Prime Minister May accuses EU of meddling in UK election

Chris Marsden 

Ratcheting up tensions with the European Union (EU), Conservative UK Prime Minister Theresa May made an unannounced statement Wednesday outside 10 Downing Street.

After visiting the queen to formally declare the closure of parliament, she asserted that representatives of the EU were deliberately seeking to influence the outcome of the upcoming general election.

In her brief address to the media, May said that talks over the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU have been “tough”:

“The European commission’s negotiating stance has hardened. Threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials. All of these acts have been deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election that will take place on 8 June.”

May portrayed her own position as the epitome of sweet reason, declaring that “in leaving the European Union, Britain means no harm to our friends and allies on the continent” and that she wanted to maintain “a deep and special partnership with the European Union.” But “there are some in Brussels who do not want these talks to succeed: Who do not want Britain to prosper.”

May’s intervention plays to a domestic political audience and were shaped by electoral imperatives. Her allegations were followed by a repeat of her mantra that a vote for the Conservatives would deliver the “strong and stable” government needed to make Brexit “a success” that is “central to our national interest.”

To choose Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party would mean “a hung parliament and a coalition of chaos” that would “let the bureaucrats of Brussels run over us. ...”

May’s speech was denounced for placing party considerations over the national interest she claims to defend. Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, joined Corbyn, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron and Nicola Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party in attacking May for making “such preposterous, paranoid and xenophobic claims” at “the first sign of difficulty in her talks with Brussels. ... Instead of alienating our European partners...she should be working to build effective relationships and make meaningful progress.”

But for May to accuse the EU of interfering in the UK general election in language hitherto reserved for Russian President Vladimir Putin testifies to a real escalation of hostilities with Europe. Indeed, over the past days, much of Britain’s media has been dominated by accusations that differ from May’s only in that the Tory press has not shied away from naming Germany as the moving force in efforts to undermine the government for its “hard Brexit” stand.

May viewed the support of US President Donald Trump for Brexit, his hostility to Germany and promise of a trade deal with the UK as her ace in the hole in negotiations over Brexit that would help secure access to European markets. But she massively misjudged Berlin’s preparedness to reject the UK’s demands as a threat to Germany’s domination of the EU.

On April 22, sources close to the White House reported that German Chancellor Angela Merkel leaked to the Times how, in March, she had in fact convinced Trump that a trade deal with the EU was far more important for the US than one with the UK post-Brexit.

In the German parliament last Thursday, Merkel then announced that no concessions would be made in negotiations with the UK and that her warning was necessary because “some in the UK still have illusions.”

Saturday saw the 27 EU member states agree in a matter of minutes to a hardline framework for negotiations drawn up in Berlin. These included a declaration that substantive negotiations on post-Brexit trade and economic relations would not even begin until the financial details of the withdrawal were clarified. This is opposed to May’s insistence that separation payments would be agreed on at the end of the planned two-year interim talks.

It then emerged that Merkel’s statement last Thursday followed a telephone call between her and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, regarding talks with May and her leadership team over dinner at Downing Street last week.

Merkel's people leaked the contents of the discussion to the Frankfurter Allgemeine, which published an account on Sunday. It reported Juncker’s view that May was “in a different Galaxy”, that Brexit Secretary David Davis should be removed and that Juncker was “10 times more sceptical” that a settlement could be arrived at after the Downing Street dinner.

On the morning of May’s Downing Street declaration, the Financial Times added to her woes by estimating that the divorce settlement with the EU would likely amount to €100 billion “using the EU’s negotiating guidelines, the more detailed draft mandate for the bloc’s negotiator, Michel Barnier.”

May’s claim that forces in the EU are trying to engineer the election of Corbyn is far-fetched. But the same is not true of her charge that the past week of leaks has been “deliberately timed” so as to fire a shot across the government’s bow.

Berlin’s decision to make public its willingness to punish the UK has a broader political aim. Coming just days before Sunday’s vote in the second round of the French presidential election, it serves as an implied threat to anyone reluctant to vote for Emmanuel Macron, an economic liberal advocate of austerity and closer ties with Germany.

Hostility to Macron is such that the once unthinkable prospect of a victory for Marine Le Pen of the far-right and anti-EU National Front is considered a serious possibility. Le Pen prepared for her televised debate against Macron last night by telling the French media that she is the best candidate to face the “new world” dominated by US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin and to “talk to the Britain of May.”

The Conservatives are entering an election that, according to the polls, should be a walkover thanks to a 15-20 points lead over Labour. But May must win decisively to extend her wafer-thin majority and maintain control over a deeply divided party: one in which the pro-Brexit forces dominate and champion a “hard Brexit” involving quitting the Single European Market which is opposed by big business and the City of London.

May’s brinksmanship is a measure not only of her own underlying political weakness, but that of British imperialism, which is still heavily dependent on EU trade and cannot rely on the US to step up and fill the void that would be left by the failure to secure an agreement.

Gary Gibbon of Channel Four News warned of growing fears that May “is pushing herself into a hardline position on the EU negotiations that could make a deal impossible. ... [T]here has been one school of thought that says Mrs. May is fighting for a big mandate in this election so she can make the concessions in the negotiations which she couldn’t make if held to ransom by a small number of Brexit hardliners exploiting her small majority. Adherents of that view may be scratching their heads after that Prime Ministerial address wondering if they’ve quite called it right.”

Whatever happens, the national tensions revealed in the bitter exchanges between London and Berlin will continue to escalate, not only placing a question mark over the fate of post-Brexit Britain but over the long-term survival of the EU itself.

Neo-Nazi network in German army exposed

Peter Schwarz

The arrest of a German army officer suspected of plotting the assassination of leftist politicians and high-ranking state officials has exposed the operations of neo-Nazi forces at the highest levels of the German military (Bundeswehr).

The information that has emerged thus far indicates that the suspected officer-terrorist was part of a broader network of fascists within the Bundeswehr, and that his activities were known to his superiors and covered up by them.

Most astonishing is the official reaction to these alarming revelations. They have prompted an outpouring of anger in the German media and from the establishment parties directed not at the existence of this network and evidence of its toleration by high-level state forces, but at mild criticisms of the military by Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen.

