10 individuals increased their net worth by $500 billion in 2021

Genevieve Leigh

The year 2021, for the second consecutive year, has been one of mass death and suffering for billions of workers around the world.

Billionaires Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk (All originals from Wikimedia Commons)

The official global death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic, widely believed to be a massive underestimation, stands at 8.4 million for 2021. The World Bank estimates that 97 million people across the globe fell into poverty due to the pandemic in 2020, a figure that experts believe persisted in 2021. On Wednesday, the US alone recorded a world record of 484,377 daily new cases. In many states, hospitals are again being overwhelmed.

Millions of workers and youth will look back on the year 2021 as one of immense struggle and grief. More than 1,000 families in the US will remember 2021 as the year they lost their child to the virus. Many will remember it as a year in which they could not pay rent or provide the basic necessities for their families. In fact, as we enter 2022, 5.7 million adult renters living with children are not caught up on rent as eviction moratoriums are being lifted in nearly every state.

However, for all the incessant talk from media pundits and politicians that “we are all in this pandemic together,” life in the upper echelons of society in 2021 has been completely unrecognizable to the average worker.

Pandemic profiteers rake in billions in 2021

For the world’s richest, life has never been better.

Consider this astonishing fact: Billionaire wealth has increased steadily since 1990, but one-third of these wealth gains have occurred during the pandemic.

At the end of November, the Paris-based Global Inequality Lab reported that about 2,750 billionaires control 3.5 percent of the world’s wealth, up from 1 percent in 1995, with the fastest gains coming since the pandemic hit. On the other hand, the poorest half of the planet’s population owns just about 2 percent of the world’s wealth.

In 2021 alone, 10 individuals saw their net worth increase by $500 billion. Leading the pack is Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who this year became the world’s richest man. For a brief period this year, Musk’s net worth topped a staggering $300 billion. Overall this year, Musk added $121 billion to his net worth in 2021.

Bernard Arnault, the CEO of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH (owner of brands such as Louis Vuitton, and Christian Dior) added $61 billion to his net worth this year. Arnault is the richest man in Europe.

Google co-founder Larry Page added $47 billion to his fortune. Sergey Brin, Google’s other co-founder, grew his net worth by $45 billion, bringing it above $100 billion for the first time. Also joining the “$100 billion club” was Larry Ellison, who added $29 billion to his net worth.

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a staggering $41 billion. One could go on. …

These billionaires and multimillionaires spent 2021 traveling about in private jets, purchasing second and third mansions, and otherwise galivanting about the world (and in some cases out of this world) without a care. Two dozen “non-professionals” blasted off into space, for fun, in 2021 on rockets owned by billionaires Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson.

Remarkably, when 2022 begins, as the Omicron variant will likely be bringing pandemic infections, hospitalizations and deaths to their peak since the start of the health crisis, the 10 wealthiest individuals in the world will all be worth more than $100 billion.

Just how much money is being hoarded at the top?

It can be difficult to wrap one’s head around the fantastical sums of money being hoarded by such a tiny fraction of society.

To give a sense of the vast chasm between the life of the ultra-rich and the life of a worker, consider the following:

• The national average salary for a registered nurse is $80,000, and there are approximately 4.2 million nurses in the US. The $500 billion made this year by the world’s richest 10 individuals could pay for an $11,904 bonus to every single nurse in the country.
• If a worker was given $1,000 every day, it would take 2,740 years to save $1 billion. To make the equivalent of what Larry Page, for example, added to his fortune in 2021 alone ($47 billion), it would take 128,768 years, or 1,694 lifetimes. These calculations are assuming the worker did not spend a cent of the $1,000 each day.
• In July 2021, when the last comprehensive data was analyzed, Surgo Ventures found that 6.2 million renting households were behind on rent, totaling approximately $23 billion. If one took the wealth made in 2021 of the 10 richest people ($500 billion), the back rent owed by workers throughout the entirety of the United States could be paid 20 times over. In fact, the wealth made by Warren Buffet alone ($21 billion) would almost cover the entire bill.
• The cumulative wealth made in 2021 alone by the richest 10 people could wipe out a third of the total student loan debt in the US, which stands at $1.5 trillion. In fact, in 2021, it took Elon Musk less than nine minutes to make enough money to pay for the average cost of a workers’ student loan debt ($39,000).
• Assuming a COVID-19 test costs on average $15, the same wealth could purchase over 33 billion COVID-19 tests.

Karl Marx in Volume I of Capital wrote: “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.” These words are perhaps truer today than they were when written more than 150 years ago.

Immense resources are being hoarded by the rich and ultra-rich while the vast majority of the world’s population struggles to survive the devastating economic situation created by the ruling class, or worse, succumbs to the virus. The characteristic feature of capitalism, most grotesquely displayed over the last two years of the pandemic, is the subordination of social need to the relentless accumulation of corporate profits and the private wealth of mega-millionaires and billionaires.

