White House in turmoil as special counsel expands Russia probe

Barry Grey

Amid reports that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is expanding his investigation into alleged Russian interference in the US elections and collusion by the Trump campaign, the intensifying conflict within the American ruling class and state is bringing long-simmering conflicts within the Trump administration to the boiling point.

The internal crisis erupted Friday with the resignation of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. This followed by one day the resignation of the chief spokesman for President Donald Trump’s outside legal team, Mark Corallo, and the demotion of the lead attorney, Marc Kasowitz.

These developments came after Trump’s extraordinary interview with the New York Times, in which the president denounced his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself in the Russia probe, and criticized the deputy attorney general and acting head of the FBI. Trump went on to accuse Mueller of conflicts of interest and attack his decision to investigate his business dealings as well as those of family members and close associates as a “violation” of the special counsel’s mandate.

Washington insiders suggested that Trump was seeking to create a justification for firing Mueller, prompting the Los Angeles Times to editorialize in favor of impeachment should that occur.

Spicer’s resignation was triggered by Trump’s appointment of Anthony Scaramucci, a multimillionaire Wall Street hedge fund operator, former Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers banker and Fox News commentator, as White House communications director. Spicer, who had been filling that role since the resignation last May of Mike Dubke, vehemently opposed Scaramucci’s appointment, according to multiple media reports. In this he was joined by White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and chief White House political adviser Stephen Bannon.

Aligned against them and pushing for Scaramucci’s appointment were Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, generally regarded as Trump’s top White House aide.

Priebus, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, had a long association with Spicer, who served as the RNC’s spokesman. He brought Spicer into the White House. While Priebus declared his support for Scaramucci following the announcement of his appointment, Priebus’s own position is increasingly problematic and his departure is widely considered only a matter of time.

With the elevation by Trump of a fellow member of the Wall Street kleptocracy to head White House communications, the billionaire president is increasingly narrowing his circle to fellow oligarchs and close family and distancing himself from the Republican Party establishment.

This appears to coincide with a decision to adopt a more aggressive posture toward Mueller. Mark Corralo, the legal spokesman who resigned on Thursday, was known to have opposed public criticism of the special counsel.

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times escalated the factional warfare against the White House on Friday with front-page reports, citing anonymous administration sources, of efforts by Trump lawyers to document conflicts of interest within Mueller’s team of prosecutors. The Post reported that Trump is making inquiries about his powers to pardon potential targets of the investigation, including himself.

These actions are in response to aggressive moves by Mueller to expand his probe. On Thursday, Bloomberg News reported that Mueller’s team is looking into Trump business operations going back a number of years and has subpoenaed banks for Trump’s financial records. Media reports say Trump is particularly agitated over the likelihood that Mueller will obtain his tax returns, which the president has refused to release to the public.

Parallel investigations by congressional committees are also expanding. On Monday, Kushner is scheduled to be interviewed in private by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the meeting held in June of 2016 involving him, Donald Trump Jr., then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin as well as other prominent Russians. The Senate Judiciary Committee has summoned Trump Jr. and Manafort to testify in a public session next Wednesday to discuss the meeting, and the Republican chairman, Charles Grassley, has said he will subpoena them if they balk at appearing.

It was also reported Friday that Mueller instructed the White House and the Trump campaign members who attended the June 2016 meeting to preserve all records relating to it.

It is increasingly unlikely that the factional battle within the ruling class will end in a peaceful compromise. There are powerful sections of the corporate-financial elite who would like to see Trump removed, but are not sure how to do it and fearful of the implications. At the same time, the longer the impasse drags on, the greater the dangers.

At some point, the political crisis will trigger an implosion of the massively inflated financial markets, plunging US and world capitalism into an even deeper crisis than that of September 2008. And the longer the political warfare in Washington continues, the greater the danger that it will provide an opening for the pent-up anger and frustration of the working class to explode into mass struggle.

This is a crisis of class rule without historical precedent. It unfolds against the backdrop, and is fueled by, intensifying economic, social and geopolitical crises. American and world capitalism remains mired in economic stagnation, intensifying the descent into trade war and, ultimately, military conflict among the major powers. Militarism and war are on rise in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and the American military is operating without any civilian restraint. Class tensions are rising in parallel with relentless austerity and growing social inequality.

American global hegemony is breaking down. Large sections of the ruling elite are appalled and frightened by the growing isolation of the United States in the affairs of world imperialism, as demonstrated at the recent G20 summit in Germany.

And at the summit of the state, the White House is occupied by an outright gangster, the product and embodiment of the degraded and criminal state of American bourgeois political culture. In Trump, the ruling class confronts a nightmare of its own making—a Frankenstein’s monster—a would-be Bonaparte who has brought into the White House the mafia methods he employs in his business operations.

Scaramucci summed up the outlook of the oligarchy both he and Trump represent when on Friday, at his first White House press briefing, he wished Spicer well and said, “I hope he goes on to make a tremendous amount of money.”

Nor is there the slightest progressive or democratic content to the anti-Trump opposition of the Democratic Party and major media outlets, in alliance with the intelligence agencies. The Democrats are not conducting a struggle against Trump’s brutal social attacks or his onslaught on immigrants and democratic rights. They are entirely focused on their hysterical campaign against Russia, attacking Trump for refusing to prioritize and intensify the warmongering drive against Moscow initiated by the Obama administration. They demand an escalation of the war for regime change in Syria and the military confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia in Eastern Europe.

