Thames Water online map confirms appalling sewage pollution in UK

Paul Mitchell

Last week’s publication of an online interactive map by Thames Water confirms that water companies are responsible for huge and continuing levels of raw sewage pollution across the UK.

Screenshot of Thames Water of online CSO Event map, January 9, 2023 [Photo: screenshot/thameswater.co.uk]

It has taken decades of campaigning by environmental groups such as The Rivers Trust, Fish Legal and Surfers Against Sewage to force even this limited admission from the UK’s largest water company.

What to do about the pollution, though, is still being kicked into the long grass. At the current rates of underinvestment, it will take hundreds of years to upgrade the sewerage system to anything like the requirements of a modern civilised society.

Thames Water’s map shows information about its Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs), which are supposed to act as emergency valves during periods of “intense rainfall”. They enable water companies to discharge millions of litres of untreated sewage and wastewater into rivers and onto beaches, which they claim would otherwise overwhelm the sewerage system and flood people’s houses.

A typical Combined Sewer Overflow [Photo by Courtesy of The Rivers Trust]

The map is startling. At the time of writing around one third of Thames Water’s CSOs (identified by an exclamation mark) had polluted the environment within the last 48 hours and another third (double exclamation mark) were still discharging. Even among the remaining third of CSOs that have a green light, a substantial number reveal a history of pollution on further scrutiny.

For continuous pollution of a watercourse the current record goes to the storm overflow in the village of Marsh Gibbon, close to the city of Oxford. Raw sewage has been discharging from it for over 500 hours since December 19.

Local Windrush Against Sewage Pollution campaigner Ashley Smith told reporters, “It shows the extent to which Thames Water is reliant on being able to use our rivers and streams as toilets to deal with problems caused largely by underinvestment and profiteering.”

Pollution from Marsh Gibbon is not a recent anomaly. As far back as 1990 the National Rivers Authority (forerunner of today’s Environment Agency-EA) identified the CSO as responsible for the poor quality of local streams and one of a swathe of sites requiring investment.

And it is not just Thames Water at fault. Last year The Rivers Trust published another map which includes the location of tens of thousands of CSOs across the country, advising people they should “Avoid entering the water immediately downstream of these discharges and avoid the overflows... especially after it has been raining.”

Large Combined Sewer Overflow. [Photo by Courtesy of Fish Legal]

Campaign group Surfers against Sewage has gone further, exposing how water companies resort to “dry spills” during which they “dump” untreated sewage “even when there hasn’t been any rain.” Forced to carry out its own research last year, the group discovered that companies failed to report a “staggering” 103 sewage overflows onto beaches for a period of more than two weeks during last summer, and that 44 sewage overflows were left completely unmonitored.

The revelations led the EA to warn people not to swim at numerous bathing sites because of high bacteria levels. At the same time Emma Howard Boyd, head of the EA’s Performance department, declared that there had been “no sustained trend for improvement for several years in total incident numbers”, lamenting that “only 56 percent of serious incidents were self-reported by the water companies which is concerning given their impact on the environment”, and that most of their environmental performance ratings had been “downgraded.”

That the UK’s CSO-based sewerage system is “unfit for purpose” is made clear by Boyd and countless official reports by regulators and parliamentary committees, including a recent report of the Environmental Audit Committee headed, “Chemical cocktail of sewage, slurry and plastic polluting English rivers puts public health and nature at risk.”

Map which includes the location of Combined Sewer Overflows [Photo by Courtesy of The Rivers Trust]

Yet none address the fundamental issue. Private ownership and the profit system’s domination of the basic right to water and a clean environment has been a social, environmental and economic catastrophe for millions, while the companies and their shareholders have profited.

When the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher privatised the water industry in 1989 it wrote off all its debts and granted indemnity for CSO discharges, in order to satisfy the financial markets which were reluctant to invest, fearing potential criminal liabilities.

The Tories claimed that bureaucratism and inefficiency would be done away with through the introduction of competition, which would provide a massive injection of cash for investment.

The exact opposite happened. A Wild West-style rampage took place in which the previously state-owned water assets fell into the hands of bank consortiums, private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds committed to extracting every last penny from customers and workers, while splashing out on dividends.

Professor David Hall, an expert on England’s water industry from Greenwich University, recently explained how the companies “have borrowed large amounts of money, building up a large pile of debt and large annual bill for interest. This debt has not been taken on to finance investment, but to finance the payment of dividends.”

Since privatisation dividends worth £65 billion have been paid out, while debt has risen from zero to £54 billion.

At the same time, according to The Rivers Trust, “Since 1991 water companies have failed to treat sewage ‘effectually’ as required by the Water Industry Act 1991 and the [financial] regulator OFWAT has singularly failed to use the powers granted to them to enforce that duty over the last 30 years. The Environment Agency has also been systematically defunded and disempowered to act.”

Since the UK left the European Union the government has attempted to scrap hundreds of environment laws. It introduced an amendment to the 2021 Environment Bill in opposition to a clause that sought progressive reductions in the harm caused by discharges of untreated sewage.

Screenshot of report of a paper on water quality in rivers by Parliament's Environmental Audit Committee [Photo: UK Parliament]

After decades of services run by private water companies, England and Wales have some of the worst water quality in Europe, with only 14 percent of rivers rated in good ecological health. A major part of the responsibility lies with the Labour Party and the trade unions.

The Labour government of Tony Blair (1997-2007) denounced opposition to Tory privatisation as “rigid dogma” and hailed “global finance, communication and the media” as “liberating” and “modernising” forces. “After a century of antagonism, economic efficiency and social justice are finally working in partnership together,” Blair told the 1999 Labour Party conference.

Last year, current Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer ditched plans to nationalise the water sector.

