The Great British Post Office Scandal

Kenneth Surin

Photograph Source: Adam Bruderer – CC BY 2.0

The still-continuing British Post Office scandal involved the wrongful prosecution of 732 sub-postmasters (SPMs) for theft, false accounting and/or fraud.

The scandal is the most extensive miscarriage of justice in British legal history.

The criminal prosecutions, civil actions and extortions, resulted in criminal convictions, jail sentences, false confessions, defamation, severe loss of income, indebtedness and insolvency, marriage break-up, and suicide. Several died before they could be cleared in subsequent legal proceedings.

The source of the scandal was the 1999 introduction of a new Post Office computer accounting system, installed by the multinational software giant Fujitsu at a cost of £1bn/$1.34bn, which erroneously detected the existence of financial inconsistencies at numerous post office branches. It should be pointed out that the British Post Office also functions as a bank.

As a result of calculations delivered by the flawed system, prosecutions were initiated and SPMs were sent to jail. Ten years later, a group of SPMs and ex-SPMs created the group Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance (JFSA) and began receiving public support and press interest.

The Post Office took fright, and decided to invite the accountancy firm Second Sight to investigate the discrepancies behind the problem. Second Sight provided a preliminary report to the Post Office, which accepted that the computerized accounting system should be examined.

When the inspection concluded, the Post Office said the issues with the system had been fixed and that it was now properly operational.

The Post Office set up a grievance review structure and a mediation scheme for SPMs who claimed to have covered the alleged losses generated by the system out of their own pockets.

However the scheme was closed to new applicants in less than a year after 150 SPMs registered their claims. The JFSA accused the Post Office of not giving SPMs sufficient time to file their claims with the scheme.

Second Sight’s completed report, submitted in 2014, said the Horizon Computer System installed by Fujitsu was simply unable to function adequately, and irremediably so. The Post Office replied that “there is absolutely no evidence of any systemic issues with the computer system”.

In 2015 the Post Office ended the Initial Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme, and published its own report absolving it of any misconduct.

Some convicted SPMs decided to sue the Post Office. As a result 555 convictions were overturned, since they were said to have been obtained by illegal means.

The judge in this case also approved a £57.8m settlement between the Post Office and the claimants. He also said he would refer the case to the Director of Public Prosecutions because of the evidence given by employees of Fujitsu in previous court cases.

He said: “Based on the knowledge that I have gained, I have very grave concerns regarding veracity of evidence given by Fujitsu employees to other courts in previous proceedings about the known existence of bugs, errors and defects in the Horizon system”.

These perjury charges against the Fujitsu employees are still being investigated.

By this year, 736 prosecutions had been acknowledged, 72 convictions had been overturned, and it was anticipated that more would be reversed. The number of those affected by other types of abuse by the Post Office, offences that merit restitution, breach of contract, intimidation etc., has not been charted or published.

Alarmed at these growing legal outcomes, the Post Office set up a new shortfall scheme that attracted more than 2,400 claims. The scheme excluded the 555 SPMs who had successfully sued the Post Office.

Up to last month there has been no commitment to recompense those SPMs and the 555 SPMs are still excluded.

On 13 February 2022, in a report prior to the start of the hearings chaired by the retired judge mentioned below, the BBC quoted a jailed and subsequently cleared SPM: “I want someone else to be charged and jailed like I was”. Several other wrongly-prosecuted SPMs echoed his words.

The British Government is the Post Office’s sole shareholder. To no one’s surprise the government refused at first to pay any compensation— it and the Post Office insisted the money awarded after the SPMs sued the Post Office represented a complete and final settlement.

Appeals were made in parliament last year, leading to a government capitulation. Victims of the scandal would be compensated by the government itself, since the Post Office itself could not shoulder the financial burden resulting from the numerous compensatory awards.

The government, by now on the back foot, set-up an independent inquiry 2 years ago, led by a retired judge. Britain has a long history of such inquiries led by retired judges, and these quintessential establishment figures do the expected job by delivering the expected whitewash.

There were 2 initial hearings before the judge’s inquiry was upgraded to a public inquiry in June last year.

In November 2021 it held a preliminary “List of Issues Hearing”^, and, in February this year began holding “Human Impact Hearings”, investigating whether the Post Office and Fujitsu were aware of defects in the IT system, which ensued in criminal convictions and civil proceedings against SPMs that were quashed afterwards.

The public inquiry is expected to last most of this year.

The Russian Orthodox Church And The World Crisis

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Putin

Extreme religious or anti-religious engagement of the ruling political forces in modern times would have serious negative consequences for the society as whole and the state apparatus. The Russian experience shows this very clearly. The communist phase of Russia was completely anti-religion. Now Putin’s Russia is deeply associated with the Orthodox Church that suffered a lot during the communist regime.

Vladimir Putin’s relationship to the Russian Orthodox church and the present global crisis bear testimony to this. From the early 20th century onwards the Russian society and state have gone through very extreme positions on the question of religion.

After the Bolshevik revolution in Russia the anti-religion campaign was so rigorous that church symbols and church buildings were pulled down. The communists thought that all people must practice atheism, though at the ground level the people were still religious. Now Putin pushed the people to believe and practice religion as a matter of state policy. The Russian Orthodox Christian church, headed by a classical kind of patriarch, which is different from Roman Catholicism, is not only fully supporting the authoritarian regime of Putin but fully supporting and mobilizing forces to fight the Ukraine war. Putin has become a regular visitor to the church, and has become a part of orthodox activities. He has been financing construction of new churches and organizing orthodox congregations.

