War Consciousness and the F-35

Robert Koehler

“The F-35 Lightning II Program (also known as the Joint Strike Fighter Program) is the Department of Defense’s focal point for defining affordable next generation strike aircraft weapon systems for the Navy, Air Force, Marines, and our allies. The F-35 will bring cutting-edge technologies to the battlespace of the future.”

Lurking behind this perky little PR blurb, from the F-35’s own website, is the void into which the soul of the human race has disappeared.

This is war consciousness: locked into place, awash in money. The deeply flawed F-35, the most expensive military weapons system in history, is ultimately projected to cost over $1 trillion, but no matter: “It will bring cutting-edge technologies to the battlespace of the future.”

What does that mean? It sounds like an ad for the next Star Trek movie, but it’s U.S. foreign policy — or, more accurately, the defining assumption of nationhood: We will always be at war with someone. It’s the quintessential self-fulfilling prophecy. When we spend trillions of dollars “preparing” for war, by God, we’ll find an enemy, as ever.

This is the consciousness we must transcend, and opposing Lockheed Martin’s way-over-budget, absolutely-unnecessary-for-national-security F-35 fighter jet, which is supposed to be ready to go by 2019, is certainly a good place to start.

“The F-35 is a weapon of offensive war, serving no defensive purpose,” reads the petition now in circulation, initiated by a dozen organizations. “It is planned to cost the U.S. $1.4 trillion over 50 years. Because starvation on earth could be ended for $30 billion and the lack of clean drinking water for $11 billion per year, it is first and foremost through the wasting of resources that this airplane will kill. . . .

“Wars are endangering the United States and other participants rather than protecting them. Nonviolent tools of law, diplomacy, aid, crisis prevention, and verifiable nuclear disarmament should be substituted for continuing counterproductive wars. Therefore, we, as signers of this petition, call for the immediate cancellation of the F-35 program as a whole, and the immediate cancellation of plans to base any such dangerous and noisy jets near populated areas.”

At the local end of this travesty, the F-35s, which would be based in Burlington, Vermont, and Fairbanks, Alaska, are so dangerous they could render nearby residential areas uninhabitable. The extreme noise level could cause cognitive impairment in children, according to a World Health Organization report; and the planes’ high risk of crashing, combined with highly toxic materials used in their construction, put local residents at an unacceptable risk.

But the absurdity of subjecting people to such risks is magnified exponentially by the needlessness to do so.

Roots Action, one of the organizations calling for the F-35’s cancellation, describes the fighter jet as “a first strike stealth weapon designed to penetrate air space undetected. It will be used for massive killing and destruction in more wars like Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Vietnam in which millions of civilians have been killed and wounded and millions of refugees created.”

Yet these wars didn’t advance any rational agenda whatsoever. They didn’t make America safe, much less “great.” To confirm this point, the Roots Action site cuts to CIA director John Brennan, testifying before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee last June:

“Unfortunately,” Brennan tells the committee, “despite all our progress against ISIL on the battlefield and in the financial realm, our efforts have not reduced the group’s terrorism capability and global reach.”

He goes on: “The resources needed for terrorism are very modest, and the group would have to suffer even heavier losses of territory, manpower, and money for its terrorist capacity to decline significantly.”

Let’s sit in silence with these words for a moment.

In the silence, the word “why” emerges with enormous force, more force, perhaps, than it’s possible to bear, at least when one begins adding up the costs of our ineffective efforts. Why are the weapons of war the only tools we choose to wield — the only tools we can imagine wielding — against the threat we call terrorism? Why are the multi-billion-dollar agencies of government trapped at such a feeble level of consciousness — war consciousness — that they are able to envision nothing but the wreaking of more destruction to “keep us safe,” when everything about this activity weakens us, endangers us, makes us ever less safe?

What if we began waging peace against terrorism? That is to say, what if we began to recognize that understanding the enemy is what’s crucial, while thinking we can destroy what we fear is an illusion of monstrous proportions?

Consider: “The Defense Department is designing robotic fighter jets that would fly into combat alongside manned aircraft,” the New York Times reported in October. “It has tested missiles that can decide what to attack, and it has built ships that can hunt for enemy submarines, stalking those it finds over thousands of miles, without any help from humans. . . .

“Defense officials say the weapons are needed for the United States to maintain its military edge over China, Russia and other rivals, who are also pouring money into similar research (as are allies, such as Britain and Israel). The Pentagon’s latest budget outlined $18 billion to be spent over three years on technologies that included those needed for autonomous weapons.”

What a world we’re planning! I believe there’s still time to change directions, but the demand to do so must begin today.

U.S.-China War: a Danger Hidden from the American People

ERIC SOMMER

Beijing.

There is a growing danger that U.S. government policies may lead to war between the U.S. and China, two nuclear-armed powers  But this danger is being systematically concealed by leading U.S. political figures from the American people who, like the Chinese people, do not want to go to war.

Aware of popular antipathy to war, U.S. politicians who advocate belligerent actions against China are relying on euphemisms to describe the hostile measures they put forward.  They disguise the danger by using phrases such as ‘sending signals to China’ or as ‘firmly drawing the line’.  Warfare, and nuclear warfare danger, is virtually never mentioned.

For some time Trump, and political figures who support him, have exuded hostility to China.  They have sought to poison public  perception of China by blaming it for U.S. economic problems, by setting the stage for a trade war and labeling China , a ‘currency manipulator’, a ‘job stealer’, and have suggested a punitive 45% import duty. But far more serious are the unprecedented appointments of former military generals to key ministerial positions in Trump’s cabinet, along with the promises of greatly expanded U.S. military presence and more aggressive actions in the South China sea.

