China records lowest growth rate since 1990

Nick Beams

The Chinese economy has recorded its lowest annual growth rate since 1990 amid indications that the trade war launched by the US is starting to make an impact. According to official government data, the economy grew 6.6 percent last year with growth in the fourth quarter falling to an annual rate of 6.4 percent—the lowest level since the early months of the financial crisis a decade ago.

Commenting on the figures, the head of the National Bureau of Statistics Ning Jizhe told a news conference on Monday that the economy faced “downward pressure.” Referring to the US trade war, he pointed to a “complicated and severe external environment” but then sought to issue a reassurance that “the economy overall is driven by domestic demand.”

However, it is in the domestic economy that the signs of weakness are most apparent. China is the world’s largest auto market and sales fell last year for the first time since 1991, contracting by 4 percent. Retail sales growth has also fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade.

Apple made a surprise announcement earlier this month when it issued a downward sales revision because of lower than expected demand for its iPhones in China. Ford has cut production at a major Chinese plant in what it said was a move to reduce the inventory of unsold cars.

In a comment to the Financial Times earlier this month, Fred Hu, the former Greater China chairman for Goldman Sachs, said: “Domestic sentiment is definitely very bad, perhaps even worse than during the 2008 global financial crisis. In theory, China has wide latitude to boost domestic demand to offset the trade war hit on external demand. But sagging business and consumer confidence, private spending on both capital expenditure and personal consumption is more likely to trend down.”

This assessment has been backed by Eswar Prasad, former China head at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “Aggregate data continue to portray a relatively benign picture that seems increasingly inconsistent with a sense of growing economic malaise and souring business, consumer and investor sentiment,” he said.

Manufacturing is also contracting. Some factories in Guangdong, at the heart of China’s export economy, have shut earlier than usual ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday. Others are suspending production lines and reducing workers’ hours amid warnings that migrant workers may not have jobs to return to after the New Year break.

China has adopted a series of limited fiscal and monetary measures since last July in a bid to halt slowing growth but they appear to have had no effect so far. While credit has been eased, the move has failed to lift fixed asset investment which grew by 5.9 percent last year, a significant drop from the 7.2 percent growth recorded in 2017.

There is evidence that the slowdown may be worse than the official figures indicate. China’s growth data are generally taken with a fairly large grain of salt with many analysts, both within China and externally, regarding them as overstated.

On this occasion, prior to the release of the latest data, the government revised down the growth figure for 2017 from 6.9 to 6.8 percent. This may have been undertaken to inflate the figures for 2018 growth.

Last month, President Xi Jinping announced that the broad economic agenda for 2019 must be to maintain growth within a “reasonable range.” The objective, which will be announced in March, is expected to be a growth rate of between 6 percent and 6.5 percent. This would mean a slight downgrade on the objective last year of growth of “about 6.5 percent.”

The Wall Street Journal has reported that of the 20 provinces and municipalities that have reported their 2019 growth targets so far, 13 have cut their objectives and six have left their targets unchanged.

The Chinese government is treading a narrow path in seeking to stimulate growth. It has ruled out any return to the kind of massive stimulus package, based on government spending and the expansion of credit, that followed the 2008-2009 crisis because of concerns over the debt levels in the Chinese economy.

In any case, stimulus measures are losing their impact. According to a Moody’s analysis, the amount of new capital investment needed to generate a given unit of GDP growth has doubled since 2007. In other words, new investment has less impact on the overall economy while debt levels increase.

The exact level of debt is difficult to calculate because much of it is hidden off balance sheets, The Institute of International Finance estimates it exceeded 300 percent of GDP at the end of last year. Much of it has gone into a construction boom of unprecedented proportions—by one estimate, from the start of 2012 until 2016, China used as much cement as the US did in the entire 20th century. A great deal of that investment has gone to waste with as many as 65 million apartments in China that are unoccupied.

The slowing Chinese economy, and the increasing constrictions on government stimulus, come at a significant turning point in the world economy, with all major international economic bodies warning of a global slowdown and increased risks in 2019.

The World Bank report produced earlier this month warned of “storm clouds” with lower growth expected in the major economies.

The IMF has now revised down its predictions for global growth in 2019 warning that the world economy is weakening faster than expected.

Cutting its forecast for global growth by 0.1 percent from its October prediction to 3.5 percent, the IMF said the main reason for the change was weakness in Europe and Japan. Overall it reduced its forecast growth for the advanced economies, with growth set to drop from 2.3 percent in 2018 to 2 percent this year and falling to 1.7 percent in 2020.

IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath said that while the downward revisions were modest, “we believe the risks to more significant downward corrections are rising.”

“The cyclical forces that propelled broad-based global growth since the second half of 2017 may be weakening somewhat faster than we expected in October.… While this does not mean we are staring at a major downturn, it is important to take stock of the many rising risks.”

These include rising trade tensions and an associated worsening of financial conditions, a no-deal Brexit that would have negative spillovers across Europe, the budgetary position of Italy coupled with weakness in its banking sector, and a slowdown in China that may be steeper than expected.

Another 170 immigrants drown in the Mediterranean

Marianne Arens

More than 250 immigrants have drowned in the Mediterranean since the beginning of the year. The Italian government and European Union’s (EU’s) policies bear direct responsibility for this grim record. Last weekend alone, no fewer than 170 people lost their lives while crossing the Mediterranean.

On Saturday, the crew of Sea-Watch 3 managed to rescue 47 immigrants, including eight children, from a shipwrecked boat. The Sea-Watch 3 is currently the only NGO rescue ship still active in the Mediterranean. The Maltese government has refused to allow crews to be changed on another ship, the Professor Albrecht Penck owned by Sea-Eye, effectively preventing it from carrying out its work.

