Britain’s police-state dragnet against pro-Palestinian activists widens

Laura Tiernan

Police raided the home of prominent anti-Zionist Tony Greenstein in the early hours of December 20, arresting him under the Terrorism Act (2000) for a social media post defending the right of Palestinians to resist Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Tony Greenstein [Photo: skwawkbox]

Sussex Police and unidentified plain clothes officers arrived at Greenstein’s Brighton home at 7am. They told the 69-year-old he was being arrested on “suspicion” of having committed an offence under Section 12 1(a) of the Terrorism Act.

Greenstein’s offending communication was a November 15 reply to a Zionist on X. Greenstein had written: ‘I support the Palestinians that is enough and I support Hamas against the Israeli army.”

In the legal dragnet represented by the Terrorism Act (2000) and subsequent amendments, Greenstein is deemed to have published a statement “supportive” of a proscribed terrorist organisation.

Greenstein co-founded the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in 2004. A supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, he was expelled from the Labour Party in 2018 based on manufactured charges of anti-Semitism. His father was a Rabbi who marched against Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists during the 1930s.

Officers bundled Greenstein into the back of a police van, and he was taken to Hollingbury Custody Centre where he was questioned for one hour and detained until 4pm. During his detention, police used Greenstein’s confiscated keys to raid his home. No warrant was provided by police. They seized electronic equipment including a laptop, desktop computer, two external hard drives and two mobile devices.

While Greenstein has not been charged with any offence, draconian bail conditions have been imposed. He is banned from posting statements on Twitter/X about Israel’s war on Gaza, he must inform police if he plans to sleep anywhere other than Brighton, and must give police the phone number, IMEI and SIM number for any new device within 24 hours.

Greenstein’s draconian bail conditions include a ban on posting about the Genocide in Gaza on Twitter/X

In a statement posted on his blog on Christmas Eve, Greenstein denounced the police raid and the seizure of his electronic devices as an intelligence gathering exercise against the state’s “enemies on the Left and in the Palestine solidarity movement”. He told the World Socialist Web Site his arrest was “a fundamental attack on free speech and must be resisted on those grounds, amongst others”.

His arrest is part of a campaign targeting left-wing opponents of Zionism. It is driven by fear of mass popular opposition ignited by Israel’s campaign of mass terror in Gaza that has seen millions demonstrate in Britain and worldwide.

On December 16, Mick Napier, founder of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) was arrested at a protest in Glasgow after he gave a speech supporting Palestinians’ “right to resist by means that they choose”. Noting that Hamas had “won the [2006] elections by a landslide in Palestine with observers from Scotland saying the elections were free and fair,” Napier thanked Hamas for “breaking out of the Gaza concentration camp”.

Police informed Napier he was being arrested for “religiously aggravated” offences. He was later charged under Section 12 (1) of the Terrorism Act for “support for a proscribed organization”. He has pleaded not guilty and will appear in court on January 9.

The bail conditions imposed on Napier, who is 76, are those of a police state. He is banned from attending any protest in Scotland and must not enter Glasgow city centre.

The SPSC has denounced Napier’s arrest as “the latest in a line of legal attacks by Scottish police and prosecution authorities over the last 14 years. Having successfully defeated in open court a series of fake antisemitism and wholly invented assault charges, extracted a churlish apology from Scottish police for wrongful arrest and assault, we will now vigorously fight and see off this new, but even more sinister and equally baseless terrorism charge.”

PEN Scotland announced it was “gravely alarmed by the arrest of Mick Napier at a peaceful pro-Palestinian demo last Saturday in Glasgow… Freedom of speech and our democratic right to protest should not be denied. In the face of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, our right to resist is paramount. Scottish Pen is also deeply concerned that these events appear to follow a pattern of restrictions being placed on the ability to protest more generally.”

Such measures—approved at the highest levels of government in Westminster and Holyrood—confirm Britain’s complicity with Israel’s war of annihilation against the Palestinians. It drives home the indissoluble connection between genocide in Gaza and a rapidly escalating assault on the democratic rights of the working class. Since October 7:

Craig Murray was detained at Glasgow Airport on October 16 and questioned under the Terrorism Act about his attendance at a pro-Palestine rally in Iceland and his meetings there with members of the Julian Assange Defence Campaign. His phone and laptop equipment were seized and retained as part of an ongoing counter-terrorism investigation.

Hanin Barghouti was charged on November 11 under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act for allegedly supporting Hamas. The 22-year-old student union women’s officer from Sussex University was charged for her speech at a Brighton protest on October 8 in which she praised the Palestinian uprising launched one day earlier.

Ranjeet Brar and three other members of the Stalinist Communist Party of Great Britain-Marxist Leninist were arrested at a mass protest in central London on November 25 for displaying a book, Zionism: A Racist, Antisemitic and Reactionary Tool of Imperialism. The book’s cover art links the swastika and the Star of David. Held overnight in police detention, their homes were raided by counter-terrorism police who seized computer and phone equipment.

Dozens of protestors have been arrested and/or charged under the Terrorism Act since October for displaying banners warning of the parallels between Hitler’s Final Solution against the Jewish people during World War II, and Israel’s war of annihilation against the Palestinians.

