Senate panel approves record US military budget for 2022-2023

Patrick Martin

The Senate Armed Services Committee has voted to approve a record $858 billion in military spending for Fiscal Year 2023, an increase of $45 billion over the Biden administration’s budget request, and nearly $80 billion over the amount appropriated by Congress for the current fiscal year.

The vote came by a margin of 23-3, demonstrating the support of both capitalist parties, Democrats and Republicans, for a further build-up of the US war machine, including the US intervention in the war in Ukraine. 

It is the 62nd consecutive year that the two parties have joined together to approve the yearly National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which has rubber-stamped US wars in Vietnam, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, as well as military aggression in Bosnia, Kosovo, Panama, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and across the Middle East and North Africa.

The gargantuan sum of $858 billion proposed under the NDAA is approximately a 10 percent increase over what was authorized last year and nearly 6 percent more than the Biden administration asked for.

US tanks are unloaded in Antwerp, Belgium to take part in the Atlantic Resolve military exercises. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Much of the increase was to take into account the impact of inflation, particularly skyrocketing fuel costs, on the operations of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. American workers are expected to tighten their belts to pay for gasoline approaching $6 a gallon, but the US war machine will not be restricted in any way by such considerations.

The Biden administration budget was already based on assuming a 7 percent inflation rate, but both Senate Republicans and Democrats insisted on a higher figure in calculating the Pentagon’s costs. The White House proposed an increase of $31 billion over the current fiscal year, from $782 billion to $813 billion. The Senate committee version of the NDAA thus represents a total increase of $76 billion over the current year.

Both the Democratic chairman and the Republican ranking member on the committee praised the legislation effusively. Chairman Jack Reed of Rhode Island said, “The committee held a robust debate and came together to support a bill that will help safeguard the nation against a range of evolving threats while supporting our troops both on and off the battlefield.” 

This year’s NDAA is named in honor of the Republican ranking member, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who is leaving Congress at the end of this year. Inhofe said of the increased spending, “It’s everything I hoped for.”

The bill authorizes $817.3 billion for the Department of Defense, as well as $29.7 billion in military programs in other departments, mostly for nuclear weapons production by the Department of Energy. Another $10.6 billion will be provided for other “defense-related” programs, bringing the total to $857.6 billion.

The rapid approval of the NDAA—it is expected to pass both houses of Congress before the end of July and be sent to President Biden for his signature—is in sharp contrast to the legislative roadblocks erected to the far smaller legislation to fund COVID-19 programs that have exhausted their resources, ending funding to subsidize free vaccinations and prophylactic drug treatments for the deadly pandemic.

The increase in military spending is more than the entire amount requested by the Biden administration for COVID relief, which has since been whittled down to only $10 billion, less that the Armed Services Committee backed for “other,” unidentified military-related spending. The COVID relief bill, now apparently doomed, amounts to barely more than 1 percent of the total military budget.

Under its standard procedure, Congress asked each armed service command to provide an “unfunded priorities” list of spending that had been rejected by the White House as unnecessary. The total came to $21.5 billion, and the Armed Services Committee funded every dollar, effectively overruling the civilian authority in favor of the military brass.

Among the weapons purchases authorized are 68 F-35 warplanes, an increase of seven over the Pentagon request, and eight new warships, including two more nuclear-powered submarines, two destroyers and a frigate.

The bill provides an across-the-board military pay raise of 4.6 percent, while setting service levels at 1,338,000 total: about half a million for the Army and half a million for the Navy and Marine Corps combined, with the balance in the Air Force and Space Force.

The bill also requires women to register for the draft, which has not been utilized for 50 years but could be required in the event of a major war against Russia or China. Three right-wing Republicans opposed that provision, but it is not clear whether they were the three votes against the overall bill.

Only one Democrat, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, opposed the NDAA in the committee last year. This year, however, she praised the legislation for its “green” character. “The legislation would require at least 75 percent of all nontactical vehicles, such as cars, vans, and light-duty trucks purchased or leased by DoD or procured or leased by the General Services Agency (GSA) for DoD, to be electric or zero-emission vehicles, while applying Buy American and other standards to create good American jobs,” according to a statement from her office.

The House Armed Services Committee passed similar legislation before the vote by the Senate panel but at a lower level of spending. The House committee will mark up a final version of the NDAA on June 22 and is expected to raise spending along the lines of the Senate version.

Certain provisions in the NDAA indicate the priorities of American imperialism for the coming year. Some of the extra money would bulk up funding for Ukraine amid its war with Russia. Specifically, the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative would get $800 million, instead of the $300 million requested by the Biden administration, according to a bipartisan summary of the bill. This is for the fiscal year that begins October 1, indicating that US officials fully expect the war to continue raging.

Another $2.7 billion is for the Pentagon to order additional munitions, including artillery rounds, to replace those already sent to Ukraine.

Other sums are earmarked for “security challenges posed by China,” including $1 billion for the National Defense Stockpile to “acquire strategic and critical minerals,” and $245 million for the establishment of a joint forces headquarters in the Indo-Pacific region.

The bill makes it US government policy to position US forces “to deny a fait accompli” in terms of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. This would involve increasing US deployments in the region to block China from “using military force to unilaterally change the status quo with Taiwan.”

The NDAA also authorizes procurement of several weapons systems from Israel, including the Iron Dome short-range rocket defense system and two others: the “David’s Sling Weapon System” and the Arrow 3 Upper Tier Interceptor Program.

