Covid cases surge in Britain with accompanying flood of hospitalisations

Robert Stevens

The UK continues to record tens of thousands of COVID infections each day and around 1,000 deaths a week. In the last week, a further 256,910 cases were announced, up 6 percent on the previous week. A further nearly 30,000 cases were recorded on Saturday, along with 156 deaths.

Nationwide 983 people died over the last week due to COVID, an increase of 198 (25 percent) on the previous week.

Passengers at Euston Square London Underground station in August, 2021 (WSWS Media)

COVID infections are being allowed to spread like wildfire, with over 7.2 million people having been infected since the start of the pandemic. According to Office for National Statistics data published Friday, one in 70 people across Britain are testing positive in England. Infection and deaths are being fueled by the Delta variant, with more than 669,000 cases of the variant now recorded in the UK, with over half a million (556,542) of these in England. While Delta is the dominant variant, there are at least 16 variants of COVID still in circulation in Britain.

Internationally only the United States, with a population five times that of Britain, recorded more cases over the last week. However, the number of cases per million population in Britain last week (3,761) was significantly higher than in the US (2,830).

With the economy fully opened on July 19, with schools returning across the UK in the weeks between August 11 and last week—the result has been a significant increase in hospitalisations.

Hospital bed occupancy due to COVID is at its highest levels since March 10, with daily admissions passing the 1,000 mark last week for the first time since the Delta variant became dominant in May. On September 6, 1,063 patients were admitted to hospital with COVID on a single day.

The surge in hospitalisations is evident from data from an 11-day period from August 19-29, when the number of COVID patients increased by 590 (9 percent). In the 11 days to September 11, the number of people in hospital with COVID shot up by more than 1,000, going from 7,091 to 8,098, and increase of 14 percent and the highest level for six months.

It is estimated that if hospitalisations reach 1,500 a day, the National Health Service (NHS) faces being overwhelmed. This is only a matter of time. The Independent reported Saturday, “New analysis from the science analytics company Airfinity shows that the hospitalisation threshold that has led to previous lockdowns in the UK could be met in mid-November if admissions continue to rise unabated. It’s estimated that daily infections will need to surpass 50,500 to reach this point—37,622 daily infections were recorded on Friday.”

The Mirror newspaper revealed in its own analysis of NHS data on Saturday that since all coronavirus restrictions were abandoned on July 19, 154 of 217 NHS Trusts recording an increase in the number of beds taken by people with the virus. Among some of the “sharpest rises” being reported were at hospitals in some of the UK’s largest cities including London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, and Leicester.

A growing number of hospitals nationwide are reporting red and black alerts. On Friday, the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust announced the suspension of routine and urgent surgeries due to pressures intensified by a “peak” in Covid admissions.

A red alert means that hospitals are facing a 'significant impact' and a black alert (now known as 'Opel 4' means that a hospital is 'unable to deliver comprehensive care' and patient safety could be compromised. On Saturday, two hospitals in Derbyshire—Royal Derby Hospital and the Chesterfield Royal Hospital—announced Opel 4 alerts. BBC News reported Saturday that “The accident and emergency teams at Chesterfield Royal, Royal Derby Hospital and Queen's Hospital, Burton-upon-Trent [in Staffordshire], saw 1,038 patients on Monday alone. The number of patients with COVID across the three sites rose to 77, an increase from 65 last week with 11 being in the most critical condition.”

Just days earlier Ami Jones, an Intensive care consultant at the Aneurin Bevan Health Board in Wales tweeted that the Board had “‘flipped’ the largest part of the unit from Amber (non-Covid) to red (Covid). Covid patients now make up the majority of our patients on the unit.” He added, “Vaccination has certainly weakened the link between infections and hospitalisations. But it hasn’t broken it and the unvaccinated are featuring heavily in hospitalised patients.”

The reopening of schools is fueling the surge of cases. Schools opened in Scotland from August 11, a few weeks before they began to open in England. By the end of the month cases in Scotland had tripled. Almost 40 percent of the new cases are in children, accounting for 2,729 out of the 6,836 cases recorded last Thursday. Last week, around one in 45 people tested positive for COVID in Scotland (around 117,300 people). The previous week infections were recorded in around one in 140 people.

While cases have been rising among young people for months—with the highest rate still among 10 to 19-year-olds—new data shows that infections among older generations are rising again. The Independent noted research from Colin Angus, a senior research fellow and health inequalities modeler at the University of Sheffield, showing that most COVID hospital admissions in July were among those aged 25-34. This has shifted since early August with the “highest admission rates have been recorded in the 75-84 age bracket. Angus said that cases are “clearly rising” among over-65s and “a [there was a] definite shift towards cases being older now compared to six weeks ago.” Angus’ conclusion was that this was not down to waning immunity levels but “It’s probably more to do with greater exposure to the virus.”

Such widespread infection is laying the basis for an even more devastating phase of the pandemic in which variants can emerge that are resistant to existing vaccines. In the face of this, the ruling elite is fixated on its herd immunity agenda and “saving the economy' i.e., the profits of the corporations.

According to media reports this weekend, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to repeal powers from the Coronavirus Act applying to England which could in any way hinder big business piling up their profits. The Telegraph reported, “These include the ability to close down sectors of the economy, such as pubs and restaurants, and to restrict access to education by closing down schools, colleges and childcare.” Under the measures to be announced, “Infectious people can also no longer be legally detained, and restrictions on events and gatherings cannot be imposed.”

All manner of mass gatherings is allowed, which are proven super-spreader events. From September 16-19, an estimated 50,000 people will attend the Isle of Wight festival under conditions in which COVID infection is raging among its small population of just over 141,000. Last Thursday, local newspaper the County Press reported that 34 acute beds were being occupied by COVID patients, up from 30 the previous week. This represents 20 percent of all acute beds on the Island being occupied by a Covid patient. A second intensive care unit at the island’s only hospital, St Mary’s, has had to open, which the trust’s chief operative officer, Joe Smyth, said is already “very, very full”.

The newspaper reported, “Government figures show between the last week of July and September 1, 2,289 covid cases were recorded on the Island—nearly a fifth of the Island's entire cases since the pandemic began.”

