Tunisian president launches coup amid protests against mass COVID-19 deaths

Alex Lantier

On Sunday, Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed sacked the Islamist Ennahda Movement government, suspended parliament and deployed the army to guard state buildings. This followed protests called across Tunisia against joblessness and the official mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the last month, anger mounted as the Delta variant devastated the country, leading to a collapse of medical care as hospitals overflowed with the sick and the dead. With nearly 19,000 deaths among a population of 11.9 million, Tunisia has suffered 1,587 confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million inhabitants, the highest rate in Africa. As its economy was hit by the pandemic, moreover, unemployment surged to nearly 18 percent and over 40 percent for youth.

Demonstrators in Tunis, Tunisia, Sunday, July 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Hedi Azouz)

A decade ago, in December 2010, protests in impoverished mining areas of south Tunisia erupted after the self-immolation of a young fruit and vegetable vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi. These protests, which began totally outside the political establishment, overcame bloody repression by security forces and ultimately triggered a mass mobilization of Tunisian workers and youth that brought down President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. The next month, Egyptian workers brought down Hosni Mubarak with mass protests and a general strike.

While the Ennahda government is deeply unpopular among workers and youth, reports of Sunday’s protests before Saïed’s coup make clear that they were not a mass mobilization of workers and youth like the January 2011 movement. Not only were they far smaller, but they involved forces working closely with the presidency.

On Sunday, hundreds of protesters marched on the parliament in Tunis and were blocked by riot police. Several thousand attended a march in the resort town of Sousse, after which smaller groups of protesters stormed and burned Ennahda headquarters in the city. The protests in Sidi Bouzid were reportedly organized by civil society activists based on calls for “the departure of the government and the dissolution of the government.” There were similar protests against Ennahda party offices in Monastir, Sfax, and El Kef, while in Sidi Bouzid and Tozeur, Ennadha offices were burned down.

While certain press reports claim that no party endorsed the movement, the Arab nationalist Popular Current party issued a statement on Saturday for protests to bring down Ennahda. It had already called on Saïed to oust the government this spring. This weekend, it appealed to Tunisia’s “political parties, organizations and the elite of society to organize a popular mobilization,” calling for “all national forces to mobilize massively to impose a national transition government and a short-term economic and social strategy to save the country from bankruptcy and receivership.”

Saïed reacted with a coup, extra-constitutionally suspending the parliament and ordering the Tunisian army to guard the parliament and state buildings, and to oversee the response to the pandemic. The parliament was ringed with armed vehicles.

While there is legitimate anger at Ennahda among workers and youth, the strongest warnings are necessary about Saïed’s actions. He has not transferred power to the workers, but to the presidency and the armed forces, which are implicated in Ennahda’s reactionary policies.

The experience of the Egyptian revolution, to which events in Tunisia are closely linked, has vital lessons for the situation today. In 2013, the Egyptian army carried out a coup, backed by the middle class Tamarod (“Rebel”) coalition, toppling unpopular Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. While Tamarod and its allies celebrated the coup in the streets, it led to the installation of the bloody dictatorship of General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, which still today detains and tortures tens of thousands of political prisoners in its vast prison system.

Everything indicates that, absent a political intervention by the working class, Saïed will also set up a counterrevolutionary dictatorship.

Saïed announced draconian measures giving himself vast powers. He suspended the parliament and eliminated parliamentary immunity for all its deputies, while announcing that he would preside over prosecutors’ offices that are preparing charges against parliamentarians. He also announced that he would designate all ministers personally and preside at meetings of the council of ministers. Saïed stated that he would then prepare “decrees to ensure a return to social peace.”

At the same time, Saïed, a constitutional lawyer who represented the Ben Ali regime at the Arab League and in international human rights bodies, threatened any further protests against his regime. He issued a statement read out on public television, declaring: “I warn any who are thinking of resorting to weapons… and whoever shoots a bullet, the armed forces will respond with bullets.”

Given the Tunisian security forces’ bloody record during the 2011 uprising, this is an unambiguous threat to use force against working class protests over the COVID-19 pandemic.

Saïed’s claim that he is imposing a state of emergency under Article 80 of the 2014 Constitution, which he helped write, is false. Indeed, this article states: “In case of imminent peril threatening the nation’s territorial integrity, security or independence and that blocks the proper functioning of the public power, the president of the Republic may take measures imposing a state of exception after consulting with the head of government and the president of the Assembly of Representatives of the People, after having informed the president of the Constitutional Court.”

Legally, Saïed would have had to consult with Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and Assembly President Rached Ghannouchi, who are both Ennahda members, to invoke Article 80. However, Ghannouchi issued a public statement yesterday denying that Saïed consulted with him, calling Saïed’s action “unconstitutional” and “illegal.” Ghannouchi called it “a coup against the [2011] revolution and the constitution.”

This exposes the reactionary hypocrisy of the imperialist powers, which all issued statements covering up Saïed’s coup and calling for him to respect the constitution. Germany’s Der Spiegel noted: “Until now, Berlin, Paris and Brussels have issued only general statements calling for respect for the constitution. And it must be hoped that there is not secretly the insane opinion that the solution—ten years after the overthrow of the dictator Ben Ali—is a new strongman.”

Similarly, the General Union of Tunisian Labor (UGTT) bureaucracy, a longtime tool of the old Ben Ali regime, gave Saïed backhanded support, calling on him to “guarantee the constitutional legitimacy of all actions taken in these difficult times.”

Saïed is not protecting the constitution, however, but trampling it underfoot. Nor is the danger of dictatorship limited to neo-colonial countries in Africa. A stark indication of this is the threats of far-right coups made by French and Spanish officers outraged at popular opposition to “herd immunity” policies, following Trump’s attempted January 6 putsch on the Capitol in Washington.

Eleven million US families face eviction as CDC moratorium expires

Chase Lawrence

An historic and devastating wave of evictions and foreclosures looms, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) federal eviction moratorium set to expire at the end of this week, on July 31.

