Divisions rise inside EU at summit between Germany, France and Italy

Alex Lantier

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi met yesterday for a summit off the Italian island of Ventotene.

This was a reprise of the June 27 crisis summit that brought Merkel, Hollande and Renzi together in Berlin shortly after Britain voted to leave the European Union (EU). After the Berlin summit, where they called for broad new economic “reforms” attacking the working class and a united EU military policy, they were determined to show unity and halt further disintegration of the EU. They assembled again yesterday to prepare next month’s EU summit in Bratislava.

“Many thought that after Brexit, Europe was over,” Renzi declared as he opened the summit’s joint press conference, on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Garibaldi. “But it is not, and we want to write a new page in the future.”

In fact, even before Britain invokes Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to begin formally negotiating the terms of its exit from the EU, the EU is on the verge of a new explosion. At Ventotene, the three largest euro zone economies faced a broad range of urgent crises: the rapidly escalating war in Syria and the Middle East, the immigrant crisis and terror attacks in Europe, and the rising danger of a historic European banking collapse centered in Italy. However, they failed to unite around any common proposals, save more attacks on the working class and migrants’ democratic rights.

“Much symbolism but nothing concrete,” the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung concluded about the summit. It mocked the three countries’ “empty declarations of solidarity and fulsome praise of the European project” and wrote: “Their ideas broadly clash, so everything stayed at the level of generous promises.”

Renzi, who is fighting to avert a run on Italy’s banks and to keep office amid the deepening slump of the Italian economy, pledged: “We will also talk about economic issues. We want strong measures, quality investments accompanied by structural reforms, investing in Manufacturing 4.0 and renewable energy. We have to focus on the youth.”

Renzi’s proposals were stillborn, however. In the run-up to the summit, Merkel downplayed Renzi’s calls for looser rules on state budget deficits, and Hollande’s calls for the EU to back the formation of a €315 billion investment firm. Such policies—which would lessen the pressure for social cuts by somewhat slowing the unfolding Italian fiscal crisis, and fund limited economic projects for Germany’s European competitors—face significant opposition in Berlin.

While Merkel stated in her remarks that the EU’s “stability pact gives many opportunities for flexibility” on budgetary issues, it is clear that Italy’s over €300 billion in bad debts cannot be painlessly absorbed by another EU bank bailout. Italy’s economy has ground to a halt, stagnating in the second trimester of 2016. As tax returns collapse, Italy faces a new state budget crisis that threatens to trigger a bank run.

Berlin is opposed, however, to yet another attempt to paper over all these crises with massive “quantitative easing,” that is, by printing euros at the European Central Bank.

New EU rules require depositors and creditors to contribute to paying the costs of a bank failure. As a result, many Italian savers who put their savings in smaller banks that went bust have already been ruined. With major Italian banks like UniCredit and Monti dei Paschi di Siena now in turn facing life-threatening financial crises, the conflicts inside the euro zone over how to handle the winding down of bad debts in Italy is set to take on explosive forms—possibly leading to a decision by the Italian government to leave the EU and the euro currency.

It is unclear what such a decision would mean for France, which has hundreds of billions of euros invested in Italy, and whether Paris could itself under these conditions remain in the euro.

“As we trend into the second half of the year, the situation in Italy, and its spill-over for the rest of Europe, will continue to be one of the biggest macro-political risks we are concerned about,” Federico Santi, a London-based analyst at Eurasia Group, told Market Watch.

The crisis has the potential to trigger yet another exit from the EU. Renzi’s popularity has been undermined by his austerity measures, and he also faces a political challenge from the anti-euro and anti-EU Five-Star Movement (M5S), which has called for a referendum on exit from the euro. Particularly if Renzi’s proposed November referendum modifying the powers of the Italian Senate fails, and if he steps down as he has pledged to do, the result could be the coming to power of another anti-EU government in Italy.

Merkel, Hollande and Renzi tried to cover over the financial conflicts emerging from the crisis of European capitalism by aggressive, reactionary calls for a build-up of European military and intelligence agencies, as well as crackdowns on refugees and immigrants.

“Europe needs to better ensure its own defense, and must also be practical. We need to better protect European borders and share more intelligence information. We also want more coordination, more facilities, and more resources in the defense sector,” Hollande said. He also gave the thanks of the EU to the crew of the Garibaldi, the flagship of Operation Sofia—the navy patrols that force African migrant ships fleeing across the Mediterranean towards Europe to return to Africa.

Mentioning the escalating war in Syria and the refugee crisis, Merkel said, “We should do more for the internal and external security” of the EU. She also praised EU collaboration with other countries to block refugees from traveling to Europe: “We will discuss migrants and control of the coastlines, but we need collaboration from neighboring countries. Collaboration with Turkey is a good thing; otherwise we cannot win the fight against people traffickers. But we also need help from the migrants’ countries of origin.”

In this context, the decision of Merkel, Hollande and Renzi to visit the grave on Ventotene of Altiero Spinelli only further highlighted the EU’s historic bankruptcy. While in prison during World War II on the orders of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Spinelli helped draft the so-called Ventotene Manifesto—a founding document of the movement to build the EU—calling for a federal Europe without national states.

Spinelli’s manifesto is a generally counterrevolutionary document, reflecting his membership in the Stalinist Italian Communist Party (PCI) in the 1920s and 1930s, and the PCI’s opposition to socialist revolution and the political independence of the working class. Insisting that capitalist businessmen play a lead role in the reconstruction of postwar Europe, the manifesto attacks “workers, trained on the issue of class, who therefore cannot see anything but their own demands.”

Spinelli later worked with the PCI during its “Euro-communist” turn of the 1970s, which prepared the PCI’s support for the Kremlin’s restoration of capitalism in the USSR and the PCI majority’s subsequent transformation into Renzi’s pro-austerity Democratic Party (PD).

What the entire period of nearly 75 years since the drafting of the document has shown, in fact, is the deeply rooted inability of European capitalism to overcome the national divisions in Europe, as this crisis-ridden summit made clear.

