Calm before the storm: the number of cyberattacks decreases in the third quarter of 2021

by Anna Zhadan

28 December 2021

It seems like malicious actors are giving companies a second to breathe freely. This quarter, analysts recorded an overall decrease in cyberattacks compared to Q2 2021, but the number of threats targeting individuals increased, according to the report by Positive Technologies.

On December 23, Positive Technologies released their Cybersecurity Threatscape: Q3 2021 report, overviewing the latest attack vectors and trends. The overall share of cyberattacks decreased by 4.8% in the third quarter of 2021, but a small tendency towards an increase in attacks targeting individuals also became evident, rising from 12% last quarter to 14%.

Such results can be attributed to two factors. The first has to do with the decrease in ransomware incidents - this tendency is described by the report as a “rapid decline.” As such, ransomware peaked in April with 120 attacks recorded and was down to 45 in September - an overall 65% decline. Threat actors mostly targeted government, healthcare, scientific and educational institutions, with REvil, LockBit 2.0, and Conti at the cybercriminal forefronts.

The second reason concerns the departure or rebranding of some major ransomware groups. As such, REvil joined DarkSide to form the BlackMatter ransomware group after international cooperation caused their servers to shut down.

“So many ransomware groups rebranded around the same time this July, and now we see the results of that. I imagine all these new groups are going to want to establish themselves and potentially increase targeting, activity, and increase the level of attack against larger organizations to rebuild that name,” Alec Alvadaro, threat intelligence manager at the digital risk protection company Digital Shadows, said during the webinar in September.

Later in November, the group announced that the new project was being canceled following rising pressure from authorities. Although, many experts saw it as simply another rebranding campaign.

“Taking these factors into account, it is likely this is yet another ransomware group pretending to shut down when in reality it is just a rebrand and launch of a new, improved version sometime soon in the future,” Peter Mackenzie, the Director of incident response at cybersecurity company Sophos, told CyberNews.

Attacks against individuals accelerate

Although the overall state of cybercrime is slightly less daunting in Q3 of 2021 than Q2, attacks against individuals are on the rise. Most of the attacks targeted people (83%), computers or network equipment (39%), and mobile devices (20%.) Overall, 62% of all attacks against individual users resulted in data leaks. Threat actors were primarily interested in credentials (42%), personal data (21%), and payment card information (15%.)

There was an evident increase in the use of Remote Access Trojan (by 2.5 times) and loaders (by 2.2 times) against individual users. Out of the RATs and loaders, the report highlights the FatalRAT Trojan, which is distributed via malicious links in the Telegram messenger, and MosaicLoader, disseminated through ads and targeting users looking for pirated versions of software.

The number of attacks against individual users via social engineering tactics has also increased - up from 67% in Q3 2020 to the current value of 83%. In comparison, the number of social engineering incidents involving organizations plummeted from 47% in Q3 2020 to 41%. Other popular attack tools on individuals were malware (51%) and hacking (11%.) Malware was mainly distributed via websites (34%), email (19%,) and compromised computers (16%.)
Attacks against organizations drop slightly

Unlike with individuals, the number of targeted attacks against companies has declined from 77% in Q2 to 75% in Q3. Targets in this segment included computer networks (75%,) people (41%,) and web resources (21%.) The most popular methods used were malware (51%,) social engineering (41%,) and hacking (33%.)

Among organizations, various industries were targeted, but the government (21%,) healthcare (12%,) and manufacturing sectors (9%) were especially of interest to criminals. According to the report, the most notable attacks on the state agencies were the hit on the Greek city of Thessaloniki, which paralyzed its most critical IT systems, and on the Italian region of Lazio, which also resulted in disruption to its IT infrastructure.

Overall, incidents resulted in sensitive data leaks (45%,) disruption to activities (38%,) and financial losses (24%.)

While there is a popular misconception that only big firms are of interest to threat actors, it is not the case. Small companies often present more opportunities to cybercriminals, as they have fewer resources to invest in cybersecurity. As such, the Verizon Business Data Breach Investigation Report (DBIR) showed that SMEs were at a high risk of data breaches and cyberattacks during the COVID-19 pandemic. And the trend is unlikely to slow down.

While it seems like there is a slight improvement in the number of attacks this quarter, such values constantly change and depend on a variety of factors. To stay safe, it is important to maintain proper cybersecurity hygiene, implement security measures, and not let your guard down.

Zuckerberg’s ring of power

As in ancient Athens, our task is to empower the demos without succumbing to the lure of power.

Yanis Varoufakis
Published December 29, 2021 

Once upon a time, in the ancient kingdom of Lydia, a shepherd called Gyges found a magic ring, which, when rotated on his finger, made him invisible. So, Gyges walked unseen into the royal palace, seduced the queen, murdered the king, and installed himself as ruler. If you were to discover such a ring or another device that granted you exorbitant power, Socrates asked, would it be wise to use it to do or get whatever you want?

Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement of some fabulous digital metaverse awaiting humanity gives new pertinence to Socrates’ answer: People should renounce excessive power and, in particular, any device capable of granting too many of our wishes. Was Socrates right? Would reasonable people renounce the ring? Should they?

Socrates’ own disciples were not convinced. Plato reports that they expected almost everyone to succumb to the temptation, pretty much as Gyges had. But could this be because Gyges’ ring was not powerful, and thus not scary, enough? Might a device far more powerful than a ring that merely makes us invisible cause us to shudder at the thought of using it, as Socrates recommended? If so, what would such a device do?

The ring allowed Gyges to overcome rivals physically, thus removing several constraints impeding his desires. But, while invisibility allowed Gyges to murder the King’s guards, it went nowhere near removing all of Gyges’ constraints. What if there were a gadget, let’s call it the Freedom Device, that removed every constraint stopping us from doing whatever we want? What would a constraint-free existence be like once this Freedom Device was activated?

We would be able to fly like birds, travel to other galaxies in an instant, and perform feats experienced within the universes designed by talented video game developers. But that would not be enough. One of the harshest constraints is time: It forces us to forego reading a book while swimming in the sea or watching a play. So, to remove all constraints, our theoretical Freedom Device should also allow for infinite, concurrent experience. Still, one final constraint, perhaps the most perplexing, would remain: other people.