With just days to go, there is no indication the Biden administration is going to extend it. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki boasted in a press conference on Friday about vague efforts by the Biden administration to “help people with government-backed mortgages stay in their homes through monthly payment reductions and potential loan modifications.” Noticeably absent was any reference to the end of the moratorium or relief for renters.

A man walks in front of a For Rent sign in a window of a residential property in San Francisco, Oct. 20, 2020. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

At his CNN town hall event on Wednesday, President Biden did not even speak about the housing crisis. Nor did he say anything about it on Friday when he spoke at a campaign rally in Arlington in support of Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s run for governor of Virginia.

Last year exceeded the $10 trillion mark in housing debt for the first time in history, according to the New York Fed’s Household Debt and Credit Report, reaching levels higher than those seen in the third quarter of 2008, which reached just under $10 trillion. This creates the obvious preconditions, paired with job losses, attacks on workers' wages and a new surge in the pandemic, for an immense foreclosure crisis.

Despite the CDC’s moratorium, which was issued on September 4, 2020 as state-level moratoriums expired, over 444,000 evictions have been ordered during the pandemic, with over 6,600 in the week preceding July 17, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. According to the Eviction Lab, neighborhoods with the highest eviction filing rates have the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates.

The housing crisis presents an immediate danger to public health, especially given the spread of COVID-19 among the homeless population, which many of those being evicted or foreclosed on will join.

A UCLA-led study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology released Monday found that COVID-19 death rates increased significantly following the lifting of eviction moratoriums, resulting in 433,700 excess infections and an estimated 10,700 excess deaths in the summer of 2020. The study’s senior author, Frederick Zimmerman, professor of health policy and management at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, concluded, “Evictions may have accelerated COVID-19 transmission by decreasing individuals’ ability to socially distance.”

Much of the $47 billion in federal aid for renters provided under pandemic stimulus programs is being held up by state governments, with the end of the moratorium expected to create a surge in evictions the money was ostensibly intended to prevent.

According to figures released in March by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 11 million families are at risk of losing housing, with 2.1 million being at least three months behind on mortgage payments, while 8.8 million are behind on rent.

At the time, homeowners were estimated to owe almost $90 billion, with the news release noting that “the last time this many families were behind on their mortgages was during the Great Recession.” Once the federal assistance programs and moratorium are ended, renters and homeowners will be left with a mass of overdue bills, payments on mortgages, and late rents.

According to the US Census Bureau’s June 23-July 5 Household Pulse Survey, 7.4 million households are not caught up on rent payments, constituting almost 15 percent of the total 50.9 million renter-occupied housing units in the US. Of these, households with four or more people constituted 3.6 million, or almost 50 percent of households not caught up on rent payments, with almost 4 million, or around 53 percent, being households with children.

The overwhelming share of households that are behind on rent are poor and working class, with 73 percent of those behind on rent making less than $50,000 a year, and over half (57 percent) making under $35,000 a year.

Speaking to the economic crisis facing broad swathes of the working class and middle class in the US, among all renters 13.7 million have seen the respondent or a household member experience a loss of employment income, with almost half of those not caught up on rent payments reporting a loss of employment income. Even worse, among respondents, 20 million were not currently employed, constituting nearly two in five households.

Even as millions struggle to make their payments and keep a roof over their families’ heads, rents are skyrocketing, with the median national rent reaching $1,527 per month, a 5.5 percent increase from the previous year, according to Realtor.com. Of the 50 largest metropolitan areas, 43 saw their median rent increase in that same period.

A recent report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that in 45 states and Washington D.C., median gross rents grew faster than median renter household income between 2001 and 2018. There is no state, city or county in the US where a worker earning the minimum wage at 40 hours a week can afford to rent a two-bedroom house.

Median existing home prices have risen, with the Wall Street Journal documenting a median price rise to $363,300, a record increase of 23.4 percent from the year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Compounding the pressure on households that have lost employment and income, putting them on the verge of eviction, is raging inflation. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increase in June was the highest seen since 2008, at 5.4 percent.

While virtually nothing is being provided for the overwhelming majority of the population, unlimited money is being provided to enrich the oligarchy and prepare for world war.

The Federal Reserve is spending $120 billion on bonds and securities every month to pump money into the financial markets. US banks have posted record profits for the second quarter, exceeding analysts’ expectations, with just six banks making a combined $42 billion in profits in only three months. One of the largest asset managers, BlackRock, which posted a profit of $1.38 billion, manages $9.49 trillion, up from $7.32 trillion last year.

As this catastrophe plays out, Biden’s budget calls for a record annual military budget of $753 billion, in preparation for war against China, Russia and other countries.

Biden has presented a watered-down bipartisan infrastructure plan, which, in its present state, constitutes $579 billion in new funding over eight years. Neither this nor Biden’s “American Jobs Plan” or “American Families Plan” has actually been drawn up in the form of legislation.

Under conditions where there has already been a sharp increase in poverty globally, and in the US as well, there has been an rise in the wealth of billionaires. Globally, billionaire wealth surged 60 percent in the first year of the pandemic, from $8 trillion to $13.1 trillion.

Wildfires continue to grow across western North America as another heat wave builds

Eric Luin

Wildfires in the western US, Alaska and British Columbia continue to spread at a record pace while a third massive heat wave of the summer is building in the US. The National Interagency Fire Center reports that in the US there are currently 79 large fires burning in 12 states that have so far destroyed over 1.5 million acres.

There are currently 20 large wildfires in Idaho, 19 in Montana, 10 in Washington, six in California, six in Alaska, six in Oregon, four in Wyoming, two in Utah, two in Arizona, two in South Dakota, one in Colorado and one in Nevada. Three new large fires have emerged in Idaho and South Dakota.

