In Kiev visit, Trudeau reaffirms Canadian imperialism’s support for US-NATO war on Russia

Roger Jordan

Canada’s Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was among several international leaders to visit Kiev February 24 on the second anniversary of the US/NATO-provoked Russian invasion of Ukraine. Trudeau used the occasion to announce that his government will provide the far-right Zelensky regime with an additional Canadian $320 million in military aid in 2024. He and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky also unveiled a 10-year Canada-Ukraine Security Cooperation Agreement that commits Ottawa to strengthening its military support and cooperation with Kiev.

Trudeau’s visit and related announcements confirm Canadian imperialism’s role as a major aggressor in the US-led war against Russia. Washington and its allies aim to reduce Russia to the status of a semi-colony in order to seize control of its natural resources and strengthen imperialist control over Eurasia in preparation for a showdown with China.

In a press release, Ottawa boasted that with the more than Canadian $3 billion in additional economic and military aid for 2024 that Trudeau announced while in Kiev, total Canadian support for Ukraine since 2022 now tops C$13 billion. This includes $4 billion in military assistance and $7 billion in financial loans administered through the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the leaders of other NATO states travelled to Kiev last Saturday, the second anniversary of the war's outbreak. From the left, Trudeau, Italy's Premier Giorgia Meloni, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo [AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky]

The Trudeau government also announced a significant new investment in its military operations in Latvia, where it leads a NATO anti-Russia “enhanced forward” deployment. At a NATO meeting in mid-February, Defence Minister Bill Blair unveiled a plan to invest $227 million in a short-range air defence system and $46 million in an anti-drone defence system. There are eight NATO brigades deployed in the Baltic republics, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria, with the aim of strategically encircling Russia in preparation for a direct war.

The Trudeau government’s increased military and financial support for Kiev comes as open discussion about the deployment of NATO ground troops in Ukraine is under way. At the end of a meeting in Paris on Monday, attended by many European heads of government and NATO defence ministers, French President Emmanuel Macron said that the question of deploying NATO ground troops to Ukraine had been a key topic of discussion; then added provocatively, there was “no agreement this evening to officially send troops onto the ground but we cannot exclude anything.”

The subsequent claim by leading officials from European and North American governments, including Blair, that there are “no plans” for deploying NATO troops to Ukraine follows a by now well-worn pattern of escalation, seen repeatedly over the course of the two-year-old war. First, NATO leaders dismiss the next escalatory step—whether it be the sending of tanks, aircraft or mid- and now long-range missiles—as a “red line” they dare not cross for fear of provoking an all-out war. Subsequently, it is revealed to be under active discussion and then announced and implemented. Macron’s remarks confirm that plans for deploying NATO ground troops are well advanced.

Canada’s participation in the escalation of the war on Russia comes just days after the trade union-sponsored New Democratic Party (NDP) reaffirmed its support for the pro-war, pro-austerity Liberal government. Languishing in the polls, the NDP had made a show of threatening to withdraw from the “confidence-and-supply agreement” under which it has pledged to keep the minority Trudeau Liberals in power till June 2025 unless the government acted on its longstanding promise to institute “pharmacare.” Predictably, this proved to be a piece of political theatre, with the NDP and unions hailing as “historic” a bare-bones agreement reached last week to provide coverage for a handful of diabetes and contraceptive medications.

In a statement delivered in Kiev, Trudeau trotted out the well-worn lie that Ukraine is fighting “Putin’s unprovoked invasion.” He insisted that the 10-year security agreement—which provides assurances of continued support for Ukraine similar to the recent bilateral accords Kiev has struck with Britain, Germany, Denmark and Italy—showed Canada was committed to the “long-term” to help Kiev secure a “decisive victory.” This, he said, would include restoration of its full “territorial integrity,” including the Crimea and the Donbas and Luhansk regions.   

Trudeau’s fairy tale of an “unprovoked war,” which has been repeated by all the imperialist powers and their media mouthpieces ad nauseam, was conclusively revealed to be a lie by the admissions made in an article published this past weekend in the fervently pro-war New York Times. Acknowledging that the CIA mounted extensive operations with Ukrainian intelligence over the past decade to prepare for war with Russia, the piece vindicated the analysis made by the World Socialist Web Site of the 2014 Maidan coup as a stepping-stone for the US, Britain, Germany and Canada towards all-out war with Russia.

The Canada-Ukraine “Security Cooperation Agreement”

The Canada-Ukraine Security Cooperation Agreement aims to perpetuate the NATO-Russia war after it has already claimed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives, and prepare the Canadian military for future conflicts. A “Canada-Ukraine Strategic Security Partnership” will oversee economic cooperation in the military, defence industry, and intelligence sectors, as “prosecuting” the war with Russia “relies on having reliable access to resources and (the) capabilities to do so.”

The agreement also commits Canada and Ukraine to step up their sharing of “information, requests and feedback as strategic partners”; to work to “develop and deliver bespoke military, security, economic, and other support to Ukraine”; and to “facilitate the rebuilding and rehabilitation of Ukraine.” The agreement pledges Canadian support for Kiev’s integration into NATO and the European Union, which would mean direct war between NATO and Russia.

Albeit using dry political and technocratic jargon, the agreement spells out how imperialism plans to consolidate its domination over Ukraine financially, politically and militarily as part of its drive to subjugate Russia. As part of this process, Canadian imperialism’s military-security apparatus is anxious to appropriate the combat and counterintelligence know-how Ukraine has built up with assistance from the Western powers. An entire section is devoted to intelligence sharing, including countering “disinformation” and cyber-warfare, i.e., the suppression of anti-war and other critical voices online. The document notes, “Building on the ongoing support and successes to date, and recognizing that Canada has much to learn from Ukraine’s experiences and knowledge, the Participants will aim to deepen their bilateral cooperation across a range of areas including defence, security, stability and resilience.” In another place, it adds that the importance of information-sharing for both sides arises from the “unprecedented experience and knowledge that Ukraine has in terms of use of new technologies in warfare, countering disinformation, and other capabilities.”

