Report highlights growing social distress in Australia

John Harris

Australian workers, retirees, single parents and young people face mounting job insecurity, poverty and financial stress, as well as a growing social divide. This is the picture painted by the Household Financial Comfort Report, released last month by industry superfund ME Bank, based on a survey of 1,500 households.

Participants rated their financial situation, expectations and confidence across 11 different fields from 0 to 10 (worst to best). The report recorded the lowest rate of “financial comfort and stability” since the survey was first conducted in October 2011.

The report provided a glimpse into the divergence of the incomes of the wealthiest and poorest layers in society. Last year, 46 percent of households earning over $100,000 per year reported income gains and only 13 percent reported a decrease. By contrast, 41 percent of households earning under $40,000 a year experienced a fall in income and just 17 percent registered an increase.

ME consulting economist and report co-author Jeff Oughton told Fairfax Media: “The rich appear to be getting richer, while the rest of Australia is struggling—there’s a divide across households.”

Oughton noted that with the collapse of the mining boom and the crisis of manufacturing, many workers were being pushed into part-time employment. He commented: “ABS data shows wage growth at historical lows over the past two years to the September quarter. ME’s report highlights low wage growth continued in the whole of 2016 and is causing financial discomfort for many households, exacerbated by job insecurity and underemployment.”

Underlining the precarious jobs situation, 56 percent of households were concerned they would struggle to find a new job within two months if they became unemployed. Around one in three felt insecure in their current job, up 9 percentage points from the previous year’s survey.

Some 70 percent of casual workers indicated they wanted to find full-time work and 60 percent of part-time employees said they would like to increase the hours they work.

Official figures are a pale reflection of the fall in full-time jobs. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, full-time employment has fallen by around 40,100 jobs over the past year. Over that time, the number of workers in part-time employment has increased by 129,800.

Roy Morgan Research reported that as of January 2017, real unemployment stood at 9.7 percent, with another 8.2 percent underemployed. That means 2.4 million people were either looking for a job or more hours.

As a result, millions are living on a knife-edge. Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents said they could not “easily raise $3,000 in an emergency.” In other words, any unexpected expense, from a car breakdown to a medical emergency, could push many into economic ruin.

Numbers of those surveyed had far less than $3,000 at hand—27 percent of households registered cash savings of less than $1,000. A further 27 percent reported cash savings of between $1,000 and $10,000.

During 2016, “debt increased faster than income,” with 28 percent of households reporting an increase in debt. In June, approximately 10 percent of survey participants said they could not meet minimum required payments on debt.

Although the report does not spell it out, broad layers of the population have negative wealth, with working-class families drowning in debt.

In another indication that many are struggling just to get by, 43 percent of households said the cost of necessities (groceries, utilities, rent, transport, medical costs plus additional costs) was their biggest concern. Nearly half (49 percent), indicated they were either “unable to afford essentials” or had “no money left over after payments.”

At the other end of society, 2 percent, comprising the wealthiest layers of society, reported cash holdings of more than half a million dollars. The cash holdings did not include other forms of wealth such as shares and property.

This disparity is in line with other indications of a sharp rise in social polarisation. A Wealth of the Nation report last year found that the richest 10 percent of society own more than half of Australia’s household wealth, with the top 1 percent holding up to 20 percent. The poorest 40 percent own virtually nothing.

The most vulnerable layers of the working class have been hit hardest by the redistribution of wealth up the income scale, and the assault on healthcare, education and social spending prosecuted by successive governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike.

Some 40 percent of single parents reported declining incomes, up 3 percent in six months. Over recent years governments have targeted sole parent households.

In 2006 the Liberal-National government of John Howard axed the single parenting payment when the youngest child turned eight, for all new applicants. The Labor government of Julia Gillard extended the policy to all recipients in 2012, pushing 130,000 parents straight onto the below poverty-level Newstart Allowance. Households lost up to $140 a week.

Those close to retirement confront significant financial uncertainty, as a result of the small returns yielded on the compulsory superannuation payments workers make throughout their working life, and the inadequacy of the poverty-line government aged pension.

Around 43 percent of households feared that their superannuation would not be enough to support them in retirement, forcing them to rely on private savings and the government pension. Some 19 percent said they would have to rely on the government pension because they would have inadequate private savings.

Amid ever more strident demands from the corporate and financial elite for the imposition of sweeping austerity cuts to social spending, the social crisis afflicting layers of the working class will only deepen.

Fire in Guatemalan “safe home” for youth kills dozens of locked-in girls

Andrea Lobo

A fire killing dozens at an overcrowded residential facility for youth on the outskirts of Guatemala City has provoked broad outrage. Health authorities have reported 35 girls dead and 23 hospitalized as a result of the blaze in the female section of the facility. Nine of the survivors are reportedly connected to respirators and “can die at any moment.”

A survivor at one of the hospitals reported that some of the at-risk youth being supposedly sheltered from domestic violence, homelessness, and abandonment were seeking to escape due to widespread abuse and poor conditions within the facility itself.

On Tuesday, about 60 of them managed to flee but were detained by the National Police, returned to the Virgen de la Asunción shelter and locked inside of a 4-meter by 4-meter room. Some of the 52 girls inside reportedly set mattresses on fire, which quickly consumed the room with flames and smoke.

This calamity was not only the result of the immediate abuse and conditions at the shelter, but more fundamentally of the desperate situations that youth face after decades of imperialist exploitation and right-wing measures that have ruined social conditions and fueled violence in Guatemala.

Thousands of youth and young workers have taken the dangerous journey to the United States to escape these same conditions that await them once again if they are deported under the mass roundup and deportation of immigrants begun by the Trump administration.

