Possible COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough makes measures to stop virus spread now more urgent

Andre Damon

The announcement from Pfizer and German partner BioNTech Monday that there has been progress in the development of an effective vaccine against COVID-19 is a promising and encouraging development. It makes all the more necessary urgent measures to contain the spread of the virus and save lives until a vaccine is widely available.

Pfizer announced that patients in clinical trials who received two injections of the vaccine, spaced three weeks apart, had 90 percent fewer cases of COVID-19 than a control group. By way of comparison, the typical yearly flu vaccine is only 40–60 percent effective.

Pedestrians walk past Pfizer world headquarters in New York on Monday Nov. 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

The findings were based on initial data from a clinical trial of over 43,538 participants, which were reviewed by an independent board, but which have not yet been made public. The company intends to file for an emergency use authorization once half of the participants in the study have been observed for safety issues for at least two months, sometime in the third week of November.

If approved, Pfizer’s vaccine (as well as that being developed by rival Moderna) would be the first mRNA vaccine in widespread use. This would open a new age for the rapid treatment of infectious diseases with a whole new class of low-cost vaccines.

The progress toward a vaccine should be greeted with enthusiasm by workers throughout the world. However, significant questions and issues remain.

In its report on the vaccine, medical journal Stat noted that “there is no information yet on whether the vaccine prevents severe cases, the type that can cause hospitalization and death. Nor is there any information yet on whether it prevents people from carrying the virus that causes Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, without symptoms.” The latter would be critical in determining how effective the vaccine is in preventing transmission rates.

It is also still too early to say how long the virus protects against infection. Stat also noted that the results announced by Pfizer and BioNTech have not yet been peer reviewed by scientists or published in a medical journal.

Provided that the initial results hold, even under the best of conditions Pfizer said that only 50 million doses will be available by the end of the year, with 1.3 billion produced in 2021. The vaccine must be stored at super-cold temperatures, which could make it extremely difficult to deliver to many places.

The availability and distribution of the vaccine, moreover, will be hampered by the subordination of production to the profit motives of the giant pharmaceutical companies and the conflicting interests of competing nation-states.

That being said, it does appear that progress is being made. Director of the US National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, noted that the initial results from Pfizer also bode well for the vaccine being developed by biotechnology firm Moderna and the National Institutes of Health based on similar technology. The Russian health ministry issued a statement indicating its Sputnik V vaccine would also be over 90 percent effective.

All of this means that an effective vaccine will likely be available for broad distribution sometime next year.

The progress toward a vaccine makes all the more criminal the policy of “herd immunity” that is being implemented by governments throughout the world. Just as one begins to see a light at the end of the tunnel, the argument that it is necessary to “live with the virus” becomes absolutely unacceptable.

News of the vaccine comes as the pandemic is surging in the United States and Europe. The US has surpassed 10 million cases, and, within a matter of days, a quarter million people will have died in the United States alone. As of Monday, 43 states reported 10 percent more new COVID-19 cases than the week before.

Despite this disaster, there is no plan to contain the pandemic. US President Donald Trump, who remains in office for at least two and a half more months, has publicly advocated for “herd immunity,” declaring that the spread of the disease is a positive good. President-Elect Joe Biden has rejected calls for more widespread lockdowns.

While the UK, France, and Germany have announced minor restrictions on bars and gyms, they have categorically refused to close non-essential workplaces like factories and schools.

The current catastrophic state of the pandemic is the direct consequence of the fact that government policy has been determined not by public health but by the interests of profit. Once the bailout of the banks was secured in March, the ruling class worked to implement its back-to-work policy.

As a result, hundreds of thousands have died. If emergency action is not taken now, hundreds of thousands more will die before a vaccine is widely available.

The senseless loss of life must be stopped! Non-essential businesses must be closed, with full compensation for all lost wages for workers and earnings for small businesspeople due to the pandemic. The terrible trade-off between risking one’s life and one’s livelihood cannot be accepted.

Where production is essential to the functioning of society, safe working conditions must be overseen by workers’ rank-and-file safety committees and health care professionals, with no concern for corporate profit.

There must be a massive investment in public health care infrastructure, including universal testing, contact tracing and free treatment for all. Once a vaccine is available, it must be freely distributed and not subject to the profit interests of private corporations or the competition of nation-states.

The working class must now intervene to ensure that hundreds of thousands do not needlessly die in the coming weeks and months because the capitalists must have their profits.

Biden coronavirus transition task force to continue back-to-work drive

Kate Randall

President-elect Joe Biden on Monday announced the members of his coronavirus task force. The convening of the panel comes as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to soar across the US, with predictions that the coming winter will see a dramatic rise in cases and deaths.

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris listen during a meeting with Biden's COVID-19 advisory council, Monday, Nov. 9, 2020, at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del [Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster]

The US has now seen more than 10 million coronavirus cases and is approaching 240,000 deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now estimates that there will be 2,600 to 13,000 new COVID-19 hospitalizations per day by the end of November.

As had been expected, the transition task force will be co-chaired by three familiar figures in government and academia: David Kessler, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations; Dr. Vivek Murthy, surgeon general under Barack Obama; and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a professor of public health at Yale University.

The 13-member Biden-Harris coronavirus transition team has been hailed by Democratic Party-leaning news outlets as a dramatic departure from the performance of the Trump administration’s White House Coronavirus Task Force.

While it is true that the Democrats’ virus transition team is not populated by open advocates of “herd immunity” like Dr. Scott Atlas, an examination of both the team and the president-elect’s policies reveals that the next administration’s approach will be based on the drive to reopen schools and businesses, and will continue to subordinate the government response to the pandemic to the defense of corporate profits at the expense of the health and lives of America’s working population.