Canada is deepening “cooperation” with a “strategic partner” whose state is riddled with far-right and outright fascist forces. Many of them have obtained their positions thanks to the previous collaboration of Ottawa, Washington, London and Berlin with the pro-Western regime brought to power by the fascist-spearheaded 2014 Maidan coup. The military and intelligence forces so highly praised by the agreement include members of the fascist Azov Battalion and other neo-Nazi groups, who have received high-level military and intelligence training by Canadian Armed Forces personnel.

The agreement is therefore not merely a threat to the Ukrainian working class, which Canada wants to continue using as cannon fodder for its imperialist goals. It also represents a real danger to workers across Canada, who will confront a state apparatus in their coming struggles that has “learned” from its “experience” of working with fascists in waging imperialist war on Russia.

The political content of this alliance was on full display during Zelensky’s visit to Ottawa last September, when he, together with Trudeau and the entire Canadian parliament, gave a standing ovation to the Ukrainian Waffen-SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka. Hunka, who was also personally invited by Trudeau to attend an exclusive reception for Zelensky in Toronto, served in the Galicia Division, which was involved in the Holocaust and the bloody suppression of an uprising of the Slovak working class. The standing ovation for Hunka was also joined by the ambassadors from all G-7 members.

Trudeau was accompanied on his visit to Kiev last Saturday by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. She is best known as the granddaughter of a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator. Mykhailo Chomiak was the editor of Krakivski Visti, a fascist Ukrainian-language newspaper that campaigned for the formation of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division and whipped up antisemitism throughout the war. Freeland concluded her remarks in Kiev with the infamous “Slava ukraini!” slogan, which has its origins in the pro-Nazi Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists led during World War II by Stepan Bandera.

Canadian imperialism’s alliance with the political descendants of Nazi war criminals is endorsed throughout the entire political establishment. The most pivotal source of political support for the Trudeau government comes from the trade unions and the trade union-sponsored NDP, whose MPs have ensured his government its parliamentary majority since 2019, initially on a case-by-case basis, and then formally with the conclusion of their March 2022 governmental alliance.

In a statement marking the second anniversary of the war, the NDP left no doubt about its wholehearted endorsement of Canadian imperialism’s aggressive role in Ukraine and throughout Eastern Europe against Russia. Foreign affairs spokesperson Heather McPherson echoed almost word for word the official government propaganda about the war, describing it as “Putin’s illegal full-scale invasion.” She then asserted that “Putin’s brutal genocide has killed and injured tens of thousands of Ukrainians.” This remark is especially revealing and noxious as it comes from a party that has refused to acknowledge the real genocide being conducted by Israel, with the backing of the Trudeau government and all the imperialist powers, in Gaza. The NDP has also participated in the witch-hunt of opponents of the Gaza genocide and the continuing suppression and dispossession of the Palestinians, including targeting its own party members.

Macy’s announces 150 store closures as layoffs continue in tech and logistics

Shannon Jones

Major US retailer Macy’s announced Tuesday a restructuring involving the closure of 150 stores over the next three years at “underproductive” locations.

[Photo by Ingfbruno / CC BY-SA 3.0]

No figures were released on estimated job losses, but the closures represent about 30 percent of Macy’s 350 existing stores. Macy’s said that it is booking $50 million in estimated termination costs. As late as 2019 the company had 870 stores.

It is the second major downsizing for the company since 2020. In January Macy’s announced it was cutting 2,300 from its corporate staff, about 3.5 percent of its total workforce. It plans to close 50 stores this year and the rest by 2026.

The announcement of major cuts by Macy’s takes place as department stores continue to lose business to online retailers. JC Penney filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May 2020, early in the coronavirus pandemic, as did Neiman Marcus.

The closure of scores of Macy stores will be broadly felt, as the stores are often the anchor of shopping malls, which are already struggling. One of the stores planned for closure is Macy’s 400,000 square-foot flagship location in San Francisco’s Union Square.

One Macy’s worker writing on Thelayoff.com commented about the announced cuts, “There isn’t enough transparency. Employees have no idea what’s going on and that affects our work. How hard is that to figure out? The more we stress over things and the more we wonder what’s going to happen, the more morale will go down, and with it productivity. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that.”

Another post referenced the 150 stores targeted for closure. “All of the managers and employees who work at these locations will be out of jobs. Store level employees won’t be the only ones impacted. Everyone who survived the 2,350 job cuts last month and were starting to feel relief and perhaps a glimmer of hope for the future will again be entering into the seemingly endless version of the Hunger Games at Macy’s...

“But hey, maybe you work in a store that isn’t on the closing list, maybe even a strategic F50 door. You’re job is protected right? Sure, as long as there isn’t someone in a closing store that leadership would like to see in your position. Perhaps someone younger, who presents better and says what they want to hear.”

In recent years Macy’s has been opening smaller stores in strip malls rather than in indoor shopping malls. The company said it is now refocusing on smaller stores and higher end brands, including its luxury Bluemercury cosmetics business.

The store closure announcement came after the company posted a fourth-quarter loss and recorded declining sales. Macy’s has been under pressure from investors who are demanding greater returns. Its US retail sales fell by 0.8 percent in January, more than the 0.3 percent decline that had been expected. The company’s fourth quarter 2023 year-over-year sales fell 1.7 percent, and 6 percent at its Macy’s department stores. Its net income for the fourth quarter was $665 million, low by Wall Street standards.