The latest – and one of the most ominous – indications that U.S. policy may lead to war is from Trumps nominee for Secretary of State, the ministerial position in charge of U.S. foreign affairs. In Rex Tilletrs’ testimony before the U.S. Congress a few days ago he declared: “We are going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.”

These are statements which prepare the ground for war.  U.S. political figures and mass media have long promoted  the false claim that China wishes to block ‘freedom of navigation’ in the South China Sea.  Now the proposed official in charge of all U.S. foreign policy proposes that the U.S. navy block freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, by preventing Chinese ships form reaching Chinese islands and islets.

It does not require much imagination that such a scenario is apt to lead to military conflict, a conflict which can spiral out of anyone’s control into a catastrophe of unimaginable dimension.   If Chinese history teaches anything, it is that the Chinese people, and government, will not tolerate attacks on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China.  From the mass resistance to the two British invasions of China in the 19th century, to the decades-long struggle of millions of Chinese led by the Chinese Communist party and the KMT against the Japanese invaders in WWII, to the insistence that Taiwan is part of one China, it should be clear that any attempt to encroach on Chinese territory will be necessarily and fiercely resisted.

The people of America, China, and of the world, clearly do not want yet another war, especially one between nuclear armed powers such as the U.S. and China.  It’s high time that U.S. political figures who advocate belligerent actions towards China end their deception and admit to the American people – and the worlds people – that highly belligerent policies towards China threaten the lives and well-being of hundreds of millions of American and Chinese people alike.

Norway moves to join NATO anti-missile shield targeting Russia

Terje Maloy

Norway is intensifying its plans to join the US-NATO missile defence system and serve as a strategically located military outpost of NATO on Russia’s northwestern border.

A joint analysis group from the Norwegian Defence Forces and the US Missile Defence Agency is expected to finalize its advice to the Norwegian government by the end of this year. The group will make recommends on joining the NATO ballistic missile defence system. The main components are expected to be the Globus II/III radar, on the Russian border just a few kilometres from the home base of Russia’s strategic submarines, and sea-based AEGIS systems on five Norwegian frigates.

The Maritime Theater Missile Defense Forum (MDMDF), which has existed for 17 years, was founded by the United States, the Netherlands and Germany. Several other countries joined later, including Norway in 2014. Now, three years later, the recommendations will be made.

Norway’s right-wing prime minister, Erna Solberg, already said in a 2015 statement to NTB, “It is necessary for us to participate in this. As a committed NATO member, we should also be committed to that part of the strategy,” i.e., the missile defense system.

This marks a significant shift from Norway’s stance 15 years ago. In 2003, when US President George W. Bush scrapped the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, supposedly to counter threats from Iran, the move was universally condemned across the Norwegian political spectrum. Jens Stoltenberg, the current NATO general secretary who was then then prime minister for Labour, claimed he was skeptical about the system at a summit in Moscow in 2007.

Since then, Norway—where defence and security policy traditionally is formulated by consensus between the main parties, which are all strongly pro-NATO—has moved towards a stance more favourable to missile defence.

The Klassekampen newspaper writes, “Cables from the US embassy, leaked by WikiLeaks, show that the US government started an intense diplomatic offensive after Stoltenberg’s statement. Ambassador Ben Whitley wrote: ‘Due to this pressure, Norway will continue to criticise the missile shield in public, while secretly working for missile defence within NATO.’”

When Stoltenberg became Secretary General of NATO, it became clear that he had had a change of heart. On May 13, 2016, he personally broke the ground for the construction of the US-led missile defence site in Redzikowo, Poland. The day before that, he and other US and NATO officials gathered in Romania to launch another anti-missile site.

The Defence Ministry claimed that “the NATO ballistic missile defence is a purely defensive capability,” a position that has repeatedly been criticized as dishonest by Russia.

Moscow fears that the missile shield will alter the strategic balance—giving Washington and NATO the ability to launch a first nuclear strike on Russia and prevent Russia from launching a counter-strike. This would effectively allow NATO not only to threaten and dictate terms to Russia, but also to destroy it in a nuclear war.

In line with the rearmament and military escalation aimed at Russia taking place across Europe, Norway is executing a drastic change in its military policy, towards a far more aggressive posture. Three hundred US Marines will be deployed in the central areas of Norway, officially on a “rotating” basis. The US forward storage areas in the country—huge caves with equipment for, amongst others, 16,000 Marines—have been upgraded to store state-of-the-art military equipment.

Norwegian forces are increasingly integrated with other NATO forces. Though Norway spends $7.3 billion annually on the military—more than Sweden ($5.7 billion), a country whose population is twice as large—former Norwegian Chief of the Defence Force Sverre Diesen said: “Norway and other small states are probably too small to maintain their own national defence.” He envisages a closer cooperation and shared capabilities with other NATO allies or the non-NATO states of Finland and Sweden.

Labour and Norway’s two main right-wing parties want an increased focus on “strategic assets” like the F-35 fighter, submarines and surveillance capabilities. Ground forces are to get less priority, except for an elite expeditionary force that can be used at the request of other allies. In case of a war, Norway’s 52 F-35 fighter-bombers are supposed to execute deep strikes in Russian territory against ships, naval bases and air bases.

Such preparations underscore the fact that Norway would rapidly be drawn into any war that NATO launched against Russia—a fact that has prompted comment in academic circles.

