Mass protests growing in Serbia against the government and President Vučić

Markus Salzmann & Peter Schwarz

Demonstration in Belgrade during a general strike on January 24, 2025 [Photo by SergioOren / wikimedia / CC BY 4.0]

After four and a half months of constant protests, the Serbian capital Belgrade recently witnessed the biggest demonstration since the breakup of Yugoslavia more than 30 years ago.

At least 300,000 people—some estimates are even higher—demonstrated against abuses of power and corruption.

Students and pupils from all over the country, which has a population of just over 7 million, traveled to Belgrade. Numerous workers and pensioners also joined the demonstration, despite the government doing everything it could to make it impossible to travel to Belgrade. The state-owned railways and bus lines suspended services to the capital due to alleged terror warnings.

These measures, however, only sparked even more solidarity. Carpooling groups formed on social networks, and taxis and even private bus companies drove participants to Belgrade for free.

The demonstration was the highpoint so far of the wave of protests against the government and President Aleksandar Vučić that has been going on for months. In all the larger cities of the Balkan state, students in particular have repeatedly taken to the streets. Almost all universities in the country have been occupied for months, with university staff showing their solidarity with students.

The wave of protests has long since spread across the entire country. The Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA) recently reported 410 protest actions in 165 different locations in just one week. A study by the CRTA shows that 80 percent of the population support the students’ demands and that two-thirds are involved in the protests in some way.

The protests were triggered by the death of 16 people, including two children, following the collapse of a station canopy in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad in November last year. Just last week, the 16th fatality, a 19-year-old student, succumbed to his injuries. In response to the news of the young man’s death, students and schoolchildren blocked two central bus and tram depots, causing significant disruptions to public transport.

The collapse of the canopy was preceded by a renovation of the train station, but the dilapidated canopy was not replaced. Protesters blame the corruption rampant in the ruling party and the state apparatus for the tragedy and are demanding that all documents relating to the Novi Sad disaster be made public.

Furthermore, they demand that the attacks on students and professors during the protests be investigated and those responsible prosecuted. In addition, the proceedings against students who took part in the peaceful protests should be dropped and the education budget increased by 20 percent.

However, the protests go far beyond these limited demands. They are an expression of widespread opposition to the abuse of power and corruption of the ruling elites and to the intolerable social conditions for the majority of the population. While they are primarily directed against the president and government and the ruling right-wing nationalist Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), the country’s so-called opposition parties have so far been unable to gain a foothold among the protesters.

This is despite Vučić’s increasingly brutal crackdown on the protests and his attempts to divide the population by stirring up toxic nationalism and racism, provoking conflicts with neighboring states and oppressing minorities.

Vučić is pitting SNS officials, who are often linked to fascist groups, against the students in an attempt to intimidate them. During the demonstration in Belgrade, a notorious fascist unit associated with executions and war crimes in the 1990s marched. High-ranking SNS members, such as Vladimir Đukanović, who has repeatedly made headlines with his fascist outbursts, have threatened to fire into the crowd if protests continue.

In Belgrade, numerous protesters were arrested. Security forces used pepper spray and a sonic weapon against the peaceful mass demonstration. Although the authorities officially denied the use of a sonic weapon, video recordings and assessments by military analysts clearly confirm its use.

The use of sonic weapons is banned in Serbia, as it is in numerous other countries, because they can cause permanent damage to protesters. In addition to hearing loss and tinnitus, they can lead to headaches, dizziness, disorientation and even organ failure. On the evening of the protest, dozens of people presented themselves at the emergency rooms of the clinics with severe headaches and earaches.

The EU is backing Vučić

In Ukraine, Georgia and other successor states of the Soviet Union, pro-imperialist forces have repeatedly succeeded in splitting protests against abuse of power and corruption from the social struggles of the working class and in steering them into the wake of the European Union and the US in the form of so-called “color revolutions.” This has not yet happened in Serbia because the reactionary character of the EU and the US has become so obvious they can no longer pose as “democratic” alternatives to the authoritarian regime in Serbia.

The EU has openly backed Vučić in Serbia, whom it needs to repel the influence of Russia and China, integrate Serbia into the EU and exploit the country’s vast lithium deposits. For his part, Vučić is determined to continue on a path towards the EU, even if he repeatedly plays up the traditionally close relations between Serbia and Russia and the country’s economic ties with China to reinforce his status. China has invested billions in Serbia and is its second largest trading partner after Germany.

In October, shortly before the outbreak of mass protests, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Belgrade to thank “dear Aleksandar” for his “implementation of reforms, particularly with regard to the foundations of the rule of law and democracy.” “You have shown that you walk the talk,” she said, commending Vučić.

