Social protests in Syria as US tightens net around Iran and its allies

Jean Shaoul

The last 10 days have has seen numerous reports of anti-government protests in Syria demanding relief from economic hardship and the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Commentators have drawn parallels with the protests that broke out in March 2011 and posed the possibility of Assad’s downfall.

The 2011 protests were designated, in the wake of the NATO-led invasion of Libya to topple the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, as Syria’s “revolution” and used as a cover by the Obama administration for armed Islamist forces, financed by its Gulf allies and Turkey to replace al-Assad with a regime more compliant with the diktats of US imperialism.

In this May 17, 2018, file photo, Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, listens to Syrian President Bashar Assad during their meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia. [AP Photo/Mikhail Klimentyev]

On Sunday August 20, protests broke out in the southern, mainly Druze city of Sweida—the site of anti-government demonstrations in 2020 and 2022—after the government doubled public employees’ salaries and cut fuel subsidies on August 15, more than doubling the cost. The Syrian pound—In free fall since the start of Washington’s proxy war to topple the Syrian government in 2011—fell a further 30 percent. The dollar/lira conversion rate is now a staggering 10,700 lira, up from 50 lira to the dollar in 2011, resulting in hyperinflation and exacerbating already terrible economic and social conditions that have left 90 percent of the population living below the poverty line, amid rampant corruption among the ruling elite.

Local leaders with the support of the Druze clergy called a one-day general strike, closing all the shops in the city. Later in the week, protesters attacked the local offices of the ruling Baath party and set up roadblocks on the road to the capital Damascus. Some demonstrators chanted, “Step Down Bashar, We Want to Live in Dignity” and “Long Live Syria, Down with Bashar al-Assad.”

The local news outlet Sweida 24 reported protests had spread to the southern city of Daraa and the town of Jableh, near the coastal city of Latakia, along with others in opposition-held areas in the northwest, parts of Aleppo province bordering Idlib and the city Deir el-Zur along the Euphrates in the east. Al-Monitor reported that Baath party offices in other towns in Sweida province were also closed.

Rayan Maarouf, Sweida 24’s exiled editor, said that while the ending of fuel subsidies sparked the “uprising,” the demands are political—for the fall of the regime—not economic.

However, these reports are sketchy. While Syria’s state-controlled media have not reported the protests, Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah has acknowledged them, blaming them on the US. The content of some of the articles certainly belie headlines such as “Hundreds of thousands demonstrate in Syria to overthrow the Assad regime.”

These protests do appear to have US backing, with Syrian exile groups in the US supporting the demonstrations and calling for al-Assad’s overthrow. In Syria, the Kurdish Autonomous Administration, the US proxy that controls Syria’s northeast, and the rival Kurdistan National Council backed by Turkey, have put out statements in support, while protesters in Aleppo province and the rebel-held province of Idlib, where the Druze have faced systematic persecution, are pledging unity with Sweida and Daraa.

The pseudo-left Socialist Workers Party in Britain has given over the pages of their press to their co-thinkers in the Revolutionary Left in Syria. The group is breathlessly lauding the protests and supporting the recently formed 10 August Movement and the Civil Action Movement “that have called for strikes and other forms of civil disobedience.” It is participating in a coordinating committee that it acknowledges is “made up of several active movements, including our party. So we’re fighting a two-pronged battle—against the regime and against conservative and counter-revolutionary currents.”

In taking part in such an organisation, the role of the Revolutionary Left/SWP is to provide a political cover for efforts to manipulate and subordinate Syrian workers to religious leaders, pro-Turkish Islamist oppositionists, and “democratic movements” that are backed by and support US imperialism and other factions of the Syrian bourgeoisie. This serves to prevent workers from mounting an independent struggle against their own ruling class and imperialism.

The protests coincided with a fleeting visit by three Republican lawmakers from the US Congress—the first in a decade—via Turkey to a rebel-held area northwest of Aleppo that has seen sporadic strikes by Russian and Syrian forces against Turkish-backed Islamist militias. Their aim was to highlight the “tragic” situation in Syria, although their compassion only extended to rebel-held regions, and to call for the “international community to step in” against the al-Assad regime.

People queue up for gasoline in Idlib province, Syria, on December 15, 2022 [AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed, File]

That conditions across Syria are dire is indisputable, but primary responsibility for this rests with US imperialism and its European counterparts. Wages are worth less than $20 a month, making it impossible to put food on the table. Most families are dependent upon remittances from relatives abroad. Of Syria’s pre-war 22 million population, nearly eight million have fled the country, with an estimated 3.5 million living in Turkey. Remittances, believed to total around $400 million a month, far outweigh the value of salaries and wages paid in the poverty-stricken country.

The war, including four years of intense US aerial bombing, has killed half a million people and injured many more. It ruined Syria’s economy, laid waste to its cities and infrastructure, its agricultural system and irrigation networks, and left a deadly legacy of unexploded artillery shells, mines, cluster bomblets and other munitions on farmland, roadsides and in buildings.

Washington and its regional allies, the Gulf States, Turkey and Israel, funded and/or supported hundreds of militias to fight the Syrian regime, but also each other. US forces and its proxies, including the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration, now control up to one third of Syria’s land mass, although not its major population centres, including its oil producing region around Deir el-Zur and its traditional breadbasket around Hassakeh, both in the east of the country, where strife continues. There have been several clashes this week between US-backed Kurdish and Turkey-backed Arab fighters in Deir el-Zur province that have left at least 34 people dead and many wounded.

While al-Assad, aided by Iran and Russia and its regional allies, regained control of much of the country, economic and social conditions failed to improve as the US sought to bankrupt Syria, imposing sanctions targeting its banking sector and choking its export industries and businesses. The US, via its control over multilateral financial institutions, also engineered the collapse in 2019 of Lebanon’s economy with which Syria is inextricably linked, to tighten the noose around Damascus.

