Criminal barristers join UK summer of discontent

Robert Stevens

Criminal barristers in England and Wales began strike action today demanding a 25 percent increase in fees paid for legal aid work. Under Britain’s legal aid system, the government pays for barristers so that those who cannot afford lawyers are able to receive representation and professional advice.

Decades of cuts to legal aid have led to an exodus from the profession, with criminal barristers in their first three years earning as little as £12,200 annually for a 70-hour week. One quarter of all criminal barristers have left the profession in the last five years. Those who remain face impossible caseloads and a legal aid system at breaking point.

Around 2,000 criminal barristers will strike two days this week, rejecting what the Conservative government falsely described as a 15 percent offer. They will strike three days next week, four days the week after, and five days from July 18 to 22.

Criminal barristers outside the Old Bailey in London during the day of action, June 27, 2022 [Photo by @anniemannion/Twitter]

Action will resume on August 1 with a five-day walkout and strikes every other week until their demands are met. “Day of Action” protests were held today outside London’s Old Bailey criminal court and at crown courts in Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and Cardiff, with further protests to follow.

The strikes were sanctioned by the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) on June 17, after a ballot of its 2,400 members showed 81.5 percent support for court walkouts, a boycott of new instructions and barristers adopting a “no returns” policy—refusing to take on work where the original barrister is unavailable. A no returns policy has been in place since April 11.

Barristers are demanding urgent measures to repair a dysfunctional system. There is currently a backlog of 60,000 cases in the crown courts alone and funding cuts are so deep they have effectively stripped clients of their right to legal representation.

Between 2010 and 2015, the Conservative government slashed £2 billion from legal aid for criminal and civil cases, prompting the first strike in history by criminal defence solicitors in England and Wales on July 1, 2014. Thousands of probation staff, members of the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO), held a one-day strike in March that year against the privatisation of services.

Barristers protested again in 2018, refusing to accept legal aid cases under the fee schemes, disrupting courts in England and Wales. A further strike was only averted when members of the Criminal Bar Association voted by a wafer-thin margin of 51.55 percent to 48.45 percent to accept a £15 million offer from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to raise payment rates for reading evidence and documents in trials. An independent review into the legal aid system was promised whose ineffectual findings were delayed.

When the pandemic hit, courts were forced to close in March 2020. But barristers speaking to the World Socialist Web Site stressed the breakdown of the criminal justice system was already well advanced, with a 40,000 backlog of cases.

Justice Minister Dominic Raab has sought to demonise barristers, declaring with utmost cynicism, “Their actions will only delay justice for victims”.

According to the “Secret Barrister”, whose anonymous first-hand accounts of life as a criminal barrister became bestsellers on UK book charts, claims of a 15 percent increase are “a scam. It is actually closer to 6 per cent, and he [Raab] is refusing to apply it to ongoing cases, insisting that it will only attach to cases that begin in October 2022.”

While barristers are exploited and burdened with impossible workloads, resulting in a 41 percent resignation rate among first year criminal barristers, the Secret Barrister explained the dispute “is about so, so much more… Every part of the system has been slashed to the bone.” A quarter of Crown Prosecution Service employees, twenty percent of court staff and 43 percent of courts nationwide have been closed or sold off.

The result is that “Legal aid has been removed from swathes of the population… The conditions in which the courts operate are, put simply, hideous.”

The cuts to legal aid are part of a raft of anti-democratic legislation being enacted by the Tory government. Last week Raab presented his misnamed Bill of Rights that is set to replace and eviscerate key provisions of the Human Rights Act following Brexit. Home Secretary Priti Patel has authored a raft of ever more draconian legislation, including the Nationality and Borders Act and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. Her latest assault on democratic rights is the National Security Bill. Further anti-strike legislation is being prepared.

The barristers’ strikes take place just days after national rail and London tube strikes by 50,000 workers. They are part of broadening resistance throughout the working class to the government’s onslaught on jobs, conditions, living standards. As with rail workers, barristers face threats to their livelihoods for resisting cuts to pay and conditions.

According to the Financial Times, “Ian Burnett, lord chief justice for England and Wales, has said in an internal note to judges that if barristers do not attend scheduled court hearings after accepting instructions from a client, ‘this may amount to professional misconduct’. More than 70 Queen’s Counsel wrote a letter to the Times describing Burnett’s note to judges ‘as an attempt to intimidate us’”.

A WSWS reporter spoke to striking barristers outside Manchester Crown Court in the city’s Crown Square.

Rebecca Filletti, a barrister for 13 years at Garden Court North Chambers in Manchester, said, “Basically the criminal justice system has been decimated to the point that in the last five years 40 percent of criminal juniors have left, so there aren’t the juniors coming through the ranks. It means we are short of barristers, short of QC’s and of the future judiciary. It means that people who are either defendants who are accused of offences, or complainants who want justice to be done and want their cases to be heard, it simply isn’t happening.

Claire Ashcroft (left) and Rebecca Filletti (right) [Photo: WSWS]

“A lot has been said about how COVID has led to delays. Actually, the reason there is such a backlog in the courts; the complainants in a rape case now have to wait 1,500 days for their case to be brought to trial; those delays aren’t because of barristers. Those delays are because so many court buildings have been sold off, and judges’ sitting days were decreased, so there isn’t the capacity. So, the backlogs were huge even before COVID.

“I’m dealing with an allegation of sexual assault case, and we were all ready for a second trial listing last November. The barristers were all prepared, the complainant was there, the defendant was there, other witnesses there, and they just could not find a court room. They rang all court rooms in the North West and nothing was available. That trial has now been put off until November, put off a year. And who knows if it will find a court room then. With this unending backlog we’ve got a defendant on bail because of the government just rinsing money out of the justice system and not putting any money into it.

