A wonderful year for the elite: Top 25 hedge fund managers earned record $32 billion in 2020 as millions plunged into misery

Kevin Reed

On February 22, the Institutional Investor (II) published its annual “Rich List” of the top twenty-five hedge managers and their earnings in 2020. During a year in which tens of millions of people lost their jobs and hundreds of thousands died from the coronavirus pandemic in the US, these super-wealthy individuals collectively increased their earnings 50 percent over 2019 to $32 billion.

In “The 20th Annual Rich List, the Definitive Ranking of What Hedge Fund Managers Earned in 2020,” Stephen Taub wrote, “A bad year for humanity was a wonderful year for the hedge fund elite.”

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange [Credit: AP Photo/Richard Drew]

To this the editors of the publication added, “when volatility increases and stock markets soar—regardless of their connection to the real economy—a select group of men (and yes, it is all men on II’s 2020 Rich List) stand to make bank. It may not be seemly, but it remains fact. And Steve Taub, alone among his peers, consistently gets it right.”

Topping the list was Israel (Izzy) Englander, the founder and CEO of Millennium Management , who earned $3.8 billion in 2020. Englander, 72, more than doubled his 2019 earnings of $1.5 billion and has a net worth of $7.2 billion and is 74th richest American according to the Forbes 400 2020 list.

Englander’s Millennium Management is characterized in investment circles as “the world’s largest alternative asset management firm with $39 billion assets under management” and it operates in America, Europe and Africa. The Millennium Management fund increased its value by 26 percent and earned “$10.2 billion in 2020, bringing the firm’s lifetime return for investors to $36 billion,” according to the II profile of Englander which noted, “Englander has been on the Rich List in 19 of 20 years, including last year’s tie for third place.”

To get a sense of the amount of money earned by Englander in 2020, his payout of $3.8 billion would cover the living expenses of 5,000 families of four for 10 years. The other 24 individuals on the “Rich List” earned between $1 billion and $2.6 billion and top 10 earned a collective $20 billion.

A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that engages in complex trading schemes on Wall Street. Short selling (betting that the value of a stock is going to fall), leverage (borrowing funds to purchase a financial asset) and derivatives (complex bundles of assets such as forwards, futures, options and swaps) are among the techniques used by hedge funds and these activities are available only to “institutional investors” and “high net worth individuals” who are part of the exclusive super-wealthy financial oligarchy.

One searches high and low online to find a single word of criticism or objection to the grotesque accumulation of wealth by the hedge fund managers hailed by the publishers and editors of II. It does not register in the capitalist press that there is any problem at all with a handful of billionaires raking in more billions while millions are without jobs, food, shelter and health care while the government and corporate America are demanding workers stay on the job and children go back to school to face the deadly pandemic.

All that could be mustered was the following from CNBC, “The big gains during the coronavirus pandemic, coupled with the public debate over hedge funds in the wake of the GameStop controversy, is likely to draw criticism from lawmakers and the public over hedge fund pay and fairness in financial markets.”

As analyzed on the World Socialist Web Site last week, the GameStop episode—which began as a “short squeeze” applied on hedge funds by a group of small retail investors—in the end resulted in many millions of dollars “pocketed by some of the most powerful sections of the financial oligarchy.”

The fact is that the bankrupting of small investors—some of whom mortgaged their homes to invest money amid the GameStop frenzy—was the inevitable outcome of a system dominated by the massive Wall Street firms.

Meanwhile, the GameStop experience as well as the 2020 hedge fund manager’s earnings barely raise an eyebrow in Washington D.C., where Congressional representatives and leading figures in the White House—both Democrats and Republicans—are themselves part of the financial feeding frenzy.

It should be recalled that leading figures of both parties—including Senators Richard Burr (Republican from North Carolina), Kelly Loeffler (Republican from Georgia), Diane Feinstein (Democrat from California) and James Inhofe (Republican from Oklahoma)—walked out of a secret briefing about COVID-19 in late January of last year and immediately made decisions to adjust their personal investment portfolios. They did not warn the public about what they had been told about the impact of the pandemic.

Additionally, it should be recalled that hedge funds brought on the Great Recession of 2007–2008 after an investment scheme in risky “mortgage-backed securities” failed and brought down the entire capitalist financial system. None among the financial oligarchy responsible for the meltdown—resulting in the worst economic and social crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s—was ever prosecuted or brought to justice for this criminal activity.

Far from it, the response of the US government—at the end of the administration of George W. Bush and the beginning of the administration of Barack Obama—was to pump hundreds of billions of dollars of government resources from the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank into the financial system to keep it from collapsing and ensuring the further enrichment of the billionaires on Wall Street.

The rise of the stock market over the past year that is behind the massive increase in the wealth of the hedge fund managers is likewise due to the ongoing purchase of trillions of dollars in financial assets by the US federal government which was massively increased with the passage of the USA CARES Act during the Trump administration. On the eve of the passage of the new $1.9 trillion stimulus package, there is no indication that this policy is going to change with Democratic President Joe Biden in the White House.

Cashing in on racialist politics: Black Lives Matter foundation raised $90 million in 2020

Trévon Austin

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) last week released for the first time a report outlining its financial position. The so-called “2020 Impact Report” states that the organization collected over $90 million last year.

The BLMGNF was founded in 2013 by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi in the wake of the killing of Trayvon Martin. It has since promoted and capitalized on the slogan “Black Lives Matter,” raising substantial sums of money, including from large corporate donors and private foundations like the Ford Foundation.

Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter [Wikimedia Commons]

According to the report, BLMGNF had approximately $8.4 million in expenses in 2020, which was distributed in the form of “staffing, operating and administrative expenses, civic engagement, programs and field expenses, rapid response, and crisis intervention.” This includes about $2 million spent on a “get out the vote” campaign to support the Democratic Party in the 2020 elections. There is no breakdown on how the other $6.4 million was spent.

The organization also reported that it has committed $21.7 million in funding to its official and unofficial chapters, in addition to 30 local organizations that received six-figure grants. These funds, it states, “will go toward the sustenance of Black communities and Black movement-building.” BLMGNF ended 2020 with more than $60 million in its coffers.

The BLMGNF has benefited from opposition to police violence which erupted in mass protests across the US and internationally following the police murder of George Floyd last summer. On June 2, seven days into the wave of protests, BLMGNF’s website drew 1.9 million visitors, with a total of 24 million visits in the second half of 2020.

BLMGNF’s report does not include any detail about who donated to the organization last year, and its leaders declined to name prominent donors. However, much of BLM’s funding in 2020 can be linked to the swelling of corporate support for racialist movements, when last year’s multi-ethnic and multi-racial protests shook the ruling class. Multiple corporations pledged substantial sums of money, usually over a period of years, to organizations ostensibly fighting for racial equality.

The BLMGNF is part of a broader group of organizations operating under the umbrella of the “Movement for Black Lives.” The latter includes, in addition to BLMGNF, the National Conference of Black Lawyers and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Cullors is also a board member of the Ella Baker Center, which was founded by Democratic Party member and former Obama advisor Van Jones.

Technology companies were some of the largest contributors to the Black Lives Matter movement. Google pledged $12 million to various groups, while Facebook and Amazon each donated $10 million. Apple pledged $100 million for a Racial Equity and Justice Initiative that will “challenge the systemic barriers to opportunity and dignity that exist for communities of color, and particularly for the black community.”

Walmart announced $100 million over five years will be dedicated to creating a new center for racial equality, and Target donated $10 million to a similar cause.

Before 2020, the Ford Foundation pledged $100 million over six years to several organizations associated with the “Movement for Black Lives.”

The swelling financial basis for BLMGNF has led to infighting over access to the resources. Multiple local branches have accused its leadership of lack of financial transparency and accountability. Ten chapters, dubbed #BLM10, claimed that local groups have received little to no financial assistance from their parent organization. Records BLM shared with the Associated Press say that local chapters received multiple rounds of funding ranging between $800 and $69,000 since 2016.

However, #BLM10 complained that the grants are not proportionate to how much the organization has raised over the years. Additionally, they questioned the decision to remain silent about prominent donors. In its early years, BLM disclosed receiving donations from wealthy celebrities such as Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Prince.

The BLMGNF foundation restructured its chapters into a separate entity called BLM Grassroots last summer. The chapters are eligible for $500,000 grants if they sign on to a multi-year agreement, including a series of demands from leadership. Only one BLM group in Denver met the demands and received funding in December.

In response to the allegations, BLMGNF co-founder Cullors, who now plays the leading role in the organization, claimed that there were misunderstandings about the organization’s finances and that it was often “scraping for money” in previous years.

The Black Lives Matter organizations have been promoted by a section of the American ruling class as part of an effort to promote racial divisions and obscure common class interests of all workers, including in the fight against police violence. The agenda of these organizations has nothing to do with the grievances of workers and youth of any race or ethnicity. Rather, they speak for privileged sections of the middle class seeking to cash in on the promotion of racial politics to advance their own positions within the state and corporate America.

Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue (BETD) Media Fellowship 2021

Application Deadline: 7th March 2021

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Online

About the Award: The German Government invites the world to the annual inspiring dialogue on the global energy transition, the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue. Every year, high-level participants from politics, industry, science and civil society gather in Berlin for two days to discuss the shift to a sustainable energy system. This year’s focus will be on:
• shifting geopolitics,
• integrated energy transition,
• structural change
• and digitalisation and blockchain.  

Type: Workshop, Fellowship

Eligibility: The conference is open to aspiring journalists from all over the world, who are interested in the global energy transition.

Number of Awards: Limited

Value of Award: The BETD Media Fellowship allows young journalists from around the world to come to Berlin and 
• gain access to this exclusive conference,
• talk to high-level global energy stakeholders, 
• connect with the other BETD Media Fellows, 
• and experience the energy transition hands-on with exclusive guided tours and side events during the Berlin Energy Week.

This year, BETD Media Fellows – Connecting Journalists conference will have full virtual access to the exclusive events taking place during the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue 2021 and the Berlin Energy Week. To compensate for the loss of networking opportunities and chances to enjoy 1:1 chats with fellow journalists, high-level policymakers or representatives from green industries, this year’s BETD Media Fellows – Connecting Journalists conference will be organised as a virtual conference specifically for the BETD Fellows – alumni and present.

Duration of Programme: 15–19 March 2021

How to Apply: Just register by filling out this form and prepare for a day of exchange, debate and mutual learning. We look forward to meeting you there!

Download the flyer of the conference here.

