8 Feb 2019

What Will the China-India Relationship Look Like in 2019?

Siwei Liu

Sino-Indian relations in 2018 were generally stable and gradually emerged from the shadow of the Doklam crisis. However, issues that will continue to  affect the ties have not been completely addressed, especially the mutual trust deficit between the two Asian giants. Looking into 2019, the bilateral ties still have room for improvement, providing both danger and opportunities. Balancing this requires knowledge of these issues as well as the foresight to move relations onto a healthy and positive track.
After the Wuhan Summit China and India not only resumed border negotiations but also a joint military exercise called 'Hand-in-Hand 2018' and a maritime dialogue that was originally scheduled for 2017. Moreover the 'China-India Plus' cooperation plan was put into action, with the first project being the joint training of Afghan diplomats. The two sides also held their first high-level meeting on law enforcement, security as well as that of the newly constituted Sino-Indian High-Level Mechanism on Cultural and People-to-People Exchanges. All of this happened in the background of counter-globalisation and rising trade protectionism, while the trade volume between two sides has nearly broken through the US$ 90 billion mark.
Based on this background, Sino-Indian relations in 2019 should remain relatively stable. It will however inevitably face various challenges. Given the current mutual trust deficit, any action from either of the two sides in border areas, including infrastructure construction and resource development and utilisation, will raise hackles. In addition, the complex and ever-changing security environment in the Indo-Pacific region will affect the Sino-Indian dynamic. This boils down to how China interprets India's attitude towards the Quad and especially the US on the one hand, and how India views the evolution of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on the other. Predictably, competition between the two countries in the Indo-Pacific region will continue, involving both geopolitics and geo-economics This "keeping up with the Joneses" psychology may be a good thing to some extent and it could encourage each other to do better, but the two countries need to ameliorate the negatives that accrue to their chosen paths. Further, the Indian general election in 2019 may add a further complicating factor, as interpersonal relationships between leaders invariably tend to affect ties.  
Tactical issues like the unresolved border will take up much energy and time. The question is how much they taint the need for the two countries to coexist and cooperate in other spheres. For ties to be insulated against such tactical ups and downs, the end goal cannot merely be to ensure stability and conflict avoidance. There should be a higher goal, that is, to jointly meet challenges, share responsibility, and identify areas of win-win cooperation.
A balance can be found if both countries understand that a threat greater than the security dilemma exists, which is the series of dilemmas related to human survival that confront both countries. Survival dilemmas not only involve the arms race, but also environment resource depletion, environmental pollution, and so on. To face these dilemmas, the two countries need to respond with new ideas based on collaboration and sharing. For example, China and India can consider more cooperation on global or regional governance issues. Given the economic slowdown in developed economies, it is unrealistic to expect them to provide more public goods. It is necessary for China and India to work together to make more contributions to transnational challenges such as climate change, environmental pollution, natural disasters and epidemic diseases.
Given that ties are plagued by insufficient mutual trust, it is highly recommended that the two countries conduct a broad and meaningful strategic dialogue in 2019. If possible, the original strategic dialogue mechanism can be upgraded to a new and comprehensive mechanism which invites the joint participation of diplomats and defence officials, where the bridge-building done by the two leaders at Wuhan is institutionalised and tied into a robust process dependency such as turning the Wuhan format into an annual leadership and government summit.  
In all, if the two countries respect each other's core interests and learn from each other's successful experiences in the process of national development and governance, and carry out more cooperation on global and regional governance issues, Sino-Indian relations in 2019 will be better than they were 2018.

The ‘QUAD’: A Strategic Liability for India

Kushal Sinha 


The January 2019 iteration of the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi featured a panel discussion on the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) during which senior defence officials from India, Australia, the US and Japan put forth their perspectives regarding the four-country grouping. Broadly, the speakers focused on the freedom of navigation on the high seas and a rule-based order in the Indo-Pacific region, and expressed concerns regarding the increasing Chinese military presence in the South China Sea (SCS).

However, the most prominent take away from this interaction was that 13 years since its formation, members of the grouping have not yet arrived at a consensus on the QUAD’s conceptual and practical contours. To illustrate, while India’s Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sunil Lanba, rejected any military element and role for India in the QUAD during the discussion, Japan’s Admiral Katsutoshi Kawano defined QUAD as a grouping for military cooperation.

Given the prevailing state-of-affairs, and India’s strategic objectives and long-term vision, is it worthwhile for New Delhi to invest its energy in the grouping?

QUAD and India’s Strategic Objectives and Long-Term VisionInsofar, QUAD members have described the grouping as an alignment of like-minded countries that share common strategic and economic interests. A closer examination reveals that the only factor binding them in this enterprise are their disputes with China in their own littoral waters, which collectively span the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), the SCS, the East China Sea (ECS), and the Pacific Ocean Region. Moreover, each member state defines the geographic contours of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region according to their respective interests and need. Indeed, there is a consensus on the SCS and the ECS, but there seems to be no consensus among the members on where the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region begins or ends.

India aspires to become the ‘net security provider’ in the IOR and aims for the Indian Navy to operate a 200-ship fleet by 2027. Given India’s geographical location and other factors, the Indian Navy prioritises the IOR’s security cover over those of the SCS, ECS and the Pacific in its official doctrine and treats it as its core strategic theatre. Strategically, it would make more sense for New Delhi to focus and modernise its military platforms in the IOR rather than wading into the SCS and beyond. At present, if New Delhi aligns militarily with the QUAD, the Indian Navy would have to carry out naval manoeuvres outside the IOR. This would cause the Indian Navy’s assets to be divided, weaken New Delhi’s presence in the IOR, and dilute strategic depth.

Post the India-China informal summit in Wuhan in April 2018, New Delhi-Beijing relations are in a delicate phase and aligning militarily with the QUAD would disturb the balance that India is trying to foster between China and the West. India’s denial of Australia’s participation in the former’s Malabar Naval Exercise 2018 has further narrowed the scope of such an alignment. Given how this took place after the Wuhan summit, this move was widely critiqued, and New Delhi was even called the “weakest link in the QUAD. It is evident that New Delhi does not want to rock the boat with Beijing by aligning militarily with any group specifically formed to counter China.

