The Guardian carries a story where Israel has smeared a Palestinian individual, one of the largest charities, World Vision and, of course, Hamas. 

Mohammed El Halabi, a 38-year-old head of World Vision’s Gaza office, has been under Israeli detention for over five years awaiting his trial for embezzling $7.2m a year, for the past seven years, diverting the money Hamas, which he is also accused of being a secret member of. More than $1m a year had been alleged by Israeli authorities to have been delivered in cash to combat units. In total, Halabi was accused of stealing up to $50m meant for desperate Palestinians and giving it to Hamas to buy rockets and build tunnels.  The Israeli government had long accused Hamas of diverting international aid intended for Gaza to fund its wars against the Jewish state. Following Halabi’s arrest many foreign governments, including Australia and Germany, stopped all funding to World Vision’s projects in Gaza.  The Australians threatened to cut all funding to World Vision globally, about $40m a year. World Vision’s leaders had seen no evidence of Halabi’s alleged wrongdoings, but the Israeli accusations threatened not just their support to Palestinians but the charity’s entire future. If Hamas had indeed breached World Vision’s systems, it meant all their work was vulnerable to manipulation. 

If found guilty, he faces decades in prison. The prosecution rested heavily on secret evidence, some of which even the defence team say they were not allowed to view, prompting a UN special rapporteur to condemn proceedings as “not worthy of a democratic state”. Halabi has been offered a series of plea deals, but he has rejected them all. His current lawyer claims Halabi received offers that would have led to his immediate release with time served, allowing him to return to his wife and children in Gaza. But Halabi insists he is innocent of the charges and has refused to make a deal.

 The arguments in court concluded in July this year, but Halabi remains in prison awaiting a verdict, which is expected this autumn.

 Israel’s case has been undermined by an independent forensic audit of World Vision’s operations, conducted by one of the world’s largest accountancy firms, which found no funds missing and no evidence of criminal activity.

Aid agencies cannot deal with Hamas for fear of falling foul of sanctions. Large aid organisations have implemented strict processes to try to prevent money being co-opted or stolen – known as aid diversion.

Itay Epshtain, a special adviser to the Norwegian Refugee Council, which also provides aid in Gaza, described the rigorous mechanisms charities adopt to prevent aid diversion. “You do repeat monitoring – going back to check multiple times that if you provided a water pump or a hospital bed it is still there and operating as it should be. On top of that you have pre-planned and continuous external auditing to check how every dollar is spent.” 

In Gaza there was additional scrutiny as the Israeli government and some monitor organisations routinely make “bad faith” allegations that aid is being stolen by Hamas. 

The Israeli charge sheet listed 12 accusations against Halabi. Most are nearly impossible to assess without seeing the secret evidence the Israelis claimed to have. But others were easier to investigate. Halabi was accused of working with two agricultural companies, Al-Atar and Arcoma, which allegedly had ties to Hamas. The charge sheet claimed that, as head of World Vision’s Gaza office, Halabi had rigged the bidding process to ensure the two companies won “nearly all” contracts for providing food aid. Halabi and the companies then allegedly conspired to overcharge World Vision for their services and funnelled the extra cash to Hamas. World Vision total contracts with Al-Atar were worth a little over $30,000 a year for the past decade. The contracts awarded to Arcoma,  amounted to about $80,000 a year. Between them, the two companies had won fewer than 50% of the bids for contracts with World Vision they entered, the organisation said.

In March 2017, the Australian government completed a review of its funding of World Vision in Gaza – it had given them $8.1m for Gaza projects between 2014 and 2016, more than 25% of World Vision’s entire Gaza budget, the charity told me. The Australian government concluded that there was no evidence any funds had been diverted.

DLA Piper and auditors from Deloitte conducted a year-long investigation. Between 20 and 30 staff worked full-time, reviewing World Vision’s operations for the five years before Halabi’s arrest. 

“We have done a number of other investigations, both corporate and NGO, where we find evidence of malfeasance,” Brett Ingerman, a managing partner with DLA Piper, told me. “We know what we are looking for, we know the ways that people who are trying to divert funds generally operate.  I do NGO investigations in difficult parts of the world … and I did not see anything out of the ordinary here from a control perspective,” Ingerman said.