Given the historic crimes of German imperialism in the 20th century and the current revival of militarism in Germany, it is remarkable how little attention has been paid to these developments in the American and international press.

Lieutenant Franco A., 28, was arrested last week after coming to the attention of Austrian police when he sought to retrieve a weapon hidden at the airport in Vienna. It quickly emerged that the officer had been leading a double life. In addition to his activities in the Bundeswehr, Franco A, who does not speak a word of Arabic, had registered as a Syrian refugee and been recognized as such.

He apparently intended to carry out a terror attack under a false flag. A police search of his home uncovered a list of possible targets, which included, together with leftist politicians and activists, Justice Minister Heiko Maas and former German President Joachim Gauck.

Franco A. did not operate alone. The police have recovered shells and handguns from a 24-year-old accomplice, who was also arrested. The Defence Ministry has informed the parliamentary defence committee that the arrested officer may be part of an ultra-right network within the Bundeswehr.

The reaction of the military leadership suggests that this network is far more extensive and reaches much higher than has thus far been revealed. Defence Minister von der Leyen cancelled a planned trip to the US and invited 100 high-ranking military officers to Berlin on Thursday “to discuss the implications and consequences of the accumulated cases in the Bundeswehr.”

It is now clear that, for some time, Franco A.’s superiors were aware of his fascistic views and shielded him. As far back as 2014, his graduate thesis at the French military university Saint-Cyr was rejected on the grounds that it was not a scholarly work, but rather “a radical nationalist, racist appeal,” calling for “existing conditions to be adapted to the alleged natural law of racial purity.” The responsible French general advised Franco A.’s German superiors to sack him, but the latter concluded that he was not a racist. They hushed up the case and promoted his military career.

The neo-Nazi views of the first lieutenant were an open secret in the French town of Illkirch, where he served in a Franco-German unit. Investigators from the Bundeswehr have found “indications of right-wing and racist ideas” in his room. In addition to a swastika carved on an assault rifle, they discovered pictures glorifying Hitler’s army, the Wehrmacht.

Racist and authoritarian views and the glorification of violence are not only widespread in the Bundeswehr, they are actively encouraged by its leaders. The military intelligence service is currently investigating 275 extreme right-wing suspects. These investigations are exercises in damage control. Charges were dropped against one soldier who placed a photo of a machine gun on the Internet with the caption: “The fastest German asylum procedure: rejects up to 1,400 requests per minute.”

The tradition of Hitler’s Wehrmacht continues to be officially cultivated in the Bundeswehr. Many barracks bear the names of military officers who were implicated in the Nazis’ genocidal racial and war policies.

The universities of the Bundeswehr in Munich and Hamburg have repeatedly generated headlines by promoting right-wing extremism. In Munich, there was a controversy in 2011 surrounding the student magazine Campus when three of its editors expressed their support for the Conservative Revolutionary movement, one of the leading ideological forbears of the Nazis.

In Hamburg, the book Armee im Aufbruch (Army on the Move) was published in 2014 with contributions from sixteen officers who studied at the Bundeswehr University there and had combat experience in Afghanistan. The book is full of language typical of Nazi literature glorifying war.

The officers consider themselves to be an elite, opposed to a “hedonistic and individualistic” society focused on “self-gratification, consumption, pacifism and egoism,” a society that has no appreciation for the “striving for honour through great sacrifice,” for a “patriotic attitude to the people (Volk) and Fatherland” and for “courage, loyalty and honour.”

There was no protest against the book within the German political establishment. The right-wing, dictatorial standpoint it expressed is shared across the political spectrum.

When Defence Minister von der Leyen, a member of the ruling Christian Democratic Union, responded to the exposure of the Franco A. case by warning that “the German army has an attitude problem and it apparently has weak leadership at different levels,” she provoked a storm of protest. She may well lose her post, not because terror attacks on the former president and current ministers and members of parliament were planned from within the ranks of the Bundeswehr, but because she spoke out too sharply against it!

The Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the Left Party are protesting the loudest against von der Leyen. SPD Chairman Martin Schulz accused the defence minister of lacking a sense of responsibility. SPD defence expert Rainer Arnold called on her to apologise to her troops. Former Deputy Juso (SPD Young Socialists) Chairman Lars Klingbeil accused von der Leyen of “stabbing hundreds of thousands soldiers in the back.”

The Green Party defence expert Tobias Lindner declared, “It is not the Bundeswehr’s fault if it is increasingly attractive to right-wing extremists.” His colleague from the Left Party, Alexander Neu, proclaimed his opposition to placing all soldiers under general suspicion due to the case of Franco A.

These developments reveal the enormity of the swing to the right by the entire German ruling class and the advanced state of its campaign to again make Germany the hegemon of Europe and a world military as well as economic power. The deepening crisis of world capitalism and rising economic and geo-political tensions are tearing Europe apart and fracturing the Atlantic alliance, increasingly pitting Germany against the United States.

Under these conditions, German imperialism must seek to sanitize its criminal past and rewrite its history to rehabilitate fascism, as it transforms the Bundeswehr into a lethal force of professional killers, capable of waging war all over the world.

Claims that the German ruling class learned its lesson from the Holocaust and the crimes of the Nazis, and that the military had purged itself, are exposed as myths.

In a commentary on Tuesday, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung co-editor Berthold Kohler derided the “fantasy image” of the Bundeswehr “as a kind of missionary military that spreads the gospel of the German constitution so that the German spirit shall heal the world.” He wrote: “Whoever sends soldiers into crises and wars must prepare themselves and the soldiers for the harshness and cruelty that awaits them.” Because the Bundeswehr has to teach its recruits “to fight and kill… it must be able to go to the limits of what is permissible in terms of hardship in training its fighting units.”

The spread of militarism into all spheres of society is an international phenomenon. In the US, Donald Trump, the most right-wing president in American history, has appointed generals to all the main security-related ministries, as American imperialism spearheads the drive to World War III. In France, heavily armed soldiers routinely patrol the streets since the imposition of a state of emergency a year-and-a-half ago.

