López Obrador proposes austerity budget, creates free economic zone at the border

Alex González

On December 24, the Mexican Chamber of Deputies approved the first budget of the new “leftist” president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). The funding package is characterized by a massive increase in military spending, negligible funds for social programs, and the creation of a new free economic zone at the US-Mexico border to further exploit Mexican, US and Central American workers.

AMLO proposed the budget under conditions in which his party, the Movement for National Regeneration (Morena), holds large majorities in both houses of Congress. Millions of people voted for AMLO and Morena with the expectation that, holding every lever of power, they would be able to carry out what AMLO has called a historic “fourth transformation” of Mexican society.

The new administration’s financial plan strips away his populist pretensions and exposes precisely what is meant by “change” under the capitalist government of AMLO. The new government’s leftist credentials consist of paltry programs that will leave social conditions intact, while blaming government employees and corruption—not the capitalist system—for the top 10 percent of Mexicans controlling 70 percent of the country’s wealth.

Markets and international commentators have celebrated the budget for its “fiscal responsibility,” with the value of the peso increasing by 0.7 percent after its release. “The new administration is keen to show more conservative fiscal management from the get-go,” wrote BNP Paribas bank.

Finance capital has commended the budget precisely because it protects the interests of the ruling elite. Meanwhile, massive sums have been granted for repressive measures that will be used against any independent movement of the working class as it becomes disillusioned with Morena and turns to a fight for genuine social equality.

AMLO and Morena awarded the Mexican military its largest funding package in history, with an 11 percent increase from the Peña Nieto administration’s 2018 budget. Although he campaigned under the promise of removing the Armed Forces from domestic security operations, AMLO has backtracked by announcing the creation of a new National Guard that will be composed of between 120,000 and 150,000 members by 2021. The National Guard amounts to a new wing of the military and will be controlled by military brass.

This massive military increase must be seen in the context of a growing crisis at the US-Mexico border. On December 20, the Trump administration announced that it would immediately deport new Central American asylum seekers to Mexico pending the resolution of their asylum claims, which the AMLO administration agreed to enforce. This sets the stage for an explosion of anger by tens of thousands of immigrants who did not escape extreme poverty and gang violence to be condemned to a life of shantytowns at the border. As workers and peasants become more desperate, the Mexican military and National Guard will be deployed to carry out the dirty work of US imperialism.

A policy of repression is being combined with a slashing of social assistance for refugees. Despite the fact that refugee applications skyrocketed by more than 1,140 percent in the past four years, the new budget reduced refugee funding by 20 percent.

As for the “profound and radical” change promised by AMLO, this amounts to a sum of about $48.5 million (922.7 billion pesos), or less than $2.50 for every person in Mexico for the entire year.

One of AMLO’s flagship programs, “Youth Building the Future,” will provide 300,000 high school students with $117 (2,400 pesos) each month. Another 2.3 million youth will be given $191 a month to work as interns for one year. The cosmetic nature of the program becomes transparent when compared to the objective needs of the working class, including trillions of dollars for universal, high-quality education. Only 17 percent of youth between 25 and 64 have a college degree, and the average educational attainment for Mexicans is middle school. Only 21 percent of those who enroll in college graduate, half of which drop out due to insufficient financial resources to continue their education.

Another one of AMLO’s supposed progressive programs is the doubling of pensions for retirees and the disabled to $74 (1,500 pesos) per month. Individuals must be 68 years old to receive the funds, while indigenous populations must be 65 years of age. The sum is less than half of the minimum monthly wage and will keep millions of workers from retiring who cannot afford basic necessities like rent or health care. About 34 percent of adults over 60 and 14 percent of adults over 75 were active in the labor force in 2017.

A pittance for the poor is being combined with a bonanza for corporations. On Monday, AMLO has announced a new free economic zone at the US-Mexico border that will slash the value-added tax in half, from 16 to 8 percent. The top income tax at the border will also decrease from 30 to 20 percent. The new free economic zone will reportedly be the largest in the world and will stretch from Baja California in the Pacific to Tamaulipas in the Gulf of Mexico.

AMLO has sought to sell what amounts to a new state-sponsored center of exploitation by raising the minimum daily wage in the new economic zone to $9—or a little more than one dollar per hour in an eight hour day. Despite having nominally higher minimum wages than the rest of Mexico, these remain poverty wages that will be clawed back through more exploitative working conditions and fewer benefits for Mexican, Central American and US workers. The tax cuts are also estimated to leave a budget shortfall of $610 billion (120 billion pesos), which will be paid for through cuts in social services for these same workers and youth.

The first month of AMLO’s administration has already confirmed the assessment made by the World Socialist Web Site on the eve of last year’s elections in Mexico that “Sooner rather than later, a Morena-led administration will betray the mass aspirations for an end to the social hardship and suffering that López Obrador has cynically exploited.”

Cuba deepens austerity in response to continued economic stagnation

Alexander Fangmann

Cuban Economy Minister Alejandro Gil Fernandez announced last month that the government will be cutting fuel consumption and imports, including raw materials, equipment and food next year. These cuts are the result of several years of stagnant growth, averaging just 1 percent per year over the past three years, a decline in exports, most notably of professional medical services, and a fall in Venezuelan oil subsidies owing to that country’s own deepening crisis.

Gil said that the government would reduce energy consumption throughout the economy, from 91 metric tons per million pesos in gross domestic product (GDP) this year, to 84 next year, forcing state-owned companies to do with less. This would reduce the pressure on the government to use scarce hard currency for oil purchases, as Cuba’s own energy production accounts for only half of its needs.

Gil explained the government’s rationale for cuts, saying, “The 2019 plan is one of adjustment to current realities. We cannot spend more than we earn.” This is especially the case as Cuba has committed to halting any increase in short-term debt.

Reductions in energy consumption announced back in 2016 had already resulted in large cutbacks in public lighting and bus service, working hours and air conditioning at many state-owned companies, and less availability of fuel for vehicles.

