New Zealand government prepares attack on foreign students

Sam Price

New Zealand’s Labour Party-led coalition government, which includes the Greens and the right-wing NZ First, is preparing to slash foreign student numbers as part of a broader assault on immigrants and the country’s tertiary education system. It plans to cut immigration by 20,000 to 30,000 entrants per year, or up to 40 percent, mostly by targeting students.

International students would no longer be permitted to work while studying unless they are enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program, or the school provides work as part of their study. Graduates from lower-level courses will be barred from applying for a 12-month post-study visa.

According to Labour’s web site, its proposed changes will result in 6,000 to 10,000 fewer student visas and a reduction of 9,000 to 12,000 post-study work visas. New regionalised skills shortage lists will reduce the number of work visas by a further 5,000 to 8,000.

The web site asserts that immigration has “contributed to the housing crisis, put pressure on hospitals and schools, and added to the congestion on roads.” Working with the Trump-like NZ First, the Labour Party is scapegoating immigrants to divert attention from the real source of the social crisis. For decades, Labour and National Party governments alike have carried out pro-business restructuring and austerity measures, including cuts to health, education and housing. The lack of affordable housing is the result of rampant speculation by investors, of whom the overwhelming majority are privileged layers in New Zealand.

By whipping up anti-Chinese xenophobia, in particular, the government is also seeking to condition the population to support a US-led military conflict with China.

The tertiary education system has suffered decades of cuts and user-pays policies, beginning with the 1980s Labour government’s introduction of student fees. Successive governments have encouraged ruthless, profit-driven business practices in major universities and smaller private training establishments (PTEs), resulting in hundreds of cuts to academic jobs and wages and the closure of departments and entire institutions.

Labour campaigned for the September 23 election with a fraudulent promise of “free education.” In fact, course fees will be abolished for one year, for first-time students only. This will not ease the pressure on tertiary institutions or reduce the $15 billion total student debt. International students, who frequently pay $20,000 to $40,000 in course fees annually, will not be eligible for any free courses. This includes Australians who have not lived in New Zealand for at least three years.

Labour will continue the National government’s crackdown on training providers offering qualifications below a bachelor’s degree to international students, which Labour described as a “back door” for residency.

The party’s web site states that, “10,000 fewer Private Training Establishment enrolments will reduce fee revenues by $70 million.” This will force smaller PTEs, which often provide training in specialist trades such as IT, to shut down, making thousands of teachers and academic staff redundant.

When Labour announced its immigration policy in June, Independent Tertiary Education New Zealand representative Christine Clark warned it could cause 70 percent of the PTE sector to collapse. On October 31, she told Radio New Zealand the changes to student visas and rules for lower-level training establishments would result in “up to 10,000 job losses.”

There have been hundreds of job cuts in the tertiary education sector already in recent years.

Unitec, in Auckland, announced 300 job cuts in 2015. In April 2017, Waikato University cut 17 jobs in its Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Otago University confirmed in October that it would cut 160 equivalent full-time positions. Also in October, NorthTec announced a plan to axe 50 jobs and potentially close down its campuses in Kerikeri and Rawene.

The Labour government will preside over hundreds more job cuts.

In early December, Auckland-based Best Pacific Institute of Education announced its closure after a funding cut by the government, affecting 150 staff and 1,200 students.

In November, 1,000 staff throughout Massey University’s Auckland, Wellington and Manawatu campuses were sent letters asking for voluntary resignations as the university sought to slash around 90 jobs as part of a drive to cut $15.7 million in costs. Over 70 staff accepted offers to resign, including several internationally sought-after scientists.

The government’s Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) sets unrealistic passing and retention targets, often as high as 85 percent, for institutions to qualify for government funding. These targets increase annually. A Tertiary Education Union (TEU) survey in March 2017 found 63 percent of educators felt pressured to pass failing or cheating students so institutions could continue accepting their fees to offset reduced government funding.

University lecturers also complained of pressure to produce “worthless” research, at the expense of teaching time, so their institute would be eligible for the Performance Based Research Funding system, which Labour introduced in 2003.

Labour bears chief responsibility for the ongoing cuts to tertiary education. After introducing fees in 1989, Labour passed the Education Amendment Act in 1990, which made all tertiary institutes independent legal entities, dropped the exclusivity of bachelor’s degrees from universities, and encouraged competition between institutes. The act laid the foundation for PTEs to proliferate.

Government funding for PTEs began under the Clark Labour government in 2000, based on the number of students enrolled. Labour established the TEC in 2003, which determines the amount of funding an institute receives based on how successfully it can turn a profit.

Far from fighting the assault, the TEU has assisted the job cuts by keeping each dispute isolated and opposing any political and industrial campaign against austerity. The union sought to subordinate workers to Labour’s election campaign and issued a December 15 statement falsely declaring that the new government is “committed to publicly funded and publicly controlled tertiary education.”

Last June, the union endorsed Labour’s plan to cut foreign student numbers, claiming this would shield institutions from global market volatility. On September 28, the TEU also praised the right-wing populist NZ First’s Tracey Martin as “a passionate advocate of accessible education at all levels.”

In opposition to the nationalist and pro-capitalist perspective of the unions and the political establishment, the Socialist Equality Group and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) insist that everyone must have the right to study and work in any country they choose, with full democratic rights.

Billions of dollars are needed to restore the education system, wipe out student debt and provide free, accessible education and decent living allowances for all students. Staff must be guaranteed job security, high wages and a manageable workload. Education must be made genuinely public and freed from the narrow interests of big business and the profit system.

