Who is responsible for earthquake deaths in Turkey?

Ozan Özgür

Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez’s well-known novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, tells the story of a murder that many people knew was going to happen that they did not act to prevent.

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

The February 6, 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake, which destroyed tens of thousands of buildings in both countries and killed over 42,000 people, presents a different version of this story. Many reports by experts, and even by state officials, have predicted earthquakes along Turkey’s fault lines on a scientific and historical basis for years. Yet, Turkish state officials and businesses took no action to prevent tens of thousands of entirely predictable deaths.

The government, which is responsible for earthquake safety, as well as the entire political establishment, municipalities and official institutions ignored these scientific findings. They willfully turned a blind eye to the murder that would be committed. Millions of people lived in buildings that it was known would collapse or be heavily damaged in a major earthquake. In this real-life version of García Márquez’s novel, “social murder” was committed as tens of thousands of people died preventable deaths, trapped under the rubble.

In contrast, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since 2002, is trying to cover up its undeniable crime in failing to prepare for and take precautions against earthquakes in a quake-prone country. On the one hand, it uses pro-government media to claim that “earthquakes were too big” and that “one cannot be prepared for such earthquake.” On the other, it tries to pin responsibility for the disaster solely on the contractors and other low-level criminals who built them.

Undoubtedly, major perpetrators implicated in this social murder include contractors who build buildings that violate existing safety regulations, and refuse to pay for the necessary materials, labor and engineering services in order to make extra profit. However, it is the capitalist political establishment as a whole that has built the system that allows contractors to skirt essential safety regulations.

The vast profits in construction, which has dominated Turkey’s economy and politics in recent decades, have attracted enormous interest and investment. As of 2017, there were around 330,000 registered contractors in Turkey, a country of 85 million people, with 60,000 contractors registered in the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce alone. However, it is estimated that there are only 3,800 contractors in Germany, with a population of 83 million, and 20,000 or 30,000 contractors in the whole of Europe.

Construction has come to the forefront in Turkey as an industry backed and developed by the state, creating wealth and, of course, financing bourgeois politics. Regulations on construction have repeatedly been rewritten, while authority to inspect and approve projects has been taken from professional organizations like the Union of Chambers of Turkish Architects and Engineers (TMMOB).

The government has amended the State Procurement Law 192 times since its enactment in 2003, clearing all obstacles to the AKP’s favoritism of party contractors. The Hatay Airport, which was badly damaged by the earthquake, several highways that were destroyed, and the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) office building that collapsed in Hatay were all built by AKP contractors. These demolitions also played an important role in delaying official search-and-rescue and relief efforts.

“Construction amnesties” played a decisive role in preventable destruction. Eight “amnesties” were issued during the AKP era, making it legally impossible to inspect many buildings.

Despite the crocodile tears shed by ruling circles after the earthquake, the entire political establishment—both allies of the AKP and “opposition” parties—are implicated in this. In line with laws enacted by all parties in parliament, the Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Ministry opened areas that scientifically should not be opened to settlement.

Municipalities have issued building permits without inspecting projects built in earthquake-prone areas, the Building Inspection Institutions have not properly inspected these buildings, and engineers have provided their services to these structures. From top to bottom they are all implicated in social murder in the affected areas.

Most recently, in 2018, a so-called “construction amnesty” was implemented “to solve the zoning problem of unlicensed buildings built before December 31, 2017.” Approximately 10 million people benefited from this law, which “legalized” unsafe illegal structures, most of which were built without supervision and without any engineering services. As a result, 16 billion Turkish liras was collected from building owners as “building registration certificate fees” and transferred to the state treasury.

A total of 294,000 owners of illegal buildings in the 10 provinces devastated by the earthquake benefited from this amnesty. Had it not been for last week’s earthquakes, another zoning amnesty would likely have been issued, in line with a legislative proposal submitted by the fascistic Grand Unity Party (BBP), an ally of Erdoğan’s AKP, and with the support or connivance of so-called “opposition” parties, as in the past.

It should be noted that the TMMOB administration has not yet announced any disciplinary proceedings for engineers who drew the projects of the collapsed buildings after the earthquakes or carried out inspections in municipalities or private companies. However, it is well known that certain engineers rent their diplomas to contractors and inspection companies just to sign projects and documents and get paid for it, and who do not even know where the construction sites are.

In the aftermath of the 1999 Marmara Earthquake, which officially killed over 17,000, prosecutors did not open a large-scale investigation and did not bring those responsible for the collapsed buildings and mass death to justice. However, Veli Göçer, a contractor who was building in Yalova at the time and whose entire housing estate collapsed, was arrested and tried for the deaths of 198 people. Although Göçer was sentenced to 18 years and 9 months in prison, he was released after serving 7.5 years.

Today, the Erdoğan government is following the same script, trying to exonerate itself and the capitalist system by targeting a contractor of a collapsed building complex. In an event where over 36,000 people died according to official figures, the government takes no responsibility. Not a single official has resigned.

Despite the massive destruction and loss of life in the earthquake area, no high-level officials have been arrested, except for a few contractors and a few people who signed building permits at a lower level. A few token arrests cannot remove the responsibility of those who did not take safety precautions against earthquakes, those who prepared construction amnesties, those who approved them in parliament or did not oppose them, those who drew, licensed and inspected these projects.

