Scotland’s RISE electoral coalition descends into crisis

Steve James

Last year saw the launch of the self-proclaimed “Scottish Syriza,” the RISE (Respect, Independence, Socialism and Environmentalism) coalition. RISE leaders intended to emulate the “success” of their Greek role-model, which had formed a government pledged to oppose austerity.

No sooner had RISE launched, however, than its components were forced to distance themselves from their Greek role model which, just one month earlier, had betrayed a massive anti-austerity mandate and signed up to all the brutal measures demanded by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Nevertheless, RISE aspired to return eight Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) at the next Scottish general election, calculating that they would need about 16,000 votes per region, 128,000 in total. Colin Fox, co-leader of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), RISE’s main component together with the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC), said the Labour Party’s “existential crisis” meant that the task of providing effective opposition to the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) would fall to RISE.

Things turned out differently. The group did not win a single regional list seat and polled 10,911, 0.5 percent of the vote, or less than 10 percent of their target. RISE was even outpolled by former SSP leader Tommy Sheridan’s crisis-ridden Solidarity Scotland, which won 14,333 list votes across Scotland. Taken together with the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), the fragmented and feuding pseudo-left groups polled 28,864 regional and constituency votes. By contrast, in 2003, a year whose results RISE were hoping to emulate, the SSP alone polled 245,735 regional and constituency votes and elected six MSPs.

Dominant in Scotland for decades, in 2003 the Scottish Labour Party held the vast majority of Westminster seats, formed a minority government in Holyrood and dominated local government. Over the intervening 14 years, in line with the collapse of Labour in Britain and social democratic parties worldwide, Scottish Labour has suffered a rout due to its pro-business and warmongering policies. The main beneficiary has been the Scottish National Party (SNP), however. Today, Labour polls less than half the vote of the SNP and has just one Westminster seat, 24 in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, less than the Tories, and is likely to lose its remaining local authorities. Although the SNP-led “Yes” campaign decisively lost the 2014 referendum, SNP membership is now many times that of Labour.

The SNP won all but three of 59 Westminster seats and won the recent Scottish election, albeit with a reduced vote thanks to a low turnout in working class areas due to its imposition of cuts. In power since 2007, the party is forming a minority government, its third government in succession, in order to advance an anti-working class legislative program.

Commenting on RISE’s electoral humiliation in the nationalist blog Bella Caledonia, reprinted in the Pabloite International Viewpoint, RISE organiser Jonathan Shafi, of the RIC and formerly of the International Socialist Group and the Socialist Workers Party, complained, “By the time [RISE] had launched, the energy of the referendum had been incubated in the SNP.”

“[W]e convinced ourselves of their being political space for the far left in an election where the SNP, Labour and the Greens were all competing for the radical vote,” he continued. “In 1999 and 2003 when the SSP broke through, the space for the radical left was much more accessible.”

Shafi offered no explanation of the pseudo-left’s decline and the SNP’s rise. But the pseudo-left's central achievement has been precisely to ensure that the main beneficiaries from the collapse of the Labour Party in Scotland is the SNP—a tax-cutting, neo-liberal, pro-NATO, pro-European Union (EU) party. The SSP, latterly alongside the RIC and Solidarity Scotland, have worked year after year to portray Scottish nationalism as a progressive answer to pro-business, Conservative and Labour, austerity governments in Westminster, which the SNP successfully exploited by judiciously employing a little leftist rhetoric.

RISE is led by an aspiring middle class layer of academics and commentators seeking to build their careers through the creation of a new Scottish capitalist state. To this end they have offered their services as allies of the SNP in presenting its right wing nationalist project, directed towards breaking up the working class and fragmenting the social provision on which it depends, in vaguely socialist-sounding terms.

During the 2014 referendum, the SNP worked with the RIC and SSP, using them and Solidarity to mobilise for a “Yes” vote in working class areas. Solidarity now calls routinely for an SNP vote, with Sheridan hoping to secure a position for himself in the party.

All three groups hoped for a quid-pro-quo after the referendum, However, the SNP membership ballooned, expanding from less than 25,000 to over 100,000 in a matter of weeks. Presented with tens of thousands of new members, the SNP concluded it had little need of its varied suitors.

An additional consideration is the political unreliability of all three groups—in particular with regard to the SNP’s key aim of supporting EU membership in the June 23 Brexit referendum in line with its desire for EU membership for Scotland after any independence referendum. SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon proposed herself as one of the leading lights in the “Remain” camp.

RISE, however, were unable to come to a unified position, with the SSP determinedly pro-EU while others such as academic Neil Davidson and former SNP leading light Jim Sillars calling for a “Leave.” Solidarity also supports the “Leave” camp.

RISE’s central election pitch was for a second Scottish independence referendum. Entitled “Another Scotland is possible,” their manifesto called for a new independence poll “within the Lifespan of the Next Holyrood Parliament, with or without Westminster’s Permission.” This is not currently much use to the SNP either, which wants another independence vote only under more favourable economic and political conditions.

As a consequence, RISE and Solidarity Scotland were both unable to convince the SNP to encourage its supporters to give them their second preference vote.

Their disastrous performance raises the possibility of RISE breaking apart. While its founding meeting was attended by over 700 people, a conference in late May drew a mere 40. There are said to be sharp divisions within the SSP over continuing participation. In the SSP’s Scottish Socialist Voice, party leader Colin Fox complained ruefully “Our ‘2nd vote for a 2nd referendum’ message simply did not resonate with Yes voters in the way we had hoped.”

