North Korea fires missile over Japan for first time since 2017

Ben McGrath

Over the past two weeks, North Korea has conducted a spate of missile launches, the first major weapons tests since June. Rather than attempt to de-escalate the situation, the United States and its allies in Northeast Asia are exploiting the issue, combining increased militarization of the region with the ongoing isolation of Pyongyang, all aimed at preparing for war with China.

This photo distributed by the North Korean government shows what was said to be the test launch of a Hwasong-12 intermediate range missile in Pyongyang, North Korea, Aug. 29, 2017. [AP Photo/ Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP]

Pyongyang’s most recent launch took place Thursday morning, with two short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) landing in the Sea of Japan. This followed a Tuesday morning firing of an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), from Mupyŏng-ri, Jagang Province in the northern part of the country. This missile, identified in the media as a Hwasŏng-12, reportedly traveled some 4,600 kilometers and reached a maximum altitude of 1,000 kilometers. The missile flew over Japan’s Aomori Prefecture, in the north of Honshu, the first time Pyongyang has fired a missile over Japan since 2017. It landed in the Pacific Ocean, some 3,200 kilometers east of the country.

In total, Pyongyang has conducted six tests, launching ten total missiles since September 25, which corresponded with the arrival of the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier at South Korea’s port city of Busan on September 23, as well as the arrival on September 26 of US Vice President Kamala Harris in Japan for the state funeral of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Harris also made a one-day visit to South Korea on September 29, meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and provocatively visiting the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea. 

The nuclear-powered US carrier and its strike group held multiple exercises in the Sea of Japan with both the South Korean and Japanese navies for the first time in five years. This broke a tacit agreement in 2018 between the previous Trump administration and Pyongyang to halt large-scale US drills with South Korea in the region in exchange for a moratorium on the North’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and nuclear tests.

Furthermore, during the summit between US President Joe Biden and South Korea’s Yoon in May, the two sides agreed to deploy US strategic assets to the region while also agreeing to restart the Extended Deterrence Strategy and Consultation Group for the first time since January 2018. The group provides Washington and Seoul the opportunity to hold discussions on strategic and policy issues regarding so-called extended deterrence, including the use of nuclear weapons.

Since agreeing to the moratorium in 2018, North Korea has conducted only two apparent ICBM tests, one in March and another in May, following the Biden-Yoon summit. The Biden government has allowed North Korea to languish under brutal US-led sanctions while the country faces a major economic crisis and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Washington has refused to offer any genuine relief as Pyongyang had hoped after halting its weapons tests.

Pyongyang’s missile launches, therefore, represent a desperate attempt to bring Washington back to the bargaining table. They are also the result of Washington’s goading as it abandons the 2018 agreement with Pyongyang by staging large-scale drills with South Korea, which included the Ulchi Freedom Shield drills in August, forcing North Korea to respond.

North Korea’s state media has remained silent about Tuesday’s test. However, China’s Foreign Ministry responded by calling on all governments involved to maintain “the policy of seeking a political settlement of issues on the Korean Peninsula and address each other's concerns in a balanced way through dialogue.”

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning also stated during a press conference on September 30 that Pyongyang had “legitimate and reasonable security concerns” while criticizing the numerous military drills the US has staged with South Korea and Japan in recent weeks.

Conscious of the US’s history of violent regime-change operations around the world, including the one currently being conducted against Russia, Pyongyang is looking for security guarantees while using its weapons program as its only real bargaining chip short of complete capitulation.

Washington and Seoul are also seizing on Pyongyang’s missile launches, as well as claims that an ICBM or nuclear test are imminent, to increase military drills in the region, close to China, the primary target of US imperialism. This includes the announcement Wednesday that the USS Reagan would return to the Sea of Japan after leaving last week. The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff called the return so soon “very unusual.”

The US and South Korea fired four ATACM (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles into the Sea of Japan on Wednesday. The previous day, the two militaries also conducted a bombing run on a range on Jikdo, an island in the Yellow Sea. Consisting of four South Korean F-15K fighter jets and four US F-16 fighters, a South Korean jet dropped two JADAM bombs on the island on Tuesday. The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that the air strike demonstrated the two allies “capabilities to conduct a precision strike at the origin of provocations based on the alliance’s overwhelming forces.”

South Korea’s military also attempted to fire a short-range Hyunmoo-2C ballistic missile, but it failed shortly after launch. While its warhead did not explode, it reportedly landed just 700 meters from the nearest residential area.

In addition, following Tuesday’s missile launch, Biden spoke to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, with the White House stating afterwards that both condemned North Korea’s test “in the strongest terms.” Kishida called the launch “barbaric” and told reporters after the call with Biden, “We will always have to consider unique sanctions” on North Korea.

Kishida also stated that Tokyo is in close communication with South Korea, discussing “various security issues while bringing the United States into the dialogue.” He said that Tokyo “would like to have close communications,” with Seoul and called for the setting up of a meeting between himself and President Yoon. The two have already scheduled a phone call for Thursday.

