Sweden announces plans to deport up to 80,000 refugees

Martin Kreickenbaum

The Swedish government has announced its intention to deport 80,000 refugees whose asylum applications have been rejected in the coming months. The Social Democratic-Green coalition in Stockholm, which enforced stricter asylum laws and border controls last year, is pursuing a vicious policy of deterrence against refugees and transforming the country, which boasted of its liberal refugee policy for decades, into a police state.

The same day as these measures were announced, Human Rights Watch published a report sharply criticising the drift toward authoritarianism throughout Europe, which European governments have justified as a response to the migrant crisis.

Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth wrote that the arrival of refugees from the Middle East is “driving many Western governments to roll back human rights protections,” adding, “these backward steps threaten the rights of all” sections of the population, not just refugees.

This tendency is exemplified by the policies of the German government, which, despite Chancellor Angela Merkel’s proclamations last year of a “welcoming culture,” is in the midst of intensive preparations to further seal its country’s borders and establish “processing centres”—i.e. internment camps—for refuges.

The publication of the 659-page Human Rights Watch report followed just one day after at least 24 refugees, including ten children, drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, adding to the 3,811 people who died last year attempting to seek refuge in Europe from war and violence in their native countries stoked up by decades of Western military intervention.

Social Democratic Swedish interior minister Anders Ygeman told television broadcaster SVT that the government had already ordered the police and immigration authorities to implement mass deportations. Swedish daily Dagens Industri quoted the minister as saying, “I expect 60,000 people will be affected, but it could be 80,000.”

Ygeman noted that the government would first aim at a “voluntary” return of refugees, but then added, “If this does not work, it will be necessary to carry out their return by force.” Since the government anticipated that “large groups of people will disappear underground,” the security apparatus is to be massively strengthened. An additional 1,000 positions are to be created with the border police, and the security agencies will be ordered to carry through arbitrary controls on “foreign” looking people, i.e. racial profiling.

The head of Sweden’s border police, Patrick Engström, stated that collaboration between the border police and immigration authorities would be intensified in order to strictly enforce deportations. Asylum seekers will only be informed about the rejection of their asylum application in the presence of a police officer.

Since the scale of the planned deportations would overwhelm the currently existing airline routes, the government plans to charter planes to carry out the deportations. According to Dagens Industri, government officials are in talks with both countries to establish a repatriation agreement with Morocco and Afghanistan.

Although Sweden seeks to portray itself as a “humanitarian great power,” it has repeatedly tightened the screws on refugees over the past year. Mass accommodation centres were systematically overcrowded, and refugees have been housed in churches and mosques. New arrivals were ultimately compelled to sleep in the snow-covered streets.

The Social Democratic-Green government imposed the first restrictions on asylum regulations in November, whereby Sweden “adjusted to the minimum standards of the EU,” as Prime Minister Stefan Löfven put it. Since then, successful asylum seekers have been granted only a maximum of three years’ residency. Family reunification was restricted, together with the right to health care.

The Social Democrat-Green government exploited the hysteria after the Paris terrorist attacks to introduce identification requirements at the border and biometric checks on refugees. A particularly despicable role was played by the Greens as the smaller partner in the coalition. Green chairwoman Asa Romson, who is also deputy prime minister, announced last year’s asylum limits in tears and claimed her party would not support any further restriction of the rights of refugees.

But this was utter hypocrisy. At the beginning of January, Sweden told transport companies to check the IDs of travellers entering the country. Since then, the borders have been practically closed for refugees. Now, the mass deportations have been supported by the Greens.

The shift to the right in Sweden’s refugee policy is the result of a weeks-long hysterical campaign in which, as in Germany, refugees have been accused of committing sexual assaults on a wide scale and constantly denounced as criminals. Swedish police came under particular criticism by the far right for allegedly sweeping criminal acts by refugees under the carpet.

This racist campaign reached a high point when a 15-year-old Syrian refugee, obviously struggling with the trauma of his experiences during the civil war, stabbed and fatally injured a carer at a mass accommodation centre for refugees.

The debate was driven by the right-wing extremist and anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, which urged the government to go further in its crackdown on refugees. They saw a “huge demand for personnel” in order to overcome the “refugee problem,” as the Frankfurter Rundschau put it.

The advance of the far right is above all the result of the disastrous policies pursued by Social Democracy over the past two decades. Unprecedented privatisation programmes and drastic cuts to public spending and welfare have plunged the suburbs of many urban centres into poverty. In some suburbs of Stockholm and Malmö, unemployment is over 15 percent, twice as high as the country’s average. Immigrants are disproportionately affected by mass unemployment. The increasing social tensions exploded in violent riots in the suburbs of Stockholm in the summer of 2014, after the police shot a Portuguese immigrant.

Sweden’s ruling elite, like those across the continent, has responded to the sharpening social tensions with national chauvinism and the stoking up of anti-immigrant sentiment so as to divide society, prepare the way for the far right and strengthen the police state. The creation of a pogrom-like atmosphere is accompanied by increased militarism. Although Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström announced that due to the influx of refugees the country “faces collapse” and could not adequately care for the tens of thousands of refugees, the 10 percent increase in defence spending adopted at the beginning of 2014 has been retained.

Wallström also supports the reintroduction of compulsory military service, which was eliminated in 2010. Such a policy would have been, according to Wallström, helpful last autumn in dealing with the refugee influx.

