7 Info-Technology Skills you need to secure your Financial Future in today’s Workplace

Within a few years, information went from being stored in file cabinets, to floppy discs, to flash drives, to shared servers and now to clouds. Today employees are being laid off in large numbers, not because of the bad economic times, but mostly because of technology shift.

Think about this statement by Bill Gates while speaking at The American Enterprise Institute, Washington D.C. Economic Think Tank –

Big changes are coming to the labor market that people and governments aren’t prepared for. Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs… I don’t think people have that in their mental model

Whatever business or profession you are in right now, some persons somewhere out there, right now are trying to figure out how to do your job faster and more efficiently with technology. And the more they breakthrough, the more people will lose their jobs.

Employers are no longer looking for a large work force to fill their payroll. They need people who’ll be more efficient, productive and deliver measurable value to the company. With this atmosphere in the workplace, the new rule is “adapt or be left out”.

Fortunately, you can upgrade these highly relevant technology skills at your own pace through online learning and be more valuable in today’s and future business world.

We’ve recommended Udemy online courses with certificate of completion to learn these skills.

1. Web development & design

Almost every business needs a website. IT companies continuously needs the service of web developers. And businesses will continue to require website services. Web development skills will add to the value you bring to your workplace. You can even start your own Web development Company.

Online course: The Complete Web Developer Course – Build 14 Websites.

2. Mobile App development

More people access the web on Smartphone and Tablets than on PC. And companies are not reluctant to embrace this trend. App developers are in high demand. Mobile app development skills can open doors for you in the job market, and even empower you to build your own app development Company. The two most popular app marketplaces are Apple’s app store for iOS devices and Google Play store for Android devices.

Online course: Complete iOS8 and Android Development course for beginners.

3. Adobe Creative Suites – Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator

Graphic designers are valued for their ability to create concepts that communicate ideas and win over audiences. Whether for image enhancement, logo or graphic design for website, advertising or entire branding, knowledge of Adobe Photoshop (and other Creative Suites) will enhance your proficiency in graphic design. You can perform professional graphic related tasks for your company and even earn a living as a freelance graphic designer or photographer.

Online course: Photoshop Course.

4. Digital Marketing

Small to large companies are now turning to digital media for measurable and cost-effective marketing. They realize that great product and offline sales people are no longer enough in this technology driven society. And considering the cost of traditional media (TV, Radio, and print media), digital media is the next big thing. This has caused a huge demand for Digital marketing managers. You help companies acquire leads, increase sales, create brand awareness and grow their business using digital technology.

Online course: Digital Marketing Management

5. WordPress for Blog publishing

WordPress is a Content Management System – CMS – for building websites, blogs, membership sites, ecommerce stores and just about any kind of website, without knowledge of coding. Once you know WordPress, you can do in a weekend what could take months to code from scratch. Powering 22.5% of all websites on the internet, a good knowledge of WordPress will be an added value to your organization. You can help your company redesign its website, troubleshoot issues and update content. You can also offer your WordPress skill as a service.

The best way to learn WordPress is to setup a WordPress blog, read WordPress tutorials and learn on the job.

6. Microsoft Excel

In business, speed and accuracy makes all the difference. Microsoft Excel is the world’s most used business intelligence spreadsheet tool. Its knowledge is even compulsory for an MBA degree, and the business world depends greatly on it. MS Excel skill is highly required by employers to increase business productivity.

Online course: Microsoft Excel 2013 Course Beginners/ Intermediate Training.

7. Video Production

YouTube has more than 1 billion users. Every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views. More than a million advertisers are using Google YouTube ad platforms to reach customers, the majority of which are small businesses. Video sharing is a fast-growing part of social platforms. You may be the one to jump start your organization’s video production by bringing these skills in house.

Online course: How to Create Video for Your Business

Are You Upgrading Your Tech Skills?

Just 5 years ago, no one ever thought companies will go out of their way to engage on social media. Today, even CNN ask viewers to ‘Like Us on Facebook’, ‘Follow Us on Twitter’, ‘Subscribe to our YouTube channel’. Amazing how fast the business world is changing. To stay on the winning side, embrace this inevitable change.

Fondation Rainbow Bridge MBA Scholarships for African and Asian Women

Brief description:

The Fondation Rainbow Bridge MBA Scholarships was established in memory of Muriel Dargent (1967 – 2004), Matthieu Dargent (1997 – 2004), Iris Dargent (2001 – 2004), and Muriel’s parents, all of whom disappeared in the December 2004 Tsunami.   The Fondation Rainbow Bridge will enable young women recipients to enrich their academic background by obtaining an HEC MBA.

Host Institution(s):

HEC Paris, France

Field of study:

Masters in Business Administration (MBA)

Number of Awards:

2  scholarships per year

Target group:

Women from Asian or African countries affected by natural disasters, drought or famine.

Scholarship value/inclusions:

€ 20,000

Eligibility:

Recipients of this scholarship are top-caliber female candidates who have been admitted to the HEC MBA program and who can demonstrate exemplary leadership skills in one or more of the following areas:

•  Community work,
•  Charity engagement,
•  Sustainable development practices.

Women applying must come from an Asian or African country affected by a natural disaster, drought or famine. In addition, they must demonstrate a commitment to solving some of the social and economic issues affecting their countries while working for the long-term security of the people living there.

Application instructions:

Only admitted candidates can apply for this scholarship. You must submit an essay on why you should be named the Fondation Rainbow Bridge Scholar at the HEC MBA Program, while identifying your post-MBA goals.  Deadline is on a rolling basis but please note that you cannot apply for this scholarship if admitted after June 15th for the September intake and after November 26th for the January intake.

