Polish and British governments exploit attacks on Polish immigrants

Clara Weiss

A number of xenophobic attacks on the large Polish immigrant community in the UK following the Brexit referendum are being exploited by both the Polish and British ruling class to strengthen their alliance, amid deepening divisions within the European Union (EU) and growing tensions with Germany.

There are 850,000 Poles working and living with their families in the UK, making Polish in many cities the second language after English. Britain is home to the second largest Polish émigré community in Europe after Germany, where an estimated 2 million people from Poland are living and working.

The overwhelming majority have emigrated since the beginning of capitalist restoration in 1989 and particularly Poland’s entry into the EU in 2004. While Polish workers are on average paid less than their British counterparts, their average salary of €1,800 monthly in the UK is still twice as much as that in Poland.

There has been an increase in attacks on Polish workers in the UK in the wake of the Brexit referendum by right-wing elements encouraged by the whipping up of xenophobia and nationalism by all factions of the ruling elite and the media.

The most publicized case is also the most obscure: British police are investigating the killing of 40-year old Arkadiusz Jóźwik in Harlow, a town in Essex by a group of youth. Although it remains unclear whether the killing had anything to do with Jóźwik’s nationality, it has received much media coverage in Poland and the Polish ambassador in London, Arkady Rzegocki, attended Jóźwik’s funeral.

The campaign of the Polish press and politicians of the ruling right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS) is not only hypocritical, coming as it does from outlets and politicians who are routinely whipping up racism and nationalism in Poland. It also stands in no relation to the actual number of cases (15 to 16 since the Brexit) that were reported by the Polish embassy.

What is involved for the Polish bourgeoisie is not a defence of Polish workers, let alone a struggle against racism. Rather, the Polish bourgeoisie is using the issue as a pawn in negotiations with Britain over Brexit and the future of bilateral relations which, in face of the crisis in the EU and resurgent German militarism, are assuming ever greater importance for both countries.

During British Prime Minister Theresa May’s first visit in Warsaw in late July, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło stressed that Britain was and remains a “strategic ally,” but that the key issue in negotiations over exiting the EU would be “the free movement of people.” She insisted that Polish workers would have to remain in the UK.

The PiS government is horrified by the prospect of a closure of EU borders to Polish workers. Above all it fears an explosion of social tensions in Poland. The restoration of capitalism was accompanied by the destruction of a massive 3.2 million jobs in 1989-2003. With €11,100, the GDP per capita in Poland is less than half that of the EU average (€27,400) and more than three times below that in neighbouring Germany, where it is €37,100.

This situation has prompted millions of workers to seek employment abroad. Out of a working-age population of about 25 million, around 2.5 million Poles have taken the opportunity to work in other EU countries since 2004. According to data by the Bank Polski from 2015, Polish workers working in other EU countries have transferred €43 billion back to their families in Poland from 2004 to 2013. These payments play an important role for many working class and middle class families in a country where 9 out of 38 million people live beneath or near the official poverty line.

Moreover, without the mass emigration of Polish workers the unemployment rate would rise significantly. Unemployment has hovered around 10 percent for about a decade now. Among youth under 25, every fourth is unemployed.

The new British Conservative government under May has shown itself eager to improve relations with the Polish government. During her first visit in late July, May emphasized that the Brexit vote should lead to a deepening, not a loosening, of bilateral relations. Foreign Minister Boris Johnson too stressed that he wanted the bilateral relations to become “from good to great” in his recent visit to Warsaw in early September where he talked with foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski.

Aware of the concerns of the Polish bourgeoisie over the return of Polish immigrants, Johnson, a notorious racist who spearheaded the anti-immigrant campaign for the Leave camp, hypocritically claimed in Warsaw said that there was “no room for xenophobia” in London and that Polish workers were “welcome” in Britain. Both May and Johnson have been careful, however, to not issue any guarantees about the legal status of Polish citizens in the UK after the Brexit.

Poland and Britain already maintain close economic ties. Poland is Britain’s second largest trading partner and the largest market in Central Europe for British companies like Tesco. Over 900 small businesses, with up to nine employees, are operating in Poland. The community of immigrant workers from Poland and other Eastern European countries represents an important pool of cheap labour for British businesses. Poland and Britain also closely collaborate within the framework of NATO, where they are spearheading the war preparations against Russia in Europe.

The PiS-government, shocked by the Brexit referendum, is now trying to use the negotiations over Brexit to push for its vision of the EU and weaken the political position of Germany. The British government in turn is trying to establish closer bilateral relations with the Pis-government, regarding it as a possible ally in negotiating favourable conditions for the Brexit. The fate of the Polish immigrant workers in the UK is merely a pawn in these manoeuvres.

A central concern for May, who is heading a cabinet bitterly divided over Brexit, has been to seek to negotiate the exit conditions with all 27 EU members individually and asked for secret negotiations—a proposal that was rejected by Brussels and Berlin.

The PiS-government is critical of Berlin’s proposal of a military union which it fears would weaken NATO and strengthen the German hegemony in Europe. Jarosław Kaczyński, the head of PiS and most influential figure behind its government, has come forward arguing for a closer economic union and more political independence for the EU member states.

Moreover, there has been a bitter clash between the PiS government and the Polish President of the European Council, Donald Tusk. Tusk is a member of the opposition party Civic Platform (PO) and has openly supported the protest movement against the PiS-government earlier this year, which was headed by political forces arguing for closer collaboration with Germany .

Following the vote for a Brexit, Kaczyński said that Tusk was “directly responsible” for the outcome of the referendum because he had put excessively harsh conditions on the table for Britain in previous negotiations. Kaczyński called upon Tusk to “disappear” from the political scene. At the recent summit in Bratislava, Tusk was pushing, in apparent agreement with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for a quick Brexit, and the toughest possible conditions for Britain.

