New details show how Pegasus was used to spy on political opponents

Kevin Reed

Further details emerged on Monday about the nature and extent of the spyware operation called Pegasus that has been used by governments since at least 2016 to hack into the smartphones of thousands of journalists, activists and business and political figures around the world.

The existence of the secret spying software was exposed on Sunday by the French non-profit media group Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International—in cooperation with a reporting consortium that includes the Guardian, the Washington Post and 15 other media organizations—following a data breach of its developer, the Israeli-based cybersecurity firm NSO, several months ago.

Photo shows the logo of the Israeli NSO Group company on a building where they had offices in Herzliya, Israel. The NSO is the company behind the Pegasus spyware. (AP Photo/Daniella Cheslow)

Among the new revelations reported on Monday by the Guardian are the fact that at least 50 individuals close to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “including his wide, children, aides and doctor” were on the list of possible targets of the Pegasus spyware; Rahul Gandhi, the major political opponent of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, “was twice selected as a potential target in leaked phone number data”; the American daughter of the imprisoned Rwandan activist, Paul Rusesabagina, who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, “has been victim of multiple attacks using NSO spyware.”

A report on Monday in the Washington Post said that Pegasus is “military-grade spyware” supposedly developed for the purpose of “tracking terrorists and criminals” but it was used on a list of as many as 50,000 cell phone numbers internationally. A forensic investigation conducted by Post and the other 16 media partners showed that the NSO spyware successfully infiltrated “37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi…”

While the phone numbers in the leaked NSO data list do not contain the associated names of individuals, reporters have been able to identify “more than 1,000 people spanning more than 50 countries through research and interviews on four continents.” Among those identified, the Post reports, are “several Arab royal family members, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and more than 600 politicians and government officials—including cabinet ministers, diplomats, and military and security officers. The numbers of several heads of state and prime ministers also appeared on the list.”

The journalists targeted in the spying operations work for “CNN, the Associated Press, Voice of America, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Le Monde in France, the Financial Times in London and Al Jazeera in Qatar.”

The forensic analysis was conducted by Amnesty International’s Security Lab on 67 smartphones and, of those, “23 were successfully infected and 14 showed signs of attempted penetration.” The testing on the remaining 30 phones was inconclusive.

A Guardian report on Monday said that the phone numbers of 15,000 Mexicans were in the leaked data including “Politicians from every party, as well as journalists, lawyers, activists, prosecutors, diplomats, teachers, judges, doctors and academics,” and that “cybersurveillance is unregulated and out of control in Mexico—a country where federal and state governments have long used informants, infiltrators and listening devices to monitor and repress dissent.”

A report in the Post on Monday morning reviewed the manner in which Pegasus infected the iPhone of Claude Mangin, the French wife of a jailed political activist in Morocco. A text message was delivered to the phone without generating a notification or warning that the iMessage from an unknown sender was skirting Apple’s smartphone security and depositing the spyware onto the iPhone.

According to the Post report, once Pegasus is on a smartphone, it can “collect emails, call records, social media posts, user passwords, contact lists, pictures, videos, sound recordings and browsing histories,” “activate cameras or microphones” and “listen to calls and voice mails.” The spyware can “collect location logs of where a user has been and also determine where that user is now, along with data indicating whether the person is stationary or, if moving, in which direction.”

In a series of lengthy official statements late Sunday, NSO denied that it was involved in the worldwide government spying operation that has targeted smartphones for the past five years. The company both claimed that the data disclosed by Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International was inaccurate and that it was not responsible the illegal use of its technology by its undisclosed government clients.

In one particularly noteworthy passage, NSO states, “We also stand by our previous statements that our products, sold to vetted foreign governments, cannot be used to conduct cybersurveillance within the United States, and no foreign customer has ever been granted technology that would enable them to access phones with US numbers. It is technologically impossible, and reaffirms the fact that your sources’ claims have no merit.”

The fact that this statement makes no mention of the US government as a well-known and proven user of similar surveillance tools both domestically and internationally is a transparent admission by NSO that its technology has been approved, if not contracted in the first place, by the American military-intelligence apparatus.

In a series of tweets on Sunday and Monday, the whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden denounced NSO and government use of spyware. Responding to the initial reports from the Guardian on Sunday, Snowden wrote, “The Israeli company behind this—the NSO group—should bear direct, criminal liability for the deaths and detentions of those targeted by the digital infection vectors it sells, which have no legitimate use.”

At noon on Monday, Snowden added, “If we don’t do anything to stop the sale of this technology, it’s not just going to be 50,000 targets. It’s going to be 50 million targets, and it’s going to happen much more quickly than any of us expect.”

Snowden also wrote, “This is an industry that should not exist: they don’t make vaccines—the only thing they sell is the virus,” and he also pointed to the fact that the NSO group gave “blood money” to Obama, Trump and Biden officials during their election campaigns.

Japanese Defense White Paper stokes tensions with Beijing over Taiwan

Ben McGrath

Japan released its annual Defense Ministry White Paper on July 13, once again raising tensions with China. The document not only includes an inflammatory statement over Taiwan but more broadly outlines Tokyo’s justification for war preparations, in alliance with the US, aimed at Beijing.

The White Paper includes a reference to Taiwan for the first time. It states, “Stabilizing the situation surrounding Taiwan is important for Japan’s security and the stability of the international community. Therefore, it is necessary that we pay close attention to the situation with a sense of crisis more than ever before.”

Japanese Defense white paper (Ministry of Defense)

Implicit in this statement is Japan’s preparedness to intervene militarily over Taiwan on the pretext that events on the island represent a threat to Japanese security. The paper falsely places sole blame for the growing danger of war on Beijing, which Tokyo accuses of attempting to alter the status quo in the region.

