America’s Russian Problem

Melvin A. Goodman

Russian-American relations over the past several years have taken on some of the most familiar aspects of the Cold War.  The conventional wisdom is extremely one-side, concluding that Russian President Vladimir Putin is entirely responsible for the setback as a result of his actions in Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine and Syria, and that the Russian leadership is not trustworthy on any diplomatic or political level.  This is a simplistic view.

Before there can be any progress in resolving the considerable differences between Moscow and Washington, it is paramount that the U.S. contribution to the imbroglio is recognized.  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union twenty-five years ago, a brace of American presidents (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama) have taken advantage of Russia’s considerable geopolitical weakness.  Clinton was the first to do so with the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which marked a betrayal of U.S. commitments not to do so.

In conversations with Mikhail Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze, President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker emphasized that, if the Soviets pulled nearly 400,000 military forces out of East Germany, the United States would not “leapfrog” over East Germany to assert itself in Eastern Europe.  The expansion of NATO was not only strategically flawed, but from the Kremlin’s point of view it was a repudiation of those verbal guarantees.

Clinton expanded NATO by admitting former members of the Warsaw Pact, but George W. Bush went further by bringing in former Soviet republics, the three Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The Bush administration was even flirting with membership for Georgia and Ukraine, until German Chancellor Angela Merkel convinced President Bush that such a move would violate a “red line” that Putin had clearly established.  Washington’s manipulation of Georgia had a great deal to do with the short war fought between Russia and Georgia in the summer of 2008.

Bush’s abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which served as the cornerstone of strategic deterrence and the arms control relationship between Russia and the United States, was another example of the United States taking unnecessary advantage of Moscow’s geostrategic weakness.  The ABM Treaty was abrogated in order to clear the way for a nationwide missile defense in California and Alaska as well as the deployment of a regional missile defense in Eastern Europe, which the Obama administration unwisely strengthened.  The fact that the Bush and Obama administrations explained that the regional missile defense was needed against a possible attack from Iran made no sense, particularly in the wake of the Iranian nuclear accord that Russia fully supported.

Putin’s claims of U.S. interference in the parliamentary elections in Russia in 2011 as well as in the political upheaval in Ukraine in 2013-2014 are too easy dismissed in the United States, particularly in the mainstream media.  Putin supported NATO’s actions in Libya in 2011 because he had “guarantees” that military intervention was needed to prevent a humanitarian nightmare and was not intended to promote regime change.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s self-aggrandizing claim that “we came, we saw, and he died” in referring to Moammar Qaddafi put the lie to U.S. importuning.

The Obama administration promised a “reset” in relations with Russia but there was no effort to institutionalize bilateral relations and, in a visit to Poland in 2011, President Obama announced the first steps in basing U.S. fighter aircraft in Poland, one more “leapfrog” measure.  Obama also unnecessarily personalized the confrontation with Putin, and allowed Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter to stop high-level discussions between the Department of Defense and the Russian Defense Ministry.

President-elect Donald Trump now has an opportunity to move Russian-American relations off of dead center.  He cannot ignore areas of controversy, including the unconscionable cyber intrusions in U.S. political websites as well as Russian aggression in Ukraine and Syria.  At the same time, there are many issues of mutual interest that require diplomatic and political coordination, including strategic disarmament, nuclear proliferation, and international terrorism.  Russian-American cooperation on the Iran nuclear agreement could be replicated elsewhere.  Any cooperative arrangement dealing with the North Korea nuclear program would be facilitated by having Washington and Moscow on the same page.

There are already indications that Putin is willing to work with the United States on issues dealing with the Middle East, including Syria, as well as in Central Europe, where Russian and American military moves have created tensions in the European theatre.  Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman have even referred to the need for a “reset” with NATO, particularly the need for normal relations.  Any “reset” would require a sophisticated diplomatic intervention, and we will soon learn if a new and inexperienced national security team in Washington is up to the task.

The Three-Way Tug Of War That’s Pulling Syria Apart

Nauman Sadiq

Last month, the Islamic State recaptured Palmyra from where it was evicted by the Syrian army only in March; and this week, the Islamic State has launched a fierce assault in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, near Syria’s border with Iraq, and has successfully managed to surround the military airport, thus cutting off food supplies to the besieged city.

Although the Syria experts of the mainstream media are claiming that the Islamic State’s jihadists from the Anbar province of Iraq have crossed over from the border to reinforce the militants in Palmyra and Deir Ezzor, but we should keep in mind that Ramadi was liberated in December 2015 and Fallujah in June last year. Why did it take the Islamic State’s jihadists several months to recapture Palmyra and mount an assault in Deir Ezzor when the aforementioned cities in eastern Syria are located only a few hours’ drive from Anbar in Iraq across a highly porous border?

The Russian defense ministry, by contrast, has given the explanation that thousands of Islamic State jihadists have crossed over to eastern provinces of Syria from Mosul in Iraq; and several analysts have blamed the US for not doing enough to prevent the reinforcements reaching to eastern Syria from Iraq, because the preference of the US seems to be to drive out jihadists from Iraq but letting them give a hard time to the government troops in Syria.

The Syrian civil war is actually a three-way conflict between the Sunni Arab militants, the Shi’a Arab regime and the Syrian Kurds. And the net beneficiaries of this conflict have only been the Syrian Kurds who have expanded their area of control by cleverly aligning themselves first with the Syrian regime against the Sunni Arab militants since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in August 2011 to August 2014 when the US declared a war against one faction of the Sunni Arab militants, i.e. the Islamic State, after the latter overran Mosul in June 2014; and then the Syrian Kurds aligned themselves with the US against the Islamic State, thus further buttressing their position against the Sunni Arab militants as well as the Syrian regime.

Although the Sunni Arab militants have also scored numerous victories in their battle against the Shi’a regime, but their battlefield victories have mostly been ephemeral. They have already been evicted from Ramadi and Fallujah in Iraq and their withdrawal from Mosul, against the Iraqi armed forces with American air and logistical support, is only a matter of time.

In Syria, the Sunni Arab militants have already been routed from east Aleppo by the Syrian government troops with Russian air support. Although a faction of Syrian opposition, the Islamic State, is still occupying Raqqa and Palmyra in eastern Syria, but it’s obvious that the Islamic State is going to lose Raqqa to the Syrian Kurds and Palmyra to the Syrian government troops sooner or later.

