EU summit approves sealing off the Mediterranean from refugees

Martin Kreickenbaum

At the European Union’s special summit in Malta last Friday, European heads of state adopted a 10-point plan aimed at blocking off the central Mediterranean route from Libya to Italy. The key components of the plan are the upgrading and training of the Libyan coastguard, which is to seize refugees in Libyan territorial waters and return them to the African coast, and the establishment of internment camps in North Africa.

The hypocrisy with which the EU is carrying out its defence against refugees is breathtaking. In the run-up to the summit, several European heads of state and governments criticized US President Donald Trump for his plans to build a wall along the border with Mexico and to impose an immigration ban from seven predominantly Muslim states in the Middle East and North Africa.

Leading European politicians attempted to outdo one another, praising the EU as “the last bastion of liberal democracy.” But the isolationist policies the EU employs against refugees are in essence no different than the inhumane measures of the US government.

According to the summit resolutions, a double wall against refugees is to be built in Libya. The EU wants to train Libyan border officials, coast guard and marines, and equip and finance them to cordon off the southern border of the country as well as the maritime border with Europe. This will strand tens of thousands of refugees in the desert regions of Central Africa or, if they cross the Mediterranean by boat, will force them back to devastated countries.

Because the ships of the European border protection agency Frontex and the NATO mission Sophia are not permitted to operate in Libyan territorial waters, the Libyan coast guard will take on the EU’s dirty work, even though it is notorious for its extreme brutality against refugees. In addition to training, the Libyan coastguard will receive several patrol boats and technical equipment from the EU.

For the care of refugees, “appropriate reception facilities” are to be established in Libya that will operate jointly with the UN Human Rights Commission and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). These are in reality internment camps for refugees.

For months, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière has been calling for camps in North Africa to stop refugees on the way to Europe and to enable mass deportations from Europe to Africa. However, only a small fraction of African refugees ever reach Europe. More than 86 percent of all refugees remain in the immediate vicinity of the regions from which they originate, where they linger hopelessly under disastrous conditions in miserable mass camps.

Instead of improving refugee camps, the EU will increase its police presence in North Africa to block refugee escape routes. Libya’s land borders with transit states Niger, Algeria, Sudan and Egypt will be strictly monitored and guarded with the support of European border protection agency Frontex.

Finally, the collaboration of the police and secret service will be deepened. Above all, Europol and Frontex are to provide data with which smugglers and their boats already in coastal towns can be located. The trade with motorboats and inflatable boats is to be permanently destroyed.

Following the closure of the Balkan route and a deal with Turkey, Libya is back in the focus of European isolationist policy. More than 90 percent of all refugees begin their journey to Europe there. In the last year, 181,000 refugees reached Italy by this sea route, while more than 4,600 drowned on the central Mediterranean route alone.

Although a majority of refugees leave home to escape war, civil-warlike conflicts, persecution and tyranny, and their rate of protection in the EU is correspondingly high, the letter of invitation to this EU summit states most refugees are “irregular economic migrants who may be sent back to their countries of origin.”

Provisions of the Geneva Refugee Convention and the European Human Rights Convention are being stretched beyond recognition in the campaign by the EU to block refugees. This includes the plan to seize refugees already in Libyan territorial waters to bypass the “non-refoulment” rule and the proposal to soften the concept of secure third states, in which even individual places and refugee camps can be declared “secure locations,” which de Maizière did a few weeks ago.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees and human rights organizations regularly list in their reports the inhumane conditions in Libyan refugee camps. The deportation of refugees there will mean torture and death for thousands of people.

Employees of the German diplomatic service in Niger have also come to this conclusion. In a report to the German government, they write that in Libyan detention facilities “the worst, systematic human rights violations” prevail. “Executions, torture and rape” are a daily reality for refugees. “Authentic cell phone photos and videos prove the concentration camp-like conditions in these so-called private prisons.”

The report goes on to state, “Eyewitnesses describe exactly five executions per week in one prison—with announcements always made on Fridays to make room for new arrivals, which is to say, to increase the human delivery rate and, with it, the profits of the operators.”

In these prisons, refugees get neither sufficient nourishment nor clean drinking water, and the medical care is completely inadequate. An asylum system does not exist in Libya, either in law or in practice.

None of this has deterred the EU, however, from developing the closest collaboration with the Libyan government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj. On the eve of the summit, al-Sarraj met with European Council President Donald Tusk and Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni to work out the details of the dirty deal against refugees.

Immediately prior to the EU summit, the Italian government secured a bilateral treaty with the government in Tripoli. Gentiloni and al-Sarraj reached an agreement on joint coastguard patrols along the Libyan coast to send refugees directly back to Libya. Moreover, the Italian government will participate in the construction and financing of refugee camps in Libya. In return, trade relations with the former Italian colony will be improved, above all in the energy sector.

Prime Minister Gentiloni is thus associating himself directly with a refugee deal that former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi made in 2008 with Muammar Gaddafi. Berlusconi commented at the time: “We will get more gas and petrol and fewer illegal immigrants.”

At the same time, the EU is working on a stronger military collaboration with the Libyan government. The German government has entrusted al-Sarraj with armoured vehicles valued at €15 million, while Italy will participate in the construction and upgrading of army and police organizations. The Italian army has stationed 100 paratroopers in Libya under the pretext of protecting a hospital.

NATO has also declared its willingness to fully support the Libyan government. “NATO is ready to help with the construction of more effective security and defence organs,” declared NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg after a meeting with al-Sarraj. Stoltenberg also offered to assist the EU in the development of the Libyan marines and coastguard.

The EU’s campaign against refugees from North Africa is increasingly a means of subordinating Libya and other countries in the region to military control and returning them to the status of colonies.

Trump plans rollback of drug industry regulations

Brad Dixon 

Trump met last week with pharmaceutical industry lobbyists and executives at the White House where he announced his plans to drastically reduce the regulatory power of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) while slashing taxes on the pharmaceutical industry.

Participants at Tuesday’s meeting included Stephen Ubl, head of the drug industry trade group PhRMA, and the CEOs of Novartis, Merck, Eli Lilly, and Johnson & Johnson.

