Coronavirus: Children can be spreaders — but are often symptomless

So far, many people have underestimated the role that children can play in spreading the novel coronavirus. Researchers say they can contract and spread the virus without showing symptoms.

Children are often infected by the coronavirus without knowing it

Numerous studies have looked into the role that children play in spreading SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus. On January 4, microbiologist Michael Wagner from the University of Vienna and his team presented their latest research findings on how schoolchildren contract and spread the virus. In November last year, they discovered one infected child — without symptoms — in every three to four classes examined.

The researchers conducted the study by asking pupils to spend one minute gargling a special salt solution and then spitting it into a test tube. A PCR test was then conducted on these samples to scan for the coronavirus. This procedure is far more pleasant for children than receiving oral swabs.

The study found that children are frequently infected, often even more frequently than adults, yet rarely show symptoms. This is why they are hardly subjected to coronavirus screenings. "If I examine infected schoolchildren and ask myself whether there are other cases at the same school — without testing symptomless pupils — I cannot infer the source of the infection," Wagner told German public broadcaster ARD. He says entire classes should be tested several times over even if just one child tests positive in that class. Otherwise, he argues, one cannot know to what extent the virus has spread.

Children in the Viennese study only had to gargle a salt solution for their test, unlike the usual method shown here

Children spreading SARS-CoV-2

Up to now, most scientists have assumed that children played a marginal role in spreading the coronavirus. One study by the Munich-based German Research Center for Environmental Health, however, used antibody tests on children and found this assumption to be untrue.

Annette-Gabriele Ziegler, who led the research project, says: "We carried out antibody tests on children and found that more than six times as many had contracted the coronavirus than previously assumed."

Between January and July 2020, the researchers tested blood samples from some 12,000 Bavarian schoolchildren for SARS-CoV-2. Study participants ranged from just 1 year old to 18 years old. One-third of those who lived with family members who had tested positive for the virus had traces of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in their blood.

Approximately half of these children remained symptomless. Antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, incidentally, can be detected only after between one and four weeks after infection.

Schools are a potential breeding ground for infections

Undetected and infectious

That children can contract the virus without showing any symptoms and therefore pose a greater risk of unknowingly spreading the virus partly has to do with their so-called naive T cells, says microbiologist and immunologist Donna Faber. Among other things, Faber investigates antibody response of children and adults to SARS-CoV-2 at Columbia University.

Faber also led a study examining childrens' untrained immune responses and how this can shed light on eliminating SARS-CoV-2. 

Children have a different immune reaction to viruses than adults

"Children show a different response to viruses in general and coronaviruses in particular," Faber told DW. "This results from their naive T cells."

"These new T cells are able to respond differently to new pathogens," says Faber. "Children are constantly producing these new, so-called naive T cells; they have an entire arsenal of them. Adults, though, gradually lose the ability to produce new ones."

These cells circulate between blood vessels and peripheral lymphoid organs. After coming into contact with an antigen, they begin reproducing, launching an adaptive immune response.

The T cells found in adults, in contrast, are targeted toward specific infections that the body has already endured, for instance from influenza viruses. This means adults' immune system responses are more effective against such infections. Now, however, both children and adults are facing a new pathogen, SARS-CoV-2, which the former can cope with better because of their naive T cells.

As many children remain symptomless despite contracting the virus, many have underestimated their role in spreading the virus. Annette-Gabriele Ziegler says kindergartens and schools must therefore adopt much stricter preventive measures to help contain the pandemic. These include social distancing, ventilating classrooms, and teaching small groups of pupils. She says that in addition, schoolchildren should be screened more rigorously for the virus even if they are symptomless

From Mulvaney to DeVos, GOP Rats Are Deserting Trump's Sinking Ship

All the times they didn’t resign or even criticize his monstrous deeds in the last four years.

by Juan Cole



When Trump said that the death rate from the coronavirus would be very low "if you didn’t count blue states," you didn’t resign or even criticize. (Photo: Screenshot)

The rats are deserting Trump’s sinking ship, after he fomented the Great QAnon Capitol Insurrection, with two cabinet secretaries and some other officials having resigned. It is too late. The Insurrection did not tell us something about Trump we did not know. Those now leaving are perhaps attempting to avoid any messy 25th Amendment or impeachment proceedings, or perhaps they are trying to salvage what’s left of their reputations by dissociating themselves from Trump at his most insane.

There is an old anecdote apparently first told about Max Aitkin, Lord Beaverbrook, a British-Canadian politician and media mogul. It has many versions but here is how I tell it.

Lord Beaverbrook is at a cocktail party conversing with an attractive woman, and the conversation turns to ethics. He asks her if she would sleep with someone for a million pounds. She says that she would.

He asks her, “Would you sleep with someone for five pounds?”

She says, “Certainly not, what sort of woman do you think I am?”

He observes drily, “Madame, we have already established that. Now we are just haggling about the price.”

I have some questions for the resignees:

When you heard Trump say of Mexican-Americans, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best . . . They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” you still signed on to serve in his administration.

When you saw that Trump sought to ban Muslims from the United States in an act of religious and racial discrimination, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When heard Trump use the phrase “very fine people” for the Charlottesville Nazis, who chanted “Jews will not replace us,” you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When you saw Trump promote carbon-intensive coal, try to lower automobile fuel standards, and try to destroy the Paris Climate Accord, wreaking 4 years of unrecoverable climate damage on the planet and on your grandchildren, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When you saw Trump used military-grade tear gas and Federal forces to clear peaceful protesters from LaFayette Square so that he could stage a photo op with a Bible at St. John’s Episcopal church, violating the protesters’ constitutional right to peaceable assembly, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When you saw Trump capriciously try to end SNAP food stamps for 700,000 unemployed Americans, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When you saw Trump’s EPA slash regulations and permit a serious degradation of our national environment, even permitting a pesticide that causes brain damage in babies, you did not resign or even criticize.