The Guatemalan fire department and police authorities who responded to the incident referred to the youth as “rebelling inmates” and blamed each other for a 40-minute delay in attending to the fire. The attorney general blamed the entire incident on “the staff, the director and the secretary” of Social Welfare, while the Guatemalan president, Jimmy Morales, cynically claimed that “all Guatemalans bear part of the responsibility, which is that of the nation, the republic we have built.”

At a press conference on Thursday, Morales announced that the shelter will be closed and the youth sent to other facilities. Then, he scorned those protesting, including the families of the victims, while confessing that not much will be done to prevent future disasters. “We can do a lot, from protesting to even proposing and acting; this last word is the hardest,” he concluded, not staying for questions.

That evening, hundreds gathered outside of the National Palace to protest the fire. Millions in Guatemala are disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Morales government, which has continued to cut spending on youth and social programs while militarizing the country to terrorize poor communities. “The people are present, and have no president,” chanted the protesters on Thursday.

The Guatemalan daily La Hora reported last November that the conditions at the Virgen de la Asunción center were truly horrendous. The 748 internees, crowded into a facility built for 400, lacked hygiene products like toothbrushes and toilet paper, while several children were sleeping on the floor.

The Public Ministry was reportedly investigating one murder case and several lawsuits regarding beatings, psychological and sexual abuse against girls and boys, and reports of sexual slavery administered by the guards at the facility. La Hora writes that there had been 73 disappearances since the beginning of 2016 until October, when a state prosecutor recommended shutting down the center.

Surrounded by tall prison-like walls with barbed wire and security cameras, the “safe houses,” like many other overcrowded shelters, prisons, schools and even hospitals, with one or few gates, are deadly disasters waiting to happen from fires, landslides and earthquakes.

In its 2016 operative program, the Social Welfare Secretariat (SBS) writes that the state serves, though in mostly inadequate ways, 8 percent of the 300,000 children and adolescents suffering from “discrimination, marginalization, mistreatment.” They also write that 6.25 million or two-thirds of all children and adolescents live in “total poverty,” making them vulnerable to such abuses.

The social conditions for a majority of youth and workers in Guatemala and the region are disastrous. Eighty percent of chronically undernourished children in Latin America live in Central America and Mexico, a condition that affects 45 percent of children under five in Guatemala, according to UNICEF figures.

The SBS requested about $33 million for yearly operations, but the Guatemalan Congress has approved only about two-thirds of this for several years. On the other hand, the military budget has increased almost 40 percent since 2011 to $280 million, mainly for the creation of a Mountain Operations Brigade, Marine Infantry Brigade, Jungle Operations Special Brigade and a Central Regional Command.

Moreover, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Guatemalan government has one of the lowest overall rates of social spending, and spends the least in the region as a percentage of GDP in the provision of education (0.51 percent) and health care (0.49 percent) for its youth.

The agency also reports that the government has the highest level of uncollected income taxes in the region, amounting to 70 percent of its potential tax revenue. Social polarization has been the overriding factor behind the social conditions for workers and youth. Oxfam calculates that the wealth of 260 multimillionaires in Guatemala is equivalent to 60 percent of the country’s GDP.

While the City of Guatemala sees 65 percent of violent crimes and most gang activity that threaten to ensnare youth, the rural areas are affected by 86 percent poverty and rampant drug trafficking and production. At the root of these desperate conditions, like those that produced the disastrous events in the Virgen de la Asunción home, is an economic system based on the pursuit of profit and personal wealth by capitalist corporations.

The current levels of inequality and violence are the result of a long history of US and European imperialist exploitation in collusion with a rent-seeking and corrupt national bourgeoisie. The polarization of wealth was greatly accelerated with the implementation of IMF austerity diktats, like regressive taxes in 1983, social cuts, and widespread privatizations starting in 1986 under the “civilian” government of Vinicio Cerezo, after a decade of brutal military dictatorships.

These right-wing measures were intensified after the formulation of the Washington Consensus in 1989 and amid mounting interest payments to the international credit agencies. Throughout the previous decade, the ruling class enforced social cuts to finance an escalation of the counterrevolutionary civil war against left nationalist guerrillas that had raged since the 1950s as a result of the US-orchestrated military overthrow of the bourgeois reformist government of Jacobo Árbenz in 1954.

Between 1970 and 1975, there were about 15,000 political assassinations against radicalized youth, workers and peasants. Entire Mayan villages were destroyed during the 1980s, resulting in the genocidal killing of 200,000 people by the US-backed armed forces as part of “counterinsurgency” military operations.

The protracted state violence since the Civil War and the expansion of gang activity, along with the growing social inequality, have set the stage for the mass migrations of families and unaccompanied children into the United States.

The fire in Guatemala City underscores the criminality and disastrous consequences of the White House drive to detain and deport millions of immigrant workers and youth back to these social conditions that they escaped by fleeing from in Guatemala and the region.

Mexican government to vote on law expanding domestic military operations, authorizing mass spying

Alex Gonzalez

Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies is preparing to pass a law that provides the legal framework for the military to intervene in matters that “endanger stability, safety or public peace.” The proposed law would also grant the armed forces the authority to “make use of any method of data collection” and would force non-governmental institutions, as well as private entities, to hand over users’ private information. The Mexican Chamber of Deputies is expected to vote on the proposed law by April 20.

The Internal Security Law ( Ley de Seguridad Interior ), proposed in Congress last November, marks a milestone in the ruling class’s efforts to defend its rule against mass mobilization of the Mexican working class. Widely discredited and deeply unpopular, the Peña Nieto administration is taking steps to ensure that any future social unrest is met with police state measures.

