Power, Wealth, and Justice in the Time of Covid-19

Rajan Menon

Fifteen months ago, the SARS-CoV-2 virus unleashed Covid-19. Since then, it’s killed more than 3.8 million people worldwide (and possibly many more). Finally, a return to normalcy seems likely for a distinct minority of the world’s people, those living mainly in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and China. That’s not surprising.  The concentration of wealth and power globally has enabled rich countries to all but monopolize available vaccine doses. For the citizens of low-income and poor countries to have long-term pandemic security, especially the 46% of the world’s population who survive on less than $5.50 a day, this inequity must end, rapidly — but don’t hold your breath.

The Global North: Normalcy Returns

In the United States new daily infections, which peaked in early January, had plummeted 96% by June 16th. The daily death toll also dropped — by 92% — and the consequences were apparent. Big-city streets were bustling again, as shops and restaurants became ever busier. Americans were shedding their reluctance to travel by plane or train, as schools and universities prepared to resume “live instruction” in the fall. Zoom catch-ups were yielding to socializing the old-fashioned way.

By that June day, new infections and deaths had fallen substantially below their peaks in other wealthy parts of the world as well. In Canada, cases had dropped by 89% and deaths by 94%; in Europe by 87% and 87%; and in the United Kingdom by 84% and 99%.

Yes, European governments were warier than the U.S. about giving people the green light to resume their pre-pandemic lifestyles and have yet to fully abolish curbs on congregating and traveling. Perhaps recalling Britain’s previous winter surge, thanks to the B.1.1.7 mutation (initially discovered there) and the recent appearance of two other virulent strains of Covid-19, B.1.167 and B.1.617.2 (both first detected in India), Downing Street has retained restrictions on social gatherings. It’s even put off a full reopening on June 21st, as previously planned. And that couldn’t have been more understandable. After all, on June 17th, the new case count had reached 10,809, the highest since late March. Still, new daily infections there are less than a tenth what they were in early January. So, like the U.S., Britain and the rest of Europe are returning to some semblance of normalcy.

The Global South: A Long Road Ahead

Lately, the place that’s been hit the hardest by Covid-19 is the global south where countries are particularly ill-prepared.

Consider social distancing. People with jobs that can be done by “working from home” constitute a far smaller proportion of the labor force than in wealthy nations with far higher levels of education, mechanization, and automation, along with far greater access to computers and the Internet. An estimated 40% of workers in rich countries can work remotely. In lower- and middle-income lands perhaps 10% can do so and the numbers are even worse in the poorest of them.

During the pandemic, millions of Canadians, Europeans, and Americans lost their jobs and struggled to pay food and housing bills. Still, the economic impact has been far worse in other parts of the world, particularly the poorest African and Asian nations. There, some 100 million people have fallen back into extreme poverty.

Such places lack the basics to prevent infections and care for Covid-19 patients. Running water, soap, and hand sanitizer are often not readily available. In the developing world, 785 million or more people lack “basic water services,” as do a quarter of health clinics and hospitals there, which have also faced crippling shortages of standard protective gear, never mind oxygen and ventilators.

Last year, for instance, South Sudan, with 12 million people, had only four ventilators and 24 ICU beds. Burkina Faso had 11 ventilators for its 20 million people; Sierra Leone 13 for its eight million; and the Central African Republic, a mere three for eight million. The problem wasn’t confined to Africa either. Virtually all of Venezuela’s hospitals have run low on critical supplies and the country had 84 ICU beds for nearly 30 million people.

Yes, wealthy countries like the U.S. faced significant shortages, but they had the cash to buy what they needed (or could ramp up production at home). The global south’s poorest countries were and remain at the back of the queue.

India’s Disaster

India has provided the most chilling illustration of how spiraling infections can overwhelm healthcare systems in the global south. Things looked surprisingly good there until recently. Infection and death rates were far below what experts had anticipated based on the economy, population density, and the highly uneven quality of its healthcare system. The government’s decision to order a phased lifting of a national lockdown seemed vindication indeed. As late as April, India reported fewer new cases per million than Britain, France, Germany, the U.K., or the U.S.

