Violent attacks on asylum seekers in Dublin, Ireland continue

Steve James

Recent incidents point to the ongoing victimisation of asylum seekers by the Irish authorities and the far right. Saturday afternoon, August 31, a Jordanian asylum seeker was assaulted by a group of stick-wielding thugs at a property in Ormond Quay, Dublin.

The man, who requested anonymity when he spoke to the Irish Times, said he needed 18 stitches to his head and had feared for his life during the attack. Another man was reportedly attacked with a fire extinguisher. Videos available online show a group of thugs who, having forced their way into the building, pushed asylum seekers onto the street and chucked their possessions out of an upstairs window.

The attack took place at a vacant building that had been squatted over the summer by housing activists who then offered shelter to some of the hundreds of homeless asylum seekers sleeping rough in Dublin.

The evening before, thugs mobilised by the landlord had also forced entry. Online coverage shows terrified asylum seekers trapped in the building while goons battered on the doors. The assault on Friday triggered a major police operation with the Garda’s Armed Support Unit and Public Order Unit attending. No one appears to have been charged.

Another asylum seeker, a 41-year-old from Gaza, said there was a racial element to the attack and one of the goons had threatened to kill everyone inside. He said Saturday’s incident, in broad daylight, was particularly shocking since it took place during a pro-Palestine demonstration in the city. Pointing to police collusion in the assault, he said there were “police everywhere”, nevertheless “people without masks, without anything, came and wanted to kill the people [inside the building].”

The Ormond Quay thuggery comes after months of increasing pressure on asylum seekers with the Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil/Green government and the far right working in tandem.

Government victimisation of asylum seekers

As of mid-August, the Garda National Immigration Bureau, on behalf of the Irish coalition government, had issued more deportation orders to asylum seekers in the previous eight months than the total issued over the whole of last year. To date, 1,100 deportation orders have been issued in 2024, compared with 948 over 2023. Enforced deportations have increased by 128 percent, while so-called voluntary returns have also increased by 157 percent.

Besides increasing deportations, the government is intent on making life as difficult as possible for some of the most vulnerable, and visibly exposed, members of society. It has for months been seeking to displace some hundreds of asylum seekers forced to sleep rough on the streets and parks of Dublin into distant and unsuitable areas of land and large buildings that could be “repurposed.”

Coolock protests

A particular focus has been the Coolock area—a large housing estate to the northwest of Dublin where a former Crown Paints factory on the Malahide Road has been designated by the government as suitable to house hundreds of asylum seekers.

Up to 500 Ukrainians under international protection are to be forced to live in what is currently an empty, largely windowless shell. Should it ever open as an asylum camp, it will inevitably place a tremendous additional burden on local social, health and education facilities already stretched by the endless cost-cutting of successive Irish governments.

The Coolock site has been targeted repeatedly for arson attacks and protests. On July 20, for example, a fire broke out in the former factory’s foyer after a protest attended by as many as 500 people. This followed several days of skirmishes orchestrated by far-right and anti-Muslim groups such as “Coolock Says No”. It was also addressed by far-right councillors, including the National Party’s Patrick Quinlan and Glen Moore of the equally right-wing Irish Freedom Party (IFP).

Both parties, formed in the last decade, are virulently anti-migrant, socially conservative, anti-abortion, anti-vaccination outfits while both wave the Irish tricolour. IFP leader Herman Kelly is a former press officer of Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, while the National Party is currently led by former Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association leader James Reynolds. Reynolds replaced Justin Barret, a Holocaust denier and Hitler admirer, after Barrett turned up to an anti-immigration protest wearing a Nazi uniform.

Coolock is an industrial area, with a significant number of factories taking advantage of a large and cheap labour force and easy access to Dublin airport. Wages for a factory worker in the area start at €13-14 an hour. House prices are astronomical. The cheapest three-bedroom house in the area will cost €300,000.

There are pockets of particularly extreme deprivation too. In neighbouring Darndale, some areas record unemployment figures of as high as 30 percent, while 59 percent of children are in single-parent families.

The absence of any perspective from the ruling parties, Sinn Féin or the trade unions to alleviate this social crisis creates an environment in which the fascists can grow.

The same day as one of the Coolock protests, on July 15, 16 asylum seekers forced to live in tents on the banks of the Royal Canal in Phibsborough, Dublin were attacked by masked men. Two days later another group of asylum seekers were attacked on the City Quay by a group of seven or eight brandishing knives. On August 1, another group of 11 men from Palestine and Jordan were forced to move their tents by police from Herbert’s Park in South Dublin. The asylum seekers were told to move, but not where to go. Another group under international protection were reportedly harassed, beaten and “threatened with death” in a shopping centre.

Another “repurposed” area is around the former St Brigid’s nursing home in Crooksling, South Dublin, which is being used by the misnamed Department of Integration to contain as many as 540 people. Asylum seekers, all men, are forced to live in tents holding 10 to 12 people, without electricity or heating, and with a questionable supply of clean water. Meals can only be had after queuing outside in the rain. Showers, toilets and mobile phone charge points are all inadequate, according to residents, while privacy is more or less nonexistent.