The general silence to date of the international media on the growth of fascistic forces within the German military is itself an expression of the turn by the ruling classes of the world toward war and dictatorship.

New Zealand: Gender pay deal used to promote unions, government

John Braddock

In a settlement acclaimed as “historic” by New Zealand’s media and political establishment, the National Party government has announced it will fund a $NZ2 billion package to address gender pay equity in the aged and disability care sector.

More than 55,000 predominantly female workers will, over 5 years, receive a minimum pay rise of between 15 and 50 percent depending on qualifications and experience. A worker on the current legal minimum of $15.75 per hour will move to $19 in July and eventually reach $23 in 2021.

The decision follows a declaration by the Supreme Court in a legal challenge begun in 2012 by the then Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU)—now part of the E Tu union—under the 1972 Equal Pay Act.

The test case was taken by SFWU member Kristine Bartlett, an aged-care worker, who was being paid only $14.46 an hour after 20 years’ work at the same rest home. She argued that her employer, TerraNova, was underpaying its staff because most were female. The courts ruled that the Equal Pay Act applied and that care workers must be paid the same as workers in male-dominated industries who perform similar tasks, such as corrections workers.

The government pays the wages through subsidies to the private health care companies. The ruling National Party strenuously opposed the pay equity case over a period of five years, including three court cases and two appeals. In 1991 and 2008 National governments had dismantled pay equity laws put in place by previous Labour governments. Successive Labour governments, however, did not implement any pay equity measures.

Now, five months out from a general election, the settlement is being universally acclaimed as a landmark for low paid workers. The Dominion Post said it represented “a huge change in New Zealand’s approach to wage setting” that is “wholly welcome.” The Otago Daily Times declared it meant “redistributing the wealth in a more equitable manner.”

The case and its reception is a desperate attempt to shore up support among profoundly alienated sections of workers for increasingly discredited capitalist institutions. As the assault on jobs and living standards intensifies, workers are being told that they can achieve wage “justice” through the framework of the unions, courts, and parliamentary parties.

Prime Minister Bill English said he expected other sectors to lodge similar claims, which would be dealt with by a new process for resolving pay equity cases, rather than direct negotiations. Legislation will be presented to parliament later this year. English warned, “The hurdles will be pretty high. This is a fairly unique set of circumstances—it’s not readily or easily applicable outside of government for instance.” According to the Council of Trade Unions, which has been collaborating with a government-employer pay equity working party since 2015, the Bartlett case would not have succeeded under the new law.

The government’s deal is yet to be ratified by workers, but the trade unions have declared it a major victory. E Tu assistant national secretary John Ryall announced it will mean a “once in a lifetime pay rise, which will end poverty wages for this mainly female workforce and set them on the path to a better life.”

This is a lie. Low wages at one end of society are required to support obscene wealth, mainly obtained through financial speculation, at the other. Households with an income of less than $30,000, i.e., 60 percent of the median disposable income, are considered in poverty. This now includes one third, or more than 300,000, of children, increasingly from families designated as the “working poor.” The numbers living below the poverty line increased by 45,000 in a year and are now double those in 1984.

While a pay increase of 15–40 percent is not insignificant, the settlement will not lift chronically underpaid workers out of conditions of poverty and grinding exploitation. The same trade unions claim that a “living wage” of $20.20 an hour is the minimum required to provide families with the basic necessities of life. The 20,000 care workers currently on the minimum wage will not even reach this inadequate threshold in the first year of the agreement.

Moreover, the majority of carers work part-time, and will still earn well below the poverty line. It is unclear what the pay rise will be worth by the time it is fully implemented in five years, given the soaring cost of living. The median rent for a 3–4 bedroom house has risen by 30 percent over the past five years, adding $6,000 to yearly household bills.

The pay equity campaign, which is promoted by a raft of unions, employers, academics and women’s organisations, has nothing to do with addressing the vast and deepening issues around social inequality which are rooted in the class relations of capitalism. While gender inequality persists, the main division in society is class, not gender.

Employers certainly use every device available to them to divide workers according to gender, ethnicity, nationality and even age to suppress wages and increase profits. Under the framework of pay equity however, there is nothing to prevent businesses from paying poverty wages, as long as men and women get the same for the same tasks. This cannot be fought on the basis of identity politics, which is promoted by affluent, privileged layers of the middle class, to oppose a genuine struggle for social equality.

The ruling elite has seized on the settlement to boost the unions. For decades the unions have suppressed strikes and collaborated in destroying tens of thousands of jobs, as well as entire industries such as car manufacturing. Union membership has plummeted to 17.7 percent of the country’s workforce, compared with about 40 percent in 1970.

The government and big business are concerned that the decimation of the unions will undermine their ability to police the working class. English praised the unions’ “constructive approach” in negotiations following the court ruling. Health Minister Jonathan Coleman also hailed the agreement and he has in turn been applauded by union leaders.

In a revealing interview with Radio NZ, former conservative Prime Minister Jim Bolger last week feigned concern about growing inequality and declared it was time “to give some power back” to the unions. In fact, the Bolger government’s attacks during the 1990s, including cuts to welfare and the anti-worker Employment Contracts Act, were made possible by the betrayals of the unions.

The aged care deal will give a major boost to the private operators, which insisted for years that they could not “afford” to improve pay rates without increased public funding. Ryman Healthcare managing director Simon Challies welcomed the settlement, saying the increase will be passed on to 45 percent of the company’s workforce.

Ryman boasted last year that its profit had grown 16 percent to a record $158 million, with the company entering “a new era of growth.” Since listing on the NZ Stock exchange in 1999, Ryman has paid out more than $500 million to shareholders.

Inevitably, the money funnelled by the government to these companies will be funded by cuts in spending on basic services. Costs for aged care residents could also increase. The health sector as a whole has been starved of funds, particularly since the onset of the 2008 economic crisis, leading to lengthy waiting lists for treatment and chronic staff shortages.