The only permanent gains of the Sunni Arab militants would be Idlib in western Syria, Daraa and Quneitra in southern Syria; and a few areas in northwestern Syria, like al-Bab, which might change hands from the Islamic State to the relatively moderate factions of the Sunni Arab militants through Turkish arbitration.

Notwithstanding, the only difference between the Soviet-Afghan jihad that spawned the Islamic jihadists like the Taliban and al Qaeda for the first time in history, and the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, 2011-onward, is that the Afghan jihad was an overt jihad; back then the Western political establishments and their mouthpiece, the mainstream media, used to openly brag that the CIA provides all those AK-47s, RPGs and stingers to the Pakistani intelligence agencies, which then distributes those deadly weapons among the Afghan mujahideen (freedom fighters) to combat the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

After the 9/11 tragedy, however, the Western political establishments and corporate media have become a lot more circumspect, therefore this time around, they have waged covert jihads against the Arab-nationalist Gaddafi regime in Libya and the anti-Zionist Assad regime in Syria, in which the Islamic jihadists have been sold as “moderate rebels,” with secular and nationalist ambitions, to the Western audience.

Since the regime change objective in those hapless countries went against the mainstream narrative of ostensibly fighting a war against terror, therefore the Western political establishments and the mainstream media are now trying to muddle the reality by offering color-coded schemes to identify myriads of militant and terrorist outfits that are operating in those countries: such as, the red militants of the Islamic State, which the Western powers want to eliminate; the yellow Islamic jihadists, like Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, with whom the Western powers can collaborate under desperate circumstances; and the green militants of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and a few other inconsequential outfits, which together comprise the so-called “moderate” Syrian opposition.

If we were to draw parallels between the Soviet-Afghan jihad of the ‘80s and the Syrian civil war of today, the Western powers used the training camps located in the Af-Pak border regions to train and arm the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan with the help of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.

Similarly, the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan are being used to provide money, training and arms to the Syrian militants to battle the Syrian regime with the support of Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies.

During the Afghan jihad, it is a known historical fact, that the bulk of the so-called “freedom fighters” was comprised of Pashtun Islamic jihadists, such as the factions of Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf and scores of others, some of which later coalesced together to form the Taliban movement.

Similarly, in Syria, the bulk of the so-called “moderate opposition” is comprised of Islamic jihadists, like the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front, Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham and myriads of other militant groups, including a small portion of defected Syrian soldiers that goes by the name of the Free Syria Army (FSA.)

Moreover, apart from Pashtun Islamic jihadists, the various factions of the Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks constituted the relatively “moderate” segment of the Afghan rebellion, though those “moderate” warlords, like Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abul Rashid Dostum, were more ethnic and tribal in their character than secular or nationalist, as such.

Similarly, the Kurds of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces can be compared with the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan. The socialist PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria, however, had been allied with the Shi’a regime against the Sunni Arab jihadists for the first three years of the Syrian civil war, i.e. from August 2011 to August 2014, as I have already mentioned.

At the behest of the American stooge in Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, the Syrian Kurds have switched sides in the last couple of years after the United States’ policy reversal and declaration of war against one faction of the Syrian opposition, the Islamic State, when the latter overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in June 2014.

However, the reports of infiltration of the Islamic State’s jihadists from Iraq into eastern Syria by the Russian defense ministry sources lend credence to the suspicion that although the US seems sincere in driving out jihadists from Iraq, but it is still playing the double game of using the Sunni Arab militants to weaken the Syrian regime.

Australian report highlights collapse of union membership

Oscar Grenfell

Figures released last week by research agency Roy Morgan, revealing record low membership rates, have highlighted the gulf that exists between the trade unions and the working class.

Having worked hand in glove with big business and governments to enforce the destruction of jobs, wages and working conditions over the past three decades, the unions have become bureaucratic shells viewed with hostility and suspicion by millions of workers.

Based on a survey of 50,000 workers across occupational, age and wealth brackets, conducted in September 2016, the report estimates that national union membership stands at around 17.4 percent. This is the lowest result since the research firm began collecting union membership data in 1998.

The figure is higher than the 15 percent recorded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) last year, a fact that some analysts have attributed to the smaller sample size of the Morgan survey.

The results provide a glimpse of the class character of the unions. While they are fraudulently touted as “workers’ organisations” by various pseudo-left groups, the unions have virtually no membership base among the most impoverished sections of the working class and young workers.

The highest density of union membership, at 25.8 percent, is the second wealthiest fifth (quintile) of the working population, with an annual income of between $80,000 and $99,000. Individuals in public administration and defence are 65 percent more likely to be union members than the average working population.

The finding tallied with ABS data from last year, which found that just 11 percent of workers employed in the private sector are in a union. Among construction workers, Roy Morgan reported that the unionisation rate is only 11.5 percent. The figure is 9.7 percent for farm, forestry and gardening workers.

Membership was lowest among the poorest workers, with just 12.9 percent in the lowest quintile surveyed—those with an income between $20,000 and $39,000—and 14.2 percent in the quintile with the second lowest income. This indicates that the unions view with disinterest the plight of the most exploited sections of the working class.

Among most young people, union membership is a thing of the past. Just 6.9 percent of workers under the age of 25 belonged to a union, while the ratio was 12.3 percent among those aged 25–34.

Young people have borne the brunt of the destruction of full-time work by the employers. Hundreds of thousands of youth have been consigned to low-paid, insecure work with poverty-level wages, no entitlements and the constant threat of unemployment. These conditions are spreading throughout the entire workforce, with rates of part-time, casual and contract work soaring to more than 40 percent.

The unions have directly enforced the destruction of the pay and conditions of young workers. Last year, for instance, it was revealed that the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association had signed secret deals with major fast food corporations, clearing the way for the underpayment of up to 250,000 workers—as much as $300 million a year collectively—compared to the mandated award rate.

The state with the lowest proportion of union membership was South Australia, with just 14.9 percent of the working population belonging to a union. The figure was substantially down on the 24.6 percent recorded in 2012.

South Australia’s Public Sector Association general secretary Nev Kitchin summed up the union bureaucracy’s contempt for the working class. Responding to the data, he declared: “We’ve been really good at building up the best working conditions anywhere in the world, so you now have a generation of people who are apathetic and don’t recognise the hard work that went on to gain them.”

In reality, South Australia has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. The unions have collaborated with the major employers in the destruction of large swathes of industry and manufacturing, leaving working-class areas with joblessness of a depression-era magnitude. Officially, the state’s unemployment rate stands at 6.5 percent. But in Elizabeth, in northern Adelaide, where General Motors is shutting its assembly plant this year, joblessness is already at a staggering 33 percent.