An exponential growth of COVID is threatened as mass public transport systems report record numbers of travelers. Last Monday, London Underground recorded its busiest morning since the start of the pandemic—with school run trips understood to be playing a major role. Just under a million rush-hour trips on the Underground were recorded—nearly a 20 percent increase from the previous week and the highest level since the first lockdown in Britain in March 2020.

A propaganda offensive is being waged by the privately owned rail network to get even more passengers back on trains, with the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) complaining that train commuting remains at just 33 percent of its pre-Covid rate. Central to its appeal is protecting the profitability of the rail firms, along with those of the major corporations who own most High Street businesses. The BBC reported, “Research carried out by WPI Economics for the RDG indicated that these commuters spent a total of £30bn a year on food and drink, shopping, entertainment and culture, boosting local businesses.”

UK schools in state of disrepair as they reopen to a raging pandemic

Simon Whelan

A survey of 1,500 British state school leaders conducted by the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) revealed 83 percent do not have sufficient funds to repair dilapidated school buildings. Speaking to the Observer newspaper, school leaders complained of leaking ceilings, faulty heating systems, broken windows and inadequate ventilation systems.

The run-down state of Britain’s classrooms will exacerbate the already dangerously high risk of COVID-19 transmission in schools.

NAHT head of policy James Bowen commented that the pandemic has “laid bare the scale of the problem”. He added, “Issues like ventilation and having enough space suddenly became really important. We were desperately ill-prepared for that. The government’s latest advice on ventilation for schools said open as many windows as you can. If your windows are screwed shut because they’re not deemed to be safe, or you’ve got external doors that are faulty, that’s a real problem.”

The findings of the NAHT survey confirm those of a Department of Education (DfE) study, which found that schools in England alone face a repair bill of £11.4 billion. It concluded that £2.5 billion was needed for electrical and IT repairs, £2 billion for boilers and air-conditioning repairs, and £1.5 billion for mending roofs, windows and walls.

The DfE’s estimated cost of £11.4 billion for “remedial work to repair or replace all defective elements” is a near £5 billion increase on the £6.7 billion recommended by the National Audit Office (NAO) as necessary to return all school buildings to a satisfactory condition in 2017. The DfE admitted, “While [the NAO report] was calculated on a slightly different basis, this does demonstrate that the overall condition need in the estate has grown over the last six years”.

Spiraling repair bills are a measure of the ruling class’s utter disregard for state schoolchildren’s wellbeing. Earlier this month, the unexpected findings of a school project run by the Don Hanson Charitable Foundation shone a light on the consequences.

The Foundation sends out educational materials on different topics to 20,000 UK schools. Over 600 schools received equipment for testing local water sources, as part of the Great British Water Project. Fourteen schools discovered that their water contains lead concentrations five times higher than the safe limit.

This is not an isolated example. Two years ago, 676 state schools were referred to the Health and Safety Executive over concerns that they were not safely managing asbestos in their buildings.

According to the ONS, between 2001 and 2019, at least 305 school workers have died of mesothelioma, a cancer almost exclusively linked with asbestos exposure. A study published in Environmental Health Scotland in 2018 found that there were five times more mesothelioma deaths among teachers than would be expected for populations not exposed to the substance.

Parading its indifference to children and educators alike, the DfE report merely “recommends” that fire-sprinklers be fitted in new schools, four years after the horrific Grenfell Tower fire. It only gives “clear guidance” that fire-sprinklers should be installed in new special schools and boarding accommodation, as well as in school buildings with floors higher than 11 metres above ground level, effectively four storeys or higher.

Fire safety design guidance currently has only an “expectation” that new buildings have fire-sprinklers installed and in recent years only one in three new school builds have had fire-sprinklers fitted.

Tilden Watson, head of Zurich Municipal’s education section, specialists in school insurance, told the Guardian, “By limiting sprinklers to schools above 11 metres, the government is effectively writing off a significant proportion of the school estate. This will create a two-tier system of safety, which is arbitrary and ill-thought-through. As predominantly single-storey buildings, primary schools will be hardest hit, especially as they already suffer nearly twice the rate of blazes as secondary schools.”

The disastrous state of the UK’s school infrastructure is the result of longstanding government neglect, private profiteering and savage austerity cuts.

School funding was slashed after the 2008 financial crash. As an example, in 2011 the repair budget for schools on Merseyside, including the city of Liverpool, was slashed by more than half, from £130 million to just £61 million. Another 12.5 percent cut followed the next year. Even prior to the crash, in 2006, Liverpool’s schools were £50 million short of what was needed to bring their buildings up to standard and were forced to hold classes in 168 mobile classrooms, up from 40 just one year before.

Overall government capital spending on schools declined by 44 percent between 2009-10 and 2019-20. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that school funding per pupil in England fell by 9 percent in real terms in the same period, the largest cut in over 40 years.

Increasing numbers of schools are therefore running financial deficits, with many struggling long before the pandemic. The size of the total schools deficit stood at £233.3 million in 2018/19 and rose to £266.4 million in 2019/20—the highest level since records began in 2002/03.

The Liverpool Echo reported how on Merseyside alone a total of 74 schools had a combined deficit of £18.5 million in 2019/20, according to DfE figures. That was up from 49 schools in 2018/19, with numbers having already risen sharply upwards from 16 in 2012/13, when comparable figures began. The average deficit per school in 2019/20 was £249,739 and Gateacre secondary school in Belle Vale, Liverpool alone has a deficit exceeding £3 million.

Gateacre School in Liverpool (Credit: Creative Commons)

Schools built under Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts, a specialty of the Tony Blair-Gordon Brown Labour governments, are especially laden with backbreaking costs.

Under the terms of a PFI deal, the government or local authority commissions a private firm to build a project using their own capital, with the local authority then paying back enormously inflated costs to the corporations over decades. Liverpool’s Parklands High School in Speke, constructed under a £100 million contract and opened in 2002, still costs Liverpool council £4 million per year despite the school closing in 2014. The city’s taxpayers must fork out £12,000 per day until 2028.