US-South Korean war games inflame Asian tensions

Peter Symonds

The annual joint US-South Korean military exercises known as Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) began yesterday amid rising tensions in Asia fuelled by the American military build-up throughout the region. While nominally aimed against North Korea, the war games consolidate Washington’s military alliance with Seoul as it makes preparations for conflict with China.

The military drills involve around 25,000 US military personnel, of which 2,500 will come from outside South Korea, operating alongside 75,000 South Korean troops. The US has 28,500 troops stationed permanently in South Korea and is currently restructuring its bases in the country as part of its broader reorganisation of American military forces in the Asia Pacific.

North Korea has responded with militarist threats to launch nuclear strikes on South Korea and the United States “if they show the slightest sign of aggression.” Such reckless and inflammatory threats, which have nothing to do with defending the North Korean people, play directly into Washington’s hands by providing a pretext for its own military expansion and provocations in the region.

The US-led UN Command Military Armistice Commission declared it had notified the North Korean army that the UFG exercises were “non-provocative.” This attempt to portray the joint war games as defensive and benign is false. Over the past five years in particular, the Obama administration has repeatedly exploited exercises with South Korea to make a menacing show of force in North East Asia.

Last November, the US and South Korea formally adopted a new military strategy—Operational Plans 5015 (OPLAN 5015)—that is explicitly offensive in character. In a conflict with North Korea, US and South Korean forces would make pre-emptive strikes on key targets, including nuclear facilities, and carry out “decapitation” raids to assassinate high-level officials, among them North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

OPLAN 5015 provides the framework not only for the UFG war games, but also the Soaring Eagle exercises currently being carried out by the South Korean Air Force, involving some 60 military aircraft and 530 troops. According to the Korea Times, the air force is practising to “pre-emptively remove the North’s ballistic missile threats by proactively blocking the missiles and their supply route.”

The Korea Times also noted that South Korean officials “are paying keen attention to the possibility that Pyongyang would carry out military provocations” during or after the UFG exercises. In reality, the huge exercises, which are premised on war with North Korea, have always heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula. During last year’s drill, the US exploited the situation to station nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers at its bases on Guam in the western Pacific.

The current war games are particularly reckless because of growing signs of instability in Pyongyang. Seoul last week reported the defection of a high-level North Korean official—the number two in its embassy in London. Washington has deliberately sought to destabilise the North Korean regime by strangling its economy through punitive sanctions and isolating the country diplomatically.

The US is boosting its defence ties with South Korea as part of its “pivot to Asia” and war drive against China. Earlier this month the Obama administration approved the sale of military GPS systems to South Korea to improve the capability of its Korea GPS Guided Bomb. On August 14, the Yonhap news agency cited a top official in Seoul saying that South Korea would expand its ballistic missile arsenal to be able to destroy all North Korean military installations simultaneously.

The most significant move, however, was the announcement last month that the US will station its Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in South Korea as part of its anti-ballistic missile network in the western Pacific. THAAD, which can intercept and destroy ballistic missiles, is not aimed primarily against Pyongyang, but against Beijing. It is part of US preparations for nuclear war with China, which has objected to the THAAD deployment.

Relations between Seoul and Beijing have soured as South Korea has been increasingly integrated into US war plans. Chinese authorities joined their North Korean counterparts in condemning the US-South Korean war games. The state-owned Xinhua news agency criticised US “muscle-flexing,” warning it would “lead to a vicious circle of violence for violence” that could provoke fighting.

Last week, the Chinese military held its own exercises in the Sea of Japan involving a simulated bomber attack on a naval task force. The potential for a mistake or minor incident provoking a broader conflict was also highlighted last week when three Chinese military aircraft flew briefly into an area covered by overlapping Chinese and South Korean air defence identification zones. The South Korean air force scrambled fighter jets to escort the “intruders” out of the area.

Beijing is concerned that South Korea is not only strengthening military ties with the US but also with Japan. Until recently, Seoul resisted US pressure to coordinate more closely with Japan, given Tokyo’s brutal colonial record on the Korean Peninsula before 1945. The US is keen to integrate both its North Asian allies into military plans, pressing in the first instance for closer intelligence sharing, which is necessary to integrate US anti-ballistic missile systems in Japan and South Korea.

Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, encouraged by the US, Japan has moved to remilitarise and take a more aggressive stance against China, not only over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islets in the East China Sea but throughout the region. The Japan Times revealed over the weekend that China had warned Japan not to send its military forces to join provocative “freedom of navigation” operations challenging Chinese territorial claims in another flashpoint—the South China Sea. Such an action by Japan would constitute a “red line”—in other words, could lead to Chinese retaliation.

Five years after President Barack Obama announced the “pivot to Asia,” Washington’s reckless actions have led to a dangerous heightening of geo-political tensions throughout the Asia Pacific. The worsening of the longstanding confrontation on the Korean Peninsula is just one of the potential triggers for a war involving nuclear-armed powers that could rapidly engulf the region and the world.

Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) MBA Scholarships for International Students 2016/2017 – Netherlands

Application Deadline: four application rounds: 4 April 2016, 18 July 2016, 12 September 2016 and 14 November 2016.

Offered annually? Not specified

Eligible Countries: International students

To be taken at (country): Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University, Netherlands

Brief description: Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University is offering scholarships for international students to study for full-time MBA Programme 2016/2017.

Eligible Field of Study: Business Administration

About Scholarship

Over the past 40 years, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University has firmly established its reputation as one of Europe’s leading business schools. RSM offers numerous scholarships to support candidates that have been accepted onto the Full-time MBA programme in meeting their tuition expenses. Applicants from outside the home country will often need to meet specific English language/other language requirements in order to be able to study there.

Scholarship Offered Since: not specified

Scholarship Type: full-time MBA Programme

Eligibility Criteria

• The Scholarship is merit-based and thus the RSM MBA Awards Committee will select the candidate based on your MBA application. For example, essays, CV, GMAT, business case (if applicable), admissions interview.
• Scholarship is available to any MBA candidate who has submitted his/her online MBA application to the International Full-time MBA Programme commencing in January 2017 by one of the MBA interview.
• Award is open to high potential candidates who are in need of financial aid to enable them to pursue their MBA degree at RSM.
• Furthermore, the Awards Committee will look at profile or aspects thereof such as nationality, cultural background, gender, experience, upbringing, sustainability etc.

