Friedrich Naumann Doctoral Scholarships for International Students 2017 – Germany

Application Deadline: 30th April 2017 and  31st October 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Germany

About the Award: Are you a doctoral student in search of funding opportunities? Are your academic achievements first-class and are you socially engaged? Then apply for a scholarship from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, a foundation closely affiliated to Germany’s Free Democratic Party (FDP). Applications are welcome from doctoral students of any nationality, in all disciplines and of any age.

Type: PhD

Eligibility: Requirements for applicants include the following:

• non-German citizenship
• unconditional university admission
• full-time PhD in Germany at a state or state-recognised university
• academic project of considerable relevance to research
• knowledge of German

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Scholarship holders receive a maximum stipend of 1,000 euros per month. In addition, a health insurance subsidy of up to 125 euros per month will be granted. The scholarship is initially approved for a one-year period, and can be extended by one further year upon application.

How to Apply: The online application (in German) is open from 1 to 30 April.

online application

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Friedrich Naumann Foundation

The Target of the “Border Adjustment Tax” is You

Thomas L. Knapp

“[O]n life support,” says US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX)of the “Border Adjustment Tax,” proposed during last year’s GOP presidential primaries by US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and backed by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI). If the idea is indeed dead, American workers and consumers should heave a sigh of relief. It’s a very bad idea, in more ways than one.

The BAT is promoted as a “tax on imports.” Which, I guess, is technically accurate, but doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s not just a tax on imports. It’s a tax on people who buy the imports. That is, it’s a tax on you.

For obvious reasons, retail merchants don’t like the idea very much. It would force them to raise prices on lots of items. Which is the same reason you shouldn’t like it, unless you like paying more for stuff than you pay now.

For equally obvious reasons, some American manufacturers love the Border Adjustment Tax. Every extra dollar you have to pay in tax for something made abroad is a dollar they don’t have to find ways to cut from their manufacturing costs to compete on price. For them it’s the equivalent of running a race in which their competitors have to carry backpacks full of lead and they don’t.

The politicians behind the idea love it because it would let them give their business cronies a huge tax cut — reducing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20% — without reducing government spending.

Ultimately American consumers pay both types of taxes, of course, but the BAT would shift the burden to customers who buy goods made in China, Mexico, South Korea, Pakistan and so on, hurting retailers who sell those things in order to subsidize American manufacturers at everyone else’s expense.

All this talk of “tax reform” is just smoke and mirrors, a way of disguising the reality that every dollar government spends has to come from somewhere, and that that somewhere is taxation. Borrowing money is just promising to tax later. Inflating the currency is just a hidden tax.

Shifting the tax burden around with tricks like a “Border Adjustment Tax” isn’t real reform, it’s just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The first step in any meaningful reform is for Congress to commit to spending no more money than it takes in. The second is for it to start taking in less.

Trump, Moral Panics and Resistance

Dave Brotherton

From the outset of Donald Trump’s campaign for the Presidency the infamous New York billionaire made it clear that the tactic of moral panic would be his chosen route to making it all the way to the White House. Like many politicians of the wealthy classes before him, threatening images of the “dangerous classes” were used wantonly to illustrate the common sense behind his ultra-conservative solutions to social and economic problems caused by fundamental disenfranchisement, inequality and poverty. Thus, the Trump campaign have treated us incessantly to scabrous descriptions of human beings who are supposedly arrayed against our innocent American sensibilities. They came thick and fast in the form of immigrant Mexican rapists, black urban gang bangers, Latino drug dealers and Muslim terrorists, among others. In each case, of course, it was always Donald the righteous who would save us from ourselves and thereby from these modern day “folk devils.”

Trump would not be the first Republican Presidential candidate to employ such tried and tested racialized “others” to reach the desired levels of fear and loathing among his supporters. Nixon in 1968 invoked the image of the “silent majority” encircled by rioting urban blacks and rampaging students, Reagan in 1976 used the specter of the black “welfare queen” to symbolize the “waste” of the entitlement system, George H. W. Bush in 1988 conjured the black rapist in the guise of Willie Horton to highlight the misplaced liberalism of his challenger Michael Dukakis, while George W. Bush appealed to the ongoing enemy of post-9/11 Islamic terrorism to shore up his inept time in office. But no one other than Trump has so brazenly, single-mindedly and arguably successfully used the moral panic strategy to advance his ambitions for public office.

Why then has this tactic of systematic lies, distortion and hyperbole gone from being so effective in the earlier stages of his presidential run now to be in tatters such that a journalist at Trump’s first solo press conference after just over three weeks in the job asked him, “Why should America trust you?” Meanwhile, as of writing, the renowned Pew Research Center announces that Trump’s approval ratings are once more at “historic lows” and hitting the 39 percent mark, in stark contrast to Obama who was getting 64 percent during the same time in his first presidency and even George W. Bush who was at 53 percent during his initial go at playing commander-in-chief.

To understand this turn of events it is important to consider how the pioneers of the concept saw the moral panic as a process with a life cycle and not at all as a “big lie” machine that was entirely sustainable. They all pointed out that the groups, persons or communities singled out by “right thinking people” through scapegoating and stereotypification reflected unresolved social anxieties produced by a social control system unable to base itself any longer on a moral consensus. They concurred that the more a regime depends on moral panics to govern the more it undermines its own legitimacy which is precisely what we are witnessing in the present White House melt-down. Such a regime through its addiction to its own rhetoric eventually sews the seeds of its own destruction.

Several British sociologists were at the forefront of this research. Stan Cohen, one of the first to coin the phrase while describing the media frenzy in the ‘60s over brawling English “mods and rockers” saw that it was youth’s embrace of hedonism and consumption undermining the message of disciplined work and restraint that was really at stake. Jock Young, who studied the public condemnation of “drug-takers” during the same period, concluded that the social interventions did more harm than the so-called “deviant” behavior (the U.S. War on Drugs is an ongoing example). Meanwhile, Stuart Hall described Margaret Thatcher’s discovery of young black “muggers” terrorizing English inner-cities as more about her commitment to be the virus that killed socialism and the global project of hyper-wealth concentration and inequality (what we now call “neo-liberalism”) than any concern over crime rates. Consequently, moral panics are never things in themselves no matter how self-serving. Further, they will always eventually motivate much larger sectors of society to question the legitimacy of both the diagnoses and policies that follow while encouraging new bonds of solidarity with those populations most targeted and vilified.

