Turkish government crackdown on political opposition intensifies: Dozens detained and thousands under investigation

Ulaş Ateşçi

Amid a growing wave of arrests by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan against the political opposition and the press, 52 people were detained on “terror” charges Tuesday morning in house raids in 10 cities across Turkey.

While Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office stated that 60 people were wanted and 52 of them were detained within the scope of this operation, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya made a separate statement on X/Twitter and said, “In the ‘GÜRZ-46’ operations against PKK/KCK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party/ Kurdistan Communities Union] in 51 provinces for the last 5 days; 282 suspected members of the terrorist organization were captured.”

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on September. 6, 2022. [AP Photo/Armin Durgut]

The operation against the Peoples’ Democratic Congress (HDK), a coalition of nominally left parties led by the Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), is part of a much broader campaign of repression. “We have been informed that there is an HDK case and HDK investigation process involving around 6,000 people. 1,600 of them are our citizens living in Istanbul,” said İskender Bayhan, Labour Party (EMEP) Istanbul deputy.

Among those detained are leading members of the DEM Party, the Labor Party (EMEP), the Socialist Refoundation Party (SYKP), the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP), the Revolutionary Socialist Workers’ Party (DSİP), the Democratic Regions Party (DBP) and the Green Left Party, as well as journalists Yıldız Tar, Elif Akgül and Ercüment Akdeniz. Musician Pınar Aydınlar, painter Taner Güven and screenwriter Ayşe Bengi were also detained.

On Monday, Mehmet Türkmen, chairman of the independent union BİRTEK-SEN, which has been leading a wave of wildcat strikes by textile workers in the southeastern city of Gaziantep, was arrested and sent to prison. Earlier, the Gaziantep governor’s office announced a 15-day ban on all protests in the province.

Türkmen was arrested on charges of “incitement to commit a crime” and “violating labor and working life” for encouraging workers to use their constitutional and democratic rights to fight for better wages and working conditions. Sitting on a social powder keg, the Erdoğan government is seeking to harshly suppress any mass movement within the working class.

The World Socialist Web Site and the Sosyalist Eşitlik Grubu (Socialist Equality Group) condemn the escalating police-state repression and demand the release of those detained. Everyone has constitutional and universal rights to engage in politics and journalism, and these fundamental democratic rights must be firmly defended by the working class.

The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office’s stated justification for the operation, as reported in the press, is the allegation that the Peoples’ Democratic Congress (HDK), a legal umbrella organization of numerous parties, is, in fact, a “terrorist organization” linked to the outlawed PKK and the KCK.

According to the daily Cumhuriyet, the targeted legal parties that are part of the HDK “organize the social sphere by carrying out actions and activities such as protest marches, press statements, rallies, etc. with a legal appearance in accordance with the instructions of the PKK/KCK terrorist organization”. In fact, with such groundless accusations of ‘terrorism,’ the constitutional activities and rights of all legal parties can be suspended.”

“It is clear that the possibility of a solution and peace [in the Kurdish issue] has started to disturb someone’s sleep,” DEM Party said in a statement on its X/Twitter account, adding: “Every day operations are launched against those who want a solution and peace, and every day, trustees are appointed to replace mayors elected by the people. Every day there are more attacks on the alliance of the peoples, on those who raise the common struggle. There is an all-out attack against society, the will of the people, the search for a solution, democracy and peace. But fear is futile; peace will surely come to these lands.”

This statement is contradictory. Because what is called “the possibility of a solution and peace” is a government policy developed with the permission and approval of Erdoğan himself. Since last October, negotiations have been going on for the release of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been imprisoned since 1999, in exchange for his call for the organization to lay down its arms. A delegation from the DEM party has met directly with Öcalan twice. The PKK/KCK, which is part of the negotiations, has influence not only in Turkey but also in Syria, Iraq and Iran.

However, what is at stake here is not “solution and peace” but Ankara’s attempt to consolidate its position in the deepening imperialist war in Syria and the Middle East. The DEM Party’s claim that Erdoğan can bring a democratic solution to the Kurdish issue while eliminating the remaining democratic rights shows the dilemma and bankruptcy of their nationalist perspective.

Moreover, the DEM Party and legal Kurdish nationalist movement remain the most intense targets of the Erdoğan government’s crackdown on political opposition. Since 2016, thousands of its members, including former party leaders such as Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, have been political prisoners, and elected mayors are being unconstitutionally dismissed.

Most recently, Abdullah Zeydan, the mayor of Van, a city of 1.1 million people, was sentenced to 3 years and 9 months in prison for “aiding a terrorist organization [PKK/KCK]” and “making terrorist propaganda through the press,” and the governor of Van was appointed as a municipal trustee. Over 100 people exercising their right to peaceful protest at the city hall were detained in a massive police operation on Saturday, and 20 were arrested.

Last week, the Public Prosecutor’s Office signaled that the HDK and its affiliated parties would be further targeted in an operation launched in Istanbul, in which 10 people were arrested in 9 district municipalities run by the Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP). There, HDK was declared a “terrorist organization” and the legal local election alliance (”Urban Consensus”) between the CHP and the DEM party, which was formed last year, was declared a “crime”. Across the country, the CHP came out on top, the unfair beneficiary of growing social opposition to the government, while Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) failed to win an election for the first time since 2002.

The CHP, a traditional pro-European Union and pro-NATO bourgeois party, responded to its electoral victory last year by launching a process of “reconciliation” and “normalization” with Erdoğan, with whom it agreed on a program of social assault targeting the working class.

The mounting state crackdown on the CHP and the DEM party is believed to be moving towards Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu (CHP). İmamoğlu, who has twice won elections against the AKP in Istanbul, is seen as the CHP’s favourite presidential candidate and polls show him ahead of Erdoğan. İmamoğlu has been the subject of numerous investigations and lawsuits due to his statements made within the scope of freedom of expression, demanding a total of 25 years in prison and a political ban.