Young Scots for Independence embraces NATO

Darren Paxton

Young Scots for Independence (YSI), the youth wing of the Scottish National Party (SNP), has voted in favour of an independent Scotland joining NATO.

The YSI had opposed NATO membership for a decade after the SNP reversed its previous opposition to the US-led military alliance. The YSI’s shift signals that all pacifist and anti-war sentiments around the SNP will be suppressed and underscores the party’s full support for the proxy-war against Russia by US and British imperialism in Ukraine.

Jack O’Neil, a leading YSI member who spearheaded the policy change, tweeted it was, “One of the proudest moments in my political life. Over the moon that the YSI have affirmed their support for NATO. Delighted to propose the resolution and play my part over years in adopting this sensible foreign policy.”

His tweet included a photo of himself and a YSI colleague holding a NATO flag.

O’Neil is the type of political careerist that stuffs every level of the SNP. His LinkedIn profile shows he has served as Communications Assistant for the House of Commons for four years, doubtless building relationships with senior political figures in and out of the SNP.

In running for a National Executive Committee (NEC) spot, he boasted of his rapid rise through the ranks of the SNP, “I joined the SNP prior to the 2014 referendum… I quickly became a Youth Officer, and later PEO [Political Education Officer] of the Ellon/District branch”. He moved to Aberdeen and then Dundee where he was elected as branch convener, one of the youngest in Scotland to hold this position. He joined the YSI’s NEC serving as Northeast regional convenor, a position he held longer than any other member in the party’s history.

O’Neil’s careerism, youth and pro-war politics are a perfect resource for the SNP, explaining his rapid rise in the party.

His Twitter feed showcases O’Neil’s admiration for the SNP’s viciously pro-war Westminster defence spokesperson, Stewart McDonald, whom he regularly retweets. He has also retweeted Toomas Hendrik Ilves, president of Estonia from 2006 until 2016. Ilves’s Twitter feed is littered with anti-Russia propaganda depicting Russian soldiers as emotionless child murderers, with retweets advocating “shell the Russians” to “oblivion”. O’Neil mixes these with reposts celebrating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian forces from pro-war pages including the fascistic ‘Defence of Ukraine’ run by the Ukrainian state.

In celebrating the YSI’s endorsement of NATO, O’Neil describes the imperialist military alliance as “progressive” and in “stark contrast to… Imperialist Russia”. This turns reality on its head. The war in Ukraine is raging as a direct result of NATO’s expansion eastwards and military encirclement of Russia. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not an expression of “Russian imperialism” but rather a reactionary and reckless response to NATO aggression. The sanctions on Russia have been so devastating precisely because Russia is not an imperialist power.

The NATO alliance described by the YSI as “progressive” has reduced entire societies to rubble in the Middle East and countless other war zones. Millions lost their lives and centuries of development was wiped out by NATO-backed military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, far eclipsing anything Putin is accused of in Ukraine.

In the aftermath of the YSI’s vote, O’Neil absurdly claimed that the SNP’s nominal opposition to Trident nuclear weapons was compatible with its advocacy of membership in a pro-nuclear NATO. He wrote, “This does not for a second put us at odds with our commitment to remove nuclear weapons from Scotland, nor does it end our opposition to the existence of weapons of mass destruction.” The delirious celebration of NATO across the SNP exposes its opposition to Trident as window dressing for a right-wing and pro-war party of the British establishment.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party, made this clear on May 16, when she travelled to the Brookings Institute in Washington. There she prostrated the SNP before NATO and grovelled to US imperialism.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

Sturgeon spoke at the Brookings Institute’s “European Energy Security” webinar titled, “Scotland and the future of European energy security”. Her session explored how Scotland can help isolate Russia economically and advance NATO’s operations in Europe.

John Allen, President of the Brookings Institute, introduced Sturgeon, reminding her what Scottish capitalism stands to gain in destroying Russia, “With enormous stakes not just for Europe but for the entire planet, this discussion comes at a critical time. And today’s conversation will focus on Scotland’s not-insignificant role... and the benefits of transitioning to a greener economy and what’s needed, especially in the wake of Russia’s destabilization of fossil fuel energy supplies to boost Scottish and European energy security and self-reliance.”

The First Minister fell over herself committing Scotland to NATO’s war, “I want to be very clear today to you here in the United States that Scotland stands with the United Kingdom, the European Union, and countries around the world, including of course the United States, in our condemnation of Putin’s actions. We support the severity of economic sanctions on Russia and also the supply of military assistance to Ukraine.”

Sturgeon has been one of the loudest advocates for a no-fly zone over Ukraine that would provide a pretext for all-out war with Russia. She continued this belligerent stance in her Brookings speech. She called for maximum participation in the war, proclaiming it was the “duty” of every so-called democracy “to offer tangible support and solidarity to Ukraine…”

Sturgeon lauded German militarism as an example for the rest of the world’s “democracies” to follow, “Germany has reversed its long-standing position of not supplying arms to conflict zones, and it has set out plans to significantly increase its own defence spending.” She continued “I am firm in my view that–coupled with a strong relationship with the UK–membership of the EU and of NATO will be cornerstones of an independent Scotland’s Security policy.”

The SNP leader signalled her willingness to use Scotland’s geographic position in NATO’s war plans against Russia.

“The Scottish Government is acutely aware of Scotland’s strategic position... close to the Arctic”, she said. The Arctic is critical for NATO. A report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in 2010, “U.S. Strategic Interests in the Arctic: An Assessment of Current Challenges and New Opportunities for Cooperation”, explained how global warming was opening new transportation pathways to “oil, gas, minerals, fish” as “viable sources of profit.” It called for a “plan of action” against Russia to ensure “US leadership” over the region.

