Rotary Peace Fellowships

Rotary InternationalMasters/Certificate

Deadline: 31 May 2017 (annual)
Study in: USA, Japan, UK, Australia, Sweden, Thailand
Course starts 2018

Brief description:

Each year, Rotary selects up to 100 individuals from around the world to receive fully funded academic fellowships to pursue a Professional Development Certificate Program or Masters Degree Program related to peace and conflict resolution and prevention at one of the participating peace centers around the world (USA, Japan, UK, Australia, Sweden, Thailand)

Host Institution(s):

•  Duke University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

•  International Christian University, Japan

•  University of Bradford, England

•  University of Queensland, Australia

•  Uppsala University, Sweden

•  Chulalongkorn University, Thailand (certificate program)

Level/Field of study:

Professional Development Certificate Program or Masters Degree Program in fields related to peace and conflict resolution and prevention

Target group:

Anyone endorsed by their local Rotary Club/District.

No. of Scholarships:

Up to 50 fellowships for master’s degree and 50 for certificate studies are awarded each year.

Scholarship value/inclusions:

The fellowships cover tuition and fees, room and board, round-trip transportation, and all internship and field-study expenses.

Eligibility:

The Rotary Peace Fellowship is designed for professionals with work experience in international relations or peace and conflict prevention and resolution. Applicants must also meet the following requirements:

• Proficiency in English; proficiency in a second language is strongly recommended

• Strong commitment to international understanding and peace as demonstrated through professional and academic achievements and personal or community service

• Excellent leadership skills

• Master’s degree applicants: minimum three years of related full-time work or volunteer experience, bachelor’s degree

• Certificate applicants: minimum five years of related full-time work or volunteer experience, strong academic background

Take the eligibility quiz.

Application instructions:

The deadline for candidates to submit applications to their respective Rotary district is 31 May. Districts must submit endorsed applications to The Rotary Foundation by 1 July.

It is important to read the complete application instructions and visit the official website (link found below) for detailed information on how to apply for this scholarship.

Website:

Official Scholarship Website: https://www.rotary.org/en/peace-fellowships

Development and India: Why GM Mustard Really Matters

Colin Todhunter

The push to commercialise the growing of genetically modified (GM) mustard in India is currently held up in court due to a lawsuit by Aruna Rodrigues. The next hearing is due in February. Rodrigues has indicated at length that, to date, procedures and tests have been corrupted by fraudulent practices, conflicts of interests and gross regulatory delinquency.

Dr Deepak Pental, lead researcher into the crop at Delhi University, has now conceded that the GM mustard in question has not even been tested against varieties of non-GM mustard for better yields. That seems very strange given that the main argument for introducing GM mustard is to increase productivity in order to reduce edible oils imports (a wholly bogus argument in the first place).

All of this should in itself provide sufficient cause for concern and have alarm bells ringing. It raises the question: what then is the point of GM mustard? 

Consider too that the drive to get India’s first GM food crop into the field and on the market also goes against the recommendations of four high-level reports that have advised against the adoption of these crops in India: The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’ of February 2010, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal; The ‘Sopory Committee Report’ (August 2012); The ‘Parliamentary Standing Committee’ (PSC) Report on GM crops (August 2012); and The ‘Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report’ (June-July 2013).

These reports conclude that GM crops are unsuitable for India and that existing proper biosafety and regulatory procedures are inadequate. Appointed by the Supreme Court, the TEC was scathing about the regulatory system prevailing in India, highlighting its inadequacies and inherent serious conflicts of interest. The TEC recommended a 10-year moratorium on commercial release of GM crops. The PSC also arrived at similar conclusions.

It might seem perplexing that the current Modi-led administration seems to be accelerating the drive for GM given that the BJP manifesto stated: “GM foods will not be allowed without full scientific evaluation on the long-term effects on soil, production and biological impact on consumers.” Yet none of this has occurred.

According to eminent lawyer Prashant Bhushan, these official reports attest to just how negligent and unconcerned India’s regulators are with regard to the risks of GMO contamination. They also attest to a serious lack of expertise on GM issues within official circles.

It now clear that placing GM crops on the commercial market in the first place (in the US) was based on the subversion or bypassing of science and that their introduction poses a risk to food security, human health and animal, plants and soil as well as the environment in general.

In India, the only commercialised GM crop (bt cotton) is a failing technology that has severely impacted farmers’ livelihoods.

As bad as all of this might seem, the real significance of GM mustard lies in the fact it could be India’s first GM food crop. In this sense, it should be regarded as a pioneering crop that would open the doors to a range of other GM food crops that are currently in the pipeline for testing.

GM provides a handful of companies with an ideal tool for securing intellectual property rights over seeds (and chemical inputs) and thus gaining corporate control over farming and agriculture. Despite the GMO industry saying that GM should be but one method within a mix, evidence indicates that this is impractical due to cross-contamination and that corporations and their mouthpieces are seeking to denigrate/replace existing food production practices in order to secure greater control over global agriculture. In effect, the only reason for imposing GM crops on India seems to be to facilitate corporate imperialism.

The issue of GM mustard is not only about a crop but is central to a development paradigm that wants to see a fully urbanised India with a small fraction of people left in agriculture and living in the countryside.