Financial and Logistical ConsiderationsThe Indian Navy will find it difficult to finance deployment and manoeuvres of its fleet in areas where it does not have any primary strategic interests such as the SCS and the Pacific Ocean Region. Expenditures incurred in an event of such deployment will non-commercial in nature, which will not converge with India’s defence interests due to lack of strategic interests.

Moreover, India does not have the logistics related capacity to expand its reach beyond the west of the Malacca Strait to ensure a steady a supply of vital spares to the fleet. This will prove to be an expensive and grueling task for the Indian Navy due to the absence of permanent refuel and repair points along the way and operating fixed wing or rotor aircrafts for this purpose would drastically increase the operating cost.

Despite being a signatory of the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) with the US, New Delhi cannot solely rely on this Agreement and other member states for logistics due to the difference in military hardware. The Indian naval fleet is predominantly made up of either Soviet/Russian or indigenous platforms whereas the other three navies’ are entirely made up of Western hardware with some indigenous elements. This not only makes logistics a burden but also increases the gap in inter-operability. A 2017 analysis shows that the Indian Navy alone would require massive recapitalisation worth a minimum of US$ 40-50 billion annually for the next decade to bridge this gap. For a country with a defence budget of US$ 44.6 billion, such costs seem beyond the bounds of possibility.

The Way AheadFor India in particular, the QUAD is a non-starter due to the absence of clarity on the definition, role, and objectives. From New Delhi’s vantage point, military involvement in the QUAD framework would disturb India-China relations and could also prove unfeasible in terms of finances and logistics. Instead of aligning with a specific group aimed at a single country, which could destabilise the emerging status quo, New Delhi should follow the non-aligned pattern of carefully balancing relations between West, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and China.

To maintain robust capabilities in the IOR, India can build-up its sea denial and control capabilities by enhancing naval capabilities and re-calibrating bilateral ties with littoral countries in the eastern flank of the IOR such as Indonesia and key ASEAN members like Vietnam. This would not only enhance bilateral relations but also augment intelligence sharing. It would also provide the Indian Navy with access to their docks, which would in turn contribute positively towards sustaining Indian naval presence in the region.

7 Feb 2019

African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) Masters Fellowships 2019/2020 for Anglophone African Students

Application Deadline: 25th April, 2019

To be taken at (universities): Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia • University of Botswana • University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania • University of Cape Coast, Ghana • University of Ghana, Legon • University of Nairobi, Kenya
• University of Mauritius • University of Namibia • University of Malawi • University of Zimbabwe • Makerere University



Type: Masters

Eligibility: To qualify for scholarship, applicant must:
(a) Have applied and been admitted to any one of the listed CMAP universities;
(b) Have attained at least a Second Class Honours (Upper Division) or equivalent in Economics or related field from an accredited university;
(c) Female and applicants from post-conflict and fragile states are highly encouraged to apply


Number of Awardees: Not specified 

Duration of Fellowship: 2 years

How to Apply: Interested applicants must submit their applications for admission directly to the respective universities (application procedure can be obtained from the respective university’s website). Upon receipt of an admission letter from a specific university, applicants shall upload the following documents on to the AERC scholarship portal http://scholarships.aercafrica.org and also submit to
training@aercafrica.org and copy jfe@aercafrica.org:

1. Application cover letter;
2. Curriculum Vitae;
3. Evidence of admission at any of the universities listed above; and
4. Certified copies of transcripts and certificates


Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

VLIR-UOS ITP Scholarship 2019/2020 in Modern breeding techniques for potato improvement

Application Deadline: 22nd February 2019

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries


To be taken at (country): Belgium

About the Award: The course proposes fundamental background sessions on potato breeding, the use of molecular techniques in plant breeding, plant biotechnology, genetic transformation and new breeding techniques for potato. Experts from Europe and Africa will further give an overview of important biotic and abiotic stresses affecting the growth of potato and possible solutions to overcome these threats. In these sessions, special emphasis will be given on the effects of pests, diseases, fungal contamination, drought and climate change on the growth and yield of potato.
The course will continue with both theory and exercises for the understanding of the basic principles and methodologies of crop safety, risk assessment and science communication. The sessions will be interactive, including group work, presentations and discussions. The program also includes visits to a potato field trial and the processing industry.

Type: Training

Eligibility:
  • Holder of at least a Bachelor (or equivalent) in Science, Plant Biotechnology, Agricultural or Bioengineering Sciences
  • Good knowledge of English
  • Preference will be given to participants from Africa involved in potato breeding
  • A balance between male and female participants will be achieved
Number of Awards: 12

Value of Award: Scholarships are only provided for the full duration of the training programme. It is not possible to apply for a partial scholarship.

Duration of Programme: The programme is organised from Tuesday 11th of June until Friday 28th of June 2019 (18 days).

How to Apply: More information about the programme and application
  • It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying

NHS 10-year plan: Recipe for further attacks on services and privatisation in UK

Ajanta Silva

Theresa May’s Conservative government recently set out a 10-year plan for the National Health Service (NHS).
As if everyone was oblivious to the last nine years of austerity, including huge cuts to the NHS budget and privatization of health services, May claimed the Tories would be the saviours of the NHS over the next decade with the launch of the Long Term Plan (LTP).
The 10-year Plan promises to save “almost half a million more lives with practical action on major killer conditions”; “investment in world class, cutting edge treatments including genomic tests for every child with cancer”; “early detection and a renewed focus on prevention in stopping an estimated 85,000 premature deaths each year”; “help prevent 150,000 heart attacks, strokes and dementia cases”; “investment in primary, community and mental health care”; to “provide digital GP consultations for all those who want them” over the next decade.
May wrote in the Mail on Sunday: “The launch of the NHS Long Term Plan marks an historic step to secure its future and offers a vision for the service for the next ten years, with a focus on ensuring that every pound is spent in a way that will most benefit patients. This will help relieve pressure on the NHS while providing the basis to transform care with world-class treatments.”
These warm words cannot conceal the fact that the LTP is nothing but a preface to the further erosion of health services and lays the ground work for wholesale privatization.
Since 2010, the NHS has suffered the lowest ever funding increase in its entire history, propelling NHS trusts into dealing with huge deficits. Half of NHS trusts ended last year with financial deficits, with a combined deficit of £991 million. Clinical Commissioning Groups, established as part of the Health and Social Care Act in 2012 to replace Primary Care Trusts, reported an overspend of £213 million. Last September, NHS Improvement noted that NHS providers are carrying an underlying deficit of £4.3 billion.
Even if the Tory pledge of an extra £20 billion a year by 2023 for the NHS materializes, the vast proportion of the funding, if not all of it, would be required to repair the devastation caused to public health care provision by years of systematic underfunding.
Many experts agree that the NHS is at a breaking point as a result of cuts in funding. They have not only created massive staff shortages but brought enormous suffering and thousands of excess deaths for patients.
Staff shortages are such that in England alone there are more than 100,000 vacancies. The UK leaving the EU, scheduled in less than two months, will inevitably exacerbate the shortages as the future of more than 62,000 EU workers who work for the NHS is uncertain.
Patient waiting times for elective surgery, cancer diagnosis and treatment and GP appointments continue to increase. Hitting NHS performance targets steadily declined since 2012-13. According to an article by the King’s Fund think tank, in July 2018, average performance in major accident & emergency department (A&E) was 83.5 percent, against a target of 95 percent of patients to be seen within four hours. Currently, 4.1million patients are waiting for non-urgent treatment compared to 2.5 million in 2012-13. The National Audit Office (NAO) estimates that “it would cost £700 million to reduce the waiting list to the level last seen in March 2018, based on current trends.”
While praising the plan, a Financial Times editorial pointed out that the May government’s promise to increase funds by £20 billion by 2023 was inadequate to keep up with the demand. It wrote, “The financial package agreed by Mrs May for the next five years envisages annual real increases in NHS spending of a little under 3.5 per cent a year. That marks a sharp improvement on the just above 1 per cent during the past eight years but fails to match the average 4 per cent increase since the creation of the NHS. An ageing population, rising public expectations of the health service and expensive new drugs and technologies place an inexorable upward pressure on costs. And Britain spends less on health than, say, Germany or France.”
The NAO annual report on the financial sustainability of the NHS is a devastating refutation of the government claims on the LTP. It warns that the NHS remains “unsustainable” regardless of the plan. It points out that the promised funding increase “applies only to the budget for NHS England and not to the Department’s entire budget.” Therefore “it does not cover some key areas of health spending such as education, public health and capital investment that could affect the NHS’s ability to deliver the priorities of the long-term plan.”
One of the reasons that the NHS is chronically overstretched and struggling to manage is the year-on-year slashing of funds to local authorities by the central government, creating an enormous crisis in social care provision. The Local Government Association, the umbrella body for all councils, stated that by 2020 councils will have faced a reduction of core funding since 2010 of nearly £16 billion—a loss of 60 percent. The NAO points out that “without a long-term funding settlement for social care, local NHS bodies are concerned that it will be very difficult to make the NHS sustainable.”
Rather than resolve the NHS’s crisis, the LTP will exacerbate it in key areas. GP surgeries will be forced to close and merge in order to create new “network contracts,” covering populations of between 30,000 and 50,000. Services will be delivered through centralised “hubs” rather than family doctors closer to homes. This will see the disappearance of thousands of GP practices from towns and cities. Some reports suggest that 7,500 GP practices will be slashed down to 1,500.
But nothing is more destructive in the LTP than its commitment to continue privatization with vigour. The current network of 44 Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) are to be turned into more centralized “Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) by April 2019. Every ICS will work towards an “Integrated Provider Contract” and these contracts will no doubt be awarded to or sub-contracted to the private sector.
Simon Stevens has already written to the government suggesting legislative repeal of significant key sections of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 that he deems as barriers to wholesale privatization and NHS provider mergers. The LTP wants to “remove the counterproductive effect that general competition rules and powers can have on the integration of NHS care” and “cut delays and costs of the NHS automatically having to go through procurement processes” and to give powers for the ICS commissioners to decide what is “best value” and to award contracts.
The cat was already out of the bag in a preceding document prepared by NHS England and NHS Improvement last December, which explicitly called for more commercialisation of the NHS. The NHS Operational Planning and Contracting Guidance states “in addition to efficiency savings, providers have opportunities to grow their external (non-NHS) income.” It further talks about the NHS working “towards securing the benchmarked potential for commercial income growth.”
The Tory government’s intentions are clear in the LTP.
Under the banner of providing more choices for patients, the government is ready to send more and more patients to private hospitals for outpatient appointments or planned operations with the NHS footing the bill.
The Labour Party and trade unions deliberately downplay the threat posed to NHS by the LTP. They support the plan with a few token criticisms over funds and staffing. Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary, said, “While the aspirations for improving patient care NHS England has outlined today are welcome, the reality is the NHS will continue to be held back by cuts and chronic staff shortages.”
The last nine years of attacks on the NHS could only have happened with the connivance of the trade union bureaucracy who have sabotaged every struggle by health workers. In response to the LTP, Dame Donna Kinnair, acting Chief Executive and General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said, “We welcome the ambitions outlined in the plan, and it deserves to succeed.”
UNISON, the UK’s largest union, has around half a million members in health care. Its head of health Sara Gorton said, “Finding the NHS more staff, and holding on to those it already has, is key to the success of the government’s plan.”

