LIVING BEYOND THE WORLD'S IMAGINATION

25 Oct 2016

Terrorists Attack Police Training College In Pakistan: 59 Cadets Killed And 120 injured

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

At lease 59 cadets were killed and more than 116 injured as terrorists attack the Police Training College in Quetta, Pakistan, in one of the deadliest extremist attacks this year.

Three gunmen burst into the sprawling academy, targeting sleeping quarters home to some 700 recruits, and sent terrified young men aged between 15 and 25 fleeing, Dawn News reported.

Communication intercepts showed the attack was carried out by Al-Alimi faction of the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi militant group, IG Frontier Corps (FC) Major General Sher Afgan said. The group itself has not claimed the attack.

Most of the deaths were caused when two of the attackers blew themselves up. The third was shot dead by Frontier Corps (FC) troops. At least 120 people were injured, according to Dawn News.

The IG FC said “terrorists were communicating with their handlers in Afghanistan”. “There were three terrorists and all of them were wearing suicide vests,” he added.

The training college is situated on Sariab Road, which is considered to be one of the most sensitive areas of Quetta. Militants have been targeting security forces in the area for almost a decade.

The attack comes a day after militants belonging to the Baloch Liberation Army on a motorcycle shot dead two coast guards and a civilian and wounded a shopkeeper in a remote southwest coastal town in Balochistan.

In August, a suicide bombing at a Quetta hospital claimed by the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Pakistani Taliban killed 73 people, including many of the city’s lawyer community who had gone there to mourn the fatal shooting of a colleague.

Last month Indian government formally offered political asylum to secessionist Baloch leaders. The Zee News of India reported that the media is buzz with reports that Brahumdagh Bugti, grandson of Nawaz Akbar Khan Bugti, is set to get Indian citizenship. He is currently living in exile in Switzerland.

Balochistan is a key region for China’s ambitious $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor infrastructure project linking its western province of Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea via Pakistan.

Security problems have mired CPEC in the past with numerous separatist attacks, but China has said it is confident the Pakistani military is in control.

18 Indian soldiers killed in an army base attack

The Quetta terrorist attack came five weeks after a militants attack on an army base in the garrison town of Uri in the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir — killing 18 soldiers. The attack on Sept 18, which took place near the de facto border between India and Pakistan in the disputed region, was one of the deadliest on an army base in Kashmir since militant attacks began in 1989, according to CNN.

Tension remains high between the neighbors following the Uri attack. The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has been under intense pressure from his own party and the Indian public to respond to the Uri army base attack. Mr Modi came to power pledging to toughen India’s response to what he calls cross-border incursions from Pakistan. He vowed that the Uri raid “will not go unpunished”.

On September 29, India announced that it had carried out early morning “surgical strikes” on terrorist camps in Pakistani controlled Kashmir. However, Pakistan denied that a cross border strike had taken place, saying that Indian troops had fired small arms across the Line of Control, killing two soldiers and injuring nine. The notion of surgical strike linked to alleged terrorists’ bases is an illusion being deliberately generated by India to create false effects,” the Pakistani military said in a statement.

A senior Pakistani security official was quoted by the New York Times as saying that Pakistan would consider a cross border strike by India an act of war. The official warned that Pakistan could use tactical nuclear weapons in self-defense if India initiates a war.

Tough stand by Modi raises risk of war with Pakistan: NYT

The New York Times has warned that tough stand by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi raises risk of war with Pakistan.

In a report about the current situation between the two nuclear armed neighbors, the paper pointed out that “as an opposition leader, Narendra Modi was a vocal critic of India’s government for not responding more forcefully to cross-border attacks from militants based in Pakistan. As prime minister, Mr. Modi has not shied away from openly retaliating in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir against the militants and stirring up nationalist passions. Now, with his tough stance, there are growing concerns that Modi may have narrowed his options, raising the risks of war with India’s nuclear-armed rival, Pakistan.”

The New York Times said experts are worrying about what India will do when allegedly Pakistan-based militants carry out another attack in India, as is almost certain. And how will Pakistan respond?

“We’re not at the point of no return, but we are in very dangerous waters,” said Bruce Riedel, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who served in the Central Intelligence Agency, where he advised several American presidents on South Asia.

“When we get to the next terror attack, which is probably only a matter of time, the prime minister has boxed himself in, and he can’t take the route his predecessors did and choose to use solely diplomatic alternatives without some loss of face,” Mr. Riedel said adding: “The big danger here is once you get started up the escalation ladder, how do you cool it off?”

“I’m scared,” retired Lt Colonel Ajay Shukla was quoted as saying. “We’re not Israel bullying Gaza, or the U.S. with Haiti. We’re the fourth-biggest army confronting the 11th-biggest army.”

Mr. Modi’s predecessors were more risk averse by nature, Mr. Shukla said. “Modi is better at brinkmanship than they were in these actions where there’s an element of risk,” Mr. Shukla said. “Manmohan Singh would not take that risk and would place India’s economic development ahead of it,” he said, referring to the previous prime minister.

That willingness to take risk derives in part from Mr. Modi’s ambition.