Never one for modesty, its Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, boasted that India had “saved humanity from a great disaster by containing Corona effectively.” He touted its progress in vaccination; bragged that it was now exporting masks, test kits, and safety equipment; and mocked forecasts that Covid-19 would infect 800 million Indians and kill a million of them. Confident that his country had turned the corner, he and his Bharatiya Janata Party held huge, unmasked political rallies, while millions of Indians gathered in vast crowds for the annual Kumbh Mela religious festival.

Then, in early April, the second wave struck with horrific consequences. By May 6th, the daily case count had reached 414,188. On May 19th, it would break the world record for daily Covid-19 deaths, previously a dubious American honor, recording almost 4,500 of them.

Hospitals quickly ran out of beds. The sick were turned away in droves and left to die at home or even in the streets, gasping for breath. Supplies of medical oxygen and ventilators ran out, as did personal protective equipment. Soon, Modi had to appeal for help, which many countries provided.

Indian press reports estimate that fully half of India’s 300,000-plus Covid-19 deaths have occurred in this second wave, the vast majority after March. During the worst of it, the air in India’s big cities was thick with smoke from crematoria, while, because of the shortage of designated cremation and burial sites, corpses regularly washed up on riverbanks.

We may never know how many Indians have actually died since April. Hospital records, even assuming they were kept fastidiously amid the pandemonium, won’t provide the full picture because an unknown number of people died elsewhere.

The Vaccination Divide

Other parts of the global south have also been hit by surging infections, including countries in Asia which had previously contained Covid-19’s spread, among them Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. Latin America has seen devastating surges of the pandemic, above all in Brazil because of President Jair Bolsonaro’s stunning combination of fecklessness and callousness, but also in Bolivia, Columbia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. In Africa, Angola, Namibia, South Africa, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are among 14 countries in which infections have spiked.

Meanwhile, the data reveal a gargantuan north-south vaccination gap. By early June, the U.S. had administered doses to nearly half the country’s population, in Britain slightly more than half, in Canada just over a third, and in the European Union approximately a third. (Bear in mind that the proportions would be far higher were only adults counted and that vaccination rates are still increasing far faster in these places than in the global south.)

Now consider examples of vaccination coverage in low-income countries.

+ In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Vietnam, and Zambia it ranged from 0.1% to 0.9% of the population.

+ In Angola, Ghana, Kenya, Pakistan, Senegal, and South Africa, between 1% and 2.4%.

+ In Botswana and Zimbabwe, which have the highest coverage in sub-Saharan Africa, 3% and 3.6% respectively.

+ In Asia (China and Singapore aside), Cambodia at 9.6% was the leader, followed by India at 8.5%.  Coverage in all other Asian countries was below 5.4.%.

This north-south contrast matters because mutations first detected in the U.K., Brazil, India, and South Africa, which may prove up to 50% more transmissible, are already circulating worldwide. Meanwhile, new ones, perhaps even more virulent, are likely to emerge in largely unvaccinated nations. This, in turn, will endanger anyone who’s unvaccinated and so could prove particularly calamitous for the global south.

Why the vaccination gap? Wealthy countries, none more than the United States, could afford to spend billions of dollars to buy vaccines. They’re home as well to cutting-edge biotechnology companies like AstraZeneca, BioNTech, Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer. Those two advantages enabled them to preorder enormous quantities of vaccine, indeed almost all of what BioNTech and Moderna anticipated making in 2021, and even before their vaccines had completed clinical trials. As a result, by late March, 86% of all vaccinations had been administered in that part of the world, a mere 0.1% in poor regions.

This wasn’t the result of some evil conspiracy. Governments in rich countries weren’t sure which vaccine-makers would succeed, so they spread their bets. Nevertheless, their stockpiling gambit locked up most of the global supply.

Equity vs. Power

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who leads the World Health Organization (WHO), was among those decrying the inequity of “vaccine nationalism.” To counter it, he and others proposed that the deep-pocketed countries that had vacuumed up the supplies, vaccinate only their elderly, individuals with pre-existing medical conditions, and healthcare workers, and then donate their remaining doses so that other countries could do the same. As supplies increased, the rest of the world’s population could be vaccinated based on an assessment of the degree to which different categories of people were at risk.

