Wave of budget cuts throughout Latin America

Neil Hardt

The governments of Latin America are preparing a wave of budget cuts that will impact hundreds of millions of workers across the region. The cuts, orchestrated at the behest of international finance capital and supported by US imperialism, represent an intensification of anti-working class policies already implemented by the so-called “pink tide” governments.

The intensification of the attacks on the working class are being carried out in tandem with the US pivot to Latin America, aimed at countering Chinese influence in the region and facilitating the exploitation of the region by Wall Street and US corporations. The harshest cuts are being imposed in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Ecuador.

In April, Mexico’s Secretary of the Interior announced $US9.4 billion in cuts to many of the country’s “priority programs.” The government has previously been reluctant to attack these programs due to fear of provoking social opposition.

In education, five out of 15 priority programs will be cut, including 5 percent from educational quality programs and 1.7 percent from scientific research and technological development programs. Health budgets will also be slashed. Obesity and diabetes prevention programs face a 21 percent cut, HIV and STD prevention will be cut by 13.3 percent, and disease control programs will be slashed by 20 percent, this as the Zika virus makes its way through the country.

On May 22, sub-Secretary of the Interior Fernando Galindo Favela said that the decline in world commodity prices would force the government to reevaluate these cuts, in order to deepen them. “We will reevaluate the role of all of these programs and will change the rules of operation of those that are not working so they can serve the intended population. This does not mean we are eliminating them,” he said.

In Argentina, the newly elected government of Mauricio Macri announced a series of moves that are dramatically raising the cost of living for the working class. In February, the government announced a series of taxes on basic utilities. Since then, the price of electricity has increased between 250 and 700 percent. Train and bus prices have also doubled, while gas and water prices have tripled.

As a result, Macri’s favorability ratings are beginning to plummet. According to the Argentinian firm Public Opinion Group (GOP), Macri’s popularity has dropped 12.6 percent since taking office in December 2015. Today, 57.2 percent of Argentinians say the situation is worse than a year before, up from 41.4 percent in March. 53.2 percent say Macri’s administration governs on behalf of society’s richest, up from 49.5 percent in March.

“This is the price he pays for the enormous quantity of methods he has taken which have affected the daily life of the population, like increases to taxes, inflation, and the freeze on parity salaries,” said Raul Timerman, director of the GOP.

The government of Brazilian Interim President Michel Temer is also preparing to launch a wave of cuts against the Brazilian working class. On Wednesday, the legislature accepted Temer’s plan to cap budget spending, with Wall Street nodding in approval. “The plans are lofty in ambition, but so far lacking in detail. The problem, as ever, remains implementation,” Neil Shearing, chief emerging markets economist with Capital economics, told Bloomberg.

Rafael Cortes, a political analyst from the firm Integrated Consulting Tendencies, told the Chicago Tribune: “There’s a feeling that the government does have a coalition and passed this first test in the legislative process. The hope is that it can hold on to that to approve the economic measures.”

The legislation limits government spending for health, education, science and environmental protection programs while opening avenues for the selling off of state assets. Scientists in Brazil have expressed a fear of what the impact of the cuts will mean.

Similar waves of cuts have been imposed by the governments of Colombia, Chile, and Ecuador.

In February, Colombian President Miguel Santos announced that 3 percent of the country’s budget would be cut in the coming fiscal year, with each ministry forced to cut spending by 5 percent.

“You have to make adjustments when you have to, even though they are painful,” he said. “It’s the responsible thing to do.”

Chile’s government also announced cuts in February totaling $540 million for the 2016 budget. “When the economy gets difficult, like now, to make investments like these becomes more difficult. At times, it is necessary to make adjustments,” Chilean President Michelle Bachelet tweeted in February.

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has imposed a new ruthless austerity regime, raising the value-added tax to 14 percent in 2016, up from 12 percent in 2015. Last year, Correa imposed $US2.2 billion in cuts to social spending. In his state of the union address delivered Tuesday, he stated that in 2015 and 2016, “6 percent of GDP [was cut] from the state budget, basically in investment, in such a way as to affect the poorest and economic activity to the least extent possible. By far, it’s the biggest adjustment in all of Latin America.”

This is not an exhaustive list. In numerous other countries in Latin America, cuts are impacting an already devastated working class.

From 2002 to 2015, Latin America’s billionaires grew 21 percent wealthier each year, a rate six times higher than that of the whole region’s GDP. Across the region, the average tax rate for the wealthiest 10 percent of the population amounts to roughly 5 percent of their income. In 2014, Oxfam reported that the richest 10 percent of Latin Americans control 71 percent of the wealth. The World Economic Forum noted that “if this trend continues, according to Oxfam’s calculations, in just six years’ time the richest 1 percent in the region will have accumulated more wealth than the remaining 99 percent.”

These figures are not the product of accident or poor planning. Rather, they are the product of decades of attacks against the working class, led by the bourgeoisie of each country at the encouragement of Wall Street and US imperialism. Whether openly right-wing or self-proclaimed “left” or “socialist,” the bourgeois governments of Latin America are to blame for deepening social inequality and poverty.

German chancellor boosts anti-refugee deal in visit to Turkey

Peter Schwarz

“The inhumane treatment of refugees,” we wrote on the World Socialist WebSite in early March, “is a signal of what workers and youth throughout Europe can expect in the future.” This was confirmed by the visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Turkey last Monday.

