US district court ruling allows electric shock “therapy” of intellectually disabled students

Nancy Hanover

The Washington D.C. District Court of Appeals has struck down a ban on the deliberate and painful shocking of autistic and mentally-impaired children with electrical stimulation devices.

At issue is the signature policy of the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center (JRC) in Canton, Massachusetts. The JRC has, since 1985, used a “graduated electronic decelerator” (GED) on students ages three to adult, supposedly as a form of “aversion therapy.” For decades, the center has been the target of lawsuits, petitions and exposés by traumatized youth and families. In 2013, the United Nations condemned its practices as a violation of the UN Convention against Torture.

After the case remained in limbo for several years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally banned the use of GEDs in March 2020. The ruling cited “an unreasonable and substantial risk of illness or injury that cannot be corrected or eliminated through new or updated device labeling.”

The agency reviewed the clinical and scientific literature on self-injurious and aggressive behavior, the purported rationale for delivering the shocks, while interviewing experts in the field. It concluded that the shocks could only temporarily halt such problems and, on balance, were harmful. They found that GEDs create a significant risk of “worsening of underlying symptoms, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, pain, burns and tissue damage.”

Nonetheless, the July 6 appeals court decision found that the FDA could not ban the device, claiming such a prohibition constituted “interference with the practice of medicine.” In fact, the Judge Rotenberg Center is technically a school, licensed by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education, serving those with intellectual disabilities or behavioral, emotional or psychiatric problems. Many clients are referred from the juvenile justice system and have a history of abuse or abandonment.

Judge Rotenberg Center's website (screenshot)

The shocking devices were developed by the center’s founder Matthew Israel in 1985 after his policy of physical abuse (spanking, squeezing and pinching) came under legal attack. Reportedly, shocks are delivered to between 20 and 50 percent of enrolled students.

The purpose of the device is to inflict pain. Students are required to wear a backpack containing the shocking device with electrodes affixed to their skin at all times. Staff can shock them with remote-control activators at any time.

Andre McCollins was shocked 31 times for failing to remove his jacket, “tensing up” his body, and screaming with pain, according to New York Magazine. The episode left McCollins catatonic, barely able to eat or walk for days. His mother sued JRC, forcing the release of a horrific video of her son strapped in four-point restraints with a helmet on his head while being repeatedly shocked. The session went on for hours while staff rotated electrodes around his body to lessen burn marks. The video showed the child screaming for help and begging employees to stop. His mother says he has never fully recovered.

Screenshot from the hours-long shocking of Andre McCollins, 18 years old.

Jen Msumba, a former student, called her time at JRC “mind and body torture.” She said electrodes were applied under students’ fingers or the bottom of their feet to increase the pain. She recounted being shocked for “waving her hands, body movements, talking too loud, not answering a staff member in less than 5 seconds, or pretty much anything they deem annoying.”

In 2018, Disability Rights International petitioned the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, pointing to multiple practices at the JRC facility, including “contingent shocks, the use of restraints and the use of isolation rooms.” It stated, “These practices—particularly when used in people with disabilities and children—constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and torture.” It objected to the state law which permitted the policies and implored the body, “Under international law, the prohibition of torture is absolute and cannot be justified for any reason.”

Food deprivation is another tool used at JRC, according to Msumba. “Your meal is divided up into little cups: If you rock in your chair, wave your hands, or talk without permission you have to get up and throw one cup away. If they stop work for 5 seconds, such as staring at the wall—throw your food away. Until you have no food left, she says. At the end of the day, they’ll give you a nasty concoction with liver powder all over it. And that’s going to be your food, but you wouldn’t eat it until 11 p.m. that night if you lost all portions of food. And that way of living makes you obsessed about food.”

Jen Msumba showing how JRC attached 5 electrodes to her body, via TikTok

Israel’s center has been a steadily growing and lucrative business. The annual cost per student is $220,000, and states pay the bills. According to the New York Magazine, “Between 2000 and 2005, the facility’s annual revenues grew from $18 million to more than $50 million.” The “nonprofit” school brought in $79 million in 2020, handsomely paying its president Glenda Crookes $354,000 and its director of human resources $224,000, with 11 other executives making between $100,000 to $200,000.

Since 2010, the center has spent nearly $500,000 lobbying federal lawmakers and agencies. At the same time, hundreds of thousands more were funneled to legislators from New York and Massachusetts, according to ProPublica. The JRC was previously named the Behavioral Research Institute and was based in California and Rhode Island, but simply relocated from state to state to elude constant legal battles.

Those confined to the JRC are largely working class and poor youths. Jennifer Gunnerman reports in New York Magazine, “In the fall of 2006, I visited while working on a story for another publication, and I found the place packed with teenagers from New York City, many from poor neighborhoods. One 15-year-old girl said she recognized other kids from her days in Bronx-Lebanon Hospital’s adolescent psych ward. Two young men said they’d come straight from Rikers.” At present, the center has over 300 students living in group homes operated by the school.

The center came to the attention of the United Nations in 2010, after the Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) issued a report on the JRC titled, “Torture Not Treatment.” UN's Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak commented at the time, “To be frank, I was shocked when I was reading the report.” He added, “What I did, on the 11th of May, was to send an urgent appeal to the US government asking them to investigate.”

The UN noted that increasing voltage was applied as individuals “became adapted” to the shocks. It quoted Israel describing the process as “very painful.” The MDRI argued, “Whether or not such treatment is narrowly defined as effective, international human rights law places limits on the amount of pain that can be inflicted on a person.”

The group pitched their appeal to then-president Barack Obama, urging a federal investigation. “President Obama has staked his international reputation on ending torture, and the world is now looking,” said Eric Rosenthal, the MDRI executive director. He added, “Are we gonna live up to our obligations and is President Obama gonna live up to his promise to end torture by the United States government?”

