Facebook hires former British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg

Joe Mount 

Facebook’s decision to appoint former British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg as its vice-president of Global Affairs and Communications epitomises the integration of the social media giants and the capitalist state apparatus in every country.

After reportedly extensive discussions with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Clegg claimed to be impressed by the company’s recognition that it “is on a journey which brings new responsibilities not only to the users of Facebook’s apps but to society at large. I hope I will be able to play a role in helping to navigate that journey.”

These “responsibilities” involve a stepping up of internet censorship as part of the efforts of the ruling elite in every country to suppress working-class resistance to austerity, militarism and war.

Clegg led the Liberal Democrats party into coalition government with Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives between 2010 and 2015. He is mainly remembered for betraying his party’s pledges of opposition to tuition fees that were instead trebled under the coalition. This was part of a savage increase in austerity measures that created the conditions for last year’s Grenfell fire disaster, which cost the lives of 72 people. It was the Tory/Lib Dem coalition, with Clegg as deputy prime minister, that backed the 2011 war on Libya, which devastated that country, and it was under Clegg that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was forced to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The Liberal Democrats’ vote base collapsed as a result. In place of being a stooge of private capital in government office, Clegg is now hawking out his tattered liberal credentials to one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. In return for a reported £4 million per year, he joins a long line of ex-government figures to use their influence to get rich in the private sector. Former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair has made tens of millions through “consulting” with the likes of the murderous Saudi dictatorship, with whom he has a £9 million deal to advise on its “modernisation.”

Clegg joins Facebook at a time when it is censoring socialist, left-wing and oppositional web sites, including the closure of hundreds of such sites over the last several weeks. In addition to legitimising this clampdown, Clegg’s role will be to help ensure the tech giant avoids or minimises any encroachment on its commercial interests as the American corporation comes under pressure from Brussels, where Clegg enjoys considerable connections from his period as a Member of the European Parliament from 1999-2004.

Last year, the European Commission imposed a €110 million fine on Facebook for business malpractice regarding the firm’s takeover of WhatsApp. Rising trade tensions between the US and the European Union (EU) mean the political and financial stakes are now much larger.

The EU recently announced plans to step up internet censorship to tackle “disinformation” that may affect the outcome of next year’s European election campaign. Clegg will now have the opportunity to perform another U-turn, this time on the issue of tax avoidance, following his critical remarks against such practices by major firms. Facebook paid a miserly £7.4 million in corporation tax in the UK last year, despite quadrupling profits.

Clegg has positively endorsed the collaboration of tech companies with the state, arguing, “If the tech industry can work sensibly with governments, regulators, parliaments and civic society around the world, I believe we can enhance the benefits of technology while diminishing the often-unintended downsides.”

Though he is the most senior British politician to join the management of a major tech company, Clegg is not the first. Fellow Liberal Democrat Lord Allan of Hallam joined Facebook as Director of Policy in Europe in 2009. In the US, the notorious war criminals Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell were hired by Dropbox and Salesforce in 2014 and in 2003 former US vice president Al Gore joined the board of directors of Apple Inc.

Facebook faced major privacy concerns following the mass data leak involving Cambridge Analytica, a company linked to President Donald Trump, which harvested the data of millions of Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica originated in British deep-state “psychological operations,” earning millions of pounds via government contracts and developing greater involvement in propaganda exercises targeting populations around the world.

The issue was elevated to prominence by liberal media outlets such as the Guardian and New York Times and, in March, Zuckerberg was pressured to testify before the US Congress. The British government fined Facebook £500,000 (US$560,415), the maximum penalty, following the scandal. Notwithstanding official criticisms, such abuses have been used to ensure compliance with demands for increased state surveillance. Bogus claims that “fake news” spread via social media is facilitating “Russian meddling” in elections in the West has become an axiom of official debate, adopted by conservative and liberal factions of the bourgeoisie alike to demand the censorship of free speech.

Clegg’s appointment was endorsed by Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson, who claimed fatuously, “I look forward to meeting Nick Clegg in his new role, as we have serious concerns about Facebook’s lack of democratic accountability. He will know our concerns about data privacy, taxation and transparency. He will also be acutely aware that there are very serious questions about the role the company played during the EU referendum that the [Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport] select committee still requires answers to.”

Facebook has enthusiastically collaborated in government-coordinated political blacklisting. Zuckerberg announced his intention to submit to government pressure last year with stepped-up use of artificial intelligence and human staff to intervene in the activity on its platform. Citing “interference from nation states” and the “spread of news that is false, sensational and polarizing,” Facebook had the responsibility to “amplify the good and prevent harm,” he wrote.

The World Socialist Web Site drew attention to the scale and target of internet censorship in 2017 after it identified the systematic rigging of search results by Google in order to make left-wing and anti-war websites harder to find. Social media is becoming a major battlefield of the class struggle.

Facebook’s control of the world’s largest platform, along with other services such as WhatsApp and Instagram—that are more popular among youth—gives it a unique role in facilitating public debate. But it is just one of the monopolistic corporations that dominate internet news, search and social networking and which have a working division of labour with governments. While these companies initially adopted a politically neutral and “techno-utopian” stance, typified by Google’s motto “Don’t be evil,” they have become willing tools and partners of the most reactionary and militaristic forces, particularly in the US.

The tech giants are collaborating in efforts to criminalise political opposition and suppress free speech, functioning as the “trusted gatekeepers” for governments and ensuring the “correct” interpretation of world events—i.e., spreading real fake news. Under capitalism, the progressive international possibilities of communication technology are being used instead as a tool for state surveillance, dictatorship, private profit and war.

