Peace for the World

Peace for the World
First democratic leader of Justice the Godfather of the Sri Lankan Tamil Struggle: Honourable Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam

Thursday, January 14, 2021

Giving Palestinians a glimpse of home

Hadima Khaddash (left) took delight in being able to finally visit Jaffa’s seaside. (Via Facebook)


Amjad Ayman Yaghi-14 January 2021

Tarek Bakri gives Palestinians around the world a glimpse of their homeland.

More than seven decades have passed since the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The people expelled by Zionist forces at that time – if they are still alive – generally have an acute awareness about their dispossession.

So do their children and grandchildren.

The awareness has remained strong even though huge numbers of the Nakba’s victims have never visited the towns and villages from where they originate.

Most Palestinians living abroad – particularly those in refugee camps – are unable to visit Palestine. Some Palestinians – for example those who hold American or European passports – are a little more fortunate insofar as they have been able to make trips home.

Bakri, a researcher based in Jerusalem, has facilitated such visits.

He regularly receives old photographs from Palestinians uprooted during and after the Nakba or their descendants. Using basic information, he sets out to find the homes of these families.

In many cases, he and his team have then arranged for people to see their homes.

Nasser al-Daqaq is among those whom they have assisted. A Palestinian American, Nasser initially met Bakri when the historian gave a lecture in Kuwait during 2016.

Following the presentation, they chatted about Nasser’s family home, built in Jerusalem around 1890.

The house belonged to Nasser grandfather Chakib. But Nasser had never seen it himself.

Bakri asked Nasser to send him a photograph of the house. He promised Nasser to help the family locate it any time they were in Jerusalem.

Later that year, Nasser and two of his children – Khaled and Yasmine – made a trip to Jerusalem.

With Bakri, they set out to find the house in the city’s al-Baqaa neighborhood.

“After searching, we found the house on a side street,” Bakri told The Electronic Intifada.

“It was a huge three-story building, with a very beautiful garden and a tree over 100 years old. I could see great happiness on the faces of Nasser, Khaled and Yasmine. They said the house was nicer than houses in America.”

Injustice

As they stood outside the house, a family approached it, carrying bags and boxes.

When Bakri began speaking to the family, it transpired they were Israelis who had just bought an apartment in the building and were about to spend their first night there. Bakri introduced the family to Nasser and said that he was the owner of the house.

The family was shocked and puzzled by that piece of information, so Bakri explained how the al-Daqqaq family had to flee their home during the Nakba.

While the conversation remained polite, the sense of injustice was palpable. A family forced out of their home was effectively witnessing another family move into it.

For many other Palestinians, seeing their actual family homes is impossible as they are no longer standing. Zionist and later Israeli forces destroyed approxmitaely 500 villages during the Nakba and the years that ensued.

When Palestinians cannot be brought to see their old buildings, Bakri nonetheless arranges for them to visit their old villages.

Halima Khaddash, 84, was displaced from the village of Beit Nabala during the Nakba.

In September 1948, the village was almost entirely demolished by the Israeli military. A school was among the few structures spared.

Khaddash was able to find the site of her family’s home when she visited Beit Nabala in 2016. She became very emotional when she realized that all that remained was the well on which the family relied for water, Bakri told The Electronic Intifada.

“Beautiful” soil

Beit Nabala is located near Ramle, today a city in Israel.

During her trip, Khaddash became elated when she went to the seaside in Jaffa.

Khaddash took some soil from her home village, placed it in a bag and brought it away with her. When she got back to Jalazone refugee camp in the occupied West Bank – where she now lives – Khaddash planted some mint in the soil.

Many of the people taking part in visits that Bakri organizes take soil from their home villages.

“It is a beautiful thing to bring with them,” Bakri told The Electronic Intifada.

“Many Palestinian refugees living in the camps of Jordan and Lebanon have asked me to send them bags of soil.”

Bakri has undertaken research on the massacre which occurred in the village of Safsaf during October 1948.

Israeli troops entering Safsaf – in the Galilee region of historic Palestine – ordered inhabitants to assemble in the village square. Approximately 70 men were rounded up, taken to a remote location and shot.

The rest of the inhabitants were ordered to leave the village, with Israeli troops firing above their heads as they fled. Eyewitness accounts say that a pregnant woman was bayoneted by Israeli troops, who raped a number of other women and at least one girl from the village.

In 2019, Bakri arranged for Mohammad Zaghmout to visit Safsaf.

Zaghmout grew up in Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus. With the camp destroyed during Syria’s civil war, Zaghmout and his family moved to Sweden in recent years.

His father Saad was a child at the time Israeli troops invaded Safsaf. Unlike many other members of his family, Saad survived the massacre.

Saad died in 2010.

“Mohammad’s father did not stop talking about what happened to the village until the day he died,” said Bakri.

“Mohammad’s father wanted to be buried in Safsaf. But that didn’t happen. His father is buried in the cemetery of the Yarmouk camp. All Mohammad could do was take some soil from Safsaf and bring it back to his father’s grave.”

Amjad Ayman Yaghi is a journalist based in Gaza.

Settlers suspected of sabotaging Israeli activist’s car as West Bank attacks rise

Rabbi Arik Ascherman, who had been helping Palestinian farmers defend their land, found his car wheels unbolted after a crash in the West Bank.

Illustrative photo of Rabbi Arik Ascherman. (Oren Ziv)
Illustrative photo of Rabbi Arik Ascherman. (Oren Ziv)
 

By
Oren ZivJanuary 14, 2021

Prominent Jewish Israeli activist Rabbi Arik Ascherman crashed his car in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday after two of the vehicle’s wheels had been unbolted, suspected to have been carried out by Israeli settlers. The incident comes at the height of an escalation of settler attacks on Palestinians and solidarity activists in the occupied territories in recent weeks.