Philippine president calls for US special forces to leave Mindanao

Joseph Santolan

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, in a speech before newly sworn-in government officials on September 12, called for US special forces to leave the southern island of Mindanao. The next day, in an address to the Philippine Air Force, he said the Philippines would no longer stage joint patrols with the United States in the South China Sea.

Duterte also declared he was looking to secure arms from China and Russia, saying he would send Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana to these countries to see what they had to offer.

The statements mark a further souring of ties between Manila and Washington under the new president. The US State Department responded by saying it had received no formal notice from the Philippines regarding its special forces in Mindanao and thus would not pull the troops out.

Duterte’s cabinet promptly went into damage control. Presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella stated that Duterte was concerned with the risks that American forces faced. The president’s statements were not “policies set in stone” but were “layered” and “could be interpreted in several ways.”

Defense Secretary Lorenzana told the House Appropriations Committee the next day that American troops would not leave Mindanao, saying: “We still need them there because they have the surveillance capability that our armed forces don’t have.”

Duterte is an exceptionally volatile figure and many of his public statements are greeted with public questions regarding his seriousness. His policy pronouncements, including those regarding Washington, are invariably delivered in the midst of lengthy, off-the-cuff, profanity-laden public speeches. Monday’s speech was an example. He spoke extemporaneously for 30 minutes, wandering in a stream of consciousness manner from topic to topic.

Unlike his press secretary, Duterte expressed no concern for the safety of American special forces operatives. “The Americans are real hypocrites,” he stated. “They know we have a real problem with drugs.” He defended his campaign to kill “tens of thousands” of drug suspects and pointed to the violence of the 1899-1902 American conquest of the Philippines to justify his own crimes.

Duterte then stated: “For as long as we stay with America we will never have peace. This is why the special forces have to go. There are lots of whites in Mindanao. They have to go. Even if you’re a black, or a white, but as long as you’re an American you have to go.”

In the same speech, the president accused the Chinese—using the racial slur “mga intsik”—of being responsible for the drug trade in the Philippines. He said his rivals were trying to impeach him. He told the assembled audience that social ills were the product of politicians “not having the balls to carry out the death penalty.”

Duterte stated that anyone who has used drugs for over a year “cannot be rehabilitated. The only solution is to kill them, grind them up, and feed them to the animals.”

Duterte delivers numerous such lengthy speeches every week. His most common audience is the military, to whom he delivers similar unprepared addresses two or three times a week.

The one consistent theme of all of Duterte’s speeches is his commitment to the violent suppression of the population in the name of his war on drugs. The official death toll of those killed by police and vigilantes since he took office on July 1 is now over 3,500. More people have been murdered in the first two and half months of the Duterte government than during the entirety of the martial law dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos from 1972 to 1981.

Last week, Duterte declared an open-ended state of national emergency in response to a “state of lawlessness.” He called upon the military “to run the country.” His administration has clarified that the state of emergency authorizes warrantless arrests. Senator Richard Gordon recently put forward a bill authorizing the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, which forbids detention without trial.

Duterte is, in his extemporaneous articulation of policy, looking to cultivate an audience for his fascistic policies. He routinely resorts to nationalist appeals, including publicly denouncing “Americans.” He said on Monday: “I do not like the Americans. It’s simply a matter of principle for me.”

According to the Philippine Department of Defense, there are only 107 US special forces in question in Mindanao. The issue of their presence has become, for Washington, a secondary matter. First stationed in 2002, the US regarded these troops as necessary to re-establish a foothold in the Philippines after the closure in 1992 of its major facilities—the Subic Bay naval base and Clark Airfield. Now, however, the chief US focus is the war drive against China in the South China Sea.

What Duterte’s pronouncements increasingly call into doubt, however, is Manila’s commitment to the renewed basing of US forces in the country under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which was signed under Duterte’s predecessor, Benigno Aquino. The termination of this agreement is something Washington will not tolerate.

Duterte has repeatedly said he intends to honor the EDCA treaty obligations, but his volatile nationalist posturing calls these statements into question.

Greg Poling of the influential US think-tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) told the Wall Street Journal: “There are two camps in Washington—one that thinks Duterte is about to push the alliance off a cliff and there is nothing US policy makers can do about it, and one that continues to argue that the alliance is just too important to both countries and so a way forward must be found. But that latter group is losing the argument day by day as Duterte continues this anti-American rhetoric.”

Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay arrives in Washington tonight to meet with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and speak before the CSIS. Doubtless he will attempt to patch things up in the wake of Duterte’s latest statements. It is noteworthy, however, that he is not scheduled to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry.

Defense Secretary Lorenzana is scheduled to be meeting US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter in Hawaii before the end of the month.

Poling’s remarks make clear that a growing section of US policy makers sees Duterte “pushing the alliance off a cliff.” The “alliance” is the long-established ties between a former colonial master and its colony. The Philippines has, for over a century, served as Washington’s stepping-stone to the Asia Pacific.

As Washington ratchets up its drive to subordinate China by military means to US economic and political dominance, it will not tolerate the loss of this stepping-stone. There has not been a single political transition during the last hundred years in the Philippines in which Washington did not play a direct role. If Duterte’s nationalist posturing continues and relations further sour, his term in office may prove to be short one.

European Commission President Juncker calls for state-build up and war

Johannes Stern

Two days before the post-Brexit summit in Bratislava on Friday , European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker delivered his annual State of the European Union speech. Speaking before the European Parliament, he warned that the European Union is facing “an existential crisis” and made clear that the European ruling elite has nothing to offer to the European working class besides austerity, nationalism, police state build-up and war.

“I am not going to stand here today and tell you that everything is now fine. It is not,” he said. “I have witnessed several decades of EU integration, but never before have I seen such little common ground between our member states. So few areas where they agree to work together […]. Our European Union is, at least in part, in an existential crisis.”