Merkel sought to save the refugee deal that the European Union agreed with Ankara under pressure from Germany. In exchange, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish President, with whom she met for a one-hour meeting in Istanbul, is now demanding that the EU accept the creation of an authoritarian presidential regime which he is energetically pursuing.

According to the official record of the talks, Erdogan threatened that the Turkish parliament would not ratify the agreement if the EU continued to insist on the weakening of Ankara’s controversial anti-terrorism law as a condition for visa freedom for Turkish citizens travelling to the EU.

Erdogan is using the anti-terrorism law to eliminate oppositional politicians and journalists critical of the Turkish army’s actions against the Kurds and his politics in Syria. Even a mere expression of opinion can result in arrest and a years-long prison sentence.

Just last week, at the insistence of the ruling AKP, the Turkish parliament agreed to lift the immunity of a quarter of its deputies, overwhelmingly members of the pro-Kurdish HDP. They can now be brought before the courts and lose their mandate if convicted. In this way, Erdogan could establish the two-thirds majority he requires to anchor the presidential dictatorship, which is already functioning in practice, in the constitution.

Prior to the talks, Merkel went a long way toward meeting Erdogan’s demands. Although she expressed her concern about “some developments in Turkey” in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, she insisted that the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) was a terrorist organization. There were “of course mutual dependencies” and the “necessity to balance interests,” said the chancellor. It was her role to “identify differences and arrive at compromises.” Thus far, Turkey had been reliable with its promises.

The refugee deal with Turkey is the heart of Merkel’s so-called European solution of the refugee crisis. Fearing that the closure of Europe’s internal borders—as Hungary, Austria and other countries unilaterally decided to implement—would mean multi-billion-euro losses for German big business and the break-up of the EU, Merkel pressed for the sealing off of Europe’s external borders.

Within the EU, the right to asylum was thus practically abolished. Refugees are being treated like criminals, arrested at the borders, confined to detention camps and deported. However, the EU is relying to a large extent on Turkey taking back refugees and deporting some of them to their countries of origin.

Merkel is not only under pressure from other European governments over her refugee policy, but also from within Germany. In this, the opposition comes overwhelmingly from the right.

Horst Seehofer, the chairman of the Christian Social Union, the Christian Democratic Union’s sister party in Bavaria, attacked Merkel on Sunday on the public broadcaster ARD, stating, “One should never allow oneself to become dependent upon such systems or be blackmailed.” In the face of the lifting of immunity for Turkish parliamentary deputies “the whole world must raise its voice,” blustered Seehofer. But there had not been much criticism, “because the deal obviously can’t be put at risk.”

Seehofer, who is among the hardliners against refugees and maintains close ties to autocrats like Hungarian President Victor Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin, is pursuing two main goals with his critique of Merkel.

Domestically, he aims to halt the rise of the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) by adopting its nationalist and Islamophobic line, which is also directed against Turkish immigrants. He is continuously repeating the maxim of the former CSU leader Franz Josef Strauß that no legitimate democratic party can be allowed to the right of the Union parties. Merkel has publicly contradicted him.

Secondly, Seehofer, along with other sections of the foreign policy elite, fears that too close of a reliance on Turkey could limit German options in the Middle East, where it is acting with increased aggressiveness.

A century ago, German imperialism pursued its aims in the Orient in alliance with the Ottoman Empire, but was left empty-handed after it was divided up by France and Britain following the defeat in the First World War. Now, with a renewed division of the Middle East taking place, Germany wants to retain the option of playing the Iranian, Egyptian or Kurdish card.

It is therefore no coincidence that the German parliament is due to pass a resolution on June 2 condemning the persecution of Armenians a hundred years ago (in which German military officers were heavily involved) as “genocide.” This move will increase tensions with Ankara.

In Berlin, Erdogan’s authoritarian strivings are accepted or tolerated with verbal protests, but they are seen as a sign of weakness. The German ruling elite does not wish to tie its foreign policy too closely to a regime which could soon be rocked by social conflict.

Throughout its history, the Turkish bourgeoisie has repeatedly responded to domestic and external crises with dictatorial measures. During the last sixty years alone, the military has launched three coups and enforced one change in power. This same course is taken by Erdogan in the face of mounting social tensions and foreign policy crises.

The rise of his AKP was closely bound up with an influx of international capital and high economic growth rates which made possible some social concessions and a growth of the middle class. But now the economy is stagnating, unemployment and inflation stand at 10 percent, and the Turkish lira is in free fall. At the same time, Turkey is deeply implicated in the Syrian war and, after expanding its economic ties with much of the Arab world and former states of the Soviet Union, finds itself in disputes with virtually all of its neighbors, as well as Russia.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung lobbies for militarism and war

Johannes Stern

“Militarism means the dominance of military ideals and aims in politics and social life, such as, for example, through the one-sided emphasis of the right of the stronger, and the expression of the view that wars are necessary or unavoidable.” This is the definition of militarism provided by the sixth edition of the political lexicon published by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education.