Both asylum seekers and local residents complain that the bus service to central Dublin is now completely inadequate. Another 450 asylum seekers have been dumped in the grounds of the former Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum where they are living in tents. 200 more are in a former seminary in nearby Milltown, South Dublin.

High Court ruling

The government was found last month to have breached the European Union’s human rights charter in its treatment of asylum seekers.

In a High Court ruling on a judicial review brought by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC), Justice Barry O’Donnell found that the state’s “response to the needs of IP [international protection] applicants is inadequate to the point that the rights of this class of person... have been breached by the State” because a “failure to provide for the basic needs of applicants amounts to a breach of their right to human dignity.”

The case arose from the government’s decision last December that it would no longer offer accommodation to men seeking international protection. Instead, male asylum seekers were given vouchers worth €75, later increased to €113, weekly on which to survive. Many ended up on the streets, living in tents. The ruling noted that the State had not provided any analysis of “real world purchasing power” or “how in fact an... applicant was expected to access the basic need of housing.” In consequence, “those persons are left in a deeply vulnerable and frightening position that undermines their human dignity.”

The ruling committed the Irish government to nothing, however. Justice O’Donnell rejected the IHREC request for an order to force the government to establish a system to uphold the fundamental rights of all IP applicants as “not appropriate or necessary”. Further, O’Donnell opined that “policing a mandatory remedy framed in such general terms would present real difficulties and give rise to scope for serious disputes about what amounted to compliance.”

In other words, the ruling was not going to be mandatory, because the learned judge fully expected the government to ignore it.

Groundbreaking study uncovers mechanism of blood clotting caused by COVID-19, points to possible treatments

Bill Shaw & Benjamin Mateus

One of the hallmarks of COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, is a multi-organ system process characterized by the formation of blood clots in small vessels. What was most puzzling in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were the unusual blood clots and strokes found among patients, even in those who were asymptomatic and irrespective of age. Most unusual had been that these COVID-induced blood clots were resistant to degradation despite adequate anticoagulation therapy.

A groundbreaking study conducted by the Gladstone Institutes and recently published in the journal Nature has uncovered the mechanism of these processes that lead to substantial tissue and organ damage, including in the brain, lungs, heart, and kidneys, as well as viral persistence and Long COVID. The authors write:

The prevalence and severity of coagulopathy [blood clotting] and its correlation with the immune response and neurological complications in Long COVID suggest as yet unknown mechanism of COVID-19 pathogenesis.

With respect to the pathological blood clotting disorder common in COVID-19 patients, they explain:

Hypercoagulability in COVID-19 is associated with extensive fibrin deposition in inflamed lung and brain. Fibrin is derived from the soluble blood protein fibrinogen after activation of coagulation and forms the central structural component of blood clots. 

Fibrin is deposited at sites of vascular damage or blood–brain barrier (BBB) disruption and is a key proinflammatory and prooxidant activator of the innate immune response in autoimmune, inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases. Neurovascular injury and reactive microglia are detected at sites of parenchymal fibrin deposition in brains of patients with COVID-19. 

BBB disruption correlates with brain fog in long COVID, and increased plasma fibrinogen is a predictive biomarker of cognitive deficits after COVID-19. However, the role of blood clots in COVID-19 inflammation and neurological changes remains largely unclear, and therapies to combat their effects are not readily available.

Spike and fibrinogen immunoreactivity in the lungs at 3 days post-infection. [Photo by Ryu, J.K., Yan, Z., Montano, M. et al. / CC BY 4.0]

With more than 400 million people the world over estimated to be suffering from symptomatic Long COVID, and essentially everyone having already been infected three to four times on average, identifying this crucial primary mechanism in the disease and possibly developing treatments for this unmet need is of the highest urgency.

Tendency to form blood clots is well understood as part of inflammatory pathways. Specifically, under conditions of homeostasis, the tendency to form clots is balanced by inhibitory pathways. However, when inflammation is encountered, such as in tissue damage and injury, the clotting cascades that recruit cells and molecules to form clots and stop bleeding are initiated. 

In COVID, these processes are over expressed and until recently were thought to be a byproduct of the immune response to the invading virus that led to a severe inflammatory response known as a cytokine storm.

However, the researchers discovered that a key protein in the clotting cascade, known as fibrin, is directly responsible for the toxic inflammatory effects of COVID. As the study found, fibrin becomes more toxic in COVID as it binds to the virus and immune cells, leading to unusual clots and fibrosis which cause inflammation. The discovery also underscores the possibility that new treatments can be designed to address the main problems caused by SARS-CoV-2.

As the senior investigator at Gladstone and the director of the Center for Neurovascular Brain Immunology at UC San Francisco, Dr. Katerina Akassoglou, noted, “Knowing that fibrin is the instigator of inflammation and neurological symptoms, we can build a new path forward for treating the disease at the root. In our experiments in mice, neutralizing blood toxicity with fibrin antibody therapy can protect the brain and body after COVID infection.”

