More revelations of corruption on US Supreme Court

Barry Grey

The exposure of rampant corruption on the US Supreme Court expanded over the past week. While the scandal has centered on Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the most brazen bribe-takers, it has increasingly implicated the entire court, including the chief justice and the Democratic minority.

Last month, the investigative journalism website ProPublica published a series of exposés documenting the fact that Clarence Thomas, a vicious opponent of the democratic and social rights of the working class, has accepted millions of dollars worth of unreported “gifts” from Harlan Crow, a billionaire Republican Party donor who sports a collection of Hitler and Nazi artifacts at his Texas mansion and calls Marxism his greatest fear.

Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts arrives before President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington. [AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin]

For more than two decades, Thomas and his wife have enjoyed all-expenses-paid lavish vacations on Crow’s superyacht and at his various private resorts, none of which have been reported by Thomas on his financial disclosure filings. He has been joined by fascistic think tank executives, corporate barons and leaders of the right-wing Federalist Society, a conveyor belt for placing reactionaries on the federal courts.

Since his accession to the high court in 1991, Thomas has played a central role in a series of anti-democratic and pro-corporate rulings that have rolled back previously established rights, including the right to vote.

These include the 5–4 decision in Bush v. Gore (2000) halting a vote recount in Florida and stealing the presidential election for George W. Bush, the loser of the popular vote.

Other landmark rulings in which Thomas joined the right-wing majority—in most cases writing concurrent decisions staking out the most extreme right positions—include Citizens United v. FEC (2010), lifting virtually all restrictions on corporate donations to election campaigns; Shelby County v. Holder (2013), gutting the enforcement provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and last year’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, rescinding the constitutional right to an abortion.

He is implicated in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election through the activities of his wife Ginni, a longtime far-right Republican activist who worked with Trump lawyers and aides in attempting to overturn pro-Biden slates of electors in swing states won by the Democratic candidate but controlled by Republican lawmakers. Clarence Thomas has refused to recuse himself from Supreme Court cases stemming from the attempted coup in which his wife played a major role.

Since the initial revelations, ProPublica has published articles exposing the fact that Thomas has had direct financial dealings with Crow, having sold the house in Georgia where his mother lived (and evidently continues to live rent-free) to the billionaire fascist for over $130,000. Thomas failed to report the transaction in his financial disclosure filings.

On May 4, ProPublicapublished a new article documenting the fact that Crow paid the tuition for Thomas’ grandnephew to attend a private military academy for one year and a private boarding school for a second year, at an estimated total cost of $150,000 or more. It also reported that some 15 years ago, Crow donated much of the budget of a political group founded by Thaomas’ wife, which paid her a salary of $120,000. None of this was reported by Justice Thomas.

Even more damning was an investigative report published May 4 by the Washington Post revealing that Leonard Leo, the former head of the Federalist Society and leading figure in shifting the courts to the far-right, arranged for Ginni Thomas to be secretly paid tens of thousands of dollars by Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway in January 2012.

The Post wrote:

Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course…”

Leo instructed Conway to bill the Judicial Education Project for the extra $25,000 channeled secretly to Ginni Thomas’ firm, Liberty Consulting.

The Post further reported:

In all, according to the documents, [Conway’s] the Polling Company paid Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, and it expected to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012.

It noted that in December 2012, the Judicial Education Project submitted an amicus brief in Shelby County v. Holder, arguing in favor of striking down the provision in the Voting Rights Act requiring states with a history of segregation and denial of voting rights to blacks to obtain federal clearance before changing their voting rules. Thomas, who ruled with the 5–4 majority against the enforcement provision, helped pave the way for a series of laws requiring voter IDs and other barriers targeting poor and working class people and youth.

A cropped image of a painting that hangs at billionaire Harlan Crow's private Topridge resort, featuring him sitting next to Clarence Thomas. Across from Thomas and Crow, are lawyers Peter Rutledge, Mark Paoletta and billionaire Leonard Leo. (center) [Photo: Sharif Tarabay via ProPublica]

But the prevalence of corrupt and often unreported gifts, free trips, lucrative speaking fees and financial dealings with rich and well-connected people and institutions is by no means limited to Thomas, or to Republicans on the court. Revelations that have emerged over the past several weeks include:

• Shortly after being elevated to the high court in 2017, Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first appointee, sold property to the chief executive of a major law firm that often has business before the court and did not disclose the identity of the buyer.

• Jane Roberts, the wife of Chief Justice John Roberts, took in $10.3 million in commissions from elite law firms for placing expensive lawyers with them between 2007 and 2014. At least one of the firms argued a case before the chief justice after paying his wife hundreds of thousands of dollars. This information was revealed by a whistleblower, not Chief Justice Roberts.

• According to the Center for Responsive Politics, retired Justice Stephen Breyer, a Democrat, took at least 225 subsidized trips from 2004 to 2018, including trips to Europe, Japan, India and Hawaii. One was a trip to Nantucket paid for by David Rubenstein, a private equity mogul. Some of the trips were supported by the Pritzker family, which Forbes magazine ranks among the 10 richest families in the US. It includes the Democratic governor of Illinois, J. B. Pritzker.

• The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg got a private tour of Israel in 2018 that was paid for by an Israeli billionaire, Morris Kahn, who has had business before the court.