Election of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador signals further shift to US imperialism

Andrea Lobo

Last Sunday, El Salvador lived one of its most quiet and dull presidential elections since the end of the 12-year civil war in 1992. All candidates advanced an anti-corruption rhetoric to cover up their support for the same right-wing policies of social austerity and militarization at the behest of the local oligarchy and US imperialism.
The overwhelming victory of Nayib Bukele, the 37-year-old former mayor of the capital, San Salvador, was chiefly an expression of the popular loathing toward the traditional ruling parties and political forces associated with the bloody civil war whose economic and social devastation is still deeply felt today—the far-right Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the ruling guerrilla movement turned bourgeois party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).
Bukele, who ran on the ticket of the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA) party, received 53 percent of the votes, enough to avoid a second round. The multi-millionaire businessman, Carlos Calleja, leading the coalition topped by ARENA, received 31.8 percent of the vote, while the former FMLN foreign minister Hugo Martinez won 14.4 percent.
The abstention rate of nearly 50 percent, more than 10 percentage points more than the last presidential elections in 2014 and the highest since the 1990s, reflected the growing political gap between workers, peasants and youth, and the entire ruling elite. In the last five years, the FMLN lost more than 1 million votes, and ARENA three-quarters of a million votes.
The Salvadoran and international media have promoted Bukele for years as a “new” and “cool” leader and worked to distance him from the leadership of the FMLN and from ARENA, which was founded by death-squad leader Maj. Robert D’Aubuisson and ruled the country for two decades.
Back in 2016, Foreign Policy (part of the Washington Post group, owned by Jeff Bezos) listed Bukele as one of 15 top “decision-makers” in the world for placing street lights, gentrifying downtown El Salvador, and removing a skating ban. On Sunday, the German Deutsche Welle featured Bukele’s comment that, “The two groups that created the war still want to keep governing, and what’s more, they’re corrupt.”
Far from an “anti-corruption outsider,” however, Bukele was expelled from the FMLN as recently as 2017 for “slandering” the leadership and allegedly violently attacking a local, female official. After failing to register a new party last year, he joined GANA, a recent split-off from ARENA founded by former president, Antonio Saca, whose successful presidential bid in 2004 was financed with millions stolen from Taiwanese donations for the reconstruction of the country after the devastating 2001 earthquakes. Last September, Saca pleaded guilty to embezzling and laundering more than $300 million of public funds during his administration.
Beyond providing a new façade for the same rotten establishment, Bukele’s rise reflects the ongoing shift of the Latin American bourgeoisie away from the “pink tide” governments in the last two decades, of which the FMLN formed a part. This process has been marked by a sharp move to the right and a geopolitical shift behind the drive by US imperialism to reassert its hegemony in the region, particularly against growing Russian and Chinese influence during the last two decades.
Partly due to these pressures, Bukele centered his campaign on the promise of a Commission Against Impunity in El Salvador (CICIES), modeled on the “anti-impunity” commission in Guatemala, backed by the UN.
Using half-truths such as “There will be enough money when nobody steals,” Bukele has sought to cover up his refusal to impinge upon the property and billions of profits plundered from Salvadoran workers by foreign and domestic capital. At the same time, Washington has demanded the creation of a CICIES since Guatemala agreed to its own commission (CICIG) in 2006 and Honduras (MACCIH) in 2016.
The US has heavily sponsored such efforts as window dressing for these corrupt, semi-colonial governments and as political tools to pressure local elites to strictly adhere to US financial and geopolitical interests. After the Guatemalan president, Jimmy Morales, pledged his opposition to establishing diplomatic ties with China, for instance, the Trump administration silently tolerated the expulsion of the CICIG last August.
That same month, facing constant financial defaults and a slowing economy, the FMLN government felt compelled to break diplomatic ties with Taiwan and recognize Beijing, which committed to a three-year assistance program of $150 million and a donation of 3,000 tons of rice. At the same time, discussions are ongoing about selling the inactive La Union container port to Chinese companies, including permission to build a major free trade zone.
The Trump administration responded by temporarily pulling out its ambassador, Jean Manes, who had previously declared, “The expansionist strategy that China has in the region is alarming, not just economically, but also militarily.”
Bukele himself has criticized the decision by the FMLN administration to break ties with Taiwan and recognize Beijing as the sole legitimate government of China, promising to “review that deal, but we will not necessarily break relations with China.”
The administration of the outgoing president, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, has continued to recognize Nicolás Maduro as the president of Venezuela, against the military coup being orchestrated by Washington to hand over power to CIA asset Juan Guaidó, who has already congratulated Bukele on his victory. For his part, Bukele has called Maduro and Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega “dictators” and indicated that his new party, unlike the FMLN, is “not bound to these governments.”
However, as the crisis of global capitalism deepens—a process accelerated by the US trade and economic war against China—and spurs the crisis of bourgeois rule in El Salvador and across the region, fears are growing in the ruling class that new parties based on “anti-corruption” platforms constitute a very limited palliative.
For instance, the Forbes magazine for Mexico, where the recently-elected president, the “anti-corruption” demagogue Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is already facing mass social unrest, wrote on Monday, “In the end, the picture of El Salvador and the young Bukele is the same as in the other countries of Latin America with minor nuances … The risk: that these faces that come to oxygenate politics don’t fulfill the expectations of change and, on the contrary, end as ‘stained’ as the traditional parties and politicians.”
As soon as Bukele takes office on June 1, he will face an anemic economic growth largely dependent on remittances from migrants living in the US, a growing exodus of migrants seeking to escape widespread poverty and gang violence, and the plans by the Trump administration to rescind the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and deport hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans.
The Foundation for Economic and Social Development (Fusades) reported recently that out of the 91,000 Salvadoran youth entering the job market each year, only 12,400, or 13.6 percent, find a formal job.
The most recent census shows that the average monthly salary in El Salvador is $300, but 64 percent of Salvadoran workers make less than this amount. Oxfam reports that multi-dimensional poverty affects 53 percent of the population. The UK-based charity reported, back in 2014, that 160 Salvadorans owned more than $30 million in assets and collectively controlled the equivalent of 87 percent of the GDP. This inequality, particularly as a result of the boom in the stock markets since, is undoubtedly much higher today.
At the same, the Bukele administration will face higher borrowing rates, a public debt equivalent to 70 percent of GDP and growing pressure by the IMF to implement new, regressive tax policies and social austerity. The percentage of GDP spent on health and education has already fallen below 2009 levels, when the FMLN came to power, while the 2019 budget already allocates $1.8 billion for debt servicing and $1.6 billion in total for health and education.
The most common proposal for El Salvador made in recent months by US-based think tanks is the creation of new tax-free economic zones, perpetuating the place of El Salvador in the global capitalist economy as a cheap-labor platform ruled by a handful of increasingly rich oligarchs. Most Salvadoran exports are currently produced in 17 free-trade zones concentrated in textile “maquiladora” sweatshops owned by US, Korean and Taiwanese capital.
Amid a growing resurgence of the class struggle and radicalization of workers and youth internationally, the Salvadoran working class can only fight against this super-exploitation and the staggering levels of inequality by extracting the essential lesson of the bloody defeats of the revolutionary struggles following 1979: it can only oppose imperialism by building an authentic socialist and internationalist party—a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International—and waging an intransigent struggle for its political independence against all pro-capitalist and nationalist parties like the FMLN, the trade unions and their pseudo-left apologists.