The legislation used to target left-wing opponents of genocide was enacted by the Blair Labour government in 2000. It was part of a battery of repressive laws rammed through on the pretext of a “war on terror,” aimed at overturning core democratic rights, suppressing domestic political opposition and to facilitate imperialist domination of the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa.

The Terrorism Act (2000) expanded the definition of terrorism to include any action, used or threatened, for the purpose of advancing any “political, religious or ideological” cause. It introduced arrest and detention of terror suspects without charge for 48 hours (later extended to 14 days with the permission of a judge) and allowed for the internment without trial of foreign nationals suspected of terrorism. It granted sweeping stop-and-search powers across “cordoned” locations (including entire cities) as designated by senior police; and allowed for the continuation of non-jury trials for terror and other serious offenses in Northern Ireland.

In detailing its provisions 23 years ago, the World Socialist Web Site described the Terrorism Act as “a political watershed in Britain. It confirms the absence of any commitment to the defence of democratic rights throughout much of the Labour Party and the ruling establishment.”

In 2019, this repressive legislation was bolstered by the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act. It amended Section 12 of the Terrorism Act, creating a new offence branding as a terrorist anyone who “a) expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation, and b) in doing so is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation.”

The legislation was passed unopposed, with the backing of then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. A gift to the British state, it has established a legal dragnet that is being deployed to intimidate and suppress mass opposition to genocide and imperialist military violence.

China’s central bank “sidelined”

Nick Beams

An article published earlier this week in the Financial Times (FT) has drawn attention to some significant changes in the operations of the Chinese central bank—the People’s Bank of China (PBoC)—flowing from decisions taken by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) back in March.

A man carries a child in front of China's central bank in Beijing [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

At that time China’s president Xi Jinping announced the formation of a Central Financial Commission (CFC) to preside over the $61 trillion Chinese financial system, reducing the powers of the PBoC and the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

Since then, the CCP has been putting together the staff needed to operate the new body—a process which seems near completion.

The report in the FT, headlined “China sidelines its once venerated central bank,” said the aim was to “step up a drive to centralise Communist party control over financial regulation.”

It noted that while the PBoC would continue to play a role in the daily operation of money markets, its governor will be ranked lower in the hierarchy of the CCP than some of the governors of other banks.

The move to downgrade the central bank’s role clearly reflects growing concerns in ruling circles about continued lower growth. The expected boost following the lifting of all anti-COVID measures failed to materialise, and the ongoing problems in the real estate and property sector have been a drag on the rest of the economy.

At times there have been criticisms that the Western media have over-emphasised the problems of the Chinese economy. That may well be true, at least in part. But there is no doubt that with the lowest growth in more than three decades, and no sign of any immediate relief, major problems have emerged.

Xi himself has openly acknowledged the difficulties in remarks reported by the state news agency Xinhua earlier this month. He said that although the economic recovery from the pandemic was improving, China faced an adverse international economic and political environment as well as domestic challenges.

“At present, our country’s economic recovery is still at a critical stage,” he said. “The development situation facing our country is complex.”

There are other indications of major problems. While it is not an official edict, it has been made clear to economists and commentators that they should not focus on the difficulties of the economy. Last August the publication of the levels of youth unemployment—those aged between 16 and 24 in urban areas—was stopped after it showed persistent jobless rates of more than 20 percent.

According to the FT report, the sidelining of the PBoC is a move way from more market-oriented policies on finance towards more direct control from the top levels of the CCP and the government.

George Magnus, a long-time China observer and an associate at Oxford University’s China Centre, told the newspaper that the “PBoC’s reformist and modernising tendences” had been a “sort of Trojan horse that allowed the government to experiment with financial liberalisation and… integrate other market-oriented mechanisms [within] a state-dominated system.”

The operations of the PBoC are now under the control of the Communist party-led oversight body, the CFC. It is headed by He Lifeng, the country’s vice-premier, and reports directly to the premier Li Qiang, who is chiefly responsible for the economy and financial affairs.

The changes in the position of the PBoC have gone down the organisation.

The FT reported that, according to four people who had been briefed on the matter, at the lower levels of the PBoC, “some advisers and research department heads, including those receptive to market-oriented reforms, have either stepped down or been sidelined.”

The PBoC is known to be opposed to the previous methods of boosting growth based on the expansion of credit. It is too early to tell, but its removal from centre stage of policy-making could be the start of a move back in that direction after various minor moves on monetary policy have had little or no effect.

The PBoC has opposed major credit expansion because of the fear that it will add to the country’s debt problems as well as pushing down the value of the renminbi. The PBoC has worked to sustain the value of the currency lest its fall provokes a capital flight.

A National Administration of Financial Regulation has also been created to oversee all financial activities apart from securities. According to the FT report, it will absorb more than 1,660 of the lower level branches of the PBoC out of a total of 1,761 branches as of the end of 2021.

How these changes are reflected in economic and financial policies remains to be seen but their scope does indicate rising levels of concern in the upper echelons of the Xi government over the problems it confronts.

There will be no boost provided internationally. Despite its professed claims that it is seeking warmer relations, the Biden administration is intensifying its military preparations against China and is continually seeking new ways, through bans and export controls, to stifle its technological development.