In an April 30 article on the rising influence of George Mason University’s right-wing Scalia Law School, named after the arch-reactionary justice who died while on an all-expense-paid hunting trip in 2016, the New York Times noted:

Other law schools have hosted justices on expenses-paid trips abroad. New York University, for example, sent Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor to a conference in Portugal in 2019, though they did not receive teaching salaries. In 2016, Tulane paid Justice Alito to teach in Berlin and Paris, according to his disclosure from that year, and covered his expenses. Notre Dame, which counts Justice Amy Coney Barrett as a longtime faculty member, has recently been vying for the court’s attention, sending Justice Alito to Rome and Justice Kavanaugh to London.

It cited a coordinator at Scalia Law School who wrote in connection with a course to be taught by Justice (Neil M.) Gorsuch in Italy: “While our guests are with us, I expect them (from experience in Padua) to want to eat, drink and be merry with us (especially with NMG).”

In fact, the broad outlines of the nexus between corporate cash, political influence and the federal judiciary have long been common knowledge within ruling class and corporate media circles. It has simply been concealed from the general public.

Now, under conditions of an unpopular war in Europe, a general breakdown of the political system to the point of an attempted coup by the former president, financial crisis, soaring inflation and a growing rebellion by the working class in the US and internationally, sections of the ruling class are reacting with nervousness to the discrediting of the Supreme Court.

The New York Times recently bemoaned the fact that public confidence in the institution upheld as the epitome of “the rule of law” has hit a record low of 25 percent, according to polls. It is competing with the presidency and Congress in the speed with which it is discredited in the eyes of the population.

But the Biden administration and the Democratic Party have no appetite for demanding the resignation or impeachment of Thomas. They fear weakening Republican support for the US-led proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, the central concern of the Biden administration, as well as the risk of lifting the lid on the corrupt practices of “liberal” as well as right-wing justices.

When the first ProPublica articles on Thomas were published in early April, the Democratic Socialists of America’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced that she would put forward a resolution for Thomas’ impeachment. But having been otherwise instructed in no uncertain terms by her superiors, she has quietly shelved that demand, instead merely tweeting that Thomas should resign.

Dick Durbin, the Senate majority whip and chair of the Judiciary Committee, politely requested that Chief Justice Roberts attend a hearing held May 2 to discuss a new ethics code. He and other Democrats have made clear their overriding concern is not rooting out corruption or ending the role of lavishly funded think tanks and lobby groups in stacking the courts with reactionaries, but somehow refurbishing the image of the court.

Roberts sent a perfunctory letter to the committee turning down its invitation, citing the “independence” of the court and the separation of powers. He attached a document on the court’s guidelines for policing itself and dismissed any tightening of rules and procedures as unnecessary. That document was cosigned by all nine justices.

World Health Organization falsely declares end of COVID-19 public health emergency

Benjamin Mateus & Evan Blake

On Friday, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the formal ending of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) first declared on January 30, 2020.

This decision has no scientific basis but rather serves to provide ex post facto justification for all capitalist governments’ scrapping of anti-COVID public health measures since the emergence of the Omicron variant in November 2021.

By any objective standard, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to meet the WHO’s definition of a PHEIC: “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response.”

The WHO announcement was clearly influenced by the United States, which as the world’s dominant imperialist power largely controls the WHO’s parent organization, the United Nations. It came less than a week before the Biden administration formally ends the national COVID-19 public health emergency on May 11, putting an end to all official response to the pandemic in the US. The WHO announcement grants legitimacy to this reactionary and unscientific policy shift.

It also follows the catastrophic lifting of the Zero-COVID elimination policy in China, which produced a horrific wave of mass infection and death, killing over 1 million people in just three months. Every country in the world has now lifted all anti-COVID mitigation measures, and the coronavirus spreads freely, evolving into new variants at an accelerating pace.

The WHO’s ending of the PHEIC represents a complete and total abrogation of all modern public health policy, which has centered on preventing and stopping outbreaks of deadly pathogens and fighting for the elimination and eradication of communicable diseases.

The same organization, which at the start of the pandemic denounced the “alarming levels of inaction” and the “moral decay” of governments that allowed COVID-19 to spread unchecked, is now the most influential advocate of the criminal policy of “herd immunity” or “forever COVID” embraced by every capitalist government.

To justify their ending of the PHEIC, the WHO claims that official COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths are on the decline. But official figures are well-known to be vast undercounts due to the global dismantling of COVID-19 testing and data reporting systems. WHO officials themselves, including Ghebreyesus, have repeatedly highlighted this contradiction over the past year but now choose to ignore it.

The only way to estimate the real state of the pandemic is through monitoring viral levels in wastewater and excess deaths above pre-pandemic levels. Both figures show that COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc globally.

Estimate of global daily excess deaths over the past year [Photo by Our World In Data (using data from The Economist) / CC BY 4.0]

At present, there remain more than 12,000 global excess deaths attributable to the pandemic each day, according to Our World in Data and The Economist. This amounts to more than 1 million people killed every three months, clearly an “extraordinary” level of preventable death which requires “a coordinated international response.”

This daily death toll has spiked considerably since March, as the highly immune-evasive and infectious Omicron XBB.1.16 “Arcturus” subvariant became dominant in India and is now spreading globally. This is only the latest in a continuous string of new variants, which “constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease.”

Furthermore, a recent comprehensive study conservatively estimated that more than 65 million people are suffering from Long COVID globally. Each new wave of infections only deepens this historically unprecedented post-viral health crisis, which in itself constitutes “an extraordinary event” that “requires a coordinated international response.”