Former AKP deputy Şamil Tayyar said on a TV channel that İmamoğlu could soon be charged with terrorism, stating: “If solid information, documents and evidence are revealed that show İmamoğlu as the architect of the relationship with the KCK within the framework of the ‘urban reconciliation,’ the investigation against İmamoğlu will fall within the scope of terrorism.”

İmamoğlu made a statement on X/Twitter on Monday, holding Erdoğan directly responsible for the lawsuits against him and reiterating the CHP’s call for early elections: “The lawsuits demanding 25 years of imprisonment against me have Mr. President’s signature, not anyone else’s, you can’t fool anyone. I challenge him for an election… Stop intrigues using the judiciary. This nation loves bravery and courage.”

The possibility of losing the presidential elections in 2028 or earlier is not the only reason for Erdoğan’s growing authoritarianism. The government is escalating its long-standing anti-democratic practices amid the growing imperialist drive for redivision in the Middle East and globally led by the United States, as well as rising class tensions at home. And Erdoğan’s actions, which do not recognize the constitution and the law, are being “normalized” globally by the practices of Donald Trump’s second administration in the US, the centre of world capitalism.

Three hundred people a day die living in poverty in Britain

Dennis Moore

Britain’s leading end of life charity, Marie Curie paints a terrible picture of over 100,000 people in the UK dying in poverty every year.

The report, “Dying in Poverty 2024”, centres on data collated from the year 2023 carried out by academic researchers at Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Social Policy.

Dying in Poverty 2024 [Photo: Marie Curie web site]

In 2021, the Marie Curie charity first commissioned the research team to examine the number of people who die in poverty in the UK that led to a landmark report, “Dying in Poverty in 2022”. The current research has been updated and includes analysis as to those in the study who are experiencing fuel poverty.

The latest data for the year 2023 estimates that 110,000 people (300 a day) died in poverty in the UK—representing 18 percent of all those that died in that year—and an increase of almost 20,000 people and 2.5 percentage points since 2019.

The data shows sharp disparities in those affected based on race, gender, age and where in the UK somebody lives.

People of working age are at much greater risk of dying in poverty, with 28 percent of people dying in poverty compared to 16 percent of people of pensioner age. The vast majority of the working aged population who die have also experienced poverty at some point in the last five years of their lives.

Women are more likely to die in poverty than men and, in the year 2023, 29.5 percent of working age women died in poverty, compared to 25.4 percent of men.

Ethnic minority groups are more likely to be in poverty, often having experienced poverty throughout their lives. Poverty rates amongst Bangladeshi households are estimated to be as high as 53 percent, with these households relying on benefits (other than the state pension) representing 20 percent of their income compared to 7 percent of white households.

Based on ethnicity, 25 percent of white working aged people between ages 20-64 died in poverty compared to a staggering 47 percent of black people, 43 percent of Asian people and 37 percent of those of mixed race or having another ethnicity.

A major contributory factor for those of working age who are terminally ill is the loss of income, often having to reduce working hours or leave work all together. This impacts other people living in the same household who may have to reduce their working hours or leave work to become carers.

A rise in poverty at the end of life is also determined by the person’s age. State pensioner benefits are normally paid at a higher rate than out of work state benefits to someone under state pension age. For those claimants of working age who become unwell and must claim Universal Credit or New Style Employment Support Allowance there can be a number of financial disadvantages.

Marie Curie have suggested that for those with less than a year to live who are under the state pension age, benefits should be paid as an entitlement, equivalent to the state pension. The costs to the Treasury would be minimal, accounting for only 0.1 percent of overall state pension spending. At present thousands of people are dying without claiming their state pension they have contributed to throughout their lives.

Across the UK the rates of poverty amongst those living with an end of life diagnosis are not equal. Poverty rates in the North East of England stood at 34 percent, 50 percent higher than areas with the lowest rates of end of life poverty.

Middlesborough had the highest rate of working age people dying in poverty at 44.5 percent, followed by Manchester in the North West at 42.3 percent and Birmingham at 39.9 percent.

The local authority of Bradford in the north of England had the fourth highest level of poverty, with more than a third of working age people living in poverty when they died.

Marie Curie states that the UK every year there are 14 million people—equivalent to one in five—living in poverty at any one time. Another assessment of poverty in Britain, published last year by the Social Metrics Commission, concluded that “At 24%, the poverty rate is now the highest it has been in the 21st Century. It means that 16 million people in the UK are living in families in poverty.”

The fall into poverty is made a lot worse for those with a terminal illness. Many of the these include families who would previously have described themselves as comfortable.

Researchers were specifically asked who dies in fuel poverty. Having a terminal illness can increase fuel costs markedly due to having to run medical equipment, maintain body temperature, and spending more time at home.

Though energy bills have come down slightly since 2022, energy prices are still not at pre-COVID pandemic levels and bills are still high. The cost of electricity for residential consumers in Britain are still some of the highest in the world. Yet the August 2024 interim results showed that profits for the energy companies amounted to over £457 billion since just before the energy crisis started. £61 billion was posted in profits in 2024 alone.

Marie Curie have reported that energy bills can rise by 75 percent following a terminal illness diagnosis, with running an oxygen concentrator costing £65 a month, a dialysis machine £27 a month, and a ventilator £35 a month.

84 percent of Marie Curie staff who have been caring for patients report that their patients have been struggling with the cost of energy.  

The Motor Neurone Disease Association found that some people living with this condition spend more than £10,000 a year alone to power devices.

Previous research carried out by Marie Curie highlighted the inconsistency and unavailability of rebate schemes for the running of medical devices, putting individuals who are dying under massive financial stress.

