Sudan’s opposition leaders capitulate to the military junta

Jean Shaoul

The Alliance for Freedom and Change (AFC) called off its protest campaign and general strike earlier this week in exchange for some vague promises of “concessions” from Sudan’s junta.

The AFC has handed the initiative to the Transitional Military Council (TMC), which ousted long-term dictator President Omar al-Bashir in April in order to prevent the overthrow of the entire regime.

The nationwide general strike had brought cities across the country to a virtual standstill for three days after the weekend, just days after the TMC ordered a bloodbath to disperse the months-long mass sit-in outside the defense ministry headquarters in Khartoum on June 3.

The sit-in gave expression to workers’ and professionals’ determined opposition to the junta despite its threats and intimidation. It prompted warnings of an imminent civil war.

Since then, the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an offshoot of the notorious Janjaweed that ruthlessly suppressed the rebellion in Darfur, have killed at least 120 protesters, including 40 whose bodies were dumped in the Nile River and 19 children, injured nearly 1,000 and arrested hundreds.

Among the opposition leaders arrested was Yassir Arman, who had returned to Sudan in May to take part in the talks with the junta despite facing a death sentence. He had been detained after the military broke up the sit-in and deported by helicopter—against his will—to South Sudan, along with two other oppositionists. The TMC had earlier announced that the three had been released.

There were reports of many rapes. Khartoum has been in lockdown, the University of Khartoum ransacked, and electricity and the internet switched off.

The TMC’s deputy leader and RSF chief, Lieutenant General Hamdan Dagalo (known by his nickname “Hemeti”), who has ambitions of stepping into al-Bashir’s shoes, had justified the brutal crackdown by blaming the protesters for “causing chaos.”

The Alliance for Freedom and Change consists of 22 opposition organisations, including the Sudan Professionals Association, coalitions of political parties, Girifna (“We have had enough,” a movement of young people), the Forum of Sudanese Tweeters and the families of the Ramadan martyrs (28 of the Ba’athist officers who, following a failed attempt to overthrow Bashir during Ramadan, were summarily executed by the Islamist security services in 1990).

It has called for the withdrawal of the militias from Khartoum and other towns, an international investigation into the bloodbath, the lifting of an internet blockade and the establishment of a civilian transitional government.

The bourgeois and petty-bourgeois layers represented by the AFC, regardless of their differences with the TMC, offer no way forward for the workers and poor in Sudan. A civilian-led transitional government in alliance with the military, while giving them a greater share in Sudan’s national cake, would continue to represent the interests of the country’s capitalist elite and its enforcers in the military.

This venal clique presides over a country where at least 80 percent of the 40 million population lives on less than US$1 per day, with some 5.5 million in need of humanitarian assistance in 2018, an increase of 700,000 compared to 2017, and around 2.47 million children suffer from acute malnutrition.

The TMC is riven with dissent, having admitted there have been at least two coup attempts since al-Bashir’s ouster, with “two groups of officers,” apparently supporters of al-Bashir, taken into custody. However, Saudi Arabia’s state broadcaster al-Arabiya denied this, claiming that most of them had refused orders to disperse the mass sit-in, while al-Hurra, a US-based Arabic channel, said that the officers had been arrested for holding opposing views to the TMC.

Following the military’s crackdown in the capital, there have been reports of clashes in other parts of the country, particularly the already-fragile and troubled regions of eastern Sudan and Darfur, where Janjaweed militia shot and killed nine people in the village of al-Dalij Monday.

In Eastern Sudan, there have been escalating tribal clashes and looting by criminal gangs in Port Sudan that have spread to the cities of Khashm el-Girba and Kassala and resulted in the deaths of more than 30 people. According to the Middle East Eye, it is widely believed that the TMC, RSF and agents of the “deep state” allied with it, are responsible for the tribal clashes and that the authorities released criminal gangs from prisons and allowed them to run riot.

The TMC’s offer of concessions comes in the wake of several international developments: the African Union’s suspension of Sudan, the UN Security Council’s condemnation of the TMC’s crackdown on peaceful protesters and mediation efforts by Ethiopia. According to Mahmoud Dirir, Ethiopia’s special envoy to Sudan, the TMC and AFC had “agreed to resume talks soon.”

Both the AFC and General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the TMC chief, met separately with Washington’s newly appointed special envoy to Sudan, Donald Booth, and the assistant secretary of state for Africa, Tibor Nagy, dispatched to Sudan to help craft a “peaceful solution” to the crisis. Booth served as the US Envoy to Sudan and South Sudan from 2013 to 2017.

The US is determined to pressure the TMC for concessions to its own imperialist interests. Washington’s primary concern is to ensure that the uprising does not spread to its regional allies: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. These dictatorial and venal regimes, fearing their own working class and poor peasants, backed the junta and ordered the bloodbath.

The last thing the US—and Europe—want is instability in Sudan, strategically located in the Horn of Africa, alongside the Red Sea and the entrance to the Suez Canal through which much of the region’s oil passes, and a new wave of refugees heading for Europe.

In a sop to the protesters, Sudan’s state prosecutors have charged former dictator al-Bashir with corruption and misuse of emergency orders and announced investigations into the financial dealings of “leading officials of the former regime.” The TMC has also “retired” 98 officers from the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) accused of cracking down on protesters while al-Bashir was in power.

The junta has also admitted that its security forces committed abuses when they attacked the mass sit-in in Khartoum, with its spokesman announcing an investigation into the violence and the arrest of several military officers for the “violations.”

These concessions urged upon the TMC by international “mediators” can and will be revoked at the drop of a hat. They are a trap for the Sudanese working class. Complicit in this treachery are Britain’s fake lefts—the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party and their international affiliates—who have called for Sudan’s revolutionaries to negotiate and ally with the lower ranks of the officers and among soldiers.

They likewise supported the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists, which backed the Egyptian military’s ouster of elected President Mohamed Mursi, paving the way for General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s bloodbath and repression more ferocious than that of his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.

Sudan’s struggle takes place amid a growing wave of working-class militancy throughout the Middle East and North Africa, exemplified by the strikes and demonstrations in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

The only way to establish a democratic regime in Sudan is through a struggle led by the working class, independently of and in opposition to the liberal and pseudo-left forces in the middle class, to take power, expropriating the regime’s ill-gotten wealth in the context of a broad international struggle of the working class against capitalism and for the building of socialism. This requires the building of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution, in Sudan.