When Jill wants to go mountaineering with Jack, but Jack craves a romantic stroll along the beach, Jack is Jill’s constraint and vice versa. To liberate them from constraints, the Freedom Device should allow Jill to go mountaineering with a willing Jack while he is strolling with a version of her contented self along the beach. It would let us all inhabit the same virtual world but experience our mutual interactions differently. It would fashion not merely a universe of bliss but, in fact, a multiverse of infinite, simultaneous, overlapping pleasures. It would grant us, in other words, freedom not only from scarcity but also from what other people do to us, expect of us, or want from us. With all constraints gone, all dilemmas dissolved, all trade-offs eradicated, boundless satisfaction would be at our fingertips.

It is not hard to imagine Zuckerberg salivating at the thought of such a device. It would be the ultimate version of the “metaverse” into which he has said he wants to immerse Facebook’s 2 billion-plus users. I can imagine him letting us sample a cornucopia of pleasures for an instant, free of charge, just enough to crave more, at which point he would charge users accordingly. Every nanosecond of immersion in this multiverse would produce enormous multiple pleasures—for which he would charge us again and again. Before long, the capitalisation of Meta, the company that now owns Facebook, would dwarf that of all other corporations put together.

The fact that our technologists are far from inventing the Freedom Device is irrelevant, as was the fact that Gyges’ ring was mythical. Socrates’ question, resting on these two science-fiction devices, one ancient and one modern, remains central: Is it wise to deploy exorbitant power over others, and over nature, in pursuit of our desires?

Big Tech and free marketeers think nothing of it: What’s wrong with joy? Why would anyone resist simultaneous experiences that satisfy one’s strongest desires? How is it wrong for Zuckerberg to make money from people who want to pay him for liberation from all constraints?

Socrates’ answer remains as apt today as it was 2,500 years ago: The price you pay for deploying excessive power is a disordered soul—that is, radical unhappiness. Whether you are a client seeking absolute control of your senses within a multiverse created by some device, or Zuckerberg striving to own the digital realm into which billions will soon be immersed, your misery is guaranteed. A successful life requires the capacity to overcome our hunger for power. It presupposes an understanding that power, in the hands of contradictory beings like us, is a dangerous double-edged sword.

Excessive power is counterproductive, even self-defeating, because we crave interaction with other minds that we cannot control, even while craving to control them. When others do what we do not want them to do, we feel disappointed, angry, or sad. But the moment we controlled them fully, their consent would give us no pleasure, and their approval would not boost our self-esteem.

Learning to appreciate that control is an illusion is hard, especially when we are prepared to sacrifice almost everything, to pay any price, to control others. But if we are to stop others—Zuckerberg, for example—from controlling us, it is a lesson we must learn.

Socrates was keen to warn us against yielding to the temptation of the magical ring, pointing to Gyges’ unhappiness. Today, with techno-feudalism and various immersive metaverses in the pipeline, his warning is more relevant than ever. As in ancient Athens, our tricky task is to empower the demos without succumbing to the lure of power.

—Project Syndicate




Yanis Varoufaki a former finance minister of Greece, is the leader of the MeRA25 party and Professor of Economics at the University of Athens.

Russians have called out Poland and Germany for the reverse on Jamal (Yamal), because they want to continue upping the prices

According to the Russians, the use of the reverse flow on the Yamal gas pipeline in Poland by the Germans is unreasonable. They are joined in criticism by Yulia Tymoshenko accusing Ukraine of paying extra to European intermediaries. In reality, however, it is a routine element of the EU gas market and a prelude to the polonisation of Yamal’s capacity. Meanwhile, the Russians can continue fuelling uncertainty, which will further increase natural gas prices that are already record-high.

The Russians accuse Germans of “unreasonable sale of gas” to Poland via the reverse flow on the Yamal gas pipeline. Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that this gas goes to Ukraine, and Yulia Tymoshenko, dubbed “the gas princess”, has accused Kyiv of overpaying for Russian gas coming from Europe. It is worth recalling that before the crisis, gas contracts with the Russians were more expensive than the offer on the European stock exchange.

“This (resold-ed.) gas comes from underground storage in Germany, which has already been used at 47 percent. And the winter is just beginning … this is not the most rational decision,” said Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kuprianov. This was his way of commenting on a routine purchase of gas on the German exchange by Poland’s  PGNiG and other entities, possible thanks to free access to the capacity of the Yamal gas pipeline after the end of the transmission contract with Gazprom and the introduction of EU regulations for the Polish section of the pipeline. PGNiG and other customers can use Yamal’s spare capacity through an auction to bring gas from the west, which constituted up to a quarter of deliveries to Poland in 2020.

Ultimately, the operator of the gas transmission pipelines Gaz-System wants to make the Polish section of the Yamal a normal part of the transmission system allowing gas to be distributed in different directions, including LNG and deliveries from the Baltic Pipe to the east. However, the Russians have suggested problems were coming.

“There is a reversal of gas flow from Germany to Poland and reportedly also to Ukraine, of the order of 3 million to 5 million cubic meters a day,” said the spokesman for Gazprom in a video that was posted on the internet. “This gas comes from underground storage in Germany, which have already been used at 47 percent. And winter is just beginning … this is not the most rational decision, ” Kuprianov added, quoted by the Polish News Agency. According to him, the prices of these supplies are “significantly higher than the volumes supplied by Gazprom”.

The Russians suggest that such a solution is unreasonable and argue for long-term contracts with Gazprom. However, these were on average several percent more expensive compared to the price on the European stock market in the period preceding the price records resulting from the energy crisis.

Yulia Tymoshenko, who was accused by her critics of signing an unfavorable long-term contract Naftogaz-Gazprom, expressed a similar view. Ukrainians have not imported gas directly from Gazprom since 2015, and instead import it through the European Union, including Poland. Tymoshenko has calculated that European brokers earn from USD 70 to 100 per 1000 cubic meters on such deliveries, and has accused the government in Kyiv of deceiving the public. The topic was also raised in Vladimir Putin’s end-of-year-speech, where he suggested that the gas from Yamal eventually lands by the Dnieper. PGNiG exports to Ukraine about a billion cubic meters of gas a year. Even dedicated shipments of American LNG from Świnoujście have made it there. It is possible that these deliveries will only increase in volume as part of the Poland-Ukraine-USA deal, we wrote about this on BiznesAlert.pl.