Three months earlier, in July 2024, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was also in Belgrade to attend the signing of a “Memorandum on Critical Raw Materials” that grants the EU access to Serbia’s lithium deposits. The Jadar mine, operated by the Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto, can meet 90 percent of Europe’s current lithium needs.

Massive protests against the environmentally destructive mining had previously forced the Serbian government to halt it for two years, until the project resumed under pressure from the EU. Many of those who took part in those protests went on to play a leading role in today’s demonstrations. It is no wonder, then, that there is little enthusiasm for the EU. According to surveys, only 40 percent of the Serbian population supports EU accession.

“As so often in the world, the EU has chosen to prioritize business interests, which do not necessarily go hand in hand with political liberalization, over freedom and democracy in Serbia,” commented political scientist Branislav Radeljic.

Vučić also plays a central role for the EU in the repulsion of refugees coming via the so-called Balkan route.

Vučić also has a good relationship with French President Emmanuel Macron. During Macron’s visit to Belgrade in 2024, Vučić purchased 12 Rafale fighter jets from the French manufacturer Dassault, worth €2.7 billion. Although the sum is unaffordable for Serbia, the political advantages that Vučić expects to gain were obviously worth the price to him.

Donald Trump’s administration—or more precisely, his family—is also pursuing its business interests in Belgrade with Vučić’s active support. On March 24, thousands protested in Belgrade against the construction of a luxury project by the US investment firm Affinity Partners, which is owned by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The property is to be built on the site of the former Yugoslav army headquarters, which was destroyed by a US air force attack exactly 26 years ago as part of the NATO war against Yugoslavia. The Serbian government has leased the property in the heart of Belgrade to Kushner’s company for 99 years.

The protests lack a viable perspective

Although the Serbian protest movement has so far not allowed itself to be hijacked by the EU or NATO, it lacks a viable perspective. The Green Left Front (ZLF), a party that emerged from the movement against the Jadar mine and other environmental protests, supports the protests but does not go beyond pious hopes for a reform of the parliamentary system and cooperation between all opposition parties.

“The Green-Left Front believes that the only solution for a way out of the crisis is the formation of a transitional government, which would be endowed with a time-limited mandate to ensure free elections and free media and urgently stop the theft of public funds through large infrastructure projects,” said Radomir Lazović, co-chair of the ZLF, to the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

Such a transitional government, the ZLF says, should revise voter lists to ensure fair elections and create conditions for objective media reporting. ZLF has initiated meetings with all of the opposition parties and insists that extra-parliamentary organizations and civil society be involved in this proposal, otherwise it would be manipulated by the authorities.

Such a proposal amounts to trying to cure a cancer patient by administering placebos. The cancerous growth of corruption and dictatorial rule, which has also infested the US and the European Union, cannot be fought with homeopathic remedies. It is the result of the rot of capitalist society. The dominance of billionaire oligarchs over economic life is just as incompatible with democracy as the global struggle for raw materials, markets and profit is with peace.

Huge earthquake causes death and destruction in Myanmar and Thailand

Peter Symonds

A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 that struck in Myanmar yesterday has killed more than 700 people in that country and neighbouring Thailand. The death toll, however, could rise into the thousands as bodies are recovered from the rubble and information comes in from towns and rural areas.

Rescuers work at the site of a high-rise building under construction that collapsed after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, March 28, 2025. [AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn]

According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), the quake occurred at around 1.30 p.m. local time at a depth of about 10 kilometres. Its epicentre was near Mandalay in central Myanmar—the country’s second largest city—and it was followed minutes later by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock. The relative shallowness of the earthquake has meant that its impact has been greater. 

Based on its analysis of the strength and depth of the quake, the USGS warned on Friday that “high casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread.” It predicted that more than 1,000 people may have been killed, with a death toll over 10,000 a strong possibility.

The official death toll in Myanmar so far is 694, with another 1,670 injured, according to an official statement reported by state media today.

In some places, buildings collapsed, Myanmar’s junta leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said in a televised speech yesterday, after visiting a hospital in the capital Naypyidaw. The junta declared a state of emergency across six regions.

State media reported that the quake caused the collapse of buildings in five cities and towns, as well as a railway bridge and a road bridge on the Yangon-Mandalay Expressway. Damage is likely to be far more extensive. Limited on-the-spot reportage from Myanmar includes photos of the twisted remains of a bridge over the Irrawaddy River near Mandalay and video footage of the spire of a pagoda collapsing.

A Mandalay resident told Reuters: “We all ran out of the house as everything started shaking… I witnessed a five-storey building collapse in front of my eyes. Everyone in my town is out on the road and no one dares to go back inside.”

A rescue worker in Mandalay told the news agency that the bodies of 30 people had been recovered from collapsed multi-story apartment blocks. “I have never experienced anything like this before—our town looks like a collapsed city,” he said, estimating that about a fifth of the buildings had been destroyed…

“We received calls for help from people from the inside, but we cannot help because we do not have enough manpower and machines to remove the debris, but we will not stop working.”