Earlier this year Macy’s rejected a takeover attempt by investment firms Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital Management, saying they did not advance a viable financing plan.

Wall Street has welcomed the downsizing announcement. Macy’s shares were up three percent the day of the job cut announcement.

Job cuts have been accelerating in various sectors across the US as corporations seek to cut costs in order to drive up profits, squeezing more labor out of a smaller workforce. The cuts are part of a deliberate policy by the US and international ruling classes to undermine workers’ militancy and impose the burden of militarism on the backs of the population.

Significant layoffs have hit workers in the tech industry and manufacturing, with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis announcing job cuts, as well as logistics giant United Parcel Service.

So far this year 170 tech companies have cut over 45,000 jobs, according to layoffs.fyi. This includes Cisco Systems, which said that it is cutting 729 jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area by April. This follows the company announcement earlier this month that it is planning to lay off some 5 percent of its global workforce. The planned cuts will hit sites in San Jose, Milpitas and San Francisco, California.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is planning to slash 8 percent of its workforce, 900 jobs. The company is the maker of Playstation. Company CEO Jim Ryan said the decision was based on an “evolving economic landscape, changes in the way we develop, distribute, and launch products, and ensuring our organization is future ready in this rapidly changing industry.”  

It was only the most recent gaming company to announce layoffs. SuperMassive Games has said that it plans some job cuts, and last month Microsoft Gaming, a major competitor of Playstation, said it was cutting its workforce by 1,900.

Online dating company Bumble said Tuesday that it plans to lay off 350 workers as part of a restructuring. The cuts represent more than one-third of the company’s workforce.

Travel technology company Expedia Group said it plans to cut 1,500 jobs this year, or 8 percent of its workforce, as part of a restructuring plan. The company is the parent of Expedia.com as well as Travelocity, Vrbo, Hotels.com, Orbitz and Hotwire, and employs 17,100 worldwide. It aggregates travel fares and lets users book airline flights and lodging from its platform.

Northrup Grumman has warned workers of coming potential layoffs at its Space Park operations in Redondo Beach, California. About 7,000 are employed at the facility, which has been in operation since 1961. According to one source the cuts could impact 1,000 workers.

“We are working to match impacted employees with existing job openings and opportunities across Northrop Grumman,” the spokesperson said. “This is ongoing, and a higher number of employees will receive WARN notices than may ultimately be impacted.”

Mass layoffs are also continuing in the logistics industry. After UPS announced 12,000 job cuts in January and recently confirmed the permanent closure of its Swan Island facility in Portland, Oregon, with 300 jobs lost, other logistics firms have announced layoffs. Companies in California, Illinois and Michigan have announced cuts in recent days.

• Third-party logistics provider DHL Supply Chain is laying off 161 workers from a warehouse in Joliet, Illinois.
• Ceva Logistics is laying off 80 workers from a facility in Romulus, Michigan, due to what it says is less business from Ford.
• Quad Logistics Services is closing a mail processing and distribution facility in Bolingbrook, Illinois, and laying off 74 workers.
• Universal Intermodal Services is cutting 42 truck drivers at a Fontana, California, facility

Stormont’s return in Northern Ireland: not a “new dawn” at all

Steve James

The deal between the British government and the sectarian Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to revive the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive has opened the door for Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill to assume the office of First Minister.

On January 30, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson announced, following a five-hour meeting of the DUP executive, that he had been given a “decisive” mandate to rejoin the power-sharing administration it brought down two years ago. Then DUP First Minister, Paul Givan, resigned in February 2022 in protest over the Northern Ireland Protocol, collapsing both the Assembly and Executive.

Stormont Parliament building outside Belfast, Northern Ireland [Photo by Dom0803 / CC BY-SA 3.0]

The protocol is part of the arrangements cobbled together covering the UK’s departure from the European Union on December 31, 2020 which imposed customs documentation checks at Irish Sea ports between Britain and the Six Counties. The restrictions were viewed by pro-British unionists as compromising Northern Ireland’s position in the UK.

Simultaneous with Donaldson’s announcement, the UK government issued a command paper, “Safeguarding the Union”. Under the proposals, the “Windsor Framework” which amended the protocol to allow for goods directed solely towards Northern Ireland from the UK to go through reduced customs checks in comparison with goods intended for the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state, will remain in place but with reduced customs scrutiny.

New bodies to promote trade between the UK and Northern Ireland are to be created. Any new regulations in the UK are to be investigated for their impact on Northern Ireland. This affirms Northern Ireland’s position in the UK, without either breaking the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which instigated power-sharing between Unionist and Irish Republican parties, or the UK’s Brexit arrangements with the European Union. For the moment, Northern Ireland businesses will effectively both be in the UK’s internal market and have access to the EU Single Market.

Two days later, legislation was hurriedly accepted in the UK’s House of Commons, without a formal vote or opposition, approving the changes.

On February 3, to press fanfare and a theatrical descent of Stormont’s grand staircase past a statue of James Craig, Northern Ireland’s first post-partition prime minister, Sinn Féin’s Vice President Michelle O’Neill was elected as First Minister by the reconvened assembly. The DUP’s Edwin Poots was selected as Speaker and Emma Little-Pengelly was chosen as Deputy First Minister. O’Neill and Little-Pengelly have equal authority, but under power-sharing rules Sinn Féin, as the largest party, holds the more influential First Minister position.

Ministerial positions were also allocated according to power-sharing rules and party preference.

O’Neill described her election as “an historic day which represents a new dawn. For the first time ever, a nationalist takes up the position of First Minister. That such a day would ever come would have been unimaginable to my parents and grandparents’ generation.”

