Australian government reintroduces sweeping welfare cuts

Mike Head

The increasingly unstable Turnbull government this week suddenly unveiled an “omnibus bill,” seeking to push through parliament welfare cuts that have been stalled in the Senate since 2014 because of deep popular hostility to them.

Facing defections and rifts in his government, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is desperately seeking to demonstrate to the corporate elite that he can impose the cuts and other austerity measures that his ousted predecessor Tony Abbott failed to deliver.

The bill contains 16 separate provisions to slash welfare payments by a total of $7.5 billion over four years, with the most severe cuts targeted at young people, working-class families and aged pensioners. Over the past three years, the media has dubbed these measures “zombie” cuts—“stinking carcasses” of the 2014 budget that the Liberal-National government, then headed by Abbott, was unable to fully implement.

By resuscitating the “zombies,” Turnbull’s government is intensifying an assault on welfare entitlements. The poorest and most vulnerable members of society are being victimised. One of the central aims is to coerce thousands of jobless workers, students and parents with young children into low-paid and insecure jobs.

This is under conditions where there is massive destruction of full-time jobs taking place throughout basic industries, especially manufacturing and mining, and wide areas of the country are already in recession.

An entire generation of young people will be the hardest hit. School leavers and jobless youth will be forced to wait five weeks, and made to complete a compulsory “activity” program, before receiving income support. Unemployed or ill people aged 22 to 24 will be shifted from sub-poverty Newstart dole and sickness allowances to even lower Youth Allowances.

Together, these measures will cost a single person living away from home at least $1,320 upfront and around $47 a week thereafter. The result will be deep impoverishment. The maximum Youth Allowance rate for a young person living independently of their parents is $219 a week—far less than rents in most cities.

Students, young and old, will also lose their once-a-year $208 education entry payments, and all welfare recipients will be stripped of annual education supplements.

The cheap labour thrust of this package is exemplified by a “social security income test incentive” aimed at “increasing the number of job seekers who undertake specified seasonal horticultural work, such as fruit picking.” The pay and conditions of seasonal fruit pickers are so poor that employers have for years relied heavily on young overseas backpackers, who must undergo such work to satisfy visa conditions.

All new welfare recipients will be forced to wait a week before being eligible for any payments, and will lose an energy supplement, cutting their benefits by up to $7 a week. This includes people on the lowest incomes, such as the unemployed, aged pensioners, students and sole parents.

Aged pensioners who leave the country to live overseas will have their retirement pensions cut off after six weeks, down from 26 weeks, unless they have worked for 35 years in Australia. The government delayed one “zombie” measure, to increase the pension age from 67 to 70, but insists it still intends to proceed with that plan.

The biggest cuts of all—worth $4.7 billion over four years—are the abolition of end-of-the-year supplements for family tax benefits, including those for sole parent or low-income households. These payments, made to about 1.5 million families, can be worth up to $726 a year per child.

Social Security Minister Christian Porter claimed that the government was making the family tax benefit system fairer by increasing some weekly payments by $10. According to the Australian Council of Social Services, however, this does not make up for the supplement cuts. A sole parent with two children aged 13 and 15, for example, will still lose between $14 and $20 per week.

The government’s bill ties these cuts to what Porter called “once in a generation reforms” to parental leave and childcare subsidies, designed to assist parents to “work for the first time, or work more.”

In reality, working-class mothers will be under increased pressure to return to work early after giving birth. Previously, they received 18 weeks’ parental leave paid at the minimum wage, on top of any leave provided by their employer. Now, leave granted by an employer will be deducted from their entitlements, with government top-up payments capped at 20 weeks.

Childcare subsidies will rise, but new means testing will make an estimated one-third of families worse off. The childcare benefits also only apply if families can afford to have children enrolled in day care or after school care, with fees of up to $200 a day.

This package is part of an offensive against welfare recipients. Despite a public outcry over its crackdown on supposed “welfare fraud,” the Turnbull government is stepping-up its “debt recovery” program. It is seeking to compel or terrify recipients, under threat of imprisonment, into paying back $4 billion in alleged over-payments. These measures will be extended from unemployed workers to sole parents and aged and disability pensioners by July.

While targeting the poor, the government is pushing ahead with cuts in the company tax rate from 30 to 25 percent to boost corporate profits. This will widen the sharp social divide in Australia, where the richest 10 percent of the population own more than half of household wealth, while the poorest 40 percent are in debt or own virtually nothing.

The full extent of the welfare cuts was quickly buried by the mass media this week, submerged beneath coverage of Prime Minister Turnbull demagogically denouncing Labor Party opposition leader Bill Shorten as a “parasite” for feigning outrage at the cuts. Turnbull’s theatrics, which seek to shore up his leadership in the Liberal Party and divert attention away from the severity of the cuts, will only intensify the widespread popular hostility to his government and the entire political establishment.

Shorten’s pretence of opposition to the dismantling of welfare entitlements is equally cynical. For decades, Labor governments have proved equally committed to enforcing the dictates of the corporate elite.

The last Labor government, in which Shorten was a key minister, stripped sole parents of benefits once their children turned 8. Like Turnbull and his ministers today, Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard declared that her government was “creating the right incentives for getting people back into work.”

Last September, Labor helped the Turnbull government pass another “omnibus” bill, cutting $6.3 billion from social spending over four years. It also supported the government’s abolition of a six-year statute of limitations on welfare “debts” and is counting on the $4 billion in budget “savings” from debt recovery for its own proposed measures to eliminate the federal budget deficit of nearly $40 billion a year.