In total, PFI deals have locked Liverpool authority into approximately £13 million each year in repayments. Sixteen Merseyside schools built under PFI contracts continue to face financial difficulties which negatively impact pupils.

These facts show up the government’s pledge to spend a pathetic £25 million sending CO2 monitors to schools for the contemptible fraud it is. The ruling class will not provide the resources necessary for a minimally acceptable learning environment and standard of safety in normal times, let alone in a pandemic. The decades-long neglect of schools and the abandonment of children and educators to the virus are part of one and the same class policy, which prioritises profits over the basic needs of the vast majority of society.

The point of the monitors, which have yet to arrive in most schools and will do nothing except diagnose a problem everyone already knows exists, is to encourage the fiction that classrooms can be made safe. The reality is that only a combination of school and workplace closures, together with extensive public health measures, testing, tracing and vaccination, working towards the elimination of the virus, can bring an end to the dangers posed by COVID-19.

Study revealing vast undercount in Canada’s pandemic death toll buried by corporate media, political establishment

Omar Ali

The political establishment and corporate media have effectively buried a major study that shows Canada’s official tally of pandemic deaths is a vast undercount. Titled “Excess all-cause mortality during the COVID-19 epidemic in Canada,” the study was released by the Royal Society of Canada’s pandemic task force on June 29. In examining the period between February 1 and November 28, 2020, it found that overall pandemic fatalities were likely underestimated by two thirds with approximately 6,000 deaths of people aged 45 and above not being registered as being caused by COVID-19. These deaths were instead attributed to heart attacks, strokes and other ailments.

The authors wrote that their conclusions were “based on an examination of the best available reports of excess deaths across Canada, the pattern of COVID-19 fatalities during the pandemic, cremation data showing a significant spike in at-home versus hospital deaths in 2020 and antibody surveillance testing that collectively unmasked the likely broad scope of undetected COVID-19 infections.”

A member of the Canadian Armed Forces working at a Quebec nursing home. (Canadian Dept. of Defence)

To ensure the most accurate results, the researchers were compelled to factor in the growth in opioid-related deaths. The arrival of the pandemic significantly worsened the opioid epidemic, which has claimed thousands of deaths across Canada in recent years.

The report also points to the degree to which workers have succumbed to the pandemic. A quarter of the un-official COVID-19 deaths were in the 45-64 age cohort, likely consisting of frontline and essential workers.

The report offers several possible explanations for the large discrepancy in the official death toll and the number of excess deaths. In comparison to wealthy countries of similar size, testing in Canada has remained very low when adjusted for case burden. There is no systematic post-mortem testing except in the provinces of Manitoba and Quebec. When there is no positive test attached to a mortality, many provinces do not report likely causes of death. These factors have contributed to COVID-19 deaths being missed when comorbidities are present in the deceased.

The authors explain, however, that their results are only preliminary even for the period which they examined. The nation’s antiquated reporting system (baseline data from the period of 2015-19 only became available late last year) means that mortality statistics for the study period are still rolling in. The death count is therefore likely to be revised upwards as more data becomes available.

Differences in the per-capita death rate and seroprevalence numbers indicate that the attribution of 95 percent of cases and deaths to Ontario and Quebec may not be accurate. Seroprevalence itself, the authors point out, may underestimate the extent of infections as levels of antibodies decline over time.

Content to downplay the risks inherent in their drive to reopen the economy amid the pandemic, officials allowed testing capacity to remain woefully inadequate as the virus spread. The report observes that by “May 17, 2021, Canada’s peer countries had performed a cumulative average of 98 tests per positive case over the course of the pandemic, while Canada had performed 25 tests per positive case.”

This graph showing the weekly number of cremations in Ontario from January 1, 2020 to April 13, 2021 confirms the Royal Society's findings of large numbers of uncounted COVID-related deaths. It shows excess deaths, including and excluding those officially attributed to COVID-19, as compared with the average number of weekly cremations from 2017 to 2019. (Ontario COVD-19 Science Table)

Screening of the population was rare; even long-term care homes, whose residents were the hardest hit in the pandemic’s first wave in the spring of 2020, only implemented regular testing during the second wave. This meant that, in the words of the report, “During the frequent, lengthy periods of the Canadian COVID-19 epidemic when local public health contact tracing was overwhelmed and non-epidemiologically linked community cases were high, a person who died of symptoms clinically compatible with COVID-19 would not be reported as a COVID-19 death unless post-mortem testing was conducted.”

The authors damning findings are undermined by their effort to impose a racial framework on the excess deaths that is rooted in reactionary identity politics. They write that among the “uncomfortable truths” brought to light by the pandemic is the existence of “systemic racism” in light of the high numbers of immigrants and minorities among the dead. In truth, the deaths among these groups point to their overrepresentation in the most oppressed layers of the working class. Compelled to live in multigenerational homes, ride crowded transit vehicles, and work in-person in jobs with little prospect of social distancing, it is their socio-economic, i.e., class, status that put them at increased risk of contracting the virus.

Despite this weakness, the study itself ultimately acknowledges the class nature of the pandemic. It states that “[blood] donors in the most materially deprived neighbourhoods were nearly four times more likely to be seropositive than donors in the most affluent neighbourhood.”

With little reported information on the occupations of those who died from COVID-19, the authors examined 142 workplace outbreaks and found that among the jobs commonly associated with infection were health care workers, cleaners, transportation workers, postal workers, agricultural and restaurant workers, as well as those in the mining, manufacturing and construction sectors.

Internationally, reports on excess deaths during the period coinciding with the pandemic have also shed light on the degree to which the toll of COVID-19 has been understated. A recent report by the Economist magazine estimates that the virus has claimed that lives of more than 15 million people worldwide, triple the official figure. The response of the ruling classes in every country to these revelations has largely been to ignore these studies or, in the case of the Narendra Modi-led government in India, to virulently denounce them. The hostility stems quite clearly from the recognition that the true death toll is further evidence of the fruits of the murderous “herd immunity” policy pursued by capitalism the world over so that profits can be ensured by forcing workers back on the job, public health be damned.