Not being able to afford fuel costs forcing the seriously ill to make potentially life threatening decisions, cutting back on spending on essentials such as food and heating or rationing the use of their prescribed equipment.

The highest rates of deaths in fuel poverty in England for people under the age of 65 were in London, 25.7 percent compared to 17.9 percent in the wider generally more affluent South East of England.

For those of pension age living in fuel poverty in the last year of their lives, London stood at 25.6 percent. But this figure was even higher in Northern Ireland where 27.2 percent died in fuel poverty compared to 16.3 percent in the South East of England.

Following a freedom of information request last year Marie Curie revealed that the Labour Party’s savage cut to the winter fuel payments will leave 44,000 terminally ill pensioners without the much needed payment worth up to £300. Marie Curie are calling for the winter fuel payment to be paid to all those with a terminal illness.

15 years after devastating earthquake, Haiti is being transformed into a concentration camp

Rafael Azul

US Marines patrol the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, March 2004 [Photo: DoD]

January 12, 2025 marked the 15th anniversary of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake [magnitude 7.0] that together with 52 aftershocks 12 days later [magnitude 4.5 and greater] shook Haiti and killed more than 200,000 people, injured more than 300,000 and left 1.3 million homeless. Lacking even minimal assistance, many survivors had to dig themselves out of the rubble. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians are still grappling with the effects of one of the biggest natural disasters ever in the Americas.

This natural disaster came on top of an ongoing social disaster produced by US imperialism, which had imposed a dictatorship and transformed this Caribbean nation into a 27,750 km2 (10,710 sq. mi) concentration camp.

A key event driving this social disaster had taken place six years earlier, when the elected government of President Jean Aristide was overthrown by the CIA. Together with his family Aristide was arrested and secretly flown to Africa as a pro-imperialist regime was installed and US Marines occupied the island.

Today, Haiti is run by the Core Group, an unelected alliance of the US, Canada, the UK, Caricom, and the Organization of American States. For all effective purposes, the Core Group is dominated and financed by the US government and by global financial interests. 

The current narrative, that Haitian society is dominated by so-called gangs that with unprecedented brutality control the urban neighborhoods of Port-Au-Prince and other cities and towns, leaves out the role of US imperialism in arming these groups, and that more than gangs, these are paramilitary “death squads” entrusted with terrorizing the urban and rural working class, allied with corrupt elites and multinational corporations.

The use of death squads to pursue the aims of US imperialism is not unique to Haiti. They have been utilized to terrorize the working class across Central America, in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. These “gangs” also functioned in Colombia and the Southern Cone of South America to murder and disappear workers and youth.

In Haiti the “gangs” are split-offs of the infamous “Tonton Macoutes” paramilitary organization created by the US-backed Duvalier dictatorship in 1959 and renamed Volunteers for National Security [Milice de Voluntaires de la Sécurité Nationale —MVSN] in 1971.

As of January 2024, about 200 such “gangs,” derived from the Tonton Macoutes, operated in Haiti with nearly half based in Port-au-Prince, where they controlled the city’s impoverished working class neighborhoods. They grouped themselves into two coalitions, the G9 and G-Pep.

In the words of a 2010 study by the Council of Hemispheric Affairs (two months after the earthquake), the Haitian death squads, are truly “The Central Nervous System of Haiti’s Reign of Terror.”

Most recently, troops from Kenya and other nations have been sent into Haiti to perform policing operations, alongside the death squads. All of these forces are financed by the United States.

Despite this continuing reign of terror against the Haitian workers, prior to, and following the 2010 earthquake, the Haitian masses have repeatedly mobilized in revolutionary struggle and fought against the successive dictatorial regimes, including in a massive wave of popular protest in 2018.

A second earthquake (magnitude 7.2) shook Haiti’s southern peninsula in 2021, resulting in 2,000 deaths; an estimated 500,000 people required emergency humanitarian aid. 

The effects of the 2010 and 2021earthquakes are still being felt, an estimated 5.4 million people, nearly half of Haiti’s population, is malnourished living on one meal a day or less; over 1 million are still homeless; and currently six thousand Haitians are starving.

Haiti has the lowest per capita Gross Domestic Product (US$2700) and life expectancy (63 years) in the Americas.

Haiti shares a 400-kilometer border with the Dominican Republic. In 2023, Luis Abinader, the Dominican Republic’s wealthiest man and current president, mandated that a wall be built along the border, falsely claiming that Haiti was illegally appropriating water from the Dajabon River, on the northern part of the border. He also argued that a wall was needed to ensure the safety of the Dominican Republic from the Haitian gangs and drug trafficking.

Last October Abinader’s government announced its intention to deport 10,000 Haitian immigrants a week, including sugar cane and other workers who had resided in the country for decades, with an ultimate goal of deporting 1.5 million Haitian immigrants.

On February 4, the first flight of Haitian deportees from the US landed at the Cap-Haïtien airport in northern Haiti. The next day Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in the Dominican Republic to rubber stamp Abindar’s deportation program.

Last week, 500 Haitian immigrants were deported from the Dominican Republic through a narrow opening in the border wall, in a scene reminiscent of the deportation of Jews into Nazi concentration camps. Some were interviewed by NBC and AP News: “They were the first deportees of the day, some still clad in work clothes and other barefoot as they lined up for food in the Haitian border city of Belladère before mulling their next move… ‘They broke down my door at 4 in the morning’ said Odelyn St. Fleur, who had worked as a mason in the Dominican Republic for two decades. He had been sleeping next to his wife and a 7-year-old son.”

Among the deportees at the border have been pregnant women, Dominican-born children of Haitian immigrants, retirees and chronically ill people.

The AP article also reported on the reaction by Dominican workers in defense of their Haitian class brothers: 

“Last year, a group of Dominican men, outraged at what they said was the treatment and arrest of their Haitian neighbors, threw rocks, bottles and other objects at authorities. One man tried to disarm an immigration official before shots were fired and everyone scattered.”