At the same time, Trump’s ruling-class opponents are concerned over the new administration’s open and unabashed corruption, fearing that Trump is subordinating the basic geopolitical interests of American imperialism to his own business interests and those of his family.

It is imperative that the working class take advantage of the political crisis to intervene independently in defense of its own interests—for jobs, health care, education, immigrant and democratic rights, and peace—against both factions of the ruling elite. It must not allow its opposition to Trump to be channeled behind the Democratic Party.

There is a real danger that Trump will respond to the isolation of his administration by escalating the ongoing wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan or initiating new ones to channel political and social opposition against a foreign “enemy” and undercut his ruling-class opponents.

Without a revival of working-class struggle on the basis of a socialist program in opposition to the entire economic and political system, the outcome of the crisis, whoever is president, will be a further shift to dictatorial methods of rule and an expansion of militarism and war.

The conditions for such a struggle are rapidly maturing. The urgent task of the day is to consciously prepare that movement by building the Socialist Equality Party as the new political leadership of the working class.

Killing continues in Colombia as FARC disarms

Carlota Duran 

After 52 years, the oldest world’s guerrilla group has laid down its arms. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos last week signed an amnesty covering 3,252 members of the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), the last of three such decrees covering a total of 6,005 guerrillas. Another 1,400, many of whom are in prison, are being sent before judges to secure amnesty.

The decrees follow the appearance by Santos, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative and Head of the UN Mission for Colombia, Jean Arnault, and FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño, also known as Timochenko, at a ceremonial surrender of weapons in Mesetas, Colombia on June 27.

At the event, the UN inspectors verified a container filled with rifles as a symbolic act, leading to a collection and counting of all FARC weapons.

"Rodrigo Londoño, ‘Timochenko’," shouted to the guerrillas at the Mesetas Camp: “Goodbye, weapons! Goodbye, war!”

The guerrillas have moved to temporary demobilization camps, established also as “Gun Drop Zones,” where thy have been slowly handing over their guns, reaching 7,132 according to the latest report. For security reasons some weapons will remain in the camps until August 1, but for the most part, the UN inspectors said, disarmament is essentially complete.

According to media reports, the collected weapons are being packed for shipment out of Colombia and, in some cases, will be melted down and used to build monuments.

President Juan Manuel Santos said in an interview on July 1, 2017: “The disarmament of the members of the FARC registered in the country zones is complete. The recovery of weapons in the hideouts is underway. We hope that the United Nations, supported by the police, will have an inventory of these weapons on the first of September.”

However, two weeks after the widely publicized event in Mesetas, the United Nations Mission accused Colombia’s government of “undermining the country’s peace process by failing to release imprisoned FARC members and protect disarmed guerrillas as promised in a peace deal with the country’s oldest and largest rebel group.”

In a press release, the UN Mission said the government should “act responsibly and swiftly to put an end to a situation that weakens peace building.” The statement continued: “The detention of members of the FARC-EP in prisons six months after the congressional approval of the Amnesty Law and two weeks after the disarmament of individuals undermines the reintegration process and the consolidation of peace.”

In fact, more than 1,400 imprisoned FARC members went on hunger strike, claiming their freedom as promised in the peace deal signed on November 24, 2016 and ratified by Congress in an amnesty law a few days later.

In addition, the Santos government has failed to send in troops to take control of territory abandoned by the FARC, creating insecurity and leading to the assassination of more than 50 social leaders, six demobilized FARC rebels and nine family members of former guerrillas.

As the UN noted “the insecurity of FARC members in the demobilization zones, illustrated by the cases of threats and assassination against them and their family members” weakens the prospects of peace in Colombia. Santos, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the deal with the FARC, has been criticized for failing to comply with the peace agreement.

The unfolding of this process threatens to escalate the violence on the part of already dangerous and violent right-wing paramilitary gangs like the “Urabeños,” ”Rastrojos,” “Aguilas Negras” and others, as well as the so-called “Bacrim” (Bandas Criminales—Criminal Gangs) or Colombia’s organized crime, which are ready to move into the vacuum left by the FARC’s demobilization. In many cases, this involves seizing territory where the FARC collected “taxes” from farmers cultivating coca and drug traffickers, with the right-wing paramilitaries intending to do the same.

According to the World Bank data, Colombia is the most unequal country in Latin America after Guatemala.

“In Colombia, the top 10 percent of the richest people earn at least four times more than the bottom 40 percent,” according to the bank. “Additionally, 77.6 percent of land in the country is owned by only 13.7 percent of the country’s inhabitants.”

From their origins in 1964, the FARC made agrarian reform the very core of its political program. It embraced the conceptions of peasant-based revolution propounded by Maoism and Castroism, even as Colombia was becoming an increasingly urban society, with today less than a fifth of the population left in the agricultural sector.

While the peace deal signed between the guerrilla movement and the government includes an agrarian reform provision, the measures envisioned will do nothing to resolve the historic problem of latifundia and the grinding oppression of the peasants and rural poor. Under the control of the Santos government, the so-called “reform” will be used to open up large areas formerly contested by the FARC to exploitation by foreign mining companies and agribusiness.