The decline in membership rates is one expression of the complete corporatisation of the unions, which function as an industrial police force. They represent a wealthy, upper middle-class officialdom whose interests are diametrically opposed to those of the workers they falsely claim to represent.

The unions derive the bulk of their income, not from membership dues, but various parasitic financial arrangements, including control of massive superannuation funds. The royal commission into union corruption in 2015 documented numerous cases of the unions funnelling workers’ compensation monies into financial investment vehicles, establishing bogus union-controlled charities and health and safety companies which solicit donations from big business, and striking countless backroom deals with employers.

Many of those counted as union members may have little choice. In a number of cases detailed by the royal commission, companies paid the union membership dues of their employees. Some workers were not even aware they were members of the union, but were subjected to union-company deals to slash wages and conditions below award rates. The unions, including the Australian Workers Union, formerly headed by Labor Party leader Bill Shorten, also use their fictitious membership numbers to boost their factional weight in the Labor Party.

The decline in union membership is an historic shift, bound up with their transformation into direct agencies of the corporate and financial elite, amid the unprecedented integration of global production. Unions once sought limited concessions for their members, within the framework of wage exploitation, under conditions of a nationally-protected economy. During the 1950s, around 60 percent of workers were union members.

The sharp decline in membership began during the 1980s, as the unions signed a series of Accords with the Hawke and Keating Labor governments to drive down wages and conditions, and eliminate thousands of jobs, in response to globalisation and the demands of business that Australia be “internationally competitive.”

Summarising the decline in union membership in an entire generation of workers, an ABS report in 2008 noted: “In 1986, almost half (48 percent) of those employees born in the 1950s, and then aged 25–34 years, were union members. Ten years later the unionisation rate of this cohort, then aged 35–44 years, had fallen to 36 percent, and a further decade later it was 28 percent (26 percent in 2007).”

Now, amid a deep-going crisis of Australian and world capitalism, the unions are enforcing the demands of the corporate elite backed by governments for unprecedented cuts to real wages, the destruction of what remains of hard-earned conditions and the axing of hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Only through the establishment of new organisations of struggle, including rank-and-file committees completely independent of the unions, and a new political perspective based on the struggle for a workers’ government and socialist policies can workers unify and fight back against this company-union offensive.

Brazil’s Temer government sends military into the prisons

Bill Van Auken 

Following a series of bloody prison riots that have claimed the lives of at least 134 inmates in the first 15 days of this year alone, the right-wing Brazilian government of President Michel Temer has ordered the military to prepare to carry out raids on penitentiaries around the country.

According to the government, the plan will initially see the mobilization of 1,000 troops drawn from the Army, Navy and Air Force, divided into 30 units that will be sent into prisons as requested by state governments. Defense Minister Raul Jungmann indicated that this force could be significantly expanded, drawing from Brazil’s 350,000-strong armed forces.

Jungmann said that the armed force would be contributing to “reducing the possibility [of new rebellions] and also to reducing their lethality.” He acknowledged that this “contribution” went “beyond their principal task, which is the defense of the country.”

Meeting with a group of state governors Wednesday, Temer declared that the armed forces “will be, as well, through their extraordinary operational capacity and even the credibility that they have, a fear factor in relation to those who are in the prisons.”

According to the government, the military will be utilized to conduct “sweeps” of prisons in search of weapons, cellphones and drugs. Supposedly, prison personnel and police will first clear the areas to be searched, precluding direct physical confrontations between the troops and the inmates.

Temer’s turn to the armed forces comes in the wake of prison uprisings that killed 60 inmates on January 1 and 2 in a prison located in the Amazon river city of Manaus, followed by two more bloody upheavals, one in the northern state of Roraima, where 33 prisoners lost their lives, and another in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, where another 26 were killed. Smaller outbreaks at other prisons produced additional deaths.

The government and the corporate media have attributed this bloodletting, which in a number of cases included the beheading of prisoners, to turf wars between rival gangs, principally the PCC (First Command of the Capital), based in Brazil’s southeastern city of Sao Paulo, and crime organizations based in the north of the country.

In reality, however, many of those killed were not linked to any gang, but rather were the victims of a brutal and inhuman system of incarceration that reflects the staggering social polarization that is the overriding feature of Brazil’s capitalist social order.

With over 622,000 inmates, Brazil has the fourth largest prison population in the word, trailing only the US, China and Russia. This population has increased more than six-fold since 1990, resulting in more and more inmates crammed into decaying prisons.

According to the government’s own statistics, the official capacity for prisons nationwide is only 327,000, just over half of the number of inmates who are today being held under abominable conditions in these facilities. The prison complex in Manaus, where the first massacre took place on New Year’s Day, held 1,224 men in a space meant for 454.

A major factor in driving up Brazil’s prison population was the former Workers Party government’s embrace under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the “war on drugs,” with the implementation of a new drug law in 2006, whose repressive weight fell overwhelmingly on the most impoverished sections of the Brazilian population. The law was only made more draconian under Lula’s successor, the recently impeached PT president Dilma Rousseff.

Meanwhile, with the onset of Brazil’s deep-going economic crisis, the Rousseff government and its successor under former vice president Temer slashed funding for the building of new prison facilities by 85 percent over the past two years, according to the daily Folha de S.Paulo, while also cutting appropriations for maintaining existing prisons.

For its part, the Brazilian court system operates at glacial speed and with utter contempt for the democratic rights of the working class and the poor. Fully 40 percent of those in jail have yet to be tried or convicted of any crime.

Temer’s calling out the troops to confront the crisis in the prison system is part of a broader pattern of a turn to repression and militarization by his government, the most right-wing in Brazil since the fall of the 20-year dictatorship brought to power by the US-backed military coup of 1964.

With 12 million unemployed and the government carrying out the most sweeping attacks on education, health care and working class living standards in decades, the increasing reliance upon the military to confront manifestations of social unrest has ominous implications.

Last month, Gen. Rômulo Bini Pereira, the former chief of staff of the Defense Ministry, wrote a column for Folha de S.Paulo stating that under conditions of deepening economic and political crisis, “the country may enter into a situation of ungovernability, which will no longer meet the expectations and desires of society, rendering the existing democratic regime unworkable.” In such a situation, he warned, “the Armed Forces may be called upon to intervene, including in defense of the state and [society’s] institutions.”

UK: Spying powers used more than 55,000 times by local government agencies

Trevor Johnson

Laws introduced in 2000 by the Labour government, under the guise of “fighting terrorism”, were used by UK local councils to carry out more than 55,000 days of covert surveillance of citizens over a period of five years.