This passage is not a one-off statement, but codifies Tokyo’s stance on Taiwan and questions of the “One China” policy. Under the “One China” policy, Japan recognizes Beijing as the legitimate government of all China including Taiwan. Beijing has stated that it will go to war to reunite with Taiwan if the island ever declares independence or if countries like the US and Japan attempt to overturn the policy.

Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and State Minister of Defense Yasuhide Nakayama have made similar comments in recent weeks. Aso stated on July 5 that Japan would have to militarily “defend” Taiwan alongside the US against Beijing. Nakayama, deputy to the Defense Minister, directly questioned the “One China” policy during a speech on June 28 and called the island the “red line of the 21st century.”

These remarks as well as the White Paper directly contradict the claim that Beijing is upending the status quo in the region. The “One China” policy has been the basis for diplomatic relations with Beijing since the 1970s when Washington and Tokyo broke off formal ties with Taipei and acknowledged Beijing. Now the world’s two largest imperialist powers regard China as a threat to their interests and are seeking to subordinate Beijing if necessary through war.

The White Paper praises the former Trump administration for doing precisely what it alleges against China. “Based on the ‘America First’ policy and the realist concept that power plays a central role,” it stated, “the Trump administration has significantly changed the patterns of US involvement in the world. The administration set out a clear stance of emphasizing strategic competition with China, in particular, and also with Russia.”

The document also made clear that President Biden is continuing this agenda. “The Biden administration clarified its intent to conduct a global posture review of the US forces, and announced that the United States would counter China over the long term, which the administration considers the only competitor potentially capable of sustainably challenging the international system, putting the highest priority on the military presence in the Indo-Pacific region.”

The White Paper accuses Beijing of being a threat to the “rules-based order” in the Indo-Pacific, but the “rules” are set by Washington to meet its interests. In his introduction, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi stated that Japan will uphold the “free and open Indo-Pacific (FOIP)”—the pretext used by the US to stage provocative “freedom of navigation” exercises either in or very near waters and airspace claimed by China.

The paper brands China as a threat not only in the Indo-Pacific region, but in technology spheres like artificial intelligence, in outer space exploration, and in the cyber domain, reflecting fears in Tokyo and Washington that China is gaining the technological edge.

The document also highlights the growing relationship between Australia and India, asserting that it is pursuing the quadrilateral relationship between the two countries and the US. The “Quad” is a quasi-military alliance aimed at surrounding China and preparing for war.

Beijing responded angrily to the White Paper. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian stated, “The Japanese side grossly interfered in China’s internal affairs, groundlessly blamed China’s normal defense construction and military activity, pointed fingers at China’s maritime activity, and hyped up the so-called China threat, which is wrong and irresponsible.”

The White Paper’s focus on Taiwan has a particular significance. Its claim that Japan needs to defend democracy in Taiwan is simply a pretext. The Japanese ruling class has long seen the island as a crucial stepping stone for projecting its power into Southeast Asia.

There are historical parallels between today and Japan’s colonization of Taiwan in 1895 following the First Sino-Japanese War, a conflict launched to remove China as a strategic competitor on the Korean Peninsula. Tokyo claimed at the time to be defending Korea from China. During the negotiation of the Treaty of Shimonoseki ending the war, Japan forced China to surrender the island, which had been part of China since 1683.

Japan waged a brutal campaign on the island to suppress opposition to the annexation. What followed were five decades of dictatorial rule justified by pseudo-scientific assertions that the Taiwanese were biologically different from the “superior” Japanese. This racist argument was put forward by Shinpei Goto, who became head of civilian affairs on the island in 1895.

Following World War I, Tokyo cultivated a layer of the island’s elite to assist in the exploitation of the island’s young working class and the peasantry. This involved an assimilation campaign to try to erase Taiwanese culture. In 1936, as Japan prepared to invade China, Governor-General Seizo Kobayashi introduced a policy requiring Taiwanese people to adopt Japanese names, language and culture. Taiwan was one of the locations from which the Japanese army coerced young women into becoming “comfort women,” a euphemism for sex slaves, a fact the Japanese establishment today denies.

Japan’s involvement in Taiwan today must be seen in this light. As it attempts to remilitarize, Tokyo simultaneously attempts to whitewash its past war crimes in Taiwan and elsewhere in the region. Like the US, Japan has no interest in promoting democracy in Taiwan or anywhere else in the region. Rather once again, the imperialist powers are exploiting the island as a pawn in the preparations for a conflict with China.

Six months of the Biden administration—A balance sheet

Patrick Martin

Six months ago, Joseph Biden was inaugurated president of the United States, under conditions of unprecedented crisis of US capitalism and the entire social and political order.

President Joe Biden speaks about the economy and his infrastructure agenda in the State Dining Room of the White House, in Washington, Monday, July 19th, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

His predecessor, Donald Trump, did not attend the ceremony, signaling his refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election. Only two weeks before, on January 6, Trump’s supporters had stormed the Capitol and temporarily halted the congressional certification of state electoral votes. The aim of the attempted coup was to stop the transfer of power and establish a personalist dictatorship. In the words of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, it was Trump’s “Reichstag moment.”

When Biden took office, 400,000 people were dead from the COVID-19 pandemic, while millions were unemployed. Just months earlier, every city, town, and village in America had seen protests in opposition to police violence.

Biden marked the six-month anniversary with brief remarks presenting American society in glowing terms. “For all those predictions of doom and gloom six months in, here’s where things stand,” he said. “Record growth, record job creation, workers getting hard-earned breaks.” He added, “Put simply: Our economy is on the move, and we have COVID-19 on the run.”

Summing up his prognosis, the US president proclaimed: “It turns out capitalism is alive and very well.” The truth is that the policies of the Biden administration have entirely failed to resolve the social crisis in America and they cannot, because they are based on the framework of American capitalism.

The pandemic, far from being “on the run,” is undergoing a new resurgence. Since Biden took office, an additional 225,000 people have died from the pandemic. All indications are that by the winter, with the new surge accompanying the spread of the Delta variant, the death toll under Biden will have exceeded that under Trump.