The Church’s interpretation of Russian history and nationhood is exactly on the lines any other theocratic religion would interpret. When religion becomes the key source of defining a nation, fundamentalism creeps into every aspect of the society and the state. The Russian orthodox patriarchs believe that Ukraine is part of Russia, because the Orthodox church was first born in the present Ukraine region in the 10th century. St Andrews was said to have established the first church at Kievan Rus around, perhaps, the present capital of Ukraine. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus were said to be the Orthodox Akhand Russia. This is like what many RSS leaders earlier were talking about Akhanda Bharat that consisted of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Putin bought this theory from the Orthodox patriarchs who seem to think that the peaceful disintegration of the Soviet Union should not be accepted and at least these classical Orthodox church centred Russia should be re-united whatever could be the cost. Though there are dissenters within the orthodox church, who oppose the war but most orthodox church leaders are with Putin. The whole world is talking about Putin but the problem is not just one Putin. The religious nationhood of whole orthodox patriarchs is the problem.

Once he used the starving Orthodox Church for his consolidation, he could easily undercut the democratic process and he slowly emerged as a new model dictator. The Russian election system is not at all democratic. It is totally stage managed.

There are some fundamental issues on which the Orthodox Russian Church differs with the Roman Catholic Church and much more with the Protestant Church of the West. After Putin became the unchallengeable leader of Russia on some of those issues, with the support of the Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholics within Russia were persecuted and attacked. Since the Roman Church is taking a liberal view of abortions and homosexual marriages, liberal dress codes and so on the Orthodox Church thinks that these are all spiritual immoralities that crept into Church in the post-modern phase of the Western world. All such things should be opposed.

The Orthodox Russians see the Western liberals as the enemies. Though one cannot say that Russians as people are opposed to democracy. The very idea of proletariat dictatorship during communist phase has a negative impact on their psyche. Their experience during the communist regime, particularly the religious orthodox people feel more assured in an orthodox dictatorial political regime. Though Russia cannot be called a theocratic state yet, Putin kind of ambitious rulers easily can turn such a convenient orthodox environment into a theocratic dictatorship. If he wins the Ukraine war the chances of Russia becoming a more dangerous theocratic regime with so much nuclear power at its command poses a major threat to the world’s democratic order.

The Orthodox Church is not only opposed to communism and socialism in any form but they also oppose liberal democracy which would bring in anti-Orthodox values into Russian society. Such religious nationalist schools think that conservative authoritarianism of the Putin type is very useful. They see the Ukrainian democracy in the neighborhood is going to have a corrupting impact on their conservative, nominal election based dictatorship. It is this politico-spiritual social base that made Putin what he is now.

The problem is not just Putin but it is the Orthodox Christian nationalism that is posing a threat to the Western liberal democracy and globalized capitalism. Russians also do not want a China type of market communism. Since the communist regimes crush the spiritual autonomy of people and the state must direct every aspect of life the Russian conservatives want authoritarianism which combines the state and religion into one whole. This post socialist Russian hunger for a religious state where there should not be any space for separation of the state and religion is fully backing Putin.

Most Muslim nations also operate in this kind of spiritual authoritarian states. They do not want to engage with secularism discourse at all. The Afghan Talibanism is only an extreme form of it.

Religion and state mixed authoritarianism look for wars with neighbours who want to practice different socio- political systems. The Russian-Ukrainian war is similar one. Once religious fundamentalism controls the ruling oligarchs’ mind the destruction of war does not appear to be a problem.

Once the socialist systems collapsed, the world has come to pre-socialist conflict stage again. In Russia spiritual nationalism, not democratic welfare nationalism, decides the nations’ actions. Though Russia is being described as a Rogue State by the West it does not seem to bother about that label. The mass psych could be more easily maneuvered with religious fundamentalism. Russia seems to show that direction within the Christian world. Since Ukraine is also a nation of similar Orthodox Christianity which accepted the democratic model with a weak separation of the state and church, we will have to wait and see what happens in this war.

The world is now encountering many forms of spiritual fundamentalisms like Afghan Talibanism, Russian Orthodoxism. In India though Hindutva forces repeatedly say we believe in democracy and as of now operating within the framework of the Indian constitution, we are not sure which direction religious fundamentalism drives those forces. If religion is thoroughly mixed with the state operation and once a ruler is convinced that he should become life time ruler and the religious forces militantly control the civil society and the election system could be manipulated or abandoned any system is likely to get into dictatorship. Every nation now needs to be cautious about deeply mixing religion with the state.

If Russia wins and dismantles the Ukrainian democracy the Christian world will enter into a new phase in their experimentation of nationalism, democracy and secularism.

The Imperialist Roots of Putin’s Policy

Lawrence S. Wittner

kremlin

A key factor that explains Vladimir Putin’s military invasion of Ukraine is traditional Russian imperialism.

Throughout the world’s long and bloody history, other powerful territories (and, later, nations) expanded their lands through imperial conquest, including Rome, China, Spain, France, Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States.

Russia was no exception.  Beginning with the small principality of Moscow in 1300, Russia employed its military might to crush neighboring peoples and gobble up territory across the vast Eurasian continent.  Under the czars, it became known as the “prison of nations.”  By the early twentieth century, Imperial Russia was the largest country in the world―and, also, one of the most brutal and reactionary.

When the Bolshevik Revolution occurred, part of its impetus was a revolt against the imperialist role of Russia and other great powers of the era.  Vladimir Lenin denounced imperialism, loosened the Russian grip on some subject countries, and promised that, within the Soviet Union, the new Soviet republics would have self-determination.

Unfortunately, with the rise of Joseph Stalin, that anti-imperialist impulse was abandoned.  When it came to the Ukrainian People’s Republic, which had not fulfilled the grain production quota set by the Kremlin, Stalin, in 1932-33, shipped off 50,000 Ukrainian farm families to Siberia and ordered the seizure of Ukraine’s grain crop.  Massive starvation followed in Ukraine, causing an estimated 4 million deaths.  Not surprisingly, this treatment did not endear Ukrainians to the Soviet regime.