A Red Cross spokesperson in Yangon, the country’s largest city, said the damage to public infrastructure included roads, bridges and public buildings, adding that there were also concerns over the stability of large-scale dams.

In his televised address, General Hlaing made a direct appeal for international assistance: “I would like to invite any country, any organisation, or anyone in Myanmar to come and help. Thank you.”

The UN, EU and US, along with other countries and agencies, have promised aid, but none has spelled out what they are planning to provide. 

Responding to reporters, Trump tossed off the offhand remark: “It’s a real bad one, and we will be helping.” His administration, however, has already eliminated more than 90 percent of US foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall international assistance. 

All USAID direct hire personnel, with few exceptions, internationally have been placed on administrative leave. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced yesterday that most would be fired.

The Myanmar disaster is being compounded by the country’s ongoing civil war. It erupted after the military seized power in a coup in February 2021, deposing the democratically-elected government headed by the National League for Democracy (NLD) of Aung San Suu Kyi.

The junta violently cracked down on protests, shooting demonstrators on the streets. Thousands were killed and many more arrested. Others fled to regions controlled by separatist ethnic militias that have been battling the military for decades.

Over the past four years in these areas, a coalition of forces has established a National Unity Government (NUG) in opposition to the junta.

In a phone call with Reuters, Zin Mar Aung, a top NUG spokesman, said troops from militias aligned with it, known as the People’s Defence Forces, would provide humanitarian help. “It’s very serious, we need humanitarian and technical assistance from the international community.”

The impact of the earthquake was felt beyond Myanmar. In Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, over a thousand kilometres from the epicentre, a 33-storey building under construction collapsed into a heap of rubble. So far, 10 people have been confirmed dead, but at least a hundred others are missing.

Bangkok was declared a disaster zone after tremors caused buildings to sway dangerously. Thousands of people in the megalopolis of 17 million were forced to evacuate their homes and workplaces.

Later yesterday, Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra told residents they could return home, saying the affected area was limited in scope. The full extent of the damage in Thailand, however, is not known.

Tremors were also felt in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, which neighbours Myanmar. In the border town of Ruili, residents ran away from a high-rise residential building as it shook violently, as shown by a video posted on the Weibo social media platform. Violent shaking was also felt by people in the Chinese city of Mangshi, about 100 kilometres northeast of Ruili.

The earthquake occurred on the Sagaing fault, running roughly north-south. It marks the boundary between the Indian tectonic plate to the west and the Eurasian plate to the east. According to Bill McGuire, a professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, it was probably the biggest quake on the Myanmar mainland in three-quarters of a century.

Given the length of time since the last major earthquake, it is likely that many of the buildings in Myanmar, one of the world’s poorest countries, have not been constructed to withstand quakes.

“A combination of size and very shallow depth will maximize the chances of damage,” McGuire said. “It is highly likely that build quality will generally not be high enough to survive this level of shaking, and casualty numbers will almost certainly climb significantly.”

Yesterday’s earthquake was the strongest recorded globally since a 7.8- magnitude quake struck Turkey and Syria two years ago, causing more than 60,000 fatalities.

Antimicrobial resistance crisis a major threat to human health

Frank Gaglioti

Microbiologist works with tubes of bacteria samples in an antimicrobial resistance and characterisation lab at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [AP Photo/David Goldman]

A stark warning of the impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) or so-called superbugs was issued in January by Sally Davies, who was Britain’s chief medical officer from 2010 to 2019. She told the Guardian: “About a million people die every year because of the spread of microbial resistance, and that figure will rise over the next 25 years. It is really scary.”

Davies has long advocated for measures to resolve what has become a major health crisis and, in 2013, wrote a book entitled “The Drugs Don’t Work: A Global Threat.” In 2022 the issue became very personal when her 38-year-old god daughter Emily Hoyle, who suffered from cystic fibrosis and was severely immune compromised, died after acquiring a drug-resistant lung infection.

“I’ve started calling it [AMR] the Grand Pandemic.… It’s the third most important underlying cause of death in the world,” she told The Naked Scientists.

The death toll Davies calculates, while shocking, may be a significant underestimation. An editorial published in the prestigious British medical journal, the Lancet, last May “Antimicrobial resistance: an agenda for all” cited a study from 2022 that “almost 5 million deaths per year are associated with drug-resistant bacteria, with a higher burden among low-income and middle-income countries.”

The Lancet also published an important assessment of the developing AMR crisis in September 2024 entitled “Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance 1990–2021: a systematic analysis with forecasts to 2050.”