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage (see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Award Provider: Germany Government

Time for a New Approach to North Korea

Daniel Jasper

As President Joe Biden takes office, a host of North Korea watchers, analysts, and former diplomats have put forward recommendations for how the new administration should deal with North Korea. Many rightly point out that the conflict in Korea will be among Biden’s biggest foreign policy challenges — and that the current circumstances portend significant humanitarian needs and the looming possibility of more military tensions.

However, what these discussions leave out reveals a glaring gap between conventional thinking in Washington and the reality of the conflict. They also reveal the gap between domestic and foreign policy conversations in the United States. Closing these gaps are the only way to build lasting peace in Korea.

What is often lost in the popular news coverage and analysis on North Korea is that the U.S. has technically been at war with North Korea since 1950, making it by far Washington’s longest running war abroad. The fact that the U.S. and North Korea never signed an official peace treaty is the reason why there is still so much conflict and military build-up on the Korean Peninsula today.

In other words, the unended war is the cause of the geopolitical tensions we see today. And nuclear weapons are the symptoms of this unended war.

Many lawmakers and pundits argue that North Korea must denuclearize in order for the U.S. to make peace, or that a peace treaty is something to use as leverage over North Korea. This reasoning, however, amounts to “we’ll make peace when they surrender” or “once they give us all their weapons.” From the perspective of North Korea, these demands sound unreasonable and out of touch with the reality of the conflict.

The conventional thinking typically falls along the lines that sanctions, isolation, and general pressure will eventually make North Korea buckle and give up its weapons. The logic rests on the idea that the North Korean regime will change its behavior, or that the country will run out of resources and collapse, or that ordinary people will turn against their own government for isolating their country.

These ideas may sound logical to some. But, after 70 years, it’s clear this approach doesn’t work.

Since the ceasefire in 1953, North Korea has endured the collapse of the Soviet Union, a major famine, many natural disasters, epidemics, pandemics, and more — all while being sanctioned and isolated by the U.S. and, since 2006, much of the international community. The idea that sanctions and isolation will cause North Korea to collapse or undergo a political revolution is clearly wishful thinking.

The Biden administration, then, must base its approach on ending the cause — the frozen state of war with North Korea — rather than an approach that’s exclusively focused on denuclearization, which is a symptom. To do this, the new administration will need to build trust and start small — something that should be doable even with the overwhelming domestic challenges that need to be addressed.

Just before the election, Biden wrote an article for the South Korean news service Yonhap largely addressing Korean Americans and making a promise to pursue family reunions between Korean Americans and their loved ones in North Korea. These families have heard these promises before and question whether this new administration will work in earnest to make good on that promise. The signs are not encouraging. Yet, it is not just a humanitarian crisis that needs to be addressed, but a viable way of building trust and healing the wounds of war.

There remain a host of other humanitarian issues and small steps that whole be low hanging fruit for the new administration.

For example, a labyrinth of sanctions regulations have impeded humanitarian aid programs for years. Most of these issues stem from U.S. domestic regulations. The handful of U.S. nonprofit organizations that carry out aid programs in North Korea not only provide lifesaving aid to civilians, they are an essential channel of communication and represent the best of our values. Yet their work has been subject to intense regulation and scrutiny from the U.S. government — the diplomatic equivalent of chopping off your nose to spite your face. These regulations can and should be changed to allow humanitarian agencies the access they need when North Korea reopens its borders.

The fact that the U.S. is still at war with North Korea is not lost on many of the families who are still waiting for their loved ones to come home from the war.

The remains of more than 7,500 U.S. POWs and MIAs are still in Korea from the period of active fighting between 1950 and 1953. Approximately 5,300 of these remains are in North Korea. The U.S. must recognize that finding these remains and bringing them home is a humanitarian mission wholly apart from the nuclear negotiations. Bringing U.S. troops home cannot be seen as a “carrot” to North Korea, but the fulfillment of the oft-stated U.S. military ethos that “no one is left behind.” Like reuniting families, it is a necessary step in healing the wounds of war.

We have other often overlooked diplomatic tools to untie this gordian knot. Steps like initiating people-to-people exchanges and opening a diplomatic liaison office in Pyongyang are tried and true instruments of a detente. Most of all, the U.S. must come to terms with the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be in a state of war for 70 years with North Korea. The very fact that so few are willing to address — even name the war — in their analysis should be reason enough for us to reexamine our assumptions about and approach to the conflict.

As I write this from my desk in Washington, D.C., nearly 25,000 U.S. troops have created a “green zone” in the city to facilitate the transition of power after an insurrectionist mob stormed the nation’s Capitol building. The events put the misogyny and racism that is imbued in our country’s institutions on full display for the world to see. As someone who has been to the demilitarized zone in Korea from both sides, those troop levels are eerily familiar. That’s about the number of U.S. troops garrisoned in South Korea (28,500) to act as a “tripwire” in case of an invasion by North Korea.

We in the U.S. would be fools to act as if our domestic situation is somehow disconnected from our foreign policy. The Biden administration has repeatedly stressed its attention to issues of diversity and inclusion — a welcome reprieve. However, this diversity needs to extend to a diversity of thought and voices as well. It’s time for fundamental change in many U.S. policies and its approach to North Korea must be included in this change or we are setting ourselves up for more war and discord.

“Islamo-Leftism”: Macron’s Witch Hunt Against Critical Academics

Philippe Marlière

Speaking recently on CNews, France’s equivalent of Fox News, the higher education minister launched an unprecedented attack on the whole French academic community. Frédérique Vidal argued that French academia is “gangrened by Islamo-gauchisme” or “Islamo-leftism”.

