USIP Youth Leaders’ Exchange with His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Fully-funded) 2018

Application Deadline: 20th May 2018

Eligible Countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Central African Republic, Colombia, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria (or of Syrian origin living and working in Lebanon, Turkey or Jordan), Tunisia or Venezuela.

About the Award: The program will bring a group of 28 youth peacebuilders to Dharamsala for two days of conversation with the Dalai Lama to discuss ways in which youth can partner with international leaders to build peace. Selected youth will come from some of the world’s most conflict-ridden areas.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• Must reside and work in Afghanistan, Burma, Central African Republic, Colombia, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria (or of Syrian origin living and working in Lebanon, Turkey or Jordan), Tunisia or Venezuela.
• Must be 18-28 years old.
• Must be able to read, write and speak English.
• Must hold a leadership role in an organization that does peacebuilding work.
• Must have a passport that is valid through April 2019.

Number of Awards: 28

Duration of Program: October 19-27, 2018


How to Apply: Please submit the following: 
   • A completed application form via Survey Monkey
• An updated CV e-mailed to GenChange@usip.org
• A scanned copy of a valid passport e-mailed to GenChange@usip.org
Please submit the application using Survey Monkey. Please e-mail all attachments in one e-mail to GenChange@usip.org. The e-mail subject line should read: SURNAME, HHDL application. Submissions that are incomplete or late will not be considered.

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: The U.S. Institute of Peace

Important Notes: Selected participants will be notified by email by June 10, 2018.  If you are not notified by this time, you have not been selected. 

International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Sponsorship Internship for International Students 2018

Application Deadline: 18th May 2018

Eligible Countries: All

To Be Taken At (Country): ICC international headquarters – Paris, France

About the Award: This wide and varied role includes: creation of marketing materials, client relations, administrative support and event logistical support. The successful candidate will work closely with the Sponsorship Project Manager and Sponsorship Assistant to explore and commercialize ICC content, events, products and services, and business networks.
Required profile:

• Exceptional presentation, written and oral communication skills in English
• Proven skills in writing, client relations, communications and project management
• Ability to manage simultaneous projects in fast-paced working international environment with challenging deadlines
• Organized, detail-oriented and ready to take initiative
• Works well independently
• Pro-active team player
• Sales experience in an international organization a plus

Specific tasks include:

•  Assisting in drafting pitches & preparing materials for email marketing campaigns
• Maintaining contact list and files and overseeing electronic mail distribution lists
• Creation of materials for projects/events
• Logistical support for events
• Client follow up
• Creation of promotional materials, edition of logos

Type: Internship

Qualifications and skills:

• The candidate must speak, read and write English fluently. Knowledge of other languages would be an asset, particularly French
• All programs from Microsoft Office, basic knowledge of Photoshop/GIMP
• Proficient user of internet tools with good understanding of web marketing
• Master degree or B.A in marketing preferred

Eligibility: 

• The applicant must be currently enrolled in a third or fourth year of under- graduate (BA/BSc.) or in a graduate (Masters) programme, and will continue to be enrolled during the period of the internship.
• Nationals from outside the European Union or Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Andorra, Monaco, or Switzerland should get an appropriate visa from the French consulate.
• The internship is gratified according to French law
• The successful candidate will work on a full-time basis. The average working week is 35 hours.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Duration of Program: 6 months (End June 2018- End December , 2018)

How to Apply: Should you be interested in this opportunity, please send your CV and cover letter to Ms. Sandra Sanchez Nery, ssy@iccwbo.org and Ms. Victoria Krapivina, victoria.krapivina@iccwbo.org before May 18, 2018.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: International Chamber of Commerce

De-escalation With North Korea, Escalation With Iran

Patrick Cockburn 

As a journalist, I have always dreaded reporting on meetings between world leaders billed as “historic” or “momentous” or just plain “significant”. Such pretensions are usually phoney or, even if something of interest really does happen, its importance is exaggerated or oversimplified.

But plus ca change is not always a safe slogan for the cautious reporter, because real change does occasionally take place and professional cynics are caught on the hop.

Watching the “historic” meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea at the Panmunjom border crossing this weekend – and listening to reporters bubbling over with excitement – it was difficult not to be captured by the enthusiastic mood.

But I recall similar meetings that were once billed as transforming the world for the better and are now largely forgotten. How many people remember the Reykjavik summit between Reagan and Gorbachev in 1986, which once seemed so important? Then there was the famous handshake on the lawn of the White House between Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat confirming a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993 that, whatever else happened, did not produce peace.

Rabin was assassinated two years later by a religious fanatic and Arafat died with his hopes for Palestinian self-determination in ruins. Sceptics who had argued that disparity in political and military strength between Israel and the Palestinians was too great for a real accord turned out to be right.

The meeting in Panmunjom feels as if it has got more substance, primarily because the balance of power between the two sides is more even: Kim has nuclear weapons and claims to have a ballistic missile which could reach the US. Their range and reliability may be exaggerated but nobody wants to find out the hard way. It is these intercontinental ballistic missiles which make Washington and the rest of the world take North Korea seriously as a state, though otherwise it is an insignificant, economically primitive, family dictatorship. Despite Kim’s pledge that he is seeking a denuclearised Korean peninsula, this is the last thing that is going to happen because he would be foolish to give up his only serious negotiating card. North Korea has a long track record of dangling nuclear concessions in front of its enemies only to snatch them back later.

This does not mean that serious things are not happening. Relations between North and South Korea are being normalised symbolically and, to a degree yet to be seen, in practice. There is to be a formal end to the Korean War replacing the 1953 armistice, an end to “hostile activities” between the two states, family reunification, road and rail links and joint sporting activities. Ritualistic propaganda broadcasts across the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) are to cease, though it would be interesting to know if they are also going to remove the minefields in the DMZ.

President Trump is claiming that it was his bellicose tweeting and harsh sanctions that forced Kim to negotiate. Maybe they had some impact, but there are limits to what sanctions can achieve against a dictator firmly in power (witness UN sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq between 1990 and 2003). Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” may or may not frighten the North Korean leader, but they certainly make US allies nervous and less willing to let their fate be unilaterally determined by an unpredictable and dysfunctional administration in Washington.