The Dixie Fire in Plumas County, California, July 24, 2021 (AP Photo/Noah Berge)

The widespread fires continue as another heat wave settles in across much of the contiguous US for the week. As of Tuesday, at least 17 states have issued heat warnings or advisories. This follows the record shattering heat wave that occurred in the Pacific Northwest earlier in the summer, and the blistering heat wave that occurred a few weeks ago in the southwest. This latest wave is not expected to lead to as many shattered records as the previous two, but it will at times span from the west to the east coast. Acute elevated heat is expected in Montana and Wyoming. Temperatures are expected to reach as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheit in eastern Montana, but this could be tempered by thick wildfire smoke, which could keep temperatures slightly cooler.

The largest of the fires remains the Bootleg fire in southern Oregon near Klamath Falls. It is currently listed to have burned over 410,000 acres and is 53 percent contained as of Tuesday morning. The Bootleg fire began from a lightning strike on July 6. More than 2,000 firefighters are assigned to the fire, including personnel from over 90 fire departments across the country, and crews of the Oregon National Guard.

In California, the Dixie fire has now burned 200,000 acres as it continues to spread and is at 22 percent containment. The Dixie fire is located 15 miles northeast of the town of Paradise, which was almost completely destroyed in the deadly 2018 Camp Fire which caused at least 85 civilian fatalities.

In British Columbia, Canada, there are currently 226 wildfires burning, 38 of these are considered fires of note, meaning that the fires are highly visible or pose a threat to persons or property. Approximately 1.05 million acres have burned so far this season in the western Canadian province. On Saturday, 101 firefighters from Mexico arrived to help fight the raging fires. At that time there were 3,320 total firefighters engaged in combating the fires in British Columbia.

These wildfires have been intensifying as a result of prolonged dry conditions from severe drought and excessive sustained high heat conditions, both related to global warming. This is leaving vegetation and timber fuels at significantly elevated risk for explosive wildfire. Years of inadequate forest and wildfire management, planning and resources is also playing a factor.

It is under these conditions that the more than 21,000 wild-land firefighters and support personnel are currently assigned to incidents across the US, making their task to contain the fires more difficult and dangerous. The massive plumes of smoke and the hazardous particulate matter it contains from the fires creates severe negative impact on the air quality in the towns and regions near to the fires, which is of course even worse for the firefighters on the ground fighting the blazes.

In the town of Gardnerville, Nevada, 16 miles north of the Tamarack Fire, the air quality index (AQI) for over the past week has been averaging around 150 and has peaked at nearly 200, which are levels considered “unhealthy” and “very unhealthy.” The local air quality and firefighting efforts got a break on Monday due to shifting winds and thundershowers. This slowed the fire, lowered the risk of resuming its previous rampage, and allowed some evacuation orders to be lifted.

The Tamarack Fire in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest of the California and Nevada Sierra Mountains was first reported July 4 from a lightning strike the previous day. It grew from a single tree to a quarter acre by July 10, and at that time fire officials felt it posed a small risk of spreading. On July 16 the Tamarack Fire broke out as a massive wildfire and has burned through nearly 70,000 acres since that time. It is currently listed at 54 percent contained.

The smoke from the wildfires is also affecting air quality conditions across the US, as it has been steadily spreading east to the Atlantic coast, starkly visible from NASA satellite imagery as smoke eerily blankets much of the country. Smoke advisories have been issued across the western US states including in Alaska as well as in British Columbia.

Wildfires are also burning in other parts of the world, the most significant being in Russian Siberia. According to Euronews, as of Monday, approximately 4.6 million acres of forestland had burned in Russia so far this year, which is an area larger than the US state of Connecticut. The increased severity of fires in these far reaches of the northern hemisphere is alarming from an emissions standpoint, not just from the loss of timber, which is significant, but because of the melting permafrost and burning peat, which had been absorbing carbon for thousands of years that is now being suddenly released back into the atmosphere.

Tunisian hospitals overwhelmed as COVID-19 surges across Africa

Kumaran Ira

Hospitals in Tunisia and across much of Africa are overwhelmed as the Delta variant fuels a July upsurge of COVID-19 to levels in Africa unprecedented since the beginning of the pandemic.

Tunisia, with 575,002 cases and 18,968 deaths registered, has the highest rate of confirmed cases and deaths of any continental African country. It has seen 48,116 cases and 1,587 deaths of COVID-19 per 1 million inhabitants. However, the Delta variant has driven caseloads and the strain on inadequate health care systems to unprecedented heights in countries across the Maghreb, all of West Africa and indeed the entire African continent.

A slum overlooking Lagos downtown in Nigeria, Tuesday May 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

While nearly half of Tunisia’s confirmed cases and deaths have occurred just since May 2021, cases surged to 5,494 in Morocco on July 24, approaching the worst days of November 2020; to 1,505 on July 26 in Algeria, the highest ever; and 1,722 on July 18 in Senegal, also a new record.

Yesterday, Senegal’s national Director of Public Health Institutions, Ousmane Dia, told AFP: “We are overwhelmed and close to saturation, with 99 percent of hospital beds occupied in Dakar,” the capital. “It is hard to keep up if we receive 600 to 700 new patients each day,” he added, noting that health personnel are “extremely tired and burned out.” Dia said that the situation was only somewhat better outside of the capital, with 45 percent of hospital beds already occupied. Only 640,000 of Senegal’s 17 million people are vaccinated against COVID-19.

Tunisian hospitals have seen conditions like those in Dakar for a number of weeks. On July 8, Health Ministry spokesman Nissaf Ben Alaya bluntly declared: “The current heath situation is disastrous. … The rate of new cases has enormously increased. The health system, unfortunately, has collapsed.” Alaya pointed to an acute shortage of beds and especially of medical oxygen to treat the severely ill, adding: “If we do not unite our efforts, the health catastrophe will only worsen.”