“Our forecasts show that an estimated 1·91 million (1·56–2·26) deaths attributable to AMR and 8·22 million (6·85–9·65) deaths associated with AMR could occur globally in 2050,” the researchers stated. When compared to their estimate for 2021 of 1.14 million deaths, their forecast represents a 67.5 percent increase in annual deaths in the next 25 years directly attributed to bacterial AMR.

The study also predicted: “Super-regions with the highest all-age AMR mortality rate in 2050 are forecast to be south Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean.”

The emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains threatens to set back the world a hundred years to the age when even a minor infection from a cut or an infection acquired during childbirth could result in a life-threatening condition.

This only changed with the development of the first antibiotic, penicillin, in 1928 by Alexander Fleming in London. Penicillin only became widely used during World War II when mass production was developed in the 1940s in the US by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain to treat wounded soldiers. This was the start of the “antibiotic era.”

Professor Alexander Fleming at work in his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital, London [Photo: Ministry of Information]

It is difficult to imagine today the impact of infection not only on individuals but on whole populations. Infectious diseases such as syphilis, scarlet fever, pneumonia, rheumatic fever, bacterial meningitis and diphtheria ravaged societies. Infections acquired during surgery were eliminated enabling the development of more complex surgical procedures.

Antibiotics virtually eliminated puerperal (childbed) fever, caused by Streptococcus pyogenes which was a major cause of maternal death. Penicillin greatly reduced the risk of infection during more complicated birth procedures such as C-sections. The impact of infectious diseases had vast social and political implications for society. The rise of superbugs threatens the return of these diseases.

Antibiotic resistance develops as a natural consequence of the use of antibiotic drugs. The use of a particular drug eliminates organisms susceptible to that antibiotic, allowing any survivors to develop into a resistant strain. Over time, particularly with widespread overuse of antibiotics, resistant strains emerge to an ever-wider range of drugs.

Today a handful of antibiotics are reserved to attempt to deal with the most-deadly resistant bacteria. This includes Carbapenems used to treat multi-drug resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae usually found in urine and Pseudomonas aeruginosa that commonly exists in the environment, in water, plants and soil, causing pneumonia and infecting the urinary tract, blood and wounds. Along with several other antibiotics of last resort they have to be used very judiciously as they can also have severe side effects.

The discovery of antibiotics was a great scientific and medical discovery, but under capitalism such breakthroughs are perverted and distorted in the interests of profit. In her Guardian interview, Davies points to some of these issues.

She especially highlights the massive overuse of antibiotics in agriculture where 70 percent of all antibiotics are used on livestock—a huge arena for the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. While some antibiotics are reserved for the exclusive use of the agriculture industry many human antibiotics are used as well. The drugs are not used to treat sick animals but to prevent infection in order to enable agribusinesses to keep animals in cramped and unsanitary conditions, and thus boost profits.

Davies explained that the overuse of antibiotics enables superbugs to become established in the environment: “If you’ve got intensive farming where a lot of antibiotics are used or a busy hospital that has a poor sewage system, resistant bacteria can get into waterways. Winds blow over these patches of contaminated land or water and pick up bacteria and genes with resistance in them, then let them rain down in other places. That is how pernicious this problem has become.”

A paper by Zahra Ardakani and her team at the University of Bologna in Italy entitled “Evaluating the contribution of antimicrobial use in farmed animals to global antimicrobial resistance in humans” was published in One Health in December 2023. It found that the nonresponse to antibiotics frequently used in animal farming is also high in human patients. At the same time, it is low for the antibiotics rarely used on animals.

The researchers explained: “For example, E. coli resistance to Aminopenicillins is found at 73.3 percent (extremely high), while E. coli resistance to Glycylcyclines, banned in animal farming, is 0.78 percent (very low resistance). For S. aureus, resistance to Macrolides represents 56.0 percent, considered very high, while resistance to Vancomycin, a more recent antibiotic banned in animal farming, is very low (0.22 percent).

“This evidence shows the importance of avoiding the use of critical antibiotics for both humans and farmed animals,” Ardakani et al. commented.

While Davies focuses on agriculture, general practitioners and hospitals, often acting under pressures of time and patient expectations, are a significant contributor to the development of antibiotic resistance. Doctors, who prescribe antibiotics for viral conditions such as the flu, know antibiotics will not combat viruses and will at best prevent secondary infections. Patients, who stop taking the full course of their anti-biotic because they feel better, also contribute to the development of drug resistance. Hospitals in particular are a hotspot for antibiotic resistance as antibiotics are over used and vulnerable patients become a reservoir for the superbugs.

According to the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) “Nearly 2 million Americans per year develop hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), resulting in 99,000 deaths—the vast majority of which are due to antibacterial-resistant pathogens.”