When you heard in the room, or read that Trump asked if migrants at the border could be slowed down by shooting them in the legs, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When Trump said that the death rate from the coronavirus would be very low “if you didn’t count blue states,” you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When you saw Trump try to take ACA health insurance away from millions of Americans during a pandemic when they had lost jobs and job-provided health benefits, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When Trump discouraged people from wearing a face mask during a deadly outbreak of a respiratory disease that is transmitted by people breathing on one another, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When, in the midst of a deadly pandemic that has has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, Trump held huge rallies with crowds whom he had discouraged from wearing masks or socially distancing, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When Trump opposed state lockdowns to deal with the pandemic and tweeted out “Liberate Michigan,” and when in response white supremacists and conspiracy theorists invaded the Michigan capitol and plotted to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When you heard Trump say that he won the election on Nov. 3 by a landslide, and you heard the Raffensperger tape in which he used crime-boss tactics in an effort to browbeat Georgia officials into “finding” him “11,780 votes,” you didn’t resign or even criticize.

We know what sort of person served with Trump. Now we are just haggling over their price.

Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His newest book, "Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires" was published in 2020. He is also the author of "The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East" (2015) and "Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East" (2008). He has appeared widely on television, radio, and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. 

© 2020 Juan Cole

Civil Society Groups Warn Against Anti-Protest Legislation Following Siege of US Capital

"We have to make sure this moment is not used to further anti-protest legislation."

by Simon Davis-Cohen

Published on Friday, January 08, 2021
by Common Dreams


Trump supporters clash with police and security forces, as they storm the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021. - Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the a 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification.

 (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Hours after Confederate flag-toting white supremacists made their way into the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the certification of the U.S. presidential election, the Florida House of Representatives released a statement announcing its intention to pass a bill to clamp down on protests.

“In response to the violent mobs in Washington, D.C., the Florida House of Representatives and Senate filed identical bills to combat violence, disorder and looting in Florida,” the release reads.

"While we condemn these crimes against democracy, such antics cannot be used to justify new repressive measures against actual protests, restrictions of the right of peaceful assembly, or curtailment of speech."

—Chip Gibbons, Defending Rights and Dissent

The proposed legislation in Florida is a continuation of a national trend to attempt to criminalize Black Lives Matter, indigenous and other civil rights protest movements. The proposed Florida legislation aims to punish municipalities that reduce funding to police departments, protect Confederate monuments, legalize forms of vigilante violence against protesters, and heighten “riot” charges. Democratic State Rep. Omari Hardy called it “bad legislation that is fundamentally un-American,” and “unconstitutional.”

Across the nation, dozens of sister anti-protest bills have been passed and proposed over the past few years, many at the behest of law enforcement lobbies and unions and influential corporate lobbies.

The proposed Florida bills are not alone.

A bill to criminalize anti-pipeline demonstrations is awaiting Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s signature (SB33). Others, to legalize violence against protesters, further criminalize, or punish protesting, are alive in Missouri (SB 26, SB 66, HB56), New Jersey (S 3261, A 4991, AB 3760), Oklahoma (SB 15), South Carolina (HB 3491), Virginia (SB 5079, SB 5058, SB 5074), according to the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law, as well as in Nebraska, Texas and Utah.

Weaponizing the siege of the U.S. Capitol

When news broke of the white supremacists breaching the U.S. Capitol, multiple news outlets repeated statements labeling the mob as “anarchists,” echoing White House efforts to target “Antifa.”

This type of weaponization of the day’s events to justify efforts to clamp down on protests is raising concerns among civil society groups.

“We have to make sure this moment is not used to further anti-protest legislation,” says Justin Hansford, Founder and Director of Harvard University’s Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center.

The events on December 6 showcased preferential treatment by law enforcement for white supremacist groups. “The tanks, batons, and tear gas rounds aggressively used against BLM protesters this summer were conspicuously absent when these white supremacists stormed the capitol building,” says Hansford. “At the end of the day, for many people around the world, this incident punctuated not only the delusion of President Trump's supporters but more enduringly, the fundamentally racially tinged nature of police response to public assemblies."

This preferential treatment, also condemed by the National Lawyers Guild, is further proof that any new efforts to strengthen the power law enforcement to clamp down on dissent—such as through domestic terrorism legislation—is “without basis," says Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund.

“This violent mob was allowed to storm the Capitol,” says Verheyden-Hilliard. “The differential treatment that they received, and as compared to the brutal attacks on actual First Amendment protected activity of the racial justice movement, is stunning. Capitol police have all the weapons, tactics and personnel at their disposal but they made an obvious decision not to deploy them. The last thing we need is to allow this right-wing attack on the Capitol to become a vehicle to give police more tools to clamp down on the progressive, peaceful social justice movement.” (The DC Police purchased over $130,000 worth of tear gas just before the November 2020 election and turned down offers from the Pentagon for backup.)

Chip Gibbons, Policy Director for Defending Rights and Dissent agrees. “While we condemn these crimes against democracy, such antics cannot be used to justify new repressive measures against actual protests, restrictions of the right of peaceful assembly, or curtailment of speech,” said Gibbons in a statement.

Groups including Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, Center for Protest Law and Litigation, Defending Rights & Dissent and Justice for Muslims Collective are demanding probes into the federal and local police planning and response to Wednesday’s events.

Simon Davis-Cohen is a writer and filmmaker focusing on political rights, municipal activism and mass incarceration. He works on research and communications for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and edits the Ear to the Ground newsletter. Follow him on Twitter: @SimonDavisCohen

Will Unprovoked War With Iran Be Trump's Parting Gift to the World?

I will always regret that I did not do more to stop war with Vietnam. Now, I am calling on whistleblowers to step up and expose Trump’s plans

by Daniel Ellsberg

U.S. Pentagon. (Photo: Staff/AFP via Getty Images)

President Trump’s incitement of criminal mob violence and occupation of the Capitol makes clear there is no limitation whatever on the abuse of power he may commit in the next two weeks he remains in office. Outrageous as his incendiary performance was on Wednesday, I fear he may incite something far more dangerous in the next few days: his long-desired war with Iran.

Could he possibly be so delusional as to imagine that such a war would be in the interests of the nation or region or even his own short-term interests? His behavior and evident state of mind this week and over the last two months answers that question.

I am urging courageous whistleblowing today, this week, not months or years from now, after bombs have begun falling. It could be the most patriotic act of a lifetime.

The dispatch this week of B-52’s nonstop round-trip from North Dakota to the Iranian coast – the fourth such flight in seven weeks, one at year’s end – along with his build-up of US forces in the area, is a warning not only to Iran but to us.

In mid-November, as these flights began, the president had to be dissuaded at the highest levels from directing an unprovoked attack on Iran nuclear facilities. But an attack “provoked” by Iran (or by militias in Iraq aligned with Iran) was not ruled out.