Councils were given permission under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to carry out the surveillance, including spying on people walking dogs, feeding pigeons and fly tipping (illegal dumping). Many councils used spying to question the legitimacy of welfare benefit claims.

The councils gathered evidence by planting secret listening devices and cameras and by using private detectives.

Members of the Liberal Democrats obtained this information on the use of spying by issuing a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. Every local council was asked if they had used the powers and if so how many times.

The councils’ responses showed they had launched 2,800 separate surveillance operations, lasting up to 90 days each. Of the 283 councils responding, two-thirds had used the powers allowed under the RIPA spying legislation. Lincolnshire County Council alone requested nearly 4,000 days of spying operations.

All the claims made in parliament and elsewhere—that judicial oversight of the newly passed and even more authoritarian Investigatory Powers Act/Snoopers’ Charter would ensure it would not be used beyond its original purposes—have been disproven at one stroke.

If it was so easy for councils to obtain warrants to invade the privacy of ordinary people over transgressions like not cleaning up after their dog, can anyone believe that the Investigatory Powers Act will not be used just as freely by the secret services to spy on people, including their political activities?

Equally, if the powers allowed under RIPA were misused on this scale, how much will the new, more intrusive powers of the Snoopers’ Charter be utilised against the wider population under conditions of growing crisis and escalating inequality?

Among the examples cited in the Guardian were Midlothian Council in Scotland, which used RIPA to obtain data on dog barking and Allerdale Borough Council in Cumbria, England that used the powers to determine who had been feeding pigeons. Lancaster City Council used the powers in 2012 for “targeted dog fouling enforcement” over a period of 11 days.

In another case, Bromley Borough Council in London used RIPA following a complaint about the accumulation of rubbish in a rear garden. The complaint claimed the perpetrator was a “serial fly tipper”. In response Bromley Council, reported the Guardian, “deployed a ‘covert camera’ in the upstairs bedroom window of another property, which gathered evidence of what was happening.”

The attack on democratic rights inherent in the RIPA legislation was criticised from the outset by civil and human rights organisations. A report published in 2010 by Big Brother Watch, a civil liberties and privacy rights group, noted, “most people would imagine that these serious powers—to spy on people, without notice—were meant for law enforcement use against terrorists and crime kingpins. One might also presume, wrongly, that these powers are meant to be used sparingly in serious cases, rather than by council officials on members of the public, not convicted of any offence, in relation to trifling allegations.”

In its report from that year, “The Grim RIPA: Cataloguing the ways in which local authorities have abused their covert surveillance powers,” Big Brother Watch found that “372 local authorities in Great Britain have conducted RIPA surveillance operations in 8,575 cases in the past two years. This means that councils alone have carried out over eleven surveillance operations every day in this country over the past two years.”

The latest report confirms that in the years since that report, use of the RIPA by local councils became more frequent rather than less.

RIPA was introduced even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and was the beginning of the imposition of a battery of legislation which has eviscerated civil liberties and democratic rights in the UK. It permitted the opening of postal correspondence, the review of subscriptions and phone numbers, details of Internet searches and email communication, bugging of buildings and vehicles, pursuing and monitoring of individuals, and the use of informers.

Among the main legislation introduced, each piece more draconian than its predecessor, were the:

• Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA)—passed 26 July 2000

• RIPA extensions in December 2003, April 2005, July 2006 and February 2010

• Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 (DRIPA)—passed July, 2014

• Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IPA/“Snoopers’ Charter”)—passed November, 2016

On July 14, 2014, a new bill was brought forward by the Conservative-Liberal Democrats coalition strengthening the authorities’ ability to retain large amounts of data on every citizen and to spy on the population at large. The bill that led to the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 (DRIPA) was rushed through parliament on “emergency” grounds.

DRIPA, now replaced by the Snoopers’ Charter, was also widely misused by the state and its auxiliaries. Some half million requests were granted to access DRIPA data each year. Hundreds of public authorities, including the police and every other branch of the state and intelligence agencies, were given access to confidential data—illegally according to the European Court of Justice.

In its December 2016 ruling, the European Court of Justice found that the general surveillance on a mass scale allowed under DRIPA was unlawful.

The vast state spying operation that was carried out illegally for years by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) spying operation—before being exposed by US whistleblower Edward Snowden—has now been made legal by the introduction of the Snoopers’ Charter.

While highlighting the disproportionate and absurd use of anti-terror legislation to target dog walkers and pigeon-feeding pensioners, the media organisations that saw fit to publish the latest RIPA figures, including the Guardian and Independent, did not raise the implications of the far more intrusive Snoopers’ Charter.

On the basis of the draconian raft of legislation now in place, the UK has been dubbed the “surveillance state.” Along with its gigantic, legalized spying dragnet, the UK has more closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras per capita than any other country in the world. In 2013, there were already up to 5.9 million CCTV cameras in the UK, approximately 15 percent of the world’s total. The UK has more CCTV cameras than China—even though China more than 20 times as many people.

People in urban areas of the UK are likely to be captured by around 30 CCTV systems every day, with each CCTV system made up of multiple cameras.

Increasingly complex computer software is now being used to pick out and recognise faces from CCTV footage. Following the London riots of August 2011, police trawled through more than 200,000 hours of CCTV footage to identify potential suspects. Around 5,000 individuals were found by such means over a period of more than five months.

Software to record car number plates and identify cars and their owners has been available for nearly a decade and is widely used by UK police. According to a recent estimation, every single vehicle in the UK and its driver is captured on the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) database around six times every week. Some 30 million motorists are photographed every day, with images of cars and their drivers taken at the rate of 350 every second. A staggering 11 billion reads of number plates are taken annually via a vast network of 7,858 cameras—many of them unmarked. This equates to an almost trebling of reads taken since ANPR was introduced in 2009.

German Constitutional Court rejects ban on fascist NPD

Peter Schwarz

On Tuesday the German Federal Constitutional Court rejected a ban on the fascist National Democratic Party (NPD). The verdict was unanimous. The court justified its decision by arguing that while the far-right party was anti-constitutional and shared an ideological kinship with National Socialism (Nazism), it was not significant enough to seriously jeopardize democracy.

“There is currently no concrete indication of any possibility that its activities could be successful,” the president of the court, Andreas Vosskuhle, explained.