International capital is also giving the thumbs down, with the FT reporting that almost 90 percent of the money that has flowed into the stock market this year has since been pulled out “spurred by mounting doubts about Beijing’s willingness to take serious action to boost flagging growth.”

One of the factors behind the withdrawal has been the continuing problems in the real estate sector which took a turn for the worse in August when Country Garden missed international bond payments. It had been touted as a secure property developer, by contrast with the failed giant Evergrande.

According to an investment manager at a Hong Kong based wealth management firm, cited by the FT: “The confidence issue goes beyond real estate, although real estate is key. I’m referring to consumer confidence, business confidence and investor confidence—both from domestic and foreign investors.”

License to kill: US police killed over 1,200 people in 2023

Jacob Crosse

Nearly a decade after popular protests broke in Ferguson, Missouri, following the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, MappingPoliceViolence.us (MPV) has found that police killed at least 1,213 people this year in the US, slightly more than the 1,202 deaths tabulated by MPV in 2022.

According to MPV, citing data from police use of force collection programs, the Gun Violence Archive, the Fatal Encounters database, and public news reports, police in the United States killed more people in 2023 than any other year in the last decade.

Anti-police violence protesters gather in Times Square on Saturday, January 28, 2023, in New York, following the release of footage the day before showing the vicious beating of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police [AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura]

There is no doubt the number of deaths recorded by MPV will rise before the end of the year; on average, police in the land of inequality kill just over three people a day. According to MPV, there have been only 18 days in the US this year where police did not kill someone, while there were at least 71 days where police killed five or more people in 24 hours. There were several days this year, such as July 3 and August 25 where police killed 9 people in single day.

Since MPV began tracking police violence in 2013, there has not been a single year in which cops have not claimed the lives of at least 1,039 individuals, overwhelmingly working class and poor. It total, since 2013, MPV has recorded 12,318 police killings in the US, over 5,000 more deaths than all US military personnel killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other “war on terror” battlefields from October 2001 through October 2019, according to the Watson Institute at Brown University.

The killing of over 12,000 people by the police in the last decade is in indication of the deep fear that has gripped the ruling class. Unable to justify their parasitic existence and sociopathic policies—including the “let it rip” approach to COVID-19, which has killed over 700,000 Americans since Biden took office, and the transfer of billions of dollars in war materiel to neo-Nazis in Ukraine and genocidal Zionists in Israel—and amid a growing upsurge in working class opposition, the ruling class is increasingly turning to wanton police violence in an effort to maintain their grip on power.

In an attempt to obscure the class character and widespread brutality of police violence, which is directed against workers and youth of all backgrounds, local police agencies and the federal government refuse to keep accurate, publicly-available information on the number of the deaths their agents cause every year, leaving it up to independent researchers and media agencies to try and piece together the grim toll.

The figures tabulated by MPV are similar to those gathered in a separate database maintained by the Washington Post. Unlike MPV, the Post only keeps track of how many people were shot and killed by police, leaving out deaths caused by police tasers, fists, batons, ‘less lethal’ ammunition, car chases and other causes.

Even with this limitation, the Post found police gunned down at least 1,089 people 2023, only seven less than the 1,096 recorded by the Post last year, which was the “highest number of people on record” according to the paper.

While police violence is overwhelmingly presented in the mainstream press as a racial question, data from MPV shows that the most killings per capita so far this year were in the states of New Mexico, Alaska, Idaho, Colorado and West Virginia, none of which have a black population above 6 percent. In these states most of the victims were white or Hispanic.

While black people continued to be killed by police at a disproportionate rate compared to their actual share of the population, with racism likely playing a factor in many cases, MPV data, shows that overall, 441 victims of police violence in 2023 have been identified as white, the most out of any racial group, with 62 more deaths than recorded by MPV last year. At the same time at least 261 black people were killed by police this year, 9 less than MPV recorded last year.

While police killings are generally swept under the rug by the media, with local news reports typically reproducing police statements verbatim and uncritically, the World Socialist Web Site reported on dozens of killings this year. These are just a few of the more high profile cases:

• On January 7, Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old black man was savagely beaten to death by five black officers from the Memphis Police Department. Nichols’ killing refutes the racialist narrative advanced by the Democratic Party and its identity politics allies who claim that police violence is an expression of “white supremacy,” which can be rectified with the hiring of more black cops and black police chiefs. All of the cops videotaped beating Nichols were members of the “Scorpion unit” an ultra-violent outfit created by Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis, a black woman, with funding provided by Democratic President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan earmarked for “community policing.”
  
• On January 18, 26-year-old environmental and anti-police violence activist, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, known by friends and comrades as Tortuguita, was shot and killed by police while protesting the construction of the $90 million public tax payer funded Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, known as “Cop City,” in the South Rivers forest in Georgia. Despite the presence of dozens of police from several different agencies, police claim no body camera footage exists of the shooting and killing of Terán. As is the case in over 98 percent of police killings, after a white wash investigation, prosecutors announced in October that no charges would be filed against any of the police involved in the murder of Tortuguita.
  
• On August 14, 27-year-old mechanic Eddie Irizarry was shot and killed by Philadelphia police officer Mark Dial during a traffic stop. Despite the fact that Irizarry did not have a gun, and never attacked police, a Pennsylvania judge dropped all charges against Dial shortly after they were filed claiming prosecutors did not present sufficient evidence.
  
