Amazon argues in court that the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional

Erik Schreiber & Jerry White

In a recent legal filing, Amazon argued that the US federal government’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is unconstitutional. The action is an escalation of the corporate giant’s drive to eliminate any obstacles to its exploitation of its workforce.

The challenges to the NLRB may very well reach the US Supreme Court whose reactionary majority, personified by the unabashedly corrupt Justice Clarence Thomas, could very well move to weaken if not abolish the NLRB. The Court already seems poised to abolish the precedent that requires federal judges to defer to the actions of regulatory agencies that were duly established by Congress.

The company submitted its filing as part of a case in which it is accused of threatening and discriminating against workers who were organizing the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) at its JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York. Despite the ALU’s election victory nearly two years ago, Amazon still refuses to recognize the union.

The ALU’s orientation to the established trade unions, the Democrats and the courts has not led to any improvements for JFK8 workers. Instead it has opened the door for Amazon’s legal counter-attack.

In its filing, the company denied many of the allegations and asked for the complaint to be dismissed. It argued further that the NLRB’s structure violates the Constitution’s separation of powers by infringing on the powers of the executive branch.

To substantiate this claim, Amazon pointed to the limits on the removal of the federal agency’s administrative law judges and five board members, who are appointed by the president. Amazon’s sudden discovery of the supposed unconstitutionality of the NLRB is entirely hypocritical. The company has never criticized the administrative courts when they denied injured employees workers’ compensation.

The company has also argued that NLRB proceedings violate Amazon’s due process rights, deny the company a trial by jury and permit legal remedies beyond what is allowed without a trial by jury. With this argument the company’s lawyers are insinuating that the giant transnational corporation, with its market capitalization of $1.8 trillion and power to buy off governments around the world, is the same as any citizen with the right to due process, jury trials, etc.

In fact, Amazon is insisting that it should not be subjected to any federal regulations. It might be the NLRB today, but tomorrow it will be the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or any other regulatory body. In other words, the company is insisting that it has the “right” to exercise an unlimited dictatorship over its one million employees in the US whose rights are meaningless in the eyes of Amazon’s corporate executives and wealthy shareholders.

It is noteworthy that similar arguments have been used by right-wing Supreme Court justices in cases like Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. to roll back fundamental constitutional rights.

In Citizens United, the US Supreme Court ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to “free speech,” by which the Court meant spending unlimited amounts of money on campaign contributions and buying off politicians.

In Burwell, the Court found that closely held for-profit corporations can exercise religious beliefs and that these beliefs can exempt the corporations from their legal obligations. It thus created a loophole that allows corporations to deny their workers health insurance that covers contraception.

Amazon’s arguments about the NLRB’s unconstitutionality are “radical,” according to Wilma Liebman, a former NLRB chair who spoke to the New York Times. “The constitutionality of the NLRB was settled nearly 90 years ago by the Supreme Court,” she added.

America’s restricted labor relations system

While Amazon is seeking to eviscerate the NLRB, it would be wrong to believe the claims by trade union officials that the federal agency is a pillar of workers’ rights. As the bitter experiences of countless workers have attested, the federal agency regularly dismisses workers’ complaints over management’s trampling over their rights with the collusion of the trade union bureaucracy.

The NLRB, like every other institution of the federal, state and local governments, defends the capitalist system, the “right” of the corporate owners like billionaire Jeff Bezos to control vast industrial and financial monopolies and to extract profit from the unpaid labor of the working class.

Formally established in 1935, the federal agency has its roots in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt the year before in the face of an increasingly explosive movement of the working class that was under leadership of socialists and left-wing militants.

It was part of the policy of relative class compromise and New Deal social reforms, which FDR implemented to forestall the danger of an “American October,” that is. a repeat of the Russian Revolution of 1917 in the United States. Based on the vast wealth accumulated by American capitalism, the Roosevelt administration made certain concessions to the working class, including the passage of Social Security, laws against child labor, and legal recognition of the industrial unions after decades of violent resistance by the employers.

But the new industrial unions were quickly entangled in a restrictive system of labor relations established under the auspices of the NLRA. In exchange for legal protections and an automatic dues checkoff system, union leaders agreed to guarantee “management rights.” This included uninterrupted production and the enforcement of contracts, no matter how egregious the terms, for the length of the agreement.

In a 1956 address to arbitrators, Arthur Goldberg, the general counsel for the United Steelworkers of America (later Secretary of Labor under Kennedy and Supreme Court justice), summed up management’s “inherent rights,” which were “not modified or diminished” by collective bargaining. “The union cannot direct its members to their work stations or work assignments. … The union does not notify people who are discharged to stay put. The union does not tell employees to report for work after a layoff. … Very often union men are disturbed by decisions they consider entirely wrong. Nevertheless, a company’s right to make its own judgments is clear.”

Workers, Goldberg said, had the right to challenge the company’s acts when they violate his or her rights, but “that challenge is made through the grievance procedure, not through rebellion.”

This system regulated class relations throughout the post-World War II period. Facing a historic decline in the world position of American capitalism and increasing challenges from European and Asian rivals, however, the American ruling class jettisoned its policy of relative class compromise and adopted a program of class war and social counter-revolution. This included the campaign of union-busting, begun with Reagan’s firing of 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981, and the destruction of millions of industrial jobs. The ruling classes in the US and around the world utilized the globalization of capitalist production to exploit cheaper pools of labor and claw back achievements won through decades of struggle.