The devastating February earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria intensified Syria’s socio-economic crisis, killing more than 6,000, destroying some 10,000 buildings and leaving about 265,000 people homeless. The earthquakes caused more than $5 billion in direct physical damage in Syria and a 5.5 percent contraction in its GDP, already down from $67 billion in 2011 to $12 billion in 2022, according to the World Bank.

The US/NATO led war in Ukraine against Russia has also limited Moscow’s financial support for Damascus, while causing wheat prices to soar. Although the Arab League has readmitted al-Assad after suspending him at the start of the proxy war and the Gulf states have re-established relations with Damascus, this has yet to deliver either investment or significant aid.

Washington, anxious to disrupt the growing links between its Gulf allies, Iran, Russia and China, is ramping up the pressure on Iran and its allies in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. The US is to hold major military drills with Israel, including one that would simulate an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. It follows a major joint drill involving US Central Command and the Israel Defense Forces in January that included air force exercises and missile defence drills.

General Mark Milley, who heads the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, met Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi recently in Israel in an unscheduled visit. During his previous visit last March, he had discussed regional security issues and “coordination to defend against threats posed by Iran.” Israel has carried out near weekly air strikes against Syria, most recently hitting both Damascus and Aleppo airports yet again, causing heavy damage, adding to the hundreds of air strikes since 2011 targeting Syrian troops, Iran-backed fighters and Hezbollah.

US energy envoy Amos Hochstein is visiting Lebanon to lessen the country’s reliance on Iran by dangling the prospect of support for the country’s offshore energy resources. According to Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen channel, the US has sent military reinforcements to its bases near Deir el-Zur in Syria and deployed fighter aircraft. It has also despatched additional forces along the border between Iraq and Syria, near Al Bukamal, possibly in preparation for operations against pro-Iran militias in eastern Syria.

Former Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki said that the recent deployment of US forces to Anbar province in western Iraq indicated that their aim is to close its border with Syria and prepare to overthrow the Syrian regime. He added that he had refused Washington’s request to close Iraq’s border with Syria in 2011 because it would have amounted to a siege on another country.

Last month, the Pentagon 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.

More than 100 schools in England told to shut buildings at critical risk of collapse days before new school year

Robert Stevens

Over 150 schools in Britain are so structurally flawed they are on the point of collapse, endangering the lives of children and staff. The news was revealed just days before the autumn term starts on Monday.

The buildings in question contain reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, known as RAAC. The lightweight, cheap material was used extensively across the UK and in many types of buildings, including hospitals, from the 1950s to the 1990s and has passed its 30-year design life.

RAAC is filled with air pockets, degrades in wet conditions, and lacks the strength and durability of ordinary concrete. In 1982, RAAC production in the UK ended amid safety concerns, and the Building Research Establishment subsequently declared it life-expiring after 30 years. The material is still used in China, central Asia, India and the Middle East.

Aerated autoclaved concrete, close-up view [Photo by Marco Bernardini, own work / CC BY-SA 3.0]

The problems with RAAC have been known for years, with the first crack appearing in a UK building in 1995. A national audit was begun in 2018 after the roof of a primary school in Gravesend, Kent collapsed in 2018 above the school staff room, also damaging toilets, computers and furniture. It was only due to the collapse occurring on a Saturday that deaths and injuries were avoided. The roof only began showing signs of stress 24 hours before the incident. Another unnamed school saw its RAAC roof collapse in 2017.

In September last year, the Office of Government Property (OGP), responsible for public buildings, issued a “Safety Briefing Notice” warning “RAAC is now life-expired and liable to collapse”. That summer, emails leaked to the Observer sent by senior officials at the DfE to Downing Street during Boris Johnson’s premiership warned many school buildings posed a “risk to life”.

More urgent warnings were issued in March this year, with experts pointing to the extraordinary £11.4 billion backlog in school repair work—even higher than the National Health Service’s £10.2 billion.

Any remedial work is being carried out at a glacial pace. The response after 2018 consisted of the Department for Education (DfE) sending a questionnaire to schools asking if they had any confirmed or suspected cases of RAAC. Only if the school said yes did the DfE sent out engineers to confirm it. Of the 14,900 schools potentially having RAAC, just 6,300 informed the DfE they had completed work to identify whether RAAC had been used.

Schools Minister Nick Gibb revealed to the media Friday morning, three days before schools were due to open, that events over the summer involving a particular type of concrete had shown educational and other buildings to be unsafe. This included a beam collapsing on school premises, despite there being no external signs it was a “critical risk”—another life-threatening event.

The day before, when the story broke that a number of schools would have to close due to RAAC, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said affected schools would contact parents directly, adding, “If you don’t hear, don’t worry”. Appearing Friday morning, Gibb could not provide any figures on the number of schools needing to be closed, saying, “We don’t know yet.”

The DfE has announced that 156 schools are at risk, with 104 requiring urgent action and only 56 identified earlier having received repair works.

Government officials have recklessly played down the dangers. Speaking to LBC’s Nick Ferrari radio programme, Gibb said some schools would have their ceilings propped up with steel girders. Asked if he would be happy for his young nieces and nephews to sit in a classroom under a ceiling propped up by a steel girder, Gibb replied, “Yes, because we’re taking a very precautionary approach. Some say we are being overcautious in dealing with this.”

It is not yet confirmed but according to the Press Association, 24 schools have been told to close entirely.

Building work underway at one of the affected schools, Abbey Lane Primary in Sheffield, England, September 1, 2023

The problem is vast and requires a mass shutdown and repair of schools nationwide. The Guardian reported, “One schools estates manager told the Guardian that the number of those affected in some way could eventually rise as high as 1,000 and said the crisis could end up with children being taught in temporary buildings for as long as a decade to come.”

Gibb said more than he intended when interviewed by GB News. “By the way, RAAC applies only in the period [between] the 1950s and the 1990s, so schools built or extended before that period or afterwards—which is about half the school estate—will not even need to consider whether they have RAAC.” The other half is therefore at risk.

Figures obtained by the Scottish Liberal Democrats in May revealed the substance was present in at least 37 Scottish schools.

