Media frenzy over New Zealand PM’s pregnancy distracts attention from inequality

Tom Peters

Following the announcement on January 19 that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is pregnant, New Zealand was inundated with fawning media coverage. Newspapers were crammed with congratulatory messages from local and foreign political leaders. Columnists offered parenting advice for Ardern and her partner Clarke Gayford, and speculated about the baby’s gender, possible names and whether the parents would get married.

Further choreographed gushing can be expected in June, when Ardern is due to give birth.

This nauseating campaign resembles the frenzy that accompanies royal pregnancies in Britain and has the same basic aim. It is to divert public attention from issues of far greater concern: soaring social inequality, poverty and the growing danger of world war.

Ardern, 37, was installed as Labour Party leader just weeks before the September 23 election and widely promoted by the media in an attempt to save the party from electoral collapse. The party scraped into office by forming a coalition with the Greens and the right-wing New Zealand First. Now a new wave of “Jacindamania” is being whipped up as the government prepares to boost the military and impose pro-business austerity measures on the working class.

Ludicrously, several commentators asserted that Ardern’s pregnancy sends an “empowering” message to working women. One headline called the prime minister “an inspiration for a generation.” Another labelled her pregnancy “a landmark for women’s rights.” Former Prime Minister Helen Clark tweeted: “Every woman should have the choice of combining family and career.” Gayford was hailed for setting a positive example as a “full time dad.”

Green Party leader James Shaw, a member of the coalition government, applauded Ardern’s decision to take six weeks’ leave when the baby is born, then resume her post. “That a woman can be the prime minister of New Zealand and choose to have a family while in office says a lot about the kind of country we are and that we can be—modern, progressive, inclusive, and equal,” Shaw declared.

Such claims are absurd and false. Ardern and Gayford, a former radio and TV presenter, make at least $500,000 a year and inhabit a different universe from the vast majority of New Zealanders.

For working people, the main obstacle to raising a family is entrenched and widespread poverty, for which successive Labour and National Party governments are responsible. Median incomes have stagnated for decades, while the cost of living has soared.

Few families can afford for either parent to give up work. The Labour Party has promised to extend paid parental leave, but only from 18 to 26 weeks. The most a new parent can get during this period is $516 a week before tax—less than the full-time minimum wage.

Labour will keep the former National Party’s draconian policy of forcing single parents to look for work once their youngest child turns three, pushing thousands more people off welfare.

Claims that the government will address poverty are being discredited rapidly. Ardern’s pregnancy announcement overshadowed a report two days earlier that the Labour Party’s election promise to halve child poverty by 2021 was based on inaccurate Treasury calculations.

Treasury secretary Gabriel Makhlouf said a previous estimate of 88,000 children being lifted out of poverty by Labour’s increases to family payments was the result of a “coding error.” A new, lower figure will be released in late February.

The Labour Party’s pledge was always highly dubious and based on a lower poverty line than that used by Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft, appointed by the previous National Party government. He estimated last year that 290,000 children lived in poverty, about one in four.

The gulf between rich and poor is widening. On January 22, Oxfam reported that 28 percent of the wealth created in New Zealand in 2017—$42 billion—went to the richest 1 percent of society. The super-rich have benefited from the global stockmarket boom and New Zealand’s out-of-control property bubble.

The poorest 30 percent—1.4 million people—gained just 1 percent of the wealth generated in the past year. Household debt at the end of 2017 stood at 168 percent of disposable income, up from 159 percent before the 2008 financial crash. The Salvation Army told the Dominion Post it distributed more food parcels in 2017 than ever.

Ardern’s government has promised big business no increase in corporate tax and committed to keeping core government spending below 30 percent of gross domestic product, the same as the previous National Party government. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be diverted to upgrade the military to prepare for war.

Days before Ardern’s pregnancy announcement, Foreign Minister Winston Peters attended a meeting of 20 foreign ministers in Canada to escalate US threats of war against North Korea. Peters demanded that “maximum pressure” be placed on North Korea to disarm. Labour has indicated it would support an attack on North Korea.

Peters, leader of the right-wing populist NZ First Party, will become acting prime minister when Ardern takes her parental leave. Ardern told Radio NZ Peters was “fantastically supportive” and she was “grateful” he would take on the role.

NZ First promotes anti-Chinese xenophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry, deep cuts to immigration and increased spending on the police and military—policies Labour has largely adopted. Peters has repeatedly demanded an “investigation” into Chinese-born National Party MP Jian Yang, who has been witch-hunted by the media as a security threat. The anti-China campaign dovetails with Washington’s plans for war against China.

Labour handed disproportionate power to NZ First, which received only 7.5 percent of the votes last September, after Peters decided on October 19 to form a coalition with Labour rather than the incumbent National Party. Peters was made deputy prime minister and foreign minister, and NZ First’s Ron Mark became defence minister.

Ardern learned she was pregnant on October 13, while coalition negotiations were underway, but claims she told no one except her partner. She made Peters her deputy, however, knowing that he would take over her role for six weeks.

During the coalition talks, which were held in secret, US Ambassador Scott Brown publicly criticised the National Party government for failing to fully endorse Trump’s threats to obliterate North Korea. He indicated that Washington expected a more overtly pro-US and anti-China stance from the next government. This was undoubtedly a major factor in Peters’ decision to form a coalition with Labour.

The prospect of the NZ First leader’s elevation to acting prime minister has not drawn any criticism from the Labour Party’s supporters in the media and trade unions.

The trade union-funded Daily Blog, which published at least six posts congratulating Ardern, paints China as a threat and supports NZ First’s agitation against Chinese “interference” in New Zealand. None of Labour’s cheerleaders criticised Brown’s intervention during the coalition talks because they all support the military alliance with the US and the build-up to war against China.

BlackRock’s Laurence Fink urges CEOs to serve a “social purpose”

Katy Kinner

Laurence Fink, the CEO and chairman of the investment management firm BlackRock, sent his annual letter to CEOs around the world last week.

