Zimbabwe sacks 16,000 striking nurses, as Uganda nurses threaten strike

Eddie Haywood

The government of Zimbabwe sacked 16,000 nurses employed at public hospitals Tuesday, after they went on strike the previous day to demand higher pay and better conditions. The striking nurses belong to the Zimbabwe Nurses Association (ZINA) union.

The walkout comes as part of growing social unrest in the country and follows a month-long walkout by doctors, who struck over similar demands. The government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa has faced growing popular opposition since coming to power after a military coup removed long-time president Robert Mugabe late last year.

In summarily firing the striking nurses, the government is seeking to stop growing social unrest from escalating before the July 2018 elections. There is a deep-seated fear among Zimbabwe’s ruling elite over the eruption of mass social unrest, which could threaten their rule.

While patients were turned away from hospitals and clinics after the strike began on Monday, striking nurses set up an impromptu clinic during a demonstration outside of parliament, with the offer of free treatment to the public.

Speaking to the media regarding the provision of free treatment, Pretty Mugudza, a nurse at Central Hospital in the capital city Harare said, “We are doing this to show that we are for the people. All we are asking for are better working conditions. We can’t be looking at patients dying in hospitals because we have no resources.”

The state of public hospitals in the country is indeed horrific. The doctor-to-patient ratio in the country is an unprecedented 1 doctor for every 12,000 residents, in contrast to the United Nations recommended standard of 1 for every 200. Many Zimbabweans die from treatable diseases, even after admission for treatment at clinics or hospitals.

Hospitals frequently lack supplies, including medicines. Essential equipment, such as x-ray machines, are either obsolete, broken, or nonexistent in many clinics across the country. In rural areas, where the majority of Zimbabweans reside, most have no access to health care at all and must travel to cities for treatment.

Tapfumaneyi Gubede, a resident of Mutoko, told the Voice of America in 2016 of the dire state of health care many rural residents experience. “Another problem is the failure to acquire drugs. People pay a $5 fee for cards at clinics but there are no drugs. The clinic just writes a prescription and you are supposed to purchase the drugs from a pharmacy. Most people die because they do not have money.”

After his government sacked 16,000 poorly paid nurses, Vice President Chiwenga cynically claimed to have the health and well-being of Zimbabweans in mind. “Government has decided in the interest of patients and of saving lives to discharge all the striking nurses with immediate effect.”

Chiwenga declared that unemployed and retired nurses would replace those who have sacked. He further denounced the nurses’ actions as deplorable and reprehensible, coming after the government allocated a paltry $17 million in funding for nurses’ salaries. Distributed evenly among the 16,000 sacked nurses, the new funding equates to less than $3 per day per nurse and would do next to nothing to improve the deteriorating state of Zimbabwe’s public hospitals.

In a betrayal of the striking nurses, on Sunday ZINA called an end to the strike and instructed nurses to return to work on Monday, even after the government remained firm that striking nurses were to be replaced. While the cessation of the strike brought no agreement for better pay or conditions, ZINA told striking nurses of the union’s plan to file a lawsuit against the government. Such a maneuver is a dead end for the nurses and will do nothing to guarantee better wages or working conditions.

Uganda nurses and midwives threaten walkout over poor salary, working conditions

On April 15, nurses and midwives employed at public hospitals and clinics across Uganda threatened to strike if salary increases agreed to with the government in November were not enacted. The proposal for salary increases from 400,000 to 1 million Uganda shillings (or from $110 to $270) for entry-level nurses and midwives was negotiated between the Uganda Nurses and Midwives Union (UNMU) and President Yoweri Museveni last November.

The UNMU has rejected the government’s new salary structure for nurses and midwives for the 2018 fiscal year, stating that it falls far short of the agreement. The union threatened a walkout if the government did not table immediate negotiations to address the nurses’ and midwives’ demands.

Chairman General Wilson Owere Usher of the National Organization of Trade Unions (NOTU), to which the UNMU is affiliated, stated, “We are warning [Minister of Finance David] Bahati. If he insists we shall camp in Kabale. Government has the money and we know where the money is. When politicians need money, it is released in two hours, but when it’s workers who generate the money, government says it doesn’t have it. This time we shall not accept that.”

On Thursday, amid the threat to walkout by nurses and midwives, student nurses enrolled at Masaka School of Comprehensive Nursing conducted a boycott to protest exorbitant registration fees and poor quality meals provided by the school.

Occupying the student compound at the school, the students declared their refusal to eat meals, stating that they would not eat weevil-infested beans and other low-quality food that the school provides and for which students are made to pay high prices.

For patients at public-run hospitals and clinics throughout the country, most can wait for days before seeing a doctor, languishing in overcrowded emergency rooms.

Due to the lack of funding made available to the public-run hospital system, many facilities have been left to deteriorate for decades. There is a generalized lack of modernized equipment and frequent shortages of supplies, even stocks of drugs, which has forced patients to purchase medicines from pharmacies elsewhere.

The Ugandan masses subsist on $3 a day or less, with an estimated 10 million out of Uganda’s total population of 40 million living below the poverty line. Amid this colossal scale of social misery experienced by the masses, there are just 24 individuals at the top of Ugandan society who collectively have a net worth of more than $4.2 billion.

Twenty-seven protesters dead amid Sandinista government crackdown in Nicaragua

Andrea Lobo

After the Social Security Institute in Nicaragua (INSS) announced Tuesday a ruthless austerity package directed against the country’s pension system, the largest protests since the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) returned to power in 2007 have erupted across the major cities, while the government of the long-time leader of the FSLN, Daniel Ortega, has called on its supporters, operatives and police apparatus to launch a “Permanent Defense Mobilization.”

The Nicaraguan branch of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) has recorded the deaths of 27 people, including a journalist, 43 disappearances, 20 detained, and dozens injured. These numbers have not been confirmed by the Red Cross. The FIDH is financed by the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundation, tied to the US intelligence apparatus, but the Nicaraguan government has not countered this information.