US companies and Washington, via the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, are driving the agenda. Does India want to mirror what is effectively a disastrous US model of agriculture? If this is the case, it is highly disturbing, given that it is an unsustainable taxpayer-subsidised sector that has produced a range of social, environmental and health costs outlined in that last link.

We must therefore ask: does India want denutrified food, increasingly monolithic diets, the massive use of agrochemicals, food contaminated by hormones, steroids, antibiotics and a wide range of chemical additives, spiralling rates of ill health, degraded soil, contaminated and depleted water supplies and a cartel of seed, chemicals and food processing companies that seek to secure control over the global food production and supply chain to provide people with low-grade but highly profitable food products?

Things do not look good. A recent UN report said that by 2030, Delhi’s population will be 37 million. In 1991, it was just over 9.4 million. Such rapid, ongoing urbanisation will eat up highly productive farmland on the edges of cities and will place smallholder farmers under even more duress. Quoted in The Guardian, the report’s principal authors, Felix Creutzig, says:

“The emerging mega-cities will rely increasingly on industrial-scale agricultural and supermarket chains, crowding out local food chains.”

In India, the push to drive at least 400 million from the land and into cities is already underway at the behest of the World Bank: a World Bank that is, under the guise of ‘enabling the business of agriculture’, committed to opening up economies to corporate seeds and agrochemicals and securing global supply chains for transnational agribusiness from field to plate.

The drive is to entrench industrial farming, commercialise the countryside and to replace small-scale farming: small-scale farming that is the backbone of food production in India (and globally) and which is more productive than industrialised agriculture, more sustainable and capable of producing more diverse, nutrient- dense diets. Contrast this with what Green Revolution technologies and ideology has already done to India, including the degradation of its water, its soils and its people’s health (see this and this).

Contrast it with an industrial farming that would bring with it all the problems outlined above. And an industrial farming that would destroy hundreds of millions of livelihoods with little guarantee of work for those whose productive system is to be displaced by that which is to be imposed by the likes of Cargill, Monsanto/Bayer and other corporate entities that fuel industrial agriculture.

The issue of GM mustard is part of a drive that seeks to restructure India to benefit foreign capital; a process that regards as being India ripe for a 30-trillion-dollar corporate hijack.

Food and trade policy analyst Devinder Sharma describes the situation:

“India is on fast track to bring agriculture under corporate control… Amending the existing laws on land acquisition, water resources, seed, fertilizer, pesticides and food processing, the government is in overdrive to usher in contract farming and encourage organized retail. This is exactly as per the advice of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as well as the international financial institutes.”

Dr Pental’s GM mustard has roots that trace its origins back to Bayer. Mr Modi, Arvind Subramanian (Chief Economic Advisor to the Indian government) and former governor of the Reserve Bank of India Raghuram Rajan also have roots that can be traced back to Washington, the IMF and the World Bank.

There is an agenda for India. An agenda that regards the peasantry, small farms and India’s rural-based traditions, cultures and village-level systems of food production/processing as backward, as an impediment to ‘progress’. An agenda that regards alternative approaches to agriculture that have been advocated by numerous high-level reports as a hindrance: approaches that would in effect build on and develop the current rural infrastructure and not eradicate it.

There is a push to displace the current productive system with a corporate-controlled model geared towards the maximisation of profit and the erosion of existing deeply-embedded and culturally relevant social relations. For all the fraud and corruption surrounding GM mustard, this alone should convince any bystanders to question the ongoing drive – against all the recommendations – to introduce GM food crops to India.

Finally, none of this is about being ‘anti-GMO’. It is about understanding and challenging the politics of GM and development. Wealthy corporations are flexing their financial and political muscle and are effectively hijacking public institutions for their own ends by slanting, science, politics, policies and regulation (these claims are discussed here,and here). It should not be about whether we are pro-GMO or anti-GMO. It is more the case of whether we are anti-corruption and pro-democratic.

An Al-Qaeda Attack in Mali: Just Another Ripple of the Endless, Bogus “War on Terror”

Gary Leupp

AP reports that a group linked to al-Qaida’s North Africa branch, al-Mourabitoun, has claimed responsibility for an attack last week on a camp in northern Mali used by government troops and former rebels, killing 71 and wounding 115. The government has proclaimed three days of mourning.

Inquiring minds wants to know: how is it that al-Qaeda, perhaps a few thousand strong in 2001when it enjoyed a foothold in Afghanistan, with cells around the world but no territory and no significant impact elsewhere, sixteen years later (despite trillions spent to defeat al-Qaeda) now controls swathes of territory in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and—but for French intervention—could control northern Mali? Why has its spin-off ISIL been even more effective in carving out an Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, erasing the colonial border?

