Tech firms, crypto companies, Goldman Sachs announce major layoffs

Jacob Crosse

Following announcements last week by Salesforce, Vimeo and Amazon that they would be laying off thousands of workers, dozens of other companies around the world have followed suit and announced significant job cuts.

The announced layoffs are not restricted to any single industry. However, newer tech and cryptocurrency companies, along with major banks such as Goldman Sachs, confirmed cuts to their global workforces this week. The job losses will mainly impact white collar workers, including mid-level managers, but even senior management positions are on the chopping block.

Tech industry layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi is reporting that so far this year 82 tech companies have laid off 23,550 workers around the world. A separate tracker, trueup.io, has reported 29,923 layoffs at 120 tech companies so far this year.

The tech industry already experienced record-setting layoffs last year. According to figures compiled by trueup.io, 237,874 people lost their jobs in the tech sector in 2022, while Layoffs.fyi reported that 1,023 tech companies laid off a total of 154,256 workers last year.

Either figure represents at least a doubling of the highest number of tech layoffs experienced by workers during the Great Recession, according to data by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based global outplacement & career transitioning firm. In 2008 and 2009, the firm estimated that 65,000 tech workers around the world lose their jobs each year.

On Friday, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek announced in a blog post that the company was reducing its “global workforce by approximately 20 percent.” The Singapore-based company, founded by Marszalek in 2016, employs 2,450 people according to PitchBook, meaning some 490 employees are being laid off.

Brian Armstrong, the billionaire CEO of US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, announced this past Tuesday that the company would be cutting a fifth of its global workforce, or roughly 950 jobs. This is the second major round of layoffs at the company in the last year.

Last June, 1,100 workers were laid off at the company. In his post Tuesday, Armstrong threatened more layoffs, writing, “We may not have seen the last of it.”

The logo for Goldman Sachs appears above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Tuesday, July 13, 2021. [AP Photo/Richard Drew]

Referring to the collapse of FTX and the nearly $1.4 trillion lost in the crypto market in 2022, Armstrong said, “[T]here will be increased scrutiny on various companies in the space to make sure that they’re following the rules.”

“The FTX collapse and the resulting contagion has created a black eye for the industry,” Armstrong added, predicting that there were still more “shoes to drop.”

The ending of the cheap money policies that fueled the growth of the cryptocurrency markets has seen a collapse in the stock prices of the remaining major cryptocurrency companies. CNBC reported this week that shares of Bitcoin fell 58 percent last year, while Coinbase shares have dropped 83 percent.

Outside of crypto, layoffs were announced Wednesday by the co-CEOs of Flexport, Ryan Petersen and Dave Clark. In their memo, Petersen and Clark revealed that the supply chain software company would be laying off 20 percent of its global workforce, affecting some 640 workers.

Scale AI, an artificial intelligence start-up founded in 2016 and valued at $7.3 billion in 2021, announced in a blog post Monday that it would also be laying off 20 percent of its workforce.

Boosted by over $600 million from institutional investors such as Tiger Global, Dragoneer and Index Ventures, along with contracts with the US Department of Defense, Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang, 25, has been crowned the “world’s youngest self-made billionaire” by Forbes.

These, and the countless thousands more layoffs to come, are the result of deliberate class polices enacted by central banks around the world, led by the US Federal Reserve. The raising of interest rates is aimed at increasing the ranks of the unemployed in order to blunt growing demands of workers for increased wages to combat once-in-a-generation and far from transitory inflation.

The US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine is exacerbating supply-chain woes. This, compounded by corporate price-gouging and profiteering, drove inflation in 2022 to the highest levels in decades, according to consumer price index data released by the US Labor Department.

While the department reported that the inflation rate for December 2022 was 6.5 percent, down from the 9.1 percent peak in June 2022, staple items such as eggs, butter and margarine, utilities, electricity and white bread remained in the double-digits.

The Labor Department reported that as of December 2022, year-to-year prices for eggs increased by nearly 60 percent. Fuel oil was up 41.5 percent; white bread increased by 17.7 percent. Health insurance increased by 7.9 percent, slightly less than the 8.3 percent year-to-year increase in rent prices. Overall, food at home increased by 11.8 percent from December 2021 to December 2022.

As workers around the world struggle to afford basic necessities, companies are making it clear that more layoffs are on the way. According to a report by The Information, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is preparing to lay off as much as 6 percent of its global workforce, translating to up to 11,000 job losses.

While an official number has yet to be publicly announced, in an interview with insiderradio.com, a spokesperson for major market research company Nielsen confirmed that it will be reducing the firm’s “total headcount” to “be roughly in line with where it was a year ago,” resulting in hundreds of job losses.

In the UK, British telecom giant Vodoafone, which employs about 104,000 workers globally, including some 9,400 in the UK, announced that it will be shedding “hundreds” of jobs, centered at its headquarters in London.

Banking giant Goldman Sachs announced earlier this week it will be laying off 3,200 bankers around the world. The figure represents the most layoffs at the bank since the 2008 global financial crisis.

IndianExpress reported on Friday that “at least 700 [Goldman Sachs] employees in India” were laid off on Wednesday and Thursday, including “a number of senior employees.”

Before the layoffs, InidianExpress reported that the Wall Street bank had employed nearly 9,000 people at offices in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai. Five fired workers who spoke to the Express told the paper that they were summoned for a “quick meeting” earlier this week and informed that they had been let go.

After being laid off, the workers said they were prevented from going back to their desks and were immediately hustled out of the building.

“Right after I was informed that I was being fired, I was escorted out of the building and asked to go home. I couldn’t even say bye to my friends,” a former software developer at Goldman’s Bengaluru office told the Express.

