Millions of lives in danger as COVID-19 spreads across South Asia

Rohantha De Silva

The COVID-19 pandemic is surging throughout South Asia, home to a quarter of the world’s population, with more than 34 million cases and nearly 480,000 deaths reported so far. The real figures are doubtless several times of these numbers, which are notoriously under-counted. The main responsibility lies with capitalist governments, who keep the economy open to guarantee big business profits, despite warnings from medical experts and epidemiologists.

People queue up for COVID-19 vaccine in Mumbai, India, Thursday, April 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

Despite the spread of the pandemic fueled by the more dangerous Delta variant, governments are abandoning measures to control the virus, including lockdowns, mass testing, or contact tracing. Even under limited so-called lockdowns, non-essential businesses are allowed to carry on daily work, with factories open, forcing workers to go to work under unsafe conditions, leading to further spread of the virus. With underfunded public hospitals overflowing with COVID-19 patients and lacking oxygen and other crucial supplies, the death toll may rise by millions more.

While the official figures show more than 422,000 lives have been lost to COVID-19 in India, the actual figures are likely ten times higher, between three to five million, according to a study by the US-based Center for Global Development. The public health system is so run-down that most Indians rely on the private hospitals and have to pay about 63 percent of their medical expenses from their personal income. Without health insurance, a mountain of medicals bills is drowning ordinary Indians in debt.

On top of this, the pandemic has pushed 230 million people into poverty. Ordinary people are now starting to sell their gold jewelry after failing to find another job or to start a small business. This is especially the case in rural India. The Indian middle class has shrunk by 32 million in 2020, and inequality is soaring. Even before the pandemic, in 2019, the top one percent of India controlled 21.7 percent of the national income, while the bottom 50 percent had 13 percent. The pandemic has further intensified these obscene levels of social inequality.

A new wave of the pandemic is underway. A recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study predicted that by the end of 2021, India will be the worst-affected nation with 287,000 new cases per day. With the public health care system already strained and almost non-existent in rural areas predicted to be badly hit by the pandemic, a catastrophe is looming.

Pakistan also faces another wave of death, as it passed the one million COVID-19 cases mark last Friday. Already, 23,087 deaths had been officially recorded by Tuesday, the second-highest in the Indian sub-continent. Hospitals are at capacity or turning patients away as COVID-19 infections surge in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and its industrial and financial center. The Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences at the University of Karachi found that the Delta variant is dominant in Karachi, accounting for as many as 92.2 percent of infections.

The health crisis in Karachi shows what could rapidly engulf other Pakistani cities if the virus is allowed to spread unchecked. Even Pakistan’s strained urban health care systems are absent in suburbs and rural areas. Amid the global crisis in vaccine production and distribution, only two per cent of the 216 million Pakistan population have been vaccinated.

The disaster in Pakistan is due both to the criminal negligence and indifference of the major imperialist powers who have controlled vaccine production, and the contempt for workers and toilers of the Pakistani regime in Islamabad. Prime Minister Imran Khan has refused to allocate funds and resources crucial to effectively controlling and suppressing the virus. Instead, his government has limited itself to calls to wear masks, and other limited measures.

Even official figures show that Bangladesh’s situation is very severe. It recorded a record toll of coronavirus, with 15,192 infections and 247 deaths on Monday morning. On Sunday, at least 228 deaths were reported. The total number of cases now stands at over 1.2 million and deaths over 20,000. If the pandemic maintains its current pace, there will soon be no space left in hospitals for patients, the Dhaka government warned on Sunday.

Bangladesh’s health care system is already overwhelmed and facing a shortage of key supplies, such as medical oxygen, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and ICU beds. Oxygen demand is about to exceed national oxygen production capability, and hospitals are struggling to treat the unprecedented surge of patients. Vaccination is very slow: Al Jazeera noted on July 27 that only 2.6 percent of Bangladesh’s 165 million population had been vaccinated with both doses.

