Israel escalates attack on the Palestinians in Gaza

Jean Shaoul

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have ramped up their attacks on Gaza, with fighter jets launching strikes on Hamas targets on Monday and Saturday in response to home-made incendiary balloons set afloat from the besieged Palestinian enclave.

It marks the heaviest escalation in hostilities since Israel’s 11-day war on Gaza last May that killed more than 250 Palestinians, including at least 66 children and 41 women.

Israel’s attacks follow Saturday’s demonstration near Gaza’s border with Israel, when Israeli soldiers fired lives shots and injured at least 41 Palestinians, including two people who were critically injured, one of whom was a 13-year-old boy shot in the head. The IDF said that the Palestinians had shot and critically injured one of its security personnel, a 21-year-old sniper from the Border Police undercover antiterrorism unit.

Protestors evacuate a serious wounded person from the fence of Gaza Strip border with Israel, during a protest marking the anniversary of a 1969 arson attack at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque by an Australian tourist later found to be mentally ill, east of Gaza City, Saturday, Aug. 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

On Monday, Palestinian groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, announced plans to hold a major rally on Wednesday in southern Gaza near the border with Israel. The IDF responded by building up its forces along the heavily fortified border with the Gaza Strip and instructing its officers and soldiers to respond 'more aggressively' to any attempts to breach the border fence or attack soldiers.

Hundreds of Palestinians had gathered on Saturday near the border to mark the 52nd anniversary of the arson attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Islam’s third holiest site. Built on the site of the second Jewish temple destroyed by the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago, it is one of the most contested religious sites in the world. While the attack was carried out by a mentally unstable Christian Australian tourist, there were suspicions that Israel had been actively involved in planning and facilitating the arson attempt.

The Mosque has become a symbol of the ongoing violations of the basic rights of Palestinians, including their ability to worship freely, most recently during Ramadan earlier this year, precipitating the tensions that gave rise to Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza. Since Israel’s capture and annexation of Jerusalem’s Old City after the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, it has become a frequent flashpoint, regularly stormed by Jewish settlers and armed security forces, while worshippers are turned away at the gates and its foundations are being damaged by tunneling.

Israel’s Channel 7 reported “Temple Mount groups” saying there had been a 60 percent increase in the number of Jewish Israeli incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque compound over the past three months, with some 9,804 Jewish Israelis storming the compound over the past three months, compared to 6,133 over the same period last year.

Under an agreement with Jordan, only Muslims can worship at the Mosque compound, while Jews can pray at the Western Wall below. But recently, Israel’s newly installed government, led by Naftali Bennett, a former leader of a West Bank settlers council, has allowed increasing numbers of Jews to pray there; a move that will exacerbate tensions in East Jerusalem. While he initially appeared to confirm a formal change in policy, saying that all religions would have “freedom of worship” on Temple Mount, he was forced to backtrack after criticism from Jordan and leftist and Arab members of his coalition, saying that the status quo ante continued.

In the days before Saturday’s demonstration, Palestinian fighters had launched a rocket, the first since the May 21 ceasefire, towards Israel that was shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system.

The Palestinians’ balloons and rockets are aimed at securing the release of Hamas prisoners detained in Israeli jails, the lifting of Israel and Egypt’s 14 year-long blockade and the release of funds pledged by international donors for Gaza’s reconstruction following Israel’s criminal wars on Gaza in 2008-09, 2012, 2014 and 2021.

While Israel claimed its 2,750 aerial attacks and 2,300 artillery shells on Gaza last May were aimed at Palestinian militants’ arms factories and warehouses, most of the damage (61 percent) fell on the housing and infrastructure sector, 33 percent on the economic and business sectors, with some 1,500 economic establishments destroyed or damaged, and 7 percent on the social development sector. This caused losses and damages amounting to $479 million, according to the Higher Governmental Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza, with the World Bank estimating Gaza needed $485 million to restore it to the same penurious state it was before the war.

On Monday, a third report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on last May’s war concluded that Israeli air raids that demolished four high-rise buildings in Gaza City, including the 12-storey al-Jalaa building housing the local offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera and many families, damaged neighbouring buildings, left dozens of people homeless and destroyed scores of businesses, and “apparently” had not violated international laws of war.

HRW’s earlier reports accused Israel of war crimes for attacks it said had no clear military targets but killed dozens of civilians, while it said the actions of Palestinian groups based in Gaza, by firing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities, also constituted a war crime. HRW has called on the International Criminal Court to include last May’s assault on Gaza in its ongoing investigation into possible war crimes by Israel and Palestinian fighters.

Israel’s targeting of businesses and factories and small businesses, along with its repeated closure of Gaza's borders, has pushed the Palestinians even further into poverty. According to the International Labour Organisation, fewer than 20 percent of people of working age in Gaza has a job, while two-thirds of women and young people are unemployed.

Since the war, Israel has refused to allow building materials needed for reconstruction that would provide work for 60,000 workers to enter Gaza until Hamas agrees to release two Israeli civilians and the bodies of two Israeli soldiers. Hamas has made this release conditional on the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Last Thursday, the United Nations and Qatar agreed to channel aid to impoverished families in Gaza whereby 100,000 families will each receive $100 monthly starting in September from funds provided by the Qatari government and distributed by the UN’s World Food Programme and bank transfers rather than direct cash transfers. The deal did not address the broader issue of Gaza’s reconstruction, nor did it include any arrangement to pay the salaries of the civil servants in the Hamas-run government.

