Even as South Korea is experiencing its worst surge of COVID-19, the government of President Moon Jae-in is moving towards eliminating current social distancing measures. Moon and other government officials are not driven by the need to protect people’s lives, but to defend the profits of big business. There were 2,155 new cases reported Wednesday from the previous day, a near record high, as well as nine new deaths.
On August 20, while extending most of the current social distancing measures for two weeks, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced the ban on more than two people at facilities like restaurants after 6pm would be lifted to four people on Monday for those who are fully vaccinated.
Healthcare workers in Seoul, South Korea, call for increased staffing at a demonstration on August 5, 2021. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
The government is portraying the decision as an incentive for people to get vaccinated. Son Yeong-rae, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, stated, “Vaccination status will come into play more and more in how social distancing rules apply.”
However, the reality, as Son admitted, is that the easing of rules is meant to lessen the impact on big business, particularly in the food and entertainment industries that have been required to close at 10pm and only offer take-out orders after 9pm.
The danger is that vaccines alone are not enough to stop the spread of COVID-19. Even those who are fully vaccinated can still contract and pass on the virus, making public health measures such as social distancing a vital component of ending the pandemic.
Highlighting this point, nursing homes are “back in crisis mode,” according to Dr. Son Deok-hyeon, the director of the Eson nursing hospital in the city of Ulsan. Since the end of July, nine instances of breakthrough cases have occurred at nursing homes and other aged care facilities, infecting at least 159 people who were previously vaccinated. Three have died while another seven had to be placed on life support.
Despite this, there are no plans to administer a third booster shot to those whose defenses may have decreased since first becoming vaccinated. Seoul has struggled to obtain enough vaccines to provide people with their first two doses. Currently, only 50.5 percent of the population has received one dose of a two-dose regimen while 22 percent are considered fully vaccinated. This makes clear that strict social distancing measures are needed now more than ever.
The government’s actions follow a now common pattern. When cases first surged in February 2020 in the city of Daegu, businesses were encouraged or forced to close, the opening of the new academic school year was postponed before beginning online, and other measures were taken to stop the spread of the virus. These steps were taken following the 2015 outbreak of the more deadly, but less contagious MERS virus. The Moon government was conscious that a failure to stop the spread of a similar deadly virus could lead to an explosion of social anger.
At each surge in new cases, the government imposed certain social distancing measures to give the appearance of dealing with the virus but with each round of restrictions less effective than the last. Each time after a relative drop in cases, the government re-worked its social distancing scheme to lessen the impact on big business. This included keeping schools open to ensure parents could go to work and capitalism could continue to profit.
Now, with the virus continuing to rage throughout the country, including in densely populated cities like Seoul and Busan, the government is signaling that even these limited measures will be discarded. The reality is that the population is now being told that it must “live with the virus.”
The removal of restrictions for those who are vaccinated will only lead to the removal of restrictions altogether if workers and students do not take matters into their own hands. The Health Ministry admitted on August 6 that its “new pandemic strategy” is increasingly seen as accepting, in government officials’ minds, that COVID-19 is not going away and allowing a return to so-called normal.
Taking the lead in defending big business and calling for an end to social distancing measures has been the ostensible “Left” in South Korea; those aligned with President Moon and the Democratic Party.
In an August 22 article, the so-called “left-wing” Hankyoreh newspaper proclaimed, “On the 20th, as the government extended the current distancing measures (Level 4 in the Seoul metropolitan area and Level 3 in some non-metropolitan areas) for two weeks, voices from all levels of society are saying fatigue from quarantine has reached its limit.”
The paper claims to voice the concerns of workers, students, and small business owners who have undoubtedly suffered from the pandemic. The Hankyoreh’s crocodile tears are meant to obfuscate the fact that Moon’s government and its supporters in the unions are the cause of this suffering. While Seoul announced at the beginning of the pandemic that unlimited amounts of money would be made available to the country’s financial institutions, no questions asked, workers and ordinary people received either a pittance from the government, not enough to even cover the cost of rent, or nothing at all.
Furthermore, when delivery workers struck in January and then again in June over the brutal conditions they face, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and its affiliated Parcel Delivery Workers Solidarity Union shut down the strikes. This was on the basis of worthless promises from the government and the companies that more would be done to alleviate the conditions workers face. The KCTU has played a key role in keeping workers on the job during the pandemic for the benefit of big business.
As the concentration of wealth among the top 0.1 percent has grown, philanthropy has become more “top heavy.” The number of middle-income donations is shrinking and most of the growth in annual charitable giving is coming from the very wealthy.
This is concerning because wealthier donors generally give to intermediaries such as their own private foundations or donor-advised funds (DAFs), not outright to charitable recipient groups. As we’ve discussed in other research, this warehousing of charitable donations has grown significantly over the last decade.
U.S. taxpayers provide a generous tax break for giving to qualified charities, and the wealthier the donor, the greater the tax reduction. The subsidy, as high as 74 cents on the dollar, is why there is a public interest in knowing that funds are flowing out to working charities.
Donor-advised funds have a fundamental design flaw: donors receive a deduction upon transfer of their gift, but there is no legal requirement that funds leave the DAF and flow to an active charity. Private foundations, on the other hand, are required to pay out at least 5 percent of their assets on an annual basis.
The Charity Reform Initiative of the Institute for Policy Studies advocates for increasing private foundation payout, requiring DAFs to have a payout (as they do in Canada), and greater transparency reporting for DAFs. The objective is to increase the flow of funds out of intermediaries and to active charities.