The FARC has begun the process of transforming itself into a political party in alliance with the Stalinist Colombia Communist Party (Partido Comunista Colombiano-PCC).

The PCC and the FARC announced earlier this month that they would seek to create a political alliance ahead of the country’s 2018 elections. The decision was revealed at the opening of the 22nd Congress of the PCC, which was attended by several FARC members. One of the leaders of the PCC declared: “The PCC and the FARC are “all anxious for the development ... of the new party or political movement.”

There are precedents in Colombia for such a development. The M-19 (19th of April Movement) Castroite guerrilla group disarmed itself at the end of the 1980s, with its members receiving small business loans from the government and its leaders becoming bourgeois politicians, one of whom, Gustavo Petro, is the current mayor of Bogota.

The FARC itself sought to turn to bourgeois politics in the 1980s, integrating itself into a political party known as Union Patriotica (UP). While the party enjoyed some initial success it was subjected to a ruthless campaign of assassinations, with some 3,000 of its candidates and campaign workers killed by right-wing paramilitaries operating with the support of the military.

Since then, the FARC has seen its numbers decimated and has suffered a considerable loss in popularity with its activities associated more in the mind of the public with the drug trade, kidnappings and extortion than any revolutionary agenda.

While its disarming appears to signal an end to the role played by the FARC in the 52-year-long civil war that claimed the lives of over 265,000 Colombians and displaced some 6 million more, there is no reason to believe that the peace deal will end the endemic violence, the majority of which has always been the work of the army and the paramilitary right.

Meanwhile, the FARC and the PCC will field a party that will serve as a “left” cover for the Santos government as it prepares intensified attacks on the living conditions of the Colombian workers. Facing continued weak oil prices and under pressure from Wall Street investors for further “adjustments,” Finance Minister Mauricio Cardenas has vowed to slash $1.65 billion from next year’s budget.

In the final analysis, the peace deal will do nothing to lessen intense social inequality, endemic state repression, lack of democracy and rampant corruption in a country that constitutes one of the closest allies of the US imperialism in Latin America.

Turkish-Russian missile deal escalates Turkey-NATO conflict

Halil Celik

Amid escalating conflict between Ankara and its NATO allies, and within the Turkish ruling class, over the first anniversary of the failed coup attempt on July 15 of last year, Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik said Tuesday that talks between Ankara and Moscow had reached an agreement on Turkey deploying Russia’s S-400 missile system. This missile system would not be integrated into NATO’s air defence network.

Speaking to journalists in Ankara on Monday, Isik said that negotiations between the Turkish and Russian governments are “on the point of a successful conclusion.” He did not give a date for the signing, however. Alexander Mikheyev, CEO of Russian’s state-run arms exporter Rosoboronexport, also confirmed the purchase agreement.

Bloomberg News reported last week Turkey’s agreement with Russia to purchase one of the world’s most sophisticated missile-defence systems, at a cost of $2.5 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Ankara will purchase two missile batteries from Russia within a year and co-produce two more in Turkey.

Parallel to the announcement of the imminent conclusion of the Turkish-Russian missile deal, Ankara also signed an initial accord with French-Italian consortium Eurosam on the development of another missile defence system.

Speaking July 14 at a reception for Bastille Day in the French embassy in Ankara, the Turkish defence minister said that Turkish companies would work with the Italian-French consortium. According to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency, he “described the move as one of the most concrete developments of Turkey’s alliance within the defence industry.”

Currently, Ankara does not have its own long-range air-defence systems. It relies on Spanish Patriot Advanced Capability-2 and Italian SAMP-T missiles, stationed in 2016 in southeastern Turkey, after the US, Germany and the Netherlands decided to remove their Patriot batteries from the country. This stepped up Ankara’s efforts to acquire its own missile-defence system.

Should it be signed, the S-400 deal would further undermine Ankara’s relations with NATO, especially with the US, as occurred when Turkey decided to buy a long-range air defence system from a Chinese state-run company in 2013. Under US pressure, the Turkish government was forced to scrap the $3.4 billion program altogether in November 2015.

After the project was cancelled and the Turkish air force shot down a Russian bomber on November 24, 2015, undermining Turkish-Russian relations, Ankara expressed its intention to independently develop a missile defence system, This aim was not realized, however, and Ankara turned to Moscow to purchase the S-400 air and missile defence system.

Despite Turkish officials’ numerous statements that the deal with Russia shouldn’t be seen as a search for an alternative to NATO or the EU, the S-400 deal is a blow to these two crisis-ridden imperialist alliances.

By obtaining its first long-range air and anti-missile defence system from Russia, Turkey could conceivably close its skies to NATO fighters if necessary.

Speaking on the S-400 deal, US Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters last Friday that they would “have to see—does it go through? Do they actually employ it? Do they employ it only in one area? All that kind of stuff. But you know, we’ll have to take a look at it.”

The Turkish government, led-by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also knows the risks involved. Due to his inability to comply with US interests and war strategies in Syria contrary to Ankara’s own interests, Erdogan has become the main target of Turkey’s imperialist allies, in a conflict that reached its highest point in the coup attempt of July 15, 2016.

