‘Whitewashing’ Genocide In Myanmar

Ramzy Baroud

Although the genocide of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar has gathered greater media attention in recent months, there is no indication that the international community is prepared to act in any meaningful way, thus leaving hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees stranded in border camps between Myanmar and Bangladesh.

While top United Nations officials are now using the term ‘genocide‘ to describe the massive abuses experienced by the Rohingya minority at the hands of the Myanmar army, security forces and Buddhist militias, no plan of action to stem the genocide has been put in place.

In less than six months, beginning August 2017, an estimated 655,000 Rohingya refugees fled or were pushed out across the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Most of the ‘clearance operations’ – a term used by the Myanmar military to describe the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya – took place in Rakhine state.

In a recent report, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) relayed the harrowing death toll of Rohingya during the first month of the genocidal campaign.

At least 9,000 Rohingya were killed between August 25 and September 24, according to MSF. This number includes 730 children under the age of five.

Eric Schwartz of Refugee International described these events in an interview with American National Public Radio (NPR) as “one of the greatest crimes in recent memory – massive abuses, forced relocations of hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of weeks.”

Coupled with numerous reports of gang rape, outright murder, and mass burning of villages, Rohingya are left defenseless in the face of unspeakable atrocities.

Worse still, a recent agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh has been reached to repatriate many of these refugees, with absolutely no guarantees for their safety.

With no safeguards in place, and with the Rohingya having been stripped of their legal status as citizens or legal aliens in Myanmar, going back is as risky an endeavor as is fleeing.

The plan to repatriate Rohingya refugees without any protection, or the guaranteeing of their basic rights is part of a larger campaign to whitewash the crimes of the Myanmar government and to, once more, defer the protracted crisis of the Rohingya.

Although the cruelty experienced by the Rohingya goes back decades, a new ethnic cleansing campaign began in 2012, when 100,000 Rohingya were forced out of their villages and towns to live in prison-like makeshift refugee camps.

In 2013, more than 140,000 were also displaced, a trend that continued until last August, when the bouts of ethnic cleansing culminated into all-out genocide involving all security branches of the government, and defended by Myanmar officials, including Aung San Suu Kyi.

The latter was celebrated for decades by western media and government as a democracy icon and human rights heroine.

However, as soon as Suu Kyi was freed from her house arrest and became the leader of Myanmar in 2015, she served as an apologist for her former military foes. Not only did she refuse to condemn the violence against the Rohingya, she even refuses to use the term ‘Rohingya’ in reference to the historically persecuted minority.

Suu Kyi’s support for the military’s relentless violence has earned her much contempt and criticism, and rightly so. But too much emphasis has been placed on appealing to her moral sense of justice to the point that no strategy has been formed to confront the crimes of the Myanmar military and government, neither by Asian leaders nor by the international community.

Instead, an unimpressive ‘international advisory board’ was set up to carry out recommendations by another advisory council led by Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General.

Expectedly, the advisory board is proving to be nothing but an instrument used by the Myanmar government to whitewash the crimes of the military. In fact, this is the very assessment of former US cabinet member and top diplomat, Bill Richardson, who recently resigned from the board.

“The main reason I am resigning is that the advisory board is a whitewash,” he told Reuters, asserting that he did not want to be part of “a cheerleading squad for the government.”

He, too, accused Suu Kyi of lacking ‘moral leadership.”

But that designation no longer suffices. Suu Kyi should be held accountable for more than her moral failings but, considering her leadership position, she should be held directly responsible for crimes against humanity, together with her top security and army brass.

Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch is one of the leading voices among rights groups who are calling for the UN Security Council to refer Myanmar to the International Court of Justice (ICC) in The Hague. Even though Myanmar is not a signatory of the Rome Treaty, such a referral is the only way to take a non-ratifying state to the ICC.

This step is both legally defensible and urgent, as the Myanmar government has showed no remorse whatsoever towards the horrible violence it has meted to the Rohingya.

Robertson also called for ‘targeted sanctions’, which will most certainly get the attention of the country’s rich and powerful elites that rule over the military and government.

In recent years, Myanmar, with the help of the US and other Western powers, was allowed to open up its economy to foreign investors. Billions of US dollars of foreign direct investments have already been channeled into Myanmar and six billion US dollars more are also expected to enter the country in 2018.

That, too, is a great act of moral failing on the part of many countries in Asia, the West and the rest of the world. Myanmar should not be rewarded with massive largesse of foreign investments, while whole communities are being killed, maimed or made into refugees.

Without sanctions that target the government and military – not the people – coupled with legal action to prosecute Myanmar’s leaders, including Suu Kyi, before the ICC, the genocide of the Rohingya will continue unabated.

Over 100 feared dead in Kiribati ferry disaster

John Braddock 

Kiribati President Taneti Maamau admitted on Monday that a passenger ferry that went missing in the central Pacific 11 days earlier was carrying as many as 100 people. Most of those are feared dead.

No correct accounting of the names or number of missing passengers has been provided. Previous reports stated that the privately-operated vessel, the MV Butiraoi, was carrying about 50 passengers when it left Nonouti Island for Kiribati’s capital Tarawa on January 18. The 260-kilometre voyage should have taken no more than two days.

Survivors found drifting in a dinghy on Sunday said people on board escaped to two dinghies and a life raft after the Butiraoi, a 17.5-metre wooden catamaran, broke apart and sank. Wellington Rescue Coordination Centre coordinator Paul Craven told Radio New Zealand the vessel was some distance off the island, but still relatively close to it, when it sank. One of the emergency dinghies had subsequently capsized.

Speaking following a cabinet meeting on Monday, Maamau said the Butiraoi was not seaworthy. The vessel had recently undergone maintenance on its propeller after running aground. It had not yet been checked by the marine authorities and did not have permission to sail, but did anyway. The boat was reportedly not carrying any kind of emergency navigation beacon.

Kiribati authorities only notified New Zealand that the ferry was missing last Friday, six days after it was due in Tarawa. Amid questions as to why it took so long, Maamau claimed the government was not aware the ferry was missing until then. However, a Kiribati plane had earlier searched for the ferry but found nothing as it lacked sophisticated radar equipment.

Rikamati Naare, editor of Radio Kiribati, told Radio NZ the sinking was the country’s worst disaster and the public was deeply shocked by the incident and the president’s revelations. He said people were angry and, through social media posts, were calling for legal action against all those connected to the company that owns the ship. Other posts indicated that the ferry was overloaded with passengers and copra.