One thing we have discovered is that private foundations and DAFs give a substantial amount of funds to other DAFs. These transactions are included in estimates of charitable giving and are counted toward DAF payout. But these funds have not effectively left the donor’s domain.
In a recent analysis prepared by Helen Flannery and Chuck Collins, “More Than One Billion Dollars In DAF Grants Went to Other Commercial DAFs in 2019,” we analyzed the tax returns of commercial DAF sponsors. We discovered that in 2019 alone, at least one billion dollars in commercial DAF grants went to other commercial DAFs.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. This is an enormous amount of money cycling between giving vehicles rather than being distributed outright to charity. But it is likely only scratching the surface of DAF-to-DAF giving, as it doesn’t capture transfers to or from DAFs held at community foundations and other mission-driven DAF sponsors.
Opponents of DAF reform argue that it isn’t necessary to impose payout requirements on DAFs because DAF donors are already transferring a great deal of money to charity. But if a significant portion of DAF grants are actually grants to other DAFs, it skews any payout rates reported by these institutions, and makes it nearly impossible to evaluate whether DAFs are actually distributing revenue to working charities in a meaningful way.
As a first step in an effort to quantify DAF-to-DAF giving, therefore, the Institute for Policy Studies examined five years of tax returns for 39 of the nation’s top commercial DAFs to see how many of their contributions went to other commercial DAFs. These include DAFs that are either sponsored by financial corporations, such as Fidelity Investments or Goldman Sachs, or are clearinghouses of DAFs on a national scale, such as DonorsTrust or the Tides Foundation. We did not examine granting to DAFs sponsored by either community foundations or single-issue organizations such as universities or hospitals. What follows are the key findings from our analysis.
Key Findings
Of the 52 top commercial donor-advised fund sponsors in the United States, 39 filed their tax returns electronically in at least one year from 2017 to 2019. Unless otherwise specified, the findings below are based on these 39 electronically-filing DAF sponsors. They do not include any DAF granting done by DAF sponsors that filed on paper.
+ More than $1 billion was granted from commercial DAF sponsors to other DAF sponsors in 2019. Over the five years we analyzed from 2015 to 2019, the 39 electronically-filing commercial DAFs granted a total of $2 billion to other commercial DAFs.
+ Commercial DAF-to-DAF giving is growing astronomically. Just $209 million was transferred between commercial DAFs in 2015. This means that the one billion dollars transferred between commercial DAFs in 2019 represents growth of 409 percent over the five years from 2015 to 2019, for an average effective growth rate of 50% per year. And this type of commercial DAF-to-DAF giving grew at more than three times that rate, 166 percent, in just the past single year from 2018 to 2019.
+ 31 of the commercial DAF sponsors in our analysis gave to another commercial DAF in at least one of the five years from 2015 to 2019. On average, 22 commercial DAFs gave to at least one other commercial DAF in any given year. Most DAFs gave to just three or four different commercial DAFs each year. But the largest–including Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, the National Philanthropic Trust, the American Endowment Foundation, and Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust–distributed grants to 16 or more other commercial DAFs each year.
+ 44 of the top commercial DAFs received at least one grant from another commercial DAF from 2015 to 2019. On average, 33 commercial DAFs received grants from other commercial DAFs in any given year.
+ In 2019, the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund was the largest grantor to other commercial DAFs, and was the largest recipient of commercial DAF grants as well. Fidelity gave $448 million to a total of 29 other commercial DAF sponsors that year, while at the same time receiving $231 million in grants from 14 other commercial DAF sponsors.
Ivermectin, a medication better known for treating parasite infestations, when it comes to the unfounded treatments for COVID-19, is perhaps the stepchild of the drug Hydroxychloroquine, which had been touted by then-President Donald Trump for its supposed ability to prevent and mitigate COVID-19 disease.
However, unlike the ignominious end to the controversy over Hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19, the still unproven use of Ivermectin has persevered, especially across Latin America, where in the midst of unchecked coronavirus transmission, people desperate for any remedy have flocked to purchase the over-the-counter drug, which has been used for decades to treat farm animals and people infected with parasitic worms.
Over the weekend, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that Ivermectin was not an anti-viral drug, ahead of its call giving Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine full authorization. The drug remains unproven in preventing or reducing the risk of developing severe COVID-19. In an official tweet, the FDA wrote: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
The packaging and a container of veterinary ivermectin is seen in Johannesburg, South Africa, Friday Jan. 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)
The FDA’s cautioned against Ivermectin use on the heels of a statement released by the Mississippi State Department of Health after reports surfaced that an increasing number of people had turned to use the drug to prevent COVID-19 infection. One man was recently hospitalized in the state for ingesting livestock Ivermectin from a feed store. The state, which has only managed to vaccinate 37 percent of its citizens fully, has recently been battered by a massive wave of infection with the Delta variant.
Ivermectin was discovered in 1975 and came into medical and veterinary use in the 1980s. It is one of the essential medicines on the World Health Organization (WHO) list and has FDA approval as an anti-parasitic agent. Though the drug, prescribed by a physician for appropriate indications, is fairly free of toxicity, it can be neurotoxic in large doses, leading to seizures or suppression in a person’s ability to breathe, possible loss of consciousness, coma and even death.
During a press briefing, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, a Mississippi health officer, warned: “There are potential toxicities [with Ivermectin]. So, it’s something, you know … some people are trying to use it as a preventative, which I think is really kind of crazy. So, please don’t do that!” Despite evidence of safe and effective vaccines widely available, it has found appeal among those opposed to the vaccines and public health measures.