Longstanding tensions between Tokyo and Seoul have cut across Washington’s plans for war against China, which includes incorporating its two allies into a regional ballistic missile system designed to prevent China or Russia from launching a counter-attack against US forces. This requires high-level and bilateral intelligence sharing between Japan and South Korea. Trade disputes and historical issues have prevented this from taking place. South Korea’s Yoon, however, has made clear his administration will pursue closer relations with Tokyo.

French refinery strikes defy Macron’s policy of inflation and war

Alex Lantier & Anthony Torres

Fuel shortages are emerging across France after strikes in Total and Exxon refineries began on September 27. This sets the stage for a confrontation between refinery workers, on the one hand, and President Emmanuel Macron’s government backed by the NATO alliance.

Refinery workers are demanding a 10 percent raise, pointing to inflation and the tens of billions of euros in super-profits realized by their employers. Total refineries at Gonfreville-l’Orcher, La Mède, Feyzin, Donges and Grandpuits are affected, as are Exxon refineries at Notre Dame-de-Gravenchon and Fos. While strike actions at Donges and Grandpuits halted this weekend, it has continued in the other refineries.

Over 70 percent of refinery workers are participating in the strike, according to trade union figures. Striking workers at the Feyzin refinery emphasized the broad impact of the strike in their comments to the press: “There is no exit or entry of products in our entire refinery. This means 200 to 250 trucks per day, without counting barges and train cars, that are no longer entering or leaving the refinery.”’

Gas stations have started to run dry in the Marseille area, as well as around Lille and Dunkirk in the north of France, and now in the Lyon area as well. On Wednesday, assemblies of strikers voted to continue the action at Gonfreville-l’Orcher, France’s largest refinery, as well as at Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon.

In Fos, a shop steward told the WSWS that the unions were impelled to strike by anger at inflation among the workers: “It’s sad, our company earns €409 million in just one semester, but it is incapable of defending the purchasing power of its employees. That is why there was such anger among the workers that we had to go out on strike. … Everywhere in France, whether one works in refineries or small businesses, transnational corporations or the public sector, everyone is up against it. So it’s critical for everyone … to get back purchasing power as prices skyrocket.”

Citing workers’ anger at Macron’s discussion of new pension cuts amid the NATO war on Russia in Ukraine, the steward added: “Inflation had already started in 2021, but then the war in Ukraine was a catalyst for an out-of-control eruption of inflation and especially of energy prices. Just like the COVID crisis, the Ukraine crisis is also a crisis of capitalism.”

The Total and Exxon workers have taken up a struggle against the inflationary policy of the financial aristocracy to attack the workers not simply in one or other workplace or industry, but as an entire class not only in France but internationally. The banks and capitalist states of the European Union (EU) are all trying to make workers bear the full brunt of the crisis by slashing their purchasing power.

The strike is bringing the refinery workers into direct conflict not only with Macron, but with the financial markets and the NATO alliance that is using Europe as a base for war with Russia. To wage such a struggle, control of the strike has to be taken out of the hands of the national union bureaucracies that negotiate with Macron and supporting his war policy.

The wage struggle at Total reveals that the bureaucracies’ have already completely failed to defend the most basic interests of the workers. The banks reacted to the NATO war with Russia by speculating on energy, massively driving up prices and boosting oil companies’ profits. Raiding the wallets of workers across Europe and the world as they paid their utilities or filled their gas tanks, the five largest companies of the industry (Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP and Total) made €60 billion in profits in just the second semester of 2022.

This summer, Total CEO Patrick Pouyanné announced plans to pay out a staggering $15 billion in profits to Total shareholders in 2022. As the strike began, Pouyanné announced that a further $2.62 billion would be paid back in dividends to the shareholders.

Yet Total has only granted a 3.5 percent raise for its employees in France, though inflation is already around 7 percent in France, and over 10 percent in Europe as a whole. That amounts to a 3.5 percent cut in real wages.

As if to display his contempt for Total workers, Pouyanné also granted himself a whopping 52 percent raise, bringing his yearly salary to €5.9 million. This is 167 times the median yearly salary of a Total worker in France.

The way forward in this struggle is for workers to rebel against the union bureaucracies, smash their stranglehold over workers’ struggles, and appeal for a far broader mobilization of the working class against inflation. The struggle is not only against Pouyanné, but against Macron and, ultimately, the entire NATO alliance that is putting Europe on a war footing. Only a broader mobilization will suffice once gas stations run dry and the Macron government moves to force workers back to work.

It is necessary to draw the lessons of the powerful 2010 refinery workers strike against then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension cuts. Facing a complete breakdown of gas supplies that would have shut down the economy, the Sarkozy government devised a multi-pronged strategy to break the strike. It imported refined petroleum, cut deals with various union bureaucrats, issued a requisition order to refinery workers to force them to work, and sent riot police to beat workers who defied the order and physically compel them to return to work.

Isolated by the other union federations, the refinery workers were compelled to accept defeat, even though Sarkozy’s pension cuts were overwhelmingly unpopular.

The warning must be made: the ongoing great-power war in Europe and the escalating economic collapse will make Macron even more aggressive in attacking the workers. French union federations have supported the NATO war against Russia, and they will prove even more craven in isolating and betraying strikes that threaten NATO’s war agenda in Europe.