The pro-capitalist and nationalist AFL-CIO had no progressive response to globalization. Instead, over the last four and a half decades, they voluntarily accepted massive job cuts and wage concessions to make American capitalism more “competitive.” Throughout this period, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), like OSHA and other federal agencies, were gutted and did little to slow down the corporate onslaught.

Today, the so-called “reform” leaders of the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers sign contracts at UPS and the auto industry that destroy the jobs and living standards of their members and collude with the Biden administration’s ever-expanding wars.

Nevertheless, the billionaire oligarchs like Bezos and Elon Musk do not want the slightest interference with their money-making operations, including having to deal with the NLRB’s wrist-slap penalties or the expense of buying off trade union bureaucrats.

In January, Musk’s SpaceX filed a lawsuit against NLRB, which also asserted that the federal agency’s structure was unconstitutional and that it was depriving the company of its supposed right to trial by jury.

SpaceX filed its lawsuit one day after the NLRB accused the company of firing eight employees for criticizing Musk in a letter to company executives.

A few weeks later, the NLRB held a hearing to discuss accusations that grocery chain Trader Joe’s had retaliated against workers who were seeking to unionize. During the hearing, a lawyer for the company echoed the SpaceX argument that the structure of the NLRB and its panel of administrative law judges is unconstitutional.

It is no coincidence that these three companies are using the same playbook to attack the NLRB. Amazon, SpaceX and Trader Joe’s have faced multiple accusations that they have violated labor law. Amazon alone has been the subject of more than 250 NLRB complaints alleging unlawful labor practices in recent years.

There are tactical differences between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump on these questions. Biden relies on the trade union apparatus to suppress the class struggle and impose the type of austerity and labor discipline necessary to expand US imperialism’s wars for global conquest.

Trump is seeking to build a fascist movement to crush the rising tide of social opposition and the growing support for socialism in the working class. Though their paths of somewhat different, the Democrats and Republicans both offer the working class nothing but a future of war, destitution and dictatorship.

In the face of this, the ALU and its pseudo-left leaders have proven totally incapable of defending workers against the gang-up of the corporations, the capitalist state and the corporatist unions.

Nvidia and AI fuel market frenzy

Nick Beams

The stock market surge, powered by the US chip designer Nvidia, which has sent Wall Street and other markets, including Tokyo, to new record highs, expresses some of the essential contradictions of the capitalist profit system.

A Nvidia office building in Santa Clara, Calif., May 31, 2023. Jeff Chiu [AP Photo/Jeff Chiu]

There is no question that artificial intelligence (AI), for which Nvidia is the main supplier of computer chips with about 80 percent of the market, is a powerful development of the productive forces, laying the foundation for major economic advances.

But at the same time, the market frenzy it has set off underscores the central role which unproductive speculation and parasitism now plays as a driving force of profit and wealth accumulation. The tens, even hundreds, of billions of dollars being raked in by hedge funds, speculators and corporate CEOs on the rise of its share price do not contain an atom of real value. They have only added another storey to the house of cards which is the global financial system.

Nvidia started in 1993 as a chipmaker for computer video games producing graphic producing units (GPUs) to run them. As the Financial Times reported: “Two years ago, Nvidia made most of its money selling graphics cards. It was a household name only to the most dedicated PC gamers.”

But it was discovered that its GPUs, which functioned somewhat differently from other chips, enabling more rapid multiple calculations, had applications which were necessary for the development of AI.

Its big break came at the end of 2022 when OpenAI made its ChatGPT tool publicly available, and it became clear the enormous potential which AI had across the board.

This led to a flood of investment in OpenAI because of the capacity of ChatGPT to generate human-like language and to provide answers to a range of questions.

The major high-tech companies moved into the development of AI and became big buyers of Nvidia’s chips while at the same time seeking to develop their own.

Last year saw a spectacular rise in the sales, profit and share price of Nvidia, capped off by the announcement of its results for the fourth quarter released last Wednesday.

It posted $22.1 billion in revenue, well above forecasts by analysts of $20.4 billion, with net profit coming in at $12.29 billion, compared to $1.49 billion a year earlier. It forecast sales of around $24 billion for the current quarter declaring the demand was not the issue but the ability of the company to meet it.

The profit and revenue results were released after the market had closed for the day, with Nvidia shares falling 2.9 percent in regular trading. But in after-hours trading the stock price surged by 10 percent to hit $741 within 30 minutes of its results being released. This was a surge of $250 billion market value in less than a hour after the company’s shares had already tripled in price over the past 12 months.

There have even been projections that its shares could go to $1,300 which would transform Nvidia into a $3 trillion company. It is already surged past a market valuation of $2 trillion and is now the world’s third most valuable company after Apple and Microsoft.

In the wake of the Nvidia result, European markets rose with the Stoxx Europe 600 index reaching a record high. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index also hit a record eclipsing the level it reached 34 years ago before the share market and real estate bubble collapsed in the early 1990s.

The rise in Nvidia shares has been responsible for a quarter of the rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index in the year to date. So great has been its influence that some market analysts claimed that the release of its revenue and profit figures was a more important event than the release of inflation data.