Gil also said that imports would be reduced by 11 percent, a measure that will have an impact throughout the economy and lead to a variety of shortages. Cuba is heavily dependent on imports for a wide variety of items, from raw materials and equipment for its industries, as well as food and all kinds of consumer goods, and the measure will no doubt lead to higher prices for most Cuban workers.

Alongside the cut in imports, the economy minister also announced the government would attempt to boost exports by 6 percent. Revenues have decreased in a number of sectors, including sugar and nickel mining, as well as tourism, at least in part due to US president Donald Trump’s re-imposition of restrictions on travel to the island by US nationals.

Speaking at his brother Fidel’s graveside on January 1, the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, 87-year-old Raul Castro condemned the Trump administration for “taking on the path of confrontation with Cuba,” while reiterating the Cuban government’s austerity message, declaring the need “to reduce all non-necessary expenses and to save more.”

A large part of the decline in export revenue has come from the programs through which Cuba sends doctors and other medical professionals abroad in exchange for a combination of hard currency and oil, and which represents the majority of its export revenue. This business took a hit after the election of the fascistic Brazilian former army captain Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency of Brazil. As president-elect, Bolsonaro set a hard line against Cuba, forcing out some 8,300 medical professionals.

The “More Doctors” program with Brazil is one of the two biggest export-earning deals Cuba has with its doctors, and accounts for $400 million to $500 million in export revenue, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. The biggest program by far is in Venezuela, to which Cuba supplies 28,000 professionals, and is itself threatened by Venezuela’s ongoing economic collapse.

Pavel Vidal, an economist at the Pontifical Xavierian University in Cali, Colombia estimates that professional services such as these deals for medical professionals account for 55 percent of Cuba’s total exports, and that revenue from this source has fallen from $10.2 billion to $7.7 billion over the past four years. Some of this decline has come from Venezuela, which has seen its ability to supply oil hindered by its own economic crisis.

Venezuela’s shipments of subsidized oil to Cuba have reportedly resumed as of September 2018, according to Reuters reports, after a pause, although shipments are still far below previous levels, and Cuba is expected to continue purchasing oil from Russia and Algeria as a result. Most of the decline in oil shipments to Cuba have been the result of a drastic decline in production in the Venezuelan oil industry.

Refinery capacity at PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company, is currently running at just around a third of capacity due to a lack of needed parts and other supplies due to a scarcity of hard currency resulting from the fall in oil prices. As a result of the oil price decline, Venezuela’s economy is nearly in free-fall, with inflation estimated at over 1 million percent and prices on many goods doubling or tripling every few months. GDP has fallen by almost half since 2014.

There is a real concern in the Cuban government that an end to what remains of Venezuelan support would plunge the Cuban economy into a situation similar to that which it faced in the 1990s after the collapse of the USSR, albeit without a popular political figure like Fidel Castro to contain the protests this would inevitably generate.

The Cuban government’s draft of a new constitution is aimed at enshrining an expansion of private property and market mechanisms that has been under way for some years, and which has seen the elimination of a million public sector jobs and the encouragement of a broad swathe of petty entrepreneurs known as cuentapropistas, or “self-employed.”

Though there is widespread agreement among the ruling Cuban Communist Party (PCC) of the need to increasingly turn to the world market, there is something of a division in the Cuban government over the extent to which it will commit to unleashing market forces in the domestic economy and allow the private accumulation of wealth.

This has come out in some of the statements from government officials, with Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel arguing in the National Assembly against a slowdown of the process:

It is time to act without dogmas and with realism, addressing the priorities, facilitating the real strengthening of state enterprise and its productive links with foreign investment, joint ventures and the non-state sector of the economy.

We must also put in order the activity of the private sector of the economy, but without impeding or slowing down its performance, stimulating best practices until ensuring that those working within it move away from illegalities. The challenge is to integrate all the actors, forms of property and management present in our social economic environment into the battle for the economy that, I reiterate, is today the fundamental battle.

He also defended the cuentapropistas from charges that they would be a source of danger for the Cuban regime, owing to their independent source of wealth and potential links to reactionary Cuban exiles and their allies in the US government:

Self-employed workers are not enemies of the Revolution, they are the result of the process of updating the economic model; they have solved problems that burdened the State and for which it was sometimes inefficient. They have rescued trades that life proved necessary.

We know that there are still attempts to turn the non-state sector into an enemy of the revolutionary process, but they will not succeed in dividing us. For this we count on the commitment of our self-employed workers and of state institutions.

It is notable that one of the significant and widely reported draft changes to the Cuban constitution, removing the article stating that the country is “advancing toward a communist society,” has apparently been rescinded following popular opposition. While Cuba is not socialist and has not been “advancing toward a communist society,” under the leadership of the Castros and their successors in the PCC, there is no doubt wide support for genuine socialism among Cuban workers, who face pressures similar to those faced by other workers around the world.

Hundreds die on UK streets as homelessness reaches record levels

Margot Miller 

Thousands of people are living on the streets in every UK town and city and a record number of roofless people are dying.

One encounters homeless people on every major high street—sitting, sleeping, begging, wrapped in a sleeping bag or blankets in an attempt to keep out the winter cold.

Homelessness shot to national prominence again over the holiday period when a man died just feet from Parliament on December 20. Hungarian national Gyula Remes had been homeless for the last three months. According to friends, he had just found a job as a chef’s assistant and was hoping to be off the streets soon.

His death came as the Office for National Statistics revealed figures showing that almost 600 people died in 2017 while sleeping rough on the streets. The grim tally of 597 dead marks a 24 percent increase over the last five years, with the highest numbers in London and the north west of England. Over the last five years, an estimated 2,627 homeless people have perished on the streets.

There were 50 deaths on the streets of Greater Manchester last year, with homeless people dying at a higher rate, relative to population, than London, where 136 homeless people died.

In the region’s main city, Manchester, on December 26, Tony Lawless, who had been a rough sleeper on and off since the death of his father, was found dead in Rochdale canal. The former market worker had just been released from North Manchester General after collapsing on Christmas Day and was 51 years old.