European Union threatens to sanction Italy over budget deficit

Peter Schwarz

Following last month’s European elections, the dispute over Italy’s state debt has flared up once again. The European Commission recommended on June 5 the launching of disciplinary procedures against the highly indebted country, which could culminate in the imposition of severe fines if the government fails to drastically cut spending.

However, numerous steps would have to be completed before that point is reached. To date, no financial penalty has ever been imposed on a eurozone member. Additionally, the potential of an Italian bankruptcy could drag the entire eurozone over a cliff. After Germany and France, Italy is the third largest member of the currency bloc.

The Italian government is divided over the issue. While the non-party prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, threatened to resign, and pleaded together with Finance Minister Giovanni Trea, also a non-party minister, for obeying European Union (EU) regulations, far-right Lega leader Matteo Salvini initially adopted a confrontational stance. The strongman of the government ridiculed the “little letter” from Brussels and vowed not to bow to the EU’s demands.

But Conte announced a de-escalation of the situation earlier this week. At a crisis meeting with Salvini and Five Star Movement leader Luigi Di Maio, it was agreed that a strategy would be drafted together with Trea to avoid EU sanctions, Conte announced. He previously warned that disciplinary action would trigger a crisis on Italy’s financial market.

Salvini confirmed the agreement. However, this isn’t worth much. The EU previously threatened to initiate proceedings against Italy late last year, but eventually agreed to a compromise. The EU now assumes that both Italy’s new debt and its overall debt will continue to increase.

In essence, the conflict over Italy’s budget is a bitter fight between competing factions of the European and Italian bourgeoisies that is being carried out at the expense of the working class.

The EU’s threats of penalties recall its treatment of Greece. The EU is particularly irritated by the Five Star-Lega government’s introduction of a basic income and the abandoning of a pension reform, both of which cost several billion euros. EU officials are demanding an end to these measures and a stricter regime of austerity.

As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, these measures are nothing more than a drop in the bucket, and are, moreover, bound to draconian requirements much like Hartz IV in Germany. They do nothing to change the glaring levels of social inequality, and poverty and unemployment continue to rise. They were introduced above all at the initiative of the Five Star Movement, which won large numbers of votes in southern Italy on the basis of its promise for a basic income.

By contrast, Salvini is developing very different plans. His Lega was initially formed as a separatist party in northern Italy and had a base of support among sections of the middle class and businessmen. An old hate-filled song that Salvini posted on YouTube at the beginning of his political career is once again making the rounds. It concerns the stinking Napolitans (people of Naples, the largest city in the impoverished south), who allegedly even force the dogs to leave the city.

Only later did the Lega expand its influence across the country with anti-refugee xenophobia and anti-EU demagogy. But Salvini benefited above all from the fact that the so-called left parties and trade unions had slavishly imposed the EU’s austerity demands for more than three decades.

Salvini’s major goal is the cutting of taxes for the super-rich and corporations. By introducing a flat tax, he wants to trigger a fiscal crisis. The project would cost between €50 billion and €60 billion to implement.

Such a policy would be inseparable from ruthless attacks on the working class. In the past, similar policies were practiced by dictatorships, like the Pinochet regime in Chile, or the right-wing governments that ruled in Eastern Europe following the restoration of capitalism. Salvini is consciously cultivating a fascist base to enforce these policies against bitter opposition from the working class.

The Five Star Movement, which long claimed to be neither left nor right, has been exposed as a reliable prop for the far-right Lega. The WSWS warned six years ago that the Five Star Movement was mobilising distressed sections of the middle class with nationalist appeals against foreigners and refugees.

While the Five Star Movement won 33 percent at the 2018 Italian elections, and Lega 17 percent, the vote percentages were almost reversed in last month’s vote. While the Lega emerged as the strongest party with 34 percent of the vote, the Five Star Movement secured just 17 percent. The protest party is deeply divided and faces the threat of a split.

Under these conditions, Salvini hopes to be able to form a government of right-wing parties following early elections. Together with the Forza Italia of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (8.8 percent) and the fascist Fratelli d’italia (6.5 percent), the Lega secured almost half of the votes in the European elections. However, Salvini can’t afford to engage in an open conflict with the EU, which brings with it the threat of a financial crisis. This is why he is shifting on the debt issue.

In principle, the EU has no objection to massive tax cuts for the rich, provided that they are offset through deep social spending cuts. All of its policies over recent decades have been based on this principle. However, the EU is not prepared to tolerate tax cuts being offset temporarily through increased debt. This would, first and foremost, undermine Germany’s dominant position in the euro zone, which is based on a strong euro.

This is why German economists in particular are stressing that Italy must first cut social spending. For example, Clemens Fuest, president of the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research, said that the former Democratic Party (DP) government “deregulated the labour market and secured more flexibility.” Now, they are “taking the other direction. The deregulations were reversed, and that’s just the wrong approach.” It is necessary to “restructure costs, away from pension benefits towards investments, for example.”

The dividing line between supporters of the EU and nationalists like Salvini is fluid, with both agreeing that major attacks on the living standards of the working class are necessary to defend the capitalist system. For the Italian working class, there is no lesser evil in this conflict. They must organise themselves independently, align themselves with the workers in Europe and internationally, and fight for a socialist programme. This is the only way to prevent a relapse into barbarism and war.

Rising US “deaths of despair” driven by health care costs, lack of access to care

Kate Randall 

A new report reveals that most US states are losing ground on key measures related to life expectancy, which has declined in each of the last three years. The Commonwealth Fund’s “2019 Scorecard on State Health System Performance” shows that “deaths of despair”—premature deaths from suicide, alcohol abuse and drug overdoses—continue to rise in nearly every state. The report further shows that these deaths are tied to rising healthcare costs that are placing an increasing financial burden on families across the country.

The Commonwealth Fund’s Scorecard assessed “deaths of despair” in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as ranked states on 47 measures of access to health care, quality of care, health care usage, health outcomes and income-based health care disparities. The report found that Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act has been a central factor leading to meaningful gains in access to health care.