Co-investigator, virologist and director emeritus at Gladstone, Dr. Warner Greene, added, “We know of many other viruses that unleash a similar cytokine storm in response to infection, but without causing blood clotting activity like we see with COVID.”

Prior to this study, scientists and researchers had thought that the blood clots associated with COVID were a byproduct of the immune response against the virus that led to a super-charged inflammatory state. 

Akassoglou and her group felt such explanations were not correct. She explained, “We began to wonder if blood clots played a principal role in COVID—if this virus evolved in a way to hijack clotting for its own benefit.” And this proved correct. 

What the researchers found in their experiments using mice was that fibrin bound directly to the virus spike protein, leading to unusual blood clots that demonstrated enhanced inflammatory activity. To confirm this finding, they then genetically reengineered the mice such that it blocked the fibrin’s inflammatory properties without altering the protein’s critical blood clotting abilities.

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and quantification of the fibrin clot fibre radius in human plasma with spike, showing that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds to fibrin [Photo by Ryu, J.K., Yan, Z., Montano, M. et al. / CC BY 4.0]

An accompaniment review from the Gladstone Institutes to the Nature report notes:

When mice were genetically altered to carry the mutant fibrin or had no fibrin in their bloodstream, the scientists found that inflammation, oxidative stress, fibrosis, and clotting in the lungs didn’t occur or were much reduced after COVID-19 infection.

Somewhat paradoxically, the researchers also recognized that although fibrin activates many white blood cells to cause inflammation, it conversely suppresses the activity of a type of immune cell called natural killer (NK), which normally work to destroy viruses in the body. In mice where fibrin had been depleted, the NK cells functioned to eradicate the SARS-CoV-2 viruses. The authors wrote:

These findings indicate that fibrinogen is required for SARS-CoV-2 infection in the lung and pulmonary lesion formation through inflammatory activation and suppression of viral clearance involving NK cells.

With respect to neurological manifestations of COVID infections, including the ubiquitous “brain fog,” and which scientists believe can trigger neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis, the Gladstone Institutes team showed that fibrin was responsible for the pathologic activation of the brain’s immune cells known as microglia that led to the degeneration of the neurons.

The autopsy of infected mice demonstrated fibrin together with toxic microglia. However, when fibrin was inhibited, inflammation in the mice brains was significantly reduced. In the discussion section of their study, they remarked:

Increased BBB [Blood Brain Barrier] permeability associated with parenchymal fibrin deposition is a feature of COVID-19 neuropathology. In the brain of some patients with COVID-19, detection of spike and viral RNA suggests potential neuroinvasion. Our data and previous literature support that, while spike can enhance fibrin toxicity, even in the absence of spike, fibrin is deleterious in diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, colitis and periodonditis. Thus, fibrin may be deposited either together with spike when spike is present in the brain or through an open BBB after peripheral infection without neuroinvasion or spike coupling.

After elucidating how fibrin leads to tissue injury after COVID infection—activating a chronic form of inflammation and by suppressing a beneficial NK cell response capable of clearing virally infected cells—the authors speculate that if these negative consequences could be neutralized, this may resolve the severe symptoms seen with COVID and prevent or mitigate Long COVID. 

In support of these hypotheses and potentially developing a new treatment against severe COVID and Long COVID, Dr. Akassoglou’s lab employed a monoclonal antibody they had previously developed that targeted fibrin called 5B8, which protected against neuronal inflammation and degeneration. This immune therapy was injected in mice either before SARS-CoV-2 infection or 24-hours after. They also tested it in a mouse-model infected with the Delta variant known for high neurological involvement and associated with greater risk of Long COVID. 

In all instances, mice receiving immune therapy with 5B8 were found to suppress SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis. The brain of immune-treated mice infected with the Delta variant demonstrated “decreased microglial reactivity and white-matter injury compared to… controls. In infected mice, 5B8 reduced the loss of cortical neurons… a feature of severe COVID-19 brain pathology associated with microglial nodules and neurovascular injury.” Inflammation was suppressed and increased neuronal survival was observed. Notably, 5B8 does not increase bleeding.

Given these successes, Gladstone Institutes reported that 5B8 is already in phase one safety and tolerability clinical trials to assess how humans will react to the new treatment before proceeding with more advanced trials in COVID and Long COVID patients. In support of these developments, Greene said, “The fibrin immunotherapy can be tested as part of a multipronged approach, along with prevention and vaccination, to reduce adverse health outcomes from Long COVID.” 

Importantly, the authors underscored the fact that the anti-COVID vaccines that utilize portions of the spike protein do not elicit the fibrin-inflammatory response seen with infections. They note that a study of 99 million vaccinated individuals led by the Global COVID Vaccine Safety (GCoVS) project found no excessive clotting or hematologic disorders that met any of their prespecified thresholds for safety. On the contrary, the vaccines ameliorated and protected individuals from clotting complications caused by COVID.

The findings of the present study are a pivotal moment in the elucidation of the pathology caused by COVID-19, especially under the now universal policy of “forever COVID,” in which mass infection has been normalized at great detriment to the world’s population. The fact that a potential treatment exists that can be used to prevent or mitigate the dreaded manifestations of this dangerous virus is a boon for humanity.

