Canada deploys surveillance plane over Haiti to lay groundwork for US-demanded military intervention

Roger Jordan & Keith Jones

Canada’s Liberal government moved closer to launching a full-scale military intervention in Haiti this past weekend, deploying a long-range Canadian Armed Forces surveillance plane to support operations by the country’s national police to combat a sustained wave of gang violence. The Western Hemisphere’s most impoverished country, Haiti has been gripped for years by an ever widening social calamity, characterized by mass hunger and destitution, the COVID-19 pandemic, a cholera epidemic, and a proliferation of heavily-armed gangs that are allied with competing factions of Haiti’s corrupt, pro-imperialist ruling elite.

The Biden administration has been pushing Ottawa behind the scenes and in public statements to assume a leadership role in a military intervention in Haiti since late October. In a joint statement issued Sunday, Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand and Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly confirmed that a C-140 Aurora spy plane had begun surveilling Haiti, but refused to specify how long the mission would continue. “This Canadian patrol aircraft will provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability to bolster efforts to establish and maintain peace and security for the people of Haiti,” the ministers declared in their statement. “The CP-140 aircraft has already deployed to the region and is currently operating over Haiti. It will remain in the region for a number of days.”

Protesters calling for the resignation of Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry run after police fired tear gas to disperse them in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. [AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph]

To describe the blather about Canada working to establish “peace” and “security” for “the people of Haiti” as hypocritical would be an understatement. The social disaster that faces the vast majority of the country’s 12 million inhabitants is the outcome of a long series of catastrophic foreign occupations and interventions stretching back over a century, primarily led by US imperialism, but also in recent decades directly involving its Canadian ally.

The last of these interventions began in 2004, when US and Canadian troops collaborated with far-right paramilitary forces associated with the old Duvalier dictatorship—which Washington had backed to the hilt for three decades ending in 1986—to violently overthrow Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The intervening two decades have witnessed the imperialist powers in the so-called “Core Group,” which includes the US, France and Canada, back a series of increasingly right-wing governments that have presided over deepening social and economic breakdown, especially since the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Under pressure from the Biden administration, the Trudeau Liberal government has made preparations over recent months to mount a new imperialist military occupation of the island nation. The Trudeau government sent a batch of armoured vehicles to the Haitian national police in October and made a second delivery last month. Ottawa also dispatched a fact-finding mission to Port-au-Prince late last year after Ariel Henry, the imperialist-installed acting president, appealed in October 2022 for a foreign military intervention to suppress the criminal gangs that control much of Port-au-Prince and other cities and exact tolls on traffic and the transport of fuel and other essentials.

Henry has held power since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse—in what appears to have been a settling of scores within the traditionally pro-Duvalierist, ultra-right-wing faction of the ruling elite from which Moïse himself hailed. The well-armed gangs, some of which were used by Moïse to suppress popular unrest, are backed by powerful figures within the Haitian oligarchy.

If there is a certain reluctance on the part of the Trudeau government to rush to deploy ground troops to Port-au-Prince, this is certainly not to be explained by any aversion to aggressive military operations in other countries. Over the past two decades, Canadian imperialism has participated side-by-side with its US ally in the savage destruction of Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, and is now in the front ranks of the imperialist war on Russia.

The delay in finalizing the intervention in Haiti has much more to do with the depth of the crisis confronting Haitian capitalism and its pro-imperialist puppet regime, and fears that the attempt to bloodily prop it up could prove costly.

Henry, who is widely suspected of having a hand in Moïse’s assassination, is hated by the vast majority of the populace. His rule is also seen as illegitimate by the bourgeois opposition, which has long argued that Moïse’s election and that of his predecessor and mentor, Michel Martelly, were the result of manipulation and outright fraud.

Among Haiti’s workers and toilers there is mass opposition to American imperialism due to its more than century-long role in bloodily suppressing the democratic and social aspirations of the Haitian people. But there is also widespread and mounting hostility to Canadian imperialism, with repeated protests in recent years targeting Ottawa’s role in upholding the country’s vicious, corrupt capitalist ruling elite.

The Liberal government clearly fears that a Canadian-led military intervention would face mass popular opposition from the outset, and that this could dangerously undermine the “democratic” and “human rights” façade behind which Ottawa conducts its predatory foreign policy, including its increasingly significant roles in the US military-strategic offensives against Russia and China.

It also needs to be noted that the gangs are heavily armed and could prove difficult to disarm. As for the National Police, some of whose former personnel are now gang leaders, they are likely to prove a less than reliable ally of a Canadian-led military intervention. Late last month, a group of officers staged a violent day-long protest in Port-au-Prince to press for more state support and weaponry, forcing acting Prime Minister Henry to shelter in the airport as they fired guns into the air. At least 78 police officers have been killed on duty since Moïse’s assassination, including 14 who were kidnapped.

The spy plane mission indicates that a decision on a Canadian-led military intervention may be imminent. During a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the North American leaders’ summit in Mexico City last month, Biden again pressed Ottawa on the issue. If Trudeau has not green-lighted such a deployment by the time the US president visits Canada in March, it could well serve as the backdrop for unveiling a Canadian-led military operation. This is the preferred outcome for the Biden administration, which is eager to avoid yet another US-led operation as it wages war against Russia and intensifies its all-sided campaign of diplomatic, economic and military pressure against China.

Bob Rae, the Trudeau government’s ambassador to the United Nations, told a meeting of the UN Security Council in January that Canada intends to “do things differently than in the past” and “learn from the history of large, outside military interventions in Haiti because they have actually failed to bring about long-term stability for Haitians.” The “solutions” Ottawa is striving for must be “led by Haitians and Haitian institutions,” Rae claimed.