In a move evidently designed to ramp up the pressure on Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza, Egypt confirmed that it would close its border crossing at Rafah with Gaza, the only point of entry and exit not controlled by Israel, indefinitely starting on Monday. Neither Hamas nor Egypt explained the reasoning behind the closure of the crossing that Egypt had opened in May to allow wounded Gazans to be treated in Egyptian hospitals and to deliver aid. Yesterday, Al Arabiya network reported that Hamas had agreed to stop launching incendiary balloons from Gaza following talks with Egyptian intelligence officials.

Israel’s increasingly aggressive stance towards Hamas in Gaza takes place amid stepped up violence against the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Yesterday, an Israeli soldier shot and killed a 16-year-old Palestinian after security forces stormed the Balata refugee camp near Nablus. Earlier this month, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian man and injured 21 others during a protest in Nablus when Israeli troops fired on them with rubber bullets.

Israel has been waging a covert war against Iran, targeting its nuclear facilities, basic infrastructure and shipping. Last Thursday night, Israel struck Syrian military camps near Damascus and Homs, targeting weapons stores linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Shi’ite militias, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, that were reportedly intercepted by the Syrian army’s Russian air defense systems.

Experts warn India rapidly heading to COVID-19 “third wave”

Wasantha Rupasinghe

As India’s far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and its counterparts at the state level, whether led by the BJP or the opposition, increasingly abandon even limited COVID-19 restrictions, India continues to record 30,000 to 40,000 new infections and 350-500 deaths, on average, each day. With the virus continuing to circulate across the country at such a high rate, scientific experts warn that a deadly third wave of the pandemic, driven by the far more contagious and lethal Delta variant, could soon strike.

India’s extremely low COVID-19 testing rate will make it difficult to assess the rapidity and extent of the virus’s spread when a third wave hits. The country’s botched vaccine rollout has left the vast majority of India’s 1.39 billion people without any protection from serious illness and death. In addition, the country’s largely rudimentary and depleted health care system, particularly in rural areas where two-thirds of the population live, is in no position to treat another surge of COVID-19 patients comparable to that in April and May. Even then, faced with a tsunami of cases, hospitals in India’s largest urban centres, Delhi and Mumbai, ran out of beds, oxygen, and crucial drugs, resulting in mass death.

A health worker takes a mouth swab sample of a Kashmiri boy to test for COVID-19 in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Saturday, May 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)

On Monday, an expert panel convened under the auspices of the Modi government’s Ministry of Home Affairs warned that the third wave could be as large as the second. If the pace of vaccinations remains slow, the panel predicted that there would be up to 5 lakh (500,000) new cases daily at the expected peak of the third wave in late September or October. Even less dramatic projections based on better vaccine coverage estimated that between 200,000 and 320,000 new infections will be recorded each day.

Pointing to the continuing worldwide spread of COVID-19 fueled by the Delta and other new variants, Dr. Pooja Khosla of Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital recently warned, “Infections can increase exponentially at any time.” Speaking to the Hindusthan Times she added, “I think one should not assume anything and make all efforts to prevent a second wave-like crisis, which was a nightmare. … Reopening everything is not appropriate.”

In a Reuters snap survey completed in June, 40 health care specialists, doctors, scientists, virologists and epidemiologists from around the world predicted that a third wave of coronavirus infections is likely to hit India by October. The experts, Reuters reported, “cautioned against an early removal of restrictions, as some states have done.”

These warnings have been further underscored by the results of the fourth and latest serosurvey from the Indian Center of Medical Research (ICMR). Conducted between June 14 and July 6, and based on samples drawn from 29,000 people across 70 districts in 21 states, it concluded that 67.6 percent of the Indian population has developed antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. If the findings are accurate, this would mean that Indian health authorities have “missed” the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 cases—including registering less than 2 percent of all infections in densely populated states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. This speaks to the deplorable state of India’s health care system and the catastrophic failure of the state’s response to the pandemic. It also lends still further credibility to the growing number of scientific studies that place the true number of deaths from the pandemic in India in the millions.

At the same time, the serosurvey highlights the extremely grave threat a third wave poses to the population, the majority of whom either live in teeming slums or in rural areas without ready access to proper medical care. Per the serosurvey’s findings, 450 million Indians—a population larger than that of the United States—lack any immunity to COVID-19, a horrifying prospect in light of the systematic dismantling of all public health measures to contain and suppress the virus.

India’s efforts to sequence genomes to track for emerging variants have also been drastically curtailed. This despite the government having designated a Delta-plus variant as a “Variant of Concern” on June 22. Preliminary research suggests the Delta-plus strain of SARS-CoV-2 is even more contagious and vaccine-resistant than the Delta variant, which having ravaged India is now fueling a global resurgence of the pandemic.

Citing data from the National SARS-CoV-2 Genomic Consortium (INSACOG), a network of the 28 labs in India that are equipped to do genome sequencing of the coronavirus, the Hindu reported that in July just 184 genome samples were sequenced. This marked a steep decline from June, when 4,381 were sequenced. In April and May, when the devastating second wave was at its peak, 15,546 and 13,142 samples were sequenced respectively. A scientist from one of the INSACOG labs complained that many states were not sending enough samples and the “funds available to labs for carrying out sequences” have been “delayed.”

The refusal of the central and state governments to fund the necessary surveillance mechanisms to monitor the spread of the virus and the potential emergence of new variants is bound up with the Indian ruling elite’s criminal policy of prioritizing corporate profits over saving human lives—a policy that has already resulted in mass death. The Delta variant was first detected in India in October, but for want of resources its progress and potency were not scientifically scrutinized. Then, last February and March as new infections surged, the Narendra Modi-led BJP government pressed forward with India’s “reopening.” On April 20 as daily new COVID-19 infections were reaching 300,000 per day, Modi infamously told the Indian people in a nationwide televised address that it was necessary to “save India from lockdowns,” not COVID-19.