The Department of Health issued an alert that they have been receiving reports about rising incidents of Ivermectin poisoning: “The Mississippi Poison Control center has received an increasing number of calls from individuals with potential Ivermectin exposure taken to treat of preventing COVID-19 infection. At least 70 percent of the recent calls have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of Ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers. Eighty-five percent of the callers had mild symptoms, but one individual was instructed to seek further evaluation due to the amount of Ivermectin reportedly ingested.”
Early in the pandemic, scientists and physicians were repurposing every medicine sitting on the shelves that could potentially stem the severity of COVID-19. Like Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin had demonstrated in vitro (an experiment conducted in a culture dish outside a living organism) inhibition of the ability for SARS-CoV-2 to replicate.
Australian researchers published their data in the journal Antiviral Researchin June 2020, demonstrating that a single treatment could affect a 5,000-fold reduction in viral RNA at 48 hours. However, the concentrations required to produce this effect would be impossible to achieve in vivo and prove highly toxic to humans. Spurred further by unreliable and later retracted studies compounded by lack of any substantiated benefit from any other pharmaceuticals, in Latin America, as the journal Nature noted, “Ivermectin’s reputation was already cemented.”
Ivermectin is commonly used in South America to treat river blindness, lymphatic filariasis and neglected tropical diseases. Despite the lack of evidence to support its use in a clinical setting, news of its potential benefit spread quickly. In May 2020, northern Bolivia’s health care workers passed out more than 350,000 doses to residents. The same month in Peru, 20,000 bottles of livestock grade Ivermectin sold on the black market were confiscated by the police. By July, the University of Peru announced it would increase production to bolster the country’s supply.
Quickly and in succession, countries in the region like Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela and Brazil, facing massive waves of infections and death, began implementing public health policies for the use of Ivermectin for the treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19.
Proponents argued that its safety profile and several decades of experience with the use of the medicine, in light of the lack of any benefit from other pharmaceuticals, warranted adding it to their guidelines for treating coronavirus infections. Bolivia’s health minister, Marcelo Navajas, went as far as acknowledging, during a press conference on May 12, 2020, that the drug “does not have scientific validation.”
Dr. Carlos Chaccour, a Venezuelan researcher at the Barcelona Institute of Global Health in Spain, working to eliminate malaria, told Nature, “I do not judge a doctor who has a dying patient before him and, desperate, tries anything [to save them]. The problem is when non-evidenced-based public policies are made.”
In Brazil, where the death toll is approaching 600,000, fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro’s Ministry of Health has promoted a cocktail of unproven drugs known as tratamento precoce (early treatment) that include Ivermectin, Chloroquine, Azithromycin (an antibiotic), blood thinners, and an assortment of vitamins and zinc. Espousing policies based on utter pseudoscience, the Brazilian government spent millions on social media promoting quack concoctions to absolve themselves all criminal responsibility for the death of its people.
Dr. Jesem Orellana, an epidemiologist at Fiocruz Amazonia based in Manaus, where the Gamma variant first exploded, told NPR, “It’s not because they believe it works, but because it is a way for them to escape their responsibility for controlling the pandemic.”
In February 2021, the US National Institutes of Health issued a COVID-19 treatment guidelines update, stating, “Despite [the] in vitro activity, no clinical trials have reported a clinical benefit for Ivermectin in patients with these viruses,” adding that “there is insufficient evidence for the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines panel to recommend either for or against the use of Ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19,” citing the urgent need for adequately conducted studies to address the pressing question.
A month later, a randomized controlled trial published inJAMAon March 4, 2021, comparing Ivermectin to a placebo, found no benefit in treating mild COVID-19. This was followed by an announcement by the W HO , based on a comprehensive review by a panel of experts, that the evidence on the use of Ivermectin remained inconclusive and that, until more data were available, its use should be used be limited to clinical trials.
They wrote: “The group reviewed pooled data from 16 randomized controlled trials (total enrolled 2,407), including both inpatients and outpatients with COVID-19. They determined that the evidence on whether Ivermectin reduces mortality, need for mechanical ventilation, need for hospital admission and time to clinical improvement in COVID-19 patients is of ‘very low certainty,’ due to the small sizes and methodological limitations of available trial data, including small number of events.”
In a blow to promoters of Ivermectin, just last month, a significant study purporting the safety and efficacy of Ivermectin to reduce mortality, which had been placed in a preprint on Research Square in November 2020, was retracted over revelations of plagiarism and widespread flaws in the data. The editors wrote, “… we were presented with evidence of both plagiarism and anomalies in the dataset associated with the study, neither of which could reasonably be addressed by the author issuing a revised version of the paper.”
Jack Lawrence, an independent journalist and British medical student with a master’s in biomedical sciences, was the individual who had raised these concerns with Research Square. His report detailed the findings of this investigation. Dr. Ahmed Elgazzar from Benha University in Egypt, also the chief editor of the Benha Medical Journal, has yet to provide responses to questions posed to him.
According to the Guardian, “The study found that patients with COVID-19 treated in hospital who ‘received Ivermectin early reported substantial recovery’ and that there was ‘a substantial improvement and reduction in mortality rate in Ivermectin treated groups’ by 90 percent.” Nick Brown, a data analyst affiliated with Linnaeus University in Sweden, told the Guardian: “The main error is that at least 79 of the patient records are obvious clones of other records. It’s certainly the hardest to explain away as innocent error, especially since the clones aren’t even pure copies. There are signs that they have tried to change one or two fields to make them look more natural.”