As the coup attempt failed thanks to mass popular opposition, Erdogan and his government openly accused Ankara’s Western allies—especially the US and Germany—of backing the putchists, and banned German parliamentarians from visiting their troops in Turkey.

In response, Berlin decided to redeploy its troops and equipment from the Incirlik base to positions elsewhere, possibly Jordan, while Berlin and its European allies, notably Austria and the Netherlands, banned Turkish government officials from organizing rallies in the campaign on the April 16 Turkish constitutional referendum.

Hypocritically using Erdogan’s post-coup crackdown on the opposition as a pretext, the European Parliament has voted against the continuation of accession talks between Ankara and the EU. Meanwhile on July 7, more than two years of talks in Switzerland between the leaders of Greek and Turkish Cypriots to reunify the divided Cyprus collapsed.

ECB offers reassurance to anxious financial markets

Nick Beams 

The European Central Bank has sought to assure jittery financial markets that the flow of cheap money, which has been so crucial to their activities, is not going to be withdrawn rapidly.

The bank’s governing council, meeting yesterday in Frankfurt, Germany, decided to keep interest rates at their ultra-low, and in some cases negative, levels. It gave no indication of when its €60 billion per month bond-purchasing program might be ended or tapered.

The assurances that the cheap money supply would continue were underscored both in the prepared statement by ECB president Mario Draghi and his response to questions at the press conference after the meeting.

The ECB meeting assumed critical importance for financial markets following a speech by Draghi at an ECB forum in Sintra, Portugal, on June 27 in which he said reflation had replaced the risk of deflation.

This was taken to mean that the ECB was preparing to throttle back on its quantitative easing (QE) program. This led to a rise in bond market yields and an increase in the value of the euro on currency exchanges. Investors anticipated monetary tightening by the ECB and a possible repeat of the 2013 “taper tantrum” when the US Federal Reserve indicated it would pull back on QE.

In his prepared statement, Draghi pointed to an “ongoing expansion” of the euro-zone economy and expressed confidence this would gradually lead to levels of inflation in line with the ECB’s goal of around 2 percent. But he emphasised that the uptick in growth was “yet to translate into stronger inflation dynamics.”

The rationale for the ECB’s present policy is that it must continue until inflation nears the central bank’s target. The latest figures showed prices rises for June at just 1.3 percent, down from the 1.4 percent recorded in May. Draghi said measures of underlying inflation remained at “subdued levels.”

Then came a crucial passage:

“Therefore, a very substantial degree of monetary accommodation is still needed for underlying inflation pressures to gradually build up and support headline inflation developments in the medium term. If the outlook becomes less favourable, or financial conditions become inconsistent with further progress towards a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation, we stand ready to increase our asset purchase program in terms of size and/or duration.”

The last sentence has appeared regularly in past statements. Its removal would be regarded as a signal that the ECB was ready to move toward tightening its monetary policy.

The questions directed to Draghi at his press conference focused on the significance of his remarks at Sintra, as well as the underlying causes for the failure of inflation, despite the injection of billions of euros into the financial system, to even begin to approach the 2 percent target rate.

One questioner pointed to the contrast between Draghi’s comments at Sintra, where he indicated that the weakness in inflation would be temporary, and his statement, following the meeting of the governing council, that he saw no sign of a pickup in the headline rate.

In answers to questions, Draghi insisted he did not comment on market reactions. Yet it was clearly the reaction of the markets to his comments last month that framed the wording of the latest statement. The ECB fears that indications of monetary tightening could spark a difficult to control sell-off. Such is the dependence of bond markets on central bank support—it is the largest trader in this area.

The calculations of both the ECB and the US Federal Reserve have been thrown awry by the breakdown of the so-called Philips curve, which claims to establish a relationship between economic growth, unemployment, wages and inflation. According to this model, as growth begins to revive and unemployment falls, wages should start to increase, leading to a rise in inflation. This is not taking place, either in Europe or the US, where inflation remains persistently below the 2 percent level.

The reason is that the ongoing impact of the global financial crisis of 2008 has shattered the relationships on which this model was based. As Draghi was forced to acknowledge, while the official level of unemployment has fallen, the response of wages was “different from that it was in the past.” That is, wages have continued to stagnate or decline in real terms.

The fall in unemployment, both in the US and Europe, is not the outcome of an increase in full-time jobs, but the product of the growth of part-time and casual working.

According to the ECB’s own figures, when account is taken of the number of people who would take on more work if they could get it, the real level of unemployment—the “U6” measure—is 18 percent, almost double the official jobless rate of 9.3 percent.

In other words, what Marx termed the “industrial reserve army of labour” is exerting downward pressure on wages, despite economic growth showing an increase.

Draghi had elaborated further on this question at the Sintra forum. There he noted that as a result of the financial crisis the number of underemployed—those who wanted more hours or had temporary jobs—had risen. This had “implications for inflation dynamics, since people might prioritise more hours or job security over higher wages in employment negotiations.”

Translating from the language of central bankers, millions of workers, and especially young people, are being forced to accept whatever they can get from employers.

