South Korean president faces second impeachment vote

Ben McGrath

South Korea’s main opposition Democratic Party (DP) has resubmitted a second motion in the National Assembly to impeach President Yoon Suk-yeol over his failed attempt to impose martial law last week and in essence carry out a military coup.

South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol, May 29, 2023. [AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, Pool]

DP spokeswoman Gang Yu-jeong announced the DP’s schedule for the motion on Wednesday, saying, “We have decided to reintroduce the impeachment motion today; it will be reported to the National Assembly on the 12th; and the vote will take place at 5 p.m. Saturday.” Like last weekend, the vote will no doubt coincide with large-scale protests demanding Yoon’s removal from office.

The Democrats pledged to repeatedly reintroduce the impeachment motion to parliament after the first was defeated on December 7, when all but three of the ruling People Power Party’s (PPP) 108 members boycotted the proceedings. This prevented a necessary quorum needed to proceed with a vote on Yoon’s impeachment.

The unicameral National Assembly is comprised of 300 seats and a two-thirds majority is needed to pass an impeachment motion. The opposition bloc holds 192 seats, with the DP alone holding 170 seats. The remaining seats are controlled by five minor parties, one nominally independent lawmaker, and the National Assembly speaker U Won-sik, who hails from the DP but is formally independent. As the president is from the PPP, the party is granted ruling party status despite having fewer seats.

If the impeachment motion is approved, the president would be suspended from office and his case decided by the Constitutional Court. A presidential election has to be held within 60 days should the court remove Yoon from office.

The PPP has attempted to implement a so-called “roadmap” for Yoon’s resignation in February or March, hoping this would allow the party to get on top of the situation. Yoon, however, appears committed to remaining in power and is reportedly preparing a legal team to challenge his impeachment.

A PPP member told the Chosun Ilbo, “There’s a growing sentiment within the PPP that if President Yoon does not change his stance before the second impeachment vote, the impeachment motion could become a reality.” At least five PPP members have expressed support for Yoon’s impeachment.

The new motion will be impacted by charges that Yoon directly ordered the military to seize control of the National Assembly and detain lawmakers. Lieutenant General Gwak Jong-geun, the head of the Army Special Warfare Command, told a parliamentary meeting on Tuesday that following the declaration of martial law Yoon called him to demand the arrest of lawmakers.

Gwak stated, “[Yoon] said the quorum did not appear to be met yet, so I should break down the doors, and go in and drag out the people inside.” The general was referring to the quorum and simple majority of 150 necessary for the Assembly to lift martial law, per South Korea’s constitution. A total of 190 lawmakers unanimously voted to lift Yoon’s declaration early on December 4.

Gwak, who has been suspended from duty, had been given instructions to seize at least six locations, including the National Assembly, the Democratic Party headquarters, and the National Election Commission. While claiming he decided to reject Yoon’s order, he also stated he was aware of Yoon’s plans for martial law at least two days in advance, which shines a light on the questions of how many in the military were aware of the plans. Many may continue to support a declaration of martial law.

On Wednesday, Yoon’s now former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun became the first administration official to be formally arrested for involvement in the attempted coup. Kim was detained on Sunday and waived his right to a review of his arrest warrant. He reportedly attempted to commit suicide on Wednesday. The heads of the National Police Agency and Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Jo Ji-ho and Kim Bong-sik respectively were also placed under emergency detention.

Yoon has already been booked as a suspect in the investigation under charges of insurrection and rebellion. He has been barred from leaving the country and faces the possibility of detention. South Korean presidents are immune from prosecution while in office except in cases of insurrection.

Investigators on Wednesday were sent to raid Yoon’s offices, the Presidential Security Service and the Joint Chiefs of Staff building. They sought documents related to Yoon’s cabinet meeting that took place shortly before the declaration of martial law. Yoon’s security, however, blocked the investigators from entering and only agreed to hand over limited material.

While Yoon is under siege and a number of his top officials are under investigation, the president remains in control of the military, despite a deal cobbled together last weekend by the PPP and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo in which they claimed Yoon would step back from all his state duties.

Jeon Ha-gyu, a Defence Ministry spokesman, confirmed on Monday: “Legally, (the control of military forces) currently lies with the commander in chief,” that is, Yoon. This makes it entirely possible that the president could declare martial law again.

Amid these investigations and parliamentary measures, the concern within the ruling class is not the defence of democracy, but that the political system is increasingly discredited in the eyes of the public. An opinion poll by Hangil Research released Wednesday showed that 72.6 percent of the public strongly support impeachment. Yoon was already widely despised before his failed coup as workers’ wages and conditions have declined and a growing strike wave began to emerge.

Both the ruling and opposition parties hope to head off growing public opposition to not only Yoon, but the political system that created him. The declaration of martial law on December 3 was not simply the result of Yoon’s personality. It was an indication that sections of the ruling class feel they can no longer rule within the framework of bourgeois democracy.

The Democrats, with the aid of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), hope they can quickly remove Yoon through impeachment and install their own candidate as president before social discontent has an opportunity to grow.

Despite claims of launching an “indefinite general strike” last week to force Yoon to resign and its supposed expansion on Wednesday, the KCTU and its affiliated unions have held a handful of limited walkouts—several of which had already been planned in previous weeks—that are now being shut down in coordination with the Democratic Party.