We call on students who support these socialist demands to join the IYSSE and help us to establish branches at universities, polytechs, PTEs and high schools.

Deaths continue to mount amid freezing temperatures across much of the US

Trévon Austin

The death toll from cold-related fatalities continues to rise as below freezing temperatures persist across much of the United States. Freezing temperatures were reported Tuesday night in every state of the continental US Tuesday night.

At least three more lives have been claimed since Monday when the death toll stood at nine. The deep freeze reached even the deep south, forcing cities to open warming centers.

In Houston, Texas, police said two homeless people died from exposure to freezing cold temperatures. Tuesday night was Houston’s coldest of the season, reaching temperatures in the low 20s Fahrenheit.

A 75-year-old woman was found dead, along with her three dogs, in her home in Clemmons, North Carolina. Her home caught fire, and firefighters found her deceased while fighting the flames. According to the Winston-Salem Journal, the elderly woman had various health issues and needed an oxygen tank.

In Hutchinson, Kansas, a family’s home was set ablaze after an attempt to thaw out frozen pipes with an open flame. The entire family was able to escape their home, but firefighters stated the cause of the fire is common when temperatures drop below freezing.

The rising number of deaths from cold at the beginning of this year has exposed the severity of the affordable housing crisis in the United States, the wealthiest country in the world.

As the market value of homes in the US reached a record high of $31.8 trillion by the end of 2017 the number of homeless people increased for the first time since the Great Recession, with more than 553,000 people recorded as homeless.

Economists point to rising home prices, economic growth, and a drop in national poverty levels to indicate a recovery from the 2008 housing crisis, but these “official” figures only obscure reality. In 2016, 13.5 percent of Americans were living in poverty—a rate similar to pre-2008 recession levels—but even the high official rate is not representative of the actual conditions confronted by millions of workers.

According to Vox, the way poverty is measured in the United states is sorely out of date. Poverty levels are based on the “subsistence food budget” for a family. The measure was developed in 1961 using family food consumption data from 1955. In no way does it capture the needs of a household in 2017.

Much of the rise in homelessness is connected to the ever rising cost of housing while real wages have stagnated. The median wage in the United States has remained virtually unchanged since the 1970s, only rising by 0.2 percent per year when adjusted for inflation.

According to the Guardian, the hourly wage needed to afford housing in New York City is $27.29, and $22.78 in Los Angeles, but the median US wage is just $17.86. The reality is similar in other cities across the nation, meaning millions of Americans cannot afford housing.

The tax reform bill signed into law late last year by President Donald Trump is already threatening to exacerbate the affordable housing crisis. According to a report by the NHP Foundation, the tax law is expected to eliminate 300,000 affordable housing units over 10 years, primarily because it will reduce the value of banks’ low-income tax credits, which finance half of all affordable housing units.

The need for affordable housing in the US is quite pressing. According to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, the number of renter households in the US has been steadily rising, but more than a quarter of the growth is represented by households living on less than $15,000 a year. For these Americans, a missed paycheck or loss of a job could mean homelessness.

More Britons than ever forced into homelessness due to rent increases

Tom Pearce 

In the run up to the New Year, the cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of MPs called homelessness a “national crisis.” They revealed that more than 9,000 people were rough sleepers and 78,000 families were living in temporary accommodation in England alone.

Homelessness is hitting families that previously would not have been affected.

In his report, “Still No Place Like Home,” Michael King—the local government and social care ombudsman—notes that in 2016-17 one in three complaints received about homelessness services delivered by English authorities came from outside London. A majority were from people who found themselves in a situation where they have been “forced to call on their local council’s help by the increasing unaffordability of private tenancies.”

King said, “Our cases show many preconceived ideas about the people affected by homelessness simply no longer ring true. The increasing cost of private rents has meant we have seen a shift towards more people in professions such as nursing, and their families, becoming affected.”

Many families are finding themselves on the brink of homelessness due to being priced out of the housing market. One-third of cases involved councils in South-East England, often in affluent areas with high housing costs, such as Berkshire, Sussex and Kent.

“People are coming to us not because they have a ‘life crisis’ or a drug and alcohol problem, but because they are losing what they thought was a stable private-sector tenancy, being evicted and then being priced out of the [rental] market,” King said.

In April 2004, the government introduced legislation to limit the use of bed and breakfast (B&B) accommodation for homeless families—The Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) (England) Order 2003. The law states that bed and breakfast accommodation is not suitable for families or pregnant women unless no other accommodation is available and, even then, must only be provided for a maximum of six weeks.

During 2016-17, 450 complaints were issued to the Ombudsman concerning temporary accommodation and homelessness. Of the cases investigated, a staggering 70 percent found that councils were at fault.

There’s Still No Place Like Home references the 2013 report, No Place Like Home, on the inappropriate use by councils of bed and breakfasts (B&Bs) to house families. Four years later, the same problems have worsened and there has been no coordinated response nationally in implementing recommendations—put forward by the ombudsman—to avoid people being shoved into B&Bs “for months on end.”

The horror stories featured in this year’s report reveal a situation comparable with Victorian slum housing. Living conditions for many are such that many councils—following a complaint to the ombudsman—spend thousands of pounds paying compensation to residents due to the poor state of the accommodation they provided.