The need for a scrupulous and principled approach to the conduct of trials and investigations cannot be understated. In concluding, it is worth noting that last week, Dr. Didier Raoult, the French scientist who had been discredited for his promotion of Hydroxychloroquine treatment of COVID- 19 , is being forced out of the Marseille-based infectious disease institute that he had founded on concerns over his role in promoting conspiracy theories and the unethical conduct of his studies. However, he is receiving support from Marine Le Pen’s former campaign director, Florian Philippot, and a broader constituency of the far-right fascistic elements.
Tropical Storm Henri made landfall in the state of Rhode Island on Sunday, having recently been downgraded from a minimal hurricane. This is the second tropical storm to hit the Northeast US in less than two months, after Elsa in early July. Heavy rain falling on already saturated ground has resulted in substantial flooding, compounded along the coast by the coincidence of an astronomical high tide.
On making landfall, Henri had sustained winds of approximately 60 miles per hour (97 kilometers per hour), with gusts up to 70 mph (113 kph). Waves of greater than 19 feet (nearly 6 meters) were reported southeast of Block Island, off the eastern end of Long Island.
After landfall, the storm first turned westward, toward New York. Reports indicated that the effects of the storm were being felt from eastern Pennsylvania, through New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Residents in some coastal areas in Connecticut were evacuated, and widespread flooding was reported extending far inland. Local evacuations were also reported in New Jersey, where flooding of up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) was observed.
A U.S. Postal truck has to turn around as Gardner Rd. in Exeter, R.I., is completely blocked by a downed tree and power lines, Monday, Aug. 23, 2021. Strong winds from Tropical Storm Henri downed trees and power lines across the state leaving roads impassable and citizens without power. (AP Photo/Stew Milne)
New York City experienced record rainfall, with an accumulation of nearly two inches in just one hour measured in Central Park and a total of over seven inches by Sunday evening. The National Weather Service reported that the Central Park rainfall was likely the highest one-hour total ever recorded in the park. The heavy rain forced the abrupt termination of an open-air concert in the park, a likely COVID-19 super-spreader event with thousands in attendance. Commuter rail service in the New York metropolitan area was significantly disrupted. The emergency rescue of 86 people, including 16 children, was undertaken after a number of vehicles were submerged by significant flooding in Newark, New Jersey.
Throughout the region, more than 140,000 residential customers were reported to have lost power on Sunday.
As of Monday morning, the forward motion of Henri, now downgraded to a tropical depression with winds of 30 mph (48 kph), had slowed, resulting in additional rainfall to already flooded areas but reducing the wind damage. With a turn to the east, the affected areas spread into Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Despite the efforts of utility crews, an estimated 65,000 customers remained without power, including 42,000 in Rhode Island and 10,000 in Connecticut.
Many lost power due to severed electrical lines cut down by fallen branches and toppled trees, whose roots had been loosened in the saturated ground. By midweek, temperatures throughout the region are predicted to reach into the high 80s or 90s with high humidity, creating a significant health burden for those who lack power to run air conditioners.
Additional rainfall of 1 to 3 inches (2.5 to 7.6 centimeters) is expected before the storm departs, with overall storm totals of up to 12 inches (30.5 cm). More than 33 million people remain under flood watch or warning as of this writing. The storm is expected to progress eastward, crossing Massachusetts, eventually exiting into the Gulf of Maine Tuesday morning.
Federal disasters have been declared by President Joe Biden in much of the affected areas, allowing emergency funds to be allocated for recovery efforts. AccuWeather estimates that the total damage and economic losses from Tropical Storm Henri, so far, at between $6 and $8 billion. As of this writing, no Henri-related deaths have been reported.
Over the past decade, beginning with the back-to-back impacts of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee (2011), followed by Superstorm Sandy (2012) among others, there has been an increase of significant storms hitting the Northeast, a predicted effect of human-induced climate change. These storms are causing severe impacts, not only to heavily populated coastal areas but substantially into the interior, primarily due to heavy rains resulting in major flooding. Irene, for example, was the greatest natural disaster in Vermont since a major flood in 1927.
This trend is expected to worsen in the coming years as the effects of climate change intensify. Rising sea levels will drive coastal flooding ever farther inland, and warming oceans and atmospheric temperatures will tend to increase the moisture-carrying capacity of storms, resulting in greater inland rainfall and more flooding.
A rise in catastrophic flooding is already being seen in many places around the globe. During this year alone, major often deadly storms have impacted Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan and Tennessee in the US, to name but a few. Similar disasters have occurred in other countries, including Germany, Turkey and China, again, to name but a few. These storms are manifestations, along with massive wildfires and droughts in other regions of the planet, of human-induced climate change.
In advance of the storm, various public officials issued the now perfunctory warnings about its potential impacts. Typical was the statement by Andrew Cuomo, soon to be ex-governor of New York:
As always, we will do everything we can to help our local partners with any and all response and recovery operations. This storm is unpredictable and, although it appears to be moving further east, the threats of storm surge, coastal and inland flooding, high winds and power outages remain very real. Now is the time to be smart—pay close attention to weather reports, and, for the safety of yourself, your family, and responders, avoid any unnecessary travel.
Or Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont:
I urge everyone in Connecticut to take this storm seriously. Prepare to shelter in place Sunday and into early Monday morning. Plan for power outages that could last for an extended period. Be prepared for urban and coastal flooding, particularly if you live in a designated flood zone. The state is deploying resources and working with our federal counterparts to react quickly and respond as necessary. We will continue monitoring the storm and provide updates through the coming days.
In addition, Cuomo made the exceedingly insightful observation that “In the Hudson Valley you have hills, you have creeks, the water comes running down those hills and turns a creek into a ravaging river.” In effect, he declared that this is the way things are, get used to it.