In recent weeks, numerous scientists have warned of the ongoing dangers of viral evolution, which will continue to undermine existing vaccines and treatments. In fact, on the same day that the PHEIC was revoked, the Washington Post published an article noting that the White House was recently briefed by experts who estimate that “there’s a roughly 20 percent chance during the next two years of an outbreak rivaling the onslaught of illness inflicted by the omicron variant.” It added that “one widely regarded scientist pegged the risk at a more alarming level, suggesting a 40 percent chance of an omicron-like wave.”

Contradicting Friday’s announcement, just last week Ghebreyesus himself acknowledged the immense global toll of Long COVID and the dangers of viral evolution, stating, “An estimated 1 in 10 infections results in post-COVID-19 condition [Long COVID], suggesting that hundreds of millions of people will need long-term care. And, as the emergence of the new XBB.1.16 variant illustrates, the virus is still changing, and is capable of causing new waves of disease and death.”

According to the statement issued by the WHO, the International Health Regulations (IHR) Emergency Committee advised Ghebreyesus that “it is time to transition to long-term management of the COVID-19 pandemic.” The “transition to long-term management” is simply a rephrasing of the propaganda slogan issued endlessly by capitalist politicians and media pundits that society must “learn to live with the virus.” It is, in effect, a declaration that the pandemic will be perpetual, that it will continue to infect, kill and maim without end.

Principled scientists and anti-COVID advocates responded to the WHO announcement with a combination of dismay and anger that the international health agency would succumb to political pressure.

Dr. Elisa Perego, a Long COVID patient and advocate, tweeted, “We’re being forced to ‘live with’ a SARS virus which has killed an estimated 15+ millions and affected the health of hundreds of millions. This is a deranged, calamitous policy that will affect global health for generations. The architects of this deserve to go down in history.”

This is only the latest in a continuous series of debacles and crimes for which the world’s leading public health institutions are culpable. For the first two years of the pandemic, until late December 2021, the WHO continuously denied that COVID-19 is an airborne pathogen that spreads primarily through aerosols produced by speaking, shouting or even just breathing, which linger in the air and can infect anyone who then breathes them in.

Illustration of droplets and aerosols released during talking; these may carry viruses if the person is infected. The large droplets fall rapidly to the ground in close proximity. The small aerosols are much more concentrated in close proximity, and they can remain floating in the air and spread throughout the room, leading to (reduced) exposure at a distance. Adapted from Tang et al. [Photo by Dr. Jose-Luis Jimenez]

The aerosolized spread of COVID-19 was evident and explained by principled scientists at the very beginning of the pandemic, whom the WHO repeatedly ignored. As a result, the majority of the world’s population remains ignorant of this most basic science of the pandemic and the importance of using high quality masks and air filters.

Through its latest actions, the WHO is inflicting untold suffering on future generations. The long-term population-level consequences of continuous, repeated infections with COVID-19 will be immense. One must ask, what will happen to children today and future generations who can anticipate infections with multiple variants of COVID-19, once or twice a year, for the next 10 years or more?

In the most conservative estimates, upwards of 80,000 people will die of COVID-19 each year in the US alone under this scheme. Most likely, this figure will be closer to a quarter million, based on a critical modeling analysis conducted by Fractal Therapeutics under a similar scenario of ending the public health emergency. Extrapolated globally, upwards of 5 million people could needlessly die of COVID-19 each year for the foreseeable future.

The development of the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the sclerotic and reactionary character of all capitalist institutions, including the WHO. Established in the aftermath of the imperialist maelstrom of World War II, which killed over 70 million people, the WHO and UN function as arms of the archaic nation-state system and initially attempted to stabilize the inherent contradictions of capitalist production.

The historic trajectory of the WHO parallels that of world capitalism as a whole, which over the past half century has become increasingly characterized by ever-rising social inequality, unending imperialist war orchestrated by the US, the resurgence of fascism and anti-democratic tendencies, and escalating attacks on all the social rights of the working class, including the right to health and longevity.

Migrants caught between troop deployments along Chile-Peru border

Andrea Lobo

Hundreds of troops have been deployed along both sides of the Chilean-Peruvian border to harass migrant families trapped in one of the driest and most inhospitable places on Earth. The migrant crisis led to clashes between migrants and Peruvian anti-riot police over the weekend.

The migrants are mostly Venezuelans trying to enter Peru and return to Venezuela, escaping the rising cost of living in Chile and a wave of anti-immigrant propaganda and policies promoted by the pseudo-left government of President Gabriel Boric. Numerous migrants, including Venezuelans and Peruvians, are also stuck in Tacna on the Peruvian side, trying to return to their jobs and families in Chile.

Hundreds of Peruvian soldiers kneeling at the border with Chile in Tacna, April 28, 2023. [Photo: @EjercitoPeru]

Since 2013, in one of the largest migrations in modern history, over 7 million Venezuelans left the country amid an economic crisis greatly exacerbated by US sanctions. The migrants trapped in Arica, on the Chilean side, also include workers from Haiti, Colombia, Ecuador and other countries.

In late February, Boric bowed to pressures from Chile’s fascistic right and the media demanding the deployment of troops against migrants in the north and declared a 90-day state of emergency along the country’s borders with Peru and Bolivia. He also approved the pretrial detention of all undocumented migrants who were arrested, while the emboldened Chilean Congress is now discussing a bill that would turn irregular migration into a felony, with jail terms of up to 541 days.

Migrants are also facing a xenophobic crusade led by the Dina Boluarte regime in Peru, which came to power in a US-backed coup last December. On April 26, Boluarte decreed a state of emergency in all of Peru’s border regions and deployed the military to prevent migrants from entering, declaring it a matter of “national defense.”

