Austria: Conservatives discuss coalition with the extreme right

Markus Salzmann

Ten days after the Austrian parliamentary elections, the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) has begun negotiations on the formation of a coalition government with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ).

The 31-year-old leader of the ÖVP, Sebastian Kurz, had already largely adopted the xenophobic slogans of the far right during the election campaign. Now, he wants to form a government with the FPÖ, which along with even more strident policies against refugees and foreigners, intends to impose further austerity measures plus a massive buildup of the state forces.

The ÖVP is a member of the European People’s Party and aligned with the German conservative parties, the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union. It is a conservative party with one of the longest histories in Europe. For its part, the FPÖ is allied in the European parliament to the French National Front, the Italian Northern League, the far-right Dutch PVV led by Geert Wilders and other far-right parties. By opening the door to government participation in Austria, the ÖVP is also preparing the path for the integration of the far right into government in other European countries.

Kurz, who is seeking to head the new government with the support of the far right, promised talks “on an equal footing”. After the first round of talks on Wednesday, he said: “It was a positive round, it was a positive atmosphere”. The leader of the FPÖ, Heinz-Christian Strache, described the meeting as a “positive way of getting to know one another”. Both men emphasised that the new alliance should be in place by Christmas.

Both the content of the negotiations and those taking part reveal the course of the future government. Firstly, a “budget inventory” is planned as the basis for further discussions. The two parties have agreed in principle to massively reduce the country’s debt burden.

Five subgroups were formed to decide policy on a range of social and security issues. The Freedom Party is demanding that the coalition agreement reflect its own political priorities, in particular in the spheres of domestic and social policy. The party is striving to fill the post of interior minister by its leader, Strache.

This means an extreme right-winger will assume responsibility for refugee and immigrant policy in the Alpine Republic. Strache, who took over the leadership of the party in 2005, had joined a German nationalist fraternity at the age of 17 and participated in far-right paramilitary training camps. He joined the FPÖ in 1989 and was to the right of its leader at the time, Jörg Haider.

In addition to a further tightening of the country’s already restrictive asylum laws, the FPÖ aims to cut back on social benefits. Among other measures, the party plans to reduce the “political influence of social partnership structures”. By such structures the FPÖ means pensions, health care, labour rights and social housing and not the corrupt clique of trade unions, social democrats, and ÖVP and business heads who have consistently attacked and sought to paralyse the working class.

FPÖ Secretary-General Herbert Kickl, a member of the negotiating team, is favourite for the post of social minister. Kickl is a far-right ideologue. He is a former speechwriter for Jörg Haider and is behind the xenophobic election campaign slogans of the FPÖ. He heads the party’s eduction unit and advocates massive cuts in the social sector. In the coalition talks, Kickl lamented “uncontrolled immigration from non-EU states as well as the utterly rash opening of the labour market for Eastern EU states”.

Another member of the negotiating team is Norbert Hofer of the FPÖ. At the beginning of the year, Hofer narrowly lost the race for the office of president against the Green Party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen. Hofer is regarded as a candidate for the post of foreign minister.

Norbert Nemeth is also involved in the negotiations. The parliamentary leader of the FPÖ is a member of the Olympia fraternity, which the Austrian Resistance Documentation Archive has described as right-wing extremist. According to the magazine profil, Nemeth declared in 1996 his solidarity with the then-imprisoned Holocaust denier Gottfried Küssel and attacked the law banning denial of the mass murder of the Jews.

Freedom Party member Anneliese Kitzmüller is also on the negotiating team. She has close links with far-right nationalist circles. She writes for the right-wing academic magazine Aula and plays a leading role in two German nationalist academies for girls. One of the schools “Iduna zu Linz” has a penchant for ancient Germanic customs. “Strictly right-wing, traditionalist and against the anti-fascist culture of remembrance, Kitzmüller—as a negotiator of the coalition pact—can be seen as an indicator of the FPÖ’s government orientation”, profil wrote.

There is already considerable agreement between the two parties on the issue of strengthening the state. ÖVP Minister Wolfgang Brandstetter has called for a “security package”, the focus of which is the extensive monitoring of Internet communication. Police and security agencies are to receive virtually unlimited surveillance powers.

In the election nearly two weeks ago, the FPÖ won 26 percent of the vote just behind the Social Democrats (SPÖ) with 26.9 percent and the first-placed party, the ÖVP with 31.5 percent. Theoretically, a coalition of the ÖVP and SPÖ or the SPÖ and FPÖ would have a majority for a new government. Prior to the election, both the Social Democrats and the conservatives had ruled out any continuation of the previous Grand Coalition of the two parties. The Social Democrats are also not averse to forming an alliance with the far right, but this is unlikely at the moment due to internal divisions in the party.

Severe US nursing shortage accelerates rural hospital closures

Gary Joad 

Nurses in the United States comprise the largest grouping of health care professionals, numbering about 3 million, and nursing is one of the fastest growing occupations in the country. However, because of changing healthcare needs and demographic shifts, the number of nurses in the US is woefully inadequate and rapidly worsening.

There are more persons over the age of 65 than at any time in the history of the United States. By 2030, one in five persons will be 65 or over, an increase from 2010 by 75 percent to 69 million persons. By 2050, 88.5 million people will be 65 and over.

At age 65, about 80 percent of the population has at least one chronic health problem needing regular medical attention, according to the National Council on Aging. Some 68 percent have two or more chronic health problems. A USA Today analysis indicated that two thirds of Medicare recipients have several chronic diagnoses needing routine and regular care.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that nursing vacancies are now emerging that will leave the US 1.2 million nurses short of what will be needed to staff US hospitals and healthcare facilities in just two years to meet the growing demand.

About 1 million US nurses are over age 50 and will reach retirement age in 10 to 15 years. By 2024, almost 700,000 nurses will retire and leave the work force. Due partially to increasing needs of an aging US population, another 500,000 nurses will be needed to safely and adequately meet the healthcare demands by 2020.

