US to set up 30,000-strong “border force” in Syria

Peter Symonds

In a provocative step that immediately fuelled tensions with Turkey and Russia, the US announced last weekend the establishment of a 30,000-strong Border Security Force (BSF) in enclaves of Syria under the control of the American proxies fighting to topple the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. The BSF will be dominated by fighters from Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), alongside elements from various Islamist militias.

Having proclaimed the defeat of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Washington has no intention of leaving Syria. It is determined to carve out a swathe of territory from which to prosecute its goal of ousting Assad. The latest move will not only intensify the civil war in Syria but bring the US into direct conflict with Russia and Iran, which back the Assad regime, and Turkey, which regards the YPG as a direct military threat.

Colonel Thomas Veale, a spokesman for the US-led coalition against ISIS, announced that the 15,000 troops of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) would form the core of the new army. “Currently, there are approximately 230 individuals training in the BSF’s inaugural class, with the goal of a final force size of approximately 30,000,” he said.

Testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Thursday, David Satterfield, acting US assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, revealed that the Trump administration’s aims, beyond the continued suppression of ISIS, involve the consolidation of the SDF in the north and northeast of Syria, and the countering of Iranian influence.

The war against ISIS was only ever a pretext for advancing US plans for regime change in Damascus as the means for combatting Iranian and Russian influence in Syria. Far from destroying ISIS, the US, which maintains 2,000 troops in Syria, and its local proxies ensured the safety of thousands of armed ISIS fighters. According to Russia, these ISIS fighters are being trained and integrated into anti-Assad forces.

Under pressure to explain why US forces are being kept in Syria, Satterfield blurted out: “We are deeply concerned with the activities of Iran, with the ability of Iran to enhance those activities through a greater ability to move matériel into Syria. And I would rather leave the discussion at that point.” In other words, the Trump administration is preparing for a war in Syria to oust Tehran’s ally Assad that could easily spill over into a wider conflict with Iran, and potentially Russia.

At the same time, the US is facing possible Turkish military action that could destroy plans for a pro-American zone in Syria. Turkey, a NATO ally, is deeply concerned about linkages between the YPG and the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which it brands a terrorist group and has long sought to suppress. Three months ago, Turkish troops crossed the border into Syria near the YPG-controlled Idlib enclave in northern Syria.

Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accused the US over the weekend of “taking worrying steps to legitimise this organisation [YPG] and make it lasting in the region.” He warned: “It is absolutely not possible for this to be accepted.” Turkey would “continue its fight against any terrorist organisation regardless of its name and shape within and outside its borders.”

Erdogan condemned US support for the YPG, declaring on the weekend: “The US sent 4,900 trucks of weapons in Syria. We know this. This is not what allies do.” At a rally yesterday he reiterated his determination to “vanquish” the Kurdish militia. “We have finished our preparations,” he said. “The operation can start any time.” Erdogan accused the US of “creating a terror army on our border,” adding: “What we have to do is nip this terror army in the bud.”

The Syrian government denounced the planned pro-US border force as a “blatant assault” on the country’s sovereignty. The state-run news agency, SANA, cited a foreign ministry spokesperson as insisting that the army was determined to thwart the US “conspiracy, end the presence of the US, its agents and tools in Syria, establish full control over the entire Syria territory and preserve the country’s sovereignty.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday accused the US of seeking to split up Syria, saying it “does not want to keep Syria as a state in its current borders.” Washington was helping “the Syrian Democratic Forces to set up some border security zones.”

Lavrov stated: “What it would mean is that vast swathes of territory along the border of Turkey and Iraq would be isolated. It’s to the east of the Euphrates River. There are difficult relations between Kurds and Arabs there. There is a fear they are pursuing a policy to cut Syria into several pieces.”

Vladimir Shmanov, chairman of the Russian State Duma’s defence committee, warned that Russia would respond to the planned Syrian border force. “[It] stands in direct confrontation [with Russia’s interests] and we and our colleagues will certainly undertake certain measures on stabilisation of the situation in Syria,” he said.

The US announcement that it will train and equip a 30,000-strong military force is a desperate attempt to shore up its position in Syria. Diplomatically, it is Moscow, not Washington, that appears to be dictating the terms of negotiations over Syria, with plans for a conference in Sochi later this month to discuss the country’s future.

Militarily, the US-backed anti-Assad militias have suffered one defeat after another, not only because of Russian and Iranian support for the Syrian army, but because of widespread popular hostility, particularly to the reactionary Al Qaeda-linked elements supported by Washington.

The last remaining major Syrian opposition enclave of Idlib has been the focus of a major government offensive since the beginning of year. Into this volatile mix, the US has declared that it intends to stake out a claim by funding, training and arming a large new proxy army, only compounding the danger of a wider war.

Greek workers strike against Syriza’s imposition of EU austerity “multi-bill”

Alex Lantier 

Workers in Greece struck Monday against the Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) government and protests erupted in Athens in the evening, as Syriza rammed a 1,300-page “multi-bill” of European Union austerity measures through the Greek parliament. The conservative New Democracy, the social-democratic Democratic Alignment, the nationalist Union of Centrists and the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn voted against the bill in parliament.