Seventy-one years after the end of the Nazi dictatorship and the defeat of the Wehrmacht in the Second World War, influential sections of the German elite think it is time to resurrect the principles that pushed Europe into the abyss twice in the last century. A recent article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, headlined, “When will we finally get back on our feet?” provides eloquent testimony of this.

The daily, a mouthpiece for the Frankfurt banks, has provided a platform for Wolf Poulet, a former “tank force officer and general in the high command of the armed forces,” whose views are entirely in the tradition of his historical predecessors in the Kaiser’s army. He advocates an aggressive German foreign and war policy.

At the very beginning of his guest column, Poulet complains from the point of view of a well-integrated militarist, a Free Democratic Party (FDP) member and foreign policy adviser, “We Germans are obviously no longer in a position to deviate from the supposed path of the all-understanding do-gooders.” And it is “this perpetual role of do-gooders, so to speak the ‘Adolf Hitler apology 2.0,’” that has “put our country on a course that is hard for neighbouring countries and allies to tolerate.”

Then he asks provocatively, “When will the Federal Republic of Germany be able to get on its feet with a self-confident, political attitude?” Of course, the “moralizing about atrocities committed in the name of Germany is right just as it was before … However, when can we trade the ‘culture of guilt’ that has lasted for 70 years for an appropriately self-confident and rationally directed state philosophy?”

In their exposure of the role of the Humboldt University professors Herfried Münkler and Jörg Baberowski, the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party have shown how the German elite is systematically working to minimize the crimes of German imperialism in the 20th century in order to prepare the way for the return of an aggressive Germany foreign policy. Poulet’s article makes it clear how far this process has already progressed and reveals the dangers it brings with it.

Poulet explicitly advocates a huge, highly armed army capable of waging war all over the world. He mourns the period of the Cold War, when the German army represented “a significant proportion of the conventional defences of Central Europe” and had “almost a million soldiers.” The army was “respected” by the Soviet army for its military capability and had more than 4,500 tanks at its disposal for the purposes of “defence” against the Warsaw Pact. Today, only “between 225 and 300” remain, he complained.

In the last 25 years, the German army has degenerated to a “torso full of holes” in which only “a few small, brave units in all sections of the military forces have maintained their functionality.” According to Poulet, political policy is responsible for this. He writes: “The principle is: make it sound good, ignore it and then cobble it together. Since the beginning of the ‘90s, the political elite have had the framework in place for dissolving the armed forces. The responsible committees in the German parliament have used the defence budget as a form of financial reserves almost every year. All the parties in government have assisted in this whenever one has taken a look into the budgets.”

Poulet not only accuses the “political elite” of financially exhausting the army, but also of not really wanting to fight a war. “In addition to the material withering of the armed forces, the fearful flinching of the members of the government at any suspicion of a deployment of fighting forces is embarrassing,” he writes. “As soon as the heat is on in a relevant region … the German foreign minister and defence minister react reflexively to reject action.”

A section headed “Primacy of Politics” makes it clear what Poulet views as the real issue. In his view, the politicians currently in power are neither ready nor in a position, after the horrible experiences of two world wars, to make Germany into a leading war power, to accept the “primacy of the military” and to impose this on the population as under the Kaiser and the Nazis.

His anger is directed above all against former FDP Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who is now dead, and current Chancellor Angela Merkel. In the war in Libya in 2011, they acted as though the issue was “the implementation of a no-fly zone against the Libyan ground troops” and were “so imbued with a preference for peace that Germany abstained from the vote like the Russians and Chinese,” he complained.

“The military does not have a very good reputation” inside Germany either, complains Poulet. In 2006, “the sanctimonious Bild newspaper” increased its circulation by publishing pictures of “young [German] soldiers in Afghanistan posing with bones and skulls.” The German media then immediately showed “their disgust and indignation,” using phrases like “desecration of the dead” and “dead body parts.” The chancellor immediately demanded “a heavy punishment for the guilty.”

However, once the situation is considered more carefully, it becomes clear “that the Afghani population was not especially interested in the issue” and “that the old fossil bones came from a gravel pit.” The fact that a “head of government of a middle power” judged soldiers in “such an unexamined way” is “only possible in Germany.” It is always “about the defence against shame and fighting the bad guys and not wanting to be one of them.”

It is clearly not enough for Poulet that the grand coalition is aggressively implementing a change in German foreign policy with the support of the opposition parties and the media, increasing military spending, and carrying out one foreign deployment after another. The consequences of his argumentation are clear: one must be ready once again to be “one of the bad guys,” and, just as in the past, to commit war crimes and defend them against every criticism.

Poulet ends his article with a provocative “prognosis.” He no longer trusts the “generation that grew up for the most part under peace” that is between 50 and 75 years old today, and “has ruled and influenced Germany for 25 years” to carry out the change he longs for. “Sustainable change” is “only to be expected with the rise of the young generation. It is tougher than us and no longer so sensitive about Nazis.”

If Poulet and the German elite for whom he speaks are of the opinion that they will get a third chance to hurl the world into the abyss, they are mistaken. Even 70 years after the end of the Nazi dictatorship, the younger generation knows what horrible crimes the SS and the Wehrmacht perpetrated in the Second World War, and the great majority rejects militarism and war. However, his article serves as a warning. The German elite with the military at the head is once again ready, as the saying goes, to trample bodies under feet to defend the interests of German imperialism.