The facts are:

(1) the U.S./NATO-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 did not weaken al-Qaeda, which found new refuge in Pakistan, but merely produced an endless conflict between the warlord-based puppet regime and the Taliban;

(2) the Iraq War beginning in 2003, based on the lies that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and close links to al-Qaeda, and the harsh policies of the occupation regime towards the Sunni minority, produced a golden opportunity for al-Qaeda to—for the first time—establish a base in Anbar Province and exploit Sunni-Shiite tensions to expand its influence in Iraq, then Syria;

(3) a faction of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria broke off to form ISIL and establish capitals in Raqqa, Syria and Mosul, Iraq;

(4) U.S. (and Turkish, Qatari and Saudi) efforts to topple the secular government of Assad, in their inability to recruit actual “moderate” Syrian fighters unwilling or unable do to their weakness to cut ties with the al-Qaeda franchise called al-Nusra, has resulted in strengthening the group that now calls itself Fateh al-Sham;

(5) U.S. sabotage of a promising U.S.-Russian plan for a ceasefire in Syria by an attack last Sept. 17 on an army camp near Deir Ezzor, killing 62 government  troops doing battle with ISIL, has paved the way for the likely ISIL conquest of Deir Ezzor, even as Palmyra (once liberated with Russian help) is once again under ISIL’s control, more of its precious monuments pulverized by the bloody thugs;

(6) the U.S./NATO unprovoked attack on Libya in 2011 sowed chaos in that country and the region, providing al-Qaeda one more opportunity to establish a foothold there for the first time, and to expand into the Sahel;

(7) U.S. insistence on regime change in Yemen in 2011 threw that country into turmoil, invited a brutal Saudi invasion and provided new opportunities for al-Qaeda expansion (including the conquest of the port of Mukkala);

(8) U.S. interventions in the Middle East and North Africa have sent over a million refugees into Europe, who include terrorists from both al-Qaeda and ISIL, producing fear huge social tensions;

(9) U.S. actions, ostensibly against al-Qaeda, in both Iraq and Syria, have not quelled al-Qaeda and ISIL but encouraged Kurdish nationalism and separatism in Iraq and Syria, pitting the U.S. squarely against its NATO ally Turkey, which fears Kurdish separatism at home, and also pitting Ankara against the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad, paving the way for confrontations in northern Iraq in the future (between U.S. allies);

(10) the destruction of the modern secular Iraqi state, justified by its (fake news) al-Qaeda associations, has empowered Shiites in Iraq, aligned informally with Shiites in Syria, Lebanon, and especially Iran—viewed by the key U.S. ally in the region (the Sunni theocracy of Saudi Arabia) as a state run by dangerous heretics, threatening the position of Sunni Islam in majority Shiite but Sunni-ruled Bahrain, Yemen (where Shiite Houthis continue to control the capital of Sana despite savage Saudi bombardment), and Saudi Arabia itself (where Shiites preponderate in the oil-rich eastern province); it has produced a general Sunni-Shiite (and Saudi-Iranian) confrontation few in Washington are equipped to understand.

In sum: disaster after disaster have accompanied the open-ended “War on Terror” proclaimed by the U.S. after the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda has grown and creatively broadened its terror activities, in no small part by using social media to encourage independent solo actions. European cities live in fear from Islamist terrorist attacks far more than they did 2001. The military position of the Taliban (the indigenous jihadi organization whose ties to al-Qaeda were always exaggerated by the press) in Afghanistan is stronger than at any time since 2001. ISIL continues to hold Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa and Palmyra (tragic Palmyra, being blown up as we speak) in Syria.

The car bombing near Gao, Mali on January 18 was declared by al-Qaeda’s al-Mourabitoun chapter as “punishment for [Mali’s] cooperation with France.” But isn’t it also punishment for those responsible for War-Based-on-Lies in 2003, that France actually opposed—the neocons in Washington with their grand scheme for the reconfiguration of the Middle East, to better service U.S. imperialism and the needs of its Israeli junior partner?

Trump’s Holy War against Islam

L. Ali Khan

In his inaugural address, President Trump singled out radical Islamic terrorism as the sole enemy. He did not even mention Russia or China as threats to the security or prosperity of the United States.  In terse and clear words, Trump said: “We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate from the face of the Earth.” In fighting against radical Islamic terrorism, Trump asserted that “We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement. And most importantly, we will be protected by God.”

What Trump Means

There are three points worth consideration to understand Trump’s speech on radical Islamic terrorism. Each point is rooted in history and academic literature, and each point carries serious implications for the peace and security of the United States and the world.

First, radical Islamic terrorism is presented as a threat to “the civilized world.” Historically, the phrase “civilized world” was coined in the era of colonialism to refer primarily to the European nations and by implication to the “uncivilized world” referred to Native Americans in Americas, slaves from Africa, and the colonized populations in Asia. Under contemporary standards of global discourse, the phrase “civilized world” is rarely used by diplomats, heads of states, or academic scholars. There is a new understanding that the world is blessed with numerous diverse civilizations, including the Islamic civilization that spans over centuries in all continents of the world. It is unclear whether President Trump includes fifty-six (56) Muslim countries as part of the civilized world.

Second, the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” was invented to argue that Islamic violence emanates from the religion itself and not from any concrete geopolitical grievances for which Muslim militants are fighting in various parts of the world. The phrase “radical Islamic terrorism “was popular with neoconservatives who wanted to shift the focus from grievances to Islamic psychology. For example, the phrase implies that the Palestinians as Muslims are addicted to violence that has nothing to do with occupation or misery they face as a people. Likewise, the phrase would suggest that the Taliban as Muslims are hooked to religiously-inspired warfare and their violence has little to do with the invasion of Afghanistan.  By adopting the phrase during his campaign and mention it in his inaugural speech, President Trump has bought into the idea that a radical version of Islam is inherently brutal and will find excuses to perpetrate violence throughout the world even after all the problems have been solved.