The reasons behind the decision of a person to take his or her own life, to take drugs resulting in a fatal overdose, or to drink alcohol in excess leading to health problems and death, are complex. But this new study shows that one of the major underlying causes of such tragedies is social inequality, in particular lack of access to health care and the associated financial struggles.

The opioid crisis, suicide and alcohol-related deaths

While the study finds that deaths from suicide and alcohol and drug abuse are a national crisis, it notes that states and regions are affected in different ways. Opioid use disorder has fueled a rise in drug overdose deaths with tragic outcomes for families across the country. The emergence of highly lethal synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, in the illicit drug supply has contributed to this national crisis.

The opioid epidemic has hit states in New England, the Mid-Atlantic and several Southeastern states particularly hard. West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Delaware and New Hampshire have the highest death rates from drug overdoses.

In Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio, death rates from drug overdose were at least five times higher than from alcohol abuse and about three times higher than suicide rates. In Montana, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Oregon and Wyoming, death rates from suicide and alcohol were greater than those from drugs.

Source: Commonwealth Fund. Data from National Vital Statistics System

West Virginia has been the state hardest hit by the opioid crisis, with 58.7 deaths per 100,000 residents—a staggering two-and-a-half times the national average. This was 25 percent more than the state with the next highest rate of opioid deaths, Ohio, which had 46.3 deaths per 100,000 residents. Opioid-related deaths in West Virginia increased fivefold in 12 years—rising from 10.5 deaths per 100,000 in 2005 to 57.8 in 2017.

The rate of death from drug overdose more than doubled across the US between 2005 and 2017. These deaths surged by 10 percent just between 2016 and 2017.

Suicide rates nationally have risen by nearly 30 percent since 2005. Parallel to the sharp rise in the death rate from drug overdose, the national suicide death rate rose more sharply between 2016 and 2017 than during any other one-year period in recent history. Similarly, the alcohol-related death rate rose by about 2 percent per year between 2005 and 2012 but increased by about 4 percent per year between 2013 and 2017.

Health insurance, access to care, cost

The Commonwealth Fund notes that the reductions in the uninsured population following the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) expansion of health coverage in 2014 have now stalled or even begun to erode in some states.

The ACA, commonly known as Obamacare, while expanding some access to health care coverage, has never challenged the domination of the for-profit health care industry. It required that individuals without insurance from their employer or a government program purchase insurance from a private insurance company.

Nearly all states saw substantial reductions in uninsured rates between 2013 and 2017 with the opening of the ACA’s insurance marketplaces, with fewer people citing cost as a barrier to receiving health care.

As the ACA was written, Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor jointly administered by the federal government and the states, was to be expanded to cover all US citizens and legal residents with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty line. However, the US Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that it was up to the states whether or not to expand their Medicaid programs.

Almost all those states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA saw a reduction in rates of uninsured through 2015. However, after 2015 any progress in reducing the rates of uninsured had stalled in most states. From 2016 to 2017, more than half of states were simply treading water. Sixteen states saw a rise of 1 percent in the uninsured rate, including both those that did and did not expand Medicaid.

States that adopted Medicaid expansion have seen lower rates of the uninsured. As of January 1, 2017, Massachusetts had the lowest rate of uninsured, at 4 percent. The states with the highest rates of uninsured—Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas—were among the 19 states that had not expanded Medicaid as of January 1, 2017. In Texas, 24 percent—nearly a quarter of all residents—were uninsured.

Uninsured rates were particularly high in states with large African-American and Hispanic populations. In Florida, George and Texas, about 20 percent of black adults were uninsured in 2017, compared to the US average of about 14 percent. In Texas, more than a third of Hispanic adults were uninsured in 2017. Undoubtedly contributing to the uninsured among Hispanics is the denial of Medicaid and access to the ACA marketplace for undocumented immigrants.

Health care costs

In addition to the lack of health insurance, the high cost of coverage for those who are insured is contributing to the crisis in accessing health care. The report notes that as of the end of 2018, 30 million adults remained uninsured and an estimated 44 million people had insurance but were considered “underinsured” due to the high out-of-pocket costs for health care in relation to their income.

People with individual-market plans under the ACA were insured at the highest rates. However, the cost of private, employer-sponsored health care plans is rising, exposing workers and their families to increasingly higher deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. In most states, the amount that employees contribute to their employer coverage is rising faster than median income.

A key contributing factor to the uninsured and underinsured rates is the overall rate of growth in US health care costs compared to the slow growth in US median income. Workers face rising costs as insurers increase deductibles and other cost-sharing for enrollees. As workers in both ACA and employee plans are covered by the insurance industry, these private companies raise costs for the insured to boost their bottom lines.

The Commonwealth Fund’s report explodes the myth that people’s use of health care services is the primary driver of cost and premium growth. The report notes that there is growing evidence that the prices paid by private insurers to health care providers, particularly hospitals, are responsible for this growth.

The report notes, according to the Health Care Cost Institute, that “between 2013 and 2017 prices for inpatient services paid by private insurers climbed by 16 percent while utilization fell by 5 percent. The analysis found similar patterns for outpatient and professional services as well as prescription drugs.”

In other words, while workers and their families are struggling to obtain decent health care and to pay for it, the entire system of health care delivery in America is geared toward enriching the hospitals, pharmaceuticals and insurance companies. Those succumbing to “deaths of despair” are the victims of a health care system and a society that values capitalist profit over the health and very lives of its citizens.

Australia’s industrial tribunal maintains poverty-level minimum wage

Terry Cook

The Fair Work Commission (FWC) ruling last month, raising the minimum wage by a meagre 3 percent, to just $740.80 a week, ensures that 2.2 million workers and their families will continue to eke out an existence on poverty-level wages.

The decision is part of a decades-long assault on workers’ pay and conditions enforced by successive governments, Labor and Liberal-National Coalition alike, and the trade unions. It follows real pay reductions over the past six years, which have resulted in wage growth falling to its lowest level since the 1930s Great Depression.

The FWC, the federal government’s pro-business industrial tribunal, has wide-ranging powers, including to set the minimum wage and penalty rate payments. It enforces Fair Work industrial laws, introduced by the previous Labor government with the full support of the unions, which ban virtually all strike action.