Sealing the perimeter to the Haitian concentration camp are the naval patrols by the Navy of the Bahamas, British warships, the Cuban border patrol and the US Coast Guard as part of a blockade operation to prevent Haitian refugees from leaving their country. The UK warships are intended to prevent Haitians from seeking refuge in the Turks and Caicos British colony. Also participating in the blockade is the State of Florida, which has increased marine and aviation patrols.

While the blockade is designed to prevent the movement of people; the same cannot be said for the entry of weapons from the US and other nations to arm, and provide ammunition for, the terror squads (80 percent originate in the US). 

According to a CNN study published last May, despite the naval blockade: “guns and drugs keep pouring in, crossing international waters and airspace to reach the embattled country —most of the firepower originating from the US.” Much of that weaponry originates in Florida, one of the participants in the blockade that surrounds Haiti, and is the source of enormous profits for weapons merchants. 

Haiti is an agricultural and clothing exporter, a source of profit for transnational firms and the wealthy elites that live in privileged areas near Port-Au-Prince, surrounded by shanty-towns and protected by the death squads. These elites benefit from the hunger wages and terrible working conditions that are enforced through terror. Haiti also has significant oil reserves as well as important mineral reserves, ripe for exploitation by US and European corporations.

One of the biggest sources of dollars entering Haiti is the remittances from the Haitian diaspora in the US, Canada, the Dominican Republic and other countries. These will surely diminish with the mass deportation of Haitian workers from the US, now accelerating under the fascist policies of  Donald Trump.

Fifteen years after the Haitian earthquake and in the context of the disaster unleashed by profit-seeking capitalism and imperialist war preparations, Haiti has been transformed into one of the world’s largest concentration camps. Its people confront a slow genocide from starvation, disease and terror squads, armed by US imperialism and in the service of the native elites and transnational corporations, all of which have stood in the way of reconstruction since the 2010 and 2021 earthquakes.

Musk, Trump begin to purge US government workers—except military and police

Jacob Crosse

President Donald Trump listens as Elon Musk speaks in the Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, in Washington. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

Under the direction of the world’s richest fascist, Elon Musk, over the last 48 hours hundreds, if not thousands, of US federal employees have been fired across multiple agencies. In order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and expanding military and police budgets, thousands of workers across agencies that provide oversight, testing, education and environmental protection are being eliminated.

At this time it appears that the bulk of the current layoffs are hitting probationary workers, as they are easier to terminate. This is only a down payment on what is to come. There is no doubt Musk, President Donald Trump, and the rest of the financial oligarchy they represent are eager to purge permanent government workers as well.

Out of some 2.3 million people working in the US federal government, roughly 200,000 are currently on probation, which typically lasts for a year, but can be as long as three years, depending on the agency and position.

USA Today reported that layoffs were “underway at multiple federal departments.” Foreshadowing tens of thousands more federal job cuts, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday night, that “White House officials are eyeing cuts to agency budgets of between 30 and 40 percent, on average, across the government—centered on significant staff reductions.”

The largest layoffs, so far, have been announced at the US Forest Service. On Thursday, Warner Vanderheuel, president of the Forest Service Council, told Bloomberg Law that 3,400 workers out of more than 20,000 would be laid off. The agency is currently charged with managing some 193 million acres with a focus on natural resource conservation and managing forests to prevent wildfires.

Over 100 probationary employees at the Department of Education and the Small Businesses Administration (SBA) were fired on Wednesday, according to CNN, which cited union sources and government documents. The network reported that fired workers received a letter that read in part, “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.”

On Thursday, two Department of Energy staffers told Politico that their department plans to “lay off most or all probationary employees.” Another DoE source said the planned purge of probationary employees at the Energy Department will be replicated “for the full federal government.”

Also on Thursday, Reuters reported that termination emails had been sent to probationary employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the General Services Administration (GSA). Probationary staff at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Reuters noted, “were fired in a group call Thursday.”

An OPM worker told Federal News Network that no union representative was present during the group call and that the meeting’s moderator “disabled microphone and camera access for all employees on the call after someone asked about union representation.” The worker said that about 70 employees were on the call.

It is unclear how many probationary workers have, or will be fired. Reuters said that at least 45 workers at the SBA, 100 at the GSA and 160 workers at the Education Department had been laid off. Federal workers on social media have reported layoffs at the US Patent Office, Veteran’s Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Internal Revenue Service and Department of Agriculture, among other agencies.

The confirmed layoffs are just the tip of the iceberg, with more on the horizon. In a statement to Federal News Network, an OPM spokesperson menacingly stated, “the probationary period is a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment.”

The layoffs come on the heels of an estimated 75,000 workers, roughly 3 percent, accepting a supposed “buyout” from the Trump administration. In a repeat of his 2022 takeover of Twitter, now X, Musk issued a “Fork in the Road” ultimatum to federal employees, offering a deferred resignation with pay supposedly until September 30. The proposal had been on a court-ordered hold after federal unions sued the government to block it, arguing that it was unfunded, illegal and gave workers only a few days to decide.

On Wednesday, a judge lifted a pause on the program and the offer ended at midnight. The Trump administration had hoped more workers would accept the buyout, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt previously stating the goal was between 5 and 10 percent of the current federal workforce (100,000 to 200,000 workers).

The layoffs began in earnest this week, following an executive order issued on Tuesday by Trump, which called for mass reductions in the size of the federal workforce under the direction of Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”

Marxists have long maintained that the state is an instrument of class rule, not a neutral arbiter of competing social forces and interests. The US government is not an expression of the democratic will of 330 million people, but a tool of the financial oligarchy, used to advance the class interests of the ruling elite.