The utter bankruptcy of the Swedish Social Democrats and Greens has above all strengthened the far right. Immediately after the asylum restrictions, they celebrated because the government had “adopted the line of the Sweden Democrats.” The Sweden Democrats, who are aligned with other European parties like France’s neo-fascist National Front, enjoy the support of 18 percent of voters according to recent polls. Last year there were at least two-dozen cases of arson directed at refugee accommodations in Sweden.

Throughout Europe, the political “left”, including the Social Democrats, Greens, and organizations such as the NPA in France and the Left Party in Germany, have fully swallowed the nostrums of the far right, demanding the curtailment of the social rights of refugees and mass deportations.

The effect of these policies has been a humanitarian disaster for refugees and the move toward police-state forms of rule throughout Europe. In its report released Thursday Human Rights Watch declared, “Blatant Islamophobia and shameless demonizing of refugees have become the currency of an increasingly assertive politics of intolerance.”

In a damning admission veiled as a humanitarian appeal, the report declared, “The Western governments threatening to curtail rights include many of the strongest traditional allies of the human rights cause.”

In other words, the very European governments that have championed the violation of “human rights” as a cause to bomb and invade defenceless countries in Africa and the Middle East, are completely indifferent to “human rights” abuses within their own borders, and are using the refugee crisis to impose police-state measures against their own working populations.

Europe joins the economic “gold rush” to Tehran

Peter Symonds

Just two weeks after the lifting of punitive international sanctions on Iran, a scramble is underway to take advantage of trade and investment possibilities. A two-day visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Tehran last week was followed by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s trip this week to Italy and France, leading to a series of multi-billion dollar deals.

The international sanctions were lifted on January 16 only after Tehran implemented the onerous demands of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) reached last July with the P-6 group—the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany—over its nuclear programs. Iran, which has repeatedly denied allegations that it planned to build a nuclear weapon, was compelled to ship out its low-enriched uranium, dismantle thousands of gas centrifuges and incapacitate its heavy-water reactor.

For the European powers, the opening up of Iran provides opportunities to boost their own depressed economies and to make up ground lost to China as a result of the US-led sanctions. For Iran, investment and trade is a dire necessity to boost its crippled economy as the government confronts mounting social tensions. As a result of falling oil prices, the economy grew last year by just 0.8 percent, compared to 4.3 percent in 2014. Iran is hoping to attract up to $50 billion in foreign investment annually.

Rouhani’s European tour was the first by an Iranian president in well over a decade. He was accompanied by a 100-strong trade delegation of ministers, senior officials and business representatives. He received red carpet treatment and met with top leaders in Italy and France, including both prime ministers, and French President Francois Hollande, as well as Pope Francis in the Vatican.

In Rome, Rouhani declared that the nuclear agreement had been a “win-win” for both sides. “We invite you to invest and we will provide stability and ensure that you can make adequate returns,” he promised. In Italy, agreements were signed worth an estimate $18 billion in industries ranging from natural gas to high-speed rail.

In Paris, Rouhani told business leaders that he wanted to “turn the page” on the old “bitterness” between Iran and France and “open a new relationship.” Pierre Gattaz, president of the French employer federation Medef, urged French companies to “rush” to Iran and “not waste any time.”

At Rouhani’s meeting with Hollande, a range of deals were formally signed, including the purchase of 118 Airbus aircraft and an oil contract with Total to buy 150,000–200,000 barrels of oil a day from Iran. PSA Peugeot Citroen sealed a joint venture with Iran Khodro to produce 200,000 cars a year and invest more than $280 million over the next five years.

Other major European powers are also lining up. On January 16, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond commented: “I hope British businesses seize the opportunities available to them through the phased lifting of sanctions on Iran.” Just days earlier, former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was part of a large German trade delegation to Iran, seeking to revive longstanding economic ties that were hard hit by sanctions.

Even before the lifting of sanctions, Tehran had become a magnet for business delegations. The New Yorker commented: “The Great Race—for what a Western ambassador in Tehran described as ‘the last gold mine on Earth’—has begun. With 80 million people, Iran is the largest economy to return to the global marketplace since the Soviet Union’s demise, a quarter century ago. It urgently needs to refurbish its crumbling infrastructure. Unlike Eastern Europe, however, Iran is flush with cash, after gaining access to $100 billion in oil revenues that had been locked away in foreign banks during sanctions.”

Moreover, Rouhani’s pledge to “provide stability” and ensure profits is a guarantee to foreign investors that the reactionary clerical regime in Tehran will implement its pro-market agenda and use police-state measures to suppress any opposition in the working class. Last May, the government hiked up fuel prices by a massive 40 percent and ended the rationing system that provided cheap subsidised petrol.

Rouhani is part of a faction of the ruling elite that has repeatedly sought to establish a rapprochement with the US as a means of opening up the country to Western investment. The government is hoping for a much-needed economic boost to stem mounting social tensions. Some 60 percent of the population is under the age of 30 and the official youth unemployment rate is 25 percent.

The European “rush” to Iran has left the United States on the economic sidelines. While most international sanctions have been lifted, the US trade embargo will not be lifted for another eight years, with a few exceptions, including passenger aircraft. Having lost out in the initial round to Airbus, Boeing will no doubt be keen to bid for the next round of sales. Iran has indicated it wants to purchase a total of 400 aircraft.

Washington has previously used threats and provocations against Iran as a means of disrupting the plans of its rivals to secure close relations with the energy-rich state. In 2004–05, the so-called EU Three—France, Germany and Britain—attempted to negotiate an agreement with Iran over its nuclear programs, only to have the talks effectively sabotaged by the US. Having frozen its uranium enrichment program, Tehran reacted angrily to a US-EU deal, which, in the words of one Iranian negotiator, was “too ridiculous to be called an offer.”