Nationalist sentiment, stoked by the Indian news media, has spiraled so high that even Mr. Modi may be powerless to contain it, Mr. Shukla said adding: “He’s gotten onto the tiger, and now he can’t get off.” With elections coming up in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, Mr. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party will be motivated to keep nationalist sentiment high because it has quickly subsumed economic development as the party’s main election platform there, Mr. Shukla said.

Layoffs hit US auto industry as sales slow

Shannon Jones

Ford Motor Company has announced temporary layoffs at several assembly plants as car and truck sales in the US slowed from record levels set last year.

Ford said it would shut down production of its F-150 pickup truck for one week at its Kansas City assembly plant and is temporarily idling production at three other facilities. The F-150 is the best selling vehicle model in North America and a big profit maker for Ford. The downturn in sales of the vehicle points to wider signs of slump in the auto industry, which had experienced six years of growth in vehicle sales since the end of the last recession.

Earlier this month, Ford halted production of the Mustang for one week at its Flat Rock Assembly Plant in Michigan. Supplies of the Mustang remained at 89 days at the end of September, with 60 days considered adequate.

US auto sales continued their decline in October after falling in September. Ford, General Motors, Fiat Chrysler and Honda all recorded sales declines last month, while Toyota and Nissan saw gains. Sales are expected to fall more than 7 percent overall in October from the same period in 2015. Two auto industry consultants, JD Power and LMC Automotive, said Friday that sales will fall in October to an annualized rate of 17.7 million units, down form 18.1 million in 2015. If that number holds, it will mark six straight months of sales declines.

In addition to temporarily idling the Kansas City assembly plant, Ford has implemented a two-week shutdown of its Louisville, Kentucky, assembly plant. That facility builds the Escape and the Lincoln MKC. Ford said it would also temporarily halt production at two plants in Mexico, one in Hermosillo that makes the Ford Fusion and the Lincoln MKC, and one in Cuautitlan that makes the Ford Fiesta.

The Escape is one of Ford’s best selling models. Sales of the vehicle fell 12 percent in September, although sales are marginally higher overall for the year. Sales of the Fiesta have fallen significantly throughout the year and fell 40 percent last month. Sales of the Fusion fell 18 percent in September.

General Motors also recorded declines in September, with sales of the Chevrolet Silverado falling 15.5 percent and sales of the GMC Sierra down 8.5 percent. GM has not at this point announced any production cuts or layoffs. However, its market share has fallen below 17 percent.

Meanwhile, French-based auto parts supplier Faurecia has announced that it is closing two plants in the Detroit suburbs due to the decision earlier this year by Fiat Chrysler to end the North American production of the Chrysler 200 passenger car to focus on production of SUVs and trucks, which have a higher profit margin. One plant is located in Sterling Heights and the other in Fraser. The cuts will eliminate about 350 jobs of workers that build seating for the 200. The affected workers were members of the United Auto Workers (UAW), which has not issued any statement on the cuts.

Another 122 jobs are being slashed with the closure of Martinrea Hot Stampings in Detroit, also related to the Fiat Chrysler moves.

Earlier this year, the UAW indicated its support for the Fiat Chrysler reorganization, which has already resulted in the indefinite layoff of 1,300 workers at the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant (SHAP) north of Detroit. The facility, which builds the Chrysler 200, will be converted starting early next year to production of a redesigned version of the Dodge Ram light truck. That vehicle is currently built at the nearby Warren Truck plant. At this point, no vehicle has been definitely slated to replace the Ram at Warren Truck, leading to speculation that the aging facility may be closed after the move.

Fiat Chrysler has also announced that it will end production of the Dodge Dart passenger car at its Belvidere, Illinois, assembly plant. That plant will build the Jeep Wrangler, currently produced in Toledo, Ohio.

The likely result of all these production shifts will be the permanent elimination of jobs. The phasing out of the Chrysler 200 at SHAP has already led to dislocation and economic stress for workers at that facility. Sales of the Chrysler 200 have meanwhile collapsed, with the company making no aggressive attempts to promote the vehicle.

Carrie, a veteran SHAP worker, spoke to the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter about the impact of the reorganization. “We will be laid off for a lengthy period of time while they retool the plant in the process of getting a new product,” said Carrie. “A lot of the tier-two workers have been picked up by other plants, but about 300 are still on indefinite layoff.

“Some people are probably going to end up being out in the cold. With the new rules in the [2015 UAW] contract, they can do what they want with the tier-two. They don’t have a lot of protection. For some, their sub pay ran out and they don’t have any money. If they are past a certain time on layoff, they don’t have to call them back. They are leaving it up to the individual worker to know what steps they have to take to transfer to another plant.”

Carrie said that many veteran workers were angry that, as a result of the long layoff, they would not be getting their mandated vacation pay. “We are losing out on our vacation pay, because it is based on the number of hours worked. The UAW should have been fighting for us to get all our vacation pay, because it is not our fault that the company is shifting one product for another.”

Germany: 1.4 million live on welfare for more than eight years

Elisabeth Zimmermann

In September, politicians and the media made a show of celebrating the lowest unemployment figures in Germany for 25 years. Officially “only” 2.6 million, or 5.9 percent, were unemployed.

Another statistic concerning long-term unemployment and the Hartz IV welfare payments paints a different picture, however. Of the 4.2 million jobless deemed fit for work, many have been dependent on the miserable Hartz IV payments for years, facing constant harassment from the job centres. Many of them do not even appear in the official unemployment statistics.