A recent Reuters report reviewed the crisis in the nursing care shortage for 20 hospitals surveyed this year. The shortage is hitting the population of the West Virginia coal mining country with life-threatening force.

The Charleston Area Medical Center is one of West Virginia’s largest employers and faces a $40 million deficit for 2017 as fewer people have private insurance, state and the federal governments slash reimbursements, and labor costs soar for a dwindling supply of nurses.

Charleston Medical will spend $12 million in 2017 for “travel” or temporary nurses, two times what the center spent 3 years ago. Ten years ago, they had no need whatever to hire temporary professionals.

Ron Moore, the vice-president and chief nursing officer for the center who retired this month, told Reuters, “I’ve been a nurse for 40 years, and the shortage is the worst I’ve ever seen it.” He added, “Better to pay a traveler than shut a (hospital) bed.”

Charleston Medical now offers to pay tuition for nursing students if they agree to stay at the center for 2 years.

The nursing shortage is a bonanza for the temporary nursing agencies financially benefiting from crisis, such as AMN Healthcare, a for-profit enterprise whose securities are traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

It is estimated that US hospitals’ expenditure for temporary nurses, working an average of 13 weeks, has doubled in the last 3 years to $4.8 billion, according to Staffing Industry Analysts, which advises governments and institutions on workforce issues worldwide.

As a result of the nursing shortage, wealthier big city and university-connected institutions are placing their smaller and rural counterparts at a disastrous disadvantage in the competition for the shrinking workforce.

The J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, Pennsylvania is on the border with West Virginia and is affiliated with West Virginia University (WVU) Medicine. J.W. Ruby spent $10.4 million this year to hire and keep nurses, compared to $3.4 million only a year ago. The complex is expanding by 100 beds as it swallows up the services formerly provided by rural facilities that are closing.

The institution offers higher pay, tuition reimbursement, $10,000 signing bonuses, and free housing for nurses that reside 60 miles or more away. J.W. Ruby administration is said to be considering paying college tuition for children of their current longer-term nursing staff to keep them at WVU.

Doug Mitchell, VP and chief of nursing services said, “We’ll do whatever we need to do (to get and keep them).”

The International Journal of Nursin g Studies published research in August confirming that short staffing of nurses was driving up the death rate after common and routine surgeries.

The University of Alabama (UAB) Hospitals in Birmingham invested millions of dollars in recruiting and retaining nurses and still finds itself 300 professionals short. Various departments have seen nurse vacancy rates at 20 percent and higher. Many low-income, poor, and uninsured patients obtain care at the university center.

Terri Poe, chief of nursing at the state’s largest hospital told Reuters, “We’ve rarely canceled a surgery or closed a bed because of a lack of staffing.” Last year, UAB wrote off $200 million for unreimbursed care and spent $4.5 million on temporary nursing services, including $3 million for staffing of postoperative care departments, compared to 2012, when UAB spent $812,000 hiring temporary nurses.

The nursing shortage in Missouri is at a record high of 5700, up 8 percent from last year. Thirty-four percent of state nurses are age 55 and older. The University of Missouri Health Care in Columbia spent $750,000 on “extras” to keep nurses, including $2000 bonuses to work in “difficult to staff units” and student debt relief. Nurses on staff were offered “referral bonuses” for colleagues who left other workplaces and signed on with the University, as well as a chance to win a trip to Hawaii.

Over 40 percent of America’s rural hospitals obtained negative financial sheets in 2015, according to The Chartis Center for Rural Health. US rural hospitals are closing at an unprecedented and alarming rate. Of 119 rural hospitals closed since 2005, over 65 percent shut down since 2010, and were centered in Texas and 15 other states that did not expand Medicaid. Of 14 rural facilities that closed between 2005 and 2016, Texas shuttered the highest number in the US. Reuters cited so-called “dire states” whose rural hospital debt threatened closure, which were Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Minnesota, New York, Alabama, and Tennessee.

Thirty-eight of the 54 rural counties in Alabama do not have obstetrical services, compared to 9 counties in 1980, according to the state’s Department of Public Health. Most pregnant women who live in rural areas must travel away from their home counties for pregnancy care, including deliveries that increase the risks to mothers and their babies. Alabama is seeing lower birth-weight infants and higher infant mortality rates, rates that are well above the rest of the US, which in turn is higher than all the rest of the G7 developed countries.

Compounding the nursing shortage, bipartisan budget cuts of federal Title VIII funding for colleges that train nurses have choked down the educational and training pipeline to replace the hundreds of thousands of professionals leaving the workforce in the next 3 to 5 years.

A recent report by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing noted, “US nursing schools turned away 79,659 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2012 due to insufficient number of faculty, clinical (training) sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors, and budget constraints.” The study also noted that many nursing college faculty are aging and nearing retirement, without effective and sufficient plans for their replacement.

Pam Cipriano, president of the American Nurses Association, told the  Atlantic, “As those numbers (of nurse instructors) drop, schools have to maintain critical student-to-teacher ratios. Preparation for most nurse faculty is a doctoral degree, and you can’t just replace someone in that position. The trajectory timeline to fill jobs (for) nurse faculty (that) are retiring is much longer.”

Cipriano also said, “We saw (Title VIII) money reduced by $2.15 million this year, and when you adjust for inflation, we’ve seen a 30 percent decline in that money since 1972. To maintain our supply (of nurses) and the pipeline, Title VIII is critical.”

A 2012 study titled “United States Registered Nurse Workforce Report Card and Shortage Forecast” graded states nationwide as to the predicted nursing care shortages in hospitals, clinics and health care facilities and graded the states accordingly. The prediction was that, given budget cuts to health care carried out on a bipartisan basis, the number of states that would accrue D’s and F’s would increase from 5 in 2009 to 30 by 2030. The F-graded states, all in the US South and West, would include Florida, Georgia, Texas, Virginia, Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and New Mexico.