The crash occurred several hours after Ascherman — the director of the human rights group Torat Tzedek-Torah of Justice, who has spent much of the last two decades accompanying West Bank Palestinians weekly to help defend them against settler attacks — and another Israeli activist arrived in the Palestinian village of Taybeh, near Ramallah, at around noon that day. The activists came at the behest of Palestinian farmers who had alerted them that settlers had arrived to their agricultural land.

Upon his arrival, Ascherman saw two young settlers walking around, one of whom was on horseback. When Ascherman left the area, two of his car’s wheels came loose, causing him to lose control and crash. No one was injured.

“It was a miracle that it didn’t end in a more serious accident,” Ascherman told +972. “Imagine what would have happened if the tires had been completely unbolted and I had been driving at a faster speed. It would have ended in disaster.”

Although it remains unclear who sabotaged his vehicle, some settlers are celebrating the incident. “The traitor Arik Ascherman tried to create a provocation and found that someone played with the car’s wheels,” wrote one user in “The Struggle,” a Telegram group used by far-right settler activists and so-called “hilltop youth,” known for their violent attacks on Palestinians and the activists who come to assist them.

With the exception of the pro-settler news site Arutz Sheva, which described the incident as an “attempted murder,” not a single media outlet reported on the incident.

Settler attacks have been intensifying in the West Bank following the death of Ahuvia Sandak, a 16-year-old settler who was killed in a car crash last month while fleeing from police. Sandak and four other youths fled by car and were pursued by police after allegedly throwing rocks at Palestinian vehicles. Police claim the youth’s vehicle lost control and flipped over, while settlers say the police deliberately rammed into their car.

Israeli settlers hurl stones at Palestinians during the annual harvest season near the Israeli settlement of Yitzhar in the West Bank on October 7, 2020. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)
Israeli settlers hurl stones at Palestinians during the annual harvest season near the Israeli settlement of Yitzhar in the West Bank on October 7, 2020. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)

Sandak’s death has led to regular demonstrations in recent weeks by the far right in Jerusalem and the West Bank, which have included stone throwing at civilians, attacking buses, and vandalism.

Since Sandak’s death, the NGO Yesh Din has documented 37 cases of violence and damage to Palestinian property in the West Bank, including throwing stones at vehicles and riots inside Palestinian villages. In some cases, Israeli soldiers have stood by and did nothing to prevent the violence.

Israel’s defense establishment has expressed concern about the growing violence, which has also been directed at its security forces. Just a month ago, a settler opened fire on a group of Palestinian and Israeli demonstrators not far from where Ascherman’s accident.

This is also not the first time Ascherman has been subjected to settler violence. In 2015, a masked settler attacked and tried to stab him during an olive harvest near the settlement of Itamar in the northern West Bank.

‘All-time high cooperation between settlers and authorities’

In recent years, residents of an unauthorized settlement outpost near Taybeh have been releasing their cows and sheep to graze on agricultural land that is tended to by local Bedouin communities. The settlers’ animals regularly eat the crops, which the Bedouin depend on for income.

Israeli solidarity activists have been coming to the area to support the residents facing harassment and violence. “It is a long struggle,” said Ascherman. “This land is recognized by the state as private Palestinian land. The farmers rent the land from the residents of Taybeh, but the settlers are trying in every way to take it over.”

Ascherman recounted the events leading up to his crash: “The army and police arrived and one of the settlers kept the cows away, but the officer refused to take his details as we requested. After the officer left, the cows returned.

“Then we made the mistake and got too far away from the vehicle to deal with the cows. We arrived at around 1:30 p.m and got back to the vehicle at 3:30 p.m. When we started driving I began to hear noises; I thought I had run over something. I stopped several times to see what was happening and found nothing, so I continued.”

Settlers on horseback who came to watch Arik Ascherman's vehicle, after unknown individuals sabotaged it (Arik Ascherman)
Settlers on horseback who came to watch Arik Ascherman’s vehicle, after unknown individuals sabotaged it (Arik Ascherman)

As they drove, two of the vehicle’s wheels came unbolted. “Luckily it happened when I made a U-turn. Two tires just fell off. I realized someone had released the bolts,” Ascherman said.

Ascherman said he did not see who sabotaged the car, but it is clear to him who was behind it. “I have no doubt it was the settlers. It was just me, one other activist, and the settlers. Even the Palestinians were not in the area because they were afraid [of potential violence]. We were far away, they unbolted the wheels on the driver’s side, most likely so we would not notice.”

The outpost closest to the agricultural area is “Neria’s Farm,” located just south of the Rimonim settlement, and not far from the new outpost that is being established to commemorate Sandak

All settlements on the territories occupied since 1967 are deemed illegal under international law.

After the crash, many settlers from Rimonim stopped to offer Ascherman help, with only a handful stopping to curse him, including a boy who spat at him. Later, as Ascherman and the activist waited for the car to be repaired, two settlers on horseback — one of whom was at the scene the night before — began to circle them, promising to return to the same area. Ascherman says he plans on filing a complaint with the police.

“The settlers bring cows, goats, and sheep who eat what the Bedouin plant. This causes damage worth tens of thousands of shekels,” said Ascherman. “A year ago we managed to lessen the damage so that only 30 percent of the crop was eaten, but this year we’re seeing an all-time high in cooperation between the settlers and the authorities, which refuse to take care of the families who have lost all their crops.”