Homeless people often resort to sleeping in refuse bins, which has led to several deaths. Last January, Russell Lane, 51, died from his injuries after being tipped into the back of a refuse lorry in Rochester, Kent. He had wrapped himself in a disused roll of carpet in the bin.

The number of rough sleepers in England doubled in 2017 to 4,571, from 1,768 in 2010, according to the House of Commons Library, which also reported average life expectancy for a rough sleeper at just 47 for a male and 43 for a woman.

The first published deaths of the homeless on the street coincide with the latest figures released by the Crisis charity, revealing a record 170,000 families and individuals without homes. The number is expected to rise.

Research carried out at Heriot-Watt University on behalf of Crisis found a year-on-year increase in homelessness between 2012 and 2017. Approximately 38,000 under-25s and 4,200 over-65s are homeless.

There are 170,800 homeless households in comparison to 151,600 in 2012. Included in this figure are those who are rough sleeping, sofa-surfing, or staying in hostels.

Crisis lays the blame at the doors of government, including policies which have created an acute shortage of genuinely affordable social housing, reduced Housing Benefit which no longer covers rent and is not available to under 25s, and youth thrust out of the care system aged 18 without provision. John Sparkes, chief executive, said, “This new research echoes what we see every day in our front-line work—that there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ homeless person … this crisis is affecting people who range from young care-leavers to pensioners. … This is a wake-up call to see homelessness as a national emergency.”

These figures are corroborated by housing charity Shelter, which revealed at the end of November that there are 320,000 homeless people living in Britain, an increase of 25,000 since last year. This figure, which includes people in working families, is likely an underestimate. Official figures only include those in contact with local authorities and not the hidden homeless residing with family or friends.

Shelter Chief executive Polly Neate said, “Due to the perfect storm of spiraling rents, welfare cuts and a total lack of social housing, record numbers of people are sleeping out on the streets or stuck in the cramped confines of a hostel room.”

The charity cited one of the causes of rising homelessness as the low level of housing benefit—a means-tested welfare benefit to help meet costs for rented accommodation—which does not cover average rent. The local housing allowance in Manchester, for example, is set at £532 a month for a family needing a three-bedroom house. However, private landlords, apart from student lets, ask for rents of £800 per month and upwards.

The homeless crisis has become so visible and public anger so widespread that Theresa May’s Conservative government has been forced to retract its previous denial of responsibility. Just prior to Christmas, Housing Minister James Brokenshire said the Conservatives “need to ask ourselves some very hard questions” regarding the increase in rough sleepers since the government came to office, and that what was necessary were “changes to policy.”

This was just PR, with the government doing virtually nothing to ameliorate an appalling crisis. After announcing “the end of austerity” in September, May allocated a measly £100 million—a repackaging of money already announced—as part of the government’s “Rough Sleepers Strategy” that is supposedly to eradicate rough sleeping by 2027!

Leading politicians of all parties, whose austerity policies over decades are responsible for the crisis, interrupted their Christmas celebrations for a show of sympathy for the homeless and destitute.

In recent weeks, the public have been forced to endure the obscene spectacle of Conservative MPs visiting food banks and supermarket food bank drop-off points for photo-ops. Among these were Dominic Raab, who infamously said in 2017 that those using foodbanks were people “who had a cashflow problem episodically.” The reality is that huge swathes of the population are going hungry and being forced onto the streets due to more than a decade of brutal anti-social policies, such as the bedroom tax and universal credit.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn visited a homeless hostel run by Crisis in his Islington constituency on Christmas Eve. In his Christmas message he invoked the spirit of the Good Samaritan, while his government-in-waiting has bent over backwards to reassure the rich it will not encroach on their ill-gotten gains to provide essential services.

Labour’s promise of initial funding of £100 million for one year into a rough sleepers’ cold weather fund is derisory and would not end rough sleeping. Corbyn acknowledged as much when he suggested Labour in office would repeal the 1824 Vagrancy Act, under which there have been 2,365 prosecutions in 2015-2016. This would make it legal to sleep and beg on the streets but would not eradicate the causes of destitution.

The homeless crisis is an indictment of a failed system, capitalism. Beginning in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher, and pursued enthusiastically by subsequent Labour governments, over 1.5 million council houses were sold off as the building of new stock ground to a halt. Last year only 6,463 homes were built in England for social rent, while 1.25 million families are on the waiting list.

Labour councils throughout the UK have implemented every cut imposed by central government and implemented privatisation of services with zeal. In London, residents have organised in opposition to the regeneration plans of Labour’s mayor Sadiq Khan, which involve the demolition of 8,000 council estate homes so property developers can get their hands on prime real estate to make a killing.

Greater Manchester’s social housing stock has declined by 5 percent in the six years since 2012 and 85,639 households languish on Labour council-run housing waiting lists. This led to 2,000 children spending their Christmas in emergency accommodation.

Gentrification and social cleansing are happening everywhere, with city skylines crowded with cranes and newly built luxury high-rise blocks that are unaffordable to everyone but the richest.

The resources can and must be found to provide safe, decent homes for all. The wealth of the billionaires and super-rich, acquired by exploiting the working class, must be expropriated to meet urgent, life or death, social needs.

Scotland: 300 laid off at Kaiam plant on Christmas Eve

Steve James

Three hundred thirty-eight workers at optical electronics firm Kaiam’s Livingston plant in Scotland were told December 20 their promised pre-Christmas pay, due the following day, would not be forthcoming.

Four days later, on Christmas Eve, all but 26 were made redundant, with immediate effect, as the company collapsed.

Workers spoke to the press of their shock at the speed and timing of the closure, and of the devastating impact it will have on them and their families.

Joanne Baxter told the Sun, “It is bad enough any time of the year being in this situation but it is Christmas and people are relying on this wage to just start their Christmas shopping today.” She continued, “There’s people in there with just one breadwinner in the family, they’ve got kids and they’ve not even got a selection box for them.”