In a May 2016 interview with NRK, MIT Professor Theodore Postol warned that Norway “would be dragged into a conflict between the great powers. … The radar in Vardø is of the type GBR-P, formerly deployed on the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific. It was formerly intended to be the most important radar in the US missile shield, to be deployed in the Czech Republic.”

The Norwegian Department of Defence denied Postol’s claims, in line with its routine denials of all information in this sensitive area, declaring: “The radar has the same mission as the one it replaces. DoD is therefore of the opinion that there is no reason for reactions towards Norway.”

The Norwegian military’s denials notwithstanding, their plans unquestionably make Norway a target for Russian military action. When Denmark decided to join the missile defence system in 2015 with several frigates, Russia’s ambassador to Denmark, Mikhail Vanin, wrote in an open letter that the country will be a nuclear target if the government joins NATO’s missile defence system.

“I don’t think that Danes fully understand the consequence if Denmark joins the American-led missile defence shield,” wrote Vanin. Similar Russian responses came after NATO bases in Poland and Romania were announced.

Norway’s important military infrastructure, despite its population of only five million people, mean it would also play a substantial role in the event of any conflict and therefore would be a target in a war. It has the sixth biggest military budget per capita—after the United States, Israel and some Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms—and joined the NATO wars of aggression in Yugoslavia and Libya.

Norway participated in a 2015 exercise where the goal was to discover and intercept enemy missiles. A Norwegian frigate participated with radar sensors. Though official reports released for public consumption only mentioned sensors and tracking, these ships are equipped with missiles that are able to shoot down enemy missiles.

According to the book The Satellite War by Bård Wormdahl, a Norwegian journalist who has written several books about Norway’s secret military cooperation with USA, Norway has three important radar stations across the globe. One of them is in Vardø, as close to Russia as you can get, and the other two are placed in [the arctic] Svalbard-archipelago and in Antarctica.

The radar in Vardø and presumably the one in Svalbard, are of high value in American nuclear strategy. They are vital to discover and intercept Russian missiles over the North Pole headed towards the continental US. In the past few years, a steady stream of senior US politicians has inspected these radars, including Secretary of Defence Ash Carter and Senator John McCain.

Since Svalbard was demilitarized by a 1925 treaty, the radar installation there is probably in breach of that treaty. Therefore, the official purpose of John Kerry’s visit to Svalbard in July 2016 was to “view the effects of climate change.”

Similarly, when McCain visited Ny-Aalesund on Svalbard in August 2015, it was declared that the purpose was “to highlight the plight of polar bears.”

Pensions cut for 330,000 Australian retirees

Will Morrow

The New Year has opened with a significant reduction in the pensions of more than 330,000 Australian retirees. The changes to aged pensions, which came into force on January 1, are a sign of the far-reaching assault on the democratic rights of the working class that will be escalated in 2017 by the Liberal-National Coalition government.

Even prior to the cuts, the pension was already below the poverty line, because successive governments had refused to raise it in line with cost of living increases, particularly housing costs. The maximum base payment for a single pensioner is currently just under $400 per week, while the poverty line is $425. That base amount is reduced, however, according to the total value of assets—excluding the family home—that pensioners own above a cut-off threshold. The threshold varies depending on whether they own their home, and whether they live alone or with a partner.

Since its introduction in 1909, the Australian aged pension has always been means-tested. The new cutbacks follow from the government’s changes to the means test, which were announced in 2015. These affect how quickly payments are reduced above the full pension threshold. Previously, they fell by $1.50 per fortnight for every $1,000 of assets a retiree owned above the threshold. Now this amount has doubled to $3.

Those immediately affected by the change have relatively large retirement savings compared to the majority of the 3.5 million current aged pensioners. However, they also include workers who have been able, due to a lifetime of labour with relatively decent wages and conditions, to contribute toward their retirement. For example, the threshold of combined assets above which a couple, who own their family home, will begin to have their pension reduced, is $375,000. As a result of the cuts, a couple whose combined retirement savings are $600,000, will see their pension cut from $15,000 to $2,000 per year, or $1,250 to $167 per month.

Such savings are not rare for couples made up of teachers, nurses, tradesmen or mid-level public servants, for example, who have worked for 30 years and had part of their income automatically transferred into Australia’s compulsory superannuation retirement scheme. The latest cut will mean that their savings will likely be insufficient to fund a retirement lasting 20 years or more, leaving them with the prospect of continuing to work past the retirement age, or being eventually forced to depend on the poverty-level pension alone.

These measures are just the thin edge of the wedge. Their real aim is to establish a precedent for expanding the means-test, in order to restrict access to the aged pension to a tiny minority of the population and thereby destroy the right to a decent retirement for millions of ordinary working people.

Historically, Australian governments have introduced major attacks on social welfare in precisely this manner. The Hawke-Keating Labor governments of 1983–1996 ended free tertiary education, for instance, by first introducing compulsory student fees for international students only, and only later expanding the measure to cover the entire student population. Current tertiary student debt in Australia stands at $42.3 billion, and is expected to blowout to $185 billion by 2026.

In a similar vein, then Prime Minister Paul Keating introduced compulsory superannuation in 1992. At the time, it was touted to workers as a major new benefit, which would raise their living standards once they retired. Its real purpose was to transfer the cost of retirement from the state, onto the backs of workers themselves. Instead of being able to live on their wages, and then retire on a decent, government-funded pension, 9.5 percent of their wages are currently compulsorily banked into giant Superannuation funds.