UnitedHealth Group: Corporate criminality and the destruction of healthcare in the US

Marc Wells

The murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week in Manhattan is one of those shocking events that suddenly reveal stark aspects of social reality under capitalism, in this case the raw truth about healthcare in the US and its destructive impact on the lives of millions. 

United Healthcare correspondence [AP Photo/Elise Amendola]

UnitedHealthcare and its parent company, UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest healthcare corporations in the world, have long symbolized the prioritization of profit over the health and well-being of the population. Their operations epitomize the predatory nature of for-profit healthcare in the United States, where the pursuit of corporate profit has devastating consequences for patients, families and healthcare workers.

From denying life-saving claims to facing numerous lawsuits for acting in bad faith, UnitedHealth Group’s track record highlights a system designed not to heal but to enrich its executives and shareholders.

UnitedHealth Group has consistently come under fire for denying patients’ claims, leaving countless individuals and families grappling with the financial and emotional toll of medical crises. Reports have surfaced of patients being denied essential treatments, including surgeries, cancer therapies and critical medications, often based on spurious justifications. Last year, 12 percent of claims were denied, a 20 percent increase from 2020. In 2023, 58 percent of insured adults experienced issues with their coverage.

Last October, a report from the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations underscored this grim reality, showing a rise of UnitedHealthcare’s denial rate for post-acute care for people with Medicare Advantage plans to 22.7 percent in 2022, from 10.9 percent in 2020.

Several ProPublica investigations in the last three years have revealed the extent of UnitedHealth and other insurance giant’s criminal practices. 

EviCore, a company owned by Cigna and contracted by major insurers like UnitedHealth and Aetna, systematically denies medically necessary treatments through its prior authorization process. Physicians and patients describe delays or outright rejections for crucial interventions, such as cancer therapies and diagnostic tests, even when recommended by specialists. Their infamous letters to patients constantly include the absurd claim: “Not medically necessary.”

EviCore uses an algorithm backed by artificial intelligence, dubbed “the dial,” that the company can adjust to lead to higher denials. Its primary goal is to save insurers money, meaning they get to pocket more of the monthly—often exorbitant—premiums workers pay in, leading to avoidable health deterioration for patients. The system often prioritizes administrative procedures over medical expertise, leaving patients to navigate bureaucratic hurdles instead of receiving timely care.

Another ProPublica investigation also exposed UnitedHealth Group’s subsidiary Optum and its use of an algorithm to illegally deny mental health and substance abuse treatment claims. A federal judge ruled the company violated laws and its fiduciary duty by using financial considerations to deny coverage. Internal documents revealed employees trained to apply restrictive guidelines ignoring medical necessity. This practice forced patients to forgo treatment, exacerbating their medical crises. 

These practices have been described as “systemic denial of care.” Patients are systematically denied coverage for cutting-edge treatment despite recommendations from physicians. Such denials are not isolated incidents. Physicians and nurses regularly voice their frustrations with UnitedHealth’s policies, which they argue undermine their ability to provide adequate care. 

UnitedHealth Group has faced numerous lawsuits for acting in bad faith, exposing the extent to which corporate greed drives its operations. In 2021, a lawsuit filed by former finance director at UnitedHealth Group Benjamin Poehling exposed UnitedHealth Group’s fraudulent practices within Medicare Advantage. UnitedHealth allegedly exaggerated patient illnesses to inflate risk scores and secure higher government payments, potentially defrauding Medicare of over $1 billion. 

Poehling revealed employees were incentivized to exploit the system, with bonuses tied to inflated revenues rather than patient outcomes. The Justice Department intervened, investigating UnitedHealth and other insurers for systemic fraud. “They’ve set up a perfect scheme here,” Poehling said. “It was rigged so there was no way they could lose.”

The Justice Department has intervened in other whistleblower lawsuits, including one from James Swoben, a former data manager at Senior Care Action Network Health Plan and a consultant to the risk adjustment industry, alleging that UnitedHealth and others defrauded Medicare Advantage by inflating risk scores to secure higher government payments. 

UnitedHealth also challenged a 2014 rule requiring insurers to verify diagnoses submitted for Medicare reimbursements, claiming it conflicted with actuarial equivalence mandates. This challenge highlights UnitedHealth’s alleged focus on exploiting the system, enabling them to overstate patient diagnoses for financial gain.

Additionally, the Justice Department is investigating other Medicare Advantage insurers, including Humana, Aetna, Health Net and Cigna’s Bravo Health, indicating systemic abuse across the industry. Humana, notably, has faced prior fraud allegations. 

In another case, the company was found to have illegally denied mental health and substance abuse treatments. A federal judge in California ruled in 2019 that United Behavioral Health, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth, prioritized profit over patient care, violating state laws and its fiduciary duty to policyholders. The court described the company’s guidelines for coverage as “infected” by financial considerations.

Such lawsuits underscore UnitedHealth’s commitment not to health, but to profit maximization—a grim reality for millions of patients and healthcare workers trapped in the system.

UnitedHealth Group’s actions are orchestrated by its top executives, including CEO Andrew Witty and the late Brian Thompson. Under their leadership, the company has seen record profits, which topped $23 billion in 2023, while patients continue to suffer under its policies. Witty, a former pharmaceutical executive in the UK, exemplifies the revolving door between healthcare corporations and regulatory bodies. After serving as the CEO of GlaxoSmithKline from 2008 to 2017 he took on a series of advisory positions within the UK government, including at the NHS, before becoming the CEO of UnitedHealth in 2021.