What is Log4j? The Latest Internet Vulnerability

Santiago Torres-Arias

Log4Shell, an internet vulnerability that affects millions of computers, involves an obscure but nearly ubiquitous piece of software, Log4j. The software is used to record all manner of activities that go on under the hood in a wide range of computer systems.

Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, called Log4Shell the most serious vulnerability she’s seen in her career. There have already been hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of attempts to exploit the vulnerability.

So what is this humble piece of internet infrastructure, how can hackers exploit it and what kind of mayhem could ensue?

What does Log4j do?

Log4j records events – errors and routine system operations – and communicates diagnostic messages about them to system administrators and users. It’s open-source software provided by the Apache Software Foundation.

A common example of Log4j at work is when you type in or click on a bad web link and get a 404 error message. The web server running the domain of the web link you tried to get to tells you that there’s no such webpage. It also records that event in a log for the server’s system administrators using Log4j.

Similar diagnostic messages are used throughout software applications. For example, in the online game Minecraft, Log4j is used by the server to log activity like total memory used and user commands typed into the console.

How does Log4Shell work?

Log4Shell works by abusing a feature in Log4j that allows users to specify custom code for formatting a log message. This feature allows Log4j to, for example, log not only the username associated with each attempt to log in to the server but also the person’s real name, if a separate server holds a directory linking user names and real names. To do so, the Log4j server has to communicate with the server holding the real names.

Unfortunately, this kind of code can be used for more than just formatting log messages. Log4j allows third-party servers to submit software code that can perform all kinds of actions on the targeted computer. This opens the door for nefarious activities such as stealing sensitive information, taking control of the targeted system and slipping malicious content to other users communicating with the affected server.

It is relatively simple to exploit Log4Shell. I was able to reproduce the problem in my copy of Ghidra, a reverse-engineering framework for security researchers, in just a couple of minutes. There is a very low bar for using this exploit, which means a wider range of people with malicious intent can use it.

Log4j is everywhere

One of the major concerns about Log4Shell is Log4j’s position in the software ecosystem. Logging is a fundamental feature of most software, which makes Log4j very widespread. In addition to popular games like Minecraft, it’s used in cloud services like Apple iCloud and Amazon Web Services, as well as a wide range of programs from software development tools to security tools

This means hackers have a large menu of targets to choose from: home users, service providers, source code developers and even security researchers. So while big companies like Amazon can quickly patch their web services to prevent hackers from exploiting them, there are many more organizations that will take longer to patch their systems, and some that might not even know they need to.

The damage that can be done

Hackers are scanning through the internet to find vulnerable servers and setting up machines that can deliver malicious payloads. To carry out an attack, they query services (for example, web servers) and try to trigger a log message (for example, a 404 error). The query includes maliciously crafted text, which Log4j processes as instructions.

These instructions can create a reverse shell, which allows the attacking server to remotely control the targeted server, or they can make the target server part of a botnet. Botnets use multiple hijacked computers to carry out coordinated actions on behalf of the hackers.

A large number of hackers are already trying to abuse Log4Shell. These range from ransomware gangs locking down minecraft servers to hacker groups trying to mine bitcoin and hackers associated with China and North Korea trying to gain access to sensitive information from their geopolitical rivals. The Belgian ministry of defense reported that its computers were being attacked using Log4Shell.

Although the vulnerability first came to widespread attention on Dec. 10, 2021, people are still identifying new ways to cause harm through this mechanism.

Stopping the bleeding

It is hard to know whether Log4j is being used in any given software system because it is often bundled as part of other software. This requires system administrators to inventory their software to identify its presence. If some people don’t even know they have a problem, it’s that much harder to eradicate the vulnerability.

Another consequence of Log4j’s diverse uses is there is no one-size-fits-all solution to patching it. Depending on how Log4j was incorporated in a given system, the fix will require different approaches. It could require a wholesale system update, as done for some Cisco routers, or updating to a new version of software, as done in Minecraft, or removing the vulnerable code manually for those who can’t update the software.

Log4Shell is part of the software supply chain. Like physical objects people purchase, software travels through different organizations and software packages before it ends up in a final product. When something goes wrong, rather than going through a recall process, software is generally “patched,” meaning fixed in place.

However, given that Log4j is present in various ways in software products, propagating a fix requires coordination from Log4j developers, developers of software that use Log4j, software distributors, system operators and users. Usually, this introduces a delay between the fix being available in Log4j code and people’s computers actually closing the door on the vulnerability.

Some estimates for time-to-repair in software generally range from weeks to months. However, if past behavior is indicative of future performance, it is likely the Log4j vulnerability will crop up for years to come.