Fink, who is in Davos for the World Economic Forum which opened on Tuesday, and whose firm manages more than $6 trillion in investments, is clearly worried about the prospect of mass struggles of the working class in response to deepening social inequality and attacks on living conditions and public services. His letter, titled “A Sense of Purpose,” warns his fellow multimillionaires and billionaires to exercise “social responsibility.” Fink himself has a net worth of $340 million.

BlackRock’s investments are greater than the GDP of any nation except China and the United States. They include big shares in major banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. BlackRock played a major role in the bank bailout of 2008, a role that was widely believed to have violated conflict of interest rules, due to Fink’s close ties to senior government officials.

Fink, a long-time Democrat who has donated to the presidential campaigns of John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, speaks for that section of the financial establishment worried that Trump’s fascistic appeals and unpredictability will harm the interests of American capitalism and provoke a social explosion.

Along those lines, Fink writes to his fellow CEOs, “The public expectations of your company have never been greater. Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose.” Fink feigns concern over workers’ retirement funds, infrastructure, automations, climate change and diversity in the workplace.

“In 2017, equities enjoyed an extraordinary run—with record highs across a wide range of sectors—and yet popular frustration and apprehension about the future simultaneously reached new heights. We are seeing a paradox of high returns and high anxiety.”

As Fink knows, this is no paradox at all, under conditions where all the “high returns” are going to the top 10 percent, especially to the top 1 percent and even 0.1 percent.

The talk of “social purpose” cannot disguise the fact that Fink represents a corporate and financial elite that is responsible for the gutting of social programs, accompanied by an unprecedented assault on the wages of unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Eight individuals own as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people on the planet, and the vast majority of the American working class has been steadily losing ground for decades.

Fink has particularly close ties to the Clintons. Cheryl Mills, who is a member of BlackRock’s board of directors, worked in the Clinton White House in the 1990s, and was Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff from 2009 to 2013. Fink was considered a strong possibility for the post of Treasury Secretary if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency in 2016.

None of this, however, prevented Fink from joining Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum in 2017, where he favored loosening banking regulations and privatizing public assets.

Several months ago, in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek about the since-enacted tax bill, most of Fink’s criticism centered on the corporate tax rate. Like most of the leading Democrats, Fink advocated a major corporate tax cut, if not quite as large as that proposed by Trump. Fink’s proposal was a rate of between 25 and 27 percent, compared to Trump’s 20 percent. He also voiced full support for other parts of the legislation, such as the 25 percent pass-through rate for sole proprietors and partnerships, claiming that it would help small businesses. In actuality it will serve to further enrich corporate real estate developers.

Fink has also backed some of Trump’s talk of infrastructure spending, especially the need for the bulk of it to be funneled into the corporate sector. In a letter to his BlackRock shareholders last April, he wrote, “Projects must deliver competitive returns and that will often require efficiencies that can only be achieved through private ownership.” In other words, public resources must be put under private control. As in health care and every other area of government spending, it must be used to further enrich the ruling elite.

Fink’s tenure at BlackRock has included some notorious episodes. In 2006, BlackRock, in partnership with real estate giant Tishman Speyer Properties, purchased the New York City Stuyvesant Town housing complex. The new owners worked to push out existing tenants as quickly as possible in order to attract residents who would be willing and able to pay monthly rents of $4,000 or more. Following the Wall Street crash of 2008, the owners were unable to make their loan payments on the property, causing them to default and leave the development in limbo, with many residents unsure if they would be able to remain in their apartments. Many of the development’s apartments are now being rented at “market rates.”

Fink is also the vice chair of New York University’s Board of Trustees. NYU has numerous ties to Wall Street, New York City real estate magnates and the military. These connections have fueled a decades-long expansion of the school, including massive salaries and perks for “star” faculty and top administrators. Along with 100 other universities, NYU has used offshore havens to shelter its endowment from taxation.

The Paradise Papers, a collection of 13.4 million electronic documents that reveal the hidden offshore assets of giant corporations and the ultra-rich, connected NYU to a Bermuda-based corporation, Genesis Limited, incorporated since 1980, with multiple university shareholders. The papers also revealed that in 2001, NYU was a shareholder in Arcadia Associates, an entity that folded after three months and was headed by Leonard Stern, after whom the NYU Stern School of Business is named.

The Paradise Papers also exposed the connections of Fink’s BlackRock to ten offshore corporations in Bermuda. Two of his fellow members of the NYU Board of Trustees, William Berkley and Joseph Landy, were also linked to offshore accounts.

Berkley has played a leading role in the campaign to privatize public education. Posturing as an advocate of educational “reform,” he is a major backer of the charter school movement, using public funds for privately-run schools. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Achievement First Charter schools in New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Berkley also benefits personally from the explosive growth of student loan debt. He is the Director of First Marblehead Corporation, one of the leading American private student loan companies. Today, over 15 percent of Americans are saddled with student loan debt. Of those students graduating this year, the average debt is $37,172 for undergraduates, and significantly higher for graduate students.

Asia-Pacific trade bloc reshaped, without the US

Mike Head

Exactly a year after President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on his first day in office, the governments of the 11 remaining members of the proposed economic pact announced on Tuesday they would sign an amended agreement on March 8 in Chile.

The announcement’s timing points to the increasing isolation of the US, and the escalating global tensions between the rival capitalist powers. Rebadged as the Comprehensive Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership, the “TPP 11” is markedly different from the previous version.

Despite media headlines about a “rescued free trade pact,” the jettisoned 12-country TPP was never about free trade. It was a US-led economic bloc directed especially at undermining China, which was excluded from the TPP, and ensuring the unrestricted plundering of the Asia Pacific’s resources and markets by US financial, media, pharmaceutical and other transnational giants.

Now, following Trump’s dumping of the TPP, it effectively has become a Japanese-led pact aimed against China and, potentially, the US itself. Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, is by far the biggest member of the new bloc.

Significantly, the TPP announcement also came on the same day that Trump imposed tariffs of up to 50 percent on imports of solar panels and washing machines, most of which come from China and South Korea, signalling a new aggressive turn in his “America First” protectionist program.