Not surprisingly, the superannuation scheme has been used to justify the starving of the pension to what it is today—a poverty-level allowance. The government spends 3.5 percent of GDP on the pension, less than half the OECD average of 7.9 percent. One third of Australian pensioners live in poverty, the second highest rate in the OECD, according to a report released earlier this year.

For the corporate and financial elite, the Superannuation funds, containing the earnings of millions of workers, have been an important source of capital. Currently they own assets of more than $2 trillion. The trade union bureaucracies played a critical role in selling the scheme to their members, and were handsomely rewarded for services rendered. The unions were granted joint control of industry superannuation funds and thus help administer the gambling of workers’ retirement savings on Australian and global markets. Hundreds of thousands of workers, who were instructed to place their “super” in riskier, more remunerative investments, saw their savings wiped out in the financial crash of 2008–2009.

Now, workers’ superannuation savings are being used by the government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to justify further cutting the pension. Nevertheless, it has sought to present the changes as creating the basis for a more “equitable” distribution of funds to pensioners. In order to maintain this fiction, the latest measures included a slight increase of $30 in the fortnightly payments of approximately five percent of aged pensioners.

The entire package is forecast to save $2.3 billion by 2020. It was originally part of a raft of legislation but the government was unable to push through parliament the other elements, which included cutting pensions across the board. Among them were raising the retirement age from 67 to 70, in the wake of the former Rudd Labor government’s increase, in 2009, from 65 to 67—and reducing inflation-related pension rises.

As far as the financial elites are concerned, the cuts so far are woefully inadequate. A series of think-tank and media reports have decried the approaching “blow-out” in pension obligations with the retirement of the “baby-boomers.” These were children born in the immediate post-war years, between 1946 and 1964, who began their working lives in the late 1960s and 1970s. While initially, only 10 percent of retirees will be affected by the latest cuts, the proportion is expected to grow to up to 40 percent by 2055, according to a report by Industry Super Australia.

A Productivity Commission report published in October 2015 noted that the pension makes up the largest single expenditure of welfare spending, at $45 billion per year. ABC columnist Greg Jericho commented at the time: “The Productivity Commission’s paper makes clear, when you talk of budgetary concerns of welfare you’re really talking about the age pension—all else is just tinkering around the edges.”

When the Australian pension was introduced in 1909, the mean life expectancy was 55—ten years younger than the age of retirement. Today, average life expectancy is 82, fifteen years older than the retirement age. As far as the ruling elite is concerned, this is the real problem: workers are living for too long. The right of ordinary workers to live a long life, in comfortable retirement, after decades of labour, is regarded as an intolerable burden on the wealth of the elites.

The next line of attack in the war on pension entitlements will be to include the family home in the pension means-test, eventually forcing many workers to sell their home in order to fund their retirement. Liberal-Democratic Party Senator David Leyonhjelm voiced the contemptuous attitude of the political establishment when he told ABC radio yesterday. “Taking the pension shouldn’t be something you aspire to, it should be something you try to avoid because it signifies you’re in a low income group.” He then repeated his call to include the value of the family home in the pension means test.

The Greens have justified their vote for the new cuts by repeating the Turnbull government’s fraudulent claim that it is targeted at the rich. In reality, the Greens’ vote was aimed at demonstrating their bona fides as a party of austerity that could be trusted by the financial elite. After voting for the latest measures in June 2015, Greens leader Richard Di Natale attacked the “partisanship” of the Labor and Liberal-National parties, and declared: “The Greens have demonstrated that we’re prepared to show some leadership...”

Labor, which has been at the forefront of the assault on pensions since introducing compulsory Superannuation in 1992, has launched a public campaign against the latest cuts that is as dishonest as it is cynical. After voting against the legislation in 2015, Labor reversed its position in the lead-up to the 2016 federal election, and announced that if it won, it would implement the cuts as well. Nonetheless, the party’s treasury spokesman, Chris Bowen, last week demagogically attacked the government as one “that will find any way they can to make life harder for pensioners,” according to a report in the Australian on December 29.

Moreover, after Rudd had increased the retirement age by two years, once in opposition, Labor claimed to be mortified by the Abbott government’s attempt to raise it by another three years.

In line with their counterparts in Europe and the US, the entire Australian political establishment is united in its attempts to place the full burden of the ever-worsening global economic crisis squarely on the shoulders of the working class, by destroying its hard-won rights to decent wages, working conditions and social services, such as public health and education, and to a decent publicly-funded retirement for all.

Industrial court endorses massive pay cuts at Australian power station

Oscar Grenfell

The Fair Work Commission (FWC), the federal government’s industrial tribunal, yesterday granted an application by AGL to terminate the existing workplace agreement at its Loy Yang A power plant in the Latrobe Valley, about 150 kilometres east of Melbourne.

The decision clears the way for the energy giant to impose massive pay cuts—estimated at between 30 and 65 percent—on its 570 employees, and tear up working conditions and entitlements for which workers have fought for decades.

The FWC intervention is the latest stage in a sweeping assault on the jobs, wages and conditions of energy workers in the Latrobe Valley and throughout the country, overseen by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments, assisted by the trade unions.

FWC deputy president Richard Clancy made clear that the ruling was aimed at helping AGL push ahead with a pro-business overhaul of Loy Yang. “I am persuaded that a change in the status quo through the termination of the agreement will better support good faith bargaining for a new agreement that delivers productivity benefits,” he said.

In other words, the decision is intended to bludgeon the workforce into accepting a deal that will boost the plant’s profitability and destroy existing conditions, following an 18-month dispute over a new enterprise bargaining agreement.