The FWC judges rejected raising the minimum wage to a “living wage,” openly stating that many working-class households would remain in poverty as a result. “Some low paid, award-reliant employee households have disposable incomes which are less than the 60 percent of median income relative poverty line,” they stated.

A 2018 report by the Australian Council of Social Service put the poverty line at 50 percent of median household disposable income. That means a single adult living on less than $433 a week, or $909 for a couple with two children, before housing costs.

The minimum pay decision was announced by FWC President Justice Iain Ross, a former union official. In 2017, he ruled in favour of cutting public holiday and Sunday penalty rates for thousands of low-paid workers. Ross said the minimal pay increase awarded “will mean an improvement in the real wages of employees who are reliant on minimum wages and an improvement in their living standards.”

These claims are a fraud. The paltry increase of little more than $3 a day, or an extra $21.60 a week, is not enough to buy a loaf of bread each day. It will do nothing to alleviate the deepening social crisis facing thousands of low-paid workers amid rapid increases in the costs of health, food, fuel, rent and electricity.

For their role in imposing the dictates of the corporate and financial elite for the suppression of wages, the well-heeled FWC judges themselves are well paid.

As of 2018, FWC deputy presidents, for instance, were paid $460,000 a year, while receiving a raft of other benefits such as lucrative retirement packages. Former FWC vice president Graeme Watson received a full judicial officer’s pension of $272,544 per year for life when he retired in 2017. During his reign, Watson continuously worked to hold down pay and complained that the minimum wage was too high.

Major business groups, who had pushed for an even lower minimum wage increase, still welcomed the FWC decision. The Australian Industry Group, which had argued for an increase of no more than 2 percent, said the ruling marked a return to a “more moderate level” compared to the previous two years’ rises.

In fact, the 2017 and 2018 increases were just 3.3 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively. They brought up the minimum wage to only $719.20 per week or $18.93 an hour. As with the latest ruling, they were designed to maintain the chronic low-pay regime, while acting as a sop to prevent struggles by workers for a real improvement in wages and working conditions.

While the employer groups opposed any significant wage increase for the low paid, the fortunes of the corporate and financial elite continued to rise.

The Australian Financial Review’s Rich List, released last month, reported: “The 200 wealthiest individuals or families in Australia now control wealth totaling $341.8 billion.” Their collective wealth rose 21 percent in just 12 months.

The pay of company chief executives hit the highest level in 17 years in 2018, thanks to what an Australian Council of Superannuation Investors report termed “persistent and increasing bonus payments.”

The median-realised pay for ASX 100 chief executives rose 12.4 percent to $4.36 million, while salaries for ASX101-200 CEOs jumped by 22.1 percent to $1.76 million. Bonus payments rose more than 18 percent. Nearly one in three ASX 100 chief executives were awarded at least 80 percent of their maximum bonuses.

The top ASX 200 earners in the 2017 financial year were Domino’s Pizza Enterprises chief executive Don Meij at $36.8 million, Peter and Steven Lowy of Westfield at $25.9 million, and Macquarie Group chief executive Nicholas Moore at $25.2 million.

Just after the FWC handed down its wage decision, the Remuneration Tribunal awarded massive pay increases to federal politicians, who have all supported austerity measures to cut social and working conditions. The tribunal said the rise was necessary to “provide competitive and equitable remuneration sufficient to attract and retain people of calibre.”

While minimum wage workers are obliged to live on an annual wage of just $38,521, parliamentary backbenchers’ pay will rise from $207,000 to $211,000. Prime Minister Scott Morrison will receive a $10,000-a-year increase, taking his up to $550,000, while Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will get a further $8,000, increasing his salary to $433,000.

As a frontbench Labor Party parliamentarian, Anthony Albanese would have received $259,000 a year after the increase. However, having become opposition leader, in the wake of Labor’s May 18 federal election defeat, Albanese will get $390,000 a year.

While admitting the new minimum wage was “not a living wage,” unions welcomed the pittance as a “win for workers.” Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) assistant secretary Liam O’Brien said it was “a welcome pay rise for millions of low-paid workers, especially in the face of penalty rate cuts in a few weeks.”

In February 2017, without any genuine opposition from the unions, the FWC ordered a cut to Sunday and public holiday penalty rates in the retail, pharmacy, fast food and hospitality industries of between 25 and 50 percentage points. Cuts to public holiday rates came into effect on July 1 of that year, but the reductions in the Sunday rate are being phased in over two years.

There have been years of real wage cuts, including to penalty rates, in union-brokered enterprise agreements. Analysis by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work of tax office data for 2012–13 to 2016–17 showed wages over that period rose by just 1.7 percent per annum, below the official inflation rate of 1.9 percent.

The trade unions are fully responsible for the plight of the low-paid workers and the ongoing reduction of wage levels. They fully supported the draconian Fair Work industrial laws introduced by the last Labor government in 2009 and operate as a police force of governments and the corporate elite.

French prime minister announces further social cuts and attacks on immigrants

Will Morrow

In an address to the National Assembly last night, French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced a series of far-reaching austerity measures, particularly targeting pensions and unemployment payments, as well as new attacks against immigrants and Muslims.

That such a speech would take place was announced in the immediate aftermath of the European election vote May 26. It would signal “Act II,” corresponding to the second half of President Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term. Macron’s party narrowly lost the European vote to the far-right National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen, which was able to exploit social anger over inequality and the austerity measures imposed by Macron and his Socialist Party (PS) predecessor, François Hollande.

Philippe’s statements made clear that the response of the Macron government will be to shift further to the right. While it faces growing left-wing opposition in the working class, expressed in a growth in strikes and protests by hospital workers and teachers in recent months, as well as the “yellow vest” protests against social inequality, the Macron government is determined to meet the demands of the financial elite for the funneling of ever greater wealth into its pockets. The policy outlined by Philippe yesterday consisted of continuing the destruction of the social entitlements won by the French working class in the 20th century.

His government is also adopting the RN’s anti-immigrant policies to whip up xenophobic hysteria and divert social anger produced by its policies.

