At least 70 dead, 47 missing as floods hit northern Turkey

Çetin Akın & Ozan Özgür

Officials announced that 70 people died in Turkey as of yesterday amid massive floods last Wednesday in Bartın, Kastamonu and Sinop in the western Black Sea region. The Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) said 47 people were missing.

The recent disaster in Turkey came as hundreds of millions of people are affected by floods, from the US to Germany and Belgium, Britain to China, North Korea and Japan. It raises the urgent necessity of a globally coordinated response, led by the working class, to climate change and the criminal policies of capitalist governments.

The flood disaster in the Black Sea region took place as forest fires in Turkey are still not completely contained. While the response of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government to the forest fires, especially in the Aegean and Mediterranean regions, has been inadequate, the emergence of the flood disaster led to even harsher social anger and criticism towards the government.

Citing data from the General Directorate of State Meteorology, Anadolu Agency reported that in some regions hit by the flood, precipitation was far higher than the annual average. This exposes the responsibility of the ruling class and its political representatives in several ways.

First of all, heavy rains and floods are the direct result of climate change produced by capitalism. The increase in sudden and heavy rains in recent years was not taken seriously by the government and local administrations. No measures were taken in settled areas through which streams pass through, and governments turned a deaf ear to scientific warnings.

Second, officials ignored the streams’ flood boundaries and allowed high-density construction there. Retired paleoseismology specialist Dr. Ramazan Demirtaş told the daily Sözcü, “The 400-meter width of the river bed has been reduced to 15-20 meters. Then these areas are zoned for construction. But also change the flow rate of the stream. A large mass of water then arrives. As this mass enters a narrow space, the water begins to rise. Then disasters like this happen. Stream beds should not be zoned for construction in any way.”

Third, the impact of the opening of private-sector hydroelectric power plants (HPP) and mines, which intensified under Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, in the Black Sea region has been enormous. Despite protests by local residents, with the opening of the mining areas and the building of HPPs, forested areas were removed, stream beds changed, and, as a result, the natural structure of the region was deteriorated for the sake of the capitalist profit.

Finally, the fact that the General Directorate of State Meteorology warned the authorities three days in advance exposes the indifference and the responsibility of the government. On this, Dr. Demirtaş said, “Meteorology has done its part. But after this warning, something had to be done.” He added, “We need to evacuate people three days before or take them to higher ground. And we could have prevented this loss of life. There should have been plans made before the disaster. But we make plans after a disaster happens.”

While scientists try to raise these issues and call for measures on future floods, the Erdoğan government is seeking to shed its responsibility, hiding as usual behind religious fatalism. Attending the funeral of Fatih Keşaplı, who drowned amid the floods in the Bozkurt district of Kastamonu, Erdoğan hypocritically declared, “It is not clear where and how this [flood] would happen. Just like the situation of our brother Fatih.”

An aerial photo shows destroyed buildings after floods and mudslides killed about two dozens of people, in Bozkurt town of Kastamonu province, Friday, Aug. 13, 2021. (Ismail Coskun/IHA via AP)

The government fears that the disaster is intensifying social anger in the working class. Faced with many protests in the region, Interior Minister Soylu made the following statement in Bozkurt, seeking to divert opposition by appealing to nationalism: “This country, state and nation belongs to all of us. While we are trying to heal the wounds of people here, there are those who think ‘how can I harm?’ and ‘how should I make this a political material?’”

After the flood disaster, the government called for financial support to the public by launching an aid campaign, as during the coronavirus pandemic.

A report in the daily Evrensel reveals the crimes of the ruling elites, since this disaster was preventable. According to this article, a report was published by the Water Management Directorate of the Turkish Agriculture and Forestry Ministry in 2019 and flood warnings were issued. The maps prepared with reference to this report showed that in the event of a flood, all residential areas, including the Bozkurt Vocational School, Bozkurt Municipality and Bozkurt State Hospital, would be under water.

Construction Engineer Umut Deveci told Evrensel, “This disaster could have been avoided with much less damage if rehabilitation works had been carried out based on these maps.”

Moreover, geologist Professor Dr. Naci Görür explained the causes of the flood disaster and how to take precautions. “These are called flood plains. These are the most productive agricultural areas in the world. Flood waters calm down in these plains. If you disrupt this system, that is, if you build houses, HPPs, dams, roads, etc. in streams and valleys, if you turn flood plains into residential areas and reduce the natural drainage capacity, you will cause flooding and you will not be able to contain it.”

Görür continued as follows, “Floods and undrained atmospheric waters trigger landslides. Reducing vegetation increases both flooding and landslides. The drainage system in the Black Sea should be managed according to scientific principles and controlled by law. Just like earthquakes, you may not be able to prevent natural floods and landslides, but you can manage and take measures to minimize the damage.”

It remains unclear whether the flash flood occurred due to excessive precipitation or to the opening of the covers of the HPP located above the valley. The State Hydraulic Works (DSİ) claimed that the HPPs played no role, thus clearing the companies with them, by publishing a statement titled “The allegation that flooding caused by HPPs does not reflect the truth.”

The accounts of those who experienced the disaster in Bozkurt refute this statement, however. Local resident Kübra Çelik stated that one hour before the incident, HPP employees called the citizens and the police and warned them about the explosion.

Whether the immediate cause of the disaster is HPPs, environmental destruction or the increase in precipitation, the ruling class and its representatives opened the areas that should not be zoned for construction, narrowed the stream beds and ignored all scientific warnings. This shows that they are responsible for the resulting damages and loss of life.