Tuesday’s executive order issued by Trump not only underscores this reality, but is a qualitative step towards dictatorship. The executive order requires the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Russell Vought, author of the Project 2025 blueprint that was so reactionary that Trump had to disavow it during the election campaign, to submit a plan to reduce the federal workforce to “maximize efficiency and productivity.”

It calls for agency heads to undertake “large-scale reductions in force” with a focus on all “agency diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.” This means targeting all workers engaged in anti-discrimination efforts, and empowering fascists and bigots.

Notably, the order does not apply to “functions related to public safety, immigration enforcement, or law enforcement.” Exclusions also include “military personnel” and any position that agency heads deem “necessary to meet national security, homeland security, or public safety responsibilities.”

Seeking to sabotage departments by barring them from hiring needed workers, the “Plan” requires agencies to “hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart.” This would quickly render most departments unable to function, simply from ordinary attrition and retirements.

Asserting direct control over the hiring process, the order calls for the new hires to be made “in consultation with the agency’s DOGE Team Lead.” Furthermore, the agency should not fill “any vacancies for career appointments that the DOGE Team Lead assesses should not be filled,” unless overruled by the agency’s head—another Trump appointee.

Federal workers, many whose departments are facing complete “deletion,” in the words of Musk, cannot rely on the Democrats, trade unions or courts to protect them. None of the federal trade unions or Democratic politicians have called for strike action, let alone a general strike of all federal workers, to protect jobs and fight the layoffs. Instead, they have filed lawsuits which will either be overruled by pro-Trump judges or produce rulings that Trump will simply ignore.

Trump’s call with Putin plunges European powers into crisis

Peter Schwarz

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and U.S. President Donald Trump give a joint news conference at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018. [AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais]

The announcement by President Donald Trump that the United States would “immediately” begin negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine has plunged European politics into a deep crisis.

Before his “long and very productive” phone call with Putin on Wednesday, Trump had informed neither the Ukrainian government nor European leaders. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky only learned about it afterward from Trump himself. The Europeans received the news through social media. It appears they will also play no role in the planned negotiations.

Prior to this, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had made it unequivocally clear at a meeting of the Ukraine Contact Group in Brussels that it was unrealistic to expect Ukraine to return to its 2014 borders—reclaiming Crimea and Donbas—or to become a NATO member. Both of these had previously been considered non-negotiable conditions for ending the war by Kyiv and Brussels. Hegseth also emphasized that ensuring future peace would be Europe’s responsibility; the US would provide neither troops nor financial support for this purpose.

Under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, the US and Europe had jointly pursued the war against Russia. Their goal was to integrate Ukraine into NATO’s and the EU’s sphere of influence and weaken Russia strategically to ensure unrestricted access to its vast resources.

However, despite providing Ukraine with military and financial aid exceeding €200 billion ($209 billion US)—most of it from Europe—the Ukrainian army remains on the defensive. After suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties and facing increasing desertions, Ukraine is struggling even to recruit the necessary soldiers for the front line.

Now, the Europeans fear that Trump may strike a deal with Putin at their expense and without their involvement. Numerous high-ranking politicians have protested against Trump’s unilateral approach.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned against excessive concessions to Russia. “We must ensure that there is no dictated peace,” he told Politico, insisting that the US must continue its military involvement.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated, “It should be clear to everyone that we cannot be left sitting at the kids’ table.” He criticized the Trump administration for revealing publicly concessions to Putin before negotiations had even begun. “From my perspective, it would have been better to discuss a potential NATO membership for Ukraine or territorial losses at the negotiating table,” he said. “Peace can only be secured from a position of strength.”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote in capital letters on X that Ukraine, Europe, and the United States should work together for a “JUST PEACE. TOGETHER”.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte stressed that “it is important that Ukraine is closely involved in everything that concerns Ukraine.”

Earlier this week, President Zelensky had already attempted to persuade Trump with economic incentives. In a lengthy Guardian interview, he offered lucrative business opportunities in exchange for continued US military support, promising Trump preferential access to rare earth minerals worth $500 billion, as well as Ukraine’s substantial uranium and titanium reserves.

“It is not in the interests of the United States for these reserves to fall into Russian hands and potentially be shared with North Korea, China, or Iran,” Zelensky said. “This is not just about security but also about money… Valuable natural resources where we can offer our partners investment opportunities that did not exist before… For us, this will create jobs, and for American companies, it will generate profits.”

At the same time, Zelensky made it clear that he did not believe the European powers were capable of replacing the US militarily. “There are voices saying that Europe could provide security guarantees without the Americans, and I always say no,” he told the Guardian. According to Zelensky, ensuring Ukraine’s security would require 100,000 to 150,000 foreign soldiers—a number that Europe cannot muster.

It is currently difficult to predict how far Trump’s initiative will go. It is unlikely that Moscow would agree to a deal that includes the deployment of European or American troops in Ukraine, as NATO’s eastward expansion was the primary reason for the war’s outbreak three years ago.

Nevertheless, Trump’s initiative and the alarmed European reactions mark a political turning point. Neither of these developments is about peace. Instead, they signal the fragmentation of the power blocs and alliances that have dominated global politics since World War II in favor of imperialist conflicts where everyone fights for their own interests.

As Der Spiegel concluded in its coverage of “Trump’s Call to the Kremlin”: “The US has begun its shift away from Europe. Trump’s conversation with Putin and Hegseth’s appearance in Brussels have dispelled any remaining doubts.”

The former head of Britain’s MI6 commented: “We’ve moved from a world of rules and multilateral structures and institutions to strongmen making deals over the heads of weaker and smaller countries.”

Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio summed up the “America First” policy as follows: “The interest of American foreign policy is to further the national interest of the United States of America.” Under the banner of rejecting a “unipolar world,” Rubio is turning his back on Europe’s traditional “partners” in order to refocus US military power on territorial expansion and competition with China.