This was the second lawsuit against the NPD rejected by the Constitutional Court. The first case collapsed in 2003 because the court arrived at the conclusion that the large number of undercover agents inside the leadership bodies of the party made it impossible to arrive at a proper legal judgment. According to the judges, the NPD was “a state-run affair.”

At that time, both houses of parliament and the government had submitted a joint motion calling for a ban on the NPD. In December 2013, the upper house of parliament, the Federal Council, representing Germany’s states, lodged a new case calling for the prohibition of the NPD. Following reassurances from German interior ministers that undercover agents had been pulled out of the party’s executive committees, the Second Senate of the Constitutional Court opened main proceedings two years later, which have now ended with the rejection of the lawsuit.

The decision did not come as a surprise, it had been on the cards for some time. Nevertheless, it was keenly awaited because the constitutional court redefined the criteria for a party’s ban.

In the history of postwar Germany there have been only two bans imposed on political parties, and these date back more than 60 years. In 1952, the relatively insignificant, fascist Sozialistische Reichspartei was banned, and in 1956 the government outlawed the German Communist Party (KPD).

The trial against the KPD was a legal assault on political convictions. Marxist writings were cited in detail in the courtroom. The judiciary not only banned the organization, many members were condemned to long prison sentences, had their personal assets seized, or were forced out of their jobs and found no new work. Among the victims were many who had been persecuted formerly for their resistance to the Nazis.

In rejecting the prohibition of the NDP, the Constitutional Court has now ruled that a party cannot be banned because of its convictions alone. The NPD’s beliefs, the court stated, are inhumane, racist and share kinship to the ideology of National Socialism. But the fact that a party aims at eliminating the basic democratic order was not sufficient for a ban. It must have the “potential” to achieve this goal and systematically work towards it.

The court concluded that this did not apply to the NPD. The party has lost considerable influence since the move to ban it. Its membership has fallen from 28,000 to the current level of 6,000, it receives barely more than one percent of the vote in federal elections and is no longer represented in any state parliament—the court argued. Many former supporters of the NPD now support other right-wing parties and organizations such as Pegida and the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The NPD itself has called for a first preference vote for the AfD in several state elections.

In its judgment, the Constitutional Court based itself on the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In the event of a ban, the NPD could have filed an appeal at the Strasbourg court, which the German court in Karlsruhe wanted to avoid. Strasbourg sets stricter standards for a party ban than Karlsruhe.

According to the case-law of the ECHR, it is not sufficient for a party to pursue anti-constitutional objectives as a ground to ban it. It must also have a realistic chance of realizing its objectives. It must have the resources and the influence to achieve its goals with a certain probability.

While the ECHR excludes a judgment based only on political convictions, based on its reasoning, a party can be banned when it gains influence and thus becomes a danger to the prevailing order.

The ECHR’s precedent-setting verdict on this issue concerned the prohibition of the Turkish Welfare Party (Refah) in 1998. The Refah Party had filled the post of premier up to 1997, but was then ousted in a “soft” military coup and banned the following year. Its deputy chairman at that time was the current Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The ECHR dismissed a complaint from the Refah Party appealing against the ban. It supported the ban on the grounds that the party represented a threat to “democratic society” in Turkey, because it had received 21.4 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections.

The Constitutional Court’s judgment on the NPD ban tends in the same direction. In essence, it means that the right of free expression and assembly for a party only applies as long as it has no significant influence and does not endanger the existing order.

The judgment has been criticised broadly in the German media, and by practically all of the country’s political parties. They are all of the opinion that the NPD should have been banned solely on the basis of its views.

Heribert Prantl wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung: “The NPD should have been banned—not despite the fact that it is very small at the moment and insignificant in elections, but precisely because of this.” According to Prantl, a ban would be a signal against “aggressive right-wing populism” and “an act of prevention.”

Christian Social Union politician Thomas Kreuzer commented: “I think it is completely wrong to say we tolerate and allow radicals to work in parties until they have a certain relevance and could possibly achieve their goals.”

The Social Democrat Eva Högl spoke of a “very disappointing” judgment: “A positive decision would have been helpful for our commitment to oppose the right-wing.”

The Left Party politician Petra Pau also regretted the failure to ban the NPD. The majority of the Left Party, as well as many initiatives for democracy and tolerance, wanted an NPD ban, she explained.

The Social Equality Party, in contrast, has always opposed banning parties as a means of fighting the right-wing. When the Federal Council launched its case to ban the NPD four years ago, we wrote, under the heading “Why the SEP (Germany) rejects a state ban of the neo-fascist NPD”:

“The banning of a political party represents a serious breach of the democratic rights of the working class. As masses of people turn their back on official politics because they feel they are not represented by any of the parties in the Bundestag, the ruling elite is reacting by attacking the right of assembly and setting itself up as arbiter of which parties people may or may not support.

“History has repeatedly shown that, in the final analysis, such curbs of democratic rights only strengthen and encourage the most right-wing and reactionary sections of society. At the same time, the workers movement is denied basic forms of free and democratic expression.”

And nine months ago, we wrote in a WSWS article on the most recent prohibition procedure: “A ban of the NPD would be reactionary in every sense: it would not weaken right-wing extremist tendencies in society, but strengthen them; it would set a precedent for the suppression of all, especially left-wing, opposition; and it would strengthen the state’s repressive apparatus, a key source of right-wing, authoritarian developments.”

The outcome of the trial has confirmed this warning. The Constitutional Court has issued a ruling that can easily be directed against a revolutionary socialist party when it gains influence and support.

Immigrant rights protests held across the United States

Clodomiro Puentes

Protests in defense of immigrant rights were held in 50 cities across the United States on Saturday, days before the inauguration of president-elect Donald Trump and leading up to Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, during which other anti-Trump protests were held.

The demonstrations on Saturday were called in opposition to Trump’s stated immigration policy aims, including threats to deport some two to three million undocumented immigrants, slashing of federal funding of all so-called “sanctuary cities” that don’t comply rigorously with federal immigration policy, and a crackdown on Muslims entering the country.

The protests were generally led by an array of civil rights, immigrant advocacy, religious and other groups, many with close ties to the Democratic Party. One of the rallies convened in Washington DC, titled “We Shall Not Move” by the National Action Network, was led by Democratic Party operative and multimillionaire Al Sharpton.

Figures like Sharpton and his ilk continue their efforts to keep the anger at the forthcoming Trump presidency expressed in these protests firmly within the two-party system, sowing illusions that the Democrats and “moderate” Republicans could be pressured to fight. Sharpton declared, “We come not to appeal to Donald Trump, because he’s made it clear what his policies are and what his nominations are. We come to say to the Democrats in the Senate and in the House and to the moderate Republicans to get some backbone. Get some guts. We didn’t send you down here to be weak-kneed.”