Canada’s media has for all intents and purposes suppressed the study since its initial release. Many news outlets carried reports on the Royal Society study on the day of its release. But this was not followed up with further analysis building on its findings of excess mortality, let alone scrutiny of the political decisions that left Canada woefully unprepared for the pandemic and have led to successive waves of mass infection and death. Subsequent reporting on Canada’s official death toll has almost never been accompanied with the acknowledgement that the real number of COVID-19-related deaths is in all probability far higher.

All sections of the Canadian ruling class have advocated the prioritizing of profits over saving lives, and backed the ruinous back-to-work/back-to-school drive. Provincial governments whether led by the New Democrats in British Columbia, the Coalition Avenir Québec in Québec, the Progressive Conservatives in Ontario, or the United Conservative Party in Alberta have systematically abandoned even the most basic public health measures aimed at slowing the spread of the disease.

At the federal level, with the election campaign entering its closing stages, the major parties have been squirming to differentiate their virtually identical approaches to the pandemic. All of the parliamentary parties support a “profits before lives” strategy that insists that the wellbeing of the big banks and corporations must take priority over the safeguarding of human life. The only difference between the pandemic policies of the Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats, Bloquistes and Greens is the degree to which they support vaccination mandates. Even the BBC was forced to conclude that the differences in the parties’ COVID-19 platforms were “pretty thin.” All are committed to keeping the economy open, whatever the cost and are complicit in the enormous death toll this strategy has produced.

The ruling class and its political representatives are determined to prevent lockdowns—although they have been shown to be the most effective means of preventing the virus’ spread. Thus, they promote vaccination as the only acceptable public health measure to fight the pandemic, placing their hopes that the hospital system does not collapse as the pandemic’s fourth wave rages (despite models showing enormous strain on ICU capacity), and the working class does not independently intervene to shutdown schools and workplaces till the pandemic is brought under control.

Vaccination, while a critical component of the fight against the disease, is not a panacea. A policy guided by a scientific understanding of the disease must recognize the threat posed to the unvaccinated and the threat of new variants emerging that evade existing vaccines.

The Royal Society report points out that the official death toll of nearly 26,000 at the time of writing in early June (currently more than 27,000) is greater than any mass casualty event in Canadian history, save the influenza pandemic of 1918 and the two world wars. To prevent further devastation and to institute a rational, science-based response to the pandemic, the working class must intervene to halt all non-essential work, so that the necessary public health measures, travel bans, school closures, vaccination, testing, and contact tracing can be employed as part of a comprehensive eradication strategy to stop the continued spread of the deadly virus.

Four year old dies from COVID-19 in Texas as cases in children skyrocket across the US

Alex Findijs

A four-year-old child died of COVID-19 last Tuesday in Texas just four hours after exhibiting symptoms, in a tragic example of the expanding impact of the pandemic on children across the United States. Kali Cook of Barclif, Texas, began showing symptoms of COVID-19 around 2 a.m. and by 7 a.m. that same morning she had passed away in her sleep.

Kali’s mother was unvaccinated and had tested positive for COVID-19 the day before. “I was one of the people that was anti, I was against it,” she told Daily News. “Now, I wish I never was.”

The sudden death of Kali Cook is a rare occurrence, but it is by no means an isolated incident. COVID-19 cases among children are exploding across the country just weeks after the reopening of schools, and the number of child deaths continues to rise.

Kali Cook (4) Image credit: Karra Harwood/GoFundMe)

Florida recorded 2,448 deaths last week, including four children under the age of 16. For the past three weeks children have made up one-third of new cases in Florida despite making up just 22 percent of the population. In just the past six weeks the total number of COVID-related child deaths in the state has doubled.

In response to the rise of pediatric cases, Tampa General Hospital released a video of pediatric doctors and nurses encouraging more people to get vaccinated.

“The delta variant really kind of changed the game for us, because we weren’t seeing that many children — now we’re starting to see them in the ICU,” said Janet Elozory, pediatric ICU nurse manager at Tampa General.

The situation is the same across the country. According to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics, children now account for more than a quarter of weekly infections nationwide. During the week ending September 2, nearly 252,000 children tested positive for COVID-19. Between August 5 and September 2 nearly 750,000 children tested positive as the pace of infection continues to climb.

In Colorado, 2,661 children tested positive in the last week of August alone, up from 347 cases a week in mid-July. At the current growth rate of infection, child cases will continue to double every week. If this pace continues, it will take less than two months to infect all of Colorado’s 860,000 school-age children.

This rapid rise in cases is translating to an increase in child hospitalizations. During the week of August 22, 71 children aged 6 to 17 were hospitalized in Colorado, up from 40 during the prior week.

The connection between the rapid rise in cases and hospitalizations to school reopenings is apparent. Dr. Kevin Carney, associate chief medical officer at Children’s Hospital Colorado, told the Fort Morgan Post, “The state has seen a significant increase in the number of pediatric patients infected with COVID-19. It’s not surprising, given that within the last few weeks, kids have gone back to school.”

Similar thoughts were expressed by Dr. Bryan Kornreich, a pediatrician from Frederick County in Virginia. Kornreich explained to WUSA9 that there has been a surge in pediatric COVID infections since schools opened, and that, “I’m worried we’re just going to run out of COVID tests, because now the number of tests we’re going through a day, it can’t be sustained… and the manufacturer can’t keep up with the demand.”

Child cases are even worse in South Carolina, where more than 4,000 students and 398 staff tested positive during the first week of September. Young people aged 11 to 20 make up the largest group of those infected at 23 percent of cases, followed in second by children under the age of 11 constituting 15 percent of cases.

The rise in cases in the state resulted in the deaths of two students in early September. A 9 year old and a 15 year old both died of COVID-19 on September 1 in Aiken County, according to the Associated Press.

The effect on children is not felt through infection alone, though. Tens of thousands of children across the country have lost one or both parents or another primary caregiver from COVID-19 during the pandemic. Just last week, a Michigan couple with seven children both died within one day of each other.

Troy and Charletta Green had been married for 22 years. Prior to a planned trip to Florida in August, Troy fell ill and decided to stay behind while his wife and children traveled to Orlando. Shortly after arriving Charletta fell ill as well. Both suffered from respiratory issues, with Troy placed on a ventilator on August 23 and Charletta on August 26.