Former work-from-home employees who were terminated by the bank were notified over Zoom that they no longer had a job.

Major banks have begun to post their final quarter 2022 profits. JPMorgan, reported this week that it “earned” a profit of $11 billion last quarter, a six percent increase from last year.

On a call with investors this week, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said that 2022 was “one of the best years ever for the bank,” with over $7 billion in net income reported in the fourth quarter alone.

While Citigroup and Wells Fargo did not exceed last year’s figures, Citigroup still reported $2.5 billion in profit for the fourth quarter, while Wells Fargo reported nearly $3 billion.

Australian Labor government defends arms exports to Saudi Arabia, UAE

Oscar Grenfell

A recent report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) revealed that Australia is continuing and expanding a lucrative trade in arms exports to regimes associated with war crimes and human rights abuses, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Indonesia.

Using official government figures, the ABC found more than 200 separate arms sales to the three countries over a period of less than two years.

Houthi detention center destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes that killed at least 60 people in Dhamar province, southwestern Yemen, in September 2019. [AP Photo/Hani Mohammed, File]

The overall figure and the breakdowns underscore the extent of the trade. In the 2021 calendar year, there were 17 exports to Saudi Arabia, 36 to the UAE and 52 to Indonesia. Over the ten months of 2022 to November 9, the figures were 21 to Saudi Arabia, 25 to the UAE and 49 to Indonesia.

While the exports are likely primarily from private arms corporations, their dispatch abroad requires government approval, through the issuing of a Defence Department military or dual-use permit.

As the ABC noted, the precise nature of the shipments is shrouded in secrecy, with no details provided on the grounds of “commercial sensitivities.” This contrasts with the US and a number of European countries, which provide publicly accessible information of officially approved weapons exports.

Previous exposures, however, give a glimpse into the sophisticated weaponry and materiel that may be making its way from Australia to despotic and dictatorial regimes.

In 2018, the ABC reported on a $410 million weapons deal involving Australian company Electro Optic Systems (EOS). It stated that two sources had told the broadcaster that the weapons were bound for the UAE. This included the RWS, an advanced system involving a platform that could be affixed to a vehicle, with guns, missile launchers or cannons placed inside it. With censors, lasers and remote-control features, this would allow soldiers to fire their munitions from the safety of a military truck or car.

EOS said that it could not confirm or deny the recipient of its systems.

The following year, the ABC reported that the company had signed a letter of intent with the Saudi Arabian government for the sale of 500 RWS units.

Over the preceding period, the then Liberal-National Coalition government had provided EOS with some $36 million in government funding. Its defence minister Christopher Pyne had lobbied in Saudi Arabia for greater Australian arms exports. While EOS denied the reports, the ABC subsequently published photographs of pallets in a factory. Their delivery dockets showed that EOS products were bound for Saudi Arabia, though with an American company as intermediary.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are waging a war against rebels in the impoverished nation of Yemen, that has been condemned as near genocidal by rights’ organisations and charities. At the end of 2021, the UN estimated that the protracted onslaught had claimed the lives of 377,000 Yemenis, 150,000 as a direct result of the war and the rest through resulting social calamities including famine.

Australian governments have persistently rejected calls from the UN and other international bodies for a ban on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The Indonesian military, with which Australian companies are doing extensive business, is also implicated in major human rights violations, both in West Papua and against domestic opponents.

The Labor government responded to the latest ABC report by making plain that its position is identical to that of its Coalition predecessor.

Labor Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy asserted that all exports were scrutinised closely on a “case by case basis… This includes careful consideration of a broad range of factors, including Australia’s international legal obligations, as well as human rights, regional and national security, and foreign policy considerations.”

Labor Defence Minister Richard Marles declared: “If overriding risks to Australia’s security, defence, or international relations had been identified, the permits would have been refused.”

The permits, however, will not jeopardise “security” or “international relations,” because Saudi Arabia and the UAE are allies of the US and its partners, including Australia. The collaboration with such regimes underscores the hypocrisy of claims by Washington and Canberra that they are defending “democracy” and “human rights” against China in the Indo-Pacific.

In fact, this bogus campaign against purported Chinese aggression is being used to justify preparations for an aggressive US-led war, aimed at reasserting American imperialist hegemony. Australia’s continued development of a weapons industry, including exports, is inextricably tied to its central role in these plans.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, released last month, claimed that the defence industry contributed $8.8 billion to the economy last financial year, up $1.8 billion over 12 months.

A 2021 article in the Conversation by University of Queensland academic Megan Price noted that the estimated value of approved arms exports increased from $1.5 billion in 2017–18 to $5.5 billion in 2019–20.

“Since 2018, Australia has been seeking to become a top ten global defence exporter. Its main exports are products and components that fit into broader global supply chains for weapons and weapons systems. For example, the government boasts there isn’t a single F-35 fighter jet production operation that doesn’t feature Australian-made components. The government sees further export potential for products and components to be used in armoured vehicles, advanced radar systems, and patrol boats, as well,” Price wrote.

In line with the ratcheting up of the US war drive against China under successive administrations, Australian governments have presided over a rapid military build-up. Defence spending is at record levels, with a bipartisan commitment of $575 billion to the sector over the decade, including $270 billion on military hardware.

In reality, the costs will be far-greater, as those figures were agreed before it was announced that Australia will acquire nuclear-powered submarines, as well as other advanced arms systems such as hypersonic missiles, as part of the militarist AUKUS pact with Britain and the US. A review, commissioned by the current Labor government into military capabilities is due to be completed in March. Media previews of the interim report indicated that it will call for a major expansion of missile systems, the purchase of more fighter jets and other aggressive weaponry.