An NGO worker on Tarawa, Tana Aata, said people were growing frustrated with the lack of information. No update was provided on Tuesday, and Maamau is yet to respond to repeated requests for further comment. The Ministry for Transport, whose maritime division is responsible for the ferries, has remained silent. It is not even clear yet who owns the Butiraoi.

An international search began on the weekend with a NZ Air Force Orion locating the dinghy on Sunday. The six adults and an unconscious teenage girl were picked up by a fishing boat, hundreds of kilometres southeast of Nauru, after drifting for four days in the blazing sun without water or an engine.

The Orion has flown over 315,000 square kilometres of ocean without sighting the missing ferry. Wellington rescue co-ordinator Craven said finding more survivors “is a bit of a needle in a haystack.” While expressing concern about the heat and lack of water, food and supplies, he said there was still a possibility that the people in the life raft were alive.

Responsibility for such disasters in the Pacific, which are frequent, rests not only with private owners who flout basic safety requirements and government agencies that either operate ferries or oversee their operations. The poor quality of transport services in the region is bound up with a history of imperialist domination, exploitation and economic underdevelopment.

Kiribati, home to about 108,000 people, only became independent from Britain in 1979. It remains a remote, impoverished nation of 33 atolls spread out over 3.5 million square kilometres. Climate change and rising sea levels mean the country is at risk of disappearing into the sea within two decades because the average land elevation is less than two metres above sea level.

The latest disaster follows the loss in July 2009 of another ferry while en route between Tarawa and the outlying island of Maiana. Some 33 of the 55 passengers and crew perished. The double-hulled wooden catamaran capsized when the captain attempted to turn around to rescue a crew member who had been swept overboard in high seas.

A month later, the Tongan ferry MV Princess Ashika capsized while travelling from the Tongan capital Nuku’alofa. It sank in less than a minute, just moments after issuing a mayday call. Most of the 74 victims were women and children sleeping below the deck when the ferry overturned. It was the third major marine tragedy in Tonga involving significant loss of life.

The Princess Ashika’s disaster provoked widespread anger in Tonga. Relatives of the victims camped for weeks outside the offices of the government-owned Shipping Corporation of Polynesia (SCP), which operated the ferry. In 2011, Tonga’s Supreme Court jailed SCP’s chief executive and the ferry’s captain and first mate after finding them guilty of manslaughter. None of the government ministers, who approved the purchase of the unseaworthy vessel and allowed it to sail, was brought to justice.

In February 2012, more than 100 people died after a ferry sank in large swells and strong winds off the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea (PNG).The MV Rabaul Queen was travelling from New Britain Island to Lae, the second largest city in PNG. Many of the passengers trapped in the sinking boat were children and students returning to begin the new school year.

Deliberate overcrowding also contributed to that tragedy. Local residents expressed longstanding concerns over the unsafe operation of the 22-year-old ferry, run by private operator Peter Sharp, brother of the chairman the PNG National Maritime Safety Authority. The vessel was licensed to carry 310 passengers but at least 350 were on board, plus 12 crew.

Geo-strategic considerations lie behind the search and rescue operations being conducted around Kiribati by Australia and New Zealand, in conjunction with Washington. An Australian maritime jet and a US Coast Guard C-130 Hercules were due to join the search on Tuesday.

The US and its allies regard the strategically-located South Pacific region as their own “back yard.” In March 2016, the Australian and New Zealand governments utilised the devastation of Fiji caused by Cyclone Winston to send ships, aircraft and hundreds of military personnel to that former British colony. The military intervention dovetailed with their role in Washington’s “pivot to Asia” to assert its domination over the Indo-Pacific region, especially against China.

Indian-Pakistani clashes in Kashmir put South Asia on knife’s edge

Sampath Perera

Exchanges of cross-border fire by Indian and Pakistani forces manning the disputed Kashmir border have intensified since the beginning of the year.

While cross-border artillery barrages have been frequent, often occurring daily ever since India mounted “surgical strikes” inside Pakistan in September 2016, recent weeks indicate tensions are mounting, raising the prospect of a catastrophic war between South Asia’s nuclear-armed rivals.

At least five civilians and a soldier were killed on the Indian side on January 19, while two civilians were killed in Pakistan. During the preceding three days, six more Indian civilians and three soldiers and six Pakistani civilians had lost their lives. While there are discrepancies in the Indian and Pakistani casualty figures, it can be said with assurance that at least four Pakistani soldiers have been killed in cross-border exchanges since the beginning of 2018.

The customary exchange of mutual accusations of “unprovoked firing” across the Line of Control (LoC) that divides Indian- and Pakistani-held Kashmir cannot disguise the fact that the situation is on a knife’s edge.

The India-Pakistan rivalry is rooted in the reactionary communal partition of the subcontinent implemented in 1947 by South Asia’s departing British imperial overlords in connivance with the colonial bourgeoisie. Independent India and Pakistan have fought four wars, the last in 1999, and numerous skirmishes.

However, it is US imperialism’s accelerating drive to make India a frontline state in its military-strategic offensive against China that has overturned the balance of power in South Asia. With the US providing numerous strategic favours to Indian, including access to its most advanced weapon systems, Pakistan has moved to strengthen its longstanding strategic ties with China. Increasingly, the region has been polarized into rival Indo-US and Pakistani-China blocs, adding an explosive new element to both the India-Pakistan and US-China conflicts, and raising the danger that a war between India and Pakistan could draw in the world’s great powers.

A further consequence of Washington’s downgrading of relations with Pakistan, its principal regional ally during the Cold War, in favour of India, is that it has emboldened the Indian ruling elite in its dealings with Pakistan.

The India-Pakistan “comprehensive peace dialogue” has been in limbo since late 2008. But under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu supremacist BJP, India has frozen virtually all high-level contacts with Pakistan and vowed to continue doing so until Islamabad demonstrably ceases all logistical support for the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir.

The Indian government’s provocative stance has been encouraged by Washington. The US endorsed India’s Sept. 2016 “surgical strikes” inside Pakistan. New Delhi, for its part, has welcomed the Trump administration’s new Afghan war strategy, which calls for Washington to ratchet up pressure on Pakistan to eliminate Taliban “safe-havens” in its Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

On January 4, Washington suspended up to $2 billion in military-security assistance to Pakistan to back its demand that Islamabad break off all ties with the Haqqani Network, a Taliban-aligned group that was closely allied with the CIA in the 1980s, but which in recent years has carried out some of the most devastating attacks on US forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s military-security apparatus has maintained ties to elements of the Taliban insurgency as a means of ensuring the Pakistani ruling elite has a significant say in any “political settlement” of the Afghan War, under conditions where Washington has increasingly sidelined Islamabad and encouraged India to expand its role in the impoverished Central Asian country.