Sturgeon did not mention it, but another strategic battleground making Scotland vital to NATO’s war against Russia is the so-called GIUK Gapvast stretches of the North Atlantic separating Greenland, Iceland and the UK. A report and tabletop exercise “Forgotten Waters” from the think tank CNAS (Centre for a New American Security) in May 2017 explored precisely how NATO would utilise this region in a Third World War against Russia.

The report explained that control of this “gap” is vital in isolating Russia and controlling the movement of military and cargo ships through this passage, “The GIUK Gap forms the principal choke point between Russia’s great Northern Fleet and its strategic interests in the North Atlantic and all points south”. The region is also filled with underwater telecommunication cables that are critical for military communications and daily life. The report called for a massive increase in sea, air and land arms spending.

Sturgeon pledged at Brookings that an independent Scotland would be a trustworthy ally, “And so we are clearer than ever that membership of NATO would… be the principal way in which an Independent Scotland, in an interdependent world, would contribute to the collective security of our neighbours and allies”.

Turkey arrests Kurdish journalists, politicians and prepares to invade Syria

Ulaş Ateşçi

Sixteen of the 20 Kurdish journalists detained in Diyarbakir on June 8 were arrested and sent to prison on Thursday, as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government escalates attacks on press freedom.

The World Socialist Web Site condemns these attacks and demands the release of all journalists. Faced with ever-increasing inflation and poverty, as well as a growing opposition and strike movement within the working class, the Erdoğan government is trying to use militarism and chauvinism to suppress the class struggle and target basic democratic rights.

IMAGE: Arrested journalists from Kurdish press. [Credit: Mezopotamya Agency]

Among the arrested journalists are Dicle Fırat Journalists Association (DFG) Co-Chair Serdar Altan, Xwebûn Managing Editor Mehmet Ali Ertaş, JinNews Director Safiye Alagaş, JinNews Editor Gülşen Koçuk, and Mezopotamya Agency (MA) Editor Aziz Oruç.

The journalists were arrested on charges of “membership” in the outlawed Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella group that includes the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) in Iran, and Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (PÇDK) in Iraq. This so-called accusation is a pretext that the Turkish state has used for decades to carry out arrests.

According to the Mezopotamya Agency, the investigation, based on testimony from secret and open witnesses, alleges that journalists used interviews with KCK leaders as “instructions” to make TV shows. One of the charges leveled against the arrested journalists is that they made shows for Kurdish television stations abroad.

One charge against Elif Üngür is that she made a TV show on the campaign to free imprisoned Kurdish artist Nûdem Durak, who has been supported by artists such as Roger Waters internationally. Üngür is also accused of showing images of Qamışlo, a town in northeastern Syria held by Kurdish-nationalist forces, in a TV show.

While JinNews Editor Gülşen Koçuk was asked whether she followed the “Justice Watch” campaign for sick prisoners, journalist Lezgin Akdeniz was asked about his phone calls with news sources and his TV show on murders by JİTEM. An unofficial state intelligence agency, JİTEM was infamous for many unsolved civilian murders in the Kurdish region during the Turkish state’s war on the PKK in the 1990s.

The journalists’ arrest was justified on the grounds that their news reports “informed the group [KCK] about the Turkish Army’s course of action, praised and encouraged the group’s [KCK] acts of force and violence.” Resul Temur, one of the journalists’ lawyers, told the daily BirGün that the whole process was full of lawlessness and irregularities.

Temur said that during the 8 days the journalists were in detention, they were not given any information about their case or even shown the detention and confidentiality order. He added, “The prosecutor’s office even told [a journalist during the interrogation:] ‘You mentioned the ‘Kurdish problem. What kind of problem do Kurds have?’ But they did not record this in the minutes. There was an 80 hour-long content in the investigation, but we couldn’t see it... In fact, we saw that there was no reason for them to be detained.”

These arrests follow a series of police raids on the legal Kurdish-nationalist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and associated parties in Turkey. Earlier this month, 29 executives of the Peoples’ Democratic Congress (HDK), an umbrella organization of which the HDP is also a member, were arrested on charges of “being KCK members” and “making propaganda for the group” as part of an investigation by the Tekirdağ Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.

On Thursday, 12 people, including journalist Saliha Aras from the Demokratik Modernite magazine and executives and members of the HDP, were detained in house raids in Istanbul.

Last week, HDK and several other organizations tried to organize a march from various parts of the country to Gemlik, where PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan is being held on an island named İmralı, to protest the isolation imposed on him. Öcalan has been in prison since 1999. The last time Öcalan was allowed to meet with his lawyers was in August 2019, and the last time he was allowed to make phone calls was in April 2020.

While marches to Gemlik from cities such as Istanbul, Diyarbakır and Van were not allowed, dozens of people were detained during police attacks on the protests. Two of those detained in Kadıköy, İstanbul were arrested.

The mass arrests of Kurdish journalists and increased crackdown on Kurdish politicians comes as the Erdoğan government continues its operation against PKK forces in Iraq and prepares to attack the US-backed, PYD-linked YPG militias in Syria.

On May 23, Erdoğan signaled an invasion into Syria, stating: “We are starting to take new steps soon regarding the remaining parts of the works which we have launched to create 30-kilometer-deep secure zones along our southern borders.”

Ankara has demanded that its NATO allies, particularly Washington, stop supporting the YPG as a proxy force in Syria, and has carried out numerous operations in Syria since 2016 to block the emergence of a Kurdish state on its southern borders. The Turkish Armed Forces and their Islamist proxies now control around 10 percent of Syria, where 4.4 million people reportedly live.