• On March 1, 25-year-old Chase Allan, who was white, was shot and killed by Farmington, Utah, police during a traffic stop over his license plate. During the stop, Allan advanced Sovereign Citizen-esqe arguments to justify his non-compliance with police. Police shot and killed him after they claimed he was reaching for a gun he was legally allowed to own in Utah.
  

This snapshot of police killings occurring this year is a fraction of the enormous scale of state violence inflicted on workers and their families on a daily basis through what Friedrich Engels noted are the “special bodies of armed men” created and elevated by the capitalist system to defend the unearned privileges of the ruling class and maintain the inequality it creates.

The record number of police killings recorded in 2023 is a grim warning for the working class. Under conditions where millions of youth and workers have not only participated in strikes in the face of surging inflation and unbridled corporate profiteering, but also in mass protests against the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, police in the US, with the full support of both major capitalist parties, continue to kill with virtual impunity.

This upcoming year, 2024, will be the tenth anniversary of the Ferguson protests and four years since the upsurge of mass anger sparked by the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Zelensky government submits draft law for the mobilization of another 500,000 men

Jason Melanovski

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during his end-of-the-year news conference in Kiev, Ukraine, Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023. [AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky]

The government of President Volodymyr Zelensky submitted a new mobilization draft law to parliament on Monday, December, 25 as it seeks to conscript up to 500,000 new troops to continue the NATO proxy war with Russia.

Details on the bill are being purposefully kept under wraps to avoid popular backlash. However, journalists from the news outlet Hromadske were able to download an explanatory description before the Ukrainian parliament’s website was shut down to public access. Among the proposed changes are:

• The conscription age is to be lowered from 27 to 25 years;
• The introduction of basic three-months-long military training for all Ukrainian citizens aged 18 to 25 in every educational establishment;
• The introduction of optional military service for persons aged under 25 who were not able to complete basic military training;
• Restrictions on Ukrainian citizens who evade registering with a military enlistment office and completing military service;
• Administrative service centres and employment and recruitment centres are to be involved in military recruitment.

The draft law also proposes to deliver military call-up notices via email and an online service for conscripts, persons liable for military service and reservists.

Among the controversial aspects of the bill are proposals to cancel the passports of Ukrainians living abroad who refuse to report for mobilization, thus threatening their legal status within the country they currently reside. Following the announcement of the proposal, Ukrainians across Europe were seen waiting in line at consular offices to renew their passports before the mobilization changes take effect. In Valencia, Spain, 550 people reportedly waited in line for hours to renew their passports and ensure their legal status for the upcoming year in Spain.

The Ukrainian parliament is set to review the new mobilization rules, followed by a vote that will likely take place as early as mid-January 2024. According to reports, members of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party have been told not to publicly discuss any details of the bill.

Zelensky first announced the proposal in his end of the year press conference on December 19, making headlines both in Ukraine and internationally. The half a million additional troops are to be mobilized at a cost of $13.3 billion. Zelensky claimed at the time that the proposal was made in response to a request from Armed Forces Commander General Valery Zaluzhnyi, with whom Zelensky has waged a very public political struggle over the direction of the war. Yet Zaluzhnyi promptly declared on December 26 that he and the army leadership had never submitted a request for a specific number of troops to be mobilized, directly contradicting the president and his justification for the mobilization bill.

The new mobilization bill is testimony to the state of extreme crisis of the war and the Ukrainian oligarchic regime as a whole. It also demonstrates that, amidst this crisis, the ruling class is prepared to sacrifice hundreds of thousands, if not millions more, for the war against Russia. However, not only the funding of this mobilization effort but also its physical feasibility are in serious question. 

Given that Ukraine had a pre-war population of approximately 36 million, the proposed numbers represent a huge share of the working age population forced into NATO’s proxy war that has failed to achieve any of the stated objectives of the Ukrainian government or NATO. The percentage is even larger if one considers that millions have fled the country and many more live in territories not controlled by the Zelensky government.

BBC Ukraine reported in November that 650,000 Ukrainian men aged 18-60 have left Ukraine for other countries in Europe since the start of the war. Zelensky’s former advisor Alexey Arestovich recently claimed that 4.5 million Ukrainian men, nearly half of the Ukrainian male population, had fled abroad to avoid military service and that 30 to 70 percent of military units consist of “refuseniks” who have gone AWOL (absent without official leave).

Out of the remaining population, hundreds of thousands have already been killed, with even Zelensky’s former advisor, Alexey Arestovich putting the number of estimated dead at a staggering 400,000. Given that there are an average of 3 wounded per 1 dead soldier, the number of those injured must now be well over 1 million. At least 80,000 people have become amputees.

Meanwhile, Zaluzhnyi himself acknowledged in November in the Economist that the war had reached a “stalemate”, drawing the ire of Zelensky who shortly thereafter cancelled the planned 2024 presidential elections. Confronting a severe shortage of men at the front throughout the past year, the Ukrainian military has resorted to kidnapping people off the streets, grabbing them at shopping malls and other public places, and forcibly drafting them into the army. 

Roman Kostenko, a Ukrainian parliament member and secretary of Ukraine’s parliamentary security committee recently told the news outlet Ukrinform, that “the words about an additional 450,000-500,000 mobilized have become a cold shower for everyone”. He added that the military must be replenished due to losses as the war “can... drag on for a long time.”

