How a Bad Environment Impacts Children’s Health

Cesar Chelala

Millions of children die every year as a result of environment-related diseases. Their deaths could be prevented by using low-cost and sustainable tools and strategies for improving the environment. In some countries, more than one-third of the disease burden could be prevented by environmental changes. According to a WHO study carried out in 23 countries, more than 10 percent of deaths are due to unsafe water and indoor air pollution, particularly from solid fuel used for cooking.

Children make up almost half the population of developing countries. Most of the deaths are among children under five and are attributable mainly to intestinal and respiratory infections. People living in industrialized countries are also affected by environmental factors such as pollution, occupational factors, ultraviolet radiation, and climate and ecosystem changes.

The integrity of the global environment is being increasingly compromised by the deterioration of the atmospheric ozone layer and an ever-higher concentration of gases responsible for the greenhouse effect. To the degree that these factors intensify, the health of populations will be seriously affected.

Environmental factors affect children’s health from the time of conception and intra-uterine development through infancy and adolescence. These factors can even exert an influence prior to conception since both ovules and sperm can be damaged by radiation and chemical contaminants.

It has been widely demonstrated that children are more susceptible than adults to environmental factors because, among other reasons, they are still growing and their immune systems and detoxification mechanisms are not yet fully developed.

Interventions both at the community and the national level can significantly improve the environment, including the promotion of safe-water treatment and storage, and the reduction of air pollution. The last measure by itself could save almost a million lives a year.

A series of measures being taken at the local level are having a significant impact on improving the environment. For example, in an overcrowded and unsanitary inner-city building housing several hundred people in South Africa, conventional environmental health control measures had failed. So, a democratically elected tenants committee initiated a series of measures to deal with the main problems affecting the building and its inhabitants. This project has laid the foundation for a participatory way of dealing with environmental problems in inner-city buildings.

In Cairo, Egypt, Dr. Laila Iskandar Kamel has implemented innovative social and environmental projects working with garbage collectors or Zabbaleen. These projects have helped garbage collectors break the cycle of exploitation and receive proper compensation for their work. In addition, she has organized girls from the community in reviving the most ancient of Egyptian crafts, weaving on a handloom using discarded cotton remnants and using the profits for improving their education and providing them with a livelihood.

In Qatar, fewer natural resources, climate change and the quality of the air are serious challenges faced by the authorities. The Ministry of Environment has taken a series of measures to improve the environment. Among those measures, creating awareness in the population, particularly among the mothers, is an important task. At the same time, a new school curriculum has been completed, placing emphasis on environmental issues.

In the countries in the Americas, an outstanding series of environmental activities are carried out by Ecoclubs, nongovernmental organizations made up basically of children and adolescents who coordinate their activities through several community institutions.

In Ecuador, the city of Loja was afflicted with dumping yards in inhabited areas, which led to outbreaks of infections and contagious diseases. Through an intensive sensitization and education campaign in which community members played a key role in establishing a sanitary landfill and a means for properly disposing of recyclable materials, there was a manifest improvement in the quality of life for Loja residents.

Children, in particular, increased their awareness about the environment and their role in improving it. The planning, design, monitoring, and management of the physical environment have proven to be an ideal terrain for children’s inputs and participation.

Such initiatives are taking place worldwide with the aim of improving the environment and, as a result, people’s health. More actions should be carried out in the main cities worldwide to protect all people, but particularly the most vulnerable. To curb pollution is expensive. More expensive, however, is the price paid in children’s lives.

Allowing Asbestos to Continue Killing

Jamie McConnell

The town of Libby is a striking and tragic example of corporate irresponsibility, weak regulation and the deadly effects of asbestos exposure. And it’s not just Libby. Nationally, the epidemic of deaths from asbestos exposure shows no sign of slowing down — it’s estimated that nearly 40,000 people die from asbestos exposure each year in the USA alone.

Asbestos is a known human carcinogen and experts agree that no amount of use of the toxin is safe. The European Union already prohibits its use, and despite this ominous classification, the United States is woefully lagging behind in the banning of asbestos.

Asbestos-related deaths in the United States demonstrate how our regulatory system for managing chemicals in the U.S. — known as the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) — has failed to protect the public. For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tried to ban asbestos in 1980s, but despite the overwhelming evidence of its deadliness, a court ruled in 1991 that the EPA failed to clear all the hurdles under this law.

When Congress passed bipartisan legislation in 2016 strengthening TSCA, many thought it would pave the way to banning asbestos use in the U.S. In fact, that was the intention under the newly strengthened TSCA and the accompanying regulations written by the Obama administration.

Under the Trump administration, the EPA issued a significant new use rule (SNUR) which opens the door to allowing old uses of asbestos to return to commerce. Given the scientific community’s consensus that no amount of use of asbestos is safe, allowing these old deadly uses to resume will surely mean more lives lost. And the sad reality is that if imports of the toxin are not banned, manufacturers will continue to use it.

What’s even more frightening is that we don’t have a clear picture of how much asbestos is entering the United States because manufacturers are not required to report this information to the EPA. In an effort to change this, a petition was recently submitted to the agency by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization and co-signed by Montana-based Women’s Voices for the Earth.

The petition asks the EPA to use their new authority under TSCA to require importers of asbestos-containing materials to report the quantity of the toxin and the types of products it’s found in. Without this information, we have no idea who is importing the chemical or where it’s being used, making it very difficult to limit exposure or even assess the risk posed to workers, who are often disproportionately impacted, and the public. Of course, the end goal isn’t just to secure our right to know where it’s being used — it is to ban asbestos.

The Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act of 2017 (SB 2072) has been introduced in Congress that would give the EPA the authority to ban asbestos. U.S. Sen. Jon Tester is an original co-sponsor of the bill. U.S. Sen. Steve Daines has not signed on as a co-sponsor.

