Brazil’s political crisis deepens after court upholds conviction of Lula

Miguel Andrade

On January 24, Brazil’s Fourth Appeals Circuit (Tribunal Regional Federal da Quarta Região—TRF-4), upheld the conviction of former Workers Party (PT) president Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula, on charges of passive corruption and money laundering. It went further, extending his original nine-and-a-half-year prison sentence to 12 years and one month. The three-judge panel rejected all the motions of Lula’s lawyers, voting unanimously in favor of the prosecution’s appeal to extend the sentence handed by 13th District Court Justice Sérgio Moro.

Since 2017, Lula has led the polls for the October 2018 presidential election, with an average of 35 percent support for the first-round balloting and an average a 15 percent lead over any potential rival in a run-off. The latest poll from the Datafolha Institute, conducted after the appeals court ruling, saw no change in the polling numbers.

Lula is now virtually barred from running for president, pending rulings by higher courts that are unlikely find that his conviction represented a miscarriage of justice. Lula’s closest competitor in the presidential polls—with just 18 percent support—is the fascistic reserve army captain Jair Bolsonaro, a seven-term representative from Rio de Janeiro in the lower house of Brazil’s federal legislature.

Nineteen percent of those polled indicated that they do not intend to cast ballots for anyone in October, a record number that reflects the broad popular hostility and disgust toward every political party, including the PT.

The unexpected unanimous decision by the appeals court on both the conviction of Lula and the lengthening of his jail sentence unleashed a frenzied run-up on the Sao Paulo stock exchange. The bourgeois media responded with a wave of right-wing triumphalism. This was in line with the media’s increasing subservience toward far-right elements in the upper-middle class, the military and the state apparatus which have for almost three years demanded the punishment of the Workers Party as a criminal organization and the “chief corrupter” of Brazilian society.

The leading prosecutor, Deltan Dallagnol, went so far as proposing in 2016 that political parties be shut down as a maximum penalty for involvement in corruption, a so-far stalled move which was nonetheless supported by Workers Party-appointed Attorney General Rodrigo Janot.

The charges ruled upon by TRF-4 on January 24 stem from the four-year-old Lava-Jato (carwash) investigation into a bribes-for-contracts scheme at the state-run oil giant Petrobras. This is the first case—out of nine—against Lula to reach a verdict. The corruption charge upon which he was convicted stemmed from his alleged acceptance of a seaside penthouse in the resort city of Guarujá, 70 km south of São Paulo, in exchange for favoring the national construction giant OAS on Petrobras contracts during his two terms in office, from 2003 to 2010. A separate charge of money laundering stems from the prosecutor’s allegation that the penthouse, officially owned by OAS, was covertly reserved for Lula.

Neither Justice Moro nor the TRF-4 appeals panel, however, have named any specific favor either granted or promised by Lula to OAS, instead arguing that the “whole” of his demonstrated relationship with several construction giants—including details of unrelated and unfinished investigations—made it “likely beyond reasonable doubt” that the apartment had been provided for services rendered.

The bulk of the evidence presented to the court consisted of internal OAS documents that the company’s president and other executives declared, while negotiating still unconcluded plea bargain agreements, contained nicknames for Lula, his wife and their collaborators, and allegedly showed that the penthouse, legally owned by the company, would be in the future used by Lula.

There is no doubt that Lula, in the course of a more than 35-year political career as head of the PT and as a two-term president, carried out crimes and betrayals against the Brazilian working class and oversaw a political system steeped in corruption. The evidence used to convict him and bar him from running again for president, however, is exceedingly thin.

Lula’s two terms earned him well documented international prestige among imperialist officials and nationalist politicians alike, who used his political success to propagandize the viability of world capitalism. US President Barack Obama famously declared in 2009 that Lula was “the man,” and the most popular politician on earth.

This assessment stemmed particularly from Lula’s pivotal role, as a moderately nationalist metalworkers union leader and later Brazilian president, in propping up Brazilian industrial and commodity monopolies, especially during the early-2000s commodity boom. His policies, as he always boasted, “allowed the rich earn money as never before,” at the same time that token cash transfer programs were employed to reduce extreme poverty and quell social unrest.

Lula left the presidency in 2011 to earn big money on the lectures circuit, much in the fashion of former US Presidents Bill Clinton and Obama.

Whatever Lula’s political guilt and responsibility for the wholesale corruption that characterized not only the PT, but every bourgeois party in Brazil, the methods used to prosecute him have been characterized by a complete contempt for democratic rights within the Brazilian ruling establishment and its state apparatus.

“Crusading” prosecutors have employed arbitrary detentions, perp walks and illegal phone bugs—including bugging law firms’ phones on the theory that lawyers were “collaborators” of their indicted clients, and, most notoriously, a phone call between Lula and his successor as president, Dilma Rousseff.

The corrosion of democratic forms of rule in Brazil has rapidly accelerated since the world capitalist crisis first hit the country with full force in 2013.

Rousseff was impeached in 2016 on trumped up charges of budget manipulation in order to intensify austerity measures about which the PT held tactical reservations, above all fearing they would provoke a social explosion. The takeover by Michel Temer, Rousseff’s vice-president and impeachment conspirator, failed to tackle the country’s worst economic crisis in a century, and the government has thus far proven unable to push through a pension “reform” which is key to its austerity agenda.

