Trump, Iran and the US drive for world hegemony

Keith Jones

At the conclusion of a bellicose and dishonest speech on Friday, US President Donald Trump vowed to blow up the 2015 Iran nuclear accord unless it is rewritten in accordance with US demands.

The speech epitomized the arrogance and criminality of America’s ruling elite. Trump denounced Iran for spreading “conflict, terror and turmoil throughout the Middle East and beyond.” This from the leader of a country that has subjected the people of the Middle East to untold horrors, waging aggressive wars that have destroyed entire societies, causing the deaths of millions of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria and forcing many millions more to flee their homes.

Trump denounced the 1979 Iranian revolution, painted Iran’s bourgeois-clerical government as an international outlaw regime, and cast the United States as the protector of the democratic rights of the Iranian people.

As if the Iranian masses have forgotten that the CIA organized the 1953 coup that overthrew Iran’s elected president, Mohammad Mossaddegh, and installed the Shah’s savage dictatorship, which Washington maintained in power for the next quarter-century. Or that for the past four decades the US has carried out an unrelenting campaign against Iran, repeatedly threatening it with attack, supporting Baghdad in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), and imposing punishing economic sanctions that culminated, under Obama, in all-out economic warfare.

Trump made clear that his demands for “correcting” the nuclear accord’s “many flaws” are nonnegotiable. They amount to an ultimatum that Tehran unilaterally disarm while the US maintains an armada in the Persian Gulf and arms its Saudi and Israeli allies to the teeth. They would require Iran to accept permanent incursions on its sovereignty and its de facto reduction to the status of a vassal state.

The demands include: making permanent the stringent restrictions on Iran’s civil nuclear program, which are set to lapse in the agreement’s eleventh year; allowing unfettered International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of Iranian military sites; and dismantling Iran’s ballistic missile program.

European leaders responded by angrily denouncing Washington for acting as a law unto itself, inciting a global nuclear arms race, and heightening the danger of war in the Middle East and on the Korean Peninsula. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned that if the US persists on this path it “will drive us Europeans into a common position with Russia and China against the USA.”

What happens next is unclear. Much of the US political and military-security establishment, including Trump’s own top advisers—Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster—have counseled Trump against jettisoning the Iran deal. Both Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, testifying last week before Congress, acknowledged that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear accord and said they believed upholding the agreement is in the United States’ interests.

This is not because Trump’s generals are any less determined to bring Iran to heel and secure US hegemony over the Middle East, the world’s most important oil-exporting region and the strategic pivot between Asia, Africa and Europe.

Trump’s Democratic Party and media critics are no different. The New York Times and the Washington Post have repeatedly urged a more aggressive US military and diplomatic offensive against Iran, beginning in Syria, where Tehran has played a major role in the defeat of the US-supported Islamist forces. In an editorial Saturday, “Trump has charted a perilous course on Iran,” the Washington Post accused the president of “geopolitical folly” and chastised him for “having no clear plan to address Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria, which is threatening to touch off a new conflict with Israel.”

The disagreements, while sharp, are entirely tactical. They revolve around the question of the appropriate target and timing of the next US war, amid widespread fears that a showdown with Iran will undercut Washington’s military-strategic offensives against China and Russia, and inflame relations with America’s traditional European allies, which, through NATO, continue to play a major role in projecting US global power, especially against Russia.

Opposition to Trump’s plan to trash the Iran accord is a factor in the unprecedented political warfare in Washington, which has now reached the point of public discussion about using the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution to remove Trump.

With Trump planning to use Wall Street’s dominance of the global banking system, and access to the US market, to bully the Europeans into imposing new economic sanctions against Tehran, the Iran issue threatens to further envenom the already fierce commercial struggle between the US and Europe, especially Germany. Already the European powers are talking of retaliatory action.