President Xi presides over brittle Chinese regime

Peter Symonds

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress ended last week with the installation of a new central committee, which then rubberstamped the appointment of the 25-member Politburo and the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC).

The composition of these bodies—especially the PBSC, the party’s top decision-making committee—had been worked out weeks, if not months, in advance through Byzantine manoeuvring and factional deal-making that is completely divorced from the concerns and aspirations of the vast majority of the population.

Without a doubt, Xi emerged from the congress with his position greatly strengthened. His “thought”—that is, key elements of his nationalist “dream” for China to play a central role in world affairs—was entrenched in the constitution.

Xi’s supporters now dominate the two crucial party committees. Moreover, in a break with recent practice, no successor was appointed to the PBSC. This leaves open the possibility that Xi might not stand down in 2022 after the customary two five-year terms as party general secretary and China’s president.

The predominant theme in the US and Western press is that Xi is emerging as the new Mao, a dictatorial figure whose antagonistic policies are undermining the “international rules-based order” underpinned by the United States. In reality, the US, under President Barack Obama and now Donald Trump, has been engaged in a “pivot to Asia” to undermine China and prepare for war to ensure Washington continues to impose its rules and maintains its dominance.

This confrontational US stance has placed enormous pressure on the Chinese regime, which also faces mounting internal problems as the economy continues to slow and the debt-ridden financial system is threatened with a meltdown. The huge social chasm between a tiny layer of the super-rich billionaires, whose interests the CCP defends, and the vast majority of the population, is generating enormous social tensions.

In this fraught situation, Xi has emerged not so much as an unchallengeable political strongman, but as a Bonapartist figure, who serves to safeguard party unity by moderating, arbitrating and, if necessary, suppressing the myriad competing and conflicting interests in the CCP’s massive bureaucratic apparatus.

The British-based Economist commented last month: “His predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, were appointed mainly to continue Deng’s [Xiaoping] reforms. Mr Xi was appointed to save the party. The notion that the Communist Party might need saving will sound peculiar. Although China experiences tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrations each year, these are local affrays which are mostly reactions to greedy local governments...

“Yet that is not how Mr Xi saw matters in 2012. To him, and to the elite who chose him as China’s leader, the party faced an existential crisis.” After relating a warning by Xi about the fate of Emperor Chu [murdered in 202 BC], the article continued: “It is not ancient history that frightens Mr Xi. It is the disintegration of the Soviet Union. For him, everything begins and ends with the party... If it collapses, so will the country.”

Since assuming the post of CCP general secretary in 2012, Xi has accumulated significant powers in his hands. He has restructured the Chinese military—the People’s Liberation Army—to concentrate control in the Central Military Commission, which he chairs. He has sidelined Premier Li Keqiang, whose post traditionally puts him in charge of economic affairs, by blaming Li for the country’s economic woes, particularly the 2015 stock market plunge. Xi now determines policy, including on financial and economic matters, through an array of so-called leading small groups that answer to him.

Xi has also exploited a vast anti-corruption purge, led by his trusted supporter Wang Qishan, to eliminate key rivals and weaken factional opponents. More than 1 million out of 88 million CCP members have been investigated and at least 100,000 have been indicted, including more than 150 “tigers” or officials above the rank of vice-minister.

Just months before the congress, a leading contender to take over from Xi in 2022, Sun Zhengcai, was dismissed from the powerful post of CCP boss in the major city of Chongqing, disgraced and finally expelled in September. Conveniently, the corruption scandal enabled Chen Min’er, who is widely regarded as Xi’s protégé, to be installed in his place.

However, Xi’s accumulation of power is a sign of the CCP’s deep fissures and tensions. While the composition of the Politburo and PBSC has strengthened Xi’s position, he has been careful to maintain a factional balance and, in the main, to observe the unwritten rules governing the party leadership since the late 1980s.

The new Chinese leadership

Despite widespread speculation to the contrary, anti-corruption boss Wang Qishan, 69, was not reappointed to either committee. If he had been reinstalled, it would have been a breach of the de-facto retirement age of 68 and a sign that Xi himself might not retire in 2022 and seek a third term. All the current PBSC members are due for retirement in 2022.

Li Keqiang also held onto his position and a PBSC seat, in the face of some conjecture in the media that he might be ousted. Li is aligned with one of the party’s two main factions—the Communist Youth League faction of ex-President Hu Jintao—which has been seriously weakened over the past five years. Xi is more closely connected to the so-called Shanghai Gang of former President Jiang Zemin, although Xi has established his own bases of support.

The various rival “gangs” and factions are not simply based on personalities. Rather they represent the competing interests of various sections of big business, the state bureaucracy and the military, as well as the state-owned enterprises. Insofar as policy differences exist, they are tactical in nature. Those like Li who advocated accelerated pro-market restructuring and a more conciliatory approach to the US have been increasingly marginalised.

However, ousting Li could have provoked factional warfare inside the party. As well as Li, the Communist Youth League faction gained an additional PBSC seat through the appointment of Wang Yang, vice-premier of the State Council, China’s cabinet, and widely seen as an aggressive proponent of pro-market restructuring.

The five other PBSC members, all with close ties to Xi, are:

* Li Zhanshu, director of the party’s General Office, has effectively operated as Xi’s chief of staff and frequently travels with him. He and Xi worked together at the start of their careers in Hebei province and transferred to Xi’s home province of Shaanxi.

* Wang Huning has worked closely with Xi to develop his ideology and policies. As head of the party’s Central Policy Research Office since 2002, he has served Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and now Xi. Wang also often travels with Xi.