COVAX, the U.N. program involving 190 countries led by the WHO and funded by governments and private philanthropies, would then ensure that getting vaccinated didn’t depend on whether or not a person lived in a wealthy country. It would also leverage its large membership to secure low prices from vaccine manufacturers.

That was the idea anyway. The reality, of course, has been altogether different. Though most wealthy countries, including the U.S. following Biden’s election, did join COVAX, they also decided to use their own massive buying power to cut deals directly with the pharmaceutical giants and vaccinate as many of their own as they could. And in February, the U.S. government took the additional step of invoking the Defense Production Act to restrict exports of 37 raw materials critical for making vaccines.

COVAX has received support, including $4 billion pledged by President Joe Biden for 2021 and 2022, but nowhere near what’s needed to reach its goal of distributing two billion doses by the end of this year. By May, in fact, it had distributed just 3.4% of that amount.

Biden recently announced that the U.S. would donate 500 million doses of vaccines this year and next, chiefly to COVAX; and at their summit this month, the G-7 governments announced plans to provide one billion altogether. That’s a large number and a welcome move, but still modest considering that 11 billion doses are needed to vaccinate 70% of the world.

COVAX’s problems have been aggravated by the decision of India, counted on to provide half of the two billion doses it had ordered for this year, to ban vaccine exports. Aside from vaccine, COVAX’s program is focused on helping low-income countries train vaccinators, create distribution networks, and launch public awareness campaigns, all of which will be many times more expensive for them than vaccine purchases and no less critical.

Another proposal, initiated in late 2020 by India and South Africa and backed by 100 countries, mostly from the global south, calls for the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend patents on vaccines so that pharmaceutical companies in the global south can manufacture them without violating intellectual property laws and so launch production near the places that need them the most.

That idea hasn’t taken wing either.

The pharmaceutical companies, always zealous about the sanctity of patents, have trotted out familiar arguments (recall the HIV-AIDS crisis): their counterparts in the global south lack the expertise and technology to make complex vaccines quickly enough; efficacy and safety could prove substandard; lifting patent restrictions on this occasion could set a precedent and stifle innovation; and they had made huge investments with no guarantees of success.

Critics challenged these claims, but the bio-tech and pharmaceutical giants have more clout, and they simply don’t want to share their knowledge. None of them, for instance, has participated in the WHO’s Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), created expressly to promote the voluntary international sharing of intellectual property, technology, and knowhow, through non-restricted licensing.

On the (only faintly) brighter side, Moderna announced last October that it wouldn’t enforce its Covid-19 vaccine patents during the pandemic — but didn’t offer any technical assistance to pharmaceutical firms in the global south. AstraZeneca gave the Serum Institute of India a license to make its vaccine and also declared that it would forgo profits from vaccine sales until the pandemic ends. The catch: it reserved the right to determine that end date, which it may declare as early as this July.

In May, President Biden surprised many people by supporting the waiving of patents on Covid-19 vaccines. That was a big change given the degree to which the U.S. government has been a dogged defender of intellectual property rights. But his gesture, however commendable, may remain just that. Germany dissented immediately. Others in the European Union seem open to discussion, but that, at best, means protracted WTO negotiations about a welter of legal and technical details in the midst of a global emergency.

And the pharmaceutical companies will hang tough. Never mind that many received billions of dollars from governments in various forms, including equity purchases, subsidies, large preordered vaccine contracts ($18 billion from the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed program alone), and research-and-development partnerships with government agencies. Contrary to its narrative, Big Pharma never placed huge, risky bets to create Covid-19 vaccines.

How Does This End?

Various mutations of the virus, several highly infectious, are now traveling the world and new ones are expected to arise. This poses an obvious threat to the inhabitants of low-income countries where vaccination rates are already abysmally poor. Given the skewed distribution of vaccines, people there may not be vaccinated, even partially, until 2022, or later. Covid-19 could therefore claim more millions of lives.

But the suffering won’t be confined to the global south. The more the virus replicates itself, the greater the probability of new, even more dangerous, mutations — ones that could attack the tens of millions of unvaccinated in the wealthy parts of the world, too. Between a fifth and a quarter of adults in the U.S. and the European Union say that they’re unlikely to, or simply won’t, get vaccinated. For various reasons, including worry about the safety of vaccines, anti-vax sentiments rooted in religious and political beliefs, and the growing influence of ever wilder conspiracy theories, U.S. vaccination rates slowed starting in mid-April.