Millions driven into poverty by pandemic, soaring prices and recession

Nick Beams

The World Bank report on the growth of global poverty released earlier this week presents a graphic picture of the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hundreds of millions of people in the world’s poorer countries, now being exacerbated by rising inflation and the shift of the world economy into recession.

According to the report, the pandemic dealt the biggest blow to poverty reduction in decades. The number of people pushed into “extreme poverty,” defined as receiving less than $1.90 per day, rose by 70 million to reach a total of 700 million, or 9.3 percent of the world’s population in 2020.

Water is distributed at a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia, on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. Somalia is in the midst of the worst drought anyone there can remember. A rare famine declaration could be made within weeks. Climate change and fallout from the war in Ukraine are in part to blame. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Under conditions of rising inflation, exacerbated by the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the downward movement in the currencies of developing markets, produced by the interest rates hikes of the US Federal Reserve, the situation shows no signs of improvement.

By the end of this year, as many as 685 million people could still be living in extreme poverty, making 2022 the second worst year for poverty reduction in two decades after 2020.

The pandemic, as in so many other areas of economic and social life, was a trigger that accelerated processes already underway.

As the report noted, in the five years leading up to it, poverty reduction had slowed and by 2020 “the world was significantly off course on the global goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.” It estimated that on present trends 7 percent of the world’s population—574 million people—will still be in extreme poverty by the end of the decade.

Even before the pandemic struck, nearly half of the world’s population (47 percent) were living in poverty, defined as receiving less than $6.85 a day.

Together with the 20 million estimated to have died because of the pandemic and the millions who continue to be infected, alongside millions of others suffering debilitating effects of Long COVID, the rise in poverty is a further expression of the magnitude of the social crime committed by capitalist governments around the world in their refusal to undertake the necessary public health measures to eliminate the virus from the human population.

This was not because it was impossible to do so—the experience in China shows it is eminently feasible—but because of the adverse impact it would have on stock markets, bloated to extraordinary levels by the provision of trillions of dollars from the Fed and other central banks.

Now the agencies of finance capital are committing new crimes. To try to crush the movement of workers and the oppressed masses around the world as they confront the highest inflation in four decades, the central banks are lifting interest rates in order to induce a recession.

The impact is already being felt by the world’s poorest people. The currencies of less developed countries have declined dramatically, leading to an escalation of food and energy prices in the local currency.

The experience of Ghana is an example of this process. Over the past year the dollar price of oil has risen by 12 percent. But over the same period the currency, the cedi, has fallen by 40 percent against the US dollar. This means that a barrel of oil which cost 475 cedi a year ago now costs more than 900 cedi, nearly double.

This experience is being repeated in country after country in food, energy, medical supplies, and other vital imports.

At the same time, a growing number of countries are on the edge of default on the debts they owe to government agencies and international finance capital. The debt of at least 10 countries has already been listed as being in extreme stress and many more will follow.

The “restructuring” programs being dictated by the International Monetary Fund mean that the experience in Sri Lanka, which has already defaulted, setting off a full-scale onslaught against the working class to pay the vultures of international finance capital, are being extended around the world.

The World Bank calls for a series of reforms aimed at aiding the poor, knowing that governments intend to do nothing of the sort.

In fact, interest rate hikes being instituted by the US Fed are driving the world into recession, as the World Bank has already acknowledged together with the World Trade Organisation, the United Nations and a plethora of economists.

At its semi-annual meeting to be held in Washington next week, the IMF will again revise down its forecast for global growth, for the fourth time, as indicated in a speech yesterday by the Fund’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva.

The IMF estimates that countries accounting for about one-third of the global economy will experience at least two consecutive quarters of contraction either this year or next and even where growth is positive, “it will feel like a recession because of shrinking real incomes and rising prices.”

The total loss of global output between now and 2026 is expected to be about $4 trillion. “This is the size of the German economy—a massive setback for the world economy,” she said, adding that “it is more likely to get worse.”

The IMF chief did not intend it, but her remarks were an indictment of the policies pursued by the supposed guardians of the stability of the global capitalist economy, above all the policy pursued on COVID.

After growth of 6.1 percent in 2021, she said, “most economists, including at the IMF, thought recovery would continue, and inflation would quickly subside—largely because we expected vaccines would help tame supply side disruptions and allow production to rebound. But this is not what happened.”

Multiple shocks, including the war in Ukraine, “changed the economic picture completely,” and “far from being transitory, inflation has become entrenched.”

But with the policies on COVID having produced a disaster, new disasters are being created.

Endorsing the interest rate hikes, Georgieva said “not tightening enough” would cause inflation to become “de-anchored and entrenched,” code words in ruling circles and their economic agencies for a situation in which the working class strives to defend its living standards through strikes and social struggles.

The suppression of this movement is the number one priority of the financial elites even though, as she acknowledged, it could “push many economies into prolonged recession.”

Amid deepening crisis of Putin regime, US steps up regime-change operation

Clara Weiss

Eight months into its disastrous war in Ukraine, the Putin regime is facing a severe political crisis.

The mobilization of 300,000 reservists in response to a massive military debacle in northeastern Ukraine in September has aggravated an already far-reaching socioeconomic crisis while escalating frictions within the ruling elites and state apparatus. 

