Australian government agrees to negotiate East Timor maritime border

Patrick Kelly

The Australian and East Timorese governments issued a joint statement on Monday declaring that they are entering negotiations through the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague to settle a permanent maritime border.

The statement also announced the termination of the 2006 Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS), under which the border was to be left unresolved for 50 years while the Timor Sea’s energy reserves were divided through a mechanism heavily weighted in favour of Australia. Canberra had previously resisted, tooth and nail, attempts by East Timor to nullify CMATS.

The announcement represents a significant tactical shift by Australian imperialism. Since 1975, when Indonesia invaded and subsequently annexed the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, successive Labor and Liberal governments in Australia have been satisfied to leave the Timor Sea maritime border undetermined. The same policy underwrote Canberra’s predatory relationship with “independent” East Timor, following the Australian military deployment in 1999 under the bogus pretext of humanitarian intervention.

The unresolved maritime border has allowed Australia to exert geostrategic influence—and extract lucrative oil and gas resources—far beyond the median point between Australia and East Timor, where the border ought to be established under international law.

The full implications of the joint Australian-Timorese statement remain to be seen. Carefully worded throughout, the statement appears to allow Canberra ample opportunity to drag out negotiations indefinitely on a maritime border. It declared that during meetings in The Hague last October: “The governments of Timor-Leste and Australia agreed to an integrated package of measures intended to facilitate the conciliation process and create the conditions conducive to the achievement of an agreement on permanent maritime boundaries in the Timor Sea… The governments of Timor-Leste and Australia look forward to continuing to engage with the [Permanent Court of Arbitration’s] Conciliation Commission and to the eventual conclusion of an agreement on maritime boundaries in the Timor Sea.”

None of this signals a retreat from Australian imperialism’s long record of provocations and lawlessness against East Timor.

Immediately prior to formal Timorese independence in 2002, Canberra withdrew from a key aspect of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in order to prevent any juridically determined border in the Timor Sea. This blatant contempt for international law has not prevented the current Australian government from hypocritically echoing US criticisms of China for failing to recognise a dubious Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) finding last year on territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

Having barred the PCA from ruling on the Timor Sea, the Australian government last year sought to block the court from allowing the East Timorese government to proceed with a compulsory arbitration case. This was to involve “compulsory conciliation,” with the PCA considering the rival sea boundary claims and then issuing non-binding recommendations aimed at providing the basis of a negotiated settlement. In September, the court dismissed the Australian legal challenge to this process.

Talks on the process of negotiating a maritime border began the following month. One of the Australian government’s aims in agreeing to Timorese demands for a permanent border is likely to prevent further scrutiny of the now defunct CMATS treaty.

The Timorese government had mounted a separate legal challenge in The Hague to CMATS, based on the argument that the treaty was unlawful because of illegal Australian intelligence operations during the treaty’s negotiations. In 2004, Australian intelligence operatives posed as humanitarian construction workers helping to build Timorese government offices. Listening devices hidden in the buildings were then used to eavesdrop on Timorese cabinet discussions.

Responding to the Timorese legal challenge, in December 2013, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) raided the offices of East Timor’s Australian-based lawyer, Bernard Collaery, also stealing sensitive Timorese government documents. Attorney-General George Brandis threatened Collaery with serious criminal charges for allegedly divulging official secrets. The government seized the passport of a former Australian intelligence operative turned whistleblower, in order to prevent him from testifying at The Hague. All of these provocations and dirty tricks are now being swept under the carpet.

The Timorese government has welcomed the termination of CMATS and the announcement of negotiations on a permanent maritime border. It is entering into the discussions amid a worsening economic and social crisis in East Timor.

The massive Greater Sunrise gas fields that were previously covered by the CMATS treaty remain untapped. Australia’s Woodside Petroleum—which heads a consortium of Australian, American, and Japanese oil and gas giants that has the rights to exploit the reserves—has flatly refused Timorese government demands to extract the gas and pipe it to southern Timor for refining and export. The protracted standoff over whether Greater Sunrise gas ought to be processed in Australia, Timor or in a floating facility in the Timor Sea has coincided with a plunge in gas prices worldwide. The rise of fracking in the US and other countries, and the development of gas mega-projects off northwest Australia and in other regions has led to a glut in global supply that has raised questions about the viability of bringing Greater Sunrise online.

The Timorese state currently relies on the far smaller Bayu Undan oil and gas field for about 90 percent of all its revenue. Bayu Undan is expected to run dry within the next decade. Moreover, a Timorese sovereign wealth fund that is currently valued at $16 billion is being depleted by higher government spending. The so-called national unity government of Xanana Gusmão’s CNRT and Fretilin has sought to dissipate social tensions in impoverished East Timor by providing limited cash grants and other entitlements to different sections of the population. According to some reports, if current trends continue, the sovereign wealth fund will be exhausted by the late 2020s.

Timorese government hopes for significant concessions in border negotiations will be dashed. For Australian imperialism what is at stake is not just the fate of the Greater Sunrise reserves but its wider geostrategic standing in the region. Sections of the Australian media have this week openly tied the resolution of the border issue to the ongoing efforts to minimise Chinese economic and political influence in Dili.

Another important consideration is the Indonesian response to an Australian-Timorese border. Canberra finalised its maritime border with Indonesia in 1971–72, just five years after Australia supported the Indonesian military coup that saw the mass murder of up to one million workers and peasants associated with the Communist Party. In the negotiations, the junta accepted Australian claims that the border ought to follow an underwater “continental shelf” that extends close to Indonesian land. Since the 1971–72 treaties, international law has largely rejected claims based on purported continental shelves, instead favouring borders equidistant between states’ land masses.

Australian officials fear that a negotiated Timorese border could trigger an Indonesian attempt to force a renegotiation of its border with Australia. The redrawing of this border in accordance with contemporary international law would see Australia lose swathes of maritime territory adjacent to some of the world’s most critically important naval trade choke-points. This would have significant implications amid accelerating moves by US imperialism for a military confrontation of China.