Behind the florid rhetoric, Rae was essentially saying that pressure is being applied behind the scenes to establish a more stable regime that can better front an imperialist intervention. Henry duly sought to oblige his imperialist masters with his announcement February 6 of the creation of a “High Transition Council,” which he stated unanimously supports a foreign military intervention to “restore order.” Its three members represent the political, business and civil sectors. They include Mirlande Manigat, a former right-wing presidential candidate associated with Henry’s supporters; Laurent Saint-Cyr, president of Haiti’s Chamber of Commerce; and Pastor Calixte Fleuridor, from the country’s Protestant Federation.

The imperialists would like to see the political integration of the bourgeois opposition “Montana Accord” parties into a transitional regime capable of imposing the dictates of the major powers and international investors, who are demanding “stability” to facilitate the ruthless exploitation of Haiti’s impoverished workers. Washington and Ottawa are also anxious that the social crisis in Haiti not destabilize the broader Caribbean region, including through a mass exodus of desperate refugees to the neighbouring Dominican Republic and beyond.

Amid the unfolding nightmare in Haiti, both the US and Canada continue to deport Haitians en masse.

A report released this week by the UN Children’s Agency UNICEF underscored the extent of the social catastrophe produced by decades of imperialist intervention and the corrupt rule of their local stooges. Fully 2.5 million children, half of the country’s entire child population, will require emergency assistance this year due to a lack of food and other basic necessities. As Bruno Maes, UNICEF’s Haiti representative told the Guardian, “Haitian children don’t just face challenges accessing food and potable water while the health system collapses around them. There is also a lack of protection. Children are being abused, young girls are being raped and services are not there at the scale they should be for their survival and development.”

A deadly cholera epidemic continues to rage across the country. According to a UN report dated January 15, 483 deaths, 1,742 confirmed cases and 24,232 suspected cases can be attributed to the outbreak that began last year. The impact of the disease is compounded by widespread malnutrition, with the World Food Program reporting that 4.7 million Haitians, more than a third of the population, face acute hunger.

Chief responsibility for this abysmal state of affairs lies with the imperialist powers. After decades of military occupations and interventions, and the backing of brutal dictatorships, they responded to the 2010 earthquake that claimed at least 250,000 lives by offering up Haiti’s impoverished masses as a source of cheap labour for international finance capital. Money provided to support the victims was funneled through pro-imperialist organizations like the Inter-American Development Bank, and large investment deals brokered by the war criminals Bill and Hillary Clinton were struck.

Under this regime of “aid,” approximately 60,000 jobs were created in the low-paying apparel sector, as large international concerns took advantage of extremely low wage rates and Washington’s removal of export restrictions to cash in. At least 11,000 of these jobs have disappeared since December 2021.

The latest announcement came from South Korean producer Sae-A Trading Co., which is cutting 3,500 jobs from its workforce of 7,000 and closing one of its six factories in northeastern Haiti. The company, which operates as S&H Global in Haiti, arrogantly complained about the prevalence of strikes by customs officials, gang violence and the unreliable local power supply in a statement full of corporate managerial-speak. “These disruptions,” declared Sae-A Trading, had led “to orders canceled and trust lost from our retailer customers in the USA as they suffered significant losses from delayed and non-delivery of merchandise.” For 2023, it continued, the large US-based retailers are rerouting orders “elsewhere around the Caribbean and Central America leaving us, S&H Global with a dearth of orders.”

Howard University awarded $90 million contract to conduct military research for the Pentagon

Dominic Gustavo

Howard University in Washington D.C. has been awarded a five-year, $90 million contract by the US Department of Defense and the US Air Force to fund a research center dedicated to developing advanced technology for the military.

The center will be one of the Pentagon’s 15 officially designated UARCs (University Affiliated Research Centers) and the first to be based at a historically black college/university (HBCU), a dubious “honor” that was announced with great fanfare on January 23 by university President Wayne A.I. Frederick.

The announcement came as the school hosted Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall to proclaim “a historic and tremendous accomplishment for Howard University.”

In his remarks, Austin lamented that “Only a tiny fraction of our department’s research funding goes to HBCUs.” He then declared, “To sharpen America’s technological edge and to strengthen America’s outstanding military, the department is committed to investing in even more HBCUs and minority-serving institutions. Today, we are taking that commitment to a new level.”

With the Founders Library in the background, a young man reads on Howard University's Washington, D.C. campus, July 6, 2021. [AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin]

Air Force Secretary Kendall added, “What we are celebrating today directly supports two goals incredibly important to our nation, one is a need to grow and diversify the pool of scientists and engineers across the country, particularly those contributing to our national security.”

The research center, which will receive $18 million in funding annually for at least five years, will focus on artificial intelligence, machine learning and cybersecurity, with an emphasis on “autonomous systems.”

Danda Rawat, who is director of Howard’s Data Science and Cybersecurity Center, explained to the university newspaper, The Dig, that “Howard’s UARC will focus on advanced battle management systems (ABMS) and tactical autonomy, which the Air Force defines as autonomous systems acting with delegated and bounded authority of humans in support of tactical, short-term actions associated with a longer-term strategic vision in war.” He added that this research would “provide operational advantages to our war fighters.”

Stripping away the euphemisms, the center will be dedicated to the development and improvement of the US military’s killing machines, including the drones that for decades have wreaked terror and havoc in the United States’ neocolonial wars in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia—wars that have led to millions of deaths and the destruction of entire societies.

Howard’s partnership with the most reactionary and bloodstained institution on the planet is presented as a progressive advance for “people of color.” Speaking to The Dig, Howard Professor Bruce Jones explained, “There is a dearth of people of color going into these areas of tactical autonomy, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cyber security… This [contract] enables Howard University to provide a pipeline of students and faculty into these strategic areas. In securing this UARC, Howard acts as a model for other HBCUs to do the same.”

