Flood victims in Germany criticise authorities for failure to provide warnings

Elisabeth Zimmermann

It is becoming increasingly clear that the consequences of the flood catastrophe in Germany three weeks ago were not simply the result of a natural disaster of “unimaginable proportions,” but of the irresponsibility of politicians and authorities at the federal, state and local levels.

In Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia alone, 185 deaths have been confirmed so far. The destruction of houses, flats, businesses, roads, bridges and critical infrastructure such as water and electricity is devastating.

Cleanup in the Ahr Valley (photo WSWS)

In Belgium, where from July 14 to 15 extreme amounts of heavy rain submerged parts of Wallonia, the flood disaster claimed at least 41 lives.

The World Socialist Web Site has in previous articles documented the fact that the disaster was not an unavoidable natural event. The fact that the floods killed so many people and caused such devastating damage is a direct result of the criminal inaction of government at all levels.

Well before people were caught in the deadly waters, governments and authorities had been warned. But they remained inactive and refused to initiate evacuations and protective measures. They did not even inform the population about the approaching danger.

In the Ahr valley in Rhineland-Palatinate, where the floods have claimed a particularly large number of lives, 138 people have died to date and 59 are still missing.

On Monday, the public prosecutor’s office in Koblenz announced that it had “initiated preliminary proceedings based on the suspicion of negligent homicide and negligent bodily harm.” Specifically, the case concerns the district of Ahrweiler: Were the responsible authorities too late in warning of the imminent but foreseeable floods, and did people come to harm and die as a result?

At the weekend, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the district of Ahrweiler had been directly warned about the flood. A level of almost seven metres was forecast for the Ahr—normally a small, peaceful river—for the night of July 14 to 15. The warnings came from the State Office for the Environment in Rhineland-Palatinate. Nevertheless, the district did not declare a disaster until late in the evening and did not initiate an evacuation of the threatened residential areas.

By the time an emergency was declared at 11 p.m., it was already too late for evacuations. The rushing flood waters washed away numerous houses and deluged and killed many people, including 12 who drowned in their rooms on the ground floor of a facility for the severely disabled in Sinzig.

Crisis expert Frank Gottlieb told the Rhein-Zeitung, “Many deaths could have been prevented.”

Gottlieb holds the district administrator for Ahrweiler, Jürgen Pföhler (Christian Democratic Union--CDU), primarily responsible for the disaster-control failure and the lack of timely warning to the population.

Gottlieb does not accept the enormous scale of the flood as an excuse. “The dimensions of floods 200 years ago were even greater,” he said. “It was similar 100 years ago. Moreover, there were warnings at an early stage. Therefore, there is no reason not to have been prepared that evening.”

The crisis expert places the main responsibility on the district administrator. However, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of the Environment as well as the entire state government of Rhineland-Palatinate along with the federal government, cannot be exempted from their responsibility for the scale of death and destruction from the flood.

In an interview with business daily Handelsblatt shortly after the disaster, the climate and environment minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Anna Spiegel of the Green Party, arrogantly stated that it was not possible to be protected from every extreme weather event.

Asked about flood prevention, Spiegel, who is deputy head of the state government, claimed, “But one must also say quite clearly: with the event we’ve had now, no flood prevention concept will help anymore.” In the interview, she repeatedly alluded to the financial limits of the state budget and demanded more help from the federal government.

Her statements, which are full of contempt for the needs of the people, express the real priorities of capitalist politicians at all levels. They have nothing to do with the need of the working class, the vast majority of the population, for safe working and living conditions. As in the pandemic, the policy of the capitalist class and its political representatives is profits before lives.

While hundreds of billions of euros are pumped into the accounts of the banks and corporations, swelling the fortunes of the super-rich, and billions more are spent on armaments and war, the claim is that there is “no money” for the protection of the population from disasters, including the pandemic, or for the fight against poverty and social inequality. The same applies to the need for massive support for the people affected by the flood disaster.

The situation in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), where 47 people lost their lives and thousands face the destruction of their livelihoods and severe damage to their houses, businesses, schools, hospitals, roads and bridges, is similar to that in Rhineland-Palatinate.

NRW Minister-President Armin Laschet (CDU) faced criticism and anger from people affected by the catastrophe during recent visits to the flood-ravaged area. Among other things, he was called a “failure” Monday when he travelled to Swisstal near Bonn and to Schleiden. On Tuesday, he visited Stollberg near Aachen. To demonstrate the unity of the ruling class, he was accompanied by Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party--SPD), his rival in the fight for the chancellorship in this fall’s elections.

One man in Swisstal complained there had been no support from the state government or the local administration. People had helped each other, he said, and volunteers, especially young people, had helped clean up.

The same experience--a complete lack of warnings and precautions and, after the disaster had occurred, of governmental help and support--was also had by flood victims in Ahrweiler. This was confirmed by several residents and people affected by the catastrophe in a video report on the World Socialist Web Site.

“They could have gone through from 5 o’clock [warning people]. Then we wouldn’t have any dead people here!” said Alwin.

Flood disaster: “They could have gone through from 5 o’clock [warning people]. Then we wouldn’t have any dead people here!"

Bettina reported that absolutely nothing was done to provide warnings and evacuate people. She attributed this to austerity measures and other priorities of the politicians, such as arms spending.

All those affected described the inability and unwillingness of those politically responsible to warn people, to provide assistance and to save lives. Evacuation orders came so late that they could no longer be implemented.

The video, which has been online since 30 July, has now been viewed over 185,000 times. Many have commented approvingly on the statements of the affected residents and volunteers, because they speak from the heart and hit the nail on the head.

