Researchers claim evidence that humans were in the Americas 130,000 years ago

Matthew MacEgan

A new archaeological claim being put forth by a group of researchers in southern California is stirring up tremendous amounts of controversy within the discipline. Last week, Nature published their article which purports to show evidence that humans were in the New World 130,000 years before the present (BP). This claim is receiving wide attention because the earliest evidence archaeologists have agreed upon for the peopling of the western hemisphere to date is approximately 15,000 BP, and even that is still debated.

It is important to note that finding a new date for the peopling of the Americas is the holy grail of New World archaeology. It is akin to finding a new hominin specimen in Africa that sheds more light on the evolution of humans. Similar to the situation in Africa, there is fierce competition between researchers to determine who has the earliest find and what types of technology are associated with it. It is therefore not a surprise that a new claim in Nature, which is one of the most highly respected research journals, that pushes back the movement of humans into the New World by a factor of more than eight, would be strongly contested.

The evidence presented in Nature by Steven R. Holen and colleagues comes from a museum collection that was excavated more than 25 years ago. The authors were not the excavators of the material but have made observations about materials stored in their museum. The materials in question come from the Cerutti mastodon site, which has been adequately dated to the Pleistocene epoch (2 million to 11,000 BP). Mastodons are extinct elephant-like animals that lived in North and Central America until the end of the Pleistocene.

Uranium dating on the specimens in question has returned an approximate date of 130,000 BP, which is significant not only for the peopling of the Americas but for the dispersal of hominins prior to Homo sapiens. It is generally agreed that Homo sapiens did not leave Africa until approximately 50,000 BP, but Homo erectus and other contemporary hominins such as the Denisovans and Neanderthals had already moved into Asia by this time, so it is plausible that some of these did make their way into the western hemisphere.

The materials used as evidence include mastodon bone and molar fragments that the researchers suggest were broken when they were “fresh,” meaning before or soon after the animal died. Holen and colleagues argue that the distribution of bone, molar, and stone recovered from the site suggests that the bones were broken at the site of a burial. They present as evidence of human interaction five large cobbles, which they describe as hammerstones and anvils—two types of stone tools that archaeologists associate with human activity—which they claim show signs of “use-wear” that could only have resulted from human activities.

Bone recovered from the Cerutti Mastodon site

The basis for these claims is a set of experiments performed by the researchers to show that human use indeed resulted in the way the bone was broken, in addition to the use-wear that they argue is present on the associated stones. For the experiment, they took a modern elephant femur and positioned it on top of a stone that would serve as an anvil and used another stone as a hammer to show that the way the bone was broken could have resulted from this type of human activity.

There are a number of problems that have been raised by other archaeologists that are valid and worth considering when reading these arguments.

First is the issue of bone marrow extraction. One argument made by Holen and colleagues is that these femurs were being broken so that bone marrow could be removed for use by humans. We would presume that a group of human foragers would have extensive knowledge about the anatomy of their target species, and if the mastodon skeleton is like a modern elephant skeleton, they would have known that bone marrow is concentrated in the pelvis. Long bones like the femur have virtually no marrow to extract. We would not, therefore, expect experienced foragers to spend time breaking open femurs for this purpose.

Stones from Cerutti purportedly showing use-wear

A second issue is whether the stones in question are actually tools used by humans. One of the problems with use-wear analysis is that there are many other processes that can lead to stone looking like it has been used, and some of these are indistinguishable from human activity. There are other ways that rocks can be pushed together by other natural forces without any interactions from humans. The same goes for the bones in question. Once these materials were in the ground, anything heavy moving over the top—say, another mastodon—could have pushed these objects into each other or crushed them in other ways.

Third is the use of experimentation as evidence. While the authors showed that human activity could create the type of break that is apparent on the mastodon femur, the experiment should also show that the same break could not have been made by some natural process. The authors did not test this in their experiments—they only showed one way that the breaks could have occurred.

A fourth concern is the uranium-dating technique, which is typically used to date samples that contain uranium as their primary substance. These include inorganic cave carbonates or corals, which take in uranium as they remove calcium from seawater. Holen and colleagues are applying this theoretical process to bone, which is problematic since bones do not contain significant amounts of primary uranium. The uranium does not get taken into the bone until after it is buried and water in the soil interacts with it.

A final issue is the excavation context. The materials were excavated in the early 1990s as part of a salvage project that took place during highway expansion in the area. This meant that detailed information was not collected on the context or positioning of the bones and stones in the ground together. The only information available shows that the materials were found somewhat near each other, but there are too many post-deposit processes at work that could have brought together materials that entered the ground during different millennia.

Researchers attempt to re-create the break on modern elephant bone

These concerns need to be addressed, because the claims of hominin entrance to the Americas more than 100,000 years earlier than currently believed are of utmost importance. It is not implausible that earlier hominins entered the Americas. It could even be the case that American archaeologists have not previously found evidence of this because they do not expect to find material remains that date back to earlier hominin dispersals. There could have been evidence that was passed over or explained using other assumptions. If anything, this case should result in more caution used by archaeologists when applying what is “already known” to the archaeological record.

However, one should also reasonably expect extraordinary claims such as these to come with very strong evidence, and this has not been made available by the authors or the journal. A lot more evidence will be necessary for the claim of much-earlier hominins dwelling in the New World to be accepted in the future. This controversy is a good example of how science should be done. There have been other instances where the dating of the first arrival of humans in the New World have been debated. Some were accepted and others were not. This is a dialectical process normal to scientific inquiry.

Amnesty report highlights companies profiting from Australia’s refugee camps

Max Newman

An Amnesty International report released last month, Treasure I$land, details the vast profits made by the companies overseeing the operations of the Australian government’s inhuman offshore refugee detention centres on Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Manus Island and the tiny island nation of Nauru.

The report states that the so-called Regional Processing Centres (RPCs) subject “refugees and people seeking asylum to a daily diet of humiliation, neglect, abuse and poor physical and mental health care.” In fact, the Australian government “proudly acknowledged that its offshore processing system is harsh and cruel, saying that this is necessary to deter people from trying to enter the country irregularly.”

