How Countries Prepare for Population Growth and Decline

John P. Ruehl

Around the world, diverse initiatives are being introduced to manage population changes.

In early 2023, India surpassed China as the most populous country in the world with the latter having 850,000 fewer people by the end of 2022—marking the country’s first population decline since famine struck from 1959 to 1961. While this reduction may seem modest considering China’s 1.4 billion population currently, an ongoing decline is anticipated, with UN projections suggesting that China’s population could dwindle to below 800 million by 2100.

Populations fluctuate through immigration, emigration, deaths, and births. China’s previous one-child policy, enforced from 1980 to 2015, and the resulting gender imbalance slowed its birth rate. The Chinese government is now trying to boost birth rates, including by discouraging abortion.

The Malthusian population growth model, proposed in the 1700s, suggested that populations grow exponentially and outpace resource availability until inevitable checks, such as famine, disease, conflict, or other issues, cause it to drop. During the high global population growth rates of the early 1960s, these concerns abounded. Yet around the world, population growth has slowed dramatically, and in China and many other countries, natural decline is already underway.

A 2020 study published in the Lancet medical journal revealed that based on current population trends, more than 20 countries are on track to halve their populations by 2100. The Pew Research think tank, meanwhile, declared that 90 countries will see their populations decline by 2100, while the Center of Expertise on Population and Migration (CEPAM) predicts the global population will peak at 9.8 billion around 2070 to 2080.

The fear of a shrinking and aging population looms over governments and economists alike. Increased payments toward pension and social welfare systems will strain a reduced labor force, while younger populations also contribute more to economic growth and innovation. Countries may also experience a reduction in their global influence—not least because of a smaller population available for military service.

Various metrics gauge fertility and birth rates, but the total fertility rate (TFR), which measures the number of children a woman will have in her lifetime, is the most common. Yet achieving replacement level fertility rates, typically 2.1 children per woman, has proven challenging.

The decline in global fertility rates can be attributed to societal and cultural shifts, family planning initiatives, wider access to contraception, improved infant mortality rates, increased cost of child-rearing, urbanization, delayed marriages and childbirth due to educational and career pursuits, and social welfare systems reducing reliance on familial support.

A case in point is Japan, whose population peaked at 128 million in 2008 and has since shrunk to below 123 million. It is poised to decrease to 72 million by century’s end, its decline sustained by a low fertility rate, an aging population (almost 30 percent of the population is 65 or older), and limited immigration. Initiatives to slow this decline include changing immigration laws and government-sponsored speed dating.

Remarkably, despite hitting a record low in 2022, Japan’s TFR is now higher than China’s and South Korea’s. Since 2006, South Korea has invested more than $200 billion in establishing public daycare centers, free nurseries, subsidized child care, and other initiatives to boost its TFR. But at 0.78, South Korea’s TFR remains the world’s lowest. South Korea’s government also introduced immigration reforms in the early 21st century, all while leading the world in automation with 1,000 robots per 10,000 employees—more than double of second-ranked Japan.

In Europe, efforts to boost populations have occurred for decades. For instance, Romania criminalized abortion and banned contraception except for certain medical conditions in 1966. Consequently, illegal abortions increased, and Romania had the highest maternal mortality rate in Europe in the 1980s as a result of this. While Romania’s TFR stabilized at 2.3 by the late 1980s, it collapsed in the 1990s, alongside a population exodus through emigration that has been sustained after Romania joined the EU in 2007.

Other Eastern European nations have experienced similar TFR declines and emigration. Contrastingly, Western European countries have managed to grow slightly since 2000, but largely only due to immigration. Even so, countries like Italy have seen population declines, spurring initiatives by the government to offer houses to foreigners for as little as 1 euro in an effort to repopulate small towns.

The U.S. has a lower average age than most European countries and saw a rebound in TFR rates in the 2000s. But this dropped after the recession in 2008 and it has never recovered. And unlike European countries, life expectancy continued to decline after COVID-19. Immigration has mitigated these issues, but as in Europe this has become increasingly political, and the U.S. population growth rate has slowed considerably. While there is no official policy to boost birth rates, the U.S. promotes family planning initiatives abroad. Republican and Democrat administrations have meanwhile oscillated since 1984 between enforcing and rescinding the Mexico City Policy, requiring foreign NGOs to not “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning” in order to receive U.S. government funding for family planning initiatives.

Russia’s TFR faced a rapid decline following the collapse of the Soviet Union, reaching a low of 1.16 in 1999, and causing a population decline. However, government initiatives saw it rebound to 1.8 in 2014 before falling again. The Kremlin announced a desired TFR of 1.7 in 2020, and increased payments for parents of at least two children. To further stabilize its population, Russia has also relied on immigration and taking parts of Ukraine.