Juncker acknowledged that the historical crisis of the EU is reproducing the same national divisions and political break-down that plunged the continent into two world wars in the twentieth century. “Never before have I seen national governments so weakened by the forces of populism and paralyzed by the risk of defeat in the next elections,” he warned.

“ The next twelve months are decisive if we want to reunite our Union,” Juncker added. He was “therefore proposing a positive agenda of concrete European actions for the next twelve months.”

In reality, there is no “positive agenda.” Juncker all but admitted that the EU's policies have deprived a whole generation of a better future. “I cannot and will not accept that the millennials, Generation Y, might be the first generation in 70 years to be poorer than their parents”. Coming from a man who has overseen years of deep austerity that have slashed wages and living standards in Greece and across Europe, this is utter cynicism.

In an attempt to cover up the class character of the EU and channel rising anger among European workers in a nationalistic anti-American direction, Juncker claimed: “Europe is not the Wild West, but a social market economy. In Europe, consumers are protected against cartels and abuses by powerful companies. This goes for giants like Apple too.”

Who is Juncker kidding? Those who are protected in capitalist Europe—as in capitalist America—are the superrich and the banks! After years of deregulation and austerity, European workers face in the final analysis the same devastating conditions as their class brothers and sisters in the US. When Juncker criticizes Apple, which like most big companies is involved in large-scale tax evasion, this has nothing to do with protecting European workers. Rather, it points to the increasing tensions as the EU seeks to assert its interests more independently of, and even against, the United States.

“ Europe can no longer afford to piggy-back on the military might of others, or let France alone defend its honour in Mali,” Juncker said, all but calling for a major European military escalation in ongoing wars in Africa and the Middle East.

Juncker also pledged a major military build-up: “For European defence to be strong, the European defence industry needs to innovate,” he said. “That is why we will propose before the end of the year a European Defence Fund, to turbo-boost research and innovation.”

Juncker confirmed longstanding EU plans, revived by defense ministers Ursula von der Leyen of Germany and Jean-Yves Le Drian of France in the lead-up to the summit, to transform the EU into a de facto military and police state.

“ Europe needs to toughen up”, Juncker stated. “Nowhere is this truer than in our defence policy. The Lisbon Treaty enables those Member States who wish, to pool their defence capabilities in the form of a permanent structured cooperation. I think the time to make use of this possibility is now.”

Juncker called for “a European Strategy for Syria” and for Federica Mogherini, the EU's High Commissioner for Foreign Policy, “to become our European Foreign Minister, via whom all diplomatic services, of big and small countries alike, pool their forces to achieve leverage in international negotiations.”

This plan alone speaks volumes about the EU's reactionary strategy. Mogherini has been leading the EU's push for a common European military and foreign policy after the UK's vote to withdraw from the EU. At the first EU summit without British participation, at the end of June, she presented a paper titled “Global Strategy for European Foreign and Security Policy.” At its center stood the goal that the EU must become an aggressive military power capable of waging war independently from the United States.

Europe “must be better equipped, trained and organised to contribute decisively to such collective efforts, as well as to act autonomously if and when necessary,” this document demands. The paper calls for a massive rearmament program and makes clear that there is virtually no geographical limit to the potential reach of an EU military force. Brussels reserves the right to intervene not only in the war-torn regions in North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, but anywhere in the world.

The stated interests of the EU include “ensuring open and protected ocean and sea routes critical for trade and access to natural resources.” To this end, “the EU will contribute to global maritime security, building on its experience in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, and exploring possibilities in the Gulf of Guinea, the South China Sea and the Straits of Malacca.”

The drive to prevent the break-up of the EU by preparing for global wars is pushed above all by Berlin. Germany's recently published “White Paper 2016 on German Security Policy and the Future of the Bundeswehr” explicitly welcomes “the European Union’s new global foreign and security policy strategy,” stating that it will “make a significant contribution to strengthening the EU’s capacity to act in the domain of foreign and security policy.”

“From the very beginning, Germany has played an active role in supporting the development of this new strategy,” Berlin's official foreign policy doctrine boasts.

The current Franco-German plans, such as the creation of a unified EU military headquarters, were also spelled out first in Berlin's white paper. In the medium term, a “permanent civil-military operational headquarters” is required, it states, with a “civil-military planning and command and control capability”. Only thus could the “political weight of the countries of Europe” be maintained in the long term, along with the “security interests of the EU,” given “geopolitical shifts and global demographic developments.”

The push especially by the German ruling class to organize Europe militarily after Brexit to defend its geostrategic and economic interests on a world scale is only increasing the tensions between the European powers and the danger of another major war between the imperialist powers.

Britain’s Admiral Lord West was quoted I the British tabloid the Sun last week: “Because of Brexit, I think Europe is very flaky, I think it is unfortunate that we didn’t stay in, because they actually need our military expertise. I can see bits of Europe breaking up and when Europe gets into a mess, twice in the past we’ve had to go in there and clear it up with immense loss of blood and lives.”

McGill University – MasterCard Foundation Scholarships for African Students 2017/2018

Application Deadline: The deadline for your application for admission to McGill University is December 10, 2016, and all supporting documents must be received by January 10, 2017. |
Offered annually? Yes for the next 10 years

Eligible Field of Study: Development related courses – contact the University for Specific Details

About Scholarship: McGill University and The MasterCard Foundation are pleased to offer The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program at McGill University for the 2016-2017 academic year. This prestigious scholarship recognizes students who are residents and citizens of Sub-Saharan African countries (including French-speaking students), who come from the most challenged socioeconomic backgrounds and who show outstanding academic and leadership abilities.

Thanks to a $27 million financial commitment from The MasterCard Foundation over the next decade, the Program will provide academically talented, economically disadvantaged young people from Africa with access to quality university education.McGill will welcome 91 Scholars from Africa over the next ten years, some of whom will be coming from French-speaking countries.