This program involved major handouts to arms companies. In 2021, the Coalition government announced a $1 billion spend on a Sovereign Guided Weapons Enterprise, aimed at establishing a domestic missile manufacturing sector. That is part of the broader push, being continued by Labor, to boost domestic production of weapons. Such programs almost invariably involve contracts to the Australian divisions of the largest US-based weapons corporations.

The universities are a central focus of this program, with the aim to harness scientific and technical expertise ever more directly to the war machine. As the WSWS reported last June, all 37 of the country’s public universities are now part of the Defence Science Partnership. It is a program initiated by the Defence Department to “provide a uniform model for universities to engage with Defence on research projects.”

In January 2021, the WSWS reported, the then Coalition 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.” Virtually every major university in the country is engaged in one or another research or development project with the arms corporations.

Special counsel appointed to probe Biden handling of classified documents

Patrick Martin

US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday that he was appointing a special counsel to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents during the period after he had ended his two terms as vice president in the Obama administration.

The appointment of Robert Hur, the US Attorney for Maryland, a career federal prosecutor promoted to his current position by President Donald Trump, has the potential to be a major blow to the Biden administration. Hur is charged with determining how a number of classified documents—at this point reported to be in the dozens—ended up in at least three unsecured locations where they were in Biden’s nominal custody.

Attorney General Merrick Garland [AP Photo/Andrew Harnik]

The locations were Biden’s private office at a University of Pennsylvania facility in Washington D.C. where he was a visiting professor from 2017 to 2020; in the garage at his Wilmington, Delaware, home; and in one of the rooms of that residence.

Biden has claimed that he was unaware that the documents were at these locations and that he has no idea what the classified material is or how it got there. Aides, speaking anonymously to the press, have said the materials were transferred inadvertently as part of Biden’s moving out of his vice-presidential offices in early 2017.

After the discovery of about a dozen classified documents at the Penn-Biden center in Washington, aides conducted a systematic search of Biden’s home in Wilmington, his beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and other locations, and found an undisclosed number of documents in the garage, one document in a room in the adjacent home and nothing at any other location.

The timeline given by Merrick at a five-minute press briefing Wednesday made it clear that the Department of Justice and the White House have been engaged in intense reviews and actions on this matter since the discovery of the classified documents November 2 during the cleanup of Biden’s former office at the University of Pennsylvania. The White House counsel’s office was notified immediately and the documents were turned over to the National Archives the following day.

According to Garland, the National Archives informed the Justice Department on November 4, and on November 9—one day after the US midterm elections—the FBI began to assess whether classified information had been mishandled. This is a federal offense, and can be a misdemeanor if the mishandling was inadvertent or accidental, and a felony if it is intentional.

On November 14, Garland appointed John Lausch, the US Attorney in Chicago and a Trump appointee, to make an initial investigation to “inform” Garland’s decision on whether to appoint a special counsel.

On December 20, Biden’s counsel informed Lausch that additional classified documents had been found in the garage of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, dating from his vice-presidency. The FBI went there and secured the documents.

On January 5, 2023, Lausch advised Garland that additional investigation was warranted and a special counsel should be appointed. He had already made it clear that he would not want such a position because he was leaving the department for the private sector. On January 12, Biden’s counsel informed Lausch of another classified document found inside Biden’s Wilmington residence.

The same day, Thursday, Garland named Robert Hur as special counsel and informed the congressional leaders of both parties. Hur is a career prosecutor and registered Republican who held positions in the central office of the Department of Justice in both the Obama and Trump administrations before Trump elevated him to his current position.

At the regular press briefing at the White House, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was extraordinarily defensive, refusing to answer questions about the documents or deviate in any way from the language already used by Biden himself in responding to a few shouted questions from the press in previous days.

The appointment of the special counsel demonstrates the deepening crisis and instability of the entire US political structure, with both the current president and his predecessor now being investigated by special counsels appointed by the attorney general in a way that gives them considerable freedom of action.

Garland did not include in his timeline the appointment of Jack Smith as special prosecutor investigating Trump, both for the retention of hundreds of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and for his role in preparing and instigating the mob attack on Congress on the January 6, 2021.

He appointed Smith last November 18 to investigate Trump, only four days after he had appointed Lausch to make a preliminary investigation into Biden and come back with a recommendation on whether a special prosecutor should be appointed in that case.

The appointment of Hur is certain to fuel the attacks on Biden by the fascistic right which is the driving force in the new Republican majority in control of the House of Representatives. This group already demonstrated its power by blocking the election of Republican leader Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House for nearly a week in order to extract concessions on both the rules of the House and on going as far as possible in attacking federal social programs and cutting taxes on the wealthy.

On Tuesday, the House established a new subcommittee on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government” by a party-line vote. The subcommittee, to be led by arch-right-winger Jim Jordan, also the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, will be used to attack any federal investigation into the crimes committed by Trump or by other Republicans acting on his behalf. This could include Jordan himself, as well as many of the 20 Republican representatives who participated in the blocking of McCarthy’s election.

It is not clear whether Jordan’s subcommittee will have the authority to investigate the activities of either the special prosecutor examining Trump’s actions or the newly appointed special prosecutor tasked with looking into Biden’s handling of classified documents. But the stage is set for a series of increasingly frenzied attacks by the very figures that two years ago helped politically direct the January 6 insurrection.

This is not a spectacle to inspire snickering, as it does in the petty bourgeois pseudo-left press. It is a demonstration of the uncontrollable decay of bourgeois democracy in the United States, which is headed inexorably towards a violent explosion, far greater than what took place on January 6, 2021.

And if the conflicts between rival factions of the corporate and political elite can no longer be contained within the traditional norms of the capitalist two-party system, what of the far deeper and more substantial conflicts between the financial aristocracy as a whole and the working class?