The pandemic has intensified the already appalling social crisis in the country. Over the last year, a further 20 million were added to the 40 million people who lived below the poverty line before the pandemic hit Bangladesh. An alarming rise of dengue fever has also been reported.

In Nepal, more than 688,000 are infected with COVID-19, and the death toll has reached 10,000, according to official figures. About four percent of the country’s 28 million population has been fully vaccinated so far; only 2.61 million Nepalis had received their first doses by July 8.

The pandemic has led to the collapse of Nepal’s economy, which relies heavily on remittances from migrant workers and tourism. On July 19, the Kathmandu Post wrote that the “central bank Governor Maha Prasad Adhikari warned that external sector stability remained precarious due to an exponential rise in the trade deficit coupled with the unavailability of means to curb it in the near future.”

In Sri Lanka, the official death toll is over 4,000 and COVID-19 cases have exceeded 300,000, though the real figures are no doubt much higher. President Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s government keeps lifting health restrictions, even as the Delta variant spreads in Sri Lanka. It is ignoring repeated warnings by the medical professionals that the country faces a “fourth wave” of the virus. Facing massive debts and a crisis of its foreign currency reserves, it is desperate to boost exports and has pressed industries to continue operations, putting profits before lives.

Not only South Asia, but the entire Asian region is severely hit by the pandemic. This region was home to the 51 percent of the world’s 688 million malnourished people last year. A report by the World Health Organization and UN agencies showed that the number of food-insecure Asians doubled to 265 million in 2020, mainly due to under-investment in social protections.

It noted that most the world’s 74.5 million stunted children under age five live in South Asia. Even before the pandemic, in 2019, nearly 350 million people in South Asia faced severe food insecurity.

Flood disaster in Germany: massive damage and growing anger

Elisabeth Zimmermann

Over recent days, southern Germany, Saxony and Berlin have seen further heavy rainfall and flooding. Heavy flooding was likewise reported in Belgium, the city of Dinant near Namur being particularly hard-hit.

Destroyed cars and piles of rubble at the entrance to Walporzheim (Credit: WSWS)

In the parts of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia hardest hit by floods last week, denizens continue to wrestle with the great number of fatalities, injuries and the immense damage caused to homes, businesses, stores, restaurants, hotels, roads, bridges and the entire infrastructure system.

Over 131 people lost their lives in the Ahr Valley of Rhineland-Palatinate. The dead drowned in their houses and apartments or were swept away by the masses of water. The normally tranquil Ahr River became a raging torrent, in places rising eight meters (26 feet) within a few hours. More than 149 people are still missing.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, officials have confirmed 47 deaths from the storm. Here, too, houses, roads and basic infrastructure were destroyed. Belgium has suffered at least 36 fatalities.

Deutsche Bahn, the German railway company, estimates that the damage to tracks, stations and rolling stock in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia total around 1.3 billion euro. By its figures, 600 kilometres of track, 50 bridges, dozens of stations and stops were affected.

Many areas hit by the floods still lack drinking water and electricity. Mobile phone networks remain widely disrupted. The damage to regional housing and infrastructure runs into the billions.

The emergency aid pledged so far by the federal and state governments, totaling 400 million euro, is but a drop in the bucket. This amounts to 1500 euro for a head of household and 500 euro for each additional family member, up to a maximum of 3500 euro.

Many of those affected doubt this aid will reach them promptly. Based on recent experience, notably the repercussions of the pandemic, residents fear that they will walk away entirely empty-handed left to figure out how to recover on their own.

Of the approximately 50,000 people living along the Ahr River, more than 40,000 have been impacted by the flood. Emergency shelters for the newly homeless are often in deplorable condition. Mutual help and solidarity among residents has been tremendous; help from the state, on the other hand, is all but naught, as people from Ahrweiler told a team of reporters from the World Socialist Web Site last Thursday.

As explained by the WSWS in previous articles and statements, the disaster is not the outcome of an unavoidable natural occurrence. That the flood killed so many people and caused such devastation is a direct result of criminal inaction by federal and state governments over many years.