It is important to visit the official website (link found below) for detailed information on how to apply for this scholarship.

Website:

Official Scholarship Website: http://www.mba.hec.edu/Fees-Funding/Scholarships/Fondation-Rainbow-Bridge

Octoberfest bombing: German government blocks information on intelligence agency involvement

Dietmar Henning

Almost 35 years after the worst right-wing extremist attack in post-war Germany, the government is blocking attempts to uncover what happened by withholding important documents. The government’s stance can lead to only one conclusion: a state within the state exists in Germany that resists any sort of democratic control.

In the bomb attack at the Octoberfest in Munich on October 26, 1980, 12 bystanders were killed along with the bomber, Gundolf Köhler. Two hundred were seriously injured. Even at the time, authorities sought to cover up the background to the attacks and the individuals behind it. They quickly concluded that Köhler had carried out the attack alone. Evidence and witness statements suggested that state authorities and neo-Nazi terrorist groups were equally involved. Just two years after the attack, on November 23, 1982, the federal state prosecutor brought a halt to the investigation.

It was thanks to journalist Ulrich Chaussy and the lawyer for the victims, Werner Dietrich, that state prosecutor Harald Range was compelled to reopen the investigation last December. Thousands of files are to be re-evaluated, including never before seen material. However, all the files that could prove the involvement of German intelligence agents in the right-wing terrorist groups and the attack are to remain secret.

This is according to a written response by the justice ministry to Green Party parliamentary deputies, cited by the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Parliamentary justice secretary Christian Lange (Social Democrats, SPD) wrote on April 7 that the government had once again come to the conclusion that “questions on the specifics of the source of guidance and the status of people as intelligence agents, even when it concerns events from a long time ago, cannot be answered due to the need to protect the functionality of the intelligence service.”

The justice ministry, led by the SPD’s Heiko Maas, is thereby placing the “functionality of the intelligence services” on a level of greater importance than the uncovering of a mass murder.

According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Lange’s letter noted that the recruitment and maintenance of intelligence agents are elementary methods of intelligence work. “A special secrecy must therefore be maintained when a person was not an active agent or if the event occurred a long time ago.” Parliament’s right to information has its limits “if the disclosure of secret information endangers the wellbeing of the federal republic or a state”, he said.

This claim could be used to justify any form of dictatorship. If the wellbeing of the state is more important than the right to information of parliament, which is supposed to control the executive branch, then democracy is a hollow shell. The justice ministry views the interests of the state and its intelligence services as more important than the rights of parliament and the public interest. The intelligence apparatus acts as a state within a state, rejecting any control on its power.

The opposition parties in parliament, the Greens and Left Party, had requested on several occasions that the German government make the secret files public, without success. Most recently, the government rejected a request from the Green Party fraction for the information in November. The Greens sent a letter of protest. Now, four months later with Lange’s letter, the government has responded. The Green Party fraction now intends to lodge an appeal to the constitutional court in Karlsruhe to gain access to information about the involvement of intelligence agents in the Octoberfest attack.

According to available information, the main state involvement in the Octoberfest attack was through the Hoffmann military sports group and the ranger Heinz Lembke.

The Hoffmann military sports group was founded in 1973 by Carl-Heinz Hoffmann and was able to train neo-Nazis in using arms and fighting as partisans, unhindered, for six years in Bavaria. Köhler, the attacker, participated in the activities of the paramilitary group in 1975 and 1976, according to the government. This was known to the state intelligence agency in Baden-Württemberg.

When on January 30, 1980, eight months prior to the Octoberfest attack, the military sports group was banned by interior minister Gerhard Baum (Free Democrats, FDP), it had 400 members. Hoffmann and his closest collaborators fled to Lebanon. Chaussy is convinced that several intelligence agents were in the group. Two of them are known by name: Walter Ulrich Behle and Odfried Hepp.

Behle said shortly after the attack, “It was us.” One bomb had been placed in a rubbish bin, another in a drain pipe. This statement, confirming that two bombs had been planted but only the one in the bin detonated, corresponded with other witness statements.

The government continues to keep quiet on how many agents were actually active in the military group. The details on this were “so sensitive, that even a small risk of such information being made public cannot be accepted under any circumstances,” stated a government letter from February to the Left Party.

Lembke is suspected of having supplied Köhler and his co-conspirators with the explosives for the bomb. In 1959, Lembke fled the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and immediately joined right-wing extremist groups such as the Fatherland Youth League (BVJ), becoming its leader in 1960. The BVJ was banned in 1962.

Lembke maintained contact with a wide variety of right-wing organisations. He monitored at least 33 weapons depots, including anti-tank weapons, hand grenades, explosives, machine guns, pistols, munitions and even chemical weapons, all of which were mostly obtained from German army stock. He also organised military sport exercises and supplied weapons to Nazi terrorist groups.

There is evidence that Lembke was in contact with the Hoffmann group, and was arrested in 1981 for a matter unrelated to the Octoberfest attack. Two days after he told the state prosecutor that he would provide comprehensive testimony, he was found hung in his cell.

The weapons and chemicals found in his weapons depots were immediately destroyed by the German army. A comparison with the explosives used in the Octoberfest attack was never made. Lembke was also portrayed as a lone wolf, and the investigation was quickly shut down.

All that is known about the Munich Octoberfest attack and the response of the authorities to it fits into the pattern of the secret Gladio force, built up by NATO during the Cold War in Europe to carry out terrorist attacks in the event of a Soviet invasion.