The couple began to recover but Charletta developed a serious blood clot and passed on September 9. After learning of the death of his wife, Troy suffered a heart attack and died the next morning. As a result of the continued spread of COVID-19, which has been allowed to persist through the bipartisan policy of “herd immunity,” the children of Troy and Charletta Green, aged 10 to 23, tragically lost both of their parents.

Every day hundreds more children around the world are added to the list of those who have lost a parent to COVID-19. Research by the Lancet estimates that around 1.1 million children have lost at least one primary caregiver globally. Of that number, 114,000 children are from the United States. Given the gaps in reporting on deaths and cases around the world, the true figure is likely even higher.

The continued threat to the health and lives of children and their parents is a social crime of immense proportions. The persistence of the pandemic and the emergence of ever more contagious and dangerous variants is the product of the insatiable greed of the ruling class, which demands that children return to school so that parents may return to work generating profits for the wealthy.

Kabul drone strike was CIA-military murder

Patrick Martin

A New York Times analysis of the August 29 US drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, based on military-intelligence sources as well as interviews with survivors and co-workers of the victims, demonstrates that the incineration of ten members of an Afghan family, including seven children, was a wanton act of mass murder.

Despite claims by General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the attack followed a rigorous protocol and was a “righteous strike,” the Times report, published September 11, indicates that every step, from the initial identification of the target to the final decision to launch, was carried out in a reckless fashion, entirely indifferent to the human consequences. Every stereotype of punch-button, remote-control warfare is confirmed.

Military-intelligence sources admitted to the Times that they did not know the identity of the driver of the white Toyota Corolla when they gave the orders to strike it with a Hellfire missile, nor did they know who lived in the home where the car had just stopped in the courtyard. The decision to attack was based entirely on the “pattern” of conduct by the driver, who allegedly visited an Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K) “safe house,” and was later seen loading heavy objects carefully into his car, in a way that supposedly suggested bomb materials (they were actually water canisters).

US MQ-9 Reaper Drone (Image credit: U.S. Air Force/Paul Ridgeway public domain)

The initial claims from the Pentagon were that four ISIS-K militants had been killed, along with three civilians, and that a secondary blast, much larger than the first, had taken place, indicating that the US missile had caused a large cache of explosives to detonate. The actual toll was three adults and seven children, six of them ten or younger, and there was no secondary explosion.

The prime target of the attack, Zemari Ahmadi, the driver of a vehicle that was supposedly being prepared to carry out a bomb attack on US forces at the Kabul airport, was actually a long-time employee of a California-based aid group, Nutrition and Education International. He and another victim, his cousin Naser, had applied to the US Embassy for refugee status in the United States, fearing they would be targeted by the Taliban because they worked for an American non-governmental organization. Instead, they were murdered by the US government.

Ahmadi had gone to his job at the group’s office in Kabul, a longtime location of a US-based organization which would certainly have been known to the US Embassy and US intelligence services, and in the course of the day loaded his car with canisters of water for his family and neighbors, because there was no water service there in the chaos following the collapse of the Afghan government.

When he returned home, which he and his three brothers and their families shared, in the fashion typical of Afghanistan, the children ran out to welcome him—and all were incinerated in the fireball caused by the detonation of a Hellfire missile launched by a circling drone.

The victims included Ahmadi, 43; his sons, Zamir, 20, Faisal, 16, and Farzad, 10; three nephews, Arwin, 7, Benyamin, 6, and Hayat, 2; his cousin Naser, 30; and two 3-year-old girls, Malika and Somaya, whose relationship to the family is unclear.

According to information supplied to the Times by military-intelligence sources, Ahmadi was initially identified as a potential target because on his way to work he stopped at a home that had been identified as a “safe house” for ISIS-K, the terrorist group that carried out a suicide bomb attack August 27 at the Kabul airport, killing 13 US soldiers and at least 170 Afghan civilians.

Ahmadi reportedly made three stops on his way to work, two to pick up co-workers, one to visit the home of his boss, the director of the Kabul branch of Nutrition and Education International. How any of these locations—all belonging to employees of a US-based charity—could be identified by US intelligence as havens for terrorism was not explained.

The actual decision to fire at this alleged ISIS-K target was equally unexplained. According to the Times, “Although the target was now inside a densely populated residential area, the drone operator quickly scanned and saw only a single adult male greeting the vehicle, and therefore assessed with ‘reasonable certainty’ that no women, children or noncombatants would be killed, U.S. officials said.”

Eyewitness accounts gave a diametrically opposed picture. The Times report continues:

But according to his relatives, as Mr. Ahmadi pulled into his courtyard, several of his children and his brothers’ children came out, excited to see him, and sat in the car as he backed it inside. Mr. Ahmadi’s brother Romal was sitting on the ground floor with his wife when he heard the sound of the gate opening, and Mr. Ahmadi’s car entering. His adult cousin Naser had gone to fetch water for his ablutions, and greeted him.

The car’s engine was still running when there was a sudden blast, and the room was sprayed with shattered glass from the window, Romal recalled. He staggered to his feet. “Where are the children?” he asked his wife. “They’re outside,” she replied.

The report on the Kabul drone strike does more than expose the monstrous carnage for which the US military-intelligence apparatus is responsible in this instance. There are countless such episodes over the past two decades, always justified in the same fashion: US intelligence identified a terrorist “operative” or “facilitator,” the “pattern of activities” indicated that an attack on a US target was “imminent,” the strike was carried out in a fashion calculated to “minimize civilian casualties,” and all of these actions were taken on the basis of “reasonable certainty.”

Most of these drone-missile strikes have been carried out in rural areas or remote towns inaccessible to media investigation, unlike the Kabul strike which was conducted, in a sense, with the whole world watching. But there is no doubt that if a serious investigation were conducted into any of thousands of such missile strikes, which have incinerated tens of thousands of people in an area stretching from Central Asia to North Africa, the results would be similar to those found by the Times in Kabul.