The European imperialists are no less predatory than Washington. They were key partners in the economic war against Iran. But the renewed US drive against Tehran threatens their plans to invest billions to economically exploit Iran, which has the world’s fourth largest oil reserves and the largest natural gas reserves. Moreover, given their proximity to the Middle East and their dependence on Mideast oil, they fear the destabilizing fallout from another US war—one that could quickly involve nuclear powers such as Russia and China.

While Trump is an accelerant, the basic source of the divisions within the US ruling elite over America’s policy toward Iran and its broader imperialist strategy lies in the failure of the drive Washington initiated, in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, to offset the erosion of its economic power by waging wars of aggression.

In the pursuit of global hegemony, the US has razed the Middle East. Iran has been a principal target of US aggression, with American troops invading two of its neighbors, Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet Iran has been able to expand its influence, while both Russia and China are now major economic and geopolitical players in the Middle East, combining to frustrate Washington’s plans to use Islamist proxy forces to overthrow Syria’s government, as it successfully did in Libya.

US imperialism’s response to these reversals is to accelerate its war plans, directly targeting its major rivals, beginning with China and Russia. Europe and Japan, for their part, are furiously rearming to assert their own imperialist interests in opposition to the US.

Mankind is faced with the real and present danger of being dragged by the imperialist powers into a Third World War, this time employing nuclear weapons.

There is no “peace” faction in the ruling class of any of the major powers. The social force that can halt the descent into a nuclear holocaust is the international working class, mobilized on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program directed at the overthrow of capitalism, the source of war, social inequality and dictatorship. The International Committee of the Fourth International is fighting to build a mass international antiwar movement on this revolutionary basis.

UK school funding crisis worsens

Tom Pearce

The majority of schools in the UK are facing an unprecedented funding problem. Many schools are being forced to ask for parent contributions for essential resources.

According to the National Education Union (NEU)—recently created from the merger of the National Union of Teachers and Association of Teachers and Lecturers—88 percent of schools face a real terms cut despite the announcement from the ruling Conservatives that there will be more funding by 2019.

Over the last five years, the ever-worsening situation has been opposed by campaign groups and teachers, who have demanded equal allocation of funding among schools as well as increased funding. In response to criticism, in July the government promised an additional £1.3 billion in a package of “fairer funding.”

With the extra money, total budgets are to increase to £2.6 billion for schools in England over the next two years. This was described by Education Minister Justine Greening as a “historic reform.” The truth is that no extra spending at all is being allocated by the Department of Education (DoE) as the £1.3 billion is coming from “efficiency savings” from its existing budget.

Some £420 million of the savings will be cut from the DoE’s capital budget. Further savings of £250 million will be made in 2018-19 and £350 million in 2019-20 from the Department’s resource budget, with £200 million to be taken away from its central school improvement programme.

Despite the hype from the Tories as they announced the details of the new package last month, the money being provided falls far short of what is needed and will hardly make any difference to the situation facing the majority of schools. The increase equates to just 0.5 percent per pupil from the next school year, and a one percent increase from 2019-20. Some schools will receive extra funding but the average primary school will still lose £52,546 per year and the average secondary school £178,321 per year.

According to the Association of School and College Leaders, schools require a further £2 billion a year between now and 2020 if they are to be able to deal with previous budget cuts. Since 2015 alone, schools have suffered a real terms cut in funding of £2.7 billion.

Many inner city areas of the UK will lose out in the new funding formula. This is because the funding is largely being redistributed from schools in one area of the UK to top up another. The borough of Tower Hamlets in London is set to lose a projected £19 million by 2020.

Figures provided by the Department of Education show a total of 9,438 schools, or one-in-three, are already in the red. In east London alone, over 200 schools were in deficit in 2015-16.

A new survey by the National Education Union found that primary pupils will in fact attract five percent less funding in real terms by 2020, compared with 2015—a £201 cut per pupil.

Like other public-sector services, state education is being pushed to a breaking point as a step towards further privatisation and the establishment of a two-tier system.

A report by the Parent Teacher Association found that out of 1,507 families, a third of parents regularly gave money to school to subsidise funds in the past year. More than half the schools surveyed were asking parents to contribute. This is not something that parents are legally required to do in the UK, but schools asking for funds has become commonplace.

