29 Jul 2017

Sri Lankan government deploys army to break oil workers’ strike

Shree Haran & W. A. Sunil 

On Tuesday night, the Sri Lankan government mobilised the army to take over key supply centres of the state-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC), including at Kolonnawa, Muthurajawela and Peradeniya.
The operation, conducted under the draconian essential services law, which enables the government to ban industrial action in key sectors of the economy, was aimed at breaking an indefinite strike by oil workers.
Police threatening workers outside Kolonnawa
The strike began on Tuesday morning, halting the supply and distribution of petrol, diesel and gas throughout the country. Fearing the action could become a focal point for broader social opposition, the government immediately stepped in to suppress it.
The stoppage was called by a combination of unions. They included the Sri Lanka Independent Employees Union (SLIEU), which is controlled by President Maithripala Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party, and the Lanka Petroleum Common Workers Union, led by the opposition Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). The National Workers Union, affiliated to the United National Party (UNP) that is also part of the government, did not join the strike.
The unions called the industrial action to demand the government halt the sale of Trincomalee’s oil tanks to India, acquire storage tanks for the CPC from Hambantota Port, which is set to be sold to China, and speed-up renovations of the main oil refinery at Sapugaskanda.
Workers joined the industrial action to express their hostility to privatisation. The unions’ demands, however, were aimed at channeling opposition into nationalist denunciations of China and India, in order to divide the working class, and promote the fraud that workers’ rights and conditions will be guaranteed if nominal state-ownership is maintained.
President Sirisena issued the gazette banning the industrial action. Employees who do not report to work 24 hours after the government’s draconian anti-strike legislation is invoked are deemed to have vacated their post and will be sacked.
This is the latest in a series of military deployments directed against workers’ struggles. Last December, the government dispatched hundreds of navy personnel to break up a protest by contract workers demanding job permanency at Hambantota Port.
On Tuesday night, after police failed to enter the main fuel distribution centre, heavily-armed military commandos broke in through a rear gate and forcibly cleared out hundreds of workers.
Workers told the WSWS that soldiers shouted abuse and attacked them, before chasing them from the premises. Some were thrown over the parapet wall. Others were dragged outside.
Military forces inside the Kolonnawa CPC premises
Workers said the troops behaved as though they were in a war zone. Some claimed to have information that the operation was planned by former Army commander and current government minister, Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka, after a discussion on Tuesday evening at Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s official residence.
Fonseka is notorious for overseeing the brutal communal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which ended in 2009.
Once the workers were forced out, police and thugs attacked them. Hundreds of army personnel and heavily-armed Special Task Force (STF) police officers were placed in front of the main gates.
At Kolonnawa, riot police were ready with batons, tear gas and water cannons. Workers tried to block trains transporting oil and bowsers, but were attacked by the STF. Police arrested 16 people, including workers’ leaders, dragging them into waiting trucks. All were later released.
Speaking at a public meeting yesterday, Sirisena made it plain the military action was aimed at intimidating the entire working class. “The government will not allow a small section to harass the majority,” he warned.
“We have already declared the oil distribution as an essential service,” Sirisena said. “After declaring the essential service according to powers vested in the constitution, we will not hesitate to take every step to ensure its implementation.”
Referring to recent stoppages by health workers, the president said doctors regarded strikes as “playthings.” He menacingly recalled that under the authoritarian rule of former President Mahinda Rajapakse, “even the trace of those who are shouting today could not be found.” Sirisena said no one would be allowed to topple the government.
STF officers ready to attack
Speaking to the WSWS, workers voiced their hostility to Sirisena’s strike-breaking attack. One said CPC workers had sacrificed their salaries and even donated blood to support the military in its brutal war against the LTTE. “But now the security forces who attacked us are using the same methods they used in the war,” he said.
The major trade unions and capitalist parties paved the way for these military attacks by backing the reactionary war and calling on workers to “sacrifice for the defence of motherland.”
The worker continued: “In this struggle, we fought against privatisation. During the last strike in April, Wickremesinghe promised not to hand over the oil tanks in Trincomalee and Hambantota to India and China, but he cheated us.”
Another striker said most of the CPC workers voted for the Sirisena government, in the hope it would block privatisation. “But now this government has shown it is no different than the previous government of Rajapakse,” he said.
The ongoing privatisation also underscores the bankruptcy of the unions, which have promoted the illusion that protest appeals to the government can limit the sell-off of state-owned assets, and secure decent working conditions. They have sought to obscure the fact that the privatisation agenda is being driven by the deepening crisis of Sri Lankan capitalism and the austerity dictates of the International Monetary Fund.
SLIEU secretary Jayantha Pareira said that before the strike the unions had submitted a charter of proposals to the government on how to maintain the CPC as a profitable enterprise. He claimed the prime minister was pleased with the charter.
When they called the strike on Tuesday, the unions said they had been “cheated” and claimed the action would last indefinitely. After the strike was suppressed by the military, however, they met with Sirisena on Wednesday, and offered to resume essential services if the government withdrew the army. Union leaders issued a statement pledging further talks with the government to reach a “solution.”
In April, the unions called an “indefinite strike” at the CPC, which they ended a day later after discussions with the prime minister. Sirisena responded to the stoppage by proposing that Fonseka take charge of the armed forces for two years to “discipline the country”.
In other words, the government’s military attacks on workers form part of a broader move toward dictatorship.
The union leaders’ backroom manoeuvres with the government show that workers need new organisations of struggle, including rank-and-file committees—opposed to the unions—to defend their social and democratic rights and fight the turn to authoritarian rule.
These organisations must be based on a new political perspective aimed at establishing a workers’ and peasants’ government to implement socialist policies, including placing the ports and oil services under public ownership and workers’ control. To wage such a struggle requires the building of the Socialist Equality Party which is the only political party fighting for this program.