Luckily, the impact of Tropical Storm Henri did not turn out as bad as it might have been. Nevertheless, the increasing frequency and severity of such storms is inevitable unless a serious effort is made to address climate change. Otherwise, according to the ruling class, they are simply things the population must endure. In their view, the devastation and death caused by these storms and other effects of climate change must be normalized.
In effect, the ruling class’s criminal response, or lack there of, to climate change mirrors its policy toward the COVID-19 pandemic, that we must “learn to live with it,” with all the disastrous consequences this holds. The necessary measures to truly address climate change are simply beyond the capacity of the capitalist system to undertake. For the working class, on the other hand, this is increasingly a life-and-death issue.
The Biden administration is under increasing pressure, both within ruling circles in the US and from its imperialist allies, particularly Britain, to extend the US military presence at the Kabul airport and provide for a longer and more extensive evacuation from Afghanistan’s capital.
A virtual meeting of the leaders of the Group of 7 (US, Canada, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Japan) set for Tuesday morning will be the first occasion for Biden to address a global forum on the collapse of the US- and NATO-backed puppet regime in Afghanistan, which fell in only 11 days to a Taliban offensive.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds the rotating chairmanship of the G-7 and will be the nominal host of the meeting. British officials have been the most vocal about seeking a longer occupation of the Kabul airport, which depends entirely on the presence of nearly 6,000 US troops.
In this Aug. 22, 2021, photo U.S. service members during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla/U.S. Marine Corps via AP)
UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said there might be “hours now, not weeks” left for the Kabul airlift, which has removed an estimated 50,000 people, counting diplomats and other personnel of the major imperialist powers and a much larger number of Afghan citizens, who facilitated their operations, including interpreters, clerical and service workers, drivers, bodyguards, spies, informers and many others.
Wallace rejected suggestions that British forces or those of other NATO countries could remain in Afghanistan after a full US pullout. “I don’t think there is any likelihood of staying on after the United States,” he said.
British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey admitted that any extension of the August 31 withdrawal deadline would involve a clash with the Taliban, who “gets a vote” on such a decision. “It’s just the reality,” he said. “We could deny them the vote; we have the military power to just stay there by force,” but added that evacuation flights could not continue with “Kabul becoming a warzone.”
In televised comments Sunday afternoon, Biden reiterated his decision to end the US role in Afghanistan in order to continue refocusing US foreign policy to the major strategic rivals of American imperialism, China and Russia. “Let me tell you, you’re sitting in Beijing or you’re sitting in Moscow—are you happy we left?” he asked, then laughed sarcastically. “They’d love nothing better for us to continue to be bogged down there, totally occupied with what’s going on.”
This remark, a consistent theme of Biden since he first approved final withdrawal of US troops in April, underscores that the US government has not pulled out of Afghanistan in response to the mass popular opposition to “endless wars.”
Rather, American imperialism is pursuing a course of action that poses the danger of a war that could bring an end to human civilization—a global strategic confrontation with its most powerful nuclear-armed rivals. At the very time that the last US forces were being drawn down in Central Asia, the US Navy was stepping up its anti-China provocations in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, and US commanders in the Pacific region were predicting war with China within a half dozen years.
Despite the shattering impact of the rapid collapse of its puppet regime in Afghanistan, American imperialism remains committed to using its massive military machine, still the most powerful of any country, to offset the vast decline in its economic strength and maintain its position of global dominance.
That belligerence is likely to be on display at the G7 summit, where the US president will listen to the urging of his European allies, particularly the British, to stay a bit longer in Kabul. Asked Sunday what his response would be to such pleas, Biden said dismissively, “I will tell them that we’ll see what we can do.”
As the British armed forces minister indicated, that depends also on the Taliban. Biden indicated that the Islamist group has been in daily discussions with the US military at the Kabul airport, and Pentagon officials said Monday these talks were happening “several times a day.”
The Taliban has not offered military opposition to the US and NATO operations at the airport, or to incursions into the city of Kabul to remove specific groups of American and other foreign residents of the capital, including at least two cases when huge US transport helicopters were employed.
Biden and Pentagon officials also said that US forces had been able to move on the ground outside the walls of the airport, and to “expand the perimeter” around it, although they refused to give any details. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby flatly denied that Taliban fighters were accompanying US soldiers “side by side” on patrols.
Appearing on the CBS program “Face the Nation” Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was taunted with the question, “So we have to ask the Taliban for permission for American citizens to leave. True or not true?” In words that confirmed the scale of the US defeat in Afghanistan, Blinken responded, “They are in control of Kabul. That is the reality. That’s the reality that we have to deal with.”
Meanwhile the campaign in the corporate media over the plight of Afghan civilians at and outside the Kabul airport continues, in conjunction with demands by a faction of the Republican Party for a more aggressive deployment of US troops there. The Sunday television talk shows were given over to harrowing footage of the conditions at and around the airport, and to right-wing critics demanding a reversal, in part or in whole, of Biden’s withdrawal decision.
These included Representative Liz Cheney, whose father, as vice president in the Bush administration, played a major role in the original decision to invade and occupy Afghanistan. Also appearing were Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, a veteran of the Afghanistan war; Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, another former military officer; Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse; and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
As is always the case in the corporate media, there was not a single representative of the more than 70 percent of Americans who now oppose the Afghanistan war—which Biden voted for when he was in the Senate—or anyone who criticized the military aggression from an antiwar standpoint throughout its 20-years duration, in which hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians were killed.
