Sowing the GM Seeds of Depopulation?

Colin Todhunter

If physical violence is to be used only as a final resort, a dominant class must seek to gain people’s consent if it is to govern and control a population. It must attempt to legitimize its position in the eyes of the ruled over by achieving a kind of ‘consented coercion’ that disguises the true fist of power. This can be achieved by many means and over the years commentators from Gramsci to Althusser and Chomsky have described how it may be done.

However, one of the most basic and arguably effective forms of control is eugenics/ depopulation, a philosophy that includes reducing the reproductive capacity of the ‘less desirable’ sections of a population.

There is a growing fear that eugenics is being used to get rid of sections of the world population that are ‘surplus to requirements’. And it is a legitimate fear, not least because there is a sordid history of forced/covert sterilizations carried out on those deemed ‘undesirable’ or ‘surplus to requirements’, which reflects the concerns of eugenicists who have operated at the highest levels of policy making. From early 20^th century ‘philanthropists’ and the Nazis to the nascent genetics movement and rich elites, by one means or another ridding the planet of the great unwanted masses has always been fairly high on the ‘to do’ list (see this informative piece)

Millionaire US media baron Ted Turner believes a global population of two billion would be ideal, and billionaire Bill Gates has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to improve access to contraception in the Global South. Gates has also purchased shares in Monsanto valued at more than $23 million at the time of purchase. His agenda is to help Monsanto get their genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into Africa on a grand scale. In 2001, Monsanto and Du Pont bought a small biotech company called Epicyte that had created a gene that basically makes the male sperm sterile and the female egg unreceptive.

Bill Gates’ father has long been involved with Planned Parenthood:

“When I was growing up, my parents were always involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that.”

The above quotation comes from a 2003 interview with Bill Gates.

Planned Parenthood was founded on the concept that most human beings are reckless breeders. Gates senior is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a guiding light behind the vision and direction of the Gates Foundation, which is heavily focused on promoting GMOs in Africa via its financing of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

The Gates Foundation has given at least $264.5 million to AGRA. According to a report published by La Via Campesina in 2010, 70 percent of AGRA’s grantees in Kenya work directly with Monsanto and nearly 80 percent of the Gates Foundation funding is devoted to biotechnology. The report also explains that the Gates Foundation has pledged $880 million to create the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), which is a heavy promoter of GMOs.

The issue of genetic engineering cannot be fully understood without looking at the global spread of US power. The oil-rich Rockefeller dynasty helped promote the ‘green revolution’, which allowed the US to colonise indigenous agriculture across large parts of the planet. By projecting power through the WTO, IMF and World Bank, Washington has been able to make food and agriculture central to its geopolitical strategy of securing global dominance.

As with the control of food and agriculture, the US also regards depopulation as a potential geo-strategic tool (see this) in the quest for control of global resources. What better way to achieve this via a (GM) tampered-with food system that US agribusiness has increasingly come to dominate?

What better way to achieve this than with ‘spermicidal corn’ for example? In Mexico, there is concern about biopharmaceutical corn. Some years ago, Silvia Ribeiro, of the ETC organization, stated:

“The potential of spermicidal corn as a biological weapon is outrageous, since it easily interbreeds with other varieties, is capable of going undetected and could lodge itself at the very core of indigenous and farming cultures. We have witnessed the execution of repeated sterilization campaigns performed against indigenous communities. This method is certainly much more difficult to trace.”

While most of the literature on GMOs is concerned with the impacts of crops that have been genetically modified to deal with pests or herbicide spraying, there are very worrying trends regarding plants being genetically modified to contain industrial pharmaceuticals or possess possible contraceptive traits.

The world’s problems are not being caused by overpopulation, as Turner states, but by greed and a system of ownership and global power relations that ensures wealth flows from bottom to top. The issue at hand should not be about stopping population growth in its tracks but about changing a socially divisive global economic system and the unsustainable depletion of natural resources.

Millionaires like Ted Turner believe it should be a case of carry on consuming regardless, as long as the population is cut. This is the ideology of the rich who regard the rest of humanity as a problem to be ‘dealt with.’ He says there are “too many people using too much stuff.” He couldn’t be more wrong. For instance, developing nations account for more than 80 percent of world population, but consume only about one third of the world’s energy. US citizens constitute 5 percent of the world’s population but consume 24 percent of the world’s energy.

We should be weary of a politically and militarily well-connected biotech sector which has ownership of technology that allows for the genetic engineering of food and a gene that could be used (or already is) for involuntary sterilization. From covert vaccination campaigns to germ warfare and geo-engineering, sections of the population around the world have too often been sprayed on, injected or exposed to harmful processes to induce sterility, infertility or to merely see the outcome of exposures to radiation, bacteria or some virus. It is for good reason some conflate GMOs and bio-terror.

Herbert Marcuse once summed up the problem facing us by saying that the capabilities — both intellectual and technological — of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than before. As a result, the scope of society’s domination over the individual is also immeasurably greater than ever before. That domination comes in increasingly sinister forms.

Lumpens and Compradors

Sam Gordon

There were days when the working class could easily be identified. It was a fairly straight forward affair. Its male members wore cloth caps, went to football (soccer) matches on Saturdays and in Britain during the latter half of the 20^th century at least, tended to vote Labour, Its female members worked in continuous production operations – often textile related or light engineering assembly work and were less frequently organised in trade unions than their male counterparts. Women often staffed the junior grades of offices and worked in shops. Or they stayed at home to cook, wash clothes and look after children. All a bit stereotypical but you get my drift.