Driving these measures is a deepening economic crisis, with the implosion of the mining boom compounded by a sharp decline in business investment. These pressures have been amplified by the election of Donald Trump as US president. His “America First” program of aggressive trade measures and huge cuts to company taxes and social spending is fuelling the demands of the capitalist class in every country for their governments to match him.

EU and IMF demand more austerity measures from Greece

Robert Stevens 

Officials from the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed Friday to a take a unified hard line against Greece, as the country’s debt crisis worsens.

The Syriza government must make a further €7 billion payment to its creditors by July or risk default on its entire debt, which remains at a staggering €330 billion.

Greece continues to drown in debt because virtually every cent of the €300 billion in loans received over the last seven years as “bailouts” have been siphoned off to service its debt to banks and financial institutions that continue to draw interest.

For the last two years, the IMF has been involved in a fraught standoff with the EU, insisting that it would not back any further bailout programmes for Greece if they did not include some debt relief structures. The IMF is on record that Greece’s debt is unsustainable and opposes demands from the EU that Athens must meet a primary budget surplus of 3.5 percent. Instead, it calls for Greece to be bled dry more slowly—based on a 1.5 percent primary budget surplus with debt relief factored in so as not to kill the “milch cow”. Addressing an Atlantic Council event Wednesday, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said, “Reforms are absolutely needed. Somebody can ask me the questions three times over, I will still say the same thing.”

The IMF position was reinforced by concerns that if Greece were forced out of the euro zone, it would mean a relaxing of the relentless imposition of massive budget cuts and threaten overall debt repayment by Athens. According to an IMF report leaked last week, Greece’s debt is set to reach 170 percent of gross domestic product by 2020 and 164 percent by 2022, and “become explosive thereafter”, escalating to 275 percent of GDP by 2060.

Friday’s announcement confirms that whatever tactical differences exist on the means to impose austerity on Greece, there are no conflicts over carrying it out. Reuters quoted a senior eurozone official: “There is agreement to present a united front to the Greeks.” Noting that the proposal had yet to be put to Greece, the official said, “What comes out of it, we will see.”

Regarding the substance of the “deal”, Reuters reported, “Officials said the lenders would ask Greece to take 1.8 billion euros worth of new measures until 2018 and another 1.8 billion after 2018, focused on broadening the tax base and on pension cutbacks.” The new cuts represent 2 percent of GDP, which has already fallen by 25 percent since 2010. In human terms, a further €3.6 billion in austerity represents taking another €327 from every man, woman and child in the country.

The agreement came following talks in Brussels Friday between Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch president of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, Pierre Moscovici, EU commissioner for economic affairs, Klaus Regling, head of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM)—the EU fund overseeing Greece’s loans in exchange for the austerity programme—and Benoît Coeuré from the European Central Bank.

Later Friday, Euclid Tsakalotos, Greece’s finance minister, arrived for talks with the EU leaders. According to the Athens News Agency, Tsakalotos will discuss the crisis in coming days with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, ESM President Regling and Poul Thomsen, Director of the IMF’s European Department.

The party led by Alexis Tsipras is widely despised for repudiating its pledge to oppose austerity and agreeing to impose the most vicious attacks yet in return for a further €86 billion in loans. The latest poll shows Syriza has the support of just 15 percent of the electorate. Tsakalotos boasted last week that a third of the austerity measures Greece had to impose as part of the current programme have been “totally completed”, another third are “totally agreed”, while the rest are subject to “political negotiation.”

Under conditions in which US President Donald Trump has declared his desire for the break-up of the EU, Greece is once again in the eye of the storm. This week Ted Malloch, Trump’s favoured candidate for US ambassador to Europe, declared that Greece could soon be forced to exit the eurozone and the euro itself was under threat. Malloch told Greek broadcaster Skai TV, “Whether the eurozone survives, I think it’s very much a question that is on the agenda.”

He added, “We have had the exit of the UK, there are elections in other European countries, so I think it’s something that will be determined over the course of the next year, year-and-a-half.”

Trump himself has repeatedly insisted that Greece should withdraw from the euro. On announcing his candidacy for president last year, Trump described Greece’s position as “unsalvageable”. Back in October 2012 he tweeted, “Greece should get out of the euro & go back to their own currency—they are just wasting time.”

Of the divisions between the IMF and EU that seem at this point to have been patched up, Malloch said, “If the [IMF] will not participate in a new bailout that does not include substantial debt relief, and that’s what they are saying, then that, more or less, ensures a collision course with eurozone creditors.”

Germany led the resistance to the IMF proposals for debt relief, and challenged, along with other EU nations including France, Belgium and Sweden, the IMF’s Greek projections at a board meeting Monday.

The Financial Times editorialised, in a swipe primarily aimed at Germany, “The rest of the IMF’s membership should be prepared to overrule the recalcitrant Europeans. The complaints of a self-interested cabal cannot be allowed to get in the way of Greece’s best interests. Eurozone governments have behaved poorly on this issue. They deserve to be defeated.”

Germany responded not by backing down, but with brutal language and further threats against Greece. On Wednesday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble warned that no relief would be offered on Greece’s mammoth debt—of which a substantial chunk is owed to German banks. “We can’t undertake a debt haircut for a member of the European single currency, it’s ruled out by the Lisbon Treaty,” he said, adding, “For that, Greece would have to exit the currency area.”

He continued, “The pressure on Greece to undertake reforms must be maintained ... otherwise they can’t remain in the currency area.”

