Australia: Hundreds of immigration detainees launch hunger strikes

Eric Ludlow

Over the past two weeks, hundreds of detainees have launched hunger strikes against the inhumane conditions to which they are subjected in immigration centres across Australia.

Around 200 detainees at the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation (MITA) centre initiated the wave of protests on January 9. Days later, on January 14, some 250 immigrants at the Yongah Hill detention centre in Western Australia also began a hunger strike.

The MITA protest initially ended after a week when officials agreed to paltry improvements to the facility, including curtains for toilets and showers that were built without doors. The detainees, however, renewed the action last Monday morning. Hunger strikes were reported this week also at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Sydney and the Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation facility in Queensland.

The striking detainees describe their living conditions as “worse than a prison.” They have small rations of food, which they say is “awful,” and are denied second portions.

The inmates are locked inside their rooms between midnight and 7 a.m. They sleep on metal bunks and have only metal chairs.

MITA, in the northwestern Melbourne suburb of Broadmeadows, was built in 2008. It is Australia’s newest detention facility, staffed by private contractor Serco.

The hunger strike began after a video shot at MITA’s South compound showed a detainee being set upon by five guards and dragged out of the mess hall. His fellow detainees said he had asked for garlic with his food. Another prisoner who tried to intervene in defence of his friend was forcibly restrained by three guards and dragged from the room.

In 2017, the government’s own Australian Human Rights Commission reported that guards used excessive restraints at MITA. The commission also condemned the limited space and privacy at MITA.

Despite a blackout of their struggle by the Australian corporate media, detainees have spoken out about the conditions they face.

Issa Andrwas, a Jordanian detainee at Yongah Hill, told the New Zealand Newshub website: The “hunger strike, we have been doing it since Monday, we’ve started losing weight because we’re having only water.”

Andrwas said the strikers feared reprisals. He said: “Anyone who’s protesting, they’re gonna ship to different centres, and we’re not getting visas, because we’re showing the world what’s been happening in here.”

Yongah Hill detainee Lee Barber, originally from New Zealand but who has been living in Australia for 45 years, told Television New Zealand (TVNZ) that detainees want their freedom. He did not know how long he could continue the strike saying: “There’s been no medical come around.”

Paula Maka Smith, another New Zealander at Yongah Hill, told Newshub: “All races all together, you know. We’re all here together. The system has failed us.”

The Department of Home Affairs blithely denies that any hunger strikes have occurred. An Australian Border Force spokesperson last week claimed there was “no mass hunger strike.” Rather, “some detainees are refusing to attend regular meal times as part of a protest,” but “they continue to eat and drink in other parts of the facility.”

Many of the detainees are refugees who fled US-led and Australian-backed wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Others have escaped persecution by Australian-supported regimes in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Most spend years at the detention centres waiting for their visa applications to be approved, or for deportation after their visas have been cancelled.

Some who have taken part in the hunger strikes have lived in Australia for decades. They are victims of a “visa crackdown” by the Liberal-National Coalition government with the full support of the Labor Party opposition.

The Coalition and Labor passed changes to the Migration Act in 2014 allowing non-citizens, including permanent residents, to be deported if convicted of crimes that carry a maximum sentence of 12 months or more.

A number of those targeted are New Zealand citizens who have lived in Australia for most of their lives.

The 12-month figure is cumulative. People who have been convicted during their lifetime of minor offences potentially carrying a combined sentence of 12 months’ imprisonment can be deported. In some cases, visas have been cancelled for traffic offences.

The Coalition government boasts that it has cancelled 4,150 visas since 2014, compared with 582 cancellations between 2009 and 2013.

In a media release last year, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and Immigration Minister David Coleman foreshadowed a further amendment to the Migration Act, expected to be passed in parliament’s first sitting period of 2019.

The release was laced with xenophobia, declaring: “Foreign nationals who think they can flout our laws and harm Australian citizens should expect to have their visa cancelled.”

The deportation measures have been linked to the racist campaign againstAfrican youth, based on bogus claims of an “African gangs crisis” in Melbourne. Earlier this month, the Australian reported a marked increase in the number of Sudanese nationals having their visas cancelled in the past two years.

All the official parliamentary parties promote anti-immigrant prejudice to divide the working class and divert attention from their own responsibility for the deepening social crisis confronting millions of people.

Labor and the trade unions seek to blame “foreign workers” for the growth of unemployment and poverty that is the result of their decades-long imposition of pro-business policies.

Labor has played a central role in the persecution of refugees. In 1992, the federal Labor government of Paul Keating introduced mandatory detention for all asylum-seekers who arrive by boat. In 2012, the Greens-backed Labor government of Julia Gillard reopened the concentration camps on Nauru and Manus Island and decreed that the refugees imprisoned there would never be allowed into Australia.

The only alternative to the nationalist poison being promoted by the political and media establishment is the fight for the unity of all workers in a common struggle against the source of the deepening social crisis: the capitalist profit system.

Spain: Podemos co-founder Íñigo Errejón splits from party

Paul Mitchell

The fifth anniversary this month of the founding of the Spanish pseudo-left party Podemos [“We can”] was marked by the most serious split in the organisation’s short existence.

Five years to the day since the party’s establishment, January 17, Podemos co-founder and number two in the party leadership Íñigo Errejón called a press conference to announce he had allied with “independent” Madrid city mayor Manuela Carmena ahead of May’s local and regional elections.

Last November, Carmena created More Madrid (Más Madrid) to replace the Now Madrid (Ahora Madrid) “citizen platform” that Podemos helped create to run for re-election as mayor. Carmena defined More Madrid as “innovative, independent, democratic and progressive” and formed “by individuals, not parties.”