* Zhao Leiji served as party secretary of Shaanxi province and is seen as part of Xi’s “Shaanxi Gang”. He was head of the party’s powerful Organisation Department prior to the congress and is slated to take over from Wang Qishan as anti-corruption chief, in charge of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

* Han Zheng is aligned with the “Shanghai Gang,” having served as Shanghai mayor and then party boss. He was Xi’s deputy when Xi was Shanghai party boss in 2007 and cemented his relations with Jiang Zemin’s faction. Han has been mooted as a replacement premier should Li Keqiang be removed before the 2022 congress.

Xi has also strengthened his position in the 25-member Politburo, which includes the seven PBSC members and an additional 18. According to some analysts, as many as 15 Politburo members have close ties to Xi.

Moreover, while no one in the PBSC is eligible to replace Xi in 2022, there are three contenders in the Politburo who are young enough to serve 10 years as president and CCP general secretary. Two of the three—Chen Min’er and Ding Xuexiang—are closely connected and beholden to Xi.

The third contender is Hu Chunhua, who is aligned with the Communist Youth League, a long time protégé of Hu Jintao and regarded as Hu Jintao’s pick for the top post in 2022. By the CCP’s informal succession rule, the top job should alternate between the two ruling factions. That means Hu should be Xi’s successor and should have been appointed to the PBSC last week.

The fact that Hu was not promoted could indicate that Xi, rather than trying to remain as president after 2022, is preparing to anoint his own successor. The most likely pick is Chen Min’er who was propelled into the significant post of party boss in one of China’s top four cities, and now has been elevated to the Politburo.

Ding Xuexiang is likewise closely tied to Xi. In 2007, he served as political secretary to Xi during his eight months as Shanghai party secretary, then in 2013 moved to Beijing to become head of the party chief office—in effect Xi’s personal secretary. He is expected to become Xi’s new chief of staff.

The new party leadership is thus the result of careful calculation. The only obvious rule that has been broken is that no successor has been nominated. As a result, Xi has left his options open: he could use the next five years to engineer a vacancy on the top PBSC and install Chen Min’er or Ding Xuexiang as his nominated successor, or move to remain in the job for another five years.

Former Australian ambassador Geoff Raby noted this week in the Australian Financial Review: “The greater power that Xi assumes and the more he acts without constraint, the more brittle the Communist state becomes.” Leaving aside the absurd reference to China as a communist state, the remark highlights the weakness of the regime.

Given the extreme geo-political tensions in Asia and the world, and the mounting economic and social contradictions in China itself, the massive CCP bureaucracy apparatus, not to speak of Xi’s schemes and manoeuvres, is likely, under the pressure of great events, to be torn by turmoil and crises.

Pentagon halts release of information on Afghanistan war

Bill Van Auken 

The Pentagon has suddenly ordered the withholding of key information on the state of Afghanistan’s security forces that have been published in quarterly reports for nearly a decade. The censoring of the data comes as the Trump administration has given the military brass free rein to escalate US imperialism’s longest war, now in its 17th year, sending thousands more troops to the South Asian country, while substantially increasing military spending.

The latest report issued by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reported that the US military command in Afghanistan had classified “important measures of ANDSF [Afghan National Defense and Security Forces] performance, such as casualties, personnel strength, attrition, and operational readiness of equipment.”

SIGAR was created by Congress in 2008 as an oversight body to monitor the vast US spending on Afghan “reconstruction,” now totaling over $120 billion, with the lion’s shares going to the country’s security forces. It also has law enforcement powers to investigate the rampant corruption and outright theft that has funneled billions of dollars of this spending into the pockets of military contractors.

The US military command has claimed that it is withholding the information on the state of the Afghan security forces at the request of officials within the American puppet regime of President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul.

In an interview with the New York Times, the inspector general, John Sopko, sharply questioned both the motives and the pretext for the US military’s censoring of the information.

“The Afghans know what’s going on; the Taliban knows what’s going on; the US military knows what’s going on,” he said. “The only people who don’t know what’s going on are the people paying for it.”

He added: “The government usually doesn’t classify good news. I don’t want any nameless, faceless Afghan bureaucrat telling the American taxpayer what they ought to know.”

The day after the issuing of the censored report saw another suicide bombing in the heart of the Afghan capital’s most heavily secured district, killing five people and wounding at least 20. The blast took place within about 500 yards of the US Embassy and near other diplomatic compounds and offices of international agencies. It is the latest in a series of such blasts that have killed at least 70 people in Kabul over the past month, underscoring the Ghani government’s tenuous hold even over the capital. Last May, a massive truck bomb in the diplomatic district killed 80 people and wounded hundreds.

The only other time the US military has classified such data was in 2015 when the Obama administration was orchestrating the formal handing over of security to the Afghan security forces, and then the data was kept secret for only a few days.

The key reason for censoring the information can be found in the last uncensored report, which pointed to unsustainable losses suffered by the Afghan forces in the first four months of the year, with 2,531 troops and police killed and another 4,238 wounded. This points to an increase in the already punishing toll recorded for all of last year: 6,700 dead and 12,000 wounded.

Casualties, desertions and other sources of attrition have led to a drop of 4,000 in the total number of Afghan troops and 5,000 in that of police. Of course, the overall losses are far greater, given the continuous recruitment of impoverished youth as cannon fodder in the US-led war.

The reliability of the figures provided by the Afghan military on the strength of its forces are, in any case, suspect. It has been estimated that up to 17 percent of the Afghan National Army’s official troop total could be made up of so-called “ghost soldiers,” names of soldiers who are no longer serving, but kept on the rolls so that senior officers can collect their paychecks.

Further underscoring the crisis within the US-backed forces were the latest report’s figures indicating a “sharp increase” in so-called “insider attacks” involving attacks on the Afghan security forces and their US “advisors” by Afghan soldiers and police: “From January 1 to August 15, 2017, there have been 54 reported insider attacks: 48 green-on-green and six ‘green-on-blue’ attacks, when ANDSF personnel turned against their Coalition counterparts. This is an increase of 22 green-on-green and four green-on-blue attacks from last quarter.”