Third, Trump has added a holy war component to the eradication of radical Islamic terrorism from the face of the Earth.  In addition to seeking protection from “the great men and women of our military,” Trump claims that “we will be protected by God.”  This simply means that God is on the side of the United States in its wars against various nations and populations, particularly radical Islamic terrorism. This understanding of God’s partisanship in human wars is the cardinal principle of the holy war whether the concept is invoked by Catholics, Protestants, Shias, Sunnis, or Shiv Sena.

Understanding Islamic Terrorism

A serious study of Islamic terrorism suggests that Muslim militancy originates in concrete geopolitical causes, including occupations and invasions. Muslim militants desert their families and children, forfeit their lives, and invite the wrath of mighty states because they are fighting occupation of their lands, resources, or way of life.  Unless the grievances factor is honestly included in the counter-terrorism equation, radical Islamic terrorism will not abate.

The phrase radical Islamic terrorism is overly provocative. It is a bad piece of rhetoric that does more harm than good. It implicates the religion of Islam, spawning hatred against ordinary Muslim families living in Western countries. The phrase also discourages peace-loving Muslims all over the world to join the fight against terrorism as they feel their religion is being maligned. As far as Muslim militants are concerned, they do not care whether they are called terrorists, radical Islamists, brutes, uncivilized, or any such phrases.

There are good reasons for all, including Americans, to criticize when Muslim militants openly and deliberately violate the laws of war. Destroying ancient temples, Sufi shrines, ramming trucks into civilian crowds, bombing cities, and threatening nuclear holocaust, all these and other acts are condemnable. Muslims are obligated to openly and unreservedly condemn when Muslim militants commit such atrocities that have nothing to do with any version of Islam.

Finally, bringing God into the fight is ill-advised. For centuries, God is presented as a sponsor of violence and warfare. Trump has ruled out the possibility that God is indifferent to human wars and that God does not condone or take part in cluster bombings, drone attacks, or the use of nuclear weapons against any cities.

Israel political crisis mounts over Netanyahu corruption revelations

Jean Shaoul 

Leaked video tapes have revealed the pervasive and corrupt relations between Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, his family, the media, and billionaire bosses at home and abroad. The tapes are the subject of police investigations.

Notorious for his hobnobbing with the financial elite, it is now clear that “gifts” Netanyahu received from his wealthy friends were down payments for favours.

This latest corruption scandal underscores the degree to which Israeli politicians are in the pocket of media networks and big business. Far from being the Middle East’s “only democracy,” Israel’s political system has more in common with mafia rule.

Given the damning contents of the tapes, it will be difficult for Netanyahu to avoid a criminal prosecution, despite having appointed close associates to the positions of attorney general and police chief. Such a prosecution could precipitate his resignation and early elections this year.

Like almost all of Israel’s prime ministers after the first, David Ben-Gurion, Netanyahu and his family have faced numerous allegations of corruption and even preliminary investigations. His immediate predecessor Ehud Olmert received a jail term for bribery offences when he was mayor of Jerusalem prior to becoming prime minister.

But the legal authorities, who have come under continuous attack from successive Netanyahu-led governments, have been reluctant to prosecute him—supposedly due to a lack of evidence that the gifts were actually exchanged for political favours. Now, the police, who have revealed few details of the investigations, have questioned Netanyahu three times “under caution” in relation to two cases.

According to the reports by Ha’aretz and TV Channel 2, the most damaging of the two cases involves tapes that establish that Netanyahu sought to make a deal with Arnon “Noni” Mozes, the boss of Israel’s daily Yediot Aharonot and its online site Ynet, to rescue its falling circulation and advertising revenues.

The recordings—believed to date from between 2014 and early 2015—were apparently found on a phone during a search of the belongings of Netanyahu’s former chief of staff during a separate fraud investigation.

According to the proposed deal, Netanyahu would back a law that would have banned free newspapers, including Israel Hayom, which functions as Netanyahu’s mouthpiece. Israel Hayom was founded and published by US casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson in 2008 at a cost of $261 million, and is a rival of Yediot Aharonot. In return, Yediot Aharonot would tone down its hostile coverage of the prime minister—in part motivated by Netanyahu’s backing for the free newspaper that had hurt its bottom line. Netanyahu would even be free to nominate the journalists.

The police have called in Mozes and his editor-in-chief, Ron Yaron, for questioning. Mozes, who has escaped prosecution in the past for illegal eavesdropping, could now face prosecution over his discussions with Netanyahu.

As it turned out, the proposed deal came to nothing, and Netanyahu tried for months to block the bill on Israel Hayom’s behalf. To no avail. The Knesset introduced the bill, despite opposition from Netanyahu and most of the Likud legislators. That left him with no alternative but to dissolve parliament and call another election just two years after the previous one in 2013.