The common conclusion of the RISE leadership is that their main mistake was to be overly critical of the SNP. Writing in the National, Carolyn Leckie, formerly an SSP MSP, declared, “I voted RISE,” but warned that “it really does need to tone down some of the over-the-top rhetoric that some of its activists directed towards the SNP.”

RISE official Jamie Maxwell was happy to concur, telling Bella Caledonia, “Bluntly accusing the SNP of being rightwing wasn’t smart. The Greens struck a more constructive tone and were rewarded for it.”

For his part, Shafi called for a RISE to focus on building a new “extra-parliamentary movement” to build a “broad movement for independence again.”

Taken together, these positions amount to a call to end all but the most loyal criticism of the SNP and to work alongside it once again as nationalist apologists for austerity, dictatorship and war.

British pensioners over 75 increasingly likely to live in poverty

Trevor Johnson

A report by Independent Age, a charity for the elderly, reveals that 1.6 million older people live in poverty in the UK, with an increasing proportion of them over 75 years of age.

Around 950,000 or one fifth of pensioners over 75 live in poverty, compared to 14 percent of younger pensioners and 14 percent of working age adults. There are 11.8 million pensioners living in private households in the UK, of whom 4.8 million are aged 75 and over.

The average income of pensioners aged over 75 is £59 a week less than younger pensioners, and £112 a week less than working age adults. Just under a quarter (24 percent) of single pensioners are living in poverty.

Pensioners renting with private landlords are even more likely to be living in poverty—around a third, after housing costs are taken into account. This is the case for both younger and older pensioners.

While the amount of wealth going to pensioners has increased overall, it has primarily benefitted the wealthy, leaving large numbers of pensioners out. A disproportionate number of those left out are over 75.

A quarter of the over-75s have no savings at all. The maximum state pension is a derisory £119.30 a week, or around £6,200 a year. Those fortunate enough to have an occupational pension, invested in the stock market, have an average pension pot of around £60,000, giving an annuity worth only around £3,200.

Many over 75 (around a third) refuse to apply for means-tested benefits such as pension credit, even though they would qualify if they did. This is mainly because they see the process of means-testing as degrading.

Much has been made of the Conservative government’s “triple lock” on yearly increases in the state pension (ensuring it increases by the higher rate of inflation, average earnings or a minimum 2.5 percent). However, the lock does not apply to benefits relied on by an increasing number of pensioners: Pension Credit, Attendance Allowance or the winter fuel payment.

Almost one fifth (19 percent), or 350,000 single female older pensioners, live below the poverty threshold, and that goes up to a quarter (26 percent) before taking housing costs into account. More than one quarter (26 percent) of women over 75 receive Pension Credit and one quarter (25 percent) receive disability benefits. Among older pensioners, women tend to have lower incomes than men, and single pensioners have lower incomes than couples.

Those over 75 are most likely to have lived in poverty within the last four years, and are most likely to remain in poverty for the longest.

The report highlights the case of Jack, an 86-year old widower, who told the researchers he does not spend as much money now as he used to, nor does he buy any new clothes or go to the pub. He told them, “I know I have to [spend less] … the thought of being without a penny would be terrible. I wouldn’t ask anyone for help... I’ve got enough in the bank to bury me [and] pay for all the bills, so my daughter doesn’t have to do it”.

One in 10 pensioners is materially deprived, based on the criteria of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Despite being on a lower income on average, those aged 75 and over are no more likely to report material deprivation than younger pensioners, according to government statistics. However, this is likely to be the result of the way the questions on material deprivation are asked.

If someone reports not having access to one of the items on the deprivation checklist (for instance, having working heating, electrics and plumbing) they are asked why, with answers to be selected from a range between “cannot afford” and “do not want”. Those over 75 appear the most likely to explain their lack of basic items as the result of not wanting them, even if they have no money to pay for them.

Pensioners over 75 are more likely than younger pensioners to go without holidays. They are also less likely to go out socially once a month or more, and less likely to have access to a car or taxi when they need one.

One of the reasons that older pensioners have lower incomes is the lower levels of pension savings they were able to make during their working lives. Another factor is that incomes tend to decline as people age.

Age UK (a charity for the elderly) gives another reason why pensioners can be hit by government rules—namely, that pensions are reduced by time out of employment, caused by such issues as caring responsibilities, disability or unemployment.

The report shows up the fraud of the “generational divide”—claims that the younger generation is suffering because the older generation are getting more than their “fair share”.

This myth ignores the actual conditions facing many elderly people and the fact that wealth is as unevenly distributed among the elderly as it is among the population at large. The “generational divide” is another attempt to create divisions in the working class and distract attention from the reality of the class divide—which has become an ever-widening chasm.

The authors of the report do not intend to draw attention to class issues—the words “working class” and “inequality” are noticeable only by their absence. It makes a long list of recommendations for changes, none of which will be carried out as government policy heads in the opposite direction.

After claiming to have “ring fenced” pensions for the last few years, sections of the ruling class have recently become more vocal in calling for a direct assault on the elderly as part of their programme of imposing austerity on the working class.

The discussions around the selling of British Home Stores and Tata Steel’s UK operations—in which the rights of those who paid into occupational pensions have been used as a bargaining chip, with a fall in payments of up to 10 percent being envisaged—show that pension arrangements are slated to be ripped to shreds as the economic crisis begins to bite deeper.