Appeals to Obama, the UN, and the court system notwithstanding, the JRC continues business as usual. It rakes in millions of dollars in tax money and continues to be well-protected. The enterprise was initially named for Judge Rotenberg because he was the first judge—in the 1970s!—to deny families’ claims and rule for Israel. The FDA itself stalled for years before issuing the ban, which was overturned in just over a year. Dozens of legal attempts have similarly failed to force a shutdown.

The problem is not just a few wealthy and well-connected individuals but a more profound need by the capitalist system for social repression. The barbaric torture and war crimes committed at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have their counterpart at home against the working class. One recalls the “black sites” run by the Chicago Police Department, the mounting use of the death penalty against the poor and mentally ill and the increasing assault of basic democratic rights. Over 70 percent of high school students attend schools patrolled by armed police. As schools cut psychologists, social workers and counselors, they add “school resource officers” resulting in growing abuse.

While the precise “averse therapy” of JRC is unusual, such institutions are not. Various forms of highly profitable entities which prey on troubled and mentally impaired youth have proliferated across the US.

On April 29, 2020, Cornelius Frederick, 16, died after being tackled and restrained at a Michigan “strict discipline academy” in Kalamazoo. The academy is a charter school run by Sequel Youth and Family Services which houses children in the foster care and juvenile justice systems. Such outfits are very often a thin veneer for profitable business chains. This particular type of charter school was incorporated into Michigan law following the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School.

Sequel Youth and Family Services has 44 “behavioral health care programs” across the US. They have been the subject of numerous allegations of illegal excessive restraint, negligence, and trauma inflicted upon children. While such reports are not regularly quantified and publicized, a federal investigation in 2007 found thousands of allegations of abuse at facilities for at-risk youth between 1990 and 2007. These reports from “boot camps,” “residential treatment facilities,” “strict discipline academies,” etc., include abuse and deaths recorded by state and federal agencies and in “pending civil and criminal trials with hundreds of plaintiffs.”

Under conditions of deepening social deprivation and the near nonexistence of mental health care for the vast bulk of the population, social tragedies and abuse are mounting. The pandemic has dramatically exacerbated the growth of poverty and mental health crises. Deaths from overdoses have reached record highs. Psychologists predict that a mental health “shadow” pandemic will last for years after the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided.

The tragic saga of those abused and tortured at the Judge Rotenberg Center is a warning. Every agency of capitalism and both political parties turned a deaf ear to these youth and workers. It is necessary to put an end to a system that requires torture and social deprivation to maintain the dictatorship of a financial oligarchy over humanity’s productive forces. Relief from this social crisis must be achieved through the independent struggle of the working class for socialism.

Demonstrator killed in Iran’s water crisis protests

Jean Shaoul

A man was killed during protests that have raged since Thursday over severe water shortages in towns and cities in the oil-rich Khuzestan province in the southwest of Iran.

The protests have including in the capital Ahvaz, with the largest taking place in Susangerd, a city of 120,000 near the Iran-Iraq border. Demonstrators, furious at provincial governor Qasem Soleimani Dashtaki claiming Friday that videos showing demonstrations the previous night were fake, shouted, “Impossible to accept humiliation” and “No to forced migration”.

The ruling elite is acutely conscious of the significance of these protests in the country’s economic powerhouse, where thousands of contract workers in Iran’s oil industry have been on strike for weeks, demanding better wages and working conditions in the southern gas fields and some refineries in the big cities and winning growing support elsewhere. It was the oil workers’ strike that erupted in late 1978, amid a wave of mass protests by workers, students, and the urban poor, that broke the back of the blood-soaked US-backed regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi. The government has refrained thus far from taking its usual heavy-handed approach to protests, lethal repression, intimidation and harsh sentences, instead attempting to play them down.

The water protests came after thousands of workers in Iran’s vast energy industry struck to press demands for better wages and conditions at oil facilities, Iranian media reported Wednesday, June 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

The protests follow the worst drought in 50 years amid growing public anger over water and electricity shortages in Iran’s sweltering summer. This has been exacerbated by the poverty fueled by sanctions targeting Iran’s oil exports imposed by the US Trump administration after unilaterally abandoning the 2015 nuclear deal three years ago, and the crashing of the value of Iran’s currency. No less a factor is the government’s corruption, pro-rich policies, and mismanagement of the pandemic.

While officials claim the protester was hit accidentally by people firing in the air—with acting county governor Omid Sabripour saying fire was aimed at both protesters and the security forces—oppositionists accused the security forces of opening fire on the demonstrations. Unverified video clips posted online show people setting fire to tyres to block roads, with one clip showing security forces in helmets and camouflage fatigues following a crowd. The man was one of Iran’s Sunni Arab community in the town of Shadegan, in Khuzestan province bordering southern Iraq.

Last week, there were reports that villagers in Khuzestan and elsewhere have been forced to buy water from tankers for personal needs, with officials acknowledging that 8,000 villages have severe or serious water shortage and rely on tanker deliveries.

On Friday, President Hassan Rouhani sent a delegation to the region to address protesters’ grievances. The water crisis, caused by a 50 percent reduction in rainfall in this past year and climate change that has amplified the intensity and frequency of droughts, has devastated agriculture and livestock farming and led to the shutdown of hydroelectric power plants and electricity blackouts as electricity consumption to power air conditioning surged.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks in a cabinet meeting in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2020. (Office of the Iranian Presidency via AP)

In addition, Iran sought to attract the high-energy demanding cryptocurrency mining by massive computer farms, offering cheap power, courtesy of government subsidies, and requiring miners to sell their Bitcoins to the central bank to pay for imports of authorised goods, attracting miners, particularly from China, to Iran. In May, Rouhani was forced to ban the industry, much of which is unlicenced, for four months due to power shortages.