Since privatisation, the unions have pursued a “partnership” agreement with the employers, claiming it was the best way to achieve job security, better wages and conditions. Instead workers have faced constant reorganisations, job cuts, declining wages, outsourcing and downgrading.

Mass unrest continues in Peru following police massacres

Don Knowland

Mass unrest continued in Peru this week following the massacre of 17 persons on Monday by Peruvian police in the southeastern Andean City of Juliaca. Police opened fire in response to demonstrators attempting to take over the Juliaca international airport.

An informal nationwide strike originally broke out in mid-December, when former president Pedro Castillo was deposed and jailed, and his vice president Dina Boluarte installed in his stead.

In response, the government declared a nationwide “state of emergency,” deploying 140,000 soldiers to the streets, in an attempt to crush the protests. The death toll now stands at upwards of 50.

Many protests have been centered in the Puno region, which borders on Lake Titicaca, and has a largely indigenous population. Repression from security forces in Puno City, the most important commercial city of the Southern Andes, has been the most violent.

Reportedly, 25,000 indigenous Aymaras have arrived at Puno City to protest. On Wednesday, a three-day curfew was ordered in Puno City.

In an effort to defuse the protests, the regional government of Puno has declared Boluarte and her prime minister Alberto Otárola “personas non grata,” as well as the Ministers of the Interior, Víctor Rojas; Defense, Jose Luis Chavez; the general of the Puno National Police, Pablo Villanueva Yana; and the general of the Army Brigade in Puno, Manuel Alarcón.

The Cusco daily newspaper El Sol reported this week that a mobilization of 20,000 Quechua-speaking locals is expected to take over this Andean city in the province to the north of Puno, which is a major tourism center. Protesters from the provinces of Canchis, Canas, Acompayo and Quispicanchi also have gathered in Cusco to demand the resignation of Boluarte.

Overall, mobilizations intensified in 31 provinces of 12 regions in response to the Juliaca massacre and prior repression. Protests and highway blockades against Boluarte and in support of Castillo have now extended to 41 provinces.

Thousands also protested in the capital Lima on Wednesday, resulting in dozens of arrests. There have been widespread calls among many groups leading protests to stage a mass march on the capital.

On Wednesday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner in Peru called upon security forces “to comply with human rights standards and guarantee that force is only used when strictly necessary and, in such case, fully respecting the principles of legality, precaution and proportionality.” The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) announced that it will visit Peru this week to investigate the military and police violence.

Also on Wednesday, Peru’s Attorney General Patricia Benavides opened an investigation against Boluarte and her closest circle of power: Prime Minster Otárola, Minister of the Interior Rojas, Defense Minister Chavez, and Minister of Justice and Human Rights, José Tello, for “the alleged crimes of genocide, qualified homicide and serious injuries” in relation to the 46 deaths and hundreds of injuries suffered thus far in the December and January protests.

Brushing this off, late at night on Wednesday, the plenary session of the Congress, dominated by the far right, approved Boluarte’s cabinet chaired by Otárola. This can only fuel the indignation of the population.

Foreign investors, including the giant mining enterprises that dominate the Peruvian economy, are increasingly nervous that the protests can get out of hand and shut down production. On Wednesday, The Guardian warned that “Peru’s broken political system will inevitably drive down foreign investment—which the economy is heavily reliant on—and the situation could get even worse.”

Growing support for far right and targeting of Trudeau within Canada’s military

James Clayton & Keith Jones

Two recent events expose the growing threat to the working class posed by far-right elements within the Canadian Armed Forces: a fascistic rant given by one of Canada’s top generals, and threats made by disgruntled military veterans against the life of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Both incidents reflect the increasing self confidence of fascistic forces in Canada, which lack a broad base of popular support, but enjoy backing from powerful elements within the ruling elite and state apparatus.

On November 9, at arguably the most important military social event of the year, retired Lt. General Michel Maisonneuve received the “Vimy Award,” which the Conference of Defence Industries Institute bestows annually on a “Canadian who has made a significant and outstanding contribution to the defence and security of Canada and the preservation of (its) democratic values.”

In the form of his acceptance speech—and before Trudeau’s national security adviser, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and much of the top ranks of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and the arms industry—General Maisonneuve delivered a fascistic “Make Canada Great Again” diatribe.

Even more significant was the audience reaction. Maisonneuve’s denunciations of the elected government and the working class, were, from all reports, greeted with a standing ovation by the assembled CAF officer corps.

Protest in support of the far-right “Freedom” Convoy, which menacingly occupied downtown Ottawa for almost a month in Jan.-Feb. 2022. [AP Photo/Arthur Mola/Invision/AP]

Maisonneuve denounced the social elements which allegedly stand in the way of Canada’s renewed “greatness”—“first-year graduates of woke journalism schools” and workers relying on “endless subsidies and handouts,” who are not “taking personal responsibility for” their “actions.”

The General decried “the toppling of statues,” referring to the removal of statues of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, who directed a genocidal campaign to dispossess First Nations people of their lands so as to open them up for capitalist development.

Other than “our troops,” the only recent figures for whom Maisonneuve had praise were Margaret Thatcher, Queen Elizabeth II, and Ukraine’s President and NATO puppet war leader Volodymyr Zelensky. Canada, bemoaned Maisonneuve, lacks a “great leader” such as Zelensky. To him, Maisonneuve offered up the fascist salute, “Slava Ukraini!” or “Glory to Ukraine,” crafted and championed by the Nazi collaborationist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

In the manner of a typical fascist “stab in the back” speech, Maisonneuve accused the Trudeau government, if not the civilian population as a whole, of betraying the military. He declared that the Canadian Armed Forces are under-resourced and lack “state-of-the-art tools” for “taking to the world stage” and “seeking alliances.” This is coded language for providing military support to US imperialism’s wars and strategic offensives around the world, which are raising an ever growing danger of a global conflagration with Russia and China.