In the event, Wall Street ignored the release of minutes from the meeting of the Federal Reserve which showed that members of its policymaking body were cautious on a round of interest rate cuts on which it has been banking.

As is always the case when what is regarded as the “next big thing” arrives there were plenty of boosters on hand with Nvidia founder and chief executive Jensen Huang occupying first place.

“Accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point. Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries and nations,” he said.

In a call with investors, he said Nvidia had enabled “a whole new computing paradigm called generative AI.” Nvidia’s chips were “essentially AI-generation factories” of the new industrial revolution.

The trading desk at Goldman Sachs chimed in calling the company “the most important stock on planet earth.”

Last week Huang’s personal wealth jumped by $9.6 billion in a single day. As recently as last year Nvidia’s market value was $13.5 billion, Now it is over $2 trillion.

Soaring Nvidia shares have boosted the wealth of the 30 billionaires who appear on Bloomberg’s wealth list and attribute some of their wealth to AI by a combined total of $42.8 billion.

Two small companies connected to Nvidia, Nano-X Imaging and SoundHound AI also jumped after Nvidia detailed its connection with them. Nano-X shares doubled while those of SoundHound AI increased by 69 percent. Someone was either “in the know” or made an educated guess.

Large amounts of money were made following a massive increase in short-term call options on Nano-X that would only pay if there was a sharp rally. And there was, with the result that a contracted trade that sold for just $0.04 on Monday rose by almost 16,000 percent.

Hedge funds have been among the major beneficiaries. Arrow Street Capital, according to the FT, bought almost four million Nvidia shares in the fourth quarter of last year, lifting the value of its holdings to $2.1 billion and stood to make a profit of $1 billion so far this year.

The Bridgewater hedge fund stood to make $65 million so far this year after quadrupling its holdings of Nvidia stock and the gains on the stocks held by the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies are likely to come in at more than $375 million.

Amid the hype surrounding AI and Nvidia, recalling that of the dotcom bubble at the beginning of this century, some cautionary notes are being sounded.

FT columnist John Thornhill commented that it could well be the case that “investors are getting way ahead of themselves in their enthusiasm for AI-related hardware companies. … There is overcapacity in several segments of the notoriously cyclical semiconductor industry. There is geopolitical risk associated with China, one of the world’s biggest chip markets, which is being squeezed by US export restrictions. A salutary market correction is probably heading our way.”

Thornhill referred to an article by fellow FT journalist June Yoon in which she recalled the telecoms bust at the beginning of the 2000.

“The biggest risk of throwing too much cash, too fast, at AI chips is overcapacity,” she wrote. “That is already a problem for older-generation chips. With the current sector downturn lasting longer than expected, Samsung had to slash production last year to deal with a deepening chip glut.”

She concluded that broader adoption of AI may take time, “longer than today’s stock prices and funding expectations suggest” and that “hype and overinvestment are a dangerous combination.”

For all the billions being generated on the stock market, none of this represents real value. AI certainly contains the prospect of real advances. But it is being developed in the world of deepening recessionary trends where the only “growth” areas are financial speculation and military budgets.

Netanyahu outlines plans for de facto Israeli annexation of Gaza

Peter Symonds

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem, Sunday, Feb. 18, 2024. [AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented a document Friday entitled “The Day After Hamas Principles” to his war cabinet. It outlines what amounts to plans for the de facto annexation of Gaza in the aftermath of its genocidal war against Palestinians, as well as tighter control over the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

As the plan declares, Israel will maintain military control indefinitely of “all of the territory west of the Jordan” river. It intends to seize territory inside the Gaza Strip to establish a so-called “security space” along its entire border. The Israeli military has already carried out large-scale demolition of homes and civilian infrastructure in northern Gaza in preparation for creating such a buffer zone.

The document also envisages the creation of an over—and underground “security flank” along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt—the only one not under immediate Israeli control—on the pretext of preventing weapons smuggling. In doing so, Israel would be in full land, sea and air control over Gaza, completing the transformation of the enclave into a giant prison camp.

The Israeli military has laid waste to cities and towns throughout Gaza. One estimate released by the BBC last month suggest that between 144,000 and 175,000 buildings in the enclave have either been damaged or destroyed—that is, between 50 percent and 61 percent of the total.

The Netanyahu plan insists that any reconstruction in Gaza must be contingent on its demilitarisation, by which is meant not simply the removal of weapons, but Israeli supervision and control over the civilian administration and police. It calls for a “comprehensive deradicalisation program in all religious education and social institutions in Gaza…”

Netanyahu intends to place the Hamas administration inside Gaza with a puppet regime composed of local representatives “who are not affiliated with terrorist countries or groups and are not financially supported by them”—in other words, local stooges who are acceptable to the Israeli regime.

Any police force in Gaza will also be under the Israeli thumb. Only “local actors with management experience” will be allowed to enforce public order. Such a body “will not be identified with states or bodies that support terror, and will not receive salaries from them.” Of course, it will be Israel that determines which states and bodies are supposedly supportive of terrorism.

In another indication that Israel intends to determine international links with Gaza—in other words, foreign policy—the document declares that Israel will work to shut down the primary relief agency for Palestinians—the 75-year-old United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and replace it with “responsible international aid organisations.”