One-hundred seventeen people reportedly drowned on Friday after trying to flee Libya from Garabulli, east of Tripoli. After 10 hours at sea, the boat, with 120 people on board, began to sink. Emergency calls for help were sent. Later that day, a helicopter with the Italian navy located three survivors around 94 kilometres from the Libyan coast. Another three were dead. Sea-Watch 3 also responded to the emergency call and arrived on the scene shortly after the navy, but found no further survivors. The three rescued by the navy were therefore the only survivors from a group of 120.

The three men, from Sudan and Gambia, managed to survive in the water for several hours. The navy brought them to the island of Lampedusa. Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), told the Adnkronos news agency that 10 women and two children, including a two-month-old baby, were among the 117 missing.

Almost simultaneously, another attempted crossing from Morocco to Spain claimed the lives of 53. The announcement was made by the United Nations Agency for Refugees (UNHCR) on Saturday. One survivor reported that after the boat had sunk, he floated helplessly in the water for 24 hours before a fishing boat picked him up and took him back to Morocco. Apart from him, everyone else drowned.

Shortly before these two horrific tragedies, the IOM estimated the number of immigrants drowned in the Mediterranean by January 16 to be 83. On Sunday, a further two deaths were announced. This means the number of deaths has already surpassed 250 in the first three weeks of the year.

The Sea-Watch 3 and the 47 survivors will now be forced to wait on the high seas until a port agrees to let the desperate immigrants land. Italy and Malta have closed their ports.

Interior Minister Matteo Salvini (Lega), the strongman in Rome, responded to the situation by saying, “The ports are and will remain closed.” Salvini’s remarks perfectly sum up the inhumane refugee policies of all EU governments.

He compared the emergency rescue teams to people smugglers, drug dealers and weapons traders, and accused them of being responsible for encouraging people to risk the dangerous crossing over the Mediterranean. Salvini repeatedly wrote on Twitter, “The party is over for people smugglers and their accomplices.”

Anyone can see for themselves how this alleged “party” plays out in reality. By reading the Twitter messages of Alarm-Phone, which documents the mayday calls, one can see how the grisly tragedies occur in real time.

On Sunday, Alarm-Phone reported on a boat carrying 100 people, including 20 women and 12 children, in trouble near Misrata, Libya, at lunchtime. At 12:20 p.m., a message read,” We have received a new position. They are now 12 nautical miles further east and have navigation problems. A child is unconscious or dead. Water is entering the boat.”

After Alarm-Phone appealed to the Italian, Maltese and Libyan coast guards for urgent help, nothing happened. Rome declared that Valetta, Malta, was responsible. Valetta promised to return the call, but nobody called back. In Libya, where the coast guard now has eight telephone numbers, nobody responded throughout the day. Although the coast guard receives millions in EU funding, it is not even capable of answering a straightforward mayday call.

Shortly before 4 p.m., a Twitter message noted, “We are trying to stay in contact with the boat. One person told us, ‘Soon, I won’t be able to talk to you, I’m freezing!’ They’re panicking, our team is having to calm them down. Over the past hour, we have repeatedly heard people screaming. The situation is desperate.”

At 4:15 p.m. it was confirmed once again that Rome, Valetta and Libya had been informed numerous times. By 6 p.m., the messages indicate that desperation had seized everyone on board. At 7:40 p.m., all contact broke off, probably because the batteries of all available mobile phones ran out.

Around 10 p.m., it was then announced that a ship sailing under the flag of Sierra Leone was changing course to rescue the boat’s passengers. At 1 a.m., the message service announced that the trading ship had rescued all on board, but was bringing them back to Libya.

Only 155 immigrants have arrived in Italy since the beginning of 2019. This compares to 2,730 people during the same period in 2018. The number of immigrants who reached Europe by sea declined from 199,369 in 2017 to less than a fifth of that number, 23,371, last year.

Salvini reported that over the weekend the Libyan coast guard intercepted 393 refugees in the Mediterranean and brought them back to Libya. “The cooperation with Libya is working,” stated Salvini. In fact, the reception centres in Libya are well known to be horrendous concentration camps. They are such a living hell that refugees are prepared to risk a life-threatening journey across the Mediterranean rather than staying there.

The people currently on board the Sea-Watch 3 also confront an uncertain future.

Already in early January, the Sea-Watch 3 and the Sea-Eye ship were forced to wait at sea for 19 days before being allowed to land 49 immigrants in Valetta, the Maltese capital. It took almost three weeks for Joseph Muscat, Malta’s social democratic prime minister, to obtain enough commitments from European countries to accept the 49 immigrants. Some of those rescued went on hunger strike to draw attention to their plight.

When the immigrants were finally allowed to land on January 9, Muscat refused to let the ships dock in Valetta and instead forced the ailing passengers to transfer to ships belonging to the Maltese navy. Sea-Watch 3 and its current passengers once again face the prospect of being shut out by every European country.

Amid mounting coup threats in Venezuela, Maduro begs Trump for dialog

Bill Van Auken

Venezuelan security forces and intelligence agents suppressed an abortive revolt by elements of the country’s National Guard in the pre-dawn hours Monday, arresting 27 soldiers led by a sergeant.

The action unfolded in the midst of mounting pressure by US imperialism and Latin America’s right-wing governments—led by Brazil’s new president, the fascistic former army captain Jair Bolsonaro, and the reactionary president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri—to force the ouster of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

This has included thinly veiled as well as open appeals to the Venezuelan military to overthrow the Maduro government.

In a tweet this week Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who exercises major influence over the Trump administration’s Latin America policy, stated: “We must support those members of military in #Venezuela who have announced they will defend the constitution and recognize Guaidó as legitimate interim President.”