The Biden administration and both parties in Congress joined forces last month to outlaw a railroad workers’ strike and impose contract terms on 115,000 workers that many of them had already rejecting, shredding both their right to vote and their right to strike.

A similar bipartisan effort has plunged the United States into a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine which threatens to escalate into a third world war fought with nuclear weapons, without ever consulting the American people. The war was not even an issue between the two parties in the midterm elections held in November—working people were presented with the “choice” of two pro-war parties, each backed by billions in spending on advertising and campaigning.

While this pretense of democracy was taking place, as Garland’s timeline indicates, the real differences within the US ruling elite—which relate to tactics and methods, not the fundamental direction of policy—are being fought out behind the scenes, through methods of backroom conspiracies, concocted provocations and sudden “revelations” duly taken up by the corporate media to stampede public opinion.

Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People 2023/2024

Application Deadline: 31st January 2023 (until 23:59 Central European Time).

Offered Annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: The scholarship is announced for the citizens of following countries: Egypt, Lebanese Republic, Republic of Iraq, State of Israel, Palestine, Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Syrian Arab Republic, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Republic of Kenya, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia & Nigeria.

To be taken at (country): Hungary

About the Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People: The Scholarship Programme for Christian Young People (SCYP) was founded in 2017 by the Government of Hungary.

The Scholarship Programme for Christian Young People is managed by the State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians and for the Hungary Helps Program. The Hungary Helps Agency is in charge of coordinating the Scholarship Programme since August 2020.

The core mission of the Scholarship Programme for Christian Young People is to provide the possibility of studying in Hungary for young Christian students living in the crisis regions of the world and/or being threatened in their country because of their faith.

After completing their studies, the scholarship holders will return to help their home community with their gained knowledge, and thy will participate in the reconstruction of war-destroyed countries and contribute to improvement of social situation and preservation of culture of Christian communities.

Type: Bachelor, Masters

Eligibility: The Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People is based on the cooperation between the Ministry of Human Capacities of Hungary and churches, pursuing humanitarian activities in crisis regions.

• The applicants may not have Hungarian citizenship.
• Local Churches are to verify and prove that the applicant belongs to their religious community. Only those applications can be awarded with scholarship, which also possess the recommendation from the local Church along with the approval of the Deputy State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians.
• Scholarship holders must possess the relevant language and education certificates, degrees requested by the host university of the selected degree programme.
• The scholarship holders commit themselves in the scholarship agreement that after the scholarship agreement ends they return to their home countries, if the local security and political conditions allow it so.
• Scholarships are for young applicants who are older than 18 years of age by the time their education starts
• An individual may win the scholarship only one time at a study level.

Selection Criteria: Applications are considered formally eligible if all criteria are met:

• the applicant is eligible for participation in the Scholarship Programme;
• the applicant has applied for a scholarship type and study programme available within the framework of the Scholarship Programme;
• the applicant has submitted the application and all documents as required no later than the application deadline (except for cases listed in section 3.3.);
• the applicant has proved his/her language proficiency and the language skills meet the requirements of the Host Institution.

Applicants with an eligible, formally correct application can proceed to the institutional entrance examinations. Each applicant can participate in up to two institutional entrance examinations – based on the submitted application form.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People: 

• Tuition-free education – exemption from the payment of tuition fee
• Monthly stipend – bachelor, master and one-tier master level: monthly amount of HUF 119 000 (cca. EUR 380) contribution to the living expenses in Hungary, for 12 months a year, until the completion of studies
• Accommodation – dormitory place or a contribution of HUF 40 000 to accommodation costs for the whole duration of the scholarship period
• Reimbursement of travel costs – HUF 200 000 /year (cca. EUR 645)
• Medical insurance – health care services according to the relevant Hungarian legislation (Act No. 80 of 1997, national health insurance card) and supplementary medical insurance for up to HUF 65 000 (cca. EUR 205) a year/person

How to Apply for Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People: The applicants must fill out and save all requested information on the online application form in English language and also present all relevant documents.

PLEASE APPLY HERE! 

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Please Note: The Scholarship Programme for Christian Young People are now performed by the Hungary Helps Agency Nonprofit Ltd.

It’s Time to Abolish the Filibuster

Andrew Moss

Photograph Source: Brady-Handy Photograph Collection (Library of Congress) – Public Domain

The filibuster has proved more pernicious to democracy than any other procedural rule of Congress. It’s time for it to go.

These claims may seem excessive in view of the real accomplishments of the 117th Congress, e.g., bills supporting a major upgrade of the nation’s infrastructure as well as substantive action in combating climate change. One can also note bills that expanded protections for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence, designated lynching as a federal hate crime, and protected same-sex and interracial marriage, to name just a few.

But Congress failed to address fundamental problems afflicting American democracy, from the suppression of voting rights and workers’ rights, to the need for meaningful immigration reform. And a principal reason for its failure is the chokehold of the filibuster.

When using the term “filibuster” today, one must note that this isn’t the “talking filibuster” that director Frank Capra idealized in his 1939 film, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Nor is it the obstructionist “talking filibuster” used by Southern senators from the 1920’s through the 1940’s to block anti-lynching legislation, or to delay civil rights legislation in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Instead, it is a Senate rule, worked out by both Democrats and Republicans in the 1970’s, that allows individual senators to block bills simply by announcing the intent to filibuster, with a 41-vote requirement to close debate. Called a “stealth,” or “silent,” filibuster, this rule simply means that the word “filibuster” is now shorthand for the requirement of a 60-vote supermajority on much critical legislation – with significant exceptions carved out for budget bills and votes on nominations, such as for Supreme Court justices.