A comprehensive study issued by the US-based Center for Global Development last month substantiated previous reports that estimated the true death toll from India’s April-June 2021 second pandemic wave as five to 10 times higher than the government’s official claim of some 235,000 COVID-19 fatalities. Based on analysis of three separate data sets, the Center for Global Development study concluded that there were between 1.5 and 3.4 million COVID-19-related deaths in those three months, and that India’s total excess fatalities during the pandemic number between 3.4 and 4.9 million.

The Modi government, with the assistance of the corporate media and the opposition parties, has sought to prevent any serious examination of the causes and catastrophic impact of India’s second wave. Instead it has prioritized the rapid dismantling of all remaining anti-COVID measures, based on the lie that the worst is over; insisted that the population must, in any event, learn to live with the virus; and pushed forward with a raft of new pro-investor measures to “revive” the economy.

At least 11 of India’s 28 states have opened schools, and many other states have announced school reopening dates. As in every other country, the rush to reopen schools is not motivated by any concern about the education and well-being of children but rather aimed at freeing up parents for the labour market so they can continue producing profits for big business.

With all those under age 18 currently ineligible for vaccination, a third wave threatens to especially impact children. Dr. Devi Shetty, a cardiologist at Narayana Health and an adviser to the Karnataka state government on pandemic response planning, told Reuters, “If children get infected in large numbers and we are not prepared, there is nothing you can do at the last minute.” She added, “It will be a whole different problem (from the previous two waves) as the country has very, very few pediatric intensive care unit beds, and that is going to be a disaster.”

Just days after reopening schools, a number of students were infected with COVID-19, according to media reports.

The Modi government and its state counterparts are making no serious effort to strengthen the dilapidated health care system as it faces a potential mass influx of patients due to the ruling class’s homicidal policies. India is among the countries with the lowest public health care expenditure as a percentage of GDP in the world, with India’s governments for decades spending the equivalent of 1.5 percent of GDP or less on health care per annum.

The opposition-led state governments are pursuing essentially the same ruinous pandemic policy as Modi and his Hindu supremacist BJP. This includes the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led government in Kerala. For weeks, Kerala has recorded 15,000 to 20,000 new cases per day, as a direct consequence of the government’s decision to reopen the economy, including all export industries, and to allow mass gatherings during recent Muslim and Hindu religious festivals. On Tuesday, Kerala reported 24,296 new cases and a test positivity rate of more than 18 percent. Earlier this month, a six-member team appointed by the central government to study the COVID-19 situation in the state criticized Kerala’s government for limiting testing to those who have symptoms and using the less reliable antigen test rather than RT-PCR tests.

On top of the lifting of almost all COVID-19 restrictions and the failure to test adequately and monitor the spread of the disease, India’s shambolic vaccine campaign threatens to make the looming third wave even worse. According to Our World in Data, as of August 23, just 9.4 percent of Indians had been fully inoculated against COVID-19, with a further 23.4 percent having received one vaccine shot. In other words, well over 60 percent of the population has yet to receive a single dose as the third wave gathers pace. These figures underscore that the Indian government will not come close to fulfilling its goal of vaccinating the country’s adult population of over 900 million people by December. To reach this target, India would need to vaccinate around 8.8 million people per day on average. Currently, around 4 million people are being vaccinated daily.

Afghan refugees face steel border walls and barbed wire from Europe’s powers

Robert Stevens

Since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on August 15, governments internationally have engaged in non-stop handwringing over the fate of tens of thousands of refugees desperate to flee the country. These are the same governments whose wars over the last three decades, including in Afghanistan, have turned tens of millions of people into refugees and destroyed entire societies.

Twenty years of war, with the imperialist military forces only finally departing this month, have left 550,000 internally displaced in Afghanistan since the beginning of this year, adding to the almost 3 million Afghans who had met this fate by the end of 2020.

For all the crocodile tears shed over those who worked with the occupation now seeking to flee, Europe’s governments, since the fall of the Taliban, have refused to take more than a few thousand refugees.

In this May 21, 2021, file photo, policemen patrol alongside a steel wall at Evros river, near the village of Poros, at the Greek -Turkish border, Greece. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos, File)

In 2015, far-right political forces mobilised against German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy to open the country’s borders to allow in around 1 million refugees from the Syrian war in a settlement scheme. This time there is to be no such policy, with the European Union (EU) and its member states focusing on tightening the borders of Fortress Europe.

On Sunday, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa tweeted, “The EU will NOT open any European migration corridors for Afghanistan” stating there would be no repeat of the “strategic mistake” of 2015. Slovenia is the current holder of the six-month rotating EU presidency. Jansa, a former Stalinist and right-wing zealot, is a close ally of the fascistic Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban.

Jansa’s statement was opposed by European Parliament president Davide Sassoli, but it accurately reflects EU policy. In a statement issued August 18, three days after the fall of Kabul, EU Commissioner Ylva Julia Margareta Johansson declared from an extraordinary meeting of Interior Ministers, “We should not wait until people arrive at the external borders of the European Union. This is not a solution. We should prevent people from heading towards the European Union through unsafe, irregular and uncontrolled routes run by smugglers.”