Earlier this month, protests erupted over power outages that have caused traffic chaos, rotting food, the shutdown of online schooling, disruption of examinations and deaths in intensive care units in hospitals. Videos appear to show crowds in several cities, with some people shouting, “Death to the dictator” and “Death to Khamenei,” referring to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Another video shows a woman complaining about the blackouts and corruption at a government office in the northern city of Gorgan, demanding that her comments be conveyed to “higher-ups like Mr Rouhani” and shouting, “The only thing you have done is forcing hijab on us.”

In a televised interview, Rouhani apologised for the blackouts, blaming it on the severe drought and high demand and called on people “to co-operate [by cutting their electricity use],” while promising to resolve the problems.

His pledge has provoked bitter refutations and recriminations among Iran’s political elite. The Rouhani administration, which will make way in August for the government of recently elected President Ebrahim Raisi, a member of Iran’s principalist, conservative faction that was shoe-horned into power by Iran’s Supreme Leader, has been largely invisible. The government has announced that the talks in Vienna, aimed at restoring the nuclear deal with US and the major powers, will not restart before Raisi takes office.

A spokesperson for the power industry warned that Iran’s power production capacity was 11GW short of demand and that a “looming heat wave” could make the situation worse. The parliamentary leader of Khuzestan’s deputies accused the government’s years-long diversion of the province’s water from the province of causing the shortage and warned, “Now Khuzestan’s security is at stake because of human errors and inappropriate decision decisions.”

The protests take place amid a deepening economic crisis. According to the International Monetary Fund, after a 13.4 percent rise in GDP in 2017 as the nuclear deal took effect, Iran’s economy shrank by 6.8 percent in 2018 and 6 percent in 2019, after Washington reimposed sanctions as well as new ones on Iran as part of its maximum pressure campaign to topple the regime. Since then, GDP has grown by 1.5 percent in 2020, it was one of the few countries to grow during the pandemic, and is expected to expand by 2.5 percent this year.

Iran’s venal ruling elite pushed the burden onto the working class as Iran’s currency plummeted and inflation soared. Widely believed to be underestimated in official statistics, June’s inflation rate at 43 percent, the second highest since 1979, broke a 26-year record.

The impact on working people has been catastrophic, with a 70 percent hike in the cost of basic food items in the last year, above that which a recent report called a 'critical level,' with no significant improvement expected soon. Last week’s report of the Statistics and Strategic Data Center of the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare reported a 120 percent increase in the cost of chicken and butter and an 80 percent hike in prices of cooking oil, milk, sugar, imported rice, and eggs. Rents have risen by up to 34 percent in the last year and clothing by 50 percent. Around 40 percent of the population, more than 32 million people, live below the poverty line, according to the state-run daily Hamshahri.

Workers’ economic plight has been exacerbated by the pandemic as the government has enriched the financial elite. More than 87,000 people have died, the largest number in the Middle East, although government statistics show excess deaths are more than double this number. Cases are on the rise again with the highly contagious Delta variant spreading through the country’s southern and southeastern provinces.

Less than 2 percent of the 84 million population have received both required vaccine doses, as sanctions have made it impossible to obtain Western medicines. While Iran has imported some Russian and Chinese vaccines, joined the COVAX programme for vaccine sharing and developed three of its own vaccines, doses are in short supply, with the government promising mass vaccinations will start in September.

The current wave of protests, along with the oil workers’ strike, to defend their living standards and secure basic democratic rights take place amid similar protests in neighbouring Iraq and Lebanon, as well as in South Africa and Brazil. Indeed, their social and economic conditions are replicated across the Middle East and Africa.

Iranian workers can only advance their struggle by asserting their political independence from all factions of the bourgeoisie and their political representatives in both the Islamic Republic’s bourgeois-clerical establishment and the pro-imperialist opposition forces within and outside Iran bourgeois parties seeking to capitalize on the unrest in their own interests. They must unite with workers and the oppressed across the Middle East and around the world against capitalism, imperialism, and war and for socialism.

As Delta variant spreads in German schools, government intensifies herd immunity policy

Tamino Dreisam & Florian Hasek

The government’s “profits before lives” policy has already led to rising infection figures again in recent weeks. Now, the federal and state governments are putting the lives and health of tens of thousands more people at risk by continuing unsafe face-to-face teaching at the end of the summer holidays.

Against the backdrop of an explosive spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus throughout Europe, Federal Education Minister Anja Karliczek (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) on Wednesday that “outbreaks at schools must be expected.”

In primary schools, the minister said, there was “naturally the danger that school attendance... spreads coronavirus again more strongly in families and society and can then also affect those who cannot be vaccinated, for example, because of cancer.” To “maintain regular classes” under these conditions, a “step-by-step plan” was necessary, “which determines how to react if the infection situation worsens.”

Classroom in Dortmund, August 2020 (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

This is unmistakable: Instead of comprehensively securing schools and day care centres against the highly contagious delta variant, children and youth, as well as their families, are to be infected according to a “step-by-step plan” in the interest of big business.

As virologist Melanie Brinkmann of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research warned RND at the beginning of the month, “the Delta variant will rush through schools very quickly after the summer holidays” if no “additional measures” are taken. Education Minister Karliczek, however, did not hold out the prospect of any precautions apart from tests and a limited obligation to wear masks and referred to the “responsibility of the Länder (federal states)” for the installation of air filtration systems.

The policy of profit maximisation and deliberate infection is being implemented by all the establishment parties, which are thus realising the programme of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and increasingly adopting its slogans.

For example, at the beginning of the month, CDU candidate for chancellor in the September federal election, Armin Laschet, had already demanded that the population “live with the virus.” In an interview with broadcaster ARD, he added that compulsory testing and wearing masks in schools could be lifted “if the incidence figures remain stable.”

Social Democratic Party (SPD) chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz recently spoke of the need for a “normal school day” and called for “clear and courageous reopening steps.” SPD politician Karl Lauterbach told broadcaster n-tv that in future there would be “no more lockdowns.”