By the time residents were swept away by the deadly torrents, the government and authorities had long been warned but remained inactive, refusing to initiate evacuations and other protective measures. They did not even inform the population about the approaching danger.

The British Sunday Times reported that the first signs of the impending catastrophe had been indicated by satellite nine days before the flood occurred. Then, four days before the flood disaster, the European Flood Warning System (Efas) directly warned the German government. Further warnings, a full 24 hours before the event, predicted with pin-point precision which districts would be worst affected.

In its current cover story, entitled “Schutzlos: Mehr als 170 Tote - Chronik einer vermeidbaren Katastrophe,” [“Defenceless: More than 170 dead—Chronical of an avoidable catastrophe”] the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel explores some aspects of the government’s failure to take adequate precautions and warn the population.

Regarding warnings issued by the German Weather Service, meteorologists and scientists about the severe storms and attendant danger, Der Spiegel concludes: “So it could have been anticipated. In fact, it must have been anticipated.”

The magazine describes how roads were not closed despite the approaching deluge, warning systems were either non-existent or did not work, authorities underestimated the danger and existing disaster control structures did not interact.

The Spiegel report quotes a number of local politicians, among them Hubertus Kunz, the mayor of the small town of Mayschoss on the Ahr, who says he could not have imagined the water rising so high. When suddenly “a level of more than five meters was predicted,” he said he thought, “they’re crazy, that can’t possibly be right.” At least one in four of the town’s residents lost their homes in the flood and at least five people died. “Knowing what we know today, we should have evacuated,” Kunz said.

Der Spiegel also quotes local residents. They confirm that the warnings came too late and that authorities dramatically underestimated the impending disaster. Achim Lorenz, from the district of Ahrweiler, reports that the water level was already over 5.70 meters in the evening, far above previous flood levels.

“All the alarm bells should have been ringing,” Lorenz said. But it was not until much later, around midnight, that the fire department issued its first warning by loudspeaker. They simply asked people not to go into cellars and to stay on the upper floors. On this basis, “really no one” believed “that a historic catastrophe was imminent.”

For Lorenz, like many others, it is clear that governments and authorities are responsible for the fatalities. “There was enough time to adequately warn and save people,” he said, venting his anger. If “those responsible had acted properly, probably not as many people would have died.”

The Spiegel authors expressed concern about the growing anger and opposition among the population. Something “has shifted in Germany,” they note. It is “the question of how safe people can still feel here. Whether citizens have the impression that the state protects them, whether they can rely on it when things get dangerous, life-threatening.”

During the pandemic it became clear that Germany “doesn’t function nearly as well as assumed.” The flood disaster now multiplies “this unease: it proves how ill-prepared this country is for extreme situations.”

Der Spiegel attributes the “problems” to “gaps, omissions and a tussle over competencies between the federal government, the states, and the municipalities,” as a result of which “expertise is not called upon.” This is nothing but diversion and an attempt to conceal the real causes. In both the flood and the pandemic, capitalism and its political representatives are responsible for the suffering and destruction.

In the pandemic, all governing parties deliberately allow the virus to spread and refuse to take the necessary measures to protect the population. Their main concern is to ensure the profits of the financial oligarchy, which enriched itself enormously over the last year. The consequence is over 91,000 deaths in Germany and more than four million, at least, worldwide.

The same inhuman indifference to the safety and lives of the population was again revealed in the flood disaster. Despite decades of warnings from scientists, nothing was done to address climate change. Disaster protection was bled dry, and investments urged by experts, such as a robust nationwide warning system, were ignored. Instead, billions were handed over to banks and corporations and flowed into military armament.

COVID outbreak in Australia intensifies financial stress and class divide

Mike Head

A report by the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), released this week, has pointed to the severe financial deprivation and social crisis that is being inflicted on working class households as the COVID-19 pandemic worsens in Australia.

The ACOSS report reveals that requests for food parcels, inquiries about financial assistance and online searches for emergency relief have soared since the beginning of the current outbreak of the Delta variant, centred in Sydney, Australia’s most populous city.

