UK population poorer and hungrier

Dennis Moore

Official statistics and a recent report paint a desperate picture of the lives of millions of people in the UK in 2016. Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and a report by the Food Foundation, “Too Poor to Eat, Food insecurity in the UK,” reveal huge increases in the numbers of people who have experienced poverty in the last three years and who are regularly unable to put food on the table.

One in three people, 3.9 million, have experienced poverty in Britain in the last three years. The ONS figures show that the numbers of people who are moving in and out of poverty is high.

The data was calculated based on the number of people who earned less than the 60 percent of the national average after tax—£9,995 or £20,907 for a family including two adults and two children.

The UK, compared with other European Union (EU) countries, showed a greater turnover of people in and out of poverty, resulting in a higher proportion of people suffering hardship. Between 2011 and 2014, 32.5 percent of the UK population had experienced income poverty at least once.

In 2014, the UK had the twelfth-highest figure among the EU countries, with 16.8 percent of the population at risk of poverty. Between 2010 and 2013, 7.8 percent of the UK population entered poverty, with only Greece and Ireland having higher entry rates.

A major contributory factor influencing people falling into poverty, and the chances of escaping, is low pay and overall job insecurity.

The proposed solution to low-pay -“social mobility,” via getting better, higher paid work - is a chimera. In reality, the number of low-paid, insecure jobs is increasing. An investigation conducted by the Resolution Foundation think tank last year found that over a 10-year period just a quarter of low-paid workers managed to move into better-paid jobs.

Poverty among older people is also on the increase. A study carried out by the Independent Age charity shows that nearly one million over-75s are living in poverty. Once in poverty, it is more than likely they remain poor, with over 75s being twice as likely to be living in poverty persistently for the last four years.

“Too Poor to Eat” shows that 8.4 million people living in Britain are struggling to put food on the table, with over half of those regularly going a day without eating. The data for this report was gathered by the United Nations, via a national representative telephone survey carried out with 1,000 adults in 2014. No British government has collected data on food insecurity since 2003. Last year the ruling Conservatives rejected calls to monitor hunger.

The number of people in the UK who struggled to put food on the table in 2014 is equivalent to the entire population of London. This is the situation in the fifth-richest country in the world.

The foundation estimates that 4.7 million people aged over 15 were severely “food insecure.” Food insecurity is defined as experiencing hunger, inability to secure enough food of sufficient quantity and quality to enable good health and participation in society, and having to cut down on food due to financial necessity.

With 10.1 percent of adults in the UK having suffered food insecurity in 2014, this places the UK in the bottom half of EU countries experiencing food insecurity—below Estonia, Hungary, Malta and Slovakia.

The report noted there has been a marked increase in the numbers of people who accessed assistance from food banks. The Trussell Trust, a major provider of food banks in the UK, saw a massive increase in the number of people receiving food parcels for three-day emergency assistance between the years 2008/9 and 2014/15. In that period, the number of people requiring parcels increased from 25,899 to more than 1 million.

However, food bank data alone underestimates how many people face food insecurity. The data from the Food Foundation shows that 17 times more people are food insecure. Many poor people use other food banks, and it is likely that many more do not access food bank assistance at all.

Rachel Loopstar, an Oxford University food poverty expert who worked on the Foundation study, said, “We knew the number of people using food banks did not capture everyone who faces not having enough to eat in the UK; what these figures tell us is just how much bigger the problem of hunger really is.”

The cost of food has gone up by 8 percent in real terms since 2007, with research carried out by Cambridge University showing that the cost of healthy food rose more in the last 10 years than unhealthy food.

The National Diet and Nutrition Survey, jointly funded by Public Health England, an executive agency of the Department of Health, and the UK Food Standards Agency, reports sharp differences in nutrition consumption between the poorest 20 percent as against the richest 20 percent of the population. The poorest eat less fish, fruit and vegetables, fibre and protein and eat more sugar.

The stagnation or even decline in incomes impacts on food spending, with government data showing that disposable income has gone down every year since 2004 for the poorest 20 percent of UK households.

In response to the ONS data, Labour Shadow Treasury Minister Rebecca Long-Bailey said, “These figures should shame [Prime Minister] David Cameron.”

They are just as much an indictment of the Labour Party and its trade union backers. Over the last 30 years successive Labour and Tory governments have overseen a significant rise in poverty across the UK, driven by decreases in wages and attacks on welfare provision. Drastic cuts to public services are administered via mainly Labour run local authorities.

Under the 1997-2010 Labour government, the income inequality gap grew to its widest since records began in 1961. Poverty increased markedly under Labour, even prior to the 2008 global financial crash and the resulting mass austerity programmes. Some 11 million people were living in poverty by March 2008, a rise of 200,000 since 2006, with 2.9 million children living in poverty in 2007-08.

Argentine court sentences Plan Condor defendants

Rafael Azul

Eighteen former military officers were sentenced in Argentina last Friday for their participation in the chain of continent-wide assassinations and kidnappings that were part of Operación Cóndor (Operation Condor) in the 1970s and 1980s.

Operation Condor was the name given to the agreement to integrate the security forces of seven Latin American dictatorships (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Perú, and Uruguay) to hunt down and eliminate left-wing political opponents.

The agreement was formally signed on December 28, 1975, in Santiago, Chile. Formally absent from the meeting was the US government. Though their signatures were missing, the fingerprints of the the CIA, the Pentagon and the US State Department, headed then by Henry Kissinger, were all over the document.