The comments of Senator Sasse, a supposed “moderate” because he voted for the impeachment of Donald Trump over the January 6 attack on the Capitol, were particularly revealing. Speaking on Fox News Sunday, he called for sending more troops, canceling the August 31 deadline, pushing the military perimeter “well beyond Karzai Airport” and for immediate discussions “to figure out if we should be retaking Bagram,” the huge military airbase outside Kabul that was handed over to the Afghan government last month and is now held by the Taliban.
“They abandoned Bagram Air Force Base in one of the stupidest military blunders in all of US history,” Sasse continued, “and now we’re left in a situation where we’re relying on a civilian airport, Karzai, that has only one runway. I don’t think the American people fully appreciate the danger and the peril into which the president has put us because one RPG … taking down a plane onto that runway means we are stranded. So the president needs to make sure that this hostage situation into which we’re drifting, that the Taliban knows we will not stand for it.”
The precarious situation at the airport was underscored by the outbreak of a firefight between Afghan security guards working for the US military and unknown attackers early Monday morning. German and American military forces intervened and brought an end to the combat, but one Afghan guard was killed and three were wounded.
The bitter recriminations which have broken out within the US ruling elite and its military-intelligence apparatus were also given voice by the Wall Street Journal, in an editorial Monday headlined, “Dancing to the Taliban Timetable.” It cited Blinken’s comments about the reality of Taliban control of Kabul, and then declared, “Yes, but this isn’t the reality the U.S. has to accept. The U.S. military has more than enough force to dictate better terms to the Taliban …”
Just days before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau triggered Canada’s pandemic federal election, a series of extraordinary events unfolded in Ottawa that exemplify mounting tensions between the top brass of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and their civilian political overseers.
On August 11, lawyers for Admiral Art McDonald issued a statement that asserted it was his right, “indeed obligation,” to immediately resume his duties as the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), that is, as head of Canada’s military. Canada’s military police had announced the previous week that a six-month investigation had determined there was no basis to lay charges against McDonald under either the Criminal Code or the military’s own Code of Service Discipline. The admiral had voluntarily stepped aside as CAF head last February, just five weeks into his CDS appointment, after an allegation of sexual misconduct was made against him by a CAF member.
McDonald’s very public attempt to reclaim his command clearly broadsided the Liberal government. In response, it hastily issued two orders-in-council, legislative instruments requiring the Governor General’s signature. On August 12, it placed McDonald on indefinite “administrative leave.” The next day it promoted the acting CDS, Wayne Eyre, to the rank of general. This strongly suggests the government intends to sideline McDonald, since the CAF commonly only has one active full general at a time.
Admiral Art McDonald (right) and his predecessor as Canada's Chief of the Defence Staff, Jonathan Vance
This clash is the latest episode in a crisis that has roiled the CAF top brass for the past seven months. There have been longstanding complaints that the officer corps have ignored or downplayed sexual violence within the military, an institution that for more than two decades has been at the forefront of wars of aggression and the brutalization and devastation of entire societies on behalf of Canadian imperialism.
However, with allegations of sexual assault and misconduct now being levelled against some of the CAF’s senior-most officers, the crisis over this issue has reached a qualitatively new stage. McDonald’s predecessor as Chief of the Defence Staff, Jonathan Vance, was accused of two counts of sexual misconduct in February for relationships he allegedly had with female subordinates, including while serving as the military’s top commander. In July, he was charged in civilian court with one count of obstruction of justice. Several other top officers are also under investigation, including Vice-Admiral Haydn Edmundson, the military’s head of human resources, who is accused of raping a 19-year-old navy recruit in 1991.
Evidence of widespread sexual assault, including rape and other forms of violence, in Canada’s military is well documented. According to a recent report, there were 581 officially filed reports of sexual assault within the CAF in the five years since 2016. This at a time when the military was supposed to be prioritizing stamping out sexual violence and harassment under its Operation Honour. Given the nature of this institution as a volunteer army of trained killers tasked with providing the “hard power” to ruthlessly uphold Canadian imperialist interests around the world, these exposures are just one element—and not a particularly surprising one—of the criminality, brutality, and thuggery that pervades the armed forces.
That being said, the unprecedented conflict between Admiral McDonald and the government underlines that the sexual assault-misconduct crisis has intersected with other disputes within and between the military and the government and is being weaponized.
Vance has received demonstrative support from a faction of the military, who deem the government insufficiently supportive and appreciative of the armed forces. Vice-Admiral Craig Baines, the commander of the Royal Navy, and Lt. Gen. Mike Rouleau, the vice chief of the defence staff, joined him for a round of golf at the military’s private golf course last spring. Rouleau, who quickly gave up his vice chief post under pressure from the media and political establishment, was at the time directly overseeing the military police responsible for investigating Vance.
One element in the backing given to Vance is no doubt concern among senior officers that the military’s independent justice system, which sees military officers adjudicate alleged crimes committed within the organization, is under threat. Strengthening the authority of the civil justice system over the military was in fact a recommendation of a 2015 government commissioned report that found rampant sexual abuse within the armed forces, but this and its other chief recommendations were never implemented.
The bitterness of the dispute between the government and a section of the CAF top brass was highlighted in the comments made by Major-General Dany Fortin last Wednesday, when he was charged with one count of sexual assault. Speaking to the press outside an Ottawa area police station, he denounced the move as driven by “political calculus.” Fortin, who only a few months ago was lauded by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his role in heading Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout, added, “For the past three months, my family and I have been living this nightmare of not knowing. Not knowing the nature of the allegation, the status of the investigation and not knowing if I would be charged.”