One family with two young children lost their home when they were evicted from their private tenancy and were placed in a B&B. They all lived in one room together and had to share washing and cooking facilities with other tenants. The shower didn’t work, and cockroaches were found in their bedroom. The owner did not address these problems and they spent significantly longer than is legal in the accommodation. The council paid the £1,750 in compensation.

Other stories show the impact of welfare cuts on the most vulnerable. A single mother with a disability—requiring the use of crutches—and her four children were forced into B&B after they became homeless due to her welfare benefits changing.

The council placed her in an unsuitable property with steps separating key facilities. To worsen the situation, “the rooms were two floors apart so Susie [the mother] would either be separated from one or more of her children, or they had to share crowded conditions.” The accommodation was found to be uninhabitable due to its appalling condition. Despite this, they lived in this situation for two years and four months.

Council delays causing additional stress on the poorest are detailed in the case of Rebecca, a mother of three children, including a baby with Type 1 diabetes. They were housed in a B&B without access to cooking facilities. The council made Rebecca wait until bailiffs came to evict her before rehousing the family in temporary accommodation. She was moved on numerous occasions between different types of housing, each one unsuitable. Her baby son was hospitalized due to infections. The report concluded, “The council had plenty of opportunity to secure suitable accommodation for Rebecca and her family before she became homeless, but failed to do so.”

In another case, the council paid out £2,325 for the injustice caused to a family who had to live in a single room with one kitchen shared with five other families. The kitchen had only one working hob and was filthy, and bed bugs were found along with stained bedding.

Under the Conservative government’s austerity programme, councils are under immense pressure due to the slashing of budgets. This is set to worsen, with councils facing a £5.8 billion overall funding shortfall by 2020.

The reduction and removal of vitally needed services—carried out mainly by the Labour Party-led councils in urban areas—has resulted in many thousands of job losses, leading to mistakes being made to the detriment of many families.

The most graphic example of the indifference of the authorities to the fate of those thrust into homelessness is that of the Grenfell fire survivors. Out of 208 households that needed homes following the tragedy, 118 are still in hotels and bed and breakfasts(B&Bs) or living with friends, including 29 families with children. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council has acted unlawfully by having families spend more than six weeks in B&B accommodation. When the figure is adjusted to include residents forced to leave blocks adjacent to Grenfell Tower, it is estimated that a staggering 857 people, including 303 children, spent Christmas in temporary accommodation.

The PAC’s figures are damning, but they are an underestimation of the true number of homeless people in one of the richest countries on the planet.

The BBC reported in December on the phenomenon of the hidden homeless. Usually young people, who are dubbed “sofa surfers,” find themselves sleeping in friends’ houses as a stop-gap before they eventually get their own accommodation. However, some youth interviewed had been doing this for over six years. This group are usually not included in official statistics, but UK-wide research commissioned by the BBC found that out of 1,000 questioned, “41% of young people had stayed with friends for at least one night and 9% did so for over a month.”

Facebook deleted accounts at the behest of US, Israeli and German governments

Niles Niemuth

Facebook has admitted to deleting the accounts of Palestinian activists and journalists at the behest of the Israeli government as well as the accounts used by the former leader of Chechnya at the command of Washington in an active campaign of international political censorship.

The social media company, which has more than 2 billion active users worldwide, has also been systematically removing hate speech and other “illegal” content from its platform in Germany.

Facebook, which has nearly 4 million active users in Israel, has been engaged in a “censorship rampage” against activists and journalists who oppose the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory according to the Intercept’sGlenn Greenwald.

The current campaign of censorship against Palestinians began after high-level meetings in September 2016 between Facebook representatives and Israeli officials including Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked of the far-right, pro-settlement Jewish Home party. Shaked once notoriously referred to Palestinian children as “little snakes.”

After the meetings with Facebook, Shaked publicly bragged that the company had granted 95 percent of more than 150 requests by Tel Aviv for removal of content during a four-month period that the Israeli government declared “incitement.”

Following the Israel-Facebook summit, ten administrators for the Arabic- and English-language Facebook pages for the Palestinian Information Center, with more than two million followers, had their accounts suspended, seven permanently. Facebook also briefly took down the page run by Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, when it posted a picture of Yasser Arafat holding a rifle.

Most recently the former head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, had both his Facebook and Instagram accounts deleted at the behest of the US last month. According to Facebook, it had deleted the two accounts, which had approximately 4 million followers, after the Trump administration had placed Kadyrov on a financial sanctions list.

The move against Kadyrov sets the precedent that allows the US government to silence the social media accounts of any foreign politician or official who may voice opposition to US interests by placing them on a sanctions list.

Along the same lines as the US and Israeli government’s censorship campaigns, the German government adopted a new law in October that bans “hate speech” and other “illegal” content on social media outlets by threatening the companies with a possible $56 million fine if they do not quickly remove offending posts.

Coinciding with the new law, Facebook opened a “deletion center” in Essen, Germany employing 500 censors to sort through posts and delete comments, videos and photos that violate the company’s rules. The first such deletion center in Germany was opened in Berlin and now employs 700 people.

Richard Allan, Facebook’s European Vice President for Public Policy, reported last year that 15,000 posts had been deleted in a single month for violating Germany’s hate speech laws.

In what was reported to be the first use of the new social media hate speech ban, Beatrix von Storch, the deputy parliamentary leader for the right-wing extremists Alternative for Germany, had her Twitter and Facebook pages blocked after she posted a racist comment disparaging Muslim man. The offending post was promptly deleted by the social media companies’ censors.