The joint EU/IMF proposals will be presented to the Syriza government, which is overseeing a social counterrevolution.

More than a third of the population (35.7 percent) are officially in poverty, unemployment stands at 23 percent and 46 percent among youth. Last year alone Syriza slashed another €350 million from the health budget under conditions in which 2.5 million Greeks have no health care coverage. Public spending on higher education was gutted by 75 percent five years ago, with 15 to 25 percent cuts in each subsequent year. An example of the impact of this is at the University of Crete, which had a budget of €17.5 million in 2011, but now operates with just €3.1 million.

Tsipras responded to Berlin’s warning by again solidarising his government with the EU. On Tuesday, he visited Kiev and held a joint press conference with Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko. Calling for continued sanctions against Russia, Tsipras said, “Greece is a member-state of the European Union and, despite the fact that it has a particular economic interest in an immediate resolution of the crisis and the lifting of sanctions that have had an extremely painful effect on the Greek economy, nevertheless we will not fragment European unity.”

Report co-authored by murdered British MP Jo Cox advocates for war

Richard Tyler

A recently published report for the Policy Exchange think-tank is titled, “The Cost of Doing Nothing: The price of inaction in the face of mass atrocities.”

The report opposes what it complains is the “new anti-interventionist consensus [that] has emerged in sections of the main UK political parties and elements of the press.” It is based on a paper that was being co-authored by Labour MP Jo Cox before she was murdered by a fascist in the run-up to the referendum on UK membership of the European Union in June 2016.

Cox’s brutal murder shocked millions. But her death has been used in the most cynical fashion by right-wing forces within the Labour Party.

Cox was a supporter of “humanitarian interventionism” and was a co-founder of the All-Party Parliamentary Friends of Syria group. Before her murder she had co-authored an October 2015 article in the Observer with Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, arguing for British military involvement in Syria on the pretext of creating “safe havens.” Cox worked on the original draft of her report with the Conservative MP and former British Army lieutenant Colonel Tom Tugendhat. The report was finished posthumously by Tugendhat and Labour MP Alison McGovern, who is chair of the Blairite campaign group, Progress.

The report was then launched at a meeting attended by former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who employed Cox’s husband Brendan as an adviser. A video contribution from former Conservative Foreign Minister William Hague was shown, arguing against “knee-jerk isolationism”, and asserting that “ideological pacifism and doctrinal anti-interventionism are not in Britain’s national interest.”

Policy Exchange is described by the Telegraph as the largest and “most influential think tank on the right.” It was set up in 2002 by Michael Gove, who last year became one of the leaders of the pro-Brexit right within the Tory Party, and Francis Maude. Both went on to hold senior cabinet positions in the 2010 Tory-Liberal Democrats coalition. Gove was succeeded as Policy Exchange chair by former Telegraph editor, Charles Moore.

The report appears as part of the “Britain in the World” series, which Policy Exchange describes as a “ new non-partisan initiative,” i.e., one that provides a meeting ground for the Tory and Labour right-wings.

Its stated aim is to “revitalise the British foreign policy debate in the UK, challenge the narrative of decline, encourage the creation of a new generation of foreign policy leaders, and to ask hard questions about Britain’s place in the world, its hard and soft power assets, and future grand strategy.”

This imperialist mission statement centres on support for “hard power” military force in the defence of Britain’s “national interest” for which the type of humanitarian rhetoric in which the late Cox specialised is used to justify. The report states:

* “Intervention—military and otherwise—has been an irreducible part of British foreign and national security policy for over two hundred years.”

* “The willingness or capacity to intervene militarily… is an essential element of Britain’s grand strategy.”

* “We must keep military intervention as a legitimate tool in our foreign-policy toolkit.”

* “Important deterrents rely for optimal effectiveness on the backing of a credible threat of military force.”

* “The tools of diplomacy and deterrence… will be most effective if backed up by a willingness to use military force.”

Then follows the well-rehearsed political complaint of the warmongers that no one any longer believes their “humanitarian” excuses for war, because “intervention has become discredited and, in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, populations and politicians have, understandably, come to regard it with deep suspicion.”

There are then a series of banalities about learning “the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan,” asserting, “Regrets about Iraq focus on the fact that the invasion went ahead without UN sanction and in the face of widespread public opposition, and the belief that the evidence of an ‘imminent threat’ was deliberately exaggerated by the UK government under Tony Blair.”

The “belief” that “evidence” was “deliberately exaggerated” hardly comes close to what happened. Blair had promised British military support to US President George W. Bush for an intervention to topple Saddam Hussein, as was borne out by the Chilcot Report published last year. The “evidence” was so clearly manufactured to justify launching the war that millions of workers and young people renamed the British prime minister “Bliar.”

Afghanistan “offers another cautionary tale and further underlines just how elusive ‘success’ can be,” the report states. Two such failures “have undermined the idea that humanitarian outcomes can be delivered by military intervention. This, in turn, has fed the view that military intervention itself is flawed, and has led to increased wariness towards the efficacy of military intervention.”

In true Blairite-speak, widespread public hostility to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is described as “oversimplified”, since it fails “to take into account the existing violence in each country, and the losses and suffering that would have occurred if intervention had not taken place.”

Libya too “provides another example of the complexities and potential pitfalls of the use of military force to protect civilians”—an anodyne description of a bloody war of aggression for which, the report complains, the UK and its allies were criticised for allowing “to morph into an effort to achieve regime change.”