Games & More writes: “According to the statements of those responsible, everyone was warned. Here are hundreds of witnesses who can testify to the contrary. Who do you believe? The person who saw/heard neighbours die, or the person in charge who has a vested interest in dismissing the blame so he can continue to hold office and not lose his emoluments?”

Pheuer one writes: “The woman at the beginning is 100 percent right. Nothing was done because the government didn't want to spend money on evacuations. etc.”

Bin online writes: “I am watching your report for the second time. It is simply authentic. One looks for such reports in vain in the mainstream. Those that are there are cut together briefly. I am sitting on the terrace under the awning, and it is starting to rain. Slowly, the rain is getting heavier, and I shudder to think how the people in the Ahr valley fared that night. Best regards from southern Thuringia and much strength to all those affected.”

Need Username writes: “Thank you for the report on the complete and total failure of politics, public broadcasting and administration to warn the population. Most responsible for the failure in the Ahr valley is Malu Dreyer of the SPD! In the past, loudspeaker trucks drove around and warned of a flood. Now, nothing! You can also warn from a helicopter with very powerful loudspeakers. There has been nothing!”

The fact that the flood disaster and its victims hardly play a role in the official election campaign shows that the official parties and politicians are indifferent to the fate of people whose deaths could have been avoided.

World marks 200 million cases of coronavirus pandemic

Bryan Dyne

The world this week marked the 200 millionth confirmed case of the coronavirus pandemic, the latest in a series of grim milestones amid a pandemic that has been plaguing humanity for the past 20 months. Alongside that sobering figure, the virus has prematurely taken more than 4.26 million human lives from their coworkers, friends and families.

This week is also the sixth week in a row that daily new cases have increased and the fourth week in a row that daily deaths have risen. As of August 3, there was an average of more than 605,000 new known cases each day, and more than 9,300 fatalities. An ominous warning was given by Dr. Catherine O’Neal, Chief Medical Officer at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, “that these are the DARKEST DAYS of this pandemic.”

Dr. Joseph Varon, right, leads a team as they try to save the life of a patient unsuccessfully inside the Coronavirus Unit at United Memorial Medical Center last month. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

The three most hard-hit countries are the United States, with 36.1 million cases and 631,000 deaths, India, with 31.8 million cases and 426,000 deaths, and Brazil, with 19.9 million cases and 559,000 deaths, totaling more than 44 percent of the world’s cases and nearly 38 percent of official deaths.

Overall, there are 19 countries with more than two million confirmed cases and 12 with more than four million. Twelve countries have also reported at least 100,000 deaths, the aforementioned three and Mexico, Peru, Russia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Colombia, France, Argentina and Indonesia.

The scale of the pandemic across continents is equally revealing. Asia and the Pacific have suffered more than 63 million cases, followed by 52 million in Europe, 43 million in North America, 35 million in South America and nearly 7 million in Africa. In percentage terms, 8.2 out of 100 people in South America have been infected, 7.2 out of 100 in North America, 6.9 out of 100 in Europe, 1.3 out of 100 in Asia, and 0.5 out of 100 in Africa.

And in reality, the figures are far worse when unreported cases and deaths are taken into account. An estimate by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) calculates that, based on excess death counts internationally, nearly 9.2 million men, women and children have lost their lives to the pandemic. A similar count by the Economist found that there are between 8–16 million dead. Given that the average infection fatality rate of the coronavirus is about 0.5 percent, these calculations indicate that the real number of cases stands at about 2 billion, ten times official figures.

That such mass death and colossal social misery has occurred is a damning indictment of the world’s capitalist governments and the socioeconomic system which they defend. The world’s ruling elites have had ample opportunities to stem the tide, including the chance to stop the spread before it fully took hold around the globe in January and February 2020, to allow the global lockdowns in March and April of last year, which had begun to lower infection rates, to continue, and to the widespread deployment of highly effective vaccines, begun in January 2021.

They have instead done the exact opposite, pursuing ever more openly the homicidal policy of herd immunity. In the United States, then-US President Republican Donald Trump resisted any measures to contain the pandemic until plans had been put into place to transfer trillions of dollars to Wall Street and the major corporations through the CARES Act. Trump then fought viciously to end the lockdowns that had been implemented and to get workers back into unsafe conditions in their offices, plants and factories to pay for the astronomical transfer of wealth to the financial oligarchy.

Trump’s policies resulted in just under 427,000 official deaths in the United States during his tenure. Internationally, other world leaders followed suit, leading to nearly 2.2 million dead overall.

These processes have only accelerated under Biden. Another 204,000 people have lost their lives in the United States and more than 2 million around the world. Come the fall, all restrictions on in-person schooling are being done away with, setting the stage for a further acceleration of the pandemic.

The ongoing crisis has been made continually worse by the emergence of newer and more infectious variants. The Alpha variant was first detected last fall in the United Kingdom and rapidly spread around the world, causing the peaks of cases and deaths witnessed in January. Data from the UK clearly showed that the Alpha variant was about twice as infectious as the wild variant and caused more hospitalizations.

At about the same time, the Gamma variant was first sampled in Brazil and became the dominant variant in South America. It is not only more infectious, but also more deadly, especially among young people. Reports have also emerged that it is capable of reinfecting those who were previously infected by the wild variant, raising the specter of a never ending cycle of infection and death that is not held back by natural immunity.

Now, the world lives under the deadly shadow of the Delta variant. It first emerged in India and was responsible for the skyrocketing cases in that country in April, when cases in that country soared to nearly 400,000 a day, at the time about half of the world’s cases. From an epidemiological standpoint, the massive spread is caused by the fact that the Delta variant is 2.5 times as transmissible as the original variant of the disease, a result of the virus mutating and optimizing itself for human infection over the course of the past 18 months and hundreds of millions of cases.