“This narrative has been manipulated. Since the Russians do not want to use the Yamal, the Poles can use it for reverse deliveries to the east,” BiznesAlert.pl’s sources in the gas sector argued. “Such suggestions are intended to add to the uncertainty in the market, which is driving up gas prices in Europe,” the informant adds.

Wojciech Jakóbik

Here's why critics are disturbed by the CDC's new guidance on isolating after getting COVID
Photo by Mulyadi on Unsplash
man in green shirt and blue knit cap sitting on floor

Julia Conley and
Common Dreams
December 28, 2021

Workers' rights advocates accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of putting business interests ahead of public health Tuesday after the agency released new guidelines for asymptomatic Americans with Covid-19, while experts expressed concern that the guidance will result in confusion and more transmission of the disease.

The CDC announced late Monday that instead of isolating at home for 10 days, people who contract the coronavirus will be advised to isolate for five days immediately after testing positive. If the person is asymptomatic after five days f, they may return to work, school, and other activities but should wear a mask everywhere, including at home if they live with others, for five more days.

People who still exhibit symptoms after five days of isolating should continue to stay home until they are asymptomatic, the CDC said.

The agency said the guidance was revised because scientists now understand people with Covid-19 to be most contagious in the two days prior to showing symptoms and for three days afterward.

CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky also said concerns about economic activity provoked the new guidelines, as the fast-spreading Omicron variant overwhelms airlines, hospitals, and other businesses.



Sick crew members forced the cancellation of thousands of flights on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and the spread of the variant is "significantly diminishing" the healthcare workforce at hospitals across the country, according to the American Public Health Association.

"We want to make sure there is a mechanism by which we can safely continue to keep society functioning while following the science," Walensky told the Associated Press.

As Common Dreams reported Sunday, the CDC's amended guidance for healthcare workers—who as of last week are advised to stay home for seven days instead of 10 if they are asymptomatic and test negative—alarmed the nation's largest nurses' union, which said the guidelines were changed in the interest of hospitals' "business operations, revenues, and profits."

The CDC's new guidelines for the larger public come after officials at Delta Air Lines and JetBlue Airways wrote to the agency asking them to consider shortening the advised isolation period for people with Covid-19.

Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, acknowledged that the CDC provided a medical explanation for the new guidance, but emphasized that "the fact that it aligns with the number of days pushed by corporate America is less than reassuring" and warned that businesses may use the guidelines to pressure employees out of isolation before they are ready to return to work.

"If any business pressures a worker to return to work before they feel better we will make clear it is an unsafe work environment, which will cause a much greater disruption than any 'staffing shortages,'" Nelson said in a statement. "We cannot allow pandemic fatigue to lead to decisions that extend the life of the pandemic or put policies on the backs of workers."

Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University, also expressed concern that the new guidelines "will too easily move to 'go back to work when you have symptoms'" and that many people who come out of isolation after just five days will not wear face masks after the isolation period.

Dr. Aaaron Glatt, a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, pointed out that the shortened isolation timeframe will make it more likely that people return to normal activities when they are still infectious.

"If you decrease it to five days, you're still going to have a small but significant number of people who are contagious," Glatt told the AP.

Some observers also urged the CDC to clarify the guidance, as the agency's website suggested people can come out of isolation if they are asymptomatic or if their "symptoms are resolving after five days."

While calling the new guidance "reasonable" and noting that the shorter isolation period could push people to get tested who otherwise would not have, Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Ashish Jha said the CDC should include more precautions to help prevent transmission as people come out of isolation.

Epidemiologist Dr. Michael Mina noted that he has previously recommended a shorter isolation period to the CDC, but pointed out that recommendation "was always with a negative test."

Pushing people to return to normal activities without a negative test is "reckless," Mina tweeted.

In the U.K., epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding pointed out, two negative tests are required before people can exit isolation.

"But somehow a five-day exit with zero negative test is okay in [the U.S.]?" he said. "American exceptionalism does not apply to a pandemic virus."

With the highly transmissible Omicron variant, Mina said, "Someone KNOWN to be positive for five days is, in my view, still one of the highest risk individuals in society for onward spread."

"We do SO much just to find people who are positive in [the] first place," he added. "When we do identify them, we should do everything possible to keep them from spreading."

Flight attendants​ fire back after CDC cuts quarantine time

Quintin Soloviev / Wikimedia Commons

Meaghan Ellis December 29, 2021

Flight attendants are not pleased with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) decision to loosen COVID guidelines as the Omicron variant spreads rapidly across the United States, per Politico.

After the CDC announced its recommendation to cut the COVID quarantine time from 10 to 5 days, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA International President Sara Nelson released a statement expressing airline workers' concerns. According to Nelson, the directive appears to be one that is influenced by the desires of corporate America as opposed to medical professionals.

"We said we wanted to hear from medical professionals on the best guidance for quarantine, not from corporate America advocating for a shortened period due to staffing shortages,” said Sara Nelson.

Although the CDC has insisted that there is a medical explanation behind its recommendation, Nelson notes that it actually aligns with the demands of corporations.

“The CDC gave a medical explanation about why the agency has decided to reduce the quarantine requirements from 10 to five days, but the fact that it aligns with the number of days pushed by corporate America is less than reassuring,” Nelson said.

Also speaking on behalf of flight attendants, Airlines for America President and CEO Nicholas Calio also penned a letter addressed to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. Calio urged the CDC to make 'scientifically sound" decisions based on clear data.

“As an industry, we stand ready to partner with the CDC to make scientifically sound policy decisions and work with you to collect empirical data necessary to appropriately monitor any guideline modifications,” Airlines for America President and CEO Nicholas Calio said in the letter.

The latest changes came shortly after Delta Air Lines made the initial request for the quarantine time period to be reduced to five days. The airline also argued that the previous 10-day guidance “was developed in 2020 when the pandemic was in a different phase without effective vaccines and treatments.”