Another worker said, “The usual pay day is the 27th but it had been brought forward to the 21st for Christmas, but now they say they don’t even know if it will be paid on the 27th. My rent is due in the next few days and I don’t know what I am going to do.”

Father of two Kevin Wells told the Edinburgh Evening News, “There were a lot of tears from members of staff. People were asking a lot of questions, like, ‘My wife’s pregnant, how do I go about getting redundancy?’ People don’t know what the next stages are. They were told they’d get help finding jobs and what jobs there are in West Lothian. We were told it’ll be four to six weeks before we get money from the government.”

Faced with misery over Christmas and New Year without work, friends and relatives set about fundraising efforts for the workforce and their families. A local community centre offered its resources to store hundreds of donations of food and family presents. A Facebook page was set up, while a crowd funding page quickly collected around £21,000—more than double its original target. Despite these efforts, it leaves the workers sharing only around £70 each.

KPMG administrators claimed the company, which has also closed its operation in California, folded because of a “lack of material orders” along with operating costs of the factory. Pressed by local Member of the Scottish Parliament, Angela Constance, Kaiam’s CEO Bardia Pezeshki explained that the company’s products—high capacity fibre optic transceivers carrying data within and between the huge data centres on which cloud-based data services depend—tended to be sold to companies such as Facebook, Amazon and Google.

According to Pezeshki, the tech conglomerates were “extremely poor at predicting when orders happen,” but suppliers had to maintain capacity in case they won an order.

Pezeshki complained that competition from China meant that market price for their devices had dropped from $900 to $100 over just one year. An $800,000 loan intended to keep the company afloat pending new orders was undermined by trade tensions between the US and China, while one of the company’s backers demanded liquidation.

Last year, Kaiam attempted to sell to both sides of the deepening standoff between the US and China.

Last May, Kaiam announced a partnership with Broadex, based in Jiaxing, in China’s Zhejiang Province, whereby Broadex would manufacture and supply its high-end transceivers to the Chinese market. Jeremy Dietz, Kaiam’s sales and marketing vice president told the press, “The two companies will combine on business growth activities in and around China to strengthen Kaiam and Broadex’s market share in optical transceivers for data centres as well as PLCs for 5G rollouts.”

In July, however, Kaiam issued a press statement in which Dietz claimed, “We sometimes forget that the optical components that power Cloud companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and others are virtually all made in China and are thus susceptible to trade tensions. As patriots, we believe a transceiver reserve is necessary for our domestic security.” Dietz boasted that Kaiam was “currently exploring secure underground locations in [US] states such as Utah and Nevada.”

It is unclear when Kaiam’s operations began to unravel, but local Westminster MP Hannah Bardell claimed the company still had £4 million worth of orders on its books.

Last year, Kaiam sold a plant in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, England for $80 million, one year after having purchased it for $70 million. One worker, John Jack, told the Sun that workers at the Livingston plant had been led to believe that this sale secured its future. Pezeshki admitted he had had a “windfall” from the deal. “But,” said Jack, “they never spent a penny on the plant. Some machines are held together with sticky tape.”

Pezeshki has been condemned by Labour and Scottish National Party (SNP) politicians for leaving local managers to break the closure news to the workforce while he flew to California. However, it emerged this week that the SNP knew about Kaiam “financial difficulties” as early as November 22.

The closure sharply exposes the pro-capitalist perspective of both the SNP and the Labour Party. Both parties have for decades insisted that, faced with a globalised economy and regardless of their differences over Scottish independence, living standards must be sacrificed in the struggle to attract international investment.

While workers face frozen or declining wages, benefit freezes and endless pressures on vital social services, companies intending to open new offices or factories have grants and benefits lavished upon them. It appears that Kaiam were offered around £850,000 in grants by investment agency Scottish Enterprise in 2014, when the company relocated some of its production away from a Chinese factory to Livingston.

Tyre manufacturer Michelin is due to close its longstanding factory in Dundee, at the cost of 845 jobs in 2020. The Scottish government recently hailed a “Michelin-Scotland Alliance” and an “Innovation Parc” on the site of factory. However, the Michelin agreement is not legally binding, and no jobs are guaranteed under it. The unions as usual have not lifted a finger, with Unite’s Marc Jackson, the convener at the plant, admitting that a “significant number of jobs will be lost.” Going forward, the “Innovation Parc” will become a new cheap labour platform for local and international capital.

Over the past decades, the unions have collaborated in one round of job losses after another. Nearly 40,000 jobs have gone in manufacturing in Scotland since 2007, with the total down from 221,000 to 185,000. Last month alone, hundreds of jobs were lost at engineering firm BiFab in Fife and the Western Isles and 40 jobs went as the Carbon Dynamic construction firm in the Highlands went into administration. But the nature of Kaiam’s collapse expresses new dangers. If Pezeshki is to be believed, the company, and everyone who depended on it, has fallen victim to the worsening geopolitical relationship between the US and China. Kaiam workers, their families and supporters are being confronted with the stark realities of world capitalism in the 21st century.

New rank-and-file organisations are urgently needed to take up a struggle to defend jobs and living standards, and to turn to the broadest sections of workers in Britain and internationally for support. But the fundamental issue raised is which class must run society. If escalating trade and military tensions between rival groups of capitalists can destroy living standards across the globe, then workers are posed with the need for world socialism to implement rational global economic planning for social need not private profit.

German army plans recruitment of EU foreigners

Johannes Stern

The German Ministry of Defence plans to recruit tens of thousands of foreigners from the EU into the Bundeswehr. The plans for this are “more concrete than have been known so far,” Der Spiegel reported last week on Thursday. According to a confidential ministry study submitted to the news magazine, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) wants to recruit mainly young Poles, Italians and Romanians for the German army. According to the paper, there is “quantitative potential” for the Bundeswehr among young men coming from these countries.

According to Der Spiegel, the ministry has already “calculated this potential more precisely.” According to the study, about 255,000 Poles, 185,000 Italians and 155,000 Romanians between the ages of 18 and 40 live in Germany. Together, this group represents about half of all EU foreigners in Germany. If at least 10 percent of this targeted population showed interest in the German army, the Bundeswehr would come up with “more than 50,000 possible new applicants for the force.”