Pakistan has long viewed Afghanistan as vital to giving it “strategic depth” in its rivalry with India.

At a press conference called to respond to Trump’s charge that the US has “foolishly” given tens of billion in aid to Pakistan and gotten “nothing but lies and deceit” in return, Pakistan Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor warned that Washington’s promotion of India as a major player in Afghanistan is exacerbating tensions in the region. Pointing to Islamabad’s “unresolved issues” with India, Ghafoor said, “It would be impossible to establish peace in the region without resolving” them.

Washington’s reckless encouragement of India has helped expand the Indo-Pakistan strategic conflict onto Afghan soil. At the same time, Afghanistan, emboldened by the deepening tensions in US-Pakistan relations and India’s belligerence against Pakistan, has adopted an increasingly hostile and aggressive policy towards Islamabad. Islamabad frequently accuses Indian intelligence of working in tandem with Afghan intelligence to foment terrorist attacks inside Pakistani territory, including by supporting the separatist insurgency in Balochistan.

Indian Army chief, General Bipin Rawat, seized on the further deterioration in US-Pakistani relations at the beginning of the year to send a bellicose warning to Islamabad. On January 12, he said that India’s military stands ready to mount further military strikes inside Pakistan if the situation along the Line of Control in Kashmir continues to deteriorate. “If a task is given to us,” said Rawat, “we cannot say we will not cross the border because they [Pakistan] have nuclear weapons. We have to call their bluff.”

Pakistan Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif responded the next day, with his own bellicose message. Rawat’s remarks, he said, “Amount to (an) invitation for (a) nuclear encounter. If that is what they desire, they are welcome to test our resolve. The general’s doubt would swiftly be removed, inshallah [God willing].”

Apart from stockpiling strategic nuclear weapons, Pakistan has recently deployed tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons and repeatedly touted them as its first line of defence against any large-scale Indian invasion or impending invasion, the kind of operation that India is actively planning for under its “Cold Start” strategy.

The Pakistani government has justified its deployment of tactical nuclear weapons and expansion of its military-strategic ties with Beijing by pointing to Washington’s failure to heed its warnings against upsetting the “balance of power” in the region.

Bolstered by its burgeoning alliance with Washington, India has vowed to face down both Pakistan and China. Last summer, amid a 10-week military standoff with China over a remote Himalayan ridge, the Doklam Plateau, Rawat boasted that India is ready to fight a “two-front war”—i.e., a simultaneous war against both China and Pakistan. He first raised this prospect when he was elevated to head the Indian army in January 2017.

India has taken exception to the $50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) infrastructure project, on the grounds that parts of the proposed highway and pipeline network would run through “Indian territory,” that is, parts of Pakistan-held Kashmir.

For the Pakistani ruling elite, the CPEC is a much needed economic shot in the arm. For Beijing, the CPEC is an important element in its broader One Belt One Road economic strategy, which is aimed at opening up new markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, but one with especially large strategic significance. The CPEC will link the Pakistani Arabian Sea port of Gwadar with western China, thus providing Beijing with a means of at least partially offsetting Washington’s plans to impose an economic blockade on China by seizing the Straits of Malacca and other maritime chokepoints.

These intractable conflicts, pitting US imperialism and its Indian partner against the rising economic power of China in alliance with Pakistan, underscore the potentially explosive ramifications of the bubbling border tensions between South Asia’s nuclear rivals.

Earlier this month, the Press Trust of India (PTI) cited a report from Indian intelligence sources that claimed 138 Pakistan military personnel were killed in the preceding year in “tactical operations and retaliatory cross-border firings” along the LoC. The same sources put the death toll of soldiers on the Indian side at 28. Both militaries are known for boasting of enemy fatalities, while downplaying casualties on their own side.

Indian intelligence sources also blamed Pakistan for violating the 2003 ceasefire agreement 860 times in 2017, i.e., more than twice per day. For its part, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry accused New Delhi January 20 of violating the ceasefire agreement 150 times already in 2018, and 1,900 times in 2017.

The PTI report shed some light on the nature of the “tactical operations” conducted by India. On December 25, 2017, a group of five Indian “commandos” crossed the LoC and killed three Pakistani soldiers, the report said. India employs a strategy called “hot pursuit”, under which it claims the right to cross into Pakistani-held territory, to disrupt the Pakistani military’s support for “terrorist groups” attacking India.

Given the combustible character of Indo-Pakistani relations, any such incursion runs the risk of triggering an all-out war or even a global conflict that would imperil the lives of tens, if not hundreds of millions of people.

A series of attacks at Russian schools

Clara Weiss 

Two major attacks on high school students by fellow teenagers occurred in Russia this month. In all, within one week, three schools witnessed attacks, and another school a stabbing. Dozens of children and several teachers were wounded.

The most widely covered attack occurred on January 15, at school No. 127 in Perm, an industrial city in the Urals. Two 16-year-olds, wearing masks, burst into a fourth-grade classroom and attacked the teacher and then the children with knives. Twelve youth, including the assailants, and the teacher were wounded.

The teacher, Natalia Schegulina, who was stabbed 17 times, and two children were listed in critical condition. One of the alleged assailants attended the 11th grade (the last year in Russian high schools) at the same school. He is the son of a relatively successful local designer, and, judging by media reports, had done fairly well in school.

The other alleged attacker had been suspended from school, reportedly at the request of his parents, because of mental health issues. According to Russia Today, he is the son of a successful local businessman, who owns numerous companies in the city. A widely discussed YouTube video shows the youth, who was in psychiatric treatment, rambling in an apparently intoxicated state. On social media, he expressed support for the campaign of right-winger Alexei Navalny, arguing that it didn’t matter who would “ruin the country,” which he described as a “country of slaves.” He also participated in a closed group on Vkontakte (VK), the Russian equivalent of Facebook and one of the most popular websites in the world, which glorified the April 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.

On January 17, a student at a school near Chelyabinsk stabbed a fellow student during a break.

Two days later, another major assault occurred at school No. 5 in the small military town of Sosnovyi Bor in Buryatia, located in the Siberian region. A 15-year-old student attacked a seventh-grade class at his school. He threw a Molotov cocktail into the classroom and then began attacking the students with an ax. Five children and the teacher were wounded.

The teacher, Irina Ramenskaya, a Russian language and literature instructor, recounted the horrific scene: “I started to take the kids out. When I came out, I saw that a person was just chopping the kids with an ax. I brought them back in the classroom, where everything was burning. I was bleeding. Before my eyes stood Anton with an ax.”