The people of Libby are living out a horrible tragedy, and they deserve for it to mean something more. They deserve for it to result in a change that will protect others from enduring the same illness and loss. We cannot simply let the town be a cautionary tale of what happens when regulations don’t go far enough to protect public health, even when there is clear evidence of danger. We need to act. We need our leaders to act and finally ban the import and use of this insidious toxin.

Reality of Israeli outreach to Arabs

Aijaz Zaka Syed

There are no permanent enemies and no permanent friends, theorised William Clay, only permanent interests. The principle perhaps best applies to the current geopolitical situation of the Middle East.

Having lived in the region for so long, one has seen one’s fair share of upheavals — coups and revolutions and wars and conflicts. One has had a ringside view of history, as it were, of the region that by design or by accident has been home to most of the world’s worst conflicts since the World War II, including the Arab-Israeli one — the world’s longest running one.

Lately, there are signs that even this bloodiest and most intractable of conflicts may be drawing to a close. Or is it?Oman stunned people around the world last week by releasing the images of a beaming Netanyahu holding hands with Sultan Qaboos. The news of the Israeli leader’s Muscat visit was released only after he had been safely back in Tel Aviv.

“These were important talks, both for the state of Israel and very important talks for Israel’s security,” Netanyahu told his cabinet. “There will be more.” He emphasised that the visit had been the result of “extensive contacts” between the two sides and had taken place at the invitation of Muscat.

Speakinglater at a GCC security summit in Manama, Bahrain, foreign minister Yusuf Bin Alawi stressed that Oman is not mediating between the Palestinians and Israelis but only “offering ideas” to help the two sides to come together. More importantly, Alawi called for “accepting Israel” by the Arabs arguing: “Israel is a state present in the region, and we all understand this. The world is also aware of this fact. Maybe it is time for Israel to be treated the same (as others states) and also bear the same obligations.”

Interestingly, Bahrain, a close ally of Saudi Arabia and the United States, came out in strong support of engagement with Israel. In fact, it was Bahrain that first reached out to Israel and is said to enjoy informal ties with Tel Aviv. Saudi foreign minister Adel Al-Jubeir, however, reaffirmed Riyadh’s traditional stance that the Palestine-Israel peace process remains key to normalising relations with Israel.

Yet, without a doubt,the Middle East is undergoing a great churn and a realignment of forces like never before. Even as Netanyahu had been holding talks in Oman, Israel’s culture and sports minister Miri Regev was next door in Abu Dhabi with a delegation to take part in a judo tournament.

As Associated Press put it, “It was a scene unthinkable just weeks ago: an Israeli cabinet minister, tears of joy filling her eyes, proudly singing her country’s national anthem at a sports event in the heart of the Arab world. The spectacle of Miri Regev singing “Ha Tikva”, which describes the Jewish yearning for a homeland in Zion, was just one in a series of taboo-busting public appearances by Israeli officials in Gulf Arab states that have thrust the once-secret back channels of outreach into public view.”

Known for her strong views on the Arabs, Regev later visited Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in a red abaya and white headscarf. A day later, Israeli’s communication minister was also headed to the UAE to take part in a security conference. Besides, Israel’s transportation minister Yisrael Katzis scheduled to visit Oman this week for a transportation conference where he will present his plan for a possible rail link connecting the Holy Land with the wider region.

These are remarkable developments in a region where Israel’s very name was, not long ago, taboo. Whenever it came up in the context of the Mideast conflict, it understandably evoked strong emotions. Clearly, winds of change are sweeping West Asia although the issue still cannot be openly discussed in the region’s state-controlled media.

Some ‘smart alecks’ in the region have been quick to link Netanyahu’s visit to Iran, suggesting Muscat may be trying for peace between Iran and Israel-United States.After all, Oman, which unlike other Arab states has maintained good relations with Iran, had played a crucial role in opening channels of communication between Tehran and Washington under Barack Obama. These parleys eventually led to the Iran nuclear accord with the West.

This theory doesn’t carry much weight though given the flurry of visits by Israeli officials to the region and the growing isolation of the Palestinians. The dispossessed Palestinians fear that the Trump administration is pushing the Arabs to embrace Israel and force on them what is being hyped as “the deal of the century.”

Clearly, the key to the change of mood in the region is the Iran factor.  The relentless media blitz by Israel and its powerful friends in US has managed to paint Iran as the clear and present danger to the world peace as well as the safety and security of the Middle East. Tehran finds itself totally isolated in the neighbourhood.

The new punitive sanctions by the Trump administration could force many buyers of Iranian oil to beat a hasty retreat.  Of course, Iran is not blameless. Its hegemonic ambitions and growing interference in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon, which see its forces and proxies pitted against the Arab armies, have divided the whole region and are forcing the Arab states into Israel’s welcoming arms.

After decades of fighting and living with Israel, the Middle East’s only nuclear weapons state, and viewing it as their mortal enemy, the Arabs now see Iran, and not Israel, as their arch enemy. For which, Iran has to blame no one but itself. It is a classic case of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. This is a stupendous victory for Israel’s aggressive foreign policy and Machiavellian realpolitik that it has managed to present Iran as the source of all evil while masking its own destructive role in the region.

Notwithstanding its genocidal war on the Palestinians and occupation of Arab lands, from Egypt to Lebanon and Jordan to Syria and notwithstanding its deadly pile of nukes pointed at Arab capitals, Israel is telling the Arabs that she is their best friend and the Shia Iran is their worst and common enemy. If you think that is a cruel joke and paradox, well, it probably is.

The Arab-Israel détente clearly has the blessings of the US administration. Trump continues to hold out the grand promise of the “deal of the century” that would once and for all settle the Palestinian question, perhaps by banishing the rest of them from Gaza and the West Bank for good. The Palestinians continue to get killed and persecuted in their own land while the blessed international community with its fine institutions stands and stares.