72 mass shootings in 46 days in the United States: What are the social and political causes?

David Walsh

This week has seen another string of mass shootings in the United States. On Wednesday evening, one person was killed and three were wounded at the Cielo Vista Mall. This follows the fatal shootings at Michigan State University (MSU) Monday night, when a lone gunman killed three students and critically wounded five others before killing himself.

Mourners attend a candlelight vigil for Alexandria Verner at the Clawson High School football field in Clawson, Mich., Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023. Verner was among the students killed after a gunman opened fire on the campus of Michigan State University Monday night. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

“No more danger to the public,” declared the El Paso (Texas) Police Department following the shooting on Wednesday. If that were only the case! Mass shootings are now more than a daily American occurrence. The Gun Violence Archive has registered 72 mass shooting in the US so far in 2023—in 46 days. Those tragic incidents have taken place this year in some two dozen states and the District of Columbia. They occurred in 37 states in 2022.

The pace is accelerating. The sum of 52 such incidents in January was by far the highest number for that month since records on such things began to be kept. The previous high in January was 34, only last year.

Meanwhile, the most the public now receives from government officials and the news media are tributes to how quickly, after the deadly fact, police, FBI and other law enforcement agents descended on a given bloody scene.

For example, the El Paso District Attorney celebrated the “fantastic coordination from all” the policing organizations. The MSU deputy police chief boasted about the “absolutely overwhelming police response to that initial call. … We had officers in that building within minutes.”

The self-congratulation of politicians, policemen and news outlets, who can neither explain what is going on or even remotely assure the safety of the public, is obscene.

Violence on this scale has to be treated as a social and not an individual phenomenon. The society has itself become toxic and hazardous.

No doubt large numbers of people in the US suffer from mental illness. However, this is not primarily a biological but rather a social issue. Violence pervades the society. Not infrequently, an individual fearing his or her own instability contacts the police—and is himself or herself gunned down.

The general framework for the growth of social and individual mental distress is clear: The murderous COVID-19 pandemic, to which the authorities have responded with criminal indifference and neglect; vast, persistent and malignant social inequality; decades of war and violence perpetrated against peoples all over the world by the US government and military; declining living standards for tens of millions, including the loss of decent jobs and job security; intense political instability and turbulence; and the emergence of an extreme right wing determined to establish authoritarian rule.

Life in the US has not known this level of social and political tension, uncertainty and menace since the period prior to the Civil War.

Official sources have begun to concede that there might be broader causes for the homicidal explosion. A recent study by the US Secret Service of 173 attacks that occurred in public or semi-public places between 2016 and 2020 found that nearly every attacker (93 percent) had experienced “at least one significant stressor in their lives within five years of the attack,” and for 77 percent, “the stressor(s) occurred within one year.” Those “stressors” include concerns over health, divorce, evictions, employment issues, bullying at school or work, “contact with law enforcement,” “contact with civil courts,” etc.

Seventy-two mass shootings in the US so far this year is a horrific figure, but it is a fact that the death toll from the deliberate policy of the ruling class is far higher. Grotesquely, the media and the government pretend that the death of one million people in a preventable pandemic, with its repercussions for tens of millions or more, has had no impact on the fabric of American society.

A connection has already been drawn between the mass death and the recent surge in suicide rates. The latter are rising in communities especially affected by the pandemic. Attempting to explain the numbers of people taking their own lives, Dr. Sean Joe, professor at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University, pointed to the “cumulative stress.”

The generalized social hardships, the “cumulative stress” and their particular expression in individual “stressors” exert themselves on massive numbers of people, but only an infinitesimal (although a relatively significant and growing) percentage collapse dramatically in the face of them.

In considering the mass shootings, the specific political, social and cultural conditions in the US have to be taken into account. The spree of killings is a symptom, as Frederick Engels once said, of Russia, of a society “in full decomposition economically, morally and intellectually.”

Endless war has deeply, irredeemably brutalized American society. Now, after decades of devastating societies in the Middle East and Central Asia, resulting in millions of dead and mutilated, the American ruling elite is lurching toward war with a nuclear power, Russia, with potentially incalculable consequences. Hundreds of millions might perish, and US official shrug their shoulders and repeat their determination not to be “deterred” by this possibility. What are the most vulnerable personalities likely to conclude from this criminal light-mindedness and recklessness? Life is incredibly cheap.

The US political system operates entirely at the service of the wealthy. Everything for Wall Street, the corporate oligarchs and the affluent upper middle classes, nothing for the rest of the population. Vast layers feel they don’t count, their misery means nothing to those in power. The two parties of big business and their representatives in Washington are deservedly held in contempt. No one expects anything but blows and abuse from the society’s leading institutions.

The suppression of the class struggle over the course of decades, thanks above all to the trade unions, which strain to smother every challenge to the employers and the government, has been a disastrous and destructive factor in American life. The thwarting of workers’ combativity, which would bring out the actual physiognomy of modern society and, most importantly, point a way out of the present economic and political blind alley, damages and warps popular consciousness.

The debased cultural situation also plays a significant role. Instead of holding a mirror up to the actual state of things, the popular culture largely celebrates money, celebrity, backwardness, social indifference. The lumpen quasi-pornography that dominates so much of the music and entertainment world functions to pollute the atmosphere, drowning or blotting out social criticism and encouraging the worst, basest instincts.