The nominally “left-wing” opposition parties are also putting the herd immunity policy into practice. The Greens sit in a total of 11 state governments where they are pushing the brutal reopening of the economy.

In Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) leads a Left Party-SPD-Green coalition. The state has almost always recorded the highest infection figures during the pandemic and ranks second—after Saxony, where the Greens are also in government—among the federal states with the most infections in relation to the number of inhabitants. Ramelow himself has repeatedly praised the Swedish government’s policy of herd immunity.

The unsafe opening of schools has already contributed to a renewed catastrophe in other countries. In the UK, where the Delta variant has spread furiously through schools, it already accounts for well over 90 percent of new infections. Although more than half the population is fully vaccinated, the country is heading for new highs with more than 50,000 new daily infections at last count.

Figures from Public Health England (PHE) show that in the working-class city of Liverpool, the incidence of coronavirus among 10- to 14-year-olds increased tenfold in the second half of June. In the week ending June 20, more than 16,000 schoolchildren fell ill in the UK—yet pupils are no longer to be quarantined if there is a suspected case of coronavirus in their class. Social distancing and mask-wearing requirements are to be removed at the start of the new school year in September.

The Netherlands is currently experiencing the steepest increase in new infections since the beginning of the pandemic. Within 14 days, the infection rate has increased tenfold and was recently back above 10,000 new infections in a single day. At the end of June, the right-wing government of Mark Rutte had, among other things, eliminated compulsory mask-wearing at primary schools.

In Israel, which started vaccinations early compared to European countries, the Delta variant has also become the dominant strain. Israel’s Ministry of Health had already admitted at the end of June that “about half” of those newly infected were schoolchildren and reported new outbreaks in “close to 30 schools” in the country. Although the summer holidays began in Israel on June 19, many pupils are still being sent to schools so their parents can work.

The Delta variant has also long been prevalent in Germany. The R (reproduction) value is above 1 for the first time in months and the rate of new infections is rising steeply. Schoolchildren are currently at twice the risk of infection as the average population. According to the figures of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the incidence rate of 15-19 year-olds is over 14 and that of 20-24 year-olds even over 18. Among 10-14-year-olds, the 7-day incidence rate reached a relative peak of 12 a fortnight ago.

Despite this ominous development, all federal states are maintaining regular classes and eliminating even the most basic protective measures. The compulsory use of masks in classrooms hardly exists in any of the federal states. According to official figures, more than 60,000 pupils have been infected with the virus so far, of whom more than 500 had to be hospitalised and two have died. If infections spread further in schools, tens of thousands of students would have to be hospitalised.

More than 16 months since the start of the pandemic, a growing number of studies highlight the prevalence of prolonged disorders following COVID-19 infection and the dangerous consequences it can have.

A study published on July 5 this year by scientists at the University of Heidelberg found that 12 months after a COVID-19 infection, only 22.9 percent of patients at the university hospital were completely free of symptoms. According to the study, the most common symptoms were “reduced physical performance (56.3 percent), fatigue (53.1), dyspnoea (37.5), concentration problems (39.6), word-finding problems (32.3) and sleep problems (26.0).”

The researchers concluded that “neurocognitive Long COVID symptoms persist for at least one year after the onset of COVID-19 symptoms and can significantly reduce quality of life.”

Another study by the University of Mainz, in which more than 10,000 people participated, concluded that more than 42 percent of those infected with COVID-19 are unaware that they carry the virus and can pass it on unknowingly.

Despite the study only examining those between 25 and 88 years of age, it was immediately misused by politicians and the media to drum up support for unprotected in-person classes. Although the study found that children are not particularly strong drivers of infection, the risk of infection increases sharply with the number of people in a household.

The class nature of the pandemic is also clearly demonstrated once again by the study. “People with a higher social status are more likely to know about their infection,” study leader Philipp Wild told news programme Tagesschau. “People with a low socio-economic status,” on the other hand, are “particularly affected” by COVID-19, although these layers consistently adhere to hygiene rules. “The socially worse off also bear the brunt of the crisis financially,” the researcher said.

Opposition to Olympics escalates as Japan declares its fourth state of emergency

Emily Ochiai

With the Olympics, the Japanese government declared a fourth state of emergency in Tokyo on July 12, just a few weeks after the third state of emergency was lifted on June 20. Tokyo, one of the world’s most densely populated cities, saw a rapid increase in COVID-19 cases immediately after the end of the previous restrictions.

Cases are continuing to increase, with schools among the sites where infections have been detected. The highly infectious Delta variant has been reported at a middle school and a preschool. Tokyo saw 1,149 new cases with a daily positivity rate of 14.2 percent on the July 14 and 1,308 new cases on July 15. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government estimates that daily infection numbers will reach 2,406 by August 11. The state of emergency will remain in force until August 22.

Despite the very real danger of the spread of infections, the Japanese government, the Tokyo Olympics Committee, and the International Olympics Committee (IOC) have refused to cancel or postpone the Games. The venues in Tokyo, Hokkaido, and Fukushima will host events without spectators while venues in Miyagi, Shizuoka, and Ibaraki are planning to operate at up to 50 percent capacity.

People walk by posters to promote the Olympic Games planned to start in the summer of 2021, in Tokyo, Wednesday, June 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

Opposition to the Olympics is very widespread. An online poll revealed over 90 percent of respondents were opposed to having any spectators at the Games. More than 8,000 phone calls and emails to the Miyagi prefecture criticized the decision to have spectators at the Games. Over 100 phone calls were made to Ibaraki prefecture opposing its plan to have elementary and middle school students as spectators at the stadium. A comment stated, “The reason for hosting the Games without spectators is because of the high risk of COVID-19 transmission. What is the point of having children attend the Games under such circumstances?”

An international online poll of 28 countries, including USA and France, conducted by market research company Ipsos Group S.A. showed that 56 percent of respondents were opposed to proceeding with the Games. The Olympics are due to open on July 23 and run to August 8.