New report documents extreme poverty in Poland

Clara Weiss

The NGO Szlachetna Paczka (Noble Package), which helps poor families during the Christmas holidays, released a report in December 2016 documenting extreme levels of poverty in Poland. The report is based on the work and experience of volunteers of the organization.

Since its founding in 2001, Szlachetna Paczka has helped, according to its own numbers, some 112,000 families. Another 20,000 families were added in 2015. The report reveals the miserable living conditions facing broad sections of the working class and the peasant population who, a quarter century after the restoration of capitalist relations, lack access to basic elements of civilized life.

The living conditions of millions are more reminiscent of the conditions facing the working class in England in the period of early industrialization in the 19th century, than the 20th or 21st centuries. In contrast to other reports on poverty, this one includes not only numbers but also offers an insight into the deprivations in everyday life brought about by poverty.

Szlachetna Paczka examined the situation of groups of the population that are particularly affected by poverty: infirm pensioners, families with more than one child or with a single parent, the self-employed, as well as families with one or more member who is seriously ill.

The resulting picture is devastating. Every third ailing pensioner in Poland cannot spend more than 7 Zloty ($1.69) per day in order to not go in debt. Every second family with more than one child has problems paying its bills and debt. Every fifth family with more than one child lives together in one room. Every sixth family with more than one child does not have its own bathroom. Of these families, 60 percent have to pay off a long-term loan. 15 percent of the families with a seriously sick or disabled member have only 1.6 Zloty ($0.39) per person per day. This is not even enough to buy a loaf of bread in Poland.

The interviewees often lacked the possibility to relax and rest, and suffered from low self-esteem. The elderly and sick, in particular, suffer from loneliness.

Conditions are particularly outrageous for elderly people dependent on the meagre payments from the state.

A 83-year-old lady, Pani Zofia, has to spend 300 Zloty ($72.40) every month on medication and does not have enough money to pay for more than two hours of heat every day. An elderly man, Pan Kazimierz, has laryngeal cancer and therefore had to give up his work before reaching the official pension age. For this reason, he has to live on only 600 Zloty ($145) per month. He was told by the government official at the office: “You will get your pension in heaven.”

Another elderly lady, Pani Czesia, has to pay off debts of 5,000 Zloty ($1,207) following the suicide of her husband. The son suffers from a mental ailment and is currently in psychiatric care. For breakfast she eats of piece of bread and drinks a glass of milk which she gets from a neighbour.

A single man, severely disabled since age 21, must live on about 700 Zloty ($169) per month. This is hardly enough to pay for the basic food, the bills and the help offered by his neighbour. Families with more than one child or a single parent are particularly affected by poverty. According to official estimates, 1.4 out of 8.9 million children and young people aged under 24 lived in poverty in 2014. This means that every fifth child has no hot meal during the day, no books, toys, new clothes or access to dentists, not to mention vacations.

The report cites the example of a single mother with three children who lives in a remote village in the countryside. The youngest son suffered an electric shock and has since then been unable to speak and walk. In order to feed her children, the mother has to knit socks and collect mushrooms in the forest.

Some families with more than one child were asked about the impact of the governmental program 500+ on their financial situation. The program was introduced by the ruling right-wing government of the Rule and Justice Party (PiS), in an effort to mitigate social discontent in the face of the rapid preparations for war and the buildup of a police state.

The program provides for a monthly payment of 500 Zloty ($121) for every child after the first. The report shows that the meagre payment signifies a certain relief for many families, though not solving their everyday struggle for existence.

In one of the families introduced in the report, the mother has to raise five children on her own after the death of her husband. One of them is severely ill. They are all sleeping together in one bed to keep warm as the family cannot afford heat. The additional money from the government program pays for the children to go on school trips. She still struggles to pay for the medication for her sick child.

The examples provided in the report by Szlachetna Paczka reflect the social reality of millions of working people in Poland, which remains one of the poorest countries in Europe. In 2013, the GDP per capita in Poland of 13,349 Euros was three times lower than that in neighboring Germany (45,000 Euros), putting Poland behind even Russia, Croatia, Greece or Chile.

The persistent poverty has driven more than three million Poles since 1989 to leave the country. Most of them work for low, but still better, pay in Germany or Great Britain. The unemployment rate in Poland is still around 8 percent.

According to the Central Statistical Office (GUS), 7.4 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty in 2015 with an income of less than 545 Zloty ($132) per month. Another 16.2 percent lived in relative poverty, which means for a family of four that is has less than 2056 Zloty ($496) per month to live on.

Figures by the Institute for Work and Social Questions (IPiSS) which preceded from a somewhat higher, but still low minimum for social existence of 1080 Zloty ($261) per person and 2915 Zloty ($704) for a family of four per month, corroborate this picture. In 2015, 42.7 percent of Poles live beneath these very low living standards. According to IPiSS, this includes 64.9 percent of peasants (some 40 percent of the population still live in the countryside), 55.4 percent of infirm pensioners, and 41.9 percent of workers.

There is a wide social gulf between the city and the countryside in Poland. Thus, in big cities such as Warsaw, or Cracow—the centres for the social elites and the middle classes—only about 1 percent of the population live in extreme poverty, whereas in the countryside it is about 11 percent.

British super-rich pay less tax as workers pay more

Simon Whelan

British workers have experienced an unprecedented assault on their living standards, wages and social conditions. Working class communities have witnessed severe attacks on basic public services, with welfare benefits slashed for the poorest in society.

While austerity ravages the lives of workers and their families, the super-rich continue to rake in gargantuan levels of wealth.

The New Year began with a bonanza for the super-rich and corporations as the stock market hit record levels. On January 9 in early trading, the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) was up 29 points to an all-time high of 7,239. The FTSE consists of the 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange with the highest market capitalization. Traders rejoiced when the index closed last week after experiencing its longest run of record closes in 20 years.