At his press conference, Errejón declared that Podemos had “failed as a political instrument” because it had not generated “hopes and confidence.” The recent formation of a Popular Party (PP)–Citizens coalition in Andalusia backed by the fascist Vox party, overturning 36 years of Socialist Party (PSOE) rule, had been “a wake-up call,” he said.

Polls suggest that the PP, Citizens and Vox could win 31 seats in the Madrid city election—two more than needed to form a majority administration.

The rise of Vox is a devastating indictment of Errejón and the “left populism” promoted by his mentor, Belgian academic Chantal Mouffe, with whom he co-wrote Podemos: In the Name of the People (2016). Shortly after the book’s publication, Errejón claimed that thanks to Podemos’ “popular and patriotic discourse” and because it occupied the same political “space,” the party would prevent the rise of a far-right movement in Spain.

The pro-capitalist, anti-Marxist basis of “left populism” is revealed by Errejón’s demands that all talk of “nostalgia” for or “defence” of “the left,” i.e., of socialism, has to be abandoned and a “broad democratic front” built.

He lamented, “We cannot be the only left in the world that has no homeland, I am very proud of my country, and the country I am proud of, Spain, is a country that is a leader in freedom, in tolerance, in human rights, in democracy ... So democracy must be taken care of.”

The statement, “The Strategy of International Class Struggle and the Political Fight Against Capitalist Reaction in 2019,” posted January 3 on the WSWS, discussed contemporary “left populism.” It explained that this brand of politics is a debased version of the 1930s anti-socialist Popular Front politics of class collaboration, justified with “democratic” phraseology, but without the “historical, let alone political, connection to the working class” that enabled the Stalinist parties to subordinate the working class to the capitalist class and enabled Hitler’s victory in Germany and Franco’s in Spain.

The January 3 statement continued, “In opposition to Marxism and socialism, the politics of Mouffe [and Errejón] and the pseudo-left advocates the formation of an amorphous, programmatically undefined, supra-class and nationalist movement. As Mouffe explicitly states, the left-populist movement neither identifies itself as socialist nor calls for a struggle against the capitalist state. It envisions the possibility of finding points of agreement and collaboration with the extreme right, as Syriza has done in Greece and Podemos in Spain. Opposing the fight to win the working class to a socialist program, left populism advocates the utilization of myths and other forms of irrationalist politics:

“Left populism is one expression of the politics of the pseudo-left, which has its theoretical origins in the demoralized denial of the revolutionary role of the working class by the theoreticians of the Frankfurt School and the postmodernist denial of objective truth and the Marxist and Trotskyist ‘grand narrative’ of the revolutionary class struggle. Pseudo-left politics, based on the elevation of race, gender, sexual identity and the ‘people,’ is the politics of a privileged layer of the middle class, the top 10 percent of the population, which is covered over with left phraseology and slogans like the ‘Party of the 99 Percent.’”

Following Errejón’s announcement, Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias confirmed that the party had split. However, he made no political assessment of his former deputy’s departure because there is little of substance to differentiate them.

Claims that their conflicts reflect differences of principle or of class orientation are politically fraudulent. Both are travelling on the same “left populist” dirt-track, with Errejón being the pre-eminent opportunist weathervane and pointing the way.

Iglesias was left to complain, “I could not imagine that today, when we should be celebrating the fifth birthday of Podemos, things would be like this… I can’t believe that Manuela [Carmena] and Iñigo were concealing the fact that they were working on an electoral project of their own for the Madrid region, and that they made a surprise announcement. Our members deserve more respect than that.”

Iglesias nevertheless wished Errejón “good luck building his new party,” before confirming that Podemos will run candidates against him in May.

The disintegration of Podemos has been viewed with concern by the ruling elite, which recognises its vital role in stabilizing the Spanish state amid growing economic crisis and social opposition. An editorial of the pro-PSOE El País warned, “An irrelevant Podemos today would be bad news, not only for the PSOE, which has treated it as a potential partner and which sees a space to the left that it cannot absorb, but also because the movement was really able to detect a political need. Democratic systems need to formulate alternatives with utopian components, aspirational elements that do not reduce politics to mere management and that strive to open other ways to involve the citizenry.”

However, the claim by Podemos to represent a new “progressive” politics against “the caste” is already in tatters. Gone are the days when Podemos polled around 30 percent of the vote making it the country’s number one party. Polls, before this latest crisis, suggest that support for Podemos and the United Left (IU) combined has slumped to 16 percent and the Unidos-Podemos alliance has been relegated to fourth place.

In power, Podemos has acted as an appendage of the PSOE and defender of the Spanish state. Podemos was key to the installation of a minority PSOE government in 2018 that has continued, in all essentials, the policies of austerity, militarism and repression in Catalonia of the previous PP government.

Workers and youth have witnessed, first-hand, its record in office in numerous town halls and city halls. Promises that Podemos-led “municipalities of change” (Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza, Cádiz, etc.) would reverse austerity and use “citizen debt audits” to stop the payment of “illegitimate” debts came to nothing … nowhere more so than in Madrid.

In June 2015, Carmena’s Podemos-led coalition Now Madrid gained power in the capital, ending 24 years of right-wing PP rule. The newly appointed head of finance at Madrid City Council, Carlos Sanchez Mato, a leader of the United Secretariat’s Anticapitalistas faction in Podemos, trumpeted, “The way to fulfil our obligations is to cast aside the spending rule, battling until the last stand.”

Within months of this boasting, Carmena acceded to demands from the PP government not only to reverse the limited increase in social spending and investment implemented, but to drastically cut the budget.

Iglesias leapt to Carmena’s defence, saying she had no choice but to comply and insisted that she would be reselected as Now Madrid’s 2019 mayoral candidate.