After the disaster, Environment and Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum, who went to Bozkurt, Kastamonu with Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, looked at the people who suffered and are in mourning, and announced more future construction plans. He said, “There are collapsed buildings on the stream route. I express that we will heal the wounds of our citizens as soon as possible by constructing new buildings after the end of the search and rescue efforts.”

In short, Kurum was stating that they would continue the same construction errors and that they had no concrete policies to deal with future flood disasters.

NHS waiting list crisis offers bonanza for private companies

Rory Woods

National Health Service waiting lists for elective procedures could rise to more than 14 million by Autumn 2022 in the worst-case scenario, and up to 9 million in the most optimistic scenario.

This warning by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) follows Conservative Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid stating that hospital waiting lists will increase up to 13 million in the coming months.

The fate of millions of people waiting to have an operation is an indictment of the Tory government and the ruling elite. They have let the COVID-19 pandemic run rampant, bringing an already dilapidated NHS to breaking point.

Many hospital trusts and ambulance services are still functioning under enormous pressure and working with reduced capacity. But operating on the maxim of “never let a good crisis go to waste”, the government has called on private hospital groups to step in and provide elective treatment. These private hospitals are set to rake in £200 million profit by providing elective procedures and diagnostic facilities to NHS patients.

A patient is pushed on a trolley outside the Royal London Hospital in east London, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021, during England's third national lockdown since the coronavirus outbreak began. Britain, with over 81,000 dead, has the deadliest virus toll in Europe and the number of hospital beds filled by COVID-19 patients has risen steadily for more than a month. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Years of underfunding, reduced bed capacity and staff shortages even before the Coronavirus pandemic hit saw 4.4 million patients on hospital waiting lists. Over the last year, the waiting list has grown by 900,000 to 5.3 million.

But millions more have not joined queues because of disruption to hospital appointments, GP appointments and consultant referrals during the pandemic. According to IFS researchers, “in the first 10 months of the pandemic, there were 3 million fewer elective admissions and 17 million fewer outpatient appointments than in the same period the previous year.” They point out that “since March 2020, 7.4 million fewer people have joined the waiting list than implied by pre-pandemic patterns.”

In one scenario, the IFS estimates that even if 80 percent of patients needing hospital care join waiting lists in the coming period, “waiting lists would soar to 14 million by the autumn of 2022 and then continue to climb, as the number joining the waiting list exceeds the number being treated.”

Patients waiting for more than a year to be treated stood at 336,000 by May this year, compared to 1,600 in February 2020. NHS England figures show that in May, 212,770 patients had waited more than six months for trauma and orthopaedic services while another 130,224 patients who needed eye treatment services faced a similar plight. Hundreds of thousands with heart, gynaecology, urology and other ailments had also waited more than six months.

Many of these patients, including those with cancer and heart conditions, will die or face devastating suffering without timely intervention and treatment. Those who can afford to will be forced to fund treatments themselves, selling homes, exhausting savings and incurring crippling debts while the government washes its hands of any responsibility.

ITV News recently reported the case of 29-year-old mother Emma Jamieson, who was forced to seek private treatment for her endometriosis. She struggled for four years to get a diagnosis, only to be told she would have to wait another two years for treatment on the NHS. Unable to bear the daily pain she took out a £10,000 personal loan and started a Go Fund Me page to raise the additional funds to pay £14,000 for her hysterectomy operation. Thousands more across the country face a similarly desperate plight.

Among those joining waiting lists are patients with Long COVID. By the beginning of March 2021, over a million people in the UK were reporting symptoms associated with Long COVID, according to the Office of National Statistics. A massive 40 percent of COVID sufferers aged between 19 and 49 had developed problems with their kidneys, lungs or other organs while being treated, according to a study by university researchers, the Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England.

The burden imposed on the NHS by the criminal “herd immunity” policy of the ruling elite is unprecedented. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has lifted all measures aimed at controlling the virus —including mask-wearing and social-distancing—amid average COVID-19 cases of more than 28,000 in the last seven days. Nearly 6,000 patients are being treated in hospitals nationally.

Hospitals are operating at 95 percent capacity, although safe capacity is 85 percent. This is even before winter pressures of flu and other ailments kicks in. Last month, the Academy of Medical Sciences warned, “A lethal triple mix of COVID-19, influenza, and the respiratory virus Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), could push an already depleted NHS to breaking point this winter unless we act now.”

In a recent interview with the Bournemouth Daily Echo, Chief Executive of The University Hospitals Dorset (UHD) Debbie Fleming admitted that Bournemouth and Poole Hospitals were already “really heaving” and “bracing for a perfect storm of pressures”. She said the past 18 months had taken its toll and staff were “knackered”.

“This summer already feels very different not least because of the pent-up demand we are experiencing. We are unlikely to be able to draw breath before the winter arrives,” she told the Daily Echo.

According to a nurse in the UHD Trust, 37 patients with COVID-19 were being treated, including 5 patients in Intensive Care Units as of last Friday. 140 staff members were absent due to COVID-19 symptoms, isolating and shielding. Waiting lists for elective surgeries at the UHD Trust have climbed to 49,000, with 1,410 patients waiting a year-and-a-half for their elective procedures. 3,449 patients have waited more than a year.

Hospitals across the country are operating with 12 percent less bed capacity as they try to prevent COVID-19 cross infections between patients. Since 1987, successive Labour and Tory-led governments have slashed bed capacity by two thirds to 118,000 in 2020. They are responsible for chronic staff shortages of more than 110,000 health professionals, including 50,000 nurses.

While engaging in the cynical “Clap for our NHS Heroes”, the ruling elite has put health workers through an unending nightmare. Numerous reports from NHS frontline workers and public health experts have pointed to staff burnout caused by repeated waves of COVID-19, massive workloads and attacks on pay, terms and conditions.