The problem was not Europe’s, as “A significant number of Afghan nationals have already fled to neighbouring countries. … We will continue our ongoing programmes and intensify our cooperation with host communities in Pakistan, Iran and Tajikistan, as well as other countries in the region such as Turkey.”

No concrete plans were put in place for any EU member to take in a single Afghan refugee. The major powers have concentrated solely on getting their military forces out, and a few thousand civilian personnel who helped prop up President Ashraf Ghani’s puppet government.

Armin Laschet, leader of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, whom Merkel has backed to succeed her as chancellor, tweeted almost as soon as Kabul fell, “The mistakes regarding the Syrian civil war must not be made again … 2015 shall not be repeated.” A day later Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right main opposition party Alternative for Germany, declared, “2015 must not be allowed to repeat itself. Genuine refugees must be helped in their home region if possible.”

French President Emmanuel Macron refused to commit to taking any refugees from Afghanistan, declaring his main concern that France had to “anticipate and protect itself from a wave of migrants.” Paris would insist on an “initiative to build a robust, coordinated and united response without delay, which will involve the fight against irregular flows … and the establishment of cooperation with transit and host countries such as Pakistan, Turkey and Iran.”

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Sunday that he was “clearly against the fact that we now voluntarily accept more people—that will not happen under my chancellorship either.” Instead, “We have to deport as long as possible.”

Britain will take in just 5,000 Afghan people this year, as part of its Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy scheme, chosen from those who collaborated alongside UK forces or officials. These are “Afghans who have supported British efforts in Afghanistan, for example interpreters and other personnel.” Among those listed as priorities to enter are “Afghan government officials”. Only another 20,000 will be allowed to enter over the next few years.

The US has promised to take just 10,000 people from Afghanistan out of a population of 38 million. Australia will take in 3,000, the figure they were already committed to under an existing programme.

The now forbidden policy of 2015 was abandoned rapidly by Germany in 2016. On behalf of the EU, Merkel signed an agreement that year with Greece’s pseudo-left Syriza government and Turkey to seal off Europe’s southern border to asylum seekers. Under this filthy deal—a flagrant violation of international law effectively abolishing the right to asylum—the EU pays Turkey’s authoritarian regime billions to take in tens of thousands of migrants. Greece facilitates the mass deportation of refugees to Turkey as they reach the EU’s shores via the Aegean Sea.

Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi announced as the Taliban came to power, “Our country will not be a gateway to Europe for illegal Afghan migrants.”

Epitomising the vicious response of the EU powers to refugee victims of their wars, Greece announced last Friday that it had completed sealing off its northern border with Turkey with a massive 40km (25-mile) steel fence and new electronic monitoring system. Work to complete the wall, initially begun in 2012, and continued by Syriza while in power (2015-2019), was rushed ahead due to events in Afghanistan. Last Friday, Michalis Chrisochoidis, the Citizens’ Protection Minister of Greece’s New Democracy government, visited the region of Evros alongside the defence minister and head of the armed forces to inspect the border wall. He declared the fall of Kabul had created “possibilities for migrant flows … We cannot wait, passively, for the possible impact… Our borders will remain safe and inviolable.”

Every single land route is being systematically closed off to refugees by fences and barbed wire and every sea passage by patrol ships.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan warned that Turkey would not become “Europe's migrant storage unit”. Mehmet Emin Bilmez, governor of the eastern border province of Van, said, “We want to show the whole world that our borders are unpassable … Our biggest hope is that there is no migrant wave from Afghanistan.”

On Monday, Ankara announced it would add by the end of the year another 64 km to its existing three-metre-high border wall with Iran. The wall, started in 2017, will prevent entry to Turkey by any refugee making the weeks-long journey across Iran on foot. Reuters reported that the rest of the 560 km frontier would be fortified by “Ditches, wire and security patrols around the clock”.

Britain’s Home Secretary Priti Patel is enforcing one of the most restrictive anti-immigration policies on the planet, with much of it modelled on the savage system imposed in Greece. In a newspaper column Sunday, UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace wrote that the Johnson government would set up “A series of ‘processing hubs’... in countries neighboring Afghanistan for refugees who manage to escape. If they can establish their right to come to the UK, they will be flown to Britain.”

On Sunday, Turkey denied that it would allow such a hub on its territory with its foreign ministry warning, “It is not possible for us to accept it even if such a request was made in this regard.”

South Korea moves to end social distancing restrictions despite COVID-19 surge

Ben McGrath

Even as South Korea is experiencing its worst surge of COVID-19, the government of President Moon Jae-in is moving towards eliminating current social distancing measures. Moon and other government officials are not driven by the need to protect people’s lives, but to defend the profits of big business. There were 2,155 new cases reported Wednesday from the previous day, a near record high, as well as nine new deaths.

On August 20, while extending most of the current social distancing measures for two weeks, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced the ban on more than two people at facilities like restaurants after 6pm would be lifted to four people on Monday for those who are fully vaccinated.

Healthcare workers in Seoul, South Korea, call for increased staffing at a demonstration on August 5, 2021. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

The government is portraying the decision as an incentive for people to get vaccinated. Son Yeong-rae, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, stated, “Vaccination status will come into play more and more in how social distancing rules apply.”

However, the reality, as Son admitted, is that the easing of rules is meant to lessen the impact on big business, particularly in the food and entertainment industries that have been required to close at 10pm and only offer take-out orders after 9pm.

The danger is that vaccines alone are not enough to stop the spread of COVID-19. Even those who are fully vaccinated can still contract and pass on the virus, making public health measures such as social distancing a vital component of ending the pandemic.