In January, the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site issued an open letter to socialist, anti-war, left-wing and progressive websites, organisations and activists calling for an international coalition to fight internet censorship.

Emphasising that the defence of democratic rights required the mobilisation of the international working class, it stressed, “It is critical to establish an understanding in the working class of the inseparable connection between the defense of their class interests, their living standards, working conditions, wages, etc., and the fight for democratic rights. Without access to alternative news and social media, workers in different countries will not be able to effectively coordinate their common struggles.

“Unfettered access to the Internet will facilitate the international unity of the working class in the global fight for socialism, democracy and equality. The World Socialist Web Site is convinced that the struggle against internet censorship, as a critical component of the defense of democratic rights, will be enthusiastically supported by the working class. This is their fight. It is not simply that the involvement of the working class is important in order to defend free speech. Rather, the fight to defend free speech is important for the working class.”

US imposes limited sanctions on Saudi officials over Kashoggi’s murder

Mike Head 

In yet another attempt to protect the Saudi Arabian monarchical dictatorship, the Trump administration levied sanctions on Thursday against 17 Saudi officials allegedly involved in the gruesome killing of journalist Jamal Kashoggi. The sanctions were unveiled just hours after the kingdom’s public prosecutor said he would seek the death penalty for five people who have been charged in the case.

Both the timing of the US Treasury’s sanctions announcement and the narrowly targeted character of the measures point to the White House seeking to shore up the latest Saudi version of the events, which explicitly denies that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder inside the country’s consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul on October 2.

In effect, the US government is backing a bid by the Saudi regime to single out a handful of officials as sacrificial lambs. Some may be executed in another brutal exercise to save the monarchy, which has been a crucial linchpin of US foreign and military policy for decades.

The US Treasury said the targets of the sanctions—including Prince Mohammed’s former adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, senior aide Maher Mutreb, and Riyadh’s counsel-general in Istanbul, Mohammed al-Otaibi—were blacklisted for gross human rights abuses.

The cynical nature of this claim to oppose human rights abuses was underscored by the fact that the list did not include the crown prince or another close aide, Major General Ahmed al-Assiri, the ex-deputy head of Saudi intelligence. The Trump administration has been desperately trying to shield Prince Mohammed from blame, and sponsor the theory that “rogue actors” carried out the plot without his knowledge.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the individuals “targeted and brutally killed a journalist who resided and worked in the United States,” and “must face consequences for their actions.” He also said the Saudi government “must take appropriate steps to end any targeting of political dissidents or journalists.”

In reality, the Saudi regime had made plain its intent to continue its ruthless suppression of any internal dissent by declaring the crown prince totally innocent. Adel al-Jubeir, the kingdom’s foreign minister, said a Saudi investigation had shown that “his Royal Highness the crown prince has nothing to do with this issue.” Instead, “this was a rogue operation,” by individuals who acted beyond their authority and “for their mistakes they will pay the price.”

Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was a tactical critic of the Saudi government, reflecting divisions within the royal family itself. He was killed inside the consulate on October 2 by a specialised death squad dispatched by the Riyadh regime, which Prince Mohammed has ruled with an iron fist since he was anointed crown prince by his ailing father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, in June 2017.

Under Washington’s sanctions, any assets the 17 Saudi officials have within US jurisdictions are frozen, the individuals are blocked from entering the US, and US-based firms are prohibited from any transactions with them. These restrictions will have no impact on the massive US aid and arms sales to the regime, which is conducting a murderous war in Yemen as part of its long record as a key US ally throughout the region, including against Iran and Syria.

Conscious of the domestic and international outrage over the slaying of a well-known journalist by a key US ally, Trump’s administration claimed it was leaving the door open to further measures. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said a US investigation would continue and his department would “work with other nations” to hold accountable those involved in the killing.

Earlier this week, however, US National Security Advisor John Bolton effectively ruled out any finding that implicated the de facto Saudi ruler. Bolton declared there was nothing on Turkey’s audio tapes of the killing that incriminated the crown prince. That was despite the Turkish government hinting that it holds separate, as yet undisclosed, material that brings the assassination to the royal court’s doorstep.

Saudi Arabia’s death penalty announcement was full of contradictions. The prosecutor’s office did not release the names of 11 people it said it has charged in the case, and claimed that the five people who face the death penalty confessed to their crime.

This announcement came with a third version of events. Initially, Saudi authorities denied government employees played any role in Khashoggi’s disappearance, saying the journalist left the consulate shortly after he entered it. Then, on October 20, the Saudi government acknowledged Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate.

On Thursday, Riyadh said the operation was ordered by Assiri, the then-deputy intelligence chief, who tasked a team of 15 operatives with returning Khashoggi to the kingdom, either voluntarily or by force.

At the media briefing, the public prosecutor’s spokesman acknowledged a degree of premeditation, saying there was evidence the team leader prepared for a possible execution in the event negotiations with Khashoggi failed. The spokesman said team members included a forensics expert tasked with covering up evidence if force had to be used.

After Khashoggi entered the consulate, the team leader concluded the journalist could not be persuaded to return and had to be killed, the prosecutor’s office said. Khashoggi was injected with a fatal dose of a tranquiliser, his body was dismembered in the consulate and his remains were handed over to a local associate. By this implausible account, the team then submitted a false report to Assiri, saying Khashoggi left the consulate after negotiations failed.