In addition to financial support, Scholars are provided with a comprehensive support network that includes an array of mentoring and support services to ensure each student’s academic success, community service engagement and transition to socially relevant employment opportunities, when they return to Africa at the conclusion of their studies.

Offered Since: 2013

Type: Undergraduate scholarships for African students

Eligibility:

• You must qualify academically for admission to McGill University. Please note that admission is competitive.
• You must be a first-time applicant to university (transfer applicants are not eligible).
• You must be a resident and citizen of a Sub-Saharan African country. French-speaking applicants are welcome.
• You must have an exceptional record of service and activity in your school and/or community.
• You must have the potential for meaningful future service to your community as a leader engaged in dynamic local and global social change.
• Your financial status must be in the lowest two quintiles of your country.

Selection Criteria:

Admission to McGill University

• Academic achievement and potential – academic admissibility is determined based on the applicant’s academic record.

Acceptance to The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program

• You must demonstrate an exceptional record of service and leadership in your school and/or your community. This may include organizing youth programs, assuming leadership roles in school activities, participating in clubs and teams, taking on responsibilities at home, advocacy and/or volunteering in your community.
• You must be committed to returning to Africa after graduation to continue to give back to your community and country.
• You must be from a low-income background. Your financial status will be verified.

To be considered for The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program at McGill University, you must demonstrate academic potential, exceptional records of service and activity in your schools and communities and/or the potential for meaningful community service through engagement as leaders in dynamic local and global social change efforts.

Number of Scholarships: Over the next ten years, McGill will welcome 67 MasterCard Foundation Scholars at the undergraduate level and another 24 at the Master’s level, for a total of 91.

Value of Scholarship: The MasterCard Foundation Scholars at McGill will receive a holistic set of financial, social, and academic supports throughout their education and during their post-graduate transitions.

Duration of Scholarship: four years duration of the undergraduate degree

Eligible Countries: Sub-Saharan African countries

To be taken at (country): McGill University Canada

How to Apply

• To apply for The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program, you must submit an online application for admission to McGill University.
• Because applicants to The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program do not have to pay the $102.20 application fee, you must follow a special application procedure. You will find detailed instructions on this special procedure, and complete information about applying to McGill as a MasterCard Foundation Scholar, from link below

For more information on how to apply for the The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program at McGill visit Scholarship webpage

Sponsors: MasterCard Foundation

Rackham Merit Fellowship Programme for International Students 2017

Application Deadline: 15th April, 2017.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): USA

Eligible Field of Study: Various

About the Award: The Rackham Merit Fellowship (RMF) Program helps sustain the academic excellence and inclusiveness of the Michigan graduate community, one that embraces students with diverse experiences and goals, and who come from many educational, cultural, geographic, and familial backgrounds. By offering financial assistance to those students who might not otherwise have access, we aim to reduce disparities in graduate education. We also aim to promote the values of diversity and inclusion by encouraging the admission and funding of students who represent a broad array of life experiences and perspectives, because this enhances the quality of the intellectual environment for all students.

Type:  PhD and Master’s fellowship

Eligibility: The Rackham Merit Fellowship is open to newly admitted students in a Rackham graduate degree program who:

• Have a record of superior academic achievement (e.g., grade point average, honors, or other designation);
• Are U.S. citizens, permanent residents, or undocumented students with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA)

And meet one or more of the following criteria:

• Come from an educational, cultural or geographic background that is underrepresented in graduate study in their discipline in the United States or at the University of Michigan;
• Have demonstrated a sustained commitment to diversity in the academic, professional, or civic realm through their work experience, volunteer engagement, or leadership of student or community organizations. By diversity, we mean in the U.S. to reduce social, educational or economic disparities based on race, ethnicity or gender, or to improve race relations in the U.S.;
• Have experienced financial hardship as a result of family economic circumstances;
• Are first-generation U.S. citizens or are the first generation in their families to graduate from a four-year college.

Selection Criteria: Students who have outstanding academic qualifications, show exceptional potential for scholarly success in their graduate program, and demonstrate promise for contributing to wider academic, professional, or civic communities.

Graduate students do not apply directly for the RMF, but are nominated by faculty in their graduate program.

Value of Scholarship: 

• Tuition, stipend, health and dental coverage, during each fall and winter semester, with select summer stipend and benefits.
• The stipend level is currently $9,869 per semester as at previous academic year.
• Appointments are also usually given (typically in the form of a fellowship, traineeship, GSRA or GSI)

Duration of Scholarship: For Ph.D. students, the RMF is typically 5 years of funding. For Masters, 2 semesters.

How to Apply: 

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: The Rackham graduate school

In Sickness and in Health: Illness in the White House

Binoy Kampmark

Exciting times, indeed. The latest bustling instalment in the Clinton-Trump saga of “produce your documents” now goes to the issue of health. The Democratic contender for the White House found herself feeling rather off, which made doctors order that Hillary Clinton take proper “rest”.

It then transpired, according to sources (who is to really know about the Clintons?) that she had been slow off the mark in revealing the diagnosis of pneumonia, a condition that nearly precipitated a fainting spell at a New York memorial ceremony for the September 11, 2001 attacks. On that occasion, Clinton excused herself for feeling “overheated and dehydrated” and required obvious assistance to her van.

“I’m feeling so much better,” she cheerily told CNN on Monday night, “and obviously I should have gotten some rest sooner.” Over the next few days, those medical directives from Dr. Lisa Bardack are set to kick in. Donald Trump, in the meantime, is bound to behave like a merry pig in electoral mud, though he is missing a sparring buddy. “I hope she gets well and gets back on the trail and we’ll be seeing her at the debate.”

The immediate sense about the Clinton campaign was that the veil of secrecy had again been given a few more layers. Rather than releasing material on the subject with speedy resolve, Team Clinton closed ranks, hoping that the press would not feast on an impeding medical bonanza.