As a result, President Biden’s goal of having 70% of adults receive at least one shot by July 4th won’t be realized. With less than two weeks to go, at least half of the adults in 25 states still remain completely unvaccinated. And what if existing vaccines don’t ensure protection against new mutations, something virologists consider a possibility? Booster shots may provide a fix, but not an easy one given this country’s size, the logistical complexities of mounting another vaccination campaign, and the inevitable political squabbling it will produce.

Amid the unknowns, this much is clear: for all the talk about global governance and collective action against threats that don’t respect borders, the response to this pandemic has been driven by vaccine nationalism. That’s indefensible, both ethically and on the grounds of self-interest.

Surging Delta variant already dominant in several European states

Robert Stevens

The highly transmissible Delta coronavirus variant is spreading rapidly across the European continent. The mutation initially emerged in India and is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. It is already the dominant strain of Covid-19 in the UK, Portugal and Russia.

The main B.1.617.2 strain of Delta first detected last October is one of several strains of Covid-19. It has now been identified in at least 74 countries according to a World Health Organization survey of local reports.

Public Health England (PHE) has identified all three Delta variants—the original first spotted in India, as well as Delta-AY.1 and Delta-AY.2 as variants of concern. By June 18, PHE had detected 36 confirmed and two probable cases of Delta AY.1 infection in England. Delta-AY.2 has not yet been detected in Britain.

In this Feb. 11, 2021 file photo, a nurse prepares medication in a COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit at the Curry Cabral hospital in Lisbon. Portugal is witnessing a surge in new daily cases not seen since February. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

Within weeks of being detected, the main Delta strain became dominant in the UK. According to latest figures it is responsible for at least 98 percent of new cases. Over the last seven days there have been around 10,000 new daily cases of Covid announced in Britain, with the virus allowed to surge due to the government reopening most of the economy on May 17. The number of new cases in the last week (68,449) marked a 31 percent increase on the 52,077 cases in the previous seven days.

On Tuesday, another 11,625 new COVID cases were recorded, the highest number since mid-February and up nearly a thousand cases on Monday. Deaths are also edging up with Tuesday’s 27 coronavirus-related deaths comparing with five on Monday.

The spread in Britain is being particularly fueled by infections among school children and young people; only a tiny percentage of whom are vaccinated. On Tuesday, the Department for Education reported that nearly 250,000 children in England missed school over the last week for Covid-related reasons, including 9,000 children who have contracted the disease.

According to epidemiologists, Delta is around 60 percent more transmissible than the Alpha variant (originally named the Kent variant—which itself became dominant in Britain within a few months in the autumn and rapidly spread globally. Initial data compiled in Britain confirms that the Delta variant increases the risk of hospitalisation by 2.2 times compared with Alpha.

Europe recorded a further 5,770 Covid deaths last week with the vast majority of these (3,000) in Russia, where the Delta variant is already rife. In the last seven days to Tuesday only Russia with 111,796 infections on the continent recorded more Covid cases than Britain. This was a 29 percent increase on the week prior. Last Friday alone a record 9,056 new infections were logged in Moscow.

The largest percentage increase in cases was recorded in Portugal which had 7,734 cases in the last week (compared with a 5,038 the week before)—a 54 percent increase.

A major factor for the spread in Portugal is again the reckless reopening of the economy including its sizeable tourism sector. Portugal’s resort are popular with holidaymakers from the UK and it was initially placed on the green list of countries from which people do not need to quarantine on their return. With Covid resurgent in Portugal, the UK placed it on the amber list on June 8 requiring quarantine—though travel continues.

In France, a further 16,444 new cases were recorded last week, in Italy 7,683 and in Belgium 3,077.

These are all being driven by the Delta surge. On Sunday, the Financial Times published a report of the spread of the Delta variant across Europe based on an analysis of global genomic data from the Gisaid virus tracking database (Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data). The FT noted that Delta “accounts for 96 percent of sequenced Covid-19 infections in Portugal, more than 20 percent in Italy and about 16 percent in Belgium…” It added, “In Portugal, community transmission of the variant has been detected in the greater Lisbon area, where more than 60 percent of the country’s new coronavirus cases in the past week have been identified.”

