AI and its implications a central topic at Davos meeting

Nick Beams

One of the central topics of discussion at this year’s World Economic Forum gathering of the global elites at Davos, Switzerland, both on the public platforms and in the private suites where much of the real business is done, is artificial intelligence (AI).

Yann LeCun, Meta's lead AI scientist and pioneer of AI attends the Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum in Davos, January 16, 2024. [AP Photo/Markus Schreiber]

AI represents a major advance in technology with the capacity to enormously develop the productivity of labour and thereby provide the basis for social advancement.

But its development under the social relations of capitalism, based on the private ownership of the means of production (including so-called intellectual property) and the extraction of private profit, means it will not have this effect but the reverse.

This fact of economic and political life, which poses the need for the establishment of socialist economic relations, is acknowledged, albeit indirectly, in the Global Risks Report prepared by the WEF for this week’s meeting.

It said the convergence of technological advances and geopolitical dynamics, an oblique reference to the rise of militarism led by the US, would likely create a new set of winners and losers in advanced and developing countries alike.

“If commercial incentives and geopolitical imperatives, rather than public interest, remain the primary drivers of the development of… AI and other frontier technologies, the digital gap between high- and low-income countries will drive a stark disparity in the generation of related benefits—and risks. Vulnerable countries and communities would be left further behind, digitally isolated from turbocharged AI breakthroughs impacting economic productivity, finance, climate, education and health care, as well as related job creation.”

In other words, rather than becoming a means to end global social inequality and impoverishment the development of AI, according to the profit motive and the interests of the major capitalist powers, will worsen it.

In another section of the document, it points to the vast implications of AI and other advanced technologies.

“Unchecked proliferation of increasingly powerful general purpose AI technologies will radically reshape economies and societies over the coming decade… It will also interact with parallel developments. Intentional misuse is not required for the implications to be profound.

“Novel risks will arise from self-improving generative AI models that are handed increasing control over the physical world, triggering large-scale changes to socioeconomic structures.”

One is reminded of the observation by Marx in the Communist Manifesto that the bourgeoisie is like the sorcerer’s apprentice who had conjured up spirits from the nether world which he did not know how to control.

And at a deeper level it recalls Marx’s analysis that the objective historical necessity for socialism, achieved through social revolution carried out by the working class, arises from the contradiction between the development of the productive forces and the social relations of capitalism in which they are encased.

The alternative to this perspective is the descent into barbarism of which war is most obvious expression.

AI, as the WEF report pointed to, plays a critical role here.

“The creep of machine intelligence into conflict decision-making—to autonomously select targets and determine objectives—would significantly raise the risk of accidental or intentional escalation over the next decade,” it said.

Others have also been sounding warnings. Back in October, in an interview with the Financial Times (FT), the chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, said unless a way was found to control the use of AI platforms in the financial system then a crisis was “nearly unavoidable” in the next decade.

He said the use by market participants of the same AI models could generate “herd” behavior and unleash a crisis.

These warnings were echoed by the governor of the Bank of Spain, and the chair of the Basel Committee in Banking Supervision, Pablo Hernández, in an interview with the FT on the eve of the Davos meeting.

He said fast-developing technology, in particular AI, “could change the course of history, not necessarily for the good.”

The increase in economic problems over the past decade meant that greater international cooperation was needed.

“However, what we are observing at the geopolitical level shows that reaching common agreements is becoming more and more difficult. That is a concern for me, and it is a concern for many people,” he said.

“Financial stability is only one dimension, there are many other potentially more important consequences related to AI.… If we are not able to give a co-ordinated global response, the likelihood of getting the right solution to these challenges will be reduced.”

But as the need for global cooperation increases, the prospect for achieving it founders on a central contradiction of the capitalist system—that between the integrated and interconnected world economy and system of rival nation-state and great powers, each pursuing its own interests.

The increased use of AI in all sections of industry will also lead to what is euphemistically termed the “restructuring” of the labour market.

Last March Goldman Sachs issued a report saying that AI could lead to the automation of a quarter of the work carried out in the US and the euro zone.

It said AI systems that generate content indistinguishable from human output could increase annual gross domestic product by 7 percent over the next decade. But this increase in productivity would result not in the material improvement in living standards but in increased profit.

The report said AI would bring “significant disruption” to the labour market with some 300 million workers in major economies exposed to its effects and that two-thirds of all jobs were exposed to some degree of automation.

A survey conducted by the accounting firm PwC of global chief executives, released as the Davos meeting began, said a quarter of them expected that AI would lead to a reduction in employment of 5 percent this year. Some 46 percent said that the use of generative AI which can generate text, images and code in seconds would boost profits over the course of the next year.

Led by Mississippi, 15 states opt out of children’s food program for low-income families

Cordell Gascoigne

On January 10, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer (Summer EBT) would begin this year. Under the program, children who receive free or reduced lunch during the school year could also be eligible to receive $120 in food benefits spread across three months during the summer. This pittance equals about $40 per month, or about $1.33 per lunch.

Thirty-five states have either opted into the program or have yet to make a formal declaration either way. It is expected that the program will provide paltry food benefits to nearly 21 million children in low-income families across states and territories that have chosen to participate. However, 15 states led by Republican governors have already rejected participating in the program, leaving more than eight million children ineligible to receive the benefits.