Number of Scholarships: not specified

Value of Scholarship: Each RSM MBA Diversity scholarship will be awarded as a €10,000 tuition fee waiver. Dean’s Assistance awards are available with a value of up to 50% offered as a MBA tuition fee waiver.

Duration of Scholarship: for the period of study

Deadline: There are four applications round: 4 April 2016, 18 July 2016, 12 September 2016 and14 November 2016.

How to Apply

Submit his/her online MBA application to international full-time MBA programme commencing in January 2017 is by one of the MBA interview round deadlines as outlined above. Complete the RSM MBA Diversity Scholarship Application Agreement and email their signed applicant agreement to the RSM Financial Aid Office at finaid-at-rsm.nl by no later than the relevant MBA interview application as outlined above.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Scholarship Provider: Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University, Netherlands

Important Notes: Note: Candidates may only submit one application to the MBA Diversity Scholarship.  If applicant not successful in their scholarship application, they are not eligible to apply to any further additional MBA Diversity Scholarship rounds.

Wolfson Foundation Fully-funded PhD Scholarships for International Students 2016/2017 – UK

Application Deadline: 1st September, 2016

Offered Auunally? Yes

Brief description: Doctoral (DPhil) research Scholarships in Humanities for students of all nationality to study in one of nine selected UK Universities including University College London, University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, University of Oxford, University of Sheffield, University of Southampton, University of Warwick, University of York, School of Oriental and African Studies.

Eligible Subject Areas: The Wolfson Postgraduate Scholarships will fund doctoral research in three disciplines that align closely with the Foundation’s interests: history, literature and languages.

About Scholarship

The Wolfson Postgraduate Scholarships in the Humanities programme awards funding to support doctoral studies at nine carefully selected universities. The initiative reflects our concerns about funding for the humanities and the potential impact of increased undergraduate student debt on postgraduate studies. Our aim is thus not only to support some of the most exciting students, but also to make a statement about the value of the humanities. We believe that high quality academic research in this field is of critical importance to British society. We hope that this programme might help to attract further funding to the sector.

Scholarship Offered Since: Not Specified

Selection Criteria

Wolfson Scholarships are awarded to outstanding students who demonstrate the potential to make an impact on these fields and to be future academic leaders. They are awarded solely on merit to students aspiring to an academic career.

Eligibility

Candidates should be applying to start a new doctoral course at one of the participating universities.

Please ensure you meet the requirements for entry to your course, including English language requirements.

The Scholarships are available in three disciplines that align closely with the Foundation’s interests: history, literature and languages. The Scholarships are available for doctoral research only and will be paid over three years. For full-time students, it is expected that students complete their doctorate in three years.

Number of  Scholarships: Twenty seven scholarships are funded each year at nine universities across the UK

Scholarship Benefits: The scholarships are worth some £27,000 each year (over three years), and cover fees, provide a maintenance stipend, and provide for some research and training costs.

Duration of Scholarship: Three (3) years

Eligible Countries: The scheme is open to all nationalities including African countries. Applicants should be intending to return to their country of ordinary residence following their studies.

To be taken at (country): The participating universities are selected using a formula based on their research record. Institutions currently involved in the programme are: University College London, University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, University of Oxford, University of Sheffield, University of Southampton, University of Warwick, University of York, School of Oriental and African Studies. Individuals should apply directly to the university and not to the Foundation.

How to Apply

Candidates should apply for graduate study to any of the participating institutions. The recipients are nominated by their host university, and enquiries should be directed to the relevant university in the first instance.

Visit scholarship webpage for details

Scholarship Provider: Wolfson Foundation UK: The Wolfson Foundation is a charity that awards grants to support and promote excellence in the fields of science and medicine, health, education, and the arts and humanities.

Arctic Death Rattle

Robert Hunziker

As of August 17th U.S. Naval Research Lab measurements of Arctic sea ice over a 30-day period “shows that the multi-year sea ice has now virtually disappeared,” Storms over Arctic Ocean, Arctic News, August 19, 2016. This means the Arctic has lost its infrastructure. It’s gone.

That means no more 20’-25’ multi-year thick ice, leaving two-dimensional “ice extent” with little thickness and no substantial mass, which charlatans use to prey upon the public’s climate science ignorance by crowing about how far and wide the “ice extent” is during freeze-over so that anthropogenic global warming is made to appear as a hoax. These keynote mountebanks at staged speaking events mislead the public about climate change. They’re found high and low.

In turn, the Arctic negatively affects the entire Northern Hemisphere (source: Jennifer Francis, Instit. of Marine and Coastal Sciences) by altering jet streams at 30,000-40,000 feet altitude, which turns normal weather patterns upside down, wreaking havoc throughout the hemisphere. But, much more significantly, loss of Arctic ice exposes the planet to risks of a crushing blow to the planetary ecosystem, without warning.

Going forward, Arctic ice will consist of young, thin, new yearly ice that easily fractures, turns to slush, turns darker, much more prone to absorbing sunlight, which, unfortunately, could bring on a worldwide catastrophe. Fasten your seat belts!

Ever since the last Ice Age, the Arctic has performed a huge favor by serving as a deep freeze over gigatons of frozen methane (CH4). That locked-in-ice methane, especially in shallow waters where it can make it to the surface in bubbles (already studied by teams of scientists), is a beastly monster beyond anything Hollywood has ever dreamed; it makes Godzilla look like a little whippersnapper.

Natalia Shakhova, head of the Russia-U.S. Methane Study at International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska believes it is possible that a 50-gigaton (Gt) burp of methane erupts along the shallow waters (50-100 m) of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, thereby actuating a fierce self-reinforcing feedback process leading to runaway global warming (5Gt of CH4 is currently in the atmosphere). In turn, life on Earth hits a thud!