Over 4,189 people have signed a petition to cancel the planned visit of IOC President Thomas Bach to Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park. On July 3, the Hiroshima-based group—Organization to Stop the Tokyo Olympics—held a public rally, stating “Thomas Bach and others, who are neglecting human lives, have no qualification to talk about peace.” The organizers warned, “If Thomas Bach visits Hiroshima, we will organize a protest on the same day.”

On July 12, a number of doctors voiced their opposition to the Olympics. Dr Aoki stated, “What is urgently needed is to end the pandemic as soon as possible, practising necessary safety measures.” He said that to proceed with the Olympics amidst a catastrophic pandemic should be taboo.

Dr Kako Maeda stressed the impact of the pandemic on the casualized workforce which is referred to in Japan as “non-regular” and is mainly female. Maeda told the media, “What remains for women living in this country after the Olympics is a long-lasting pandemic … Many women are at the frontline of the pandemic and are affected by it. This is a disaster caused by the government whose sole interest has been going forward with hosting the Olympics.”

An online rally conducted by organizers of FLOWER DEMO on July 13 stated, “The Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics are about to be enforced. Under the state of emergency, many citizens suffered difficulties, live with the fear of a health care crisis. While more than 10,000 people have been killed by the virus, tens of thousands of athletes, officials and reporters from overseas will be coming to Tokyo for the Games. What justifies forcing [the holding of] an international event that invites such a large number of people?”

A petition calling for the cancellation of the Olympics on Change.org, started by Kenji Utsunomiya on May 5, now has over 450,000 signatures. Utsunomiya re-submitted the petition to the Japanese government and the Tokyo Olympics Committee after it was revealed that the Tokyo governor ignored the petition the first time it was submitted.

Despite the surging COVID-19 cases and the widespread opposition, IOC President Bach asked Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to allow spectators at the Games if the COVID-19 situation improves. In response, Suga said, “If there is a big change in the situation, we will hold a consultation again and consider how to deal with it.’

Condemnations flooded social media. One user stated, “It’s obviously impossible considering the current situation, but the IOC probably wants to make as much profit as possible. They don't care how much infection would spread in Japan after the Games.”

Another comment stated, “Thomas Bach is like Hitler. He doesn’t care about the dangers facing people in Japan. He is a person who adheres only to commercial profit interests. The infection in Tokyo is spreading beyond expectations. The Olympics should be stopped immediately.”

When Bach appeared on live TV with Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike on July 15, a man shouted “President Bach, you are a liar! The airport is dangerous! The Bubble is broken!” He was dragged out of the venue by Tokyo Metropolitan staff members.

The Olympic Committee’s COVID-19 preventative measure known as the “Bubble Method” is meant to isolate athletes and staff from contact with the general public. It was revealed on July 14 that one of the athletes who entered Japan has tested positive for the virus but the Olympics committees have refused to provide any details of the case. So far there have been four cases of COVID-19 infection among athletes and 22 cases among Olympic staff members.

Despite the emergence of the Delta variant which is surging worldwide, the ruling classes in every part of the world are pushing to remove all safety measures in order to pursue profits. The lives of thousands of people will be at risk as a result of Japanese government’s refusal to cancel or postpone the Olympics and its decades-long defunding of the healthcare system.

COVID-19 cases across the US have more than doubled in the last two weeks

Benjamin Mateus

In her typically hypocritical and insensitive manner, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, after admitting that “we are going to continue to see preventable cases, hospitalization and, sadly, deaths among the unvaccinated,” sought to blame this on the poor choices of those have not yet been vaccinated.

We’re having “a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” she said, as though there was no connection between the evident failure of the Biden administration’s vaccination campaign and its broader effort to push workers back to their jobs and students back to school, regardless of the mounting danger of infection from the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus.

The unvaccinated, on whom she blames the pandemic, also includes 40 million school children for whom there is no vaccine as yet, but who will be fully exposed to the risks of coronavirus when public schools reopen, either now, during the summer months, or in August and September, when the regular school sessions begin.

Dr. Joseph Varon, right, leads a team as they try to save the life of a patient unsuccessfully inside the Coronavirus Unit at United Memorial Medical Center earlier this month. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Instead, Walensky reiterated the demand that schools be fully reopened for the fall and the advice that fully vaccinated individuals need not wear masks, while claiming, “things can still get worse, which is why we’re doing everything we can now to make sure that that doesn’t happen,” a patent falsehood.

As a teacher on the Facebook group Teachers Against Dying appropriately noted, “[That] Walensky is shifting the blame is epic! The unvaccinated did not cause, nor are they perpetuating, the pandemic. The CDC is wildly culpable for massive death and illness and continues with their ‘shitty’ and baseless advice.”

Teachers and parents should note that the CDC has confirmed the role children play as vectors of transmission. In yet-to-be- published data from June 10, 2021, during a presentation on the epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in children and adolescents, Dr. Hannah Kirking warned that “kids transmit as efficiently as adults and are infected at rates similar to adults.” This information has continued to be suppressed by the CDC and the media, which continue to endorse school reopenings.

Speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday, former head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Scott Gottlieb offered a more compelling and starker reminder that the pandemic is far from being over even for those fully vaccinated. He said, “If you’re in a location where there is dense spread, and there are parts of the country where it’s very dense right now, I think people need to start taking precautions, including people who are fully vaccinated if you’re a vulnerable individual.”

Figure 1 Estimated seroprevalence from US multi-state assessment for SARS-CoV-2 survey in commercial laboratories

He added, “The Delta variant is going to move its way through the country over the course of August and September, maybe into October. That’s what the modeling shows, that’s what we expected, that the peak of this epidemic would really be sometime around the end of September, back-to-school season…It’s going to get worse before it gets better in terms of the spread of these infections right now.”