Iran’s birth rate policies have fluctuated over the last few decades. During the 1950s, Iran implemented fertility controls but abolished them after the 1979 Islamic revolution. However, they were reintroduced in the late 1980s to release pressure on the economy. Once seen as a “success story,” Iran’s TFR fell faster than anticipated to 1.6 in 2012. That year, the government began attempts to boost the birth rate by limiting access to birth control, abortion, and vasectomies.

Although India now holds the mantle of the world’s most populous country, its TFR is now below replacement level. Nonetheless, its population will continue to grow, fueled by a large, youthful population—a demographic feature increasingly common across the Global South. While India’s population is eventually projected to begin declining by the 2060s, India is currently managing its youthful population through initiatives such as promoting employment opportunities abroad.

The perils of not utilizing a large working population extend beyond unrealized economic potential. Without economic prospects, large youthful populations can generate significant social and political upheaval. Neighboring Pakistan is trying to reduce its population growth to avoid exacerbating strains on resources, infrastructure, education, and health care systems.

Pakistan’s concerns are similar to much of Africa. Aside from Afghanistan, the top 20 countries with the highest TFR are all located in Africa. Nigeria’s population is projected to grow from 213 million currently to 550 million in 2100, while some projections see half of all births in Africa between 2020 and 2100. Even so, family planning programs have helped slow growth in recent years across the continent.

Contrastingly, the experience of countries where campaigns supporting fertility have seen some success (including Germany, the Czech Republic, and Hungary) suggests direct financial incentives, tax breaks, cheap/free child care centers, generous maternity/paternity leave, housing assistance, and more flexible approaches to work-life balance are successful at interrupting decline.

While gender equality has often been cited as a barrier to higher birth rates in the past, this no longer seems to be the case. Highly educated women had the lowest fertility rate in the U.S. in 1980, for example, but this was not true in 2019. Additionally, Mongolia’s TFR declined from 7.3 kids per woman in 1974 to under two by 2005. But Mongolian birth rates then increased to around three children per woman by 2019, despite Mongolian women becoming better educated, increasingly represented in traditionally male-dominated fields, and having access to improved rural maternal health services.

Nonetheless, Mongolia’s recent population boom has resulted in school crowding, pollution, housing problems, and other issues, and points to the need for flexible approaches to population growth, decline, and stabilization.

With a median age in Europe of 44.4 years old and a median age of about 19 in Africa, different parts of the world will require different measures to deal with fluctuating population numbers this century. China is not alone in the perception that it will grow old before it grows rich, and such countries will develop their own methods to deal with aging societies. Seeking the creation of long-term sustainable approaches to population management, which avoid coercion but also provide help for those raising children, should be prioritized.

Floods cause death and destruction across Europe

Alejandro López

Widespread flooding in Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria and Spain has left at least 25 people dead, dozens missing, many more injured and thousands displaced. The floods have destroyed whole bridges, washed away roads, burst dams and drifted cars into the sea.

Floodwaters and mud covers the town of Palamas, after the country's rainstorm record, in Karditsa, Thessaly region, central Greece, Friday, Sept. 8, 2023. Rescue crews in helicopters and boats are plucking people from houses in central Greece inundated by tons of water and mud after severe rainstorms caused widespread flooding. [AP Photo/Vaggelis Kousioras)]

The still unfolding catastrophe is yet another warning about the disastrous consequences of capitalist-induced climate change, coming just weeks after all the above countries suffered wildfires and amid a prolonged drought and record-high temperatures—forest fires continued in Greece this week.

In Greece, the death toll as of writing has risen to six since Storm Daniel hit early this week. Some regions received up to 800mm of rain in recent days—more than normally seen in a whole year. Greek daily Ekathimerini described how the storm had turned “the plain of Thessaly into a large lake.”

To put it in context, meteorologist George Tsatrafyllias said on X, formerly Twitter, that the volume of water that fell just in Pelion, Greece on Tuesday was equal to annual rainfall in London.

Athens saw flooded streets that turned part of a major avenue in the city centre into a river of mud.

In the coastal port city of Volos in Thessaly, a man died in his car and the local hospital was partly flooded. The floods partly destroyed a street, opening up a crater so large it swallowed a bus whole after the vehicle first collapsed on its side.

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Andreas Diakodimitris, owner of a small-plates restaurant in Volos, told The Guardian, “Just as we said that is over, we’ll put it behind us, now this has happened. We had 10 days of breathing in smoke, then the [ammo depot] explosion, the unbearable heat … It’s a given that this will keep happening, as long as people don’t respect the environment.”

In the space of two days, between September 5 and 6, the Greek Fire Service received 4,870 calls for assistance which included rescues, evacuations, pumping flooded homes and clearing fallen trees. In some cases, rescue efforts have been hampered by collapsed bridges and damaged roads. Nearly 1,800 people have had to be rescued, 100 of them airlifted, with many spending the whole day on their roofs.