Strike wave against austerity spreads in France, Belgium

Kumaran Ira

As strikes and occupations continue in France against the reactionary labor law imposed earlier this month by the Socialist Party (PS) government, despite attacks on strikers by riot police, protests and walkouts against austerity are breaking out in neighboring Belgium. On Tuesday, some 60,000 workers marched in Brussels against the austerity measures of the conservative government of Prime Minister Charles Michel.

The Brussels demonstration targeted planned cuts to the welfare system, budget cuts in public service and education, and a labor reform allowing bosses to introduce a 45-hour work week and impose overtime without extra pay.

Prior to Tuesday's protest, the Michel government reinforced draconian security measures imposed after the March 22 terrorist attack in Brussels. It is now clear that the Belgian government, which ignored forewarnings from foreign intelligence agencies concerning the identity and plans of the March 22 attackers, is using the security measures to repress domestic opposition from the working class. Riot police used water cannon and tear gas against Tuesday’s protest, injuring several people. Ten people were reportedly arrested.

The growing movement against austerity in Belgium coincides with an escalating wave of strikes in France. The regressive PS labor law allows companies to negotiate with trade unions to lengthen the work week up to a maximum of 46 hours and to cut wages. It also eases the conditions for laying off workers. The law, overwhelmingly opposed by workers and youth, is widely seen as an illegitimate attack on workers' social rights won through decades of struggle.

In France, strikes are occurring at oil refineries and ports and in civil aviation, rail, energy, transport and construction. Nationwide protests will take place today, after thousands of people participated in protest on May 19.

A week-long oil strike is paralyzing the French economy and causing widespread fuel shortages. Thirty percent of France’s 12,000 gas stations are reportedly out of fuel or close to it.

The PS government has responded by hypocritically denouncing protesting workers. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that “democracy is being taken hostage by a minority.”

This is a brazen and provocative lie. It is the PS government that is behaving like a dictatorship, pushing through the socially regressive law without a parliamentary vote in the face of overwhelming popular opposition, employing the emergency powers provisions of the anti-democratic Article 49.3 of the French Constitution to do so.

A large majority of the population holds President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls responsible for the social tensions and the industrial disruptions caused by the strikes. An Elabe survey published yesterday found that nearly 70 percent of the population support having the PS, and not the strikers, back down by withdrawing the labour law.

The strikes are undermining the PS government, triggering a deep crisis and calls for withdrawing the law, even from within the PS itself. Bruno Le Roux, head of the PS faction in the National Assembly, called on the government to rework the labor law. He particularly singled out Article 2, which allows the trade unions to sign and implement contracts violating the Labor Code and the requirement for industry-wide agreements.

Valls opposed this proposal in the parliament, claiming that there would be “neither a withdrawal of the law nor questioning of Article 2, as it is the heart of the philosophy of the bill.”

Instead, the PS government is determined to use police repression to crush strikes and blockades by oil workers.

After sending riot police on Tuesday to attack workers blockading the oil refinery at Fos-sur-Mer near Marseille, police intervened yesterday to reestablish access to a key fuel depot at Douchy-les-Mines near Valenciennes in northern France. The depot had been blocked by members of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) and Solidaires unions since May 19.

The attack on Tuesday began around 5 a.m., as 20 police trucks converged on the refinery and riot police used water cannon to dislodge 80 workers who were blocking access.

Despite the police repression, strikes are spreading throughout France’s oil facilities. The country's eight refineries are all affected by strike action. The Total refinery at Feyzin near Lyon and Total's Normandy plant have stopped production. The Grandpuits facility near Paris will soon come to a complete halt and Donges, close to Nantes, will shut down several units, while La Mède of Fos-sur-Mer and Lavéra in the Marseille region are working at a reduced rate. Dozens of oil depots, out of a total of 78 in France, are also blocked.

With fuel shortages worsening, the government has begun releasing portions of its strategic fuel reserves. Francis Duseux, president of the French oil industry group UFIP (Union Française des Industries Petrolières), told RMC radio: “Over the last two days, since we had problems with the refining operations and blockades of fuel depots, we began, together with the public authorities, to use the reserve stocks.”

Terrified by the protests, ruling circles are calling for the government to trample on the constitutionally protected right to strike and force employees back to work. The right-wing opposition Republicans (LR) asked the PS to requisition oil workers and legally compel them to return to work. MP Eric Ciotti said, “We must requisition them, as [conservative President] Nicolas Sarkozy did in 2010. It is in the national interest. We cannot leave the country blockaded by a small minority.”

In the meantime, strikes are erupting in other French industries against the labor law. The CGT-Energy federation has called for strike action at the French state electricity company EDF and is planning site blockades to cut electricity production. This would lead to power cuts across the country. Yesterday, workers at France’s 19 nuclear plants, including Nogent-sur-Seine southeast of Paris and Gravelines in the north, voted to go out on strike on Thursday.

Unions at the French National Railway (SNCF) called strikes for yesterday and today, and the CGT issued a notice of strike action, renewable daily, starting from May 31. Indefinite strike action has been called at Paris transport system (RATP) against the PS labour law and poor working conditions and wages, starting from June 2.