The breakdown of talks led to escalating tensions as the US ratcheted up its threats of war against Iran. After Obama came to office, Washington pressured its allies and the UN to impose draconian sanctions that cut Iran off from the international financial system and dramatically reduced its exports of oil.

Last year’s nuclear deal is often hailed as a triumph for peace and stability. In reality, the US agreed to the JCPA in part because it feared a breakdown of the sanctions coalition. More fundamentally, however, it was a tactical shift aimed at preparing for confrontation and conflict with larger adversaries, China and Russia.

The United States cannot simply stand by and allow its European and Asian rivals to consolidate an economic base and political ties with Iran. The country is the second largest economy in the Middle East and has the fourth largest reserves of oil, and second largest of gas, in the world. US imperialism will either have to join in the scramble, or, as it has done before, use sanctions and military threats to undermine its rivals, and thus bring the region to the brink of another new war.

Japan moves to negative interest rates

Nick Beams

In what was widely regarded as a shock move, the Japanese central bank yesterday cut its base interest rate to minus 0.1 percent. It was a response to continued deflation, amid a weakening domestic economy and fears of the impact of the continued slowdown in China. In its statement, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) said it would “cut the interest rate further into negative territory if judged necessary.”

The decision came as a surprise because only eight days earlier BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda told parliament the bank was “not seriously considering” a negative rate.

The move had immediate international consequences, helping to fuel a near 400-point rise in Wall Street’s Dow Jones index. Speculators concluded that the Japanese step, together with the near stagnation of the US economy in the fourth quarter, meant the US Federal Reserve would not lift interest rates in March. There is thought to now be virtually no prospect of four interest rate rises by the Fed this year following its decision to increase the base interest rate by 0.25 percentage points in December.

Together with interest rate cuts in Europe, the Japanese central bank decision means that one quarter of global gross domestic product now emanates from countries where official interest rates are negative, with predictions this figure could rise even further. Such a situation has never existed in the history of global capitalism. It is an indication of the deepening breakdown in the world economy that began with the 2008 financial crisis.

The Japanese central bank decision was only carried by a 5–4 vote on its governing board, indicating significant divisions within the country’s financial establishment. Supporters of the move claim it was necessary to counter deflation, in line with so-called Abenomics. Opponents focus on the need to pursue more conventional economic policies in order to bring down the level of Japanese government debt, which is among the highest in the world.

Under the new regime, banks will be charged an interest rate of 0.1 percent for any deposits they make with the central bank, while their existing deposits will still be paid interest at the old rate of 0.1 percent.

The official rationale for the move is to stop major corporations sitting on piles of cash and push them into making investments, the level of which has been stagnating because of deflationary fears.

“Through the minus interest rate combined with quantitative easing, I hope we can support companies and individuals in breaking their deflationary mindset,” Kuroda said.

As in the rest of the world, however, the only effect of the interest rate cut and the continuation of the BoJ’s asset purchasing program of 80 trillion yen a year ($675 billion) will be to promote further financial speculation, rather than investment in the real economy.

In its statement, the BoJ focused on falling oil prices and the slowdown in China rather than any weakness at home.

“For these reasons,” it said, “there is an increasing risk that an improvement in the business confidence of Japanese firms and the conversion of the deflationary mindset might be delayed and that the underlying trend in inflation might be negatively affected.”

The bank said its aim was to exert downward pressure on interest rates across the board.

While it eschewed any reference to the domestic economy, economic data published on the eve of the announcement would have been of considerable significance. These showed continued low growth in key areas.

Industrial production was lower than expected, down 1.4 percent in December on the previous month, compared to expectations of a 0.3 percent decline. Prices were up by just 0.2 percent on a year ago. Preliminary figures for January in the Tokyo area indicated a fall in prices of 0.3 percent from a year ago, pointing to a possible trend in the national economy as a whole.

Household spending was down by 4.4 percent on the levels of a year ago, compared to market forecasts of a 2.4 percent contraction. December was the fourth consecutive month in which spending declined and it was the biggest fall since last May.

While there were claims the decline in consumption spending may have been overstated, there was a general consensus that it fell in the last quarter of 2015 and this would lead to lower numbers for economic growth.

Marcel Thieliant at Capital Economics told the Financial Times the figures were “disappointing” and “suggest that Japan’s economy barely grew last quarter. While activity should recover in the first quarter, the moderation in underlying inflation suggests that the Bank of Japan still has more work to do to reach its 2 percent inflation target.”

There is considerable scepticism that the latest move will have any more effect in halting deflation than have the massive central bank purchases of Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) and other assets. Some analysts suggest that the interest rate cut may be an admission of failure of the bond purchasing program.

Daiju Aoki, an economist at UBS Securities in Tokyo, told Reuters that the BoJ move was a “regime change.” Its major policy tool was now negative interest rates, which showed that “the ability to buy more JGBs is limited.”

Kuroda sought to counter the idea that the move to negative rates meant the bank was no longer able to lift asset purchases, saying it could increase them in the future, as well as further cutting rates.

However, his words will do nothing to diminish the growing realisation that the various forms of quantitative easing pursued by the world’s central banks are doing nothing to halt growing recessionary forces, and that the banks are running out of policy options.