Israel has seized on unsubstantiated claims that a dozen UNRWA employees of its 12,000-strong workforce in Gaza took part in the Hamas military operation inside southern Israel on October 7. UNRWA has repeatedly warned about the desperate situation confronting the population in Gaza that is being deliberately starved of basic supplies of food, clean water, medicines and other essentials.

The US and its allies have joined the Israeli campaign against UNRWA by cutting funding to the UN body. UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said in a letter to the UN General Assembly on Thursday that the agency had lost $450 million in funding and warned: “I fear we are on the edge of a monumental disaster with grave implications for regional peace, security and human rights.”

Citing a map shown to the UN General Assembly last September showing Gaza and the West Bank inside the borders of Israel, Lazzarini said that Israel’s calls to close UNRWA are “not about the agency’s neutrality.” Rather, “UNRWA’s mandate to provide services to Palestine refugees within this same area is an obstacle to that map becoming a reality.”

Netanyahu’s post-Hamas plan makes clear exactly what the Zionist regime intends to do—the Israeli colonisation of Gaza and the West Bank, followed by ethnic cleansing and ultimately to annexation. The plan was accompanied by the announcement that Israel had given the green light for the building of 3,000 new housing units in settlements in the West Banks.

Netanyahu has repeatedly ruled out the so-called two-state solution. His latest “day after” document rejects any “unilateral recognition” of a Palestinian state. “Israel utterly rejects international diktats in the matter of a final status arrangement with the Palestinians,” it declares. “Such an arrangement will only be reached in direct negotiations.”

Just as it intends to impose a puppet regime in Gaza, so any “negotiations” for a final status arrangement will be with Palestinians of Israel’s choosing to meet Israeli ends.

The Biden administration’s response to Netanyahu’s plan is utterly hypocritical. Having backed the Zionist regime’s barbaric military operation in Gaza to the hilt—politically, financially and militarily—the White House has attempted to distance itself from the predatory aims of Israel’s war.

While backing the full-scale Israeli invasion of Gaza, the US maintains the fig-leaf that it supports a two-state solution and repeats its calls for the involvement of the conservative Palestinian Authority in the West Bank in any reconstruction of Gaza. While nominally opposing Israeli plans to construct military buffer zones around its borders, the US declares that it might support their “temporary” establishment.

The timing of the announcement of Netanyahu’s plan is significant, coming as it does on the eve of talks in Paris for a temporary pause or ceasefire in Israel’s blitzkrieg in Gaza. Its release has the character of a calculated political provocation aimed at poisoning talks before they even get started. Netanyahu has previously dismissed Hamas proposals for a ceasefire as “delusional.”

At the same time, the Israeli bombardment of the city of Rafah where more than a million Palestinian refugees are clinging precariously to life continues. The death toll continued to rise yesterday to more than 29,400. Al Jazeera reported that more than 100 people were killed over the previous 24 hours including at least 24 people, mainly women and children when an Israeli strike hit a home sheltering dozens of displaced Palestinians in Deir el-Balah.

That terrible toll is poised to rise dramatically. The fascist Netanyahu regime has delivered an ultimatum declaring that unless all remaining Israeli hostages are released by the beginning of Ramadan on March 10, the military will launch its deadly ground offensive on Rafah to complete its seizure of Gaza.

Government Of Ireland Funded International Education Scholarships Programme (GOI-IES) 2024

Application Deadline: March 13, 2024.

The GOI-IES program provides financial assistance to exceptional foreign students who want to pursue master’s or doctoral studies in Ireland and it is run by the Government of Ireland. The Higher Education Authority oversees the program, which the Irish government sponsors and runs in collaboration with Irish universities. Sixty full-time master’s or doctoral scholarships are given out annually as part of the initiative. Participants in the program can pursue any field of study.

Eligibility

• To be eligible for a Government of Ireland International Education Scholarship, applicants must have a domicile of origin outside the EU/EEA/Switzerland/United Kingdom.
• Candidates will need to apply for admission to a relevant master’s or PhD programme offered by an eligible higher education institution as per that institution’s admission procedures.
• Applicants must have a conditional or final offer of admission to that higher education institution at the time of application and will be required to submit a copy of the same.
• The offer letter must confirm that the student has been offered a place on a full-time programme as an international fee-paying student. In the context of the continued aggression of Russia in Ukraine, Russian and Belarussian nationals are not eligible to apply.

Benefits

• A Government of Ireland International Education Scholarship consists of a stipend amounting to €10,000 for one year of full-time study at the master’s or PhD level. 
• The awardees’ host higher education institutions are required to give a full fee waiver to the awardees for the year of their scholarship.
• Successful scholars will be expected to commence their studies in either September or October 2024.

Method Of Application

• Potential applicants should read the call documentation carefully to ascertain whether they are eligible to apply.
• An indicative version of the application form is provided for informational purposes only.
• Applications must be submitted via the online portal.
• All applications require two references to be uploaded via the online portal.
• It is recommended that candidates submit their applications well before the deadline, to avoid technical issues due to heavy server traffic on the respective day.
• Applications cannot be submitted once the deadline has passed. No alterations can be made to an application once it has been submitted.

Key Dates

Application deadline	5pm (Irish time) March 13, 2024
Call outcome	Late May or early June 2024

For more information,

Visit The Official Webpage

300 million people need humanitarian assistance, with one in five children living in or fleeing conflict zones

Jean Shaoul

The latest report from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states that around 300 million of the world’s eight billion population need humanitarian assistance and protection due to conflicts, climate emergencies and economic factors.