“Those carrying out assaults, robberies and other criminal acts are foreigners,” she ranted during the announcement. Her regime is also expanding police deployments in the capital, Lima, and plans to change the Constitution to make military patrols along the borders permanent. A bill was also introduced in Congress that includes 10-year prison sentences for undocumented immigrants.

The migrant crisis is reigniting nationalist tensions along the contested border. The Chilean Foreign Ministry felt compelled to declare that there is an “open dialogue” with Peru to avoid a conflict. Only highlighting the danger, Chilean Senator José Miguel Insulza, who belongs to the ruling coalition, declared that “this is not a military conflict.”

Hours after these “reassurances” last week, the Chilean Foreign Ministry summoned the Peruvian ambassador to issue a “diplomatic protest” after the mayor of the Peruvian border city Tacna, Pascual Güisa, a right-wing former cop, attacked Boric on CNN as “an unspeakable and irresponsible person.”

Peruvian Prime Minister Alberto Otárola only added to the tensions later that day by saying: “What we are asking President Boric and the other presidents is that they solve their problems and don’t dump them in our country.”

UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric called upon the Chilean and Peruvian governments to resolve the crisis through dialogue. She said that some migrants “have been stranded for three months, in many cases without food, water, shelter or medical care.” Exacerbating an already perilous journey, these migrant families are largely living in tent camps along the border, exposed to the harsh heat during the day and freezing cold during the night.

The show of military force ostensibly against groups of unarmed families without enough money to bribe the police—reportedly the Peruvian police are demanding $100 per person— clearly has nothing to do with the migrants themselves but derives from the irresolvable crises faced by both regimes.

The main export of both countries is copper, and their main trading partner is China, while both are betting heavily on finding and exploiting lithium deposits. Control over these and other minerals—key for modern technology and peppered across this entire region— has become a geopolitical imperative. Meanwhile, US imperialism is increasing its pressure on Latin America, which it considers its backyard, in an attempt to counter China’s rising economic influence.

Rising US-China tensions, the war in Ukraine, the continuing pandemic, the reshuffling of supply chains for geopolitical and technological reasons and the effects of climate change paired with El Niño this year are all existential threats that expose the reactionary role of national borders.

As they have done for 50 years, the oligarchs in both countries are hammering on the same nail of privatizations, social cuts and deregulation to compete for foreign investments and loans while they point their fingers at and provoke tensions with their old national rivals.

The Chilean-Peruvian border was the scene of the “War of the Pacific,” fought in large measure over control of massive deposits of guano, or bird excrement, then highly valued as a fertilizer and for its use in the making of gunpowder. Chile won and took Arica and Tarapacá from Peru as well as Bolivia’s exit to the sea, along with the Atacama Desert.

While the direct involvement of Britain, the main colonial power at the time, is debated, British companies were heavily financing both governments with credits and had major stakes in the minerals. Meanwhile, the rising power of the United States has sought to stoke tensions and animosity against the British, with the Secretary of State James G. Blaine promoting the one-sided narrative during the war that Chile was merely acting as an “instrument” for “English capital.”

Today, the conflicts between the US, the European powers, China and regional powers like Brazil are undoubtedly helping to fan the nationalist flames in what is already a new capitalist re-division of the globe.

There is no progressive justification for the existence of these separate nation-states. After the South American wars of independence against Spain (1810-1826), the local criollo landowning elites scuttled all attempts at forming regional federations, including wars against attempted confederations, in order to establish their own ties to European trade and credits.

Bolivia, formerly Alto Perú, and Chile were established to undermine the power of the leading post-colonial aristocracy in Peru. The rabid competition between these elites was illustrated by the fact that Bolivia shrank to about 40 percent of its original size from wars and pressures. Meanwhile, Diego Portales, one of Chile’s “founding fathers” who led the war against the Peru-Bolivian Confederation, insisted on maintaining a “dominant presence” along the Pacific chiefly to subordinate Peru.

Such petty and reactionary calculations — today founded upon selling minerals or managing cheap labor for transnational corporations—are still the basis for all nationalism in the region and are completely at odds with the interests of the Latin American working class.

The attacks against migrants and the border tensions today serve essentially four political needs of the capitalist ruling elites, as Boric and Boluarte follow similar right-wing agendas:

Firstly, national chauvinism aims at pitting workers against their most powerful allies, their class brothers and sisters who come from or live in other countries. Having formed connections with various countries and cultures, migrant workers and their families are a critical contingent for the indispensable coordination of all future struggles across borders.

The national isolation of the recent mass struggles in Chile and Peru against social inequality and militarized repression—an isolation enforced by workers’ real enemies among the nationalist union bureaucrats, politicians and their pseudo-left apologists — was the main cause for their failure to win any improvements for workers.

Secondly, migrants and neighboring countries are being scapegoated to divert responsibility for the deepening social crisis away from the corrupt and dependent ruling elites at home.

Thirdly, these attacks serve to mobilize a political constituency among fascistic and politically disoriented sections of the middle class and within the state apparatus itself. Boric, whose approval rating fell below 30 percent, and Boluarte with 15 percent approval are both deeply hated and find it necessary to rely on such reactionary social layers for their ongoing attacks against the working class.

And lastly, the xenophobia serves to justify autocratic rule in the form of states of emergency that have suspended democratic rights and seen troop deployments since at least 2019, when they were used against a massive wave of strikes and demonstrations in Chile, as well as against roadblocks mounted by indigenous communities against mining transnationals in Peru.