Maisonneuve’s claim that civilian authorities are letting down the military and thereby putting the country at risk is one of the most notorious leitmotifs of far-right and fascist movements throughout history, including Hitler’s Nazis.

Intimating that the public fails to properly appreciate the “sacrifices” the military makes on its behalf, Maisonneuve lamented, “The idea of serving in our armed forces is getting little traction.”

The officer corps’ enthusiastic response to Maisonneuve’s speech underscores that he articulated the sentiments of broad sections of the military-security establishment.

Much of the military top brass regard the Trudeau government’s domestic, military and foreign policies with disdain. They believe it is insufficiently politically and financially committed to the projection of imperialist power abroad; view its identity-politics based “diversity” agenda and promotion of the myth of Canada as a “peacekeeping” nation as threats to military discipline and morale; and are angered by its pursuit of sexual assault and misconduct allegations against more than a dozen top-rank officers. They would like to see the establishment of a more explicitly right-wing and authoritarian regime to more ruthlessly defend Canadian imperialist interests against its geopolitical rivals abroad and the working class at home.

The support broad sections of the political elite, state security services and corporate media gave the far-right “Freedom” Convoy as it menacingly occupied downtown Ottawa last year underscored that Canada’s ruling class, like its counterparts internationally, is breaking with traditional democratic forms of rule. If the Convoy, which was instigated and led by far-right and fascist activists, many of them “independent” truckers and other small business people or military veterans and retired police, could come to play such a prominent role in national political life, it was because it was built up and incited by the official opposition Conservatives, the hard-right premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario, and right-wing media outlets like the National Post and Toronto Sun. They used the Convoy as a battering ram to overcome the widespread public support for anti-COVID-19 public health measures. By whipping up a far-right extra-parliamentary movement they also sought to push the Trudeau government further right, destabilize and if possible precipitate its collapse.

Ultimately, under mounting pressure from the Biden administration, international investors and big business to end the Convoy supporters’ blockading of critical cross-border trade routes, the Trudeau government invoked the never-before-used Emergencies Act, thereby granting the state and its police and security agencies sweeping powers of repression. While these powers were initially turned against the far-right occupiers of downtown Ottawa, they can and will be used in the future against working class opposition to the ruling elite’s class-war agenda of military aggression abroad and attacks on wages and public spending at home.

In his acceptance speech, Maisonneuve gave vent to his outrage over the Trudeau government’s dispersal of the Convoy. Saying perhaps more than he intended, Maisonneuve commented, “Can you imagine a military leader labelling half of his command as deplorables, fringe radicals or less-thans and then expect them to fight as one?” The insinuation is that large parts of the Canadian military supported the Convoy.

The Trudeau government, which relies on backing from the social democrats of the New Democratic Party to retain power, responded to Maisonneuve’s tirade with an embarrassed silence. Defence Minister Anita Anand offered only a single critical comment, which was buried in the press.

Under Operation Unifier, the Canadian Armed Forces played a major role in training and reorganizing Ukraine’s military to prepare for war with Russia. This included helping integrate fascist militia like the Azov battalion. [Photo: Canadian Department of Defence]

The fact that the fascistic filth spewed forth by Maisonneuve has a growing constituency within Canada’s military, including its officers corps, is a damning indictment of the policies pursued by successive governments, the Trudeau Liberals included, in support of Canadian imperialism’s global predatory ambitions. Three decades of wars and military interventions, including in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Haiti, Libya, Syria, Iraq and now Ukraine, have created a substantial pool of bloodied, battle-hardened and disgruntled soldiers and officers. In the regular performance of their duties many of these will have participated in war crimes, including torture and civilian killings. The most disoriented have been primed to throw in their lot with a fascist movement.

More significantly, as the entire political establishment rallies behind the US-NATO war with Russia, there is a growing recognition throughout the ruling elite that more authoritarian forms of rule will be required to squeeze the financial resources out of the working class that Canadian imperialism needs to fund its war machine. Already, the Liberal government has committed to spending over half a trillion dollars over the next two decades to fund new weapons and weapons systems, including new fleets of F-35 fighter jets, warships and armed drones. Meanwhile, health care is collapsing across the country, as a growing number of patients die while waiting for care in overwhelmed emergency rooms, and public education is subject to brutal austerity.

In Ukraine, Canada and the Trudeau government have been openly allied with fascists for years. As part of its Ukraine military training mission, “Operation UNIFIER,” the CAF helped supervise the integration of the Azov battalion and other fascist paramilitary units into the Ukrainian Armed Forces and National Guard. This campaign to create a powerful Ukrainian army, based on celebrating the fascist political tradition of the OUN, which participated in the Nazi Holocaust in Ukraine, was crucial to preparing NATO’s war against Russia.

Canadian imperialism has long been instrumental in promoting the Ukrainian far-right. It provided a safe haven for thousands of OUN fighters following World War II, whitewashed their crimes and assisted them in disseminating their nationalist-fascist ideology. The alliance between the Ukrainian far-right and the Canadian state is documented in last year’s WSWS series “Canadian imperialism’s fascist friends.”

These imperialist operations have fostered growing support within the military for far-right politics. One group expressing this development is the misnamed “Veterans for Freedom” (V4F), which agitated against anti-COVID public health measures. Last month it hosted a “Veterans’ Round-Table: Coping Strategies for a Canadian Commie Christmas” in which participants chatted about the need to “take-out” Trudeau.