As Lula’s lead in the presidential campaign widened—and Temer’s crisis deepened—questioning of the investigations against the ex-PT president began to emerge in the media. The financial daily Valor ran a high-profile article on January 22 titled “Jurists see flaws in Lula’s conviction,” signaling the expectation that the TRF-4 panel would have at least one dissenting justice, opening the way for Lula’s appeals to higher courts and a possible election win.

Similarly, the BBC reported on the morning of the appeals court decision that the Eurasia Group had sent international investors a letter advising that a unanimous decision by the TR-4 panel was highly unlikely and that the court’s decision would have “zero say on Lula’s future.” Folha de São Paulo, for its part, published an editorial on the same morning declaring that “the case involves complex evidence and that is why it is going through a second evaluation, which won’t be the last.” Folha, Valor and the Eurasia Group were at this point cautiously preparing international and national investors to once more consider Lula as the best-suited candidate to preside over Brazil’s explosive social inequality.

All this was dropped 24 hours later, with the media bowing to the stock market, which saw a 3.72 percent rally in the hours after the appeals court decision, reaching an all-time high. Folha in its January 25 editorial did an about-face, stating, “Facts, in their complexity, resist any attempt by the defense to portray Lula as innocent.” Within 24 hours, eliminating Lula from the election by means of an upheld conviction that renders him ineligible under Brazilian law had become an accomplished fact.

The Lava Jato operation, and Rousseff’s impeachment, have been used by Brazil’s desperate bourgeoisie to push the whole political system far to the right. This includes not only the press, but also Lula and the Workers Party, which accepted the impeachment drive with no attempt to mobilize workers against it. Since then, they have worked with the unions to impose a straightjacket on the working class in order not to jeopardize Lula’s electoral ambitions, even as labor “reforms,” privatizations and the rolling back of environmental and other regulations have devastated conditions of life for the working population.

Despite his lip service to workers at rallies organized by his oligarchic allies around Brazil, Lula placed his true confidence in national and international capital to free him from the corruption conviction

These hopes were not unfounded. In its response to the appeals court decision, the Financial Times of London published an editorial titled “Lula’s conviction will not make Brazil great again,” warning that “the many opponents of Lula are mistaken in their joy. Brazil, one of the most unequal countries in the world, needs a strong, center-left party like the PT.”

Such a strategy, based on preserving the interests of Brazilian and foreign capital, inevitably demands further shifts to the right. Lula’s promise to subject Temer’s “reforms” to referendums should be seen in the light of Syriza’s referendum on austerity in Greece, laying the groundwork for a similar fraud and betrayal should he be given a third term.

As late as December, all the talk about a “left turn” by the PT notwithstanding, Folha de S. Paulo reported discussions within the party about inviting Luiz Trabuco, CEO of Bradesco, Brazil’s largest bank, to serve as Lula’s running mate.

May’s China visit highlights UK’s post-Brexit dilemma

Jean Shaoul 

Prime Minister Theresa May’s three-day visit to China was part of the British government’s desperate attempt to drum up business, attract more inward investment and strike a new trade deal as the UK prepares to leave the European Union (EU) in March 2019.

May promoted the trip as an example of “Global Britain,” telling Chinese state broadcaster CCTV “…we’re going to be more outward looking and looking to enhance our relationships around the world, and this relationship with China is an important part of that.”

She visited the industrial city of Wuhan, which has the largest student population in the world, the capital Beijing, and Shanghai, the commercial capital.

President Xi Jinping likewise struck an upbeat note, saying, “We must strengthen the pragmatism of Sino-British relations in the golden era and push economic and trade cooperation between the two countries to a new level.”

But for all such talk, May and her 40-plus delegation made up of figures from business, industry and universities came away with a few crumbs that only served to expose Britain’s catastrophic political and economic decline. According to Liam Fox, the Secretary of State for International Trade, who accompanied May to China, these deals included:

* A deal to open a chain of new nurseries, expand English language teaching and other education deals worth around £550 million,

* An agreement to tackle international wildlife trade,

* A commitment to launch a trade and investment review, although any future trade deal was “some way off,”

* A promise to look at ways of expanding the import of British agricultural produce and to explore lifting the ban on British beef imposed after the outbreak of Mad Cow disease in 1996,

* Commercial deals said to be worth around £9 billion, about which little was said.

May’s visit is the first by a British prime minister since her predecessor David Cameron went with a 120-strong business delegation in 2013, when he promised to double the volume of trade with China by 2015.

But while exports of goods and services to China have increased by 60 percent since 2010, by 2016 this was worth less than £17 billion—against £42 billion of imports—and amounted to just 3.1 percent of all Britain’s exports. This is trifling compared to the 43 percent of Britain’s exports to the EU. Any further expansion of exports can only be accomplished by sharply reducing the wages of British workers and vastly increasing the rate of exploitation.

Cameron’s chief concern was to encourage Chinese investment in the UK and to promote the interests of the City of London, on whose speculative and parasitic activities the British economy has become ever more dependent.

To that end, he even defied pressure from the United States’ and Britain’s own security agencies to become the first Western country, in March 2015, to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), set up as China’s equivalent to the World Bank. He welcomed President Xi with all the panoply of a state visit to Britain in 2015, lauding it as the start of a new “golden era” in Sino-British relations still referred to by Xi.