To achieve regime change, NATO “protected civilians” by carrying out “over 20,000 sorties, destroying schools, hospitals and homes and slaughtering untold numbers of Libyan soldiers, many of them young conscripts.” 

Examples of “successful” military interventions cited in the report include, “The establishment of a no-fly zone in northern Iraq in 1991 [which] successfully protected Kurds from Saddam Hussein’s genocidal air attacks,” and “The 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo … [which] protect[ed] tens of thousands of Kosovar civilians.”

The result of the first Gulf War, launched in 1990, as is explained in Desert Slaughter: The Imperialist War Against Iraq, “was at least 250,000 Iraqi soldiers killed and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, either through the savage bombing campaign, or from disease and starvation in the aftermath of the war.”

The subsequent imposition of no-fly zones accompanied a crippling regime of sanctions that, according to various analysts, led to the deaths of at least 500,000 civilians.

The Kosovo “intervention” was in reality part of a massive bombing campaign launched against Serbia in which hundreds of civilians were killed and vital infrastructure destroyed.

The “lessons” the authors are concerned should be learned from this are that the British state should once again be made ready to intervene militarily on the same lying “humanitarian” pretext used to sanction its previous crimes.

In Syria, the report laments the failure of the UK parliament to vote for air strikes in 2013, “coupled with President Obama’s failure to follow through on his pledge to act if President Assad crossed the US-designated ‘red line’ of using chemical weapons.”

In the report’s foreword, Cox is cited saying, “My heart sank as I watched in 2013 when, following President Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians, we first voted against a military response and then supported taking military options off the table.”

Advocacy of military intervention throughout is couched in the “humanitarian” rhetoric of the UN’s “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine, for which Cox actively campaigned. “I still firmly believe that a legitimate case can be made for intervention on humanitarian grounds when a Government is manifestly unwilling or unable to protect its own civilians. Sovereignty must not constitute a licence to kill with impunity,” she said in parliament in October 2015.

The Policy Exchange report concludes by quoting the Roman writer Vegetius, “If you desire peace, prepare for war,” before listing eleven points advancing the case for continuing British military intervention around the globe. These include the need to use massive force “to avoid retaliation and further conflict,” cynically claiming, “overwhelming force deters and ultimately saves lives.”

Anticipating that such brutal interventions will unleash popular opposition, they insist the “Allies should anticipate and have the ability to withstand opposition from domestic constituencies and demands for early exits.”

This implicit threat to mobilise the power of the state against the development of a new anti-war movement is the iron fist concealed behind the political beatification of Jo Cox.

German Left Party leader demands tougher deportation policy

Johannes Stern 

In an interview with the conservative Die Welt newspaper, joint founder of the Left Party Oscar Lafontaine spoke out in favour of a stricter deportation policy.

“Many states rightly rely on voluntary repatriation and offer assistance. But the state must ultimately be able to decide who it accepts. That is of course the basis of the state order,” stated Lafontaine, who will run as the Left Party’s leading candidate in state elections in Saarland at the end of March. “Whoever has crossed the border illegally should be given the option of voluntarily returning. If they do not accept this offer, deportation is all that is left. The state governments in which the Left Party is involved also see things this way.”

In common with representatives of the far right, Lafontaine seeks to invoke social issues in his attacks on refugees, the majority of whom have fled from war zones in the Middle East and North Africa. He promotes nationalism, attacks globalisation from the right and attempts to play off the poorest sections of the population against immigrants.

“We cannot afford to leave it to right-wing parties to talk about the problems of wage and rent competition,” the Left Party politician said. Businessmen support open borders to secure labour power from developing countries and “intensify wage competition by means of increased migration.” He added that the immigration question was “above all a social issue—for those who come here and those already living here.” He went on to cite sociologist Colin Crouch,who had “pointed out that the call for open borders [is] a central demand of neoliberalism.”

Lafontaine’s line of argument is reactionary and cynical. For one thing, the Left Party, as a party of government, is responsible for much of the social misery he now blames on immigration, particularly in the eastern German states where workers have been driven to desperation. Currently the party is in government in the eastern states of Brandenburg, Thuringia and Berlin. Secondly, the fact it poses as a “left” party, while implementing right-wing, anti-working class policies creates the political frustration which the AfD (Alternative for Germany) and others exploit.

We noted in a previous article that Lafontaine’s right-wing slogans come as no surprise. They arise directly out of his party’s orientation, which defends capitalism and German imperialism. Hardly anyone else embodies this better than the former Social Democratic Party chairman and federal Finance Minister. A brief review is enough to show that Lafontaine has been one of the leading trailblazers for an anti-refugee policy over the past 25 years.

In the early 1990s, as Minister President in Saarland, he adopted “immediate measures” including the introduction of mass detention camps, communal caring facilities and benefits in kind. At the same time, he pushed for new legislation from the German government, which would deny the guarantee of asylum to those coming from countries where “according to general opinion, no political persecution is taking place.”

Lafontaine was seen within the SPD at the time as a hardliner on refugee policy. He saw his task as one of imposing his line on the entire party. When in August 1990 then-minister president of North-Rhein Westphalia and future German President Johannes Rau (SPD) publicly backed Lafontaine, Der Spiegel wrote, “North-Rhein Westphalia’s SPD government intends to restrict the right to asylum—entirely in the spirit of Chancellor candidate Oscar Lafontaine.”