However, the government has “also created an island of profits.” The report focuses on the three main companies that benefit from the misery inflicted on the asylum seekers. The leading private contractor is Broadspectrum, formerly Transfield, which runs the RPCs under a three-and-a-half-year contract with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) worth around $2.5 billion ($US1.9 billion). Broadspectrum sub-contracts most of the security work to Wilson Security. In April 2016, Broadspectrum became a subsidiary of Spanish-based transnational Ferrovial.

Broadspectrum was awarded the contract for “garrison” services on Nauru by the Gillard Labor government in 2012 when it reopened the off-shore prison camps. This lasted until March 2014 when the Liberal-National government expanded the contract to include Manus Island. This contract, amended several times to expand Broadspectrum’s control, is due to expire in October.

The actual profits these companies garner from their government contracts are veiled in secrecy. Broadspectrum and Ferrovial can “hide the exact profit they make from an abusive context,” the report notes. The secrecy arrangements also allow the government to hide exactly how much money is being spent on these criminal enterprises.

The Amnesty report utilised the available public material to paint a picture of the profits accumulated by Broadspectrum. According to Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) estimates, the current contract with Broadspectrum costs over $573,000 per detainee, per year. This estimate fits with information from the Australian government’s contract web site, which puts the combined total of contracts for “welfare” and “garrison” services over three-and-a-half years at $2.5 billion.

Broadspectrum claims the value of the contract is $1.2 billion. The report notes that, “even taken on its own, this is an outstandingly large amount of money.” The DIBP contract falls into Broadspectrum’s most profitable business sector, the “Social” sub-category of its Defence, Social and Property (DSP) group.

According to the report, in 2016 the DSP group contributed $1.646 billion of Broadspectrum’s total operating revenues of $3.692 billion, or 45 percent of its overall income. Moreover, 69 percent of the DSP income was derived from the “Social” subsector, which includes the DIBP contract. The DSP profit margin, 17.8 percent, far exceeded the company’s other sectors—Infrastructure, 2.8 percent, and Resource and Industrial, 1.6 percent.

The report states “the vast amount of money that Ferrovial and Broadspectrum make from the DIBP contract stands in stark contrast to the shockingly poor conditions in … the RPCs.”

An Australian Senate inquiry, which Amnesty cites, documented conditions on Nauru in which asylum seekers lived in mouldy tents, children had holes in their shoes, the replacement of soiled sheets on which children had urinated was a low priority and detainees accused security staff of torture and abuse.

The Senate inquiry was designed to whitewash the Australian government’s responsibility for the conditions in the camps. Nevertheless, the revelations in its report have been supported by numerous other investigations. One Amnesty report last year, published after the agency gained first-hand access to the centres, characterised the RPCs as places of torture because the infliction of abuse and anguish was the deliberate intent of the Australian government.

RPC staff members and ex-members themselves leaked incident reports that revealed officially suppressed cases of violence and abuse, particularly against children. A Human Rights Watch analysis this year again condemned the “heavy human toll” exacted on asylum seekers by Australia’s detention regime.

These are just a few of the now voluminous accounts of torture, physical and sexual abuse and mental degradation. When Ferrovial acquired Broadspectrum in April 2016 it had intimate knowledge of these operations. In December 2015, in a bidder statement, Ferrovial referred to the DIBP contracts as “highly profitable.”

After the PNG Supreme Court ruled, last April, that the Manus Island RPC was illegal, because of the unconstitutional deprivation of liberty, and must be closed, Broadspectrum recommended that its shareholders accept Ferrovial’s takeover bid. Ferrovial later announced it would not seek to renew Broadspectrum’s DIBP contract when it ends this October.

Amnesty’s report recommends that Ferrovial end its contract as soon as possible and that the Australian government scrap offshore processing and bring all detainees to Australia to have their “international protection applications” processed in a timely manner.

There is no chance, however, that the current Liberal-National government, or a Labor government, will heed such recommendations. Successive Australian governments, including the previous Greens-backed Labor administration, have deliberately brutalised asylum seekers and stripped them of the most basic legal and democratic rights. Refugees are being demonised and victimised to divert working-class opposition to worsening inequality and declining social conditions.

Moreover, Australia’s supreme court, the High Court, has sanctioned the continuation of indefinite detention on the basis of two fictions —that Australia is not the sovereign power incarcerating the refugees, despite financing and orchestrating the detention, and that RPCs are not “punitive” in character.

Similar developments are taking place across America, Europe and internationally. Xenophobia and nationalism are being whipped up, dovetailing with preparations for war. As a result, some of the world’s most vulnerable people, many fleeing the wars already unleashed by the US and its allies, are being subjected to ever-more cruel and lawless imprisonment.

Nationalists storm Macedonia's parliament

Markus Salzmann

The political crisis in Macedonia, which has been raging for months, intensified after some 100 partly masked nationalists, followers of long-time Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, stormed the parliament building in the capital, Skopje.

The demonstrators waved Macedonian flags and sang the national anthem. They attacked members of the Social Democratic Party and the parties representing the country’s Albanian minority. According to media reports, around 100 people were injured. Zoran Zaev, the designated Social Democratic head of government, suffered an injury to the head.

Although there has been a series of violent conflicts and assaults in recent months, there were only a handful of police in and around the parliament building. Police were able to establish some sort of control only after several hours, while some 3,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the parliament shouting nationalist and racist slogans. The police refrained from intervening.

It must be assumed that the security forces had been informed in advance about the action. Gruevski has considerable support in the security apparatus.

The occasion for the attack was the election of a new president of the parliament. The Social Democrats (SDSM) and the party of the Albanian minority had elected Albanian Talat Xhaferi with 61 out of a total of 120 votes, although the acting president had already declared the meeting closed. Gruevski’s party, the VMRO, described this as a coup.

The storming of parliament, in a country wracked by poverty and with just over two million inhabitants, threatens to turn into all-out civil war. President Gjorge Ivanov, who has close links to the VMRO, refused to give the Social Democratic opposition a mandate to form a government following parliamentary elections in December 2016, despite the fact that the SDSM together with Albanian parliamentarians has a majority. Ivanov accuses the opposition of “undermining Macedonia’s sovereignty.”