The teenager then reportedly stabbed himself in the chest and jumped out of a window in an apparent attempt to commit suicide, but survived. Earlier reports about two additional assailants have not been confirmed.

According to a report by RBC, which referred to the accounts of fellow students, the teenager had problems with alcohol and drugs and followed skinhead and pro-Nazi websites on Vkontakte. That same day, a student released teargas at his school in Vladivostok, a major city in Russia’s Far East, wounding four teenagers.

The limited discussion in the Russian media about the incidents has focused on the lack of security provisions at the schools in question, while politicians and the spokesperson of President Vladimir Putin have evaded making any clear statement on the rampages at all.

As is the case in the US whenever a new mass atrocity occurs, neither the Russian media nor the political establishment dares address the social context in which such disorientation and right-wing conceptions emerge among teenagers and take such violent forms.

Born after the restoration of capitalism in Russia, which has thrown tens of millions of Russian workers and professionals into poverty, these youth grew up in a climate of extreme social reaction and brutality. Since the destruction of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, the country has been ruled by a criminal oligarchy that obtains its wealth at the expense of the living standards of the vast majority of the country’s population.

Under Putin, there has been a reshuffling of wealth and political control within layers of the ex-bureaucracy, the mafia and the oligarchs who have emerged as the chief beneficiaries of capitalist restoration. While some oligarchs, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who advanced positions on foreign policy that went counter to the interests of the Kremlin, were either put in prison or forced into exile, the vast majority of the oligarch-gangsters and criminal bosses of the 1990s have become the “respected businessmen” of the Putin era.

Tellingly, almost 40 percent of Russian GDP originates in the shadow economy that employs about a fifth of Russia’s workforce. The shadow economy involves business operations such as illegal financial deals, human and drug trafficking, prostitution, and the widespread practice of hiring workers in construction and other industries without formal contracts.

The working population has also largely borne the cost of the Kremlin’s stand-off with US imperialism. The Western economic sanctions and the steep decline in oil prices ushered in a deep economic crisis in 2014. While the oligarchs have feverishly shoveled their money abroad, increasing numbers of Russians suffer from extreme poverty, eking out an existence by growing their own food and renouncing essentials of civilization, including medication, running water and electricity. Wealth inequality in Russia is now the highest among the world’s major countries, with the top decile owning a stunning 89 percent of the country’s total wealth.

On television, there is a continuous promotion of nationalism and militarism. After the bloody and criminal Chechen wars of the 1990s, which killed about a tenth of the Chechen population and have led to an ongoing devastation and destabilization of the North Caucasus, Russia has directly intervened in Syria and indirectly in Ukraine in a proxy war with the US-backed Kiev regime.

Under these conditions, the interests of the working class find absolutely no expression in official politics. The current presidential campaign is dominated by the stand-off between Putin, who has been the “godfather” of the Russian oligarchy for almost two decades, and Navalny, a far-right politician who openly supports fascist forces and whose aim is to foster a regime change in Russia in the interests of US imperialism and a section of the Russian oligarchy and upper-middle class.

Politically disarmed by decades of Stalinism, which included the murder of entire generations of revolutionaries and socialist intellectuals, and endless lies about the Russian Revolution, the working class has been unable to fight successfully against this decade-long onslaught of social and political reaction.

It is hardly surprising that such a climate would produce serious disorientation among sections of young people. The reactionary conceptions and utter contempt for the lives of other human beings, including children, expressed by these teenagers are ultimately a reflection of the attitude of the ruling elite toward the general population that these youth have witnessed their entire lives. Their rampages point to the urgent need to provide a progressive, socialist way forward out of the blind alley into which Stalinism and capitalism have led.

Currency conflicts deepen between US and Europe

Nick Beams

Deepening tensions between the Trump administration and the European Central Bank, which surfaced last week over the level of the US dollar in international currency markets, reflects the growing tensions over the administration’s “America First” agenda and the danger this could lead to trade and currency wars.

The war of words was sparked by comments by US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin last Wednesday at the Davos summit of the global elites in which he remarked that “a weaker dollar is good for us as it relates to trade and opportunities.” Mnuchin later tried to soften his remarks saying he was only noting the short-term “factual” benefit of a lower dollar for US exporters.

But they sparked controversy because of concerns that the US is shifting from the position of previous administrations in favour of a strong dollar in line with the increasingly aggressive trade policies of the US which has imposed a series of new tariffs on solar cells and washing machines and is considering sweeping measures against Chinese and other imports.

At his press conference last Thursday following a meeting of the ECB’s governing council, the bank’s President Mario Draghi directly addressed the issue of the falling value of the US dollar which is pushing up the euro-dollar exchange rate.

In his prepared remarks, Draghi noted that the “recent volatility in the exchange rate” represented a “source of uncertainty” and downside risks to growth “continue to relate primarily to global factors, including developments in foreign exchange markets.”

Further elaboration followed in response to a series of questions from journalists about US exchange rate policy.

In a clear shot at Mnuchin and the Trump administration, Draghi referred to the “use of language … in exchange rate developments that doesn’t reflect the terms of reference that have been agreed lastly on October 14th, 2017” at the meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington.

Draghi was then asked whether comments from “certain members of the US administration” on the benefits of a lower dollar could lead to a “currency war scenario”. He insisted that governments and ministers had agreed that “excess volatility or disorderly movements” in exchange rates could have “adverse implications for economic and financial stability” and that “we will refrain from competitive devaluations and will not target our exchange rate for competitive purchases.”

While Draghi did not directly name Mnuchin or cite the Trump administration, his remarks were, in terms of the language used in international financial discussions, the equivalent of “gloves off”.

They were sparked, at least in part, because of the pressures he is under on the governing council of the ECB. The policies of ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing—the purchases of billions of dollars of government and corporate bonds by the central bank—initiated under his leadership have been opposed by Germany and its supporters on the governing council. In seeking to push back against this pressure Draghi has insisted that the ECB will move to “normalise” monetary policy but only when the European inflation rate moves back to a sustained level of close to 2 percent.

However, it remains at around 1.5 percent and the effect of a lower US dollar and a higher euro is to lower import prices into Europe, thereby working against a rise in inflation and a return to a “normal” monetary regime.

Under other circumstances, Mnuchin’s remarks may have been dismissed as the slip of a tongue and of no great concern. But they attracted wide international attention because they are seen as another manifestation of the breakdown of the international trading and financial order for which the US provided the central pillar of support.

In a comment reported in the Financial Times, Matthew Goodman, a former US treasury official, now at the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies, commented: “There has been a lot of thunder, and now a storm is coming. Maybe the world economy can absorb all of this, but these actions on trade and currency have ripple effects around the world and I don’t take them lightly.”