Clusters caused by the Delta variant are springing up across the continent. The FT reported, “French authorities are currently trying to contain an outbreak in the Landes region, near the Spanish border, where 125 cases of the Delta variant have been confirmed by genetic sequencing and another 130 are suspected, representing about 30 percent of recent infections in the area. Clusters of the Delta variant have also been identified in recent weeks in the southern suburbs of Paris and an art school in Strasbourg.”

The Delta infections reported by governments in mainland Europe are no doubt a significant underestimation. Hardly any genomic sequencing of COVID cases has been carried out. The UK is a world leader in genome sequencing and has completed over half a million genomes. In contrast, as the FT notes, “Germany, France and Spain have sequenced about 130,000, 47,000 and 34,000 respectively.”

Modelled estimates of Delta’s share of all sequenced cases found that up to June 16, 98 percent of UK Covid cases were Delta, where 30 percent of all Covid cases are sequenced. In Russia, the figures were 99 percent of Covid cases being Delta, based on 1 percent sequencing. In Portugal, 96 percent were Delta based on 5 percent sequencing. In Italy, 26 percent of cases were Delta based on 2 percent of cases sequenced and in Belgium 16 percent Delta based on 6 percent sequenced. Germany’s rate was 15 percent Delta based on 8 percent sequenced (compared to the Robert Koch institutes’ “higher end” estimate of Delta cases reaching 6 percent). In France, where the Health Ministry calculates that the rate of Delta cases is between 2 and 4 percent, the Gisaid data found that almost 7 percent of cases are Delta based on just 1 percent of cases being sequenced.

The lack of such genome sequencing again points to the deadly impact of the principle adopted by all the major powers at the outset of the pandemic that profits and the economy must come before the health and lives of the population. Commenting on the lack of sequencing by some of the richest countries on the planet, the FT cited Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva who said, “It’s costly, it’s time consuming and it was neglected.”

In Sweden, where the government took the decision to let coronavirus run rampant with the goal of reaching “herd immunity” causing more than a million people to be infected from a 10 million population and over 14,200 deaths, the Public Health Agency confirmed last Thursday a “community spread” of Delta with 71 cases of the variant. Agency director general Johan Carlson told a news conference, “There are some dark clouds on the horizon and I think mainly of outbreaks of the delta variant. It is found in Europe and also locally in Sweden.”

Huge swathes of Europe’s population remain unvaccinated, allowing the virus to spread and mutate. Even in Britain, which has vaccinated the highest percentage of its population in Europe, only around half of the population has been fully immunised with two doses. As the FT notes, “vaccination rates in most countries in mainland Europe are hovering at between 20 per cent and 30 per cent. About 26 per cent of the population in France has been fully vaccinated.”

Europe’s governments have all barely altered their agendas to fully reopen their economies to ensure the profits of the corporations and banks.

In Portugal, the authorities sealed off the capital, Lisbon, preventing travel in and out, but only for last weekend only.

In the case of the Conservative government in Britain, having been forced to delay ending all final restrictions from June 21, it has declaring July 19 “Terminus Day” and announced a raft of super-spreader events. On Tuesday, the latest announcement was that 60,000 soccer fans will be allowed into London’s Wembley Stadium for the semi-finals and final of Euro 2020 on July 7, 8 and 11—the most allowed at a UK sporting event in 15 months. The upscale in fans watching was agreed between London and Europe’s governing soccer body, Uefa.

On Tuesday, Scottish National Party First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced that moving to the lowest level of restrictions will be delayed until July 19 and that all major legal Covid restrictions will be ended in Scotland on August 9.

Lebanon’s social crisis deepens amid internal political turmoil and imperialist scheming

Jean Shaoul

Shops, government offices, businesses, and banks, largely controlled by Lebanon’s Christian and Sunni elites, closed their doors in a general strike last Thursday.

Protesters set up roadblocks in Beirut and other towns and cities, burning tyres and bringing traffic to a standstill, including the road to Beirut airport.

While workers joined the strike to protest the horrendous social conditions and endemic corruption that have destroyed their livelihoods, Lebanon’s corrupt political parties seized the occasion to call for a new government to be installed forthwith.