At the Munich Security Conference, which takes place from Friday to Sunday, this debate will play out in public. Alongside numerous European politicians and military officials, US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Rubio will also be in attendance.

The Munich Security Report 2025, which serves as the basis for the conference, is titled “Multipolarization” and describes a world where the emergence of competing power blocs “increases the risk of disorder and conflict and undermines effective cooperation.”

Regarding the US, the report states: “Donald Trump’s presidential victory has buried the US post–Cold War foreign policy consensus that a grand strategy of liberal internationalism would best serve US interests. For Trump and many of his supporters, the US-created international order constitutes a bad deal. As a consequence, the US may be abdicating its historic role as Europe’s security guarantor—with significant consequences for Ukraine. US foreign policy in the coming years will likely be shaped by Washington’s bipolar contest with Beijing.”

Europe’s only response appears to be massive rearmament in pursuit of its own imperialist interests, combined with the increasingly harsh exploitation and repression of the working class to cover the costs of militarization. In this, Europe is moving in the same direction as Trump.

A prime example of the prevailing war hysteria is a guest article in Der Spiegel by Green Party politician Ralf Fücks. As the former head of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Fücks played a leading role in the 2014 right-wing coup in Kyiv that laid the groundwork for the current war.

Now, he accuses Trump of “throwing Ukraine under the bus.” He blames German and European policies for failing to support Ukraine sufficiently. “If Europeans do not pull themselves together now and do everything to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty and the foundations of the European peace order, they will seal their own political insignificance. Europe will become nothing more than a pawn of the great powers,” Fücks argues.

This approach is also shaping Germany’s upcoming federal election. All major parties—from the Left Party, Social Democrats, Greens, Liberal Democrats, and Christian Democrats to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD)—agree that Germany must drastically increase its military spending while cutting social programs accordingly. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, (BSW) an anti-migrant split-off from the Left Party, meanwhile, praises Trump as an alleged peacemaker.

Lula government prepares new attacks on Brazil’s workers and poor

Guilherme Ferreira

Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva [Photo: MMARCELO CAMARGO/AGÊNCIA BRASIL]

The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers Party - PT) has begun the second half of its term with rising signs of a mounting economic and social crisis in Brazil. With a challenging domestic and international economic scenario, marked by the trade war unleashed by the US administration of Donald Trump, the Lula government is laying the groundwork for placing the growing weight of this crisis onto the backs of the Brazilian working class.

At the end of last year, the Lula government managed to pass an austerity package which will have a broad impact on the poorest and most oppressed sections of the working class. But it hasn’t stopped there. Members of his economic team are responding to an alleged “heated market” and a prospect of higher inflation this year with actions aimed at slowing down the economy, spending cuts and more austerity measures. Following the mantra of economic orthodoxy, its aim is to suppress wages by raising interest rates to keep corporate profits growing.

In a January 31 interview with Estado de S. Paulo, Lula’s Treasury Secretary, Rogério Ceron, said that “there is an understanding within the government that it is necessary to guarantee a slowdown in the economy in order to avoid inflationary decontrol.” He made clear that this implies “a more contractionary fiscal policy in the first half of the year” and that “if more fiscal measures are needed to guarantee the results sought by the government [a zero deficit target and compliance with the new fiscal framework, which limits social spending], they will be adopted.”

To this end, one of the measures that the Lula government is putting into practice is to raise interest rates even further. In the first two years of his administration, Lula repeatedly criticized the president of the Central Bank (BC) appointed by the fascistic ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, Roberto Campo Neto, for the high interest rates in the country. Last July, Lula called him a “political and ideological adversary of the governance model we are pursuing,” that is, one that supposedly prioritizes productive investment, aiming the “re-industrialization” of the country, over financial capital.

However, now that the vast majority of the Central Bank’s directors and its president, Gabriel Galípolo, are direct appointees of the PT government, what is seen is the continuation of Campo Neto’s monetary policy. Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said in an interview last Friday that “The remedy for correcting inflation is often to raise interest rates to inhibit price rises.” At the end of January, the Central Bank raised the interest rate to 13.25 percent, the highest real rate in the world, and the prospect is that it will reach 15 percent in April.

At the end of January, some economic figures for 2024 were released which, from the Lula government’s class perspective, justify its concern. In 2024, Brazil’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 3.6 percent, while this year the government expects it to grow by up to 2.5 percent. There is also the possibility that the Brazilian economy will enter a technical recession (two quarters of falling GDP) in 2025. 

Last year, Brazil saw a 4.8 percent increase in the inflation, driven mainly by higher food prices for the poorest. Household food inflation was 8.2 percent, while food and beverages pushed up inflation for low-income families by 2.3 percentage points, compared to 0.9 percentage points for high-income families.

In the first week of February, the federal and state governments raised fuel prices, with gasoline going up by 2.4 percent and diesel by 4.2 percent. The huge dependence on trucks for food distribution in Brazil will certainly mean that the increase in fuel prices will be transferred to food, further increasing the inflationary perspective. The government expects inflation of 5.51 percent this year.

Any prospect of Lula’s government acting to alleviate the scenario of accelerating degradation of living conditions, especially for the poorest, is an illusion. Ignoring the huge profits of large companies and banks in Brazil last year, which at least partly explains the high food inflation, Lula declared on February 6: “I can’t freeze [prices], ... what we need to do is call the businessmen, talk to the whole sector, and see what we can do to ensure that the basic food basket of the Brazilian people fits within their budget with a certain flexibility.”

The following day, the announcement that the Ministry of Social Development would increase the value of Bolsa Família, one of the largest social assistance programs for people living in extreme poverty, against the rise in food prices was almost immediately denied by the government. In a statement, Minister Wellington Dias was forced to acknowledge that “All the actions of this Ministry are taken in accordance with the guidelines of the federal government, especially with regard to fiscal responsibility.”