According to a special analysis by the Employment Agency, produced following a parliamentary question by a Left Party deputy, some 1.4 million of the 4.2 million working age Hartz IV recipients have been dependant on welfare for more than eight years, and 2.1 million for more than four years, as of the end of last year.

The figures include 1.82 million long-term unemployed and 1.2 million on so-called “top up” payments whose incomes are so low that they have to claim additional Hartz IV benefits.

Other groups of long-term Hartz IV recipients include single parents, apprentices whose training allowance is not enough to cover their living expenses, and countless people who are dependent on welfare because they are caring for relatives.

Many elderly or people with health problems also claim Hartz IV payments. A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation states: “In Germany, job loss in old age is increasingly a trap from which those affected cannot break free.”

Other reasons for long-term unemployment and being stuck in the Hartz IV trap are said to be low qualifications and a poor knowledge of German.

While there was much talk of “support and demands” when the Hartz IV system was introduced, the emphasis of the sanctions-based system was, from the beginning, placing “demands” on those in need.

While in the early days, some training was provided for the long-term unemployed, which led to the acquisition of new knowledge and skills, most of this has fallen away in recent years, a victim of the austerity measures. Instead, there are short-term schemes, combined with the lowest wages, such as “one-euro jobs,” which mean the long-term unemployed fall out of the statistics.

The state authorities play a big role in the harassment of those forced to rely on welfare. For example, Andrea Nahles (SPD, Social Democratic Party), federal minister for Labour and Social Affairs, has recently introduced a number of stricter sanctions against Hartz IV recipients.

In addition, job centres imposed 457,000 penalties against Hartz IV recipients in the first six months of this year. According to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) this is 8.4 percent fewer than in the same period last year and is the lowest level in five years. However, the number is still huge.

The FAZ reports that almost 77 percent of the sanctions “are imposed due to attendance failures—such as when a recipient misses an appointment at the job centre without good reason. ... Only about 10 percent are imposed because a Hartz IV recipient refuses to take a job.”

The dramatic impact of these sanctions for those affected is hard to imagine; a single parent receives just €404 a month in addition to rent and heating costs. According to the FAZ, penalties in June 2016 resulted in about 132,000 beneficiaries suffering average cuts of 19 percent or €108.

The chicanery the poor face at the hands of politicians and the legal system is also shown by a judgement of the Federal Social Court, reported by Spiegel Online. A family dependent on Hartz IV payments were forced to sell their self-built property after three of the four children had moved out.

The report states: “Families receiving Hartz IV benefits, and owning a home, must surrender their property if it has become too large after the departure of the children. The home is to be considered an exploitable asset, the Federal Social Court (BSG) in Kassel determined.”

The family from the Aurich district of Lower Saxony, whose appeal was rejected by the court, owned a house with just 144 square meters of living space, in which the parents had originally resided with their four children. After three children moved out, the job centre declared the house was unduly large. For four residents, 130 square meters was deemed sufficient, but only 110 was required for three people. Therefore, the house had to be regarded as an exploitable asset.

The family should now sell their house, move into a smaller apartment, and live as long as possible from the proceeds until they can apply for Hartz IV benefits again, it was determined. Until the house is sold, the job centre regards any Hartz IV benefits received as a repayable loan.

Plans take shape for red-red-green federal coalition in Germany

Johannes Stern

With coalition talks in full swing between the Social Democrats (SPD), Left Party and Greens in Berlin over a potential coalition to form the next state government, plans are being initiated to establish a red-red-green coalition at the federal level.

Twelve months ahead of the federal election, 90 high-ranking representatives of the three parties from all 16 states met in the SPD’s parliamentary group room at the Bundestag (federal parliament). The meeting was initiated by several deputy parliamentary group chairs from the three parties, who have already been discussing the possibility of a red-red-green federal government behind the scenes for some time.

Under conditions of deepening economic and political crisis, sections of the ruling elite see such a coalition as a good option to enforce the programme of social cuts and the strengthening of the internal and external state apparatus in the face of popular opposition. The daily Süddeutsche Zeitung remarked, “Red-red-green could offer a perspective for power. It is at least much more promising than any other option.”

After the meeting, leading representatives from all parties spoke positively about a joint government. SPD deputy parliamentary group chair Axel Schäfer said, “There is a need to talk. And there is a readiness to assume joint responsibility in the future. That also means: government responsibility.”

Left Party parliamentary group chair Dietmar Bartsch stated that there was a growing readiness among all three parties for a coalition: “I detect a significant change in the SPD, the Greens and with us which could make a three-party coalition possible: the will to do so.”

SPD leader and deputy chancellor Sigmar Gabriel made a surprise appearance at the meeting. He listened to the opening remarks from Oscar Negt before meeting with some of those present in a smaller group.

Negt, a social philosopher and pupil of Theodor Adorno, previously played an important role in the SPD-Green coalition under Schröder and Fischer, which governed from 1998 to 2005, sending German troops on their first foreign interventions since World War II and launching major attacks on the working class with the Hartz welfare reforms.

Negt told an interview with the newspapers of RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland that the SPD and Greens faced an historic test of strength: “If it goes wrong, it will be a catastrophe.”