It was never officially explained to what extent Lembke or the Hoffmann group worked for the NATO Gladio force. The quantity and quality of the recovered military weaponry pointed to Lembke’s membership in the secret force, according to Swiss historian Daniele Ganser, who has researched the Gladio force.

In the documents relating to the Octoberfest attack, victims’ lawyer Dietrich uncovered the remark that “information on Lembke can only partially be evaluated by the courts.” According to the lawyer, such comments are usually used only in connection with intelligence agents and contractors with the intelligence services.

In the response to the Greens’ request of November 21, 2014, the government contested such a conclusion. “Such an indication of the need to protect information for the intelligence services or police does not suggest that the person named in the evidence is an intelligence agent or secret source for the police.” But in response to the question of whether Lembke worked for intelligence, the government refused to answer on the grounds of endangering state security.

The fact that close ties exist between the intelligence agencies and right-wing extremist terrorists was recently made clear in connection with the racist murders and attacks by the far-right National Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist group. According to Chaussy, links existed between the Hoffmann group and the intelligence service in Thuringia, from which the NSU emerged.

The government is seeking to bury the true background to the Octoberfest attack in order to cover up the involvement of the state security forces with right-wing terrorist groups. When state prosecutor Range announced he was reopening the investigation into the Octoberfest attack, Justice Minister Maas did not justify it with reference to the need to uncover the full story, but rather that in the wake of the “oversights” surrounding the NSU affair, it was necessary to restore confidence in the activities of the intelligence agencies.

Banking group HGAA stokes conflict between Vienna and Munich

Markus Salzmann

The decision of the Austrian government to no longer pay the debts of scandalized banking group Hypo Group Alpe Adria (HGAA) has led to serious conflicts between Vienna and Munich and, indirectly, with Berlin. German banks expect losses in the billions. Experts warn that confidence in European financial markets will be shaken.

On March 1, the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) put a freeze on all loans issued by HGAA and stopped interest payments. The FMA cited an additional capital hole of €7.4 billion discovered by auditors as the basis for their decision.

The FMA will decide in the next year what will ultimately be done with the bank. Experts predict a debt reduction of up to 50 percent. That would also affect many German banks. According to a statement of the German Federal Bank, HGAA has debts of more than €7.1 billion outstanding. The Fitch rating agency therefore calculates as much as a 10 percent slump in annual profits for the German banking sector in 2015.

The Bavarian state government has reacted to the Austrian decision most fiercely. Regional bank Bayern LB has litigated since last November against the Austrian government for the repayment of €2.4 billion which HGAA allegedly owes. Now additional losses are threatened.

The Bavarian finance minister Markus Söder fumed that one currently hears the kinds of words from Vienna that otherwise “only come from Athens.” Vienna’s conduct was, he said, “a genuine vulnerability in the European financial architecture and, after Greece, could be the next big problem.”

Other German banks and insurance companies are also affected. These include the state-run German Mortgage Bank, the Dexia Municipal Bank of Germany, the Düsseldorf Mortgage Bank (already threatened with bankruptcy), as well as the Munich Reinsurance Company.

The HGAA is a prime example of the criminal machinations through which banks and corrupt politicians amassed billions until the financial crisis of 2008 washed them away and tore gigantic holes in the public sector, which are now being filled at the expense of the population.

The small Carinthian Regional Bank was hugely inflated under the right-wing Jörg Haider, who governed Carinthia from 1989 to 1991 and from 1999 until his death in 2008. Haider wanted to take part in the bonanza that accompanied the privatization of state property in Eastern Europe, in which HGAA spent years granting state guarantees for high-risk and dubious businesses in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. The Province of Carinthia was liable for unevaluated credit loaned to Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and Macedonia, which exceeded the annual state budget many times over.

As the situation became increasingly precarious, Haider managed to sell the bank to Bayern LB for €1.6 billion, making Bayern LB majority owner. This was pushed through by the Bavarian government, which also wanted to enter the lucrative international banking business. Its representative at Bayern LB overlooked the fact that they had purchased a failing bank. How intentional this was has never been fully clarified. The acquisition of HGAA through Bayern LB has in any case profited several wealthy investors as well as the Haider government.

With the international financial crisis, the scale of losses through speculation and bad credit has come into focus. The HGAA has revealed itself as a black hole that swallowed up billions. Its “rescue” bled the Bavarian state treasury of nearly €4 billion. Bavaria contributed more than €12 billion altogether to save Bayern LB from a bankruptcy that also caused losses to other businesses.

In 2009, HGAA was facing imminent bankruptcy. The Province of Carinthia, with an annual budget of €2 billion, was unable to come up with the guaranteed €10 billion. Now the Austrian government, a social democratic-conservative coalition, has taken over the bank and transferred it to a “bad bank” called Heta. The previous owners—the Bayern LB, the Province of Carinthia and the Graz Mutual Insurance Company (GRAWE)—were each compensated with a single euro.

With the new financial gap of €7.4 billion, which auditors have called a “mystery,” and the adjustment of payments, the HGAA crisis has undergone a qualitative change. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote, financial circles agree that it “concerns not only Austria, but the fundamental question: How much is a state guarantee in Europe still worth, if Austria abused regulations?”

The government in Vienna has its back against the wall. Austrian banks are threatened with loss of their top credit rating. The ratings of the country’s three largest banks will likely sink by as much as three places, to the range of “BBB,” analyst Patrick Rioual explained in March in Vienna.