There are 14 other universities with Pentagon-funded UARCs, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin and Johns Hopkins University. While Howard is the first HBCU to be awarded this “prestigious” program, this is merely the latest step in the integration of HBCUs into the military-intelligence apparatus, part of the broader militarization of American higher education.

Eleven other HBCUs are classified under the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as R2 (Research 2) high research activity institutions, conducting research that can be utilized for military purposes, and in many cases specifically intended for military use.

A September 2022 issue of Diverse: Issues in Higher Education detailed the extent of this collaboration, quoting an Air Force spokesperson who reported: “The Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act required the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish a plan to elevate a consortium of Historically Black Colleges and Universities/Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCUs/MSIs), assess their ability to participate and compete in engineering, research, and development activities, and report the plan to Congress. … The goal is to grow and diversify the available pool of scientists and engineers to support more comprehensive solutions to the department’s most challenging problems.”

Among the “problems” being tackled by these research centers, such as the one located at the HBCU Florida A&M University (FAMU), is the issue of communication with hypersonic aircraft, which is difficult due to the high speeds involved. The solution would allow hypersonic craft to operate entirely unmanned, giving the US a military edge over its principal competitors, designated in the article as Russia and China.

The establishment of the UARC at Howard will open the road for the university to receive a Carnegie R1 (very high research activity) designation, which in turn will open the floodgates for even more funding and grants. This fact was noted with glee by the university’s president, himself a millionaire who answers to a wealthy Board of Trustees made up of venture capitalists and Democratic Party operatives.

The research center at Howard will provide the infrastructure for a consortium of HBCUs that will collaborate and share academic resources among themselves in support of the research. Among these schools are Jackson State University, Tuskegee University and Tougaloo College. The founding of the center at Howard will therefore serve as a catalyst for the further integration of these institutions into the military-intelligence complex.

The unholy alliance between the Pentagon and the wealthy executives who run Howard University is a demonstration of the fundamentally reactionary character of identity politics.

When the race- and gender-obsessed middle classes speak of “diversity,” they are referring to the elevation of a narrow layer of grasping careerists to well-paid positions in academia, the state and the corporate world. There is no contradiction between these aspirations and the war aims of American imperialism. Indeed, they are in lockstep: the wealth of these affluent layers is tied to Wall Street by a million threads.

On the other hand, this “diversity” has nothing to do with the interests of the great mass of the working class of all races, from whom the gargantuan costs of the ever-expanding military apparatus and its imperialist wars are extracted in the form of increased austerity and exploitation.

This basic contradiction has found its expression at Howard, which has a wealthy, mostly black administration, while it hosts mostly black students from working class backgrounds, who face deplorable living conditions on campus. Similarly, the mostly black faculty face low pay and high exploitation. The administration claims it has no money to pay for better dorms or higher wages, even as it receives millions of dollars to fund the latest weapons research.

The integration of Howard and other HBCUs into the military apparatus of US imperialism is part of the broader militarization of America’s colleges and universities, which are being transformed into a pipeline for trained technicians and specialists who can be put to use in the burgeoning military-intelligence field. Any aspect of academics that cannot be put to this use is deemed worthless. Hence the attempt by the Howard administration to shut down the university’s classical studies department in 2021, which was called off only after it provoked outrage among students and faculty.

Patient deaths on the rise due to health care understaffing

Kevin Reed

A poll of working registered nurses (RNs) in Michigan shows that understaffing is the number one issue they face, making hospitals unsafe and leading to an increase in patient deaths.

The poll was conducted by Emma White Research, an Ann Arbor-based public policy research agency, and explored registered nurses’ perceptions of their working conditions, the staffing shortage and the reasons nurses are leaving the profession. Several of the questions were the same as those asked in a similar poll in 2016. They show the changes in nurses’ views over the past seven years.

Emma White Research conducted the poll from January 2 through January 8 by holding 400 interviews via live mobile and landline phone calls and text-to-web communications among registered nurses living or working in Michigan. The nurses were selected from a list of RNs provided by the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA).

The poll was conducted on behalf of the Michigan Nurses Association (MNA), a union representing 13,000 nurses in Michigan. The MNA has been conducting a campaign for the passage of a “Safe Patient Care Act” by the Michigan legislature, that would set mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios.

The results of the poll, which were published on January 23, expose the dire conditions that nurses are working under across Michigan. The results are, in fact, a microcosm of the situation facing nurses throughout the US and around the globe.

The following is a summary of the key findings:

• More than seven in ten RNs say they are assigned an unsafe patient load in half or more of their shifts. Of the nurses polled, 71 percent said they agreed with the statement, “Nurses are often assigned too many patients at once.”
• More than nine in ten RNs say requiring nurses to care for too many patients at once is affecting the quality of patient care. Ninety-four percent of nurses responded that they strongly agree or somewhat agree with the statement, “Some people say that the quality of patient care in Michigan hospitals is suffering because hospitals are requiring registered nurses to care for too many patients at once.”
• Nurses reported increases in awareness in every category of negative patient outcomes as compared to 2016. The eight negative outcomes listed range from nurses lacking time to properly comfort patients and families (92 percent) to medication errors such as wrong medication, wrong dosage or missed medication (75 percent) and longer hospital stays (64 percent). Most categories increased by 10 percentage points or more from the 2016 poll results.
• A dramatic measure of the deteriorating conditions in hospitals was the number of nurses who say they know of a patient death due to nurses being assigned too many patients. This category nearly doubled from 22 percent in 2016 to 42 percent this year.
• Of those who plan to leave nursing within the next two years, 75 percent said staffing and nurse-to-patient ratios are the biggest problem on their jobs, and 85 percent say that they are assigned too many patients at once. Significantly, of these nurses planning to leave their jobs in the next two years, 58 percent said they know of a patient who died due to insufficient staffing.
• The vast majority of RNs, 79 percent, blame working conditions for the staffing crisis, rather than a shortage of qualified nurses.