Zelensky and the Ukrainian ruling class as a whole are clearly aware that the a new round of mass mobilization would prove unpopular as the war drags on and the casualties continue to rise. In an embryonic but significant expression of growing anti-war sentiment, this fall saw the first nationwide protests by family members of soldiers, some of whom have been deployed at the front since the start of the war in February 2022 almost two years ago.

Zelensky has called the proposal “a very sensitive issue” and attempted to offload much of the responsibility onto parliament and the military with Zaluzhnyi as its leader and public face.

The fact that the bill was introduced on Christmas Day which Ukrainian Orthodox Christians were busy celebrating for the first time ever on December 25 was clearly an attempt to avoid popular uproar. Previously, Orthodox Christians in Ukraine celebrated Christmas on January 7th as in Russia, but the date was changed this year by the newly-formed Orthodox Church of Ukraine in cooperation with the right-wing government in a xenophobic and reactionary attempt to divide the Ukrainian working class along religious lines.

There are also fears within the government and ruling class that the law is too open an admission of the catastrophic state of the war. Statements by Oleksandr Musienko, the head of the Center of Military Law Studies NGO, indicate that sections of the Ukrainian ruling class view the new mobilization law as a sign of panic and desperation on the part of Zelensky.

“The aggressor (Russia) can rejoice to some extent,” Musienko told the New Voice of Ukraine radio this week. “I don’t understand why [this bill was introduced]. The situation in our state is not fatal or catastrophic. They monitor and interpret it as if panic has somehow leaked through to us, and our decision-making is influenced not by rational calculations but by a panicked reaction.”

“I get the feeling that someone consciously, intentionally, or unintentionally (through certain erroneous actions) aims to discredit the mobilization campaign in Ukraine, which is very, very dangerous.” 

The mobilization draft law was announced amidst a new round of provocative strikes by Ukraine in Crimea on Tuesday. Satellite images showed significant damage to the  Russian tank landing ship Novocherkassk, which Ukraine claims to have destroyed in a cruise missile attack. A part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the ship carries a crew of around 87 with capacity for 237 troops, according to the US military. 

While the Ukrainian military and press made much of the attack, the operation was timed in order to divert attention from the news that Ukrainian forces had lost the city of Marinka in the eastern Donetsk region — yet another territorial loss for Ukraine which even the New York Times was forced to report.

Turkey’s escalating clashes with Kurdish militias in Iraq, Syria threaten war

Barış Demir

On December 22-23, 12 Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq were killed by Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) guerillas amid the Turkish Armed Forces’ (TSK) military operations targeting Kurdish forces.

Turkey has military bases and guardhouses in Iraq, which the Baghdad government has declared illegal. The raid came amid air strikes and assassinations by Turkish forces and the National Intelligence Organisation (MİT) targeting the PKK and its Syrian ally, People's Protection Units (YPG) militias in northern Iraq and Syria. Hundreds of Kurdish political prisoners in Turkey have been on hunger strike since November 27 demanding improved conditions.

Turkish and U.S. soldiers conduct the joint patrol outside Manbij, November 1, 2018 [Photo: Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve/Spc. Arnada Jones]

Amid Israel's genocide in Gaza and US preparations for war in the Middle East targeting Iran, rising tensions point to the danger of another war in Syria and Iraq. The Turkish forces intensified air strikes after the raid. The US-backed “Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria” said civilian settlements and infrastructure were targeted.

Turkey's seven warplanes and 33 drones launched air strikes in the area on December 23, killing 8 people, leaving more than 2,000 residents without electricity and targeting hospitals. Thousands of people protested Turkey’s attacks at a funeral in Qamishli.

While Ankara denied targeting civilians, the Turkish Defence Ministry announced that it had destroyed “a total of 71 targets consisting of caves, bunkers, shelters, oil facilities and warehouses,” and “neutralized” 2,201 PKK-YPG members during the year, 81 of them in the last week.

The bloody war between the Turkish state and the Kurdish nationalist forces led by the PKK, now going on for almost 40 years, has been intertwined with the imperialist wars the US has waged in the Middle East over three decades.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government was a key supporter of the CIA-orchestrated regime-change war attempting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, which killed more than 500,000 people. Erdoğan's NATO-backed “peace process” with the PKK collapsed in 2015 when Washington turned the YPG into its main proxy force in Syria.

Ankara was terrified by the prospect of a US-backed Kurdish state emerging in Syria, fearing it could trigger a similar outcome in Turkey. The Turkish government has gone on the offensive against the PKK in Turkey and northern Iraq and the YPG in northern Syria.

Turkey has so far launched three major ground invasions in Kurdish-majority areas of northern Syria controlled by the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). As a result, Ankara now controls an area of 8,835 square kilometres covering more than 1,000 settlements, including cities and towns such as Afrin, al-Bab, Azaz, Jarabulus, Jinderes, Rajo, Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. The Syrian government has repeatedly demanded that Ankara end its illegal occupation in the country.

Turkey aims to prevent Kurdish nationalists from dominating its entire southern border with Syria and to prevent the emergence of a Kurdish state. Ankara has established an occupation regime in these areas, which has displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurds during the military invasions. The Erdoğan government has previously announced that it will continue ground operations until it has established a 30-kilometre-deep “safe zone” along the entire Syrian border.