To avoid being mobilized, more privileged layers of the middle class have left the country in a panic, with reports suggesting that as many as 400,000 men have fled to neighboring countries. In an indication of the social layer involved, the German magazine Spiegel ran a portrait of two young men involved in a bitcoin company who made it to Georgia under the headline “Latte Macchiato in Tiflis.” Prior to their flight, they had each been earning $5,000 a month in Russia, more than many workers make in an entire year. 

The vast majority of the Russian working population, by contrast, is left to face the devastating economic fallout from both the economic warfare by the imperialist powers and the mobilization drive. Those drafted have to pay for their own uniforms, which can cost up to $3,000, and first-aid kits. The mobilization of thousands of working-age men will also leave their families without the main income earners of the household.  

The ongoing military route of Russian forces in Ukraine is a result both of the imperialist buildup of the Ukrainian army into a formidable, modern fighting force, and the disastrous miscalculations of the Kremlin which launched the invasion of Ukraine in February believing that it could force the imperialist powers to the negotiating table. Instead, NATO has used the provoked invasion as the welcome pretext to launch a full-scale war against Russia, in which the Ukrainian armed forces are but a proxy.

Already, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers are estimated to have been killed and wounded. Media reports indicate that in the North Caucasian republic of Dagestan, where a particularly large number of men had signed up as contractors with the Russian army to escape poverty, virtually every single village has reported battlefield dead.

As one military debacle has followed another—with Russia losing more territory over the past week in the very regions it now seeks to annex—the Ministry of Defense and general staff have come under almost constant fire from military figures and politicians, including Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.

The head of the Chechen republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, openly attacked the Ministry of Defense in the aftermath of the fall of Lyman this weekend. Kadyrov declared that he could not understand “what the Ministry of Defense is reporting to the commander-in-chief,” adding that “more radical measures, including the deployment of low-yield nuclear wepaons” should be taken. Shortly after these statements, Putin promoted Kadyrov to the rank of colonel general, his second promotion in the military ranks this year. 

On Wednesday, General Andrei Kartapolov, who is the current head of the State Duma’s Committee for Defense and the former deputy defense minister, demanded that the Ministry of Defense “stop lying” about the state of the war. He warned that their ongoing “lies” would make the population lose confidence in the Kremlin.

He then compared the severity of the situation to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II, stating: “Today the enemy is on our soil as well. And I'm not even talking about the newly acquired subjects of the Russian Federation [in East Ukraine]. Practically all the border villages of the Belgorod region have been destroyed. Our city of Valuiki [about 15 kilometers off the Russian-Ukrainian border] is under constant fire.” 

On Thursday, Kirill Stremousov, the deputy governor of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, which Russia is now annexing, attacked Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, encouraging him to kill himself. Stremousov said, “Many people are saying that as an officer, the defense minister could simply shoot himself for being the one who let things get to this state.”

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin joined the public attacks on the Ministry of Defense, blaming the military leadership for “mistakes” made during the mobilization drive. Contrary to Putin’s initial announcement that only those who have combat experience would be mobilized, thousands of Russians, including many who are elderly, sick or fathers of many children, received draft notices even though they had been promised to be exempted.

Thousands are now reportedly being sent home after having received draft notices “by mistake.” Media reports on Thursday indicate that regional governors have initiated a purge of lower-ranking military personnel responsible for overseeing mobilization in the provinces.

Since the beginning of the war, Russian generals and top officials of the Ministry of Defense have barely appeared in public. The Russian press now speculates that the public criticism of the Ministry of Defense by the Kremlin could be the precursor to a significant reshuffle of the military leadership.

As frictions within the Russian elites and state apparatus are emerging into the open, Washington and its allies in the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchy have clearly stepped up their efforts at a regime change in Moscow.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky notably responded to Putin’s move to annex the four regions in East Ukraine by insisting that there would be no more negotiations with Russia as long as Putin was president. The Ukrainian government has since issued a decree, formally banning any negotiations by Kiev with the Kremlin under Putin. 

On September 30, the day of Putin’s annexation speech, the Washington Post published a lengthy op-ed by the imprisoned Alexei Navalny, the figurehead of the pro-NATO so-called liberal opposition to the Putin regime. In the piece, Navalny effectively called for NATO to adopt regime change in Russia as the official strategic goal of this war. 

Navalny’s calls for the institution of a “parliamentary democracy” in Russia as the outcome of such a regime change are, of course, no less a fraud than the “bombing for democracy” narrative that served as the basis for virtually every US war in the Middle East and North Africa in the past decades. The result of this imperialist operation would be even more disastrous, leading to the carve-up and a series of civil wars in the largest country in the world, with a large, multiethnic population of over 140 million and the world’s second largest nuclear arsenal.  

With his usual bluntness, John Bolton, a leading figure in the US national security establishment first under President George W. Bush and then Donald Trump, spelled out the critical role of the Russian military in what he openly described as a “coup.” In a piece this week, Bolton wrote: “It is from the colonels and one-star generals, and their civilian-agency equivalents, where the most-likely co-conspirators to take matters into their own hands. These are the decision-makers whom the dissidents must identify, persuade and support to facilitate regime change.”