This has forced the agency to appeal for a record $56.7 billion to help 245 million people. It warns that funding for humanitarian relief has declined, resulting in the largest funding gap on record, leaving millions at risk of starvation. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), every one percent cut in food assistance, risks pushing 400,000 more people to the brink of starvation.

Women wait in line for food donated by the Covid Without Hunger organization in the Jardim Gramacho slum of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, May 22, 2021. [AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo]

OCHA says the world is seeing a growing number of more deeply entrenched conflicts, disrupting food systems and agricultural production, hampering aid delivery, and creating a burgeoning population of displaced people. The consequences for civilians, particularly children, are devastating. Almost one child in every five around the world is living in or fleeing from conflict zones, many barely mentioned in the international corporate media.

One in every 73 people have been forced to flee their homes, a ratio that has almost doubled in the last decade, with 71.1 million people internally displaced at the end of 2022, a 20 percent increase in just a year and the largest year-on-year increase since 2013. The number of refugees is at a record high of 36.4 million, with over half coming from Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine, the product of imperialist-fueled wars.

Most devastating is the situation in Gaza. In the first five weeks of 2024, the number of civilians killed there was equivalent to almost 60 percent of the total number of global civilians killed in 2022, itself the deadliest year since the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Already last December, a UN report warned that 93 percent of people in Gaza face “crisis levels of hunger” and that a quarter of the besieged enclave’s population faces “catastrophic hunger and starvation.” The UN special rapporteur on the right to food said that all children under five in Gaza, 335,000, are at high risk of starvation, while WPF spokesperson Steve Taravella said, “The scale and swiftness of this crisis is unprecedented in modern times,” adding “If current predictions continue, we will reach famine by February.”

Israel rejected this out of hand, saying “There is no starvation in Gaza, period.” The catastrophe has worsened since.

But the Palestinians are a fraction of the 53.8 million requiring assistance, with 32.5 million in need in Syria and neighbouring countries, along with 21.6 million people in Yemen as 80 percent of its population struggles to put food on the table and access basic services. This humanitarian crisis is set to worsen following repeated missile strikes by the US and Britain on the Houthis who control much of the war-torn country.

By far the largest number of people in need of assistance are in Africa. The eruption of civil war in Sudan in April last year between two rival factions of the military has left 30 million of the country’s 49 million population in desperate need of assistance. The crisis in Sudan accounts for almost 40 percent of the 74.1 million in need in East and Southern Africa. In West and Central Africa, centered on Burkina Faso and Niger, 65.1 million people require humanitarian assistance.

There are 50.8 million people in Asia and the Pacific in need, predominantly in Afghanistan (30.6 million of its 43 million population) and Myanmar (18.6 million of its 55 million population).

The Latin America and Caribbean region are now home to 38.9 million people in need, with 15.9 million impacted by the Venezuela crisis.

In Eastern Europe, 16.8 million people are in desperate need of assistance because of the war in Ukraine.

As well as conflicts and wars, the global climate crisis is wreaking destruction with tropical cyclones in southern Africa, wildfires in Europe and Storm Daniel in Libya. Some 8.7 million people were internally displaced due to more frequent and extreme weather events by the end of 2023. But pre-existing poverty, social inequality, official discrimination, and economic policies were also significant drivers of humanitarian need in several countries, including Afghanistan, Syria and Venezuela.

Acute food insecurity is the reality for 258 million people in 58 countries because of armed conflict, economic shocks, climate extremes, poverty and inequality. Of particular note is that “wasting” threatens the lives of 45 million children under 5 (a shocking 7 percent of all children), with nearly one third or 13.6 million suffering from severe wasting, meaning that they are at imminent risk of death.

Disease is also causing significant suffering and loss of life. Twenty-nine countries reported outbreaks of cholera, a water-borne disease easily preventable and treatable. Outbreaks have grown deadlier due to overstretched health systems, vaccine shortages, lack of access to clean water and sanitation, and the presence of multiple, parallel disease outbreaks, while most communities remain under-vaccinated for COVID-19.

Crucially, as OCHA points out, in the absence of concerted international efforts, food security will deteriorate further in 2024 with Burkina Faso, Mali, Gaza and the West Bank, South Sudan and Sudan of particular concern.

Hunger hotspots include the Middle East where Israel’s genocide in Gaza is spiraling into a wider regional war, and in the Sahel where instability and violence continued to surge, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). It warned that food insecurity would deteriorate further amid reduced “donor support,” lower economic growth and sharp rises in domestic food prices. Food prices rose following the start of the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine, and, as at the end of last month, 15 countries had implemented 21 food export bans, while 11 had introduced export restrictions that, along with the re-routing of shipping around southern Africa, are pushing up transportation costs, exacerbating the global food crisis.

A separate report, The Funding Gap, by Action against Hunger, revealed that 17 countries with a hunger burden at “crisis” levels or above in 2022-23, had just 35 percent of their urgent requests for hunger relief funding met.

It would have taken just $8.86 billion to fully fund the hunger-related appeals of all 17 of these countries, loose change for the world’s 2,600 billionaires.

The funding gap was about 23 percent larger at the start of 2024 than it was a year earlier. Approximately 88 percent of hunger appeals received less than half the funding requested in last year. Only 12 percent of hunger programs in countries with crisis levels of hunger received half of what they needed. None were fully funded, compared with just 3 percent in 2022.