The results of the poll paint a devastating picture of conditions in hospitals and health care systems in the tenth most populous state in the US. Since 2016, the working conditions for nurses in Michigan have deteriorated significantly, especially during the three years of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the staffing crisis in the health care industry preceded the pandemic and was markedly exacerbated by it. The disconnect between the needs of the public for increased health care services, the need of hospital employees for improved staffing resources, incomes and working conditions, and the drive by the health care industry for increasing profits and financial performance has been manifest for decades.

While the health care industry in Michigan received a collective $3 billion in emergency government funding during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has shown no inclination to reverse the decline in the number of nurses working in direct care. According to records maintained by the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA), there are 154,758 registered nurses with active licenses in Michigan, but the US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows just 102,480 are working as RNs in the state.

Any serious examination of the source of the staffing crisis points to the role of the for-profit health care industry, run by powerful capitalist and financial interests, that subordinate all aspects of patient care to the drive for profit.

The remaining segments of the poll were devoted to asking nurses if they support the “Safe Patient Care Act” which would “establish a limit on the number of patients a nurse is assigned at one time.” Nurses were also asked if the measure passes “do you think the quality of care for the patients you see will improve.”

The poll also asked about a law in Michigan that would “eliminate mandatory overtime for nurses.” On these questions, of course, the nurses polled were overwhelmingly in favor by a margin of 75 percent or more.

However, the campaign by the MNA for the passage of the “Safe Patient Care Act” seeks to conceal the root cause of the staffing crisis, and divert nurses away from a mass struggle against the corporate and political institutions responsible for the crisis.

As the MNA has shown repeatedly, such as when 6,000 nurses were blocked from taking strike action, and their contract fight at Michigan Medicine was betrayed last spring and summer, the union has no intention of organizing any fight to mobilize the strength of nurses and other health care workers against the capitalist interests responsible for the understaffing crisis.

Public anger grows as death toll in Turkey-Syria earthquake rises

Ulaş Ateşçi

The catastrophe is worsening after Monday’s 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes in Kahramanmaraş, on Turkey’s southern border with Syria, destroyed thousands of buildings in both countries.

Turkey’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced last night that the death toll from the earthquakes, which hit 10 cities in Turkey, has reached 5,434, with nearly 32,000 injured. Syria has also been hit hard: 1,600 people died, and nearly 4,000 people have been injured.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced yesterday that his government has decided to declare a state of emergency for three months in 10 cities hit by the earthquake. The bill is to be voted in parliament today.

Responding to widespread protests to his government’s inaction in the face of the earthquake disaster with an attempt at intimidation, Erdoğan claimed there is “national unity,” stating: “While the state and the nation are working hand in hand to overcome this historic disaster, we are closely monitoring those who intend to pit our people against each other with fake news and distortions.”

Erdoğan added: “When the time comes, we will bring them to account. Our prosecutors identify those who try to create social chaos with such inhumane methods and take the necessary actions swiftly.”

In reality, the social chaos in the region is the result of the government’s turning a blind eye to the widely foreseen earthquake disaster and its indifference to the consequences. Yesterday, while Agriculture and Forestry Minister Vahit Kirişçi was met with protests in Adana, masses of earthquake victims protested in the governor’s office in Adıyaman, chanting: “Adıyaman is unprotected.” Both cities were devastated by the earthquakes.

The government is trying to criminalize posts by journalists or social media users that reveal the almost complete lack of state response in the disaster area and the fact that millions of people, including those trapped under the rubble, are abandoned to their fate.

Yesterday, an anti-democratic investigation was opened against Tele1 TV journalists Enver Aysever and Merdan Yanardağ on charges of “public incitement to hatred and hostility” for their statements on the earthquake disaster.

Meanwhile, the Journalists’ Union in Turkey issued a statement last night, saying: “With the announcement of the state of emergency, journalists are being removed from the rubble in some regions. Investigations are being opened against TV commentators and social media users. They want to censor those who talk about negligence and places where help is not coming.”

Millions of people across the country and internationally have mobilized to collect and deliver aid to the earthquake victims. Many health care workers and miners trained in search and rescue have also volunteered to go to the region. However, coal miners in Zonguldak were only able to reach the affected region after 36 hours because the authorities did not arrange a plane.

Other aid personnel also had great difficulty in reaching the necessary places. Many volunteers complained on social media about the lack of coordination and organization by the state. Every moment lost worked against those under the rubble.

Around 23 million people in Turkey and Syria are thought to have been directly affected by the earthquake. The harsh winter conditions in both countries, with snow and rain, necessitated the rapid rescue of tens of thousands of people trapped under the rubble. However, neither in Turkey nor in Syria was this requirement met.

In Syria, divided by the 12-year war for regime change waged by NATO powers, including Turkey, and with many buildings damaged before the earthquake, the Damascus government’s ability to help earthquake victims continues to be undermined by crippling imperialist sanctions. There is no international aid or comprehensive search and rescue efforts in the affected towns in northern Syria.

In Turkey, the damage to highways and airports built on fault lines undermined the disaster response, but the Erdoğan government’s incapable response to the earthquake exposes its political bankruptcy. This is not a failure of this or that official but a reflection of the indifference of the financial oligarchy to the suffering and vital needs of the broad masses.

Remarkably, 36 hours after the earthquake, there were still places where search and rescue teams have not reached. In many places, urgent needs such as shelter, electricity, heating and water cannot be met. While earthquake survivors say there are many bodies under and above the rubble, these terrible conditions also point to the danger of disease outbreaks.

“With the addition of the search and rescue teams that have reached Hatay as of tonight, we will be doubling the number of teams for tomorrow,” Health Minister Koca said last night. However, these teams should have reached the affected in the very first hours.