US military and intelligence agencies have frequently, as in Vietnam and Iraq, provided presidents with false information that offered pretexts to attack our perceived adversaries. Or they’ve suggested covert actions that could provoke the adversaries to some response that justifies a US “retaliation”.

The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, in November was probably intended to be such a provocation. If so, it has failed so far, as did the assassination exactly a year ago of General Suleimani.

But time is now short to generate an exchange of violent actions and reactions that will serve to block resumption of the Iran nuclear deal by the incoming Biden administration: a pre-eminent goal not only of Donald Trump but of the allies he has helped bring together in recent months, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Evidently it would take more than individual murders to induce Iran to risk responses justifying a large-scale air attack before Trump leaves office. But US military and covert planning staffs are up to the task of attempting to meet that challenge, on schedule.

I was a participant-observer of such planning myself, with respect to Vietnam half a century ago. On 3 September 1964 – just a month after I had become special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, John T McNaughton – a memo came across my desk in the Pentagon written by my boss. He was recommending actions “likely at some point toprovoke a military DRV [North Vietnam] response … likely to provide good grounds for us to escalate if we wished”.

Such actions “that would tend deliberately to provoke a DRV reaction” (sic), as spelled out five days later by McNaughton’s counterpart at the state department, the assistant secretary of state William Bundy, might include “running US naval patrols increasingly close to the North Vietnamese coast” – ie running them within the 12-mile coastal waters the North Vietnamese claimed: as close to the beach as necessary, to get a response that might justify what McNaughton called “a full-fledged squeeze on North Vietnam [a progressively all-out bombing campaign]”, which would follow “especially if a US ship were sunk”.

I have little doubt that such contingency planning, directed by the Oval Office, for provoking, if necessary, an excuse for attacking Iran while this administration is still in office exists right now, in safes and computers in the Pentagon, CIA and the White House. That means there are officials in those agencies – perhaps one sitting at my old desk in the Pentagon – who have seen on their secure computer screens highly classified recommendations exactly like the McNaughton and Bundy memos that came across my desk in September 1964.

I regret I did not copy and convey those memos to the foreign relations committee in 1964, rather than five years later.

I will always regret that I did not copy and convey those memos – along with many other files in the top-secret safe in my office at that time, all giving the lie to the president’s false campaign promises that same fall that “we seek no wider war” – to Senator Fulbright’s foreign relations committee in September 1964 rather than five years later in 1969, or to the press in 1971. A war’s worth of lives might have been saved.

Current documents or digital files that contemplate provoking or “retaliating to” Iranian actions covertly provoked by us should not remain secret another moment from the US Congress and the American public, lest we be presented with a disastrous fait accompli before January 20, instigating a war potentially worse than Vietnam plus all the wars of the Middle East combined. It is neither too late for such plans to be carried out by this deranged president nor for an informed public and Congress to block him from doing so.

I am urging courageous whistleblowing today, this week, not months or years from now, after bombs have begun falling. It could be the most patriotic act of a lifetime.



Daniel Ellsberg was put on trial in 1971 for leaking the Pentagon Papers, but the case was dismissed in 1973 because of government misconduct. He is the author of "Papers on the War," "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers" and "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner." Follow him on Twitter: @DanielEllsberg

IRAN

Israel-Linked Assassinations: How Much Is the US Really Involved?

Any remaining objection to the idea that the United States would participate in the assassination of Iranians was rendered ridiculous by the January 2020 American assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

by Ted Snider

People hold posters showing the portrait of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Major General Qassem Soleimani and chant slogans during a protest outside the U.S. Consulate on January 05, 2020 in Istanbul, Turkey. Major General Qasem Soleimani, was killed by a U.S. drone strike outside the Baghdad Airport on January 3. Since the incident, tensions have risen across the Middle East. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)


Less than a month ago, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was murdered in a storm of bullets and explosions outside Tehran.

Common speculation has Israel as the assassin. A senior Israeli official, involved in the tracking of Fakhrizadeh, told The New York Times that the world should thank Israel for assassinating him and that Israel “would continue to act against the Iranian nuclear program as necessary.” According to paper, “One American official — along with two other intelligence officials — said that Israel was behind the attack.” Israeli security and intelligence expert Yossi Melman has explicitly attributed the assassination to the Israeli Mossad.

But given the American maximum pressure campaign on Iran and the close cooperation between Pompeo and Netanyahu, including their secret meeting in Saudi Arabia just five days before the Nov. 27 assassination, the question of American cooperation in, or at least prior knowledge and approval of the assassination forces itself into the conversation.

Fakhrizadeh would not be the first Iranian nuclear scientist to be murdered by Mossad. Mossad had a list of 15 targets, and between 2007 and 2012, at least seven were targeted. Six were successful, and several of those were traced back to Mossad.

Mossad’s program for assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists had its birth in May of 2003. It was then that Mossad director Meir Dagan and his deputy, Tamir Pardo, began a top secret plan to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. The plan included diplomatic pressure, sanctions, supporting Iranian opposition groups who sought regime change, disrupting nuclear equipment supplies, sabotaging nuclear facilities, and assassinating nuclear scientists.

To make the plan happen, a complete cooperation deal — including sharing intelligence, sources and methods — was signed between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President George W. Bush.

The intelligence-sharing partnership actually goes back many decades earlier, according to Ronen Bergman, author of 2018’s “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations.” In 1951, according to Bergman, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, along with Mossad founder Reuven Shiloah, traveled to the United States. Ben-Gurion met with Allen Dulles to establish relations; Shiloah met with the CIA’s James Angleton to work out details. According to CIA expert Jefferson Morley in his book, “The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton,” their agreement established “the foundation for the exchange of secret information between the two services and committed them to report to each other on subjects of mutual interest.”

According to Morley, Angleton then met Amos Manor, his counterpart in Israel’s Shin Bet. Manor would become head of Operation Balsam, Israel’s intelligence conduit to the U.S. Operation Balsam was the beginning of intelligence sharing between the two countries on “subjects of mutual interest.” Bergman, an expert on Israel’s assassination program, says that Operation Balsam provided the CIA with much intelligence, and that it is “a practice that continues to this day.”