Washington’s backing for this fraud faced immediate difficulties. On Thursday, Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, disputed the Saudi narrative. “It was not a momentary decision to dismember this body, it was pre-planned,” Cavusoglu said. “Necessary equipment was brought beforehand. It was planned how he will be killed and dismembered.”

The Turkish government, whose strategic interests in Syria and across the Middle East have come into conflict with those of the Saudi regime and the US, has conducted a drip-feed of evidence that has placed the conspiracy at the feet of Prince Mohammed.

Turkey is yet to release full transcripts of its audio tapes. However, they have been shared with allied intelligence agencies and even played to a Saudi agent, according to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Some members of the US Congress also expressed disbelief in the Saudi story, concerned that the whitewash was too obvious. Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said: “I don’t find the shifting Saudi explanations particularly believable. It has a ‘let’s round up the usual suspects’ kind of quality to it.”

This is window dressing. Successive governments in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike, have turned a blind eye to the Saudi regime’s crimes and repressive methods, which have included routinely beheading political opponents and non-violent offenders, putting 150 to the sword in 2017 alone.

Before Khashoggi’s disappearance, an estimated 30 Saudi journalists already had been imprisoned or disappeared, without any protest from the US or its allies, who sell billions of dollars in arms to the kingdom each year, profit off its oil wealth and rely upon it to enforce their geo-strategic interests in the Middle East.

Civilian death toll mounts as US escalates offensive in Syria

Bill Van Auken

Amid near total silence by the Western media, the US military has steadily escalated its bombing campaign in eastern Syria, killing scores of civilian men, women and children over the past week.

While the offensive is supposedly aimed at clearing out remaining pockets of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Deir Ezzor province near the border with Iraq, it is becoming increasingly clear that the US military campaign has wider strategic aims, directed at regime change in Syria and escalating Washington’s confrontation with Tehran.

In the latest incident, US airstrikes on Thursday targeted residential neighborhoods in the villages of al-Boubadran and al-Sousa, destroying homes and killing at least 23 people, the Syrian state news agency Sana reported.

The raid reportedly wiped out an entire family of 17 civilians, who had been forced to flee from the nearby town of al-Baghuz because of intense combat between ISIS fighters and the US proxy ground troops of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is comprised largely of the Syrian Kurdish YPG [People’s Protection Units] militia. The advances of the YPG in the region have been made possible by intense US bombing and close-air support.

The attack comes on the heels of earlier and even more devastating US strikes. On Tuesday, the Syrian government condemned an airstrike against the town of al-Sharifah that left over 60 civilians dead and injured. The Syrian government as well as residents of Deir Ezzor province have also charged that US warplanes are dropping cluster bombs as well as white phosphorous munitions—both banned by international treaties—on civilian neighborhoods, with devastating results.

Syria’s foreign ministry addressed two letters last Saturday to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the current president of the UN Security Council Ma Zhaoxu, condemning yet another earlier US airstrike against the village of Hajin near the Iraqi border that killed 26 civilians, including 14 children.

The letters denounced the US intervention that has been waged since 2014, with continuous bombings that have been carried out without any UN mandate or permission from the Syrian government. They charged that under the false pretense of fighting terrorism, the US was killing Syrian civilians, decimating the country’s infrastructure and violating the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity with the aim of perpetuating the CIA-orchestrated war and effecting regime change.

“All these attempts constitute a blatant violation of all United Nations Security Council resolutions on Syria,” the Syrian foreign ministry said.

“Whilst the United States and its allies continue to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity, the Security Council has maintained an awkward silence and failed to take any measure to stop these misdeeds,” the statement continued.

Speaking to reporters Thursday after a regular meeting of the UN humanitarian agency, Jan Egeland, a special advisor to the UN on Syria, said that the problem of Syrian refugees had been compounded by the destruction of entire cities, which he compared to the decimation of Stalingrad and Dresden in World War II.

Among the worst hit of these cities was Raqqa, the so-called Syrian capital of ISIS, which US airstrikes and artillery bombardments largely reduced to rubble, while killing thousands of innocent civilians.

Russia’s foreign ministry—citing the letters sent by Damascus to the United Nations—reported on Thursday that over 8,000 bodies have been recovered from the ruins of Raqqa, which was besieged by the US military one year ago, between June and October of 2017.

“The bodies of over 4,000 people were found while clearing away the rubble in two of the city’s residential neighborhoods left over from the airstrikes and also around the stadium and the zoo,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the media. “Those were mainly women, the elderly and children. In addition, a mass grave where more than 2,500 people were buried was uncovered at a farm near a pediatric clinic and the National Hospital, while another burial site was opened near Al-Panorama where 1,500 of the bombing raids’ victims were buried.”

The letters to the UN indicated that just two percent of the rubble has been cleared away in Raqqa, where returning residents are living among the ruins and amid the continuing stench of human remains.

In a Wednesday press conference, the State Department’s special representative for “Syria engagement,” James Jeffrey, indicated the aims that American imperialism is pursuing by means of this unrelenting carnage.

Claiming that the military objective of the more than 2,000 US troops on Syrian soil is the defeat of ISIS, Jeffrey made clear that this campaign is seen as a virtually unending venture by the Pentagon and the White House, bound up with the goal of regime change in Damascus, as well as in Tehran.

Jeffrey insisted that “you cannot have an enduring defeat of ISIS until you have fundamental change in the Syrian regime and fundamental change in Iran’s role in Syria, which contributed greatly to the rise of ISIS in the first place in 2013, 2014.”