Included among the Biden team’s members are advocates of the rationing of health care and proponents of the further privatization of health care delivery. The selection of the panel’s top officials also signals that, in keeping with the Democratic Party’s focus on identity politics, a Biden administration will seek to present the inequities in health care primarily as a racial, rather than a class, question.

Of particular note is the inclusion on the panel of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and brother of Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago and White House chief of staff under Obama. The World Socialist Web Site has written extensively on Dr. Emanuel’s promotion of class-based, rationed medical care for the majority of Americans, particularly the elderly.

In an especially foul piece published in the November-December 1996 Hastings Center Report, Emanuel wrote that “services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

An article appearing in the January 2009 Lancet spelled out Emanuel’s attitude toward limiting “scarce” medical resources for the elderly: “Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination: every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age.”

He explained further why adolescents might receive care at the expense of infants, arguing: “Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments. … It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old child dies, and worse still when an adolescent does.”

Emanual penned an article in the Atlantic in September 2014 titled, “Why I Hope to Die at 75,” in which he made the sinister argument that the elderly are a drain on society due to the dollars spent to keep them alive that could otherwise be used to line the pockets of the rich.

We wrote at the time:

While admitting that seniors today are less disabled and more mobile compared with their counterparts 50 years ago, he notes that, “over recent decades, increases in longevity seem to have been accompanied by increases in disability—not decreases.” He stresses, therefore, that “health care hasn’t slowed the aging process so much as it has slowed the dying process ” (emphasis added). One can only assume that he advocates an acceleration of this “dying process.”

Under conditions of a pandemic, the sinister implications of these conceptions become all the more apparent. As hospitals are overwhelmed with patients, doctors will be forced to make wrenching decisions about who is to receive a ventilator—an 82-year-old Alzheimer’s patient, who is less likely to survive, or a previously healthy 20-year-old college student?

Disability advocates in the UK have already documented how the disabled have been denied ventilators and other life-saving treatments on the basis of their “frailty” score.

Another noteworthy member of the coronavirus transition team is Atul Gawande, a professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. In May, the surgeon and writer left his job as CEO of Haven, the joint venture of JPMorgan Chase billionaire Jamie Dimon, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. The aim of the venture is to set up a self-sufficient private health care system for the employees of the three companies.

Then there is co-chair Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, the founder of the Yale School of Medicine’s Equity Research and Innovation Center (ERIC), which has investigated COVID-19 mortality data across the United States by race and ethnicity. ERIC has investigated the very real issue of higher death rates for Latinos and blacks in the US in the course of the pandemic. Her inclusion on the task force, however, will undoubtedly be used promote a narrative that shifts attention away from the class inequities suffered by all ethnicities in the pandemic.

Rounding out the 13-member team are Dr. Richard Bright, the former head of the government vaccine development agency BARDA who was fired by the Trump administration; Julie Morita, a former Chicago health commissioner; Dr. Eric Goosby, founding director of the federal government’s Ryan White HIV/AIDS program; Dr. Celine Gounder, physician and medical journalist; Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota; Loyce Pace, executive director of Global Health Council; and Dr. Robert Rodriquez, professor at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.

The program to fight COVID-19 set forth on the Biden-Harris transition web site is filled with modest and vague pledges that will likely go unfulfilled. It promises that the administration will set up a Pandemic Testing Board, “Fix personal protective equipment (PPE) problems for good,” and “Ensure everyone—not just the wealthy and well-connected—in America receives the protection and care they deserve, and consumers are not price-gouged as new drugs and therapies come to market.”

While the statement asserts that a Biden administration will “provide guidance for how communities should navigate the pandemic—and the resources for schools, small businesses, and families to make it through,” there is no talk of providing the funds needed now or in the future for the millions of people who are facing poverty, hunger and eviction as a result of the pandemic.

There are no demands for emergency measures to be taken over the coming weeks and months to deal with a sharply expanding health care catastrophe.

For good measure, the program makes the nationalist threat to “Rebuild and expand defenses to predict, prevent, and mitigate pandemic threats, including those coming from China.”

It pledges to work with governors to implement a mask mandate, a call that will likely be ignored by most Republican governors.

The great unmentionable in this program is how these measures will be financed. Biden-Harris say they will “ensure that the millions of Americans who suffer long-term side effects from COVID don’t face higher premiums or denial of health insurance because of this new pre-existing condition.”

They also say they will work to defend the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and “lower health care costs and expand access to quality, affordable health care through a Medicare-like public option.”

It is a fact that the program known as Obamacare has nothing in common with socialized medicine and has resulted in the funneling of premium payments to private insurers. The fig leaves of reform in the ACA have long since evaporated, and the legislation itself is now threatened by Trump’s Supreme Court, stacked with reactionaries.

The Biden-Harris transition team is well aware that health care costs will not be lowered, during the pandemic or otherwise. Having attacked any and all references to socialism, the incoming administration rejects the only policy that can resolve the health care crisis that has been disastrously exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic—genuine socialized medicine.

This requires the expropriation of the giant health care chains, insurance companies and pharmaceuticals to free up the resources to provide for the health needs of the population. Such a program requires the mobilization of the working class in a struggle independent of and in opposition to the two big business parties.

New Hampshire report raises concerns on evolving 5G technology

Rosamma Thomas

On November 1, the Commission to Study the Environment and Health Effects of Evolving 5G Technology in the US state of New Hampshire submitted its report to the governor of the state. It noted that the permissible radiation exposure rates in the US are among the highest in the world, and recorded that research within the country exists to show that regulatory agencies are “captured” – packed with individuals who have strong industry ties. This report went largely unnoticed, given it was submitted so close to Presidential elections in the US.