What we currently witness therefore is a moral panic process that instead of functioning as a unified narrative that constantly injects momentum into the various apparatuses of ideological production, pushing us ever closer to the practices of tyranny and dictatorial necessity, instead becomes the very object of our scorn and disbelief. This growing opposition to the cynical manipulation of our fears and vulnerabilities, whether real or imagined, in turn prompts us to envision a quite different world in which to resolve our social discontent and political unhappiness.

We see this with each Trumpian Punch and Judy show, a debilitating spectacle that has become both the form and essence of the Presidential regime. In response we, the people, recoil in disgust and amazement at the level to which our fellow human beings have debased themselves while we also begin to realize and accept the fallacy of our political fantasy, i.e., that we have been living in a world that pretentiously refers to itself as fundamentally democratic.

In other words, the dialectics of the moral panic now ensure that we not only participate in the death agony of what one Guardian writer describes as “a terrible mistake” but in the unraveling of society’s general fabric. It is not that the Emperor has no clothes but rather the whole neo-liberal project becomes revealed in all its stark naked ugliness along with the body politic that has enabled it. These are definitely new times. From where I sit the removal of Trump and his gaggle of know-nothings will only be the beginning as we enter a time when the future is truly up for grabs.

Trump Administration Adopts Ruthless New Immigration Protocol

Eric London

The Trump administration officially adopted new immigration enforcement policies yesterday that place all undocumented immigrants living in the US at risk of deportation.

The new policies were outlined in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memos leaked over the weekend. These memos were subjected to only minor changes before DHS Secretary John Kelly made them official on Monday.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer addressed the White House press corps Tuesday: “Everyone who is here illegally is subject to removal at any time,” he said. Spicer explained that the DHS memos establish guidelines for those undocumented immigrants who are the first priority for deportation, a staggering one million people.

These immigrants have already been found removable in court and are subject to final orders of removal. The government will also target immigrants with any criminal record, as well as those who have supposedly “abused” public services (a very broad category that includes anyone who filed a false Social Security number or gave a false answer on an official document about their immigration status) and those who have been charged with or are suspected of committing a crime.

But Spicer explained that after the government expels the first million immigrants, agents will move in stages against the remaining population: “The president has made clear that when you have 12, 14, or 15 million [immigrants] here illegally, there has to be a system of priority.” He added, “We are doing this one step at a time in a very methodical way.”

The language of the memos confirms this. “Department personnel have full authority to arrest or apprehend an alien whom an immigration officer has probable cause to believe is in violation of the immigration laws,” one memo said. “They also have full authority to initiate removal proceedings against any alien who is subject to removal under any provision of the [Immigration and Nationality Act].”

Spicer’s estimate that the Trump administration plans on ultimately deporting as many as 15 million immigrants nearly doubles an earlier estimate by the Los Angeles Times that 8 million were at risk. This much higher figure raises the specter that Trump will also seek to deport green-card holders, revoking their status as legal permanent residents.

Though the memos do not repeal Obama’s executive order establishing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, covering 750,000 immigrants who were brought to the US as children, the DHS notes that the issue will be addressed in the future. However, DACA enrollees who have been convicted or charged with a crime or who immigration officials believe may have committed a chargeable offense can be slated for removal. One DACA enrollee was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Washington State last week.

“We will have more [orders],” Spicer said. “Immigration is one of those issues [Trump] was clear and consistent on throughout the campaign.”

The World Socialist Web Site outlined the DHS memos in detail yesterday. The construction of new detention centers and a border wall, the hiring of 15,000 immigration and deportation officials, and the deputizing of local police agencies to detain and deport migrants will result in a significant police-state build-up in cities across the country.

“These memos lay out a detailed blueprint for the mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants in America,” Lynn Tramonte, deputy director of America’s Voice Education Fund, told USA Today. “They fulfill the wish lists of the white nationalist and anti-immigrant movements and bring to life the worst of Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric.”

The Trump administration is fearful that the memos will set off a wave of mass social protest. A DHS official told the press yesterday, “We do not need a sense of panic in the communities.”

Both Spicer and the DHS have sought to downplay risks that the government is going to immediately round up and incarcerate millions and millions of undocumented workers. At his press briefing Tuesday, Spicer explicitly disavowed a suggestion that the goal of the new Trump initiative was “mass deportation.” The DHS official said: “We do not have the personnel, time or resources to go into communities and round up people and do all kinds of mass throwing folks on buses.”

In other words, the Trump administration does plan on deporting millions, but to do so at once would be physically impossible and to announce it as a goal would be politically dangerous. The deportations will likely speed up, however, once sufficient police manpower has been mobilized and once a large network of detention centers has been constructed.

The DHS official also said, “We’re not creating anything out of the whole cloth.” The Trump administration’s attempts to hide the qualitatively different scale and depth of their anti-immigrant attacks are disingenuous and false. However, Trump’s immigrant program is an extension of the anti-immigrant policies of the Obama administration, which deported 2.7 million immigrants—more than all his predecessors combined.

The statutory framework used by Trump to deport over ten million undocumented people was established in a bipartisan effort. The Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 would not have passed without the support of Democratic members of Congress and was signed into law by Democrat Bill Clinton. The Secure Fences Act of 2006, which Trump cites to justify his wall construction program, was supported by Senators Hillary Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Schumer.

Thirty seven of 48 Senate Democrats, including Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, voted to confirm Secretary John Kelly—the signatory of the DHS memos—to head the DHS earlier this month. Sanders said he hoped Kelly would “have a moderating influence on some of the racist and xenophobic views that President Trump advocated throughout the campaign.”

Adopting the fraudulent “public safety” narrative of the Trump administration, Sanders told NBC News last week, “I think the vetting mechanisms are very, very strong. If there’s any way to make them stronger, let’s go forward. I don’t think there is any debate that we want to keep the United States safe and we want to be 100 percent clear that anybody who comes into this country should not be coming into this country to do us harm.”

The claims by both parties that immigrants represent a threat to “public safety” or “national security” are fraudulent. The Trump administration seeks to scapegoat immigrants for a social crisis caused by the capitalist system, in an attempt to pit workers against one another and prevent them from fighting their real enemy: the ruling class.

No significant opposition to these measures will come from the Democratic Party. The phase-in of Trump’s deportation program will devastate the lives of millions of immigrants and their families, the overwhelming majority of whom are working class, and it is from the working class that opposition to these reactionary and xenophobic measures is emerging.

Immigrant and US-born workers must unite to mobilize against efforts by the Trump administration to deport their co-workers. Immigrants will receive no protection from the Democratic Party, from the trade unions who support Trump’s economic nationalism, or from hollow appeals to “change the minds” of the politicians. The right to live and work with full citizenship rights must be available to all workers, regardless of immigration status.