Unemployed workers outside an inner-western Sydney Centrelink office in March 2020 [Source: WSWS Media]

The corporate media has imposed a virtual blackout on the report, which shows that those most affected are people thrown out of work, especially casualised low-paid workers, the households trying to survive on sub-poverty level welfare payments and international workers and students, who have been denied all government income support.

Thus far, the Delta outbreak has risen to above 200 new infections daily in Sydney, with smaller numbers in other states, not the many thousands of cases in other countries. No less than elsewhere, however, governments are imposing on the working class the full burden of the disaster that they have created by refusing to take the necessary measures to protect the population from the pandemic.

For ten days, after infections were first recorded in Sydney on June 16, the New South Wales (NSW) government refused to impose any shut down measures, in line with the demands of the corporate elite for no restrictions that could affect profits, only expanding some mask mandates.

The subsequent “stay at home” orders exempted a wide range of non-essential retail, manufacturing and other business operations. As a result, the outbreak continued to spread across the Greater Sydney region and into the neighbouring states of Victoria and South Australia.

The ACOSS report shows that between the start of the partial Sydney lockdown on June 26, and July 14, online searches for emergency relief services rose by more than 800 percent through Ask Izzy. This is a mobile website that connects people in need with housing, a meal, health and wellbeing services, family violence support and counselling.

Searches for financial assistance on Ask Izzy doubled in Sydney during the same period. Foodbank, which provides food relief, was processing as many hampers a day as it did in a week, before the limited lockdown began—2,500 to 3,500 daily.

International students, many of whom normally work part-time but are excluded from government income support, had made 20,000 requests for food hampers since July 6.

The impact has gone beyond Sydney because infections have spread to other areas and because the economic slump in Sydney, a major industrial and logistics hub, affects the entire country. By July 19, Foodbank had a backlog of over 10,000 food relief requests across the state of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.

As at July 22, Foodbank reported that over 12,163 emergency relief hampers had been distributed to lockdown areas across Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the NSW Central Coast and Wollongong, an increase of 160 percent compared to the previous level of need. Foodbank also reported an overall 37.5 percent increase in food parcel distribution.

Similar signs appeared in Victoria during a COVID-19 lockdown from May 27 to June 10. There was a 120 percent increase in searches for emergency relief, with almost one in four searches relating to food relief. Searches for financial assistance rose by 76 percent.

At the end of March, the federal Liberal-National Coalition government scrapped its JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme, which had earlier given employers up to $750 a week to pass onto their employees, and cut the JobSeeker dole payments back to the below-poverty level of $315 a week, or $44 a day.

Young people, including students who are living independently and entitled to government support, were cast back into an even worse situation. Youth and Austudy allowances are just $256 per week, or $36 a day.

These “social security” payments are not enough to live on. If a welfare recipient is living in a private rental residence, they may also get Rent Assistance of up to $70 per week. Yet median rent for a unit in Greater Sydney is $495 per week, leaving a huge gap.

The JobKeeper and JobSeeker cuts were a deliberate drive to coerce workers into low-paid work, thus intensifying the use of the pandemic to slash the wages and conditions of workers across the board. The government has since refused to reinstate even the small JobKeeper subsidies and JobSeeker supplements.

Yesterday, in an attempt to head off mounting discontent, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced an increase in Covid Disaster Payments for laid-off workers from $600 to $750 per week, and for part-time workers from $375 to $450 per week. People on welfare who lost more than eight hours of employment per week can apply for payment top-ups of up to $200 a week.

All these amounts still fall far below what is needed to live in Sydney. The state Coalition government in NSW has placed a ban on evictions for now, but there is no rent relief, so many tenants confront soaring rental debts that they cannot pay off.

A related ACOSS survey produced some accounts from people affected by the crisis. Their responses gave a picture of the escalating financial and social stress.

One respondent said: “Every fortnight I have to decide whether to use the $40 I have left after rent and bills to buy my prescription medication or food. My landlord hasn’t raised my rent since the start of the pandemic, but that’s not fair on him and his family. Even with that kindness, I still lose 85 percent of my JobSeeker allowance in rent. How is that sustainable?!”