Tensions have long been simmering between the government and military leadership over delays to and alleged mismanagement of major procurement programs, including warships, submarines, drones, and fighter jets. Despite the Trudeau government’s commitment to vastly increase military spending by over 70 percent from 2017 levels by 2026, the military top brass, Conservative and New Democrat opposition, and sections of the media have complained that the process of equipping the armed forces for the wars of the 21st Century is not moving fast enough.
In 2017, Vice-Admiral Mark Norman’s house was raided and he was suspended from his position as second-in-command of the Canadian Armed Forces after being accused of leaking a confidential cabinet document relating to a contract to convert a civilian ship into a military vessel. The criminal case against him, which was dropped in 2019, triggered competing claims of political interference in military procurement programs from Norman’s defenders and opponents alike.
A related point of contention is the drive to “modernize” the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) for “strategic conflict” with China and Russia, including control over Arctic Ocean energy and mineral resources. Military-aligned think-tanks and other strategists for Canadian imperialism see this as a golden opportunity to secure Canada’s participation in the US ballistic missile defence shield—something that they strongly support because it would strengthen the Canada-US military-strategic alliance and give the CAF greater access to the Pentagon’s most advanced weaponry.
Its name notwithstanding, the defence shield’s ultimate purpose is to enable US imperialism to wage a “winnable” nuclear war. In 2005, the minority Paul Martin-led Liberal government decided against joining the defence shield, due to fears of riling anti-war sentiment in the population. The Trudeau government has indicated it might at some point be ready to integrate Canada into the missile shield. However, much of the military and foreign policy establishment are frustrated by the reluctance of the government and the opposition parties to openly debate this issue, and others, such as a greater Canadian role against China in the Indo-Pacific, and press forward in implementing a more belligerent policy in defiance of public opposition.
Whilst the scandal roiling the military top brass has cut across the longstanding establishment efforts to promote the CAF as the incarnation of “Canadian values” and an instrument of the Liberal government’s “feminist foreign policy,” the allegations against Vance and others have been used by the media and political establishment to divert public attention away from the widespread support within the military for far-right and outright fascist organizations.
In July 2020, right-wing extremist military reservist Corey Hurren attempted to assassinate Trudeau at his Rideau Hall residence. Over subsequent months, much evidence emerged pointing to support among CAF personnel for far-right groups like the Proud Boys and Three Percenters. But any examination of this has been dropped and the public’s attention instead focused on the high profile sexual assault and misconduct allegations, which inevitably have been given a #MeToo narrative twist. The issue of how to deal with far-right sympathizers within the military remains in dispute, with a faction of the officers corps at the least prepared to downplay and tolerate their presence in the CAF.
As important as these issues are, they are merely expressions of the much deeper crisis of Canadian imperialism. The very same week the dispute between the military leadership and Liberal government erupted into the public eye, the US-backed puppet regime in Afghanistan, which Canadian imperialism played no small part in fashioning, was collapsing to the Taliban. The debacle in Afghanistan, with the puppet regime built up by the imperialist powers over two decades with hundreds of billions of dollars proving to be a political zero, represents a devastating defeat for Washington and its allies, and their three decades of virtually uninterrupted wars in pursuit of their global predatory ambitions.
From Yugoslavia to Afghanistan, Haiti, Libya, and Iraq, Canadian military personnel have been bombarding countries, massacring civilians, and propping up corrupt, pro-Western regimes in alliance with its US imperialist partner on a more or less continuous basis since the late 1990s. In the course of these criminal operations, the military has been implicated in a series of war crimes, from complicity in torture and child-rape in Afghanistan, to the abuse and massacring of prisoners in Iraq. In Haiti in removing the country’s elected president in 2004 and in the Ukraine following the 2014 Kiev coup, the CAF closely collaborated with fascist forces. Its role in NATO’s 2011 regime-change war Libya war amounted, to use the words of one senior Canadian commander, to serving as “al-Qaida’s air force.”
The wars Canadian imperialism has waged as Washington’s junior partner over the past two decades have not only killed hundreds of thousands and devastated entire societies. They have had a disastrous impact on every aspect of social and political life at home. Canada’s perpetual wars have made social relations more violent, exacerbated social inequality by further enriching the wealthy elite, facilitated the corruption and co-option of the media, and legitimized the gutting of democratic rights.
They have also emboldened the armed forces and intelligence agencies to essentially operate as laws unto themselves, as underscored by their systematic lying to the courts about Canada’s involvement in torture, construction of a comprehensive network of spying and surveillance since 9/11, and refusal to acknowledge their involvement in war crimes in Afghanistan. The military responded to the pandemic by activating plans modelled on its neocolonial occupation of Afghanistan to monitor political discussion, promote government propaganda and, in a “worst-case scenario,” to suppress popular opposition.
All the lies employed by various factions of the political establishment to justify the wars—that Canada is a “warrior nation,” that “force works,” that the military is fighting for “human rights” and “democracy”—have been thoroughly undermined by their ruinous results and the war crimes with which they are inextricably associated. The Trudeau government’s desperate efforts to intervene and manage the fallout from the series of sexual assault scandals only goes to show that the political establishment is painfully aware of this fact, and determined to do whatever it can to preserve the ideological as well as practical and political authority of the military so it can continue to ruthlessly assert Canadian imperialist interests.
But that will prove a much harder task than they think. The last two decades have not only witnessed an upsurge of military aggression and war, but also a radicalization of the working class. Workers in Canada, the United States and internationally, who have witnessed the squandering of vast resources on wars of aggression and the propping up of the super-rich during the pandemic, are entering into mass struggles to overturn decades-long attacks on their social rights, fight for wage increases and secure jobs, and oppose the destruction of public services. These militant struggles can and must find political expression in the growth of a conscious anti-war and anti-imperialist movement among the Canadian and international working class.