They had “more than sufficient documentation” to complete their investigation. The team carried out more than 70 interviews, including with former and current World Vision employees, and reviewed 280,000 emails. Deloitte reviewed every payment the organisation made over five years. They found no sign of any missing funds, and no evidence Halabi was working for Hamas – in fact, they reported that he consistently sought to distance World  Vision from them. 

Australia and Germany quietly reinstated funding, on the basis of the report’s findings. World Vision waited for the Israeli court to drop the charges against Halabi. The case drags on. 

Has a lone Palestinian aid worker been falsely accused of the biggest aid money heist in history? | Gaza | The Guardian

 According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, the toll of the war on terror is tremendous: minimally 801,000 deaths (with more on the way) since 9/11 in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen.

 More than 300,000 civilians across those and other countries have been killed and an estimated nearly 37 million more displaced. Around 15,000 U.S. forces, including soldiers and private contractors, have also died. Untold scores of devastating injuries have occurred as well to millions of civilians, opposition fighters, and American troops. In total, it’s estimated that, by 2020, these post-9/11 wars had cost America $6.4 trillion.

750 American military bases overseas are now scattered across 81 countries.

There are U.S. military bases in every Persian Gulf country except Iran and Yemen: seven in Oman, three in the UAE, 11 in Saudi Arabia, seven in Qatar, 12 in Bahrain, 10 in Kuwait, and those six still in Iraq. Any of these could potentially contribute to the sorts of “over the horizon” wars the U.S. now seems committed to in countries like Iraq, just as its bases in Kenya and Djibouti are enabling it to launch airstrikes in Somalia.

Camp Blaz, the first Marine Corps base to be built on the Pacific Island of Guam since 1952, has been under construction since 2020.   Even more new bases are being proposed for the nearby Pacific Islands of Palau, Tinian, and Yap. 

 We may not agree 100% with George Monbiot on everything but he often says things that we can agree upon. 

… On behalf of commercial interests, governments are all too happy to be constrained…

…It represents an outrageous curtailment of political choice, with which governments like ours are entirely comfortable. I’m not sure how we can escape such agreements, but government lawyers should be all over this issue, looking for a way out. Otherwise, future corporate profits remain officially more important than life on Earth…

…The global emergency requires a new politics, but it is nowhere in sight. Governments still fear lobby groups more than they fear the collapse of our living systems. For tiny and temporary political gains, they commit us to vast and irreversible consequences…

…No government, even the most progressive, is yet prepared to contemplate the transformation we need: a global programme that places the survival of humanity and the rest of life on Earth above all other issues. We need not just new policy, but a new ethics. We need to close the gap between knowing and doing. But this conversation has scarcely begun.

Why is life on Earth still taking second place to fossil fuel companies? | George Monbiot | The Guardian

If only George and others could be more visionary when it comes to understanding the limits of capitalism and the urgent and vital need for world socialism.

Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at Yale University, in a series of tweets on Wednesday, pointed out.

“More for me. None for you. America first. This is American Covid-19 vaccine policy now,” Gonsalves lamented. “It doesn’t have to be this way. In a global emergency, you do not hoard resources for yourself, stockpile extra just in case people need a boost, while others die for lack of even one shot, letting variants flourish.”

 William Parker and Govind Persad respectively serve as assistant director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics and Greenwall Foundation Faculty Scholar in Bioethics, argue that Biden’s decision to roll out booster shots for the entire U.S. public as soon as next month is a mistake, particularly as just over 1% of people in low-income nations have received at least one vaccine dose.

“Not only does it risk depriving millions throughout the world of the vaccine, but there also is no evidence that additional shots meaningfully reduce death or hospitalization from Covid-19 for healthy Americans.”

To illustrate the massive inoculation gap between rich and poor countries, the pair noted that the 120 million additional mRNA doses the U.S. will likely need for its nationwide booster campaign would be sufficient “to vaccinate the population of Covid-decimated Botswana 26 times over.”

“High-income countries have used bilateral contracts with vaccine manufacturers to achieve vaccination rates as much as 50 times that of low-income countries. A campaign for boosters could lock in that apartheid,” the pair continued. “This profound global inequity would not only be a humanitarian disaster, but also a significant long-term risk for Americans, as scientists agree that accelerating global vaccination is the only way to prevent the formation of deadly new variants.”