According to Ascherman, this year the settlers have begun grazing in the fields earlier than usual, leading to the destruction of most of the crops. “A few weeks ago, we helped families sow and plow. We hoped there would be a grace period of a few months, but [the settlers] released the cows, who ate the seeds and then the crops. At best, the army comes but does not do much.”

The following day, on Wednesday afternoon, settlers on horseback returned to the area with their cows — as did Ascherman and a number of Israeli activists. One 10-year-old settler reportedly beat and wounded one of the activists with a stick. When police arrived at the scene, they detained the wounded activist after the boy falsely accused him of attacking him. The police then arrested Ascherman after he refused to leave the area. The two were taken into custody and released on Wednesday night. 

Israeli politics is full of military connections

Supporters of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu come together in Tel Aviv on election night on 9 April 2019 [THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images]

Supporters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu come together in Tel Aviv on election night on 9 April 2019 [THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images]


Antoine Shalhat-January 14, 2021

There is an unprecedented increase in the number of political parties in Israel in the run up to the next General Election in March. This will be the fourth election in less than two years.

Perhaps the most prominent of these parties is Kahol Laffan founded by the Mayor of Tel Aviv, Ron Khaldaei. He has been joined by Minister of Justice Avi Nissenkorn, who split from the Blue and White party and resigned from his post, and former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli army, Major General Dan Harel.

On Monday, Khaldaei presented the outlines of Kahol Laffan's programme. He made sure to let us know of his military service as a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, stressing that he participated in four wars launched by Israel and if that qualifies him to be affiliated with the right-wing, that would make him happy.

Of course, Khaldaei is not the first Israeli to enter politics and market himself through his military record, and he will not be the last. Israeli politics is full of former soldiers. Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, ended his military service as a captain, while Benny Gantz was Chief of the General Staff.

When Israel was founded in occupied Palestine in 1948, its first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, set the pattern for the PM to hold the defence portfolio as well. This lasted until the appointment of General Moshe Dayan as Defence Minister on the eve of the Six-Day War (1967). This was a turning point in two ways: the separation of the roles of prime minister and defence minister, and appointing a person with a significant military record as a minister in a civilian government.

READ: Israel: Gantz's calls for unity against Netanyahu rejected

The precedent set by Dayan has since become the norm. Former senior officers in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have held the position of defence minister on most occasions since 1967, in parallel with retired officers entering politics in greater numbers.

This has been controversial, raising a number of questions, the foremost of which is the dividing line between civilian and military attitudes and positions. To what extent do military personnel maintain and promote a military ideology after moving into civilian politics?

There are those who believe that a military officer will always be a military officer; rank is always retained beyond a certain level, even in retirement. Taking this into account, there is no doubt that it has great significance in Israel, and the common transfer of senior army officers to positions of political leadership is indicative of the militarisation of Israeli politics. Another question is whether former military personnel get involved in politics beyond their areas of expertise in an effort to increase the influence of the IDF.

This would suggest not that the army is relatively strong, but that civilian institutions in Israel are relatively weak, leaving a void for the military to fill. Many believe that the latter explains why Israeli politics is full of military connections.

‘Beyond Vietnam’: Where Do We Go from Here?

Martin Luther King (1929 - 1968)


By Benay Blend-
January 14, 2021

In “Beyond Vietnam” (1967), his speech delivered at the Riverside Church in New York, Martin Luther King opened by quoting from Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. “A time comes when silence is betrayal,” King explained, then concluded: “That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.”

King’s words that followed still ring true today. In what was perhaps the most significant, but least appreciated, speeches of his career, King warned against falling into “conformist thought,” in particular regarding official policy during times of war.

There is no war today like Vietnam, but there is an ongoing foreign policy that commits imperialist acts abroad. As Peter Dreier notes, over 50 years since King’s Riverside Church address, the US remains involved in several ground wars as well as a war on “terrorism,” which is principally a battle against Muslims as well as immigrants, the latter of whom are motivated to flee their countries because of US-sponsored violence abroad.

In particular, there is foreign aid that goes, among other destinations, to the state of Israel. In this way, the Unites States allows the Zionist state to continue its Occupation of Palestinians by using all the brutality that we used in Vietnam.

As Ramzy Baroud observes, by going against “not only the state apparatus” but also the “liberal hierarchy” which posed as if they were his allies, King’s self-described “inner truth” cost him some support. “It was a lonely, moral stance,” wrote Michelle Alexander. “And it cost him.”

In her landmark Opinion Piece published one year ago in the New York Times, Alexander goes on to hold up King’s example as a standard that still holds true today. In particular, Alexander is concerned with questioning her own silence on what she calls “one of the great moral challenges of our time: the crisis in Israel-Palestine.”

Alexander circumvents King’s well-known advocacy for Israel’s “right to exist” by suggesting that “if we are to honor King’s message and not merely the man, we must condemn Israel’s actions.”

It is impossible to know how King’s position on the Middle East would have changed over time. Building on Alexander’s piece, David Palumbo-Liu cites King’s opposition to apartheid South Africa as a clue to how he would feel towards the same practices in Israel today.

“The fact that King explicitly linked colonialism and segregation suggests that he would indeed recognize the expansion of the occupation as a settler-colonial project. If he did, he would then have to reevaluate his support for Israel pre-1967, as so many others have in recent years. He might well have come to recognize the absolute continuity between the 1948 dispossession, exile, and colonization of Palestinians and the post-1967 occupation.”