In the YouTube video, Retired Naval Officer Andrew MaGillivray described secret insubordination by members of Canadian Armed Forces’ elite Special Forces unit JTF2, who are assigned to protect Trudeau. They allegedly keep an enlarged photo of themselves posing with Trudeau in their ready room, which shows Trudeau smiling and the two soldiers with “shitty looks.” This prompted Afghan veteran Shaun Arntsen to muse: “Makes me wonder what’s going through their heads. I mean, why aren’t they fucking doing anything? They see everything through the back door, They’re the ‘Praetorian Guard’… it’s how Caesar got taken out.” Arntsen’s suggestion that the troops should either assassinate Trudeau or carry out a military coup was met with approval by other round-table participants.

There is ample precedent and reason to fear an attempt on the prime minister’s life from the military. On July 2, 2020, CAF reservist Corey Hurren crashed a truck laden with heavy weapons through the gates of Rideau Hall, where Trudeau was temporarily residing, in an assassination attempt. The Liberal government and Canadian state covered up the attack. They refused to even characterize it as a failed attack on Trudeau’s life, dismissing it as an “isolated incident” perpetrated by a disoriented individual. In fact, Hurren was a long-standing proponent of far-right conspiracy theories and was on active duty when he was detained.

The Ontario Provincial Police has alleged that Daniel Bulford, an RCMP sniper and intelligence officer who served on Trudeau’s security detail, leaked the Prime Minister’s schedule to his far-right allies, before resigning from the force in late 2021 to protest the federal government’s COVID vaccine mandate. Bulford was subsequently a leading figure in the “Freedom” Convoy’s security operations.

The increasing assertiveness of fascistic elements within the military and state apparatus in Canada is part of an international phenomenon rooted in the global capitalist crisis. In the United States, ex-President Donald Trump and key collaborators within the Republican Party and state apparatus remain free more than two years after attempting a fascist coup on January 6, 2021, to prevent president-elect Biden from assuming office. Last week, a copycat operation was attempted by the supporters of far-right Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro in Brasilia. Military generals in France and Spain have openly speculated about launching military coups and massacring large portions of the population, while in Germany numerous far-right terrorist networks have intimate ties with the armed forces and state intelligence agencies.

US and Japan accelerate war drive against China

Peter Symonds

US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held talks at the White House yesterday, capping off meetings this week between top-level US and Japanese officials all with one overriding aim: to strengthen closer military collaboration and accelerate joint preparations for war against China.

President Joe Biden meets Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the White House, Friday, Jan. 13, 2023, in Washington. [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

A joint statement released after the White House talks declared that cooperation between the two countries was “unprecedented” in the face of “growing challenges,” then proceeded to denounce China for “actions inconsistent with the rules-based international order,” along with Russia for the war in Ukraine and North Korea for its “provocations.”

Kishida thanked the US for its involvement in regional security in the Indo-Pacific amid “the most challenging and complex security environment in recent history.” Biden hailed what he called a “remarkable moment” in the US-Japan alliance and praised the Kishida government’s decision last month to double its military budget and boost its offensive capacity. He declared that the US was “fully, thoroughly, completely committed” to the defence of Japan using all means, including nuclear weapons.

The statement and comments are premised on a lie: that the US and its allies are simply responding to Russian and Chinese provocations and aggression. In reality, the US and Japan are basing themselves on the same modus operandi in Asia as the US and its NATO allies have carried out in Europe: goading Moscow into a war in Ukraine designed to weaken and dismember Russia.

Both Washington and Tokyo are deliberately undermining the basis for diplomatic ties with China—the One China policy under which the two countries have in the past de facto recognised Beijing as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan. By boosting ties with Taipei, and thereby encouraging it to declare formal independence from China, the US and Japan are goading Beijing to reassert its control of the strategic island militarily.

The US-led war on Russia in Ukraine is the opening phase and preparation for conflict against China, which American imperialism openly declares is the greatest threat to its global domination. The accusation incessantly repeated that China undermines the “international rules-based order” refers to the post-World War II order in which the US dictated the rules. The US is aiming to shore up its global position by securing control over the vast natural resources and labour reserves of the Eurasian land mass.

Biden alluded to the global sweep of US ambitions when he declared: “We also recognize that the challenges we face transcend geography. United across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, we have stood together in firm opposition to Russia’s unjust and brutal war of aggression against Ukraine…”

The significance of the US-Japanese talks has been underscored by other top American officials. Following 2+2 meeting between top US and Japanese defence and foreign affairs officials on Wednesday, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin declared that 2023 was “an inflection point for our national security and defense strategies aligning closer than ever.”

US ambassador to Japan, Rahn Emanuel, told the Washington Post that Biden and Kishida were working to “shrink the distance between the trans-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific into a single strategic sphere” in what is “probably one of the biggest developments that the two leaders have produced.”

Transforming Asia, Europe and North America into “a single strategic sphere” only has one possible meaning—it is the strategic preparation for world war and, moreover, a conflict that has already begun in Ukraine.

Details of the talks in Washington that have been released only confirm the rapid escalation of war planning in the Indo-Pacific. Biden, Austin and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken were all full of praise for Japan’s aggressive remilitarisation announced last month, which blatantly breaches the so-called pacifist clause of its post-war constitution. “Japan is stepping up big time and doing so in lock step with the United States, partners in the Indo-Pacific, and in Europe,” Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, enthused.

Kishida’s right-wing, ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has been pushing for decades to remove the legal and constitutional constraints on the military, is exploiting the “threat” posed by China to undermine widespread anti-war opposition at home. Doubling the military budget ends the longstanding restriction on military spending to 1 percent of GDP. Acquiring 400 to 500 US-made Tomahawk cruise missiles worth $US38 billion over the next five years and other nakedly offensive weaponry overturns the pretence that Japan’s military might is purely defensive.

The US-Japan 2+2 talks this week opened the door for far closer military collaboration, planning and preparation. The joint statement declared that given “a severely contested environment,” US forces in Japan should be strengthened with “more versatile, resilient, and mobile forces with increased intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, anti-ship, and transportation capabilities.”