The vast majority of low-paid workers will gain nothing from gender equity legislation. In recent weeks the Meat Workers Union and the Taylor Preston company have pushed through an agreement that entrenches the poverty wages and insecure conditions at the plant, which has some of the country’s lowest paid workers. It includes an extra 70 cents an hour, mirroring the government’s recent pitiful 50 cent increase to the minimum wage. Most Taylor Preston workers, men and women, will still receive little more than the minimum wage. This situation is repeated in industry after industry.

Leadership contest begins in Spain’s Socialist Party

Alejandro López 

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE) has announced the primary election for the party’s general secretary will be held on May 21. Candidates will have to be endorsed by at least 5 percent of the party’s 180,000 members before May 4.

The PSOE has been without a leader since October, when an internal coup orchestrated by a cabal of bankers, the intelligence services and the media ousted general secretary Pedro Sánchez. Organized by former PSOE Prime Minister Felipe González and El País editor-in-chief Juan Luis Cebrián, the objective was to install a Popular Party (PP) government after Spain had been without a proper administration for almost 10 months—something opposed by the Sánchez faction of the PSOE.

The coup exposed the reactionary workings of the political system that emerged from Spain’s transition to parliamentary rule in 1978, after the death of fascist dictator Francisco Franco.

As the World Socialist Web Site noted, “The putsch has laid bare the class forces served by the PSOE and the Spanish political system. It has shown how capitalist politicians, the media and the state machine ruthlessly do the bidding of the banks, corporations, and the leading imperialist powers. If elections do not produce the desired result—in this case, a right-wing government planning austerity, attacks on democratic rights and preparations for war—they simply impose it. To do so, they are quite willing to toss aside small fry like Sánchez.”

The coup, however, has not resolved the crisis of bourgeois rule. The PP minority government, supported by little more than a third of the parliament, is weak and unpopular. Moreover, it is embroiled in one corruption scandal after another, implementing savage austerity measures, drastically increasing the military budget and is divided over whether to orient towards Berlin and the European Union or the US under the aggressively nationalist and protectionist Trump administration. To pass laws, the PP government depends on the direct support of the PSOE in parliament.

The question now being fought out between the main contenders in the PSOE leadership contest—ousted PSOE former leader Sánchez and current state premier of Andalusia, Susana Díaz—is whether the PSOE should continue propping up the PP minority government, or whether the PSOE should dress itself up as a “left” alternative by allying with the pseudo-left Podemos in preparation for the PP’s possible collapse.

Although both candidates have called for unity, the differences are such that they threaten to break up the party. HSBC economist Fabio Balboni has stated, “Depending on who wins, we could see a shift of the party to the left (Pedro Sánchez) or the centre (Susana Díaz), with a risk of a possible party split and, particularly in the first case, a tougher opposition to the PP-minority government.”

Díaz is the clear favourite of the ruling class, with the backing of virtually all the media, the support of the PSOE interim committee (supposedly a neutral organ in the power struggle), previous PSOE prime ministers, including her mentor González and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and dozens of former ministers and regional premiers.

During the coup against Sánchez, she played the leading role in attacking him, defending an abstention to allow the PP to come to power for “the good of Spain.”

Díaz has accused Sánchez of being Podemos’ lackey in the PSOE, claiming that if he wins, the PSOE will be handed over to Podemos: “It’s one thing to forge pacts and another to give yourself over to someone else or even imitate them,” Diaz said in a rally. She has vowed, “to struggle against … populism [i.e., Podemos] and regional separatism.”

The Sánchez faction calculates that the continued survival of the PSOE depends on the incorporation of the pseudo-left Podemos into a PSOE-led “left alliance” government—as he had attempted to do before the coup against him—in order to control the working class. He has also called for “unity of action” with the trade unions and other “left” forces.

Sánchez represents factions of the ruling class who are concerned that the PSOE, one of the pillars of the post-Franco era, will be destroyed—as has its social democratic equivalents in Greece, PASOK, and France, the Socialist Party (PS)—if it continues its support for the PP. The PSOE has already suffered disastrous results in national elections, dropping from 44 percent of the popular vote in 2008 to its current 22 percent.

Sánchez made this clear in a recent interview when he said, “I am especially concerned about the lack of trust that exists between our members and part of the leadership. And I think our project can humbly repair those wounds. It can rebuild the lost unity between the militants and the leaders, and also the credibility lost to our voters.”

Díaz opposes an alliance with Podemos, despite its pronounced shift to the right; for fear that such an alliance might still serve to arouse left-wing anti-capitalist sentiments in broader layers of the population that neither the PSOE nor Podemos would be able to control. She has even attempted to use the disastrous results of the PSOE’s French counterparts in the April 23 presidential elections as an example of failure resulting from adopting “radical policies”!

Díaz declared, “We should learn from that [the French Socialist Party’s results], when radical positions are taken, people punish us, move away from us.”

Díaz omitted any mention of the fact that the Socialist Party’s (PS) meltdown in France, with its presidential candidate Benoît Hamon winning barely more than six percent of the vote, is due to the hatred engendered by the current PS government’s austerity measures, warmongering and attacks on democratic rights. The PSOE’s own pro-austerity track record includes the programme implemented by her regional government in Andalusia, one of the poorest regions in Spain, with the second highest unemployment level at 28 percent.

Sánchez is in no position to attack his foes’ austerity measures or those implemented previously by the PSOE governments—voting for them as a parliamentarian in 2009-2011.

Sánchez and Díaz are also fighting over the question of how to deal with the nationalist forces that control the region of Catalonia, one of the wealthiest in Spain, who are pledged to hold a referendum on independence this year, illegal under the Spanish constitution.

Díaz is a hardliner. She has publicly stated, “There will be no referendum” because “it goes against the law”—the same position held by the PP government. Sánchez, on the contrary, defends giving symbolic concessions, such as Catalonia being recognized as a “nation” in the country’s constitution. Sánchez has also defended the federalist proposal of the PSOE’s sister Catalan Socialist Party.

Regardless of the differences, both candidates agree that the minority PP government should remain in power as long as possible. Last month, Sánchez said in an interview, “We can say no to Rajoy without the need to put forward a no confidence vote”, and that “we cannot call for new elections once again”.