Netanyahu recently admitted on his Facebook page that he had “dissolved the government and went to elections, among other things because of the subversion from within the government to pass the law. Everyone also knows that with the establishment of the new government after the election, I inserted an explicit clause into the governing coalition agreements to prevent the recurrence of such legislation.”

In other words, he called an early election in 2015, at a cost of $500 million, because of legislation that would have curbed the power of Israel Hayom, and made it a condition for joining his coalition that there would be no further attempts to enact a similar ban.

The other case under investigation, apparently the lesser of the two, involves the receipt of substantial gifts and benefits from several wealthy businesspeople. There is plenty of evidence, including detailed testimony from Netanyahu’s well-known benefactor Arnon Milchan, together with receipts and invoices. Milchan, an Israeli billionaire and Hollywood producer, gave Netanyahu more than $100,000 worth of cigars and liquor. He reportedly asked Netanyahu to press his case with US Secretary of State John Kerry for a 10-year visa, which was ultimately successful.

Netanyahu is also known to have received lavish gifts from Ronald Lauder, an American businessman whose family founded the cosmetics giant Estee Lauder and who has himself been questioned by the police.

Another benefactor is the Australian billionaire James Packer, who is reported to have given the Netanyahu family lavish gifts. This included extended stays at luxury hotels in Tel Aviv, New York and Aspen, Colorado, for Netanyahu’s son, Yair, as well as the use of his private jet and dozens of tickets for concerts by Packer’s former fiancée, Mariah Carey. The police have now questioned Yair in connection with the affair. The purpose of Packer’s largesse is believed to be his desire to obtain Israeli citizenship or permanent-resident status for tax purposes.

Netanyahu’s cousin and personal attorney represented a German company involved in a controversial $1.5 billion sale of submarines to Israel.

Netanyahu has denied any impropriety and hit back against his opponents, saying they were mounting a witch-hunt against him. He claimed he had done nothing wrong and that “nothing” could come of the accusations because “I repeat and say there will not be anything because there is nothing.”

Nevertheless, he is clearly coming under increasing pressure. Last week, he suddenly cancelled his trip to the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland, and did not attend President Donald Trump’s inauguration, despite reports that he was invited.

He is urging his supporters to introduce a bill making it impossible to investigate a sitting prime minister for fraud, bribery and breach of trust, although it would not be applied retrospectively.

Leading members of his Likud party, while publicly remaining supportive, are quietly lining up to put themselves in contest for the leadership position.

Netanyahu’s coalition partners have indicated that they will not allow him to continue as prime minister if he is indicted. Nor would they continue in the coalition, thereby precipitating an election. Likud currently holds 30 seats in the 120-member Knesset. Jewish Home, the right wing settler party led by Naftali Bennett currently has eight seats, but is expected to makes gains at Likud’s expense. This would make Bennett the king-maker if not the king.

Israel’s so-called left and centrist parties have done nothing to challenge Netanyahu. They have not even attempted to get 40 signatures—out of a possible 54 opposition legislators—that would force the prime minister to answer questions on the bribery allegations. The last time they used the 40 signature procedure was in March last year, contrasting sharply with their frequent use of the rule during the tenure of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, under investigation for corruption in 2007-8.

Both Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid and Isaac Herzog of the Zionist Union (formerly the Labour party) are implicated. Lapid, a former journalist, worked for Milchan and Mozes at Yediot Ahronot. His wife still works there and they all remain friends. Herzog is the subject of alleged election offences, and he too is a personal friend of Milchan. Yediot Aharonot backed him in the 2015 elections.

The mounting crisis surrounding Netanyahu makes it all the more likely that he will seek to distract public attention by escalating tensions with the Palestinians. He can count on strong support from the Trump administration.

French prime minister beaten into second place in Socialist Party presidential primary

Alex Lantier 

French President François Hollande’s government suffered another humiliating setback last night in the presidential primary of his Socialist Party (PS), as former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who resigned his position to run for president, was beaten into second place by Benoît Hamon.

Hamon, a former education minister, took 36.21 percent of the vote, Valls 31.19 percent, former Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg 17.62 percent, and Vincent Peillon 6.48 percent. The remaining candidates each won less than 5 percent.

The primary took place amid a general atmosphere of popular indifference. Some two million voters participated in the PS primary, after over 4 million voters participated in the primary elections that selected François Fillon as the right-wing The Republicans’ (LR) candidate. While Fillon was broadly expected to win the presidency after the LR primary, neither Hamon nor Valls is currently expected to survive to the second round of the presidential elections.

The latest Ipsos poll showed that they would receive 8 and 9 percent of the vote, respectively, setting up a second round between Fillon and Marine Le Pen of the neo-fascist National Front (FN).

The vote is set to intensify the deep crisis in the PS, one of the French bourgeoisie’s two major parties of government, whose survival itself is at stake. After five years of a deeply unpopular presidency, the PS is deeply divided and threatened with a split as it faces a wipe-out in the April-May 2017 elections. Now, however, broad sections of the PS closer to the government may back investment banker and former Hollande advisor Emmanuel Macron rather than backing Hamon, should Hamon beat Valls in the run-off and become the PS candidate.