Despite the CDC’s insistence that face coverings are not required for vaccinated individuals, Los Angeles County, where about 52 percent of the residents are fully vaccinated, has reinstated the indoor mask mandate in the face of rising infections.

On Saturday, 1,800 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the county. Barbara Ferrer, the local public health director, said in a statement, “Given the increased intermingling among unmasked people where vaccination status is unknown, the millions of people still unvaccinated, and the increased circulation of the highly transmissible Delta variant, we are seeing a rapid increase in COVID-19 infections.”

The number of new COVID-19 cases across the United States has been accelerating since reaching its low point near the end of June. The seven-day moving average has climbed to more than 31,000 new infections per day, a 135 percent rise compared to 14 days ago.

All states across the country, even those with high vaccination rates, are seeing a rise in infections. Twenty-eight states had cases climb more than 100 percent in a two-week period. In conjunction with these new surges, hospitalizations for the treatment of severe COVID-19 infections have also risen to a seven-day moving average of over 21,400, a 33 percent increase from the lows in June. Twenty-five percent of those hospitalizations are in intensive care units.

The US will reach the milestone of 35 million cumulative COVID-19 cases early this week, with 625,000 reported deaths attributed to complications with the infections since the pandemic. These figures remain the highest in any country across the globe.

Attesting to the benefits offered by vaccinations, the rise in hospitalizations and fatalities associated with COVID-19 complications is essentially occurring among unvaccinated patients, hence predominately among younger people. However, their youth does not provide a guarantee against the danger of more severe and even life-threatening consequences. Health officials are growing concerned that younger unvaccinated people are accessing healthcare with severe COVID-19 symptoms, necessitating admission into hospitals for treatment more frequently than in the earlier period of the pandemic.

Dr. Dana Hawkinson, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Kansas Health System, remarked, “We are seeing patients in their 20s and 30s who are otherwise healthy who are coming because of worsening symptoms … today, in the hospital, in the ICU, who are needing to have ventilator and high oxygen support.”

Dr. Faisal Khan, director of St. Louis County’s public health department, said on MSNBC, “Two weeks ago there were 89 patients admitted to ICU beds for COVID-related conditions across the St. Louis metro area. Each of these individuals was unvaccinated, and they were from the relatively younger age group between 18 to 50.”

At Miami’s Baptist Hospital, COVID-19 patient numbers are growing exponentially, with now more than 70 people being treated for their infections. Dr. Sergio Segarra, the chief medical officer, speaking with CNN, reminisced, “I remember seeing articles in the news about hospitals in California with empty COVID units, and I longed for that experience. It’s an experience we were working our way towards that, unfortunately, has taken a rather sad turn.” He explained that many are very young, in their 20s and 30s, who are critically ill and dying.

What makes the situation particularly dire is that the US vaccination campaign has slowed dramatically, with only 48.5 percent of its people fully vaccinated. The seven-day average of inoculations has remained barely over 500,000 per day for more than a week. Biden’s goal of 70 percent of adults receiving at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccines by July 4, a meaningless target given that a single dose offers minimal protection against the present strain, has been pushed back to mid-August.

Breaking this down by age groups, about 84 percent of adults 65 and older have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccines. Almost 72 percent have been fully vaccinated, accounting for the most significant proportion by age group. COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted the elderly. Though they account for 16 percent of the population, they make up 80 percent of all those that have died from COVID-19 during the pandemic so far.

Approximately 66 percent of those between the ages of 50 and 64 have been fully vaccinated, while for those aged 40 to 49, 56.4 percent have been fully vaccinated. Less than half of adults between 25 to 39 have been fully inoculated. That drops to 42 percent for 18 to 24. Only 10 percent of people 12-17 have been fully vaccinated, and no vaccines are available yet for children under 12.

There are enormous geographic variations: states in the Southeast and parts of the Midwest and Rocky Mountain areas that won’t see the “70 percent of adults fully vaccinated” well into winter or next year. States like Wyoming, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, Alaska, Ohio, Indiana, and Louisiana, which are below the national averages, are also seeing the pace of vaccination declining from the previous week.

According to Kaiser Family Foundation, regions that rank high on the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), along with higher poverty levels, also have lower vaccination rates. In areas where the share of people 65 and older living in poverty is greater than 11 percent, only 58.8 percent are vaccinated compared to 69 percent vaccinated where fewer than seven percent of the elderly are in poverty.

The Axios website, in a survey of adults on their vaccination status, conducted June 9-21, found that those earning less than $50,000 by household income accounted for 52.7 percent of all unvaccinated Americans. Though political affiliations, media misinformation, and religious backwardness all play a role, the socioeconomic factors appear decisive.

Julia Raifman, a health policy professor at Boston University, told Axios, “A lot of low-income workers are working hard to provide food and housing. That may mean it’s hard for them to find a time to get vaccinated.” The issue of unpaid time off is a concern, given vaccine side effects. Companies are not always making it easy for workers to get these life-saving treatments despite many low-income workers still wanting to get vaccinated.

Even the CDC noted that although vaccine eligibility has expanded, “vaccination coverage among adults was lower among those living in counties with lower socioeconomic status and with a higher percentage of households with children, single parents, and persons with disabilities.”

It should be noted that since Joe Biden took his oath of office in January, close to 200,000 people have died from COVID-19. His administration, the CDC, and both Democratic and Republican state governments have been working furiously to dismantle the safeguards of public health measures that have saved lives, in order to push workers back to their jobs. Vaccines have been used to declare the pandemic over and demand a return to capitalist exploitation as usual.

The floods in Europe and the bankruptcy of capitalism

Johannes Stern

Measured by the number of fatalities, the current floods in Germany constitute the worst flooding catastrophe since the storm flood along the North Sea coast in 1962. Officially, more than 180 people have died so far, with at least 156 in Germany and 31 in Belgium. Thousands of people remain unaccounted for.