While Facebook’s campaign is justified publicly by targeting right-wing extremists and autocrats, the real aim is to use these powers against anyone who is branded an “extremist,” in particular political opponents of the financial oligarchy. Facebook’s censorship campaign, carried out in coordination with Western governments, is of a piece with Google’s efforts to block access to left-wing and antiwar web sites by demoting their pages in search results, resulting in traffic drops by as much as 75 percent.

Germany’s “Network Enforcement Law” goes into effect: A move to censor the Internet

Johannes Stern

The German Network Enforcement Law (NetzDG) went into effect on January 1. The law, drafted by Social Democratic Justice Minister Heiko Maas and passed by the outgoing Grand Coalition with the Christian Democrats, is a massive attack on free speech. Under the guise of fighting “fake news” and “hate speech”, it enables the state to regulate and censor the Internet.

The law requires operators of Internet platforms with more than two million users to remove or block access to “obviously illegal content within 24 hours of receiving the complaint.” For “unlawful content,” a period of seven days applies. If platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat violate the rules, they face fines of up to 50 million euros.

The law opens the door to censorship of the Internet by multi-billion-dollar corporations, which already work closely with the state. It uses 21 specific legal norms—including slander, libel, blasphemy, sedition, violent images, use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations and violations of privacy through capturing images—as the basis for determining whether content can be reported and its immediate deletion demanded.

The law has already had far-reaching consequences. According to its own data, even before the NetzDG came fully into force, Facebook deleted 15,000 so-called “hate comments” a month. The corporations will now take even more aggressive action to avoid possible fines. To deal with the law, Facebook set up a second “deletion centre” with 500 employees in Essen in November, and further expanded the already existing centre in Berlin.

Even those who appeared as experts at the hearings in the Bundestag (parliament) said that the NetzDG is unconstitutional. “With the network law, the state is violating its duty of neutrality in the exchange of opinions. This affects a very fundamental basis of our democracy,” said lawyer Simon Assion of the German Bar Association. “It is quite possible that the leading figures of the state will exert a direct influence. The Federal Ministry of Justice has access to how social networks implement their deletion mechanisms.”

The law is part of an international campaign to censor the Internet. In mid-December, the Trump administration abolished net neutrality in the United States, giving US Internet Service Providers the ability to throttle and block content. At the same time, the European Union is preparing to set up an anti-“fake news” agency to censor the Internet. These measures serve one purpose above all” to suppress and censor left-wing news and views that contradict the official political line of the government and the establishment media.

At the last debate in the Bundestag on NetzDG in December, Tabea Rößner, the spokeswoman for the Greens, justified the regulation of the Internet by declaring: “Quality journalism is one of the bulwarks against irrationality and brutalization of public discourse. It deserves our critical but constructive supervision.” Just as the state must “ensure the fulfilment of the function of public service broadcasting”, it is “obliged to integrate social networks into the legal system of a free constitutional state”.

The expansion of Internet censorship is also supported by the Left Party, which introduced its own bill in the Bundestag. In the debate, Left Party deputy Anke Domscheidt-Berg described the current version of NetzDG as “ineffective”, as it did not apply to the Russian platform Vkontakte “and other platforms”. She also found “an initiative of the federal government to increase and train personnel at the investigating authorities” to be lacking.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is now objecting after an anti-refugee tweet by deputy chair Beatrix von Storch was blocked by Twitter, is not against the censorship of the Internet. In the parliamentary debate, far-right deputy Markus Frohmaier said angrily: “Again and again it is repeated here that the AfD wants law-free areas on the Internet. That’s not true. If you had listened to us, then you would have realized we are simply saying… something like that should be heard in the courts and not transferred to private companies.”

The agenda of the right-wing extremists is well known. While spreading their reactionary rhetoric using the cynical argument of freedom of expression, they work closely with the establishment parties and the state to suppress left-wing and anti-militarist views.

When the German government banned the Internet platform “linksunten.indymedia” in August last year, AfD chairman Jörg Meuthen cheered: “The action against the left-wing extremist platform linksunten.indymedia was long overdue… I have been calling for it for more than a year. Now that the election date is approaching, action is finally being taken. Very late and very predictable, but at least it shows: The AfD is effective.”

While the ruling class is adopting the extreme right policies of the AfD, it is aggressively opposed to platforms exposing the crimes of capitalism and the return of German militarism and discussing left-wing and socialist perspectives. In close coordination with German government circles, Google has been censoring left-wing and progressive websites since last April, most notably the World Socialist Web Site.

The NetzDG will be used primarily to suppress left-wing and socialist opposition. Maas, who is responsible for the law, had already called for the establishment of a European database of left-wing radicals and for a “rock against the left” concert after the demonstrations against the G20 summit in Hamburg. Now he is using the alleged attacks on the security forces on New Year’s Eve to argue for a massive increase in police powers.

In the 200th anniversary year of Karl Marx’s birth, the ruling class in Germany and around the world is once again confronted with the spectre of revolution. A recent comment on news platform Spiegel Online titled “Welcome, Year of Upheavals!” warns: “The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer: society has to change so that inequality does not tear it apart—and so we have a turbulent year ahead of us.” And further: “There are now enough people who understand that this will not go on forever—that inequality tears apart every society and eventually leads to struggles and revolutions.”

The efforts of ruling classes internationally to control speech online are aimed at suppressing and blocking the growth of such a movement.

Working class opposition erupts in Iran: A harbinger for the world in 2018

Keith Jones

The long-suppressed and brutally exploited Iranian working class has burst onto the scene shaking Iran’s bourgeois-clerical regime.