However, according to Bergman, the 2003 cooperation pact did not extend to assassinations because Israel knew that assassinations were prohibited by U.S. law and that Washington would not cooperate in such targeted killings. CIA director Michael Hayden told Bergman that Israel never told the United States about their assassination plans and categorically denied any U.S. association with such operations.

There is evidence of American knowledge of and, perhaps, cooperation with, Israeli assassinations of Iranian scientists.

But in 2012, two senior officials in the Obama Administration revealed to NBC news that the assassinations of the Iranian nuclear scientists were carried out by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an expatriate Iranian opposition group that was aligned with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. They also confirmed that the MEK was being financed, armed and trained by Mossad. And, contrary to Hayden’s insistence that America did not know, they said that “the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign.”

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh supported this account. Hersh reported back in 2012 that Washington also contributed to MEK’s training. He says that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) began training the MEK in 2005 — a charge that JSOC strongly denies.

Although Hersh was not able to specifically link the MEK members reportedly trained by JSOC to those who carried out Israel’s assassinations, a former senior intelligence official told him that the assassinations “benefitted from American intelligence.” He told Hersh that the assassinations are “primarily being done by MEK through liaison with the Israelis, but the United States is now providing the intelligence.” The MEK has always denied any connection to the assassinations, including Fakrizadeh’s.

Nearly three months before Hersh’s New Yorker report, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a nuclear scientist who supervised a department at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was killed in an explosion on Jan. 11, 2012. “I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” then-State Department Secretary Hillary Clinton said in a strong condemnation of what was being called another Israel-linked assassination in Iran.

But there is evidence of American knowledge of and, perhaps, cooperation with, Israeli assassinations of Iranian scientists. There is also a historical precedent for U.S. knowledge of and, at the very least, turning a blind eye to, Israeli assassinations. Iranian nuclear scientists were not the only ones being assassinated by Israel. Palestinians were also being targeted. A secret deal was struck between Ariel Sharon and U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that, according to Bergman, committed Israel to “significantly reduce the construction of new settlements in exchange for American backing of the war with the Palestinians and of Israel’s targeted killing policy.”

But America’s relationship with Israeli assassinations stretches well beyond knowledge and turning a blind eye. Around the beginning of 2008, President Bush greenlighted Mossad chief Dagan’s request for Washington’s assistance in the assassination In Damascus of Imad Mugniyah, chief of Hezbollah’s international operations. On February 12, 2008, he was assassinated with U.S. assistance and close cooperation, according to later reports by The Washington Post and Newsweek.

Though the Post said Mossad was running the operation, Newsweek quoted an unnamed former U.S. official who participated in the project as asserting:, “That was us … The Israelis told us where he was and gave us logistical help. But we designed the bomb that killed him and supervised the operation.” It is clear from both reports that the U.S. involvement exceeds knowledge and crosses into participation.

And it may get worse. The Post reported that the bomb was “triggered . . . by agents with Mossad,” but according to Newsweek it was the U.S. who did the killing. Newsweek’s source insisted that “the Mossad agent would ID Mugniyah, and the CIA man would press the remote control.” 

Any remaining objection to the idea that the United States would participate in the assassination of Iranians was rendered ridiculous by the January 2020 American assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike outside the Baghdad airport.

His killing proved not only that Washington would assassinate Iranians, but that they would cooperate with Israel in doing so. According to an “Israeli army officer with knowledge of Israeli military assessments,” the assassination of Suleimani “did not come as a surprise” to the Israelis because “Israel had advance notice of the U.S. plan.” Netanyahu had been informed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

But Israel did more than know about it. According to multiple news reports, Israel participated in it. “Israeli intelligence was instrumental” and “confirmed and verified” informants’ information, tipping the U.S. off to which plane Suleimani was on, according to NBC News and Reuters at the time. Former Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman denied such reports, calling into question the media’s Israeli sources.

A long history forces the important question of how much the U.S. knew about the Fakhrizadeh assassination and other Israeli assassinations of Iranian scientists over the years.

Reporting on the Fakhrizadeh assassination on December 7, veteran Haaretz reporter Yossi Melman wrote that “it was most likely that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu … had consulted with … Donald Trump. Trump and his security and military aides must have been privy to the secret decision, because the U.S. had to prepare itself for all eventualities, including the worst-case scenario: Iran deciding to retaliate by hitting US targets, such as its bases in Bahrain or Qatar.”

The Trump Administration has denied Iran’s accusations that it was complicit in the murder.

Ted Snider is a columnist at AntiWar.com and a frequent contributor to Truthout and Mondoweiss, as well as other websites.

The Empire Is Not Done with Julian Assange

As is clear from the memoir of one of his attorneys, Michael Ratner,

the ends have always justified the means for those demanding

his global persecution.




by Chris Hedges

Published on Tuesday, January 05, 2021
by Scheerpost

Assange earned the eternal enmity of the Democratic Party establishment
by publishing 70,000 hacked emails belonging to the Democratic National
Committee and senior Democratic officials. (Photo: Hollie Adams/Getty Images)


Shortly after WikiLeaks released the Iraq War Logs in October 2010, which documented numerous US war crimes — including video images of the gunning down of two Reuters journalists and 10 other unarmed civilians in the Collateral Murder video, the routine torture of Iraqi prisoners, the covering up of thousands of civilian deaths and the killing of nearly 700 civilians that had approached too closely to US checkpoints — the towering civil rights attorneys Michael Ratner and Len Weinglass, who had defended Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case, met Julian Assange in a studio apartment in Central London, according to Ratner’s newly released memoir “Moving the Bar”.

Assange had just returned to London from Sweden where he had attempted to create the legal framework to protect WikiLeaks’ servers in Sweden. Shortly after his arrival in Stockholm, his personal bank cards were blocked. He had no access to funds and was dependent on supporters. Two of these supporters were women with whom he had consensual sex. As he was preparing to leave, the Swedish media announced that he was wanted for questioning about allegations of rape. The women, who never accused Assange of rape, wanted him to take an STD test. They had approached the police about compelling him to comply. “I did not want to put any charges on Julian Assange,” texted one of them on August 20 while she was still at the police station, but “the police were keen on getting their hands on him.” She said she felt “railroaded by the police.” Within 24 hours the chief prosecutor of Stockholm took over the preliminary investigation. He dropped the rape accusation, stating “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Assange, although not charged with a crime, cancelled his departure and remained in Sweden for another five weeks to cooperate with the investigation. A special prosecutor, Marianne Ny, was appointed to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct. Assange was granted permission to leave the country. He flew to Berlin. When Assange arrived in Berlin three encrypted laptops with documents detailing US war crimes had disappeared from his luggage.