Such a requirement has no basis in the U.S. Constitution, and it runs counter to a majoritarian philosophy espoused by such founders as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. In recent times, it has wreaked havoc on Congress’s ability to strengthen representative democracy.

In October, 2021, the filibuster blocked passage of the Senate’s Freedom to Vote Act, which would have, among other things, made Election Day a national holiday, expanded voter registration through automatic and same-day registration, and limited the removal of voters from voting rolls. The next month, the filibuster marked for defeat the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a bill that would have revitalized the 1965 Voting Rights Act, helping curtail discriminatory electoral practices. The defeat of this legislation must now be seen in the context of the plethora of bills intended to restrict voting access and promote partisan interference in voting processes – bills either passed or currently moving through many state legislatures.

The filibuster also blocked a major piece of labor reform legislation, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act), that would have enhanced workers’ protections from corporate interference when attempting to organize workplaces. And the stealth filibuster also made it impossible for the 590,000 recipients of DACA, young people brought here as children and raised and educated in America, to move out of the legal limbo in which they’ve been placed by judicial and political attacks.

One might object, in response to these critiques, that the filibuster offers protections to the minority. But the Senate is so constituted that power is already skewed to smaller states. If you happen to be one of the 576,851 residents of Wyoming, your two senators wield as much legislative clout as the senators representing the 39,538,223 residents of California. That’s a power ratio of almost 70 to 1.

You might ask, what minority would be protected in any case? When the U.S. Chamber of Commerce upheld the filibuster as a defense against raising the minimum wage, and against passage of labor’s PRO Act, one wonders if the issue is not so much about protecting the minority as about ensuring corporate hegemony.

It may seem quixotic to focus on the filibuster when the current House of Representatives promises little more than gridlock, if not legislative chaos. But there is perhaps no better time than now for the Senate, at least, to put its own house in order: to model a path to a more representative democracy – and to be ready when the time again comes for forward movement.

Surplus in German retirement funds testifies to high excess mortality from pandemic

Marianne Arens

German public retirement insurance issuers generated a 2.1 billion euro surplus last year. A major contributor was the fact that an above-average number of pensioners died of COVID-19. This once again confirms the warnings of the World Socialist Web Site, which has called the official mass infection policy 'social murder.'

A woman waits for her vaccination at a vaccination Drive-in center in Cologne, Germany, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

'Contrary to many expectations, the statutory pension insurance will end this year of the crisis with a remarkable plus of 2.1 billion euro,' the outgoing managing director of the Deutsche Rentenversicherung (the German public pension insurance society), Matthias Förster, said December 16 at an insurers’ meeting.

The president of the Rentenversicherung, Gundula Roßbach, spoke similarly in an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) in Berlin on December 27. Just a year ago, a deficit of several billion euros had been expected, Roßbach said. As one reason for the unexpected surplus, she explicitly named 'the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to an increase in mortality, especially among older people.'

These reports quickly disappeared from news feeds. The bourgeois media raised no outcry. Journalists who commented on the news were not alarmed but delighted that the pension fund was on a solid financial footing. What went unmentioned was the extent of the grief, pain and suffering this development dealt those affected and their families.

The alarming extent of excess mortality in recent months is documented by the Federal Statistical Office on its official press portal. According to the report, in October 2022, when coronavirus mortality was particularly high, the number of deaths was 19 percent, or nearly 15,000 people, above the mean value (median) of the years 2018 to 2021.

In November, when COVID-19 cases declined slightly, the number of deaths was still seven percent, or nearly 6,000, above the median of the previous years. In the first two weeks of December, excess mortality increased again, and deaths were about 12 percent above the previous means, exacerbated by an unusually strong flu epidemic and rampant respiratory illness.

The World Socialist Web Site has reported the strikingly high excess mortality in 2022. Death rates that year averaged nine percent higher than the median for the previous four years, 2018-2021.

Officially, 162,688 coronavirus patients have died in Germany as of January 8, but the number of unreported cases is undoubtedly higher since the data is unreliable. The WHO puts the number of coronavirus deaths worldwide at just under 6.7 million, while experts give informed estimates of more than three times that number. By those estimates, more than 21 million people worldwide have died directly or indirectly from COVID-19.

The World Socialist Web Site's New Year's Statement declares:

More than 10 million children worldwide have lost a parent or primary caregiver from COVID-19. (...) A recent study on excess deaths by the World Health Organization found that COVID-19 was the third-leading cause of death globally in 2020 and the world’s leading cause of death in 2021. There were approximately 5.1 million excess deaths globally in 2022, making the “mild” Omicron variant the third-leading cause of death.

Life expectancy is falling for the first time since World War II as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. It had been rising steadily until 2019, at least in Germany, but SARS-CoV-2 has put an end to this trend. In 2020, life expectancy fell by an average of 0.2 years for men and 0.1 year for women, and in 2021 it fell another 0.4 years for men and another 0.3 years for women.

The figures vary greatly depending on the region. Accordingly, life expectancy for men in the German states of Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt fell by at least 1.5 years from 2019 to 2021! This is a completely unusual development for peacetime.

But it is deliberate. Even at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, when the government refused to protect the population with a sensible lockdown, then-Bundestag (Federal Parliament) President Wolfgang Schäuble (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) found an unmistakable formulation.

In his infamous commentary on German Basic Law, Schäuble declared, '[W]hen I hear that everything must take second place to the protection of life, then I must say: that is not correct in such an absolute sense.'

To justify opening up the economy and ruthless back-to-work policies, Schäuble argued pointedly, 'Fundamental rights are mutually limiting. If there is one absolute value in our Basic Law, then it is human dignity. It is sacrosanct. But that does not exclude us from having to die.'