Ultimately, the social layers that the imperialist powers base themselves on in their regime change operation are the same social layers that the oligarchic Putin regime is based on as well: the oligarchy, the state and military apparatus and layers of the upper middle class.

Like the Putin regime itself, its opponents in the ruling class and state have emerged out of the Stalinist reaction against the October revolution which culminated in the restoration of capitalism and destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991. While the liberal opposition is advocating a direct alignment with US imperialism, they share with the Putin regime a deep-rooted fear and hatred of the working class.

Catholic Relief Services International Development Fellows Programme (IDFP) 2023

Application Deadline: 30th November 2022

Eligible Countries: All

About the Award: The Catholic Relief Services International Development Fellows Program, or IDFP, is designed for individuals dedicated to a career in international development. While completing comprehensive training on program management and operations, fellows support CRS’ work in various sectors such as agriculture/livelihoods, health, peacebuilding, emergency response, education, microfinance, or a combination of these.

The fellows’ training focuses on project management, project design and proposal development, partnership and capacity building, monitoring and evaluation, budget and resource management, supply chain and logistics, human resources and security protocols.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• Graduate degree in field relevant and applicable to international development (e.g. Agriculture, Health, Engineering, Business, Public Administration, Finance, Supply Chain)
• Fluency in English with strong oral and written communication skills
• Professional proficiency in a second language (preference given to major languages spoken where CRS works)  
• At least six months of work or volunteer experience in a developing country (or 5+ years living in a developing country)
• Able and willing to be based in locations with tropical and infectious diseases and limited access to medical facilities.

Skills Required:

• Strong interpersonal skills; able to cultivate strong relationships while working with a wide range of individuals in and outside the agency    
• Effective communicator; able to develop tailored and influential messaging for varied audiences
• Proactive; willing and able to take on additional responsibility, challenge assumptions and facilitate change
• Results driven; able to set and achieve ambitious goals and instill confidence
• Strategic thinker; able to formulate guiding questions, leverage resources and find creative solutions
• Discerning; able to maintain focus and provide good judgment amidst complexity and uncertainty
• Develops others; able to listen, coach and mentor
• Agile; able to operate effectively in a   stressful, fast changing environment      where security could change unexpectedly
• Aligned; able to support and champion the   mission, vision, and values of CRS     
• Motivated; interest in a career in   development or emergency relief
• Flexible; willing to work in various regions and developing countries around the world 

Number of Awards: CRS offers 20-30 fellowships each year.

Value of Award: CRS provides IDFP participants with the following benefits:

• Great opportunities for professional growth and development overseas
• Stipend, allowances, and furnished housing
• Transportation to and from the country
• Extensive insurance coverage (medical, dental, life, travel/accident, evacuation and personal household effects)
• Paid vacation, sick and personal leave, and 12 paid holidays
• Language learning assistance

Duration of Programme: 12 months

How to Apply: We welcome as a part of our staff and as partners people of all faiths and secular traditions who share our values and our commitment to serving those in need.

To be considered for the program, please apply here

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Commonwealth Foundation Grants 2023

Application Deadline: 1st November 2022

Eligible Countries: Commonwealth countries

About the Award: The Foundation offers grants of up to £200,000 over four years in support of innovative project ideas and approaches that seek to strengthen the ability of civic voices to engage with governments and that have the potential to improve governance and development outcomes through their active participation.

The Foundation believes in the power of stories and storytelling for social change and will award grants for creative approaches that have the potential to influence public discourse.

All proposals must ensure that the cross cutting theme of gender is mainstreamed throughout the project.

Fields of Funding: The Foundation’s Strategic Plan 2021-2026 is strongly linked to the Commonwealth Charter and its values and aspirations, and it identifies three thematic areas of focus:

• Health
• Environment and climate change
• Freedom of expression

Applications for the 2022-2023 grants call open at 1pm GMT on Thursday 29 September and close at 1pm GMT on Tuesday 1 November. For details on eligibility and the application process please download the call documents below.

Type: Grants

Eligibility: To be eligible for a grant, the following criteria must be met:

1. The applicant and, when applicable, partner(s) are registered not for profit civil society organisations (CSOs).
2. The applicant and, when applicable, partner(s) must be based in a Commonwealth Foundation member country and the project should take place in an eligible Commonwealth Foundation member country. A list of countries eligible under this call is available at Annex 1.
3. The application is for funding for a maximum of £50,000 per annum
4. The applicant is applying for funding for a maximum of four years
5. The applicant does not have an existing grant from the Commonwealth Foundation at the time the application window is open.
6. The average of the applicant’s total income over the last two years is less than £3m
7. The project must address one or both Commonwealth Foundation’s outcomes
8. The applicant will provide the following documents as part of the application:
• a completed logic model using the Commonwealth Foundation template
• a copy of the organisation’s registration certificate1 (the official registration document provided by the relevant authorities in the country concerned)
• a copy of the organisation’s most recent audited accounts (it must include both the accounts and the opinion of the external auditor who has certified them; it should not be older than December 2016)
• a copy of the registration certificate for all partner organisations

Selection Criteria: The application for a grant is a two-stage process: preliminary application and full application. Only shortlisted organisations will be invited to submit a full application.