Berlin-based airline files for bankruptcy

Ulrich Rippert 

On Tuesday, the Berlin-based airline Germania filed for bankruptcy. Around 1,700 employees and many passengers are immediately affected. They were all surprised by the announcement and left stranded at home or abroad.
Last week it was reported that the airline was unable to pay salaries for January. The airline management denied the report and said the company was merely suffering from short-term financial problems. Early Tuesday morning, a company spokesman suddenly announced that the sub-companies Germania airline GmbH, Germania Technik Brandenburg GmbH and Germania Flugdienste GmbH had filed for bankruptcy at the district court of Berlin-Charlottenburg. Flight operations were cancelled overnight.
Germania is Germany’s fourth largest airline. Its closure is another blow to the employees of the aviation industry, following the bankruptcy of Air Berlin a year and a half ago.
Germania had operated for 30 years as a scheduled and charter airline and had developed into a popular company for holiday flights. It was closely associated with regional airports, such as Rostock-Laage, Dresden, Erfurt, Bremen and Münster-Osnabrück, which now fear for their own futures. For many years, Germania had specialised in non-mainstream routes and was therefore not regarded as a rival to the country’s major airlines.
In addition to holiday flights to Mallorca, the airline focussed on flights to Turkey, and Turks living in Germany regularly used the company to fly home. Only a part of the fleet flew routes within its own network. Another part was leased to other companies. Germania flew on behalf of major tour operators and also used two Airbus aircraft for company transport.
In total, Germania transported more than 4 million passengers a year to more than 60 destinations on short- and medium-haul routes. Together with Swiss Germania Flugbetrieb AG and Bulgarian Eagle, Germania possessed a fleet of 37 aircraft.
Management had reacted to growing competition in recent years with a massive expansion programme. In the summer of 2016, it bought a total of 25 aircraft of the Airbus A320neo series, due to be delivered by 2020. The bankruptcy of rival Air Berlin in October 2017 was also used by Germania CEO Karsten Balke to take over part of the Air Berlin business. For example, Germania offered around 40 percent more flights in 2018 than in the previous year.
This intensified the company’s competition with Lufthansa and its budget subsidiary Eurowings, on the one hand, and low-cost airlines such as Ryanair and Easyjet on the other.
According to the Handelsblatt business newspaper, which cites the Germania annual report, the company made a loss of €40 million in 2016/17, based on a turnover of €450 million, with losses even heavier in 2018. In the end, the company did not have enough money to make a down payment for the 25 new aircraft it had ordered.
In the case of the bankruptcy of Air Berlin, the German government agreed to provide a bridging loan amounting to €150 million, but this time around it has refused to support Germania. “This is how the market economy works,” said the federal Economics Minister Peter Altmaier. Success and failure were part of the game. If the state intervenes “arbitrarily” to save companies, this leads to “false allocations” with high economic costs.
In the case of Air Berlin, the state bridging loan was directly linked to support for Germany’s main carrier, Lufthansa, and once again, the refusal of support for Germania is aimed at boosting Lufthansa. The latter airline has announced “generous help” for stranded Germania passengers, and is preparing to extract plum parts of the failed airline. At the same time, Lufthansa’s executives are busy with plans to take over troubled low-cost carrier Norwegian Airlines.
Lufthansa is pursuing a systematic course of expansion with the goal of establishing itself as the unassailable market leader in Europe. In the past year, the LH Group (Eurowings, Swiss and Austria Airlines) expanded its already dominant position. The number of passengers carried increased to 142.3 million—an increase of 10 percent compared to 2017.
This goal of establishing Lufthansa as the main player in the European aviation industry is actively supported by the main union for German airline workers, Verdi. The union works closely with Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr to implement rationalisation measures and social cuts. Verdi board member Christine Behle is deputy chairwoman of the Lufthansa Supervisory Board and is directly involved in the preparation of plans for the expansion of the airline at the expense of the wages and conditions of the workforce.
On Tuesday, Germania boss Karsten Balke said that the company was not only suffering due to the high price of jet fuel. He accused Verdi of having concentrated strikes during the past few months at regional airports, which resulted in an above-average number of flight cancellations and very high extra costs for Germania.
What is certain is that Verdi has done nothing to warn the employees of Germania against the threat of job losses. As in the case of the bankruptcy of Air Berlin, where Verdi and Lufthansa worked closely together, it is ultimately the workforce which will pay the costs of insolvency. Many airline workers switched to Germania after losing their jobs at Air Berlin, and have now been made redundant for a second time within the space of 15 months.