Still, it’s important to note that the “50-gigaton burp of methane” theory is extraordinarily controversial among climate scientists. Whereas, the startling loss of Arctic ice mass is irrefutable via actual measurement, and it is glaring evidence of global warming, as heat melts ice!

The Guardian’s ace environmental editor John Vidal recently published an article entitled Time to Listen to the Ice Scientists About the Arctic Death Spiral, The Guardian, August 18, 2016, wherein he states: “The Arctic’s ice is disappearing. We must reduce emissions fast, or the human catastrophe predicted by ocean scientist Peter Wadhams will become reality.”

Professor Peter Wadhams (University of Cambridge) has a new book due for release September 1st, 2016 A Farewell to Ice, A Report from the Arctic (Publ. Allen Lane). According to Vidal’s Guardian article, Wadhams’ book offers a new slant on the climate change controversy: “Because Peter Wadhams says what other scientists will not, he has been slandered, attacked and vilified by denialists and politicians who have advised caution or no-action.”

“He and other polar experts have moved from being field researchers to being climate change pioneers in the vanguard of the most rapid and drastic change that has taken place on the planet in many thousands of years. This is not just an interesting change happening in a remote part of the world, he says, but a catastrophe for mankind.”

All of which begs the question: Is runaway global warming a possibility within current lifetimes?

Yes, it is certainly possible if, as Dr. Wadhams suggest, an ice-free Arctic triggers rapid acceleration of climate change. Accordingly, Wadhams beckons people who study climate change to speak up, tell the truth, don’t hold back.

After all, it is already public knowledge that scientists have been tweaking their own work by downplaying the severity of climate change in order to preserve grants and avoid ridicule, and dodge rabble-rousing, extremist name labeling, which can freeze research funds and ruin careers.

Leading climate scientists are not willing to honestly expose their greatest fears, as discovered by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! whilst at COP21 in Paris this past December, interviewing one of the world’s leading climate scientists, Kevin Anderson (University of Manchester) of Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research/UK who said: “So far we simply have not been prepared to accept the revolutionary implications of our own findings, and even when we do we are reluctant to voice such thoughts openly… many are ultimately choosing to censor their own research.”

Forthwith, we know from one of the world’s leading authorities on climate change that climate scientists are censoring (downplaying) their own research, but why?

“What we are afraid of doing is putting forward analysis that questions the paradigm, the economic way that we run society today… We fine-tune our analysis so that it fits into the economic reality of our society, the current economic framing. Actually our science now asks fundamental questions about this idea of economic growth in the short term, but we’re very reluctant to say that. In fact, the funding bodies are reluctant to fund research that raises those questions,” Top Climate Expert: Crisis is Worse Than We Think & Scientists Are Self-Censoring to Downplay Risk, Democracy Now! Dec. 8, 2015.

Dr. Anderson’s last sentence is worth repeating because it goes to the heart of the debate about climate research bias: “In fact, the funding bodies are reluctant to fund research that raises those questions.” To that end, money dictates science. Hmm! Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Along with Wadham’s unambiguous point-blank warning of serious trouble ahead, Anderson’s revelation is all the more reason to stop and think and act, each and every person, especially leaders because the accumulation of all wars, of all natural disasters, of all famine and heartache throughout all time pales in comparison to a blindside hit by out of control intense climate change, perhaps driven by runaway global warming.

The likely upshot of out of control intense climate change, beyond catching humanity with its pants down, is rapid increase in sea level flooding coastal cities, embedded droughts diminishing or destroying agricultural production, severe storm activity, and horrific heat throughout the mid latitudes, resulting in panic, illness, and sudden death (happening now). The world turns chaotic. Life turns difficult. The American dream turns horribly sour within a generation.

But, the preponderance of published science on climate change leads to the conclusion that such an event is far off in time, decades or in some cases more than 100 years away, and in some cases nothing to worry about, which is the intermittent “gradualists” viewpoint.

Whereas sorrowfully, in point of fact, there is already evidence indicating that the worst-case scenario is in its early stages. Just read Wadhams’ book. The only question going forward is whether climate change rapidly accelerates as an out of control defiant monster or evolves little by little, in which case the gradualists will be correct, meaning future generations can fight the demons of ecosystem collapse.

In any case, anthropogenic (human influenced) climate change/global warming is openly and plainly a deadly serious dilemma that in some cases is severe, happening right under society’s collective nose, for instance, the loss of Arctic sea ice, or 95% of Greenland’s surface turning to slush for the first time in recorded scientific history (1-2 mile thick ice = 23’ sea rise), or Swiss Alps’ glaciers turning into Land O’ lakes, or the Everest base camp glacier turned to stone, or the permanent closing of the world’s highest ski resort Chacaltaya at 17,785 feet turned to rock, or Chinese drought destructiveness doubling over the decades, or Antarctica’s Totten Glacier 90×20 miles irreversibly cascading, or Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier retreating at fastest rate of any ice mass on Earth, or North Carolina’s Outer Banks irreversibly losing isle land mass to the sea, and the list goes on, and on, and on.

Still, people in key American leadership positions, like Donald Trump, publicly state: “Global warming is a hoax.”

Labouring Hours: Sweden’s Six-Hour Working Day

Binoy Kampmark

“The establishment of a normal working-day is the result of struggle between capitalist and labour.”

Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Ch 10

Lengthy hours of work are never a good recipe for feeding the productivity machine.  In Calvinist notions of hard work, the harder such toil is engaged in, the greater the prospects of gain. Combined with industrial rapacity, this doctrine produced terrible results for the toilers of the Industrial Revolution.  Men, women and children were drawn into the machine and ruined to the sound of rising capital. What, however, of actual productivity?

Karl Marx, ever the historical digger, was onto the point in Chapter 10 of Das Kapital: lengthier working days do not a more productive worker make.  Taking aim at his ever familiar target of capital, “the labourer is nothing else, his whole life through, than labour-power, that therefore all his disposable time is by nature and law labour-time, to be devoted to the self-expansion of capital.”