As well as signing £40 billion worth of deals, Xi agreed to open China’s first overseas financial centre in London for marketing its sovereign debt in Chinese renminbi. At the end of last year, according to recent data cited by the Financial Times, British banks had more exposure at around $300 billion to China than the eurozone and North America.

After initially hesitating about making overtures to Beijing following the Brexit referendum that brought her to office, May sanctioned China’s involvement in the Hinkley nuclear power station and Britain’s participation in China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Last December, during a two-day visit to Beijing, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond announced the setting up of a $1 billion investment fund with China to back BRI.

But while May desperately wanted to be associated with good news due to the factional disputes tearing her government apart and threatening her political survival, she was severely constrained as to how far she could go in her overtures to Xi given the geopolitical consequences of doing so. May might have been willing to risk alienating the EU by signalling her intention to support China’s BRI investment plans, but she could not risk doing so while at the same time alienating her main political and commercial ally against the EU—the US.

The UK faces an existential dilemma, placing definite constraints on the degree to which it can pursue its own interests without jeopardising its strategic relationship with the US, the world’s dominant military power, that has, since the end of World War II, enabled it to “punch above its weight” on the world arena.

Before May arrived in Beijing, she had met with President Donald Trump in Davos, where he had once again promised to sign major trade deals with the UK post-Brexit. One price for doing so was to ensure that the UK toes the US line regarding relations with China.

As May was departing for China, CIA Director Mike Pompeo was giving an interview to the BBC in which he stressed that “Chinese efforts to exert covert influence over the West are just as concerning as Russian subversion.” Pompeo told the BBC that the Chinese “have a much bigger footprint” to do this than the Russians, citing “efforts to steal US commercial information and infiltration of schools and hospitals” that “extended to Europe and the UK.”

“Think about the scale of the two economies,” he said of Russia and China. “The Chinese have a much bigger footprint upon which to execute that mission than the Russians do.”

Pompeo and Trump effectively scripted May’s response to the key issues of concern during her trip. For this reason, even as she abandoned any pretence of opposing China’s human rights violations, to the extent that she was afforded the appellation “Auntie May” by China’s media, she felt obliged to publicly stress the necessity of China adhering to “fair trading practices”—a reference to steel dumping—and intellectual property rights.

But crucially, the US tied her hands in the key issue, the BRI, leading to her refusal to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) officially endorsing the BRI—aimed at building a vast transport network linking China to the Mediterranean, Europe and Africa via 70 countries in Eurasia, the Middle East and Africa, a modern version of the old Silk Routes.

To do so would have risked incurring the wrath of Washington. Within the US, opposition to the BRI is bound up with the Trump administration’s designation of China as a “strategic competitor.” Washington views the advance of China’s economic influence in Asia and Europe as expressed by the BRI, the AIIB, and the use of the renminbi as an international currency and the enhancement of its military and strategic capacities as inseparably linked and a growing threat.

In addition, May would have further alienated the European powers. While several eastern European states have signed up to the BRI, the EU, Germany and France have thus far joined the US in not doing so—concerned that China will favour its own corporations in the construction of the BRI at the expense of their own and fearing that Beijing is seeking to strengthen its geostrategic interests by reshaping the global economy along a Eurasian axis.

Under the terms of the MOU signed with the Czech Republic, China has promised to turn the Central European country into a transport and financial hub that could further threaten economic and political integration of the EU.

Hamburg police searching for G20 protesters Europe-wide

Marianne Arens

The Hamburg police want to significantly expand their controversial search operation for alleged “rioters” and “violent criminals” on the periphery of the G20 summit in July 2017. The measure is part of a massive stepping up of state powers at home and corresponds to the plans of the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Union parties (Christian Democratic Union-CDU/Christian Social Union-CSU) for coordinated policing practices across Europe.

In December, the Hamburg police had already widely published photos of alleged suspects. In an action coordinated with the tabloid Bild, they posted photos of 104 alleged rioters on the Internet. What the Hamburg police have described as “one of the largest public search operations in German history” is an unlawful, prejudicial action in which those affected are publicly pilloried without due process of law.

The search is now to be extended to other European countries, such as Spain and Italy, as Hamburg state interior minister Andy Grote (SPD) announced on 1 February. In a lengthy interview with the Hamburger Abendblatt, he threatened, “For the first time, perpetrators cannot feel safe, even months after riots took place, but are being consistently hunted down.”

The G20 summit was the occasion for massive attacks on basic democratic rights. The entire city was placed under siege, accompanied by attacks on freedom of expression, assembly and the press. The police sought to escalate the conflict and used the situation for an exercise that had the character of civil war manoeuvres.

Peaceful opponents of the G20 summit were repeatedly attacked with pepper spray, truncheons and boots. At the same time, there were clashes between those in uniform and the so-called black bloc, with a certain division of labour. The rioting was deliberately provoked to provide the press with the pictures it wanted. It is known that individual acts of violence were carried out by right-wing provocateurs or undercover informants and secret service agents.

Immediately after the G20 summit, a campaign against “left-wing extremism” began. In July, Justice Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) called for the introduction of a pan-European “extremist database” and, a little later, a “rock against the left” concert. At the end of August, federal Interior Minister Thomas De Maizière (CDU) banned the left-wing Internet web site “linksunten.indymedia” and on December 4 the police organized large-scale raids in several federal states to arrest alleged “perpetrators of violence” at the Hamburg conference.