The Delta variant is also at least partially resistant to vaccines, the panacea promoted by the Biden administration as the reason mask mandates and public health measures are no longer needed to end the pandemic. A recently leaked internal report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that there are an estimated 35,000 symptomatic cases of COVID-19 each week in the US among vaccinated people.

Those vaccinated can also spread the disease, which has been found to live in the mouth and sinus canals, avoiding the body’s immune system for some time, meaning that being vaccinated doesn’t automatically remove one from the chain of transmission. This is especially concerning given how infectious the Delta variant is, more easily spread than the common cold.

The sheer virulence of the Delta variant also undermines the effectiveness of vaccines. It is so infectious that, even with the current 50 percent full vaccination rate in the US, the Delta variant is able to spread faster than the wild variant was able to when there was no vaccination. In other words, even with vaccines, the emergence of the Delta variant has induced a spread of the coronavirus that is worse than what occurred in March 2020. That Florida is currently experiencing record hospitalizations must be taken as a warning of the dangers facing the whole population.

In countries with lower vaccination rates, which remains the vast majority of the world, the Delta variant is causing even greater havoc. Multiple countries had very low case rates until April, when the Delta variant reached them and caused cases and deaths to explode out of control. Thailand, for example, which has a full vaccination rate of less than six percent, had less than 100 coronavirus-related deaths before April, and now has more than 5,300.

And there are more variants on the horizon. The Lambda variant has been shown to be resistant to vaccines and three other variants, Eta, Iota and Kappa, have been described as “potential threats” by researchers looking into the infectiousness and evasiveness of the coronavirus as it mutates.

Whatever Happened to Internationalism?

Mark A. Ashwill

 

“The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

– Thomas Paine

The international education profession, especially in the United States, has devoted untold pages, bytes and conference sessions to the red hot, perennial topic of intercultural competence, but very few to nationalism, a cultural superiority complex and exclusionary state of mind that transcends gender, race, social class and political affiliation.

A sponsored post, “What is intercultural competence? And 4 reasons why employers value it”, offers one of the most general and widely accepted definitions of intercultural competence and then proceeds to explain why employers value intercultural competence and list its benefits, including how it “prepares you to work for international companies, it shows you’re proactive” and it is “something to talk about in interviews”, all of which emphasise the utilitarian value of this skill set.

International education, including intercultural competence, is often ‘sold’ on the basis of the extent to which it contributed to US economic growth and national security, both Ameri-centric goals whose pursuit is too often to the exclusion of the interests and aspirations of other peoples. This approach is limiting and antithetical to the true mission of the profession.

What many utterly fail to recognise is that intercultural competence and nationalism are not mutually exclusive. In this sense, they are committing an elephantine and corrosive sin of omission. Why focus on the safe topic du jour and avoid, consciously or subconsciously, the thorny yet indispensable one?

One possible reason could be a variation on the theme of false consciousness that conjures up this famous quote from Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919): “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” Colleagues who refuse to acknowledge nationalism as a pivotal issue that demands our attention, scholarly and otherwise, especially in the US, are figurative prisoners who are bound up with intellectual and psychic shackles.

IHE style psychic chains

Last year, the founder of a US global citizenship-oriented non-profit reached out to me in search of a ‘teammate’ in Vietnam. The organisation curates “international resources and opportunities to inform and empower people with global interests” and “helps you discover worldly things relevant to your personal, professional and academic goals”. It also claims to “broaden horizons, enhance growth and potential, and connects dots among people and places”.

I suggested that he post a 2016 essay of mine entitled “US nationalism – The elephant in the room” on the organisation’s website.

His response was that he couldn’t “because it leans a bit into the wrong thinking of Republicans. As a policy, we avoid overt religion and politics”. In other words, just as “those who do not move, do not notice their chains”, there are apparently limits to the extent to which people should be able to connect the dots.

US Americans who identify as Republicans in general and MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters in particular do not have a monopoly on nationalism. It is a bipartisan disease, with at least a simple majority of all US Americans afflicted who sincerely believe that their country is “the greatest nation on earth”, a solidly nationalistic perspective.

It was the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate who referred to the US in speeches and print as an “exceptional nation”. Every US political leader, at least at the national level, is obliged to utter this sentiment, whether they believe it or not – or else.

Intersection of religion, politics and IHE

Any avoidance of ‘overt religion and politics’, two of the most powerful forces now and throughout history, is problematic, plays into the hands of the nationalists aka neo-conservatives and many red, white and blue evangelical Christians, who are often one and the same, a toxic marriage of nationalism and fundamentalist Protestantism.

In order to properly deal with the ‘elephant in the room’, you can’t be shy or fearful; you must introduce it in no uncertain terms.

To give you an idea of how much fear surrounds this issue in the US, I co-authored a book chapter about nationalism, patriotism, intercultural competence and global citizenship in a comparative Vietnam-US perspective that was mildly censored because my then employer, whose slogan, ironically, was Opening Minds to the World, was afraid that it might anger certain powerful individuals in the government who controlled the organisation’s purse strings.

Restrictions on freedom of speech, much like psychic chains, ensure that minds remain closed, an obstacle to progress.

Skill set vs mindset

Intercultural competence is generally defined as a skill set not a mindset, meaning it’s entirely possible to be an interculturally competent nationalist who places her or his skills in the service of a government or corporation whose interests are at odds with those of much of humanity and the environment.

There are many US nationalists who are interculturally competent, for example, diplomats, intelligence officers, military officers and business executives.