Polish President Andrzej Duda vetoes government’s judicial reform

Clara Weiss

On Monday, Polish President Andrzej Duda unexpectedly vetoed two key aspects of the judicial reform of the governing Law and Justice Party (PiS), which would have given the government virtually unrestricted control over the country’s judicial system.
Duda’s veto has temporarily halted two bills that would have led to the immediate dismissal of 83 top judges and given Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro complete freedom in the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court. Both chambers of the Polish parliament had agreed to the drafts after fierce disputes.
Duda agreed another bill authorizing the justice minister to appoint judges to the district and state courts.
The two draft laws vetoed by the president must now go back to parliament, which can only overturn the veto with a three-fifths majority. Since the PiS needs the support of the right-wing Kukiz ‘15 party, who have welcomed Duda’s veto, this is unlikely.
Hundreds of thousands of people have protested against the laws in the past days and weeks. In a survey, 55 percent of Poles declared that they wanted Duda to veto the laws. The European Union (EU) threatened to impose severe sanctions on Poland because of the judicial reform. German politicians have warned Poland of political isolation, and the US State Department also expressed concern about the so-called reform on Saturday.
Duda justified his decision by saying, “I think reform in this form will not strengthen the sense of security and justice.”
By claiming that a meeting with Zofia Romaszewska, one of his advisers, who had opposed granting new powers to the justice minister, had been decisive in making his decision, Duda is appealing to the ferocious anti-Communism in both the PiS and the liberal opposition. In the 1970s and 1980s, Romaszewska was one of the most important members of the Committee for the Defence of Workers (KOR) and Solidarnosc. She played a critical role in turning the trade union movement in an anti-communist and nationalist direction.
Duda announced that he would submit his own amendments in the near future. In two months, the bill will be discussed again in amended form.
The veto apparently came as a shock to the PiS. Duda himself is a member of the party and has been regarded as a puppet of PiS chief Jarosław Kaczyński since entering office in 2015. Media reports describe the general frustration, confusion and disappointment among PiS politicians.
The liberal opposition and Western media are now praising Duda, amid hopes that his move will lead to the break-up of the government party. In last week’s protests, the opposition made the appeal to the president to exercise his veto a central issue.
Newsweek Polska, which belongs to German publisher Axel Springer, wrote triumphantly: “For the first time the power of Kaczyński has been called into question.” In several editorials, the newspaper explained how Duda’s move could lead to a sharper division within the PiS government.
It argued that within the framework of the PiS, “a competitive power camp” had formed around the president. “PiS politicians in parliament and in the party, for whom the authoritarian radicalism of Kaczynski and his assistants is unpalatable, can now give this courageous expression. There are such people in the government camp and perhaps their number will grow.”
In another piece, Newsweek Polska asserted that PiS politicians feared “President Andrzej Duda wants to found his own political movement with the support of people like Jarosław Gowin and Mateusz Morawiecki and Kukiz ‘15. The veto against the reform of the Supreme Court and state court council could be the beginning of a bid for independence by the president.”
Kukiz ‘15 is an extreme right-wing party that has supported most of the PiS’s authoritarian measures over the past few years and is known to include fascist tendencies. Morawiecki, a former banker, is currently Finance Minister under the PiS. Gowin is notorious for his militant homophobia and has played a central role as Minister of Education and Science in shifting Poland’s cultural climate to the right.
The fact that the bourgeois opposition is now hoping to deepen a split in the government camp through pressure from the EU and Washington and to strengthen right-wing politicians like Duda, Morawiecki and the Kukiz’15 party exposes once again the reactionary core of its politics.
The opposition’s conflict with the PiS revolves, above all, around questions of foreign policy. The former not only rejects the orientation of the PiS toward an alliance with the US against Germany, but also fears losing political influence under an authoritarian PiS government.
For the last two years the opposition against the PiS has been dominated by the liberal opposition and largely confined to middle class layers in the big cities. The PiS has tried to appeal to social resentment in the working class and, in preparations for war and the establishment of a police-state, to neutralise it through certain social concessions, such as the introduction of a child allowance of 500 zloty per month (approximately 117 euros or US$ 137).
In a country where 43 percent of the population (about 16 million people) have less than 245 euro (1080 zloty) per month on which to live, this is a significant sum for many. On social issues, such as the introduction of the child allowance, the liberal opposition, which carried out extreme social cutbacks when in government, has repeatedly attacked the PiS from the right.
Despite these limited social concessions, the policies of the PiS are rejected by large portions of the Polish population. In a survey, 82 percent of 19-to-29-year-olds saw themselves as opponents of the government. In total, 52 percent of voters put themselves in this category. Meanwhile the two main bourgeois opposition parties, the Citizens Platform (PO) and Nowoczesna, could not command the support of a third of the electorate between them.
At the same time, Polish foreign policy is in a deep crisis. The emerging conflict between America and Germany, both key countries for Poland’s foreign and economic policy, presents the Polish ruling elite with a dilemma virtually impossible to resolve.
The liberal opposition rejects a break with Germany and the EU, and considers an orientation to the Trump government to be dangerous. Conservative newspapers such as Rzeszpospolita also believe that Poland cannot afford an exclusive orientation to Washington.
Under these conditions, Duda seems to have felt it too dangerous to push forward the extremely unpopular justice reform. The greatest fear of the entire Polish political establishment is intervention by the working class.