In some hospitals where anti-resistant microbes have become entrenched, this can lead to serious complications and even death. In 2021, at the University Hospital in Geneva in Switzerland, resistant Enterobacter cloacae infected patients in the intensive care unit. The bacteria were spread through the hospital’s plumbing and ventilation system.

The lack of new drugs to combat antibiotic resistance strains is not an accident. As Davies explained, the giant pharmaceutical companies are simply not uninterested in funding the necessary research.

“We’ve had no new classes of antibiotics come into routine use since the late 80s and the market model that would promote the creation of new ones is broken. If you develop a new antibiotic, it might be used by someone for a weekly course once a year. Where’s the profit in that?… So there is no incentive for them to try to develop new antibiotics. It is a real headache,” she commented.

Antibiotic resistant microbes have become a particular problem for poor countries as the use of antibiotics is not regulated and they are often readily available, leading to their misuse. The prevalence of infectious diseases and the lack of proper medical care has led to the inappropriate use of antibiotics for viral conditions such as HIV/Aids. Many of these societies lack clean drinking water and basic sanitation and people live in overcrowded conditions providing a perfect breeding ground for superbugs. In agriculture, antibiotics are used to boost the productivity of livestock and to keep the animals healthy. Any developing superbugs can be easily transferred to the human population. Antibiotic resistant microbes can be spread internationally through travel and migration.

Although Davies and other principled scientists have taken an important stance in highlighting the AMR crisis, their aim is to pressure governments to act to resolve the crisis.

Davies commented on the Lancet: “Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance 1990–2021” study: “This landmark study confirms that the world is facing an antibiotic emergency, with devastating human costs for families and communities across the world. It substantiates our calls to all sectors to take decisive action now to save lives and save modern medicine for generations to come, and address the needs of low-and-middle income countries who bear the greatest tragedies from AMR.”

Not surprisingly, Davies’ remarks, despite her previous role as chief medical officer, have fallen on deaf ears. Governments around the world have used the ongoing COVID pandemic to ditch their support for public health, dismantling even minimal mitigation measures as an impost on the profits of the oligarchs. In this case, a virus is being allowed to debilitate and kill, and mutate unimpeded into new and potentially deadlier strains.

In November 2021, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson notoriously blurted out the attitude of ruling classes around the world: “No more f***ing lockdowns, let the bodies pile high in their thousands!” Now Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a notorious anti-vaxxer and purveyor of quack remedies, has been installed by Trump as health secretary in the United States.

OECD report points to mounting global debt crisis

Nick Beams

A report issued by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) earlier this month has pointed to mounting debt problems in the world economy, which are being intensified by the rise in interest rates.

Global Debt Report 2025: Financing Growth in a Challenging Debt Market Environment [Photo by OECD Publishing, Paris / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Among its findings is that across the membership of the organization, comprising 38 countries and all the major economies, the interest bill on government debt is swallowing up an ever-greater amount of government revenue with no sign this will decrease. Debt service costs rose to 3.3 percent of GDP in 2024, up from 2.4 percent in 2021, amounting to more than $2 trillion.

The value of outstanding government and corporate bonds in the OECD exceeded $100 trillion last year, with global GDP at between $105 and $110 trillion. Governments and corporations in the OECD borrowed $25 trillion in 2024, almost triple the level of borrowing in 2007 before the global financial crisis the following year.

Much of the increase in borrowing over the past decade and a half has been because of measures taken in response to the global financial crisis and the outlays as a result of the pandemic. This money was used, in the main, to provide handouts and in some cases bailouts for corporations while virtually free money was pumped into the financial system, boosting stock market and other forms of speculation.

Debt raised in this period, corporate and government, was at ultra-low rates, even negative in some cases.

But with the onset of inflation in 2021, the highest in four decades, and the subsequent lifting of interest rates starting in 2022, debt servicing problems have continued to grow.

And they will increase. This is because, as the OECD report explained, the current debt stock is “largely a legacy of the low-interest rate period” and “most outstanding debt carries a cost that is much lower than current market rates, and likely to be lower than the cost of borrowing going forward.”

At the end of 2024, more than half of OECD sovereign debt, 30 percent of emerging market debt, 63 percent of corporate debt, and 74 percent of non-investment grade debt had interest costs below the prevailing market level.

But that situation is changing rapidly as existing debt must be refinanced at much higher interest rates.

The report noted that 45 percent of OECD countries’ sovereign debt will mature by 2027 and must be rolled over, together with around one-third of corporate debt.

Even before the full impact of interest rate increases takes effect on the debt mountain, there has been a very sharp increase in interest payments. The OECD noted that while the effect of interest rate rises tended to be gradual “nonetheless, between 2021 and 2024, interest costs to GDP increased from the lowest to the highest level in the last 20 years, reflecting the speed of recent changes.”

The growing crisis is most graphically expressed in the US, where government debt is $36 trillion, and interest payments are around $1 trillion and set to become the biggest item in the budget.