On Sunday, as reports surfaced that police officials were being arrested for not complying with orders to repress demonstrators, Ortega announced that he was cancelling the pension reform and setting up a negotiation with the business chambers, the trade unions and the Church.

After government buildings, other infrastructure and FSLN headquarters were attacked, and some burned in Estelí and Managua on Friday night, the military was deployed in these two cities. The next day, in his first public address about the demonstrations, Ortega appeared next to military and police chiefs, appealed for “reconciliation” within the ruling class, defended tax exonerations for big business, and emphasized that FSLN has for decades been a bulwark of “stability” for bourgeois rule. Without referring to the repression or dead, he sought to sow fear, with warnings about a civil war, and criminalized protesters as “agents of imperialism,” gang members, drug traffickers and “exterminators.”

While reactionary organizations aligned with US imperialism are likely attempting to take advantage of the current crisis to exert pressure on the ruling clique, the demonstrations appear to be a genuine popular explosion against right-wing reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Initial protests on Wednesday were composed largely of pensioners and University students in the two largest cities of the country, Managua and León. Activists of the right-wing opposition, Broad Front for Democracy (FAD), have been rallying some demonstrations, clearly seeking to gain control of the protests. During the last two days, thousands more, mostly youth, have joined the wave of demonstrations in 11 other cities and several smaller towns. Students have been arrested and at least 37 people have been injured.

Starting on July 1, existing pensions are scheduled to fall 5 percent, while future pensions will be 12 percent lower. At the same time, the signed executive decree increases the social security contributions from workers and employers by 0.75 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively. Beyond denunciations by the bourgeois media and business chambers, these measures were not only suggested last year by the International Monetary Fund, but constitute a major diversion of income from the working class to the national ruling class and their imperialist bosses.

The FSLN political apparatus, including several media outlets controlled by the business clique around Ortega, the Sandinista Youth, all major trade unions, local government officials, and Catholic leaders, have organized concerts, demonstrations, and staged photo-ops in support of the INSS resolutions.

Moreover, videos from Managua posted on social media showed police pick-up trucks transporting groups of men wearing Sandinista youth t-shirts, who attacked demonstrators on Wednesday, targeting journalists. Similar incidents were reported in León and Masaya, while students barricaded themselves inside the Central American University (UCA) and the National Engineering University (UNI) to protect themselves against these pro-government shock groups and anti-riot police, who have used tear gas and rubber bullets against the demonstrators.

Vice-president Rosario Murillo, wife of Ortega, characterized the protesters as “tiny groups that inflame and destabilize to destroy Nicaragua.” The government suspended classes nationally on Friday, while the US embassy closed its offices and called on “the forces of order to respect media and the rights of protesters.”

On Friday afternoon, the international Western outlets celebrated that the local leader in Nueva Guinea, Francisca Ramírez, has called for peasants to march to Managua in protest of “all of the reforms of laws in this country.” Ramírez gained some fame internationally as the leader of the protests against the planned Inter-oceanic canal granted to the Chinese firm HKND.

In a dramatic about-face, the main business chambers and the all-powerful business council, Cosep, which have ruled the country hand-in-glove with the FSLN bureaucracy, have opposed the INSS measure and called for a lock-out by employers in the private sector on Monday, including a march “for dialogue and peace” in downtown Managua. So far, the only reported strike occurred on Friday afternoon by employees of the private bank Lafise.

In response, the government folded and announced talks with the Cosep about the INSS policies “among other themes,” with the business chambers calling on the weight of the funding to fall more heavily on the state finances and the workers.

All the major business chambers have used the increase of the quota required from employers to fund INSS to threaten workers with mass firings or dropping them from the social security program, which could potentially end up undermining the INSS finances. Their interventions in the current political crisis reflect a growing feud within the ruling class, which is losing confidence in Ortega’s ability to contain social unrest within the country, especially as they prepare much more sweeping attacks against the social rights of the working class.

Government officials and FSLN operatives have justified the pension cuts as a measure needed to expand elderly health care; however, a source with access to the INSS financial records told Confidencial that the institution was simply approaching bankruptcy.

On Thursday, a worker in Managua in contact with the WSWS reported a complete media blackout of the protests. “Daniel Ortega ordered to close down four TV channels,” she indicated, adding that many are joining the marches, with a genuine desire to resist the INSS measure and attacks against freedom of the press, but do so with hesitation regarding those organizing them.

At the same time, Nicaraguans are relying on social media to avoid the government blackout. In fact, on March 12, Rosario Murillo announced that she was discussing with the president of Congress measures to “revise” social media access in the country, indicating it was damaging the “ability to live in harmony.”

The FSLN first came to power in 1979 under a petit-bourgeois nationalist movement, including Castroite guerrillas. They were voted out in 1990 as the government began imposing IMF-austerity diktats. The Sandinistas, however, kept a significant amount of control over the state bureaucracy and military during the following decade. Since returning to power in 2007, the self-proclaimed “socialist” government has only deepened the exploitation of the Nicaraguan working class as cheap-labor platform largely for US imperialism, diverting virtually all wealth back to investors abroad or the local client elite. The top 10 percent of the population receives as much income as almost the bottom 70 percent (ECLAC-UN Economic Commission for Latin America).

Close to 85 percent of the working population has incomes below the ECLAC threshold of four poverty lines—“insufficient to keep out of poverty an average-sized household.” This measure has remained constant since at least 2002. Moreover, since 2008, inequality has increased rapidly.

Central Bank of Nicaragua figures show that the percentage of economic participation (above 15 years old) jumped from 52 percent in 2009 to almost 75 percent in 2016, amid a demographic boom nearly doubling the overall working population and more than doubling foreign investments. Despite such a large growth of potential contributors to INSS, the INSS fund turned a $7.5 million surplus in 2012 to a $75.8 million deficit in 2017, which suggests that, proportionately, workers are being excluded more from the health care and pension system. Some analysts also suggest deliberate mismanagement and corrupt investments to favor the ruling clique around Ortega.