This was the industrial proletariat, identified and named as such by Karl Marx. The name proletariat he borrowed from ancient Rome where the proletariat formed the lowest form of Roman citizenship. The main wealth producers, the slaves, were beyond official registration. Marx also gave us the term lumpen proletariat, a social stratum for which he didn’t much care. The term, in his day and even more recently, referred to those excluded from industrially productive processes.

“The dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass . . .” was how he referenced the lumpen prolitariat in The Communist Manifesto. In The German Ideology he was more specific and included, “discharged soldiers,” “discharged jailbirds,” “gamblers,” “maquereaux” [pimps], “brothel keepers,” “porters,” among others. Marx was making a point of course, especially with the phrase the “dangerous class.” Capitalist society has its disconnected and alienated social groupings that do not stand with the ranks of those engaged in class struggle. Indeed these people are easy prey for manipulation by those who wishing to vilify others directly struggling for more and better paid jobs, improved housing, and accessible health care.

The Irish Marxist, trade union leader and prolific writer James Connolly managed to be both a porter and a discharged soldier. But time, by definition, changes. In the 21^st century left leaning people generally welcome sex workers struggling to improve health and working conditions as well as the rehabilitation of ex-offenders. Nevertheless, lumpen remains a disparaging term.

Another from Ireland, the writer James Plunket, summed it up well in his book, Farewell Companions, when he turned the phrase “Tupence ha’penny (ten cents) looked down on tupence (five cents). Others take license from the bible. When the former tax collector known as Saint Mathew, who I’ll return to later, was extoling the virtues of a more spiritual life he is credited with saying, “consider the lilies of the field; how they grow, they toil not neither do they spin …” This is a phrase which has come into common usage, at least among those who have been exposed to biblical teaching. Some people get by nicely, thank you very much, yet never seem to break sweat in either a literal or figurative sense.

The Egyptian political economist Samir Amin, unequivocally a Marxist, breaks free from the strictures others have accepted for more than a century and a half when he refers to lumpen development. In The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism he discusses a monopolies and imperialist model of development, one resulting in what he calls social disintegration.

This may serve as an example. In the 1980s Nicaragua struggled to break out of the bond imposed by the 43 year dictatorship of the Somoza family dynasty. One of the family called the Republic of Nicaragua his “farm.” The popular revolution which freed the farm from dictatorship was imperfect, as such revolutionary changes always are. But it opened up possibilities for a different form of development. However the low intensity war waged on the Nicaraguan state and people by different US administrations made a break through when the war weary people voted out the revolutionary Sandinista government in 1990.

The cooperative and public service sectors took a hammering. A progressive agrarian reform program had helped set up cooperative run farms. The imperfections of the revolution, lack of penetrating ideological, administrative and technical education, merged with the monopolizing power of the finance. The result has been that banks have often taken ownership of land formerly worked by families which made up the coops’ membership. The social disintegration went further. Opportunistic individuals in positions of power and influence became the owners of land and other assets. Is this or is this not lumpen development?

In the past few months the British media has carried stories of democratically elected Members of Parliament (MP) caught out in an undercover sting operation. Two former foreign secretaries in both Conservative and Labour governments, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw agreed to undertake well paid contract work for private businesses where their governmental time had earned them valuable commercial contacts. The contract work could be done during the MP’s normal working time. Surely this put the likes of Rifkind and Straw in the same category as the dangerous class and social scum.

But perhaps more dangerous than the lumpen is the comprador class. Saint Mathew is a good, if dated, example of this. Mathew was a Jewish tax collector in Galilee and operated under the authority imperial Rome. This earned him the contempt of many of his fellow Jews.

The word comprador – taken from the Portuguese meaning buyer – found its way into modern political speak by way of Portuguese / Chinese trading relations of previous centuries. The comprador classes were those who facilitated western traders of silks and spices, not to mention opium, in 18^th and 19^th China and south Asia.

The textile factory and fruit plantation owners of Honduras serve as a present day example of the comprador class. They have a close association with the country’s elites among politicians and senior military officers who find comfort in the establishment of US military bases in their country. Honduras is the original “banana republic”, a pejorative term coined early in the 20^th century which referenced Honduras’s economic base but also its slippery political condition. For the compradors, a few US military bases guarantee economic traction and political stability.

But perhaps the best living example of the comprador class is the UK’s three time election winner, Prime Minister and creator of New Labour, the Right Honorable Tony Blair. Putting the final nails in the coffin of a once proud party in the social democratic tradition and joining George W Bush’s coalition of the wiling in wreaking havoc on the people of Iraq has bought him economic stability. It’s not silks and spices now. It’s lecture tours and consultancies to businesses and governments that are the shop fronts of a comprador.

Singapore International Graduate Award (SINGA) Scholarship in Science, Engineering and Research 2016

Brief description: Singapore International Graduate Award (SINGA) Scholarship for international applicants seeking admission to pursue a full-time PhD programme at NTU in January 2016

Eligible Field of Study

PhD in Science, Engineering and Research

About Scholarship

The Singapore International Graduate Award (SINGA) is a collaboration between the Agency for Science, Technology & Research (A*STAR), the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) to offer PhD training to be carried out in English at your chosen lab at A*STAR Research Institutes, NUS or NTU. Students will be supervised by distinguished and world-renowned researchers in these labs. Upon successful completion, students will be conferred a PhD degree by either NUS or NTU.