Reuters noted that this “health scare revived concerns about a tendency toward secrecy that has dogged her campaign, and underscored the perennial worries about the medical fitness of candidates for one of the world’s most demanding jobs.”

Those running for the White House – and those in it – tend towards hiding the assortment of ailments that could, technically, make them either unelectable or deficient. What had sprung out, notably in this election, is some unwritten obligation to, as one NBC News report put it, “inform the public about her health.”

President Bill Clinton certainly thought so, telling the New York Times in a 1996 interview that the public was entitled “to know the condition of the president’s health.” That particular piece disclosed the president’s battle “with desensitization shots” taken weekly to combat Washington’s notorious tendency to tickle and tease allergies.

The interview may well have been precipitated by the fact that Bill, when a candidate in 1992, had troubles with his voice. Medical opinions started to swarm; speculation about fitness was duly triggered, and has become something of a greater curiosity in recent years. (Witness, for instance, discussion about John Kerry’s triumph against prostate cancer; or Dick Cheney’s heart problems, revealing that even such a dark force can have a troubling ticker.)

That same NBC report digs a bit deeper, asking questions about why hiding such a pneumonia diagnosis was necessary to begin with. Did Clinton, for instance, contract it in the past? The coughing attack last week at an appearance in Cleveland, for instance, was dismissed as a matter of “seasonal allergies”. Did the candidate “lose consciousness at all?”

In all seriousness, the maladies of the White House occupant have been many and fundamental. Healthy, sturdy figures seem oddities. Prior to the First World War, William Taft laboured under morbid obesity, a condition which made him nap during meetings. His successor, the supposedly high-minded visionary, Woodrow Wilson, suffered a series of strokes that left him blind in his left eye and wheelchair bound.

A suitably doped up President John F. Kennedy remained at death’s door for much of his time in office till assassination opened it; Franklin Delano Roosevelt sneakily crafted an image of good, mobile health in the face of polio; and Grover Cleveland took a good four days off to have a tumour removed on a yacht.

Secrecy has become a dull, continuous feature of this presidential battle. Neither candidate has been entirely open to continuous press scrutiny on the trail, or supplying the tips, and trimmings as the important dates are ticked off the calendar.

The idea of “protective pool” coverage is something both find troubling, with Clinton and Trump preferring greater management and staging, with protective guardians. Trump, for instance, has no reporters to accompany him on his plane; Clinton has tended towards a drier pool of correspondents.

Neither candidate seems particularly fit in several ways for the White House, though these have little to do with matters of physique and stamina. Boiling matters down to misogyny and greater scrutiny of Clinton for her supposedly vulnerable sex hardly gets away from the central matter at hand: her unquestionable sense of being unreliable. Only the Clintons could have converted something in the realm of health into a spectacle of secret ponderings and conspiratorial wonder. The crooked timber of humanity continues to creak.

The EU-Jordan Experiment: Towards Easing the Refugee Issue

Roshan Iyer

On 20 July 2016, the EU and the Kingdom of Jordan entered into a free trade deal, the first of its kind in the region. If optimally utilised, the deal opens doors for significant investment into Jordan and promises to create a large number of jobs. However, the most salient feature of these jobs will be that a certain percentage of them will be set aside for Syrian refugees. Could this deal mark the first step towards integrating the Syrian refugee population in Jordan?

The Deal: A Brief OverviewThe deal reduced restrictions on 52 product groups, including all types of textiles, clothing, fabric and yarns, which Jordan exports. The agreement specifically simplified ‘rules of origin’, the technical criteria that determine whether a specific product qualifies for preferential access under a given trade agreement, if certain conditions are met. Under this 10 year agreement, in order to qualify, producers must be located in specified industrial areas and development zones in Jordan and at least 15 per cent (to increase to 25 per cent in the third year of the agreement) of their employees must be from the 650,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan. This agreement currently applies to 18 Special Economic Zones (SEZ). In conjunction with the deal, the EU pledged 100 million Euros in humanitarian aid to be distributed by international organisations and 200 million Euros to support refugees and finance water, education and energy infrastructure.

Syrian Refugees in Jordan

This is significant as the influx of Syrian refugees to Jordan has increased the rate of youth unemployment in the country by 10 per cent and has exacerbated latent social tensions in the country. This deal attempts to solve some of those problems in a unique way. It not only benefits the Jordanian economy by opening up the massive EU markets but also creates employment for approximately 200,000 Syrian refugees in the region. Initial action on the deal has included Jordan's investment of $140 million into the infrastructure development of the largest SEZ, the King Hussein Bin Talal Development Area (KHBTDA). This particular investment can easily accommodate the nearly 80,000 refugees in the nearby Za'atari refugee camp. The Jordanian authorities must enforce both workers and human rights in these SEZs, as refugee populations are often exploited as a pool of low-cost disposable labour by profit seeking factory managers.

Implementation

A summer pilot project that was meant to cover 150,000 refugees working in Jordan produced little interest from the Syrians themselves and uncovered flaws in the initiative. Apparently the employment provided is simple repetitive work and that pays correspondingly low wages. Most Syrians tend to gravitate towards informal work that pays higher wages, makes better use of their skills, and does not require costly and complicated paperwork associated with work visas and permits. Jordan could try to reorient these SEZs to attract higher end manufacturing that sees significant value addition of the labour force. Firms in the SEZs benefit from less red-tape and 5 per cent lower income tax. Unlike in the rest of Jordan, in these SEZs, foreign entities enjoy 100 per cent ownership of their firms. These steps provide investors with marginal but significant cost saving in the region and would be optimal for increasing profit margins. 

Jordan is currently seeking and encouraging investment in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and food and beverage production. It is hoped that this would succeed in attracting higher value investments from the rest of West Asia, and particularly from the Gulf countries, which are looking to diversify their investment portfolios. However the KHBTDA is a mere 30 kilometres from the Syrian border, and additional security will be essential to securing high value investments.