This is utter nonsense. The rise of ISIS was rooted in the US destruction of Iraqi society after its 2003 invasion and occupation of the country, followed by the CIA’s orchestration of a war for regime change in Syria by means of funneling vast quantities of arms, money and foreign fighters to Islamist militias, with ISIS proving to be the principal beneficiary.

With this attempt to effect regime change through the promotion of Al Qaeda-connected militias having failed, Washington is now pursuing the same aims by somewhat different methods.

Pressed by a reporter as to when US troops would be withdrawn from Syria, given Jeffrey’s prediction that ISIS would be defeated within the next few months, the US ambassador responded that the mission in Syria was to ensure the “enduring defeat” of ISIS, which he said required “building up local security forces” and “participating in a political process that gives the people of the northeast a future so that they aren’t going to be subject to temptations to go with ISIS as they did back in 2013-2014.”

In other words, Washington is preparing a permanent occupation of northeastern Syria, with the dual aims of controlling a region that contains the country’s oil and gas fields, vital for Syria’s reconstruction, and securing the border with Iraq.

The escalation of US military operations in Syria are bound up with the strategy being pursued by Washington throughout the Middle East to roll back Iranian influence and destroy the Iranian economy by means of sweeping unilateral economic sanctions that are tantamount to an act of war.

Within this broader context, the brutal US offensive being waged in northeastern Syria—at the cost of an increasing number of civilian lives—has the potential for igniting a far more devastating region-wide war.

German chancellor calls for a “real European army”

Johannes Stern 

To the applause of the vast majority of European parliamentary deputies, German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a call on Tuesday for the “creation of a real European army.” Merkel’s speech in Strasbourg underscores the reactionary traditions currently evoked by the ruling elites in Germany and Europe. The task of such an army would be to advance the economic and geostrategic interests of Germany and Europe across the world using military force.

“We are aware that as Europeans, we can better defend our interests when we act together,” Merkel explained. She continued, “Only a united Europe is strong enough to be heard on the global stage and defend its values and interests. The times when we could rely unconditionally on others are over. This means that we Europeans have to increasingly take our fate into our own hands if we want to survive as a community. This means in the long term that Europe must become more capable of acting abroad.”

Merkel tried to sell the creation of an army “capable of acting,” i.e., a Europe armed to the teeth, as an “opportunity” to achieve “lasting peace” after the “horrors” of two world wars. What a mockery! Her own words left no doubt that the European powers are militarily rearming to prepare for war and play an independent role in the struggle to reorganise the globe.

There is “less and less chance of enforcing interests on the global stage alone,” Merkel declared. She therefore proposed “that we set up a European Security Council with alternating, rotating memberships of the Member States, in which important decisions can be prepared quickly.” One needs a “European reaction force,” which “can also act locally.” There has been “great progress” in “permanent structural cooperation in the military field” but “due to developments in recent years” one must now “work very consciously on the vision of creating a real European army one day.”

A German-dominated European army is one of the stated goals of Germany’s grand coalition (Christian Democratic Union, CDU, Christian Social Union, CSU and Social Democratic Party, SPD) government. The coalition pact already agreed on taking further steps towards creating an “army of Europeans.”

Last weekend, SPD leader Andrea Nahles also pleaded for a European army at the “debating camp” of the SPD in Berlin. “We have to put an end to all this small-state politics. We now have to find a European answer.” There are 28 armies, 27 air forces and 23 navies in the European Union. What is necessary is a “European army,” she declared.

This demand is also supported by the Greens and sections of the Left Party. The EU must be able to “conduct world politics in a dramatically changed situation,” Green Party leader Annalena Baerbock told Der Spiegel in a recent interview. A common European security and defence policy is “a holistic project” and requires “first and foremost combining military capabilities in Europe and reducing duplicated structures.”

Already two years ago, immediately following the election of Donald Trump, leaders of the Left Party called for a “European army” to “put an end to the pussyfooting” with Washington.

In Strasbourg, Merkel claimed that a “European army” was not an “army against NATO” but “a good complement to NATO.” In fact, it is obvious that the call for an independent European force is a response to the growing conflicts between the major powers, which are reverting to open hostility and creating the danger of a third world war, exactly 100 years after the end of WWI.

When French President Emmanuel Macron raised his own demand for a “true European army” last week, he made absolutely clear that it would also be directed against the US.

US President Donald Trump immediately responded via Twitter, describing Macron’s proposal as “very insulting.” On Tuesday he said: “Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the US, China and Russia. But it was Germany in World Wars One & Two—How did that work out for France? They were starting to learn German in Paris before the US came along. Pay for NATO or not!”

Merkel and Macron are currently striving to transform the EU into a military alliance that, unlike NATO, can operate independently of, and against the US. But historical grounded tensions and conflicts are also breaking out between Berlin and Paris. As tensions escalate with the US, differences are increasing between the European powers themselves.

Representing an ever more vocal anti-French wing in the German ruling class, the leader of the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alexander Gauland, condemned Merkel’s participation in the ceremonies to mark the end of WWI. Gauland said on German television that “it was wrong to retrospectively rewrite history and participate in the victory celebrations of the former allied forces at a later date.” Germany had “lost the war,” he said, and “yes, the policies that led to WWI have many guilty parties.” Therefore, one could not march “beside Mr. Macron through the Arc de Triumph.”

The fact that Gauland can uncritically propagate his aggressive historical revisionism on a major German public news channel is indicative of the course being taken by the German ruling class. Earlier this year, Gauland provocatively referred to “Hitler and the Nazis” as a mere “speck of bird shit in over a thousand years of successful German history” and said that Germans had “the right to be proud of the achievements of German soldiers in two world wars.”