According to J. Patrice McSherry, author of “Operation Condor: Cross-Border Disappearance and Death,” the foundations of this repressive plan had been established by US military intelligence:

The reigning national security doctrine incorporated counterinsurgency strategies and concepts such as “hunter-killer” programs and secret, “unconventional” techniques such as subversion, sabotage, and terrorism to defeat foes. Much of counterinsurgency doctrine is classified, but scholars have documented many of its key components. Michael McClintock, for example, analyzed a classified U.S. Army Special Forces manual of December 1960 Counter-Insurgency Operations, one of the earliest to mention explicitly, in its section “Terror Operations,” the use of counterinsurgent terror as a legitimate tactic. He cites other secret U.S. army special operations handbooks from the 1960s that endorsed “counter terror,” including assassination and abduction, in certain situations. One March 1961 article in Military Review stated, “Political warfare, in short, is warfare…that] embraces diverse forms of coercion and violence including strikes and riots, economic sanctions, subsidies for guerrilla or proxy warfare and, when necessary, kidnapping or assassination of enemy elites.” In short, “disappearance” was a key element of counterinsurgency doctrine.

During the course of the trial in Argentina, more than 500 witnesses described in detail many of the aspects of Operation Condor that directly applied these US military tactics. Their testimony firmly established the conspiracy that existed among the participating governments to abduct, illegally transport across national borders, torture and murder perceived political enemies. This policy is currently known as “rendition.”

One of the better-known examples of such abductions is that of the daughter and son-in-law of the famous poet Juan Gelman. In 1976, Argentine authorities abducted María Claudia García Irureta Goyena, 19, and Marcelo Ariel Gelman, 20. They were never to be seen again. It is now known that María Claudia was transported by an Argentine “work group” to Uruguay were she was killed after giving birth to her daughter, Macarena, who was given to the family of a police officer. Juan Gelman himself was forced into exile by the dictatorship.

This policy of “rendition,” to other countries to be tortured and killed, now widely practiced by the CIA and other US agencies, was one of the key innovations of Operation Condor.

Originally among the accused, in addition to those that were tried—all of them but one Argentine citizens (along with former Uruguayan military commander Manuel Cordero)—was former Peruvian dictator Francisco Morales Bermudez, whose extradition to face trials in Italy, and Argentina, was blocked by the Peruvian Supreme Court.

The trial against the 18 began in 2013. Since then, seven of the defendants, including Jorge Videla—the general who originally led the murderous military junta that ruled Argentina—have died. Videla headed the military-fascist junta between 1976 and 1981, during the height of the bloody suppression of working class resistance and elimination of political opponents across national borders.

The 1975 document and much of the information that led to the trial were discovered hidden in a Paraguayan police station in 1992. These are now known as the “Terror Archives.” Paraguayan lawyer Martín Almada discovered these files, acting on a tip. The Terror Archives corroborated suspicions of the existence of the plan, and of the US participation in the context of its above-described “National Security Doctrine.” The documents, compiled by officials of the Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship, detailed the coordinated attacks by the Latin American security forces against alleged leftists in Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay.

Included in Plan Condor were the assassinations of Chilean general Carlos Pratts, killed in Buenos Aires, and former Chilean foreign envoy Orlando Letelier, killed with a car bomb in Washington, D.C. It is widely and strongly suspected that the deaths of Brazilian presidents João Goulart and Juscelino Kubitschek were also part of Operation Condor. Goulart, a left-nationalist politician who was overthrown in 1964, died in Argentina in 1976. The Argentine junta blocked an autopsy on Goulart. A former member of the Uruguayan secret police came forward in 2008 with testimony that he had been poisoned.

The targets of Condor were not just well-known activists or organizers who opposed the dictatorships. Despite Condor, many of these did manage to survive in exile in México, the US and Europe. The files of the dead and disappeared are filled with the names of workers and youth fighting heroically to defend their economic and social rights, who identified with the various left-wing currents, and who sought to defend their factories, neighborhoods, schools and jobs.

Also part of Operation Condor was the sinister disappearance of infants born in captivity from disappeared mothers, “adopted” by persons connected to the regime. The Catholic Church vetted this policy, which had been widely used by the Franco fascists during and after the Spanish Civil War.

The 2013 trial was the latest in a series of trials in Argentina that began in 1999, following court decisions that declared unconstitutional amnesty laws and pardons to the military dictators and their collaborators.

In this trial, the defendants—most of whom are already in prison for their complicity in other acts of repression and murder under the Videla dictatorship— had been found guilty of the kidnapping and murder of 105 people—45 Uruguayans, 22 Chileans, 14 Argentines, 13 Paraguayans and 11 Bolivians—the tip of the iceberg in an operation that resulted in an estimated 35,000 to 60,000 disappearances across Latin America. If one were to include those victims of political and labor repression that occurred in Latin America between 1964 and 1983, the estimated number rises to 350,000.

Those sentenced on May 27 include Argentina’s last military ruler, Reynaldo Bignone, who is now 88 years old. Bignone is already serving a 25-year prison sentence for his role in other aspects of the “Dirty War.” He is now sentenced to an additional 20 years.

Maximum 25-year sentences were handed to former commanders Santiago Riveros and the Uruguayan Manuel Cordero, as well as to former agent of the Argentine secret services Miguel Ángel Furci. The latter was accused of crimes against humanity in the clandestine center Automotores Orletti, an infamous Buenos Aires torture center that was the first stop for many Condor victims exiled from, or rendered from Uruguay, Bolivia and Brazil.

Reacting to the sentencing of the military assassins, the organizer of Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Nora Cortiñas, declared: “Perseverance pays off.” However, she voiced regret that the death of many repressors prevented them from “sitting in the dock”.