Preliminary applications will be assessed on the criteria below:

1. The application has a clear problem definition.
2. The application clearly demonstrates that it is demand driven and relevant.
3. The project must address one or both Commonwealth Foundation outcomes
4. The application clearly shows how the planned activities will deliver outputs that lead to the project outcomes.
5. The organisation(s) has the capacity to deliver the submitted proposal.
6. The project must mainstream gender in the project design and project plan

Full applications will be assessed on the criteria below, in addition to the criteria used at the preliminary application stage:

1. The application clearly illustrates a strategy to sustain the positive outcomes from the project beyond the duration of the funding received from the Commonwealth Foundation
2. There is a clear Monitoring and Evaluation strategy for the project
3. The project includes a strong gender analysis of the problem, mainstreams gender and identifies how the anticipated change specifically impacts women and girls.

The selection process is highly competitive and selected projects will have been designed to undertake work that has the potential to lead to one or more of the outcomes in the Foundation’s strategic logic model.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: up to £200,000 over four years

How to Apply: To apply applicants will need to complete and submit an online application form using the online application system in the link below.

It is important to go through every helpful application detail before submitting.

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Kenyan President Ruto auditions for US and British imperialism

Kipchuma Ochieng

As the NATO powers escalate against Russia in the Ukraine, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war, and dramatically escalate tensions with China over Taiwan, Kenyan President William Ruto travelled to London and New York.

President of Kenya William Samoei Ruto addresses the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022 at U.N. headquarters. [AP Photo/Mary Altaffer]

Ruto’s first stop after winning the August presidential election was the UK, to attend the Queen Elizabeth's funeral service in London. Ruto groveled before the late figurehead of British imperialism, stating: “We will miss the cordial ties she enjoyed with Kenya and may her memories continue to inspire us, we join the Commonwealth in mourning and offer our condolences to the Royal Family and the United Kingdom during these difficult moments.”

Ruto was silent on British imperialism’s brutal role in Kenya. Queen Elizabeth became the monarch in 1952 while visiting Kenya, after her father, King George VI, died. She served as Kenya’s Head of State as a mass anti-colonial armed revolt broke out from 1952 to 1960, led by the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, commonly known as the Mau Mau rebellion.

London’s reaction was brutal, claiming an estimated 150,000 Kenyan lives according to historian Caroline Elkins’s work Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. Her study showed how the UK detained half a million people in camps and fortified villagers. Thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis or dysentery. Inmates were used as slave labour and subjected to sexual assault. Interrogation under torture was widespread.

The repression was endorsed at the highest levels. The British governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, regularly intervened to prevent its perpetrators from being brought to justice.

Elkins recently wrote in Time magazine: “Beginning with her first prime minister Winston Churchill, the queen’s ministers not only knew of systematic British-directed violence in the empire, they also participated in its crafting, diffusion, and cover-up, which was as routinized as the violence itself. They repeatedly lied to Parliament and the media and, when decolonization was imminent, ordered the widespread removal and burning of incriminating evidence.”

Queen Elizabeth returned to Kenya in 1983 and 1991, during the rule of Western-backed dictator President Daniel Arap Moi, Ruto’s mentor, as left-wing opponents of the regime were routinely killed and tortured.

After paying his respect to Kenya’s former colonial overlord, Ruto travelled to the United States for the 77th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). There, he used his tour to reassure the US ruling establishment that Washington can count on his government as a loyal partner to help it maintain its strategic grip over Eastern and Central Africa, where Washington has launched a long series of interventions, drone strikes and proxy wars.

After meeting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Ruto tweeted: “We pledged to advance our strategic partnership at both bilateral and multilateral levels. We acknowledge the strong ties between Kenya and the United States and commit to step up cooperation in the areas of trade, investment, food security and stability in the Horn of Africa for the benefit of the people.”

Although the details of the meeting have not been revealed, Ruto later promised the 3,500-strong Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) would prolong its decade-long stay in Somalia. He told France24: “those troops will be back home as soon as we’ve done with the assignment that we have in Somalia.”

In recent weeks, the KDF has reportedly worked with the national Somali army, killing hundreds of Al-Shabaab fighters in the Hiiraan, Galgaduud and Bay regions.

Kenya functions a key US proxy against the Al-Shabaab insurgency in Somalia. This strategically located country sits on the Indian Ocean and the entrance to the Red Sea, through which around $700 billion in maritime shipping passes every year. This includes nearly all Europe’s trade with Asia, including from Washington’s rival, China.

Should war with China break out, Washington would seek to use Somalia as a chokepoint to strangle Chinese trade through the Suez Canal with Europe.

Ruto also signed onto a Western-backed East Africa “peacekeeping” force to Congo’s mineral-rich east. The aim is to stabilise the war-torn region so Western corporations can plunder the minerals in the region—cassiterite, columbite-tantalite, wolframite, beryl, gold, and monazite, among others. Congo’s resources are viewed by Washington and its European imperialist allies as key to waging war against Beijing.

Ruto’s alignment with Washington against China and Russia were reflected in two high-level meetings with US Senate delegations in little over a month.