Australian inquiry into dangerous building products: An exercise in political damage control

Richard Phillips

Building and fire safety officials and strata unit peak bodies testifying at hearings of a Senate investigation into “non-conforming building products” over the past fortnight presented a damning portrait of the construction industry.
The Senate committee inquiry was initiated in June 2015, eight months after a potentially fatal apartment fire in Melbourne’s Docklands area. The outside of the 23-storey Lacrosse building, which was covered with flammable aluminum cladding, quickly caught fire in the early hours of November 25, 2014.
No one was killed in the Lacrosse blaze—internal sprinkler systems prevented the fire moving inside the building. Nevertheless, the Senate investigation was convened in an attempt to defuse widespread concerns.
Following the Grenfell Tower disaster on June 14 in London, the spotlight again fell on Lacrosse and Australia’s building industry. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull promised a national audit of aluminum-clad buildings and declared that concerns about cladding would be discussed in the current Senate inquiry. The long-running investigation has been extended five times, and is not expected to release any findings until early next year.
In hearings over the past fortnight, witnesses blamed the widespread use of dangerous materials and safety frauds on federal and state government deregulation of the industry. One witness said the question was not “if” there would be a serious catastrophe in Australia, but “when.”
Along with flammable cladding, the hearing received detailed evidence on the use of asbestos, including in at least one hospital—the Perth Children’s Hospital in Western Australia—as well as faulty electrical cabling and exploding glass panels.
Safety and building engineers detailed the industry’s free-for-all nature, with forged product safety documents, non-operating sprinkler systems and illegal techniques used to pass building safety inspections.
Government deregulation, which began in the mid-1990s, also involved the privatisation of building inspections, allowing construction companies to hire their own inspectors. This places enormous pressure on certifiers to “flick and tick”—i.e., to turn a blind eye to obvious faults and pass unsafe buildings—or risk not getting any future work.
Other witnesses warned that “non-compliant construction work” is as widespread as non-compliant materials because there is no serious enforcement of building standards nationally.
Under-staffed government agencies fail to check building materials or buildings, let alone prosecute construction companies, corrupt building inspectors or anyone else for building code and safety standard violations.
Fire Protection Association Australia CEO Scott Williams told the Sydney hearing on July 19 there was a lack of enforcement. “There must be surveillance, there must be auditing, there must be compliance and there must be consequences through that process for behaviours that don’t support the process.”
Dr Darryl O’Brien from the Australian Institute of Building compared the privatisation of building safety checks with the Roman Catholic Church’s sale of papal indulgences as a “confessional insurance to the faithful” in the Middle Ages.
“In 2017 we may be sceptical that payment to a higher authority could provide the faithful with insurance for the afterlife but in many ways our reliance on [building] certification and test reports for building materials is similarly based on faith, not evidence,” O’Brien said.
Engineers Australia CEO Peter McIntyre pointed to “inconsistency in construction regulation and enforcement” and said “cost-reduction imperatives dominate the process.” Although “deficiencies are often noted year after year,” there is “no mechanism to force rectification.”
Stephen Goddard from the Owners Corporation Network, which represents strata unit owners, said consumer protection for buildings had been “whittled away” by state governments. In New South Wales alone, two million people live in strata title dwellings.
Goddard denounced consecutive federal governments for refusing to heed the warnings of industry professionals and strata unit residents. “I have more consumer protection buying a refrigerator than a $1.5 million apartment,” he said.
“In 2002 our parliaments were deaf to what you are hearing now because the agenda was entirely different and capital growth in our housing market wallpapered over the damage,” Goddard said. “It’s only now, with Lacrosse and the Grenfell situation, that we’re pulling the skin off the custard and looking at it in the cold light of day.”
Apartment owners, not builders and developers, are being forced to bear the cost of rectifying faulty buildings. Karen Stiles, also from the Owners Corporation Network, said the financial burden was intense, causing major social problems. “Marriages are breaking up’” she said. “People are bankrupted. People suicide with the stress. This is a terrible, terrible problem.”
Philip Dwyer, a former Builders Collective of Australia national president, said there had been a “shameful” decline of construction standards. “We’re responsible for building people’s homes,” he said. “We need to be responsible and accountable, but we’re not. We’ve got the [building] codes board, and so on, which have oversight over the whole lot, but they do nothing…
“I’ve been building for 40-odd years, and to see the downhill slide in the last 10 or 15 years is really an affront to all of us. Talk must stop and we must do something very practical about it… We’re cutting corners everywhere, and we’re going to have a disaster.”
Notwithstanding these damning exposures, the Senate inquiry is an exercise in political damage control. Its purpose is to divert the concerns about building safety voiced by fire-fighting and emergency service personnel, construction workers and safety engineers, and apartment residents, into the hands of the political establishment.
Like every other parliamentary investigation, any recommendations issued by the inquiry will be “business-friendly”—i.e., calculated to boost profits—and will protect those politically responsible for the unsafe homes, offices and public buildings across Australia.
Those presiding over the past fortnight’s hearings include Labor senators Chris Ketter and Kim Carr and the right-wing populist Nick Xenophon.
All feigned concern about the dangerous state of the construction industry, acting as if they knew nothing about the origins or consequences of free-market deregulation and the privatisation of building safety agencies. This is political theatre designed to deflect attention from the record of Liberal-National and Labor governments, state and federal.
At the Melbourne hearing, Federal Safety Commissioner Alan Edwards admitted his agency had conducted no audits of building materials in the past seven months and taken no action against construction companies violating the national building code.
Senator Carr declared that the licensing and regulatory regime was “one of the great buck passing exercises” in his more than 25 years in parliament.
In Sydney, Senator Ketter, who chairs the inquiry, declared: “We’ve got a broken system, industry standards that aren’t worth the paper they’re written on and copies of the standards which are too expensive and people can’t afford to access them.”
What a fraud! Both men are fully aware that Labor and Liberal-National governments alike are responsible for the breakdown in building standards.
Testimony from Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU) national policy research officer Travis Wacey was just as cynical.
The union, which maintains close working relations with building companies and product manufacturers, called for import controls on Chinese building products. “Our borders are essentially out of control when it comes to quality assurance of product coming in—from consumer products to buildings products,” Wacey told the Melbourne hearing.
This is a nationalist diversion, aimed at hiding the fact that the union has worked hand-in-glove with building industry bosses to cut costs and drive up productivity. It is also aimed at strengthening the union’s relations with Australian manufacturers of building products.
The Senate inquiry is another attempt by the political establishment to cover up the underlying economic and political reasons for the catastrophic situation facing building workers, home and apartment owners and residents—the reckless drive for profit at all costs.