Shipping and public transport in Athens were almost entirely halted, amid mass opposition to fresh EU attacks on basic social and democratic rights, including the right to strike. Athens subway, bus and tramway workers and air traffic controllers all took strike action. Schools were closed and hospitals operated on skeleton staffs as doctors joined the strike. Tens of thousands of people marched in two separate trade union protests in the capital.

Clashes erupted between protesters and riot police in Athens after the Greek parliament, led by Syriza deputies, voted 154 to 141 to approve the multi-bill, which slashes family welfare payments, facilitates foreclosures and includes draconian limitations on the right to strike.

Protesters threw Molotov cocktails, pieces of cement and stones, while police retaliated with tear gas and stun grenades.

The eruption of workers’ struggles against Syriza’s attack on the right to strike and the relentless assault on living standards mounted by the EU since the 2008 Wall Street crash marks a new stage in the international class struggle. It explodes the political lie, which the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) has consistently fought, that Syriza is a left-wing or socialist organization. It is a right-wing party, hostile to the workers.

It betrayed its election promises to end EU austerity and now plans to use antidemocratic methods to muzzle workers’ opposition.

This will have far-reaching implications well beyond the borders of Greece, as growing sections of the working class across Europe move into struggle against plans for mass layoffs and attacks on wages and social spending.

Similar petty-bourgeois populist and anti-Marxist parties across Europe that backed Syriza’s election—from Podemos in Spain to the Left Party in Germany, the New Anti-capitalist Party and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s organization in France, and the Socialist Workers Party in Britain—also stand exposed as enemies of the workers. The growing conflict between the working class and these forces, which pass for the “left” of the European political establishment and are closely linked to the trade unions, will have explosive and ultimately revolutionary consequences.

These events are exposing before millions of workers the increasingly threadbare parliamentary-democratic façade of the EU and the European national governments, which function as a dictatorship of the financial aristocracy to oppress the working class.

The Syriza deputies in the Greek parliament simply rubber-stamped the “multi-bill,” which was no doubt drafted by the EU and the major banks, without even bothering to read it. As Greece’s right-wing daily Kathimerini wrote, with some embarrassment, “hundreds of pages of draft legislation had to be debated over just a few days, and there are legitimate doubts about whether deputies will fully comprehend what they are voting for.”

It was widely reported and Syriza knew very well that the “multi-bill” contains drastic attacks, opposed by the people of Greece and Europe, on basic social and democratic rights. It includes provisions for electronic auctions of foreclosed homes, aimed at keeping residents and neighbors from physically blocking foreclosures; deep cuts to family benefits; and measures designed to block strike action, such as requiring 50 percent of all union members (as opposed to 50 percent of all union members present at a strike vote) to support strike action before it can be taken.

Reuters noted that this is a measure Greece’s “creditors hope would limit the frequency of strikes and improve productivity,” that is, increase the exploitation of the workers.

Speaking in the parliament yesterday, Syriza leader and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras tried to deny the socially counterrevolutionary character of this agenda. He pledged that this austerity package would be the last raft of cuts dictated by the EU to the Greek people under the terms of successive EU austerity memoranda. Hailing the “end of a long and difficult cycle,” Tsipras said, “We are one step before the end of the program and the final end of the memoranda.” He added, “In the summer, we will...leave behind a tough, unfair and harmful period.”

Denying that the “multi-bill” aims effectively to scrap the right to strike, which is protected in Greece’s constitution, Tsipras continued: “It’s a shameless lie [to claim] that this government is enforcing demands by creditors and industrialists to deregulate the labor market. The right to strike is a sacred conquest of the working class.”

The shameless liar here is Tsipras. His promises in parliament are as worthless as were his election promises to end EU austerity when he came to power three years ago this month. As he spoke in parliament, top EU officials were announcing that they would keep demanding draconian austerity measures in Greece even after the formal end of the EU bailout of the country.

“If there is further debt relief after the end of the program, then it is sensible to reach a further agreement,” Thomas Wieser, an associate of former German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and outgoing head of the European Working Group (EWG), told Kathimerini. This implies that the EU will demand additional devastating social cuts should Greece seek to declare bankruptcy or restructure its unviable €323 billion sovereign debt or again ask the EU for help in servicing its loans.

Syriza’s “multi-bill” is part of an assault on the right to strike and other legal rights carried out over a protracted period by the bourgeoisie across Europe. This includes Britain’s antiunion laws, the imposition of minimum service requirements banning public-sector strikes in large parts of Western Europe, and France’s state of emergency and labor law, which allow for the banning of protests and the imposition of sub-minimum wage salaries.

The protests in Greece are bound up with rising working-class militancy throughout Europe—with German metalworkers and British rail workers taking strike action, growing strike activity in Spain, growing social anger at the French government’s anti-worker agenda, and strikes by workers in Romania and other Eastern European countries. Faced with the escalation of the class struggle, the capitalist class is moving to tear up basic democratic rights.

The Syriza government is a fundamental strategic experience of the international working class as it goes into a period of resurgent class struggle. Struggles cannot proceed under the political and organizational control of the trade union bureaucracy and pseudo-left parties that, as the experience of Syriza abundantly shows, are hostile to the working class. The way forward is through the establishment of organizations of struggle independent of the trade unions that work to coordinate working-class resistance on a European and international scale.