This year, the UN and its partner organisations are appealing for $46.4 billion to assist 180.5 million of the 300 million people who it says need humanitarian assistance.

Congress prepares renewal of Section 702 warrantless surveillance by US intelligence

Kevin Reed

On February 14, the House of Representatives scrapped plans to vote on a bill to reauthorize warrantless electronic surveillance that has been used by US law enforcement agencies to violate Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures since 2008.

NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland [Photo by Fort George G. Meade Public Affairs Office / CC BY 4.0]

After a meeting of the bipartisan House Rules Committee revealed disagreements over amendments to the bill renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the measure was pulled back and reauthorization delayed. The rules in Section 702 must be periodically renewed by Congress and are currently set to expire on April 19, 2024.

In a statement posted on Twitter/X, the deputy chief of staff for communications for House Speaker Mike Johnson, Raj Shah, wrote that Congress needed more time to “reach consensus on how best to reform FISA and Section 702 while maintaining the integrity of our critical national security programs,” and the House “would consider the reform and reauthorization bill at a later date.”

According to the language of Section 702 of the FISA law, digital communications, including phone calls, email and text messages, of foreigners living outside the US can be collected and searched for national security reasons without a warrant. The law states that intelligence and law enforcement agencies are not permitted to use the Section 702 authority to target digital communications of American citizens.

However, any time a US citizen interacts with a foreign surveillance target, their communications are collected up in the electronic dragnet and this is known by the intelligence agencies as “incidental” collection. In other words, US intelligence agencies are permitted to gather the electronic communications of whomever they choose without a warrant.

Meanwhile, numerous audits conducted by the government itself of Section 702 data queries have shown that the FBI, in particular, has repeatedly violated Fourth Amendment rights and searched through the information of US citizens.

For example, a decision made by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on May 19 showed that the FBI had improperly searched the foreign intelligence communications database more than 278,000 times between 2016 and 2020.

The ruling found that illegal FBI searches of the database were used in the criminal investigations into the fascist assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and to look into participants in the nationwide protests following the police murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020.

The FISA court ruled that the searches violated the Section 702 rules because there was “no reasonable basis to expect they would return foreign intelligence or evidence of crime,” while the FBI argued that it was “reasonably likely.”

The release of details of the ruling by FISC—a secret court whose judges are appointed by the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court without confirmation or oversight by the US Congress—of the blatant violations by the FBI was carefully timed to coincide with the Biden administration’s campaign to obtain Congressional renewal of Section 702 warrantless surveillance before its original expiration at the end of 2023.

Preoccupied with the war in Ukraine and Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the Biden administration secured an extension of the rules until April as part of its $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act, which the President signed on December 23.

The differences in Congress about renewing Section 702 are over changes that will make it look more like the FBI and other intelligence agencies are only spying on Americans if a probable cause warrant is obtained from the FISA court before doing so. There are no differences over the necessity of keeping the Section 702 data-gathering authority in place.

For its part, the White House has made it clear that it is firmly opposed to Fourth Amendment rights articulated in the US Constitution. When asked by a reporter on February 14 if President Biden would veto a bill that required the US government to obtain a warrant to conduct FISA surveillance, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said, “We do not believe that that serves the national security interests of the United States. A warrant requirement from our perspective would go too far in undermining the very purpose of FISA, and, frankly, it would put victims at risk.”

Currently, there are three different bills proposed in the House, one from the Judiciary Committee, one from the Intelligence Committee and one from the far-right Freedom Caucus of the Republican Party. Both Democrats and Republicans are jockeying for media attention as they absurdly claim to call for a warrant amendment to the Section 702 bill while also stating how important warrantless surveillance is for national security.

As for the members of the Freedom Caucus—who essentially represent the politics of Donald Trump in the House of Representatives—it is a measure of the rot within the American political system that the fascist 2024 Republican candidate for president and his mouthpieces are posturing as opponents of illegal surveillance of the American public. They are only able to do this because the Biden administration is so openly supporting illegal surveillance and directly attacking democratic rights.

Freedom Caucus member Representative Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, claimed to oppose the standard argument from police agencies that imposing a warrant requirement would disrupt and delay critical intelligence work and would cost lives. Biggs said, “The narrative from some on the other side is if you have warrants, if you require a warrant for a query, you will kill law enforcement and you will be responsible for dastardly deeds.” However, the Judiciary Committee bill that Biggs worked on includes numerous exceptions to the warrant requirement.

Responding to the fakery going on the in the House, Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, said the House bill’s purpose is to look like reform “without actually changing anything.” She said the so-called reform legislation was a “trick” meant for members not closely familiar with Section 702.

Goitein went on, “You have to know a fair amount about how Section 702 works to realize how little this bill actually does. And the Intelligence Committee leaders are counting on, or they are betting on, other members not knowing enough about Section 702 to see through this ruse.”

Biden White House prepares Trump-style anti-immigrant executive order barring asylum claims

Jacob Crosse

On Wednesday evening, several media outlets, including CNN and the New York Times, reported that President Joe Biden is seriously considering issuing an executive order that would block most people who travel to the United States from claiming asylum.