One former US diplomat involved in academic programmes in the Bush/Cheney State Department when I was country director of the Institute of International Education-Vietnam, told a plenary address at the NAFSA 2003 annual conference in Salt Lake City, months after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, in the spirit of ‘love it or leave it’ that one can no longer claim to “hate this government’s policies but love the country”.

On the other hand, it’s impossible for a global citizen to be a nationalist because of the diametrically opposed mindset. However, one could become a global citizen first, and then gradually add the skill set that is intercultural competence.

Last year, Corina (@cdvaughn16) graphically illustrated this point when she tweeted: “‘Agree to disagree’ is reserved for things like ‘I don’t like coffee’. Not racism, homophobia and sexism. Not human rights. Not basic decency. If I unfriend you during this, it IS personal. We do not have a difference of opinion. We have a difference in morality.”

Nationalists have a markedly different morality than global citizens – with or without national affiliation. Theirs embraces and values one country and its interests to the exclusion and often the detriment of all others.

Some definitions

As I outlined in my 2016 article on US nationalism to which this essay is a long-awaited sequel, it’s necessary to define some of these concepts because there are colleagues, including those with a PhD after their names, who confuse patriotism and nationalism. When people are not on the same semantic page, they run the risk of talking past each other. Hence the importance of precise definitions.

Patriotism is defined simply as “love for or devotion to one’s country”. The uber-patriotism that is nationalism takes it to the next level, defined as loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups. It is the italicised part that distinguishes nationalism from its more compassionate and caring semantic cousin, patriotism.

Implicit in the exaltation of one nation over all others is the belief that ‘others’ wish to be like us and, by extension, the desire to mould them in our image, by force, if need be. This is the essence of missionary nationalism, not just rhetoric but action.

Everyone falls into one of five categories of self-identification: 1) passive nationalist; 2) missionary nationalist; 3) patriot; 4) global citizen with national affiliation; and 5) global citizen without national affiliation. (Full disclosure: I’m in the last category, the result of education, formal and informal, and life experience.)

Intercultural competence is generally defined as a means to an end not necessarily rooted in the values system of global citizenship. Here are a few definitions that mention what’s necessary to have ‘effective and appropriate’ communication and interaction with people of other cultures.

“Intercultural competence is the ability to develop targeted knowledge, skills and attitudes that lead to visible behaviour and communication that are both effective and appropriate in intercultural interactions.” (Dr Darla K Deardorff, 2006)

“Intercultural competence is a range of cognitive, affective and behavioural skills that lead to effective and appropriate communication with people of other cultures.” (Wikipedia)

“Intercultural competence is the ability to function effectively across cultures, to think and act appropriately, and to communicate and work with people from different cultural backgrounds – at home or abroad.” (Monash University)

As George Santayana famously observed: “To me it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.” Global citizenship is the notion that one’s identity transcends national borders and that national interests must not supersede global interests, especially if the former are damaging to the latter.

While we all carry a national passport out of necessity, “the world is our country”. We are all citizens of Planet Earth and members of humanity, regardless of our nationality. Our well-being forms an unbreakable bond with that of our fellow human beings and the natural world. It is the ultimate expression of inclusion that has many positive implications for peace, justice, environmental protection and economic sustainability.

The way forward

While nationalism is not new, this dangerous ideology has been in the ascendancy in recent years, supported in word and deed by authoritarian leaders and wannabe dictators, and energised by globalisation that has left certain segments of the population behind. The world, but especially those countries in which nationalism holds sway, such as the US, desperately needs more global citizens – with or without national affiliation.

Those of us who have devoted ourselves personally and professionally to international education have an obligation to address nationalism head on in our discussions, writing, presentations and advocacy. To focus on intercultural competence as a skill set and neglect global citizenship as a mindset is to abdicate this collective responsibility to the detriment of us all.

Wouldn’t the world be a better place, including higher education, if more people took Thomas Paine’s noble sentiment to heart?

One year since the Beirut blast: Lebanon’s social, economic, and political crisis deepens

Jean Shaoul

A year has passed since one of the world’s largest non-nuclear explosions at the port of Beirut devastated the northern part of Lebanon’s capital city.

The blast that could be heard as far away as Cyprus exacted a terrible toll, killing at least 218 people and injuring 7,500. It caused around $15 billion in property damage to the city’s buildings and infrastructure making 300,000 people homeless. Last week, the United Nations warned that Lebanon's water supply could collapse within a month due to the collapse of the power grid.

The explosion wrought havoc to a country already reeling under the impact of an economic meltdown. Its six million people, many of them refugees from Palestine and Syria, have long been ensnared in the wider regional power struggles, including the bitter armed conflict of 1975 to 1990, between shifting alliances backed by rival powers.

The explosion that hit the Beirut port, Wednesday August 5, 2020 (source: AP Photo / Bilal Hussein)

In recent years, US imperialism, along with Saudi Arabia and France, has piled on pressure as part of its broader campaign to isolate Iran and Syria, widening its sanctions on Hezbollah and Syria, with whose economy Lebanon is closely connected. Hezbollah, the Iran-backed bourgeois-clerical party, together with its allies forms the largest political bloc in parliament.

The aim of the de facto economic blockade against the country is to orchestrate a return to power by the Sunni Future Movement of former Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri and his allies, after they were ousted by the mass social protests that erupted in October 2019 against economic hardship, government corruption and the country’s sectarian political setup.

This, along with the financial looting and mismanagement of the economy by Lebanon’s financial elite through its political parties and the central bank, whose governor is now under investigation by the Swiss banking authorities, led to the government’s default on its overseas debt, a currency collapse that wiped out foreign reserves, soaring inflation, the doubling of food prices, and widespread poverty. This has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic which, according to official figures that grossly underestimate the reality, has cost nearly 8,000 lives.