A video recorded one day after Thompson’s murder shows Witty defending the company’s claim denial practices. “We make sure that care is safe, appropriate, and is delivered when people need it and we guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe or unnecessary care to be delivered in a way that makes the whole system too complex and ultimately unsustainable,” Witty told employees in the video, leaked to journalist Ken Klippenstein.

Thompson, whose 20-year career at UnitedHealthcare coincided with the expansion of the company’s market dominance, had been equally complicit. Prior to becoming CEO, he held various leadership roles within UnitedHealthcare, including overseeing the company’s government programs and Medicare & Retirement divisions and had been a key figure in shaping the company’s strategy and direction.

A lawsuit by the Hollywood Firefighters’ Pension Fund accuses Thompson, Witty and UnitedHealth Group executive chairman Stephen Hemsley of insider trading. The executives allegedly sold over $120 million in stock in 2023, after learning privately of a DOJ investigation into UnitedHealth’s acquisition of Change Healthcare. The company reportedly failed to establish promised data firewalls, raising antitrust concerns. The pension fund claims significant financial losses due to undisclosed risks.

The ripple effects of UnitedHealth’s policies extend beyond patients to the healthcare workforce across the United States. Nurses and doctors frequently cite insurance hurdles as a significant contributor to burnout and moral injury. The strain on healthcare workers has only intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, as insurance companies like UnitedHealth reported record profits while frontline workers faced shortages of staff, equipment and support, in addition to illness. 

The incoming Trump administration and figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is set to head the Department of Health and Human Services, guarantee that the most unrestrained corporate interests will further entrench themselves in the system. Kennedy, known for his anti-scientific stances on vaccines and public health, aligns with the administration’s broader agenda of deregulation and privatization. This will embolden corporations like UnitedHealth, allowing them to operate with more impunity and even less oversight. 

UnitedHealth Group’s actions serve as a damning indictment of for-profit healthcare. Its denial of claims, exploitation of healthcare workers, and prioritization of financial gain over human life encapsulate the failures of a system driven by profit. As the political elite realigns its policies to social reality and prepares further attacks on living standards and democratic rights, the potential for greater corporate influence looms large, threatening to deepen the crisis in healthcare.

The speculative Bitcoin frenzy

Nick Beams

The spectacular rise of Bitcoin is not an indication that it and other cryptocurrencies represent a new form of finance or an alternative to the present system. Rather, it is the expression of the increasingly diseased character of the present financial order, a growing malignancy centered at its heart in the US.

An electronic signboard in the lounge of Bithumb cryptocurrency exchange in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. [AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon]

Last week, the price of Bitcoin rose to more than $100,000, as other cryptocurrencies also surged, bringing their total value, according to a report in the New York Times, to $2 trillion. The Wall Street Journal estimated the total value of the asset class at $3 trillion—“more than the combined worth of Mastercard, Walmart, and JPMorgan Chase.”

This has prompted claims in the so-called mainstream media, which previously tended to characterize it as some kind of scam, to hail the crypto surge as the wave of the future.

As the Times article went on to comment: “Bitcoin’s rise to $100,000 signals its now-undeniable status in the global economic system. The virtual currency has now become a staple of financial markets, embraced by Wall Street giants and amateur investors alike.”

At the end of 2022, Bitcoin underwent a precipitous fall in the wake of the collapse of the heavily promoted crypto exchange firm FTX and the charging and subsequent conviction of its owner, Sam Bankman-Fried, for fraud. The value of Bitcoin just two years ago was around $16,000.

Since then, it has enjoyed a spectacular rise. It began last January when regulatory authorities in the US allowed major asset managers and finance houses to establish financial products, exchange traded funds (ETFs), linked to the coin.

Crypto started its life as a supposed alternative to the existing financial system, allowing transactions to be conducted outside the purview of banks and regulatory authorities. As such, it only had a limited connection with major banks and financial institutions. All that has changed.

As a recent article in the Financial Times (FT) noted, since the approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission allowing Bitcoin ETFs, “crypto has become far more closely connected to the rest of the financial system. And the numbers are enormous: BlackRock’s recently launched ETF has already drawn an astonishing $48 billion.”

Bitcoin received a further boost with the election of Trump to the US presidency and his declaration that he wants to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” and even to establish a fund to invest in it as part of the government’s reserve of financial assets.

Trump boosted the use of crypto during the election campaign and has since followed up with a series of appointments of crypto advocates and operators to key posts in his administration.

After the appointment of Howard Lutnick to head the commerce department and Elon Musk as the co-head of the “department of government efficiency” with the acronym DOGE, the same as Musk’s own crypto token, he announced that crypto advocate Paul Atkins would head the chief regulatory authority, the SEC, to replace outgoing head Gary Gensler, regarded as a thorn in the side of crypto.

Trump described Atkins as a leader for “common sense regulations”—code words for the scrapping of what remains of previous controls. Atkins has been critical of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which regulates accounting firms and is overseen by the SEC.

A member of the PCAOB’s advisory group, Lynn Turner, told the FT the appointment was possibly the worst outcome for the organization “short of an atomic bomb hitting their building.”

In announcing the appointment, Trump made crypto the central focus. In a post on his social media site, he said Atkins recognized that “digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.”

This was followed up by the announcement that Gail Slater, an aide to Vice President-elect JD Vance, an avid crypto supporter, would head the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, a move hailed by corporate and financial interests.

Trump’s announcements and appointments led to a rapid rise in Bitcoin, which is up by more than 50 percent since the November 5 election victory.