In fact, the fairy tale of “extreme left-wing violence” was already collapsing shortly after the G20 summit. On several police videos, which came into the public domain, it could clearly be seen that the violence unleashed in Hamburg came from the security forces. Most of the violent scenes reported in the media were either fictitious or systematically inflated. Significantly, to date, there have been few legal charges, and almost all the alleged offences have been misrepresented. Even the photos that the police have posted on the Internet to aid their public search operation do not provide evidence of the serious crimes alleged.

Nevertheless, the judiciary has acted with draconian harshness from the start. At the end of August, a young Dutchman was sentenced to two years and seven months’ imprisonment, solely based on police statements. Two police officers had accused him of throwing empty glass bottles at a policeman. A 24-year-old art student from Warsaw was given a six-month suspended sentence for carrying pepper spray, goggles, seven firecrackers, “clothing typical for the [anarchist] scene” and two marbles in his backpack, at the time of the arrest.

Fabio V., a 19-year-old northern Italian worker, was detained for four months. Although not a single act of violence could be attributed to him personally, he was nonetheless accused of a serious breach of the peace. In November, he was released on bail of 10,000 euros, and at the end of January, the Hamburg-Altona district court was forced to lift the warrant for his arrest, as there could be no imprisonment without probation.

On the other hand, not a single police officer has been charged, let alone convicted, despite the documenting of many cases of brutal assault, as the case of Sarah Nothdurft shows. According to a video from Spiegel Online, the police assaulted the young worker as she was on her way home, pulling off her bike for no reason, dragging her across the floor and kicking her. They broke her wrist and elbow. The video also shows an unprovoked orgy of police violence against demonstrators.

Such scenes must be understood as a warning. They serve to intimidate young people who are prepared to oppose social inequality and war. The Europe-wide search operation can only be understood in the context of the evolving explosive struggles of the working class. The bourgeoisie is reacting by abolishing elemental fundamental rights, censoring the Internet, and building a Europe-wide police state.

Germany’s Grand Coalition for austerity and war

Johannes Stern

When the Social Democrats talk against austerity, every worker knows that a new round of social attacks is imminent.

With the coalition negotiations in the final stretch, Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Martin Schulz stepped in front of the cameras yesterday and announced an agreement between his party and the conservative Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union (both parties known collectively as the Union) on European policy. The result was “a much-needed signal for a new departure for Europe.” Successes from the SPD point of view are “more investments, an investment budget for the Eurozone and an end to the austerity dictates.”

That was obviously a lie. Only a few minutes later, the CDU Economic Council clarified that the adopted chapter on European politics was by no means the “end of the austerity dictates.” The European policy would “even in a grand coalition not be made in the SPD headquarters,” Economic Council Secretary General Wolfgang Steiger (CDU) told Reuters.

In fact, there are no fundamental differences between the Willy-Brandt-Haus (the SPD headquarters) and the CDU headquarters in matters of fiscal policy. Both the SPD and the Union plan to intensify the austerity policy with which they have already plunged millions of workers and young people in Germany and throughout Europe into poverty and unemployment in recent years. The exploratory paper already contained phrases such as “We want to strengthen the EU’s competitiveness in the context of globalization” and “We want to push for fiscal control in the EU.”

According to media reports, the Union and SPD have agreed in their coalition paper, which is expected to be presented today, to regulate banks less strictly. With regards to Brexit, they agreed that Germany, as the EU’s financial center, should be made more attractive to banks and international finance. In addition, the notorious “Black Zero” (Schwarze Null) of former Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble will remain in place. Together with the SPD’s Hartz “reforms”, it has made Germany one of the most socially unequal countries in Europe.

Behind Schulz’s “Departure for Europe” stands a deeply reactionary political agenda. The SPD and its chairman are pursuing the declared goal of deepening the social counterrevolution together with French President Emmanuel Macron and transforming the European Union from an economic to a military alliance, in order to enforcing its imperialist interests upon its international rivals.

Already at the SPD special party conference in January, Schulz called for the speedy implementation of a common European military and great power policy in close cooperation with France. “Only a strong and determined SPD can make our country and Europe strong. ... It’s about a lot,” he shouted at the delegates. Europe is waiting “for a Germany that is aware of its responsibility for Europe and acts decisively, and that will not be possible without the SPD.” The proposals of French President Emmanuel Macron would be “on the table.”

The anti-social impact of these proposals has been reiterated in the past week. On Thursday, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and Minister of Public Finance Gerald Darmanin announced a comprehensive attack on civil servants. It aims to completely remove the legal status of workers’ rights established after the liberation of France from Nazi occupation. The Macron government is planning massive layoffs, a weakening of civil servant status, performance-related pay, and the increased use of contracted employees instead of lifetime civil servants.

The offensive is enthusiastically supported by the ruling class in Germany. “Now Macron wants to slaughter France’s holy cows,” cheered the German daily Die Welt and demanded similar measures in Germany. “Here, too, many public employees work at the federal, state and local levels. Together with the 1.85 million officials, it is about 4.6 million. The cost of around 250 billion euros per year is about one-fifth of government spending.”

There is no doubt that the SPD and the Union parties are planning savings on this scale in order to free up the necessary billions for their desired military upgrades. The comments of influential security politicians show that the coalition partners are discussing a comprehensive armaments program behind the backs of the population that evokes memories of the Wehrmacht’s buildup in the 1930s.