As a user, you are probably wondering what can you do about all this. Unfortunately, it is hard to know whether a software product you are using includes Log4j and whether it is using vulnerable versions of the software. However, you can help by heeding the common refrain from computer security experts: Make sure all of your software is up to date.

UK children with disabilities asked about “do not resuscitate” notices during COVID pandemic

Thomas Scripps

Families in the UK were offered “do not resuscitate” notices for their children with learning-disabilities during the pandemic, amid the extreme pressures on the National Health Service (NHS) caused by the government’s policy of herd immunity.

The Telegraph ’s Investigations team published interviews with two parents this Sunday whose teenage sons were asked about Do Not Attempt CPR (DNACPR)/Do Not Attempt Resuscitation (DNAR) notices.

A National Health Service "Do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation" form (WSWS media)

Karen Woollard, the mother of a 16-year-old boy with Down’s syndrome, was asked by a healthcare assistant during a health check if her son should be a given a DNACPR.

Debbie Corns’s 15-year-old son, with a learning disability and congenital classic autism, was directly asked the same, also during a health check. Corns told the paper he answered “yes” having not understood the question.

The Telegraph has seen a letter sent to Corns by the local NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) apologising for what happened. The CCG explained on social media that a “template” had been in circulation which “unintentionally [gave] GPs the impression that they must record the status as part of the annual health check,” adding, “this question is not mandatory and should not be asked for our young children”.

Such a horrifying situation, in which children with no serious health concerns beyond their disabilities are asked if they would want to be resuscitated, is the product of the medical catastrophe created by the Johnson government and the fascistic arguments it has embraced to justify mass death.

The details of “templates” giving guidance on how to ration care and apply DNACPR notices first emerged, and were greeted with widespread outrage, in the spring and summer of 2020.

In April, the Financial Times revealed a “COVID-19 Decision Support Tool” circulated in the NHS to help medical workers decide which patients should receive life-saving intensive-care treatment if hospitals were overwhelmed. The scoring system, originally developed to help assess the wellbeing of elderly people, was entirely inappropriate for use with the disabled and would have unfairly discriminated against them.

Clinical staff care for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, May 5, 2020 (Credit: Neil Hall Pool via AP)

A Clinical Frailty Scale issued by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence had the same effect. A caveat that the scale was not suitable for patients “under 65, or [a] patient of any age with stable long-term disabilities (for example, cerebral palsy), learning disabilities or autism” was only added after the threat of legal action.

Multiple charities and rights organisations concerned with the elderly and the disabled were reporting the unlawful issuing of DNACPRs, including their blanket application in some care homes.

This was confirmed by a report from the Care Quality Commission in March 2021, which found that at least 508 DNACPR decisions were made between March 2020 and January 2021 without discussion with the person involved or their family. Of these, 180 were still in place in December 2020. In addition, 119 social care providers stated blanket DNACPR notices had affected people in their care.

The British Institute of Human Rights (BIHR) reported the same month that only just over one in four DNACPR orders followed a capacity assessment of an elderly or disabled patient—legally required to determine someone’s ability to participate in decisions.

The final decision on a DNACPR is a medical one and lies with the doctor. It should be based on a careful examination of the individual’s situation and following consultation with the patient. It is an important part of humane and dignified medical care.

However, the imposition of DNACPRs without an assessment or informing the patient, on a group of people, or on account of a learning disability, autism or dementia is a social crime. It is the most grotesque expression of a broader policy choice made by the ruling class to leave whole sections of the population to be killed by the COVID-19 virus as the health system was overwhelmed. Under conditions in which hospitals were struggling for beds and staff, immense pressure was placed on health workers to ration care.

COVID-19 has taken an appalling toll on the disabled, who have not only been denied the increased support and protection they need in the pandemic, but also been left vulnerable by longstanding inequalities and disadvantages.

Between January 2020 and February 2021, 58 percent of deaths involving COVID in England were among disabled people, according to research carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

For the period January 2020 to November 2020, the ONS reports that the age-standardised COVID death rate for more-disabled women was 4.1 times higher than for non-disabled women. For more-disabled men, the figure was 3.2 times higher. For less-disabled women versus non-disabled women, it was 2 times higher and for less-disabled men versus non-disabled men, 1.8 times higher.

These figures reflect a wide range of factors and cannot be reduced to the misuse of DNACPR notices—with CPR a last resort that is by no means always successful in preserving life, even when considered applicable by doctors.

The ONS study adjusted for residence type (private household versus care home or another communal living arrangement); geographic, demographic and socio-economic conditions; and the presence of pre-existing health conditions. After these were considered, the increased risk close to disappeared for less-disabled men and was reduced substantially to 1.1 times greater for more-disabled men, 1.4 for more-disabled women and 1.2 for less-disabled women.