President Joe Biden demands passage of a $95 billion war package being debated in Congress, in the State Dining Room of the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024, in Washington. [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

The executive order under consideration is based on Section 212 (f) of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act which provides the president sweeping authority to block immigration for anyone deemed “detrimental to the interest of the United States.” The Biden administration has previously invoked that authority 16 times, including against countries such as Russia and Myanmar.

In his weekly campaign rallies, the fascist Republican front-runner for president, Donald Trump, frequently invokes Section 212 (f) when he promises to embark on the “largest deportation operation in history.” Trump, promises, as Biden is contemplating now, to “deny entry” based on “national security” considerations.

Trump previously used the exact same legal provision when he announced his first travel ban a week after his 2017 inauguration. Trump’s executive order banned travel to the US for 90 days from seven predominately Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The order also barred the resettlement of any Syrian refugees.

In response to Trump’s attack on immigrants, outraged workers, immigrants and protesters flooded airports and border crossings across the country. The mass outpouring in support of the democratic rights of workers, regardless of their religion or where they were born, to immigrate to America terrified the Democratic Party, which immediately sought to divert the movement back into the framework of two-party electoral politics in order to snuff it out.

Democrats called on protesters to “remember in November” and elect them to Congress and the White House so they could pass laws “protecting” immigrants.

Far from protecting immigrants, since coming into office Biden continued virtually all of Trump’s policies, including using Title 42 to expel 2.8 million people between March 2020 and May 2023. After ending Title 42 last year, agents with the Department of Homeland Security have carried out more than 470,000 “removals or returns” while an average of 28,000 people are in DHS detention facilities at any one time.

In addition to carrying out mass deportations, last year the Biden administration waived over two-dozen federal laws in order to resume construction of portions of Trump’s border wall in South Texas.

Far from standing up for the democratic rights of working people to travel and work where they want, the Biden administration has done nothing in response to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s usurpation of federal authority along the US-Mexico border, even as Abbott blocks Border Patrol access along a section of the Rio Grande and deploys buoys equipped with saw blades and concertina wire in and along the river.

Now, seven years after Trump first used 212 (f) to ban entry to the US, Biden and the Democrats, after promising to undo all of Trump’s anti-immigrant executive orders if elected into office, are preparing to unleash an even more vicious and sweeping attack on immigrants.

Citing anonymous sources within the Biden White House, CNN reported that the proposed executive order is currently being reviewed by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to see if it could survive court challenges. While the exact text has yet to be released, multiple outlets have reported that it is based on the anti-immigrant provisions in the stalled legislation that combined border repression and a huge increase in war spending for Ukraine and Israel in a single $118 billion package.

In an attempt to secure fascistic Republican support for the war bill, which included over $60 billion for the ultra-right regime in Kiev, infested with neo-Nazis, and over $14 billion for the genocidal Israeli attack on Gaza, the Biden administration and a majority of congressional Democrats agreed to provide over $20 billion to border enforcement efforts conducted by the sprawling Department of Homeland Security.

Coupled with this infusion of cash, which would have nearly doubled the current budget of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the bill would have provided Biden and his successors new authority to “shut down” immigration to the United States along the southern border if certain low thresholds were met.

During a “shut-down” period, the president could deny virtually all asylum claims for those seeking to enter the United States. Currently, anyone who is able to reach American soil is able to file an asylum claim to stay in the country, with the vast majority of migrants coming to the US through the Mexico border submitting themselves to Border Patrol agents after crossing the border “illegally” in order to file such a claim.

Despite the right-wing character of the bill, Speaker Mike Johnson, at the request of Trump, has so far refused to bring it to the floor for a vote. Backing up Trump’s opposition, Georgia representative and QAnon fascist Marjorie Taylor Greene has promised to file a motion to vacate against Johnson to force a vote on replacing him as Speaker if he brings the bill to the floor.

As of this writing, Biden has yet to comment publicly on the proposed executive order. However, in a widely distributed statement, White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández said, “The Administration spent months negotiating in good faith to deliver the toughest and fairest bipartisan border security bill in decades because we need Congress to make significant policy reforms and to provide additional funding to secure our border and fix our broken immigration system.”

Fernández continued, “No executive action, no matter how aggressive, can deliver the significant policy reforms and additional resources Congress can provide and that Republicans rejected.” He added, “We continue to call on Speaker Johnson and House Republicans to pass the bipartisan deal to secure the border.”

Biden’s proposed executive order has provoked an outpouring of anger from immigrant and human rights groups. Azadeh Erfani, a senior policy analyst at the National Immigrant Justice Center, told the Hill, “The executive actions the Biden administration is considering harken back to some of the darkest chapters of the Trump presidency—leaning on an authority his predecessor used to advance unapologetically racist, Islamophobic and blatantly unlawful attacks on immigrants and asylum seekers.”

Amy Fischer, director of refugee and migrant rights with Amnesty International USA, said the “clear intention behind President Biden’s newest proposed deterrence policy is to create so much fear, pain, and suffering at the border that vulnerable communities abandon their right to seek asylum and instead return to face the violence they are fleeing.”

In response to Biden’s latest adaption to Trump and the Republicans’ draconian and inhumane immigration policies, Democrats who have already endorsed “Genocide Joe” took to social media to try to save face. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez three years ago denounced those who made comparisons between Biden and Trump’s anti-immigrant policies as “doing a profound disservice to the cause of justice,” but she now tweets, “Doing Trump impressions isn’t how we beat Trump… The mere suggestion is outrageous and the President should refuse to sign it.”