Hamon, who ran based on appeals to discontent with Hollande’s austerity policies and a demagogic promise to institute a minimum universal income for everyone in France, called for his voters to again vote in the second round of the PS primary this coming Sunday. “Left-wing voters, this is my conviction, voted by conviction and not by resignation,” he said in a press conference after the vote. He added, “Now we must broaden the mobilization in the first round, to give it more strength.”

Hamon also thanked Montebourg, who left the race with an appeal to his voters to vote for Hamon in the second round of the primaries.

Valls, who in the days preceding the vote had been expected to take first place but then lose in the second round to Hamon, tried to put the best face on his surprise second-place finish and claimed to be the only viable candidate to oppose Donald Trump, Russia, and the National Front. “A new campaign is starting from this evening,” he said. “A very clear choice is presenting itself to us now, and to you. The choice between certain defeat and possible victory, the choice between unrealizable and unaffordable promises and a credible left wing that takes responsibility for our country.”

He continued, “I refuse to abandon the French people to its fate in the face with the far right that would destroy our country, or the right wing led by François Fillon, hard and free-market as never before, and conservative in its policy faced with Donald Trump’s America and Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

PS First Secretary Jean-Christophe Cambadélis hailed the vote as “successful” and proof that the PS and its voters could “resist the spirit of the times” and avoid a complete collapse of his party. Nonetheless, he could not avoid striking a pessimistic tone as he described the PS’ future prospects.

“I am convinced that this democratic exercise will hold the left together,” Cambadélis declared. “I am persuaded that a new alliance is being born, forged by today’s vote. … I am persuaded that the presidential election is not yet over.”

The crisis that is engulfing the PS points to the broad, international character of the collapse and discrediting of the political institutions of the post-World War II period. The PS played a central role in pressing for the construction of the European Union (EU) and the euro under President François Mitterrand in the 1980s and 1990s. Compared to Le Pen’s party and LR, it still takes the least hostile stance towards the EU of any major party in the French presidential elections.

However, after the Socialist Party disappointed expectations of the population in successive governments—Mitterrand’s presidency, the 1997-2002 Plural Left government led by Mitterrand’s top aide Lionel Jospin, and now with Hollande’s presidency—it is politically disintegrating. Hollande is currently at 4 percent in polls.

Like other European social-democratic parties that have imposed a ruthless austerity diktat since the 2008 Wall Street crash, like Greece’s Pasok or the Spanish Socialist Party, the PS now faces the prospect of collapse or even electoral annihilation. The geo-strategic stakes of such a collapse are all the greater, in that a dissolution of the PS would deal a further blow to the EU, which is already reeling from Brexit and from Trump’s expression of overt hostility to the EU and Germany before his inauguration.

In this context, the emergence of Valls and Hamon as the PS’ two main candidates points to the bankruptcy of the PS and the EU more broadly.

Valls personifies like no one else the socially regressive character of the PS. A politician who has called for the PS to simply abandon the name “socialist,” he is directly associated with the most reactionary policies of Hollande’s presidency. He defends the state of emergency, austerity measures like the labor law and the Responsibility Pact, and the ever-closer integration of the PS and the police and intelligence apparatus, based on law-and-order and anti-Muslim appeals.

Should Valls fail to defeat Hamon, powerful sections of the bourgeoisie will intensify pressure on his allies within PS to rally behind Macron, effectively liquidating itself into the personal electoral movement of an investment banker with close ties to the nationalist far right, such as Philippe de Villiers. In other words, Valls’ posturing as an anti-FN force is a hypocritical and empty fraud.

The decision to run Hamon as a candidate points to broad awareness in sections of the ruling class and the media of the deep social opposition and anger over economic inequality developing in the working class in France and internationally.

Nonetheless, Hamon’s proposals offer little to workers and, above all, are not seriously intended. His plans for a €600 [$US645]-800 [$US859] per month universal wage would barely lift the unemployed out of poverty, but would cost hundreds of billions of euros, under conditions where the bourgeoisie itself is hostile to any new social spending.

And, as the Hollande presidency has made very clear, not only will the PS implement the bourgeoisie’s austerity diktat, but its so-called “rebel” faction, from which Hamon hails, will not mount any effective opposition—citing the need to keep the right wing out of power.

Under these conditions, Hamon’s plans are simply dust which he hopes to throw into the eyes of those remaining sections of the electorate still willing to vote for the PS.

Trump scraps TPP and outlines trade war agenda

Mike Head 

Just as he vowed he would, US President Donald Trump effectively killed off the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade bloc on his first day in office, as part of his aggressive “America First” agenda to boost the US economy at the expense of the rest of the world.

Within hours of assuming power, Trump’s White House web site not only affirmed his intention to withdraw from the TPP. It placed that decision side-by-side with a demand for the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico, adding to the consternation in capitals around the Asia-Pacific, especially in Tokyo, Mexico City, Ottawa and Canberra.

As one of the Trump administration’s six highest priorities, alongside “An America First Foreign Policy” and “Making Our Military Strong Again,” the web site declared that the United States government would pursue a course of “rejecting and reworking failed trade deals” that had allegedly produced “a mounting trade deficit and a devastated manufacturing base.”

“This strategy starts by withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and making certain that any new trade deals are in the interests of American workers. President Trump is committed to renegotiating NAFTA. If our partners refuse a renegotiation that gives American workers a fair deal, then the President will give notice of the United States’ intent to withdraw from NAFTA.”