In a press conference, the conservative New Democracy government’s Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias declared, “I know the word unprecedented has been used many times and it may not make an impression. But here even this word does not convey the severity of the phenomenon. We are talking about unimaginable amounts of water.”

But the floods have not come as a surprise to the authorities. Already in 2021, a team of 46 scientists warned of possible landslides and floods in Attica, the Peloponnese and Evia island—areas ravaged by summer wildfires.

According to the scientists, “The fires are expected to affect the hydro-geomorphological processes in the burned areas to a different degree, depending on local conditions and the intensity of the event”. The team’s report warned, “An increase in erosion and transport rates of sediments should be expected.” This in turn, it added, “will lead to an increase in the frequency of floods, material transport and landslides, for a period that cannot be clearly estimated but ranges from two to 15 years.”

Two years after these warnings, Greece has been struck by hundreds of wildfires this summer, with dozens of fires breaking out each day and leaving 28 dead.

In Turkey, thunderstorms, torrential rainfall and flash flooding also wreaked havoc, leaving at least 10 people dead. In Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, heavy rain of up to 130 litres per square meter fell over a few hours, flooding streets and homes in at least two districts, Basaksehir and Kucukcekmece, and inundating subway stations and hospitals. This volume of rainfall is equal to what Istanbul would typically expect in September as a whole.

The floods come barely three weeks after Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu urged the city’s 16 million residents to save “every precious water drop flowing from the tap” to reduce their water consumption as major cities across the country grappled with a drought crisis and high temperatures.

Scientists have long shown how drought leaves regions more exposed to intense flooding as soil loses its ability to absorb water effectively.

In Bulgaria, deadly floods swept along its southern coast leaving at least four dead. Most of the rivers in the region burst their banks. The bodies of three people were found in a submerged car that was washed away from a bridge into the sea when the river overflowed. Several bridges were destroyed, causing serious traffic problems, and leaving more than 1,000 people stranded.

Videos on social media emerged showing cars and camper vans being swept out to sea in Tsarevo, a resort town.

In response, Bulgaria's Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov announced a pittance in financial aid of up to 770 euros for damaged houses and premises. This contrasts sharply to the announced purchase of $1 billion of NATO weaponry, enabling the dispatch to Ukraine of 100 armoured vehicles, ammunition and Soviet S-300 anti-aircraft systems to assist in waging war against Russia on NATO’s behalf. This, despite 70 percent of Bulgarians being against sending military aid to Kyiv.

On the other side of the Mediterranean, record levels of rain fell in Spain, leaving at least five people dead and major infrastructure destroyed, and causing disruption to air, rail and road transport.

Three of the deceased belonged to the Toledo region, one of the areas where there were torrential rains due to DANA, the Spanish acronym for an isolated high-level weather depression. The other dead were found in Huesca.

One woman in Aldea de Fresno, Madrid, told Euronews, “We felt the water running and we went down to see how the river was coming and at that moment the bridge fell. We all ran. After a while the other bridge fell, a huge noise. It was a moment of panic.” The town saw three of its bridges collapse.

The Madrid regional government sent alert messages to millions of citizens to stay indoors, leading the local authorities to close train lines and cancel a La Liga football match (Atlético de Madrid-Sevilla).

Across Europe, floods are having an impact on supply chains. In Portugal, the Volkswagen Group was forced to stop production at its Autoeuropa plant in Setúbal (Portugal), which employs 5,000 autoworkers. This was due to the flooding of auto plants in Slovenia which provide car parts to the plant. Renault may stop production at its Valladolid plant in Spain for the same reasons.

The floods are part of the extreme weather patterns becoming more frequent and severe across the world. In recent months, floods have caused 62 deaths in northern China and wreaked havoc in Slovenia, Austria, South Korea, and the states of Vermont and New York in the US. At the same time, massive wildfires raged in Maui in Hawaii, Canada, Spain and Greece.

While climate change and global warming are drastically changing weather patterns, capitalist governments have refused to take any serious action to mitigate the devastating impact of these widely predicted catastrophes or to provide adequate relief.

Billions of euros are necessary to strengthen structural flood mitigation measures, such as building or modifying infrastructures like dams, levees, bridges and culverts. Existing creeks and stormwater drainage systems must be properly maintained. In houses, measures such as solid fences, raised windows, doors sealed with “stop boards” and reflux or backflow valves limiting sewage contamination must be installed. Roads should be improved to allow residents to escape floods and ensure emergency service access.

Non-structural measures are also necessary, like surveys of flood prone areas or strategic land use planning to identify the extent of flood-impacted land and limit construction. Populations of millions of people continent-wide must have access to early warning systems and emergency plans, particularly as many floods occur at night.

Instead, the European capitalist powers are plundering their treasuries to spend billions of euros on NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine, upgrading their armed forces, and investing in preparations for World War Three—while granting major tax incentives and other giveaways to big business and the financial aristocracy.