The VMRO won the election on December 11, 2016 with 39 percent of the vote, just ahead of the Social Democrats. But it has since been unable to form a government coalition. The SDSM, led by Zoran Zaev, formed an alliance with the representatives of ethnic Albanians, who account for 20-25 per cent of the population. Since then, the Gruevski camp has been trying to paralyse the work of the parliament with filibusters and other procedural tricks. More recently, the tactics have taken violent forms, with the clear intent of seizing power.

President Ivanov, who has himself played a vile role in the right-wing protests, hypocritically called for peaceful protest in a TV speech. Last Friday, he invited the various party leaders to discuss the situation in his office.

The political strife in Macedonia has been going on for more than ten years, but has recently intensified considerably. In 2006, the VMRO won the parliamentary election and formed a government with the parties of the Albanian minority. After 2008, the government collapsed when the VMRO refused to recognize Kosovo as an independent state.

The early parliamentary election of 2008 was overshadowed by protests and violent outbreaks involving deaths and injuries. After a long political crisis, Gruevski was finally confirmed in 2011 as head of government.

According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Gruevski is regarded as a “corrupt power-broker, who regards politics as an opportunity for personal enrichment” and employs authoritarian methods. The VMRO has roots in fascist traditions. It is a successor to the Inner Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, which was founded in 1919 as a nationalist movement and has always maintained a paramilitary wing.

At the same time, Gruevski has the backing of the European Union and European powers because, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he was useful at the height of the refugee crisis “as a bulwark against migration flows.” In 2015, when tens of thousands of refugees attempted to navigate the Balkan route to Western Europe, Macedonia reinforced its border with Greece, set up frontier fences and used tear gas to repulse refugees, including women and children.

The country has been transformed into a powder keg by the rampant corruption of the ruling elite, which earns part of its wealth through smuggling operations, and the bitter poverty of the population. Macedonia has no significant independent economy, and effective unemployment is around 45 percent. The status of candidate for accession to the EU, agreed in 2005, has served only to intensify the social and economic crisis as Macedonia struggles to fulfill the conditions for EU membership.

Both the VMRO and the Social Democrats seek to direct these tensions along ethnic and nationalist channels. Following the break-up of Yugoslavia, to which Macedonia belonged, the country was embroiled in the Kosovo war. In 2001, armed conflicts occurred in the northwest of Macedonia after the Albanian militia occupied some villages and fought with the police and the army.

Now the VMRO is once again playing the Albanian card. President Ivanov refused to appoint the Social Democrat Zaev as premier because he and his coalition partners agreed to strengthen the rights of Albanians in the country. Albanian is due to become the second official language.

The great powers are also stirring up conflicts in the country, although they try to stay in the background. For example, Dušan Reljić, the head of the Brussels office of the official German Institute for International and Security Affairs, complained about the role of the United States in the region. He told the Austrian Standard: “The Americans have always had the say, not the Europeans. The fact that the Albanians turned away from Gruevski and toward the Social Democrats a year-and-a-half ago can be traced back to direct interference from Washington.”

“The whole region still sees America as its most important security policy partner, especially the Albanians,” Reljić continued, a situation that obviously does not suit Brussels and Berlin. He described talk about the growing influence of Russia in the region as “nonsense.”

For his part, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel condemned the attack carried out by Gruevski supporters on the parliament. “There must now finally be a government. There were democratic elections,” Gabriel said on Friday on the fringes of an EU meeting in Malta. “It is absolutely unacceptable when the former ruling party allows its supporters to attack the parliament and assault MPs.”

The crisis in Macedonia could quickly spread across the entire region. Ethnic conflicts, social misery and ruthless, reactionary elites dominate all of the states of the former Yugoslavia. The danger of war in the region looms ever closer.

In March, the British Economist magazine wrote: “In normal times, the world tends to ignore Macedonia and its 2 million people, a quarter of them ethnic Albanian. But the world is not ignoring Macedonia now. Western politicians are rushing to Skopje, Russia is issuing warnings, and Serbian newspapers proclaim that war is coming. Geopolitical relevance is returning to the Balkans…”

Each day 150 workers die in the US due to hazardous work conditions

Matthew Taylor

The AFL-CIO last week released its annual report on workplace fatalities and injuries. “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect, 2017” is based on 2015 injury and fatality data compiled by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and Fiscal Year 2016 enforcement data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

In 2015, the study found:

· 4,836 workers were killed on the job in the United States or 3.4 per 100,00 workers.

· 50,000 to 60,000 workers died from occupational diseases.

· There were 3.7 million reported work-related injuries or illnesses, a figure that the AFL-CIO acknowledges is underreported. The true toll is estimated to be between 7.4-11.1 million.

· Overall, 150 workers die each day due to hazardous working conditions.

Statistics for individual groups of workers are even more horrifying. Deaths of Latino workers, for example, increased significantly, from 804 in 2014 to 903 in 2015. Immigrant workers accounted for 67 percent of that figure. In total, 943 immigrant workers or over 20 percent of the total—were killed on the job in 2015.

Older workers face especially hazardous conditions. Workers 55 and older accounted for 35 percent of all fatalities, a total of 1,681 deaths. For workers 65 and older, the fatality rate is 9.4 per 100,000, a figure 2.5 times higher than the average.

The highest rate of worker fatalities was in agriculture, fishing and forestry, with 570 deaths in 2015, at a rate of 22.8 per 100,000. The death rate for transportation and warehouse workers placed second, at 13.8 per 100,000, for a total of 765 fatalities. Deaths in the construction industry continued to increase in 2015, for the second year in a row, with 937 construction workers being killed on the job.

In the mining industry 118 workers died in 2015. The fatality rate in the mining sector was three times the national average or 11.4 per 100,000 workers. This includes workers in the gas and oil industry, who account for 74 percent of the total fatalities in that sector. While the report notes that this represents a decline from previous years, it fails to mention the salient fact that this is largely due to a massive reduction in the coal mining workforce.