Compare the de-escalating crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons with the escalating one over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal from which Trump is likely to withdraw the US on 12 May. This brings us to the second international meeting this week, this time between Trump and French president Emmanuel Macron in Washington, which had plenty of artificial-sounding bonhomie, but not much else.

It was the worst type of state visit in which governments and the media are complicit in pretending that there is real amity and agreement. Kisses and handshakes were exchanged, and pictures of Trump removing a speck of dandruff from Macron’s jacket were beamed across the planet, as if they signified anything. Once commentators would use the sugary phrase “personal chemistry” to describe a non-existent warmth between leaders, though this is being replaced by “personal rapport” which is a little less offensive.

Strong emotional bonds between Trump and other human beings seem unlikely to me, given his manic self-obsession. He resembles an eighteenth century monarch presiding over a court in which there is an ever-changing array of courtiers, who are powerful one day only to be abruptly dismissed the next.

Some US commentators have found reasons why the two men should get along. I particularly like a tweet by “The Discourse Lover”, who writes sarcastically: “I actually bet Trump and Macron get along great – Trump is the exact type of vulgar, acquisitive simpleton that French people assume all Americans are, Macron is the exact type of preening, arrogant creep that Americans assume all French people are.”

Macron did not have any illusions that his “personal rapport” was getting him anywhere when it came to Iran. He confirmed that Trump will most likely kill the Iran nuclear deal “for domestic reasons” and will impose “very tough sanctions” on Iran. Angela Merkel is in Washington today and will see Trump, but is equally unlikely to change his position on Iran or anything else.

The Iran crisis is truly dangerous in a way that was never quite true of the North Korea crisis. In Korea, we are talking of a peace agreement that would replace the Panmunjom Armistice of 1953, but there has been no war going on there for 65 years, though there have been a few sporadic clashes. Compare this with the position of Iran which is a rival for influence with the US in a ferocious war in Syria and one that in Iraq that is currently receding, but could easily blaze up again.

The crisis in relations between the US and Iran has been going on so long – essentially since the fall of the Shah in 1979 – that people may be self-immunised against reacting to its latest and most dangerous phase. Trump will be withdrawing from an agreement with which all signatories – US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China – agree that Iran is in compliance. The US will reimpose sanctions, which will be damaging to Iran, but not be as painful as those imposed before the 2015 deal, because this time round they will have much less international support.

Iran will inevitably resume all or part of the nuclear programme halted by the 2015 agreement since it will no longer receive any benefit from it. Trump may want a tougher deal but his own arbitrary actions have reduced the US diplomatic and economic leverage which he would need to obtain one. The Iranian leadership may respond cautiously to Trump’s demarche in order to isolate the US and draw out a crisis that weakens the Americans more than it does the Iranians.

Short of diplomatic options, the White House might view military action against Iran as an increasingly attractive approach. The Iran and North Korea crises are very different but in both cases Trump is behaving as if the US is turning into a stronger power when, thanks to his leadership, it is becoming a weaker one.

The spillover of Taliban-Hazara conflict in Pakistan

Nauman Sadiq

The Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East region is essentially a political conflict between the Gulf Arab autocrats and Iran for regional dominance which is being presented to lay Muslims in the veneer of religiosity.

Saudi Arabia, which has been vying for power as the leader of Sunni bloc against the Shi’a-led Iran in the regional geopolitics, was staunchly against the invasion of Iraq by the Bush Administration in 2003.

The Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein constituted a Sunni Arab bulwark against Iran’s meddling in the Arab world. But after Saddam was ousted from power in 2003 and subsequently when elections were held in Iraq which were swept by Shi’a-dominated parties, Iraq has now been led by a Shi’a-majority government that has become a steadfast regional ally of Iran. Consequently, Iran’s sphere of influence now extends all the way from territorially-contiguous Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean coast.

Moreover, during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush Administration took advantage of the ethnic and sectarian divisions in Iraq and used the Kurds and Shi’as against the Sunni-led Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. And during the occupation years from 2003 to 2011, the once dominant Sunni minority was politically marginalized which further exacerbated the ethnic and sectarian divisions in Iraq.

The Saudi royal family was resentful of Iran’s encroachment on the traditional Arab heartland. Therefore, when protests broke out against the Shi’a-led Syrian government in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, the Gulf states along with their regional Sunni allies, Turkey and Jordan, and the Western patrons gradually militarized the protests to dismantle the Iranian resistance axis.

Reportedly, Syria’s pro-Assad militias are comprised of local militiamen as well as Shi’a foreign fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and even the Hazara Shi’as from as far away as Afghanistan and Pakistan. And similarly, Sunni jihadists from all over the region have also been flocking to the Syrian battlefield for the last seven years.

A full-scale Sunni-Shi’a war has been going on in Syria, Iraq and Yemen which will obviously have its repercussions all over the Islamic world where Sunni and Shi’a Muslims have coexisted in relative peace for centuries.

Notwithstanding, in order to create a semblance of objectivity and fairness, the American policymakers and analysts are always willing to accept the blame for the mistakes of the distant past that have no bearing on their present policy, however, any fact that impinges on their present policy is conveniently brushed aside.

In the case of the creation of the Islamic State, for instance, the US policy analysts are willing to concede that invading Iraq back in 2003 was a mistake that radicalized the Iraqi society, exacerbated sectarian divisions and gave birth to an unrelenting Sunni insurgency against the heavy-handed and discriminatory policies of the Shi’a-led Iraqi government.

Similarly, the war on terror era political commentators also “generously” accept the fact that the Cold War-era policy of nurturing al-Qaeda and myriads of Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” against the erstwhile Soviet Union was a mistake, because all those fait accompli have no bearing on their present policy.

The mainstream media’s spin-doctors conveniently forget, however, that the creation of the Islamic State and myriads of other Sunni Arab jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has as much to do with the unilateral invasion of Iraq back in 2003 under the Republican Bush administration as it has been the legacy of the Democratic Obama administration that funded, armed, trained and internationally legitimized the Sunni militants against the Shi’a-led Syrian government since 2011-onward in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa region.

In fact, the proximate cause behind the rise of the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam and numerous other Sunni Arab jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has been the Obama administration’s policy of intervention through proxies in Syria.