Scholarship Type: Full time PhD Scholarship

Eligibility and Selection Criteria

• The scholarship is open to all international students
• Excellent academic results to be in the top 20% of your cohort
• Graduate with a passion for research and excellent academic results
• Good skills in written and spoken English
• Good reports from two academic referees

Number of Scholarships: Several

Value of Scholarship

• Attractive monthly stipend over 4 years of PhD studies, which can support you comfortably. The stipend amount is SGD 24,000 annually, to be increased to SGD 30,000 after passing Qualifying Examination.
• Full support for tuition fees for 4 years of PhD studies.
• One-time SGD 1,000 Settling-in Allowance
• One-time Airfare Grant of SGD 1,500

Duration of Scholarship: For the duration of the programme

Eligible Countries: International Students

To be taken at (country): National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore

Application Deadline: for January 2016 intake is 1 Jun 2015

Offered annually? Yes

How to Apply

Hard copies of the following supporting documents must be submitted to the SINGA Office:

Compulsory:

• A copy of your Identity Card or Passport
• Certified true copies of university transcript(s), one in English translation and the other in the original language
• Certified true copies of degree scroll(s) or a letter or certification from the university on your candidature if your degree scroll has not yet been conferred.
• Two Academic Referees’ Recommendation
• Two recent passport-sized photographs

Not compulsory but good to include (if any):

• A certified true copy of TOEFL / IELTS results
• A certified true copy of SAT I & II / GRE / GATE results
• Certified true copies of awards / prizes and certificates
• List of publications
• List of patents filed

How can I get more information?

If you need more Information about this scholarship, kindly visit the Scholarship Webpage

Sponsors

Agency for Science, Technology & Research (A*STAR), the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU)

Important Notes: Only short-listed candidates will be notified within 10 weeks from the application closing date.

Apply for NNPC/Chevron Nigerian University Scholarship 2015/2016

2015/2016 NNPC/Chevron JV National University Scholarship Awards for Undergraduate students

Chevron Nigeria Limited, in collaboration with its Joint Venture partner, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), is offering a number of Chevron Scholarship Awards to suitably qualified undergraduate students in Nigerian Universities. Full-time second year (200level) students studying specific courses listed below, in Nigerian Universities, are invited to apply online.

Eligible Course of Study

E-applications are invited from full-time SECOND YEAR (200 LEVEL) degree students of the under-listed courses, in Nigerian Universities:

·         Accountancy
·         Agricultural Engineering/Agricultural Science
·         Architecture
·         Business Administration/Economics
·         Chemical Engineering
·         Civil Engineering
·         Computer Science
·         Electrical/Electronic Engineering
·         Environmental Studies/Surveying
·         Geology/Geophysics
·         Law
·         Mass Communication/Journalism
·         Mechanical/Metallurgical & Materials Engineering
·         Human Medicine/Dentistry/Pharmacy
·         Petroleum Engineering

Application Guidelines1. Before you start this application, ensure you have clear scanned copies of the following documents

• Passport photograph with white background not more than 3 months old (450px by 450px not more than 200kb)
• School ID card
• Admission letter
• Birth certificate
• O’ Level result
• JAMB Result

2. Ensure the documents are named according to what they represent to avoid mixing up documents during upload
3. Ensure you attach the appropriate documents when asked to upload

Application Deadline:

Closing date for receipt of e-applications is strictly June 16, 2015.

How to Apply for Chevron Scholarship

To apply for this scholarship Click on apply.

Alex Garland’s Ex Machina: Will artificial intelligence replace human efforts?

Dorota Niemitz

Written and directed by Alex Garland, Ex Machina is a breath of fresh air in the midst of so much recycled science fiction recently displayed on movie theater screens. Alex Garland’s directorial debut does not disappoint: his futuristic thriller manages to explore seemingly familiar territory—new developments in artificial intelligence [AI] technology—with a high dose of scientific knowledge, vivid imagination and artistic beauty.

Ex Machina

A British novelist and screenwriter, best known for his novel The Beach(1996) and screenplays for 28 Days Later … (2002), Sunshine (2007) and Dredd (2012), Garland is accustomed to exploring the fragility of human civilization, vulnerable to gruesome viruses, cataclysms or the imperfections of human nature.

His apocalyptic visions and his gloomy scenario about the possibility of human self-destruction are still present in Ex Machina, but they are somewhat less pronounced , overshadowed by intelligently framed questions about the future of humanity and its dependence on computer technology.

Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a geeky coder at the world’s largest Internet search engine company Bluebook, wins a competition and is sent on a weeklong mission to work on a mysterious development project. Transported by helicopter to a remote Alaskan location, he finds himself in an isolated house, a research facility that belongs to the firm’s CEO Nathan (Oscar Isaac), a computer prodigy who wrote Bluebook’s code at the age of thirteen. Nathan, an athletic, thick-bearded alcoholic, introduces Caleb to Ava (Alicia Vikander), the world’s first true AI, with a goal to have him perform a Turing test [a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior] to determine if, at any level, his new robot is distinguishable from a human being.

Despite the fact that Caleb can see through Ava’s partially transparent body, which is covered with metallic mesh revealing luminous diodes of artificial muscles, he develops feelings for her as if she were a real woman. Fascinated at first by this scientific achievement, Caleb soon realizes that the subject of Nathan’s experiment is imprisoned and abused, and he himself tested and controlled. Locked in his claustrophobic bunker-like bedroom with no windows, all exits remote-controlled and rooms under surveillance, Caleb desperately begins looking for ways to regain control and outsmart his boss. However, Nathan’s intelligence can only be defeated by a higher one, the one he helped create.