The build-up is focused on Japan’s southwestern islands that are close to Taiwan and adjacent to the Chinese mainland. The joint statement agreed to bolster bilateral training and exercises in these islands, on which the Japanese military has already been stationing missiles.

The large US bases on Okinawa, also part of Japan’s southern island chain, are to be restructured and boosted with the establishment of a Littoral Regiment of 2,000 troops, the Marine Corps’ most advanced unit, by 2025. Austin declared that the regiment, which has advanced intelligence and surveillance capacities as well as being armed with anti-ship missiles, would “contribute in a major way” to the joint military build-up. Currently there are 18,000 US Marines on Okinawa as part of the 54,000 American military personnel stationed on bases throughout Japan.

The US is to station MQ-9 Reaper drones, used for missile attacks on ground targets, at the Kanoya Air Base on the southern island of Kyushu. A US Army company of around 300 soldiers and 13 vessels will be deployed by mid-year to facilitate the rapid dispersal of US and Japanese troops and equipment in the event of conflict.

Significantly, the US has agreed to extend its security treaty to cover attacks in space. Any attack on Japanese satellites used by the military and for its global positioning system would be used as a pretext for the US to unleash the full force of its military, including nuclear weapons.

The US and Japan have also agreed to collaborate in military research, the development of critical and emerging technologies and the securing of supply chains essential to the military. At the same time, the two countries have undertaken to “sharpen our shared edge on economic security… including semiconductors.” This signifies that Japan will support US efforts to choke off the supply of advanced computer chips and the machinery needed for their manufacture to China.

Tech firms, crypto companies, Goldman Sachs announce major layoffs

Jacob Crosse

Following announcements last week by Salesforce, Vimeo and Amazon that they would be laying off thousands of workers, dozens of other companies around the world have followed suit and announced significant job cuts.

The announced layoffs are not restricted to any single industry. However, newer tech and cryptocurrency companies, along with major banks such as Goldman Sachs, confirmed cuts to their global workforces this week. The job losses will mainly impact white collar workers, including mid-level managers, but even senior management positions are on the chopping block.

Tech industry layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi is reporting that so far this year 82 tech companies have laid off 23,550 workers around the world. A separate tracker, trueup.io, has reported 29,923 layoffs at 120 tech companies so far this year.

The tech industry already experienced record-setting layoffs last year. According to figures compiled by trueup.io, 237,874 people lost their jobs in the tech sector in 2022, while Layoffs.fyi reported that 1,023 tech companies laid off a total of 154,256 workers last year.

Either figure represents at least a doubling of the highest number of tech layoffs experienced by workers during the Great Recession, according to data by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based global outplacement & career transitioning firm. In 2008 and 2009, the firm estimated that 65,000 tech workers around the world lose their jobs each year.

On Friday, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek announced in a blog post that the company was reducing its “global workforce by approximately 20 percent.” The Singapore-based company, founded by Marszalek in 2016, employs 2,450 people according to PitchBook, meaning some 490 employees are being laid off.

Brian Armstrong, the billionaire CEO of US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, announced this past Tuesday that the company would be cutting a fifth of its global workforce, or roughly 950 jobs. This is the second major round of layoffs at the company in the last year.

Last June, 1,100 workers were laid off at the company. In his post Tuesday, Armstrong threatened more layoffs, writing, “We may not have seen the last of it.”

The logo for Goldman Sachs appears above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Tuesday, July 13, 2021. [AP Photo/Richard Drew]

Referring to the collapse of FTX and the nearly $1.4 trillion lost in the crypto market in 2022, Armstrong said, “[T]here will be increased scrutiny on various companies in the space to make sure that they’re following the rules.”

“The FTX collapse and the resulting contagion has created a black eye for the industry,” Armstrong added, predicting that there were still more “shoes to drop.”

The ending of the cheap money policies that fueled the growth of the cryptocurrency markets has seen a collapse in the stock prices of the remaining major cryptocurrency companies. CNBC reported this week that shares of Bitcoin fell 58 percent last year, while Coinbase shares have dropped 83 percent.

Outside of crypto, layoffs were announced Wednesday by the co-CEOs of Flexport, Ryan Petersen and Dave Clark. In their memo, Petersen and Clark revealed that the supply chain software company would be laying off 20 percent of its global workforce, affecting some 640 workers.

Scale AI, an artificial intelligence start-up founded in 2016 and valued at $7.3 billion in 2021, announced in a blog post Monday that it would also be laying off 20 percent of its workforce.

Boosted by over $600 million from institutional investors such as Tiger Global, Dragoneer and Index Ventures, along with contracts with the US Department of Defense, Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang, 25, has been crowned the “world’s youngest self-made billionaire” by Forbes.

These, and the countless thousands more layoffs to come, are the result of deliberate class polices enacted by central banks around the world, led by the US Federal Reserve. The raising of interest rates is aimed at increasing the ranks of the unemployed in order to blunt growing demands of workers for increased wages to combat once-in-a-generation and far from transitory inflation.

The US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine is exacerbating supply-chain woes. This, compounded by corporate price-gouging and profiteering, drove inflation in 2022 to the highest levels in decades, according to consumer price index data released by the US Labor Department.

While the department reported that the inflation rate for December 2022 was 6.5 percent, down from the 9.1 percent peak in June 2022, staple items such as eggs, butter and margarine, utilities, electricity and white bread remained in the double-digits.

The Labor Department reported that as of December 2022, year-to-year prices for eggs increased by nearly 60 percent. Fuel oil was up 41.5 percent; white bread increased by 17.7 percent. Health insurance increased by 7.9 percent, slightly less than the 8.3 percent year-to-year increase in rent prices. Overall, food at home increased by 11.8 percent from December 2021 to December 2022.