Workers overwhelmingly rejected two previous agreements put forward by the company, which removed clauses relating to overtime, manning levels, pay and working conditions. AGL also sought to tear-up job security provisions, paving the way for forced redundancies.

By abolishing the existing agreement, AGL can place most of its workforce on the base rate under the 2010 Electrical Power Industry Award. In October, the Latrobe Valley Express reported that a letter signed by Loy Yang’s general manager Steve Rieniets showed that under that award, weekly wages for a unit attendant would plummet 65 percent, from $2,787 to $1,014. The company is also seeking to halve its overtime wage bill, from $20 million per year to $10 million.

One anonymous worker told the Sydney Morning Herald he was “flabbergasted” by the FWC ruling. “Yes we are on quite reasonable salaries, but it’s not extravagant compared to other plant operators around Australia. The award is for minimum basic electrician wages—we are not basic electricians, we are operating a major power station.” Loy Yang A generates up to 30 percent of the state of Victoria’s electricity supply.

The tribunal decision sets a precedent for wage cuts that will be used against other workers across the country. This is a direct product of the actions of the trade unions covering the power station.

Last month, the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) and the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) called off a one-day strike scheduled for December 28, without consultation with their members. The move followed a notice from AGL declaring it would retaliate by locking out the workforce. The Victorian state Labor government, which is supported by the major unions, also threatened to intervene through the FWC to prevent industrial action.

Union officials, having already stated that any strike would merely seek to “pressure” the company, responded by showing they were anxious to strike a deal with AGL, at the expense of their members.

Geoff Dyke, Victorian district secretary of the CFMEU’s Mining and Energy division, told the media the union had offered 30–40 major concessions in order to “reach an agreement” with AGL. Dyke and other officials complained that AGL had held no backroom meetings with them for up to eight months. Thus, the union’s real concern is to preserve its own position at the bargaining table.

The role of the unions at Loy Yang is paralleled throughout the energy and mining sectors. At power plants and mines around the country, the major corporations are using the slump in commodity prices and the global economic crisis to justify the destruction of working conditions and basic rights.

Time and again, the unions have isolated workers, collaborated with company managements, and promoted illusions in the FWC, a pro-business tribunal established, with the support of the unions, by the last federal Labor government.

In December, the FWC banned a strike by workers at Esso Australia (ExxonMobil)’s gas operations in southeastern Victoria. Workers were fighting moves by Esso to overhaul staffing and shift arrangements, and destroy mandated pay arrangements, in a bid to cut wages by 40–50 percent.

The state Labor government applied to the FWC to outlaw the strike, under Labor’s Fair Work laws, because it would “have a huge and damaging impact on Victoria.” The unions had repeatedly appealed to the FWC to intervene in the dispute.

In the Latrobe Valley, the unions have overseen the destruction of thousands of jobs over the past three decades. Since the Victorian Labor government of Joan Kirner began the privatisation of the state’s electricity industry in the early 1990s, up to 15,000 jobs have been lost in the region. The number of power workers across the state declined from 21,500 in 1990 to 8,000 in 2005.

The unions are now enforcing the shutdown of major sections of the energy sector.

Last November, ENGIE, a French multinational, announced it would close the Hazelwood power station in the Latrobe Valley, destroying 450 permanent jobs and 350 casual positions. The CFMEU acknowledged that it had heard “talk” of the closure plans for years. The union touted the company’s worthless claims that it would retrain workers. It called for the shutdown, slated for March, to be carried out in a “phased out way” to help prevent workers’ opposition from erupting.

At the nearby Maryvale paper mill, the CFMEU is seeking to coerce more than 900 workers to accept a 5 percent pay cut, worth up to $100 a week. According to the Herald Sun, there is substantial opposition to the union-company attempts to blackmail workers into accepting the wage cut by threatening to close the plant.

There is already a dire social crisis in the Latrobe Valley. Unemployment in the town of Morwell stands at an estimated 19.7 percent, and a 2015 report listed it among the seven most disadvantaged areas in Victoria. An entire generation of young people faces a future without a permanent, full-time job.

Workers at Loy Yang, Maryvale and Hazelwood have to take a stand. The only way to oppose the race to the bottom being imposed by state and federal governments and the major companies is to break with the trade unions and strike out on a new path. A struggle in defence of jobs, wages and conditions requires the formation of rank-and-file committees to organise a genuine industrial and political fight-back.

Such committees would break the isolation imposed by the unions. Energy workers, who run a strategic sector of the economy, could make a powerful appeal to other sections of the working class throughout the Latrobe Valley and around the country for coordinated strikes and other industrial action.

Above all, a new political perspective is required. Labor, the Greens and every capitalist party is committed to making the working class pay for the deepest crisis of the profit system since the 1930s. The alternative is the fight for workers’ governments that will carry out socialist policies, including placing the energy conglomerates and major corporations under public ownership and workers’ control.

Growing nervousness in Europe over Trump

Peter Schwarz

A week ahead of the inauguration of the new US President, nervousness is growing in Europe over Donald Trump. Initial hopes that Trump would moderate himself after the election campaign and pursue a course within conventional Republican politics have not been realised. Trump’s press conference on Wednesday served to confirm for many that their worst fears are being confirmed.

The closer Trump gets to the White House, the more justified are the fears about the future, the Spanish daily El Pais commented. According to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, a man is entering the Oval Office who does not see the power of his country “in always seeking consensus,” but who “built his own success on his own perceptions, resentment and persistently mobilising people against someone.”