Throughout his term as ECB governor, Draghi has emphasised the importance of “structural reforms”—above all, the ability of employers to scrap national standards for wages and working conditions and impose their own dictates. “Structural reforms that have increased firm-level bargaining may have made wages flexible downwards but not necessarily upwards,” he told the Sintra meeting.

Yesterday’s ECB meeting was another expression of the class agenda that drives all economic policy—the ongoing provision of billions of euros for the finance houses, financial investors and money market operatives, enabling them to continue their wealth gouging, combined with a never-ending offensive against the working class.

Opposition grows to writing French state of emergency into law

Francis Dubois

France's National Assembly voted on July 6 a new prolongation of the state of emergency until November 1 and, with the Senate, discussed on July 18-19 in accelerated proceedings a bill that would inscribe the police powers granted by the state of emergency into common law.

As these bills are examined and discussed in the press, opposition to them is growing. Even inside the academic and NGO circles that largely supported President Emmanuel Macron in this year's presidential elections, it is increasingly widely recognized that he is taking a historic step to build an authoritarian and anti-democratic regime in France.

On July 12, Libération and Médiapart published an appeal signed by 500 academics and researchers criticizing moves towards a permanent state of emergency. “These are measures that gravely menace liberty and that, according to this bill, could be decided by the interior minister or police prefects not in a situation of 'imminent peril,' but more broadly, at any time or place and … [that could be] decided based on simple suspicions,” it declares, concluding: “We cannot accept such a regression of the rule of law.”

In parallel, protests called by a coalition of NGOs, trade unions (including of judges), and of petty-bourgeois parties including the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), the Stalinist French Communist Party, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Unsubmissive France (LFI) took place in Paris on July 1 and 18. They were called on the slogan “No to a permanent state of emergency.” Another protest is scheduled for September 10.

The parties organizing the current protests supported the previous Socialist Party (PS) government of President François Hollande, its “Je suis Charlie” campaign after the January 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo, and the imposition of a state of emergency after the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris. They accepted the suppression of democratic rights under the state of emergency, which deputies of the Left Front coalition between the PCF and Mélenchon voted in the Assembly.

The WSWS for its part consistently opposed the state of emergency, stressing that it would serve to build a police state repressing working class opposition to austerity and imperialist war. It stressed that the state of emergency was not in fact a struggle against the Islamist terror networks carrying out attacks in Paris, which the imperialist powers in fact use in their wars in Syria. It located the more profound causes of the state of emergency in the international crisis of capitalism and the collapse of democratic forms of rule that are incompatible with rising grotesque social inequality.

The perpetrators of the terrorist attacks were individuals well known to intelligence services, who allowed them to circulate freely and operate without hindrance. This was the case of the Kouachi brothers, who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack; of Amédy Coulibaly, who carried out the attack in the Hyper Kosher market in Vincennes the same day; and of Saleh Abdeslam, the key suspect in the November 2015 attacks, who hid for four months near his family home in Brussels while he was supposedly being searched for by every police force in Europe.

The recent attacks in Manchester again revealed the close ties between Western intelligence and the individual carrying out the terror attack. He and his family were well known to the security services, as his family had participated in CIA-led wars in Libya and Syria.

The NPA in particular rapidly and vocally aligned itself with these wars. It defended the war in Libya on the false pretext that it was a “humanitarian” intervention, and Hollande's war in Libya with the false claim that militias dominated by Islamist forces linked to Al Qaeda were leading a “democratic revolution.” This party, integrated into the political machinery that aimed to “sell” imperialist foreign policy to the population, ended up also serving as a cover for the political lies that underlie its repressive domestic policy.

The masses, and above all the working class, are profoundly attached to democratic rights. However, their oppositional struggles will develop along political lines extremely different from those of symbolic protests dominated by parties like LFI, the PCF, and the NPA or other groups close to the PS and the imperialist state machine.

If the warnings that predominate in the current protests point to Macron's dictatorial policy and call for maintaining “the rule of law,” they advance above all the argument that the state of emergency is “not effective against terrorism.” That is, they accept the legitimacy of the “war on terror,” which has served from the beginning as a false pretext for the suppression of democratic rights. One speaker at the protests even proposed to reinforce the intelligence services and to form “on the ground [in Syria] a universal coalition against the Islamic State.”

The speakers at the protest address demands to Macron without mentioning his predecessor, Hollande, to pass over in silence the fact that they supported his policy. They address also the parliament, the July 18 demonstration having passed in front of the Senate, which had just prolonged the state of emergency until November.

If Macron is trying to build a permanent police state in France, it is because he knows that the opposition of the working class will be of an entirely different scale and character than that of the old political satellites of the PS. He has no popular support for his policies of war and austerity, a state of affairs underscored by the unprecedented majority abstention in the legislative elections. His party won a majority in the Assembly with the support of only 16 percent of registered voters.

Broad sections of the population and of youth are openly hostile to Macron's policies; an explosion of the class struggle and a revolutionary confrontation between the working class and the bourgeoisie are being prepared.

The sections of the media and the political establishment who are now concerned by the permanent state of emergency are proposing to preserve the rule of law and capitalism. But it is crisis-ridden capitalism, with its wars and social and economic crises, which is driving the ruling class to try to destroy democratic rights by setting up a permanent police state.