The policies of the Biden administration have been driven by the interests of Wall Street and the super-rich. This is why, despite occasional criticisms of Trump’s callous and anti-scientific response to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden has pursued the same policy of restoring corporate profit-making by forcing workers back to work and children back to school as quickly as possible, regardless of the dangers to their lives and health.

Trump’s response to the economic depression that accompanied the onset of the pandemic was to pour trillions into bolstering the banks, hedge funds and corporations, with bipartisan bills like the CARES Act. Biden pursues essentially the same policy, although with less support from the Republicans than the Democrats gave Trump. He boasts of success on the economic front, although seven million fewer workers have jobs today than before the pandemic began, and millions face wage cuts, poverty, eviction and foreclosure.

Only in foreign policy is there a significant shift from Trump to Biden, and this in tactics only, not strategy. Biden has placed more emphasis on the US utilization of NATO and the “Quad,” a de facto alliance with Japan, Australia and India. Significant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus backed Biden against Trump because they sought a more effective mobilization of US power against Russia and China.

And if Biden’s statement that “capitalism is alive and very well” were true, it begs the question: Why is there a mounting fascist threat to American democracy?

In the six months since Biden’s inauguration, the Republican Party has maintained its intransigent opposition to any serious investigation into the events of January 6. Half-hearted Democratic proposals, first for an “independent” bipartisan commission to investigate the attack, then for a bipartisan congressional investigation, have been blocked outright or endlessly delayed.

Meanwhile, evidence continues to emerge of the central role played by Trump and his allies in Congress in seeking to carry out a political coup d’état to overturn the results of the election and maintain himself in office. But neither Trump nor his accomplices have even been questioned, let alone tried, convicted and jailed.

Instead, Trump has renewed his agitation against the election, seeking to transform the Republican Party into an openly fascistic movement subordinated to his personal authority. And his supporters in the Republican Party are using their control of state legislatures to enact unprecedented and sweeping attacks on the right to vote.

Biden himself acknowledged something of the reality of the crisis of American capitalism in a speech last week in Philadelphia, when he declared “We are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.” But he offered no way forward, except to appeal to “my Republican friends in the Congress, states and cities and counties to stand up” against this assault—although they are the very ones carrying it out.

In an effort to prop up illusions in the Democratic Party, the representatives of its “left” wing, portray Biden’s policies in extravagant terms. Last week Senator Bernie Sanders claimed that Biden’s “reconciliation” bill on social spending amounted to “the most consequential piece of legislation for working families since the 1930s.” Or, like Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin, affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, they express disappointment in what has been achieved so far, but express the hope that “Biden has shown a willingness to think big,” and that additional pressure should be brought to bear on congressional Democrats.

For his part, Biden uses every possible occasion to make clear he has no intention of implementing any measures that challenge the interests of the financial oligarchy, declaring last weekend, “Communism is a failed system, universally failed system. I don’t see socialism as a very useful substitute.”

The truth is that the Biden administration is Wall Street and the military, mobilizing behind it sections of the upper middle class through the utilization of identity politics. Well aware of the explosive social conditions developing in America, moreover, the administration supports the union “organization” campaign at Amazon and for the PRO Act, to make it easier to install unions at work locations where they otherwise would have difficulty convincing workers to pay dues for the privilege of having their wages and benefits cut.

It is telling that when workers engage in genuine anti-corporate struggles, like the strikes waged by autoworkers against Volvo Trucks in Dublin, Virginia, the supposedly “pro-labor” president falls completely silent. Biden is for the unions, not for the workers, because he correctly sees the unions as an instrument of the US ruling class in policing the working class.

Workers must draw the lessons of six months of the Biden administration. None of the problems confronting the working class, from the disastrous pandemic response to unparalleled levels of social inequality, to the danger of imperialist world war and fascist dictatorship, can be addressed without breaking the grip of the financial oligarchy over every aspect of society.

Nothing is Happening in South Africa (Just Devastation)

Paul Cochrane

Huge swathes of South Africa are smouldering from days of rioting and looting. Some 27 million people have been going through the equivalent of a force 10 hurricane, yet judging by the limited news coverage internationally, you wouldn’t think so. It’s not too much of a stretch to say there’s been a near global media blackout.

The crisis has been going on since Friday 9th, and really took off on Monday. Indicative of how little international coverage there has been is that it took until Thursday for me to start receiving a smattering of messages asking if we are OK – “I heard something is going on…”

The contrast to Lebanon (where I lived for 17 years, until 2019) is incredible. Whenever there was a bomb or another security incident, I’d invariably get messages within minutes if not hours checking in.

Yes, South Africa’s at the end of the world, but it’s the continent’s largest (or was) economy, with 59 million people. The country is on a knife’s edge right now, particularly the two most populated provinces of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg, and the location for the majority of rioting.

Over 200 malls, 800 shops and dozens of warehouses had been looted and in many cases burned to the ground by late Monday. Town centres have become burned husks. Farms have been destroyed, livestock stolen. 117 people have been killed so far. Operations at the fourth largest container terminal in the southern hemisphere, in Durban, and train freight have ground to a halt. Telecom towers were hit. The country’s third largest oil refinery has closed. On Wednesday night alone there were 208 ‘incidents’ in KZN and Gauteng. Food and fuel are now in short supply. There is talk of armed insurrection. The damage is in the billions of dollars.

Abroad, it’s as if not much is happening in South Africa – “ah, Africans rioting again” seems to be the overall impression. Some of the titles imply that what’s happening here is just a bit of ‘unrest’, if that – “South Africa is wandering from Mandela’s Vision”. On the major news networks there’s more news about the floods in Germany and Putin-Trump election meddling.