Now who wouldn’t want peace in the Middle East and world at large? God knows enough blood has been spilt in the Holy Land. But can peace be brought about through coercion and use of force without Israel ending its subjugation of Palestinians and ceding a single inch of their land? How long will such peace last if the historic injustices at the heart of this conflict remain unaddressed?

If Israel and its powerful friends indeed want peace, the Arab peace plan remains the best solution yet. It’s worth recalling that the late Saudi King Abdullah had made a historic offer to Israel promising peace and full normalisation of ties by Arab states for complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories and a just settlement of the Palestinian refugees. The Arab League endorsed the Saudi initiative at its 2002 and 2007 summits.

But Israel has never been interested in finding peace or sincerely resolving this conflict. That would mean giving up the Palestinian and Arab land that it stole in successive wars. This Israeli “outreach” to the Arabs is really about itperpetuating its hegemony and paving the way for the so-called greater Israel.

British prime minister tries to minimise cabinet rebellion against draft Brexit agreement

Robert Stevens 

The European Union (EU) and Prime Minister Theresa May’s negotiating team announced a draft agreement yesterday on the text specifying terms for the UK’s withdrawal from the 28-nation bloc.

The announcement of the 400-plus-page Withdrawal Agreement and Outline Political Declaration Tuesday afternoon saw key Cabinet ministers called into Downing Street by May for one-to-one discussions, ahead of this afternoon’s Cabinet meeting. Other ministers were invited to a secure reading room in the Cabinet Office to study the agreement. Business groups will also be briefed on the agreed text today.

May’s aim is to minimise the numbers supporting a rejection of her proposals, with the Financial Times declaring today’s meeting to be the “most dangerous moment of her premiership.”

Brussels refers to the agreement only as a “stable text.” According to reports, the main contentious issue in negotiations continued to be the future status of the Irish border and what mechanism would be able to terminate any “backstop” put in place to keep Northern Ireland and the UK in a temporary post-Brexit Custom’s Union.

Only if May can secure agreement among her ministers and wider parliamentary party can an agreement be finalised between the EU and UK at a European council summit later this month. That deal then requires the consent of MPs in the UK Parliament, with a vote set to be held in mid-December.

Even though a draft text is agreed, May’s government faces an ongoing crisis that could possibly lead to her removal as party leader, a second referendum or a snap general election.

May has faced escalating opposition from both the hard-Brexit and Remain wings of her divided party. This week’s events were trailed by last Friday’s resignation of pro-Remain Transport Minister Jo Johnson, who declared that the UK was “on the brink of the greatest crisis” since the Second World War and that the choice of May’s plan or a no-deal Brexit was a “failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez crisis.”

Johnson came out in support of a second referendum “People’s Vote” on EU membership. Speaking to BBC Radio 4, Johnson said other Tory MPs should follow his lead rather than “exit the EU on this extraordinarily hopeless basis.”

The other main resignations from May’s Cabinet have been among its hard Brexit wing, including Johnson’s brother and former foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and former Brexit Minister David Davis. It is suggested that up to four Remain-supporting ministers are also considering their position.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Tory’s 60-strong European Research Group (ERG) hard Brexit faction, said the deal was a “failure to deliver on Brexit” that moved the UK “from being a vassal to being a slave” and he would vote against it.

In addition, the agreement was reached without May’s coalition partners, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) signing off on it. May relies on the DUP’s 10 MPs to prop up her minority government. The DUP may reject the agreement based on its declared “red lines”—including the duration of any backstop—with DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds, saying if the deal is “as we are hearing, then we couldn’t possibly vote for it.”

It is unclear what the agreement’s provisions are regarding how any backstop agreement can be terminated. The EU reportedly rejected May’s proposal that there be independent arbitration over ending the backstop, with the EU demanding the European Court of Justice (ECJ) make the decision. If this is the case, it could solidify support for her hard Brexit wing and DUP.

May’s argument for loyalty will be to warn Cabinet ministers and other potential rebels that agreeing her deal is the only way to avoid worse options—for Remainers this is a hard-Brexit, for Brexiteers a second referendum that could be lost, for both factions a snap general election and the election of a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn.

Even as news of an agreement with the EU broke, the Labour Party put forward a motion demanding the publication of the government’s legal advice over Brexit—a demand supported by the DUP and the ERG. May was forced to buckle after Labour refused to drop the motion, which then passed without a vote. The legal advice contains 5,000 documents, with Cabinet Office minister David Lidington telling Parliament that Attorney General Geoffrey Cox would make a statement to MPs on the advice and take questions ahead of the final parliamentary vote on any Brexit deal.

All the main opposition parties—Labour, Scottish National Party and Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru—are set to oppose the proposed deal. On Tuesday evening they sent a joint letter to May demanding a “meaningful vote” on the deal that allows amendments to be tabled. Corbyn said the agreement “is unlikely to be a good deal for the country” and if it didn’t meet Labour’s six tests—which include the UK having the “exact same benefits” as full membership of the Single Market and Customs Union—“then we will vote against it.”

Corbyn also faces the threat of internal rebellion by the Blairites, who are as opposed as the Tories to a snap general election and are insisting that Corbyn abide by his conference pledge to support a second referendum—if his preferred option of a “meaningful vote” on the Brexit deal precipitating a general election fails to materialise.

Asked by German news magazine Der Spiegel last weekend , “If you could stop Brexit, would you?” Corbyn replied, “We can’t stop it. The referendum took place. Article 50 has been triggered. What we can do is recognize the reasons why people voted Leave.”

This unleashed a series of denunciations by leading Blairites for his retreat from the policy agreed at party conference.