Since these statements, Tunisia took emergency measures and received international assistance that has slowed the pace of recorded infections, although—in line with policy in the imperialist countries of North America and Europe—it still opposes a strict lockdown to allow non-essential workers to shelter at home.

The day after Alaya spoke, Tunis announced a night-time curfew in six of the worst-hit regions of Tunisia. It also received hundreds of thousands of doses of COVID-19 vaccines from China, France, Italy and Portugal; shipments of medical equipment from Germany; and shipments of medical oxygen from Algeria. Over the last week, the number of infections fell 47 percent from the previous week, to 24,641.

Nonetheless, the situation in Tunisia remains extremely grave, and deaths continue to mount among the large numbers of people now on emergency life support. Over 90 percent of hospital beds remain occupied in large areas of the country, not only in the capital, Tunis, but especially in poorer areas with weaker health systems.

Kairouan, a city of 600,000 in central Tunisia, has seen dozens of deaths, including of children, with test positivity rates in the city exploding upwards to between 45 and 50 percent as the contagion exploded out of control. At Kairouan’s Ibn Jazzar hospital, the influx of new patients was so fast that COVID-positive patients were mixed with other patients.

Imen Fteiti, a nurse at Ibn Jazzar hospital, told AFP there were so many patients that “some died without us realizing that it had happened.” The ward had only 3 nurses for 35 COVID patients. She added: “There is a lack of oxygen equipment and we have reached a point where we do not know whom to help first. … We start early in the morning and we never know when we will end.”

She pointed to the horrific psychological stress of seeing so many of her patients die. AFP reported that she is “still haunted by a young woman who begged her to give emergency care to her father, because she had just lost her mother to COVID-19. ‘Unfortunately he died, too,’” Fteiti said.

Staff at Mongi-Slim hospital in the Tunis suburbs spoke to Le Monde to share similar stories of tragedy and unbearable work stress during the pandemic. “What is terrifying, is that we cannot see the end of the tunnel. New patients arrive every day, and each time we must make difficult choices to determine who will have access to emergency life support,” an anesthesiologist who wanted to remain anonymous declared. “The average age on life support is between 40 and 50, mainly due to the Delta variant. As soon as one bed becomes free, a new patient arrives.”

She said that she was particularly distressed by the ten young pregnant women who were admitted to her hospital with COVID-19. “We were only able to save one of them,” she said.

She added that she was angry at the Tunisian government’s attacks on health workers’ pay and conditions: “Recently, we were told we would have to give up our vacations, whereas in France, health care staff received bonus pay for their work during the crisis. It is impossible to understand this.”

These reports underscore the politically-criminal failure of the wealthiest capitalist powers to coordinate in a timely manner the sending of critical medical equipment and vaccines to the world’s poorest continent. Reports have emerged that over 4 million people have died during the pandemic in India, unreported in official health figures. It is clear that urgent action is necessary to avert truly horrific losses among Africa’s 1.2 billion population.

Amid the new wave of the pandemic driven by the Delta variant, barely 1 percent of Africa’s population has been vaccinated. While Africa has registered 6.6 million cases and 166,000 deaths, Red Cross regional director for Africa Mohammed Mukhier warned that this was a drastic under-reporting of cases and deaths, which has made it harder to organize international cooperation to treat the virus in Africa.

He said, “Since the outset of the pandemic, not enough attention has been paid to the evolution of this virus on the African continent. Lower levels of transmission data have created the perception that this region has not been so affected by the pandemic. The upward trend in the number of infections that we are now seeing is partially as a result of insufficient funding to address several gaps in the response. These include weak surveillance mechanisms; weak testing capacity; insufficient protective gear and medical equipment, including hospital beds, oxygen and ambulance services.”

Red Cross official Rui Alberto Oliveira stressed the obstacles to effective treatment of COVID-19 posed by ongoing civil wars and also mass AIDS infections across sub-Saharan Africa. With AIDS badly weakening millions of people’s immune system, this creates a large population that is vulnerable not only to having very serious cases of COVID-19, but also to creating new, potentially more dangerous variants of the coronavirus.

Oliveira said, “Responding to COVID-19 in countries facing multiple crises, such as DR Congo, Sahel, Lake Chad, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Sudan or Somalia is extremely challenging, meaning the disease may continue to circulate unchecked. We cannot wait for the situation to deteriorate further before taking action. We must ensure that enough resources are made available, now, to halt the progress of the imminent and potentially catastrophic third wave of COVID-19 in Africa.”

Drone war whistleblower Daniel Hale sentenced to 45 months in prison

Kevin Reed

Daniel Hale, the whistleblower and former military intelligence analyst who leaked details of the US drone warfare program to the Intercept in 2014, was sentenced to 45 months in federal prison on Tuesday for violating the Espionage Act. In a backhanded acknowledgement of the significance of Hale’s revelations, US District Judge Liam O’Grady said that the 33-year-old’s disclosure of documents went beyond his “courageous and principled” opposition to the military’s deadly use of drones.

Judge O’Grady went on to say, “You are not being prosecuted for speaking out about the drone program killing innocent people. You could have been a whistleblower … without taking any of these documents.” Among the documents that Hale obtained and turned over to journalist Jeremy Scahill was proof that a targeted assassination program was being run out of the White House by then-President Barack Obama, behind the backs of the American people.

Daniel Hale

Hale’s exposures also contained an analysis of the drone warfare program that showed—far from Obama’s claim of the surgical precision of the unmanned aerial vehicle attacks—nearly 90 percent of the people killed in the missile strikes were not the intended targets. Hale also revealed the criteria which the Obama White House used for placing an individual on the terrorism watch list and then authorizing them to be assassinated by military personnel from remote-controlled operations thousands of miles away.

In a brief statement before Judge O’Grady handed down the sentence, Hale said he copied the classified documents because he believed it “was necessary to dispel the lie that drone warfare keeps us safe, that our lives are worth more than theirs.” The courageous whistleblower then went on, “I am here because I stole something that was never mine to take—precious human life. I couldn’t keep living in a world in which people pretend that things weren’t happening that were. Please, your honor, forgive me for taking papers instead of human lives.”