Those things such as time spent for education and intellectual development; or social intercourse and “the free play of … bodily and mental activity, even the rest time on Sunday” would be mere “moonshine”.  Capital, having a “were-wolf hunger for surplus-labour” usurps “the time for growth, development, and healthy maintenance of the body.”

Sweden has been in the news of late for attempting to take the Marxist spirit to heart, with employers seeking to maximise the value of labour from the shorter work time offered.  The latest reduction will take the form of a six-hour working day, though trials were already taking place last year.

Some work places in Sweden will not find the moves particularly novel – the Toyota centres in Gothenburg have been engaging in the practice for 13 years. Staff have registered levels of high satisfaction, which has been rewarded with low turnover rates and, shockingly to those across the Atlantic, high profits.

Linus Feldt, CEO of the Stockholm-based app developer Filimundus, has had his reservations of the eight-hour day for years.  “To stay focused on a specific work task for eight hours is a huge challenge.”  His strategy entails using pauses, improving the work mix “to make the work day more endurable.”

Sweden’s more than mere flirtation with this idea has its roots in a broader historical debate.  The balance between work and leisure, along with the ever increasing rise of capital, has been the battle of industrialised societies, typified by the rise of organised labour.

Australasia, in its pugnacious infancy, tended to be strides ahead of the pack in accepting that more leisure, better working conditions, and importantly, less work hours, would be productive to company profit and physical health.  Chartist men such as James Stephens, a Welsh-born agitating mason derided by the Melbourne Daily Herald as a “stupid mischievous blockhead”, saw organised unionism as a weapon to blunt the broader ravages of unaccountable capital.

On April 21, 1856, stonemasons working on the site of the University of Melbourne made their point in marching on Parliament House, largely at Stephens insistence.  The result of their pluckiness?   The 48-hour week.

Some of their views were sensibly observant, and the working movement in the antipodes took heed of the stresses inflicted by the environment on the working body for lengthy periods of time.  As the Victorian Operative Mason’s Society Report (11 June, 1884) observed, “the period of labour under the relaxing influence of an Australian climate, cannot extend to the length of daily toil in the mother country [Britain], without sacrificing health, and shortening the duration of human life.”

In the manner that now sounds like textbook socialism, the mind of such working folk would also be deemed important.  This entailed, as the same report noted, “The self-cultivation… of the ‘adult man’.”  Give the worker time to read and study, “and to progress in knowledge and virtue.”

Airing and feeding the mind, while providing more leisure, would also have a lasting effect on family life and engender in a citizen the values of civic understanding. The “natural flow of the animal spirits” needed to be unleashed, and in so doing would come “self-respect, and respect for other, for law, order, and forms so essential to freedom, domestic virtues and good citizenship.”

Other states have made the shorter work week famous in the last few decades.  France’s 35-hour working week was introduced in 2000 by a socialist government as a threshold measure “above which overtime or rest days start to kick in.” With a certain bitter irony, it is the current socialist government that is having severe reservations about it.

The vigilantes of productivity always saw little merit in cutting back such hours.  The 35-hour week entailed higher labour costs while tying French hands in the global market place.  “Labour reforms” have been touted as necessary to unclog the disincentives.

As Prime Minister Manuel Valls explained in January, “Exemptions to the legal duration of working time at 35 hours are no longer a violation of the law.”  Economy minister Emmanuel Macron preferred to be even blunter, suggesting that legal requirements to pay overtime rates of at least 10 percent more than the standard rate should be abolished altogether.

Even in Sweden, there are those sceptics who insist that less work risks becoming a matter of idleness.  The mining town of Kiruna, for instance, saw a trial that ran for 16 years examining the shorter work day.  It was abandoned amidst political acrimony and a lack of reliable data.

For all that, it is still comforting to note that cultural changes in environment, given the appropriate nudge along, do help. While the six-hour day, like any such work programs, can become a caricature, they are very much part of a social welfare sentiment distinctly absent in US or Japanese workplaces.  The rationale is hard to fault: the happier the employee, the greater the productivity.

Shifting Alliances: Turkey, Russia And The Kurds

Nauman Sadiq 


It is an irrefutable fact that the United States sponsors the militants, but only for a limited period of time in order to achieve certain policy objectives. For instance: the United States nurtured the Afghan jihadists during the Cold War against the erstwhile Soviet Union from 1979 to 1988, but after the signing of Geneva Accords and the consequent withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the United States withdrew its support to the Afghan jihadists.

Similarly, the United States lent its support to the militants during the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, but after achieving the policy objectives of toppling the Qaddafi regime in Libya and weakening the anti-Israel Assad regime in Syria, the United States relinquished its blanket support to the militants and eventually declared a war against a faction of Syrian militants, the Islamic State, when the latter transgressed its mandate in Syria and dared to occupy Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014.

The United States’ regional allies in the Middle East, however, are not as subtle and experienced in Machiavellian geopolitics. Under the misapprehension that alliances and enmities in international politics are permanent, the Middle Eastern autocrats keep on pursuing the same policy indefinitely as laid down by the hawks in Washington for a brief period of time in order to achieve strategic objectives.

For example: the security establishment of Pakistan kept pursuing the policy of training and arming the Afghan and Kashmiri jihadists throughout the ‘90s and right up to September 2001, even after the United States withdrew its support to the jihadists’ cause in Afghanistan in 1988.

Similarly, the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of Turkey has made the same mistake of lending indiscriminate support to the Syrian militants even after the United States’ partial reversal of policy in Syria and the declaration of war against Islamic State in August 2014 in order to placate the international public opinion when the graphic images and videos of Islamic State’s brutality surfaced on the mainstream media.

Keeping up appearances in order to maintain the façade of justice and morality is indispensable in international politics and the Western powers strictly abide by this code of conduct. Their medieval client states in the Middle East, however, are not as experienced and they often keep on pursuing the same counterintuitive policies of training and arming the militants against their regional rivals, which are untenable in the long run in a world where pacifism has generally been accepted as one of the fundamental axioms of the modern worldview.