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung stated, “There is no sign of a transformation into the statesman who would rather bridge divides than build walls.” And the Kölner Stadtanzeiger remarked, “Whoever still hoped that the populist election campaigner Trump would transform himself into a sober statesman would do well to abandon such hopes.”

The European fears relate to the internal stability of American society, the consequences of Trump’s “America first” policy for the world economy and above all the consequences for American foreign policy.

The relative stability during the past 70 years in Europe, where, throughout the 600 years from the Hundred Years War to the Second World War, wars took place at regular intervals, was closely bound up with the global pre-eminence of the United States and the Transatlantic alliance.

Originally directed against the Soviet Union, NATO developed into the world’s most powerful military alliance. It was retained after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and served, notwithstanding internal conflicts, as a tool of the Western powers for joint imperialist interventions. The wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya were thus waged under the command of NATO.

The mere possibility that Trump could align with Moscow at NATO’s expense therefore triggered panic in many European governments. Even though the Obama administration’s aggressive confrontation with Russia met with criticism in Europe, almost all of the European media have greedily lapped up the allegations that Russia manipulated the US elections and could blackmail Trump, and are backing Obama.

Several comments expressed the hope that the scandal could be used to apply pressure to Trump to make him distance himself from Moscow. As France’s Le Figaro remarked on the latest allegations against Trump, “The reconciliation with Russia desired by the future US President is becoming complicated, he is running the risk of always being treated like Putin’s lackey.”

Stefan Kornelius stated in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that the document alleging that Russian intelligence had compromising material about Trump had to be “taken seriously irrespective of all unverified allegations, … because the US intelligence agencies are taking it seriously.” He even suggested the possibility that a provocation by the intelligence agencies was involved, “That the agencies are resorting to unusual methods in order to prevent the self-declared system destroyer Trump from beginning his work.”

Kornelius expressed the hope that the “toxic mixture of sexual extremism and the possibility to be blackmailed, concealed under the fur cap of the Russian intelligence services,” would “even reach those Trump voters who have thus far forgiven their idol all errors and for being loudmouthed. These voters are Trump’s only power base. If he loses them, he will lose everything.”

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung called on the US spy agencies to “thoroughly examine the accusations about Trump’s connections with Russia,” and placed its hopes in the Republican majority in Congress stopping Trump. There the “wheat” is separated from “the chaff, the sycophants and flatterers who would rather look at Trump beyond the Russian danger, and by contrast those who have not lost an eye for overriding interests.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also intervened in the controversy by warning of attempts at Russian influence in other NATO members. “Any attempt to externally intervene in national elections or influence them is not acceptable,” he stated.

However, the Times of London is of the opinion that the strategic reorientation of the United States, which was already indicated under Obama, can no longer be prevented, “Trump intends reconciliation with Russia and a declaration of war against the military and economic ambitions of China. Both amount to a significant deviation from previous US foreign policy. It is time for the West to concern itself seriously with the idea that this is a well-considered strategy to newly position … America.”

The European NATO members fear a breakup of the military alliance in which the United States continues to be by far the strongest member, not merely due to military considerations. A weakening of NATO would also accelerate the disintegration of the European Union and raise once again all unresolved problems which threw the continent into two world wars during the last century.

The social, economic and political tensions within Europe are already extremely sharp. In most countries, right-wing, nationalist forces are on the rise. Britain voted to leave the European Union and other countries could follow.

Economic historian Adam Tooze noted in a contribution for Die Zeit the importance of the United States in the past for the foreign policy of Germany, which is the European country with the largest population and economy. Under the title “Farewell to the USA,” he wrote that America had resolved “the problem of foreign relations, of power, the relation Germany maintained with the world.” He added, “Cold War, NATO, the European integration backed by America, the United Nations—this was the framework thus far.” Tooze concluded by asking what would happen if America gave up this role, “Where is Germany’s place in the world then?”

The German bourgeoisie answered this long ago. For three years, it has been intensively working to rehabilitate German militarism and is raising the demand to be the hegemon and leading power in Europe—which is inevitably meeting with opposition in other countries.

The ruling class in Germany and other European countries have no other option in their response to the collapse of the post-war capitalist world order, which has found its sharpest expression to date in the election of Trump, than resorting to militarism and constructing a strong state, with which they are preparing to suppress social and political opposition.

CDR, University of Bonn Doctoral Scholarship Program 2017/2018.

Application Deadline: 31st August, 2017.

Offered annually? Yes

To be taken at (country): Germany

Eligible Field of Study: Economics, social sciences, sociology, political science, economics, development economics, agricultural and resource economics, agronomy, biology, ecology, forestry, mathematics or earth sciences.

About the Award: ZEF’s doctoral studies program aims at attracting young scientists from all over the world with an outstanding master’s or equivalent degree in economics, social sciences, sociology, political science, economics, development economics, agricultural and resource economics, agronomy, biology, ecology, forestry, mathematics or earth sciences. Candidates preferably have work experience in national or international research institutions, governments, or the private sector. Interest in interdisciplinary research is a prerequisite.