Some of the states that are refusing to participate include Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming. In some cases governors have refused to comment on why they are not participating, while others have demagogically postured against expanding “Biden’s welfare state.”

In Mississippi, Trump-aligned Republican Governor Tate Reeves has already publicly rejected the program. Reeves’ decision will impact more than 324,000 children, according to the Food Research and Action Center.

From 2019 to 2021, the average food insecurity rate in Mississippi was 15.3 percent, the highest in the US and 32 percent higher than the national average of 10.4 percent. The US Census Bureau recently reported that over 22 percent of households in Mississippi lack sufficient food to maintain a proper diet. Additionally, the state has a child poverty rate of 28 percent, nearly double the national average.

Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves at the Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, Miss.,Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024. [AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis]

Despite widespread poverty and hunger in Mississippi, Reeves justified denying food benefits to children as part of the war to combat “attempts to expand the welfare state.” Reeves’ rationale was echoed by every other Republican governor who decided not to participate in the Summer EBT program.

“I don’t believe in welfare,” said Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen in an interview The Journal Star back in late December. A USDA survey released last November found that over 12 percent of Nebraskans faced food insecurity between 2020-2022, roughly a full percentage point higher than the national average.

Pillen’s decision will deprive about 150,000 students $18 million worth in benefits. It would have only cost the state about $300,000 in administrative costs to implement the program, according to a review by Nebraska Appleseed.

Justifying his rejection of the program, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt said it would merely add “more bureaucracy for families to wade through.”

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster claimed the program was “...a COVID-related benefit, extra. We’ve got to get back to doing normal business. We can’t be doing that forever...”

The attack on social programs that benefit the working class is bipartisan. Almost a year ago, the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden drastically reduced food stamp benefits for 42 million poor and working-class Americans.

In Louisiana, where 27 percent of children are living in poverty and 21 percent “often go hungry,” according to Feeding America, outgoing Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards refused to opt into the program before leaving office earlier this month.

Approximately 13 percent of the state’s population, or 600,000 children, as per the USDA, would be eligible for benefits. Current Republican Governor Jeff Landry, as of this writing, has yet to decide whether or not the state will participate.

In Iowa, Republican Governor Kim Reynolds cited “childhood obesity” as the rationale for depriving 240,000 children of needed benefits. In justifying the decision to reject $29 million in food assistance, Reynolds advanced fascistic and unscientific arguments, including claiming that starvation could be beneficial for obese children. “[A]n EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic,” said Reynolds.

Reynolds’ right-wing attack ignores the economic constraints faced by the poor and working class families who are often forced to purchase and consume cheaper foods, which are frequently high in carbohydrates and high fructose corn syrup.

Inflation has continued to eat away at workers’ stagnant paychecks, resulting in more and more workers and their families “skipping” meals or “filling up” on unhealthy calories. This diet, along with the stress of hunger, contributes to weight gain and numerous associated health issues, including early-onset diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart attacks.

Reynolds and her Republican colleagues’ statements, coupled with the bipartisan assault on social programs brings to mind the Nazi “Hunger Plan,” where starvation was employed as a tool to manipulate and control populations. While the contexts may differ, the impact on vulnerable sections of the working class, particularly children, raises the necessity for a socialist alternative.

In response to Reynolds’ decision to opt out of the program, Iowa Hunger Coalition board chair Luke Elzinga said, “Hunger is a policy choice, and this is just one more unfortunate example of that fact,” adding, “It’s deplorable that Iowa’s leadership has chosen to make feeding children a political issue.”

It is a political issue. While both parties find and justify seemingly unlimited funds for war, social services for the working class such as existing summer nutrition programs fall significantly short in reaching the numerous families who depend on free and reduced-price school meals throughout the school year. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that the enrollment deadline coincides with Congress grappling with the threat of another government shutdown.

The Biden administration, which is negotiating with Republicans on supplemental war package totaling over $110 billion, issued a warning to lawmakers that failing to avert a shutdown this month could result in over 2 million Americans being denied access to a critical federal assistance program designed for low-income families.

Joint Japan World Bank Group Scholarship Program 2024/2025

Application Deadline: 29th February 2024

About Joint Japan World Bank Group Scholarship: The Joint Japan World Bank Graduate Scholarship Program (JJ/WBGSP) is open to women and men from developing countries with relevant professional experience and a history of supporting their countries’ development efforts who are applying to a master degree program in a development-related topic.

After earning their degree, developing country scholars commit to return to their home country to use their new skills and contribute to their countries’ social and economic development.

Type: Masters

Selection Criteria: Eligible applications are assessed according to three main factors: academic excellence, professional experience, and relevance of program of study. Priority is given to candidates from the public sector with a high potential to impact the development in their own countries after completion of their studies

Who can apply for Joint Japan World Bank Group Scholarship: Details on Eligibility Criteria for each call for applications are provided in that call’s Application Guidelines, and these detailed eligibility criteria are strictly adhered to. No exceptions are made.