The latest military announcement came after Erdoğan threatened to veto Sweden’s and Finland’s request to join NATO against Russia, on the grounds that they support the PKK and YPG.

In early June, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made clear Washington’s opposition to a Turkish invasion targeting its main proxies in Syria. He said: “Any escalation in northern Syria is something that we would oppose, and we support the maintenance of the current ceasefire lines.”

The Russian government also criticized Erdogan’s plans. “Such a move, in the absence of the agreement of the legitimate government of the Syrian Arab Republic, would be a direct violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson María Zakharova, adding: “We hope that Ankara will refrain from actions that could lead to a dangerous deterioration of the already difficult situation in Syria.”

Moreover, speaking to RT on June 9, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said: “If there is an invasion, there will be popular resistance in the first stage.... Of course, in the places where the Syrian army is positioned, and it is not deployed to all regions in Syria, and when military conditions allow for confrontation, we will do this.”

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), whose backbone is the YPG, said it would respond to a possible Turkish invasion by seeking military support from the Syrian regime. However, the US and Turkey have waged a war for regime against Assad’s government since 2011, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths and turning millions more into refugees.

On June 5, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi said that the Syrian government should use its air defence systems against Turkish planes and that the SDF were “open” to working with Syrian army to fight off Turkish forces.

This points to the potential for a dangerous escalation that could once again pit NATO member state Turkey against Russian-backed Syrian forces. Ankara’s preparations to invade Syria and the Kurdish-nationalists’ role as a US proxy expose the bankruptcy and reactionary character of Turkish and Kurdish nationalism, both of which seek to cut deals with imperialism.

One in five Canadians eating less due to food price rises, as Liberal government squanders billions on war

Steve Hill

A recent survey commissioned by Food Banks Canada revealed that a growing number of Canadians report they are facing hunger and food insecurity due to rising inflation and housing costs. Inflation hit a three-decade high in April, reaching almost seven percent.

Food bank (Credit: U.S.Air Force)

The survey, conducted by Mainstreet Research, shows that one in five, an estimated 7 million Canadians, now report going hungry—with 23 percent reporting that they are eating less “than they think they should” because they do not have enough money for food. The percentage among those earning less than $50,000 per year who are eating less was almost double the overall average.

Food banks across Canada typically see an easing of demand during the summer months, but this year there has been no sign of slow-downs. “Food banks in most regions of Canada are experiencing an influx of Canadians visiting food banks for the first time—a number that's increased by up to 25 percent in some regions, which we haven't seen since the first few months of the pandemic,” stated Kirsten Beardsley, Food Banks Canada’s CEO.

“The biggest sign that inflation is seriously impacting hunger and food insecurity in Canada, is that the reasons why people say they are coming to food banks is changing,” Beardley noted. “In the past, people would turn to food banks during times of job loss, or due to lower wages—but over the past six months, Canadians are telling us that they are running out of money for food because of rising housing, gas, energy and food costs.”

Statistics Canada reports that consumers paid 9.7 percent more for groceries in April compared with a year ago, the largest year-on-year increase since September 1981. Pasta prices were up 19.6 percent, cereal products rose 13.9 percent, bread increased 12.2 percent and fresh fruit costs jumped 10 percent.

Speaking to CBC News, Breanna Cordeiro of Oakville, Ontario, said the rising price of gas combined with stagnant wages has forced her family to find ways to economize. “Where you look at budgeting, it’s like, where can we make some cuts?” she said. “And unfortunately, sometimes it has to be food.” Opting for more meatless meals and stocking up on groceries based largely on what is on sale goes so far, but even then, the mother of two said it can be tough. “The flyer comes out every Wednesday or Thursday, and it’s like, 'This is on sale? This is the sale price? That's what you used to pay full price, even six months ago’,” she said.

The Stop Community Food Centre, a Toronto food bank, cannot keep up with the growing number of people arriving hungry at its doors, and has been forced to reduce how much food it gives to each person. The food bank’s three locations currently serve about 400 meals a day—a 40 percent increase from 2019. During the pandemic, it allowed families to collect groceries twice a month, but they have been forced to change that policy. Maria Rio, director of development and communications, told The Breach, “With food costs and an increase in new clients, this became harder and harder to maintain so now we are back to once-a-month access per household.”

The grocery business in Canada is monopolized by five large corporations: Loblaws, Costco, Sobeys, Metro and Walmart, which control over 60 percent of retail market food sales. Every major chain has squeezed their customers and their employees. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) economist David Macdonald reports that grocery stores “booked $7.3 billion in pre-tax profit in 2021.” That’s “more than double what they were clearing the year before the pandemic,” according to Macdonald.

The skyrocketing profits for big business on the one hand and stagnant wages for workers on the other as the cost of food and other basic necessities surge are not merely the product of economic forces, but the intended outcome of the policies pursued by the establishment political parties and the trade unions for decades.

The unions have enforced one round of concessions after another on workers, while systematically sabotaging their struggles against real-terms pay cuts, the gutting of benefits like cost-of-living adjustments, and the destruction of jobs. All political parties, from the New Democrats on the “left” to the Tories on the right, have presided over a low-tax, deregulated regime that has proven to be a bonanza for the super-rich and major corporations.

These long-standing developments were dramatically accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal Liberal government, supported by the unions and NDP, handed over $650 billion to the financial markets and major banks overnight to protect their vast wealth, while forcing workers to remain on the job in dangerous conditions as the deadly virus spread.