Since Dec. 28, tens of thousands have defied the Islamic Republic’s repressive apparatus and taken to the streets in cities and towns across the county. They have done so to voice their anger over food price rises, mass unemployment, gaping social inequality, years of sweeping social spending cuts and a pseudo-democratic political system that is rigged on behalf of the ruling elite and utterly impervious to the needs of working people.

The scope and intensity of this movement and its rapid embrace of slogans challenging the government and the entire autocratic political system have stunned Iranian authorities and western observers alike. Yet, it was preceded by months of worker protests against job cuts and plant closures and unpaid wages and benefits.

In the days immediately prior to the eruption of the antigovernment protests, discussion of the ever-deepening divide between Iran’s top 1 and 10 percent and the vast majority who live in poverty and economic insecurity raged on social media. The trigger for this explosion of popular discontent was the government’s latest austerity budget. It will further slash income support for ordinary Iranians, raise gas prices by as much as 50 percent, and curtail development spending, while increasing the already huge sums under the control of the Shia clergy.

Yesterday, after days of an ever-widening mobilization of security forces, mass arrests, and bloody clashes that left at least 21 dead, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, declared the unrest over: “Today we can announce the end of the sedition.”

The rulers of the Islamic Republic are trying to justify their brutal crackdown with spurious claims that the protests are being manipulated by Washington and its principal regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, as part of their incendiary drive for regime change in Tehran.

The claim that the current protests are akin to those mounted by the Green Movement in 2009 is a base slander meant to justify a bigger crime. The Green challenge to the results of the 2009 Iranian presidential election was a long-prepared political operation that followed the script of similar US-orchestrated “color revolutions” in the Ukraine, Georgia, Lebanon and elsewhere. It was aimed at bringing to power those elements of the Iranian elite most eager to reach a quick rapprochement with US and European imperialism. It drew its popular support almost exclusively from the most privileged layers of the upper middle class, who were mobilized on the basis of neoliberal denunciations of the populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for “squandering” money on the poor.

The current challenge to the Iranian regime is of an entirely different character. It is rooted in the working class, including in smaller industrial cities and district towns; draws its greatest support from young people who face an unemployment rate of 40 percent or more; and is driven by opposition to social inequality and capitalist austerity.

Whatever the immediate fate of the current wave of protests, a new stage in the class struggle has opened in Iran that will unfold over the coming weeks and months. What is certain is that the working class, having thrust itself onto center stage, will not be quickly or easily silenced.

The working-class unrest in Iran has already upset the calculations not just of the Iranian elite, but of governments around the world. Trump, whose anti-Muslim travel ban targets Iranians, has hypocritically and fatuously claimed his “support” for the protests, with the hope that he can use them to demonize Tehran and thereby provide grist for US war preparations against Iran. The European powers have been more circumspect, and not only because the protests cut across their plans to cash in on the Iranian government’s offers of oil concessions and cheap labor. They fear the destabilizing impact of mounting class struggle in Iran on the entire Middle East.

To understand the significance of the resurgence of the Iranian working class for Middle East and world politics, it is necessary to examine it in historical context.

The 1979 Iranian Revolution, which overthrew the tyrannical US-sponsored regime of the Shah four decades ago, was a massive, working class-led, anti-imperialist social explosion. It was a growing wave of political strikes that broke the back of the Shah’s regime, and in the months that followed, workers seized factories, placing them under the control of workers’ councils.

But a social revolution expropriating the Iranian bourgeoisie and establishing a workers’ republic in alliance with the rural toilers was blocked by the nominally socialist organizations, above all the Stalinist Tudeh Party. The Tudeh party had deep roots in the working class, which had a long history of secularism and revolutionary socialism. But for decades it orientated to the impotent liberal wing of the national bourgeoisie and then in 1979 swung round to giving uncritical support to the Ayatollah Khomeini, on the grounds that he was the political leader of the “progressive” wing of the bourgeoisie and leading a “national democratic” (i.e. capitalist) revolution.

This aged Shia cleric had long been a politically marginal figure. But he was able to gain a mass following among the urban and rural poor by exploiting the political vacuum created by the Stalinists, and by drawing on the longstanding connections between the Shia clergy and the bazaar, the bastion of the traditional wing of the Iranian bourgeoisie.

With the working class politically neutralized by the Stalinists, Khomeini was able to reorganize the state machine following the Shah’s overthrow while manipulating and diverting the mass movement, then restabilize bourgeois rule through savage repression of the political left, including the Tudeh party, and the destruction of all independent workers’ organizations.

These developments fed into and were part of a broader process in which, due to the betrayals of the Stalinists, Islamist forces were able to politically profit from the mounting crisis of the postcolonial bourgeois nationalist regimes and movements, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, and their inability to realize their bourgeois-democratic programs.

Before his death in 1989, Khomeini oversaw a further lurch to the right of the Islamic Republic, with a turn to the IMF and overtures to the “Great Satan,” US imperialism. This had been prepared the previous year in a further ferocious assault on the left, in which thousands of political prisoners were killed.

Over the course of the past three decades, Iran’s government has been led by different factions of the political elite, including so-called “reformists” and Shia populists like Ahmadinejad. All have further rolled back the social concessions made to working people in the wake of the 1979 revolution and savagely suppressed the working class.