American imperialism is, in the full sense of the word, a gigantic criminal enterprise. Its leaders should be tried, convicted and punished to the fullest. And its apologists—like the Times itself, on 364 out of 365 days every year—should be branded as such. One day’s truth cannot outweigh the years of deliberate lying and cover-up that have served to conceal from the American people the reality of the imperialist “war on terror.”

Eviction filings in US spike in week following end of moratorium

Chase Lawrence

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling which ended the eviction moratorium, millions of renters stand the risk of losing their housing amid the new surge of the pandemic. Eviction filings have already skyrocketed for the week ending September 4, with four of six states monitored by the Princeton University’s Eviction Lab having already exceeded historic averages.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s weekly Household Pulse Survey for the week ending August 26 found that 3,511,056 respondents are facing the “likelihood” of eviction in the next two months. This is taking place as the Biden administration has allowed the expiration of federal unemployment benefits for 7.5 million jobless workers, who will be left with nothing, and the $300 supplement for another three million workers still receiving meager state unemployment benefits.

While data is only out for the first four days of the month, within these days dramatic increases in eviction filings have already been observed. Out of the 31 cities that the Eviction Lab tracks, 13, or roughly a third have seen an increase in evictions above and past their respective historic averages for the same period. The three largest increases seen as of September 4 were recorded in Charleston, South Carolina, at 232 percent the historical average; Wilmington, Delaware, at 238 percent; and Dallas, Texas, at 134 percent.

People from a coalition of housing justice groups hold signs protesting evictions during a news conference outside the Statehouse, Friday, July 30, 2021, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Five saw filings increase relative to historic averages in previous months, with Delaware seeing a 130 percent rise. Before September, Delaware saw eviction filings consistently at half or less of its 2016-19 averages at virtually every point following March 2020, when the moratorium was implemented.

Indiana is now 22 percent above average. It had also stayed under historical averages since March 2020. New Mexico has seen a similar increase, with evictions averaging now at 140 percent the state’s 2017-2019 averages and reaching the highest point since the Eviction Lab started tracking the state. Other states like Minnesota and Connecticut did not increase past their respective averages but saw increases nonetheless relative to previous months preceding the end of the moratorium.

Rental assistance funds of $46.5 billion have been allocated, but the vast majority of the money has not been distributed. Treasury Department Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that she would begin to move funds from jurisdictions that have failed to distribute assistance by the end of September to ones that did. In other words, the Biden administration will allow poor renters in areas with unwilling local governments to be deprived of federal rental assistance.

In a hearing on Friday, California Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters said state and local governments have only distributed 11 percent of the emergency rental assistance funds available. “There is no question that the funds are not reaching landlords and renters quickly or widely enough,” she meekly complained.

One of the major reasons for the failure to distribute the funds is resistance from landlords themselves who have exploited the landlord-friendly character of the measure, which gives them veto power over whether to accept it or not.

The solution the Congressional Democrats advocate would be even more favorable to landlords. The Expediting Assistance to Renters and Landlords Act of 2021 bill, introduced by Waters, would allow landlords to directly apply for back-rent themselves, in what essentially amounts to a bailout of the landlords.

Slumlords who maintain illegal units will simply throw out residents late on payments and get new, desperate renters. The recent flooding in New York City caused by Hurricane Ida exposed that hundreds of thousands of low-income residents live in illegally converted basements. In Los Angeles County, with a population of 10 million, there are an estimated 200,000 such illegal units.

In addition, the New York Times noted, “Federal and local officials, housing experts, landlords and tenants cited an array of problems that slowed the flow of aid: bureaucratic missteps at all levels of government, onerous applications, resistance from landlords, the reluctance of local officials to ease eligibility requirements for the poor, difficulty raising awareness that rental aid even existed, and a steep rise in rents that increased the incentive for kicking out low-income tenants.”

Housing assistance has also been decimated by decades of bipartisan attacks on the remains of the social safety net in the country. The only comparable program to the Emergency Rental Assistance Funds program is the Section 8 voucher program, a federal program that provides funding to make up the difference between what tenants pay and what the going market rate is for housing by paying landlords and nonprofits.

As the Times notes, Section 8’s funding has been “stagnant for decades” and waiting lists “of up to 10 years are not uncommon in many cities.” Given the onerous nature of the certification requirements, Section 8 was unable to provide any sort of useful means for the new money to be directed. That is, no preexisting infrastructure was in place for the relatively small amount of funds to be distributed for rental assistance.

By contrast there is a vast governmental infrastructure for the various bailouts of the financial and corporate oligarchy, which has received trillions of dollars looted from the public treasury. This includes the bailouts following the 2008 global financial crash and many other “small” bailouts of individual industries, such as the airlines in 2001, as well as GM and Chrysler in 2009. The bipartisan CARES Act has funneled trillions more to the largest corporations, including purchases of their bad debts, and the Federal Reserve pumps $120 billion in virtual free credit into the financial markets every month .

In other word, a well-oiled infrastructure exists for distributing aid to the ruling class, which has enriched itself during the pandemic, while tens of millions of people are being threatened with destitution and homelessness.

Israel responds to jail break with dragnet across the occupied West Bank and Israel

Jean Shaoul

Following an unprecedented dragnet operation across Israel and the occupied West Bank, the Israeli authorities captured four of the six Palestinians on the run after their audacious jail break on Monday from the maximum security jail in Gilboa, Israel.

Four of the prisoners were serving life sentences for their involvement in attacks on Israelis during the second Palestinian Intifada (2000-2005), while two had been held for years, awaiting trial. As Palestinians living on land captured by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, they had been held in Israel by the Zionist state’s military regime that has for decades used collective punishment, house demolitions, expulsions, torture, forced confessions and systematic theft to strip the occupied population of almost all democratic rights and human dignity.

Their detention in an Israeli jail contravenes Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that outlaws the transfer of prisoners outside of the occupied territory. This is, however, a widespread Israeli practice that serves to prevent the prisoners’ families in the West Bank and Gaza from visiting them. According to Addameer, the prisoners’ rights group, Israel holds 4,750 Palestinians, including 42 females, 200 children and 550 administrative detainees, across dozens of prison facilities.