Parents report that they are contributing money to provide the essentials, which many expect to be provided by the state. Some examples include asking parents to provide stationary and books. Almost a fifth of parents have been asked to provide essentials such as toilet paper.

Some schools are asking for voluntary contributions of around £10-£30 a month to top up their funding. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said, “This takes us to the very edge of what state education should be doing, if we are starting to ask parents for [toilet paper].”

Schools have also asked for donations from businesses to provide basic necessities, resulting in further reliance on the private sector.

A survey of teachers by the Times Educational Supplement (TES) found that nearly four-in-ten (39 percent) respondents said their school asked parents for money to help with school funding last year. More than two-thirds (68 percent) said their school asked parents to pay to attend school concerts and sports events. Over a fifth (22 percent) of schools asked parents to pay for books. Some 22 percent of parents were paying for design technology and 21 percent for art materials.

Workers employed in schools are also picking up the bill. A survey, carried out by the NEU in August and September of just over 1,800 school staff in England, revealed that 94 percent “paid for classroom resources or equipment from their own pocket in the last school year, with a third (33 percent) saying they spent more last year than in previous years. Nearly two-thirds (61 percent) said they did so because their school did not have enough funds.”

It also noted, “Over a quarter (26 percent) of them spent between £101 and £500 of their own money on school resources last year and nearly a third (31 percent) between £51 and £100. Seven-in-ten (73 percent) said they paid for stationery, nearly six-in-ten (58 percent) said they bought books and four-in-ten (43 percent) bought art materials.”

While the NEU carries out such surveys, the teaching unions have done nothing to mobilise their members, who are angered by the dire crisis in school age education. Apart from the NEU creating and updating their website School Cuts, the only action they are planning is a lobby of parliament on October 24.

The “campaign” of the NEU is encapsulated in all of 90 words on its website and is aimed at telling its members to appeal to the good graces of a government which has imposed over a hundred billion in austerity measures in the last seven years to desist!

It states, “MPs will be asked to put pressure on the Chancellor to find the funding needed to reverse the cuts and invest in our children and young people, a month before he is set to deliver his budget statement.”

The only call on its members to do anything is that they “Use the form [on the NEU’s website] to request a meeting with your MP and tell us you will attend the lobby …”

Included in the MPs that NEU members are being asked to arrange meetings with are the 316 Tory MPs who openly support the cuts.

At its annual conference in April, the then National Union of Teachers (NUT)—now the NEU—backed industrial action over the education funding crisis. The union, however, took no action in the summer term. This was despite a motion being passed which led to General Secretary Kevin Courtney—a supporter of the pseudo-left Socialist Workers Party—declaring that strike action would be considered. This was to be confined to regions of the country where schools are the worst hit by funding cuts.

Since then, talk of action has disappeared altogether, despite the newly created union being able to count on the backing of 450,000 teachers, lecturers and support staff.

Youth suicides at a record high in the UK

Alice Summers 

According to a study by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), 134 students committed suicide in the 2014-15 academic year. This figure, an all-time high, represents an increase of 79 percent since 2007, when 75 students took their own lives.

The IPPR’s research findings come amid a worsening mental health crisis in the UK and worldwide, which is particularly affecting young people under the age of 25. Approximately one-in-four people in the UK suffer from a mental health condition each year, with around three-quarters of adults with a mental illness first experiencing symptoms before the age of 25, according to the report.

The proportion of 16-to-24-year-olds experiencing a mental health condition in England is rising, with 19 percent in this age group suffering from some form of mental health problem, up from 15 percent in 2003. Young women under 25 are hit hardest by the mental health crisis, with 28 percent affected.

In the past ten years, the number of students disclosing a mental health problem to their university has skyrocketed. In the 2015-16 academic year, 15,395 UK-domiciled first-year students reported a mental health condition, a fivefold increase since 2006-07.