The Western press has long sought to vilify Iranian politics and social life. But at its core, the experience of the working class in Iran mirrors that of workers around the world, who for decades have faced an unrelenting assault on their social rights and politically have been utterly disenfranchised.

In response to the 2008 crisis, the universal response of the bourgeoisie has been to drastically intensify this class war. Precarious employment, crumbling public services, unprecedented social inequality, exclusion from political life and the threat of imperialist war—this is the lot of workers the world over.

But the period in which the class struggle could be suppressed is coming to an end.

In country after country around the world, the parties, organizations and political mechanisms, including the establishment left parties and pro-capitalist unions, through which the bourgeoisie has managed its affairs and above all suppressed the class struggle are breaking down.

The events in Iran will resonate across the Middle East, where the working class has passed through decades of bitter experiences, not only with the secular bourgeois nationalist movements, but also with various forms of Islamist politics, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party in Turkey.

And while the ignoramus Trump tweets about injustice in Iran, how different will American workers deem their circumstances from those of Iranian workers? Last month as the Iranian government was presenting a budget that slashes social spending while funneling additional money to the mullahs, the US Congress rewarded the rich and super-rich with trillions in additional tax cuts. These tax cuts are now to be paid for through a massive assault on Social Security, health care and other core social rights.

The events in Iran must be recognized as a harbinger of a vast eruption of working-class struggle around the world.

The task of revolutionary socialists is to turn into this movement and to fight to arm the international working class with an understanding of the logic of its needs, aspirations and struggle. Capitalism is incompatible with the needs of society. Working people, the class that produces the world’s wealth, must unite their struggles across state borders and continents to establish workers’ political power, so as to undertake the socialist reorganization of society and put an end to want and imperialist war.

SPIE Scholarship in Optical Science and Engineering for International Students 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 15th February 2018

Eligible Countries: All

To Be Taken At (Country): Any

About the Award: The Optics and Photonics Education Scholarships are available to SPIE student members located anywhere in the world, in high school (pre-university/secondary), undergraduate and graduate programs, who are studying in optics, photonics or a related field.

Students are eligible to receive one (1) Education Scholarship for each academic level including high school, undergraduate, Master’s and PhD.

Preference may be given to those who have not received any previous awards from SPIE.

 If awarded the Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship, funds must be used for the 2018-2019 academic year (Aug 2018-Jul 2019).

Type: Secondary school, Undergraduate, Master’s and PhD.

Eligibility: All Students, both full- and part-time are eligible to apply.

• You must be a Student Member of SPIE. Standard Student Membership Fee is $20 (US).
• High school, pre-university, secondary school students will receive a one-year complimentary Student Membership. Fill in the Pre-College Membership Application Form and return to scholarships@spie.org
• Must be enrolled in an optics or photonics program or related field
• Must be in school for the full academic year beginning Fall 2018
• Two recommendations are required. Family members/relatives/students are not eligible to write recommendations.
• If applicable, all Annual Scholarship Reports must be on file with SPIE if you received a scholarship previously. Please contact scholarships@spie.org to confirm that your report is on file (if applicable).
• Incomplete applications will not be submitted for consideration.
• All students will be notified of the results of their application in May

Selection Criteria: The key criterion in evaluating and ranking applications is the “prospect for long-term contribution that the granting of an award will make to the field of optics, photonics or related field.” Need, in and of itself, shall not be considered as a criterion.

All scholarship applications are judged on their own merit, based on the experience and education level of the individual student. High school (pre-university, secondary school), undergraduate, and graduate students will be judged relative to other applicants with similar educational backgrounds.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The Education Scholarship award amounts vary from $2,500 to $11,000 and typically support tuition, books, research activities, and other education-related expenses.

How to Apply: Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship Application 

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: SPIE

5th African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications (ASP) Program for all African Students (Fully-funded Training Program in Namibia) 2018

Application Deadline: 31st January 2018

Eligible Countries: African countries

To Be Taken At (Country): University of Namibia, and Namibia University of Science and Technology Windhoek, Namibia

About the Award: The ASP activities consist of the following components:

1. A 3-week scientific program for 60–80 students from all over Africa with a minimum if 3 years university education in mathematics, physics, computing and/or engineering. ASP2018-Namibia;
2. African Conference on Fundamental Physics and Applications (ACP) organized in parallel to the students and teachers activities. It  includes invited and contributed talks in many different tracks. ACP2018-Namibia;
3. A one-week workshop is organized to train 70–80 high school teachers for improved physics teaching;
4. A one-week program that consists of outreach to motivate 200–250 learners to develop and maintain interest in physics;
5.  A forum that consists of talks, discussions and debate about the role and the future of ASP in capacity development in Africa;
6. Continuously,  an active mentoring and coaching program to help ASP students.

Members of the International Organizing Committee made a site visit to Namibia on June 12-16, 2017. The objective of the site visit was to meet with the Local Organizing Committee and to converge on a program of actions leading towards a successful ASP.

Fields of Training: The ASP includes lectures, demonstrations, experimentation and hands-on tutorials in the following ares:

• Astrophysics and Cosmology;
• Nuclear and Particle Physics;
• Accelerator, Medical and Radiation Physics;
• High Performance Computing;
• Physics Education;
• Physics Communication;
• Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency;

Type: Training

Eligibility: Priority will be given to:

• African students with a minimum of 3-year university education in physics, mathematics, engineering or computer science;
• Students that did not attend any previous editions of ASP.

Value of Award: Selected students will receive travel coverage, accommodation and full board.