The reality of capitalism: GM makes $11.8 billion in profits while closing plants, eliminating 14,000 jobs

Jerry White

General Motors made $11.8 billion in profits in 2018, according to a company statement released yesterday. This included $10.8 billion in North American earnings last year and a 9.5 percent profit margin in the final quarter. These giant profits were announced as GM accelerates it plans to shut five factories in the US and Canada and destroy more than 14,000 jobs.
GM’s corporate board initiated the jobs massacre two days before the release of the profit report, which showed an eight percent decline over last year’s profits. The aim is to reassure Wall Street that GM will not bow to popular outrage over the plant closings and mass layoffs.
On Monday, the first of 4,000 engineers, technicians, managers and other white-collar workers, including 1,300 workers at the GM Tech Center in the Detroit suburb of Warren, were laid off and escorted out of their work locations. The half-century old Lordstown, Ohio assembly plant is scheduled to be closed next month. The Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant is to be closed on June 1, and the Oshawa, Ontario plant shut down by the fourth quarter of 2019. The company also plans to close transmission plants in Baltimore and Warren by April 1 and August 1, respectively.
In 1979, during the first Chrysler bankruptcy, the corporations and the United Auto Workers (UAW) claimed that huge wage and benefit concessions were needed to “save” the auto industry. After three decades of endless givebacks, the UAW made the same claims as it collaborated with the Obama administration to slash wages during the 2009 restructuring of GM and Chrysler.
Now, even as the auto companies are flush with cash, the corporations are demanding even more sacrifices from workers and handing over billions to Wall Street.
Since 2015, GM squandered $10.6 billion on stock buybacks to boost the value of the company’s shares, more than double the $4.5 billion GM is expected to save next year from the job cuts.
Billions more have been spent on dividend payments to wealthy shareholders. This means even greater personal fortunes for top GM investors like Warren Buffett, the world’s third richest man (net worth $84.4 billion) whose Berkshire Hathaway owns 52.4 million GM shares, and Paul Schwarzman (net worth $12.4 billion) whose BlackRock investment firm controls 79 million GM shares.
In a conference call Wednesday, GM CEO Mary Barra told representatives from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citibank, Barclays, Deutsche Bank and other investment firms that company executives would “continue to deliver on our commitments that we made to you, our owners” to “create value in the short-term and long-term for our shareholders.”
Workers in the US, Canada, Korea and Brazil are thrown onto the streets, their communities are destroyed, and the profits they have produced are handed over to the financial aristocracy that lords over society.
Workers are being given an object lesson in the nature of capitalism. While the working class produces all of society’s wealth, the product of its labor is owned by the ruling class, which funnels vast sums into the hands of super-rich minority, while workers are condemned to poverty, servitude and social misery.
Predictably, no one on the investors’ call raised any objections to the devastation that would be wrought by the plant closings and mass layoffs. One analyst from Swiss-based UBS, however, did express concern about the “enormous push back” against the plant closings. He asked Barra, “How much of the $4.5 billion in savings is at risk if the unions don’t allow the closings or concessions?”
The GM CEO quickly assured him, saying, “I don’t see any risks,” making it clear the UAW had already signed off on closing what she said were underutilized plants. While the status of the plants would be finalized in negotiations with the UAW for a new labor agreement this summer, she said, “it’s a transition we have to go through” and “problem solve with the UAW.”
Far from fighting the plant closings, the UAW and the Unifor union in Canada have actively supported the decimation of autoworkers’ jobs and living standards. A substantial portion of the wages and benefits stolen from workers has found its way into the bank accounts and investment portfolios of the union executives themselves. When GM announced the plant closings in November, the value of GM shares controlled by the UAW increased by more than $200 million.
Facing the growing militancy of workers, the unions, discredited by decades of betrayals and bribery, are blaming the plant closings on Mexican workers for supposedly stealing the jobs of US and Canadian workers, echoing the nationalist rantings of the Trump administration.
This lie has been exploded by the courageous and ongoing struggle of Mexican workers in the “maquiladora” sweatshops in Matamoros. The workers have waged a three-week battle after rebelling against the unions, forming independent strike committees and calling popular assemblies to fight for improved wages and conditions.
Free from the stranglehold of the unions, these workers marched to the US border at Brownsville, Texas and appealed to their American brothers and sisters to join the fight against the global corporations. The struggle has now spread to grocery store workers, public employees and other sections of workers in Matamoros, with business publications warning about the spreading “contagion” of the class struggle.
The reemergence of the class struggle and political radicalization of the working class has struck fear in the hearts of the ruling class. Terrified that the growth of working-class struggle will acquire a conscious, anti-capitalist perspective, President Trump declared in his State of the Union Tuesday night: “We are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country.” His warning received the approval of the assembled representatives of the ruling class, Democrat and Republican, who hoped their clapping hands might stop the wave of working-class anger spreading throughout the country and internationally.
The answer to GM’s job massacre is the demonstration on Saturday, February 9, called by the Steering Committee of the Coalition of Rank-and-File Committees and the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter, to mobilize working class opposition to GM’s plant closings and mass layoffs. The march will oppose the supposed “right” of GM to shut down these plants.
The demonstration is not an appeal to GM and its corporate executives, beholden to Wall Street, but a call for workers to express their independent strength and determination to fight. It is also not an appeal to the UAW, the cheap-labor contractor and industrial police force, but is based on the call for auto workers and other workers to form independent rank-and-file committees to organize and unify their struggles.
The demonstration will demand a halt to all plant closures, the abolition of the two-tier wage and benefit system, the transformation of all temporary workers into full-timers, and the rehiring of all laid-off and victimized workers. In opposition to the shop floor dictatorship of corporate management, it will fight for industrial democracy, workers’ control of production and the transformation of GM, Ford and the other auto giants into public enterprises, democratically controlled and collectively owned by the working class.
This program is a critical part of the socialist transformation of world economy, to make social need and equality, not the accumulation of grotesque levels of personal wealth, the guiding principle of economic, political and social life.

6 Feb 2019

IGB Freshwater Science Fellowship Programme 2019 for International Scientists – Germany

Application Deadlines:  Application deadlines are 1st June 2019 and 1st December 2019.