The only viable defense of democratic rights is through the revolutionary mobilization of the working class in France and across Europe in a political struggle against capitalism. It is the only force in society that can secure the overthrow the capitalist class in order to defend and extend democratic rights that are now under profound threat.

Fire risk in most New Zealand high-rise buildings

Tom Peters

The June 14 Grenfell Tower fire in London, which killed at least 80 people, has exposed the life-threatening conditions in which millions of poor and working class people are forced to live in Britain and throughout the world.

The cost-cutting and negligence that led to the Grenfell disaster are rampant in New Zealand. As in Britain, property owners, construction companies, suppliers, local councils and successive governments have been complicit in flouting regulations to cut costs and maximise profits.

The government’s assurances cannot be trusted. Building and Construction Minister Nick Smith told the media the combustible aluminium composite panels that contributed to the immense scale of the Grenfell fire were “not prevalent” in New Zealand and had been banned for new buildings from January this year.

This is the same government that has prevented a proper investigation into the 2010 Pike River mine disaster, which killed 29 men, and shielded those responsible from prosecution. Repairs to thousands of damaged homes overseen by the government insurance agency EQC following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake failed to comply with building standards.

In fact, the dangerous cladding has been available for at least a decade in New Zealand and the extent to which it has been used is not clear. On June 30, the Auckland Council said it would review the safety of 90 buildings with the cladding it had identified in the city, a process that could take several months. So far only two buildings have been named—the Nautilus and Spencer on Byron. The council claims these have other features, including sprinklers, which make them safe.

There are many other fire risks. On July 7, Radio NZ reported that “there is widespread industry agreement that most [multi-storey] buildings have weak points that could accelerate the spread of a big fire and shouldn’t have been signed off as compliant with the Building Code.”

Fairfax Media reported that patients in Christchurch Hospital are at risk of dying from smoke inhalation because of holes in fire protection walls. The District Health Board claimed it was repairing the walls.

Ron Green from the Association of Building Compliance said he had seen hospitals and rest homes with inadequate fire barriers. He had been “shouting about” this for a long time and “the Grenfell disaster, as horrible as it is, has made people aware that things can happen.”

In April 2014, Green told the NZ Security magazine that “99 percent of the buildings I inspect don’t comply with the Building Code and less than 10 percent will be only 60 percent compliant.” The article noted there was “no requirement for contractors or sub-contractors to be trained in the installation” of passive fire protection (PFP) systems, such as fire and smoke barriers, “and no compliance checking for fire stopping.”

A 2008 study of 11 high-rise buildings by the Fire Protection Association found that more than half did not meet the Building Code, primarily because of breaches in smoke and fire barriers.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment dismissed these warnings in 2014. A spokesperson told NZ Security: “We’re aware of some issues but nothing suggests a widespread or endemic issue that needs to be dealt to in particular.”

But Home Owners and Buyers Association (Hobanz) president John Gray told Newstalk ZB on June 15 that all the large building complexes that Hobanz had assisted owners with “have suffered from the lack of proper fire rating and fire protection.” He said Hobanz had “grave concerns” about residents’ safety.

Gray blamed the failings on “willful negligence on the part of the designers, builders and certifiers... These weren’t mistakes... It was a willful and deliberate act to save costs.”

He explained: “We’ve seen building Warrants of Fitness being issued [by council inspectors] and all the boxes being ticked and yet there are glaring omissions in relation to the protection of penetration through cladding, and even the lack of operable smoke detectors and fire alarms.”

Another widespread problem was the lack of “intumescent coatings ... to delay the deformation of the steel [in a fire] so that the building doesn’t immediately collapse.”

The absence of meaningful enforcement of regulations was highlighted by a recent radio NZ report that the Sky World building received a Warrant of Fitness from Auckland Council in January 2016 despite having “multiple defective or broken smoke alarms, smoke detectors, and smoke extraction systems.”

The seven-storey building, housing several shops, a cinema complex and food court, is visited by two million people per year. Auckland Council, which is dominated by the Labour Party and its allies, identified problems with the building in mid-2015 but allowed it to continue to operate.

A Dangerous Building Notice was issued in December 2016 after owner James Kwak refused to make the necessary repairs. The council stated: “In the event of fire, injury or death to any persons in the building or to persons on other property is likely.”

Despite this finding, Sky World was not shut down. It was ordered to take precautions, including employing extra security guards, until the faults were reportedly rectified in May this year.

The fire danger in residential buildings is compounded by overcrowding caused by soaring house prices and rents. Speculation by rich investors has driven up prices for houses, which now sell for more than $NZ1 million on average in Auckland, the largest city.

In 2013 it was estimated that more than 41,000 New Zealanders are homeless, while in Auckland alone 6.6 percent of houses and apartments—33,000—are officially classified as empty. Thousands of people are crammed into expensive rental accommodation, including slum-like boarding houses. In many cases, whole families share the same room.

Successive National and Labour Party governments have deliberately run down public housing for low-income people. Today there are about 64,000 houses owned or managed by Housing New Zealand, compared with 69,928 in 1992, despite the population increasing from 3.5 to 4.5 million. There have been reports of people becoming ill and even dying as a result of cold, damp state houses.