When the ruling class in Germany now dreams of a “European army” or an “army of Europeans,” it draws directly from the criminal traditions of German imperialism. The Nazi regime was quite prepared to use pro-European rhetoric to justify its plans for world domination. For example, it described its forces in the former Soviet Union, which suffered a crushing defeat in Stalingrad, as a “European army.” A memorandum from the German Foreign Office of September 9, 1943 on the establishment of a “European Confederation” resembles many of the passages in current speeches and strategy papers on European foreign and defence policy.

“The unification of Europe, which has been on the cards for a long time in history, is an inevitable development,” it reads. “Europe has become too small for feuding and mutually exclusive sovereignties. A divided Europe is also too weak to sustain itself in the world with its own character and strength and maintain peace.”

The section headed “Joint Defence Against External Attacks” states: “The basic principle must be that an attack on Europe will be opposed by a solidarity-based defence of the European peoples. The military forces of the European peoples are to be regarded as a single unit and aligned with one another.”

Today, as then, the implementation of such a strategy requires an aggressive nationalist, anti-working-class and ultimately fascist programme. That is why Macron declared it “legitimate” to honour World War II general, fascist dictator and Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain when Macron made his own appeal for a “European army.” For the same reason, the ruling class in Germany is courting the far-right AfD and permits far-right terrorist networks to be active in the German army (Bundeswehr)—networks which in turn can rely on support from sections of the military, police and intelligence apparatus.

In his book Power in the Middle, published in 2015, the now emeritus Humboldt professor and foreign policy adviser to the German government, Herfried Münkler, demanded that Germany, as a “central power,” once again become the “hegemon” and “disciplinarian” of Europe. From the standpoint of German elites, the call for a European army serves exactly this purpose. It must be sharply opposed by the working class along with all other attempts to strengthen European nation states and their respective armies.

Brexit deal threatens survival of May government

Robert Stevens

The draft agreement struck between the European Union (EU) and Prime Minister Theresa May’s negotiating team has been denounced on all sides. May’s fate depends most immediately on the size of a rebellion by the hard-Brexit wing of her party. But based on anything other than the most optimistic assessment, there is little likelihood of her proposal passing in parliament—threatening her future and that of the Conservative government.

May was only able to get Cabinet approval for her proposed agreement on the terms of British withdrawal from the EU after a five-hour meeting Wednesday and she did not allow a formal vote. High-profile resignations followed—of Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey.

May has responded by insisting that there is no alternative path to Brexit, that there must be a “backstop” agreeable to Brussels to ensure tariff-free access to the Single European Market and to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. She has urged hard-Brexiteers not to vote her deal down and risk either a second referendum or a snap general election that could bring Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party to office. Even if she is successful in dividing opponents within her own government and party, she would still require the support of a section of the Labour Party in parliament to get the deal through.

The influential leader of the Tory’s anti-EU European Research Group, Jacob Rees Mogg, has put in a letter of no confidence in May to the chair of the party’s 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady. Two other Brexiteers, Sheryll Murray and Henry Smith, followed suit. Triggering a leadership contest would necessitate 48 MPs handing in letters and Mogg intimated that they were “not there yet,” but could be within weeks. This expressed much less confidence than the numbers that were predicted last month, indicating that some Brexiteers have listened to the demands of business that European trade must be preserved and suggesting May might survive a challenge.

In any eventuality, with May opposed by all the opposition parties, her coalition partners in the Democratic Unionist Party and dozens of Tory MPs, the crisis over Brexit can only deepen. Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf warned that the impasse was historic, as “Britain cannot at present resolve its relationship with the continent … Comparisons with the 1956 Suez crisis do not get close to the mark. This is a far more significant mess than that.”

The unofficial leader of the Remain camp, Tony Blair, declared, “This deal isn’t a compromise, it’s a capitulation.” The Remain faction complain that the deal on offer is much worse than the terms of current EU membership in that, while guaranteeing continued access to the Single Market, the UK loses membership rights. Opposing the deal therefore united him with former Tory foreign secretary Boris Johnson in an “unholy alliance … We agree this is a pointless Brexit in name only which is not the best of a bad job but the worst of both worlds.”

On Thursday morning, Labour issued a statement via Jon Trickett, its shadow Cabinet Office minister, that the “government is falling apart before our eyes” and that the prime minister “has no authority left and is clearly incapable of delivering a Brexit deal that commands even the support of her cabinet—let alone parliament and the people of our country.” Yet despite Corbyn’s previous call that a general election would be the only way to resolve the Brexit crisis, he made no explicit call for one.

This is clearly bound up with efforts by the Corbynites to placate the Blairite faction of the party, who are opposed to a general election, fearing it will encourage a movement of the working class against the decades of neo-liberalism and austerity. They are instead demanding a “People’s Vote” second referendum to reverse Brexit entirely.

Labour, together with other opposition parties, has focused on calling for the promised “meaningful vote” on the deal to include the right to make amendments that would supposedly provide the “exact same benefits” as EU membership. EU officials responded by insisting that the draft deal is “the best we can do.”

May’s predecessor, David Cameron, called the 2016 Brexit referendum as a means of satiating his party’s Eurosceptic wing, while strengthening the UK’s bargaining position with other EU powers, Germany above all. Faced with the disastrous implication of having lost—largely as a result of a protest vote expressing widespread social and political alienation—the ruling elite was thrust into bitter factional conflict over how best to defend Britain’s global interests.