The border between Syria and Iraq is highly porous and poorly guarded. The Obama administration’s policy of nurturing militants against the Syrian government was bound to have its blowback in Iraq sooner or later. Therefore, as soon as the Islamic State consolidated its gains in Syria, it overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014 from where the US had withdrawn its troops only a couple of years ago in December 2011.

Apart from Syria and Iraq, two other flashpoints of Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East region are Bahrain and Yemen. When peaceful protests broke out against the Sunni monarchy in Bahrain by the Shi’a majority population in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, Saudi Arabia sent thousands of troops across the border to quell the uprising.

Similarly, when the Iran-backed Houthis, which is also an offshoot of Shi’a Islam, overran Sana’a in September 2014, Saudi Arabia and UAE mounted another ill-conceived Sunni-led offensive against the Houthi militia in Yemen in March 2015.

The nature of the conflict in Yemen is sectarian to an extent that recently the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda’s leader Qasim al-Raymi claimed that al-Qaeda has been fighting hand in hand with the Saudi-led alliance against the Iran-backed rebels for the last three years.

The revelation does not come as a surprise, however, because after all al-Qaeda’s official franchise in Syria, al-Nusra Front, has also been fighting hand in glove with the so-called “moderate” Syrian opposition against the Syrian government for the last seven years of the Syrian proxy war.

Furthermore, according to Pakistan’s National Commission for Human Rights, 509 Shi’a Muslims belonging to the Hazara ethnic group have been killed in Pakistan’s western city of Quetta since 2013. Although a South Punjab-based sectarian militant outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi frequently claims responsibility for the massacre of Hazaras in Quetta, such claims are often misleading.

The hub of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’s power mostly lies in Punjab while the Balochistan province’s provincial metropolis Quetta, which is almost three-hour drive from the Af-Pak border at Chaman, is regarded as the center of Taliban’s activities.

After the American invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001 with the help of the Northern Alliance, the top leadership of the Taliban has mostly settled in Quetta and its adjoining rural areas and Afghan refugee camps, hence it is called the Quetta Shura Taliban.

In order to understand the casus belli of the Taliban-Hazara conflict, it’s worth noting that the leadership of the Hazara ethnic group has always taken the side of the Tajik and Uzbek-led Northern Alliance against the Pashtun-led Taliban.

The Taliban has committed several massacres of the Hazara people in Afghanistan, particularly following the 1997 massacre of 3,000 Taliban prisoners by the Uzbek warlord Abdul Malik Pahlawan in Mazar-i-Sharif, thousands of Hazaras were massacred by the Taliban in the same city in August 1998 for betraying the Taliban.

The Hazara people are an ethnically Uzbek, Dari (Afghan Persian)-speaking ethnic group native to the Hazarajat region in central Afghanistan but roughly 600,000 Hazaras also live in Quetta, Pakistan. Although the conflict between the Taliban and Hazaras might appear religious and sectarian, as I have already described the real reasons of the conflict are political in nature.

Now, when the fire of inter-sectarian strife is burning on several different fronts in the Middle East and the Sunni and Shi’a communities are witnessing a merciless slaughter of their brethren in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain and the Af-Pak region, then it would be unfair to look for the causes of the conflict in theology and medieval history. If the Sunni and Shi’a Muslims were so thirsty for each other’s blood since the founding of Islam, then how come they managed to survive as distinct sectarian groups for 1400 years?

Fact of the matter is that in modern times, the phenomena of Islamic radicalism, jihadism and consequent Sunni-Shi’a conflict are only as old as the Soviet-Afghan jihad during the 1980s when the Western powers with the help of their regional allies trained and armed Afghan jihadists to battle the Soviet troops in Afghanistan

More significantly, however, the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988 between the Sunni and Baathist-led Iraq and the Shi’a-led Iran after the 1979 Khomeini revolution engendered acrimony and hostility between the Sunni and Shi’a communities of the region for the first time in modern history.

And finally, the conflict has been further exacerbated in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 when the Western powers and their regional client states once again took advantage of the opportunity and nurtured militants against the Arab nationalist Gaddafi government in Libya and the Baathist-led Assad administration in Syria.

Pakistan: Government unveils pro-business, anti-worker federal budget

Ali Mohsin

As its term of office nears completion, Pakistan’s scandal-ridden government, led by the Pakistan Muslim League (N), unveiled a pro-business budget last Friday in which the needs and concerns of the country’s working class and rural poor find no expression.  Among the most striking features of Rs5.9 trillion ($51 billion) federal budget for 2018-2019 are the cuts to development programs and the massive increase in defense spending. The government has also been criticized for failing to explain how it will raise the necessary revenues to fund its expenditures and make up for the tax cuts included in the budget.  

Defense spending and debt serving account for nearly two-thirds of the anti-worker budget, leaving little for Pakistan’s chronically underfunded education and healthcare systems.  The government allocated a whopping Rs1.1 trillion ($9.6 billion) for defense spending, an 18 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. This figure does not include expenditures on the country’s nuclear and missile programs or on major planned military hardware acquisitions. The Rs260 billion allocated for the pensions of military personnel and the Rs45 billion reserved for security enhancement are also not included in the defense budget.  

During its tenure, the PML-N has clashed with the military-intelligence apparatus over the latter’s hardline stance on India and its support for the Afghan Taliban.  The military, which jealously guards its control over Pakistan’s foreign policy, has sought to punish the PML-N for its assertiveness. The judiciary’s selective targeting of the PML-N leadership with corruption cases is certainly encouraged by the military, so as to weaken and neuter the civilian government. The massive increase in defense spending could therefore be an attempt by the ruling party to ease tensions with the army.

In addition to the enormous increase in defense spending, the PML-N’s proposed budget also includes significant giveaways to big business.  For example, it includes a plan to reduce the corporate tax rate by 1 percent each year until 2023, eventually bringing it down to 25 percent. Similarly, the government plans to gradually reduce the super tax, currently at 3 percent for non-banking companies and 4 percent for banks, by 1 percent each year until it is eventually phased out. In order to boost the Pakistan Stock Exchange, the government has also withdrawn the tax on bonus shares and rationalized broker taxes in its proposed budget.  