Highlighting this point, nursing homes are “back in crisis mode,” according to Dr. Son Deok-hyeon, the director of the Eson nursing hospital in the city of Ulsan. Since the end of July, nine instances of breakthrough cases have occurred at nursing homes and other aged care facilities, infecting at least 159 people who were previously vaccinated. Three have died while another seven had to be placed on life support.

Despite this, there are no plans to administer a third booster shot to those whose defenses may have decreased since first becoming vaccinated. Seoul has struggled to obtain enough vaccines to provide people with their first two doses. Currently, only 50.5 percent of the population has received one dose of a two-dose regimen while 22 percent are considered fully vaccinated. This makes clear that strict social distancing measures are needed now more than ever.

The government’s actions follow a now common pattern. When cases first surged in February 2020 in the city of Daegu, businesses were encouraged or forced to close, the opening of the new academic school year was postponed before beginning online, and other measures were taken to stop the spread of the virus. These steps were taken following the 2015 outbreak of the more deadly, but less contagious MERS virus. The Moon government was conscious that a failure to stop the spread of a similar deadly virus could lead to an explosion of social anger.

At each surge in new cases, the government imposed certain social distancing measures to give the appearance of dealing with the virus but with each round of restrictions less effective than the last. Each time after a relative drop in cases, the government re-worked its social distancing scheme to lessen the impact on big business. This included keeping schools open to ensure parents could go to work and capitalism could continue to profit.

Now, with the virus continuing to rage throughout the country, including in densely populated cities like Seoul and Busan, the government is signaling that even these limited measures will be discarded. The reality is that the population is now being told that it must “live with the virus.”

The removal of restrictions for those who are vaccinated will only lead to the removal of restrictions altogether if workers and students do not take matters into their own hands. The Health Ministry admitted on August 6 that its “new pandemic strategy” is increasingly seen as accepting, in government officials’ minds, that COVID-19 is not going away and allowing a return to so-called normal.

Taking the lead in defending big business and calling for an end to social distancing measures has been the ostensible “Left” in South Korea; those aligned with President Moon and the Democratic Party.

In an August 22 article, the so-called “left-wing” Hankyoreh newspaper proclaimed, “On the 20th, as the government extended the current distancing measures (Level 4 in the Seoul metropolitan area and Level 3 in some non-metropolitan areas) for two weeks, voices from all levels of society are saying fatigue from quarantine has reached its limit.”

The paper claims to voice the concerns of workers, students, and small business owners who have undoubtedly suffered from the pandemic. The Hankyoreh’s crocodile tears are meant to obfuscate the fact that Moon’s government and its supporters in the unions are the cause of this suffering. While Seoul announced at the beginning of the pandemic that unlimited amounts of money would be made available to the country’s financial institutions, no questions asked, workers and ordinary people received either a pittance from the government, not enough to even cover the cost of rent, or nothing at all.

Furthermore, when delivery workers struck in January and then again in June over the brutal conditions they face, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and its affiliated Parcel Delivery Workers Solidarity Union shut down the strikes. This was on the basis of worthless promises from the government and the companies that more would be done to alleviate the conditions workers face. The KCTU has played a key role in keeping workers on the job during the pandemic for the benefit of big business.

Warehousing Wealth in Donor-Advised Funds

Chuck Collins & Helen Flannery

As the concentration of wealth among the top 0.1 percent has grown, philanthropy has become more “top heavy.” The number of middle-income donations is shrinking and most of the growth in annual charitable giving is coming from the very wealthy.

This is concerning because wealthier donors generally give to intermediaries such as their own private foundations or donor-advised funds (DAFs), not outright to charitable recipient groups. As we’ve discussed in other research, this warehousing of charitable donations has grown significantly over the last decade.

U.S. taxpayers provide a generous tax break for giving to qualified charities, and the wealthier the donor, the greater the tax reduction. The subsidy, as high as 74 cents on the dollar, is why there is a public interest in knowing that funds are flowing out to working charities.

Donor-advised funds have a fundamental design flaw: donors receive a deduction upon transfer of their gift, but there is no legal requirement that funds leave the DAF and flow to an active charity. Private foundations, on the other hand, are required to pay out at least 5 percent of their assets on an annual basis.

A number of organizing efforts have pressed to reform the rules governing philanthropy, including advocacy for emergency payout provisions during the pandemic.

The Charity Reform Initiative of the Institute for Policy Studies advocates for increasing private foundation payout, requiring DAFs to have a payout (as they do in Canada), and greater transparency reporting for DAFs. The objective is to increase the flow of funds out of intermediaries and to active charities.

One thing we have discovered is that private foundations and DAFs give a substantial amount of funds to other DAFs. These transactions are included in estimates of charitable giving and are counted toward DAF payout. But these funds have not effectively left the donor’s domain.

In a recent analysis prepared by Helen Flannery and Chuck Collins, “More Than One Billion Dollars In DAF Grants Went to Other Commercial DAFs in 2019,” we analyzed the tax returns of commercial DAF sponsors. We discovered that in 2019 alone, at least one billion dollars in commercial DAF grants went to other commercial DAFs.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. This is an enormous amount of money cycling between giving vehicles rather than being distributed outright to charity. But it is likely only scratching the surface of DAF-to-DAF giving, as it doesn’t capture transfers to or from DAFs held at community foundations and other mission-driven DAF sponsors.

Opponents of DAF reform argue that it isn’t necessary to impose payout requirements on DAFs because DAF donors are already transferring a great deal of money to charity. But if a significant portion of DAF grants are actually grants to other DAFs, it skews any payout rates reported by these institutions, and makes it nearly impossible to evaluate whether DAFs are actually distributing revenue to working charities in a meaningful way.