The Ortega faction of the ruling class has been compelled to deepen its austerity measures to repay interest payments that are growing about 20 percent each year and to counter the loss of Venezuelan aid in recent years. For this, it has turned more decisively to set up a police-state dictatorship to suppress growing social opposition.

Nonetheless, just like the local business chambers, US imperialism is threatening to end their tolerance of the corrupt FSLN bureaucracy, particularly by keeping under consideration the Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act in the US Congress, which could end Managua’s credit access from international financial institutions. Moreover, as the Trump administration pursues a more aggressive military and economic confrontation against its current major rivals, Russia and China, Washington’s pressure seeks to force the FSLN government to cut its growing ties to Moscow and Beijing or to install a regime that will.

Australian banking revelations fuel political crisis

Mike Head

Continuing evidence of systemic illegal fee-gouging and other financial abuses by Australia’s major banks and finance houses is deepening the crisis of the Liberal-National Coalition government and the political establishment as a whole.

Over the past three weeks public outrage has mounted as damning revelations have emerged from hearings conducted by a royal commission into financial services. The country’s four big banks and AMP, a major finance firm, are now notorious for levying fees for no services, knowingly charging fees for up to a decade after customers have died, and giving misleading financial advice that caused people to lose their homes.

With weeks of hearing still to come, it already has been proven that the financial giants manipulate interest rates, forge customers’ signatures or require them to sign blank documents and lie repeatedly to corporate regulators. It is also clear that regulators have permitted them to continue their predatory activities.

None of these abuses can be explained, as politicians and the corporate media have sought to do, as the activities of individual rogues, corrupt officials and super-greedy financial advisers. Such practices are the inevitable result of business models, set from the top, designed to extract ever-greater profits, aided by the complicity of successive governments, both Coalition and Labor, which have protected the banks for decades.

In a belated act of damage control, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday expressed shock at the “unacceptable behaviour” of the banks and said it had been a political mistake to oppose calls for a banking royal commission for two years. Speaking from Germany, he told reporters: “When you say the government would have had less political grief if it set up a royal commission, you are right, clearly with the benefit of hindsight.”

Turnbull’s comments signalled yet another about-face by his increasingly faction-riddled government. For days, senior ministers, including Treasurer Scott Morrison and Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer, had repeatedly insisted that the government had been correct to condemn previous proposals for such an inquiry as irresponsible “rubbish.” They had also declared that the royal commission had produced nothing new that the government had not previously rectified.

Last December, the government made an extraordinary back-flip to announce the royal commission. Fearing for their political survival, members of the Coalition’s rural-based National Party had threatened to vote for a Senate bill, backed by the Labor Party, the Greens, One Nation and other right-wing populist senators, to conduct a parliamentary inquiry into the banks.

The royal commission was designed as a whitewash of the banks and a defence of the underlying capitalist profit system, as well as a political fix for the government. Turnbull said an inquiry was essential to ensure “confidence and trust in the financial system.” He added: “This will not be an open-ended commission; it will not put capitalism on trial.” The sheer volume of evidence has shattered those hopes.

But Turnbull’s motivations were shared by the Labor Party, which first joined calls for a royal commission in April 2016. An inquiry was always intended as a means of placating and diverting back into official channels public hostility toward the rapacious operations of the banks and other finance houses, which have grown to new heights since the 2008 global financial breakdown.

There were already mountains of evidence against the banks. A prime example was the country’s largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), which was privatised by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments during the 1990s. Its record alone included using outdated definitions of heart attacks to deny insurance claims; selling disastrously poor advice via financial planners; and liquidating Storm Financial, a financial advice company, in 2009, so that thousands of people lost their homes.

Over the past week of hearings, which featured AMP, it has become even clearer that these scandals were the tip of an iceberg. For instance, testimony revealed an internal AMP report saying that informing customers they were paying fees for no service would be “a very negative customer experience.”

Then it emerged that financial planners were paid up to 44 percent of the revenue they pulled in for the finance firms, including by pushing clients into expensive life insurance. Massive profits have been generated by such means. More than two million Australian residents currently pay a combined $4.6 billion a year for financial advice.

Behind the political posturing over the royal commission, Labor governments are, above all, responsible for these extortionist operations. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Hawke and Keating governments responded to the globalisation of production and finance by deregulating the money markets and selling off the CBA.

In 2008, the Rudd Labor government shored up the big four banks, which faced potential disasters because of their dependence on foreign funds, and underwrote their borrowings. This allowed the CBA, Westpac, ANZ and National Bank of Australia (NAB) to tighten their oligopolistic grip. By the middle of 2009, they were capturing nearly 100 percent of new housing mortgages, up from 60 percent before the crash.

During 2012, in a bid to quash rising discontent, the Gillard Labor government enacted Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) laws to ban a limited range of commissions paid to lure loan customers. The banks and finance companies easily found ways around these measures, knowing they would not be prosecuted. Between 2012 and 2015, financial planning fee revenue rose 110 percent at AMP and 39 percent at CBA.

In the past two decades since the privatisation of the CBA, the combined annual profit of the four banks has risen almost sixfold from $5.4 billion to just under $30 billion. These profits are largely obtained via predatory lending, exorbitant fees and interest rates, foreclosures on homes, businesses and farms, and the elimination of thousands of finance sector jobs.

Far from being aberrations, these practices are bound up with the ever-more destructive and parasitic character of the financial markets, whose mega-profits internationally derive from speculation and market manipulation, not economic production.

Finance capital dominates Australian capitalism. The country’s seven largest authorised deposit-taking institutions (including the big four banks) hold roughly $4.6 trillion in assets—around two and a half times the size of Australia’s $1.8 trillion economy, as measured by nominal gross domestic product. Another $1.6 trillion is held by superannuation funds, which are due to be examined by the royal commission in coming weeks.

No “reforms” or regulation can stop the abuses committed by the financial giants. Claims by one government after another to have established the “best regulated” financial system in the world are a total fraud. Treasurer Morrison desperately announced tougher penalties yesterday, but that was just for show. The industry regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), imposes criminal penalties, typically minor, in just 10 percent of admitted cases of abuse.