Violence in the workplace claimed the lives of 703 workers in 2015. An additional 26,420 workplace injuries were reported due to violence.

The US states with the highest rates of on-the-job fatalities were North Dakota and Wyoming, with 12.5 and 12 per 100,000 respectively. This is near twice the number of the next highest state, Montana, which saw 7.5 fatalities per 100,000 workers.

The report details the paucity of resources available for the enforcement of workplace safety rules. For the eight million workplaces covered under the Occupational Safety and Hazards Act (OSHA), there are a mere 1,838 inspectors, or one for every 76,402 workers. In practical terms, this means that federal OSHA inspectors have enough personnel to inspect each workplace once every 159 years, while state inspectors can visit each workplace once every 99 years. The annual OSHA budget equals $3.65 for each worker in the US.

Despite its authors’ best intentions, the report is an indictment of American capitalism, both corporate-controlled political parties and the role of unions themselves.

In a whitewash of President Obama, the AFL-CIO report claims, “The Obama administration produced a number of significant safety and health rules and left a solid legacy of worker protections in place. While the first term saw many regulatory delays, the second term was much more productive.” Among the supposed reforms enacted by Obama is the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s “2014 coal dust rule [that] reduces dust exposures and protects miners from black lung.”

In fact, by reducing the allowable exposure to coal dust by only 25 percent, the Obama administration not only intervened to deliberately loosen the 1.0-milligram limit proposed by MSHA; it also rejected longstanding recommendations by health officials, backed by numerous studies, arguing that the limits should be cut in half to 1.0 milligram.

Under the Obama administration, the deadliest form of black lung, the common name for coal workers pneumoconiosis, has increased sharply although this deadly and incurable occupational lung disease is known to be entirely preventable through proper dust control.

The overall occupational fatality statistics also contradict the AFL-CIO’s assertion about Obama. With the exception, of 2013, the number of fatalities steadily rose under the Obama administration from a low of 4,551 in 2009 to 4,836 in 2015.

The Obama administration was also aware that the last-minute measures it took before leaving office could easily be underdone by an incoming administration.

Insofar as the AFL-CIO looked to the Obama administration, it was because the Democratic president utilized the services of the unions to implement its pro-corporate policies. One of Obama’s first acts was to appoint former United Mine Workers of America safety director, Joe Main, to head up OSHA’s mine safety division. Under Main, who was schooled in the UMW’s corporatist outlook of labor-management collusion, 29 miners were killed in the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster and coal companies rarely saw anything but wrist-slap fines.

At the same time, the Obama administration relied on the unions to suppress opposition to stagnant wages, increased exploitation, longer and more grueling work hours and the explosion of so-called “independent contractors” who lack any job security and are denied workers compensation and unemployment benefits.

In 2015, for example, the United Steelworkers betrayed the strike by oil refinery workers whose demands included a reduction in work hours to combat worker fatigue in the perilous industry.

President Trump, who has stacked his cabinet and administration with billionaires and business figures hostile to the slightest obstacle to corporate profit-making, had promised to destroy supposed “job killing” regulations, including occupational safety. In his first week in office, Trump signed a presidential memorandum ordering all federal agencies to freeze the regulatory process and delay the implementation of new rules not yet in effect. Days later, he issued an absurd executive order ordering that for every new regulation adopted two previous ones must be repealed.

The administration has abolished rules requiring employers to keep accurate records of injuries and illnesses incurred on the job, as well as requiring companies to report past health and safety violations when bidding for federal contracts. Trump’s proposals would reduce the budget of the Department of Labor by 21 percent, slash the funds made available for job safety research by $100 million dollars, and eliminate the chemical safety board altogether.

The Trump administration has also delayed the implementation of new OSHA rules dealing with the handling of beryllium and silica. The AFL-CIO report states that delay of the Silica rule will lead to 160 worker deaths.

Whatever its criticisms of the current administration, the AFL-CIO has wholly embraced Trump’s program of economic nationalism and trade war. AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka, a frequent visitor to the White House, has been appointed to Trump’s Manufacturing Jobs Initiative panel, where he sits alongside the heads of the Big Three auto companies, the CEOs of US Steel, and other corporate leaders. The purpose of the panel is to increase the profitability of US manufacturers at the expense of their international rivals and the working class at home.

Floods, tornados kill 13 across US South as Trump plans major cuts to disaster relief

Eric London

At least thirteen people, including three children, are dead across the American Midwest and South due to a series of tornados and floods that hit over the weekend.

Entirely preventable, the deaths were caused by the lack of public infrastructure, planning, or spending on disaster relief. Although floods and tornados are relatively common in the impacted areas, the ruling class ignores the needs of this deeply impoverished region.

Local officials found what they believe to be clothing belonging to two missing children, a four-year-old boy and his 18-month-old sister, who were swept away by floodwaters in Madison County, Missouri. The children’s mother tried to save the two after their family car was swept off the roadway Saturday afternoon, but the young children slid out of her hands and into the rushing water.

A 10-year-old girl was also swept away by flooding that struck Springdale, Arkansas Saturday night. Officials recovered her body late that night. In DeWitt, Arkansas, 65-year-old Julia Schwede was crushed by a tree in her mobile home. Many of those killed were elderly people caught in their vehicles, unable to escape the rising waters. Missouri declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard.

East Texas was worst hit by tornados, which killed four and injured over fifty.

Ernestine Cook, a resident of East Texas, told Dallas television station WFAA that the tornados “hit so hard, so fast. It just kept moving. I’ve never seen anything like it after 22 years of living here.”

Roughly three dozen people have been killed by tornados in the US so far this year. Two thirds of those killed are impoverished mobile home residents, according to a Weather.com report from early April. These types of homes provide no shelter for residents, who are either crushed by debris or sucked up into the deadly cyclones.

The administration of President Donald Trump is proposing to cut 11 percent of the budget for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is ostensibly responsible for disaster relief. The New York Times noted in March: “At FEMA, potential cuts would target for reduction an array of grants to state and local governments that have helped fund the development of emergency preparedness and response plans for natural disasters…”

According to the administration, funds for disaster relief will instead be used to construct a border wall separating the US and Mexico and for an intensified plan to militarize the border region.