Only one year ago, the FTSE 100 ended the first week of January at 5,912 points. By the first week of 2017, the FTSE had climbed 22 percent to 7,208 points.

Two of the FTSE firms, Anglo American and Glencoe, are mining corporations and beneficiaries of the protracted market rally. Central to this has been the plummet in the value of the British pound since the referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) last summer. The persistent fall in the value of sterling has boosted multinational companies listed on the FTSE 100, when their foreign earnings are converted into pounds.

In the time it took between the FTSE 100 Share Index opening trading on the first Monday morning of the New Year and reports of its continuing rise arriving across news desks by midday, the UK’s most highly remunerated CEOs had already received more money than most workers earn in a year.

The High Pay Centre (HPC) which conducts research and analysis on issues relating to the incomes of the super-rich compared the earnings of CEOs at FTSE 100 firms with UK average wage rates.

Its informed estimate is that British-based CEOs are paid approximately £1,000 an hour, in comparison to the National Living Wage of £7.20. They calculated it would take approximately 28 hours of employment in the New Year for them to equal the UK average wage of £28,200. This means that by lunchtime on Wednesday January 4, the average FTSE 100 CEO had surpassed the average annual worker’s salary in less than 48 hours. The top bosses now receive 129 times more than their employees.

Pointing to the further enrichment of the super-rich, a report by the public spending regulator the National Audit Office (NAO) suggests that Her Majesties Revenue and Customs (HMRC) was chasing nearly £2 billion in taxes that have potentially gone unpaid by those more than capable of affording them.

In 2009, HMRC set up a specialist unit, following widespread public anger and criticism that it was failing to seriously tackle tax avoidance by the wealthiest. Seven years after HMRC launched this “crackdown” on the super-rich, it emerges that they are now paying even less income tax than before.

More than half of the estimated £2 billion in missing taxation was linked to tax avoidance schemes the likes of which were partially exposed by the release of the Panama Papers last year.

The NAO research shows that since 2009, while the total amount of income tax collected in Britain has risen by £23 billion to £273 billion, the amount paid by the super-rich has fallen by £900 million to £3.5 billion. In 2014, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government cut the top rate of income tax to just 45 percent and subsequently the numbers of the super-rich, whilst still tiny in absolute terms—the British population is approximately 60 million—rose sharply from 5,900 to 6,500 individuals.

The heads of the HMRC recently gave evidence to parliament’s public accounts committee, following the publication of the NAO’s research. Some MPs felt obliged to go through the motions and question why tax inspectors assigned to deal with the super-rich were known euphemistically but accurately as “customer relationship managers.”

Questions were asked about why the richest individuals in society received only “suspended fines” rather than serious penalties for their infringements and breaking of the law. The 380-strong HMRC unit had prosecuted just one super-rich tax avoider since the team was established back in 2009. It aims to prosecute 100 individuals by 2020. However, on the basis of its record so far, prosecuting just 100 more would take hundreds of years!

According to the HMRC, the super-rich paid just £4.4 billion in income tax and National Insurance in 2009-2010, but that fell further to £3.5 billion in the year to April 2015. During the same timeframe, the total amount collected by the Treasury increased from £250.1 billion to £272.9 billion, a 9 percent rise—with the share paid by Britain’s richest falling from an already derisory 1.8 percent to 1.3 percent.

Standing reality on its head, HMRC saw fit to release a statement suggesting that the potential tax paid by rich taxpayers would have been negatively affected by the economic downturn. In fact, the incomes of the super-rich have been entirely unaffected and indeed have grown, not shrunk, since the beginning of the 2008 global financial crisis.

Nothing will be done to ensure that the super-rich hand over taxes due. HMRC all but confirmed this when stating that really everyone should be grateful for what they do deign to pay. It stated, “Today, the top 1 percent of earners pay more than quarter, 27% of all income tax, and the National Audit Office makes it clear that each year HMRC has increased the amount of tax it chases from the very wealthy that would have otherwise gone unpaid.”

While the sated rich are allowed to avoid and evade the taxes necessary to fund vitally-needed services for millions of people, the government continually devises the means to extract ever more from the working class.

Last month, Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May approved a measure allowing local authorities to hike up council tax from the currently permitted 1.99 percent each year to an extra 6 percent over the next two years. This is to offset massive cuts in central government funds.

The amount expected to be raised nationally through this measure is £900 million—exactly equal, according to HMRC, to the amount the super-rich have got away with paying in income tax in recent years.

A council tax increase on this scale means that a household in an average council B and D property—which already pay £1,530 a year—would face a nearly £100 increase over the next two years if the full 6 percent is levied. This would be on top of a general increase of 2 percent set to be imposed by councils. Councils are already planning to enforce the increase. For example, Manchester City Council is to increase council tax by the maximum 4.99 percent in 2017-2018 and 2018-2019, and then by 1.99 percent in 2019-2020. For a property in band D, this results in a council tax increase of £178.20 between now and 2020.

This regressive tax is justified on the basis that it is needed to fund social care. But it comes after overall social care funding has been slashed by 12 percent in real terms over the past five years. Tens of thousands of people with physical disabilities and mental health problems have been the victims of social care cuts. By 2013, after years of austerity since 2008, more than £1.5 billion had been cut from the social care budget and an estimated 483,000 elderly and disabled people had either lost their care support, or were no longer eligible.

The cuts have resulted in a fall in the number of available care homes overall in England. From more than 18,000 available in September 2010, just over 16,600 remained by July last year.

President Hollande gives French army, intelligence “green light to kill”

Kumaran Ira 

Last week, Le Monde published extracts of Erreurs fatales, a book released a week ago by investigative journalist Vincent Nouzille. After his first book on this subject in 2015, The Killers of the Republic, Nouzille gives further details in his new book on how President François Hollande and top army staff regularly order extrajudicial murders, including of French citizens.

According to Fatal Errors, the Socialist Party (PS) government has vastly stepped up the French state’s murder program, assassinating at least 40 people on Hollande’s “kill list.” This program, carried out behind the backs of the French people and violating basic constitutional rights in a country where the death penalty is illegal, underscores the enormous dangers posed by the crisis of French democracy.