Last week, he described the no confidence proposal, put forward by Podemos in parliament because of the latest corruption scandals of the PP, as making “no sense” and called on Rajoy to resign to save his government.

Podemos has called for support for Sánchez. Its leader Pablo Iglesias has said that he would aim to negotiate with the PSOE to form a government, declaring, “If you are in politics, it is to rule.”

Podemos’ no confidence vote, impossible to win without the support of the PSOE, which has dismissed the Podemos initiative as “irresponsible fireworks”, also aims at exposing the PSOE’s pro-PP line, while bolstering the positions of Sánchez within the PSOE to pave its own path to government on behalf of Spanish capital.

Mass casualties in latest refugee tragedy off Libyan coast

Martin Kreickenbaum

More than 100 refugees are feared drowned off the Libyan coast during a crossing to Europe. According to a spokesperson for the German aid organisation Jugend Rettet (Youth Rescue), Pauline Schmidt, volunteers discovered an empty inflatable boat off the Libyan coast capable of carrying up to 140 people. In addition, Doctors Without Borders crew members on the chartered ship Prudence pulled five bodies from the sea a few nautical miles away.

On Saturday, the Italian coast guard reported a distress call from a refugee boat in foggy conditions with high waves, prompting the ship Juventa from Jugend Rettet to initiate a search. The crew then discovered the empty inflatable boat near the Libyan port of Suvara.

One could assume an accident had occurred, Schmidt said, because the wreck had not been long at sea and did not show the typical signs left behind by rescuers. It was also unlikely that Libyan fishermen had saved the occupants, since the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has not reported any such operations over recent days. The IOM was also informed about the discovery of some 30 bodies on a beach just 30 kilometres from Suvara.

Following the latest catastrophe, the number of refugees drowned on the central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy this year rose to almost 1,150. At the same time, around 38,000 refugees have reached the Italian coast via this route, more than in the same period last year. Over the Easter weekend alone, around 8,500 refugees were rescued from the Mediterranean and brought to Italy.

Leading politicians in the European Union (EU) respond with indifference to the daily dramas and tragedies facing refugees on the Mediterranean. They continue to militarily fortify Europe’s external borders to seal them off against refugees. At the same time, they are turning conditions for refugees in the camps on the Greek and Italian islands, or on the Hungarian-Serbian border, into a living hell. Refugees are being deported en masse, and nationalism and xenophobia are being deliberately provoked.

The major powers, France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the United States, have laid waste to entire countries in the Middle East and North Africa with their imperialist wars, forcing millions of people to flee. But in its boundless cynicism, the EU makes smugglers responsible for the movement of refugees towards Europe. The EU is criminalising refugees as illegal immigrants, even though there is no legal route to Europe and the refugees are dependent on the unscrupulous services of the smugglers.

The EU-led operation “Sophia” has been ongoing in the Mediterranean for two years to take action against smugglers and close off travel routes. Warships, planes, helicopters, drones and border guards from 22 European countries have been deployed since then to prevent refugees from reaching Europe. Shortly before, the Italian mission “Mare Nostrum” was halted under pressure from the EU after it was denounced as an additional “pull factor” encouraging refugees to set out by sea.

The Sophia mission was never planned as a rescue operation. Those politicians responsible within the EU consciously accepted the fact that casualties in the Mediterranean would rise drastically. This was even welcomed as a means of deterrence.

Despite this, the number of refugees on the central Mediterranean route has continued to rise, which has not stopped the same arguments from being repeated—this time against the rescue ships owned by international aid organisations operating off the Libyan coast.

In December 2016, the EU’s border and coast guard protection agency, Frontex, filed its first complaint against the activities of international aid organisations in the Mediterranean. In February, Frontex head Fabricio Leggeri went further. He told the daily Die Welt that the work of the aid organisations resulted in “smugglers forcing even more people onto unseaworthy boats than in previous years.”

Yet it is not the smugglers who force refugees onto unseaworthy boats, but the wars and civil wars, repression and persecution by despotic regimes that are closely collaborating with the EU to deter refugees, and the basic struggle to survive.

The “pull factor” is not the rescue boats, but the EU’s own policies of deterrence. Samer Haddadin, head of the UNHCR in Tripoli, stated recently that the more the EU shouts about the invasion of refugees and calls for their deportation, the more refugees are prepared to set off for Europe.

But the attacks on aid organisations have been welcomed by the media and anti-immigrant parties in Europe. A leading role in this has been played by Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S) in Italy, which described the boats as “taxis” and accused the aid organisations of being paid by the smugglers.

The M5S received backing from Sicilian state prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro, who accused the aid organisations in Italy’s La Stampa of having direct contact with people smugglers in Libya, without presenting a single scrap of evidence to back up this claim.

In addition, Frontex head Leggeri complained that the aid organisations were now conducting 40 percent of all rescue missions in the Mediterranean, whereas a year ago it was just 5 percent. “We should review the current concept for rescue measures off the Libyan coast,” he told Die Welt .

An idea of how this would look was provided by a Frontex employee in an interview with T he Intercept: “So as not to become a ‘pull factor’, our ships only patrol north of Malta. We do not travel down to Libyan waters.” This results in refugees being discouraged from setting out for Europe. In other words, Frontex is deliberately abandoning rescue operations so as to deter refugees by allowing them to drown.

Support for Frontex has come chiefly from the Italian, German and Austrian governments. On behalf of his fellow European ministers, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz spoke of “NGO madness”; relying on private rescue operations at sea was “undoubtedly the wrong path.” Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka went so far as to demand “the immediate closure of the Mediterranean route.”

During a surprise trip to Tripoli, Kurz reiterated his demand to immediately send refugees rescued at sea back to Africa. “Rescue in the Mediterranean ought not to be linked to a ticket to Central Europe,” Kurz told journalists during the trip. They should instead be sent to asylum centres outside Europe, he added.