At a UN General Assembly in 2019, Erdoğan announced his plan to resettle three million Syrian refugees, mostly Arabs, who had fled NATO’s regime-change war. He explained his plan, which amounted to an ethnic cleansing targeting Kurds, as follows:

Another important issue is the elimination of the PKK/YPG organization in the east of the Euphrates... Our efforts to create a safe zone are ongoing... Our intention is to create a peace corridor and settle 2 million Syrians here. Once this safe zone is declared, we can settle 1.5-2 million Syrian migrants here... If we can move the depth of this zone to the Deir-u-Zor to Raqqa line, we can increase the number of Syrians returning from other parts of Europe to 3 million.

The October attack on the Turkish National Police headquarters in Ankara, claimed by the PKK, was seen by the Erdoğan government as an opportunity to advance these plans. The Ankara attack was followed by intensified air strikes against Kurdish militias in Iraq and Syria.

Ankara considered turning its escalating military operations into a large-scale ground operation in Syria. However, such an operation was not given a green light by Iran and Russia, which back the Syrian government, and the United States, which supports the YPG. On October 5, the Pentagon announced that a Turkish armed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had been shot down by US aircraft in Syria.

The Turkish ruling class feared that the US-backed Israeli genocidal war in Gaza could be extended to target Iran and threaten its own interests, so the Erdoğan government was forced to call for “restraint” and temporarily remove from its agenda a full-scale ground operation targeting Kurdish forces that would have increased tensions with Washington.

As the World Socialist Web Site recently stated, “The Turkish bourgeoisie fears that a victory in a Middle East war of Washington and Tel Aviv, both of whom back Kurdish-nationalist militias on Turkey’s borders in Iraq and Syria, could lead to the formation of a Kurdish state.”

In a statement following the deaths of 12 Turkish soldiers in Iraq on December 23, Erdoğan targeted the US, saying, “To eradicate terrorism at its source; we will continue to implement this strategy with determination until the last terrorist is eliminated. Turkey will not allow a terrorist entity in northern Iraq or Syria at any cost. We will never retreat from our fight against the hired gangs of killers who work as subcontractors for the imperialists.”

Erdoğan has repeatedly declared that he sees the US and other imperialist allies as complicit in Israel's genocide in Gaza. Yet the Erdoğan government maintains Turkey's critical trade with Israel and refuses to impose any sanctions.

The falsity of Erdoğan’s “anti-imperialism” epitomizes by the Turkish ruling class's close ties to imperialist powers and decades-long defence of its foreign policy interests through NATO. This hypocrisy is manifested in the support of both the government and the bourgeois opposition, including the Kurdish nationalists, for NATO's expansion against Russia, with which it is de facto at war. Despite rhetoric criticism and tensions, the Turkish parliament unanimously approved Finland's accession into NATO in last March.

On Tuesday, three days after Erdoğan's accusations of 'subcontracting to the imperialists' and in the midst of Israel's NATO-backed genocide in Gaza, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Turkish Parliament sent a proposal for Sweden's NATO membership to a vote in parliament.

Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP), its fascist ally the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the main opposition, Kemalist Republican People's Party (CHP), whose candidate the pseudo-left parties supported in the presidential elections in May, voted 'yes' to the proposal. The Kurdish nationalist People's Party for Equality and Democracy (DEM) showed once again that it is not opposed to NATO enlargement by not participating in the vote, as it did in the vote on Finland.

The Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisie are unable to bring a peaceful and democratic solution to the Kurdish question, which is intertwined with the imperialist war in the Middle East, in which they have been complicit for decades. The democratic aspirations of the oppressed Kurdish people, like those of the Palestinians, cannot be met by the imperialist powers and their reactionary regional proxies, who are primarily responsible for the carnage in the Middle East.

Israel guns for war with Lebanon and Iran

Thomas Scripps

Another 210 Palestinians were killed and 360 injured by Israeli forces in Gaza in the 24 hours to Thursday 3pm, according to the Gazan health ministry. More than 21,300 people have now been reported killed in the assault, and over 55,600 injured, with roughly 7,000 more missing, likely buried under rubble.

The United Nations reports that 85 percent of the population of the enclave has been displaced, and 40 percent face famine. UN shelters are at over four times capacity.

Smoke rises following an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, December 26, 2023 [AP Photo/Leo Correa]

While the genocide in Gaza continues, Israel and its allies are looking to expand the scope of the war. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared earlier this week, “We are in a multi-front war. We are being attacked from seven fronts—Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], Iraq, Yemen and Iran.”

He added Thursday, “This is the end of the era of limited conflicts,” continuing, “We operated for years under the assumption that limited conflicts could be managed, but that is a phenomenon that is disappearing. Today, there is a noticeable phenomenon of the convergence of the arenas.”

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes comments along the lines of Monday’s, “We are not stopping. The war will continue until the end, until we finish it, no less,” it is the wider Middle East more than the already ruined Gaza Strip he is referring to.