Offered annually? Bi-annual. Twice a year

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Germany

About the Award: You would like to expand your research on freshwaters or inland fisheries? You are highly motivated to put your excellent research ideas into action? You are keen on working abroad with an interdisciplinary team of scientists dedicated to advance freshwater ecology, inland fisheries science or related research areas? And you are looking for unique facilities to develop new approaches to tackle the most important research questions for the future of our freshwaters?
Then we cordially invite you to apply for a research visit at IGB. With Berlin being an attractive science location, you will find stimulating working conditions, excellent infrastructure and open-minded colleagues with a wide range of backgrounds in freshwater ecology and inland fisheries. The working language at IGB is English.
IGB provides excellent laboratory and field facilities for interdisciplinary research, large-scale experimental facilities as well as long-term research programmes. Fellowships are offered in three funding lines:
  1. Postdoc Fellowships: full support for postdoctoral researchers to carry out full-time research at IGB for up to two years
  2. Senior Fellowships: for scientists who generally lead a research group at their home institution to obtain funding for an extended visit at IGB (e.g., during a sabbatical leave)
It is generally possible to split the granted number of months in more than one visiting period at IGB. Please discuss with your host if this option is suitable for your planned project.

Fields of Study: 
  • Ecohydrology
  • Ecosystem Research
  • Experimental Limnology
  • Biology and Ecology of Fishes
  • Ecophysiology and Aquaculture
  • Analytical Chemistry and Biogeochemistry
Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: The type of fellowship applicable to your career stage depends on your qualifications at the intended starting date. Applicants must hold a Master degree or equivalent (PhD fellowships) or a doctoral degree (postdocs and senior scientists) in one of the research areas at IGB. Before submitting an application, please contact your potential host and develop a research programme in accordance with your host group. The following links may help to identify the best potential host to pursue your ideas.

Selection: The selection of the fellowship awards is competitive. The following evaluation criteria apply:
  • scientific record and potential to conduct the proposed research
  • full support of the potential host contacted before
  • quality and novelty of the research proposal
  • complementary integration into ongoing research activities at IGB
The selection committee is composed of the director, the department heads, the speakers of IGB’s cross-cutting research domains and IGB’s equal opportunity commissioner. The director will notify the awardees no later than eight weeks after the application deadline. Research projects can start in agreement with the respective host at any time but no later than six months after notification. Candidates that have not been accepted can resubmit a revised application within one of the following application rounds. Consultation with the potential host is strongly recommended if this option is envisioned.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of fellowship: The fellowships provide resources to cover basic living expenses. They amount to 1,365 €/month at the doctoral level, 1,828 €/month at the postdoctoral level, and 2,600 €/month at the senior scientist level. In addition, some funds can be provided for consumables and travel allowances. The fellowships do not include health insurance, which is mandatory in Germany, nor contributions to pension schemes. Fellowships can normally only be granted if no other income is received during the fellowship period by employments elsewhere.

Duration of fellowship: Fellowships for PhD students, postdocs and senior scientists for 6-24 months.

How to Apply: 
  • CV, including a complete list of publications
  • certificates of your Master degree or equivalent, or of your doctoral degree, respectively
  • a letter indicating your research interests and experience (max. 1 page)
  • your proposed research programme at IGB (max. 1 page), including potential research host(s) and time line
  • two letters of recommendation to be (a) uploaded by the applicant to our application platform or (b) sent by the reference contact directly to Dr. Ina Severin (severin@igb-berlin.de, cc to co@igb-berlin.de)
Please apply electronically in English by using our  online application platform.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: The Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB)

Employment-Based Scholarship Postgraduate Programme 2019 for International Students – Ireland

Application Deadlines:
  • Applicant deadline: 16:00 (Irish time) 28th February 2019
  • FAQ deadline: 16:00 (Irish time) 7th February 2019
  • Supervisor, employment mentor and referee deadline: 16:00 (Irish time) 7th March 2019
  • Research office endorsement deadline: 16:00 (Irish time) 14th March 2019
Eligible Countries: All


To Be Taken At (Country): Ireland

About the Award: The Council offers opportunities for suitably qualified individuals to take up an employment-based award to carry out research leading to a postgraduate qualification in any discipline, granted by an eligible HEI within Ireland. The application for a scholarship is developed by the applicant, in collaboration with an Employment Partner and host HEI. Awardees have, for the term of the award, dual status as employee of the employment partner and postgraduate student of the host HEI.
Application for a scholarship can be made in respect of both a Masters Degree by Research or a PhD.


Fields of Study: The Scholarship supports research across all disciplines

Type: Masters, PhD, Research

Eligibility: Scholars must fulfill the following criteria:
  • must not have applied more than once to the Scheme and at the time of application:
  • be a new entrant to the degree for which they are to receive Council funding and have been formally accepted by the relevant department/school by, at the latest, 1st October 2019; or
  • fulfil the criteria in Clause 4.5 if already registered and part of the degree has been completed.
and in the case of
  • Research Masters Scholarships, not currently holding or having previously held a Council Postgraduate Scholarship.
  • Degree Scholarships, not currently holding or having previously held any Council Postgraduate Scholarship other than those which would enable them to obtain a Research Masters Degree.
  • Scholars from any country may hold a Council Postgraduate Scholarship. However, Scholars must:
    • maintain her/his principal residence in Ireland (as defined) during the period of the Scholarship.
    • satisfy the State’s regulations on immigration and have the support of their HEI and Employment Partner with respect to these regulations and requirements if not a national of a member state of the European Union (EU). This must be completed in advance of signing a contract with the IRC.
    • For all Scholarships, arrangements with respect to immigration will be a matter for settlement between the Scholar, his/her HEI, the Employment Partner, and the relevant immigration authorities of the State.
Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The total value of the Employment Based Programme Scholarship, will be up to a maximum of €24,000 in any approved year for the duration of the Scholarship and will consist of the following:
  • A contribution of €16,000 to the employment of the Scholar.
  • A contribution of up to a maximum of €5,750 to Scholarship fees (including non-EU Scholarship fees). In the event of any differential between this contribution and the institutional fee, this must be paid by the Scholar and/or HEI and/or Employment Partner. Scholars who hold a fee waiver from their HEI, or where no fee is required, or where fees are paid in full or in part by a third party, must inform the Council and the appropriate offices in their HEI and will not be eligible for the fee portion of the Scholarship.
  • Eligible direct research expenses of €2,250 per annum to enable the scholar to carry out the research project. Please see Appendix III for guidance on what is considered an eligible direct research cost.
Duration of Award: 
  • All Scholarships will commence with effect from 2nd September 2019 (no later or earlier).
  • The duration of funding to be given for the Scholarship is dependent on the type of degree being pursued and the date of first registration.
How to Apply: Applications (including academic supervisor, employment mentor and referee forms) will only be accepted through the online application system.
  • It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying
Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Disaster Capitalism in Brazil: Mining Greed Produces a Horrific Death Toll