People in US perplexed due to cut in COVID-19 isolation period by half

CDC guidelines endorsing to end isolation 5 days after infection prompt reactions amid concerns over high transmissibility of omicron variant

Dilan Pamuk |29.12.2021


ANKARA

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) recent guidelines to cut the isolation and quarantine period in half have raised questions among experts and caused concern among the general public in the US.

As omicron, the variant notorious for its rapid contagiousness, pervades and triggers new spikes in the number of cases worldwide, the CDC guidelines have been met with strong criticism and disagreement for recommending shorter isolation and allowing it to end without the requirement of a negative PCR test.

The unexpected changes in isolation and quarantine periods, amid recent spikes in cases due to the omicron variant, raised doubts about whether the CDC was caving in to the pressures of major sectors and profit-driven laypeople affected by the pandemic's negative impact on the workforce.

Concerns have also been raised about the health care sector, as health professionals may be required to return to work before fully recovering from COVID-19, leading to the spread of the virus and, as a result, a reduction in the number of health care workers available in hospitals.

Meanwhile, experts point out that there is not enough research involving the omicron form to back up CDC2's decision.

The CDC reduced the recommended COVID-19 isolation period from 10 days to five days on Monday, followed by another five days of wearing a mask around others for asymptomatic patients.

If the patient is asymptomatic, they may be released from isolation on the condition that they wear a mask around others for another five days to minimize the risk of infecting others, according to the CDC.

The CDC attributed the change in guidelines to the fact that the virus is transmitted in the early stages of the illness, usually within the first two days of infection.

The center also altered its quarantine recommendations for people who have been exposed to the coronavirus, depending on whether or not they have been vaccinated.

People who have not been vaccinated or have not had their last mRNA dose in more than six months should undergo a five-day quarantine followed by strict mask wear for another five days.

If a five-day quarantine is not feasible, the CDC recommends wearing a well-fitting mask at all times while around others for 10 days after exposure.

Individuals who have had their booster shot do not need to be quarantined after being exposed, but they should wear a mask for 10 days afterwards, it added.

CDC draws criticism for shorter COVID quarantine, isolation as omicron bears down
Data backs shorter periods, but experts say testing is key.

BETH MOLE - 12/28/2021

Enlarge / Travelers wait in line to check-in at LaGuardia Airport in New York, on December 24, 2021. -On Christmas Eve, airlines, struggling with the Omicron variant of Covid-19, have canceled over 2,000 flights globally, 454 of which are domestic, into or out of the US.

As the ultratransmissible omicron coronavirus variant bears down on the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday made a controversial decision to ease COVID-19 isolation and quarantine rules.

The country's omicron surge has sent graphs of case counts vertical, and is already causing severe strain on health systems, shuttering businesses, and wreaking havoc on holiday travel and festivities. The US is currently averaging over 243,000 new COVID-19 cases per day, near the country's all-time high of an average just over 250,000 per day set in early January 2021. Still, federal officials and public health experts say this is only the beginning of omicron's towering wave, which may not peak until next month.

The CDC's decision Monday is intended to ease the economic burden of the skyrocketing cases and follows an accumulation of data suggesting that infectiousness tends to wane two to three days after the onset of symptoms. However, some public health experts called the new rules "reckless" for not incorporating testing requirements.

As of Monday, the CDC says that people who test positive for COVID-19 but do not develop symptoms can cut their isolation period down from 10 days to only five—though they must wear a mask for an additional five days when around others. The new guidance does not stipulate that people should test negative prior to ending isolation at the earlier time period.

"The change is motivated by science demonstrating that the majority of SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs early in the course of illness, generally in the 1-2 days prior to onset of symptoms and the 2-3 days after," the CDC said in its announcement.Advertisement

Similarly, the CDC slashed quarantine periods for people who are unvaccinated or are vaccinated but past due for a booster dose. If someone in one of these two groups is exposed to someone with COVID-19—that is, they were within six feet of an infected person for a cumulative 15 or more minutes over a 24-hour period—they can quarantine for only five days, rather than the previous recommendation of 14 days. The exposed person must still mask for an additional five days after the quarantine period. Again, the new rule does not stipulate that an exposed person receive a negative test result to end quarantine.

A balance

The CDC did not change its guidance for people who are vaccinated and boosted or vaccinated and not yet eligible for a booster. For these groups, people do not need to quarantine after an exposure unless they develop symptoms. However, the CDC still recommends that they get tested and mask indoors.

In a statement Monday, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky called the new recommendations a "balance" between the fighting the formidable variant and keeping the country functioning. “The omicron variant is spreading quickly and has the potential to impact all facets of our society," Walensky said. "CDC’s updated recommendations for isolation and quarantine balance what we know about the spread of the virus and the protection provided by vaccination and booster doses. These updates ensure people can safely continue their daily lives. Prevention is our best option: get vaccinated, get boosted, wear a mask in public indoor settings in areas of substantial and high community transmission, and take a test before you gather.”

The decision drew praise from businesses and industry leaders, particularly those in charge of airlines. There have been thousands of flights cancelled over the holidays due, in part, to staff shortages. Just last week, the airline trade group, Airlines for America lobbied the CDC to cut recommended isolation periods.

In a statement late Monday, Delta Air Lines welcomed the CDC's updated guidance, saying it "allows more flexibility for Delta to schedule crews and employees to support a busy holiday travel season and a sustained return to travel by customers."

Delta's Chief Health Officer Dr. Henry Ting added that it "is a safe, science-based and more practical approach based on what we now know about the omicron variant."
"Reckless"

But, while other public health experts generally agreed with Ting's point, they were frustrated that the CDC's new guidance did not also require negative test results. Dr. Michael Mina, a Harvard epidemiologist and long-time advocate of rapid testing, called the new guidance "reckless."

He noted that while some people may be infectious for only three days, some may be infectious for longer periods, even up to 12 days. "I absolutely don’t want to sit next to someone who turned [positive] five days ago and hasn't tested [negative]," Mina wrote on Twitter. Requiring a negative test result to leave isolation early is "just smart," he concluded.

Similarly, Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious disease expert at New York University, said on Twitter that the shortened isolation and quarantine periods are only reasonable if they're paired with rapid testing. "People are infectious for a wide range of time. Some for a couple days. Others, for over a week," she wrote.