“Crucially, since 2014, German policy has taken a different course, not so much because it was announced in speeches or coalition agreements, but because the situation requires it,” wrote the President of the Federal Academy for Security Policy (BAKS), Karl-Heinz Kamp, in a guest post in the German weekly Focus.

In other words, the policy of the next government is determined not by the promises of the SPD and CDU/CSU or by what they will write into the coalition agreement, but by the international crisis of capitalism and the reaction of the ruling class to it. “With Russia’s aggression in the east and the chaos in the Mediterranean there are again direct threats,” writes Kamp.

Then he adds visibly satisfied: “[T]he German defence budget is rising again, and so are the expenses for the police, the intelligence services and for development aid. Also new military equipment has been procured. In the last four years, the Bundestag approved arms projects for around 32 billion euros—in the previous legislative period it was only 6 billion. In early 2016, Parliament was presented with an investment plan worth 130 billion euros, with 1,500 concrete individual projects ranging from the protective vest to the battle tanks.”

The hollow promises made by the Union and the SPD in recent days—such as spending more money on education, housing and social affairs—are simply intended to disguise their reactionary program. The ruling class fears the growing resistance among workers and youth against their anti-social and militarist policies. While the SPD and the Union parties want to bring the coalition talks to a quick conclusion, the unions are desperately working to strangle last week’s massive strikes in the metal and electrical industry. Handelsblatt reported on “a possible agreement” between IG Metall and the bosses for today.

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party—Germany) bases its call for new elections on the growing opposition to social cuts, militarism and dictatorship. The strikes in the metal and electrical industries must be continued and linked to the broadest possible mobilisation of the working class throughout Europe and internationally on the basis of a socialist programme. The ruling class in Germany must not be allowed to bring to power the most right-wing government since the overthrow of the Nazi regime in order to prepare for new wars and social attacks.

US flu epidemic rages on, with more deaths and record hospitalizations

Kate Randall

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported Friday that at least 16 more children died of the flu over the previous week, with 42 states reporting high levels of the flu activity, up from 39 states the week before. This brings the number of child deaths this flu season to at least 53.

Typically tragic was the case of 7-year-old Savanna Jessie of Columbus, Indiana, who was sent home from the hospital after testing positive for influenza B, strep throat, and scarlet fever. Her father found her in bed unresponsive the next morning. Medics rushed her to the regional hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

“Hospitalizations are now the highest we’ve seen,” said CDC Acting Director Dr. Anne Schuchat in the Friday briefing. CDC officials expect to see numbers similar to or greater than those from the 2014-2015 flu season, when 710,000 Americans were hospitalized and about 56,000 died, including nearly 150 children.

Hospitalizations are one of the key measures of the severity of an outbreak. The rate currently stands at 51.4 per 100,000 people, already significantly higher than the 43.5 rate for the same period during the 2014-2015 season. In California, hospitalization rates are four times higher than they were two years ago.

Although there are indications that flu activity may be peaking in the Western US, Schuchat cautioned that the disease is continuing to spread in the East and remains largely unchanged in the South.

Under these epidemic conditions, the CDC has been hit by a scandal forcing the head of the agency to resign and the Trump administration is proposing drastic cutbacks to the programs that fight epidemics both domestically and internationally.

Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, a former OB-GYN doctor and Georgia health commissioner, who was tapped by President Trump last summer to head the CDC, stepped down from the post Wednesday after a report in Politico that she traded in tobacco and health care stocks. These included Japan Tobacco, a multinational that sells Winston and Camel cigarettes around the globe, pharmaceutical giants Merck & Co. and Bayer, and health insurer Humana.

In other words, the top official at the helm of the government agency charged with preventing and fighting disease has been trading in stocks that promote tobacco use, a known carcinogen, and private drug companies and health care insurers that are reaping billions in profits at the expense of the well-being of ordinary Americans.

Due to these egregious conflicts of interest, Fitzgerald was forced to cancel her first scheduled appearance before Congress last fall to discuss the opioid epidemic that is ravaging the nation. Dr. Peter Lurie, president of Center for Science in the Public Interest, was quoted by Reuters: “It takes a certain kind of cluelessness for a director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to purchase stock in a tobacco company a month after assuming the job as the nation’s top public health official.”

The choice of Fitzgerald to head the CDC was no less calculated than Trump’s selection of Tom Price to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Price, a vehement opponent of women’s reproductive rights and the Medicare and Medicaid programs, was forced to resign in September following revelations that he had used more than $1 million in HHS funds for his own travel on private charter jets and military aircraft.

Meanwhile, doctors’ offices, hospitals, and clinics are bursting at the seams in an effort to accommodate people reporting flu-like symptoms. School districts in Chicago, Florida and elsewhere have been forced to close because so many children and staff are out sick. In California, which has been especially hard hit, officials are describing hospitals as “war zones.”

There is an ongoing shortage of saline IV bags to treat people for hydration and administer medications. The shortage stems from the devastation in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria, where a private company manufactures nearly half of the IV bags used in US hospitals.

The Food and Drug Administration is monitoring continuing IV bag shortages, as well as spot shortages of some antivirals used to treat the flu, flu tests, and flu vaccines.

The H3N2 virus is the most prevalent in this year’s flu outbreak, causing an estimated 90 percent of cases. Of the two species of influenza viruses that cause seasonal flu, A and B, H3N2, a strain of the A virus, is the most virulent.