As a first step in an effort to quantify DAF-to-DAF giving, therefore, the Institute for Policy Studies examined five years of tax returns for 39 of the nation’s top commercial DAFs to see how many of their contributions went to other commercial DAFs. These include DAFs that are either sponsored by financial corporations, such as Fidelity Investments or Goldman Sachs, or are clearinghouses of DAFs on a national scale, such as DonorsTrust or the Tides Foundation. We did not examine granting to DAFs sponsored by either community foundations or single-issue organizations such as universities or hospitals. What follows are the key findings from our analysis.

Key Findings

Of the 52 top commercial donor-advised fund sponsors in the United States, 39 filed their tax returns electronically in at least one year from 2017 to 2019. Unless otherwise specified, the findings below are based on these 39 electronically-filing DAF sponsors. They do not include any DAF granting done by DAF sponsors that filed on paper.

+ More than $1 billion was granted from commercial DAF sponsors to other DAF sponsors in 2019. Over the five years we analyzed from 2015 to 2019, the 39 electronically-filing commercial DAFs granted a total of $2 billion to other commercial DAFs.

+ Commercial DAF-to-DAF giving is growing astronomically. Just $209 million was transferred between commercial DAFs in 2015. This means that the one billion dollars transferred between commercial DAFs in 2019 represents growth of 409 percent over the five years from 2015 to 2019, for an average effective growth rate of 50% per year. And this type of commercial DAF-to-DAF giving grew at more than three times that rate, 166 percent, in just the past single year from 2018 to 2019.

+ 31 of the commercial DAF sponsors in our analysis gave to another commercial DAF in at least one of the five years from 2015 to 2019. On average, 22 commercial DAFs gave to at least one other commercial DAF in any given year. Most DAFs gave to just three or four different commercial DAFs each year. But the largest–including Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, the National Philanthropic Trust, the American Endowment Foundation, and Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust–distributed grants to 16 or more other commercial DAFs each year.

+ 44 of the top commercial DAFs received at least one grant from another commercial DAF from 2015 to 2019. On average, 33 commercial DAFs received grants from other commercial DAFs in any given year.

+ In 2019, the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund was the largest grantor to other commercial DAFs, and was the largest recipient of commercial DAF grants as well. Fidelity gave $448 million to a total of 29 other commercial DAF sponsors that year, while at the same time receiving $231 million in grants from 14 other commercial DAF sponsors.

FDA warns that Ivermectin should not be used to treat COVID-19

Benjamin Mateus

Ivermectin, a medication better known for treating parasite infestations, when it comes to the unfounded treatments for COVID-19, is perhaps the stepchild of the drug Hydroxychloroquine, which had been touted by then-President Donald Trump for its supposed ability to prevent and mitigate COVID-19 disease.

However, unlike the ignominious end to the controversy over Hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19, the still unproven use of Ivermectin has persevered, especially across Latin America, where in the midst of unchecked coronavirus transmission, people desperate for any remedy have flocked to purchase the over-the-counter drug, which has been used for decades to treat farm animals and people infected with parasitic worms.

Over the weekend, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that Ivermectin was not an anti-viral drug, ahead of its call giving Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine full authorization. The drug remains unproven in preventing or reducing the risk of developing severe COVID-19. In an official tweet, the FDA wrote: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

The packaging and a container of veterinary ivermectin is seen in Johannesburg, South Africa, Friday Jan. 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)

The FDA’s cautioned against Ivermectin use on the heels of a statement released by the Mississippi State Department of Health after reports surfaced that an increasing number of people had turned to use the drug to prevent COVID-19 infection. One man was recently hospitalized in the state for ingesting livestock Ivermectin from a feed store. The state, which has only managed to vaccinate 37 percent of its citizens fully, has recently been battered by a massive wave of infection with the Delta variant.

Ivermectin was discovered in 1975 and came into medical and veterinary use in the 1980s. It is one of the essential medicines on the World Health Organization (WHO) list and has FDA approval as an anti-parasitic agent. Though the drug, prescribed by a physician for appropriate indications, is fairly free of toxicity, it can be neurotoxic in large doses, leading to seizures or suppression in a person’s ability to breathe, possible loss of consciousness, coma and even death.

During a press briefing, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, a Mississippi health officer, warned: “There are potential toxicities [with Ivermectin]. So, it’s something, you know … some people are trying to use it as a preventative, which I think is really kind of crazy. So, please don’t do that!” Despite evidence of safe and effective vaccines widely available, it has found appeal among those opposed to the vaccines and public health measures.

The Department of Health issued an alert that they have been receiving reports about rising incidents of Ivermectin poisoning: “The Mississippi Poison Control center has received an increasing number of calls from individuals with potential Ivermectin exposure taken to treat of preventing COVID-19 infection. At least 70 percent of the recent calls have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of Ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers. Eighty-five percent of the callers had mild symptoms, but one individual was instructed to seek further evaluation due to the amount of Ivermectin reportedly ingested.”

Early in the pandemic, scientists and physicians were repurposing every medicine sitting on the shelves that could potentially stem the severity of COVID-19. Like Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin had demonstrated in vitro (an experiment conducted in a culture dish outside a living organism) inhibition of the ability for SARS-CoV-2 to replicate.