Trump has demagogically postured as a critic of the pharmaceutical industry, including calling for rule changes to allow the federal government to use the bulk purchasing power of Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.

“Pharma has a lot of lobbies, a lot of lobbyists and a lot power,” Trump said at his first press conference as president-elect on January 11. He said that it was necessary to “create new bidding procedures for the drug industry, because they’re getting away with murder.”

Trump has now abandoned any pretense of opposition.

“We’re going to be changing a lot of the rules,” Trump proclaimed prior to the meeting.

“I’ll oppose anything that makes it harder for smaller, younger companies to take the risk of bringing their product to a vibrantly competitive market. That includes price-fixing by the biggest dog in the market, Medicare, which is what’s happening,” Trump told reporters after the meeting, reversing his previous position on allowing Medicare to negotiate prices and falsely stating that the program currently does so.

“We’re going to be lowering taxes, we’re going to be getting rid of regulations that are unnecessary,” said Trump. He said that he wants to get rid of 75 or 80 percent of FDA regulations.

Biotech and Pharmaceutical stock shares rallied following the meeting, and Trump’s plan was met with approval by the industry lobbyists and CEOs gathered at the meeting.

“Tax, deregulation—those are things that could really help us expand operations,” commented Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks, according to Reuters.

“These changes are going to be great for the country,” Celgene Chairman Robert Hugin told the Washington Post.

The deregulation of the FDA and the streamlining of the drug approval process will result in less knowledge about the safety and efficacy of the drugs approved by the FDA.

“Streamlining drug approvals sounds good, but the agency has already weakened approval standards and patients are paying the price—hugely expensive drugs that don’t even work,” Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, told the New York Times.

Dr. Michael Carome, the director of Public Citizen’s health research group, noted in a statement that Trump’s proposal would “destroy the ability of the agency to protect patients and consumers from unsafe or ineffective medications and medical devices, hazardous foods and dietary supplements, and dangerous tobacco products.”

“The end result would be countless preventable deaths, injuries and illnesses across the US,” he said.

These risks have already been heightened by the bipartisan legislation passed late last year, the 21st Century Cures Act. The Act significantly rolls back the regulatory authority of the FDA, lowers the standards that must be met before a drug is approved, and expands expedited approvals.

The FDA will be further hindered by Trump’s executive orders instituting a hiring freeze and the rule that two regulations must be removed for every new one.

“That will cripple the FDA’s ability to do anything other than regulate by non-binding guidance documents,” David Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, told the Washington Post.

“To hollow out the agency’s authority by forbidding it from dealing with emerging issues through new regulations, and perhaps even giving guidance will jeopardize consumers and threaten the reputation of the agency around the world,” Vladeck said.

Trump tied his criticism of high drug prices to his “America First” rhetoric of economic nationalism, attacking “global freeloading” through “foreign price controls.”

“Our trade policy will prioritize that foreign countries pay their fair share for U.S.-manufactured drug, so our drug companies have greater financial resources to accelerate development of new cures, and I think that’s so important,” Trump said.

Instead of allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, which Trump referred to as “price fixing,” he claimed that competition spurred by deregulation and tax cuts would bring down drug prices.

This approach will do nothing to address skyrocketing drug prices in the United States, which have doubled since 2011 and are up to ten times higher in the US than in other countries.

The pharmaceutical industry, which continues to consolidate through mergers and acquisitions, is notorious for dodging competition when it threatens the bottom line. For example, drug companies will often raise prices almost simultaneously with their competitors, a practice known as “shadow pricing.” When a drug is about to go off patent, companies will often pay potential generic competitors to hold off on introducing generic versions in “pay-for-delay” deals.

Moreover, there is little evidence that high drug prices are due to the costs associated with researching and developing drugs. According to an article published in August of last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association, large pharmaceutical companies invest only 10 to 20 percent of their revenue in R&D. The authors cite an analysis that looked at 26 products or product classes over the past 25 years and found that more than half originated in publicly funded research centers.

The authors of the article conclude that “there is little evidence of an association between research and development costs and drug prices; rather, prescription drugs are priced in the United States primarily on the basis of what the market will bear.”

In response to Trump’s meeting, Democrats continued to perpetuate illusions in the president’s demagogic attacks on the pharmaceutical industry, with Senator Bernie Sanders and Maryland representative Elijah Cummings issuing a joint statement saying they “hope” Trump “really” takes on the industry.

“I look forward to working with President Trump on this issue if he is serious about standing up to the pharmaceutical industry and reducing drug prices,” Sanders said after Trump’s meeting.

The Trump administration has not yet named its nominee for FDA commissioner, who would be charged with “streamlining” the agency. Four possible nominees have been mentioned, all of whom favor weakening FDA regulations.

Jim O’Neill, an associate of Trump transition adviser and Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, is a managing director at Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management. He has called for changing FDA regulations to allow pharmaceutical companies to begin marketing drugs before they have been shown to be effective.

“We should reform FDA so it is approving drugs after their sponsors have demonstrated safety, and let people start using them at their own risk, but not much risk, of safety,” O’Neill said in a 2014 speech.

Balaji Srinivasan, another Thiel associate, is the CEO and co-founder of 21 Inc., which develops software and hardware for bitcoin micropayments, and was a co-founder and chief technical officer at Counsyl, a company that developed a prenatal genetic test for chromosome-related birth defects.

“Drug development shows that modern regimen is not necessary for safe innovation,” Srinivasan said in a tweet in December.

Scott Gottlieb is a former FDA deputy commissioner and venture capitalist who has worked with numerous drug companies. He is currently a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Finally, the Trump transition team has spoken with Dr. Joseph Gulfo about possibly heading the FDA. Gulfo, a former CEO of drug and medical device companies, has criticized the FDA for delaying approvals by requiring clinical trials demonstrating that a drug is effective, and has called on the FDA to rely more on “biomarkers” rather than actual clinical outcomes. He says that any attempts to impose price controls on drugs would be “punishing” the pharmaceutical industry.