But this catastrophic situation has opened a new goldmine for the ruling elite to plunder and privatise the NHS. The Tory government has plans to sign another £2 billion worth of contracts with private hospital firms to create around 7,000 extra beds. Contracts worth more than £2 billion have already been offered to companies since March 2020 to create extra bed capacity and provide non-urgent care. The iNews wrote, “Private hospital groups such as Circle Health, Ramsay Health Care and Spire Healthcare are believed to been among those discussing new and expanded deals with the Department for Health and Social Care.”

“Cost plus” pricing formulas in these contracts allow private companies to claim 8 to 10 percent of profits from the government, refuting NHS England’s argument that these contracts would be “at the same cost to taxpayers.”

Delta variant infections explode in Brazil

Tomas Castanheira

While the Brazilian ruling class is promoting the broadest resumption of economic activities, along with the reopening of schools and entertainment venues, celebrating a fictitious end of the COVID-19 pandemic, a third wave of the coronavirus is growing at alarming speed, enhanced by the spread of the Delta variant.

Brazil has already recorded 569,218 deaths and 20,361,493 COVID-19 cases. Despite decreasing numbers in the last period, the country continues to record very high daily averages of more than 28,000 infections and 800 deaths.

In an interview in early August, the physician and neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis, who has raised the most consistent warnings and predictions about the pandemic’s uncontrolled development in Brazil, described the current situation as an imminent catastrophe.

COVID testing site in Brazil (Credit: Marcelo Camargo/Agencia Brasil)

In a strong image, the scientist compared the development of the epidemic to the movement of the waves, in which the current decreasing moment of epidemiological curve precedes an overwhelming new uprising. “It’s like a wave, a tsunami, that ‘swept the coast’ and now has gone backwards,” he stated. “The tsunami of the second wave in Brazil retreated with the sea only to gain energy, and that energy is going to, in some way, reproduce here the dynamics happening in other countries. ... While the whole world is exploding [with the Delta variant cases], we are just waiting for it to explode here in Brazil.”

Nicolelis further characterized the present moment of the pandemic in Brazil as a “dispute between the Gamma variant and the Delta variant,” and he pointed to the recent news that in Rio de Janeiro the Delta variant already accounted for 45 percent of new cases as a sign that “this dispute is being won by the Delta variant, as expected.”

The most recent data from the Fiocruz Genomics Network further substantiates that dismal prediction. They point out that the share of Delta variant cases in Brazil increased from 2.3 percent in June to 23.6 percent in July, a nine-fold increase. This is a radically faster spread than that recorded with the Gamma variant, which at a similar stage of its development, between December and January, had only doubled its share of the total number of cases.

But if scientists like Nicolelis advocate “keeping mask mandates, restricting crowds, not resuming classes, not opening economic activities, not having soccer games” and in certain cases “decreeing lockdowns,” the joint response of all of Brazil’s governing bourgeois parties is the complete opposite.

An offensive against all measures to contain the virus is being led by the administration of fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro. In an official statement in late July, the ministers of education and health, Milton Ribeiro and Marcelo Queiroga, called for the immediate return of in-person learning and economic activities throughout Brazil. While Ribeiro emphasized that “the vaccination of the entire school community cannot be a condition for the reopening of schools.” Queiroga declared, “It is necessary that we manage to promote a prompt return of economic activities, we have beds available in hospitals, let’s live with this pandemic situation.”

To better elucidate his idea of “living with this pandemic situation,” Queiroga quoted an excerpt from a song by Brazilian composer Lulu Santos that says, Nothing will be again the same way it was one day.” In other words, the Brazilian population should accept as the norm the indiscriminate deaths caused by this pandemic, as well as by others that will predictably surge in the coming years. In his crusade to implement this homicidal policy, last Wednesday the minister offered a guarantee “on behalf of Bolsonaro” that by the end of the year “we will be able to take off these masks once and for all.”

Such sociopathic ideas, which correspond to the deeply reactionary interests of the bourgeoisie, have gained a particularly grotesque manifestation in the policies advocated by the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, of the Social Democratic Party (PSD). On July 29, Paes announced that his city, now the epicenter of the Delta variant in Brazil, will launch in September a continuous year of festivities to celebrate the end of the coronavirus pandemic. He even plans to institute a municipal holiday called “Reunion Day” and stated that he will promote the “biggest New Year’s Eve in the history of the city,” which should be celebrated without the mandatory use of masks.

Similarly, in São Paulo, which has the second highest number of confirmed cases of the Delta variant in Brazil, Governor João Doria of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) declared Monday (August 16) the “Day of Hope” because the entire population up over the age of 18 will have had access to the first shot of the vaccine. The date will coincide with the largest reopening of activities since the beginning of the pandemic. It is especially hypocritical to use such an occasion to talk about “hope” when the rapidly spreading Delta variant is reportedly responsible for breakthrough infections and for the reduction of vaccine protection, especially for those who have received only a first shot.

While the Rio de Janeiro state (but not municipal) public schools have been closed again to contain the advance of the new variant, Doria is continuing to promote the widest functioning of schools in São Paulo, the largest educational system in the country. A large portion of teachers in the state have received only a first shot of the vaccine, while the millions of students who are increasingly susceptible to infection and death have received none at all.

The same anti-scientific measures are being promoted by governments headed by the Workers Party (PT) and its allies. Officials like the governor of Bahia, Rui Costa of the PT, are proceeding with the resumption of in-person classes despite resistance from educators. At the same time, the trade unions controlled by the PT and supported by its pseudo-left satellites, are not organizing any resistance to the homicidal back-to-work policy of the ruling class.