Australian researchers published their data in the journal Antiviral Research in June 2020, demonstrating that a single treatment could affect a 5,000-fold reduction in viral RNA at 48 hours. However, the concentrations required to produce this effect would be impossible to achieve in vivo and prove highly toxic to humans. Spurred further by unreliable and later retracted studies compounded by lack of any substantiated benefit from any other pharmaceuticals, in Latin America, as the journal Nature noted, “Ivermectin’s reputation was already cemented.”

Ivermectin is commonly used in South America to treat river blindness, lymphatic filariasis and neglected tropical diseases. Despite the lack of evidence to support its use in a clinical setting, news of its potential benefit spread quickly. In May 2020, northern Bolivia’s health care workers passed out more than 350,000 doses to residents. The same month in Peru, 20,000 bottles of livestock grade Ivermectin sold on the black market were confiscated by the police. By July, the University of Peru announced it would increase production to bolster the country’s supply.

Quickly and in succession, countries in the region like Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela and Brazil, facing massive waves of infections and death, began implementing public health policies for the use of Ivermectin for the treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19.

Proponents argued that its safety profile and several decades of experience with the use of the medicine, in light of the lack of any benefit from other pharmaceuticals, warranted adding it to their guidelines for treating coronavirus infections. Bolivia’s health minister, Marcelo Navajas, went as far as acknowledging, during a press conference on May 12, 2020, that the drug “does not have scientific validation.”

Dr. Carlos Chaccour, a Venezuelan researcher at the Barcelona Institute of Global Health in Spain, working to eliminate malaria, told Nature, “I do not judge a doctor who has a dying patient before him and, desperate, tries anything [to save them]. The problem is when non-evidenced-based public policies are made.”

In Brazil, where the death toll is approaching 600,000, fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro’s Ministry of Health has promoted a cocktail of unproven drugs known as tratamento precoce (early treatment) that include Ivermectin, Chloroquine, Azithromycin (an antibiotic), blood thinners, and an assortment of vitamins and zinc. Espousing policies based on utter pseudoscience, the Brazilian government spent millions on social media promoting quack concoctions to absolve themselves all criminal responsibility for the death of its people.

Dr. Jesem Orellana, an epidemiologist at Fiocruz Amazonia based in Manaus, where the Gamma variant first exploded, told NPR, “It’s not because they believe it works, but because it is a way for them to escape their responsibility for controlling the pandemic.”

In February 2021, the US National Institutes of Health issued a COVID-19 treatment guidelines update, stating, “Despite [the] in vitro activity, no clinical trials have reported a clinical benefit for Ivermectin in patients with these viruses,” adding that “there is insufficient evidence for the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines panel to recommend either for or against the use of Ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19,” citing the urgent need for adequately conducted studies to address the pressing question.

A month later, a randomized controlled trial published in JAMA on March 4, 2021, comparing Ivermectin to a placebo, found no benefit in treating mild COVID-19. This was followed by an announcement by the W HO , based on a comprehensive review by a panel of experts, that the evidence on the use of Ivermectin remained inconclusive and that, until more data were available, its use should be used be limited to clinical trials.

They wrote: “The group reviewed pooled data from 16 randomized controlled trials (total enrolled 2,407), including both inpatients and outpatients with COVID-19. They determined that the evidence on whether Ivermectin reduces mortality, need for mechanical ventilation, need for hospital admission and time to clinical improvement in COVID-19 patients is of ‘very low certainty,’ due to the small sizes and methodological limitations of available trial data, including small number of events.”

In a blow to promoters of Ivermectin, just last month, a significant study purporting the safety and efficacy of Ivermectin to reduce mortality, which had been placed in a preprint on Research Square in November 2020, was retracted over revelations of plagiarism and widespread flaws in the data. The editors wrote, “… we were presented with evidence of both plagiarism and anomalies in the dataset associated with the study, neither of which could reasonably be addressed by the author issuing a revised version of the paper.”

Jack Lawrence, an independent journalist and British medical student with a master’s in biomedical sciences, was the individual who had raised these concerns with Research Square. His report detailed the findings of this investigation. Dr. Ahmed Elgazzar from Benha University in Egypt, also the chief editor of the Benha Medical Journal, has yet to provide responses to questions posed to him.

According to the Guardian, “The study found that patients with COVID-19 treated in hospital who ‘received Ivermectin early reported substantial recovery’ and that there was ‘a substantial improvement and reduction in mortality rate in Ivermectin treated groups’ by 90 percent.” Nick Brown, a data analyst affiliated with Linnaeus University in Sweden, told the Guardian: “The main error is that at least 79 of the patient records are obvious clones of other records. It’s certainly the hardest to explain away as innocent error, especially since the clones aren’t even pure copies. There are signs that they have tried to change one or two fields to make them look more natural.”

The need for a scrupulous and principled approach to the conduct of trials and investigations cannot be understated. In concluding, it is worth noting that last week, Dr. Didier Raoult, the French scientist who had been discredited for his promotion of Hydroxychloroquine treatment of COVID- 19 , is being forced out of the Marseille-based infectious disease institute that he had founded on concerns over his role in promoting conspiracy theories and the unethical conduct of his studies. However, he is receiving support from Marine Le Pen’s former campaign director, Florian Philippot, and a broader constituency of the far-right fascistic elements.

Tropical Storm Henri brings extensive flooding to the Northeastern US

Philip Guelpa

Tropical Storm Henri made landfall in the state of Rhode Island on Sunday, having recently been downgraded from a minimal hurricane. This is the second tropical storm to hit the Northeast US in less than two months, after Elsa in early July. Heavy rain falling on already saturated ground has resulted in substantial flooding, compounded along the coast by the coincidence of an astronomical high tide.

