It Is a New Era, But China’s Balancing Act Will Fail in the Middle East

Ramzy Baroud

Although ties between Washington and Tel Aviv are stronger than ever, Israeli leaders are aware of a vastly changing political landscape. The US’ own political turmoil and the global power realignment – which is on full display in the Middle East – indicate that a new era is, indeed, in the making.

Unsurprisingly, this new era involves China.

China’s Vice President, Wang Qishan, arrived in Israel on October 22 on a four-day visit to head the fourth China-Israel Innovation Committee. He is the highest-ranking Chinese official to visit Israel in nearly two decades.

In April 2000, the former president of China, Jiang Zemin, was the first Chinese leader to ever visit Israel, touring the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and paying diplomatic dues to his Israeli counterparts. At the time, he spoke of China’s intentions to cement the bond between the two countries.

Wang Qishan’s visit, however, is different. The “bond” between Beijing and Tel Aviv is much stronger now than it was then, as expressed in sheer numbers. Soon after the two countries exchanged diplomatic missions in 1992, trade figures soared. The size of Chinese investments in Israel also grew exponentially, from $50m in the early 1990s to a whopping $16.5bn according to 2016 estimates.

China’s growing investments and strategic ties to Israel are predicated on both countries’ keen interest in technological innovation, as well as on the so-called “Red-Med” Railway, a regional network of sea and rail infrastructure aimed at connecting China with Europe via Asia and the Middle East. Additionally, the railway would also link the two Israeli ports of Eilat and Ashdod.

News of China’s plan to manage the Israeli port of Haifa has already raised the ire of the US and its European allies.

Times have changed, indeed. Whereas in the past, Washington ordered Tel Aviv to immediately cease exchanging American military technology with China, forcing it to cancel the sale of the Phalcon airborne early-warning system, it is now watching as Israeli and Chinese leaders are managing the dawn of a new political era that – for the first time – does not include Washington.

For China, the newfound love for Israel is part of a larger global strategy that can be considered the jewel of China’s revitalized foreign policy.

Qishan’s visit to Israel comes on the heels of accelerated efforts by Beijing to promote its mammoth trillion-dollar economic project,the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

China hopes that its grand plan will help it open massive new opportunities across the world and eventually guarantee its dominance in various regions that rotated, since World War II, within an American sphere of influence. BRI aims to connect Asia, Africa, and Europe through a “belt” of overland routes and a maritime “road” of sea lanes.

The China-US competition is heating up. Washington wants to hold on to its global dominance for as long as possible while Beijing is eagerly working to supplant the US’ superpower status, first in Asia, then in Africa and the Middle East. The Chinese strategy in achieving its objectives is quite clear: unlike the US’ disproportionate investments in military power, China is keen on winning its coveted status, at least for the time being, using soft power only.

The Middle East, however, is richer and, thus, more strategic and contested than any other region in the world. Rife with conflicts and distinct political camps, it is likely to derail China’s soft power strategy sooner rather than later. While Chinese foreign policy managed to survive the polarizing war in Syria through engaging all sides and playing second to Russia’s leading role at the UN Security Council, the Israeli Occupation of Palestine is a whole different political challenge.

For years, China has maintained a consistent position in support of the Palestinian people, calling for an end to the Israeli Occupation and for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. However, Beijing’s firm position regarding the rights of Palestinians, seems of little consequence to its relationship with Israel, as joint technological ventures, trade and investments continue to grow unhindered.

China’s foreign policymakers operate with the mistaken assumption that their country can be pro-Palestine and pro-Israel at once, criticizing the Occupation, yet sustaining it; calling on Israel to respect international law while at the same time empowering Israel, however unwittingly, in its ongoing violations of Palestinian human rights.

Israeli hasbara has perfected the art of political acrobats, and finding the balance between US-western discourse and a Chinese one should not be too arduous a task.

Indeed, it seems that the oft-repeated cliché of Israel being “the only democracy in the Middle East”, is being slightly adjusted to meet the expectations of a fledgling superpower, which is merely interested in technology, trade and investments. Israeli leaders want China and its investors to think of Israel as the only stable economy in the Middle East.

Expectedly, Palestinian priorities are wholly different.

With the Palestinian struggle for freedom and human rights capturing international attention through the rise of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, more and more countries are under pressure to articulate a clear stance on the Israeli Occupation and apartheid.

For China to enter the fray with an indecisive and self-serving strategy is not just morally objectionable, but strategically unsustainable as well. The Palestinian and Arab peoples are hardly interested in swapping American military dominance with Chinese economic hegemony that does little to change or, at least challenge, the prevailing status quo.

Sadly, while Beijing and Tel Aviv labor to strike the needed balance between foreign policies and economic interests, China finds itself under no particular obligation to side with a well-defined Arab position on Palestine, simply because the latter does not exist. The political division of Arab countries, the wars in Syria and elsewhere have pushed Palestine down from being a top Arab priority into some strange bargain involving “regional peace” as part of Trump’s so-called “Deal of the Century”.

This painful reality has weakened Palestine’s position in China, which, at least for now, values its relationship with Israel at a higher level than its historical bond with Palestine and the Arab people.

Weather Disasters, Global Warming And Potential For Conflict

Arshad M Khan

East Island was an uninhabited remote island in the Hawaiian chain, but it was an important refuge for wildlife:  Many of the endangered Hawaiian monk seals numbering about 1400 raised their young on that island; others like the green sea turtle and the albatross used it as a shelter.  Not any more because Hurricane Walaka washed away most of the island a few days ago.

It was not the only major Pacific storm last week for category 5 Typhoon Yutu devastated the Northern Marianas, a U.S. territory.  It was reputedly the worst U.S. storm since 1935.  Perhaps happenstance, but the rise in mean temperature due to global warming also exacerbates storms.

In September, Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina  — 51 people died.  The next month Hurricane Michael slammed the Florida panhandle at 5 mph short of a category 5, a record for the area.  Following just a few days after the IPCC (October 8, 2018) report on restricting global warming to 1.5 C, it seemed like nature’s affirmation.  The residents of the area have not yet recovered from the devastation.  The same is true in Puerto Rico and the other affected areas where over 3000 people reportedly have lost their lives due to Hurricane Maria a year ago.  It followed on the heels of Irma tearing through several other Caribbean islands before arriving in Florida.  And Harvey flooded Houston causing a record $125 billion in damage.