Bankrupt Thames Water demands rate hikes as UK waterways flooded with sewage

Margot Miller

Debt-stricken utility company Thames Water, which serves 16 million in London and South East England, is demanding a taxpayer bailout or an increase in customer bills of 59 percent a year by 2030 to keep afloat—while it continues the criminal practice of pumping raw sewage into the environment.

On Thursday, the Labour government led by Sir Keir Starmer tabled its new Water (Special Measures) Bill in parliament, promising to end “years of neglect” with threats to bonuses, of fines and imprisonment.

Lack of investment driven by the thirst for ever-increasing profits has led to a situation where the basic sanitation infrastructure introduced by the Victorians is at breaking point—which a Labour government will not reverse.

Thames Water, only the worst offender, initially approached price regulator Ofwat for a 44 percent hike in household bills. Ofwat’s final decision is due in December, though it suggested a figure of 22 percent.

The company, according to the Guardian, asked the government to sidestep Ofwat, permit the price hike and help it avoid administration by underwriting its debts—to prevent a “chilling effect” on the UK’s attractiveness to global investment. Indebted to the tune of £15 billion, it says money will run out by June next year.

Thames Water HQ by the Thames In Reading, Berkshire [Photo by Jim Linwood / CC BY 2.0]

Thames Water is one of ten regionally based water companies formed in 1989 after the privatisation blitz begun under the Thatcher government (1979-90), with Ofwat created supposedly to curb the excessive rapaciousness of investors and CEOs. The consequences for the environment and potentially for human health have been catastrophic.

Last year, sewage spills into rivers and seas around England hit a record 477,000 incidents totaling over 4 million hours, an increase of 58 percent from the previous year.

In May 2023, the government’s Environment Agency reported that only 16 percent of surface water assessed in and around England was of “good” ecological status. This included 14 percent of rivers and lakes, 19 percent of estuaries and 45 percent of coastal waters.

Since 2020, Thames Water, the largest water company in the UK, has poured 72 billion litres of sewage into the River Thames—the equivalent of 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The company is currently owned by a consortium including Canadian pension funds, the UK university lecturer’s pension fund, a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and the China Investment Corporation. Its previous owner was Australian infrastructure asset management Macquarie.

Thames Water is not unique. In May, a faulty valve in Pennon Group-owned Southwest Water’s system led to the pollution of the water supply with the parasite Cryptosporidium. Thousands of residents in Devon had to drink bottled water.

The end of August saw further contamination of Lake Windermere in the Lake District by United Utilities.

Sewage was discharged from Hawkshead Pumping Station via Esthwaite Water, and Near Sawrey Waste Water Treatment Works via Cunsey Beck, for seven days continuously. Last year, the lake was subjected to 8,787 hours of raw sewage spills, according to the Save Windermere Campaign which has been protesting pollution for three years.

The Lake District is an area of outstanding natural beauty, an attraction for thousands from all over the world, a jewel in the north of England and inspiration to poets including William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Coleridge Taylor (1772-1834) and art critic and historian John Ruskin (1819-1900).

Esthwaite Water is a grade one site of Special Scientific Interest with its “nationally scarce” invertebrate fauna and plants.

A spokesperson from the company responsible, United Utilities, said, “Storm overflows are designed to operate during heavy rainfall, like that seen in the Lake District over recent days…” Founder of the Save Windermere Campaign Matt Staniek disputed that the recent heavy rainfalls fell within the parameters designated “exceptional circumstances” when overflows into waterways are permitted.

The UK has in the main a combined sewerage system, so that both rainwater and household wastewater from toilets, bathrooms and kitchens travel through the same pipes to a sewage treatment works.

During exceptionally heavy rainfall excess capacity is directed into rivers and the sea through stormflows to avoid flooding homes, towns, roads and agricultural land or overwhelming water treatment plants. Wastewater treatment plants and waterpipes, however, have not been properly maintained and upgraded to deal with the extra water capacity which occurs now not as an exception, but on a regular basis—in substantial part due to climate change.

The Met Office reported in its annual State of Climate report that the UK is experiencing more hotter and wetter days, threatening the delicately balanced ecosystem as well as agriculture. The report noted that 2023 was the seventh wettest year since 1836.

Ofwat has revealed that some companies are also “routinely releasing sewage” regardless of the weather.

A BBC investigation found evidence of 6,000 potential dry spills (no rain) by England’s water companies in 2022, some of which occurred during the summer heatwave, thus putting swimmers cooling off in danger of harmful pathogens. Parents are routinely warned to dissuade children from paddling in shallow rivers.

After its investigation into illegal sewage dumping, Ofwat suggested fines totaling £168 million for Thames Water, Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian Water. These fines, however, would doubtless be passed onto customers, or paid for by taking on yet more debt or abandoning even more essential maintenance.

Research by the Financial Times found water companies in England and Wales increased their net debt by £8.2 billion since 2021, while paying out £2.5 billion in dividends.