As workers around the world struggle to afford basic necessities, companies are making it clear that more layoffs are on the way. According to a report by The Information, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is preparing to lay off as much as 6 percent of its global workforce, translating to up to 11,000 job losses.

While an official number has yet to be publicly announced, in an interview with insiderradio.com, a spokesperson for major market research company Nielsen confirmed that it will be reducing the firm’s “total headcount” to “be roughly in line with where it was a year ago,” resulting in hundreds of job losses.

In the UK, British telecom giant Vodoafone, which employs about 104,000 workers globally, including some 9,400 in the UK, announced that it will be shedding “hundreds” of jobs, centered at its headquarters in London.

Banking giant Goldman Sachs announced earlier this week it will be laying off 3,200 bankers around the world. The figure represents the most layoffs at the bank since the 2008 global financial crisis.

IndianExpress reported on Friday that “at least 700 [Goldman Sachs] employees in India” were laid off on Wednesday and Thursday, including “a number of senior employees.”

Before the layoffs, InidianExpress reported that the Wall Street bank had employed nearly 9,000 people at offices in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai. Five fired workers who spoke to the Express told the paper that they were summoned for a “quick meeting” earlier this week and informed that they had been let go.

After being laid off, the workers said they were prevented from going back to their desks and were immediately hustled out of the building.

“Right after I was informed that I was being fired, I was escorted out of the building and asked to go home. I couldn’t even say bye to my friends,” a former software developer at Goldman’s Bengaluru office told the Express.

Former work-from-home employees who were terminated by the bank were notified over Zoom that they no longer had a job.

Major banks have begun to post their final quarter 2022 profits. JPMorgan, reported this week that it “earned” a profit of $11 billion last quarter, a six percent increase from last year.

On a call with investors this week, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said that 2022 was “one of the best years ever for the bank,” with over $7 billion in net income reported in the fourth quarter alone.

While Citigroup and Wells Fargo did not exceed last year’s figures, Citigroup still reported $2.5 billion in profit for the fourth quarter, while Wells Fargo reported nearly $3 billion.

Australian Labor government defends arms exports to Saudi Arabia, UAE

Oscar Grenfell

A recent report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) revealed that Australia is continuing and expanding a lucrative trade in arms exports to regimes associated with war crimes and human rights abuses, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Indonesia.

Using official government figures, the ABC found more than 200 separate arms sales to the three countries over a period of less than two years.

Houthi detention center destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes that killed at least 60 people in Dhamar province, southwestern Yemen, in September 2019. [AP Photo/Hani Mohammed, File]

The overall figure and the breakdowns underscore the extent of the trade. In the 2021 calendar year, there were 17 exports to Saudi Arabia, 36 to the UAE and 52 to Indonesia. Over the ten months of 2022 to November 9, the figures were 21 to Saudi Arabia, 25 to the UAE and 49 to Indonesia.

While the exports are likely primarily from private arms corporations, their dispatch abroad requires government approval, through the issuing of a Defence Department military or dual-use permit.

As the ABC noted, the precise nature of the shipments is shrouded in secrecy, with no details provided on the grounds of “commercial sensitivities.” This contrasts with the US and a number of European countries, which provide publicly accessible information of officially approved weapons exports.

Previous exposures, however, give a glimpse into the sophisticated weaponry and materiel that may be making its way from Australia to despotic and dictatorial regimes.

In 2018, the ABC reported on a $410 million weapons deal involving Australian company Electro Optic Systems (EOS). It stated that two sources had told the broadcaster that the weapons were bound for the UAE. This included the RWS, an advanced system involving a platform that could be affixed to a vehicle, with guns, missile launchers or cannons placed inside it. With censors, lasers and remote-control features, this would allow soldiers to fire their munitions from the safety of a military truck or car.

EOS said that it could not confirm or deny the recipient of its systems.

The following year, the ABC reported that the company had signed a letter of intent with the Saudi Arabian government for the sale of 500 RWS units.

Over the preceding period, the then Liberal-National Coalition government had provided EOS with some $36 million in government funding. Its defence minister Christopher Pyne had lobbied in Saudi Arabia for greater Australian arms exports. While EOS denied the reports, the ABC subsequently published photographs of pallets in a factory. Their delivery dockets showed that EOS products were bound for Saudi Arabia, though with an American company as intermediary.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are waging a war against rebels in the impoverished nation of Yemen, that has been condemned as near genocidal by rights’ organisations and charities. At the end of 2021, the UN estimated that the protracted onslaught had claimed the lives of 377,000 Yemenis, 150,000 as a direct result of the war and the rest through resulting social calamities including famine.

Australian governments have persistently rejected calls from the UN and other international bodies for a ban on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The Indonesian military, with which Australian companies are doing extensive business, is also implicated in major human rights violations, both in West Papua and against domestic opponents.

The Labor government responded to the latest ABC report by making plain that its position is identical to that of its Coalition predecessor.

Labor Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy asserted that all exports were scrutinised closely on a “case by case basis… This includes careful consideration of a broad range of factors, including Australia’s international legal obligations, as well as human rights, regional and national security, and foreign policy considerations.”

Labor Defence Minister Richard Marles declared: “If overriding risks to Australia’s security, defence, or international relations had been identified, the permits would have been refused.”

The permits, however, will not jeopardise “security” or “international relations,” because Saudi Arabia and the UAE are allies of the US and its partners, including Australia. The collaboration with such regimes underscores the hypocrisy of claims by Washington and Canberra that they are defending “democracy” and “human rights” against China in the Indo-Pacific.

In fact, this bogus campaign against purported Chinese aggression is being used to justify preparations for an aggressive US-led war, aimed at reasserting American imperialist hegemony. Australia’s continued development of a weapons industry, including exports, is inextricably tied to its central role in these plans.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, released last month, claimed that the defence industry contributed $8.8 billion to the economy last financial year, up $1.8 billion over 12 months.