Then in August 1992, Lafontaine enforced, together with then SPD chair Björn Engholm, the so-called “Petersburg Turn,” which marked the repositioning of the SPD on refugee and foreign policy, including among other things the virtual abolition of the right to asylum through a so-called asylum compromise. A central element of this was so-called third state regulations. These laid the basis for the current mass deportations: asylum seekers from what are designated secure third states could be rejected without any further review. Lafontaine described this as a “real step forward.”

After his resignation as SPD chair and departure from the party, Lafontaine stuck to the same line. In 2004, he was among the few who supported the controversial plans of Interior Minister Otto Schily (SPD) to establish detention centres for refugees in Africa. At the time, Lafontaine formulated in the Bild newspaper what has become one of the favourite arguments of the far right today. Among “the 15 percent” who leave Africa as refugees, are “not the weak, elderly, sick and children without parents. It is normally the healthy, those capable of achievements who want to get to Europe to live better,” Lafontaine wrote.

In 2005, Lafontaine then deliberately encouraged prejudices against “foreign workers.” The state was obliged “to prevent family fathers and women becoming unemployed while foreign workers take jobs from them with low wages,” he declared in a now infamous speech in Chemnetz.

Over the past two years, Lafontaine and his wife, the parliamentary group leader of the Left Party Sahra Wagenknecht, have repeatedly attacked the refugee policy of Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) from the right. Already in November 2015, Lafontaine appealed for a strict upper limit for refugees. In a statement he demanded the limitation “of refugees being provided protection in Germany by strict quotas in Europe.”

Then at the beginning of this year, Wagenknecht stated that chancellor Angela Merkel was “jointly responsible” for the terrorist attack on a Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin. “There is joint responsibility, but it goes deeper,” said Wagenknecht. “Along with the uncontrolled opening of the borders there is the police cut to the breaking point, with neither the personnel nor the technical equipment appropriate to the danger of the situation.”

The agitation against refugees and the demand for more police are part of the broader campaign by the Left Party to participate in the federal government. Lafontaine noted in Die Welt that “the SPD, Greens and Left Party hold the majority in the Bundestag (parliament).” In Neues Deutschland, Wagenknecht urged a new, more self-assertive German power politics, “Regardless of what Trump does: we have to intensify the pressure on the German government to break free from subordination to US policy.”

Forty-three percent of US children live in low-income families

Shelley Connor

Forty-three percent of all children in the United States live in low-income families, according to a report released late last month by the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP).

The percentage of children living in low-income families increased by one percentage point between 2009—the official start of the economic “recovery” proclaimed by the Obama administration—and 2015. The NCCP defines “low-income families” as those earning below twice the federal poverty threshold (FPT), which is currently set at $24,036 for a family of four.

The total number of children living in these families is 30.6 million, including 5.2 million infants and toddlers under the age of three.

The very youngest of children are the most vulnerable to poverty and low-income. Forty-five percent of children under the age of three live in in low-income families, and 23 percent (2.6 million) live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level.

According to the NCCP, families generally need to make twice the FTP to support themselves. What constitutes a livable income varies widely, however, as the cost of food, rent/mortgage, and other necessities is significantly higher in many cities.

Supporting a family of four in Boston, Massachusetts requires an annual income of about $85,000, according to the report. In Akron, Ohio, a family of four needs an annual income of about $61,500, and a family in Tulsa, Oklahoma needs $57,200. Many children in these cities are in families that are struggling to meet basic necessities but are not defined as “poor” or “low-income.”

Many children have parents who are employed but whose wages are insufficient to meet basic needs. Half of low-income children under age three and 28 percent of poor children have at least one parent who works full-time. While 84 percent of children whose parents did not graduate high school live in low-income households, 50 percent of low-income children have at least one parent who has attended college. Forty-one percent of poor children have a parent who has attended college.

Low income families are also more likely to move and move more frequently. While rents have risen steadily since 2009, 71 percent of low-income children are in families that rent their homes.

During the US election campaign last year, Obama declared that “things have never been better,” a message he and Democratic Party candidate Hilary Clinton contrasted with Trump’s slogan of “Make America great again.” Obama cited stock market gains and employment statistics to support these claims.

The child poverty figures, however, expose the reality of social life in the United States. Most of the post-recession job growth occurred in low-paying, service sector jobs. American manufacture continued to decline--even in places where manufacturers continued to hire, they did so with lower wages and fewer benefits.

There is little reason to expect the economic prognosis for low-income children to improve as they reach adulthood. In an indication of economic insecurity in young adults, almost half of people in their early 20s require assistance from their parents with rent payments and other necessities, according to a recent report in the New York Times.

Forty percent of young adults between the ages of 22 and 24 require help, with a median assistance level of $250 a month. Young adults living in metropolitan areas of one million people or greater are 30 percent more likely to need help from their parents. These numbers have grown steadily. In the 1980s, fewer than 30 percent of this age group needed assistance.

The record of the Obama administration and the hostility of the Democratic Party to the working class opened the way for Trump to posture as an opponent of the “status quo” who would bring back jobs. However, the Trump administration, packed with billionaires and corporate CEOs, is preparing a vast intensification of the assault on the working class.

Throughout his campaign, Trump denounced programs such as SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program). One of his campaign advisors, Jack Kingston, stated in 2013 that children who need free or reduced lunches should be made to sweep floors in order to "[get] the myth out of their head that there is such a thing as free lunch." Trump has promised to cut over one million Americans off of SNAP and Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) by early 2017.

America's young children are essentially canaries in a mine. Like the decreasing ability of young adults to support themselves, their financial instability points to a greater level of economic instability for the entire working class.