Although most Russians―and most Communists―were horrified by the rise of Nazi Germany during the 1930s, Stalin signed a pact with Hitler (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) in August 1939.  Its secret provisions turned over the independent nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, as well as the eastern half of Poland, to the USSR, which soon occupied them.  It also provided a green light for the Soviet invasion of Finland (which led to Soviet seizure of a portion of that country) and Soviet seizure of a portion of Rumania.  As the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact also provided Soviet endorsement of Nazi Germany’s imperialist ambitions, Hitler promptly launched World War II.

In June 1941, however, things shifted dramatically, for Hitler, overly ambitious, began a full-scale military invasion of the Soviet Union, thereby double-crossing his ally.  In the ensuing bloody conflict, the Russians fought fiercely against Germany for their very survival.  They were aided by Britain and the United States, both of which also took on the powerful Japanese armed forces in the Pacific.

After World War II, although Ribbentrop was tried at Nuremberg and executed, Molotov and Stalin were not, for, of course, they were on the winning side of the war.  As part of the spoils of victory, the Soviet Union incorporated Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and eastern Poland into its territory.

This proved only the beginning of a new round of Russian imperialism.  In the aftermath of the war, the Soviet Union took control of most nations in Eastern Europe and retained them as vassals and unwilling partners in the Warsaw Pact.  They included Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Bulgaria, and East Germany.  The Soviet Union retained its grip on them through Communist Party dictatorships that it imposed, occupations by Soviet troops, and military assaults, most notably bloody invasions of Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968), where Communist regimes proved too independent for the tastes of the Kremlin.  In Hungary, Soviet military repression produced 20,000 Hungarian casualties (including 2,500 deaths) and 200,000 refugees.

When the reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev finally stopped enforcing Soviet imperial rule in Eastern Europe, revolutions in these countries swept aside the tired pro-Soviet dictatorships and reasserted their national sovereignty.  Not surprisingly, many of these newly-independent countries then began to apply to join NATO―not because they were forced to do so, but because they feared a reassertion of Russian domination.

Events in Ukraine illustrate this desire for freedom from Russian control.  Gorbachev allowed a referendum on Ukrainian independence to take place in 1991.  In a turnout by 84 percent of registered voters, some 90 percent of them voted for independence from Russia.  As part of its independence arrangement, Ukraine―which had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world―handed over all its nuclear weapons to the Russian government.  In turn, as part of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, Russia formally pledged to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty.

But the Russian government began to backtrack on its agreement with Ukraine.  It was happy with the rule of Viktor Yanukovych, a pliable pro-Russian politician.  But when the political tide turned against him and he was ousted from office because he blocked Ukraine’s membership in the European Union, Russian leaders were incensed.  Ukraine was turning toward the West, and this, they believed, could not be tolerated.  In a clear violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, the Russian government deployed its military power to seize Crimea and take control of Russian-language separatist regions in eastern Ukraine.

Of course, the Russian government sought to justify its actions with flimsy claims, then and subsequently.  It said that there was no military intervention by Russia.  But clearly there was.  It said that there were fascists in Ukraine.  True enough; but there were also plenty of fascists in Russia and in many other lands.  Ukraine’s government, it said, was under the control of an unrepresentative Nazi cabal.  But Zelensky was elected with 73 percent of the vote, remains wildly popular, and is certainly no right-winger or authoritarian.  Can we say the same about Vladimir Putin?

When one looks at what Putin has declared in his recent pronouncements, his dominant motive is clear enough.  Denying that Ukraine has any right to statehood independent of Russia and glorifying the expansionism of his country’s Czarist and Stalinist past, he is caught up in a reactionary nostalgia for empire.  Or, to put it simply, he longs to Make Russia Great Again.

To safeguard the interests of smaller nations, as well as international peace, Putin―like other arrogant rulers of powerful countries―should be encouraged to discard outdated imperial fantasies and accept the necessity of a world governed by international law.

Brazil’s “herd immunity” policy: poverty and mass death for workers, bonanza for super-rich

Guilherme Ferreira

Food distribution to homeless population in Curitiba, in southern state of Paraná. (Credit: Valmir Fernandes - Coletivo Marmitas da Terra)

Almost two years after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, its social, economic and health effects on the working class and poor are increasingly laid bare by the country’s social and economic statistics. Numerous studies and reports published in recent months have revealed a disproportionate effect of the greatest health crisis in a century on the working population, which has experienced higher mortality, impoverishment and starvation, even as the number of billionaires in Brazil has increased.

Brazil has suffered the second highest death toll from the pandemic, with 652,000 deaths, and the third largest number of cases, over 29 million. There is a consensus among medical experts that both counts are underestimates, and there is no accounting of the millions who have “survived” only to suffer from crippling sequelae.

Such a situation is the direct product of a deliberate policy of Brazil’s ruling elite to keep workplaces and schools open amid the raging pandemic, not only to avoid damaging corporate profits, but also to increase them. While the herd immunity policy has found in Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro its most open representative, it has been embraced by all ruling parties, including the alleged opposition represented by the Workers Party (PT), which has joined in abandoning the most basic mitigation measures to declare the pandemic over.

Last Friday, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) released the latest economic data for last year. Despite Brazil’s GDP growing by 4.6 percent in 2021, after a 3.9 percent drop the previous year, the real average income of Brazilian workers decreased by 7 percent compared to 2020, going from 550 to 511 dollars. This is the lowest level since 2012.

However, the income reduction was not the same for the entire Brazilian population. A September 2021 study by the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), “Inequality and Labor Impacts in the Pandemic,” showed that for the poorest 50 percent, the reduction was 21.5 percent compared to 2019, more than double the average reduction for the entire population of 9.4 percent.