It is above all Austrian business and finance interests in Eastern Europe that are behind the crisis. At the beginning of the millennium, Austrian banks expanded into Eastern Europe and became the largest lending institutions there. Until the financial crisis, this resulted in big profits for the banks, but later two institutions—the HGAA and the Austrian Credit Union AG—were led to the brink of collapse.

This year the Austrian national debt will climb to about 89 percent of gross domestic product. In addition to this, the deficit may decrease more slowly than previously anticipated. In 2014, it rose to 2.4 percent of GDP.

New Zealand shared intelligence with Bangladesh’s repressive agencies

Tom Peters

Leaked documents show that New Zealand’s intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), has spent more than a decade collaborating with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on targets in Bangladesh. The agencies passed on information to Bangladeshi security agencies, which are notorious for torture, murder and “disappearances.”

The secret NSA documents are the latest released by whistleblower Edward Snowden about the GCSB’s activities. The revelations were published on April 16 in the New Zealand Herald by journalists Nicky Hager and David Fisher, in collaboration with Ryan Gallagher from the US web site, theIntercept. Previous reports have exposed the agency’s mass surveillance of New Zealanders and Pacific Islanders, direct surveillance of the Solomon Islands government, and spying on Afghanistan, Iran, China and other Asian countries.

The GCSB shares information with its partners in the Five Eyes alliance: the NSA and the intelligence agencies of Britain, Canada and Australia. In return, the GCSB has access to the NSA’s powerful spy tools such as XKeyscore, which allows the agency to search through millions of private emails, internet data and phone calls. The New Zealand ruling elite uses mass surveillance to maintain its neo-colonial sphere of influence in the south-west Pacific and to advance its interests internationally, as an ally of US imperialism.

As with previous revelations, Prime Minister John Key has refused to comment on the GCSB’s operations in Bangladesh, telling Radio NZ that “they act lawfully... they gather information for reasons of national interest to New Zealand, and that’s really about all I’m prepared to say.” In fact, the leaks demolish claims that the GCSB’s activities are lawful and focused on countering threats to New Zealand.

A NSA document from April 2013 stated that “GCSB has been the lead for the intelligence community on the Bangladesh CT [Counter-Terrorism] target since 2004.” It added that the GCSB “provided unique intelligence leads that have enabled successful CT operations by Bangladesh State Intelligence Service, CIA and India over the past year.”

Another document written in 2004 reveals that in December 2003 the GCSB was “contributing to the War on Terrorism by reporting on the activities of Islamic extremists in Asia and the Pacific region and specifically taking on Bangladesh and Burma.”

The Herald noted that the three Bangladeshi intelligence agencies—the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, the National Security Intelligence agency, and the police Special Branch—as well as the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), which carries out “counter-terrorism” operations, “have been accused of involvement in severe human rights abuses over a sustained number of years.”

The agencies “work together as part of a notorious centre called the Taskforce for Interrogation Cell, located inside a compound in northern Dhaka that is controlled by the RAB.” A Human Rights Watch report quoted by the newspaper lists the methods of torture used there, including “burning with acid, hammering of nails into toes ... electric shocks, beatings on legs with iron rods, beating with batons on backs after sprinkling sand on them, ice torture, finger piercing, and mock executions.”

The RAB has been responsible for the disappearance and murder of hundreds of opposition politicians, trade unionists and Islamists. US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks in 2011 showed that British police provided training for the RAB death squads.

The reign of terror is aimed primarily against the Bangladeshi working class, a source of cheap labour that is exploited by the world’s capitalist powers. The vast majority of the population lives and works in appalling and dangerous conditions. The RAB and other paramilitary police units regularly use physical violence against protests and strikes by workers.

The NSA documents indicate that successive New Zealand governments—beginning with the 1999–2008 Labour government of Prime Minister Helen Clark—have been complicit in the repression by Bangladeshi security forces. The GCSB’s operations were carried out entirely behind the backs and without the consent of the New Zealand population.

After retiring from politics, Clark visited Bangladesh in November 2010, in her current role as United Nations Development Program administrator, to participate in a forum hosted by the country’s Human Rights Commission. In a speech, she praised Bangladesh’s supposed “progress” toward “poverty reduction based on participatory and inclusive strategies and democratic governance.” She did not mention, of course, her government’s support for the state’s torturers and murderers.

Spying in Bangladesh was part of the Labour government’s strengthening of intelligence and military alliance with Washington. It sent troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq and deployed GCSB agents to help in targeting air strikes in Afghanistan. The so-called “left wing” Alliance Party and the Greens supported Labour’s decision to join the war in Afghanistan.

According to the Herald, current Labour leader Andrew Little “said he was not concerned about the GCSB’s work in Bangladesh but would be if intelligence material was ‘being used to deal with people in a barbaric, extra-judicial way.’”

In reality, extra-judicial and barbaric methods are routine in Bangladesh. Amnesty International’s New Zealand executive director Grant Bayldon told Radio NZ: “There’s an extremely high risk that surveillance handed over to the Bangladeshi security forces by the New Zealand Government could result in... very grave human rights abuses.”

The Snowden documents mention that, in addition to sharing information with Bangladeshi agencies, the GCSB secretly monitored the RAB itself. A 2009 GCSB report stated that this intelligence “could well be of high interest for future operations if the domestic security situation in Bangladesh were to deteriorate.”

The US and its allies, including New Zealand, do not oppose the RAB’s human rights abuses. Rather, they are gathering information to use against Dhaka in the event that it chooses to pursue stronger diplomatic and military ties with China, which is Bangladesh’s biggest trading partner. In the event of any shift towards Beijing, the Bangladeshi government could suddenly find itself the target of US-led “human rights” campaign aimed at pressuring into line with Washington.