While letting the virus run rampant, the COVID-19 pandemic was used as a cover to rule by decree and maintain threatening deployments of police and soldiers. Then, quickly dispensing with any democratic pretensions, the pseudo-left presidents Pedro Castillo in Peru and Gabriel Boric in Chile responded to renewed protests and strikes against the rising cost of living last year by deploying soldiers and riot police, with Castillo declaring a state of emergency in the capital Lima. Boric also continued an ongoing state of emergency and troop deployment to terrorize indigenous communities that have seized lands in southern Chile.

After Castillo was overthrown in a parliamentary coup backed by the United States last December, the Boluarte regime employed states of emergency to crush the nationwide protests against the coup. The state of emergency in the Puno region next to the Bolivian border had not ended before it was renewed by Boluarte last week.

Only a few weeks before confronting migrants on the border, the same troops and police had used live ammunition to massacre young workers and peasants protesting the coup.

It is worth recalling that, while seeking to pit workers against each other, the ruling elites have long collaborated in suppressing the workers movement. In 1978, Peru joined the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and other South America regimes in Operation Condor, which at the time was being run out of the American military base in Panama. The security forces in all countries collaborated closely to kidnap and kill left-wing workers, youth and intellectuals.

In the most infamous episode involving Peru, the government collaborated with Argentina’s Battalion 601 death squad in June 1980 in capturing and torturing a group of Montoneros at a Peruvian military base. A “601” member explained to the US Embassy in Buenos Aires, “Once in Argentina they will be interrogated and then permanently disappeared.” The story leaked to the media, which led to a change of plans. The body of one of the abductees, Noemi Gianotti de Molfi—a founder of the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo”— was found in an apartment in Madrid, while the other bodies were never found.

Ideological opponents of the Ukrainian government are waiting for prison or death

Maxim Goldarb

Ukraine has long been proclaimed the freest country in the post-Soviet space. In the pro-NATO media, the country is even portrayed as a bulwark of democracy. But this is a lie. The right-wing oligarchic regime that came to power in the Western-backed coup in February 2014 has severely persecuted its opponents, using terrorist methods.

The most tragic example of not just persecution, but murder by the ruling regime in Kiev of its ideological opponents took place in Odessa on May 2, 2014, when far-right nationalists, with the full connivance of and open assistance from the authorities, blocked anti-fascist activists in the building of the House of Trade Unions and set fire to the building. To escape the burning building, many jumped out of windows to their death. Even on the ground, some of those who had survived were then murdered by neo-Nazis. In total, more than 40 people died, among whom were Vadim Papura, a member of the Komsomol (Communist youth union), as well as Andrei Brazhevsky, a member of the left-wing Borotba organization.

The Trade Union house in Odessa after the fire and massacre in 2014. [Photo by Lsimon / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0]

For this crime, no one was ever punished, even though those responsible were recorded in many photos and videos. One of the organizers of this massacre subsequently became the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, another one became a member of parliament on the lists of the party of former President Petro Poroshenko.

In the same way, the killers of a number of well-known opposition politicians and journalists who have died since 2014 have not been punished. This includes the ex-deputy of the Socialist Party of Ukraine, Valentina Semenyuk-Samsonenko (her murder on August 27, 2014 was disguised as suicide); the ex-deputy and organizer of opposition actions Oleg Kalashnikov (he was killed on April 15, 2015); the popular writer and anti-fascist publicist Oles Buzina (killed on April 16, 2015), and many others.

The Communist Party of Ukraine, one of the largest parties in the country, was banned in 2015.

In addition, opposition-minded politicians, journalists and activists, many of whom are left-leaning, have been beaten, arrested and imprisoned in recent years on trumped-up charges of “high treason” and other overtly political charges. This happened, in particular, with journalists Vasily Muravitsky, Dmitry Vasilets and Pavel Volkov, as well as human rights activist Ruslan Kotsaba and others. It is telling that even in the courts, which are under heavy pressure from the authorities, the accusations of “high treason” as a rule fell apart and turned out to be completely untenable.

The situation has become more and more aggravated with each passing year, especially after Volodymyr Zelensky became the president of Ukraine. The formal reason for the complete elimination of the remnants of civil liberties and the start of open political repression was the military conflict in Ukraine that began in February 2022.

All opposition parties in Ukraine, most of which are left-wing parties, including the Union of Left Forces (For New Socialism) party, which I lead, were banned on fabricated, carbon-copy accusations of being “pro-Russian.”

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has also detained a number of opinion leaders and journalists who spoke to the media before the war, criticizing the government. All of them were accused of promoting a pro-Russian position, high treason, espionage, propaganda, etc.