The reference was to Juan Guaidó, the relatively political unknown who has been elevated to the presidency of the Venezuelan National Assembly.

A member of the right-wing Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party, which has been funded with tens of millions of dollars from the US State Department and National Endowment for Democracy, Guaidó has been anointed as the sole legitimate leader of Venezuela by Latin America’s rightist regimes. The Trump White House is reportedly considering recognizing him as Venezuela’s president.

Guaidó has himself called upon the Venezuelan military to intervene, charging that Maduro’s inauguration to a second term as president earlier this month was illegitimate, interfered with the armed forces’ “chain of command” and calling for the army to “reestablish democracy.”

The right-wing opposition to which Guaidó belongs knows that it lacks the broad base of political support needed to oust Maduro by political means and therefore appeals to the military. The military command has served as a principal pillar of so-called “Bolivarian Socialism” introduced by Maduro’s late predecessor Hugo Chavez, himself a former army officer, who gained national prominence by leading his own abortive coup in 1992.

Guaidó and the National Assembly have called for a mass demonstration on Wednesday in Caracas to demand Maduro’s downfall. Meanwhile the ruling PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) has called its own demonstration for the same day, which marks the anniversary of the 1958 overthrow of the repressive Venezuelan dictatorship of Gen. Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

The argument that Maduro’s second term is illegitimate is based upon last May’s election, which was boycotted by most of the right-wing opposition, which knew that it would lose. While the vote saw a record-low turnout, reflecting the disgust and hatred of Venezuelan working people for both the government and its right-wing opponents, Maduro was elected with three times the votes of his nearest rival. This represented just 28 percent of Venezuela’s eligible voters, but still two points more than the 26 percent of eligible voters who cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2016.

While small and isolated, the military revolt Monday was significant. Its leader, who identified himself as Sgt. Alexander Bandres Figueroa, stated in a video, “You asked to take to the streets to defend the constitution, well here we are. ... You wanted us to light the fuse, so we did. We need your support.”

He went on to say that his mother was dying of cancer—in a country where access to medicine and decent medical care has become out of reach for much of the population—and that he and his men were facing the same conditions as the rest of the population.

The mutinous troops overpowered their commander and then took two army trucks and raided a police station in the Petare neighborhood of Caracas, where they seized arms. They then took over a security post in the Cotiza section of Caracas, where they issued their call for a revolt and were subsequently captured by security forces.

The clash touched off protests in Cotiza, where residents, hearing shots fired, took to the streets, to be met with tear gas. Protesters in this poorer neighborhood, which would have once been a base of support for chavismo, chanted, “The government is going to fall” and denounced the fact that the neighborhood’s water service had been cut off for a year, and that other basic utilities were constantly being cut off.

The protest, triggered by the clash within the security forces, was similar to many thousands of such demonstrations that have taken place across Venezuela as the working class suffers the effects of the country’s economic crisis, punishing US sanctions and an “adjustment” program implemented by the Maduro government to place the full burden of the crisis on the backs of the working class, while protecting the interests of foreign capital and the financial oligarchy in Venezuela itself.

The Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict (OVCS) issued its annual report last week, recording 12,700 protests in 2018—an average of 35 a day—in Venezuela. The figures represented a 35 percent increase over 2017, when the right-wing opposition organized protests aimed at toppling the Maduro government. The bulk of last year’s protests were led not by the opposition, but by the working class and the poor in response to sharply deteriorating social conditions.

In the face of threats from sections of the military, upon which his government depends, sanctions and ever-escalating pressure from Washington and its right-wing Latin American allies, on the one hand, and a threat of social upheaval from the Venezuela working class, on the other, President Maduro has directed a call to Donald Trump to reach some form of accommodation.

Maduro used an interview with a Fox News reporter to deliver the message, which appealed to Trump for a “frank, direct, face-to-face dialog.” Such a meeting, he insisted, would show Trump that “we are people with whom you can talk, negotiate, understand and agree.”

This pathetic plea to imperialism only underscores the class character of the Maduro government, which for all its “Bolivarian” and “21st Century Socialist” rhetoric, is a capitalist regime that ruthlessly defends private property and the profit interests of the financiers, corrupt government officials and military commanders that are its most important constituencies.

Its effect will doubtless be to fuel Washington’s drive for regime change, which is bound up with US imperialism’s determination to assert unrestrained domination over Venezuela’s oil reserves—the largest on the planet— and to counter the influence of Russia and China, which have established close economic and political ties with the Maduro government.

The only way out of Venezuela’s desperate crisis lies in the independent mobilization of the Venezuelan working class in opposition to the government, the ruling PSUV and their trade union stooges, as well as to the right-wing opposition, whose rise to power through a military coup would signal a bloodbath against the country’s workers and impoverished masses.

Oxfam: 26 billionaires control as much wealth as poorest half of humanity

Nick Beams

As members of the world’s financial elite gather today in Davos, Switzerland, for the opening of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, a new report by the UK-based charity Oxfam International has highlighted the vast accumulation of wealth at the heights of society, and the accelerating growth of social inequality.

The report showed that last year, the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $900 billion, or 12 percent, while 3.8 billion people—half the world’s population—saw their wealth decline by 11 percent.

Last year, the billionaires increased their wealth by $2.5 billion every day, while a millionaire moved into their ranks every two days.

In the decade since the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, governments and financial authorities have imposed its full impact on the backs of the world working class, in the form of stagnant and lower wages and austerity programs that have gutted health and other social services, to name just some of its effects. Meanwhile, wealth has become ever more concentrated. Last year, just 26 people controlled as much wealth as the 3.8 billion people who comprise half the world’s population, compared to 43 people the year before.