Due to the refusal to act by successive governments, the full extent of the problem beyond schools—in hospitals, public housing and other buildings—is unknown. Fully seven months ago the Mirror reported, “Over 30 NHS buildings and hospitals are ‘ticking time bombs’ that could ‘collapse without warning’ and it will cost more than £1 billion to repair them.” According to Mid Cheshire Hospitals Foundation Trust chief executive James Summer, seven of those identified were “made nearly exclusively” of RAAC.

The government has identified five hospitals constructed mostly from RAAC which will not be rebuilt until 2030 at the earliest. The north west of England has 11 hospital buildings built with RAAC, including seven with roofs made from it. According to a Manchester Evening News assessment last month, “Current government plans would not see removal of this concrete from all affected hospitals [in the North West] for another 13 years.”

The government, which has imposed £10 billion in school budget cuts since 2010, at first insisted as late as Thursday evening, “We expect you [schools] to be able to fund anything that is an additional revenue cost, for example rental costs for emergency or temporary accommodation for education settings or additional transport costs for local authorities.’

By Friday morning, forced into damage limitation mode, Gibb had to say Whitehall would cover “all capital costs” over any disruption. He made clear the type of alternative accommodation being considered: “So if, in the worst-case scenario, we need Portacabins in the school estate… we will cover all those costs.”

The idea that schools will be quickly able to find suitable space for thousands of pupils, and transport to the new locations, in a country which can barely run functioning school and transit systems at the best of times, is ludicrous. Such an unserious response is indicative of the ruling class’s total disregard for the vast majority of children’s education. Its sole imperative, at it was during the height of the pandemic, is to keep them in schools so that parents can go to work, whatever the risk—whether of infection with Covid or a classroom roof coming down on their heads.

Schools still have next to no mitigations in place against the spread of COVID-19, with a renewed surge underway globally. As far back as April 2022, the government ended routine testing for the virus in educations and children’s social care settings.

This is accepted by and the responsibility of the trade unions, which have not lifted a finger to defend the safety of their members, working in COVID and asbestos ridden, structurally unsound schools for years.

The National Education Union, the largest teaching union, issued a statement Friday proposing no action, only reiterating, “The NEU and sister unions have been raising concerns ever since [2010] and pressuring education secretary Gillian Keegan in recent months to release a list of RAAC-affected schools”. Their sole demand was that the “Government must fund all costs for schools affected by RAAC.”

Mpox pandemic spreads into China after lifting of Zero-COVID policy

Lily Zhao

Since the beginning of June 2023, China has experienced a significant outbreak of mpox (previously known as monkeypox), joining ranks with the rest of the world in the ongoing but rarely reported on mpox pandemic. Unsurprisingly, this development is taking place in the aftermath of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) abandoning its Zero-COVID policy that maintained a strict public health program against the spread of COVID-19 within its national borders.

The mpox pandemic began in May 2022 with the relaxation of most anti-COVID mitigation measures and limitations to public gatherings, with an initial cluster of cases detected in the United Kingdom. By the end of the month several countries, predominately in Europe, but including Asia, Africa, North America and Oceania had reported cases. This was the first time in history that the virus that caused mpox had spread so widely outside of Central and West Africa.

Global distribution of mpox cases. Inset A: mpox cases per country through September 1, 2022. Inset B: Countries with endemic mpox virus. [Photo: National Institutes of Health]

On July 14, 2023, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a situational report where they confirmed they had diagnosed 106 new cases across seven provinces and municipal cities in the month of June. The same monthly report published in August revealed that in July the number of new infections rose sharply to 491 and geographically spread across 23 of the 31 provinces and municipal cities in mainland China.

By the end of July, 597 new cases were confirmed by health authorities. The unprecedented outbreak of mpox in China and more broadly across East Asia this summer is consistent with the abandoning of public health measures against COVID and another dire warning that capitalism is fundamentally incapable of mobilizing the necessary resources against any global public health emergency.

Nearly a third of the cases have been centered in Guangdong Province in the southeast, followed by 126 cases in Beijing. The southwestern province of Sichuan reported 49 cases, while the coastal provinces in the east, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, each recorded 39 and 41. While the majority of cases concentrated in the far more populous eastern part of the country, the virus has spread across most provinces in just two months.

This ongoing mpox outbreak is developing with the most rapid pace in the world at present, according to reports from the World Health Organization (WHO). According to the international health agency, as of August 29, 2023, 114 countries have reported cases with nearly 90,000 cases confirmed and 157 fatalities.

Before June, China had reported only one mpox patient from September 2022 in the southwestern municipal city of Chongqing, and this case was imported from abroad. Because the Zero-COVID policy was still in place back then, the patient was quarantined upon entry into China, during which he was immediately tested for mpox after rashes developed on his skin.

Map of mpox cases in China: September 2022 vs June and July 2023.

This had remained the only mpox case in China until June this year. The sudden uptick, by no coincidence, took place after the ending of Zero-COVID policy and the lifting of all restrictions on domestic and international travels last winter. The virus was most likely introduced again into China this year and was allowed to spread across the country due to the lack of any preventive public health measures.

Even after this outbreak on the national level, the response from the CCP regime has focused on downplaying the danger of the virus and promoting misinformation about how it transmits.

In a Q&A published on August 2 after the sharp increase in cases caused widespread concern, the CDC reassured the general public that “since the outbreak of mpox in many countries around the world in 2022, the majority of cases, clinically speaking, have been mild…. Deaths were mostly among people who were infected with HIV but were not able to receive treatment or other immunocompromised people. Since 2022, the death rate is about 0.1 percent in regions where the disease is not endemic.”

In the meantime, the regime also disseminates illusions that the virus almost only spreads between men who have sex with men (MSM). In the report on July mpox cases, the CDC concluded that since all confirmed cases have been among men and 96 percent of them were MSM, risks through other forms of contact are extremely low.

The CDC in Beijing published an article in mid-June where one of the subheadings is “for normal people, the chance of being infected with mpox is low.” Xinhua News Agency, the official state media, declared on July 14 that “the possibility of a large-scale infection is low.”