Corbyn was immediately contradicted by his Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry and then by Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer, who told Sky News, “Brexit can be stopped. … Decision one is on the deal; decision two is—if the deal goes down—should there be a general election? And decision three is—if there’s no general election—all options must be on the table, including the option of a public vote.”

So acute is the crisis facing May’s government that sections of the ruling class and the state apparatus are factoring in the possibility that a general election might be unavoidable and that a Corbyn government is becoming a distinct possibility.

In an extraordinary development, Corbyn was called in for discussions last week with Alex Younger, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, reportedly on the implications of a possible snap election in the event of the failure of Brexit negotiations. Corbyn was also reportedly recently briefed by Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5, on “the facts of life” regarding the struggle against “terrorism” and “extremism.” This is a major shift in attitude to Corbyn, who although, as opposition leader, he is a member of the Privy Council that advises the queen, was initially denied access to critical intelligence briefings normally granted to those in his position.

The Daily Telegraph reported the meeting with Younger at MI6’s London HQ as an “acquaintance session.” A Whitehall source said, “The feeling was that the time had come for Mr. Corbyn to become acquainted with the workings of the intelligence establishment.”

That these meetings were only divulged through media reports and not by Corbyn is the clearest warning of the class character of a government he would lead. Under conditions in which British imperialism is entering its most turbulent crisis in peacetime and amid reports of the armed forces preparing for the crisis resulting from a forced exit from the EU, Corbyn is demonstrating his political loyalties are to British imperialism and not to the working class who are being targeted for state conspiracies and repression.

Macron and Facebook announce joint social media censorship plan in France

Alex Lantier 

On Monday, less than a week after he provoked disgust among working people in France and beyond, by praising France’s Nazi-collaborationist dictator, Philippe Pétain, French President Emmanuel Macron held meetings with Facebook to plan the censoring of social media in France.

At an official Forum for the Governance of the Internet at UNESCO in Paris, Macron argued that the world is on the brink of catastrophe due to the exercise of free speech on the internet. While the internet was initially a “fantastic opportunity,” he declared, now “it is also starting to be described as a threat to our democratic societies.”

Macron denounced “anonymity” online, warning that the “internet is being used in our democracies by totalitarian regimes to destabilize us.” He called on France to find a Third Way between a supposedly unregulated “California internet” and the heavily censored “Chinese internet.”

As a result, for six months starting at the beginning of 2019, French officials are to operate a joint program with Facebook giving them access to the tools that Facebook uses to censor “racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic or sexist” speech. Macron added, “This is a first. It is a very innovative experimental method which illustrates the cooperative methods I support.”

This program is a fundamental assault on democratic rights. The target of Macron’s internet censorship campaign is not the threat posed by foreign totalitarian enemies or far-right hate speech, but domestic left-wing political opposition in general, and the World Socialist Web Site in particular.

Macron’s presentation is a pack of lies from start to finish, aiming to provide pseudo-democratic cover for the building of a regime of police-state censorship. This process is well underway in both Europe and the United States, where the major tech firms have thousands of employees working on censoring the internet. The “California internet” Macron held up as a terrible model of free speech is, in fact, run by a handful of powerful corporations implementing mass censorship.

Facebook, Macron said, “will soon host a delegation of French regulators tasked, together with Facebook experts, with making precise, concrete joint recommendations on the struggle against hateful and offensive speech.”

A dozen anonymous individuals, working either for Facebook or the French government, will apparently run this censorship program, without public oversight or reporting of what content they are deleting from social media. Their power to eliminate content that they claim someone might construe as “hateful and offensive” amounts to a license to delete virtually any political content. This constitutes a blatant attack on freedom of expression.

Le Monde reported that the French presidency had also contacted Google, asking for similar access to the tools Google uses to censor internet search results. The Elysée palace has stated that this is a way for tech firms to “show whether or not firms are acting in good faith and making the necessary efforts” to remove content the French state objects to. Google has until now refused to develop a collaboration with the French state censors.

Macron was undeterred, however. “There will inevitably be more regulation in the future,” he declared at the Monday Forum, adding: “It is not the big firms’ job to fix doctrine about hate or free speech … But we must escape the black-and-white dichotomy between editors of content (with strong legal responsibility) and firms hosting content (like YouTube or Facebook). The big firms must not be exonerated from all responsibility. These platforms must accept reinforced obligations, because they are accelerators of content.”

The attempt to pass off censorship as a defense against foreign totalitarian enemies—echoing Charles de Gaulle’s denunciation of masses of striking communist workers as tools of the Kremlin during the May–June 1968 general strike, 50 years ago—is a political fraud. So are the attempts by Macron, who recently hailed Pétain the genocidal anti-Semite, to portray his censorship as being driven with deep concern about the struggle against racism.

Both in Europe and in the United States, where mass censorship on Facebook and Google began last year, the target is growing political opposition in the international working class to policies of austerity and militarism that have been implemented over decades.

During a congressional hearing calling for internet censorship last year, former FBI official Clint Watts declared: “Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words. America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America. ...Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced...”

It is widely known in official circles in France that censorship targets left-wing opposition. In January 2018, Pierre Rimbert wrote in the well-known monthly Le Monde diplomatique on Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s promise to demote Russian state media in search results. Noting the WSWS’s analyses of this censorship’s impact on readership of anti-war web sites, he asked whether internet censorship is “killing pluralism in the name of better informing the public.”

He wrote: “How to separate the wheat from the chaff? ‘In a statement issued on April 25, Ben Gomes, the company’s vice president for engineering, stated that Google’s update of its search engine would block access to “offensive” sites, while working to surface more “authoritative content,”’ write Andre Damon and David North of the World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org, August 2, 2017). Using an internet tracking firm, the Trotskyist site measured the effect of new algorithms that, by default, see the dominant media as reliable and the alternative press as suspect. ‘A massive loss of readership observed by socialist, anti-war and progressive web sites over the past three months has been caused by a cumulative 45 percent decrease in traffic from Google searches.’”