Protesters carry posters with pictures of Palestinian prisoners that read "Ahed Abu Ghalmeh a life sentence and five years, freedom for Mohammed al-Salaymeh, a 25 years sentence," during a rally supporting Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Many of these prisoners are awaiting trial, while others are in so-called administrative detention, whereby they are held without trial or even charges. Their conditions in captivity are nothing short of brutal, and they face the constant threat of beatings and torture. The Israeli authorities even deny them food, with the result that the Palestinian Authority (PA) pays their families to support them in jail.

Two were caught on Saturday in the Arab town of Umm al-Ghanam in Israel. One was Zakaria Zubeidi, 46, from the northern West Bank city of Jenin. Zubeidi joined and later emerged as a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Fatah’s armed faction, after Israel launched a horrific attack on the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002, killing hundreds of Palestinians and carrying out a mass demolition of homes, including Zubeidi’s family home. The other was Mahmoud al-Arida, a member of the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

A further two, whose names were not released, were captured on Friday near Nazareth in northern Israel, while another two remain on the run. Five men, all members of Islamic Jihad, are Monadel Yacoub Nafe’at, 26, Yaqoub Qassem, Yaqoub Mahmoud Qadri, 49, Ayham Nayef Kamamji, 35, and Mahmoud Abdullah Ardah, 46.

While there were reports that local residents in Umm al-Ghanam and Nazareth had turned in the prisoners—claims denied within the two towns—sparking angry denunciations by Palestinians in the West Bank, others have suggested that such reports were part of a deliberate attempt by the Israeli authorities to drive a wedge between the Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank.

The men hail from Jenin, where there is mass opposition to President Mahmoud Abbas’s corrupt Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority for its role as Israel’s subcontractor in its efforts to permanently subjugate them in their own land. In recent months, there have been gun fights between Israeli forces and the Palestinians in the Jenin area and the refugee camp, with the PA’s own security units unwilling to enter the camp. Two weeks ago, Israeli security forces killed at least four Palestinian men with live fire when Israeli special forces raided the Jenin refugee camp to arrest a Palestinian man.

The prisoners’ audacious escape from the high security jail prompted jubilation and hilarity among the Palestinians and throughout the Middle East while profoundly embarrassing Israel’s military intelligence apparatus that described it as “a major security and intelligence failure.” It is one of just a handful of such escapes that include the escape of three Palestinians from the Kfar Yona facility in 1995 and an escape via tunnels from the Shata prison in 2014.

The Palestinians had tunneled their way out of Gilboa by digging a hole with a spoon from their cell toilet floor to open underground passages built during the prison’s construction, whose plans were apparently on the website of the architectural firm that had designed the prison. As the underground passages were open and apparently not monitored, the prisoners were able to dispose of the building waste without detection. The hole beyond the prison’s fence through which the prisoners escaped was situated directly below a watchtower whose guard was asleep.

The Israel Prison Service (IPS) immediately announced that it would relocate around 400 Islamic Jihad-affiliated inmates inside Gilboa, Megiddo, Rimon and Katziot prisons in Israel to other prisons to isolate them from each other, some of whom were later held in solitary confinement. Their use of special units and the military to transfer prisoners who refused to go voluntarily prompted days of tensions inside the jails. On Wednesday, after Palestinian prisoners in Katziot prison set fire to seven cells in protest against their transfer, the military moved in to reassert control, while the IPS banned all visits for Palestinian prisoners for the rest of this month and declared that no new visits could be booked.

As the news of the tensions within the prisons emerged, angry demonstrations broke out across the West Bank that were put down with brutal force. According to the Palestinian News Agency, Israeli forces fired stun grenades and tear gas at protesters, injuring nearly 100 Palestinians in the Nablus and Hebron governorates, while four were injured in clashes in East Jerusalem. On Friday, the Palestinians held a mass “Day of Rage” protest, called by Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated group that controls Gaza, in solidarity with the prisoners.

Israel deployed hundreds of troops to scour villages and the countryside for the escapees and arrested several of the prisoners’ relatives, a form of collective punishment outlawed under international law. The military extended the closure of the occupied West Bank beyond the planned closure from last Monday to Wednesday during the Jewish New Year celebrations and set up hundreds of checkpoints to prevent the escaped prisoners from crossing into the West Bank and Gaza, amid calls for the security forces to catch and kill them as a deterrence to others.

The Palestinian Authority warned that Israel’s “repressive” measures against the prisoners could ignite a new intifada. A PA official said, “Israel is playing with fire. The issue of the prisoners is extremely sensitive. The situation is very dangerous.” He warned Israel that the West Bank “is on the verge of explosion” because of the anger over the measures taken against the security prisoners, while the PA Foreign Ministry said that Israel’s latest measures “rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

The PA is acutely aware of mounting public anger over its cooperation with Israeli security forces, its rampant corruption and nepotism, mismanagement of public monies and refusal to tolerate dissent, especially if it targets Fatah, the ruling party that has enriched a handful of Palestinian families at the expense of the broad mass of the population.

Last week, the PA was forced to indict 14 members of the PA’s security services on charges of beating to death Nizar Banat, an outspoken activist well known for his fierce criticism of the PA on social media, last June. His death at the hands of the Palestinian security forces turned into a rallying cry against Abbas and the PA. Banat’s family, however, dismissed the indictments, saying that the 14 are merely “sacrificial lambs” and that the senior Palestinian officials that gave the instructions should also be charged.

Last month, Israel agreed to transfer $155 million to the Palestinian Authority—monies it described as a loan—to keep the cash-strapped government afloat.

In Gaza, following threats by Islamic Jihad and Hamas to launch rockets into Israel if the six escapees or other prisoners were hurt, militants fired a rocket into Israel on Friday and again on Saturday, causing no damage after the prisoners were captured. Israel launched air strikes on the Palestinian enclave in response.

A Hamas spokesman said that Hamas will demand that the escaped prisoners be included in any future prisoner exchange deal negotiated with Israel, which is seeking the release of two Israeli civilians and the bodies of two Israeli soldiers held in Gaza. There is still no agreement with Israel over Gaza’s reconstruction following Israel’s 11-day assault last May, after the PA backtracked on transferring Qatari monies through its banks in the West Bank to Gaza, citing concerns that its banks would be exposed to lawsuits alleging support for terrorism, as Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel and other Western countries.

Phone call between US and Chinese presidents underscores dangerous tensions

Peter Symonds

US President Joseph Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping held their first phone conversation since February last Thursday [US time], amid mounting tensions fueled by Washington’s aggressive stance toward Beijing across the board—diplomatic, economic and strategic.

Few details were issued. Both sides issued brief read-outs from the 90-minute discussion, but no decisions were announced and no joint statements were issued. In short, Biden initiated the call in a bid to enlist China’s assistance on matters of US concern, but offered nothing in return and the standoff between the world’s two largest economies continues.

The tensions were evident even in the limited official reports. A White House statement declared that the two leaders had “discussed the responsibility of both nations to ensure competition does not veer into conflict.” An administration official told reporters that Biden’s message had been to ensure “we don’t have any situation in the future where we veer into unintended conflict.”

Xi Jinping (Left), Joe Biden (right) (Image Credit: Alan Santos Wikimedia Commons (Left), AP Photo/Evan Vucci (Right))

The very fact that the prospect of “conflict” between two nuclear-armed powers is raised in formal statements indicates it is under discussion behind closed doors. Over the past decade, beginning with the “pivot to Asia” initiated by the Obama administration, in which Biden was vice-president, the US has sought to undermine China and prepare militarily for war.

According to a Chinese foreign ministry statement, Xi made clear that “the policies that the United States has adopted toward China for some period of time have pushed Chinese-US relations into serious difficulties.”

Xi warned: “Whether China and the United States can properly handle mutual relations is a question for the century that concerns the fate of the world, and both countries must answer it.”

A senior White House official told reporters on Friday that Biden had requested the call after becoming “exasperated” by the unwillingness of lower-level Chinese officials to hold substantive talks with his administration.

The “unwillingness” of Chinese officials is no surprise. The Biden administration has not only continued, but escalated, the Trump administration’s aggressive anti-China policies, including:

* Perpetuating the Wuhan Lab lie that the COVID-19 pandemic originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, despite expert evidence to the contrary and a World Health Organisation investigation which found it was “extremely unlikely” to be the case.

* Denouncing China for “genocide” of the Muslim Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region of the country—another unsubstantiated lie. Beijing undoubtedly uses police-state measures in Xinjiang, as it does elsewhere in China, but there is no evidence it is engaged in the physical elimination of the Uyghur population.

* Strengthening ties with Taiwan and thereby undermining the One China policy that has been the basis of diplomatic relations between China and the US for three decades. In 1979, the US ended diplomatic ties with Taipei, effectively acknowledging that Beijing was the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan.

* Maintaining Trump’s trade war measures that included tariffs on more than $360 billion worth of Chinese goods, leading to China to retaliate with tariffs on more than $110 billion of US products. The US has also provocatively imposed bans on Chinese hi-tech giants, such as Huawei, aimed at limiting their sales and access to components.

Driving the dangerous confrontation between Washington and Beijing is the determination of US imperialism in its historic decline to prevent any challenge to its global hegemony by all means, including war. While also targeting Russia and Iran, the US regards China as the chief threat to its position and has demanded that Beijing abide by the “international rules-based system” by which Washington has set the rules for global capitalism since World War II.

Shortly after taking office, Biden made abundantly clear that his administration would maintain Trump’s anti-China policies. At the first top-level meeting between US and Chinese officials in Alaska in March, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken provocatively opened up with a list of American denunciations and grievances against China, triggering an extraordinary slanging match before the press.

China’s top foreign policy official Yang Jiechi responded by pointing to Washington’s hypocrisy on “human rights” and indicating that US references to an international rules-based system were tantamount to insisting that Beijing bow to US interests. China upheld the UN-centred international system, he said, “not what is advocated by a small number of countries of the so-called ‘rules-based’ international order.”

Yang also noted that, unlike the US, China did not believe “in invading through the use of force, or toppling other regimes through various means, or massacring the people of other countries.”

The only difference between the orientation of Trump and Biden toward China is a tactical one. Biden has sought to marshal support from US allies for its confrontation with Beijing, in particular by holding the first-ever leaders’ meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—a quasi-military alliance with India, Japan and Australia, directed against China.

Since March, meetings between Chinese and US officials have continued to stall amid mutual acrimony. In July, US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman flew to China and met with Foreign Minister Wang Yi but left complaining that she faced a list of demands and grievances. This month, Wang told Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry, who visited Tianjin for talks, that cooperation on climate could not be separated from other issues, and called on the US to take steps to improve the broader relationship.

According to the US statement on last week’s call between Biden and Xi, the “two leaders had a broad, strategic discussion in which they discussed areas where our interests converge, and areas where our interests, values, and perspectives diverge.” As well as climate change, the US was evidently seeking Chinese assistance over North Korea and its debacle in Afghanistan.

After reviewing US policy toward North Korea, the Biden administration is appealing for talks with Pyongyang. At this stage, the North Korean regime has rejected negotiations, which in the past two decades have led to nothing but broken US promises and crippling sanctions. Washington now wants Beijing to pressure Pyongyang to come to the negotiating table by threatening to cut off its economic lifeline.

The Biden administration is concerned that the ignominious collapse of the US puppet regime in Afghanistan will open the door for greater Chinese and Russian influence in the strategic Central Asian country. Chinese officials have held talks with senior Taliban officials, seeking guarantees that the new regime will not allow its territory to be used by Uyghur separatist groups.

Even as it seeks Chinese cooperation, however, the Biden administration continues to ramp up its confrontation with Beijing. Top US officials are reportedly discussing whether to launch an investigation into Chinese industrial subsidies, with a view to imposing greater trade penalties on Beijing.

Just hours before Biden spoke to Xi, the media reported that his administration was considering allowing Taipei to include “Taiwan” in the name of its representative office in Washington—a further undermining of the One China policy that would anger Beijing.

Biden’s call for Chinese cooperation has a hollow, hypocritical ring to it. He is steering a course not toward “peace and prosperity” but conflict and war.