Duration of Program: It is planned for June 24 – July 14, 2018.

How to Apply: Application materials needed:

• CV
• Statement of interest
• All university transcripts
• One letter of recommendation from university advisor

Application to be submitted online here.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: African School of Physics

Amsterdam Merit Scholarships (AMS) for International Masters Students 2018/2019 – The Netherlands

Application Deadline: Deadlines for the AMS differ per Faculty or Graduate School. Click the each course link to view specific scholarship deadlines.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Fields of Study: The Amsterdam Merit Scholarship (AMS) is eligible for these fields. Also, you can find the specific eligibility requirements, selection criteria and application instructions on the Faculty or Graduate School websites.

• Child Development and Education
• Communication
• Economics and Business
• Humanities
• Law
• Medicine
• Psychology
• Science
• Social Sciences

About Scholarship: The University of Amsterdam (UvA) aims to attract the world’s brightest students to its international classrooms. Outstanding students from outside the EU/EEA can apply for an Amsterdam Merit Scholarship (AMS).

Offered Since: 2015

Type: Masters taught

Selection Criteria: The applicant must meet the eligibility criteria in order to be considered for the AMS scholarship. The applicant should:

• hold a non-EEA nationality or nationalities only;
• not be entitled to receive a Dutch study grant or loan (Studiefinanciering);
• not be eligible to pay the reduced tuition fee rate for EEA students at the UvA;
• not receive a full coverage scholarship for the same period of study as the AMS scholarship;
• have submitted a complete application to one of the (Master’s) programmes of the UvA;
• have been (or will be) admitted to one of the (Master’s) programmes of the UvA;
• be able to comply with the conditions to obtain a Dutch visa (if applicable).

Number of Scholarships: The UvA will award up to 15 of these scholarships annually.

Value of Scholarship: € 25,000

Duration of Scholarship: 1 year.

How to Apply: Applications for the Amsterdam Excellence Scholarship (AES) are made through the admissions office of the faculties and graduate schools. As long as you meet all the requirements, you can apply for the AES at the same time as you register for your programme.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Sponsors: University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

US Government Fulbright Teaching Excellence and Achievement (TEA) Program for International Teachers 2018

Application Deadline: Each country sets its own application deadlines. Please inquire from the US Embassy or Fulbright commission in your country or territory for deadline information.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: See list of countries below.

To be taken at (country): USA

About the Award: The Fulbright Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program (Fulbright TEA) brings international teachers to the United States for a six-week program that offers academic seminars for professional development at a host university. Participants observe classrooms and share their expertise with teachers and students at the host university and at local secondary schools.

Type: Short courses/Training

Eligibility: Details for this program may vary by country. In general, applicants must meet the following criteria:

• Current secondary school-level,* full-time teacher in an institution serving primarily a local population;
• A bachelor’s degree or equivalent;
• Five or more years of classroom experience as a teacher of English, English as a foreign language (EFL), mathematics, science, or social studies, including special education teachers in those subject areas;
• Proficient in written and spoken English with a TOEFL score of 450 on the paper-based TOEFL or an equivalent English-language examination;**
• Demonstrated commitment to continue teaching after completion of the program; and
• A complete application.

*Secondary-level teachers include both middle and high school teachers working with students between approximately 12 and 18 years of age. Teachers responsible for teaching additional grade levels must teach middle school or high school students more than 50% of their work time in order to be eligible for the program.

**A limited number of participants with TOEFL scores between 425 and 450, or equivalent, will be accepted for the program in a special cohort that will include additional English-language training as part of the professional development program.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program is fully funded pending availability of funds.

Duration of Scholarship: 6 weeks

Eligible Countries: Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt,  El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Malawi, Mali, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Russia, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, West Bank/Gaza, Zambia, Zimbabwe. 

How to Apply: APPLY NOW

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the US Department of State.

Global Minds Doctoral Scholarship Program for PhD Students in Developing Countries at K U Leuven 2018/2019 – Belgium

Application Deadline: 31st January 2018

Eligible Countries:

• Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea, Cameroon, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Niger
• Asia: Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia, Palestinian Territories, Vietnam
• Latin America: Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Peru

To be taken at (country): Belgium

About the Award: The aim is to give students the opportunity to conduct PhD research in a ‘sandwich’ system, which means that 50% of the research takes place at KU Leuven and 50% at the home institution of the scholar, supported by a local co-promotor. The PhD-degree is awarded by KU Leuven.

The scholarships are offered to excellent proposals that deal with a development-relevant research topic, preferably linked to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Having obtained their doctoral degree from KU Leuven, the PhD-holders are expected to utilise their expertise at the university in their home country.

KU Leuven is situated at about twenty kilometers from Brussels, the capital of both Belgium and Europe. It is the oldest university of the Low Countries. As such, it has a long-standing tradition of hospitality towards students and scholars from abroad. Currently, almost 7,000 international students (about 15% of the total number of students at KU Leuven) have found their home away from home in Leuven.