Stephen Moore, a former economic adviser to the Trump campaign, said there was an “obsession” among some White House advisers about the US trade deficit that could lead to counter-productive measures on currency and trade and disrupt the present increase in economic growth.

“When you look at the kind of things that could disrupt this burst of growth, the movement against international trade would be one of them,” he said, adding that it was “fool’s gold” to think that a weaker dollar could improve the situation.

However, the view of key figures in the Trump administration is not that its actions will lead to a trade war but that it has been going on for some time and the US has been losing because other countries are using international regulations and agreements to disadvantage it. The difference today is that, according to remarks delivered by US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to the Davos gathering: “US troops are now coming to the ramparts.”

The issue of the fall in the dollar’s value goes beyond the issue of Mnuchin’s remarks. Since the start of 2017 it has fallen against a basket of currencies by about 9 percent, the major portion that decline coming against the euro which has risen from around $1.07 to as high as $1.25. This decline has come in the face of higher US economic growth and increases in US interest rates by the Fed, which would normally bring a rise in the dollar’s value.

One interpretation of this apparently anomalous situation is that it reflects a longer term decline in the economic position of the US and its role as the linchpin of the international trading order and a monetary system.

In a note to clients this week, reflecting the rise of global economic tensions, Deutsche Bank wrote: “You can only be entrusted with the management of the reserve currency of the world if you care about the world. The US has unilaterally declared that it doesn’t and that comes at a price.”

Concern about the global position of the US also appears to be at the centre of criticism by the Wall Street Journal of the US administration.

An article on Mnuchin’s comments noted that while it might be too much to say a currency war had started, “a skirmish has definitely broken out.”

In an editorial it said Mnuchin’s comments were “baffling” because with the effect of the corporate tax cuts the administration should be “riding high” adding, in reference to the call for a lower currency value: “Why mess it up by imitating the economic policy of Argentina?”

It returned to the issue following Draghi’s criticisms in another editorial in which it said Mnuchin should be assisting the ECB chief in trying to return stability in the world’s most important exchange rate.

“Mercantilists in the White House” may think eurozone monetary policy is not their problem, it stated, but if their “greenback gimmicks” pushed the ECB too far away from following the Fed’s “modest attempts” at normalisation there could be “unpredictable consequences for exchange rates and the world economy.”

Puerto Rican Governor calls for the closing of a quarter of the island’s public schools

Rafael Azul

Last Wednesday, Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló presented his government’s fiscal spending plan for 2018, which calls for $1.5 billion in cuts, including more than $300 million to education. These cuts will require the closure of 300 of the 1,100 K-12 schools on the island and could lead to a decrease of 27,500 students and 7,300 teachers by 2022.

This attack on education and other social services comes four months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. Students at every level have lost at least a semester of their education since the storm hit. Due to the completely inept “recovery” aid provided by the local and federal governments, 30 percent of residents are still struggling without running water or electricity—including about 30 percent of public school buildings, which are still operating on half-day schedules.

In addition to the physical damage to school buildings and the resulting loss of school days, students have lost their clothing, schoolwork, books, and notes. Many educators have left the island permanently, exacerbating an already severe teacher shortage. One school just outside of the capital city of San Juan, the Rio Grande High School, is reporting classes of 90 students, with only one teacher responsible.

In addition to the closures, most schools are now operating without enrichment programs, such as physical education, and with shorter hours. In many cases, the teachers themselves have had to purchase food, clear away debris, repair broken walls and roofs, and buy teaching supplies to get the schools up and running.

The devastating effect of the hurricane on education stretches far deeper than just physical damage and the lack of resources. The immense poverty that existed on the island before the hurricane has been greatly exacerbated, causing further strain on students, teachers and their families. Before Hurricane Maria, 80 percent of public school students in Puerto Rico came from households below the poverty line.

The public school system had some 350,000 children enrolled, and almost all of them qualified for free meals. Many of these families have since lost their jobs, their homes, and even their loved ones in the storm and its aftermath. The effect that these conditions have had on students and their ability to learn is unimaginable.

Instead of dedicating the resources necessary to repair the schools, aid the students, pay the remaining teachers, and train and hire more, the local and federal governments are using the crisis to push through long-standing plans to privatize education on the island.

The governor has used the damage caused by the hurricane to justify his proposal. One major element is the ongoing population exodus to the mainland United States (the Rosselló administration anticipates a 7.7 percent population drain for this year). However, Rosselló’s proposal is not a response to population decline. It is only the latest political maneuver by the ruling class in a long battle with the Puerto Rican working class over the right to public education.

The public school crisis set off by Hurricane Maria represents the culmination of more than a decade of economic depression in the territory. Between 2008 and 2012, Puerto Rican K-12 schools lost 45,000 students and 5,000 teachers. The dropout rate exploded, with 60 percent of 10th graders failing to graduate high school. Between 2010 and 2015, 100 public schools were shut down.

The attack on education is not limited to the K-12 system. Last April and May, six months before Maria, university students at 8 of the system’s 11 campuses went on strike against proposed budget cuts of nearly $500 million, fully half of the system’s budget, demanded by the unelected Fiscal Oversight Board. In addition to striking against the budget cuts, the strikers demanded a moratorium on the entire $74 billion debt.

Two months later, Governor Rosselló announced the planned closure of 179 public schools. Had the plans not been foiled by Hurricane Maria, the closure would have forced the transfer of 27,000 students and some 3,000 teachers.

Since Maria struck on September 20, the local government has managed to close about 222 public schools, claiming they were too damaged.

In an attempt to pit teachers against each other, and against the wellbeing of their students, the government has offered a paltry wage increase to those teachers that will not be sacked: a yearly increase of $1,500 ($125 per month). The raise will come out of the savings generated by the school closures. Elementary school teachers earn a median salary of just $36,750 per year in Puerto Rico. Starting salaries can be as low as $19,230.

While rank-and-file teachers in Puerto Rico have bravely shown the way forward by fighting to reopen schools in the face of inaction by Rosselló and Education Secretary Julia Kehler (who favors the privatization of the school system), the same cannot be said for union officials. Neither the head of the Puerto Rican Teachers Association, Aida Díaz, nor anyone in the Teachers Association has proposed organized opposition to defend Puerto Rican schools, teachers and students.

In response to the governor’s proposal for the closure of 300 additional schools, Díaz has done nothing more than state that the measures are “not acceptable” and should “raise alarms.”

The proposal from Governor Rosselló and his administration should do much more than “raise alarms.” It is a full-scale attack on the working class of Puerto Rico and will have serious consequences for the lives and futures of hundreds of thousands of students, teachers and their families.