Faced with the treachery and bankruptcy of Syriza, the working class urgently needs its own revolutionary political leadership, fighting for a socialist and internationalist perspective. This means the construction in Greece and every country of sections of the ICFI—the Trotskyist movement, which alone opposed Syriza from the standpoint of the international working class and warned of the treacherous role it would play before it came to power.

Pangea Accelerator Program for African Entrepreneurs 2018

Application Deadline: 19th February 2018

Eligible Countries: African countries

To Be Taken At (Country): Nairobi, Kenya

About the Award: The Pangea Accelerator offers dedicated expertise to help your company reach full potential and connect you to capital and investors to scale your company. Apply before 19th February for a chance to accelerate the growth of your company.

• Validation and Scalability: Get the skills and tools you need to validate and scale your business.
• Mentoring: Tap in to a pool of experience and expertise from the angel investor and diaspora communities in Europe, US and Africa. Learn from succesful entrepreneurs, angel investors and experts.
• Management and Operation: Learn how to run the daily operational activities of your business
• Access investors: As a startup, having the right investment and competence partner is a crucial aspect of growing your business. At Pangeaa, we match you with best investors to accelerate your company.

Field of Funding: Fintech – Agribusiness – Green Initiatives – Education – Healthcare – and many more.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: 

• Impact Driven Early Stage Startups: Your idea is unique and scalable.
• Pre-Revenue & Revenue Companies: You have either generated some income or in the process of doing so.
• Potential To Create Employment: Your project will create jobs in your community.
• Passionate Team: You believe in your project and work hard to reach your goals.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• Dedicated expertise to help you reach the potential in your team, business model and market strategy
• Matchmaking to connect you to capital and investors to scale your company
• Opportunity to get up to $50 000 in funding
• Working with other people going through the same challenges makes a huge difference

Duration of Program: 3 months

How to Apply: Apply in the Program Webpage (see Link below)

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Pangea, Strathmore University and @iLabAfrica

ACU Commonwealth Scholarships for Study in Low and Middle Income Countries 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 11th March 2018 at midnight GMT.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Commonwealth Low and Middle Income Countries

To be taken at (Universities): The following universities in Low and Middle Income countries:

• Bangladesh – University of Dhaka, one scholarship available (all Master’s courses)
• Botswana – University of Botswana, one scholarship available (all Master’s courses)
• Ghana – Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), two scholarships available (all Master’s courses)
• Ghana – University of Ghana, one scholarship available (all Master’s courses)
• Pakistan – COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT), two scholarships available (all Master’s courses)
• Rwanda – University of Rwanda two scholarships available (Computer Science, Engineering, Environmental Conservation, Medicine)
• Swaziland – University of Swaziland, two scholarships available (Animal Science, Conservation Ecology, Crop Science, Family Nursing Practice, Horticulture and Midwifery courses only)
• Tanzania – University of Dar es Salaam, one scholarship available (Agriculture, Economics, Engineering and Technology, ICT, Mathematics and Natural Resources courses only)
• West Indies – University of the West Indies, one scholarship available (various Master’s courses)

About the Award: Association of Commonwealth Universities is currently offering 13 scholarships, tenable at ACU member universities in 9 low and middle income Commonwealth countries. For more information about each scholarship and to apply, click on the Scholarship Webpage link below.

The scholarships give talented students – who can be from any Commonwealth country other than the host country – the opportunity to gain a Master’s degree while developing new skills and experiencing life in another country.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: 

• Applicant must be a citizen of a Commonwealth country other than the host country (See list of commonwealth countries in link above).
• Applicant must hold a Bachelors degree of at least upper second level.

Number of Awardees: 13

Value of Scholarship: The scholarships are fully-funded. They provide full tuition fees, a return economy flight, an arrival allowance, and a regular stipend (living allowance).

How to Apply: Interested candidates should click the Scholarship Webpage link below For more information about each university scholarship and to apply.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan (CSFP).

DAAD: German Egyptian Research Short-Term Scholarship Program (GERSS) for Egyptian Students 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 15th May 2018

Offered Annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Egypt

To Be Taken At (Country): Germany

Type: Masters, PhD, Short courses

Eligibility: 

• The programme is aimed at Master’s students, doctoral candidates and young postdocs.
• Applicants must be enrolled at a private or state university or research institute in Egypt.
• Applicants for a GERSS scholarship must have a Bachelor, Master or PhD degree.
• Age Limits
  – Graduates: should not be older than 26 years
  – Medicine / Dentistry Graduates: should not be older than 29 years
  – PhD candidates: should not exceed 36 years
  – Post doc candidates should not be older than 40 years
• Generally, candidates residing outside Egypt for a period longer than 6 months are not allowed to apply for GERSS
• Candidates who have been granted the GERLS scholarship may apply for GERSS – at least – one year after returning from Germany
• Applicants who have been rejected 3 times in the GERSS programme, are not entitled to reapply
• Candidates from non-public universities will be limited in number according to the internal regulations between MHESR and DAAD
• Applicants submitting dual applications in MHESR or DAAD programmes are kindly requested to inform the DAAD Cairo Office in writing
• Candidates who received a DAAD/MHESR funded scholarship at a certain academic stage are not allowed to apply for GERSS, unless they change their academic status
• Academic studies in musicology are offered within the GERSS scholarship; however instrumentalists can apply for the programme “Study Scholarship for Foreign Graduates in the field of Performing Artists”. For more information, please refer to the scholarship database (www.funding-guide.de)
• Candidates from the field of medicine / dentistry can only apply for GERSS, if they intend to visit Germany for research purposes with no direct contact with patients
• Applicants employed at the public universities or research institutes should fulfill the eligibility criteria of the mission Department