New First Minister Michelle O'Neill MLA (Sinn Fein) [Photo by Northern Ireland Assembly/flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0]

This is only half the story. The entire political structure of Northern Ireland was designed, from Ireland’s partition in 1921/2 onwards, to ensure the hegemony of the unionists, come what may. O’Neill’s rise to power testifies to the protracted and bitterly contested loss of influence by Unionism and the demographic shift in the population to a situation where Catholics outnumber Protestants.

But O’Neil’s new position also points to the decades-long rapprochement, backed and orchestrated by the United States, between the Irish republicans of Sinn Féin and British imperialism. O’Neill’s elevation, along with the Sinn Féin’s emergence as a coalition contender in the South, underscores the party’s commitment to capitalism in Ireland and opposition to any threat from the working class.

O’Neill was explicit on her priorities: “With new leadership in the Economy Department, we will work in partnership with business, the trade union movement, education providers, and the community sector to improve economic performance.” She pledged to “seize the considerable opportunities created by the Windsor Framework, to use dual market access to grow our exports and attract higher-quality FDI [Foreign Direct Investment].”

Many working people will view the revival of the Assembly as a necessary and very belated response to the deep crisis in public services. Since the institutions were brought down by the DUP in 2022, Northern Ireland has been run by caretaker administrators and subject to a funding freeze by the British government. But while some immediate resources will be made available, Stormont’s revival in fact signals new attacks on the working class.

O’Neill’s speech made clear that the resuscitated institutions will be devoted to attracting global investment. Public services, such as water, are being set up for charging and privatisation, while demands are being made for corporation taxes to be reduced in line with the notoriously low rates in the South.

O’Neill is assuming office under conditions where the imperialist powers to whom she is beholden, on both sides of the Atlantic, are in the opening stages of a new world war against Russia, China and Iran. It is out of efforts by the ruling class to reduce tensions between imperialist allies in the US, UK and Europe, heightened by Brexit, that the new agreement has arisen.

The Good Friday Agreement

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which brought British imperialism’s hated dirty war in Northern Ireland to an end, was, in large measure, a product of the growing influence of the United States in the politics in Ireland on both sides of the border. With US investment pouring into the Republic of Ireland, seeking markets in Europe and internationally, the British colonial outpost in the North, propped up by heavy subsidies and a huge military commitment, was increasingly viewed in London as a financial drain requiring the removal of obstacles to profits that could be made across the entire island.

The agreement, brokered by the US and supported by the EU, opened the door to Irish nationalists— Sinn Féin but also the smaller Social Democratic and Labour Party—sharing power with the then dominant Ulster Unionist Party and the DUP of the Reverend Ian Paisley.

In this April 10, 1998, file photo, from right, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, pose together after they signed the Good Friday Agreement for peace in Northern Ireland. (AP Photo/File)

A complex voting and electoral system was, however, devised to ensure that sectarian divisions between Catholics and Protestants, the traditional tool of British rule in Ireland, were institutionalised into the structures of the new Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive in Stormont. Every decision needed to be signed off by representative of both designated “communities”. The agreement’s premise was that US investment directed towards Europe would provide “peace and prosperity” for all.

In return, the Irish government renounced its claim on the North and, most importantly, the Provisional Irish Republican Army wound up its military campaign, in line with the evolution of bourgeois nationalist groups such as the African National Congress and the Palestine Liberation Organisation worldwide, while much of the British military apparatus was also dismantled.

Although US investment largely failed to materialise in the North, there was a stabilisation. The 300-mile North/South border, once defended by British Army helicopters, watch towers and check points, disappeared, now crossed hundreds of thousands of times daily. Investment, despite disruption by the 2008/9 financial crisis, continued to pour into the South.

But, in 2016, expressing the deepening contradictions of world imperialism, a section of the British ruling class attempted to undercut their rivals on the world markets by quitting the European Single Market and the regulatory restrictions on their profit-making bound up with it. Taking advantage of the deep alienation of much of the working population from the political establishment, Brexit was presented by the Tory right, led by later Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as a popular reclamation of national sovereignty, supposedly usurped by the EU in Brussels, and a means of channeling taxes back to the National Health Service and a revival of British imperialism’s halcyon days as the leading world power.

However, Brexit threatened to unravel the agreement that had brought “the Troubles” to an end. So long as the UK and Ireland were both in the EU, there was no need for customs or trade restrictions between the two islands or between both and the EU. Irish nationalists could point to the increasing integration on the island, overcoming the irrational border, and slow demographic change as moving towards Irish unification, while Unionists could reassure themselves that the North was going to remain in the UK for as long as they wished.

With the UK’s departure from Europe and the threat of trade war, the North/South line of partition became, and remains, an international frontier between the UK and the EU. Everything was thrown in the air.

Political tensions within Northern Ireland were enflamed. Although a majority in Northern Ireland had voted against leaving the EU, DUP members of parliament had played a crucial role in allowing the Tory government in Westminster to push through key aspects of its Brexit legislation.

After Boris Johnson’s landslide victory in 2019, however, the DUP’s services were dispensed with. Having promised the DUP there would be no restrictions on trade between the UK and Northern Ireland, the DUP and its unionist voters found themselves on the wrong side of an “Irish Sea” border agreed by the Tories under the Northern Ireland Protocol to avoid a “hard” land border. Customs infrastructure began to be constructed on Northern Ireland ports. In response, amid orchestrated threats of a loyalist backlash, the DUP collapsed the institutions in 2022.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets with Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP, of the Democratic Unionist Party while visiting Northern Ireland. Hillsborough Castle, 16/05/2022. [Photo by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Tensions between US and UK over Ireland

Brexit had also infuriated US imperialism by depriving it of a British counterweight to Germany and Franc within the EU and a safeguard against measures such as the creation of a European military capability independent of NATO. The US viewed the prospect of ever-deepening tensions between the UK and the EU with profound alarm. Particularly with the election of Democrat Joe Biden, a president with strong Irish connections, in 2020, the US began pressing for a resolution of the border question that preserved the island’s stability and defended the Good Friday Agreement and US capitalism’s huge investments in the South.