US economy adds fewest jobs in five years

Evan Blake

In another indication of a deepening slump in the US economy, the Labor Department reported yesterday that the US economy added only 38,000 jobs in May, the lowest monthly job growth since September 2010.

The report was released merely two days after US President Barack Obama declared in a speech in Elkhart, Indiana that the belief, widespread in the US population, that the economy is doing poorly is a “myth.”

“By almost every economic measure, America is better off,” Obama declared.

The latest figures sharply contradict such claims. Summarizing the findings of the report, Laura Rosner, an economist at BNP Paribas, told the Associated Press, “The shockingly low payrolls gain in May provides further evidence that the economy is showing clear signs of slowing.”

In addition to the dismal rate of payrolls growth, the Labor Department said a massive 459,000 people left the workforce last month. In other words, 12 times more people gave up looking for work than got a job last month. Simultaneously, the Labor Department reported the number of people working part-time, but who would prefer to have full-time work, increased by 468,000 in May.

The labor force participation rate decreased by 0.2 percentage points, after an earlier 0.2 percent decline in April, to a nearly four-decade low of 62.6 percent.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also revised downward the figures for March and April, which overestimated job growth by a combined 59,000 jobs. Together, the number of jobs created each month between March and May was 116,000, a marked decline from last year’s monthly average of nearly 230,000.

According to the Labor Department, the construction sector lost 15,000 jobs last month, mining and logging industries lost 11,000 jobs and the manufacturing sector lost 10,000 jobs. As with previous months, the jobs added were centered in the low-wage service sector.

The past several quarters have shown slow economic growth in the US. Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of just 0.8 percent in the first quarter of 2016, down from 1.4 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.

The Institute for Supply Management also released a report Friday that rated the US non-manufacturing index as falling to 52.9 from 55.7 in April.

Many major US department store chains, including Macy’s, Kohl’s, JCPenney and Nordstrom, reported sharp declines in sales and profits during the first quarter of 2016.

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy, meets again on June 14-15. Many had anticipated that the Fed would raise the benchmark federal funds rate, but May’s unexpectedly poor jobs report makes it more likely that the Fed will hold off on raising interest rates until at least its next meeting in late July.

The employment figures were released just days before the crucial California Democratic Primary. In recent weeks, Bernie Sanders has narrowed the gap with frontrunner Hillary Clinton, trailing by only one point among eligible voters in a Thursday Los Angeles Times poll.

Throughout the primary campaign, Clinton has upheld Obama’s legacy as President and maintained that she will continue his economic policies.

Even aside from the most recent jobs report, Obama’s claim that “almost every economic measure” has improved under his administration is a patent absurdity.

In reality, the US working class has experienced an unrelenting assault on its living standards over the past eight years. The so-called economic “recovery” under Obama has entailed the creation of part-time and poverty-wage jobs, the slashing of employee benefits, and a continuation of mass unemployment.

A report published earlier this year by Princeton University and the RAND Corporation found that all job growth in the US over the last decade was accounted for by the growth of “alternative work arrangements,” or people working as independent contractors, temps, through contract agencies or on-call. Such jobs usually entail minimal job security, health benefits and vacation days.

Between 2005 and 2015, the percentage of the workforce in such contingent arrangements rose from 10.1 percent to 15.8 percent, placing nearly one in six full-time workers in a contingent status. Of these contingent workers, a staggering 32 percent are forced to hold multiple jobs to make ends meet, due to the lack of job security and benefits.

The growth of poverty-wage employment, particularly for young people, has resulted in sweeping demographic changes. A Pew report released last week found that for the first time in 130 years, Americans aged 18-24 are more likely to be living at home than with a spouse or partner.

As a result of eight years of near-zero interest rates, bank bailouts, and “quantitative easing” money printing operations, the wealth of the US financial oligarchy has soared, and social inequality has widened dramatically. Under Obama, 95 percent of all income gains have gone to the richest 1 percent of society, while median household income has declined by thousands of dollars.

In one of the starkest indications of social distress, the death rate in the US increased last year for the first time since 2005, fueled by increases in the rate of death from Alzheimer’s, heart disease, drug overdoses and suicides.

These figures make clear that, far from being a “myth,” working people have seen an enormous reversal in their living standards during the Obama presidency. For all the declarations by Obama and the Democrats that things are better than ever, the vast and pervasive economic distress felt by millions of people is fueling the growth of political opposition, expressed in the ongoing popular support for the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, who claims to be a socialist, as well as the growth of social struggles by the working class, such as last month’s strike by nearly 39,000 communication workers at Verizon.

Economic nationalism and the growing danger of war

Nick Beams

By every measure, the world economic and political situation is increasingly coming to resemble the 1930s—a decade marked by social devastation, economic conflicts and rising geo-political tensions that led to the explosion of war in 1939.

The global economy is moving further into “secular stagnation,” a term first coined in reference to the Great Depression to characterise a situation where global demand persistently falls below output, leading to glutted markets and “over production.”

Nearly eight years after the eruption of the global financial crisis, the euro zone economy remains mired in deflation and has only this year returned to the levels of output reached in 2007. The US has experienced the slowest “recovery” in the post-war period, while productivity is set to fall for the first time in more than three decades.

Japan, the world’s third largest economy, remains mired in low growth and deflation, while China, the second largest, is experiencing a marked slowdown, together with vast job losses and mounting concerns over its level of debt accumulation.