More layoffs as global oil price slump continues

Niles Williamson

Oilfield service company Schlumberger Ltd., headquartered in Houston, Texas and Paris, France, announced late Thursday that it was planning to cut a further 11,000 jobs. These cuts come on the heels of 9,000 layoffs announced in January. With these 20,000 layoffs, the company will be eliminating 15 percent of its total global workforce.

The company reported to shareholders that first quarter profits fell 39 percent due to a worldwide slowdown in drilling for oil and gas. The company posted a profit of $975 million in the first quarter of this year, down from $1.6 billion in the same period last year.

“The abruptness of the fall in activity, particularly in North America, required us to take additional actions,” Schlumberger CEO Paal Kibsgaard told shareholders. The company also reported a decline in drilling activity in Russia, Brazil and Colombia.

The additional layoffs at Schlumberger point to further job cuts throughout the energy industry, which has been shedding jobs at a significant rate amidst a dramatic collapse in the price of oil over the last several months. Prices have been pushed down by near-record oil production in the United States and the decision last year by Saudi Arabia to maintain its rate of production in the face of a global oil surplus.

While the cost of a barrel of crude oil has risen slightly in recent weeks, partially due to concerns about Saudi airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, the price remains near a six-year low. The fall in the cost of a barrel of oil, down nearly 50 percent since a recent peak last year, has had a negative impact on drilling operations in the US states of North Dakota, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas, as well as in Mexico.

The Texas Workforce Commission reported 400 layoff notices last week, including 194 at FTS International, and 149 at Lufkin Industries, a subsidiary of General Electric.

Tim Cook, an oil and gas recruiter and the president of PathFinder Staffing, told the Wall Street J ournal that the roughnecks who work on the rigs have been the most affected by the layoffs. “The closer your job is to the actual oil well, the more in jeopardy you are of losing that job,” he said. “Each time an oil rig gets shut down, all the jobs at the work site are gone. They disappear.”

Energy companies have announced the layoff of more than 100,000 workers worldwide since the price of crude oil plunged last year. At least 91,000 of these layoffs have already taken effect. Pemex, the Mexican state-owned oil company, announced in January that it was laying off 10,000 workers.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of workers directly employed in oil and gas extraction in the United States has fallen by 3,000 since a peak of 201,500 in October. The number of workers employed in the wider energy support sector has declined by 12,000 since a peak of 337,600 in September. According to Baker Hughes, the number of active oil and gas rigs in the United States has declined by nearly 50 percent to 988, the lowest number in five years.

Halliburton and Baker Hughes, the two main competitors of Schlumberger, which agreed to a $34.6 billion merger late last year, announced the layoffs of a combined total of 13,400 workers in February. It is expected that they will follow Schlumberger in announcing further job cuts.

Schlumberger’s Kibsgaard indicated to investors that the company did not expect a recovery in demand for oil drilling or oil prices in the near future. “We believe that a recovery in US land-drilling activity will be pushed out in time, as the inventory of uncompleted wells builds and as the refracturing market expands, “ he stated. “We also anticipate that a recovery in activity will fall well short of reaching previous levels, hence extending the period of pricing weakness.”

The impact of the slump in oil drilling has extended to the segments of the American steel industry that manufacture oil-drilling pipe. Last month US Steel announced 2,080 layoffs with the idling of its steel pipe factory in Granite City, Illinois. Since the end of March at least 731 jobs have been cut at the company’s Fairfield, Alabama facility, which also manufactures pipes used for drilling. The layoffs were part of a cut of 4,500 jobs nationwide announced by US Steel last month. Republic Steel also announced the layoff of 200 workers at its steel pipe factory in Lorain, Ohio last month.

Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru and Green Party offer “progressive alliance” with Labour

Chris Marsden

The BBC challenger’s debate Thursday involved all the major party leaders, except David Cameron and Nick Clegg for the outgoing Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition. It was notable primarily for exposing the depth of the desire of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru (the Party of Wales) for an alliance with Labour.

Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP and, somewhat less forcefully, Plaid’s Leanne Wood pleaded with Miliband to form what they ludicrously called a “progressive alliance” to keep out the Conservatives—one that would also include the Green Party. Natalie Bennett, the Green Party’s leader, made some mildly critical noises in the hope of being included later in the political horse-trading.

The debate up to Miliband’s exchange with Sturgeon was forgettable.

Sturgeon, Wood and Bennett were able to score a few points at Labour’s expense, portraying their parties as being “anti-austerity.” They all opposed the renewal of the Trident nuclear submarine programme, while the presence of Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) allowed for some posturing as being less xenophobic and anti-immigrant.

But always their remarks were weak and constrained. Sturgeon’s pose of opposition to Trident was somewhat queered by Miliband being able to point to the SNP having come out in favour of the NATO nuclear alliance. Bennett felt obliged to stress the Greens’ commitment to maintaining military spending at 2 percent of GDP and echoed Sturgeon’s call for this to be directed towards building up Britain’s conventional armed forces.

On immigration, Sturgeon’s opposition to imposing targeted reductions was raised only after her professed concern that nations should be able to effectively control their borders and determine who was allowed in. She made clear that her stand on immigration was determined primarily by the economic criteria of Scotland’s skills shortage and a need to attract, and possibly to retain after graduation, highly qualified students.

None of this matched the generally left tenor of the audience—despite the fact that it was chosen for the BBC by an external polling organisation to reflect a cross section of opinion.