The positions of the potential nominees are at odds with a report released by the FDA last month showing that reducing drug approval standards would pose greater financial and health risks for patients.

The report highlighted 22 case studies of drugs, vaccines and medical devices tested since 1999 where promising data from smaller and shorter phase 2 clinical trials, which often rely on biomarkers instead of clinical outcomes, diverged from the larger phase 3 randomized controlled trials. The phase 3 studies failed to confirm phase 2 findings on effectiveness (14 cases), safety (1 case), or both (7 cases).

“As a result of the Phase III studies discussed in this paper, patients outside of clinical trials were not subjected to drugs that would not benefit them or to the risk of unnecessary serious toxicities, and did not suffer unnecessary financial expenditures. Where effective alternative therapies existed, they were not diverted from proven treatments; where an implanted medical device was at issue, patients were spared unnecessary surgical procedures,” the report concludes.

Tens of thousands rally in London in second round of anti-Trump protests

Robert Stevens

Tens of thousands demonstrated in London, and thousands more around the UK Saturday, to protest Donald Trump’s presidency and his travel ban on citizens from seven majority Muslim countries entering the United States.

The demonstration was organised by a number of organisations, including the Stop the War Coalition, People’s Assembly, Stand Up to Racism and the Muslim Council of Britain.

Protesters at the London demonstration

Protesters assembled at the US Embassy in the capital and marched a few miles to Downing Street—the residence of Prime Minister Theresa May—where a further rally was held.

The overwhelming majority attending were young people. Many carried homemade banners denouncing the ban and other policies being rolled out by the Trump administration.

While the vast majority of protesters attended on the basis of seeking to oppose Trump, the organisers sought to divert this opposition into the dead end of appeals to May on the basis that she end the “special relationship” between the US and Britain.

Speeches from the platform at the beginning and end of the rally were centred on appeals to May to “disinvite” Trump from attending an official state visit to the UK later in the year, when he is scheduled to meet the queen at Buckingham Palace. Andrew Murray, the chair of Stop the War and a supporter of the Stalinist Morning Star, went so far as to state, “I must admit I stand here as a republican, but my first thought when I heard that was ‘Donald Trump, keep your wandering hands off the Queen.’”

Andrew Murray speaking to the rally at the US Embassy in London

He called on May, “Let go of his [Trump’s] hand. It’s time, at last, to call time on the special relationship.”

Concealing the onslaught against democratic rights carried out by successive Labour and Tory governments, including the period that May recently spent as home secretary in the Cameron government, Murray concluded, “It’s time we had a British government” that will “stand up for the dignity of our democracy and the values that we believe in.”

None of this is aimed at mobilising the working class in Britain and the US against either Trump or May, but on appeals to sections of the ruling class and upper layers of the middle class to force May to recognise that such a close relationship with Trump would be detrimental to the interests of British imperialism.

In the lead up to the demonstration, Stop the War issued a petition calling for an end to the special relationship tied to opposing Trump’s proposed state visit.

A January 27 statement read, “Our government should not be seen to be endorsing the sorts of ideas and policies he [Trump] is putting forward.”

A January 23 article by leading STWC figure and member of the Counterfire splinter from the Socialist Workers Party, Chris Nineham, stated, “Any civilised or sensible government would be breaking links with him.”

He concluded, “We must demand now that our government breaks ties with the Trump regime and ends the special relationship. Only then can we begin to move away from war and towards a sane foreign policy” (emphasis added).

A section of the London demonstration

What unites all the organisers of the London protest is their resolute opposition to any independent movement of the working class against the ruling elite.

John Rees, another leader of Counterfire, spoke in the name of the People Assembly outside Downing Street. Rees claimed that the only way forward in the fight against Trump and May was by supporting and joining the trade unions. Trump, he said, was attacking the unions.

This completely misrepresents the relationship between Trump and the trade unions, which have reached out to the fascistic demagogue based on asserting a common platform of economic nationalism in defence of US capitalism.

Last December, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Richard Trumka, the president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), arguing that Trump would be far more successful if he saw the unions as “partners” rather than antagonists. January saw the AFL-CIO urge Trump to honour his pledge to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, with Trumka pledging, “We are ready to fix it.”

In February, Trump held a White House lunch with corporate executives and officials from the United Steelworkers (USW) and the International Association of Machinists (IAM) from motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson. Trump said of the unions, “You folks have been terrific to me.”

The head of the USW, Leo Gerard, has applauded Trump’s executive order pulling the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, pledging to work with Trump on the “promised, pro-worker, pro-income-growth agenda that prioritizes revitalizing manufacturing.”

Protesters on the London demonstration

In the UK, the unions have an unbroken record of organising defeat after defeat for the last three decades. But this didn’t prevent Rees from declaring, “What we should chant today is union, union, union!”

The same pro-British capitalist message was repeated at protests all over the country. In Sheffield, for example, around 800 people rallied outside City Hall to be subjected to a platform dominated by the Labour Party, Green Party and pseudo-left groups including the SWP.

Former Greens leader Natalie Bennett condemned May’s support for Trump as being opposed to British national interests. “We are focusing on Trump,” said Bennett, “but we’re also focusing very much on Theresa May, walking hand-in-hand with Donald Trump, and I think she’s got a message from Britain that says, ‘that’s just not acceptable.’”

Sheffield Trade Union Council (TUC) Secretary Martin Mayer condemned May as a racist but was silent on the Labour Party’s anti-immigrant record, including its repeated calls—backed by the Trades Union Congress—for a “legitimate discussion” against the free movement of labour. Rally organisers presented speakers from a range of ethnic and community associations, including local Labour councillors Mohammed Maroof, and Abdul Khayum, whose political affiliations were deliberately concealed.

The SWP’s Maxine Bowler was introduced as a “leading trade union activist” and combined demagogic attacks on Trump (“You’re fired!”) with overt support for the imperialist powers in Europe and elsewhere. “Politicians around the world are having a go at Trump,” she declared. “We need to stop Theresa the appeaser.”