Indeed, Hagai El-Ad, executive director of B’Tselem, Israel’s largest human rights organization, has just called for the end of “the systematic promotion of the supremacy of one group of people over another,” i.e. apartheid very similar to what existed in South Africa.

In other ways King’s voice speaks to present-day concerns. In his 1968 call for an “economic bill of rights,” King challenged the notion that this country could afford both “guns and butter,” a conundrum that still prevails today. “We have come to see that this is a myth,” he explained, “that when a nation becomes involved in this kind of war, when the guns of war become a national obsession, social needs inevitably suffer.”

Theoretically we are not at war. On the other hand, as long as we give military aid to countries that repress their people we are not at peace. At a time when Congress continues to propose huge increases in the country’s military budget by cutting programs for the poor, King’s speech holds true today.

As Ramzy Baroud observes, there has been very little direct aid to Americans struggling under the impact of the virus, yet Congress continues to provide Israel with enormous sums of money ostensibly for defense. In reality, these funds are very much needed at home.

“The mere questioning of how Israel uses the funds – whether the military aid is being actively used to sustain Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, finance Jewish settlements, fund annexation of Palestinian land or violate Palestinian human rights,” Baroud explains, remains a “major taboo.”

Many years ago, Reverend King described “adventures like Vietnam” as “some demonic, destructive suction tube” that drew “men and skills and money” into the effort to keep it going. What would he think now of massive funds that go to another country which oppresses its people in ways similar to the Jim Crow South in which King was born?

At the closing of her memorial to Martin Luther King, Alexander pledges “to speak with greater courage and conviction about injustices beyond our borders, particularly those that are funded by our government, and stand in solidarity with struggles for democracy and freedom. My conscience leaves me no other choice.”

King, too, chose to address his vision “beyond Vietnam,” thereby to “a world that borders on our doors.”

In a statement regarding the January 6th right-wing riots in D.C., the US Peace Council reiterated that guns at the expense of butter were part of the root cause of disaffection. “While a record $740B military appropriation sailed through Congress with only 20 Democrats in opposition,” the statement read, “desperately needed reforms that benefit working people have been sidetracked.”

Moreover, the statement refuted a comment often heard in response to recent riots. According to the press and much of social media, what happened at the Capital was “sedition,” because this is America, and its “not who we are.” In reality, notes the Peace Council, what is happening today

“is a microcosm of what the capitalist financial institutions and elites have wreaked upon the planet through trade agreements and an imperialist foreign policy that has suppressed populations through illegal acts of interference, aggression, and economic warfare designed to create the conditions for exploitation, the theft of land and resources and environmental destruction.”

Because the root causes of our problems extend beyond our borders, the Council calls for solutions very much in the manner of King’s focus on the global nature of oppression. Accordingly, the statement concludes that:

“A unified grassroots mass movement is needed to address the fundamental class contradictions of the system as a whole and not limit itself to fighting against the symptoms solely by seeking cosmetic changes through elections and reforms from above. We need to bring all contingents of the people’s movement — labor, social justice, civil rights, human rights, environmental, peace — together under a single coordinated network, with a clear agenda that addresses the root causes of the present crisis and not only its variegated symptoms.”

In this way, more people will come to understand that the catastrophes we face will not be solved as long as what we allow to be done in our name abroad comes home to our nation’s capital. King knew that local police, in conjunction with para-military hate groups, used violence in much the same way as the far-right factions that more recently invaded D.C.

In both cases, the Klan and other groups were/are motivated by a desire to oppose the struggle for civil rights at home. Nevertheless, “our actions cannot be limited to the US,” concludes the US Peace Council, “because if the global elites are willing to oppress and exploit people anywhere, the crises we face will continue.”

The United States, concluded King, is “on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.” In order to solve domestic problems while promoting global peace, he suggested “giv[ing] up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments,” and, he might have added, ending aid to countries like Israel that use the funds to wreak violence on Palestinians under the Occupation.

With “Beyond Vietnam,” concludes Baroud, King “courageously broke free from the confines of American exceptionalism,” thereby joining the civil rights struggle to “a worldwide movement of struggles against racism, colonialism and war.”

In 2021, it is more important now than ever to heed King’s words. Indeed, as Baroud suggests, “new strategies” will have “to replace the old ones” for the Palestinian struggle to succeed. His vision calls for unity among all factions, bringing together Palestinians in the homeland and elsewhere to formulate a blueprint for One Democratic State that would grant the Right of Return.

Harking back to King’s international idea, Baroud calls for “a global solidarity movement that rallies behind a unified Palestinian vision,” a plan that bypasses official circles that have done little to promote peace. While Baroud’s strategy focuses on freedom for the Palestinian people, if such a movement becomes one of transnational mutuality, it would be possible to bring about the liberation of all oppressed people worldwide, thereby remaining true to the “other, more revolutionary, radical and global King” that Baroud explains is more often “hidden from view.”

– Benay Blend earned her doctorate in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. Her scholarly works include Douglas Vakoch and Sam Mickey, Eds. (2017), “’Neither Homeland Nor Exile are Words’: ‘Situated Knowledge’ in the Works of Palestinian and Native American Writers”. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

EFJ demands immediate release of Andrei Alexandrov and other journalists imprisoned in Belarus

Picture credit: Olga Hvoin / BAJ.


14-01-2021

Criminal prosecutions of journalists are increasing in Belarus. Journalby editor Andrei Alexandrov was arrested on 12 January. Eight other journalists are still behind bars in Belarus, just for doing their job. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) once again calls on the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the European Union to intervene with the regime of disputed President Lukashenko to secure their immediate release.