Having run down its foreign reserves, Lebanon faces a growing shortage of fuel, medicine and other basic goods, leading to power cuts for many hours a day. It has signed a barter-type agreement with Iraq to supply one million tonnes of heavy fuel oil for electricity generation, enough for four months, in exchange for $300-$400 million worth of goods and services from Lebanon.

More than half the population live in poverty. A recent survey by Save the Children found that about 47 percent of Lebanon’s population cannot afford essential goods like lentils, cooking oil, diapers, sanitary pads and fuel, while “Hundreds of thousands of children are going to bed hungry, often without having eaten a single meal that day.”

“Families can’t afford the electricity to run a fridge or hot water, or the medicines they need to treat illness. The longer this situation continues, the more likely it is that children will slide into malnutrition, which ultimately could lead to death.”

The government had applied for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan, which would necessitate “free market reforms” that would plunge millions into destitution and cut across key and conflicting interests of the ruling elite. Moreover, any such loan would also be subject to US approval and be conditional on Lebanon’s political alignment with the Sunni oil states and against Iran and Syria, conditions that are anathema to Hezbollah.

Without accepting the IMF’s terms, Lebanon would not be able to access aid pledged at a conference by the European and regional powers. Led by France, the European Union is likewise ramping up the pressure on Hezbollah, having just announced the adoption of a legal framework for a sanctions regime against Lebanese individuals and entities.

Last year’s catastrophe was caused by ammonium nitrate, a key component of fertilizers, mine explosives and bombs, stored at the port. In September 2013, the ship transporting the chemicals from Georgia to Mozambique via Beirut was abandoned and later confiscated after a dispute over unpaid fees between the owner and the port authorities. In 2014, a court ordered the removal of the 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate from the ship to a warehouse at the port, in the heart of the city.

Six years later, the chemicals caught fire, possibly triggered by workmen welding nearby and/or by a stash of fireworks, setting off two explosions with the force equivalent to one-20th of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima or a 3.3 to 4.5 local magnitude earthquake.

The explosion was the result of negligence, inaction and corruption on the part of Lebanon’s plutocrats, mismanagement by the port authorities as well as the inaction of the flag registry's country and ship owner. Despite several investigations that had warned of the dangers, successive governments headed by Lebanon’s billionaire Prime Ministers Najib Mikati, Tammim Salaam and Sa’ad Hariri, took no action to implement the recommendations. It is a damning indictment of the entire ruling elite that have for decades enriched themselves at the expense of Lebanese workers, turning Beirut into a playground for the region’s millionaires and billionaires.

However, days after the blast Prime Minister Hassan Diab and his government resigned when it became clear that they were to take the sole blame for the disaster. Diab, an engineering professor, had been installed as a “technocrat” to head the government in January after mass social protests erupted in October 2019 against economic hardship, government corruption and the country’s sectarian political setup, forcing Hariri’s resignation.

Diab’s cabinet, largely made up of non-aligned people, was supported by Hezbollah, making him a hate figure for the Christian and Sunni plutocrats allied with Hariri’s Future Movement. Future Movement refused to cooperate with the government, leading to the eruption of small but violent clashes between the two rival blocs and fears of another armed conflict backed by rival regional powers similar to that of 1975-1990.

Despite his resignation, Diab has remained in post in a caretaker role while various thoroughly discredited Sunni politicians, including Hariri, tried and failed to cobble together a government acceptable to the President Michel Aoun and his faction. Najib Mikati, a former prime minister, Lebanon’s richest businessman and banker, and a resident of the northern port city of Tripoli, the country’s poorest city, is currently attempting the task, with no greater success.

The investigation ordered by Aoun to report by August 11, 2020 into the cause of the blast has been symptomatic of the politicians’ determination to avoid responsibility. One year later, the investigation has descended into farce as several nominees for the presiding judge were rejected and legislators have stalled on lifting immunity on politicians and agency chiefs the judge has sought to question.

A report by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation carried out last October and seen recently by Reuters claims that only one-fifth of the shipment of ammonium nitrate unloaded in Beirut in 2013 exploded in August—without explaining how the discrepancy arose or where the rest of the shipment has gone, fueling suspicions that much of it had been stolen.

None of the demands for greater social equality, democratic rights and an end to corruption and sectarian-based politics that drove the months-long social protests of 2019-20 have been granted. The “technocratic” government was unable to make any headway against the entrenched positions of Lebanon’s financial and political elite.

Morenoite Izquierda Diario silent on Spanish ruling against COVID-19 lockdowns

Alejandro López

The Morenoite Workers’ Revolutionary Current (CRT) has reacted with utter indifference to the reactionary ruling of Spain’s Constitutional Court that COVID-19 lockdown measures imposed in spring 2020 were unconstitutional. Its online daily Izquierda Diario has said absolutely nothing.

Last month, the Constitutional Court ruled that the restrictions implemented to halt the spread of the coronavirus exceeded the remit of the state of alarm, the juridical mechanism used to impose social distancing measures such as lockdowns. The appeal was lodged by far-right Vox.

People wearing face masks to protect against the spread of coronavirus walk along a commercial street in downtown Madrid, Spain, Saturday, June 5, 2021. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

The WSWS has noted the significance of this ruling. We wrote: “The ruling in Spain represents an escalation of the ‘herd immunity’ policy pursued by the entire European bourgeoisie. This policy of keeping nonessential workers at work, letting the virus spread so as to avoid any slowdown in the flow of corporate profits, will lead to thousands more COVID-19 deaths. This was most crudely expressed by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who allegedly demanded last year in a leaked private cabinet meeting: ‘No more f…ing lockdowns—let the bodies pile high in their thousands.’”