Prior to the London demonstration, an attempt was made to sabotage it by Guardian columnist Owen Jones and a number of his journalistic co-thinkers. Jones, a Labourite who, last year, played a pivotal role in the attempted coup against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, launched a slanderous witch-hunt against the SWP, claiming the group were behind one of the organisers of the event, Stand Up to Racism. He tweeted Friday, “I’m not taking part in tomorrow’s Trump demo because of the leading role of the SWP in it, a cult which covered up rape.”

The aim of the attack on the SWP, using its bureaucratic efforts to suppress accusations by two members against one of its leaders in 2013, is aimed at whipping up hysteria against all left-wing political thought and tendencies—asserting that the “Comrade Delta” affair is an indictment of Leninism, Trotskyism and proof that “gross abuses of power” are “inevitable on the far left.”

Jones’s aim is to stigmatise anyone who even remotely challenges his efforts to subordinate politics to the Labour Party—and above all the pro-capitalist, pro-European Union perspective of its Blairite wing that he regurgitates every week within the pages of the Guardian.

Jones is a leading figure in the Stop Trump Coalition, which is seeking to exploit mass hostility to the right-wing regime in the White House and to the Tories to argue that last June’s referendum decision to leave the EU must give way to a reorientation towards a new anti-US, pro-EU foreign policy.

White House appeals ruling against anti-Muslim travel ban

Tom Carter 

On Friday, Federal District Judge James Robart entered an order halting the enforcement of President Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim travel ban, which has prompted large protests across the US and worldwide. The Trump administration has responded by filing an immediate appeal, arguing that the judge’s order violates a “fundamental sovereign attribute” of the president.

Robart’s order was entered in a lawsuit brought by the states of Minnesota and Washington, which argued that the ban was motivated by unconstitutional “religious animus” and would hurt the states economically. Robart, a George W. Bush appointee, expressly struck down the ban nationwide.

Trump’s January 27 executive order prevents citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries—Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen—from entering the US for 90 days. The order also indefinitely halts all refugee admissions from Syria, halts all other refugee admissions for 120 days, and permits Christian refugee applications to be prioritized over applications by Muslims.

The order was widely viewed as a fulfillment of Trump’s campaign promise to ban Muslim immigration, as well as a boon for racist and far-right groups, which promote theories that there is a Muslim conspiracy to oppress Christians and enact Sharia law in the United States. Breitbart News, formerly headed by Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon, ran an article in November headlined, “Muslim Migrants Secretly Hate Christians, Seek to Outbreed Them.” Bannon once proposed a documentary about how the US is in danger of being transformed into the “Islamic States of America.”

While the executive order itself does not include the word “Muslim” or “Islam,” it is freighted with anti-Muslim stereotypes and tropes. “The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law,” the order states. “In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including ‘honor’ killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.”

Trump responded to the judge’s order on Friday with a Twitter rant that all but accused the judge of being a traitor. “The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!”

Trump continued: “The judge opens up our country to potential terrorists and others that do not have our best interests at heart,” Trump wrote. “Bad people are very happy! Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!”

Trump’s accusation that the judge is complicit in future terrorist attacks is particularly ominous, suggesting that any opposition to his decrees will be considered treason.

On Saturday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals summarily rejected an emergency appeal filed by the Trump administration for an immediate administrative stay of Robart’s order. Further briefing on the issue by the states of Washington and Minnesota was due in the Ninth Circuit by midnight on Sunday, with the Trump administration to respond by 3:00 p.m. Monday. The case, State of Washington et al. v. Trump et al., is expected to move rapidly through the federal judicial system and may even reach the Supreme Court.

In addition to the question of whether the Trump administration’s executive order was motivated by religious bigotry, the most significant legal issue raised by the case concerns the scope of presidential powers. In the brief for the Trump administration, Justice Department lawyers bluntly argued that the US president has authoritarian powers that cannot be “second-guessed” by anyone.

“Judicial second-guessing of the President’s determination,” the administration lawyers wrote, “would constitute an impermissible intrusion on the political branches’ plenary constitutional authority over foreign affairs, national security, and immigration.” They went on to argue that the “the power to expel or exclude aliens” is a “fundamental sovereign attribute” that is “largely immune from judicial control.”

In its latest brief, the Trump administration pointed to arbitrary executive powers previously asserted by the Obama administration, which the Supreme Court—in an opinion by Antonin Scalia—had affirmed in a 2015 case called Kerry v. Din. Citing the precedents set by the Bush and Obama administrations, Trump’s lawyers argued essentially that the president is a dictator whose authority cannot be challenged.

There are tensions within the ruling class over the issue of the “Muslim ban.” The states of Washington and Minnesota were supported in court by briefs filed by Amazon, Expedia and Microsoft, all of whom opposed the ban. There is a concern that such a flagrantly bigoted action by the president will be bad for business, not just in terms of its immediate consequences for individuals affected, but also in terms of undermining America’s ability to posture as the leader of the democratic “free world.”

No confidence can be placed in the Democratic Party or its big-business allies to wage a principled opposition to the Muslim ban. While ex-President Barack Obama now postures as a sympathetic friend of immigrants, the former “deporter-in-chief” was responsible for the brutal expulsion of a record 2.5 million people during his eight years in office. Indeed, the Trump administration is expressly relying on authoritarian precedents set by the Obama administration that were supported by the Democratic Party at the time. Whatever show of opposition they may make to the “Muslim ban,” congressional Democrats are meanwhile assisting the Trump administration in its campaign of economic provocations against Iran.

While Judge Robart’s order temporarily halts enforcement of the “Muslim ban,” the remainder of Trump’s anti-immigrant orders remain in effect. According to calculations published by the Los Angeles Times on Saturday, up to 8 million people living in the US could be targeted for deportation under the Trump orders.