In July last year, the state passed a law constituting this commission, comprising 13 members with diverse areas of expertise: physics, engineering electromagnetics, epidemiology, biostatistics, occupational health, toxicology, medicine, public health policy, business and law. (This range of areas of expertise on this commission should come as a good lesson in public policy formulation for the Government of India). The commission received representations from the telecommunications industry and began work in September 2019.

“Fifth generation of 5G wireless technology is intended to greatly increase device capability and connectivity but also may pose significant risks to humans, animals and the environment due to increased radiofrequency radiation exposure. The purpose of this study is to examine the advantages and risks associated with 5G technology, with a focus on its environmental impact and potential health effects, particularly on children, fetuses, the elderly and those with existing health compromises,” that law read.

In its report, the commission notes: “So as the presentations and discussions went on, the Commission concluded that all things emitting radio frequency (RF) radiation needed to be considered together because of the interaction of all these waves.” There were also different meanings accorded to 5G, from how the antennae interact with other generation antennae to whether small cell towers would be needed. Ultimately, 5G was seen as a marketing concept centered around speed of data transmission.

“There is mounting evidence that DNA damage can occur from radiation outside of the ionizing part of the spectrum. The Commission heard arguments on both sides of this issue with many now saying there are findings showing biological effects in this range. This argument gets amplified as millimeter waves within the microwave range are beginning to be utilized,” the report notes.

The Commission noted that the US Telecommunication Act of 1996 says that siting of antennae cannot be denied on grounds of health concerns. Given this reality could not be altered, “As the New Hampshire Commission, we moved through the Commission process, many of the members concluded we could first encourage our federal delegation to enact changes and second, assuming the federal realities cannot be changed, recommend protective measures…”

Here is a list of the eight questions that the Commission set out to answer:

“1. Why does the insurance industry recognize wireless radiation as a leading risk and has placed exclusions in their policies not covering damages by the pathological properties of electromagnetic radiation?

2. Why do cell phone manufacturers have the legal section within the device saying keep the phone at least 5 mm from the body?
3. Why have 1000s of peer-reviewed studies, including the recently published US Toxicology Program 18-year $30 million study, that are showing a wide range of statistically significant DNA damage, brain and heart tumours, infertility and so many other ailments, been ignored by the Federal Communication Commission?
4. Why are the FCC-sanctioned guidelines for public exposure to wireless radiation based only on the thermal effect on the temperature of the skin and do not account for non-thermal, non-ionizing, biological effects of wireless radiation?
5. Why are the FCC radiofrequency exposure limits set for the United States 100 times higher than countries like Russia, China, Italy, Switzerland and most of Eastern Europe?
6. Why did the World Health Organization (WHO) signify that wireless radiation is a Group B Possibly Carcinogenic to Humans category, a group that includes lead, thalidomide and others, and why are some experts who sat on the WHO committee in 2011 now calling for it to be placed in Group 1, which are known carcinogens, and why is such information being ignored by the FCC?
7. Why have more than 220 of the world’s leading scientists signed an appeal to the WHO and the United Nations to protect public health from wireless radiation, and nothing has been done?

8.Why have the cumulative biological damaging effects of ever-growing numbers of pulse signals riding on the electromagnetic sine waves not been explored, especially as the world embraces the Internet of Things, meaning all devices being connected by electromagnetic waves, and the exploration of the number of such pulse signals that will be created by implementation of 5G technology?

“The rollout of wireless services and new products … can be key to enhancing public safety, economic opportunity and healthcare. Regardless of the evidence presented and the risks associated with RF electromagnetic field effects, business and residents alike want 100% coverage and seamless connectivity. The majority of the Commission believes that some balance can be struck to achieve the benefits of technology without jeopardizing the health of our citizens,” the report notes.

The Commission heard from experts from 10 different fields, including toxicology and public policy, and ONLY the presenter representing the telecommunications industry did not acknowledge the deleterious effect on humans and the environment from RF radiation from wireless devices, the committee noted.

The Commission noted that radiation exposure limits established by law may need to be revised: “Most of the federal regulatory agencies’ radiation exposure limits were established in the mid-1990s before the studies were carried out, so they did not take those studies into account when setting exposure limits. In addition, the initial exposure limits were developed at a time before wireless devices, and the radiation associated with them, became ubiquitous…Because of the large number of radiating devices in today’s environments, exposure for people is many times greater than when radiation thresholds were established, and the nature of today’s radiation (highdata-rate signals) has been shown to be more harmful than the lower data-rate signals that were prevalent before.” The report notes that there is only one country in the world with a higher exposure rate permissible under law than in the US – Japan.

Citing a Harvard University publication, “Captured Agency: How the Federal Communications Commission is Dominated by the Industries It Presumably Regulates,” the report notes that the priority of such bodies is then the interests of the industry rather than the health of citizens. The Commission calls for a reassessment of these agencies.

The Commission has called for an independent review of standards already set. Public service announcements should warn of health risks in using the devices, the report suggests.

The Commission has also recommended that schools and public libraries, given the evidence of young children being more susceptible, should migrate from RF wireless connections for computers and laptops to hard-wired or optical connections.

“The majority of the Commission believes that fiber optic transmission is the infrastructure of the future. When compared, RF wireless transmission lacks fiber optic characteristics: speed, security, and signal reliability while avoiding biological effects on humans and the environment,” the report notes. Three members of the Commission submitted a minority report stating that there were “no known adverse health risks from levels of RF energy emitted at the frequencies used by wireless devices”.

Meanwhile, there are reports that China has now leapfrogged into 6G – “the 6G frequency band will expand from the 5G millimeter wave frequency to the terahertz frequency,” this report noted. There are concerns that increased integration of space-air-ground-sea communications and the new frequency range might affect astronomical instruments or public health.