The whole filthy episode was covered up by the Pabloite Anticapitalistas, who have continually peddled the illusion that Podemos could be “reinvigorated” by “social mobilisation” to return to the party’s founding document (largely written by the Anticapitalistas) promising debt cancellation, nationalisation and membership control.

Following Errejón’s departure, Anticapitalistas leader and Viento Sur editor Brais Fernández complained that the leadership of Podemos “has failed miserably when it comes to setting up a project in Madrid, lacks a broad, dynamic and articulated militant base, and has behaved with a terrible arrogance towards the other sectors combined with political opportunism.” He then turned to the IU Stalinist electoral front with an appeal to help the Anticapitalistas “promote candidacies that are the embryo of a new space” in Madrid, before offering the usual olive branch to Podemos saying they could join “but not impose their rules.”

“Let’s make it possible for assemblies, militancies and transforming programs to return. It is the best guarantee to avoid decomposition in these dark times,” Fernández pleaded.

Former leader Alex Salmond’s arrest threatens to tear Scottish National Party apart

Steve James

Former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond has been charged with 14 offences, including two of attempted rape, nine of sexual assault, two of indecent assault and one of breach of the peace.

After a private hearing at Edinburgh Sheriff Court, Salmond, the most prominent public face and former leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), protested his innocence. He told the assembled press, “The only thing I can say is I refute absolutely the allegation of criminality and I will defend myself to the utmost in court.”

Salmond explained that he was unable to make any further comment “until proceedings are concluded.” He would not answer questions, he said, because “I’m informed that court rules are that your questions and my answers might breach court rules.”

Salmond is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Under Scottish law, the media is prevented from going into detail about the background to the case, referring to evidence that might be heard or the possible outcome.

Salmond’s arrest comes amid escalating factional warfare now affecting every major British ruling class party, under the impact of the profound geopolitical instability provoked by the Brexit crisis and immense class tensions. Both the Conservative and Labour parties are hopelessly divided over Brexit. They are unable to fashion a common response, unable, thus far, to even find a mechanism to prevent a “no deal” Brexit despite all the threats of supply chain failures and food and medicine shortages such a departure from the European Union (EU) might well entail.

The only certainty is that, regardless of which faction wins, the working class will be targeted for intensified exploitation and the destruction of vital social provisions to ensure that British capitalism can continue to challenge its major rivals for trade and investment.

Relations between Salmond and his successor and former protégée Nicola Sturgeon are thoroughly poisonous—meaning that the latest legal turn of events could tear the SNP apart.

Salmond resigned as SNP leader immediately following the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, which those seeking independence lost decisively by 55 to 45 percent. He was replaced by Sturgeon, whose initial approach differed little from Salmond. Despite losing the independence poll, the SNP ballooned in membership topping out at as much as 125,000.

Sturgeon continued Salmond’s technique of imposing austerity with regional tweaks, while placing blame for them on funding decisions imposed by Westminster. Salmond, for his part, won a Westminster electoral seat in 2015. Debate within the SNP and its periphery hinged on whether it was wise to begin a low-level campaign for a second independence referendum after the failure of their 2014 campaign or to keep the demand as a general principle while focusing on calls for greater autonomy.

This debate became bitter and heated with the Brexit vote of 2016.

The Scottish electorate voted to remain in the European Union (EU) by a large majority, 63 to 37 percent, against the narrower British decision to leave.

Sturgeon immediately stated that a second independence referendum was back on the table as the only means to secure continued Scottish membership of the EU. However, this was largely for the record given that the large majority opposed to Brexit does not translate to a sudden shift towards support for Scottish independence. Moreover, all plans by the SNP to develop Scotland as a low-tax investment platform modelled on the Republic of Ireland depend upon access to the Single European Market—and the EU 27 did not look favourably on moves to break up the UK when they wanted Brexit reversed and feared any encouragement of separatist movements in Catalonia and elsewhere.

Sturgeon therefore focused on securing anti-Brexit alliances at Westminster and leading opposition to the threat of a no-deal exit from the EU—seeking the backing of dominant sections of business and finance, including those in Scotland, reliant on the EU’s single market and customs union. The SNP has repeatedly offered Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn a coalition pact for a future Labour minority government, only to be rebuffed.

Salmond, who retains a large base of support in the SNP, used his distance from office to position himself as the voice of “grassroots nationalism.” Following the loss of his parliamentary constituency in North East Scotland in 2017, he also took up a broadcasting role with RT, the Russian government-funded news channel, who offered him a weekly current affairs slot where he could pose as a political “outsider.”

Salmond was vehemently attacked from across the political spectrum, including from within the pro-NATO SNP. Sturgeon commented that she “would have advised against RT and suggested he [Salmond] seek a different channel to air what I am sure will be an entertaining show.” She insisted, “Neither myself nor the SNP will shy away from criticising Russian policy when we believe it is merited.”

An SNP spokesman said, “The SNP has no connection to Alex’s company or his media interests. The SNP has regularly expressed concern over actions by the Russian government.”

During the crisis last year over the alleged poisoning by nerve agent of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, the SNP’s leader in Westminster, Ian Blackford. effectively urged a boycott of Salmond’s show describing the party’s former leader as a “private individual.” Salmond’ s programme, which continues on RT, had questioned the Conservative government’s insistence that the Russian government was responsible for the attack.

In August, Salmond resigned from the SNP to pursue a judicial review of the Scottish government’s handling of a case against him involving allegations of sexual harassment. He issued a statement complaining of “a procedure so unjust that even now I have not been allowed to see and therefore to properly challenge the case against me.” Salmond won his judicial review earlier this month, having crowdfunded £100,000 [US$132,000] from supporters to pay for his challenge.