Nearly all (94 percent) universities in the UK have reported an increase in the number of students seeking counselling, with 61 percent of campuses seeing a rise of more than 25 percent. At some institutions, as many as one-in-four students are using, or are on a waiting list for, mental health services.

Even these figures do not tell the whole story. Due to fear of being stigmatised or feeling that help or support would not be available, nearly half (48 percent) of students who have experienced mental health problems do not disclose it to their university.

Many students fear that admitting to a mental health problem would have a negative impact on their social relationships with peers or academic staff, or that it would adversely affect their chances of getting a good job after they graduate.

The IPPR report stated that due to the lack of support and treatment “poor mental health can lead to increased risk of students dropping out of university, or in the most severe and tragic cases, death by suicide.” Although suicide is intimately linked to mental health conditions, only 25 percent of people who die by suicide in the UK were in contact with mental health services in the year before their death.

While the rate of student suicide is increasing, it is in fact lower than the population as a whole. However, suicidal thoughts are prevalent within universities. The charity YouthSight and the National Union of Students report that the proportion of students thought to have experienced suicidal thoughts is between 8 and 13 percent respectively.

Young adults between the ages of 20 and 24 are the least likely of any age group to report high levels of well-being, the indicators of which are: life satisfaction, feeling that things done in life are worthwhile, happiness and low anxiety. Students experience lower rates of well-being than young adults as a whole—with less than one-in-five students reporting high levels in each of these four main well-being indicators in 2017.

Austerity cuts have reduced the capacity for prompt intervention to prevent mental health problems developing, and are a significant factor in the increased rates of mental illness and in the rise in demand for mental health services among young people. Students also experience specific risk factors that can lead to poorer mental health and well-being, according to the study, including academic demands and pressure to achieve high marks, social pressures and financial worries.

According to Ruth Caleb, a well-being consultant at Brunel University, the increase in students suffering from mental health problems could be attributed to the fact that more students are now arriving at university already anxious and worried about their degree, as well as feeling anxious about the obscene levels of debt they will incur before even starting work.

With average debt at around £57,000, and with living costs spiralling upwards in most cities, worries about not having enough money are one of the factors causing students the most stress. According to a survey by education charity Teach First, 44 percent of students said this caused them stress in their first year.

Disadvantaged students are significantly more likely to drop out of university in their first year than their wealthier peers. According to the Office of Fair Access, in the 2014-15 academic year, 8.8 percent of full-time undergraduates below the age of 21 coming from disadvantaged backgrounds did not continue with their studies beyond their first year, compared to less than 5 percent of wealthier students.

Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency published in May revealed the impact that poor mental health is having on student retention. A record 1,180 students dropped out of university in 2014-15 due to mental health problems such as anxiety. This has more than trebled since 2009-10—in the aftermath of the global financial crash—when 380 students were forced to leave university for this reason.

Pressure to achieve high marks also has more of an adverse effect on poorer students than on their wealthier peers, with nearly half (47 percent) saying that keeping up with academic work caused them stress.

Exam pressures and fears of not getting good grades are factors taking the highest tolls on youth mental health. They are some of the common reasons for suicide among young people, and not just those at university age.

According to a study by the University of Manchester, suicides among children and young people peak every year around exam season. In England and Wales, an average of 96 young people under the age of 25 take their own lives each year in April and May during the period when most exams are held. The next highest number of youth suicides takes place in September—the start of the academic year—when an average of 88 young people die by suicide every year.

The University of Manchester research revealed that 47 percent of the young people who took their own lives in 2014-15 were experiencing “academic pressures overall” before their death. Nearly one-in-three (32 percent) either had exams at the time, would be sitting exams soon, or were waiting to receive exam results.

This appalling rise in mental health issues and youth suicides is not just a phenomenon affecting the UK, but can also be seen in the US, the wealthiest country in the world.

Suicide rates among young girls in the US have reached a 40-year high. Children between 10 and 14 in the US are now more likely to die by suicide than by car accidents.