Regarding the recent thaw in the icy relationship between Russia and Turkey after the latter shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 in November last year on the border between Syria and Turkey, although the proximate cause of this détente seems to be the attempted coup plot against Erdogan’s Administration last month by the supporters of the US-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, but this surprising development also sheds light on the deeper divisions between the United States and Turkey over their respective Syria policy.

After the United States’ reversal of regime change policy in Syria in August 2014 when Islamic State overran Mosul in Iraq in June 2014 and threatened the capital of another steadfast American ally, Masoud Barzani’s Erbil in the oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan, the Obama Administration has made the Kurds the centerpiece of its policy in Syria and Iraq.

Bear in mind that the conflict in Syria and Iraq is actually a three-way conflict between the Sunni Arabs, the Shi’a Arabs and the Sunni Kurds. Although, after the declaration of war against a faction of Sunni Arab militants, the Islamic State, the Obama Administration has also lent its support to the Shi’a-led government in Iraq, but the Shi’a Arabs of Iraq are not the trustworthy allies of the United States because they are under the influence of America’s archrival in the region, Iran.

Therefore, the Obama Administration was left with no other choice than to make the Kurds the centerpiece of its policy in Syria and Iraq after a group of Sunni Arab jihadists transgressed its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq from where the United States had withdrawn its troops only a couple of years ago.

The so-called Syrian Democratic Forces, which has recently captured Manbij near the border with Turkey only a couple of weeks ago, are nothing more than Kurdish militias with a tinkering of mercenary Arab tribesmen in order to make them appear more representative and inclusive in outlook.

As far as the regional parties to the Syrian civil war are concerned, however, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf Arab States may not have serious reservations against this close cooperation between the United States and the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, because the Gulf Arab States tend to look at the regional conflicts from the lens of the Iranian Shi’a threat.Turkey, on the other hand, has been more wary of the separatist Kurdish tendencies in its northeast than the Iranian Shi’a threat, as such.

Notwithstanding, any radical departure from the longstanding policy of providing unequivocal support to the American policy in the region by the political establishment of Turkey since the times of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is highly unlikely. But after this perfidy by the Americans of lending their support to the Kurds against the Turkish proxies in Syria, it is quite plausible that the Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Turkey might try to strike a balance in its relations with the Cold War-era rivals.

Remember that Turkey has the second largest army in the NATO, the United States has been conducting air strikes against the targets in Syria from the Incirlik airbase and around fifty American B-61 hydrogen bombs have also been deployed there, whose safety became a matter of real concern during the attempted coup when the commander of the Incirlik airbase, General BekirErcan Van, along with nine other officers were arrested for supporting the coup; movement in and out of the base was denied, power supply was cut off and the security threat level was raised to the highest state of alert, according to a report by Eric Schlosser for the New Yorker.

Australian government seizes on NAPLAN test scores to justify budget cuts

Patrick Kelly

The Liberal-National government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has exploited the latest round of school NAPLAN (National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy) results to defend its education budget cuts.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham released on August 3 the preliminary results from the standardised tests done earlier this year by Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students throughout Australia. Across all year levels, the data reportedly showed an increase in average reading scores of 0.4 percent since 2013, a decrease in writing scores of -0.2 percent and an increase in numeracy of 1.26 percent.

In a media statement headlined, “Plateau Not Good Enough,” Birmingham declared that the NAPLAN results “once again show that, despite significant funding growth, we are not getting sufficient improvements in student outcomes.” He claimed that “while strong levels of investment in schools are important, it’s more important to ensure that funding is being used on initiatives proven to boost student results… we need to move the conversation on from just how much is being spent in schools to focus on how record funding can best be used for the benefit of students.”

Federal school funding, Birmingham claimed, rose by 23 percent in the past three years—and because students’ test scores have not risen by comparable levels it was necessary to “move the conversation on,” away from how much more funding schools actually require. Even within the narrow, stultifying framework of standardised testing and educational cost-benefit analysis, it is absurd to suggest that increased spending should produce endlessly improving test results.

The government’s rhetoric on the NAPLAN results serve two purposes. The first aim is to justify previous education spending cuts and prepare the ground for further austerity measures, and the second is to undermine teachers’ working conditions and impose regressive teaching models in the name of promoting “initiatives proven to boost student results.”

The government previously abandoned the scheduled “Gonski” school funding for 2017 and 2018. The Gonski funding model, unveiled by the former Labor government of Julia Gillard, was always a fraud. Ahead of the 2013 federal election, however, then Liberal leader Tony Abbott went along with it, declaring a “unity ticket” on the policy with Labor. After winning office amid an accelerating economic slowdown, the government abandoned much of the planned funding, amounting to around $4 billion, as part of its moves to defend the interests of finance capital and the ultra-wealthy through budget cuts targeting the working class.

Now Turnbull’s education minister is sending a clear signal. As global economic growth falls and signs emerge of an imminent slump in the Australian economy, the government is signalling its intent to slash education and other basic services as part of a stepped-up austerity drive.

The result will be to escalate the crisis confronting the public education system. Birmingham’s claims of record funding increases in the past period seek to cover up the reality that Australia has one of the most privatised and unequal education systems among advanced capitalist countries. While billions of dollars have been funnelled into private schools, including the most exclusive and lavishly resourced, by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments, overcrowded public schools across the country are struggling to cope with record enrolments and increasingly complex social, psychological and developmental needs of many of their students, for which there is almost no additional support.

The government is now promoting a “conversation,” not about how to resolve this crisis but rather how to promote “evidence-based initiatives” to boost NAPLAN results.

In May the government announced a range of reactionary policies under the banner of a “Student Achievement Plan.” These include advancing so-called performance pay for teachers by “linking teacher salary progression to demonstrated competency and achievement, rather than just length of service” and “incentivising high-performing teachers to work in disadvantaged schools.”

Another measure extends standardised testing to Year 1 students (six-year-olds). They will soon have to undergo a phonemic awareness test, which is already used in Britain and has been condemned by literacy experts, involving children being asked to “read” pseudo-words such as “brip” or “snirt.”