Other figures that were included in the report also point to a steadily deteriorating situation for the US-backed regime and the American occupation. Afghan forces were said to be in control of just 56.8 percent of the country’s 407 districts—the lowest share since SIGAR began keeping figures—having lost control of an additional nine districts to the Taliban over the last six months. Moreover, government controlled areas included just 63.7 percent of the Afghan population, far below the 80 percent which the senior US commander on the ground, Gen. John Nicholson, promised to Congress in February.

The report issued Tuesday also found that the number of civilian casualties inflicted by the US military and the security forces of the Afghan regime had increased by 52 percent this year, attributable in large measure to the escalation of US air strikes, with 2,400 conducted between January and September and more bombs and missiles dropped on the country than at any time since 2012, during the Obama administration’s “surge.” At least two-thirds of those killed and maimed by the US and its puppet forces are women and children, according to the report.

The day before the issuance of the censored SIGAR report, US think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies posted an analysis by Anthony Cordesman, a longtime advisor of the Pentagon, that indicated increasing pessimism within the US military and intelligence apparatus over the Afghanistan intervention.

Cordesman painted a picture of an Afghan military consisting of poverty-stricken youth forced into the army because of lack of work in a country that “has become an economic nightmare for all too many of its citizens.”

“Much of the better paid service sector in the Afghan economy collapsed with the departure of US and other foreign troops in 2012-2014,” Cordesman writes, with “all too many of the better educated and more skilled Afghans” leaving the country.

His report cites World Bank figures estimating an overall poverty rate of 39.1 percent, climbing to 46 percent in the rural areas. The bank estimates Afghan per capita GDP at just $590, making it the poorest country on earth outside of sub-Saharan Africa.

An unemployment rate estimated at between 30 and 40 percent for military age males “pushes men—especially young and inexperienced men—into the military out of sheer economic survival and without regard for patriotism or the nature of the cause,” Cordesman writes.

He describes Afghanistan as “one of the worst and most corrupt political structures and governments in the world,” lacking any “coherent political leadership” and characterized by “warlords and power brokers, and a steadily increasing dependence on a narco-economy.”

The situation, he adds, has “ominous historical precedents” that ended in the defeat of “what appeared to be a superior army.” He cites similar levels of corruption and demoralization leading to the defeat of the South Vietnamese army in 1975, the collapse of Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist Army in 1949 and the disintegration of Fulgencio Batista’s security forces in the face of the 1959 Cuban revolution.

In other words, US imperialism is confronting another historic debacle in its 16-year-old war in Afghanistan. Its only answer is to give the military free rein to escalate the bloodshed, increasing the number of air strikes and sending in more troops, while organizing CIA “hunt and kill” militias and drone strikes. At the same time, it is seeking to draw India into a conflict that could rapidly escalate into a broader war involving a confrontation with South Asia’s other nuclear power, Pakistan.

The suppression and censorship of information is an integral part of this escalation of a war that enjoys no significant support by the American people.

Irish Aid Casement Fellowship in Human Rights for Nigerians 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 20th December 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Nigeria

To be taken at (country): Ireland

About the Award: The Roger Casement fellowship has been established to honour the memory of the Irish human rights activist Roger Casement who spent some of his early working life in Calabar, Nigeria. He was an early advocate for human rights while in Nigeria, and, famously, during his later work in the Congo, the Amazon and in Ireland. With his humanitarian legacy in mind, it has been decided to support one Nigerian student to study a master’s degree in human rights in Ireland.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: Candidates will need to have achieved the necessary educational standard to be accepted onto a Masters course in a Higher Education Institute in Ireland. In addition, there are a number of essential requirements to be eligible to apply for this scholarship.

Candidates must:

• be a citizen of Nigeria and be residing in Nigeria
• have achieved the necessary academic standard to be accepted onto a master’s level course of study in Human Rights
• have a minimum of three years relevant work experience.
• be able to demonstrate a strong commitment to the development of Nigeria.
• be able to take up the fellowship in the academic year for which it is offered.
• meet any relevant procedural requirements of Government of Nigeria.
• be able to demonstrate skills in academic English by achieving an appropriate score on a recognised test (IELTS 6.5).

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Under the Casement fellowship, full financial support is provided for return airfares, full tuition, stipends to cover accommodation and subsistence costs, health insurance and other allowances, in addition to the necessary entry arrangements such as medical examination and visa.

How to Apply: It is important to go through the application requirements before applying.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Irish Aid

New York University (NYU) Africa House Fellowship Programs 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 28th February 2018

To be Taken at (country): USA

About the Award: NYU Africa House fellowships include:

1. Africa House/CTED Development Impact Fellowship;
2. NYU Africa House Thoyer Fellowship;
3. Robert Holmes Travel/Research Award for African Scholarship; and
4. NYU Gallatin and Africa House Summer Fellowship.

Africa House/CTED Development Impact Fellowship: This fellowship of $1,500 is awarded to two (2) students to cover costs associated with research activities linked to the search for innovative solutions that have the capacity to enrich the lives of people in the developing world. Fellowships support undergraduate and graduate students to cover costs associated with research projects undertaken in the Spring, Summer, or Fall of 2018, in the following Africa House/CTED research areas:

• Economic and Political Theory
• Economic Development, Mobile Apps, Rural Tourism
• Food and Agricultural Markets
• Migration and Diaspora
• Local Governance, Cultural Norms, and Development of Property Rights

Eligibility:

• Applicants must be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program at New York University, graduating no sooner than May 2019.

Requirements:

• Explain how you plan to participate in the intellectual life of Africa House/CTED in the Africa House Fellowship Application Form.
• Author or co-author one (1) research paper providing findings of your research project, to be submitted to Africa House/CTED in Spring 2019.
• Present research findings in-person at Africa House in Spring 2019.