“We consider the Swedish allegations a distraction,” Ratner told Assange, according to his memoir. “We’ve read the police reports, and we believe the authorities don’t have a case. We’re here because in our view you are in much more jeopardy in the US Len [Weinglass] can explain why.”

Assange, Ratner recalled, remained silent.

“WikiLeaks and you personally are facing a battle that is both legal and political,” Weinglass told Assange. “As we learned in the Pentagon Papers case, the US government doesn’t like the truth coming out. And it doesn’t like to be humiliated. No matter if it’s Nixon or Bush or Obama, Republican or Democrat in the White House. The US government will try to stop you from publishing its ugly secrets. And if they have to destroy you and the First Amendment and the rights of publishers with you, they are willing to do it. We believe they are going to come after WikiLeaks and you, Julian, as the publisher.”

“Come after me for what?” asked Julian.

“Espionage,” Weinglass continued, according to the memoir. “They’re going to charge Bradley Manning with treason under the Espionage Act of 1917. We don’t think it applies to him because he’s a whistleblower, not a spy. And we don’t think it applies to you either because you are a publisher. But they are going to try to force Manning into implicating you as his collaborator. That’s why it’s crucial that WikiLeaks and you personally have an American criminal lawyer to represent you.”

Ratner and Weinglass laid out potential scenarios.

“The way it could happen,” Ratner said, “is that the Justice Department could convene a secret grand jury to investigate possible charges against you. It would probably be in northern Virginia, where everyone on the jury would be a current or retired CIA employee or have worked for some other part of the military-industrial complex. They would be hostile to anyone like you who’d published US government secrets. The grand jury could come up with a sealed indictment, issue a warrant for your arrest, and request extradition.”

“What happens if they extradite me?” asked Julian.

“They fly you to where the indictment is issued,” Weinglass told Assange. “Then they put you into some hellhole in solitary, and you get treated like Bradley Manning. They put you under what they call special administrative measures, which means you probably would not be allowed communication with anyone. Maybe your lawyer could go in and talk to you, but the lawyer couldn’t say anything to the press.”

“And it’s very, very unlikely that they would give you bail,” Ratner added.

“Is it easier to extradite from the UK or from Sweden?” asked Sarah Harrison, who was at the meeting.

“We don’t know the answer to that,” Ratner replied. “My guess is that you would probably have the most support and the best legal team in a bigger country like the UK In a smaller country like Sweden, the US can use its power to pressure the government, so it would be easier to extradite you from there. But we need to consult with a lawyer who specializes in extradition.”

Assange’s British lawyer, also at the meeting, proposed that Assange return to Sweden for further questioning.

“I don’t think that’s wise,” Weinglass said, “unless the Swedish government guarantees that Julian will not be extradited to another country because of his publishing work.”

“The problem is that Sweden doesn’t have bail,” Ratner explained. “If they put you in jail in Stockholm and the US pressures the government to extradite you, Sweden might send you immediately to the US and you’d never see the light of day again. It’s far less risky to ask the Swedish prosecutor to question you in London.”

The US government’s determination to extradite Assange and imprison him for life, despite the fact that Assange is not a US citizen and WikiLeaks is not a US based publication, Ratner understood from the start, will be unwavering and relentless.

In the 132-page ruling (pdf) issued today in London by Judge Vanessa Baraitser of the Westminster Magistrates’ Court the court refused to grant an extradition request only because of the barbarity of the conditions under which Assange would be held while imprisoned in the US.

“Faced with the conditions of near total isolation without the protective factors which limited his risk at [Her Majesty’s Prison] Belmarsh, I am satisfied the procedures described by the US will not prevent Mr. Assange from finding a way to commit suicide,” said Baraitser, “and for this reason I have decided extradition would be oppressive by reason of mental harm and I order his discharge.”

Assange is charged with violating 17 counts of the Espionage Act, along with an attempt to hack into a government computer. Each of the 17 counts carries a potential sentence of 10 years. The additional charge that Assange conspired to hack into a government computer has a maximum sentence of five years. The judge ominously accepted all of the charges leveled by US prosecutors against Assange — that he violated the Espionage Act by releasing classified information and was complicit in assisting his source, Chelsea Manning, in the hacking of a government computer. It is a very, very dangerous ruling for the media. And if, on appeal, and the US has already said it would appeal, the higher court is assured that Assange will be held in humane conditions, it paves the way for his extradition.

Assange has done more than any contemporary journalist or publisher to expose the inner workings of empire and the lies and crimes of the US ruling elite.The publication of classified documents is not yet a crime in the United States. If Assange is extradited and convicted, it will become one. The extradition of Assange would mean the end of journalistic investigations into the inner workings of power. It would cement into place a terrifying global, corporate tyranny under which borders, nationality and law mean nothing. Once such a legal precedent is set, any publication that publishes classified material, from The New York Times to an alternative website, will be prosecuted and silenced.

Assange has done more than any contemporary journalist or publisher to expose the inner workings of empire and the lies and crimes of the US ruling elite. The deep animus towards Assange, as fierce within the Democratic Party as the Republican Party, and the cowardice of the media and watchdog groups such as PEN to defend him, mean that all he has left are courageous attorneys, such as Ratner, activists, who protested outside the court, and those few voices of conscience willing to become pariahs in his defense.

Ratner’s memoir, which is a profile in courage of the many dissidents, including Assange, he valiantly defended, is also a profile of courage of one of the greatest civil rights attorneys of our era. There are few people I respect more than Michael Ratner, who I accompanied to visit Assange when he was trapped in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. His memoir is not only about his lifelong fight against racial injustice, a rising corporate totalitarianism, and the crimes of empire, but is a sterling example of what it means to live the moral life.