At Edinburgh’s Court of Session, Lord Pentland ruled in early January that the Scottish government’s actions were “unlawful in respect that they were procedurally unfair” and had been “tainted with apparent bias.”

It emerged in court that the Scottish government’s investigating officer had had substantial contact with one of the women accusing Salmond of impropriety, before taking on a role against Salmond. Among those attending the hearings in support of Salmond were former Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, and a former presiding officer of the Scottish parliament, Tricia Marwick.

MacAskill, who held his position for seven years, told ITV Border, “I’m a friend of Alex ... and you stand by your friends. And I think that the actions of the government, as the courts decided, were cack-handed and indeed wrong.”

MacAskill took the opportunity to attack Sturgeon, suggesting that a puritanical inner circle were intent on “driving out” anyone seen as a threat to Sturgeon. MacAskill suggested Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell should resign as the SNP’s chief executive.

Days after winning his case, Salmond elaborated to the pro-independence Sunday National on his differences with Sturgeon: “Nicola should be concentrating all her energies on the independence agenda when we will never have better circumstances. … As far as I am concerned Westminster’s Brexit difficulty should be Scotland’s opportunity.”

Joyce McMillan, a Scotsman journalist and advocate for Sturgeon, replied, “If Nicola Sturgeon is proceeding with great caution ... it is because she has good reason to … she knows that Scotland remains almost evenly divided on the matter of independence.”

She concluded, “Sometimes, amid the maelstrom of Brexit politics, it is wise to step back a little and look at the big picture of where we would like Scotland and the other countries of these islands to be in 25 years’ time … we are unlikely to get there by seeking to snatch a second independence referendum out of the jaws of the Brexit crisis, and pushing a divided electorate to a knife-edge decision.”

US coup bid pushes Venezuela closer to invasion or civil war

Bill Van Auken

The US-orchestrated regime change operation continued to escalate tensions in Venezuela Friday, pushing the country closer to civil war or an outright US invasion.

Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó, a leader of the right-wing Voluntad Popular party and president of the country’s National Assembly, who proclaimed himself the country’s “interim president” Wednesday with immediate backing from Washington, spoke simultaneously on Friday at different locations in Caracas .

Maduro, speaking at a press conference in the Miraflores presidential palace, declared that his government was confronting “an advancing coup d’état promoted and financed by the United States of North America.” He charged that Guaidó was a puppet of Washington, who was incapable of taking any decisions without orders from the State Department.

He revealed that on the eve of the right-wing politician’s self-proclamation as the “president,” Guaidó had met with two leading representatives of the government, including Diosdado Cabello, an ex-military officer and leader of the ruling PSUV party, who is widely seen as a rival of Maduro’s within the chavista camp, to discuss initiation of a dialogue.

Guaidó had denied that any such meeting had taken place, but the government Friday released a videotape showing him and Cabello entering the meeting site.

Maduro reiterated the appeal for a dialogue, both with the United States and Guaidó, while insisting that his announcement of a break in diplomatic relations with Washington would not stop Venezuela from selling oil to the US, which accounts for 75 percent of the cash Venezuela gets for crude shipments.

US officials are reportedly discussing sanctions on the oil sector, which would have the effect of “making the economy scream,” the term used by the Nixon administration during the economic destabilization operations against Chile in advance of the fascist-military coup of 1973.

For his part, Guaidó spoke at a rally in eastern Caracas, ruling out any dialogue with the present government, vowing that anti-government demonstrations would be called next week and calling for the military to support him and overthrow Maduro.

This is the main concern of the Venezuelan right and its US backers, but as yet, the military high command, which has been a pillar of the governments of Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez, heading a large share of ministries as well as controlling the most lucrative state agencies, has shown no sign of deserting the government.

Washington, meanwhile, has escalated its offensive against the Maduro government. National Security Adviser John Bolton announced that the US will divert all assets held by the Venezuelan government in the US to the so-called “interim government” of Guaidó. This includes bank deposits as well as the properties held by Citgo, the US-based refining affiliate of the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA.

The financial analysis firm S&P Global Platts cited sources close to the right-wing opposition in Venezuela as stating that Guaidó was preparing to name a new board of directors for Citgo and to send his representatives to take over the company’s headquarters in Houston. Goldman Sachs reported that the corporate coup would be carried out in conjunction with the proclamation of a new National Law on Hydrocarbons, which would open up Venezuela’s oil reserves to more direct and comprehensive foreign exploitation.

That this is to be one of the first actions of the US-backed “interim president” is hardly an accident. The restoration of domination by US-based energy conglomerates over Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world, has been a strategic objective pursued by Washington under both Democratic and Republican administrations over the past two decades.

Meanwhile, the Bank of England, acting in compliance with demands from Washington, has stymied an attempt by the Venezuelan government to withdraw $1.2 billion in gold reserves from its coffers.

The other principal goal of the US-orchestrated coup is the rolling back of influence in Latin America by China and Russia, both of which have established close economic, political and military ties with Caracas. The regime change operation thus dovetails with the announced shift in US strategy toward “great power” conflict and carries with it the danger of a confrontation in the America’s between the world’s largest nuclear powers.

While the various capitalist governments and the corporate media outlets that are supporting and lionizing Guaidó all claim that his victory over Maduro would usher in a renaissance of Venezuelan “democracy,” the reality is that the right-wing opposition that he represents has never enjoyed broad popular support in Venezuela and has no commitment whatsoever to the democratic rights of the broad masses of working people. On the contrary, their rise to power would almost certainly be accompanied by a repressive bloodbath and the institution of dictatorial forms of rule required to impose the dictates of Washington and international finance capital.