Gounder and others pointed out that the CDC may not have included testing requirements in their update because the country is currently seeing shortages of rapid tests and long lines at testing centers. "CDC's isolation policy is being driven by a scarcity of rapid antigen tests," she concluded. But, Mina pushed back on this excuse, calling it an "artificial" problem stemming from a failure to fortify testing capacity earlier in the pandemic.

BETH MOLEBeth is Ars Technica’s health reporter. She’s interested in biomedical research, infectious disease, health policy and law, and has a Ph.D. in microbiology.

COVID-19: Government under pressure to further reduce self-isolation period for positive cases

Despite Omicron being less severe in terms of its symptoms, it is more transmissible, meaning that some industries are struggling to cope due to the quarantine requirements - particularly the NHS.

Wednesday 29 December 2021 UK

There are calls to reduce the self-isolation period to help stimulate the economy

A number of scientists have said that the UK should follow in the footsteps of the US and reduce the COVID self-isolation period to five days, in an effort to protect the NHS.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday that Americans who catch COVID and don't have any symptoms only need to self-isolate for five days, so long as masks are worn for another five.

It has prompted similar calls in the England, despite the rules being relaxed slightly ahead of Christmas.

This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button.

Professor Alison Leary has told Sky News health and social care workers 'are absolutely exhausted' by the pandemic.

In England, those who have tested positive for COVID are able to leave self-isolation after seven days, as long they can produce two negative tests.

Despite Omicron being less severe in terms of its symptoms, it is more transmissible, meaning that some industries are struggling to cope due to the quarantine requirements - particularly the NHS, which at one point last week reported a 50% rise in staff absences.

A record number of people tested positive in the latest reporting period, with 117,093 new infections in England alone, as the new variant sweeps through communities, with up to 800,000 thought to be in isolation.
It's led to calls for the isolation period to be further reduced, to get the economy moving again.

Professor Tim Spector from Kings College London, who runs a nationwide COVID symptoms study, tweeted on Tuesday in favour of the recommendation, saying it would "protect the economy".

That was echoed by Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, who told the BBC that he believes Omicron has become "effectively just another cause of the common cold".

"We're going to have to let people who are positive go about their normal lives as they would do with any other cold.

"I think the whole issue of how long are we going to be able to allow people to self-isolate if they're positive is going to have to be discussed fairly soon, because I think this is a disease that's not going away."

He did caveat his thoughts though, adding: "Maybe not quite just yet".

Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, also piled on the pressure, telling the BBC's Today programme that a negative test is a "better way to measure if we're allowing people to go back into community" instead of isolation periods.

The president of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Lord Bilimoria, went further, pointing out to the Today programme that South Africa, which discovered Omicron through genetic sequencing, dropped the requirement to isolate altogether for those who are asymptomatic.

He added: "We have got to do everything we can to stop the disruption to our lives and to our livelihoods and to the economy in as safe a way as possible.

"We need people to isolate for as little time as possible."

The Department of Health said: "Anyone who takes a negative lateral flow test on days six and seven of their self-isolation period can end their isolation early, following analysis by the UK Health Security Agency that this has a similar protective effect to a ten-day isolation without lateral flow testing."

Flaming the fans: How the age of Trump has changed fandom

(Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
President Donald J. Trump waves to the crowd after participating in pre-game ceremonies Saturday, Dec. 8, 2018, at the Army-Navy NCAA College football game at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.

Robert Lipsyte and TomDispatch 

December 07, 2021

If you think that the true focus of the recent World Series was what the Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves were doing on the field, you were either living in Texas, Georgia, or on some billionaire’s space station. In the world that lies somewhere between rabid fandom and total baseball disinterest, the fall classic actually proved to be a contest pitting the cheaters against the racists with a disturbing outcome that might be summed up this way: to the spoiled belongs the victory.

And don’t think this was purely a baseball phenomenon. I can’t wait to see who will be competing in next February’s Super Bowl, although the most obvious early contenders are homophobia, sexism, and vaccination misinformation. As for the basketball, hockey, and Olympic seasons, I’m putting my money on the likelihood that predatory sexuality, financial inequality, and transgender discrimination will be right up there alongside the commercials for Nike and gambling.

I consider all this the upshot of what appears to be a shift in the very nature of fandom, a moral drift. Fandom has traditionally been mostly regional. In recent years, however, it has begun to take on the worst of the corrupted tribalism that has dominated so much of life outside the arena, the ballpark, and the stadium ever since Donald Trump became America’s coach. Before that, sports was generally considered a crucible for character, a place to define righteous principles, or at least to pay lip service to the high road, whether anyone was on it or not.

Of course, as Trump himself was more a symptom of ongoing developments in this country than the originator of them, this moral drift in sports started years ago when TV and shoe company money further corrupted the arms-race competition among colleges for box-office athletes. Think of Trump as the blowhard who fanned the already growing flames, or perhaps more accurately — by provoking the fanatics — flamed the fans. This shifting sense of sports, fandom, and life in America started gathering velocity in the late 1990s as performance-enhancing drugs proliferated and the National Football League’s (NFL’s) ongoing cover-up of the brain traumas the sport caused so many of its players began to be revealed.

Soon enough, though, cover-ups of just about any sort became unnecessary as the world of Trumpism affirmed that the strategic use of lies and bad behavior was at least as acceptable as were well thought out personal fouls in soccer and basketball. And all of that was before the complications of the Covid-19 pandemic led professional athletes to realize that it was about time they assumed active responsibility for their own physical and mental health — if they wanted to survive.

International stars like tennis champion Naomi Osaka and Olympic medal-winning gymnast Simone Biles found themselves crushed by the pressure exerted on them by major sports institutions whose only interests, whatever their fates, seemed to be eternal profits. Even pro football players are becoming involved in their own mental health.

The Fall Classic

A milestone of the current moral drift was the World Series just past.

Like every major sporting event these days, it opened with a media-generated narrative. Such story lines generally feature a star’s comeback (from a slump, an injury, or more recently, suspensions for drug use or domestic violence) or perhaps a franchise’s chance to finally win a title and so repay a city for its endless sufferance of mediocrity and tax breaks. Such narratives help ratings and circulation. Baseball, losing popularity lately, depends on them, especially to reel in the “cool” Black audience so important to current pop culture and style.