European Central Bank president Mario Draghi has signalled the bank may extend its asset purchasing program when it meets in March in order to try to counter the effect of the China slowdown and falling oil prices. In Britain, the Bank of England appears to have shelved the idea of a return to a more normal interest rate regime, while in the US there are mounting criticisms of the Fed that its December rate rise was a mistake.

Ray Dalio, the head of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, called on the Fed to abandon any further rate rises.

Summing up widespread opinion in financial markets, Jordi Visser told the Financial Times: “The market views tightening as a mistake now. I don’t think 25 basis points (0.25 percentage points) matters much but the market clearly does. We’re now closer to a recession than we all realise.”

While the US markets celebrated the prospect of continued cheap money with yesterday’s 396-point rise, there is growing concern that the Fed has no clear policy direction. The Fed’s statement last Wednesday, keeping interest rates on hold, said it was closely watching the gyrations in global markets. It provided no assessment of financial risks, however, indicating that it is simply reacting to events and has no idea about how to control them.

Washington to escalate US Mideast wars

Bill Van Auken

The Obama White House has given the green light to demands by the US military for an escalation of the ongoing intervention in Iraq and Syria, as well as the opening up of a new theater of war in the oil-rich North African nation of Libya, according to published reports.

Citing a senior administration official, the New York Times reported Friday that President Barack Obama is “willing to consider raising the stakes in both Iraq and Syria” by deploying hundreds more US troops to the war-torn countries.

Describing Obama as having earlier “resented” Pentagon pressure for military escalation, the Times report indicated that the US president is now bowing to the military brass for the deployment of substantially more troops.

The plan reportedly involves sending some 800 more US soldiers to join the roughly 3,700 already deployed in Iraq, along with US special forces units operating inside Syria.

The Times noted that both “the White House and the Pentagon have taken pains to avoid describing the deployment as combat troops, instead calling them special operators, trainers and advisers.” These terms of art are designed to obscure for the American public the reality that US imperialism is once again embarking upon a major new war of aggression in the Middle East.

According to the Times, top US commanders have pitched the latest escalation as a matter of building on supposed successes in the military campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), arguing that these could be expanded to the extent that Iraqi forces are “coached and trained by Americans.”

They have pointed in particular to the recent “liberation of Ramadi,” insisting that it can be followed by “liberating” both Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and Raqqa in Syria, the nominal capital of the ISIS-occupied territory.

Ramadi was re-taken last month by an elite US-trained counterterrorism unit of the Iraqi army after protracted and devastating US airstrikes. Estimates are that over 60 percent of the city was reduced to rubble, leaving it virtually uninhabitable for the roughly half million people who previously called it home.

It is by no means clear how such an operation can be repeated in Mosul, a much larger city with a population of over one million, unless the Pentagon’s plans are to level it as well. The counterterrorism unit is too small for the job, and larger regular Iraqi army units have proven unreliable.

The logic of the US objectives in Iraq is an ever greater escalation of American forces leading to a reprise of the kind of war and occupation that was launched in 2003.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Obama convened a meeting of his national security advisers at the White House on Thursday to discuss the expansion of the US campaign against ISIS into Libya.

The White House issued a statement late Thursday stating, “The president emphasized that the United States will continue to counter ISIL [ISIS] terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary.”

The White House statement continued by stating that “ISIL affiliates and other violent extremists attempt to find safe haven in areas with limited or poor governance” and vowing that Washington would “continue efforts to strengthen governance and support ongoing counterterrorism efforts in Libya…”

Of course the White House release makes no mention of how Libya became an area “with limited or poor governance” or how ISIS acquired the strength to occupy part of the country’s Mediterranean coast. Both are bound up with the 2011 US-NATO war for regime change that toppled and murdered the country’s longtime ruler, Muammar Gaddafi.

In addition to a protracted campaign of airstrikes, Washington and its allies armed and aided Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias to serve as proxy ground troops. These same forces were then funneled into Syria along with large quantities of arms seized from Libyan government stockpiles, escalating the war for regime change there against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Some of these same fighters then returned to establish strongholds in Libya itself.

In other words, the Pentagon and the Obama White House are proposing a second war in Libya to counter the effects that were created by the first. In both cases, the real US objective is to impose US domination over the North African country, which boasts the largest oil reserves on the African continent.

Even as plans are being rolled out for escalating the war in Iraq and Syria and launching a new one in Libya, the US Army general appointed to command American forces occupying Afghanistan testified at a Senate hearing Thursday that an escalation of the US intervention may be required in that country as well.

Lieut. Gen. John “Mick” Nicholson told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the security situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating and that US military forces would be required not only for stepped up “counterterrorism” operations, but also “to prevent the Taliban from retaking the provincial capital” of Kandahar.

The Taliban currently control more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since the US invasion of 2001, while the Afghan security forces are suffering record casualties—16,000 killed or wounded in 2015—that are described by US commanders as “unsustainable.”

Nicholson testified that in some areas, the Afghan security forces “have years to go” before they will be able to stand on their own. He indicated his agreement with the committee’s Republican chairman, Senator John McCain, who attacked Obama’s troop reductions.

There are currently 9,800 US troops occupying Afghanistan. As in Iraq, they are formally designated as advisers, trainers and special operators. In reality, they are heavily involved in combat operations, as was exposed in last October’s US war crime, the airstrike on the Doctors without Borders hospital in Kunduz that killed 42 medical staff and patients.

President Obama last October rescinded his previously announced plan to pull out virtually all US forces from Afghanistan, adopting a plan dictated by the Pentagon to keep the roughly 10,000 troops there, likely beyond the end of his presidency.