Also absent from the dock were those who participated in Operayion Condor before it had a name, and in the so-called dirty war during the years that preceded the 1976 coup in Argentina, under the presidencies of Juan Domingo Perón and his widow Isabel Perón (1973-1976). These included officials in the Peronist trade union bureaucracy that collaborated with the security forces and provided many of the assassins for the Triple A(Argentine Anti-communist Alliance) death squads.

Also not facing trial was the Catholic Church, which turned a blind eye to the assassination of priests, nuns and lay persons who identified with “liberation theology” and concern for the oppressed. At the same time, the church organized masses, confessions and absolutions for those that carried out the executions of workers and youth, throwing them into the Atlantic Ocean on death flights. Among these is current Pope Francis I (Jorge Bergoglio), who as Buenos Aires archbishop collaborated with the junta and may have conspired in the kidnapping of priests and civilians.

Most importantly, absent from the docks for their crimes against humanity are the top officials in the White House, CIA and the Pentagon who supervised the transnational murder and repression in Latin America, along with leading political figures such as former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who collaborated directly with the dictatorships.

The task of holding them accountable for their crimes falls to the international working class and future workers’ tribunals.

Union of Concerned Scientists warns of US-China nuclear war

Peter Symonds

The US-based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) issued a stark warning last week over the mounting danger of nuclear conflict between the United States and China, declaring that the two countries were just “a few poor decisions away from starting a war that could escalate rapidly and end in a nuclear exchange.”

The report included an examination of the nuclear arms race currently underway between the US and China, the failure of diplomatic efforts to mitigate tensions and the dangerous dynamic that is heightening the danger of war. Its bleak assessment offers no hope that the drive to war can be halted other than through enlightened diplomatic efforts—a solution that is negated by its own analysis of their complete lack of success to date.

The UCS paper is notable, given the rising barrage of anti-Chinese propaganda in the US and international press, for the absence of criticisms of Chinese “expansionism” and “aggression.” If anything, it cautiously highlights Washington’s confrontational approach to Beijing, especially under the Obama administration. As part of his “pivot to Asia,” Obama has deliberately inflamed dangerous regional flashpoints including disputes in the South China and East China Seas as a means of isolating China from its neighbours.

The report explains: “In 2009, the Obama administration broke with past policy by emphasising it would use military force to police long-simmering disputes between China and its neighbours over competing sovereignty claims. The change responded to PRC [People’s Republic of China] statements describing its sovereignty claims as a ‘core interest’. The United States backed up its new policy with new military bases, deployments, and exercises in the region. It sailed US Navy task forces into PRC-claimed waters that the United States does not normally patrol. The stated objective has been to compel a compromise on PRC sovereignty claims. The PRC responded by accelerating ongoing island-building activities, excluding foreign fishing vessels from disputed waters and constructing new military facilities in the region.”

While it refers to potential triggers for conflict, the UCS paper is focussed on the rising risk of a clash spiralling into nuclear war. The US, which has engaged in one war of aggression after another over the past 25 years, outspends China on the military both in absolute terms and relative to GDP. Yet as the UCS explains, the Pentagon is deeply concerned that China’s military modernisation threatens America’s absolute dominance in Asia by potentially restricting US military operations in the Western Pacific.

The report states:

“The Obama administration decided to counter those perceived threats by investing in new submarines, a new stealth bomber, improved missile defences, and anti-satellite weapons… Currently, the United States plans to invest more than a trillion dollars in comprehensive upgrades to its nuclear forces. It also plans to spend several hundred billion dollars modernising the US nuclear weapons complex—the laboratories and facilities that research, design, produce, and maintain nuclear weapons. These plans include developing two nuclear weapons intended for fighting a nuclear war against the PRC: the Long-Range Stand-Off nuclear-armed cruise missile and a redesigned B61 nuclear gravity bomb.”

China, which has a relatively small nuclear arsenal—an estimated 260 war heads as opposed to about 7,000 for the US—confronts the possibility that a US first strike could completely destroy its ability to retaliate and render it completely vulnerable. It has not increased the number of weapons but has taken some measures to protect its nuclear deterrent against a US attack.

The issue is at the heart of the failure of limited talks between the US and China to ease nuclear tensions. The UCS report noted that while discussions have produced some limited confidence-building measures on other military matters, “strategic dialogues on their nuclear forces, missile defences, and anti-satellite weaponry are perfunctory.”

The paper highlighted what it regarded as “one critical set of bilateral dialogues” that focussed on “preserving strategic stability—a euphemism for making sure that if a conflict starts it does not end in a nuclear exchange.” Chinese experts proposed that, like Beijing, Washington adopt a no first strike policy. But as the report explained: “The Obama administration considered this option but concluded that there is ‘a narrow range of contingencies’ where the United States may need to resort to the first use of nuclear weapons” to counter conventional attacks including by China.

Chinese officials then sought an assurance from their American counterparts that the US would not seek to negate China’s ability to retaliate with nuclear weapons if struck first. Again, the US was not prepared to offer such a guarantee, with some officials concerned this would be “a sign of appeasement”. In other words, Washington is determined to achieve what is known as nuclear primacy over China—the ability to strike first and obliterate China’s nuclear arsenal, as well as tens if not hundreds of millions of its people.

China’s determination to preserve its ability to respond to a US first strike is compounding the danger of war. It is increasing the sophistication of, and protection for, its nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and also reportedly discussing a policy of “launch on warning”—that is, to fire off nuclear-armed missiles if a US nuclear attack is perceived to be underway.

The UCS report declared:

“It is not difficult to imagine situations that could trigger an inadvertent or accidental nuclear war. For example, PRC leaders could underestimate US willingness to use nuclear weapons to stop a conventional war. US leaders could underestimate PRC willingness to retaliate after a tailored US nuclear attack. The PRC could launch a retaliatory nuclear attack if the United States were to launch conventional missile strikes that China mistakenly believed were nuclear. The United States could make the same mistake.”