Andrei Alexandrov was detained as part of a criminal case initiated by the Minsk City Investigation Committee. He is considered as a suspect under article 342 of the Belarusian Criminal Code for “organization and preparation of actions, grossly violating public order, or active participation in them.”

In 2009-2012, Andrei Alexandrov was the Deputy Chairman of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), the EFJ affiliate in Belarus. He has also worked for the freedom of expression organisations Index on Censorship and Article 19. He later founded the news portal Journalby.

Eight other journalists are still in prison in Belarus, just for doing their job:

  • Ekaterina Andreeva
  • Daria Chultsova
  • Ekaterina Borisevich
  • Julia Slutskaya
  • Alla Sharko
  • Sergey Alshevsky
  • Peter Slutsky
  • Ksenia Lutskina

“We call, once again, on the international community to demand the immediate release of our colleagues,” said EFJ General Secretary Ricardo Gutiérrez. “The raid on the BelaPAN editorial office on 14 January shows that the disputed President is intensifying the repression. We call on the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the European Union to take action against those responsible for electoral fraud and the repression of citizens and journalists.”

It is the crisis hidden in the shadow of the pandemic: record numbers of patients waiting for hospital treatment as the surge in Covid cases leaves health services struggling to cope.

The waiting list in England now stands at almost 4.5 million people, as doctors warn that the challenge facing the NHS is “truly daunting”.

The government says the latest data on the number of daily deaths and cases in the UK has been delayed by a technical issue.

But almost three million people in the UK have now received their first dose of a vaccine.

MORE 'super-covid' variants are coming, scientists warn: Global surge of nearly 230,000 cases a DAY is fueling more chances for the virus to mutate to beat immune system in people with chronic infections, expert claims

  • Scientists say that the more coronavirus infections there are around the world, the more variants will emerge
  • With more cases, more will become chronic, long infections that give the virus an opportunity to mutate in ways that help it infect human cells and beat the immune system  
  • A third homegrown variant of the coronavirus has U.S. by a team at Southern Illinois University Carbondale
  • Results show the earliest appearance of new variant, called 20C-US, was in Houston, Texas, in May 2020
  • Genome sequencing of the 57,000 U.S. samples uploaded to database GISAID revealed an uptick of the new variant in July 2020
  • Between November 1 and December 31, the team found that 20C-US made up almost 50% of all U.S. sequenced genomes 
  • The variant has not spread significantly to another countries and is most highly prevalent in the Upper Midwest and eastern states

 


In less than 24 hours, US scientists have reported three homegrown 'super-covid' variants - and experts say the world should brace for many more, emerging in countries all over the world. 

And the more people get coronavirus, the more of these highly infectious variants will emerge, scientists believe.  

Scientists theorize that 'super-covid' variants are only going to become more common as case numbers surge across the globe, because the more cases there are, the greater the number of people with rare, chronic infections will be - and these cases offer a unique opportunity for new, stronger COVID-19 variants to evolve. 

'My (highly speculative!) hypothesis is that the emergence of these variant viruses arises in cases of chronic infection during which the immune system places great pressure on the virus to escape immunity and the virus does so by getting really good at getting into cells,' wrote Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center scientist Dr Trever Bradford wrote in a Thursday Twitter thread. 

Weaker immune systems allow the virus to stay in the body for a longer time, during which the immune system keeps fighting it. Duking it out with the immune system teaches the virus how to stick around better. 

Dr Bedford isn't the only one who thinks so. 

'The uptick in mutations [we are seeing] is expected because there is more circulation of the virus, and more chances for a mutation to occur,' Dr Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist with the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation told DailyMail.com

And when people are infected for a long time, 'it is giving the virus an opportunity to mutate within the same host,' Dr Mokdad explained. 

He says scientists suspect that that is how the UK variant, B117, arose: 'A person who was infected for 12 days was the one who started this whole thing,' though that theory is yet to be confirmed. 

The more infectious B117 variant has become dominant in the UK. Similar variants have cropped up in South Africa, Brazil and the US. Now, the US has two other variants. So far, they all appear to likely be more infectious, but not more deadly. Scientists think vaccines will work against them, but that is the key question still looming over them. 

'That's why this debate of cutting the dose [of vaccines] or only giving the first dose is very, very dangerous' Dr Mokdad says. 

'You want [a vaccine] to knock down the virus very, very low. We don't want to get this virus used to something in small doses so the virus can develop immunity, we want to make sure that when the virus comes into contact with these immune antibodies, it loses every time, and fast.'  

Researchers say the variant first began spreading rapidly in late June and early July, coinciding with the second wave of the virus in the U.S.

Researchers say the variant first began spreading rapidly in late June and early July, coinciding with the second wave of the virus in the U.S.

As cases have surged in countries including Brazil (pictured), there have been more chances for the virus to mutate because more infections means a greater number of chronic cases that give the virus ample time to learn how to better infect humans, experts speculate. One of several more infectious 'super-covid' variants emerged in Brazil

As cases have surged in countries including Brazil (pictured), there have been more chances for the virus to mutate because more infections means a greater number of chronic cases that give the virus ample time to learn how to better infect humans, experts speculate. One of several more infectious 'super-covid' variants emerged in Brazil 

Between November 1 and December 31, the variant made up nearly 50% of all U.S. genomes sequenced (right)

Between November 1 and December 31, the variant made up nearly 50% of all U.S. genomes sequenced (right)

Chronic COVID-19 infections - not to be confused with 'long-covid,' symptoms that may linger months after someone clears the virus - may last weeks or even months, and most commonly affect people with weak immune systems. 