The opposition Labor Party and the education trade unions are complicit in all the federal government’s education policies.

NAPLAN is the primary mechanism for the assault on public education—and it was introduced by the last Labor government. The Australian Education Union (AEU) played a critical role in sabotaging teacher opposition to the standardised testing regime. The union called off a planned boycott of NAPLAN in 2010, after the Labor government invited the union bureaucracy onto a “working party” to help organise the implementation of the tests.

NAPLAN is being used in different ways by state Labor and Liberal-National governments to undermine the public education system. In New South Wales, the Liberal-National government of Premier Mike Baird recently announced that Year 9 students will have to achieve a certain benchmark NAPLAN score to qualify for their Higher School Certificate (HSC) at the end of Year 12. The HSC is required to enter university.

In other words, 14-year-olds will be told that the possibility of going on to tertiary study depends on their performance on a standardised test. The New South Wales Teachers Federation (NSWTF) issued a statement making clear that it had no opposition to the government’s proposals, requesting only “further clarification” on the details of the implementation.

In Victoria, the Labor government of Premier Daniel Andrews has directly tied some school funding to NAPLAN test scores. The government has allocated $72 million over four years for schools where students have registered poor NAPLAN results in Year 5. The measure was presented as a means of helping schools and disadvantaged students—but what has been established is a reactionary precedent. Moves will no doubt soon be made to tie school funding “bonuses” to high and improving NAPLAN results, further accelerating the pressure on school administrators and teachers to “teach to the test,” to the detriment of the real needs of their students.

Massive job cuts planned in South Korean shipbuilding industry

Ben McGrath

South Korea’s three largest shipbuilders slashed 5,000 jobs in the first half of 2016 as part of ongoing restructuring by the struggling companies. Both regular and non-regular workers have been forced to quit or accept retirement.

More layoffs are planned over the next few years, with the moves expected to affect related positions in the sector. The entire ruling elite, including the trade unions, is in agreement that the working class must pay to rescue big business.

Shipbuilding is a major component of the South Korean economy, with Hyundai Heavy Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries, and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering the world’s largest firms in the industry.

The companies have been greatly impacted by the downturn in global trade, particularly in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the drop in the oil industry. They have also faced increased competition from cheaper competitors in countries like China.

While Hyundai, Samsung and Daewoo, known in South Korea as the “Big Three,” were initially able to weather the crisis, their combined net losses reached $US4.9 billion last year. They now face a lack of orders as well as overcapacity.

Smaller shipbuilders like STX Offshore and Shipbuilding, Sungdong Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering and Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction are also facing serious debt crises. The combined debt of the top nine shipbuilders has reached 102.6 trillion won ($92.6 billion).

Daewoo is at the center of an accounting scandal, with the firm accused of hiding billions of dollars in losses over the past several years. Its headquarters were raided in June, but any punishment coming out of the investigation and trial, assuming a guilty verdict is actually reached, will amount to nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

As part of the restructuring, the Big Three forced 3,000 workers to retire, while at Hyundai (no longer directly affiliated with Hyundai Motors) an additional 2,000 workers were laid off through a “voluntary” retirement scheme. The three companies plan to eliminate upward of 6,000 positions this year, but far more workers are likely to be sacked. Some 5,000 positions, including subcontractors, were also eliminated last year. As a result of this job destruction, Hyundai Heavy managed to return to profitability in the first half of 2016, earning $577 million.

“As the business environment is getting worse [in the shipbuilding industry] and more workers are expected to apply for the voluntary retirement programs later this year, the number of workers leaving the shipbuilders will be bigger [than the present 6,000] at the end of this year,” an industry official told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

The Big Three intend to eliminate 30 percent of their combined workforces by 2018, meaning a total of 16,000 laborers will be sacked. Close to 30,000 jobs, including subcontractors, will be lost in the coming months alone. On Geoje Island, 22,031 jobs are likely to be lost by the end of this year, with that number rising to 27,257 by March, according to a report by the island’s local municipal government. Both Samsung and Daewoo are located on the island.

State-owned banks such as the Korea Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of Korea have provided loans to the companies, running a risk that the lenders themselves could face financial crises. As a result, the government agreed in June to hand over $9.5 billion to bail out the institutions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) supported the measures, but insisted on even more restructuring.

“The companies, along with creditor banks, should make bone-crushing efforts to revive their businesses,” President Park Geun-hye said in a speech in June, emphasizing that those responsible for the financial problems would not be held accountable. “If we don’t carry out a bold restructuring by downsizing the overgrown workforce … and cutting costs, the future of not only the shipbuilders but also the whole economy will be in jeopardy.”

The labor unions, under the Federation of Shipbuilding Industry Unions, are entirely on board with these plans. These so-called workers’ representatives at the companies are directly controlled by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), and its affiliate the Korean Metal Workers Union (KMWU) or, in the case of Hyundai Heavy, nominally independent unions that are close to KCTU.

There is no shortage of will to fight the restructuring amongst workers, with several unions approving strike action. Workers at Daewoo, for example, approved strike action by 85 percent. However, the KCTU and its allies have stepped in to prevent a larger struggle spreading, particularly into other industries.

This entails the unions sanctioning only partial walkouts, designed to make the least impact on the companies. All of this is entirely for show, in order to dissipate workers’ anger, with unions not even holding strikes on the same days. The union at Samsung held the first such walkout on July 6, during which only 3,000 workers out of the total 14,000-strong workforce struck for four hours. Then on July 20, workers at all Big Three shipyards held a similar four-hour walkout. Unions at Hyundai and its smaller affiliates are scheduled to strike on August 31.

At smaller firms Hanjin and Sungdong, the unions, which both belong to the KMWU, are reportedly in “harmony mood” with management, according to the magazine Business Korea.

Workers must not place trust in any of the unions to wage a genuine struggle against layoffs. The KCTU’s goal is to isolate shipbuilding workers from each other and the rest of the South Korean and international working class to prepare sellout agreements with the companies.