Farage was so incensed by the negative response to his numerous attacks on immigrants and the applause given to any reference to ending austerity that he declared from the podium, “[This] is a remarkable audience even by the left-wing standards of the BBC.”

He was booed loudly for his outburst.

Giving the lie to all else that went before, however—including her own pointing out that Miliband had committed Labour to £30 billion of cuts—Sturgeon focused on repeated appeals to form an anti-Tory coalition to “lock the Tories out” of government.

“The polls will show Ed isn’t strong enough to get rid of the Tories on his own,” she said. “I will work with Labour, with Leanne, with Natalie, so that together we can get rid of the Tories.”

Her stated mission in such an alliance was a desire for “Ed” to “replace the Tories with something different, better, more progressive … What I’m saying is that I can help Labour be bolder to deliver the changes we need.”

“Don’t turn your back on that, Ed, and let David Cameron back into Downing Street”, she reiterated. “Is it the case that you would rather see David Cameron go back into Downing Street than work with the SNP? Surely that cannot be your position.”

Sturgeon’s pleas helped cover for Miliband’s right-wing austerity agenda, in a week that Labour issued its manifesto beginning with what it describes a “Budget Responsibility Lock.”

This pledge to endless austerity promises that no policy of Labour’s “requires additional borrowing.”

“A Labour government will cut the deficit every year,” it states. “The first line of Labour’s first Budget will be: ‘This Budget cuts the deficit every year’.”

In addition Labour promises to “legislate to require all major parties to have their manifesto commitments independently audited by the Office for Budget Responsibility.” What price then, Sturgeon’s “progressive alliance” to end austerity?

All that Sturgeon achieved was to allow Miliband to adopt a statesmanlike pose as the possible future prime minister. “I have fought the Conservatives all my life,” he said. “We have profound differences. That why I’m not going to have a coalition with the SNP. I’m not going to put at risk the unity of the United Kingdom. It’s a no, I’m afraid.”

Plaid Cymru’s Wood, seemingly equally oblivious to reality, embarrassingly challenged Miliband to hold an “emergency budget” to end austerity if he becomes prime minister.

The debate ended with a few platitudes from the assembled candidates, framed as closing remarks.

As events closed Sturgeon, Wood and Bennett collectively walked to Miliband’s podium to publicly shake hands with him. Commenting favourably in the Guardian, Jonathan Jones spoke of a “triumvirate of left-wing women” and “anti-austerity parties … making the running”. An accompanying picture makes clear the reality that they are all running straight into the arms of Ed.

The debate was yet another example of the vast and growing chasm between working people and all the myriad parties of big business and the super-rich. Earlier this month, all seven party leaders engaged in their only combined debate of the election campaign on ITV. Cameron has insisted that all other televised appearances do not involve face-to-face meetings, leading to plans for a “Question Time” special on the BBC , one week before May 7 polling day, in which Cameron, Miliband and Clegg will appear and be questioned by the audience separately.

This is a pathetic effort on Cameron’s part to shield the Tories from any possible attack on their record in office. However, on Thursday night it had an additional and unintended effect. The various “challengers” to the Tories were all exposed as having nothing of substance to offer working people.

Labour was left with no one to its right, other than the increasingly unhinged Farage, behind which it could conceal its own pro-austerity and militarist programme. The two nationalist parties and the Greens, for their part, made clear that they will happily sell every one of their own meagre election pledges in return for a seat in government and a chance for a greater share of national tax revenues for the bourgeoisie in Scotland and Wales—and for the benefit of their own grasping upper-middle class supporters.

Fighting rages in Iraqi provincial capital

Patrick Martin

Thousands of Iraqi civilians have fled heavy fighting in Ramadi, capital of Anbar Province, according to reports Friday from government officials in Baghdad. Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) captured three towns on the outskirts of Ramadi Wednesday and pushed forward toward the city’s downtown section.

The Iraqi military rushed hundreds of troops from an elite Interior Ministry commando unit to Ramadi Thursday, amid reports that military units in the center of the city were surrounded by the Sunni fundamentalist fighters. McClatchy News Service reported, “Residents on Wednesday had described a near-total collapse of Ramadi’s defenses, with huge numbers of security forces abandoning large portions of the city in the face of the Islamic State assault.”

McClatchy said that tens of thousands of civilians were trapped in the city and new, unaligned militias had sprung up to replace the fleeing police and military units and defend their neighborhoods. Local hospitals were crowded with civilian casualties.

Other reports described Ramadi as a ghost town, with streets empty. Anbar’s deputy governor, Faleh al-Issawi, called the situation “catastrophic” and issued a plea for help. He told the Associated Press in a telephone interview, “We urge the Baghdad government to supply us immediately with troops and weapons in order to help us prevent the city from falling into the hands of the IS group.”

Ramadi has been contested territory between ISIS and the Baghdad government for more than a year, but the recent fighting has completely severed road links from Ramadi to the east. Most of the 70-mile stretch from Ramadi to Baghdad is under ISIS control, including the second-largest city in the province, Fallujah. Some desert territory to the west of the city remains under government control, including the huge former US airbase at Al-Asad, where 300 US military trainers are stationed.

The fighting in eastern Anbar Province intensified last week with an abortive offensive by pro-government forces, including regular army units and Sunni tribal fighters. The government of Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi held back the Shiite militias that played a critical role in the successful reconquest of the city of Tikrit last month, ordering them not to enter Anbar Province, whose population is nearly all Sunni.