A team from Southern Illinois University Carbondale traced the earliest appearance of new variant, called 20C-US, to Texas in May 2020.

The variant carries several mutations, including to the spike protein, which the virus uses to enter and infect human cells.

Scientists say the variant has not spread significantly beyond the country's borders, and that is most highly prevalent in the Upper Midwest. 

What's more, it could be responsible for at least 50 percent of all American cases, meaning it is very widespread. 

The researchers predict that 20C-US may be the most dominant variant of the coronavirus in the U.S. at this moment.  

20C-US is now one of the growing list of mutations discovered in countries such as the UK, South Africa and Brazil.

The news comes just one day after Ohio researchers announced the first discovery of two homegrown variants - one virtually identical to a variant that emerged in the UK and the other completely unique to the U.S. and dominant in the capital of Columbus.

The results were published in a pre-print article on bioRxiv.org on Wednesday.

Led by Dr Keith Gagnon, an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at SIU, the team first noticed the possibility of the new variant while looking at genome sequencing data from Illinois.

'We were just looking at our local, like state-specific Illinois data...and we were asked [by the Illinois Department of Public Health] to specifically look for the spike protein mutations of the UK variant for example,' he told DailyMail.com.

'As we're going through the data, we're not seeing a UK variant but I keep seeing this large outbranching off the final genetic tree that we reconstructed.' 

Of the viral genome samples taken from March to the present that were sequenced, one variant was more pronounced than the rest. 

The variant has not spread significantly beyond U.S. borders and is most highly prevalent in the Upper Midwest (above)

The variant has not spread significantly beyond U.S. borders and is most highly prevalent in the Upper Midwest (above)

Despite being more widespread, the virus does not appear to more deadly, just more transmissible

Despite being more widespread, the virus does not appear to more deadly, just more transmissible

US SCIENTISTS FIND THREE HOMEGROWN 'SUPER-COVID' VARIANTS 

The US now has three of its own homegrown 'super-covid' variants that are more infectious than the most common coronavirus types in the US - and the new variants are spreading like wildfire in at least one state.  

Two variants were identified by Ohio scientists on Wednesday and the third by Illinois researchers on Thursday.

One of the new, more infectious variants has already become dominant in Columbus, Ohio, where it was discovered.   

So far, this homegrown variant has been seen in about 20 samples since Ohio State University (OSU) scientists first detected it in December. 

It's now present in most of the samples they are sequencing. 

A second variant has mutations virtually identical to the UK variant's, but arose completely independently on American soil, according to Ohio State University scientists. 

Just one person with this variant has been found.  

The third new variant was discovered by a team from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. 

The earliest appearance of new variant, called 20C-US, was traced back to Texas in May 2020.

It began picking up prevalence in late June and early July 2020 and could be responsible for up to 50% of all current cases.   

To see if it was present at the the national level, researchers randomly subsampled 3.3 percent of U.S. genomes available on the global genomic database GISAID. 

The earliest appearance was found from a sample taken in the greater Houston area of Texas on May 20, 2020.

'The crazy thing is it's been around for months, I would say largely unnoticed, uncharacterized,' Gagnon said.

'It wasn't that it wasn't undetected...but nobody I think really picked up on it.' 

Following the variant over time, there was a notable expansion in the variant's presence in late June and early July 2020, which coincides with America's second wave of the pandemic, in states such as Wisconsin and Illinois.  

However, between November 1 and December 31, almost 50 percent of all sequenced genomes from the U.S. are the new variant.

'It is coincidental that the rise to dominance of this variant really started at the end of the summer and especially during the third pandemic wave,' Gagnon said.

'It is tempting to speculate that possibly this variant is playing a role. The circumstantial evidence suggests that.' 

Researchers suggest this means 20C-US has 'surpassed 50 percent penetrance to become the most dominant variant in the U.S.'

However, it has a high prevalent in the eastern and Midwestern regions and has no t spread widely to the western half of the U.S.  

20C-US has been reported in other countries including Australia, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, but at low levels.

The first mutations the virus showed were in genes related to virus particle maturation - a process by which a virus breaks from a host cell and activates to infect more cells - and the  processing of viral proteins.

Gagnon says these are all important for virus production.

Since then, the new variant has formed two new mutations in the spike protein, which demonstrates that it is evolving. 

However, the variant does not appear to be more deadly. 

'Even more speculative, but interesting, is we notice that the death rates are a lot lower even though cases are very high,' Gagnon said.

This may suggest 20C-US is highly transmissible but only causes a mild illness.  

Dr Daniel Jones, of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, who discovered the Columbus variant told DailyMail.com the Illinois variant 'looks closely related but not exactly identical.'

Jones said this means the two sets of researchers - in Ohio and Illinois - are likely tracking variants from the same outgrowth.

With the first doses of newly approved vaccines being administered across the national, Gagnon said it is unknown whether the variant will impact its effectiveness. 

'Based on the mutations so far, I don’t think it will significantly impact the vaccine’s effectiveness,' he said.

'The catch is that the virus continues to evolve, and since May, it has acquired three mutations, and two of them are in the spike protein, one of which might affect antibody binding. There are a lot of unknowns.' 

Both Pfizer and Moderna have been testing their vaccines against the international variants and say they expect the jabs to provide protection.  