Whatever the personal fates of the individuals involved in the latest controversy, the conflicts emerging between the military leadership and civilian authorities testify to the putrefaction of Canada’s bourgeois-democratic institutions and norms. In the final analysis, the dramatic growth of social inequality, which has been accelerated by the pandemic, and the expansion of military operations in conjunction with the United States can no longer be concealed by the ruling elite’s portrayal of Canadian capitalism as a bastion of “democracy” and “human rights.” While the response of ruling circles will be to turn ever more openly to the right and to authoritarian forms of rule, working people must oppose Canadian imperialism on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program.
There are growing indications that the uncontrolled spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus is having a significant impact on the global economy, due to shortages in the production of computer chips.
Last week the supply chain problems afflicting a range of companies was highlighted by the announcement by Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker, that it would cut its production for September by 40 percent. It will now produce 540,000 vehicles for the month as compared to the original plan of 900,000.
A shopper passes a hiring sign while entering a retail store in Morton Grove, Ill., Wednesday, July 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
The company has been hit by a surge of COVID-19 cases in Vietnam and Malaysia which has contributed to an already existing computer chip shortage as well as affecting the supply of other vehicle parts. The company is also being impacted by the rise of cases in Thailand, the location of its largest manufacturing hub in Southeast Asia.
Announcing the decision, Kazunari Kumakura, the company’s global procurement chief, said: “It became difficult to secure the necessary volume for several parts, which led to this sudden and large-scale production cut.”
Until now Toyota has been able to sustain production because of its build-up of inventories.
Other car companies, including Ford and General Motors are also being affected by supply chain problems and have announced reductions in output. Ford said it was halting the assembly of a pick-up truck for a week and GM has announced downtime at production lines.
The Chinese car firm Geely has also warned of “uncertainty” over production because of the chip shortage and Jaguar Land Rover halved its sales forecast last month for the same reason.
The Toyota decision will hit almost all its production facilities in Japan, where 27 production lines will be disrupted. Plants in North America and China will each cut production by 80,000 vehicles and production in Europe will be reduced by 40,000.
The shortage of chips is by no means the only problem confronting the world economy. There is growing evidence that the Chinese economy, which rebounded last year after effective measures were taken to deal with the pandemic, has started to slow.
As the Financial Times (FT) reported last week, the latest data coming from China “have suggested that the increase in industrial production and other key gauges has been decelerating in the latter summer months.”
One of the most significant indicators of this process is the fall in commodity prices, particularly iron ore.
Last Thursday, its spot price dropped by close to 15 percent, continuing a sharp downward trend over the last three months. At start of the year the price of iron ore was $160 per tonne. It peaked at $230 a tonne in May. Since then, it has fallen by 44 percent and is now back down below $160.
Some of the fall may have been due to an outbreak of the Delta variant in China. But that has now been brought under control and the fall in the iron ore price is being attributed to broader issues.
A note issued last week by Kieran Cleary of Capital Economics said: “Chinese steel exports have fallen sharply since May and the restrictions on steel mills could spark an even sharper fall in output through the remainder of this year.
“We expect the slowdown in the latest Chinese activity data for July to deepen over the rest of the year, leading to lower demand for steel and iron ore in turn.”
Sydney Morning Herald columnist Stephen Bartholomeusz last week commented that a “near perfect storm had hit the market for iron ore” and while some of the issues would be transitory others would have lasting effects on demand for Australia’s most valuable commodity.
“At a macro level China’s economy has been slowing amid a renewed effect by authorities to reduce leverage, particularly in the over-indebted property and construction sectors where some of the country’s biggest companies are teetering. Those sectors are the biggest sources of the demand for steel.”
But, he continued, the slowdown was broadly-based with recent data showing “industrial production, retail sales, investment and even employment” falling short of expectations.
Economic slowdown in one part of the world and especially China, the world’s second largest economy, is soon transmitted to the rest of the globe. In this case, the fall in industrial production and the demand for iron ore will rapidly hit the budget of the Australian government, which is highly dependent on tax revenue from iron ore sales.
Iron ore prices are not the only indication of a global slowdown. The price of copper, considered to be the world’s most important industrial metal and an indicator of the health of the global economy, fell by 2 percent last week to reach to reach a five-month low.
The optimistic forecasts for growth in the US economy are also being revised down on the back of rising Delta infections and falling retail sales and consumer confidence.
Last week, Goldman Sachs sharply lowered its forecast for US growth in the third quarter. It now predicts a 5.5 percent expansion in gross domestic product between July and September compared to its earlier forecast of 9 percent.
“The impact of the Delta variant on growth and inflation is proving to be somewhat larger than we expected,” the bank’s economists said.
According to calculations by Citigroup, economists’ predictions for US economic expansion have been overstated by the largest amount since the start of the pandemic.
The worsening economic outlook is leading to jitters in financial markets with the S&P 500 index having its largest fall in a month last week. It had earlier reached a record high, doubling its level since the lows it recorded in March 2020.
The financial oligarchs are looking to the central bank again to step in if Wall Street starts to fall. They have already pocketed hundreds of billions of dollars as a result of the injection of more than $4 trillion into the financial system by the Fed since the spring of last year.
Their eyes will be turned to the conclave of central bankers to be held online at the end of this week, following indications in the minutes of its latest Fed meeting that it may consider winding back its asset purchases.
“COVID risks are re-emerging as a really important downside risk,” the senior US economist at Barclays bank told the FT. “It’s back on the [Fed’s] radar and the wording in the minutes gives them the freedom to put a hold on tapering.”