Trump orders could affect up to 8 million immigrants as deportations begin

E.P. Milligan

Donald Trump signed two executive orders on January 25 outlining a series of new measures aimed at setting massive restrictions on immigration to the United States and on tearing those already present in the country away from their children, parents, and other loved ones. Two particularly high-profile components of these measures, the construction of a border wall between the US and Mexico and a travel ban on seven predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East, have sparked social outrage in the form of mass demonstrations throughout the US and internationally.

Though the travel ban has been halted by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the other elements of the immigration orders are only just beginning to take effect. The result is a massive ramping up of the deportation apparatus and strengthening of the police state built up under the Obama administration. For millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States, the future poses the immediate danger of deportation. According to an analysis by the Los Angeles Times, the new orders could result in the deportation of eight million people, with millions more family members effected. The Trump administration’s move to scapegoat millions of immigrants is part of a broader attack on the democratic rights of the working class as a whole.

The language of the domestic immigration enforcement order exposes the deeply anti-democratic character of the orders. Trump’s proposal to “end the abuse of the parole and asylum provisions currently used to prevent the lawful removal of removable aliens,” despite the fact that asylum applications were rarely granted under the Obama administration. A website put together by Syracuse University tracks the denial rates of immigration judges nationwide. In California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas, most judges deny between 70 and 99 percent of asylum applicants. One judge in Texas, Howard Rose, denied all 110 asylum applicants who appeared before him between 2011 and 2016.

Judge scorecard for asylum application denial rates, 2011-2016. Left column - Number of cases heard; Center column - Approved; Right column - Denied

The executive orders will only lead to more denials of asylum applications from deserving migrants. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has already issued a call for volunteers from within the agency to travel to border states to aid in processing newly arrived migrants for mass deportation.

The order on border security and public safety will deputize state and local law enforcement to aid immigration officials in leading deportation operations in major American cities nationwide. It also threatens to cut federal funding to “sanctuary cities” where sheriffs and local police are not required to aid federal forces in deporting migrants. The result will be a massive increase in deportations, an increase in workplace and home raids by ICE officials and police, and the incarceration of hundreds of thousands or millions of workers for the “crime” of bringing their families to the US to escape violence or look for work.

The executive orders drastically expand the list of individuals the administration will prioritize for deportation as “removable aliens.” The executive orders state that even those migrants accused of committing a crime will be removable—a gross violation of due process and the centuries-old presumption of innocence.

Trump has called for the construction of new immigrant detention facilities along the US-Mexico border through both federal as well as for-profit, private contracts. He has also directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “allocate all legally available resources to immediately assign asylum officers to immigrant detention facilities” to conduct credible fear hearings for asylum seekers.

“Credible fear hearings” are the process by which the Asylum Office for US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) determines whether or not asylum seekers will be allowed to enter the country. If the interviewee does not appear to have “reasonable” or “credible” fear of returning to his or her country of origin, the ICE immediately deports the individual. If they are found to have a credible fear, they have the right to appear before a judge, though most end up getting deported anyway.

The system is rigged against asylum seekers with judges and prosecutors paying little attention to the merits of their asylum claims. Officers frequently lie to the courts and write false testimony in which asylum seekers “admit” that they have no claim. This practice, which took place regularly under the Obama administration, will intensify under Trump. Since Trump took office, immigration attorneys have reported that their clients are being denied the right to appear before a judge even when the migrants were found to have a credible fear of returning to their home countries.

According to a senior US immigration official that spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity, ICE is preparing internally for a drastic increase in deportations. Trump’s executive orders promised to hire 10,000 new ICE deportation officers. The official said, “I can’t think of any other reason than preps for processing a lot of expedited removal cases.” In addition to mass deportations, the measures will produce a vast number of asylum seekers that become trapped in a bureaucratic swamp, detained for months without the right to meet their family and without the ability to easily access an attorney. Under US immigration law, jailed migrants do not have the right to an attorney. The Obama administration’s official position was that children as young as three or four years old do not have the right to an attorney. As a result, they are often forced to appear in court alone.

The state has already set into motion the vast acceleration of deporting immigrants, with raids beginning last week. Immigration agents in Phoenix, Arizona, arrested Guadalupe García de Rayos on Wednesday. Rayos, 35, had been living in the US for eight years since she was a teenager, regularly checking in with a local ICE office after being caught using a false social security number to get a job in 2008, as many migrants are forced to do in order to receive a legal wage. The Trump administration is now prioritizing the deportation of these individuals, who were not at the top of Obama’s list for deportation.

Another controversial aspect of Trump’s orders are the resurrection of the DHS-administered Secure Communities program. Began by the Bush administration and expanded by Obama, this program partnered ICE officials with local jails to aid in the sharing of biometric data. It was suspended in November 2014 after pressure from immigration advocates, only to be replaced by a similar initiative known as the Priority Enforcement program.

The second program to be expanded by Trump is the 287(g) program, which allows local and state police to be deputized as immigration officials for the purpose of rounding-up migrants for deportation. The Department of Justice (DoJ) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have shown on numerous occasions that the program causes racial profiling and routine violations of constitutional rights amongst Latinos.

The proposed economic stranglehold against so-called “sanctuary cities” has particularly authoritarian characteristics. According to the order’s language, any city that does not abide by Washington’s exact dictates can be considered a sanctuary city and therefore liable for cuts to federal funding, without which cities would be unable to deliver basic services. This is an attempt by the Trump-Bannon presidency to bring rival sections of the American ruling elite to heel while creating yet another opportunity to slash municipal budgets and gnaw away at the few remaining social gains of the working class.