Under the proposed law, the Mexican Army, Marines and Air Force can be formally deployed for wide-reaching operations that include fighting organized crime, investigating corruption, combatting terrorism and “restoring order” after national disasters. In addition, the armed forces will be permanently tasked with “internal security,” vaguely characterized as preventive actions “fundamental to anticipating the State’s actions against phenomena that seek to violate internal order.”

While the military has already been informally carrying out these operations without a legal framework under the guise of the decade-long “war on drugs,” the Internal Security Law aims to legalize and make permanent the use of the military in conducting anti-drug operations, a move that is sure to produce further human rights violations from a force already notorious for its acts of torture and abuse.

The Internal Security Law also lays the foundation for mass spying on the Mexican population. Telecommunications service providers will be forced to deliver “private communications, real-time geographical location or delivery of retained data on mobile communication equipment” without any form of judicial overview or accountability. According to the Digital Rights Defense Network, a Mexican privacy rights organization, the law’s broad language leaves open the possibility for the government to ask application and content providers to “establish vulnerabilities, deliver encryption keys or establish another type of back door to facilitate surveillance.”

The military, as stated in the proposed legislation, can be mobilized by the president at any time, as well as by Congressional actions. Last year, Mexico amended its constitution to grant the president the authority to establish a state of emergency and declare martial law in instances that “place society in grave danger or conflict.” As with the Constitutional amendment, the Internal Security Law is a carte blanche for the State to suspend civil rights and suspend basic democratic rights under the pretext of fighting organized crime and preventing terrorist attacks.

The law is being sponsored by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN). Both parties have been in power during and have played a role in escalating the bloody war on drugs, which has killed over 166,000 and disappeared 28,000 over the last decade.

The National Regeneration Movement (Morena) and the Party for Democratic Revolution (PRD), the nominal “left” Mexican bourgeois parties, have opposed the legislation from the standpoint of Mexican nationalism. “The drafting of the law does not express clearly that the Mexican Army is the only one that can perform interior security functions,” stated PRD congressman Alejandro Ojelda. Similarly, Morena congressman Paulo César Martínez López has noted the proposed law “opens the door to military operations by foreign armies.” In other words, the PRD and Morena want to ensure that the Mexican state will have the exclusive power to crack down on social opposition from the working class using military force.

Human rights groups and academics have widely denounced the proposed law, warning its adoption would gravely endanger human rights in the country. Over the past decade, the armed forces have been repeatedly found guilty of torture, extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances. The Mexican Federal Police and the armed forces have been implicated in the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students, while in Tlatlaya, 22 civilians were executed by the 102nd Infantry Battalion of the Mexican Army.

The Interior Security Law is being proposed in the context of an outbreak of social opposition against the policies of the Trump administration and the inability of the Mexican government to provide any defense for workers, youth and peasants on either side of the border.

Since the election of Trump, the Mexican government has been in crisis over how to balance its role as a junior partner of American imperialism and subdue mounting social anger at home over Trump’s bullying threats to deport millions of immigrants to Mexico, renegotiate NAFTA, build a border wall with Mexico, halt remittances to the country and send US troops to Mexico to take over the war on drugs.

The law also comes in the wake of mass demonstrations against the policies of the Peña Nieto administration, including the gazolinazo protests at the beginning of the year, when thousands of workers mobilized across the country to block roads and highways, taking over processing and distribution centers, and shutting down transit services in many parts of the country.

In July of last year, teachers went on strike in Oaxaca against the regressive education policies of Peña Nieto’s “Pact for Mexico” in defense of public education. After 13 were killed and dozens wounded when the Mexican federal police fired at striking teachers, 200,000 doctors and nurses struck in solidarity with the protesting teachers, and students at major universities boycotted classes to show their support.

In response, the Mexican ruling elite is building up the military to prepare for open class conflict. Mexico’s weapons imports have more than tripled in the last five years, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Mexico is now the region’s second largest importer of weapons, buying $7.9 billion in military equipment in 2015 alone.

Through the government’s military sales program, the Obama administration sold over $2.5 billion in military equipment to Mexico from 2008 to 2016. Weapons purchased directly from US companies—another way the Mexican government can acquire US weapons—tripled to $2 billion from 2011 to 2012.

Aude Felurant, an SIPRI analyst specializing in Latin American affairs, characterized the weaponry being brought into Mexico, including thousands of Humvees, dozens of Blackhawks, and millions of rounds of ammunition, as “the type of equipment that is imported to carry out counterinsurgency measures.”

Desperate to cling to its privileges and wealth, the Mexican ruling class will act quickly and violently to institute martial law and prevent social revolt from threatening its rule. In response, the working class must arm itself with revolutionary politics in a struggle for socialism and the unity of the international working class.

RadioShack closing 187 more stores

James Brewer

RadioShack announced that it is closing 187 stores this month, after filing its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition Wednesday. Once one of the largest consumer electronics retail outlets in the US, the company had already dropped the number of locations to less than 2,000.

In 2015, RadioShack filed its first bankruptcy reorganization petition. At the time, it ran 5,200 stores across the country. The company, based in Fort Worth, Texas, closed some 2,400 stores that year. Later, a joint venture of Sprint Wireless and hedge fund Standard General acquired RadioShack and operated over three-quarters of its remaining stores.

Some 1,850 employees will lose their jobs when the stores shut down on March 13.

Founded in 1921, Radio Shack was acquired by Tandy Corporation in 1963. In 1977, the TRS-80 microcomputer was marketed by RadioShack and became one of the first personal computers on the market—years before the IBM PC.

The announcement this week by RadioShack coincides with the release by Sears of its fourth quarter financials, revealing a loss of $607 million. According to Standard & Poor’s Global Market Intelligence, the retail firm, which owns Kmart, posted losses in all but two of the last 24 quarters. Over the last year, its revenues fell to $6.1 billion from $7.3 billion a year earlier. In January, the company announced the planned closure of 150 stores in February and March.