While graphically warning of the danger of nuclear war, the UCS, a pressure group of scientists established in the late 1960s, has no proposal to prevent it—other than a vain hope in a diplomatic solution. Its inadequate explanations for the escalating tensions between the two countries boil down to it being the product of competing Cold War ideologies or conflicting regional ambitions. No attempt is made to explain why this is taking place now.

The growing danger of war is rooted in the irresolvable contradictions of capitalism between world economy and the outmoded nation-state system that have been profoundly exacerbated by the worsening global crisis of the profit system since 2008/09. The United States regards China as the prime threat to its global dominance, and, confronting a historic economic decline, is determined to retain its world position through military means. The aim of the “pivot to Asia” is nothing less than the complete subordination of China to American strategic and economic interests by any means, including war.

As in the 1960s, in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, the threat of nuclear conflict will inevitably produce broad anti-war opposition among workers and young people internationally as the danger becomes more immediate and palpable. The crucial issue is what political perspective must guide such a movement. The only realistic means of ending the danger of war is to abolish the social order that gives rise to it on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program.

US-backed offensive against Fallujah threatens “human catastrophe”

Bill Van Auken

The besieged civilian population of Fallujah is confronting a “human catastrophe” as a US-backed offensive to retake the Iraqi city from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) intensifies, a human rights group warned Tuesday.

While forces backing the Iraqi government, including troops of the elite Counter Terrorism Service, Iraqi Army soldiers, police and Shia militiamen of the Popular Mobilization Units, have moved to the outskirts of the city, stiff ISIS resistance Tuesday prevented them from advancing into its center. At least 50,000 civilians are believed to be trapped in Fallujah.

“A human catastrophe is unfolding in Fallujah. Families are caught in the crossfire with no safe way out,” warned Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which has provided aid to civilians in the area.

“The stories coming out of Fallujah are horrifying,” said Nasr Muflahi, NRC’s Country Director in Iraq. “A lack of food, medicine, safe drinking water and electricity are pushing families to the brink of desperation. People who managed to flee have told us of extreme hunger and starvation. We haven’t been able to see this for ourselves or assist people inside the town, and we are extremely concerned about the full extent of the terrors unfolding there.”

The United Nations’ humanitarian aid director in Iraq, Lise Grande, further warned that the city could be only “days away from a cholera outbreak,” because of the lack of clean drinking water.

Fallujah has been under siege for close to a year, with roads that bring in vital supplies cut by the Iraqi Army and Shia militias. Now, its residents are facing intensifying bombardment from US and allied warplanes, Apache attack helicopters and Iraqi artillery.

Fallujah was the first major Iraqi city to fall to ISIS at the beginning of 2014, six months before the Islamist militia overran Mosul, Iraq’s second largest population center, along with roughly a third of Iraqi territory.

The early victory in Fallujah was made possible by a revolt on the part of the city’s Sunni population against the Shia-dominated central government in Baghdad, which was widely reviled for carrying out sectarian repression against Sunnis.

While there have been widespread reports of ISIS exploiting the city’s civilians as “human shields”—a charge frequently made by the US military to provide an alibi for carnage inflicted by American air strikes—it is also reported that the bulk of the ISIS fighters are city residents.

This marks the third time in a little over a decade that Fallujah has been subjected to an all-out military siege. Twice in 2004, the US Marines, backed by heavy aerial bombardments, stormed the city, killing thousands and reducing the bulk of Fallujah’s homes and infrastructure to rubble. A center of resistance to the 2003 US invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, the city was subjected to merciless collective punishment.

Fallujah’s fate this time around has been presaged by that of previous Iraqi Sunni towns retaken by forces loyal to the Baghdad government. These include Ramadi, where at least 70 percent of the buildings were destroyed by bombardment and the population of 400,000 has been driven out, and Tikrit, where Shia militias carried out bloody reprisals against the population for the atrocities committed by ISIS, which included the massacre of up to 1,700 predominantly Shia military cadets.

Sunnis view this US-backed campaign as an exercise in ethnic cleansing designed to expel them from Iraq. The massive destruction unleashed on these cities, however, has also been seen in the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobane, which was largely razed to the ground, as well as the Yazidi town of Sinjar. It is a function of the type of warfare employed by the Pentagon, in which proxy ground forces, often with the participation of US special operations troops, rely on heavy air support to defeat ISIS.

While the US military is supporting the offensive against Fallujah with intense air strikes, the Pentagon had reportedly opposed the move against the city, seeing it as a distraction from the buildup for an attack on Mosul, Iraq’s second city, which had a population of some 2 million before falling to ISIS in June 2014.

Washington is also uneasy about the prominent role being played by Iranian advisers on the ground as well as the Shia militias, which provide much of the manpower for the siege. The US views Iran as its major regional rival for hegemony over the Middle East in general, and Iraq in particular.

For Iraq’s Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, the siege of Fallujah is seen as a political imperative for his government, which has faced mounting popular opposition from within Baghdad’s impoverished Shia majority. Crowds have twice stormed the heavily fortified Green Zone, the seat of the central government, to protest rampant corruption and the failure to ensure essential services.

Also fueling the growing popular anger is a series of terrorist attacks centered in poorer Shia neighborhoods. The government has charged that Fallujah, less than 40 miles west of the capital, is the center from which these attacks are planned and executed.

Unfolding parallel to the siege of Fallujah is a separate anti-ISIS operation to the north also backed by extensive US-led air strikes. This operation, directed at preparing an offensive against Mosul, is being conducted largely by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and allied militias, with the participation of US special forces, who are increasingly engaged in combat.