In Oklahoma, the site of the Moore Tornado, which killed 24 people in 2013, Trump’s budget cut would reduce funding for the state’s emergency relief program by 85 percent.

Oklahoma Congressman Steve Russell told residents not to worry about the impact of the cuts, asking sardonically: “You got to look at it like, does this really mean that the US is going to tell Oklahoma if they face a tornado, we’re sorry?”

The answer is yes.

Not only will more poor and working-class residents of these regions be killed as a result of the budget cuts, but relief to help people whose homes were destroyed will also be cut.

The Trump administration is also planning to slash $6.2 billion from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, headed by retired neurosurgeon and religious fundamentalist Ben Carson. HUD provides funding for the Community Development Block Grant Program, which provides money to people whose homes are destroyed in natural disasters.

Trump also announced in March that his administration would cut $2.4 billion from federal transportation programs that fund road and transit programs in rural areas like the ones affected by this weekend’s storms. It is precisely due to a lack of spending on infrastructure that many of the region’s roads are prone to flooding, making travel dangerous in storms.

The regions devastated by the storms are overwhelmingly poor.

Madison County, Missouri, where the two young children were lost in a flood, has a per capita income of just $15,825 and a median family income of $37,474. The county is 98 percent white.

Springdale, Arkansas, where the 10-year-old girl drowned, 39 percent of children live below the poverty line. DeWitt, Arkansas, where Julia Schwede was crushed by a tree in her mobile home, per capita income is at $18,993 and median family income is at $42,917.

Those killed are the victims of the capitalist system, under which the ruling class directs society’s resources toward war and speculation in order to enrich a tiny oligarchy. The needs of the working class—whether for shelter in Tornado Alley or for water in Flint, Michigan—are ignored as working-class children and elderly people are killed by the wind and rain.

European Union issues hard-line Brexit negotiating strategy

Robert Stevens

The weekend was dominated by acrimonious exchanges between the European Union (EU) and the British government over the upcoming negotiations over its exit from the EU.

On Saturday, the European Council unanimously approved a hardline set of guidelines. The 27-member body reportedly took just one minute to discuss the document and less than 15 minutes to approve it.

The document warns that Britain cannot have separate discussions with individual EU states over the terms of Brexit, “so as not to undercut the position of the Union.”

It declares, “A non-member of the Union that does not live up to the same obligations as a member cannot have the same rights and enjoy the same benefits as a member.”

On this basis, the guidelines make clear that there can be no ‘cherry picking’ by the UK of the “indivisible” four core single market freedoms—the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people. The official position of the Conservative government of Prime Minister Theresa May is for a Brexit to preserve access to “elements of a single market,” with accepting, on behalf of big business—at least during the transitional period after the UK exits—the free movement of people.

The EU’s guidelines list three issues of priority: the residency rights of EU and UK citizens post-Brexit, agreeing what the UK must pay to the EU as part of its “divorce” settlement and avoiding the creation of a “hard” border between the Irish Republic—which is an EU member—and Northern Ireland.

Agreement on the EU’s strategy came just days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted on a tough line against the UK, insisting that it “cannot and will not have the same or even more rights as a member of the European Union. All 27 member states and the European institutions agree on this.”

Merkel’s statement followed a telephone call between her and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker last Wednesday, following Juncker’s dinner talks with May in Downing Street. Rejecting the claims of May’s government that an EU-UK agreement on trade can be achieved within a two-year deadline, with the first phase settled within weeks, Juncker brought to Downing Street a hard-copy of the full EU-Canada trade agreement, which runs to 2,255 pages, and took eight years to negotiate.

The Financial Times reported, “Attendees at the dinner told colleagues Mrs. May’s expectations were ‘completely unreal’ and that Mr Juncker was left ‘speechless’ at some UK expectations.”

According to reports, May told Juncker that Britain would only make a Brexit divorce payment if it was tied to a full trade deal agreed before 2019. The EU has long insisted that discussions on a future trade relationship between it and the UK can only take place after the divorce payment, and other terms of exit are agreed.

The Sunday Times reported that the Juncker/May meeting went “very badly.” It said EU leaders view May as “living in a different galaxy” over Brexit. The newspaper cited a source who said, “Based on the meeting, no deal is much more likely than finding agreement.”

May’s response to the European Council agreement was to insist that her negotiating position remained unchanged. On Saturday, she spoke to the pro-Brexit Daily Telegraph while campaigning in Scotland. The newspaper asked the prime minister, “The Brexit deal that appears to be on offer from Brussels at the moment looks pretty bad. Will you allow yourself to be bullied by Brussels?”

May responded, “First of all I would point out we don’t have a Brexit deal on the table from Brussels. We have their negotiating guidelines; we have our negotiating guidelines…”

On Sunday morning, May continued to oppose the EU’s position on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. Stating, “I am not living in a different galaxy,” she asserted that the EU response shows that “there are going to be times when these negotiations are going to be tough.” A Tory victory in the election was therefore critical, as “you need strong and stable leadership… to get the best deal.”

Above all, her interview underscored that the Brexit agenda of the Tories is centred on an escalation of the relentless austerity, imposed by successive Labour and Conservative governments, since the 2008 global financial crash and bailout of the banks.

In her first television interview since announcing the snap general election nearly two weeks ago, she defended the cutting of £2,500 in welfare benefits from the poorest working families.

Marr pointed out that public sector workers had “now had seven years of below inflation pay increases, a really tough freeze on their pay,” asking, “That can’t go on, can it, in the next few years?”

He noted that nurses have seen a 14 percent pay cut since 2010 and according to the Royal College of Nurses, “lots of ordinary nurses by the end of the week have to use food banks because they can’t afford to pay for food.”

May responded by insisting that what was important was “growth in the economy.” Under conditions in which, due to widespread grinding poverty, food bank usage in the UK stands at record levels with 1.2 million parcels distributed last year, May declared with undisguised contempt, “There are many complex reasons why people go to food banks.”