Baker, after all, is Black and celebrated for his integrity and decency. As a player, he was mentored by Atlanta slugger Hank Aaron. As a veteran manager, he was well-liked by his players and by the media. For a team that had cheated the last time around, he was, in other words, a seemingly unassailable and all-too-necessary figure. (Well, actually, maybe not quite. Despite managing slugger Barry Bonds for 10 years at San Francisco, he claims to have had no idea whether Bonds used steroids, which, for some at least, makes him either a liar or a self-blinkered leader.)That’s why this year’s baseball narrative was so startling — and effective in terms of ratings. I think of it as: root for the lesser of two evils. In this case, the lesser of those was either a team that broke the rules to win the title or a team that marketed its racism.

Three years ago, the Houston Astros won the 2017 World Series, apparently with the help of an intricate system of cheating, which involved shooting video of the opposing team’s pitching signals and relaying them to their own batters. The subsequent punishments meted out by Major League Baseball (MLB) were clearly designed not to be harsh enough to damage the Astro’s future possibilities in any way. And when the team showed up at the 2021 World Series, it was with a new manager, Dusty Baker, a highly appropriate yet seemingly cynical selection of the team owners.

In any case, Baker’s reputation made it possible for fans and the media to look past the Astros’ previous transgressions long enough to focus instead on those of the Atlanta Braves. In a time when the Cleveland Indians have changed their name to the Cleveland Guardians and the former Washington Redskins have dropped their (as yet to be replaced) terrible name, Atlanta and Major League Baseball nevertheless defended not only that team’s use of what was considered a racist slur (“Braves”), but its promotion of the despicable tomahawk chop gesture among its fans in the stands, which former President Trump so notoriously demonstrated when he attended game four of the series.

If perhaps you don’t know what happened but still care, the “Braves” beat the Astros, four games to two, to win the series. In what once was arguably the national pasttime, they seemed to prove that racism tops cheating in Trumpist America during this season of moral drift.

Email Slurs

But what about the sport that left baseball in the dust, and now passes for the national pastime? Can diverse bigotry beat anti-vaxx mendacity in pro football?

Last October, Jon Gruden, justifiably famous for good-old white mediocrity, resigned as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders after a trove of emails revealed him to be an equal-opportunity slinger of slurs. Those emails were discovered while lawyers were investigating alleged sexual harassment at the Washington Football Team (those former Redskins). The Gruden emails had mostly been exchanged 10 years ago with Bruce Allen, then the Washington team president when Gruden was an ESPN sports analyst. Racial and homophobic slurs abounded in those old, white, frat-boy-style exchanges.

Allen was fired and Gruden is now suing the NFL and its commissioner, Roger Goodell, for allegedly leaking those e-mails in an attempt, he claims, to divert attention from the transgressions of the league and of Goodell himself. It’s not all that far-fetched a notion in this time of conspiracies. Who knows what medical, racial, and financial wrongdoing pro football continues to conceal today?

It may be unlikely but, should the upcoming Super Bowl feature, say, the Raiders or that still-to-be-renamed Washington team against the Green Bay Packers, it could rival the World Series as a “lesser of two evils” (or greater of two evils?) event. Matched against the bigotry that lost Gruden his job would be the peculiar prevarications of the Packers’ once exemplary quarterback, Aaron Rodgers. He lied about getting his Covid vaccinations, putting teammates, fans, and sports reporters at risk.

One of my favorite sports commentators weighed in mightily on the subject. The Washington Post‘s Sally Jenkins wrote:

“Lord knows Rodgers is inventive with the football, but of all the dodging, narcissistic, contrived moves. ‘Yeah, I’m immunized,’ he said, so artificially, when asked in the preseason whether he was vaccinated. That was a lie by omission. And not just a single lie but a daily willful deception along with a weirdly callous charade. On multiple occasions he went into postgame news conferences — which tend to be closely packed, fetid affairs — unmasked. And there should be some queries about the steam and sauna and rehab rooms, too.”

Former National Basketball Association star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was fearful of the damage Rodgers might have done to the very image of pro athletes by, among other things, claiming that
“this idea that it’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated, it’s just a total lie… If the vaccine is so great, then how come people are still getting Covid and spreading Covid and, unfortunately, dying of Covid?”

As Jabbar pointed out,

“Those two statements don’t even belong together. Statistics from many sources conclude that around 97% of those being hospitalized or who have died in the past several months are unvaccinated. The CDC found that the unvaccinated are 11 times more likely to die than those vaccinated. If he thinks that’s a lie, what credible evidence does he have? None.”

Fun fact: Rodgers also auditioned to be the new host of the TV game show Jeopardy, a potential job he soon put in… er, jeopardy.

Sadly, pro football was not exactly “woke,” despite the sustained courage of Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback. Just before Trump was elected president, he dropped to a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial mistreatment in this country. His stature has only grown since, even if he could never again get a job in the NFL. In fact, this February, your time might be far better spent on the new book just published about Kaepernick’s impact on our world or the new TV series on his life than watching the Super Bowl.

On Thin Ice

The drifting morals of major league sports have even tainted the whitest and usually least controversial of those leagues, the National Hockey League. In October, it began its latest season dealing with one old tumult and a whopper of a new one, both involving the same team.

The old controversy has been dragging on for years, the slur-ish name and logo of the Chicago Blackhawks. The new one concerns the cover-up of the sexual abuse of a young pro player by a coach, a shocking tale in a particularly stoic, macho, and tight-lipped sport. The club and the league at first professed surprise at the charges for an incident which allegedly occurred in 2010. Nobody knew anything, as usual… until, of course, it turned out that they did but, in the interests of the sport and of winning, had kept quiet.

In a remarkable interview with Rick Westhead of TSN’s SportsCentre, the victim, former Blackhawk player Kyle Beach, said:
“I am a survivor. And I know I’m not alone. I know I’m not the only one, male or female. And I buried this for 10 years, 11 years. And it’s destroyed me from the inside out. And I want everybody to know in the sports world and in the world that you’re not alone. That if these things happen to you, you need to speak up.”