The office supply retailer Staples announced Thursday that will be closing 70 more stores, reporting a $548 million loss and a 3 percent drop in sales over the fourth quarter.

Over the last month, other retailers have announced store closures as well—Macy’s closing 68 stores with 10,000 layoffs and JC Penney closing 140 stores. Women’s clothier The Limited announced the immediate closing of all 250 of its retail stores in January, though it will continue online sales. Even more profitable retailers like Neiman Marcus are facing financial crisis. It is restructuring its $5 billion of debt.

Electronics retailer HHGregg is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, announcing last week that it will close 88 of its 220 stores and three distribution centers, costing 1,500 jobs.

Among mall retailers, Abercrombie and Fitch announced plans to close 60 stores in 2017 and shoe outlet Crocs will shut 160 by 2018.

So-called brick-and-mortar retailers are under what some financial analysts see as a terminal crisis. Wolf Richter of Business Insider described the crisis this way: “Brick-and-mortar retailers, many of them subject to leveraged buyouts during the LBO boom before the Financial Crisis and now burdened with way too much debt, are keeling over one after the other, in a dense wave of debt restructurings and bankruptcies. And creditors are getting skinned.”

In addition to the protracted economic decline, another aspect of the closing of retail stores is the predominance of online marketing. More generally, the continued erosion of workers’ living standards placed unrelenting economic pressure on the retail markets.

In the automobile industry, GM has shut down the second shift at its Detroit Hamtramck Assembly plant, shedding 1,300 jobs, and has announced this week that it will close the third shift at its Lansing, Michigan Delta Township plant, costing 1,100 jobs.

The February jobs report released Friday by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the national unemployment rate is slightly lower than one year ago, but these figures don’t reflect the character of the jobs being created. The trend to replace relatively good-paying jobs with low-wage jobs has been driven by the Obama administration since the 2008 financial crash.

EU Summit backs trade war and militarism

Johannes Stern

The European Union is responding to the deepest crisis since its founding by further militarizing the continent and preparing for an economic showdown with the United States.

In a statement issued Friday at the end of the two-day EU summit in Brussels, the 27 remaining member states declared their intention to press ahead with “greater determination and speed” with the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The European Council welcomed the “holding of a high-level conference on security and defence in Prague on 9 June.” Just days prior to the conference, the EU foreign and defence ministers agreed on Monday to the creation of a joint headquarters for military interventions.

The EU referred to the “need to implement the ‘common set of proposals’ for enhanced cooperation with NATO.” But it is clear that the offensive rearmament is increasingly directed against the United States. The statement does not mention US President Donald Trump by name, but spoke out explicitly against “protectionist tendencies” in world trade and called for the development of “tools to tackle unfair trade practices and market distortions.”

Brussels, and above all Berlin, are using the threats of the new US President to position the EU economy in opposition to that of the United States.

The EU will “continue to engage actively with international trading partners,” the statement says. This will include “resolutely advancing on all ongoing negotiations for ambitious and balanced free trade agreements, including with Mercosur and Mexico.” Negotiations with Japan “are closest to an early conclusion” and “relations with China should be strengthened on the basis of a shared understanding of reciprocal and mutual benefits.”

The EU is thereby seeking an expansion of its economic relations with countries that are in the crosshairs of American imperialism. Trump is threatening Mexico with trade war and the abandonment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). And Washington is ever more openly adopting a course towards war with China. As a result, transatlantic tensions will only deepen.

A guest comment in Friday’s Süddeutsche Zeitung warned of the “enormous potential for destruction” of the Trumpian “America first” policy. The countermeasures proposed by economics professor and former Finance Minister of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Karl-Heinz Paqué, in a piece entitled “Cool heads and a firm hand” are just as aggressive. Europe must “if necessary be ready to wage trade war against Trump’s America.”

Paqué writes, “If Trump goes against WTO regulations and imposes tariffs or quotas on cars from Europe, Europe could do the same with microprocessors and information technology from the US….” And “should all else fail,” Europe would have to “be ready with a firm hand for a controlled trade war and its economic victims.” The answer to “America first” is “global trade first.”

This theme was taken up by German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democrats, CDU) in her government statement prior to the beginning of the EU summit. Europe must “determinedly defend its interests […] whenever and wherever necessary.” Precisely “because the character of transatlantic relations” was changing, Europe had “decided to assume more responsibility in the future than it has in the past, and in our own neighbourhood as well as beyond.” Germany was “reliant not only on having access to the single market, but also to global markets.”

Berlin is striving for a core Europe under German leadership to enforce its geostrategic and economic interests by military means in opposition to the United States if necessary, and maintain control over the growing conflicts within the EU. “The tasks before us are too great,” Merkel said, “for us to continue working at the lowest common denominator.” It therefore must be “increasingly possible for some member states to move forward, while others do not wish to participate yet in certain steps.”

Merkel’s call for a “two-speed Europe” is reproduced almost word-for-word in the statement that the EU intends to adopt on 25 March to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which founded the European Economic Community, the EU’s predecessor. “An undivided and indivisible EU acts together wherever that is possible, and in different steps and intensities where that is necessary,” a draft cited by Handelsblatt stated.

Germany’s desire to rise to the position of Europe’s hegemon, and the mounting conflict with the United States, are intensifying the sharp tensions within the EU and the ruling class of each country.

“We will never accept a two-speed Europe,” stated Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło after the conference. In Brussels, the right-wing Polish PiS (Law and Justice Party) government vehemently opposed the reelection of EU Council President Donald Tusk, a former Polish Prime Minister. Tusk was “Germany’s candidate” and his reelection would “intensify the union’s crisis,” warned PiS chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski prior to the beginning of the summit.