The pro-Brexit factions pinned their hopes on using the election of Donald Trump to piggy-back on US demands for unrestricted access to European markets combined with the right to negotiate independent trade deals internationally. May sought the same end goal but was brought face to face with the reality of Britain’s weak position and the full implications of the growing antagonisms between the US and Europe.

Rather than folding under US pressure, Germany and France have taken a hard line against the UK to preserve the unity of the EU while seeking to strengthen their hand against Washington. The week leading up to the Brexit text announcement was dominated by official commemorations of the centenary of the end of World War I, leading up to the meeting in Paris of 70 world leaders. Such is May’s isolation that she could not contemplate attending and stayed to mark the occasion in London. More significant still, hostile relations erupted between the US, France and Germany over President Emmanuel Macron’s declaration that Europe needed its own army—not only to combat the threat from Russia and China—but in recognition that the US was no longer a reliable ally.

As he landed in Paris, Trump fired off a tweet stating that “President Macron of France has just suggested that Europe build its own military in order to protect itself from the US, China and Russia. Very insulting, but perhaps Europe should first pay its fair share of NATO, which the US subsidizes greatly!”

On Tuesday, he tweeted, “Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the US, China and Russia. But it was Germany in World Wars One & Two—How did that work out for France? They were starting to learn German in Paris before the U.S. came along.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said nothing against Macron’s proposal to honour Marshal Petain, the wartime leader of the Nazi collaborationist Vichy regime, solidarized herself with his call for an independent European military capability. She told the European Parliament in Strasbourg Tuesday of her “vision to establish a real European army one day,” insisting, “The times when we could rely on others are over.”

Under these circumstances, May was forced to accept a bad deal, rather than the calamitous consequences of a no deal exit. But this has only changed the battlefield in which the raging conflict within the ruling elite is fought.

In calling for an active boycott of the 2016 Brexit referendum, the Socialist Equality Party insisted that the working class has no interest in supporting either of the two right-wing bourgeois factions. Brexit has proved to be an economic disaster, and a focus of xenophobic nationalism and plans for trade war waged at the expense of workers’ jobs, wages and essential services. This cannot be opposed by support for EU membership, where member governments are pursuing the same agenda of escalating militarism, anti-migrant measures and savage austerity and fuelling the emergence of fascistic movements across the continent, above all in France and Germany.

The working class must advance its own internationalist programme to unify the struggles of workers throughout Europe in defence of living standards and democratic rights. The alternative for workers to the Europe of the transnational corporations is the struggle for the United Socialist States of Europe.

TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting on Commercial Bribery 2019 – Uncovering Commercial Bribery

Application Deadline: 31st January, 2019.

Eligible Countries: All

Type: Contest

Eligibility: 

• Nominees may be print, broadcast or online reporters from any country who have investigated bribery schemes, business activities that create serious conflicts of interest or similar misconduct.
• Entries must have appeared in print or online during the 2016 calendar year to be eligible for consideration.
• Multiple entries per author are permitted, as are team entries produced by groups of journalists.

Selection: A panel of independent judges will review the submissions and select up to two winning entries.

Value of Contest: Each winning entry will receive a cash prize of $10,000 USD and the reporter will be invited to an award ceremony hosted by TRACE in mid-2018. The judges may also name up to two honorable mentions, who will each receive $1,000 USD.

How to Apply: 

• Download an Entry Form
• Submissions or queries should be emailed to Caitlin Seymour, cseymour@traceinternational.org.

Visit Contest Webpage for details

Award Provider: TRACE

Future Global Leaders (FGL) Fellowship+Internship 2019

Application Deadline: 31st January 2019

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Future Leaders Foundation, USA

About the Award: The Future Global Leaders Fellowship annually selects the world’s top first-generation university students and, over the course of a 3-year program, primes them for induction into the Fortis Society – the world’s first private network of diverse leaders committed to one another’s success and to a better world.

Type: Fellowship, Undergraduate

Eligibility: Applicants for the Future Global Leaders Fellowship must be currently enrolled First-Year College students who fit the following eligibility criteria:

1. First-Generation College Student – which we define as students who do not have a family history of higher education.
2. A Track Record of Academic Excellence – throughout high school and university. Priority given to GPAs 3.5 and above.
3. Proven Leadership Abilities – through self-started initiatives and ventures, or leadership in their community.

CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATES
In addition to eligibility criteria, our Admissions Committee will select Fellows who display the following characteristics:

1. Contagious Charisma and Unyielding Strength of Character – two common and essential traits in all leaders.
2. Resilience and Guts – demonstrated through having overcome hardship.
3. Inexhaustible Global Ambition – along with a realistic strategy, the ability to execute, and the willingness to sacrifice and take risks to achieve extraordinary success.
4. A Humble Background – the highest priority will be given to first-generation and low-income students who meet all requirements.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: All programme costs are covered the by the Future Leaders Foundation.
(1) Mentorship from world renowned professionals;
(2) Three-week Intensive leadership training;
(3) Funding and support for an internship;
(4) Customized career advice and tools;
(5) Access to an influential international network – the Fortis Society

Duration of Fellowship: The Future Global Leaders Fellowship officially starts in July, when all newly selected FGL Fellows come together for an intensive 20-day leadership training.