According to new research, G7 countries are on track to stockpile nearly a billion extra vaccine doses by the end of 2021. Meanwhile, if current inequities persist, many poor nations may not achieve adequate vaccination rates until 2024 or later.

“Anyone who thinks that vaccinating Americans with a third dose is not going to come at the expense of getting the vaccine to other places in the world—if that’s what you think, you’re just kidding yourself,” Scott Hensley, a vaccines researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Institute for Immunology, explained.

Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa, said during a news conference on Thursday that “moves by some countries globally to introduce booster shots threaten the promise of a brighter tomorrow for Africa,” which has fully vaccinated just 2% of its population. “As some richer countries hoard vaccines,” said Moeti, “they make a mockery of vaccine equity.”

“Feeling sick like a dog and laid up in bed, but not in the hospital with severe Covid, is not a good enough reason for boosters,” Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center, told the NYT. “We’ll be better protected by vaccinating the unvaccinated here and around the world.”

Experts in public health have stressed that the pharmaceutical industry’s monopoly control over vaccine production—made possible by an international patent regime that rich countries are choosing to uphold—has artificially constrained global vaccine supply. When supply is limited, rich countries’ hoarding of vaccines affects the number of doses available to poor nations.

Experts Warn Rich Nations’ Push for Boosters Could Lock in Vaccine ‘Apartheid’ | Common Dreams News

In the last issue of the World Socialist, we elaborated on Clause One of the World Socialist Movement’s Declaration of Principles, which deals with private property and the enslavement of the working class. In this issue, we’ll touch on Clause Two, which states that:

 The median pay of a chief executive of a FTSE-100 firm – the UK’s blue-chip company index – was £2.69m in 2020, according to the High Pay Centre.

The research also showed that the average chief executive earnings at the nine FTSE-100 companies that used the furlough scheme to pay their employees was £2.39m.

The bosses of Britain’s biggest companies earned 86 times the average full-time wage last year.

The think tank’s research revealed average bonus size was £828,000 last year.

Meanwhile, the average long term incentive plan payment was £1.38m.

 High Pay Centre director Luke Hildyard, explained,  UK’s high chief executive pay reflected a wider gap between rich and poor in Britain than in most other European countries.

Pascal Soriot of drugs giant AstraZeneca was the highest-earning chief executive, making £15.45m last year.

Brian Cassin of credit reference agency Experian made £10.3m.

Albert Manifold of building materials company CRH received £9.92m.

Laxman Narasimhan of consumer goods firm Reckitt Benckiser was fourth with £9.24m

 Rob Perrins of housebuilder Berkeley, made £8.03m.

FTSE bosses earn 86 times more than average worker in 2020 – BBC News

 Unable to achieve the media headlines due to Afghanistan news, the earthquake in Haiti has inflicted more pain upon the already suffering Haitian people.

The earthquake killed more than 2,000 people and injured almost 10,000 in Haiti had left the Caribbean nation “on its knees”, Prime Minister Ariel Henry said.

“We need help,” said Roosevelt Milford, a pastor speaking on radio on behalf of the hundreds camping out in soggy fields since the quake destroyed their homes.

Milford and others complained they lacked even the most basic provisions, such as food, clean drinking water, and shelter from the rain. 

Quake leaves Haiti ‘on its knees’ as impatience grows over lack of aid | Reuters

 1,100 union coal miners in Brookwood, Alabama, have been on an unfair labor practices strike against Warrior Met Coal for over five months. The mainstream media has barely made a mention of the strike. 

There is a promise in trade unions. Not just better wages, or better working conditions, but a better society. What unions offer to working people is a vision of the world in which your enemy does not have to be someone of a different race or from another land.

 The U.S.A will begin administering coronavirus vaccine boosters next month.  Beginning September 20, “all Americans” who received either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine will be offered a booster starting eight months after their second dose.

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus condemned wealthy countries for pursuing “narrow nationalistic goals when we live in an interconnected world and the virus is mutating quickly.”

He explained, “The divide between the haves and have-nots will only grow larger if manufacturers and leaders prioritize booster shots over supply to low- and middle-income countries,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, without specifically mentioning the U.S. “In fact, strong national leadership would be to fully commit to vaccine equity and global solidarity, which would save lives and slow variants down.”