The working class must rely on its own social strength to defend these rights through the establishment of committees in workplaces, neighborhoods, and schools aimed at developing a political strategy for blocking deportations and prohibiting the government from removing immigrant workers from the country.

Conflict And Rapes In Kashmir

Mushtaq Ul Haq Ahmad Sikander

“Rape” the word carries with it a host of meanings and in East or Orient cultural baggage too. The term signifies violence, anger, atrocity, patriarchy, imposition and coercive submission. It is particularly used by men against women or children, though in rare cases men can be victim of rape too in particular sodomy. Rapes have been happening in the past and future would be no exception viz a viz the crime of rape is concerned. Indian subcontinent due to its patriarchal culture is still a bastion of rapists and the notion of ‘honor’ and ‘shame’ associated with rape does not let the crimes of rape to be reported in Police stations, hence most of the rapists are never brought to the book. Women especially in the conservative, traditional, orthodox and Eastern societies are considered to be the repositories of honor; hence to humiliate, deflower, and dishonor them through rape is to humiliate the collective honor, masculinity and strength of the society. Even in the Western countries where the sexual freedom has landed the societies into sexual anarchy, rape is considered as a grave crime, and when its use as a weapon to humiliate an ethnic group, population, a nation or a society is the order of the day, it is considered as a crime against humanity, whose perpetuators must be dealt with a serious punishment.

Rape as a weapon of war has always been used by the occupational forces to demean, debase and finally destroy the social rubric of the enemy. In case of the secessionist tendency, the defiant population is tried to inculcate spirit of submissiveness and unconditional obedience by using various strategic tactics, and Rape is one of them. In every conflict rape has been used against the womenfolk of the other or enemy, in order to make them understand how weak and vulnerable they are and make a living testimony of their helplessness before the mighty institutions and a constant reminder not to side with the ‘other’ as the punishment awaits them in the form of rape of their womenfolk.

Since the inception of armed insurgency in Kashmir, the military approach towards the insurgency has resulted in numerous rapes of innocent women. Various tactics were employed by the soldiers to rape women, who on the excuse of searching militants or arms would barge into a house and rape women, during crackdowns. A whole area would be sealed with men assembled at a community ground and women and girls left behind in the houses would be gang raped, during nocturnal raids women were raped, women were intimidated that if they wouldn’t comply and resist the gang rape their sons and husbands would be killed, revenge rapes were also perpetuated on innocent victims when an army man would be killed in the militant assault the army would rape women by barging into their homes, in some cases the male members of the family were first killed and then the women were raped.

The free license to raid, search any premise gave army an upperhand to rape, who would even resort to loot, robbery, arson and even rape during the search operations. They would render eatables defunct by mixing them with oil, kerosene in order to starve the household. In many cases the victims reported that the soldiers said that they were given the orders of enjoyment and can’t take any second chances as the Kashmiri girls are too beautiful to resist.

The aftermath of rape is most agonizing for the victim, and most of the victims suffer from depression and psychological trauma and many victims have even committed suicides. According to a survey conducted by Medicans San Frontiers(Doctors Without Borders) an International NGO in 2006 on “Kashmir: Violence and Health”, 11.6 percent of interviewees said they had been victims of sexual violence since 1989. Almost two thirds of the people interviewed (63.9 percent) by MSF had heard about cases of rape during the same period. The study revealed that Kashmiri women were among the worst sufferers of sexual violence in the world. The figure is much higher than that of Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Chechnya and Ingushetia. Many teenage girls are now going for counseling in order to cope the rising psychological impact of the atrocities on women perpetuated by army and police.

The Justice System in Kashmir is in shambles, as Kashmir has become a Police State, where the State tries every tactic to save the culprits of the heinous crimes who happen to be its soldiers. The various acts provide impunity to the army personnel to be tried in civil courts, and even the Police and State machinery is hesitant to file cases against the army as it will affect their morale. Hence not a single soldier has been brought to book and victims are still awaiting Justice which will elude them till eternity, be it the victims of Kunanposhpora or Shopian double murder and rape case, plus the police enquiry has never helped the victims who now even don’t bother to report the same.

There has been little sensitivity depicted by the society while dealing with the rape survivors. Kashmir being a patriarchal society, woman is treated as a second class inferior citizen whose only purpose of life is to satisfy the carnal desires of her husband, raise the children and look after his household. She is being praised for her selfless household activities and dedication towards her husband. Her salvation in the hereafter depends on how happy her husband is with her services. Any disobedience is treated as sin. She is doomed to raging fires of hell if her husband is unhappy with her. The disobedience of her husband is equal to disobedience to creator. The misogynist Hadith wrongly attributed to Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) try to reinforce this mindset. The patriarchal mindset wants to demean the status of women by stating that “if Prostration was allowed for anyone other than Allah then it would have been allowed for a wife to prostrate before her husband”. Also another misogynist Hadith states that, “If a husband is angry with his wife, Allah doesn’t listen to her prayers”. Also another Hadith that tries to reinforce the upperhand of husbands by stating that, “If a husband doesn’t permit his wife to fast, she shouldn’t keep the non obligatory fasts”. When the patriarchy and misogyny is inculcated and camouflaged in religious terms then obedience and submission becomes a religious duty that few women would dare to oppose. Islam, Quran and Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) gave revolutionary rights to women that were snatched by Muslim men over centuries.

The situation of Kashmiri Muslim women is pathetic, as Fatwas and Mullahs try to deny them rights on religious pretext. In Kashmir there is no training for gender sensitivity both within homes as well as in schools. The father and male teachers are mostly misogynist and patriarchal in their worldviews. The children learn same and indoctrinate similar values. The lewd jokes with deep misogynist overtures depict our bias towards half of our population. The use of women’s bodies as a subject of abuse and the declining sex ratio with thousands of girls missing is a living testimony of the status women today enjoy in Kashmir.

Associated with the rape is the concept of shame and honor. Both of them have been wrongly attributed to the survivor. Till the shame and dishonor is the associated with the perpetuator, the survivors will find it quite difficult to cope with the aftermath of rape. Immediate family plays a big role in making the survivor strong giving her a new hope of life. The concept of virginity also needs to be relooked. Husband can play an important role towards her wife if she is a rape survivor, instead of ridiculing or divorcing her by labeling her as ‘impure’. Rape should be treated like an accident, in which the survivor with the help of immediate kith and kin can make the guilty face rule of law. The role of counselors is also important but in Kashmir we have a dearth of professional ones. We have still not developed any social consensus about the rape survivors and in most cases they find it hard to get married if they are spinsters. As a society we need to come forward with a strong institutional mechanism to help survivors live a life free of shame, dishonor, impurity, guilt and hopelessness.