Applicants should submit the following in one PDF file: 


1. Cover letter
2. Curriculum vitae
3. Two (2) letters of recommendation
4.  2-4 page Africa-focused research proposal. The proposal could be an outline of your research or a study that is presently underway that will be further enhanced by the fellowship.
5. Africa House Fellowship Application Form

Send applications and inquiries to africa.house@nyu.edu. Please include “Africa House/CTED Development Impact Fellowship” in the subject line.

NYU Africa House Thoyer Fellowship: This fellowship of $2,500 is awarded to two (2) outstanding graduate students to support Africa-focused study and research in the fields of economics, political economy, and related disciplines. Fellowships may be used to cover travel costs, living expenses, tuition, books, research expenses, and other relevant expenses while studying or pursuing research at New York University. The Africa House Thoyer Fellowship is rooted in the idea that development is more likely to occur where there is sustained, sound management of the economy, and that such management is more likely where there is an active, well-informed group of development experts conducting policy relevant research.

Eligibility:

• Applicants must be enrolled in a graduate program at New York University, graduating no sooner than May 2019.
• Open to students in the fields of economics, political economy, or related disciplines.

Requirements:

• Explain how you plan to participate in the intellectual life of Africa House/CTED in the Africa House Fellowship Application Form.
• Author or co-author one (1) research paper providing findings of your research project, to be submitted to Africa House in Spring 2019.
• Present research findings in-person at Africa House in Spring 2019.

Applicants should submit the following:

1. Cover letter
2. Curriculum vitae
3. One (1) letter of recommendation
4. 2-4 page Africa-focused research proposal. The proposal could be an outline of your research or a study that is presently underway that will be further enhanced by the fellowship.
5. Africa House Fellowship Application Form

Send applications and inquiries to africa.house@nyu.edu. Please include “Africa House Thoyer Fellowship” in the subject line.

Note: All your applications must be submitted in this order in one pdf minus the letters of recommendations

1. A cover page
2. 2-4-page research proposal

• 2 pages, double-spaced, 12 point Times New Roman, 1-inch margins
• Header Format: Student Last Name, First Name, Department, N-Number
• The proposal should be written for educated readers, but not experts in your field or members of your department (i.e. at The New York Times level). It should identify the proposal’s research question, thesis/hypothesis, methodology, significance, and budget etc.

3. Curriculum vitae (c.v.)

• Header format: Student Last Name, First Name, Department, N-Number

4. Two (2) letters of recommendation

• Faculty should submit their signed letters of reference directly to africa.house@nyu.edu, with attention to Kingsley Essegbey.
• Must assess the general quality of the applicant’s academic work, the expected contribution of the research proposal to academia, and the prospects for publishing the full work either in whole or in part.
• One letter must be from the applicant’s faculty advisor.

5. Naming your application pdf

• Name your application pdf in this order: Student last name, first name, N-Number, Name of fellowship, and add 2018-2019.

Robert Holmes Travel/Research Award for African Scholarship: Two awards of $2,500 for Summer 2018 are available to outstanding graduate students to support study and research in Africa. Doctoral student applicants should, within one year of the award, expect to complete any remaining coursework and requirements (qualifying, comprehensive and language exams) other than the dissertation. Exceptional Master’s students, proposing research contributing to their theses, are eligible to apply. The awards support the research and study abroad of scholars in the humanities and social sciences and may be used for visits to research sites, such as archival resource facilities, libraries, and fieldwork locations that will be necessary for later sustained dissertation research. Award recipients are expected to make a presentation of the research as part of the Africa House programming, if possible during the Spring 2019 term. Doctoral students who are nominated but not selected for the Holmes Award will automatically be considered for the GSAS Pre-Doctoral Summer Fellowship, as detailed above

NYU Gallatin and NYU Africa House Summer Fellowship: NYU Gallatin and Africa House will award up to $5,000 to a Gallatin student whose concentration would benefit from travel to and research on Africa in Summer 2018. Specific research areas are open, but preference will be given to ones that focus on economics, development, or travel and tourism, including cultural tourism. This research should be closely linked to an existing or developing concentration; prior related coursework is expected. In the Spring semester, the student will be given the opportunity to present her or his findings at a forum sponsored by Gallatin and Africa House.

The fellowship recipient will be expected to spend at least five weeks in Africa in Summer 2018. The recipient will be responsible for arranging, with the assistance of Gallatin’s Office of Global Programs, her or his travel and accommodations. These arrangements must comply with University practices regarding health and safety.

Eligibility:

• Gallatin undergraduate and graduate students. Undergrads must be between their sophomore and senior years and must have at least one full semester of registration remaining upon completion of the research project—so not graduating before January 2019. Graduate students must have completed at least one semester of study and should not have already enrolled in their thesis and defense credits.

Type: Fellowship

Visit Program Webpage for Details

Award Provider: New York University

Austria: What Happened?

THOMAS KLIKAUER

In Austria’s recent elections (15^th October 2017), Adolf Hitler and Gustav Schwarzenegger’s ideological successors –called FPÖ– did extremely well shifting yet another country in Europe to the extreme right. The clear winner was the arch-conservative ÖVP (31.5%) followed by the social-democratic SPÖ (27%) and the crypto-Nazi party FPÖ (26%). The Greens failed to jump Austria’s 4% limit to enter parliament while the neo-liberal NEOS (5.3%) just managed it. Finally, the right-wing of the Greens is represented by Peter Pilz (4.4%). There no longer is a true left party in Austria’s parliament.

Overall, a marked move to the right has been detected allowing the conservative poster-boy Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) to present himself as the election winner. Meanwhile, the Greens received a truly disappointing result. They had received 12.4% in 2013. After splitting the party, eco-conservative Peter Pilz remains as a semi-Green. Unlike many Anglo-Saxon “first-past-the-post” election systems, Austria votes on proportional representation which means coalition building after the election. While also contemplating a minority government, the conservative leader Kurz (ÖVP) is most likely to enter a coalition with the xenophobic right FPÖ ending the conservative-SPÖ coalition that had governed Austria.