Due to the reelection of Tusk, a member of Poland’s largest opposition party PO (Citizens Platform), which is engaged in a major dispute with the government, above all due to its pro-EU stance, the Polish delegation blocked all of the summit’s decisions.

The ruling class in Germany is particularly concerned about the “erosion of the EU” as Handelsblatt put it. In the lead article of Saturday’s edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Stefan Kornelius bemoans the “existential crisis of the EU.” After Brexit and the election of Trump last year, “two events this year [could…] accelerate this dynamic,” if “in the Netherlands or more importantly France fate is on the side of the EU destroyers Wilders and Le Pen.”

The European working class confronts two scenarios, both of which would mean a relapse into barbarism and war: the transformation of the EU into a military union dominated by Germany and preparing for trade war against its international rivals, and Europe’s division into hostile nation states. The only way to successfully fight war and nationalism is to unite Europe on a socialist basis.

Hungary builds internment camps for refugees

Ulrich Rippert 

Hungary plans to intern all refugees in the country in camps adjoining its borders. The camps will consist of large-scale ship containers for between 200 to 300 refugees and recall the barracks set up by the Nazis in their own concentration camps. The camps will be secured with high barbed wire fences and watchtowers. Armed border police with dogs backed by gangs of right-wing thugs will patrol the camp perimeter.

Beginning now, it is impossible for refugees and asylum seekers to move freely in Hungary or leave the country as long as their legal proceedings are in progress. The parliament in Budapest passed a bill on Tuesday with the votes of the right-wing conservative governing party Fidesz and the opposition far-right Jobbik party. The parliamentary vote restores a practice that Hungary had suspended in 2013 following pressure from the EU, the UN and the European Court of Human Rights.

Hungary’s ultra-right government under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is thereby intensifying its policy of walling off the country against refugees. Already in January it introduced custodial measures for all asylum seekers in the country, arguing the measure was justified by security risks.

Although Hungary’s borders are already hermetically sealed off, Orbán warned of a “wave of refugees” threatening to overrun the country. Hungary was “under siege,” he declared, with hundreds of thousands of migrants threatening to make their way to Europe. One could not ignore the danger, Orbán continued, but was obliged to protect borders in the strictest and most effective way.

“Migration is the Trojan horse of terrorism,” he stormed in his xenophobic hate speech on Tuesday morning in a Budapest exhibition hall to several hundred newly sworn-in border guards. According to Orbán, migrants come to Europe to live according to their own culture and habits, but at a “European level” and at Europe’s cost.

The human rights organization Pro Asyl protested sharply against the Hungarian parliament’s decision to intern asylum seekers in camps. Its European speaker Karl Kopp told the Neue Osnabrück newspaper: “The imprisonment of asylum seekers in Hungary violates EU law and international law.”

Kopp called for the EU to initiate proceedings against Hungary for treaty violations. The EU also had to ask itself whether “Hungary’s right to vote in the EU Council should be suspended, because the internment of refugees is a clear violation of European basic values.”

This appeal to European basic values is worthless and runs in the face of reality. The racist policy of the Orbán government is a direct consequence of EU refugee policy.

The EU has been working for years to seal off Europe’s external borders and build the walls of “Fortress Europe” in such a way that they are insurmountable. The declared objective of the European refugee policy is to prevent asylum seekers from entering Europe in the first place. If they do get in, the EU objective is to confine them in border camps and limit their freedom of movement within Europe as much as possible.

In line with this policy the EU favours mass internment for refugees in countries outside Europe. In order to ensure that refugees do not leave the inhuman and overcrowded camps in Jordan, Lebanon and other countries neighbouring Syria, the EU donated €1 billion last year to the World Food Program and the United Nations Refugee Fund. African countries have also given financial support to detain refugees.

Most of the money allocated to deterring refugees, however, goes to the Frontex border protection agency, which is being constantly expanded. Originally, the task of the European agency was to coordinate the protection of the EU’s external borders between the member states, but it has increasingly developed into an independent European border police with a military infrastructure and its own monitoring apparatus.

In the meantime, Frontex is responsible not only for the coordination of border control, but also for risk and hazard analysis at the EU’s external borders, the training of border guards, support for member states regarding personnel and technology, the deportation of refugees and cooperation with the European police authority Europol and the security agencies of non-EU countries. The agency also plays an important role in military surveillance and deterrence of refugees in the Mediterranean.

The persecution of refugees is not a Hungarian peculiarity, but is based on the EU’s own brutal refugee policy and is supported by leading EU politicians, despite some occasional criticism. Viktor Orbán is a close friend of the head of the German Christian Social Union (CSU), Horst Seehofer. Orban’s national conservative party Fidesz is a member of the European People’s Party (EPP), which also includes the German ruling parties, the CSU and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Orbán also receives support for his racist policies from the media. In Die Welt this week, Jacques Schuster wrote: “Hungary is more honest in the refugee question than we are.” The former speechwriter for the former mayor of Berlin, Eberhard Diepgen (CDU), wrote: “It is the task of every state to protect its borders. Anyone who wants to integrate refugees must deter masses of immigrants.” Hungary is merely taking on board what some would call the EU’s “dirty work.”

Even if Angela Merkel would never admit it, Schuster continues, she has long since realised that her policy and some of her statements were well intended but not thought through, and disastrous: “If it were otherwise, the refugee policy today would not consist of ‘deportation, deterrence, rejection.’ But the chancellor and her party don’t like to talk about it.”

Orbán’s racist refugee policy is a direct result of the EU’s refugee defence and cannot be combated by appeals to the European institutions. Rather, the construction of internment camps, recalling the concentration camps of the Nazis, must be seen in the context of the fundamental changes taking place in Europe and the rest of the world.