According to Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) official Orhan Tatar, around 24,000 personnel of many different organizations are on duty in the earthquake zone. Since around 6,000 buildings in Turkey have completely collapsed, this means that for every building that collapsed, there are only four personnel on duty. This obvious inadequacy has led to the deaths of those trapped under the rubble, as search and rescue operations in many areas were either non-existent or started too late.

Speaking to BBC Türkçe yesterday morning, Arzu Dedeoğlu, a resident of Hatay’s Iskenderun district, said: “We waited until the evening but no one came. We brought a crane by our own means, but they didn’t want to and they intervened to stop. There are two children [under the rubble], my sister’s children, Ayşegül and İlayda. The children have passed away!”

Dedeoğlu cried out against the late arrival of aid, adding: “Why didn’t those who came now come before noon? We brought a generator by our own means, we tried, but we ran away when the apartment shook with the aftershocks.”

According to the same report, earthquake victims waited all day for help, but the cries from those trapped in the rubble stopped yesterday morning. “If you had come yesterday, we would have saved them,” another woman said.

In the same place, a citizen named Ali Önder expressed his anger at the state and the political establishment, stating: “I have eight people under the rubble. No one has come, and there is still no AFAD. Don’t let those who leave us alone like this come to ask for our votes, don’t! There is no one on behalf of the state, everyone pulled out their relatives by their own means. We dug with our hands!”

However, the government has deployed more police and gendarmes to the region than search and rescue workers specialized in earthquakes. According to Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, 18,000 gendarmes and about 10,000 police officers have been dispatched to the region, and 10,000 more will be sent.

Speaking to Cumhuriyet TV in Elbistan district of Kahramanmaraş yesterday, an earthquake victim said: “No one has arrived. Everyone is cold, and tents have not been set up. All living beings died under the debris. Not a single [official] person came. Elbistan was left to die.”

These massive earthquakes have long been expected, and scientists have explained what needed to be done to prevent such devastating consequences.

Hüseyin Alan, chairman of the Chamber of Geological Engineers, exposed the guilt of the government and the political establishment as follows: “There are many reports and academic articles on the fact that these faults will produce earthquakes and could break at any moment. Taking these into account, we have often tried to draw attention to this region. In fact, our Chamber has conducted studies for 24 cities and more than 500 neighborhoods and settlements on this fault. We have repeatedly said and written that these settlements should be prepared for earthquakes.”

He added: “We prepared and presented reports on this issue. We have presented this report to the President, to the relevant ministries. We have repeatedly pointed out that measures need to be taken. We didn’t get a single response. ... Not from the President, not from an MP ... No one turned to us. ... Not even a single improvement was made. All our warnings went unanswered. ... So the expected happened. It was blindingly obvious. We knew this was going to happen.”

In an interview with Habertürk TV channel yesterday, respected geologist Prof. Dr. Naci Görür emphasized that their warnings were not heeded. He explained: “It is clear what we will do. We have to build earthquake-resistant cities. The first priority of future governments should not be roads and airports. Of course they should also be built. But the first priority is to build earthquake-resilient cities that will ensure the safety of the people.”

Epidemics of Race-Based Violence and Police Brutality

Wim Laven

Have you ever spoken with a parent of black boys about the struggle and fear of keeping them safe? There are several familiar concerns, but a number that are unique. “He is 12 now and I think I need to tell him he is not allowed to wear hoodies anymore,” is such an example.

A great deal of research shows that white people and black people have different experiences with law enforcement. A friend explained: “when you get pulled over for speeding on your way to work you might call in and let them know you’ll be late. I call my wife and tell her that I love her.”

Some people think it hyperbolic, but that makes me uncomfortable. The evidence is irrefutable, racial bias in police violence is undeniable, even the prestigious international medical publication The Lancet reports: “Mounting evidence shows that deaths at the hands of the police disproportionately impact people of certain races and ethnicities, pointing to systemic racism in policing;” Black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than White men.

Focusing on numbers, while irrefutable at this point, has not created positive change. It often inspires victim-blaming, as in when the videos show police shooting an unarmed Black man and the response from some is, “but what happened before the recording started?” as though the Black person must have done something to deserve dying and the film is incomplete.

More people have been tracking the use of “copaganda” (coverage of police biased to show law enforcement in a positive light) and there is clear evidence—for better and worse—that people (on the whole) believe law enforcement is doing better job than they actually are.

Writing for The Nation, civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger reports: crime reporting is not based on “criminological facts,” reportage is marred by “alarmist headlines,” and “dehumanizing language,” with “overly simplistic stories” that “provoke fear in the public.”

Is it any wonder that dominant-culture people are not getting a good picture of the epidemic minority communities are experiencing?

Police departments have openly admitted, or some of their officers have declared, to using racial profiling as a “strategy” and continue to employ prejudicial technologies and practices. Even in liberal blue states like California, despite ongoing efforts demanded by the public and promised by politicians, the data shows the nationwide phenomena of racial profiling is resistant to improvement. From the San Francisco Chronicle just months ago:

Black people are far more likely to be stopped by police than white people, and that the disparity widened in 11 of the state’s 15 biggest law enforcement agencies from 2019 to 2020.

The problems of both profiling and subsequent violence by police are regularly referred to by police chiefs as “a few bad apples.” But it’s possible the failure to improve is related to the nature of some applicants to become police. The FBI has warned of the increasing threat of white nationalist and supremacist groups infiltrating law enforcement.

Thus the “bad apple” conversation ignores the systematic and structural realities. Policy and procedure have caused, created, and permitted the violence to occur.

For decades we have had bad apples growing on bad trees in polluted orchards. I’m tired of so much focus being on the apples at all. If we started addressing the copious amounts of cultural, institutional, and structural racism the prejudice and hate would not have a home in law enforcement.

We need to stop promoting warrior cops and violent retributive justice. We need to demilitarize our police departments and return to ideas of service. But most importantly we need to finally decide enough is enough; innocent people have been terrorized and killed by police for too long. We cannot continue to let them literally and acutely painfully get away with murder.