A new explosion of the COVID-19 pandemic and the uncontrolled spread of the Delta variant throughout Brazil will have predictably catastrophic effects on neighboring South American countries. The outbreak of the second wave of the pandemic in Brazil in early 2020 spread across the continent with devastating results. The Gamma variant, originally from Manaus in northern Brazil, rapidly engulfed neighboring countries, critically contributing to the explosion of infections and collapse of hospital systems in countries such as Colombia, Paraguay and Uruguay, causing an overwhelming number of deaths.

COVID-19 catastrophe unfolds in French Overseas Territories

Samuel Tissot

The French Overseas Territories (OTs), which include islands in the Antilles, French Guiana, Polynesia and Réunion Island, are witnessing dramatic rises in the virus and hospitalizations. The poor state of health infrastructure, low vaccination rates and the herd immunity policy of the French ruling class have transformed them into major hubs for COVID-19.

The Antillean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean have had an incidence rate of 2,225 and 1,188 per 100,000, respectively, in the last seven days. Despite the imposition of limited lockdowns two weeks ago, the case rate in Guadeloupe has continued to rise. Now it is nearly four times higher than the most affected area in mainland France, the Bouches-du-Rhône region which had 693 cases per 100,000 over the last week. On August 11, Guadeloupe recorded 1,376 new cases, the equivalent of 245,000 cases in mainland France.

The situation has become so dire that last week Health Minister Olivier Véran appealed for volunteer nurses and doctors to travel to the islands. The army has also been mobilized to build emergency resuscitation beds on the islands as hospitals overflowed, with new admissions not treated due to lack of resources and personnel.

Health care workers in Africa. (Credit: World Health Organization)

Speaking to France24, Dr. Marc Vallette, head of resuscitation of the Pointe-à-Pitre University Hospital in Guadeloupe, stated, “In the last 24 hours we have reached saturation, which means each new entry of a COVID patient is only possible if a COVID patient in intensive care leaves the service.”

Guillem Diarra de Latapie, a 28-year-old volunteer nurse in Guadeloupe, told Europe1, “We are overloaded with patients, arrivals, crowds, needs.”

Significant outbreaks have also been recorded in French Guiana, Saint Martin, Réunion and Saint Barthelemy. Following a rapid rise in Delta variant cases, which now make up 60 percent of sequenced cases, French Guiana has reintroduced a curfew in the Cayenne region. Despite the developing situation, fully vaccinated travelers can still visit the territories if they present a recent negative test.

On the island of Réunion located in the Indian Ocean, a record of 3,590 weekly COVID-19 cases was recorded last week. Despite the dangerous situation and the increased impact of the Delta variant on infants and adolescents, 220,000 unvaccinated school children on the island returned to school on Monday, August 16.

French Overseas Territories Minister Sébastien Lecornu visited Guadeloupe last week and told France Inter, “I am upset at what I saw today,” describing Guadeloupe’s infections as occurring at “a rate we have never known since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.” A new lockdown was declared on August 4. Nevertheless, bars, beaches and other tourist destinations remained open until last week.

The rapid surge of cases in the Antilles and Réunion has been driven by a rise in tourism over the summer months. In June, Macron tried to encourage French tourists to boost domestic tourism, declaring, “This year, holidays are in France.” This has led to the OTs being particularly popular for tourists from the mainland, who introduced the Delta variant to these territories. As late as June 29, the weekly number of cases in Guadeloupe had been just 16.

While the Delta variant spread rapidly throughout mainland France in the last two months, the even more dramatic rise in the OTs is driven by low vaccination rates. While 52.6 percent of the mainland’s population are fully vaccinated, Martinique and Guadeloupe respectively have 15.8 percent and 15.9 percent of their populations fully vaccinated. On July 30, only 16.2 percent of the Guianese population were vaccinated, while Réunion has a vaccination rate of 29.2 percent.

The low vaccination rate in the OTs is due to many factors. While the vaccination campaign in mainland France was itself delayed, the territories in the Antilles had to wait an additional month for vaccination to commence due to insufficient infrastructure for mRNA vaccines, which must be stored in extremely cold temperatures to remain effective.

Huge numbers of the population in the ex-French colonies are hesitant to take a vaccine. Primarily, this is a product of the French government’s neglect of these populations’ health throughout the pandemic as well as the previous decades. The Macron government has fraudulently presented its murderous herd immunity policy, which has led to over 113,000 deaths, as “scientific,” eroding public trust in any new measures taken to combat the virus.

While acknowledging the horrific proportions of the crisis in OTs, the Macron government is seeking to shift the blame for its herd immunity policy onto the shoulders of the inhabitants of these regions. Sébastien Lecornu told Libération that the vaccination rate can be explained by “cultural or religious reticence.” A Ministry of Health statement claimed, “We have not identified any specific obstacles to vaccination in the OTs, we have the same obstacles as in mainland France, but in a much more accentuated way.”

Rather than the cultural or religious beliefs of the population in the Overseas Territories, the record of state abuse of the health of these communities is the chief cause of widespread vaccine skepticism.

While Macron blames the local populations for the spread of the virus, it is the president’s own herd immunity policy that has promoted the premature end of lockdowns and renewal of tourism, causing the Delta variant to become entrenched on a mostly unprotected population. This policy has been supported by political leaders from across the OTs. This includes Olivier Serva, the Unsubmissive France deputy for Guadeloupe, who denounced mandatory vaccination in an interview with France1 on August 5.

This is only the latest and deadliest example of state misconduct, however. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, which have the lowest vaccination rates, over 90 percent of the population suffer from chlordecone poisoning, according to the French Ministry of Health. Even low amounts of chlordecone in the blood can cause brain damage, cancer and infertility.