In an unmistakable signal of Washington’s real intentions in Venezuela, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Friday named Elliot Abrams as the administration’s special envoy on Venezuela. Abrams, a right-wing veteran of the Reagan and Bush administrations, is the personification of the criminal, deceitful and thuggish character of US imperialism’s policies globally and, above all, in Latin America.

He was best known for defending the US-backed dictatorships in Central America in the 1980s and covering up for their bloody massacres, torture and assassinations. During the same period, he played a central role in the creating a covert and illegal network for funding the terrorist “Contra” organized by the CIA to attack Nicaragua. He was convicted of lying to Congress about the illegal operation but pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.

Washington has set the stage for a bloody settling of accounts in Venezuela by defying the Venezuelan government’s order to withdraw all of its diplomatic personnel from the country within 72 hours, a deadline that expires on Sunday. While the State Department has ordered the evacuation of all “non-essential” personnel from the country, it has left in place a skeleton crew of diplomats as bait for a potential military intervention.

Bolton on Friday said that the Trump administration has developed plans to defend the embassy but gave no details. Trump and his aides have repeatedly stated that “all options are on the table” in terms of military intervention in Venezuela. The Washington Post reported Friday that the Pentagon is refusing to comment on any operations regarding Venezuela or the position of any naval ships in the country’s vicinity, referring all questions to the National Security Council, which also has declined comment.

The ongoing coup in Venezuela is by no means the first such attempt by Washington. In 2002, the CIA and the Pentagon backed an abortive military coup staged by sections of the military and the ruling financial circles, together with the AFL-CIO-connected union federation, that removed the late former president Hugo Chávez from office for 48 hours, while installing Pedro Carmona, the president of the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce, as “interim president”.

There were no credible allegations then that Chávez’s presidency was “illegitimate”—he had been re-elected two years earlier with a 60 percent majority. Yet the coup and the arrest of Venezuela’s elected president were portrayed in Washington as a triumph for “democracy”.

The New York Times saluted this “democratic” coup writing in truly Orwellian fashion that, with the military overthrow of an elected president, “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator.” After masses took to the streets in opposition to the coup, Carmona and his military henchmen were forced to retreat, with Chávez restored to the presidential palace.

The Times has weighed in once again in support of the ongoing Venezuelan coup with an editorial titled “Between Mr. Maduro and a Hard Place.” Reflecting the rightward shift of the erstwhile “liberal” political establishment for which the newspaper serves as a mouthpiece, the word “democracy” does not appear in the piece.

Rather, it is concerned with more practical matters of executing a successful regime change operation. Its principal concern is “how to pry Mr. Maduro out without a blood bath,” while acknowledging that the recognition of a rival US-backed president raises “terrifying prospects of carnage, especially should the military stand by Mr. Maduro,” which it so far has.

Nonetheless, the Times editorial board solidarizes itself with the imperialist intervention, writing, “The Trump administration is right to support Mr. Guaidó,” while counseling that, given long and bloody record of CIA coups and US-backed dictatorships in the region, Washington “must be seen as participating in a broad coalition of South American and other democratic nations…”

In other words, another “coalition of the willing” to mask the fact that in Venezuela’s case—as in Iraq’s 16 years ago—“democracy” is spelled “OIL.”

The Washington Post published a similar editorial backing the anointment of the State Department stooge Guaidó as president. It described the 35-year-old right-wing politician as “a young and dynamic new leader,” while the Times had hailed him as a “fresh young leader.”

The Post lays out scenarios for direct US military intervention. “Unless the lives of Americans are endangered and there is no other recourse, military intervention would be folly.”

Of course, the Trump administration’s defiance of the Venezuelan government’s order to close the US embassy in Caracas lays the groundwork for precisely such a claim that “lives of Americans are endangered.”

It should be recalled that the last two US invasions in the Americas—Panama in December 1989, and Grenada in October 1983—were carried out on the pretext of protecting US officials.

It goes on to suggest that “A multilateral operation to deliver humanitarian supplies to Venezuela or to its borders, in cooperation with the National Assembly, is one possibility” for installing Guaidó in power. The Post concludes that the main hope for regime change is for “the military to defy its commanders and support” Guaidó, i.e., carry out a coup.

These views largely dovetail with those of the Democratic Party leadership, which, having waged a bitter campaign against the Trump administration over alleged Russian “meddling,” has jumped to support the White House in its real and deadly meddling in the affairs of Venezuela.

The Women’s Digital Safety Fellowship for East Africa 2019

Application Deadline: 15th February 2019.

Eligible Countries: Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda 


About the Award: Two years ago, we started the work of building a community of tech-savvy East African women ready to stand up and defend digital rights and digital safety while fighting online harassment in their communities. Since then 21 amazing women from Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and Tanzania have been trained to play an important role in their communities as digital security mentors!
We are excited to announce the expansion of this unique group of women. We are looking for creative, self-motivated and dependable women who want to take their digital safety skills and online activism to the next level – inviting women human rights defenders from Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda to apply.

Type: Training

Selection Criteria: Priority will be given to applicants who:

• Demonstrate experience with strong technical competencies (though this need not be formal education);
• Have experience with tech and human rights initiatives;
• Demonstrate an understanding of their own and their community’s digital safety challenges and needs;
• Propose creative project ideas; and
• Construct clear project objectives/goals.

Number of Awards: Limited 

Value of Award: Participation involves 

• Minimum 4 hours per week for 3 weeks before the first workshop to complete self-study assignments and exercises. Please note these exercises are mandatory for participation in the workshop;
• Must be available for weekly email check-ins with mentors;
• Must be able to attend a one-week workshop to be scheduled in March 2019 in Kampala, Uganda;
• Opportunity to seek small grants to carry out community digital safety activities of your own;
• Working with mentors and peers as you improve your skills and work to defend your community; and
• Opportunity to participate in a 2^nd gathering of Safe Sisters to further grow skills and reflect on practice and experienced gained during project implementation.