The Bolsa Família and the Continuous Cash Benefit (BPC), which pays a minimum wage to elderly and disabled people living in extreme poverty, have been attacked by the Lula government’s austerity package approved in December. With the prospect of a reduction in the number of beneficiaries—being intentionally provoked by the PT’s austerity package—and a smaller increase in the value of these benefits—which are dependent on the increase in the minimum wage, another item targeted by the austerity package—social inequality in one of the world’s most unequal countries will certainly increase.

An article in the newspaper O Globo titled “Misery falls, inequality doesn’t: experts explain why Brazil doesn’t distribute income,” reported in early December that “IBGE [Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics] estimates that inequality would have increased by 7.2 percent in 2023” if Bolsa Família and BPC were disregarded. In 2023, even with GDP growing by 3.2 percent, social inequality in Brazil was the same as in 2022, reaching 0.518 according to the Gini index. It is surpassed only by the poorest countries in Africa.

At the same time, the report says that, according to IBGE, the “heated market ... has mainly benefited higher-income groups, since they depend more on wages. In other words, the gains of the labor market were not appropriated by the most vulnerable.” In fact, even after Brazil’s GDP has grown over the last four years, the average income of workers in Brazil is still at the pre-pandemic level.

The impact of the aggravation of social inequality among the active workforce, highly understated by the government and in bourgeois public opinion, is brutal. Although unemployment is formally at its lowest level since 2012, having reached 6.6 percent last year, this statistic disregards underemployed workers—people who work less than they would like or are not looking for a job. Were these numbers considered, the unemployment rate would double. In Brazil’s poorest states, such as Bahia and Pernambuco, official unemployment already exceeds 11 percent.

Those employed face brutal levels of exploitation. Most formal workers in Brazil are in services and commerce, industries in which the so-called 6x1 scale (six days of work, one of rest) predominates, with working hours of 44 hours a week or more. Almost 40 percent of Brazilian workers are in the informal sector, rising to more than 50 percent in the impoverished states of the Northeast.

The Lula government is trying hard to paint the country’s economic and social life in rosy colors that frontally clash with reality. On February 3, at the start of the Brazilian Congress’s legislative year, Lula declared that “In these two years, Brazil has become less poor and less unequal, with rising wages, higher labor income and fairer income distribution.”

But Brazilian workers doesn’t seem to agree. At the end of January, an opinion poll by Quaest showed that for the first time since the start of his term, Lula had negative approval rating. Approval fell from 52 percent in December 2024 to 47 percent in January 2025, driven by the economic difficulties of the Brazilian population due to low wages and high inflation. In the Northeast, where the PT has a significant electoral base mainly among the poorest, Lula’s approval went from 67 percent in December to 59 percent.

Following the PT’s collapse at the polls in last November’s municipal elections, the soaring inflation, the government’s austerity measures and Lula’s broken promises to reverse the pro-corporate reforms implemented by the right-wing Michel Temer (2016-2018) and Bolsonaro administrations, there is growing speculation that this government will pave the way for a return of the far-right to power, as happened in the United States with the reelection of Trump. This has led to growing dissension within the PT and among its allies.  

In December, João Pedro Stédile, leader of the Landless People’s Movement (MST) said in interviews that “the public policies [of the Lula government] are not reaching the poorest among us, in the suburbs and in the countryside”, and that “Land reform has come to an absolute standstill in these two years.”

Before the Lula government approved its austerity package at the end of December, long-time PT leader and former party president José Genuíno told TV Fórum that measures like this are “the path to the PT’s political defeat. I think there’s a climate of apprehension at the ranks of the party, there’s a climate of dissatisfaction.... I think we’re at a certain crossroads.”

Major class battles lie ahead for the Brazilian and Latin American working class. Last year, virtually all sectors of the federal public employees went on months-long strikes against the Lula government’s claim that there is no money for social services in Brazil. 

As the economic and social crisis intensifies, more workers will clash with the PT government, as well as the unions it controls and the Brazilian pseudo-lefts who are doing everything they can to cover up the growing attacks on living conditions.

Philippine Vice President Duterte impeached

John Malvar

Vice President of the Philippines Sara Duterte was impeached on February 5 by a vote of 215 of the 306 members of the House of Representatives. The impeachment will go to trial in the Philippine Senate in the context of the country’s heated midterm elections which are scheduled to be held on May 12.

Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte gestures as she speaks during a press conference in Manila, February 7, 2025. [Photo: Basilio Sepe/WSWS]

This is the first time in Philippine history that a Vice President has been impeached. The office of Vice President in the Philippines is, in the performance of official duties, largely a symbolic position. The primary function of the office is to ensure a constitutional succession of power.

The Vice President works autonomously from the President, has her own substantial budget, and operates a sizeable network of government employees loyal to her office. Historically, during periods of tension between the President and Vice President, who are regularly rivals in Philippine politics, the Vice President wields what amounts to a shadow government waiting to supplant the President.

Three years ago, Marcos and Duterte were elected together on a shared “Uniteam” slate. Among the common positions of their campaign was that they would continue the geopolitical orientation of the outgoing administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, Sara Duterte’s father. President Duterte, during his six years in office, had dramatically reoriented Philippine foreign relations away from the United States toward improved ties with China.

On taking office, facing intense pressure from both the Philippine military and the Biden White House, Marcos abruptly altered his stance, integrating the Philippines into the war plans of Washington. Under his presidency, the US has overseen and coordinated direct confrontations and collisions between Philippine and Chinese Coast Guard and naval vessels, has deployed a medium range Typhon missile system to the northern Philippines targeting China, and has been actively preparing a number of basing facilities to house US forces in the country.