The authors note, “For both sexes and for both more-disabled and less-disabled people, the largest reduction in the hazard ratio was achieved by adding socio-economic and geographical circumstances to the model.”

Similar findings were reached for those with a learning disability. Learning-disabled men were at 3.5 times greater risk of dying of COVID and women at 4 times. Accounting for the same factors identified above, these increased rates were reduced to 1.7 for men and women.

According to the authors, in this case, “Much the largest effect was associated with place of residence, suggesting that living in a care home or other communal establishment was a major factor in the increased exposure of people with learning disabilities to COVID-19.” The government’s transformation of care homes into killing fields was a national scandal in 2020.

A large part of the suffering and death inflicted on the disabled by COVID-19 has therefore been the product of sharp inequality and inadequate provision going back decades, pushing a disproportionate number of the disabled into the conditions which have seen the working class and poor as a whole bear the brunt of the pandemic.

The remaining increased risk indicates the existence of other, compounding factors which have not been meliorated by the government: relatively more difficult access to and pathways through the health system, restricted means of connecting with the community and possibly increased physical risk associated with certain conditions.

Politically, the devastating impact of the pandemic on the disabled reflects the far-advanced development of fascistic, eugenicist ideologies within the ruling class.

At the start of the pandemic, the Telegraph ’s Jeremy Warner wrote that COVID might prove economically “beneficial” by “disproportionately culling elderly dependents.” Former government adviser Dominic Cummings is reported to have explained the herd immunity policy as “Protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad.” His connections with the eugenics movement are known and he is now a key player in efforts to engineer a further step to the right in the Tory party by removing Boris Johnson as leader.

Johnson himself, infamous for his declaration, “No more fucking lockdowns—let the bodies pile high in their thousands”, penned an article in 2007 asserting “global over-population is the real issue”, referring to “a horrifying vision of habitations multiplying and replicating like bacilli in a Petri dish” and lamenting governments having “given up on population control”.

As both the death toll and the stock share prices of the pandemic profiteers continue to climb, and resistance in the working class grows, this ultra-reactionary ideology is becoming more prominent.

Nearly 300 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean in the week before Christmas

Martin Kreickenbaum

A woman holds a 3 month old baby as migrants and refugees from different African nationalities wait for assistance on an overcrowded rubber boat, as aid workers of the Spanish NGO Open Arms approach them (AP Photo/Bruno Thevenin)

In the week before Christmas, close to 300 refugees drowned in several boat accidents in the Mediterranean Sea. According to the International Organization for Migration, at least 200 people died off the Libyan coast and dozens more perished in the Aegean Sea. According to official data, at least 1,887 people have drowned in the Mediterranean this year while seeking asylum.

Most recently, the bodies of 28 people were found near the western Libyan port city of Al-Khums. “The advanced state of decomposition of the bodies suggests that the shipwreck occurred several days ago,” a Libyan security official said. According to the Libyan Red Crescent, two women and a baby were among the bodies found. Only three people have been rescued, while more deaths are feared.

On December 17, 102 refugees drowned when their wooden boat capsized near the port city of Surman, west of Tripoli, International Organization for Migration (IOM) spokeswoman Safa Msehli confirmed. Another 61 bodies were found by the so-called Libyan Coast Guard aboard a vessel off the coast not far from the town of Sabratha, according to IOM coordinator Flavio di Giacomo via Twitter.

At the same time as these tragic boat accidents have occurred, ships belonging to private aid organizations have rescued more than 1,200 refugees from distress in this maritime area. Some of them are still waiting to enter an Italian port. While the Sea-Watch 4, with 216 rescued refugees on board, and the Geo Barents, with nearly 560 refugees, have been given permission to enter the ports of Pozzallo and Augusta in Sicily, the Ocean Viking, with 114 survivors, has yet to be assigned a port.

The Sea-Watch 3, which rescued 446 people from distress at sea in five missions over the Christmas period, also urgently needs a berth to bring people ashore and provide them with supplies. Many people aboard these private sea rescue vessels are dehydrated and have burns from the mixture of salt water and gasoline that often builds up in the crowded inflatable boats used for the dangerous crossing.

This year, at least 1,534 refugees have drowned on the central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy alone, 50 percent more than a year earlier. In addition, according to IOM data, the so-called Libyan Coast Guard has intercepted some 31,500 refugees at sea and returned them to Libya—nearly three times more than in 2020, when “only” 11,900 refugees were forced back to Libya.

Dozens of refugees drowned in the Aegean last week. They were on small boats leaving from Turkey and had probably been trying to reach Italy’s east coast.