25 Years Of New Middle Women

Moin Qazi

We live in a world in which women living in poverty face gross inequalities and injustice from birth to death. From poor education to poor nutrition to vulnerable and low pay employment, the sequence of discrimination is very hard, but all too common. They face significant constraints in maximizing their

 But there are also silvery strands in this dark discourse. Given an opportunity to fight hunger and poverty, a poor woman turns out to be a better fighter than a poor man. It has been our experience that poor women have the intense drive to move up; they are hardworking, concerned about their human dignity, concerned about their children’s present and future, and willing to make personal sacrifices for the well-being of their children’

Over the years several strategies have been used to empower women .One of them relies on community groups whose members   can be trained and equipped to use their collective strength and wisdom to tackle their problems. 

In India, community groups have been set up in villages and slums to tackle specific problems. They are known as self-help groups. typical Indian SHG consists of 10-20 poor women from similar socio-economic backgrounds who meet once a month to pool savings and discuss issues of mutual importance.   One of the key objectives of SHGs is to provide financial access to entrepreneurial women through a mechanism in which women cross guarantee each other’s debts.

Moreover, SHGs are also an instrument for the empowerment of poor and marginalized sectors. They have proved to be an effective instrument for changing oppressive relationships in the home (gender- and tradition-related) and in society. This is especially true for those relationships arising from caste, class and political power, which have made it difficult for poor people to build a sustainable base for their livelihoods and to grow holistically.

It needs great emotional intensity to break through age old barriers .This can possible only through groups who share the same emotional values and are driven by   strong impulses of mutual goals. One of the primary objectives is of course to avail loans which the women access by cross guaranteeing each other’s liability. These loans are part of a financial philosophy called microfinance. Members take loans for a variety of reasons: to buy medicine, start a business, purchase animals, pay school fees, buy clothing, buy food during the lean season, invest in agriculture..

Women view the cooperative as their window to the outside world and as a place where they can discuss their problems with each other, indicating that the groups have had a profound impact on many women. The members consider the unity and solidarity among the women in the group to be one of the most important benefits of membership. Women have become more self-confident in their activities. Previously, when government officials or the bankers interacted with the village women in the absence of their husbands, they generally responded with statements like:”I don’t know”, “My husband has gone out”, “What can I say”, “Let him come” or “He only knows”.

The process for the banks relationship with a self help group   ip involves an initiatory period, during which a group deposits savings with the bank for a designated period, usually a minimum of six months, after which it can access a bank loan. The SHG then “on-lends” the loan amount to its members. Depending on the policies of the partner bank, SHGs are able to borrow between 2 and 4 times their savings, and terms can include both short-term and long-term loans. The group makes a financial spread by charging members a higher interest rate than it pays to the bank. This “profit” is distributed to members, or is added to member savings and used for lending or investment. SHG members may choose to distribute dividends, but SHGs generally do not “cash out” (distribute all savings and earnings) on a periodic basis. Groups can have loan terms as long as 60 months. Some SHGs allow voluntary withdrawal of savings, but many do not as these funds are used as a guarantee for bank loans.

When I first initiated this loan programme in Cjharurkhati vilage in Chandrapur district as a banker almost two and half decades back, I remember there was a woman by name Nirmala Wansnghe who started out with a mud hut. When I came back after six years on a personal holiday, she had a three-room house with a cement floor, and the goats were stabled in the hut in which she had stayed before. When her group of women first came for loans, they sat hunched, looking down into their laps. They would take the small pile of pastel and white notes they got as part of a loan and fold it into a hairpin behind their ears. They were looking so frightened because, they said, they were afraid they couldn’t pay it back. One of them was so dazed that she wanted to know the name of the person who had recommended her for the loan. Some of them even suggested taking only a part of the loan. For the remaining they said they would consult their husbands and then come back.

Bebibai Kotrange was abandoned by her husband for no fault of her. Life seemed to have drawn a curtain on her life. The odds were badly stacked against her. The Bank’s timely assistance regenerated her skills and her fingers have been honed by training to produce beautiful garments. She now exudes a quiet confidence as she presides at group meetings. There was a lime when she had retreated into   depression, after the sudden disappearance of her husband. “I had to lower my eyes, seek refuge in its cocoon. I felt suffocated”. It was the SHG, which helped her emerge from the catatonic trance.

Granted, there are problems: a husband confiscates the cash and uses it to buy a bottle of homebrew, a woman buys a goat that then dies, a borrower uses a loan not to invest but to pay for a doctor’s visit for a child, and so on. In those cases, the borrower’s family is indeed worse off, but I think those are unusual. Socially responsible finance , delivered responsibly, enables poor women to accomplish a number of useful purposes for her family.

Social innovation is taking place at multiple levels. But as with most trumpeted development initiatives the present programmes are also struggling to turn rhetoric into tangible success. One inspiring step has a tendency to raise the sense of possibility in others — say, the youth who dream of being active change agents. A lot of good programs got their start when one individual looked at a familiar landscape in a fresh way. But several of these programmes are difficult to scale up. We know what to do if we just can summon the political will.

Corruption In Bangladesh: Perceptions vs. Reality

Taj Hashmi

Corruption became so integral to Bangladesh that consecutively for five years (2001-2005) it remained the most corrupt country in the world. However, we hear things have changed for the better. On the one hand, the country has become self-sufficient in food; on the other, it’s no longer the most corrupt nation on earth, officially! Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s human development index has also risen – it’s higher than India’s and some other countries’ in the Third World. The country has already become a lower middle-income country. So far so good! However, these indexes don’t always tell us the whole truth about the states of governance, corruption, poverty, inequality, and most importantly, frequent violations of human rights across the country.

Officially, as per Transparency International’s (TI’s) Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), Bangladesh in 2016 was the 15th most corrupt country in the world, 2nd most corrupt in South Asia. In view of the unprecedented level of corruption in Bangladesh, and the alarming rise in the number of organized violations of human rights of ordinary people, politicians, intellectuals, journalists, women, and members of minority communities, it’s time to assert that: a) there’s a wide gap between perceptions and ground reality of corruption in the country; b) the bulk of the population – due to popular belief and pragmatic reasons – believe in the efficacy of corruption; and c) corruption and human rights violations are positively correlated to each other.