Despite being identified as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization in 1979 and banned in France in 1990, it was authorized to be used as a pesticide by the French government in Martinique until 1993. The molecule takes 700 years to decay in a natural environment and passes through the food chain, meaning even those born after the cessation of its use still become poisoned.

The provision of medical care in the OTs depends above all on the political mobilization of the working class in a struggle to eradicate the coronavirus. Only it can impose the social distancing and lockdown measures necessary to halt the rapid spread of the virus and create political conditions for scientists to explain the necessity of vaccination to the entire population.

Trudeau triggers Canadian election in midst of pandemic’s fourth wave

Keith Jones

The Justin Trudeau-led minority Liberal government has triggered a federal election to be held—amid Canada’s Delta variant-driven fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic—on Monday, September 20.

The Liberal government’s election call is a gamble based on three cynical political calculations: First, that the Liberals, who have led Canada’s government for the past six years, are up in the polls and thus appear well-positioned to regain the parliamentary majority they lost in the October 2019 election; Second, that the Liberals’ electoral prospects could easily sour in coming months, whether because of economic headwinds, global geopolitical shocks, public demands for an accounting for Canada’s ruinous response to the COVID-19 pandemic, or popular anger over the ever-widening social chasm that divides Canada’s rich and super-rich from working people; And third, that the pandemic’s fourth wave will not overwhelm the health care system and cause thousands more deaths … at least prior to voting day.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Trudeau and his handlers carefully scripted Sunday’s election call over many weeks. Nevertheless, they could not prevent an air of crisis from invading their election launch. Since the beginning of August, COVID-19 cases have spiked, as the inevitable result of governments across the country and at all levels abandoning virtually all anti-COVID-19 measures. In the two weeks ending Saturday, August 14, the average number of daily new infections more than doubled from 776 to 1,608, causing health experts, including the government’s own chief medical officer, Theresa Tam, to warn that the fourth wave is now upon us.

At his election launch, Trudeau was peppered with reporters’ questions as to why the government was triggering an election now. Would it not have been prudent to have first secured passage of Bill C-19, a government bill designed to facilitate mail-in voting and extend in-person voting over multiple days?

However, before Trudeau made any reference to the impending election, he was compelled to address events in Afghanistan, where in the preceding hours the Taliban had make a triumphant entry into Kabul. The ignominious collapse of Afghanistan’s made-in-USA puppet government, after two decades during which Washington squandered $2 trillion, the lives of thousands of US-NATO troops, and countless Afghans trying to subjugate the Central Asian nation is an historic debacle for US imperialism.

But it is also a debacle for Canada’s capitalist ruling elite, which for the past three quarters of a century has depended on its close military-security partnership with Washington to assert its own imperialist interests on the world stage. With the aim of strengthening this reactionary alliance, Canadian imperialism made the neocolonial Afghan war its own, deploying 40,000 troops to Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014 and lavishing billions of dollars in aid on the Kabul regime.

Whilst the Canadian Armed Forces once boasted about the influence their embedded advisors exerted over the Afghan government, Trudeau was reduced on Sunday to announcing that Ottawa’s embassy in Kabul has been closed and all Canadian diplomatic personnel are being evacuated from the country.

Nonetheless, the prime minister went out of his way to reaffirm his government’s support for Canada’s role in the Afghan war. He declared Canada remains “committed to Afghanistan,” and vowed to work with NATO allies to ensure that the “sacrifice” of the more than 150 Canadian soldiers who died propping up the Karzai/Ghani government was not “in vain.” Above all, he sought to recycle the deeply discredited lies about Canada and its military promoting “humanitarian” and “democratic” values that provide political cover for Canadian imperialist aggression around the world.

In his prepared text on the election, Trudeau acknowledged the threat of an economic slump and invoked the climate change crisis, which has impacted millions of Canadians this summer in the form of drought, an unprecedented heat dome, and massive wildfires in much of western Canada. Along with the pandemic, he sought to tie these to his central electoral sales pitch: the claim that the Liberal government “has had Canadians’ backs.”

In reality, the Trudeau Liberal government has ruthlessly enforced the agenda of the ruling class. It ignored and played down the threat of the pandemic during the first 2 ½ months of 2020, so as not to impinge on profit interests. Only on March 10, 2020, did it even write the provinces to ask about potential shortages of personal protective equipment, ventilators and other essential supplies. Subsequently, it funneled some $650 billion into the markets and the coffers of big business to safeguard investors, then pivoted to pressing for “reopening” the economy, i.e., forcing workers back on the job in nonessential businesses amid the pandemic.

Similarly, behind phony progressive-sounding rhetoric, the Trudeau government has further integrated Canada into Washington’s military-strategic offensives against Russia and China and is spending tens of billions to procure new fleets of warplanes and warships.

If Trudeau is anxious to secure a parliamentary majority, it is to further insulate his government from any popular pressure, the better to press forward with implementing the reactionary agenda of the ruling class, from deregulation and privatization to austerity measures aimed at making working people pay for the corporate bailouts. The day before the election call, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and US Defense Secretary Lloyd James Austin III issued a joint statement on “modernizing” NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command. It is meant to pave the way for further militarization of the Arctic, in the name of great-power “strategic competition” with Russia and China, and for Canada’s participation in the US ballistic missile shield, whose underlying purpose is to enable the US to wage a “winnable” nuclear war.

The opposition parties all made a show of deploring Trudeau’s “risky” decision to call an election amid an incipient fourth wave of the pandemic. Conservative leader Erin O’Toole said he hoped “it won’t cost Canadians dearly.”