The “Islamo-leftism” tag is today used uncritically by members of the government, large sections of the media and conservative academics.

It is reminiscent of the anti-semitic “Judeo-Bolshevism” slur of the 1930s which blamed the spread of communism on Jews. In reality, “Islamo-leftism” is an elusive pseudo-concept which voluntarily confuses Islam – and Muslims – with Islamic extremism and points the finger at “left-wing academics” who allegedly collude with these nebulous Islamic entities.

The notion, which is dismissed by the scientific community as unsound, was coined by the academic Pierre-André Taguieff in the early 2000s. The neologism was originally forged to point to the alleged political convergence between leftist “alter-globalists” and Muslim extremists fighting the “Americano-Zionist” partners. Taguieff argued that an unlikely alliance which expressed a “New Judeophobia” was formed between the two camps in the name of the struggle against imperialism and neoliberal globalisation.

Taguieff today readily goes along the new usage of his own word. He is a co-founder of an academic network called “Vigilance Universités”, which monitors the alleged “racialist drift” in French academia. The network’s actions comprise flagging up to the government some of the academic research carried out by alleged “Islamo-leftists” on race, intersectionality or de-colonial/post-colonial studies.

On the same day of the CNews interview, the higher education minister declared that she would ask the state-funded national research centre, CNRS, to investigate academic research in French universities. She pledged to identify “militant and ideologically driven work” in academia.

The minister cited post-colonial studies as an example of “un-scientific” research. Still referring to post-colonial studies, she confessed being “extremely shocked when spotting Confederate flags in the Capitol” during the attack by Donald Trump’s supporters. This comparison bordered on the absurd and left commentators speechless.

French academics at large perceive her intervention as an attack on academic freedom and the sign that the “thought police” have been sent to closely monitor what they are allowed to research.

Vidal’s statements drew unusually robust rebuttals from two of the most influential academic institutions in France. First, the traditionally low-key Conference of University Presidents (CPU) dismissed “Islamo-leftism” as a pseudo-concept which belongs to the gutter press and far-right rhetoric. It further argued that university was not a “place of indoctrination which fosters fanaticism”. In short, the CPU said that the minister was talking nonsense.

Shortly after came an equally strongly worded rebuttal from CNRS itself. Despite complying with the ministerial order to review research in academia, the national research centre reiterated that the word “Islam-leftism” has no scientific grounds. It stated that it “firmly condemned” attacks on academic freedom and “attempts to delegitimise different fields of research, such as postcolonial studies, intersectional studies and research on race.”

Vidal’s injurious statements did not appear out of thin air. In June 2020, President Macron himself declared that “the academic world, looking for a niche, is guilty of having encouraged the racialisation of socio-economic issues. The outcome of this can only be a secessionist one. It boils down to breaking down the Republic.”

Macron made these disparaging comments following George Floyd’s assassination in the United States and in the wake of the most important antiracist protests that France had experienced since the 1980s. It is no coincidence that those words started a new wave of anti-American rhetoric against so-called “un-French” concepts such as “white privilege”, “racialised people”, “state racism” or “decolonial thought”.

France is familiar with systemic police brutality against people of colour from poorer backgrounds. However, when it comes to race, the French establishment is in complete denial. Most politicians and journalists revert to the tired argument that to talk about “race” is “racism”. They argue that France, a “colour-blind Republic”, has to uphold its “universal” values, the best defence against racism and division.

In a televised address to the nation the day after a historic anti-racist march in Paris, President Macron labelled the anti-racist demonstrators “separatist” and “communautaristes” – a very pejorative term implying they reject the laws and traditions of the Republic, and cultivate instead their own “community-driven” values and lifestyles. Macron celebrated instead “republican patriotism” and “republican order”, expressions which traditionally pander to the French right and far-right.

Eminent members of the government followed suit: Jean-Michel Blanquer, the education minister, was the first to cross the line and use the “Islamo-leftist” tag traditionally associated with conservative or far right media. On a major French radio channel, he declared that “Islamo-leftism is creating havoc in academia.” As ever, those claims were unsubstantiated.

More recently, Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, tried to outbid Marine Le Pen by being even more right-wing than the far-right leader herself on immigration. He accused her of being “too soft on Islam.” Those public statements culminated in February 2021 with the passing of a controversial bill aimed at tackling so-called Islamic “separatism”. Many in France see the bill as an infringement on religious freedom, enshrining Islamophobia as state doctrine.

Yet the accusation of “Islamo-leftism” is dismissed out of hand by the main academic institutions and no one has ever been able to define exactly what an “islamo-leftist” is. Post-colonial and de-colonial studies, race studies and intersectionality studies remain extremely marginal and under-rated in French academia: only two percent of publications in French sociological journals have been devoted to those studies since the 1960s.

So why such a fuss about “Islamo-leftism”? Academics who work on intersectionality, race or decolonial issues take gender-related and race-related discriminations and inequalities seriously. Their research findings are therefore unpalatable to the government which upholds the view that there is no structural sexism and racism in France, or nothing to discuss about France’s colonial past. Hence the concerted attacks on “critical academics” to discredit their work and silence them.

What is more, Macron knows that he is now perceived as a man from the right by a majority of voters. His electorate has also dramatically shifted to the right since 2017. He is betting on facing Le Pen again in the second round of next year’s presidential election by presenting himself as the respectable face of conservatism. To achieve that, he believes that “being tough on patriotic values and Islam” will win over conservative voters.