Marcos’ reorientation to the United States drove tensions between his political faction and that of the Vice President. The Dutertes represent sections of the Philippine elite who seek to improve ties with China by distancing the country from the aggressive policies of the United States.

It is the war tensions between the United States and China, and the question of the position of the Philippines in the growing conflict, that is being fought over in the election. The impeachment of Duterte is the extremely aggressive opening salvo.

The decision to impeach Duterte was arrived at abruptly and late. Machinations toward her impeachment had previously been made beginning in August 2023. On several occasions representatives of the Stalinist Makabayan bloc had attempted to file impeachment charges, citing allegations of corruption, her complicity in the murderous ‘war on drugs’ conducted by former President Rodrigo Duterte, and her alleged failure to defend Philippine sovereignty in the South China Sea.

The final charge, regarding the South China Sea, raised by Makabayan and the right-wing Magdalo party, is the political essence of the matter, but it is a flimsy grounds for impeachment. The Vice President is responsible for neither foreign policy nor national defense. By late December 2024, three separate attempts to impeach Duterte had been made, but none succeeded.

With breathtaking rapidity, on February 5, the last day of the Congressional session before it adjourned for the duration of the election, a new set of impeachment charges were brought before the House. The first to sign on the new charges was Congressman Sandro Marcos, son of the President. This was the go signal. A political stampede followed. Some 215 representatives voted in favor, then the House adjourned.

Twelve of the country’s 24 Senate seats are up for election. The Senators will sit as judges at the impeachment trial of Duterte. The outcome of the election will determine the fate of Duterte’s impeachment. Her last-minute impeachment has turned the midterm election into an open battle between the rival factions of Marcos and Duterte, and through this conflict a struggle over the geopolitical orientation of the Philippines.

Why the last minute impeachment? Public tensions between Duterte and Marcos were, if anything, worse in December. Why did the President not greenlight charges then? Why wait until February? The fundamental political difference between two months ago and now is the beginning of the new Trump administration, which with its tariffs and openly imperialist aggression, has destabilized all of world politics. The question of how the Philippines will position itself in this new world, confronting tariffs and the mass return of over 350,000 undocumented Philippine immigrants from the US and economic warfare with China, has become unbearable. The ambiguity and the balancing of rival factions is turning to open political warfare.

Duterte is charged with the misuse of funds, bribery and corruption, plotting to assassinate the President, and committing acts of sedition and insurrection. The charges of insurrection and plotting to assassinate the President stem from angry remarks made by the Vice President in late 2024 claiming that the President was trying to kill her and that she had ordered a contract killer, in the event of her death, to murder the president.

It is not yet certain when the Senate trial will convene. Senate President Francis Escudero stated that it was “almost a sure thing” that the trial would not finish before a new Congress took over on July 28. In other words, half of the Senators voting on the articles of impeachment would be those newly elected. Escudero anticipated convening the trial under the outgoing 19th Congress on June 2, when the legislative session resumes, and continuing it under the incoming 20th Congress.

Senator Tito Sotto stated that uncertainty over rules and conflicting legislative provisions regarding an impeachment trial, in particular whether the trial should be delayed until after the newly elected Senators took office, would likely see the matter raised to the Supreme Court.

The election season is just opening, but early polling showed candidates tied to the Marcos administration leading the Senate race for the so-called Magic 12, the twelve top vote-getters being those who elected to seats in the Senate. Political loyalties are fickle and the race remains close. At least five of the top 14 candidates are likely to defend Duterte.

The administration slate, assembled under the political umbrella Alyansa Para sa Bagong Pilipinas (Alliance for a New Philippines), kicked off its election campaign on February 11 in Ilocos Norte, long the regional base of power for the Marcos family. President Marcos told the rally that the candidates of Alyansa were distinguished from their rivals by their commitment to defend Philippine sovereignty over the West Philippine Sea, the name coined in the last decade for the portion of the South China Sea claimed by the country.

“None of them,” Marcos declared of the administration candidates, “applauded China and was happy when we were fired with water cannons, when the coast guard was hit, when our fishermen were blocked and when their catch was stolen from them.”

Despite the grandstanding, Marcos was openly declaring the fundamental question of the election for the Philippine elite: how the Philippines will position itself in a war with China.

Among those running for reelection on the Alyansa slate is Senate Majority Leader Francis Tolentino, the author of the Philippine Maritimes Zone Law and the Philippine Archipelagic Sea Lanes Law, both of which sought to codify Manila’s claims to the South China Sea against China, and both of which were signed into law by Marcos.

Also running for reelection is Sen. Imee Marcos, the President’s sister, but sharp political tensions over relations with the United States run between the siblings. Sen. Marcos refused a position on the Alyansa slate, criticized the deployment of US Typhon missiles to the Philippines claiming it made the country a target for war with China, and publicly declared her opposition to the impeachment of Duterte.

The precedent for the impeachment of Duterte is the impeachment of Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012. The impeachment and trial, orchestrated by the Benigno Aquino III administration, sought to remove the Chief Justice on charges of corruption. Corona represented the political interests of the faction of the Philippine elite loyal to former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who had, to an extent, oriented the Philippine foreign policy towards China.

Washington played a critical role in the impeachment of Corona, supplying supposedly incriminating international financial records against Corona to the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) for use in the trial. There is every indication that this pattern will be repeated in the trial of Vice President Duterte.

Eleven representatives from the lower house were selected to serve as prosecutors of the impeachment charges against Duterte before the Senate. Joel Chua, one of those designated, declared that the prosecution was filing subpoenas for Duterte’s bank records related to supposed “unexplained wealth.” This would be done in coordination with the AMLC.

Pammy Zamora, another of the prosecutors, stated that the collecting of financial evidence against Duterte would involve international assistance. The international assistance in question is without doubt that of Washington.