Tedros added “Vaccine injustice is a shame on all humanity.”

Dr. Mike Ryan, director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, argued Wednesday that rich nations administering booster shots is akin to “planning to hand out extra life jackets to people who already have life jackets and leaving other people to drown without a life jacket. That’s the ethical reality.” 

 Matthew Kavanagh, a professor of global health at Georgetown University, pointed out, ” Imagining that a booster shot will protect us from a pandemic that continues to rage around the world is more theater than public health. Ending the pandemic is far better medicine than an individual booster.”

Madhu Pai, a Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health at McGill University in Montreal, echoed that argument, tweeting, “The ‘race to stop the Delta variant’ cannot be won by giving repeated boosters to already vaccinated people in a few rich nations. The race will be won when all people in the world have access to vaccines.”

1.3% of people in low-income countries have received at least one vaccine dose, meaning billions of people remain vulnerable to the highly contagious Delta variant and other mutations. Africa, Southeast Asia, and other regions of the world are currently facing alarming surges in coronavirus cases and deaths as they struggle to obtain access to vaccines due to supply shortages.

Due to the massive global Covid-19 vaccine shortage, less than 4% of people on the African continent and just 30% of people across Asia have obtained at least one dose of a vaccine.

In an editorial, the authorative journal Nature endorsed the WHO’s call for a temporary moratorium on booster shots, arguing that “the case for boosters has not yet been proved.”

“In a period of vaccine scarcity, the choice to dole out boosters must be guided by evidence of benefit, and consideration given to the cost of delaying the delivery of vaccines to vulnerable people and health-care workers in other countries,” the editorial reads. “So far, there is little evidence that boosters are needed to protect the fully vaccinated.”

“If vaccines were not scarce, boosters would be less controversial,” the editorial continued. “But to focus on boosters when more than half the world lacks vaccine doses is short-sighted and will only keep the pandemic burning longer. For wealthy countries, this strategy means they will be indefinitely chasing their tails in terms of new variants. And for the rest of the world, it means prolonging unnecessary suffering.”

WHO Decries Vaccine Inequity as a ‘Shame on All Humanity’ as US Moves Ahead With Boosters | Common Dreams News

 Millions of Johnson & Johnson vaccines produced at its Aspen factory in South Africa will be exported to Europe, at the very time that Africa is grappling with its deadliest wave of Covid-19 infections yet.

Africa needs vaccines immediately. 

South Africa is still waiting to receive the overwhelming majority of the 31 million vaccine doses it ordered from Johnson & Johnson. It has administered only about two million Johnson & Johnson shots. That is a key reason that fewer than 7 percent of South Africans are fully vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson has been exporting millions of doses that were bottled and packaged in South Africa for distribution in Europe, according to executives at Johnson & Johnson and the South African manufacturer, Aspen Pharmacare, as well as South African government export records.

Many Western countries have kept domestically manufactured doses for themselves. That wasn’t possible in South Africa because of an unusual stipulation in the contract the government signed this year with Johnson & Johnson. The confidential contract, examined by The New York Times, required South Africa to waive its right to impose export restrictions on vaccine doses.

Popo Maja, a spokesman for the South African health ministry, said, “The government was not given any choice. Sign contract or no vaccine.”

Critics say the shortfall in South Africa partly reflects a power imbalance between a giant company and a desperate country.

“The disproportionate amount of power that Johnson & Johnson has exercised is really concerning,” said Fatima Hassan, a human rights lawyer in South Africa. “It is harming our efforts to get speedy supplies into the system.”

Johnson & Johnson had always planned for some vaccines produced by Aspen to leave Africa, but it has never disclosed how many doses it was actually exporting. The export records show that Johnson & Johnson shipped 32 million doses in recent months, although that does not capture the full number that has left South Africa.

Glenda Gray, a South African scientist who helped lead Johnson & Johnson’s clinical trial there, said companies needed to prioritize sending doses to poorer countries that were involved in their production. “It’s like a country is making food for the world and sees its food being shipped off to high-resource settings while its citizens starve,” she said.

Covid Vaccines Produced in Africa Are Being Exported to Europe – The New York Times (nytimes.com)