This censorship is being continually escalated. Coincidentally or otherwise, as Macron announced his Facebook censorship plan on Monday, Facebook was removing a WSWS article from social media, claiming it violated “community standards.”

Macron is launching his censorship program as his approval ratings collapse to a historic low of 21 percent. Universally reviled in the working class as the “president of the rich,” his government is on high alert in the face of a planned mass protest and blockade of French cities on November 17 by truck and car drivers protesting a regressive proposed gasoline tax. Fifty years after the May–June 1968 general strike, France and Europe are on the brink of a revolutionary explosion.

Under these conditions, sections of the media are demanding that the state censor expressions of opposition to Macron. In one remarkable article, La Voix du Nord denounced its own readers, boasting that it was censoring their online comments about its coverage of Macron.

“Thus under each article on his trip commemorating World War I,” it wrote, “we have deleted dozens of comments and insults against this president you say is ‘indifferent to the people’ and ‘only helping the rich.’ … The level of violence in comments on the president is unprecedented. Each of his actions provokes hundreds of comments on our social networks, calls for hate and violence. And let us not forget the particularly violent and sexist comments that followed the publication of the article on the death of Brigitte Macron’s elder brother.”

Criticisms of Macron and similar governments are not the expression of dangerous foreign totalitarian subversion, but of growing, legitimate social anger in the working class. To the extent that the French state sees as its goal the suppression of social anger and the class struggle through such means as censorship and states of emergency, it will be treading a path returning to the type of regime overseen by Macron’s military hero, Philippe Pétain.

Chinese regime cracks down on student labour activists

Robert Campion

At least 12 workers and student activists have been detained in police raids in China since last Friday in a desperate attempt to suppress growing labour unrest. The crackdown is another sign of growing unrest in the Chinese working class and fear in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime that the involvement of students will politicise the strikes and protests.

Initial media coverage on Sunday reported that dark-clothed men had been beating and kidnapping activists into black cars in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou on Friday. According to friends of the activists, many of them were recent graduates of elite universities prominent in campaigns to defend the rights of workers.

According to the New York Times, unidentified men descended on the campus of Peking University in Beijing around 10 p.m. Friday searching for Zhang Shengye, a recent graduate. An eyewitness called Yu Tianfu reported that Zhang was beaten and dragged into a car.

“Who are you? Why are you doing this?” Mr. Yu said he asked the men. “I’ll beat you more if you dare shout again,” one of the men responded, according to Mr. Yu.

Four other students and alumni were arrested, according to Reuters, who also cited a video posted by a university student who said that he and other nearby students were pushed to the ground and prevented from leaving until they deleted evidence of the incident from their phones.

In a social media post on Sunday, Yu said, “What kind of privilege do they have to completely disregard the law and civil rights? How dare they unscrupulously and arrogantly beat up students and kidnap one at Peking University.”

Yu is now missing, according to his fellow classmates, and his social media account has been deactivated. A collection of posts on the university’s internal messaging board with screenshots of the event has also been taken down.

A spokesman from the university said simply, “Public security organs in accordance with law seized non-campus affiliated persons suspected of committing a crime.”

Zhang’s associates denounced the university as complicit in the seizure, claiming that they “acquiesced to the kidnapping.”

Three more people were violently arrested in the city of Wuhan on Sunday. They were members of the Jasic Workers Support group, which also identified the abductors as police. The group said that one of their members in Wuhan had been pinned to the ground by three officers.

It also reported that two members of their staff were seized in Shenzhen and three in Guangdong Province, along with an unspecified number of other activists. Five of the activists detained in Guangzhou last Friday were released on Tuesday.

The repression by CCP authorities is an attempt to muzzle a long running dispute that began in July, when factory workers at Jasic Technology in Shenzhen went on strike against gruelling work conditions, underpayments of social insurance and excessive workplace fines.

Workers declared that were being treated “like slaves” and demanded the right to establish a trade union. In the course of the struggle, the state-run All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) worked hand-in-glove with management to scuttle the campaign. Thirty workers were beaten and arrested in July. According to the China Labor Bulletin, four of them are still detained, under charges of “gathering a crowd to disrupt public order.”

In response to the crackdown, dozens of students converged from across the country to support the workers. Before they could organise a demonstration, riot police stormed the apartment block in Huizhou where they were staying, detaining forty of them.

Eleven are still in police custody or under some form of house arrest, and the whereabouts of some are unknown. Zhang, who was detained last Friday, was leading the search for some of the activists, according to the Guardian newspaper.

While the media has identified students as Marxists or Maoists, the movement is politically heterogeneous. In interviews in August, they expressed displeasure with the naked self-interest of many of their peers at China’s elite universities and felt the need to tackle the social crisis facing working people.

Zhang told reporters, “We aren’t solely focused on one particular issue. We’re interested in improving society in all kinds of ways, whether it is improving the lives of factory workers, fighting for gender equality or advocating for environmental sustainability.”

Yue described herself as part of a broad, left-wing organisation, “Student activists have been fighting on a wide range of issues—including against sexual harassment and in support of democracy on campus … not everyone in this movement would identify as Marxist, Leninist or Maoist but they are certainly all influenced by Marxism.”

Some of the activists emphasised that they were not calling for a revolutionary change to the government and viewed President Xi Jinping favourably.

The CCP, however, is terrified of a movement of the working class. It recalls the social upheaval that was triggered in 1989 when student protests in Tiananmen Square led to strikes and protests by workers voicing their own class interest that threatened the existence of the regime.

The brutal crackdown in 1989 set the stage for an acceleration of the processes of capitalist restoration, which both greatly expanding the size of the working class and enormously widened the social gulf between the super-wealthy oligarchs that the CCP represents and the vast majority of working people.