There were undoubtedly broad layers in attendance at the dozens of protests throughout the country, motivated by compassion for one of the more vulnerable segments of the population and repelled by the xenophobic sentiments whipped up by the Trump administration. However, so long as the basic political perspective remains one of pressuring the two parties of big business for more “humane” immigration reform, opposition to the exploitation of immigrants will continue to be funneled into a dead end.

The recent demonstrations recall, albeit on a smaller scale, the massive immigration reform protests of 2006, which involved millions of demonstrators across the country, including over half a million in Los Angeles alone. Those protests were sparked by proposed legislation which would have made felony crimes of undocumented immigration, as well as providing aid to undocumented immigrants, including charities, clinics and other services offered.

While the bill did not pass in Congress in 2006, the protests prompted the Bush administration to vindictively escalate the scale of ICE raids with the express aim of intimidating the immigrant population and curbing further attempts at organization efforts. Furthermore, the Senate failed to work out even the most modest of reforms to the overall framework of US immigration policy.

That the 2006 mass demonstrations fell under the sway of politicians and figureheads of the Democratic establishment also proved to be a decisive political obstacle. Some leaders of the protests even suggested that native-born workers “have it too good.”

The heavily militarized ICE raids continued under the administration of Barack Obama, with the Democratic president overseeing the deportation of more than 2.5 million people, more than any of his predecessors. The incoming Trump administration’s targeting two to three million immigrants for rapid deportation would represent a dismal continuity with the outgoing administration.

Amidst the calls at the protests for vigilance against ICE under a Trump administration, there was a glaring incongruity when it came to the silence on the content of Obama’s own draconian deportation policies. No serious effort was made to take into account the record of the Democrats, who falsely pose as friends of the foreign-born.

There was also no mention from protest organizers of the fact that the massive database collected on those immigrant youth who had been registered in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program under the Obama administration could now potentially be used to expedite the deportation schemes of a Trump government.

From the outset, in 2012, the WSWS had warned of the potentially draconian use of the DACA program, stating that, “To receive the two-year relief from the threat of deportation, young undocumented immigrants must register with the Department of Homeland Security, effectively declaring themselves to be 'illegal’ and making them easier targets if and when a new directive comes from the White House, either from Obama himself or from his Republican opponent Mitt Romney, should Romney win the November election. Once registered, immigrants still have no path to citizenship and their legal status is only temporary. Even if there is no immediate double-cross, the condition of the newly registered would represent only the regularization of their status as an exploited underclass.”

As Trump takes office, the confirmation of this warning points to the increasingly authoritarian character of American politics. To the extent that Trump intends to make good on his plans for mass deportation, there would be no way to realize it except through the erection of what would amount to an immense infrastructure of detention camps.

A check to Trump’s anti-immigrant policies will not come through appeals to the Democratic Party, which has proven itself time and again to differ only tactically from the Republicans on the question of immigration.

The Trump presidency and the coming conflict between Europe and America

Chris Marsden

Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States heralds an unprecedented deterioration in post-war relations between the US and Europe, above all between the US and Germany.

The January 20 ceremony was preceded by an interview with Trump in Britain’s Sunday Times and Germany’s Bild newspaper. His remarks were a broadside against the institutions that have constituted the basis of the post-World War II European order.

Trump praised Britain’s exit from the European Union, describing the EU as a vehicle for German domination and predicting that “others will leave.” He added, “Look, the EU was formed, partially, to beat the United States on trade, OK? So, I don’t really care whether it’s separate or together, to me it doesn’t matter.”

Trump threatened Germany’s auto industry with sanctions and attacked Chancellor Angela Merkel, blaming her refugee policy for destabilising Europe. He also opposed sanctions against Russia, while declaring that he believed the NATO alliance was “obsolete.”

Never before has a US president set as his explicit goal the breakup of the EU. Trump made clear in his interview that he was seeking to pit the UK against Germany and he solidarised himself with the UK Independence Party and other right-wing anti-EU parties.

The response from Europe’s political elite was uniformly hostile. In Germany, Merkel replied, “I think we Europeans hold our fate in our own hands.” Sigmar Gabriel of Merkel’s coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, insisted, “We must not adopt a servile attitude now… In dealing with Trump, we need German self-confidence and a clear stance.”

French President Francois Hollande said that “transatlantic cooperation” will from now on be based on Europe’s own “interests and values.”

Europe’s think tanks and media predicted escalating militarism and an eruption of nationalist tensions. “EU member states will have to consider increasing strategic autonomy by reinforcing collective defence inside the EU,” said Felix Arteaga of the Elcano Royal Institute in Madrid.

Judy Dempsey of Carnegie Europe wrote that Trump “might rekindle old fears of German encirclement” by encouraging a “gang-up on Germany.” She added, “Since that is the new political outlook, Europe and Germany have to respond.”

In the Guardian, Natalie Nougayrède suggested, “Europe may witness a return to spheres of influence... with governments rushing to try to secure their own interests whatever the cost to neighbours and the continent’s future.”

Trump’s “America First” positions represent a seismic shift in US political relations with Europe. The Christian Science Monitor cited John Hulsman, a transatlantic affairs specialist, berating the “European elites” for having “grown accustomed to ‘Wilsonian’ American leaders who left unquestioned America’s leadership of the postwar internationalist system,” and not adjusting quickly enough to “a ‘Jacksonian’ and more nationalist US worldview promoted by Trump.”

Until now, however, such unilateralist tendencies were generally in abeyance. The American ruling class recognised that their unrestrained application would undermine its ability to exercise effective global hegemony. One of the issues animating hostility toward Trump within the US intelligence agencies in connection with his relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin is their belief that a Russian “bogeyman” is essential to preserve the framework through which the US has long exercised its dominance within Europe, via NATO and the EU.

The last time tensions emerged sharply between the US and Europe was in 2003, during the run-up to the Iraq War, when US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denounced France and Germany for failing to support the US in Iraq. Rumsfeld called the two countries “old Europe” and counterposed to them the states of Eastern Europe.

On January 26 that year, the World Socialist Web Site published a perspective comment by David North titled “How to deal with America? The European dilemma,” which addressed the historic significance of that conflict.

North explained that America’s postwar relationship with Europe between 1945 and 1991 “was determined fundamentally by its appraisal of its own essential economic and geopolitical interests within the specific context of the Cold War.” He continued: “America’s attitude toward Europe was determined by the overriding need to (1) enforce the isolation of the Soviet Union and minimize its influence in Western Europe (“containment”) and (2) prevent social revolution at a time when the European working class was extremely militant and highly politicized.

“The United States’ emphasis during that period on its alliance with Western Europe was, in fact, a departure from the historical norm. The more basic tendency of American capitalism, rooted in its somewhat belated emergence as a major imperialist power, had been to augment its world position at the expense of Europe.”

North then wrote: “The collapse of the Soviet Union fundamentally altered the international framework upon which postwar diplomatic relations were based. There was no longer any need for the United States to prop up the Western European bourgeoisie as a line of defense against the Soviet Union. Moreover, the demise of the USSR created a vacuum of power that the United States was determined to exploit to its own advantage.”

In this context, he cited the prophetic warning made by Leon Trotsky in 1928:

“In the period of crisis the hegemony of the United States will operate more completely, more openly, and more ruthlessly than in the period of boom. The United States will seek to overcome and extricate herself from her difficulties and maladies primarily at the expense of Europe, regardless of whether this occurs in Asia, Canada, South America, Australia, or Europe itself, or whether this takes place peacefully or through war.”

The dilemma anticipated in 2003 now assumes its full significance. Sections of the US bourgeoisie continue to be deeply opposed to Trump’s attacks on the EU and Germany, with outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry describing Merkel as “courageous” and Trump’s remarks as “inappropriate.” But regardless of such disagreements, the US is being objectively driven on a steep trajectory toward trade war and protectionism to counter the threat to its global hegemony due to economic decline, the challenge posed by the rise of China and other rival powers, and a series of military debacles suffered since 2003. This must inevitably provoke conflict with Europe.

No one can predict in detail the consequences of this geostrategic shift by the US—including what alliances Germany, France, the UK and Russia might eventually forge. To this must be added the precise role that may be played by China as a potential counterweight to America.

However, underlying all such developments will be an explosion of national antagonisms in which the corollary of Trump’s “America First” agenda will be demands to put “Germany First,” “Britain First” and “France First,” which can lead only to the fracturing of Europe into competing power blocs.

The project of European integration under capitalism is coming to an end, unleashing all of the political demons it was meant to have contained.

Nothing is left of the promise that closer political union and the Single Market would bring prosperity and peace. Instead, right-wing reaction and the growth of fascistic parties are taking place in every country. The European powers speak constantly of the need to militarise, even as NATO troops mass on Russia’s border, while austerity is the only issue on which they all agree.

The assault on the working class will worsen, as Berlin, Paris and London demand yet greater “national sacrifice” to compete against their rivals and pay the vast sums needed to rearm the continent.

The bourgeoisie has proved incapable of overcoming the fundamental contradiction between the integrated character of the global economy and the division of the world into antagonistic nation states based on private ownership of the means of production, which is once again driving them to a war for the redivision of the world.

The working class of Europe must proceed from an understanding that the post-war period, in which, since 1945, several generations have lived their lives, is over, and a new pre-war period has begun. It must assume responsibility for opposing the drive to austerity, militarism and war by all the imperialist powers.

Above all, it must seek the conscious unification of its struggles with those of workers in the United States and internationally. The explosion of working class opposition that Trump’s government of oligarchs and warmongers must inevitably provoke will provide the most powerful accelerant for the struggles of the European working class.

Six Years Post the ‘Arab Spring’: Prognosis for 2017

Ranjit Gupta

The net result has been that instead of the passionately hoped for new political and economic dawn, the people of Syria and Yemen are going through the darkest ever period in their modern history. West Asia has become deeply polarised due to a particularly noxious sectarian feud and a power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. This is being chillingly exhibited in the blood soaked, exceedingly destructive developments in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. A vicious war has broken out within Islam. Muslims are killing other Muslims in an orgy of fanaticism with unprecedented ferocity. Radical Islam and terrorism in the name of Islam have become rampant and are creating mayhem even beyond the region.

All this was epitomised in the emergence of the Islamic State (IS) and its

"Caliphate" in Iraq and Syria in June 2014 with its capital at Raqqa, Syria. Actions and policies of Turkey (which has been proactive); Saudi Arabia; the brazenly sectarian (mis)governance of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq; policy omissions and commissions of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the US have been the main contributors to the advent and rise of this anachronistic phenomenon. At the peak of its power, the Islamic State controlled 40 per cent of Iraq and over 50 per cent of Syria; it is now less than 10 per cent in Iraq and less than 25 per cent in Syria.

To a very considerable extent, this success is due to the US led coalition conducting almost 10,500 air attacks against it from August 2014 till the end of 2016 in Iraq and just over 6000 from September 2014 in Syria. Russia too has carried out a large number of air attacks against the IS in Syria since October 2015. A full-scale assault to recapture Mosul, the last significant city that the IS controls in Iraq is currently underway as also efforts to recapture the IS capital, Raqqa.

But the third outcome is perhaps the most startling. The US, the world's most powerful country after World War II, has been the architect and guarantor of security and stability in West Asia since then. Despite continuing to be the world’s leading economic and military power, continuing to have a strong military presence in the region, with its regional allies armed to the teeth with the latest state-of-the-art US equipment, the end of 2016 finds Washington in the rather bizarre and completely unfamiliar and unimaginable situation of being virtually marginalised in meaningfully influencing the shape of the emerging strategic landscape of the strategically vital West Asian region. This is not because other players have edged the US out but an almost inevitable consequence of outgoing US President Barack Obama's very deliberately adopted (and trenchantly criticised both within and outside the US; but this author views it as statesmanlike for the longer term) retrenchment approach and refusal to get militarily involved in new conflicts in West Asia. The vacuum has been filled by Russia, which has emerged as the new power broker in West Asia with Iran becoming the most influential regional power.

SYRIA
Credible estimates suggest almost 500,000 people have died in the many wars raging in Syria since March 2011; approximately 5 million people have fled the country and over 6.5 million people are internally displaced, cumulatively comprising over half the total Syrian population in 2011. The utterly devastating destruction of housing and infrastructure in its cities has left Syria a completely broken country where normalcy will not return, if ever, for decades.

Robust Russian military intervention since September 2015 in favour of Assad, and Iran’s consistently growing support and commitment to Assad – compelled by evolving circumstances; the steadily dwindling support for rebels from Turkey; Gulf Sunni States and the West; Assad’s finally taking full control over the psychologically and strategically vital Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and erstwhile commercial and financial centre, enabled by a ceasefire and evacuation of rebels brokered by Turkey and Russia; the focus of all major players increasingly shifting towards defeating the Islamic State – are all factors that have ensured that Assad can no longer be overthrown by military means.