The inspector general of the Bundeswehr, the highest ranking German military figure, also confirmed the plans. The recruitment of EU citizens for special activities is “an option” that is being examined, Eberhard Zorn told the newspapers of the Funke Media Group. People talk about “doctors or IT specialists, for example,” he said. In times of a shortage of skilled workers, the Bundeswehr had to “look in all directions and strive to find the right young talent.”

The plans of the Ministry of Defence and the official debate about them show how aggressively German imperialism and militarism are re-emerging despite Germany’s historical crimes in two world wars. Having caused a social catastrophe in Southern and Eastern Europe in particular with its austerity measures, Berlin is now using the lack of prospects and sheer desperation of young people to recruit cannon fodder for the German war policy.

Since leading government representatives officially announced the return of German militarism at the Munich Security Conference in 2014, the government and the Ministry of Defence have been working to increase the Bundeswehr’s troop strength, however, with rather moderate success so far. Since Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) announced the expansion of the army on May 10, 2016, the Bundeswehr has hardly been able to record any significant growth despite aggressive advertising campaigns. In November, the Bundeswehr officially comprised 180,997 active soldiers, just under 1,000 more than in 2015 (179,633).

The plans of the Ministry of Defence have been worked out behind the backs of the population for a long time. The 2016 White Paper on German security policy and the future of the Bundeswehr stated: “Last but not least, opening up the Bundeswehr to citizens of the EU would not only offer potential for wide-ranging integration and regeneration and thus strengthen the personnel base of the Bundeswehr, it would also send out a strong signal for a European approach.” According to Der Spiegel the state secretary responsible for Bundeswehr personnel, Gerd Hoofe, signed off on the concept in August.

The German initiative is aggravating tensions within the European Union. Poland’s Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz is “surprised by the advance,” writes Der Spiegel. For his government, he urged “rapid clarification in Brussels.” The opening of the Bundeswehr for foreigners without consultations in the EU, “would not be appropriate behaviour,” Der Spiegel quotes Czaputowicz. “If Germany were to introduce such a law without consulting Poland beforehand, that would not be good. Of course, Germany has more to offer to workers and probably also to soldiers.”

There are similar concerns in Bulgaria, Italy, Romania and Greece. In talks with German military attachés, for example, the Bulgarian government had made it clear that 20 percent of the positions in the Eastern European country’s armed forces could not be filled today due to staff shortages. If Germany now opened its army with significantly higher salaries, this would have “catastrophic consequences.”

Berlin’s efforts to increase its own armed forces with foreign mercenaries go hand in hand with the German government’s plans to create a “ real European army “ (chancellor Angela Merkel). With both projects German imperialism is pursuing the goal of expanding its dominance in Europe and asserting its geostrategic and economic interests in competition with the other great powers worldwide. In this process the ruling class is increasingly openly returning to the German-European power politics of the German Kaiser and of Hitler.

“Germany’s destiny: Leading Europe in order to lead the world” was the title of an essay published by an official website of the German Foreign Ministry four years ago. Since US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would withdraw US troops from Syria and that “the United States cannot continue to be the policeman of the world,” leading German foreign policymakers have been stepping up their calls for more German leadership in Europe and internationally.

“We must now put our own house in order and be more prepared ourselves—in our own interests and for our own sake,” Norbert Röttgen (CDU), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag, stated in an interview . It was now necessary to “consolidate the progress we have made in this area, i.e., to increase the military budget every year so that the Bundeswehr becomes fully operational again and is able to make its contribution.” Germany is “being required” because “without Germany nothing works either, that is also part of our responsibility, at least in Europe.”

Social Democratic Foreign Minister Heiko Maas made similar comments in an interview with the news agency dpa. “Our responsibility is growing. The expectations of us are higher than ever before,” he explained. Germany is already “assuming massive responsibility ... but the more old partners withdraw from international cooperation, the more the eyes are on us.”

Maas indicated that the ruling class was preparing a massive escalation of its war and great power offensive in the coming year. With its membership of the Security Council beginning on January 1, Germany is “moving politically even closer to crises and conflicts. Our vote will gain even more weight in the Security Council. We will not be able to duck away from difficult decisions,” the foreign minister stated.

He was particularly concerned about “the situation in the Middle East—with the conflicts in Syria, Yemen and the struggle for a Middle East peace settlement.” Germany would have to “be even more committed there than before,” and would also have to “assume military responsibility.”

The return of German militarism is also supported by the Left Party and the Greens. Their current silence on the recruitment plans of the Bundeswehr can only be interpreted as a tacit approval. Only recently, Dietmar Bartsch, the leader of the Left parliamentary group in the Bundestag, called on the German government “not only to talk” about the proposals of French President Emmanuel Macron regarding the construction of a European army, but “rather take genuine action.” And Green leader Annalena Baerbock demanded in an interview: “In a dramatically changed situation, the EU must be able to make world politics.”

If there is criticism of the defence ministry’s advance, it comes from the right. The recruitment of EU foreigners is “no solution for our personnel problem,” CDU defence official Henning Otte told the Westfälische Rundschau. “If we have difficulties in winning Germans for service in our own troops, then the attractiveness of the Bundeswehr must be increased.”

Rüdiger Lucassen, the spokesman for defence policy of the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, stated that “German citizenship” was the “basic prerequisite for service as a soldier” along with “identification with our German culture, values and norms.” He regretted that von der Leyen, despite various advertising programmes, “had not been able to fill the armed forces with the necessary personnel.”

Slowdown in China’s manufacturing growth sets tone for New Year

Nick Beams

Last year opened to claims that the world economy had entered a period of “synchronised” global growth, after experiencing its best year since the 2008 financial crisis. There was also talk of a “melt up” in US stock markets on the back of major corporate tax cuts at the end of 2017.

It is a very different picture at the start of 2019. Wall Street and global markets have just experienced their worst year in a decade amid growing signs that the world economy has begun a significant slowdown.