In a statement apparently aimed at preparing US public opinion for the fall of Ramadi, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that the city was “not symbolic in any way… or central to the future of Iraq.” He added, “It’s not been declared part of the caliphate” by ISIS. “It won’t be the end of the campaign if it falls.”

Dempsey’s remarks provoked a furious rejoinder from Senator John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee and a leading advocate of renewing the US ground war in Iraq. “Disregarding the strategic importance of Ramadi is a denial of reality and an insult to the families of hundreds of brave young Americans who were killed and wounded during the surge fighting to free Ramadi from the grip of Al Qaeda,” he said in a written statement.

McCain claimed that the “current US strategy is to defend an oil refinery in Baiji, but abandon the capital of pivotal Anbar province.” He was referring to Iraq’s largest oil refinery, located in Salahuddin province north of Tikrit and south of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, now under ISIS control.

ISIS fighters began a major attack on the refinery Thursday, demonstrating the group’s continuing ability to wage multiple offensive operations in both Iraq and Syria. Even at the height of the ISIS offensive last summer, Iraqi Army units had been able to hold the refinery against a siege by the Islamic fundamentalists. The facility produces 40 percent of Iraq’s gasoline and its loss would be crippling for the Abadi government.

General Dempsey said US warplanes were conducting heavy air strikes against ISIS forces near Baiji. “The refinery is at no risk right now, and we’re focusing a lot of air support,” he said. Iraqi military spokesmen said Friday that the military had successfully counterattacked and seized control of the towns of al-Malha and al-Mazraah, south of Baiji. Shiite militiamen participated in the fighting.

The fighting in Ramadi and Baiji largely overshadowed Abadi’s first visit to Washington as prime minister. In the course of the three-day trip, he met with President Obama at the White House, as well as with Republican congressional leaders, State Department and Pentagon officials, and representatives from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. He also gave a speech to a Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Abadi came away with comparatively little. Obama offered $200 million in humanitarian aid for civilians in Tikrit and other territory recaptured by pro-government forces, but no additional military hardware. Pentagon officials have resisted supplying more heavy weapons to Iraq for fear they will be captured by ISIS or made available to pro-Iranian militias. But Obama did agree that 36 F-16 fighter jets, promised to Iraq in 2011, would finally be delivered.

On the economic front, Abadi was seeking loans to cover the $22 billion hole in Iraq’s budget caused by the sharp fall in the world price of crude oil, Iraq’s principal export and source of nearly all government revenue. The Iraqi government plans to draw on $2.4 billion from the IMF and $2 billion in loans from the World Bank, as well as obtaining loan guarantees from the Export-Import Bank of the United States to finance purchase of Boeing jets for Iraqi Airways.

In the course of his visit, Abadi reiterated the strategic choice made by his government, over the objections of some US military commanders, to follow up last month’s retaking of Tikrit by moving south and west, into Anbar Province, rather than northwest along the Tigris River toward Mosul. The Abadi government is concerned about the proximity of ISIS forces to the capital city—Fallujah is only 40 miles west of Baghdad—and wants to push them back before undertaking operations around Mosul.

“I’m working on a timetable, which I’m not going to reveal,” he told reporters in Washington, adding that a counteroffensive towards Mosul would not come before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which extends from mid-June to mid-July.

On Friday, Iraqi officials said that government forces had killed Saddam Hussein’s former vice president, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the highest-ranking official of the Baathist regime who remained active in fighting the US puppet regime. The governor of Salahuddin province, Raed al-Jabouri, said soldiers and Shiite militiamen killed Douri early Friday east of Tikrit.

Meanwhile, House Republican leaders said that there was little prospect of action on an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) for the war against ISIS. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Monday that there was no prospect of passing the AUMF in the House because the draft resolution submitted by the White House was too restrictive. Passage of the White House draft “would weaken our ability to respond to our current situation,” he said, citing the expansion of the conflict in the Middle East to Yemen.

House Speaker John Boehner called Tuesday for a wider operational role for US troops in fighting ISIS forces, declaring that Obama had placed “artificial constraints” on US military commanders in the region. Speaking of the AUMF resolution, Boehner said, “I have not given up on it, but until the president gets serious about fighting the fight and really has a strategy that makes some sense, there is no reason for us to give him less authority than he has today.”

The White House presently claims authority for waging war in both Iraq and Syria under resolutions passed more than a dozen years ago. The first resolution, passed in October 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, authorized the war against Al Qaeda and the US invasion of Afghanistan. ISIS publicly broke with Al Qaeda two years ago. The second resolution, passed in October 2002, authorized the US war against the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. Obama aides now argue that this resolution can authorize a US war to support the Iraqi government of Abadi.

Wave of assassinations in Ukraine targets critics of Kiev regime

Alex Lantier

In the lead-up to the May 9 celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany at the end of World War II, there has been an accelerating wave of political assassinations targeting critics of the Western-backed, far-right regime in Kiev.

Yesterday evening, a group calling itself the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)—the name of a Ukrainian fascist militia that collaborated with Nazi forces in carrying out ethnic genocides of Jews and Poles during World War II—claimed responsibility for the killings. In a statement emailed to opposition legislators and political commentators, it also gave “anti-Ukrainian” persons 72 hours to leave the country or be killed if they stayed behind.

It pledged to carry out the “complete extermination” of enemies of Ukraine and a “merciless insurrectionary struggle against the anti-Ukrainian regime of traitors and Moscow toadies,” according to a report in Der Spiegel .