Broadly speaking, Developing Country nationals must:

• Be a national of a World Bank member developing country;
• Not hold dual citizenship of any developed country;
• Be in good health;
• Hold a Bachelor’s (or equivalent) degree earned at least 3 years prior to the Application Deadline date;
• Have 3 years or more of recent development-related work experience after earning a Bachelor’s (or equivalent) degree;
• Be employed in development-related work in a paid full- time position at the time of submitting the scholarship application.  The only exception to this criterion is for developing country nationals from a country that will be on the updated list of Fragile and Conflict States provided to applicants in the Application Guidelines for each call for scholarships.
• On or before the Scholarship Application Deadline date, be admitted unconditionally (except for funding) for the upcoming academic year to at least one of the JJ/WBGSP preferred university master’s programs and located outside of the applicant’s country of citizenship and country of residence listed at the time the call for scholarship applications open.
• Not be an Executive Director, his/her alternate, and/or staff of any type of appointment of the World Bank Group or a close relative of the aforementioned by blood or adoption with the term “close relative” defined as: Mother, Father, Sister, Half-sister, Brother, Half-brother, Son, Daughter, Aunt, Uncle, Niece, or Nephew; *Please note: All eligibility criteria are strictly adhered to. No exceptions are made.
• Eligibility criteria WILL NOT change during an open call for applications. However, this information is subject to change between the close of one application process and the opening of the next.

Number of Scholarships: Several

Joint Japan World Bank Group Scholarship benefits: The JJ/WBGSP scholarship provides annual awards to cover the cost of completing a master’s degree or its equivalent. The awards are given for one year and, provided that the academic program is longer than one year, may be renewed for a second consecutive year or a portion thereof, subject to satisfactory academic performance in the first year and the availability of funds.

The scholarship provides benefits for the recipient only, covering:

• economy class air travel between the home country and the host university at the start of the study program and one return journey following the end of the overall scholarship period. In addition to the ticket, scholars receive a US $500 travel allowance for each trip;
• tuition and the cost of basic medical and accident insurance usually obtained through the university;
• a monthly subsistence allowance to cover living expenses, including books.

Duration: The proposed program of study should be for a maximum duration of two years.

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

To be taken at (country): One of the preferred universities (see in Program Webpage Link below)

How to Apply for Joint Japan World Bank Group Scholarship: Applicants are strongly encouraged to use the online application form available in  English, French, or Spanish.

It is very necessary to go through the instructions in ALL application documents before applying.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Thousands of jobs threatened by insolvency of German department store chain Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof

Marianne Arens

Once again, Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof (GKK) has filed for insolvency in the Essen district court. Once again, sales assistants are facing the loss of their jobs and future prospects. This is already the third insolvency in less than four years. And now, of around 32,000 employees and 243 GKK stores in 2018, only 15,000 staff (12,500 full-time) and 92 GKK outlets remain.

Galeria (formerly Kaufhof) at Frankfurt’s Hauptwache

In an initial statement on January 9, the trade union Verdi said its “absolute goal” was that “Galeria as a whole must be preserved.” And how does Verdi intend to achieve this? Silke Zimmer, responsible for the retail division on the Verdi executive board, replied: “In our view, an investor is urgently needed for this, preferably an investor with retail expertise.”

This shows Verdi has no intention of even considering, let alone taking industrial action to defend jobs. Verdi is simply hoping that a new investor (with or without “retail expertise”) will appear on the horizon.

This is no surprise. For many years, Verdi has shown itself to be incapable and unwilling to defend the store workers. When René Benko took over the Kaufhof and Karstadt department stores for the symbolic price of one euro, the union welcomed him with open arms as a “saviour” and showered him with praise. Benko was mainly interested in the valuable properties in prime city centre locations. The WSWS recently wrote: “Benko is the product and embodiment of a sick society in which profit and wealth count for everything, while the fate and even the lives of ordinary people count for nothing.”

Verdi has repeatedly built golden bridges for Benko. Stefanie Nutzenberger, Zimmer’s predecessor on the Verdi executive, helped the financier from Vienna to close down dozens of branches and cut employees’ wages further and further. For years, allegedly to “secure jobs,” GKK workers have been foregoing wage components such as collectively agreed pay, holiday and Christmas bonuses. Currently, their wages and salaries are on average around €500 a month below the collective agreement for the sector. And most GKK employees have already experienced a branch closure and made the associated sacrifices.

When the coronavirus pandemic began, the Signa holding company took advantage of this to drastically restructure in the course of GKK’s first insolvency in April 2020. Verdi campaigned for the government to provide Benko with €680 million from its economic stabilisation fund. The result at the end of 2020 was a situation in which Benko-owned Signa Prime Selection paid out dividends totaling €200 million to its investors, while GKK employees paid the price with the loss of over 3,000 jobs and 40 branches.

The second insolvency followed in October 2022, and Verdi was prepared to seal the destruction of a further 5,000 jobs and 41 branches in a new restructuring agreement. The last of these stores are being closed right now, in the course of January 2024. So, workers at GKK now confront a third insolvency.

It is not due to the poor business performance of the department stores; GKK is caught up in the maelstrom of insolvency that Benko’s Signa Group is suffering as a result of the global interest rate crisis. Benko’s business model consisted mainly of Signa buying the department stores, increasing their property value and thus trading in real estate. This was accompanied by constantly hiking up rents, which Benko collected from his own department stores. For Galeria, this means the rents that some GKK shops pay to Signa consume up to 32 percent of revenue.