Similarly, Kurdish paramilitaries of the YPG (Kurdish People’s Protection Units) are providing the main ground forces for a campaign across the border in Syria aimed at re-taking the city of Raqqa, the capital of ISIS’s self-styled caliphate.

While the Kurdish forces, supported by US special operations “advisers” and US warplanes, are advancing from the northwest, the Syrian military, backed by Russian airpower, is advancing from the southwest.

This race for Raqqa reflects the underlying conflict between Washington and Moscow over Syria, with the US backing a war for regime change against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, and Russia working in alliance with the government.

In both Iraq and Syria, Washington’s reliance upon Kurdish forces has antagonized its NATO ally, Turkey, which has demanded that the US brand Syria’s Kurdish militia as “terrorist” because of its ties with the Turkish Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), against which the Turkish military is waging a simmering civil war.

Not only has the Obama administration resisted Ankara’s pressure on this score, the chief of the US Central Command paid a visit to the Kurdish units in northern Syria last month. Subsequently, photographs of US special forces wearing YPG patches on their uniforms provoked fresh outraged protests from the Turkish government.

At the same time, the prospect of Kurdish forces “liberating” either Raqqa in Syria or Mosul in Iraq, both predominantly Sunni cities, has sparked new fears of ethnic cleansing and partition.

The advance of the disparate anti-ISIS offensives has served to underscore the catastrophic destruction inflicted upon the region by US imperialism, which deliberately incited sectarian divisions, first as part of its divide-and-rule strategy in Iraq, and then to promote a sectarian-based war for regime change in Syria.

At the same time, the prospect of defeating ISIS only exposes even more clearly the mutually opposed interests of the various outside powers that claim to be united in their opposition to the Islamist militia, raising the specter of the present conflict spawning regional and even world war.

The return of the “grand narrative”

Andre Damon

Throughout the world, a rising tide of social struggle is upending the proclamations by anti-Marxist intellectuals that the “grand narratives” of working-class struggle and socialist revolution have been superseded.

The unfolding global wave of class conflict is currently centered in France, where workers and young people are entering another week of strikes and demonstrations against the “El Khomri” labor reform measures pushed through parliament last month with the help of emergency measures implemented by President François Hollande.

Workers at the national rail line SNCF began a rolling walkout Tuesday evening, while rail and metro workers in the city of Paris will walk out Thursday. The French Civil Aviation Authority is planning a strike beginning Friday, threatening to paralyze transportation in much of the country. This follows strikes by hundreds of thousands of workers at oil refineries and other workplaces, as well as mass demonstrations in which over a million people have taken part so far. Workers and youth have clashed with police forces mobilized under the state of emergency measures imposed in the name of fighting terrorism earlier in the year.

In the United States, where the ruling class and its propagandists have long sought to deny the very existence of distinct social classes, tens of thousands of communication workers went on strike last month. Their struggle, which the unions are working feverishly to shut down, follows the eruption of opposition in Michigan, the traditional home of US auto industry, to the poisoning of the residents of Flint and the destruction of public education in Detroit. The growth of anti-capitalist sentiment is reflected in widespread support for the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, who many believe to be a socialist.

These struggles, and many more in countries throughout the world, are taking place against the backdrop of an unrelenting economic crisis, the ever-growing danger of war and the deterioration of living standards for large sections of the working class and youth.

These events must inevitably set into motion a profound political and theoretical reorientation among broad sections of the population, undermining the conceptions that have prevailed over the past half-century. The events in France are particularly significant, since the May-June 1968 strike in that country marked a significant turning point in post-war politics.

That struggle, the largest general strike in European history, shook the foundations of the Gaullist state and directly posed the question of overthrowing capitalism. The French general strike was followed by a wave of unrest between 1968 and 1975 throughout the world that directly posed the question of state power. The period saw the massive anti-Tory movement of the British working class, strike movements in Italy and Latin America and the struggle against US imperialism by the Vietnamese masses.

Capitalism weathered these storms thanks to the betrayals of Stalinism, Social Democracy and the trade unions, which allowed it to survive and restabilize in subsequent decades.

Reacting to these events with fear and demoralization, broad sections of the intelligentsia turned violently against Marxism. While blaming the working class for the betrayals of its leadership, this shift was motivated above all by fear of the working class itself. Witnessing the prospect of revolution, they cast aside their left pretensions and fled into the arms of the ruling class.

This process found perhaps its clearest expression in France, where it was associated with theoretical conceptions that came to be known as postmodernism. The basic premise of this philosophical and political tendency was that the great wave of revolutionary struggles initiated by the Russian Revolution of October 1917 belonged to a past epoch that had now been superseded.

The meaning of the term “postmodernism” was summed up by Jean-François Lyotard in a his 1979 book, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. The postmodernists adopted an “incredulity toward metanarratives,” Lyotard wrote. “The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal.”

The social content of Lyotard’s declaration was put more crudely a year later by Andre Gorz in his book, Farewell to the Working Class: “Any attempt to find the basis of the Marxist theory of the proletariat is a waste of time.”

What was the “grand narrative” that Lyotard rejected?

It was the “narrative” announced first and foremost by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, which declared that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” and that the workers have “nothing to lose but your chains.”

It was the indictment of the capitalist system in Marx’s Das Kapital, which prophesied:

Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

It was the characterization by Friedrich Engels, in his Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, that the state is merely an instrument of the dominant capitalist class for suppressing and subjugating oppressed classes:

Because the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, but because it arose, at the same time, in the midst of the conflict of these classes, it is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of keeping down and exploiting the oppressed class.