Nouzille writes, “Since his election in May 2012, François Hollande intends to pursue a more martial policy than his predecessors, even if the price to be paid is leaving the strict framework of legality. He has decided to systematically react in this fashion to hostage-taking situations and to attacks that impact on French people throughout the world.”

Hollande has given a green light to the army and external intelligence agency, the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), to kill individuals identified as High Value Targets (HVT) or High Value Individuals (HVI).

The French daily Le Monde reported, “Surrounded by military advisers who tend towards aggressive action, including his personal chief of staff General Benoît Puga, and members of [Defense Minister] Jean-Yves Le Drian’s staff, François Hollande has given clear directives on the matter to the military general staffs and to the DGSE: they have a green light to kill abroad, including through clandestine operations, terrorist leaders and other alleged enemies of France.”

In The Killers of the Republic, Nouzille exposed the assassination programme of successive French governments. He revealed the existence of a clandestine cell in the DGSE whose commandos are trained to carry out “Homo [i.e., homicide] operations.”

Hollande himself admitted that he had ordered targeted assassinations. Speaking to journalists Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme in their book A president should not say that, released last October, he said: “The army, the DGSE have a list of people who presumably were responsible for hostage taking or acts against our interests. I was asked. I said, Well, if you catch them, of course,” Hollande said. He has approved at least four targeted killings of Islamists abroad.

Nouzille states, however, the extent of the program has been minimized: “At least 40 HVT were executed overseas between 2013 and 2016—by the army, or the DGSE, or even more directly by allied countries based on intelligence provided by France. This is a tempo of about one operation per month—a tempo not seen since the end of the 1950s, during the Algerian war.”

According to Nouzille, French extrajudicial murders are carefully prepared, based on electronic intelligence, interrogation of prisoners, and imaging analyses. Once identified, the target is tracked in order to select the most opportune time to trigger the assassination.

The French army deliberately targeted and extra-judicially murdered a Frenchman, Salim Benghalem, near Raqqa, Syria, on the night of 8-9 October 2015, during the bombing of an Islamic State (IS) training camp.

Several relatives of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the Islamist who took responsibility for a hostage-taking after the attack on the Tiguentourine gas field near Aménas, Algeria, were apparently killed on PS orders. They include Abu Moghren Al-Tounsi, in September 2013; Fayçal Boussemane and the Mauritanian Al-Hassan Ould Al-Khalil, the son-in-law and spokesman of Belmokhtar, in November 2013; and Belmokhtar’s right-hand man, Omar Ould Hamaha, in March 2014.

The PS government has defended and promoted extrajudicial killings, claiming that this aims to defend the population from terrorist attack. In opposition to accusations by sections of the judiciary that Hollande is effectively reintroducing the death penalty and moreover without trial, Le Monde notes, “As the Elysée [presidential palace] and the general staffs see it, on the other hand, war against far-off, fanatical enemies justifies the primacy of military operations rather than uncertain recourse to French courts.”

The admission by Le Monde, a paper politically aligned with the PS, that Hollande and his top officials are ordering extrajudicial murders of people a court of law would not convict—acting quite literally as judge, jury, and executioner—is a warning to the working class. In line with the turn to drone murder and mass surveillance by the United States government and its allies across Europe, Hollande is giving extraordinary powers to the military/intelligence apparatus, laying the basis for the transformation of France into an authoritarian police state.

The state murder campaign takes place amid a state of emergency imposed after the 2015 Paris terrorist attack, and amid the development of an unprecedented mass spying program by US and European intelligence agencies, including French intelligence, targeted at the entire population. The observation that the French state is murdering people at a tempo unseen since the Algerian war, when it deployed mass torture against the Algerian people, itself testifies to the escalating criminality of official French politics.

No faction in the political establishment is campaigning against the assassinations arbitrarily decided by the executive without even the fig leaf of a legal decision. Extrajudicial executions are systematically hidden from the public. Pseudo-left parties like the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), which called for a Hollande vote in the 2012 presidential elections and backed the war in Libya and Syria, are silent on the French state’s assassination program.

The program is not aimed at stopping Islamist terrorist groups, which continue to serve as tools of French and NATO foreign policy in the Syrian war and beyond. Rather, the French state is using the continuing activities of terror networks it is well acquainted with and closely monitors in order to justify the build-up of its police powers—including, most threateningly, the head of state’s ability to order murders at will.

The terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015 were committed by individuals, like the Kouachi brothers involved in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo editorial office, who were well-known to French intelligence authorities. The Islamist networks they were a part of were cultivated by France and other NATO powers as they backed various Islamist elements in the regime change war in Libya and Syria.

Speaking on Thursday to Europe1, Nouzille said that many terrorist operatives, from Toulouse shooter Mohamed Merah to the Kouachi brothers who carried out the attack on Charlie Hebdo, were spotted but then “disconnected” by French intelligence.

US air strike kills 20 civilians in Syria

Jordan Shilton

A US B-52 bomber carried out an air strike in Idlib province in northern Syria last week, which claimed the lives of 20 civilians, according to Russia’s Ministry of Defense.

Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Jerasimov said at a news conference that the attack, launched against Sarmada in Idlib, took place without Russia being notified. He compared it to the strike against Syrian army units in September, which killed over 60 Syrian soldiers near Deir Ezzour, enabled Islamic State fighters to launch an offensive and torpedoed a US-Russian brokered ceasefire deal.

The Russian report contradicted initial US claims that its bombing raids on Idlib last week killed a senior al-Nusra Front commander and around 20 al-Nusra combatants. The US has not responded to Russia’s allegations of civilian deaths during the airstrike.