The only way to end this ruthless exploitation lies in the fight for a socialist program that includes the expropriation of the banks and giant financial institutions. They must be placed under public ownership, with full protection for small depositors, and operated under the democratic control of the working class.

This requires the development of a political movement of the working class, in direct opposition to the pro-capitalist organisations such as Labor and the unions, fighting for a workers’ government that will completely reorganise society on the basis of the needs and interests of the majority, not the obscene wealth of a tiny elite.

British Commonwealth summit sees line up against China and Russia

Mike Head

A gathering in London last week of government leaders from the former British Empire became a forum for intrigues and diplomatic bullying directed against Russia and the growing influence of China in the Indo-Pacific and Africa.

In particular, Australia, one of the Commonwealth’s imperialist powers, brought intense pressure to bear against small Pacific member states that have received aid or financial assistance from China.

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) saw a concerted drive to turn the 53-member grouping of ex-British colonies, long regarded as an imperial relic, into a vehicle for confronting Moscow and Beijing. There were even suggestions in the media of extending the Commonwealth’s membership, for this purpose, to include former French colonies.

The summit assembled amid the escalating global tensions generated by the US-French-British missiles strikes on Syria, the Trump administration’s trade war moves and the Pentagon’s recent National Defence Strategy, which openly accused Beijing and Moscow of seeking to challenge the hegemonic power of the US.

On the eve of the summit, the British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand leaders held a meeting, as four members of the US-led Five Eyes worldwide intelligence network, to stridently back the illegal attack on Syria and pledge to intensify their collaboration with the US and each other.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters the Five Eyes partners showed “total solidarity” with Britain and “provided real support and endorsement” of the missile strikes. “It is vitally important that we work more closely together than ever. No countries work more closely together in intelligence and security matters than the Five Eyes,” he said.

While the CHOGM event saw a line up behind the US-led militarism, the dominant members of the Commonwealth used various side meetings to assert their own predatory interests.

This was most notable in regard to the South Pacific, where Australia and New Zealand exert influence with the military backing of the US. There are nine small Pacific ex-colonies in the Commonwealth: Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

With China’s activities in aid and infrastructure projects growing in the region, its two middle-ranking imperialist powers are stepping up their relations with Britain, whose Pacific colonies they inherited, and France, which still holds significant territories in New Caledonia and French Polynesia and maintains a sizeable military presence.

In the lead-up to the summit, intelligence and military thinktanks declared that Australian governments had lost ground to China. Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings said: “We’ve kind of lost a lot of those connections, particularly on the military side where for the last 12, 13 years we’ve been heavily involved in Afghanistan and the Middle East and really taken our eye off the ball as far as the Pacific is concerned.”

Citing unnamed “intelligence and security” sources, Australian media outlets fuelled an ongoing anti-China propaganda campaign, alleging that China and the tiny island nation of Vanuatu were in talks about establishing a Chinese naval base on one of the country’s islands.

During a meeting held on the sidelines of CHOGM, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull reportedly secured an assurance from Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai that he would never allow such a base. Turnbull informed reporters: “Well the prime minister of Vanuatu has made it very clear, quite unequivocally, the media reports about Chinese interest in establishing a military base in Vanuatu have no basis in fact.”

In a separate meeting with Solomon Islands Prime Minister Rick Houenipwela, Turnbull insisted that Australia would substantially fund an underwater Internet cable between the two countries, as well as Papua New Guinea. This effectively blocks a rival bid by Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei, which has also been banned from major operations in the US and Australia on “national security” grounds.

Turnbull issued a media statement emphasising that Australia’s had “a long-standing commitment to peace and stability in the region, with Australia having led the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) over its 14 years of existence.”

This was a blunt reminder that in 2003 Australia sent more than 2,000 troops and police, backed by naval warships and air force support, to virtually take over Solomon Islands in order to reassert Australian domination over the country. “We will continue to work together to sustain the gains made under RAMSI and support long-term stability and growth in Solomon Islands, such as through our bilateral security treaty,” Turnbull declared.

In yet another meeting, Turnbull held talks with Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who has “looked north” to China for financial support. According to the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation, “various issues were discussed, including the strengthening of bilateral relations and cooperation between the two countries.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was as active as Turnbull, having stopped off in Paris for a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. She and Macron agreed to “confirm our friendship” and work together on a range of issues, especially “defence” in the Pacific. Macron accepted an invitation to visit New Zealand, which would make him the first French president to do so.

Macron is already making a three-day visit to Australia, starting May 1. These developments mark a sharp shift from the 1960s to 1990s, when French nuclear testing in the Pacific was denounced by governments in Australia and New Zealand, which regarded France as a rival in their Pacific “spheres of influence.”

Hosting the CHOGM summit, Prime Minister Theresa May’s government vowed to work in tandem with Australia and New Zealand. “Britain is about to dramatically expand its trade, aid and diplomatic presence in the South Pacific to counter China’s growing influence in the region as part of a global refocus ahead of its departure from the European Union,” the Australian reported.

Events have gathered pace since January, when the Australian government provoked a diplomatic row with China by condemning Beijing’s aid programs in the Pacific. Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Australia’s minister for international development and the Pacific, accused China of “duchessing” politicians in the Pacific, lending funds on unfavourable terms and financing worthless construction projects.

China’s involvement in the South Pacific is bound up with its response to Washington’s aggressive military and strategic “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific to confront China, which began under Obama and has intensified under Trump.

The Pacific was a major battlefield in World War II. Like other parts of the world, is again becoming a cauldron of geo-strategic conflict, primarily between the US and China, in which other powers are scrambling for alliances and jostling to assert their neo-colonial interests.

2.3 million evictions across the US in 2016

Shelley Connor

A team of researchers from Princeton University, led by sociologist Matt Desmond, has begun compiling a database of evictions throughout the United States. The first of its kind, the database found that at least 2.3 million evictions were filed in 2016, a rate of 4 evictions per minute, underscoring the heightening housing crisis in the United States a decade after the collapse of the housing market.