And, in language that speaks so directly to our period of war, it was the Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s declaration that

Imperialism is the epoch of finance capital and of monopolies, which introduce everywhere the striving for domination, not for freedom.

But the venom of the postmodernists was directed above all against the revolutionist who gave the most eloquent expression—in word and in deed—to the perspective of Marxism: Leon Trotsky, who in his Theory of Permanent Revolution declared, “The socialist revolution begins on the national arena, it unfolds on the international arena, and is completed on the world arena,” and in his History of the Russian Revolution defined revolution as “the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.”

In sum, the postmodern theoreticians—and the broader upper middle class social layer whose interests they articulated—rejected the idea that society is divided into classes; that the state is an instrument of class rule; that it is possible to understand the objective logic of social and economic development; that capitalism is leading mankind to catastrophe; and that it is the task of the working class, led by a revolutionary party, to overthrow this bankrupt social order on a world scale and lay the foundations of a society based on equality.

Despite the proclamations of the anti-Marxist theoreticians that Marxism is dead and buried, a new generation of youth, students and workers are living the “grand narrative” of economic breakdown, social polarization, war and dictatorship. In the coming months and years, millions will study the great works of Marxism and use them as an indispensable guide in resolving the great tasks that the working class still confronts.

2017/2018 INSEAD Greendale Foundation Scholarship in France and Singapore for African Students

Application Deadline: For January 2017 Class:

Applications Open: 23 May 2016
Deadline: 6 June 2016
Round 2:
Applications Open: 18 July 2016
Deadline: 3 August 2016 

Offered annually? Yes

Scholarship Name: INSEAD Greendale Foundation Scholarship

Brief description

Financial Aid Opportunity for MBA postgraduate students from Southern and Eastern Africa in 2016 to study Abroad in France or Singapore for the 2017/2018 admission session.

Accepted Subject Areas?

MBA programme

About Scholarship

INSEAD is considered one of the world’s leading and largest graduate business schools, with campuses in Europe (France), Asia (Singapore) and a research centre in Israel. The Trustees of the Greendale Foundation provide access to the INSEAD MBA programme to disadvantaged Southern and East Africans who are committed to developing international management expertise in Africa and who plan their careers in the Southern and East African regions. Scholarship recipients must return to work in these African regions within 3 years of graduation. In the event this condition is not met, the recipients will be asked by INSEAD to refund their scholarship within the fourth year after completion of the MBA Programme.

Scholarship Offered Since: Not Specified

By what Criteria is Selection Made?

These scholarships are granted under various criteria and essentially there are two basic categories of scholarships:

• Need-based: demonstrate financial need
• Non-need based: based on merit, nationality, gender, professional background, leadership abilities, field of previous studies etc.

Who is qualified to apply?

Candidates must be nationals from Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa (disadvantaged backgrounds), Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia or Zimbabwe (from disadvantaged backgrounds)who have undergone the major part of their education in Southern or East Africa. Preference will be given to those who have worked there prior to INSEAD. The candidate’s financial situation will also be taken into consideration.

How Many Scholarships are available? Not Specified

What are the benefits?

€35,000 for each scholarship recipient

How long will sponsorship last? The scholarship is a onetime financial award to cover for tuition fee

To be taken at (country): France or Singapore

How can I Apply?

Essay topic:

1) In 350-400 words, describe (a) why you wish to undertake the INSEAD MBA (b) How you envisage contributing to the future development of Southern or East Africa after graduation, and (c) why you should be selected for this scholarship.

2) In 150-200words, provide a concise but accurate description of your financial circumstances as well as a cash flow forecast for the year at INSEAD (details of income set against all expenditures)

Sponsors: The Greendale Foundation

How can I get more information? If you need more Information about this scholarship, kindly visit the Scholarship Webpage

Important Notes:

All scholarship applications are online except where mentioned in the scholarship description. To submit an application, first follow the Scholarship Guide and get yourself registered.

Scholarship awards are deducted from the last installment of your tuition fees.

INSEAD Alumni Fund (IAF) Women’s Scholarship(s) 2017/2018

Application Deadlines: 

January 2017 Class:

Application Deadline:6th of June, 2016

Round 2
Applications Open: 18th of July, 2016
Deadline: 3rd of August, 2016

August 2017 Class: 

Applications Open: 24th of October, 2016
Deadline: 5th of November, 2016

Offered annually? Yes

Scholarship Name: INSEAD Alumni Fund (IAF) Women’s Scholarship(s)

Brief description: The INSEAD Alumni Fund (IAF) offers scholarship for Women from any country to study for MBA at INSEAD campus

Eligible Field of Study: Masters in Business Administration

About Scholarship: The INSEAD Alumni Fund (IAF), created in 1977, raises funds from alumni for INSEAD’s development. A significant portion is allocated to scholarships that will underwrite the breadth of diversity of INSEAD participants: country of origin, background, gender, etc. The IAF Women’s Scholarships support INSEAD’s commitment to bring outstanding women professionals to the MBA Programme and to increase representation of women in leadership positions in the business community. Some 10 to 15 awards are made per class and most are allocated at the time of admission based on merit.

Scholarship Offered Since: 1977

Scholarship Type: MBA Scholarships for women

Selection Criteria and Eligibility

INSEAD seeks bright, dynamic and motivated women who are making significant achievements in their professional and/or personal lives. Merit scholarships will be awarded to recognize these outstanding women. Their financial situation may also be taken into consideration.