“This government has repeatedly called us ‘lefty lawyers’ and criticises lawyers in general and doesn’t see their worth and doesn’t see that without a functioning justice system you have no society. So, when they criticise us and don’t put any money into the system and have the audacity to blame us for delays which are entirely of their doing, which they’ve managed to hide from under COVID, and now they come back and say that we are the ones who are responsible for further delays, its scaremongering and failing to appreciate what they’ve done to the system.”

Our reporter recalled Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s denunciation of “lefty lawyers” in relation to their challenge to the government’s barbaric policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, in defiance of international law.

Rebecca said, “Exactly, as opposed to appreciating that it’s about upholding the rule of law. We have a justice system that for years has been one that other countries aspire to, and that is because we have well trained lawyers who are independent from the state and will look after individual rights. And we need to protect that because the other option is a politicised justice system isn’t it, and you end up with a police state where they can do whatever the hell they want. You can see this already with immigration.”

Claire Ashcroft, a barrister for 21 years, said, “As we are all self-employed, we are not calling it a strike but days of action. But in everything but name it is a strike.” She explained, “Since 2006, incomes have declined by closer to 28 percent. The main reason is because it’s not inflation linked. In essence, back before either of us started practice we had implemented a graduated fee scheme, so rather than being paid an hourly rate, we are paid on the nature and seriousness of the case, how many days it’s going to be in court. Some of the volume of the case might be reflected in the payment as well. If you have got 100 hundred pages or 2,000 pages, you may, but it’s not guaranteed—be paid slightly more because you have a bigger case in terms of volume.

“Those figures are based on, I think, 1999 practice, and it was revised again in 2006. Since then, there has not been any improvement. There has been a rejigging, so in some cases the payment has gone up and for others it’s gone down, so overall it’s stayed the same. In real terms it’s declined.”

Rosalind, a junior barrister began work 18 months ago. She said, “The reason this is happening is because legal aid [fees] on criminal cases are too low. So junior barristers are on about £12,200 a year for the first three years of practise, that’s the median income. That’s what the action’s about. There aren’t enough criminal barristers to do trials. Last year over 560 trials fell through because there aren’t enough barristers to do it. I’m a junior barrister and in the first three years of practise, we can expect to get about £12,200 a year and that’s not sustainable. I’m working 50 or 60 hours a week and that’s far less than minimum wage. So, people are leaving. I think 40 percent of junior barristers have left in the last five years because we can’t stay.”

Rosalind (left) and Mira Hammad [Photo: WSWS]

Mira Hammad is a criminal inquest and inquiry barrister at Garden Court North Chambers. She is currently instructed as part of a team representing bereaved families at the Manchester Arena Inquiry, is part of a team representing clients bereaved as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and is seconded part-time to the Hickman Rose Grenfell Inquiry Team, which represents the bereaved, survivors and residents.

Mira said that due to underfunding, “The bar is going to go backwards. What you find now is that a lot of young barristers like me are coming into a profession. But because of the way legal aid is going, only privileged people are going to be able to work in a professional career like this. That’s going to mean the minimal representation of people like me in the bar is going to go backwards.”

Australian universities further integrated into military build-up

Eric Ludlow

There is an accelerating drive to incorporate Australian universities into the military apparatus.

The push for institutions to sign lucrative deals with defence contractors is part of the Australian ruling elite’s role in the US-led confrontation with China, which Washington is rapidly intensifying, even as it wages a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. 

Rheinmetall’s Mission Master autonomous unmanned vehicle [Credit: Rheinmetall AG]

This drive is being deepened under Australia’s Labor government. During its first five weeks in office, Labor has already threatened Pacific Islands nations against turning to China and sought to line up countries throughout the region behind the US war preparations.

A central component is AUKUS, a military pact with the US and Britain unveiled with bipartisan support last September. It involves a substantial expansion of offensive military capabilities, including Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-armed submarines and hypersonic missiles.

The universities are playing a key role in developing these weapons of war.

Founded in 2014 by the Australian Defence Department’s Defence Science and Technology Group (DST Group), the Defence Science Partnership (DSP) has now been signed by all 37 public universities. The DSP was set up to “provide a uniform model for universities to engage with Defence on research projects.”

Universities are signing agreements with the world’s largest arms manufacturers at a rapid rate.

In January, the Australian government announced a Defence Trailblazer Concept to Sovereign Capability program—a $242 million package aimed at the “commercialisation” of universities through their partnership with military companies.

The program’s focus is researching quantum technologies, hypersonics, cyber warfare, robotics, artificial intelligence and space warfare.

Among the first two universities to join the program in April was the University of Adelaide (UoA). Solidifying South Australia as a hub for Australian military research, the UoA in conjunction with the University of New South Wales (UNSW) will match the government’s $50 million contribution for its military research and development alliance with companies.

The program is chaired by the US-based Northrop Grumman, the world’s fourth largest military weapon company. Northrop Grumman Asia Pacific manager Christine Zeitz said: “The Defence Trailblazer will transform the nature of the relationship between the academic sector, defence industry and the Department of Defence, compelling universities to pivot outwards towards entrepreneurial and commercial outcomes-driven collaboration.”

UNSW Vice Chancellor Attila Brungs boasted: “We have a proud track record at UNSW of quantum, cyber, hypersonics, robotics and space technology research which are supporting Australia’s national capability.”

The UK’s BAE Systems, the seventh largest global arms manufacturer, joined the “trailblazer” in April, pledging its Red Ochre Labs R&D centre, which employs 500 people across Australia, to develop air, land, sea, space and cyber technologies.

The Defence Innovation Partnership—a collaboration between the DST Group and South Australia’s three public universities—granted $150,000 funding each for five research projects linked to military contractors. Among the projects is a one led by Flinders University and electronic warfare company DEWC Systems to address design challenges in war games.

On January 25, the then Defence Minister Peter Dutton opened a new $14 million purpose-built hypersonic research facility in Brisbane, Queensland. With 60 staff, the centre is yet another joint venture between government, universities and defence companies.