The signal of the ruling class is clear: There will be no measure limiting the spread of the virus which would jeopardize the accumulation of profits.

Days after the ruling, a number of limited measures reintroduced at the regional level to stop the spread of the virus have been suspended. The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands, a region attracting mass European tourism, suspended the regional government’s measure forcing restaurants, hotels and gyms to demand COVID-19 certificates to enter. On Sunday, the Superior Court of Justice of Asturias rejected the curfew between 1:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. in various cities and towns in Asturias, where the virus is running rampant.

Both regions are at extreme risk of contagion, having exceeded 350 cases per 100,000 inhabitants for seven consecutive days as hospitals are increasingly crowded.

The fifth wave has so far infected 500,000 people, mostly those aged between 12 and 29, causing the unnecessary deaths of nearly 500 people. Last week, 98 people died from the virus. This is practically double the 50 weekly deaths reported the week before and triple the 32 deaths of three weeks ago. This is expected to increase in the coming days.

The Morenoite CRT—which was utterly indifferent last April when the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government announced it was ending all social distancing restrictions, which has now provoked the current wave of infections—has remained completely silent on the latest ruling.

Its last article on the COVID-19 situation, published on July 16, “New wave of infections in the face of exhausted public health care,” said nothing about the reactionary ruling of the Constitutional Court announced two days before. This article, remarkably, was written almost three weeks ago.

As usual, CRT blames the spread of the virus purely on the failure of regional and federal governments to invest enough in the public health care system. It wrote, “The situation [of the fifth wave] was not unpredictable either. As in the four previous waves, the rebound began to be noticed in Primary Care and Public Health services. … However, neither the PSOE and Podemos government nor the regional governments have strengthened the public health care system.”

Another reason for the spread of the virus, according to the CRT, is the “refusal of governments to release patents on vaccines,” which it claims allowed “the pandemic to develop new variants that increase the infectivity of the virus, which in turn have disrupted government vaccination plans.”

Mass vaccination and strengthening of the public health care systems are clearly vital, as the WSWS has insisted. However, they represent only one component of what must be a global effort to eradicate the virus, along with other measures like masking, social distancing and mass testing.

CRT’s omissions of social distancing and lockdowns as a necessary scientific policy against the virus and its silence on the Constitutional Court’s ruling are not accidental. During the pandemic, the Morenoites consistently opposed social distancing measures, reacting ambivalently to the suffering and death inflicted primarily on the working class due to the ruling elite’s criminal handling of the pandemic. While posing as a critic of the policies of the capitalist PSOE-Podemos government, in reality their position aligns with that of the ruling class in all its fundamentals.

In fact, if CRT were to be honest, they would say that they are in agreement with the appeal of the far-right Vox party and the ruling of the Constitutional Court. Last January, the CRT escalated its agitation against social distancing. Izquierda Diario carried an article, sarcastically titled “More restrictions, the recipe for confronting the third wave,” denouncing critical public health measures, such as lockdowns and social distancing, as “authoritarian and palliative.”

“As if it were a tap,” the Morenoites declared, “they [the PSOE-Podemos government] are limiting our liberties and movements at will.” Such language echoed that of Vox, which attacked lockdowns as the “biggest infringement on rights in history.”

This came after the CRT defended the reopening of schools. Last September, as Madrid decided to reopen schools even if it meant rapidly spreading the virus, CRT called for a “safe” return to schools, while acknowledging that the safety of teachers and students “cannot be guaranteed.”

In May, as the PSOE-Podemos government ended the state of alarm—the juridical mechanism now repudiated by the Constitutional Court as a mechanism allowing regional governments to impose health measures, such as lockdowns, curfews and mobility restrictions—the CRT made no criticism of this reckless endangerment of the lives of millions of workers in Spain. Instead, they refused to make any warnings of the serious danger still posed by COVID-19. Nor did they demand continued efforts to combat the pandemic.

Now, amid the fifth wave, the CRT’s most significant intervention has been to launch a politically criminal campaign of encouraging youth to pour back into nightclubs and bars. Despite the obvious health risks posed by the reopening of these facilities, it actively called for them to remain open and encouraged attendance, asserting, “Young people have the right to enjoy themselves.” One of its articles declared, “It’s time to demand a safe return of social, cultural and educational life.”

A youth representative of CRT was invited on prime time public television in Catalonia to agitate for “antigen tests and measures to resume the necessary safe socialization.”

The CRT’s silence on the court ruling reflects the material class interests upon which this tendency is based. It speaks for well-off layers of the upper middle class and union bureaucrats, whose positions and lifestyles depend on the upward movement of stock markets and the exploitation of workers. These interests are aligned with the demands of the Constitutional Court, Vox and PSOE-Podemos government against public health measures.

Craig Murray joins Julian Assange behind bars

Laura Tiernan

Former British diplomat and whistleblower Craig Murray has begun serving an eight-month prison sentence in Scotland over his supposed “jigsaw identification” of witnesses in a failed sexual assault case against former Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Alex Salmond.

Murray’s jailing for contempt of court is a settling of scores over his long record of exposing the crimes of British and US imperialism.

He surrendered himself to St Leonard’s police station in Edinburgh Sunday afternoon. Surrounded by supporters, the 62-year-old, whose pleas for mitigation on health grounds were rejected by courts in Scotland and England, embraced his wife Nadira and their two young children.

Since 2002, Murray has earned the enmity of the British state, its intelligence services, judiciary and media over his exposure of human rights abuses by the imperialist powers extending from Central Asia to London’s Belmarsh Prison.