Across the Atlantic, there have been heavy rains in Turkey where a 300 year-old bridge was washed away, and flooding in France, Wales and Scotland.  Hurricane Leslie targeted Portugal weakening fortunately to a tropical storm before landfall, and last year Hurricane Ophelia skirted past, its winds fanning wild fires in Portugal and Spain before becoming the worst storm to hit Ireland in 50 years although not at hurricane force, having dissipated in the colder northern waters.

Then there are the insidious effects usually unearthed by scientists.  A warmer earth makes hungry insects hungrier i.e. those voracious caterpillars will be munching even more.  So predict scientists in a study published in the August 31, 2018 issue of Science and reported on elsewhere.  Insects will be causing 10 to 25 percent more damage to wheat, maize and rice crops with a 2 degrees C rise in mean temperature above preindustrial levels as per the Paris agreement.

Other threats to crops include water shortages.  Countries relying on rivers for irrigation are threatened when the head waters are under the control of rivals.  Nuclear armed India and Pakistan are a case in point.  The 1960 Indus Waters Treaty lays down a mechanism for joint management, but Narendra Modi, India’s current nationalist Hindu prime minister aborted all engagement albeit temporarily.  India is building dams upstream which worries Pakistan, and in the latest row Pakistan has banned all Indian TV channels — Indian movies and TV are popular in Pakistan.

There are other regions with potential water conflicts.  Ethiopia is building a grand dam on the Nile for electricity generation.  The water used for electricity will continue to flow downstream but irrigation water if any is bled off — possible when there is a colossal reservoir that will take 5 to 15 years to fill.  Egypt’s life-blood is the Nile, and water flow can be seriously affected depending on the fill rate.

The Mekong river passes through China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.  It is entwined in the livelihood and culture of the region, and upstream dams now threaten centuries-old agricultural and fishing practices downstream.

How can such problems be resolved?  They are also not the only ones.  Parched or flooded farmlands, rising seas, and persistent severe weather will cause large areas to become uninhabitable.  Should then the mandate of bodies like the IPCC be expanded to deal with such consequences of climate change?  It is a possibility although government representatives are inherently biased.  More appropriate perhaps would be neutral international commissions composed of experts.  But how should affected people be settled?  We have a caravan of 1000 headed to the U.S. and causing much discomfiture in the Trump administration.  Imagine the numbers multiplied by 100 or a 1000.

All of which reminds us again that global warming is the most important issue we face.

100,000 people living in unsafe UK tower blocks

Barry Mason

At least 575 tower blocks across Britain, 41,000 individual flats, have structural faults endangering the safety and lives of around 100,000 people.

These blocks were built during the 1960s and 1970s using the Large Panel System (LPS) method involving prefabricated concrete panels held together by bolted joints. Flats built using LPS have been found to have widening cracks in walls.

LPS was authorised by central government as it provided a quick and cheap method of delivering social housing. It provided lucrative profits for building firms.

The LPS system’s faults have long been known, but the June 2017 Grenfell fire disaster has heightened public concerns. Tower Blocks UK, which coordinates information about tower block safety, not only warns that the structural design of LPS blocks “is weak, they could collapse in an explosion, high wind or serious fire,” but also that gaps between floor and wall panels “prevent the flats from containing a fire for one hour and lead to the risk of serious fire spread. The highest risk blocks are those with gas in them.”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the collapse of Ronan Point in East London, built using the LPS technique. A gas explosion in a corner flat on the 18th floor of the 22-storey block blew out load-bearing walls and led to a progressive collapse of the south-east corner of the building. Four residents died and 17 were injured. The collapse took place in May 1968, only two months after the tower was officially opened.

Inside Housing published an article in May, “The tower blocks that time forgot.”

It asked, “Fifty years ago councils were told to assess high-rise buildings that were similar to Ronan Point and strengthen them where necessary. So why are problems with some of the blocks still emerging?”

Following the Ronan Point disaster, landlords of large panel blocks were told by the government to assess their buildings and strengthen them if necessary. “These blocks are still standing across the country, but it is by no means certain, 50 years on, that they have been modified in line with the government’s requirement.”

The Building Research Establishment (BRE)—the privatised former government national building research laboratory—published its LPS guide in 2012, stating that block owners have an ongoing responsibility to regularly inspect and assess LPS buildings. When Inside Housing sent a Freedom of Information request to councils asking when they had last carried out such a survey, many had not done so.

The Tower Blocks UK information sheet on LPS notes: “Originally it was expected that these blocks would have a life of 40 years, we are beyond that now...the bowing of the panels is likely to become greater with age. ... All large panel system tower blocks should be inspected as a matter of urgency. This needs to be led by experts who are familiar with these structures, it needs to be led by the government and the Building Research Establishment.”

An article in the October 22 Independent cites building surveyor expert Arnold Tarling, who has examined LPS blocks across London. He described the LPS system as “a house of cards...stacked up and held together by a bit of simple bracing work. It’s not just the risk of gas explosion like Ronan Point. A serious enough fire in an LPS building could result in collapse. The floor slabs would expand and push out the external wall panels and things would break up quite quickly.”

Tarling insisted, “The government needs to...start facing up to the problem. You can’t leave residents in potential danger.”

The Ministry of Housing and the Local Government Association have established a forum to discuss the issue, but an LGA spokesman told the Independent, “The issues...with LPS buildings are complex and technical ones. They require expert advice on what to do and the LGA is not placed to do that. We have...been pushing for the government to provide that advice.”

The Independent notes structural defects have been found at LPS high-rise blocks in Rugby, Leicester, and Portsmouth and in two London boroughs—the Ledbury estate in Southwark and on Haringey’s Broadwater Farm estate. Southwark Council has four LPS blocks on the Ledbury estate in south London deemed at risk of collapse. One resident, Danielle Gregory, had cracks in the walls of her 12th-floor flat big enough to put her hand through.

The blocks are being emptied and the council has yet to decide whether to demolish them. But in a consultation exercise, most residents expressed the wish that the blocks should be strengthened and refurbished. This reflects a growing awareness that London’s working-class estates are being socially cleansed and replaced with private, unaffordable luxury developments with a minimal number of supposedly “affordable units” that are much more expensive than existing housing stock. Gregory, who has been rehoused nearby, told the Independent, “My worst fear is all these [LPS] estates will eventually be demolished and replaced with mainly private apartments.”