However, there are conflicts within the EU as to whether such centres should be established in Libya, or in Egypt, Tunisia or Algeria. While Kurz excluded Libya, the last EU meeting of interior and justice ministers agreed to create so-called legal islands in Libya. According to the German daily Tageszeitung, in these legal islands, “especially well-armed police” will be responsible for supervising the camps and repatriating refugees to their homelands.

To this end, Frontex has already expanded the support mission for the strengthening of Libya’s borders (EUBAM Libya) and begun the search for appropriate locations for internment camps. In addition, the EU has made available €90 million to help Libya strengthen its borders and prevent refugees from setting out for Europe.

Italy has also promised to supply 10 patrol boats to the Libyan coast guard. The official unity government supported by the EU, under the leadership of Fayiz as-Sarraj, has dispatched another shopping list to the EU, demanding 130 coast guard boats, including five 100-metre-long offshore speedboats, and weaponry.

However, voices are growing within the EU of not working solely with Sarraj, who controls only a fraction of the war-torn country. The French and Italian governments are currently negotiating with his opponent, General Chalifa Haftar, who controls the east of the country and thus the most important oil ports.

One of the main aims in this is to push back Russian influence in Libya so as to enable the Western powers to exploit the country’s rich energy resources. The Russian oil company Rosneft agreed on a cooperation agreement with the Libyan oil corporation, which is controlled by General Haftar.

EU Foreign Representative Federica Mogherini issued mixed messages on the cooperation with the Libyan unity government when she commented, “We always want to ensure that we train the right people and supply the right equipment.” The EU is therefore continuing to expand its military intervention in North Africa. The refugees face the prospect of being ruthlessly crushed between the interests of the local militias and the closed border policy of the EU.

Writers’ Guild of America reaches deal with major studios

Marc Wells

The Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) in the early hours of Tuesday morning, preventing a strike by 12,000 movie and TV writers on the West and East coasts. The new three-year deal must be ratified by union members.

The WGA made it clear throughout the negotiations that it had no desire to launch a strike, although its members had overwhelmingly authorized a walkout against the Hollywood studios and major broadcast and cable TV networks. While trying to mollify the anger of writers—who have faced years of stagnant or declining incomes—the WGA conceded to a deal that minimizes the financial impact on the entertainment giants.

The six largest studios—Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures—collectively reported more than $50 billion in operating profits in 2016.

In a statement announcing the deal, the WGA wrote, “Did we get everything we wanted? No. Everything we deserve? Certainly not. But because we had the near-unanimous backing of you and your fellow writers, we were able to achieve a deal that will net this Guild’s members $130 million more, over the life of the contract, than the pattern we were expected to accept.”

Just a few weeks ago, the Guild announced its initial demands would cost the producers $178 million over three years.

While the full details are still unknown, several reports say the AMPTP planned to increase its contribution to the union’s depleted health care fund by up to $90 million, leaving little else to meet the writers’ other demands.

The deal reportedly includes a 15 percent increase in Pay TV residuals, roughly $15 million in increases in High-Budget SVOD (Streaming Video on Demand) residuals, a 2.4 coefficient on episodic fees and residuals for comedy-variety writers in Pay TV.

This is a drop in the bucket, in an industry that is quickly shifting towards SVOD. The deal solves none of the issues that caused writers to suffer an average 23 percent decline in living standards in 2015-2016. It also fails to establish any provision that would guarantee substantial residuals in the utilization of new media.

There is another significant factor in the context of this contract renewal: unlike in 2007-2008, outfits like Netflix and Amazon now represent a major alternative to the traditional TV programming system, in fact becoming its rivals.

Preparing for the possibility of a writers’ strike, the streaming giants, who are not signatories of the AMPTP-WGA deal, found themselves in a privileged position. An unnamed executive from one of the streamers stated two weeks ago, “Most of our series in the pipeline to debut in the next six months are already deep in post, so we’re good there.”

Additionally, had a strike occurred, the Netflix/Amazon/Hulu streamers would likely see an instant increase in subscriptions, since Hollywood programming would be affected by the strike and possibly come to a halt. Rumors that Netflix was pursuing a side deal with the WGA were echoing throughout Hollywood’s executive circles during the recent strike vote.

The AMPTP was fully aware of this and relied on the WGA’s services to avoid a scenario where the traditional broadcasters’ competitors would have exploited the strike to gain substantial audiences.

Despite “the pitchforks out among the writers” and “a bigger stick to take back to resumed talks with AMPTP,” as the Editors’ Guild described the situation before the tentative deal was reached, the WGA proceeded in the opposite direction, accommodating the media giants’ demands and, in fact, laying the foundation for even worse future deals.

Writers, like other sections of workers, find themselves caught in the crossfire of major contradictions. As technological advancements offer the possibility of progressive new forms of content distribution, competition among massive corporations in the pursuit of profits determines the course of events.

The WGA, like other unions, accepts and operates within this capitalist framework, ultimately imposing upon its members whatever the corporate giants deem necessary to improve their profitability and competitiveness.

The AFL-CIO, which limited strike activity during the eight years of the Obama administration to the lowest level in modern history, is doing everything possible to suppress the class struggle once again as the unions cozy up to Trump based on their shared outlook of economic nationalism.

Despite overwhelming votes to authorize strikes—at AT&T West, AT&T wireless, UPS aircraft mechanics and other locations—growing anger by teachers and other public sector workers over Trump’s attack on public education, and logistics workers living and working in horrifying conditions, the unions’ watchword is “no strikes.” The labor bureaucracy fears the eruption of the class struggle because it would undermine the corporatist relations it enjoys with the corporations and lead to a direct confrontation not only with Trump and the Republicans, but the unions’ allies in the Democratic Party.

Writers should reject the current sellout agreement and organize rank-and-file committees to mobilize workers throughout the industry and beyond to fight the entertainment corporations. But broader political questions must be raised if a serious struggle is to go forward. The fight for the political independence of the working class and international unity of workers must be the point of departure for a strategy to overthrow the corporate control over culture and every aspect of life.

Indian military given green light to strike Pakistan

Keith Jones

Relations between India and Pakistan are again on the boil, just months after South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed powers came to the brink of war.