Pakistan’s corporate elite has been given much to celebrate. Unfortunately, the government’s generosity does not extend to working people.  Development spending has been reduced by 20 percent in the proposed budget, a massive decrease which the poor will feel most acutely. While the overall budget has been increased by nearly 15 percent from last year, the amount allocated for education and healthcare has only been raised by 7 percent and 8 percent respectively.  

The government also refused to increase the miserly minimum wage.  Earlier this month, thousands of workers protested outside the National Press Club in Islamabad to demand higher wages.  They demanded that the minimum wage be increased to Rs 30,000. The protest was organized by the All Pakistan Workers Confederation and was attended by employees of the Water and Power Development Authority, Pakistan Railways, Pakistan International Airlines, as well as textile workers and chemical workers.  The just demands of the workers were predictably ignored. The government did, however, include a 17 percent increase in the budget for the Prime Minister’s House and a 15 percent bump for the President’s House.

Blockchain Technology: From the Chaos of Capitalism a New(Revolutionary) World Order Emerges

Mary Metzger 

While there are many approaches to it, there is only one truth: that the world is One and thus that all is internally related.  The genius of Einstein is that he expressed and established this as the physical truth of the universe by negating Newton’s profound misconception of the world as separate and isolated units coexisting in an ether which had no effect upon them. He reformulated and unified time and space, into a continuous fabric which shaped and in turn, was shaped by various densities of matter in motion so that matter bent space and gravity slowed time.    No less, in his most famous formula he established the unity of energy and matter.  Nor was Einstein alone; it could be said that much of modern science has arrived at the same conclusion.  The big bang theory unifies reality by providing a common point of origin, the double slit experiment and the formulations of Heisenberg and Schrodinger established the unity of observer and observed to be such that subject and object could no longer be separated.  Evolution shows us nothing less than our internal relatedness to our physical past and our environment.  DNA tells us that we are all related to a single “Eve” from Africa. Recent research in genetics and epigenetics point to how the totality of our environment shapes our genetic structure in ways that lead diseases of body and mind.  Recent research takes it a step further by hinting at the possibility that we have a genetic memory such that the experiences of our ancestors are transferred to us generation after generation  The popularized version of chaos theory is that the flapping wings of a butterfly have repercussions on the weather patterns of Europe.

Of course the philosophy of internal relations is not derived from or based on modern scientific proofs, but rather is supported by them.  Way before Einstein, Hegel dedicated his life to logically elaborating the implications and subsets of the philosophy of internal relations, and Marx, following Hegel, turned it into a social and economic theory which led inexorably to communism. Thus the logical formulation of the philosophy of internal relations preceded any scientific proofs.

My purpose here is not to explain the philosophy of internal relations, but rather to focus on one logical implication of it and apply it to an understanding of the current state of the world.  According to the PIR, the result of internal relatedness is constant churning change.  This is the logical outcome of the unity of different bundles of relations.  The nature of this change is both evolutionary, slow and gradual change, and revolutionary, sudden and drastic phase transitions. Hegel would bind these two together by asserting that at a given point in time a change in quantity produces a change in quality.  I would like to tie this philosophical concept to the science by referencing chaos theory.  Chaos theory says the same thing with a slightly different twist.  It says that in the midst of chaos there exists a point of structured order which over time grows and grows until it flips the chaotic system into equilibrium.  Likewise and conversely, within that equilibrium there already exists the seed of chaos which grows and grows until the system undergoes a phase transition into pure chaos.

That the world now is in a state of nearly absolute capitalist and patriarchal chaos is reflected in a multitude of ways that can be measured:  war is ever expanding, the world is increasingly dividing into those few who have everything, and the vast majority, who have nothing, the brutal rape and slaughter of females even before they are born, has hit epidemic proportions in much of Asia, the pollution of the world has carried life forms to the brink of disaster, racism has been transformed in American into the nearly ritual daily killing of people of color, , and the “revolutionary” force of society is has taken the sad form of religious fanaticism.

Yet in the midst of it all, is the one small kernel of transformation that has begun to grow and expand in world’s absolute chaos, and that is technology.  Technology in general to be sure,  But in particular, one new form of technology which has the potential to dissolve the archaic social and economic structures of a putrid capitalist world. This is not to say that it will make the world perfect, for in fact, the “owners” of these new social forces are already capitalists-people such as PavelDurov.  However, they will redefine capitalism, move its social structures into a new phase transition, a phase transition which will, because it both it embodies and reinforces the internal relatedness of all,  take the world one step closer to communism.

This technological development is called blockchain technology (https://medium.com/animal-media/3-use-cases-of-how-blockchain-technology-is-already-unlocking-value-ec0b01129b03). It is the technology powering Bitcoin, the technology that threatens to bring banks as we know them to their knees. It has turned individuals into millionaires in a matter of months, and created a new class of entrepreneurs and investors.   The more idealistic blockchain advocates see it as  one of the most revolutionary and disruptive discoveries of our age, and argue that it will end global poverty, and revolutionize the ways in which politics and business are conduct.  It will, at the very least, make all transactions both absolutely secure and perhaps even ethical  Ostensibly, it will eliminate the ability of one human being to dupe another.  Beyond this it will redefine the nature of “value” itself.  According to its advocates, as the power and scope of blockchain technology grows the world will change for the better. This technology which will reflect the structure of the world by creating a technological “One” which is not based on knowledge but on human interactions will hopefully restructure the chaos and, of course, become the crucible for a new form of chaos.  But kid yourself not, it is the new, revolutionary force of society.

Global giant spearheads drive for further healthcare privatisation in Australia

Margaret Rees

Bupa, a UK-based international healthcare company that operates the largest private health insurance business in Australia, last month moved to limit one of its key insurance policy products to patients treated in a Bupa-contracted hospital or clinic.

Because Bupa’s insurance arm has four million customers in Australia, the change would accelerate the privatisation of health care in the country, where 45 percent of the population pays for private insurance to avoid long delays in the chronically-underfunded public hospital system.

From August 1, Bupa planned to restrict its “gap cover”—insurance against “out-of-pocket” fees that exceed Medicare benefits or insurance payments—to customers who undergo medical procedures in facilities under contract to the company.