Nicholson’s testimony was followed Thursday afternoon by a statement to Pentagon reporters by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who vowed that the US military will “stick with Afghanistan, but not just in 2016, that’s 2017 and beyond.”

What clearly emerges from the events of the past week is that the Obama administration, which came to power on a wave of opposition to the two wars of aggression that killed over a million people under President George W. Bush, is preparing to leave the White House with the US military still engaged in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, while waging new wars in Syria, Libya and beyond.

Wall Street celebrates mounting signs of US slump

Andre Damon

On Friday, the Commerce Department released the latest in a series of economic reports pointing to a dramatic slowdown in the US economy, with vast global implications. The response of Wall Street was a euphoric surge on US markets, sending the Dow Jones industrial average up by nearly 400 points and leading every major stock index around the world to close sharply up for the day.

The Commerce Department said US economic growth fell to a near-standstill in the last quarter of 2015, with the gross domestic product (GDP) expanding at an annualized rate of just 0.7 percent, down from 2 percent in the third quarter. The grim report included a dramatic fall in business investment and a marked slowdown in consumer spending.

This followed a report Thursday that durable goods orders, a key indicator of manufacturing output, tumbled by 5.1 percent in December in the sharpest monthly fall since the 2008–2009 financial crisis.

These statistics coincide with a series of mass layoff announcements by major US corporations. They include 16,000 layoffs at retailer Walmart, 10,000 at oilfield contractor Schlumberger, 6,000 at chemical company DuPont, 4,000 at education resources company Pearson LLC, 2,000 at the Norfolk Southern rail network, 3,000 at consumer products conglomerate Johnson & Johnson, 886 at mining company Alpha Natural Resources, 829 at mobile phone service Sprint, and 800 at technology company VMware.

Also this week, a number of giant US-based corporations, including United Technologies, Boeing, Apple and Caterpillar, reported poor figures for the end of 2015 and even worse estimates for 2016. Apple is anticipating its first annual revenue decline since 2003. Caterpillar, saying its revenues fell 20 percent last year and this year’s revenues could hit the lowest level in six years, announced Friday that it would eliminate 670 US jobs and close five plants in the Midwest.

How is the giddy upturn in stock prices in the face of signs of an economy sliding into recession to be explained?

For the broad mass of the population, economic stagnation and slowdown mean a further descent into economic distress, unemployment and outright poverty. The recent developments explode the claims of economic “recovery” and confirm that the destruction of decent-paying jobs, pensions and social services that followed the Wall Street crash of 2008 is not a temporary condition, but only the beginning of a permanent and escalating attack on working class living standards.

For the financial aristocracy, on the other hand, the signs of slump are welcome indicators that the Federal Reserve will continue to pump trillions of dollars into the financial markets, delaying further interest rate increases and perhaps rolling back the initial increase it imposed in December. Bankers and hedge fund speculators were rubbing their hands on Friday in anticipation of still more cheap credit to underwrite their parasitic financial operations.

The euphoria on Wall Street was a demonstration of the essential character of what the government and media call economic “recovery.” Just over two weeks ago, President Obama in his State of the Union address praised the economic “surge” that had made the US economy “the strongest, most durable… in the world,” and said claims “America’s economy is in decline” were a “fiction.”

There has been no genuine recovery in the real economy. Instead, a massive diversion of public resources has been carried out to rescue and further enrich the financial oligarchy at the expense of the productive forces and the working class. The focus of domestic policy has been to subsidize the utterly parasitic and quasi-criminal speculative activities of the banks and financial institutions, starving the real economy of productive investment, in order to engineer a further concentration of income and wealth among the top 1 percent and 0.1 percent of the population.

Now, with the slowdown in China, the crisis of the “emerging market” economies, the collapse of industrial commodity prices, and signs that the mountain of debt is unraveling, the financial elite is demanding even more free cash to prop up its Ponzi scheme operations.

At the same time, it is demanding the squandering of even greater sums to finance its wars for geo-political dominance and economic plunder in the Middle East and its preparations for war against its nuclear-armed rivals Russia and China.

The mounting economic crisis, for which the ruling class has no rational or progressive solution, intersects with and exacerbates geo-political tensions around the world and social tensions at home. The corporate-financial elite, fearing the spread of social opposition, prepares all the more feverishly the means for violent state repression against the working class.

The deepening economic crisis is playing out against the backdrop of an election that has already revealed deep-seated popular alienation from and disgust with the entire political system and both big business parties, and a profound crisis that threatens to tear apart the two-party system through which the American ruling class has exercised political domination for a century-and-a-half.

There is a growth of working class militancy, reflected in the opposition of auto workers to the sellout contracts imposed by the United Auto Workers last year and protests by workers in Flint against the poisoning of the city’s water supply and by teachers and students in Detroit against intolerable conditions in the schools. At the same time, the broad support for the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a socialist and denounces inequality and Wall Street, even as he seeks to channel popular opposition behind the Democratic Party, reflects a political radicalization and growth of anti-capitalist sentiment among working people and youth.

There is growing fear within the ruling class of impending social upheavals, reflected in a wave of articles and studies on social inequality and worried commentaries on the implications of the support for Sanders. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published a column by Peggy Noonan, a former speech writer for Ronald Reagan, under the headline “Socialism Gets a Second Life.” She writes, “The rise of Bernie Sanders means that accommodation is ending, and something new will take its place,” and adds, “Do you know what’s old if you’re 25? The free-market capitalist system that drove us into a ditch.”