It is widely recognized that the US has vastly undercounted the civilian death toll resulting from the thousands of air strikes it has carried out in Syria since the fall of 2014. In October, Amnesty International estimated that the US-led coalition had killed at least 300 Syrian civilians and warned that more would follow in neighboring Iraq as the Mosul offensive got under way. Since then, tens of thousands of civilians have been forced from their homes in and around the Iraqi city of 1.5 million people as a result of the US-backed attack and an unknown number have lost their lives.

Amnesty’s death toll is comparatively low in relation to estimates provided by other rights groups, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights suggesting that between 600 and 1,000 civilians have died from US-led coalition air strikes.

In one incident near Manbij in northern Syria last July, the US military belatedly acknowledged that it had killed two dozen civilians several months later. But estimates from Syrian human rights groups put the number of dead from anywhere between 75 to over 200.

This record demonstrates once again the utter hypocrisy of the US political establishment and its media lackeys, who raised a hue and cry about atrocities carried out by Russian and Syrian forces during their assault on the rebel-held areas of eastern Aleppo during the latter half of 2016. While Syrian and Russian air strikes undoubtedly killed substantial numbers of civilians and were brutally conducted, they pale in comparison alongside the crimes of US imperialism, which fomented the Syrian civil war with the aim of bringing about regime change in Damascus and bears chief responsibility for its more than 400,000 casualties.

The incessant propaganda focusing on Russian war crimes was used to stampede public opinion behind a campaign for a military escalation against Russia that carries the danger of triggering a wider war between the major powers.

The debacle suffered by the US-backed rebels, which were dominated by the al-Qaida-affiliated al-Nusra Front, has only intensified the demands from the corporate-controlled media and significant factions of the political and military establishment for a more aggressive policy towards Russia. The New York Times reported Monday with concern on renewed Turkish-Russian cooperation in Syria, which it feared threatened to sideline the United States in determining the outcome of the civil war.

On Sunday, US special forces were deployed in a rare ground operation in eastern Syria, ostensibly with the aim of capturing a mid-level ISIS operative. The troops, based in Iraq, spent around 90 minutes on the ground and killed up to 25 in a firefight, according to independent estimates disputed by the US military.

The Pentagon refused to provide more details on the operation, but the comments of spokesman Captain Jeff Davis were significant. Referring to the ground operation and providing an indication of the support within the military for a substantial escalation of the Syrian war, he told the press, “We have done them before and we will do them again.”

The real target of the US’ military intervention in Syria is the Assad regime in Damascus, which Washington has been seeking to remove for almost six years. With its strategy of backing Islamist militias now in tatters, and with Russia aligning with Turkey to establish a peace deal that could see the US excluded from talks due to commence later this month, the option of a more direct military intervention is being considered.

A more frequent presence of US special forces on the ground would add yet another combustible element to the already explosive situation in Syria. US and Russian warplanes have repeatedly been involved in near misses in the crowded skies over the conflict zone, any one of which could have supplied the spark for a major escalation between the two nuclear-armed powers. While all of the major imperialist powers, including Germany, France and Britain, are part of the US-led coalition against ISIS, they are all pursuing their own predatory interests in Syria and the broader region.

One area where US special forces could be deployed in the immediate future is in the northwest near the town of al-Bab, where Turkish troops are trying to seize the strategically-important location from ISIS. Control of al-Bab would give Turkey significant influence over the subsequent push to take the ISIS capital of Raqqa.

Speaking anonymously to the Washington Post, US defense officials confirmed that work was underway to lift restrictions on US special forces personnel supporting the Turkish operation. Currently, US support troops only operate ten miles inside the Syrian border. Turkish officials said they are pushing for the US to break off ties with the Kurdish YPG, which Ankara views as a terrorist group. Washington continues to supply the YPG with arms via Iraq and is deliberating on providing the militias with more direct support.

US warplanes are also increasing their presence in the area, bringing a greater risk of a direct clash with Russia, which has been bombing ISIS locations around al-Bab in support of Turkey for several weeks.

“Flying anywhere in Syria is complicated. Flying up in that area where everyone seems to be flying would require some work,” a defense official told the Post. “I wouldn’t say we aren’t worried about it.”

This highly explosive situation is being further exacerbated by the push of substantial sections of the US political establishment for more punitive measures against Russia. US senators from both the Republican and Democratic parties tabled legislation Tuesday calling for stepped up sanctions on Moscow. The bill was sponsored by Republican Senator John McCain and Democrats Ben Cardin and Robert Menendez. According to Reuters, the legislation would impose visa bans and asset freezes on individuals who engage “in significant activities undermining the cybersecurity of public or private infrastructure and democratic institutions.”

There are unconfirmed reports that Russia has responded to the anti-Russian campaign in the US and the push for a more aggressive stance on Syria by increasing its own military deployments to the country.

The Kremlin publicly announced the withdrawal of its only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, from the Eastern Mediterranean last week. But according to the satellite imaging firm ISI, Iskander ballistic missile systems have been detected at Russia’s Latakia airbase in Syria. These systems would make it possible for Russia to fire nuclear-capable weapons throughout Syria and beyond.

Documents alleging Trump-Moscow ties leaked to media, intensifying conflict in US state

Joseph Kishore

US media outlets on Tuesday reported the existence of a previously undisclosed document from a former British intelligence official alleging secret contacts with officials in Moscow by Donald Trump and his campaign team. The document includes salacious details on Trump’s personal activities.

The document, initially prepared last year at the request of Republican and Democratic opponents of Trump, was reportedly obtained in December by Republican Senator John McCain, one of the most vociferous advocates of aggression against Russia. McCain then passed the document on to US intelligence agencies. A summary of the document was included in the report given last week by top US intelligence officials on alleged Russian interference in the US election to President-elect Trump and President Barack Obama.

The release of the document is the latest and most explosive episode in an escalating political struggle within the state apparatus that is without precedent. The conflict is centered on foreign policy issues, with sections of the state, led by the CIA, concerned that Trump will shift away from an aggressive stance toward Russia in favor of a more immediate focus on China.