The New Year began with the news that a key manufacturing index in China had recorded its worst reading in 19 months—another sign that the Chinese economy is starting to slow. There are fears that it will be further adversely impacted if no trade agreement is reached with the US by the deadline of March 1 and Washington proceeds with its threat to lift tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent.

The worsening outlook for the Chinese economy was highlighted by the Caixin purchasing managers index (PMI), mainly tracking privately-owned factories, which fell to 49.7 in December from 50.2 in November. It was the first time since May 2017 that the index fell below 50, which marks the line between expansion and contraction.

The data on the private sector were published two days after China’s official PMI, which mainly tracks state-owned corporations, came in at 49.4, the first time it has fallen below 50 since July 2016.

It was significant that in both indexes new orders fell from expansion to contraction between November and December. PMIs in the China-dependent economies of Taiwan, Malaysia and the Philippines have also recorded declines for the month of December.

Other Chinese data point in the same direction. In November profits of industrial companies fell for the first time in three years and the growth in retail sales was at its lowest level in 15 years, with the auto industry particularly hard hit. According to the global consulting firm PwC, as a result of large foreign investment by major car producers, including Ford, Peugeot, Hyundai and Volkswagen, China has the capacity to produce 43 million vehicles but will build fewer than 29 million.

Reporting on the latest news of the manufacturing downturn, the Wall Street Journal commented that it was a “sign that nine months of monetary easing by the central bank has failed to boost lending in the real economy, though it has succeeded in pushing government-bond prices into bubbly territory. This kink in China’s monetary-policy machinery bodes ill for 2019, and makes predictions that growth could bottom out in the first quarter look optimistic.”

The banks were continuing to lend, but to other financial institutions and not to “the cash-starved companies that really drive growth.”

Besides the slowdown in manufacturing, the whole economy is being threatened by an escalation of tariffs.

Seeking to provide a boost to the battered US stock market, Trump issued a tweet last weekend that he had talked with Chinese President Xi Jinping and “big progress” had been made in trade discussion. A deal, if made, he tweeted, would be “very comprehensive, covering all subjects, areas and points.”

However, the key issue remains how far China will agree to US demands that it cease alleged theft of intellectual property rights and wind back, if not entirely eliminate, subsidies to state industries which the US claims are “market distorting.” These issues will be at the centre of talks between leading trade representatives of both countries on January 7.

China has already agreed to boost its imports of US products in order to address the trade imbalance between the two countries. But this is regarded as insufficient by the anti-China hawks within the Trump administration who see its industrial development, especially in high-tech areas, as a threat to the global economic and military dominance of the US.

Trump attempted to provide a further boost to the markets in a tweet yesterday. He said that the US stock market had suffered a “little glitch” in December and would recover once he had negotiated trade deals with China and other countries. The market appeared to respond, adopting a wait-and-see approach when trading began for the New Year, with the Dow recovering to finish marginally up after falling by almost 400 points at the opening.

Trump’s description of the stock market turmoil recalled the comments of President Clinton when he remarked that the Asia financial crisis of 1997–98 was just a “glitch” on the road to globalisation. Clinton was confronted with a major fallout from the Asian turmoil when the US firm Long Term Capital management had to be bailed out in 1998 in order to prevent a meltdown of US financial markets.

The trade conflict with China and its worsening growth prospects are not the only factors impacting on the world economy. The latest indications are that growth in both Germany and France is slowing. There is continuing uncertainty over the terms of British withdrawal from the European Union amid warnings that a “no deal” Brexit will have major economic and financial consequences.

Trade is also a point of conflict between the US and the EU. Under a deal struck between Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in July the US agreed to put threatened auto tariffs of 25 percent on hold in return for negotiations on tariff reductions and other trade constrictions.

However, there has been little progress in the discussions, with a leading EU trade representative accusing the US of undermining the July agreement.

Writing in the Financial Times on December 18, Bernd Lange, the chairman of the International Trade Committee of the European Parliament and the standing rapporteur for EU-US trade relations, said that with “tariff threats, intimidations and divisive rhetoric” Trump’s negotiating tactics were as “clumsy as they are alienating.”

Noting that he was “highly sceptical” that the US would deliver on the temporary truce, Lange said American envoys were now questioning the terms of the July 25 statement and were displaying “utter disregard for standard EU procedures in preparing for formal trade negotiations.”

“Finally, having brought the EU, China and others to the negotiating table with tariff threats, the US now regularly turns to blackmail,” he wrote, adding he remained “unconvinced” that the EU should enter into formal discussions under such “troubling conditions.”

Any transatlantic partnership had to be based on “mutual respect,” Lange stated, warning that “as it stands, the current US rhetoric and disregard for our values and red lines have the potential to poison transatlantic relations for years to come.”

The year 2018 was marked by slowing growing global growth, increased financial turbulence, trade war and tariff measures. The New Year has opened with clear indications that all these conditions are set to intensify.

SEED Foundation Call for Projects 2019: Promoting Local Resources of the African Soils

Application Deadline: 6 February 2019

SEED Foundation has launched a call for projects 2019 “AFRICAN TERROIRS” that aims to promote the local resources of the African soils (products local agricultural practices, agricultural practices, know-how, etc.) and optimize their management to support their role in the development of family farming in Africa.

SEED Foundation wants to support projects to maintain diversity of resources terroirs while offering opportunities for transformation and innovation of the agricultural system. This theme meets the challenges of standardization and homogenisation of practices and the loss of diversity of agri-food chains. Applicant’s project will therefore aim to address the following issues:

• To what extent can local land resources respond to challenges of an agricultural system (job creation, better meeting the demand local, etc.)?
• How to maintain the diversity of agricultural practices, for the purpose of protection different forms of ecosystem production and resilience?
• How to develop efficient and less efficient agricultural production systems consumers of natural and financial resources?
• How to support the development and diversity of local sectors, production until the marketing of the finished product?