Although O’Grady’s nearly four-year sentence was far less than the maximum of eleven years that was demanded by federal prosecutors, that Hale is serving any time at all is a travesty of justice and part of an ongoing assault on democratic rights and the rights of whistleblowers who expose the crimes of US imperialism.

The vendetta against Daniel Hale has been ongoing for past the past seven years. Under Obama, federal authorities searched Hale’s home in 2014 before the publication of the documents by the Intercept. He was then indicted by a grand jury on four counts of violating the US Espionage Act of 1917 and one count of theft of government property, and arrested in 2019 during the Trump administration. Hale was accused of printing 36 documents from his computer including 23 that were unrelated to his work for an intelligence contractor of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and giving 17 of these to Scahill, 11 of which were marked either “secret” or “top secret.”

Although he originally pled not guilty to all charges, Hale changed his plea to guilty on one of the Espionage Act charges on March 31, 2021 in order to avoid a likely sentence of decades in prison. He admitted in court that he was the author of a chapter titled “Why I Leaked the Watchlist Documents” included in Scahill’s 2017 book The Assasination Complex. After his guilty plea, Hale was initially released pending sentencing but was rearrested on May 5 and imprisoned on the orders of Judge O’Grady on the grounds that he had violated the terms of his pretrial release.

During pretrial motion to dismiss the charges, Hale’s attorneys argued that the Espionage Act violates the First Amendment because the public’s right to know about the war crimes of the US government stands above any commitment to preserve classified documents in the interests of national security as a service member or contractor for the Department of Defense. The prosecution sought to exclude Hale’s public interest defense—a legal tactic that has been used in many of the Espionage Act case that were brought under Obama and continued by the Trump administration—and this request was granted by Judge O’Grady.

Fully aware that he faced years if not a decade in prison, Hale never wavered in explaining his motivation along with the emotional toll that his experience in the Air Force had on him. As he explained in the 11-page hand-written letter to Judge O’Grady on July 18, Hale said he suffered from PTSD and depression and that his exposure to combat in the Air Force “irreversibly transformed my identity as an American” and that he was compelled to “violate the Espionage Act.”

In his statement to the court prior to sentencing on Tuesday morning, Hale said, “With drone warfare, sometimes nine out of 10 people killed are innocent. You have to kill part of your conscience to do your job.”

Following the sentencing, Hale’s support team posted a series of tweets that said, “#DanielHale has already spent years under investigation and has been dragged through a lengthy court process. Despite the fact that the government failed to even prove his disclosure caused harm, he is now subject to harsh sentencing intended for outright spies.

“But everyone agrees that #DanielHale is not a spy. He is a deeply honorable man who is being punished simply for acting on his conscience and telling the truth.”

The ongoing use of the Espionage Act—by both Democrats and Republicans in the White House—against whistleblowers and journalists who provide irrefutable proof of the crimes of American imperialism is a prominent expression of the decay of democracy and drift toward authoritarianism in the US. Since 2010 there have been ten prosecutions of individuals under the Espionage Act for either leaking classified information to the media—such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden—or “seeking” classified information as in the case of WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange.

With the sentencing of Hale, the Biden administration now joins that of Obama and Trump with the distinction of jailing someone with the honesty, courage and determination to stand up to the most powerful military apparatus in world history.

La Trobe University in Australia announces hundreds more job cuts

Eric Ludlow

On July 14, La Trobe University in Melbourne announced the slashing of 230 jobs as part of a “Change Proposal.” This is part of a destructive new wave of job losses throughout Australia’s public universities, on top of up to 90,000, including casuals, during 2020.

In addition to the slashing of casual staff, La Trobe’s management will have cut 15 percent of the university’s permanent workforce since the beginning of the pandemic. That is among the highest rate of job losses of any university in Australia.

La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science building at La Trobe University in 2015 [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

As well as the academics and all staff members, this has serious consequences for the students, both under-graduate and post-graduate. They face course cuts, larger class sizes and the loss of experienced educators and thesis supervisors.

The management said the proposal would be subject to a three-week “consultation” period before being finalised. This is a bid to dampen, divert and dissipate the outrage and opposition of staff and students.

As at a number of other universities, the management declared that new roles would be offered in a brutal “Hunger Games”-style spill and fill operation, with staff forced to vie for remaining positions. Altogether, the change proposal would result “in the order of a loss of 200 FTE [full-time equivalent] positions.”

The proposal features major restructuring, including the “centralisation” of student services, and “[c]onsolidation of some disciplines and departments within Schools” to align with “strategic objectives.” The School of Molecular Sciences is to be liquidated into other schools, with the management dishonestly claiming this would “have no impact on teaching and learning.”

In the past year, La Trobe has already scrapped its drama department and either demolished or reduced around a dozen “financially unviable” disciplines in the arts and education.

Universities across the country have utilised the crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic to accelerate years of pro-business restructuring at the expense of jobs, wages and conditions. A decade of chronic under-funding under the pro-market framework imposed by the last federal Labor government’s “education revolution” made the universities dependent on international student fee revenue, which has dropped sharply.

This offensive has been possible because of the full cooperation of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), which covers academic staff, and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), which covers professional and administrative staff.

La Trobe University’s NTEU branch last year adopted a version of the NTEU’s fraudulently named “ Jobs Protection Framework ” (JPF). The JPF was proposed in May 2020 to allow university managements nationally to cut wages by up to 15 percent while still eliminating “at least 12,000 jobs.”

After an upsurge of rank-and-file opposition to the JPF, most universities abandoned the deal to pursue similar pacts with individual NTEU branches. At La Trobe, the NTEU proceeded with a version of the JPF, claiming it would “protect jobs.” Yet the university still announced around 400 redundancies under the framework last July and August.