This would be a major step toward “managed care,” in which insurance companies effectively dominate all aspects of medical care, and ration access by determining which kinds of treatment patients can obtain.

Out-of-pocket expenses are a huge problem in Australia, despite supposed near-universal healthcare coverage under the government’s Medicare public insurance scheme. OECD figures for 2015 showed that patients paid 20 percent of all health care expenditure out of their own pockets, compared with 10 percent in Britain, 13 percent in New Zealand and 14 percent in Canada.

Bupa also advised 720,000 “minimum benefits” policy holders that certain widely-needed services would be excluded altogether from their coverage from July, including hip and knee replacements, pregnancy, IVF, cataract procedures, kidney dialysis, obesity surgery and some plastic surgery.

The affected procedures had previously been listed as “restricted cover,” meaning there were large out-of-pocket fees to access them. The rise of such restrictions and exclusions is creating “junk” insurance policies, where patients risk having no cover at all if they need it.

Private health insurance companies operating in Australia are the beneficiaries of an annual federal government rebate—currently $6.4 billion—to lower insurance premiums. This outlay has grown rapidly each year while federal funding for public hospitals has been reduced from 48 percent to about 40 percent of their budgets.

Despite the rebate, insurance premiums have continued to increase each year at a rate higher than cost of living increases, rising 38 percent in the five years to 2016. The 3.95 percent average increase this April 1 followed a 4.84 percent average increase in 2017.

Bupa’s change to its Medical Gap Scheme caused an immediate outcry within the medical profession. Bupa denied that it was introducing managed care, but tactically retreated, if only temporarily. It said doctors and their patients opting to use the public hospital system would continue to qualify for the “gap cover” if the procedures were for pre-booked “elective” surgery.

Currently, doctors participating in the Medical Gap Scheme and their insured patients have choice of hospital. Under the new arrangements, this would be eliminated for private hospitals or day surgeries without a Bupa contract, and for all public hospitals, where many specialists have the right to private practice.

Australian Medical Association president Michael Gannon said: “That is US-style care and it will be resisted by our profession at every level. We can’t have a situation where an insurer decides what care patients can and can’t get. Bupa already owns dental facilities, and to have complete control they’d own hospitals and employ doctors.”

In reality, the privatisation inroads of the corporate health insurers are already extensive, especially in dental care, where the companies use financial inducements to control the system. Many dentists have signed contracts with a private insurer, only to find themselves competing against a “superclinic” run by the insurer itself.

There is little public coverage of dental treatment, except for children of families on Family Tax Benefits or Double Orphan payments, former and current military personnel and young people with cleft palates.

Bearing the full cost of treatment for uninsured patients, or large out of pocket costs for those privately insured, means that many patients are forced to delay or forgo dental treatment, with potentially serious and even life-threatening health consequences.

In South Australia, where its market share is at least 50 percent, Bupa introduced a three-tier system of paying differential rates to privately-insured dental patients. Those who visit an independent dentist receive a lower rebate than those who use a contracted provider, while the Bupa super clinic provides some treatment for nothing to gain a greater stranglehold over the market.

From March this year, former Labor Party health minister Nicola Roxon has been chairman of Bupa Australia and New Zealand, which is responsible for 49 percent of the profits of the giant British corporation, which has operations in 190 countries. Before that, she was a non-executive director of the company.

While health minister from 2007 to 2011 in the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments, Roxon rejected calls for the abolition of the private health insurance rebate. Her latest appointment further exposes the fraud of the Labor Party’s pretences of opposing continually rising private insurance premiums.

The subsidy of private insurers grew rapidly under the Rudd and Gillard governments. Now the Turnbull Liberal-National Coalition government is taking it to a new level. It is introducing Gold, Silver, Bronze and Basic Bronze categories of private insurance from April 2019. Only the Gold category would have no restrictions on healthcare coverage. The other categories would have exclusions, and deductibles or co-payments, or both.

In the United States, deductibles for lower-priced “bronze” plans now average more than $6,000 for individuals and $12,000 for families. Deductibles for “silver” plans, which make up 70 percent of the market, average more than $3,000 for individuals. That is, working class people must pay thousands of dollars before they begin to receive any insurance payments.

Advances in medical technology are making possible an enormous improvement in the health of the world’s population, but governments and corporations everywhere are increasingly rationing healthcare. The solution to this crisis lies in putting an end to the private ownership of health care services and establishing socialised medicine, based on providing free, first class services to meet the needs of all.

Income inequality worsening in Bangladesh

Sujeewa Amaranath 

Statistics on income inequality, and indicators of social distress, belie the claims of the Bangladeshi government that economic growth and development are benefiting workers and the poor.

A World Bank report published on April 7 echoed the government rhetoric, stating that “Bangladesh is regarded globally as an example remarkable progress in poverty reduction and human development.”

The report said that in 2014, Bangladesh reached the status of a “low middle-income country.” If the “right policies and timely action” were implemented, the country would be elevated to the middle income bracket by 2021.

The Household Income and Expenditure Survey for 2016, published by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) last October, however, demonstrated that the spoils of economic growth have gone to the capitalist elite. Every aspect of the report, detailing income, expenditure, along with access to education and health, showed a widening gap between the rich and the poor.

BBS is a government body that provides limited statistics. Its latest report covers the period from April 2016 to the end of March 2017. Since its previous survey, in 2010, social polarisation has widened.

The report claimed that the proportion of people in poverty fell from 31.5 percent in 2010 to 24.3 percent in 2016. The percentage of the population living in extreme poverty allegedly declined from 17.6 percent to 12.9 percent.

The figures showed, however, that poverty reduction declined to an annual rate of 1.2 percent, down from 1.7 percent in 2010.

Moreover, the income share of the poorest 5 percent of the population was 0.23 percent, a sharp fall from the 2010 figure of 0.78 percent. In contrast, the richest 5 percent’s income share rose to 27.89 percent, up from 24.61 percent in 2010.

The top 10 percent’s income share rose from 35.84 to 38.16 percent, whereas the bottom 10 percent saw their share halve from 2 to 1.01 percent. Every decile in the bottom 90 percent of the population experienced either a decrease or stagnation in its income share.