All applicants must submit proof of English language skills/abilities. The proof should be either IELTS (band 6.5) certificate or institutional TOEFL ITP (minimum score 550) or international TOEFL IBT (minimum score 80). Research projects submitted in German language in the fields of German studies, Islamic studies in German are exempted.
Please note: Post-doctoral candidates who can submit a proof that they have conducted their PhD degree in English language in the context of an international program could be exempted .

Selection Criteria: Selection will take place at the DAAD-Branch Office Cairo.
The candidates will be selected in two rounds. First, a pre-selection is a paper-based procedure which will identify the group of applicants who will be invited for the second phase consisting of a personal interview with the GERSS independent selection committee. Pre- and final selection of the candidates should be conducted according to, but not limited to the following criteria:

• Excellent Research proposal
• Scientific merits, including:
  – Quality of the proposal
  – Preparation and feasibility of the project
  – Quality of the acceptance letter
• Excellent study achievement

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: This programme funds research visits to a research institute, a state or state-recognised private university in Germany.

Travel allowance for scholarship holders:

• A lump sum will be paid for travel and an accident and liability insurance will be provided

Monthly scholarship payment according to academic status:

• Post-Doctoral scholarship holders will be granted an amount of Euro 2.145 (two thousand one hundred forty-five Euros) per month
• Doctoral and MSc scholarship holders will be granted an amount of Euro 1069 (one thousand and sixty-nine Euros) per month
• GERSS scholarship does not include family allowances

Health insurance:

• The amounts for the DAAD health insurance will be deducted from the monthly stipend of each scholarship holder
• One additional insurance installment will be added and will begin 15 days prior to the arrival to Germany and end 15 days after the scheduled departure date to Egypt

Duration of Program: The scholarships are awarded for a period of 3-6 months.  Scholarship periods are not extendable

How to Apply: The application is only valid, when all required documents are uploaded on the DAAD portal AND submitted as one hard copy to the DAAD Cairo office.

It is important to go through the Application Procedure in the Program Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: DAAD

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Internship Program for International Students 2018

Application Deadline: 21st January 2018

Eligible Countries: International

To Be Taken At (Country): Work is undertaken at IMF headquarters in Washington D.C.

About the Award: Interns are assigned cutting-edge research in macroeconomics or a related field (the exception being an internship in the IMF’s Legal Department), supervised by an IMF colleague. Fund interns work under the supervision of experienced colleagues to carry out a research project, and prepare a research paper. Papers may be presented to IMF staff at the end of the internship, and those of the highest standard may be published internally to the IMF.

Research topics are derived from the IMF work program—the host department’s needs. Past projects have delved into a broad spectrum of economic issues. A few of the 2016 and 2017 FIP research topics included:

• Preferential access to credit: evidence from Brazil
• Credit Demand and Supply during the U.S. Recovery
• Climate change—a contribution to this analytical chapter in the October 2017 WEO
• Impact of commodity price shocks on financial stability in developing countries.
• Explore non-linear effects of oil price shocks on growth (Kazakhstan).
• Spillover effects of ECB unconventional monetary policies
• Impact of foreign direct investment and portfolio investment on gender inequality in developing countries
• Systemic risk amplifiers for stress testing based on inferred networks
• Survey literature on public sector BSA
• Spillovers: measuring third party effects
• Technology and income polarization
• Carbon tax, structural transformation and inequality
• Consumption and wealth in Italy
• Debt sustainability, capacity to repay and other risk assessments
• Productivity and volatility in Europe/Euro Area
• Financing costs in sub-Saharan Africa—Overshooting or fundamentals?
• Trade Integration in Latin America
• Macroeconomic and structural policies and gender inequality
• Bond trading: big data analytics
• Evaluating post-implementation effects of the G20 financial regulatory reforms
• Benchmarking policy frameworks in low-income countries

The IMF’s Legal Department is also offering an internship under this program. The successful applicant will be assigned research for the Legal Department and be supervised by a senior member of the department. In past years, the Legal Department’s FIP has had the opportunity to complete:

• Analysis of the legal framework for capital controls under the European Economic Area
• Research on the insolvency of non-bank financial institutions
• Research on the legal mandate of the IMF in financial regulation
• Cross-country comparisons of effectiveness of AML/CFT efforts

Type: Internship

Eligibility: To be eligible for the FIP, candidates must meet the following criteria:

PhD students

• Must be within one to two years of completing a Ph.D. in macroeconomics or a related field and be in student status (i.e. must be returning to university after the internship). Typically, internships are sought by those who are interested in the IMF’s Economist Program following graduation from the Ph.D.
• Be below the age of 32 at the commencement of the internship.
• Have an excellent command of English, written and oral.
• Possess strong analytical, quantitative and computer skills.