European Union threatens retaliation over US sanctions bill against Russia

Alex Lantier 

The European powers reacted sharply yesterday to the US House of Representatives’ passage of a bill imposing sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea, indicating that it was unacceptable to European interests and that the European Union (EU) was preparing retaliatory measures.
The US bill and the EU reaction expose the fundamental conflicts behind the rapid deterioration of US-EU relations since the election of Donald Trump as US president last year. While European politicians repeatedly attacked Trump, who is widely unpopular in Europe, conflicts are erupting now over a bill supported by Trump’s Democratic opponents (and adopted in a nearly-unanimous vote) as a way to block Trump’s freedom of action in ties with Russia. This points to the deep financial and strategic conflicts between the European powers and the entire American ruling class.
EU, German and French officials attacked the bill, warning that its broad provisions allow Washington to impose sanctions on major European corporations working with Russia or Iran, and thus threaten basic European strategic and energy interests.
The EU Commission issued a communiqué yesterday expressing “concerns notably because of the draft Bill's possible impact on EU energy independence.” It warned that despite modifications to the bill in the House, the bill still “foresees the imposition of sanctions on any company (including European) which contributes to the development, maintenance, modernisation or repair of energy export pipelines by the Russian Federation. Depending on its implementation, this could affect infrastructure transporting energy resources to Europe.”
The US bill threatens to cut off an entire network of critical east-west pipelines transporting Russian gas to European markets, as well as several major European energy companies. France’s Engie (Gaz de France-Suez), UK-Dutch firm Royal Dutch Shell, Austria’s OMV, and Germany’s Wintershall and Uniper would all face financial penalties for their participation in the Nordstream2 Baltic pipeline project. Firms involved in transporting gas to Europe from the Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan and the Russia-to-Turkey TurkishStream pipeline would also be threatened.
EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker repeated his threat from earlier this week to swiftly prepare retaliatory punitive action against US firms. Attacking the US sanctions bill as an example of Trump’s “America First” policy, Juncker said, “The Commission concluded today that if our concerns are not taken into account sufficiently, we stand ready to act appropriately within a matter of days. America first cannot mean that Europe’s interests come last.”
Speaking to Russia Today, Volker Treier, chief economist of the German Chambers of Commerce and Industry, warned that the bill threatened to do significant damage to the German economy. “If German firms are banned from participating in gas pipeline enterprises, very important projects in the energy supply security sector can be halted. In that case, the German economy will be discernibly influenced,” he said.
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel had already denounced an earlier version of the bill for forcing Europe to buy more expensive US liquefied natural gas instead of Russian gas. He bluntly declared the bill was about “the sale of American liquefied gas and the sidelining of Russian gas supplies in the European market,” in order “to secure jobs in the American oil and gas industries.”
The French Foreign Ministry also issued a sharply-worded statement yesterday, attacking the sanctions bill as illegal under international law. Spokeswoman Agnès Romatet said, “To protect ourselves from the extraterritorial effects of US (or other countries') legislation, we will have to work to adapt our national policies and to modernize European policy.”
A list compiled by financial daily Les Echos of French firms facing US sanctions over their operations in Russia and/or Iran includes many of the country’s leading corporations.
The eruption of commercial conflict between the United States and the European Union points to the extraordinary dangers posed to the population of the world by world capitalism. Over the course of 25 years of war since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington and its European imperialist allies have carried out an escalating series of wars and interventions in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
While these were cynically packaged to the masses as wars for democracy or against terrorism or “weapons of mass destruction,” the underlying material interests were the same as those that twice in the 20th century led to the eruption of world war between the imperialist powers. As globalization of production inflamed the contradiction between world economy and the nation-state system, the major capitalist corporations and governments were seeking to re-divide the world’s resources between them through wars of plunder.
Now, as various factions in Washington threaten wars with major powers on the Eurasian land mass, the underlying US-EU rivalries are erupting to the surface. Three years after Germany announced the re-militarization of its foreign policy, EU countries are using China’s launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the partial normalization of trade with Iran due to its nuclear deal to step up investment across Eurasia and the Middle East. The foreign policies of the United States and the major EU powers are increasingly on a collision course.
At the same time, US and European authorities no longer bother to conceal deep trade conflicts between them. After US officials imposed an $8.9 billion fine on French bank BNP Paribas over its dealings with Iran in 2014, EU officials retaliated last year by cutting off talks on a trans-Atlantic trade deal and imposing a €13 billion fine on Apple.
Angry commentary over the sanctions bill in the German press underscore that influential forces in the German ruling class see the sanctions bill as yet further evidence of hostile US intent towards Germany and Europe.
“What is particularly dangerous is that supporters of Russia sanctions in Washington are not only trying to put Putin and Trump in the same bag, but also helping the US economy against foreign competition,” wrote the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Under the bill, the daily added, “Europeans would be forced to burn less Russian natural gas and more American liquefied natural gas. This is an unfriendly act, especially against Germany.”
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote that, “with all due respect for the Senate and its ambition to tie President Donald Trump’s hands on Russia policy, the draft law is unacceptable from a European perspective. First, it breaks the diplomatic alliance between Europe and the United States in deciding on sanctions against Russia. ... The argument that America is promoting Europe’s energy security is also quite insolent. That is Europe’s responsibility. This is how you lose friends.”
The question that is emerging is whether the US-EU military rivalry and bitter trade conflicts will now coalesce and escalate into a catastrophic breakdown in US-EU relations—in the form of a trade war that would bring the world economy to its knees, or of outright military conflict.