Priorities for action

• Project Staffing / Total Project Budget: Priority will be given to projects where the SEED Foundation endowment is balanced in the budget and the funding plan.
• Sector aspect: Priority will be given to projects acting on several stages of the sector.
• Feasibility: The capacities of the project leader and the local partner, the local anchoring and coherence with the context of the zone, the coherence of the budget and the financial arrangement.
• Relevance: The respect of the objectives of sustainable development, the expected impacts of the project and the existence of evaluation mechanisms.
• Sustainability: The prospects and long-term vision of the project, particularly through valuation and capitalization.

Funding Information

• Funding awarded per project: between € 7,000 and € 15,000
• Overall envelope: 45,000 €
• Share of the total project budget allocation: between 10% and 70%, ie a total budget of project between € 10,000 and € 150,000

Eligibility of the application

• Project duration between 24 and 36 months
• The pre-project stages must already have been completed: feasibility study, diagnosis, market study, project drafting
• Spread the allocation over a maximum of 3 years and ensure that it represents between 10% and 70% of the total project budget, ie a total project budget of between € 10,000 and € 150,000.
• If the project fits into a larger program, the SEED Foundation team will ensure that its dimensions remain at the scale of its grant.

Eligibility of the holders

• The French organization
  • Issue CERFA tax receipts
  • Have experience in the field of agricultural development in Africa
  • Submit only one project per call
  • Not to be a SEED Foundation partner (project currently underway)
  • Not to be a student association
• The African organization
  • Being a non-profit organization
  • Participate actively in the project
  • Be able to continue the process after the support

Eligibility of the project

• Being in an eligible African country (mentioned above)
• Be less than 3 hours drive from the country’s capital
• Present an innovative character
• The project must concern agricultural or livestock products intended for local food and not for export
• The project must concern at least 2 stages of the sector: production, processing, marketing
• The direct beneficiaries must be identified (number and kind)

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the SEED Foundation Call for Projects 2019

UONGOZI Institute Postgraduate Diploma in Leadership (Full Scholarships available) 2019

Application Deadline: 8^th February, 2019 at 5:00pm.

About the Award: The Programme, undertaken in collaboration with Aalto University Executive Education of Finland, aims to develop leadership competencies in three areas; Making Strategic Choices, Leading People and Other Resources and Excelling in Personal Leadership Qualities. This is the third cohort to undertake this programme.
Facilitated by world-class professors and experts in leadership from around the world, the Programme is designed to encourage participants to challenge their thinking as they broaden their competencies in visioning, planning and inspiring others through advanced strategic communication. It will motivate the participants to become better designers and innovators of effective structures and systems for better results.
Each module runs for between 2-3 days of in-class workshops and online individual or group assignments.

Type: Short course

Eligibility: Completion of the Programme requires attending all modules and completing several written pre- and post-assignments and four graded exams. On successful completion, candidates will earn 18 European credits; all of which are eligible to be transferred towards the Aalto Executive MBA or Aalto MBA Program.

Selection Criteria: The candidates need to meet with the following entry requirements:

• Minimum five years of work experience in a managerial or senior specialist position
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent
• Good command of written and spoken English
• Recommendation from employer

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The tuition fees for the Postgraduate Diploma in Leadership are EUR 4,000. This covers:

1. All facilitation costs and learning and training materials, including stationery
2. All meals during training hours

The participants or their sponsors will also be responsible for:

1. Daily Subsistence Allowance (Per Diem) for each module
2. Transportation allowance to attend each module
3. On-transit expenses, incidentals and medical coverage

*A limited number of full scholarships will be available for Government employees.

Duration of Programme: 1 year

How to Apply: 

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

TÜBİTAK International Fellowships for Graduate Research in Turkey 2019

Application Deadline: 15th February, 2019

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Recognized Universities in Turkey

Eligible Fields of Study: Natural Sciences, Engineering and Technological Sciences, Medical Sciences, Agricultural Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities

About the Award: The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) grants fellowships for international highly qualified PhD students and young post-doctoral researchers to pursue their research in Turkey in the fields above. The program aims to promote Turkey’s scientific and technological collaboration with countries of the prospective researchers. Preference will be given to candidates who demonstrate the potential to contribute significantly to Turkey’s goal of international cooperation in scientific and technological development.

Type: Fellowship, Research

Eligibility: 

1. Candidates should be non-Turkish citizens. Applicants who hold dual citizenship with Turkey are   not eligible to apply.
2. Candidates should have an invitation from the universities or research institutes in Turkey.
3. Candidates should certify that they have sufficient command of language to perform their research.
4. Candidates must be 35 years old or younger.
5. Candidates should be enrolled in a program in abroad for PhD students.
6. Candidates who hold a PhD degree in Turkey should have a GPA minimum of 3.50/4.00 in PhD program.

Selection Criteria: All successfully submitted applications are listed and prepared for scientific evaluation after the prior selection. The proposal will be evaluated according to the following 4 evaluation criteria:

1. Research potential of the fellow
2. Scientific and technological quality of the research proposal
3. Impact of the proposed fellowship to the applicant’s training and career development to  the hosting institution and to Turkey
4. Implementation of the proposed research

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: The scholarship will consist of a monthly stipend, tuition fee, travel costs and health insurance.

Duration of Fellowship: Maximum duration for the fellowship is 12 months.

How to Apply: All applications must be submitted electronically via TÜBİTAK scholarship application portal by 15th February, 2019

• It is important to visit the Fellowship webpage (see link below) to access the online application form and for detailed information on how to apply for this scholarship.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details


Award Provider: Turkey Government

Nestle Nutrition Postgraduate Fellowships 2019 for Young Professionals in Developing Countries – Up to 40,000CHF in Grants

Application Deadline: 31st January 2019. 