What has become clear is that the rioting is more than just calling for the release of former President Jacob Zuma, who turned himself in last week for contempt of court, sparking the crisis. Poverty and rage against the machine are of course drivers of the looting. But there are nefarious elements at work  purposefully destabalising the country. Investigations have been started into 12 intelligence agents and cadres loyal to Zuma, including former special operations boss Thulani ‘Silence’ Dlomo.

Zuma, it should be recalled, was head of the ANC’s intelligence department during the apartheid years, and his team know well how to organise mass demonstrations and foment unrest.

There are massive internal struggles within the ANC government, with Zuma’s so-called Radical Economic Transformation faction demanding the former president’s release and the overthrow of the president, Cyril Ramaphosa. Such internal struggles prevented the deployment of 75,000 troops, as the opposition wanted; as of Thursday, just 25,000 have been deployed.

Food and fuel trucks are under military escort to keep supply lines open on the country’s main transport artery, the N3 highway, which runs from Durban to Johannesburg.

The army has come too late to have prevented the rampage. The underwhelming response of the South African Police Force (SAPs) to the rioting is indicative of not only their low numbers (less than 200,000) and resources but in cases a lack of willingness to take on rioters, in part because of orders from elements that are pro-Zuma.

In a town near to where we live, Howick, with a population of 21,000, there were just eight cops on duty when thousands of looters descended on the centre. Civilians had to band together to defend the town, firing off thousands of rounds. In Durban and areas where thousands of looters went after malls and shopping centres, the SAPs were running out of rubber bullets and then live rounds.

People feel they have been abandoned by the state. Vigilante justice has surfaced. Across KwaZulu-Natal, civilians are manning checkpoints (in our town it is eight unarmed civilians, to two armed per checkpoint), with some backup from the police and the country’s over-sized private security companies – two and a half times that of the police, at 500,000. Everyone with an weapon is carrying it or keeping it close to hand. Communities have banded together – of all races – to defend their neighbourhoods, businesses and property.

The talk now is of attacks on gun stores, and that some 1.5 million rounds of ammo were looted from Durban port. If that is true and the ammo gets into the wrong hands, an armed insurrection could just be around the corner. In any case, there are plenty of guns and ammo around. Local farmers say they have expected something to happen for a long time, with many stockpiling thousands of rounds of ammo per farm.

Contributing to the overall crisis is the legacy of apartheid, and decades of misrule and corruption, for which Zuma was being investigated during his nine year as president. The country also has the highest inequality in the world – youth unemployment is 75% – which has only gotten worse over the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

If the situation is able to stabilise in the coming days, the immediate challenge is to ensure food, fuel, medicine and other essential supplies start being distributed or hunger will spread, the pandemic will run rampant (the country was put back to Level 4 restrictions a few weeks ago due to the spread of the Delta variant), and more trouble will be afoot.

As the novelist Alan Patton, from Pietermaritzburg, the provincial capital of KwaZulu-Natal just down the road from me, entitled his renowned anti-apartheid novel, Cry, the Beloved Country.

Presidential Prerogatives

Mel Gurtov

Once upon a time, American leaders only went to war when, in accordance with the Constitution, Congress declared it. That practice has long since been abandoned.

In recent times Congress either votes to “authorize” a war already underway or is only casually consulted if at all. Though the 1973 War Powers Resolution was meant to restrain an imperial president who had led the country to defeat in Vietnam, no president since has faithfully followed that law’s requirements. Thus, whereas in authoritarian systems the great leader simply orders troops into action, in democracies like ours, going to war is sneakier, in two ways.

First, in justifications, as when the President dispatches troops on the basis of his role as commander-in-chief, invoking “national security,” the “national interest,” “regional stability,” “humanitarian intervention,” “restoring order,” and other wide-open categories that most Congress-members are loath to challenge.

Second, in methods, by using indirect warfare, such as drones, special forces, economic and cyber warfare, and sabotage; and unofficial (and deniable) assets such as the CIA, private company mercenaries, and third-country partners.

No one understands the game better than Joe Biden, who as a senator had a consistent record of opposing the use of force without Congressional approval. He says he wants to end the “forever wars” in the Middle East. As Afghanistan shows, however, “ending” does not actually mean terminating. With the Taliban now intent on overthrowing the US-supported government, and many in Congress already critical of Biden’s troop withdrawal, US policy will actually entail reducing US involvement, using a different mix and level of intervention—what he calls “over-the-horizon capabilities.” The “forever wars” will go on, justified by an understanding of presidential power that leaves enormous room for military action even when troops are withdrawn.

Without Constraint

In the Middle East since the George W. Bush administration, the legal basis for US military involvement has been Congressional Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). Authorizations amount to blank checks, and have been freely exploited by Democratic and Republican presidents alike to attack terrorists and unfriendly states, support allies, and sustain very large forces in the region.

The authorizations are so expansive that they could be used to go to war with Iran, attack the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons depots, protect Israel, or reintroduce forces in and around Afghanistan.

Biden says he would like to revoke the 2002 AUMF, which was directed at Iraq, and he apparently has support in both houses of Congress to do that. But that still leaves the much broader 2001 AUMF, which gives the president the power to “prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.” His capacity to deploy forces and use other assets in the Middle East and Africa will not be all that constrained.

Remember Ronald Reagan’s war making in Central America, which culminated in the Iran-Contra affair? That secret operation, though eventually exposed, demonstrated how a president determined to defeat a particular enemy (Nicaragua) could go around Congress and, with the help of dogmatic advisers and secret channels, erect a sophisticated network of state and private entities to fund war fighting.

The Democratic opposition in Congress fought a rearguard action as it struggled for legislative language that would tie Reagan’s hands. The lesson of Iran-Contra is that presidents have enormous resources at their disposal for conducting wars. A skeptical or hostile Congress is often playing catch-up.