Russian offensive underway in Ukraine as war destabilizes the entire region

Clara Weiss

A week short of the one-year anniversary of the NATO-US war against Russia in Ukraine, there are growing indications that a Russian offensive is already underway as the war increasingly destabilizes the entire region. 

In an interview with the BBC on Thursday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said that “Russian attacks are already happening from several directions.” Zelensky again rejected out of hand any territorial concessions to Moscow, including the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea, which has been claimed by Russia since 2014, and other territories in East Ukraine now occupied by Russian forces. 

On Wednesday, UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told the BBC, “We now estimate 97% of the whole Russian army is in Ukraine.” Since an order for a partial mobilization in early September, the response by the Kremlin to a series of catastrophic set-backs in the war, 300,000 Russian men were drafted into the army. After several months in which most of them were kept in the rear and underwent basic training, it now seems that a large portion of them have been sent to the front, with media discussions in Russia suggesting that a renewed mobilization drive may be coming soon. 

According to the British Telegraph, heavy fighting has been reported from almost the entire front line on the border of the Russian-held territories in East Ukraine over the past 48 hours. Following months of intense fighting, Russian forces, including the paramilitary Wagner group, which is composed of mercenaries, appear to be on the verge of taking Bakhmut, and have also launched repeated assaults on Vuhledar. Both are relatively small towns, located in the Donetsk region. Al Jazeera described this week as “the toughest yet” for the Ukrainian army on the front in East Ukraine.

The fighting, which has so far resulted in little substantial movement of the front lines, is coming at a horrifying cost for both sides. Ukrainian and NATO officials have claimed, with some glee, that Russia is losing hundreds of men every day with some units having been entirely destroyed.

Destroyed Russian tanks stand across the road from a church in the town of Sviatohirsk, Ukraine, Sunday, February 12, 2023. [AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka]

Losses on the Ukrainian side, however, are also estimated to be extremely high, with hundreds believed to be dying every day, out of a much smaller population. At least 8 million Ukrainians have fled the country since the beginning of the war, out of a pre-war population of just under 40 million (as opposed to Russia’s 140 million). Several millions of those who remain are now living in Russian-controlled territories.

In November, 9 months into the war, US Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley estimated that both sides had suffered 100,000 casualties each since the beginning of the war. Now, over three months later, this already horrific figure must have risen further very substantially.

Amid these catastrophic losses and the collapse of the economy—about a third of the working age population in Ukraine is now unemployed—the state of the Ukrainian military is highly precarious and the government has been plagued by intense crisis.

The Washington Post reported this week that US officials objected to Zelensky’s prioritization of the defense of Bakhmut, writing, “American military analysts and planners have argued that it is unrealistic to simultaneously defend Bakhmut and launch a spring counteroffensive to retake what the United States views as more critical territory.”

The principal response by NATO to the crisis of its proxy military forces in Ukraine has been to further escalate its involvement and arms deliveries.

Over the past six weeks, NATO has moved with lightening speed to send hundreds of battle tanks to Ukraine and is now openly discussing sending F-16 fighter jets as well. 

Earlier this week, NATO officials pledged to “ramp up” arms production for what they called a “grinding war of attrition.” A US official told the Financial Times this past week, “The Russian land forces are pretty depleted so it’s the best indication that they will turn this into an air fight. If the Ukrainians are going to survive … they need to have as many air defence capabilities and as much ammunition … as possible.” According to the newspaper, Russia has been amassing aircraft along the border with Ukraine with over 80 percent of its air force still intact.

As the working class in the imperialist countries have been subjected to further assaults on its living standards, the 30 NATO members have pledged at least $80.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine over the past year, according to the latest figures of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.  

With a further escalation underway, the war is already destabilizing the entire region, threatening to ever more directly draw in neighboring countries. Belarus, which borders Ukraine to the north and Russia to the west, completed major joint military exercises with Russia involving all Belarusian military airfields on February 1. Belarus also continues to host Russian troops on its territory. 

So far, the government of Alexander Lukashenko, the last remaining ally of the Putin regime in Eastern Europe, has refrained from openly joining the war. Before leaving for a meeting with Putin in Moscow on Friday, Lukashenko stated that there was “no way” he would send troops to Ukraine unless Belarus was attacked. In that case, he said, he was “ready to wage war, alongside the Russians, from the territory of Belarus. ... don’t forget Russia is our ally, legally, morally and politically.”

In Moldova, a country of 2.6 million, which is sandwiched between Ukraine and NATO-member Romania, a major political and social crisis has erupted in the shadow of the war.

From the very beginning, Moldova has been heavily affected by the war. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have fled to Moldova and missile debris from the war regularly lands on Moldovan territory. Since the fall, Moldova has also been suffering significant energy outages as the country is closely tied to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which is regularly knocked out by Russian missile strikes. In the fall, large-scale protests over soaring costs of living shook the government.

The small country has long been one of the main geopolitical flashpoints in the conflict between NATO and Russia in Eastern Europe. Like Ukraine, Moldova was part of the Soviet Union until its destruction in 1991 by the Stalinist bureaucracy.