Wednesday last week, a boat with up to 50 refugees sank near the island of Folegandros. According to the Greek Ministry of Shipping, survivors reported that the boat had filled up with water and sunk within minutes after an engine failure. Only 13 refugees were able to save themselves on a rubber dinghy attached to the vessel. During the subsequent rescue operation, only the bodies of three refugees were recovered; no other survivors were found.

Greek Coast Guard spokesman Nikos Kokkalas said the chances of finding more survivors were extremely slim: “We fear that most of them simply did not manage to leave the sinking boat in time and were dragged down with it.” The 13 survivors who had fled from Iraq, Syria and Egypt included four adolescents and one woman.

Just a day later, at least 27 refugees died in two other shipwrecks in Greek waters. A boat with more than 100 refugees on board ran onto a reef near the rocky island of Andikythira. Eleven people could only be recovered dead from the sea. Among the 90 survivors who managed to save themselves on the tiny island were 27 children and 11 women.

And just a few hours later, a sailboat capsized off the Cyclades island of Paros with around 90 refugees on board. The Greek Coast Guard recovered 16 bodies from the sea and managed to rescue 63 refugees.

Greek Shipping Minister Giannis Plakiotakis blamed the smugglers who organized the crossings for these tragic shipwrecks. According to Plakiotakis, they are “indifferent to human life and they pile dozens of people without life jackets in ships that do not meet the most basic safety standards.”

Without question, the smugglers are extremely unscrupulous, but the responsibility for the more than 20,000 refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean since 2014 lies with the European Union and its murderous refugee policies. Fortress Europe, with its ruthless measures taken against refugees, is the basis for the smugglers’ business model, and it drives the desperate refugees to take ever more dangerous and longer routes.

All three of the ships that capsized in Greek waters were traveling along a rather unusual route. Until now, most refugees had headed for the eastern Aegean islands such as Lesbos, Samos or Leros, leaving Turkey in small inflatable boats. But since the Greek government has implemented the EU’s dirty refugee deal with Turkey ever more rigorously, mercilessly deporting refugees without hearing their asylum claims or forcing refugee inflatable boats back toward Turkey in illegal “pushback operations,” the number of refugees arriving here has plummeted.

The militarization of the Greek land and sea border is forcing refugees to switch to other routes. This greatly increases the risk of not surviving the crossing. The islands of Folegandros, Paros and Antikythera, off which the recent tragic shipwrecks occurred, lie north of Crete on a route that leads to the Italian coast. This course has already brought 11,000 refugees to Italy this year. However, there is no official information on how many refugees have lost their lives in the process.

The spokeswoman for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Athens, Stella Nanou, said the recent shipwrecks made clear “that people continue to risk their lives by making desperate journeys in search of safety. If there were legal and safe routes, these refugees would have a choice.” For now, however, Nanou added, these people are “faced with the insoluble dilemma” of either risking their lives in their places of origin or embarking on the perilous journey.

And the EU continues to close itself off. Most recently, during the refugee crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border, it has eroded the right of asylum to such an extent that it effectively no longer exists. Contrary to the Geneva Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights, the EU Commission has allowed EU border states to detain asylum seekers, concentrate them in camps, and conduct an abbreviated asylum procedure there without legal guarantees. At the same time, accommodation standards and care for refugees are being undermined, deportations facilitated, and illegal pushbacks enabled.

As in the pandemic, mass deaths in the Mediterranean are the result of deliberate policies being taken over the mounting piles of corpses. Sea rescue missions have been largely halted by European countries bordering the Mediterranean. Desperate refugees who find themselves in distress at sea and request help are often referred to the EU-trained and highly equipped Libyan Coast Guard. This is essentially comprised of militias led by warlords and is notorious for its serious human rights crimes.

Man claiming to work for Turkish intelligence burned Syrian refugees to death

Hasan Yıldırım

The location in Izmir where three Syrian workers were burned to death while sleeping

Last week, human rights associations reported that three Syrian refugees were burned to death in their sleep, in a horrific murder in Izmir, Turkey, on November 16. This barbaric act is the product of the decade-long NATO war in Syria and the reactionary atmosphere incited by the Turkish ruling class against millions of Syrian refugees who have fled the war to Turkey.

Shockingly, the fact that this was a murder was covered up for over a month and came to light after one of the families contacted the Refugee Media Association (Mülteci Medyası). Only afterwards was an investigation initiated to establish the circumstances of the fire. The attacker, Kemal Korukmaz, boasted to police of having carried out the attack after his arrest, telling them that he worked for Turkey’s Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism (JİTEM) agency.

Deysem Siti, the head of the Refugee Media Association, told daily Evrensel: “One of the families reached me three days ago. They said the incident was a homicide,” adding, “They also said that the police had not given them information. We followed up to learn about the incident… Although it was said that there was a fire from the stove at first, a camera recording showed that there was an attack.”