Researchers at the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute in Wisconsin earlier this season found that the vaccine designed for this year was about 33 percent effective. A new study from the journal Eursurveillance found that the flu vaccine was only about 10 percent effective against H3N2 among adults in Canada.

H3N2 is particularly resistant to flu vaccines, as it mutates as it moves through the population at a faster rate than other flu viruses. A vaccine to protect against H3N2 is also more difficult to grow in eggs, where viruses for flu vaccines are generally produced.

The federal National Institutes of Health (NIH) only committed $30 million in funding out of an already inadequate budget of $230 million last year overall for the development of a universal vaccine, which could potentially protect against all strains of the flu over the course of a person’s lifetime.

The CDC estimates total yearly expenditures for flu outbreaks, in both direct and indirect medical costs, amount to $87.1 billion. Last year’s budget provided just $57 million for influenza pandemic planning.

As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the CDC is discontinuing its work in 39 out of 49 countries where its Center for Global Health helps prevent, detect and respond to dangerous infectious diseases such as Ebola and the Zika virus. CDC personnel were informed over the past two weeks that the cuts were being made because it does not expect any new funding for the program.

According to the Center for Global Health website, the organization monitors 30 to 40 disease outbreaks in countries outside the US every day and has trained more than 10,000 “disease detectives” in more than 70 countries.

The five-year initiative was begun under the tenure of Dr. Tom Frieden, CDC director from 2009 to 2017. Its funding runs out in October 2018 and it is not expected to be refunded. Dr. Nancy Knight, director of the Center for Global Health’s Division of Global Health Protection, said, “We estimate approximately an 80 percent reduction in the staff that are based overseas. This is also going to result in a significant reduction of the staff we have at headquarters.”

Frieden, who is now the president and CEO of the initiative Resolve to Save Lives, told CNN the decision to slash 80 percent of epidemic prevention activities overseas “would significantly increase the chance an epidemic will spread without our knowledge and endanger lives in our country and around the world.”

Global markets plunge as Dow records biggest ever one-day point fall

Nick Beams

Wall Street stocks plunged yesterday amid a global market sell-off. At the end of the day, the Dow was down by 1,175 points, its biggest one-day point fall in history, after a day of violent moves.

Including the fall last Friday, the Dow has dropped by more than 1,800 points in two days, erasing all the gains it had made this year.

One of the most significant features of yesterday’s decline was its speed. In the space of about 11 minutes just after 3 pm, the Dow went from minus 700 points to 1,600 points down, in what was described as an “avalanche” of selling, before recovering somewhat. However, selling resumed and the index finished 4.6 percent lower for the day.

Other indexes were also down sharply in the biggest market fall since 2011. The S&P 500 fell by 4.1 percent, the Nasdaq, 3.78 percent, and the Russell 2000 by 3.63 percent. Tech stocks recorded big falls, with Apple and Alphabet (the Google parent company) down by more than 10 percent.

Every sector of the broad-based S&P 500 index was down. Financial stocks fell 4.7 percent, health care 4.6 percent, industrial stocks 4.5 percent and energy 4.3 percent.

The turbulence in the market was reflected in the rapid spike in the so-called Vix, or volatility index, which rose by 117 percent, its largest one-day percentage increase. This marked a major break from the situation last year, when the Vix recorded its lowest ever average annual rate.

In its report on the market plunge, the Wall Street Journal noted that “traders described a growing sense of anxiety” when the fall in the Dow reached 1,600 points, citing one investment manager who said it was “the first time in a while I’d say it feels like borderline panic-type selling,” as yelling broke out on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

The rapid plunge raised fears that it could have been the result of a “flash crash”—a sudden fall produced by a so-called “fat finger” trade or some other malfunction. But nothing like that appears to have taken place. The fall was precipitated by large computer model-generated trades.

The Wall Street plunge followed significant declines in global markets, as trading opened following the fall in US markets last Friday. The Hong Kong market fell by as much as 2.7 percent at one point, while Japan’s Topix index slid by 2.2 percent.

As the trading day began in Europe, markets were also down. London’s FTSE index fell by 1.5 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 600 index lost 1.6 percent.

Market analysts and commentators were divided on the reasons for the sell-off. Some have maintained that it is a necessary correction and that the economic fundamentals remain sound, with improved prospects for higher growth. Others have pointed to the moves by central banks to wind back quantitative easing and start to end the low-interest rate regime that has played such a key role in sustaining the market surge since the financial crisis of 2008.

While it is impossible to predict the short-term course of the markets, there are clearly significant shifts taking place. The sell-off that began on Friday was triggered by the report that average wages in the US had risen by 2.9 percent over the past year, the largest increase since 2009. This drove an increase in the interest rate on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury bond to 2.85 percent, sparking fears that the rate was on its way to the critical level of 3 percent.

The significance of the wage rise was not so much the number itself, a relatively small increase coming in just over market expectations of a 2.7 percent rise, but what it signified. The markets are above all fearful of a resurgence of wages militancy in the working class in the US and internationally, the signs of which are growing. This would force an end to what has been a central aspect of US monetary policy going all the way back to the stock market crash of October 1987.

At that time, the incoming chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, announced that the financial spigots of the central bank would be opened to sustain the market, and in every period of market turbulence since then what became known as the “Greenspan put” has been set in motion.

But with the working class seeking to push back against the continuous wage cutting of the past four decades, that policy may have to be dropped as the Fed lifts rates to counter such an offensive.