On August 18, he met a delegation of anti-China hawks, signaling that Washington wants Nairobi to align itself against Beijing. It included US ambassador to Kenya and Silicon Valley billionaire Meg Whitman; anti-China hawk and Delaware Senator Chris Coons, known as Biden’s proxy in the senate; US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, who has continued Trump’s trade war measures against Beijing; and Mary Catherine Phee, the assistant secretary of state for African Affairs.

Phee has pledged to use US embassies across Africa “to confront the Chinese challenge to the international rules-based order.”

Last Monday, Ruto met with another US delegation after speaking with Blinken on phone. Blinken thanked Ruto for supporting a UN Security Council resolution denouncing Moscow’s referendums in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in Ukraine.

Nairobi is signing up to the US-NATO war against Russia in the Ukraine. Ruto is backtracking from his comments days before to the BBC, pledging to consider purchasing fuel from Russia, thus bypassing US sanctions.

The US delegation was led by Oklahoma senator James Inhofe, the Chairman for the Senate Armed Services Committee. Inhofe in the past has urged the Biden administration to fast track the Kenya-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA). In a letter last year, he said the FTA was necessary to “help US security interests in the region.” Calling Kenya “an important ally in the Horn of Africa,” adding: “A US-Kenya FTA would strengthen trade and commercial ties at a time when China and Russia are seeking economic influence across the African continent.”

Kenya’s ruling class aims to make the country a manufacturing hub for U.S. companies looking to diversify or relocate out of China, after successive sanctions against Beijing tech companies, provocations in Taiwan and trade war policies. Kenya is the only African country engaged in bilateral trade talks with Washington.

US businessmen, however, are demanding more concessions from Kenya. Tech giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon want Washington to compel Nairobi to abolish the Digital Services Tax as a condition for a new trade deal. The 1.5 per cent tax was introduced last year by the National Treasury.

Ruto has already shown he can be trusted to impose austerity on the workers. In his first weeks of presidency, his government has eliminated subsidies on the staple unga (maize flour) and fuel, announced new tax hikes on excisable goods and services, and raised mandatory National Social Security Fund contributions.

He has also ordered the National Treasury to cut at least $2.5 billion from this financial year’s $27.4 billion budget, a savage 10 percent cut. This is just the beginning; Ruto promised that “next year, we will bring it further down so that, by the third year, we have a recurrent budget surplus.”

Modi booster Gautam Adani becomes world’s second richest man amid social misery for Indian working class

Martina Inesa

Last month Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, chairman of the Adani Group, briefly became the world’s second richest man with a net worth of $US155.5 billion, overtaking LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault on Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires rankings on September 16.

Adani’s ascent to the stratosphere of the world’s richest individuals triggered an outpouring of triumphant reports in the Indian media. It celebrated Adani’s obscene accumulation of personal wealth as further proof of India’s capitalist “rise.” This in a country where hundreds of millions are malnourished and at least a quarter of the population is illiterate.

Chairman of Adani group Gautam Adani speaks during the inauguration of the 9th Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit (VGGS) in Gandhinagar, India, Friday, Jan. 18, 2019. [AP Photo/Ajit Solanki]

Adani’s wealth has since been adversely impacted by a fall in the value of Adani Group shares. Forbes currently estimates that he and his family have a fortune of $131.8 billion, good enough for fourth place in its billionaires rankings, behind Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ($144 billion), Arnault and Elon Musk ($230 billion).

The devastating social reality confronting the vast majority of India’s population, which stands in the starkest contrast to the immense wealth enjoyed by Adani and other Indian billionaires, was very evident in a tragic incident that happened just one day before Adani’s brief rise to the position of the world’s second-richest person. On September 15, a pregnant woman in Jharkhand state was brutally killed by a loan “recovery agent,” who drove a tractor over her because her disabled farmer father was unable to pay a $1,600 loan.

Adani and other top Indian billionaires have steadily increased their wealth during the past two years, even as the population at large has been ravaged by the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. While officially India admits to only 529,000 COVID-19 deaths, the true figure—as has been established by studies of excess mortality—is in excess of 5 million. Moreover, the Indian ruling class’ catastrophic pandemic response, which has prioritized protecting investor profits over human lives, has resulted not only in multiple waves of mass infection and death but also in a pandemic of mass joblessness and hunger.

In mid-September, it was estimated that Adani’s wealth had risen by $198.6 million in each day of the previous year, adding some $70 billion to his net worth. Mukesh Ambani, who at the beginning of 2022 had stood ahead of Adani on Forbes’ billionaire list and is currently deemed the world’s 10th-richest person, by contrast had “only” accrued an additional $25.8 million per day over the previous 12 months.

Adani, Mukesh Ambani, his brother Anil Ambani, and other billionaire oligarchs helped propel Narendra Modi and his Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) to power in 2014 in order to intensify the class war assault on the working class and more aggressively pursue the Indian bourgeoisie’s great power ambitions, particularly through closer military-strategic ties with US imperialism.