Assange earned the eternal enmity of the Democratic Party establishment by publishing 70,000 hacked emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee and senior Democratic officials. The emails were copied from the accounts of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. The Podesta emails exposed the donation of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and identified both nations as major funders of Islamic State [ISIL/ISIS]. It exposed the $657,000 that Goldman Sachs paid to Hillary Clinton to give talks, a sum so large it can only be considered a bribe. They exposed Clinton’s repeated mendacity. She was caught in the emails, for example, telling the financial elites that she wanted “open trade and open borders” and believed Wall Street executives were best positioned to manage the economy, a statement that contradicted her campaign statements. It exposed the Clinton campaign’s efforts to influence the Republican primaries to ensure that Donald Trump was the Republican nominee. They exposed Clinton’s advance knowledge of questions in a primary debate. They exposed Clinton as the principal architect of the war in Libya, a war she believed would burnish her credentials as a presidential candidate.

The Democratic Party, which routinely blames Russia for its election loss to Trump, charges that the Podesta emails were obtained by Russian government hackers. Hillary Clinton has called WikiLeaks a Russian front. James Comey, the former FBI director, however, conceded that the emails were probably delivered to WikiLeaks by an intermediary, and Assange has said the emails were not provided by “state actors.”

Journalists can argue that this information, like the war logs, should have remained hidden, but they can’t then call themselves journalists.

A few weeks after Ratner’s first meeting with Assange, WikiLeaks published 220 documents from Cablegate, the US State Department classified cables that Chelsea Manning had provided to WikiLeaks. The cables had been sent to the State Department from US diplomatic missions, consulates, and embassies around the globe. The 251,287 cables dated from December 1966 to February 2010. The release dominated the news and filled the pages of The New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El País.

“The extent and importance of the Cablegate revelations took my breath away,” Ratner, who died in 2016, wrote in his memoir. “They pulled back the curtain and revealed how American foreign policy functions behind-the-scenes, manipulating events all over the globe. They also provided access to US diplomats’ raw, frank, and often embarrassing assessments of foreign leaders. Some of the most stunning revelations:

In 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered US diplomats to spy on UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and other UN representatives from China, France, Russia, and the UK.

The information she asked for included DNA, iris scans, fingerprints, and personal passwords. US and British diplomats also eavesdropped on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The US has been secretly launching missile, bomb, and drone attacks on terrorist targets in Yemen, killing civilians. But to protect the US, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told Gen. David Petraeus, “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.”

Saudi King Abdullah repeatedly urged the US to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities to “cut off the head of the snake.” Other leaders from Israel, Jordan, and Bahrain also urged the US to attack Iran.

The White House and Secretary of State Clinton refused to condemn the June 2009 military coup in Honduras that overthrew elected President Manuel Zelaya, ignoring a cable from the US embassy there that described the coup as “illegal and unconstitutional.” Instead of calling for the restoration of Zelaya, the US supported elections orchestrated by the coup’s leader, Roberto Micheletti. Opposition leaders and international observers boycotted those elections.
Employees of a US government contractor in Afghanistan, DynCorp, hired “dancing boys” — a euphemism for child prostitutes — to be used as sex slaves.

In various cables, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is called “an extremely weak man who did not listen to facts but was instead easily swayed by anyone who came to report even the most bizarre stories or plots against him.” Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and her husband Néstor Kirchner, the former president, are described as “paranoid.” President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is described as “thin-skinned” and “authoritarian.” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is called “feckless, vain, and ineffective.”

Perhaps most important, the cables said that Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali had “lost touch with the Tunisian people” and described “high-level corruption, a sclerotic regime, and deep hatred of . . . Ben Ali’s wife and her family.” These revelations led to the eventual overthrow of the regime in Tunisia. The Tunisian protests spread like wildfire to other countries of the Middle East, resulting in the widespread revolts of the Arab Spring of 2011.

Secretary of State Clinton said after the release of the cables, “Disclosures like these tear at the fabric of the proper functioning of responsible government.” Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department was conducting “an active, ongoing criminal investigation into WikiLeaks.” Then US Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI) called WikiLeaks “a terrorist organization.” Former GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called for WikiLeaks to be shut down and Assange treated as “an enemy combatant who’s engaged in information warfare against the United States.”

“For those who ran the American empire, the truth hurt,” Ratner writes. “For the rest of us, it was liberating. With the 2010 release of the Collateral Murder video, the Afghan War Logs, the Iraq War Logs, and Cablegate, WikiLeaks went far beyond traditional investigative reporting. It proved that in the new digital world, full transparency was not only possible, but necessary in order to hold governments accountable for their actions.”

“On November 30, 2010, two days after the initial release of Cablegate, Sweden issued an Interpol ‘Red Alert Notice’ normally used to warn about terrorists,” Ratner goes on. “It also issued a European Arrest Warrant seeking Assange’s extradition to Sweden. Since he was wanted only for questioning about the sexual misconduct allegations, it seemed clear from the timing and severity of the warrant that the US had successfully pressured the Swedes.”

The efforts to extradite Assange intensified. He was held for ten days in solitary confinement at Wandsworth Prison before being released on bail of 340,000 pounds. He spent 551 days under house arrest, forced to wear an electronic anklet and check in with police twice a day. Visa, Mastercard, Bank of America, and Western Union refused to process donations to WikiLeaks.

“It became virtually impossible for anyone to donate to WikiLeaks, and its income immediately plummeted by 95 percent,” Ratner writes. “But none of the financial institutions could point to any illegal activity by WikiLeaks, and none had imposed any restrictions on WikiLeaks’ mainstream co-publishers. The financial blockade applied only to WikiLeaks.”

Ratner was soon spending several days a month in England conferring with Assange and his legal team. Ratner also attended the trial at Fort Meade in Maryland for Chelsea Manning (then Bradley Manning), certain that it would illuminate how the US government intended to go after Assange.

“Prosecutors in the Bradley Manning case revealed internet chat logs between Manning and an unnamed person at WikiLeaks who they said colluded with Manning by helping the accused traitor engineer a reverse password,” he writes. “Without supporting evidence, prosecutors claimed the unnamed person was Assange. Both Manning and Assange denied it. Nonetheless, it was clear that what Len [Weinglass] and I had predicted was happening. The case against Bradley Manning was also a case against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. The two were inextricably linked.”

Manning was charged with 22 violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Espionage Act, including aiding the enemy — which carries a possible death sentence — wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the internet, and theft of public property.