Amidst the break-up of the Soviet Union, a war between Russian-backed separatist forces in the Transnistria region, bordering Ukraine, and the Moldovan central authorities erupted in November 1990. The war ended in 1992 in a ceasefire, but the status of Transnistria was never resolved. While Transnistria claims independence and is backed by Russia, it is still internationally recognized as part of Moldova. Russia has 1,500 troops stationed in Transnistria.

A central component of the temporary settlement of the conflict was that Moldova’s military neutrality was enshrined in the country’s 1994 constitution.

This map shows the location of Transnistria in Europe. [Photo by TUBS / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0]

However, since the beginning of the war, the government under the pro-EU President Maia Sandu, a former World Bank official, has moved to abandon this official position of neutrality, and has openly taken the side of NATO and Ukraine in the war. In June, Moldova was granted EU candidate status alongside Ukraine. In January, Sandu told POLITICO that her government was having “serious discussion on our capacity to defend ourselves, whether we can do it ourselves, or whether we should be part of a larger alliance”—a clear hint at NATO, even though she avoided mentioning the name. The Kremlin has repeatedly warned Moldova of aligning openly with NATO.

Moldovan troops already regularly exercise side by side with NATO forces and take part in the NATO mission in Kosovo. For 2023, the Sandu government ramped up military spending by 50 percent, while aggressively clamping down on democratic rights, including by shutting down oppositional news outlets and TV channels.

On Monday, Sandu declared that Moldovan intelligence agencies had uncovered a “plot by Moscow” to “topple” her government, with the involvement of pro-Russian Moldovan oligarchs and opposition figures. Without providing any evidence, Sandu claimed that the aim of the “plot” was to install a government “which would put our country at the disposal of Russia, in order to stop the European integration process.” She further alleged that Russia sought to use Moldova in the war in Ukraine and said, “The Kremlin’s attempts to bring violence to our country will not succeed.” A day later, on Tuesday, the Moldovan authorities temporarily closed the country’s airspace, claiming that a balloon-like object had crossed the border. 

Sandu’s allegations of a “Russian plot” came just four days after President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that his intelligence services had “intercepted the plan of the destruction of Moldova by the Russian intelligence.” 

Sandu’s former security advisor, Dorin Recean, who has spearheaded the turn toward an alignment with NATO, was sworn in as the new prime minister on Thursday, following the sudden resignation of his predecessor the week prior.

Youth of Excellence Scheme of China (Yes China) Masters Scholarship for Developing Countries 2023/2024

Application Deadline: April 2023.

Please contact the Embassies or universities for the specific deadlines for 2023 applications.

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

To be taken at (Universities/Country): China

About the Award: To promote the mutual understanding and friendship between China and other countries, and to provide education opportunities to the youths worldwide who enjoy good potentials in their career development, the Chinese Government established the “Scholarship for Youth of Excellence Scheme of China——Master Program （YES CHINA）” with the aim of providing financial support to the outstanding youth coming to China to pursue a Master’s degree.

The programs duration will be open to applicants from 56 developing countries.

Field of Study: The Master of Laws (LL.M.）Program in Chinese Law, International Program on Master of Public Health （IMPH）, Master of International Economic Cooperation, Master of China Studies, The LL.M Program in International Economic Law, MBA Program, AIIB Master of International Finance, Master of One-Belt-Road Sustainable Infrastructure Engineering.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: 

• Healthy both physically and mentally; not over 45 years old （born after September 1, 1977）.
• A bachelor or higher degree, at least 3 years’ work experience, some educational or professional experience in a field relative to that of the program applied.
• Working in a government agency, company or research institute, and being a Section Director or Chief of Office, a senior manager, or excellent in scientific researches.
• Good English language proficiency, able to follow English-taught courses well. Minimum requirements for reference: IELTS （Academic） total score 6.0, or TOEFL Internet score 80.
• Having a strong development potential in his/her career, and willing to promote the mutual cooperation and exchanges between China and his/her home country.
• Students who are now studying in China or already winners of Chinese Government Scholarship are not allowed to apply. Note: More details about each program can be found in the corresponding university’s recruitment prospectus.

Number of Awardees: 200

Value of Scholarship: 

1. One-year Program: Total Amount: 200,800 RMB per year for each student, covering:

•  Exempted fees: registration fees, tuition fees, laboratory experiment fees, internship fees, and fees for basic learning materials.
•  On-campus accommodation.
•  Living Allowance （96,000 RMB per year for each student）.
•  One-off settlement subsidy after registration （3,000 RMB for each student）.
•  Comprehensive medical insurance.
•  A one-way air ticket to China upon registration and a one-way air ticket back from China to the student’s home country after completion of the study.

2. Two-year Program （1+1 studies）

Scholarship for the first academic year is the same as One-year Program. In the second academic year, students will do their thesis back in their home countries and the dissertation defense in China, while the scholarship will only cover one round-trip ticket for dissertation defense.

Duration of Scholarship: The programs duration will be one year or two years.  Academic year from September, 2023

How to Apply: The applicants should submit their applications during the application period to the Chinese Embassy in their countries of nationality, or to the 7 program universities.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace demands up to £11 billion extra for military budget

Robert Stevens

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has denied speculation that he will resign if Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government does not scale up military spending within weeks to levels not seen since World War II.