• In February-March 2022, a number of well-known bloggers and journalists were detained on charges of high treason and placed in pre-trial detention centers (SIZOs). Among them were Dmitry Dzhangirov (a supporter of leftist views, who worked with our party), Yan Taksyur (a supporter of leftist views), Dmitry Marunich, Mikhail Pogrebinsky, Yuri Tkachev, and others. The reason for their detention was not ephemeral treason at all, but the authorities’ fear of their public political position, which did not coincide with the official line of the government.
• In March 2022, the historian Alexander Karevin, known for his political activities, disappeared without a trace after SBU officers visited his house. Karevin has repeatedly sharply criticized the actions of the Ukrainian authorities in the field of the humanities, language policy and the politics of historical memory.
• In March 2022 in Kiev, Olena Berezhnaya, a lawyer and human rights activist, well known for her anti-fascist positions, was detained and placed in a pre-trial detention center under suspicion under Article 111 of the Criminal Code, i.e., for treason. Just a few months prior, in December 2021, she had spoken at the UN Security Council about the lawlessness in Ukraine.
• On March 3, 2022, the SBU detained the left-wing activists and anti-fascist brothers Alexander and Mikhail Kononovich in Kiev on charges of violating Article 109 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (“actions aimed at forcibly changing the constitutional order or seizing state power”). They were placed in a pre-trial detention center until the end of 2022, where they were beaten and tortured, and denied timely medical assistance.
• In May 2022, in Dnipro, the SBU detained the brother of the former presidential candidate Oleg Tsarev, citizen of Ukraine Mikhail Tsarev, on charges of “destabilizing the socio-political situation in the region.” As a result, in December 2022, he was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison on charges of terrorism.
• On March 7, 2022, six activists of the opposition organization Patriots for Life disappeared without a trace in Severodonetsk. In May 2022, one of the leaders of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, Maxim Zhorin, posted a photo of their dead bodies on the Internet, claiming that they “were executed,” and that their murder was connected to their political views and carried out by paramilitary structures.
• On January 12, 2023, Sergei Titov, a resident of Belaya Tserkov, a half-blind and disabled person with a mental illness, was detained and placed in a pre-trial detention center. He was declared a 'saboteur.' On March 2, 2023, it was reported that he had died in the pre-trial detention center.
• In February 2023, Dmitry Skvortsov, an Orthodox publicist and blogger, was detained in a monastery near Kiev and placed in a pre-trial detention center.
• Since November 2022, Dmitry Shymko from Khmelnytsky has been in the dungeons for his political beliefs.
• Hundreds of ordinary people have already been prosecuted in today's Ukraine for distributing political content on the Internet that the authorities considered prohibited.

The authorities have taken under tight control the information space of Ukraine, including the Internet. Any personal publication of citizens about mistakes at the front, about corruption among the authorities and the military, and about the lies of officials are declared to be crimes. Such individuals, as well as bloggers and administrators of TG channels, are subject to harassment by the police and the Security Service.

By the spring of this year, according to the SBU, 26 telegram channels were blocked — channels on which people had informed each other about the locations where military summons were being handed out. Searches were carried out at six public administrator offices and suspicions were handed over to them. Thus, public pages were blocked in the Ivano-Frankivsk, Cherkasy, Vinnitsa, Chernivtsi, Kiev, Lviv and Odessa regions. These pages had more than 400,000 subscribers. The public administrators of these channels face 10 years in prison.

In March 2022, Article 436-2 (“Justification, recognition as lawful, denial of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, glorification of its participants”) was introduced into the Criminal Code of Ukraine. In reality, it is directed against any citizens of Ukraine who have views that differ from the official government line.

This new law is formulated in such a way that, in essence, it provides for punishment for “thought crimes” — words or phrases spoken not only publicly, but also in a private conversation, written in a private messenger or SMS message, or said over the phone. In fact, we are talking about an invasion of the privacy of citizens and of their thoughts. This, in fact, has been confirmed by the practice of law enforcement — conviction for likes, private phone calls, and so on. For simple conversations on the street and likes on the Internet under posts, as of March 2023 there have been 380 sentences, based on court records, including those sentenced to prison.

Thus, in June 2022, in Dnipro, a resident of Mariupol was sentenced to five years in prison, with a trial period of two years. In March 2022, the individual had claimed that shelling of the civilian population and civilian infrastructure in Mariupol was carried out by servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Another sentence, based on a telephone conversation in March 2023, was handed down against a resident of Odessa. That person was sentenced to two years on probation for “unpatriotic and anti-state” conversations on a mobile phone.

A resident of the village of Maly Bobrik in the Sumy region was convicted under Part 1 of Art. 436-2 of the Criminal Code in June 2022 and sentenced to a term of six months in prison because she had, in April 2022, near her yard and in the presence of three persons, expressed approval of the actions of the Russian authorities in relation to Ukraine, and later refused to admit her guilt.

At least 25 Ukrainians have been convicted of “anti-Ukrainian activities” on social media. Nineteen people were found by law enforcement officers in Odnoklassniki and held in the country. According to the investigation, these residents of Ukraine distributed “Z” symbols and Russian flags on their pages and called the invasion “liberation.”

Sentences were also handed down against those who did not distribute such publications, but only “liked” them (i.e., expressed a form of approval on social media). The texts of at least two sentences say that the so-called “likes” had the goal of “bringing the idea to a wide range of people of changing the borders of the territory of Ukraine,” and “justifying the armed aggression of the Russian Federation.” The investigators justified the prosecutions on the grounds that personal pages have open access, and liked publications can be seen by many people.

For instance, in May 2022, in Uman, a pensioner was sentenced to two years in prison with a probationary period of a year for “rejection of the current Ukrainian authorities... on the Odnoklassniki Internet network,” having put down “likes... to a number of publications that justify the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.”

A woman looks as Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) agents enter a building during an operation to arrest suspected Russian "collaborators" in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 14, 2022. [AP Photo/Felipe Dana]

In Kremenchug in May 2022, a citizen of Ukraine was convicted under article 436-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Using a pseudonym, this individual had spoken on the social media platform Odnoklassniki about the Nazis in Ukraine and the development of biological weapons funded by the Pentagon.