At the meeting of global elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos the next day, Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross spelt out the trade war drive behind these decisions. Trade wars “are fought every single day,” he told reporters. “The difference is the US troops are now coming to the rampart.”

Ross’s militarist language is not accidental. For the past quarter century, successive US administrations have resorted ever-more to military aggression to seek to offset the country’s economic decay, relative decline and loss of global hegemony. Washington’s response to the reshaped TPP will be to intensify both its trade and military war plans.

The commerce secretary’s broadside was directed, first and foremost, against China, declaring that its “highly protectionist behavior” and aim to become a world leader “in most all of the new technologies,” was a “direct threat” to the US.

Ross, however, sent a belligerent message to every other government as well. “We don’t intend to abrogate leadership, but leadership is different from being a sucker and being a patsy,” he said.

The Canadian government, which baulked at signing up to the TPP 11 during last November’s Asia-Pacific summits, agreed to participate, in part, to strengthen its position in acrimonious talks with the US on the future of the two-decade-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Mexico, which will also join the TPP 11, is the other party to the NAFTA negotiations.

In talks that began on Tuesday, Trump’s administration continued to demand major concessions from both Canada and Mexico—including guarantees of US content in North American cars. Trump has ratcheted up his threats to walk away from NAFTA. In this context, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) declared that the new TPP was “a clear signal that this country is serious about lessening its dependence on its giant neighbour to the south.”

Canada’s reversal on the TPP highlights how each ruling class is now jostling for position in the face of the US threats. Canadian officials told the CBC that Canada secured a side letter with Japan that requires Tokyo to give Canadian-based auto firms the same access to its market as any European auto makers. Canada also obtained side letters from each of the other 10 nations recognising Canada’s right to protect its “cultural sector.”

Because of the US withdrawal, the TPP 11 is much smaller than the previous version, which represented about 40 percent of the global economy and a quarter of world trade. The 11 remaining members—Japan, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam—account for some 14 percent of the world’s gross domestic product.

The agreement remains tenuous and fraught because of each capitalist class’s conflicting interests. No start date has been set for the pact, which must still be ratified by the various legislatures, and many of its measures are to be phased in over 10 years.

More fundamentally, however, the revamped bloc marks a sharp global shift. From 2008, under the Obama administration, the TPP became a key aspect of Washington’s “pivot to Asia”—a concerted military, diplomatic and economic drive to encircle and dominate over China. As Obama stated repeatedly, the purpose was to ensure that the US, not China, “writes the rules of the road for trade in the 21st century.”

By abandoning the TPP, Trump made it clear his administration wants a completely free hand to assert US interests unilaterally. It will not work within the old, post-war framework that sought to avoid the outright trade wars that erupted during the 1930s, collapsed world trade and set the stage for World War II.

Over the past year, Japan’s government spearheaded efforts, backed by Australia’s government, to resurrect the TPP. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in particular, regarded the TPP as crucial to gaining greater access to US markets and as a platform from which to reassert Japan’s global interests and combat China’s ambitious One Belt One Road project to directly link Beijing, across Eurasia, to the European powers.

Anxious not to too openly cut across Washington’s agenda, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday left open the prospect of the US joining the new TPP at a later date. The Australian ruling class relies heavily on the US for investment and strategic protection and has been increasingly integrated into US war plans, including through the stationing of US Marines in Darwin.

Turnbull, like his 10 TPP counterparts, boasted that the “free trade agreement” would foster investment, generate billions of dollars in export revenues and create “thousands of jobs.” Each government highlighted the advantages that their nation’s industrial, agricultural and services industries would reap.

In reality, decades of such trade pacts have boosted the capacity of global financial and corporate giants to extract super-profits at the expense of the jobs and conditions of workers on every continent, driving social inequality to unprecedented levels. As Oxfam reported on the eve of the Davos gathering, nearly all global wealth growth in 2017, 82 percent, went to the richest 1 percent, while the poorest half of the world’s population, some 3.8 billion people, gained nothing at all.

If implemented, the TPP 11 will intensify the social polarisation. While few details have been published about the pact, it retains Investor State Dispute System clauses, which allow transnational companies to sue governments if any regulations interfere with their profits.

The 30-clause previous agreement also featured the protection of “intellectual property rights,” the full opening up of economies to overseas investment and the breaking up of state-owned enterprises that were directed particularly against China.

Above all, the TPP will only heighten trade conflicts over market shares and sources of profit, particularly between the US and the other major powers, and accelerate the descent of world capitalism toward military conflict and war.

Catalan nationalists struggle to form government

Paul Mitchell

Although the nationalists narrowly held on to their absolute majority in the Catalan parliament in the December 21 regional election, they have been unable to appoint a regional premier and form a new government. If a new premier is not invested before the January 31 deadline, a new election must take place.

The crisis centres on the ban on five nationalist deputies being able to vote in the regional parliament—including former regional premier Carles Puigdemont, leader of Together for Catalonia (JxCat). The five fled to Belgium after the Catalan Parliament declared independence in October, fearing arrest after Popular Party (PP) Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy invoked Article 155 of the Constitution giving Madrid the power to directly administer regions. Sedition and rebellion charges led to the imprisonment of three deputies, including vice-premier Oriol Junqueras (Republican Left of Catalonia, ERC).

Rajoy had hoped to install pro-Spanish unity parties in power on December 21, but it backfired. He has since threatened to extend the use of Article 155 if a new government resurrects the “independence process.”

Although Catalan parliamentary regulations allowed the three imprisoned deputies to nominate proxies able to vote, lawyers say the same privilege cannot be extended to the five in exile without the Speaker’s committee changing the rules. As a result the nationalist bloc is reduced to 65, instead of 70, deputies in the 135 seat regional Parliament ­- three seat short of an absolute majority.

Last week, the nationalists managed to get the ERC’s Roger Torrent elected as Speaker, a post with the power to decide who to propose for investiture as regional premier. However, he only obtained a simple majority on the second ballot - beating by just nine votes José María Espejo-Saavedra candidate of the right wing anti-independence Citizens party, which won the largest number of seats in the election.

