Sanctions May Impoverish Nicaraguans, But is Unlikely to Change Their Votes

John Perry

In 1985, when President Reagan declared Nicaragua “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” his words were followed by a trade blockade, a ban on commercial flights and—most seriously of all—the financing of the “Contra” war, which led to 30,000 deaths. When, 33 years later, Donald Trump made the same declaration, its effect was far more limited. Yet presumably neither president saw the absurdity in designating a country as an “extraordinary threat” when it has just six million people, is one of the poorest in the hemisphere, and has only a tiny military budget. Nor, apparently, does President Joe Biden, who has renewed the declaration and added to the sanctions.

Sanctions, called “unilateral coercive measures” by the United Nations, are illegal in international law, yet are deployed by the United States against 39 countries. The Reagan administration used them against Nicaragua in the 1980s in their most drastic form, even mining the country’s ports—for which Nicaragua successfully took action against the United States in the International Court of Justice. When the Sandinistas lost power in 1990, sanctions ceased. But then Daniel Ortega won reelection in 2006 and again in 2011, so his opponents began to lobby the United States to reimpose them. To give one of many examples, Ana Margarita Vijil, then leader of the Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista (MRS)—a party that broke away from the Sandinistas in 1995 and later aligned with right-wing parties—met Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) several times from 2015 onwards to push for sanctions. In 2016, Ros-Lehtinen introduced the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act, known as the NICA Act, in response to alleged fraud in the 2016 election process and the ending of presidential term limits, which had enabled Ortega to seek reelection. He was elected for a third consecutive term in November 2016 with 72 percent of the vote while Congress was still considering the Act.

The legislation fell in the Senate but was reintroduced in 2017 by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who argued that “Nicaragua and all freedom-loving people in Central America depend on U.S. leadership.” It was passed in December 2018 as the Nicaragua Human Rights and Anticorruption Act. By then a violent attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan government between April and July 2018 had failed, spurring on the Act’s proponents. The legislation allowed targeted sanctions against Nicaraguan officials and required U.S. officials to oppose loans to Nicaragua from international financial institutions (IFIs), excluding those to address “human needs” or “promote democracy.” Sanctions apply until Nicaragua is “certified” as meeting various requirements, including having “free and fair” elections.

The NICA Act’s targets may have been government ministers, but its victims were Nicaragua’s poorest communities. The World Bank, having praised Nicaragua’s use of international funds to relieve poverty and having financed over 100 successful projects since the Sandinistas first took power in 1979, suddenly halted funding in March 2018. It did not resume work for nearly three years, until late 2020, when the bank belatedly helped respond to the Covid-19 pandemic and two devastating hurricanes. The Inter-American Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund similarly stopped funding large projects, and their help in response to the pandemic and the hurricanes was also delayed. Not surprisingly, opinion polls show that over three-quarters of Nicaraguans oppose these sanctions, and even the Organization of American States described the NICA Act as “counterproductive.”

Trump also imposed personal restrictions on a range of Nicaraguan government officials, a list to which Biden has now added. It is unclear if these sanctions have much effect: they merely block named individuals from having U.S. property, financial dealings, or travelling to the United States. The sanctions are based on very flimsy evidence. For example, the recently deceased Paul Oquist, a widely known negotiator in global efforts to tackle climate change, was sanctioned. The former health minister, Sonia Castro, was falsely accused of instructing hospitals not to treat opposition casualties during the violence in 2018. Much respected for her work in transforming the country’s health services since 2007, Castro had to leave her post when sanctioned, as she could no longer handle international financial transactions.

While sanctions have hit specific projects benefiting poor communities, they have also begun to impact mainstream services such as healthcare, where replacing defective equipment or obtaining supplies during the pandemic has proven to be problematic. Nicaragua is also one of the few Latin American countries to receive no U.S. vaccine donations so far, although this will be belatedly corrected via the COVAX mechanism. To some extent, gaps have been filled using Nicaragua’s strong ties to other countries: for example, Taiwan has sent multiple shipments of medical equipment and Russia has donated Sputnik V vaccines. The Central American Integration Bank, unlike the other IFIs, stepped up its assistance via the Central America Integration System (SICA).

Sanctions are only part of the US “regime change” agenda for Nicaragua. Other measures include “democracy promotion,” in which U.S.-funded non-profits have trained over 8,000 young Nicaraguans with the ultimate goal of displacing the Ortega government. The United States actively organizes and promotes opposition politicians and refuses to accept the legitimacy of elections if they fail to win power. A $2 million program called Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) aims to achieve “an orderly transition” towards a new government, part of at least $160 million spent recently on regime-change efforts. Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton labelled Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela the “Troika of Tyranny,” and Biden’s Latin American adviser, Juan González, continues this extreme language in claiming: “The actions taken by the Ortega administration against their own people…possibly constitute crimes against humanity.” The United States mobilizes its regional allies against Nicaragua via the Lima Group and the OAS, and “human rights” issues are weaponized via local bodies funded by the United States. One outcome is a consensus narrative about Nicaragua in international media: that it is a repressive, dictatorial “regime” that is trying to destabilize neighboring countries, despite those countries’ own problematic human rights records.

Doubling Down on a Failed Sanctions Strategy?

If sanctions on Nicaragua were toughened, as some U.S. and many of Nicaragua’s opposition politicians are demanding, the effects could be huge. Nicaragua’s exports to the United States are bigger than those of any other Central American country, while personal remittances and U.S. tourism are vital sources of income. All could be affected if the United States imposes a Cuba-style blockade or forces Nicaragua out of regional trade agreements. Nicaragua would have a degree of protection not available to Cuba—it is self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs and its intra-regional trade links are strong. Nevertheless, family incomes and Nicaragua’s sizeable small business sector would be badly affected. A foretaste of what might happen was provided by the short-lived campaign in the United States to boycott Nicaraguan beef, which put the jobs of an estimated 600,000 low-paid workers at risk.