Autoworkers at Hyundai Motors, who are also covered by the KMWU, have joined partial strikes in recent weeks. Despite a few token expressions of solidarity, the struggles have largely been kept separated from each other. Workers in auto and shipbuilding, both in South Korea and internationally, need to develop an independent industrial and political struggle in defence of jobs, conditions and all the social rights of the working class.

Suicide bombing kills 51 at wedding in Turkey

Alex Lantier

Fifty-one people died and 69 were injured Saturday when a horrific suicide bombing hit a Kurdish wedding in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the border with Syria. At least 17 of the wounded are severely injured and clinging to life.

The pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) has confirmed that one of its members was getting married at the wedding. The wedding party was winding down and guests were beginning to leave when the suicide bomber, identified as a boy aged 12 to 14, detonated his explosive vest. “The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion,” one of the guests said. “There was blood and body parts everywhere.”

Many of the victims were children, apparently because they had gathered to one side of the folk dancing at the party, and were therefore closer to the blast.

The bride and groom, Besna and Nurettin Akdogan, were injured. “They turned our wedding into a blood bath,” the bride told Turkey's Anadolu News Agency after being released from the hospital.

The couple had reportedly fled the town of Siirt to Gaziantep in order to escape fighting between the Turkish army and ethnic Kurdish militias in Turkey. The government offensive against Kurdish separatists escalated as Kurdish militias across the border in Syria began playing a larger role in the war in that country.

Yesterday, a mass funeral was held for victims of the bombing in Gaziantep, though authorities said further DNA testing will be needed to identify all of the victims, many of whom were blown apart.

Several international heads of state issued condemnations of the bombing. Russian President Vladimir Putin called it “shockingly cruel and cynical,” and French President François Hollande denounced it as an “infamous terrorist attack.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel sent a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım regretting that “Again, innocent men, women, and children have fallen victim to cowardly and treacherous violence.”

Notable for his silence on the bombing was US President Barack Obama, whose relations with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have collapsed since Erdoğan publicly attacked Washington for supporting last month’s failed military coup against him.

While as of this writing no one has claimed responsibility for the Gaziantep bombing, international media and several Turkish officials blamed the atrocity on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has reportedly recruited children to be used as suicide bombers.

“Initial evidence suggests it was an ISIS attack,” Erdoğan said while visiting Gaziantep after the bombing, which he called a “heinous” crime. Stating that the attackers aim to “provoke people by abusing ethnic and sectarian sensitivities,” he added, “Our country and nation have only a single message to those who attack us: you will not succeed.”

The atrocity in Gaziantep is the outcome of years of incitement of Islamist terror and ethnic bloodshed in the region by Washington and its imperialist allies in Europe as part of their proxy war for regime-change in Syria. Since 2011, the NATO powers and their Middle East allies have funneled billions of dollars and vast weapons shipments to Islamist and Kurdish nationalist militias fighting in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died and over 10 million have fled their homes, unleashing the greatest global refugee crisis since World War II.

Erdoğan’s attempts to follow the twists and turns of imperialist policy have had devastating consequences for Turkey itself, particularly since Washington and its European allies began attacking ISIS in 2014 after it invaded Iraq and threatened to topple the US-backed puppet regime in Baghdad. ISIS had developed an extensive logistical network in Turkey and, starting last year, retaliated with a string of terror bombings inside Turkey.

These included the October 2015 attack in Ankara that killed 105 people and the March 2016 bombing on Istiqlal Avenue in Istanbul, both of which were planned by ISIS forces in Gaziantep.

The latest attack is retaliation for an even broader shift in the alignment of forces in the Syrian war that has intensified the conflict between the Erdoğan government and ISIS. Since last year’s Russian military intervention tipped the scales of the war in favor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Turkish government has steadily shifted its policy. Having found itself isolated after it recklessly shot down a Russian bomber over Syria last fall, and facing the prospect of a defeat of US-backed forces in Syria, it reoriented its policy towards Moscow and the Assad regime.

This reorientation accelerated last month after Moscow warned Erdoğan of the coup being prepared against him by Turkish officers acting out of the Incirlik air base in Turkey, a critical staging ground for US and NATO air strikes on Syria and Iraq.

Both Washington and ISIS are furious at the developing ties between Turkey, Syria, Russia and now China, which pledged last week to begin expanding its aid to the Assad regime.

Shortly before the Gaziantep bombing on Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım made clear that his government is considering taking the unprecedented step of allowing Moscow to use Incirlik air base to bomb ISIS. The base has historically been used by Washington to further its designs against Moscow. Yıldırım’s remarks confirmed rumors that have circulated since Igor Morozov, a member of the Russian upper house, called for Moscow to make an “agreement with Erdoğan that we get the NATO base at Incirlik as our primary air base.”

At a press conference, Yıldırım said, “Turkey opened Incirlik airbase to fight ISIS terrorists. It is being used by the United States and Qatar. Other nations might also wish to use the airbase, which the Germans are also now using.” Asked specifically if Moscow could also use Incirlik air base, Yıldırım replied, “If necessary, the Incirlik base can be used.”

US officials are increasingly desperate over these shifts, which threaten to split Turkey from the NATO alliance and create a broad realignment of major powers in Eurasia against the United States. They are responding by escalating their reckless threats of military action against Russian and Syrian government forces, at the risk of provoking a global war.

Last week, after Assad’s Air Force bombed Kurdish militia among whom were “embedded” US Special Forces operating extra-legally within Syria, Pentagon spokesmen warned that the US was prepared to attack anyone who threatened its troops, risking a direct clash with Russian, Iranian or Syrian forces.

On Saturday, the commander of US forces in Iraq and Syria, Lt. General Stephen Townsend, issued a more official threat to take military action against Syria and Russia. He told CNN, “We’ve informed the Russians where we’re at… [They] tell us they’ve informed the Syrians, and I’d just say that we will defend ourselves if we feel threatened.”

“If the Syrians try this again, they are at great risk of losing an aircraft,” an anonymous senior US military officials told CNN.

CNN commentators added that the situation “increases the probability of direct conflict” between US forces on the one hand, and Moscow and Damascus on the other.