The experience of the working class in New Orleans is an instructive lesson for how these “natural disasters” are utilized by the ruling class. Two years after the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration and local officials had overhauled the city’s schools and instituted a system dominated by charter schools—publicly funded schools run by for-profit or non-profit groups. Seventy percent of the city’s schools have now become charter schools.

The cuts to education proposed in Roselló’s fiscal plan have not yet been finalized, as all financial decisions must be approved by the dictatorial Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB). This board was appointed by former President Barack Obama to control the island’s budget and spending on behalf of Wall Street. The FOMB has played a central role in the attack on education since its formation and will undoubtedly support these early steps in the effort to dismantle the public education system.

Harley-Davidson to close Kansas City plant, lay off 800

Marcus Day 

Harley-Davidson, the world’s largest maker of heavyweight motorcycles, announced plans Tuesday to close its Kansas City, Missouri assembly plant by the summer of 2019 and lay off 800 workers.

Euphemistically referring to the closure as part of a “multi-year manufacturing optimization initiative,” the Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based company attributed the move to a sharp fall in demand for its iconic bikes, particularly among young people. Harley’s US retail sales fell 8.5 percent in 2017—the fourth straight year of decline—and its global sales are projected to fall a further 4.9 percent in 2018.

The job cuts are part of a growing wave of mass layoffs, contradicting President Donald Trump’s boasts of US economic strength and the miraculous benefits supposed to accrue from the corporate handouts contained in the 2017 “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” In the past month alone, telecom giant AT&T, retailers Sams’ Club and Toys “R” Us, and paper products manufacturer Kimberly-Clark have revealed plans to slash thousands of jobs.

Harley-Davidson’s plant in Kansas City

The layoffs at Harley-Davidson, announced the morning of Trump’s first State of the Union address, come as a further blow to the president’s reactionary “America First” economic program, and are particularly embarrassing as Trump has lauded the company, inviting company executives and union officials to the White House in early 2017.

In a press release, Matt Levatich, Harley Davidson’s president and chief executive officer, laid out the cold-blooded financial calculations behind the plant shutdown, saying, “Our actions to address the current environment through disciplined supply and cost management, position us well as we drive to achieve our long-term objectives to build the next generation of Harley-Davidson riders globally.”

In what will be little comfort to the workers who will imminently be deprived of their livelihood, Levatich added that in 2017, “[W]e delivered another year of strong cash generation and cash returns to our shareholders.”

As part of Harley’s reorganization plans, production of the vehicles previously made in Kansas City will be moved to its York, Pennsylvania, plant, which the company claims will add 450 jobs. However, the 450—if they in fact all appear—will reportedly include part-time and contract positions.

Along with the shutdown of the Kansas City factory, Harley announced the planned closure of a wheel plant in Adelaide, Australia, with a loss of a further 100 jobs.

The company made the announcement at the Kansas City plant at a 6 a.m. “town hall” meeting, after which it sent workers home for the day, no doubt fearing an outbreak of anger.

Dominique Alstrok, a worker at the plant, told a local Fox News affiliate, “Where is my next job? What am I going to do benefits wise? I have three kids and a single mom.”

The closure of the Kansas City plant is the culmination of a long series of betrayals by the trade unions, principally the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and the United Steelworkers (USW), which both bargain on behalf of workers at Harley-Davidson.

In 2010, the USW and IAM signed a deal at Harley-Davidson’s plants in Menomonee Falls, near Milwaukee, and Tomahawk, Wisconsin, that included a seven-year wage freeze and strike ban, sharp increases in workers’ contributions to their health care coverage, and the creation of a “sub-tier” of seasonal or casual workers who will receive no benefits whatsoever and earn starting pay of $16.80, about half what current workers make.

The concessions contract, backed by the unions under the pretext that it was necessary to “save jobs,” in fact paved the way for hundreds of layoffs in subsequent years. The York, Pennsylvania plant saw its employment plummet from nearly 2,000 in 2009 to roughly 800 in 2017, while the plants in Wisconsin also lost hundreds of jobs.

Union officials feigned surprise and outrage at the current layoffs, while offering no plans to oppose the company’s decision. Kevin Amos, president of IAM Local 176 in Kansas City, demonstrated the utter spinelessness of the union and its groveling efforts to please the company, telling FOX4 News, “We have a good workforce, and we did as we were told. We were living in a seven-year concession contract. Workers were hurting, and yet we did everything we were supposed to do.”

Bob Martinez, national president of the IAM, predictably sought to deflect blame onto foreign workers and incite reactionary nationalism, saying, “Hundreds of working families are now wondering what their future holds because of this self-proclaimed American icon’s insistence on shipping our jobs to Asia and South America. I’m sick of seeing our jobs disappear or turn into part-time work...This company’s executive leadership team is letting Harley-Davidson’s foundation crumble.”

Instead of appealing to workers to mobilize against the plant closure, Martinez directed his pleas to the union’s real constituency, namely Wall Street and the political establishment: “We hope investors and policy-makers join our call to finally bring our jobs home.”

Harley-Davidson workers must draw the necessary conclusions from the decades of wage cuts, job losses, and attacks on health care and pensions they have suffered under the IAM and USW, who seek to divide workers from their brothers and sisters in other countries in order to defend the profit interests of the corporations.

In order to conduct a real fight against plant closures and for good-paying jobs and all the other gains bargained away by the unions, it is necessary to break with these pro-company organizations and form independent rank-and-file committees, democratically elected and controlled by workers themselves. Such committees must appeal to the millions of workers facing similar attacks in the US, Mexico, Asia and internationally for a joint struggle for the social rights of the working class as a whole.

Corporate giants announce partnership to cut employer health care costs

Barry Grey

Three of the biggest corporations in the world—Amazon, Berksire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase—sent shockwaves through the US health care industry Tuesday with a joint announcement of plans to form a company dedicated to cutting employer health care costs.

The press release issued by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Berkshire head Warren Buffet and JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon provided few details beyond a general goal of utilizing advanced technology to slash the cost of providing health care for the firms’ combined US work force of over 1 million. However, Dimon, who heads America’s biggest bank, hinted that their ambitions went beyond their own employees when he said, “Our goal is to create solutions that benefit our US employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans.”

The initiative heralds a further monopolization of health care by a handful of billionaire-run corporations and a further subordination of social needs to Wall Street. Health care in the US is a $3.3 trillion industry that accounts for 18 percent of the American economy. Whoever controls it stands to pocket untold billions in personal wealth.