As in the case of Cuba, Biden’s presidency brings warning signs that sanctions will be tightened, not reduced. The fact that Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista politicians continue to demand tougher sanctions was one of the justifications the government gave for recent arrests of government opponents, an issue warranting separate examination. Calls for stronger action may succeed with the RENACER Act, short for “Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform,” recently approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If passed, this legislation would monitor IFIs even more strictly, expand the targets of personal sanctions to tens of thousands of ordinary Sandinista party members, require closer collaboration with U.S. partners to implement the act, and add Nicaragua to the list of countries deemed to be “corrupt.” Another bill, introduced on June 17, would require the administration to review Nicaragua’s compliance with free trade agreements.

If the U.S. Congress approves RENACER, will it have the intended effect? Nicaraguans go to the polls on November 7. In May, electoral law was updated to include reforms such as gender parity among electoral officials and digital auditing and traceability of voting tallies. On July 24 and 25, 2.8 million voters attended 3,106 voting centers to check they were registered. The latest opinion poll (July 3) shows that 95 percent will have the required identity cards, 73 percent intend to vote, 58 percent say they will vote to reelect the Ortega government, while 23 percent will vote against. Six opposition parties are choosing their candidates, including both “traditional” parties and new ones formed after the 2018 uprising. It is difficult to see any circumstances in which elections would not proceed. Almost as likely, given economic and social advances over the past 14 years, is that the Sandinistas will win.

Past experience suggests the U.S. government will refuse to recognize such a result. However, imposing extra sanctions is not straightforward. A parallel election is taking place on November 28 in neighboring Honduras, where widespread fraud occurred in the 2017 presidential vote; the electoral process is disorganized, and some 400,000 people may be left without a ballot. Honduras is a narco-state, while Nicaragua is more successful than its neighbors in combating the drug trade.

Will the U.S. accept a dubious result in Honduras while decrying a more clear-cut one in Nicaragua? Will it take action against Nicaragua that drives it towards closer relationships with Russia and perhaps even with China? What will it do if Nicaragua—currently one of the safest countries in Latin America—loses its traditional security because the economy collapses and poorer Nicaraguans travel north to look for jobs, as they do from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador? What would be the response if U.S. action caused a humanitarian crisis?

Sanctions are clearly not in Nicaragua’s interest, but they may not be in the United States’ interest either.

The Hidden Face of Animal Research

Martha Rosenberg

Animal disease research in government or government-funded labs often flies under the public radar and it goes way beyond COVID-19 questions. For example few are aware of the existence of the U.S.’ Plum Island Animal Disease Center even though it is located in New York state near the northeast coast Long Island. During the Nixon era, bioweapons were developed there. Now the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service conducts gain of function-like research into vaccines and other countermeasures against foreign animal diseases like vesicular stomatitis virus, foot-and-mouth disease and swine fever.

The 2005 book, “Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory,” exposed biological meltdowns, infected workers and virus outbreaks at the facility including lab leaks that were seriously underreported by mainstream media.

Recently, a French laboratory worker was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) leading to an immediate moratorium on the prion research the worker and others conduct at five public research institutions in France.  Prions, misfolded infectious proteins, cause the fatal brain diseases of scrapie in sheep, mad cow disease in cattle (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE), chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk and CJD in humans. The prion-caused CJD brain-based fatal has been confused with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases in humans because of the severe cognitive and mobility impairments it causes.

While the infected worker is retired, prion research has been halted for three months to determine if a lab accident or exposure explains the illness.

In 2019, a French lab employee who also worked with prions, Émilie Jaumain, died at age 33 of lab-contracted CJD. Jaumain was infected with variant CJD, or vCJD, normally associated with eating prion-contaminated beef, venison or other meat said officials. In humans, CJD can develop spontaneously from no known cause or have genetic causes. Jaumain had stabbed her  thumb with an instrument while cleaning a machine she was using to cut brain sections from transgenic mice infected with a sheep-adapted form of mad cow disease/BSE.

Prions are Widespread and Almost Indestructible

Though prions lack a nucleus, they reproduce and are almost impossible to obliterate as I reported in my 2012 animal disease expose. Prions are not inactivated by cooking, heat, autoclaves, ammonia, bleach, hydrogen peroxide, alcohol, phenol, lye, formaldehyde, or radiation and they remain in the soil, contaminating it for years.

The prion-caused chronic wasting disease (CWD) has become epidemic in U.S. deer and elk and humans can catch it though urban communities remain mostly untouched and unaware. Human cases of variant CJD (vCJD) caused by mad cow disease (BSE) in meat that was eaten have occurred in the U.S. but in recent years have been dismissed as “atypical” and thus not requiring herd and offspring searches for “Cow 1.”

Mad cow outbreaks in cattle threaten beef producers, exports and financial markets and CWD outbreaks in deer and elk threaten hunting income and state revenues. Both are barely reported as public health stories by mainstream media because of their serious financial implications.

And, with Midwest deer now carrying COVID-19 including one half of deer tested in Michigan, how might prions interact with the coronavirus? Why is that possible disease adaptation not being reported?

Brave New Animals Are Created for Lab Research

The creation of transgenic, hybrid and chimeric animals is underreported and disturbing. Transgenic mice like those infected with a sheep prion used by Émilie Jaumain are not new and date back to the early “oncomouse” and knock-out mice. “hACE2 mice” were developed to study SARS but interest waned when the COVID-19 predecessor seemed to hide. The mice are now greatly in demand for such research which is back with a vengeance. COVID-19 is, after all, SARS-CoV-2.

Because of the ethical and disease spread/security dangers presented by transspecies experiments, some Western scientists have outsourced such research reported the Sun earlier this year. “Human-monkey hybrids, souped-up viruses, head transplants and gene editing are just some of the tests known to have been carried out by Chinese scientists,” the news outlet wrote.