One of the most striking parallels with the conditions of the 1930s is the growth of economic nationalism and the rising trade war tensions as each of the major powers seeks to shove the effects of the global stagnation onto its rivals. The beggar-thy-neighbour policies of that earlier period produced devastating consequences as international trade contracted by more than 50 percent between 1929 and 1932, after which the world divided into currency and trade blocs leading up to World War II.

The intensifying struggle for markets is bringing the return of the kinds of measures that characterised the Great Depression, as seen in the decision by the US International Trade Commission (ITC), acting at the behest of US Steel, to launch an investigation into 40 Chinese companies, with a view to imposing increased tariffs.

As Professor Simon Evenett, the head of Global Trade Alert, an organisation that monitors protectionist measures, has warned, the ITC case should set off “alarm bells” and is a move towards a “nuclear option.” His words have more than a metaphorical or rhetorical significance: rather, they point to the inseparable connection between economic nationalism and outright military conflict.

Not only are old forms of protectionism being revived, new ones are being developed. Having virtually scuttled the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks under the World Trade Organisation last year, the US is pursuing its own nationalist agenda through the formation of exclusivist trade blocs under the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIV).

The TPP, which despite its name, excludes China, the world’s second largest economy. Washington’s objectives have been spelled out by President Barack Obama who declared it is aimed at ensuring that America, not China, writes the global rules of trade for the twenty-first century.

Beyond the present administration, the rising tide of US economic nationalism is expressed in the strident “America first” campaign of the presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump and his pledge to “make America great again.”

Trump’s campaign, however, is only a particularly violent and crude manifestation of deep-rooted tendencies within the entire political establishment, including the trade union bureaucracy. Notably, the statement issued by US Steel welcoming the ITC decision to investigate Chinese companies, pointed to the support for its case from “our union brothers and sisters.”

It would be a great mistake to think that these tendencies are confined to the United States. The turn to economic nationalism is ever-more visible in the political establishment of every major capitalist power.

In Britain, both sides of the official campaign over Brexit—the referendum of June 23 which is to decide whether the UK leaves or remains in the European Union—are advancing their positions on the basis of what is best for the country’s national interests.

On the European continent, the German political establishment demands the imposition of ever-increasing austerity measures over the whole of Europe, and vehemently opposes any stimulus measures. It fears that such actions would weaken the position of German banks and financial interests in the face of increasing competition from their international rivals, particularly the US finance houses. At the same time it insists Germany cannot confine itself to Europe, but must play an increasing role on the global arena, not least by military means.

Likewise, the Japanese government of Shinzo Abe is seeking to push down the value of the yen in order to boost its exports in a contracting world market. At the same time it has all but scrapped the so-called pacifist post-war constitution as Japan seeks to play an increased military role in world affairs.

The inseparable connection between the rise of economic nationalism and military conflict was the subject of far-reaching analysis by the revolutionary and Marxist theorist Leon Trotsky of the objective conflicts, rooted in the very structure of the capitalist mode of production, that led to the outbreak of World War I.

Pointing to the downturn in the European economy in 1913, he noted that the productive forces had run up against the limits fixed for them by capitalist property and capitalist forms of appropriation.

“The market was split up, competition was brought to its intensest pitch, and henceforward capitalist countries could seek to eliminate one another from the market only by mechanical means,” Trotsky wrote. “It was not the war that put a stop to the development of productive forces in Europe, but rather the war itself arose from the impossibility of the productive forces to develop further in Europe under conditions of capitalist management.”

Today it is not only a question of the inability of the productive forces to further develop in Europe, but globally under the regime of private ownership and private profit in the framework of the world economy riven by national-state and great power divisions.

The very phenomenon of “overproduction” is the expression of these contradictions. There is not overproduction of steel, industrial and agricultural products—all of which confront glutted markets—in relation to human need. All that can be produced by the world’s working class, whether in China, Japan, the US, Europe and elsewhere, could be more than productively employed in a rationally-planned socialist global economy.

Such an economy, however, can only be realised through the overthrow of the capitalist profit and nation-state system, by means of the seizure of power by the working class. This is the foundation of the program of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

This strategy is, of course, dismissed by all the pseudo-lefts and short-sighted opportunists as “not practical,” “unrealisable” and so on. But what alternative do they have to offer? Nothing but the descent into war, with potential nuclear consequences, threatening the very future of civilisation itself.

The material force for the realisation of world socialism is emerging with the rising tide of the struggles of the international working class. The crucial task is the building of the world party of socialist revolution, the International Committee of the Fourth International, to provide the necessary guidance in these struggles by imbuing the working class with the conscious understanding of the great historical task it has before it.

Economic conflicts threaten global trade war

Nick Beams

The ongoing stagnation in the global economy, marked by falling investment and the emergence of overproduction in key basic industries, is fuelling the rise of trade war protectionist measures by the major powers, above all the United States.

Last week, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) launched an investigation into Chinese steel mills which have been accused by the United States Steel Corp of stealing secrets and conspiring to fix prices.

Chinese industrial overcapacity, especially in steel, will be on the agenda of the “strategic and economic” dialogue to be held between the US and China in Beijing next week. The US treasury undersecretary for international affairs, Nathan Sheets, recently called for China to allow its industries to “better reflect capacity and global demand conditions.” In other words, China should cut back production.

Overproduction in the Chinese steel industry has been blamed for an increase in cheap exports and the loss of jobs and plant closures in both Europe and the US.