With inflation surging over recent months, workers have been straining against the straitjacket imposed on them by the unions and have waged militant struggles for wage increases and improved working conditions. These struggles include 40,000 Ontario construction workers, more than 20,000 New Brunswick public sector workers, and rail workers at Canadian Pacific.

Aware of the anger building up among working people, the New Democrats have absurdly sought to portray themselves in a series of demagogic statements as friends of workers.

On June 8, New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh posted a video on TikTok and Instagram of himself speaking in the House of Commons about the struggle faced by growing numbers of workers to feed themselves. “One out of every four Canadians in this country is going hungry because they cannot afford groceries. At the same time, corporations are making record profits. They’re breaking record after record. Our plan is to tax the excess profits,” Singh claimed.

Nobody can take such cynical posturing seriously. Singh’s NDP has been propping up the minority Liberal government since 2019 with the full support of the trade union bureaucracy. It backed the Trudeau government’s bailout of the super-rich at the beginning of the pandemic and the back-to-work campaign, which was aimed  at making working people pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars made available to the banks and major corporations. At the same time, all NDP MPs have backed Liberal budgets that have included billions of additional dollars in funding for Canada’s military.

In March of this year the NDP signed a “confidence-and-supply” agreement that will keep Justin Trudeau’s Liberal minority government in office through June 2025. The NDP and its backers in the unions explicitly hailed the deal as necessary to ensure “political stability,” allowing Canada to continue playing a major role in the imperialist powers’ war against Russia.

As the WSWS explained at the time, “The specific task of the NDP and their union allies will be to suppress worker struggles, while providing the Liberals with ‘left’ cover as the government pursues imperialist aggression and pivots to renewed austerity and “growing the economy”—a euphemism for a raft of pro-business policies from deregulation to privatization.”

The inflation rate has been spiraling upward for more than a year as the economic costs of the failure to end the pandemic, and the massive handouts to wealthy corporations, are imposed on the working class by the ruling elite’s policies. For more than two years, the NDP has collaborated with the unions and the Liberals to suppress strikes and deny legitimate wage demands, while promoting Canada’s imperialist ambitions around the world.

Yves Giroux, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, recently released a report stating the federal government would need to spend an additional $75.3 billion on defence over the next five years for Canada to reach NATO’s target of spending two percent of GDP on defence. Based on government figures, Giroux forecasts that Canada’s total military spending will increase from $36.3 billion in the 2022-23 fiscal year to approximately $51 billion in 2026-27.

Notwithstanding Singh’s blather about taxing the corporations, his party is the fifth wheel in a government that is committed to ensuring that the funds needed to fund Canada’s massive rearmament program will come from gutting what remains of the social safety net and ratcheting up the exploitation of the working class.

US Supreme Court authorizes indefinite detention of immigrants and immunizes Border Patrol agents from brutality claims

John Andrews

In a pair of related cases decided June 13, the US Supreme Court upheld the challenge by Biden administration lawyers to three lower court rulings that entitled non-citizens to request a bail hearing while waiting for their objections to deportation to be resolved.

Immigrant families held in overcrowded Border Patrol detention center in McAllen, Texas [Credit: OIG]

Because of these reactionary rulings, thousands of immigrants who pose no danger and no risk of flight, and who are asserting valid legal claims to remain in the United States, will remain jailed under medieval conditions as their cases wind through the backlogged and indifferent immigration courts.

In a third case decided on June 8, Border Patrol agents, perhaps the most thuggish of all federal law enforcement officers, were granted broad immunity from constitutionally based lawsuits for excessive force brought by US citizens.

Antonio Arteaga-Martinez was arrested in 2018 after six years in the United States while awaiting the birth of his first child because he entered without documents. An asylum official found credible Arteaga-Martinez’s claim that he would face persecution and torture if deported to Mexico. Arteaga-Martinez sought to be reunited with his family while his petition for a “withholding of removal” order worked its way through the immigration courts, followed by the inevitable appeals.

Writing for eight of the nine justices, the leading “liberal,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, reversed the lower court ruling requiring the federal government to provide a bail hearing within six months, at which an immigration judge could consider traditional criteria for releasing someone in exchange for the posting of a cash bond, such as danger to the public or risk of flight. 

Sotomayor, indifferent to the devastating impact that indefinite imprisonment for immigration violations has on working families, based her decision on a pedantic, result-driven reading of the governing statute, which, she  added, could be changed. Sotomayor left open the option that Arteaga-Martinez could present a constitutional challenge on remand to the lower court.

Stephen Breyer dissented, writing that a 2001 case, Zadvydas v. Davis, resolved the issue, preventing the government from detaining immigrants indefinitely. If deportation was not likely in the “reasonably foreseeable future,” immigrants must be released absent some good reason to detain them, Breyer wrote. Arch-reactionary Clarence Thomas agreed that Zadvydas was controlling, but instead urged that the earlier decision be overruled.

The second case, Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez, involved two class actions filed on behalf of non-citizens jailed for more than six months. Both lower courts issued class-wide injunctions ordering bail hearings on the grounds that due process rights were being violated.

Reactionary Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, did not just rule that the lower courts were wrong, but that the detainees had no right to bring the lawsuit in the first place. He wrote that federal law “generally prohibits lower courts from entering injunctions that order federal officials to take or to refrain from taking actions to enforce, implement, or otherwise carry out specified statutory provisions.”