Most Pandemics Are Zoonotic Including COVID-19

The 1918 flu epidemic originated in birds and the HIV epidemic originated in apes but the zoonosis of COVID-19 has been all but ignored for political reasons. It is now found in U.S. minks, zoo animals and deer.

Whether a fatal animal disease is bred in labs, hunting ranges (CWD), factory farms (BSE) or unhygienic wet/wildlife Asian markets, the possibility of animal-based human pandemics and their variants is the biggest lesson of the 21st century.

Israel launches aerial strikes on Lebanon escalating covert war against Iran

Jean Shaoul

Israel has launched a series of air strikes on Lebanon in a marked escalation of hostilities in response to the launching of a handful of rockets by militant groups in the south of the country.

It is the first time that Israel has admitted conducting air strikes against Lebanon since 2014, although its fighter planes have for years breached Lebanese airspace on an almost daily basis as it prosecutes its covert war on Iran and its allies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, in Syria.

The strikes come in the wake of mounting tensions between Israel and Iran following the drone attack, which Washington, London and Tel Aviv have attributed to Iran, on the oil tanker MV Mercer Street. The tanker is operated by an Israeli-owned shipping company and was sailing in international waters off the coast of Oman.

F-16I Soufa Multirole Fighter in flight (Wikimedia Commons/Israeli Air Force)

That attack, which killed the ship’s Romanian captain and British security officer, was likely in response to the long-running, covert offensive by Israel’s naval, air, security, intelligence and cyber forces against Iran. While the United States and Britain said they would work with their allies to respond to the attack, Israel said it reserved the right to act alone if necessary.

Tensions rose further when several ships were delayed in the Gulf of Oman last Monday, after one of them appeared to hit a mine at sea. Later, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency reported the end of a “potential hijack” of one of the ships by armed attackers, in a sequence of events that are far from clear.

On Wednesday, Israel launched 92 rounds of artillery fire against targets in south Lebanon, reportedly hitting an open area near the town of Mahmoudiya in the Marjayoun district and causing a fire in a nearby village.

This assault was in response to what the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said were three rockets fired into Israel by Palestinian militants in the area earlier that day, without identifying the Palestinian group it held responsible. One of the rockets was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defence system, with two rockets landing inside Israel, sparking fires near Kiryat Shemona. It marked the sixth such incident in the last three months, including three sets of rockets fired at Israel from Lebanon during Israel’s 11-day war on Gaza in May and a further three since then, after reported Israeli airstrikes on Syria, meaning that there were more incidents on Israel’s northern border than on its border with Gaza.

While the IDF attributed all of them to Palestinian militants in southern Lebanon, not Hezbollah, it stressed that Hezbollah was probably aware of their plans.

On Wednesday night, Israel’s fighter jets launched strikes against sites and infrastructure the IDF claimed were used for rocket launches. A spokesman said that Israel held the Lebanese government responsible for shelling from its territories and warned against more attacks. Defence Minister Benny Gantz told Ynet that Israel was prepared to attack Iran, saying both “Israel and the international community must act to curb Iran's actions.” He described Israel’s strikes as “warning shots… It’s obvious we are capable of doing a lot more, and we hope we won’t be dragged into it.”

On Friday, Hezbollah, the bourgeois-clerical group backed by Iran, fired 19 missiles into uninhabited areas in northern Israel. Three fell within Lebanon, while 10 of the remaining 16 were intercepted by the Iron Dome. No casualties were reported.

Hezbollah released a video of its fighters launching the rockets, making it the first time since Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006 that Hezbollah publicly took responsibility for rocket fire on Israel. It said the rocket fire was in response to Israeli aggression, indicating the killing of a Hezbollah member who had crossed into northern Israel at a protest during the assault on Gaza and the wounding of another in Syria by an airstrike attributed to Israel, as well as the previous day’s aerial attacks.

An IDF spokesman said Israel had responded with further artillery and aerial strikes in a third day of cross-border attacks by “striking the rocket launch sites in Lebanon” and open areas “in order not to escalate the situation,” justifying it with the claim that Iran had fired into open areas in the Golan Heights instead of populated ones. Israel’s TV Channel 12 cited an unsourced report as saying that the Israeli defence establishment had warned there could soon be several days of fighting, although Gantz urged Israelis not to cancel their vacation plans in the Galilee region.

Ned Price, spokesperson for the US State Department, confirmed Washington’s unconditional defence of Israel’s belligerence, telling reporters, “Israel has the right to defend itself against such attacks.” He indirectly acknowledged Washington’s prior knowledge if not approval of the attack, saying the US would remain engaged with its “Israeli and Lebanese counterparts, as well as with the Lebanese Armed Forces.” He called on the Lebanese government “urgently to prevent such attacks and bring the area under its control,” a clear instruction to the army to rein in Hezbollah.

On Saturday, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said that his group was not seeking to escalate the conflict. “What happened over the past few days was a dangerous development, something that has not happened for 15 years,” he said, warning that Hezbollah would expand its range to “the Galilee or parts of the Lebanese Golan that Israel has occupied,” if Israel continued its airstrikes.

Israel’s aggressive action against the Palestinian militant groups and Hezbollah is bound up with its broader hostility to Iran, which indicated its collaboration with its allies by giving the secretary-general of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziad al-Nakhalah, the head of Hamas’ Political Bureau Ismail Haniyeh, and the deputy secretary-general of Hezbollah Naim Qassem front-row seats, in front of the European Union’s delegate, at President Ebrahim Raisi’s inauguration in Tehran on Thursday.

The following day, Raisi met with Qassem, Haniyeh and other leading officials from Iran’s regional allies, while on Saturday Hossein Salami, who heads the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, met with Qassem.