The vote for speaker would have been an exact draw, exacerbating the constitutional crisis even further, had it not been for the abstention of nine deputies—eight from the Podemos-backed Catalonia in Common (CeC) and an unknown “renegade” from the pro-Spanish unity bloc comprising Citizens, the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) and Popular Party (PPC).

On Monday, Torrent announced that, following discussions with all the Catalan parties, Puigdemont was “the only candidate” he was putting forward as regional premier even though he was “aware of his personal and legal situation.” Torrent justified his decision saying that Puigdemont is endorsed by JxCat and the ERC and that the Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP), which has four deputies, recognised his “legitimacy.”

He had asked for a meeting with Rajoy “to sit down to analyse and talk about the anomalous situation in the Catalan Parliament,” in which the “political rights” of the eight nationalist MPs were being “infringed.”

JxCat has proposed that Puigdemont’s investiture and participation in parliamentary debates could take place via a video link. The decision on this and whether the five deputies can appoint proxies was postponed on Tuesday by the Speaker’s Committee. Pro-unity parties claimed it was deliberately being delayed to a date as close as possible to January 31 to prevent them appealing to the Constitutional Court.

Puigdemont asserted, during a debate on Catalonia at the University of Copenhagen on Tuesday, that he could form a new government, declaring, “We will not surrender to authoritarianism despite Madrid’s threats…It’s time to end their oppression and find a political solution for Catalonia.”

He demanded that the PP government take the necessary measures so that he can return to Catalonia “safely”, with “complete tranquility and total normality” in order to be invested.

PP ministers declared that this was out of the question. Home Secretary Juan Ignacio Zoido vowed, “Justice will be done with Carles Puigdemont” and that Spanish security forces were “working on the problem.”

“Although there are a lot of country paths and you can get in by boat, in helicopter or in a microlight, we are working towards that not happening… so that Puigdemont can’t even get back in in the boot of a car,” he boasted.

PP government spokesperson Inigo Mendez de Vigo snapped, “He won’t be president” and would not be allowed to vote and rule via a video link from Belgium. If the situation remained stuck, a fresh regional election would be called in Catalonia. “This is not what we want but that’s what will happen if they (nationalists) act outside the law.”

Reports suggest the PP government will lodge an express appeal to the Constitutional Court should the Speaker’s Committee authorise a video link.

The PSC has also threatened an appeal to the Constitutional Court if Puigdemont is elected. Spokesperson Eva Granados declared, “Lawyers have unanimously stated that a tele-investiture cannot be produced…We cannot accept a debate with someone who has decided not to come to the investiture debate.”

Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias also insisted that Puigdemont cannot be premier saying “It does not seem sensible that someone from Brussels can be president of the Government of Catalonia.” Catalonia in Common would abstain in the vote for the “independentistas or constitutionalists… We are not going to support either one or the other.”

Podemos had sought a government agreement “between progressives”—ERC, PSC and themselves, he said.

Podemos is pursuing a case through the Constitutional Court to get the use of Article 155 illegalised.

Citizens leader Inés Arrimadas criticised Podemos bitterly for abstaining in the vote for Speaker and scuppering any chance of her party’s candidate, Espejo-Saavedra. She declared, “The only impediment to not having a premier is that the Podemos gentlemen have decided to side with the independence fighters.”

“There are still arithmetical options for the Parliament to be chaired by the party that has won the elections [i.e., Citizens],” she claimed.

The pro-unity forces may have little to fear. It seems behind the scenes there are moves to jettison Puigdemont. While Puigdemont was in Denmark, Supreme Court Judge Pablo Llarena appeared not to want to jeopardise those moves. He turned down a request from the Public Prosecutor to reactivate an arrest warrant against Puigdemont, ruling that he preferred to wait until “a time when the constitutional order and the normal functioning of parliament are not affected” to issue a new warrant.

Former PSOE secretary general, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, after declaring that “Puigdemont will not be president” because “the unilateral path has died and everyone knows it,” insisted that in reality none of the nationalist parties want to put at risk their narrow majority in a new election.

On Monday, when asked if the ERC will support the remote investiture of Puigdemont, ERC spokesperson, Sergi Sabrià, said the party would only take a final decision when JxCat reveals how it plans to carry it out. “So far there have been different opinions, and when everything is clear we can talk about certainties and not hypotheses,” Sabrià said.

ERC deputy spokesperson, Gabriel Rufián, went further, revealing that the party had a “plan B” for Junqueras to be put forward as candidate for the premiership.

The leadership of the CUP, which has a deciding vote with its four deputies, will discuss on Saturday whether to support Puigdemont based on whether he will resume the push for independence.

CUP deputy Natàlia Sànchez also complained on Tuesday that JxCat’s lack of “clear information” about how it is planning to invest Puigdemont did not help to “weave trust.” “Not having all the elements does not help make the decision,” she added.

Sànchez said support for Puigdemont depends on whether he will “deploy the Catalan republic or intends to carry out a political action for an autonomist [rather than independentist] legislature.” “All scenarios are open.”

German, French parliaments prepare new alliance, 55 years after Elysée treaty

Alex Lantier 

On Monday, for the 55th anniversary of the signing of the post-World War II German-French Elysée treaty, the Bundestag and the Assemblée Nationale jointly adopted a common “resolution for a new Elysée treaty.” This unusual simultaneous vote of both parliaments underscored the political, and not simply historic, content of the commemoration.

The European Union’s (EU) German-French “axis” is trying to hammer out a world policy around which to rally the EU, despite Brexit and a historic crisis of US-EU relations that has erupted to the surface since the election of Donald Trump. The resolution adopted by both parliaments shows that the policies jointly being prepared in Berlin and in Paris are reactionary and lack any element of democratic legitimacy. It lays out a framework for a major military build-up, deep social cuts and attacks on democratic rights.

On both sides of the Rhine, the media tried to downplay this unpopular political agenda, and play up cross-border friendship and promises that the 1963 treaty put an end to the German-French conflicts that helped trigger two world wars in the 20th century. Le Monde hailed the 1963 treaty as the historic “gesture of reconciliation that European institutions had failed to create until then.”