Had Kyle Beach spoken up earlier, it might have helped Jonathan Martin, a football player whose mental health issues were triggered by the homophobic and racist harassment of a teammate. Martin is only now coming to terms with his psychological needs. His nemesis, Richie Incognito, had a long college and pro history of aggressive behavior, but his size — 6-4, 322 pounds — and his skill allowed him to flourish even as he appeared on police blotters and was considered by some of his peers to be the dirtiest player in the league.

There is a moral to this story. A discouraging one. The bad guy wins. Martin was driven out of pro football in 2015 at age 26, his early talent unrealized. Meanwhile, Incognito, 38, is still in the league, a Trump supporter now playing for the Las Vegas Raiders. Don’t you wonder if he misses his former coach, Jon Gruden?

But before you get too discouraged, take heart in this Ohio State University study which finds that less than half of Americans surveyed think “that sports teach love of country, respect for the military, and how to be an American.” Those who do think that way tend to be “men, heterosexuals, Christians, and Republicans… groups that have traditionally had high status in the United States, been comfortable with their situations, and therefore have positive feelings about these values.”

Maybe there’s a better moral out there and hope for sports yet. If we can drive the moral drifters off the field, maybe we can have a brand-new ball game.

Copyright 2021 Robert Lipsyte

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.


Robert Lipsyte is a TomDispatch regular and a former sports and city columnist for the New York Times. He is the author, among other works, of SportsWorld: An American Dreamland.

There’s only one essential role humans have on Earth

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash
green plant

Paul Watson and  Independent Media Institute

December 21, 2021

I would like to introduce you to an alternative way of looking at this planet that we live on. We call it planet Earth, but in reality, it should be called planet ocean. What makes life possible on this planet is one very important element: water. This is the water planet. We have been taught that the ocean comprises the sea. However, the ocean is much more than that.

This is a planet of water in continuous circulation moving through many phases, with each phase intimately linked at every stage. It is the water in the sea, the lakes, the rivers, and the streams. It is the water flowing underground and deep, deep down inside the planet, locked in rock. It is the water in the atmosphere or encased in ice.

And it is the water moving through each and every living cell of every plant and animal on the planet.

Water is life, powered by the sun pumping it from sea to atmosphere and into and through our every living cell. Water is the life that flows through our bodies, flushing out waste and supplying nutrients. The water in my body now was once locked in ice. It once moved underground. It once was in the clouds or in the sea. Even the gravitational pull of the moon acts on the water in our bodies in the same way it acts upon the water in the sea. Water is the common bond among all living things on this planet, and, collectively, all this water in its many forms and travels forms the Earth’s collective ocean. The ocean is the life-support system for the entire planet. From within the depths of the sea, phytoplankton manufactures oxygen while feeding on nitrogen and iron supplied from the feces of whales and other marine animals. The water in rivers and lakes removes toxins, salts, and waste. Estuaries and wetlands act like the kidneys to remove further toxins, and the mineral salts are flushed into the sea. The heat from the sun pumps water into the atmosphere, where it is purified and dropped back onto the surface of the planet, where living beings drink or absorb it before flushing it through their systems. It is this complex global circulatory system that provides everything we need for food, sanitation, and the regulation of climate—for life.

Water is life and life is water. Rivers and streams are the arteries, veins, and capillaries of the Earth, performing the very same functions that they do in our bodies: removing waste and delivering nutrients to cells. When a river is dammed, it is akin to cutting off the flow of blood in a blood vessel. For example, the great Aswan High Dam on the Nile River in Egypt starved the lands below of nutrients, building up toxic water above.

This entire interdependent system is its own life-support system. The book Gaia by James Lovelock is a hypothesis proposing that all living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings to form a synergistic and self-regulating complex system that helps maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet. In other words, life operates its own life-support system. In this system, not all species are equal. Some species are essential and some species are less so, but all species are connected. The essential foundations of this life-support system are microbes, phytoplankton, insects, plants, worms, and fungi. The so-called “higher” animals are not so essential, and one of them—humans and the domesticated animals and plants we own—are alarmingly destructive. I like to compare Earth to a spaceship. After all, that is what this planet is—a huge spaceship transporting the cargo of life on a fast and furious trip around the enormous Milky Way galaxy. It’s a voyage so long that it takes about 250 million years to make just one circumnavigation. In fact, our planet has only made this trip 18 times since it was formed from the dust of our closest star.

For a spaceship to function, there needs to be a well-run life-support system that is managed by an experienced and skillful crew. It is this crew that produces the gases in our atmosphere, especially oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. It is this crew that sequesters excess gases, particularly carbon and methane. It is this crew that cleans the air, recycles waste, and assists in the circulation of water. It also supplies food, both directly and indirectly through pollination. It is this crew that removes toxins from the soil and keeps the soil moist and productive. The plants serve the animals and the animals serve the plants. The plants feed on the soil and the animals feed on the plants, and, in turn, the animals impart nutrients to the soil.

Some species, especially the ones we call the “higher” animals (mainly the large mammals), are primarily passengers. Some of these passengers contribute a great deal to maintaining the machinery of the life-support system, although they are not as critical as the absolutely essential species that serve as the tireless engineers of the system. There is one passenger species, however, that long ago decided to mutiny from the crew and go its own way, content to spend its days entertaining itself and caring only for its own welfare. That species is Homo sapiens.

There are other species, both plant and animal, that we have enslaved for our own selfish purposes. These are the domesticated plants that replace the wild plants that help run the system. These are the animals that we have enslaved to give us meat, eggs, and milk, or to serve the purpose of amusing us, only to abuse, torture, and slaughter them.

As the number of enslaved animals increases, wild animals are displaced through extermination or the destruction of habitat. The plants that we enslave must be “protected” with lethal chemical fertilizers and genetically modified seeds, along with other chemical poisons, such as herbicides, fungicides, and bactericides.

We are stealing the carrying capacity of ecosystems from other species to increase the number of humans and domestic animals. The law of finite resources dictates that this system will collapse. It simply is unsustainable.

Because of our technological skills, humans have evolved to serve one very important function: We have the ability to protect the entire planet from being struck by a killer asteroid like the one that paid our dinosaur friends a visit 60 million years ago. Although I sometimes wonder if we could even do that, considering our lack of cooperation within our own species. We also have the skills and intelligence, if we so choose to utilize these abilities, to aggressively address climate change, the problem that we are directly responsible for creating. But will we?