The CCP is well aware that it is sitting atop a social powder keg. According to the China Labour Bulletin, 1,332 strikes and collective protests by workers took place in the first nine months of this year, compared to last year’s total of 1,257. These figures, which rely on media reports and contacts in China, greatly underestimate the extent of strikes as many either go unreported or the reports are censored.

The critical issue for students is the political perspective on which to base a political struggle against the CCP apparatus and its police state methods. No amount of pressure will compel it to grant significant concessions.

Moreover, Maoism, or Stalinism with Chinese characteristics, and its program of national autarchy was what opened the door for capitalist restoration and the gross exploitation of the working class. The Trotskyist movement, based on socialist internationalism, has waged a decades-long struggle against Stalinism and provides the revolutionary alternative needed to politically fight the CCP regime.

Israeli terror raid provokes new clashes in Gaza

Bill Van Auken 

Israel and the impoverished Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza have teetered on the brink of another all-out war this week. This follows in the wake of a botched terror raid Sunday by Israeli special forces commandos who were sent deep into Gazan territory, provoking an armed clash that left seven Palestinians and an Israeli lieutenant colonel dead.

At least 15 Palestinians have been killed since Sunday, seven of them in the clash with the Israeli commando squad and eight others in air strikes carried out by Israeli F-16 fighter jets and armed drones. Hamas, the bourgeois Islamist party that controls Gaza’s government, responded to the Israeli attack with a barrage of hundreds of rockets and mortar shells against Israel, killing one person, identified as a Palestinian.

Hamas and other Palestinian factions reported on Tuesday that Egypt had brokered a new cease-fire with Israel.

“Egypt’s efforts have been able to achieve a ceasefire between the resistance and the Zionist enemy,” a statement issued by Hamas and the other Palestinian groups said. “The resistance will respect this declaration as long as the Zionist enemy respects it.”

For its part, Israel refused to acknowledge the existence of any such agreement. After a six-hour meeting of Israel’s security cabinet on Tuesday, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement declaring that it had directed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to continue its military operations against Gaza “as necessary.”

The Israeli strikes launched on Monday imposed a reign of terror on the Gazan population, with seemingly every area of the strip a target. Among the structures demolished was the building housing the Hamas-affiliated Al Aqsa TV station.

Another six-story building was reduced to rubble. Located in the city center, it held apartments, a kindergarten, offices and a language training center.

The Israeli military boasted that it had carried out strikes against 160 separate targets. In the densely populated Gaza Strip, these strikes, in blatant violation of international law, have demolished civilian structures and forced hundreds of families from their homes.

On the eve of Sunday’s special forces raid, Netanyahu had made a statement at a press conference that an effort should be made to avoid another major war against Gaza. Israel, the most powerful military force in the Middle East, has repeatedly bombed and invaded the territory since unilaterally withdrawing its troops and settlers in 2005—most recently in its 2014 “Operation Protective Edge,” which killed 2,251 Palestinians.

Just before the raid, Netanyahu had also told his cabinet that he was doing “everything I can in order to avoid an unnecessary war” and that a previous cease-fire brokered by Egypt appeared to be holding.

The provocative special forces raid, however, appeared designed to blow up any such truce. The commando squad, some of them dressed up as Palestinian women, penetrated deep into Gazan territory before it was discovered by a Hamas security team. Hamas has charged that the team’s aim was to assassinate or abduct a Hamas military commander. Nour el-Deen Baraka, a battalion commander in Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, was shot dead in the raid.

The Israeli military, which has long pursued a campaign of “targeted assassinations,” denied that the squad was sent in to kill or abduct a Hamas commander. It claimed that the elite troops were conducting an “intelligence” operation.

The Hamas leadership has been attempting to calm the seething anger of Gaza’s population, which has found expression in the wave of “March of Return” protests which saw hundreds of thousands of Palestinians marching on the heavily fortified border between the occupied territory and Israel, demanding an end to the Israeli siege and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the lands from which they were driven by force with the creation of Israel in 1948. Of Gaza’s population of 2 million, at least 1.4 million are either refugees from the 1948 Israeli terror campaign against the Palestinians or their descendants.

The “March of Return” protests, in which at least 233 unarmed demonstrators have been shot dead by Israeli snipers and more than 20,000 have been wounded, have continued despite the attempt by the Hamas leadership to wind them up on May 15, the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel, marked by Palestinians as Nakba (Catastrophe) Day.

The protests express popular outrage over the intolerable conditions of life imposed by Israel’s siege and occupation, with infrastructure devastated by repeated Israeli bombardments, a lack of water and fuel, an unemployment rate of 53 percent—70 percent for young workers—and more than two-thirds of the population dependent on aid, which the administration of Donald Trump has slashed.

Last Friday, Rami Wael Ishaq Qahman, 28, died after being shot through the neck with a live round while protesting at the border. Another 37 Palestinians, including six children and 10 women, were wounded. The international media has long since stopped paying any attention to this bloodletting by the Israeli military, treating it as a matter of course.

The latest cease-fire has provoked a furious wave of recriminations within Netanyahu’s right-wing Zionist government.

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s office released a statement denying media reports that he had supported an end to Israeli strikes on Gaza. It read: “The defense minister’s stance is consistent and hasn’t changed. [News reports of] Lieberman’s support of halting attacks are fake.”

Education Minister Naftali Bennett released a similar statement denying he supported any kind of cease-fire.

The two right-wing Zionist politicians have been vying with each other over who has a tougher policy against the Palestinians amid criticisms of Netanyahu for being too “soft” on Gaza. The bellicose rhetoric is part of the preparations for an anticipated early general election in Israel next year.