As a measure of the US stake in Ireland, the crucial chip maker Intel has built its largest and most advanced production facility, outside the US, in Leixlip, near Dublin. Intel alone employs 7,500 people in Ireland and claims to have invested as much as €30 billion.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, accompanied by The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Chris Heaton-Harris and The Lord-Lieutenant of County Antrim David McCorkell, welcomes the US President Joe Biden to Northern Ireland. Flying Station Aldergrove. [Photo by Simon Walker/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Matters were brought to a head in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Richard E. Neal, chair of the US Congress House Committee of Ways and Means, warned the UK, “We don’t believe that Ireland should be held hostage to turbulence in the UK political structure.”

A large delegation to Ireland, led by Neal, was criticised from all quarters of Unionism, while threats were made against the delegation’s security. In 2022, 100 years since partition was enforced with anti-Catholic pogroms, the North saw the biggest Orange marches for years.

Having alienated both the EU and the US, and with prospects of a US trade deal destroyed, as the war in Ukraine raged, Johnson was forced out of office on September 6, 2022. His eventual replacement, Rishi Sunak, has rebuilt relations with the US and the EU, while continuing like Johnson to march in lockstep with the US and NATO over the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza and preparations for war with Iran and China.

This is the context of the protracted efforts to cajole and bribe the DUP back into Stormont. A deal had to be found which involved no border in Ireland and very little border in the Irish Sea, and which was acceptable to the EU, the US, the UK and the DUP, Sinn Fein and the Irish government.

From late 2023 the framework of a proposal was clear: the DUP would re-enter Stormont and accept O’Neill as First Minister on the basis of a substantial handout from Westminster (several billion pounds), much reduced controls under the terms of the “Windsor Framework”, and moves towards privatisation and public service charges—with the whole package draped in the Union Jack to mollify the Unionists.

The DUP, however, was split between those who saw the advantages of the deal for business, led by Donaldson, and the most hardline Loyalists-supporting flag-wavers such as Jamie Bryson and the Traditional Unionist Voice lawyer Jim Allister.

The threat of an intervention by the working class was to force the issue. With public services starved of resources because of the funding freeze and broad sections of workers facing ever more intolerable conditions, 170,000 public sector workers took part in a one-day “generalised strike”, January 18 2024, which brought the North to a standstill.

Pickets outside the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, January 18, 2024

The strike, conceived of by the trade unions as a belated warning that matters at Stormont needed to be resolved before the class struggle got out of hand, nevertheless united workers from across the religious divide. It was the largest strike in Northern Ireland since, and a sharp contrast with, the reactionary two-week strike movement of May 1974 of Protestant workers which, under the pressure of loyalist paramilitaries and egged on by the DUP and the fascistic Vanguard party, brought down the Sunningdale Agreement, a more limited forerunner of the GFA.

Within days, the DUP settled. With O’Neill installed as First Minister, the unions responded by immediately cancelling further industrial action. The deal supposedly includes some £688 million to settle pay claims, but not a single agreement has yet been reached.

Necessity for a socialist perspective independent of the trade union bureaucracy and bourgeois parties

The Unite, GMB and SIPTU unions stopped a transport strike planned for February 15, with GMB organiser Peter Macklin declaring, “The unions want to provide the politicians and Translink the space to provide a cost-of-living pay increase for public transport workers.” Thus far, a 72-hour strike scheduled for 27 February remains in place.

Planned action by teachers was also cancelled because, according to Justin McCamphil of the NASUWT, “Devolution has been restored, we have an education minister, and we have pay negations which will be commencing soon.”

A measure of what can be expected from the negotiations is the recent settlement agreed by the trade unions, including SIPTU, covering public sector workers in the Republic of Ireland. Some 385,000 workers are being asked to vote on a miserable offer of 10.25 percent over two-and-a-half years: 4 percent this year, 4 next and 2.5 in the final six months. Annual inflation was running at 5.8 percent in December 2023.

All workers in their struggle to defend living standards confront an alliance of the Sinn Féin/DUP devolved administration and the trade union bureaucracy no less hostile to their interests than the British government. Nor is the new administration any more stable than its predecessors. Fear of the working class might have forced the Unionist establishment into accepting a Sinn Féin First Minister but every turn of the political situation, particularly over the UK’s relations with Europe, will re-open the old disputes. Any illusions in the administration, in conditions of slump and the endless struggle for investment, will be short lived.

O’Neill, for her part, has clearly decided to devote her tenure to repaying Biden for her promotion by whitewashing US imperialism. Under conditions of repeated huge demonstrations in Dublin and large protests across Ireland, North and South, against the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, O’Neill told The Late Late Show: “The US have always been a very strong partner for peace, actually a critical player in terms of achieving our own peace process. And I would hope that the US would use that same pragmatism and the same approach they took to our peace process to bring that message to the Middle East.”

O’Neill’s comments make clear that the new agreement offers no way to overcome the bitter legacy of partition, exploitation by British, US and Irish capitalists alike, collapsing living standards and the descent into war.

Growth of US debt threatens dollar dominance

Nick Beams

A report by the Congressional Budget Office on the soaring US government debt has raised questions as to how long the dollar can continue to function as a stable base for the global monetary system.