Desmond’s project, Eviction Lab, has thus far collected 83 million records from 48 states and the District of Columbia. “We’re in the middle of a housing crisis, and that means more and more people are giving more and more of their income to rent and utilities. Our hope is that we can take this problem that’s been in the dark and bring it into the light,” Desmond recently told NPR.

This scourge of evictions, Desmond reports, is rooted in the stagnation of wages combined with escalating housing prices. “Incomes have remained flat for many Americans over the last two decades,” Desmond explained, “but housing costs have soared… between 1995 and today, median asking rents have increased by 70 percent, adjusting for inflation.” As a result, he notes, there is a “shrinking gap” between families’ income and their rent expenses.

Desmond’s assertion is borne out by research done by other organizations. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), workers earning the federal minimum wage ($7.25 hourly) would have to work an average of 94.5 hours weekly in order to afford a basic, one-bedroom apartment. The NLIHC’s annual report on low income housing, released in March, states that about 8 million people nationwide pay greater than 50 percent of their income for rent.

“The problem is not that low-income people aren’t working hard enough. The problem, rather, is that many jobs don’t pay enough for low-income people to afford to pay the rent,” Diane Yentel, the president and CEO of the NLIHC told City Lab.

In the midst of the shrinking rent-to-income ratio, public housing is not rising to meet the needs of low income family. In his interview with NPS, Desmond explained, “...Wait a minute, where’s public housing here? Where’s housing vouchers? Doesn’t the government help? And the answer is, it does help, but only for a small percentage of families. Only about 1 in 4 families who qualify for housing assistance get anything. So when we picture the typical low income American today, we shouldn’t think of them living in public housing or getting any kind [of] housing assistance for the government, we should think of folks who are paying 60, 70, 80 percent of their income and living unassisted in the private rental market. That’s our typical case today.”

The Hampton Roads region of Virginia, which comprises seven cities, including Virginia Beach, Norfolk, and Newport News, has one of the highest eviction rates in the nation. According to Eviction Lab, all the region’s cities issued eviction orders three times more than the national average in 2016. Landlords asked courts to issue eviction orders for at least a fifth of rental households in Hampton Roads that year.

In Hampton Roads, the housing issues are manifold. As in many parts of the country, incomes in the region have not risen in proportion to demanded rent. In addition, public housing is not only failing to answer to the problem but is actually exacerbating it. Three of Norfolk’s public housing developments—Calvert Square, Tidewater Gardens, and Young Terrace—are slated for “overhaul” over the next 10 years. Altogether, the developments currently house about 4,200 people, many of whom will be displaced by the planned renovations.

In April, Ben Carson, the Director of Housing and Urban Development, visited Norfolk and praised the city for its plans to replace these public housing developments with mixed-income housing. “The overall plan is very well thought out. It’s something that will garner a lot of support and I think it will likely be included in the opportunity zone,” Carson said during his visit. Opportunity zones are economically disadvantaged areas targeted for redevelopment by HUD. Investors who develop in opportunity zones are eligible for tax deferments until 2026.

Carson sloppily dodged questions posed by concerned residents of these housing developments during his visit. “In talking to the mayor and some of the council members,” he said in front of the news cameras, “they are very carefully looking at the displacement issue and they are taking it into account in their planning, so I don’t think it’s going to be a big issue.”

The city, however, is not counting on public housing residents coming back to the area. Officials cite the nearby Broad Creek development, which “redeveloped” 767 units in the former Bowling Green and Roberts Village housing developments; a mere 150 of the developments’ original residents returned to the new, mixed-income housing. While the city chooses to frame this as a choice made freely, it is more likely that residents simply could not wait for the new developments.

The Hampton Roads eviction rate is extraordinarily high, but it is not the only region where housing authorities are increasingly more interested in developing real estate than providing affordable housing for low income workers. Opportunity Zones have been designated in at least 15 states and one territory since HUD initiated its redevelopment scheme in January.

Matthew Desmond points out that Eviction Lab can only provide a portion of the real impact of eviction in the US. As he told NPR “...the estimates that we have are stunning, but they’re also too low,” given the myriad ways that people can be evicted without landlords bothering to file for an order. He noted the many deleterious effects evictions have upon individuals and families, from the resulting condition of homelessness to poor job and school performance.

Irish government calls abortion referendum

Dermot Quinn

Simon Harris, Health Minister in the Fine Gael-led Irish government, has announced a referendum on May 25 to scrap the notorious Eighth Amendment in the Irish constitution. The so-called “pro life” amendment blocks legal termination of pregnancy in Ireland. Currently women can receive a 14-year jail sentence. A parliamentary committee has recommended allowing terminations and unrestricted access to abortion up to 12 weeks into pregnancy.

A decision on this minimal concession has split all the major parties and seen repeated twists and turns from leading politicians. Tanaiste (deputy prime minister) and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney has elucidated four different positions, while Harris himself, on the conservative wing of Fine Gael, changed his view little more than a year ago. Fianna Fail leader Micheál Martin also recently switched to supporting repeal.

Behind the confusion are seething class tensions and the collapse in the authority of the Catholic Church, following the clergy’s involvement in sexual/physical abuse in brutal children’s homes and orphanages. Church attendance in a country where the Church dominates education and health provision has fallen to around 20 percent of the population. In working class areas the figures are reported to be as low as 2 to 3 percent.

The Eighth Amendment was introduced in 1983 after a referendum and three years of protests, rallies and religious vigils orchestrated by right-wing Catholic organisations backed by the Church. Supported by all the major parties, the aim was to copper fasten by national plebiscite Ireland’s already draconian abortion laws.

Passed by a 66.9 percent majority, on a turnout of only 53.7 percent, the 1983 constitutional amendment reads: “The state acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother guarantees in its laws to defend as far as practicable and vindicate that right.”

The following decades have seen numerous cases in which women have tried to circumvent the reactionary prohibition with terrible emotional, financial and health costs.