Two scholars who have served in government have this to say about the current state of affairs with respect to restricting presidential authority to make war:

To understand the limited significance of [Biden’s] approach [on AUMFs] to ending the forever wars, you need look no further than Mr. Biden’s Feb. 25 airstrikes in eastern Syria against the Iran-backed militias responsible for assaults on U.S. and allied personnel in Iraq. The United States is not at war with Syria or Iran, and Congress had not authorized the strikes. The president ordered them nonetheless, based on his independent authority, under Article II of the Constitution, “to conduct United States foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive.” Narrowing the 2001 and 2002 [AUMFs] would leave this presidential power untouched.

The Need for Fundamental Change

But the problem goes much deeper than presidential hubris. Congress may often be behind the curve when it comes to national security, but it is still part of the problem rather than the solution. Bipartisanship has much to do with the expansion of presidential power in national security matters.

A majority almost always rejects efforts to limit the commander-in-chief’s authority, as shown, for example, during the Bill Clinton intervention in the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the post-9/11 start of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Republicans and Democrats then rejected efforts to restrain a president by recourse to the War Powers Bill.

In fact, if that bill were up for a vote today —and two senators plan on doing just that —it probably wouldn’t pass, whereas if continued direct US involvement in Afghanistan—or sending troops to Haiti in order to “help restore order”—were put to a vote, those actions probably would pass. The reality, of course, is that a president wouldn’t put any of those decisions to a vote by Congress.

I conclude that no significant inroads in presidential power in foreign affairs are possible without redefining US national security. Foreign policy needs to be humanized and demilitarized; Congress must resist authorizing poorly defined military action in advance; the bloated military budget, three times the size of China’s and 10 times Russia’s, must be deeply cut; the use of force must be proportional and seldom used; and diplomacy must be reenergized, with an accent on engaging adversaries as well as friends.

Pres. Biden is correct to say that foreign policy begins at home. But he must avoid the trap presidents typically fall into—the temptation of undemocratic warmaking.

UK government proceeds with criminal “Freedom Day” and junks COVID safety measures

Robert Stevens

The Conservative government is proceeding with its criminal policy of ending all COVID safety restrictions today. This is happening while the UK is facing a massive surge of coronavirus infections, with daily cases passing 50,000 on Friday and Saturday.

In the last seven days, Britain recorded 296,768 new cases of COVID-19, up 41 percent on the previous week and the second highest seven-day total in the world. Only Indonesia with 341,749 cases, but with a population of 276.5 million—four times the size of Britain’s recorded more.

On Friday the Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced that one in 95 people in England have COVID, a leap from one in 160 the previous week. The hot weather, with many people travelling, staying in the UK for a holiday and gathering on beaches, will accelerate the spread of the virus.

Along with the surge in cases, hospitalisations and deaths are both rising. The 284 deaths over the last week were a rise of nearly 50 percent on the previous week’s 192. Around 600 people a day are being hospitalised. On July 15, 3,964 people were in hospital with Covid, with 551 (almost 14 percent) requiring ventilation. According to research by the Daily Mail, four-fifths of NHS hospitals in England are now seeing a spike in COVID patients being admitted.

So widespread are the infections that the authors of the criminal ditching of COVID regulations are being infected. Health Secretary Sajid Javid, despite being double vaccinated, is ill. Prime Minister Boris Johnson (who contracted COVID last year and nearly died as a result) and Chancellor Rishi Sunak were contacted by NHS Test and Trace as contacts of Javid and instructed to self-isolate for 10 days.

Both tried to dodge the requirement, saying they would take part in a “daily contact testing” pilot scheme. A storm of protest forced a U-turn. This was under conditions in which over half a million people, including key workers from all sectors, have been forced to self-isolate over the last week after being “pinged” by the NHS test and trace phone app. Moreover, 821,000 children (11.2 percent) in England’s state school were not in class on July 8 because of COVID—the highest level since March and a 31 percent increase on the week prior. Of those off school, 39,000 pupils had tested positive and 35,000 had a suspected infection.

There is no constituency within any section of the political establishment to halt or even delay the ending of restrictions. All that has been done is the release of a muted statement by the heads of the National Health Service in England, Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland, calling for “caution”.

To comprehend the scale of the criminality being perpetrated, one needs only look at the statements of health professionals associated with the signing of a letter to the UK’s premiere medical journal, The Lancet. More than 1,200 experts signed the letter titled, “Mass infection is not an option: We must do more to protect our young”.

On Friday, an online “Emergency international summit on UK’s ‘freedom day’” was held. Hosted by The Citizens, a UK NGO, it brought together world-leading experts from 10 countries including scientists and physicians.

Introducing the meeting was Gabriel Scally, the Regional Director of Public Health in England and a member of Independent Sage, an alternative scientific advisory panel to the UK government’s official Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).

Dr Gabriel Scally speaking at the online summit (credit: Citizens's TV/YouTube channel)

Scally spoke as a “representative of the group of scientists who wrote to The Lancet recently calling the government's plans ‘a dangerous and unethical experiment’,” he said. “The Westminster government has failed to bring the virus under control and is now preparing to remove the last few measures that inhibit the virus spreading even more widely amongst our only partially vaccinated population.”

The summit opposed the statement at a July 12 Downing Street press conference last week by the UK’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty that there was “widespread agreement across the scientific community” with the government’s ending restrictions.

“A blind man on a fast horse can see that this is a strategy that doesn’t have the support of scientists, universally at all,” said Scally. “And I personally was amazed at some of the comments, the idea that it was a good idea to have the virus spread widely through the population and infect people, make them ill, and have them die, so that we got that over with before the autumn. To ‘go in the summer’, as it was described [by Whitty].

“I’ve been a public health doctor for 40 years and I’ve never heard of a public health strategy like this. As you have heard from some of the experts from around the world this is not any concept of public health that any public health physician would really recognize I don’t think.”

Professor Stephen Duckett, Health Programme Secretary of the Grattan Institute and former secretary of the Australian Health Department, said, “There is no reputable public health advisor of any kind who would recommend opening up at a time when the virus is spreading rampantly. It just defies any logic, any science of any kind, and it is a recipe to just accept that 40,00, 50,000, 80,000 cases a day is somehow acceptable.”