A 2021 article in the Conversation by University of Queensland academic Megan Price noted that the estimated value of approved arms exports increased from $1.5 billion in 2017–18 to $5.5 billion in 2019–20.

“Since 2018, Australia has been seeking to become a top ten global defence exporter. Its main exports are products and components that fit into broader global supply chains for weapons and weapons systems. For example, the government boasts there isn’t a single F-35 fighter jet production operation that doesn’t feature Australian-made components. The government sees further export potential for products and components to be used in armoured vehicles, advanced radar systems, and patrol boats, as well,” Price wrote.

In line with the ratcheting up of the US war drive against China under successive administrations, Australian governments have presided over a rapid military build-up. Defence spending is at record levels, with a bipartisan commitment of $575 billion to the sector over the decade, including $270 billion on military hardware.

In reality, the costs will be far-greater, as those figures were agreed before it was announced that Australia will acquire nuclear-powered submarines, as well as other advanced arms systems such as hypersonic missiles, as part of the militarist AUKUS pact with Britain and the US. A review, commissioned by the current Labor government into military capabilities is due to be completed in March. Media previews of the interim report indicated that it will call for a major expansion of missile systems, the purchase of more fighter jets and other aggressive weaponry.

This program involved major handouts to arms companies. In 2021, the Coalition government announced a $1 billion spend on a Sovereign Guided Weapons Enterprise, aimed at establishing a domestic missile manufacturing sector. That is part of the broader push, being continued by Labor, to boost domestic production of weapons. Such programs almost invariably involve contracts to the Australian divisions of the largest US-based weapons corporations.

The universities are a central focus of this program, with the aim to harness scientific and technical expertise ever more directly to the war machine. As the WSWS reported last June, all 37 of the country’s public universities are now part of the Defence Science Partnership. It is a program initiated by the Defence Department to “provide a uniform model for universities to engage with Defence on research projects.”

In January 2021, the WSWS reported, the then Coalition government “announced a Defence Trailblazer Concept to Sovereign Capability program—a $242 million package aimed at the ‘commercialisation’ of universities through their partnership with military companies. The program’s focus is researching quantum technologies, hypersonics, cyber warfare, robotics, artificial intelligence and space warfare.” Virtually every major university in the country is engaged in one or another research or development project with the arms corporations.

Special counsel appointed to probe Biden handling of classified documents

Patrick Martin

US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday that he was appointing a special counsel to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents during the period after he had ended his two terms as vice president in the Obama administration.

The appointment of Robert Hur, the US Attorney for Maryland, a career federal prosecutor promoted to his current position by President Donald Trump, has the potential to be a major blow to the Biden administration. Hur is charged with determining how a number of classified documents—at this point reported to be in the dozens—ended up in at least three unsecured locations where they were in Biden’s nominal custody.

Attorney General Merrick Garland [AP Photo/Andrew Harnik]

The locations were Biden’s private office at a University of Pennsylvania facility in Washington D.C. where he was a visiting professor from 2017 to 2020; in the garage at his Wilmington, Delaware, home; and in one of the rooms of that residence.

Biden has claimed that he was unaware that the documents were at these locations and that he has no idea what the classified material is or how it got there. Aides, speaking anonymously to the press, have said the materials were transferred inadvertently as part of Biden’s moving out of his vice-presidential offices in early 2017.

After the discovery of about a dozen classified documents at the Penn-Biden center in Washington, aides conducted a systematic search of Biden’s home in Wilmington, his beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and other locations, and found an undisclosed number of documents in the garage, one document in a room in the adjacent home and nothing at any other location.

The timeline given by Merrick at a five-minute press briefing Wednesday made it clear that the Department of Justice and the White House have been engaged in intense reviews and actions on this matter since the discovery of the classified documents November 2 during the cleanup of Biden’s former office at the University of Pennsylvania. The White House counsel’s office was notified immediately and the documents were turned over to the National Archives the following day.

According to Garland, the National Archives informed the Justice Department on November 4, and on November 9—one day after the US midterm elections—the FBI began to assess whether classified information had been mishandled. This is a federal offense, and can be a misdemeanor if the mishandling was inadvertent or accidental, and a felony if it is intentional.

On November 14, Garland appointed John Lausch, the US Attorney in Chicago and a Trump appointee, to make an initial investigation to “inform” Garland’s decision on whether to appoint a special counsel.

On December 20, Biden’s counsel informed Lausch that additional classified documents had been found in the garage of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, dating from his vice-presidency. The FBI went there and secured the documents.

On January 5, 2023, Lausch advised Garland that additional investigation was warranted and a special counsel should be appointed. He had already made it clear that he would not want such a position because he was leaving the department for the private sector. On January 12, Biden’s counsel informed Lausch of another classified document found inside Biden’s Wilmington residence.

The same day, Thursday, Garland named Robert Hur as special counsel and informed the congressional leaders of both parties. Hur is a career prosecutor and registered Republican who held positions in the central office of the Department of Justice in both the Obama and Trump administrations before Trump elevated him to his current position.

At the regular press briefing at the White House, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was extraordinarily defensive, refusing to answer questions about the documents or deviate in any way from the language already used by Biden himself in responding to a few shouted questions from the press in previous days.

The appointment of the special counsel demonstrates the deepening crisis and instability of the entire US political structure, with both the current president and his predecessor now being investigated by special counsels appointed by the attorney general in a way that gives them considerable freedom of action.

Garland did not include in his timeline the appointment of Jack Smith as special prosecutor investigating Trump, both for the retention of hundreds of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and for his role in preparing and instigating the mob attack on Congress on the January 6, 2021.