Number of police officers in UK schools increases by 300 in one year

Liz Smith

“Over-policed and under-protected: The road to Safer Schools,” a report by the Runnymede Trust think tank, reveals that there are 979 police officers in Britain’s schools.

This is an increase of nearly three hundred, or 43 percent, since the last research available, from 2021. The Safer Schools Officers (SSOs) are overwhelmingly in schools with high numbers of students eligible for Free School Meals (FSM), a key poverty indicator, and which also have higher numbers of black and minority ethnic students.

SSOs have powers that ordinary police officers do not. They may have ongoing permission to be present on school property which ordinary police officers do not. They are assigned to a school or a cluster of schools under a generally vague Safer Schools Partnership (SSP).

Half of the SSOs (489) are based in London in areas where social conditions are appalling. There are plans to further increase the number of SSOs by seven percent (65 officers) across the UK.

The Runnymede Trust think tank report, “Over-policed and under-protected: The road to Safer Schools" [Photo: runnymedetrust.org]

The report presents only a partial picture, based on a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to police forces in the UK of which only 43 responded. The forces that did not respond are Kent, Leicestershire, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Sussex, Northern Ireland and Lancashire Police Constabularies. They cover some densely populated areas, with schools in impoverished areas, including: the city of Leicester, where 20 percent of neighbourhoods are among the most deprived 10 percent nationally; Derby and the former mining areas of Chesterfield and Bolsover; and Lancashire, where towns like Blackburn, Burnley and Darwen have over 35 percent of child poverty.

According to a July 7, 2022 written answer to a question from a Green Party London Assembly representative on the number of police in schools, the office of London Mayor Sadiq Khan answered, “As of June 2022, the MPS have over 370 SSOs delivering 622 SSPs and a further 329 schools who have named officer support. In total 1014 schools either have an SSP or named school officer.”

The impetus for the Runnymede Trust research was the case of Child Q, which “brought to attention the presence of police in schools”. Child Q was a then 15-year-old black girl wrongly accused of possessing cannabis, who in 2020 was strip searched by Metropolitan Police at her school in Hackney. She was menstruating at the time.

The arrest triggered protests against the Met, who are still under investigation. An FOI by the Guardian in March 2022 revealed, “Metropolitan Police conducted around 9,000 strip searches on children in the past five years.”

A Children’s Commissioner’s report into the “Strip Search of Children by the Metropolitan Police Service in 2022” found that “of the 650 children strip searched by the Metropolitan police between 2018-2020, 95% were boys, and over half of the boys searched were black.” This widespread criminalising of children is potentially causing long-term psychological damage.

The drive to embed police in schools took place under the Labour government of Tony Blair (1997-2007) which in 2002 brought in the “Safer Schools Partnership Programme”. This was part of a raft of policies seeking to penalise parents and young people for social problems previously dealt with by social services and school welfare programmes, including the introduction of fines and imprisonment of parents for their child’s non-attendance.

The Runnymede Trust report comments, “This marked a development in the role and activities of police officers in school, who in the decade after, were tasked with a range of multi-agency preventative and enforcement work based in the school setting.”

The report identified a further shift rightwards when, following the police killing in 2011 of Mark Duggan, riots erupted in Tottenham and quickly spread across the country. In November 2011, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government introduced the Ending Gang and Youth Violence scheme. This insisted on the placement of police officers in schools as important to “identifying potentially at risk” young people and referring them for “further intervention to address their behaviour”.

Under the guise of fighting terrorism and preventing “radicalisation”, the Prevent Strategy was introduced by Labour in 2003, with the deliberate aim of demonising Muslims while reinforcing the apparatus for surveillance and intimidation to be used against the entire working class.

Prevent had its remit widened in 2011 by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government. In 2014, Prevent led to the introduction of “British values” in the school curriculum. This includes the promotion of “British democracy” and the “rule of law,” under conditions in which civil liberties are under a sustained offensive. The Ofsted inspection criteria for judging schools also insists that these supposed values are for all British citizens to adhere to.

In 2015, legislation made it a statutory duty for school, local authority, prison and National Health Service staff to report any individual deemed “vulnerable” to radicalization to the Prevent programme. A 2019 report by Liberty revealed that UK police forces have full access to private information, including the political views, of the thousands of men, women and children referred to Prevent. The information is available to police forces through the National Police Prevent Case Management (PCM) database, centrally managed by the national counter-terrorism body.

West Midlands Police [Photo by West Midlands Police / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0]

The section of the report “Young People’s Experience of a Regular Police Presence in Schools” shows the extent to which the presence of police in schools is now a daily experience for many children. It reports that 37 percent of children attended a school with a regular police presence. It notes, “Thirty-nine young people who attended or had attended a school with a regular police presence provided qualitative comments about their experiences. The vast majority of views expressed here were negative.”

Overall, the Greater Manchester report shows that the presence of police in schools stigmatises both schools and their students. Their presence “creates a climate of fear, anxiety and hostility for young people, particularly for those that are already marginalised,” with young people’s well-being, mental health, and attainment all impacted. “Put simply, police in schools feed a school-to-prison pipeline.” This forms part of the Runnymede Trust’s summary.

In the last two decades, state schools have been transformed into holding pens where teachers are subject to intense scrutiny, working within a national curriculum imposed with all the many legal government directives flowing from Safeguarding and Prevent legislation. One of the points made in the Manchester report is that the presence of police in schools adds to “existing school punishments – including detentions, isolation and exclusions, for example – this poses a real barrier to the positive development of young people.”

Behaviour policies in schools have as their core principle a punitive individual approach to the social problems that many young people find difficult to “leave at the door”. Over the last 15 years of austerity pastoral support in schools has been slashed, with under-resourced workers spending their entire time dealing with child protection and pressing social needs such as access to food, clothes, and welfare benefits--a situation that can only intensify under conditions of a severe economic crisis.