How to Apply: You are advised to review the Fellowship Webpage thoroughly and download a sample of FGL Honor Pledge, Application Form and Resume Template.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details


Award Provider: Future Leaders Foundation

Holland Government Scholarships 2019/2020 for International Students at TU Delft

Application Deadline: 1st February 2019 (23:59 CET)

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): The Netherlands

About the Award: The Holland Scholarship is financed by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and Dutch research universities and universities of applied sciences. Part of the scholarships  are meant for international students from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who wish to study in Holland. The EEA consists of the EU countries and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: Excellent applicants from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who have been (conditionally) admitted to one of the 2-year Regular TU Delft’s MSc programmes with a bachelor’s degree from an internationally renowned university outside The Netherlands

Number of Awards: 8 per faculty

Value and Duration of Award:

• € 5.000 in the first academic year for Non EEA students, as contribution to living expenses for a TU Delft MSc programme based on the statutory fee or institutional rate, according to the registered nationality.
• A candidate can be awarded multiple Holland Scholarships, based on merit, to a maximum of 3 (€15.000).

How to Apply: 

• Check if you’re eligible for this scholarship
• Complete your MSc application (check the admission requirements)
• In addition to all the regular documents for a MSc programme application:
• Upload two reference letters (in one PDF document, check admission requirements)
• NO extra application form is needed to be considered for this scholarship.
• GOODLUCK!

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Important Notes: Please note that Non-EU/EFTA students must include their English test with their application (if required). EU/EFTA students can submit this document in a later stage according to the Admission instructions.

Radical Idealism: Jesus and the Radical Tradition

Brandon Lee

Another world is possible, if not already on its way – for better or worse.  There are humanizing and sustainable alternatives to the way we organize society, and there is a diverse tradition of individuals and movements that do the work to build a better future.  I would characterize this tradition as radical idealism: a stance dedicated to dignity, peace, and the constant struggle against injustice.

As a young person in US public education as well as the Protestant church, I did not consider the possibility of another world: it’s not the purpose of those (or any) institution to suggest alternatives exist.  But I was a critical child, and discovered the tradition of radical idealism through the punk rock scene.  Everything was permitted: from NOFX to Chumbawamba, Noam Chomsky to Emma Goldman, Edward Abbey to Rachel Carson, Leonard Peltier to John (Fire) Lame Deer, Howard Zinn to James Boggs, and from Fred Hampton to Subcomandante Marcos.  My education began where the school and church curriculum would not go.

The tradition of radical thinking, writing, organizing, and fighting for a better world – the foundation of radical idealism – is a fringe tradition. I recognized this early on, and made a connection to things I read in the Bible, namely the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus was a threat to the power structures during His time and was exiled immediately after birth.  He taught his followers a lifestyle incompatible with greed, individualism, authoritarianism, militarism, and nationalism.  He healed, preached, and educated without a place to lay His head because He knew what awaited Him if He was captured by the authorities.  His Sermon on the Mount wasn’t meant to comfort the listener in turbulent times, but rather establish an ideal: an impossible standard to guide and provide hope for humanity. Like so many radical idealists before and after Him, Jesus was executed by the State.

The contradiction is stark.  If Jesus Christ was radical, what happened to the religion named after Him? Why does the nation that identifies with that religion seem to be the most oppressive and dangerous nation in history?  French professor, Jacques Ellul, in addressing why Christianity gave birth to a culture “completely opposite to what we read in the Bible,” offered an entire book on the “the subversion of Christianity.”  Although, in His typical fashion, Jesus explained the disconnect on an individual level when he quoted the Old Testament:

“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.”  In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.  For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.  Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.” (Matthew 13: 13-15).

Jesus spoke plainly, radically, and idealistically.  He challenged His followers to hear His words and not participate in the ways of predatory economics, authoritarian politics, and rampant individualism.  Unfortunately, Christianity allowed the social forces of greed (capitalism) and country (nationalism) to institutionalize the Man and His teachings in order to obtain a seat at the table of power.  When a person’s eyes, ears, and hearts are closed to the love and dignity of all humans, dehumanizing solutions develop in the darkness.

This darkness is palpable in 2018.  The United States of Amnesia, consumed by 24-hour news media and miles of Twitter feeds, has given way to an information age with little substance.  The most powerful office in the country is held by a White Nationalist, and it appears that many Christians in the U.S. support him.  The Democrats can only hope to be a moderating force against overt white supremacy, exploitation, and war as they shift quickly to the center-right of the political spectrum.  The socialists, if not consumed by the Democrats, can barely get a platform in the political arena.  All the while the anarchists battle the fascists, distribute for Food Not Bombs, and provide disaster relief.  The ideology of capitalism and war research is embedded in academic institutions, and will not allow the university a chance to combat a corrupt and oppressive society.  All the while, Noam Chomsky can’t stop reminding us that we face two existential threats: climate change and nuclear annihilation (i.e., the slow burn or the fast track).

Radical idealism is not delusional, but allows the individual a way to conceptualize light in dark times.  It does this by positioning us in the collective struggle for dignity, peace, and justice.  Radical idealists have left a trail of breadcrumbs and books for us to draw strength from including the teachings of Jesus contained in the Gospels.  It is up to us to build a new society in the shell of the old, an ideal society grounded in love, dignity, and lessons learned from the light of radical idealism.

Spraying Poisons, Chasing Ghosts

Evaggelos Vallianatos

Agribusiness power

The twentieth first century continues the toxic business as usual of the twentieth century. Agribusiness, part of the military-industrial-complex, is king. The new weapon is spraying the world with mostly badly tested chemical poisons. And the strategy is the control of the natural world and societies.

Few people know exactly what these chemical poisons do. Occasionally, they do kill insects and weeds. But they do much more, mostly harm. Scientists have revealed certain facts about those invisible effects. But agribusiness nullifies the significance of that knowledge. It does that by buying agricultural universities, the media and influencing politicians. Agribusiness guards its secrets, including how it has been controlling the politics of the world.