Taking advantage of the NTEU’s complicity, the management claimed in its July 14 announcement that the JPF “saved 225 jobs and reduced the magnitude of changes we need to make in 2021 … but didn’t provide permanent savings.”

In response, NTEU appealed for another such deal. La Trobe NTEU branch president Alysia Rex said in a media release she was “disappointed” that Vice Chancellor John Dewar had “made this announcement without exhausting all other options.” She urged Dewar to “work with the union to find alternatives to involuntary redundancies.”

This appeal is along the same lines as NTEU operations elsewhere to help universities achieve their cuts by pressuring staff into “voluntary” redundancies. The union recently boasted of a “resounding success” at the University of Queensland, where it helped the management to axe five jobs by that means—more than the two posts originally targeted for elimination.

The union’s La Trobe statement outlines supposed “alternatives,” including “job shares” and a “pathway to retirement contracts.” These proposals are echoed in an online petition initiated by the NTEU. While the petition has received well over 1,000 signatures, indicating widespread anger among staff and students, it is another bid to funnel opposition into such outcomes.

One comment on the petition by a former student said: “Since I graduated, I have seen LTU [La Trobe University] decimated. Neither of the depts where I did majors exist anymore. They are not the only depts now gone. LTU used to be ‘cutting edge.’ Nowadays, it’s just ‘cutting.’”

Taylor, a first-year agriculture student at La Trobe, told the WSWS the change proposal was an “attack on the right of youth and students to quality education.”

Taylor

“There have been cuts across the country,” Taylor said. “This, of course, began before COVID-19 broke out, but the crisis caused by the virus was an excuse to further escalate cuts.”

“Typically, those teachers and lecturers who care the most for their students, putting the most effort into getting the most out of them, are the ones that are lost… There’s already been numerous job cuts at La Trobe. I think it’s clear that the quality of our learning is dropping.”

Taylor commented on the role of the unions, which “pose as defenders of university workers, yet they outright oppose any broader mobilisation against the cuts. I think it’s a reflection of the unions themselves who have tried to keep the university executives happy.”

A student-led campaign in defence of much-respected Mathematics lecturer Dr Frank Valckenborgh at Macquarie University in Sydney has won broad support, but the cuts at that university are continuing, as they are around the country. Similar petitions and campaigns have started at Melbourne’s Monash University and the University of Western Australia.

Student unions and associations, however, are also seeking to disorient these campaigns. At La Trobe University, the management-backed La Trobe University Student Association (LTSA) released a statement supporting the change proposal. It claimed the job cuts showed a focus “on LTU strengths and distinctiveness in teaching and research” and were “designed to simplify business processes and operations while making a positive difference to students, communities and partners.”

Claiming to represent the real voice of students is the La Trobe University Student Union (LTSU), which had much of its university funding diverted to the LTSA at the end of 2020. However, the LTSU has close ties to the Labor Party, which laid the foundation for the assault on tertiary education and defends the corporate profit system that is driving the restructuring.

London floods highlight failure to address climate change and its consequences

Thomas Scripps

Large areas of London were hit by flash floods this weekend. Although less severe than the recent devastating flooding in Europe and China, they caused serious disruption to health and transport systems and damage to homes.

Whipps Cross Hospital in the east of the city declared a major incident after it suffered a power outage due to the heavy rainfall. Ceiling panels in the maternity ward collapsed. Around 100 patients had to be evacuated, all scheduled operations cancelled, ambulances diverted and patients seeking urgent treatment asked to “attend alternative hospitals where possible.”

Several miles to the south, Newham Hospital was also forced to ask patients seeking urgent care to use other Accident and Emergency departments.

A street in east London during recent floods (credit: WSWS Media)

Nine London Underground and Overground stations were closed, with a video of Pudding Mill Lane station almost completely underwater going viral, as were many major roads.

The London Fire Brigade reported more than a thousand flooding-related calls, rescuing people from cars trapped in floodwater and helping with flooded basements and collapsed ceilings. Many homes have been severely damaged by the floodwater and overflowing sewage. Some households have been evacuated to emergency accommodation after power failures.

Flood warnings are in place for multiple areas of England, Wales and Scotland until Thursday.

The immediate cause of the weekend’s floods was the torrential rain which fell on the capital on Sunday. The average total rainfall for London in July is 45mm, but the St James’s Park station recorded 41.6mm of rain on Sunday alone, the station’s second-wettest July day since records began in 1912.

This is the second time in the last two weeks that a month’s rain has fallen in a day in London. On July 12, nearly three inches of rain fell in an hour and a half in parts of the capital. On that occasion, the resulting flooding saw 120 residents in Kensington and Chelsea evacuated from their homes, another 1,000-plus calls to the London Fire Brigade and several underground stations closed. Euston Station, one of the capital’s main rail hubs, was shut down after lines out of London were completely submerged.

Such extreme weather events are happening more frequently due to climate change. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, amplifying heavy rains that impact most on urban areas with large hard surface areas. Professor Hayley Fowler, from the UK Climate Resilience Programme, told the BBC, “These heavy short-duration bursts from thunderstorms which cause flash flooding are becoming more common”. Her research suggests that flash floods “will increase five-fold by the 2080s” if climate change continues on its current trajectory.

Dr Jess Neumann, a hydrologist at the University of Reading, told the Guardian, “Flooding from intense summer rainfall is going happen more frequently. No city, town or village is immune to flooding and we all need to take hard action right now if we are to prevent impacts from getting worse in the future.”

Similar warnings have been issued for years without any serious action being taken. Just last month, the government’s climate change committee warned that the country was not ready for the impacts of climate change, saying “adaptation action has failed to keep pace with the worsening reality of climate risk.”