Captain Paul Watson is a Canadian-American marine conservation activist who founded the direct action group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 1977 and was more recently featured in Animal Planet’s popular television series “Whale Wars” and the documentary about his life, “Watson.” Sea Shepherd’s mission is to protect all ocean-dwelling marine life. Watson has authored or co-authored more than a dozen books, including Death of a Whale (2021), Urgent! (2021), Orcapedia (2020), Dealing with Climate Change and Stress (2020), The Haunted Mariner (2019), and Captain Paul Watson: Interview with a Pirate (2013).

This excerpt is from Urgent! Save Our Ocean to Survive Climate Change, by Captain Paul Watson (GroundSwell Books, 2021). This web adaptation was produced by GroundSwell Books in partnership with Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

AN ECONOMIC STRIKE
Israel Bombards Syrian Port Of Latakia In Nighttime Strike

It’s the second time this month that the Israeli Air Force has targeted apparent weapons deliveries at the Mediterranean port.

BY THOMAS NEWDICK

DECEMBER 28, 2021
THE WAR ZONE

An Israeli airstrike on the Syrian port of Latakia early this morning targeted a cargo of “arms and munitions,” according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a U.K.-based, pro-opposition group focusing on monitoring the Syrian Civil War. The raid, which has not been acknowledged by Israel, resulted in massive explosions and a fire that burned for around 10 hours before being brought under control. So far there have been no confirmed reports of casualties.

The airstrike targeted the container terminal at the port of Latakia on Syria’s Mediterranean coast at around 3:21 am local time today. Multiple sources state that the Israeli Air Force (IAF) was responsible for the attack, its aircraft launching missiles from over the Mediterranean.

 

 

 

GOOGLE EARTH
The port facility in Latakia.

According to Syrian state media, this is the second such attack on the port this month and it fits the pattern of Israeli raids that have been conducted at a fairly high tempo since the start of the Syrian civil war. These have largely targeted Iranian weapons shipments intended for Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed forces in Syria and Lebanon.


SANA VIA AP
Firefighters work at the scene of the attack on the port of Latakia, Syria, Tuesday, December 28, 2021.

However, the IAF has apparently only turned its attention to Latakia this month, presumably in response to the shipment of arms to supply Iranian-backed forces such as Hezbollah. The first such raid was on December 7, targeting a reported Iranian arms shipment. It is unclear what munitions the IAF employed in these attacks. While some accounts describe the use of cruise missiles, the distances and target types involved would also allow for the use of Small Diameter Bombs (SDBs), or possibly Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs).

“The Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression with several missiles from the direction of the Mediterranean ... targeting the container yard in Latakia port,” an unnamed military source told the Syrian state news agency, Sana, in response to today’s attack. They added that the attack resulted in “significant material damage.”

According to Syria's state ran Sana media outlet, the blaze that ripped through the port after the attack was caused by containers carrying “engine oil and spare parts for cars and other vehicles.” However, SOHR reports that the “powerful explosions that were felt across the city of Latakia and its suburbs” were the result of detonating weapons shipments.

SOHR was not able to determine where these weapons shipments originated, but Iran has a track record of delivering arms to the Syrian regime and to its own proxies operating in the country and Lebanon via Syria. As well as sending arms shipments by sea, Tehran has also used cargo aircraft and the land route via neighboring Iraq. Earlier this month it became apparent that the IAF launched cruise missiles in an unusual raid against Damascus International Airport in Syria, a facility that has been used in the past to fly in supplies to support Iranian militia and affiliates and which has come under repeated Israeli attack.

The IAF now turning its attention to Latakia is a new development, however, and perhaps a direct response to Iran making greater use of maritime traffic to move its weapons shipments. That would also tally with the reported clandestine campaign of attacks waged by Israel on Iranian ships carrying oil, as well as suspected weaponry, to Syria.

Based on data published by SOHR, and which remain unconfirmed, today’s attack was the 29th that has been prosecuted by Israel this year alone, resulting in 130 fatalities, of which 125 were loyalist fighters and five civilians. Israel has admitted to hitting around 50 targets in Syria this year but does not normally comment on individual strikes.


SANA VIA AP
A missile flies into the sky near the international airport in Damascus, Syria, on January 21, 2019. 

This was a rare incident in which the Israeli military issued a statement saying it is attacking Iranian military targets in Syria.

For Israel, the campaign against targets in Syria is necessary to prevent Iran from gaining further traction in the country and using it as a springboard to launch its own attacks on Israel, often perpetrated by proxies like Hezbollah, and to interdict arms shipments that would otherwise make their way to Lebanon. Rockets, missiles, and suicide drones are some of the top threats Israel is trying to interdict.

As another major player in the Syrian civil war, Russia is known to be notified by Israel in advance of certain airstrikes and its air defenses do not engage the IAF. Russia has its main airbase in Syria at Khmeimim in Latakia province, less than 10 miles away, while it has a major naval facility at Tartus, around 50 miles further south. Russian installations are protected by S-400 air defense systems which took no action during this morning’s raid.


RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY PRESS SERVICE VIA AP
Crew members leave a Russian Tu-22M3 bomber upon its landing at Khmeimim airbase in Syria in May this year.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also says it has “monitored great discontent among the public and supporters of the Syrian regime,” due to Russian unwillingness to comment on the Israeli airstrikes in general, let alone attempt to put a stop to them. In this context, the port of Latakia is particularly significant, in that it is one of the regime’s few major sea-trade ports providing a connection with the outside world, especially since part of Tartus was turned over to Russian military use.

“Citizens, public figures, and politicians who support the Syrian regime, including a deputy in the Syrian parliament, criticized the Russian position, and expressed their dissatisfaction with the Russian position,” SOHR added

Following the previous IAF raid on the port of Latakia and against Damascus International earlier this month, it seems that Israel is indeed ramping up its campaign against Iranian activities in Syria, with an apparent focus on suspected arms shipments. Israeli officials have made it clear on numerous occasions that they see Tehran’s growing influence in the Middle East, and especially in Lebanon and Syria, as an existential threat against which it will take action at will. Now it seems, we are seeing something of a spate of airstrikes to back up that position.