May also refused to commit to not ending the “triple lock” for state pension payments. Under the triple lock, the state pension increases in line with wages, inflation or by 2.5 percent, whichever is highest.

May’s comments follow the publication of a review of state pensions by former CBI Director-General John Cridland. He recommended that the triple lock be withdrawn in the next parliament, with those retiring after April 2016 having their pension increases linked to earnings only. The report estimates that scrapping the triple lock will save almost £3 billion per year by 2028.

May also supported the National Audit Office estimates of £3 billion of cuts to school funding by 2020, stating only that the government is committed to “fair funding” for schools. The reality is that more than 90 percent of schools across England will see funding cuts. Cuts in London schools amount to £600 million. Pupils in other major cities, including Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Nottingham, will receive less funding per head under the new system.

Significantly, with the entire election campaign so far being framed around the war agenda of the government—which backed recent US bombing in Syria and Afghanistan and warmongering against North Korea and Russia—May refused to accept that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had been correct in opposing the illegal 2003 war against Iraq. May said what “Jeremy Corbyn has shown is that he is not prepared to stand up for the defence of this country.”

In relation to future military action, May said, “If we look ahead there will be tough decisions to be taken. I think it is important that we… have a prime minister that’s willing to defend this country, to stand up for the defence of this country. Jeremy Corbyn has shown he’s not willing to do that.”

The struggle over whether the UK exits the EU on the basis of a “hard” or “soft” Brexit will determine the increasingly divergent economic and trade relations between the major imperialist powers. What May’s interview with Marr demonstrated is that, whatever is cooked up in the Brexit negotiations between Britain, Brussels, Germany and France, the fate of working people will be an escalating march towards worsening austerity and a drive to war.

French right splits as sections back neo-fascist Le Pen

Kumaran Ira

This weekend, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, the leader of the small right-wing party Arise France (DLF) officially backed Marine Le Pen of the neo-fascist National Front (FN) in the runoff of the French presidential election.

Le Pen said she would name Dupont-Aignan prime minister if she were elected president. “It is together that we will campaign to bring people together, more and more, and win a victory on Sunday May 7,” declared the FN presidential candidate.

The two leaders issued a six-point “government accord” that forms the basis of their alliance. “This contract for a governmental alliance will be key to get beyond the divisions and the doubts that are giving the ‘system’ and Emmanuel Macron the weapons they need to survive, thus harming the national interest,” the two signatories stated.

An alliance at the national and presidential level between the FN and a right-wing party is unprecedented and points to the collapse of the two-party system made up of the Socialist Party (PS) and The Republicans (LR), whose candidates were eliminated on the first round. Already, several LR leaders including Henri Guaino, Laurent Wauquiez, or Thierry Mariani have decided not to call for a Macron vote against the FN.

While most PS and right-wing politicians are calling to block Le Pen by voting for Macron, a former economy minister in the reactionary PS government, Dupont-Aignan justified his decision to back the FN. “If Emmanuel Macron—that is, [PS President] François Hollande junior—is elected, the country is screwed,” he said. “I’ve made a historic choice, telling the French people: yes, I will do everything to beat Macron. I went beyond, I didn’t rally to the FN. I negotiated. It is the most beautiful moment in my political history.”

The rallying to a neo-fascist policy of growing sections of the French ruling elite underscores the correctness of the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES) call for an active boycott of the second round of the presidential elections. The strategy of begging the political establishment to block the rise of the neo-fascists is false and will only produce disasters.

The pseudo-left parties—the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA, at the time the Revolutionary Communist League, LCR), Workers Struggle (LO), and the Independent Democratic Workers Party (POID, at the time the Workers Party, PT)—used this strategy in 2002. They aligned themselves with the PS as it endorsed right-wing candidate Jacques Chirac to block FN candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. They claimed this would block the rise of the neo-fascists.

In fact, this granted the far right the monopoly of opposition to Chirac and the PS within the French political establishment. The conservatives and then the PS carried out policies increasingly indistinguishable from those of the far right over the last 15 years—in the last five years alone, the PS imposed a state of emergency and repeatedly invited Marine Le Pen to the Elysée presidential palace. Now, a section of the right is overtly jumping ship to back Le Pen, who has become a major force by profiting from the discrediting of the traditional PS-LR two-party system.

These bitter experiences, like Dupont-Aignan’s current policy, expose the claims that a vote for Macron, a supporter of austerity and war, will halt the FN’s rise. Not only would Macron carry out an extremely reactionary policy, but ever-larger sections of the ruling elite are rallying behind the far right and its populist demagogy.

The PES calls for the independent mobilization of the working class through an active boycott of the election. Macron and Le Pen are both ruthless enemies of the workers. As the PES wrote in its statement “No to Macron and Le Pen! For an active boycott of the French election!”, “The critical issue… is the development of opposition in the working class to both Macron and Le Pen from the left.”

The differences between those sections of the French ruling class backing the FN and those supporting Macron are largely tactical and are principally about foreign policy. The bulk of the ruling class supports Macron, but a considerable section supports the FN. This division reflects in no small part the deep crisis of the EU and of NATO: the FN prefers an alliance with Trump and Russia against German hegemony in Europe, and has proposed a Frexit to leave the EU, as well as a referendum on leaving the euro and returning to the French franc currency.

Large sections of the French population still view the FN with horror, however. In their document, Le Pen and Dupont-Aignan therefore make a few modifications to nationalist or xenophobic policies of the FN that provoked particular media attention and popular hostility.

They therefore claimed that to clinch the agreement, Dupont-Aignan forced Le Pen to give up her policy of making foreign children pay for school. Policy changes regarding “cost-free access to public services for strangers arriving legally on national territory will not affect schools,” the text states.

They also implied that Le Pen had somewhat moderated her anti-European nationalism. Dupont-Aignan said, “I am not against Europe, nor is Marine Le Pen, we are against the European Union. We want a referendum to renegotiate all the treaties. The French people, by voting for Marine Le Pen, will not have issued a blank check on Europe. The transition away from the common European currency will have to be accomplished with skill.”