The repressive actions carried out by the current government to fight against those who disagree with it have turned Ukraine into the most repressive state in Europe, a state where any person who dares to oppose the authorities, the oligarchy, nationalism and neo-Nazism risks freedom and often even their life.

Sri Lanka’s public health services face breakdown

Tisara Senanayake & Kamal Mahagama

Sri Lankan public health services are facing a catastrophic breakdown caused by shortages of doctors and other employees, essential medicines, equipment and basic facilities. Doctors and health workers confront severe difficulties treating patients, with ward closures, surgery postponements and a lack of basic pharmaceuticals.

Part of health workers protest march in Colombo on July 7, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

Increasing numbers of doctors are also leaving Sri Lanka in response to higher Pay as You Earn (PAYE) tax rates and skyrocketing inflation, exacerbated by brutal International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity measures being imposed by President Ranil Wickremesinghe and his government.

A senior Health Department officer told the World Socialist Web Site that 1,000 of Sri Lanka’s 3,700 medical specialists had recently left the country. Applications to leave were increasing on a daily basis. In a brutal move to slash jobs and reduce government expenditure, the Wickremesinghe government has lowered the retirement age of state employees, including doctors, from 65 years to 60. Sri Lankan doctors currently receiving overseas training are fearful of returning home because of the country’s worsening economic crisis.

Emergency treatment and surgery procedures have stopped at the Embilipitiya District Hospital in the country’s south because the facility does not have any anesthetists. Both of the hospital’s anesthetists left and are now working overseas, and one doctor has gone abroad for further education. On April 16, the district hospital’s director appealed to other major hospitals in the south to accept patients from the Embilipitiya facility.

Last March, the professorial pediatric ward at the Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital was closed because four pediatricians resigned and left Sri Lanka. This has meant that medical students from Rajarata University cannot have any clinical training in this section of the hospital.

The surgery unit at Mullaitivu Hospital in the Northern Province has closed because it has no surgeon and there is only one specialist doctor available for its pediatric ward, seriously hampering the diagnosis and treatment of children.

At the Kandy General Hospital, 10 medical specialists and 21 senior doctors have left the country to work overseas since 2022, while emergency doctors, neurologists and endocrinologists from the Sirima Bandaranaike Children’s Hospital in Peradeniya have also migrated.

On February 13, Asia News reported that Sri Lanka, which imports 80 percent of all its pharmaceuticals, had no reserves of 160 essential medicines out of the 300 required, and existing supplies were only sufficient for two or three months.

These shortages are delaying surgeries and blowing out already existing waiting lists, with thousands of patients having to wait for months, and in some cases years. This is leading to further health complications and premature death.

The Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) has revealed that there are shortages of pharmaceuticals to stop bleeding after birth, as well as a lack of anesthetics, antibiotics and even insulin and paracetamol.

Both of the CT scan machines at the Karapitiya Teaching Hospital in Galle are not working and need to be repaired. One of them stopped working a year ago and the other has not been functioning since April. One hospital worker told the media that patients have to pay for emergency scans, which are being done at private hospitals. Patients are also being forced to have other medical tests conducted in the private sector due to a lack of equipment in the public system.

The escalating breakdown of public health services is placing extreme pressure on doctors and health workers. As one Kandy hospital nurse explained: 

“Before the coronavirus pandemic, we carried out stent treatment to avoid the blockage of heart blood cells on only five patients a day. Now we have to do it for more than 20 patients. This may be because of an increase of heart diseases as an aftereffect of coronavirus infections, but we lack suitable stent equipment. This means that patients are compelled to buy this sort of equipment at very high prices from outside sources.

“There are about twenty nurses working at our unit. Six of them are undergoing physiotherapy because of their unbearable workloads. When we come home after work, we feel half-dead, and now even our salaries have been subject to tax, but we have no one to complain to about any of this. I am fed up with all of the trade unions,” she said.

A health worker from the hospital’s surgery unit said there was a severe lack of heart valves for patients, who were needlessly dying because they could not buy the devices from outside sources.

A doctor from the Peradeniya Hospital’s psychiatric clinic explained that health employees and the families of patients confronted extremely difficult conditions because of pharmaceutical shortages, and that many patients were being repeatedly hospitalised. “These psychiatric patients cannot afford to pay the high prices of these medicines,” he added.

A Kandy Hospital administrative worker said the facility was having to buy medicines from private pharmacies. “While the hospital is paying millions of rupees to buy medicines from these private pharmacies, it also has to buy diesel and petrol for its trucks and ambulances. This means the hospital has to try and find money from canteen rents and selling cardboard boxes,” he said.

Drastic falls in the numbers of doctors and health workers have led to huge workloads for the remaining workforce, who are already severely burdened with higher taxes, inflation and cuts in allowances and overtime.  

Kandy hospital workers protest against the Rajapakse government on 28 April 2022. The placard calls for the formation of workers' action committees. [Photo: WSWS]

The Sri Lankan public health system was once hailed as a “model” compared to other South Asian countries, but it has been in serious decline, even before the current unprecedented economic crisis, with only an average 1.5 percent of GDP allocated for health spending. “Open market economic reform” and private investment in the health industry saw the mushrooming of privately-owned hospitals and other health institutions.

The escalating crisis of Sri Lanka’s public health sector is occurring as hyperinflation, unemployment and poverty are escalating across the country. According to the World Food Program’s latest survey, 32 percent of Sri Lankan households are food insecure and face serious hunger. Poverty has risen from 13.1 percent of the population in 2019 to 25.6 percent in 2022. This means millions lack adequate nutritional food, which in turn worsens overall public health.