Ex Machina is intriguing, sensual, exciting. Its sustained suspense is built solely on its numerous ambiguities and the tension between the characters. The film is as much about the battle between humans and technology as it is between two very different types of men who use artificial intelligence as their tools and extensions of their brains.

Aesthetically severe and nearly theatrical, with most of its scenes taking place in the hermetic, expensively elegant, Jackson Pollock-decorated glass interior and with only four characters on stage, the movie aspires to combine something of the atmosphere of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) with that of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Ex Machina

Garland would like to follow in the footsteps of those directors by carefully planning dialogue and movement, by cutting scenes with considerable precision. His artistic skill is best manifested in the masterful use of visual contrasts: the austere cement surface of the house set against the pristine nature on the outside, the silence of the laboratory with the noise of the power outage alarm, metal mesh set against the softness of Ava’s artificial skin, the lean body of the good-hearted Caleb against the almost military posture of the intense and manipulative Nathan.

Garland’s script and characters, however, still fall prey to certain stereotypes. The girlfriend-deprived Caleb seems to stand in for every talented and naive computer nerd and is at times too predictable. Modeled after Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979) , Nathan is a modern embodiment of the mad scientist who has removed himself from the society and whose pioneering discoveries, as was the case with Dr. Frankenstein, can pose unpredictable risks.

Nathan is also a narcissistic, misogynistic male who objectifies his female robots: mute servant Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno) is the most questionable persona in Ex Machina, a clichéd sexually subservient and obedient Asian female. The inventor’s quest for a perfect computing machine here reduces itself into a nearly pornographic hunt for “perfect” women-computers whose only role is to serve their “master.”

Ava, moving with the grace of a ballerina, is an attractive temptress who has developed a “biological” will to survive. “What will happen to me if I fail your test?” Ava asks Caleb. “Do you think I might be switched off?” If the will to survive is one of the traits of every living organism, Ava crosses the line between the machine and an autonomous being. Her growing self-awareness makes us realize how much we still have to learn about the development of our own cognitive abilities and consciousness. Not knowing what her future holds, she also perhaps speaks to the uncertainty of humanity as a whole, which constantly develops and learns to orient itself in a changing world.

The invention of creatures endowed with artificial intelligence capable of feeling emotions and learning to adapt is still far away, although many scientists take the matter very seriously, some even predicting that AI may become a reality in the next few decades. Human bodies are already partially integrated with technology through artificial limbs, vehicles, cell phones, remote-controlled devices like television sets, drones, space or battle robots—we can easily envision that in the near future; thanks to the rapid progress in computer science technology, those hybrids will be more and more governed by their nonbiological components.

A famous physicist, the “robot-voiced” Stephen Hawking, predicting that computers might soon trump people, superseding them in intelligence, efficiency and longevity, warns that artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. At one point humans, who need many resources in order to survive (food, clothing, energy, medicine) might simply lose the competition with the faster evolving entities.

“One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa. An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction,” says Nathan.

This pessimistic view and Garland’s own suggest that some of the debate over artificial intelligence is misguided or misplaced. Is the danger really that machines are taking over our lives? Or is that for those who see no way out of humanity’s social predicament technology takes on a menacing character out of proportion to its real threat?

There is in such works as this one, and Her, a veiled or not so veiled criticism of—or worry about—humans who spend more time with machines than with other humans. However, the source of this sort of extreme alienation is not computer-obsessed individuals but a social life that seems more and more hostile, oppressive and intrusive, more and more dominated by wealth and the drive for profit, where giant corporations and military-intelligence apparatuses appear to rule unchecked. The problem does not lie with technology, but the social relations in which it operates.

In any event, like every good movie, Ex Machina is multilayered, touching on many issues. Humanity’s dissatisfaction with its own biological limitations and cognitive capacities is after all the reason for the quest to develop enhanced intelligence, to go beyond the shortcomings forced upon us by nature. The film comes highly recommended as it leaves the viewer thinking about the questions it raises long after the credits roll.

Spanish elections: Support for Podemos declines amid predicted losses for main parties

Paul Mitchell

Polls for the May 24 elections in 13 of Spain’s 17 regions and around 8,000 municipalities suggest the hold of the two main parties—the right wing Popular Party (PP) and Socialist Workers party (PSOE)—will fragment even further.

The PP will lose nearly all its absolute majorities, even in heartland—with the PSOE unable to benefit. In many regions and cities, two new parties—the pseudo-left Podemos (We Can) and the right-wing Ciudadanos (Citizens, C’s)—could hold the balance of power.

However, the polls also suggest support for Podemos is faltering—from around 27 percent in November 2014, when it managed to become the number one party in Spain, to about 20 percent today.

Podemos was launched last year by the Pabloite Anti-capitalist Left (IA) group, and a handful of Stalinist academics from Madrid’s Complutense University, led by 36-year-old professor and TV pundit Pablo Iglesias on a programme of left-sounding “anti-capitalist” demands.

The party’s rapid rise was a sign of the volatile political situation and the collapse in support for the PP and PSOE through which the class struggle had been suppressed for decades after the transition from the fascist regime of General Francisco Franco to bourgeois democracy in 1975-78.

One of the reasons for the drop in support for Podemos is the apparent transfer of disaffected PP voters attracted to Iglesias’s tirades against the corrupt “caste” to Citizens, a nine-year-old party that began life in Catalonia as an anti-independence party but became a national party last year and is now polling around 14 percent. Citizens leader Albert Rivera employs anti-corruption rhetoric similar to Iglesias, but is more acceptable to sections of big business and the media which have heavily promoted the party—earning it the nickname “the Ibex 35 party” after the Madrid stock exchange index.