Meanwhile, the crypto-Nazi party leader Heinz-Christian Strache believes that around 60% of all Austrians agree to the FPÖ’s xenophobic-racist anti-foreigner and anti-EU program. In the case of a black-brown coalition (black is the traditional colour of conservatism in Europe while brown was/is the Nazi colour), Austria’s move to the right might have serious implications for a Europe already battered by Brexit. Potentially, Austria’s new coalition might also mean a move towards the so-called Visegrád States – a group of anti-EU states (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland) with Hungary’s right-wing demagogue Viktor Orbán as their ideological leader. There has been talk of Austria joining the group of authoritarian-nationalistic Eastern European states obsessed with the racial purification of Europe.

When seeking to understanding Austria (a country that gave us Josef Fritzl (a monster), Kurt Walheim (a Nazi and UN-boss), Gustav Schwarzenegger (terminator-father, Nazi volunteer and Wehrmacht policeman) and Adolf Hitler), perhaps it is most beneficial to look at Austria’s own culture. Adolf Hitler was Austrian – not German. Nonetheless, Germany gave Hitler German citizenship so that he could enter German politics and become Germany’s chancellor in a conservative-Nazi coalition in 1933. What explains the continuation of Austria’s racist radical right? Perhaps the movie “Dog Days” (if you can stomach it!) and of course Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek’s seminal masterpiece “The Piano Teacher”. Both works deliver a most insightful description of Austria and the Austrians. Behind Austria’s idyllic pretence lurks an ugly truth. Perhaps “Dog Days” and “The Piano Teacher” can explain the continued prevalence of Austria’s extreme right.

Austria’s extreme right is, in parliamentarian terms, connected to the FPÖ – home of many of Austria’s ex-Nazis. The origins of the FPÖ date back to the immediate post-Nazi years when several splinter organisations –among them plenty of ex-Nazis– sought to set up a “third camp” next to Austria’s traditional two-party split between conservatives and social-democrats. The FPÖ’s actual founding date is 3^rd November 1955 with the first convention held in 1956 by SS-Brigadier Anton Reinhaller who was “briefly” interned between 1950 and 1953. Displaying early eagerness and ideological conviction, Reinhaller had joined the Nazi party before Austria was annexed by Nazi-Germany. In his FPÖ convention speech Reinhaller highlighted his nationalistic belief founded in membership of the Germanic race.

Throughout the 1960s, the FPÖ remained a fringe party. In 1970, the FPÖ’s new leader, Waffen-SS Obersturmführer Friedrich Peter temporarily supported Austria’s social-democratic SPÖ. Roughly 10 years later, a more liberally oriented –e.g. not too obvious Nazi– wing gained the upper hand in the party. Still, many inside the FPÖ remained faithful to its Aryan roots. So much so that the FPÖ’s own defence minister welcomed back old Nazi and war criminals returning from overseas exile.

In 1986, the most charismatic 1986 FPÖ leader appeared on the scene: Jörg Haider whose parents where both Nazis with his mother being a high ranking Nazi (BDM-Führer). FPÖ’s Haider’s repeated political tactics was to say what he believes and later apologise for it: “I was misunderstood, let me clarify, etc.” Haider called SS men decent people and believed that Nazi employment policies were good. Of course with no mentioning of slave labour and concentration camps. Untill today, Haider’s sudden death (11^th Oct. 2008) via a traffic accident is paved with speculations about homo-erotic “boys” parties(Buberl-Pary).

Barely ten years later, the once fringe party may well be in a governing coalition in Austria with 51 seats of Austria’s 183 seat parliament while the social-democratic party received 52 and the conservatives 62 (NEOS: 10 and Pilz: 8). In a conservative-FPÖ coalition, the FPÖ will continue its crypto-Nazi policies albeit with a petit-bourgeois cover. It means, for example, a staunch rejection of any refugees who could no longer enter Austria as the FPÖ seeks to protect the racial make up of Austria. The FPÖ’s Islamophobic policies are known as believing in a coming Islamisation of Europe. Entering a coalition government, FPÖ party leader Strache was once a member of Germany’s neo-Nazi Viking youth grouping that was declared illegal. He quickly moved on to a radical right student organisation taking part in para-militaristic war games. To camouflage his past and his affiliations with German neo-Nazis, Strache announced that he will not tolerate “Nazi-glorification” and outright “Anti-Semitism” – the wolf in sheep’s skin.

Meanwhile, the FPÖ’s party program speaks of Austria’s nationalistic identity and the protection of its soil while securing its borders. Exiting the EU may also be on the cards albeit not yet too openly paraded. Nonetheless, there is party talk of Öxit following Britain’s Brexit. Two years ago, FPÖ boss Strache threatened the EU president with exactly that. Ideologically, the FPÖ sees itself linked to France’s National Front, Britain’s Ukip, and Holland’s Geert Wilders. In line with that, the FPÖ is against any expansion of the EU. It has announced that if Turkey were to become an EU member, Austria should leave the EU. In sum, the FPÖ will ossify nationalism.

Not surprisingly and much in line with TV-clowns like Trump, the FPÖ too denies global warming. Meanwhile, it views the family unit as the core of its nationalistic daydream of a purified Austria. The party also rejects same sex marriage. Despite all this, the FPÖ is no outright Nazi party. It does hot have uniformed storm troopers beating up Jewish people, does not run concentration camps, does not dream of a Greater Austria through military means, and does hark back to a mythical Aryan race. Despite this, the FPÖ is no good news for Austria, Europe, the world, and least of all, the remaining progressive forces in Austria.

Early Queensland election points to political instability in Australia

Mike Head 

Queensland state Labor Party Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk last Sunday called an election for November 25, sending voters to the polls several months early, with an election campaign to last less than four weeks. The decision has clear national implications, and provides an insight into the underlying social and political crisis across the country.