Master’s degree students

• Must be in student status at the commencement of internship (not yet graduated).
• Be below the age of 28 at the commencement of the internship.
• Have an excellent command of English, written and oral.
• Possess strong analytical, quantitative and computer skills

Number of Awards: Internships are offered to about 50 students each year.

Value of Award: IMF interns receive:

• A competitive salary;
• Round-trip restricted economy class air travel to Washington, D.C. from their university; and
• Limited medical insurance coverage.

Duration of Program: between June and October 2018.  Internships are a minimum of 10 weeks duration, and maximum of 12 weeks duration.

How to Apply: 

• If you are a Ph.D or Master’s student in macroeconomics click here to enter the IMF’s job application system, then enter 1701251 into the field titled “Job Number”.
• For the Legal Department Internship: candidates must be within one or two years of completing an LLM, J.D, or equivalent advanced degree in law and below the age of 32. To apply for this internship, click here to enter the IMF’s job application system, then enter 1701249 into the field titled “Job Number”.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: IMF

Holland Scholarships for International Students 2018/2019 – Bachelors & Masters

Application Deadline:

• 1st February 2018
• 1st May 2018.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: international students from outside the European Economic Area (EEA)

To be taken at (country): Netherlands research universities and universities of applied sciences

Fields of Study: courses offered at the Universities

About Scholarship: The Holland Scholarship is financed by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science as well as several Dutch research universities and universities of applied sciences. This scholarship is meant for international students from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who want to do their bachelor’s or master’s in the Netherlands.

Type: full-time Bachelors, Masters.

Eligibility Criteria

• Your nationality is non-EEA.
• You are applying for a full-time bachelor’s or master’s programme at one of the participating Dutch higher education institutions.
• You meet the specific requirements of the institution of your choice.
• You do not have a degree from an education facility in the Netherlands.

Number of Scholarships: not specified

Value of Scholarship: The scholarship amounts to €5,000.

Duration of Scholarship: You will receive this in the first year of your studies.

How to Apply: The deadline for application is either 1 February 2018 or 1 May 2018. Please check your specific deadline on the website of the institution you want to apply to.

Further information about the application procedure, the participating institutions and the specific deadlines is available on the website of the institution of your choice.

Check further instructions below.

1. Choose a course and/or institution with the Studyfinder tool.
2. Check whether the Dutch higher education institution is participating.
   a. Participating research universities
   b. Participating universities of applied sciences
3. Check the selected fields of studies on the website of the Dutch higher education institution.
4. Check whether you meet the application criteria above.
5. You can start applying from 10th Jan 2018 onwards.
6. You need to apply for the Holland Scholarship directly at the institution of your choice and meet their selection criteria.
7. If you have any questions about the procedure, please contact the institution you are applying to directly.
8. After the application deadline, the institution you applied to will contact you to let you know if you have been awarded a scholarship.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Scholarship Provider: Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science as well as several Dutch research universities and universities of applied sciences.

Important Notes: You can find the specific closing dates and the fields of study for this academic year on the website of the institution you want to apply to.

Hong Kong Politics: a Never-Ending Farce

THOMAS HON WING POLIN

Hong Kong used to be the can-do capital of the world. Few economic achievements seemed beyond the reach of its plucky people and savvy entrepreneurs. Its public infrastructure was a marvel. The place exuded unbounded vitality and irrepressible self-confidence. Everything worked. Facilitating their feats were the British, who ran a superficially benign and reasonably efficient colonial dictatorship.

Came time in 1997 to return the prime booty of the Opium Wars to China, the Brits left behind a quasi-democracy designed to be dysfunctional. Against Beijing-friendly forces were entrenched a formidable coalition of Beijing-haters and mentally colonized West-is-besters. Naturally, the latter have been discreetly supported by the Anglo-American Empire — a fact Hong Kongers are too “polite” to point out forcefully even today.

The latest reminder of the territory’s predicament came this week, when carelessness on the part of the new Justice Minister over illegal structures at her home gave anti-Beijing forces an opening to fan a public scandal. Incredibly, the incident was a bizarre rerun of the controversy that crippled C.Y. Leung politically as he took office as HK’s Chief Executive five years ago. Coming after a series of battles typically manufactured by the opposition coalition, the new tempest prompted Michael Chugani, a prominent local newspaper columnist, to write:

“North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has a nuclear button. US President Donald Trump says he has a bigger one. We in Hong Kong have a self-destruct button. Kim and Trump haven’t used theirs yet but we use ours regularly. We press it first thing in the morning to blow ourselves up.

“When I wake up every morning, I put on the news. I see and hear people talk about co-location, political persecution, politicised judges, police fury over the jailing of comrades, Beijing’s heavy hand, and lately even illegal structures – a long-buried phrase that has returned to haunt us. It’s always the same people repeating the same points, which pass for news.”