In 1992 the High Court ruled that a 14-year-old rape victim could not travel outside Ireland to terminate a pregnancy. The attorney general placed an injunction to prevent her from travelling to Britain. After a public outcry and continuous mass protests outside parliament, the “X case” as it became known, forced the then-Fianna Fail government into holding a series of referenda. These resulted in the freedom to travel outside Ireland for an abortion and the right to information on abortion services being conceded.

In 2010, it was reported that 4,402 women gave Irish addresses to UK abortion clinics in the course of that year. In the same year the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Irish state failed to provide clarity on the legal availability of abortion where the mother’s life was at risk.

In 2011, Amanda Mallet received a scan in Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital in 2011 which showed the foetus she was carrying was suffering Edwards syndrome, a fatal condition. Informed by the hospital that she would have to travel to England to terminate the pregnancy she scraped the money together. In 2016, the United Nations Human Rights Commission found that Amanda had been subjected to “discrimination and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment due to Ireland’s abortion ban.”

In 2012, Savita Halappanavar died in a Galway hospital of septicaemia from complications arising from her pregnancy. She had repeatedly requested an abortion, which could have saved her life. The 31-year-old Indian woman was told by staff at University Hospital Galway that to procure an abortion was impossible as “this was a Catholic country.”

After a huge public outcry and ongoing protest rallies, Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael government grudgingly introduced the 2014 “Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill” allowing for abortion if the women was deemed to be suicidal.

This year’s referendum comes after years of intense campaigns, protests and even a strike demanding abortion rights. Particularly amongst young people, there is broad support for repeal of the reactionary law.

In the face of this, the major parties have moved at the last possible moment towards repeal, while the Church itself and the religious right, in Ireland and internationally, are campaigning aggressively to oppose any change.

Although opinion polls are registering large majorities, 63 to 37 percent in favour of repeal, some 20 percent of voters are undecided. A No campaign began on March 10 with a large rally in Dublin addressed by businessman and millionaire Declan Ganley. One of the most prominent right-wing and conservative voices in Ireland, Ganley told the crowd that “the coming weeks would be a battle between the people and the powerful.”

Another speaker was Niamh Ui Bhriain, who also fraudulently presented the anti-abortion campaign as an uprising against the “elite.” Urging a “No” vote, she claimed, “This is a rising of the people against the elites, and on May 25 it’s time to join a rebellion, and to reject both abortion on demand and the untrustworthy political class.”

A UK-based data-analytics company Kanto Systems has been hired by the “Save the Eight” campaign to work for a “No” vote. Kanto Systems is run by Thomas Borwick, son of former British conservative MP Lady Victoria Borwick. Borwick was chief technology officer with the Brexit campaign in Britain and has close ties to hedge fund billionaire Tomas Mercer, a key backer of Donald Trump.

It is a measure of the backwardness of the Irish bourgeoisie, inseparably entangled as it is with the Catholic Church, that a struggle on this issue is even necessary. Throughout the entire history of the Irish Free State and the Republic of Ireland the Church has ruthlessly maintained the leading role handed to it on all social matters by all the political representatives of Irish capitalism, who viewed the Church as its pre-eminent ally against the working class.

If the minimal concession over the 8th Amendment is now being made, it is because any further delay would threaten Church influence with an even more rapid collapse. The amendment is also regarded by sections of the bourgeoisie as an obstacle in their attempts to market Ireland internationally as a modern investment location, particularly for tech companies with a young and socially liberal workforce. Ireland currently has the most restrictive reproductive rights regime in Europe.

Even if the 8th Amendment is repealed next month, the new limit of 12 weeks on terminations is still more restrictive than the 24-week limit in operation across the Irish Sea in Britain. Even this can be extended in cases of medical emergency.

The World Socialist Web Site unequivocally defends the right of free and readily accessible abortion on demand, to comprehensive emotional counselling, free contraception advice, free contraceptive provision and advanced sex and sexual health education in schools. This is inseparable from the struggle for decent social conditions for all who want children but fear the economic consequences. Both require immense inroads into the wealth and social power of the ruling oligarchy, in Ireland and internationally and the socialist re-organisation of society.

US issues ultimatums to IMF on trade

Nick Beams

The growing dangers of trade war dominated the meeting of the International Monetary Fund held in Washington over the weekend. Despite warnings from the leaders of the fund and from major IMF member states that its actions are threatening the global economy, the US is stepping up its demands.

The increased US pressure was spelled out in a formal statement issued by US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to the fund’s governing committee demanding that it do more to reduce large surpluses of countries that trade with the US, such as Germany and China.

Adopting the tone of an overlord, he insisted that the IMF back the US in its drive against what it claims are “unfair global trade practices” that impede stronger US growth. He declared that the IMF should be a “strong voice for its members to dismantle trade and non-trade barriers and protect intellectual property rights.”

In line with its “America First” agenda, the Trump administration regards the move by China to develop its high-tech industries in the fields of telecommunications, robotics and artificial intelligence as a threat to both US economic and military supremacy. It denounces China for “stealing” US know-how.

Addressing the issue of global imbalances—the US trade deficit of $375 billion and the large surpluses of a number of other major economies—Mnuchin’s statement said these were a third larger than in the 1980s and 1990s “and there is no indication they are narrowing.”

“The IMF must step up to the plate on this issue,” he said, “providing a more robust voice and consistently noting when members maintain macroeconomic, foreign exchange and trade policies that maintain unfair competitive advantage or lead to imbalanced growth.”

Mnuchin said the IMF had to “speak out more forcefully on the issue of external imbalances, including by providing clear policy recommendations for countries with large surpluses, in support of more balanced global growth.”

The position of the IMF is that the Trump administration’s tax cuts, which will increase government debt while providing hundreds of billions of dollars to the bottom line of US corporations, much of it to be used for stock buybacks, will worsen the US trade position by sucking in imports.