A student who lost hospitality work because of the pandemic, wrote: “After $280 rent I have about $40 a week to survive. This barely covers the cost of groceries. On top of that I have medical bills, phone bills, utility bills, car payments and so on. I also resume uni classes soon and will need textbooks, stationary supplies etc., and the costs of transport/parking. This is simply impossible on Youth Allowance alone.”

An ACOSS analysis of Department of Social Security figures also shows that the western and southwestern local government areas in Sydney with the strictest lockdown requirements, such as Fairfield, Liverpool and Canterbury-Bankstown, cover federal electorates with the highest numbers of people on welfare payments and low incomes in NSW.

In these suburbs, which have the highest levels of infection because they are home to the greatest numbers of frontline workers, only workers whose positions are deemed “critical” are permitted to leave their districts in order to work. These restrictions are being enforced by a heavy police presence, unlike more affluent eastern areas of the city, where the outbreak began.

People in these working-class areas are being doubly targeted. Not only are they being impoverished but they are also being subjected to police-state conditions, designed to intimidate them under conditions of rising social and political disaffection.

Sri Lankan government rejects teachers’ wage demand

Pradeep Ramanayake

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse told a meeting with teacher union officials on Tuesday that the government was not in a financial position to address their wage demands. Over 200,000 public school teachers have been holding a national “online learning” strike since July 12 to win higher salaries.

Teachers are also demanding withdrawal of the Kotelawala National Defence University Act (KNDUA), which will be debated in parliament next month. If the Act is passed, the military-controlled university will be able to establish more private fee-paying courses. The Act is part of the government’s moves towards the privatisation of education and the militarisation of society.

Joint teachers protest outside Colombo Secretariat July 23 [WSWS Media]

The teachers’ wage demands were rejected on Monday at the weekly meeting of cabinet of ministers, which is chaired by President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, citing Sri Lanka’s economic crisis. The economy has been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse was appointed to head a sub-committee and directed to meet with teacher union officials on Tuesday. Those attending included leaders of the Ceylon Teachers Union (CTU), the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna-controlled Ceylon Teachers Service Union (CTSU), the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party affiliated United Teachers Service Union, and officials from other educators’ unions.

According to media reports, Mahinda Rajapakse claimed that the government knew that the wage issue “needs to be resolved.” However, he then said that “under the present global situation and the country’s financial predicament, the government was not in a position to rectify the salary issue at this moment.”

The prime minister cynically “assured” the assembled union bureaucrats that the matter would be discussed with the salaries commission and a decision taken soon.

An official statement from the Prime Minister’s Office indicates that the teachers’ union leadership fully endorsed the government’s position. They urged the prime minister to take “a policy decision” to reduce salary anomalies, adding that they had “a clear understanding that an immediate increment for the salaries is not possible due to the current economic crisis in the country.”

In other words, the unions have betrayed the teachers’ salary demands once again, and are now working to shut down all industrial action on the basis of another empty promise from the government to “reduce the salary anomalies” at some unspecified future date.

The teachers’ unions first called for wage increases 24 years ago, in 1997, and have systematically betrayed every struggle by teachers since then on the basis of bogus government promises.

Addressing a media conference on Tuesday, teacher union officials, who are nervous about the rising anger of their members, did not reveal that they had accepted the government’s dictates.

Attempting to put on a brave face, CTSU secretary Mahinda Jayasinghe simply told the media that talks with government had failed. Fearing that any attempt to immediately shut down the strike could see the unions lose control, Jayasinghe said the strike would continue.

Social unrest and working-class anger are rising across the country in response to the efforts of the Rajapakse government and big business to offload the burden of the economic crisis on to the working masses.

Yesterday, university teachers held a one-day strike against the KNDUA. On the same day, hundreds of nurses from several hospitals participated in a lunch-hour protest called by the Government Nursing Officers Union over worsening conditions in the health system.