Billing themselves as “pro-democracy,” this anti-Communist alliance has paralyzed governance in Hong Kong for two decades with its relentlessly obstructionist behavior. Such sustained, slow-motion suicide has dropped HK substantially down the global rankings of human accomplishment, sparked deep social divisions, and revived among the middle class a desire to emigrate. Above all, the internecine conflict has disenchanted many young HKers, turning them into rebels without a cause. Politically, their loss of direction and hope has been channeled by the pan anti-Communists into mindless, know-nothing opposition to both the local government and the central authorities in Beijing, worsening the tensions. Meanwhile, during the same 20 years, China achieved historically unprecedented progress and prosperity — which bypassed HK almost completely, thanks to the faux- democrats’ bone-deep Sinophobia and tireless efforts to segregate the two.

The anti-Communists’ control of the key sectors of education, the legal system and mainstream media, plus the protections of One Country Two Systems, ensured they would continue their depredations without let or hindrance. The intensification of their antics recently has turned political life in HK into a never-ending farce.

Summed up commentator Chugani:

“Our first post-colonial Chief Executive was forced out. Our second was jailed. Our third was so loathed he couldn’t seek a second term. And now we have Carrie Lam, who expected the political honeymoon her predecessors never got but is instead getting her teeth knocked out. Some are already saying she is the second coming of C.Y. Leung.”

New Zealand spy agency illegally accessed immigration data

Tom Peters

On December 12, New Zealand’s government-appointed Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Cheryl Gwyn released a report on the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), revealing that for almost 20 years the internal spy agency illegally accessed personal information held by the Customs and Immigration departments.

This is the latest in a series of revelations of illegal activity by the intelligence agencies. In 2013 and 2014, whistle-blower Edward Snowden exposed that the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB)—NZ’s external spy agency—carried out mass surveillance of New Zealanders. The agency also spied on the Pacific islands, China and other countries, as part of the US-led Five Eyes intelligence alliance.

According to Gwyn’s report, between 1997 and 2016, under successive Labour Party and National Party governments, the SIS used a Customs computer terminal to routinely gather information on the movements of people entering and leaving the country. The number of people whose privacy was violated by this tracking has not been revealed. Gwyn states that “at the time there was no lawful basis under the Customs legislation, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Act, or any other legislation” for this type of monitoring.

The Labour Party-led government welcomed the report and used it to argue that there were now good “checks and balances” on the intelligence agencies.

Andrew Little, the Minister responsible for the GCSB and SIS, told Radio NZ on December 14: “I’ve made it clear to both the directors general of both the services, and the agency, that I expect them to be fully compliant with the law at all times. They are now, and the reason we have the Inspector-General is to make sure there is a good check and balance on those services complying with the law.”

Asked whether anyone would be held accountable for decades of law-breaking, Little brushed the question aside, repeating that the spy agencies were “now acting lawfully” with “good, strong oversight.”

These sentiments were echoed by the corporate media. An editorial in the Dominion Post declared: “Democratic society owes Gwyn a debt of gratitude.” It described her as “the public’s only real watchdog over the spies.” The New Zealand Herald’s David Fisher wrote that the discovery of the illegal SIS conduct was “a signal of the extraordinary change our agencies have undergone in the past five years.” The newspaper’s liberal columnist Bryce Edwards gushed that Gwyn was “the brightest note in the spy sector [in 2017].”

The notion that New Zealand’s spy agencies are behaving more democratically than in the past is ludicrous.

In 2013, in response to revelations of illegal spying by the GCSB, the National Party government changed the law to greatly broaden the agency’s powers, making mass surveillance of New Zealand citizens legal. The move provoked large protests throughout the country.

In 2017, the National Party government, supported by the Labour Party, passed legislation that widened the powers of the SIS and the GCSB and allowed the two agencies to work more closely together.

In response to Gwyn’s report, director-general of the SIS Rebecca Kitteridge stated that the Intelligence and Security Act 2017 “explicitly confirmed NZSIS’s authority to access the [Customs and Immigration] databases.”

In other words, the SIS is “now acting lawfully” only because the law was changed, with bipartisan support, to legalise anti-democratic surveillance methods that were previously illegal.

Far from being an independent “watchdog”, as the media and political establishment portrays her, Gwyn was appointed to her role in 2014 by the then-National Party government. Having spent some years in an anti-Marxist Pabloite group in the 1980s, Gwyn later pursued a career in the state apparatus, working as Deputy Solicitor-General during the 1999–2008 Labour government.

Members of the Labour Party and its coalition partners the Greens and the right-wing populist New Zealand First attended rallies in 2013 and 2014, fraudulently presenting themselves as opponents of the National government’s moves to broaden the GCSB’s powers. Following the change of government in September 2017, however, the 2013 and 2017 legislation remains in place.

The Labour government has stressed its commitment to the Five Eyes alliance with the US, and its readiness to support a US war against North Korea. It has given NZ First, a xenophobic anti-Asian party, the positions of Foreign Minister and Defence Minister. New Zealand troops remain posted in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

A witch-hunt against Chinese “influence” is underway, driven by NZ First, the intelligence agencies and the media. NZ First leader and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has demanded an investigation into Chinese-born National Party MP Jian Yang, based on unsubstantiated claims that he is a Chinese Communist Party agent.

The NATO-funded academic Anne-Marie Brady, widely promoted in the NZ media, has called for the SIS to be empowered to investigate anyone in business, politics and universities with links to China. The Wall Street Journaland the UK-based Financial Times reported last month that the GCSB and SIS had raised “concerns” about the supposed “threat” posed by China.