Dr Deepti Gurdasani, a clinical epidemiologist and senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, said, “The world is watching the current avoidable crisis unfold in the UK.” She warned, “only about half of our population are fully vaccinated and we have been told to expect that millions will get infected over the summer with case rates reaching about a hundred thousand per day. Our government has chosen this path despite having safe and effective vaccines available that could have protected the millions who will now be exposed to a novel virus and its long-term consequences leaving a generation with chronic illness and disability.”

Professor Christina Pagel, director of University College London’s clinical operational research unit, explained, “Because of our position as a global travel hub, any variant that becomes dominant in the UK will likely spread to the rest of the world. We saw it with Alpha. I’m absolutely sure that we contributed to the rise of Delta in Europe and North America. The UK policy doesn’t just affect us. It affects everybody and everybody has a stake in what we do.”

Pagel drew attention to a letter from UK clinical virologists published in the Financial Times July 15, stating that “complete relaxation of behavioural measures designed to reduce the spread of infection, before robust and sufficient levels of vaccine-induced immunity in the population have been achieved, is potentially a recipe for disaster, with the risk of negating the long-term benefits of the early UK rollout of vaccines.” The virologists insisted, “Removal of precautions should happen only when infection rates are decreasing, not increasing.”

The Labour Party and trade unions have no fundamental disagreements with the homicidal ditching of restrictions. Backing the reopening in a July 8 statement, Trades Union Congress General Secretary Frances O’Grady said, “We all want working life to get back to business as usual,” with the TUC complaining only that it had not been consulted as it had been at the end of the first lockdown in May 2020.

No nationalist factions of the ruling elite, including the Scottish National Party government, has an opposed strategy. As a proportion of the population, even more people are infected with COVID in Scotland (one in 90) than in England. Yet First Minister Nicola Sturgeon could only muster a plea for “caution” in announcing that Scotland will move to Level 0 today and ditch a raft of restrictions.

US district court ruling allows electric shock “therapy” of intellectually disabled students

Nancy Hanover

The Washington D.C. District Court of Appeals has struck down a ban on the deliberate and painful shocking of autistic and mentally-impaired children with electrical stimulation devices.

At issue is the signature policy of the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center (JRC) in Canton, Massachusetts. The JRC has, since 1985, used a “graduated electronic decelerator” (GED) on students ages three to adult, supposedly as a form of “aversion therapy.” For decades, the center has been the target of lawsuits, petitions and exposés by traumatized youth and families. In 2013, the United Nations condemned its practices as a violation of the UN Convention against Torture.

After the case remained in limbo for several years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally banned the use of GEDs in March 2020. The ruling cited “an unreasonable and substantial risk of illness or injury that cannot be corrected or eliminated through new or updated device labeling.”

The agency reviewed the clinical and scientific literature on self-injurious and aggressive behavior, the purported rationale for delivering the shocks, while interviewing experts in the field. It concluded that the shocks could only temporarily halt such problems and, on balance, were harmful. They found that GEDs create a significant risk of “worsening of underlying symptoms, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, pain, burns and tissue damage.”

Nonetheless, the July 6 appeals court decision found that the FDA could not ban the device, claiming such a prohibition constituted “interference with the practice of medicine.” In fact, the Judge Rotenberg Center is technically a school, licensed by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education, serving those with intellectual disabilities or behavioral, emotional or psychiatric problems. Many clients are referred from the juvenile justice system and have a history of abuse or abandonment.

Judge Rotenberg Center's website (screenshot)

The shocking devices were developed by the center’s founder Matthew Israel in 1985 after his policy of physical abuse (spanking, squeezing and pinching) came under legal attack. Reportedly, shocks are delivered to between 20 and 50 percent of enrolled students.

The purpose of the device is to inflict pain. Students are required to wear a backpack containing the shocking device with electrodes affixed to their skin at all times. Staff can shock them with remote-control activators at any time.

Andre McCollins was shocked 31 times for failing to remove his jacket, “tensing up” his body, and screaming with pain, according to New York Magazine. The episode left McCollins catatonic, barely able to eat or walk for days. His mother sued JRC, forcing the release of a horrific video of her son strapped in four-point restraints with a helmet on his head while being repeatedly shocked. The session went on for hours while staff rotated electrodes around his body to lessen burn marks. The video showed the child screaming for help and begging employees to stop. His mother says he has never fully recovered.

Screenshot from the hours-long shocking of Andre McCollins, 18 years old.

Jen Msumba, a former student, called her time at JRC “mind and body torture.” She said electrodes were applied under students’ fingers or the bottom of their feet to increase the pain. She recounted being shocked for “waving her hands, body movements, talking too loud, not answering a staff member in less than 5 seconds, or pretty much anything they deem annoying.”

In 2018, Disability Rights International petitioned the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, pointing to multiple practices at the JRC facility, including “contingent shocks, the use of restraints and the use of isolation rooms.” It stated, “These practices—particularly when used in people with disabilities and children—constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and torture.” It objected to the state law which permitted the policies and implored the body, “Under international law, the prohibition of torture is absolute and cannot be justified for any reason.”

Food deprivation is another tool used at JRC, according to Msumba. “Your meal is divided up into little cups: If you rock in your chair, wave your hands, or talk without permission you have to get up and throw one cup away. If they stop work for 5 seconds, such as staring at the wall—throw your food away. Until you have no food left, she says. At the end of the day, they’ll give you a nasty concoction with liver powder all over it. And that’s going to be your food, but you wouldn’t eat it until 11 p.m. that night if you lost all portions of food. And that way of living makes you obsessed about food.”