As COVID Surges in L.A., Hard-Hit Indigenous Communities Fight to Preserve Life, Culture & Language

Image Credit: CIELO and Jon Endow


JANUARY 13, 2021

As Los Angeles County reports record COVID-19 infections, overflowing hospitals and record death tolls, we look at how Indigenous communities there are among the hardest hit in working-class neighborhoods, where many are essential workers. “Indigenous people, we don’t have the privilege to stay home and not go to work,” says Odilia Romero, co-founder and executive director of Indigenous Communities in Leadership, or CIELO, an Indigenous women-led nonprofit organization in Los Angeles. Romero also laments “the loss of knowledge” that comes with the devastation of COVID-19. “Some of the elders have passed away, and there goes a whole worldview,” she says. CIELO recently published a book documenting the stories of undocumented Indigenous women from Mexico and Guatemala living in Los Angeles in the midst of the pandemic.


This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

Four thousand three hundred twenty-seven. That’s the world record-shattering one-day coronavirus death toll in the United States. That’s more than the total number of people who have died of COVID in South Korea. It’s more than the total number of people who have died of COVID in Japan — again, through the entire pandemic.

As the U.S. hits yet another COVID-19 world record, we go to California, where the epicenter, Los Angeles County, is expected to hit 1 million COVID-19 infections by the end of the week, amidst reports of overflowing hospitals, record death tolls. With 1,600 deaths in the past week, L.A. is averaging a death every six minutes. The crisis point for Los Angeles comes as numbers soar across the state. On Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom said the state would open mass vaccination sites.

GOVGAVIN NEWSOM: We recognize that the current strategy is not going to get us to where we need to go as quickly as we all need to go, and so that’s why we’re speeding up the administration, not just for priority groups, but also now opening up large sites to do so, meaning Dodger Stadium, Padre Stadium, Cal Expo — these large mass vaccination sites. You’ll start to see those coming up as early as this week.

AMY GOODMAN: The virus has hit Latinx and Indigenous communities in Los Angeles the hardest, as COVID-19 ravages working-class neighborhoods, where many are essential workers. This is Dr. Edgar Chavez, who works in a community clinic in Los Angeles, speaking to NBC.

DR. EDGAR CHAVEZ: It’s really hard for us to see our population doing the work that nobody else wants to do, front-facing, exposing themselves to COVID, and then dying from COVID, and then not getting the healthcare that they need, not getting the vaccine fast enough.

AMY GOODMAN: Los Angeles’s Indigenous communities from Mexico and Central America have been particularly impacted as they face both the crisis of COVID-19 and additional language barriers and lack of access to information and care.

For more, we go to Los Angeles, where we’re joined by Odilia Romero, co-founder and executive director of Indigenous Communities in Leadership, or CIELO, an Indigenous women-led nonprofit that has raised over a million dollars for coronavirus relief for L.A.'s Indigenous communities. It also recently published a book called — a book, which I'm going to ask her to pronounce, documenting the stories of undocumented Indigenous women from Mexico and Guatemala living in the midst of the pandemic. Odilia Romero is a Zapotec interpreter, has been an Indigenous leader with the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations for a quarter of a century.

Odilia, welcome back to Democracy Now! Please, so I don’t mispronounce it, tell us the name of your book, and then talk about the Indigenous immigrant communities and what’s happening now in the midst of this record-shattering pandemic.

ODILIA ROMERO: Good morning, Amy. Thank you for having me again. Pa diuxi. The name of the book is Diža’ No’olePalabra de MujerA Woman’s Word.

And COVID in Indigenous communities in L.A. County has been devastating. You know, every time I talk to someone in the community, another — the mechanic die, the healer die, the dancer die. And that is like every day we get to talk to people, and it’s a tragedy. I spoke to someone yesterday, and they were like, “Already eight people this week die in my community.” Another woman told me, “Four people die in my community.” So, every day that I talk to someone in the community, there’s more and more dead.

And this happens because Indigenous people, we don’t have the privilege to stay home and not go to work, right? We have to go to work, as we — through our Undocu-Indigenous Fund, we’ve heard a lot of stories: “I don’t have money to pay for my rent. The funds that I’m getting through CIELO, it goes directly to my rent. I don’t have food. I have to work. I’m selling food on the street.” So, this puts you in a condition that you put yourself at risk to get COVID. And once you have it, you live in an apartment — some people now have lost their apartment, and now they’re living with other families. So, one gets infected, the rest will get infected.

So, it’s been really painful to see the impact of COVID in Indigenous communities. The infection rate is very high. And when they go to the hospital, well, if you are there — even if you spoke Spanish or English, you’re alone, but as you get there, there’s no one that interprets in your language. And when this pandemic started, when we started the funds, it was a person I know knows a person that had COVID. During the summer, “Oh, a person in my family had COVID.” Now it’s like, when you talk to people, “I have COVID.” My family has — a family member says, “I have COVID.” My mother says, “I have COVID.” My mother has been in the hospital, personally. My mom was in the hospital for 10 days. And her being there, not being able to see her and not talk to her, her not being able to communicate in her Indigenous language was devastating, that she fell into a deep depression, that for a moment we thought we were going to lose her. So, all this is happening with Indigenous communities — a lack of funds, the lack of — there’s a lot of food insecurity. So we’re going through a lot currently, Amy.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Odilia, I’m wondering — when we hear the stories, and it’s one outrageous story after another in recent days, of the inequality in how this pandemic is being dealt with, I think specifically, for instance, National Football League athletes, football players, getting tested for COVID every single day just to assure that the football games can go on, or we’re hearing of these elite medical institutions, like Columbia/Presbyterian and Brigham Hospital, vaccinating not only the workers who — the emergency room workers, who are actually dealing the COVID patients, but they’re vaccinating their grad students, they’re vaccinating their administrators, they’re vaccinating all kinds of other people who really aren’t at risk. And meanwhile, you’re facing this crisis in Los Angeles. When you hear some of these stories, what’s your reaction?