Before privatisation, the ten regional water authorities were debt free. In the period 1991-2023, profits to shareholders totaled £78 billion, almost half the £190 billion spent on infrastructure, and debt grew to £64 billion. While customer bills rose by 40 percent, 22 water company executives were rewarded £24. 8 million in 2022 presiding over this mess. Thames Water alone has paid out £7.2 billion to shareholders since 1990.

Announcing Labour’s new Water Bill, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Steve Reed, declared, “Under this Government, water executives will no longer line their own pockets whilst pumping out this filth. If they refuse to comply, they could end up in the dock and face prison time.”

But these are hollow promises, made to assuage public anger. Politician’s attitude to corporate criminality has been demonstrated sharply by the recent final report of the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire—in which 72 people were killed and for which no one has been held criminally responsible.

Charles Watson, founder of campaign group River Action, said, “If the secretary of state believes that the few one-off actions announced today, such as curtailing bosses’ bonuses—however appealing they may sound—are going to fix the underlying causes of our poisoned waterways, then he needs to think again.”

According to industry body Water UK, £104.5 billion is needed to update the long-neglected infrastructure, which it insists must be paid for by households.

This private ransacking and pollution of public infrastructure and environments cannot be allowed to continue. The water companies must be immediately brought into public ownership without compensation to their shareholders who have spent years getting rich by running down the water and sewage system. The necessary billions—taken from the super-rich—must be provided to bring sanitation to the standards required by society in the twenty-first century, under the challenging conditions posed by climate change.

Labour’s programme is for the opposite. Since coming into office, the government has made clear its opposition to any reforms and pledged to continue with austerity, starting with plugging a £22 billion “black hole” in public finances, all while promising increased spending on the military.

UK studies on Long COVID reveal its brutal impact and prevalence

Robert Stevens

The spread of COVID-19 continues in Britain with new strains still taking the lives of up to 200 people a week in England alone.

Moreover, an estimated up to 2 million people are suffering from Long COVID in the UK. The condition encompasses a variety of symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, and cognitive impairments. Estimates suggest that approximately 10 percent of all individuals who contract COVID-19 experience Long COVID.

Several recent UK studies have investigated this harm being done to the population’s health by the policy of “living with the virus” enacted jointly by the Conservative and Labour parties.

Research carried out by academics at Newcastle University found a fifth of GP patients in some areas of northern England suffer from Long COVID. The study, “Navigating the Long Haul: Understanding Long Covid in Northern England”, also found that there were regional inequalities in terms of the incidence of Long COVID in the North East of England and Yorkshire, where rates in the most deprived areas were 5.2 percent higher than in the less deprived areas.

Its summary explains, “Our ‘A Year of Covid-19 in the North’ report showed Covid-19 hit the region harder than the South of the country and this report shows this pattern is repeated in Long Covid in the region. In some areas of the North the prevalence of the illness is as high as 20%.” It adds, “The average for England as a whole was 4.4%.”

The highest rate of prevalence was recorded among patients at Parklands medical practice in Bradford and Margaret Thompson medical centre in Liverpool. All ten of the GP surgeries with the highest rates of Long COVID among patients are in the North.

Drawing attention to the lack of care and support available to Long COVID sufferers, the report notes, “While many employers in the North provide support for Covid-19, this is specified on an acute basis, rather than in response to Long Covid/post Covid illnesses.” The report notes that “Only three out of 10 northern employers contacted offered a specific rehabilitation package to employees living with Long Covid despite the high prevalence in the region.”

Protesters hold placards outside the COVID Inquiry at Dorland House in London, Monday, Dec. 11, 2023. [AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

Separate research published in the Journal of Infection on August 28 details the prevalence and impact of persistent symptoms following SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers. Researchers from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and Public Health Scotland analysed data from the SARS-CoV-2 Immunity and Reinfection Evaluation (SIREN) study.

It explains that “SIREN participants were eligible for the survey if they had a recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection by 12 September 2022 and had not withdrawn from the study before the survey date.” 16,599 health care workers were eligible to complete the survey. Of these 6,677 responded and 5,053 were included in the final analysis.

The study found that “A substantial proportion of UK healthcare workers in our cohort experienced persistent symptoms following their initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, and this has impacted their life and work.”

Another important conclusion was the higher prevalence of persistent symptoms found among those who were unvaccinated (38.1 percent) than among those who were vaccinated (22 percent).

The study notes, “When asked about the impact of persistent symptoms on day-to-day and work-related activities, 51.8% and 42.1% replied ‘a little’ (for day to day and work-related activity respectively) and 24.0% and 14.4% replied ‘A lot’ (first infection only).

“When asked about at work adjustments among those reporting persistent symptoms, 8.9% reported they had reduced their working hours and 13.9% had changed their working pattern. The medium number of sick days participants reported taking off work due to persistent symptoms for their first infection was 14 days”, with an interquartile range of seven to 50 days and an overall range of one to 680 days.

That the upper range of sick days required is approaching two years shows the horrific impact of the disease on a layer of workers in the National Health Service.