21-year-old Ahmed Al-Ali, 23-year-old Mamoun Al-Nabhan and 17-year-old Mohammed Al-Bish were reportedly working uninsured at the Birlik Beton cement factory in the Urla district and were trying to live on a wage below the hunger line.

Korkumaz came to the three workers’ room at night, doused them in fuel and burned them to death. Al-Ali and Al-Bish died two days later, while Al-Nabhan has lost his life after a painful week in the hospital.

Other details point to a planned massacre. According to human rights associations’ joint statement, Korkumaz told another worker, “That place will burn, and those Syrians will die today.”

Korukmaz was caught after stabbing two Turkish citizens ten days after the murder. In his statement, Korukmaz confessed to the murders and claimed he was working for JİTEM, according to the daily Evrensel which had access to his confession.

JİTEM was infamous for a large number of unsolved civilian murders in the Kurdish region during the Turkish state’s war on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The state denied its existence for decades before Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit admitted JİTEM’s activities in the aftermath of the 1996 Susurluk scandal.

In his statement, Korukmaz said that while he was doing his compulsory military service in the 2000s, he was asked by one of his commanders to join JİTEM. He accepted and participated in many operations. Korukmaz said that one day he found a note on his car saying “start your duty,” and a few days later he found a second note saying “continue your duty.” Claiming that he took action with the third note stating “Start the cleansing,” Korukmaz said: “I understood this note as ‘cleanse Turkey of Syrians.’”

Korukmaz’s account raises the issue of state complicity in murders of immigrants and refugees across the NATO alliance. In Germany, where the state-infiltrated, neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground (NSU) murdered at least 10 immigrants in Turkey, a neo-Nazi network planning to murder Syrian and Middle Eastern refugees, and including an individual identified as Franco A., came to light in 2017.

In the Izmir killing, a statement by Mamoun Al-Nabhan’s brother, Ahmet Nabhan, shows that Turkish authorities deliberately concealed the murder.

Ahmet Nabhan said, “We came to Turkey 5 years ago. My brother was 23 years old. While they were sleeping in the factory where they worked, he [Korukmaz] poured diesel or gasoline and then burned them. My brother remained in the hospital for a week after the incident and then died. Others of his friends died a day later. We did not tell anyone at the time because the police asked us not to tell anyone… I do not know why the Turkish sides did not inform the press. The killer was buying stones from the same factory as us.”

The Association of Lawyers for Freedom stated that the massacre, “despite taking place on November 16, 2021, was concealed by pressure on families.” It added, “It is clear that this massacre is directly related to the refugee policy of the state, and discourses that serve the purpose of deepening racism against refugees.”

Meanwhile, a report is awaited on whether Korukmaz, who was arrested and sent to prison, is mentally stable. Regardless of the direction of the report on Korukmaz’s mental health, however, the responsibility of the political establishment in this attack does not disappear.

A rotten deal between the EU, Turkey and Greece in March 2016 established Greece as the EU’s jailer of refugees and obliged President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government to ensure that refugees from war zones in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan do not make their way to Europe. Moreover, Ankara aims to use refugees as a bargaining chip in its negotiations with the NATO powers. It also oversees an estimated 3.6 million refugees in Turkey, who are exploited without insurance and with wages below even the legal minimum wage.

The bourgeois opposition, led by the Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the far-right Good Party, is leading an anti-refugee campaign. They are fueling anti-refugee chauvinism, boasting that if they come to power they will send the refugees back where they came from.

Amid an economic and social crisis that has deepened with the COVID-19 pandemic, the aim of this campaign, carried out by the entire political establishment, is to divide the working class and divert growing class tensions into reactionary attacks on the most exploited layers of workers.

The developments have confirmed the warnings made by the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS). At the end of July, we wrote, “This xenophobic lynch-mob atmosphere, especially incited by pro-bourgeois opposition parties and media, paves the way for fascistic attacks not only against refugees but against the entire working class.” Only a few days after this warning, a far-right mob of hundreds of people took to the streets in Ankara, chanting anti-Syrian slogans. They threw stones at the homes of Syrian refugees while some shops were also ransacked, and some cars burnt.

A video released by a paramilitary fascist group named Ataman Brotherhood on Tuesday indicates that the far-right danger is growing. In the video of this racist group, they are seen chasing and beating an Afghan refugee in Istanbul. The group, which broadcasts videos of the armed militia, has a flag similar to the fascistic Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Members of the group make hand-signs of the far-right Grey Wolves organization.

Ukrainian government expands military conscription among women

Jason Melanovski

SSO fighters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during training [Credit: Wikipedia/ArmyInform]

As part of its ongoing campaign to militarize its population and prepare for war against Russia, on December 17 the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense vastly expanded the conscription of women between the ages of 18 to 60.