What is most significant is that it is being fueled by what the FT called a “flood of institutional money. Exchange traded funds investing in the cryptocurrency run by mainstream asset managers including BlackRock and Fidelity have poured in billions since they received regulatory approval in January.”

Other asset managers, including pension funds, are reported to be investing in cryptocurrency.

In grasping the significance of this phenomenon, it is vital not to become dazzled by the rise of Bitcoin and the fabulous fortunes that have been acquired, in some cases virtually overnight, and to focus on the fundamental issues.

No matter how steep its rise, and it may have further to go, the basic facts remain. Bitcoin is a financial asset that has no intrinsic value and does not generate an income stream. Other financial assets, such as holdings of commercial property and corporate debt, do, and, in the final analysis, rest on a real asset that generates a profit.

Profit from Bitcoin trading is generated solely by its price rise and nothing else. And its rise in price continues as long as money keeps flowing into the crypto market.

Many things have changed since the 1920s when Charles Ponzi gave his name to this type of operation. But the crypto market is, by any definition, a Ponzi scheme and, like all such schemes, considerable amounts of money can be acquired while they continue to operate.

The significance of the latest surge is that it is not being driven by rogue operators, outliers, and individual investors. Today it could be rightly characterized as a Ponzi scheme backed by the most powerful financial institutions in the world and by the capitalist state. Nothing like this has been seen in economic history.

Its promoters sometimes like to claim that it does have a real foundation in so-called blockchain technology. But the potential gains from this technology have nothing to do with the rise of the cryptocurrencies on which they are supposedly based.

In fact, a kind of inversion has taken place.

When Bitcoin was first proposed by its pseudonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto in a paper published in 2008, it was advanced as a means of making payments without having to rely on the traditional banking system and free of control by the state.

Today, the price of Bitcoin is being sent further into the stratosphere by Trump’s proposal, among other things, to create a national reserve of Bitcoin holdings. That is, the state, which it was supposed to bypass, is to become one of its foundations. Its supposed role as an alternative currency has not materialized, except, by and large, for criminal activities.

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in a recent article: “Bitcoin is practically never used today as a way to make payments—the original use envisioned by Nakamoto. Instead, proponents argue it is a form of ‘digital gold,’ a way to store monetary value and hedge against inflation.”

But there is a fundamental difference between so-called “digital gold” and real gold, and all that glitters is not gold. There are fluctuations in the price of gold as the result of speculation. But gold, as a commodity produced by human labor, does embody value. The rise in Bitcoin’s price is entirely the result of more money—the very money it was supposed to bypass—flowing into the crypto market.

Not only does Bitcoin embody no intrinsic value, but the process of “mining” new coins via complex computer-based calculations is extremely destructive and wasteful. It has been estimated that the creation of new Bitcoin by tens of thousands of computers uses as much as 0.9 percent of the global demand for electricity, roughly equivalent to the annual energy consumption of Australia.

The latest rise in the price of Bitcoin, driven by the intervention of Wall Street finance houses, has major implications for the stability of the entire financial system. When FTX went down two years ago, it had little effect on the broader financial market. Conditions have changed markedly since then.

As Martin Walker, a research fellow at Warwick Business School, commented to the FT: “One thing that history teaches us about financial crises is that risk always builds up and then explodes in areas the regulators never seem to expect. Fault lines in the financial system are not always obvious… Crypto finance is so large now there are sure to be macro risks… that are both dangerous and little understood.”

UK Labour chancellor pledges austerity offensive to fund military spending increase

Paul Bond & Robert Stevens

UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves has confirmed that the Labour government’s commitment to raised military spending will be funded by cuts elsewhere.

In an interview Saturday with the right-wing Daily Mail’s political editor Jason Groves, Reeves directly connected the astronomical costs of war abroad with austerity at home. Warning of spending cuts, her comments were to reassure the ruling class that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government can be relied on to hike up military spending by billions of pounds.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (right) appoints Rachel Reeves as his Chancellor from the Cabinet Office in 10 Downing Street, July 5, 2024 [Photo by Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Labour’s electoral pledges included ramping up military spending to 2.5 percent of GDP from its current level of just over 2.2 percent. But, aware of the broad unease in the working class over its warmongering offensive in Ukraine, and hostility to its support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Labour was cautious about setting a date to hit the 2.5 percent target.

On taking office, it said military spending decisions would follow a Strategic Defence Review next year, led by former Labour MP George Robertson, who was Tony Blair’s Secretary of State for Defence and then became NATO Secretary General.

In an interview which the Mail splashed across its front page and two inside pages, Reeves said, “the trajectory for defence spending” will be set out “alongside” the review’s report. Reeves pointed to her initial steps in raising defence spending by £2.9 billion in the October budget; and the £2.3 billion she allotted to Ukraine from frozen Russian assets.

The Daily Mail's front page headline reading "Reeves We can’t boost UK defence without making cuts" [Photo: Screenshot: Daily Mail]

Reeves would still not confirm whether the 2.5 percent target will be achieved by 2030—which could cost an extra £20 billion a year. But the Mail was partially assuaged by her message—given a block capitals front-page headline: “Reeves: We can’t boost UK defence without making cuts”.

The chancellor boasted that the defence review will take place alongside a “zero-based” audit of government spending “line by line.” Promoted as an efficiency drive to cut waste, it is being applied to departments that have already seen budgets slashed over decades of austerity. The audit review will see wider axing of projects as the timetable for increased military expenditure is established.