The budget to be presented next month is being cast as putting the nation on a “war footing”, with leading military figures and hawks within the political elite demanding billions of pounds are immediately handed over to the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Ben Wallace, Secretary of State for Defence, left, arrives for a cabinet meeting at Downing Street in London, January 31, 2023. [AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth]

The ground is being prepared to divert vast sums from health care, education, welfare benefits and housing to the war machine, at devastating cost to millions of workers already crushed by 15 years of unrelenting austerity and a surge in the cost of living.

On Tuesday, the Times reported that Wallace “is pressing [Chancellor] Jeremy Hunt to increase the defence budget by between £8 billion and £11 billion over the next two years to avoid deep cuts to the armed forces.”

It noted, “The Ministry of Defence wants its budget to rise by as much as a fifth to cover the costs of inflation, foreign exchange fluctuations and the higher cost of funding Nato and Ukraine.”

Under current plans the “defence budget is set to rise by just £700 million over the next two years.”

In December Wallace and the head of the armed forces, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, visited Downing Street to lay out the case for the “UK military’s need for money.” According to reports, Wallace threatened to resign last November as part of his campaign to ensure the military is handed billions. He has spent months enlisting the support of senior Conservative MPs, to demand the military budget is boosted and Sunak reverses planned armed forces cuts, including a decision to reduce the number of the Army’s regular troops from 76,000 to 73,000 by 2025. Other demands include a “review” of plans to slash the number of tanks. The Times reported that under “existing plans, just 148 out of a fleet of 227 Challenger 2 tanks will be upgraded to Challenger 3 tanks, at a cost of about £1.3 billion.”

On taking office, Sunak refused to commit to his predecessor Liz Truss’s pledge to increase military spending to 3 percent of GDP by 2030—a staggering uplift in money terms of £158 billion. He said he would not back “arbitrary” defence spending targets and any increase in funding would have to follow a new Defence Review.

The Defence Review will be published on March 7, one week before Hunt’s next major budget. Hunt previously declared his support for defence spending to increase to 4 percent of GDP, surpassing Truss’s pledge.

Speaking to Sky News Wednesday, Wallace piled further pressure on Sunak and Hunt, declaring he was in “uphill battle” with the Treasury over increasing military spending. “It’s the right thing that the secretary of state will argue for an increase to meet their priorities. And of course, between now and the Budget, I’ve got lots of time and lots of meetings with the chancellor to make sure that we try and come to a deal on it,” he said.

Wallace was clearer in spelling out what this means for the working class. For decades, “since 1991, since the end of the Cold War,” there had been “a consistent, effectively raiding of the defence budget over time.” With the war against Russia, the military has to be prioritised to confront “growing” threats.

“Maybe a peace dividend was appropriate straight after the Cold War. We had huge armies in Europe. The Cold War finished and it was right that the taxpayer who'd invested in defence got a return on that.

“The problem is that continued and has continued for many decades as the threat has increased. And I've been very open here that the threat has increased.”

Wallace was echoing Britain’s main defence and security think-tank, Royal United Services Institute which, hailing Truss’s pledge, declared that the post-war “peace dividend” was over.

A graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and a former Captain in the Scots Guards, Wallace became defence Secretary in 2019 under Boris Johnson and has retained the position despite the extraordinary political turmoil which saw last July’s resignation of Johnson; the six-week term in office of Truss and her replacement Sunak.

Wallace was kept in place due to his intimate involvement with provocations against Russia, leading to NATO’s de facto war in Ukraine. He is trusted by Washington to maintain Britain as a partner in provocations against Moscow and the second largest provider—after Washington—of weapons of war to Ukraine.

The Times, owned by billionaire oligarch Rupert Murdoch, has led an incessant campaign for more military spending, foregrounding Wallace’s demands of the Treasury. On Monday, an MoD source told the newspaper “the request was not a ‘shopping list’ of new equipment. ‘It’s the cost of standing still,’ they said…. ‘The Ministry of Defence is particularly exposed to inflation because of the amount it spends on military kit. The world has become significantly more dangerous, not less. It’s time to invest.’”

Top military figures have outlined doomsday scenarios for the armed forces if the Treasury’s coffers are not opened up. Retired General Sir Richard Shirreff, formerly Nato’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, stated this month, “Our Army has been hollowed out.”

“Britain is more vulnerable than it has been at any time since the 1930s,” he added. “As it stands we no longer have the troops, the kit or the ammunition to defend ourselves. It is a truly perilous and unforgivable situation.”

Leading Tory MPs backing Wallace include Tobias Ellwood, another former army veteran and chairman of Parliament’s Defence Select Committee. He told Sky News earlier this month, “The army is in a dire state…. It is up to the Treasury and Number 10 to recognise the world is changing. We are now at war in Europe. We need to move to a war footing.”

Figures in the US military have also intervened on behalf of Wallace. Deborah Haynes, a Sky News journalist with close connections to the MoD and intelligence agencies, reported on January 30 the comments of an anonymous “senior US general” who told Wallace the British Army was no longer regarded as a “tier one force”, saying “It's barely tier two.”

Her article cited an MoD source who said, “We have a wartime prime minister and a wartime chancellor.