How to Apply: Application requires 

• Applicants must have a demonstrated interest in digital safety and security;
• Applicants should have experience working in the human rights and/or media field with strong links to communities who are digitally at-risk;
• Applicants must hold a sufficient level of english, as english will be the working language; and
• Applicants must complete and submit the application form here.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Google Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) Program 2019 for Computer Science Educators

Application Deadline: 9th March 2019 11:59 local time.

Eligible Countries: Countries in Africa, Europe and Middle East.


Purpose: Developing Computer Science educators globally for today’s 21st century students.

About the Award: Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) now Educator professional development (PD) is an annual funding program to improve the computer science (CS) educational ecosystem by providing funding for the continuation of CS teacher professional development worldwide. CS4HS provides funding to computer science education experts for the planning and development of CS teacher professional development. Driven by local needs, CS4HS funding brings educators together for a professional development opportunity with the goals of invigorating them about computer science and computational thinking, while providing tools and networking opportunities to help educators in the CS classroom.

Awards: Institutions may receive support of up to $20,000 each. Additional funding is available for projects with regional reach and the potential to scale nationally. This can be through MOOCs or collaborating with other organisations.

Eligibility: To apply for a CS4HS award you must meet the following requirements:

• Your professional development opportunity must include a plan for year-round communities of practice work that supports ongoing PD and advocacy for Computer Science.
• Affiliated with a university, technical college or an official non-profit organization.
• Project must develop high school teachers or student’s understanding of computer science and contain computer science content that will be relevant in the classroom.
• Project must be in the form of either a teacher training workshop or teacher and student training workshops, an online course (MOOC) or a teacher resource project.
• Previous applicants are welcome to apply, if adding a new dimension to former projects or launching a new computer science project.

Selection Criteria: The funding criteria are:

• Educator Audience: Pre-service or in-service teachers who reach students ages 10-18
• Content: Professional development (PD) content based on the needs of your Educator Audience, mapped to your local/national CS standards (if relevant), and relevant for an in-class implementation of CS (i.e. standalone CS course, or interdisciplinary application of CS).
• Format and Schedule: PD delivered throughout the 2018-2019 academic year with a format and schedule based in meet the needs of your Educator Audience
• Support: Community of Practice (COP) that supports ongoing commitment of educators and implementation of CS content in the classroom throughout the 2019-2020 academic year.

How to Apply: START YOUR APPLICATION
Please read FAQs and make sure you meet the eligibility requirements before applying.

Tips for a successful application:

• Project contains computer science content.
• Project creates new materials that can be brought directly back to the classroom or used elsewhere by anyone (open source).
• Project has regional reach with the potential to scale nationally/internationally.
• There is careful budget consideration and a clear breakdown of how the funding will be used.
• Project provides a hands-on experience and includes activities for participants that are interactive and allows them to manipulate the subject themselves.
• There is follow up activity and continued learning for the target audience.
• How you will develop and/or support a Community of Practice

Visit Program Webpage for details

As Nations Get Ready for Nuclear War, Their Governments Work to Create the Illusion of Safety

Lawrence Wittner

Ever since the U.S. atomic bombings of Japanese cities in August 1945, a specter has haunted the world―the specter of nuclear annihilation.

The latest report from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, issued on January 24, reminds us that the prospect of nuclear catastrophe remains all too real.  Citing the extraordinary danger of nuclear disaster, the editors and the distinguished panel of experts upon whom they relied reset their famous “Doomsday Clock” at two minutes to midnight.

This grim warning from the scientists is well-justified.  The Trump administration has withdrawn the United States from the painstakingly-negotiated 2015 nuclear weapons agreement with Iran and is in the process of withdrawing from the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia.  In addition, the 2010 New Start Treaty, which caps the number of strategic nuclear weapons held by the United States and Russia, is scheduled to expire in 2021, thus leaving no limits on the world’s largest nuclear arsenals for the first time since 1972.  According to Trump, this agreement, too, is a “bad deal,” and his hawkish national security advisor, John Bolton, has denounced it as “unilateral disarmament.”

Furthermore, while nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements crumble, a major nuclear weapons buildup is underway by all nine nuclear powers.  The U.S. government alone has embarked on an extensive “modernization” of its entire nuclear weapons complex, designed to provide new, improved nuclear weapons and upgraded or new facilities for their production.  The cost to U.S. taxpayers has been estimated to run somewhere between $1.2 trillion and $2 trillion.

For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin used his televised 2018 State of the Union address to laud his own nation’s advances in nuclear weaponry. Highlighting a successful test of Russia’s RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile with a payload of 15 nuclear warheads, he also boasted of developing a working laser weapon, a hypersonic missile, and a cruise missile powered by a nuclear reactor that could fly indefinitely.  Putin noted that the hypersonic missile, called Kinzhal(or dagger), could maneuver while traveling at more than 10 times the speed of sound, and was “guaranteed to overcome all existing . . . anti-missile systems” and deliver a nuclear strike.  The cruise missile, displayed on video by Putin in animated form, was shown as circumventing U.S. air defenses and heading for the California coast.

When it comes to bellicose public rhetoric, probably the most chilling has come from Trump.  In the summer of 2017, angered by North Korea’s missile progress and the belligerent statements of its leaders, he warned that its future threats would be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”  The following year, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, he bragged: “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger and more powerful one than his.”

The problem that government officials have faced when engaged in this kind of missile-rattling behavior is public concern that it could lead to a disastrous nuclear war.  Consequently, to soothe public anxiety about catastrophic nuclear destruction, they have argued that, paradoxically, nuclear weapons actually guarantee national security by deterring nuclear and conventional war.