Signa was also able to borrow heavily against the highly valued properties: a kind of snowball principle that resulted in a huge mountain of debt. Benko used the money to pay for his lifestyle, his yacht, his private jet and lavish parties for influential politicians and financial backers. But it was also used to finance the purchases of new projects, such as the recent Selfridges prestige store in London, as well as other ongoing construction costs. Germany and Austria are now teeming with unfinished buildings; the ambitious Elbtower project in Hamburg has now been cancelled.

Above all, the money had to be used to pay the dividends due to investors such as management consultant Roland Berger, logistics entrepreneur Klaus-Michael Kühne, ex-Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking and company heir Robert Peugeot.

The Signa empire consisted of an impenetrable web of over a thousand individual companies. It ultimately failed because interest rates, which have risen again in recent years, made refinancing the high debts a problem, while at the same time the value of the properties fell. The Ponzi scheme created threatened to burst. Within just nine months, Signa Holding’s mountain of debt rose from less than €2 billion to officially around €5 billion. According to JPMorgan, Benko is said to owe his lenders a total of at least €13 billion. Signa itself had to file for insolvency in December.

For Galeria, the Signa bankruptcy means that the promised €200 million investment funds, which would have to come from Signa in March 2024, are probably not available at all. Suppliers are therefore only delivering goods for cash and the management board at GKK headquarters in Essen is running out of money. Insolvency proceedings were filed January 8.

The process is symptomatic of the deeply sick and bankrupt capitalist profit system and its effects on society. The WSWS article quoted above summarises:

Benko, who is only 46 years old, was able to become a billionaire in a very short space of time because the entire political system has long focused on enriching those already rich. Fantastic profits are made on the stock exchanges, in the financial and real estate sector, in industrial and IT monopolies with gigantic salaries paid to managers, while taxes are cut, exploitation is intensified and education, health and public infrastructure are cut to the bone.

GKK workers are now at a crossroads: are they willing to leave their fate to Verdi and its pious hopes for a new investor à la Benko or worse? Or will they take the fight for jobs and wages into their own hands?

This is how business weekly Wirtschaftswoche described the prospects for GKK:

For the experts, the answer is clear: a break-up of the group with its current 92 remaining shops is now the “likely scenario,” says Johannes Berentzen, head of retail consultancy BBE. And: “I would be surprised if more than 20 Galeria stores survive.” Retail expert Gerrit Heinemann from the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences also believes it is conceivable that only a few “cream pieces” will remain from Galeria. Property specialist Lars Jähnichen from IPH Handelsimmobilien expects that “more Galeria stores will be closed.”

The investment company of billionaire Walter Droege could be a potential buyer, he adds, but would “only continue to operate a few premium shops.” Even if an investor were found who would continue to run a large proportion of the GKK branches, any new start will mean not only revised rental agreements but also employees’ working conditions being renegotiated and worsened. Under the conditions of such investors (better described as “locusts”), a new start will in any case be paid for dearly by the workforce.

Workers Party government lays groundwork for police state in Brazil

Miguel Andrade

The last two months of 2023 saw a string of ominous measures being implemented by the Brazilian state laying the groundwork for massive repression against the working class. The Workers Party (PT) government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the country’s Supreme Court have put into effect and ruled upon a string of new laws and legal precedents that will massively increase police powers, including for domestic spying operations and for prosecuting civilians in military courts. 

Military Police patrols demonstrations in Brasilia in December 13, 2023 [Photo: Jose Cruz/Agência Brasil]

The most prominent of the new laws was signed into effect by Lula on December 13, 2023. It is the so-called Military Police Organic Law (LOPM), which renews the legal foundations for the country’s 27 Military Police corps, controlled by Brazil’s 26 states and the autonomous Federal District, where the capital Brasília is located.

The law had been introduced by former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) in 2001, and took 22 years to finally clear both houses of Congress in November 2023, with a critical push by the PT government. Its ostensible aim is to regulate and adapt the functions of the Military Police corps to the bourgeois-democratic framework of the 1988 Constitution. This charter was adopted after the fall of the 1964–1985 US-backed military dictatorship, which originally created these corps in 1969 as “auxiliary forces to the Army,” making them an essential component of its campaign of repression against workers and rural guerrillas.

The original decree establishing the Military Police corps came in the wake of the so-called “coup within the coup” in December 1968, when the ruling junta signed the infamous Institutional Act number 5 (AI-5), shutting down Congress, abolishing the right to habeas corpus and outlawing all but one sanctioned oppositional party, designed to give the dictatorship a thin democratic veneer. One crucial feature of the new police forces from 1969 on was their designation as “auxiliary forces to the Army,” which effectively gave the latter ability to override civilian governors, who are formally in command of the troops, and their military-style organization, including their own ranks and military courts.

The continued existence of the Military Police with no specific new law—just the veto of the original 1969 decree—has been a key component of what became known in Brazil as the “authoritarian rubble” (entulho autoritário), or unaddressed authoritarian infrastructure operating under the cover of the “Citizen’s Constitution” of 1988. As a result, the Military Police became a deadly force, armed with war-grade weapons and killing about 6,000 Brazilians a year. These assassinations occur chiefly in bloody, lawless vendettas slaying dozens at a time in the country’s favelas. They are carried out under the cover of fighting organized crime and have led to repeated calls by human rights organizations for the complete dissolution of these armed bodies. In the state of São Paulo alone, the Military Police has grown to a massive force of 100,000, almost half the size of Brazil’s standing army.