Hypersonic weapons travel up to five times faster than the speed of sound, allowing them to bypass existing missile defence systems, as well as hunt down long-range missiles.

Research on hypersonic flight has been conducted for over a decade, through the Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation program (HIFiRE), established in 2007. It involves the DST Group, the University of Queensland, the US Air Force Research Laboratory and defence contractors BAE Systems and Boeing.

Following from HIFiRE, in 2020 Australia and the US began to test hypersonic cruise missile prototypes under the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE).

The University of Southern Queensland (USQ) was in March granted membership to the federal government’s Defence Industry Security Program (DISP). The university has already been involved in defence research into hypersonic propulsion systems, rocket fuel development, machine vision and advanced materials.

USQ works with DST Group as well as the US Airforce and Navy, Boeing and BAE Systems. In an Australian article, USQ Deputy Vice-Chancellor John Bell wrote that all three of the university’s campuses “are in close proximity to South East Queensland’s strong defence presence … enabling USQ to work directly with defence end-users and boost Australia’s sovereign space and defence capability.”

German defence company Rheinmetall announced late last year that, in partnership with Queensland University of Technology and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, it had developed a new Autonomous Combat Warrior “Wiesel” craft.

According to the German magazine Europäische Sicherheit & Technik, the vehicle is designed to understand soldier behaviour, recognise terrain and make tactical decisions in combat situations.

At the beginning of 2022, Victoria’s Deakin University signed a $5.13 million contract with the federal government to provide naval firefighting training. “Deakin University has executed more than 165 contracts with the Australian Defence Department, highlighting the important role our region’s institutions can play in driving innovation and generating cutting-edge capability in support of the ADF,” Victorian Liberal senator Sarah Henderson said.  

In mid-2021, Deakin University was awarded the Australian War College contract, taking over in January 2023 from the Australian National University (ANU) as the provider of the Australian Command and Staff Course and Defence Strategic Studies Course.

Led by the University of Sydney, nine Sydney universities were last year awarded $2 million to work as part of the Australian-United States Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (AUSMURI).

University of Sydney Deputy Vice-Chancellor Duncan Ivison said the program was one which “the US and the Australian defence departments support and monitor at the highest levels because they are so targeted to our defence priorities.”

AUSMURI has already held talks with defence companies GE, AmericaMakes and world number one arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, as well as the DST Group and the US Department of Defense.

Students and young people have to oppose the transformation of the universities into hubs of war preparation, which goes hand in hand with their commercialisation and an assault on learning.

Bolsonaro and Workers Party seek support of US imperialism as Brazil’s presidential elections near

Miguel Andrade

With Brazil’s October general elections approaching, the two main presidential contenders, fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro and former Workers Party (PT) president Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, are competing to convince national and international capital that each is the most reliable defender of profit interests against the impoverished Brazilian working class.

Jair Bolsonaro, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva [AP Photo/Andre Penner [Lula]; Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil [Bolsonaro]]

The PT’s and Lula’s opposition to Bolsonaro are founded not on any desire, much less ability, to solve any of the pressing issues facing workers—a raging pandemic, spiraling inflation and mass unemployment and poverty. They have always opposed Bolsonaro as a liability for Brazilian capitalism. His overt contempt for workers’ lives and living standards and his open preparations to take power by force in case of an electoral defeat expose all the brutality of the country’s profit system. This in turn threatens to provoke a mass reaction from below, as in neighboring Chile, Colombia and now Ecuador, calling into question capitalism itself.

Much attention has been given by the Brazilian corporate press and Congressional parties in the last weeks to a June 11 Bloomberg report of a leak from the White House, saying that Bolsonaro told Biden he would defend “US interests” in Brazil, in opposition to Lula, who would defend “Brazilian interests,” which presumably, means neutrality in face of the US war preparations against China, as well as the current NATO proxy war against Russia.

Lula’s campaign coordinator, Senator Randolfe Rodrigues, reacted to the news with a nationalist, right-wing rant. He once again appealed to Bolsonaro’s own military base, declaring the president should be charged with high treason for seeking electoral interference by a foreign power. The ominous implications of US interference for workers’ democratic and social rights, including the history of US-backed coups in Latin America and its countless victims, was completely ignored.

In what has become a ritual in the Brazilian media reporting and official opposition statements, the Bloomberg report has been treated as further evidence that Brazilian democracy is thriving, with the exception of Bolsonaro himself. Without citing any evidence, Globo pundit Valdo Cruz argued that the White House leaked the report to mark its distance from Bolsonaro and his preparations for an electoral coup and, in turn, that such “distancing” would guarantee a peaceful transition of power after October’s election. In the words of Lula’s former chief-of-staff José Dirceu, “there will be no coup because of the lack of international support for an event of this kind.”

Dirceu’s statement embodies the PT’s entire attitude towards Bolsonaro’s plans for dictatorship: they must be opposed not in the name of social and democratic rights of Brazilian workers, but because they are “bad for business.” What the PT offers, in turn, is loyalty from unions and the so-called “social movements” in achieving “internal stability.”

Virtually ignored by the media was a Reuters report from May 25 that the PT sent its last defense minister, Jaques Wagner, for an undisclosed meeting with US State Department officials to discuss prospects for a third Lula government. Officially, Wagner went to the United States to speak in Lula’s name at the so-called “Brazil Conference” organized yearly by Brazilian students at Harvard and MIT. Wagner, who is a senator but holds no official foreign relations capacity in the Brazilian Congress, has also met with French, and US ambassadors for similar discussions.