Even though statistically speaking, most patients so far have been MSM, the virus can and has spread into and threatens other sections of the population, especially children, pregnant women and the immunocompromised, who are more likely to develop complications after infection.

Before the beginning of this year, according to a study in Lancet, there had been 59 cases among children in Europe and 31 in the United States. Many of the infections were through the household environment. In Brazil, 38 children under the age of four, including two infants, were infected with mpox, and the ratio between male and female is about one-to-one, contrary to the media propaganda that the virus only infects men.

Transmissions outside of sexual contact are not negligible either. In the WHO’s latest release on mpox data, it issued a special warning against occupational exposures. Healthcare workers constituted 4.8 percent of all cases since 2022, and 8 percent of all infections are healthcare-associated.

Quarantine measures have also been very limited. Per the recent guidelines on mpox, jointly published by the CDC and the National Health Commission on July 26, suspected and confirmed cases should be quarantined at a medical facility, but they will be allowed to quarantine at home once their skin vesicles have scabbed. Patients with mild symptoms are allowed to quarantine at home from the beginning. According to interviews in the South China Morning Post, patients quarantined at a hospital must pay for all costs out of pocket.

The guideline suggests patients should quarantine at home. Should they have to leave their homes, however, they advised them to cover their skin, wear masks and avoid the crowd if they need to leave their homes. Close contacts are not required to quarantine at all, but only need to self-monitor for 21 days by measuring body temperature, watching for potential symptoms and avoiding blood donation.

No reference to vaccinations is made in the guidelines. In the CDC’s Q&A article, it simply stated that “mainland [China] has no vaccines against mpox for the time being.”

As noted, the current surge in China is part of a broader resurgence of mpox infections. Although the WHO ended the public health emergency (PHE) on mpox in May, around the same time they ended the PHE for COVID-19, at a press conference on August 25, Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus admitted, “we have seen a significant increase in cases in the last two months in Asia.”

According to WHO data, over the past three weeks, there has been a 72 percent increase in cases from Western Pacific Region, including China, Japan and South Korea, countries who have witnessed upticks in cases in the recent period. During the same period, the increase has been 48 percent and 11 percent for Europe and the Americas, respectively. Portugal reported a 201 percent increase, the highest relative increase in cases.

World Health Organization mpox outbreak map for June 27, 2022. [Photo: WHO]

For China, the recent outbreak is another testament of the criminality and dire consequences of lifting the Zero-COVID policy. On top of close to two million deaths, waves after waves of infections and mass debilitation, other dangerous viruses have and will emerge and spread almost entirely unchecked around the country.

But this is not just the result of a national failure. Under capitalism, every aspect of economy, transportation and life have been integrated internationally. As the impossibility of eliminating COVID-19 based on a nationalist program demonstrates, one cannot build an isolated sanctuary to forever shut viruses out of national borders. Only a globally coordinated strategy, based on the prioritization of public health over private profits, can stop the needless spread of these and many other preventable diseases.

Given the concerted efforts by leading economies to dismantle their public health systems, it is widely accepted that the current figures on mpox, like COVID, are a vast undercount. Despite mpox being a DNA virus that does not mutate as easily as SARS-CoV-2, the failure to contain its spread and to develop and distribute effective vaccines over a year into its global outbreak is a further damning exposure of capitalist decay.

Guantanamo military judge rules against evidence “derived from torture”

Tom Carter

An exceptional legal ruling issued from the depths of America’s secretive apparatus of military tribunals has thrown a wrench into the latest government efforts to whitewash the notorious Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture program.

This ruling—and the depraved and sadistic war crimes that it once again brings to light—underscores the hypocrisy with which the US government now claims to be defending “human rights” and the so-called “rules-based international order” abroad.

The ruling in question is a 50-page pretrial decision issued August 18 by Army Colonel Lanny J. Acosta Jr. in favor of Guantanamo Bay prisoner Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who allegedly played a role in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. Al-Nashiri, who has been imprisoned for two decades without trial, is currently being prosecuted in the secretive pseudo-legal apparatus of military tribunals that was established as part of the “war on terror” and about which many Americans to this day remain unaware.

Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on January 11, 2002. [Photo: DoD photo by Petty Officer 1st class Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy]

Under this framework, if a person is arrested and prosecuted as a vaguely defined “enemy combatant,” the judge, the prosecutors and even the “jury” all consist of military officers. The lopsided procedural rules are designed to favor prosecutors with every conceivable advantage. The US asserts the power to prosecute citizens of any country under this system, including US citizens. Those found guilty can be sentenced to death and executed.

After being abducted by the CIA in Dubai in 2002 without charges or trial, al-Nashiri was one of numerous victims subjected to extensive and systematic torture at Guantanamo Bay and at secret CIA dungeons known as “black sites” located around the world. He was repeatedly sexually assaulted by American torturers in a perverted and sadistic practice known as “rectal feeding.”

The depravity of al-Nashiri’s torture exceeds the most depraved of the depraved films in the horror film genre—and is all the more horrifying because it really happened, and at the direction and with the approval of the highest levels of the US government.

In an effort to extract a “confession,” American torturers operated a power drill next to al-Nashiri’s blindfolded head and told him they were going to drill into his skull. They told him that they would bring his mother into the torture chamber and force him to watch them rape her. They strapped him into excruciating “stress positions” reminiscent of the Catholic Inquisition and crammed his body into a small box. He was “waterboarded” repeatedly and subjected to meticulous and protracted sleep deprivation.

He was housed naked in a cold cell. Interrogators struck him in the head repeatedly and blew cigar smoke in his face. In one torture session, described by Acosta in his ruling, al-Nashiri was forcibly rubbed and scraped on his “buttocks and genitals” with “a stiff boar brush that was then forced into the Accused’s mouth.” Al-Nashiri reported that he was then “sodomized with the brush.”