The most significant measure announced by Philippe is the effective lengthening of the retirement age by two years. The government will introduce a new “equilibrium age” of 64 while keeping the legal minimum retirement age at 62, with “inducements to work longer” by cutting benefits for those under 64. This will force already retired workers to return to poverty-level jobs to survive.

“Everyone will be able to make their own choice, in freedom and responsibility,” Philippe said, with all the grandiloquent hypocrisy of the French bourgeoisie. The elderly will be driven to labor for longer, with the announcement of a “great plan of employment for seniors.”

Philippe also referred to a restructuring of the national pension system scheduled to be announced this year. It will abolish the 42 different pension entitlements according to industry and employer, and replace them with a single national retirement system. This will tear up the more generous retirement benefits won by certain sections of workers, including national railway workers, teachers and other public employees. These plans are to be replaced by a system of retirement “by points,” whose value the state can arbitrarily modify according to its financial interests up until the time a worker takes his or her retirement.

Unemployment benefits will also be slashed. “The second objective of this reform is to ensure that work pays more than inactivity,” he said. While this is “in general [already] the case,” there are “situations where the monthly unemployment payment is more than the monthly salary. We must put an end to it.”

On June 7, Les Echos published an exclusive report on the government’s plans to slash unemployment benefits, based on comments by unnamed government officials. The full details are to be revealed June 17. The plan will reportedly include raising eligibility requirements for receiving payments: whereas presently a worker must have been employed for the equivalent of four months over the previous 28 months, this will be increased to at least six months over the previous 24 months.

The National Union for Employment in Industry and Commerce (Unédic) stated that even without changing the time-frame from 28 to 24 months, the increase from four months to half a year in work requirements will automatically cut off benefits for 236,000 unemployed people, or 11 percent of the total.

These social attacks are being combined with tax cuts totaling some 5 billion euros [$US5.6 billion] per year. The full details are yet to be announced, and they will no doubt provide further concessions to the rich and sections of the upper middle class. Philippe stated only that for those in the first- and second-lowest income brackets, the cuts would lead to derisory reductions of 350 euros and 180 euros, respectively. At the same time, the property tax, calculated by property value, is being eliminated, disproportionately benefiting the rich.

At the same time spending that benefits the most vulnerable sections of the working class is to be slashed, Philippe reaffirmed his government’s commitment to provide billions of euros to fund the military and the police forces tasked with repressing working-class opposition. “To keep control means above all to guarantee public order,” Philippe said, “and one of our first decisions was to launch a great recruitment and equipment program for the police.” Macron’s pledge to raise military spending to two percent of GDP in line with European Union targets is “a massive effort,” he said, “but it is necessary to be consistent.”

The authoritarian content of Philippe’s speech emerged most clearly when he launched into a rant against immigrants, asylum seekers and the growth of “Islamism.”

His statements were in line with the lies of the Trump administration and extreme right-wing parties internationally that immigrant workers fleeing war and poverty caused by the policies of European and US imperialism and exercising their legal right to seek asylum are “abusing” the “system.”

“The number of asylum seekers had dropped by 10 percent in Europe last year, but continues to go on in France on the order of 22 percent.” France must “get control over this immigration flow,” he declared. “The right to asylum is a treasure,” Philippe said, “but we must fight with firmness against abuses… We must be sure that asylum seekers choose France for its values, for its history, for its language, and not because our system is more favorable than those put in place by our neighbors in Europe.”

This suggests that the government will further attack the conditions for immigrants in France, which Macron had already suggested in the wake of the European elections. Le Monde published a report on Monday headlined “New offensive by the executive on immigration,” based on anonymous statements from Macron government officials. It noted that at an internal meeting last week the interior minister spoke “about the too great attractiveness of France” for immigrants.

Macron held a meeting with ministers on April 30, during which he declared that the “question of immigration is once again before us.”

Philippe announced that the Macron government will organize an annual debate in parliament on “asylum and immigration,” the first edition of which will be held in September, because it “goes to the fundamentals of our sovereignty and our principles.” This will be little more than a platform for denunciations of immigrants and the whipping up of xenophobia by the entire political establishment.

Philippe’s speech was a demonstration of the far-right trajectory of the political establishment in France and internationally. Terrified by the growing struggles of the working class against more than a decade of social attacks and preparing for major wars, the ruling class is building up the forces of a police-state and promoting nationalism and anti-immigrant scapegoating.

UK police seek to prosecute 1,130 Extinction Rebellion climate change protestors

Alice Summers

The London Metropolitan Police are pushing to prosecute every single one of the 1,130 protestors arrested during climate change demonstrations organised by Extinction Rebellion (XR) in April.

In the face of a massive police operation to intimidate and disperse them, protestors had peacefully occupied prominent public spaces across London, including Parliament Square, Piccadilly Circus, Waterloo Bridge, Oxford Circus and Marble Arch.

Hundreds of extra police officers from neighbouring forces were drafted into the city, with the heavy police presence at times outnumbering the demonstrators. At the height of the protests, Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick declared, “Every day we have had over 1,000 officers—and now over 1,500 officers.”

Oxford Circus Extinction Rebellion April 2019 [Credit: Andrew Davidson]

In fact, a staggering 10,000 police officers were deployed over the two weeks of protests.

Many videos were circulated on social media showing police officers forcibly removing peaceful protestors and dragging them through the streets by their wrists. But despite police surrounding their targets, sticking video cameras in their faces and dragging them to police vans, there was no violence from the demonstrators.

According to Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, more than 70 XR protestors have already been charged with various offences, including breach of a Section 14 Notice of the Public Order Act 1986, for obstructing a highway and police.

A dedicated unit of around 30 police officers has been set up to investigate the alleged “offences” committed by the demonstrators during the XR protests, Taylor told journalists at Scotland Yard. “It is our anticipation that we are putting all of those to the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] for decisions,” he continued.

The mass arrests at the XR protests constitute the largest act of state repression against peaceful protests for at least 37 years. The number of arrests far surpassed that at the anti-nuclear protests at RAF Upper Heyford in 1982, where 752 were detained, and at the poll tax riots in 1990, where 339 were arrested.

The arrests of over 1,000 came amidst vitriolic denunciations from politicians and the bourgeois media of the XR demonstrations and calls for stepped-up police repression.