Why Biden would refuse to sign his own executive order being drafted at his instruction Ocasio-Cortez did not explain.

Biden’s latest moves to ban the right to asylum and lay the groundwork for a further attack on the democratic rights of the working class confirm that neither capitalist party is willing or able to fight for immigrants and their families. Under conditions of expanding global war, the ruling capitalist parties in every country have declared war on immigrants and social programs.

The assault on democratic rights must be opposed by workers in every country. The entire framework of the debate, with each party promising to enact more repressive measures, is reactionary to the core.

Ukrainian forces withdraw from Avdeevka

Jason Melanovski

Ukrainian soldiers fire a French-made CAESAR self-propelled howitzer towards Russian positions near Avdiivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Monday, Dec. 26, 2022. [AP Photo/Lib's]

Ukrainian forces withdrew from the destroyed eastern city of Avdeevka on Saturday, following months of bloody fighting that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers and ended in a clear debacle for the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The fall of the formerly Ukrainian-controlled city was first announced by Ukraine’s newly appointed Commander-in-Chief Oleksander Syrsky on Facebook. Syrsky wrote that he had given the order to retreat “in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen.”

Syrsky’s claims of concern for the well-being of Ukrainian soldiers are self-serving and cannot be taken seriously as the risk of encirclement was already well known by early February. Syrsky, who recently replaced former General Valery Zaluzhny as head of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, reportedly continued to hold on to the city and send in reinforcements on direct orders from Zelensky. According to Russian sources, at the height of fighting this past month, Ukrainian forces were suffering casualties of up to 1,500 soldiers a day.

Russia’s Defense Ministry later confirmed that Russian forces had taken control of the city on Sunday, marking its most significant victory since the similarly bloody battle over the city of Bakhmut in May 2023 that became known as a “meat grinder” due to mass casualties on both sides. Syrsky similarly led Ukraine’s defense of Bakhmut on direct orders from Zelensky, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, many of them experienced veterans.

Released videos from Russian drones in Avdeevka also appeared to show Ukrainian soldiers haphazardly retreating while under attack from Russian artillery fire and air strikes, leaving behind multiple military vehicles. The videos clearly contradict Syrsky’s claims of an orderly withdrawal as they were recorded a day before Syrsky ordered the retreat.

On Tuesday, further evidence of a debacle emerged as the New York Times reported that “hundreds” of Ukrainian soldiers had in fact been encircled and captured despite assurances of an orderly withdrawal from Ukrainian officials.

In the days prior to the botched retreat, Ukraine ordered its 3rd Separate Assault Brigade into battle in a last-ditch effort to hold on to the city. While pro-NATO Western media outlets such as the New York Times reported on the deployment of the brigade as a heroic act, they failed to mention that the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade is composed of far-right Azov Battalion soldiers. It is led by the neo-Nazi Andry Biletsky, the founder of the Azov Battalion, who has called for a “crusade of the white nations of the world against the Semitic-led subhumans.” 

With a prewar population of approximately 30,000, just 900 civilians remain in the largely flattened city. Most of them are living in basements and underground shelters. 

Following the outbreak of full-scale war in February 2022, Ukraine stationed over 10,000 soldiers in Avdeevka, which is a strategically important city due to its proximity to Donetsk. Control by Kiev granted Ukrainian forces the ability to hit the heavily populated Donetsk with artillery and potentially attempt to “retake” the city, which had been under the control of Russian-backed separatist control since the NATO-backed coup of elected President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

As usual, both Ukrainian and Western officials blamed the loss of Avdeevka on insufficient funding from its imperialist backers. At the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Zelensky blamed Republicans in Congress for holding up additional military aid over demands to crack down on migrants at the US southern border.

“Please, everyone remember that dictators do not go on vacation. Hatred knows no pause. Enemy artillery does not fall silent due to procedural issues. Warriors standing against the aggressor need sufficient strength,” Zelensky said.

In a clearly rehearsed joint PR stunt, US President Joe Biden echoed Zelensky’s comments. According to a readout of a phone call with Zelensky on Saturday, Biden stated, “Ukraine’s military was forced to withdraw from Avdiivka after Ukrainian soldiers had to ration ammunition due to dwindling supplies as a result of congressional inaction, resulting in Russia’s first notable gains in months.”

As predicted by military experts, with the war dragging on, Russia’s numerical and military superiority is growing over Ukrainian forces that are suffering from severe manpower and ammunition shortages. With the loss of Avdeevka, the risk of further losses by Ukraine is now being openly acknowledged by the Western media outlets.

“If the Russians had the strength, they would blow through and try to go all the way to the Dnipro River if they could at this point. Apparently, that’s not happening,” retired General Wesley Clark, former NATO commander, told CNN. “Avdiivka was protecting a series of road junctions that held an eastern front together for the Ukrainians. And so, when it falls and there’s no easily defensible ground to the west of Avdiivka, it opens a hole in the Ukrainian defenses.

“They’re using their airpower much more effectively in the Avdiivka battle than they have in the past. They could initiate a war of movement east of Dnipro River. They could move many, many miles and seriously dislocate defenses that are protecting Kharkiv and even Kiev itself. So, it’s a very dangerous time in the war,” Clark warned.