People around the world are horrified by the devastation wrought by the floods. Drone video and before-and-after pictures reveal the extent of the destruction. The high waters had an especially horrific impact in the Eifel region. Villages along normally small rivers like the Ahr, Erft and Ruhr, as well as their tributaries, were largely destroyed.

Entire roads were consumed by the water and partially washed away. Paths, sections of railways and bridges were rendered impassible, and some were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people temporarily lost power after several distribution plants were flooded. In some regions, the mobile phone networks and drinking water were interrupted for a time.

A bridge over the Ahr river is damaged in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany, Saturday, July 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

The most dramatic consequence of the floods, however, is the number of deaths, which continues to grow.

In the district of Ahrweiler alone, there have been 110 deaths, including at least 28 in the community of Schuld (660 residents) and the small city of Sinzig (17,642 residents). It is difficult to find words to describe the fates of the individuals. People lost their parents, brothers, sisters and children. Among the deaths in Sinzig were 12 residents of a home for disabled people, which was not evacuated in time.

Similarly dramatic scenes are now threatening to be repeated in parts of Bavaria, Saxony and Austria. Since Saturday night, the heavy rain has shifted to the southeast, pushing up water levels on the Danube, Isar, Inn and tributaries of the Elbe. In Bavaria, the inner cities of Passau and Beerchtesgaden were flooded, and in Saxony, villages including Bad Schandau and Krippen.

The flood disaster exposes in numerous ways the bankruptcy of capitalism and its political representatives.

First, it is the direct product of the climate crisis produced by the capitalist profit system, which is leading to ever more extreme weather events. “Already over thirty years ago, climate models predicted that extreme precipitation would occur more often, while days with light rain would be less frequent,” commented Stefan Rahnstorf, professor at the Potsdam Institute for Research into the Consequences of Climate Change. For every degree of warming, “the air [can] absorb 7 percent more water vapour and then rain it down.”

The consequences of climate change fuel events like the current flood disaster and ultimately threaten the very survival of the planet and all of humanity. These consequences have been understood for a long time. However, the ruling class is incapable of and unwilling to adopt serious climate protection measures, because this would undermine its economic and geostrategic interests. The regular agreements and treaties on climate change are not worth the paper they are written on.

Second, the deadly effects of climate change are the product of decades of underfunding and cuts to infrastructure, including flood barriers, a working early warning system and a disaster prevention system. International experts have pointed out that the high death toll is directly bound up with inadequacies in these areas.

“In 2021, we should not experience this number of fatalities from floods. This is just unacceptable,” stated Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology at the University of Reading in the UK.

The professor told the ZDF television channel about problems with early warning systems. “Already, several days in advance, it was possible to see what was coming,” she said. All the necessary warnings were issued by the weather services,” commented Cloke, who was involved in the construction of the European flood alert system EFAS. “But this chain of warnings broke down somewhere so that they never reached the people.”

This account is confirmed by reports from flood victims given to the WSWS. A resident in Ahrweiler explained that he and his family were only warned about flooding in the local area two hours ahead of time. The sandbags they then received were not filled. Due to the approaching mass of water, the family no longer had any time to locate sand. Within a short period of time, the cellar and lower parts of the house were totally flooded.

It is “incredibly frustrating,” continued Cloke. In Germany, there were failures at every level, she said. First, there is “no unified nationwide approach to flood risks,” even though “different flood plans for various scenarios” are needed. Second, “local authorities often don’t have the resources necessary to prepare appropriately.”

In fact, numerous municipalities are bankrupt due to the debt brake in Germany’s Basic Law. Deep cuts were made to budgets for disaster protection over recent years. This applies to the building of emergency hospitals, the training and provision of equipment for tens of thousands of volunteer civil protection forces, and the maintenance of national stores of equipment and medical supplies. The network of warning sirens was also largely dismantled.

The Federal Office for Population Protection and Disaster Assistance, which is part of the Federal Interior Ministry, has only 344 employees and a pathetic annual budget of less than €250 million.

Necessary spending for flood protection was not undertaken. “The implementation of flood-related measures” was “restricted due to a lack of allocated financial resources,” notes a report from the European Accounting Agency from 2018 on the implementation of the European Flood Guidelines. Member states are often “not in a position” to “calculate the impact of climate change on the extent, frequency, and location of the appearance of floods.”

The same politicians who now shed crocodile tears in the disaster zones and incessantly pledge “rapid and unbureaucratic emergency help” are responsible for this situation. Over recent years, they have provided the banks and corporations with hundreds of billions of euros with no strings attached and repeatedly increased military spending. At the same time, they have carried out spending cuts that have plunged millions of workers and their families into poverty.

The ruling class exploited the pandemic to intensify its policy of redistribution from the bottom to the top. Within the framework of the so-called coronavirus emergency bailout, all parties in the German federal parliament supported the pumping of billions of euros into the major corporations and banks. All parties in government are allowing the virus to spread so as to guarantee the profits of the financial oligarchy, while rejecting all scientific measures to protect the population. The result is over 4 million dead around the world, including more than 1 million in Europe and over 91,000 in Germany.

The same indifference to human life and the wellbeing of the population is being repeated in the current flood disaster. The joking and laughter captured on video in one of the disaster zones by North-Rhine Westphalia’s Minister President and Christian Democratic candidate for Chancellor, Armin Laschet, are merely the most disgusting examples of this.

After the initial shock, workers and young people will begin to draw far-reaching lessons from these experiences.

Data breach reveals extensive government spying on journalists and political activists

Alex Findijs

A data breach of the Israeli spy company NSO Group has revealed that the company’s Pegasus software is being used by governments around the world to spy on political dissidents and journalists. The breach, obtained by French media non-profit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, included a list of 50,000 phone numbers targeted for infection with the Pegasus spyware.