The new bill addresses none of these issues, but rather sanctions the repression, now under the “democratic” facade of the party, the PT, and the political leader, former metalworkers union’s president Lula, which formally stood at the head of the massive working class opposition to the dictatorship. As noted by researchers Adilson Paes de Souza, of the São Paulo University, and Gabriel Feltran, of Sciences Po in Paris, in a blunt article published by the daily Folha de S. Paulo on December 5, the new law signed by Lula not only maintains, in slightly rephrased or in many times literal fashion, key authoritarian features of the original decree, but also expands them, by giving the Military Police the autonomy to establish “intelligence and counterintelligence operations.” 

In other words, the legislation will allow Military Police commanders to establish spy organs akin to the infamous Social and Political Order Department (DOPS) used to capture, torture and murder opponent of the junta’s rule until 1985. As the authors note further, since the new law maintains the key provision of the 1969 decree establishing the Military Police as an “auxiliary force to the Army,” the authorization for it to carry out intelligence operations provides a direct source of information to the latter, outside of any civilian oversight and bypassing the official channels of the civilian Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin).

Military Police and Military Firefighters officials watch Brazilian Senate session that approved the new Military Police Organic Law, November 7, 2023, Brasilia [Photo: Lula Marques/ Agência Brasil]

Two weeks later, on December 27, Lula signed a decree granting the country’s municipal guards police powers to answer emergency calls and make on-the-spot arrests, effectively adding tens of thousands of new agents to the swelling ranks of the Brazilian repressive apparatus. The decree came in response to a growing number of cases in the country’s courts of plaintiffs questioning evidence produced by the guards, which have the ostensible role of protecting urban infrastructure. The decree also provides for the integration of the guards with other police organs to be established in each city.

Along parallel lines, the Supreme Court (STF) ruled on November 10 that military courts have the right to try civilians if they are accused of “military crimes.” The STF was ruling on an appeal of a businessman accused of attempting to bribe an officer in exchange for clearance to operate a bulletproof glass company. The case was deemed a “military crime,” and the STF declined to transfer it from the Supreme Military Court (STM) to a regular court. The precedent will now likely open the door for the prosecution of civilians who protest or even register abuses amid Military Police operations, as long sought by commanders. Not content with the ruling, the government has plans to enshrine and widen the scope of crimes by civilians tried in military courts by constitutional amendment. 

The string of new repressive measures comes amid efforts by the government to increase military spending to 2 percent of the GDP by means of a constitutional amendment and the hailing of the arms industry as the “engine” of the country’s development. There is also a campaign to approve a draconian internet censorship law, the 2630/2020 bill. This is portrayed as a decisive measure to avoid further far-right assaults upon bourgeois democracy—blamed on massive “misinformation” spread on social media. It also comes amid the endless repetition that the military high command, which was fully engaged in the conspiracy led by former President Jair Bolsonaro to overturn the 2022 elections and remain in power, were the true saviors of democracy for “refusing” to follow him up to and including the January 8, 2023, assault on the capital.

The events of the last decade, culminating in the rise to power of the heirs of the dictatorship led by Bolsonaro, have fully exposed the lie promoted by the PT and its supporters since the end of military rule in 1985 that a democratic regime could be established and increasingly perfected over time. The concept itself of “authoritarian rubble,” commonly referred to in the press and academia, has always carried the assumption that repressive laws were remnants of the dictatorship which would eventually be replaced by democratic laws, and as such were irrelevant relics of the past. Now, this course is being reversed at an astonishing pace. 

The passing of a law granting the Military Police spying powers once again exposes another lie, that the PT is a victimized, even if cowardly and naïve, spectator in this entire process, cornered into right-wing policies by the congressional opposition. It is no secret that the government sponsored the quick approval of the LOPM bill, assigning it to its leading representative in the Senate, former Federal Police Deputy Fabiano Contarato, to obtain support of the military and the far-right. 

The PT government is vastly expanding the powers of the most violent organizations within the Brazilian state, which are a hotbed for fascist politics fed by daily, sadistic violence against the most oppressed sections of the population. The Military Police have been openly recognized as a key constituency of Bolsonaro to such an extent that STF Justice Alexandre de Moraes declared recently that on January 8, 2023, he was compelled to order the immediate arrest of the governor, the security secretary, and the police commander of the capital to avoid a “domino effect” of sympathy for the coup in the rest of the country.

Moraes was himself empowered by the Lula government and major parties in Congress to head a secret investigation into the dictatorial conspiracy led by Bolsonaro and his allies because of his closeness to the police and military apparatus. Moraes had previously headed the Military Police in São Paulo, as the state’s security secretary, being later appointed minister of justice and public security by Michel Temer’s administration.

The basis for these reactionary policies is the ever growing concern that the austerity measures carried out by the PT on behalf of national and imperialist capital will sooner rather than later lead to a confrontation with the working class, and the capitalist state should prepare accordingly. In barely a year, the government has abandoned its previous abstract references to social reforms, instead committing itself to a zero-deficit 2024 budget with the single-minded aim of attracting maximum foreign capital investment flows into the country. Far from “trickling down” to increases in wages and welfare as promised by Lula, the assurance of “stability” for foreign investors will require massive repression against workers and an ever deeper turn to the very repressive forces that are the backbone of the far-right threat that the PT promised to combat.