The PT’s promotion of the US and other imperialist powers as the guarantors of democracy in Brazil is a criminally dangerous policy. Given the US-backed 1964-1985 military dictatorship, this claim is absurd on its face. The PT, which was founded in the wake of the mass struggles against this regime, long ago transformed itself into the foremost instrument not to reform, let alone abolish Brazilian capitalism, but to defend it against the Brazilian working class. The PT is single-minded in hiding the real dangers facing Brazilian workers because it fears a working class rebellion far more than it fears Bolsonaro and his fascist supporters.

Claims of US “support” for democracy in Brazil, drawn from a handful of White House press conferences and State Department leaks, are even more preposterous in face of the intractable crisis facing world capitalism, expressed most intensely in the United States itself. This crisis was the source of Donald Trump’s January 6 putsch, which enjoyed significant support within the political establishment and military apparatus. It is also the driving force behind the US imperialist offensive against Russia and China, threatening World War Three, in which Latin America features as a key battleground. This global crisis is driving US imperialism to renew its aggression against multiple Latin American countries, including its crippling sanctions against Venezuela, the 2019 coup in Bolivia and the tight grip it maintains over Colombia.

The rationale behind Bolsonaro’s advanced preparations for dictatorship was laid out late last month in a repulsive and threatening document presented by a group of ultra-right military think-tanks, with the backing of Brazil’s vice-president, Gen. Hamilton Mourão, and top intelligence officials. Titled “Nation Project, Brazil in 2035,” the document proclaims the need to “neutralize the political and social power” of “radical … ideologies that divide the nation” in order to provide the country the cohesion needed to assert itself in the geopolitical arena dominated by the conflict between US and China.

The document unapologetically embraces a fascist worldview in which “globalism” is the greatest threat to Brazil. In language reminiscent of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” it asserts that Brazilian capitalist institutions are plagued by a “globalist” outlook and must be purged. Written in the form of a results and perspectives document from a hypothetical Brazil in 2035, it portrays as a major achievement the establishment of a an unelected “center of government” (presumably headed by the military) that oversees the president.

An attack on the justice system, and the Electoral Court (TSE) in particular, consciously laid out in the military manifesto, are the central tenet of Bolsonaro’s preparations for a coup. The president has repeatedly fabricated claims that the Electoral Court is actively preparing electoral fraud to benefit the PT.

Bolsonaro’s cabinet is escalating attacks against the TSE, with Defense Minister, Gen. Paulo Sérgio Oliveira, publicly denouncing it for “disrespecting” the military and “ignoring” the observations made at the request of the TSE itself over the safety of Brazil’s electronic balloting system. Last week, Oliveira declared the military would not discuss its “concerns” outside of exclusive meetings with the Court, which bar other bodies constitutionally allowed to oversee the elections, such as the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB). Three days later, Justice Minister Anderson Torres made the same demand on behalf of the Federal Police, setting the stage for a public refusal by both the Army and the Federal Police to recognize ballot results proclaimed by the TSE.

In face of the unprecedented offensive by the Executive against the TSE and the revelations that government officials have laid out a plan to destroy any opposition after the October elections, the PT’s reaction is centered on the spineless appeal for Lula to be elected on the first round, in order to “discourage” Bolsonaro supporters from acting on the president’s announced challenge to the results.

As for the PT electoral program’s promises of “reforms,” the party has made clear to big business that they are not worth the paper on which they are printed. For every time Lula promises to “lift” a crippling federal spending cap imposed by a Constitutional amendment in 2017, he repeats that businessmen know he has always been “fiscally responsible,” recalling the austerity measures imposed from the start of his government, such as the pension reform that led to an internal purge in the PT.

For every time he claims to oppose privatizations, he repeats that he has “never broken a single contract,” that is, that no private profit will be touched in large mixed capital companies such as Petrobras.

In fact, the issues listed by the fascist military manifesto are the same as those advanced by the PT as fundamental in its opposition to Bolsonaro, chiefly Brazil’s perceived diplomatic isolation and geopolitical weakness, and his inability to maintain “internal security.” The PT is fully aware that increasing Brazil’s share of world markets and geopolitical assertiveness require brutal austerity and exploitation of the working class, which cannot be achieved without the suppression of social opposition.

As opposed to Bolsonaro, it promises national and international capital to achieve these aims through the industrial police of the unions. But the party is also aware that the rotten unions and “social movements” it promotes as social pacifiers will not hold back workers for long, and hence its absolute refusal to point out, let alone condemn, any of Bolsonaro’s military co-conspirators.

This is a continuation, and at the same time a deepening, of the policy it pursued in over a decade in power by upholding the amnesty for the torturers and murderers of the 1964-1985 dictatorship, allowing for Bolsonaro himself to thrive as a backbencher in its ruling coalition. As for its goal of pursuing “geopolitical independence” from the US—shared with the military—it only reinforces the need to achieve “competitiveness” through a more intense exploitation of workers. That includes guaranteeing the capitalist profits of US companies in face of workers’ strikes and struggles, with the PT’s Jaques Wagner seeking to reassure the US State Department not to take Lula’s rhetoric as anything else than a “smokescreen,” as confessed by PT’s president herself.

Turkish government escalates attack on democratic rights amid explosive social conditions

Ulaş Ateşçi

On Sunday, the annual Pride March in Beyoğlu, Istanbul, attended by thousands of people, was violently attacked by police. In Istanbul, 371 people were detained, including AFP photojournalist Bülent Kılıç, along with dozens more in other cities, including Izmir and Ankara. According to news reports and statements by lawyers, those detained were released in the following hours.

The Istanbul Governor’s Office closed some roads to traffic on Sunday morning in Beyoğlu, where Taksim Square is located, and deployed a large number of police forces in the area ahead of the peaceful march, citing “calls for unauthorized meetings, demonstrations and similar activities on social media.” During the day, the police relentlessly attacked those who wanted to gather, while marches and protests took place on various streets despite the crackdown.