Vijay Prashad

On January 25, 2019, a dam burst in the town of Brumadinho, north of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The dam was built by the iron-ore company Vale to store residue after the iron ore had been extracted. Once the dam began to crumble, it did not take long for its 13 million cubic meters of iron waste to sweep down onto the workers and into their town.
Approximately 300 people have been killed in this disaster. Many more have been injured. Within four hours of the breach, the sludge had swept down into the Paraopeba River, threatening to pollute the entire region’s water.
Accidents That Are Not Accidents
It is difficult to focus attention on these disasters, which are not really disasters. On April 18, 2018, nine months before the dam was ruptured, Vale admitted in an internal document that the dam was weak and that its collapse would cause a large loss of life. It mentioned the fact that in the sludge’s path was the workers’ cafeteria. The dam burst just after noon. Workers were in that cafeteria eating lunch. They took the first brunt of the mud’s force. This is what had been predicted by Vale’s study, which was leaked to the press after the disaster.
It is also what Brazil’s Mining Agency had found last September. It said that the dam had a “low risk of rupture,” but that if the dam went, it would have a “strong impact” in terms of loss of life and environmental damage. The agency had obviously miscalculated regarding the chance of rupture but had been correct in terms of the impact.
Men Who Never Pay
Vale, a Brazilian firm whose market capitalization is at $77.4 billion, is one of the world’s largest producers of high-quality iron ore. Last year, Vale announced record profits from its sale of iron ore. The Chinese economy has slowed down, which means Chinese firms are more circumspect when it comes to sourcing iron ore. Vale produces low-impurity iron ore, which produces less pollution and allows steel mills to improve their blast furnace productivity. This is why Vale has seen an increase in its sales and its profits. Warnings about dam ruptures and other accidents were not going to interrupt the flow of money into Vale’s coffers.
The Brazilian government has hastily gone after local-level managers, but it has not touched senior management including Fábio Schvartsman, one of the most powerful Brazilian businessmen. Two years ago, the UN Environmental Program and the Norwegian foundation GRID-Arendal did a study of mine failures and found that most of them gave sufficient warnings and that these warnings could have led to prevention of the disasters. “The tragedy,” they wrote in their study, “is that the warning signs were either ignored or not recognized by under-resourced management.” It is these “under-resourced managers” who often hold together the undercapitalized mines that are pushed hard to produce more to increase the firm’s overall profits.
Policy is not set at the level of the mine, but from the boardrooms. No one like Schvartsman, however, is going to pay the cost. People like him will stand alongside the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and cry crocodile tears. There will be no real reform of the system, since any real reform would undermine the economic and political power of men like Schvartsman.
Sacrifice Zones
Brumadinho lies squarely in Brazil’s sacrifice zones. Living in these zones are people who are being treated as disposable—people whose land is being destroyed as corporations drive their giant excavators to tear into the earth and to leave the soil polluted and the landscape destroyed. The large corporations have declared a war against the planet, their machinery digging deeper and deeper to make mountains of profit for the few as many millions of people perish into starvation and disorientation.
The sacrifice zones are in every country, from the lands on which live Native Americans in North America to Adivasis in central India. No tree is safe, no stream is to be left alive.
As long as the newspapers keep Brumadinho and Vale in the news, the corporations will keep their heads down. Vale has already been forced to stop its operations at the Brucutu mine, the second-largest in Brazil after Vale’s Carajás—the largest iron-ore mine in the world. But all this is temporary. Vale knows that business will proceed once the tears have dried.
Not far from the Carajás mine, Vale has vast concessions to extract copper, gold and manganese—putting it at odds with nature and the local residents, the Kayapo community. In 2015, the Kayapo community asked a professor from the Federal University of Pará to measure the water in the Cateté River. The professor—Dr. Reginaldo Saboia de Paiva—found shockingly elevated levels of iron, chromium, copper and nickel in the water. The polluted water is what the Kayapo community must use, even as it poisons them. They live in a sacrifice zone. They are being sacrificed so that Vale can make its fabulous profits.
The capacity of the Kayapo to take on Vale and the Brazilian state is negligible. President Bolsonaro has appointed General Franklimberg Ribeiro de Freitas to run the indigenous affairs agency (FUNAI). Neither Bolsonaro nor Franklimberg has any care for the survival of the Kayapo. Policy will support the bulldozers and the heavy diggers, the mining and the agro-business corporations. There is money to be made, nature and people be dammed.
Canada’s Ugly Side
The firms know that. Franklimberg had been on the advisory board of Belo Sun, a Canadian mining firm with its tentacles in Brazil. Belo Sun is not the only Canadian mining firm to operate in Brazil. Most of those with their machines deep into Brazilian earth are from Canada—Barrick Gold, Reunion Gold, Kinross Gold, Jaguar Mining, Largo Resources, Emerita Resources, Equinox Gold, Yamana Gold and Leagold Mining Corporation. Along with the British firm Anglo American and the Australian firm Mirabela Nickel, these firms take a pause each time there is a disaster and then proceed all guns blaring into the sacrifice zones.
If you are confused by Canada’s role in the Lima Group that seeks to overthrow the government in Venezuela, pause and read about the Canadian companies that are tearing South America apart.
The Brazilian Solicitor General André Mendonça went to the town of Brumadinho and said that Vale must change its behavior. Vale said that it would cooperate with the authorities and it would provide support for the families who had been affected. The right noises have been made. There will soon be silence. And then the sound, once more, of the engines from the 793F CMD Caterpillar 240-ton trucks as they carry iron ore away from the mine, away from the sacrifice zone.