That the working class confronts in parliament a unified party of austerity and war was confirmed by Reeves’s rhetoric borrowed from Tory predecessors such as former prime minister Theresa May: “If you spend money on one thing, you can’t spend it elsewhere. There’s not a magic money tree.”

“There is not some magic pot for any area of government spending,” she went on, “it has to come out of this [spending] envelope.’’

Reeves emphasised that there was no threat of cutting defence expenditure in favour of other spending on health, education, housing, etc., nor any pledge of broader social provision. These departments must learn to “live within their means.” The 2 percent efficiency target imposed on the National Health Service, seamlessly carried over from the Tories—is to be extended to all departments.

Labour is looking to the public sector unions to police workers’ opposition, with any future pay deals conditional on productivity deals. Reeves warned that the spending review “is going to be tough.” The government is “not going to be coming back with more borrowing or more taxes… We’re going to have to be ruthlessly prioritising and targeted.”

The spending review would also involve intervention from the private sector, with Reeves promising, “We will also use outside people to challenge [every spending item] and look at that.”

A Parliamentary debate held last month titled, “Defence: 2.5% GDP Spending Commitment,” saw the major parties accusing each other of not being militaristic enough. In the words of Defence Secretary John Healey, “Everyone agrees that an increase in defence spending is needed.”

Labour MP Graeme Downie spoke of the “need to increase defence spending in response to emerging threats around the world,” asking whether the 2.5 percent “should be kept under review.”

Downie has since written on the LabourList blog that “we should make clear that this number should not be considered a ceiling.” He echoed calls by the Times, the main forum where military figures demand spending of 3 percent and more.

In parliament, Healey agreed with Downie that “the starting point for any defence planning must be the threats that we face.” He recently announced the establishment of a UK Defence Industrial Council to “improve decision making and productivity by sharing information between market participants and government” and “shaping public-private investment strategies.”

This is the lucrative business of militarism, as Downie appreciatively cooed in LabourList, calling the council “the latest sign that this UK Labour government is mobilising British industry for our security and to support Ukraine in a way which supports our economy, building on work such as the loan fund to support Ukraine in buying the weapons it needs.”

Reeves’s interview with the Mail was part of the paper’s “Don’t Leave Britain Defenceless” campaign calling for “significant increases in Armed Forces investment, to meet the growing threat.” It is shaped by the demands of the ruling elite that Labour hand the Treasury’s keys to the armed forces to pursue their war aims against Russia and—in alliance with the incoming Trump administration in the US—a conflict with China.

In July, army head General Sir Roland Walker called for the doubling of Britain’s “fighting power” in three years and its tripling by the end of the decade to confront “an increasingly aligned axis of upheaval.” Walker said the UK and its NATO allies had to be able “to deter or fight a war in three years.”

Although the Tories included a manifesto target for 2.5 of GDP for military spending, that is now viewed as old hat. Following the general election, Tory leadership candidates James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat both called for military spending of a minimum 3 percent. This would require a war on the working class at home.

According to a Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank estimate made in 2022, going to 3 percent of GDP would cost an extra £157 billion over the course of eight years. Put into context, £157 billion is approaching the entire cost of the NHS for a year, serving a population of 66 million people, including wages for 1.5 million full-time staff. It is more than total education spending in Britain, which was £116 billion in 2023-24. It dwarfs the housing benefit budget of about £30 billion a year.

Even this onslaught on the working class pales in comparison to what is required to wage a full-scale war against a major power like Russia. In a Q&A at the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) Lecture at the Freeman Air and Space Institute this month, head of the Royal Air Force Chief Air Marshal Sir Richard Knighton argued, “We are witnessing a return to great power competition.” He declared, “In 1936, Britain was spending 2.9 percent of its GDP on defence. By 1945, that figure was 52 percent. War is incredibly costly”.

Speaking at a conference on reserves at RUSI in London, Labour MP Alistair Carns, the government’s veterans minister, warned, “In a war of scale—not a limited intervention, but one similar to Ukraine—our army for example on the current casualty rates would be expended—as part of a broader multinational coalition—in six months to a year.”

Carns, a former Royal Marines Colonel, pointed to the Russian casualty rate in Ukraine as an argument for the broader militarisation of society. The Russian experience, he said, “doesn’t mean we need a bigger army, but it does mean you need to generate depth and mass rapidly in the event of a crisis.” He cited the argument of military commanders that war is started by professional armies but ended by civilians taking up arms as volunteers and reservists. He described the army’s reserves as “absolutely central… Without them we cannot generate mass, we cannot meet the plethora of defence tasks.”

Carns insisted, “There is a requirement across government to remind people that freedom is not free.”

More than 16 million people in poverty in UK, including one in three children

Simon Whelan

The Social Metrics Commission (SMC) annual report reveal a staggering increase in social inequality in the UK.

In 2022/23, more than 16 million people, almost a quarter of the population (24 percent) were living in poverty. Over one in three children, 5.2 million (36 percent) are included in the figures.

Homeless people opposite London Victoria station, November 2024

The SMC’s Measuring Poverty 2024 found that the COVID-19 pandemic and cost of living crisis plunged 2.1 million additional people into poverty since 2019/20, raising poverty rates by two percentage points. An extra 260,000 children are in poverty, an almost five percentage point increase since 2019/20 and the highest of any social group.