The Daily Star pointed to the social reality behind the numbers. It stated: “Lack of access to education for poor household children, unequal employment opportunities, severe exploitation, low-wage level jobs, high rate of youth unemployment and poor healthcare make vulnerable layers in the society suffer from extreme poverty. Lack of proper education is directly correlated with poverty and unemployment.”

The average national monthly income was 15,945 taka ($US192), barely above the average monthly expenditure of 15,715 taka. For poor and working-class families, more than 98 percent of income was spent on the minimum daily necessities of life.

The situation was particularly dire in rural areas. Average monthly income was 13,353 taka, while average monthly expenditure was 14,156 taka. In other words, for most of the rural masses, expenditure exceeded income. This has created a mounting debt crisis and condemned hundreds of thousands to abject poverty.

Despite the government’s claims of improving education, the national literacy rate was just 65.6 percent, one of the lowest in South Asia. Rural literacy was only 63.3 percent. Many rural youth are deprived of an education, and are forced into back-breaking manual labour while still in childhood.

The indices contained in the report also underscore a crisis of the healthcare system. Only 15.44 percent of the total population who required some form of medical attention over the survey period were treated by a qualified doctor. Another 22.51 percent received care from individuals without official qualifications.

A myriad of health problems have emerged as a result of poverty and lack of access to adequate healthcare. According to the report, 20.54 percent of the population suffered from gastric ulcers. Some 13.15 percent and 10.62 percent were afflicted with rheumatism and respiratory diseases respectively.

Social safety net programs (SSNP) are also grossly inadequate. Only 34.5 percent of rural and 10.6 percent of urban households received SSNP assistance. Just 11 million households received government assistance in a poverty-stricken country with a population of 166 million.

An article in the Daily Star on April 7 noted government claims to have reduced the rate of unemployment to 4.1 percent. Some 40 percent of workers, however, are underemployed, with many struggling to make ends meet after a few hours of work. The newspaper also reported that a third of youth are unemployed. “Most alarming is graduate unemployment which now stands at 47 percent, the highest in the South Asian region,” it added.

The conditions of the working class have deteriorated.

The Fair Labour Association (FLA) published a report last month based on a survey across 18 factories. It found “that not a single garment worker among the more than 6,000 whose wages were studied was earning income even close to a living wage, measured against any living wage benchmark.”

It stated that “the average worker would need an 80 percent pay raise to begin earning wages equal to even the most conservative living wage benchmark under consideration in this report.”

The FLA added that when it began the study in 2015, its “researchers found that garment workers in Bangladesh were achieving the lowest purchasing power of all the 21 countries studied at that time, and that the minimum wage in Bangladesh fell below the World Bank Poverty Line.” That poverty line is $1.90 a day.

As the figures demonstrate, the claims of the Bangladeshi government, and the World Bank, have nothing to do with the reality confronting millions of ordinary people.

Economic growth in Bangladesh has been based on the super-exploitation of workers in the garment sector, and other industries, by multinational companies and the local ruling elite. This has enabled the ten richest individuals in Bangladesh to accumulate a combined wealth of US$ 6.8 billion, amid mass destitution and suffering.

French immigration bill attacks right to asylum

Athiyan Silva

On April 22, the French National Assembly passed the repressive Asylum-Immigration Bill by a vote of 228-139, with 24 abstentions. The Assembly discussed this politically criminal bill for seven days before passing it. The measure tramples on the fundamental democratic right to asylum, allowing police to detain asylum seekers without charge for up to four months, deny them appeal hearings, and deport them back to their war-torn countries.

Significantly, though the neo-fascist National Front (FN) voted against the bill as a whole, it voted for the provision restricting appeals of deportation proceedings.

The bill was passed despite broad popular opposition. Thousands marched against the measure in cities including Paris, Lyon, Rennes, Caen, Montpellier, Valence, Toulouse, Grenoble, Bourges, Briançon, Avignon, Lille and Calais. Lawyers and administrative staff of the national asylum court struck for several days.

The bill is bound up with expanding imperialist wars across the Middle East and Africa and the turn to authoritarian forms of rule in France and across Europe. Interior Minister Gerard Collomb first presented the bill in the Assembly just two days before Paris, along with Washington and London, launched illegal missile strikes against Syria. With Trump threatening to suspend the Iranian nuclear treaty, the NATO powers are expecting an even broader flow of refugees after tens of millions have already been displaced by their wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and beyond.

This bill cuts the period for the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) to examine an asylum application from 120 to 90 days. Crucially, it reduces the time for asylum seekers to appeal a negative decision to the National Asylum Court (CNDA) from 30 to 15 days. Since police prefectures typically take a month to schedule appeal hearings, this would effectively allow the police to rapidly expel refugees after a negative OFPRA ruling. Refugees are to be denied sufficient time to obtain a lawyer and interpreter and raise funds.

The bill increases the administrative detention period from 16 to 24 hours and allows the maximum period of incarceration in notorious administrative detention centres to be increased from 45 to 135 days. Children are to be held in these centres with their families. Last year, 275 children were detained.

The bill strengthens existing French immigration law, which punishes people who facilitate illegal entry, movement or residence of refugees in France. The bill allows for sentences of up to five years in prison and a fine of €30,000 for using false identification papers.

It also intensifies checks by border patrol and customs officers on immigrants in migrant and homeless shelters, in subway stations and on the street. Since the imposition of the state of emergency in France three years ago, thousands of troops and heavily armed police are permanently deployed across the country. The European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) is also intensifying its border controls on land and sea, deploying ships, aircraft, helicopters and high-tech equipment, condemning thousands to drown in the Mediterranean before they reach Fortress Europe.

Refugees and undocumented immigrants are to be obliged to stay at a place stated as their residence for a fixed number of hours each day. This helps the police track them and, if necessary, deport them back to the countries they fled.

French President Macron, who is waging wars in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Mali, said arrogantly in an interview with BFMTV last month, “We cannot take in all the misery of the world.” According to media estimates, France forcibly deported some 26,000 immigrants last year, a 14 percent increase over the previous year.