Last month, the nurses’ unions betrayed national strike action by 25,000 nurses over 14 demands, including professional and risk allowances, staff grade positions with a legitimate promotion system and the easing of unbearable workloads, after agreeing to similar empty promises from the government.

Starting on July 26, teachers stepped up their industrial action, by withdrawing from practical examination-related duties for GCE Ordinary Levels, Sri Lanka’s major exams for Grade 11 students. They have also placed bans on preparing student applications for Advanced Level Examinations.

The mainstream media has unleashed a vicious campaign against the striking teachers. An editorial in the Island newspaper yesterday stated that “government teachers deserve a better deal” but added, “the question is whether this is the right time for salary increases in the public sector. The economy is also on oxygen support.”

Parroting the government’s line, the editorial declared the “pay hike would mean tax increases and the aggravation of the woes of the public struggling to keep the wolf from the door.” It then praised the Rajapakse administration, stating that “it is heartening that the government has paid off a one-billion-dollar bond debt” before deadline and is helping to “boost investor confidence.”

Government, big business and their media are united in their efforts to ensure that profits come before human lives. The struggles of teachers, health workers and other public sector workers further reveals that the unions are aiding and abetting the ruling elite’s efforts to impose the burden of the worsening economic crisis on the working class and the poor.

The Continuing Horror of CIA’s Torture and Abuse

Melvin A. Goodman

Nearly two decades ago, the Central Intelligence Agency began its sadistic program of torture and abuse, and the Department of Defense created a prison at Guantanamo to evade U.S. law. We are still learning about the horrors of the Global War on Terror. On July 16, military prosecutors finally asked to erase information obtained through torture and abuse. Several days later, the Biden administration transferred its first detainee out of Gitmo, repatriating a Moroccan man who had been cleared for release five years ago. These two items provide an opportunity to document the inadequacy and the errors of the mainstream media’s coverage of  CIA’s unconscionable crimes.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken audaciously claimed that it is difficult to transfer detainees until the United States receives assurances that the “rights of these people will be protected in that country.” In other words, the senior diplomat of the country that tortured and abused hundreds of captives; violated various Geneva Conventions by kidnapping individuals and turning them over to countries such as Syria and Pakistan that conduct torture and abuse; created secret prisons throughout East Europe and Southeast Asia; and used Guantanamo to circumvent U.S. laws is now concerned about the health and safety of these abused individuals.

Over the years, false statements from government officials have been treated as facts by the mainstream media.  Perhaps Blinken is unaware that many U.S. captives who were turned over to third countries were actually released by those countries for lack of sufficient evidence of culpability.  Blinken should familiarize himself with the Inspector General report on Khalid al-Masri, who was a victim of an erroneous rendition.  If it hadn’t been for al-Masri’s German citizenship and the intervention of National Security Adviser Condi Rice, then CIA director George Tenet may never have sanctioned the release of al-Masri who was being held in Afghanistan.

In 2004, the CIA’s Inspector General completed a study of the torture and abuse that was used  in CIA’s secret prisons, but various CIA directors have argued against the findings of the report. Former CIA director General Michael Hayden lied about every aspect of the torture program in his briefings to Congress, including the genesis of the program; the number of detainees; the intelligence allegedly obtained from coercive tactics; and the illegal conduct of the interrogators.  He asserted that “fewer than 100” detainees were moved through the CIA’s detention program, but that is an understatement.

Moreover, some individuals were moved or rendered from one country to another or to the U.S. military and therefore not counted as part of the CIA program.  Hayden also stated publicly that “fewer than a third” of the detainees were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the Orwellian term for torture and abuse.  Far more detainees were subjected to elements of the program, including sleeplessness, shackling, and constant light and noise.  There were numerous examples of detainees who were rendered by mistake who were tortured. Of course, he was probably comfortable lying to members of the intelligence committee who had been briefed on the program several years earlier and did nothing to stop it.