The many thousands of asylum seekers are fleeing the catastrophic consequences of the imperialist wars that have been waged for decades in the Middle East, the Balkans and other regions by the US and NATO states. The first Gulf War and the Yugoslav wars, the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the bombing of Libya, and the devastation of Syria and Yemen have killed hundreds of thousands. Cities and entire countries have been laid waste and millions forced to flee.

The many desperate asylum seekers and their families, who are now being interned and terrorized, are part of the world working class threatened by imperialist war policy.

The assumption of power by Donald Trump in the US has acutely increased the danger of new war. With his slogan of “America First” Trump’s government of generals and billionaires threatens the whole world with economic and military confrontation.

The German government has responded to this development with a crazed program of military rearmament. Demands were raised at the Munich Security Conference three weeks ago to triple the country’s military budget. This is only possible through enforcing a drastic savings program with massive reductions in all spheres of social welfare.

As was the case on the eve of the Second World War, this war policy can only be implemented with the establishment of a police state and dictatorial methods.

Today it is refugees from war who are being herded into internment camps. Tomorrow opponents of war and political dissidents will have their turn. The return of concentration camps in Europe is a warning. It shows how urgent it is to make the defence of refugees the starting point for an international struggle against war and capitalism.

Canada’s elite determined to stanch influx of refugees fleeing US

Laurent Lafrance 

The number of asylum seekers entering Canada from the United States has continued to rise in recent weeks. Fearing the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant witch-hunt, men and women, often travelling with children and babies, are crossing the border in hazardous conditions and cold temperatures, risking their health and even their lives.

Early Wednesday, 19 refugees had to be rescued as they crossed into Manitoba during a winter storm.

Just in Quebec, 635 people claimed asylum in February, up six times from the same month in 2016.

In January and February, about 450 asylum seekers crossed into Canada overland without going through an official checkpoint. Although this is a tiny number—even when compared with Ottawa’s 2017 refugee target of 40,000, let alone the scope and scale of the global refugee crisis—it has provoked an outcry in the Canadian press and political establishment.

Last Saturday, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale went to Emerson, a small city in Manitoba that has reportedly seen some 200 border crossings so far this year. While he announced funding for the Emerson Fire Department, which deals with new arrivals, Goodale failed to promise any financial help for asylum seekers. He did, however, reiterate that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canada Border Services Agency are fully enforcing the law and that Canada has no intention of suspending the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States.

The Liberals’ refusal to scrap the Safe Third Country Agreement—brushing aside warnings from legal scholars and refugee advocacy groups about Trump’s anti-democratic policies—is putting the lie to the Trudeau government’s fraudulent “refugee-friendly” posturing. Under the agreement, most asylum-seekers who enter Canada from the US at a land-crossing are denied the right to make a claim for refugee status in Canada and are immediately returned to the US.

On the other hand, those who cross into Canada without going through a regulated border checkpoint are allowed to seek refugee status. This is why growing numbers of migrants are being forced to enter Canada “illegally”—that is, passing through snow-covered fields and ditches instead of showing up at an official border crossing.

Most of the asylum seekers come from the Middle East or Africa, but there are also many who hail from Latin America. These regions have been the target of brutal US-led wars of aggression and/or subjected to bloody US-backed dictatorships—crimes in which Canadian imperialism has been complicit.

The Trump administration is mounting a draconian witch-hunt against immigrants and refugees. This includes suspending the entire refugee assessment process, banning travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries, broadening the arbitrary powers of immigration authorities to expel people, and initiating plans for the arrest and deportation of millions of immigrants.

A key reason Trudeau and his Liberals are so emphatic about upholding the Safe Third Country Agreement is that they are keen to avoid causing the Trump administration, with which they are determined to forge a close working relationship, any embarrassment. As was made clear in a joint statement Trudeau and Trump issued last month, the basis of a reinvigorated Canada-US alliance is to be Canada’s further integration into US-led military violence abroad and the creation of a US-led North American trade war bloc, either through the refurbishing of NAFTA or a new bilateral trade deal.

Speaking in Calgary last week, Justin Trudeau demonstrated his contempt for asylum seekers and the willingness of his government to step up repression against migrants. “We can reassure Canadians,” said Trudeau, “that we have a strong and robust system for processing these new arrivals, but at the same time, we are working with all levels of government and indeed talking with our counterparts in the United States to ensure that we are addressing the situation properly.”

The Liberal government has responded to the inflow of desperate asylum seekers by increasing border surveillance and deepening Ottawa’s already very close cooperation with the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Customs and Border Protection Agency—the very bodies overseeing the mass round-up of immigrants south of the border.

On Friday, Trump’s Homeland Security chief, John Kelly, traveled to Ottawa to meet with Canadian officials.

Big business fully supports the Liberals’ indifference and hostility to those fleeing Trump’s anti-immigrant witch-hunt and, if anything, is pressing the government to take a harder line. John Manley, the CEO of Canada’s most important corporate lobby group, the Business Council of Canada, has urged the government to take measures to dissuade people from seeking safety in Canada. “The world is literally swimming in refugees,” Manley told the CBC. “We figure we can take in and manage about 40,000 a year. Do we really need to take people from the United States?”

Manley, who as Liberal deputy prime minster in 2002 signed the Canada-US Smart Border Declaration, which helped bring the Safe Third Country agreement into effect, was at pains to minimize the Trump administration’s attack on democratic rights and its anti-immigrant witch-hunt. “People have misgivings about Donald Trump … OK,” said Manley. “But it’s still the United States. It’s not Homs, Syria, or Mosul in Iraq.”

Despite the fact that the Trump administration is stepping up an already brutal crackdown on immigrants (Obama deported some 3 million people during his presidency) the Liberal government has repeatedly vowed that it will not raise Canada’s miserably low 2017 refugee quota of 40,000—down 15,000 from its 2016 quota.