Democrats’ bid to win control of state legislatures collapses

Barry Grey

The 2020 US election has seen the biggest voter turnout in 120 years, driven by mass popular hatred for Donald Trump. Former Vice President Joe Biden has defeated the incumbent by more than four million votes and is certain to reach the threshold of 270 Electoral College votes needed to become president.

But the inability and refusal of Biden and the Democratic Party to advance any program to address the catastrophic public health impact of the coronavirus pandemic or the Depression-era social crisis it has triggered have actually strengthened the position of the Republican Party in the US Congress and in statehouses across the United States.

In the US Senate, the Democrats have to date netted only one additional seat, leaving Trump’s GOP in control, while in the House, their anti-Russia impeachment debacle and complicity in denying unemployment benefits to tens of millions impacted by the pandemic have resulted in a loss of seats.

The Senate side of the US Capitol is seen on the morning of Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, 2020, in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite]

Perhaps the sharpest expression in the elections of the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party is its failure to make any inroads into Republican control of state legislatures across the country. These state bodies largely determine the rules for elections, the exercise of reproductive rights, spending for education and the availability of health care.

As of Tuesday’s election, the Republicans controlled some three-fifths of legislative chambers, having won two dozen in the 2010 election cycle. States with Republican-controlled legislatures include Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas, North Carolina and Florida.

In Tuesday’s vote, despite an unprecedented public health, economic, social and political crisis, the lowest number of state chambers changed hands in more than 70 years. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), there were changes or potential shifts of control in just four bodies. The Republicans took back the New Hampshire House and Senate from the Democrats, and the Democrats may have captured the House and Senate in Arizona, although the contests for the Arizona chambers are still too close to call.

“This is crazy in that almost nothing changed,” said Tim Storey, an expert with the NCSL. “It really jumps off the page.”

The Democrats’ failure came despite having poured millions of dollars into campaign ads aimed at gaining control of the state legislatures in Texas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and other key states. David Abrams of the Republican State Leadership Committee gloated, “Democrats spent hundreds of millions of dollars to flip state chambers. So far, they don’t have a damn thing to show for it.”

Republican-led state houses have spearheaded the attack on abortion rights and voting rights, imposing ever more onerous restrictions on access to abortion and measures such as voter IDs to make it more difficult for working and poor people to vote. The Democrats have put up no serious resistance to these attacks on democratic rights.

Control of state legislatures is particularly important in this election because the incoming state bodies will carry out redistricting next year on the basis of the just completed decennial census. They will redraw congressional districts for the next 10 years, gerrymandering them to suit partisan aims and further entrench the interests of the corporate elite.

In Texas, the second most populous state in the US, where the GOP controls both legislative chambers and the governorship, the Republicans are considering redrawing state maps based on “citizen voting-age population” instead of counting the total population. This will exclude all non-citizens, disproportionately Hispanic, and lower representation from Democratic strongholds in south Texas and fast-growing parts of Dallas and Houston.

As for gubernatorial races, the Democrats failed to pick up any Republican governorships and lost an open seat in Montana that had been vacated by Democrat Steve Bullock, who ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate. Republican Greg Gianforte won against Lieutenant Governor Mike Cooney, ending more than 16 years of Democratic leadership in a state that usually votes Republican in presidential contests.

Armed conflict in Tigray threatens break up of Ethiopia

Jean Shaoul

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has ordered repeated air strikes against military targets in Tigray, one of Ethiopia’s semi-autonomous, ethnically defined provinces, and declared a six-month state of emergency. With phone and internet lines cut, the region has been effectively sealed off.

Abiy launched the strikes in response to what he claimed was an “attack” by Tigray’s ruling party on an army compound that he said had the support of an unnamed “foreign hand.”

While details are unclear, amid claims and counterclaims, the United Nations has reported armed clashes in eight different locations with dozens of casualties and warned that nine million people could be displaced by the fighting.

The parliament, meeting in an emergency session, declared Tigray’s regional government illegal and voted to dissolve it. The Tigray leadership had “violated the constitution and endangered the constitutional system” and a new caretaker administration would hold elections and “implement decisions passed on by the federal government.”

The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that heads the regional government has refused to back down in the escalating conflict with the federal government in Addis Ababa. With more than half of Ethiopia’s army based in Tigray, a legacy of its war with Eritrea, Abiy cannot rely on the military’s support or a brief skirmish. Yesterday, he sacked his army chief, head of intelligence and foreign minister.

Ethiopia regions (credit: map for use on Wikivoyage, English version)

Tigray is only one of the country’s festering ethnic conflicts and there are fears of a civil war that threatens the breakup of Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country that is a mosaic of ethnicities and languages. As the regional powerhouse, Ethiopia’s risks the broader destabilisation of the Horn of Africa.

The Tigrayan conflict has been brewing for some time. The TPLF, an armed ethno-nationalist movement that emerged in 1975, played a prominent role in defeating the Moscow-aligned government of Mengistu Haile Mariam, known as the Derg, in 1991. Mengistu’s regime had brutally suppressed the politically amorphous social movement that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, jailing its political opponents, carrying out a series of civil wars against separatist movements of Eritreans and Tigrayans, as well as the Oromos and Somalis, and presiding over droughts and famine in 1984 and 1985 in which hundreds of thousands perished.

The TPLF was the dominant party in the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of several militia groups and parties, that governed the country after Megistu’s overthrow in 1991. The EPRDF was to remain in power, courtesy of rigged elections, for nearly three decades, presiding over an increasingly authoritarian state.

Map showing the location of Ethiopia on the Horn of Africa (credit: map for use on Wikivoyage, English version)

In 1995, the government, under the leadership of Meles Zenawi, a Tigrayan, had devolved some powers to the regions, including the right in principle to secede. Resentment grew against Tigrayan political and economic dominance—Tigrayans constitute six percent of the population—as politicians whipped up ethnic tensions as a diversion against a unified struggle by the impoverished masses against the Ethiopian elites.