According to an analysis by Reuters, a sum of $2.27 billion in annual funds for the 10 largest cities in the US are under threat of removal. This includes hundreds of millions of dollars meant for Head Start preschool programs, public housing, and HIV prevention and treatment.

Aware of growing discontent within broader layers of the working class, the American political and media establishment seeks to divert attention from the growing chasm of social inequality by scapegoating immigrant workers and transforming the US-Mexico border into an armed zone replete with internment camps. Though the executive orders represent a qualitative deepening of the breakdown of American democracy, Trump's policies are the outcome of the eight years of record deportations under Obama, who deported 2.5 million—more than all his predecessors combined.

Air strike in Afghanistan kills more than 20 as top US commander calls for more troops

Bill Van Auken

Over 20 civilians were reported killed and scores more wounded in a US air strike conducted in the Sangin district of Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province Thursday night. Eleven of the victims were reportedly from the same family, whose house was demolished by a missile.

“Last night, U.S. Air Force bombed the house of Haji Fida Mohammad in Chinari village, killing 10 members of the family, including women and children,’’ reported Haji Saifuddin Sanginwal, a tribal elder in Sangin district.

A spokesman for “Resolute Support” the name given to the latest stage of the more than 15-year-old US war in Afghanistan, acknowledged that US warplanes had carried out attacks in the area and said that the American command was “aware of the allegations of civilian casualties” and took them “very seriously.”

This latest bloodletting came on the same day that the top US commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, told a Senate panel that “a few thousand” more US troops were needed to sustain what is now by far Washington’s longest war.

The US has 8,400 US troops currently deployed in Afghanistan. Italy, Germany, Britain and other countries have some 5,000 troops in the country.

Early in his presidency, Barack Obama launched a “surge” in Afghanistan that brought US troop levels up to 100,000. Afterwards, he pledged to reduce the American presence to a “normal” embassy protection force. In the face of the continuing reversals for the US-backed security forces, however, he scrapped his withdrawal schedule, handing the continuing US war over to Donald Trump.

Asked by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Arizona Republican John McCain, “In your assessment, are we winning or losing?” Nicholson replied, “We’re in a stalemate.” This was the same description provided by Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. John Dunford in testimony last September.

Objective indices, however, suggest that the US and its puppet regime in Kabul are steadily losing ground, while the war’s impact on Afghanistan’s 33 million people is today more catastrophic than ever.

The Afghan National Army continues to suffer record losses. A quarterly report issued last month by Washington’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) revealed that more than 6,700 Afghan soldiers were killed last year through November 12, exceeding the 6,600 soldiers killed in all of 2015. Combined with continuing high levels of desertion, the US-backed Afghan National Army is growing weaker.

This reality underlay General Nicholson’s testimony that the “few thousand” more US troops were needed for training and “advising” Afghan forces. Such an increase would entail the deployment of such “trainers and advisors” more directly in combat. “We have identified the requirement and the desire to advise below the corps level,” the US commander told the committee. “It would enable us to thicken our advisory efforts across the Afghanistan mission.”

The problem confronted by the US occupation force in previous such efforts has been the proliferation of “insider” or “green on blue” attacks in which Afghan recruits have turned their guns on their American “advisors.”

While the losses suffered by the Afghan National Army are severe, the war’s impact upon the civilian population has been even more devastating.

A United Nations report issued this week documented 11,418 civilian casualties in 2016, more than double the number a decade ago and the highest since the UN began keeping a count of the war’s toll. The casualties included 3,500 dead, 923 of whom were children. Another 2,600 children were wounded over the course of the year.

In addition, fighting on the ground combined with air strikes drove at least a half a million Afghans from their homes in 2016—a 40 percent increase over 2015—aggravating a protracted humanitarian crisis and swelling the number of Afghan refugees, whose numbers are second only to those from Syria.

Among the sharpest increases in civilian casualties recorded by the UN’s Afghan agency stemmed from “suicide and complex attacks,” with the Afghan capital of Kabul seeing the greatest number of dead and wounded, reflecting the tenuous grip of the US-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani.

Also driving up the civilian toll was the increased number of airstrikes, with the number of dead and wounded caused by these attacks doubling since 2015. The Obama administration issued the order last summer allowing US commanders to provide greater levels of air support for Afghan forces.

The UN report called for “an immediate halt to the use of airstrikes in civilian-populated areas,” an injunction that the Pentagon is certain to ignore as it would spell the rout of its Afghan puppet security forces.

As it is, according to the SIGAR report issued last month, the share of Afghan districts under government control decreased from 72 percent in November 2015 to 63 percent in August 2016 as a result of the offensive by the Taliban and other anti-government insurgents.

Among the more ominous features of Thursday’s Senate hearing were the attempts by both Senator McCain and General Nicholson to implicate Russia in the deteriorating situation for the US in Afghanistan.

McCain accused Moscow of “meddling in Afghanistan in an apparent attempt to prop up the Taliban and undermine the United States.” The US military commander charged that Russia was acting to “legitimize and support” the Taliban, while claiming he could not provide any specific evidence to support this charge in an open hearing.

What has drawn the ire of the Pentagon and sections of the American ruling establishment is the announcement earlier this week by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Afghan counterpart Salahuddin Rabbani that Moscow will host a meeting later this month bringing together representatives from Afghanistan, China, India, Iran and Pakistan in a bid to resolve the decade-and-a-half-old war. Lavrov added that the Taliban had to be included in any effort to reach a settlement.