Two blocks at the Broadwater Farm estate in north-east London—6-storey Tangmere House and 18-storey Northolt—have failed structural safety checks. The risk at Tangmere House is compounded by the fact it has a gas supply. The council wants to demolish them, but Jacob Secker, the secretary of the residents’ association, wants residents to be given the option of deciding if the blocks should be strengthened and refurbished. He told the Independent, “If there was a scenario where you had all these wonderful new council homes ... I would be less opposed to demolition... local authorities never seem to have the funding to rebuild their estates with new council housing.”

In Portsmouth, the council is to move out 800 residents from its 18-storey Leamington House and Horatia House following structural surveys. An Architects ’ Journal article of June 7 noted that the construction system used in Portsmouth is the “same used at two high-rises in Rugby where residents were moved out in April following safety fears.” Leicester City Council took the decision to demolish its 23-storey Goscote House, which contains 134 apartments, over fears about its structural integrity. It will cost around £3 million to demolish compared to around £6 million to refurbish it.

The Grenfell Fire Forum, initiated by the Socialist Equality Party, demands immediate government intervention to make all the LPS-constructed tower blocks safe, along with hundreds of other public and private sector building that threaten residents’ lives due to being covered in combustible material similar to hat caused the Grenfell Fire inferno. Quality public housing is a social right. We demand an emergency multibillion-pound programme of public works to build schools, hospitals, public housing and all the infrastructure required in the 21st century.

Turkish ruling parties break planned election alliance

Barış Demir

Amid growing social anger in Turkey and a new shock to Turkey’s international relations with the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the People’s Alliance between the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has broken down.

Last Tuesday, MHP Chairman Devlet Bahçeli announced that his party would no longer seek an alliance with the AKP in local elections slated for late March 2019.

Speaking at a weekly leadership meeting of his party, Bahçeli said: “In this current situation, we have no expectations, pursuit or intention to form an alliance in the local elections of March 31, 2019. It will not be possible to reach an agreement through forced meetings. Nor is there a need to linger or play with hopes. … We will stand in the elections with our own candidates and emblem.”

The Islamist AKP and the far-right MHP formed the People Alliance in early 2018 for presidential and parliamentary elections, after the MHP supported President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP government after the abortive coup of July 15, 2016, launched from NATO’s Incirlik air base with US and German backing. They have cooperated on building a police state targeting the working class in Turkey, invading Syria and attacking Kurdish nationalist forces in Syria. The MHP called for a “yes” vote on granting the Turkish presidency dictatorial powers in the 2017 referendum.

Erdogan won the presidential election with MHP support in the first round. But the June 24, 2018, parliamentary elections were a definite setback for the AKP, which failed to secure a majority. The AKP won 295 of 600 seats in parliament and became dependent on the MHP for its parliamentary majority. The MHP won 49 seats on 12 percent of the vote. This was a surprisingly good result for the MHP, as the IYI Parti (Good Party) had split from MHP prior to the election, on a pro-NATO line.

In response to Bahçeli’s announcement that there would be no alliance in the local election, Erdogan said: “Everyone will go their separate ways.” He also accused the MHP—a far-right party formed with CIA support in 1969 by former Colonel Alparslan Türkeş, who carried out brutal “counterinsurgency” campaigns in the 1970s against the workers and students movements in Turkey—of racism.

He also accused the MHP of supporting the drug trade by supporting the release of drug dealers: “We cannot grant amnesty in a period where there are 50,000 drug dealers. … Will we be known as a government that has forgiven the drug dealers?”

After Bahçeli broke the election alliance, Turkey’s lira fell nearly 3 percent on the currency markets. Then both Erdogan and Bahçeli had to stress that the decision was only about the upcoming local election and will not, however, affect the continuation of the People’s Alliance government itself.

The breakdown of the election alliance nonetheless points to the crisis provoked in Turkish ruling circles by escalating strikes and workers struggles at home, and growing wars and conflict across the region.

Rising inflation, especially on prices for basic goods, growing unemployment and poverty, business closures, bankruptcies and downsizing are threatening workers and are increasingly provoking workers struggles. In September, thousands of construction workers at the site of a new airport in Istanbul carried out protests against workplace accidents, precarious and oppressive working conditions and the violation of basic rights. The government reacted to this mass protest with a brutal police attack, jailing more than 30 workers.

Erdogan and both parties in his government are desperate to prevent this opposition from picking up momentum, for fear that it will rapidly escalate into mass class struggles. Its brutal attack on the protesting construction workers is aimed at intimidating all workers who seek to defend their rights. Although the airport construction workers’ strike was suppressed, mass opposition in the working class heightens.

The class struggle is developing parallel with the deepening crisis of the Turkish economy. The Turkish lira suffered significant depreciation against the US dollar and the euro this year. Turkey’s official inflation rate rose to 24.52 percent in September. According to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK), it increased 6.3 percent from the previous month—a far bigger increase than the 3.6 percent that had been predicted in an earlier Reuters poll of 15 economists.

Under these conditions, tensions between the MHP and AKP grew, as the MHP does not want to take responsibility for the consequences of the economic crisis and the policies of the AKP-led government. Instead, it offered some populist promises of social concessions in an attempt to consolidate its gains in the last elections. It made calls for an amnesty law for prisoners, an early retirement law, and for a return of the racist vow in the schools. Erdogan opposed these MHP proposals, however.

Amid the upsurge of the class struggle and wars across the Middle East from Syria to Yemen, Erdogan saw the Saudi regime’s brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi as a chance to strengthen his hand.

As the World Socialist Web Site stated: “Ankara clearly sees the Khashoggi assassination as a means of promoting the Turkish regime’s interests in relation to Riyadh and Washington. It has shared tense relations with both the Saudi regime and US imperialism, including over Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Qatar, a key ally of Turkey, and Washington’s utilization of the YPG Syrian Kurdish militia as a proxy ground force. Ankara views the YPG as a branch of the PKK, the Turkish Kurdish separatist movement against which it has waged a bloody counterinsurgency campaign for more than 30 years.”

Erdogan may also try to use Khashoggi’s assassination as a way to ask for concessions from Washington, such as an exemption from US sanctions against Iran.