Many of the torture techniques were designed by professional psychologists with the specific intent of destroying the victims’ sanity while leaving their bodies relatively intact. In addition to their physical injuries, many of the victims of this torture program now suffer from extreme psychological trauma. The sexual assaults, in particular, have been noted to have had a severe effect. In the cases of some victims, the trauma—left untreated for years—was so severe that they are now effectively incompetent. They can no longer think or function normally.

In 2007, confronted with the possibility that the “evidence” the torturers extracted with these methods would be found inadmissible, even within the network of secret military tribunals that was subsequently instituted, the government brought in a supposed “clean team” to extract all of al-Nashiri’s alleged confessions a second time, purportedly without the taint of torture.

In his ruling, Acosta flatly rejected the admissibility of the “clean team” evidence, finding that it was still categorically tainted by torture because “any resistance the accused might have been inclined to put up when asked to incriminate himself was intentionally and literally beaten out of him years before.

“Even if the 2007 statements were not obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, they were derived from it,” Acosta wrote. As he is scheduled to retire next month, Acosta’s ruling has the character of a parting shot.

Acosta also rejected government claims that the “rectal feeding” was justified for supposed medical reasons. “Since the early 20th century, medical knowledge has concluded that there is no medical reason to conduct so-called ‘rectal feeding,’” he wrote. “Although fluids can be absorbed through the rectum in emergencies, food or nutrition cannot.”

Reporting on the decision and its implications, the New York Times limited itself to two articles buried far from the front pages. If the conduct described in Acosta’s ruling had been perpetrated by the government of Russia or China, the Times would have produced dozens of articles and editorials brimming with moral indignation and demands for accountability.

But the language employed by the Times is nevertheless remarkable for its candor, acknowledging on August 26 that the CIA torture program represents a “legacy of state-sponsored torture.”

The rest of the “mainstream” media has scrupulously ignored these reports by the “newspaper of record.”

The existence of a massive torture program operated by the American military and intelligence agencies does not only implicate the individual torturers in war crimes. The fact that nobody has ever faced accountability or consequences incriminates all branches of government, the military, and both political parties, together with all the media, corporate, and academic institutions that have complacently reconciled themselves to this reality—in short, the entire US political establishment.

Aside from the tiny handful of courageous and principled attorneys representing the victims—who have faced harassment, intimidation and arrest for their efforts—all of official America will forever bear the unwashable stain of the torture program.

During the 2008 elections, Barack Obama as a candidate promised repeatedly to close the Guantanamo Bay torture camp. But as president, not only did he fail to do so, he actively shielded CIA torturers from accountability with the policy of “looking forward, not backward.” Meanwhile, Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder openly defended the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, as well as the president’s power to order the CIA to abduct or kill anyone, anywhere in the world, without charges or trial.

In 2014, the Senate Intelligence Committee published official findings, albeit heavily redacted and released only in summary form, that exposed the global scope of the torture program, as well as the criminal CIA efforts to cover it up. But to this day, the full report remains secret and none of the perpetrators has ever been brought to justice. The only significant prosecution to date related to the torture program was the conviction of CIA agent John Kiriakou, who was jailed by the Obama administration for publicly acknowledging the CIA’s use of waterboarding in 2007.

As details regarding the torture program began to come to light, in 2005 the CIA systematically and deliberately destroyed videotapes showing the torture being inflicted, including the torture of al-Nashiri. The destruction of these tapes by the CIA was the legal equivalent of hoisting a black flag with the skull and crossbones on the high seas. Not only was this a flagrantly illegal act in broad daylight, it was an unrepentant affirmation that the CIA will never allow itself to be held accountable by anything resembling a democratic process. And it worked: Nobody ever went to jail for the destruction of the tapes, not under Obama, Trump or Biden.

In any criminal prosecution conducted under anything resembling basic democratic norms, the deliberate destruction of evidence by the government, or the torture of the accused, would make a conviction impossible.

The US media apparatus, which at this point functions as little more than an industry for the production of war propaganda, relentlessly accuses Russia of “war crimes” and violations of “international law.” But across both Democratic and Republican administrations, the US has refused to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court because war criminals like those responsible for the treatment of al-Nashiri would immediately be subject to international arrest warrants.

This includes Republican primary presidential candidate and current Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has bragged about his role as a Naval officer in Guantanamo Bay in 2006. Mansoor Adayfi, who was a teenager when he was transported to Guantanamo Bay, has reported that DeSantis was present when he was tortured for his participation in a hunger strike. Under international law as well as American law, this would make DeSantis legally culpable, if not as a direct participant in torture, then at a minimum as a co-conspirator or accomplice in a war crime for his failure to intervene.

In al-Nashiri’s case, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) already ruled in 2014 that Poland violated international human rights law by permitting the CIA to torture him at a “black site” on its territory.

The CIA torture program was not an accidental or secondary byproduct of America’s “war on terror” but an essential centerpiece. The principal idea of the “war on terror,” which was launched in 2001 with the support of leading Democrats and Republicans alike, was that America confronted a “state of emergency” following the events of September 11, 2001, under which ordinary constitutional democratic rights and norms had to be suspended on an “emergency” basis.

This “state of exception,” a legal concept lifted from Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, meant that the US military could be unshackled to wage aggressive (“preemptive”) war anywhere in the world, while the government was free to ride roughshod over democratic rights at home.

Externally, this manifested itself in the eruption of military aggression against Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, and at home in attempts to normalize unlimited government surveillance, the abrogation of democratic rights, dictatorial executive powers, military tribunals, assassination and torture. It was under this framework that the infamous “torture memos” were drafted and circulated at the highest level of the Bush administration—and then put into effect against victims such as al-Nashiri.

The open-ended “Authorization to Use Military Force” in 2002, which not only authorized the unprovoked invasion of Iraq but proved central to the legal framework of the “war on terror,” was passed with the votes of then-Senator Biden, as well as Democratic senators Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.

The essential legal framework of the “war on terror” remains on the books to this day, including the authoritarian USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 (which passed the Senate with a bipartisan vote of 99-1), laws establishing the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 (which passed the Senate 90-9), and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (with 12 Democratic senators voting in support).