In his article titled “Friendship is a feeling” for German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Max Hoffmann wrote, “Don’t confuse the simple and clear document of 1963, that let millions of youth get to know the other country and its people, with bureaucratic nonsense about the euro group and PESCO, the Permanent Structured Cooperation on defense policy. While this may be important for the future of the EU, Franco-German friendship is not only about budget deficits, military coordination and structural reforms. It’s about a German-French feeling.”

Propaganda calling workers to passively accept the diplomacy, war planning, and austerity policies of European capital is reactionary and false. What has prevented war in Europe since 1945 is not the pro-militarist “German-French feelings” praised by Mr Hoffman. It was opposition to militarism and austerity in the working class—bound up with the existence of the Soviet Union and the Soviet victory against Nazi Germany in World War II—and, especially after the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, US imperialism’s status as the lone but fading superpower.

The period when US imperialism could rely on its economic and military power to try to impose settlements to conflicts that emerged between other powers is over, however. The German-French resolution lays out plans for the assertion of their imperialist interests in the face of the growing economic weakness of US imperialism, the disasters caused by its endless Middle East wars, and Trump’s threats to lock European products out of US markets.

Anyone who claims that the “axis” between German and French imperialism will avert major wars is placing heavy bets against history. The German-French “axis” is seeking to develop itself as a major independent militarist power, financing a war machine based on the ruthless exploitation of the working class.

Notwithstanding its calls for more German-French sister cities and joint foreign language programs, the resolution is centered around the commitment of Berlin and Paris to a military build-up. It calls for “reinforcing a common foreign and security policy,” hailing “the creation of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) on 11 December 2017 and the agreement on setting up a European Defense Fund.” It calls for stepped-up German-French military coordination, up to the level of the general staffs of their armed forces.

It also calls for more attacks on immigrants, committing Berlin and Paris to “deepen common efforts in the struggle against the causes of immigration”—efforts that have already seen the EU finance detention camps in Libya where immigrants are subjected to torture, sexually assaulted and sold into slavery.

The resolution also calls for more free market and social austerity policies. Germany and France, it declares, “aspire to a complete and rapid integration of their markets … [and] collectively call for a fully integrated European internal market.” This is to be based on a “European foundation of basic social rights, aiming to produce in Europe a minimum level of equality of opportunity and of access to the labor market, of fair working conditions, of social protection and inclusion, and of equality between women and men.”

In fact, the policies pursued by Macron in nine months since his election give an indication of the ruthless attacks now being prepared. He rammed through labor decrees, partially modeled on the German social democracy’s Hartz laws, that effectively suspended the Labor Code and allowed employers to impose sub-minimum wage salary levels in the oil industry and unregulated mass sackings in auto. He is planning broad cuts to pension and health care spending in the coming years.

These attacks are designed to roll back all of the social concessions made to the working class in an earlier historical period, and press forward with a major escalation of European militarism. Before the vote on the Bundestag-Assemblée resolution, Macron gave a speech at the Toulon naval base again calling for a return to military conscription for all youth in France. This goes hand in hand with growing discussion in Germany of the possible development of a German nuclear arsenal.

Workers cannot afford to wait for Berlin and Paris to implement this reactionary agenda. This year has seen growing strikes and social struggles, from German steelworkers and British railworkers to Iranian and Tunisian workers, pointing to growing militancy in the working class. The only viable response is the fight to build an international movement against war, social austerity, and attacks on democratic rights, unifying workers across Europe in a revolutionary socialist struggle against capitalism and for the United Socialist States of Europe.

This requires a conscious break with the reactionary, nationally-oriented, social democratic, Stalinist, and petty-bourgeois pseudo left forces that promote European militarism, insisting it is less violent than its American counterpart. Sahra Wagenknecht, a leader of the German Left Party, presented their arguments in detail when she traveled with former German Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schäuble to Paris to speak on the joint resolution in the Assemblée nationale.

She hailed the two right-wing heads of state who signed the 1963 treaty, German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and French President Charles de Gaulle, as models for the EU. She declared, “We want “a Europe in which progress ‘becomes a common good,’ as de Gaulle said. Progress as a common good, that is really an entirely different frame of mind from the current EU treaties, in which the freedom of capital clearly outweighs basic social rights.”

This is a travesty of the 1963 treaty designed to sow illusions in the benevolent nature of European capitalism. After five years of talks, Adenauer and de Gaulle both agreed to the treaty to promote their imperialist interests. Adenauer sought an alliance to dissociate West German capitalism from its Nazi past and free it up to play a greater role in Europe; de Gaulle was seeking a German ally against US interference in French imperialism’s colonial interests, in particular the bloody 1954-1962 war in Algeria.

The treaty disappointed de Gaulle, however: the Bundestag voted to add a preamble to the treaty stressing the alliance with the United States. De Gaulle was furious, privately denouncing Germans who “fear they are not kowtowing enough to the Anglo-Saxons. They are acting like pigs. It would be fitting for us to denounce the treaty, break the alliance and agree one with the Russians.”

Wagenknecht’s hailing of de Gaulle as a model for today is reactionary. European capitalism has abandoned its pretensions to distribute wealth as a “common good,” that it maintained in de Gaulle’s era, while the Soviet Union existed as a visible alternative to capitalism. Its national welfare policies undermined by the globalization of economic life, it is tearing up the social gains established by workers struggles in the 20th century and preparing for war.

The divisions between the United States and Europe have, moreover, only grown since de Gaulle’s time and are now reaching explosive levels. Significantly, today’s German-French resolution does not mention any alliance with the United States, Britain, or NATO. Indeed, in the Assemblée nationale, Wagenknecht went on to endorse French imperialism’s anti-American policy in the 1960s, attack Trump, and call for an independent EU foreign policy.

“Lately,” she said, “since the United States has a president who in key moments boasts about the size of his atomic arsenal, it has become fully clear that Europe, as de Gaulle wanted before, must take its fate in its own hands. Yes, we need an independent European foreign policy. But we need it in order to bring peace, disarmament and de-escalation and not to bring on an arms race.”