As he sought to repair relations with the NATO powers badly damaged after the 2016 NATO-backed coup, Erdogan turned to Germany and the EU and also sought to normalize relations with the United States. He gave some compromises such as release of US pastor Andrew Brunson, who had been accused of helping prepare the 2016 coup. This cut across the nationalist line of the MHP, which made tactical criticisms of the AKP on this issue.

Falling growth rate sparks concern in China’s ruling circles

Nick Beams 

The Chinese Communist Party leadership is showing increased signs of anxiety over the direction of the economy amid indications that growth is starting to slow significantly.

Last month China recorded its lowest quarterly growth figure—6.5 percent—since the impact of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. This week the government’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) showed that China’s manufacturing output in October had weakened.

The PMI fell to 50.2 in October from 50.8 the previous month. While this is still above the level of 50, indicating expansion, it was the lowest level since July 2016.

A PMI sub-index of new export orders fell from 48.0 to 46.9 in October, its lowest level since January 2016. The index of total new orders, which measures both exports and imports, was also down, dropping to 50.8 from its level of 52 in September.

In a note, reported in the Financial Times, Serena Zhou, Asia economist at Mizhou Securities in Hong Kong, wrote: “China’s October manufacturing PMI came [in] much weaker than the market had expected. Softness was seen in both new orders (especially export-related) and factory production, foreshadowing slower manufacturing activity in the fourth quarter amid sluggish domestic sentiment and rising external trade tensions.”

Commenting to the Wall Street Journal, Xiaowen Jin, an economist at Citigroup, said: “Companies are definitely feeling the chill from the trade war.”

A statement issued from a meeting on Wednesday of the 25-member Politburo, China’s key policy-making body chaired by President Xi Jinping, reflected the growing concern in Beijing over the economy and the impact of US trade war measures.

According to the state-owned Xinhua news agency, the Politburo said there was “growing downward pressure” on the economy, combined with “profound changes” in the external environment. The latter phrase contrasts with the Politburo statement of three months ago, which pointed to “noticeable” changes in the external environment.

In that time, the trade war initiated by the US has markedly escalated. In addition to 25 percent tariffs on $50 billion worth of industrial goods, a levy of 10 percent was imposed on $200 billion worth of products, set to rise to 25 percent in January, and US President Donald Trump has threatened to place tariffs on the remaining $267 billion worth of Chinese exports to America.

Trade war is not the only problem confronting the Chinese leadership. It is seeking to reduce the level of debt in the economy while balancing the reduction of credit against the need to provide a stimulus for growth. This is a matter of considerable concern to the Beijing leadership because it fears that a significant reduction in growth will lead to struggles by the working class. In the past it maintained that a growth level of 8 percent was necessary for “social stability.” Now growth is down to 6.5 percent and could well go lower in the future.

The Politburo statement said there were “a lot of difficulties with certain enterprises and the emergence of risks accumulated over long periods of time.” The latter appears to be a reference to the accumulation of debt.

S&P Global Ratings issued a report last month saying China could be facing a “debt iceberg with titanic credit risks” because infrastructure projects financed by local government authorities were leading to a debt pile, as high as $5.8 trillion, hidden off their balance sheets.

The Politburo said it had to “enhance reform and opening up to focus on core problems with targeted solutions … We must get our own things done and firmly seek high-quality growth.”

The government and the central bank have undertaken a series of measures in recent weeks to try to boost financial liquidity, while providing tax concessions for households as well as giving support to exporters. But these measures appear to have provided little stimulus.

Indicating that further measures are under consideration, the Politburo said the leadership was “paying great attention to the problems” and would be “more preemptive and take action in a timely manner.”

Another problem is the decline in the value of the renminbi against the US dollar. The Chinese currency fell to a decade-low this week and is now close to what is regarded as a key benchmark of 7 against the US currency. The Chinese leadership is seeking to sustain its value lest the US brands it a “currency manipulator” and unleashes a further round of punitive measures.

Writing in the Financial Times on Tuesday, Diana Choyleva, chief economist at Enodo Economics, a consultancy firm on the Chinese economy, noted that while a major devaluation or a sharp fall in a short period of time would help China’s exporters, it would “plunge the world into deflationary disarray” and shred Beijing’s claims to be a force for global stability.

Choyleva pointed to the criticism that has begun to surface within Chinese ruling circles that President Xi underestimated the aggressive character of American policies. Despite his strong hold on power, she wrote, he could not “afford to enrage America and risk an overreaction” and that “a second miscalculation would go down badly at home.”

This week, the Financial Times reported on the criticism voiced by two prominent Chinese economists who have argued the trade war launched by the US is not an attempt to block China’s rise—the position of the ruling faction around Xi—but an understandable response to its state-directed economic policies.

According to a recent speech delivered by Zhang Weiying, a professor at Peking University’s National School of Development, from the Western perspective, the “China model” makes it “an alarming outlier, and must lead to a conflict between China and the Western world.”

Zhang is an advocate of the free market, who was named “economist of the year” by the state broadcaster in 2002 when the emphasis of official policy was market reform. He said the “environment we face today is not unrelated to the mistaken interpretation of China’s achievements over the past 40 years by some”—a thinly-veiled criticism of the state-backed “model” of economic growth promoted by Xi.

Zhang’s views were echoed by Sheng Hong, the executive director of the Unirule Institute of Economics, a liberal think tank, who warned that China was at risk of abandoning Deng Xiaoping’s policy, initiated in 1978, of “reform and opening up,” leading to a conflict with the West.

At present, such views are regarded as outliers. They point to cracks opening up within the regime, however. Those cracks could widen if the economy worsens and leads to the emergence of the greatest fear of the ruling regime of ultra-wealthy oligarchs—a movement of the multi-millioned Chinese working class.

Washington calls for Yemen ceasefire as Saudis escalate siege of Hodeidah

Bill Van Auken

Despite calls by the US secretaries of state and defense for a ceasefire in Yemen, the US-backed, Saudi-led coalition is carrying out a massive buildup of troops laying siege to the country’s critical Red Sea port of Hodeidah, threatening an offensive that could kill many thousands while plunging millions more into outright starvation.

The developments came as the United Nations issued fresh warnings that some 14 million people in Yemen are threatened with a famine that is eclipsing anything the world has seen for the past century.