On making landfall, Henri had sustained winds of approximately 60 miles per hour (97 kilometers per hour), with gusts up to 70 mph (113 kph). Waves of greater than 19 feet (nearly 6 meters) were reported southeast of Block Island, off the eastern end of Long Island.

After landfall, the storm first turned westward, toward New York. Reports indicated that the effects of the storm were being felt from eastern Pennsylvania, through New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Residents in some coastal areas in Connecticut were evacuated, and widespread flooding was reported extending far inland. Local evacuations were also reported in New Jersey, where flooding of up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) was observed.

A U.S. Postal truck has to turn around as Gardner Rd. in Exeter, R.I., is completely blocked by a downed tree and power lines, Monday, Aug. 23, 2021. Strong winds from Tropical Storm Henri downed trees and power lines across the state leaving roads impassable and citizens without power. (AP Photo/Stew Milne)

New York City experienced record rainfall, with an accumulation of nearly two inches in just one hour measured in Central Park and a total of over seven inches by Sunday evening. The National Weather Service reported that the Central Park rainfall was likely the highest one-hour total ever recorded in the park. The heavy rain forced the abrupt termination of an open-air concert in the park, a likely COVID-19 super-spreader event with thousands in attendance. Commuter rail service in the New York metropolitan area was significantly disrupted. The emergency rescue of 86 people, including 16 children, was undertaken after a number of vehicles were submerged by significant flooding in Newark, New Jersey.

Throughout the region, more than 140,000 residential customers were reported to have lost power on Sunday.

As of Monday morning, the forward motion of Henri, now downgraded to a tropical depression with winds of 30 mph (48 kph), had slowed, resulting in additional rainfall to already flooded areas but reducing the wind damage. With a turn to the east, the affected areas spread into Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Despite the efforts of utility crews, an estimated 65,000 customers remained without power, including 42,000 in Rhode Island and 10,000 in Connecticut.

Many lost power due to severed electrical lines cut down by fallen branches and toppled trees, whose roots had been loosened in the saturated ground. By midweek, temperatures throughout the region are predicted to reach into the high 80s or 90s with high humidity, creating a significant health burden for those who lack power to run air conditioners.

Additional rainfall of 1 to 3 inches (2.5 to 7.6 centimeters) is expected before the storm departs, with overall storm totals of up to 12 inches (30.5 cm). More than 33 million people remain under flood watch or warning as of this writing. The storm is expected to progress eastward, crossing Massachusetts, eventually exiting into the Gulf of Maine Tuesday morning.

Federal disasters have been declared by President Joe Biden in much of the affected areas, allowing emergency funds to be allocated for recovery efforts. AccuWeather estimates that the total damage and economic losses from Tropical Storm Henri, so far, at between $6 and $8 billion. As of this writing, no Henri-related deaths have been reported.

Over the past decade, beginning with the back-to-back impacts of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee (2011), followed by Superstorm Sandy (2012) among others, there has been an increase of significant storms hitting the Northeast, a predicted effect of human-induced climate change. These storms are causing severe impacts, not only to heavily populated coastal areas but substantially into the interior, primarily due to heavy rains resulting in major flooding. Irene, for example, was the greatest natural disaster in Vermont since a major flood in 1927.

This trend is expected to worsen in the coming years as the effects of climate change intensify. Rising sea levels will drive coastal flooding ever farther inland, and warming oceans and atmospheric temperatures will tend to increase the moisture-carrying capacity of storms, resulting in greater inland rainfall and more flooding.

A rise in catastrophic flooding is already being seen in many places around the globe. During this year alone, major often deadly storms have impacted Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan and Tennessee in the US, to name but a few. Similar disasters have occurred in other countries, including Germany, Turkey and China, again, to name but a few. These storms are manifestations, along with massive wildfires and droughts in other regions of the planet, of human-induced climate change.

In advance of the storm, various public officials issued the now perfunctory warnings about its potential impacts. Typical was the statement by Andrew Cuomo, soon to be ex-governor of New York:

As always, we will do everything we can to help our local partners with any and all response and recovery operations. This storm is unpredictable and, although it appears to be moving further east, the threats of storm surge, coastal and inland flooding, high winds and power outages remain very real. Now is the time to be smart—pay close attention to weather reports, and, for the safety of yourself, your family, and responders, avoid any unnecessary travel.

Or Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont:

I urge everyone in Connecticut to take this storm seriously. Prepare to shelter in place Sunday and into early Monday morning. Plan for power outages that could last for an extended period. Be prepared for urban and coastal flooding, particularly if you live in a designated flood zone. The state is deploying resources and working with our federal counterparts to react quickly and respond as necessary. We will continue monitoring the storm and provide updates through the coming days.

In addition, Cuomo made the exceedingly insightful observation that “In the Hudson Valley you have hills, you have creeks, the water comes running down those hills and turns a creek into a ravaging river.” In effect, he declared that this is the way things are, get used to it.

Luckily, the impact of Tropical Storm Henri did not turn out as bad as it might have been. Nevertheless, the increasing frequency and severity of such storms is inevitable unless a serious effort is made to address climate change. Otherwise, according to the ruling class, they are simply things the population must endure. In their view, the devastation and death caused by these storms and other effects of climate change must be normalized.

In effect, the ruling class’s criminal response, or lack there of, to climate change mirrors its policy toward the COVID-19 pandemic, that we must “learn to live with it,” with all the disastrous consequences this holds. The necessary measures to truly address climate change are simply beyond the capacity of the capitalist system to undertake. For the working class, on the other hand, this is increasingly a life-and-death issue.