The issue of dollar supremacy does not feature prominently in the public statements of financial authorities, but it is certainly discussed under conditions where there are moves away from dependence on the US currency for international transactions. The recent initiatives by China, Brazil and Saudi Arabia, among others, to conduct some transactions in their own currencies are an example.

US dollar bills [AP Photo/Mark Lennihan]

Even though shifts away from the dollar are limited at this point, they are of some concern as evidenced in a speech delivered earlier this month by Christopher Waller, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governor, to a conference on central banking.

The subject of his address was the dollar’s primacy in global finance and the global economy “which some feel is under threat as never before.”

After noting that warnings of the dollar’s demise had been raised on previous occasions, and it was tempting to write them off because they “never seem to come to pass,” he added, as if to cover himself, that “I don’t dismiss them.” However, he went on to precisely do that.

Waller outlined possible sources of dollar instability, including: moves to conduct international transactions in other currencies; the economic rise of China and the international role of its currency, the renminbi; the shift out of US assets because of fears of US sanctions such as those imposed on Russia; and the role of what has been termed “geoeconomic fragmentation”—the increasing trend towards the division of the world into blocs.

While noting these issues, Waller brushed them aside as having little effect before turning in his conclusion to “financial stability concerns” as a factor in the international use of the dollar.

That too was dismissed because whenever a crisis occurred there was a “flight to the dollar” with a heightened demand for US dollar assets.

“We saw this in 2008 and again in 2020. This is the ultimate vindication that the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency and is likely to remain so—in times of global stress, the world runs to the dollar, not away from it.”

It did not seem to bother Waller that there is, to say the least, something highly perverse about the claim that the “ultimate vindication” of dollar supremacy is the rush toward it every time there is a crisis emanating from the US financial system as took place in 2008 and 2020.

The issue was taken up by long-time Financial Times columnist John Plender in a comment published this week.

He noted that Waller had “conspicuously failed to mention the biggest reason for thinking Treasuries [US government bonds] are no longer an ultra-safe store of value.”

According to Plender: “This is not the US’s appallingly dysfunctional politics. Nor the weaponisation of the dollar thanks to geopolitics. Nor again the possible competitive threat from other central banks’ digital currency plans. Rather, it is a spiraling public debt now exceeding 97 percent of gross domestic product, a level not seen since the second world war.”

The explosive growth of US public debt was highlighted in the CBO report issued earlier this month which forecast it would grow by almost two thirds, from $1.6 trillion to $2.6 trillion over the next ten years.

In the period of ultra-low interest rates following the financial crisis of 2008, the issue of US public debt was to a great extent out of sight and out of mind. But with lifting of interest rates by the Fed from near zero to 5.5 percent since the spring of 2022, it has come into focus.

The CBO said interest payments on debt would account for around three quarters of the rise in the deficit over the next decade, taking it from 5.6 percent of GDP in 2024 to 6.1 percent in 2034, well above the average of 3.7 percent over the past 50 years.

The widening debt has already had an effect as seen in the decision last August by the credit rating agent Fitch to remove its triple A rating from the US because its debt to GDP ratio exceeded that of other countries afforded the top rating.

Plender noted that the demise of dollar dominance had been predicted in the past but had not happened “because other countries cannot match the supposed safety and liquidity of US Treasuries.”

However, he continued, that “logic may fracture in the face of a deep-seated problem” identified by former International Monetary Fund chief economist Kenneth Rogoff and two other economists in a paper published in 2021.

The paper likened the present situation to the so-called Triffin dilemma, identified by the Belgian-American economist Robert Triffin in 1960, which ultimately led to the demise of the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944. The agreement had formed the basis of the post-war monetary order, a central foundation for the boom which lasted until the beginning of the 1970s.

Under the agreement, the dollar functioned as the global currency backed by gold at the rate of $35 per ounce, but as Triffin explained, this system required a net outflow of dollars from the US to finance trade and other financial transactions. However, as dollars piled up outside the US, it lacked sufficient gold to redeem them, leading to president Nixon’s decision to remove the gold backing on August 15, 1971.

Since then, the US dollar has functioned as a fiat currency, backed ultimately by the economic power of the US state.

According to the paper cited by Plender, the modern-day version of the Triffin dilemma “is the demand for safe dollar assets that risks eventually overwhelming the US government’s fiscal capacity to back them.” That waning capacity is revealed in the shrinking US share of global output and the rise of debt.

The US Treasury has already declared that the growth of US debt is “unsustainable”.

Pointing to this issue, Plender recalled the UK experience of September-October 2022. So-called bond market vigilantes set off a financial crisis, selling off government bonds after the Liz Truss government sought to fund tax cuts by increasing debt without making deep cuts to government spending.

“Could the fiscal disciplinarians of the global investment community not turn their disruptive talents to the US Treasury market?” he wrote.

“As well as savaging the president of the day, such a challenge would devastate the US’s role as the world’s chief provider of safe assets during global crises, while simultaneously threatening the dollar’s status as the pre-eminent reserve currency.”

Such a situation is today dismissed an “unimaginable,” but that is always the case in the lead up to a crisis when the guardians of finance capital maintain that “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

The UK crisis of 18 months ago came seemingly “out of the blue” as did the collapse of three US banks in the spring of last year.

One should recall the events leading to the global financial crisis of 2008. Warnings that the ultra-easy monetary policies of the Fed were creating the conditions for a crash were dismissed as a slander against the “maestro,” chairman Alan Greenspan, with Lawrence Summers, one of the advisors to the Biden administration, leading the charge.

Massive increase in anti-Muslim violence in Germany

Joshua Seubert & Clemens Huber

Against the backdrop of the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza with the help of its NATO allies, violence against Muslims and Palestinians in Germany has increased dramatically in recent weeks and months.