The SMC gives a more accurate understanding of poverty by providing an analysis of “poverty depth” and the “persistence of poverty”, its magnitude and longevity. It analyses “below average resources”, includes costs such as childcare, the extra costs of being disabled, and factors in rent and mortgage payments.

The SMC finds:

• “Deep poverty” has increased in Britain over the last two decades. 4.1 million people, 6 percent of the population, live in the deepest form of poverty. This is defined as being more than 50 percent below the poverty line—compared to 2.7 million people (5 percent of the population), in 2000/01.
• Persistence of poverty—defined as an individual being in poverty in the year in question, in addition to two out of three years prior to that—has risen to almost six in ten. 57 percent of those in poverty were living in persistent poverty in 2022/23, a rise of four percentage points since 2014/15.
• More than half of the people (8.7 million; 54 percent) in poverty live in a family that includes a disabled person. Over three in 10 (31 percent) of those in poverty are disabled: a total of 4.9 million people.
• Poverty rates in workless families have risen rapidly, by seven percentage points, to 75 percent.
• Those in poverty are more likely to have poor self-reported mental health. More than one in three (33 percent) live in a family that includes someone with poor self-reported mental health.
• The poor are more likely to be living on their own, as 45 percent of those in poverty live in a household with only one adult.
• Those in poverty experience poorer physical health outcomes as over a quarter; 27 percent, are in a family that includes at least one adult self-reporting poor physical health.
• Nearly four in 10 (38 percent) people living in poverty in London are in deep poverty—at least 50 percent below the poverty line. The South East of England, despite a lower overall poverty rate than London, sees three in 10 (31 percent) of those in poverty in deep poverty.
• Persistent poverty affects almost four in 10 people (38 percent) living in London.
• Those in the deepest levels of poverty are the most likely to be in persistent poverty. 57 percent in deep poverty are also in persistent poverty.
• Around 17 percent of the population is less than 50 percent below the poverty line, but either in persistent poverty (5.7 million), or non-persistent poverty, (5.8 million).

The SMC’s data is more accurate and detailed than the UK government’s current definition of poverty, which measures only average income and housing costs. With such a limited calculation, a still terrible 18 percent of the population was defined as living in absolute poverty in the year to March 2023, including 3.6 million children. But according to the SMC figures 9.3 million people (14 percent), exist more than 25 percent below the poverty line. A further 4.1 million (6 percent of the UK population) are 50 percent beneath the poverty line

Another 4 percent (2.5 million people), live less than 10 percent above the poverty line. Those only just above the poverty line are some of the most likely families to fall into poverty.

The SMC explain their poverty measurement is a “hybrid between the traditional absolute and relative approaches to measuring poverty.” Absolute poverty is based on subsistence, i.e., the minimum needed to sustain life. Those suffering absolute poverty literally do not have enough money to live on. Relative poverty is a social measurement evaluating prevalent living standards. In his 1847 work, Wage Labour and Capital, Karl Marx wrote:

 “Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society… they are of a relative nature”.

The SMC sliding scale of “poverty depth” brings more nuance and continuity between levels of poverty severity than can be provided by static binary concepts, absolute and relative—as crucial as they are.

The SMC is led by commissioners from several thinktanks across the political spectrum including the Sutton Trust, Institute for Fiscal Studies, Centre for Social Policy Studies, Trussell Trust, with input from academics. Its chair is Baroness Philippa Stroud, who stood but failed to win a seat for the Conservatives in 2010 in a marginal seat taken by the Liberal Democrats. The Tories ruled in coalition with the Lib Dems for five years, imposing brutal austerity. Stroud co-founded the Centre for Social Justice with former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and was an adviser to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions helping create and implement the punitive Universal Credit welfare system.

While the SMC claims to be independent in their prescriptions to combat poverty, its main call is that the unemployed must accept work regardless of the paucity of wages. “Work provides an effective protection from poverty, with poverty rates for those in workless families having risen rapidly since the pandemic,” it states. But contrary to successive government’s “work is the only route out of poverty” mantra, echoed by the SMC, nearly two thirds (62 percent) of people in poverty today live in a family where someone works at least part time.

The expected acceptance of the SMC definition of poverty by the Labour government will do nothing to halt its austerity agenda defined by Chancellor Rachel Reeves as she outlined October’s budget as, “If we cannot afford it, we cannot do it”.

Labour has intensified poverty by refusing to scrap the two-child welfare benefit cap, introduced by the Tories, meaning 5.2 million children (55 percent) live in families with three or more children but who receive zero benefits beyond the first two. The Tories introduced the cap to make billions in welfare cuts, with the Malthusian justification of blaming the poor for having too many children.

Further tens of billions of pounds are to be raided from public spending with Labour’s plan to increase military spending to 2.5 percent of GDP within months—on top of their commitment to renew Britain’s nuclear weapons arsenal costing many billions more.

Thousands protest in Berlin against massive public service cuts

Gregor Link & Gustav Kemper

On December 5, thousands of teachers, public employees, artists and cultural workers, carers and educators protested in Berlin against the Berlin Senate’s plans to cut billions of euros from the city’s budgets for education, culture, health and other areas.

In the social and education sector, the Senate cuts threaten funding for youth social work, integration projects, programmes for the homeless, addiction counselling and digitalisation processes in schools.

#Unkürzbar demonstration in front of the Berlin House of Representatives, 5.12.2024

Trade unions, social organisations and schools called for a rally in front of the Senate under the slogan #Unkürzbar (#Uncuttable), attended by around 5,000 protesters, including several primary school classes plus parents and teachers.