The National government is currently privatising state housing in parts of the country. The opposition Labour Party has criticised the sales but not proposed a significant expansion of public housing to address the homelessness crisis. The ruling elite and its political parties have no intention of spending the billions of dollars required to repair unsafe buildings and ensure that everyone has access to safe and decent housing.

Tomorrow’s Peacebuilders Awards 2017. USD10,000 Prize + Online Recognition

Application Deadline: 6th September 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All

About the Award: Tomorrow’s Peacebuilders awards are the global awards for local peacebuilding run by Peace Direct. Awarded annually, they offer international recognition for grassroots peace activists in conflict-affected countries worldwide. These are inspiring individuals who are building a better tomorrow for their communities, in the world’s most fragile and needy places.

This year’s awards are being run in association with Alliance for Peacebuilding. Entrants will need to show how they are making communities more peaceful, or breaking the cycle of violence. A jury of international peacebuilding experts will select the winning entries.

One prize is available in each of the three categories below:

• Women-led Peacebuilding
• Youth-led Peacebuilding
• Inter-Religious Peacebuilding

Offered Since: 2013

Type: Contests/Awards

Eligibility: These are global awards. There is no geographical restriction on applications. In order to be eligible to enter, you must:

• Undertake peacebuilding work – your organisation is either a peacebuilding organisation or has peacebuilding as a substantial element of your work.
• Be locally based – your organisation must be based in the country or communities where your work will be done. If your organisation operates in multiple countries, you are not eligible to enter. (Note cross-border projects are eligible.)
• Be an independent organisation, not an in-country or satellite organisation of an international NGO.
• Be working, or planning to work, in at least one of the following thematic areas: women-led peacebuilding; youth-led peacebuilding; or inter-religious peacebuilding.

Selection Process: Peacebuilders strongly recommends applying as early as possible. Peacebuilders will review applications as they are submitted to ensure they are complete and correct, therefore early applications enjoy this advantage and a greater chance of success.

Number of Awardees: 3 organisations

Value of Award: The winners receive global publicity and cash prizes. They are chosen by an international panel of experts including distinguished practitioners, political figures and media. Each winning entry will receive:

·         $10,000 prize funding for peacebuilding activities.

·         Promotion of their work online, including on the Insight on Conflict and Peace Direct websites and newsletters

How to Apply: In order to enter, please download and return the application form(See in Award Webpage link below). We prefer to receive applications completed in English. If you are not comfortable writing your answers in English, we encourage you to have a friend or colleague translate your application into English prior to submission. If these options are not possible, we will accept applications in French or Spanish.

Send completed applications to the email (See in Award Webpage link below).

Please ensure the total size of email attachments does not exceed 5 MB. Emails larger than 5 MB may be rejected by our email system.

Visit Award Webpage for details

Award Provider: Peace Direct

Columbia University Earth Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship Program 2017

Application Timeline: 

• Application Opens: 28th August, 2017
• Application Deadline: 31st October 2017 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
• Reference Letter Deadline: 9th November, 2017 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Eligible Countries: All

To Be Taken At (Country): New York City, USA

About the Award: The Earth Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship program is the premier program in the world for those dedicated to a better understanding of critical scientific and social issues in global sustainable development. Earth Institute Postdoctoral Fellows, often referred to as the EI Fellows, will join multidisciplinary teams of outstanding, committed scientists from across the Earth Institute and Columbia University.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• Proposals may suggest participating in, contributing to, or extending existing multidisciplinary Earth Institute projects.
• Candidates are also encouraged to develop new, innovative projects that connect Earth Institute expertise.
• In addition to submitting the application and proposal, candidates are encouraged to identify and contact their desired multidisciplinary mentoring team, i.e. two or more senior faculty members or research scientists/scholars at Columbia University with whom they would like to work during their appointment.

]Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• Funding: EI Fellows will receive an annual salary of $61,800. They are also awarded a research stipend of $12,000 over the two-year term for reimbursable expenses related to the fellowship. These funds can be used for relocation and moving expenses, as well as for computer, travel, conference, journal, book, software, equipment, and other research costs.
• External Funding: EI Fellows are encouraged to participate in the development and submission of research proposals in cooperation with their mentors, host research units, or other researchers. When doing so, they must follow all Columbia University rules applicable to postdoctoral scholars.
• Visas: Columbia University only grants limited-term J1 visas for non-US citizens. Read more information on Columbia’s visa eligibility policies online.
• Benefits: EI Fellows are considered Officers of Research and are eligible for benefits provided by Columbia University for full-time employees. For more information, please visit Columbia’s Office of Human Resources online. The rules, regulations and policies that govern employment at Columbia are also listed on the website.
• Housing: The Earth Institute does not provide housing allocation for postdoctoral fellows. Fellows may contact Columbia’s Housing Office for informal guidance on acquiring housing in the areas near the university.

Duration of Program: 2 years

How to Apply: To apply, candidates must complete the online application and submit a proposal for research that would contribute to the goal of global sustainable development.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Earth Institute

West African Research Association (WARA) Travel Grant Fellowship 2017 for African Scholars

Application Deadlines: 15th September 2017

Eligible Countries: West African countries

To be taken at (country): Any African country of candidate’s choice.