New Google algorithm restricts access to left-wing, progressive web sites

Andre Damon & Niles Niemuth 

In the three months since Internet monopoly Google announced plans to keep users from accessing “fake news,” the global traffic rankings of a broad range of left-wing, progressive, anti-war and democratic rights organizations have fallen significantly.
On April 25, 2017, Google announced that it had implemented changes to its search service to make it harder for users to access what it called “low-quality” information such as “conspiracy theories” and “fake news.”
The company said in a blog post that the central purpose of the change to its search algorithm was to give the search giant greater control in identifying content deemed objectionable by its guidelines. It declared that it had “improved our evaluation methods and made algorithmic updates” in order “to surface more authoritative content.”
Google continued, “Last month, we updated our Search Quality Rater Guidelines to provide more detailed examples of low-quality webpages for raters to appropriately flag.” These moderators are instructed to flag “upsetting user experiences,” including pages that present “conspiracy theories,” unless “the query clearly indicates the user is seeking an alternative viewpoint.”
Google does not explain precisely what it means by the term “conspiracy theory.” Using the broad and amorphous category of fake news, the aim of the change to Google’s search system is to restrict access to alternative web sites, whose coverage and interpretation of events conflict with those of such establishment media outlets as the New York Times and the Washington Post.
By flagging content in such a way that it does not appear in the first one or two pages of a search result, Google is able to effectively block users’ access to it. Given the fact that vast amounts of web traffic are influenced by search results, Google is able to effectively conceal or bury content to which it objects through the manipulation of search rankings.
Just last month, the European Commission fined the company $2.7 billion for manipulating search results to inappropriately direct users to its own comparison shopping service, Google Shopping. Now, it appears that Google is using these criminal methods to block users from accessing political viewpoints the company deems objectionable.
The World Socialist Web Site has been targeted by Google’s new “evaluation methods.” While in April 2017, 422,460 visits to the WSWS originated from Google searches, the figure has dropped to an estimated 120,000 this month, a fall of more than 70 percent.
Even when using search terms such as “socialist” and “socialism,” readers have informed us that they find it increasingly difficult to locate the World Socialist Web Site in Google searches.
Referals from Google searches to the WSWS have fallen by about 70 percent
According to Google’s webmaster tools service, the number of searches resulting in users seeing content from the World Socialist Web Site (that is, a WSWS article appeared in a Google search) fell from 467,890 a day to 138,275 over the past three months. The average position of articles in searches, meanwhile, fell from 15.9 to 37.2 over the same period.
David North, chairperson of the International Editorial Board of the WSWS, stated that Google is engaged in political censorship.
“The World Socialist Web Site has been in existence for nearly 20 years,” he said, “and it has developed a large international audience. During this past spring, the number of individual visits to the WSWS each month exceeded 900,000.
“While a significant percentage of our readers enter the WSWS directly, many web users access the site through search engines, of which Google is the most widely used. There is no innocent explanation for the extraordinarily sharp fall in readers, virtually overnight, coming from Google searches.
“Google’s claim that it is protecting readers from ‘fake news’ is a politically motivated lie. Google, a massive monopoly, with the closest ties to the state and intelligence agencies, is blocking access to the WSWS and other left and progressive web sites through a system of rigged searches.”
In the three months since Google implemented the changes to its search engine, fewer people have accessed left-wing and anti-war news sites. Based on information available on Alexa analytics, other sites that have experienced sharp drops in ranking include WikiLeaks, Alternet, Counterpunch, Global Research, Consortium News and Truthout. Even prominent democratic rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International appear to have been hit.
A broad range of left-wing, progressive, and anti-war sites have had their traffic rankings fall in recent months
According to Google Trends, the term “fake news” roughly quadrupled in popularity in early November, around the time of the US election, as Democrats, establishment media outlets and intelligence agencies sought to blame “false information” for the electoral victory of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.
On November 14, the New York Times proclaimed that Google and Facebook “faced mounting criticism over how fake news on their sites may have influenced the presidential election’s outcome,” and they would be taking measures to combat “fake news.”
Ten days later, the Washington Post published an article, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say,” which cited an anonymous group known as PropOrNot that compiled a list of “fake news” sites spreading “Russian propaganda.”
The list included several sites categorized by the group as “left-wing.” Significantly, it targeted globalresearch.ca, which often reposts articles from the World Socialist Web Site.
After widespread criticism of what was little more than a blacklist of anti-war and anti-establishment sites, the Washington Post was forced to publish a retraction, declaring, “The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings.”
On April 7, Bloomberg News reported that Google was working directly with the Washington Post and the New York Times to “fact-check” articles and eliminate “fake news.” This was followed by Google’s new search methodology.
Three months later, out of the 17 sites declared to be “fake news” by the Washington Post ’s discredited blacklist, 14 had their global ranking fall. The average decline of the global reach of all of these sites is 25 percent, and some sites saw their global reach fall by as much as 60 percent.
“The actions of Google constitute political censorship and are a blatant attack on free speech,” North stated. “At a time when public distrust of establishment media is widespread, this corporate giant is exploiting its monopolistic position to restrict public access to a broad spectrum of news and critical analysis.”