The Runnymede report pays lip service to wider social inequalities, but insists  throughout on prioritising race as the defining problem of a police presence in schools separate from any identification of the common class basis of the targeting of pupils, whether they are black, Asian or white. It insists, “The government should require all police forces in England to discontinue any further participation in Safer Schools Partnerships and withdraw Safer Schools Officers from schools”, because their presence, “disproportionally discriminates against black and ethnic minority pupils.”

The increasing police presence in schools and the entire policy of criminalising the classroom must be ended. While there is plenty of money to pay for police in schools, there is no money to pay for desperately needed education workers and other required additional staff. More must be trained and recruited to create a nurturing not a hostile environment. Tens of billions of pounds must be poured in to support children and young people with their educational, social and mental health needs.

Germany’s housing crisis: 700,000 more homes needed

Elisabeth Zimmermann

At a press conference in Berlin on January 12, 2023, the Social Housing Alliance presented the results of its recent study, “Building and Housing in Crisis—Current Developments and Repercussions on Housing Construction and Housing Markets.” Based on its research, the new study comes to the alarming conclusion that there is currently a shortage of 700,000 homes in Germany.

On entering office, the federal government, a coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) Greens and the neo-liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), pledged to build 100,000 new homes per year. In fact, only 20,000 social housing units (i.e., housing for less well-off members of society) have been completed.

The study was prepared by the Pestel Institute in Hanover and the Arbeitsgemeinschaft (ARGE) für zeitgemäßes Bauen in Kiel (Working group for contemporary building in Kiel). It was commissioned by the Berlin-based Social Housing Alliance, which includes the trade union IG BAU and the tenants’ association, as well as a Caritas social welfare association and two building associations active in housing construction.

The study finds a record shortage of affordable housing and especially of social housing. In its first year in government, the coalition of the SPD, Greens and FDP only managed to complete 250,000 to 280,000 new flats instead of the 400,000 planned.

Demonstration against excessively high rents in Berlin, 11 September 2021 [Photo: WSWS]

In addition, the situation is likely to worsen. Many social flats are coming to the end of their contract period, and too few new ones are being built. On the other hand, the population increased from 80.5 million in 2011 to around 84.5 million in 2022. While births in 2022 fell to their lowest level since 2014, and the death surplus reached a record high (not least due to the pandemic), net immigration rose to a peak of 1.5 million, largely due to the intake of refugees from Ukraine.

Matthias Günther, head of the Pestel Institute and responsible for the study, spoke about this development at a press conference on January 12. According to Günther, the situation on the social housing market is dramatic. At the same time, Germany already has a “record housing shortage of more than 700,000 missing flats.” According to Günther, it is the “largest housing deficit in more than 20 years.” He added, “In the case of affordable housing, the already massive supply gap is getting bigger; in the case of social housing, it’s long since reached an intolerable level.”

The Tagesschau newspaper highlighted the housing crisis in a special report on January 12. The report read: “Millions of social housing units are lacking. The smallest number are being built in areas where housing is needed, because that’s where the least money can be made for the construction industry.”

As it turns out, the stock of social housing is actually in decline. During the 1990s there were about 3 million social housing units in Germany; today there are only 1.1 million. The report is based on figures from the social association VdK, according to which there is currently a need for 5 million social housing units. VdK President Verena Bentele points out that today not only people who have been living in poverty or on low wages for a long time are dependent on social housing, but also a large number of families who were relatively well off a few years ago, but who are now in financial difficulties due to huge rent increases and the explosion of energy costs.

In common with the study, the Tagesschau report points out the discrepancy between the number of social housing units pledged and those actually built in 2022: in fact, the number of social housing units at the end of the year was down by about 27,000 compared to 2021. And in the course of the year, the number of social housing units which lost their controlled rent status after 25 to 30 years exceeded that of the 20,000 new state-subsidised buildings.

The Building and Housing in Crisis report shows that building projects, whether subsidised or not, are generally becoming more and more expensive. This is due to a number of factors: a large increase in the price of building materials as a result of disrupted supply chains since the coronavirus, rising inflation and the explosion of energy prices associated with the anti-Russian sanctions, and increased interest rates on bank loans. In the past, investors in state-subsidised construction projects were still able to earn a return on their investment, even with basic rents of €6 per square metre. But today, any such returns are eaten up by extra costs. For this reason, many cities only continue work on current construction sites, but hardly plan any new projects.

At the press conference on January 12, Professor Dietmar Walberg, ARGE Institute director, summed up the current construction costs: “The new construction of a rental flat in a large city today costs on average almost €3,980 per square metre. Added to this are apportioned costs of a good €880 for the land. Together, that makes almost €4,900 for a square metre of living space in rental housing. With that, we have clearly placed ourselves out of a range that makes freely financed new construction possible in the first place.” According to his forecast, by the middle of this year the cost of new construction will have increased by 148 percent, almost two-and-a-half times the figure from 2000.

Excessive rents in the large cities are already driving more and more people into hardship. More than 11 million tenant households in Germany are entitled to a housing entitlement certificate (WBS), and thus to social housing. However, social housing is only available for one in 10 of those entitled. As the report shows, there are only 1.1 million social housing units left in Germany.

By contrast, at the end of the 1980s, there were still about 4 million social housing units in West Germany alone. While in 1987 there were 25 social housing units for every 100 tenant households, today there are only five and this disparity is expected to worsen.

The Alliance demands that the government and the state urgently create a special fund for social housing. As a first step, €50 billion are needed for this special fund by 2025. This is the only way to achieve the target of 380,000 social housing units in this legislative period, set by the government in its coalition agreement. Three-quarters of the sum for the special fund “Social Housing”—at least €38.5 billion—must come from the federal government, the Alliance demands. The rest to be financed by the individual German states.