A key Citizens policy is the creation of a single work contract in Spain to replace the current two-tier system. The aim is to bring the relatively better pay and conditions of generally older workers on permanent contracts down to the levels of those on cheaper temporary contracts, a quest the Spanish employers’ federation, CEOE, has been pursuing for years.

The major factor in Podemos’s declining support, however, is the junking of virtually all its “anti-capitalist” demands. Calls to overthrow the “1978 regime” and establish a republic have been dropped. Restructuring the €61 billion bank bailout from the European Union has taken the place of non-payment and exiting the euro is no longer mentioned.

Podemos has abandoned its promise to nationalise key sectors of the economy and ban redundancies in profitable companies, public subsidies to private (charter) schools, temporary job agencies and evictions (proposing instead the provision of alternative housing). It has reneged on its promise to cut the retirement age from 65 to 60 and to establish universal basic state wages and rent. At the same time, Podemos has adopted the vocabulary classically associated with far-right politics—praising the Church, the monarchy and the army.

On April 30, co-founder Juan Carlos Monedero resigned from the number-three position in Podemos, warning that it was becoming like the parties it was seeking to replace. “If we lose this window of opportunity, it will be terrible: we would be betraying a lot of people who believed that we represented change,” Monedero declared.

Monedero’s resignation was linked to his failure to declare around €425,000 allegedly earned as an adviser to various “Bolivarian” countries in Latin American. The revelation was a gift to the press, which hammered Podemos for being as corrupt as the parties it criticised and for being in the pay of dictatorial regimes.

Iglesias responded to Monedero’s resignation declaring, “As you can imagine, it’s enormously painful. For me Juan Carlos is not only a long-standing teammate, he is also one of my best friends and he has been and still is a key figure for our political careers and of course for Podemos.”

Josep María Antentas, sociology professor and leading Pabloite, writing in International Viewpoint on May 8, also warned about the search for “centre” votes. He declared, “The challenge is for Podemos to continue to set the political agenda by placing proposals and issues on the table to highlight its uniqueness and its credibility as an agent of democratic and social change.”

Unsurprisingly, Antentas made no reference to the fact that the Pabloites bear direct responsibility for the rightward lurch of Podemos. Under pressure from the Iglesias faction which demanded Podemos members drop dual membership in another party, Anticapitalists was dissolved. Subsequently, half of the organisation in Andalusia was expelled for opposing the dissolution. They complained that Anticapitalist’s “achievements” of “getting some parliamentary positions, as in the case of Teresa Rodriguez in Andalusia, or replacing Miguel Urbán in the European Parliament, have been at the cost of completely abandoning the defence of an anticapitalist programme.”

They go on, “It has accepted uncritically the turn to the ‘centre’ expressed by the direction of Pablo Iglesias, who is guiding Podemos towards an impasse that will disappoint the sectors hardest hit by the crisis, while losing the battle for hegemony in the centre of the political scene after the upsurge of the liberal right of Citizens.”

The belated complaints of the Andalusian Anticapitalists bear out the warnings made by the World Socialist Web Site when Podemos first emerged that, like its counterpart in Greece, Syriza, it was a pro-capitalist party that would inevitably betray, then attack the working class. Iglesias has repeatedly insisted that he is willing to make any kind of political alliance, including with explicitly right-wing forces. In a statement declaring that he would consider deals with both the PSOE and the PP, he said, “We are not sectarian. On programmatic issues, we will not have problems with anyone.”

The role of Podemos has been to steer mass anger into the dead end of electing new bourgeois governments and a mechanism for the affluent middle class layers inside Podemos to join “the caste” they claim to abhor.

German postal service threatens to lay off strikers while deploying strike-breakers

Gustav Kemper

In spite of major attacks and threats on striking postal workers in Germany, the Verdi trade union is continuing to limit the strike to regional centres, even though this means that just several thousand of the 140,000 employees have been called out on strike.

This stalling tactic is aimed at dissipating the combativity of the workforce and selling out the strike. The tactic of the union is playing directly into the hands of management. The company is utilising the limited strike to intensify their attacks on the strikers. Since the postal service continues to have a significant number of civil servants at its disposal who are not permitted to strike, they are being deployed as strike-breakers.

This not only violates Germany’s constitution, which bans the use of civil servants as strike-breakers, but also a ruling of the German Constitutional Court from 1993, which determined that the federal postal service at that time could not order civil servants to fill positions left vacant by strike action.

A spokesman for the postal service explained at the beginning of the week that the strike was not tangibly restricting the delivery of letters or parcels. The trade unions protested against the use of civil servants as strike-breakers, but refused to significantly expand the strike.

On May 13, Verdi called for strikes in 83 letter-sorting centres, as well as in transportation and in departments for major clients. The main demand of the strike is a reduction in working hours from 38.5 hours per week to 36 hours on full pay. This is because the postal service did not maintain its contractually agreed commitment to restrict the handing of delivery zones to private companies, a commitment obtained by accepting a longer workweek.

As previously reported by the WSWS, the postal service is doing everything it can to reduce the costs of postal delivery. This has been justified with reference to the low-wage contracts agreed by the service’s competitors in private firms. In reality, they are trying to keep their promise to the financial elite to increase dividends by 2020 and expand business operations into foreign markets.