Big Picture

The EU-Jordan free trade deal should be viewed as a pilot programme with potential to stabilise the refugee situation in West Asia as well as the social dynamics arising due to it. While the experience of the Palestinian population in Jordan gives a much more sobering lesson on the limits of integration, the deal has the potential to stem many of the negative consequences of population migration.

This is in sharp contrast to the experience of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, who, until recently, did not have the right to work and produced a large body of heavily radicalised youth. If successful, teh EU-Jordan deal could provide significant impetus to a Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Area connecting the EU with the Levant and the Maghreb. The EU's trade with countries from these two regions comprise 8.6 per cent of EU's total external trade. This deal has the potential to create a win-win situation. On one hand, it adds new jobs in Jordan for Jordanians while buttressing the government’s plans to move the country up the value chain in terms of manufacturing. On the other, it also seems to provide a relatively more sustainable stop gap measure for dealing with the consequences of the ongoing civil war in Syria.

Oceans of (Dis)trust

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera

“No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people” 

Albert Camus

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon delivered a lecture at the Kadirgamar Institute, Colombo, on ‘Sus-tainable Peace and Achieving Sustainable Development Goals’.  Referring to the lack  of UN intervention in Sri Lanka, the Secretary General said, “Had we been more actively engaged, we could have saved much more, many more human lives.”

On a recent visit to Singapore, Harvard University scholar Dr NeelanTiruchelvam’s son spoke about the death of his parents by the LTTE over false promises on unattainable goals.  Dr N Tiruchelvam was a peace loving man who wanted nothing more than a political settlement, but he was assassinated by the LTTE leader Prabhakaran,like late Hon Lakshman Kadirgamar, Tamil lawyer and former Foreign Affairs Minister. The institute where Ban Ki-moon delivered his lecture was named after Kadirgamar and the irony of his statement, under the late statesman’s photograph, was not to be missed. The Sri Lankan situation was clearly different to Rwanda or Serbanica or another place - and this has to be established and understood. 

“Sri Lankan Army lost 5600 officers and soldiers with over 25000 battle field casualties during the last two years of the battle, thousands of soldiers are still lying on beds like vegetable. All Sri Lankans are happily and peacefully living today because of the sacrifices that they made to bring about a future with no bombs and blood” says Maj Gen Kamal Gunaratne, who fought the 45-minute final battle that killed LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, in an interview for his latest book titled “Road to Nandikadal.” He further says, “I wrote this book for the poor parents who sent their sons to fight with the ruthless LTTE, the elite people in Colombo and abroad and the human rights activists who were misled by a wrong pic-ture.”

On 4 September, 2016 a few LTTE sympathisers and supporters attacked the Sri Lankan High Commis-sioner to Malaysia, Ibrahim Sahib Ansar, at the Kuala Lampur Airport. This clearly demonstrates how cer-tain LTTE sympathisers have forgotten the struggle that they subscribed to in past. The disgraceful act of attacking Sri Lankans, including the Buddhist priest in South India, cannot be ignored. 

2 September 2016 concluded the two day conference organised by the SriLankan army. The central theme for this Colombo Defence Conference was the importance of using soft power as a powerful tool in post-war Sri Lanka. To combat this rise in radical elements, soft power strategies need to be implemented on a urgent basis. Soft power as a tool has been used extensively in Sri Lanka and has been an inherent part of Asian culture for many years. Prof Joseph Nye famously said, “I understand that as a nation we have used soft power positively and there are times we have failed to use it.” Kadirgamar used soft power to ban the LTTE, and to promote art and culture, he commissioned the book The World of Stanley Kirinde, however he was killed a few days before the book launch. Soft power was used by Sirimavo Bandaranayake to position Sri Lanka in the global sphere. Another example of a different use of soft power is when Michael J Delaney, Assistant US Trade Representative for South Asia, at the last minute, turned down the lecture at the Kadirgamar Institute. These small waves of displeasure and disappointment ended up creating a narrative surrounding the negative image of Sri Lanka.

During the Indian Ocean Conference in Singapore, 1-2 September 2016, with 250 delegates from 21 na-tions, US Assistant Secretary of State, Nisha Biswal explained the importance of soft architecture for the Indian Ocean nations and referred to Sri Lanka’s ports with their impressive performance as an example. Prime Minister Wickramasinghe who made the keynote speech made some important points starting from a geopolitical view: “Single power and duopoly appears to be a thing of the past and for the first time in five centuries economic power in the world is moving again towards Asia” to the “US is proposing the furtherance of a single combined security strategy for the two Asian oceans - the Indian and Pacific,” warning of implications for Asian security. For the Indian Ocean countries, many scholars highlighted  past heritage and unique contributions owing to the geographical locations. Asian soft power and our Asian foreign policy did exist in the past and rediscovering the same is essential. It also brought forth cooperation is essential to bring human capital together to develop the Indian Ocean agenda. 

In understanding a polycentric Asia with no uniformity in terms of geopolitics and culture, each country is a separate world to itself, according to Fukuyama. It is important to understand the multiple layers of dispute, historical backgrounds and strategic mistrust before commenting and drawing parallels with other nations. 

US triples special operations deployment to Latin America

Neil Hardt

From 2007 to 2014, the United States tripled the deployment of special operations forces to Latin America, according to documents obtained via FOIA request by the non-profit Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

The deployment of Green Berets, Navy Seals and other elite units to Latin America is bound up with American imperialism’s preparations to suppress the outbreak of social struggle in Central and South America and is also aimed at countering the growing influence of China in the region.