Despite the widespread prevalence of COVID and Long COVID among health workers, there is no general mask mandate in place in the National Health Service. The reality of the virus and its impact has, however, pushed a number of NHS hospital trusts to implement their own mandates.

In July it was reported that at Worcestershire’s Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, with COVID cases at their highest level in seven months, mask wearing was required “to protect patients, their loved ones and hospital staff.”

The Royal Stoke University Hospital and County Hospital in Stafford also introduced mask requirements in clinical areas. The Daily Express reported that in “Staffordshire, the situation is equally dire, with 108 patients battling the virus and two wards at Royal Stoke Hospital completely occupied by those affected.” The trusts acted after COVID hospitalisations rose, as the summer holiday season got underway, to 3.31 per 100,000 people from 2.67 in the preceding week.

A study by researchers from the Institute of Health Informatics and the Department of Primary Care and Population Health at University College London (UCL), in collaboration with the software developer Living With Ltd, analysed self-reported symptoms from 1,008 people in England and Wales.

Its report, “Long COVID symptoms and demographic associations: A retrospective case series study using healthcare application data”, published in JRSM Open, looked at the health of people referred to a National Health Service post-COVID clinic who had reported their symptoms on the Living with COVID Recovery Digital Health Intervention app. The data covered the period November 30, 2020, to March 23, 2022. 

The findings concluded that pain, including headache, joint pain and stomach pain, was the most common symptom, as reported by 26.5 percent of participants. Other common symptoms included anxiety and depression (18.4 percent), fatigue (14.3 percent), and dyspnoea, or shortness of breath (7.4 percent).

ScienceDaily noted that “The study also examined the impact of demographic factors on the severity of symptoms, revealing significant disparities among different groups. Older individuals were found to experience much higher symptom intensity, with those aged 68-77 reporting 32.8% more severe symptoms, and those aged 78-87 experiencing an 86% increase in symptom intensity compared to the 18-27 age group.”

Deprivation (broken down by geographical area), gender and ethnicity were also significantly associated with symptom severity. The least deprived decile had symptoms 68 percent less intense than those of the most deprived, women reported symptoms 9.8 percent more intense than men, and non-white groups 23.5 percent more intense than white.

The UK research adds to a growing body of scientific evidence internationally showing the seriousness of Long COVID.

Last month, the World Socialist Web Site reported on a position paper on Long COVID published by Drs. Ziyad Al-Aly, Akiko Iwasaki Eric Topol, and other acclaimed researchers, published in the Nature Medicine journal.

The WSWS explained, “Basing their estimates on meta-regression studies that pooled all the available evidence, they estimated that figure for the first four years of the pandemic at 409 million cases of Long COVID. The authors remarked, ‘It is crucial to emphasize that these estimates only represent cases arising from symptomatic infections and are likely to be conservative. The actual incidence of Long COVID, including cases from asymptomatic infections or those with a broader range of symptoms, is expected to be higher.’”

Appeals court ruling backs big publishers’ lawsuit against the Internet Archive

Kevin Reed

On Wednesday, a three-judge federal appeals court panel upheld an earlier ruling in favor of major book publishers and found that the Internet Archive was guilty of violating copyright law by scanning books and lending them to the public for free.

In its 64-page decision, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan ruled in favor of the lawsuit filed in 2020 by four of the 10 largest book publishers in the world against the San Francisco-based nonprofit Internet Archive and its Open Library project.

HarperCollins headquarters in New York [Photo: Jim.henderson]

The court rejected the Internet Archive’s appeal which was based on the argument that lending digital copies to the public at no charge should be considered “fair use” of copyrighted content. The court also rejected the Internet Archive’s novel policy of “controlled digital lending” in which electronic copies of books can be borrowed by readers one copy at a time in the same manner readers have been borrowing print books from public libraries for 235 years.

The appeals court ruling states:

This appeal presents the following question: Is it “fair use” for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors? Applying the relevant provisions of the Copyright Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent, we conclude the answer is no.

The four publishers—Hachette Book Group, Inc., HarperCollins Publishers LLC, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and Penguin Random House LLC—mounted their lawsuit in the first year of the pandemic after they learned that the Internet Archive had launched the National Emergency Library (NEL). The NEL was created in response to the closure of libraries during the public health emergency and the calls from readers and librarians to provide a means for people to obtain access to millions of books.

The NEL was an extension of the Internet Archive’s previously existing Open Library, minus the controlled digital lending, and permitted large numbers of people to borrow digital copies all at the same time. This response by the non-profit to an unprecedented crisis of access to books then became the subject of a ferocious campaign by the $25 billion book publishing industry which claimed, “willful mass copyright infringement” and demanded damages in its lawsuit.

After Judge John G. Koeltl of US District Court for the Southern District of New York forcefully ruled in favor of the publishers in March 2023, the Internet Archive removed 500,000 titles from its digital library and filed an appeal in September 2023.

One aspect of Koeltl’s ruling overturned by the appeals court was the contention that the Internet Archive was engaged in commercial activity. The judge ruled that the nonprofit was soliciting donations from readers and visitors to its Open Library website, gained non-monetary reputational benefit from its lending program and also received a small percentage of the sales of books from its Better World Books subsidiary.