Comparative data on the income of the poorest and richest Brazilians released last December by the World Inequality Lab painted an even more disturbing picture. It found that the poorest 50 percent in Brazil received only 10 percent of the national income and owned only 0.4 percent of the country’s wealth in 2021. The richest 10 percent, on the other hand, earned 59 percent of the national income, almost 30 times more than the poorest 10 percent.

According to the FGV study, more than half of the decrease in the income of the poorest was due to the rise in unemployment. The year 2021 ended with an average unemployment rate of 13.2 percent, or 12 million Brazilians. The ruling elites celebrated this statistic as a decrease from the nearly 15 percent unemployment rate at the height of the health crisis, ignoring that such a “recovery” came at the expense of the numbers of those formally employed and of the wages for those hired. In any case, it was the second highest level of unemployment recorded since 2012, and the highest among the G20 countries.

Brazilian inflation is also the third highest in that group, trailing only Turkey and Argentina. The 10.06 percent inflation in 2021, the highest since 2015, was driven by a huge increase in fuel prices, with gasoline having increased 47.5 percent last year. The price of electricity has risen by 21 percent, cooking gas by 37 percent and food and beverages by 7.9 percent. These price increases directly impacted household consumption and, along with unemployment, brought the level of consumption of Brazilian families back to the level of 2018.

This miserable combination of unemployment and inflation has accelerated the rise of poverty and hunger, which had been on the rise in Brazil since 2015, when the country’s economic crisis worsened. In 2019, 11 percent of the Brazilian population, or 23 million people, were living below the poverty line. Now, amid celebrations of the economic “recovery,” poverty rates are still the highest in nine years, according to the latest data, from July 2021. According to the same survey, 27.7 million people, or 13 percent of Brazilians, were poor.

It is noteworthy that the paltry “emergency relief” paid by the government during 2020, worth only 60 percent of a minimum wage, had briefly reduced the poverty rate to 4.3 percent. Its termination made poverty explode to 16 percent of the population, or 34 million people. In withdrawing the “emergency relief,” the ruling class was able to blackmail workers into returning to work at lower pay and completely exposed to a further catastrophic COVID-19 surge in the second quarter of 2021.

In the first year of the pandemic, in 2020, a study by the Free University of Berlin in partnership with the Federal University of Minas Gerais showed that 59.3 percent of the Brazilian population, or 125.6 million people, suffered from food insecurity, the highest proportion since 2004. It also showed that 63 percent of the Brazilian population changed their food habits due to impoverishment.

This desperate scenario for the Brazilian working class and poor contrasts with the situation of the super-rich. Listing 40 new Brazilian billionaires last year, Forbes cynically wrote that the year 2021 was “as challenging as the first for the ... business environment,” adding, “Financial incentives [i.e., multi-trillion-dollar bailouts] around the world to address the crisis have heated up the capital markets,” which “directly favored the growth of the club of the super-rich.”

At the beginning of the pandemic, the Central Bank of Brazil, following the speculative frenzy in the US and internationally, poured $240 billion into the financial markets, almost 17 percent of the Brazilian GDP. This represents four times more than what was offered to the 67 million Brazilians, 31 percent of the population, who received “emergency relief” from the federal government.

According to Oxfam’s report “Inequality Kills,” published in January of this year, this led to Brazilian billionaires increasing their wealth by 30 percent during the pandemic, while 90 percent of the population became poorer. The World Inequality Lab study also showed that the richest 1 percent in Brazil owned almost half (48.9 percent) of the national wealth in 2021, an increase of 0.5 percentage points since 2019. Indeed, the Gini index during the pandemic has skyrocketed. It rose from 0.6276 in 2019 to 0.6669 in the first half of 2020, falling to 0.6400 by the middle of 2021 amid the so-called “recovery.” Brazil is the sixth most unequal country in the world.

Not only did the pandemic increase social inequality, but the effects of social inequality have also had a direct impact on the pandemic in Brazil, the country with the second highest number of deaths in the world. Numerous studies have shown the association between poverty and COVID-19 mortality, which at the beginning of the pandemic was twice as high among the Brazilian poor as the national average. In São Paulo, the largest city in Latin America alongside Mexico city, and Brazil’s financial center, a recent study showed that ICU lethality in public hospitals was three times higher than in “high cost” hospitals, which are attended by the super-rich and the Brazilian ruling elite.

This unequal death toll is bound up with the efforts of the Brazilian ruling elite to keep as many workplaces open as possible to ensure its profits. The study “The timeline of the federal strategy of spreading COVID-19” was delivered to the Brazilian Senate Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the COVID-19 pandemic last year.

After investigating the federal government’s response to the pandemic—including more than 3,500 federal government regulations up to April 30, 2021—the study found a “commitment and efficiency in favor of the wide dissemination of the virus in the national territory, avowedly with the aim of resuming economic activity as soon as possible.” It concluded that this policy, “according to the Federal Budget Court, configures the ‘political option of the Government Center to prioritize economic protection’”—by which the court actually refers to corporate profits, and not workers’ living standards.

Among the regulations to “prioritize economic protection” were those that “expanded the list of activities considered essential during a pandemic,” such as construction and several industrial and service sectors. These same economic activities were the ones that boosted Brazil’s GDP growth in 2021, driven by low wages and informal jobs.

The study concluded that the federal government advocated the “thesis of herd immunity by contagion as a form of response to COVID-19, disseminating the belief that ‘natural immunity’ arising from virus infection would protect individuals and lead to pandemic control. ... one cannot be too familiar with the views of William Haseltine, President of ACCESS Health International, for whom ‘herd immunity is another name for mass murder. This is exactly what it is all about.’”

US undersecretary of state acknowledges there are biological warfare labs in Ukraine

Kevin Reed

State Department Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria J. Nuland speaks during a briefing at the State Department in Washington, Jan. 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool)

On Tuesday, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland stated before a Senate hearing that “biological research facilities” have been operating in Ukraine, in response to a question from Senator Marco Rubio (Republican of Florida) about the presence of chemical or biological weapons in the country.