While the media in Canada and internationally have presented Trudeau as a champion of liberalism for accepting 25,000 Syrian refugees in his government’s first months in office, the reality is that the government is providing them virtually no support. Many have been forced to rely on charity just to feed, clothe, and house themselves.

The reactionary character of Canada’s immigration system was underscored by the praise it received from Donald Trump in his recent speech to Congress. The US president hailed Canada’s “merit-based” immigration, which uses a point system to select immigrants according to the needs of big business, saying that it should serve as a model for the US.

The Conservative Party, meanwhile, is seeking to whip up xenophobia, with most of the 14 candidates to succeed Stephen Harper as party leader denouncing Trudeau for failing to halt the “illegal” influx of refugee-claimants from the US. Trump wannabee Kellie Leith has vowed that if she were prime minister she would cut funding for so-called sanctuary cities, and has produced a video to promote her call for all immigrants, refugees and visitors to Canada to undergo a face-to-face interview with an immigration officer to determine whether they adhere to “Canadian values.”

Jason Kenney, former Minister for Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism under Harper and front-runner in the Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership race, told CTV that Canada should eliminate the “exemptions” in the Safe Third Country Agreement that allow people to enter Canada because it is “incentivizing people coming in illegally and dangerously.”

The Conservatives have also denounced a Liberal parliamentary motion condemning Islamophobia. On the Liberals’ part the motion is a hypocritical manoeuvre: an attempt to distance themselves from a rise in anti-Muslim incidents in the wake of the January 29 Quebec mosque massacre and to give them political cover for their eager pursuit of close ties with Trump. But the Conservatives’ opposition is a crude appeal to anti-Muslim sentiment, including ludicrous claims that the Liberal-backed motion is an attack on free speech and that the government is privileging Islam over other faiths.

The whipping up of such foul xenophobia is emboldening racist and outright fascist forces. Last weekend, the newly-created Canadian Coalition of Concerned Citizens held demonstrations in several Canadian cities, including Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Calgary and Edmonton, to protest the anti-Islamophobia motion and the purported Islamization of Canada. Georges Hallack, the group’s founder, urged “Canadian patriots” to participate in the protests, which attracted a few hundred, to prevent the introduction of “sharia law” in Canada and oppose “globalization.”

The Trudeau government, on behalf of Canadian imperialism, is determined to join Washington in its bloody military interventions in the Middle East and Africa, as well as in its war preparations against Iran, Russia and China. Such conflicts will only create more destruction, deaths and refugees. But the Canadian ruling class, like its US counterpart, is determined to close the borders and send back the desperate asylum seekers to their war-torn countries.

Constitutional Court removes South Korean President Park from office

Ben McGrath 

South Korea’s Constitutional Court removed President Park Geun-hye from office in a unanimous 8 to 0 decision late Friday morning. The National Assembly had impeached her on December 9 on thirteen charges, including bribery allegations and dereliction of duty. A new presidential election will likely be held in early May, with Prime Minister and acting President Hwang Gyo-an continuing to serve as the country’s leader until then.

Led by acting-Chief Justice Lee Jeong-mi, the court implicated Park in the scandal involving Choi Soon-sil, Park’s close confidante, who set up nonprofit organizations to demand bribes from South Korea’s powerful chaebol conglomerates. The court further charged that Park had violated the law by leaking state secrets and allowing Choi to take part in government affairs despite holding no formal office. However, it rejected the other charges, including neglect of duty in regards to the Sewol ferry sinking in 2014 and violation of freedom of the press.

“Judging from the series of words and actions [Park has made], there is no will to defend the Constitution,” Lee said, in giving her ruling. “The president’s violations of the Constitution and the law amount to a betrayal of the people’s trust and are grave actions that cannot be tolerated from the perspective of defending the Constitution.”

South Korea’s political parties, including Park’s ruling Liberty Korea Party (formerly Saenuri), all accepted the court decision. “The Liberty Korea Party gave birth to the Park Geun-hye government. It was a ruling party and the partner of state affairs,” said party leader In Myeong-jin. “But we failed to fulfill our duty as the ruling party and failed to protect the dignity and pride of South Korea, which has been built by the people.”

The Trump government in Washington said that it “look(s) forward to a productive relationship with whomever the people of South Korea elect to be their next president.” Since the scandal broke in September, neither Obama nor Trump offered Park any public support.

However, Park is reportedly not resigning herself to the decision. One of her aides told Yonhap News Agency that her office is “in talks over the future course of action.” Seo Seok-ku, a lawyer for Park, questioned the legitimacy of the ruling, saying: “Our suspicions about the court’s secret communications with the parliament turned out to be correct. I don’t think the trial was purely based on law and conscience.”

For millions of people who had taken part in demonstrations around the country since October demanding Park’s removal, the court ruling was a cause for celebration. These protests reflected the enormous anger that masses of South Koreans feel not only against the president’s personal conduct and relations to the chaebol, but very broadly against a discredited economic and political system.

While the Korean peninsula faces the imminent danger of a war launched by Washington and Seoul against North Korea and China, South Korean workers’ conditions continue to deteriorate. They face mass job cuts in the shipping and shipbuilding industries, high unemployment for students and recent university graduates, and an overall drive by the government and big business to slash wages and job protections.

Popular relief at Park’s removal is understandable, but the removal of Park by itself will address none of the aspirations of the population that underlay the broad opposition to her government. Power is set to be handed to other political forces—particularly the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and its presumptive presidential candidate, Moon Jae-in—which are tools of the same reactionary ruling class.