Study documents devastating effects of Long COVID two years after infection

Bill Shaw

A study recently published in Nature Medicine comprehensively assessed for the first time a broad range of impacts of COVID-19 up to two years after SARS-CoV-2 infection. It found that of 80 long-term consequences or sequelae of the disease, individuals with past infection remained at risk for 48 or 60 percent of them at two years post-infection. This compared to an elevated risk at one year post-infection for 69 or 86 percent of sequelae.

The implications of this fundamental result are staggering. It means that long past infection, people remain at risk for a broad array of serious, life-threatening health events impacting over half their body systems.

These events include hospitalization, stroke, chest pain, development of a variety of heart arrhythmias, heart failure, blood clots, dizziness, diarrhea, vomiting, kidney failure, loss of hearing, and loss of smell. They also include the onset of a variety of disorders including diabetes, inflammation of the pancreas, irritable bowel syndrome, liver abnormalities, mental disorders, opioid use disorder, joint pain, muscle pain, arthritis, headache disorders, memory disorders, and shortness of breath.

Relative risks by days after infection plotted for time periods of 30–90, 91–180, 181–360, 361–540 and 541–720 days after infection, labeled by the last day of the corresponding time period. Heatmaps include (top row) nonhospitalized for COVID-19 during the acute phase of the disease (n = 118,238) corresponding to each sequela and (bottom row) COVID-19 hospitalization during the acute phase of the disease (n = 20,580). Relative risks were estimated in comparison to a noninfected control (n = 5,985,227). Sequelae are grouped by organ system. ACD, acute coronary disease; AIM, abnormal involuntary movements; AKI, acute kidney injury; CKD, chronic kidney disease; DVT, deep vein thrombosis; ESKD, end-stage kidney disease; GAD, general anxiety disorder; GERD, gastroesophageal reflux disease; IBS, irritable bowel syndrome; ICM, ischemic cardiomyopathy; ILD, interstitial lung disease; MI, myocardial infarction; NCD, neurocognitive decline; NICM, nonischemic cardiomyopathy; PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder; PUD, peptic ulcer disease; TIA, transient ischemic attack; VTE, venous thromboembolism. NS, non-significant. [Photo by Bowe, B., Xie, Y. & Al-Aly, Z / CC BY 4.0]

If there is any good news in the study, it is that the risks nearly all declined over time, including a return to baseline risk relative to the control group for some of the most serious events such as heart attack, pericarditis and myocarditis, cardiac arrest and death.

However, the risk did increase over two years for some events such as the development of inflammation of the bile ducts, called cholangitis. Furthermore, for the 60 percent of sequelae where the risk remains elevated, the rate of reduction of risk is considerably flattened over time, suggesting these risks could remain elevated above normal for a long time to come.

The study, conducted by noted Long COVID researcher Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly and his team at the Washington University in St. Louis, examined the differential risks for COVID-19 patients who had been hospitalized with the disease vs. those who had not. It found that individuals who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 had significantly higher risks over time for all sequelae, including at two years post-infection, than those who had not been hospitalized.

Notably, hospitalized individuals remained at significantly increased risk of death at two years post-infection, whereas individuals not hospitalized for COVID-19 had a risk of death similar to the control group after two years. The hospitalized cohort remained at elevated risk for 65 percent of COVID-19 sequelae at two years versus 60 percent for the overall COVID-19 population.

Individuals infected but not hospitalized for COVID-19 remained at elevated risk for 31 percent of sequelae at two years, including cardiovascular, coagulation, endocrine, gastrointestinal, kidney, mental health, musculoskeletal and neurologic sequelae.

Looking at changes in risk over time, these non-hospitalized individuals’ risk of death returned to baseline after 6 months post-infection. Their risk of hospitalization only returned to baseline in the final three months of the two-year period, meaning they were at increased risk of hospitalization for approximately 1.75 years post-infection. This was also the case for another 20 sequelae for which non-hospitalized patients returned to a baseline risk at two years, meaning that non-hospitalized patients are at risk for 57 percent of sequelae for 1.75 years.

Another important finding of the study is that at two years, Long COVID sequelae among non-hospitalized patients generated 80.4 disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for every 1,000 people. By this metric, a DALY represents a year of healthy life lost to illness. Among hospitalized patients, the figure rose to a staggering 642.8 DALYs per 1,000 people. These figures are far higher than the burden of disability caused by both heart disease and cancer, which cause roughly 52 and 50 DALYs for every 1,000 Americans, respectively.

Commenting on the elevated DALY figures associated with COVID-19 infection, Dr. Al-Aly told CNN, “When I looked at that initially, I was really shocked. That’s actually a huge number.” He added, “I think that we need to understand that infections lead to chronic disease and we need to take infection seriously.”