While she said nothing about US involvement in the labs, Nuland rapidly shifted her testimony during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to efforts by the State Department to “prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces.” She went on, in a carefully orchestrated exchange with Rubio, to say that if there were a biological or chemical weapons attack inside Ukraine, it would “no doubt” be carried out by Russia.

The following is the transcript of the exchange between Rubio and Nuland:

Sen. Marco Rubio: Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?

Victoria Nuland: Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we’re now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how we can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.

Sen. Marco Rubio: I’m sure you’re aware that the Russian propaganda groups are already putting out there all kinds of information about how they have uncovered a plot by the Ukrainians to unleash biological weapons in the country, and with NATO’s coordination.

If there is a biological or chemical weapon incident or attack inside Ukraine, is there any doubt in your mind that 100% it would be the Russians behind it?

Victoria Nuland: There is no doubt in my mind, senator. And in fact, it is a classic Russian technique to blame the other guy for what they are planning to do themselves.

The extraordinary admission by Nuland about Ukrainian bioweapons labs confirms reports from Moscow that a military biological program was being operated inside the country by the US. The State Department admission also proves that statements by the Pentagon calling the Russian reports “absurd,” and from the office of Ukrainian President Zelensky denying that such programs existed, were entirely false.

A report by Reuters on Wednesday morning said, “Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said evidence of the alleged programme had been uncovered by Russia during what it calls its military operation in Ukraine, which its forces invaded on Feb. 24.”

Reuters reported that Zakharova also said that Russia had “documents showing that the Ukrainian health ministry had ordered the destruction of samples of plague, cholera, anthrax and other pathogens after Feb. 24.” Zakharova said, “We can already conclude that in Ukrainian biological laboratories in direct proximity to the territory of our country, development of components of biological weapons was being carried out.”

Responding to the exposures, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday demanded that the US “give a full account” of biological weapons research that the Russians say was being carried out in Ukraine with US funding.

Spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Zhao Lijian, said, “In particular, the US, as the party that knows these laboratories the best, should publish relevant specific details as soon as possible, including the types of pathogens stored and the research conducted,” in order to ensure the “health and safety of people in Ukraine, the surrounding areas and even around the world.”

Details about the biological weapons facilities in Ukraine were reported by the Russian Defense Ministry on March 6 when Major General Igor Konashenkov alleged that pathogens for deadly diseases for biological warfare were being created in Ukrainian labs that were funded by the Pentagon.

Konashenkov told the Russian news agency TASS, “Obviously, with the start of a special military operation, the Pentagon had serious concerns about disclosing the conduct of secret biological experiments on the territory of Ukraine.”

A damage-control Twitter thread posted by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki late Wednesday afternoon did not reference Nuland’s congressional testimony but called the Russian and Chinese reports “preposterous” and a “disinformation operation.” Psaki went on to state that the US “is in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention and does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere.”

The White House press secretary then accused Russia of a “long and well-documented record of using chemical weapons, including in attempted assassinations and poisoning of Putin’s political enemies like Alexey Navalny.” She also wrote that Russia “continues to support the Assad regime in Syria, which has repeatedly used chemical weapons.”

However, the alleged poisoning of Navalny —the leader of the imperialist-backed anti-Putin opposition in Russia—with Novichok in December 2020 was never proven and quickly turned out to be part of an international propaganda campaign aimed at stoking US war preparations against Russia in advance of the inauguration of Biden as president. Meanwhile, documents published by WikiLeaks have exposed the accusations of a Syrian chemical weapons attack in Duoma in 2018 as an elaborate scheme to justify an assault by the US, Britain and France against the government in Damascus.

Psaki finished her tweet by saying Russia has a “track record of accusing the West of the very violations that Russia itself is perpetrating,” a claim that is thoroughly exposed as false by the Nuland testimony on Tuesday.

Nuland’s devastating revelation, which exposes before the entire world the preparations of US imperialism for war in Ukraine long before Russia invaded the country, has caught the corporate media by surprise. Apparently waiting for their line from the White House, no major American news outlet has reported it yet. Meanwhile, news reports are continuing to call the now verified Russian allegations of biological weapons labs in Ukraine “a false narrative” and “debunked conspiracy theory.”

A Newsweek report published at noon on Wednesday says, for example, “In fact, the U.S. Defense Department has never had a biological laboratory in Ukraine.” Newsweek also reported that the partnership between the Pentagon and Ukraine Ministry of Health “is part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which began in 1991 with the aim of reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction following the fall of the Soviet Union.”

The exposure of Pentagon-backed biological weapons development in Ukraine is a warning to the international working class as to what US imperialism is preparing militarily against Russia. Given its decades-long wars of aggression, which have resulted in the deaths of millions in the Middle East and North Africa, there can be no illusions as to the degree of lying, provocation and military violence that the US is prepared to carry out in pursuit of its geostrategic aims.

UK imaging study finds that even in mild COVID cases there is brain atrophy and cognitive decline

Benjamin Mateus

“There is a greater cognitive decline … a decline in mental ability, in being able to perform complex tasks.” Professor Gwenaëlle Douaud, lead author of the UK Biobank study reviewing the impact of COVID on the brain.

Every day new evidence emerges from studies conducted across the globe highlighting the serious dangers posed by infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. The recent publication in the journal Nature by the UK Biobank on the impact of COVID and loss of the brain’s grey matter is quite alarming.

Led by scientists from the University of Oxford, the UK Biobank study is a 30-year-long project launched in 2006 intending to follow 500,000 volunteers ages 40 to 69 to investigate the impact genetics and environment may have on disease development. The imaging arm of the large trial was opened in 2015 aimed at supplementing the overall findings with high-quality scans of the brain and other organs to gain better insight into disease processes and the impact of treatments.