Le Pen has also indicated that she may take 18 months to develop her policy on the euro, and that other policy issues could have priority rather than the euro, though she is still hostile to it.

“The euro is dead,” she told Le Parisien this weekend. She explained that under the FN, the common currency could still be used by major corporations for international trade, but that the franc would be used for daily transactions within France.

These attempts to somehow reassure electors thinking of voting for the FN are false and reactionary. Class tensions in France and across Europe are enormous. Hollande’s presidency demonstrated that the entire ruling class is shifting rapidly and very far to the right. If the FN were to be elected, as was the case with the PS in 2012, it would seek to carry out a policy far to the right even of what it proposed during the presidential campaign.

The Value of a Declared No First Use Nuclear Policy

Vijay Shankar

"Can it be a nation’s case to destroy the very purpose that polity sets out to attain; or as Milton put it “Our Cure, To Be No More; Sad Cure!”

The sensibility of negotiated agreements to assuage friction between nations during ‘The Time of Troubles’ (as Toynbee so sagely suggested) is well recognised. This dynamic in turn sets into motion a search for a deeper concord that establishes and maintains order however stormy the process may be (the fact of continued endurance of the Westphalian state being the basis of international relations is a case in point). Lessons of history have persistently refuted the idea of non-violence and altruism as guiding instrumentalities of relations between nations for at best, non-violence and altruism are a state of mind and higher principles of behaviour; the concord however, is in favour of realpolitik and seeks mutuality. The latter affects its beneficiaries in varying degrees as it brings about a levelling between the dominant and lesser powers. The relative incapacity to generate conditions that favour the dominant power has at times been at the cost of longevity of the concord while at others the dominant power has paid of its political legacy. But in cases when the concord determines inhibition or non-use of a weapon of war that can potentially destroy political intent, it becomes an instrument of balance.

India’s declared policy of no first use (NFU) of nuclear weapons makes for such an instrument of balance. The credibility of its deterrent at a minimal level is sought through periodic technological intrusions. The form of India’s doctrine has remained unchanged since 2003. It is ironic that among the remaining eight states in possession of nuclear weapons (barring China), their doctrines have not been declared with any clarity while their nuclear weapon postures and policies remain, at best, ambiguous.

The UK since 1958 has deep nuclear links with the US, so much so that its arsenal of Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missile (it has since 1998 retired other vectors) along with its doctrine and nuclear policy is pooled with that of the US. Yet it subscribes to the idea of “Sub Strategic Tasks” (no explanation) and an independent nuclear deterrent with neither transparent command and control organisation nor coded control devices.

France also maintains an independent nuclear deterrent; its doctrine is a little less ‘enigmatic’ and is characterised by "nonemployment" within the framework of a conflict which does not threaten “vital interests” (what these interests are is never made clear). The general understanding is that nuclear weapons are not intended for the battlefield. The French doctrine refutes nuclear warfighting “up an escalatory ladder.”

In the meantime, Russia, without declaring so, has increased its reliance on nuclear weapons since 1993, when it formally dropped the Soviet NFU policy and discarded its defensive nuclear posture of the Cold War era. Today, its doctrine is more Orwellian: “To escalate in order to de-escalate” (V. Levshin, A. Nedelin, M. Sosnovskiy, "O primenenii yadernogo oruzhiya dlya deeskalatsii voennykh deystviy," (Use of Nuclear Weapons for Deescalating Conflicts; author’s transalation) Voennaya Mysl Vol. 3, May-June 1999). The stated rationales for the emergence of their new nuclear doctrine are: sensitivity to external threat, particularly so after the invasion of Crimea, eastern Ukraine and involvement in Syria; and perceived weakness of Russia's conventional forces. The idea to be the first to go nuclear in order to deescalate a conventional conflict is an unprecedented awareness, for it suggests two contrarieties: that not only can a nuclear tit-for-tat be controlled, but also that a nuclear war is winnable.

China’s nuclear doctrine embraces two concepts of contemporary nuclear thought: the doctrine of NFU and maintenance of a credible minimum nuclear deterrent. In form, the doctrine has been consistent since 1964. These two tenets have in turn sculpted the nature and size of their arsenal. China’s efforts to modernise its nuclear forces have, in some quarters, been seen as a transformation of the basis of their doctrine. This however, would appear a misperception since technological updates primarily improve the survivability, lethality and precision of their arsenal, with a view to enhance the credibility of the deterrent. So far it would appear that China’s nuclear policy has been undeviating over the years. It is also here the benign nature of China’s nuclear policy ends. A significant feature of the nuclear correlation in the region is China’s proliferatory activities that have given an antagonistic tripolar character to matters. This applies equally to both North Korea and Pakistan.

As is well known today, it is the collusive nature of the Sino-Pak nuclear relationship that created and sustains the latter’s nuclear weapons programme. Therefore it is logical to conclude that there also exists doctrinal links between the two which permits duality in China’s nuclear policy; a declared NFU policy masks Pakistan’s first use intent that the former has so assiduously nurtured, from the development of the weapons programme to the supply of tactical nuclear weapons. China’s proliferation policy may have been driven by a balance-of-power logic but it would appear to have forgotten the actuality in the Pakistan case - of an enfeebled civilian leadership incapable of action to remove the military finger from the nuclear trigger, involvement of non-state actors in military strategy and an alarming posture of intent-to-use. Indeed, the Pakistan proxy gives to China doctrinal flexibility vis-à-vis India, but involvement of jihadis and world repugnance to nuclear proliferation, even China must know, can boomerang on its aspirations. The same would apply to North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and doctrine of which very little is known particularly after the failure of the 1994 Agreed Framework. While academics have ruminated over possible North Korean nuclear strategies ranging from political, catalytic (threat of use to provoke intervention), retaliatory to war fighting, what is apparent is that China has taken centre stage and has been elevated to the unlikely role of an ‘honest’ broker in the matter. Somewhere, China’s unwavering support of Pyongyang since the Korean War has been consigned to a ‘memory warp’.