Speaking at the US Institute of Peace in Washington on October 30, Pentagon chief Gen. James Mattis stated in relation to Yemen, “We have got to move toward a peace effort here, and we can’t say we are going to do it sometime in the future. We need to be doing this in the next 30 days.”

Mattis’ peace appeal was laced with lies placing the principal blame for the near genocidal war that has been raging in Yemen for the last three and a half years on the Houthi rebel movement that overthrew the US and Saudi-backed puppet regime of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. He repeated unsubstantiated US allegations that the Houthis are a proxy force for Iran, and that Tehran is supplying them with missiles, something for which the US and its allies have presented not a shred of evidence.

The US defense secretary insisted that the peace talks would be aimed at “demilitarizing the border so that Saudis and Emirates [sic] do not have to worry about missiles coming into their ... homes, and cities and airports.”

He went on to denounce Iran declaring that their alleged shipment of missiles to the Houthis had “interrupted freedom of navigation” and charging that: “They are the ones who keep fueling this conflict and they need to knock it off. They may do it through proxies as they do so often in the Middle East, but they do not escape accountability for what they’re doing through proxies and surrogate forces. We still will hold them accountable.”

This belligerent nonsense turns the situation in Yemen inside out. Saudi Arabia recently claimed that a little over 100 of its civilians—a grossly inflated figure—had been killed by Houthi missiles. No one has died in the UAE. Meanwhile, the estimates of the number of Yemenis killed—the vast majority of them by Saudi airstrikes—ranges between 50,000 and 80,000.

While there is no evidence that Iran is “fueling” the conflict, Washington is literally doing just that. US Air Force tanker planes have been deployed over the Arabian Peninsula to enable Saudi bombers to carry out continuous strikes against Yemen. US military intelligence officers help run a joint command center in Riyadh providing the Saudi military with targeting information and other intelligence and the US Navy provides crucial support for a Saudi-led blockade that is starving the country of food, medicine and other essential supplies. Meanwhile, virtually all of the billions of dollars’ worth of bombs, warplanes and other military equipment being use in the war on Yemen is supplied by the arms manufacturers of the US, the UK and other NATO allies.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed the statement by Mattis, declaring that the “time is now for the cessation of hostilities.” He added that “America stands by the kingdom” of Saudi Arabia.

The state-run media in Saudi Arabia portrayed the statements by Mattis and Pompeo as support for

Riyadh. “America stands by the kingdom against the Houthi’s Iranian ballistic missiles,” was the headline of the major daily Al Riyadh.

Even as these duplicitous calls for a ceasefire were being made in Washington, the Saudi-led coalition was reportedly bringing as many as 10,000 fresh troops, including Sudanese regulars, mercenaries and Saudi and Emirati troops to the outskirts of Hodeidah for a fresh offensive that is expected to unfold within days.

The size of this buildup makes clear that it could not have been carried out without US knowledge and logistical backing.

Washington gave the greenlight for the siege of Hodeidah, which is aimed at cutting off the lifeline for food, medicine and other basic supplies to the majority of the population who live in areas of the country controlled by the Houthi rebel movement. The Red Sea port is the entry point for 70 percent of the country’s food imports and international aid.

Despite continuous airstrikes, the Saudi-led forces have until now been unable to break the resistance of the Houthis and the city’s residents. Aid organizations have reported that food is running out in the city, while thousands of families have been driven from their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The aid groups and the United Nations have warned that the overrunning of the city by the Saudi-led forces would entail massive civilian casualties, while threatening millions of Yemenis with death by starvation by cutting off the flow of food aid.

The Western media has largely blacked out reports of the Yemen war, while the meager reporting that has appeared repeats a years’ old estimate of 10,000 civilians killed. The UN has since raised this estimated death toll to 16,000.

However, a new report issued by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, has established that the Saudi-led war has claimed the lives of at least 56,000 Yemenis.

That figure is itself a significant underestimate. Andrea Carboni, who researches Yemen for the ACLED, told Patrick Cockburn of the Independent that it includes only those killed between January 2016 and October 2018. Adding the victims claimed from the start of the Saudi-led war in March 2015 until the end of that year, he said, would likely bring the real toll to between 70,000 and 80,000.

The death toll from hunger and preventable diseases like cholera caused by the US-backed blockade of the country and the systematic destruction of basic infrastructure, including water and sewer systems and healthcare facilities, is far higher.

The aid group Save the Children has released an estimate that 100 children on average are dying every single day in Yemen from preventable causes like extreme hunger and disease. At least half of the 14 million Yemenis threatened with famine are children. UNICEF reports that 1.8 million children under the age of five are facing acute malnutrition, and 400,000 are affected by severe acute malnutrition.

This massive human catastrophe is the product of policies pursued under both Obama and Trump, without which the war in Yemen would have been impossible. The aim under both the Democratic and Republican administrations has been to further US imperialism’s drive for hegemony over the Middle East, by assuring that Yemen remained under the control of a US-Saudi puppet regime and preventing any expansion of Iranian influence in the region.

The calls for a ceasefire—while giving a 30-day deadline to allow the murderous siege of Hodeidah to proceed and continuing US arms shipments and logistical support—signals a tactical shift in this imperialist policy. Washington is attempting to utilize the crisis provoked within the Saudi monarchy by the exposure of the brutal assassination in its Istanbul consulate of journalist Jamal Khashoggi to put a tighter leash on the House of Saud and its de facto chief, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

There are also reports that the US government is pressing Riyadh to end its economic blockade of Qatar, which hosts the largest US military facility in the Middle East, the Udeid airbase, from which US warplanes have carried out their bombardments of Syria and Iraq.

What is to be done about the plutocrats?

Patrick Martin

A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, made public Tuesday, underscores the role of inherited wealth in the growth of social inequality in the United States. The report, titled, “Billionaire Bonanza: Inherited Wealth Dynasties in the 21st-Century United States,” analyzes the Forbesmagazine list of the 400 wealthiest individuals in the United States, and finds that one-third of them derived their wealth primarily from inheritance from their parents or from an even older generation of the super-rich.

The three wealthiest of the dynasties, the Waltons, the Koch brothers and the Mars family, saw their combined wealth increase nearly 6,000 percent since 1982, while average household wealth in America actually declined slightly. These three families, based in retailing, oil production and food manufacturing respectively, had a combined wealth of $348.7 billion in 2018, up from $5.84 billion in 1982, adjusted to 2018 dollars.