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the US debt-to-GDP ratio would rise from its present level of around 100 percent to 109 percent in 2027.

The CBO warned that 'mounting debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of US debt, and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook.'

Growing debt problems are not confined to the US but extend across the major economies. An example was provided this week with the bringing down of the Australian Labor government’s budget. It recorded that government debt had reached the $1 trillion mark and the interest bill was increasing at 9.5 percent, the fastest rate of increase of spending of any item in the budget.

The OECD noted a significant fact about the growth of corporate debt, highlighting the growing divorce between the financial operations of corporations and the underlying real economy.

Corporate bond issuance had grown significantly above trend, but corporate investment, that is, spending on new factories, technology, that is the development of the productive forces needed to promote real growth, had not.

“Rather than productive investment, much debt in recent years has been instead used to fund financial operations like refinancing… and shareholder payouts. This suggests existing debt is unlikely to ‘pay itself off’ through returns on productive investments,” the OECD report said.

The economy, in all major countries, is increasingly coming to resemble an inverted pyramid in which a growing amount of non-productive debt sits on top of a relatively smaller productive base.

The OECD warned of growing financial turbulence from at least two sources. As central banks withdrew from the debt through “quantitative tightening”—the reduction of their financial asset holdings—the “existing investors will need to buy more debt or new, likely more price-sensitive, investors will need to enter the market, which could increase volatility.”

Foreign investors would be needed in all markets, and this demand depended on the level and functioning of international financial flows.

“However, geopolitical tensions and trade uncertainties may lead to rapid changes in risk aversion that could, in turn, disrupt certain international portfolio flows.”

So far at least, the worsening situation had not led to a major increase in corporate defaults, and no major economy had defaulted or undergone a significant debt restructuring. But debt trajectories in recent years could not be ignored.

The report noted that “several sovereigns” were “shortening the maturity of their issuance” of debt. The US is a major example of this trend.

Increasingly, new debt is being issued at the short end of the market for two-year Treasury bonds rather than for ten-year bonds. This action by the Federal Reserve is being undertaken because of fears that there will be a shortage of investors at the longer end of the markets, and this deficiency of demand will lead to a lowering of bond prices and a rise in their yields or interest rate. (Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.)

But this maneuver has its downside because an increased reliance on the short end of the market, where rates can move more sharply, “can amplify already heightened financial risks.”

The body of the report, which runs to more than 170 pages, made virtually no mention of the spending policies of governments. But the executive summary contained a winged sentence that indicates the direction these policies must take.

“Many governments,” it said, “will likely mean a combination of prudence, structural reforms to boost growth, and greater efficiency in public spending.”

What these anodyne terms mean is a deepening assault on the social position of the working class—major cuts in spending on services necessary for modern life and intensified exploitation of workers via so-called “structural reforms.”

The attacks are already underway as military spending is increased. In the US, Elon Musk, the head of Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, has labeled the Social Security system a “Ponzi scheme,” the clear implication being that it should be subjected to his “chainsaw.”

In Europe, the so-called “peace dividend” is at an end with all governments increasing their military spending to record levels, with German imperialism leading the way with an allocation of €1 trillion on war to be financed by the release of the so-called debt handbrake.

200 people jailed as mass protests continue in Turkey

Ulaş Ateşçi

CHP leader Özgür Özel is addressing the demonstrators protesting against the arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu in front of the building of Istanbul Municipality in Saraçhane, İstanbul, March 25, 2025 [Photo: herkesicinCHP]

Some 1,500 people have been detained and 200 sent to prison across Turkey as mass protests continue against the arrest of Istanbul Mayor and Republican People’s Party (CHP) presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu last week.

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Saraçhane Square on Tuesday, where over 1 million gathered on Sunday to protest the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after İmamoğlu was arrested and sent to prison. Protests continued on Monday, while school boycotts and mass demonstrations by university students have grown. The CHP announced the next rally in Istanbul will be held on Saturday in Maltepe Square.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on Tuesday that a total of 1,418 people have been detained since March 19. On Tuesday alone, 174 people were arrested and sent to prison in Istanbul. Four people were arrested in Kocaeli and ten in Izmir.

The Sosyalist Eşitlik Grubu (Socialist Equality Group, SEG), the Turkish section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), and the World Socialist Web Site condemn the arrests and detentions and demand the immediate release of all political prisoners.

Among those arrested are several journalists and leading members of the Labor Party (EMEP), the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), the Left Party, the Communist Movement of Turkey (TKH) and the Social Freedom Party (TÖP).

On Wednesday morning, many others were detained in Istanbul, Bursa and Adana as the police continued their house raids. Among those detained was academician Levent Dölek, deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (DİP) and representative of educators’ union, Eğitim-Sen at Istanbul University.