Like Modi and the Ambanis, Adani hails from the western state of Gujarat, where he was a key supporter of Modi and his ruling BJP as they rose to dominate national politics. Adani got his start in the plastics industry, but his first big break came in the 1990s, when the Gujarat state government outsourced the management of Mundra Port, today India’s largest private sector port. Adani received the government contract, which permitted him to manage the port’s operations as a Special Economic Zone and reap profits through the export of plastics and metals. Over the intervening decades, his business has benefited handsomely from government support, including snapping up privatized power asserts and green energy subsidies.

Adani was an early supporter of Modi, who first came to national prominence for his role, soon after becoming Gujarat chief minister, in instigating and facilitating the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom, which left 2,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands more homeless.

Adani’s fortune has grown spectacularly in the eight years since Modi became prime minister. He and Mukesh Ambani now account for nearly 60 percent of the total wealth of the top 10 richest people in India.

Last year, Adani tried to dismiss claims that he has benefited from his close ties to Modi. He publicly declared that “he got no special favours from Modi” or from any of his predecessors as head of either the government of India or Gujarat other than a barren waste land for infrastructure projects in 1993.

In reality, Adani, like India’s other top billionaires, has gorged off decades of “pro-market” policies aimed at attracting investment and intensifying the exploitation of the working class—privatization, tax cuts, special economic zones, land grants and other subsidies and the use of state repression against worker struggles.   

Modi and his government have not only steered asset sales and management contracts, like that of Mumbai Airport, to the Adani Group. They have also lobbied and strong-armed foreign governments on its behalf. In January, the chairman of Sri Lanka’s government-owned Ceylon Electricity Board, M. M. C. Ferdinando, was forced to resign after revealing to a parliamentary committee that then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had told him that Modi had said emergency Indian government support for the collapsing Sri Lankan economy was conditional on Adani Green Energy receiving contracts for the development of wind and solar projects in Sri Lanka.

Pro-investor economic reforms  carried out since 1991 by successive Indian governments, led by both the Congress Party and the BJP, and intensified by the Modi government especially since 2019, have deepened social inequality, concentrating wealth in the hands of billionaires like Adani and pushing tens of millions of workers and rural toilers still deeper into poverty.

According to the recently released World Inequality Report 2022, India is now among the most unequal countries in the world.

The top 10 percent of the Indian population holds 77 percent of the total national wealth, and appropriates 57 percent of all income. At 21.7 percent, the income share of just the top 1 percent dwarfs that of the poorest 50 percent of Indians (13.10 percent.)     

According to the British-based international aid agency Oxfam, the number of Indian billionaires has exploded during the pandemic—rising from 102 in 2020 to 142 by the end of 2021. Between 2018 and 2022, India is estimated to have produced 70 new millionaires every day.

On the other side of the social divide, there is unspeakable poverty and deprivation

The Indian government has refused to provide an official estimate of the numbers living in poverty since 2011. However in 2019—that is before the pandemic—two prominent economists estimated, based on government data, that almost 21 percent of the population, 346 million people were living on 29 rupees per day (US 42 cents) or less.

The Niti Aayog, the National Institution for Transforming India, an Indian government think tank, has conceded that according to its Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI–a measure of poverty taking into consideration access to education and other basic social infrastructure in addition to income) one in every four people in India is multidimensionally poor.

Many ordinary Indians are not able to access the health care they need. 63 million of them are pushed into poverty because of healthcare costs every year—almost two people every second. While the country is a top destination for medical tourism, the poorest Indian states have infant mortality rates higher than those in sub-Saharan Africa. India accounts for 17 percent of global maternal deaths, and 21 percent of deaths among children below five years.

All of this has grown significantly worse during the past two-and-a-half years as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and then the US-NATO instigated war with Russia over Ukraine.

While the wealth of Gautam Adani, Mukesh Ambani and other Indian billionaires soared, the masses have been left to fend for themselves. Between January and late March 2020, the Modi government did nothing to prepare the drastically under-funded public health care system for the looming threat of COVID-19, then imposed a short-lived and ill-prepared lockdown. The tens of millions working in the informal sector who lost their jobs overnight were at best provided famine-style rations.

According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy's (CMIE’s) Consumer Pyramids Household Survey, employment in India fell from 408.9 million in 2019-20 to 387.2 million in 2020-21. Although the figure recovered to 401.8 million in 2021-22, it remains below the pre-pandemic level. In 2021-22, the unemployed who were actively seeking work but were unable to find any were estimated at 33 million.

In 2020, India’s position on the Global Hunger Index, based on undernourishment of the population, child wasting, child stunting and child mortality, was placed at 94th out of 107 countries. Its position dropped further to 101 out of 116 countries in 2021.

Suicides among daily wage workers have risen 166 percent between 2014 and 2021.

The ruling class and the political establishment have justified the BJP government-enforced collapse in the living standards of the working class and rural toilers during the pandemic as being in the “national interest” and a shared sacrifice. As the Forbes Rich List proves, the only “sacrifice” has been on the side of working people and in the “interest” of a super-rich fraction of society.

The unprecedented enrichment of the financial oligarchy, in the midst of the greatest crisis since the 1930s, has exposed the arguments that have been made to justify decades of job-cutting and the destruction of social programs.

Massive levels of social inequality and the constant pumping of money into the financial markets have created runaway inflation that is driving up the cost of all basic necessities internationally.