ODILIA ROMERO: My personal reaction, our staff reaction, it’s like this. When we hear the community’s stories, it’s very heartbreaking. You know, there are days, like when the team, we meet in the evening, we’re all quarantined together, and we just like sit there and don’t know what to do. Our hands are tied. We’ve only raised $3.4 million. And it sounds like a lot of money, but it only helps 5,000 people. You know, when people call, like, “Do you have any food for me? Do you have any, like, money for the rent? Because, you know, I’m being threatened by the landlord,” and then you hear these — you know, “And I have to go to work. I’m infected.” When we talk to people, people are coughing.

And when you hear the privilege of others, when the essential workers are not getting vaccinated, it’s very heartbreaking. And it is, very personally, very frustrating. Like, I wouldn’t have the words to tell you, like, my feeling of anger at times, because I see Indigenous communities at the forefront. From the farm — from the agricultural fields to the hospitality industry to the cleaners, we are there. And we don’t have access to the vaccine. We don’t have access to any more funds but what we have in CIELO. And what we have in CIELO is — like, it sounds like a lot of money, but it’s really nothing compared to the need that people have right now.

And on top of it, we have to talk about people not knowing how to — they can’t work; because they have children, they have to stay at home. One parent told me the other day, “You know, there’s four families living in our household, and the kids are asking for pizza. And we have to take turns. One family buys a pizza, and we prioritize the kids.” You know, some families have shared that now they’re reducing their intake of food, and they prioritize the kids. So, it’s very heartbreaking and depressing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’m wondering also — Odilia, I’m wondering also: What’s been the actions of Governor Newsom and the state, at the state level, to assist some of the most hard-hit communities, especially in places like Los Angeles, where a good percentage of the people are undocumented and are not — cannot partake of any of the assistance handed down by the federal government?

ODILIA ROMERO: Well, there has been a lot of support to undocumented communities. They had the California relief fund. But there has been an effort, but as far as for particularly Indigenous people, there hasn’t, because then you have to go — you are labeled as Latinx, so then the box is checked that you’ve been supporting undocumented Latinos. But we’re not Latinos, right?

So, in order for Indigenous people to access all these resources, one, there’s the language barrier. A lot of us did not go have college educations, so we don’t know how to read and write. So that does not allow us to access a lot of the funds. And we hear this from different community members: “I have applied.” And some of the beautiful things that come out of this is, like, we’re able to speak the language. Our staff, there’s K’iche’, Zapotec, Mixtec, and we’re able to communicate with the community. That makes a big difference for them to access the funds. There has been little effort for Indigenous communities.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to continue on that point of who is dying, the lives lost and the knowledge lost. As you were talking, I was thinking about a conversation I had with a member of the Standing Rock Sioux. And there, they have prioritized speakers of the Native languages for its COVID-19 vaccine distribution, because cultures and languages are dying out with the death of these elders during COVID. And if you can talk about, Odilia, what’s happening in Los Angeles, as you’re a Zapotec interpreter, talking about the Zapotec, the K’iche’, and what data doesn’t show? You’ve talked about it as erasing Indigenous people.

ODILIA ROMERO: Let’s say, for last night, the county health department put out: Death so far, new death, is 288. I know at least 15 people are Indigenous people that died, because I’ve talked to the family members, because our team has talked to them. The new cases — right? — there has been 11,844. I know also that maybe a hundred of them are Indigenous communities.

And you might say the numbers are small, but because we’re a small population, this is — it’s the loss of lives, people being infected, you know, and the loss of knowledge is there, right? Some of the elders have passed away, and there goes a whole worldview. Just last week, someone in the community died. She knew the stories of migration. She was one of the first women that came to the U.S., you know, and she brought a lot of other women. And all the stories are gone.

And the language is dying with COVID more than ever, especially here in L.A. with the elders. You know, I speak the language, but when my mom was in the hospital, that’s one of the things I thought: We never documented her story. Like, what’s going to happen with all the recipes of food that my mom has? Like, everything — so, it’s one of those things that, for us, it’s so important.

It would be great if Indigenous communities will have access to the vaccine, because there’s so much knowledge that will be gone with COVID. And because we live in confined places here in L.A., the risk of elders getting infected and dying is a lot higher than in any other places, and the language, the language, the traditions. When one of the traditional healer was in the hospital, I called and tried to — like, he doesn’t speak Spanish. He doesn’t speak English. How do I communicate with him? That was impossible. Luckily, he’s home, and he’s doing better. But it is these things that are heartbreaking for us here at CIELO.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much, Odilia, for joining us, Odilia Romero, Zapotec interpreter with Indigenous Communities in Leadership, which helped raise more than $1 million in COVID-19 relief to help Los Angeles Indigenous immigrant communities, has published a book documenting their stories of living and dying during the pandemic.

That does it for our broadcast. You can watch the House impeachment proceedings, the first time in history a president will be impeached twice, on our website, democracynow.org. We’ll be streaming the full debate and vote starting at 9 a.m. Eastern time.

That does it for our show. Democracy Now! is produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Libby Rainey, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Carla Wills, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud and Adriano Contreras. Our general manager, Julie Crosby. Special thanks to Becca Staley, Miriam Barnard, Paul Powell, Mike Di Filippo, Miguel Nogueira, Hugh Gran, Denis Moynihan, David Prude and Dennis McCormick.

Remember, wearing a mask is an act of love. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Thanks for joining us.