Airport workers, including air traffic controllers, administrative staff, engineers and technicians are on strike today, causing the cancellation of flights at several airports. A nationwide strike is planned between June 2 and June 5 involving air traffic controllers and civil aviation workers to protest against the labor law and the drop in staff numbers.

Port and dock workers are also entering into struggle, with dockers at Marseille and Le Havre, which handles 40 percent of French imports, voting to strike until Friday to protest police repression on Tuesday at the Fos-sur-Mer oil facility.

Since Monday, Marseille dockers have refused to unload goods, including crude and refined petroleum products, headed to refineries. Some 29 ships carrying crude oil were still stranded yesterday as the CGT called a work stoppage until Friday at the public Marseille port facilities as well as at Fluxel, the private operator that manages two oil terminals.

Thousands of civilians in danger as US-backed forces mount offensives in Iraq and Syria

Bill Van Auken

Aid groups are warning that at least 50,000 civilians are in danger of being “caught in the crossfire” in Fallujah as it is subjected to constant US-led air strikes along with artillery barrages, and forces loyal to the Washington-backed government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi along with Shia militias encircle the central Iraqi city.

The predominantly Sunni city, which is about 40 miles west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been occupied by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) since January 2014. It has now been targeted by the Iraqi government as part of a desperate bid to contain mounting political opposition from within Baghdad’s impoverished Shia population as well as from militia groups, including those aligned with the Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr.

Within the last month, crowds numbering in the thousands have twice stormed Baghdad’s Green Zone, the heavily fortified seat of the Iraqi government. On the second occasion, on May 20, security forces repulsed the protesters with live fire, killing four and wounding hundreds.

Along with denunciations of the government for rampant corruption and a failure to provide essential services, the protesters have condemned it for failing to secure the capital from terrorist attacks, which have killed at least 200 this month, most of them in poor Shia neighborhoods.

Iraqi officials have claimed that the terrorist attacks have their origin in ISIS-controlled Fallujah, and the offensive is designed to show that it is doing something to halt these atrocities.

While the US military is providing air support for Iraqi government troops advancing on Fallujah—and denying it to the Shia militia forces of the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units), which work closely with Iran—Pentagon officials have made it clear that the siege of Fallujah is seen by Washington as a diversion from the principal strategic target in Iraq, the much larger city of Mosul in the north.

“You do not need Fallujah in order to get Mosul,” US Army Col. Steve Warren, the spokesman for the US military forces in Iraq and Syria, told the Reuters news agency in a telephone interview.

Nonetheless, Washington is supporting in Fallujah precisely the type of murderous siege that it has accused the government of President Bashar al-Assad of waging against areas controlled by the Western-backed Islamist “rebels” in Syria.

At least 21 civilians were reported killed in the US-led bombardment of Fallujah on Monday and Tuesday.

The population of Fallujah, which was the scene of bloody US sieges in 2004, has been subjected to bombardment for the last two years. Government forces have cut off supply routes to the city, depriving it of food, health care and other basic necessities. There are reports that substantial numbers of civilians are on the brink of starvation.

The Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq, a militant Sunni organization formed in 2003, denounced the new offensive against Fallujah as “an unjust aggression, a reflection of the vengeful spirit that the forces of evil harbor against the city.” It reported in a statement that 10,000 Fallujans have been killed or wounded by government bombs and shells over the past two years.

While staying in Fallujah may entail starving to death, those who flee risk being killed by either ISIS or Iraqi government forces. As few as 80 families have managed to flee Fallujah.

The United Nations refugee agency has expressed concern over Iraqi government forces separating men and older boys from women and children, taking them to the Habbaniyah Military Base for “security screening.”

While the siege of Fallujah tightens in Iraq, a simultaneous offensive has been reported in the area north of the ISIS-held Syrian city of Raqqa.

Backed by US air strikes and accompanied by US special operations “advisors,” a force of several thousand fighters have begun advancing 30 miles to the north of the city. The Pentagon has described these fighters as belonging to the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is overwhelmingly dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Forces, or YPG.

The offensive was prepared by a secret visit to the Kurdish-controlled region of Syria by General Joseph Votel, the head of US Central Command, which oversees the US wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Votel met with both Kurdish commanders and some of the hundreds of US special operations troops now on the ground in Syria.

The visit prompted an angry response by the Turkish government, Washington’s NATO ally, when Votel visited Ankara immediately after his unannounced foray into Syria.

Gen. Yasar Guler, the deputy chief of the Turkish General Staff, reportedly warned Votel against reliance upon the YPG, which Ankara fears will consolidate an independent Kurdish entity on its border. Instead, he proposed that Washington intensify its support for “moderate” Islamist rebels, forces which are largely dominated by either ISIS or the Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

The group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which regularly denounces ISIS atrocities against the city’s population, reported that US warplanes had dropped leaflets over the northern suburbs of the town, warning their inhabitants to flee the area.

The group pointed out, however, that there were no safe areas or access routes for such an exodus, adding via Twitter that the US reliance on the Kurdish dominated Syrian Democratic Forces to wage the offensive had pushed “a lot of people to join ISIS to defense of their city.”

Just as in Mosul and other predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq where the Iraqi army is seen as a hostile occupying force dominated by Shia interests, so in Raqqa, the SDF is seen as a hostile force dominated by Kurdish interests. In both areas, the local population fears, with reason, that they will be subjected to ethnic cleansing and driven from their homes.