While the Fed rate is still relatively low, between 1.25 and 1.5 percent, the move of bond market rates toward 3 percent is regarded with trepidation because of its impact on US firms and its ramifications globally.

According to the findings of a report by London’s Longview Economics, the results of which were cited in the Financial Times, if interest rates in the US rapidly move above 3 percent, the impact will be far-reaching. This is because some 12 percent of US companies are “zombies.” That is, their earnings do not cover their interest payments, and a sudden rise in rates would send them into bankruptcy, so dependent have they become on the continuous supply of ultra-cheap money.

According to a report published by CNBC on research carried out by the Bank of America Merrill Lynch, there is a similar situation in Europe, with a significant number of “zombie” firms there dependent on cheap credit. The bank report found that 9 percent of companies in Europe were “zombies” with “very weak interest coverage metrics.” This compares to 6 percent in the period before the crash of 2008 and 5 percent in late 2013.

“The plethora of monetary support in Europe over the last five years has allowed companies with weak profitability to continue to refinance their debt and stave off defaults,” the report noted.

Whatever the immediate future of the markets, yesterday’s sell-off has already had a political impact by deepening the crisis of the Trump administration. Just ten days ago in his address to the summit of the global elites in Davos, Switzerland, Trump cited the rise of the stock market, “smashing one record after another,” as proof of the virtues of his economic policies.

In an address at a Cincinnati-area manufacturing company yesterday afternoon, he hailed a “tidal wave of good news,” while television coverage of his speech tracked a further plunge in the Dow toward minus 1,600 points in a corner of the screen.

East Africa Social Science Translation (EASST) Visiting Fellowship for East African Students 2018

Application Deadline: 30th March 2018.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, or Rwanda

To be taken at (country): USA

About Scholarship: In Spring 2017, EASST will host its seventh annual Visiting Fellowship application. The EASST Visiting Fellowship seeks to equip East African social scientists with the skills needed to carry out rigorous evaluations of social or economic development projects in East Africa. During a four-month fellowship, researchers will be based at the University of California, Berkeley during the Fall academic semester.

Our EASST fellows are able to audit courses, present research, attend seminars, develop curricula and design collaborative research projects. Fellows receive a living stipend, round-trip economy class air travel to Berkeley, CA, and the opportunity to receive seed funding promote impact evaluation at their home institution in East Africa.

Type: Research, Fellowship

Who is qualified to apply?

• Be a resident of an East African country participating in EASST (i.e. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, or Rwanda);
• Have a PhD or Masters (completed within the last 5 years), or be enrolled in a doctoral program, in economics, statistics, epidemiology/public health, or other social science discipline;
• Have conducted an impact evaluation study (either randomized or quasi–experimental), or have an interest in micro-level data collection and quantitative analysis;
• Should hold a staff position at a research institution, university or other recognized national institution in East Africa that has an element of quantitative social science research;
• Will return to a university or research institute in East Africa for at least 1 year after the fellowship;
• Be computer literate and fluent in English.

Number of Awards: Several

What are the fellowship benefits? Fellows receive a living stipend, round-trip economy class air travel to Berkeley, CA, and the opportunity to receive seed funding promote impact evaluation at their home institution in East Africa.

Duration of Fellowship:  Fall 2018 (September – December), or Spring 2019 (January – May).

How to Apply: To apply, please review application information available through the Request for Applications, below. All materials should be submitted using the online platform in the Submittable link below

Visit the Scholarship Webpage for Details

Sponsors: The East Africa Social Science Translation (EASST) Collaborative

Foundation House of Human Sciences Sudan Postdoctoral Fellowship 2018 – France

Application Deadline: 16th March, 2018

Eligible Countries: Sudan

To Be Taken At (Country): France

About the Award: This research is designed to enable researchers to conduct research studies in France: field investigations, library and archives work. This call is part of the Atlas short-term postdoctoral mobility program offered by the FMSH and its partners.

Type: Fellowship, Postdoctoral

Eligibility: 

• Nationality/Residence: Applicants must be Sudanese nationals and be affiliated with a public institution of higher education and research / public institute of research in Sudan
• Educational Degree : Applicants must have obtained their PhD doctorate and presented their thesis from 2009.
• Theme : Applicants must be involved in research in social and human sciences .
• French host institution: Before submitting their application, applicants will have to find a French research institution to host them for the time of their stay. Applicants will have to provide a letter from the hosting institution addressed to the FMSH, the AMB and the MOHE expressing the institution’s willingness to host the applicant during the time of fellowship and explaining the work conditions offered.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• Laureates will receive a total stipend of 3 400 € for the two months (2 instalments of 1 700 € paid at the beginning of each month of stay). This financial contribution is intended to cover expenditure such as transport and accommodation costs.
• Laureates will be considered as “Boursier du Gouvernement Français” and will have access to affordable accommodation, social security for the time of their stay and get a financial support to buy bibliographic material.
• Laureates will also benefit from free visa and logistical support to organize their stay (possibility to have a workspace, letter for the libraries…).

Duration of Program: 2 months

How to Apply: 

Applicants will be required to submit an online application form and a scientific dossier (research project + appendices). The online application form will be available on the FMSH website as of 2 January 2018. Completed proposals can be uploaded to the application portal at any time before the application deadline of 16 March 2018, 17:00 (Paris time).