The non-governmental organisation CLAIM has documented 187 cases of violent anti-Muslim attacks, insults, threats, and discrimination in the period from October 9 to November 29, 2023. The incidents include over 149 attacks on individuals or groups, mainly families and groups attacked in public spaces.

Twenty-four attacks were directed against religious institutions—including the desecration of Muslim graves and attacks on mosques. This means that the documented incidents exceed the previous year’s level. The recorded cases relate exclusively to the offline arena and not to the eruption of anti-Muslim hate speech on the internet. Overall, it can be assumed that there is a high number of unreported anti-Muslim incidents that have not yet been reported or recorded.

The following is an incomplete chronology of some attacks:

• October 9, 2023: Attack on a mosque in Siegburg: the three perpetrators smashed the windows of the mosque, police seized right-wing extremist flyers.
• October 16, 2023: Arson attack on a mosque in Dortmund.
• November 17, 2023: Muslim graves were painted with swastikas in Magdeburg.

Muslim tomb desecrated with a swastika in Magdeburg

• December 10, 2023: In Berlin, racists attacked a Palestinian man who was wearing a Keffiyeh. He had asked riders to make room on the train for an elderly woman with a walking frame. “F*ck off you Arab, go back to your homeland,” the attackers shouted before beating him up.
• December 11, 2023: Racist graffiti was discovered on the facade of the Heinrich-Heine-Gymnasium in Munich including the call to “Kill all Palestinians.”
• December 21, 2023: An Arab restaurant in Ludwigshafen received an online order that included a call for genocide against the Palestinians: “No ceasefire until the last Muslim! Death to Islam and all its followers! Destroy hospitals in Gaza!”
• December 24-25, 2023: In Rimpar (Bavaria), eight swastikas were daubed on a wall on Christmas night in a street where several Muslim families live. The tires of 16 cars were also slashed.
• December 26, 2023: In Wachtersberg (Hesse), the house of a family originating from Pakistan was the victim of an arson attack.
• December 27, 2023: In Wuppertal (NRW), numerous Islamophobic graffiti such as “Muslims out!” appeared overnight.

Anti-Muslim graffiti in Wuppertal

• January 18, 2024: In Dresden, two women wearing headscarves were attacked in public.
• January 20, 2024: There was an arson attack on a Bosnian mosque under construction in Essen. Swastika graffiti was also left behind.
• January 26, 2024: In Mössingen (Baden-Württemberg), a mosque was daubed with a swastika and the threat of a Holocaust.
• February 7, 2024: Unknown persons destroyed several objects (photos of mosques, blinds and a piece of furniture) in the Room of Silence on the Treskowallee campus of HTW Berlin.
• February 8,2024: Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian graffiti was found in the Käftertal and Vogelstang districts of Mannheim (Baden-Württemberg). In addition to “F*ck Palestine,” it also said, “Kill all Muslims.”

The German government and media are directly responsible for the violence. They have systematically created the political and ideological conditions for it. They are among the most aggressive supporters of the far-right Israeli government, which is committing genocide against the Palestinian population. Any protest against this is criminalised under the false accusation of antisemitism. Palestinians and Muslims are vilified across the board as perpetrators of violence and/or terrorists. The right to demonstrate is being restricted; slogans in favour of a free, united Palestine are being equated with the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil!”

Demonstrators report brutal police violence at the rallies. Participants—some of them even children—are arrested by the dozen without justification and subjected to racist harassment. Immediately after October 7, hundreds of police laid siege to Sonnenallee in Neukölln, Berlin and arbitrarily arrested people for wearing the wrong clothes or saying the wrong thing. Wearing a “Palestinian scarf” or shouting the slogan “Free Palestine” was enough for an arrest.

Organisations or private individuals who condemn the genocide in Gaza and are active in this regard were also attacked. For example, the German branch of the international aid network “Samidoun-Palestinian Solidarity Network,” which supports Palestinian political prisoners, was banned.

The witch-hunting began long before October 7. In September 2023, over 700 attacks against Muslims were documented in the first few months of the year. Incitement and violence against Muslims have steadily increased in previous years—with increasingly murderous consequences.

February 19 marked the fourth anniversary of the racist attacks in Hanau when a fascist killed nine people. The role of the police in the attack is still largely unexplained and is being covered up by the authorities.

There have been other deadly right-wing extremist attacks in previous years. On July 22, 2016, 18-year-old right-wing extremist David Sonboly killed nine people with a migrant background in Munich; on June 2, 2019, a neo-Nazi known to the police shot and killed Kassel District President Walter Lübcke (Christian Democrat). And on October 9, 2019, more than 70 participants in a Yom Kippur celebration in Halle escaped mass murder only by luck—the right-wing extremist assassin Stephan Balliet killed two people after failing to gain entry to the synagogue.

This increase in right-wing extremist violence and the associated political repression against Muslims, Palestinians and left-wing forces in Germany is the result of the ruling class’s shift to the right. For years, all the establishment parties have been building up the fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD) and adopting its policies.

While millions of people are taking to the streets against the AfD’s deportation plans, the federal government—a coalition of the Social Democrats, Liberal Democrats and Greens—is de facto putting these plans into practice with the so-called “Repatriation Improvement Act.” At the EU level, the reform of the “Common European Asylum System“ (CEAS) has largely abolished the right to asylum. The law makes it possible to detain refugees at the EU’s external borders for up to one year. To this end, the existing detention centres are being expanded and the deadly violence against refugees at the external borders of Fortress Europe is being constantly stepped up.

Climate change disruption of Atlantic currents reaching dangerous tipping point

Mark Wilson

A new study published by Utrecht University in the Netherlands warns that the “conveyor belt of the ocean” is approaching a tipping point due to climate change that would result in major environmental changes which would affect millions of people.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a major system of currents throughout the Atlantic Ocean, spanning from the Labrador Sea just south of Greenland, to the Southern Ocean near Antarctica. It works by transporting large masses of warm water north at the surface of the ocean and moving cooler water south toward the bottom of the ocean.