The entire process was criminal, but the mainstream media failed to highlight what were essentially war crimes.  The CIA had legal protection with memoranda from the White House and the Department of Justice, but media failed to note that the torture and abuse began before the memoranda were prepared and that the torture techniques exceeded what the DoJ  considered legitimate.  CIA officers served as accusers, investigators, renderers, interrogators, judges, juries, and jailers.  There was no appeals process, and no oversight by CIA lawyers and managers.  Some individuals were rendered on the basis of information from a single source to a single, unvetted asset.  Too many innocent people were kept in custody long after there were reasons to do so. We will probably never know how many of these people ended up in Guantanamo.

The decline of congressional oversight of the intelligence community and the weakening of the role of the Inspectors General throughout the intelligence community have enabled the CIA to escape accountability for its role in conceptualizing and implementing an unconscionable program of torture and abuse.  President Barack Obama had the best opportunity to address the issue of accountability, but he said that he would “look forward, not back” at the crimes of the Bush administration and its global war on terror.  Senior CIA officials pressed the White House to place limits on the role of the CIA IGs, and Obama honored these demands.

CIA director Tenet who approved the torture program left government with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor that can be given to a civilian.  Whenever Tenet was asked about CIA torture, his standard reply was “We don’t do it and I’m not going to talk about it.”  Tenet’s immediate successors, Representative Porter Goss and General Hayden had no interest in accountability. Goss defended the “techniques” as “unique and innovative ways, all of which are legal and none of which are torture.”  Hayden lobbied for a CIA exemption in any legislation to ban torture and abuse. (Tenet received his Presidential medal along with Paul Bremer, who probably did more to create chaos and havoc In Iraq than any American other than the war’s sponsors: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.)

The CIA committed serious crimes in the 1960s and 1970s during the Vietnam War, but at least the Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House exposed the assassination plots and the secret intrusions against U.S. citizens.  Laws were written to stop the kinds of assassinations that had been approved by the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, and the Senate and House intelligence oversight committees were created, three decades after the creation of the CIA itself.  It took an additional fifteen years and the crimes of Iran-Contra to create a statutory Inspector General at the CIA.  The torturers should have been prosecuted, and the crime of torture and abuse should have led to stronger oversight of the CIA.

At its peak, Gitmo held more than 675 men.  According to the New York Times, there are currently 39 men in the prison; only 11 have been charged with crimes.  There have never been charges against the other 28 individuals, and a federal parole-like panel has approved transfer for ten of them, including a 73-year-old Pakistani with heart disease.  President Obama failed in his efforts to close Guantanamo and transfer the detainees to a U.S. prison; the 2022 budget proposal of the Biden administration has restored the proposal to close Gitmo and transfer the detainees.  (The Times’ Carol Rosenberg deserves kudos for her outstanding coverage of Guantanamo over a twenty-year period, filling in the vacuum created by the failure of congressional and governmental oversight to do so.)

The only accomplishment of the torture program was the degradation of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Need for a Change of the dominant Narrative in An Asian Century

Tanya Vatsa

The key players of the global power contest must realize that we are past the cold war era wherein two superpowers fought for global domination. Suppressing a rising China simply because it threatens the American leadership will not be the end of this diplomatic war that the U.S. seems to be embarking upon. The current world order is far from the unipolar or bipolar which have been witnessed earlier. This century marks the rise of several countries which had spent most of the previous centuries as colonies of the west. Dubbed as the Asian century, the 21st century is bound to witness the rise of the east to put an end to the western hegemony. The west needs to realize that no decisions made at the global platform will be viable without the involvement of the Asian players who constitute a large number of people and a huge chunk of the global GDP. Much like the creation of G-20 since the G-8 could not have evolved economic and financial solutions for the benefit of all economies.