Protesters block a main highway by burning tires and garbage containers, during a protest against the increase in prices of consumer goods and the crash of the local currency, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Their pose of support for the strike was widely ridiculed on social media, with one Twitter user writing, “Let me get this straight. The same corrupt government, criminal ruling class that blew up this city are actively protesting against themselves...? In what world is this acceptable?”

On the previous Friday, pharmacies went on a two-day nationwide strike over the failure of the central bank to supply them with dollars at a preferential exchange rate as was previously the case. This has made it impossible to import goods at an affordable price, amid a severe shortage of medicines and baby formula as hospitals struggle to cope with the coronavirus pandemic while criminal gangs hoard or smuggle medicines out of the country.

The economic crisis has been intensified by the pandemic, the default last year on Lebanon’s sovereign debt to international lenders and the Beirut port blast last August that killed 211 people, injured more than 6,000 and destroyed much of the northern part of the city.

More than half of the population has been thrown into poverty as a result of the pound’s plummeting purchasing power and the soaring unemployment rate that rose from 28 percent in February last year to 40 percent in December. While the government said it would set up a financial support system to help those most in need, it has failed to do so, leaving the political parties to provide food and other aid to their clients.

A World Bank report published this month branded Lebanon’s economic crisis as one of the world’s worst in over 150 years. Lebanon’s GDP crashed from nearly $55 billion in 2018 to around $33 billion in 2020, a 40 percent drop in GDP per capita. Its currency has lost 90 percent of its value since late 2019 and is now trading at 15,100 pounds to the US dollar, with soaring inflation expected to worsen this year.

According to the Lebanon’s statistical service, as of last December, food prices had risen fourfold in a year, clothing and shoe prices rose fivefold and hotels and restaurants more than sixfold, while the minimum wage had fallen in real terms to just $67 a month, down from about $450 a month two years ago.

There are now food, fuel and electricity shortages. Turkey’s Karpower recently shut down two floating power barges that supply a quarter of the country’s electricity due to payment arrears. Basics like oil, flour, rice and sugar have vanished. Meat is unaffordable, while people are forced to queue for hours to buy petrol.

As the World Bank pointed out, “Such a brutal and rapid contraction is usually associated with conflicts or wars.” It warned, “The dire socio-economic conditions risk systemic national failings with regional and potentially global consequences.” This was a reminder that what happens in Lebanon has ramifications beyond its borders, particularly Syria, whose economy, financial system and people are inextricably linked to that of Lebanon.

The economic crisis has been compounded by political paralysis. After mass protests erupted in October 2019 over rising poverty, social inequality, and rampant government corruption, demanding an end to the sectarian political system and elections to form a new government, Hassan Diab, an engineering professor from the American University of Beirut was tapped to form a “technocratic” government. He replaced the government of Sa’ad Hariri, the billionaire Sunni client of Saudi Arabia and France, early last year.

As the new government sought to impose the cost of Lebanon’s financial losses on the banking sector, and thereby on the corrupt Sunni and Christian politicians with banking interests, including the Hariri family, the financial elite and their political allies moved to undermine the government’s economic programme.

As it became clear that it would be held responsible for the last August’s explosion in Beirut’s port—despite being the first to raise the alarm about the explosives being held at the port since 2014—Diab’s short-lived government resigned. Once again, President Michel Aoun fell back on the widely discredited Hariri to form a government, but with the two men unable to agree a new cabinet that would include their different patronage networks—Aoun backing the Free Patriotic Movement, led by his son-in-law Gebran Bassil, and the Shia party Hezbollah—no new government has been sworn in and Diab continues in a caretaker role.

The country’s foreign reserves that are used to fund the subsidies of basic goods including fuel, medicine and wheat are running out. Lebanon, whose health care system has collapsed, has suffered nearly 8,000 deaths from the coronavirus, if official figures are to be believed. Some hospitals are refusing to carry out anything except emergency services to preserve remaining medical supplies, while desperate citizens are turning to the Internet to trade belongings and barter for medicines.

Earlier this month, Hassan Nasrallah, who heads the Hezbollah movement that together with its allies has a majority in the parliament, said that Lebanon might soon have to rely on fuel imports from Iran if shortages continue.