The release of the document appears to be a last-ditch effort by sections of the intelligence apparatus to prevent the inauguration of Trump, which is only 10 days away. There will likely be congressional hearings into the allegations that could begin even before Trump takes office, assuming that he is inaugurated.

The document was leaked on the eve of Trump’s first scheduled press conference since July, slated for Wednesday.

Trump responded to the reports with a Tweet Tuesday night: “FAKE NEWS—A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!”

CNN first reported on the document Tuesday evening, citing “multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings” to Obama and Trump—that is, intelligence officials. One hour later, Buzzfeed published the full 35-page document prepared by the British intelligence official, from which a two-page summary was produced for the Obama and Trump briefings.

According to the Guardian, it and other media outlets had access to the revelations several weeks ago but declined to publish “because there was no way to independently verify them.”

The full document alleges an “extensive conspiracy between Trump’s campaign team and the Kremlin,” organized by Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. It asserts that Trump was aware of Russian involvement in the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails, and that in return for the leaks agreed to sideline Russian involvement in Ukraine as a major campaign issue.

The document also claims that Russian officials had obtained evidence of Trump’s “perverted sexual acts” while he was staying at a hotel in Moscow in 2013, and that the officials used the information to blackmail the current president-elect.

According to the media reports, the document was assembled by the former British intelligence official hired by a Washington research firm working for opponents of Trump during the 2016 election campaign. The official gave the information to the FBI sometime during the campaign, but FBI Director James Comey decided not to make it public. McCain reportedly found out about the document last month and again presented it to Comey and likely to other intelligence agencies.

The release of the document follows the publication last Friday of an unclassified version of the report by US intelligence agencies on allegations of Russian hacking of Democratic Party emails. The report contains no actual evidence of the charges, but it has been used by the media and those sections of the political establishment favoring aggression against Russia to demand harsher measures.

McCain has repeatedly called the hacking an “act of war,” while his close ally in the Senate, Republican Lindsey Graham, demanded over the weekend that Trump “make Russia pay a price for trying to interfere” in the election.

Economic nationalism and the breakdown of the post-war order

Nick Beams

In contrast to 2016, the new year has opened with relative stability in global financial markets. A year ago, markets experienced considerable turbulence in the context of the US Federal Reserve’s decision to lift interest rates by 0.25 percentage points, a sharp downturn in the price of oil, and a plunge in bank shares.

Thus far in 2017, it has been all quiet on the financial front, with US markets continuing to hover around the record highs they reached in December in the surge triggered by Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.

Behind the appearance of relative calm, however, major shifts have taken place that will have far-reaching consequences, not just for financial markets, but for the world economy more broadly.

One of the most significant features of 2016 was the rise of economic nationalism and the growth of right-wing nationalist and populist movements. The turn to economic nationalism is reflected in many areas of the world, but has found its sharpest expression in the “America First” policies espoused by incoming President Trump and the appointment to his cabinet of figures who openly advance this agenda, with China designated as one of the central targets.

The shift in orientation by the US ruling class has profound historical significance. One of the lessons drawn by the American ruling elites following the disasters produced by the decade of the 1930s, when the division of the world economy into currency and trading blocs led to World War II, was the need to base the post-war order on free trade, with protectionism eschewed at all cost.

What was called the “liberal” trade agenda was itself based on, and underwritten by, the unchallenged global economic dominance of American capitalism, which emerged relatively unscathed from the carnage of the Second World War, in contrast to the devastation of Europe and much of Asia. The war amplified the already dominant position of US industry and finance. American capitalism sponsored the establishment of a set of institutions and programmes—the dollar-based Bretton Woods monetary system, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the Marshall Plan—to stabilise and pry open the world market to its exports and investments and facilitate the profit-making of US corporations.

Today, after decades of protracted decline, US economic hegemony is a thing of the past and American capitalism finds itself threatened by the rise, in particular, of China. This is fundamentally what underlies the breakdown of the post-war economic order and the turn of the American ruling class to unbridled economic nationalism.

This has given rise to considerable concern about where the global economic system, and with it the entire system of political relations on which the stability of world capitalism has rested, is now headed.

Fears about the new US orientation were voiced in a column by Financial Times economics correspondent Martin Wolf published on January 6. It was headlined “The long and painful journey to world disorder.”

“It is not true that humanity cannot learn from history,” Wolf began. “It can and, in the case of the lessons of the dark period between 1914 and 1945, the west did. But it seems to have forgotten those lessons. We are living, once again, in an era of strident nationalism and xenophobia. The hopes of a brave new world of progress, harmony and democracy, raised by the market opening of the 1980s and the collapse of Soviet communism between 1989 and 1991, have turned to ashes.”

What lies ahead, he asked, for the US under a president who repudiates permanent alliances and embraces protectionism, and a battered European Union facing “illiberal democracy” in the east, Brexit, and the possibility that Marine Le Pen could be elected to the presidency in France?

Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman also devoted his first piece of the year to the same processes. Before Trump promised to “Make America Great Again,” he wrote, China, Russia and Turkey had already turned to what he called “nostalgic nationalism.” In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was leading an energetic campaign for “national revival,” while in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was combining a push to “modernise India” with an appeal to “Hindu pride.”

There was also a strong appeal to nationalism in the Brexit referendum, with the Leave campaign’s stress on a “Global Britain,” an attempt to appeal to “memories of the time when the UK was a dominant world power, not just a member of the club of 28 European nations.”

Rachman noted that it was somewhat difficult for any party in Germany to openly campaign on the slogan “Make Germany Great Again.” But while the slogan might be absent, at least to this point, similar forces are at work there—above all in key foreign policy, military and academic circles, where the assertion is heard repeatedly that Germany cannot simply function as a power within Europe, but must exercise its influence on a global scale.

The turn to economic nationalism is not rooted in the personality or psychology of Trump, Le Pen or any of the other political leaders. Nor is it simply a device by various politicians to exploit seething popular dissatisfaction with the existing economic and political order and use it for their own political advantage.