“History will look back at the choices they make in the coming weeks as fundamental to whether this government genuinely believes that its primary duty is the defence of the realm or whether that is just a slogan to be given lip service.”

Sky News produced a film urging more arms spending, “Is The Army Fighting Fit?”, backed by several Haynes articles including, “Why spectre of British military becoming a ‘hollow force’ is now a reality”.

Other pieces took up the complaint that defence cuts were preventing British imperialism from intervening effectively in the war against Russia and threatening its commitment to exceed the £2.3 billion in military hardware already handed over to Kiev. Each concluded that the era in which welfare state spending was allowed to rise while the defence budget fell, was over.

“What is the current state of the British armed forces?” by Sky News data journalist Saywah Mahmood, stated, “In 2021, the UK spent 2.2% of its Gross Domestic Product on defence, amounting to about £45.9bn.

“However, this number has fallen since the mid-1950s. In the financial year ending in 1956, the UK spent just under 8% of its GDP on defence and in 1980 it was 4.1%. Since 2000, the proportion has remained around the 2% mark.

“In comparison, health spending as a proportion of GDP in 1956 was just under 3% and in 2020 this figure jumped to over 7%.”

In its report on Wallace demanding extra spending, the Times included a graph showing public expenditure for the top six departmental groups in 2021-22. Health and Social Care was in first place at £274.7 billion, with Work and Pensions in second place at £225.7 billion. Education spending, even with a cut of over 5 percent from the previous year, accounted for £120.2 billion in spending. Below all these was defence spending, accounting for £71.4 billion (which included an 18 percent increase put in place by the Johnson government).

Institute for Fiscal Studies Senior Research Economist Ben Zaranko wrote in The Conversation last March, “Defence cuts effectively paid for UK welfare state for 60 years—but that looks impossible after Ukraine”.

The main parties of the political elite, Tory and Labour, are seeking to outdo each other as to who can be entrusted carry out the attacks on the working class required to slash social spending to fund a surge in militarism and war against Russia.

Speaking at RUSI this month Labour’s Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey praised Truss for pledging to increase spending to 3 percent, castigating Sunak because, “Since the invasion, there has been no new money allocated to the defence budget. None.”

The main problem arising because the government “crashed the economy” was that it “sent inflation soaring” so that “defence budgets are being squeezed even further, just as threats against the UK are increasing.”

Earthquake-ravaged Syria abandoned as Washington continues to pursue its goal of regime change

Bill Van Auken

The official death toll in Syria from last week’s catastrophic earthquake has risen to nearly 6,000, with many more dead lying in the rubble, still to be counted. The United Nations estimates that as many as 5.3 million Syrians have been left homeless by the quake. Many of them were already internally displaced by the 11-year, US-orchestrated war for regime change that devastated the country and cost the lives of over 300,000 civilians.

UN officials have acknowledged that while the lion’s share of international aid has gone to Turkey, Syria has been starved of assistance. The Syrian people, “rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived,” Martin Griffiths, the under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator at the United Nations recently stated.

Even before the earthquake, nearly 90 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. Around 14.6 million people—nearly 70 percent of the population—were in need of humanitarian assistance, with some 12 million facing food insecurity as prices soared and supplies fell.

The population had also been left without access to electricity for more than two hours a day, while the vast majority of homes remained unheated.

These conditions are due in large measure to a crippling unilateral US sanctions regime, which under the so-called Cesar Act imposes severe punishments on any country or overseas financial institution or other entity that dares to engage with Syria.

This deliberate starvation of the Syrian population has been supplemented by the US military occupation of the country’s northeastern oil and gas fields, which has denied the country access to its principal sources of energy needed for reconstruction.

Behind these policies lies the unstated and thus far failed aim of precipitating the downfall of the government of President Bashar al-Assad. What Washington failed to achieve through the arming and funding of Al Qaeda-linked militias, it now seeks to accomplish through deliberately inflicting mass misery upon the people of Syria in the hope that they will be forced to rise up against the government.

This tactic, likewise employed against Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, has thus far failed, while inflicting immense suffering.

Last Friday, in the face of growing international outrage and pressure, Washington was compelled to announce a temporary and partial suspension of US sanctions to allow earthquake relief into Syria. The suspension is supposed to last for 180 days, and then the full sanctions regime will snap back into place.

In announcing the suspension, formally known as Syria General License 23, the US Treasury Department stated that it authorizes “all transactions related to earthquake relief that would otherwise be prohibited by the Syrian Sanctions Regulations.”

The announcement exposes the boundless hypocrisy of the US government, which had long claimed that the draconian and deadly sanctions regulations posed no impediment to humanitarian relief. It only confirms what everyone in Syria already knew: that this was a barefaced lie.

The supposed partial suspension of sanctions only came four days after the earthquake, too late for thousands who died in the rubble, without sufficient heavy machinery and other aid to pull them out, or for the thousands more unable to access medical care or secure shelter in the quake’s immediate aftermath.

Even now, Syrian immigrants in the US are unable to send remittances to their families in the earthquake zone as companies like Western Union, Ria and MoneyGram still don’t allow transfers from the US to Syria. Platforms like Paypal, GoFundMe and Patreon have taken down pages soliciting relief for Syria and blocked attempts to route aid to the devastated country.