He criticised the grand coalition of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and the SPD for being “always focused on the short-term successes at elections.” There was “a lack of direction.” As a result, “a point has been reached in Germany for the first time since 1945 in which the danger of Weimar is there once again.” In this situation, “only assistance from the cooperative Left Party … is capable of preventing the collapse of democratic institutions.”

In other words: a red-red-green government would have the task of suppressing the class struggle, strengthening the state apparatus and continuing the previous SPD-Green government’s policies of austerity and war. It would be no “left” alternative to the grand coalition, but would instead continue and intensify its right-wing policies.

The Left Party is now needed even though the SPD and Greens categorically excluded the possibility of cooperation at the federal level only a short time ago. The Left Party’s sister party in Greece, Syriza, has already demonstrated that it is capable of enforcing even more brutal austerity measures against working people than the more established bourgeois parties.

In foreign policy, a red-red-green government would have the task of pushing ahead with the return of German militarism against mounting opposition, and pursuing, increasingly independently from the US, a more aggressive German foreign policy.

Since Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier proclaimed at the Munich Security Conference in 2014 that Germany had to “be ready to intervene earlier, more decisively and substantially in foreign and security policy,” the SPD has been the main force behind the foreign policy shift. Steinmeier has written articles distancing himself from the US and spoken of “Germany’s new global role.” At the same time, the foreign ministry which he heads has produced strategy papers on the goal of militarising Europe under German leadership.

In a recent essay titled “Europe is the solution,” based on a lecture at the University of Zürich, Steinmeier urged, “We have to give ourselves the instruments required today for a joint foreign policy [of the EU]. This included “practical capabilities: capacities for joint situation analysis, financial resources for stabilisation and crisis management, and ultimately joint military capabilities, like joint commando units or naval task forces.”

These, according to Steinmeier, were “the concrete steps now required.” “The creation of a European army” ought to be discussed “when we have demonstrated that Europe can do it better than any national state alone.”

The role of the Left Party and Greens in a federal government led by the SPD would consist in concealing this militarist programme with rhetoric about “peace,” “democracy” and “human rights,” while suppressing any opposition to it. The former Green pacifists are experts in selling German military interventions as a struggle for humanity or by using cynical references to the historic crimes of German imperialism to justify them.

Since Green leader Joschka Fischer justified the participation in the 1999 Kosovo war with the statement “Never again Auschwitz,” the Greens have supported every German military intervention while in opposition and even attacked the government on foreign policy from the right. Currently, leading Green politicians are urging a harder line towards Russia and support a military intervention in violation of international law in the Middle East.

In an interview with Spiegel Online, Green leader Cem Özdemir demanded the threatening of Syria with a “comprehensive, international no-fly zone,” which should be imposed without a UN mandate if necessary. At the same time, he complained about Germany’s abstention during NATO’s bombardment of Libya in 2011. “I am no radical pacifist,” he said reassuringly. “I continue to think it was a mistake that Germany abstained from the Libya intervention and I agreed to the military intervention in Afghanistan.”

The Left Party is preparing to play the same role as the Greens did 18 years ago. It is emerging as an openly pro-war party. Over recent weeks, it has been building strong links to the German general staff and signalling to the ruling elite that it is ready to back German militarism. As the first “left” minister president in Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow, stated in Der Spiegel, the Left Party is “not pacifist.” Sahra Wagenknecht declared during ZDF’s summer interview, “Germany will of course not leave NATO the day we enter government.”

The Left Party was fully integrated into the foreign policy shift from the outset. Stefan Liebich, the party’s representative on the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, was among the 50 politicians, journalists, academics, military figures and business representatives who produced the strategy paper “New power—new responsibility,” under the direction of the government-aligned German Institute for Foreign Affairs (SWP) and Washington-based German Marshall Fund think tank. The paper served as the basis of Steinmeier’s speech at the Munich Security Conference.

The Left Party also participated in the drafting of the “White Paper 2016 on security policy and the future of the Bundeswehr,” which is the government’s official foreign policy doctrine and calls for, among other things, the deployment of the German army domestically, the launching of military interventions with increased independence from Germany’s post-war allies and a major strengthening of the army.

On the defence ministry’s official web site on the white paper, a statement from the Left Party is prominently placed which says, “The defence minister encouraged a broad discussion within society about this. The Left Party city group in Strausberg welcomes this proposal and invited representatives of the BNVg [defence ministry] as well as all local parties and social organisations to consultations. From the group of those responsible for the written drafting of the white paper, Colonel Just provided information about the time scale of the work.”

Scottish National Party pushes for second independence referendum

Steve James

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon met British Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday to discuss the crisis prompted by the June referendum vote for the UK to leave the European Union (EU). The leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) was joined in the talks by the leaders of the two other devolved administrations, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Scotland voted by 62 to 38 percent to remain in the EU, against 52 to 48 percent to leave across the UK. Northern Ireland also voted to remain by 55 to 45 percent.

Writing in the Financial Times, Sturgeon noted, “I accept that there is a mandate to take England and Wales out of the EU, I do not accept there is any such mandate to take any part of the UK out of the [EU] single market.”

The talks follow the announcement last week by the SNP administration of a draft bill for a second referendum on Scottish independence. No date or timetable was set, and the bill does not commit the Scottish government to holding a new poll. Publication nevertheless adds to the crisis of a British and European nation-state system already reeling from the implications of the June 23 vote for Britain to leave the European Union (EU).