Wagenknecht’s appeal to re-arm in order to prevent an arms race is cynical and false. An independent European military escalation will not convince Trump or Washington to disarm or deescalate, but intensify the pressure on US imperialism and, indeed, every major power, to step up its armaments programs. Wagenknecht ignores this lesson of both of the world wars of the last century to dress up the reactionary military policy of Berlin and Paris in bright, peaceful colors.

In the final analysis, moreover, such plans only sharpen the strategic and military tensions between Berlin and Paris, which have fought three major wars against each other in the last 150 years. Berlin has emerged from the reunification of Germany immensely strengthened vis-à-vis Paris. The long-standing rivalries between the two again erupted after the September 2017 German elections, when Free Democratic Party leader Christian Lindner attacked Macron’s economic proposals for Europe, denouncing them as a “money pipeline to Paris” that was unacceptable to Berlin.

Significantly, even as Berlin and Paris intensify their strategic cooperation, there are growing signs of nervousness in French ruling circles at German policy. Articles in the pro-Macron Le Monde have warned that Berlin may not respect important French interests, like supporting French military interventions in Africa and maintaining a “pragmatic” approach to Russia.

“Germany, both in terms of public opinion and in ruling circles, does not seem disposed to increase Franco-German strategic cooperation,” Le Monde wrote. It added, “Moreover, greater European integration on defense policy runs up against major obstacles, like the problem of sharing France’s nuclear arsenal or the deployment of German combat troops abroad.”

British Armed Forces chief prepares for war with Russia

Robert Stevens

General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of the General Staff of the British Armed Forces, has declared that Britain must actively prepare for war with Russia and other geo-political rivals.

Carter, the second most senior figure in the Armed Forces chain of command after Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Stuart Peach, detailed the strategic planning of British imperialism to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and made clear that this has been formulated in collaboration with the United States.

Carter stated his enthusiastic agreement with the new National Security Strategy outlined  by US Defence Secretary James Mattis, citing a passage from his speech:

“We will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists that we’re engaged in today, but great-power competition—not terrorism—is now the primary focus of US national security.”

Carter listed, “viewed from this perspective,” the threat posed by “increasing competition in the South China Sea; the potential grave consequences of North Korea’s nuclear programme; the arms race and proxy wars that you see playing out in Yemen and Syria, that perhaps stem from Iran’s regional aspirations. With Russia the most complex and capable security challenge we have faced since the Cold War superimposed on much of this, it would be difficult I think, on that basis, not to agree with Jim Mattis’s assessment.”

No longer were there “two clear and distinct states of ‘peace’ and ‘war’,” said Carter. “…[A]ll of these states have become masters at exploiting the seams between peace and war.”

Inverting Clausewitz, Carter declared that any measure by an opposing power to defend itself, politically or economically, was simply war by other means. Virtually anything can now be designated as a “weapon” threatening the “rules-based international architecture that has assured our stability and prosperity since 1945,” he asserted. “What constitutes a weapon in this grey area no longer has to go ‘bang.’ Energy, cash—as bribes—corrupt business practices, cyber-attacks, assassination, fake news, propaganda and indeed military intimidation are all examples of the weapons used to gain advantage in this era of ‘constant competition.’”

This “strategic challenge… requires a strategic response.”

According to Carter, the main enemy to be faced down militarily is Russia, “the arch exponent” of this new warfare, as “described by the Prime Minister in her Mansion House speech  last autumn.”

Russia represents “the most complex and capable state-based threat to our country since the end of the Cold War,” he insisted, adding that this was a position shared by “my fellow Chiefs of Staff from the United States, France and Germany… at last year’s RUSI Land Warfare Conference.”

Russia was intent on undermining “our centre of gravity which they rightly assess as our political cohesion; and Russian overtures to Turkey are a clear indication of this.”

Carter insisted that the NATO powers “should identify Russian weaknesses and then manoeuvre asymmetrically against them”—that is, with a campaign of stepped-up aggression thinly disguised as a defensive response.

Initially this would centre on “the business of building real institutional capacity in neighbouring states so that they have the strength and confidence to stand up to Russia and the internal resilience to withstand pressures designed to bring them down from within,” Carter said.

But things could not stop at the building of the East European and Baltic states as a proxy force.

Carter proposed nothing less than the eventual invasion and dismemberment of Russia.

It was necessary to pre-empt a Russian attack on the West. This meant planning for land invasions, with a mass troop mobilisation of “Great Power” rivals on the scale of the two world wars, which between them claimed around 100 million lives.

He urged the Armed Forces to “compare the situation today to 1912 when the Russian Imperial Cabinet assessed that it would be better to fight now, because by 1925 Russia would be too weak in comparison to a modernised Germany; and Japan, of course, drew similar conclusions in 1941…

“The parallels with 1914 are stark. Our generation has become used to wars of choice since the end of the Cold War--but we may not have a choice about conflict with Russia… I think, we need to prepare ourselves to fight the war we might have to fight… And I think the 100th anniversary of World War One gives us a great chance to actually think about what that war might look like.”

Carter revealed, “At the moment, we have a project underway styled as ‘Project Henry Wilson’,” a reference to “the Major General who was the Director of Military Operations in 1914, who was able to pull a mobilization plan off the shelf and send the British Expeditionary Force to Flanders. Now, being able to do that again, I think, is important.”

To carry out such an operation, the British Army needed “to be able to deploy overland by road and by rail. And our Strike concept seeks to project land capability over distances of up to some 2,000 km.”

The “need” to project land warfare capability up to 2,000 km is a direct threat to Russia with a horrifying historical parallel.

Carter stated, “For example we are copying what the Germans did very well in 1940 when all of their prime movers, in terms of their tanks and armoured vehicles, had trailers; and by doing that, it reduces your logistic tail. Those sorts of old-fashioned lessons, brought forward, are definitely improving our ability to deploy. And we will test this concept by driving to the NATO Exercise Trident Juncture which is taking place in Norway this autumn.”

The “old fashioned lessons” to which Carter refers were bound up with the preparation by Nazi Germany for Operation Barbarossa—the 1941 war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, recognised as the most brutal military campaign history has ever seen. The Nazi invasion was carried out over a 2,900-kilometer front, with four million troops and utilising 600,000 motor vehicles.