Type: Postgraduate Degree

Selection Criteria: A prerequisite for applying for the DAAD scholarship is having at least two years of relevant professional experience. Other prerequisites for admission include:

• Academic qualification: An excellent master or equivalent degree: G.P.A. higher than 3.0 in the American system, or a grade higher than 2.0 in the German system or equivalent.
• Innovative research ideas: Candidates application must contain a Graduate Research Statement (See in link below). The statement should describe a development problem candidate considers interesting and important; include main research questions and the proposed methods linked to them; and literature references. The statement should have a maximum of 4 pages. The Graduate Research Statement may relate to ZEF’s research areas (see in link below) in a broad sense or may address a topic in another development research area. The selection committee will assess all research statements on the basis of orgininality, analytical rigor, and relevance.
• ZEF’s doctoral program is conducted in English. Therefore candidates require the following English language skills: IELTS (band 6) certificate or TOEFL (minimum score: 550 paper based, 213 computer-based, 80 internet-based). Successful candidates can attend a two-month German language course prior to the study program.
• There is no age limit for applying to the doctoral program at ZEF. However, candidate’s last academic degree should be obtained less than six years prior to application.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Fully-funded

Duration: Duration of programme

How to Apply: Applicants with a citizenship from a developing country can apply for a DAAD scholarship directly from ZEF: You have to submit a DAAD application form which can be downloaded from the list of required documents for admission (see link below).

Applying to the ZEF Doctoral Studies Program involves two steps:

Step 1: Online registration:  Candidates have to register online. During the online registration you will be asked to enter your personal data and information. After you have completed your online registration you will receive a confirmation per e-mail, containing  your personal registration number and all further necessary information for your application. Please use this number in any communication with us.

Step 2: Application for admission: Please note that your online registration helps to accelerate the selection and admission procedure, it is NOT a substitute for the required documents to be sent by e mail to the program’s office. (docp.zef(at)uni-bonn.de).

Special prerequisites and requirements for DAAD scholarship applicants from Cameroon:

Applications from Cameroon must be submitted via the German Embassy, where the academic certificates have to be verified.
Cameroon: German Embassy in Yaoundé

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: University of Bonn, Centre for Development Research

Study in Malaysia: Monash University Malaysia Scholarships for Undergraduate Students 2017/2018

Application Deadlines: 
5th May 2017 for July intake
4th August 2017 for October intake

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Malaysia

Eligible Field of Study: All undergraduate courses are eligible except Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS), Bachelor of Psychological Science, and Bachelor of Pharmacy.

Type: Undergraduate

Eligibility: Applicants must have completed an Australian Year 12 qualification or an international senior secondary qualification accepted by the University with an outstanding Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) or equivalent, as deemed by Monash University Malaysia.

Applicants who have already commenced tertiary studies, or applicants transferring with credit exemptions and/or advanced standing, are not eligible to apply.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: RM5,000 per semester, subject to maintaining satisfactory academic progress.

Duration of Scholarship: Duration of programme

How to Apply: An application for Admission to the University will constitute an application for a scholarship. All applications for Admission consistent with the eligibility and selection criteria will be considered automatically for a scholarship. All successful candidates will be offered a Scholarship along with the Offer of Admission to Monash University Malaysia.

If you are eligible, you will receive notice of the scholarship when you receive your letter of offer.  To accept the scholarship, you must follow the steps below before the lapse date that is specified in your letter of offer.

1. Accept the offer to study at Monash University Malaysia, making sure you have completed all the relevant forms.
2. Complete the Scholarship Acknowledgement Form
3. Submit the forms to:Admissions Office
   Monash University Malaysia
   Building 2, Level 1
   Jalan Lagoon Selatan
   47500 Bandar Sunway
   Selangor Darul Ehsan
   Malaysia

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Monash University Malaysia

Who’s Afraid of a Naked Emperor?

Hiroyuki Hamada

Fear is a strange thing.  As the war on terror began, the US started dropping bombs on Middle Eastern countries.  They killed tons of people. They literally destroyed countries.  And we got this thing called Islamophobia.  They say that people are scared of Muslims.

In 1990, Public Enemy released an album called Fear of a Black Planet.  It was a great album.  I listened to it so many times.  The title track was about people being scared of black people.  I think the meaning is clearer today thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement responding to the police killings, gentrification, mass incarceration, institutionalized racism and so on.  But the tendency has been always with us.  People are scared of black people while black people have been subjected to horrendous mistreatments of police brutality, racism, lynching and slavery.  But it has been the non blacks who are scared.

Today, we have Russophobia.  Smart, respectable people make fun of Russian people as if it’s a duty, a slight bow to the establishment just to make sure that they belong and are being obedient.  The President of the United States says upfront that Russia is weak, small and no one wants anything from them except for oil, gas and arms, and so on.

Capitalism forces the people to play an intricate game of musical chairs in which people fight each other for artificial scarcity.  Any disruptions of their given privileges in the artificial hierarchy enforced by money and violence would freak people out, making them defensive, suspicious and divisive.  I think that is the source of many of our political disputes.  And since they are firmly within the framework of the corporate party domination and devoid of the intention to solve the problem of the wasting hierarchy, they won’t amount to any constructive solution.  For example, people are encouraged to argue about different kinds of health insurance they can have instead of a fully state funded healthcare service for all.  As a result, those who are below in the hierarchy are kicked in the heads and those who are above are kissed in the asses.  The siphoning system ensures the flow of the capital to the 1% at the top.  And from the top comes down the instructions as to who to worship and who to trash.

I believe that it comes down to the fact we have homelessness, racism, sexism, poverty, drug addictions, wars, mass incarceration, gentrification, police killings and other issues of our time in an extraordinary proportion because of capitalism functioning to form the hierarchy and keep accumulating wealth at the top.  The Western nations have been embracing capitalism as a guiding principle of the empire.  I want the world to be peaceful and filled with kindness, sharing and caring among all of us.  I think that sort of stuff should be the guiding principle instead.  I like what Richard Wolff, one of the most prominent economists and thinkers, says about how to change our society from a capitalist one to a truly a democratic one.  He talks about dismantling hierarchical economic structures and bringing them down to the communities and real needs of the people by implementing cooperative ownership of business enterprises.  That way, people become responsible for the economic decisions that are tied to their communities, environment and their real needs.  I think we should all hear what he has to say.  Here is his web site.