Jen Msumba showing how JRC attached 5 electrodes to her body, via TikTok

Israel’s center has been a steadily growing and lucrative business. The annual cost per student is $220,000, and states pay the bills. According to the New York Magazine, “Between 2000 and 2005, the facility’s annual revenues grew from $18 million to more than $50 million.” The “nonprofit” school brought in $79 million in 2020, handsomely paying its president Glenda Crookes $354,000 and its director of human resources $224,000, with 11 other executives making between $100,000 to $200,000.

Since 2010, the center has spent nearly $500,000 lobbying federal lawmakers and agencies. At the same time, hundreds of thousands more were funneled to legislators from New York and Massachusetts, according to ProPublica. The JRC was previously named the Behavioral Research Institute and was based in California and Rhode Island, but simply relocated from state to state to elude constant legal battles.

Those confined to the JRC are largely working class and poor youths. Jennifer Gunnerman reports in New York Magazine, “In the fall of 2006, I visited while working on a story for another publication, and I found the place packed with teenagers from New York City, many from poor neighborhoods. One 15-year-old girl said she recognized other kids from her days in Bronx-Lebanon Hospital’s adolescent psych ward. Two young men said they’d come straight from Rikers.” At present, the center has over 300 students living in group homes operated by the school.

The center came to the attention of the United Nations in 2010, after the Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) issued a report on the JRC titled, “Torture Not Treatment.” UN's Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak commented at the time, “To be frank, I was shocked when I was reading the report.” He added, “What I did, on the 11th of May, was to send an urgent appeal to the US government asking them to investigate.”

The UN noted that increasing voltage was applied as individuals “became adapted” to the shocks. It quoted Israel describing the process as “very painful.” The MDRI argued, “Whether or not such treatment is narrowly defined as effective, international human rights law places limits on the amount of pain that can be inflicted on a person.”

The group pitched their appeal to then-president Barack Obama, urging a federal investigation. “President Obama has staked his international reputation on ending torture, and the world is now looking,” said Eric Rosenthal, the MDRI executive director. He added, “Are we gonna live up to our obligations and is President Obama gonna live up to his promise to end torture by the United States government?”

Appeals to Obama, the UN, and the court system notwithstanding, the JRC continues business as usual. It rakes in millions of dollars in tax money and continues to be well-protected. The enterprise was initially named for Judge Rotenberg because he was the first judge—in the 1970s!—to deny families’ claims and rule for Israel. The FDA itself stalled for years before issuing the ban, which was overturned in just over a year. Dozens of legal attempts have similarly failed to force a shutdown.

The problem is not just a few wealthy and well-connected individuals but a more profound need by the capitalist system for social repression. The barbaric torture and war crimes committed at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have their counterpart at home against the working class. One recalls the “black sites” run by the Chicago Police Department, the mounting use of the death penalty against the poor and mentally ill and the increasing assault of basic democratic rights. Over 70 percent of high school students attend schools patrolled by armed police. As schools cut psychologists, social workers and counselors, they add “school resource officers” resulting in growing abuse.

While the precise “averse therapy” of JRC is unusual, such institutions are not. Various forms of highly profitable entities which prey on troubled and mentally impaired youth have proliferated across the US.

On April 29, 2020, Cornelius Frederick, 16, died after being tackled and restrained at a Michigan “strict discipline academy” in Kalamazoo. The academy is a charter school run by Sequel Youth and Family Services which houses children in the foster care and juvenile justice systems. Such outfits are very often a thin veneer for profitable business chains. This particular type of charter school was incorporated into Michigan law following the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School.

Sequel Youth and Family Services has 44 “behavioral health care programs” across the US. They have been the subject of numerous allegations of illegal excessive restraint, negligence, and trauma inflicted upon children. While such reports are not regularly quantified and publicized, a federal investigation in 2007 found thousands of allegations of abuse at facilities for at-risk youth between 1990 and 2007. These reports from “boot camps,” “residential treatment facilities,” “strict discipline academies,” etc., include abuse and deaths recorded by state and federal agencies and in “pending civil and criminal trials with hundreds of plaintiffs.”

Under conditions of deepening social deprivation and the near nonexistence of mental health care for the vast bulk of the population, social tragedies and abuse are mounting. The pandemic has dramatically exacerbated the growth of poverty and mental health crises. Deaths from overdoses have reached record highs. Psychologists predict that a mental health “shadow” pandemic will last for years after the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided.

The tragic saga of those abused and tortured at the Judge Rotenberg Center is a warning. Every agency of capitalism and both political parties turned a deaf ear to these youth and workers. It is necessary to put an end to a system that requires torture and social deprivation to maintain the dictatorship of a financial oligarchy over humanity’s productive forces. Relief from this social crisis must be achieved through the independent struggle of the working class for socialism.

Demonstrator killed in Iran’s water crisis protests

Jean Shaoul

A man was killed during protests that have raged since Thursday over severe water shortages in towns and cities in the oil-rich Khuzestan province in the southwest of Iran.

The protests have including in the capital Ahvaz, with the largest taking place in Susangerd, a city of 120,000 near the Iran-Iraq border. Demonstrators, furious at provincial governor Qasem Soleimani Dashtaki claiming Friday that videos showing demonstrations the previous night were fake, shouted, “Impossible to accept humiliation” and “No to forced migration”.

The ruling elite is acutely conscious of the significance of these protests in the country’s economic powerhouse, where thousands of contract workers in Iran’s oil industry have been on strike for weeks, demanding better wages and working conditions in the southern gas fields and some refineries in the big cities and winning growing support elsewhere. It was the oil workers’ strike that erupted in late 1978, amid a wave of mass protests by workers, students, and the urban poor, that broke the back of the blood-soaked US-backed regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi. The government has refrained thus far from taking its usual heavy-handed approach to protests, lethal repression, intimidation and harsh sentences, instead attempting to play them down.