With the plan of scanning 100,000 images, the study had already conducted more than 40,000 brain scans when the pandemic hit. As more and more reports of severely ill patients suffering from neurological consequences of their infections surfaced, the researchers turned their attention to studying the impact COVID had on the brains of the infected.

Their initial findings were released in preprint form in June 2021, and “revealed a significant, deleterious impact of COVID-19 on the olfactory cortex [the region of the brain responsible for smell perception] and gustatory cortex [taste and flavor], with a more pronounced reduction in grey matter thickness and volume in the left para-hippocampal gyrus, the left superior insula and the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex in COVID patients.” In the current study, the authors attempted to discern if even milder cases of COVID led to brain pathology after the acute phase of the infection had subsided.

Dr. Gwenaëlle Douaud, lead author of the UK Biobank study and professor in the department of clinical neurosciences at the University of Oxford, said, “What is really different in this study is that we had mild participants who were not hospitalized, so they were well enough to stay at home, and some were asymptomatic.” Additionally, a control group was used for comparison who also had two brain scans conducted and were confirmed never to have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Figure 1 Areas of the brain impacted by COVID infection. See linked study for details of the figures and graphs. Source UK Biobank study.

Participants who had been diagnosed with a COVID infection were scanned, on average, four to five months after their infection. The results of the second brain scan were contrasted with their previous scans obtained before their COVID infection (in most instances, completed before the pandemic) offering a direct comparison. The authors wrote, “The availability of pre-infection imaging data reduces the likelihood of pre-existing risk factors being misinterpreted as disease effects.”

This facet of the study is highly critical in confirming their findings, as the infected participant’s previous scan becomes a baseline comparison. Control participants without previous infection assist in eliminating bias from changes that occur during aging.

The study measured hundreds of distinct brain imaging-derived phenotypes (IDP) where each IDP reflected one specific aspect of the brain’s structure or function. Comparing a participant’s brain scan at two different time points, they were able to identify effects associated with tissue damage and atrophy [shrinkage] caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection. Douaud added, “We are not seeing the kind of gross pathology that you would see in all of these other brain imaging studies that have focused on hospitalized patients. We are looking at much more subtle kind of differences here.”

In all, there were 785 UK Biobank participants between the ages of 51 to 81. There were 401 cases who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection between their brain scans and 384 controls that were “matched for age, sex, ethnicity, comorbidities, economic status, and time elapsed between the two scans.”

The scientists remarked on three primary findings from their analysis:

1) There was greater reduction in grey matter thickness and tissue-contrast in the orbitofrontal cortex and para-hippocampal gyrus, areas of the brain involved with decision making and memory encoding and retrieval.

2) Greater changes in markers of tissue damage in regions functionally connected to the primary olfactory cortex responsible for the sense of smell.

3) Greater reduction in global brain size equivalent to a decade’s worth of aging.

They wrote: “… we identified significant effects associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection primarily relating to greater atrophy [shrinkage] and increased tissue damage in cortical areas directly connected to primary olfactory cortex, as well as changes in global measures of brain and cerebrospinal fluid volume.” Additionally, corroborating these visual changes, infected participants also demonstrated a larger “cognitive decline” between the two scans, shown in cognitive testing administered during the trial.

When they compared hospitalized patients to non-hospitalized cases (mild cases), though less pronounced, similar patterns in the loss of grey matter was seen. The affected regions included areas that control cognitive processes in decision-making and “attention” allocation that include ethics and morality, impulse control, and emotions. It is no wonder that some people suffering from Long COVID have complained of brain fog and feeling of a loss of identity.

Figure 2 Trail Making Test Part A and Part B.

Attempting to place their findings into context, the authors first note that the “strongest” structural changes observed between those infected and control groups corresponded to a loss of around two percent of mean baseline IDP value.

They wrote, “This additional loss in the infected participants of 0.7 percent on average across the olfactory-related brain regions—and specifically ranging from 1.3 to 1.8 percent for the FreeSurfer volume of the para-hippocampal/perirhinal and entorinal cortex [these regions are involved in the formation and processing of memories]—can be helpfully compared with for instance, the longitudinal loss per year of around 0.2 percent (middle-age) and 0.3 percent (older age) of hippocampal volume [regions related to memory] in community-dwelling individuals.”

The implications of these findings will require longer follow-up times but infection with SARS-CoV-2, as some are hypothesizing, may predispose some to the development of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Though no memory impairment was established among those with mild disease, when they were administered the Trail Making Test (parts A and B), they took a significantly longer time to complete the tasks compared to non-infected controls. The test is a commonly used neuropsychological test of visual attention and task switching, as well as executive function, that is sensitive to detecting cognitive impairments associated with dementia.

Participants previously infected with COVID had a “significantly greater time” completing part B of the test, also known as the alphanumeric trail B, which is associated with “longitudinal changes in the cognitive part of the cerebellum.” As the authors note, this part of the brain is associated with cognitive impairments in patients with stroke. These participants and, in general, those infected with COVID will need to be followed closely for years to see if these findings correlate with the development of memory problems or dementia.

One concerning finding was that the differences between the infected and uninfected grew with age. Though the performances were similar between the two groups for those in their 50s and 60s, the performance gap widened considerably for the eldest. Douaud admitted, “I don’t know if that’s because younger people recover faster or they were not as affected to start with, [it] could be either or it could be both.” It should be added, it is unknown when the damage incurred is of sufficient magnitude that it surfaces as a clinical finding. Younger people may manifest more cognitive flexibility, but whether they will suffer the consequences of this harm sooner in their future lives remains an important question.

Serious as these findings are and the insight they offer into the complex processes of cognition, one fundamental question must be asked: “Was it necessary for the population to have undergone this social trauma caused by policies that have allowed the virus to spread throughout communities unimpeded?”