Arctic blast brings deadly cold to 231 million in the US

Kevin Reed

An Arctic blast of brutally cold weather hit nearly every state in the US over the weekend and brought deadly conditions including record low temperatures, blizzards and high winds. There were scattered reports of deaths among the homeless and others affected by the cold wave, but no systematic national count is carried out to monitor the impact.

As is the case with every extreme weather event in recent decades, the “bomb cyclone” exposed the decrepit condition of the US infrastructure and revealed the lack of government preparedness and a callous disregard for the most vulnerable sections of the population.

More than 100 million people from the Canadian border to the Mexican border are currently under wind-chill alerts and most of the lower 48 states have some type of winter weather warning.

The National Weather Service reported wind-chill effective temperatures could reach minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit in the Plains and minus 50 in Montana and the Dakotas. Wind-chill temperatures as low as minus 45 can cause frostbite in as little as 5 minutes.

The Arctic blast is expected to impact 79 percent of the US geographically, from Oregon to Mississippi and Florida by the end of the week, with more than 231 million Americans experiencing below average temperatures.

Many areas of the country are unprepared for severe winter weather and were forced to take emergency measures. Dozens of school districts canceled classes in Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama following the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, with temperatures expected to reach a low point on Tuesday.

The mayor of Shelby County (Memphis), Tennessee, declared a state of emergency after several inches of snow fell followed by extremely cold temperatures. A message from the mayor said people should “stay off the street today, and if you can do it safely, please check in on your neighbors.”

Tate Reeves, governor of Mississippi, declared a state of emergency and warned residents to prepare for extreme winter weather. On social media, Reeves claimed his declaration, “will allow us to mobilize state assets, and better support response and recovery efforts.” However, roads in the northern part of the state had already started to ice over by the time his statement was released around 4 p.m. Sunday.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a bomb cyclone is a storm that rapidly intensifies and undergoes a significant drop in air pressure. The system typically develops over the ocean or off a coast in the winter. It begins in the temperate latitudes and strengthens quickly, with the atmospheric pressure at its center dropping swiftly, a process called “bombogenesis.”

The current weather system, being called Winter Storm Heather by meteorologists, is picking up fresh Arctic air as it moves from the south to the northeast this week, dropping snow and leaving icing conditions in its wake. The sudden drop in temperatures is the result of Arctic air escaping the polar vortex, a high-altitude swirl of winds surrounded by a lower-altitude band called the polar jet stream.

According to an article in Scientific American, “If the polar vortex gets disrupted, however, the jet stream can become wavy and carry frigid air much farther south than usual in an Arctic blast. Sometimes this frigid air brings snow and ice; other times the weather is dry but bitterly cold.”

While scientists are still working through the precise cause of the polar vortex disruptions, many experts point to climate change as likely playing a role. Judah Cohen, a climate scientist at the company Verisk Atmospheric and Environmental Research, told Scientific American that this winter’s melting sea ice near Scandinavia coupled with high snowfall near Siberia set up a thermal contrast, which drove the polar jet stream into waves.

The polar vortex typically “wakes up” around January, Cohen said, so it makes sense that the sharp chill from an Arctic blast is being felt now since the stage was set by these distant trends. Cohen went on to say the current blast, “will be a very impressive—certainly one of the most impressive Arctic outbreaks of this century anyway.”

The extremely cold weather once again exposed the fragile condition of the electricity infrastructure across the US. Approximately 200,000 Michigan customers of DTE Energy and Consumers Energy were without power beginning on Friday during snowstorms that hit the Great Lakes region.

The power grid in Texas was stressed and set a new record for demand on Monday. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) reported that power usage was the most demand on the grid ever recorded during the winter months. For a second day in a row ERCOT issued a “conservation appeal,” this one set for Tuesday morning from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. in anticipation of potential outages.

An information sign is displayed at a car wash center in Palatine, Ill., Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024 [AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh]

The Texas agency issued a statement Monday which said, “Tomorrow’s conservation appeal does not indicate ERCOT is experiencing emergency conditions at this time. ERCOT will remain vigilant and communicate further if conditions change because of continued freezing temperatures and very high demand in the morning hours.”

As of this writing, at least 15 people have died from circumstances associated with the severe winter weather:

• Wisconsin: The deaths of three homeless men in Milwaukee, Wisconsin are being investigated as cases of hypothermia. A 64-year-old man was discovered under a bridge and a 69-year-old man was found in a vehicle he had been using as a shelter. A 40-year-old man was found dead today shortly before 10 a.m. “on a heating mechanism near the railroad tracks,” according to the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office. Another Wisconsin man died on Friday while snowblowing his driveway in the Milwaukee suburb of Franklin.

• Illinois: On Friday, a man was found dead in the Chicago suburb of Schiller Park, apparently from exposure to the cold.

• Michigan: A 60-year-old homeless man was found dead in Orion Township, in the Oakland County suburbs of Detroit, on Sunday morning. He had died of exposure overnight, according to press accounts.