Online application and scientific dossier can be submitted in French or English.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Foundation House of Human Sciences (FMSH), French Embassy in Sudan (AMB) and the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Sudan (MOHE)

Getting Rich or Getting By? Cryptocurrency Trading Today

Julian Vigo

I remember in the 1990s when day traders were the hot thing on Wall Street as scores of twenty-somethings would wake up after a night of clubbing, put on their brightly-colored track suits and trainers, and work with music blasting from their headphone in a downtown Manhattan trading firm.  Long are the days of day traders which are today replaced by those who deal in cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin.

In recent months Bitcoin, a currency which is not even a “coin” but instead a series of lines of code, has gone from incredible highs to lows.  Many people in the past few years have taken interest in Bitcoin, especially given the media onslaught in recent months over Bitcoin and other such currencies.  As a result, I have had many friends ask me, “What is Bitcoin?”  So, I decided to try to explain what cryptocurrencies are, to include their perceived benefits and pitfalls.

As per the usual “success stories,” the rise of cryptocurrency has followed the allegory of Jack and the Beanstalk where companies and the media show us the potential to get rich quickly and climb to heavens.  And an important turning point for Bitcoin was with Sam Sharma, one of the founders of Centra, a company that offers a debit card to translate Bitcoin into useable currency.  Simply put, Sharma made a killing from translating code into a currency that can be used outside the computer. However after Sharma, Centra’s former president, and Raymond Trapani, Centra’s former chief operating officer, founded Centra, they found themselves at the center of a scandal in the company’s first months and have since stepped aside for reasons which are not completely clear even today.

Despite the rumors surrounding the pros and cons of Bitcoin which compare this era of cryptocurrency to the California “gold rush,” there are many reasons to consider the advantages of crypto trading, and just as many reasons to be wary of these products.  And the newest trend of all is that of the crypto robot and crypto app which is effectively a software that automates online trading, taking out the guesswork and anxiety surrounding online trading.  While many YouTubers have focussed on this mechanism over the past year, as such currencies seem to have most confounded, crypto robots are simply not the get-rich-quick schemes nor are they for the faint of heart despite the possibility to mine for Bitcoin.

Given that the media is promoting Bitcoin and other types of cryptocurrency like Ripple as the currency of the future, I think it bears understanding what these currencies are about and what, in reality, they offer, to include their positive and negative aspects.  This is especially important today given Bitcoin’s downward plunge over the past two weeks and the fact that Bitcoin was only $.08 in July 2010, rose to almost $20,000 in December, 2017, and as I write this, is currently valued at $8,155.

First it is important to note that there are well over a dozen of cryptocurrencies out there. Here is a quick list of the most popular with brief explanations for each. Secondly, let’s begin with a simple question: what is money?  Yes, you might be reaching for your pocket to hold up a paper bill or a coin.  But in effect those physical pieces of paper, plastic, cotton, or coins are just the “promissory note” between the individual and the bank, hence the words “legal tender” appearing still on American banknotes.  In and of themselves, these articles are pretty much worthless, except that they actually do stand for the symbolic amount which has been agreed to within national and international banking systems.  And cryptocurrency is not so different than this system, but it is a lot more technical and complex.   

First, some history on this currency.  that during the Occupy Wall Street movement large banks were accused of abusing their customers, misusing their money, rigging the financial system, and charging huge fees.  Bitcoin was a type of pushback to the banking system putting the seller in charge by eliminating the “middleman” while also cutting out interest and transaction fees. Bitcoin was initially designed to be a money transfer and digital cash system without a central entity. Think of a peer-to-peer network (P2P) for file sharing. But instead of going online to download that now undiscoverable Kenny Loggins album, you are going online to transfer digital cash.

Bitcoin came about quite accidentally while trouble shooting for online transactions when devising the first blockchain database. Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the unknown inventor of Bitcoin, had to address the problem of double-spending of digital currency. After all, go back to the coins and bills in your wallet: you know they are spent when they are gone. With digital money P2P sharing of money, there is no way to keep track of this spend/gain effect because digital tokens could obviously be reused over and over as a meme you share and share again on Facebook.  And double spending would create a huge problem for inflation and eventually devaluation of the currency.  And when that happens, trust in trading is diminished and the system collapses.

So when the double-spending problem was solved early on in 2008 through a system of cryptographic techniques, Bitcoin was born. It can be used through virtual purchases whereby both the buyer and seller use cryptographic code to exchange currency.  In short, cryptocurrency is an exchange of digital information that allows the individual to buy or sell goods and services.  Like Skype, or BitTorrent, and other file-sharing systems, each transaction gains its security and trust by running on a peer-to-peer computer networks.

While there are risks to cryptocurrencies, more people are moving towards this system despite the current push by governments to enforce tax on profits or the recent market price caps.  There are also fears of Bitcoin being the next frontier of money laundering, worries of  hackers illegally accessing accounts, high volatility, and transaction delays. Still, there are advantages where banks are left out in the cold and many in developing countries are finding this currency more profitable for individuals to negotiate financial transactions.

The bigger problem for crypto-currencies is, as Roy Morrison points out, this economic model “is based on a limited quantity that makes it resistant to inflation, but enshrines scarcity and therefore value and the siren calls of greed and desire as it does for scarce commodities like cocaine or diamonds or gold.” The real question is how monetary products of any nature are necessarily dependent upon the vulnerable being crushed and those with power vanquishing the rest.