People remove their furniture and household appliances out of a collapsed building following a devastating earthquake in the town of Jinderis, Aleppo province, Syria, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023. [AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed]

The sanctions regime continues to block any aid going through the Syrian government, which serves to prevent the importation of heavy equipment and fuel, cripple air traffic and ban the use of Syrian ports.

Meanwhile, companies and even aid organizations that have over-complied with US sanctions in the past for fear of US retaliation continue to remain wary of any dealings with Syria.

For its part, the Biden administration has offered a paltry $85 million in aid to both Turkey and Syria, a tiny fraction of the billions in arms and aid poured into the proxy jihadist forces that ravaged Syria in Washington’s regime change war.

What little aid is being provided by the US and the UK is politically directed at undermining the Syrian government. It is being funneled exclusively into the area of Idlib in northwestern Syria controlled by the remnants of the Al Qaeda and ISIS-affiliated jihadist militias previously armed and funded by the CIA in the regime-change war to topple Assad.

This has been combined with a concerted effort to promote the White Helmets, a so-called rescue organization that was organized by British intelligence. It had been widely discredited for its involvement in the staging of fake chemical weapons attacks, as in Douma in 2018, meant to serve as a pretext for direct US-NATO intervention in the regime-change war.

The jihadist forces in Idlib have a filthy record of stealing international relief supplies and then selling them at drastically marked-up prices to the starving refugees trapped in the area under their control. There have been recent reports of rival armed factions fighting each other for earthquake relief supplies that have trickled across the Turkish border.

Washington and its allies have also mounted a new propaganda campaign blaming the Assad government as the culprit for blocking relief aid, something for which they themselves are responsible.

The reality is that Syria controls virtually none of its northern border, which is in the hands of jihadist organizations in Idlib, Turkish-backed militias and the US-backed Kurdish militia, the YPG in the east, where some 900 US troops are illegally deployed, in violation of Syrian sovereignty and without any mandate from the United Nations or even approval from the US Congress.

Washington has attempted to blame the Syrian government for the failure of aid to reach the jihadist-controlled areas of Idlib province. Only one route into the area from Turkey had been allowed before the earthquake by agreement between Damascus, the Turkish government and the United Nations, out of concern over the flow of weapons and foreign fighters. When Syria reached an agreement with the UN to open two more, the head of the White Helmets group, Raed al-Saleh, denounced the agreement, saying it had given the Assad government a “free political gain.”

Similarly, the dominant jihadist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Syria, denounced the attempt of the Syrian government to deliver a convoy of aid trucks organized by the Red Crescent to the area of via a crossing at Saraqeb. An HTS spokesman told Reuters, “We won’t allow the regime to take advantage of the situation to show they are helping.” According to some reports, the HTS had demanded payment of $10,000 for every truck allowed to enter.

The carving up of Syria, with rival US-backed and Turkish-backed militias controlling the country’s northern border, has proven a major obstacle to the provision of earthquake relief.

Al Jazeera reported that more common than aid crossing the border have been the bodies of Syrian refugees pulled from the rubble of southern Turkey. “1,413 Syrians have returned to their home country in body bags as of Wednesday morning,” it reported. Even in this regard, the carve-up of Syria makes itself felt, with the bodies of earthquake victims who fled areas controlled by the Syrian government denied return to their home villages and instead buried among the thousands of dead in Turkey.

The horrors of the earthquake and the supposed unity of the world in support of its victims notwithstanding, acts of war continue in Syria unabated.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) reported Wednesday that its forces shot down an Iranian drone that it claimed was conducting surveillance of American troops at Mission Support Site Conoco, a US base that sits atop Syria’s oil fields and is named after the American energy corporation that once exploited them.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said a Turkish drone hit a military vehicle which it said belonged to the US-backed YPG militia in the Syrian city of Kobane, apparently killing one militiaman and wounding others.

ISIS-linked forces unleashed an armed attack south of the Syrian city of Palmyra, killing four people, including one woman, and wounding ten others.

And in the jihadist-occupied area of Idlib, HTS “rebels” claimed that government forces launched an unprovoked artillery attack. Damascus countered that its troops had responded to a drone attack by the Al Qaeda-linked militias.

One thing is certain, Washington has not given up on its aim of toppling the bourgeois national government of Assad and installing a puppet government subservient to US imperialist interests. It will continue to employ violence and coercion to that end.

The Biden administration views Syria not as a country urgently requiring humanitarian assistance after nearly a dozen years of war and a massive earthquake. Rather it is seen by Washington’s military and state apparatus as another battlefield in the war being waged in Ukraine against Russia, which backs Assad and operates its sole overseas naval base at the Syria’s Mediterranean port of Tartus.

After three decades of uninterrupted war in which it has reduced entire societies from Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya and Syria to rubble, American imperialism is prepared to kill hundreds of thousands more, either through hunger and cold or renewed military conflict to further its drive to control the strategic energy resources of the Middle East and Central Asia.

New Zealand government slashes funding for COVID response

Tom Peters

Even as thousands of people have been made homeless and at least five have died in New Zealand’s worst storm in decades, the country continues to experience a simultaneous disaster caused by the removal of all COVID-19 public health measures.