Macron regards Le Pen as a weaker opponent because the assumption is that moderate voters from the left will rally around him to stop the far-right from winning the decisive second round. This strategy worked in 2017, but it might not work again next time round.

Following combative social movements opposed to his economic reforms such as the Yellow Vests, an inadequate handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and major concessions to the far-right on law and order issues, Macron is no longer seen as a credible bulwark against the rising tide of the far-right.

By aping and outbidding the far-right on its traditional themes of immigration and Islam, Macron has been playing with fire. His economic failures, his unpopularity and the lack of popular candidates from the centre left and centre right could see France sleepwalking into voting for a far-right president, almost by default.

Are we failing children in the HIV response?

Shobha Shukla

The promise was that by 2020, no child will be born with HIV or newly infected with HIV during breastfeeding across the world. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic posed an unprecedented challenge to health systems, the progress towards the HIV-related 2020 goalpost, despite some commendable gains, was not very encouraging.

Despite global efforts to prevent HIV transmission, 150,000 children were either born with or were newly infected with HIV during breastfeeding in 2019, bringing the total number of children (aged 0 to 9 years) living with HIV to 1.1 million. Also, about 310 children died from AIDS-related causes every day in 2019, mostly because of inadequate access to HIV prevention, care and treatment services.

This is unacceptable – inflicting HIV on kids for no fault of theirs. It is our moral duty to eliminate vertical transmission of HIV from parent to child and ensure every baby’s right to enter the world free of HIV.

Start free, stay free, AIDS free

This is also one of the aims of the Start Free, Stay Free, AIDS Free super fast-track framework launched by UNAIDS in 2015 for ending AIDS as a public health threat among children, adolescents and young women by 2020. One of its main goals was to reduce the number of children newly infected with HIV annually to less than 20000 by 2020. But with 150,000 new pediatric HIV infections in 2019, we are far away from achieving it.

Unfulfilled promise of prevention of parent to child transmission of HIV

HIV can be transmitted from an HIV-positive mother to her baby during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding. Mother-to-child transmission, which is also known as vertical transmission, accounts for the vast majority of infections in children.

Factors contributing to vertical transmission are:

(i) mothers get infected during pregnancy/ breastfeeding;

(ii) mothers do not receive lifesaving antiretroviral treatment (ART) during pregnancy/ breastfeeding;

(iii) mothers drop off ART during pregnancy/ breastfeeding

If a pregnant woman living with HIV is not on ART, the likelihood of the virus passing from her to her baby is 15% to 45%. However, ART interventions, to her and her new-born, could reduce this risk to less than 2%. In the last 10 years there has been a 40% decline in new HIV infections annually in children, thanks to increase in coverage of HIV positive pregnant women with ART. But 20% of such women are still not on treatment which they urgently require.

To be fully effective, a full gamut of services should be offered to HIV positive women before conception, throughout pregnancy, labour and breastfeeding as per standards of prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV. These include early infant diagnosis at 4 to 6 weeks after birth, testing at 18 months or when breastfeeding ends, and ART initiation as soon as possible for HIV-exposed infants to prevent HIV acquisition. However, retaining women and infants in programmes for prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV, post-delivery, could be challenging. In some countries more infant infections are now occurring during the breastfeeding period than during pregnancy.

Closely linked to prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV, is the goal of achieving elimination of mother to child transmission, along with Syphilis, by 2030. Here also we are lagging behind. As of 2019 only 14 countries had achieved elimination of mother to child transmission – Cuba, Thailand, 6 Caribbean territories, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Armenia, Belarus and Moldova.

The required WHO criteria for validation of elimination of mother to child transmission includes 95% of all pregnant women to receive antenatal care, 95% of all pregnant women to receive testing for HIV and syphilis during pregnancy; and 95% of all pregnant women diagnosed with HIV or syphilis to receive treatment.

At 2.4 million, India has the 2nd highest population of people living with HIV (PLHIV) after South Africa (7.6 million). As per available national data, out of the 30 million annual pregnancies in India, an estimated 20,520 occur in those HIV positive pregnant women who are in need of ART to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

According to noted gynaecologist Dr Hema Divakar, who is senior technical advisor to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India and Medical Director of Divakars Speciality Hospital, there is an urgent need for proactive involvement of women in seeking antenatal care.

“As against 90% pregnant women opting for institutional deliveries in India, only 25% of them seek antenatal care. This gap has to be bridged. It is time that women themselves wake up and access care. The importance of integrated antenatal care for the long-term benefit of the mother and the baby has to be positioned in such a way that the opportunity for optimal comprehensive care during pregnancy is not missed out. If antenatal care coverage becomes 100%, it will be a gateway to elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV. Universal access to antenatal care with essential interventions to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV as well as syphilis, is a must. Also, where breastfeeding or mixed feeding is the norm, infants should be followed for up to 18 months for establishment of final HIV negative status”, she said.

However, despite the best interventions at hand, more than 2000 new HIV infections occur daily among women of child bearing age, and about 400 infants get infected with the virus every day. Perhaps ART alone is not enough to eliminate pediatric HIV and so researchers have been working on various immune strategies to address the gap.