An alliance built on the lines of NATO or Warsaw( which were based on the exaggerated military and political potential of the leading nations) will only crumble under domestic political shifts.  The underlying threat perception that binds the Quad ( an alliance of the U.S, India, Japan and Australia for a free and safe indo-pacific) is based on the idea of defending the status quo of liberal rules-based order- a construct solely based on the global hegemony of the west. It is also based on the denial of the fact that China is already a superpower and not just an American rival in making. Unlike the other regimes based on a variant of a communist ideology like North Korea or Cuba, China’s unique political structure has made it an economic force akin to the vein running through the current global economic and financial output. Similarly, it is no secret that the Asian democracy- that is India- functions very differently from its western counterparts wherein federalism, representation, protection of minorities and catering to regional/communal/cultural aspirations shape Indian politics.

The hegemon must take a step back

Step one should be acceptance of China as an influential world leader and abandonment of the idea of a single acceptable ideology for running a country. The assumption of the superiority of the western liberal democratic model which according to Francis Fukuyama marked “the end of history” of realpolitik with the fall of the communist Soviet Union has proved to be flawed beyond doubt. The imposition of liberal democratic order in the Middle East has proved disastrous for their peace and security. They continue to be marred by conflict and war with terrorism spreading like a festering wound.

American troops had beaten the Taliban to dust but their reformist zeal to ensure the establishment of a government that resonates with the American brand of liberalism has led to a humiliating defeat and retreat of the American forces from Kabul. It has also legitimized the Taliban as a prospective ruler of Afghanistan with the Doha engagement putting them on the negotiation table with other prominent world leaders. While The USA has almost vacated Afghanistan, the Taliban has failed to adhere to its promises of ceasefire and abandonment of terrorism against civilians, pushing the nation, yet again, into turmoil.

The worsening economic conditions in countries like Iran and Cuba are largely attributable to decades of economic and military sanctions imposed by The USA. The unilateral abandonment of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear growth in return for the lifting of sanctions, between Iran and the permanent 5 of UN plus Germany- and re-imposition of sanctions had pushed Iran into a massive crisis of essential services especially food and medicines. Similarly, the sanctions on Cuba since the 1960s have debilitated the communist state economically with massive protests by the citizens against unemployment and inflation.

On the other hand, China and Russia have established their places in the world despite American sanctions and it’s time for the west to recognize an ideology different from their own while providing them manoeuvring space and capacity. Their presence in the UN has saved several countries in recent times from NATO invasion under the garb of abuse of human rights and suspected nuclear proliferation ( Libya and Iraq are cases in point).

Acknowledgement of novel developmental trajectory

The brazen superiority of the West has led it to turn a blind eye to the massive difference in the circumstances in which the eastern countries live and prosper. Unlike the west, China has shown no apparent objection to a multipolar world wherein it is willing to share its status on the international front with other influential powers. The development models of most countries in the east have been severely impacted by Neoliberalism imposed by IMF in return for developmental loans. China however managed to avoid ideological conflicts during the cold war and was never forced to accept loans from IMF under duress. Hence China enjoyed political autonomy at a time when the west was importing its ideology to the third world. This provided ample space for political and economic experimentation towards the end of modernization and set the Chinese model apart in a world that witnessed universalization of western policy as the only acceptable policy (Source).

While this largely explains the animosity of the western dominant narrative against China, it becomes imperative to accept that the model worked for the Chinese development. Like most things, China’s definition of a superpower status differs from that of the USA’s. China’s Xi preached “equality of civilization” and warned against the “stupid” and “disastrous” clash of civilization. This is the jargon that “seems” to shape China’s idea of a multipolar world as it comes dangerously close to the superpower status. This current reality validates Samuel Huntington’s prediction of a civilizational clash between the West and China in his “clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order”.

Room for the Eastern Narratives

It is high time that the Global East is given sufficient room to propagate its models without the supervision of the West. The post-colonial philosophies are more likely to shape the third world considering its greater relevance to the current time and age. The regressive ways used by the developed world to attain their “developed” status are denounced by the current order. These techniques included development at the cost of exploitation of the colonies and indigenous population and discrimination on basis of race and ethnicity. The means to the end were far from liberal and it’s time that they rose above the ‘ideological hypocrisy’. The East has the right to trial and error for making its own decisions for the governance of the people without an overarching imposition of archaic world order.

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.