Type: Doctoral

Eligibility: 

1. The applicant must be a citizen of one of the countries indicated in the VLIR-UOS scholarship country list.
2. The applicant may not possess a citizenship from an EU country. The applicant may not possess a long-term EU residence permit.
3. The candidate’s latest master’s degree must have been awarded no more than ten years prior to October 1st, 2018 (including the ongoing calendar year).
4. The candidate must hold an academic qualification at least equivalent to a high distinction. Degrees obtained with a final score equivalent to second class second/lower division will not be taken into consideration.
5. The research project must have excellent academic quality, with a special focus on the development relevance of the proposal.
6. The research project must have a clear time frame in which it is indicated how the research periods at KU Leuven and at the home institution alternate (one has to alternate a maximum of 12 months at the home institution with a maximum of 12 months at KU Leuven).
7. The candidate must be formally affiliated to a university in the home country as an employee. In case the candidate has no such affiliation yet, he/she is eligible to apply to this scholarship programme but will only be granted the scholarship once such an affiliation is obtained.
8. The applicant’s home university must demonstrate sufficient support for the doctoral project, guaranteeing that the candidate can dedicate himself/herself sufficiently to conducting doctoral research during the periods spent at that home institution. Candidates who are not yet affiliated to a university in their home country do not yet have to demonstrate the support of the home university. However, the Scholarship will only be granted once the candidate is formally affiliated to a university in the home country and when, consequently, that university can demonstrate sufficient support.
9. Candidates who are already enrolled as PhD-students at KU Leuven and who are financed by KU Leuven are not eligible for this programme. However, they might be eligible for the IRO PhD Scholarships.
10. Candidates who have been employed before in an EEA-country other than Belgium, are not eligible for this scholarship. They may be eligible for the IRO PhD Scholarships though.
11. The candidate must demonstrate a development-oriented motivation.
12. The candidate must be supported by a KU Leuven promoter.
13. The candidate must be supported by a local co-promoter at the candidate’s home university.
14. The candidate must be supported by excellent recommendations from relevant referees.
15. The candidate has read and agreed to the Regulations, obligations and conditions for terminating the GM PhD scholarship
16. Please do not submit your application unless it fulfills the conditions enlisted above. Incomplete or late applications will not be taken into consideration without exception.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The scholarship covers ALL related expenses (full cost).

Duration of Program: The Doctoral programmes will last for one or two academic years while the shorter predoctoral programmes will last 14 to 90 days.

How to Apply: The candidate must follow the application procedure  and complete his/her file before January 31, 2018. Please make sure to fill in the application form with the following instructions:

• First name and last name EXACTLY as written on the passport.
• Type of programme: Doctoral Programme (diploma contract) or Predoctoral programme. Select the doctoral or predoctoral programme in your field of study.
• Academic year:  you must select 2018-2019.
• Is this application also intended as a scholarship application? Yes.
• Name of the scholarship agency: Global Minds Doctoral Scholarship

It is important to go through ALL Application instructions and requirements on the Program Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: The Global Minds programme is managed by IRO, the University’s Interfaculty Council for Development Cooperation.

Rekindling the Emancipation Proclamation

Jesse Jackson

One hundred forty-five years ago on Jan. 1, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, helping to transform this country from a union of states into a nation, from a country stained by slavery into one moving at great cost closer to “liberty and justice for all.”

On Jan. 1, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, the Republican president, issued the proclamation on his own authority as commander-in-chief “in time of actual armed rebellion” against the United States. The emancipation was grounded on his wartime powers, as a “fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion.”

The emancipation did not end slavery in the United States. It applied only to the states still in rebellion, exempting the slave owning border states such as Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky that still had slaves. Lincoln was desperate to keep the border states from joining the South. Some abolitionists ridiculed him for this. “Where he has no power, Mr. Lincoln will set the negroes free, where he retains power we will consider them as slaves,” declared the London Times.

But the doubters did not understand the significance of the proclamation and its words. The president announced, “all persons held as slaves” in the states “in rebellion against the United States” are “forever free.” He called on the newly freed people to abstain from all violence and declared that they were eligible to be “received into the armed service of the United States.”

The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass hailed it immediately as “an act of immense historic consequence.” The proclamation, as James McPherson put it in “Battle Cry of Freedom,” “marked the transformation of a war to preserve the Union into a revolution to overthrow the old order.” This was extremely controversial, even in the North. There were violent protests in both the North and the South against the use of black troops. Black regiments were segregated, paid less than whites and commanded by white officers.

Yet after years of battle, most Northerners would embrace anything that would help weaken the rebellion and hasten a victorious end to the war. Despite resistance, 179,000 black soldiers and nearly 10,000 black sailors bolstered Union forces through the end of the war. Victory, all now understood, would mean the abolition of slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation was hailed in England, ending all talk of recognizing (and aiding) the South.

The proclamation, a wartime act of necessity, turned the tide on slavery. It led directly to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that outlawed slavery, the 14th Amendment that guarantees equal protection under the law, the 15th Amendment that prohibits states from denying the right to vote on the basis of race or color.

The war — America’s bloodiest conflict — continued to take its deadly toll for over two more years after the Emancipation Proclamation. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln described the “terrible war” as “the woe due to those” in both North and South for the “offence” of American slavery. He called for “malice toward none” and “charity for all,” that we “bind up the nation’s wounds” to create a just and lasting peace. Forty-one days later he was assassinated. Reconstruction soon was reversed into segregation, enforced by Klan terrorism. It would take another century and a civil rights movement to fulfill the promise implicit in Lincoln’s proclamation.

Few Americans take the time to read the Emancipation Proclamation, yet it is as central to the foundation of modern America as the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. The night before it was issued, there were vigils and church gatherings of people in anticipation. This year, dozens of ministers have agreed to hold sessions to read and discuss the Emancipation Proclamation. This country paid a terrible price to remove the scourge of slavery and become one nation. At a time when some would drive us apart, it is worth remembering the sacrifice and the triumph.