Medical staff test shoppers who volunteered at a pop-up community COVID-19 testing station at a supermarket carpark in Christchurch, New Zealand, 2022. [AP Photo/Mark Baker]

With little media coverage, the Ministry of Health reported another 32 deaths from COVID-19 last week, including two people aged in their 20s. There were 171 people in hospital with COVID on Sunday night. According to the ministry, since the pandemic began 2,513 people are confirmed to have died as a result of COVID and a further 477 are not confirmed but had COVID when they died—a total of nearly 3,000 deaths. 

Officials make the extraordinary claim that another 938 people died with COVID but the virus did not contribute to their death. If they were added to the pandemic toll, it would be 3,928.

New Zealand has recorded nearly 2.2 million COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic and 26,022 hospitalisations for the virus. The government refuses to keep track of Long COVID, but a study by Victoria University of Wellington researchers published last month concluded that 300,000 people may be suffering from the severe condition.

The vast majority of cases and all but 59 deaths from COVID occurred in 2022–2023, after the Labour Party-led government scrapped the previous elimination policy and reopened schools and businesses, with then-prime minister Jacinda Ardern echoing false claims that the Omicron variant was “mild.” Mask and vaccine mandates and social distancing measures are now all gone.

Since Ardern’s resignation in January, in response to plummeting support for Labour, the government has taken further steps to dismantle the official response to the pandemic. 

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced a cabinet reshuffle on January 31, supposedly to refocus on what he called “bread and butter issues like the cost of living, education, health, housing.” One of the most significant changes was the disestablishment of the COVID-19 Response ministerial portfolio, previously held by Ayesha Verrall, who has been promoted to health minister.

This has been accompanied by drastic funding cuts. National Public Health Service director Nick Chamberlain told Newsroom on February 8 that the overall funding to support the COVID-19 response “through until 30 June 2023 will be about $540 million. This is less than a quarter of the equivalent cost in the first half of 2022, and less than half of the cost for the second half of 2022.”

The cuts include staffing reductions and the closure of vaccination centres and call centres where patients can get information. In addition, COVID-related funding for doctors’ practices has been slashed by about 70 percent. 

As of February 13, most people need to pay to visit a general practitioner within six weeks of their infection—something that was previously free. There are exemptions for high-risk groups: Māori, Pacific islanders, people with a disability or a high-risk medical condition, and people aged over 65.

The New Zealand Herald reported that “chart reviews for all cases, post-hospital discharge follow-ups and patient-initiated follow-ups within six weeks of diagnosis would no longer be funded following consultation from the primary care sector.”

The changes will have a major impact on working-class patients who are struggling with soaring costs for food, fuel and housing. Inevitably, many will be forced to choose between paying for medical care and paying their bills or feeding their families. It will become even harder for someone to be properly diagnosed with Long COVID and receive treatment.

Dr Bryan Betty, medical director of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners expressed alarm, telling One News: “Especially for patients that have been in hospital with COVID, it is critically important that there is integration back into their general practice and GP to manage their condition and we felt quite strongly that that should be a free visit after a hospital admission.”

Due to reduced funding for rapid antigen tests (RATs), Auckland doctor Sapna Samant said she was concerned that many COVID cases could go undetected at general practices, posing greater risks for patients.

Brushing aside such concerns, Health Service spokesperson Matt Hannant told One News now was the right time for the cutbacks because “we’re in summer, we’ve got low case numbers about under 1,000 a day.”

The daily case numbers are completely unreliable. The government chose not to encourage testing for asymptomatic cases, in order to keep people at work even if they have COVID.

Hospitalisations are currently down from a peak of nearly 600 before Christmas, but the end of the school holidays earlier this month will inevitably be followed by increased transmission, hospitalisations and deaths. Masks are not required in schools and nor are air filters or other mitigation measures. The increased homelessness and overcrowding caused by Cyclone Gabrielle could also facilitate the spread of COVID. 

The dismantling of all measures to stop the spread of COVID, and ongoing cuts to related healthcare services, should give pause to anyone who believes that the government will provide ongoing assistance to people affected by the historic flooding. 

The priority of the Labour-Greens government is to slash spending and maintain ultra-low taxes for the rich and corporations. In New Zealand, as is the case in every country, the ruling class is forcing working people to pay for the worsening economic crisis through austerity measures, along with inflation, increased unemployment and by driving down wages.

Meanwhile, due to the neglect and underfunding of the public health system, the population remains vulnerable not only to COVID but to other serious diseases as well. In an alarming development, on February 13 the Health Service confirmed a case of measles, for the first time since a disastrous outbreak in 2019. 

The infected person, who had arrived from overseas, spent several days—from February 5 to 11—travelling around Auckland, Tauranga and Mount Maunganui. Measles is far more infectious than COVID-19. 

Doctors warned that in the four years since the last measles outbreak, vaccination rates have fallen to even more dangerous levels. The New Zealand Herald reported: “As of December, 82 percent of 2-year-olds were up to date with their immunisations, down from 91 per cent before the pandemic. For Māori children, the rate is just 66 per cent. Coverage of 90 to 95 per cent is needed for herd immunity.”

The 2019 measles outbreak caused 2,200 infections mostly in Auckland and Northland and spread to the impoverished Pacific country of Samoa, where the disease killed 83 children and put 1,868 in hospital.