The power of knowledge

Despite the passive acceptance of poisons by mostly urban populations, resistance continues. An example of that resistance is a documentary about the effects of massive sprayings in the past several decades. This courageous film, Sprayed  by Craig Leon (Future History Films, 2018), shows the power of telling a story well — and telling the truth.

The documentary moves from Miami Beach, Florida, to Brazil to Vietnam. The idea is to have people speak about being sprayed and scientists giving their opinions about the effects of the sprays.

After all, the Zika scare of 2016 during the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, muddied the waters. This was another agribusiness and media broadcast to the world: that malformed babies in Brazil were a result of the nasty Aedes aegypti mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus. Second, blame the women of the slums for giving birth to those kids with tiny brains. Blame the nasty Zika mosquitoes. Pesticides had nothing to do with that tragedy.

Craig Leon’s documentary demolishes this agribusiness mythology.

What sprayed people think

We see and hear a person in Miami Beach saying: “Well… they’re spraying again so I am just trying to shut it down and we’re going to the federal courts to try to do that. In August 2016, neurotoxic chemicals banned in Europe were first sprayed over Miami residents to kill Zika mosquitoes… many people were upset, including myself and have addressed the city of Miami Beach previously regarding the spaying of Naled onto our community.”

Another Miami resident says: “I’m growing herbs that I’m thinking are organic, and they just sprayed Naled all over them.”

Naled is a nerve poison related to chemical warfare agents.

Spray planes “bombed” Miami Beach residents with the neurotoxic insecticide naled 2 to 3 times a day: “We only walked at night… I could see a thick layer of dust, smoke everywhere.” The helicopters flew about 100 feet over homes. The spraying lasted for five hours in the morning. The chemical coming down felt “like a little light rain.” The immediate effect was a “pounding headache you could not get rid of.”

Poisoning Brazil

In Brazil, the emphasis is in the decades-long impoverished Northeast, especially the state of Pernambuco. This is where the Zika virus hit hard, with tiny brain-babies blamed on mosquitoes stinging pregnant women. Pernambuco is also the first state in the only country in the world where the government added pyriproxyfen in the drinking water. This was done at a time Pernambuco had been experiencing drought for six years.

Gilsomar Santos, distraught father of a baby girl born with microcephaly in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, said: “The Department of Health… give us some product to dump into our water tanks.”

Microcephaly describes infants born with tiny brains.

The “product” was pyriproxyfen. This is an “insect growth regulator” and teratogen causing monstrous wounds to the developing insect. It makes it impossible for the young mosquito to become an adult. It may affect humans in similar monstrous fashion.

Yet, in all of Brazil, no more than 12 to 15 percent of babies affected by microcephaly were linked to mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus.

A frustrated Brazilian says: “If you’re in the position that you’re desperate to do, you just grab the pesticides and you just spray [them].” Another asked why Colombia has had no deformed babies from the Zika virus.

Paolo Paes de Andrade, professor of genetics at the Federal University of Pernambuco, says Brazilian scientists are fiddling with the DNA of mosquitoes, creating genetically engineered mosquitoes. Brazil released them in 2014.

Immediately thereafter, microcephaly appeared in Brazil.

According to Germana Soares A. Nascimento, president and founder of the Association of Mothers of Angels, Brazil has been experimenting with the malformed babies. Brazilian scientists extract from the “medulla through the spine of the babies” a “liquid transparent like water.” But parents are complaining they have been kept in the dark: “They never gave us the results whether it was Zika or not,” said Germana Soares.

The legacy of Agent Orange in Vietnam

Spraying poisons has had deleterious effects in Vietnam. In the Vietnam War, 1962-1973, America drenched Vietnam with “cocktails of neurotoxic chemicals (codename: Agent Orange).” The strategy was to kill forests and the growing of rice.

A Vietnamese physician named Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong says he delivered the first deformed babies in 1965, an experience that broke his heart. He says: “I was very shocked… I could not sleep, could not eat, I could not work. I thought about the reasons why we have so many suffering [people] and I realized that oh, maybe, the increase of birth defects may be linked to the spraying mission.”

That spraying mission made Vietnam a museum of spraying monsters. Birth defects have been appearing in Vietnam for three generations.

Is this what we want to see in the rest of the world?

However, in 2018, Vietnam is reluctant to advertise its war fate with chemicals. Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong says Vietnamese scientists working for the chemical industry, the courts, and the government of Vietnam deny that the chemicals America sprayed in Vietnam caused deformities in human beings.

Chasing ghosts

Anthony Samsel, an independent toxicologist from New Hampshire, summed up the dramatic crisis of the Zika virus enmeshed with the spraying of pesticides all over the environment for decades:

“We know that [pesticide] chemicals cause mutagenesis. It’s what we should be looking at. But we’re not. We’re not looking to the chemical industry or to any of these materials. Instead, we’re looking at viruses. I think we’re chasing ghosts.”

All this uncertainty about the risks of pesticides, risks of viruses, and harm resulting from misguided and immoral environmental regulatory and agricultural policies are scaring people. Some people, in fact, are frightened so much they question the continuation of civilization. They ask: Is it a good idea to have children?

During the spraying campaign over Miami Beach a resident asks:

“How safe is it to bring kids, to bring life into this world, when there’s this kind of straight out poisoning happening, and we’re not even told to take any precautions.”

Watch the documentary Sprayed by Craig Leon. It is enlightening, timely, and extremely important. It asks the scientific and ethical questions that bring out the danger of spraying pesticides all over the world for so long.