The private competitors normally work with sub-contractors paying far less than the standard agreement at the German postal service. In the newly established 49 distribution centres of Delivery GmbH, 20,000 jobs are to be created in the coming five years, but they will be paid according to rates prevailing in the freight and logistics branch, where wages are around 20 percent lower than the postal service’s pay agreement.

Temporary workers who are still paid the higher level are being threatened with the prospect of not being offered new contracts if they refuse to accept the shift to the Delivery GmbH pay agreement based on the freight and logistics branch.

In several letter centres, superiors have placed considerable pressure on striking employees in one-to-one meetings, threatening them with the loss of their job or termination of contract if they take part in the postal strike. Some employees were told that participation in the strike would have consequences. “They have also indicated that they are looking at the contracts of temporary workers,” a worker in Hesse reported.

Instead of expanding the strike, Verdi sent a letter of complaint to Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, Social Democratic Party (SPD), appealing for him to apply pressure on the postal service management. Verdi celebrated as a success Gabriel’s meeting with the chairman of the board, calling for the “respecting of personal as well as collective employee rights.”

But the government is firmly on the side of company management. The federal state owns around 21 percent of Deutsche Post AG shares, and as a result is directly involved in the drive for larger profits for shareholders. It therefore has a considerable interest in reducing employee costs, since the percentage of wages paid to postal workers equates to around 50 percent.

As was to be expected, postal service chief Frank Appel firmly rejected the accusation that pressure was being applied to employees, but could not deny the fact that concrete threats to delivery workers had been made.

In previous weeks a total of some 7,000 workers in several letter centres, in transportation and in the division for corporate clients, were involved in the strike, but Verdi announced May 18 that only 5,000 members were being called out.

Verdi is doing everything to bring the conflict to a rapid conclusion by agreeing a rotten compromise.

Further talks are due today and Thursday on a wage increase for the 140,000 employees. This pay agreement expires at the end of May. Verdi is calling for a pay rise of 5.5 percent over 12 months. A Verdi spokesman in Berlin sought to calm the membership by referring to these talks. Should these fail, the strike could be expanded at the beginning of June, he said. However, this does nothing to assist the 20,000 workers to be employed by the newly established Delivery GmbH, who will see their wages drop by some 20 percent.

Saudi Arabian monarchy calls for more executioners

Niles Williamson

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Civil Service posted eight job openings this week for new executioners on its employment website. The job posting states that no particular qualifications are necessary and that applicants will not be subject to typical civil service entrance exams.

The new state killers, who are formally classified as religious functionaries, will be responsible for “carrying out the death sentence according to Islamic Sharia after it is ordered by a legal ruling.” They will also be responsible for amputating the hands of those individuals convicted of criminal offenses that do not carry the death penalty.

The most common form of state sanctioned murder in the Islamic kingdom is beheading with a scimitar, a traditional Arabian sword with a long curved blade. Executions have also been carried out by firing squad and stoning, though these methods of killing are less prevalent.

The Saudi monarchy is in desperate need for new swordsmen as the number of beheadings is on pace to double from last year. According to Human Rights Watch there have been 85 beheadings so far this year, nearly matching in less than five months the 90 beheadings carried out in all of 2014.

Approximately half of those beheaded last year were Saudi Arabian. The others were migrant workers from Yemen, Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, Sudan, Chad, Eritrea, India, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines.

With their noted quiescence, American officials including President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry sanction Saudi Arabia’s decapitations even as they hypocritically utilize the horrific images of beheadings by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to justify military operations in Iraq and Syria.

Saudi Arabia has consistently been ranked as among the top five countries for executions annually. The kingdom ranked third in the number of executions in 2014, behind China and Iran, and ahead of Iraq and the United States. According to figures compiled by Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia put a total of 592 people to death between 2007 and 2014.

The number of executions has risen dramatically since King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud took the throne in January. Salman has appointed a number of new judges to work through a significant backlog of death penalty appeals.

Saudi Arabia is one of the last countries to officially sanction public executions and the only one to carry them out on a methodical basis. Beheadings are routinely carried out in broad daylight in public squares. Deera Square, the main site of public executions in the capital city, Riyadh, is grotesquely nicknamed Chop Chop Square.

Earlier this month five men who had been convicted of murder were beheaded in Jeddah and their corpses were hung by a rope from a helicopter hovering above the city in a grisly public display. Recent cases have also been reported in which decapitated corpses were crucified and left to hang in the open air.

Though it is illegal to film the killings, videos depicting the barbaric practice often leak online. A Saudi security official was arrested in January for filming and posting online the video of a typical execution. The video shows a woman protesting her innocence as she is forced to the ground by security officers, positioning her to be beheaded. The swordsman pulls back his scimitar and butchers the woman with three successive hacks at her neck.

While most beheadings are carried out in punishment for murder, the death penalty is also applicable under Saudi law in cases of adultery, apostasy, burglary, drug smuggling, sorcery, witchcraft, fornication, sodomy, homosexuality, lesbianism, carjacking and waging war on God.

A Sudanese migrant worker was beheaded in 2011 after being convicted of practicing witchcraft and sorcery. According to Amnesty International, Abdul Hamid bin Hussein Mostafa al Fakki was entrapped by an agent provocateur from Saudi Arabia’s religious police, who asked him to cast a spell to reunite the police agent’s supposedly divorced parents. The Ministry of Justice filed 191 capital cases of alleged sorcery between November 2013 and May 2014, many against migrant workers.

The barbarity of the Saudi monarchy is not confined to its own borders. The spike in public executions also comes as the Saudi monarchy, with the full support of the US, is leading a punishing air war against the Houthi in Yemen. Airstrikes since March have resulted in the deaths of more than 1,800 people, half of them civilians.

The Saudi-led coalition has committed numerous war crimes, deploying illegal cluster munitions and dropping bombs on a refugee camp, a warehouse full of humanitarian supplies and a dairy factory. Schools, hospitals, airports and residential neighborhoods have all been deliberately targeted for destruction.

US secretary of state berates North Korea

Ben McGrath

US Secretary of State John Kerry stopped off in South Korea for two days this week after his trip to Beijing where he confronted Chinese leaders over China’s activities in the South China Sea. While in Seoul, Kerry took the opportunity to ratchet up tensions with North Korea, which is ultimately aimed at China.

Kerry met his South Korean counterpart Yun Byeong-se on Monday, followed by a press conference, a lecture on cyber security and an address to US military personnel in South Korea. During the press conference Kerry and Yun emphasized the strength of the alliance between the two countries, stating that there was “no daylight” between them.

Kerry and Yun specifically targeted North Korea, ramping up pressure on the Stalinist regime of leader Kim Jong-un. Kerry condemned North Korea’s recent ejection test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile as a “flagrant disregard for international law.” The secretary of state also strongly criticized reports of public executions and other human rights abuses in North Korea.

Kerry stated, “As a result of that, we are indeed talking about ways to increase the pressure and increase the potential of either sanctions or other means to make it clear to him [Kim Jong-un] that he is on a very dangerous course in the missile systems and continued pursuit of his nuclear program.”

Kerry’s lecture at Korea University on cyber security was also aimed at North Korea. He denounced Pyongyang for “provocative, destabilizing, and repressive actions, including the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures.” Last December, the US made unsubstantiated claims that North Korea had hacked into the computers of Sony Corporation in retaliation for its movie,The Interview, which depicted the killing of Kim Jong-un.

Kerry’s comments on human rights and international law are entirely cynical. The US regularly turns its back to human rights abuses by allies while utilizing the same issue to justify military buildup and attacks on opponents. Denunciations of North Korea as a “rogue regime” have been part of the justification for the US “pivot to Asia” aimed at undermining Chinese influence and encircling it militarily.

While continuing to cite North Korea as the threat, Kerry said during a speech to US troops late Monday, “This is why we need to deploy ships, forces… and we are talking about THAAD.” THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, is an anti-ballistic missile system that the US plans to deploy throughout Asia. Washington has been pushing for the placement of a THAAD battery to South Korea since at least last spring when it was revealed that the US military was surveying possible locations.

The THAAD system is designed to knock out incoming missiles and is part of the Pentagon’s plans for fighting a nuclear war with China. In the event of a first strike by the US, the anti-ballistic missile systems are designed to contain a Chinese counterattack.

US pressure is also being increased on North Korea following recent negotiations with Iran, with an agreement being held out as a road for Pyongyang to follow. As in the case of Iran, Washington’s primary concern is not North Korea’s limited nuclear capability, but rather to establish relations with Pyongyang more in line with US interests.

Kerry said during the press conference that a deal with Iran could, “serve as an example for North Korea about a better way to move, a better way to try to behave, a more legitimate entry road to the global community and to the norms of international behavior.” Such a rapprochement, however, would be heavily dependent on Pyongyang distancing itself from Beijing.

After decades of sanctions and international isolation enforced by the United States, the North Korean regime confronts a deepening economic and political crisis. Signs have emerged of a factional struggle in the upper echelons. In December 2013, Kim’s uncle Jang Song-thaek was purged and executed. Jang, previously regarded as the power behind Kim, had close relations with China.

Unsubstantiated accounts of the recent execution of Defense Chief Hyon Yong-chol might point to further internal turmoil. South Korea’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, has made conflicting claims that Hyon had been killed or purged, after initially declaring that he had been executed with an anti-aircraft gun.

Kerry put the onus on China to pressure North Korea over its nuclear programs, declaring, “China has obviously an extraordinary leverage.” He reported that Beijing was considering new sanctions on North Korea which is heavily dependent on China for trade and financial assistance.

China, however, is caught in a bind. Beijing does not want to precipitate a collapse of the North Korean regime, which it has regarded as a buffer against US encroachment on the Korean Peninsula. At the same, Pyongyang’s nuclear programs and empty threats are exploited by Washington as the pretext for its military build-up in North East Asia.

While in Seoul, Kerry also sought to push South Korea towards closer relations with Japan. These have been undermined by the Japanese government’s campaign to whitewash the war crimes of Japanese imperialism during World War II, including the abuse of sex slaves or “comfort women,” many of whom were Korean. The South Korean government regularly exploits this issue to whip up nationalism and anti-Japanese sentiment to distract from rising social tensions at home.

While declaring the use of so-called comfort women “a terrible, egregious violation of human rights,” Kerry stated, “[W]e urge both Japan and South Korea to handle these sensitive historical issues with restraint and continue to engage in direct dialogue towards a mutually accepted resolution that promotes healing while facilitating a future oriented relationship.”

Washington is concerned that the dispute could hamper its attempts to integrate Seoul and Tokyo into its military preparations for war against China, including the deployment and coordination of THAAD ballistic missile systems.

The Clintons peddle populism while raking in corporate cash

Patrick Martin

Hillary Clinton has launched her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination with a flurry of populist demagogy, claiming to fight for the interests of “ordinary Americans.” But financial disclosure forms filed May 15 with federal election officials show that the Clinton family is anything but ordinary.