Oxfam noted that just 1 percent of the $112 billion fortune accumulated by Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, was equivalent to the entire health budget for Ethiopia, a nation of 105 million people.

The Oxfam report found that the top tax rate for the rich in the developed countries plunged from 62 percent in 1970 to 38 percent by 2013, and pointed to the tax cut introduced by US president Trump at the end of 2017, benefiting the wealthy and corporations.

In developing countries, the top personal tax rate is just 28 percent. In the UK and Brazil, the report found that the bottom 10 percent of the population paid a higher proportion of their income in tax than the top 10 percent.

Tax avoidance is rife. The report revealed that the super-rich were hiding $7.6 trillion from tax authorities, while corporations were holding large amounts of money offshore, depriving developing countries of $170 billion per year in revenue.

As a result, only 4 percent of all tax revenue came from the taxation of wealth.

The report noted that “the rate of poverty reduction has halved since 2013, and that “Extreme poverty is actually increasing in sub-Saharan Africa.”

It added that between 1980 and 2016, the poorest 50 percent of the world’s population received only 12 cents in every dollar of global income growth, while the top 1 percent captured 27 cents of every dollar.

A decade ago, the ruling elite’s annual meeting in Davos took place in the wake of the most severe economic and financial crisis, caused by the massive fraud and criminality of the world’s largest financial institutions.

But rather than being sent to jail, the “malefactors of great wealth” were bailed out. Over the next decade, they were provided with trillions of dollars of ultra-cheap money, enabling them to continue their wealth accumulation at an exponential rate.

According to a new report by Bloomberg, the wealth of the 12 richest Davos attendees soared by a combined $175 billion, as the overall wealth of the world’s billionaires grew, in the same period, from $3.4 trillion to $8.9 trillion.

The Bloomberg report highlights the details of this extraordinary growth:

• Mark Zuckerberg increased his wealth from $3 billion a decade ago to $55.6 billion, a rise of 1853 percent.
• Stephen Schwarzman, the head of the hedge fund Blackstone, has seen the assets of his firm rise from $95 billion at the end of 2008 to $457 billion, while his personal wealth has shot up from $2.1 billion to $10.1 billion, an increase of 486 percent.
• The media baron Rupert Murdoch has increased his wealth from $3.2 billion to $15.1 billion, a rise of 472 percent, while Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan, has enjoyed a 276 percent wealth increase, from $0.4 billion to $1.1 billion.

And the list goes on.

The strength, however, of the economic data produced by Oxfam, forms a stark contrast to its prescriptions for dealing with such extreme levels of social inequality. These centre on the development of what it calls a “human economy,” built on different principles from what it calls a “growth economy.”

The “human economy” would provide health care, education and gender equality, and create the best conditions for shared wealth. It could be financed by raising taxes on the world’s wealthiest individuals and corporations, given that just a 0.5 percent increase in taxes on the richest individuals would raise enough money to educate the 262 million children, who currently don’t receive an education, and provide health care that would save 3.3 million people from preventable deaths.

Oxfam, however, has been making such proposals for the past eight years, issuing warnings and calling for a policy switch. But to no avail. Every year the situation worsens, as Oxfam itself acknowledges, and at an accelerating rate.

The scourge of social inequality cannot be ended through futile appeals, made to the very powers that preside over the current system, to change course. They are no more capable of that, than the ancien regime in France, prior to the revolution of 1789, or the czarist autocracy in Russia, before 1917.

The only road to a genuine “human economy” is through the working class taking political power in the socialist revolution, thus ending the dictatorship of private profit and the financial markets. Only in this way can the vast resources created by the working class be utilised to meet the social needs of all.

This is the perspective that must now be advanced in the social and class struggles that are erupting around the world—from auto parts strikes in Mexico, the teachers’ strike in Los Angeles, to the huge struggles of the Indian working class. It requires the building of the world party of socialist revolution, the International Committee of the Fourth International, in every country, to provide the necessary leadership.

Joint NAM S&T Centre – ACENTDFB Fellowship in Neglected Tropical Diseases and Forensic Biotechnology 2019 for Developing Countries – Nigeria

Application Deadline: 1st February 2019
Please send the required papers at the academy before 26 January 2019

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To be taken at (country): Nigeria

About the Award:  The NAM S&T Centre is implementing a Joint NAM S&T Centre – ACENTDFB Fellowship scheme in partnership with The Centre of Excellence for Neglected Tropical Diseases and Forensic Biotechnology (hereinafter called, ACENTDFB), Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, NIGERIA to provide opportunities to the scientists from the developing countries for working in the ACENTDFB laboratories in various subjects.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility:

• Scientists and researchers should hold at least M.Sc. or equivalent qualification and should be engaged in R&D or management of scientific programmes on the identified subjects.
• There is no upper age limit, but younger scientists would be preferred.
• Selection is strictly on merit based on the scientific quality of the proposal submitted by the applicant.
• From any given developing country only one scientist / researcher will be accepted in any given financial year.
• Scientists from Nigeria are not eligible to apply for this Fellowship.

Number and Value of Awards: One researcher will be selected from each Member State of the Center based on the applicant’s academic and professional background. The NAM Center will pay the international airfare. The ACENTDFB will provide free furnished accommodation and a monthly subsistence allowance of US $400 per month to the selected Fellows for the duration of the Fellowship.   

Duration of Programme: 1-2 months

How to Apply: 
Please submit the registration form with the required documents at:asrt.organizations@gmail.com

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

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

ARPPIS-DAAD Scholarships 2019/2020 for PhD Scholars in African Countries

Application Deadline: 11^th February 2019

To be Taken at: Scholars conduct their innovative research at icipe’s laboratories and at field sites located in various agro-ecological zones.