The August 30 WOLA report notes that US special operations training is aimed at improving “technical skills like pistol and rifle marksmanship, urban combat, intelligence gathering, or riot control” among the Latin America security forces. Government documents show that the training programs are aimed at “building partner capacity, countering transnational threats, and ensuring domain awareness,” which allows the US to gain “regional access with a minimal footprint.” The number of training events increased 29 percent from 2013 to 2014.

Joint training exercises also support the military’s “National Security Strategy” at a “relatively low-risk, low-cost, and low-signature.” In other words, the presence of American troops in nearly two dozen countries allows US imperialism to exercise an enormous amount of coercion on the political life of these countries without the cost and political fallout of open military occupation. In this vein, government documents also highlight how training “activities often enhance US influence in host countries.”

The report notes that the increased presence of special forces in Latin America lays the basis for an expanded US presence in the region. Special Operations Liaison Officers are currently positioned in 14 US embassies, including four in Latin America (Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador and Peru). By 2019, the report notes, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) will have funding to place liaison officers in 40 countries, presumably including a number of new ones in Latin America.

The United States government treats the entire Latin American region as its imperial staging ground, asserting its ability to station troops and operate bases. The WOLA report notes that the US conducted 21 training exercises in Honduras from 2007 to 2014, 19 in Colombia and El Salvador, 18 in the Dominican Republic, 16 in Belize, 15 in Panama, 13 in Brazil and 11 in Guyana, Peru and Jamaica. US elite units also trained soldiers in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guatemala, Paraguay, Suriname, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Mexico, Argentina, the Bahamas and Uruguay.

The elite units of many of these governments effectively serve as extra-judicial death squads, giving the lie to claims that the US military is engaged in “humanitarian” or “democratic” intervention abroad. The presence of the US military in countries like El Salvador, Colombia, Honduras, Jamaica, Guatemala and Mexico has coincided with drastic increases in state repression and violence, in some cases creating civil war-like death rates for the civilian population.

For example, a US State Department report from 2015 notes that in Honduras, “three soldiers were arrested and their unit commander temporarily suspended in connection with an investigation of alleged torture of artisanal miners working in a mine that had been closed for safety reasons.” Though the soldiers were captured on video torturing the workers, “an appeals court provisionally dismissed charges against the three soldiers.”

In El Salvador, the country’s human rights investigator “stated that between June 2014 and May 2015” there were “2,202 complaints of human rights violations, 92 percent of which alleged human rights violations committed by the National Civilian Police and the military.” These violations included “arbitrary deaths, situations that verge on torture, and possible executions between police and supposed criminals.”

These are mere snapshots of the crimes committed by the armed forces trained by US military advisers, many of whom learned the trade in the criminal wars waged by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, where torture, execution and mass murder were the standard operating procedure of the occupying armies.

The true purpose of the increasing US role in Latin America is to assert hegemony over the region’s resources and cheap labor on behalf of American banks and corporations. The presence of US military forces is required to keep the region under US control and to ensure that the US is well-positioned militarily in case of war with China.

A 2015 US Army War College article by Professor R. Evan Ellis, titled “The Strategic relevance of Latin America for the United States” puts the matter clearly:

“To view the matter through a military analogy, Latin America is the unoccupied high-ground overseeing the US position. A responsible commander would recognize that the occupation of that high ground by an adversary poses an unacceptable threat to his force, and thus would dedicate resources to block the adversary from doing so. By this analogy, it would be a grave error for the United States to conclude that, in the absence of serious threats to the United States from Latin America, it is okay to merely watch as potential future adversaries such as Russia and China expand their positions in the region. While such neglect, in the short term, may ‘free up resources’ to continue other engagements abroad, over the long term, willing cessation of its own neighborhood by the U.S. is the single factor most likely to force the United States into a chaotic retreat from its external engagements.”

There is another important reason for the increased US troop presence in the region. The US fears the outbreak of social opposition in Latin America and is prepared to crush it through invasion and the establishment of right-wing military and paramilitary units trained to kill workers, students and peasants who oppose the demands of Wall Street and US imperialism. Aware that Latin America is the most socially polarized region of the world, the architects of US imperialist geostrategy fear the outbreak of mass social upheavals in Latin America. The groundwork for cracking down on such a revolutionary upsurge of the impoverished Latin American masses is being prepared by the US military through the expansion of military training programs.

Despite increase in 2015, US household income still lags behind pre-recession levels

Kate Randall

Household incomes for Americans rose in 2015, the US Census Bureau reported Tuesday. Median household income was $56,516 in 2015, an increase of 5.2 percent over the previous year.

While this was the largest one-year rise since at least 1967, median household income—the level with equal numbers of households above and below it—is still 1.6 percent below the previous peak of $57,423 in 2007, before the economy sank into recession. It also remains 2.4 percent lower than its peak in 1999, before the bursting of the dot-com bubble.

The census data also reveals that income inequality in America remained virtually unchanged from 2014, with the wealthy in the top fifth of the population taking in about half of all household income, while the bottom fifth earned only 3.4 percent.

The official poverty rate in 2015 was 13.5 percent, down 1.2 percentage points from 14.8 percent in 2014. The census used the abysmally low figure of $24,847 as the poverty threshold for a family with two adults and two children in 2015. The poverty rate fell by 3.5 million from 2014, meaning that 43.1 million Americans continued to live in poverty. The poverty rate has still not dipped below pre-recession levels.

The census report followed a US Department of Agriculture report last week showing that 12.7 percent of US households were food insecure in 2015, meaning they had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources.

Predictably, President Obama praised the modest household income gains, posting on his White House blog, “Today’s report from the Census Bureau shows the remarkable progress that American families have made as the recovery continues to strengthen,” and pointing to the figures in a stump speech he gave for Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia Tuesday afternoon.

While Obama touted the household income gains as evidence that the economy is on the upswing, analysts question why seven years after the proclaimed “recovery” in 2009, household incomes have still not returned to pre-recession levels, while poverty and hunger remain extraordinarily high for the richest country in the world

Or, as Arloc Sherman of the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities told the New York Times, “The next question is why did it take such a long time for things to look good?”