Bill and Hillary Clinton took in at least $30 million during 2014 and the first four months of 2015, according to the campaign filing, placing the Clintons in the upper stratosphere of American families, with incomes in the top 0.1 percent of the population.

The Clintons’ total family wealth can’t be directly calculated from the income filings, but press reports indicate that Bill Clinton alone has made more than $100 million since he left the White House in January 2001, mainly through speeches to corporate, banking and trade association audiences who paid six-figure fees.

The Clintons combined to make more than $125 million in speaking fees alone, not counting millions from the sales of several memoirs—Hillary Clinton’s volume on her four years as secretary of state provided more than $5 million in income. Alongside these millions, Clinton’s salary as a US senator from New York state for eight years, and four years as secretary of state, must be considered small change, although both are far more than the median US income.

Throughout 2014 and in the first three months of 2015, when it was an open secret that Hillary Clinton would seek the Democratic presidential nomination and that she was the overwhelming frontrunner, she made 51 paid speeches, racking up $11 million in total fees. Her husband gave 53 paid speeches for similar fees, for a total of $14 million.

The typical fee for either Clinton is $250,000 for an appearance of usually no more than an hour. This is four times what the median American family makes in an entire year.

The banks and corporations that shelled out to one Clinton or the other included General Electric, Cisco, eBay, Microsoft, Oracle, Deutsche Bank, Corning, Xerox, Quallcomm, Salesforce.com, as well as trade associations.

Nearly one third of Hillary Clinton’s fees came from tech companies, followed by health care and financial services, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. Bill Clinton made the most money from financial services, insurance and real estate companies, in that order. The Clintons also spoke before trade groups representing computer software, banking, insurance, medical device manufacturing and biotechnology.

The first month of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has been overshadowed by a series of disclosures of seedy connections between contributors to past and future campaigns, donors to the Clinton Global Initiative, the interlocking series of nearly a dozen foundations associated with the family, and those who have paid the Clintons a large fortune in speakers’ fees.

In many cases, the same giant corporations pay a Clinton to speak before them, donate to the Clinton foundation, and, through the executives or big shareholders, donate to the Clinton campaign or to one or another Political Action Committee (PAC) supporting the campaign.

There are also countless opportunities for Clinton operatives to cash in on their political connections. One particularly sordid episode was reported Tuesday by the New York Times: longtime Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal sent more than two dozen memos to Hillary Clinton in 2011-2012, during her time as secretary of state, offering information and commentary on the political situation in Libya. This was the period of the US-NATO bombing attack and the partnership between the CIA and former Al Qaeda militants in overthrowing and murdering Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Blumenthal was also working with a group of businessmen, including former military and intelligence officials, who were looking for profit opportunities in a post-Gaddafi Libya. One from the group, retired Army major general David L. Grange, traveled to Libya and signed a memorandum of understanding with the US-backed transitional government to provide “humanitarian assistance, medical services and disaster mitigation,” and help to train a new national police force.

Grange told the Times, “We were thinking, ‘O.K., Gaddafi is dead, or about to be, and there’s opportunities.’” It was while this attempted profiteering from disaster was under way that Hillary Clinton made the notorious remark about Gaddafi—delivered with a smirk—“We came. We saw. He died.” She could have added, “And some people are about to make a lot of money.”

In the event, it was not Grange or Blumenthal. Their deals came to nothing, and better-informed and better-financed competitors swooped in, especially the major oil companies.

Hillary Clinton stopped giving paid speeches when she formally announced her candidacy last month. Bill Clinton said he would continue to collect speaking fees, telling NBC News, “I gotta pay our bills.”

The brazen cynicism of this remark is demonstrated by the fact that the Clintons hold the bulk of their accumulated wealth, tens of millions of dollars, in cash. They could never earn another dollar and still enjoy a living standard that would put them in the company of the multi-millionaires and billionaires whose class interests all Democratic and Republican politicians serve.

The Clintons own some real estate like their homes in Westchester County, New York and the Georgetown district of Washington, DC. But for political reasons, they have owned no stocks, bonds or shares of any financial asset since liquidating their investment holdings in 2007, before Hillary Clinton’s first and unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

At her initial campaign stops in Iowa last week, Hillary Clinton struck a populist pose, declaring, “The deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top.” She attacked “hedge-fund managers” for taking advantage of tax loopholes, adding, “There’s something wrong when the average American CEO makes 300 times more than the typical American worker.”

Clinton herself is far more likely to be on speaking terms with hedge-fund managers or Silicon Valley billionaires than with the “typical American worker.” After a recent campaign fundraiser at the home of John Chambers, the founding billionaire of Cisco Systems, she pronounced herself interested in his proposal to cut the corporate tax rate for overseas earnings so that Cisco and other corporations holding more than $1.5 trillion in profits in foreign bank accounts might repatriate the money and use it in the United States. “It doesn’t do our economy any good to have this money parked somewhere else in the world,” Clinton told the Wall Street Journal.

These class realities are no barrier to the New York Times, the Washington Post and other pro-Democratic Party publications from presenting the 2016 Clinton campaign as well to the left of her campaign in 2008. The Post claimed, in a largely favorable profile published May 17, that “Hillary Rodham Clinton is running as the most liberal Democratic presidential front-runner in decades…”

The paper’s account was largely focused on Clinton’s approach to social issues like gay marriage, abortion rights and the environment, of concern to the upper-middle-class milieu for which they write, but which do not threaten the wealth and power of the super-rich.