Sturgeon explained that the vote outcome, with the Scottish result at odds with the UK-wide result, was “one of the specific scenarios” in which the Scottish government had previously proposed to hold a rerun of the 2014 referendum on independence. Speaking in Glasgow a few days previously, Sturgeon proclaimed she was “determined that Scotland will have the ability to reconsider the question of independence—and to do so before the UK leaves the EU—if that is necessary to protect our country’s interests.”

The qualifiers scattered around Sturgeon’s pronouncement reflect both the uncertainties around the Brexit process, and the perplexity within the SNP over how to respond. Following the financial crisis of 2008, the subsequent slump in oil prices and the collapse of North Sea oil production, the prospect of Scottish independence, and the enormous instability that comes with it, is distinctly unappealing to business and financial circles.

Moreover, without prior agreement with the EU, an independent Scotland would be excluded from the Single Market or face sanctions regarding intra-UK trade on which it overwhelmingly depends. Any agreement with the EU is highly unlikely as is would be seized by regionalist and secessionist movements across the continent. This applies particularly in Spain, where the months-long government crisis has been intensified and complicated by the Catalan nationalist drive for independence, and in Belgium where the Wallonian regional parliament are currently delaying a multibillion-euro trade deal, five years in the making, between the EU and Canada.

This is why, during the campaign for the June 23 vote the SNP campaigned for the UK as a whole to “Remain” in the EU, despite having campaigned to leave the UK two years previously. Sturgeon was amongst the most prominent pro EU speakers. Sturgeon offered to participate in a “progressive alliance” with Labour, although this was rejected by the bitterly divided Labour Party.

For Sturgeon and the SNP leadership, the draft referendum bill and the threat of a new poll is a tool with which to extract concessions from London—primarily over the terms of Brexit. Sturgeon has repeatedly demanded post-Brexit access to the Single Market for Scottish based business and the right to maintain a more lenient migration policy to alleviate a falling population.

Sturgeon called in the Financial Times for a “‘flexible’ Brexit in which different parts of the UK, or different sectors of the British economy, would take advantage of continuing single market membership and close association with EU trading-partners.” Similar bespoke arrangements are being floated for Northern Ireland and the City of London, with suggestions that billions could be paid into the EU annually to allow London to maintain its position as a leading European financial centre.

At the same time, the prospect of a new poll serves to mollify the SNP’s many supporters who are committed to Scottish independence come what may. In the immediate aftermath of the 2014 vote, lost by 55 to 45 percent, SNP membership quadrupled to over 100,000 augmenting its long-standing hard line seperatists with new forces largely won from the Labour Party. The Green Party has already begun to campaign for a new independence vote. Party leader Patrick Harvie claimed last week that “the UK which people voted for in 2014 no longer exists.”

The issues around which the SNP are seeking to pressure London are precisely those on which May and her pro-Brexit cabinet are refusing to offer concessions. Over the last weeks, it has become clear that the Conservatives, despite their deep divisions, are led by elements set upon pursuing a so-called “hard Brexit” in which they are ready to sacrifice access to the single market in order to end free movement of EU labour and preserve the City of London from regulatory interference.

Successive statements from government ministers have attacked foreign workers for, in the words of Home Secretary Amber Rudd, taking “jobs that British people should do.” Government proposals, later retracted, to require companies to publish the proportion of international staff they employ provoked widespread condemnation from business circles. In response, EU leaders have made clear that access to the Single Market is dependent on British agreement on the free movement of labour within the EU.

Relations between London and the EU are degenerating rapidly, with opinions in the EU’s capitals consolidating around a view that Britain should be made to pay for the continent-wide mayhem that the Brexit vote has intensified. As former Polish prime minister, and current president of the Council of Europe, Donald Tusk put it, “The only real alternative to a hard Brexit,” where no agreement is reached on market access or migration, “is no Brexit.”

Seeking to overcome EU hostility, the SNP is, perforce, turning to an ever more fervent embrace of imperialist militarism to make its case for EU membership. In 2012, the party dropped its opposition to NATO and it has long been apparent that its opposition to Trident nuclear missiles was simply a rhetorical smokescreen. Scotland hosts the entire British nuclear submarine fleet at Faslane, 20 miles from Glasgow. The Faslane base, which employs over 7,000 workers and service personnel, is undergoing an expansion and rebuilding to host the newly agreed Trident replacement without a word of complaint from the SNP.

British Defence Minister Harriet Baldwin recently confirmed that all eight of the Royal Navy’s new Type 26 “Global Combat Ships” would be built in Glasgow. One of the surviving shipyards on the Clyde is in Govan, Nicola Sturgeon’s constituency. Besides announcing the draft referendum bill, Sturgeon, an admirer of Hillary Clinton, used her conference speech to line up with US and British foreign policy against Russia. “The barbarism of the Assad regime and actions of Russia are sickening,” intoned Sturgeon, while keeping silent on US and British responsibility for the disaster in the first place.

Where this is heading was outlined by Stephen Gethins, an SNP Westminster MP and member of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Gethins suggested Scotland could be the means whereby the US offset its loss of influence in the EU following Brexit: “The United States also has a strong interest in the European Union as President Obama outlined during the EU referendum. Scotland remaining part of the EU would provide a partner within Europe as well as bringing Scotland significant competitive and strategic benefits.”