Recent tariffs on imports of steel have boosted American prices, but authorities are looking for further measures. Industrial overcapacity was important “for the global economy and we hope to make some progress on it” in Beijing, Sheets told a meeting at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The issue is fraught, however, with contradictions because many industrial companies in the US are dependent on cheap steel imports for their business models. Stuart Barnett, the head of the Chicago-based Barsteel Corp which supplies a range of manufacturers said the government had done a “pretty good job” of keeping out the cheapest steel imports. “But now the greatest fear we have is that China keeps cheap steel for itself and makes products that undercut other industries,” he said.

In other words, suppression of the increasingly ferocious struggle for markets and profits in one area of the industrial economy will see it resurface in another.

Pressure from the US for China to cut back production and exports were met with a sharp response from the Chinese government.

Speaking at a briefing in Beijing on Thursday, Zhu Guangyao, China’s vice-finance minister, said: “Trade disputes between China and the US should be addressed in accordance with World Trade Organisation (WTO) principles. We are opposed to abusive trade remedy measures.”

There was an even stronger reaction from China’s Hebei Iron and Steel Group, the country’s largest steel producer. In a statement posted on its website on Thursday, it denounced the investigation by the US ITC.

“The protectionist behaviour taken by the US on purely groundless accusations by US Steel has seriously broken WTO rules, distorted the normal world steel trade and damaged the essential interests of Chinese steel mills and US steel users,” it said.

US Steel filed the complaint a month ago, claiming it was the victim of a Chinese computer hacking incident in 2011. The ITC has now taken up the case, identifying 40 Chinese steelmakers and distributors as being the subject of investigation.

Baosteel, China’s second-largest steelmaker, the world’s fourth-largest and a target for the ITC probe, said the US was in breach of WTO rules and urged the Chinese government to take all necessary measures to ensure the country’s steel industry received fair treatment.

The ITC case has raised concerns it could be the start of far broader measures, possibly including a wholesale ban on Chinese steel imports, according to Simon Evenett, a professor of international trade at University of St Gallen in Switzerland, who is engaged in monitoring protectionist measures.

“The big thing is really the potential scale of this case versus the pinpricks that we have seen unleashed over the past nine months,” he told the Financial Times. “This should be setting off alarms bells. It is really a nuclear option.”

The conflicts go beyond steel and extend to the entire functioning of the WTO, the international body in charge of regulating the global trading system. They are being fuelled by an aggressive push by the United States on two fronts.

Last week, the US told other WTO members it was vetoing the reappointment of Seung Wha Chang, a respected South Korean expert on international trade law, to a second term on the organisation’s appellate body which adjudicates on international trade disputes. Reappointment for a second term has been standard procedure in the past.

Washington cited several decisions that have gone against the US as a pattern of what it called “overreaching” and arriving at “abstract” decisions.

“The appellate body is not an academic body that may pursue issue simply because they are of interest to them or may be to certain members in the abstract,” the US declared. “It is not the role of the appellate body to engage in abstract discussions.”

Other members of the WTO, including Brazil, Japan and the EU say the US veto risks undermining the independence of the appellate body and the entire system. The EU said the US actions are unprecedented and pose “a very serious risk to the independence and impartiality of current and future appellate body members.”

The US move prompted a highly critical editorial in Wednesday’s edition of the Financial Times. The newspaper noted that in the wake of the collapse of the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations last year—largely as a result of the US decision to walk away from further discussions—the last thing the WTO needed was another blow to its authority. With the end of the WTO’s role in negotiating global trade deals, its only real remaining function was to adjudicate between governments over existing trade rules and order “miscreants to bring policies into compliance.”

“The fact that the US is now trying to subvert it by removing a judge who happens to disagree with the American viewpoint is seriously disturbing,” it said.

The episode, it continued, also vindicated, at least in this instance, “those critics of the US who say Washington favours global cooperation only insofar as it controls the international institutions that run it. This is a serious charge to which the US remains exposed.”

The issue of the appellate body is linked to another brewing conflict within the WTO. Following its ascension to WTO membership in 2001, China is this year seeking to be accorded “market economy status,” which would make it more difficult to prosecute Chinese companies for alleged dumping, i.e. selling goods at artificially low prices.

The US is reported to have been lobbying hard for the upgraded status not to be granted, against opposition from at least some European powers, as well as Britain. The British government has portrayed itself as China’s “best friend” in the West, as financial interests in the City of London seek to profit from expanded Chinese investment and financial activity. Britain has said that if China is accorded full market status, dumping charges could still be dealt with under WTO rules. But this does not appear to have had any impact on the push by the US to prevent its status being raised.

Under conditions of global overcapacity, persistently suppressed demand, and warnings of a productivity slowdown in major developed economies, global conflicts over trade are deepening, and, together with the endless promotion of economic nationalism, threaten a global trade war similar to that which emerged in the 1930s. In that period, the growth of protectionism served as the antechamber to world war.

Today, the growth of economic nationalism under conditions of another persistent world slump is likewise fuelling conflicts that threaten to erupt into another global conflagration.

The US elections and the criminalization of American politics

Patrick Martin

With the US primary campaigns drawing to a close, the two parties of the US ruling elite, Democrats and Republicans, are preparing to nominate candidates who may be subject to criminal indictment between now and the general election.