The appeals court was not prepared to go as far as the lower court judge in stripping the Internet Archive of any financial resources whatsoever. However, the appeals court had no difficulty defending the market interests of the big book publishers who saw the limited initiative of the Internet Archive as a threat to its profits.

As the appeals court ruling states, “IA copies the Works in full and makes those copies available to the public in their entirety. It does not do this to achieve a transformative secondary purpose, but to supplant the originals.”

While the appeals court decision is directed at protecting the multibillion-dollar book publishing monopolies, it sought to hide this behind claims that it is defending the rights of authors. The ruling states:

With each digital book IA disseminates, it deprives Publishers and authors of the revenues due to them as compensation for their unique creations. Though IA and its amici [ supporters] may lament the consolidation of editorial power and criticize Publishers for being motivated by profits, behind Publishers stand authors who are entitled to compensation for the reproduction of their works and whose “private motivation” ultimately serve[s] the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts.

As pointed out by Dave Hansen, executive director of the Author’s Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates expanded access to digital books, the presentation of the relationships between authors and publishers by the court is a distortion. Hansen asserted:

Authors are researchers. Authors are readers. IA’s digital library helps those authors create new works and supports their interests in seeing their works be read. This ruling may benefit the bottom line of the largest publishers and most prominent authors, but for most it will end up harming more than it will help.

There is no doubt that the aggressive legal posture of the publishers toward the Internet Archive is aimed at bankrupting and shutting down the organization. Alongside the book publishers’ case, the Internet Archive also is facing a new lawsuit filed on August 11 by Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and other record labels for copyright infringement.

The labels’ lawsuit says that the Internet Archive’s “Great 78 Project” is an “illegal record store” for songs by musicians including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday. The recording industry has achieved considerable experience with digital rights management and has aggressively pursued actions against anyone and everyone it considers a threat to the commercial distribution of online music.

The global record industry labels, which had sales of $17.1 billion in 2023, have identified 2,749 recording copyrights that have been violated and they are claiming damages of $412 million. The annual budget of the Internet Archive, a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is $37 million derived from grants, donations and foundation funds.

Internet Archive logo

The Internet Archive was founded in 1996 to provide free access to collections of digitized media including websites, software applications, music, audiovisual and print materials. The organization is an advocate of an open and free internet. As of this writing, the archive has more than 42.1 million print materials, 13 million videos, 1.2 million software programs, 14 million audio files, 5 million images, 272,660 concerts and over 866 billion web pages in its Wayback Machine.

The Wayback Machine is an archive of the World Wide Web that allows readers to go “back in time” and see how websites looked in the past. It is a repository of the internet that is archiving and preserving online content from defunct websites.

Responding to Wednesday’s appellate court ruling, the Internet Archive issued a statement that said, “We are disappointed in today’s opinion about the Internet Archive’s digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere. We are reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books.”

Speaking to the New York Times, Brewster Kahle, computer engineer and founder of the Internet Archive, said, “People are worried about book banning and the defunding of libraries, but I don’t know that there is really an awareness of what’s going on in the movement toward license-only access to electronic material.”

Kahle continued, insisting that libraries are “not just a Netflix reseller of books to their patrons. Libraries have always been more than that.”

One month of Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk region

Andrea Peters

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. [AP Photo/Alexander Kazakov]

One month into Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, Moscow has yet to repel Kiev’s forces. President Vladimir Putin, whose government failed to prevent the first seizure of Russian territory by an army since World War II, is attempting to manage the debacle.

Speaking on Thursday, the Kremlin leader insisted that “the enemy has not succeeded” in its goal to compel the redeployment of soldiers away from the Donbass. The Russian military has now “stabilized the situation” and “begun to gradually squeeze the enemy out of the border territories,” Putin stated. Invoking Russian nationalism and attempting to manage deep popular anger over the government’s failure, he declared the liberation of Kursk to be the country’s “sacred duty.”

On the ground, Ukraine’s advance appears to have been halted and possibly even slightly rolled back. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who rules with ever-more authoritarian methods over a country whose working population is increasingly opposed to the war, claims his forces currently control 1000 square kilometers of Russian territory. If true, this would be a decrease of 200 square kilometers from what Kiev said it initially seized when its troops and tanks pushed past Russia’s poorly defended borders on August 6.

The Kremlin has been silent about the amount of territory it has lost. Speaking to school students in Tuva, Siberia, this week, President Putin described Ukraine’s military as “thugs who made it in to Russia,” as if the elite forces armed by the Western powers and trained by the British were akin to a bunch of roving bandits attacking a wagon train. His government has sought to emphasize the successes of its intensifying assault in the Donbass, where, even according to pro-Ukrainian Western media accounts, Kiev’s army is struggling.

In an article on Thursday, the New York Times described Ukraine’s military situation as “increasingly difficult.” Russian forces have managed to create a “a large bulge that extends about 20 miles deep through the center of Ukraine’s defenses,” it noted. The Washington press outlet The Hill warned the same day that Kiev’s “gamble against Russia risks becoming a blunder.”  A September 2 article in Foreign Affairs by Michael Kofman and Rob Lee likewise expressed concern over Zelensky’s “thinly-stretched lines” and ability to rotate troops out of the Donbass in order to hold onto Russian territory.