In a thinly disguised reference to the US, the final communiqué of the International Monetary and Finance Committee said the fiscal policies of member countries had to “avoid procyclicality … and ensure that public debt as a share of global GDP is on a sustainable path.”

It said global growth had strengthened, but risks remained skewed to the downside “beyond the next several quarters.”

It continued: “Rising financial vulnerabilities, increasing trade and geopolitical tensions, and historically high global debt threaten global growth prospects. Demographic headwinds and subdued productivity growth may reduce the potential for higher and more inclusive growth going forward.”

In her closing press conference, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde tried to assuage US demands and prevent the trade conflicts breaking into the open. She cited concerns about both the rise of protectionism and protection of intellectual property rights, saying her “key concern” was to “help in the process of resolving those issues before they escalate to a point where they would hamper growth and stability.”

But under conditions where the US is determined to press ahead in its drive to offload its mounting economic problems onto its rivals—old and new—that is becoming an increasingly difficult task.

A report issued earlier this month by the US Treasury Department on the macroeconomic and foreign exchange policies of its major trading partners made it clear that China is not the only target in Washington’s crosshairs.

After citing the “extremely large and persistent” bilateral Chinese trade surplus, it said “the increasingly non-market direction of China’s economic development poses growing risks to its major trading partners and the long-term global growth outlook.”

This is a reference to the push by Beijing to promote high-tech development through state funding and state-owned and directed companies under its “Made in China 2025” program.

But the concerns do not stop there. “Japan’s goods trade surplus with the United States did not diminish in 2017, and stood at a still-large $69 billion over the four quarters through December 2017,” the report stated.

South Korea, the report complained, still maintained large external imbalances, with a current account surplus of 5.1 percent of GDP in 2017, its sixth straight year of over 3 percent.

Apart from China, Germany is a key target of the trade war hawks within the Trump administration.

“Germany has the world’s largest current account surplus in nominal dollar terms, $299 billion in 2017, and has had the world’s largest surplus in most years since 2011, with little to no progress on reducing this massive surplus the past three years,” the report said.

This was because domestic demand in Germany had not been sufficiently strong and low inflation has “contributed to a weak effective exchange rate.” According to Trump’s top trade adviser Peter Navarro, Germany has used a “grossly undervalued” euro to secure an advantage in global markets.

Even India came in for a mention, with the report noting that it had a “significant bilateral goods trade surplus” with the US of $23 billion in 2017.

In remarks during the IMF gathering, Mnuchin held out the prospect for negotiations with China, saying he was considering making a visit to Beijing for discussions and that he was “cautiously optimistic” about the possibility of an agreement. “A trip is under consideration,” he told reporters. “I’m not going to make a comment on timing, nor do I have anything confirmed.”

But given the conflicts in the White House and the fact that Mnuchin is not the key driving force of the trade policy, such a visit is by no means certain. Navarro and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are determined to press ahead against China.

As the Wall Street Journal reported: “It is unclear if Mr Mnuchin’s consideration of a China trip has broad support from the administration. Some US-China experts say such a trip could undermine the pressure tactics being currently pursued by the White House.”

So far the trade war measures and counter-measures have developed under conditions where the global economy is experiencing its most significant expansion in seven years. It could become much more intense in the event of a downturn, the first signs of which may be emerging in Europe.

The European economy grew by 2.5 percent in 2017, the fastest rate for more than a decade, but there are indications that the expansion has peaked.

“Surveys of sentiment and manufacturing indicate that first quarter growth is likely to be weaker than previously expected,” the Financial Times reported. Forecasts were being revised downwards “amid fears that the region’s bounceback may have peaked and that trade tension could darken the picture further.”

Commenting on the failure of discussions between Germany and France to agree on banking and monetary policy for the euro zone—France wants a common budget and an all-European mechanism to counter global shocks, both of which are opposed by Germany—the FT’s commentator on Europe Wolfgang Münchau wrote that lack of reform and a downturn could presage and “existential crisis.”

With the financial crisis having permanently lowered the euro zone’s potential output, “what is now disguising itself as a downturn may in time be revealed as a return to a depressed normality,” he wrote.

The combination of a slowing economy and a monetary union unable to reform itself “constitutes one of the biggest risks to the global economy right now,” he said, with the euro zone “particularly vulnerable” in a trade war because of its large current account surplus.

It is not possible to predict exactly how the various conflicting tendencies in the global economy will develop. But one thing is certain: none of the contradictions that exploded in the financial crisis of 2008 has been resolved. Rather, as the drive to trade war indicates, they are intensifying.

Japanese Government Scholarships (Monbukagakusho) for Undergraduate, Masters & Research International Students 2019

Application Deadline: 15th June 2018 (annual).
The deadline of the applications differ according to the country. Please contact with Japanese embassy or consulate general in your country (See link below).

Offered annually? Yes

To be taken at (country):  Japanese Universities

Eligible Field of Study: Those who wish to study in Japan as an undergraduate student must choose a field of major from (1) or (2) below. Applicants may enter a first, second, and third choice.
(1) Social Sciences and Humanities: Social Sciences and Humanities-A: Laws, Politics, Pedagogy, Sociology, Literature, History, Japanese language, and others. Social Sciences and Humanities-B: Economics and Business Administration.
(2) Natural Sciences: Natural Sciences-A: Science (Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry), Electrical and Electronic Studies (Electronics, Electrical Engineering, Information Engineering), Mechanical Studies  (Mechanical Engineering, Naval Architecture), Civil Engineering and Architecture (Civil Engineering, Architecture, Environmental Engineering), Chemical Studies (Applied Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Industrial Chemistry, Textile Engineering), and other fields (Metallurgical Engineering, Mining Engineering, Maritime Engineering, Biotechnology). Natural Sciences-B: Agricultural studies (Agriculture, Agricultural Chemistry, Agricultural Engineering, Animal Science, Veterinary Medicine, Forestry, Food Science, Fisheries), Hygienic studies (Pharmacy, Hygienics, Nursing), and Science (Biology). Natural Sciences-C: Medicine, and Dentistry.
For postgraduate, applicants should apply for the field of study they majored in at university or its related field. Moreover, the fields of study must be subjects which applicants will be able to study and research in graduate courses at Japanese universities.