Shortly before, the same Schäuble had demanded in a keynote speech on foreign policy that, in the interests of 'security,' Germany had to be prepared to intervene in Europe and around the world, and that this would include 'ultimately, the willingness to use military force.' Since then, the German government has found a welcome pretext in the Ukraine war for massively rearming the state both domestically and for foreign conflicts.

There is a direct connection between the calls for war and violence and the demand to place alleged 'dignity' above life, as the WSWS explained at the time, 'To advance its foreign and domestic interests in the deepest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, the ruling class is again literally willing to walk over corpses.'

It was precisely the time, at the end of April 2020, when the government, together with businessmen, bankers and shareholders, sent hundreds of thousands of workers back to the factories and workplaces unprotected, despite the risk of infection. Since then, the official line has been that we must all learn to 'live with the virus.' More correct would be 'die with the virus,' because to this day it means nothing other than allowing ever new waves of infections, reinfections, and deaths, which could have been avoided, to wash over the population, harming entire generations through long-COVID.

In the meantime, many leading politicians only speak about the pandemic in the past tense. At the turn of 2022-2023, state government after state government is repealing the last protective measures. In Schleswig-Holstein, Bavaria and Saxony-Anhalt, the mask requirement in public transport has been abolished and most of the other German states plan to follow suit in the coming weeks.

At the same time, the latest, extremely easily transmitted coronavirus variant, XBB.1.5, is spreading out from the northeastern United States to Europe and the entire world. On January 7, Bavarian broadcaster BR24 quoted Bremen epidemiologist Hajo Zeeb as saying, 'One can say with some prognostic certainty that the variant will also become the dominant variant in our country.'

With the start of the new year, vaccination requirements for employees in health care facilities and homes for the elderly will also be struck. This requirement was never consistently implemented. As the Ärzte-Zeitung reports, the nearly 270,000 reported violations of this rule were offset by only 1,275 activity bans, which is not even half a percent. Just under 7,000 other violations were punished with fines while the rest went without consequences. Seven federal states stated that they had not levied a single fine.

The mendacious half-heartedness in the way such measures—vital for old people’s and nursing homes—are handled is revealing. It confirms what was evident in the disgracefully positive reaction to the unexpected surplus in the pension funds: the politicians did not decide in favor of mass infection solely because they wanted to keep the economy open at all costs in the interests of short-term profits. They also see it as an effective means of reducing the 'pensioner overhang' and relieving the government of pension subsidies long term.

With sham trials and executions, Iran’s rulers intensify repression of anti-government protests

Jean Shaoul & Keith Jones

Dozens of people demonstrated outside Rajaei-Shahr prison in Karaj, near Iran’s capital Tehran, on Monday in a bid to stop the executions of two young men convicted in sham trials for allegedly attacking security personnel during the now months-long wave of anti-government protests.

There were also reports of demonstrations in multiple Tehran neighborhoods last Saturday night following the execution earlier that day of two other protesters. Crowds reportedly exclaimed, “For every person killed, there are a thousand others behind him.”

Protests were also held in other Iranian cities last weekend in response to the executions. According to press reports, participants chanted “Death to Khamenei” (the ayatollah who has served as the country’s Supreme Leader since 1989), “We do not want the government that kills children,” and “Death to the Basij,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps volunteer force that has been front and centre in the repression of the anti-government protests.

Monday’s angry protests calling on the government to stop the executions followed rulings by Iran’s Supreme Court confirming death sentences for 22 year-old Mohammad Ghobadlou, who allegedly ran over several members of the security forces with his car, killing one, and 19 year-old Mohammad Boroughani, who was convicted of “moharebeh” or “waging war against God” for allegedly killing a member of the security forces with a knife.

Protesters chant slogans during a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini last September. [AP Photo/(AP) [AP Photo/AP Photo/FILE FOTOĞRAF ASSOCIATED PRESS ÇALIŞANI OLMAYAN BİR BİREY TARAFINDAN ÇEKİLMİŞ VE AP TARAFINDAN İRAN DIŞINA ÇIKARILMIŞTIR.]]

Iran’s crisis-ridden bourgeois clerical regime has branded the protests “riots” and repeatedly accused protestors of acting at the instigation of foreign governments, particularly the United States, Britain and Israel.

It has increasingly resorted to barbaric methods, including death sentences, a public execution, sham trials and torture, to terrorise the Iranian people and stomp out the mass demonstrations that erupted after the police-custody death in mid-September of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini. Its greatest fear is that under conditions of ever deepening poverty and ever widening social inequality, the working class will erupt onto the scene

The latest protests follow the execution over the weekend of two young men, Mohammad Mahdi Karami and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, for allegedly killing a member of the Basij force in Karaj last November during the nationwide protests. Both men denied the charges and said they were tortured and denied access to their own lawyers. The UN Human Rights Office said they were victims of “unfair trials based on forced confessions.”

The US and its allies, who remain silent in the face of mass executions by their brutal ally Saudi Arabia, lost no time in excoriating the Islamic Republic.

Together with last month’s executions of two 23 year-olds, Mohsen Shekari and Majidreza Rahnavard, after similar sham trials, Saturday’s hangings bring the total number of anti-government protesters executed to date to four. At least 17 other people have been sentenced to death, according to the United Nations Human Rights Office, among them a doctor, a bodybuilding champion, a rapper and a barber, for purported crimes ranging from burning a trash can to killing security forces.

So far, at least 519 protesters and 68 security personnel have been killed in the unrest, according to the Human Rights Activists’ News Agency (HRANA). The government puts the number at just over 300 killed. HRANA says that another 19,290 protesters have been arrested, of whom 111 face charges for capital crimes.