Lines present the cumulative disability adjusted life years (DALYs) due to COVID-19 per 1000 persons (y-axis) by days after infection (x-axis). Bands represent the 95% confidence intervals. Plots are ordered, from left to right and up to down, by cumulative burden at two years after infection. PASC, post-acute sequelae of COVID-19. [Photo by Bowe, B., Xie, Y. & Al-Aly, Z / CC BY 4.0]

The study had numerous strengths that increase the confidence in its results. It used a large electronic health record data set from the United States Veterans Affairs administration. This data set included large numbers of patients, with 138,818 COVID-19 patients and nearly 6 million control patients.

The researchers also conducted a number of sensitivity analyses to check for possible impacts of certain inclusion criteria for both the COVID-19 and control groups, as well for possible biases of the particular statistical methods used. These sensitivity analyses found that the results were not impacted. They included varying criteria related to vaccination status over time, re-infection with SARS-CoV-2, and the probability of healthcare utilization.

The study also used a “negative outcome control.” This means that they also studied outcomes that have not been reported in Long COVID patients, and thus they did not expect to see an elevated risk with COVID-19 at only two years post-infection. This was to ensure that there was as expected no differential risk between the COVID-19 and control groups. If they also found elevated risks of these kinds of outcomes, it would indicate potential problems with their statistical methodology.

For the negative outcome control, they looked at a number of cancers and confirmed that there was no differential risk in the development of cancer between the COVID-19 and control groups. Cancer is a particularly useful outcome to study at two years, because the development of cancer nearly always occurs over a longer timeframe. Thus, even if COVID-19 does end up being associated with increased risks of cancer at 5, 10, 15, etc., years post-infection, it would not be an issue at merely 2 years.

There are some limitations to the study. One limitation is that the researchers could not exclude from the control group individuals who developed COVID-19 but either were not tested at all, or self-tested or otherwise had a test outside the Veterans Affairs healthcare system. These tests would not be available in their data.

The net effect of this limitation, however, would be to improperly assign some risks of COVID-19 sequelae to the control group, and thus it would lower the differential magnitude of risks between the COVID-19 and control groups. So if anything, the study likely somewhat understates the risks of developing COVID-19 sequelae.

Another limitation is that being a US Veterans Affairs study, the population is not representative in two key respects. First it is an overwhelmingly male population and thus women are underrepresented. The researchers did not detect sex-specific differences in risk, but had too few women to detect anything but very large differences that one would not expect based on what is already known about Long COVID. Second, being a US-based study, the results are not representative of the entire world.

Of course the United States is an advanced industrialized nation, and as noted by leading worldwide COVID-19 experts in a recent Lancet editorial, its healthcare system has access to resources unavailable in most nations.

Even studying Long COVID sequelae in underdeveloped, resource poor nations is enormously challenging due to a lack of requisite infrastructure and resources, let alone their ability to manage tens of thousands and possibly millions of debilitated citizens. As the authors of the editorial note:

As we learn from the COVID-19 pandemic and better prepare for emerging threats, it is crucial to further investigate post-infection syndromes. These investigations will contribute to future pandemic preparedness and ensure that [low and middle income countries] are not once again marginalised in these efforts.

The pandemic has proven to be a global mass disabling event, as Long COVID advocates began to warn as early as 2020. As noted by the editorial, anywhere from 10 to 45 percent of those who suffer COVID-19 end up with Long COVID. Assuming conservatively that half of the 8.1 billion people alive worldwide have had at least one infection with SARS-CoV-2, that leads to a minimum of 405 million people now living with Long COVID globally, a monumental figure which exceeds the population of the United States.

A separate review article recently published in Nature detailing the specific biological mechanisms by which COVID-19 is thought to cause Long COVID notes that uncovering these mechanisms has been challenging because SARS-CoV-2 infection has an unprecedented array of effects on the body.

Despite the intensity and diversity of the research summarized, there is still much to learn and no theory about the causes of Long COVID is yet emerging as a leading one. The review article concludes:

The oncoming burden of long COVID faced by patients, health-care providers, governments and economies is so large as to be unfathomable, which is possibly why minimal high-level planning is currently allocated to it.

However, the authors are too charitable. The ruling class is not merely failing to plan for the oncoming burden of Long COVID because the burden is unfathomable. Rather, they are simply criminally indifferent to it and will not let any amount of human suffering come between them and their accumulation of wealth through the exploitation of the working class.

How people in Ukraine are declared traitors to the state: The mechanism of the repressive apparatus

Maxim Goldarb

Recently, almost every day, we have been reading in the Ukrainian news or hearing on TV about “state traitors” who were exposed by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) or the State Office of Investigation (GBR) and prosecutors, because they are suspected of anti-state activities and treason. As a rule, “traitors” include well-known public figures or politicians who disagree with the government’s policy, criticize it, speak out against the war and advocate peace, and reveal the corrupt motives and intentions of the current regime. More rarely, it is ordinary citizens who are exposed as “state traitors” for absolutely minor “offenses”: posts and likes on social media, public statements of their opinion, etc.