Anyway, our prospect for the future, if we keep the same trajectory, is not good.  For one thing, more of us will become unnecessary as workers as the new technologies replace us.  The question we must ask is:  should anybody exclusively own ideas or technologies that stem from generations of accomplishments belonging to the whole fields of science, biology, agriculture, architecture, politics, physics, psychology, medicine and so on?  If the powerful few monopolized those, isn’t that a form of a colonization?  I think those ideas should be our collective assets that we can all benefit from, just as the resources from the planet should belong to all of us and human rights should be for all of us.  Well, obviously, considering the path of our “civilization” it will have to be quite a change.  But are we ready to give up everything?

You see, the “owners” of the nations don’t seem to really need people that much already.  Think about what they’ve done to countries like Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya. They call them failed states.  They steal resources from them and build military bases out of them but they don’t really seem to show an urgent need to turn them into viable economies with labor forces, markets and so on.  They do sell them weapons so that violence stays the solutions, which of course ensures superiority of the US as the world’s only super power.  According to a document published by the United States Army War College, implementation of such a denigrating scheme against major cities across the globe as “inescapable” at some point in the future.

In short, our lives today are getting cheaper and cheaper.  This, along with the need to squeeze people harder to produce profits according to the demand of the stock holders, is reflected in the general decline of the economic well being of the people.  The tendency can be observed in the general willingness of the ruling class to deprive human rights on many levels.  Perhaps, they feel that they can afford to deprive education, healthcare, housing and so on from the people, since less people are needed for their factories.

Is it just for the rich and powerful to monopolize enormous profits generated by robots, artificial intelligence and biotechnologies which are the culminations of our achievements as a species?

The answer should be obvious.  The changing dynamics in the economic structure must accompany necessary changes to ensure human rights and integrity of the environment for all life forms.  Those who have the grip on the collective assets knew what has been going on all along.  That’s why the western nations have been obsessed with destroying so many nations which called themselves socialists or communists.

I believe it has been the time for a while to stop seeing such a topic as an ideological issue.  We must see it as a fact with numerous evidences with countless instances to prove that what we embrace as the system is a direct descendant of a feudalism.  And it is killing our species as well as others while accelerating the catastrophe of the climate change.  It is imperative that we the human species come to a collective realization to bring about a structural change to do away with a system with capitalism as a driving force.

But please allow me to get back to the topic of fear; we have a Russophobia cultivated by the western nations today.  Hundreds of the Western military bases that surround Russia keep reinforcing their military powers while economic and political sanctions are enforced against Russia.  It is obvious that the country is targeted for western exploitation and subjugation.  The demonization of its leader comes as a package.

As President Obama stated, Russia might not be as strong as the Western coalition with only 1/13 of the military budget of the NATO forces, however, Russia is a fully nuclear armed nation.

Regarding nuclear weapons, I know something as someone who grew up in Japan.  Unfortunately, regrettably, the history seems to indicate that the nuclear weapons which were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were very effective in incorporating imperial Japan into the Western empire.  After enduring sacrifices forced upon its people with enormous death toll, dropping of nuclear bombs and fire bombings on the major cities, Japan had become a vital part of the Western imperial projects against Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and nations across the globe including the ones Imperial Japan had violated and subjugated.  Those people in the US establishment certainly remember the result as a promising one.  The $1 trillion project to renew the nuclear arsenal in the US clearly substantiates its willingness to keep such an option on the table.

But of course, no degree of a capitalist imperative or a deranged desire to rule over the planet would convince anyone with a common sense in picking a fight with a nuclear armed country which has been subjected to numerous invasions only to prove itself to be a formidable contender.  But of course, we are talking about those who joke about drone killings, laugh at the brutal death of the Libyan leader or managed to declare that it was worth it to kill half million Iraqi children before the country become a killing field for the Islamic State.

I don’t really know how the current momentum against Russia will eventually materialize.  It might just turn out to be a way to contain options for the upcoming Republican president Donald Trump who has been expressing a reluctance to demonize Russia.  Or, the momentum will be shifted against China–another nuclear armed nation.  After all, It was the Obama administration with Hillary Clinton’s initiative to shift its strategic emphasis to the pacific to put pressure against China militarily and economically.

But in any case, frankly speaking, I just think it is just outrageous and unbearable that we live under the hegemony of the warring empire.  Everything seems to be built with lies.  And they are forcefully backed by 17 spy agencies and 1000 military bases.  It makes me feel dirty and violated just to talk about the allegation of Russians intervening in US politics. I mean, the US overthrows governments.  OVERTHROWS them!  It’s been lying to destroy so many governments that there is even a term for it–regime change.  And the allegation of the Russian intervention comes from the lying central–CIA, FBI and so on, which has assisted the US interventions of 81 elections in foreign countries.  So this baseless allegation against Russia is the excuse for the intervention against Russia and the allegation is coming from the people who intervene in foreign governments by deadly force.  So, this is basically a thief pointing a gun to your head telling you that the victim is the thief.

We can’t do this any more.  Yes, it is scary. But we must face the fact that the real fear is not coming from Russia, Trump, Muslims, Blacks or anyone who gets in the way of the empire but it is coming from the empire itself.  It is OK to imagine a different tomorrow.  In fact we must.