Clearly, the results of the study should evoke a deep sense of unease, if not horror, at what is happening to the billions of people on the planet who have become infected. The findings are more than just the exposure of the devastating impact COVID has on the human body, but irrefutable proof of the dangerous policies being imposed by the ruling elites forcing the population to “live with the virus.” If the precautionary principles of medicine hold no sway, the results are chilling, and they reinforce the demand a radical shift in policy to eliminate COVID once and for all.

China offers to mediate talks between Russia and Ukraine

Peter Symonds

On the sidelines of China’s annual National People’s Congress, Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a lengthy press conference on Monday urging a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine while reaffirming the “iron clad” friendship between China and Russia. His comments come amid mounting pressure from the US and its allies demanding that Beijing condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Wang suggested that China could mediate peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, saying: “China is prepared to continue playing a constructive role to facilitate dialogue for peace and work alongside the international community when needed to carry out necessary mediation.”

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi speaks during a remote video press conference held on the sidelines of the annual meeting of China's National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing, Monday, March 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil)

The foreign minister also outlined a six-point plan to address the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine as fighting continues and intensifies. No doubt reacting to the deluge of Western media propaganda seizing on the plight of Ukrainian civilians, he said that the provision of aid should “abide by the principles of neutrality and impartiality, and avoid politicising humanitarian issues.” He called for the United Nations to be in charge of coordinating relief efforts.

Wang said the Red Cross Society of China would provide Ukraine “with a tranche of emergency humanitarian supplies as soon as possible.” The Chinese foreign ministry announced on Wednesday that China would supply a batch of nearly $800,000 worth of aid, including food and daily necessities. The first shipments had already been sent.

Ahead of an EU–China summit in April, Wang also made a thinly veiled appeal for European powers to distance themselves from Washington and to strengthen ties with Beijing that “are not directed at, dependent on, or subject to third parties.” He declared that there were “some forces” that did not want stable China–EU relations, “so they fabricate the ‘China threat,’ hype up competition with China, advocate ‘systemic rivalry’ and even provoke sanctions and confrontation.”

China is engaged in a precarious balancing act in the Ukraine crisis. It has refused to line up with the US–NATO war drive by condemning or imposing sanctions on Russia but neither has it fully endorsed Moscow’s actions. Beijing has not supported Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decree last month recognising the independence of two regions in eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists. It fears that Putin’s move sets a dangerous precedent for US intervention to break up China.

At the same time, Beijing has blamed the conflict on the encroachment of the US and NATO into eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics, and their refusal to acknowledge Russian national security concerns or guarantee that Ukraine will not become part of NATO. It has called for the international recognition of the national security concerns of all parties—both Russia and Ukraine.

Wang’s appeal for closer EU ties with China is directed at marshalling support in Europe for negotiations to end the Ukrainian conflict, in opposition to Washington’s determination to escalate the war as a means of weakening and breaking up Russia. While NATO has lined up with the US war drive, there are undoubtedly fears in European capitals, as well as the broader population, about the dangers of a far wider war enveloping Europe.

In an interview on Saturday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said China had to be the one to mediate, but acknowledged that the EU had yet to ask Beijing to do so. “There is no alternative… it must be China, I am sure of that,” he said.

On Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping held a virtual meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in which he declared he was “pained to see the flames of war reignited in Europe” and called for “maximum restraint” in the Ukraine crisis.

While a statement released after the meeting declared that all three leaders supported “negotiations aimed at a diplomatic solution to the conflict,” it announced no concrete proposal for talks or any agreement for a solution. Germany and France have both delivered weapons to Ukraine and supported EU sanctions on Russia. France has also increased the number of its nuclear-armed submarines on active patrol.

President Xi told the National People’s Congress (NPC) on Sunday: “The world has entered a new era of turbulence and change which makes domestic reform and development a challenging task.” Xi is well aware that China is also facing the mounting threat of war as the US seeks to prevent any challenge to its global dominance as well as a worsening economic crisis as the world economy is plunged into turmoil.

In his report Premier Li Keqiang forecast an economic growth rate of just 5.5 percent for China in the coming year—the lowest in decades and well below the government’s benchmark of 8 percent to ensure high employment and prevent social turmoil. Even this figure is optimistic given the uncertainties posed by the conflict in Ukraine.

The US is already ratcheting up pressure on China. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday accused Beijing of hypocrisy, claiming that it was failing to speak up against Russia. “China speaks often about the sanctity of this principle of sovereignty… [Yet] you have one of its permanent members [Russia] violating that very principle.”

The US, of course, has routinely flouted the national sovereignty of countries through coups and invasions. Its unilateral sanctions against Russia in the Ukraine crisis not only ban American corporations from doing business with Russia, but apply to companies around the world including in China.

On Tuesday, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo warned that the US would take “devastating” action against Chinese companies that defied Russian sanctions. In an interview with the New York Times, she declared that the Biden administration could “essentially shut” Chinese enterprises that sold goods to Russia that were subject to US bans, by cutting them off from American equipment and software needed to manufacture their products.

Even more ominously, the US and its allies have been deliberately intensifying tensions with China over Taiwan. In a manner similar to the stream of propaganda accusing Russia of preparing to invade Ukraine, there has been a steady drum beat of warnings and allegations in the Western media that China could invade Taiwan. At the same time, Washington has strengthened its ties with Taipei even while acknowledging the “One China” policy, under which Taiwan is part of China.

In his media conference. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang lashed out at the US for sowing instability in the region by supporting Taiwan. “The real goal of the US Indo-Pacific strategy is to establish an Indo-Pacific NATO,” he said, referring to Washington’s strengthening of military ties with regional allies and strategic partners. “The US is going to great lengths to engage in zero-sum competition with China and keeps provoking China on issues concerning our core interests.”