“No one should be allowed to break the law without consequence,” Conservative Home Secretary and now leadership contender Sajid Javid tweeted during the protests. He called on police to “take a firm stance” against “any protestors who are stepping outside the boundaries of the law” and “significantly disrupting the lives of others.”

In April, former Labour Home Secretary, now Sir David Blunkett, also wrote an opinion piece in the right-wing Daily Mail demanding: “Why hasn’t the full force of the law been used against these eco-anarchists who fill me with contempt?”

Sky News presenter Adam Boulton attacked protestors for “fascistic disruption” in a clear attempt to redefine and criminalise the right to protest.

Speaking about the moves to prosecute all the detained protestors, deputy assistant commissioner Taylor called for stronger punishment for protestors who apparently commit “unlawful” activities.

“I’m not saying going to jail,” Taylor said, “but we would like to see consequences for any activity at these events that is unlawful.

“Protest is not illegal. There is nothing unlawful about protest,” he conceded grudgingly. “[But the] activity of some individuals at a protest can be unlawful… [At] the moment there doesn’t seem to be much of a criminal deterrent for doing that and therefore, it doesn’t legitimise it but it does make it easy for that unlawful activity to take place.

“And what we would like to see is consequence, where the law is clearly broken and it goes beyond what is reasonable and a legitimate aim for a protest, for that to be recognised and for appropriate sanctions [to be imposed].”

Precisely what constitutes a “reasonable and… legitimate aim for a protest” in Taylor’s book is left unsaid.

In keeping with the demands from journalists and politicians, the Met Police are calling for the effective criminalisation of protest. This was made doubly clear back in April by Metropolitan Police Commander Adrian Usher, who called on the government to change “outdated” protest laws to criminalise even peaceful demonstrations.

“We need to move away from the language of ‘peaceful protest’ to talk about ‘lawful protest,’” Usher told the Human Rights Committee in parliament.

“A protest being peaceful is only one of the attributes police would assign to a protest to make it lawful,” he continued. “We will conduct a sober review of our tactics against recent protest but I think it’s likely to say the legislation associated with policing protest is quite dated.

“Policing and protest has moved on and legislation should follow suit,” Usher added.

The calls by police, politicians and the media to criminalise demonstrations are a massive upscaling in attacking democratic rights.

What is being prepared are police state conditions, whereby any demonstration, no matter whether violence has been used by protestors, can be declared “unlawful” by an arbitrary decision of the police, leading to legal charges against anyone who opposes the government’s policy.

Usher’s demands that protest laws be changed ostensibly come in response to verbal “abuse” of MPs such as Tory Anna Soubry, who was verbally confronted by right-wing pro-Brexit protestors outside parliament earlier this year.

But while the targets of calls for police repression have so far been isolated protestors outside parliament, and the largely middle class XR demonstrations, the real purpose of this stepped-up authoritarianism is to combat unrest from an increasingly restive working class.

The statements by the Met police are only a foretaste of how the state will respond to any large-scale movement of workers. The arguments being deployed to justify police repression against environmental protestors—including “disruption” and “inconvenience” to the public—will be used tomorrow to demand mass arrests and repression against striking railway workers, bus drivers, pilots and cabin crew, or National Health Service staff.

Police crackdown against Hong Kong protesters opposing extradition bill

Ben McGrath

Tens of thousands of people protested in Hong Kong Wednesday against a bill, backed by Beijing, that would allow extraditions to any country, including mainland China. Debate on the legislation, which was slated to take place, was postponed. The demonstration took place three days after more than one million people marched Sunday against the bill.

Wednesday’s demonstrators, largely youth and students, blocked streets surrounding Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LegCo). The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions also called a strike for the day. With lawmakers unable to enter the building, the government announced that debate would resume at a “later time to be determined.” Andrew Leung, LegCo chairman, said Tuesday that the vote would take place on June 20.

To protect themselves against teargas, protesters carried umbrellas, reminiscent of the so-called Occupy or Umbrella Movement in 2014. Those protests led to the protracted occupation of key sections of the city as people demanded the right to directly elect the chief executive, the head of Hong Kong. Currently Beijing effectively appoints the top official.

This week’s protests represent a sharp condemnation of both the Hong Kong and Beijing governments, with youth rightly concerned that the Stalinist Chinese Communist Party is preparing further measures to restrict democratic rights in the city.

Jeremy Lau, a 26-year-old bank worker, criticized Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam, and the government’s dismissal of the concerns of broad layers, telling the South China Morning Post: “More than a million people have taken to the streets and she still considers our demands trash. Isn’t she, as the leader of Hong Kong, supposed to take citizens’ interests into consideration?”

The Beijing regime fears the spread of social discontent and demonstrations from Hong Kong to the mainland, which also motivates its desire to have the extradition bill passed. The CCP wants to be able to silence and intimidate individuals and organizations on its doorstep in Hong Kong that are critical of its police-state methods on the Chinese mainland.

The Hong Kong police responded to yesterday’s protests with violence, using water cannons and pepper spray before firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd, injuring at least 22. Witnesses stated that officers targeted journalists. Lam denounced protesters for holding an “organized riot.”

Police Commissioner Stephen Lo threatened demonstrators, saying: “If they are peaceful protesters, please leave. If they are violent protesters, then please think twice because you might regret your decision for your entire life.” In other words, the mere act of protesting is considered violent and subject to repression.

As pro-Beijing lawmakers control the LegCo, passage of the bill is assured under current conditions. The opposition grouping known as the pan-democrats offers no genuine opposition. Instead, it attempts to win concessions to smooth over the concerns of business interests wary of the city growing too close to Beijing. Claudia Mo, a member of the pan-democrats, attempted to give these opposition parties a radical veneer, telling protesters Wednesday: “During Occupy Central 2014, we had said, ‘We will be back.’ Today, we say, ‘We are back’.”

None of the issues has been resolved since 2014; they have only intensified. An Oxfam report last September revealed economic inequality is at its worst levels in 45 years. The top 10 percent in the city takes home 43.9 times the amount of the bottom 10 percent. Billions in stock dividends go untaxed in the name of a “free economy.” The minimum wage of $HK34.50 ($US4.41) an hour has less purchasing power than it did eight years ago. It stands well below the living wage of $HK54.70. One in four children and one in three elderly live in poverty.