The killing spree began this week with the murder of journalist Sergey Sukhobok. On Wednesday evening, Oleg Kalashnykov was found dead in his home in Kiev. He was a former parliamentarian from the Party of Regions and a close ally of President Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian politician ousted in a NATO-backed, fascist-led putsch last February that installed the current regime in Kiev.

According to Interior Ministry advisor Anton Heraschenko, killers were waiting for Kalashnykov outside his residence and shot him when he returned.

Before his death, Kalashnykov indicated that he had received death threats over his call to commemorate May 9. He addressed a letter to his friends warning that “open genocide on dissent, death threats, and constant dirty insults” had become the “norm” since he publicly raised the issue. He reportedly added in the letter that Ukraine was under Nazi occupation.

On Thursday, pro-Russian journalist Oles Buzyna was shot and killed near his house in Kiev by two unidentified masked gunmen firing from a car. Buzyna had edited the Segodnya newspaper, a pro-Russian publication financed by Ukraine’s richest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, a multi-billionaire who was also one of the leading sponsors of Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions. Also killed on Thursday was Neteshinskiy Vestnik editor Olga Moroz.

The killings were the latest in a spate of deaths of high-profile opponents of the Kiev regime. The victims have largely been political and media associates of the faction of the post-Soviet Ukrainian business oligarchy tied to Akhmetov, Yanukovych, and the Kremlin oligarchy in Russia. Other deaths include:

* Aleksey Kolesnik, former chairman of the Kharkov regional government, found hanged on January 29;

*Stanislav Melnik, a Party of Regions member reportedly close to Akhmetov, found shot in the bathroom of his Kiev apartment on February 24;

*Sergey Valter, the mayor of Melitopol, found hanged before his trial on February 25, leaving no suicide note;

*Aleksandr Bordyuga, the deputy chief of Melitopol police, found dead the next day, in his garage;

*Mikhail Chechetov, a former member of the Party of Regions, who jumped from the window of his 17th floor apartment in Kiev on February 28, leaving a suicide note;

*Sergey Melnichuk, a prosecutor who fell from a 9th floor apartment in Odessa on March 14.

Russian and Ukrainian officials traded accusations of responsibility in the killings. Speaking on a call-in television show, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to the families of the victims and said of Buzyna’s killing, “It is not the first political assassination, we have seen a series of such killings in Ukraine.”

Officials in Kiev offered up dubious arguments to blame the killings on Russia. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the killings “a deliberate provocation which plays into the hands of our enemies, destabilizing the political situation in Ukraine.”

In the meantime, officials and far-right parliamentarians in Kiev openly endorsed and celebrated the murders. While lawmaker Borys Filatov rejoiced that “one more piece of sh*t” had been eliminated,” Irina Farion, a lawmaker of the fascist Svoboda Party, attacked Buzyna as a “degenerate” and hoped that his “death will somehow neutralize the dirt this [expletive] has spilled. ... Such ones go to history’s sewers.”

Political responsibility for the killings rests with the imperialist powers that oversaw and backed the Kiev putsch. They have encouraged Kiev to wage a bloody civil war against pro-Russian regions of east Ukraine and have covered up its reliance on fascistic, anti-Russian forces. In the resulting political atmosphere, opponents of the Kiev states can be murdered without investigation and with political impunity.

What is occurring in Ukraine is a warning to the international working class. With the support of Washington and its European allies, which are moving to train the neo-Nazi militias which make up much of the Ukrainian regime’s National Guard, an ultra-right regime has emerged in a major European country.

With Ukraine’s economy disintegrating and its population resisting Kiev’s attempts to reinstate the draft to wage war against east Ukraine, Kiev is seeking to crush domestic dissent and rely ever more directly on the far right. Terrified that mass opposition might coalesce around the May 9 holiday, it has banned public discussion of communism. It also rehabilitated the UPA and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

This is the culmination of a series of police-state measures by the Kiev regime that have enjoyed the full support of its NATO backers. During last year’s Ukrainian legislative elections, opposition candidates including Pyotr Symonenko, the Stalinist Communist Party of Ukraine’s (KPU) former presidential candidate, were physically attacked by fascist thugs.

Even before the murder of Buzyna, Kiev regime officials and sympathizers were demanding draconian punishments of journalists who oppose the regime. Last month, Ukrainian Minister of Information Policy Yuri Stets demanded that journalists in the breakaway east Ukrainian Donbass region serve prison terms of eight to 15 years.

In an account on Facebook of a speech he had given at Harvard University, pro-Kiev regime commentator and political analyst Yuri Romanenko boasted that he had argued for murdering pro-Russian journalists and summarized his arguments:

“The Ukrainian army must selectively and carefully eliminate Russian journalists covering the situation in Donbass. We need to direct Ukrainian army snipers to shoot people wearing PRESS helmets, making them priority targets,” Romanenko wrote. “Since the media represent a destructive weapon and allow Russia to operate not only in the war zone but across Ukraine, taking out several dozen journalists in the conflict zone will reduce the quality of the picture presented in the Russian media and, therefore, reduce the effectiveness of their propaganda.”

The murder of Kalashnykov, Buzyna and their political associates emerges directly from the foul political atmosphere produced by such rantings. It is an indictment of the NATO powers backing the regime in Ukraine, and of illusions peddled by the Western media and corrupt pseudo-left groups that the right-wing protests on the Maidan and the February 2014 putsch were a revolution bringing a flowering of democracy to Ukraine.

While these forces insisted, without any proof, that the murder of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was a crime carried out by the Russian government, they are maintaining a hypocritical silence as the Kiev regime’s internal opponents are gunned down in the streets.