In February, Labour MP Meg Hillier, the chair of parliament’s public accounts committee, warned, “The government is simply not doing enough to protect the UK’s current housing stock from floods or stepping in to prevent new homes being built on flood plains”. The Environment Agency agreed: “We need long-term investment to both build and maintain flood defences if we are to continue to protect and prepare the country from the increased risks that the climate emergency is bringing, with impacts already hitting worst case scenario levels.”

Major storms and floods in 2007, 2012, 2014, 2015- 16 and 2019- 2020, forcing tens of thousands of evacuations and causing billions of pounds worth of damage, have proven this point. An investigation by the research arm of Greenpeace, Unearthed, found that over 3,400 of England’s “high consequence” flood defences were rated as being in poor or very poor condition in 2019-20 by the Environment Agency.

Liz Stephens, associate professor of climate resilience at Reading University, commented after the weekend’s floods, “The surface water flood hazard maps for the UK have not been improved since 2013. These urgently need updating. The current accuracy of surface water flood maps reflects an investment choice and not what is possible with the state-of-the-art science.”

Large areas of the capital are at serious risk. According to the Greater London Authority, 17 percent of London is at medium or high risk of flooding and more than 1 million residents live on a floodplain.

The dangers are exacerbated by outdated infrastructure. Stephens told CNN, “The risk is always greater in the urban environment because we've got concreted surfaces, but we’re also relying on an old drainage infrastructure in London, we’re talking about Victorian drains.”

London’s underground network has long been identified as critically exposed. In 2016, the Guardian and the Independent reported on an unpublished Transport for London (TfL) flood risk report which identified 85 of its sites as being at “high risk” of flooding. Fifty-seven of those were London Underground stations, including some of the capital’s busiest—King’s Cross, London Bridge and Waterloo.

The report states, “London has been fortunate to escape the worst of recent storm events in the UK, but it is only a matter of time before heavy rainfall seriously affects London and the underground network.” It explained that the “increased laying of asphalt over earth surfaces” and climate change leading to “more intense” storms would be the biggest contributing factors.

London Underground requested £3 million over three years “to analyse the riskiest sites in greater detail and to begin to install protective measures”, but the service’s head drainage engineer told the Guardian that the money would not “scratch the surface” of the problem.

TfL’s “Annual Report and Statement of Accounts for the Year Ended 31 March 2021” identifies climate risk as a “growing threat” and notes that “funding constraints” mean it is “likely to remain a challenge over the medium term.”

Successive governments refuse to adequately respond to the dangers posed by flooding because the money for such an initiative would have to be taken from big business and the super-rich. It would require laws managing urban development which would cut across the untrammelled profiteering of private property developers. Since 2013, one in 10 homes in England have been built on land with a high flood risk. Twenty-two Hyde Parks worth of gardens have been paved over in London to make way for parking or patios, reducing natural drainage.

Nowhere is the destructive logic of inequality and the capitalist market clearer than in North Kensington, hit hard by the floods two weeks ago. The area is filled with “iceberg houses”—homes owned by multimillionaires and billionaires who have extended their basements to multiple times the size of the house, accommodating swimming pools, cinemas, gyms and garages. Nearly 3,800 basement planning applications have been submitted to Kensington council in the last 10 years.

These gargantuan developments are likely to have contributed to the flooding. Mary Dhonau, a former CEO of the National Flood Forum, explained to the Daily Mail, “There has got to be somewhere for the water to go. When there is rain it falls onto the ground and percolates in areas of the ground. Super-basements are being built where the water would naturally percolate. There are other factors like climate change, but the more we take away permeable surfaces the more places will flood.

“North Kensington is a prime example of land that would have soaked up water, which is now being used for super basements.”

Whether the issue is the implementation of immediate extreme weather defences or the deeper problem of climate change, the primary obstacle confronting humanity is not natural or scientific, but social. The dangers can only be resolved through the expropriation of the vast fortunes and industrial empires controlled by the super-rich oligarchy and the democratic use of these resources to meet social needs.

Expanding the buffet of choices for preventing HIV

Shobha Shukla

Great strides have been made in HIV prevention, treatment and care, since the first case of the viral infection was reported 40 years ago. Thanks to the untiring efforts of the HIV community, activists, and medical fraternity, 74% (27.5 million) of the 37.7 million people living with HIV are able to access the lifesaving antiretroviral therapy today. But the governments’ promise of ending AIDS by 2030 (Sustainable Development Goals) is still far from our sight.

Deliberations at the recently concluded 11th International IAS Conference on HIV Science (#IAS2021) show important progress in HIV prevention, treatment, and cure efforts despite major disruption to HIV programmes and research during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keeping in mind that there were 1.7 million new HIV infections in 2020 (which is 3 times higher than the UNAIDS 2020 targets), HIV prevention must remain a key focus. While speaking with the journalists around IAS 2021, Professor Linda Gail Bekker, who is the Director of Desmund Tutu HIV Centre at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and former President of the International AIDS Society (IAS), said that humanity comes in many shapes and forms, and so should HIV prevention options.

This article, the first in the series of a trilogy by CNS head and IAS HIV Science 2021 Media Fellowship Awardee Shobha Shukla, showcases an array of prevention options that are either already at our disposal or are in various stages of development.

Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP): Once daily oral pill

It has been 10 years now since it was proved that adherence to antiretroviral based oral PrEP provides robust protection against HIV in all populations and for all routes of infection. We have PrEP-1, the daily oral HIV prevention pill Truvada whose two active ingredients are tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) and emtricitabine (FTC), both of which are nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors.

But, in some users daily oral PrEP can be a barrier to adherence and can lead to pauses or discontinuation. This has led to the next discovery of taking the pill on-demand at the time of exposure and not daily. So we have PrEP 1.5, TDF/FTC as oral HIV prevention on-demand. The dosing for PrEP on Demand is 2-1-1, that is, two tablets taken 2-24 hours before engaging in sex, one tablet taken 24 hours after the first two, and another tablet 24 hours after that. But it can be used only by cisgender and other men who have sex with men.