Despite her simultaneous ruling against the statutory right to bail hearings, Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Breyer, on the grounds that Alito’s ruling made it impossible for people to band together in challenging government misconduct that could not be challenged individually. She wrote that the ruling will “leave many vulnerable noncitizens unable to protect their rights.”

These reactionary rulings occurred against the background of a surge in arrests along the Mexican border. US Customs and Border Protection announced there were 239,416 arrests in May alone, a pace of nearly three million detentions annually. The mass arrests are fueled in large part by the Biden administration’s failure to terminate the unconstitutional Title 42 summary exclusion policy, instituted by the Trump administration, which effectively abolishes the right to asylum on the southern border of the United States.

In last week’s case, Egbert v. Boule, Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the right-wing majority, ruled against Robert Boule, a US citizen who runs the “Smuggler’s Inn,” a bed-and-breakfast that abuts the Canadian border.

Boule was a paid government informant who found himself at odds with Erik Egbert, a local Border Patrol agent. While arguing over a Turkish guest legally in the United States, Egbert threw Boule against a car and then slammed him to the ground. When Boule filed a formal complaint, Egbert used his government connections to retaliate by triggering a tax audit.

Boule filed a federal lawsuit under the well known 1971 precedent Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents, which authorizes claims for money damages against federal officials based on constitutional violations. Right-wing justices have been attacking and restricting Bivens for decades. Although Thomas declined to straight-out overrule Bivens, his opinion reduced its scope to the approximate size of a postage stamp.

While the facts may seem somewhat trivial, the decision has far-reaching legal consequences.

Thomas referred at length to Alito’s 2020 decision in Hernández v. Meza, a sickening case where the Supreme Court “declined to create a damages remedy for an excessive-force claim against a Border Patrol agent who shot and killed a 15-year-old Mexican national across the border in Mexico.”

Although Bivens was decided two years after Chief Justice Earl Warren retired, it stands as one of the landmark decisions from the relatively brief period in the last century when the Supreme Court was popularly perceived as an institution that protected democratic rights. Thomas, speaking for the reactionary majority, wrote not only that Bivens would likely be decided differently today, but that “we are now long past the heady days in which this Court assumed common-law powers to create causes of action.”

Finally, Thomas wrote, “In Hernández, we declined to authorize a Bivens remedy, in part, because the Executive Branch already had investigated alleged misconduct by the defendant Border Patrol agent... Boule nonetheless contends that the Border Patrol’s grievance process is inadequate because he is not entitled to participate and has no right to judicial review of an adverse determination. But we have never held that a Bivens alternative must afford rights to participation or appeal... Thus here, as in Hernández, we have no warrant to doubt that the consideration of Boule’s grievance against Agent Egbert secured adequate deterrence and afforded Boule an alternative remedy.”

In other words, because a law enforcement agency rubber-stamps the actions of its employees, without “rights to participation or appeal,” there is no need for a lawsuit.

Coinbase terminates 1,100 employees following 25,000 tech sector layoffs since May

James Martin

The US-based cryptocurrency exchange company Coinbase announced mass layoffs and cut over 18 percent of its workforce on Tuesday after it abruptly locked out employees from their work systems. More than 25,000 tech workers have also been laid off since May as the stock market bubble continues to burst.

On Tuesday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced in a blog post that the company had terminated 1,100 employees due to a “crypto winter.” Cryptocurrency prices, including those for Bitcoin and Ethereum, have crashed by 70 percent amidst the growing global financial instability. Following a record high value of $3 trillion last fall, cryptocurrencies are now worth around $1 trillion.

FILE - An advertisement for Coinbase, center, is displayed on NASDAQ billboard in Times Square, New York, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

Hundreds of Coinbase employees in the United States woke up on Tuesday to find that they no longer had access to the company systems, and learned of their termination via an HR note sent to their personal emails. Over 8 percent of the Coinbase employees in India were also part of the global layoffs.

“Yesterday I woke up early to work on a deck and got a weird error message when I tried to start my laptop,” said a Coinbase employee on the social media platform LinkedIn. “A quick Google search revealed that Coinbase had cut 18 percent of its workforce.”

Another software engineer wrote, “I was also part of the Coinbase 18 percent. My whole org was cut. After three years they broke up with me and my fiance via text message—11 days before our wedding, and a couple months before the birth of our daughter.”

White-collar employees affected by the layoffs spanned multiple departments at Coinbase, including hundreds of software engineers, product designers, product managers, customer support workers, recruiters, data scientists, marketing professionals, researchers, analysts and more.

Two weeks ago, Coinbase rescinded hundreds of offers for incoming employees who had quit their previous jobs. Tech workers who came to the United States with a visa suddenly found themselves forced to leave the country.

Armstrong, the billionaire CEO of Coinbase, wrote in a blog post, “We appear to be entering a recession after a 10+ year economic boom. A recession could lead to another crypto winter, and could last for an extended period.”

Coinbase’s rise was part of a speculative frenzy in cryptocurrencies fueled by the cheap money policy of the Federal Reserve of the last decade followed by decades of attacks on the living standards of the working class.

Armstrong indicated that the company grew too quickly. In the beginning of 2021, Armstrong said the company only had 1,250 employees. By early 2022, that number exceeded over 6,000 employees globally.

Armstrong explained how employees were terminated in the blog post. “If you are affected,” he wrote, “you will receive this notification in your personal email, because we made the decision to cut access to Coinbase systems for affected employees. I realize that removal of access will feel sudden and unexpected.”