Gethins’ proposals are another devastating exposure of the claims by Britain’s pseudo-left groups regarding the alleged left-wing and anti-militarist character of the movement for Scottish independence. However, the US is no more likely than the EU to compromise relations with NATO members Spain and Belgium to give encouragement to the SNP.

Podemos, pseudo-left prepare for political power in Spain

Alejandro Lopez

After former Prime Minister Felipe González’s putsch inside the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) paved the way for the installation of a right-wing Popular Party (PP) government, the Podemos party is signalling that it plans to form Spain’s next government after that.

The Pabloite Anticapitalistas faction of Podemos and General Secretary Pablo Iglesias are seeking out alliances with disgruntled factions of the political establishment linked to the PSOE. They are well aware that the incoming minority PP government will be weak, deeply unpopular, and quite possibly very short-lived.

Workers must be warned: the government coalition Podemos is seeking to build in Spain would be an enemy of the working class. Were it to come to power, Podemos would pursue an agenda of war and austerity—just like Podemos’ ally, the coalition government between Syriza and the far-right Independent Greeks party in Athens.

Days after González ousted PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez and pushed for the PSOE to back the installation of a PP government, Iglesias called for forging alliances with social democratic unions, a critical prop of successive PSOE and PP governments. Since 2012, the unions have remained silent as millions of workers suffered unemployment, wage cuts and redundancies.

Referring to the PSOE-linked General Union of Labour (UGT) and the Stalinist-led Workers Commissions (CCOO) trade unions, Iglesias said: “If the working class organisations call a general strike, Podemos is ready to make this general strike different.” He continued, “The general secretary of the UGT said something reasonable: ‘no, we do not discard the possibility of calling a general strike if the PP rules.’ This is very important, very important.”

Iglesias told eldiario.org that “the delivery of the government by the PSOE means we have to make parliamentary activity consistent with the construction of a popular movement.”

Iglesias is well aware that the PP government will be Spain’s weakest in the post-Franco era. The PP is massively unpopular due to its savage austerity measures and is involved in numerous corruption scandals. Just last week, Spain’s largest corruption trial in years opened; among the 37 accused are three former PP treasurers.

The PP’s electoral base is little less than 20 percent of the electorate, many of them pensioners, who face grim prospects, as Spain’s social security fund is predicted to run out of cash in late 2017. At the same time, the PP has already prepared a €5 billion austerity package to be implemented with the European Union once it takes power.

On Sunday, after the PSOE’s Federal Committee voted to allow the PP to rule, a decision that was the raison d’être of the coup against Sánchez, Iglesias wrote a piece for Público. In it, he declared that “we are the opposition because there is where they have taken us, and we will assume it with pride. But I assure you that we prefer to govern and we will continue to prepare for it. Be assured that sooner or later it will occur.”

Podemos is conscious that the blow to the PP-PSOE two-party system means that the ruling class will sooner or later rely on Podemos to carry out its policies of austerity and war.

The PSOE has been the main party of bourgeois rule in Spain for the past 40 years. Re-founded in the dying days of the fascist regime of Francisco Franco by González, with the aid of European social democratic parties and semi-tolerated by the fascist Franco regime, the PSOE has undermined itself by backing a PP-led government. It is clear to ever broader masses of people that the two-party system in Spain in the entire post-Franco period was a duopoly between reactionary bourgeois parties deeply hostile to the working class.

Podemos hopes to be the entirely undeserving beneficiary of mass anger with the PSOE and PP. Two years since its creation, Podemos is virtually indistinguishable from the PSOE in terms of its pro-capitalist programme and its imperialist foreign policy.

Podemos is signalling as aggressively as possible to the media that its populist rhetoric is purely for show, and that it will carry out whatever policies are required by the banks and the financial aristocracy. Two weeks ago, Iglesias bluntly stated: “If we rule, we will look for compromises and consensus, and we would openly say that our populism has ended, that it was useful in the fight.”

To the extent that Iglesias is briefly adopting deceitful populist rhetoric in a cynical bid to prepare Podemos for power, however, this has provoked an enthusiastic endorsement from the Pabloites.

Previously, Anticapitalistas had directed mild criticisms at Iglesias after the June 26 elections, when Unidos Podemos—the alliance between Podemos and the Stalinist-led United Left—lost 1.2 million votes.

Anticapitalistas blamed Podemos’ loss on Iglesias’ blatant attempts to reassure the Spanish and European banks that he would protect their interests, by forming a “left coalition” with the PSOE. In the days before June 26, Iglesias declared that Podemos was the “new social democracy,” and that former PSOE Prime Minister José Zapatero was “the best PM in Spain’s history.”

Speaking to the Pabloite web site International Viewpoint just weeks before the González putsch, Josep Maria Antentas, a leading member of Anticapitalistas, complained that “voters have seen Podemos say one thing and do the opposite: rejecting left unity and then making an alliance with United Left; saying they would never form a joint government with PSOE only to then make an offer to do just that; refusing the label ‘left’ and then embracing the label of ‘social democracy’.”