The Kremlin claims Ukraine has lost 10,000 troops in Kursk. If even 20 percent true, would be a large share of the 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers—largely drawn from elite forces—that Kofman and Lee estimate Kiev sent in.

President Zelensky is using its invasion of Kursk and the pressure building on its military—internally and at the front—to demand ever-more weapons from its Western backers and get authorization to launch attacks deeper into Russia. Ukraine’s seizure of Russian territory demonstrates, Zelensky stated in late August, that Putin’s “red lines” are an illusion not to be taken seriously.

The same point was made earlier this week by anti-Putin Russian oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky—one of a number of contenders for power should the current occupant of the Kremlin be overthrown. Braying for war, he criticized the Western powers from the right, that is, for not acting rapidly enough on the fact that the Kursk invasion shows that “any red lines are not where [they] imagine them to be.”

The Zelensky government is now receiving the go-ahead from NATO to escalate. On Thursday, Jans Stoltenberg, head of the alliance, welcomed the lessening of Western restrictions on Ukraine hitting targets in Russia and endorsed the country’s use of long-range missiles. The following day, at a meeting of the imperialist powers and Zelensky at Germany’s Ramstein air base, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced another $250 million military aid package for Kiev.

Whatever the short-term outcome for Ukraine on the battlefield, the imperialist powers see in Russia’s debacle in Kursk an immense opportunity to advance their goals to carve up the entire country. This was spelled out in an article by political scientist Mark Katz, a fellow at both the Wilson Center and the Atlantic Council, in the National Interest this week.

“By itself,” he writes, “the Ukrainian occupation of Russian territory in Kursk may not discomfit Putin for long. But if it leads other actors to conclude that Ukraine’s Kursk offensive shows that Putin is unable to respond effectively to whatever they are contemplating, then Putin and his generals could find themselves overwhelmed with crises.” Katz went on to question the Kremlin’s ability to hold Chechnya, all the Muslim republics in Russia’s North Caucasus, Belarus, and Transnistria, the Moscow-allied breakaway region of Moldova.

Domestically, the Russian government is working to downplay the crisis in Kursk. News coverage of the region would give one the impression that life is, more or less, moving along swimmingly and the situation for civilians is under control. Recent press articles have highlighted orchestra concerts, computer classes for kids, the opening of a photo exhibit of great moments in the country’s military history, and the visit this week by a deputy minister to the region’s main agricultural university. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin recently announced tax and insurance deferments for businesses in the area, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko just declared that the oblast is completely stocked with medicines, medical equipment, and blood supplies, and the government has reportedly already distributed 10,000-ruble payments ($110) to 120,000 evacuees. This is a paltry sum that only covers about two thirds of the over 180,000 people who had to flee the invasion.

Social media posts suggest that the reality, particularly for those caught behind the front lines, is appalling. A recent petition posted on the social media site Vkontakte appealed to the government to rescue people trapped in six villages who are, according to the appeal’s author, “without water, medicine, light and gas, and will soon be without food and the ability to heat their homes.” The petition, which was signed by 1,000 people within the first 24 hours that it was posted, reads, “This is a cry for help from your people to you! Do not abandon your people, who have made their choice in your favor! Please make your choice in favor of the people too!”

Hundreds, if not thousands, are missing. The search-and-rescue non-profit LizaAlert issued a statement this week indicating that of 918 reports it received of friends and relatives feared to be lost in Ukrainian-controlled territory, 698 were still unaccounted for and 5 were found dead. On Friday, RIA-Novosti carried a story of Kursk residents searching for their loved ones, with flyers of missing persons now being posted at bus stops. One man, who reported that his friend had not had contact with his parents since August 10, told the press outlet, “They said then that they were going to the farm to shelter from shelling, and that’s all.”

A video surfaced in mid-August documenting the abuse of a bewildered elderly man walking down the road in rags. He tells the Ukrainian soldiers, “I’m lost, I’ve been trying for five days now…” Wearing helmets of the Nazi SS, they taunt him and say, “Go drink vodka.” “Russian pig,” they declare in German. The family of the man, identified as 74-year-old Aleksandr Gusarov, saw the video, but reported that he was still missing at the time. The Ukrainian military is awash with far-right, pro-fascist, anti-Russian forces, who embrace the great crimes and collaborators of the Nazi war against the Soviet Union in which 27 million Soviet citizens were killed.

From a historical standpoint, the ruling class of Russia bears as much responsibility for what is happening in Kursk as the invading Ukrainian army and its NATO backers. In 1991, the ex-Soviet bureaucrats turned capitalists dissolved the Soviet Union and with it what remained of the conquests of the Russian revolution. This meant not just liquidating nationalized property and turning it into a huge well of profits for a new elite, but breaking apart the USSR, unleashing fratricidal nationalism, and transforming the entire region into an object of conquest for the imperialists.