There are already 31,000 women serving in the Ukrainian armed forces and women in select professions were previously subject to wartime conscription.

The updated law expands the list of professions subject to conscription for women between the ages of 18 to 60 to include doctors, librarians, journalists, and more who are now required to register for potential military service. Even pregnant women and mothers of small children will now be conscripted.

Speaking to the American military website Coffee or Die magazine, Oleksandra Ustinova, a Ukrainian parliament member and representative of the center-right Holos Party, called the measure “logical, timely, and sensible.”

“This sends a powerful signal to Moscow that Ukrainians are ready to resist. Although we strive for introduction of the contract army, in the current situation, the decision to educate as many people as possible to hold arms and to be ready to serve seems a good one,” Ustinova said.

While the country’s major political parties have fully supported the effort, the Ukrainian population has been less receptive to the revised measure.

Demonstrating the widespread rejection of the government’s attempts to militarize the civilian population for a war against a nuclear-armed Russia, an official petition addressed to President Volodymyr Zelensky to cancel the measure has already reached over 36,000 signatures in a matter of days. The threshold for the president to review the petition is 25,000 signatures.

On the heels of the announced changes in conscription, the New York Times published a glowing and uncritical story, titled “Training Civilians, Ukraine Nurtures a Resistance in Waiting,” on the Ukrainian government's attempts to convince the population they must prepare to fight and die against Russia.

The author, Andrew E. Kramer, fails to mention the role of the country’s far-right paramilitary groups such as the Azov Battalion and Right Sector in leading such volunteer efforts. In an attempt to whitewash their neo-Nazi background, the New York Times just referred to them as “volunteer brigades.”

Kramer speaks glowingly of their efforts and cites a dubious opinion poll as proof for “some support for the effort.” According to Kramer, the poll “showed 24 percent of Ukrainians saying they would resist ‘with a weapon in hand’ if Russia invaded. Among men, 39 percent said they would resist with weapons. Ukrainians have taken to posting selfies on social media holding rifles.”

In reality, since the ongoing civil war first began in 2014 in Eastern Ukraine, tens of thousands of Ukrainian men have purposely evaded conscription. While the Ukrainian army has been careful not to release military evasion statistics in subsequently years, at the height of the initial fighting in 2014, 85,792 of those summoned for conscription didn’t appear for mobilization.

In the western provinces of Ukraine, which are typically depicted as the most nationalistic and patriotic by the western media, 9,969 were proven to be illegally avoiding military service.

In 2015, ten months after the start of the civil war, Roman, a draft evader from the western city of L'viv told Foreign Policy, “I am against every war, but especially this war, because it’s meaningless. I think this conflict was created artificially. The Ukrainian mass media helped this along by spreading this patriotic hysteria.”

Rather than being met with an influx of willing conscripts, the Ukrainian army instead began the war in 2014 with just 6,000 combat-ready soldiers. In its ongoing civil war against pro-Russian separatists, Kiev has primarily relied on far-right and neo-Nazi paramilitary groups such as as the Azov Battalion.

These far-right groups have also been incorporated into the country’s newly created National Guard and are instrumental in carrying out the propagandized militarization of Ukrainian society by leading military classes, fund drives, and right-wing children’s summer camps.

Today, Ukraine reports having approximately 255,000 active military personnel with 900,000 reservists. If the mass evasion of 2014 repeats itself, it is doubtful Kiev could rely on its reservists to actually report for mobilization.

In comparison, Russia has over one million active duty personnel and has already positioned over 120,000 troops close to the Ukrainian and Belarusian borders in reaction to NATO military activities in Ukraine and the Black Sea.

This week, Moscow announced that more than 10,000 troops had finished military drills near the Ukrainian border and are returning to their permanent bases.

The Russian oligarchy is desperate for an agreement with Western imperialism, with President Vladimir Putin recently pleading with NATO to give “something, at least something.”

Since the 2014 western-backed coup that removed the pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from power with the deployment of right-wing thugs, the United States has given Ukraine $2.5 billion in military assistance.

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has spent the last year publicly begging for NATO membership, such a step is considered a redline for Russia due to the disadvantageous military position they would quickly be placed in.

According to Putin, “If this infrastructure moves further — if US and NATO missile systems appear in Ukraine —then their approach time to Moscow will be reduced to seven or ten minutes.”

Talks between the NATO powers and Russia are now reportedly being planned for early January.

Omicron variant thrashes global luxury cruising industry

Tom Casey

Symphony of the Seas (Darthvadrouw/Wikimedia Commons)

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus has ripped through existing mitigation measures on cruise ships around the world, creating widespread anxiety among the industry’s customers and workforce. Beginning last week, a sharp increase in outbreaks has occurred on dozens of ships across the globe. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently marked over 80 vessels as “yellow” in its color coding system, indicating that “[r]eported cases of COVID-19 have met the threshold for CDC investigation” on each of such ships.