The CIA torture program is one acute symptom of the protracted crisis and decay of American democracy, which has been characterized in the wake of the liquidation of the USSR by three decades of endless military violence, a political establishment lurching further and further to the right and deepening political, economic and social dysfunction.

From the standpoint of dominant sections of the American ruling class, to prosecute the torturers would implicate too many individuals in leading government positions and would tarnish the credibility of too many institutions—individuals and institutions now considered essential to shoring up the official displays of “unity” behind the ongoing NATO proxy war in Ukraine and behind future plans for “great power conflict” abroad and repression at home.

Unsurprisingly—but revealingly—the New York Times has reported that the Biden administration’s military prosecutors are “already appealing” Acosta’s ruling. The appeal amounts to yet another effort to shield the torturers from accountability and consequences. It further implicates the entire American political establishment in an episode constituting some of the most depraved, brutal and sadistic criminality to this point in the 21st century.

Cost of damage from Hurricane Idalia could reach $20 billion

Kevin Reed

After causing catastrophic damage and flooding in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas on Wednesday and Thursday, the remnants of Hurricane Idalia regained strength on Friday as a tropical cyclone that was approximately 80 miles west-southwest of Bermuda, the British island territory in the Atlantic Ocean.

Tina Brotherton, 88, looks over the remains of her business, Tina's Dockside Inn, which was completely destroyed in Hurricane Idalia, as was Brotherton's nearby home, in Horseshoe Beach, Florida, Friday, September 1, 2023, two days after the storm's passage. [AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell]

According to the National Hurricane Center, the storm has maximum sustained winds of 50 miles per hour and will move near the south of Bermuda on Saturday. A tropical storm warning is in effect with winds extending outward up to 240 miles from the center of the cyclone. The storm is expected to bring between three and five inches of rain to Bermuda and produce hazardous surf on the island, which has a population of 65,000 people.

Severe damage has occurred in towns along Florida’s Big Bend coastal region from the initial impact of Idalia. CNN reported on Thursday evening, “In its wake, the storm left thousands of homes damaged in Florida—some with shredded walls and roofs, others with murky, waist-high floodwater that officials warn could be dangerous for days to come.”

Photos and videos posted on social media show severe flooding and reports of people being rescued from waters that were driven by the rain and storm surge. In the working class communities of Pasco County, just north of the city of Tampa, between 4,000 and 6,000 homes were damaged, according to county officials.

PowerOutage.us reports that approximately 65,000 Florida electric customers were without power as of Friday evening in the zone where the hurricane passed through the state and moved into Georgia. The state health department has issued a boil water advisory for DeSoto, Dixie, Leon, Levy, Marion and Taylor counties.

Michael Bobbitt, a Cedar Key resident who rode out the storm to help his neighbors, said the scene after the hurricane came through was “almost apocalyptic.” Bobbitt said some homes “were just picked up and carried into the Gulf, so that was heartbreaking to see. My neighbor’s house across from me was submerged to the roof line, but we had no injuries.”

While it appears that the death toll from the storm has been limited, the corporate media and political establishment in Florida and Washington D.C. are downplaying the extent of the damage from the storm and covering up its impact on the working class throughout the region.

As recovery efforts are underway, early estimates of the total cost of the hurricane range from $12 billion to $20 billion. Moody’s Analytics published this preliminary estimate in its weekly economic summary dated August 31. The report said the numbers account for a combination of property damage and lost economic output throughout the region.

The Moody’s report said the estimate comes “not from a handful of counties that were decimated but instead a large, multi-state area experiencing significant but not catastrophic damage.”

Significantly, from the standpoint of the corporate and financial interests for whom Moody’s Analytics is published, the claim that the damage from the hurricane was “not catastrophic” is based on its assessment that “the storm made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend, which is fortuitous. Its three coastal counties— Dixie, Levy and Taylor—are three of just five among roughly three dozen on Florida’s coast that are not large enough to be part of a metropolitan area.”

The report then goes on, “This means that the hurricane’s worst impacts were felt in an area with fewer people and structures than most similar events. Given the relative lack of economic activity and relative absence of land constraints, property values in the Big Bend are lower than they are for much of the rest of the state, further suppressing costs.”

In other words, as far as the capitalist elite is concerned, the devastated rural areas where Idalia struck Florida and the 84,000 people who live there are of little concern or economic value.

A report by Fox35 said residents in Horseshoe Beach, a small town in Dixie County, were hit with water and wind and “homes blew over like stacks of cards, strewing debris all over the city.”

Fox35 interviewed Herman Neely, who has lived in Horseshoe Beach for 78 years. The furniture inside his house was flipped over by four and a half feet deep water, and a freezer was toppled. Neely said, “It’s hell on wheels. It’s the worst. Sure is.”

The population of Dixie County is 17,100. The median household income of the country is $44,287, well below the national medium of $82,000. Approximately 15 percent of families and 19 percent of the population live below the poverty line, including 24 percent of children under age 18 and 16 percent of those age 65 or over.

Meanwhile, Bob Henson, a meteorologist and journalist with Yale Climate Connections, told the Associated Press, “The most unusual aspect was the especially high water recorded at Charleston, South Carolina, and other places along the Southeast coast.” Henson added, “These high waters were a combination of a ‘supermoon’ high tide, the storm-surge effects of Idalia, and a long-term component from sea level rise associated with human-produced climate change.”

Escalating maternity service crisis in Australian public health facilities

John Mackay

Maternity care in Australia is facing an unprecedented crisis caused by major staffing shortages exacerbated by ongoing government budget cuts and the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to the closure of services, most seriously impacting regional and rural areas. Shortages of midwives are being reported across urban, regional and rural Australia.

NSW nurses protesting during a one-day strike on March 31, 2022.

Currently the closures are primarily in private hospitals, forcing large numbers of pregnant women to shift to the already burdened and understaffed public healthcare system, which is experiencing burn out and resignations of trained and experienced health care professions.