The Republicans have as their presumptive nominee Donald Trump, a man who made his billions through various scams and insider dealings. US newspapers have been filled this week with details of the fraudulent methods he employed to enhance his fortune. Court documents in the lawsuit joined by numerous former students at Trump University allege that the supposed training in real estate provided by the school was a fiction.

It was a fraud on two levels. At an enormous price, up to $35,000 for the “Gold Elite” program, students were told little more than “buy low” and “sell high.” As many as 5,000 students paid a total of $40 million for the worthless instructions, most of which could be obtained, according to press accounts, through a simple Internet search.

As for the claim that Trump would be personally involved in sharing his supposed real estate expertise, with instructors who “are handpicked by me,” the documents show that Trump played no role in the “education” program except allowing his name and face to be used to promote the venture, and then cashing the checks—his cut of loot was at least $5 million.

New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman, appearing on two television interview programs Thursday morning, said, “We have laws against running an illegal, unlicensed university. This never was a university. The fraud started with the name of the organization.” He added, “It was really a fraud from beginning to end.”

While Trump U. accounts for only a small fraction of the real estate mogul’s personal wealth, the methods used were representative of his “business model” as a whole, and for that matter, of his presidential campaign, which has been focused largely on appealing to increasingly desperate sections of workers and the lower middle class, offering Trump’s billionaire persona as the solution to deepening economic afflictions.

There is something extraordinary in the fact that one of the principal parties of the ruling class is preparing to choose an individual like Trump as its presidential candidate. Despite the initial hypocritical criticisms of his vulgar and racist pronouncements, nearly all Republican Party leaders have now reconciled themselves with Trump, culminating in Thursday’s statement by House Speaker Paul Ryan that he will support his candidacy.

This can only explained in relation to broader social tendencies that have produced an immense degradation of American politics. Trump personifies the descent of corporate America into every more brazen methods of speculation, swindling and outright theft, which culminated in the economic crash of 2008. Over the past 40 years, the operations of the American ruling class have taken on an ever more parasitic character, with a mass of financial operations covering over a long-term industrial decline.

On the Democratic Party side, Hillary Clinton is currently under investigation for conducting all her government communications while Secretary of State on a private email server, an arrangement clearly intended to keep her correspondence under her control, regardless of the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Later this summer she is expected to be interviewed by the FBI, which could lead to criminal charges over the mishandling of classified materials or perjury.

Clinton represents a more polished version of the same social processes that have created Trump. Bill and Hillary Clinton have accumulated a personal fortune topping $150 million by serving as speechmakers to corporate audiences, backed by their “fundraising” work at the Clinton Foundation, which connects corporate donors and charitable organizations in return for lucrative fees.

The foundation has become the center of a web of international influence-peddling that keeps the Clintons in front of their real constituency, the world’s billionaires, making them fabulously wealthy in the process.

Clinton is also more directly associated with the crimes of the state and the military-intelligence apparatus. The criminalization of the American financial aristocracy has found its reflection in foreign policy—in the casting aside of all legality and the adoption of torture, assassination and “preemptive war” as principal means for asserting the interests of the ruling class abroad.

It is significant that as the viability of her candidacy is being called into question as a result of the continued successes of her rival, Bernie Sanders, Clinton decided to focus a major speech in San Diego California on a critique of Trump’s foreign policy views. Clinton made her pitch to the military, based on the argument that she, and not Trump (or Sanders, or some other candidate) would be the most effective “commander-in-chief” of US imperialism.

Clinton focused her speech on the decision by President Obama and his top military and foreign policy advisers, including Clinton herself, to authorize the Navy Seal Team 6 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. She made no reference to the foreign policy debacle with which she is most closely identified, the US-NATO bombing of Libya, although it “accomplished” the same end. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was murdered in his home town of Sirte by US-backed rebels, an event that Clinton celebrated at the time with the infamous wisecrack, “We came, we saw, he died,” touching off gales of laughter among her claque of traveling aides.

Trump and Clinton are both products of the same process: the criminalization of the American ruling elite, as the methods of the mafia have come to predominate in both the operations of Wall Street and the practice of imperialist “statecraft.”

DAAD Masters Scholarships for Public Policy and Good Governance

DAADMasters Degree

Deadline: 31 July 2016 (annual)
Study in:  Germany
Next course starts Sept/Oct 2017

Brief description:

The DAAD Masters Scholarships for Public Policy and Good Governance Programme offers very good graduates from developing countries the chance to obtain a Master’s degree in disciplines that are of special relevance for the social, political and economic development of their home country at German institutions of higher education.

Participating Programmes in Host Institutions:

The scholarships are awarded for selected Master courses at German institutions of higher education listed below:

•  Hertie School of Governance, Berlin: Master of Public Policy (MPP)
•  University of Duisburg-Essen: MA Development and Governance
•  Willy Brandt School of Public Policy at the University of Erfurt: Master of Public Policy (MPP)
•  Leuphana University of Lüneburg: Public Economics, Law and Politics (PELP)
•  Hochschule Osnabrück: Management in Non-Profit Organisations
•  University of Osnabrück: Master of  Democratic Governance and Civil Society
•  University of Passau: Master of Governance and Public Policy
•  University of Potsdam: Master of Public Management (MPM)

The courses have an international orientation and are taught in German and/or English.

Number of Scholarships:

Not specified

Target group:

The scholarship scheme is open to candidates from Africa, Latin America, North/Central America, South Asia, Southeast Asia as well as from countries in the Middle East. See list of eligible countries.

Scholarship value/inclusions:

DAAD scholarship holders are exempt from tuition fees. DAAD pays a monthly scholarship rate of currently €750. The scholarship also includes contributions to health insurance in Germany.

In addition, DAAD grants an appropriate travel allowance and a study and research subsidy as well as rent subsidies and/or allowances for spouses and/or children where applicable.

Eligibility:

The scholarship targets very well qualified graduates with a first university degree (Bachelor or equivalent) who in the future want to actively contribute to the social and economic development of their home countries. The scholarships are offered both for young graduates without professional experience and for mid-career professionals.

The main DAAD criteria for selection are: the study results, knowledge of English (and German), political and social engagement, a convincing description of the subject-related and personal motivation for the study project in Germany and the expected benefit after the return to the home country.

The university degree should have been obtained during the six years before the application for the scholarship. Applicants cannot be considered if they have been in Germany for more than 15 months at the time of application.

All Master courses have further additional requirements that must be fulfilled by the applicants at any case.

Application instructions:

Please submit your applications for the selected Master courses and for the DAAD scholarship to the respective universities only (not to DAAD). Please fill in the DAAD application form by indicating your desired priority of study courses. The application period at all 8 universities is from 1 June – 31 July 2016.

It is important to read the 2017 Announcement and visit the official website (found below) to access the application form and for detailed information on how to apply for this scholarship.

Website:

Official Scholarship Website: https://www.daad.de/deutschland/stipendium/datenbank/en/21148-scholarship-database/?status=&origin=&subjectGrps=&daad=&q=public%20policy&page=1&detail=10000039

Related Scholarships: List of Germany Scholarships

2016 HEC Paris-Forté Foundation for International Women Scholars

Application Deadline: Rolling. September 2016 Full-time intake: 18th August 2016

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): France

Brief description: HEC and Forté Foundation are offering scholarship opportunities to exceptional women candidates who understand the added value of an MBA from the University.

Eligible Field of Study: Courses offered for  MBA

About the Award: As part of the school’s partnership with the Forté Foundation, the HEC Paris MBA Program will offer exceptional women significant scholarships per graduating class. By opening educational pathways, the HEC Forté scholarships will help improve leadership opportunities for women in business.

Recipients of the Forté Scholarship are high-quality candidates who meet the school’s standard selection criteria and have demonstrated exemplary leadership skills in:

• Academics
• Team building
• Community work
• Creative activity

Offered Since: Not stated

Type: MBA

Eligibility: Only admitted candidates can apply for this scholarship. Candidates should have demonstrated a commitment to women via personal mentorship or community involvement. Candidates should please note that unfortunately, they cannot apply for this scholarship if admitted after June 15th for the September intake, and after November 26th for the January intake.

Selection Criteria: Essay – “Please explain in 1,500 words why you should be the Forté Scholar at the HEC MBA Program”.

Amount of Award: Variable, up to €15,000

Number of Awardees: A minimum of 3 scholarships for the September intake, a minimum of 1 for the January intake

Duration of Scholarship: Duration of programme

How to Apply: Once admitted into the HEC Paris MBA Program, candidates will have the opportunity to apply for HEC MBA Scholarships. Candidates will receive guidance in applying for a scholarship from the Admissions Officer

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: HEC MBA School

Register for the 2018 Football World Cup Volunteer Programme

Programme Dates: Registration starts June 2016. Selection starts Third (3rd) quarter of 2016. Training starts first(1st) quarter of 2017. Those who will volunteer at the 2018 FIFA World Cup™ will begin 10th of May 2018.

Eligible Countries: Global

To be taken at (country): Online

Brief description: The call is on for eligible youths to join the 2018 World Cup Volunteer Programme taking place in Russia! Dedicated volunteer centres will be responsible for recruiting and selecting applicants living in Russia. International candidates will apply and go through the selection process from their respective home countries with online support.

Minimum Required Experience: Zero (0) year(s)

Minimum Qualifications: High School

Eligible Field of Study: Not Specified

About the Award: Russia is now gearing up to host its first-ever football World Cup, which is impossible to organize without the help of volunteers. To take part in the World Cup as a volunteer means to be part of a global highlight, to get a chance to represent Russia and tell the world about it. Whether our World Cup is a success, to a great extent, depends on the volunteers.

What kind of person should be a World Cup 2018 volunteer? He or she is a cheerful, dynamic person, living a healthy lifestyle, proficient in foreign languages, and with a wide range of professional skills. He or she is a person who is willing to work hard and communicate with others. Not so long ago the volunteer culture was not developed in Russia. But in the past few years, thanks to a series of major international events, Russia has grown aware of what volunteers do and why their work is important.

Type: World Cup Volunteer Programme

Eligibility: Registration will be open to everyone, regardless of the gender, ethnic background and physical ability. There is only one requirement: volunteers wishing to volunteer at the 2018 FIFA World Cup™ must be at least 18 years old by the 10th of May 2018. Volunteers should also:

• Agree to the terms and conditions of participation;
• Undertake and successfully complete a security check;
• Be available to work up to eight hours each day

Selection Process: Volunteer candidates go through a three steps selection process: testing to determine analytical skills and personal traits; English test; interview. Those who successfully pass will be enrolled in the training programme.

Number of Awardees: Fifteen thousand (15 000) 2018 World Cup volunteers

Value of Programme: 

• Unique Volunteer Uniform
• Free Meals during Shifts
• Souvenirs
• Free Use of Public Transport
• Priceless Experience
• New Friends
• A chance to take Special Training
• Participant Certificate

Key Functional Areas: There will be twenty (20) key  functional areas. Volunteers will be required to specify their preference in the application form. However, don’t worry if you cannot make a choice at this time, preference can be made during selection process:

• Spectator Services
• Marketing
• Catering
• Arrivals and Departures
• Protocol
• Transport
• Sustainability
• Ceremonies
• Media Operations
• Venue Management
• Language Services
• Hospitality
• Team Services
• Broadcasting Operations
• Volunteer Management
• Accommodation
• Ticketing
• Medical Services and Doping Control
• Information Technologies
• Accreditation

Duration of Programme: June 14-July 15 2018. The 2018 World Cup will take place at 12 stadiums in 11 Russian cities: Moscow, St Petersburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Saransk, Sochi, Kaliningrad, Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don, Volgograd, and Samara.

How to Apply: Interested participants should:

• Fill out the form at fifa.com. To do that, participants need
  • Internet access
  • Passport
  • Digital Photo
• Go for an online testing and interview
• Find out if they have been picked
• Participate in the training
• Receive their accreditation and volunteer uniforms
• Become part of the Football Highlight of 2018!

Visit Programme Webpage for details

Programme Coodinator: FIFA

Fossil Fuel Energy Gave Us Power And The Illusion Of Security, So Far

Lionel Anet

The reason wealth gives the wealthy so many things is, that our planet and its ecosystems still have much to yield, but only by jeopardizing itself. What scientists have shown is only from their individual narrow specialised field with little or no holistic assessment, so the future appears manageable with only fine-tuning of the existing system. On the other hand, a holistically based assessment would show it’s impossible to deal with that multitude of threats, which’s combined in capitalism. Here are some of the obvious ones. Over-population, depleting sea food resources, acidification of oceans, warming of Siberian seas releasing methane hydrates, the loss of sea ice in the artic that reflects of sunlight to absorbing it as heat, rising sea levels of metres. Furthermore, on land there’s falling levels of ground water, desertification of farm land, a depleting soil due to synthetic fertilisers, the unprecedented speed in the heating of biosphere of the atmosphere, which’s creating a multitude of difficult leading to impossible condition for life, like severe storms and flooding, extended droughts. We are trying to deal with those threats in a piece meal fashion with the system that’s proliferating and reproducing those menaces. The structure and the way civilised systems must or are likely to functions will negate attempts to remove those threats to a continuing life. Furthermore, the effect those difficulties, will produce condition of chaos, civil and national wars, creating unimaginable numbers of refugees looking for sustenance and safety.

Civilisation was founded by warriors and maintained by the masses for the few dominant people to maximise their wealth and increase our oppressors’ domain and power over people and their land. This is civilisation and with the use of fossil fuels and fiat money the masses only see the power that money gives, so today, it’s a struggle for money, not for fairness. Although financial institution rules the planet’s people with money through the market, but it’s largely uncoordinated, unplanned, yielding unexpected outcomes, but worst still, it’s assessed inwardly on its ideological supreme premise thereby, they the financial market, are able to ignore scientifically evaluated needs and dangers to our wellbeing and survival.

Oil has soar civilisation to an incredible wealthy state and managed to feed the ever increasing population to a standard for many of the world people that would be unimaginable a century ago. Yet it’s hardly acknowledged the role oil plays in bolstering our lifestyle. The impossible has become the norm for road transport, shipping, air transport, agriculture, mining including coal, and most important for capitalism, all aspect of warfare. Without oil, capitalism is kaput, but with it people are finished. Our ultimate choice is to abandon both, although late, if we had used our foresight we would have phased out oil and capitalism by the end of last century and be living simple worthwhile life.

Oil has produced so much wealth, which has blinded our ability to foresee the effect of using so much of it. Without oil we would use picks and shovels to get that tiny bit of coal, and haul it with pit ponies to be taken by coal burning steam trains and ships, which was the world of my youth. But the second half of last century was the age of oil, it gave us the power to do real harm to the planet and we did, to the extent it’s jeopardizing our lives and will end it for today’s children unless we come to our senses. The cost of oil is vital, it was too high for the economy at $140 a barrel in 2014 and now it’s too low at $50 dollars a barrel for the oil industry, as it now requires over $140 a barrel to be viable.

So the first question I ask myself is why do we need so much energy and stuff, what do we do with it all? Well, the build-up of military hardware and its use is substantial, it kills, maim physically and emotionally directly and indirectly untold numbers of people. The advertising medium enticing us to buy more to feel good so as to buy more, the neocons eternal growth dependency, and civilisation ideology of living for a belief, or things. We even have children to bolster the economy to produce more stuff. Nurturing, particularly public education is centred on fulfilling the needs of the economy, what will benefit the economy will determent the education given. That’s capitalism and is our life now; it’s living for an economy. Pre-capitalism it was God King and country, which was the reason to live and die today it’s for the dollar.

All living things have an economic system that’s successful otherwise they die as individuals and as circumstances changes species adapt or die out. We are nature’s most social creature, because we have the body structure, the compulsive need of others, and the mental ability to be supremely social. Therefore, our nature must be compassionate, cooperative, and an affinity for one another, furthermore because our body and brain is so adaptable and able we have been able to withstand all the harrowing conflicts that tented to explode into violence time after time.