The Russian effort threatens to repeat Washington’s humiliation in Moscow’s brokering—together with Turkey and Iran—of a ceasefire in Syria after the strategic reversal for the US-backed war for regime change with the government’s retaking of eastern Aleppo at the end of last year.

From the outset, US imperialism has aimed at utilizing its intervention in Afghanistan, launched in the name of the “war on terror,” to secure permanent bases that would provide a strategic launching pad for operations in the former Soviet republics of energy-rich Central Asia, in South Asia, as well as against both Russia and China.

While the US ruling establishment has been engaged in a bitter internecine struggle over the incoming Trump administration’s apparent tactical shift in relation to Moscow, there is little doubt that Washington will continue to pursue its aggressive aims in Afghanistan.

General Nicholson told the Senate panel that he was confident that the Trump administration would support increases in troop levels requested by the Pentagon. On the same day as the US commander gave his testimony, Trump made his first call since his inauguration to Afghan President Ghani.

Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) Early Career Academic Grants for Developing Countries 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 2nd April 2017 at 11:59pm (BST)

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

Type: Grants

Eligibility: 

• At the time of application, applicants must be employed in an academic role by an ACU member institution.
• Applications are open to university staff who are less than ten years from the start of their employment in an academic role.
• Applicants must not have previously worked or attended an academic conference outside their home region.
• Academic staff who have recently returned to work after a career break can also be considered: applicants to whom this criteria applies should make this clear in their application.

Selection Criteria: Applicants can strengthen their application by providing evidence of the submission/acceptance of a paper or poster, or other communication with the conference organisers. It is highly recommended that applicants attach this evidence to their application form.

Number of Awardees: 30

Value of Grants: The grant must be used to participate in a conference between 1 July 2017 and 31 December 2017.

Duration of Grants: The grant must be used to participate in a conference between 1 July 2017 and 31 December 2017.

Apply here.

It is important to go through the Application requirements in the Grants Webpage before applying

Visit Grants Webpage for details

Award Provider: Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU)

Study in Canada: University of Winnipeg President’s Scholarship for Young Leaders 2017/2018

Application Deadline: The application deadlines are between 3rd April, 2017; 2nd June, 2017 and 2nd October, 2017.

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Canada

About the Award: The University of Winnipeg President’s Scholarship for World Leaders will be given to international students entering any of the University’s divisions for the first time  through the following ways –

1. Undergraduate,
2. Graduate,
3. Collegiate ,
4. PACE or
5. ELP

Type: Undergraduate, Postgraduate

Eligibility: Candidates must meet the following criteria:

• Have a minimum 80% admission average or equivalent
• Be an international student
• Entering first year of any program
• Demonstrate exceptional leadership qualities
• Apply for admission by the scholarship deadline date

Number of Awardees: 

• English Language Program: 3
• Professional, Applied Continuing Education: 3
• Undergraduate: 3
• Collegiate: 3
• Graduate: 3

Value of Scholarship:

• English Language Program: $3,500
• Professional, Applied Continuing Education: $3,500
• Undergraduate: $5,000
• Collegiate: $3,500
• Graduate: $5,000

How to Apply: Please submit your completed form and documents to:

Awards and Financial Aid
The University of Winnipeg
515 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9
CANADA

Only complete applications received on time will be considered. Documents sent with your application will not be returned. Scanned applications are accepted in PDF or JPG format.

Scanned applications and associated documents should be sent to awards@uwinnipeg.ca.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: University of Winnipeg

BI Master of Science Scholarships for International Students 2017/2018 – Norway

Application Deadline: 1st March 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: international

To be taken at (country): Norway

Type: Masters

Eligibility: Candidates demonstrating strong academic performance and demonstrated financial need who apply for, and are accepted in, a Master of Science degree.

Selection Criteria: BI Norwegian Business School aims for a national and international mix in the student body. Hence, priority may be given to applicants from selected countries, selected partner schools of BI, or enrolled in priority master’s programmes

Number of Awardees: A maximum of 25 scholarships are available for the academic year commencing Autumn 2017.

Value of Scholarship: The MSc International Scholarships range from partial to full tuition for the first year of studies. You might also receive the opportunity to renew for a second year. Some living expenses may be covered by a one-time stipend. The amount is set after a thorough individual assessment of each candidate.

All candidates must meet academic progression requirements in order to maintain their scholarship.

How to Apply: Write a scholarship application letter, maximum one page, outlining why you are deserving of this scholarship. Documentation of financial need for covering living costs must be stated in the financial declaration. Please include proof of financial need.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider:  BI Norwegian Business School Norway

Important Notes: Only students accepted to a Master of Science degree commencing Autumn 2017 will be considered for this scholarship.

National Taiwan University Scholarships for Outstanding International Masters Students 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 24th February 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Taiwan

Type: Masters

Eligibility: New international master’s students applying for admission must comply with the Ministry of Education’s Regulations for International Students Undertaking Studies in Taiwan and shall have demonstrated academic excellence and outstanding research achievements.

Selection Criteria:  Applications shall be evaluated by the Office of Research and Development (ORD). Criteria for evaluation shall include academic performance, research motivation, potentials, enthusiasm and competitiveness.

Number of Awardees: 8

Value of Scholarship: TWD 250,000 /year

Duration of Scholarship: 2 years

How to Apply: Application for the Scholarship shall be submitted to the Office of International Affairs (OIA) together with the applicant’s admission application to the University.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: National Taiwan University