Besides the seven Waltons, two Kochs and six Mars, the report notes nine Cargill heirs on the Forbes 400 list, along with five Johnsons (Fidelity Investments), nine Pritzkers (Hyatt Hotels), five heirs to the Cox media fortune, four heirs to the Duncan oil fortune, four Lauders (perfumes), five billionaires from the Johnson & Johnson empire, four Bass brothers (oil), three Strykers (medical equipment), and so on. The top 15 billionaire dynasties had a combined wealth of $618 billion.

In the 100 years since the first US “Gilded Age,” the vast wealth of the original dynastic families like the Rockefellers, Mellons, Carnegies and DuPonts has been dispersed among large numbers of descendants, as well as diluted by progressive taxation (before 1980) and, in a few cases, by transfer to foundations. Few heirs of the original “robber barons” now make the Forbes 400 list. But the report notes, “Now several decades into the second Gilded Age, dynastic wealth families once again appear in force on the Forbes 400 list. And like previous dynasties, a segment of these families use their considerable wealth and power to rig the rules of the economy to protect and expand their wealth and power.”

These wealthy families have pushed through major changes in the tax and inheritance laws that will allow them to pass on their wealth to the next generation virtually without hindrance—changes which will be taken advantage of by the new layer of super-rich, personified by the trio of Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, whose combined wealth is greater than that of the bottom half of the American population.

But their impact on American social and political life goes well beyond the immediate accumulation and preservation of family fortunes. The report begins by citing a warning by Paul Volcker—who, as the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, the US central bank, was intimately familiar with the political and social psychology of this layer—about the dangers of the rule over society by a tiny elite of the fabulously rich.

“The central issue is we’re developing into a plutocracy,” Volcker said. “We’ve got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they’re rich because they’re smart and constructive. And they don’t like government and they don’t like to pay taxes.” Hence the agenda of tax-cutting and deregulation carried out by Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

The past 40 years have seen the consolidation of a plutocratic elite, which has subordinated every aspect of American society to a single goal: amassing ever more colossal amounts of personal wealth. The top one percent have captured all of the increase in national income over the past two decades, and all of the increase in national wealth since the 2008 crash.

This is the fundamental class reason for the dramatic and seemingly unending shift to the right in American politics over this period. Well-paying jobs, long-term job security, decent public schools, the social infrastructure of transportation, health care, housing, even water and sewage systems—all these have been sacrificed to the maniacal and never-ending self-enrichment of the plutocrats.

The destruction of jobs, living standards and social benefits for working people is constantly and invariably justified by Corporate America and the capitalist politicians of the Democratic and Republican parties with the declaration that “there is no money.” This mantra is repeated even as the fortunes of the super-rich swell to previously unthinkable dimensions. What it really means is “there is no money for you, because we want it all.” The plutocrats bear the same relationship to modern society as a cancerous tumor does to the human body.

The Institute for Policy Studies has done a public service by publishing these figures, which dovetail with the findings of economists like Emmanuel Saez, Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman. But the policies advanced by the IPS, tepid liberal reforms such as the reinstitution of the inheritance tax and a 1 percent annual wealth tax, have a snowball’s chance in hell of being enacted under the present social order. They are proposed to bolster illusions in the Democratic Party, and in particular to promote politicians of the Bernie Sanders stripe.

The reality is that the Democratic Party is just as beholden to the billionaires and just as devoted to the defense of capitalism as the Republican Party. The financial aristocracy will never permit such measures to be adopted through the mechanisms of Congress and the presidency, which it controls from top to bottom. On the contrary, the open turn to authoritarianism by both corporate-controlled parties is a powerful demonstration that economic inequality on the scale that exists today in the United States is incompatible with democracy.

The only realistic alternative to the dictatorship of the billionaires is the independent political mobilization of the working class on the basis of a socialist program. The banner of the working class cannot be “restore modest taxation on the super-rich.” It must be, “Expropriate the super-rich.” The working class must set as its goal the confiscation of the wealth of the billionaires—which was produced in the first place by the workers—to provide the resources needed for the common good. This would be the first and most decisive step in the socialist reorganization of economic life to serve human needs and not private profit.

Royal African Society’s Africa Writes 2019 for Talented Writers

Application Deadline: 6th November 2018

Eligible Countries: African countries and Africans in other countries

To be Taken at (Country): The British Library, London

About the Award: The Royal African Society’s annual celebration of contemporary literature from Africa and the diaspora returns! Established in 2012, Africa Writes is now the UK’s biggest celebration of contemporary African writing. The festival aims to showcase both established writers and newcomers to a UK audience, provide an opportunity for African literature fans to meet and connect, and to encourage people to develop their interest in literature and their own creative skills.
We aim for the process to be open and inclusive, to reflect the broad community that makes up Africa Writes. All the individuals and organisations whose submissions are part of the 2018 programme will be fully acknowledged and credited.
– Do you represent an author that you think would be perfect for Africa Writes?
– Are you buzzing with an idea for a book launch or workshop that you would love to see at the festival?
– Do you have an idea for a performance event or panel discussion?

From the seeds of an idea to a fully-fledged plan, we would like to invite you to submit whatever suggestions you might have, to influence and help create the festival in 2019. The submissions will be then reviewed and some will be developed, to work towards shaping the programme for Africa Writes 2019. This in turn, will inform our applications to secure funding for the festival to take place.

Type: Contest

Eligibility: The Society aims for the process to be open and inclusive, to reflect the broad community that makes up Africa Writes! All the individuals and organisations whose submissions are part of the 2018 program will be fully acknowledged and credited.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Duration of Program: 
LONDON – Friday 5 July – Saturday 6 July, The British Library
BRISTOL – late June (final dates TBC)

How to Apply: Go to submission form

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

ICFJ/ONE Michael Elliott Award for Excellence in African Storytelling 2019

Application Deadline: 2nd December 2018 at 11:59pm EST

Eligible Countries: African countries

About the Award: In its third year, this prestigious award will honor an up-and-coming journalist in Africa who tells important stories through quality reporting.
This award, given in Mike’s name, will provide the winner a $5,000 cash prize to pursue an in-depth reporting project. In a special study tour organized by ICFJ, the winner will spend time in U.S. newsrooms to learn new skills and share knowledge. In order to take full advantage of the study tour, applicants must speak English, even if they work in another language.