The Macron government’s rhetoric on the law was virtually impossible to distinguish from the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the FN. Interior Minister Gérard Collomb, as he introduced the bill in the National Assembly, claimed that it was necessary because regions of France “are falling apart because they are submerged by a flood of asylum seekers.” He claimed that if this continued, “we should not be surprised tomorrow if certain excesses take place in our country.”

This immigration law is a political exposure of all those who argued that in last year’s presidential election voters had to support Macron, who was backed by the European Union, against FN candidate Marine Le Pen in order to protect immigrants’ rights. In fact, as Macron rams through social attacks on the working class, bombs Syria and prepares for even broader wars, he is predictably turning to the right on immigration.

He is calling for a return of the military draft and plans to spend €300 billion on the army over the next six years. He is aligning himself with sections of the ruling class that believe a fascistic, anti-immigrant atmosphere is the only way to push through the militarist policy of French imperialism.

In particular, the immigration law exposes numerous forces, including Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (LFI) and the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), which accommodated themselves to media claims that Macron was a “lesser evil” to Le Pen. They are politically implicated in Macron’s attacks on immigrants’ rights.

After the bill passed in the Assembly, Mélenchon shed a few crocodile tears, complaining that the new bill was “barbaric.” This demonstrates only the political hypocrisy of Mélenchon, who called in 2012 for a vote for Socialist Party presidential candidate François Hollande, who went on to wage war in Syria and Mali, impose austerity measures, and deport tens of thousands of Roma from France.

In the 2017 presidential election, despite receiving more than 7 million votes in the first round, Mélenchon helped Macron win the election. In the second round, he and the NPA refused to take a position on whether workers and youth should vote for Macron against FN candidate Marine Le Pen.

Their abdication of their political responsibilities to the millions of people who voted for them to express their left-wing opposition to Macron allowed the media to promote virtually unchallenged the lie that Macron was the democratic alternative to Le Pen. The Parti de l’égalité socialiste, the French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, was the only party that called for an active boycott of the second round. It insisted that this was the best way to prepare a struggle of the working class against the reactionary policies of whichever candidate won.

Report: Amazon and Tesla among most dangerous workplaces in the US

Evan Blake

In its annual report, “The Dirty Dozen 2018: Employers Who Put Workers and Communities at Risk,” the National Council for Occupational Health and Safety (COSH) ranked Amazon and Tesla as among the most dangerous work environments in the United States, exposing the grim reality that workers face in the modern tech industries.

The report opens with an overview of statistics on workplace injuries and fatalities in the US, noting, “According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5,190 people died from workplace trauma in 2016, a seven percent increase from 2015 and a 12 percent increase over a five-year period dating back to 2012. [These deaths] include sudden, tragic events—such as falling from a height, being struck by a vehicle or being crushed by a machine.”

The report continues, “In addition to more than 5,000 deaths from acute workplace trauma, an estimated 95,000 workers die annually in the U.S. from cancers, respiratory and circulatory diseases and other illnesses associated with long-term exposure in the workplace.”

“All these deaths were preventable. […] Thousands of workers would still be alive and with their families today if their employers had followed well-established safety protocols to reduce the risk of injury, illness and death.”

The “Dirty Dozen” report highlights the fact that since 2013 alone, seven workers have been killed at Amazon warehouses in the US, including three workers in a five-week span during the high-volume holiday “peak season” last fall.

Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce company, has vastly expanded its global operations in recent years through the construction of a network of warehouses across the US and internationally, where workers endure sweatshop conditions and earn poverty-level wages.

The report describes each of the deaths of the seven Amazon warehouse workers since 2013:

1. Devan Michael Shoemaker, 28, was killed on September 19, 2017, when he was run over by a truck at an Amazon warehouse in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

2. Phillip Terry, 59, was killed on September 23, 2017, when his head was crushed by a forklift at an Amazon warehouse in Plainfield, Indiana.

3. On October 23, 2017, Karla Kay Arnold, 50, died from multiple injuries after she was hit by a car in the parking lot of an Amazon warehouse in Monee, Illinois

4. Jeff Lockhart, 29, a temporary employee, was found collapsed and dead from a cardiac event near the end of an overnight shift at an Amazon warehouse in Chester, VA on January 19, 2013. As a “picker,” Lockhart routinely walked upwards of 12 miles per shift.

5. Roland Smith, 57, a temporary employee, was killed after being dragged and crushed by a conveyor belt at an Amazon warehouse in Avenel, New Jersey on December 4, 2013.

6. Jody Rhoads, 52, was crushed and pinned to death by a pallet loader at an Amazon warehouse in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on June 1, 2014. (This is the same facility where Shoemaker was killed last September).

7. An unidentified worker was crushed to death by a forklift at an Amazon warehouse in Fernley, NV on November 4, 2014.

The report omits the death of an unidentified Amazon worker at the new Sacramento, California warehouse last December, who was hospitalized after vomiting blood at the facility, and died the following day. Countless more Amazon workers have been injured on the job, including with chronic and debilitating injuries that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. In the summer months, workers regularly collapse from heat stress in facilities across the world.

Comparable conditions exist at electric car manufacturer Tesla, which also imposes brutal speedup and unsafe conditions at its primary auto plant in Fremont, California, which employs roughly 10,000 workers. While there haven’t been any reported workplace fatalities at Tesla, severe injuries are an almost daily occurrence.

The “Dirty Dozen” report cites data from Worksafe, a COSH affiliate based in Oakland, noting, “Recordable injuries for workers at Tesla Motors were 31 percent higher than for the rest of the automotive industry in 2015 and 2016. […] The rate of serious injuries among Tesla workers, requiring days away from work, restricted duty or job transfer, was also much higher at Tesla than at other auto factories: more than double the industry average in 2015 and 83 percent higher in 2016.”

The grueling and perilous work environments at Amazon and Tesla express the reactionary character of capitalism, which sacrifices workers’ bodies to the profit interests of the ruling class. The vast wealth accumulated by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (now the richest person in the world, with over $131 billion) and Tesla CEO Elon Musk (the world’s 48th richest person, with over $19.5 billion) is derived from the brutal exploitation of their respective workforces.