In Iraq, there is already the example of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, whose “liberation” entailed the destruction of at least 70 percent of the city’s buildings. Since ISIS was driven out in December of last year, less than 15 percent of Ramadi’s previous population has been able to return.

The unfolding US-backed offensives in Iraq and Syria expose the catastrophe into which decades of US imperialist wars have plunged the entire region. The divide and conquer strategy employed by the US occupation in Iraq deliberately stoked sectarian tensions that have riven the country. Similarly in Syria, Washington and its regional allies have backed sectarian Sunni Islamist militias in a war that has claimed at least a quarter of a million lives.

Whatever the tactical victories achieved against ISIS, they will only exacerbate these divisions. US imperialism will continue its attempt to exploit them to further a military intervention whose underlying aim is not a struggle against terrorism, but rather the assertion of US hegemony over the Middle East and its immense oil wealth.

Apply. The 2016 BCFN Foundation Scholarship for Food and Nutrition Researchers

Application Deadline: July 27, 2016 11:59 p.m. Eastern time.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Global

To be taken at (country): Italy

Brief description: The BCFN Foundation has opened the research competition BCFN YES! 2016. For a grant of €20,000, researchers from across the globe are invited to put forward projects and concrete solutions on the themes of food and sustainability.The BCFN Foundation has opened the research competition BCFN YES! 2016. For a grant of €20,000, researchers from across the globe are invited to put forward projects and concrete solutions on the themes of food and sustainability.

Eligible Field of Study: The BCFN YES! Research Grant Competition offers the opportunity to put into action concrete proposals that will have the objective of making more sustainable one or more themes of the agri-food system (in terms of environmental, social, health and/or economic aspects). Among others, the following areas of particular interest are considered:

• Sustainable and healthy diets;
• Urban food systems and policies;
• Resilient agriculture, land use change and agroecology;
• The nexus between climate change, energy and food;
• Sustainable water management;
• Food supply chains;
• Ecosystems and ecosystem services;
• Healthy lifestyles;
• Food waste reduction;
• Food policy development;
• Food security: availability, access, utilisation, stability;
• Communication technologies and networks;
• Youth and women’s involvement in agriculture;

About the Award:The BCFN Foundation is strongly committed to addressing the future challenges of food. The Foundation is focused on reducing hunger, fighting food waste, and promoting healthy lifestyles and sustainable agriculture. In 2015, with the help of the BCFN Alumni –young thought leaders from 20 countries representing five continents – the BCFN Foundation drafted the Youth Manifesto on Food, People and the Planet. The document resulted from an intense workshop in which the young pictured change through seven key roles for the food system: policymakers, farmers, activists, educators, the food industry, journalists and researchers.

Type: PhD and postdoctorate Degree

Eligibility: 

• Students/applicants who are currently pursuing doctoral degrees are eligible, as well as researchers/applicants with a PhD or a doctoral degree received after December 2014.
• All the Participants must be under the age of 35 at the date of December 31, 2016.

Selection Criteria: The BCFN YES! Research Grant Competition Evaluation Committee will evaluate the proposals with the assistance of additional members (experts in specific sectors) in those cases where the methodology warrants. The proposals will be judged on:

• Consistency with the topic areas and the BCFN Foundation’s mission;

Significance of the problem; – Design of the study; – The investigator’s qualifications (possession of the requisite skills); – The appropriateness of the schedule and the likelihood that the work will be accomplished on time; – Completeness of the application. Submissions will be disqualified if they exhibit one or more of the following: – Lack of adherence to submission requirements; – Poor quality in the writing; – Poor organization of material; – Lack of specificity on required elements; – Lack of appropriate instrument samples; – Lack of appropriate theoretical framework

Number of Awardees: Three (3)

Value of Award: The Recipients shall present a preliminary report at the February 2017 first BCFN Advisory Board Annual Meeting. Upon submission by the Recipients to the Advisory Board of the BCFN Foundation of quarterly reports documenting the progress of the Research, BCFN Foundation will pay the grant in two periodic installments as the research progresses:

• The first tranche (10,000 €) after the winning ceremony – December 2016;
• The second tranche (10,000 €) after BCFN advisory board meeting – July 2017

How to Apply: BCFN encourages submission of:

• Either new or ongoing research projects;
• Either unfunded proposals projects that are co-financed by a research institute, trust, foundation, university, private companies, venture capital funds angel investors. Details of research timeline and supplemental sources of financial support should be specified in the application form.  Go here to register for the competition.

Visit Award Webpage for details

Award Provider: Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN)

Important Notes: Contestants should read the Competition Documentation before applying.

Cocky-Doody Politics and World Affairs

Marc Estrin

Reading through Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s minutely sourced and annotated book, The Untold History of the United States, I was struck by the language and thought-structures enunciated by our leaders concerning issues impinging on them.

Truman, for instance, on civil rights: “I think one man is as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman.” (He regularly referred to Jews as kikes, to Mexicans as greasers.)

When Oppenheimer expressed to Truman his misgivings about having developed the atomic bombs, the president told his chief of staff, “I don’t want to see that son of a bitch in this office ever again.” He later called Oppenheimer a “crybaby scientist”.