Australian tabloid vilifies Muslim immigrants and welfare recipients

Max Newman

The Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph, a Sydney tabloid, recently launched a campaign to collectively demonise Muslim immigrants, refugees and welfare recipients. It led with a front-page article claiming that “Middle Eastern migrants are piling up the dole queue.”

These efforts, based on lies and distortions, aim to generate support for the Turnbull government’s assault on welfare entitlements, including the reintroduction of widely-despised welfare cuts, while whipping up anti-Muslim bigotry as a means of diverting social discontent away from the government and the corporate elite that are demanding the brutal cuts.

Taking isolated statistics completely out of their economic and social context, the article claims the unemployment rate among Middle Eastern and North African immigrants has more than doubled in the past ten years and they are “three times more likely than European or Asian immigrants to be out of work in the first five years.”

These claims are drawn from monthly labour force data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) since January 1991. The figures indeed indicate that the official unemployment rate among workers from North Africa and the Middle East—33.5 percent—is much higher than those “born in Australia”—5.5 percent. But the claim that this rate has more than doubled in the past decade deliberately distorts the statistics, which display considerable volatility.

While the figure for December 2016, 33.5 percent, is more than double the rate in December 2006, 14.1 percent, it is not double the figure in January 2007, which is 20.7 percent, one month later. The average unemployment rate for those from North Africa and the Middle East in 2006 was 18.8 percent, just 3.2 percent lower than 2016, whose average was 22 percent.

Moreover, the December 2016 result is not the highest in the past ten years—it reached 40.2 percent in March 2009. In the past, the percentage has been even higher, ballooning to 64.8 percent in February 1996.

The Daily Telegraph’s inflammatory article singling out and blaming Muslims for being on the dole queue stands reality on its head.

The figures indicate that, as expected, new arrivals face great difficulty in finding work, both as a result of the ongoing destruction of full-time jobs for all workers and endemic discrimination by employers against immigrant workers, who generally regard them only as opportunities for super-exploitation.

All those who are unemployed, whatever the statistics for particular ethnic groups, should have the basic social right to decent welfare payments, which are an essential protection against destitution, under conditions of worsening unemployment and under-employment.

Yet that social right is precisely what is under attack across the board. As one of the most vulnerable layers of the working class, these refugees and immigrants are being targeted as part of a wider drive to further wind back the totally inadequate, below-poverty-line payments that are made to jobless and disabled workers.

Though the article refrains from drawing direct conclusions on Australia’s refugee program, it refers disparagingly to government spending on education programs for humanitarian visa holders. It also states that, unlike “other migrants,” refugees do not have to “wait two years for welfare payments.” The implication is that those Muslims in the “dole queue” are mainly refugees.

The Daily Telegraph insinuates that Australia is accepting too many Middle Eastern immigrants and refugees. The article states that the number of Iraqi-born migrants has increased by 38 percent in ten years, to 63,000 and that the “number of Syrian settlers is set to double” as a result of the government’s promise, more than a year ago, to accept 12,000 refugees from Syria.

This material is part of a broader campaign to channel the mounting social tensions produced by the destruction of jobs, cuts to basic services and soaring housing prices in reactionary and divisive directions, and away from the real causes of the worsening social conditions, which lie in the capitalist profit system itself.

The propaganda goes hand in hand with the Murdoch press’s promotion of right-wing populists, like One Nation’s Pauline Hanson, who advocate immigration bans, welfare cutoffs and increased military spending. Emulating US President Donald Trump, Hanson has stridently backed his measures to ban Muslims from entering the US, and demanded similar measures in Australia.

In the corporate media, people relying on pitiful welfare benefits are routinely depicted as parasites or fraudsters, in line with the government’s proposed $7.5 billion cuts to welfare over the next four years and its deepening welfare “debt” crackdown. In recent months, thousands of unemployment and sickness benefit recipients have been sent letters demanding they pay back thousands of dollars in alleged overpayments, and threatening them with debt collectors and jail.

Despite a public outcry against this offensive, and protests by the Centrelink workers who have been ordered to carry it out, the government plans to soon extend it to sole parents, pensioners and others relying on welfare.

The scapegoating of immigrants is not isolated to the Murdoch media. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a state-funded network, published a report last month declaring that “high immigration masks Australian economic decline.” According to the article, immigrants are driving soaring house prices and reductions in wages.

The article concluded by saying the “reason why many people feel that they haven’t benefitted from Australia’s long stretch of economic expansion, is quite simply because they haven’t.” This was put down to high immigration being good for business, but not “necessarily good for ordinary workers.”

Such demagogy is used to conceal the true source of the worsening social conditions and widening inequality, both in Australia and worldwide. That is the ever-more ruthless and parasitic operations of the financial and corporate elites, which profit both by eliminating jobs and driving down wages and conditions, and by speculative investment in the real estate and share markets. US-led militarism across the Middle East, in which Australian forces are heavily involved, has also caused the greatest refugee crisis since World War II, with more than 60 million people forced to flee their homes.

The capitalist class is not only seeking to eliminate every basic social program that once ameliorated, if only slightly, the constant financial stress that working-class households confront. Amid the rising trade and military tensions between the US and other major powers, there is also a drive to place the country on a war footing, with $195 billion to be spent on military hardware over the next decade, the cost of which will be borne by workers and youth.

BT Italia engulfed in “accounting irregularities” scandal

Simon Whelan

British Telecom’s (BT) Italian arm, BT Italia, is under investigation for so-called “accounting irregularities.”

Italian prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into BT Italia. Fabio De Pasquale, the Milanese prosecutor working on the case, said the probe was focused on allegations of “false accounting and embezzlement,” but would not comment further when pressed.

BT Italia is accused of using a financial transaction called “factoring”—a form of debtor finance, in its Italian operations. Factoring involves a business selling its accounts receivable (invoices) to a third party at a discount. What appears to have occurred at BT Italia is that they over-reported their earnings for years, while they borrowed money against unpaid debts and used that money to then pay the company’s own suppliers—thereby masking their underlying cash position.

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office has yet however to intervene in the affair, stating, “We have noted the news. We cannot confirm or deny our interest.”

Last October, BT announced a warning to investors and the markets that what they termed “inappropriate management behaviour” and equally unspecified “accounting irregularities” at their Italian operation, would cost approximately £145 million to rectify.