Iranian authorities have also targeted well-known personalities, including filmmakers, lawyers, actors, athletes and activists as well as 84 journalists, for voicing their support for the protesters, jailing some and imposing severe restrictions and travel bans on others.

Among those imprisoned is Faezeh Hashemei, a former legislator and the 60 year-old daughter of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the late two-term president who long led a faction of the Islamic Republic’s Shia clerical political establishment eager for rapprochement with Washington and the European imperialist powers.

Hashemei was accused of “propaganda,” “instigating protests” and actions against public order and national security, and sentenced to five years in jail, said her lawyer, Neda Shams. She has long been an outspoken critic of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Last May, she called on the United States to keep the IRGC on its list of foreign terrorist organizations, prompting demands for her immediate prosecution.

The anti-government protests began in Amini’s home town, in the predominantly Kurdish northwest, under the slogan “Women, Life and Freedom,” popularized by Kurdish nationalists. But they spread rapidly across the country, particularly among the country’s youth and students, and are fueled by anger over the political privileges, social control and endemic corruption of the clerical elite, the mismanagement of the pandemic, the soaring cost of living—inflation is running at 50 percent a year—and widespread unemployment, particularly among young people. Some 50 percent of Iran’s 86 million people live below the poverty line according to the government’s own statistics. This is the outcome, on the one hand, of the punishing economic sanctions Washington has imposed against Iran with the aim of crashing its economy, and, on the other, the regime’s rolling back and elimination of the price subsidies and other social-welfare measures implemented in the wake of the 1979 revolution that toppled the bloody dictatorship of the US-backed Shah.  

Teachers and some workers at major industrial facilities, including steel works in Isfahan and Persian Gulf oil refineries, have staged walkouts in conjunction with the anti-government protests, while some small traders have closed their shops and businesses in the bazaars in response to calls for anti-government “strikes.” 

The protests, while not the largest the Islamic Republic has seen, have lasted longer than the wave of mass protests that rocked Iran in the days immediately preceding and following New Year 2018 and again in November 2019.

In recent years there have been myriad struggles by workers and the rural poor against privatization, the spread of precarious contract-labour jobs, the non-payment of wages, and the lack of government action in the face of a growing water-crisis in many rural areas.  

However, the protests—due to the political domination within the opposition movement of more privileged layers previously aligned with the “reform” wing of the Islamic Republic’s clerical elite and/or oriented to the western imperialist powers— have articulated no social demands or programme that would appeal to the working class. The movement has consequently remained largely confined to students and other young people.

As mass participation in the protests has declined in recent weeks both because of the state repression and the lack of a viable strategy for opposing imperialism and the bourgeois nationalist regime, young people’s readiness for self-sacrifice has frequently been squandered in clashes between small groups of protesters and security forces.  

Iran’s currency, the rial, has been in free fall since the protests erupted in September, plummeting from 316,700 to an all-time low of 440,000 against the US dollar at the end of December. While this has led to bitter attacks on President Ebrahim Raisi’s economic policies from his opponents within the political elite, the implications are truly catastrophic for Iranian workers, with the Faraz news site noting that Iran’s monthly minimum wage has fallen from the equivalent of US $251 in May 2017—when most sanctions had been lifted under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal—to just over $90 this month.

In this picture released by the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. [AP Photo/Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader]

The efforts of the regime to rally support via its annual celebration of the supposed “covenant” between the Iranian people and the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Guardian, Ayatollah Khamenei, only served to further expose the erosion of its popular support. On December 30, 2009 the government staged a massive mobilization, including a so-called “million march,” against the US-backed bourgeois opposition Green movement. In subsequent years meetings and rallies have marked the occasion. This year, the state media promised that there would be huge pro-government rallies across the country on Dec. 30, but to no effect. At most, small gatherings were held, which the media thought it wise to ignore. This was in marked contrast to the large rallies and marches held on November 4, the anniversary of the start of the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Far from making any concessions to the protest movement, amid what is undoubtedly a grave economic and political crisis, Supreme Leader Khamenei indicated in a televised speech Monday that the Islamic Republic intends to continue using savage repression. Those who “set fire to public places,” he declared, “have with no doubt committed treason'—an offence that carries the death penalty.

In a further signal of its bloody intentions, the government last week appointed Ahmad Reza Radan to head the country’s police force. Radan, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officer, played an important role in the crackdown on the 2009 Green Movement protests and in 2014, due to the outcry over his savage methods, had to step down from a senior police position. He is notorious for his strict enforcement of the country's Islamic dress code for women.

This week, the judiciary ordered the police to “firmly punish any hijab violations” and demanded that “Courts must sentence the violators, as well as fine them, to additional penalties such as exile, bans on practicing certain professions and closing workplaces.” This comes just a week after Khamenei appeared to be willing to relax the rules, saying that women with “lax” hijab were still “our children” and should not be viewed as opponents of the Islamic Republic.

Iran’s clerical-dominated government also faces the ongoing aggression and intrigues of US imperialism, which is using the increasing economic and military ties between Tehran and Moscow in the context of the US/NATO provoked war in Ukraine, to further isolate Iran. Both US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken are to visit Israel later this month to discuss Iran. Blinken reportedly said that Washington aims to get its European allies on board with his plans for tightening still further the punishing economic sanctions that are pauperizing the Iranian people and denying them access to critical medical supplies.

Former leader of the Turkish Grey Wolves assassinated

Hakan Özal

Sinan Ateş, former chairman of the Turkish Grey Wolves or Ülkü Ocakları paramilitary group of the fascistic Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and a faculty member at Hacettepe University, was murdered in an armed attack in the heart of Ankara on December 30.