Pakistan has no declared doctrine; its collaborative nuclear programme with China drives nuclear policy. It espouses an opaque deterrent under military control steered by precepts obscure in form, seeped in ambiguity and guided by a military strategy that not only finds unity with non-state actors, but also perceives conventional and nuclear weapons as one continuum. The introduction of tactical nuclear weapons exacerbates matters. It has periodically professed four thresholds which if transgressed triggers a nuclear response; these are geographic, economic, military and political. It does not take a great deal of intellectual exertion to declare whose case lowering of the nuclear threshold promotes.

Israel does not officially confirm or deny having nuclear weapons. Its ambiguous stance puts it in a difficult position since to issue a statement pledging NFU would confirm possession. Israel has however declared that it "would not be the first in region to introduce nuclear weapons.”

The US has refused to adopt a NFU policy, saying that it "reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first.” And yet, the doctrine reduces the role of US nuclear weapons to deter nuclear attack on the US, allies, and partners. The Nuclear Posture Review of 2010 notes a less abstruse long term vision: "it is in the US interest and that of all other nations that the nearly 65-year record of nuclear non-use be extended forever."

It has been argued that nuclear weapons are instruments of state that can potentially destroy political intent; indeed, when a nuclear exchange occurs it is the survival of the protagonists that is threatened. And if survival is an enduring feature of every nation’s interest then it is logical that incipient combatants desist from escalating to a nuclear exchange. This logic provides the determinate sensibility for a NFU policy. A compact appraisal of doctrines of nations in possession of nuclear weapons was done primarily to highlight the intrinsic hypocrisy – or realpolitik - that drives them. But if realpolitik is taken to mean politics that strives to secure practical national interests rather than higher ideals, then even in this frame of reference, NFU advances an irrefutable case. There is another awkward irony: these nations recognise two central attributes of policy; first, the inability to control escalation of a nuclear exchange, and second, the value of nuclear disarmament. After 72 years since the last use of nuclear weapons, neither has proliferation occurred en masse nor have nuclear weapons found tactical favour. The world’s ‘nuclear realpolitik ontogeny’ now suggests that the first step towards the negation of nuclear weapons is to find value in a universal declaration of no first use.

OWSD PhD Fellowships for Women Scientists from Science and Technology Lagging Countries 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 30th June 2017, 9:00am (CET)

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

To be taken at (country): The award will give nominated students the opportunity  to study in centres of excellence in the developing world, and help educate the next generation of mathematicians thereby advancing science in the home countries of those chosen for the fellowship.

Fields of Study:

01-Agricultural Sciences
02-Structural, Cell and Molecular Biology
03-Biological Systems and Organisms
04-Medical and Health Sciences incl. Neurosciences
05-Chemical Sciences
06-Engineering Sciences
08-Mathematical Sciences
09-Physics

About the Award: The “South to South PhD Training” fellowships for Women Scientists from Science and Technology Lagging Countries (STLCs) to undertake PhD research in the Natural, Engineering and Information Technology sciences at a host institute in the South. The fellowships are to be held at a centre of excellence in a developing country outside the applicant’s own country.

Candidates can choose between two study schemes:

• a full-time fellowship (maximum 4 years funding), where the research is undertaken entirely at a host institute in another developing country in the South.
• a sandwich fellowship, where the candidate must be a registered PhD student in her home country and undertakes part of her studies at a host institute in another developing country.
  The sandwich fellowship is awarded for a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 3 research visits at the host institute. The minimum duration of the first visit is 6 months. The total number of months spent at the host institute cannot exceed 20 months. The funding period cannot exceed 4 years.
  OWSD particularly encourages candidates to consider the sandwich option, which allows them to earn the PhD in their home country while accessing specialist researchers and equipment abroad, at the host institute.

The fellowship support is only provided while the student is on site, at the host institute.

Type: Postgraduate (Doctorate)

Eligibility: To be eligible, candidates must confirm that they intend to return to their home country as soon as possible after completion of the fellowship.

The minimum qualification is an MSc degree in one of the above listed study fields.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Each fellowship will cover the following:

• A monthly allowance to cover basic living expenses such as accommodation and meals while in the host country
• A special allowance to attend international conferences during the period of the fellowship
• A return ticket from the home country to the host institute for the agreed research period
• Visa expenses
• Annual medical insurance contribution
• The opportunity to attend regional science communications workshops, on a competitive basis
• Study fees (including tuition and registration fees) in agreement with the chosen host institute which is also expected to contribute
• Travel expenses to and from the host institute

Duration of Award: up to four years

How to Apply: The online application system will only accept applications complete in all parts, including the required documents. All documents must be uploaded through the online application system. Do not email any document to OWSD unless requested.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World  and The World Academy of Science (TWAS)

Stanford University MBA Fellowship Program for African Students (Fully-funded) 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 7th June 2017 (5:00pm Pacific Time)

Offered Annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be taken at (Country): Stanford University, USA

Eligible Field of Study: Courses offered at the University.

About the Award: Stanford University is offering an MBA Fellowship program to eight Africans who wish to obtain a Stanford MBA degree. The program is set annually to assist citizens from Africa study at the university, acquire essential skill sets for the standard duration of two years and return to the continent, to work in vital positions that directly impact and improve Africa.

Type: MBA Fellowship

Eligibility

1. To demonstrate the primary reason for the program, applicants must be ready to dedicate at least two (2) years to the development of the economy of Africa after the MBA program.
2. The MBA Fellowship will be awarded to Final-year undergraduates and graduates of institutions in Africa as well as African citizens who studied in countries outside of Africa.
3. To be eligible for the fellowship, applicants must also apply to the Stanford MBA Program.

Selection Criteria:

1. Merit
2. Commitment to developing Africa
3. Financial need

Number of Awardees: Eight (8)

Value of Scholarship: $160,000

Duration of Scholarship: Two years

How to Apply:

1. One-page resume or curriculum vitae (CV)
2. A 250-word essay on how applicant plans to effect change in Africa
3. Financial information
4. Awards and honours
5. History of employment
6. Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) and/or Graduate Record Examination (GRE)

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Stanford University, United States of America.