Israel’s airstrikes seek to undermine the position of Tehran’s allies in Lebanon, which is reeling under an economic and social firestorm exacerbated by the pandemic and the devastation caused by last year’s blast at Beirut port. The Sunni and Christian political elite backed by Washington and Paris have tried and failed for the past year to form a government that meets the approval of President Aoun, his Christian Patriotic Free movement and Hezbollah, which with its allies has the largest bloc in Lebanon’s parliament. The successful formation of such a government under their latest candidate Najib Mikati would serve to ramp up the pressure on Iran, forcing further concessions from Tehran if not the outright ending of the Vienna talks aimed at reinstating some version of the 2015 nuclear accords.

At the very least, Israel sought to estimate the extent of the Palestinian militants’ independence from Hezbollah, which had rejected any responsibility for the attacks, and of Hezbollah’s support within southern Lebanon, its long-time stronghold. Druze villagers in Chouaya located Hezbollah’s rocket launcher and vented their anger.

Aoun said that Israel’s overnight air strikes showed an escalation in its “aggressive intent” towards his country. They not only constituted a direct threat to the security and stability of southern Lebanon but violated UN Security Council resolutions. The Lebanese army said it had detained the “four people who launched the rockets and seized the launcher used in the operation,” but Druze leaders supported Hezbollah, saying it had the right to act against Israel.

On Saturday, Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas sites in Gaza in response to incendiary balloons launched from the besieged Palestinian enclave.

UK: Johnson government wages dirty war on migrants and asylum seekers

Robert Stevens

Britain’s Conservative government is stepping up its onslaught against migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

The Tory government is advancing an anti-immigration agenda as its flagship policy. This is centred on Home Secretary Priti Patel’s Nationality and Border Bill, moving through parliament after passing its second reading last month. With the Tory’s 80-strong majority, the legislation will pass later this year.

The most-right-wing sections of the pro-Brexit media are spewing out invective demanding that the clampdown on “illegal” immigration is stepped up as the only way to stop an “army” of migrant “invaders” reaching Britain’s shores.

A Border Force vessel brings a group of people thought to be migrants into the port city of Dover, England, from small boats, Saturday Aug. 8, 2020. The British government says it will strengthen border measures as calm summer weather has prompted a record number of people to attempt the risky sea crossing in small vessels, from northern France to England. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Last month’s Cabinet Office Outcome Delivery Plan: 2021 to 2022 report outlined the importance of tackling migration to the government’s agenda. The report states that the UK must “seize the opportunities of EU Exit,” which requires “creating the world’s most effective border to increase UK prosperity and enhance security.”

The government and media have focused their propaganda on securing the border against dinghies and small boats containing migrants who arrive in the UK via the Channel between England and France. With no exception, from the supposedly “impartial” BBC to the Murdoch-owned Sun, the media pointed out that last Wednesday saw a “record” 482 migrants arrive in the UK via this route. For good measure the BBC pointed out, “A further 475 migrants crossed the English Channel in 15 small boats on Thursday.”

Every newspaper declared in banner headlines that the numbers who crossed on Wednesday took the total arriving via the Channel this year to more than 10,000, with the Daily Mail complaining that it “smashed the previous daily record set on July 19 when 430 arrived.” The “Channel migrant crisis” it intoned, would lead to 22,000 entering Britain that way by the end of this year.

The government, backed by its media echo chamber, has escalated tensions with France and the European Union (EU), complaining that too few migrants are being stopped in northern France before they attempt the crossing. Last month, London agreed to pay Paris £54 million to double its anti-migrant police force stationed in northern France to monitor beaches and ports, to 200 officers.

The agreement came under attack, with Tory MPs and the Daily Telegraph denouncing France last week for not doing enough to stop journeys taking place and complaining that the £54 million was money down the drain. Saturday’s Telegraph article opened with the words, “France is under pressure to set up a joint maritime brigade to turn back migrants, as 1,500 more mass on the coast ready to cross to the UK.”

The Telegraph cited Tony Smith, the former director general of Border Force, which is responsible for the UK’s air, sea and rail ports, who said, “We need a joint agreement with the French that migrants will be instantly taken back to the point from where they came and their asylum application would be considered there.”

Conservative MP Tim Loughton, a member of the home affairs committee, said, “If they are talking about intercepting the boats and returning migrants to France, that is the key to all of this. If their actions can match their words when they are in a position to do it—and if a joint force is deemed necessary to execute it—then that’s fine. We need to do something that effectively deters them.”

Last week, the Johnson government dispatched immigration minister Chris Philp to meet French police officials with a remit of ensuring they “continued to get results for the British public”.

Home Secretary Priti Patel and her French counterpart Gérard Darmanin have formally agreed to “support the idea of a UK-EU readmission agreement to mutual advantage in terms of deterring illegal migration, protecting the vulnerable, and tackling the criminal gangs”.

Paris nevertheless insists that maritime law prevents it from bringing back to France those boats which manage to leave French shores.

Britain is cynically using the tragic fate of scores of migrants who died attempting the treacherous crossing to ensure that everyone possible is prevented from making the journey.

The Telegraph cited UK sources claiming the European Commission is “turning a blind eye to people dying” by refusing to enter talks to allow Britain to send migrants back to France, blaming “post-Brexit shenanigans… EU officials are understood to have insisted that the right to negotiate asylum and readmission agreement rests entirely with the bloc, and not individual member states.”

Interviewed on LBC Radio, Rear Admiral Dr Chris Parry, the first Chair of the UK Government’s Marine Management Organisation until 2011, attacked France for being reticent when “a crime is being committed in their territorial seas.” France is “supposed to stop the migrants coming off the French coast but part of the problem is that the French aren’t doing their job very well.”

He advocated “various solutions which are available at the moment, on the real hard-edge you have the Australian method which is you tow people back like they did in the Pacific. Make it an offence to try and get into Australia and if you committed that offence then you’re never allowed to settle there and everyone is processed offshore.”

Last week, Home Secretary Patel visited Greece on a two-day fact-finding trip to discuss Fortress Europe’s southern border. The EU, Greece and Turkey have set up an anti-immigration system manned by hundreds of boats in which Greece blocks entry to thousands of desperate asylum seekers.