Joining in this ugly contest was the leader of the supposed opposition, the Israeli Labor Party, Ehud Barak, who as defense minister presided over the 2008-2009 “Operation Cast Lead,” which killed at least 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza. He bragged last month, “When I was defense minister, more than 300 Hamas members were killed in three and a half minutes in an air force attack,” referring to a strike that killed defenseless police recruits and civilians. In a recent television interview, he described Netanyahu as “weak” and “afraid,” charging that he had “surrendered” to Hamas.

Fueling and abetting this right-wing rampage is the policy of Washington, which has provided its unconditional support to every act of brutality and aggression carried out by the Israeli regime against the Palestinian people. The Trump administration’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and its cutoff of $364 million to the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA—30 percent of its funding—are part of a broader strategy aimed at building up an anti-Iranian axis in the Middle East, based upon Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Millions of Palestinians, together with tens of millions in Yemen, are collateral damage in this imperialist drive to assert unchallenged US hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East, a crusade that threatens to ignite a wider war with potentially catastrophic implications for the entire region, including Israel.

Sri Lanka crisis escalates as Supreme Court overturns Sirisena’s dissolution of parliament

K. Ratnayake

In a dramatic intensification of the factional conflict raging inside Sri Lanka’s ruling elite, the Supreme Court yesterday issued an interim order overturning President Maithripala Sirisena’s dissolving of the national parliament. The court will issue its final verdict on December 7.

The Supreme Court made its ruling after hearing 12 fundamental rights petitions challenging Sirisena’s dissolution of parliament on November 9. Petitioners included several political parties—the United National Party (UNP), Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and Tamil National Alliance (TNA)—as well as “civil society” groups and individuals. Five petitions were submitted in support of Sirisena’s proclamation.

The court decision elevates the brawling inside the ruling elite into a major constitutional crisis with a stand-off between Sirisena and the Supreme Court, and also between his recently appointed prime minister, Mahinda Rajapakse and Ranil Wickremesinghe, the previous PM. Wickremesinghe is likely to win a vote of confidence in parliament which is being reconvened today.

Sirisena dissolved parliament late last Friday in violation of the constitution and declared that a general election would be held on January 5 and a new parliament convened on January 17. Yesterday’s Supreme Court interim blocking order also applies to the election date announcement and nominations that were to be lodged between November 19 and November 26.

While lawyers for those opposing Sirisena’s dissolution of parliament argued that it violated the constitution, Attorney-General Jayantha Jayasuriya insisted that the court had no jurisdiction to determine the fundamental rights petitions opposing the dissolution of parliament. The president’s powers in this regard, he declared, are “unambiguous.” The three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Nalin Perera, however, decided to hear the petitions.

Dissolution of parliament is one of a series of anti-democratic actions by the Sri Lankan president over the past two weeks. On October 26, in a political coup, he sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, replacing him with the former President Mahinda Rajapakse, and prorogued the parliament until November 16. Facing local and international criticism, Sirisena changed the date to November 14.

The president’s prorogation was a manoeuvre to allow Rajapakse to secure majority support in the parliament. Despite intense horse trading, Rajapakse declared last week that he had been unable to garner the required numbers, prompting Sirisena to dissolve the parliament.

Following yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, the UNP and other opposition parties and groups enthusiastically proclaimed the interim order as a “victory” for democracy and the people.

Workers and youth must reject these claims. The interim order is a manifestation, on a higher and more explosive level, of the deep divisions gripping the Sri Lankan political elite. Workers and the poor cannot defend their social and democratic rights through the political representatives of the bourgeoisie or the judiciary which is another repressive instrument of capitalist state.

The interim order reflects fears in ruling circles that Sirisena’s blatant breaches of the constitution could add further fuel to a growing movement of protests and strikes by workers and the rural masses. If a means of defusing the acute political crisis is not found in the next three weeks, the court could still rule in favour of Sirisena.

Following the court order, UNP leader Wickremesinghe declared in a tweet: “Let’s go forward and re-establish the sovereignty of the people in our beloved country.” He told the media that his party would ‘fight to the last’ to save democracy, the supremacy of parliament, and in defence of the constitution.

Wickremesinghe’s pompous rhetoric echoes the ridiculous claims by Sirisena that his authoritarian actions are to “defend democracy.”

Every faction of the ruling elite has been thrown into crisis about what to do about the mounting economic problems and global geopolitical tensions confronting Sri Lankan capitalism, as well as the deepening social opposition of workers and the poor against the government attacks on their social rights. Sri Lanka’s rival bourgeois parties have never defended the democratic or social rights of the people; their record is one of systematic repression against the masses.

Yesterday, a jubilant JVP general secretary Tilwin Silva interrupted his speech to a public gathering to announce the Supreme Court order. The “conspiracy” of Sirisena and Rajapakse had been defeated, he declared, adding that there would be “more conspiracies” and his party was ready to defeat them.

In fact, the JVP has cynically embraced the UNP’s bogus “defence of democracy” campaign against the machinations of Sirisena and Rajapakse. In January 2015, however, it lined up with Sirisena and Wickremesinghe in a US-backed regime change operation to oust Rajapakse, claiming to be defending democracy from dictatorship.

While the Speaker told MPs that parliament will be convened today, the agenda is not clear. Wickremesinghe told the media that the parliament would demonstrate he has the majority. “We will show that we are the legitimate government,” he said and called on “government servants to follow the Constitution.” He also declared that the police “should adhere” to his instructions.

At a press conference held last night, several ministers from the new so-called Rajapakse government claimed the Speaker had no authority to reconvene the parliament.

More significantly, Sirisena responded to the court order by convening a special meeting last night with Sri Lanka’s national security council and military commanders. No details have been revealed about what instructions he issued but the media has reported that he asked commanders to tighten security across the country. Inspector General of Police Pujitha Jayasundara has also instructed police to curb any violence that may occur.