Dropping the mask: A war of plunder in Afghanistan

Bill Van Auken

In less than three months, Washington will mark the 16th anniversary of its invasion of Afghanistan, which initiated the longest war in American history.
The attack on this impoverished and war-torn south Asian country was cast as the opening shot in a “global war on terrorism,” a crusade for justice and revenge for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 centered on the ludicrous pretext of hunting down one man, Osama bin Laden.
In response to the invasion, the World Socialist Web Site dismissed these official claims, condemning the US action as an imperialist war. In an October 9, 2001 statement titled “Why we oppose the war in Afghanistan,” we wrote:
The US government initiated the war in pursuit of far-reaching international interests of the American ruling elite. What is the main purpose of the war? The collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago created a political vacuum in Central Asia, which is home to the second largest deposit of proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world…
These critical resources are located in the world’s most politically unstable region. By attacking Afghanistan, setting up a client regime and moving vast military forces into the region, the US aims to establish a new political framework within which it will exert hegemonic control.
Nearly 16 years later, nearly 9,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan. Without them and the immense fire power brought to bear by the US Air Force, the puppet regime of President Ashraf Ghani would not last a week.
According to conservative estimates, the Afghan death toll since 2001 has reached 175,000. Hundreds of thousands more have been wounded and millions driven from their homes. The last six months have seen a record number of civilians killed, with a 43 percent rise in the number dying in US air strikes compared to the same period last year.
This slaughter has been carried out in the name of fighting terrorism, building democracy, liberating women, human rights and various other phony pretexts.
In the end, however, this brutal, corrupt and bloody enterprise has been driven by the imperialist interests spelled out by the WSWS in its 2001 statement. This has been made abundantly clear as the Trump administration conducts an acrimonious internal debate over how to confront what American generals delicately describe as a “stalemate,” in which the Taliban and other insurgents have gained control of an unprecedented amount of Afghan territory and the country’s security forces are suffering unsustainable losses in casualties and desertions.
While Trump has given his defense secretary, the recently retired Marine Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis, the authority to escalate the war by sending 4,000 to 5,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, the buildup has yet to take place.
The new war strategy, first promised in advance of the NATO summit last May and then for mid-July, has yet to emerge, and Trump last week told White House reporters that he was still trying to figure out “why we’ve been there for 17 years.” This after Washington has reportedly spent some $1 trillion on the war. Asked as he headed into a Pentagon meeting last Thursday whether more troops would be deployed, he responded, “We’ll see.”
Now, however, the administration appears to be warming to the idea of an escalation, focusing on the war’s bottom line: plunder and profit.
According to a report published Wednesday in the New York Times, Trump has “latched on to a prospect that tantalized previous administrations: Afghanistan’s vast mineral wealth, which his advisers and Afghan officials have told him could be profitably extracted by Western companies.”
Pitching the idea to Trump are both the CEO of American Elements, a firm that contracts with the Pentagon and specializes in rare earth minerals that exist in apparent abundance in Afghanistan, and Stephen Feinberg, the hedge fund and private equity billionaire. A prominent Wall Street supporter of Trump, Feinberg also owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International and has reportedly offered the services of his mercenaries to guard US-run mines against attacks by the Taliban and other insurgents.
Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani, recognizing the profiteering mindset of his new master in Washington, has, according to the Times, “promoted mining as an economic opportunity” since his first conversation with the US president.
The idea that American capitalism could use its military might to loot Afghanistan’s mineral resources is not an invention of Donald Trump. The CIA was well aware of the riches that could be tapped before the first US Special Forces troops hit the ground in 2001. “In 2006, the George W. Bush administration conducted aerial surveys of the country to map its mineral resources,” the Times reports.
And the “newspaper of record” published its own glowing report in 2010, when it was supporting the Obama administration’s 100,000-troop “surge,” under the headline “US Discovers Mineral Riches in Afghanistan.” The article proclaimed that, with the “help” of US-based transnational corporations, Afghanistan could “be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world.”
But with Trump, the mask has come off. The “humanitarian” and “democratic” pretenses used to disguise US imperialism’s predatory interests are being dispensed with, and the ruthless, parasitic and criminal character of the American ruling elite, personified by Trump, openly drives US foreign policy. It is altogether likely that in considering the next stage in the Afghanistan war, Trump is working out what deals can be secured by US troops for his son Donald Jr. or his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