While cynically couched in terms of a “fair deal” for American workers, this is a nakedly nationalist and protectionist agenda that seeks to halt the protracted decline of US capitalism, bolster corporate profits and further enrich the American financial elite. It goes hand in hand with threats of crippling tariffs, such as 45 percent penalties on Chinese imports that could trigger a global trade war, with devastating results for workers in America and all around the world.

This is not a retreat into US isolationism but a dramatic ramping up of the offensive, already commenced by the Obama administration, to reassert US hegemony throughout the Asia-Pacific over its economic and strategic rivals, notably China and Japan. The 12-country TPP itself was never a free trade agreement. It was a US-led economic bloc directed especially at undermining China, which was excluded from the TPP, and ensuring the unrestricted plundering of the region’s resources and markets by US financial, media, pharmaceutical and other transnational giants.

The TPP was a key aspect of Obama’s “pivot to Asia”—a concerted military, diplomatic and economic drive to encircle and dominate over China. As Obama stated repeatedly, the purpose was to ensure that the US, not China, “writes the rules of the road for trade in the 21st century.” As part of this quest, the TPP sought to cement alliances across the region, particularly with Japan and Australia, Washington’s two key military allies, both of which hoped to gain greater access to US and other TPP markets.

By jettisoning the TPP and targeting the two decade-old NAFTA, Trump has made it clear his administration will not work within the old, post-war framework that sought to avoid the outright trade wars that erupted during the 1930s, collapsed world trade and set the stage for World War II.

The TPP agreement states that it can go ahead only if at least six of its 12 original members ratify the deal, and if those six countries represent 85 percent of the combined gross domestic product (GDP) of all 12 countries. That means the deal cannot come into force if the US fails to ratify it, because the US accounts for more than 55 percent of the total GDP.

There was dismay in ruling circles throughout the region, especially in Japan, where Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has banked on the TPP as a major pillar of his “Abenomics” program to end the country’s prolonged stagnation. Japan’s auto and corporate giants have also used NAFTA to establish low-wage operations in Mexico as means of gaining entry to US markets. About 1,000 Japanese companies operate in Mexico today, spearheaded by Toyota, Nissan and Honda, which utilise their factories in Mexico as exporting hubs to the US and Canada.

In a last-ditch effort to avert a TPP pull-out by Trump, Abe last month secured the Japanese parliament’s formal ratification of the treaty, even though Trump had made his intentions very clear. Last week, Abe also conducted a quick-fire trip to the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia and Vietnam in an effort to shore up Japan’s position.

While in Australia, Abe and his Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull reaffirmed their support for the TPP, issuing a joint statement that it remained an indispensable priority because of its “significant economic and strategic benefits.” Even though Abe and Turnbull also pledged their commitment to their respective military alliances with the United States, Trump has bluntly dashed their plea to retain the TPP.

According to yesterday’s Yomiuri Shimbun, the Japanese government now has been forced to review its trade policy. Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry chairman Akio Mimura released a statement condemning Trump’s “America first” policy, saying it would promote the spread of protectionism, “significantly disrupting the system of open trade that has supported the growth of the global economy.”

The nervousness is also palpable in Australia’s corporate and media elite, for whom Trump’s inauguration message that “the whole world must be made to fear us” not only points to trade wars but escalates the danger of military conflict between the US, on which Canberra depends militarily, and China, Australia’s largest export market.

Today’s Australian Financial Review editorial described Trump’s declarations as “chilling for the future of world trade.” Turnbull’s government is still saying it will go “flat out” to rescue the TPP, or try to concoct a “Plan B” treaty without the US. Trade Minister Steve Ciobo met officials from Japan, Canada, Mexico, Singapore and New Zealand last week in Switzerland to discuss ways to “take the TPP forward” without the US.

The Chinese regime’s reaction to Trump’s statements was muted. The normally strident Global Times, a state-owned media outlet, said negotiations around China’s rival to the TPP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), “could finally see some momentum” but “no one is celebrating yet as countries, including China, still try to grasp specific policies and actions the US might take going forward.”

The 16-nation RCEP would include countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China, Australia, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand, but not the US. High-ranking Japanese and Chinese trade officials met in Tokyo last month to advance RCEP. If these moves continue, China will not be the only country in Trump’s sights. Japan could find itself increasingly at odds with Washington.

Divisions in UK ruling elite widen over post-Brexit orientation to Trump

Chris Marsden

UK Prime Minister Theresa May is to be the first foreign leader to meet US President Donald Trump in Washington DC, Friday.

With a Supreme Court ruling Tuesday expected to rule that her government must secure parliamentary approval for triggering the two year process of the UK leaving the European Union (EU), the days leading up to the meeting will see escalating political conflict in ruling circles.

May has made Trump’s election the cornerstone of her post-Brexit strategy, adapting to a yet more open embrace of Trump by the anti-EU right-wing of her party, as well as the UK Independence Party and the largely pro-Brexit press.