The coming struggles of the working class must be guided by the understanding that its interests are incompatible with those of the financial oligarchy that dominates the economy and political system. The euphoric response of Wall Street to economic news that spells growing distress and suffering for countless millions is a demonstration of an irreconcilable conflict of social and class interests.

The fight to secure basic social rights—to decent-paying jobs, education, health care, housing, pensions—and halt the drive toward a new and catastrophic world war is a fight to break the power of the ruling financial oligarchy and end its private ownership of the banks and corporations. It is a fight against the capitalist system itself.

Londoners spend majority of their income on housing

Allison Smith

A new report released this week by the House of Commons library shows that private sector rent now comprises 62 percent of pre-tax income, up from 49 percent just five years ago.

Renters—who remain unprotected from annual price increases—are hardest hit by the cost of housing, with 25 percent of London renters in 20 out of the city’s 32 boroughs spending the overwhelming majority of their income on housing. Richmond Borough has seen the largest rent increase at 26 percent, while Westminster—the wealthiest borough—has risen by 22 percent. Hackney and Merton boroughs have risen 21 percent.

The high cost of rent means that far fewer young people are able to save to buy a home, which has resulted in an all-time high of young people renting privately. According to the most recent English Home Survey, almost half (48 percent) of all households aged 25-34 rented privately in 2014, up from 45 percent in 2012 and more than double the number since 2005.

The collapse in homeownership by individuals and families under 30 years old over the past decade is laid bare in an official analysis of the housing market in Britain since 1980. Remarkably, a report by the Office for National Statistics shows that through the 1980s and into the 1990s, one in three 16- to 24-year-olds were able to afford to buy their own home, compared to one in 10 today.

Housing and Planning Bill could end “affordable housing”

The Conservative government’s Housing and Planning Bill, which has reached the reporting stage and had its third reading in the House of Commons, contains anti-working class measures that could virtually put an end to affordable housing in London.

The bill contains requirements that force councils to sell vacant, high value properties in order to generate revenue, introduces “Pay to Stay” rules that increase council rents for households earning more than £30,000 (£40,000 in London), and includes reforms that obligate local authorities to ensure “Starter Homes” are built, with funding diverted from existing affordable housing funding within the planning system.

The government defines affordable as 80 percent of market rate. With the average cost of London homes now well over £500,000, Shelter housing charity argues, “As ‘Starter Homes’ are not currently affordable to most families on low-and-middle incomes, they should be built in addition to, not in place of, existing affordable housing. Local authorities should not be compelled to accept them if they are not affordable to their local community.”

Last April, Shelter housing charity research found that there were only 43 potentially suitable homes in London listed for sale on Zoopla that would be affordable for first time homebuyer families.

Low-income residents in London forced to use “poor doors”

Several new luxury housing estates in London are forcing lower income residents to use separate entrances, essentially poor doors, to access these estates.

Under current London planning laws, builders are normally required to construct a certain number of “affordable” units on new estates. In order for wealthier tenants to avoid coming in contact with their poor neighbours, estates are segregating them, sometimes entirely through separate bicycle storage, postal delivery boxes, and rubbish facilities.

Some of these estates even have an entirely different look and feel for the affordable housing side. Tracey Kellett, a buying agent for wealthy clients, said a number of developments have separate entrances “so the two social strata don’t have to meet.” In one, “The affordable [housing] has vile coloured plastic panels on the outside rather than blingy glass.”

Chinese billionaire buys London mansion for £80 million

Wang Jianlin—China’s richest man with a personal worth estimated at £20 billion—purchased a long lease from the British Crown Estate to buy the mansion at 15A Kensington Palace Gardens for £80 million—a sum roughly equal to the annual “living wage” of £18,570.40 of 4,307.93 Londoners. It is anticipated that he will spend tens of millions pounds more to renovate the already opulent 20,000 square foot, 10-bedroom estate located in London’s Billionaire Row.

Wang, the son of a foot soldier in Mao’s Zedong’s Stalinist Communist Party of China, is a former People’s Liberation Army commander turned real estate developer and theatre operator, who made his money through connections to the Chinese state. Corporate records of investments made between 2007 and 2011 reveal that Wang gave significant company shares to relatives of some of China’s most powerful politicians and their business associates.

The previous occupant of the home was Ukraine-born oligarch Leonid Blavatnik, who made a fortune in the privatisation of oil and aluminium after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. He is now famous for his Gatsby-style parties in Kensington.

The road leading to Billionaire Row is the most heavily guarded in London due to its proximity to Kensington Palace, the home of heir to the throne, William.

Former Labour minister blames immigrants for housing crisis

A new report, written by the notorious right-winger and former Labour Party minister Frank Field and published by Conservative think tank Civitas, warns that population growth is being driven almost exclusively by immigration and suggests that the government must control the borders, especially within the European Union.

Field said, “The longer-term solution to the housing benefit crisis is almost too obvious to state. In normal circumstances it would be difficult to meet the existing demand for homes. It becomes incredibly difficult to do so if the government operates an open-door immigration policy within the EU.”

High rents and low wages lead to £25 billion housing benefit bill

The Centre for Cities think tank reports that the UK’s estimated £25 billion housing benefit bill for 2015-2016 is due to soaring rents paid to landlords, particularly in the most prosperous parts of the country, combined with falling wages.

It calculates that almost 1 million jobs have been created in the UK’s cities since 2010, but with the average annual wage having fallen by £1,300 per person.