In August 2016, Turkey launched operation Euphrates Shield, which envisages the creation of a Turkish military controlled ‘safe haven’ of over 5000 square kilometres of territory inside Syria to prevent any possibility of the Kurds creating an unbroken corridor under their control extending across the entire Syrian-Turkish border. In the closing weeks of 2016, a rather improbable and opportunistic alliance emerged consisting of Iran, Russia and Turkey, which has taken control of efforts to bring about peace in Syria, with the US and European countries being deliberately excluded from its meetings.

Prognosis:The multiple ongoing wars in Syria between Assad and Salafi/Jihadi/al Qaeda affiliated rebels; between Assad and other ‘moderate’ rebels; between Assad and the IS; between the IS and other rebels; between the al Qaeda affiliated rebels and other rebels; between various foreign countries and the IS; Turkey’s war against the Kurds scaled up by operation Euphrates Shield, etc., will continue but the intensity of these different wars will diminish significantly except for the war against the IS, which will be ratcheted up, as well as the Turkish war against the Kurds. Assad will remain in power.

There will be serious and sincere Russia driven efforts for ceasefires and peace talks. Given US President-elect Donald Trump’s warm feelings for Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a strategic partnership between the two in Syria is likely to fructify. This will boost the possibilities of moving forward towards ending the mayhem in Syria though collaterally working to Assad’s advantage. Russia and Iran will continue to be the dominant political foreign influence in Syria. 

Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been a particularly destabilising element in West Asia since the advent of the so-called Arab spring; and his frequent policy flip-flops suggest that Turkey will remain a spoiler rather than a constructive factor. Operation Euphrates Shield could cause new complications in Syria.

YEMEN

The inability of the former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Shia but a protégé of the Sunni Saudi Arabia since 1991, to control the Arab Spring related unrest led to his ouster in the Saudi manipulated Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) “mediation” in November 2011. In February 2012, he was replaced by Vice President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, a Sunni, from Yemen's south. Hadi’s inept and ineffective governance and his equally incompetent leadership of the military enabled the Houthis to take control of Sana’a in September 2014. Saleh opportunistically announced an alliance with the Houthis in March 2015 after his residence was attacked by Saudi planes. Despite eviction from office, given Saleh’s still enormous influence over the army, a significant part of the country (including Aden, albeit briefly) came under Houthi/Saleh control. Despite the relentless Saudi offensive, Houthis and their allies continue to maintain their hold over Sana’a, a significant part of the northern highlands, much of the coastal areas, and the important city of Taiz.

Justifying these developments as Iran posing an existential threat, Saudi Arabia, without any credible basis whatsoever, launched operation Decisive Storm on 15 March 2015, in alliance with a few GCC and other Sunni Arab countries. In the complete reversal of the traditional under the radar foreign policy, this new muscular approach was initiated by the extremely ambitious, brash and completely inexperienced new Saudi Defence Minister, Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, the favourite son of new Saudi King, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. Heavy and indiscriminate aerial bombing has devastated Yemen, the poorest Arab country, causing approximately 10,000 deaths; displacement of 1.5 million people; and unimaginable destruction in its cities and infrastructure, leaving 86 per cent of its population in need of urgent and sustained humanitarian assistance.

Two side-effects of all these developments have been the very considerable enhancement of the influence and power of al Qaeda in Yemen and the ingress of the IS.

Prognosis:Saudi Arabia cannot win this war and this realisation will finally sink in. The drain on Saudi resources will pinch ever more. The international community will finally be compelled to start pressurising Saudi Arabia to end this war. The unnatural and opportunistic alliance between Saleh and the Houthis will begin to crumble. Multi-pronged efforts will be initiated to organise ceasefires to enable humanitarian aid for the Yemeni people. As a result of all this, the intensity of the Saudi assault and internal civil war are likely to abate, setting the stage hopefully for a stop to all hostilities in 2018.

ISLAMIC STATE 

Prognosis:

The IS as a territorial entity will almost certainly be militarily defeated before 2017 ends though small isolated pockets controlled by IS fighters will remain. The new IS tactics of carrying out high visibility high casualty attacks in Europe, Turkey, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc., would likely escalate. However, the ideology that inspired and underpinned the IS will remain to trouble West Asia and the world for a considerable time to come.

Masters Fellowships in Public Health and Tropical Medicine for Low and Middle Income Countries 2017/2018 – UK

Application Deadline: 29th March 2017

To be taken at (country): UK

About Scholarship: This scheme strengthens scientific research capacity in low- and middle-income countries, by providing support for junior researchers to gain research experience and high-quality research training at Masters Degree level.

Research projects should be aimed at understanding and controlling diseases (either human or animal) of relevance to local, national or global health. This can include laboratory based molecular analysis of field or clinical samples, but projects focused solely on studies in vitro or using animal models will not normally be considered under this scheme.

Type: Masters, Fellowship

Eligibility: You should be:

• A national or legal resident of a low- and middle-income country, and hold a first degree in subject relevant to tropical medicine or public health (clinical or non-clinical). See list of countries below.
• At an early stage in your career, with limited research experience, but have a demonstrated interest in or aptitude for research.

Benefits

• Fellows will receive a stipend in accordance with the cost of living in the country in which he/she will be studying; travel costs and support for approved tuition fees. Masters training by distance learning is acceptable.
• Research-dedicated costs (excluding salary/stipend costs) should not exceed £20 000 per annum.

Duration: This fellowship normally provides up to 30 months’ support. A period of 12 months should normally be dedicated to undertaking a taught Masters course at a recognized centre of excellence, combined with up to 18 months to undertake a research project.

Eligible African Countries: Algeria, Angola,  Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Dem. Rep. , Congo, Rep., Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Federation Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey , Uganda, Ukraine,  Rep. Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Other Countries: Afghanistan, Albania, American Samoa, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh,  Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Arab Rep., El Salvador, Fiji, The Georgia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iran, Islamic Rep. Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Korea, Dem Rep., Kosovo, Kyrgyz, Republic Lao PDR, Lebanon, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malaysia, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Micronesia, Fed. Sts., Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Mayotte, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea,  Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Russian, Samoa, São Tomé and Principe, Serbia, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. ,Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Syrian, Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, RB Vietnam,  West Bank and Gaza Yemen,

How to Apply

Visit the Scholarship Webpage for details