The anti-China campaign, which parallels similar moves by the intelligence agencies in Australia, is aimed at aligning New Zealand with the already far-advanced war preparations by Washington against China and North Korea.

At the same time, the strengthening of the GCSB and SIS, together with the recruitment of more police and military personnel, is aimed at establishing the framework of a police state. New Zealand is experiencing immense social inequality, poverty and homelessness; the Labour government is preparing to confront and suppress the opposition to war and austerity that will inevitably emerge in the working class.

Malaysian opposition chooses autocratic Mahathir as top candidate

John Roberts

Mahathir Mohamad, the 92-year-old former Malaysian prime minister, was chosen on January 7 by the opposition coalition, Pakatan Harapan (PH), as its top candidate in this year’s national elections. If PH wins, Mahathir will become prime minister, a post he occupied from 1981 to 2003.

Prime Minister Najib Razak must call an election by August 24, but it is widely expected earlier. Najib heads the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the dominant party in the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) government.

The opposition’s endorsement of Mahathir as its lead candidate is an extraordinary about-face that underscores its utterly opportunist politics.

From 1993 to 1998, PH de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim was Mahathir’s deputy in UMNO, also deputy prime minister and finance minister. In 1998, amid the political turmoil following the Asian economic crisis of 1997, Anwar fell out with Mahathir over the direction of economy policy.

Mahathir expelled Anwar and his supporters from the government and UMNO. When Anwar launched a nationwide campaign of protest rallies over government corruption, Mahathir had his former deputy arrested under the country’s draconian Internal Security Act. Held incommunicado, Anwar was bashed so severely that he sustained lifelong injuries. He was then charged, tried and jailed on trumped-up charges of corruption and sodomy.

Yet the PH delegates at its convention, held in the Selangor state capital of Shah Alam, voted unanimously on January 7 for Mahathir to head the coalition. If PH wins the election, Mahathir has agreed to seek a pardon for Anwar and step aside if that takes place. Anwar is due to be released from prison in June, but without a pardon will be barred from any political involvement.

The four PH parties consist of Mahathir’s United Malaysian Indigenous Party (PPBM), formed in 2016 after he split from Najib and UMNO; Anwar’s People’s Justice Party (PKR); the ethnic Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP); and Parti Amanah Negara, a breakaway from the Islamist Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS). PAS was formerly allied with the opposition coalition, but broke away in 2015.

The integration of Mahathir and PPBM into PH was formalised last June after days of tense wrangling. The key issue was what position Mahathir would have. Some delegates had pushed for him to be a special adviser, but Mahathir insisted on a leadership post.

Mahathir argued the four parties needed to unite to remove Najib. He emphasised Najib’s involvement in the 1Malysia Development Fund (1MDB) scandal, in which up to $US6 billion went missing, including hundreds of millions that international investigators claim went into Najib’s personal accounts.

Mahathir declared that PPBM could deliver ethnic Malay votes from UMNO and PAS. UMNO has ruled over Malaysia since formal independence from Britain in 1957. It has pursued an aggressive policy of discriminating in favour of the country’s Malay majority in jobs, business and education at the expense of ethnic Chinese and Indians.

Mahathir remains a vehement proponent of this racialist New Economic Policy and speaks for layers of Malay crony capitalists that have benefitted from it. He ousted Anwar in 1998 precisely because Anwar was advocating the opening up the Malaysian economy to foreign investment that could have bankrupted such Malay businesses.

Nevertheless, during an opposition convention last June, Anwar intervened in the debate with a message from prison arguing that PH “should benefit from the position and role of Mahathir.” Anwar insisted that, in “amassing all the strengths in a team to go up against” UMNO’s BN coalition, it was “fair to ensure the participation of all leaders effectively.”

In the end, Anwar was elected PH ketu umum or de facto leader, Mahathir was elected chairman and Anwar’s wife and PH parliamentary leader Wan Azizah became coalition president.

At this month’s opposition convention, Anwar sent another message, read by his daughter Nuril Izzah, emphasising his support for the decision to nominate Mahathir as the opposition’s prime ministerial candidate. In part, this message sought to quell resentment and opposition within the opposition ranks.

The alliance with Mahathir is based on the crude electoral calculation that he can deliver a sizeable vote from disaffected Malays. DAP leader Lim Kit Siang, whose party had for decades been the target of Mahathir’s anti-Chinese chauvinism, heralded the formation of his PPBM as a “game changer”.

One DAP leader has calculated that at least 40 of UMNO’s ruling BN coalition’s peninsular seats are vulnerable. The convention on January 7 agreed to allocate the largest number of peninsula seats, 52, to Mahathir’s party, with Anwar’s PKR receiving 51; DAP 35 and Parti Amanah Negara 27.

At the last national election in 2013, the opposition coalition won the popular vote but failed to gain enough seats to form government due to widespread fraud and blatant gerrymander. Najib and UMNO were clearly shaken by the result and have used every dirty trick in the book to undermine the opposition.

Najib, following Mahathir’s example, had Anwar re-arrested in 2008 on bogus charges of sodomy. Anwar was tried and, after a lengthy legal battle, finally jailed in 2014. Najib helped engineer the breakaway of PAS from the opposition, and undermined the opposition’s control of several state governments.