Spending on housing benefit in more wealthy cities such as London, Cambridge, Bournemouth and Milton Keynes has risen by 50 percent more than in low-wage cities such as Glasgow and Liverpool. The average housing benefit claimant now receives £144 a month in London, compared with £72 in Doncaster.

Around a quarter of tenants in private accommodation claim housing benefit and a third of these are working poor.

FAO - Hungarian Government Scholarship 2016-2017

The following Master of Science degree courses are being offered in English for the 2016-2017 Academic Year:

• Agricultural sciences
• Agricultural biotechnology
• Horticulture 
• Animal nutrition and feed safety

Universities
The following universities are participating:

• Szent István University, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
• Szent István University, Faculty of Horticultural Sciences (previously having belonged to the Corvinus University of Budapest)
• Kaposvár University, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Conditions

Courses will be offered provided the minimum number of students is reached.
The scholarship will cover:

• application and tuition fees throughout the study period;
• basic books and notes;
• dormitory accommodation;
• subsistence costs.

All of the above mentioned costs are financed by the Hungarian Government, according to the Agreement between FAO and Hungary in 2007. Scholarship students are entitled to the same health care coverage offered to Hungarian students during the course of the scholarship. The scholarship covers student costs only; family members are not supported within the frame of this programme.

Eligibility

Residents (who must be nationals) of the following countries are eligible to apply to the Scholarship Programme: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Macedonia, Madagascar, Mali, Myanmar, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Namibia, Nigeria, North-Korea, the Philippines, Serbia, Somalia, South-Sudan, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen.

Application and selection process

The selection process as described below applies to scholarships beginning in September 2016.
Student selection will take place in two phases:
Phase 1: FAO will pre-screen candidates and submit recommendations to the Ministry of Agriculture of Hungary that will send them to the corresponding University as chosen by the applicants. Students must submit only COMPLETED dossiers. Incomplete dossiers will not be considered. It is important to note that a favourable pre-screening in the first step does not guarantee selection.
Phase 2: Selected candidates may be asked to take a written or oral English examination as part of the admission procedure. The participating Universities will run a further selection process and inform each of the successful candidates. Student selection will be made by the Universities only, without any involvement on the part of FAO. Selected students will also be notified by the Ministry.

Candidates will be selected on the basis of the following criteria:

• Citizenship and residency of one of the eligible countries
• Excellent school achievements
• English language proficiency (for courses taught in English)
• Motivation
• Good health
• Age (candidates under 30 are preferred)

Application procedure

Interested applicants should prepare a dossier to be sent by e-mail consisting of:

• Application form duly completed
• A recent curriculum vitae
• A copy of high school/college diploma and transcript/report of study or copy of the diploma attachment
• A copy of certificate of proficiency in English
• Copies of relevant pages of passport showing expiration date and passport number
• A letter of recommendation
• Statement of motivation
• Health Certificate issued by Medical Doctor
• Certificate of Good Conduct issued by local police authority.

All submitted documents must be in English. Documents submitted in any other language will not be accepted. It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure that documents are duly translated and certified by a competent office; and that each document is saved with a name that identifies what it is.

Deadlines
Applications by interested candidates should be submitted by e-mail to FAO in the period

04 January - 28 February 2016

Paper copies of dossiers received by post or courier or any other way, will not be taken into consideration.

Important notes

As the number of scholarships is limited, interested applicants are strongly encouraged to submit their applications as soon as possible.
Applicants who were not selected in previous years may re-apply to the 2016-2017 Programme. These applicants will have to submit the complete dossier once again (by e-mail only!).
Please note that the duration of the scholarship cannot be extended.
A Scholarship Study Contract will be signed between the selected student and the Ministry of Agriculture of Hungary (MoAH), which is the donor of the program at the time of first semester registration.

Applicants wishing to explore external funding opportunities to cover the travel costs may do so at their own initiative. However, in view of the length of the process, applicants wishing to apply for 2016 scholarships are strongly encouraged to E-MAIL their application while they endeavour to identify funds or pending confirmation that such funds will be granted.
All queries concerning the programme or the application process should be sent by e-mail to

REU-Scholarship@fao.org

$50,000 OPEC/OFID Scholarships for Developing Countries 2016/2017

Brief description: The OPEC Fund for International Development – OFID Scholarship Award 2016/2017 is open for qualified applicants who have obtained or are on the verge of completing their undergraduate degree and who wish to study for a Master’s degree, to win up to $50,0000.

Accepted Subject Areas: The Scholarship is open to those students who wish to pursue studies in a relevant field of Development or Energy Studies such as: economics of development (poverty reduction, energy and sustainable development), environment (desertification), or other related science and technology fields.

About Scholarship

OFID (The OPEC Fund for International Development) is pleased to announce that qualified applicants who have obtained or are on the verge of completing their undergraduate degree and who wish to study for a Master’s degree are welcome to apply for the OFID Scholarship 2016/2017

OFID scholarships will be awarded to four students or candidates for master’s degree studies. Applicants must be from a developing country (except OFID Member Countries),  and he/she must first obtain admission to pursue a Master’s degree studies in a relevant field of development, from any recognized university/college in the world.

Through its scholarship scheme, OFID aims to help highly motivated, highly driven individuals overcome one of the biggest challenges to their careers – the cost of graduate studies. The winners of the OFID Scholarship Award will receive a scholarship of up to US$50,000. The funds will be spread over a maximum of two years, toward the completion of a Master’s degree, or its equivalent, at an accredited educational institution, starting in the autumn of the academic year 2016/2017.