Via the snap election, the Labor Party in Queensland and nationally is seeking to capitalise on the disarray of the Liberal-National Coalition federal government in the wake of last week’s High Court ruling disqualifying National Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and four other MPs. While the supreme court did so on the reactionary nationalist basis that the five MPs technically held dual citizenships, the verdict has also exacerbated the fragility of the one-seat majority Coalition government.

The election could signal a new stage in the decay of the two-party system that has prevailed in Australia since World War II.

After three years of pro-business and “law and order” policies to boost police powers, Palaszczuk’s government has opened the door for the extreme right-wing, anti-immigrant Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party to possibly win enough seats to hold the so-called balance of power in the next Queensland parliament.

Such a development could boost One Nation’s capacity nationally to exploit the acute distress in working class and regional areas of the country. Like Trump and similar outfits in Europe and New Zealand, Hanson’s party specialises in diverting discontent over falling wages, unemployment and under-employment in xenophobic and divisive directions. It seeks to scapegoat refugees, migrants and “foreigners,” especially from China and Middle East for the social inequality and problems caused of by the capitalist profit system.

Media polls in Queensland indicate support for both traditional ruling parties, Labor and the Liberal National Party (LNP), is at near-record lows—with Labor on 35 percent and the LNP on 34 percent. One Nation is polling up to 16 percent, which may translate into holding 6 to 12 seats in the 93-member legislative assembly. One Nation’s support is concentrated in the most impoverished parts of the state, where polls indicate its vote could hit 30 percent.

In effect, One Nation, a rabidly nationalist formation, could determine which party forms the next state government. That is, either Labor or the LNP could form a de facto coalition with One Nation, although both are currently ruling out a formal partnership with it.

Typifying Labor’s commitment to meeting the needs of the corporate elite, Palaszczuk, a long-time party functionary, opened Labor’s election campaign on Sunday by saying she called the poll “to give business and industry in our great state the certainty they need.”

Labor’s backing for big business has included offering lucrative royalty rebates—yet to be publicly quantified—to the proposed Adani coal mine in central Queensland. If the $20 billion open-cut mine proceeds, scientists have warned that it could endanger regional underground water supplies and the Great Barrier Reef.

Last Saturday, Palaszczuk underlined Labor’s other main policy—bolstering the police apparatus to deal with social unrest—by announcing another 400-person increase in police numbers. She boasted that this was in addition to the more than 300 officers the government had added since 2015, taking the total police numbers to 11,800 full-time equivalent officers, with a record budget of $2.37 billion for 2017-18.

Together with other state Labor premiers, Palaszczuk this month joined hands with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s federal Coalition government to agree to an extraordinary increase in police powers. Under the guise of dealing with terrorism, the provisions further develop a police-state apparatus for suppressing opposition to the bipartisan program of austerity and war preparations. The measures include “real-time” use of facial recognition technology to monitor the population, 14-day police detention without charge, including for children as young as 10, and expanded powers to call out the military to deal with domestic unrest.

Parliamentary government in Queensland, the third most populous state, has become increasingly unstable since the 2008 global financial crisis.

For the past three years, Palaszczuk has headed a minority government, propped up by various independents and ex-Labor MPs. In 2015 Labor clawed its away back into office on the back of an electoral landslide against the widely-hated LNP government of Premier Campbell Newman. Newman and his treasurer, Tim Nicholls, who is now state LNP leader, had made a frontal assault on health, education and other public services, axing 14,000 public sector jobs.

Labor also benefited from the widespread hostility to the federal Coalition government, then headed by Tony Abbott, particularly over its plans for upfront charges to see doctors, higher tertiary education fees and the scrapping of penalty wage rates.

Just three years’ earlier, in 2012, Labor was thrown out of office after two decades in power under premiers Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh. Labor had responded to the 2008 economic meltdown, which ended the state’s AAA credit rating, by privatising $15 billion worth of more public services, on top of the electricity grid, at the expense of thousands of workers’ jobs. In recognition of her political services, Bligh was this year appointed CEO of the Australian Bankers’ Association, representing the interests of the big banks. Palaszczuk was a leading minister in Bligh’s government.

Labor’s years in office, both before and after 2012-15, have left a trail of devastation in working class areas. Even on under-stated official figures, unemployment remains stuck at near 20 percent in the southern and western suburbs of Brisbane, the state capital. This is almost four times the national and state average of less than 6 percent.

Official unemployment is also in double-digit figures in regional centres such as Ipswich, parts of the Gold Coast, Townsville, Rockhampton, Mackay, Bundaberg, Gladstone and Mount Morgan, especially where workers have been severely affected by the sharp downturn in mining and smelting industries since 2011.

Almost as many workers are “under-employed”—trying to find more work—and youth unemployment rates are up to double the overall level. In the northern city of Townsville, for example, the youth joblessness rate is estimated at 22 percent.

In a cynical bid to head off rising anger over soaring living costs, and to cover Labor’s tracks on electricity privatisation, Palaszczuk last week promised to give households a $50-a-year rebate on their power bills for two years. This is of little assistance to working class families, whose annual average bills now run to around $700 a year, and with another $140 rise predicted.

Australian Energy Regulator figures showed a 55 percent leap in the number of households in Queensland that had their power cut off in the three months to March. With more than 18,000 disconnections in the first nine months of 2016-17, the total is set to top the previous year’s 21,667.

Whichever government is formed after November 25, it will be under intense pressure from the financial markets to step up the slashing of social spending in order to further drive down workers’ wages and conditions, cut business taxes and lift profits. Because of the ongoing slump in mining and related industries, financial media outlets are warning that total state debt is forecast to rise to $81 billion in 2020-21.

Yet the trade unions, which all backed Beattie and Bligh, joined by the pseudo-left groups, are urging voters to elect yet another anti-working class Labor government.