About the Award: The primary objective of ARPPIS is to prepare young researchers from Africa to compete in an internationally competitive research environment within national, regional and international research programmes. At icipe ARPPIS scholars are provided with excellent research facilities in an interdisciplinary environment within a structured, three-year PhD programme that includes research, training, developing research partnerships, writing scientific papers and grant proposals, and attending scientific meetings and international conferences.

List of Projects: These ARPPIS-DAAD PhD scholarships are available to nationals of sub-Saharan countries for the following projects: LIST OF PROJECTS

Type: PhD

Eligibility: Applicants for these Fellowships must meet the following criteria:

• The applicant must be a citizen of a country in sub-Saharan Africa. Some country restrictions apply. See LIST OF PROJECTS above for more details.
• A Bachelor’s degree with a minimum pass of second-class, upper division.
• A Master’s degree taken with both coursework and research in the field of natural sciences or other field relevant to the PhD project.
• The Master’s degree must have been completed less than six years ago at the time of application.
• Qualified female candidates and candidates from less privileged regions or groups as well as candidates with disabilities are especially encouraged to apply.
• Qualified nationals of French- and Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa are also encouraged to apply.
• Preference will be given to applicants with a maximum age of 36 years (men) or 40 years (women) by 31^st December 2019.
• Additional specific entrance requirements will be considered for admission depending on the eligible PhD project(s) selected by the candidate. For information on applicant requirements for each project, go to LIST OF PROJECTS.
• A working knowledge of English (written & spoken).
• Completed application forms and accompanying supporting documents. Note: please start the application process as soon as possible, especially if some of the supporting documents are difficult to obtain.

Number of Awards: Six ARPPIS-DAAD PhD scholarships are available.

Value of Award: 

• The scholarships cover all costs of the PhD programme, including travel, living expenses, medical insurance, university fees and all research and training costs.
• Successful candidates will develop a full proposal and register with an ARPPIS partner university in Africa after they start the PhD programme at icipe.

Duration of Award: 3 years. The ARPPIS PhD programme will commence from September 2019.

How to Apply: 

• Full instructions and online application: LINK
• Before applying it is recommended that you read very carefully the application guidelines for detailed information on eligibility criteria, deadlines and other key requirements of the application procedure.

Visit the Scholarship Webpage for Details

Dream Together Masters Scholarships 2019/2021 for International Students

Application Deadline: 8th February 2019

To be taken at (country): Seoul National University, South Korea

About the Award: The Dream Together Master is a graduate scholarship programme at the Seoul National University, Korea, which is fully funded by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) and the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation (KSPO). It is a unique opportunity to hone sport management skills in a multicultural environment. Every year, FISU presents candidates for this scholarship.

Type: Masters

Eligibility:

• The DTM programme is offered to countries recognised in the List of Official Development Aid Recipients provided by the Development Assistance Committee (Developing countries)
• FISU invites its member National University Sports Federations (NUSFs) to present candidates for this scholarship.
• Achievements in sport, education and social activity would be highly appreciated – especially at FISU events – and that preference will be given to top level athletes as well as to applicants that are interested on writing a thesis related to the University Sports Movement.

Number of Awards: Not specified

How to Apply: 

• All student application forms must be sent to the FISU Education Department at education@fisu.net, with ‘DTM Scholarship 2019’ mentioned in the mail subject. Further details on eligibility and all required documents can be found here. 
• In addition to the documents listed, candidates are required to provide an official recommendation letter from their National University Sports Federation or Continental University Sports Federation.
• The 2019 Admission Guide and the DTM brochure can also be downloaded.
• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

UNESCO/IUPAC Postgraduate Scholarship 2019 for International Students – Czech Republic

Application Deadline: 22nd February 2019.

Eligible Countries: International 

To Be Taken At (Country): Czech Republic

About the Award: Over the years, more than 150 young researchers from different countries participated in UNESCO/IUPAC Courses (see archive) and contributed to a number of scientific projects.  The participant of the UNESCO/IUPAC Course joins a current research project led by an experienced supervisor from the Institute (for research program of the Institute, see http://www.imc.cas.cz). Preliminary contact with the potential supervisor is recommended. The participant is obliged to attend a series of lectures and practica on various topics of polymer science given by Institute specialists.
Graduates can follow in their studies in the Czech Republic as PhD students at Charles University, Institute of Chemical Technology or other in collaboration with laboratories of the Institute.

Type: Research

Eligibility: 

• Candidate must have Masters or PhD degree.
• The official language of the Course is English; hence, good command of English is a necessary condition for admittance.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• The participants receive monthly scholarship of CZK 9.500,-  (EUR 354,- ).
• The participants  use facilities at the IMC building in Prague 6 or at the IMC laboratories in the BIOCEV building in Vestec (outskirts of Prague).
• In addition, the Institute offers free accommodation at the Academy Hotel Mazanka.
• The Institute reimburses the payment the participant made to obtain visa.

Duration of Program: The Course begins on 1st October every year and lasts ten months.

How to Apply: Apply here

It is important to go through application instructions on the Program Webpage before applying.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: The Course is organized under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, UNESCO and IUPAC.

The Next Recession: What It Could Look Like

Dean Baker

With the New Year and the US recovery soon to be record-breaking in duration, many are asking when the next recession is likely to come and what will cause it. While none of us has a crystal ball that gives a clear view of the future, there are a few things we can say.

First, and most importantly, the next recession will not look like the last recession. The last recession was caused by the collapse of a massive housing bubble that had been the driving force in the previous recovery. While economists like to pretend this was an unforeseeable event, that is not true.