Despite the companies’ talk of improving the availability and quality of health care for workers, the initiative announced Tuesday signals a further rationing of care for the working class. Its overriding purpose is to cut business costs and increase profitability, and that means restricting further the access of workers to quality care.

Even before Tuesday’s announcement, the monopolization of health care in the US was accelerating, encouraged by the market-based “reform” enacted by the Obama administration in the form of “Obamacare.” According to the Healthcare Financial Management Association, the pace of consolidation doubled between 2011 and 2015.

Last year saw a wave of hospital mergers, the largest of which combined Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives, uniting their 139 hospitals and 700 care sites across 28 states. A number of major mergers of health insurers and pharmacy companies were announced, topped off by the $69 billion purchase of insurance giant Aetna by the CVS drug store chain.

But the sheer wealth, power and weight of the three firms involved in Tuesday’s announcement constitute a threat to the industry’s middlemen, from insurers and pharmacies to benefits managers. The new entity could eventually negotiate directly with drug makers, hospitals and doctors, undercutting the more traditional industry behemoths.

As a result, the announcement triggered panic selling of shares of major health insurance and pharmacy firms, which in turn sparked a broader selloff on US markets on Tuesday. At the close of trading, CVS was down 4.11 percent, Walgreens had lost 5.16 percent and UnitedHealth Group suffered a drop of 4.35 percent.

The Dow fell 362.6 points, or 1.4 percent, after falling 177.2 points on Monday, bringing its two-day loss to 540 points. This was the biggest two-day loss for the Dow since June 2016. The Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq indexes also declined sharply.

The executives chosen by Bezos, Buffett and Dimon to head up the new venture underscore the dominant role of financial capital in the further private carve-up of the health care system. Amazon named Beth Gialetti, a senior vice president who had served as FedEx’s vice president for planning. Berkshire named investment banker Todd Combs, who was a hedge fund manager before joining Buffett’s firm. JPMorgan chose Marvelle Sullivan Berchtold, the global head of mergers and acquisitions at drug maker Novartis before joining JPMorgan last year.

The sheer size of the three firms points to the increasing stranglehold of oligopolistic entities over society. Amazon has 542,000 employees around the world. Berkshire Hathaway employs 367,000 and JPMorgan Chase has more than 240,000 employees.

These are corporations that have overseen massive attacks on working class living standards. Dimon was fully implicated in the criminal machinations on Wall Street that led to the financial crash of 2008 and has been named in a series of financial swindles since then. Bezos has made his fortune by running the world’s biggest sweatshop operation, subjecting workers in his distribution centers to backbreaking labor at poverty wages.

The combined market capitalization of the three companies is $1.61 trillion, a sum larger than the gross domestic product of Spain ($1.2 trillion). Bezos, with a net worth of $115.6 billion, is the world’s richest person. Buffett, with $93.2 billion, ranks second. Dimon, despite an annual salary of $28 million, is a piker compared to his new partners, with net holdings of “only” $1.26 billion.

The combined wealth of Bezos and Buffett alone ($210 billion) is almost twice the combined fiscal year 2018 budget levels proposed by the Trump administration for the departments of education, housing and labor.

While the three CEOs in their joint press release said they had as yet no concrete policy proposals for their new company, some business commentators speculated as to the likely approach that would be taken. The New York Times spoke of a “wider use of telemedicine and virtual doctor visits,” and telemedicine companies saw a rise in their stock price.

Bloomberg posted an opinion piece stating: “The one thing we can say, however, is that if it succeeds, its success may help usher in an era of even tighter employer control over employees’ lives… There are probably considerable savings to be had if employers use their power to guide employees toward better decisions about everything from ER use to smoking.

“But one big reason that our health care system is such an expensive mess is that Americans hate being told what to do. They demand maximal, expensive freedom of choice about their health care. They rebel if they can’t get it. Worse still, if they are denied it, they call their legislators, who do things like telling insurers to stop denying so many claims for experimental treatments of dubious worth.”

Another Bloomberg piece declared bluntly, “The most effective way to reduce health care costs is to restrict choice.”

Trump economic adviser and former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn, who played a central role in drawing up Trump’s multi-trillion-dollar tax cut for the rich, endorsed the Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan plan on Tuesday. “We’re doing the same thing here at the White House,” he said.

In his statement to the press, Buffett declared that growing health care costs “act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy.” This is a completely false and self-serving presentation of the situation. The tapeworm is not an excess of money spent to provide health care for the population—although the existing corporate-dominated system is rife with corruption and profit-gouging. Rather, it is the financial oligarchy that rules over economic and political life under capitalism, of which the three CEOs are a part.

The diversion of ever more obscene amounts of money and resources into the bank accounts of a parasitic elite, made possible by private ownership of the health care industry and all of the economic levers of society, makes any rational and humane approach to social needs, including health care, impossible.

The first step in solving the health care crisis and providing quality care for all is the expropriation of the fortunes of oligarchs like Bezos, Buffett and Dimon and the transformation of the banks and large corporations into publicly owned and democratically controlled utilities—that is, a struggle by the working class to put an end to capitalism and establish socialism.

Hundreds of thousands of industrial workers strike in Germany

Peter Schwarz

As Germany’s ruling elite conspires to form a new government to slash workers’ wages, attack democratic rights and remilitarize the country, the working class is giving its response in the form of the country’s biggest strike movement in 15 years.

On Wednesday, more than 65,000 workers in Germany’s metal and electrical industries will strike for 24 hours. On Thursday and Friday, hundreds of thousands more will follow. The IG Metall union has called 24-hour warning strikes nationwide in 250 companies, including Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen.

The extension of industrial action is taking place despite the efforts of the IG Metall leadership to contain the current contract struggle and reach a rotten compromise that betrays the workers’ demands. It is an expression of the growing anger and militancy of the workers after decades of social attacks by the government and employers.

The significance of this struggle goes far beyond the borders of Germany. Throughout Europe and around the world the ruling elites are engaged in a drive to dismantle labor protections and destroy workers’ wages and benefits in order to fund new and bigger wars and line their own pockets.

The strike wave in Germany is a confirmation of the World Socialist Web Site ’s prognosis at the New Year that “The year 2018--the bicentenary of Marx’s birth—will be characterized, above all, by an immense intensification of social tensions and an escalation of class conflict around the world.”

The names of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the country’s former finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, have for years been synonymous with brutal attacks on the European working class. The austerity diktats that upended the lives of millions of working-class families in Greece, Spain and Portugal were above all the work of the last grand coalition government in Berlin. The transformation of Eastern Europe into a vast pool of cheap labour for international corporations, which pay workers in the formerly Stalinist-run countries a fraction of Western European wages, is also the result of German ruling-class policy.