With this, the authorities pursue several goals:

1) Distracting the attention of Ukrainians from the government’s miscalculations, mistakes, crimes and failures;

2) The formation of the image of “enemies of the people”;

3) The criminal prosecution of political opponents and rivals;

4) The creation and cultivation of an all-encompassing atmosphere of fear, mutual distrust and hatred in Ukrainian society, based on the principle, “divide and rule.”

Points 1, 2, 4 are above all aimed at achieving psychological results: it is an attempt at mass deception of society, plunging it into an abyss of fear and distrust, while distracting attention from reality. Point 3 allows the government to deal with its opponents by removing them from the political scene, by throwing them into prisons, mutilating and even killing them, persecuting them, by taking away their property and business. 

For the uninitiated, the question undoubtedly arises: Why are opponents of the government and others often accused based on this particular article of the Criminal Code, this particular crime—treason? The answer is as follows: The definition of the crime of “state treason” in Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine is very vague and abstractly written. This gives the repressive apparatus the opportunity to charge anyone under it whom the president or his team decide to pick out. 

It should be remembered that the current version of this law was written and adopted by the deputies of President Zelensky’s ruling “Servant of the People” party. Thus, it is not surprising that it turned out to be just such a “multilateral” and vague law that can be interpreted in different ways, depending on the task at hand or the instructions received from above.

After all, you must agree that the concept of “an act committed to the detriment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability, defense capability, state, economic and information security of Ukraine” can be interpreted in almost any possible way. Anyone can be described with these words. The most important and basic issue is this: Who in Ukraine today has the right to apply, interpret and evaluate this law? It is definitely not the courts, but, rather, the special services and prosecutors, and both of them are completely dependent on the president or his structures who appoint and remove them. Having come to power, Zelensky did everything to influence the appointment of all heads of the law enforcement system, and to place his people there. Now, during the war, he has managed to concentrate all the power over the judicial system in Ukraine in his hands, even though this goes entirely against the provisions of the Ukrainian Constitution. 

The leadership of the investigative bodies—the state office of investigation (GBR), the Secret Service (SBU), the prosecutor’s office, the police, and the office of economic security (BEB)—and the judicial system are now fully controlled by and accountable to the office of the president. In fact, they are appointed and removed by it. 

US President Joe Biden and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev. [Photo: @POTUS Twitter]

Moreover, state treason is a particularly serious crime, and Article 111 provides for imprisonment of up to 15 years, while the criminal procedure law allows for the arrest of a suspect under this article without any right to bail or release.

Undoubtedly, any sensible lawyer from a democratic country would raise the concern: But to prove a person’s guilt in such a serious crime, there must be obvious and irrefutable evidence collected in an exclusively legal way, such as materials of operational activities (e.g., wiretapping, reading correspondence, surveillance, video and audio recordings of conversations, meetings, actions, physical evidence, qualitative agent’s reports, etc.). And only on the basis of the totality of all such evidence and its comprehensive evaluation in court would it be possible to have a fair and objective judicial decision on the guilt or innocence of the accused person. And such a lawyer would be absolutely right...

But with one correction. In the lawyer’s country, in their judicial system it may be necessary to thoroughly prove the guilt of a person before the judge to bring him to justice. In Ukraine, since the beginning of the war, there is no such need. None at all. All that is needed is to simply detain and place the opponent of the authorities, the victim, in custody and that’s it. Then, in the detention center the accused is confronted with unbearable conditions: He is subject to torture and ill-treatment, blackmail and abuse, and that for an indefinite period. The case is investigated, as it were, in a slow, very slow manner, and even if it goes to court, the arrested person continues to be held in custody. This is what is happening today. The whole world knows the terrible situation confronting left-wing activists and anti-fascists, such as the brothers Alexander and Mikhail Kononovich, the publicist and blogger Dmitry Skvortsov, the lawyer and human rights activist, Elena Berezhnaya, who is well known for her anti-fascist position, and many other public figure who have expressed oppositional views. 

But, the reader will ask: Is it not impossible to grab and throw a person behind bars, accusing him of one of the most serious crimes against the country, just as the Gestapo once did in Nazi Germany, without even the slightest legal justification? It is possible. Today in Ukraine it is possible. But in order to give the appearance of at least some legitimacy to the ongoing complete lawlessness, the prosecution authorities (the SBU, the state office of investigation, and the prosecutor’s office) have learned—attention!—to conduct “expert examinations” of a person’s words and statements, their comments and posts on social media.

For this purpose, employees of the prosecution bodies take the words of any opponent of the current government—whether it is a post on social media, a speech on TV, or an article in a newspaper—and appoint and conduct a special forensic linguistic examination, where the expert linguist answers the following questions posed to him by the investigation: 

1) Is there anything bad directed against Ukraine in these words? 

2) Is there anything in them that indicates that the person indirectly or directly supports the enemy?