The West Bank is one focal point of an already expanded conflict, with Israel tightening its military dictatorship over the occupied Palestinian territories. On Wednesday night, Israel carried out its most intense raids of the war to date in the region, sending large numbers of troops and vehicles into ten cities, killing at least one person and injuring 15 others, while at least two dozen were detained, and seizing $2.5 million from money exchanges.

Over 500 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) or settlers since October 7, and over 4,700 arrested—among them journalists and politicians.

Middle East Journalist Mouin Rabbani told Al Jazeera, “They are out to deliberately provoke the Palestinians to seek to create as much conflict as possible,” adding that this was part of a plan “to permanently consolidate” Israeli control of the West Bank.

The UN released a 22-page flash report Thursday on “The human rights situation in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem” up to November 20.

The paper lists: “Increase in the use of unnecessary or disproportionate force by Israeli security forces (ISF), resulting in unlawful killings”; “Mass arbitrary arrests, detentions and reported torture and other ill-treatment by ISF, raising concerns of collective punishment”; “Exponential increased in attacks by armed settlers leading to displacement of Palestinian herding communities”; and “Ongoing discriminatory movement restrictions affecting daily life and choking the local economy.”

A line from the summary reads, “Palestinians live in constant terror of the discriminatory use of State force and settler violence against them and, while the situation is already dire, all indications are that it may further deteriorate.”

Conforming the threat of a wider war, to the north a full-scale conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon is on a hair trigger. Israel’s forces are in a “state of very high readiness” and escalating strikes on Lebanon’s southern territory, in a trade of fire with Hezbollah forces.

More than 150 people have been killed on the Lebanese side of the border since October 7, including over a dozen civilians, three of them journalists. Three more, one a Hezbollah member, were killed Tuesday by an Israeli airstrike on Bint Jbeil. Nine soldiers and four civilians have been killed in Israel by return fire.

Al Jazeera journalist Ali Hashem, reporting from Bint Jbeil, explained, “Israeli warplanes are currently targeting towns that are even very far from the border. The fact is that this area is now becoming a complete warzone, it’s becoming very dangerous, very risky, to go around, with the fact that you’re always anticipating an Israeli drone.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen used a visit to the Lebanese border to threaten Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who Cohen said “must understand that he’s next. If he doesn’t want to be next in line he should immediately implement the U.N. Security Council’s resolution (1701) and keep Hezbollah away from the north of Litani.

“We will work to exhaust the political option, and if it does not work, all options are on the table in order to ensure the security of the State of Israel.”

Netanyahu’s spokesperson Eylon Levy added the same day, “We are now at a fork in the road. Either Hezbollah backs off from the Israeli border, in line with U.N. Resolution 1701, or we will push it away ourselves.”

War cabinet triumvirate member Benny Gantz was most explicit, saying Wednesday, “The situation in the northern border necessitates change. The time for a diplomatic solution is running out. If the world and the government of Lebanon don’t act to stop the fire toward northern communities and to push Hezbollah away from the border, the IDF will do that.”

The ultimate target is Iran, in service to the broader imperialist war aims of Israel’s US patron. Referring to the seven theatres in which the IDF is waging its war, Gallant declared, “Iran is the driving force in the convergence of the arenas. It transfers resources, ideology, knowledge and training to its proxies.”

Israel drastically escalated this confrontation on Monday by assassinating Iran’s Brigadier-General Seyed Razi Mousavi, a senior commander of the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in Syria. Omar Rahman, fellow at the Middle East Council of Global Affairs, told Voice of America, “Israel’s decision to assassinate a high-ranking member of the Iranian military in Damascus is a huge provocation.

“Iran has stayed out of direct involvement so far, but if its commanders are being targeted, it will have trouble continuing along a path of restraint.”

Senior Iranian officials, including President Ebrahim Raisi, have pledged to retaliate. It is only one week until the fourth anniversary of America’s assassination of General Qassem Suleimani, considered second only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, which Iran has repeatedly threatened to avenge.

Any retaliation would serve as a pretext for Israel, whose government is seeking a war it otherwise could not seriously contemplate because it has been assured in advance of US support.

Washington has deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups to the Eastern Mediterranean, adding to the thousands of soldiers it already has stationed across the Middle East. Since October 7, US forces have carried out multiple strikes in Syria and Iraq against Iran-aligned militias, most recently Kataib Hezbollah, following a drone attack on America’s Erbil Air Base. US Central Command commented that the strike “destroyed the targeted facilities and likely killed a number of Kataib Hezbollah militants.”

The government in Baghdad condemned the “hostile act” and violation of its sovereignty.

US and allied forces are also heavily engaged in the Red Sea, where Iran-aligned Houthi rebels have launched attacks on shipping in retaliation for the genocide in Gaza. Washington is attempting to form a coalition navy to police the waters and considering strikes on Houthi bases in Yemen, with Iran placed squarely in the crosshairs.

“We know that Iran was deeply involved in planning the operations against commercial vessels in the Red Sea,” US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said last Friday.

Fire at Indonesian nickel smelter leaves 19 dead

Ben McGrath

A fire at a nickel smelting plant in Indonesia on Sunday killed at least 19 workers while leaving as many as 40 others injured. Industrial accidents in this sector are common, with the disaster shining a light on the brutal and unsafe working conditions in the nickel processing industry and throughout Indonesia as a whole.