People display rainbow flags as Turkish police officers cordon an area off during the LGBTQ Pride March in Istanbul, Turkey, Sunday, June 26, 2022 [AP Photo/Emrah Gurel]

Last week, the district governorships of Beyoğlu and Kadıköy announced a one-week ban on “LGBTI+ Pride Week” events. In the Kadıköy District Governorship’s statement, the arbitrary ban was based on Article 17 of Law No. 2911 on Meetings and Demonstrations, hypocritically citing “the protection of peace, security and well-being and the prevention of crime.”

In fact, this law effectively abolishes the Constitutional article stating that “Everyone has the right to organize unarmed and nonviolent meetings and demonstrations without prior permission.” This arbitrary police attack, ordered by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government, is one of the largest detention operations in recent years and an obvious onslaught on basic democratic rights.

The main target of the Erdoğan government’s increased police state repression and authoritarianism is the working class, which is beginning to mobilize together with its international class brothers and sisters against skyrocketing costs of living and growing attacks on social conditions.

Inflation—triggered by the massive printing of money by central banks around the world, further enriching the super-rich and exacerbated by the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine—has pushed the cost of living in Turkey to unprecedented levels. According to a survey conducted in March, 90 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Under these explosive social conditions, the strike and protest movement of various sections of the working class, especially health workers, is developing.

Faced with ever-increasing inflation and poverty and growing social opposition, the government is targeting basic democratic rights, promoting religious reaction, chauvinism and militarism to suppress the working class.

The anti-democratic state crackdown on Kurdish politicians and the media escalated after Erdogan announced in late May a new military operation against the US-backed Kurdish nationalist People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria.

Members of the Kurdish nationalist People’s Democratic Party (HDP), a legal pro-NATO and pro-European Union party with more than 5 million votes, which the government accuses of being an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and YPG, are detained or arrested on charges of being “members of a terrorist group” without any evidence. Another 38 politicians were detained in Adana yesterday, including HDP Provincial Co-chairs Helin Kaya and Mehmet Karakış and Seyhan Municipality Deputy Mayor Funda Buyruk.

Also this month, 20 journalists from the Kurdish press were detained on similar allegations and 16 of them were arrested. In this attack on press freedom, journalists were sent to jail for news they reported.

The attack on press freedom is accompanied by the government’s planned amendment to the press law, which has been postponed in the face of widespread public opposition. The amendment envisages a prison sentence of one to three years for “anyone who publicly disseminates untrue information about the country’s internal and external security, public order and public health with the intention of creating anxiety, fear or panic among the public in a manner likely to disrupt public peace.”

In Turkey, for example, where the official annual inflation rate announced by the government is over 70 percent, according to this amendment it will be a criminal offense to disseminate information based on a study by ENAG, an independent research agency, that the real annual inflation rate is 160 percent. Under the pretext of “internal and external security” and “disturbing public peace,” exposing the reactionary character of the government’s war policies or state repression against workers’ struggles could be criminalized.

Moreover, the amendment also places under threat scientists and health care workers who directly provide information on the COVID-19 pandemic in the press or on social media, under conditions where the government has stopped releasing all official data on the COVID-19 pandemic since June 12. Scientists and public health advocates who warn the population against the government’s false claim that “the pandemic is over,” or those who calculate the excess death toll and expose the government’s concealment of the true death toll from the pandemic, could become targets.

These reactionary attacks on democratic rights are by no means confined to Turkey. All over the world the escalation of the war by the US-led NATO powers against Russia in Ukraine is accompanied by the elimination of basic democratic rights and the promotion of the far-right forces at home.

In the US, five unelected members of the Supreme Court have decided to strip hundreds of millions of Americans of the right to abortion. In France, an unelected administrative court has banned Muslim women from wearing religious bathing suits. This attack on the rights of the immigrant population is accompanied by the elimination of the right to asylum. Britain attempts to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. In Spain at least 37 asylum seekers were massacred by security forces trying to cross the Spanish-Moroccan border.

NATO announces plan for massive European land army

Andre Damon

In what NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the “biggest overhaul of our collective deterrence and defense since the Cold War,” the US-led NATO alliance has announced plans to build a massive standing land army in Europe, numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

Stoltenberg said NATO would increase its “high readiness forces” sevenfold, from 40,000 to 300,000, deploying tens of thousands of additional troops, as well as countless tanks and aircraft, directly to Russia’s border.

The move will entail a massive diversion of social resources to NATO’s ongoing war with Russia and planned war with China, draining treasuries throughout Europe and North America and fueling demands for the elimination of social services, the slashing of wages, and the gutting of workers’ pensions.

Stoltenberg said the creation of this massive fighting force was a response to the “new era of strategic competition” with Russia and China.

He called the plan “a fundamental shift in NATO’s deterrence and defense,” embracing not only the war with Russia, but “the challenges that Beijing poses to our security, interests and values.”

As a part of this massive expansion of its fighting force, NATO will increase the numbers of troops stationed in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to the “brigade” level, meaning approximately 3,000 to 5,000 troops.

The Financial Times reported, based on an interview with Stoltenberg, that the plan will “include new structures in which Western NATO allies, such as the US, UK and France, would pledge their ships, warplanes and a total of more than 300,000 troops to be ready to deploy to specific territories on the alliance’s eastern flank, with graded response times starting from the opening hours of any attack.”

Instead of troops deployed to the Baltics serving as a “tripwire,” the new plan would envision NATO fighting a war against Russia directly on the borders of these countries on NATO’s eastern battlefront.

Stoltenberg boasted that “2022 will be the eighth consecutive year of increases across European Allies and Canada,” adding that NATO’s target of two percent of economic output going to military spending will be “considered a floor, not a ceiling.”

That same day, US officials previewed yet another massive weapons shipment to Ukraine, including the NASAMS medium-to-long-range surface-to-air missile defense system created by Raytheon.

In addition to “advanced medium- and long-range air defense capabilities for the Ukrainians,” the US would also provide “ammunition for artillery and counter battery radar systems,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said.