Greece has one of the most brutal anti-migrant policies in Europe. Patel and Greek migration minister Notis Mitarachi discussed the country’s latest measures and visited a newly constructed asylum “reception centre” on Samos Island, which will operate on a “closed and controlled” basis from September. Patel plans to introduce a similar operation in Britain.

Last November, the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment issued a report on the islands. On visiting two Greek police holding cells on Samos, its delegation “found 93 migrants (58 men, 15 women—three of whom were pregnant—and 20 children, 10 of whom were under five years old), crammed into the two cells.” The detained men, women, and children “slept on blankets or on cardboard placed on the cell floor.”

Last week, Labour MP Diane Abbott authored a piece in the Guardian on the conditions facing migrants at a “holding facility” in Dover that were nearly identical. “The facility was terrible. There were 56 people crammed into a small room, including women, young children and babies. They were sitting or lying on thin mattresses which covered the entire floor, including the aisles between a small number of seats. At night they would sleep on these same mattresses.”

Every filthy device available is being utilised to demonise migrants and asylum seekers and to curb immigration. The Guardian reported that the Home Office has financed a website and front organisation, On the Move, supposedly offering independent advice to migrants, as part of a £23,000 social media campaign. It declares, “The UK asylum process does not offer any advantages. It is safer and easier to apply for asylum in the country you’re in now.”

The filth pumped out by the government and media serves to legitimise anti-migrant attacks by far-right thugs. The Guardian reported on a freedom of information request it submitted which revealed that “70 racist incidents by far-right supporters against asylum seekers in barracks and hotel accommodation” had taken place between January 2020 and July 13, 2021. This year, the number of far-right attacks on those accommodated in hotels has more than tripled, rising to 40 from 13 in the whole of 2020.

US daily hospital admissions for children reach all-time pandemic high

Benjamin Mateus

“We have reached a grim juncture: more US children are hospitalized with COVID than at any other time point in the pandemic, and this number will continue to grow as the Delta variant spreads.”—Dr. Heather Haq, Baylor College of Medicine, August 9, 2021

The United States has reclaimed its position as the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic—a criminal “achievement” of the American ruling elite—due to the rapid transmission of the Delta variant, which now accounts for more than 93 percent of all sequenced cases.

Every reputable epidemiologist and public health official had warned that abandoning mitigation measures combined with ending mask mandates was a recipe for disaster. Now the disaster is here.

The country saw almost 700,000 new cases of COVID-19 last week, a 17 percent increase over the previous week. The death toll last week was 3,500 people, a 13 percent rise from the preceding week, and deaths are a lagging indicator. They will increase more rapidly. Every state in the US is reporting a rise in daily case rates. The current cumulative totals are 36.63 million COVID-19 infections and over 633,000 deaths.

Peyton Copeland, 5, hospitalized with Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C). Photo: (Twitter/@Cleavon_MD via Tara Copeland)

According to the COVID tracker of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the current seven-day moving average (the daily rate averaged over a seven-day period) is 683 percent above the lows observed on June 19, 2021. In contrast, the number of COVID tests has barely climbed 15 percent. This means that American society is flying blind into a new pandemic storm.

The current seven-day average of positive tests is close to 10 percent. The seven-day average for new hospital admissions of patients with confirmed COVID-19 in the United States in the first week of August was 8,308, a 22 percent increase from the last week in July. In total, there are now 66,477 people admitted to US hospitals for complications from COVID.

Much of the current surge is taking place across Southern states—Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri—that have had relatively low rates of COVID vaccinations compounded by resistance to implementing any significant measures to contain the spread of the virus. However, former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb recently warned that Northern states may see a rapid rise in cases once children are back in school.

“The Northern states are more impervious to the kind of spread we saw in the South, but they’re not completely impervious. The challenge right now is that the infection is going to start to collide with the opening of school,” he explained on “Face the Nation” Sunday.

The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, speaking on ABC News, noted, “And now we’re paying a terrible price as the cases go up quickly, most of the cases, of course, now in unvaccinated people.”

The US has just fully vaccinated half the population and about 90 million people have yet to get a single dose. Collins added, “Almost all of the deaths are unvaccinated people. And these are younger people now, including children. The largest number of children so far in the whole pandemic right now are in the hospital, 1,450 kids in the hospital from COVID-19.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics, which has been a consistent source of information on COVID and children, reported that since the onset of the pandemic nearly 4.3 million children have tested positive with the virus. Of the almost 700,000 COVID cases confirmed in the US in the first week of August, 94,000 were among children. The positivity rate on tests among children ranges between 4.8 and 17.6 percent, underscoring the fact that the number of pediatric cases is grossly underestimated.

The state of Mississippi is facing a dangerous collapse in its ability to render immediate intensive care to its population. State health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs informed the press that there were no ICU beds available in about 20 of the state’s top-level hospitals. On Monday, more than 200 people were crowded into emergency rooms across many of the state’s hospitals waiting for admission.

Dobbs tweeted the following grim statistics from the Mississippi State Department of Health: “Today MSDH is reporting 6,912 more cases of COVID-19 in Mississippi, 28 deaths, and 153 ongoing outbreaks in long-term care facilities.”

In Louisiana, COVID hospitalization records are being shattered almost daily. The number of COVID admissions has risen to the highest level since the beginning of the pandemic. Over the weekend, the state confirmed more than 12,200 new infections, bringing the seven-day count to an all-time high of 28,239. On Sunday, there were 2,720 patients hospitalized across the state.

In Florida, Darlene Andrews, a nurse at AdventHealth’s Orlando-area hospitals, noted that occupancy at six of seven hospitals had reached beyond full capacity with one at 123 percent for adults, she told the Wall Street Journal. The waiting time in the emergency rooms for beds is growing. Delays threaten unstable COVID cases or other urgent health conditions. The chief clinical officer Neil Finkler said point-blank, “This surge has come at us like a freight train.”