“I couldn’t get over the irony of it all,” Ratner writes. “On trial was the whistle-blower who leaked documents showing the number of civilians killed in Iraq, the Collateral Murder video, Reuters journalists being killed, children being shot. To me, the people who should be the defendants were the ones who started the Afghan and Iraq wars, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the officials who carried out torture, the people who committed the very crimes that Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks exposed. And those who should be observing were the ghosts of the dead Reuters journalists and the ghosts of the children and others killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“A week after Manning’s arraignment, WikiLeaks published an internal e-mail dated January 26, 2011 from the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor),” Ratner goes on. “Part of a trove of five million e-mails that the hacker group Anonymous obtained from Stratfor’s servers, it was written by Stratfor Vice President Fred Burton, a former State Department counter-terrorism expert. It stated clearly: ‘We have a sealed indictment on Assange. Pls protect.’ Another of Burton’s e-mails was more vivid: ‘Assange is going to make a nice bride in prison. Screw the terrorist. He’ll be eating cat food forever.’”

“The e-mails revealed how far the US government would go to protect its dirty secrets, and how it would use its own secrecy as a weapon,” Ratner writes. “Somehow Stratfor, which has been called a shadow CIA, had information about this sealed indictment that neither WikiLeaks, Assange, nor his lawyers had.”

Jeremy Hammond was sentenced to the maximum ten years in federal prison for the Stratfor hack and leak. He remains imprisoned.

On June 14, 2012, the UK Supreme Court issued its verdict affirming the extradition order to Sweden. Assange, cornered, was granted political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he would remain for seven years until British police in April 2019 raided the embassy, sovereign territory of Ecuador, and placed him in solitary confinement in the notorious high-security HM Prison Belmarsh.

The arrest eviscerates all pretense of the rule of law and the rights of a free press. The illegalities, embraced by the Ecuadorian, British and US governments, in the seizure of Assange were ominous. They presaged a world where the internal workings, abuses, corruption, lies and crimes — especially war crimes — carried out by corporate states and the global ruling elite will be masked from the public. They presaged a world where those with the courage and integrity to expose the misuse of power will be hunted down, tortured, subjected to sham trials and given lifetime prison terms in solitary confinement. They presaged an Orwellian dystopia where news is replaced with propaganda, trivia and entertainment.

Under what law did Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno capriciously terminate Julian Assange’s rights of asylum as a political refugee? Under what law did Moreno authorize British police to enter the Ecuadorian Embassy — diplomatically sanctioned sovereign territory — to arrest a naturalized citizen of Ecuador? Under what law did Prime Minister Theresa May order the British police to grab Assange, who has never committed a crime? Under what law did President Donald Trump demand the extradition of Assange, who is not a US citizen and whose news organization is not based in the United States?

“As a journalist and publisher of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange had every right to asylum,” Ratner writes. “The law is clear. The exercise of political free speech — including revealing government crimes, misconduct, or corruption — is internationally protected and is grounds for asylum. The US government has recognized this right, having granted asylum to several journalists and whistleblowers, most notably from China.”

“My view is that mass surveillance is not really about preventing terrorism, but is much more about social control,” Ratner writes. “It’s about stopping an uprising like the ones we had here in the US in the ’60s and ’70s. It shocks me that Americans are passively allowing this and that all three branches of government have done nothing about it. Despite mass surveillance, my message for people is the same one that Mother Jones delivered a century ago: organize, organize, organize. Yes, the surveillance state will try to scare you. They will be watching and listening. You won’t even know whether your best friend is an informant. Take whatever security precautions you can. But do not be intimidated. Whether you call it the sweep of history or the sweep of revolution, in the end, the surveillance state cannot stop people from moving toward the kind of change that will make their lives better.”

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show On Contact. His most recent book is "America: The Farewell Tour" (2019).

In Israel, Vaccine Leadership or Medical Apartheid?

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza direly need the COVID-19 vaccine.

by Ariel Gold
Published on Wednesday, January 06, 2021
by Common Dreams


A Palestinian child clad in mask due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic stands outside a mosque upon arriving for the prayers of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday which starts at the conclusion of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, in Gaza City on May 24, 2020.

 (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images)


The media is abuzz these days with headlinessuch as “How Israel Became a World Leader in Vaccinating Against Covid-19.” While the U.S. has so far vaccinated only 1.3% of its population against COVID-19, Israel has already given the vaccine to over 14% of its citizens. In explaining this, the media cites Israel’s socialized medicine, the fact that the country is small but wealthy (allowing Israel to pay $62 a dose, compared to the $19.50 the U.S. is paying), and the heavily digitized nature of Israel’s health care system. But below the headlines celebrating Israel’s vaccination rates lies a far darker story about health inequality.

Israel has a population of around nine million. 20% of Israel’s population are Palestinian citizens of Israel. These people can vote in elections, have representation in the Knesset, and are being vaccinated against COVID-19. But, there are another around five million Palestinians who live under Israeli rule, without rights, and like the rest of the world, are suffering from the pandemic.

Since 1967, Israel’s settler population has ballooned to close to 500,000, with Israeli settler regional councils controlling 40% of West Bank land. Despite the U.S.-facilitated normalization deals with the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco that occurred during the latter half of the year, that were supposed to have halted Israel’s annexing of the West Bank, 2020 has seen the largest number of settlement unit approvals since the watchdog group Peace Now began tracking in 2012.

Thanks to Israel’s air, land, and sea siege, as well as multiple military assaults on the crowded enclave, there is a severe shortage of medicine and medical equipment in Gaza along with significant poverty and unemployment. Quarantining and maintaining sanitation in Gaza is extremely difficult.


Despite the Palestinian Authority and Hamas supposedly being the official governments of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel is really in charge. Israel controls the borders, currency, central bank and even collects taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA). It maintains the right to carry out military operations on Palestinian land and controls the amount of freedom, or lack thereof, that Palestinians are granted. Even in areas like Ramallah, supposedly under the complete control of the Palestinian Authority, Israel reserves the right to enter the city at any time, to close streets and shops, to burst into homes, and to make warrantless military arrests.

Israel’s distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine is far from the country’s only system of inequality. Israeli elections do not include the approximately five million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians in East Jerusalem, while they can vote in municipal elections, cannot cast ballots in national elections, such as the one slated to take place in March (the fourth in two years).