The latest is the Cairns Private Hospital’s closure of its maternity ward. Now due to a nationwide shortage of specialist staff, the Cairns Public Hospital is left to cover maternity services for the remote region of Far North Queensland with a population just under 200,000.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported last week that the high cost of private insurance and staffing shortages of midwives, as well as obstetricians and pediatricians, was threatening the closure of the St John of God Hospital in Bunbury in southwest Western Australia. The private hospital has been providing maternity services for nearly a century. Its closure means that the nearest option, apart the local public hospital, is a private hospital 100km away.

In February, Epworth Hospital, a private hospital in Geelong, Victoria announced that it would close its maternity ward the following month due to staff shortages. There were 14 full time equivalent roles vacant in its maternity service, a 44 percent vacancy rate.

This meant that the 100 booked births had to find alternative maternity services and there were only two other wards available in Geelong at Barwon Health’s University Hospital and the private St John of God Hospital. The Geelong region of over 200,000 people about an hour southwest of Melbourne, is expected to see a 46 percent increase in population over the next 20 years.

Recent national data from the Department of Health and Human Services notes that the number of people working in midwifery fell by 1,220 between 2016 and 2022, with the decline across every state and territory. A 2021 survey of 1,000 midwives in Victoria cited by the ABC last month revealed that almost three-quarters were feeling burnt out and 40 percent were considering leaving the profession.

Australian College of Midwives chief midwife Alison Weatherstone recently told the ABC: “Midwives are just scrambling to provide the basic care and can’t spend time with women going through breastfeeding or providing postnatal education and support.”

Women now accessing maternity services have increasingly complex needs. Women giving birth today are more likely to be older and overweight, which can lead to complications requiring more attention and increased post-natal care, Weatherstone explained.

Anonymous statements published by the ABC paint a grim picture. One midwife from Perth in Western Australia wrote: “We force women to birth quickly because there are no staff to look after them on the night shift… And then in the postnatal period we kick them out before they know how to breastfeed because we have no beds and no staff.”

A midwife from Sydney said, “It breaks my heart to imagine a woman I cared for writing to you, describing how neglected she felt on my ward under my care. The system failed us both. I work so bloody hard, and it’s not enough.”

An Australian Capital Territory midwife wrote: “I work in a public hospital that is in crisis due to lack of staff… I regularly feel complicit in care that harms women.

Commenting on conditions in a New South Wales regional centre, another midwife said: “I have often left my jobs feeling that I have completely failed women in one of the most vulnerable and pivotal times in their life. They’re alive at the end of the shift, but I have been unable to support them as they cried, bring them pain relief on time, do their vital observations… even change the blood-soaked sheets they’re sleeping in.”

Staffing shortages are also putting pressure on post-natal length of stay. Health Department Health data updated in June this year show that the average number of days women spend in hospital following childbirth has steadily declined from 3.0 days in 2011 to 2.5 days in 2021.

The report states that a mother’s post-natal length of stay is related to maternal factors, such as recovery after birth, particularly for caesarean section birth, management of obstetric and maternal health conditions, management of conditions related to the baby and health system factors such as resourcing pressures.

The World Health Organization in 2022 recommend that after an uncomplicated vaginal birth healthy mothers and newborns should receive care in the facility for “at least” 24 hours after birth.

These recommendations state that the aims of post-natal care in hospital are to monitor the mother and baby after birth and to provide mothers and their partners and/or family with advice and support around physical recovery, breastfeeding, parenting skills and linking to supports in the community.

Staffing pressures and pressures on existing services and the consequences of further cuts to hospital budgets will see pressures put on mothers to leave hospital early and not be monitored, potentially leading to increasing complications.

Last week midwives marched on the Queensland parliament denouncing staff shortages and unsafe working conditions with midwives in some facilities forced to care for up to 20 mothers and babies at a time.

The protest was organised by the Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union with demands only relating to the crisis in that state. Demonstrators called for ratios for inpatient maternity wards, public funding for home births and a workforce plan for midwives, the existing unsafe conditions a result of the union’s previous cost-cutting deals with the government.

Like their counterparts across Australia and internationally, midwives, nurses and other health workers unions have slavishly imposed cuts demanded by governments on behalf of big business. These policies have created an unprecedented and worsening crisis in public health. While midwives, nurses and health care workers are told there is no money for higher staffing levels, Australian governments—Labor and Liberal-National—are spending billions of dollars on the military.

Ethiopia: Amhara Genocide and the Threat of Civil War

Graham Peebles

Image of people walking in the desert with camals.

Image by Daniele Levis Pelusi.

Since April the Ethiopian government, in the form of the ENDF (Ethiopian National Defense Force) have been engaged in violent clashes throughout the Amhara region in Ethiopia, with the volunteer force known as Fano.

The ENDF have used drones, tanks and heavy artillery against Fano freedom fighters, resulting, inevitably in the death of hundreds of civilians. “It is difficult to quantify the damage done….Many corpses are entering the hospital,” a doctor at the Bahir Dar Yelk Hayat Referral Hospital, told the BBC.

Associated Press (AP),14 August, reported that, “at least 70 civilians have been killed in drone attacks in Fenote Selam town in Ethiopia’s Amhara regional state.” AP confirmed that the “Ethiopian air force …carried out the drone attacks in Bure town [13 August] and killed an undisclosed number of civilians and injured several others.”

The conflict, between the ENDF and Fano, a volunteer group made up of men and women from the community, trusted and revered throughout Amhara, comes on the back of a series of interconnected assaults and injustices perpetrated against the Amhara people by the government, led by Prime-minister Abiy Ahmed.

First, and most shocking is the genocide of Amhara people living in Oromia, which has been going on for the last three years or so. Thousands of Amhara civilians have been killed, over two million displaced, homes and land stolen. And in a brutal act, typical of genocide elsewhere, pregnant Amhara women are specifically targeted; their stomachs stabbed, babies murdered. In addition, thousands of non-Oromo’s, specifically but not exclusively Amhara, have seen their homes demolished in Sheger City on the outskirts of the capital, Addis Ababa.