Such calculations are present, of course. But underneath the political manoeuvres and propaganda, profound objective forces are at work. These forces can be identified by reviewing the course of the world economy since the eruption of the US-based global financial crisis of 2008. This, as the World Socialist Web Site stressed at the time, was not a conjunctural downturn, but a breakdown in the functioning of the world capitalist economy.

At their first meeting in 2009, the leaders of the G-20 group of nations, representing 85 percent of the world economy, in confronting the most severe financial crisis since 1929, recognised the inherent dangers of a return to the conditions of the 1930s. From the outset, and at all subsequent meetings, they pledged to avoid protectionist and trade war measures. But the contradictions of the capitalist economy have proven to be more powerful than the pledges of capitalist politicians.

The policies enacted in response to the financial meltdown and the ensuing Great Recession were based on so-called quantitative easing, under which the world’s major central banks—the US Fed, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan—pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system. These measures were accompanied in China by a massive stimulus package, based on government spending and the rapid expansion of credit.

The policies of the major central banks averted a total financial meltdown, while the Chinese stimulus provided a significant boost for commodity-exporting countries, from Latin America and Africa to Australia. For a brief period, this created the illusion that the so-called BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—could provide a new base of stability for world capitalism. That prospect proved to be short-lived.

The unprecedented injection of money into the financial system did little or nothing to promote real economic growth in the major economies, on which the BRICS countries are ultimately dependent, but simply enriched a global financial oligarchy, while the broad mass of the working class were forced to pay for the financial largesse through cuts in real wages, social programmes and living standards, amid a rise in social inequality to record levels.

In the years following the financial crisis, the central bankers and capitalist politicians insisted that the financial measures they had enacted would eventually bring about an economic recovery. But this fiction has now been well and truly exposed. Investment, the key driver of the economy, remains persistently below pre-crisis trends. Productivity is falling. Deflation has become widespread. And, most significantly, world trade growth has slowed markedly. Last September, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) noted that in 2016, the growth in world trade would fall below the rate of growth in global gross domestic product, only the second such occurrence since 1982.

The overall situation is graphically depicted by the fact that the world economy as a whole is one sixth smaller than it would have been had pre-crisis growth trends been maintained.

In response to this situation, the past year has seen, as the WTO noted, the increased use of protectionist measures, especially by the major economies, notwithstanding all the pledges to the contrary. It is within this broad economic context that Trump and his “America First” agenda, and the turn to such economic nationalist policies by other major powers, must be placed.

In the final analysis, they are the response by the ruling elites to their inability to devise any measures to promote sustainable economic growth. Consequently, the world market is increasingly becoming a battleground—a development that will become ever more apparent in the coming year.

There are striking historical parallels here. In the aftermath of the economic breakdown that led to World War I, there were numerous efforts in the decade of the 1920s to devise measures to revive the belle époque that had preceded the war. All of them failed, and the major powers responded to the contraction of the world market with a war of each against all, leading ultimately to World War II.

There are many differences between the situation today and that of 90 years ago. But the basic trends remain the same. In fact, the basic contradiction between the development of an interdependent global economy and its division into rival and conflicting nation-states has intensified.

This is reflected in the lamentations of bourgeois economic commentators such as Martin Wolf over the breakdown of globalisation. Just over a century ago, the international capitalist elites implemented their response to the breakdown of the nation-state system, unleashing on mankind the horrors of world war. Three years later, the international working class, through the conscious leadership provided by the Bolshevik Party, led by Lenin and Trotsky, gave its response to the crisis—the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, the first shot in the world socialist revolution.

There are, indeed, lessons of history that must be drawn. If mankind is to avert another catastrophe, the deepening social hostility to the present economic and political order must be transformed into a conscious struggle by the working class for the programme of international socialism, not as some kind of distant hope, but as the only viable and practical programme of the day.

USAID African Young Water and Sanitation Professionals (AfYWSP) Scholarships 2017

Application Deadline: 28th February, 2017.

Eligible Countries: African countries

Field of Research: The topics selected for this scholarship program for the 2016-2017 academic year are as follow:

1.    Non-revenue water
2.    Water quality
3.    Water services provision in low income urban areas
4.    Faecal sludge management
5.    Urban & peri-urban sanitation
6.    Use of ICTs in water and sanitation service provision

About the Award: This program, funded by USAID West Africa through the AfriCap Program (WASH – African Water Association – AfWA – Capacity Building Program –AfriCap), will provide young graduate students at the graduate level (Master II) with research scholarships. Each grant, amounting to $ 1,000, will reward each selected project in accordance with the budget.

Type: Research, Fellowship

Eligibility: Candidates for the award of a scholarship shall formulate their research topics in relation to one of the themes proposed in this call for applications. They may also apply with one of the research topics proposed by one of AfWA members. The topics will be available on AfWA’s website. To apply, applicants must meet the following criteria:

•    Be a citizen of a West African country;
•    Have duly registered in their academic institutions;
•    Speak and write fluently in the language used by the academic institution;
•    Have obtained an average greater than or equal to 12/20 or B in Master I;
•    Present an application file including the last diploma, the transcripts of Master 1, the curriculum vitae, three letters of recommendation (one should be from the academic supervisor), the research proposal as specified in section 1.3 above, a letter of motivation and a plan of action for the studies.

In case of equality, preference will be given to the female candidate.

Selection: A first screening will be carried out by the academic institution. This will enable it to select and transmit the five best applications to AfWA. AfWA’s Selection Committee for the award of scholarships to Young Professionals, on the basis of the applications submitted by the various institutions, will establish the final list of beneficiaries.

Value of Scholarship: As part of this scholarship, the maximum amount allocated per beneficiary is 1,000 US Dollars. Sixty per cent (60%) of this amount will be paid to the recipient when the detailed plan of the research project is finalized, approved by the Research Director and received by AfWA’s Research and Capacity Building Program before the deadline. The remaining forty percent (40%) will be paid once the recipient submits the final electronic copy.