About the Award: The WARC Travel Grant program promotes intra-African cooperation and exchange among researchers and institutions by providing support to African scholars and graduate students for research visits to other institutions on the continent

Type: Research Grants

Eligibility: This competition is open only to West African nationals, with preference given to those affiliated with West African colleges, universities, or research institutions.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Grants: The WARC Travel Grant provides travel costs up to $1,500 and a stipend of $1,500. Travel grant funds may be used to:

1. attend and present papers at academic conferences relevant to the applicant’s field of research;
2. visit libraries or archives that contain resources necessary to the applicant’s current academic work;
3. engage in collaborative work with colleagues at another institution;
4. travel to a research site.

Duration of Grants:  Between January 1, 2018 and June 30, 2018 for the  15th September 2017 deadline

How to Apply: All applications must be submitted online at:

https://fs9.formsite.com/westafricanresearchassociation/form33/index.html

Complete applications will include uploaded word, pdf, or jpgs of all of the documents listed below.

• A brief (50-80 word) abstract of the activity to be funded, beginning with a clear statement of purpose
• A description (6 double-spaced pages maximum) of the applicant’s research and how the proposed travel is relevant to this work. This should be presented in language understandable to non-specialist readers
• A curriculum vitae with research and teaching record when relevant
• If attending a conference, an abstract of the paper to be read and a letter of acceptance
• If visiting another institution, an invitation from host institution
• If travel is to consult archives or other materials, a description of the collections to be consulted and their significance to the applicant’s research
• For graduate students, a letter of recommendation by the professor overseeing their research
• Proof of citizenship (scan of the applicant’s passport).

Visit Grants Webpage for details

Award Provider: Funding for WARA’s Fellowship Program is provided by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State through a grant from the Council of American Overseas Research Centers.

Important Notes: Please note: this competition is open only to West African nationals eligible for non-immigrant visas to the U.S. WARC Travel Grantees must agree in writing to submit to the WARC Library in Dakar two copies of their dissertation/thesis, articles, and all other publications arising from the research funded through this grant. They must also agree to make public presentations on their research to 1) their academic institution, and 2) their local communities and to submit reports on these to WARA.

Please note that late & incomplete applications will not be considered.

University of Cape Town (UCT) Bertha Centre Scholarships for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship 2017

Application Deadline: 31st October 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: African countries. Preference will be given to citizens from South Africa.

To be taken at (country): Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Eligible Fields of Study: The scholarship covers a wide variety of programmes at the UCT Graduate School of Business. These include the MBA [both full-time and the modular program], the MPhil in Inclusive Innovation, and PhD programs. Eligible fields also include candidates committed to advancing social justice and  opportunities through social innovation and entrepreneurship.

About the Award: The Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship was established as a specialised unit at the UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB) in 2011, in partnership with Bertha Foundation, a family foundation that works with inspiring leaders who are catalysts for social and economic change.

Through this partnership the GSB strengthens its commitment to transformation and equality and UCT’s strategic goal to address key development challenges facing Africa.

While the Bertha Foundation supports activists, storytellers and lawyers across the world, who are working to bring about social and economic justice, and human rights for all; the Bertha Centre Scholars at the GSB are part of a larger Bertha Foundation network of “troublemakers/radical actors” whose purpose it is to challenge the status quo for social justice – in this case through social innovation and entrepreneurship.

Type: MBA/MPhil/PhD

Eligibility: The Bertha Centre scholarships are open to innovators, entrepreneurs, out-of-the-box thinkers, system-entrepreneurs, change-makers, social activists and cross-disciplinary candidates from any field provided they are actively involved in the exploration of social, environmental and/or economic justice using innovative approaches.

An eligible candidate must

• be an African citizen (or a South African permanent resident for at least one year.)
• have:
  • started or worked with a social/green/entrepreneurial innovative idea that seeks social or economic change; or
  • worked on advancing social justice and pioneering inclusive opportunities through social innovation within an organisation for at least one year.

• Experience in these fields would be preferable, as well as a track record of action exploring or initiating innovative approaches in these sectors.
• Demonstrate strong leadership qualities within their field.
• Demonstrate some level of financial need for the scholarship

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The Bertha Centre Scholarship covers full or partial costs.

Duration of Scholarship: 30 November – 4 December 2017

How to Apply: Candidate must first be eligible, comply with and apply for the MBA or MPhil programmes entrance requirements at the UCT Graduate School of Business*.

Candidate would then submit the Bertha Centre Scholarship Application Form which should include:

• Candidate’s UCT GSB application number received from the GSB Admissions Office
• Candidate’s contact details and your CV uploaded
• Candidate’s answers to the three essay questions, which shows how the degree programme at this stage in your career will help to accelerate impact in your area of work/interest and how it will contribute to society as a whole.
• Candidate’s short [no longer than four minute] video.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details

Award Provider: The Bertha Foundation, Canon Collins Trust

Important Notes: 

• Candidate will only be able to take up the Bertha Centre Scholarship if you are successfully admitted to the UCT GSB MBA, MPhil or PhD programmes.
• Candidate’s submission will be assessed and the Bertha Centre will contact you only if you have been selected for an interview with the scholarship selection panel.