The German government could not have played this role if it had not simultaneously attacked the German working class and kept it under control, with the help of subservient unions. The Hartz Laws introducing labour and welfare “reforms,” passed in 2003 by a Social Democratic-Green Party government, created a huge low-wage sector. At the same time, an army of well-paid works council representatives and union officials ensured that wages stagnated and workers’ conditions steadily deteriorated.

The working class has gained nothing from Germany’s economic “success,” which was achieved on its back. A small layer at the top of society has enriched itself without restraint, leaving Germany one of the most unequal countries in Europe, with 40 percent of all employees earning less than they did two decades ago.

The strike wave in the automative, metal and electrical industries is a rebellion against these conditions. The IG Metall union has been forced to call the 24-hour strikes because it confronts a mood of anger and mistrust that goes far beyond the affected industries.

Militancy is growing in other European countries. In Serbia and Romania there have been spontaneous strikes against starvation wages in the auto industry. In Greece, the working class has struck and protested against the austerity diktats of the European Union and the Syriza government. In France, resistance to the labour market “reforms” of President Macron is growing. The UK has seen a series of rail strikes. The strike movement in Germany will embolden workers across Europe in their struggles.

The challenges facing the striking workers are above all political. While they are fighting for higher wages and shorter working hours, the Social Democratic Party and the conservative union parties (Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union), with full support from the unions, are getting ready to form a third edition of the grand coalition. Such a government will not only intensify the attacks on the working class in Germany and across Europe, it will expand the powers of the state and accelerate the program of military rearmament and war.

Such a government has no democratic legitimacy. The grand coalition was voted out of office four months ago. The votes for the Social Democrats, Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union fell by 14 percent in the general election. The attempt to bring back the same parties in the form of a new grand coalition is a political conspiracy whose real goals are being concealed from the people.

While those favouring the coalition bluster about “the unity of Europe” and “friendship with France,” their real goal, along with French President Macron, is to deepen the social counterrevolution and turn the European Union from an economic to a military alliance that enforces German and French imperialist interests against Russia, China and the United States.

The German ruling elite is plotting to increase military spending not only to the NATO-mandated target of two percent of GDP, which means doubling it to 60 billion euros, but even higher. This is possible only through massive cuts in social spending, which will rapidly wipe out any gains the metal workers might achieve through strike action.

The industrial action in the metal and electrical industries must be linked to the fight for new elections. Workers must not allow a cabal of conspirators to install the most right-wing government since the end of World War II.

New elections must be called to mobilize behind a socialist programme that combines the fight against social cuts, dictatorship and war with the overthrow of capitalism. The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) is the only party that puts forward such a programme. It rejects the European Union and advances the struggle for the United Socialist States of Europe.

This week marks 85 years since a clique around President Paul von Hindenburg, who had been elected with the support of the Social Democrats and the Centre Party, appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor, initiating the greatest human catastrophe in world history.

Contrary to the official narrative, Hitler was not brought to power by a wave of public support. The Nazis were in a deep crisis. In the Reichstag (parliamentary) elections of November 1932, they lost nearly two million votes. With 33 percent of the vote, they trailed the two major workers’ parties, the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Communist Party (KPD), which had a combined total of more than 37 percent. But the German ruling elite needed Hitler to crush the workers’ movement and prepare for the next war.

Nobody should imagine that such a catastrophe cannot be repeated. The world is moving rapidly toward a Third World War. This week’s edition of the British Economist magazine is headlined “The Next War.” Its lead editorial declares,“Conflict on a scale and intensity not seen since the Second World War is once again plausible.”

German ruling circles are preparing more and more openly for war and dictatorship. For the first time, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right party, is sitting in the Bundestag (parliament) and will be entrusted with the chairmanship of the Budget Committee. A Humboldt University professor, Jörg Baberowski, announces, “Hitler was not vicious,” and is defended by the university administration and the media against criticism from students. In its latest editorial, the weekly Der Spiegel, which published Baberowski’s apologia for Hitler, boasts that windowpanes “in Manchester and Rome, in Warsaw and Lyon” are shaking as Germany, the “800 pound gorilla,” rearms.

As in the first half of the twentieth century, the working class faces the alternative of socialism or barbarism. To prevent the ruling class from imposing its programme of social counterrevolution and plunging the world into a catastrophic war, the working class must seize the initiative and unite internationally to overthrow capitalism.

The strikes in the metal and electrical industries must be expanded. This requires a break with the IG Metall union, which is doing everything it can to stifle the strike. The union works closely with the employers’ associations, and most of its officials are members of the SPD and supporters of a new edition of the grand coalition.

In order to expand the strike, rank-and-file workers’ committees must be set up to take control of the dispute and establish contact with workers across Europe and around the world. This is inseparably bound up with the fight for fresh elections to prevent the installation of a new grand coalition and advance a socialist alternative.

Newton International Fellowships for Early-Career Scientists 2018

Application Deadline: 27th March 2018.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries:  Brazil, China, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey.

To be taken at (country): UK

About the Award: The scheme provides the opportunity for the best early stage post-doctoral researchers from all over the world to work at UK research institutions for a period of two years.

The scheme covers the broad range of the natural and social sciences and the humanities. It also covers clinical and patient orientated research for applicants from Newton Fund partner countries.

The scheme is jointly run by the British Academy, the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society. Currently there is one round per year which opens in January.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: To be eligible to apply you must:

• have a PhD, or will have a PhD by the time the funding starts
• have no more than 7 years of active full time postdoctoral experience at the time of application (discounting career breaks, but including teaching experience and/or time spent in industry)
• be working outside the UK
• not hold UK citizenship
• be competent in oral and written English
• have a clearly defined and mutually-beneficial research proposal agreed with a UK host scientist

Before applying, please ensure that you meet all the eligibility requirements, which are explained in the scheme notes.

Number of Awardees:  Not specified

Value of Fellowship: 

• Newton Fellowships last for two years. Funding consists of £24,000 per annum for subsistence costs, and up to £8,000 per annum research expenses, as well as a one-off payment of up to £2,000 for relocation expenses.
• Awards include a contribution to the overheads incurred, at a rate of 50% of the total award to the visiting researcher.
• Applicants may also be eligible to receive up to £6,000 annually following the tenure of their Fellowship to support networking activities with UK-based researchers.

Duration of Fellowship: 2 years

How to Apply: Applications should be submitted through the Royal Society’s electronic grant application system (e-GAP). Applications are initially reviewed by two members of the Newton International Fellowships panel and then shortlisted. The applications are then reviewed again by the panel and the final decision is made.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: British Academy, the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society.