The Senate has threatened to implement devastating cuts and job cuts to Berlin’s social fabric, including its main charitable organisations (AWO, Caritas and Diakonie), whereupon the chairpersons of these organisations claimed they were “systemically relevant” to the “functioning of the economy”—as the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic had shown. The supposedly “mitigated” result nevertheless amounts to “huge social cuts to take place in installments,” according to Oliver Bürgel, director of the AWO.

A total of €370 million [$US 390.6 million] is to be cut from the education budget, as well as €14 million from the expansion of day care centres. In the cultural sector, 12 percent of the total budget will be cut. Around €660 million are also to be cut from the budget for mobility, transport and the environment, which accounts for almost 20 percent of the total budget. Subsidies to the student union will also fall by €7.5 million.

Teachers protest against cuts in Berlin, 05.12.2024

Campaigners from the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) discussed a socialist perspective against the policy of social cuts, which has been supported and promoted by all parties in the Bundestag and the Berlin Senate for decades, with participants in the demonstration. The SGP’s call for the Bundestag elections on February 23 states:

This all-party coalition in favour of war and cuts has deep objective causes. In the face of the capitalist crisis, the ruling class is focussing on war abroad and class war at home in order to defend its wealth and overwhelm its competitors. This is why all the ghosts of the past are returning. Germany is at war with the nuclear power Russia, democratic rights are under attack and the fascists of the Alternative for Germany AfD are being courted by all parties.

“Schools must not be victims of austerity measures” Teachers protest against cuts in Berlin, 05.12.2024

With regard to the Senate’s policy, SGP members explained that the billions saved are to be channeled into war policy and rearmament and that the struggle against the cuts must therefore be directly linked to the struggle against war. Instead of making hundreds of billions of euros available for arming German troops and continuing the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, these sums must be used for schools, day care centres, clinics and social services.

Consequently, entire groups of demonstrators signed in favour of allowing the SGP to stand in the Bundestag elections.

Teachers protest against cuts in Berlin, 05.12.2024

Syrian government collapses after Bashar Al-Assad flees to Russia

Jordan Shilton

Islamist militia supported by the United States and Turkey seized Damascus, the capital of Syria on Sunday, after Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad fled to Russia.

US-backed opposition fighters celebrate as they burn down a military court in Damascus, Syria, Sunday, December 8, 2024. [AP Photo/Hussein Malla]

After nearly 14 years of war, the so-called “rebels,” dominated by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia, won a lightning victory. Reports Saturday evening were that HTS forces had entered into the central Syrian cities of Hama and Homs. However, news broke barely a few hours later that the Syrian capital, Damascus, had fallen, and that Assad had taken a plane to flee the country. Last night, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that Assad was in Moscow.

Assad’s collapse could not have occurred without the complicity of factions of the Syrian, Iranian and Russian regimes. On Sunday morning, HTS leaders announced they were in discussion with Syrian Prime Minister Mohamed al-Jalali. On Telegram, they instructed their troops that “public institutions [should] stay under the supervision of the former prime minister until they are formally handed over.” Jalali, for his part, declared he is “ready for cooperation” with the new authorities.

Yesterday, the Russian government announced that, after talks with the “rebel” factions, Assad had ordered his troops not to fight the HTS-led offensive. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated: “As a result of negotiations between Bashar al-Assad and a number of participants in the armed conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic, he decided to leave the presidential post and left the country, giving instructions to transfer power peacefully.” It added that “the Russian Federation is in contact with all groups of the Syrian opposition.”

The Iranian government similarly called to “end military conflicts as soon as possible, prevent terrorist acts, and initiate national dialogue with the participation of all segments of Syrian society.”

The imperialist powers responded in a celebratory mood to news of Assad’s downfall. French President Emmanuel Macron enthused, “The barbaric state has fallen,” while German Foreign Minister Analena Baerbock declared it was a “great relief” for the Syrian people. Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign affairs representative, gloated that the fall of Assad was “a positive and long-awaited development,” adding, “It also shows the weakness of Assad’s backers, Russia and Iran.”

HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Golani, a former al-Qaeda asset who had ties to Islamic State, have become the darlings of Western media outlets virtually overnight. Even though HTS was designated a foreign terrorist organisation by Washington and Golani was the subject of a $10 million bounty in 2018, he has received overwhelmingly favourable coverage in the US and European media. Perhaps giving away more than it intended, CNN observed in an article based on an “exclusive interview” with Golani on December 5 that he “exuded confidence” and sought to “project modernity” during a meeting “which took place in broad daylight and with little security.”

The HTS-led forces’ pro-imperialist character was underscored soon after they seized Damascus. Fighters ransacked the Iranian embassy, destroying pictures of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Qasem Soleimani, assassinated at Baghdad’s international airport by the Trump administration in January 2020, and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, assassinated in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, by the genocidal Zionist regime in September 2024. International media outlets were all conveniently on hand to capture these events.

By acquiescing to a handover of Syria to an al-Qaeda-linked militia, Assad and his allies in Moscow and Tehran are falling in line with longstanding foreign policy objectives of Washington and its NATO allies. Particularly since Israel began its US-backed genocide of the Palestinians in October 2023, the Zionist regime has waged a low-level war on Syria with US-supplied bombs and missiles. Al Jazeera reported that Israel Defence Forces (IDF) warplanes have struck Syrian military sites three times a week on average over the past 14 months.