Members of the NATO alliance, meanwhile, are openly using the language of war. In his first public speech as the chief of the general staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders will, according to the Telegraph, declare that the UK army must be ready to “fight and win” against Russia.

Simultaneously, the US and its allies are intensifying the economic embargo against Russia. Over the weekend, participants in the G7 summit announced plans to ban imports of gold from Russia and are finalizing plans to try to put price caps on oil and gas sold by Russia.

On Monday, Russia officially defaulted on its foreign debt payments, after European payments clearinghouses refused to process payments from the country. Russian officials insist that they have the funds available to make the payments, but that it has been effectively cut out from the European financial system and hence forced to carry out an artificial default.

Regardless, this would be the first time Russia has defaulted on its debts since 1918, when the Bolshevik government, in the wake of the 1917 revolution, repudiated the foreign debts of the Tsarist regime.

NATO’s  massive military escalation comes as the official position of the United States and NATO—that they are not at war with Russia—becomes increasingly untenable.

This weekend, the New York Times reported that US forces are secretly operating on the ground in Ukraine, as well as forces from several other NATO countries, despite the denials of Biden and other NATO leaders.

“But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country… directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces,” the Times wrote.

The newspaper reported that dozens of special forces from the UK, Canada, France and Lithuania have been operating inside the country.

The revelation, the report continued, “hints at the scale of the secretive effort to assist Ukraine that is underway and the risks that Washington and its allies are taking.”

The Times report is only the latest piece of evidence documenting the extent of US involvement in the war. Earlier this year, NBC and other media outlets reported that the United States was directly involved in Ukrainian targeted killings of Russian generals, as well as the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

Ukrainian commanders, according to these reports, are provided intelligence extracted from satellites “which they can call up on tablet computers provided by the allies. The tablets run a battlefield mapping app that the Ukrainians use to target and attack Russian troops.”

Despite the massive degree of US involvement in the war, Ukrainian losses are surging, rivaling the number of US combat deaths at the deadliest point of the Vietnam war. On some days, Ukrainian forces have suffered between 500 and 1,000 casualties.

Russia now controls more than 90 percent of the Donbass in East Ukraine and a total of one fifth of the entire territory of Ukraine. But despite the disastrous series of battlefield setbacks, the United States and its NATO allies are massively intensifying their involvement in the war, no matter the cost in Ukrainian lives or the trillions of dollars diverted from vital social programs.

Russian officials are drawing the conclusion that open war between NATO and Russia is all but inevitable. In remarks last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said: “Hitler rallied a significant part, if not most, of the European nations under his banner for a war against the Soviet Union… now, the EU together with NATO are forming another—modern—coalition for a standoff and, ultimately, war with the Russian Federation.”

At least 46 undocumented immigrants found dead in truck trailer in sweltering Texas heat

Eric London

Hardly a day goes by in contemporary America without a mass casualty event produced by capitalist reaction. On Monday evening, a semi-truck trailer filled with bodies—some dead, some still clinging to life—was discovered a stone’s throw from a busy interstate highway in San Antonio, Texas.

Police block the scene where a semitrailer with multiple dead bodies were discovered, Monday, June 27, 2022, in San Antonio. [AP Photo/Eric Gay]

The truck was carrying undocumented immigrants fleeing desperate economic conditions in Central America and the legacy of over a century of US imperialist exploitation. The immigrants were forced to enter surreptitiously due to the anti-immigrant restrictions imposed by the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden.

So far, the official death toll is 46, but this is expected to rise, as local officials say 16 others were hospitalized at varying stages of illness. This is the deadliest such event in US history. It doubles the death toll of the second highest mass immigrant asphyxiation, when 19 people suffocated in a truck trailer in Victoria, Texas, in 2003.

Earlier Monday, temperatures in San Antonio hit 103 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius). It is difficult to imagine how those who perished in the trailer spent their last moments struggling to escape. One individual who lives near the spot where the trailer was found told the New York Times, “Now I’m hearing there are kids.” Families often make the journey together.

After discovering the trailer, police and Border Patrol reportedly deployed military-grade heat-seeking equipment to search for and detain any immigrants who managed to escape.

This social crime is the responsibility of the Biden administration, which was elected on the basis of mass opposition to the fascist Donald Trump, but whose administration has carried out a ruthless attack on immigrants, arresting more in 2021 than Trump detained in any one year in office. Biden is on pace to arrest some 2 million immigrants this year, a new record. Two days ago, Biden ended all previous restrictions on ICE arrests, ordering agents to arrest immigrants regardless of arrest record or how many years they have been in the United States.

The trailer was discovered in Texas hardly 24 hours after Spanish and Moroccan border police carried out a brutal melee attack on a crowd of African immigrants attempting to cross into the Spanish outpost of Melilla on Africa’s northern coast. At least 36 immigrants died, some after being beaten by police, some hanging from the barbed wire border fence, some in the stampede that followed the police assault.  

Both crimes expose the lie that the US and its NATO allies are waging war against Russia in Ukraine for humanitarian reasons. If these crimes had taken place in Russia, the imperialist governments would have used them as pretenses to justify further escalation of a war which threatens the world with nuclear catastrophe.

It is already clear that the political establishment in the US will respond to the mass death in San Antonio by using the event to justify a further crackdown on immigration. An hour before the bodies were discovered in his district, Texas Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales tweeted that immigration is “incentivizing lawlessness and creating absolute chaos at our southern border.”

After the event, Gonzales blamed Democrats for being insufficiently iron fisted. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a fascist supporter of Trump, blamed Biden for the deaths, tweeting: “They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”

The corporate media will alternate between demands for a military-style crackdown on the border and denunciations of whichever criminal was driving and abandoned the trailer in the heat.

But the existence of smugglers is a criminal byproduct of the bipartisan border policies of the US government which are fundamentally to blame.