Delegates at the recent 4th global conference on HIV Research For Prevention (HIVR4P), discussed new prevention strategies to address HIV acquisition in children through mother to child transmission of HIV. Sallie Permar, Professor of Pediatrics, Weill Cornell Medical Centre shared that the epidemiology of pediatric HIV is very unique in that the transmission risk falls into two distinct periods. The first is the HIV infection risk that occurs just after birth and through the 1-2 years of breastfeeding. The second is the long childhood period of little to zero HIV risk- from the period of weaning to the period of 1st sexual contact. After sexual debut the rate of HIV acquisition goes up very steeply in that there are more than 1600 infections in adolescents every day.

She said that this bi-modal distribution of HIV transmission risk in childhood provides opportunities for implementing unique protection strategies against pediatric and life-long HIV acquisition. Passive immunisation can be administered to an infant to cover the period around birth due to breastfeeding, and this can be combined with the strategy of multi-dose active vaccination that can be initiated at childhood and boosted all the way till pre-adolescence. This combined immunisation strategy is already in use to prevent transmission of Hepatitis B virus from the mother to the baby.

Agreed Lynda Stranix-Chibanda, a pediatrician and researcher at College of Health Sciences Zimbabwe University, that the goals of immune strategy for pediatric HIV prevention, are to

(i) prevent HIV infection in high risk infants by administering subcutaneous antibody injection at birth and every 3-6 months while breast feeding and

(ii) develop long term immunity against HIV in them prior to sexual debut through a safe and effective HIV vaccine as part of the routine childhood immunisation schedule.

She shared that multiple HIV antibodies are in development. Some passive monoclonal antibody prevention studies have been conducted in human infants and have shown very encouraging data so far. Currently we have the IMPAACT P1112 (phase 1/2) study for administering antibodies to HIV exposed infants at birth and while breastfeeding.

Thus, in future, passive immunisation given in early infancy could reduce HIV transmission during breastfeeding, and, when combined with multiple doses of an effective HIV vaccine, immune strategies could be a viable approach to close the gap and induce lifelong immunity to HIV prior to sexual exposure as a young adult.

Philippa Musoke, Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health at Makerere University, Uganda, believes that an AIDS-free generation is on the horizon. “But if we are to meet the target for elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV by 2030, a lot still needs to be done. It requires political commitment to identify pregnant women who seroconvert during pregnancy and breastfeeding and ensure that they initiate ART quickly. In addition, all HIV infected pregnant and breastfeeding women should be supported to adhere to ART and be retained in care so as to reduce vertical transmission. Governments, community stakeholders, civil society and people living with HIV – all will have to commit themselves to push for elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV”, she said.

Let us not forget that HIV positive children born to HIV positive parent(s) are innocent sufferers of the tragic consequence of the HIV epidemic. We have the tools to bring down pediatric HIV transmission rates to less than 2%. Improved surveillance of pregnant women, strengthening of prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV, as well as ART services, with adequate follow up to ensure adherence, will help us achieve the goal of zero new infections in children at least – as we advance progress towards ending AIDS worldwide.

Sanction the Axis of Mercenary and Terrorist Evil: Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Georgia

David Boyajian

Azerbaijan deployed thousands of mercenaries in last year’s 44-day war that it and Turkey waged against Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia.

Azerbaijan thereby flagrantly violated the UN’s International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries (UNMERC) which it signed in 1997.

Forty-six countries have signed UNMERC including Belgium, Cyprus, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, and Poland.

These mercenaries are not clean-cut military men.  They’re terrorists, thugs, jihadis, and fanatics.

The Evidence

They include former ISIS commander Sayf Balud, and members of the Hamza Division, Sultan Murad Brigade, Al-Amshat Militia, Free Syrian Army (FSA/SNA), and other factions.

Many were brought into Azerbaijan before the war began on September 27, 2020.  Unknown numbers remain there despite the November 9 armistice.

Armenian forces captured two mercenaries who came from Syria’s Hama and Idlib provinces.

The independent, UK-based, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has confirmed Azerbaijan’s employing mercenaries.  In October, it numbered them at over 2,050 with 145 dead.

Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights has named the chief mercenary commanders, such as Fehim Isa of the Sultan Murad Brigade, and their organizations.

Video and audio recordings have identified many of the mercenaries.

Azeri soldiers have forced some of them into battle at gunpoint and lied about the combat conditions.  “Haji … don’t come,” warned one mercenary. “We have been deceived … this is a meat grinder.”

Earlier Mercenaries

Azerbaijan’s importing mercenaries/jihadis is nothing new.  Nor is its involvement in terrorism.

• In the 1990s, Azerbaijan hired Afghan Mujahedin, Chechens, Pakistanis, and Turkey’s terrorist Grey Wolves to fight Armenians.
• Al-Qaeda cells in Baku facilitated the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
• Over 900 Azerbaijanis have joined ISIS.
• Azerbaijan’s Silk Way Airlines has transported weapons to terrorist organizations.

Azerbaijan’s political and military cultures are clearly deranged, as are Turkey’s.

Turkey is a shameless, longtime ISIS supporter, which the U.S. Treasury Department just identified as a “logistical hub” for ISIS.

Turkey and Azerbaijan’s Guilt

Most of the mercenaries used by Azerbaijan were flown in by Turkey.   They often came from the ranks of Turkey’s proxy jihadist organizations (named above) in Syria who had reportedly committed atrocities and war crimes there.