The two most populous states in the South, Texas and Florida, have the most reactionary, anti-science and, literally, anti-human, state officials.

The office of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis released a statement to the effect that the State Education Board could withhold salaries of superintendents who choose to implement mask mandates.

His office recently issued an executive order banning masks in schools, writing, “Education funding is intended to benefit students first and foremost, not systems. The Governor’s priorities are protecting parents’ rights and ensuring that every student has access to high-quality education that meets their unique needs.”

Such reactionary statements and maneuvers are motivated by political calculations and eschew any concerns for the public health safety of his constituents. And in this, the Republican governor has partners among the Democrats, despite their pretense of bitter hostility: The White House and the CDC are equally impervious to the requirements of science when they order children to go back to in-person instruction in schools, an effort that will insure mass infection and innumerable deaths.

In a similar vein, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas has thrown down the gauntlet staking out a firm position against any mask mandates while health officials are warning of reaching ICU capacity in the Austin area. The COVID-19 modeling consortium of the University of Texas projected that if the pandemic does not slow, it is almost certain that school openings will increase community transmission, fueling an already untenable situation.

When the mayor of San Antonio criticized Abbott’s ban on mask mandates as “risking the safety of our children,” the governor’s office issued a callous and chilling statement: “Governor Abbott has been clear that we must rely on personal responsibility, not government mandates. Every Texan has a right to choose for themselves and their children whether they will wear masks, open their business, or get vaccinated.”

No one has the “right” to infect or kill other people under conditions of a deadly pandemic—not even the governor of Texas. This is a declaration, not of individual rights, but of government indifference to mass death.

And for all of the posturing about the “right to choose,” the children of Texas and throughout the country are being sent back into schools without any rights at all, including the right to be free of a disease that threatens death, or, in the form of Long COVID, a long-term and perhaps permanent physical and intellectual disability.

As the tweet by Dr. Heather Haq, assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, noted, with 259 children hospitalized on August 7, the US surpassed a grim milestone for more children hospitalized in one day for COVID than any other time during the pandemic.

The rising number of pediatric hospitalizations is sparking concerns among health officials that when schools reopen, children will become the focal point of the burgeoning health crisis. The question is no longer if they get infected, but rather how sick can they get? Dr. Richard Malley, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital, told the New York Times, “Everybody is a little bit nervous about the possibility that the Delta variant could in fact be, in some way, more dangerous in kids.”

To put it bluntly, this is not the time to experiment with the lives of children and certainly not to facilitate reopening of schools so that parents can go back to work producing profits and adding to the already bloated wealth of the capitalist elite. As one forthright epidemiologist warned, the next stage in the coronavirus tragedy, affecting millions of children, would be “the pandemic of the innocent.”

Studies confirm safety of AstraZeneca and other COVID vaccines against threat of blood-clotting disorders

Benjamin Mateus

A recent population-based study commissioned by the European Medicine Agency (EMA) found that blood-clotting events after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine were the same or less frequent than for those who received the Pfizer mRNA vaccine.

Early in March 2021, concerns had been raised over blood-clotting events associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine. On April 7, 2021, the safety committee of the EMA concluded that there may be a link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and very rare cases of unusual blood clots, recommending it be listed as a side effect. These rare blood clots occurred in veins in the brain (cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, CVST), the abdomen (splanchnic vein thrombosis) and in arteries, in combination with low levels of blood platelets.

The announcement came on the heel of dozens of European countries, including Germany and France, suspending their use of AstraZeneca in March on reports of a handful of cases where the blood clots had proven fatal, prompting national and international health authorities to investigate the reports.

These developments had been preceded by an open brawl among European powers over AstraZeneca’s inability to meet delivery schedules, with some EU governments attacking the pharmaceutical company (based in Britain and Sweden, Britain not being a member of the EU, Sweden outside the euro zone) on a clearly nationalistic basis.

The vaccine was jointly developed by the bi-national company and Britain’s Oxford University and was promoted as a vaccine for the world. At one to two dollars a shot, it was intended to provide the world access to a cheap and readily storable vaccine. Meanwhile, Pfizer ($18.20 to $23.00 per shot) and Moderna ($22.60 to $25.50) have recently increased their prices by as much as 25 percent.

French President Emmanuel Macron openly denigrated the AstraZeneca vaccine in January, calling it quasi-effective. The repercussions had a disastrous impact on the European and global vaccination campaign, causing significant mistrust and confusion regarding the benefits of the vaccine against SARS-CoV-2.

Since the announcement, many European countries, as well as Australia and Canada, have stopped using AstraZeneca in younger people (those under 50 or under 60). The US has yet to approve the vaccine despite tens of thousands of doses being stockpiled.

A dismayed Adam John Ritchie, a project manager at the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, explained, “The thing that terrified me more than anything else is that the one vaccine that’s not-for-profit is the one that has been dumped on over and over and over again.” He added that he felt AstraZeneca was made a “scapegoat” at a period in the EU vaccination campaign when it was struggling to ramp up its efforts.

As Politico observed, “But as these excess doses headed toward developing countries, the cascading negative press of the past few months is exacerbating the reluctance to accept it. These nations are caught in a bind—highly dependent on the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine but increasingly looking to other [unavailable] options.”

A week after the EMA’s announcement, the World Health Organization’s regional director of Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, in comments which received hardly a mention in the mainstream press, noted that 12 million doses of AstraZeneca COVID vaccines had been administered without any cases of blood coagulation disorders being reported.

She added (this in April), “To date, more than 200 million people have received AstraZeneca vaccines around the world, and cases of blood clots and low platelets are extremely low—fewer than 200 cases have been reported. COVID-19 on the other hand has claimed nearly three million lives worldwide.”