Deaths like these did not occur prior to the militarization of the US-Mexico border initiated by Democratic President Bill Clinton. In the 1990s, Clinton, with the support of Democrats and Republicans, enacted programs like “Operation Gatekeeper” and “Operation Hold-the-Line,” the aim of which was to militarize urban crossing zones and force migrants to cross in the uninhabitable deserts.

In 2006, under the George W. Bush administration, Congress passed the Secure Fences Act, which facilitated the construction of hundreds of miles of border barriers and further militarized the border. Those voting “yes” for this law included then-Senators Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain and Charles Schumer.

In 2010, Obama signed legislation that deployed a fleet of drones to the border and 1,500 National Guard soldiers to block or arrest immigrants. In 2018, the Democratic Party caved when Trump illegally redirected congressionally-apportioned money to fund his deployment of the National Guard to the border. The Biden administration kept pandemic-related restrictions on all asylum applicants and kept Trump’s Remain In Mexico policy in place, which barred all refugees from entering the US through Mexico.

The trailer was discovered in southwest San Antonio, barely a mile from where nine immigrants were found dead of dehydration and asphyxiation in the back of a semi-truck trailer almost exactly five years ago, on July 17, 2017.

NATO summit to embrace US-led confrontation with China

Peter Symonds

Amid the US-led proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, a major focus of the NATO summit beginning today in Madrid will be the extension of the Atlantic military alliance to the Asia-Pacific, directed against China. NATO’s agenda derives directly from Washington’s rapidly intensifying and aggressive confrontation with Beijing, which the US regards as the chief threat to its global dominance.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a media conference, after a meeting of NATO defense ministers in video format, at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, Pool)

During a press conference yesterday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declared that the summit would directly address China for the first time, and “the challenges that Beijing poses to our security, interests, and values.” He said NATO members would “consider our response to Russia and China’s increasing influence in our southern neighbourhood”—that is, the Indo-Pacific region, on the other side of the globe, thousands of kilometres from the nearest NATO member.

While Stoltenberg’s language was guarded, what is proposed is an extraordinary expansion of NATO’s scope across the entire world, making clear that the escalating US-NATO proxy war against Russia is not a limited, episodic conflict in Europe, but global in character. The massive expansion of NATO military forces slated to be discussed at the summit is not just directed against Russia, but China as well.

In preparation for the summit, Stoltenberg flew to the US in early June to hold talks with both US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Not surprisingly, he is parroting Washington’s propaganda.

Even as basic democratic rights are being eviscerated in the US and Europe, Stoltenberg, in a media forum hosted by Politico last week, painted the conflict with Russia and China as a rising competition “between democracy and authoritarianism,” adding “Moscow and Beijing are openly contesting the rules-based international order.” In reality, the US is seeking to preserve the post-World War II order, in which it set the rules, through military means.

Like Washington, the NATO chief told the forum that he was concerned “at the rise of China, the fact that they’re investing heavily in new modern military equipment, including scaling significantly their nuclear capabilities, investing in key technologies, and trying also to control critical infrastructure in Europe coming closer to us.”

The NATO summit will revise its Strategic Concept, which has been in place since 2010 and makes no mention of China. The new document, in line with the Pentagon’s strategic orientation, will be focused, not only on the “war on terrorism,” but as NATO deputy secretary general Mircea Geoană, told a conference in Copenhagen on June 10, on great power competition—particularly on Russia and China.

Significantly, the leaders of four Asia-Pacific countries—Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea—will attend the NATO summit for the first time. Australia, Japan and South Korea are all formal US military allies, while Australia and Japan are part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad, along with the US and India, that is targeting China.

Recently-installed Australian Labor Party prime minister, Anthony Albanese, on landing in Madrid immediately reiterated his government’s support for the NATO proxy war, and expressed concern about China “becoming increasingly aggressive” and its “closeness” to Russia. He said Australia would welcome increased military cooperation with other members of the “Asia-Pacific Four”—that is, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. A meeting has been mooted of the leaders of those four countries on the sidelines of the summit.

Since being sworn in last month, the Australian Labor government has been engaged in frenetic diplomatic activity in the Asia-Pacific—including taking part in a Quad leaders meeting in Tokyo while barely in office, and despatching Foreign Minister Penny Wong to Pacific Island states in a bid to counter Chinese influence in the region. The new government has fully endorsed the AUKUS pact with the US and Britain, aimed against China, that will arm Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines.

On Sunday, speaking at the G7 leaders meeting, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made a thinly-veiled swipe at China. He declared that a united front was necessary to prevent other countries drawing the “wrong lessons” from Russia’s war in Ukraine. Japan has joined the US and other allies in accusing China of preparing to invade Taiwan as the pretext for strengthening ties with the island which all nominally accept, under the One China policy, is part of China.

Beijing is deeply concerned at aggressive US-led efforts to build military alliances, strategic partnerships and basing arrangements throughout the Indo-Pacific in conjunction with NATO. Speaking at the BRICS summit of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a rejection of “Cold War mentality” and warned against the type of crippling unilateral sanctions imposed by the US and allies on Russia.

Last Thursday, Chinese foreign affairs ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin explicitly accused NATO of engaging in a “highly dangerous” effort to create hostile blocs in Asia. “NATO has already disrupted stability in Europe. It should not try to do the same to the Asia-Pacific and the whole world,” he said.

The shift by NATO toward a confrontation with China as well as Russia is bound up with the sharp escalation in geo-political tensions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and growing economic and financial instability. Previously the European powers sought to balance their economic ties with China with their military alliance with the US. Now they have joined in the US-led war against Russia in Ukraine, while also preparing to play a far greater military role in the Indo-Pacific.

In 2019, China was referenced for the first time in a NATO summit in a sentence declaring that Beijing presented “both opportunities and challenges.” In 2021, however, a joint NATO communique adopted a sharply different approach, accusing China of “systemic challenges to the rules-based international order.”