Scholarship Offered Since: Not Specified

Scholarship Type: Full masters scholarship

Selection Criteria

Applicants are responsible for gathering and submitting all necessary information. Applications will be evaluated based on the information provided. Therefore, all questions should be answered as thoroughly as possible. Once an application has been submitted, no changes will be allowed on it.

Eligibility

To be eligible to apply for the OFID Masters Scholarship, applicants:

• Must be between the ages of 23-32 at the time of submitting his/her application.
• Must have obtained or be on the verge of completing their undergraduate degree with a Baccalaureate from an accredited college/university, or its equivalent.
• Must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher on a 4.0 rating system, or its equivalent.
• Must be matriculated at an accredited university for the upcoming academic year starting August/September 2015, and must maintain full-time status for the duration of the Master’s Degree.
• Must be a national of a developing country (except OFID Member Countries)
• Must select a subject of study that pertains to OFID’s core mission, such as: economics of development (poverty reduction, energy and sustainable development), environment (desertification), or other related science and technology fields.

Number of Scholarship: Four

Scholarship Benefits

The winners of the OFID Scholarship Award will receive a full tuition scholarship of up to US$50,000. The funds will be spread over a maximum of one year, toward the completion of a Master’s degree, or its equivalent, at an accredited educational institution.

Duration: one year masters degree programme

Eligible African Countries: See the list of eligible developing countries for OFID Masters scholarship from the link below

To be taken at (country): Any recognized University in the world

Application Deadline: is May 1, 2016.

Offered annually? Yes

How to Apply

Applicants must complete the online application.

Within the on-line application, applicants must upload the required documents as listed below in Section III. All materials including the on-line application, recommendations, and other required information must be received no later than the deadline date.

Required Documents

• A completed on-line application form.
• A scanned copy of the applicant’s passport.
• A scanned copy of the last university degree or certificate.
• A scanned letter of acceptance from chosen educational institution, confirming your admission, subject of study and duration of the Master’s degree program (must not exceed one year).
• A proof of meeting any prerequisites, including language proficiency.
• A short essay – of about 500 words in English – giving reasons for applying for the OFID scholarship, explaining your educational goals, and clearly describing how you will use the experience gained from your Master’s degree studies to help in the development of your home country.
• Two letters of recommendation from professors and/or lecturers at applicant’s present university.
• Curriculum Vitae (CV)..

Only the winner will be notified by June 2, 2015 via OFID website at www.ofid.org.

Visit Scholarship Webpage  for more details

Sponsors: The OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID)

Five Revealing Facts About Homeless Youth

Lina Breslav

The federal government has set a goal of ending youth homelessness by 2020 with Opening Doors, a strategic plan released in 2010. But as the plan acknowledges, figuring out how many youth are homeless is no easy task.

This month, communities across the country will undertake the annual Point-in-Time (PIT) count of homeless adults, families, and youth in an effort to measure the number of sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons on a single night in January. Unfortunately, the PIT count generally undercounts youth experiencing homelessness, so some communities choose to conduct a targeted count of this critically vulnerable population.

As the date of the annual count approaches, it’s helpful to take stock of what we’ve learned about these youth.

1 Many youth who leave home are not ready to be self-sufficient. Youth are likely to leave home because of a bad situation rather than feeling ready. A hallmark of readiness is the ability to meet basic needs, such as food, shelter, medical care, and work, and many homeless youth have trouble meeting these needs. In one study, about half of homeless youth had difficulty getting enough food and a majority had spent at least one day in the past month without anything to eat. 
This is not surprising because we know that developmentally, many young people are not ready to be out on their own. Neuroscience research finds that the brain continues to experience major development during adolescence and early adulthood. In fact, because we know that hitting an 18th birthday does not necessarily indicate readiness for adulthood, most states have extended foster care past the age of 18 to respond to the needs of a population that are now more accurately described as “emerging adults.”

2 Most homeless youth return home. We know that most homeless youth return home. And this can happen quickly. In one study of 1,682,900 underage runaway youth and youth forced to leave home, 99.6 percent returned home and most were gone for less than a week. In a different study of newly homeless adolescents in Los Angeles, California and Melbourne, Australia, most newly homeless adolescents returned home for significant amounts of time within two years of becoming homeless. This doesn’t mean that all youth remain home permanently. But they do maintain connections, even while away from home. In another study, 41 percent of homeless youth who owned a cell phone reported using it to stay connected to their families.

3 Many homeless youth attend school. Homeless youth face enormous challenges when it comes to attending school, but many still attend. Based on our tabulations using the Runaway and Homeless Youth Management Information System, we find that 65 percent of homeless youth ages 12 to 18 were attending school regularly and 20 percent were attending school irregularly.
It’s possible that schools don’t know just how many of their students are homeless. One innovative approach is the Homeless Youth Estimation Project, a direct-to-student survey designed to provide an estimate of the number of youth within a school district living somewhere outside of home temporarily. Results from 12 high schools in New England indicate high rates of youth disconnection from permanent and stable homes.

4 Many youth remain connected to the internet and social media, despite being homeless. One study found that 80 percent of homeless youth use the internet at least twice a week, with many seeing the web as a way to create and maintain social networks and locate services. Homeless youth can use the internet and connections on social media to maintain relationships and stay in touch with family and friends.

5 When it comes to sex work, homeless youth are being coerced and manipulated, and participate out of desperation. Homeless youth are particularly vulnerable to being coerced into the commercial underground sex economy. In a 2008 study in New York City, a great majority of sexually exploited children expressed a desire to change their circumstances, but felt that they were doing what they had to do to survive.