This is rich. All the federal opposition parties are themselves complicit in the Canadian ruling elite’s prioritizing of corporate profits over human lives throughout the pandemic. This has resulted in more than 26,700 officially recorded pandemic deaths, but probably closer to 40,000, according to a recent Royal Society of Canada study. The opposition parties’ provincial allies, from British Columbia’s John Horgan-led New Democratic Party (NDP) government to the hard-right Conservative governments in Ontario and Alberta, have all pursued the back-to-work/back-to-school policy that led to Canada’s devastating second and third pandemic waves. Moreover, now when ten million Canadians, including all children under 11 and under, have yet to get a single vaccine shot, they are all rushing to fully reopen schools for in-class instruction by early September.

Seeking to tap into justifiable popular concern that the election campaign will serve as a series of super-spreader events, O’Toole made a point of appearing only at virtual events on the campaign’s first day. But he also made a marked appeal to far-right, anti-vaccine, anti-mask forces in and around his Conservative Party. He said he would not require Conservative candidates to be vaccinated and made known his opposition to the government’s recent announcement that it will make it mandatory in the fall for all federal workers to be vaccinated.

In a transparent appeal for big-business support, O’Toole attacked the Trudeau government for having no plan to eliminate the deficit and promote economic growth. He also denounced Trudeau for being “offside on China for the past six years,” vowing that a Conservative government would immediately ban Huawei from Canada’s 5G network and otherwise align Ottawa even more fully behind Washington’s economic and military aggression against China.

At the express urging of its trade union affiliates, the purportedly “left” NDP has played the principal role in propping up the minority Liberal government over the past 22 months. Indeed, so anxious is the NDP for that collaboration to continue that party leader Jagmeet Singh wrote the unelected Governor General in late July to urge her to use her arbitrary powers to refuse Trudeau’s impending election request. But that did not stop Singh from decrying, at his party’s campaign launch, how the “ultra-rich” have benefited from Liberal policies and programs the NDP voted to enact.

With its promises of a wealth tax and pharmacare, the NDP is making a calibrated appeal to mounting social anger with the aim of securing more seats and influence. But its function first and foremost is to trap social opposition with the confines of establishment parliamentary politics.

Like the other party leaders, Singh deplored the collapse of the US-sponsored Afghan regime. A lengthy party policy statement published late last week, reiterated the NDP’s support for arming the Canadian Armed Forces with new, high-tech fighter jets and warships. “Decades of Liberal and Conservative cuts and mismanagement,” it complains, have left “our military…with outdated equipment, inadequate support and an unclear strategic mandate.”

The Bloc Québécois (BQ), currently the third largest party in parliament, launched its campaign Sunday on a strident chauvinist note. Party leader Yves-François Blanchet boasted that the BQ is the only party exclusively devoted to the “economic interests of Quebec,” that is supporting Quebec’s capitalist elite and Quebec-based businesses. The BQ postures as a “progressive” party. But it is a close ally of the province’s Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government, which has adopted chauvinist legislation targeting immigrants and religious minorities, routinely threatens to criminalize worker job action, and denounces the “high wages” of manufacturing workers.

Annamie Paul, whose leadership of the Green Party has been challenged since one of the party’s three MPs defected to the Liberals in early June, stressed at her campaign launch that the “green economy” is where “the smart money” is going, and an “opportunity of a lifetime” for Canadian capitalism to become a “world leader.”

One faction of the trade union bureaucracy, led by Unifor, the country’s largest industrial union, and many of the teachers’ unions, is once again mounting an “Anybody but Conservative” campaign, urging in effect a vote for the Liberals in most constituencies. Another faction, including the top brass of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the United Steelworkers (USW), is somewhat more circumspect in its support for the Trudeau government. But both factions will urge the NDP to prop up a Trudeau Liberal government committed to boosting the global “competitive” and strategic position of Canadian capitalism in the event no party wins a majority on September 20.

Chinese regime reins in billionaire tech tycoons

Peter Symonds

Since November, the Chinese regime has taken several steps to restrict the operations of some of the country’s largest private tech companies, such as Alibaba and Tencent, hitting the fortunes of the multi-billionaire magnates that control them.

Jack Ma [Wikimedia/World Economic Forum/Claran McCrickard; Ma Juateng [Wikimedia]; Zhong Shanshan [Nongfu Spring]

Last week, China’s State Council and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee issued a joint policy statement calling for legislation to codify the measures. It declared there was an “urgent need” for additional laws to regulate the digital economy and internet finance to ensure “new business models develop in a healthy manner.”

The measures have provoked growing concern in the Western press because of plunges in share values of tech companies, in which global managed funds and other foreign companies have heavily invested.

Bloomberg calculated that the combined share values of the giant tech corporations at the beginning of July had fallen by a massive $US823 billion since their February peaks. According to the Financial Times, since the start of July, Beijing’s “regulatory assault on China’s technology industry” had lopped $87 billion off the net worth of the sector’s wealthiest tycoons.

Moves against the tech giants began when the Chinese regulators cancelled what was set to be the worlds’ largest-ever Initial Public Offering (IPO), for Alibaba’s financial services subsidiary Ant Group on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges in November. The IPO was about to raise $34 billion, eclipsing the $29.4 billion listing of the energy giant Saudi Aramco in 2019. At the same time, an anti-monopoly cause was launched against Alibaba that resulted in a $2.8 billion fine in April. Its founder Jack Ma, at the time China’s richest billionaire, who had made remarks critical of Chinese financial regulation, went to ground for weeks.

It has become clear this year that the government was not just engaged in a vendetta against Ma. The online food delivery company Meituan lost $40 billion of its market value after the state regulators opened an investigation into its “suspected monopolistic practices,” alleging that it was forcing restaurants to use its app exclusively, to the detriment of its rivals. Last month its shares plunged further after authorities instituted rules to provide limited protection to the notoriously exploited delivery workers.