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

Type: Postgraduate

Eligibility: 

• Priority consideration for this prestigious fellowship will be given to candidates in junior positions from emerging countries.
• The candidates’ history of previous or alternate grants will be taken into consideration.
• Candidates will be notified of their eligibility by letter.
• The application form must be accompanied by the following:
  1. Curriculum Vitae,
  2. A plan of the proposed training/activity clearly indicating its specific outcomes and
  3. Two letters of recommendation (1 from the institution where the candidate is working and 1 from the host institution*).
  4. Letter stating intent to return to the home country upon completion of the training program
  5. Details of their current level of training

Selection Criteria:

• Fellowships are available for post graduate qualifications only
• Applicant has to be affiliated with an academic/clinical institution
• Successful candidates will be required to start their training within 1 year of being notified of the fellowship award
• Duration of the support for the research training lasts for a maximum of 12 months
• Upon certification, fellowship awardees must return to their home countries.

The Panel will not accept applications, which are submitted by:

• Candidates who have already spent more than 12 months outside their home country during the 3 years preceding the application. Exceptions could be made if the applicant can justify how this additional training will supplement the one(s) already obtained
• Candidates who have already left their country at the time of applying for the fellowship
• Candidates who have completed more than one half of any training programme they may already be enrolled in
• Candidates who, at the time of submitting their application, already have a grant from any other training program
• Applications will not be entertained if the applicant’s home country law prohibits the nature of this activity.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship:  The grant includes learning a specific laboratory technique, statistics, nutrition, etc. The NNI grant up to 40’000 CHF can be used to pay course registration fees, round trip travel to the host institution, lodging and living expenses and health insurance coverage for the duration of the course.The grant offer of 40’000 CHF is also given and can be used to pay course registration fees, round trip travel to the host institution, lodging and living expenses and health insurance coverage for the duration of the course.

Duration of Scholarship: Maximum of twelve (12) months

How to Apply: 

• Applications without all documentation, including a letter of acceptance by the faculty at the hosting institution will not be considered.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

The True Nature of US Interventions

John Perry

‘Make America Great Again’: Trump’s slogan seems both to yearn for a time when the United States had more influence, and to call for its pre-eminence to be restored. In its own way, it asserts that the US is – or should be – different.  In fact it was only Trump’s predecessor, Obama, who was the first president to talk regularly about American exceptionalism, yet to Trump it is something that is long lost and it is his job to recover it. Yet belief in the US’s exceptional nature has been a constant feature of the country’s history, whoever has been president, and continues right up to the present day.

Its starting point in the early nineteenth century was the ‘Monroe doctrine’, the assertion of the US’s pre-eminent power in the western hemisphere, replacing the old colonial powers such as Spain and Portugal. Its domestic counterpart was the US’s God-given ‘manifest destiny’, which justified settlement of the whole North American continent, regardless of the presence of the people to whom much of the land already belonged. Whereas the Monroe doctrine at first reflected a degree of respect for the then newly emerging Latin American nations, by the end of the century it only thinly disguised a new kind of imperialism which justified US intervention anywhere in the hemisphere.

Soon after the end of the second world war, the former ‘great powers’ began to give up those colonies that had not already been returned to their rightful owners. But, fuelled by the cold war, the US began a new phase of imperialism. Dan Kovalik, in his new book The Plot to Control the World, quotes a report, which he says is almost certainly an underestimate, that the US interfered in 81 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000. And even that number omits more serious interventions such as US-provoked coups, assassinations and invasions. Yet, as Kovalik says, ‘American exceptionalism’ requires a belief that the US is a unique force for democracy and freedom in the world. This enables the New York Times to justify US interference in the affairs of other countries because the US is unique in using its power to challenge dictators or otherwise promote democracy, whereas Russia (say) more often intervenes to disrupt democracy or promote authoritarian rule.

Dan Kovalik is far from the first author to show US intervention in its true light. Chomsky, William Blum and many others have trodden this path with, it seems, little effect on the conscience of most of the US population or, for that matter, on that of much of Europe’s. Kovalik’s approach is to take ten examples, reduce the history of each to its essentials, recount it in very readable form and ensure that it is bang up to date. In response to the current obsession with Russian interference in the last US presidential election, he begins with an account of the much more drastic action taken by the US to ensure the right result in Russia’s 1996 election. The rest of his choices are also strategic: Iran (where the long history of US interference began when it halted an emerging democracy in its tracks), Guatemala (where it did the same and created the conditions for a war in which perhaps 300,000 people died), Congo (which was on the point of bringing to an end perhaps the world’s worst colonial nightmare), Brazil (to show that even a giant among developing powers was not allowed to shape its own future), Vietnam (for the genocide which the US unleashed), Chile (to aid the birth of neoliberalism), Honduras (showing that the supposedly liberal Obama-Clinton administration could also disregard democracy), Nicaragua (where the story comes up to 2018) and Ukraine (where the US aims to deny Russia the right to influence even what happens on its own doorstep).

In Latin America, Kovalik uses five examples, but in truth he could have cited almost every country that is a former Spanish or Portuguese colony: of those, only Costa Rica has not been the subject of US intervention and arguably the US is so dominant in its economy and the country has been so obedient in never electing rulers who have challenged US hegemony, that it has earned its immunity. While most of the former British, French and Dutch colonies have been exempt from direct interference, there have been notable exceptions. The most obvious and most recent are Grenada in 1983 and Haiti on multiple occasions. One wonders what President James Monroe would think now of the consequences of the doctrine that still carries his name.

Kovalik quotes Harold Pinter as saying that an important feature of US interventions is that they ‘never happen’. Even while they are happening they aren’t happening. Everyone should look away. So often the role of the supposedly liberal media is to turn a blind eye, especially when a US-provoked disaster is taking place, or to tell the story that favours the intervention, rather that of people who suffer from it or are resisting it. Nicaragua is a case that is very much in point.

Dan Kovalik is a much better writer than William Blum and more accessible than Noam Chomsky. His book should be required reading in US colleges and could be a useful reminder to many politicians, political commentators and journalists in Europe of the real nature of the US’s ‘exceptionalism’. As the title says, what it really amounts to is an often overlooked and not very subtle ‘plot to control the world’. Why isn’t this the message conveyed by the mainstream media, and when will they start to tell the truth?