Part of the reason for the abrupt layoffs was the leak of an employee petition for a vote of no confidence in the executive team. The petition’s complaints included opposition to the rescinding of “offers to new employees despite promising them that their offers would not be rescinded two weeks earlier, leading to a massive negative reception from the public and the industry at-large.”

In response, Armstrong arrogantly dismissed the employee petition publicly on Twitter, saying, “This is really dumb on multiple levels…if you have no confidence in the execs or CEO of a company then why are you working at that company? Quit and find a company to work at that you believe in!”

Armstrong’s blog post after the termination of employees went on to callously justify the termination. “Given the number of employees who have access to sensitive customer information,” he said, “it was unfortunately the only practical choice, to ensure not even a single person made a rash decision that harmed the business.”

Layoffs mount across the global tech industry

The sudden layoffs at Coinbase follow a surge of layoffs across various tech sector companies, but tech startups specialized in finance and real estate carried out the heaviest layoffs. According to the tech layoff aggregator website Layoffs.fyi, nearly 17,000 were laid off in May, up more than 350 percent from April. At least 8,821 have been laid off in June so far.

Some of the tech companies that laid off dozens to hundreds of workers globally in June so far include Wealthsimple (159), Redfin (470), Compass (450), BlockFi (250), Crypto.com (260), OneTrust (950), Stitch Fix (330), Cazoo (750) and Carbon Health (250).

Istanbul-based Getir, a food delivery service, laid off 4,480 workers in May, one of the largest layoffs in the global tech sector. Swedish financial tech company Klarna laid off 700. India-based healthcare startup MFine laid off 600. The US-based startup Carvana that delivered used cars laid off over 2,500 workers.

One of the largest layoffs in the past six months was the unraveling of mortgage-lending technology firm Better.com, which has laid off over 3,900 workers since last December. Vishal Garag, the CEO of the company, fired over 900 workers via a Zoom video call. The shocking announcement was followed by insults by Garag, who told employees they were not working hard enough. On the anonymous employee app Blind, Garag went on to trash workers who spoke out, calling one angry worker an “ingrate.”

The wave of layoffs in the tech industry, reminiscent of the early days of the collapse of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s, are part of the unraveling of the stock market in the last few months and part of the deepening crisis of the global capitalist financial system. Most of these companies were drunk on venture capital funding, burning cash to grow quickly while seeking quick returns in the stock market rally during the pandemic.

The business models most tech startups relied on with venture capital funding meant spending more than they brought in from revenue, with the expectation of delayed profitability up to a decade later. But with financial liquidity in the markets drying up and global recessionary fears looming with skyrocketing inflation and central banks raising interest rates, the tech-heavy NASDAQ has suffered heavy losses, with investors and shareholders selling stocks in companies that do not bring immediate returns.

“The music has stopped”

In the past two years alone, capitalist governments across the globe, including chiefly in the United States, threw trillions at the financial system to boost the profits of corporations and the financial banks in response to the pandemic. The response of the ruling class in every country to the pandemic was not to protect the world’s population from mass death, but to ensure that the frenzied speculation and profits extracted from the working class did not stop. Millions across the world have died while Wall Street soared.

But as commentators such as Lee Reiners, a former Federal Reserve official, have observed, “the music has stopped.”  Corporate debt has ballooned to over $11 trillion. The turbulence in Wall Street and the financial house of cards are rapidly coming apart at the seams as the pandemic has destroyed the global supply chain of labor and the US-NATO conflict in Ukraine against Russia has accelerated inflationary tendencies across the globe and caused food, gasoline and other commodities to surge in price.

The latest measure of inflation in the US, at 8.6 percent year over year, caused the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates. The chief target of the interest rate hikes is not curbing inflation, but above all to stop the drive for higher wages by workers in the US and internationally against decades of wage stagnation.

The turbulence among tech startups and the collapse of cryptocurrency startups in particular has made CEOs more vocal in their attacks on their workforce. Jesse Powell, the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange KrakenFX, responded to growing internal employee frustration on a number of issues. “I entertained debate for a bit,” Powell said in a tweet, warning, “Back to dictatorship.”

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, recently announced he would cut 10 percent of Tesla’s white-collar workforce. The billionaire sociopath, who has endorsed the fascistic Ron DeSantis for president, is currently negotiating a deal to purchase the social media platform Twitter for $44 billion, and hinted in a virtual town hall meeting to Twitter employees that he intends to carry out layoffs at Twitter as well. “Right now the costs exceed revenue,” he said. His rambling and delusional speech that spanned topics from aliens to how he intends to improve the platform was widely ridiculed by Twitter employees, according to leaked reports.

Future funding for COVID-19 testing and treatment “Probably Dead”

Benjamin Mateus

The June 16 hearing on the federal response to COVID-19 made clear that congress will not pass further funding for measures to blunt the impact of the pandemic, despite evidence of the growing dominance of the latest contagious and deadly B5 subvariant of Omicron in the United States.

The expiration of funding means that uninsured Americans may soon be forced to pay for testing, treatment, and vaccines out of pocket.

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky lamented during the hearing, “I’m deeply concerned that a lack of additional funding for other response activities will end or substantially scale back critical COVID response work.”

Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah’s testimony was seen as the death knell of the negotiations over continued COVID response funding.

The initial proposal of $80 billion late last year was reduced to $30 billion, by March to $22 billion, and more recently to just $10 billion, “but the deal collapsed as Democrats raised questions about the removal of international aid from the package and lawmakers of both parties objected to a separate plan to lift pandemic restrictions at the border,” according to the Washington Post.