Dölek was detained for “violating the law on meetings and demonstrations” by participating in a one-day work stoppage organized by Eğitim-Sen in solidarity with the ongoing student boycott at universities. The governorships of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir unconstitutionally declared “protest bans” last week but they were overturned by the defiance of the youth and working masses.

Students from several universities in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir started a school boycott on Monday to defend democratic rights and protest the government. Faculty members of the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara organized a march to protest the operation targeting Eğitim-Sen for its strike.

University students, who have been organizing marches and demonstrations for days despite police repression, staged one of the largest student protests in Istanbul in decades on Tuesday. According to news reports, the students’ joint protest march was two kilometers long.

CHP leader Özgür Özel declared that the Erdoğan government’s “coup attempt” against İmamoğlu has been defeated, stating: “The coup attempt on March 19 was to install a trustee appointed by an indigestible coup plotter who could not defeat the elected İstanbul mayor. We sincerely thank the tens of millions of people they did not take into account for defending the will of İstanbul and defeating the coup.”

However, İmamoğlu was unlawfully removed from his post as mayor and sent to prison, and it is unclear whether he will be able to run for president in the next elections. The CHP is the founding party of the Turkish Republic established by Atatürk.

İmamoğlu, the only candidate in the CHP’s presidential primaries on Sunday in which 15 million people participated, had his university degree, a requirement for candidacy, revoked the day before he was detained.

In his remarks to Tuesday night’s rally, Özel addressed Erdoğan and demanded İmamoğlu’s hearings be broadcast live on state-owned TRT channel. On Wednesday, Erdoğan signaled that the crackdown on the CHP would continue, implying that the ruling in the case of İmamoğlu had already been made.

“İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality and some district municipalities [run by CHP] seem to have written the book on cannibalism when it comes to theft. The extent of the shame that began with the irregular diploma [of İmamoğlu] and continued with the bribery and extortion ring that wrapped around the whole city like an octopus has been revealed with the latest operation,” Erdoğan said, adding, “All kinds of illegality, including corruption, amounting to 100 billion liras, have been revealed.”

He continued: “Moreover, these are the crimes that the judiciary accused them of based on information coming from inside the CHP. Bigger ones will follow… Instead of shedding light on the allegations, the CHP leadership preferred to play cheap politics and tried to create chaos in the country by taking people to the streets.”

In reality the CHP did not take the people to the streets, but did its best to control the masses who took to the streets spontaneously, seeking to prevent the movement from radicalizing and subordinating it to capitalist rule.

On Tuesday, Finance Minister Mehmet Şimsek and Central Bank Governor Fatih Karahan held an online meeting with many investors from North America, the United Kingdom, Europe and the Middle East to reassure finance capital. The Central Bank is estimated to have sold around US$26 billion in three days as the Turkish lira plunged against the US dollar after İmamoglu’s detention last week.

“The increase in inflation expectations will not require a second increase in the minimum wage for the time being,” said Şimşek, pointing out that the price of the financial turmoil will be paid by workers who have been subjected to a severe austerity. Official annual inflation was 39 percent in February.

The sharp decline in the living conditions of workers and youth played an important role in the eruption of mass anger against the Erdoğan government over the detention of İmamoğlu. The austerity program led by Şimsek, which the CHP supported, has led to a severe decline in real wages. This has provoked wildcat strikes in many sectors, from metal workers to miners, textile workers to construction workers. Most recently, on Tuesday, hundreds of workers at the construction site of the strategic Akkuyu nuclear power plant in Mersin, a joint venture with Russia, walked off the job because they were denied a wage increase for the new year.

Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan traveled to Washington on Tuesday for a two-day official visit. After talks with his US counterpart Marco Rubio, the State Department issued a statement saying the secretary of state “expressed concerns regarding recent arrests and protests in Türkiye.”

New study finds that the world’s glaciers are melting at an accelerating rate

Philip Guelpa

The Punta Rocca glacier near Canazei, in the Italian Alps in northern Italy, where a huge chunk broke loose in July 2022. [AP Photo/Luca Bruno]

A newly published scientific study, (“Community estimate of global glacier mass changes from 2000 to 2023,” Nature, 19 February 2025), finds that the world’s mountain glaciers are melting at a faster rate than ever recorded and that rate is accelerating. This will have many dire consequences both for humans and the environment as a whole. 

Glaciers are large masses of ice, formed in colder regions, usually in mountains, where the accumulating winter snow does not completely melt away during summer. Over many years, snow builds up, gradually compacting and consolidating into ice. Eventually, the weight of the ice becomes such that it begins to “flow” downhill at a slow pace. The dynamic balance between snow accumulation during winter and melting during summer determines whether a glacier expands or contracts. Due to global warming, glaciers around the world have been contracting at an increasing rate. 