Where, then, have Hong Kong’s democrats been since 2014? The pan-democrats’ purpose is to corral social discontent by leading workers and students into political dead ends. No major gains or reforms were won in 2014. No movement uniting the oppressed in Hong Kong was launched. One university student, Sean, told CNN: “We don’t have any leaders this time. This is our last hope.” That students and workers do not see the pan-democrats as leaders is an indictment of these politicians’ failure to address their real concerns.

Under conditions of growing inequality around the globe, genuine democracy is impossible as countries compete to slash workers’ jobs and wages for greater profits. Governments can respond only with the sort of repression on display in Hong Kong yesterday.

Hong Kong workers and youth therefore will find in the mainland Chinese working class powerful allies in their fight for democratic rights. They must turn to these allies and the working class around the globe.

Instead, politicians like Mo spread the poison of Hong Kong parochialism to isolate workers and defeat their struggles. She is the founder of Hong Kong First, a political party within the pan-democrats that claims Hong Kong’s “culture and lifestyle” must be defended from an “invasion” by mainland Chinese people, including tourists and children attending schools.

Other politicians like Martin Lee make open appeals to United States imperialism. Lee, whose involvement in Hong Kong politics goes back decades, met with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in May. The US State Department released a statement at the time saying Pompeo was concerned over the extradition bill as it threatens the “rule of law.” Washington and its allies regularly accuse Beijing of violating the “rule of law” in the South China Sea, as they invent pretexts to bring military and economic pressure on China.

State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus pointed to Washington’s real concerns on Monday. After making empty references to “democratic values,” she stressed: “We are also concerned that the (extradition) amendments could damage Hong Kong’s business environment, and subject our citizens residing in or visiting Hong Kong to China’s capricious judicial system.”

A letter to Chief Executive Lam from the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China in May made clear Washington’s hypocrisy on democratic rights. The commission is headed by Representative James McGovern and Senator Marco Rubio. They declared that the new legislation could be used by Beijing to target “business persons, journalists, rights advocates and political activists residing in Hong Kong.”

What hypocrisy! One has only to look at the US-led efforts to extradite journalist Julian Assange to the United States, to face retribution for exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, to see what Washington really thinks about journalists, activists and democratic rights.

Workers and young people should oppose the oppressive legislation and repressive police methods against unarmed protesters by Hong Kong authorities, acting on behalf of Beijing. At the same time, however, they should reject with contempt the efforts of the pan-democrats to seek the support of US imperialism, which is notorious for exploiting “human rights” to further its own predatory interests.

The fight for the political independence of the working class means, above all, the building of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International to lead the fight to unite all Chinese workers as part of the struggle for socialism internationally.

US gears up for World War III with largest defense contract in history

Andre Damon

The Pentagon announced Monday the single largest arms purchase in its history, agreeing to buy nearly 500 F-35 fighter aircraft at a total cost of $34 billion.

This purchase is only a down payment on the Pentagon’s acquisition of the notoriously wasteful and failure-prone aircraft, whose design is based on two overarching priorities: fighting a war with a “great power” such as Russia and China and lining the pockets of Lockheed Martin and the horde of former congressmen and retired generals on its payroll.

The agreement covers the 12th, 13th and 14th batches of F-35s ordered by the Pentagon, which eventually plans to field thousands of the aircraft. Billed in 2001 as a program to save money, each plane eventually ended up costing four times the initial estimate.

A US Air Force F-22 aircraft [Credit: US Air Force]

At a projected total program cost of $1.5 trillion, this one weapons system alone would finance the US Department of Education for a quarter-century.

The F-35 has no greater advocate than President Donald Trump, who promotes it like one of his golfing properties. Trump turned a Wednesday afternoon joint press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda into a photo-op to promote the war plane. As an F-35 carried out a low-speed flyover of the White House, he praised Poland for its agreement to purchase 32 of the aircraft.

At speeches before military audiences, Trump routinely brags about the massive military budgets he has pushed through Congress, touting in particular the Pentagon’s vast spending on the F-35. Speaking at the Air Force Academy commencement ceremony last month, the American president responded to resounding applause from the graduating officers by declaring, “You just like all those brand new, beautiful airplanes that we’re buying.”

Trump continued: “Last year… we secured $700 billion to support our war fighters, followed by another $716 billion—not million—billion. That’s with a ‘B.’”

Both of these Pentagon budgets, entailing the largest increases in defense spending since the end of the Cold War, were passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Eighty-nine percent of Senate Democrats voted to pass the most recent defense budget, whose explicit aim is to prepare the US military for “great power” conflict with Russia and China.

This year the White House is aiming even higher. Next Monday, the administration plans to submit a $750 billion Defense Department budget proposal, a figure $18 billion higher than the amount requested by the Pentagon.

A small army of defense industry executives, former generals serving as “consultants” and congressmen turned lobbyists for the military-industrial complex is salivating at the infusion of cash into a military notorious for paying $7,622 for coffee makers and $640 for toilet seats.

Even by the normal standards of US war profiteering, the F-35 program takes the cake for sheer corruption—so much so that the warmonger and military yes man John McCain called it a “poster child for acquisition malpractice,” a “scandal” and a “tragedy.”

According to the Project on Government Oversight, “By design, the [US military] services can’t independently perform many of the most basic functions needed to properly employ the most expensive weapon system in history.” It added that Lockheed Martin “keeps the government from even knowing the costs of any of the spare parts it has to buy from the company.”

The hundreds of aircraft already delivered are plagued with failures that make them largely inoperable. As Defense News recently reported, “F-35B and F-35C pilots [are] compelled to observe limitations on airspeed to avoid damage to the F-35’s airframe or stealth coating,” while the aircraft remains prone to “cockpit pressure spikes” that cause “excruciating ear and sinus pain.”

But the graft, incompetence and corruption that mark the F-35 program should not distract from its fundamental purpose: to fight a “near-peer” competitor in the form of Russia or China.

Earlier this month, Vice President Mike Pence, addressing the graduating class at West Point, predicted war in the Pacific, Europe and the Americas within the graduates’ lifetimes.