Type: Contest

Eligibility: 

• The contest is open to up-and-coming, English-speaking journalists working in Africa for print, broadcast and online news media.
• Applicants must have no more than 10 years of journalism experience.
• Applicants must submit one published story that reflects top-notch storytelling about important issues.
• The submission can be a feature story; an in-depth, investigative or explanatory piece; or a multimedia report or documentary.
• The published story or broadcast must be submitted in English. Works in other languages must include English translations.

Selection: A distinguished international jury will select the winner.

Number of Awards: 1

Value of Award: 

• This award will provide the winner with a US$5,000 cash prize to pursue an in-depth reporting project.
• In a special study tour organized by ICFJ, the winner will spend time in U.S. newsrooms to learn new skills and share knowledge.
• The winner will also complete a two-week internship at the headquarters of The Economist in London.

How to Apply: Submit your application if you meet the criteria above.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), ONE and the Elliott family

Machel-Mandela Fellowship Program 2019 for Study in South Africa

Application Deadline: 30th November 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Countries in Africa or abroad

To be taken at (country): Johannesburg, South Africa

Eligible Field of Study: None

About the Award: The Machel-Mandela Fellows programme aims to be the most prestigious of its kind in Africa. It helps sharpen the Brenthurst Foundation’s focus on Africa’s burgeoning youth population and helps nurture Africa’s future leaders.
The Fellowship runs full-time for a minimum of six months and is open to both South African and international candidates, with the selected candidate expected to take up the appointment at the Foundation’s headquarters in Johannesburg in April 2019. Fellows will work directly with and assist the Foundation’s staff on a range of projects and activities, some of which will require foreign travel.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• Under 30 years of age
• Undergraduate or Masters degree with track record of academic excellence
• Excellent English communication skills required, with copy-editing and proof-reading skills an asset
• Enthusiastic and reliable self-starter who requires minimal oversight and management
• Able to balance deadlines and attention to detail
• A passion for Africa and keen interest in strengthening Africa’s economic performance
• Familiarity with the work of The Brenthurst Foundation

Value of Scholarship: An all-inclusive stipend per month and accommodation (subject to Foundation policy) will be provided. Other work-related expenses may also be covered subject to agreement with the Foundation.

Duration of Scholarship: The programme will be available full-time for a minimum of six months and the selected candidate will be expected to take up the appointment in January 2019.

How to Apply: Please address your application to Ms Leila Jack at leila.jack@thebrenthurstfoundation.org, quoting ‘Application: Machel-Mandela Fellow’ in the subject line.
You will need to send:

• An up-to-date CV with references
• A covering letter of no more than 500 words, outlining your interest in the position and relevant skills
• A writing sample, for example an essay or a published article of any length.
• The earliest date you would be able to start
• Details of where you saw the post advertised.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details


Award Provider: The Brenthurst Foundation

World vertebrate populations have fallen 60 percent since 1970

Bryan Dyne

The most recent Living Planet Report reveals that the world’s populations of vertebrate—those species with a spine—have fallen by 60 percent between 1970 and 2014 as a result of human-induced global environmental changes. Put another way, the available data for all species and regions reveals that the number of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians across the world has fallen by “well over half in less than 50 years.” At the same time, the report notes, this threatens the economic activity that ultimately depends on nature, “estimated to be worth around $125 trillion a year.”

This decline is especially sharp in South and Central America, a region which has experienced a vertebrate population decline of 89 percent, and in freshwater populations worldwide, which have dropped by 83 percent. The decline is slower in North America and the Eurasian landmass, which have suffered population declines of 23 percent and 31 percent, respectively.

Other data presented in the report indicate the same sobering trends. While Earth’s environment was relatively stable during the past 11,700 years, an era known as the Holocene, the past 50 years in particular have seen enormous changes to the planet’s ecosystem. “In the last 50 years, global average temperature has risen at 170 times the background rate,” the report says. “Ocean acidification may be occurring at a rate not seen in at least 300 million years. Earth is losing biodiversity at a rate seen only during mass extinctions.”

First published in 1998 and every two years since, the Living Planet Report and its primary statistic, the Living Planet Index, serve as a benchmark for biodiversity—the number of species in an ecosystem and the populations of those species—across the world. It is a collaborative effort between the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London which analyzes the impact human activity is having on the environment and in turn how the various changes of Earth’s environment impact animal and human life.

The study tracks 16,704 populations representing 4,005 species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians currently used as the sample for Earth’s wildlife. All the populations in the study come from one of five major regions, which roughly correspond to North America, South America, Eurasia, Africa and Oceania. The divisions are based on the types of species found in the regions and provide a somewhat more granular understanding of the health of different regions around the globe, which in turn indicates whether the effects on a specific section of wildlife are local or global in scope.

The regions are then subdivided by taxonomic group—birds, mammals, fishes, reptiles and amphibians—and threats such as habitat degradation and loss, overexploitation, invasive species and disease, pollution, and climate change. This allows for an at-a-glance analysis of both what species in a given region are being most affected by the changing environment and what is driving their population loss.

On a global scale, the most common reasons for declining animal populations are habitat loss and overexploitation, which account for approximately three-quarters of global vertebrate population loss. This includes a combination of agricultural, residential, industrial and commercial development, logging, damming, and mining, as well as mass hunting, poaching and harvesting.

Climate change, in contrast, only accounts for less than 10 percent of the decrease in wild populations. The Living Planet Report notes, however, that this will increase as climate change accelerates and that “losses of wild species already suffering from more ‘traditional’ threats like habitat loss and overexploitation may be exacerbated by compromising a species’ ability to respond to changes in climate.” This interconnection is stressed throughout the report and is shown for climate change and every other impact humans have had on the environment.

The analysis showing the consequences of the deteriorating environment on human life are no less devastating. The cost that humans face, the report notes, is not just measured by the direct monetary loss caused by a lack of natural resources. There are natural processes that regulate air, water and soil, between 50,000 and 70,000 plants used industrially, as well as numerous cultural benefits that are being eroded as various ecosystems suffer collapse.