Now, to support my main hypothesis, that Bangladesh is still among the top two-three most corrupt countries in the world, I cite an interesting story (“Snapshot of reality”) that came out in this daily on Friday, January 27, 2017. This helps us understand two things: first, the average Bangladeshi no longer believes in the age-old maxim, “Honesty is the best policy”; and second, corruption and violence go hand in hand.

The story is about physical attacks on an honest Assistant Commissioner of the Customs Department by some rowdy dishonest people, in his office at Chittagong. Recently, some corrupt clearing and forwarding (C&F) agents (brokers) attacked the Officer, confined him to his office for hours, pelted stones at him, ransacked his office, and removed his nameplate off the door . They attacked the Officer because of his honesty; he refused to accept any bribe or “speed money” in exchange of giving them any undue benefits.

Does one incident establish rampant corruption in Bangladesh? “No” could be the answer had the Revenue Department and law-enforcers taken stern actions against the corrupt, rowdy brokers instead of punishing the victim by transferring him to a training academy! Recently, a senior Cabinet Minister justified government officials’ taking “speed money” from people, in exchange of giving them service. As if public servants aren’t paid to do their job with taxpayers’ money!

As the story goes, the Customs Officer, who never indulged in corruption, told the writer a story about his own people’s acceptance of corruption as something normative: “When I visit my village, people want me to donate money for various purposes like construction or renovation of mosques …. As I don’t have any other source of income, I cannot contribute much and sometimes become a laughingstock. People, including my relatives, get very annoyed. They say, ‘Come on! You are in the administration. You can make a lot of money.’ Learning that I despise bribes, some even say, ‘What are you? A fool?’” According to one C&F union leader, the officer who never takes bribe, “had to face this situation because of the reality of our society is different”.

Lack of transparent and accountable governance, and the prevalence of impunity for well-connected people shroud be the real extent of corruption in Bangladesh. Corruption is not all about taking or giving bribe, it’s about what individuals, organizations, and governments often ignore or condone by turning a blind eye to the corrupt practices by their cronies, friends, and political supporters. Politically well-connected criminals just get mild slaps on the wrist for mega scandals. They get away with plundering billions of taka through the share market, government’s development projects (bridges, flyovers, roads and railway tracks), nationalized and private banks, and even by grabbing thousands of acres of land to build mega shopping malls and residential areas. They are too many, and too well-connected and powerful to name!

In the recent past, one minister only lost his job for his intent to resort to corruption through a mega development project; and another minister just became a “minister without portfolio” – got a slap on the wrist – due to his PS’s involvement in carrying a hefty amount of cash in his car in the wee hours of the night. Recently, one ruling party MP – widely known as a drug baron – just paid the equivalent of one million dollars as fine for making more than $100 million through illicit drug trafficking. Conversely, we see people from the wrong side of the aisle (not belonging to the ruling party) get arrested, allegedly for resorting to corruption. These case studies – with unproductive innuendoes – are very tiny tips of the big iceberg!

Recently, I met a cross section of people in Bangladesh, newspaper editors, journalists, a prestigious Western news agency’s bureau chief in Bangladesh, retired government servants, including diplomats, NBR members, generals, police officers, judges, university teachers, prominent human rights activists, bankers, businessmen and industrialists, and last but not least, private car drivers, rickshaw pullers, and CNG drivers. They all seem to agree on one point: “corruption and violations of human rights in the country have gone up tremendously”. I think underestimating the extent of corruption, human rights violation, and poverty in Bangladesh – where drivers, rickshaw pullers, garment factory workers, and domestic servants, among others, live well below the poverty line ( at $2 per capita per day) – also amounts to resorting to corruption.

Three of my interviewees – a retired Additional IG of Police, a retired district judge, and a Western news agency’s bureau chief – gave a horrific picture of the institutionalization of corruption – which they insisted prevailed with the full knowledge of ministers, lawmakers, high civil and military officers, intellectuals, and the ordinary people. They told me about the fixed or negotiable rates of bribe candidates for entry-level and executive positions in the government have to pay to the recruiting officials and members of the selection committees. The “market rates” of bribe for jobs vary (in Taka): police constable – 8/10 lakh; clerk – 10 lakh; sipahi in the Army – 6 lakh; sipahi in the BGB – 5 lakh; and lower court clerks – 8 lakh. One of my interviewees told me that bribing for jobs is also normative in the private sector, especially for positions of medical representatives or sales officers in pharmaceutical companies.

The moment one draws a parallel between corruption and organized violations of human rights by law-enforcers, criminals, and political goons, one has no reason to believe corruption has really gone down in the country. All sections of the society – especially the rich and powerful – simultaneously resort to corruption and play the hideous hide-and-seek game to deny their crime. Lastly, people’s adherence to religious rituals only, with almost no respect for the morals or ethical teachings of the religion, and their drawing a line between sin and crime are problematic. In sum, corruption of public morals is at the roots of all corruption in Bangladesh.

Muslim Ban Blocked: Federal Judge Issues Nationwide Injunction Against Trump Order

Jon Queally

A federal judge in Washington state issued a nationwide injunction late Friday against President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order on immigration—widely denounced as a travel ban targeting Muslims and refugees from war-torn states—that stirred airport protests across the U.S. last weekend and dozens of lawsuits and legal challenges throughout the week.

In Seattle, U.S. District Judge James Robart ruled in favor of a challenge brought by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who sued the Trump administration earlier this week to invalidate key provisions of the executive order that barred entry to individuals from seven Muslim-majority nations.

AG Ferguson obtains Restraining Order immediately halting Trump immigration Executive Order nationwide.

— WA Attorney General (@AGOWA) February 3, 2017

“The Constitution prevailed today,” Ferguson said in remarks to reporters on the federal courthouse steps after Judge Robart’s ruling. “No one is above the law — not even the president.”

Though the injunction only comes in the form of a “temporary restraining order” until the court can fully vet the state’s challenge, the news was received with applause from those challenging the ban. According to a statement from the AG’s office: “The Temporary Restraining Order will remain in place until [Robart] considers the Attorney General’s lawsuit challenging key provisions of the President’s order as illegal and unconstitutional. If Ferguson prevails, the Executive Order would be permanently invalidated nationwide.”