Perhaps Israel’s most flagrant demonstration of having two sets of laws for two groups of people is its court system in the West Bank. While Israeli settlers, residing there illegally according to international law, are subject to Israeli civilian law, their Palestinian neighbors live under Israeli military law. This makes them subject to statutes such as Military Order 101, which bans even peaceful protest.

According to the Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, the Palestinian Authority is solely responsible for the health care of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. However, those deals were part of the vision that contemplated a more complete peace agreement being signed within five years. Almost three decades later, this larger peace agreement still hasn’t happened and Israel has entrenched its settlement enterprise occupation while flouting international law and dodging its moral, legal, and humanitarian obligations as an occupying power. Providing the COVID-19 vaccine to Palestinians is one of these obligations.

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza direly need the COVID-19 vaccine. As of January 5, 2021, there were 143,169 active cases and 1,505 COVID deaths in the Palestinian territories. The infection and death rates are climbing dangerously. In a period of just 24 hours, 1,191 new cases and 20 deaths from the virus were announced. The situation in Gaza is particularly worrisome. Gaza suffers from up to 12 hours a day without electricity. Thanks to Israel’s air, land, and sea siege, as well as multiple military assaults on the crowded enclave, there is a severe shortage of medicine and medical equipment in Gaza along with significant poverty and unemployment. Quarantining and maintaining sanitation in Gaza is extremely difficult.

The World Health Organization’s Covax system, aimed at assisting impoverished countries, has pledged to vaccinate 20% of the Palestinian territories. But Covax vaccines don’t yet have the necessary “emergency use” approval of the WHO. Gerald Rockenschaub, head of the WHO office in Jerusalem, said Covax vaccines aren’t likely to be available for distribution in the Palestinian territories until “early to mid-2021.” According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the territories have been in a financial crisis, leaving them next to no funds to purchase vaccine doses. Even when they were able to find the money, the vaccines they attempted to purchase from Russia in December could not be delivered as Russia determined that they did not have enough doses to sell.

In the first week of 2021, the Palestinian Authority began to inquire if Israel would help them obtain the vaccine. So far, Israeli officials have said that they might offer whatever they have leftover to the West Bank and Gaza after vaccinating Israeli citizens and East Jerusalem Palestinians. If that isn’t medical apartheid, I don’t know what is.

Ariel Gold is the national co-director and Senior Middle East Policy Analyst with CODEPINK for Peace.

 

In 'Brutal Blow' to Wildlife and Gift to Big Oil, Trump Finalizes Rollback of Migratory Bird Treaty Act

"The Trump administration is signing the death warrants of millions of birds across the country."

by

Julia Conley, staff writer

A pied-billed grebe on an oil-covered evaporation pond at a commercial oilfield

 wastewater disposal facility. An estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 migratory birds

 die each year in oilfield production skim pits and oil-covered evaporation ponds.

(Photo: USFWS Mountain Prairie/Flickr/cc)

"Even though a federal court already ruled that the Trump administration cannot eliminate protections for migratory birds, the administration continues its relentless campaign to undermine environmental protections and harm wildlife." 
—Jamie Rappoport Clark, Defenders of Wildlife

Just over two weeks before President Donald Trump is set to leave the White House, his U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday finalized a rollback of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—a law that's been in place since 1918 and which conservation groups credit with holding corporate polluters accountable for harming bird species.

In what the Western Values Project called a "parting gift to Big Oil by corrupt former oil lobbyist Interior Secretary David Bernhardt," the USFWS announced a new rule under which the federal government will no longer penalize or prosecute companies when their actions cause the inadvertent death of birds. 

In the case of oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed more than one million birds in 2010; electrocutions by power lines; ducks and other species stuck in fossil fuel tailings ponds; and illegal actions like the spraying of banned pesticides, companies will no longer be held to account as long as they don't intentionally kill birds.

Antithetical to its purpose, US Fish and Wildlife Service finalized a rule rolling back protections for migratory birds, according to a document to be published in the Federal Register this week. https://t.co/Q2xrbW3RBg

— Aric Caplan (@CaplanComms) January 5, 2021

When it was passed into law more than 100 years ago, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) made it illegal to hunt, take, capture, or kill birds from endangered species "by any means or in any manner."

Bernhardt said Tuesday the new rule "reaffirms the original meaning and intent of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act," while the Center for Western Priorities called it a "radical interpretation of the law."

"The Trump administration wants to make sure extractive industries can continue to kill birds after they leave office," said Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the group. "Secretary Bernhardt's former oil industry clients have explicitly asked for this policy change, and now he is delivering, just days before returning to the private sector. By finalizing this proposal, the Trump administration is signing the death warrants of millions of birds across the country."

Conservation groups pointed to data showing that three billion birds have been lost in North America since 1970, while six million fewer birds were counted by the Audubon Society in 2019 than previous tallies showed.

As Common Dreams reported in September, the wildfires that overwhelmed the West Coast last year were thought to be behind the deaths of thousands of migratory birds in the southwest. 

"This brutal blow hits America's birds when many populations are already plummeting, so it's really the last thing they need," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Trump officials are giving oil companies and other polluters a license to kill birds. Vast numbers of birds will be electrocuted by power lines, drowned in oil waste pits and killed in other easily preventable ways."

Advocates say the MBTA has worked in recent years to show the oil and gas industry that it will be held accountable if its activities kills birds. The federal government reached a $100 million settlement with BP after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), who was named as President-elect Biden's nominee for Interior Secretary last month, is expected to repeal the USFWS's rule, but that process could take time. Meanwhile, Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) introduced the Migratory Bird Protection Act last year as the administration was considering the rollback, with the aim of reaffirming the original law's intent of protecting vulnerable birds—not corporations. 

Advocates also expressed hope that the federal courts will strike down what Greenwald called the Trump administration's "reckless attack on one of America’s oldest and most important conservation laws," as Judge Valerie Caproni of the Southern District of New York did in August.

"There is nothing in the text of the MBTA that suggests that in order to fall within its prohibition, activity must be directed specifically at birds," Caproni said in her ruling at the time. "Nor does the statute prohibit only intentionally killing migratory birds." 

This brazen effort will most certainly be in vain as the administration already found out in court that it can’t unilaterally gut the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and its obligation to protect and conserve birds. #ProtectTheBirds

— Audubon Society (@audubonsociety) January 5, 2021

Through the courts, Congress, and administrative action, it is critical we do everything we can to not only reinstate the full protections of the Migratory