When Elliot Roosevelt, FDR’s son, once spoke out against one of his policies, Truman characterized him as the “product of a piss-erection”, and chided the “damned fool congressmen crying like a bunch of women” over “nothing but a bunch of bullshit.”

This was the man whose finger did press the button.

JFK. the Hahvad aristocrat with his royal wife? When he found that Khrushchev had declared he would resume nuclear testing JFK erupted, “Fucked again!” His advisors urged him to hold off responding in kind so that they could score a propaganda victory, but Kennedy brushed them off, exclaiming “What are you? Peaceniks? They just kicked me in the nuts. I’m supposed to say that’s okay?”

When the President invited the Chiefs of Staff in to thank them for their support during the Cuban missile crisis, there was (McNamara reporting) “one hell of a scene.” Curtis LeMay came out saying, “We lost. We ought to just go in there today and knock them off!” But Kennedy viewed the outcome differently. He privately boasted that he had cut Khrushchev’s balls off.”

LBJ? Well we know about him. Still, some of his locutions are worth meditating on. Concerning the Communists: “If you let a bully come in your front yard, be on your porch the next day and the day after that he’ll rape your wife in your own bed.”

Concerning his own intelligence operatives: “Let me tell you about these intelligence guys. When I was growing up in Texas, we had a cow named Bessie. I get her in the stanchion, seat myself and squeeze out a pail of fresh milk. One day I’d worked hard and gotten at full pail of milk, but I wasn’t paying attention and old Bessie swung her shit-smeared tail through that bucket of milk. Now, you know, that’s what these intelligence guys do. You work hard and get a good program policy going, and they swing a shit-smeared tail through it.”

When the Joint Chiefs recommended mining Hai Fong harbor, Johnson started screaming, “You goddamn fucking assholes. You’re trying to get me to start World War III with your idiotic bullshit – your ‘military wisdom.’” He insulted each of them individually. “You dumb shit. Do you expect me to believe that kind of crap? I’ve got the weight of the free world on my shoulders and you want me to start World War III?” He called them shitheads and pompous assholes and use the F-word more freely than a Marine in boot camp he really degraded them and cursed at them. So reported a military man in attendance.

When Sen. George McGovern warned that the bombing might provoke strong responses by both the Chinese and the North Vietnamese, Johnson responded, “I’m watching that very closely. I’m going up for leg an inch at a time…I’ll get to the snatch before they know what’s happening.”

Johnson would not stand insubordination. “I don’t want loyalty. I want LOYALTY!,” he said of one aide. “I want him to kiss my ass in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses. I want his pecker in my pocket.”

Good one. Onward in statecraft:

Nixon and Kissinger decided to bypass the “impossible fags” in the State Department and run foreign policy out of the White House. He advised Kissinger to disregard Africa. “Henry,” he said, “let’s leave the niggers to Bill Rogers and will take care of the rest of the world.” He assured Chilean Ambassador Edward Korry that he was going to “smash that son of a bitch Allende.”

And of course the Yalie in the cohort, George W, who popped unexpectedly into a meeting between Condoleeza Rice and a bipartisan group of senators and exclaimed, “Fuck Saddam. We’re taking him out.” He told press secretary Ari Fleischer, “I’m going to kick his sorry motherfucking ass all over the mid-East.”

I guess he did.

As one might expect, Obama’s potty-mouth is more Harvard educated, but equally spewing of shit:

Announcing the “end” of the Iraq war in 2011, he declared, “We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people,” he told the troops at Ft. Bragg, praising their “extraordinary achievement.” The “most important lesson,” he declared was “about our national character… that there’s nothing we Americans can’t do when we stick together….And that’s why the United States military is the most respected institution in our land.” He commanded their willingness to sacrifice “so much for a people that you had never met,” which, he insisted, was “part of what makes us special as Americans. Unlike the old empires, we don’t make these sacrifices for territory or for resources. We do it because it’s right. There can be no fuller expression of America’s support for self-determination than our leaving Iraq to its people. That says something about who we are.”

Surely that speech does.

And we freak out at presidential primary talk about the size of Donald Trump’s hands, or the fictive throwing of a chair. Trump wants to kill Syrians. Bernie wants the Saudis to do it.

In 1946, Lewis Mumford wrote:

“Soberly, day after day, the madmen continue to go through the undeviating motions of madness: motions so stereotyped, so commonplace, that they seem the normal motions of normal men, not the mass compulsions of people bent on total death. Without a public mandate of any kind, the madmen have taken it upon themselves to lead us by gradual stages to that final act of madness which will corrupt the face of the earth and blot out the nations of men, possibly put an end to all life on the planet itself. ….

“Why do we let the madmen go on with their game without raising our voices? Why do we keep our glassy calm in the face of this danger? There is a reason: we are madmen too. We view the madness of our leaders as if it expressed a traditional wisdom and common sense: we view them placidly, as a doped policeman might view with a blank tolerant leer the robbery of a bank or the barehanded killing of a child or the setting of an infernal machine in a railroad station. Our failure to act is the measure of our madness. We look at the madmen and pass by.”