Many identified targets of NSO’s software are prominent individuals, including hundreds of business executives, religious leaders, academics, union and government officials—including several yet to be named cabinet ministers, presidents and prime ministers—as well as employees of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

The list consists of at least 180 targeted journalists, with reporters, executives, and editors from the Financial Times, CNN, the New York Times, France 24, the Economist, Associated Press and Reuters, all identified by the Pegasus project. The Guardian, which has produced a series reporting on the leak titled “The Pegasus project” in coordinating with 16 other news outlets, has stated that it will release further information about the targeted individuals in the coming days as part of its reporting on the issue.

This file photo shows the logo of the Israeli NSO Group company on a building where they had offices in Herzliya, Israel. (AP Photo/Daniella Cheslow, File)

Without forensic analysis of each phone number listed, it is impossible to determine how many phones were actually infected. However, an analysis of a sample of the listed phones by the Pegasus project determined that half, 37 of 67, were infected, indicating potentially tens of thousands of infections.

Regardless of how many phones were actually infected, the determination by government agencies that it was necessary to spy on tens of thousands of people, and hundreds of journalists and activists, is a warning of the lengths that capitalist governments will go to suppress any and all opposition to their rule and trample on democratic rights.

The revelations of the scale and extent of NSO’s spying operations are an astonishing exposure of the ability of governments and intelligence agencies around the world to spy on their populations. An extensive investigation by over a dozen news outlets has discovered disturbing details about the capabilities of the Pegasus spyware.

According to the Guardian, Pegasus software is capable of monitoring all information stored on a smartphone, including texts, emails, and images, as well as encrypted data and contacts lists. It is even capable of accessing the victim’s GPS, as well as activating a cell phone microphone or camera to record the target’s conversations.

Such capabilities suggest that it may have been the GPS tracking features of Pegasus that facilitated the assassination of Mexican journalist Cecilio Pineda Birto in 2017. Pineda was gunned down by four men at a car wash in Altamirano, Mexico just weeks after his addition to the list by one of NSO’s Mexican clients.

Even more concerning is the ability of Pegasus to infect a target’s phone with ease. Earlier infection models relied on texting or emailing a link through which the virus would enter the target’s device. This method was often unreliable, with some known targets sent links that failed to complete the infection. However, recent advancements in NSO’s spyware have allowed it to infect phones through what are called “zero-click” attacks that significantly reduce the risk of failure.

Such attacks enable NSO to infect target devices without any interaction on the part of the victim. These methods exploit “zero-day” vulnerabilities such as bugs in the operating system of a phone that the developer may not even know exist. In 2019, for example, WhatsApp revealed that NSO had been able to send malware to 1,400 devices by exploiting a zero-day vulnerability that allowed Pegasus to infect the device through a phone call, regardless of whether the target answered the call or not.

NSO has also been working to exploit weaknesses in Apple’s iMessage app. Claudio Guarnieri, director of Amnesty International's Security Lab, has been able to identify Pegasus infections of Apple devices as recently as this month, even penetrating Apple’s most recent security updates.

The target may also have their phone targeted remotely through an agent operating a wireless transceiver, and, according to NSO itself, a phone can be infected manually if an agent is able to steal the phone and download the spyware directly.

Using these techniques, Pegasus is virtually impossible to stop. The software is effectively undetectable, living in the temporary memory of a device and leaving no trace once the device is shut down. Furthermore, once infected, the spyware is capable of activating administrative privileges for itself. “Pegasus can do more than what the owner of the device can do,” Guarnieri explained to the Guardian .

Guarnieri continued, “This is a question that gets asked to me pretty much every time we do forensics with somebody: ‘What can I do to stop this happening again?’ The real honest answer is nothing.”

The consequences of the widespread deployment of this software are apparent: NSO is facilitating the extensive spying on journalists and political dissidents by governments with impunity.

According to NSO, it provides its services only to verified military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies in 40 unnamed countries and conducts extensive vetting of clients’ human rights records. Ostensibly, the software is only used to target high profile criminals and terrorists.

However, based on information about NSO’s clients obtained by the Pegasus project, this appears to be patently false. Not only have journalists, political activists and even high-ranking politicians been targets, but the ten countries so far identified by the Pegasus project as clients of NSO are Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, India and the United Arab Emirates.

Among this list are governments notorious for violating the human rights of journalists and citizens. Notably, Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman was found to have ordered the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Several members of Khashoggi’s family, as well as close associates and Turkish officials investigating the murder, were targets for NSO’s spyware.

Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, was allegedly hacked with Pegasus spyware just four days after his murder.

Mexico, with multiple agencies purchasing Pegasus and a suspected 15,000 targets, is the most dangerous country for journalists in the world outside of active war zones. Since 2010, 86 journalists have been killed, including two just last month. Those who investigate the connections and corruption between organized crime, the government and the security forces are often targeted for intimidation and threats of violence.

NSO and its government clients, the list of which will undoubtedly grow with time, is enabling the covert surveillance of any person deemed a threat by the capitalist governments and their intelligence agencies.

Such software will undoubtedly be used to record every move of independent, left wing and socialist journalists and political activists across the globe. This spying will be used to intimidate and threaten them, using the potential of violence as a bludgeon against critical journalism and political dissent. It will also be only a matter of time before such technology is used by companies to spy on their employees and crack down on the efforts of workers to organize against their bosses.

The attempts of governments to use spyware against journalists and their people must be opposed. But the defense of democratic rights cannot be entrusted to the capitalist parties that have assaulted democratic rights for decades and carried out mass surveillance of all electronic communications, as was exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.

In the United States, the Republican Party passed the anti-democratic Patriot Act and the Democratic Party voted to extend it in 2019. In Germany, the grand coalition of the conservative Christian Democrats and liberal Social Democrats voted this June to further expand the surveillance powers of the state.

In every country, it is imperative for the working class to break with these parties, which embrace the assault on democratic rights, and build an independent socialist movement for the defense of democratic rights and freedom of the press.