Lebanon, a tiny country whose population has swelled to six million following the influx of Syrians fleeing the decade-long proxy war to topple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad orchestrated by US imperialism, has long been at the mercy of the rival regional powers and their more powerful backers. Caught in the crosshairs of the escalating conflict between the US, Israel and the Gulf petro-monarchs on the one hand, and Iran and its allies, including Syria on the other, it has been hung out to dry as Washington steps up the pressure on Iran.

The Gulf states have made any aid dependent upon a government that excludes Hezbollah, while the Western banks and institutions have refused to stump up $11 billion pledged at a 2018 conference until the government implements the free market reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund. This is an anathema to Lebanon’s corrupt financial elite that are dependent upon government succor.

Should the talks in Vienna over the resumption of the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran succeed, with a partial lifting of the sanctions targeting oil exports that have crippled Iran’s economy, this would release Iranian funding for Tehran’s regional allies. This would allow Hezbollah to partly fill Lebanon’s financial and economic vacuum, and thereby align the country more closely with Iran, and by implication Russia and Syria.

It was for this reason that the US State Department announced last week that it would grant the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) an additional $15 million in foreign military funding. This brings the total for the year to $120 million, including to support Lebanon’s “border security and counterterrorism operations” that are poised to receive an additional $59 million. This would include operations in Syria, supporting the counter-Islamic State offensive, as well as maintaining “internal stability.”

Warning of a “critical” situation, LAF chief Gen. Joseph Aoun told a French-led virtual meeting of the major powers and some Gulf Arab states last Thursday that the country’s economic crisis would lead to a collapse of all state institutions. He said he had not enough money to adequately pay his 80,000 troops, who were earning the equivalent of just $90 a month. Military personnel were moonlighting to augment their incomes, going absent without leave or quitting. His warning came after the LAF’s recent receipt of ammunition from Russia and some 100 light duty vehicles from China.

Aoun said the army was the “sole guarantor” of Lebanon’s security and its “most trusted institution domestically and globally… Therefore maintaining the cohesiveness and supporting the LAF to carry out its mission are of paramount importance.”

“Witness K” convicted for exposing Australia’s illegal bugging in East Timor

Mike Head

A former senior Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) officer, known publicly only as “Witness K,” was sentenced to a suspended jail term last Friday. His “crime” was to blow the whistle on the Howard Liberal-National government’s use of ASIS to plant a listening device in East Timor’s cabinet room in 2004 during crucial oil and gas negotiations.

While “Witness K,” now 70, was spared immediate imprisonment after pleading guilty to breaching his secrecy obligations as an intelligence official, the current Liberal-National government and the magistrate presiding over the case insisted that he had to be punished to “send a message” on “national security.”

Meanwhile, the real criminals remain free—those responsible for bugging the East Timorese government in order to help retain Australian corporate control over the multi-billion dollar energy resources beneath the Timor Sea between the two countries.

Moreover, the government is pushing ahead with the closed-door trial of Witness K’s lawyer Bernard Collaery, who has pleaded not guilty to conspiring with the intelligence officer and could face years of imprisonment if convicted.

Bernard Collaery, Witness K's lawyer, who also faces national security charges (Credit: AP Photo/Rod McGuirk, File)

The government, through former Attorney-General Christian Porter, personally signed off on the prosecutions, invoking section 39 of the Intelligence Services Act, which criminalises the communication of any information acquired by ASIS, punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

A wall of secrecy has been retained around the Timor bugging case for many years because it is so politically and ideologically damaging to the Australian ruling class and its intelligence apparatus. It lays bare the reality that behind the cloak of “national security” stands the plundering interests of Australian imperialism throughout the region, from the underwater riches of the Timor Sea to South East Asia and the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

The dirty operations of ASIS, the overseas surveillance service, and other Australian intelligence agencies must be hidden from public view all the more because they are always conducted in close collaboration with their US counterparts, reflecting Australian capitalism’s dependence on Washington for military and intelligence protection.

The Australian spy services are an integral component of the US-led “Five Eyes” global network that conducts mass surveillance on the world’s population and monitors other governments whose interests could potentially conflict with those of Washington.