But the efficacy of nuclear deterrence is far from clear.  Indeed, despite their possession of nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan fought wars against one another, and, like the United States and the Soviet Union, came perilously close to sliding into a nuclear war.  Furthermore, why has the U.S. government, armed (and ostensibly safe) with thousands of nuclear weapons, been so worried about Iraq, Iran, and North Korea acquiring them?  Why does it need additional nuclear weapons?

Beginning in 1983, Ronald Reagan―under fierce public criticism for his nuclear buildup and disturbed that U.S. nuclear weapons could not prevent a Soviet nuclear weapons attack―initiated a nuclear safety program of a different kind: missile defense.  Called the Strategic Defense Initiative (but derided by Senator Edward Kennedy as “Star Wars”), the program involved shooting down incoming nuclear missiles before they hit the United States, thus freeing Americans from any danger of nuclear destruction.

From the start, scientists doubted the technical feasibility of a missile defense system and, also, pointed out that, even if it worked to some degree, an enemy nation could overwhelm it by employing additional missiles or decoys.  Nevertheless, missile defense had considerable appeal, especially among Republicans, who seized upon it as a crowd-pleasing alternative to nuclear arms control and disarmament.

The result was that, by the beginning of 2019, after more than 35 years of U.S. government development work at the cost of almost $300 billion, the United States still did not have a workable missile defense system.  In numerous scripted U.S. military tests―attempts to destroy an incoming missile whose timing and trajectory were known in advance―the system failed roughly half the time.

Nevertheless, apparently because there’s no policy too flawed to abandon if it enriches military contractors and reduces public demands for nuclear disarmament, in mid-January 2019 Trump announced plans for a vast expansion of the U.S. missile defense program.  According to the president, the goal was “to ensure that we can detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States―anywhere, any time, any place.”

Even so, all is not lost.  Leading Democrats―including presidential hopefuls―have demanded that Trump keep the United States within the INF Treaty and scrap plans to expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal.  Adam Smith, the new chair of the House Armed Services Committee, has called for “a nuclear weapons policy that reduces the number of weapons and reduces the likelihood of any sort of nuclear conflict.”  Using their control of the House of Representatives, Democrats could block funding for the administration’s nuclear weapons programs.

And with enough public pressure, they might do that.

Complacency and the Environmental Catastrophe

Graham Peebles

Ask any reasonably well-informed person what the cause of climate change is and the chances are they will say greenhouse gas emissions (GGE’s), but they would only be partially correct. While it is true that man-made GGE’s are clogging Earth’s lower atmosphere, trapping heat and resulting in widespread climate change, the underlying 21st century cause, in contrast to the 19th and early 20th century when information was scarce, is something much more personal and lethal: complacency. Widespread complacency among politicians, big business and to a lesser degree, the general public, is the reason why, despite the various cries for restraint, global GGE’s continue to increase.

Complacency is why air pollution is getting worse in cities and towns across the world, leading to a range of health problems and premature deaths; complacency has caused the destruction of the planet’s rain forests, 85% of which have been lost through human activity, and it’s why the oceans have been poisoned and robbed of fish. Complacency is fueling the greatest extinction of animal and plant species in our history, it’s setting forests alight, filling the oceans and rivers with plastics and other pollutants, and is the reason why the ice mass in the North Pole is melting at unprecedented rates, leading to rising sea levels, flooding and the erosion of land, destroying homes and natural habitats, taking lives, displacing people – potentially millions.

It is complacency, which a wise man once described as the root of all evil, that is causing all of this and more – the ‘I’m all right Jack’ mentality’. And no matter how many reports are published and forecasts made, or how often someone speaks or writes about what is the greatest crisis in human history, few listen, even fewer act and nothing substantive changes, certainly nothing that matches the scale of the catastrophe. Do people even know there is a crisis, really? The level of apathy amongst governments and corporate power beggars belief, as does the lack of coverage in mainstream media, such as the BBC. Environmental issues should be headline news every single day, but scan the websites and publications of the mass media and the environment is barely mentioned.

Complacency is reinforced by greed and ignorance, greed for limitless profits, short-term gain and material comfort and ignorance of the scale, range and urgency of the crisis, and of the connection between lifestyle and environmental ruin. The fact that animal agriculture is responsible for more GGE’s than any other sector, for example, is not common knowledge, and when it is known, changes in behavior, where they occur at all, are slow. Cutting out meat, fish and dairy reduces a person’s individual GGE’s more than any other single factor. In a positive sign, and for a range of reasons, more people than ever are adopting a vegan diet, particularly in Europe and America. But globally 90% of the population continues to eat animal produce, and this needs to dramatically change. Dissipating ignorance and cultivating greater awareness is badly needed; to this end, a coordinated public information program is needed throughout the world; this is a worldwide crisis and, as all those working in the area know, it requires a unified ‘Environment First’ response.

S.O.P.: Save Our Planet

Restoring the planet to health is the major need of the time; together with a shift in lifestyles, this requires economic systemic change and a reorientation of political priorities. Knowing there is an environmental crisis, claiming to be concerned but doing little or nothing is pure hypocrisy; to their utter shame the vast majority of politicians are environmental hypocrites; weak and devoid of vision, they constitute the very embodiment of complacency; they are indebted to big business and have repeatedly shown that they cannot be relied on to initiate the radical policies needed to keep fossil fuels in the ground and repair the environmental carnage mankind has caused.

The number one priority of governments around the world is ‘the economy’. This is the sacred cow around which they tiptoe and to whom they make their reverential offerings in the hope of being blessed by limitless economic growth, no matter the environmental cost. Where they exist at all, Government policies to reduce GGE’s are designed and limited by the impact they will have on economic development; as such they remain totally inadequate.