From the Green Revolution to GMOs: Living in the Shadow of Global Agribusiness

Colin Todhunter

What can we do about the powerful transnational agribusiness companies that have captured or at the very least heavily influence regulatory bodies, research institutes, trade agreements and governments? How can we assess the safety and efficacy of GMOs or their other technologies and products when narratives and decision-making processes have become distorted by these companies?

Through the ‘green revolution’ chemical-intensive model of agriculture these corporations and their powerful backers promoted and instituted, they have been able to determine what seeds are to be used by farmers, what is to be grown and what inputs are to be applied. This, in turn, has adversely affected the nutritional content of food, led to the over-exploitation of water and diminished drought resistance, degraded soil, undermined biodiversity, polluted the environment, destroyed farmers’ livelihoods and so much more: with 60 years’ farming experience behind him, Bhaskar Save outlined many of these impacts in his open letter to Indian officials some years back.

These powerful corporations increasingly hold sway over a globalised system of food and agriculture from seed to plate. And with major mergers within the agribusiness sector in the pipeline, power will be further consolidated and the situation is likely to worsen. While scientific innovation has a role to play in improving agriculture, the narrative about farming has been shaped to benefit the interests of this handful of wealthy, politically influential corporations whereby commercial interest trumps any notion of the public good.

The green revolution has proved to be disastrous in many areas (for example, see this, this and this). If the technology involved had been used more judiciously and genuinely in the public interest – and had not been married to geopolitical interests resulting in the creation of food deficit regions or instituted for the commercial gain of corporations – would we not now be in a better position? And would organic farming and agroecology have received greater attention and investment and be playing a much greater role (as research shows they should), even a dominant one, in agriculture?

Instead, while transnational agribusiness pays lip service to promoting a mix of different farming systems, alternative models are marginalised and continually discredited. PR replaces fact. Wild claims are made about the successes of the green revolution (or GMOs), which certainly should not be accepted at face value, and fail to acknowledge the massive external costs of this model.

How can the public, governments and regulatory agencies really evaluate the efficacy of technologies like GMOs when commercial interests continue to distort the narrative and hide behind slick public relations messages that are intended to mislead and misinform, while at the same time they co-opt politicians, trade policies, scientists and research?

There is of course enough independent evidence indicating the dangers, failures and shortcomings of GMOs to make anyone at least question the claims and motives of the industry, but this does not prevent the industry and its lobbyists misrepresenting the issue, smearing critics and using its enormous wealth and political clout to get GMOs onto the commercial market (see this), while suppressing research that is critical of its claims and technologies.

If we are ever going to have a system of food and agriculture that serves the interests of farmers, rural communities and consumers, rather than the interests of unaccountable corporations (that profit at the expense of human life) or extremely wealthy individuals like Bill Gates and others, we require transparency, accountability and a system of decision making that does not take place within the overbearing shadow of commercial influence.

With reference to GMOs, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI) (M) recently alluded to some of the issues mentioned above by stating:

“… there should not be any commercial release of GM crops without ensuring safety for humans, animals and the environment… The seed monopolies and agribusinesses only aim to maximise profits. They are not concerned about bio-safety or issues like biodiversity or the environment.”

The statement, which can be read in full here, continues:

“The Indo-US Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture with agribusinesses like Monsanto, WalMart, Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill and ITC in its Board made efforts to turn the direction of agricultural research and policy in such a manner as to cater their demands for profit maximisation. Companies like Monsanto during the Vietnam War produced tonnes and tonnes of “Agent Orange” unmindful of its consequences for Vietnamese people as it raked in super profits and that character remains.”

That character remains because the aim is always to maximise profit for shareholders.

In addition to promoting and supporting local food self-sufficiency and agroecology and shielding agriculture from the destructive impacts of manipulated trade and international commodity markets, what is also required to counter the power of these corporations is a leading role at national state level for the carrying out of public research that is free from the influence of commercial interests.

Again, focusing on GMOs, the CPI (M) continues:

“Hence we are of the opinion that all such experiments should be done exclusively by the public sector and the government institutions and no multinational corporations or monopoly agribusinesses should be allowed to undertake field trials… The government is facilitating profiteering by MNCs without addressing the concerns about bio-safety, monopoly control over seeds and having a fool-proof regulatory mechanism in place… the introduction of any such innovation… should be predicated on sound research and verification of claims open to public scrutiny.”

And in testing such claims, it should be not only the safety and environmental impacts of technologies that are taken into account, but also the potential effects on farmers, self-sufficiency, food security, biodiversity, nutrition, local economies and sustainability.

This approach should be based on democratic accountability and transparency and applies not only to India, but is also relevant for the US, Africa, Europe and every other country or region where transnational agribusiness has co-opted politicians and other key figures and bodies and behind the scenes has colluded with governments and agencies to gets its products onto the market.

India continues to dismantle its agriculture for the benefit of Western agribusiness at the behest of the World Bank, and what has happened in Africa has been described as a case study of how doctrinaire economics served corporate interests to destroy a whole continent’s agriculturally productive base.

If we do not strive to follow the route advocated for by the CPI (M) (and others, of course) on a global basis, we will have giant agribusiness conglomerates continuing to steam roll governments, farmers and the public into accepting patented seeds, poisonous chemicals, degraded environments and a centralised food production system that for the sake of profit (and geopolitical gain) aims to eradicate or marginalise traditional agriculture and successful alternative models across the globe.