Essay topic :

1).In approximately 350 words please answer the following questions: Women are still not equally represented in the business world. What can be done about this? What have you contributed to date to address this issue, and what do you expect to contribute in the future?
2).In approximately 150-200 words explain why a women’s scholarship at INSEAD would be important to you and outline any factors that you feel would distinguish you from other candidates.
3).What amount of award do you consider appropriate? Discuss. (approximately 150 words)

Number of Scholarships: 10 to 15 awards are made per class

Value of Scholarship: € 20,000

Duration of Scholarship: for the period of study

Eligible Countries: Any country

To be taken at (country): INSEAD

How to Apply

No essay required

To be considered for these scholarships please submit your application on line before the specified deadlines. Candidates will also be considered for the INSEAD Judith Connelly Delouvrier Scholarships.

Visit Scholarship webpage and description page for details

Sponsors: The INSEAD Alumni Fund (IAF)

Trade Pacts and Deregulation: Latest Leaks Reveal Core Problem with TISA

Deborah James

The 18th round of negotiations on a secret deal to limit public oversight over the services economy starts this week at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, and negotiators will have a new item on their agenda: how to deal with the onslaught of leaks of proposals that were supposed to remain locked away in secret until five years after the deal was concluded or abandoned.

That’s because WikiLeaks released draft texts on three previously unpublished cross-cutting annexes of the proposed Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) yesterday: disciplines on the way governments can regulate State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs); Professional Services, and New Provisions Applicable to All Services.

With this leak, 17 proposed annexes as well as the core text have been released to the public, although none through official government channels. Updated texts on financial services, e-commerce, movement of natural persons (Mode 4), telecommunications, and transparency were also leaked. Member groups of the Our World Is Not for Sale (OWINFS) global network have analyzed earlier chapters.

The publication follows a high-profile leak by Greenpeace earlier this month of a trove of chapters of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and Europe. Given that congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is on the rocks, as the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is in those countries, and given that public opposition to the TTIP is on the rise, negotiators had hoped that the TISA could slide by under the public radar. This leak makes that possibility even more remote.

The New Provisions annex would restrict the job-stimulating localization requirements that governments can place on foreign services providers. These proposals, which are more extreme than existing free trade/investment agreements, would make it harder for all TISA countries to effectively regulate these companies — including potentially in the finance sector. And they would restrict developing countries’ ability to regulate foreign investment to promote development the way the industrialized TISA countries did when they were developing, according to an extensive analysis by Sanya Reid Smith, legal adviser to the Third World Network in Geneva.

The U.S. Treasury Department and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative yesterday revealed a plan to go beyond the TPP in terms of localization requirements on financial services in the proposed TISA, to appease major banking industry corporations and the members of Congress who represent them.

The irony of this is that the limits on localization requirements that the United States, and a few other countries, intend to impose through the TISA are the very same mechanisms by which the U.S. and other countries allege that developing countries would primarily benefit from opening their services sectors to foreign participation.

“They’ll hire local workers, and your population will gain know-how” — nope, requiring local hiring would be prohibited under the TISA. “Having foreign companies will result in the transfer of technology to locals” — except that requiring technology transfer is also prohibited in the proposed text.

Historically, the U.S., Japan, and many European countries required that domestic nationals sit on the boards of foreign companies providing services in their countries; this “local management” tool is explicitly prohibited in the leaked text. This is kicking the proverbial development ladder away, indeed.

This is a core of the problem of the proposed TISA. Because it’s not the participation of foreign companies in a country’s market that the TISA would herald; it does not force foreign banks to provide capital to slum dwellers, or giant telecoms to ensure communications access for the rural poor, or energy corporations to ensure universal access to electricity.

Instead, the TISA is designed to limit the ways in which governments can ensure that the presence of those foreign corporations in an economy can benefit the local population. In the United States, we have enough problems with the customer service of Comcast, Verizon, and the like — imagine how it would be possible to hold a giant telecom accountable if they did not have a local presence, as the proposed TISA would prevent countries from requiring?

The Professional Services annex would restrict how governments and professional associations regulate market access, cross border supply, local presence requirements, foreign capital limitations, and licensing requirements for foreign services providers in specified professional fields including accounting, taxation, architectural services, engineering, urban planning and landscape architecture, technical testing and analysis, and also potentially legal services, engineering-related scientific and consulting services, veterinary services, private education services, and construction-related engineering services.

According to a brand-new analysis of the proposed annex on SOEs by University of Auckland Law Professor Jane Kelsey:

the US proposal for state-owned enterprises in TISA adapts key parts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement chapter on SOEs as part of its strategy to create new global rules through the triumvirate of new mega-deals: TPPA, TISA and TTIP. The proposal would force majority-owned SOEs to operate like private sector businesses.

It doesn’t directly require countries to privatise, but removes the rationale for them to remain public entities, creating conditions for privaTISAtion by stealth. The most extreme, complicated and potentially unworkable provisions in the TPPA relating to state support are not included — yet. But mandatory negotiations would be triggered if a country with a high proportion of SOEs wanted to join TISA. China is the real target. There is an unmistakable message: adopt the US model or stay out of the club.

“Changes to the e-commerce chapter continue to be made in complete isolation from the stakeholders it affects, notably the global Internet community of users and innovators. This legacy, closed model of trade negotiation is no way to be making public policy for the digital environment,” noted Jeremy Malcolm, Senior Global Policy Analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The documents, along with the analysis, highlight the way that the TISA responds to major corporate lobbies’ desire to deregulate services, even beyond the existing WTO rules.

This leak exposes the corporate aim to use TISA to further limit the public interest regulatory capacity of democratically elected governments by imposing disciplines on domestic issues from government purchasing and immigration to licensing and certification standards for professionals and business operations, not to mention the regulatory process itself.