In one of his first post-inauguration speeches, delivered at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia to an assembled audience of agents and agency functionaries, Trump spelled out his approach, extolling the principle of “to the victor belong the spoils.” He said in relation to the Iraq war that “we should have kept the oil,” adding for the benefit of the US military and intelligence apparatus, “But, OK, maybe you’ll have another chance.”
In the attempt to use US military might to lay hold of the strategic mineral wealth of Afghanistan, and more broadly, the vast energy resources of Central Asia, US imperialism is confronting not merely the problem of the Taliban insurgency, but also the opposition of major rivals that are pursuing their own interests in Afghanistan and the broader region.
China is seeking to advance a long-stalled $3 billion deal between its state-owned mining corporation and Afghanistan to exploit the country’s largest copper deposits. Russia has launched its own initiative to broker a peace between the Kabul government and the Taliban, holding three rounds of talks. On the eve of the last round in mid-April, the US dropped the largest weapon used since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hitting a target in eastern Afghanistan, but clearly sending a message to both Moscow and Beijing.
For the past quarter century, US imperialism has been engaged in continuous warfare, directed in the first instance at utilizing its military superiority to offset the decline of its influence over the affairs of global capitalism. It has sought to assert its hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East and expand its influence into the regions opened up to capitalist penetration by the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Now, under the banner of “America First,” it is prosecuting a naked struggle for markets, raw materials and related strategic interests at the expense not only of its supposed enemies, but also its erstwhile allies, particularly in Europe, whose major powers are driven to pursue their own foreign as well as military policy.
Such tensions and conflicts, which preceded both World War I and World War II, raise the threat of a third world war and with it the prospect of nuclear annihilation.
In the US, the bitter internecine struggles in Washington notwithstanding, both Democrats and Republicans support the increasing turn to militarism, while deliberately concealing the implications of their policies from a population that is overwhelmingly hostile to war.

26 Jul 2017

Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Scholarship for Female Students in Tanzania 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 16th August 2017
Offered annually? Yes
Eligible Countries: Tanzania
To be taken at (country): Tanzania
Eligible Field of Study: Mathematics and Science
About the Award: The Fund grants Scholarships to best female Tanzanian students to pursue Undergraduate studies in Mathematics and Science in Tanzania’s accredited universities. It is also partly used to sponsor both male and female Tanzanians top students to pursue undergraduate studies in Economics, Information Technology, Accounting and Finance as well as best students intending to pursue Master’s programmes in those fields.
The primary objective of the Fund is to promote interest and excellence in Mathematics and Science courses among female students in the United Republic of Tanzania.
Type: Undergraduate and Masters degrees
Eligibility: For the Masters programme:
  • Candidate must be a Tanzanian citizen.
  • Candidate must have obtained First Class or an Upper Second Class (honours) in the Bachelor degree with a minimum GPA of 4.0.
  • Candidate must not be more than thirty five years of age and should have completed Bachelor’s degree in studies related to Mathematics, Science, Economics, Information Technology, Accounting or Finance.
  • Candidate must have applied/be admitted to a full time Master’s degree programme in an accredited university of the United Republic of Tanzania. The programme should commence in 2016/2017 academic year in any of the following fields: Mathematics, Science, Economics, Information Technology, Accounting or Finance.
Selection Criteria: The Scholarships are granted on academic merit and based on a rigorous selection process.
Number of Awardees: 
  • Undergraduate Degree Programmes (4 Scholarships)
  • Master’s Degree Programmes (2 Scholarships )
Value of Scholarship: Successful candidates are granted full scholarship which covers all university direct cost (tuition fees etc.) and student direct costs (meal, accommodation, book and stationery allowance, field practical training, special faculty requirement etc.) as specified in the respective institutions ‘costs structure including a laptop computer.
Duration of Scholarship: Duration of candidate’s course
How to Apply: Candidates are required to complete Scholarship Application Forms which can be accessed on the BOT website (See link below)
Printed forms can be obtained from
The Fund Administrator,
Bank of Tanzania Head Office,
2 Mirambo Street,
11884, DAR ES SALAAM.
The forms can also be obtained at the Bank of Tanzania Branch Offices (Arusha, Zanzibar, Mwanza, Mbeya, Dodoma and the Bank of Tanzania Training Institute, Mwanza). All application forms should be completed and submitted to the Chairperson, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Memorial Scholarship Fund, Bank of Tanzania Head Office, 2 Mirambo Street, 11884, DAR ES SALAAM by 24th August, 2016 (16:00hr).
Award Provider: Bank of Tanzania
Important Notes: Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for interview