Turkey typically recruits jihadis/mercenaries through SADAT, a quasi-official Turkish military contracting company.  Led by former Brigadier General Adnan Tanrıverdi and other Turkish officers, SADAT is loyal to Turkish President Erdogan.  Turkey’s use of SADAT contravenes the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Turkey has also been sending terrorists and jihadis to fight in Libya’s civil war.

Azerbaijan may also have recruited mercenaries from elsewhere, such as Pakistan, according to some reports.

Regardless of the source of the mercenaries, Azerbaijan has brazenly violated UNMERC.

Charges against Turkey and Azerbaijan

A bi-partisan letter to the State and Defense Departments by one hundred U.S. House members has criticized “Turkish backed foreign mercenaries [in Azerbaijan], many alleged to have ties to internationally recognized terrorist groups.”

A European Parliament resolution has deplored “the transfer of foreign terrorist fighters by Turkey from Syria and elsewhere to Nagorno-Karabakh, as confirmed by international actors, including the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries.”

On November 6, 2020, the UN’s Working Group on the use of mercenaries and two Special Rapporteurs sent a strongly worded, eight-page letter to Turkey and Azerbaijan that detailed the charges against them.

The way “Syrian fighters are allegedly being recruited, transported and used in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict appears consistent with the definition of a mercenary, as set out by relevant international legal instruments.  Furthermore, their deployment appears to have contributed to the rapid escalation and intensification of hostilities, in turn resulting in civilian harm and suffering.”

Seventy-six days later — in a short, vacuous, and predictably arrogant reply — Turkey called the Working Group’s charges “fake news.”  Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has similarly denied using mercenaries.

UNMERC signatory Georgia is also culpable.  It has knowingly permitted Turkey to use Georgian airspace to transport the terrorists to Azerbaijan.

Next Moves

Armenia has just filed war crimes lawsuits against Azerbaijan in the European Court of Human Rights.

Armenia, a member of the UN Human Rights Council, should also petition that organization to promptly sanction Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Georgia.

The case against the three countries could not be clearer.  A lengthy investigation would be superfluous and counterproductive.

UNMERC signatories are especially obligated to hold the guilty parties accountable.

Human rights organizations worldwide must demand action, not mere words, from their respective governments and the UN.

South American states militarize borders against refugees

Mauricio Saavedra

“The world of decaying capitalism is overcrowded. ... In an era of aviation, telegraph, telephone, radio, and television, travel from country to country is paralyzed by passports and visas. ... Amid the vast expanses of land and the marvels of technology, which has also conquered the skies for man as well as the earth, the bourgeoisie has managed to convert our planet into a foul prison.”

“Manifesto of the Fourth International on Imperialist War and the Proletarian World Revolution” adopted by its Emergency Conference of May 19-26, 1940

The Fourth International’s emergency conference held in the midst of the Second World War delivered a comprehensive indictment of the war’s chief cause—the private ownership of the means of production, together with the capitalist nation-state system which rests upon this foundation.

This indictment applies with even greater force today in Latin America, as one nation after another seeks to align itself ever more closely with US imperialism as Washington prepares its next military aggression against Venezuela in its attempt to quash Chinese and Russian influence in the hemisphere.

As interimperialist antagonisms grow, the historically venal and reactionary bourgeoisie in Latin America is shutting its borders to millions of Venezuelans escaping economic, social and health disasters caused by decades of unending destabilization, coup attempts and plunder.

Haitian refugees forcibly expelled from Peru at Brazil border (Credit: foto diffusion)

The pro-imperialist, right-wing regimes in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru are using an explosion in regional migration as a justification to militarize their borders, whipping up xenophobic anti-immigrant sentiment in the process.

Thousands of troops, backed by tanks and armored vehicles, have been deployed to reinforce security personnel at irregular border crossings. Earlier promises made to displaced Venezuelans have proven a cruel hoax. The truth is that the ultraright governments were only concerned with using the profound crisis facing destitute migrants for political advantage.

Today, military forces monitor the crossings between Brazil and Venezuela, on one side, and Colombia on the other. Colombia has dispatched 600 national police and military personnel to monitor the border. The right-wing government of President Iván Duque launched “Operation Wall” last year to control its border with Venezuela.

More forces have been deployed to the Colombia-Ecuador border, the Ecuador-Peru border, as well as the Peru-Brazil and the Chile-Bolivia borders.

As a result, more than 500 displaced people, mainly from Haiti, have remained stranded on the Amazonian border between Peru and Brazil for the last two weeks. The refugees, trying to leave Brazil through the “International Friendship Bridge” linking the two countries, are denied entry by Peruvian Armed Forces mobilized to bolster the police. Last Tuesday, security forces charged at the defenseless men, women and children with tear gas and repression. On Thursday, Brazil responded by sending military forces to take charge of border control for 60 days.

This follows an incident at the end of January, when Peruvian troops opened fire on displaced Venezuelans entering from Ecuador through Tumbes. Some 500 mostly Venezuelan nationals were arrested at different points in the Tumbes region. In mid-January, the Peruvian government deployed 1,200 troops, tanks and armored vehicles, as well as national police, to control the more than 30 irregular crossing points between Ecuador and Peru. The Ecuadorian government reciprocated. On January 27, the Ecuadorian Armed Forces mobilized 200 soldiers and 20 Hummer tactical vehicles on the border with Peru in the El Oro department.