Antentas raised the fear that Podemos’ leadership was moving “to further moderate the party’s positions in order to increase its governmental and institutional credibility, especially among those potential voters still suspicious of Podemos.”

After González’s coup against Sánchez, however, Iglesias has changed course and distanced himself from those inside Podemos who advocated an alliance with the PSOE and even with the right-wing Citizens party.

This has been well received by the Pabloite Anticapitalistas. In Madrid, where Podemos is holding primary elections to decide on the region’s leadership, the Iglesias faction and Pabloite Anticapitalistas have joined forces.

The written agreement cynically declares the party is “not looking for moderation” and that “they will have no insecurities about scaring the privileged.” Their aim is to create a party “that does not surrender itself now that the PSOE has chosen the PP.” They both agree that Podemos will not enter alliances with the PSOE in the region of Madrid.

The Pabloite leader and Podemos Eurodeputy Miguel Urbán declared that “this does not end here,” stating that the aim is to replicate the Madrid agreement at the national level.

Social inequality and the fight against capitalism

Nick Beams

A lecture delivered in Sydney, Australia on Sunday by the French political economist Thomas Piketty, who has made a detailed study of the growth of social inequality, was significant from two standpoints.

First, basing himself on the data presented in his 2014 best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, as well as new results covering the two years since its publication, Piketty documented, in a series of vivid graphs and tables, the inexorable process of wealth accumulation at the heights of society, under conditions where the standard of living of the broad mass of the population is either stagnating or in decline.

Second, the lecture revealed the bankruptcy of the political perspective advanced by Piketty and other economists working in this area that this ever-growing social malignancy can somehow be contained through changes in the policy settings of various capitalist governments, including taxes on wealth and capital.

Facts, as the saying goes, are stubborn things, and the facts produced by Piketty from an analysis of objective data argue that there is no possibility of combating social inequality other than the overthrow of the capitalist social order, which produces inequality, by means of a socialist revolution carried out by the international working class.

When Piketty’s book was published in its English-language version in May 2014, the financial elites immediately recognised the dangers contained in its findings. One of their chief mouthpieces, the London-based Financial Times, went straight onto the attack with a piece by its economics editor questioning Piketty’s use of the data, claiming it was “flawed.” The newspaper published an editorial titled “Big questions hang over Piketty’s work.”

These criticisms have sunk beneath the waves of data in the book as well as further facts that have been published since the book’s appearance. To cite just one example: two years ago it was revealed that 85 people controlled as much wealth as half the world’s population. This year the number has fallen to just 65.

Piketty’s perspective in the Sydney lecture was not to set out the case for the overthrow of the profit system, but just the reverse. He is working to prevent such an outcome. In his political outlook, he is an opponent of Marx and what he calls Marx’s “apocalyptic” vision of a historic crisis of the capitalist system leading to socialist revolution.

He is, to use a phrase coined by former Clinton labour secretary Robert Reich, not a “class warrior, but a class worrier.” In his book, Piketty pointed to the widening gap between the return accruing to finance capital and the growth of the real economy, noting that “the consequences for the long-term dynamics of the wealth distribution are potentially terrifying.”

That is, he was seeking to warn the ruling elites about the mounting dangers to the present social and economic order and advocating a series of measures to counter the present dangerous trends, principally a global tax on capital gains. This would, he maintained, “contain the unlimited growth of global inequality of wealth, which is currently increasing at a rate that cannot be sustained in the long run and that ought to worry even the most fervent champions of the free market.”

What has happened in the two years since these lines were published?

The vast accumulation of wealth at the heights of society has continued apace, fueled by the world’s central banks’ pumping of ultra-cheap money into the financial markets, while the underlying real economy is mired in what is increasingly being termed “secular stagnation,” i.e., low growth and investment, declining productivity, a marked slowdown in the growth of world trade, and a consequent fall in living standards.

This has produced an incipient rebellion from below, reflected in contradictory ways in the Brexit vote in Britain, the support for the avowed “socialist” Bernie Sanders in the US, the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing hostility towards the political and financial establishment and growth of anti-capitalist sentiment around the world. So intense are social tensions that these issues now are on agenda of every meeting of the International Monetary Fund and other major global economic institutions.

Piketty’s book has been widely read, but no government anywhere in the world has undertaken any of the measures he has advocated to reverse the rise of social inequality. This has not been due to a lack of nominally “left” governments. The experience in Greece, where the Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras repudiated the massive anti-austerity vote of July 5, 2015 and implemented the demands of the European and international banks, was of international significance. It confirmed in political experience that there was no way of ending the dictatorship of financial capital without the overthrow of the entire profit system.

When a member of the audience at Piketty’s Sydney lecture confronted him with these experiences, above all the fact that no government anywhere in the world was even vaguely contemplating the measures he advocated, the dead end of the economist’s reformist perspective emerged in full view.

He said it was “very sad” that the French and German governments had rejected proposals for debt restructuring. He acknowledged that neither of the two candidates in the US presidential election would adopt the tax policies he advocated, expressing the hope that “maybe in another time another Bernie Sanders, maybe less white and a bit more young” would be able to win “and make a difference.”

His only perspective was for the “democratisation of knowledge,” which he hoped could bring “sufficient pressures” to get a change in policies.