There was an unprecedented run-up in nationwide house prices. It was clear that this was not being driven by the fundamentals of the housing market, as there was no remotely corresponding increase in rents, and vacancy rates were hitting record levels.

Furthermore, it was easy to see the housing bubble was driving the economy. Residential construction was hitting record shares of GDP, more than two full percentage points above its long-term average of 4.0 percent of GDP.

The wealth created by the bubble was also leading to a consumption boom, as people spent based on the new equity created by the run-up in the price of their home. This was also easy to see in the data, as the ratio of consumption-to-income hit record levels.

This history is important to review because many analysts are looking for the next recession to be a replay of the 2008 crash. If we pretend that the bursting of the housing bubble and subsequent downturn was an unforeseeable event, then there could be other unforeseen events that will sink the economy. For this reason, it is necessary to point out that the 2008 collapse was entirely foreseeable, economists just ignored the evidence that was visible to anyone who examined the economy with open eyes.

If we rule out the collapsing bubble as the story for the next recession, we are left with the standard story that explains every recession since the end of World War II and before 2001. The Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates too high in an effort to head off inflation. While this chain of events is not likely to trigger a recession in 2019, it is certainly plausible that it will play out in 2020.

While wage growth has been sluggish following the Great Recession, the tighter labor market is finally giving workers more bargaining power. The year-over-year rate of increase in the average hourly wage (the most commonly used measure) was 3.2 percent in the December data. That is up from a 2.5 percent rate in 2017. If we take the annual rate for the most recent three months compared with the prior three months, it is slightly faster at 3.3 percent.

This pace of wage increases is not terribly fast, but it does seem likely that the pace will continue to accelerate if the labor market stays tight. The rate of productivity growth has remained very weak in this recovery at just over 1.0 percent.

Productivity growth acts as an offset to wage growth. If productivity growth were equal to growth (3.2 percent in the most recent data) then employers are seeing no increase in their labor costs per unit of output.

However, in a context where wage growth is 3.2 percent and productivity growth is just 1.0 percent, labor costs per unit of output are rising at a 2.2 percent rate. If wage growth accelerates with no corresponding increase in productivity, then labor cost per unit of output will be rising more rapidly.

Higher labor costs will not be passed on directly in higher prices. Conditions of competition will likely limit firms’ ability to raise prices. This means profits may be reduced to some extent. This is perfectly reasonable, since there was a large increase in profits at the expense of workers in the Great Recession.

However, at some point it is likely that higher labor costs will lead firms to raise their prices more rapidly. If the Fed is committed to maintaining its target of a 2.0 percent average inflation rate, it will find it as necessary to raise interest rates to increase the unemployment rate and reduce workers’ ability to secure pay increases. While it surely does not want to induce a recession with higher rates, the history suggests that this is a likely outcome.

Again, this is not a story that is likely to play out in 2019. The inflation rate remains under 2.0 percent using the core personal consumption expenditure deflator, which is the key measure for the Fed. However, if wage growth does continue to pick up in the next few months, then we are likely to see a somewhat higher inflation rate in the near future.

That could trigger more aggressive rate hikes by the Fed. Given the lag between increases in interest rates and their impact on the economy, Fed rate hikes in the middle of 2019 will not lead to a recession in 2019, but they certainly could in 2020.

That would be my best guess as to what the next recession looks like and when it will come. There can always be extraneous factors that would hugely change the picture. For example, if a war or revolution lead to large disruptions of oil flows and therefore sharp price rises. It is also possible that Trump’s trade wars get completely out of control and go from being minor drags on the economy to major disruptions.

But, barring these sorts of unpredictable events, I would go with a Fed-induced recession in 2020.

Macronist Repression Against the People in Yellow Vests

Jérôme Duval

A State of Emergency That Does Not Say His Name

According to Vincent Brengarth, a lawyer at the Paris Bar, in recent years we have been witnessing a disturbing drift in police repression in France, more specifically since November 2015 when the state of emergency was pronounced and extended several times, before being integrated into common law. We would henceforth be under “a state of emergency that does not say its name,” with preventive arrests only based on suspicion, without concrete evidence of an offence.

Figures from the Ministry of Law Enforcement 

On Saturday, 8th December, the “Yellow Vests” movement maintained its progress as it gathered a total of 136,000 demonstrators throughout the country (including nearly 10,000 in Paris), a comparable level on Saturday the 1^stof December while 106,301 people were counted during the previous weekend, according to the, regularly underestimated, figures of the Ministry of the Interior. In the wake of the mobilisation on the 1^st of December, the Minister Christophe Castaner was quick to review the figures of the 24th of November, as he re-evaluated the number of protesters to 166,000 people instead of the previously announced 106,000. We may notice this jump of nearly 60,000 people that suddenly appeared in the Department’s own numbers, an accounting manipulation that allows to say that the movement is decreasing…

Paris on insurgent alert

For this fourth Saturday of demonstrations for the Yellow Vests, 89,000 members of the so-called “law” enforcement authorities were mobilised, including 8,000 in Paris, supported by 14 “VBRG” (Véhicules Blindés à Roues de la Gendarmerie – Wheeled Armoured Vehicles of the Gendarmerie). The tension was palpable. In the capital, 36 metro stations were closed to the public, many shops did not raise their curtains and the doors of a dozen museums (including the Louvre, the musée d’Orsay, the Grand Palais, the musée de l’Homme or the Museum of Modern Art) as well as other iconic tourist sites such as the Eiffel Tower, the Catacombs or the Arc de Triomphe, remained closed. Performance halls, from the Opéra to the Comédie-Française, to the Théâtre Marigny and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées cancelled their performances.