The internet ride-hailing company Didi, China’s equivalent to Uber, proceeded with its IPO in New York in June despite a request by Chinese regulators to call it off. Days later, authorities ordered a security review of the firm amid concerns that the US listing could provide foreign access to its vast store of personal data. It was banned from taking new customers and mobile phone stores were ordered to remove its apps.

The regulatory targets have not been just tech companies. The Chinese government announced new regulations on July 23 for the online education industry, banning IPOs and forcing companies to operate as non-profit bodies. Shares in the three largest US-listed Chinese companies—TAL Education, New Oriental and Gaotu Techedu—fell precipitously.

In late July, Chinese anti-trust authorities ordered the giant internet corporation Tencent to give up its exclusive music licencing rights and fined it over its acquisition of China Music in 2016. The purchase gave Tencent exclusive control of more than 80 percent of music library resources, placing rivals at unfair advantage, according to regulators.

The response in the financial media has been increasingly frantic. An article this month in the New York Magazine declared: “The CCP’s brand of capitalism had never been Milton Friedman’s. But it had been decades since the party had displayed such communist characteristics.” An opinion piece by financial speculator George Soros in the Wall Street Journal last Friday denounced Chinese President Xi Jinping as a dictator whose regulatory campaign “threatens to destroy the geese that lay the golden eggs.”

Xi is not about to overturn Chinese capitalism, nor is the regime implementing “communist” measure. It is not out to destroy the super-wealthy oligarchs such as Jack Ma and Tencent’s Pony Ma, whom it helped to create, and with whom it has had close relations. Rather the regulatory efforts to rein in the sprawling tech empires reflect fears in ruling circles in Beijing about the country’s extreme social tensions and mounting economic and financial crisis.

These concerns found expression late last year when Xi announced that 2021 would mark the beginning of a “new development phase” that would prioritise “common prosperity,” national security and social stability over unrestrained growth.

Fears in Beijing over social stability stem from the widening gulf between rich and poor that has resulted from decades of capitalist restoration. At one extreme are the billionaires and multi-billionaires who in some cases are members of the CCP or have been delegates to the annual National People’s Congress. At the other extreme are large sections of working people struggling to survive. Last year, Premier Li Keqiang told a press conference that some 600 million people exist on a monthly income of just 1,000 yuan ($154), which is not enough to rent a home in a mid-sized city, let alone cover other expenses.

Social distress, which has been compounded by the measures necessary to control the COVID-19 pandemic, is among the factors fuelling a political radicalisation, particularly among young people.

In a comment last month hailing to mark the centenary of the CCP’s founding, Chinese academic and venture capitalist Eric Li noted that, unlike his generation that focussed on getting rich, China’s youth today are increasingly critical of capitalism.

Li wrote: “Significant signs show that Chinese young people’s perception of capital and market have turned negative, and their support for socialism and communism have increased markedly. For example, on Bilibili, China’s leading video social media for young people, content with communism, Marxism, capital, and labor became most popular in 2020, with increases greater than any other content. Even in the extraordinarily entrepreneurial tech sector, calls by young people for stopping excessive exploitations, both of lowly paid delivery workers and more highly compensated but overworked technical and professional workforces, are becoming louder.”

Li, who is an enthusiastic supporter of the CCP, maintained that the party was capable of responding to these concerns. No doubt, the targeting of high-profile billionaires is calculated to appeal to widespread hostility to widening social inequality, as are the moves to limit the gross exploitation of casual delivery workers. The transformation of the giant private education corporations into non-profit organisations is likely to be popular among parents concerned to ensure the best for their children in the highly competitive education system.

The CCP regime, however, is not reining in the thousand or so Chinese billionaires spawned by capitalist restoration across the board. Manufacturers have increased in value. The richest man in China is Zhong Shanshan, who controls the bottled-water company Nongfu Spring and whose wealth stands at more than $782 billion, up by $5 billion since June. The country’s nine richest auto magnates have increased their collective wealth by $22 billion since July, while the eight billionaires who dominate the renewable energy sector saw their collective riches rise by $13.6 billion during the same period.

Through their internet payment systems and provision of credit, the tech corporations, however, had become huge financial operations that function without the restraints maintained on the large state-owned banks. In 2020, Alibaba, Tencent and Ant had a combined market capitalisation of nearly $2 trillion, far greater that the state-owned banks such as the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China.

In his public criticisms last October at the Bund Summit in Shanghai, Jack Ma lashed out at the strong “pawnshop” mentality of Chinese banks that demanded collateral and guarantees before lending. He called for reform to create a new, inclusive and universal banking system for small businesses and individuals.

Through the various arms of Alibaba, Ma had created a massive financial empire and was effectively demanding a further removal of regulatory restraints. Alibaba established Alipay as an online payment platform in 2004. By 2018, it had an estimated 870 million users, accounted for about 60 percent of the third-party payment market in China and provided some $300 billion in credit for business and consumer loans. As well as Alipay, Alibaba’s Ant Financial Services provided micro-financial services at high interest rates through various operations such as Yu’ebao, Ant Credit Pay, Ant Cash Now and Sesame Credit, in some cases in league with provincial governments seeking ways to circumvent central financial controls.

Amid fears about the already high levels of debt and the potential for financial instability, the CCP apparatus took action against Alibaba and Ma. The moves were also driven by political concerns that Ma and other tech magnates were closely associated with foreign capital and could use their resources, including their vast accumulations of data, to undermine or challenge CCP rule. According a list published late last year by the Chinese financial magazine Caixin, overseas shareholders in Ant held 52 percent of shares, of which financial groups on Wall Street and in London accounted for half. In March, Ma was ordered to divest himself of various media outlets, such as the South China Morning Post.