The political record of the International Committee of the Fourth International stands in marked contrast to that of Piketty and other would-be reformers of the capitalist system. Just over twenty years ago, the Workers League in the United States and sections of the ICFI in the rest of the world changed their names to Socialist Equality Party.

This change was based on the understanding—long before it became a matter of official discussion—that growing disorder within the capitalist system, then somewhat concealed beneath short-lived growth and intense propaganda hailing the “magic of the market,” was manifesting itself in growing social inequality, which would become a defining issue of our time.

This assessment was not arrived at accidentally, nor was it the result of a lucky guess. It was based on a scientific assessment of the objective contradictions of the capitalist system as analysed by Marx, which Piketty and others so assiduously seek to deny.

The conclusion of the ICFI’s analysis was that the growth of social inequality—one of the central forms in which the crisis of the profit system impacts on the lives of the broad masses of the working class, changing their consciousness and understanding—would become a key driving force of political and social struggle, posing the necessity for socialist revolution not as a theoretical construct, but as a living reality.

In the growth of social opposition and the intense political crises wracking capitalist governments and institutions around the world—from Brexit to the US elections—we are witnessing, with all its contradictions, not the dreams of Piketty and other reformist critics of the status quo, but the emergence of a new period of revolutionary struggle.

24 Oct 2016

Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellowships in Public Health and Tropical Medicine 2017

Application Deadline: The preliminary application deadline is 28th November 2016 and full application deadline is 13th February 2017.

Eligible Countries: Low- and middle-income countries

To be taken at (country): Fellowships can be taken in Low- and middle-income countries (See list of countries below)

Eligible Field of Study: Fellowships are awarded in the field of Public Health and Tropical Medicine

About the Award: This scheme helps mid-career researchers from low- and middle-income countries establish independent research programmes in those countries. The scheme aims to support research that will improve public health and tropical medicine at a local, national and global level.

Type: Research (Intermediate career stage)

Eligibility: Students can apply for an Intermediate Fellowship in Public Health and Tropical Medicine if they:

Are a national of a low- or middle-income country
Have a PhD or a degree in medicine and are qualified to enter higher specialist training
Have three to six years postdoctoral experience.
Students that do not have a PhD or degree in medicine, Welcome Trust may still be considered if they have a first or Master’s degree and can show substantial research experience.

Students must also:

Have a strong track record in your area of research and show the potential to become a scientific leader
Have sponsorship from an eligible host organisation in a low- or middle-income country
Have a research proposal that is within the public health and tropical medicine remit.

Selection Criteria:

your track record
the quality and importance of your research question(s)
your approach to solving these questions
the suitability of your research environment.

This scheme may be of particular interest if you’re an early career fellow (such as a Training Fellow in Public Health and Tropical Medicine) and this fellowship is the next step in your career as a research scientist.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: Support includes:

A basic salary (determined by your host organisation)
Personal removal expenses
Research expenses, directly related to your proposal

Scholarship can be taken in Low- and middle-income countries

Duration of Fellowship: An Intermediate Fellowship in Public Health and Tropical Medicine is for up to five years and cannot be renewed. An Intermediate Fellowship can be held on a part-time basis.

List of Countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia,Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros,Congo, Dem. Rep., Congo, Rep., Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Arab Rep., El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon,Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iran, Islamic Rep., Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Korea, Dem Rep., Kosovo, Kyrgyz Republic, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya,Lithuania, Macedonia, FYR, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands,Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Micronesia, Fed. Sts., Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro,Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Samoa, São Tomé and Principe, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, RB, Vietnam, West Bank and Gaza, Yemen, Rep., Zambia andZimbabwe

How to Apply: Applicants must submit their application through the Wellcome Trust Grant Tracker (WTGT). Stages of application

Submit preliminary application
Submit full application
External peer review
Shortlisting
Interview

Application Form

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Wellcome Trust

Wellcome Trust Training Fellowships in Public Health and Tropical Medicine 2017

Application Deadline: The preliminary application deadline is 28th November 2016 and full application deadline is 13th February 2017.

Eligible Countries: Low- and middle-income countries

To be taken at (country): Fellowships can be taken in Low- and middle-income countries (See list of countries below)

Eligible Field of Study: Fellowships are awarded in the field of Public Health

About the Award: This scheme offers research experience and training to early-stage researchers from low- and middle-income countries. The scheme aims to support research that will improve public health and tropical medicine at a local, national and global level.

Type: Postgraduate, Early Research

Eligibility: A researcher can apply for a Training Fellowship in Public Health and Tropical Medicine if:

they are a national of a low- or middle-income country.
they have a degree in a subject relevant to public health or tropical medicine. Or you have a degree in medicine and are qualified to enter higher specialist training.
they have some initial research experience.

The Trust expects candidate to register for a PhD if they’re awarded this fellowship. Candidate may also apply if they have a PhD and no more than three years’ postdoctoral experience.

You must also:

have sponsorship from an eligible host organisation in a low- or middle-income country
have a research proposal that is within the public health and tropical medicine remit.

If you’ve been away from research (eg for a career break, maternity leave, or long-term sick leave), we’ll allow for this when we consider your application. If you’ve taken formal maternity, paternity or adoption leave as the primary carer, or long-term sick leave, we’ll allow an extra six months for each period of leave when we consider your postdoctoral experience.