About the Award: The Japanese Government’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) offers scholarships for academic study in Japan to foreign students interested in deepening their understanding of the Japanese language, Japanese affairs and Japanese culture. The purpose of these scholarships is to promote mutual understanding and deepening friendly ties between Japan and other countries through the application of advanced knowledge regarding Japan’s language and culture.

Type: Undergraduate, Postgraduate
Scholarship is available in four categories:

1. Research students
2. Undergraduate students
3. College of Technology students
4. Specialized Training College students

Selection Criteria and Eligibility

• Nationality: Applicants must have the nationality of a country that has diplomatic relations with Japan. An applicant who has Japanese nationality at the time of application is not eligible. Selection is conducted at facilities such as the Japanese Embassy /Consulate General (hereinafter “Japanese legation”) located in the country of the applicant’s nationality. (This shall not necessarily be applied in cases where one embassy covers multiple nations.)
• Health: Applicants must be free from any mental or physical disabilities that would be an impediment to the
  pursuit of university study.
• Military personnel or military civilian employees at the time of arriving in Japan are not eligible.
• Availability on arriving in Japan by April/ October 2019
•  Age: Research Student: Applicants generally must have been born on or after April 2, 1984.
       Undergraduate Student: Applicants generally must have been born between April 2, 1994 and April 1, 2002.
  College of Technology Student: Applicants generally must have been born between April 2, 1994 and April 1, 2002.
  Specialised Training College Student: Applicants generally must have been born between April 2, 1994 and April 1, 2002. 
  vi) Research Student: Undergraduate Degree holders from universities and/or colleges with a total mark of Second Class Upper Division or higher. Applicants for this program must submit a complete research proposal at the time of applying Undergraduate Student: Highschool graduate with a mathmatic score of B3 or higher.

Number of Scholarships: Not specified

Value of Scholarship:

• -Allowance: The amount of the scholarship disbursement per month has yet to be determined.
• -Transportation to Japan
• -Transportation from Japan: The recipient who returns to his/her home country within the fixed period after the expiration of his/her scholarship will be supplied, upon application, with an economy-class airplane ticket for travel from the New Tokyo International Airport or any other international airport that the appointed university usually uses to the international airport nearest to his/her home address
• -Tuition and Other Fees: Fees for the entrance examination, matriculation, and tuition at universities will be borne by the Japanese Government.

Duration of Scholarship: For undergraduate, the scholarship period will last for five years from April 2019 to March 2024, including the one-year preparatory education in the Japanese language and other subjects due to be provided upon arrival in Japan. For scholarship grantees majoring in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine or a six-year course in pharmacy, the scholarship period will be seven years until March 2025.
For postgraduate,  between 18 & 24 months.

Eligible African Countries: Africa: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Cape Verde, Chad, Comoros, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabonese Republic, Gambia, Ghana, Republic of Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Zambia, Uganda and Zimbabwe

Other Eligible Countries: See link below for eligible European, Middle East, Asian and other developing countries

How to Apply: 

• Application Forms can be downloaded here
• Previous exam papers for written exams are available here

Visit the general scholarship webpage for details. For country specific details, please contact with Japanese embassy or consulate general in your country.

Sponsors: The Japanese Government’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)

Important Notes: Please note that applications forms for the current exercise is clearly marked – (2019). Applications made with the 2018 forms will, therefore, not be processed by the Embassy.

OWSD Early Career Women Scientists (ECWS) Fellowships 2018 for Women in Science and Technology Lagging Countries

Application Deadline: 31st August 2018 (Application opens 30th June).

Eligible Countries: Science and Technology Lagging Countries

About the Award: The Early Career Women Scientists (ECWS) fellowship is a prestigious award of up to USD 50,000 offered to women who have completed their PhDs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects and are employed at an academic or scientific research institute in one of the listed Science and Technology Lagging Countries (STLCs). ECWS fellows will be supported to continue their research at an international level while

Type: Fellowship (Academic)

Eligibility: To be eligible to apply for the ECWS fellowship applicants must meet the following criteria:
1. Eligible countries

• Applicants must have been resident in one of the listed Science and Technology Lagging Countries (STLCs) for at least 5 years.
• The fellowship must be undertaken in one of the listed STLCs.

Please note this list may be subject to slight variation each year according to criteria established by our donor, IDRC, and in agreement with OWSD. Each year the list will be updated when the call for applications is opened.
2. Eligible STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)

• Agricultural Sciences
• Astronomy, Space and Earth Sciences
• Biological Systems and Organisms
• Chemical Sciences
• Computing and Information Technology
• Engineering Sciences
• Mathematical Sciences
• Medical and Health Sciences
• Neurosciences
• Physics
• Structural, Cell and Molecular Biology

3. Eligible academic qualification
PhD in one of the above listed study fields.

• PhD awarded not more than 10 years prior to application.

4. Eligible employment

• At the time of application, applicants must be already employed at the university or research institute where the project will be carried out.
• The university or research institute must be based in one of the eligible countries.
• Applicants must provide evidence that they will receive a salary from the above institute for the duration of the two-year fellowship.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• The ECWS fellowship is for two years and provides up to USD 50,000 to enable fellows to maintain an international level of research as well as initiate collaborations and partnerships with industry and the private sector.
• The ECWS fellowship does not provide for the fellow’s salary which must be guaranteed by the fellow’s institute.
• The eligible expenses are listed in the Program Webpage (see Link below).

Duration of Program: 2 years

How to Apply:

• All applications must be submitted online. The online system will be activated by 30 June 2018 and so the application form itself is not yet available, but we recommend that you start to prepare the project proposal and collect the necessary documents as soon as possible.
• The documents listed in the Program Webpage (see Link below) may take some weeks to prepare, especially when they require official signatures. We strongly encourage eligible applicants start gathering all requested documentation as soon as possible.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada.