2016 Bayer Foundation Talents for Africa Scholarship Programme – Germany

Application Deadline: Applications must be submitted between June 3 and July 18, 2016.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Egypt, South Africa and Kenya

To be taken at (country): Germany

Brief description: The Bayer Fellowship Program targets students and apprentices in scientific and medical disciplines to support the next generation of researchers and teachers from Africa as they engage in “Science for a Better Life”.

Eligible Fields of Studies: 

• Careers in healthcare
• Technical or scientific occupations
• Business administration

About the Award: The program “Talents for Africa” is aimed at German students and young professionals with up to two years of work experience who would like to do a study project or gain practical work experience in Africa. It is also open to students in Africa who would like to study, research or complete an internship in Germany. Students and young professionals with credentials in the subjects listed above can apply.

Offered Since: Not known

Type: Postgraduate Degree

Eligibility: 

• All applicants should have a high level of commitment, dedication and an innovative project plan.
• Applications are invited from
  • students and young professionals from Germany who wish to pursue a project abroad or
  • students and young professionals from abroad who wish to pursue a project in Germany.

Number of Awardees: Not stated

Value of Scholarship: The financing generally covers the cost of living, travel expenses and project costs. Each applicant is asked to set up an individual cost schedule to be approved by the Foundation Council.

Duration of Scholarship: Duration of course

How to Apply: The following application documents are required for the Talents for Africa scholarship:

• Confirmation letter from host institute/university
• A description of the project (duration of 2-12 months) with financial plan within the timeline of September 2016 to August 2017. The project can consist of
  special study courses, laboratory assignments, research projects, summer classes, internships, Master’s or PhD programs.
• Most recent transcripts
• Any additional documents that would enhance the application
• Photo (passport or job application photo)

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: The Bayer Fellowship Program

The Wages of Neoliberalism: Poverty, Exile and Early Death

Michael Hudson & Sharmini Peries

Economist Michael Hudson says neoliberal policy will pressure U.S. citizens to emigrate, just as it caused millions to leave Russia, the Baltic States, and now Greece in search of a better life.

A research team from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York estimates 875,000 deaths in the United States in year 2000 could be attributed to social factors related to poverty and income inequality.

According to U.S. government statistics, 2.45 million Americans died in the same year. When compared to the Columbia research team’s finding, social deprivation could account for some 36% of the total deaths in 2000.

“Almost all of the British economists of the late 18th century said when you have poverty, when you have a transfer of wealth to the rich, you’re going to have shorter lifespans, and you’re also going to have emigration,” says Michael Hudson, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Many countries, such as Russia, the Baltic States, and now Greece, have seen a massive outflow of their populations due to worsening social conditions after the implementation of neoliberal policy.

Hudson predicts that the United States will undergo the same trend, as greater hardship results from the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, changes to social security, and broader policy shifts due to prospective appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court and the next presidential cabinet.

“Now, the question is, in America, now that you’re having as a result of this polarization shorter lifespans, worse health, worse diets, where are the Americans going to emigrate? Nobody can figure that one out yet,” says Hudson.

SHARMINI PERIES, TRNN: After decades of sustained attacks on social programs and consistently high unemployment rates, it is no surprise that mortality rates in the country have increased. A research team from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York has estimated that 875,000 deaths in the United States in the year 2000 could be attributed to clusters of social factors bound up with poverty and income inequality. According to U.S. government statistics, some 2.45 million Americans died in the year 2000, thus the researchers estimate means that social deprivation was responsible for some 36 percent of the total deaths that year. A staggering total.

Joining us to discuss all of this from New York City is Michael Hudson. Michael is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City. His latest book is Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy. 

So, Michael, what do you make of this recent research and what it’’s telling us about the death total in this country?

HUDSON: What it tells is almost identical to what has already been narrated for Russia and Greece. And what is responsible for the increasing death rates is neoliberal economicpolicy, neoliberal trade policy, and the polarization and impoverishment of a large part of society. After the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, death rates soared, lifespans shortened, health standards decreased all throughout the Yeltsin administration, until finally President Putin came in and stabilized matters. Putin said that the destruction caused by neoliberal economic policies had killed more Russians than all of whom died in World War II, the 22 million people. That’s the devastation that polarization caused there.

Same thing in Greece. In the last five years, Greek lifespans have shortened. They’re getting sicker, they are dying faster, they’re not healthy. Almost all of the British economists of the late 18th century said when you have poverty, when you have a transfer of wealth to the rich, you’re going to have shorter lifespans, and you’re also going to have immigration. The countries that have a hard money policy, a creditor policy, people are going to emigrate. Now, at that time that was why England was gaining immigrants. It was gaining skilled labor. It was gaining people to work in its industry because other countries were still in the post-feudal system and were driving them out. Russia had a huge emigration of skilled labor, largely to Germany and to the United States, especially in information technology. Greece has a heavy outflow of labor. The Baltic States have had almost a 10 percent decline in their population in the last decade as a result of their neoliberal policies. Also, health problems are rising.

Now, the question is, in America, now that you’re having as a result of this polarization shorter lifespans, worse health, worse diets, where are the Americans going to emigrate? Nobody can figure that one out yet. There’s nowhere for them to go, because they don’t speak a foreign language. The Russians, the Greeks, most Europeans all somehow have to learn English in school. They’re able to get by in other countries. They’re not sure where on earth the Americans will go. Nobody can really figure this out.

And the amazing thing, what’s going to make this worse, is the the Trans-Pacific trade agreement, and the counterpart with the Atlantic states. There’s news that President Obama plans to make a big push for the Trans-Pacific trade agreement, essentially the giveaway to corporations preventing governments from enacting environmental protections, preventing them from imposing health standards, preventing them from having cigarette warnings or warnings about bad food. Obama says he wants to push this through after the election. And the plan is that the Republicans also are sort of working with him and saying okay, we’re going to wait and see. Maybe Donald Trump will come in and he’ll really do things. Or maybe we can get Hillary, who will move way further to the right than any Republican could, and bring along the Congress.

But let’s say that we don’t know what’s happening after the elections, and the Republicans don’t want a risk. They’re going to do a number of things. They’re going to approve Obama’s Republican nominee to the Supreme Court figuring, well, maybe Hillary will put in someone worse, or even Trump may put in someone worse. They may go along, at this point, with ratifying a trade agreement that’s going to vastly increase unemployment here, especially in industrial labor, turning much of the American industrial urban complex into a rust belt. And they’re also talking about an October surprise or an early November surprise. It’s the last chance that Obama has, really, to start a war with Russia.

Russia policy expert Stephen Cohen, and a number of other site,s have warned that there’s going to be a danger when they put in the atomic weapons in Romania. President Putin has said this is a red line. We’re not going to warn. We don’t have an army. We can only use atomic weapons. So you have danger coming not only from a domestic decline in population, you have a real chance of war. And Obama has stepped things up. Hillary has, I think, almost announced that she is going to appoint Victoria Nuland as secretary of state, and Nuland is the person who was pushing the Ukrainian fascists in the direction of assassinations and shootouts.

This trend looks very bad. If you want to see where America is going demographically, best to look at Greece, Latvia, Russia, and also in England. A Dr. Miller has done studies of health and longevity, and he’s found that the lower the income status of any group in England, the shorter the lifespan. Now, this is very important for the current debate about Social Security. You’re having people talk about extending the Social Security age because people are living longer. Who’s living longer in America? The rich are living longer. The wealthy are living longer. But if you make under $30,000 a year, or even under $50,000 a year, you’re not living longer.

So the idea is how to avoid having to pay Social Security for the lower-income people — the middle class and the working class that die quicker, and only pay social security for the wealthier classes that live longer? Nobody has plugged this discussion of lifespans and longevity into the Social Security debate that Obama and Hillary are trying to raise the retirement age, to ostensibly save Social Security. By saving Social Security she means to avoid taxing the higher brackets and paying for Social Security out of the general budget, which of course would entail taxing the higher-income people as well as the lower-income people.

Why Shorter Workweeks Will Defeat the Robots

Dean Baker

More than eight years after the start of the Great Recession, our labor market is far from recovering by most measures. At 5 percent, the current unemployment rate is not very different from its pre-recession level, but the main reason it is so low is that millions of people have given up looking for work and dropped out of the labor force. These people are no longer counted as being unemployed.

And contrary to what is often claimed, this is not a story of retiring baby boomers. The percentage of the prime age population (people between the ages of 25-54) that is working is down by 2 full percentage points from its pre-recession level. This translates into 2.5 million people who have given up looking for work at an age where they should be at the peak of their working career. That looks like pretty solid evidence of a weak labor market.

There are two ways to deal with a situation in which the number of people who want to work exceeds the number of jobs. The first is to increase demand in the economy, thereby increasing the demand for workers. We could in principle do this with increased government spending, but people don’t like budget deficits.

Reducing the size of the trade deficit would also increase demand, but this requires that our politicians make trade deficits a priority, which is not likely.

Some politicians claim that they have a magic formula that will cause companies to go on an investment spree. Unfortunately, the magic seems to work only in the elections, never once they are in office.

If we can’t increase the demand for labor, we could go the other route and share the amount of work available more evenly. This can be done through a variety of mechanisms, such as shorter workweeks, mandated vacations, paid sick days, and paid family leave. The idea is that we would get most workers to put in less time on the job, thereby creating demand for more workers.

That shouldn’t sound like a strange concept. It was exactly this sort of thinking that got us the 40-hour workweek back in 1938. Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which required employers to pay time and half if they required workers to put in more than a 40-hour week.

There were people at the time who pronounced the law a disaster and job killer, but the facts disagreed. The economy was lifted out of the Great Depression by the spending associated with World War II. We then had the three most prosperous decades in the country’s history as we saw strong wage and productivity growth accompanied by low unemployment.

The Fair Labor Standards Act was part of a steady progression toward shortening work time as the country got wealthier. Unfortunately, it was also pretty much the end of this progression. Since expensive nonwage benefits like health care insurance and pensions were largely provided as fixed cost per worker, employers decided they would rather require more hours per worker than hire more workers. As a result, the 40-hour workweek was largely frozen in place.

This makes the United States an outlier internationally. Workers in other wealthy countries put in many fewer hours on average than do workers in the United States. To take one prominent example, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the average number of hours worked in Germany is almost 25 percent less than the average for the United States. This has helped push Germany’s unemployment rate down to 4 percent. And, unlike the United States, the share of the population in Germany with jobs is far above its pre-recession level.

We cannot, of course, make our economy a carbon copy of Germany, but we can pass laws requiring paid time off for family leave and sick days, as many states and cities have already done. In Germany, workers are guaranteed six weeks a year of paid vacation. We can start at two or three. And, we can restructure our unemployment insurance system to encourage firms to reduce hours with work sharing rather than layoff workers.

Technology is supposed to be about making our lives better. An important way in which it does this is by reducing the number of hours that we have to spend working so that we can have more time to be with our family or enjoy other pursuits. There is a great fear across the country that robots will take our jobs. If we correctly structure the economy, robots will give us more free time, and that will be good.

One in seven children in Germany relies on social welfare

Marianne Arens


One in seven children under the age of 15 in Germany is dependent upon the Hartz IV welfare benefits received by their parents. In Bremen and Berlin almost one child in three is affected (31.5 percent).

These alarming figures come from data from the federal agency for labour for 2015 examined by parliamentary deputy Sabine Zimmermann (Left Party). According to the data, an average of more than 1.5 million children were dependent upon Hartz IV last year, 34,000 more than in the previous year. The difference in poverty rates between east and west is starkly visible. Whereas in eastern Germany 20.3 percent of children are affected, in the west the average is 13 percent.

But these figures by no means comprise all children who are reliant on state support and thus live below the poverty line. “There are a large number of children in addition,” said Hans Hilger from the German Alliance for the Protection of Children on Dom radio. If one includes the families not dependent on Hartz IV, but other benefits like child benefits or housing benefits, roughly 2.7 million children are affected.

It was a scandal, Hilger continued, that the state paid more for the children of the better-off than for those of the poor. Parents on an average income could cut their taxes by almost €300 thanks to the child tax rebate, but for the poor, child benefit of almost €200 is incorporated into the Hartz IV rate. According to Hilger, child poverty has roughly doubled since 2000.

The parents of these children are often single parents or long-term unemployed. Der Spiegel reported in an article on Hartz IV that an increasing number of people never make it out of the poverty trap.

More than a million adults have been claiming Hartz IV for more than nine years. This emerged in a response by the federal government to a question tabled in parliament by the Greens. This means that one in four Hartz IV claimants is expected to be permanently dependent on social welfare, presumably for the rest of their lives.

Behind these figures lurk senseless suffering and frustration millions of times over, for children, young people and their parents, as well as families, numerous pensioners and the unemployed. The rampant poverty rates are destroying any future perspective for an entire generation.

In Der Spiegel’s report, a pensioner from Munich, who was formerly an engineer with a diploma, spoke about how he has to walk around with holes in his shoes because he lacks the funds to buy a new pair. “When it rains, it seeps through,” the magazine cited him as saying.

The Paritätische Wohlfahrtverband, a welfare organisation, classified over 15 percent of the population, or 12.5 million people, as poor in its last report, including around 3.4 million pensioners and more than 2.5 million children. These poverty figures are a devastating indictment of a wealthy society like Germany in the 21st century.

These horrendous figures are the direct product of the Hartz reforms and the “Agenda 2010” implemented 14 years ago by the Social Democrat-Green government (1998-2005) of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Deputy Chancellor Joschka Fischer. In collaboration with the trade unions, it initiated the largest social cuts in German history since the Second World War.

The Hartz laws have subsequently emerged as a model for the whole of Europe. Similar or even worse social attacks have since taken place in Greece, Italy, Spain and France.

Currently in France, the Socialist Party government is enforcing a comparable labour market reform against the bitter opposition of the French working class. Two years ago, the initiator of the Hartz reforms, Peter Hartz, who gave his name to the laws, personally advised the Hollande government in the drafting of the reform. The result is the law named after labour minister Myriam El Khomri, which the Socialist Party rushed through parliament by decree and without a vote three weeks ago.

In Greece, several Social Democrats are collaborating with Syriza to enforce the dictates of the European Union. According to Greek media reports, Deputy Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, Jörg Asmussen, state secretary in the labour ministry under SPD labour minister Andrea Nahles, and European Parliament President Martin Schulz are in close contact with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. In Greece, Syriza’s brutal programme of cuts is provoking new strikes and protests.

The problem of child poverty has “been known for a long time,” said the Left Party deputy Zimmermann as she presented the figures last Tuesday. “The federal government must finally deal with this problem in order to create a perspective for the children.” There is a great deal of hypocrisy behind this critique.

The Left Party is no different from other parties on questions of social policy. From the Alternative for Germany, the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, to the Social Democrats, Greens and Left Party, all are agreed that in the crisis there is “no alternative” to cuts. The Left Party was the first party to support Syriza in Greece and they continue to back the Tsipras government today.

In Berlin, where nearly one in three children survives on Hartz IV payments, the Left Party, and its predecessor organisation PDS, sat in the state government from January 2002 to the end of 2011. During this time, social polarisation intensified more than anywhere else in Germany. The Social Democrat-Left Party state government imposed a ruthless austerity programme on the backs of the working class, and on the unemployed and socially vulnerable in particular. In Berlin, the conditions for the unemployed and Hartz IV claimants deteriorated more sharply than in any other German state.

The Senate supported a large number of one euro (per hour) jobs and was heavily involved in hiking off the unemployed to private companies as low-wage or contract labourers. During the 10 years of the Social Democrat-Left Party government, the number of contract workers increased by 118 percent and the number of employees in the public sector was cut by a third.

The Senate sold public housing units to private investors and property developers, resulting in a massive increase in rents. Thousands of Hartz IV claimants were forced out of their apartments, because the decision-makers at the job centres determined that rent costs were too high.

It was precisely during this time that child poverty consolidated itself in socially explosive areas of Berlin. In this context, the Left Party’s record on this is devastating. At the same time, the Social Democrat-Left Party government made massive cuts to universities and schools and eliminated the free provision of school textbooks. The access to the public services for school leavers was also made increasingly difficult.

Berlin is a perfect example of the fact that the Left Party’s name is the only thing “left” about it. Whenever it has assumed government responsibility, it has been a driving force for social destruction. Their policies are no different from those of the SPD, with which it has been striving for years to form a governing coalition on the federal level.

Sri Lankan armoury explosion forces thousands to flee

W.A Sunil

A massive explosion in an armoury at the Salawa army camp on Sunday forced thousands of people to flee their homes, fearing for their lives. The military complex is located in a highly-populated area at Kosgama, just 33 kilometres east of Colombo. So far, one soldier’s death has been reported and about 50 people have been treated for injuries or respiratory problems.

Sri Lankan soldiers and police were yesterday trying to find and defuse unexploded bombs or rockets that fell on villages. Hundreds of homes were destroyed after the raging ammunition fire triggered a series of blasts that sent shrapnel flying into the air. AFP said its photographer saw commandos collecting four unexploded rockets from one house garden.

Residents did not know such a huge armoury had been set up near their villages. It was one of the biggest ammunition storages in the country, with a large stock of rocket-propelled grenade shells and heavy artillery weapons. According to some media reports, there were 600 containers of ammunition.

The blaze broke out at about 5:30 p.m. on Sunday and continued till 10:00 a.m. on Monday. The intensity of the explosions and fire was such that the fire brigade could only reach two kilometres from the location. Colombo Fire Brigade chief operating officer Rohitha Fernando said: “None of the trucks have entered the camp as it’s not safe to go inside. We have not handled this magnitude of armoury fire.”

It was the largest ammunition blast since an armoury explosion at Vavuniya in Northern Province during 2009. No explanation has yet been provided by the government or the military authorities.

Hearing huge noises, panic-stricken people around the army camp ran to seek safety. The police and the army then issued an announcement, asking those living within a five-kilometre radius to vacate the area. Many people were seen running, some unable to access a vehicle. The main highway running past the military complex was closed five kilometres on either side.

Many residents stayed at wayside shelters, while others took refuge at temples or schools. Some people returned to their homes yesterday to see destroyed or damaged houses. However, residents who live within a one-kilometre radius were barred from returning to their homes. The army said the area would be cleaned up by Thursday.

One resident, Trince Samantha Lal, told the World Socialist Web Site: “Suddenly we heard a huge explosion, like thunder. When we came out of the house we saw huge black smoke coming from the camp and the explosions were continuing. The police said to vacate the area, but people had not enough facilities. With my family, we went to my mother’s house about six kilometres away from the camp. Some who fled the area spent the night at temples and schools and some stayed with their friends and relatives.”

Another resident living near Hanwella township, some four-and-a-half kilometres from the camp, said: “There was a bright orange glow in the sky around the camp and regular explosions with short intervals. About 15 kilos of debris from the explosion fell in the garden of my neighbour. The people in the area were panicked and terrified. Many people, including my family, walked some three kilometres for safety because there was a huge traffic block and no transport facilities.”

According to the area administrative officer, M.M.S.K. Bandara, about 300 houses and two factories within one kilometre were destroyed. Many homes in villages near the army camp, including Salawa, Kaluaggala, Suduwella, Mavilgama, Katugoda north, Akaravita, Bandigamapola and Kosgama north and east, have been badly damaged.

According to Bandara, about 18,628 people have been displaced. They are staying in 11 camps. People fear they will not be able to return to their houses. Many are relatively poor rural people. Behind the Salawa army complex there is also a village built for disabled soldiers and soldiers’ widows. Residents have been warned not to drink water from wells until they are cleaned.

The armory was established, without the residents being informed, in early 2000 as part of the huge military buildup during the 26-year war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The military base took over a major complex of buildings from the liquidated state-owned Plywood Corporation.

Samantha Lal said during the war that the army brought arms to the camp. “When they brought them [the ammunition] they closed roads and number of army trucks would come. But people did not know what was going on, or the size of the armoury, or the danger they would face in an incident like this.”

Locating a major ammunition depot in a residential area underscores the utter disregard of successive governments for the lives of the ordinary people. All the establishment parties are directly responsible for the catastrophe.

In an attempt to deflect blame, former President Mahinda Rajapakse claimed that his administration had planned to relocate the ammunition dump from the built-up area before he was defeated in the January 2015 presidential election.

Fearing that the disaster will intensify his government’s political crisis, President Maithripala Sirisena called a national security council meeting yesterday and ordered a court of inquiry to investigate the cause of the explosion. Law and Order Minister Sagala Ratnayake said the government had also ordered an inquiry by the police criminal investigation department.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe visited the area yesterday and held a meeting with administrative officers. According to media reports, Wickremesinghe pledged to build or repair all the damaged houses. The army made a similar promise.

However, people expressed doubts about whether they will have their houses repaired and be able to return. Just a month ago, hundreds of thousands of people in Colombo and suburbs, including in this area, fled their homes because of floods.

Maoists take cabinet positions in Philippine government

Joseph Santolan

Since Rodrigo Duterte’s election as president of the Philippines in early May, his administration, which will be inaugurated into office on June 30, has taken on an ever-more openly fascistic character. At the same time, the Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has become increasingly vocal in its support for his government and opened peace talks to end its 47-year armed struggle. Three of its leading representatives have been installed in cabinet-level posts in his administration as secretaries in the Department of Social Welfare and Development, and the Department of Agrarian Reform, and as undersecretary in the Department of Labor and Employment.

Over the past week, with Duterte’s explicit encouragement, police and vigilante groups have carried out at least ten summary executions of alleged criminals throughout the country. The victims had their hands tied behind their backs and were repeatedly shot in the back of the head. Cardboards signs were left on the corpses, stating they were drug pushers or petty thieves. At least one cardboard sign read “#DU30”—the social media hashtag of the newly-elected president.

Duterte told a press conference the majority of journalists murdered in the Philippines deserved to be assassinated because they were “rotten sons of bitches.” The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) lists the Philippines as the third most dangerous country to be a journalist, after Iraq and Syria. The Philippines, however, is not a war zone. All the journalists killed in the country have been the victims of targeted assassinations.

Duterte announced he would no longer hold any press conferences, or allow himself to be interviewed or questioned by reporters. All press releases, he stated, would be coursed through the government-owned TV channel, PTV-4. The last Philippine president to manage the press in this manner was Ferdinand Marcos, after his declaration of martial law.

All these measures, from the creation of death squads to the moves toward suppressing the freedom of the press, are being prepared to crack down on emerging struggles of the working class. Duterte’s presidency has the support of leading sections of the Philippine ruling class and of international finance capital. The Washington-based think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), wrote on June 6 that Duterte “promised to continue and maintain the successful macroeconomic policies” of outgoing President Aquino. They hailed Duterte’s stated intention to allow increased foreign ownership of Philippine corporations.

Duterte is thus heading a government that is preparing to crack down on and murder the working class at the behest of international finance capital. The task of building a base of support for this fascistic program in the petty bourgeoisie and among various lumpen elements rests with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

The Maoist CPP has given its support to Duterte for decades, while he headed the notorious Davao Death Squads as mayor of the southern city. Elements from the CPP’s New People’s Army (NPA) have long been reported to have assisted in the assassinations carried out by these death squads. The NPA participated in the vigilante violence of the past week, carrying out a raid on a town in Davao Oriental in support, it told the press, of Duterte’s campaign against drugs.

On his election, Duterte offered four cabinet posts to the CPP, calling on Joma Sison, the founder and head of the party, to select his appointments. Sison hailed Duterte’s offer as “magnanimous.” Thus far, three CPP nominees have been appointed. These positions are not simply rewards for the CPP’s support. The CPP-appointed officials will be directly responsible for carrying out the suppression of the working class.

Selected to head the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) was Judy Taguiwalo. Taguiwalo was a national council member of one of CPP’s youth wings, the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK), in the early 1970s. She was in the leadership of the Nationalist Corps, a student-based front organization responsible for carrying out charitable projects in poor communities in order to win their support for the CPP. After the declaration of martial law, she went underground with the party, re-emerging after Marcos’s downfall to take up a position as Professor of Women’s and Development Studies at the University of the Philippines (UP).

Taguiwalo announced she would continue the Aquino administration’s Conditional Cash Transfer program. This program, pushed by the World Bank, uses a limited cash subsidy for small sections of the poor who qualify, as a means of implementing austerity measures and slashing social infrastructure.

Appointed head of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) is Rafael Mariano. The long-time head of the CPP’s peasant wing, the Kilusang Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (KMP), Mariano led peasants in 1987 in a march to request land reform from President Corazon Aquino’s Ministry of Agrarian Reform. The CPP leaders said they were looking to “meet Your Excellency in a dialogue.” Aquino’s military forces opened fire, killing 13, in what became known as the Mendiola Massacre. When Aquino died in 2009, Mariano attended public masses to honor Aquino and to pray for the well-being of her soul.

Joel Maglungsod, vice president for Mindanao of the CPP trade union umbrella Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), was made undersecretary of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). When Duterte announced in February that he would kill workers who attempted to organize a union in Export Processing Zones (EPZ), Maglungsod issued a press release describing Duterte’s statement as “hyperbole.”

These three departments—Social Welfare, Agrarian Reform and Labor—serve as arms of the state for policing the poor, the peasantry and the working class. The CPP appointees to these positions will be directly responsible for carrying out the dictates of capitalism via an increasingly fascistic government against the working class.

The CPP’s various front organizations are working to whip up illusions in Duterte. Renato Reyes, national secretary of the CPP umbrella front organization, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN), wrote: “We support the progressive and nationalist goals and program of the new government.”

Carol Araullo, national chair of BAYAN, penned a more extensive justification of Duterte’s administration in her regular column in Business World, the leading business daily in the country. Araullo described Duterte’s government as “apparently inconsistent.” Duterte was “continuing the neoliberal economic policies of the Aquino government while offering socio-economic cabinet posts to the communists.” This seeming contradiction, however, was an example of Duterte’s “exceptional brinksmanship.” Duterte was “proving that an avowed Leftist and Socialist can win and wield the Presidency while reassuring the Right that he will keep his oath to preserve the system.”

Araullo’s perspective is a damning indictment of the CPP’s nationalist politics, which are entirely in the service of the bourgeoisie. She admits that Duterte is carrying forward Aquino’s policies of austerity and repression, which over the past six years have presided over mounting social inequality.

The fact that Duterte is installing “communists” into his cabinet, is only “apparently” contradictory. Duterte can install the CPP into his government and “reassure the Right” at the same time, precisely because the CPP’s politics are hostile to the working class.

From its inception, the CPP has been based on the Stalinist two-stage program, which stated that the tasks of revolution in the Philippines were national and democratic only, and not yet socialist. The working class, the CPP claimed, should not fight for its independent class interests but ally with its enemy, the bourgeoisie, in the name of national democracy. Time and again, this program has led to the betrayal and murder of the working class. The alliance with Duterte is the most criminal demonstration of the bankruptcy of the CPP’s politics.

As Duterte and Sison engage in peace talks and negotiate the role of the CPP in the new administration, the working class must take warning. These forces are preparing immense betrayals and class suppression.

NATO launches largest anti-Russian war game since Cold War

Alex Lantier

Military tensions surged yesterday in Europe as NATO launched Operation Anaconda, the largest NATO military exercise in Eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War a quarter century ago, when the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991.

Some 31,000 troops, 3,000 vehicles, 105 aircraft, and 12 warships are participating in war games based on a scenario that war erupts between NATO and Russia, a nuclear-armed power. European defense officials in Warsaw said the scenario was one where there is “a mishap, a miscalculation which the Russians construe, or choose to construe, as an offensive action.”

The largest contingents in the exercises are 14,000 troops from the United States, 12,000 from Poland, and about 800 from Britain, as well as other forces, including from non-NATO countries. They will be commanded by Polish Lieutenant General Marek Tomaszycki.

Operation Anaconda is a massive provocation, effectively amounting to a dress rehearsal for a NATO invasion of Russia. In the exercise, for the first time since the Nazi invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union during World War II, German tanks will cross all of Poland from west to east.

With staggering recklessness, NATO officials are launching exercises dangerously close to Russian soil, even as security analysts acknowledge that this creates a situation where miscalculations could lead to war between NATO and Russia. According to the British Guardian, “defence experts warn that any mishap could prompt an offensive reaction from Moscow.” The daily cited Marcin Zaborowski, an official of the Center for European Policy Analysis, as admitting that the international situation surrounding Operation Anaconda is “tense, and accidents can happen.”

Russian officials reacted aggressively against escalating NATO military activity along Russia’s borders. The exercises in Poland come as 5,000 NATO forces carry out exercises code-named Operation Iron Wolf in Lithuania, the largest NATO deployment to Lithuania in several years, and amid NATO military exercises in Latvia, another Baltic republic bordering Russia.

“We do not hide that we have a negative attitude toward the NATO line of moving its military infrastructure to our borders, drawing other countries into military unit activities,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in Moscow. “This will activate Russia’s sovereign right to provide its own safety with methods that are adequate to today’s risks.”

Russian Permanent Representative to NATO Aleksandr Grusho said yesterday that Moscow would closely analyze NATO military activity in the region during the exercises. Russian military sources indicated that they would move three divisions closer to Russia’s western borders in response to the exercises, likely motorized rifle units of about 10,000 men each.

Operation Anaconda goes hand in hand with US and NATO operations aiming to encircle Russia’s entire western border, from the Baltics and Eastern Europe to the Balkans. Last month, NATO officials set up a missile base in Deveselu, Romania, and began work on a similar base at Redzikowo in northern Poland.

Yesterday, the US guided missile destroyer USS Porter sailed through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea with a strengthened missile armament—a year after a similar US warship in the Black Sea, the USS Ross, nearly violated Russian territorial waters, prompting a standoff with Russian warplanes.

All of these aggressive actions come in the run-up to the July 8-9 NATO summit in Warsaw, which is expected to further escalate NATO deployments to the Baltic region and tighten ties between NATO and former Soviet republics including Ukraine and Georgia, in the Caucasus.

Twenty-five years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the disastrous geopolitical implications of this event are ever more evident. The elimination of what capitalist propagandists of an earlier era called the “communist menace” did not lead to a flowering of peace and prosperity under the aegis of a capitalist European Union (EU). Rather, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and of the Warsaw Pact threw Eastern Europe open to imperialist intrigue and war plotting by Washington and its major allies in Europe.

The assurances NATO gave Moscow decades ago that its strategic interests would not be threatened have proven worthless. The 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act said: “in the current and foreseeable security environment, the [NATO] Alliance will carry out its collective defense and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces.”

Instead, as NATO absorbed countries across Eastern Europe, what emerged was a steady spread of NATO wars and combat forces across the continent. From NATO’s bloody Balkan wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the brief 2008 war that Georgia recklessly launched against Russia with US support, the intervention has now escalated to the point that Russia is surrounded and directly threatened with invasion.

The pretense that NATO’s latest escalation is a legitimate response to a change in the European security environment due to Russian aggression in Ukraine is a political fraud. The war in Ukraine was provoked by a violent putsch, led by the fascistic Right Sector militia and supported by the CIA and the European capitals, that toppled a pro-Russian government in Kiev in 2014. As the current military situation with Operation Anaconda makes clear, it was not part of a Russian master plan to conquer Europe, but of a relentless and aggressive NATO drive to strategically isolate Russia.

This does not change in any way the fact that the actions of the Russian capitalist oligarchy in the Kremlin are politically reactionary. Incapable of and hostile to mobilizing opposition to war in the international working class, they oscillate between seeking an accommodation with the imperialist powers and threatening them with Russia’s military power.

Particularly as Russia faces ever more bellicose and right-wing regimes in Poland, Ukraine, and further afield in Eastern Europe, backed by Washington and its NATO allies, such threats simply escalate the danger of nuclear war.

The right-wing regime in Poland is in particular using Operation Anaconda to inaugurate the 35,000-strong nationalist territorial militias it has set up after cashiering a quarter of the country’s generals since it came to power last October. There are numerous reports that the territorial militias, drawn from Polish gun clubs and paramilitary groups, are linked to racist Polish football hooligan groups.

The deployment comes amid rising tensions between the EU and the Polish government, which has sought to sideline the country’s constitutional court. On June 1, the EU Commission issued a ruling demanding “concrete steps to resolve the systemic risk to the rule of law in Poland.”

The territorial militias are apparently viewed with concern in the Polish army and in NATO circles internationally. The Guardian cited an unnamed “Western defense expert” as saying: “Poland is highly regarded internationally. In the past 15 years, they spent a lot of money and created one of the best armies in the region… It is not clear what the government thinks it needs to improve.”

Employment Lies

Paul Craig Roberts

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the US economy only created 38,000 new jobs in May and revised down by 59,000 jobs the previously reported gains in March and April.

Yet the BLS reported that the unemployment rate fell from 5.0 to 4.7 percent, a figure generally regarded as full employment.

The May jobs increase only covers a small fraction of the monthly growth in the labor force and, therefore, cannot account for the drop in unemployment.

Moreover, the BLS reported that the labor force participation rate fell by 0.2 percentage points, bringing the decline to 0.4 percentage points over the past two months. Normally, a strong labor market, such as one represented by a 4.7% unemployment rate, causes an increase in the labor force participation rate.

The question becomes:  How real is the 4.7% rate of unemployment?

The answer is: Not at all.

The unemployment rate dropped because people unable to find jobs ceased looking and are no longer counted as being in the labor force.  If you are unemployed but not considered part of the labor force, you are not included when unemployment is measured. The BLS says that in May there were 1.7 million Americans who “wanted and were available for work,” but “were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.”

In other words, the unemployment rate is a useless measure of unemployment, just as the consumer price index no longer measures inflation.  What were once useful statistical measures have been converted into good news propaganda.

Another inconsistency is the BLS report that, despite the low unemployment rate, in May almost another one-half million Americans were forced into part-time jobs as full-time employment was not available.

The average work week is no longer 40 hours.  The shrinkage of the average work week to 34.4 hours (May) is another reason for declining real median family income. Assuming 3 weeks of vacation, a 34.4 hour work week is 274.4 hours less per year. At $20 per hour, for example, a 34.4 hour work week produces $5,488 less annual income than a 40 hour week.

The loss of annual income is greater for many.  The average is a result of shorter and longer work weeks. The shorter work weeks that pull down the average are not full-time jobs and therefore do not receive health and pension benefits.

Just as Washington and the presstitute media lie about everything else, they lie about the economy.

The United States of America has beeen reduced to a House of Cards whose foundation is lies.

How long can it stand?

Defiance Of Law And Impunity In Bangladesh

Taj Hashmi

Karl Marx, among other critics of imperialism, had some kind words for British colonial rule in India, especially in regard to the prevalent rule of law in the colony. The civil and criminal laws, as evolved in Bangladesh – as in all the former British colonies, worldwide – are based on the British Common Law. However, barring a handful of former British colonies, there have been endemic violations of the law in Africa and Asia, including extra-judicial killings, and impunity from arrests and prosecutions of certain privileged individuals. Being one of the most corrupt and ungovernable countries in the world, of late Bangladesh provides hitherto unheard of impunity to “well-connected” people, mostly politicians, businessmen, civil and military officers, and their henchmen.

As arbitrary power leads to undue privileges, so members of the ruling elite, bureaucracy and law-enforcers frequently break the law by taking advantage of the ordinary people’s compliance to feudal, colonial and pre-modern traditions. The British – who introduced the Common Law and nurtured the rule of law in the Subcontinent – conceded certain (unwritten) privileges and extra-judicial power to high civil and military officers, and members of the landed gentry. However, the British did not allow extortions, torture, and public humiliation of people, at least not in the last two decades of the Raj.

In the backdrop of frequent violations of law – including the grant of impunity to the privileged few – in Bangladesh, one may be too naïve to impute this disorder to British colonial rule. And it’s absurd; the law-breakers are not ignorant of the law, colonial or postcolonial, which don’t allow vigilantism, extra-judicial killings, and any impunity from arrest and prosecution to the guilty, irrespective of one’s power, position, and status in the social hierarchy. It’s no exaggeration that British rule – at least during the last decade of the Raj, 1937-1947 – ensured much better law and order situation, democracy, freedom of the press, and human rights to the people in this country than what prevail here since Independence.

As the Common Law and its derivatives are quite adequate and comprehensive, so are the well-structured criminal and civil law in Bangladesh. There’s hardly any inadequacy in the law. The problem lies elsewhere, especially in the highhandedness of the executive and legislature, which stifle the judiciary, and influence the bureaucracy. There’s an ongoing tug of war between the legislature and the judiciary. While the former refuses to part with its power of impeaching judges, the latter apprehends the power could be arbitrary, and even worse, politically motivated.

Since the “right credentials and connections” matter most in Bangladesh, certain people enjoy undue benefits from corrupt regimes; they may kill and humiliate people, swindle billions from public and private sectors, with total immunity from arrests and prosecutions. For those who know the art of remaining “well-connected” forever, immunity goes hand in hand with impunity. Loyalty to one particular party or ideology is out of place in Bangladesh. Beneficiaries of ruling parties often change sides with the change of regimes, and join another ruling party, which might have totally different ideologies and programmes.

The predominance of the ruling party, or the Present Government Party (PGP) – I coined the acronym in the 1970s, which got a wide currency among my colleagues at Dhaka University – and the proliferation of the PGP Men and PGP Culture are at the roots of the prevalent culture of impunity. Then again, impunity isn’t a sign of strength, but of corruption, nepotism, weakness and incompetence of the government. Throughout history, incompetent autocracies failed to ensure the rule of law for the common people. And the rest is history – they didn’t last long. They either imploded due to civil wars and revolutions, or exploded due to foreign invasions.

Of late, we frequently hear from certain members of the ruling elite that development is more important than democracy. As if, the so-called development is unimpeded, and not subject to any retardation; and as if nothing can hold back Bangladesh’s growth and development despite corruption and violations of human rights! Hence the advocacy for the Mahathir Mohamad model of development! Nothing could be more condescending, complacent, and foolish than preferring development to democracy. Actually, today unimpeded democracy is the epitome of development.