Topographic map of the Nordic Seas and subpolar basins with surface currents (solid curves) and deep currents (dashed curves). [Photo by R. Curry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/Science/USGCRP. / CC BY 3.0]

Professor Matthew England at the University of New South Wales described the AMOC as “an overturning circulation that’s been there and steady for thousands and thousands of years. And so, if it were to slow down or collapse, it would be a major disruption to our climate system.” He is regarded by the Australian Academy of Science as “Australia’s leading ocean modeler.”

The northward flow of warmer water—which includes the Gulf Stream—is driven mostly by wind. But when it reaches the high latitudes of the Atlantic near Europe that water sinks to deeper layers of the ocean due to temperature loss and salinity increase. This sinking process is crucial to what is known as thermohaline currents, where the flow of ocean water is caused by differences in water density. If this sinking of water is interfered with, the entire AMOC system is at risk of slowing or even shutting down.

Climate change, caused by over a century and a half of fossil fuel greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, results in processes that can severely disrupt that sinking process. Two major mechanisms that can cause this are increased rainfall and increased melting of ice sheets, both of which dilute the salt content of the ocean water. This decrease in salinity caused by climate change—as explained by ocean physics professor Stefan Rahmstorf from Potsdam University—“makes the water lighter and, therefore, unable to sink—or at least less able to sink—which, basically, slows down that whole engine of the global overturning circulation.”

The dangerous impact of climate change on the AMOC has already been observed. A reported by the WSWS, study published in February 2021 using proxy indicators suggested that the AMOC was already in its weakest state in over a thousand years. Another study from 2021 by researcher Niklas Boers provided evidence that the AMOC was close to a critical transition from its strong to weak modes of circulation. Such a transition if it were to occur, would have “severe impacts on the global climate system.”

While this is concerning enough, scientists have warned that in addition to the weakening trend of the AMOC, a “tipping point” could be reached that could rapidly result in major climate changes around the world. One research paper from 2022 explained: “Tipping points occur when change in part of the climate system becomes self-perpetuating beyond a warming threshold… leading to substantial and widespread Earth system impacts.”

Put another way, and in the context of the AMOC, if the circulation strength is weakened beyond a critical threshold, those changes will become self-reinforcing by the AMOC itself, and lead to further drastic changes for multiple climate systems worldwide that will become increasingly more difficult to halt.

Until now, such a tipping point event for the AMOC has only been modelled using idealised climate models. Such models, while still a vital tool in modern climate science, do not generally consider many of the complexities and interactions between different climate systems. Therefore, there was plausible doubt until now in the scientific community as to whether a tipping point was merely a theoretical concept, and that perhaps if more complex data was included in these projections, a future tipping point for the AMOC may not be a likely occurrence.

The new study, published in Science Advances on February 9, addresses this concern by using the Community Earth Systems Model (CESM) for the first time to perform a “targeted simulation to find an AMOC tipping event.” This type of model—sometimes referred to as a global climate model (GCM)—is better able to capture the complexity of the Earth’s climate by using high-resolution simulation of the various systems that comprise it, such as the atmosphere, oceans and land. The model also accounts for the interactions between these systems, allowing for more holistic representations of the climate to project the likelihood of an AMOC tipping point event.

The grim results show that taking into account the intricacies and complexities of various climate systems, the Earth is heading for a AMOC tipping point. As explained by one of the study’s authors, Rene M. van Westen said: “We are approaching the tipping point, but we cannot deduce the distance to the tipping point.”

The researchers outline an early warning system for an AMOC collapse, based on fresh water-induced overturning sensitivity (FovS). Defined in the study as “the minimum of the AMOC-induced freshwater transport at 34°S in the Atlantic,” this observable quantity decreases as the circulation system weakens. The report notes that currently the FovS is already at a negative value, and is trending further downward, indicating that the AMOC is on course for a tipping point.

Referencing the FovS value, van Westen stated: “We know under climate change that this AMOC will gradually weaken and this parameter will become more negative, so it will destabilize the AMOC further.”

The authors warn that one major effect of such a tipping point would be rapid cooling in the northern hemisphere, particular in Europe. This could be as drastic as 3 degrees Celsius of cooling per decade for Europe. The authors note that “no realistic adaptation measures can deal with such rapid temperature changes under an AMOC collapse.”

A study from 2021 warned that AMOC shutdown would result in harsher winters in the United States. If a tipping event is reached, the US is likely to see more events similar to the freezing temperatures of December 2022, which, as the WSWS reported, resulted in at least 57 deaths.

No doubt right-wing media outlets will seize on such events to further spew climate denial nonsense, as Fox Business host Larry Kudlow recently did. “What about all the subfreezing, subzero record temperatures we’re talking about?” he asked. “The immediate danger from global warming is a hoax.”

In fact, scientists have explained that, counterintuitively, increasing global average temperatures can lead to harsher and more extreme winters in the northern hemisphere. This is due to the warming of the Arctic, which can weaken the polar vortex stream and send cold air south into Europe and the US. The current study provides another mechanism in which climate change can lead to harsher winters—the breakdown of the AMOC.

The study also projects that under an AMOC collapse, drastic changes to the rainfall patterns in the Amazon rainforest are likely, to the extent that the wet and dry seasons in the region may even reverse. This could potentially lead to further cascading tipping points.

The warnings issued by scientists about the dire effects of climate change on humanity have been ignored by governments and fossil fuel corporations around the world for decades now. The impending AMOC tipping point is one such warning.