How is the federal government reacting to this alarming report?

Far from drawing conclusions from the report and providing the necessary financial means as soon as possible to build new social and affordable rental housing, Federal Minister for Housing, Urban Development and Construction Klara Geywitz (SPD) responded with the terse statement: “I presume that the figure of 400,000 flats in 2022 and 2023 is unachievable.”

The minister is seeking to buy time, declaring that a new construction target of 400,000 dwellings per year is realistically only achievable from 2024. Although the final completion statistics for 2022 will not be available until May, neither Geywitz nor other members of the government assume that this target will be reached.

Contractors also express strong doubts that the target can be reached in the foreseeable future. The television station ntv quoted on January 23 under the headline “Hard times for people looking for housing—Geywitz cashes in on the coalition’s housing construction target,” the assessment of the Federal Association of German Housing and Real Estate Companies (GdW) is that, at least in the medium term, the construction of just 200,000 flats per year is realistic.

The study presented by the Social Housing Alliance presents a great deal of valuable information on the housing shortage as one of the major social issues facing the working class. The demands for massive investment in social housing and more generally the construction of affordable housing are necessary and justified.

However, the results and analyses of the same study show that no positive change can be expected from the current government any more than from previous ones. After all, it is previous governments, in which the SPD has played a leading role, which are responsible for the catastrophic situation on the housing market.

Most recently, the government led by Olaf Scholz (SPD) was able to pull a special fund of €100 billion for the Bundeswehr out of the hat, and the budget for militarism and war is constantly being increased. At the same time, spending on health and education was massively reduced in the latest federal budget. The government has switched to warfare, and there is no money left in its war chest to combat social problems.

In Berlin, there were already mass protests in 2018 and 2019 against the deplorable housing situation, and the demand to expropriate major property companies, such as Deutsche Wohnen, gained mass support. Tens of thousands of people also took to the streets in many other cities against housing shortages and exploding rents.

On September 27, 2021, the day for the election of the government, 56.4 percent of Berliners voted in a referendum for the expropriation of the big housing corporations that rake in profits from the misery of millions of people. However, the Berlin Senate, a coalition of the SPD, Greens and Left Party, which hypocritically supported the referendum during the election campaign, has a ditched the majority decision of the city’s electorate.

PC manufacturer Dell announces 6,650 job cuts, 5 percent of total workforce

Kevin Reed

Dell, the multinational personal computer manufacturer and technology corporation, announced mass layoffs on Monday as part of a restructuring plan after a dramatic decline in computer sales in 2022.

Although the number of layoffs have not been disclosed officially by Dell, Bloomberg reported Monday that 5 percent of the company’s global workforce will be eliminated, or approximately 6,650 jobs.

In a post on Monday on the Dell Technologies Blog, entitled “Preparing for the road ahead,” company Vice Chairman and Co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said, “Market conditions continue to erode with an uncertain future” and previous steps taken “to stay ahead of downturn impacts” are “no longer enough.”

Clarke said the restructuring will affect the global sales, services and ISG engineering groups within the $30 billion corporation based in Round Rock, Texas. ISG is the division of Dell that provides corporate IT infrastructure and cloud computing solutions.

The Dell corporate executive—who has an estimated net worth of $257.5 million—went on to say, “Some members of our team will be leaving the company” and that making the job cuts was necessary “for our long term health and success.”

While the corporate parent Dell Technologies has other business units in smartphones, televisions, software, network and information security systems, 55 percent of its annual revenue comes from personal computer sales.

With 133,000 employees, Dell is the third-largest manufacturer of personal computers with 17.5 percent of worldwide market shares, behind Lenovo (24.1 percent) and HP (19.4 percent) and ahead of Apple (9.8 percent).

During the pandemic, Dell and other computer manufacturers benefited from a dramatic boom in sales. PC makers reported their fastest sales growth in 20 years at the beginning of 2021, when businesses and schools bought notebook computers in record numbers for employees working and students learning remotely.

According to International Data Group (IDG), a total of 348.8 million PCs were sold in 2021, the largest number since 2012, and a reversal of a years-long decline as consumers and businesses spent more money on smartphones and tablets.

By April 2022, the boom in computer sales was over, and by the end of the year, global PC sales had fallen by 28 percent. While all the other manufacturers experienced declines, Dell’s sales fell the farthest, dropping 37 percent in 2022.

The mass layoffs at Dell are the latest in a series to hit technology workers. Lenovo (6,000 job cuts announced in December) and HP (6,000 job cuts announced in November) had already taken measures in response to the 2022 sales drop. Among the other largest tech layoff announcements have been Alphabet/Google (12,000 jobs), Meta/Facebook (11,000 jobs), Microsoft (10,000 jobs) and Salesforce (8,000 jobs).

On January 31, PayPal announced 2,000 job cuts, or 7 percent of the company workforce. Like all the other corporate executives who have delivered news about layoffs, PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman said the cause was the “challenging macroeconomic environment,” and that cuts were part of “right-sizing our cost structure” and “focusing our resources on our core strategic priorities.”

Writing as if from the same script, the corporate officers express regret that the layoffs are necessary and pledge to provide assistance to those losing their jobs. In some cases, the executives take personal responsibility for the decisions that did not account for the changes in the business climate.

In every case, the layoffs—which have tragic consequences for those seeking jobs when all the employers are shedding workers—are presented as coming about by unforeseen and inexplicable business circumstances.

However, the deepening mass layoffs in the technology and other industries can be traced directly to government policy and, specifically, the steep interest rate increases of the US Federal Reserve and other central banks over the past year.

These rate increases are designed to impose the inflationary crisis—itself the product of central bank policy of pumping trillions of dollars into the financial system going back to the Great Recession of 2008—onto the working class by driving the economy into recession and deliberately increasing unemployment.