Moon has at times attempted to adapt to anti-war and anti-chaebol sentiment in the population, notably by proposing to delay the installation of US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile bases aimed at China, North Korea and Russia. However, he does not call for a suspension of the THAAD program, with which the Trump administration is driving military tensions in the region rapidly in the direction of a direct military clash.

Moon and the DPK still fundamentally support the US alliance. Moon expressed support in a recently published book, for example, for the deployment of a THAAD battery to South Korea, saying, “As the agreement has already been reached between the allies, it is very complicated to discuss the issue again.”

The DPK also regularly whips up anti-Japanese chauvinism to divide workers and block the development of a united struggle against war among workers of the entire region, and it has a long record of backing US imperialism’s predatory wars in the Middle East. The Democratic governments of both Kim Dae-jung and Noh Moo-hyun backed Washington’s wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. Moon served as chief of staff in Noh’s government.

Moon currently leads other presidential contenders in the polls, with 34 percent support compared to 15 percent for the next closest rival, An Hui-jeong, also of the DPK. Acting President Hwang Gyo-an of the Liberty Korea Party is polling at 8 percent, Ahn Cheol-soo of the People’s Party at 9 percent, and Yu Seung-min of the Bareun Party at 1 percent.

The fall of Park illustrates how ferocious international political and geo-strategic tensions are destabilizing bourgeois politics. As she came to office in 2013, Park’s overtures to Beijing cut across the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia.” While all the South Korean political parties supported the US alliance, they argued over how to balance between their political and military relations with the United States and their economic relations with China.

While in office, Park attacked opponents’ democratic rights, including by dissolving the Unified Progressive Party, a minor party allied with the Democrats, in 2014. The move was an attempt to head off growing discontent in the population with her overall agenda, which included stoking tensions with North Korea and trying to force through so-called labor reform, further casualizing the workforce, in response to demands from big business.

She proved unable to achieve this goal and a split developed within her own party, leading one faction to support Park’s removal and create the right-wing Bareun (Righteous) Party in January. Leaders in the new formation, including Yu Seung-min, chastised Park’s administration in the past for not making Seoul’s orientation to Washington stronger.

None of these reactionary forces have anything to offer to working people. Characterizations of Park’s government as simply incompetent and corrupt are being used by her opponents and critics to cover up the fact that they have no answer to declining living conditions and the threat of war in the region. The next government, regardless of party, will be just as crisis-ridden and fundamentally in conflict with the demands and aspirations of the working class as the last.

Africa Scholarships at Macquarie University Australia for Undergraduate & Postgraduate Studies 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 31st January for Session 1 intake (February) or 30th June for Session 2 intake (July).

Offered annually? Yes

Brief description: The Macquarie University Australia through its Country Scholarships is offering the 2017/2018 Africa Scholarships for undergraduate and postgraduate degree at the university

Eligible Field of Study: courses offered at the university

About Scholarship: Under the Africa scholarships, Macquarie University will provide a specific amount annually to each successful student commencing in either 2016 or 2017. Payment of the scholarship will be applied equally towards your tuition fee for each session for the duration of your studies. As this scholarship is competitive, you are encouraged to accept your course and scholarship offers without delay to guarantee your eligibility to receive the scholarship.

Scholarship Type: Partial scholarships for Undergraduate & Masters taught programmes

Selection Criteria and Eligibility: To be eligible for this scholarship, candidate must:

• Be a citizen of an African country.
• Have applied for undergraduate or postgraduate coursework through a registered Macquarie University agent or through our online application system.
• Have met the University’s academic and English requirements for the course offered at our North Ryde campus.
• Have enrolled and be ready to begin your course in 2016 (commencement may not be deferred).
• Commence study in the session and year indicated in your scholarship letter of offer. Commencement may not be deferred.

Number of Scholarships: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The university will provide AU$5000 annually towards your tuition fees for the length of the course (AU$2500 is credited against your tuition fees each semester).

Duration of Scholarship: The scholarship is awarded annually for on-campus study only.

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be taken at (country): Macquarie University Australia

How to Apply: Candidates don’t need to apply directly to be considered for a country scholarship. Applicants who meet the criteria will be automatically advised of their eligibility in their Macquarie University course offer letter.

• Details on how to apply to Macquarie University for a coursework degree are available on the website. Visit mq/howtoapply
• Applicants who meet the criteria will be automatically advised of their eligibility in their Macquarie University course offer letter sent via email.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Sponsors: Macquarie University, Australia

Important Notes:

• Students who are on an English-packaged course are eligible for this scholarship if they commence their course in 2016 or 2017.
• You’re not eligible if you have received any other Macquarie University scholarship for this course of study.
• To remain eligible for this scholarship, you must stay enrolled in your original approved course of study and pass all units within the course.

Education First Speech International Competition for Students 2017 (Fully-funded to New York, USA)

Application Deadline: 15th April 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): New York, USA

About the Award: The EF Youth Leadership Forum brings together outstanding students from all over the world and gives them an opportunity to become better global leaders: the EF Youth Leadership Forum 2016 took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2017, the selected students will meet in New York, USA.

With the help of their teachers, the EF Challenge participants will write and record a short speech that inspires the audience and convinces the jury: both students and teachers have the chance to win amazing prizes – from trips to dream-destinations to study abroad courses and online English lessons.

Type: Contest

Eligibility:

• All speeches must be in English
• Students between 15 and 19 years can participate
• The speeches must be between 2 to 5 minutes long
• All speeches must be recorded and uploaded to YouTube or a similar platform

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Program: 

• Win a two-week study abroad course to a destination of your choice
• Win a trip to the EF Youth Leadership Forum at the EF New York
• Win a spot for an EF Teacher Training Course

How to Apply: All students and teachers must be registered and will receive an email with instructions on how to submit the speeches.

It is important to go through the Application requirements before applying.

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: Education First