Sinan Ateş sits at his desk in front of the logo of the Grey Wolves and a photo of MHP founder Alparslan Türkeş and current leader Devlet Bahçeli. [Photo: @sinanates16]

Ateş, who became the leader of Grey Wolves on the orders of MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli in 2019, was among those who remained loyal to Bahçeli during the establishment of the Good Party after the split in the MHP in 2017. Ateş resigned as chairman on April 2020, however, on the instruction of Bahçeli, and started working at Hacettepe University in Ankara.

Although it was claimed that Ateş had to leave the post due to differences of opinion, he had expressed his loyalty to the far-right leader in his resignation statement on Twitter, stating, “The General Presidency of the Grey Wolves will be the most sacred title I will carry for the rest of my life. As long as I live, I will be at the command of my leader Mr. Devlet Bahçeli and my cause.”

In the days following the murder, around a dozen people were detained, including the alleged instigator Doğukan Çep, a fascist mafia leader nicknamed “Dodo,” an MHP Istanbul provincial executive and two special operations police officers. Çep had been wanted for years due to his conviction for the 2013 shooting death of leftist youth Hasan Ferit Gedik during an anti-drug demonstration in Istanbul.

Meanwhile, Gizem Memioğlu, a former head of the MHP's women's branch in Taşköprü district of Kastamonu, was found dead in her home last week, although it is not yet known whether this is linked to Ateş's murder. Memioğlu had resigned from her post in December 2021.

The reports raise the question of the role of the MHP and elements within the state in the Ateş murder. Two assassins on motorcycles were reportedly transferred from Istanbul to Ankara in a vehicle accompanied by special operation officers. It is also reported that a suspect was detained from a house where an MHP deputy was present and was later released. The alleged shooter in the murder is still at large.

Last March, Çağrı Ünel, the former leader of the Grey Wolves in Mersin, responded to an assault by a group by opening fire, killing two people, allegedly MHP members. Ünel is considered one of the names close to Ateş.

On his social media account, Yavuz Selim Demirağ from the Good Party-affiliated daily Yeniçağ wrote, “The Sinan Ateş assassination is a political murder. The instigators used this criminal gang as a subcontractor. They may try to pass it off as a [common] judicial case. We must take the allegations of intense pressure on the police seriously.”

According to Demirağ, Ateş was popular in far-right circles and was seen as a possible successor of Bahçeli as leader of the MHP.

Before his murder, Ateş made political visits, which led to a backlash from the Grey Wolves. He visited governorships, police departments, municipalities, sheikhs, tribal leaders and prominent fascists across the country. Shortly before his death, he wrote on social media from Iğdır, on the eastern border of the country, “I had sent you greetings from the southernmost and northernmost parts of Turkey. Now I send you greetings from the easternmost part of Turkey, i.e. Iğdır.”

There are various speculations about events that led to Ateş’s murder. Some claim that Ateş was building a faction within the party against Bahçeli. Others claim he had recently become close to the Good Party, while some elements, especially within the MHP, are spreading allegations that he was linked to Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen in the US, who Ankara claims led the putschist officers in the NATO-backed 2016 attempted coup against Erdoğan. What is certain is that the suspects arrested after Ateş’s murder are related with the MHP and related fascist mafia gangs.

This raises the possibility that Ateş may have been killed in a power struggle within the MHP. The funeral was attended by thousands of people and representatives from the Good Party as well as Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), with which the MHP is allied. However, no one representing the MHP, of which Ateş was a member, attended the funeral. Remarkably, neither the MHP nor the Grey Wolves made a statement on the murder.

In addition to his possible goal of becoming leader of the MHP, his friendship with the prominent figures of the Good Party, which is reflected on social media, also points to his growing conflict with the MHP leadership.

The MHP, an ally of the Erdoğan government, and the Good Party, part of the bourgeois opposition bloc led by the Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP), have a long and filthy record of political assassinations. Since the late 1960s, the ultra-nationalist fascists have functioned as a paramilitary force auxiliary to the state. They are responsible for countless assaults on striking workers and protesting students, the murder of journalists, and numerous attacks and massacres of leftists, Alevis and Kurds.

In 2017, the Good Party emerged as another mouthpiece of sections of the ruling class unhappy with the MHP’s increasing integration into the AKP government and Ankara’s growing conflicts with the US-led NATO allies. The faction led by Meral Akşener, who founded the Good Party, tried for a long time to convene an extraordinary congress within the MHP, but their attempts failed. It then severed ties with the MHP leadership after the NATO-backed 2016 coup attempt, when the MHP entered into an open alliance with the AKP, and especially during the April 16, 2017 presidential referendum.

In the run-up to the June 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections, the Erdoğan government, which has been in power for 20 years, has lost credibility due to rising social inequality and the cost of living, as well as its “profit against public health” response to the pandemic. It is very close to losing power in the elections.

In this context, an internal power struggle by the MHP, a partner of the AKP-led People’s Alliance, would be undesirable for the Erdoğan government. Polls show that the MHP’s potential vote is around only 7 percent. However, its support is critical for Erdoğan to have a chance in the presidential election. A connection of the murder to the MHP leadership, if it were to be established, would pose serious problems for the People’s Alliance.

Indeed, through its control over the police and the judiciary, the Erdoğan government is seeking to treat this as a simple case of murder and close it down. The operation on the Ateş assassination is being carried out not by the organized crime bureau, but by the homicide bureau of the Ankara Police Department, even though it is clearly a political murder. Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu and Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ did not make a statement for days about this assassination in the heart of Ankara.

This official indifference to the murder of a fascist politician should be taken as a warning by working people. Amid growing political crisis and emerging class battles ahead of the elections, far right and fascist elements linked to the state, whatever their internal conflicts, are a deadly threat to the working class and the Kurdish people.