However in late January this year, on the verge of releasing their third quarter results, BT announced that after further investigation by auditors KPMG, the BT Italia affair would now cost somewhere in the region of £530 million to correct. Their shock profit warning was compounded by a downturn in BT’s British fortunes, uncertain market conditions and the loss of British and European state contracts.

Upon the announcement of profit warnings, BT’s share price collapsed, wiping off £8 billion from their FTSE 100 company share valuation. Forecasts for BT’s next two operating years have been cut. As a result, profits are estimated to be £300 million lower than previously expected. BT’s ability to outbid Rupert Murdoch’s Sky for the broadcasting rights to televise lucrative European Champions League soccer may be affected.

BT has a vast global presence with operations in 180 countries. Earlier this month, it was revealed that Deutsch Telekom—the German company that is BT’s largest single shareholder—is set to announce in its full-year results on March 2 a £3 billion write-down on its shareholding.

One after another household names from the blue chip FTSE100 have come under investigation for alleged criminal business practices designed to secure profits and market dominance. The investigation into BT Italia follows hot on the heels of the record fine of Rolls Royce aerospace for corrupt activities.

Not worried by the consequences and knowing no serious punishment will be meted out, BT merely suggested a “need to reflect” on why the illegal behaviour was not spotted by BT Italia’s management, the wider BT group, or even by its auditors.

BT’s London based senior management claim they were initially alerted by a whistleblower to wrongdoings at their Italian division last summer. BT Italian chief executive Gianluca Cimini and chief operating officer Stefania Truzzoli have since left the business, after their initial suspension by BT.

In business circles, BT’s serious profit warning was deemed far more critical in than any alleged crimes committed at BT Italia. Bloomberg’s Gadfly column typically bemoaned how “Britain’s largest provider of communication services used the bad tidings from Italy to bury even worse news: a profit warning.”

In light of the scandal BT’s remuneration committee are to examine bonus payments, previously paid to leading directors based on profit targets that were probably never achieved in the real world. Any such moves may well require the paying back of such payments given to senior Italian executives, two of whom were initially suspended and have now left the business. In addition, BT’s European head, Corrado Sciolla resigned from his post shortly after the scandal broke.

BT chief executive Gavin Patterson said BT was investigating its other overseas interests, but believed the problem was specific to Italy. Patterson argued that the BT Italia affair involved a very complex set of manipulations, involving lots of people over many years. He stated, “This is a very disappointing situation. It’s been going on for a number of years. It’s a complex situation that’s involved a lot of people and a business we thought was profitable but in truth was probably unprofitable for a number of years.”

Patterson alone earned some £5.3 million during 2016, including an annual bonus worth over £1 million, and share options worth another £3 million. BT’s international finance director, Tony Chanmugam, due to step down in the summer, received £2.8 million with a further £587,000 bonus.

BT and their auditors PwC have not offered as yet any explanation as to why and how the wrongdoing at their Italian operations apparently continued year after year, unabated until recently. BT’s chief executive said only, “We need to take stock and understand why the company’s management, internal audit and auditors failed to spot this over time.”

The crisis at BT has a widespread knock-on effect within the UK population, as some 700,000 of its 827,000 shareholders own 1,600 shares or fewer.

In the summer of 1982, the Thatcher Conservative government sold off what had been until 1977 an integral part of the state-owned Post Office. The Carter Report was designed to begin breaking up state monopolies and to introduce free market principles. It separated British Telecommunications, trading as British Telecom, off from the Post Office. In November 1984, more than 50 percent of British Telecommunications shares were sold to the public, in what was at the time the largest share issue in the world. Within a decade, the government’s remaining shares in British Telecommunications were sold off, raising £5 billion. A third flotation in July 1993 saw 750,000 new shareholders to the company taking out a stake.

What had previously been commonly termed the “country’s crown jewels,” i.e. gas, water, electricity, the telephone system and later the train transportation system—British Rail—were all privatised, with prices and bills for consumers skyrocketing.

BT Italia was originally formed by British Telecom in the late 1990s, together with a number of other regional privately owned media corporations. These included Mediaset, owned by former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, as the Italian government aped the British example and privatised whole swathes of their economy.

The scandal surrounding business practices at BT Italia compounds protracted issues over the company’s huge pension deficit, which has recently climbed to approximately £7 billion. According to a report published last year by MSCI, which analysed the health of more than 5,000 company pension funds across the globe, BT has the second-worst funded pension scheme in the world. The dire state of its pension system meant that BT has not been able to be sold or merged. The financial chicanery revealed at BT Italia is a culmination of this process, with new criminal means devised in order to enrich a few major players.

BT joins other formerly state owned companies like British Steel and British Aerospace that were privatised during the 1980s and have since come to grief. The orgy of more than 50 privatisations of public services and utilities that occurred during the Thatcher- and Major-led Tory administrations has been a disaster for the consumer and a boon for its richest shareholders.

Meeting on UK undercover policing highlights need for an independent inquiry

Paul Mitchell 

Last week a number of organisations and individuals involved in the exposure of police surveillance and infiltration of protest groups and political parties held a meeting, “Strikers & Spy cops—from Grunwick to now,” in central London.

During the course of the meeting it became clear, as the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) has maintained from the start, that the state is using the ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry (UPI), chaired by Lord Justice Pitchford, to review and refine its repressive policies. The role of the UPI is to clean up the fall-out from several high-profile court cases, rather than conducting an independent investigation of anti-democratic measures against political organisations and individuals.

In its submission to the UPI, the SEP rejected its terms of reference, which means that hardly any political organisations have been designated as core participants. This is “especially peculiar, given that the focus of the inquiry is the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), which was specifically created as part of high-level political operations against the left.”

The SEP submission demanded “the immediate release of the names of all undercover police operatives, especially those active in the Workers Revolutionary Party (and its forerunners and successor organisations), their pseudonyms and dates of operation.”

The London meeting heard how undercover police officers from the SDS and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) had infiltrated hundreds of political groups since 1968, using a multitude of deceptive techniques. These included using the names of at least 42 dead children, and officers forming long-term relationships with unsuspecting individuals and fathering their children, as part of building their cover story before suddenly disappearing.

The resulting court cases led to the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) admitting abuses of human rights and paying millions in compensation.

The chairperson of last week’s meeting, Eveline Lubbers from the Undercover Research Group, explained that although the UPI was established in 2014 (by then Home Secretary Theresa May) it had still not started its hearings. “It is depressing… Until now we thought the Inquiry was the best thing we could get to get to the truth and find something out,” Lubbers said, before revealing that the MPS had, on the morning of the meeting, asked for a further seven months delay.