Last week May gave a speech at Lancaster House threatening the EU states with trade war measures that all concerned knew were underscored by a belief that the Trump administration stood behind her in supporting Brexit—as confirmed by Trump’s earlier interview with the Sunday Times in which he said Brexit “is going to end up being a great thing” because the EU is “basically a vehicle for Germany.”

Even so, May hopes the threat of a “hard Brexit,” with the UK leaving the Single Market and Customs Union, will act as a bargaining chip ensuring that the UK is able to continue the favourable trade terms with Europe on which the UK economy relies. To this end, May used an interview with the Financial Times to explain that she did not share Trump’s relish at the prospect of the break-up of the EU. “I want the EU to continue to be strong and I want to continue to have a close and strategic partnership with the EU,” she said. She was sure that Trump “recognises the importance and significance of NATO” and “will recognise the importance of the co-operation we have in Europe to ensure our collective defence and collective security.”

This is a mixture of wishful thinking and overt dissembling.

The impact of Trump on Europe and the UK’s relations with the continent is indicated by the talks on a new trade deal conducted prior to May’s visit by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Bloomberg reported that the January 8 talks had the specific aim of encouraging May “to be more aggressive in exiting the union.”

They were held between Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s chief strategy adviser Steve Bannon, alongside separate talks with National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and UK defence and intelligence leaders.

An ecstatic article by Freddy Gray in the right-wing Tory magazine, the Spectator, described the fascistic Bannon as “a true Brexit believer and an EU hater. ... It is Bannon who brought [UKIP leader Nigel] Farage into Trump’s orbit” and was thought to have “arranged for the Eurosceptic Marine Le Pen [of the fascist National Front] to visit Trump Tower last week.”

Gray boasts that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the EU “can either fall in with Trump’s new world order—or fall out with the world’s greatest superpower.” The EU project, he continued, “has always been nurtured with American backing. ... America used trade and NATO to make the continent a bulwark against the East. That often meant sacrificing America’s short-term economic gains in the interests of security and world peace. Trump has no time for that.”

These are the political and geostrategic calculations on which the Tory right bases itself—of an escalating conflict between the US and Europe that will force the European powers to once again “know their place” in the New World Order, while Britain can benefit from its alliance with the thuggish bully in the White House. Hence the Daily Telegraph urging, “Mr. Trump is now the most powerful man in the world—and the UK has to work with him. If he offers the hand of friendship, we would be fools not to accept it.” And Rupert Murdoch’s the Sun claiming that Trump “could spell great things for UK too ... with apologies to JFK—ask not what Trump can do for his country, ask what he can do for ours.”

Even such positive comments are tinged with concern that Trump’s “America First” doctrine will militate against achieving a partnership that serves Britain’s interests. But outside these circles, the reaction to Trump’s inauguration speech, on the official right and left of politics, was one of barely concealed dread.

The Financial Times editorialised that his address “was perhaps the most xenophobic in US history. The rest of the world should be on notice. Mr. Trump intends to rip up the US-created global order. His address will go down as a turning point in America’s post-war role—and quite possibly its death knell.”

The Observer, Sunday sister paper of the politically liberal Guardian, stated baldly that “it is not too much to say Trump’s ranting scream of ‘America first, America first!’ carries an echo of the ‘Sieg Heil’ (hail victory) of another, not-forgotten era of brutish nationalist triumphalism.” US protectionism, it continued, would “plunge a blunt knife into Theresa May’s hopes of a post-Brexit sweetheart trade deal.”

The newspaper urged a European alliance against Trump, insisting, “If he is inclined to meddle, which is entirely possible, Europe’s members must be ready to repulse him.”

Efforts to consolidate such an alternative EU-based foreign policy for British imperialism are being stepped up. The Guardian Saturday reported that a “cross-party group of MPs is plotting to thwart Theresa May’s attempts to drive through a hard Brexit amid rising fears that UK businesses could soon have to pay huge export tariffs on goods they sell to the EU.”

Encompassing Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens and Tories, the move is accompanied by an open letter to May, signed by 43 Labour MPs as a public declaration of opposition to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for being “soft on Brexit.” Led by Blairites such as Chuka Umunna, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, the letter was used by the Observer to solicit comments by Former Tory Chancellor Kenneth Clarke that it is time for all pro-EU MPs to “abandon a bit of the tribalism in British politics.”

With Trump making clear that the US is set on confrontation with any country deemed to be a threat or challenge to its interests, Germany has made clear it intends to respond in kind. The reconsolidating of the UK’s relations with the EU is therefore only an alternative path towards trade and military war.

Corbyn’s own response to Trump has been typically flaccid moralising bordering on caricature. He noted that he previously gave Barack Obama a copy of “What Would Keir Hardie Say?”—a collection of essays on the founder of the Labour Party.

“I think the whole world needs to learn the lesson of Keir Hardie,” Corbyn said. “He came up from the most appalling poverty and circumstances and gave himself an education, filled his home with learning and books and filled his heart with love and humanity.”

“Let’s hope,” he went on, “that he reaches out to communities across the United States. Let’s hope he [Trump] is prepared to engage with people to maintain the Iran Nuclear Deal ... that he doesn’t go ahead with his proposal to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and that he promotes engagement, critical engagement but engagement with Russia and others.”

Let’s hope, as the old saw goes, for pie in the sky.