• Idaho: In Idaho, one man is missing and believed to be dead after being caught with two others in an avalanche near the Montana border on Thursday.

• Mississippi and Arkansas: On Saturday, two drivers were killed in separate accidents involving snowy conditions, one in Humphrey County, Mississippi, and the other in White County, Arkansas.

• Oregon: Also on Saturday, trees fell and killed two people in Portland and Lake Oswego, Oregon. The deaths of two other men were being investigated as cases of hypothermia.

• Utah: In Utah, after nearly four feet of snow fell in the mountains during a 24-hour period, a snowmobiler was struck and killed on Sunday evening by a semitruck near Salt Lake City while attempting to cross the highway.

The catastrophic levels of homelessness in the US are exposed during the winter when there is a sharp increase in hypothermia deaths. In Seattle, Washington, for example, the number of homeless deaths in 2023 set a record of 415, according to data from the King County Medical Examiner’s Office. That was an increase of 34 percent from the previous record of 309 deaths in 2022.

The US government does not maintain an official count of the number of people who die while experiencing homelessness. When a homeless person dies, their housing status is rarely recorded. It is estimated by the National Coalition for the Homeless that approximately 700 people die each year from hypothermia.

Along with the “forever COVID” policy of capitalist governments throughout the world that has permitted millions to die from an entirely preventable disease, the increasing number of deaths from extreme weather events, including the present deadly Arctic blast and winter storm, are accepted as inevitable.

Oxfam report: A devastating indictment of monopoly power and inequality

Nick Beams

As the gathering of the global elites at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland gets underway, the international aid agency Oxfam has published a devastating report on the escalation of inequality.

It shows how the enormous growth of corporate power and wealth is reshaping the world, producing social devastation for billions and the accumulation of fabulous wealth for a handful of oligarchs.

A woman holds up the Spanish sign "Our soup kitchens need food" outside the Social Development Ministry during a protest demanding more government food aid for soup kitchens in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, Dec. 22, 2023. [AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd]

The report begins by noting that since 2020 the world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes, at the rate of $14 million per hour, from $405 billion to $869 billion, while almost 5 billion people, over half the world’s population, have been made poorer.

Speaking on the report, Oxfam interim Executive Director Amitabh Behar said: “We are witnessing the beginnings of a decade of division, with billions of people shouldering the economic shockwaves of pandemic, inflation and war, while billionaires’ fortunes boom.”

“This inequality,” he continued, “is no accident; the billionaire class is ensuring corporations deliver more wealth to them at the expense of everyone else.”

Importantly, he also pointed to a trend which was emphasised in the New Year perspective statement of the World Socialist Web Site—the role of corporate power and concentration, not just the growth of individual wealth, in undermining all democratic structures and paving the way for extreme right-wing and fascist regimes.

“Runaway corporate and monopoly power,” he said, “is an inequality-generating machine: through squeezing workers, dodging tax, privatizing the state, and spurring climate breakdown, corporations are funneling endless wealth to their ultra-rich owners.

“But they’re also funneling power, undermining democracies and our rights.”

The opening chapter of the report, headlined “A new gilded age of division” highlighted the enormous growth of corporate concentration and profit in contrast to the “brutal world” for billions of people confronted with the “grinding reality” of the rising cost of food and other essentials.

It noted that 4.8 billion people are today worse off than they were in 2019, prices outpacing pay the world over, “with hundreds of millions of people seeing their wages buy less each month and their prospects for a better future disappear.”

This has meant that in the past two years some 800 million workers have lost $1.5 trillion because their wages have fallen behind inflation, equivalent to near a month (25 days) for each worker. Of the 1,600 largest corporations worldwide, only 0.4 percent of them have committed to paying workers a living wage and supporting a living wage in their value chains.

For billions of people in lower-income countries, a new era of colonialism has arrived. The exploitation of the masses, which used to be carried out by direct control, has been replaced by the seamless, and even more efficient, operations of the global financial system.

In the words of the report, as governments find it impossible to stay afloat: “Low- and lower-middle-income countries are set to pay nearly half a billion US dollars a day in interest and debt payments between now and 2029, and they are having to make severe cuts to spending to pay their creditors.”

It details the vast increase in corporate profits at the top end, finding that the world’s largest corporations had an 89 percent jump in profits for the years 2021 and 2022 compared to the period 2017-2020, as data covering the first six months of last year indicates it is “set to shatter all records as the most profitable year yet for big corporations.”

Some of the numbers are: a 278 percent increase in 2023 for the profits of 14 oil and gas companies; the profits of two luxury brands up by 120 percent from the average in 2018-21; an increase in profits of 32 percent for 22 financial companies in 2023 compared to the average for 2018-21; an increase of 32 percent in the profits of 11 pharmaceutical companies in 2022 compared to 2018-21.

But even more significant than the profit increases themselves is the concentration of corporate power to an extent never before seen in history.

The report notes that the largest 0.001 percent of firms earn roughly one-third of all corporate profits.

The chapter on monopoly power was introduced with an image of the hand of a puppet master controlling the strings to point to the effect of corporate control of governments and their legislative agenda, ranging from taxation policy to corporate concentration, social spending and climate change.