“A person who enters the country with an irregular pass is being put on the same level as someone who commits a crime. Crossing the border with an irregular pass is not contemplated as a type of crime in Peru’s migration law,” said Marta Castro, a human rights research coordinator in Peru.

But this is precisely the aim. This has been facilitated by the local big business media with inflated and salacious reports of supposed migrant crime waves that have fomented attacks and pogroms against Venezuelans and other refugees with increased frequency. They are cultivating the basest moods of national chauvinism and xenophobia, dehumanizing the poorest and most vulnerable sections of the working class and oppressed masses.

Chilean Interior Minister Rodrigo Delgado explained the concept best when he revealed that the decree extending the use of the military also gives the authorities the “tools in terms of immediate expulsion” of refugees. He continued, “Today crossing the border is not characterized as a crime, but with the new law it is characterized as a crime.” This is not merely a national but rather a regional response.

The death of 23-year-old Bolivian Jaime Veizaga Sánchez at the hands of the paramilitary Carabineros police on February 9 must be viewed in this context. The cops dumped the barely conscious man from a checkpoint vehicle outside the Medical Legal Service (legal mortuary) in the mining town of Calama. He had arrived in the country just seven days earlier.

Last week, about 100 migrants were expelled from Iquique in the north of Chile. While a Court of Appeals annulled the expulsion order, arguing the refugees were denied due process, most are already in Venezuela.

“The expulsion order was issued while they were in the sanitary residence, they were notified at 2 in the morning and then the expulsion was carried out 24 hours later, but they never left this place where they had no possibility of organizing a defense,” explained a lawyer representing the refugees.

The Venezuelan exodus

Some 4.6 million of the 5.4 million Venezuelans who have fled the ravages of both an unending imperialist onslaught and the abject failure of the bourgeois nationalist “Bolivarian Revolution” have sought refuge in the neighboring countries, only to suffer more hardship.

In 2018, the ultra-right-wing billionaire president of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, and the fascistic Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro drafted bills limiting the intake of refugees by making it a requirement to present certified documentation. Every other regime has followed suit. The special rapporteur of the United Nations for migrants’ rights, Felipe González, criticized the increasingly restrictive measures.

“Comparative experience, even in Latin America, shows that the use of the Armed Forces in migration matters produces serious violations of the human rights of people in mobility and in no way solves the problem, but rather increases it,” González tweeted.

“Faced with this radical change in migration policy measures, international organizations warned that there would be a significant increase in irregular entries and human trafficking, with the consequent risk for people in mobility,” he added.

A turning point in the mass migration of Venezuelans was reached in 2019 when Washington and Brussels began sharply escalating their attacks on the government of President Nicolás Maduro with sanctions and embargoes, backed by the so-called Lima Group (consisting of Canada and 13 Latin American countries that do the bidding of the US against Venezuela).

Conditions for refugees residing in Latin American countries have only deteriorated during the pandemic as millions have been laid off, evicted and made homeless. A study released last week revealed that two out of five Venezuelans residing in Latin American countries have been evicted during the pandemic. The survey by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and UN agencies showed that 11 percent of all renter evictions led to homelessness, while three out of four Venezuelans had no place to call home once evicted.

With much grandstanding, the Colombian government announced a Temporary Protection Status for Venezuelan migrants, which will identify, register and formally document 1.7 million refugees and migrants in Colombia, ostensibly to guarantee protections to foreigners. The measure will do nothing to protect them from exploitation, but it will replenish government coffers with increased foreign aid.

In another report the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR warned last week that barely two percent of the 1.7 million Venezuelan migrants in Colombia can cover their basic needs. Eighty-four percent are unable to obtain food, lodging or clothing. Three-quarters of these are believed to be “irregular,” or undocumented refugees.

While the governments of the Lima Group claim that the militarization of borders is designed to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, the reality is that the beefed-up security preceded 2020 and has more to do with demonstrating allegiance to US plans. This takes the form of the Armed Forces being allocated millions of dollars and employing tens of thousands of its troops in border control operations that ostensibly serve as an extension of the US “war on drugs” across the continent. Over the last two years, Latin American armed forces have deployed an increasingly sophisticated arsenal to intercept “transnational organized crime” in the border areas.

The coronavirus pandemic has ravaged South American nations not because of migration, but precisely because every right-wing government has imposed criminally reckless “herd immunity” policies that prioritize profit above the health and lives of the masses. Non-essential export-oriented industries critical to profit interests remained operational throughout 2020.

Now, each government is extending the use of its armed forces to control so-called “illegal smuggling of migrants and human trafficking.” Among the measures enacted is a plan allowing Colombian, Peruvian, Bolivian, Ecuadorian and Chilean police forces to coordinate transnational operations. The dangers of such measures are burnt into the history of 20th century Latin America, where the intelligence services of the military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s united in hunting down and murdering their political opponents under the CIA-backed Operation Condor.

The fate of the Venezuelan masses puts into sharp relief the anachronism and bankruptcy of the existing capitalist national state system in Latin America. In its 1940 conference, the Fourth International pointed the way out of this blind alley by advancing the slogan of the Soviet United States of South and Central America and calling on the proletariat to lead the struggle to free the masses from the yoke of world imperialism as part of the fight for world socialist revolution.

“It is not the belated South American bourgeoisie, a thoroughly venal agency of foreign imperialism, who will be called upon to solve this task, but the young South American proletariat, the chosen leader of the oppressed masses,” it stated.