There were huge protests starting in 2014, precipitated by Addis’ land grab of historic Oromo lands that were handed over to overseas companies—often from the Gulf and China, for infrastructure and export-orientated agribusiness. Ethnic protests in Oromia and Amhara, who constitute about 35 percent and 27 percent of the population respectively, saw thousands killed and tens of thousands arrested.

In February 2018, as the protests and political crisis mounted, Hailemariam Desalegn, who became prime minister after Meles’ death in 2012, resigned as both head of government and the EPRDF. His successor, Abiy Ahmed, a former military intelligence officer and an Oromo, was welcomed at home and abroad as a “reformer,” receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for making peace with Eritrea one year later. In November 2019, he disbanded the EPRDF, replacing it with the Prosperity Party (PP), which TPLF refused to join.

Abiy released tens of thousands of political prisoners, ended the internet blackout imposed by the previous government, lifted a ban on several political parties, some of which had been designated “terrorist” groups, paving the way for the leaders of the banned groups to return to Ethiopia and ended the 20-year long war with neighbouring Eritrea. He introduced a raft of measures aimed at reducing the TPLF’s dominance, including retiring their military and government officials, instigating corruption charges against some members and announcing plans for the privatisation of swathes of the state-owned economy and liberalisation of the banks, in a bid to secure Washington and the International Monetary Fund’s approval.

This sparked furious opposition within the military and led to last year’s abortive coup. Viewed as collectively responsible for the crimes of the previous regime, some 100,000 Tigrayans have been driven from their homes and are living in internally displaced people’s camps due to racist violence.

Despite Abiy’s promise to end ethnic discrimination, ethnic violence has increased, with some 1.7 million internally displaced people living in camps as the danger grows of still bloodier ethnic violence. The sale of land has also continued, under conditions where 80 percent of Ethiopia’s 104 million people are dependent upon the land for their subsistence and at least 25 percent of the population ekes out an existence on less than $2 a day.

The COVID-19 pandemic has served to intensify the social, economic and political crisis, with Abiy announcing the postponement of this year’s general election, viewed as an important component of Ethiopia’s transition to democracy—initially to August, but now indefinitely. His decision was backed by parliament and a Council of Constitutional Inquiry (CCI), prompting Abiy’s opponents to accuse him of illegally extending his term in office. The Tigrayan regional government rejected the postponement, holding its own election in September.

After the federal government declared the result illegal, the finance ministry announced plans to bypass the Tigrayan regional government and send funds directly to local authorities, reportedly also blocking welfare payments to poor farmers and preventing people travelling to Mekelle, the regional capital—moves that the TPLF said were tantamount to a “declaration of war.”

The country has also been destabilised by the widespread protests that took place throughout Oromia, in the wake of the assassination of the popular Oromian musician, activist, and former political prisoner, Hachalu Hundessa.

Abiy responded by deploying troops to put down the riots, shutting down the internet and media offices, and arresting thousands of people. These included journalists accused of inciting violence and a leading opposition politician Jawar Mohammed, also an Oromo and former ally turned opponent of Abiy. The state-controlled media blamed Hachalu’s assassination on the Oromo Liberation Army, a rebel group, and the TPLF.

The last few weeks have seen several massacres, mostly of Amharas, with Amnesty International reporting the killing of dozens of women and children in a schoolyard in western Oromia on November 1, adding to this year’s 147 clashes that have left several hundred dead. There are widespread fears that the open conflict in Tigray will inspire secessionist sentiment in other parts of the country.

This crisis takes place amid an escalating international conflict over Ethiopia’s giant Renaissance Dam over the Blue Nile, that supplies 80 percent of the Nile’s downstream waters. Defeated United States President Trump has backed Egypt and Sudan against Ethiopia, amid threats that Egypt could blow up the dam and cuts in Washington’s aid to Addis.

The desperate situation in Ethiopia is part of the ongoing fragmentation and disintegration of the countries in the Horn of Africa, which includes Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and Djibouti. The Horn is an arena of intense great power and regional rivalry for control of oil reserves and mineral resources in neighbouring countries and the sea route through the narrow Bab al-Mandeb straights—through which much of Europe’s oil passes—with the US and Europe engaged in a ferocious struggle with China.

Former Mexican military chief pleads not guilty to US drug trafficking charges

Andrea Lobo

Retired Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, the Mexican defense secretary from 2012 to 2018, appeared in a US federal court in Brooklyn last Thursday, following his Oct. 15 arrest at Los Angeles International Airport.

Cienfuegos, referred to as “The Godfather” in the indictment, pleaded “not guilty” to charges of conspiracy, drug trafficking to the United States and money laundering. Between December 2015 and February 2017, according to the court filing, “in exchange for bribe payments, he permitted the H-2 Cartel—a cartel that routinely engaged in wholesale violence, including torture and murder—to operate with impunity in Mexico.”

The prosecutors claim to have thousands of incriminating BlackBerry Messenger exchanges with the H-2 Cartel, a remnant of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel, they obtained through US phone-tapping operations against Cienfuegos and cartel members. One message allegedly indicates that he provided assistance for far longer to another organization, which is widely believed to be the Sinaloa Cartel.

General Cienfuegos in 2018 receiving award at Pentagon's Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (Credit: NDU Audio Visual)

The trial of Cienfuegos is the latest in a string of cases pursued by the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn since it handed down a life sentence against Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán last year.

Currently, the two main overseers of the so-called “war on drugs” during the administration of Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto are being charged for working with the drug cartels. Genaro García Luna, former secretary of public security, arrested last year in Texas, has also pleaded not guilty to charges of receiving millions to protect the Sinaloa Cartel. The case also involves charges against his closest underlings Luis Cárdenas Palomino and Ramón Pequeño García.