Carter’s speech was timed to coincide with discussions in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Theresa May over the UK’s military spending plans. With the defence budget facing a £20 billion black hole, proposals have been mooted to slash the size of the armed forced by up to 11,000 soldiers and cut the number of Royal Marines and warships.

Carter countered by insisting that Russia possessed a vast array of military hardware that had to be bested by those powers opposed to it--including Britain, which now had to substantially step up its military capability. The implications of this are enormous in an austerity-strapped country.

Concluding, the general warned the government, “I believe that our ability to pre-empt or respond to these threats will be eroded if we don’t match up to them now… we cannot afford to sit back. We need to recognise that credible deterrence must be underpinned by genuine capability and genuine commitment that earns the respect of potential opponents.”

However, whatever British imperialism plans for its own military is conceived of running in tandem with Washington’s war aims—“prioritising Great Power competition” not only against Russia but China and any strategic rival to America’s global hegemony.

US escalates war for annexation of Syria

Bill Van Auken

In its first National Defense Strategy document issued in over a decade, the Pentagon this month bluntly declared that its nearly two-decade focus on the so-called global war on terror was over, and that it has adopted a new strategic orientation toward preparing for “great power” confrontation, i.e., war with nuclear-armed Russia and China.

In Syria, the Pentagon’s declared strategic shift has already been realized in bloody facts on the ground. The US plans to permanently occupy parts of Syria, impose a client regime of its own choosing, and destroy the influence of its rivals. These moves have sparked the ongoing Turkish invasion in the northwestern Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin, which threatens to spark a much broader and bloodier conflict.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made public the new war of Syrian annexation on January 18 before an audience at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He stated that US forces—at least 2,000 troops—will remain in Syria indefinitely. He also dispensed with the phony pretext that Washington invaded Syria to wage the war on terror, in this case in the form of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Tillerson made it clear that the aim of US imperialism is to pursue its own geo-strategic interests against those of its principal rivals in the region. The US is, above all, determined to prevent any Russian, Iranian and Turkish brokered settlement of the war that does not achieve the original aim of regime change initiated by the US.

This policy is in line with the demands of the Democratic Party and those sections of the ruling class that have criticized the Trump administration for not adopting an aggressive enough policy in Syria and against Russia. The Washington Post, aligned with the Democrats and owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, hailed the move in an editorial Monday, “Tillerson tells the truth about Syria.”

The Post praised Tillerson for making “an implicit break with US policy of the past several years, which was to seek Syria’s pacification primarily through diplomatic deals with Russia.” Rather than negotiations with Russia, the US must maintain a “serious and sustainable” commitment of military forces in Syria, which will inevitably be directed not just against Assad, but against Moscow and Tehran as well.

Tillerson’s statement came less than a week after the US command in Iraq and Syria announced that it was organizing a 30,000-strong border security force, consisting primarily of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which has served as the main American proxy ground force in Washington’s three-and-a-half-year-old Syria intervention.

It was this provocative policy unveiled by Tillerson and the Pentagon that provoked Turkey, which refuses to accept the deployment of Kurdish militia on its border or any move to set up a Kurdish autonomous region in Syria. Turkey fears that such moves would only revive the struggle of oppressed Kurds against the autocratic regime in Ankara.

Turkey launched its invasion of Afrin after unconvincing attempts by US officials to walk back the announcement of the planned border force. On Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened that the Turkish army will move from Afrin into Manjib, just east of the Euphrates River, which was conquered by YPG militia forces backed by US troops in August of 2016. American special forces remain deployed in the city, using it as a hub for their operations and a training site for their Syrian proxies.

Such an advance would set the stage for an armed clash between the US and its ostensible NATO ally, Turkey, further destabilizing the region and creating a flashpoint for a third world war.

US President Donald Trump held a phone call with Erdogan on Wednesday in which Trump warned “against the growing risk of conflict between the two nations,” according to the New York Times. The Times added that the call “marked an abrupt reversal from a White House briefing just a day earlier, where senior administration officials suggested that the United States would side with Turkey, a NATO ally, in disputes with Kurdish forces.”

Pentagon officials had in recent days indicated that, if necessary, the US military is prepared to dispense with the services of the Kurdish YPG militia, which has provided the cannon fodder for American operations in Syria under the mantle of the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF).

“We don’t see the YPG as currently the majority element (of the SDF),” one Pentagon official told the Voice of America, Washington’s officials propaganda outlet. “We have a much more populous and much more capable Arab force that we can use.”

This “more populous and ... more capable” force will undoubtedly be drawn from the very same “terrorists” that the US used as the pretext to invade Syria in the first place. In the waning days of the murderous US-YPG siege of Raqqa, the US military oversaw the evacuation of some 4,000 ISIS fighters from the city so that they could be deployed against Syrian government troops advancing on the country’s main oil fields. These same ISIS fighters are now to be rebranded as Syrian Democratic Forces to fight the Assad government and both Iranian and Russian forces within the country.

Thus, the shift from the “war on terror” to “great power” conflict assumes a particularly crude and criminal form.

As for the Syrian Kurds, they are to be subjected to an entirely predictable betrayal, one in a long historical series of such tragedies engendered by naked imperialist carve-ups in the Middle East and the bankrupt attempts of the Kurdish bourgeois nationalist leaderships to hitch their wagons to one or another imperialist power.

However, the current tensions between Turkey and the US are resolved, either through another tragedy for the Kurds and the Syrian population as a whole, or a head-on military clash between the two NATO allies, the present crisis has laid bare the immense dangers confronting the international working class.

The predatory and illegal US operation in Syria is part of a broader turn by not only US imperialism, but all of the major imperialist powers, driven by the insoluble crisis of the capitalist system, toward the preparation for “great power” conflicts, i.e., a repetition on a far more catastrophic scale of the two world wars of the 20th century.

The working class must develop its own independent strategy to prevent these plans from being executed. The most urgent task is the creation of an international anti-war movement of the working class based on socialist principles, and the building of the International Committee of the Fourth International and its sections as the mass revolutionary parties to lead it.