The water protests came after thousands of workers in Iran’s vast energy industry struck to press demands for better wages and conditions at oil facilities, Iranian media reported Wednesday, June 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

The protests follow the worst drought in 50 years amid growing public anger over water and electricity shortages in Iran’s sweltering summer. This has been exacerbated by the poverty fueled by sanctions targeting Iran’s oil exports imposed by the US Trump administration after unilaterally abandoning the 2015 nuclear deal three years ago, and the crashing of the value of Iran’s currency. No less a factor is the government’s corruption, pro-rich policies, and mismanagement of the pandemic.

While officials claim the protester was hit accidentally by people firing in the air—with acting county governor Omid Sabripour saying fire was aimed at both protesters and the security forces—oppositionists accused the security forces of opening fire on the demonstrations. Unverified video clips posted online show people setting fire to tyres to block roads, with one clip showing security forces in helmets and camouflage fatigues following a crowd. The man was one of Iran’s Sunni Arab community in the town of Shadegan, in Khuzestan province bordering southern Iraq.

Last week, there were reports that villagers in Khuzestan and elsewhere have been forced to buy water from tankers for personal needs, with officials acknowledging that 8,000 villages have severe or serious water shortage and rely on tanker deliveries.

On Friday, President Hassan Rouhani sent a delegation to the region to address protesters’ grievances. The water crisis, caused by a 50 percent reduction in rainfall in this past year and climate change that has amplified the intensity and frequency of droughts, has devastated agriculture and livestock farming and led to the shutdown of hydroelectric power plants and electricity blackouts as electricity consumption to power air conditioning surged.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks in a cabinet meeting in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2020. (Office of the Iranian Presidency via AP)

In addition, Iran sought to attract the high-energy demanding cryptocurrency mining by massive computer farms, offering cheap power, courtesy of government subsidies, and requiring miners to sell their Bitcoins to the central bank to pay for imports of authorised goods, attracting miners, particularly from China, to Iran. In May, Rouhani was forced to ban the industry, much of which is unlicenced, for four months due to power shortages.

Earlier this month, protests erupted over power outages that have caused traffic chaos, rotting food, the shutdown of online schooling, disruption of examinations and deaths in intensive care units in hospitals. Videos appear to show crowds in several cities, with some people shouting, “Death to the dictator” and “Death to Khamenei,” referring to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Another video shows a woman complaining about the blackouts and corruption at a government office in the northern city of Gorgan, demanding that her comments be conveyed to “higher-ups like Mr Rouhani” and shouting, “The only thing you have done is forcing hijab on us.”

In a televised interview, Rouhani apologised for the blackouts, blaming it on the severe drought and high demand and called on people “to co-operate [by cutting their electricity use],” while promising to resolve the problems.

His pledge has provoked bitter refutations and recriminations among Iran’s political elite. The Rouhani administration, which will make way in August for the government of recently elected President Ebrahim Raisi, a member of Iran’s principalist, conservative faction that was shoe-horned into power by Iran’s Supreme Leader, has been largely invisible. The government has announced that the talks in Vienna, aimed at restoring the nuclear deal with US and the major powers, will not restart before Raisi takes office.

A spokesperson for the power industry warned that Iran’s power production capacity was 11GW short of demand and that a “looming heat wave” could make the situation worse. The parliamentary leader of Khuzestan’s deputies accused the government’s years-long diversion of the province’s water from the province of causing the shortage and warned, “Now Khuzestan’s security is at stake because of human errors and inappropriate decision decisions.”

The protests take place amid a deepening economic crisis. According to the International Monetary Fund, after a 13.4 percent rise in GDP in 2017 as the nuclear deal took effect, Iran’s economy shrank by 6.8 percent in 2018 and 6 percent in 2019, after Washington reimposed sanctions as well as new ones on Iran as part of its maximum pressure campaign to topple the regime. Since then, GDP has grown by 1.5 percent in 2020, it was one of the few countries to grow during the pandemic, and is expected to expand by 2.5 percent this year.

Iran’s venal ruling elite pushed the burden onto the working class as Iran’s currency plummeted and inflation soared. Widely believed to be underestimated in official statistics, June’s inflation rate at 43 percent, the second highest since 1979, broke a 26-year record.

The impact on working people has been catastrophic, with a 70 percent hike in the cost of basic food items in the last year, above that which a recent report called a 'critical level,' with no significant improvement expected soon. Last week’s report of the Statistics and Strategic Data Center of the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare reported a 120 percent increase in the cost of chicken and butter and an 80 percent hike in prices of cooking oil, milk, sugar, imported rice, and eggs. Rents have risen by up to 34 percent in the last year and clothing by 50 percent. Around 40 percent of the population, more than 32 million people, live below the poverty line, according to the state-run daily Hamshahri.

Workers’ economic plight has been exacerbated by the pandemic as the government has enriched the financial elite. More than 87,000 people have died, the largest number in the Middle East, although government statistics show excess deaths are more than double this number. Cases are on the rise again with the highly contagious Delta variant spreading through the country’s southern and southeastern provinces.

Less than 2 percent of the 84 million population have received both required vaccine doses, as sanctions have made it impossible to obtain Western medicines. While Iran has imported some Russian and Chinese vaccines, joined the COVAX programme for vaccine sharing and developed three of its own vaccines, doses are in short supply, with the government promising mass vaccinations will start in September.

The current wave of protests, along with the oil workers’ strike, to defend their living standards and secure basic democratic rights take place amid similar protests in neighbouring Iraq and Lebanon, as well as in South Africa and Brazil. Indeed, their social and economic conditions are replicated across the Middle East and Africa.

Iranian workers can only advance their struggle by asserting their political independence from all factions of the bourgeoisie and their political representatives in both the Islamic Republic’s bourgeois-clerical establishment and the pro-imperialist opposition forces within and outside Iran bourgeois parties seeking to capitalize on the unrest in their own interests. They must unite with workers and the oppressed across the Middle East and around the world against capitalism, imperialism, and war and for socialism.