Oromo fanatics are responsible for the violence – The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) together with radicalized elements within the Oromo Special Forces (OSF), and the regional government, the Oromo Regional Authority.

Secondly, the plan to dissolve the Amhara region militia, the Amhara Special Forces (ASF): In April the government announced that all regional militia would be integrated into the ENDF or police, starting with the Amhara Special Forces (ASF).

The process of creating a unified force is long overdue. However, to begin with the ASF, without any consultation or agreed timetable, was a political action, designed to eliminate the only body protecting the Amhara people, from potential TPLF and OLF attacks. ASF refused to disarm and disband, huge public protests erupted throughout major Amhara towns/cities against the proposal, ASF members fled. Protesters were met with police violence and arrested.

Thirdly: Amhara representatives were excluded from the peace talks in Pretoria (November 2022) between the TPLF and government. This despite the fact that much of the 2020-2022 war took place within Amhara (as well as Afar). As a result the region suffered extensive damage to homes, hospitals, schools, roads and other infrastructure – estimated cost of reconstruction is a little over US$9 billion; hundreds of thousands of Amhara were displaced and there is little or no support (including from UN agencies, denied access by Abiy) for those now destitute and living in IDP camps, or comprehensive plans to rehouse them.

Political problems, military “solutions”

Anyone highlighting the Amhara genocide, or speaking out against the Abiy government more broadly – journalists, politicians, human rights workers, activists and youth – have been silenced, routinely imprisoned without trial in non-disclosed locations.

One of the most recent high profile figures to come under threat is member of parliament and former foreign secretary, Gedu Andergachew. He made a brave speech in parliament against the proposed State of Emergency in Amhara and denounced the government’s violent actions towards Amhara people. Saying: “this current government creates political problems and tries to solve [them] militarily instead of looking for political solution/s. This has become the character of the government……One thing we have to learn is to listen to the people and not undermine their demands.”

Andergachew asserts genocide is being committed against the Amhara people, pointing out that, “Ethnic cleansing was [and is being] committed against the Amhara people several times. [The Amhara people] have been forcefully evicted. Hundreds [of] thousands were displaced and lost their property…[and] are subjected to abuse and deprivation.” And when the Amhara people demand that their human rights are observed, their appeals “fell on deaf ears. In fact the attacks and prejudice worsened, [triggering] further abuse, displacement and killings.”

He closed his powerful address by saying, “There are government officials who want to incite Oromo people to instigate violence against Amhara people. This must be corrected. This is irresponsible. “

Predictably his was a minority voice, and a State of Emergency in the Amhara region was officially passed. Like previous such conditions imposed by the Abiy regime, indiscriminate (politically motivated) arrests followed (the UN record that, “more than 1,000 people have been arrested.. under this law”), further intensifying the mistrust and anger felt by the Amhara people toward the Abiy regime. A regime that increasingly echoes the suppressive methodology of its vicious predecessor, the EPRDF.

Government duplicity

Much like the current government, the EPRDF (a coalition on paper, which ruled from 1991-2018) was dominated by one faction, the US-backed TPLF (Tigray Peoples Liberation Front); in the same way, this administration presents as an alliance, but Abiy and the Oromo Prosperity Party (OPP) run the show.

PM Abiy, who was a member of the EPRDF government, came to power in 2018 on the back of widespread public demonstrations against the regime. He had worked in the intelligence services, was relatively unknown, and in the early days after gaining power said all the right things; apologizing for atrocities committed by the EPRDF, and talking about unity and tolerance. A large percentage of the populous and the diaspora, desperate after almost 30 years of repression and longing for change, took him at his word.

Elections were staged in 2021 amid a war with the TPLF and Covid-19. Widely regarded as unfair and undemocratic, the ruling Prosperity Party “won” a landslide. Consequently, despite the regime’s claims to the contrary, Abiy’s government, like all Ethiopian governments before it, was not democratically elected.

In the years since those hopeful, exuberant days of 2018, Abiy has consistently shown that (like Meles Zenawi before him) he is a dictator, power hungry and narcissistic, with no loyalty or concern to any particular ethnic group, and none whatsoever to the Ethiopian people as a whole. Five years on the suffering and division in the country is acute. Hundreds of thousands have been killed, millions displaced; a genocide perpetrated against Amhara people living in Oromia, that, if not directed by the government as some believe, then, through neglect alone, ethnic slaughter that the regime is complicit in; and now, as a result of Abiy’s refusal to negotiate with Amhara leaders, a civil war (potentially between Oromo and Amhara) has been brought closer than ever.

Ethiopia is made up of around 80 ethnic groups. For community harmony to exist within such a diverse, culturally rich nation a unifying principled government, with policies that promote tolerance and cooperation is essential. Whilst Abiy has in the past spoken in such terms, his actions have consistently run contrary to his words, and the results are writ large. As a result of his serial duplicity, Abiy is not trusted, not just by Amhara people, but throughout the country.

If peace, social harmony and democracy are to be established, long-term constitutional reform is needed, ethnic federalism abandoned and fair and open parliamentary elections held.

But first, and immediately, the Amhara genocide must be stopped, those responsible arrested and charged; access granted to international humanitarian organizations, including UN agencies, so IDPs can receive the support they so badly need, and all political prisoners released.

In order to diffuse the conflict between the ENDF and the Fano, which is in fact a dispute between the Amhara people and the Abiy regime, a major shift in attitude from the government is needed. As Gedu Andergachew said, “political dialogue not military force” is required, following the immediate withdrawal of all ENDF troops from Amhara towns and cities, “without any pre-conditions ”.

PM Abiy shows no signs of responding to such rational demands; all pressure therefore must be brought to bear on him and his regime by Western powers, particularly the US and its European partners.

The Amhara, indeed all the people of Ethiopia have suffered much over long decades. Fundamental political and social change is needed, central to which is the dissolution of tribal-based political groups and methodologies, the creation of inclusive democratic systems of governance; strengthening of the judiciary and civil society, and crucially, the cultivation of an atmosphere of brotherhood, tolerance and mutual understanding.