3) Is there a causal relationship between these words and any following consequences?

And so on and so forth. As you will understand, any words, position, statement, can be called “bad,” simply because the forensic expert is operating based on highly relative and subjective evaluations and subjective perception. And the main question in such a case is to find the “right” expert, who will “correctly” evaluate the words of the victim of the regime and write the “necessary” expert report. 

Where does this expert come from? How is this expert report written? And here it becomes particularly interesting for those who have not yet encountered the machinations of the current system of persecution of dissent in Ukraine. Part of the expert review can be carried out in state institutes of forensic expertise, where the expert will be given an order by the director of the institute, will fulfill it, and write what is necessary. Because in Ukraine now experts do not bear responsibility for anything, they can write anything they want. 

In addition, there are also “appointed” experts whom the state system of persecution has helped to obtain the necessary license from the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, allowing them to conduct linguistic examinations. They are on the payroll of the state system of persecution and receive a very decent salary, for which they simply “clamp” the expertise needed by the system. If you want a bad expert report, they will write a bad one; if you want a good one, they will write a good one. Then the conclusions of this expert report are made the basis for bringing charges and for the initiation of the prosecution of a person: First he is charged, then he is put on a wanted list, he is detained, arrested, imprisoned, and so forth.

This is how Metropolitan Pavel, the vicar of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, the main Orthodox monastery in Ukraine, was treated and this is how many opposition members of parliament, public figures, politicians, leaders of political parties that have been banned by Zelensky’s government, and other “state traitors” were treated. This is how those are treated whom the current government considers its enemies but against whom the government has no evidence of guilt.  

Think about how frankly silly and delusional the accusation of state treason against a former MP who owns a TV channel that was closed by President Zelensky sounds: He created a TV channel where anti-state opinions were voiced? Is it possible to believe that a conscientious, intelligent, real expert has checked the entire terabyte array of information, has reviewed several years of footage from the TV channel with thousands of politicians, activists, public figures, journalists, experts, specialists, viewers, and has checked and weighed billions of words and sentences and speeches? And that, on this basis, the conscientious expert was able to come to the conclusion that this TV channel had an anti-state, treasonous policy? Of course not. It is absurd. And yet in Ukraine, they amicably prepared an absolutely unsubstantiated expert report. And on the basis of this report’s accusatory conclusions, a former people’s deputy was accused of state treason and put on the wanted list. 

In total, over the last year and a half, more than 1,500 criminal cases have been opened in Ukraine under the article of “high treason.” In other words, on average, two or three criminal cases are opened under this article every single day.

To repeat: The conclusions of the investigative body (in our country, this is, in fact, the prosecution) which are arrived at in accordance with the law mean nothing to the court and are not proof of a person’s guilt. Until the case is considered in court, no evidence plays any role at all. Only the evidence that is presented in court or investigated by the judge during the trial matters. But in order to accuse someone of a crime, the investigating or prosecuting authority must collect at least some data that would somehow testify to the correctness of the opinion of the investigating or prosecuting authority about the guilt of a person. This is where this inherently deceitful examination of a person’s allegedly anti-state views comes in.

This does not mean that the accused will necessarily be convicted and found guilty. Rather, on the contrary, a normal court will find them innocent and their guilt unproven. But obviously, this will not happen anytime soon, certainly not until the current regime changes. And which of the political prisoners will live to see this, is, unfortunately, an open question …

Is information that is distributed about peace and that advocates for peace anti-Ukrainian information? For the current government, the “party of war,” for those who want this war to continue, who make money off it, and for whom the war means a prolongation of their political life cycle, the answer is: yes.

Scholz’s “Germany Pact”: A war alliance against the population

Johannes Stern

“I no longer know any parties, I only know Germans,” declared Kaiser Wilhelm in his infamous speech to the Reichstag on August 4, 1914, when Germany began World War I and the Social Democrats (SPD) agreed to war credits. Chancellor Olaf Scholz's (SPD) call for a “Germany Pact” stands in this dark tradition. In order to impose its policies of austerity and war against the growing opposition, the ruling class is closing ranks.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz speaks on the second day of the budget 2024 debate at the German parliament Bundestag in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023. [AP Photo/Markus Schreiber]

“We need a national effort. Let's join forces!” Scholz explained in his Bundestag (federal parliament) speech on Wednesday. “I would therefore like to propose a pact, let’s say: a Germany pact—a Germany pact that makes our country faster, more modern and safer. Speed instead of stagnation, action instead of sitting out, cooperation instead of quarrels.” This is “the order of the hour.”

His proposal is not only “explicitly” addressed to the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) as the largest opposition fraction in the Bundestag, but to all parties and organisations—the “federal government, the federal states, cities and municipalities, companies and authorities, associations and trade unions.” Only together will we “shake off the mildew of bureaucracy, risk aversion and despondency that has spread over our country for years and decades,” said Scholz. 