While nearly 1 million people have accessed the PrEP prevention option globally, the oral daily or on-demand PrEP is not feasible for everyone. Many people may find it difficult to remember to take the pill daily or at the right time. If one stops on and off there is risk of poor coverage of exposure, as substantiated from a study by Global Evaluation of Microbicide Sensitivity, which found high rates of HIV drug resistance in some individuals who were diagnosed with HIV while participating in HIV PrEP rollout programmes in Eswatini, Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Levels of drugs in their blood suggested that they were taking PrEP at least 4 times a week, which was not enough to prevent HIV infection, but enough for the resistant virus to emerge (as drugs used in PrEP are also used for HIV treatments). Moral of the story is to take PrEP every day as prescribed, to stay free of HIV.

So for those who cannot adhere to a daily regimen, the solution lies in having long-acting agents in different formulations – like the once-a-month pill or a long-acting injection or the vaginal ring.

Dapivirine Ring: Once a month vaginal ring

This monthly vaginal ring, developed by the International Partnership for Microbicides, is the first woman-controlled, topical long-acting HIV prevention method to reduce the risk of acquiring HIV through vaginal sex. It is a silicon ring that contains antiretroviral drug, dapivirine (a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor), and when worn inside the vagina, it releases the drug slowly for a period of 28 days, after which it should be replaced by a new ring. The dapivirine ring offers a discreet and long-acting alternative to daily oral PrEP.

Interim results from the REACH study show encouraging levels of adherence to dapivirine ring and oral PrEP among adolescent girls and young women in Africa. High adherence was observed in 50% of the ring users as against 22% of oral PrEP users. Moreover, 88% of the participants liked using the ring.

The European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organization have already approved the ring for use as an additional prevention choice for women in high HIV burden settings.

Zeda Rosenberg, CEO of International Partnership for Microbicides, said that Zimbabwe has already given the go-ahead for its use and many other African nations are expected to follow suit in the near future. Rosenberg also informed that studies are underway for its use in pregnant and breastfeeding women and for those who are 15-18 years old.

A 90-day dapivirine ring has successfully completed Phase-1 clinical study in which it was found to be well tolerated and delivered target levels of drug throughout the three months of use, showing the potential to provide long-acting and sustained HIV protection. Next phase studies are to begin this year and Rosenberg is hopeful that results would be available by 2023.

Long-acting Cabotegravir: Once every 8 weeks injection

It belongs to a new class of HIV drugs called integrase inhibitors and is delivered once every 8 weeks via intramuscular injection. Long-acting Cabotegravir has been found to be safe and well tolerated. Two studies (HPTN 084 and HPTN 083) done in sub-saharan Africa have found it to be statistically superior to daily oral PrEP in preventing HIV infection among cisgender women, cisgender men and transgender women who have sex with men.

This much awaited prevention method is now into the implementation phase and is moving towards licensure.

Although long-acting dapivirine ring, and long-acting Cabotegravir, both do not offer contraceptive benefits. Women of reproductive age do need multipurpose prevention technology products to address two or more overlapping health risks, such as, unintended pregnancy and HIV. The dual prevention pill is an answer to their prayers.

Dual Prevention Pill: A daily oral pill for women for protection against HIV and pregnancy

Dual prevention pill, a co-formulated tablet containing oral PrEP (TDF/FTC) and a combined oral contraceptive, is currently being developed for daily use to prevent both HIV and pregnancy and is likely to be a new multipurpose prevention technology to go to market. Since both the ingredients of dual prevention pill are already approved for individual use, their combination pill just needs to undergo bio-equivalence study to determine if they are as safe and effective in combination. Regulatory timelines suggest that dual prevention pill could receive US FDA approval by 2024.

Several other multipurpose prevention technologies for HIV and pregnancy prevention are in various stages of development, but still many years away from market launch.

Islatravir: Once a month oral PrEP

Islatravir is the first nucleoside reverse transcriptase translocation inhibitor currently being evaluated across a variety of dosing regimens, for both – treatment as well as prevention of HIV infection. It has a novel mechanism of action, as it can persist in the body for a long period of time and is being developed as a monthly pill and also as a sub-dermal implant for prevention that could provide protection for one year.

Interim data from a Phase-2a study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics show that it is safe and was generally well tolerated through 24 weeks. Monthly doses of Islatravir, 60 mg and 120 mg, also achieved the pre-specified efficacious pharmacokinetic threshold for PrEP.

Two Phase-3 clinical studies (IMPOWER 024 and IMPOWER 022) to evaluate its efficacy and safety in cisgender women, men, and transgender women who have sex with men, have already begun. But it could be another 2-3 years from now till we have it. Phase-2 studies for the once-a-year removable Islatravir implant are also underway.

Lenacapavir Long Acting: twice-yearly injectable for HIV prevention

Lenacapavir (the first HIV capsid inhibitor) as a once every 6 months injectable for HIV prevention is in the early stages of development. Two studies to evaluate its efficacy and safety are to take place – one in South Africa and Uganda (in adolescent girls and young women) and the other in USA, Brazil, Peru, and South Africa (in cisgender men, transgender women, transgender men and gender non-binary individuals). It is also being developed as long acting treatment and implant.

Broadly neutralising antibodies

Broadly neutralising antibodies provide a new approach to HIV-1 prevention and treatment. But they are still in very early stages of development.

HIV Vaccine

There is currently no vaccine available to prevent or treat HIV infection. However, scientists are working to develop one. Research efforts undertaken by USA’s National Institutes of Health include two late-stage, multinational vaccine clinical studies called Imbokodo and Mosaico.

Basket of choices to prevent HIV

We need a basket of HIV prevention options. It is about choices and preferences depending on where people are in their life cycle, local realities, and contexts. Moreover, prevention options should be accessible, affordable, simple to use, and easy to adhere, for everyone! It is only then that we may expect better coverage of all people and of all exposures, rightly said Bekker.