The number of full-time, year-round workers increased by 2.4 million in 2015—1.4 million men and 1 million women. Between 2014 and 2015, the real median earnings of men and women who worked full time, year round in both years increased by 1.5 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively.

This is far lower than the reported 5.2 percent increase in median income for all households. This suggests that the largest source of these gains is increased working hours for part-time workers rather than any rise in hourly pay. As workers moved from unemployment or part-time work to full-time jobs, many of these jobs are likely in the low-wage retail and other sectors.

And while men’s earnings from work in 2015 rose by 1.5 percent from 2014, to $51,212, they still lag behind men’s earnings from the 1970s when calculated in 2015 dollars. Women’s earnings rose by about 25 percent, to $40,742, during this same period.

Real median incomes in 2015—$72,165 for family households and $33,805 for non-family households—increased 5.3 percent and 5.4 percent, respectively, from their 2014 medians.

While all family households saw median income increases in 2015, married couple households had the highest median income, at $84,626. This was followed by households maintained by men with no woman present, $55,861 median, and those maintained by women with no man present, $37,797 median.

Hispanic households saw the greatest rise in median income (6.1 percent), followed by white households (5.6 percent), black households (4.1 percent), and Asian households (3.7 percent).

Although all regions of the country saw median household income increases, the South’s was the smallest, rising by 2.9 percent. Rural areas were the only demographic to see a decrease in median household income, dropping by 2 percent, compared to metropolitan areas.

The census’s comparison of household incomes distributed across all quintiles of the population showed virtually no change from 2014 to 2015, indicating that extreme income inequality persists despite the modest increases in household median income.

While the bottom and second lowest fifths of households saw modest increases in income, 1.9 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively, the highest fifth still takes 49.8 percent of all income. The top 5 percent takes in 21.8 percent, statistically equal to 2014.

Wage crisis for youth in US labor market

Kathleen Martin

A report released in July 2016 by Indeed Hiring Lab, “The State of Opportunity: Overcoming the wage crisis in today’s labor market,” reveals the terrible situation facing young workers looking for jobs in the US. It is a far cry from the proclamation of the Obama administration that everything is “pretty darn great” and that now is the “best time to be alive.” Only 16 percent of jobs available in the US labor market today are beating what is termed as the “wage crisis.”

The report states, “Today, many people feel that the labor market is polarizing, with high-paying opportunities going to a select few, middle-wage jobs disappearing, and low-wage jobs proliferating.”

It appears that these feelings correspond to a real stagnation and overall decline in wages and opportunity for the majority of people searching for employment.

First, the report defines (economic) “opportunity” for job-seekers as “the ability to comfortably support themselves and their families,” meaning a job that not only pays a living wage, but also keeps up with the ever-rising cost of living. It analyzed 2014 data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has jobs broken down into 800 categories. Each category is then characterized according to two factors: “high pay,” or a salary of $57,700 or more; and “purchasing power,” meaning an “opportunity job” that has shown salary growth in the last decade, even after adjustment for inflation.

The report states, “After applying those two salary filters, we found that only 170 occupations out of a total of 800 met the criteria of a stagnation-defying opportunity job. That amounts to a mere 16 percent of 2014 total employment…”

Of these opportunity jobs, 92 percent are concentrated in the following five categories: health care practitioners and technical; management; computer and mathematical; business and financial operations; and architecture and engineering.

Over the course of an entire decade, the proportion of opportunity jobs has increased only from 13 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2014. The report goes on to state: “[S]uch gains are modest. This is an average measure, and while there are certainly exceptions, the results suggest the global wage crisis will likely continue throughout 2016 and beyond.”

The report itself declares that the “economic crisis is over,” but the figures themselves suggest something different. Every statistic shows poverty-level and stagnating wages for the vast majority of job openings. At the same time, nearly half of the extremely scarce opportunity jobs are concentrated in only 10 states.

As for the remaining 84 percent of jobs in the US labor market, further examination proves that most do not come close to meeting the overall modest standards of the opportunity jobs. They do not offer a sustainable wage to begin with, nor do they beat inflation and the rising cost of living. Another striking difference between the two categories is that the opportunity jobs are at a much lower risk of automation than the non-opportunity jobs—8.8 percent for the former, compared to 45.7 percent for the latter.

The greatest common factor underlying each category of opportunity jobs is the education needed in order to attain such a position. According to the report, “Our analysis of opportunity jobs quickly revealed the crucial importance of education. A look at job advertisements showed 75 percent of opportunity job postings are in categories typically requiring a college education, compared with 14 percent of ‘other’ job postings.”

Obtaining a college degree or certificate has become more important than ever, in fact nearly indispensable, to compete in today’s job market—or what should be called the race to the bottom. However, the report also indicates what most young people know all too well to be true: “Even so, a degree alone does not guarantee membership in the fortunate minority at the top of the polarized labor market. Far from it … [I]t is feasible to emerge from college with a degree and find a job that will lock you into a career with underperforming wages. Gone are the days when a college degree could guarantee financial security.”

The number-one job listing for people entering the workforce with a college degree is particularly revealing: miscellaneous sales representatives and services. These kinds of jobs do not provide health care, pensions, livable wages or even job security. A few listed among the top 10 job openings include clinical and school counseling; social and human service assistants; and insurance sales agents. Each job falls short, anywhere from $5,000 to $30,000 per year, of the $57,700 annual salary needed to keep up in today’s economy.

These numbers fly directly in the face of the assertion that there has been some sort of recovery from the crash and recession. Paired with crippling student loan debt, now at an average of $26,600 per student, the likelihood that a young member of the working class will be able to purchase a home, save for retirement, or even simply dig themselves out of debt, is very slim.