Mahathir Mohamad, Lee Kuan Yew, Park Chung Hee and other authoritarian rulers didn’t ensure any immunity and impunity to members of the ruling elite, let alone police and bureaucracy. Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea – among other autocracies in the recent past – developed only by ensuring the rule of law or total accountability of the politicians, bureaucracy, police, military, judiciary, businessmen, and professionals. No government in Bangladesh has so far been able to ensure the rule of law, which is a sine qua non of growth, progress, and development. In sum, the rule of law is the mother of development.

Shockingly, influential people who were involved in mega scandals, corruption, or violation of human rights in the recent past, never had to face any law enforcer or the court of justice. The Padma Bridge Scandal, the Share Market Scam, the capture of seven million taka from a minister’s PS’s car in the middle of the night, the shooting of a 12-year-old boy by an MP, a ruling party MP’s alleged role as a drug lord, a former MP’s nephew’s drunk driving and killing a pedestrian in broad daylight, and last but not least, MP Salim Osman’s recent public violation of human rights of a school headmaster at Narayanganj may be mentioned in this regard.

Although the police, journalists, and sections of the population know who the criminals and their associates are, the “well-connected” criminals somehow remain unscathed. Thanks to the hush-hush culture, and the culture of fear of intimidation from above, people tend to feign indifference to the grossest violations of human rights, scandals in the share market, and fraudulent banking and financial transactions. What many people don’t realise, financial corruption leads to political corruption, and political corruption to impunity, and impunity to chaos, and disorder. In short, impunity is corruption, which breeds tribalism and fractured states. And corruption begins at the top. Mao Zedong has aptly said: “A fish rots from the head down”.

It would be sheer recklessness to assume that since Bangladeshis have tolerated all the excesses by members of the ruling elites during the last four decades, they would remain compliant and complacent for an indefinite period. Corruption, impunity, and unaccountability never saved any regime in the past. As the social media indicates, people want justice, not impunity for a select few. It’s time the superordinates read the writings on the wall. It’s a sacred obligation to the nation, not a favour to anybody. What Abraham Lincoln has said in this regard is very relevant to Bangladesh today: “You can’t fool all the people all the time”.

Demand Destruction And Peak Oil

Roger Baker

We are fully under the influence of petroleum demand destruction. The global oil market can't function without real oil production price discovery, which doesn't exist in the currently deflationary global economy, which forces indebted producers to sell far below cost.

Both supply and demand seem to cyclic in nature and we are not finished with the supply destruction phase, which can only be revived through a globally realistic oil trading price, which nobody knows. This is an unknown until demand destruction also runs its course. The global demand in the oil supply-demand balance that sets the global oil price cannot be known until we can understand where the global economy is headed. The global material economy seems to be contracting as the Baltic dry index, trucking, and railroad profitability seem to affirm, even ignoring oil prices and Chinese economy.

The reality is probably that a falling EROEI and the end to cheap oil after ~2005 made our finance capital investment growth less profitable. But this fundamental shift has been hidden through easy central bank credit and fiat currency generated on demand to pay interest on a growing mountain of unpayable debt, with a shift of debt from private hands to public, such as away from Wall Street toward Fed and US Treasury obligations. Now we see the world's major central banks each independently creating their own fiat currencies to preserve a trading advantage, led by the dollar as the world's standard reserve currency. (if it were up to me, things would work out a lot better if each dollar would be exchangeable on demand for a quart of conventional oil)

Under current conditions, nobody can predict a meaningful exchange rate for the major currencies trading on the key foreign exchange market; the trade exchange rates and pegs are established through national politics and are thus arbitrary, which leads to Triffin's paradox. National sovereign bank policies tend toward easy money, more debt, and business as usual. Global trade generates its own pressures that necessarily, for the sake of stability of global trade, have to be soundly based on how much energy, labor, and investment capital really went into the production of the goods being exchanged. Here the trends don't look so good.

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr16/triffins-paradox4-16.html

It looks like a system that tends to resist change and internal pressure for reform until things break down into a sort of a global version of a "Minsky moment" where financial guarantees behind finance break down like a domino effect, think late 2008 before the emergency bailouts. Trying to predict how far an out-of-balance system can be pushed before it breaks down or stalls out is impossible.

When this happens, there is no reason to expect an orderly contraction toward the lower energy supply and demand balance needed to encourage new oil investment. It may look more like a chaotic price increase in a world full of angry oil junkies fighting over the existing production. Or maybe it already is that way more than we would like to admit.

Back to oil economics. Following is a nice analysis of when we might expect the next oil price spike, considering the current trends. Perhaps in early 2018 as this estimates? I have seen others guess maybe 2017 for a slow return to a tight global oil market. At any rate, this analysis gives appropriate credit to the many things that can go wrong in the meantime. This has a useful geopolitical account of the various global oil production regions, including Art Berman's rather discouraging Permian shale oil profitability map.

http://attheedgeoftime.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/this-is-peak-oil.html

Jeffrey Brown makes the very important point that special attention should be focused on the higher boiling fractions of petroleum known as distillate. You can crack big hydrocarbon (distillate) molecules into little ones during refining, but you can't (affordably) go back the other way to make the little ones into big ones.

The problem here is that what we might call the raw mobile muscle power for our civilization and its trade rests critically on the availability of these bigger distillate molecules that mostly come from conventional oil. Trucks, planes, airplanes, ships and heavy equipment mining won't work using the smaller hydrocarbon molecules that predominate in gasoline. These lighter fractions tend to be favored in tight oil due to the geology and physics involved.

For this reason, whenever we do see oil production price discovery again due to the return of a tight global oil market, if operating under orderly market conditions, we should expect to see it expressed as a global fuel price shift. One where distillate price rises stubbornly, relative to the price of lighter fuel fractions like gasoline.