It is clear what the Chancellor means. The budget, which is currently being discussed in the Bundestag, is a declaration of war on the working population. It contains massive cuts and aims to launch the largest rearmament offensive since the end of World War II. According to the plans of the SPD/Green/Free Democrat (FDP) coalition government, €85.5 billion will flow into the military next year. This represents an increase of one third compared to the estimated figure for 2023 of €65 billion.

The new draft budget for 2024 shows only an increase of €1.7 billion to €51.8 billion (plus 1.68 percent) in military spending. But in addition, €19.17 billion will be spent from the €100 billion “Special Fund for the German army” (Bundeswehr), which the government decided on last year with the support of the opposition parties. And numerous other military expenditures are hidden in other budget areas. For the regime in Kiev alone, the government has estimated annual military aid of €5 billion. 

Scholz made clear in his speech that the rearmament orgy will be intensified in the coming years and decades. “We are now spending the €100 billion so that the Bundeswehr has the NATO quota of 2 percent (of GDP) available from next year.” He continued that “already today” it is “clear that we will have to finance an additional €25 billion, perhaps almost €30 billion for the Bundeswehr directly from the federal budget by 2028 at the latest.”

Scholz justified the permanent militarization of the budget with well-known propaganda. The “Russian war of aggression” represents a “turning point” and “threat” to the “security architecture in Europe” and will occupy Germany “not only in this, but many, many legislative periods” to come. In fact, the leading NATO powers provoked Putin’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine and are now escalating the war further and further. German imperialism, which invaded Ukraine twice in the 20th century and tried to subjugate Russia, is once again pursuing the goal of becoming the dominant European military power.

In order to finance the German war offensive, the ruling class is organizing historically unprecedented social spending cuts. “The seriousness of the situation” was “not served by rhetoric and populism,” Scholz warned, but “with everything we are doing now, we are helping to ensure that we will be able to raise this budget in the year ahead.'

The current draft budget already contains the deepest cuts in post-war history. The health budget alone is slashed by 33.7 percent from €24.48 billion to €16.22 billion, after it had already been cut by almost 40 billion euros the year before. There will also be far less money for education and numerous social benefits. For example, expenditure on the maternity convalescence centre and family holiday homes is reduced by 93 percent each, for youth education and youth meeting places by 77 percent, for free youth welfare by 19 percent, for student aid by 24 percent and for housing benefits by 16 percent.

And this is only the beginning. A campaign for even greater savings is already underway in the political establishment and the media. A column in Der Spiegel entitled “The rollback of the welfare state has begun” praises the German government for having “drastically curtailed” the original wishes of the Federal Minister for Family Affairs Lisa Paus “for new billions for children in need.”

Now, “there is already a demand for able-bodied recipients of citizens’ benefit to become volunteers, and the next target is likely to be the ‘pension at 63’.” For the ruling class, the current budget of €172 billion for the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs is simply unacceptable and will have to fall victim to the red pen in the future—with devastating consequences for millions of workers and their families.

The deliberate impoverishment of the population in the name of rearmament and war goes hand in hand with massive attacks on democratic rights and anti-refugee agitation in the style of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). In his speech, Scholz praised the government’s decision to “classify Georgia and Moldova as safe countries of origin” as “important progress in the fight against irregular migration.”

“I am very grateful to Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) that she has also made very concrete suggestions for improvement to the federal states concerning repatriation in connection with the expansion of deportation detention and in many other areas. This too must be part of the Germany Pact,” he stated.

Workers and young people must understand that the “Germany Pact” is a threat of war. Behind the official phrases of “security,” “digitization” and “reduction of bureaucracy,” it is about rearmament, war, social spending cuts and the establishment of a de facto dictatorship against the population. All parties and organisations of the ruling class are already working closely together. In eight federal states, the SPD, Greens, and FDP, which make up the so-called “traffic light” coalition at the federal level, rule with the CDU and in three with the Left Party. At the municipal level, all government parties have long been openly pacting with the far-right AfD, which is also integrated into political work at the state and federal level via the parliamentary committees.

The unions are part of this all-party conspiracy. Verdi, IG Metall and the entire DGB (German Trade Union Federation) already concluded a pact with the government last year, the so-called “Concerted Action.” They support the war policy and play a key role in enforcing the attacks. In the public service, the postal service and, most recently, the railways, in close cooperation with the government and companies, they enforced massive real wage reductions and a further deterioration in working conditions.

But the resistance to this is growing. This is demonstrated by the massive opposition across workplaces, which is increasingly reflected in the establishment of independent rank-and-file committees. The coalition government is despised just halfway through its legislative term. According to the current ARD Germany trend poll, only 19 percent of the population are satisfied with the government's work. Above all, Scholz's Germany Pact aims to conceal the fear of a social storm brewing beneath the surface. In their speeches in the Bundestag, the Chancellor and many other speakers repeatedly invoked “social cohesion.”