Though real-world data demonstrated that the AstraZeneca vaccine is equivalent to Pfizer’s in preventing severe disease and hospitalizations caused by the Delta variant, South Africa opted not to use it and sold its supply to other African nations due to reported poor efficacy against the Beta variant that had developed in that country. More recently, however, with the dominance of the Delta variant, newly appointed South African Minister of Health Joe Phaahla told the press that the government would begin using AstraZeneca.

In a recent publication in The Lancet, AstraZeneca researchers provided context for the number of cases of Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS) reported to their “global safety database, which captures all spontaneously reported adverse events from real-world use of its medicines and vaccines worldwide.”

In short, there were 399 cases of TTS among 49.23 million first doses of their COVID vaccines and 13 cases among 5.62 million recipients of the second dose. Based on the exposure level, the number of cases of this dreadful complication is between two to eight for every million vaccinees. By comparison, COVID-19 killed 9,000 people globally just on August 7, 2021.

In other words, COVID-19 killed in one hour the number of people who contracted TTS blood clots in the five months of administering the AstraZeneca vaccine, most of whom did not die. The current cumulative total places reported COVID-19 deaths at 4.3 million, and by all accounts, a woeful underestimate.

TTS is a serious condition. However, the risk estimates presented by AstraZeneca appear to be comparable to real world incidences. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) during an April 14, 2021, presentation placed the rate of this event in the general population at 2.2 to 15.7 per one million persons. The median age among those developing the condition was 37, with a female to male predominance of three to one. The data reported is consistent with several publications noting this incidence rate in the population.

Turning now to the recent Lancet report that is in preprint, researchers from Spain, the UK, and the Netherlands had sought to compare the rates of blood-clotting disorders and low platelet counts following vaccination with BNT162b2 (Pfizer’s mRNA COVID vaccine) and ChAdOx1 (the AstraZeneca/Oxford adenoviral vector vaccine) to answer the important questions about the potential adverse effects associated with the vaccines and compare that to COVID-19 infections. They used the average of such blood-clotting events in the general population as their comparative reference.

The study included nearly 946,000 who received the Pfizer vaccine (82.3 percent fully vaccinated), over 426,000 with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and close to 223,000 who were infected with COVID-19. Data on almost 4.6 million “background participants” was used for the general population average. Their findings led them to conclude that “in this study, including 1,372,213 people vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, similar safety profiles were seen for both vaccines.”

The rates of deep vein thrombosis (DVT), blood clots in the legs, was similar in those receiving the first dose of the vaccines and slightly elevated above background (general population) levels. However, COVID-19 patients had more than a three-fold rise in this category.

Table 1: Incidence of Venous Thromboembolism with Vaccines and COVID-19

In the category of pulmonary embolism, or clots to the lung, again, both vaccines were similar to background though Pfizer’s was slightly higher and the difference was statistically significant. However, those with COVID-19 infections had a 15-fold rise in this complication.

In the category of overall venous thromboembolism, those receiving the Pfizer vaccine had, once again, a slightly higher and significant risk of such a complication, while those receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine did not demonstrate a significant increase. By comparison, those with COVID-19 infections had an eight-fold rise, again, highlighting the dangers associated with infection.

The risk associated with heart attacks and strokes was only elevated for those with COVID-19 infections. Cases of arterial blood clots and TTS were quite low and in line with expected rates for both COVID vaccines. Less than five cases of TTS were identified among those receiving the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine. The incidence rate among those receiving the Pfizer vaccine was consistent with population-based rates.

In distinction to their findings, the authors referenced a previous study from Denmark and Norway of more than 280,000 people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca shot that showed rates of Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) were twice as high as expected. In that study, VTEs were driven by cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) events. Such events were not increased in the later study, though among women between the ages of 20 and 44, the study found a higher incidence of Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) with AstraZeneca. On the other hand, rates of low platelet counts were higher in the Pfizer group, particularly in men ages 20 to 40 years.

These continued and ongoing studies and analysis are necessary both to establish the risks associated with these treatments, as well as comparing these risks to the benefits the vaccines offer, not just in preventing COVID-19 itself, but in reducing the blood-clotting complications associated with COVID infection.

However, these studies also suggest the danger of politicizing research, which can only work to dissuade the population from seeking these life-saving measures. The mixture of national tensions, commercial considerations and elements of panic over AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine led to major slowdowns in the vaccination program in Europe and other countries globally. It fueled vaccine skepticism and hesitancy that furthered the unnecessary rise in preventable deaths.

The exceedingly small risk associated with AstraZeneca was elevated to a major political and media talking point and detracted from focusing on the enormously greater dangers associated with the pandemic infections. Vaccines should be evaluated on the basis of science and not hysteria. The case of AstraZeneca is just one example among many of how the vaccine rollout has been distorted and rendered less effective by the commercial concerns and national tensions inherent to capitalism.

Afghan regime’s rout exposes crisis of US imperialism

Bill Van Auken

The rout of Afghan regime forces at the hands of the Taliban insurgency has led to increasingly bitter recriminations in US ruling circles on the theme of “Who lost Afghanistan?” The Wall Street Journal Monday published an editorial that termed the US withdrawal a “debacle” and charged that the Taliban was able to make its advances because “Biden ignored military advice and withdrew so recklessly and without a plan to prevent disaster.”

Taliban in Kunduz city, northern Afghanistan on Aug. 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Abdullah Sahil)

A military catastrophe on this scale, however, cannot be attributed to the lack of a “plan.” The reality is that US imperialism is paying the price for two decades of crimes against the people of Afghanistan carried out under four successive administrations, Democratic and Republican alike. Together they sent three-quarters of a million US troops to Afghanistan to wage a dirty colonial-style war in which it is conservatively estimated that at least 175,000 civilians were killed. The result of this mass killing, as well as the terrorizing of the population with the ever-present threat of bombing raids and drone strikes, night raids and the systematic torture of detainees, succeeded only in swelling the ranks of the insurgency.