How to Apply: Applicants must submit their application electronically simultaneously to the contact person of AfWA in their institution and to the coordination of the program (vyao@afwa-hq.org and gdjagoun@afwa-hq.org).

Download the application form HERE

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: AfWA (African Water Association)

Important Notes: The selected list will be posted on AfWA’s website and each beneficiary will receive an official notification from AfWA.

Federal Government Scholarship for Nigerian Undergraduate, Masters and PhD (Bilateral Educational Agreement) 2017/2018 -Overseas

Application Deadline: The 2017/2018 BEA interviews are between Monday 13th February – Thursday 16th February 2017 across the six geopolitical zones. Candidates are advised to apply online before these dates.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Nigeria

To be taken at (country): Russia, China, Morocco, Turkey, Algeria, Romania, Serbia, Japan, Ukraine, Cuba, Greece, Czech Republic, Syria, Macedonia, Mexico, Egypt, Tunisia etc.

Accepted Subject Areas?

• Undergraduate level – Engineering, Geology, Agriculture, Sciences, Mathematics, Languages, Environmental Sciences, Sports, Law, Social Sciences, Biotechnology, Architecture, Medicine (very limited), etc; and
• Postgraduate level (Masters Degree and Ph.D) in all fields.

About the Federal Scholarship: The Honourable Minister of Education, is hereby inviting interested and qualified Nigerians to participate in the 2017/2018 Nomination Interview for Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) Scholarship Awards for:

• Undergraduate (UG) studies tenable in Russia, Morocco, Algeria, Serbia, Hungary, Egypt, Turkey, Cuba, Romania, Ukraine, Japan, Macedonia; and
• Postgraduate (PG) studies tenable in Russia (for those whose first degrees were obtained from Russia), China, Hungary, Serbia, Turkey, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, e.t.c.

Type: The Awards are for Undergraduate (UG) and Postgraduate (PG) studies.

Eligibility Criteria

• Undergraduate Scholarship:

• All applicants for undergraduate degree courses must possess a minimum qualification of Five (5) Distinctions (As & Bs) in the Senior Secoundary School Certificate, WAEC (May/June) only in the subjects relevant to their fields of study including English Language and Mathematics.
• Certificates should not be more than Two (2) years old (2014 & 2015).
• Age limit is from 18 to 20 years.

• Postgraduate Scholarship:

• All applicants must hold a First Degree with at least 2nd Class Upper Division.
• The applicants who are previous recipients of Foreign Awards must have completed at least two (2) years post qualification or employment practice in Nigeria.
• All applicants must have completed N.Y.S.C.
• Age limit is 35 years for Masters and 40 years for Ph.D.

• Since the BEA countries are non-English speaking, applicants should be prepared to undertake a mandatory one year foreign languare of the country of choice which will be the standard medium of instruction; and

• All applicants for Hungarian Scholarship must visit the website: www.stipendumhungaricum.hu.

Number of Scholarships: Several

What are the benefits? The participating countries are responsible for the tuition and accommodation, while Nigeria government takes care of supplement, warm clothing, health insurance, research grant where applicable and take off.

How long will sponsorship last? The duration of the scholarship offer ranges from 4- 9 years depending on the level of study and the country.

Interview Dates and Zones (Venues): 

North West: Location of interview is Kasu Main Campus

• Mon 13th Feb: Sokoto and Zamfara states
• Tues 14th Feb: Kano and Kebbi states
• Wed 15th Feb: Jigawa and Katsina states
• Thurs 16th Feb: Kaduna state

North East: Location of interview is FGGC Jalingo, Taraba State

• Mon 13th Feb: Borno and Yobe states
• Tues 14th Feb: Bauchi and Gombe states
• Wed 15th Feb:  Adamawa state
• Thurs 16th Feb: Taraba state

North Central: Crowther Memorial College, Lokoja Kogi state

• Mon 13th Feb: Benue state and FCT
• Tues 14th Feb: Niger and Plateau states
• Wed 15th Feb:   Nasarawa and Kwara state
• Thurs 16th Feb: Kogi state

South West: School of Science, Okebola, Ibadan, Oyo state

• Mon 13th Feb: Osun and Ondo states
• Tues 14th Feb: Lagos and Ogun states
• Wed 15th Feb:  Ekiti state
• Thurs 16th Feb: Oyo state

South South: Federal COE Tech Permanent Site along Asaba-Ibusa rd., Asaba, Delta state

• Mon 13th Feb: Cross River and  Rivers states
• Tues 14th Feb: Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa states
• Wed 15th Feb: Edo  state
• Thurs 16th Feb: Delta state

South East: Law Faculty, Ebonyi State University, Ebonyi state

• Mon 13th Feb: Anambra  state
• Tues 14th Feb: Imo state
• Wed 15th Feb: Abia and Enugu states
• Thurs 16th Feb: Ebonyi state

What to bring to Interview: All eligible applicants are to report for interview at the venues scheduled for their respective Zones of origin for proper identification. Two sets of the Printed Completed application forms are usually submitted at the various interview centres with the following attachments:

• Two sets of Photocopies of Educational Certificates and Testimonials of previous schools attended with the originals for sighting;
• One certificate is accepted i.e WAEC of May/June only; • Statement of results must be confirmed by WAEC and forwarded to the Director/Secretary, Federal Scholarship Board, Abuja;
• Two copies of Birth certificate
• State of Origin/LGA certificate duly signed, stamped and dated;
• Four (4) passport sized coloured photographs on white background;
• Academic transcripts and NYSC certificates will be required from applicants for Postgraduate Studies.

How to Apply: Candidates nominated and finally selected by the awarding BEA countries will be required to submit to Federal Scholarship Board the following:

• Photocopies of Authenticated academic certificates;
• Data page of current International passport, and
• Specified Medical Reports & Police clearance certificate.

Visit the scholarship webpage for details

Sponsors: The Federal Government of Nigeria through the Federal Ministry Of Education, through the Federal Scholarship Board (FSB), Plot 245 Samuel Ademulegun Street Central Business District, Abuja