The unregulated financial operations of the tech corporations also threatened to generate social instability. In an essay entitled “China’s Economic Reckoning—The Price of Failed Reforms” in Foreign Affairs, Daniel Rosen explained: “In the early 2010s, these firms were given a free hand by party technocrats who hoped that financial innovations would force ossified state-owned banks to become more productive. This succeeded, at least in fits and starts: the new firms made the financial system work for previously underserved customers.

“But innovation also came with new risks, such as peer-to-peer lending platforms that offered high rates to depositors and even higher rates to borrowers. When many of the borrowers defaulted, investors protested, believing erroneously that the platforms were guaranteed by the government. In August 2018, thousands of people showed up in the heart of Beijing’s financial district to demand compensation. A regulatory crackdown on peer-to-peer lenders commenced, in a prelude to this year’s scrutiny of Ant Group.”

The CCP’s attempts to rein in the free-wheeling operations of some of the country’s largest corporations is not a sign of strength. Rather, it points to the extent of the economic, social and political crisis building up in China that will erupt in the not-too-distant future.

What starts in Afghanistan does not stay in Afghanistan: China, India, and Iran grapple with the fallout

James M. Dorsey

Taliban advances in Afghanistan shift the Central Asian playing field on which China, India and the United States compete with rival infrastructure-driven approaches. At first glance, a Taliban takeover of Kabul would give China a 2:0 advantage against the US and India, but that could prove to be a shaky head start.

The potential fall of the US-backed Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani will shelve if not kill Indian support for the Iranian port of Chabahar that was intended to facilitate Indian trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Chabahar was also viewed by India as a counterweight to the Chinese-supported Pakistani port of Gwadar, a crown jewel of the People’s Republic’s transportation, telecommunications and energy-driven Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The United States facilitated Indian investment in Chabahar by exempting the port from harsh US sanctions against Iran. The exemption was intended to “support the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan.”

However, with negotiations with Iran about a revival of the 2015 international nuclear agreement stalled, the United States announced in July together with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan plans to create a platform that would foster regional trade, business ties and connectivity.

The connectivity end of the plan resembled an effort to cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face. It would have circumvented Iran and weakened Chabahar but potentially strengthened China’s Gwadar alongside the port of Karachi.

That has become a moot point with the plans certain to be shelved as the Taliban move to take over Kabul and form a government that would be denied recognition by at least the democratic parts of the international community.

Like other Afghan neighbors, neither Pakistan nor Uzbekistan or for that matter China are likely to join a boycott of the Taliban. On the contrary, China last month made a point of giving a visiting Taliban delegation a warm welcome.

Recognition by Iran, Central Asian states and China of a Taliban government is however unlikely to be enough to salvage the Chabahar project. “Changed circumstances and alternative connectivity routes are being conjured up by other countries to make Chabahar irrelevant,” an Iranian source told Hard News and The Wire.

The Taliban have sought to reassure China, Iran, Uzbekistan and other Afghan neighbors that they will not allow Afghanistan to become an operational base for jihadist groups, including Al Qaeda and Uighur militants of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP).

The Taliban have positioned themselves as solely concerned with creating an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan and having no inclination to operate beyond the borders of the Central Asian state, but have been consistent in their refusal to expel Al Qaeda, even if the group is a shadow of what it was when it launched the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington 20 years ago.

The TIP has occasionally issued videos documenting its presence in Afghanistan but has, by and large, kept a low profile in the country and refrained from attacking Chinese targets in Afghanistan or across the border in Xinjiang, the north-western Chinese province in which authorities have brutally cracked down on ethnic Turkic Uighurs.

As a result, the Taliban reassurance was insufficient to stop China from repeatedly advising its citizens to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible.

“Currently, the security situation in Afghanistan has further deteriorated … If Chinese citizens insist on staying in Afghanistan, they will face extremely high-security risks, and all the consequences will be borne by themselves,” the Chinese foreign ministry said.

The fallout of the Taliban’s sweep across Afghanistan, despite the group’s assurances, is likely to affect China beyond Afghan borders, perhaps no more so than in Pakistan, a major focus of the People’s Republic’s single largest Belt-and Road-related investment.

The investment has made China a target for attacks by militants primarily Baloch nationalists. However, the killing in July of nine Chinese nationals in an explosion on a bus transporting Chinese workers to the construction site of a dam in the northern mountains of Pakistan, a region more prone to attacks by religious militants, raises the specter of jihadists also targeting China. It was the highest loss of life of Chinese citizens in recent years in Pakistan.

The attack occurred amid fears that the Taliban will bolster ultra-conservative religious sentiment in Pakistan that celebrates the group as heroes whose success enhances the chances for austere religious rule in the world’s second-most populous Muslim-majority state.

“Our jihadis will be emboldened. They will say that ‘if America can be beaten, what is the Pakistan army to stand in our way?’” said a senior Pakistani official.

Indicating Chinese concern, China has delayed the signing of a framework agreement on industrial cooperation that would have accelerated the implementation of projects that are part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Said scholar Kamran Bokhari: “Regime change is a terribly messy process. Weak regimes can be toppled; replacing them is the hard part. It is only a matter of time before the Afghan state collapses, unleashing chaos that will spill beyond its borders. All of Afghanistan’s neighbors will be affected to varying degrees, but Pakistan and China have the most to lose.”

The demise of Chabahar and/or the targeting by the Taliban of Hazara Shiites in Afghanistan could potentially turn Iran into a significant loser too.