The fire killed 11 Indonesian workers and eight from other countries. It took place at a plant owned by Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel (ITSS), which is a subsidiary of Tsingshan Holding Group, based in China. ITSS is located in the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP) on Sulawesi Island. IMIP is jointly owned by Tsingshan and Indonesia’s Bintang Delapan Group.

The accident occurred at about 5:30 a.m. while workers were conducting repairs on a furnace, according to a preliminary investigation. Dedy Kurniawan, a spokesman for the industrial complex, initially stated that a flammable liquid had ignited, causing nearby oxygen tanks to explode. He later changed his statement and claimed no oxygen tanks were on the site and no explosion had taken place.

Dedy stated that after a furnace had been shut off, its “walls then collapsed and the remaining iron slag flowed out, causing a fire and resulting in some workers at the location suffering injuries and even fatalities.”

In response to this tragedy, around 300 workers rallied on Wednesday demanding improved safety conditions. Workers chanted slogans such as, “No production is worth a life.” Others expressed their anger to the media. Parlin Hidayat, the cousin of Muhammad Taufik, a 40-year-old worker who was killed, told Al Jazeera, “The family is grieving, he was the breadwinner,” leaving behind a wife and two children. “They hope there will be no more incidents like this in the future, let him be the last victim.”

Relatives weep during the funeral of Irfan Bukhari, one of the victims of the explosion of a smelting furnace at a Chinese-owned nickel plant on Indonesia's Sulawesi island [AP Photo/Yusuf Wahil]

Wednesday’s rally was organized by the Serikat Pekerja Indonesia Sejahtera (SPIS) trade union, which submitted 23 demands to management, including improving the maintenance of nickel smelters and better health clinics capable of dealing with emergencies. The union claimed that it would strike if its demands were not met within three days.

Katsaing, the regional head of the union, told Reuters, “Our main demand is for the companies to comply with the occupational health and safety law.” However, he previously told Wired magazine in an article published in February, “The health and safety regulations now are toothless.”

Dedy, the complex spokesman, dismissed the union’s demands. He stated the rally had “no impact on operations” throughout the industrial park and claimed that ITSS had supposedly already implemented the demands.

Workers should not place any faith in the safety regulations or in the companies or government to improve conditions. To claim that if only the company had supposedly followed the law, the explosion would not have happened only deflects workers’ anger away from the government and the capitalist system, which is the root cause of these disasters.

Accidents are common throughout the nickel industry and are the result of President Joko Widodo government’s drive to turn Indonesia into a major producer of the mineral for companies around the world. Indonesia has the world’s largest nickel reserves, at an estimated 21 million tonnes. Between 2020 and 2022, nickel production doubled to 1.6 million tonnes, or more than 48 percent of the global output.

Nickel is used for products such as electric vehicle (EV) batteries and stainless steel, making Indonesia a major part of the supply chain in the production of EVs. Jakarta has also signed deals worth as much as $US15 billion with companies like South Korea’s Hyundai Motors and Taiwan-based Foxconn. The government is also actively trying to entice Tesla to invest in Indonesia in what will no doubt be a further race to the bottom when it comes to workers’ conditions.

Widodo therefore has no intention of addressing health and safety conditions, despite claims from Ministry of Manpower Deputy Minister Afriansyah Noor that Jakarta will strengthen work safety laws. Similarly, none of the three candidates running in February’s presidential election will address these issues.

Instead, the ruling class is seeking to sow divisions between Indonesian and Chinese workers to distract from the responsibility of the local and central governments and from the capitalist system as a whole. The media has focused on the fact that the nickel smelter at IMIP where Sunday’s fire occurred is Chinese-owned.

Yet Chinese workers are no less exploited than their Indonesian class brothers and sisters. Both sections of the working class face similar brutal conditions. The IMIP complex hosts 18 nickel processing companies, employing more than 70,000 workers. In April, two workers were killed at the complex when they were buried under nickel slag. This is not limited to IMIP. At a plant located further north on Sulawesi, another two workers were killed in January during protests over safety conditions and low pay at Gunbuster Nickel Industry.

Wired magazine wrote in February that workers at IMIP labor for up to 15 hours a day with no days off for as long as three months. They earn less than $US25 a day. Workers struggle to continuing working as health, safety, and environmental needs take a backseat to profit. One 18-year-old worker stated, “Sometimes it’s hard to breathe. I’m concerned, but I can’t do anything.”

Trend Asia, a non-government organization based in Indonesia, reported in March that between 2015 and 2020, a total of 47 workers in the nickel industry were killed in accidents while 10 others committed suicide as a result of the conditions.

This is not limited to the nickel industry. Jakarta’s Ministry of Manpower reported in February in its “National Occupational Safety and Health Profile” that across the country, 6,552 workers had died in workplace accidents in 2021, nearly doubling the number of deaths from the previous year (3,410). Total accidents have also grown, with 234,370 in 2021, rising from 210,789 in 2019.

The rise in workplace safety accidents and deaths also corresponds to the refusal of capitalist governments around the world, including Jakarta, to address the COVID-19 pandemic. In what is undoubtedly a vast undercounting, there have been more than 6.8 million COVID cases and 161,921 deaths in Indonesia. Just as virus mitigation measures were torn up, so are workplace safety measures, all in the name of profit.