University of Manchester Doctoral Prize Fellowships for International Research Students 2017/2018

Application Deadline: Monday 14th August 2017 at 12 noon.
Offered annually? Yes
Eligible Countries: International
To be taken at (country): United Kingdom
About the Award: The EPSRC Doctoral Prize is a prestigious scheme aimed at developing the very best EPSRC funded students beyond the end of their PhD and help them launch a successful career in research as potential future research leaders.
Successful applicants will be expected to take their research to the next level and undertake significant new research; the Prize must not be viewed merely as an opportunity to continue/complete PhD work although continuation of specific work from the applicants’ PhD that will result in publications may be permitted.
Type: Fellowship
Eligibility: 
  1. Candidates may apply for funding for not less than six months and not more than 12 months.
  2. The proposed project must be within the EPSRC remit;
  3. Candidates must be able to demonstrate a clear commitment to remaining in academia.
  4. Candidates must have been funded for their PhD studies by the EPSRC in the form of fees and/or stipend in order to be eligible for an EPSRC Doctoral Prize.
  5. If candidates have already submitted their thesis at the time of application, this must not be more than six months before commencing an EPSRC Doctoral fellowship.
  6. Although candidates are not required to have submitted their thesis prior to application, successful applicants must have submitted their PhD thesis before they can start to receive EPSRC Doctoral Prize funding. They may commence their Fellowship while awaiting viva, but may have their Fellowship withdrawn if they subsequently achieve a result lower than Aii at first viva examination.
Project
  1. Candidates should propose a Fellowship research project. This may include the publication and development of work from their PhD, but the major part of the propose research programme must include substantive new work which will take allow the candidate to take their next steps in terms of developing as an independent researcher.
  2. Projects are welcomed in any area of research which comes under the EPSRC remit.
  3. Proposals should explain how the candidate will manage the project and how this will be facilitated by the project sponsor with whom they are working.
  4. All EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellows are expected to engage in Public Engagement work as part of their fellowship.
  5. EPSRC Doctoral Prize funding will provide maintenance costs and the consumables and travel costs associated with a project. It may also be used for attendance at conferences to present the results, but will not support purchase of equipment.
Assessment Procedure
  1. Applications will be assessed and short-listed by an appointing Committee consisting of Associate Vice-President for Research and Associate Deans for Research.
  2. The Committee will fund proposals that are of sufficient quality, subject to available funds. Candidates should be in the top 10-15% of PhD students.
Number of Awardees: Not specified
Value of Scholarship: 
  • The University will provide Fellows with excellent research and training environments including a first class and challenging career development training programme.
  • In addition to a Project Sponsor (a research – active member of The University’s academic staff who is willing to support an applicant’s project and, where appropriate, host the project in their lab), recipients of a Prize will also have access to an academic mentor who will offer advice and support regarding the mentee’s research and career development throughout the duration of the award.
  • Successful applicants will be awarded a tax-free living allowance of £24,370 per annum (pro rata).
Duration of Scholarship: 12 months
How to Apply: Candidates are expected to submit:
  1. A completed application form;
  2. A brief CV (1 page maximum: Arial font size 11 or equivalent). Please attach a separate list of publications;
  • Letter of Support from the Head of the School where you intend to conduct your Prize research. The completed form should be signed and returned as a PDF document;
  1. Evidence of qualifications (scanned certificates or transcripts);
  2. A scanned copy of your passport (if you will need a visa to study in the UK).
All applications should be made in accordance with the scheme’s guidelines, which can be found at the end of the Application Form (See links below)
Candidates must have been funded for their PhD by the EPSRC in the form of fees and/or stipend and have submitted their PhD thesis no more than six months before commencing the EPSRC Doctoral Prize fellowship.
Full applications, including application form and a letter of support from the Head of School where the EPSRC Doctoral Prize research will be carried out, should be returned by e-mail to lee.wilkinson@manchester.ac.uk. Please note that the word counts and page limits listed on the application forms are not flexible.
Candidates will be shortlisted and interviewed by a panel of senior academics. The decision of the panel is final.
It is expected that interviews will take place in the last week of September 2017
Award Provider: Faculty of Science and Engineering, The University of Manchester.