Health sector trade union officials issue statements about the breakdown of the public system, but instead of mobilising workers to fight this brutal social assault, they appeal to the very government which is responsible.  

On March 3, Health Professionals Association President Ravi Kumudesh openly declared: “Every health worker is unanimously calling (for strike action) but we have suppressed these people saying that we cannot do it this time.”

Three weeks later, on March 24, the Professionals Trade Union Front, which includes the GMOA, held discussions with the IMF, in which they politely asked for a “concession” on PAYE taxes, but did not oppose any of the other harsh social attacks being unleashed against the population.

In fact, Saman Ratnapriya, president of the Government Nursing Officers Association, has become an open advocate for IMF austerity. He declared in a press briefing in February 28: “Strikes lead to destabilisation of the country and generate unrest. Such a country will not be granted [IMF] loans.”

As the world economic crisis deepen, every government is unleashing major attacks on public health, education and other vital social services. This has produced an eruption of strikes and protests by health workers and other sections of the working class who have come forward to defend their jobs, wages and the health services.

Preparing for War: the Global Military Budget

Binoy Kampmark

Photo by Scott Rodgerson

$2.24 trillion in US dollars is a mighty amount. It’s also a sickening figure when considering the object of this exercise.  The flickering tease of war, the promise of bloodshed and an increasingly large butcher’s bill, are inevitable suggestions from such a figure.  The scenes are also clear: well-paid suits dazed by theories of the next war; policy wonks jabbering over mock war games.  A huge amount of money is being pushed into the venture, and the sceptics are being held at bay.

Much of this news comes from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s latest findings that countries are spending 2.2% of the world’s gross domestic product on armaments.  Of that amount, the United States, China and Russia accounted for 56% of the total.  Global military spending, the SIPRI report also notes, grew by 19% over 2013-2022, rising every year since 2015.

The amount is slightly more than the previous year, when SIPRI announced that total military expenditure had risen by 0.7% in real terms in 2021 “to reach $2113 billion.”  The largest contributors to the binge on that occasion were the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom and Russia.  In sum, the five countries accounted for 62% of expenditure.

This reads differently from the more optimistic International Monetary Institute’s assessment from 2021: “Worldwide military spending, when estimated on the basis of unweighted country averages, has declined by nearly half, from 3.6 percent GDP during the Cold War period (1970-90) to 1.9 percent of GDP in the years following the global financial crisis.”  When it comes to variations on the figures in this field, best stick with SIPRA.

2022 proved to be a boon for militarists the world over, though there were particular regions that saw more growth than others.  In Europe, levels of spending had reached levels unseen since the Cold War, up from 13% from the previous twelve months.  The reason commonly given: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  In East Asia, the justification is the increasingly hostile US-Chinese rivalry, though those in Washington’s corner are ever pointing the finger to the Yellow Horde’s ambitions in Beijing.

The picture in Europe is an ugly one, with concerns being expressed in certain strategic circles that not enough is being done to move away from dependency on the US imperium.  The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) has even posited that Europe is the victim of US “vassalisation”, notably in light of the Ukraine War.  Visions of strategic autonomy are more distant than ever.

Such sentiments, however, do little to discourage the militarists: whether Europe chooses to throw in its lot with Washington or not, the arms dealers and manufacturers will do a merry jig.  To prove that point, the ECFR advocates the deployment of “western European forces to the east in greater numbers, offering to replace US forces in some cases.”  The only difference here is the burden shared, rather than the amount spent.

In terms of individual countries, Finland’s military expenditure rose by 36% in 2022 to reach $4.8 billion, the largest in the country’s year-on-year increase since 1962.  Polish military expenditure grew by 11%, reaching $16.6 billion over the course in 2022.  The passage of the Homeland Defence Act, designed to reorganise the military and raise defence spending, promises to eventually push the levels to 4% of GDP.  Warsaw has made no secret of the fact that it wishes to have the continent’s largest army, a daft and distinctly draining exercise.

The figures are also significant given the increasingly proxy nature of the Ukraine War’s balance sheet.  Ukraine, for its part, rose from its position at 36 on the league of arms spenders to 11 in 2022, with a figure of $44 billion.  But SIPRI has a modest confession to make: it is unable to furnish us “an accurate assessment of the total amount of financial military aid to Ukraine”.  This is largely because the donor countries have, for the most part, not released disaggregated data.  A rough estimate of $30 billion is provided, which “includes financial contributions, training and operational costs, replacement costs of the military equipment stocks donated to Ukraine and payments to procure additional military equipment for the Ukrainian armed forces.”

Some of this must be factored into the increased budgets of the UK (top European spender at 3.1%), with Germany and France coming in at 2.5% and 2.4% respectively.  Of the three, the UK has given the most military aid to Ukraine, and is second only behind the United States, which allocated $19.9 billion.

As for the US itself, the Biden administration has already mooted the idea that it will increase the number of troops deployed to Europe by 20,000 personnel to 100,000.  The measure is part of the European Deterrence Initiative (EDI), an effort to, according to the US Department of Defense, “enhance the US deterrence posture, increase the readiness and responsiveness of US forces in Europe, support the collective defense and security of NATO allies, and bolster the security and capacity of US allies and partners.”

While China, with a bill of $292 billion, is leant upon as an excuse for increased military expenditure by other powers, the United States remains the undisputed premier spender, making up a staggering 39% of the global total at $877 billion.  Hardly the sort of figure to be sported by a peacemaker.