As British Ambassador to Uzbekistan in 2002, Murray exposed British and US complicity in torture as part of the “war on terror.” One year after the US invasion of Afghanistan, he blew the whistle on the widespread use of torture by the US-backed regime of Islam Karimov, including “rape with objects such as broken bottles; asphyxiation; pulling out of fingernails; smashing of limbs with blunt objects; and use of boiling liquids including complete immersion of the body.”

Murray’s exposé cut across long-term strategic plans set in motion after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Within weeks of 9/11, Karimov allowed the US to establish a military base in southern Uzbekistan, with the US funnelling $79 million to Uzbekistan’s security forces. Torture was used to extract false confessions, with information fed to British and US intelligence, and used to justify the invasion and military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 2018, Murray used his knowledge of the intelligence services to expose British imperialism’s efforts to utilise the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia to ramp up hostilities against Russia, skewering their lurid claims that Moscow had manufactured and deployed “Novichoks” on British soil.

Left, Craig Murray and his family outside St Leonard's police station Edinburgh on the day of his incarceration for contempt of court. (Wikimedia Commons). Right, Julian Assange

But it was in 2019 that Murray came to worldwide prominence for his eloquent defence of persecuted WikiLeaks founder and journalist Julian Assange. After Assange was seized from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London by a police snatch-squad in April and indicted under the Espionage Act for his exposure of US war crimes, Murray’s defence of his friend was unrelenting. His daily reports during extradition hearings in February and September 2020 won an audience of millions, cutting through the lies, filth and hypocrisy of British judicial proceedings overseen by the CIA.

In 2020, Murray’s exposure of #MeToo-style court proceedings against Salmond provided the ruling class with its opportunity to silence him. The former SNP leader was charged with rape and sexual assault in 2019 based on allegations passed to police by the Scottish government. Murray later reported “with a high degree of certainty” that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s Chief of Staff, Liz Lloyd, was behind reports in the Scottish press in 2018 alleging sexual assault by Salmond.

Despite a massive police operation to encourage women to testify against Salmond, including some 400 police interviews, the jury exonerated him. Witnesses made claims that were impossible to verify, were frequently implausible and were sometimes disproven in court. But while Salmond was proven innocent, Murray was charged with contempt over his supposed “jigsaw identification” of witnesses—a claim that he has comprehensively refuted.

Murray’s jailing is a further milestone in the collapse of democracy. Lady Leeona Dorrian, who presided over the Salmond trial and later sentenced Murray, is leading efforts to abolish jury trials in sexual assault cases. As Murray wrote Sunday, “We will then have a situation where, as established by my imprisonment, no information at all on the defence case may be published in case it contributes to ‘jigsaw identification’, and where conviction will rest purely on the view of the judge…

“The right to have the facts judged in serious crime allegations by a jury of our peers is a glory of our civilisation. It is the product of millennia, not lightly to be thrown away and replaced by a huge increase in arbitrary state power. That movement is of course fuelled by current fashionable political dogma which is that the victim must always be believed. That claim has morphed from an initial meaning that police and first responders must take accusations seriously, to a dogma that accusation is proof and it is wrong to even question the evidence, which is of course to deny the very possibility of false accusation.”

Like Assange, who was targeted via state manufactured sexual assault allegations in Sweden, Murray is a victim of the state’s utilisation of gender politics to suppress fundamental democratic rights, aimed above all at silencing those who expose the crimes of imperialism.

The sentencing of Murray has set a dangerous precedent above all in its singling out of independent media. The judges’ June 8 High Court ruling insisted, “it is relevant to distinguish his [Murray’s] position from that of the mainstream press, which is regulated, and subject to codes of practice and ethics in a way in which those writing as the applicant does are not.”

This is sickening hypocrisy. What “codes of practice” and “ethics” were the mainstream press exhibiting when they recycled state propaganda about Iraq’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction”—lies used to illegally invade, occupy and destroy an oppressed country leading to 1 million dead?

Murray’s imprisonment extends the precedent set by Assange’s indictment under the Espionage Act. Amid a pandemic that has triggered an historic breakdown of the world capitalist order, the ruling class fears the eruption of mass working class opposition to malignant social inequality, austerity, police violence and authoritarianism, and the escalating drive to war.

In 2010, WikiLeaks’ exposures of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, torture, rendition and state corruption sparked mass movements of the working class and oppressed in Tunisia that led to the Arab Spring. The ruling class responded by designating Assange a “high-tech terrorist,” in the words of Joe Biden, with former CIA Director Leon Panetta telling German public broadcaster ARD that Assange was being targeted to “send a message to others not to do the same thing.”

Last Thursday, Murray issued a press statement that was ignored by the mainstream media, “I believe this is actually the state’s long sought revenge for my whistleblowing on security service collusion with torture and my long-term collaboration with Wikileaks and other whistleblowers. Unfortunately important free speech issues are collateral damage.”

More political fallout from the Pegasus spyware revelations

Kevin Reed

Political fallout from the exposure of government use of the Israeli-based NSO Pegasus spyware continued last week as protesters rallied to demand the resignation of the right-wing government in Hungary.

On July 26, approximately 1,000 people organized by opposition political parties demonstrated at the House of Terror museum in Budapest in response to revelations that the Hungarian government had been using the spyware to monitor the activity of journalists, businesspeople and politicians. The House of Terror museum is housed in the building where individuals were interrogated, tortured and murdered and contains exhibits about the victims of both the fascist and Stalinist regimes in the twentieth century.

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)

The protesters demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Justice Minister Judit Varga, who has the authority under Hungarian law to sign off on secret surveillance without judicial oversight.