The Cienfuegos arrest sent shockwaves through the Mexican ruling elite, with nervous press commentaries calling it “irresponsible” and warning that it “shatters trust in Mexico’s armed forces.”

Cienfuegos was not under any investigation in Mexico, raising suspicions about the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who claims to be leading a campaign against corruption. He has responded to the charges in the US by claiming that “We won’t cover for anybody,” while refusing to remove any of the officials appointed by Cienfuegos, or even those in his circle of confidence like the current chief officer of the secretary of defense, Agustín Radilla.

“I don’t see anyone in the Army happy about this detention,” wrote Mexican reporter Eunice Rendón, who added, “They are the same then and now under [López Obrador’s] ‘Fourth Transformation.’”

The recent cases have gravely tarnished all institutions involved in the “war on drugs,” from the presidencies of Felipe Calderón (2006–2012) and Peña Nieto (2012–2018), to the military and police leaderships, as well as the US administrations that backed the war through the $3.1 billion Merida Initiative since 2007.

As in other countries in the region, chiefly Colombia, drug trafficking has long been exploited by US governments to further Washington’s influence over the region’s security forces and, through this, over domestic politics. “Prior to FY2008,” explains a 2020 report by the US Congress Research Service, “Mexico did not receive large amounts of U.S. security assistance, partially due to Mexican sensitivity about U.S. involvement in the country’s internal affairs.”

The corporate media has largely avoided commenting on the questions the cases raise about the role of the US government itself. García Luna, especially, played a key role in setting up and selling the Merida Initiative to the US and Mexican public.

A December 2007 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks indicates that then Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was a personal handler of García Luna, helping him “fill in the blanks in preparation for future questioning regarding the Merida Initiative.”

García Luna was also allowed to personally “vet” officials in the Mexican police, a cover used by US agencies to assuage fears of corruption in the Mexican state. An April 2008 cable explains that “unprecedented cooperation … would not be possible without our ability to work with vetted units [by García Luna] supported by USG agencies including DEA and ICE.”

After the killing of several of García Luna’s officials by rival drug cartels in 2008—officials eulogized by the US embassy for their “outstanding work” and “highest professional standards”— an embassy cable expressed “concerns about García Luna’s ability to manage his subordinates.” Nonetheless, in October 2009, the US ambassador said García Luna, who had just quintupled the size of the federal police with the help of US aid, would be a “key player” in reaching “new levels of practical cooperation in two of the country’s most important institutions.”

After the war claimed more than 300,000 lives, left 73,000 missing—including numerous extrajudicial massacres by the military— and cost Mexican taxpayers $120 billion, the promises to end the war and the Merida Initiative by Andrés Manuel López Obrador were central to his 2018 election as president.

Shortly after the 2018 election, an Internal Security Law approved by Peña Nieto and requested by Cienfuegos—allowing troops to carry out police functions and granting greater autonomy to the military to select targets, wage operations and collect intelligence—was declared unconstitutional.

As soon as he came to power, however, López Obrador and his Morena party changed the Constitution to permit the domestic deployment of the military and created a National Guard as a new cover for the discredited military.

Meanwhile, the US Congress, with bipartisan approval, has granted AMLO nearly $300 million under the Merida Initiative.

Commenting on the Cienfuegos arrest, the renowned journalist and expert on Mexican drug cartels, Anabel Hernández, stressed that, “The same system remains embedded in his own political party Morena.” She explained that Morena’s security chief in Mexico City, Omar García Harfuch, rose through the ranks under the patronage of García Luna and Cárdenas Palomino, and cites federal police documents confirming Harfuch’s talks with organized crime.

A December 2009 cable published by WikiLeaks shows that the US State Department vetted Harfuch when he was working for the federal police under García Luna so that Harfuch could complete programs with the FBI, DEA and Harvard University.

Additionally, a DEA agent told Proceso in December 2012 that they had long known about García Luna’s ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, but kept quiet “out of respect for Mexican institutions and because he was the direct contact with the United States.”

In the case of Cienfuegos, several cables note his constant collaboration with the United States, with the Pentagon awarding him an award for excellence two years ago.

The US legal cases against the Sinaloa Cartel and their partners in the previous governments can only be understood in the context of the new buildup of the Mexican military encouraged by the United States. Its main target, amid a resurgence of the class struggle across North America and internationally, is the working class.

While carrying out widespread austerity measures amid the pandemic crisis, including the elimination of $3 billion for science, culture and victim protection, the Morena administration granted $1.5 billion for military equipment and subsidies for the families of the chiefs of staff and proposed a 20 percent budget increase for defense.

This context explains why the US case against Cienfuegos ignores the widespread human rights abuses carried out by the military under the general’s term, including countless extrajudicial executions.

Last September, soldiers were first arrested in Mexico for their involvement in the killing of the 43 Mexican teaching students from Ayotzinapa in 2014. Cienfuegos lied repeatedly about the involvement of the military, which collaborated in the killings with Guerreros Unidos, another splinter of the Beltrán Leyva cartel.

From 2005 to 2007, Cienfuegos headed the IX military region of Guerrero, the state where Ayotzinapa is located, at a time when the Beltrán Leyva cartel prospered out of their base in Acapulco, the state’s largest city. Cienfuegos would then lead the first military region of Mexico City from 2007 to 2009, which was then a stronghold for the Sinaloa Cartel.

In 2012, Sergio Villarreal, a leader of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel known as “El Grande,” testified after his arrest that in 2007 and subsequently, he and his then partners of the Sinaloa Cartel had “bought” the commanders of the security forces in Guerrero and Mexico City.

Coronavirus pandemic intensifies humanitarian disaster in Yemen

Anna Rombach & Marianne Arens

In war-torn Yemen—devastated by five years of a US- and EU-backed war led by Saudi Arabia—the coronavirus pandemic is exhibiting its murderous potential. Doctors there report a death rate of 20 to 30 percent among those infected.