Last week, Amazon released its first quarter earnings report, which included $1.63 billion in profit, more than doubling the previous year’s figure and far greater than analysts had predicted. The boon to profits caused Amazon’s stock price to surge 7 percent, which propelled Jeff Bezos’ net worth by over $9 billion in less than two days.

The “Dirty Dozen” report pointedly notes, “[Bezos’] vast wealth depends, in large part, on a business model that features a relentless work pace and constant monitoring of employees. These workplace characteristics, coupled with the lack of an intentional health and safety system program, are a recipe for disaster. Even as Amazon workers are injured and die on the job, the company is playing locality against locality to see which taxpayers will pay the most for the privilege of hosting ‘H2Q,’ Amazon's proposed second headquarters. Newark, New Jersey, one of twenty finalists, is offering the online retailing giant $7 billion in taxpayer subsidies.”

Amazon has already accrued over $1.2 billion in tax incentives and subsidies from localities across the US, based on the specious claim that their warehouses boost the local economy and “create jobs.” In reality, any jobs created by Amazon are low-wage, often part-time or temporary, and with minimal benefits. Earlier this month, the Intercept revealed that Amazon ranks among the top 20 employers of SNAP (food stamp) recipients, in four of five states surveyed, with one-third of their employees in Arizona receiving SNAP benefits.

The social rights of the working class in the US, including the right to safe and reliable employment, high quality health care, livable wages, and an early retirement, can only be secured through a political struggle against both the Democratic and Republican parties, which both represent the interests of the capitalist class and have overseen the evisceration of workplace safety regulations and the unending transfer of wealth to the rich.

These preventable deaths and injuries confirm what Karl Marx’s life-long collaborator Friedrich Engels’s wrote in his 1845 work The Condition of the Working Class in England:

“When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another, such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live—forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence—knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual.”

To fight for their rights, Amazon and Tesla workers must organize independently of both political parties and the trade unions, which have imposed similar death-trap conditions at unionized factories and warehouses across the country and across the world. This requires the building of rank-and-file committees—controlled and run democratically by the workers themselves—which will link workers across the world in a common fight against the corporations and the governments.

Between Sanctions and Diplomacy: North Korea's Balancing Act

Shivani Singh


The possibility of bilateral negotiations between North Korea and the US is a sign of relief after months of prevailing tensions in the Korean Peninsula. Following a long trajectory of strained relations between North Korea and the West, North Korea has finally agreed to direct bilateral talks with the US. The reason for this is simple. There has been a change of tactics by Kim Jong-un towards a more diplomatic and cooperative approach with China, the US and South Korea. Additionally, deployment of hard diplomacy by the international community through the imposition of sanctions on North Korea finally seems to be paying off. This article argues that a combination of both these factors is what led to a thaw in the escalating conflict and is a development to be cautiously optimistic about. 

Tactical Changes
Sticks in the form of international economic and diplomatic sanctions on North Korea have been in place for some time. North Korea has traditionally ignored international condemnation of its regime by taking a more aggressive stance and conducting more nuclear weapon and missile tests. However, it recently adopted a different tactic by deploying soft diplomacy measures, which included sending a North Korean delegation to the Winter Olympics to Pyeongchang, South Korea. Crucially, North Korea displayed its willingness to cooperate with South Korea by allowing the games to be concluded without tensions. 

This diplomatic positioning by North Korea along with soft symbols of unity like North and South Korean athletes marching under the Korean Unification Flag and re-opening communication channels definitely contributed to pacifying bilateral relations. A South Korean delegation's visit to North Korea to discuss peace prospects followed. 

Efficacy of Sanctions
China - North Korea’s largest trade partner, accounting for 93 per cent of its overall trade - agreed to come on board in adopting the latest set of UN sanctions targeting North Korea’s oil imports and textile exports. Although China signed onto the new sanctions, as it has done in the past, there continues to be been reason to doubt both China's intentions and the extent of its influence with North Korea. 

Having said that, a considerable shift in China’s position is discernible through its ramping up sanctions implementation. Reports suggest that the effect of these sanctions is being felt on both sides of the border as they are “hitting local Chinese businesses hard and starting to bite inside North Korea, with factory closures, price rises and power shortages in some areas.” In January 2018, China reported a 10.5 per cent drop in its trade with North Korea in 2017 with an 81.6 per cent slump in China’s imports from North Korea. The gradual drop in North Korea’s trade with China is accompanied by depleting foreign currency reserves and is likely to impact its inventories of food and medical necessities and lead to price rise during decreased supply. 

Signs of economic strain were evident when in his new year’s speech, Kim Jong-un suggested the possibility of future economic duress and talked about focusing on the development of domestic industries since relying on external aid was fast diminishing as an option. Despite the signs of reduced trade, opacity in China and North Korea’s trade figures continues to pose a challenge. Whether the sanctions have actually worked is thus debatable. Ultimately, however, North Korea's decreasing access to short-term financial avenues has most definitely factored in North Korea’s calculations, and could have incentivised coming to the negotiating table.

Pursuit of Legitimacy
North Korean efforts partially contributed to the tentative diplomatic success of the US agreeing to bilateral negotiations outside of the six-party talks framework - a major concession for the North. North Korea finally perceives a chance to present itself as one nuclear-armed state negotiating with another nuclear-armed state on the same platform. This is the kind of legitimacy that North Korea has been pursuit of for decades, and these talks, in its opinion, could prove to be the first step. The question here is not whether North Korea will seriously consider a complete, verifiable, and irreversible disassembly of its nuclear arsenal. The central emphasis is that for the first time ever, a sitting US president will meet a North Korean leader and the world will recognise the North Korean regime as a legitimate party in bilateral talks with the US. 

Kim Jong-un is not likely to diverge from the position of celebrating the success of achieving a complete nuclear deterrent and the ability to “mass produce nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.” However, the current thaw could be used as an opportunity by North Korea to shed the image of an isolated 'hermit kingdom' through such high-level and public contact with the West.

Conclusion
Despite no change North Korea's three conditions that would make it consider denuclearisation - the US removing its troops from South Korea, assurances of no threat of regime change, and rescinding US' extended deterrence guarantees to South Korea and Japan - that both countries have agreed to a bilateral summit is in itself an achievement.