No Free Lunch: The Hidden Costs of EVs

Mel Gurtov

Image by Andrew Roberts.

The Hidden Costs

In his pathbreaking 1971 book, The Closing Circle, Barry Commoner proposed four laws of ecology: Everything is connected to everything else; Everything must go somewhere; Nature knows best; There is no such thing as a free lunch. We are inclined to forget that any technology designed to make life better comes with a cost—not just a monetary cost but also a cost in health, psychology, the environment, or social values.

Remember all the promises of nuclear energy? All benefit and no (announced) cost. So it is now with electric vehicles as an antidote to the climate crisis.

EVs require six times the mineral input of an ordinary car. Mainly because of the heavy lithium battery, EV production releases nearly 70 percent more greenhouse gases than are produced in an ordinary car’s manufacture.

Lithium and other battery mineral components require extensive mining. The expanding international competition over access to these minerals is not yielding riches for mine workers and landowners, only devastation of local environments, health and safety concerns for miners, and exceptional profits for global corporations and the governments that preside over the mines.

Besides lithium, cobalt, bauxite, and nickel are also crucial for batteries; they are mined in various parts of Africa and Latin America. Hence the international scramble, a familiar story that has played out with fossil fuels extracted from the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia, to the overwhelming benefit of the oil companies and the repressive governments that invited them in.

Three Cases

Guinea in east Africa, mineral-rich but dirt-poor. Guinea has the world’s largest reserves of bauxite, used to manufacture the aluminum in batteries. 200,000 acres of farmland and 1.1 million acres of natural habitat will be destroyed by bauxite mining, with little compensation from foreign investors. Three international firms dominate mining in Guinea: US-owned Alcoa, British-owned Rio Tinto, and Russian-owned United Company RUSAL. Chinese and Norwegian firms are also involved.

Or take nickel, which is concentrated in Indonesia, where a new Chinese nickel processing technology is producing millions of tons of toxic waste that have to be disposed of on land. Coal-fired plants provide the energy for the processing, adding carbon emissions to the environmental disaster. For Indonesia’s government, however, processing raw nickel within the country is a major benefit, and China holds the advantage.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the international battle is over cobalt. China is leading the way in the DRC; US corporations are trying to get back in the game. As I’ve written previously, the DRC holds most of the world’s cobalt mines. That means sudden riches for the mining companies and some government officials, but it also means terrible working conditions for miners, exploitation of child labor, and destruction of the environment to make way for the mines.

China in the Lead

As a New York Times graphic shows, China dominates the supply chain in all phases of EVs—from mining and processing the key minerals to assembling the battery cells and manufacturing the autos. China has a controlling interest, about 80 percent, in the processing of lithium, manganese, cobalt, nickel, and graphite, as well as the manufacture of battery components.

How to get past China’s chokehold on minerals is the subject of ongoing international discussions that involve the US, the European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia. In May, at the most recent G7 meetings in Hiroshima, the members agreed to take the first steps toward cooperating on reducing dependence on Chinese supplies.

Agreements will not be easy to negotiate or implement, however, for at least two reasons. Making the supply chain more secure—meaning more secure from China—would also require that corporations that normally compete would have to share supplies. Politically, a formidable obstacle is the human rights and environmental policies of the host countries. Working closely with those governments will (and should) arouse criticism, in much the same way that getting in bed with Middle East autocrats has been controversial.

Forming a “critical minerals club,” one of several proposals being considered by the US, the EU, and other countries, leaves open the question of the club’s rules when it comes to labor and environmental standards. As we have seen in various trade agreements, such as NAFTA, imposing those standards raises political problems both within and between the parties.

As for the producing countries, such as Indonesia, high international demand is an invitation to create an OPEC-style cartel so as to gain greater revenue from investing companies. Those countries have every incentive, as the OPEC countries have shown, to discount human rights. As a cartel, OPEC has the power to ensure that human rights and environmental concerns never feature in pumping and marketing agreements with the major oil companies.

If Not EVs, What?

EVs are obviously going to be around for a good while. Consumers have spoken; everywhere you turn, EVs comprise a fast-growing proportion of car sales. Governments are cranking up subsidies and tax breaks for manufacturers and buyers.

Lithium battery investment and production capacity are likewise growing exponentially. Yet all that effort will be eclipsed before very long. That’s when solid-state batteries replace lithium batteries and hydrogen becomes the fuel of choice. Meantime, gas-powered vehicles remain on the road, far more numerous than EVs and dirtying the air as before.

Perhaps the politically and environmentally correct car strategy is to keep the vehicle you have for as long as you can. If it’s of fairly recent vintage, it should last for decades with proper care. That way, you lower the costs, hidden and well-known, of new car production and old car disposal.

Or you move in an entirely different direction: two- and three-wheel electric vehicles. “Globally,” writes David Wallace-Wells in the New York Times, “there are 10 times as many electric scooters, mopeds and motorcycles on the road as true electric cars, accounting already for almost half of all sales of those vehicles and responsible already for eliminating more carbon emissions than all the world’s four-wheel EVs.”

The Poor in Today’s India

Nilofar Suhrawardy

Photo by V Srinivasan

As Indian parliamentary elections approach, politicians’ promises resting on uplifting economic status of the poor will get more assertive and aggressive. As these promises become louder, headlines may be expected to display the same more prominently. The unwritten rule followed in general by most politicians is to try convincing voters that “magic wand” to achieve this rests only in his/her hands. If this was really possible, the poor Indian would not have continued to suffer as he and his family still remain deprived of even proper meals. Death of farmers by suicide, owing to their being debt-ridden and/or being unable to earn enough just to barely feed their families has not come to a halt. Unemployment continues to hit practically all, except of course the millionaires and billionaires who have enough to sail through probably for few generations.

A typical village remains devoid of medical facilities, a proper school and most houses don’t have proper toilets with their residents continuing to use fields. This is where the majority of Indians reside. Yes, a member or two of practically each family moves to urban areas in search of employment in various capacities- where educational certificate/degree is not a requirement. These include jobs as laborers, car-cleaners with women primarily working as domestic maids- cooking, cleaning, etc. Each moves to cities with the aim of gradually getting other members join in the hope of securing better life with education for their children. The recent years have witnessed a traumatic impact on these sections, reducing dreams they entertained once virtually to dust. When Covid first struck, it forced thousands from cities to their rural roots. Many had to walk back. Life hasn’t been the same for majority since then. It may be recalled, attempts were certainly made then to provoke communal discord by blaming several sections of Muslim community as responsible for Covid-trauma. Of course, it sounds preposterous now. But it happened. Some Muslims were also pushed behind bars on these “charges.”

Certainly, Covid-phase spared no one. Economically, the worst hit were poor Indians and as mentioned, they haven’t as yet fully recovered from its impact. They have had no choice but gradually return back to urban areas and try start earning again. Substantial coverage was given to their leaving cities. But news about them was then largely limited to this aspect- rough estimate supported by photographs as well as videos about their leaving urban areas. True, when misery – in any form- strikes, media pays substantial attention to how the poor are hit.  When farmers commit suicide, if noticed by one outlet of media, others don’t take long to cover this “news,” else chances of this issue being confined to statistics remain.

The tragedy is that despite all promises repeatedly handed down to them, economic conditions of poor have barely improved. Nor has sufficient attention been apparently paid in this direction. India is the most populated country, where the super-rich – a percentage of the population own more than nearly 50% of country’s total wealth, with only three percent of it being with 50% of the poor, according to a report of Oxfam for 2021. As rich are growing richer, poor are becoming poorer. Be it even slight inflation, Covid-lockdown, floods, chaos/conflict/tension or any such factor, the poor are the worst hit. One doesn’t need to draw attention to plight of laborers in urban as well as rural areas. The list of work engaged in by laborers is fairly exhaustive. This includes small farmers, construction workers, labelling and packing, workers in factories and numerous jobs of various categories. Recent decades have seen an increase of self-employed workers in primarily urban areas engaged as parking attendants, car-cleaners, car-mechanics, hair-dressers, domestic workers, mobile-repair, tailors, sanitation workers and so forth. There has also been an increase in vendors selling fruits and vegetables, road-side eating stalls, weekly/evening markets with pavements dotted with small stalls selling goods ranging from clothes, buckets, cosmetics and a lot more at reasonable rates for poor, where middle-class sections also shop.

The self-employed in various sections have no job-security. Their demand rests on expertise in their work and its market. It may be noted the demand and market of these self-employed workers is not decided by their religion, caste or region. It is decided by their expertise in their fields, whether they are carpenters, construction workers, tailors, hair-dressers, car-mechanics, car-cleaners, food-sellers, gardeners, vendors, electricians, plumbers or of any field. Of course, the demand, pricing and labelling of certain of these fields, adopts more sophisticated and expensive tags among richer sections- be it that of designing clothes, parlors, restaurants and so forth. But, here the focus is on poorer sections. The self-employed can work only till they retain health to do so. They can’t retire banking on any pension-scheme. Those employed with others, including construction workers also suffer from the same problem, whether they are farmers, domestic helpers, construction-workers or in other areas. In most circumstances, they are not paid when they can’t work due to illness or any other reason, can be fired at any time and so on. These laborers form roughly 50% of India’s population. Their income is not decided by their religion, caste or region but literally by sweat and blood they put into their work. India, reportedly, has the highest poverty rate with 22.89 crore (228 million) living in poverty, of which more than six crore (60 million) live in slums.

Of course, when communal tension strikes, it affects all in areas targeted, but as suggested the poor suffer the most. While the well-off in most circumstances can afford to move to other areas, continue working from home, the poor usually lose everything- from their houses to their work. Pictures of shanties targeted in Manipur and Haryana are just a mild indicator of this harsh reality. And yet, come election time, it is the vote of the poor that is reached for the most. Why not? It is not just the case of their vote being numerically the most important. But they are the ones who exercise their right to vote in greater numbers than those from richer classes. The poor Indian retains his/her importance, democratically but continues to suffer economically. Whatever claims may be made about India being a rich country, among the most developed countries and so on, at the grass-roots, the Indian remains poor, suffering from economic hardships!

US and Iran reach agreement amid escalating pressure, tensions and threats

Jean Shaoul

The US has agreed an informal and limited deal with Iran over its nuclear programme in a bid to stymie growing relations between Tehran and Moscow, as Washington prepares to escalate the war in Ukraine against Russia.

Following more than a year of indirect talks, Iran’s clerical bourgeois nationalist regime has apparently agreed not to process uranium beyond the 60 percent level, to release several jailed Iranian-American dual nationals, to stop attacks on American forces by its regional allies, and to not transfer ballistic missiles to Russia.

In return, the US has agreed not to tighten sanctions, seize oil tankers or seek punitive resolutions against Iran at the United Nations or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It has also agreed to the unfreezing of some Iranian assets in third countries for non-sanctionable activities, including food and medicine imports.

The details are sketchy, with the Biden administration refusing to comment or confirm the arrangements, which do not constitute a formal written accord. In part at least, this is to avoid triggering the 2015 US Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which requires any nuclear agreement reached with Tehran to be approved by Congress, which is openly hostile to any such deal. The Republican Party has lashed out at the news, with former Vice President Mike Pence, who is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, calling the deal “the largest ransom payment in American history to the Mullahs in Tehran.”

In the last week, Iran has transferred four Iranian-Americans imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin Prison to house arrest, including Siamak Namazi, Emad Sharghi and Morad Tahbaz, jailed on charges of spying, and two other unnamed Americans, one a scientist and the other a businessman, one of whom had already been released to house arrest. They will be allowed to return to the US once $6 billion of Iran’s frozen oil revenues in South Korea and $4 billion in Iraq have been transferred via the central bank in Qatar to Iran. The cash will provide a crucial lifeline for President Ebrahim Raisi’s regime, which is struggling with a $10 billion budget deficit, although it can only be spent on food and medicine. According to Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, the US will then release five Iranians held in American prisons.

A report in the Wall Street Journal last week said that Tehran had decided to lower the quantity of enriched uranium it possesses and dilute some of the uranium already enriched back to 60 percent—far higher than that agreed under the 2015 nuclear accord that the Trump administration unilaterally abandoned in 2018—while slowing the enrichment process. This may indicate that Tehran is prepared to come to a broader agreement with Washington and the European powers.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, speaking at a televised news conference, said Tehran was committed to resolving its nuclear dispute with world powers through diplomacy, saying, “We have always wanted a return of all parties to full compliance of the 2015 nuclear deal.”

These developments come after the US ramped up the pressure on Iran, even as Washington’s allies in the Gulf have normalised relations with Tehran. Saudi Arabia has reopened its embassy in Tehran, while Amir-Abdollahian has held talks with his counterpart in Riyadh.

Last month, the US Navy said it had intervened to prevent Iran from seizing two commercial tankers in the Gulf of Oman, while the Pentagon had sent additional F-35 and F-16 fighter jets and two warships to the region following what it claimed was Iran’s seizure and harassment of commercial shipping vessels. Washington is said to be considering a plan to put US Marines on commercial tanker ships to deter Iranian efforts to seize ships in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of all oil shipments pass.

In this photo released by the U.S. Navy, two U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II fighter jets fly alongside amphibious assault ship USS Bataan and guided-missile destroyer USS Thomas Hudner in the Gulf of Oman, Thursday, August 17, 2023. The Bataan transited through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, in recent days amid tensions with Iran, August 20, 2023. [AP Photo/U.S. Navy via AP]

The Biden administration, using the threat of US sanctions, has forced Pakistan to suspend its natural gas pipeline project in Iran. It is a major blow to both Iran and Pakistan. The latter is plagued by persistent power shortages that lead to 18-hour blackouts in rural areas and 6-to-10-hour load-shedding in cities.

Tehran announced that it has the technology to build a supersonic cruise missile, saying, “The supersonic cruise missile will open a new chapter in Iran’s defense program, as it is extremely difficult to intercept a cruise missile flying at supersonic speeds.”

Washington’s objectives in restarting the on-off talks abandoned a year ago and seeking some sort of accommodation with Iran are to disrupt the growing ties with Russia, which cut across US geostrategic interests, and to ease escalating tensions in the Middle East. The covert aerial and maritime war carried out by the US and its attack dog Israel, which jointly strike Tehran’s Syrian and Lebanese allies on a weekly basis, has threatened to erupt into open military conflict.

Under President Ebrahim Raisi, whose conservative faction opposed the 2015 deal, Tehran had sought to take advantage of the Russia-Ukraine war and western sanctions on Russia to stress Iran’s importance to both Russia and China, while keeping open the option of an agreement with the US. His government, desperate to get rid of ever-tightening sanctions that have wrecked the economy, leading to soaring inflation and widespread poverty and provoking mass opposition from workers and young people, had largely withdrawn its preconditions for a deal, including that the US withdraw its designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation.

Last year, the US walked away from the deal when it was revealed that Russia was using Iran-supplied drones in the US-NATO-provoked war against Russia in Ukraine.

Weeks later, mass protests broke out over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after her detention by the corrupt clerical regime’s morality police. Fueled by popular anger over the desperate social and economic conditions, they spiraled into mass demonstrations that lasted for months and were suppressed with arrests, lethal force and the execution of at least seven protesters. Many protesters, including minors, remain in jail without trial, despite a widely publicised amnesty.

The imperialist powers were unable to use the protests to engineer regime-change in Iran, but the Raisi government has continued to face protests by Iran’s retirees, whose pensions have become worthless, and sporadic strikes by teachers and oil and other industrial workers, who bear the full brunt of the US-imposed economic sanctions—compounded by the kleptocracy’s handling of the pandemic and climate crisis. Tehran has responded with intimidation and repression, executing some 278 people so far this year.

In the run-up to next month’s anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s killing, the authorities have intensified the enforcement of the regime’s dress code for women, sending the Islamic Hijab police patrols back onto the streets, closing several firms and well-known startups whose workers failed to wear the hijab, and arresting at least 12 women activists. Female celebrities who challenged the hijab law have been given sentences of up to two years, with actor Azadeh Samadi ordered to undergo psychological treatment for “antisocial personality disorder.” The Guardian reported that some women had been denied the chance to take university exams and that a religious court had ordered a woman to wash corpses for burial as punishment for not wearing a headscarf.

The judiciary is taking increasingly harsh measures against journalists, activists and film directors, issuing new sentences and re-arresting those recently released from detention to politically intimidate critics of the regime. Maysam Dahbanzadeh, a political activist released from Evin prison in May, was given a new six-year prison term for “orchestrating gatherings intended to commit crimes against national security,” and “forming a group to disturb the nation’s security.” Ali Asghar Hassanirad, a former political prisoner, has been detained without explanation.

The Tehran-based journalists’ syndicate reported the judiciary had sentenced two journalists, Saeedeh Shafiei and Nasim Soltanbeigi, to three-year and seven-month terms, respectively. According to the International Federation of Journalists, 13 journalists are currently in jail.

The prominent film director Saeed Roustayi, whose 2019 film Law of Tehran (AKA Just 6.5) exposed Iran’s horrendous drug problem and the police’s brutal response, was given a six months’ prison sentence for showing his film Leila’s Brothers at last year’s Cannes film festival. The film, which won the International Federation of Film Critics award, tells the story of a family struggling with economic hardship in Tehran. It had been banned in Iran after it “broke the rules by being entered at international film festivals without authorisation,” and the director had refused to “correct” it as requested by the culture ministry. Roustayi and the film’s producer Javad Noruzbegi were found guilty of “contributing to propaganda of the opposition against the Islamic system.”

Last year, Iran ordered internationally acclaimed filmmaker Jafar Panahi, 62, to serve a six-year jail sentence for inquiring after his fellow directors Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad, who had been detained by the police.

Britain among four countries where new highly mutated COVID strain detected

Robert Stevens

Amid a surge of COVID cases in Britain, a new possibly more dangerous strain, BA.2.86, has been detected. The announcement that the new strain, dubbed “Pirola”, had been detected in the UK was made August 18, after it had already been found in Israel, Denmark and the United States.

Pirola could mark a new stage in the pandemic as it has 35 mutations on the spike protein that distinguish it from Omicron XBB.1.5.

A man walks past a COVID-19 vaccination tent at St Thomas' Hospital, near the National Covid Memorial Wall in London, Monday, December 27, 2021. Over 24.2 million people have been infected with COVID in the UK and over 229,000 are dead from the disease. (AP Photo/David Cliff)

Omicron was the most recent variant of COVID to dominate globally. Vaccines are effective against Omicron, and the next iteration of vaccines are aimed at combatting it. It is possible they will be less effective against Pirola.

It is likely that community transmission of Pirola has been underway for some time. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) reported that the first case found was detected in an individual with no travel history outside the UK.

The Independent reported Saturday, “Luke Blagdon Snell, a clinical research fellow at King’s College London, said a patient at Guy’s and St Thomas’ in the capital had first shown symptoms five days ago, and had acquired the infection ‘locally’”.

Molecular virologist Professor Marc Johnson tweeted, “The three Denmark cases were from different parts of the country and had no known contact with one another. This is looking more and more like an avalanche.”

Prof Francois Balloux, director of the UCL Genetics Institute, said that another SARS-CoV-2 variant, EG.5 / EG.5.1 (nicknamed Eris), was “one of the myriad Omicron sub-lineages in circulation constantly jockeying for places.” He said of Pirola, “More recently the BA.2.86 variant has attracted attention, rightly so, as it is of far more interest. BA.2.86 is the most striking SARS-CoV-2 strain the world has witnessed since the emergence of Omicron.”

“The most plausible scenario is that the lineage acquired its mutations during a long-term infection in an immunocompromised person over a year ago and then spread back into the community,” he said. “BA.2.86 has since then probably been circulating in a region of the world with poor viral surveillance and has now been repeatedly exported to other places in the world.”

The appearance in Britain of the new highly mutated version of COVID comes amid a spike in the spread of the disease, under conditions in which all testing and monitoring has been abandoned by the Conservative government and devolved Scottish and Welsh administrations. Those infections were driven by the Omicron variants Eris and Arcturus, accounting for nearly half of all UK cases.

Eris, or EG.5.1, was first monitored in Asia, in early July this year. Classified as a variant present in Britain on July 10, it then accounted for 11.8 percent of cases and increased by early August to 14.6 percent. The UN health agency reports that Eris has been detected in 51 countries. Arcturus, which emerged earlier, in April, was responsible for nearly 40 percent (39.4 percent) of UK cases at that time.

Since then, COVID has spread more widely, with the number of neighbourhoods hit by outbreaks in England seeing cases double in a fortnight. The Mail reported Saturday, based on UKHSA statistics, that almost 600 districts reported clusters of infections in the week to August 12. This was a marked increase from the 270 two weeks earlier.

The newspaper explained that “589 out of 6,500 neighbourhoods in England had detected at least three Covid cases in the week to August 12.” It continued, “For comparison, just 58 areas had reached this threshold — given to protect the anonymity of patients sickened in tiny clusters — at the start of July.” This represents a tenfold surge of COVID in England in the space of 10 weeks.

On August 7, the number of daily COVID hospital admissions had more than doubled from four weeks earlier. Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, wrote in The Conversation, “Immunity against infection, either from immunisation or following infection, is very short lived—only a matter of months. As covid heads towards being endemic it will likely still cause an average of around 80,000 new infections each day in England for years to come.”

Dr Trisha Greenhalgh, a primary healthcare expert at the University of Oxford and member of the group Independent SAGE, tweeted of Pirola, “My various science WhatsApp groups are buzzing. Genetic lineage clips and diagrams flying back and forth”, adding that it “looks like it’s once again time to MASK UP”.

The Mail, as with every national newspaper, backed the major political parties in reopening the economy and abandoning testing well over a year ago. National testing was stopped as long ago as April 2022. The Mail notes, “The [COVID surge] figures only reflect the tip of the iceberg, however. Barely any Covid cases are logged nowadays because of the decision [to end testing] … Infection rates are, therefore, not necessarily an accurate reflection of the current picture.”

In a population of over 66 million, only “Around 5,000 lateral flow test results and 2,700 PCR readings have been uploaded per day in the last week.”

The tearing up of all testing and monitoring measures, and depriving millions of people of access to vaccines, places the entire population in danger.

March 2022 saw the end of wastewater monitoring and this March the Office for National Statistics Covid-19 survey was ditched. In May, the Scottish National Party-Green Party government scrapped the use of masks in health and social care settings.

Earlier this month, the government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) issued guidance to the National Health Service barring 12 million people who had previously been eligible from receiving a free COVID vaccine. Britons between the ages of 50 and 64, except those classed as “vulnerable”, will be deprived of an additional booster dose. The same 12 million people will also be deprived of a free flu vaccine.

Scientist and doctors have responded with alarm. On Saturday, the Daily Record reported the contents of a letter from a prominent but unnamed GP “showing they [the profession] are worried about a new winter coronavirus surge and believe the current vaccine roll-out is not fit for purpose.”

The doctor wrote, “It’s been reported in the press there’s an upswing in Covid. We haven’t heard officially but GPs have been noticing this all over the place.

“Then yesterday we got a letter to say all testing was to stop, including frontline staff, unless we are vulnerable and may need treatment. I questioned the letter. It seemed odd we wouldn’t, given the upswing. I spoke with our director of public health to clarify that and also clarify what’s happening with vaccination as that seems a total shambles at the minute.”

Speaking to the MailOnline, Professor Stephen Griffin, an infectious disease expert at the University of Leeds, said of the many mutations of the new variant, “These types of changes typically take a long time to become established in concert, but the source of these new viruses is not immediately clear. Of course, our limited surveillance now makes this job much harder.

“Ultimately, whether or not humans declare that a public health emergency is over, the virus will carry on its course, regardless. The best way to future proof against this is a combined vaccine and mitigation-based approach. Worryingly, in the UK, we are currently winding both of these aspects down.”

Acting PSOE-Podemos government removes remaining mitigation measures as new Covid-19 variant Eris spreads across Spain

Santiago Guilen

A new wave of COVID-19 is rapidly spreading across Spain, fueled by the Eris variant (scientifically known as EG.5), which now accounts for over 30 percent of sequenced cases globally. It takes place just as the acting Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government has declared the end of the health crisis, and removed the last mitigation and monitoring measures.

Scientists throughout the world have also sounded the alarm over the emergence of a new COVID-19 named Pirola. After first being detected in Israel last week, Pirola was sequenced in another three countries, indicating that it has likely begun spreading globally undetected for some time.

Medical staff members attend to a COVID-19 patient in the ICU department of the Hospital Universitario, in Pamplona, northern Spain, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos) [AP Photo/Álvaro Barrientos]

In Spain, Pirola has yet to be detected. But it is hard to understand the true spread of the virus, given that the government, like others across the world, has dismantled basic monitoring measures.

The government stopped issuing the report with the indicators of the evolution of the pandemic and monitoring its incidence on July 4, two months after the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Biden administration in the US ended their COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) declarations. This signaled the total collapse of the pandemic surveillance systems globally.

The only way to monitor the evolution of the virus in Spain is now the Acute Respiratory Infection Surveillance System (SiVIRA) led by the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) that records the number of affected people who are treated in primary and hospital care along with other diseases such as influenza.

The latest report from SiVIRA shows that the rate of COVID-19 identified in primary care has increased significantly from 29.3 cases per 100,000 inhabitants on July 2 to 88 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in August 6.

In the same period, the rate of hospitalizations has gone from 0.6 to 2.04 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, although it has fluctuated. The percentage of positivity to SARS-CoV-2 stands at 32 percent in the last week, when a month ago it was at 24 percent.

Another clear proof of how COVID infections is rapidly increasing across Spain is the sale of antigen tests to detect the virus. The consultancy firm Iqvia, which has been carrying out a study on the sale of tests in 6,500 chemists across the country, points out that with the data for the week of July 31 to August 6, the increase in tests sold reached 174 percent compared to the end of June.

Joan Caylà, a member of the Spanish Epidemiology Society (SEE) explained to El Periódico de España that the increase in infections “is multicausal: it has to do with the new variant -not yet sequenced in Spain, but in other European countries, but also with the withdrawal of the [healthcare] alarm, masks, the unconcerned attitude of the population and the summer gatherings.' Caylá warned that “infections are increasing in the middle of summer instead of going down.'

The numbers hospitalized is beginning to be significant and could soon create problems. In Catalonia, there were 453 hospitalized as of last week. In the Basque country it has quadrupled to 124, from 30 the month before. In Galicia, the main hospitals have over 70 patients admitted.

The new spread of the virus will mean more Long Covid cases and its debilitating impact. Almost two million suffer from Long COVID in Spain and, of them, 600,000 have suffered from it for more than three years.

According to a follow-up survey carried out by the Spanish Society of General and Family Physicians (SEMG), only 15.6 percent of those affected by Long COVID work “under normal conditions”, compared to 46 percent who are on sick leave or work “with great difficulty”. 9.5 percent of those surveyed lost their job and only 2.9 percent have achieved permanent disability status. Workers who suffer from this dangerous ailment are either left out of the labor market due to their inability to work or are forced to work with pain or severe suffering, making it very difficult for their situation to be recognised and for them to be granted disability status.

The researcher at the AIDS Research Institute (IrsiCaixa), Roger Paredes told El Periódico de España, “The fact that you have not had persistent COVID in the first or second infection does not mean that you cannot contract it in the third.”

This is a serious problem that will continue to spread as infections grow.

Countries like the United States, Italy, South Korea, Japan and many others are suffering an increase in COVID cases similar to Spain due to the absolute passivity of capitalist governments and the complicit silence of the media.

The acting PSOE-Podemos government has refused to make any public statement even as cases rise since it announced the end of the health emergency on July 4 and was lifting obligatory masking in health centres. The Ministry of Health has also stopped publishing its weekly reports of infections, hospitalisations and deaths, even those over the age of 65, who were the only category monitored since the government announced the end of the surveillance for the general population in March 2022.

For those infected due to their work activity, particularly health workers who are in the frontline, PSOE-Podemos—in collaboration with the trade union bureaucracy—is making sure they receive as little compensation as possible to prioritise profits and cut costs.

As of July 26, COVID-19 infections in the workplace will not be considered occupational diseases, which means that these workers will receive less money for sick leave, money that will be saved by both public social security system and private companies in the health sector.

The reaction of the acting PSOE-Podemos government is a warning of any new government that will be formed in the wake of Spain’s contested July 23 general election. Whatever government is eventually formed amid ongoing negotiations—whether led by the right-wing People’s Party (PP) with the neo-Francoist Vox or the PSOE with the pseudo-left electoral platform Sumar (which incorporates the PSOE’s former coalition partner Podemos)—homicidal indifference to stopping the pandemic will remain. The incoming government will be pledged to maximise profits and subject the population to perpetual waves of infection, death and debilitation with Long COVID.

The PSOE-Podemos’ policies on the pandemic have already led to mass deaths. According to The Lancet calculations, these policies have already cost the lives of 162,000 lives as per excess deaths, even though official data remains at over 120,000.

Meanwhile, the government continues to spend billions of euros on the Spanish military and NATO's war against Russia in Ukraine, while showering large banks and corporations with billions of euros from European funds. That's where money that could be used to fund next-generation COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and the renovation of infrastructure to prevent airborne transmission is going.

Wildfires rage across British Columbia, forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes

Penny Smith

Wildfires are tearing through wide swathes of the western Canadian province of British Columbia as the country confronts the most devastating wildfire season in its history. 

Flames from the Donnie Creek wildfire burn along a ridge top north of Fort St. John, British Columbia, Canada, Sunday, July 2, 2023. [AP Photo/Noah Berger]

According to the BC Wildfire Service, there are 382 active wildfires burning across the province. This includes 157 deemed out of control, and 14 “of note,” meaning they are highly visible or threatening public safety. Over the past couple of days, the number of people under evacuation orders has soared to more than 15,000. An additional 35,000 more are on evacuation alert.

Distressing scenes of chaos, confusion, and catastrophic damage are being shared on social media by affected residents. In some instances, footage was captured as they fled for their lives. Numerous homes and other properties have been destroyed by the flames, with the precise number unknown. Despite the scope of the fires, there have been no reported civilian deaths reported so far.

Eleven of the wildfires of note are burning in the Kamloops and Southeast regions. These are some of the hottest places in western Canada, where record-breaking temperatures were registered this summer. 

In the Central Okanagan, the McDougall Creek wildfire, first identified last Tuesday northwest of the city of Kelowna, has exploded in size to 110 square kilometres. Parts of the area surrounding Kelowna, a region with a population of 235,000, have been badly devastated. Ten thousand residents have been forced to evacuate, including students at the local university and residents of seven care homes.

Footage of escaping locals jumping into Okanagan Lake as the flames travelled down the ridge from West Kelowna has been shared widely on social media. Flights have been cancelled and the airspace closed at Kelowna International Airport to prioritize aerial firefighting.

Ten kilometres south of Kamloops, the massive Adams Complex wildfires continue to rage out of control. The largest of the fires, the Bush Creek East fire, which has been burning since mid-July, has exploded to 300 square kilometres in size. Friday was declared by the regional district as the most devastating wildfire day in its history. Some 3,500 residents in several communities around the Shuswap Lake were evacuated amid conditions described by one local as a “scene of Armageddon.”

In Cathedral Grove National Park, southwest of the town of Keremeos, the out-of-control Crater Creek fire has ballooned to 410 square kilometres. Evacuation alerts and orders have been issued for nearby First Nations communities. On Wednesday, 70 people under evacuation order were rescued from a remote guest home when the only road access for escape was cut off by the raging fire.

In the Fraser Canyon, wildfires are again ablaze near Lytton, the village destroyed by wildfire in 2021, when two people were killed and several injured. Two years later, many of the town’s 200 residents are still displaced.

On Friday, premier David Eby (NDP) declared a province-wide state of emergency in response to what he called an “unprecedented” fire threat. The announcement came after forced evacuation orders for over 10,000 more people were made in the space of one hour. An order to restrict non-essential travel to fire-affected areas has been issued to ensure accommodation is available for evacuees and emergency personnel.

Air quality in the areas near the fires is extremely dangerous, rated at the maximum 10+ on the Air Quality Health Index—meaning very high risk. In mid-July, a nine-year-old boy in the town of Hundred Mile House tragically suffered a fatal asthma attack that his parents suspect was exacerbated by wildfire smoke. 

Emergency accommodation is becoming scarce. Sympathetic residents are generously offering their homes to victims of the wildfires. Out of those who have lost their homes, many are renters who will have no other choice but to move to larger urban centres, which have a near zero percent rental vacancy rate and little affordable housing. Many uninsurable properties have been lost and those homeowners left without the means to replace their house. 

On Sunday, a brief reprieve for firefighters came in southern British Columbia as the weather brought cooler temperatures and calmer winds into the area. However, the Northern Forestry Centre at the Canadian Forest Centre warns that there continues to be an “extreme risk” for more fires in British Columbia, the Prairies, the Northwest Territories and northern Ontario for weeks to come. 

Over 1,800 wildfires have burned about 1.61 million hectares of land throughout BC since April 1—almost four times the 10-year average and a catastrophic new record. The immediate general causes are forests made tinder-dry by extreme and extended heat waves. According to the BC Wildfire Service, around 80 percent of the current wildfires in the province have been sparked by dry lightning in a tree or other fuels.

In March, scientists warned that Canada was experiencing record-breaking heat two months earlier than usual—brought on by the effects of capitalist-induced climate change—placing it on track for the worst wildfire season on record. By June, a quarter of Canadians reported being impacted by the record-breaking wildfire season. At the time, more than 5,500 fires had broken out, affecting every province and territory, burning approximately 13.4 million hectares—a shocking ten times more than the 10-year average, and surpassing the record set by the 2020 California wildfires. On June 25, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre declared the 2023 wildfire season was the worst in Canada’s recorded history.

Last Wednesday, close to 22,000 residents fled the town of Yellowknife, capital of the Northwest Territories. The mandatory evacuation order came as wildfires burned out of control and encroached on the northern hub city from three sides. Fires remain about 15 kilometres from the deserted, smoky city with firefighters working day and night to beat back the flames and fortify firebreaks. Currently, another 236 fires are burning across the territory.

The climate change disaster continuing to unfold in British Columbia and across the country was both foreseen and preventable. It is the devastating consequence of capitalist governments throughout Canada and internationally doing nothing to effectively fight climate change while ramping up decades-long austerity policies to pay for imperialist war abroad and the enrichment of the ultra-wealthy.

Governments of all political stripes in Canada have razed fire prevention, firefighting and other emergency relief budgets to the bone to pay for imperialist wars against Russia and China and feed the corporate profit-gouging at the expense of the well-being and safety of working people. 

For decades, scientists have been warning authorities about forests littered with millions of hectares of dead or dying trees that turn into highly combustible fuel in drought conditions. Recommendations to governments to clear the forests of debris stretch back decades, yet only a small fraction of forests have been treated for fuel suppression.

The pro-business BC NDP government has shown time and time again its callous indifference to public safety. It slashed its summer wildfire emergency budget from $801 million in 2021 to a meagre $204 million in 2023. The budget was already depleted by June, less than a month into summer. Over the past two years, with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warning that rising greenhouse gas emissions are pushing the world to the brink of disaster, the provincial government handed out $1.3 billion in fossil fuel subsidies. 

In 2021, then-premier John Horgan, adopting the homicidal let-it-rip strategy of the ruling class, denied that COVID-19 was airborne and forced kids into infected schools, then covered up the outbreaks. His government then scrapped all pandemic restrictions and protections including vaccine and mask mandates and regular reporting. When a record-breaking deadly “heat dome” settled over British Columbia in late June 2021, resulting in 619 heat-related deaths mainly of vulnerable seniors, Horgan made the callous remark that “fatalities are a part of life.”

The Trudeau Liberal government, backed by its trade union and New Democratic Party allies, offers no way out of the devastating consequences of the capitalist system’s destruction of the environment. On the contrary, its ruthless pursuit of the interests of big business, including through corporate deregulation and tax exemptions for Canada’s oil firms, has fueled climate change.

In British Columbia, four firefighters have died needlessly this summer as many resource-strapped volunteer and composite crews risk their lives battling fires of monstrous scale. Many volunteers lack adequate training and experience. In a belated tweet Sunday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the military would be deployed to British Columbia “to help with evacuations, staging.”

Trudeau’s indifference is of a piece with US President Joe Biden, who responded with “no comment” when asked about the hundreds of deaths produced by the devastating fire that ripped through Maui. He then boasted of pathetic one-time payment of $700 per household for those who have lost everything in the disaster.

Saudi massacres of refugees: Mass murder by key US ally

Thomas Scripps

Border guards in Saudi Arabia, armed and trained by the imperialist powers, especially the United States, have committed sadistic crimes against humanity, according to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) released Monday. The report documents the systematic murder of hundreds of migrants, mainly from Ethiopia, at the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023.

Based on eyewitness, video and satellite evidence, the report, headlined, “They Fired on Us Like Rain,” found that large groups of migrants were targeted with mortars, rockets and tanks, leaving “scenes of horror: women, men, and children strewn across the mountainous landscape severely injured, dismembered, or already dead.”

These attacks sometimes continued for days. Many with limbs torn off had to be abandoned, with survivors describing memories of the screams and the mental trauma of being forced to leave them behind.

Fourteen-year-old Hamdiya told HRW, “We were fired on repeatedly. I saw people killed in a way I have never imagined. I saw 30 killed people on the spot. I pushed myself under a rock and slept there. I could feel people sleeping around me. I realized what I thought were people sleeping around me were actually dead bodies.”

Sometimes upwards of 100 people were killed in a single assault. Mass killings continued as the victims fled back toward Yemen. Mass graves are being dug at crossing points along the border.

Migrants apprehended by border guards report being asked in which limb they would like to be shot before the maiming was carried out. Others were beaten with rocks and metal bars. This was sometimes the method used to deal with those who had survived attacks from a distance with explosive weapons.

“A 17-year-old boy described how Saudi border guards forced him and other survivors to rape two girl survivors after the guards had executed another survivor who refused.”

Survivors temporarily detained in Saudi Arabia before being expelled back into Yemen were beaten, kept in unsanitary, overcrowded conditions—fed once a day and held in sites flooded with sewage.

HRW writes cautiously that “the abuses may qualify as crimes against humanity, if there is now a Saudi state policy of murder of civilian migrants,” but the evidence is overwhelming.

Between the start of the year and April 30, 2023, writes HRW, “UN experts reported receiving allegations of ‘artillery shelling and small arms fire allegedly by Saudi security forces causing the deaths of up to 430 and injuring 650 migrants, including refugees and asylum seekers.’ The report goes on to state that this ‘appears to be a systematic pattern of large-scale indiscriminate cross-border killings.’”

“They Fired on Us Like Rain” is based on 42 interviews with survivors, analysis of over 350 videos and photographs, and satellite imagery of hundreds of square kilometres. Photos and videos were analysed by members of the Independent Forensic Expert Group (IFEG) of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims.

This savagery is not merely the product of the barbaric regime in Riyadh, but of global capitalism, which relies on Saudi oil and the recycling of Saudi billions as a critical element in its world structure.

Global inequality, class societies dominated by obscenely rich despots, and regional and imperialist wars and intrigues have produced a hell on earth. Rape, torture and death are refugees’ reward for a harrowing journey out of the Horn of Africa, fleeing violence and hunger, and through Yemen.

Many will have been forced from their homes by the two-year Tigray war between the Ethiopian government and the northern region of the country, which formally ended in November last year. Between 300,000 and 500,000 people were killed by fighting, famine and lack of medical attention. Attacks on civilian locations, massacres and sexual violence were carried out by both sides.

Over 3 million are still internally displaced within the country and 9 million need food aid, with 40 percent of people in the Tigray region suffering extreme food shortages. The destruction of the war came on top of the worst drought on record in the whole Horn of Africa, threatening 50 million people with crisis levels of food insecurity. Ethiopia itself is host to nearly a million refugees, mainly from South Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea.

The journey to Saudi Arabia takes migrants through Djibouti and across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen. Smugglers frequently torture migrants to extort money from their families. Women are often raped, with two interviewed by HRW becoming pregnant in this way.

A video published on TikTok on December 4, 2022 shows a group of roughly 47 migrants, 37 of whom appear to be women, walking along a steep slope inside Saudia Arabia on the trail used to cross from the migrant camp of Al Thabit. [Photo: Human Rights Watch ]

Once in Yemen, migrants must pass through a war zone and a second unprecedented humanitarian disaster. A nine-year civil war has flattened its society. Seventeen million Yemenis are food insecure, with 2 million children suffering acute malnutrition. Over 70 percent of the population rely on some form of humanitarian aid, and the UN estimates 377,000 had been killed by the end of 2021—70 percent of them under the age of five.

Both the rump Yemeni government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, and Houthi rebel forces, who control more than half the country, have committed grave human rights abuses against migrants detained in appalling conditions, including violence and torture, sexual assault and executions. In 2021, HRW reported the burning to death of scores of migrants in Sanaa after Houthi forces fired weapons into a detention camp to suppress a protest.

Staging posts for the crossing to Saudi Arabia are set up in Yemen’s northern Saada region—ramshackle camps sometimes housing thousands of people. The smugglers use the migrants least able to pay as cannon fodder to scout the dangerous crossings.

American imperialism has its fingerprints all the way along this bloody trail. Its close economic, political and military partnership with the semi-feudal Saudi oligarchy is known by everyone. As part of their alliance, the US facilitates the Saudi intervention in the Yemeni civil war, which involves systematic airstrikes against civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Ties between the two governments were reinforced by US President Biden in a visit to Saudi Arabia in July last year. Biden’s trip reversed his empty campaign pledge to treat the country as an international pariah after its murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and was intended to line the Gulf States up behind the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. In Biden’s words at the time, “I think we have an opportunity to reassert what I think we made a mistake of walking away from: our influence in the Middle East… I want to make clear that we can continue to lead in the region and not create a vacuum, a vacuum that is filled by China and/or Russia.”

Significantly, the Human Rights Watch report, while repeatedly citing the Saudi use of “explosive weapons” against unarmed and helpless migrants, says nothing about which countries supplied those weapons, particularly the United States, Britain and France. The names of these countries do not even appear in the 73-page report. Instead, there is the carefully worded recommendation: “Concerned governments should suspend any transfers of arms and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia, including arms, training, and maintenance agreements and suspend any ongoing military training and cooperation with Saudi border guard units.”

Human Rights Watch is an organization generally aligned with American foreign policy. In the current US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine, HRW has published lengthy reports on alleged Russian atrocities, while making only the slightest mention of similar actions by the Ukrainian government. The group’s occasional critiques of key US allies are generally related to internal conflicts within the US national-security establishment, or the desire of the State Department to pressure these allies when their actions run counter to US foreign policy considerations.

But whatever the reasons for the timing of the release, there can be little doubt that the evidence is genuine and the findings damning. The Saudi regime, one of the three main allies of American imperialism in the Middle East, along with Israel and Egypt, is drenched in blood.

Governments such as the US and Britain which maintain friendly relations with Saudi Arabia while claiming to sanction other states for human rights abuses are guilty of sickening hypocrisy. Even the most tokenistic “commitments” to international law dissolve on contact with the oil wealth of the Gulf states. The imperialist governments claim that their rapacious foreign policies are based on considerations of human rights and international law, but Saudi Arabia is irrefutable proof that these claims are lies.

Moreover, even the barbarity of the Crown Prince pales by comparison to the crimes of the imperialist governments, and particularly of the United States. Over the past three decades, no other government in the world has waged as many wars, killed as many people, or broken international law more flagrantly than the government that sits in Washington D.C.

As for the abuse and outright murder of immigrants, the US and the imperialist powers of Europe are all guilty of their own crimes, whether at the hands of the US-Mexico border force or the innumerable measures under the policy known as “Fortress Europe” that have led to mass deaths.