At the same time, however, Najib adapted to the opposition’s policies, easing restrictions of foreign investment, and softening the discrimination against non-Malays. He also sought to undercut international support for the opposition by cautiously endorsing President Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” against China, including the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership.

When Obama visited Malaysia in 2015, he ignored the imprisoned Anwar. Washington’s ties with Najib have continued under Trump, who welcomed Najib to Washington last year and made no mention of the 1MDB scandal that wracked Najib’s government.

It was Najib’s economic concessions to the US that primarily lay behind Mahathir’s break with UMNO. Mahathir and his party remain deeply opposed to any policies that undermine the dominant economic and political position of the Malay ruling elites. Thus, they are hostile to the political program for which Anwar and his opposition coalition have campaigned. As a result, the opposition alliance is inherently unstable.

There is no doubt bitter resentment toward Mahathir in the opposition’s ranks. Significantly, after he was installed as prime ministerial candidate, the Selangor branch of Anwar’s PKR refused to sign a formal declaration that stressed “our unwavering support towards all declarations made during the convention.” Selangor is Malaysia’s most economically important state, producing 22.6 percent of the gross domestic product, and a centre of corporate support for Anwar’s advocacy of pro-market “reforms.”

US AFRICOM blacklists reporter Nick Turse as “not a legitimate journalist”

Eddie Haywood

Journalist Nick Turse, who has reported extensively on US military operations in Africa, was recently told that he has been deemed “not a legitimate journalist” by AFRICOM, the US military command which oversees operations across the continent.

The move is of a piece with the US government’s drive to silence critical reporting by alternative news outlets and comes amid the global effort to censor oppositional and alternative viewpoints on the Internet.

Turse explained in an article published by the Intercept on Saturday that AFRICOM officials began stonewalling his queries after he authored an article in July which documented torture by US-trained Cameroonian forces at a US base in Salak, Cameroon.

For several years, the Pentagon has been perturbed by Turse’s reporting, which has exposed the vast spectrum of United States military operations across Africa, most of which it wishes to keep shrouded in secrecy.

Turse related a telephone conversation in October with Lt. Commander Anthony Falvo, the head of AFRICOM’s public relations office, in which Falvo told him, “Nick, we’re not going to respond to any of your questions...We just don’t feel that we need to.”

When asked by Turse if Falvo believed AFRICOM did not need to address questions from the press in general, or just Turse himself, Falvo stated abruptly, “No, just you. We don’t consider you a legitimate journalist, really.” Falvo then hung up on Turse.

Turse noted several attempts by AFRICOM to stonewall his queries into US military operations on the continent in the weeks following his phone call with Falvo. During the course of his investigation into torture by US-trained Cameroonian forces, he stated that AFRICOM essentially ignored his emails and telephone calls.

Around 10 days before his call with Falvo and after several fruitless phone calls to AFRICOM by Turse to verify details in his July article published by the  Intercept, “Cameroonian troops tortured and killed prisoners at base used for US drone surveillance,” his call was finally taken by AFRICOM spokesperson Robyn Mack, who told Turse to proceed with his questions.

Bizarrely, Turse says that while in the middle of giving her his list of queries, Mack interrupted, “Hello, hello, Nick are you there? Hello?” as if the two had a faulty connection. Turse replied several times that he was still on the line, but after several moments, Mack hung up.

After several attempts to call back went unanswered, finally someone picked up the line. When Turse asked to speak to Mack, he was told that she “went out for lunch, along with everyone in the office.”

On November 15, several days after the first phone call, Robyn Mack answered, but when Turse identified himself, Mack again hung up.

Turse’s exposures have shed light on the Pentagon’s vast array of secret military bases and its operations across the African continent. In the course of several year of reporting Turse has sought to exhaustively documented the extent of Washington’s criminal drive to re-colonize Africa.

Since October, when five Green Berets were killed in an ambush in Niger, exposing the extent and scale of the US military offensive in West Africa, AFRICOM and its offensive operations across the continent have come under greater scrutiny.

With the blacklisting of a journalist who has exposed its criminal operations, the United States military is attempting to control the flow of information to those media outlets who toe the official line, such as the New York Times,Washington Post, and other such officially approved media organs which make up the corporate press on which the ruling class can depend.

The antidemocratic attempt by the US government to establish “genuine journalism” coincides with Washington’s drive to censor the Internet in coordination with the big tech companies, including Google, Facebook and Twitter.

The attempt to smear Turse as an illegitimate journalist comes after Google’s introduction last April of a new search engine algorithm which resulted in a decline in search results leading to sites with political views which are critical of the right-wing reaction coming out of Washington.

Various left-leaning and anti-war websites have seen a drastic decline in incoming traffic from Google, with the World Socialist Web Site suffering the most with a 75 percent decline in incoming searches. The Intercept has also experienced a noticeable decline in traffic generated by Google searches.

The attack on the democratic right of the American population to freedom of the press and access to information online should be taken within the broader context of the campaigns conducted against former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and journalist Julian Assange of Wikileaks, who have been condemned and pursued as criminals by Washington for exposing the crimes of US imperialism.