India is claiming that Pakistani troops snuck across the Line of Control in disputed Kashmir Monday, killed two Indian soldiers, and beheaded their corpses. The country’s Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has reportedly instructed the military to retaliate as it sees fit, suggesting an Indian cross-border attack on Pakistan or some other military action is imminent.

Indian Defence Minister Arun Jaitley vowed Monday that the “sacrifice” of the Border Security Force personnel “will not go in vain,” adding India’s armed forces “will respond appropriately.” This language echoes that employed by Prime Minster Narendra Modi and other members of the BJP government last September in the days before Indian Special Forces struck “terrorist launch pads” in Pakistan-administered Kashmir—an illegal and highly provocative action that Modi, his BJP, and the Indian media celebrated as the end of Indian “strategic restraint” in its dealings with Pakistan.

Indian Vice Army Chief Sarath Chand denounced the Pakistani military for carrying out “extreme barbaric acts” not even seen “during war” at a press conference yesterday. He pledged Pakistan would suffer consequences, but said that rather than making threats, India’s military “will focus on our action at a time and place of our choosing.”

The principal opposition party, the Congress Party, has joined in the warmongering. “Give free hand to the army to act against those behind mutilation of two Indian soldiers,” A.K. Antony, the Congress leader who served as India’s defence minister for eight years ending in 2014, told a press conference. For his part, former Congress Minister Kapil Sibal chided the Modi government for being too conciliatory to Pakistan. He urged India’s prime minister to “remove his bangles and show what you can do.”

Pakistan has denied any of its military personnel entered Indian-held Kashmir or clashed with Indian Border Forces on Monday. Pakistan’s Director General of Military Operations, Maj. Gen. Sahir Shamshad Mirza, said the Indian claims of a Pakistani incursion, ambush and desecration of dead Indian soldiers were an “attempt to divert the attention of the world” from the popular unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only majority-Muslim state.

Responding to the Indian threats in kind, Mirza said “any misadventure,” i.e. Indian attack, “shall be appropriately responded at a place and time of [our] own choosing.”

The “surgical strikes” that India’s Special Forces mounted inside Pakistan last fall were followed by two months of daily cross-border artillery shelling and gunfire in which scores of Indian and Pakistani villagers and military personnel died. While the clashes subsided in late November, there was no resumption of even the strained ties that for have decades characterized Indo-Pakistani relations. Moreover, both sides have continued to make bellicose threats, including about the possible use of nuclear weapons in an all-out war, and staged tit-for-tat tests of nuclear-capable missiles.

The Indian-Pakistani strategic rivalry is rooted in the 1947 communal partition of the subcontinent, implemented by rival factions of the national bourgeoisie and the subcontinent’s departing British colonial overlords. But since the beginning of this century it has become ever more enmeshed with the increasingly explosive cleavage between US imperialism and a rising China.

Washington has overturned the balance of power in South Asia, downgrading its ties with its longtime ally Pakistan so as to woo India. With the aim of harnessing New Delhi to US global strategy, above all its military-strategic offensive against China, Washington, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, has showered strategic favours on India, including creating a special status for it in the world nuclear-regulatory regime and, more recently, giving it access equal to that of the most-trusted US allies to advanced Pentagon weapon systems.

Under the three-year-old Modi government, India has dramatically increased its integration into Washington’s anti-China “Pivot to Asia.” Last August it granted the US military routine access to Indian air bases and ports to refuel, resupply and repair its warplanes and battleships, and under a recently concluded agreement the ships of the US Seventh Fleet, the naval force at the center of war planning against China, will be serviced in India. India is also rapidly expanding bilateral and trilateral military and security ties with Washington’s principal Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

Emboldened by its burgeoning partnership with the US and rattled by the size and tenacity of the anti-Indian protests in Kashmir, the BJP government is determined to change the “rules of the game” in its relations with Islamabad. It is adamant that as a precondition for any resumption of high-level ties, let alone “normalization” of relations, Islamabad must demonstrably prevent all logistical support from Pakistan for the anti-Indian insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir.

As the Indo-US alliance has strengthened and India has become more aggressive, Pakistan and China have responded by drawing closer together. This is exemplified by the $50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, which by linking Pakistan’s Arabian seaport of Gwadar with western China will partially offset US plans to impose an economic blockade on China in the event of a war or war crisis.

India’s elite, meanwhile, bitterly resents the economic and military support Beijing has provided Islamabad. The Indian press routinely rails against China and on assuming his new command in January, India’s army head, Gen. Bipin Rawat, boasted about India’s capacity to fight a “two-front” war against Pakistan and China simultaneously.

Last month tensions between New Delhi on the one hand and Islamabad and Beijing on the other continued to sharpen.

The Pakistani high command, apparently without even informing the civilian government, announced that a military court had sentenced to death an alleged Indian spy, Kulbushan Sudhir Jadhav, whom it claims was liaising with anti-Pakistan, Balochi separatist insurgents. India acknowledges that Jadhav is a former naval officer, but denies that he was engaged in spying and even in Pakistan. Rather it claims, he was kidnapped in the Iranian city of Chabahar and transported to Pakistan.

In any event, New Delhi has condemned Jadhav’s conviction and sentencing in the strongest terms and cited it as further reason to freeze diplomatic relations with Islamabad.

China, meanwhile, denounced in very strong terms the BJP government’s welcoming of the Dali Lama, who made a high-profile tour of Arunachal Pradesh, territory claimed by China as “southern Tibet.” The BJP Chief Minister of Arunachal, Pema Khandu, responded to the Chinese criticism by provocatively declaring that India does not share a border with China, but with Tibet.

The Obama administration first implicitly and then explicitly supported India’s “surgical strikes” inside Pakistan claiming that it was a legitimate response to terrorist incursions.

The Trump administration has made clear that it wants to deepen and expand the Indo-US alliance. It has yet to publicly state any position on the legitimacy of Indian retaliation for the alleged attack this Monday, but there is no question the Modi government is taking encouragement from US belligerence around the world, including last month’s dropping of the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal on Afghanistan.

Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Grants for Sub-Saharan African (Including Sudan) Researchers 2017

Application Deadline:  Sunday 25th June 2017.