Romney said, “I and a number of other members have worked over a number of months with members of this party and across the aisle to develop a supplemental bill to provide the $10 billion to address this inability to purchase these things …  you can manage my surprise when I find out that on June 8 the federal government did in fact prioritize $5 billion for the purchase of additional vaccines and $4.9 billion for therapeutics and $300 million for additional monoclonal antibodies.”

He added, “But it chose not to do so in February, March, April, or May, citing the inability to do so. So, the administration has recklessly and unilaterally spent taxpayer’s money, we have runaway inflation, but instead of taking an accurate inventory of the funds they had at their disposal … For the administration to provide information to us that was patently false is something which dramatically attacks that trust that I have, members of my party and both parties have.”

Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the panel’s chair, had explained in her opening remarks, anticipating the criticism: “The fact the administration has had to resort to allocating resources from our long-term needs to keep our short-term response afloat – that’s not a solution. That’s a stopgap.”

White House office of management and Budget, Associate Director for Health Topher Spiro, had said on Twitter, “To be clear, we were forced to divert dollars from next-generation vaccines and therapeutics, vaccine production, testing capacity, and PPE. These tradeoffs were necessary because Congress failed to act.”

What would happen if this funding were not secured?

These include funding for next-generation vaccines, including mucosal and intranasal vaccines, which can potentially offer sterilizing immunity against infection, would fall aside. Research into therapeutics would suffer irrevocably. Testing capacity would implode while immune-evading new variants are ripping across the globe even as global deaths begin to inch up again.

Research into the impact of Long COVID on the population and critical studies in pediatrics and MIS-C and long-term post-COVID surveillance of pregnant mothers would stall. The uninsured and underinsured would be left out of the arsenal of therapeutics that exist. The ability to purchase life-saving monoclonal antibody treatment, especially for immunocompromised individuals, would collapse. In short, it is the complete implosion of the fragmented public health infrastructure.

The working class must heed the warnings that the federal government and the politicians in both parties are incapable of any legitimate response to the pandemic. They have, from day one, discredited themselves as lacking any principles upon which to base their leadership.

An internal analysis by the Biden administration’s scientific advisory has warned that the fall and winter may bring a massive wave of infections and deaths. Meanwhile, Long COVID continues to afflict millions leading to a mass disabling social crisis, which will have significant health consequences for the population and the crumbling health infrastructure.

The Raymond James Financial Services, a premier investment management firm, sent a note to their clients after the hearings stating, “New COVID Funding Probably Dead: We are very skeptical more COVID money will be made available and believe the Administration will now need to move more quickly toward a system where COVID vaccines, treatments, and testing are provided through the traditional supply chain and purchasing apparatus in the US health system.”

During the hearing, no effort was made to place the pandemic in its appropriate social context and offer a clear, compelling response why elimination remains the only viable solution. The dominant policy of “learn to live with the virus” was never challenged and enjoyed bipartisan support. Not one senator or expert witness entertained to consider the lessons offered by China’s response to the pandemic in Shanghai. Instead, they persisted in their efforts to tarnish the country and allude to lab leak theories.

During the proceedings, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, FDA Head Dr. Robert Califf, and the entire committee membership – including Senators Bernie Sanders and Tim Kane, who now suffers from Long COVID, spoke and participated in the nearly three-hour event without a mask, potentially making it another high visibility super spreading event.

At one point, Walensky, even after informing Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine that numerous studies have demonstrated that mask mandates have decreased the number of infections, made everyone aware that no one was wearing a mask. One could have asked her why she ever rescinded previous mask mandates if they proved so effective?

Just one month ago, every media outlet and the Biden administration acknowledged that more than one million Americans had perished in less than two years of the pandemic. Walensky also informed the committee that cases across the country had been climbing. Currently, 67 percent of the population resides in counties with medium to high COVID transmission levels, twice the levels from a month ago.

That fact that President Biden’s chief medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was online and isolated at home because he had tested positive for COVID, was not missed by the committee members who all sent him well wishes for a speedy recovery.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra has tested positive for COVID twice in less than one month and is isolated at home. Should Walensky and Califf in the next two or three days test positive, it would mean that the entire head of public health would be positive for COVID simultaneously.

David North, chairman of the Socialist Equality Party, said on Twitter, “I will not be sending them get-well cards. They are deserving victims of the criminally irresponsible policies they have foisted upon the public. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is raging out of control, thanks to the deliberate dismantling of all anti-COVID measures.”

Throughout the hearing, HELP Ranking Member Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina barraged the witnesses to provide him a plan asking, “What is the end game?” meaning when will HHS declare the emergency phase of the pandemic over.

Burr observed, “Let me say, we have removed all the mask requirements and eliminated testing requirements to enter the country. Title 42 is a CDC decision, and you said in your response to your letter to me that you were lifting it because … we have the tools, tests, and vaccinations; therefore, there is no longer a public health emergency.”

HHS must give a 60-day warning before it rescinds the emergency declaration. The implications would be considerable for the population affecting coverage, costs, and payment for COVID-19 testing, treatment, and vaccines. Access to medical countermeasures like vaccines, tests, and treatments through FDA emergency use authorization would be affected, and coverage to health systems and providers would be removed.

It was made clear that there is no money for a pandemic that has killed millions across the globe and will continue to kill, but the billions to prosecute a dangerous war in Ukraine against a nuclear-armed Russia can be made readily available at the drop of a hat with an unlimited purse string at their disposal and no questions asked. Burr speaks for Wall Street and the financial oligarchs when he asks what the endgame is. Clearly, the answer is, “Declare the pandemic over and get back to work!”