“It is a virtual certainty that you will fight on a battlefield for America at some point in your life,” he declared. “Some of you will join the fight on the Korean Peninsula and in the Indo-Pacific, where North Korea continues to threaten the peace and an increasingly militarized China challenges our presence in the region. Some of you will join the fight in Europe, where an aggressive Russia seeks to redraw international boundaries by force. And some of you may even be called upon to serve in this hemisphere.

“And when that day comes, I know you will move to the sound of the guns and do your duty, and you will fight, and you will win.”

These blood-curdling sentiments, far from being unique to the Trump administration, are broadly shared on a bipartisan basis. Speaking in Iowa on Tuesday, former naval intelligence officer-turned-Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said: “Our military capabilities exist for a reason… we stand ready to use force.” He added that the US must prepare for the “wars of the future.”

Even as Trump rips up fundamental constitutional protections, imprisoning immigrant children on military bases and ruling by executive fiat, the Democrats hail the value of an external enemy to enforce political unity at home, with Buttigieg declaring: “The new China challenge provides us with an opportunity to come together across the political divide.” This is essential, he suggests, since, “At least half the battle is at home.”

Some three decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the proclamation of a “unipolar moment” of US dominance, America’s efforts to preserve its global hegemony through military means have produced a debacle. In the lead article in the current edition of Foreign Affairs, Fareed Zakaria writes of “The Self-Destruction of American Power,” concluding that, “Sometime in the last two years, American hegemony died.”

But every failure, setback and disaster has only led the United States to double down on its economic bullying and military aggression. After the debacles of the “war on terror,” including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the wars in Libya and Syria, Washington has set its sights on a conflict with Russia and China. The results of such wars will be a disaster on an incomparably greater scale than the bloodletting in the Middle East, threatening a nuclear Third World War.

The homicidal eruption of American militarism that began with the first Gulf War, coinciding with the Stalinist regime’s dissolution of the Soviet Union, will not simply peter out. Unless halted by the emergence of a mass socialist movement of the working class, it will only intensify.

African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) African Women Writers Workshop 2019 – Fully-funded to Ghana

Application Deadline: 24th June 2019.

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be taken at (country): Ghana

About the Award:  This workshop is targeted at women writers, journalists and activists who wish to step-up their involvement in highlighting issues around women’s rights and social justice and who wish to improve and practice their personal writing skills. Participants will be expected to read widely from assigned selected texts, and to complete daily writing exercises. After the workshop, the participants are expected to use the knowledge acquired to write widely about social justice issues in and beyond their communities. Participants will also be required to produce at least two articles, blogs or longer pieces for use by AWDF.

Type: Workshop

Eligibility: Applicants must meet the following requirements

• Be from the African region, or the diaspora.
• · Be a feminist or women’s rights activist
• · Have high proficiency in English (verbal and written)
• · Be an experienced writer (published or unpublished)
• · Be available to travel to Ghana and stay for the entire 10-day session Young women writers between ages 21-35 are especially encouraged to apply.

Priority will be given to interested women writers (fiction & non fiction) journalists, academics who wish to actively engage in women’s rights activism.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: AWDF will provide the following to successful applicants · Round trip fare. Participants from the diaspora may be required to pay part of the cost of air fare depending on the budget · Full accommodation and meals · Workshop material and stationary

Duration of Award:  October 21 – 30 2019

How to Apply: To apply, send an e-mail to communications@awdf.org with the following:
· Contact details including name, email address, telephone
number
· A short bio (maximum 200 words)
· A sample article written by the applicant, about women’s rights or social justice -between 500 and 1000 words. The
sample maybe unpublished or published on any media. AWDF will not be responsible for any cases of alleged plagiaris

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Government of Korea K-Startup Grand Challenge 2019 for Entrepreneurs

Application Deadline: 14th June 2019 at 13:00 GMT +9

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Startup Campus in Pangyo Techno Valley, 14 minutes south of Gangnam, South Korea.

About the Award: The Korean government is working to transform the country’s economy for another century of success, ultimately raising employment, the GDP and Korea’s place in the world. In order to do this, the government is supporting talented entrepreneurs and promising startups to turn Korea and Pangyo Techno Valley into a global startup hub in Asia. The top ranked 50 teams selected by the accelerators will be invited to stay in Korea to participate a four-month accelerating program in Pangyo, located south of Seoul. At the end of the accelerating program, the government will host a Demo Day to select the top 25 startups from the program. They will get additional financial incentives, and if they establish their businesses in Korea, they will get additional support from the government.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Selection Criteria: The selection panel will give priority to startups working on disruption in the following criteria, but they will also consider startups with brilliant ideas in any sector:

Number of Awards: 4

Value of Program:

• The top 40 startups selected will be eligible to receive a total of $22,727 each in funding for settlement in Korea
  based on their performances at the ‘Demo Day’ and according to the Settlement Evaluation.
• All 80 startups in the program wil each receive about $11,136 (12,250,000 KRW) to cover living expenses in equal installments over 3½ months.
• State-of-the-Art R&D Labs: Prototyping and testing facilities, expert support.
• Brand New Startup Campus: Global Startup Campus is purposely built 14 minutes from Gangnam and next to Korea’s tech giants.
• Expert Support: Experts from some of the world’s top tech companies with experience taking companies global.
• Corporate Partnerships: Meet Korea’s top tech companies with expertise ranging from smartphones to software to semiconductors.
• Break into Asia: Korea is safe, developed and two-hour flight away from over 1 billion potential customers.
• Grant for Top 25 Startups: The top 25 startups selected at the final Demo Day will be eligible for an additional $27,000 (32,000,000 KRW) grant in equal installments over six months if they establish a legal entity in Korea.
• Grants for Top 4 Startups:
  • Top Prize: $100,000 (120,000,000 KRW)
  • Second Prize: $40,000 (48,000,000 KRW)
  • Second Runner-up: $20,000 (24,000,000 KRW)
  • Third Runner-up: $6,000 (7,200,000 KRW)
• Additional Investments The five accelerators will make equity investments in the most promising startups. Startups will have access to other VC’s and investors who may choose to invest.

How to Apply: Apply here

Visit Programme Webpage for details