In his ruling, Robart stated the temporary restraining order was warranted after the state successfully proved its argument that Trump’s order was causing “immediate and irreparable injury”; that it would do more harm to keep it place than to halt it; and that the state had additionaly proven its substantial likelihood of success in challenging the constitutionality of the travel ban.

“The executive order adversely affects the states’ residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations and freedom to travel,” Robart stated in his written ruling. “These harms are significant and ongoing.”

Though the White House immediately vowed to appeal the decision, and sought an immediate stay against Robart’s restraining order, legal experts and opponents of the travel restrictions immediately praised the decision as an important legal victory and stinging rebuke of Trump’s position.

“This ruling further demonstrates that the Executive Order was not adequately thought out,” said David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, which opposed the ban. “The Order should be paused and existing vetting and visa systems, which have proved their worth, should be left in place.”

On the immediate implications, the Seattle Times reports how:

Jorge Barón, director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said he was advising people who have been stranded outside the United States because of the ban to use Robart’s ruling to try to return. But, he also cautioned it’s a very fluid situation.

“You might get on a plane and there might be a different ruling in the middle, we warn people that there’s a chance of that happening,” Barón said. “At the same time, I’d also want to make sure that people who are trying to be reunified with their families are taking advantage of this ruling.”

Given a separate ruling in Massachusetts earlier on Friday, it’s quite possible that the disparate challenges to Trump’s order could ultimately end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

GM Canada slashes CAMI workforce in Ontario

Carl Bronski 

General Motors Canada announced last week that 625 autoworkers at its CAMI assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ontario would be laid off at the end of July as the company shifts production of the GMC Terrain to Mexico and as, according to the company, sales slow for the current Equinox model assembled at CAMI. The move reduces the labour force at the operation to less than 2,400 workers.

The announcement comes on the heels of significant reductions in the GM labour force at three American-based assembly facilities. Twelve hundred workers at Lordstown, Ohio lost their jobs last week. In addition, the company announced that 800 jobs would be cut in Lansing, Michigan with a further 1,300 job losses slated in March at its Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant.

In a statement issued by Unifor, the Canadian auto union, President Jerry Dias characterized GM’s announcement as a ‘betrayal.”

“This decision reeks of corporate greed. It is not based on sales, it is another example of how good jobs are being shifted out of Canada for cheaper labour in Mexico and Unifor will not let it happen without a fight,” proclaimed Dias.

There is no doubt that GM—which has posted profits hand-over-fist since the auto bailouts of 2009—operates as a trans-national entity that seeks to maximize its returns on the backs of its highly exploited labour force. But Dias’ talk of “betrayal” is particularly rich.

Unifor constantly refers to the auto bosses as their “partners” and has rammed one concessions deal after another down the throats of its membership for over a decade.

The announcement of layoffs exposes the bankruptcy of the claims made by Unifor and Dias that concessions would protect jobs. Dias spent the past year touting the claim that his strategy of concession bargaining would secure the Detroit Three’s “footprint” in Canada. In the face of unprecedented rank-and-file opposition to the massive concessions contracts pushed through at GM, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler this past fall, the Unifor leadership insisted that surrendering even the semblance of a defined benefit pension for new hires, cementing the hated ten-year two tier grow-in period, cutting benefits and providing a wage rise so small that it fails to keep up with inflation were all necessary to safeguard employment levels in Canada.

It was at the CAMI plant in 2013 that Unifor first agreed with GM to abolish defined-benefit pensions for new hires, setting the stage for similar concessions across-the-board when negotiations opened at the Detroit Three’s other Canadian plants in the summer of 2016. CAMI, which negotiates its contract one year after all other Canadian plants, acts as something of a stalking horse to herald future cuts to workers’ living standards. It is no surprise that the current layoffs, slated for July, come the same month that contract negotiations open for the Ingersoll workers.

GM’s announcement also casts a further shadow over the future of the company’s Oshawa facility. With no new products assigned and threatened with closure by 2019, the Oshawa plant was buttressed by overflow shipments of Equinox frames. That practice will soon end. Company officials have so far stated that the change will not affect employment levels in Oshawa.

However, the continued “re-positioning” of GM’s global auto footprint will only lead to calls for deeper concessions from Oshawa workers. Dias’ much criticized “framework agreement” signed with GM last September—an agreement that still has not provided important details on future product timetables—claimed that to keep at least a portion of Oshawa operations running, overflow work would be shipped to the plant from a Missouri facility already operating at full capacity. However, with auto sales projected to decline over the next several years, Dias’ so-called “historic” 2016 deal with GM appears ready to unravel.

Unifor has stated that the union will not accept the CAMI layoffs “without a fight.” But the fact of the matter is that union officials have already sat down with the company to begin discussions on layoff protocols and severance packages.

Dias claimed that “the CAMI announcement is a shining example of everything wrong with NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), it must be re-negotiated. It is imperative that we have trade rules that help ensure good jobs in Canada.” He also called on the federal and provincial governments to “step up” their financial support for the auto companies in Canada.

Unifor, like the United Auto Workers south of the border, promotes a nationalist-corporatist course as the solution to continuing job losses in the auto industry. But this course has produced only one reversal after another over the past three decades. For years the auto bosses have taken advantage of the 1985 split between American and Canadian autoworkers to whipsaw jobs and wages back and forth across the border, giving product to the jurisdiction that is able to offer the most miserable contracts.

The right-wing, anti-working-class character of such politics is shown by the unions’ embrace of the Trump administration’s call for the renegotiation of NAFTA, which is part of a reactionary program of economic nationalism that leads directly to trade wars and military conflict.

Unifor’s appeal to the federal and Ontario Liberal governments is no less revealing. The last major infusion of cash by government into the coffers of the auto giants was accompanied by an unprecedented assault on workers’ wages, benefits and working conditions as part of the so-called bailout of the auto industry in 2008-09.

Unifor has developed an intimate alliance with Justin Trudeau’s big business Liberals, based on contract concessions, support for a low Canadian dollar that only serves to jack up consumer prices and reduce workers’ real wages, and the continued imposition of social spending cuts and other measures to boost the insatiable profit drive of big business on the backs of the working class.