Today’s leak follows others, including a June 2014 WikiLeaks revelation of a previous version of the Financial Services secret text; the December 2014 leak of a U.S. proposal on cross-border data flows, technology transfer, and net neutrality, which raised serious concerns about the protection of data privacy in the wake of the Snowden revelations; and the February 2015 release of a background paper promoting health tourism in the TISA, although this issue is unlikely to be included as an annex in the final agreement.

WikiLeaks blew the cover on the entire agreement in June 2015 when it issued the massive publication of 17 documents on the TISA, along with accompanying analysis, including annexes on specific services sectors including: air transport, maritime transport, competitive delivery; electronic commerce; telecommunications; financial services; professional services; and on government functions with regards to the Domestic Regulation and Transparency annexes. This was followed by the July 2015 publication of an updated batch of texts, along with the core text of the TISA and accompanying analysis.

The most recent previous TISA leak was the December 2015 leak of annexes on energy and environmental services which showed that states’ ability to implement their Paris climate commitments would be highly constrained if the TISA were adopted according to the existing proposals.

Global civil society has long warned:

[t]he TISA negotiations largely follow the corporate agenda of using “trade” agreements to bind countries to an agenda of extreme liberalization and deregulation in order to ensure greater corporate profits at the expense of workers, farmers, consumers and the environment. The proposed agreement is the direct result of systematic advocacy by transnational corporations in banking, energy, insurance, telecommunications, transportation, water, and other services sectors, working through lobby groups like the US Coalition of Service Industries (USCSI) and the European Services Forum (ESF).

The TISA is currently being negotiated among 50 countries (or 23 parties counting the EU as one) with the aim of extending the coverage of scope of the existing General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in the WTO. However, even worse than the opaque talks at the WTO, the TISA negotiations are being conducted in complete secrecy.

Last year, Uruguay left the negotiations after a public uproar ensued in the wake of the publications of the documents, which resulted in a cabinet-level review of the potential implications that came back with near-universal thumbs down from the various departments. Paraguay followed shortly thereafter.

Public Services International (PSI), a global union federation, published the first TISA report, TISA vs Public Services in March 2014, and PSI and OWINFS jointly published “The Really Good Friends of Transnational Corporations Agreement” report in September 2014. A factsheet on the TISA can be found here and more information on the TISA can be found at OWINFS’s website.

Memorial Day and the Glorification of Past Wars

Paul Craig Roberts

The Saker reports that Russia is preparing for World War III, not because Russia intends to initiate aggression but because Russia is alarmed by the hubris and arrogance of the West, by the demonization of Russia, by provocative military actions by the West, by American interference in the Russian province of Chechnya and in former Russian provinces of Ukraine and Georgia, and by the absence of any restraint from Western Europe on Washington’s ability to foment war.

Like Steven Starr, Stephen Cohen, myself, and a small number of others, the Saker understands the reckless irresponsibility of convincing Russia that the United States intends to attack her.

It is extraordinary to see the confidence that many Americans place in their military’s ability. After 15 years the US has been unable to defeat a few lightly armed Taliban, and after 13 years the situation in Iraq remains out of control. This is not very reassuring for the prospect of taking on Russia, much less the strategic alliance between Russia and China. The US could not even defeat China, a Third World country at the time, in Korea 60 years ago.

Americans need to pay attention to the fact that “their” government is a collection of crazed stupid fools likely to bring vaporization to the United States and all of Europe.

Russian weapons systems are far superior to American ones. American weapons are produced by private companies for the purpose of making vast profits. The capability of the weapons is not the main concern. There are endless cost overruns that raise the price of US weapons into outer space.

The F-35 fighter, which is less capable than the F-15 it is supposed to replace, costs between $148 million and $337 million per fighter, depending on whether it is an Air Force, Marine Corps, or Navy model.  A helmet for a F-35 pilot costs $400,000, more than a high end Ferrari. (Washington forces or bribes hapless Denmark into purchasing useless and costly F-35.

It is entirely possible that the world is being led to destruction by nothing more than the greed of the US military-security complex. Delighted that the reckless and stupid Obama regime has resurrected the Cold War, thus providing a more convincing “enemy” than the hoax terrorist one, the “Russian threat” has been restored to its 20th century role of providing a justification for bleeding the American taxpayer, social services, and the US economy dry in behalf of profits for armament manufacturers.

However, this time Washington’s rhetoric accompanying the revived Cold War is far more reckless and dangerous, as are Washington’s actions, than during the real Cold War. Previous US presidents worked to defuse tensions. The Obama regime has inflated tensions with lies and reckless provocations, which makes it far more likely that the new Cold War will turn hot. If Killary gains the White House, the world is unlikely to survive her first term.

All of America’s wars except the first—the war for independence—were wars for Empire. Keep that fact in mind as you hear the Memorial Day bloviations about the brave men and women who served our country in its times of peril. The United States has never been in peril, but Washington has delivered peril to numerous other countries in its pursuit of hegemony over others.

Today for the first time in its history the US faces peril as a result of Washington’s attempts to assert hegemony over Russia and China.

Russia and China are not impressed by Washington’s arrogance, hubris, and stupidity. Moreover, these two countries are not the native American Plains Indians, who were starved into submission by the Union Army’s slaughter of the buffalo.

They are not the tired Spain of 1898 from whom Washington stole Cuba and the Philippines and called the theft a “liberation.”

They are not small Japan whose limited resources were spread over the vastness of the Pacific and Asia.

They are not Germany already defeated by the Red Army before Washington came to the war.

They are not Granada, Panama, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, or the various Latin American countries that General Smedley Butler said the US Marines made safe for “the United Fruit Company” and “some lousy bank investment.”

An insouciant American population preoccupied with selfies and delusions of military prowess, while its crazed government picks a fight with Russia and China, has no future.