1,723 arrests

A massive wave of arrests took place this Saturday, 8th December, the fourth Saturday or act IV of the mobilisation of the “Yellow Vests” movement. Arrests were made in which the police confiscated vials of physiological saline, brought to help and relieve people asphyxiated by tear gas, protection masks, cyclist helmets, etc. Stealing the protective material from the protesters aroused indignation and added fuel to the fire. Despite being non-violent, with the legitimate intention of protecting themselves from the violence of the weapons used by the police, these intimidations end up prompting them to no longer “remain peaceful, since it is useless”, as confided by Jean-Philippe interviewed by Mediapart.

In the capital, the race for arrests was in full swing. We went from 121 arrests at 7:30 in the morning to 575 at 2 pm. Police stations very quickly became saturated. Finally, on the day of Saturday, 8th December, police forces arrested 1,723 people participating in the movement, including 1,082 in Paris alone, which resulted in 820 in police custody. A young mother delivered a damning testimony when she found herself in custody without having been accused of anything and without being able to breastfeed her four-month-old baby. “It’s a state of emergency that does not say its name, a misuse of power for the benefit of the judiciary,” insists the lawyer registered with the Bar of Paris, Vincent Brengarth. Since the start of the Yellow Vest movement in mid-November, the French police have carried out 4,523 arrests, of which 4,099 resulted in police custody.

Florent Compain, president of Friends of the Earth – France, and Denys Crolotte, of the Movement for a nonviolent alternative, were arrested in the procession of the Climate March in Nancy. Their only crime was to have organised and held a demonstration despite the ban made by the Prefecture. It proved to be a real success, gathering between 1,000 and 1,500 people. Here too, it seems that bringing “an answer to the problems of the end of the world as much as the problems of the end of the month” to converge the national stakes of the mobilisation have not been to the taste of the police who have done everything possible to avoid this convergence on the ground. But, supporters have multiplied and the police station switchboard collapsed beneath phone calls. Denys and Florent were finally released after being detained in custody for more than 21 hours by the police. They face a possible six-month prison sentence and a 7,500 euros fine.

In the meantime, the complaints lodged loom large as we celebrate, on 10th December, the 70^thanniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 9 of which states: “No one shall be arbitrarily arrested, detained or exiled.”

Violence, let’s talk about it!

Saturday, 1^stDecember, while protests were held throughout France, Zineb Redouane, an 80 year old woman, was in her apartment on the fourth floor of 12, rue des Feuillants, adjacent to la Canebière in Marseille. Suddenly, as she was about to close her shutters she received a tear gas bomb in her face, shot during incidents on la Canebière after the demonstrations. Her neighbour Nadjia Takouche, listened to the old lady’s description of events while she was transported to La Timone hospital, then to Conception Hospital, to be operated on. “But how could they fire on the fourth floor? The police took a good aim at me. They fired with a gun, then got into the car and left. Maybe they thought I was filming with a mobile,” she wondered before dying a few hours later, in the operating room of Conception Hospital, on Sunday, 2nd December. A judicial investigation, yet another, will be entrusted by the prosecutor to the IGPN, the police of the police.

A few days later, young people from Simone-de-Beauvoir High School in Garges-lès-Gonesse demonstrated on 5th December, 2018 against Parcoursup in front of their High School. One of them, Issam, a final-grade student aged 17, was hit by a Flash-Ball shot and collapsed in front of his teacher Mathieu Barraquier, with his cheek ripped open. On the same day, 16-year-old Oumar was seriously injured by a shot from a Flash-Ball (lanceur de balles de défense – LBD), at the door of lycée Jacques-Monod high school in Saint-Jean-de-Braye, near Orléans. On the next day, the 6th of December, came the shocking news of the arrest of 151 young people in Mantes-la-Jolie. On images that went viral on the Internet, students were lined up, kneeling on the ground, hands on their heads or handcuffed with Rilsan (plastic bracelets), under the surveillance of armed agents. A policeman was distinctly heard commenting on the scene: “Here’s a class that knows how to keep quiet.”  The same day, 6th December, some 130 former high school students engaged in the movements of 1968, 1977, 1986, 1990, 1994, 2000, 2005 or 2013 under the various governments of General De Gaulle, Georges Pompidou, Valéry Giscard D’Estaing, François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy or Francois Hollande sounded the alarm. “A step has been taken” towards further repression, they worried.

Two days later, Fiorina, a 20-year-old student from Amiens, and Thomas, also aged 20, a student from Nîmes, were badly wounded in the face by rubber bullets on the Champs-Élysées. Le Front de Mères, the first parent’s union in the lower-income neighbourhoods, has published a forumin which parents denounce “the infamous police repression worthy of a dictatorship” suffered by their children. Le Front de mères claims to be “in solidarity with the legitimate demands of our children, who refuse to comply with “reform” after “reform” that restrict their fields of possibilities and their future prospects, (…) in solidarity with their claims against Parcoursup, the “reform” of the bac, the elimination of 2,600 positions since September, and discrimination in the school system. They demand that “the right of our children to protest and express themselves” be respected and supports the complaints lodged by lawyers of high school students who are the victims of police violence. Finally, le Front de mères calls for the protection of its children by intervening as shields against the police, because: “A country where children are terrorised is heading towards dictatorship and fascism.”