Intensive care physician Tankred Stöbe from the aid organization Doctors Without Borders told the German newspaper Tagesspiegel of the dramatic consequences of the pandemic . The pandemic, he noted, has swept through the bitterly poor and war-ravaged country “like a deadly desert storm.”

Stöbe estimates a 30 percent mortality rate among COVID-19 patients, the highest in the world. A significant lack of testing renders the official figures—just over 2,000 confirmed cases and 600 deaths—meaningless. “The vast majority of patients have suffocated in their homes without being counted, diagnosed or treated.”

Yemen students wear face masks to help curb the spread of COVID-19 as they take a final-term school exam at a public school in Sanaa, Yemen, Saturday, Aug. 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

Many Yemenis live far from a clinic and are left to fend for themselves if infected with the coronavirus. The virus spreads virtually unchecked. “There is hardly a family that has not been affected by the pandemic,” Stöbe reports.

Doctors Without Borders erected a specialized COVID-19 clinic whose 40 beds were immediately filled. “The mortality was very high because patients came too late,” Stöbe explained. “The average length of stay was five days—but not because people recovered, but because they died.” The clinic contends with a chronic shortage of personnel and materials. Moreover, the staff must transport oxygen bottles across residential districts devastated by war.

The high mortality rate is primarily due to the preexisting, unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe in the country from a years-long civil war and an imperialist-backed bombing campaign.

Saudi Arabia has waged an unrelenting air war in Yemen since March 2015 aimed at toppling the Huthi rebel government and reimposing the puppet regime of imperialist stooge Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. The United States, France, Great Britain and Germany have all supported this murderous war, directly or indirectly. As such, the German government has exported over €1 billion in weaponry to countries participating in the war.

Stöbe described the situation now unfolding in Yemen as an “unbelievable tragedy.” Bombing and live fire continue on a daily basis: “Tens of thousands have already died. Millions have been displaced.”

Were the criteria and legal principles of the Nuremberg Trials to be applied to Yemen, the politicians responsible for these crimes against humanity would be tried in court and locked behind bars. Sentences handed down in Nuremberg after the Second World War sent the surviving leaders of the Third Reich to the gallows or a lifetime in prison.

Today, however, the United Nations sees this differently: Of all countries, they chose Saudi Arabia to host the charity conference for Yemen in June of 2020.

Under international pressure, early this year Saudi Arabia announced a temporary abstention of aerial raids against Yemen “for humanitarian reasons.” In fact, the bombing continued. Between March and June, the Yemen Data Project recorded 1,078 air attacks, at least 142 on civilian targets like residential areas, schools and hospitals.

The war perpetrated by Saudi Arabia with support of Western powers against the Yemeni population has impacted primarily civilians. The monarchy in Riyadh, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has blockaded food and medical aid to the country with the conscious intention of causing mass suffering and starvation. Roughly 20 million Yemenis depend on food aid for survival.

Ten million human beings are threatened by starvation, as reported this summer by the German broadcaster Tagesschau. It has been two years since the aid organization Save the Children reported that 85,000 Yemeni children had starved to death.

Other diseases—cholera, malaria, dengue fever—are taking an additional toll. Just this year over 110,000 people contracted cholera. A cholera clinic set up and operated at great personal sacrifice by Doctors Without Borders volunteers was bombed by Saudi fighter planes in the battle for the port city of Hodeidah.

Doctors Without Borders’ account of the pandemic is corroborated by Essen, Germany cardiologist Dr. Marwan Al-Ghafory, an advocate for suffering Yemenis. Via the free app “Tabiby” (my doctor) he has reached tens of thousands of people in Yemen.

The cardiologist concludes that the real situation in Yemen is far worse than officially reported. According to Johns Hopkins University, there are currently 2,070 known coronavirus infections and 602 deaths. “But the information our team has gathered, the statistics that we have collected ourselves, tell us quite something else,” the doctor said in an interview. “We peg it at more than 100,000 cases with a mortality rate of over 20 percent.”

For Dr. Al-Ghafory, the most important task is warning the population about a second, more severe wave of coronavirus. Yemenis have very little access to reliable information. He said: “I write articles every day and translate medical studies. My team and I post between seven and ten articles a day. We’ve taken the task upon ourselves to educate our forgotten people about COVID-19.”

The coronavirus pandemic is only accelerating the enormous catastrophe long wrought by imperialism. As a result of the war, the country is lacking not only necessary health care, but clean water for drinking and washing, sanitary systems, sufficient nutrition, shelter, as well as prospects for the future—in short, every elementary necessity for a healthy life.

The imperialist powers, especially the US, but also Germany, support the belligerence of Saudi Arabia because they consider Riyadh an important ally in their conflicts with Iran, Russia and China. Above all, however, they see in the Saudi monarchy a bastion against the threat of working class uprisings throughout the Middle East.

Australian bushfire report aids government whitewash on climate change and lack of resources

Margaret Rees

Late last month, the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements issued a nearly 600-page report into the 2019-2020 Australian bushfire disaster, after hearing 270 witnesses and receiving 1,750 public submissions.

Despite all the evidence presented, the report faithfully follows the instructions of the Liberal-National government, which called the inquiry in February as an exercise in political damage control and cover-up.

On the release of the report, Emergency Management Minister David Littleproud quickly announced the government’s agreement with its 80 recommendations. “In terms of the federal recommendations there is nothing there that the federal government is concerned about,” he told the media. “I think they are very pragmatic recommendations and ones that we will continue to proceed.”