The force claims it needs more time to process anonymity orders for the 116 former SDS officers who have been identified to the UPI. In addition, MPS lawyer Melanie Jones asked that Pitchford keep secret those undercover officers that he “wishes to subject to more considered scrutiny.” She brushed aside the criminal actions of the undercover police officers and the trauma perpetrated against their victims, declaring it would be “harrowing and upsetting” for the officers! “Some are in advanced years. Some may need to undergo distressing and confusing psychological or medical assessment, which are themselves costly in financial resources,” Jones added.

If Pitchford grants the request at a hearing planned for early April, the UPI is unlikely to start until 2018—the year it was supposed to complete its findings.

Investigative reporter Solomon Hughes told the audience that in 2006, following a request under the new Freedom of Information legislation, the MPS released a number of Special Branch files reporting in great detail on the 1976-78 Grunwick industrial dispute. At various points in the files are the words “Please index” against an individual or organisation—in other words, create a file on them.

Since 2006 Hughes explained, the MPS has refused similar requests, either saying they have lost the files, declaring those asking for the information “vexatious,” or that releasing it would “undermine national security” and lead to “more crime and terrorist incidents and place officers at risk.”

Civil rights lawyer Harriet Wistrich, who is acting for several women involved in the “fraudulent” long-term relationships with “men who turned out to be spies,” explained that the refusal of the MPS to release information was a result of the recently developed “Neither Confirm Nor Deny” policy. It now meant “we can’t get hold of anything.” She told the meeting that “over 18 months into the Inquiry…we are nowhere seeing an ounce of disclosure, nowhere near a public hearing.” Wistrich also revealed that MPS officials had shredded documents the previous week that could be relevant to the UPI.

Wistrich explained that the onus is on anyone suspecting the activities of undercover police officers, to prove they have taken place. Nearly all the cases being accepted for core participant status are those that are already in the public domain and only came to light because the names of some undercover operatives were either disclosed by the agents themselves, or uncovered by their victims.

Wistrich concluded by saying, “It’s very difficult to see anything coming out of this Inquiry.”

In the Q&A session that followed the speeches, this reporter explained, “What we are seeing is a damage limitation exercise designed to reorganise the state. The implementation of the NCND policy is a sign the state is becoming more repressive. Things must get worse because of Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the rise of nationalism and militarism internationally. The state is gearing up to deal with the dissent and opposition these developments must inevitably produce.”

The reporter then read a section from a leaflet produced by the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance, which states, “We have no faith in any of the ongoing police inquiries or reports, including Operation Herne, nor those from the satellite bodies such as the Independent Police Complaints Commission or Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. Several have already been thoroughly discredited.”

This is all well and good, but in the next paragraph, the leaflet then creates illusions in the UPI, declaring it “must be transparent, robust and independent” and that “it should happen without delay.”

“Surely the evidence produced by tonight’s speakers proves that the state cannot be trusted to investigate its own criminality,” the reporter continued before calling for an inquiry into policing that is truly independent of the state.

He also discussed the experiences of the 1995 independent Workers Inquiry into the killing of Joy Gardner, the first immigrant to die in Britain during a deportation. The International Communist Party, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party, initiated the inquiry. Using trial court evidence and testimony supplied by Joy’s family, the inquiry was able to prove that her death was the direct result of the actions of the deportation squad. In addition, her brutal treatment was the result of a concerted offensive by the British government against immigrant workers and democratic rights, which was never opposed by the Labour Party or the trade union bureaucracy.

The call for an independent inquiry found a response from another platform speaker, Marcia Rigg from the United Friends and Families Campaign against deaths in police custody (and whose brother met the same fate), who said a “Peoples’ Court” should be set up. And in concluding the meeting, Lubbers agreed the idea of a real independent inquiry was something to be thought about.

As socialists have long recognised, far from being a neutral arbiter that can be made to operate above class interests, the police are part of the state’s “special bodies of armed men,” assigned the task of keeping the capitalist class in power and the working class oppressed. The police can no more be reformed or made democratically accountable than capitalism itself.

Canada: Authorities whitewash police killing of terror suspect

Laurent Lafrance

A joint investigation by the Strathroy-Caradoc police and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) has determined that the police killing of terror suspect Aaron Driver last August was legally justified. The federal government, which conducted its own independent review of Driver’s death, has upheld the police investigation’s conclusion.

In fact, the shooting of Driver had the hallmarks of a summary execution, and the police and government reports have done nothing to answer why police shot him multiple times when he was already incapacitated.

On the afternoon of August 10, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Strathroy-Caradoc police, with the support of Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and Canadian Special Forces operatives, mounted a major operation to prevent Aaron Driver from committing an allegedly “imminent” terrorist attack in a public space.

The RCMP said it was acting on a tip passed to it by the FBI earlier the same day concerning an online video in which a masked Driver pledged allegiance to ISIS and vowed Canadians would pay with their blood for Canada’s involvement in the wars in the Middle East.

For hours, heavily armed security personnel clandestinely staked out Aaron Driver’s sister’s home, where the 24-year-old man was living, and essentially occupied the adjacent Strathroy neighbourhood.

Hours after the police operation began, a taxi arrived at Driver’s residence. It waited for about five minutes before Driver left his sister’s house and jumped into the car with a backpack. According to the taxi driver, Terry Duffield, Driver asked to go to Citi Plaza, a mall in nearby London.

It was only then that police intervened, blocking the cab from leaving. When police approached the car, Driver detonated a device, of which only a portion actually exploded. Police then rushed the taxi and pumped several bullets into the severely injured Driver.

Initially police refused to say how Driver had died. Only days after the event did they confirm that Driver had been killed by police gunfire and not at his own hand from the bomb blast.

Subsequently, an RCMP bomb analysis showed that if Driver’s homemade device, embedded with 139 ball bearings, had entirely exploded, it “would have caused a high risk of death to anyone within 1.5 meters of the explosion and varying risks of injury up to 7.8 meters away.”

The police inquiry maintained a veil of secrecy surrounding the circumstances of Driver’s death. The main argument to justify the killing, as stated in the report, was that the police believed Driver had more explosives. “Fearing for their safety, and believing that Mr. Driver would detonate a second device, the RCMP shot Mr. Driver fatally wounding him,” declares the report.