At the rally in Bordeaux on 8th December, Antoine, 26, had his right hand amputated after the explosion of a grenade he was trying to return to “the law enforcement”. 32 other protesters were injured. Antoine was probably mutilated by a GLI-F4 explosive grenade, a weapon made up of 25 grams of TNT and tear gas, which reaches 165 decibels when it explodes, louder than a plane taking off and that only France uses in Europe in its operations to “maintain public order”. “I don’t exactly blame the cops,” says Antoine, “but this system that has left people arming themselves in such a way against other people who are not at all ready to face that. However, as early as the 30th of November, a group of lawyers of people wounded by this type of ammunition sent an open letter to the Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, in which they called on him to stop the use of this grenade in view of the protest planned for the next day, the 1^stof December. “Despite the fact that since 2016, both le Défenseur des droits (the Defender of Rights) and Christians Against Torture (ACAT) have sounded the alarm about the use of these firearms, the State continues to make extensive use of these explosive grenades at the risk of mutilating or even killing”, they denounced in their letter. For now, the only answer to this letter is the indiscriminate repression of a government in disarray. The collective plans to bring appeals before the administrative court. “In a joint report dated 2014, the Inspectorate General of the National Gendarmerie, as well as that of the National Police, indicate that these grenades are likely to mutilate or mortally injure,” says Raphael Kempf, one of the lawyers of the collective. “Whether on the area to defend Bure (Meuse) or Notre-Dame-des-Landes (Loire-Atlantique), this grenade has already resulted in many wounded…” denounces Aïnoha Pascual, the lawyer of Gabriel, another demonstrator who had half his hand torn off on 24th November.

Confiscated protective equipment, rights of the press violated

Several photo-reporters said they had their work equipment confiscated. The photographer Véronique de Viguerie told L’Express how the protective equipment of this journalist were confiscated by the police, making her vulnerable in the heart of Saturday’s demonstrations. “I arrived in front of the Louvre and there were four boys sitting on a pavement. They had just been stopped by the police. I took a picture and that’s when the police approached me. They searched me, told me to turn around. I showed my press card and reminded them that I was a journalist. But they took my bag, in which I had two snowboard helmets, which had “press” written on them with tape, two snowboard masks and two painting masks.”

Four journalists’ unions, the SNJ, the SNJ-CGT, the CFDT and FO, asked on Monday, 10th December to be received “urgently” by Emmanuel Macron after “inadmissible blunders” made by the police, especially in Paris, against field reporters and photographers on the sidelines of the Yellow Vests demonstration. They “demand explanations from the police headquarters, the Ministry of the Interior and the government on the instructions given to arrive at this situation”. “From 8 am on Saturday, many press photographers, clearly identified as such, had their personal protective equipment (helmets, goggles, gas mask) confiscated, sometimes under the threat of being taken into police custody”, they wrote in a joint statement. Among the wounded journalists on Saturday, the 8th of December, two Parisien photographers were targeted by Flash-Ball, one of them, Yann Foreix, was the target of a shot in the back by a policeman, at a distance of two metres. Same scenario for Boris Kharlamoff, a photographer from the agency A2PRL, also hit in the back by a rubber projectile fired by a plainclothes policeman. A  Le Journal du dimanche photographer, Eric Dessons, was hospitalised for a fracture in his hand after being hit twice by a CRS policeman and a Reuters photographer was hit by a flash-ball shot in Bordeaux. Also in Paris, on Saturday, 8th December, the reporter of the famous radio show, Là-bas si j’y suis, Gaylord Van Wymeersch, was attacked by an agent of the BAC (anti-crime squads of the National Police deployed on a huge scale in civilian clothing, with or without armband) who gave him a blow from a truncheon and broke his phone. His colleague, Dillah Teibi, recorded the scene.

Finally, when a Republican law enforcement officer spoke to an independent photographer, covering the protests, in these terms: “If you want to stay alive, then go back home! You’ve got no business being here! “, then we can ask questions about the maintenance of the Republican order. Macron, in his speech of 10th December, spoke exclusively of the violence of the “thugs”, without even mentioning the countless victims wounded by the lethal weapons of the police. However, the provisional record of the fourth Saturday of 8th December demonstration is heavy: 264 wounded including 39 police, greater than the previous week of 229 wounded including 28 police officers. Hospitals in Paris took care of 170 wounded, compared with 162 on the 1^stof December. In all, since the beginning of the movement in mid-November, nearly a thousand people have been injured and sometimes very seriously. A non-exhaustive list of the serious injuries of these last demonstrations prepared by the Désarmons-les! collective sends a shiver down the spine. It mentions 3 hands amputated by GLI F4 grenades and at least 4 eyes gouged out by LBD 40 shots.

Unfortunately, to cope with such an influx of wounded, of which we list only too few, the health services suffer from a glaring lack of resources that could easily be mobilised by restoring the ISF – Impôt sur la fortune (wealth tax) for example. Following the demonstration on 8th December, the Association of Users and Health Personnel (AUP’S) revolted in a statement against the fact that the human resources and material resources intended to treat people with dignity are reduced from year to year, while “People die in emergency services or sleep on camp beds for lack of space.” The association says it is preparing to go down the street again and demonstrate with the Yellow Vests.

Note Bene, 16th December, 2018: The arms manufacturer Jean Verney-Carron, general manager of the eponymous company that invented the famous Flash-Ball (the Verney-Carron company, in Saint-Etienne, employs 90 employees and represents 15 million euros in turnover), said in a statement that the Flash-Ball is no longer used by the police and begs the journalists to no longer mention it regarding the repression of the current social movement. The brand Flash-Ball is however reproduced here in this text according to the journalistic sources that use it. It should be noted however that the Flash-Ball, in use since 1995, has effectively been replaced by the LBD 40, a machine of the same kind but much more dangerous as it is more precise and more powerful. In addition, the Flash-Ball, after having seriously injured many demonstrators, including Alexandre and Bruno de Villiers-le-Bel who lost an eye in 2009, is now intended for export for keeping the peace operations abroad. As with the methods of counterrevolutionary war used by the French army during the Algerian war, then taught in the United States and Latin America to support the dictatorships in place, French equipment and know-how in repression cross the borders.