Within the space of barely one week, the Taliban has overrun six provincial capitals. On Friday, they captured Zaranj, near the border with Iran, and Sheberghan in the north, and on Sunday they took three more capitals: Kunduz, the commercial hub in the north of the country, as well as Sar-i-Pul and Taloqan. On Monday, local officials confirmed that the insurgency was fully in control of Aybak City, the capital of Samgan province, which controls the main highway linking the capital of Kabul with the country’s northern provinces.

Ongoing urban warfare has reduced the grip of the US-backed regime in Kabul to just some neighborhoods and, in some cases, blocks in other besieged capitals, including Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, and Kandahar City in the south. Fierce fighting is also taking place in Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif, the largest city in Afghanistan’s north.

Defending forces loyal to the US-backed regime in Kabul have surrendered to the Taliban by their thousands or laid down their weapons and removed their uniforms. In some cases they have defected to the insurgency. The Taliban has insisted that, in most instances, it has been able to negotiate surrenders of districts and cities without fighting.

Where there has been resistance to the insurgents, as in Lashkar Gah and other besieged capitals, it has been heavily reliant on airstrikes by US warplanes operating from “over the horizon.” This has included the use of B-52 strategic bombers flying from the Al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets flying off the deck of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan deployed in the Arabian Sea, and AC-130 Specter gunships.

The use of this airpower against heavily populated urban areas will inevitably inflict a bloody toll in terms of civilian casualties. In Lashkar Gah, US bombs destroyed a health clinic and a school, while officials reported 20 civilian deaths over the space of 48 hours. Afghan security officials, while attempting to minimize the government’s loss of control, have taken to touting body counts from the air strikes, claiming the deaths of hundreds of Taliban fighters. How many civilian bodies are lumped into these totals is unknown.

The reasons for the Taliban’s success can be grasped in the record of the US occupation in the largest of the cities the insurgency has overrun in recent weeks, Kunduz, with a population of nearly 350,000.

In 2001, shortly after the US invasion, Taliban forces in Kunduz surrendered to US special forces and a militia loyal to the warlord Gen. Rashid Dostum, who forced them into metal shipping containers and transported them to Sheberghan, Dostum’s stronghold. Most of some 2,000 prisoners suffocated in the containers, those still alive were shot.

In 2009, a German officer called in a US military airstrike against a crowd in Kunduz province that was siphoning fuel from two tanker trucks stuck at a river crossing. The 500-pound US bombs left at least 142 civilians incinerated.

And in 2015, a US AC-130 gunship slowly and deliberately reduced to rubble a civilian hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Kunduz, killing at least 42 patients and medical staff and wounding many others.

No one has ever been punished for any of these crimes, but they are certainly not forgotten by those who survived them and the relatives, friends and neighbors of those who did not.

The regime that these crimes were meant to defend has never been more than a puppet of the US occupation and a corrupt kleptocracy, enriching a layer of politicians, warlords and their cronies through the embezzlement of US aid.

At a press conference last month, US President Joe Biden defended his decision to order all but a handful of US troops out of Afghanistan by the end of this month and strenuously denied that there existed any similarity between the debacle in Afghanistan and the one in Vietnam in 1975. “They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability,” he said. “There’s going to be no circumstance when you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan.”

With both Washington and London telling their citizens over the weekend to get the first flight out of Afghanistan, and gun battles breaking out in the streets of Kabul, Biden’s assurances ring increasingly hollow.

In Vietnam, it took more than two years from the withdrawal of US troops for North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front forces to take Saigon. In Afghanistan, the US intelligence agencies’ “worst case scenario” of Kabul falling within three months of US troops pulling out of Afghanistan is beginning to look overly optimistic.

A debacle on this scale calls into question the survival of not just the regime in Kabul, but the one in Washington as well. The collapse in Afghanistan is part of the implosion of an entire policy pursued by US imperialism over the course of more than three decades.

In the wake of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the American ruling class concluded that nothing stood in the way of its employing US imperialism’s overwhelming military power to reverse the protracted erosion of Washington’s global economic position and impose US hegemony over strategically vital areas of the globe. From the first Persian Gulf War and the US interventions in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Washington has been at war ever since.

The US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, launched on the pretext of retaliation for the September 11 attacks, had been prepared well before the collapse of the Twin Towers. The war’s strategic objective was not the destruction of Al Qaeda, a Frankenstein’s monster created by the CIA-orchestrated war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Rather it was waged to project US military power into Central and South Asia by seizing control of a country bordering not only the oil-rich former Soviet republics of the Caspian basin, but also China and Iran.

Under the slogan of the “war on terror” or what George W. Bush described as “the wars of the 21st century,” Washington claimed the right to invade any country it perceived as a threat to its global interests. Within less than two years of the Afghanistan invasion, the US military was sent into a war in Iraq based on lies about nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction.” Regime change wars, launched under the hypocritical banner of “human rights,” were waged in both Libya, the country with the largest oil reserves in Africa, and Syria.

While killing and maiming millions, turning tens of millions more into refugees and decimating entire societies, these wars have failed to further Washington’s hegemonic aims, while producing debacles similar to the one now unfolding in Afghanistan.

Far from deterring the growth of American militarism, the debacles produced by the “war on terrorism” have only paved the way to the shift of US global strategy to “great power conflict,” in the first instance, confrontation with nuclear-armed China and Russia. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was carried out not to end America’s longest war, but rather to shift the Pentagon’s resources to the South China Sea, Eastern Europe and the Baltic.

Underlying the eruption of American militarism and the growing threat of a third world war is the insoluble crisis of US and world capitalism, which finds its sharpest expression in the policy of “herd immunity” and social murder pursued by the ruling classes in the United States and internationally in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The relentless pursuit of profits at the expense of human life has laid bare the irreconcilable contradiction between capitalism and the needs of masses of working people the world over, while provoking mounting class struggle.