The events in Budapest were touched off by investigative reporting two weeks ago from a consortium of 16 media outlets called the Pegasus Project that analyzed leaked documents showing that more than 50,000 individuals had been targeted by the software and potentially had their smartphones hacked and transformed into 24-hour per day surveillance devices. Among the countries these individuals come from are Hungary, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Azerbaijan, India and France.

The software firm NSO Group developed Pegasus ostensibly as a tool for stopping “terrorists and criminals,” but instead the leaked information showed that the numerous government customers of the Israeli firm were using the malware to spy on major political figures including sitting president and prime ministers and monarchs.

Headed up by the Paris-based Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, the Pegasus Project—which also includes the Washington Post and the Guardian —performed forensic analysis on the smartphones of some of the individuals on the Pegasus target list and showed that their devices exhibited evidence of either hacking attempts or successful spyware installation.

While the leaked information included the phone numbers of approximately 300 Hungarian citizens, the forensic analysis demonstrated that Pegasus had been used to break into the smartphones of at least five Hungarian journalists. According to InsightHungary, for example, the smartphones of “Szabolcs Panyi and András Szabó of investigative reporting outfit Direkt36,” had been broken into. The phones of opposition politician György Gémesi who leads the New Start Party and János Banáti of the Hungarian Bar Association president were also on the leaked list of Pegasus targets, but these devices did not undergo the forensic examination to confirm that they had been breached.

While the journalistic investigation points to the involvement of the Hungarian government in a spyware operation, InsightHungary reported on July 22 that government officials have neither confirmed nor denied the use of Pegasus. They did, however, state that “covert surveillance in Hungary occurs only in accordance with relevant laws.”

Speaking in Brussels more directly on the subject without confirming the use of Pegasus, Justice Minister Varga said, “Let’s not be ridiculous, every country needs such tools! It’s an illusion if anyone tries to make an issue out of it.” Additionally, Prime Minister Orbán’s chief of staff told the press that the cabinet did not discuss the issue and had “no plans to conduct an investigation into the spying allegations,” according to InsightHungary.

The political crisis in Hungary follows close behind that of the far-right regime of Narendra Modi in India, where approximately 1,000 people were targeted by the Pegasus tool, including journalists, activists, lawyers and academics. Among the mobile numbers found on the leaked data list were two devices used by Congress leader Rahul Ghandi along with five of his close personal friends.

While NSO Group continues to absolve itself of any responsibility for the deployment of its hacking software by governments around the world—the company has refused to disclose a list of its 60 accounts within 40 or more state clients—the company has moved to block several governments from using Pegasus pending an investigation of the allegations.

An anonymous NSO Group representative told NPR on July 29, “There is an investigation into some clients. Some of those clients have been temporarily suspended.” The source added that NSO, “will no longer be responding to media inquiries on this matter and it will not play along with the vicious and slanderous campaign.” The Washington Post reported that the clients that have been suspended include Saudi Arabia, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and some public agencies in Mexico.

Cyber-security experts have identified Pegasus as one of the most powerful spyware tools developed and deployed to date. As opposed to previous techniques, which require a user to click on something contained in a text message or email in order to install the malware on the device, Pegasus is a “zero-click” hack that penetrates the security of a smartphone simply by sending a text message to it that does not even need to be opened by the user to infect their system.

Dr. Tim Stevens, director of the Cybersecurity Research Group at King’s College London, explained the nature of zero-day vulnerabilities to BBC Science Focus magazine, “It is a fact that all very large pieces of software, like an operating system like Apple’s iOS or Android or any other, including open source operating systems, have bugs. None of them are perfect. They present openings or opportunities for people to use to gain access.

“It’s like locking up all the doors and windows, but leaving the kitchen window open overnight. If the burglar is going to recce the whole house, they will find it eventually, no matter how large your house. And that’s exactly what goes on with software. ...

“Pegasus effectively jailbreaks your phone, it unlocks all this kind of administrative functionality that it then uses to position itself and hide itself and have access to everything that’s going on in your phone. It’s a very novel and impressive technical feat.”

Once the spyware is on a smartphone, it can be used to monitor all activity within both the apps such as email, browser activity, text messaging and photo images as well as the hardware such as the microphone, speakers and front-facing and rear-facing cameras.

In response to the Pegasus leak revelations—which he called “the story of the year”—whistleblower and former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden published a blog post on Substack on July 26 entitled, “The Insecurity Industry.” In it, Snowden wrote that prior to the Pegasus revelations, “most smartphone manufacturers along with much of the world press collectively rolled their eyes at me whenever I publicly identified a fresh-out-of-the-box iPhone as a potentially lethal threat.”

He went on to say that despite years of reporting that implicated NSO Group’s “for-profit hacking of phones in the deaths and detentions of journalists and human rights defenders” and despite evidence that smartphone operating systems are “riddled with catastrophic security flaws,” that he has often felt like “someone trying to convince their one friend who refuses to grow up to quit smoking and cut back on the booze—meanwhile, the magazine ads still say ‘Nine of Ten Doctors Smoke iPhones!’ and ‘Unsecured Mobile Browsing is Refreshing!’”

Snowden, who has been living in asylum in Russia for more than eight years, exposed in 2013 the existence of a massive surveillance operation being run by the US National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency that was monitoring the electronic and phone activity of everyone on earth.

Of the Pegasus spyware, Snowden wrote in his blog post that he considered the leak and revelations about it to be a “turning point” and added that NSO Group and the global commercial hacking industry “involves cooking up new kinds of infections that will bypass the very latest digital vaccines—AKA security updates—and then selling them to countries that occupy the red-hot intersection of a Venn Diagram between ‘desperately craves the tools of oppression’ and ‘sorely lacks the sophistication to produce them domestically.’” Snowden has called for this industry to be dismantled.