“We are living through a new area of monopoly power,” according to the report. “A small number of ever-swelling corporations wield extraordinary influence over economies and government with ... largely unbridled power to price gouge consumers; suppress wages and abuse workers; limit access to critical goods and services; thwart innovation and entrepreneurship; and privatize public services and utilities for private profit.”

In his introductory remarks on the report, Behar said the world had not forgotten “how pharma monopolies deprived millions of people of COVID vaccines, creating a racist vaccine apartheid, while minting a new club of billionaires.”

Monopoly power goes across the board. Would be reformers of the capitalist system, including Oxfam itself, often point to increased taxation on corporations and the wealthy as a means of ameliorating, at least to some effect, social inequality. But such proposals fly in the face of the historical record, as detailed in the report.

It says that since 1980, corporations have waged a “sustained and highly effective war” on taxation, with the result that the statutory rate has more than halved, falling from 48 percent to 23.1 percent. But this is only part of the picture, because major corporations with their lawyers and tax accountants can exploit the loopholes in the legislation, write-offs and the like, deliberately put in place to enable avoidance, and end up paying tax far below the statutory rate, or in some cases no tax at all.

On top of this there is the use of tax havens. It is estimated that about $1 trillion in profits, 35 percent of foreign profits, were shifted to tax havens in 2022.

Another reform proposal often advanced is the break-up of monopoly power by government regulation. But as the report itself makes clear, the historical trend is in the opposite direction and that “far from being accidental, this power has been handed to monopolies by our governments.”

The degree of concentration is captured in some significant data. Ten giant “big pharma” firms have emerged from 60 over the past two decades; two global companies control over 40 percent of the global seed market, compared to ten 25 years ago; four firms control 62 percent of the world’s pesticide markets; three quarters of global online advertising is done through Meta (the owner of Facebook) and Alphabet (the owner of Google); and four companies control 74 percent of the global accounting market.

On the vital issue of global warming, the report notes that “corporate power is driving climate breakdown, in turn causing great suffering and exacerbating inequalities.”

The report continues:

Many of the world’s billionaires own, control, shape and financially profit from processes that emit greenhouse gases, and benefit when corporations seek to block progress on a fast and just transition, deny and spin the truth about climate change, and crush those who oppose fossil fuel extraction.

As with all of Oxfam’s previous reports, the conclusions it draws from the facts and figures it lays out, as well as the pronounced trends and processes it details, going back decades, stand in stark contrast to the completely empty “solutions” it advances.

CARNEGIE AFRICAN DIASPORA FELLOWSHIP PROGRAMME (CADFP) 2024/2025

Application Deadline: 4th March 2024

Eligible Countries: African-born academics currently living in the United States and Canada and working in higher education.

To be taken at (country): Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and member institutions of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) and partner universities with the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) 

About the Award: The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Programme (CADFP) is a scholar fellowship programme for educational projects at African higher education institutions for African researchers in diaspora. Offered by IIE in partnership with the United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa), the programme is funded by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY). In the first two years of the programme, the CADFP supported 110 short-term faculty fellowships for African-born academics. The programme exemplifies CCNY’s enduring commitment to higher education in Africa. IIE manages and administers the programme, including applications, project requests and fellowships.

Eligible Project Activities: 

• curriculum co-development
• research collaboration
• graduate student mentoring and training

Type: Research, Fellowship

Eligibility: To be eligible for the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Programme , a scholar must:

1. Have been born in any African country, as evidenced by the biographical data in the scholar’s passport;
2. Live in the United States or Canada;
3. Hold a terminal degree; and
4. Be employed at an accredited college or university.

Scholars may hold any academic rank, but postdocs are not eligible.

As part of the application, scholars submit personal statements and information about their academic qualifications, disciplinary expertise and administrative experience.  A letter of recommendation from a Dean (or from an administrator of equal or higher level) from the scholar’s current institution is required.

Selection Criteria of Project: 

• Specific activities are proposed to collaborate on research, curriculum co-development and/or graduate student teaching, training and mentoring.
• Strong project concept and rationale are provided; project demonstrates innovation.
• Project Request clearly indicates what has been done by the institution on the proposed topic(s), the resources of the host institution, the problem to address, the goals of what to change or improve, the gaps and the anticipated specific role of the Diaspora Fellow in the proposed activities.
• Clear mission of what the host institution wants to accomplish through project visit is articulated, and justification is provided on reasons to partner in the effort with a Diaspora scholar.
• The proposed scholar’s discipline, subfields, areas of expertise, experience and motivation for applying are well-suited to the success and impact of the project.
• Evidence of relevant experience by the proposed scholar in each requested project activity is demonstrated.
• The proposed project must have the potential for impact
• If potential impact of longer term project will take more time to be realized or evaluated, explanation is provided on how initial impact of project visit will be measured or how it is expected to contribute to larger goals.

Value of Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Programme: For the fellowship, the African Diaspora Fellow will receive

1. a $150/day stipend
2. visa costs (if required)
3. supplemental health insurance coverage
4. round-trip international air travel and ground transportation costs to and from the scholar’s home to the North American airport
5. potential opportunities to apply for supplemental funding to cover knowledge production activities and workshop attendance.

Duration of Fellowship: Fourteen to Ninety days 

How to Apply for Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Programme: 

SUBMIT A SCHOLAR APPLICATION

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details