East Timor, a statelet on half an island in the sprawling Indonesian archipelago, is also a key strategic location in the intensifying US economic and military drive to combat the rise of China and reassert the hegemony over the region that Washington established via its victory in World War II.

To maintain absolute secrecy, the ex-ASIS officer Witness K stood behind a wall of black panels, invisible to the packed courtroom, as he was handed a three-month suspended term of imprisonment and a 12-month good behaviour order.

In return for his guilty plea, first entered two years ago, the government did not seek an immediate jail term. However, Richard Maidment, the Commonwealth director of public prosecutions, opposed Witness K’s application for a non-conviction order. Maidment said Witness K’s case should be used as a vehicle to deter others from engaging in similar acts.

Witness K’s lawyers had urged the court to show the former highly-decorated naval and intelligence officer “judicial mercy,” saying he suffered from numerous mental health afflictions—post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety and hyper mania.

Magistrate Glenn Theakston nevertheless agreed with the government. He declared that Witness K had violated “strict and absolute” proscriptions regarding ASIS. Even though Witness K had been motivated by considerations of justice and a “rules-based order of international relations,” he had compromised the agency’s effectiveness, safety and security and jeopardised Australia’s relationships and reputations.

Theakston insisted the offence was “not trivial.” It was an “express, deliberate breach of the defendant’s obligations to maintain the secrecy of the operations of ASIS.” Nor was it any excuse that Witness K made no attempt to hide his actions from the Australian government.

Witness K made the “illegal” disclosures in two affidavits in 2013, which were intended to be used at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, where East Timor had accused Australia of failing to negotiate in good faith by spying on its impoverished supposed ally.

Witness K’s home was raided in 2013 and his passport seized to prevent him from going to The Hague to testify for East Timor in its bid to overturn the unfavourable oil and gas deal secured by Australia. Despite the raid, conducted by the internal spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), no charges were brought until 2018, after the conclusion of a treaty with the East Timorese government.

Confident of the opposition Labor Party’s support, Prime Minister Scott Morrison personally endorsed the trials of Witness K and Collaery in September 2018. Morrison told reporters “justice will be served” by the prosecutions. Labor’s shadow attorney-general, Mark Dreyfus, made clear his party’s backing, telling the Guardian: “The charges are serious and it is important to let the judicial process take its course.”

Both the Coalition and Labor uphold the use of the National Security Information (Criminal and Civil Proceedings) Act, passed in 2004, supposedly to assist the “war on terrorism,” to conduct Collaery’s trial behind locked doors.

The government is also demanding closed-door proceedings in the trial of an ex-military lawyer, David McBride, who exposed a cover-up of civilian killings and other war crimes conducted by Australian Special Forces units during the US-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

These are not the only secret trials. In 2019, it was revealed that an ex-soldier and intelligence officer, known only as “Witness J,” had been convicted and imprisoned in Canberra for 15 months via a criminal trial that was completely hidden from public knowledge.

This assault on basic legal and democratic rights matches the brutal methods being used against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder. With the backing of the Australian government, he remains incarcerated in a maximum-security UK prison, facing extradition to the US on “espionage” charges for exposing the war atrocities and anti-democratic conspiracies of the US government and its allies, including those in Canberra.

Collaery, a former Liberal Party attorney-general in the Australian Capital Territory, has described Witness K as a “patriot” who raised criticisms of the ASIS bugging mission through the proper channels.

Collaery’s comments indicate that his concern is to repair the damage done to ASIS’s credibility. Among other things, the illegal bugging operation further exposed the fraud of Canberra’s claims to have intervened militarily in East Timor in 1999 for the benefit of the long-impoverished Timorese people.

Whatever the motivations of Witness K and his lawyer, however, there is no doubt that the working class must demand the dropping of all the charges. The people who should be on trial are members of the Howard government, such as its foreign minister, Alexander Downer, who was in charge of ASIS in 2004.

Alongside them should be members of the subsequent Labor government, which authorised the raids on Witness K and Collaery in 2013. Labor also refused to renegotiate the 2006 treaty with East Timor, which was secured with the help of ASIS’s spying and retained the lion’s share of the oil and gas revenues for Australian imperialism and the conglomerates it favoured, including Shell, Woodside and ConocoPhillips.