The CDC’s color roster only includes vessels which are currently sailing in or plan to sail in US waters. There are likely dozens more ships around the world which are experiencing similar outbreaks. While ship operators under the CDC’s guidance are not required to document how many infections there are on board, Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s (RCCL) Symphony of the Seas, the biggest cruise ship in the world, has reported an outbreak of 48 among approximately 6,000 occupants.

There have been widespread disruptions to the itineraries of a large and growing number of ships due to onboard COVID-19 infection. Such ships have included Carnival Cruise Line’s (CCL) Freedom, RCCL’s Symphony, Odyssey and Allure of the Seas, Holland America Line’s (HAL) MS Zuiderdam and MS Konigsdam, Norwegian Cruise Line’s (NCL) Epic and Breakaway, as well as Cunard’s the Queen Mary and the Queen Victoria.

Port governments including those of Mexico, Aruba, Bonaire and Colombia have denied entry to passengers on ships which have high levels of infection, and several vessels have opted to make changes to their routes, citing concerns of COVID-19 and related restrictions.

The health agency of Puerto Rico announced on December 26 that it would require all visitors from cruise ships to present a negative COVID-19 test within 48 hours of entry. In response, nearly a dozen calls to dock in the port of San Juan have been cancelled by the Royal Caribbean International (RCI), the umbrella corporation of several major cruise lines. The company has issued a warning to its customers of the possibility of further port cancellations and onboard activity disruptions due to Omicron.

In response to the recent surge on cruise ships, US Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut called for a complete shutdown of the industry. “Our warnings have proved sadly prescient & continuously compelling. Time for CDC & cruise lines to protect consumers & again pause— docking their ships. Cruises are repeating recent history as petri dishes of COVID infection,” Blumenthal posted on Twitter.

In the past week, several cruise ship passengers have taken to news outlets and social media to denounce conditions on board, with many citing a lack of accurate reporting to guests and crew. “I feel like I just spent my past week at a superspreader event,” one passenger who had recently disembarked the Carnival Freedom tweeted.

Since this summer, the global cruising industry has ramped up its testing, onboard quarantining, vaccination and masking protocols across the board since its resumption of operations after the 15-month, worldwide shutdown began in March, 2020. These safety measures, as important as they are, have largely been used as a pretext to recklessly and criminally reopen the multibillion-dollar industry without respect to the risk that it poses to the physical and mental health and safety of its customers and crew.

The cruise industry has responded to the recent surge in outbreaks with reassurances of the efficiency of their existing health procedures, as well as the announcement of limited and inconsistent measures to contain the spread of the virus onboard.

The Washington Post published an article Tuesday which backed plans by the industry to continue to operate while shipboard coronavirus cases explode around the world. The article, entitled “Covid is spreading on cruises again. This time they plan to keep sailing,” repeating hollow claims by Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) spokeswoman Bari Golin-Blaugrund that infections on ships represented only a minority of the total number of passengers currently sailing. The publication downplayed the risks of Omicron on ships, citing the fact that many of the detected cases have been asymptomatic.

During the initial months of the pandemic, cruise ships were the scene of what former HAL President Orlando Ashford called a “humanitarian crisis” involving hundreds of thousands of cruise guests and staff. In 2020, there were over 3,000 infections and 77 COVID-19 deaths on cruise ships. After passengers were evacuated, approximately 200,000 employees remained stranded on vessels around the world, most having been stricken from their company payrolls, and with no idea of when they would be able to return to their families. Over a dozen additional non-COVID-19 related deaths among crews occurred during this period which were widely suspected to have been suicides.

To put into perspective the scope of the current crisis on cruise ships, there have been 1,300 COVID-19 infections reported on cruise ships since June 2021, a period in which the entire industry has only been operating at a fraction of its original capacity.

In concert with the approach taken by the entire American ruling class, cruise companies and the CDC are acting on the principle of “do nothing until it is too late” and sacrificing lives and public health in pursuit of private profit. The recent disruptions of cruise ships are a confirmation of the recklessness of the drive to force open the industry in the midst of a global pandemic.

An anonymous submission by a crew member on board MSC Divina to Crew-Center.com, a cruise crew-run news source, reported that there were nearly “80 positive cases for crew and guests.” The employee continued, “why [is] the CDC … still giving the right for the ship to sail away with the positive guests[?] We will be denied for sure in many ports. … The management is hiding all these positive guests from all the other guests. Why no action is being taken? We have to stay with all these positive guests for 11 days even if they are isolated [while on the ship]. … For crew, there is no shore leave, the guests can go independently in every port they want [while] they are bringing the virus [back] onboard.”