In fact, all evidence points to Driver having been killed while he was incapacitated. Following the police operation, Duffield, who suffered minor physical injuries from the explosion, gave the media his own account of what happened. “As I’m lying on the ground,” he told the London Free Press, “I hear an officer say, loud, ‘He’s still twitching.’ Then I hear pop, pop, pop, pop, like four or five shots, and then it was complete silence.”

Duffield also explained that although he was himself visibly injured, the police did not arrange for him to have medical care or otherwise assist him. It was the son of the taxi company owner who had to pick him up and drive him home. Duffield, who suffered from anxiety and panic attacks following the incident and as a result was not able to work for weeks, has said he may sue the police for using him as bait in their operation.

The police were clearly not interested in hearing what Duffield had to say. The taxi driver—the only civilian witness at the scene of Driver’s death—complained last November that he had not yet been questioned by the police. His account of the event is not even mentioned in the Strathroy-OPP report.

Duffield has strongly criticized the way police handled the whole situation. “I don’t know how [the shooting] is justified. If I’m lying on one side of the car and hear somebody yell ‘he’s still twitching’ it means he’s not really mobile. Did you really have to shoot him?” he said, adding, “They could’ve [used a Taser] and he would still be alive to answer questions.”

Duffield and his lawyer, Kevin Egan, have expressed anger and disappointment at the police investigation. “I’m not surprised that the police investigating themselves found that their actions were justified or that the attorney-general did as well,” Duffield said, adding, “They can finalize the justification of killing somebody, but wouldn’t give me a straight answer on who decided to jeopardize my life.”

Duffield reiterated that police had had plenty of opportunity to warn his cab company about Driver or to get him out of harm’s way as he drove to the house and waited for Driver to get into his car. Egan raised the question as to how the RCMP allowed a man who was the subject of a court-ordered “peace-bond” due to his alleged terrorist sympathies build a bomb powerful enough to have caused multiple fatalities.

Driver was a disturbed individual who declared allegiance to ISIS and expressed sympathy for the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. His apparent plan—to detonate a bomb with the power to kill in a heavily traveled public space—was deeply reactionary and reprehensible.

But the fact that the police acted as judge, jury and executioner—culminating in what appears to have been Driver’s summary execution—should be seen as a serious warning by workers and young people.

The questions raised by the World Socialist Web Site in the wake of the August 10 events remain unanswered. Why did the police not seek to apprehend Driver before he entered the taxi? More fundamentally, why did the highly trained antiterrorism RCMP officers decide to fire multiple times at Driver while he was incapacitated?

Most disturbing of all is the fact that the media and the political establishment have demonstrated almost complete indifference to these questions, revealing the ruling elite’s contempt for democratic rights and endorsement of the most brutal methods of rule at home and abroad, including state-sanctioned killings. Days after the event, Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau congratulated the security services and police for “having managed to prevent any serious incidents related to this particular individual.”

The police’s claim that an “imminent attack” was only narrowly averted thanks to an FBI tip is highly suspect given that Driver was well-known to the Canadian security apparatus and presumably under close surveillance.

In June 2015, police detained Driver for eight days without charge, that is illegally, citing Internet postings he had made expressing sympathy for ISIS. Then in February 2016, they obtained a peace-bond that circumscribed Driver’s rights because of fears he would “participate in or contribute to, directly or indirectly, the activity of a terrorist group to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity.”

Yet, last July when a neighbour reported hearing explosions in Driver’s backyard, the authorities inexplicably failed to investigate.

One could justifiably ask whether the RCMP knowingly permitted Driver to proceed with his planned attack to a point where a major police-military deployment could be justified. That such a scenario is far from impossible is exemplified by a recent British Columbia judge’s ruling that the RCMP had encouraged and even pressured a couple to prepare and carry out a terrorist attack on the province’s legislature on Canada Day in 2013.

It should also be underlined that in the case of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the 2015 Paris terror attack, and most recently the Berlin Christmas market attack, the suspects were all well-known to the security forces and acted under their noses.

While it is impossible to know to what extent the state was involved in the August 10 events, the ruling elite predictably seized on it to boost their phony “war on terror” narrative. Since 9/11, the Canadian bourgeoisie, like its US counterparts, has systematically used the “fight against terrorism” to justify Canada’s participation in predatory overseas wars and to attack the democratic rights of the population at home.

Police officials were quick to cite the events in Strathroy to bolster their demands for stricter controls on online communications and further attacks on the right to privacy, including the capacity to break encryption.

In a similar fashion, the ruling elite exploited the 2014 Ottawa and St-Jean-sur-Richelieu shootings to expand police powers. Shortly after these events, the then-Conservative federal government, with the support of the Liberals, passed Bill C-51 (the 2015 “Anti-terrorism Act”) which gives the CSIS the power to break virtually any law in the name of countering “public security” threats and otherwise dramatically expands the coercive powers of the state.

Following last August’s events, Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale said stronger anti-terror measures are needed and argued that peace bonds are “tools and instruments with limited capacity” that should be revised as part of the Liberal government’s current review of national security laws and practices.

Trade growth slows to lowest level since global financial crisis

Nick Beams

Last year saw the lowest increase in global trade growth since the financial crisis of 2008–2009, according to a report issued by the World Bank on Tuesday. It was the fifth consecutive year that international trade growth has slowed.

The report said current estimates for the growth in trade in goods and services ranged from 1.9 percent to 2.5 percent but preliminary data suggested that the growth in merchandise trade volumes had increased by only 1 percent. Last year was different from all the other post-crisis years “in that trade sluggishness is a characteristic of both advanced and emerging economies.”

It attributed the trade slowdown to a number of factors including the slower pace of trade liberalisation, lower global growth, a trough in commodity prices and what it called “macroeconomic rebalancing” in China—a reference to the decisions of the Chinese government to try to cut back on investment and infrastructure spending.

While it did not consider that restrictive measures introduced by governments had led, at least to this point, to a trade slowdown, it did point to the impact of political uncertainty in 2016, reflected most notably in the Brexit vote in the UK and the victory of Trump in the US elections.

The prima facie evidence for a connection between political uncertainty and trade growth emerged from a sample study of some 18 countries extending over 30 years. On the basis of this study it found that “the increase in uncertainty in 2016 may have reduced trade growth by about 0.6 percentage points, which is equivalent to 75 percent of the difference between trade growth rates in 2015 and 2016.”

Political uncertainty impacted on trade because it reduced overall economic growth. “In a less certain environment firms may choose to postpone investment decisions, consumers may cut back on spending, and banks may increase the cost of finance.” Furthermore, to the extent that economic policy uncertainty is due to trade policy uncertainty in particular, this could affect trade directly.