The new data shows that the rate of melting is now (2012-2023) more than a third (36 percent plus or minus 10 percent) greater than that during the preceding period, 2000-2011. Since the beginning of the century, mountain glaciers have lost more than 6,500 billion metric tons of ice, 5 percent of the total.

There are currently a total of more than 200,000 mountain glaciers of varying sizes throughout the world. 

They hold enough frozen water to raise sea levels world-wide by 32cm (13 inches), if totally melted. This would inundate many low-lying coastal areas, especially due to storm surge. That is not even counting the massive ice sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland, which currently hold 99 percent of fresh water ice on earth. Total melting of the Antarctic ice sheet alone would raise sea levels by another 60 meters (200 feet) and Greenland would add an additional 7.4 meters (24 feet). Combined, this would cause an incalculable catastrophe. 

In addition, glacial runoff provides fresh water for millions of people around the world. The loss of this resource, if all the glaciers were to disappear, would cause massive economic and social disruptions and population migrations. Yet, this is the inevitable outcome if global warming is not halted and reversed. 

The current study in Nature is the most comprehensive yet on this topic. It combines data from more than 230 regional estimates gathered by 35 internationally based research teams. 

Until the advent of the industrial revolution, when the burning of fossil fuels began to increase massively, releasing greenhouse gases, fluctuations in glacial ice masses were subject to natural climate variation. In general, the loss of glacial ice due to warm weather melting was balanced by cold season snowfall and changes were relatively gradual. The rate of melting now being observed exceeds anything previously recorded since the end of the last ice age, roughly 11,500 years ago. Human civilization has developed and is adapted to this post-ice-age environment. 

Since 2000, the annual rate of glacial melting has risen dramatically, from less than 100 gigatons to more than 500 gigatons. 

To arrive at these numbers, the researchers used a variety of methods, from direct measurements on the ground to data from satellite imagery, the combination of which raises the level of confidence in the reliability of the result. 

It was also found that glacial ice is far more vulnerable to climate change than the massive ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, due to the latter’s larger mass and depth which result in a lower surface to volume ratio (i.e., less ice directly exposed to warm air). This disparity is also reflected in the contrast between the total volumes of glacial ice loss from larger glaciers and the proportional losses relative to the sizes of individual glaciers between regions.

The greatest total volumes of glacial ice loss contributing to the global total were recorded in Alaska (22 percent), the Canadian Arctic (20 percent), peripheral glaciers in Greenland (13 percent) and the southern Andes (10 percent). However, the greatest relative losses (i.e., reductions in glacial size) occurred in regions with smaller glaciers, including Central Europe (-39 percent), the Caucasus (-35 percent), New Zealand (-29 percent), North Asia (-23 percent), and Western Canada and USA (-23 percent). 

A separate report prepared by the United Nations agency UNESCO assesses the impact of melting glaciers on the world’s population. It finds that the retreating glaciers threaten the food and water supplies of 2 billion people. The combination of the loss of glacial meltwater and diminished snowfall in mountainous regions due to global warming will adversely affect irrigated agriculture. Many of these areas are already experiencing food insecurity.

Regions significantly affected include East Africa, which has lost 80 percent of its glaciers in some places, and the Andes, where between a third and a half of glaciers have melted away since 1998. 

The rapidly melting glaciers and diminishing and irregular rains are not only impacting poorer regions of the world. For example, the Colorado River basin has been in drought since 2000. Reduced rain and snowfall combined with higher temperatures have significantly lowered river levels, creating conditions in which various users of water resources, including urban areas, farmers and Native American nations are locked in seemingly irreconcilable conflict over the division of water allocations. 

Another factor in the acceleration of glacial melting is the loss of the “albedo effect.” White snow and ice reflect more sunlight and therefore absorb less heat than dark soil and rock. Therefore, as glaciers melt and retreat spatially, more of the darker underlying surface is exposed, creating a positive feedback (i.e., self-reinforcing) loop of more heat retained in the earth and even faster melting. 

Historically, mountain glaciers and winter snowpack melt relatively more slowly, releasing water over an extended period as compared to runoff from rain, thereby creating a more steady, predictable supply of water for agriculture and human consumption than often more variable rainfall. However, global warming is upsetting that balance. Warmer global temperatures mean that there is less snowfall, and it melts more quickly. At the same time, growing seasons are lengthened but without a commensurate increase in the quantity and continuity of available water. 

The study published in Nature projects that, at the current rate, half of the world’s glacial mass will be lost by the end of the century. 

Every year that greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced means that the rate of glacial melting will continue to accelerate. Since 1900, sea level worldwide has risen 20cm (8 inches) due to melting from all sources plus expansion of the volume of ocean water due to warming. Approximately half of that increase has occurred during the last 35 years.