IDRC Cultivate Africa’s Future Fund Program (CA$20 million Grant) 2018

Application Deadline: 1st March 2018

Eligible Countries: This call is open to applicant organizations that will work in partnership with others to carry out research in one (or more) of the eligible countries:

• Burundi;
• Ethiopia;
• Kenya;
• Malawi;
• Mozambique;
• Rwanda;
• Tanzania;
• Uganda;
• Zambia; and
• Zimbabwe.

About the Award: This call will support cutting edge applied field and/or laboratory research projects with the potential to generate high impact and innovative results with particular impact on the food insecure and poor in eligible eastern and southern African countries. All projects require a sound environmental impact assessment, the consideration of social and gender issues, and an applicability to smallholder farmers. The projects should address real practical development challenges and research needs of the 10 developing countries.

The fund will focus on issues under four key research areas aligned to regional priorities as stated in the Malabo declaration:

1. Improved productivity and incomes for farmers and communities and decreased post-harvest losses;
2. Improved gender equity;
3. Nutrition and human health; and
4. Climate change and sustainable water management.

Of special interest is supporting innovative research with the potential for breakthrough results that can be effectively scaled-up and easily adopted by smallholder farmers, food processors, post-harvest handlers, and other value chain actors to improve food and nutrition security and achieve gender equality.

Type: Grants

Eligibility: 

• Applicant organizations must be developing country organizations (national agricultural research systems, universities, government departments, NGOs, regional organizations, and Southern-led international organizations) with legal corporate registration in an eligible country. They may work in partnership with Canadian or Australian organizations, but this is not a requirement.
• United Nations organizations, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research centres, and Canadian and Australian organizations shall not apply to this fund as applicant organizations. They may, however, be included in applications by other research teams as third-party organizations.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: CA$20 million.

Project budgets under this call must be in the range of CA$1 million to CA$3 million (please see the instructions document for more detail on budgets).

Duration of Program: 6 weeks.

Project duration must not exceed 42 months, including all research activities and final reporting. It is anticipated that projects selected in this call will begin in January, 2019. Please plan activities accordingly.

How to Apply: Apply on-line

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: IDRC and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research

Thailand International Postgraduate Scholarship and Training Program for Developing Countries 2018

Application Deadline: Each embassy has a different deadline.

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To Be Taken At (Country): Thailand

About the Award: Annual International Training Course (AITC) was initiated in 1991 as a framework in providing short-term training for developing partners. Today, the AITC remains one of TICA’s flagship programmes. It offers not only a training experience, but also a platform in exchanging ideas and establishing professional network among participants from across the world.

Thailand International Postgraduate Programme (TIPP) was introduced in 2000 as a framework in providing postgraduate scholarships for developing partners. Believing that knowledge sharing is an important pillar of South-South Cooperation, TIPP offers opportunities for Thailand and its partners to exchange their experiences and best practices that would contribute to long-term and sustainable development for all.

Aiming at sharing Thailand’s best practices and experience to the world, the AITC training courses and the TIPP scholarships focus on development topics of our expertise which can be categorized under five themes namely; Food Security, Climate Change, Public Health,  other topics related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and “Sufficiency Economy Philosophy” or SEP which Thailand is proud to introduce as the highlighted theme. SEP has been added with an aim to offer an insight into our home-grown development approach which is the key factor that keeps Thailand on a steady growth path towards sustainable development in many areas.

Fields of Study: Food Security, Climate Change, Public Health,  other topics related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and “Sufficiency Economy Philosophy” or SEP

Type: Training, Postgraduate (Masters, PhD)

Eligibility: 

• Candidates must be nominated by central government agencies in a country from the TIPP eligible countries/territories list.
• Candidates should be an officer or agent (preferably from government agencies) currently working in the area related to the course provided.
• Candidates must have bachelor degree and/or professional experience related field or related to graduate degree.
• Candidates must have a good command of English.
• It is recommended that candidates be less than 50 years of age.
• Candidates must have good physical and mental condition.
• TICA reserves the rights to revoke scholarship offered to participants who are pregnant during the period of study or violate rules and regulations.
• Other requirements apart from these will be under consideration by the University regulations.

English Language Requirements: Candidates must have a good command of English. Candidates whose English is not the first language/Bachelor’s degree was not taught in English/ who is from a country other than New Zealand, USA, the United kingdom, Australia, Canada has to pass and English Language proficiency test according to criteria announced by University regulations.

Selection Criteria: 

• In considering applications, particular attention shall be paid to the candidates’ background, their current position in the service of their Government, and practical use they expect to make of the knowledge and experience gained from training on the return to their Government positions.
• Selection of participants is also based on geographical distribution and gender balance, unless priority is set for particular country/ group of countries.

Number of Awards: Over 700 training fellowships and 70 postgraduate scholarships. Each eligible countries/territory can nominate up to five (5) candidates per academic program.

Value of Award: Successful candidates will be offered an award which covers:

• Return economy class airfare
• Accommodation allowance
• Living allowance
• Book allowance
• Thesis allowance
• Settlement allowance
• Insurance
• Airport meeting service

How to Apply: 

• The nomination must be made by central government agencies in charge of the nomination of national candidates (such as Ministry of Foreign Affairs) or by relevant central government agencies for which the nominated candidates currently work. The nomination must be in line with relevant rules and regulations of the nominating countries/territories.

• The nomination must be submitted to TICA through the Royal Thai Embassy/ Permanent Mission of Thailand to the United Nations/ Royal Thai Consulate-General accredited to eligible countries/territories. (See “List of Eligible Countries/Territories”)
• Originals of nomination documents, duly filled out, must be received no later than a specified deadline for each academic program.
• The application form must be filled in the typed-block letter.

The nomination must be supported by the following four documents;

• TIPP Application form
• Medical Report
• Transcript
• Recommendation letters
• English score (e.g. TOEFL/IELTS)
• One original with two (2) copies of all forms duly filled out, counter-signed and stamped by the authorized person must be submitted.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Government of Thailand