One noted direct cost on humans is the loss of pollinators, which threatens at least $500 billion of crop production per year. Another, not discussed in the report, is the impact of extreme weather events such as wildfires, hurricanes and typhoons, made more common and stronger as a result of climate change, which kill thousands of people every year and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damages globally.

Overall, a clear picture emerges of a planet in crisis. The biosphere of Earth, the “infrastructure” for all life on the planet, is collapsing. The massive expansion of human activity since the Industrial Revolution is the primary cause. What then are the solutions?

To its credit, the authors of the Living Planet Report never suggest a Malthusian approach, never suggest that perhaps the only road for a healthy planet is to eradicate some large percentage of the human race in order to restore some sort of equilibrium. On the contrary, the appeal to its readers is that the natural world should be preserved and strengthened in order for a “modern, prosperous human society to exist, and to continue to thrive.”

What they do not challenge is the socioeconomic form of political organization that helped propel the Industrial Revolution, capitalism and the division of the world into rival nation-states. In contrast to the global approach taken to the science they present, the authors appeal to the United Nations and its member states, all of whom have material interests in exploiting and ravaging the planet’s resources. This has been proven again and again by industrial/ecological disasters such as the BP oil spill and the radiation leakage from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

As such, the crisis of the environment is ultimately a political crisis, one that can only be solved by a turn to the working class. Only through this social force, one which is inherently international and for which a healthy environment is a social necessity, can the restoration of Earth’s ecosystems even begin.

Ukraine’s depopulation crisis

Jason Melanovski

As fascist far-right nationalist groups regularly parade through the country demanding “Ukraine for Ukrainians,” Ukraine faces a massive depopulation crisis. Millions of people of all ethnicities are leaving the country, fleeing poverty and war.

Since the restoration of capitalism in 1991, the overall population of Ukraine has declined from just over 52 million to approximately 42 million today, a decrease of nearly 20 percent. If the separatist-controlled provinces of the Donbass region and Crimea are excluded, it is estimated that just 35 million people now live in the area controlled by the government of Petro Porosehnko.

Ukrainian governments, including the current one, have been loath to carry out an official census, as it is widely believed that the population estimates reported by the country’s State Statistics Service (SSS) are inflated by including deceased individuals. One aim of this is to rig elections. An official country-wide census has not been held since 2001. In late 2015, the Poroshenko government postponed the 2016 census until 2020.

Despite the lack of reliable official numbers, all independent reports point to a sharp reduction in the population. According to Ukraine’s Institute of Demography at the Academy of Sciences, by 2050 only 32 million people will live in the country. The World Health Organization has estimated that the population of the country will drop even further, to just 30 million people.

Ukraine’s SSS has acknowledged that so far this year, the population has already decreased by 122,000.

Such data are a testament to the monumental failure of capitalism to provide a standard of living that matches, much less exceeds, that which existed during the Soviet period over 25 years ago.

While the country’s low birth rate of approximately 1 birth for 1.5 deaths is a contributing factor to the country’s depopulation, emigration is by far the biggest factor.

Between 2002 and 2017, an estimated 6.3 million Ukrainians emigrated with no plans to return.

Facing poor employment prospects, deteriorating social and medical services, marauding far-right gangs, and the ever-present prospect of a full-scale war with Russia, Ukrainian workers are fleeing the country in great numbers, either permanently or as temporary labor migrants.

According to a report from the Center for Economic Strategy (CES), almost 4 million people, or up to 16% of the working-age population, are labor migrants. Despite having Ukrainian citizenship and still technically living in Ukraine, they actually reside and work elsewhere. Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has put the number of Ukrainian migrant workers even higher, at 5 million.

Through 2015 and 2017, as a result of the ongoing war in the Donbass region and the plunging value of the Ukrainian hryvnia, migration increased notably: 507,000 people went to Poland; 147,000 to Italy; 122,000 to the Czech Republic; 23,000 to the United States; and 365,000 to Russia or Belarus.

The easing of visa-free travel by the European Union (EU) in September 2017 only increased the flow of Ukrainians to countries such as Poland, which is facing its own demographic crisis and in need of workers. In 2018 alone, more than 3 million Ukrainians applied for passports that would allow them to work in Poland. Poland is the only EU country that allows Ukrainians to obtain seasonal work visas with just a passport. Ukrainians have received 81.7% of all work visas issued in Poland this year.

Between 1 and 2 million Ukrainian workers now reside in Poland, where they are often forced to take jobs “under the table,” are easily exploited by employers, and work in dangerous conditions. Many Ukrainian laborers are recruited to Poland by scam offers of employment, only to then find themselves stranded and forced to work for whatever wage they can get.

While migrant workers in Poland are constantly subjected to anti-immigrant rhetoric from the right-wing PiS government in Warsaw, the Polish state classifies Ukrainian laborers as “refugees” in order to comply with EU quotas and reject refugees from Syria and elsewhere.

According to polls of Ukrainian migrants in Poland, over half are planning to move to Germany if the labor market there is ever open to them.

While Russia is constantly demonized in the Ukrainian and Western press as the eternal enemy of Ukraine, 2 million Ukrainian citizens now live or work in Russia. According to Olga Kirilova, between 2014 and 2017, 312,000 Ukrainians were granted Russian citizenship and Ukrainians make up the vast majority of immigrants to Russia.

The dearth of a working-age population in Ukraine is putting further strain on an already struggling pension system. According to Ukraine’s SSS, as a result of widespread labor migration, only 17.8 million out of 42 million Ukrainians are economically active and paying into the pension system.

The migration of Ukrainian workers abroad has reached such a level that remittances from migrants now constitute 3 to 4 percent of the country’s GDP. They exceed the amount of foreign investment in Ukraine. Nonetheless, such transfers are not nearly enough to make up for the negative impact of the currency’s falling value, inflation, and the disappearance of skilled workers.

The Ukrainian ruling class acknowledges that the country is in serious trouble. “One of the main risks of the current scenario is the continuation of the outflow of labor from Ukraine, which will create a further increase in the imbalance between demand and supply in the labor market,” noted a report from the country’s national bank.

However, the government can do nothing to slow the mass emigration, as it is thoroughly under the control of international finance capital and committed to implementing the austerity programs demanded by Western states and banks.

Despite assurances from the Poroshenko regime that the economy will improve, the emigration and emptying of the country shows no signs of slowing.