While not mentioning the US president by name, this was a thinly-veiled reference to Donald Trump and his “America First” agenda and his decision to either scrap or renegotiate proposed and existing trade agreements.

It said that while protectionism could not explain the trade patterns of 2016 it was “likely that trade policy uncertainty contributed to the surge in overall political uncertainty.”

The report also pointed to some longer-term processes. Trade sluggishness was now characteristic of both advanced and emerging economies, in contrast to the years immediately following the global financial crisis when “the dynamism of emerging economies largely sustained world trade growth as advanced economies struggled to recover from the financial crisis.”

The boost in trade from emerging economies was largely the product of the massive stimulus package initiated by the Chinese government based on increased government spending and expansion of credit in response to the loss of 23 million jobs. But the boost from emerging markets was reversed in 2014 and 2015 with the fall in commodity prices and “rebalancing” in China.

One of the main boosts to world trade in the first decade of the century was the establishment of what are called global value chains (GVCs), in which major companies offshore components of the manufacturing process to take advantage of cheaper labour. Much of the trade growth resulted not from the export and import of finished goods but the shifting of components of final products around the world.

The establishment of GVCs provided a major boost to profitability as companies were able to cut costs. But the initial lift in the bottom line appears to be wearing off because cost reductions cannot be endlessly repeated. The World Bank report did not discuss this question in terms of profitability preferring to refer to what it called the “maturing of global value chains.”

“Trade appears to have grown more slowly not only because global growth is lower, but also because that growth has become less trade intensive,” the report noted.

According to the report’s authors: “We are witnessing a decline in the growth of trade as well as productivity, and the slowing expansion of global value chains can help to explain both.”

The World Bank report on trade followed the publication of its annual Global Economic Prospects report published last month.

That report painted a somewhat dismal picture of the world economy.

“Stalling global trade, weak investment and heightened political uncertainty have depressed world economic activity,” the report stated. Global growth was estimated to have fallen to 2.3 percent in 2016, the weakest performance since the global financial crisis and 0.1 percentage point below the forecast by the World Bank made in June 2016.

“Advanced economies continue to struggle with subdued growth and low inflation in a context of increasing uncertainty about policy direction, tepid investment, and sluggish productivity growth. Activity decelerated in the United States and, to a lesser degree in some other major economies.”

Advanced-economy growth was estimated to have slowed to 1.6 percent in 2016 with a small pick-up to a level of 1.8 percent expected in 2017.

The situation is no better in emerging market economies. While growth in these economies was expected to rise over 2017 and 2018, and could account for 60 percent of global growth in the coming year, the long-term outlook for these economies was “clouded by a number of factors.”

These include uncertainty about global trade prospects, advanced-economy economic policies, a weakening of potential output flowing from subdued investment and sluggish productivity growth.

The report noted that since 2010 investment growth in emerging market economies had slowed sharply. While the deceleration had been most pronounced in the largest of these markets and commodity-exporting countries, it had now spread to the rest with the result that investment growth was below its long-term average over the past quarter century, except during serious global downturns.

These economies, it pointed out, account for than more one third of global GDP and three-quarters of the world’s population and the world’s poor.

Trump administration revokes transgender rights guidance issued by Obama administration

Shelley Connor 

In May 2016 the Obama administration instructed public schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom they felt most comfortable using; schools refusing to comply with the instructions risked losing federal funding. The guidelines also included instructions for teachers to use students’ preferred names and pronouns in class. On Wednesday, February 22, the Trump administration rescinded the instructions, arguing that states and public schools have a right to discriminate against transgender students without interference from the federal government.

In a new, superseding document that is to be sent to schools throughout the US, both the Justice and Education Departments, under the new administration in Washington, have promised to continue to analyze the legal considerations of the issue. The law at the heart of the issue is known as Title IX, and it prohibits sex discrimination in public schools. Trump and his supporters, however, dispute the meaning of the term sex discrimination. According to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime advocate of states’ rights, the previous guidelines “did not contain sufficient legal analysis or explain how the interpretation was consistent with the language of Title X.”

The Obama guidelines were contested by many conservatives associated with the religious right. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton led thirteen states in a lawsuit against the guidelines. “Our fight over the bathroom directive has always been about former President Obama’s attempt to bypass Congress and rewrite the laws to fit his political agenda for radical social change,” Paxton crowed triumphantly after Trump’s revocation of the guidelines was announced. The new guidelines could grant even broader permissions to public schools than Paxton’s lawsuit argues for, allowing individual schools to set their own rules with no fear of federal “meddling.”

According to White House spokesman Sean Spicer, the White House was forced to act on the instructions now, ahead of a pending US Supreme Court case, G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board. Gavin Grimm, the Virginia boy at the center of the case, is arguing for the right to use the boy’s bathroom at his high school. In addition to revoking the guidelines issued by the Obama administration, the Trump administration’s actions on Wednesday withdrew an Education Department letter in support of Grimm’s case.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the case could have far-reaching ramifications. The Court could bypass the question of whether Title IX protections include transgender students, leaving the decision to lower courts. It is equally capable of defining Title IX protections once and for all. The case raises the longstanding tensions in the United States between those who view education as a federal concern and those who believe that education should be left to states to legislate. For many transgendered persons and their advocates, that dichotomy represents a dangerous gray area in which states could deprive transgender students of equal access to education or protection from bullying.

The conflicts between states’ rights and civil rights hearkens back to the 1950s and 1960s, when Southern states argued that they had a right to segregate white and black students. Segregationists then quibbled over the definition of “equal” in much the same way that Sessions, an ardent partisan of states’ rights for his entire political career, quibbles over the definition of “discrimination” today. Transgender legal advocates rightly criticize the states’ rights arguments, seeing them as a green light for states to restrict access to education without fear of oversight, opening up vulnerable students to attacks upon their dignity by administrators and teachers who neglect their primary concern—the education of children—in order to police community morality.

That the issue would warrant an executive order demonstrates the decay of social conditions and the Trump administration’s absolute disregard for education. In an era when America’s schools lag behind other advanced countries by almost all measures, Trump’s attacks on education are particularly harmful to the working class. Schools that have already suffered under the policies of the No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top programs of the Bush and Obama administrations are now being picked over by vultures using federalist pretexts to hide their eagerness to subordinate social interests to private profit.

The cloak of “morality” is being used to whip up social backwardness, to be used to attack education and other basic rights. The old cry of “states’ rights” should signal to the working class that the bourgeoisie is preparing new assaults upon workers and their families.