Last year Britain joined the AUKUS alliance and has begun the deployment of warships to the South China Sea off the Chinese mainland. France and Germany also have despatched warships through these sensitive strategic waters.

The NATO summit marks a sharp turning point in the accelerating proxy war with Russia, and the involvement of the US military allies in Europe in Washington’s aggressive confrontation with China—posing the very real danger of a global war between nuclear-armed powers.

Sri Lankan corporations reap large profits as workers and rural toilers face poverty and starvation

N. Ranges

Food, beverage and tobacco, capital goods, diversified financials, transportation and consumers services companies in Sri Lanka are enjoying increased profits while millions of workers, poor and children are in a desperate struggle to survive the worsening economic crisis. Many companies have recorded their highest-ever annual profits.

Luxury villas for rent in Weligama, Sri Lanka (Image: Tripadvisor)

According to the recent figures, the listed companies in the above sectors have secured large increases in their combined earnings in the first quarter of 2022 on a year-to-year basis. This includes 303 percent growth in the food, beverage and tobacco sector’s earnings, 210.2 percent in capital goods, 138.8 percent in diversified financials, 682.1 percent in transportation and 173.6 percent increases consumer services, compared to the same quarter of 2021.

The most diversified blue chip, Hayleys PLC, recorded an all-time high profit of 28.1 billion rupees ($US78 million) in the last financial year. It was the highest profit in the company’s 144-year group history, chairman Mohan Pandithage said.

LOLC financial service group recorded a profit growth of 443.8 percent year-on-year basis to 39.3 billion rupees in the first quarter. The increase was mainly a result of its global operations.

Hatton National Bank Finance, which is involved in a range of loans and other financial services, recorded a group net profit of 515.6 million rupees for the 2021–22 financial year, up from a loss the previous last year. The diversified blue-chip Aitken Spence conglomerate reported a profit before tax of 14.2 billion rupees, an increase of 2.8 billion rupees from previous year. Prime Lands Residencies also posted a record before tax profit of 1,848 million rupees for the 2021–2022 fiscal year.

Softlogic Holding’s consolidated annual revenue surged by 35 percent to 111.2 billion rupees and consolidated year-on-year gross profit increased 52 percent to 39 billion rupees. It is involved in healthcare, retail services, insurance and financial services.

The Lanka Hospitals Corporation, one of the largest of the more than 140 private hospitals in Sri Lanka, recorded a 2.8 billion-rupee turn over in the first quarter of this year. Benefiting from COVID-19, which continues to rage across the country, it was a 27 percent increase on the same period last year.

By contrast, Sri Lanka’s year-on-year inflation rate for May rose to 45.3 percent and food inflation to 58 percent—figures that are continuously climbing as fuel prices increase. High prices are devastating the social conditions of millions of workers, the self-employed, farmers and the poor.

Long queue for cooking gas at Mahabage, 5 May 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

The vast gulf between these huge profits and the social disaster being unleashed against the Sri Lankan masses is yet another dramatic confirmation of Karl Marx’s famous observation: “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital” (Section 4, Chapter 25 Capital, Volume 1).

According to a recent United Nations report, nearly 5 million Sri Lankans are living hand to mouth, forced to sell their jewelry and to borrow money in order to survive. It noted 22 percent of country’s population needs food aid and 86 percent of households have been compelled to reduce what they eat, including skipping meals. The UN also reported that 56,000 children under five suffer from severe acute malnutrition and urgently need nutrient-rich food.

An indication of the desperate conditions confronting children was revealed by doctors at Colombo’s Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children (LRH) who reported that 20 percent of children admitted to the facility suffered from malnutrition. These children, LRH Consultant Paediatrician Dr. Deepal Perara said, were not receiving the required quantities of carbohydrates, proteins, lipids and vitamins.

The disaster facing children was further confirmed by UNICEF’s representative in Sri Lanka, Christian Skoog. He reported that nearly one in two children in the country required some form of emergency assistance, including nutrition, health care, clean drinking water, education and mental health service. Sri Lanka, he added, has the second-highest rate of acute malnutrition among children under five in South Asia and at least 17 percent of children are suffering from chronic wasting.

While Lanka Hospitals Corporation in Colombo, which is part of the island’s expanding private hospital sector, is making high profits, the overall public health system is on the brink of collapse as stocks of vital medicines and medical equipment dry up.

According to the latest UN update, about 200 essential medicines are now out of stock in Sri Lanka, with predicted shortages of another 163 critical drugs over the next two to three months. Over 2,700 essential surgical items and more than 250 regular laboratory items are also out of stock.

This social calamity is a product of the capitalist profit system. From so-called independence from the British colonial rule in 1948, successive Sri Lankan governments have systematically worked to secure the profit interests of local and foreign big business at the expense of all working people and the poor.

Sri Lanka’s tiny capitalist elite, and the governments that serve it, regard the state-owned sector as their own private assets, demanding and receiving bail outs and concessions paid for by increased exploitation and social attacks on the working class.

There is no solution to burning issues confronting the masses—the shortages and skyrocketing prices of essentials like food, fuel and cooking gas—within the capitalist system and national borders.

The only way for the working class to secure its essential needs is to take the production and distribution out of the hands of the capitalists. Inventories must be made of these resources and the wealth of the ruling elite seized by the working class and redistributed on the basis of social need.

Sri Lankan workers, who demonstrated their political and industrial strength in powerful general strikes against the Rajapakse government on April 28, May 6, and May 10 should review the political lessons of this struggle and the treacherous role played by the unions.

During the two-month popular anti-government uprising, the trade unions systematically blocked any independent intervention of the working class against Rajapakse government, and its brutal attacks on social and democratic rights. The unions do not represent the working class but defend the profit system, functioning as industrial police force on behalf of the government and employers.