Fire on the outskirts of Harrington, NSW late last year (Credit: Kelly-ann Oosterbeek)

First and foremost, the report holds no one, least of all the government, responsible for the catastrophe. The foreword states: “Although informed by the existing national arrangements, we took a deliberate decision not to find fault, ‘point fingers’ or attribute blame.”

The three commissioners appointed by the government were ex-armed forces chief Mark Binskin, former judge Annabelle Bennett and environmental law professor Andrew Macintosh.

Their report begins by paying lip service to climate change as the driver of bushfire disasters. Based on testimony from witnesses from the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), the official Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Geoscience Australia, it notes that clear global warming trends have emerged, and that Australia has warmed by approximately 1.4 degrees since 1910.

According to the BoM, further warming over the next two decades is inevitable, with the global climate system continuing to warm in response to the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. The CSIRO stated that some further climate change is “locked in” because of emissions already experienced.

Yet the report advances no recommendations at all for responding to global warming. What is advanced instead is the catchphrase “resilience,” which means accepting more extreme weather-related disasters as inevitable, and somehow co-existing with them.

Accordingly, the report proposes that “a more mature understanding of the root causes and effects of disaster risk and, in particular, systemic vulnerability, is needed, so that our efforts to mitigate the risk and build resilience can meet the challenges of the future.” This is exactly in line with the terms of reference for the inquiry set out by Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

The report presents the resulting national disasters within the framework of the profit system, citing estimates of economic costs. It quotes Deloitte Access Economics, which in 2017 estimated that, for the previous decade, the national bill for natural disasters was $18.2 billion annually. The report projects that this amount will blow out to $39 billion per year by 2050, even without accounting for climate change.

The report takes a similar approach with the lack of civilian resources to combat infernos of the intensity experienced over the past year. It covers up the criminal lack of civilian firefighting resources—aerial capacity, modern trucks, professional firefighters and evacuation infrastructure—revealed by the bushfires.

The inquiry commissioners warn that the “increasing complexity of disaster risks” has “the potential to overwhelm the capabilities of our fire and emergency services.” Yet they make no recommendation for the allocation of the necessary billions of dollars to address this threat.

Given the lengthening of bushfire seasons in both northern and southern hemispheres, due to climate change, the hire of aircraft for aerial bushfire fighting from overseas is becoming increasingly difficult.

The report notes that during the 2019-2020 fires, 66 overseas aircraft were leased for firefighting, but the severity of the fires meant that more were needed at short notice, and could not be obtained.

In Australia, about two-thirds of aerial firefighting aircraft are owned or contracted directly by the states and territories, which meet the costs. The remaining one third (160) are contracted through the National Aerial Firefighting Centre (NAFC), which does not own any aircraft itself.

The report calls for a “modest” national aircraft fleet, ensuring a “sovereign aerial firefighting capability.” What is meant by “modest” is indicated by the mere $15 million per year that the Morrison government committed to spending on aerial firefighting between 2018 and 2021. This amount was hastily topped up during the 2019-2020 catastrophe by an extra $31 million, enabling an additional four Large Air Tankers to be procured for the season.

The report deals likewise with the inadequacy of evacuation facilities, with state, territory and local governments merely advised to provide nationally-consistent evacuation centres, Neighbourhood Safer places, places of last resort and natural disaster shelters.

The commissioners admit that during the last bushfire season “people slept on floors with limited to no bedding and others slept in cars or other vehicles.” Desperate people arrived together with their animals, big and small. There were chaotic evacuation scenes at fires such as those at Lake Conjola in New South Wales, Mallacoota in Victoria, and Kangaroo Island in South Australia. Yet the report provides no costing for evacuation centres.

The same attitude is maintained in relation to power outages, which proliferated during the 2019-2020 bushfire season, in some cases lasting for weeks. The insistence by the private power companies that they should not have to put power lines underground, is advanced in the report without any criticism, on the grounds that it would be “significantly more expensive.”

Then the Morrison government is applauded for having allocated $37 million toward “enhancing telecommunications resilience”—a mere drop in the bucket.

In line with the report’s underlying profit-driven response, it insists that governments cannot protect everyone. “Even the best prepared and resourced governments and fire and emergency services cannot entirely protect the public from the impact of natural disasters,” it states.

“Some bushfires, for example, will be too widespread; some Australians will live too remotely; and there are only so many firefighters, aircraft and trucks that can be deployed at the same time. Furthermore, governments and charities by no means cover the cost of rebuilding uninsured homes and replacing other property lost in natural disasters.”

Moreover, the report makes clear that the overwhelming volunteer base of the fire service should remain, rejecting calls for more full-time firefighters.

“Australia has a strong culture of volunteerism with over 200,000 volunteer emergency responders nationally,” it states. “Volunteers are willing to give their time to protect their communities, generally seeking no more than support and respect.”

Because of the extraordinary demands on volunteers, and the impact on their employment, the report merely suggests offering them some financial aid. “Volunteers need to be supported and enabled to participate in a way that respects the values of volunteerism, and considers the competing demands on their time.”

Under the heading of “land management,” the report proposes allowing farmers more leeway to clear land of trees, saying it is necessary to “ensure that there is clarity about the requirement and scope for landholders and land managers to undertake bushfire hazard reduction activities; and minimise the time that is necessary to obtain approvals.”

The report estimates that during and after the 2019-2020 bushfires, over $8 billion was provided for disaster recovery, by all levels of government, non-government organisations, charities and the private sector. This includes $2 billion from the Morrison’s government’s National Bushfire Recovery Fund, $1.8 billion from state and territory governments, and $2.3 billion from insurance.

Much of the proclaimed amount has not been dispensed, leaving many of the disaster’s survivors still in limbo, often in temporary accommodation. Furthermore, this outlay pales into insignificance besides the $575 billion to be spent over the next decade on the military, including for an expanded domestic role in dealing with social unrest and other “emergencies.”