Wang also drew a distinction between Ukraine and Taiwan. “Some people, while being vocal about the principle of sovereignty on the Ukraine issue, have kept undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity on the Taiwan question,” he said. “This is a blatant double standard.”

The continuing US threats and provocations against China, despite its current focus on Russia, underscore the very real danger that the rapidly escalating conflict in Europe will quickly spill over into Asia and potentially engulf the world in a war between nuclear-armed powers.

Democrats, Republicans, Biden agree on staggering increase in military budget

Patrick Martin

The Biden administration and congressional leaders in both the Democratic and Republican parties reached agreement early Wednesday on the passage of an overall budget bill funding federal spending for the rest of the current fiscal year, which runs until September 30.

The House of Representatives passed the legislation Wednesday night, divided into two sections. The military spending portion, providing a record $782 billion to the build-up of the US military machine, passed by an overwhelming bipartisan vote. The social spending portion, smaller at $730 billion, passed on a near party-line vote, 260-171, supported by all but one Democrat and only 39 Republicans.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., center, Assistant Majority Leader Patty Murray, D-Wash., left, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., right, speaks after the Democratic strategy meeting at the Capitol Hill, Tuesday, March 8, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

The bill is massive, both in terms of the funds allocated, some $1.5 trillion, and in its physical size, more than 2,700 pages. Dozens of extraneous provisions were inserted in the “must-pass” legislation, while other measures were stripped out to appease Senate Republicans, whose support was required to overcome any filibuster.

The record military spending is supplemented by another $14 billion, labeled “aid to Ukraine,” although the bulk of it is spending to support US military operations in Eastern Europe, including the deployment of thousands of additional troops, tanks and warplanes.

The total comes to nearly $800 billion, more than any US administration has ever spent on military operations for a single year. The Biden administration initially requested $715 billion for the Pentagon. Congress raised this figure by $25 billion in the National Defense Authorization Act passed late last year. The appropriations bill adds another $42 billion, plus the Ukraine money.

To this should be added most of the appropriation for the Department of Energy, which manages the production of US nuclear warheads before they are loaded into bombs and missiles, and much of the spending for the Department of Homeland Security, which reached a record $106 billion, an increase of 11 percent, as well as spending on the intelligence agencies.

Total spending by all departments of the federal government for the military-intelligence apparatus certainly exceeds $1 trillion, more than the next eight countries in the world combined. By comparison, the Russian military budget is estimated at $62 billion, about one-sixteenth of the US total.

Other provisions include support for “counterterrorism” efforts in Africa, an additional $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome rocket defense system, and money for the State Department to promote pro-Israeli, anti-Palestinian measures such as the Abraham Accords, reached under the Trump administration, between the arch-reactionary oil sheikdoms and the Zionist state.

In order to obtain Senate Republican support for the “omnibus” bill before the next federal shutdown deadline of Friday midnight, the White House, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to virtually every demand by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee.

McConnell issued a statement declaring, “This agreement provides significantly more money than the Biden Administration requested for defense and significantly less money than the Administration requested for non-defense. At my insistence, it also provides much more money for Ukraine than Democrats had proposed, particularly for authorities and funding to deliver crucial military equipment to Ukraine quickly.”

“The Omnibus rejects liberal policies and effectively addresses Republican priorities,” Shelby gloated. “The House and Senate should act quickly and send it to the President.” Among the Democratic concessions, he cited the dropping of an effort to rescind the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of Medicaid or other federal money to pay for abortions.

Liberal Democrats sought to use the Ukraine crisis as a justification for their support for the record military spending. “I do support military aid to Ukraine,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democrat, New York). “I think that’s the thing. We never support the defense budget.” Oregon Representative Earl Blumenauer said, “It’s situational. And there’s a lot riding on it. We need to support Ukraine.”

The White House also cited the Ukraine aid, as well as a $46 billion increase in domestic social spending, as reasons for supporting the bipartisan deal. But the total spending deviates from Democratic Party claims of “parity” between military and non-military spending, providing $782 billion for the military and $730 billion for all other discretionary spending by the federal government.

Speaking on behalf of the White House, budget director Shalanda Young said in a statement: “The bipartisan funding bill is proof that both parties can come together to deliver for the American people and advance critical national priorities... It will mean historic levels of assistance for the Ukrainian people, a bold new initiative to drive unprecedented progress in curing cancer and other diseases, and more support to keep our communities safe.”

The latter was a reference to additional funding for state and local police agencies, mainly through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Justice Department.

The division of the omnibus spending bill into two parts is for the purposes of political posturing. All the Democrats and a handful of Republicans approved the domestic social spending, while most Republicans and all but seven Democrats approved the military spending. Each measure contains a provision to combine the two into a single bill when it goes to the Senate later in the week.

In a significant exposure of the reactionary maneuvering to obtain passage of the bill, Speaker Pelosi removed a $15.6 billion provision for supplementary COVID-19 spending from the omnibus bill, which delayed the planned vote from the afternoon until late at night. She did so after many “progressive” Democrats objected to the method used to finance the COVID-19 supplement, which was to raid funds already previously appropriated under last year’s American Relief Act but not yet sent to state and local governments for distribution.

In other words, the COVID-19 “spending” was not new money at all, in contrast to the Ukraine military supplement, which is added to the money being allocated to the Pentagon. There was widespread opposition from Democratic representatives spread across some 30 states that would lose money. In a letter to the Democratic caucus, Pelosi admitted that states would lose about 9 percent of the federal funds they were expecting to receive. This admission only generated more opposition, so Pelosi simply pulled the bill from the floor so that it could be hurriedly revised and resubmitted.

The episode demonstrates both the cynical and reactionary character of the congressional Democratic leadership, and the timidity of the “opposition” by progressives, if it even merits the name. All factions of the Democratic Party will be united in passage of the overall legislation, in both the House and Senate, providing the biggest bonanza in history for the US war machine.