These attacks were directed not only at Syrian forces but also at weakening Iran’s presence in the country. The most high-profile of these was the April 2024 bombing of Iran’s Damascus consulate, killing a high-level IRGC commander and other officials. Israel’s attacks continued over the weekend, striking the Mazzeh district of Damascus and southern areas of Syria following Assad’s downfall on Sunday. IDF soldiers have also advanced into Syrian territory on the Golan Heights, where a “closed military zone” has been declared.

Offensive operations by the “rebels” were launched less than a day after US President Joe Biden unilaterally announced a ceasefire between its regional attack dog, Israel, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah from the White House. The announcement brought to an end a two-month savage bombardment of Lebanon by the IDF that decimated one of the Assad regime’s most important allies and suppliers of military manpower.

During the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians and the war in Lebanon, Israel also struck—with US approval—targets in Iran, Assad’s key regional backer. These attacks included the July assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, present in the Iranian capital as an official guest of the regime, and the 26 October strikes on Iranian military facilities. All of this unfolded amid an illegal, years-long occupation by 900 US troops of northeast Syria, denying the Assad regime any revenue from the region’s substantial oil reserves.

The HTS offensive is closely linked to the war in Ukraine, where the imperialists are recklessly escalating towards a direct conflict with Russia. Just weeks before fighting erupted in Syria, the Biden administration approved Ukraine’s firing of long-range missiles into Russia, bringing NATO and Moscow ever closer to all-out war. This reckless step was taken to avert Ukraine’s collapse on the battlefield, where Russia is making substantial advances.

Indeed, it appears this explosive international situation, with Europe teetering on the verge of a vast military escalation, played a critical role in the decision of Moscow and Tehran to acquiesce, for now at least, to the HTS-led takeover of Syria. The offensive and the sudden collapse of Assad’s regime come amid signs that the incoming Trump administration may believe opening negotiations is the best way to secure its interests. Trump himself issued a long post on Syria and the Ukraine war on his Truth Social network.

Trump wrote:

Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer. There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lose all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers are wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started... Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted… I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The World is waiting!

The decision to place an al-Qaeda-linked organization at the head of the Syrian government is, however, monumentally reckless, and the events in Syria are by no means fully under US imperialism’s control.

On the contrary, the contradictory and mutually antagonistic interests of multiple imperialist and major powers, as well as regional players, in and around the country give an especially explosive character to the sudden revival of the 13-year-old Syrian civil war. Provoked in 2011 by Washington’s arming and training of the predecessors of HTS, with the aim of ousting Assad, the conflict has claimed at least 500,000 lives and forced millions to flee the country.

The volatility of the Syrian events is chiefly due to the fact that American imperialism and its allies are engaged in a region-wide war to secure Washington’s hegemony. The US is determined to exert control over the Middle East’s rich energy reserves and geostrategic location on key trade routes as a gateway to the Eurasian landmass. It is one front in a rapidly escalating third world war involving the US and its European imperialist allies against Russia in Eastern Europe and China in the Asia-Pacific. As David North wrote in his 2016 preface to A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony:

The last quarter century of US-instigated wars must be studied as a chain of interconnected events. The strategic logic of the US drive for global hegemony extends beyond the neocolonial operations in the Middle East and Africa. The ongoing regional wars are component elements of the rapidly escalating confrontation of the United States with Russia and China.

All of these conflicts find a reflection in Syria, which is forcing major and regional powers to pursue their own interests ever more aggressively and could trigger a region-wide bloodbath endangering millions of lives. Washington, which inflamed the Syrian civil war in 2011 by funding and supplying Islamist terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front, one of the forerunners of HTS, never accepted the outcome of Russia’s 2015 intervention, which stabilised the Assad regime.

The Putin regime profited with the establishment of the Khmeimim air base near the city of Latakia, which served both as a base for Russian air operations in Syria and a transit point for flights to Africa. Russia’s naval military base at Tartus, the only such base Moscow has in the Mediterranean, is a holdover from the Soviet era, having been established in 1971. Together with Iran, which depended on Damascus for land access to Lebanon to supply its ally Hezbollah, Russia was the Assad regime’s main backer.

In the north, Turkey has patronised Islamist militias under the Syrian National Army banner. Although these militias are not directly part of the forces led by HTS, the latter could only operate and received their military supplies through Turkey, a NATO member state. As a result, it is widely acknowledged that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had foreknowledge of the HTS-led offensive.

Erdogan declared Saturday that “a new political and diplomatic reality” existed in Syria. Ankara’s principal concern is to prevent the emergence of a unified Kurdish territory on its southern border, which it has sought to do by funding SNA operations and launching invasions of its own to target the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). For their part, the Kurds receive backing from the US. Reuters reported last Tuesday that US-backed Kurdish forces launched an offensive in eastern Syria against Assad’s troops, resulting later in the week in the capture of Deir Ezzor.

While the timing of the Islamists’ advance and its rapid progress speak to the deep involvement of the imperialist powers and Turkey, the ignominious collapse of Assad’s forces demonstrates the utter bankruptcy of the region’s bourgeois nationalist regimes. The Assad family, first under the regime of Hafez al-Assad (1971-2000) and then his son Bashar (2000-24), ruled Syria as a one-party dictatorship for 53 years. But by the end it effectively worked to dissolve itself and hand over power to the forces it had fought against for 14 years.