The only way workers at CAMI can fight back against the latest wave of job cuts is by appealing to autoworkers at GM facilities and at the other automakers throughout North America for support. All autoworkers confront the ever-present threat of layoffs and concessions, imposed with the full collaboration of the trade union bureaucracies that falsely claim to represent them.

Autoworkers’ interests can only be defended in a political and organizational break from Unifor and the UAW in the US. Independent action committees must be formed at CAMI and other plants to fight for the right to a decent-paying, secure job, an overturning of all concessions imposed by Unifor and the struggle for a workers’ government committed to utilizing the vast profits extracted by the auto giants through the exploitation of workers for social need, not the enrichment of a tiny minority.

Pittsburgh community college students and staff speak on hunger

Evan Winters

Food banks, also known as food pantries, are rapidly proliferating on college and university campuses across the US. The College and University Food Bank Alliance counts 434 member food banks at colleges and universities nationwide, an increase of 23 in the span of just two months.

There are food banks at prestigious public universities, including University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of Pittsburgh, University of Oregon, Georgia Tech, and University of Minnesota. What’s more, there are food banks at selective private universities, including Cornell University, Georgetown University, University of Southern California, and George Washington University, all of which charge roughly $50,000 per year in tuition alone, with total annual cost of attendance at roughly $70,000 per year.

2016 brought additional hardship to part-time students along with unemployed workers in Pennsylvania and 21 other states that implemented changes to eligibility rules for the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps. The federal government cut SNAP benefits for an estimated 500,000 to one million childless adults between 18 and 49 who have been unemployed for over three months. Students enrolled in higher education more than half their time are generally ineligible for SNAP unless they work at least 20 hours a week, care for dependent children, or meet a handful of other exemptions. The change in the work requirement does apply for part-time students.

In response to high unemployment levels in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, many states were allowed to temporarily waive requirements that SNAP beneficiaries work at least 20 hours per week to receive benefits after 90 days. 22 states implemented the cut in 2016, with 22 others doing so in 2015. The justification given for these cuts is a drop in the quasi-fictional official unemployment rate, which does not count workers who have given up looking for work. The US labor force participation rate, the fraction of the working-age population that is employed, remains at lows not seen since the late 1970s, when women entered the workforce en masse.

The draconian SNAP work requirement was itself a product of the 1996 welfare reform law, which then-President Bill Clinton boasted would “end welfare as we know it.” The Democrats are fully complicit in these cuts. At the federal level the question was not seriously raised by either congressional Democrats, then-President Obama or any of the Democratic presidential candidates. At the state level, the cuts were ruthlessly implemented in states with Democratic as well as Republican-controlled administrations.

Sign advertising the food bank

WSWS reporters spoke with food pantry volunteers and community college students at Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The food pantry, named the CCAC Allegheny Campus Foodbox Project, began this year to provide nutritional assistance to students on roughly a monthly basis.

A CCAC staff member, who asked not to be identified, explained her reasons for helping start the food bank during the mid-December holiday season. “I wrote a small grant to get the initiative started. We partnered with the honors class, and this is our third food pantry.”

She spoke of the stigma surrounding hunger. As a result of reluctance to discuss the issue, student hunger is almost certainly under-reported. The proliferation of food banks, however, is a clear indication of the growing need.

CCAC staff and student coordinators of the food bank

“People don’t want to talk about it; maybe a small circle of friends know. But I put a box of snacks on the table in the cafeteria yesterday, and before I could get them to my office, it was gone. So it helps if they see something that’s easy to pick up. We try to give them things that they can eat right now and they don’t have to worry about shelf life.

“Students have a lot of pride, and that’s why we chose this location, because there is a culinary program in the basement. There’s a bus stop on the corner. If you’ve got a car, you can at least stop temporarily to go load up your food, and nobody is really seeing you carrying bags of groceries through the student union. We try to be mindful of people’s pride.

“When someone thanks us four or five times as they’re walking out the door, we know they really need it. One person said, ‘I’m just trying to fill in gaps from what I already have.’”

She went on to emphasize the need for students in the greater Pittsburgh area. “At South Campus [several miles away], a student stole some food because they were hungry.

“I only got a small grant. We’re trying to get a bigger grant now so we can carry this through to next year.”

Michelle, a CCAC student, explained her reasons for volunteering at the food bank. “Everybody needs to eat, and not everybody can afford to go to the store as frequently as they might need to, especially students.”

Abby, a culinary student at CCAC, gave her thoughts on hunger among students. “I feel that it’s becoming more of an issue in today’s society because the cost of school is so high. People often can’t feed themselves or their families. Some of the students have families, or are single parents, and that makes it even harder.

“I was working 35 hours a week part-time, but I hurt my thumb, cut it with a knife at school, and had to quit my job. I didn’t get workman’s comp because I was hurt at school. I live off loans, about $1,000 a month, and I live with my boyfriend.”

CCAC students Joe and Elle have volunteered at food banks

Elle, a student at CCAC, spoke on hunger in the working class more broadly. “In high school, I volunteered at the Food Bank of Greater Pittsburgh. I definitely think it’s important. I think that hunger is definitely a problem that needs to be solved, because there are people who go to sleep hungry all the time. There are people who don’t have money for food, and that’s a problem.

“I think it’s a huge issue. There are a lot of homeless people. That’s horrible. Especially homeless veterans, that’s tragic. I feel something needs to be done. I’m not sure what, but something definitely needs to be done.”

Joe, who studies graphic communication at CCAC, added, “I heard there were more foreclosed houses than there are people who can actually use them. I used to volunteer in high school as well at a food bank in Homestead. I saw people all the time down there who both took from food banks and volunteered at food banks. It definitely helps out a lot of homeless people.”

Elle continued, “It’s expensive to live and be able to afford everything you need as a human being. The minimum wage is not enough. Fifteen dollars an hour is not enough. Something needs to change. It’s just a question of what and how we can do it.”