Eligible Countries:  Sub-Saharan African Countries (Including Sudan)

Fields of Grant: Applications should generally fall into one of these four research-related categories:

1. Workshop/research training course, in Africa
2. Travel between Cambridge and Africa
3. Research Project
4. Equipment

About the Award: The Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund competitively awards grants of between £1,000 and £20,000, for:

• research costs (such as reagents, fieldwork and equipment)
• research-related travel between Cambridge and Africa
• conducting research training activities in Africa (e.g. setting up courses/workshops).

To date, 116 awards have been made, to enable Cambridge researchers to engage with African researchers from 14 African countries. Some awardees have been able to use the preliminary results from their seed fund research/collaboration to apply for and win significant funding (e.g. Royal Society/Leverhulme Awards, Global Challenges Research Fund, etc.).

Type: Grants

Eligibility: 

• Applications should be submitted jointly by an applicant based in Cambridge and an applicant based in a university or research institution in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Both applicants must be at post-doctoral level or above, and by completing an 2 application it is understood that they are both doing so with support from their Senior Researcher/Head of Group/Principle Investigator, if they are not in this position themselves.
• Both applicants should have a formal link to a research group/department/faculty in their home institution.
• The Cambridge applicant must be either working at the University of Cambridge, or at a research Institute affiliated with the University. Previous successful Cambridge applicants have included those from: Wellcome-Trust Sanger Institute; MRC Human Nutrition Research; National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB).
• The African applicant must be from a sub-Saharan African research Institution or university. The Cambridge applicants will act as the lead applicants, for administrative purposes, as the awards have to be paid to their Cambridge departments/faculties/institutes.
• Requests for additional support from returning Cambridge or African recipients will only be considered in the following instances:
  • For supporting courses and workshops in Africa that have been previously funded, or are new. Applicants must provide justification that includes evidence that other sources of funding have been sought, and what plans there are for future funding sustainability. Also, a report(s) should have been submitted for the previous funding received
  • Request for funding for research (reagents, equipment or travel) with the old or a new collaborator, but for a new project. Report(s) should have been submitted for the previous funding received.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Program: Grants are between £1,000 and £20,000. Awards will range from £1,000 – £20,000, and limits apply for categories as follows:

• Maximum of £20,000 for applications in the sciences (including equipment)
• Maximum of £6,000 for applications in the social sciences and humanities
• Maximum of £5,000 for a workshop/course in Africa
• Maximum of £3,000 for a travel award

How to Apply: 

• The online application form has been designed to allow both applicants (Cambridge- and Africa-based) to log in, update, save and eventually submit electronically.
• To access the form, the Cambridge based applicant must Register Here. Only applicants with @cam.ac.uk, @sanger.ac.uk and @niab.ac.uk email addresses can register.
• The Cambridge-based applicant must then log in to the ALBORADA Research Fund application form, where they will see the words “Invite a 2nd applicant to view/edit this submission”. Click on this link in order to invite the Africa-based applicant to register and edit the forms.

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: The ALBORADA Trust.

Important Notes:  All equipment purchased using the Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund must be for use in Africa, and must remain with the African partner institution/university upon completion of the project.

Swansea University School of Management Developing Futures Scholarship Program 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 11th August 2017.

Offered Annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): UK

About the Award: Our Developing Futures programme is more than a scholarship package, along with financial support for an academic year you will also get the chance to gain valuable career-enhancing skills.  Recipients of the scholarship will be required to work with the Recruitment and Marketing teams on three events, plus one event for the Student Experience team and the Careers team.  Recipients are also expected to join a society or become a course representative for their degree programme.

Type: Postgraduate (Masters)

Eligibility: Swansea University will take into consideration the student’s:

• Academic competence
• Financial need
• Passion and future plans
• Ability and plans to contribute back to the School and University.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Program: Financial support as well as the chance to gain valuable career-enhancing skills.

Duration of Program: 1 year

How to Apply: You’ll need to download and complete the Scholarship Application Form and return it by email.

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: Swansea University

Postcode Lottery Green Challenge for Innovative Entrepreneurs 2017

Application Deadline: 1st June 2017.

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Amsterdam, The Netherlands

About the Award: The Postcode Lottery Green Challenge is one of the world’s largest competitions in the field of sustainable entrepreneurship. From 1 March 2017 until 1 June 2017, green start-ups from all over the world can submit their promising sustainable business plans to the the 11th edition. The winner will receive €500,000 to further develop the product or service, and to bring it to market. The runner-up will receive €200,000. An international jury selects the winner and runner-up.

The Dutch Postcode Lottery started the competition in 2007, after being inspired by president Clinton to look for those dedicated entrepreneurs with brilliant green business plans. Plans that are ready to speed up the transition towards a low carbon economy. The answers to the issues of our time are already in front of us. But it takes entrepreneurs like the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge finalists to present us with sustainable solutions and get them out into the world.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: Candidate should:

• be willing to bring your idea to market yourself, and to commit to working with any organisation necessary for developing the product and/or implementing the service
• be 18 years or older
• agree with all Terms & Conditions
• fully complete all the questions on the entry form in English
• be willing to attend the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge in Amsterdam if you are selected as a finalist to present your idea to the jury (reasonable travel and lodging expenses for one person per finalist will be reimbursed)

Selection Process:  The Plan:

• should have the potential to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by an amount you can roughly estimate
• should be developed enough to execute
• should be realisable as a usable product or service within the next two years
• should preferably have integrated Cradle2Cradle principles in the designs

Besides these criteria, the jury will also look at factors such as: communication potential, courageousness and creativity.

Selection Process: Five finalists will be selected Mid-August for the final round of the competition. If you have been selected you will be invited to come to the grand final Amsterdam on September 14. There you will present your business plan in front of a selected audience and an international panel of experts.

Value of Program: The winner receives €500,000 to further develop their service or product and bring it to market within the next two year. The runner-up will receive €200,000.

Duration of Program: June 2 – September 14, 2017

How to Apply: APPLY

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: The Dutch Postcode Lottery