Development takes place within the constructs of an unjust system that is dependent on constant consumption, encourages greed, produces huge quantities of waste, and is maintained by the relentless agitation of desire. These thoroughly negative elements work to the detriment of human beings and are the driving impulses behind behavior that has led to and is perpetuating the environmental crisis. The system demands that irresponsible consumption not only continues, but deepens and expands into areas of the world hitherto relatively untouched by its poison; it obstructs environmentally responsible policies and lacks the flexibility required to face the challenges, certainly within the time-scale needed if the planet is to be restored to health. Given these facts, the only sane, rational solution is to change the system to one that allows for an urgent meaningful response: a sustainable and just system based on altogether different principles and reasons for being. Neo-liberalism is not a living organism without alternatives, as some devotees of mammon would have us believe: it is a man-made structure and can therefore be redesigned to meet the urgent social and environmental needs of the time.

Systemic change and shifts in government policy will not just happen by themselves, it is up to all of us to demand that the environment becomes the number one priority for governments across the world. At the same time, we all need to examine how we live and ensure that we do so in a way that is determined, first and foremost, by environmental considerations – not by pleasure, convenience and comfort, as is often the case, but by love, for living in an environmentally responsible way is an act of love.

The decisions we make today and in the coming years will affect life on Earth for thousands of years to come. Sacrifices and the breaking of habits are required and within the spirit of collective individual responsibility these should be gladly accepted. Every political, business and lifestyle decision needs to be taken with an understanding of how it affects the environment, and a simple question posed: ‘will this action add to or reduce GGE’s’? If it will increase them, then don’t do it.

Consider how you get around: do you really need that fossil-fueled car (private ownership of cars needs to be drastically reduced, particularly in cities)? What you buy and who you shop with, who supplies your energy and does it come from renewable sources? Where you go on holiday and can you avoid flying and go by train or bus? If not, go somewhere else. What do you eat? If your diet is based on animal produce then reduce your intake. Shop based on need, buy secondhand, limit how often you wash clothing, reduce waste, boycott environmentally abusive companies, write to your political representatives, call for a national public information program; live responsibly and encourage family and friends to do likewise.

Complacency, apathy and hypocrisy coalesce to form the most noxious causes of climate change and environmental vandalism, and until this Trinity of Destruction is overcome, and the crisis is taken seriously by the political class, corporations and the public at large, nothing substantive will take place; and unless fundamental change occurs, and urgently, life on Earth will become increasingly uncomfortable, ecosystems will continue to collapse, and one dark day, in the very near future, it will be too late. The Shroud of Complacency needs to be thrown off now, today, and widespread action rooted in environmental awareness initiated; where there is concerted, sustained action therein lies hope.

Extreme Wealth is a Planet Killer

Sam Pizzigati

We either keep fossil fuels in the ground, or we fry.

That’s the conclusion of another new blockbuster study on climate change, this one from the National Academy of Sciences. Our fossil-fuel industrial economy, the study details, has made for the fastest climate changes our Earth has ever seen.

“If we think about the future in terms of the past, where we are going is uncharted territory for human society,” notes the study’s lead author, Kevin Burke from the University of Wisconsin.

“In the roughly 20 to 25 years I have been working in the field,” adds his colleague John Williams, “we have gone from expecting climate change to happen, to detecting the effects, and now we are seeing that it’s causing harm” — as measured in property damage and deaths, in intensified flooding and fires.

The last time climate on Earth saw nearly as drastic and rapid a climate shift, relates another new study, came some 252 million years ago, and that shift unfolded over the span of a few thousand years. That span of time saw the extinction of 96 percent of the Earth’s ocean species and almost as devastating a loss to terrestrial creatures.

Other scientific studies over this past year have made similarly alarming observations, and together all these analyses provided an apt backdrop for this past December’s United Nations climate change talks in Poland.

Climate change activists hoped these talks would stiffen the global resolve to seriously address climate change. But several nations had other ideas. The United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait all refused to officially “welcome” the recent dire findings of a blue-ribbon Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, essentially throwing a huge monkey-wrench into efforts to protect our Earth and ourselves.

What unites these four recalcitrant nations? One key characteristic stands out: The United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait all just happen to rate among the world’s most unequal nations.

Just a coincidence? Absolutely not, suggests a new analysis from the Civil Society Equity Review coalition, a worldwide initiative that counts in its ranks scores of groups committed to averting a climatic cataclysm.

Limiting future global temperature rises, this coalition notes, will require “disruptive shifts” and heighten public anxieties. People will tolerate these disruptions, but only if they believe that everyone is sharing in the sacrifice — the wealthy and powerful included.

Environmental policy makers typically define the wealthy at the level of the nation state. They focus on the relationships between wealthy nations and developing nations still struggling to amass wealth. Wealthier nations, the conventional climate change consensus holds, have a responsibility to help poorer nations meet the environmental challenges ahead.

But the wealthy have the power to shirk those responsibilities — unless we expand our focus from inequality between nations to inequality within nations as well.

The more unequal a wealthy society, the coalition explains, the greater the power of the rich — and the corporations they run — to ignore their debt to Mother Earth.

And the economic inequality their wealth engenders, researchers add, has “much to do with the dark character of the current political moment,” referring to the growing xenophobia and racism that make serious environmental aid from developed to developing nations ever less likely.

The world’s wealthiest people and their corporations, left to their own devices, would for the most part rather not bear any sort of significant sacrifice. That’s all the more reason to address the inequality that bestows so much power upon them.

“Addressing climate change effectively and justly,” sums up Basav Sen, the climate policy director at the Institute for Policy Studies, “requires us to transform the unjust social and economic systems that gave us climate change in the first place.”