The US and other major international powers have intensified their pressure on Sirisena following his dissolution of parliament. Sirisena and Rajapakse have both tried to appease international concerns.

Foreign minister Sarath Amunugama called a meeting of all foreign diplomats in Colombo, but according to Reuters, ambassadors from Britain, Netherlands, Norway, France, Australia, South Africa, Italy and Canada did not attend. The European Union, the US and Germany sent representatives and India a junior official.

A US statement criticising the dissolution declared, “President Maithripala Sirisena’s decision to dissolve Parliament poses a vital threat to Sri Lanka's democratic institutions” and an EU statement said, “A fully functioning Parliament is an essential pillar of democracy.”

Japan yesterday expressed its concerns about the political crisis and “the dissolution of the parliament.” The major powers are not concerned about democracy or social rights of the working class in Sri Lanka or anywhere else.

Washington backed the regime-change operation that brought Sirisena into the presidency in January 2015 and strengthened its military and political relations with Sri Lanka. Its current interventions in the escalating crisis in Colombo are in order to maintain those relations.

While the US and other major powers are currently backing Wickremesinghe, Washington is not averse to working with Rajapakse if he is willing to serve American interests.

African Changemakers Fellowship 2019 (Cohort 3) for African Visionaries

Application Deadline: 30th December 2018

Eligible Countries: African countries

About the Award: African Changemakers Fellowship Program continues to develop African leadership and entrepreneurial skills through training, mentorship, collaboration and a connected network to a global changemakers. You will learn a lot from us and we will learn a lot from you, African Changemakers Fellowship is through a selection application process; selected applicants are enrolled in FREE intensive 5 weeks online training to share, collaborate and learn everything on civic engagement, entrepreneurship, leadership, project management, social enterprise and mentorship.

Type: Fellowship (Professional/Career)

Eligibility: 

• 25-40 years old
• A citizen from any of the 54 African countries.
• Fluent in English – can read and speak in English.
• Have access to internet, computer, laptop or mobile device to connect to online program.
• Able to commit a full 5 hours a week to the program.
• Passionate about using their skills to make positive impact in their community and businesses.
• Interested in leadership and social enterprise for Africa sustainable development.
• Can demonstrate leadership and collaborative skills with people.
• Can demonstrate initiative, self-direction, and a “can-do” attitude

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: African Changemakers Fellowship Program continues to develop African leadership and entrepreneurial skills through training, mentorship, collaboration and a connected network to a global changemakers.

Duration of Program: September – October 2019.

How to Apply: Apply here

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Commonwealth Professional Fellowships 2019 for Mid-career Professionals in Developing Countries – UK

Application Deadline: 3rd December 2018 4pm (GMT).

Eligible Countries: Developing Commonwealth country

To be taken at: UK Universities

About Scholarship: The Commonwealth  Professional  Fellowships  support  mid-career  professionals  from  developing  Commonwealth countries  to  spend  a  period  of  time  with  a  UK  host organisation  working  in  their  field  for  a  programme  of professional development.

Type: Research, Fellowship

Eligibility: To be eligible for these fellowship, candidate must:

• Be a citizen of or have been granted refugee status by an eligible Commonwealth country, or be a British Protected Person
• Be permanently resident in an eligible Commonwealth country
• Have normally at least five years’ relevant work experience in a profession related to the subject of the application, by the proposed start of the fellowship
• Be available to start your fellowship within prescribed dates as stated on the CSC website
• Not have undertaken a Commonwealth Professional Fellowship in the last five years
• Not be seeking to undertake an academic programme of research or study in the UK. Academics are eligible to apply for the scheme, but only to undertake programmes of academic management, not research or courses relevant to their research subject
• You must be available to undertake the Fellowship during the dates set out by the Host organisation. All Fellowships must start between 15 April 2019 and 17 June 2019.  You should check exact dates with the prospective Host.

Selection Criteria: 2019 applications for Commonwealth Professional Fellowships will be judged on the following criteria:

• The extent to which the proposed Fellowship will ensure the transfer of skills relevant to the needs of a Commonwealth developing country
• The extent to which those skills will lead to practical benefits for the developing country following the Fellowship
• The extent to which the Fellowship will have a catalytic effect, either within the developing country concerned, or in establishing new relationships with the UK

Number of Scholarships: Several

Value of Scholarship: A commonwealth Fellowship covers the living expenses for the Fellow as well as a return airfare to the UK. It also provides funding support to the host organisation, with a budget of up to £3,000 available for attendance at conferences, on short courses, and other eligible costs.

Duration of scholarship: Typically 3-months but could be extended to 6-months

How to Apply: 

• Once the closing date for Fellows’ applications and references has passed your application will be shared with the Host organisation you have applied to in order for them to review all applications and select the candidates they wish to put forward to the Commission. The Commission will make the final selections of Host organisation programmes and individual Fellows.
• Access to the Online Application System will be available soon.

Visit the Scholarship Webpage details on how to apply

Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc Graduate Trainee Scheme 2018 for Young Nigerians

Application Deadline: Ongoing

Eligible Countries: Nigeria

To be taken at (country): Nigeria

About the Award: The role belongs to Manufacturing & Operations Job Family.  Successful candidates can over time progress within Power Plant operations, Production and Technical (Engineering) services across the Group.

Type: Job

Eligibility:

• Not be more than 28 years old and must have completed NYSC by 31^st December 2018.
• Be result oriented and a good team player, with great appetite for fast-paced challenging assignments.
• Possess good communication, organization skills and display initiative.
• Be willing and able to move around Nigeria.

QUALIFICATION

• First degree in Mechanical/Electrical/Production/Chemical Engineering and related courses.
• Minimum of Second Class Honours (Upper Division)

EXPERIENCE

• No experience required

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: This is a Paid Job

Duration of Programme: 2 years

How to Apply: Apply in link below

Visit Programme Webpage for Details