He appointed Smith last November 18 to investigate Trump, only four days after he had appointed Lausch to make a preliminary investigation into Biden and come back with a recommendation on whether a special prosecutor should be appointed in that case.

The appointment of Hur is certain to fuel the attacks on Biden by the fascistic right which is the driving force in the new Republican majority in control of the House of Representatives. This group already demonstrated its power by blocking the election of Republican leader Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House for nearly a week in order to extract concessions on both the rules of the House and on going as far as possible in attacking federal social programs and cutting taxes on the wealthy.

On Tuesday, the House established a new subcommittee on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government” by a party-line vote. The subcommittee, to be led by arch-right-winger Jim Jordan, also the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, will be used to attack any federal investigation into the crimes committed by Trump or by other Republicans acting on his behalf. This could include Jordan himself, as well as many of the 20 Republican representatives who participated in the blocking of McCarthy’s election.

It is not clear whether Jordan’s subcommittee will have the authority to investigate the activities of either the special prosecutor examining Trump’s actions or the newly appointed special prosecutor tasked with looking into Biden’s handling of classified documents. But the stage is set for a series of increasingly frenzied attacks by the very figures that two years ago helped politically direct the January 6 insurrection.

This is not a spectacle to inspire snickering, as it does in the petty bourgeois pseudo-left press. It is a demonstration of the uncontrollable decay of bourgeois democracy in the United States, which is headed inexorably towards a violent explosion, far greater than what took place on January 6, 2021.

And if the conflicts between rival factions of the corporate and political elite can no longer be contained within the traditional norms of the capitalist two-party system, what of the far deeper and more substantial conflicts between the financial aristocracy as a whole and the working class?

The Biden administration and both parties in Congress joined forces last month to outlaw a railroad workers’ strike and impose contract terms on 115,000 workers that many of them had already rejecting, shredding both their right to vote and their right to strike.

A similar bipartisan effort has plunged the United States into a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine which threatens to escalate into a third world war fought with nuclear weapons, without ever consulting the American people. The war was not even an issue between the two parties in the midterm elections held in November—working people were presented with the “choice” of two pro-war parties, each backed by billions in spending on advertising and campaigning.

While this pretense of democracy was taking place, as Garland’s timeline indicates, the real differences within the US ruling elite—which relate to tactics and methods, not the fundamental direction of policy—are being fought out behind the scenes, through methods of backroom conspiracies, concocted provocations and sudden “revelations” duly taken up by the corporate media to stampede public opinion.

Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People 2023/2024

Application Deadline: 31st January 2023 (until 23:59 Central European Time).

Offered Annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: The scholarship is announced for the citizens of following countries: Egypt, Lebanese Republic, Republic of Iraq, State of Israel, Palestine, Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Syrian Arab Republic, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Republic of Kenya, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia & Nigeria.

To be taken at (country): Hungary

About the Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People: The Scholarship Programme for Christian Young People (SCYP) was founded in 2017 by the Government of Hungary.

The Scholarship Programme for Christian Young People is managed by the State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians and for the Hungary Helps Program. The Hungary Helps Agency is in charge of coordinating the Scholarship Programme since August 2020.

The core mission of the Scholarship Programme for Christian Young People is to provide the possibility of studying in Hungary for young Christian students living in the crisis regions of the world and/or being threatened in their country because of their faith.

After completing their studies, the scholarship holders will return to help their home community with their gained knowledge, and thy will participate in the reconstruction of war-destroyed countries and contribute to improvement of social situation and preservation of culture of Christian communities.

Type: Bachelor, Masters

Eligibility: The Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People is based on the cooperation between the Ministry of Human Capacities of Hungary and churches, pursuing humanitarian activities in crisis regions.

• The applicants may not have Hungarian citizenship.
• Local Churches are to verify and prove that the applicant belongs to their religious community. Only those applications can be awarded with scholarship, which also possess the recommendation from the local Church along with the approval of the Deputy State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians.
• Scholarship holders must possess the relevant language and education certificates, degrees requested by the host university of the selected degree programme.
• The scholarship holders commit themselves in the scholarship agreement that after the scholarship agreement ends they return to their home countries, if the local security and political conditions allow it so.
• Scholarships are for young applicants who are older than 18 years of age by the time their education starts
• An individual may win the scholarship only one time at a study level.

Selection Criteria: Applications are considered formally eligible if all criteria are met:

• the applicant is eligible for participation in the Scholarship Programme;
• the applicant has applied for a scholarship type and study programme available within the framework of the Scholarship Programme;
• the applicant has submitted the application and all documents as required no later than the application deadline (except for cases listed in section 3.3.);
• the applicant has proved his/her language proficiency and the language skills meet the requirements of the Host Institution.

Applicants with an eligible, formally correct application can proceed to the institutional entrance examinations. Each applicant can participate in up to two institutional entrance examinations – based on the submitted application form.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People: 

• Tuition-free education – exemption from the payment of tuition fee
• Monthly stipend – bachelor, master and one-tier master level: monthly amount of HUF 119 000 (cca. EUR 380) contribution to the living expenses in Hungary, for 12 months a year, until the completion of studies
• Accommodation – dormitory place or a contribution of HUF 40 000 to accommodation costs for the whole duration of the scholarship period
• Reimbursement of travel costs – HUF 200 000 /year (cca. EUR 645)
• Medical insurance – health care services according to the relevant Hungarian legislation (Act No. 80 of 1997, national health insurance card) and supplementary medical insurance for up to HUF 65 000 (cca. EUR 205) a year/person

How to Apply for Hungary Scholarship Program for Christian Young People: The applicants must fill out and save all requested information on the online application form in English language and also present all relevant documents.

PLEASE APPLY HERE! 

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Please Note: The Scholarship Programme for Christian Young People are now performed by the Hungary Helps Agency Nonprofit Ltd.