Germany: The significance of the election in Lower Saxony

Ulrich Rippert

Tomorrow’s election in the state of Lower Saxony has far greater importance than appears at first sight. Germany’s federal (Bundestag) election took place three weeks ago, but negotiations on the formation of a “Jamaica” coalition—comprising the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU), the neo-liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Greens—have been postponed until the outcome in Lower Saxony is known.

Influential circles of the ruling class intend to use tomorrow’s result to facilitate a complete realignment of the government at the federal level. If the Social Democratic Party (SPD) emerges as the front-ranking party in Lower Saxony, as polls are predicting, then SPD leader Martin Schulz’s announcement that the Social Democrats would not participate in the next federal administration would be called into question.

Former SPD chairman and acting Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel has stated already that the decision to rule out participation in government was somewhat premature, and influenced by the party’s miserable election result. Gabriel, whose political base resides in Lower Saxony, said: “The hangover is yet to come.” The SPD, he inferred, would regret its decision.

The SPD-Green state administration in Lower Saxony collapsed at the beginning of August, almost two months before the Bundestag election. A Green deputy, Elke Twesten, announced she was switching parties and joining the conservative CDU. This meant the state government in Hanover headed by SPD premier Stephan Weil lost its slender majority of one seat and was forced to call an early election.

There were many indications at the time that Twesten’s switch of parties was the result of political intrigue. She held talks with the CDU some weeks before her decision and rumours circulated that her change of faction was bound up with career prospects and lucrative job offers.

Right-wing elements in the CDU and the media saw an opportunity to further weaken the SPD on the eve of the Bundestag elections and thereby prevent any continuation of its “grand coalition” with the conservative CDU-CSU. A “business as usual” attitude was no longer permissible was the mantra of many comments. The grand coalition was described as too cumbersome and incapable of fulfilling Germany’s ambitious domestic and foreign policy agendas. The same accusation was levelled against Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has governed for two-thirds of her 12-year term in an alliance with the SPD. A new coalition and a charismatic leader were necessary.

Three months later, the media, which applauded the fall of the SPD-Green state government, has little to say about the SPD election campaign in Lower Saxony. The Bild newspaper commissioned an opinion poll and ran the headline a few days later: “SPD leads CDU in Lower Saxony.” The CDU had lost a 12-point advantage in Lower Saxony within two months. For the first time since April, the SPD was leading the polls with 33 percent.

The main reason for the media about-turn is the dramatic intensification of the international crisis and the growing danger of war.

In this context, a comment by Gabor Steingart in the Handelsblatt is noteworthy. The editor of Germany’s leading business newspaper warned that the “political hurricane” raging between the US State Department, the White House and Capitol Hill would affect Europe very soon and very powerfully. He wrote: “It is an issue of war or peace, even if is obscured behind a smokescreen of personal accusations.”

US President Donald Trump’s uncontrolled verbal attacks on other countries, Steingart declared, risked opening the way “to a Third World War.” In the face of this “coming storm,” Germany appeared drugged with the “narcotics” known as party politics, and petty interests and bickering dominated. As a result, he wrote, “the American storm petrel, which presages the coming disaster, remains unobserved.” For the sake of convenience, the German establishment was underestimating Trump and minimising the danger of war.

Steingart ended by citing the well-known author Sebastian Haffner, who described the atmosphere of the pre-World War II years in his memoirs, TheStory of a German. Haffner’s references to the “deliberate ignorance” which prevailed at that time, Steingart concluded, “recalls our present situation.”

The article demonstrated that sections of the ruling class want to keep open the option of a continued CDU-SPD grand coalition. A “Jamaica” coalition of four parties has never been attempted before in post-war Germany. It could prove extremely unstable due to internal conflicts. In addition, FDP leader Christian Lindner and Green leader Cem Özdemir, who expect to fill leading ministerial posts, are considered to be weak and inexperienced when it comes to dealing with the challenges posed by the growing danger of world war.

There are also foreign policy differences within the ruling class. Foreign Minister Gabriel and the SPD regard close cooperation with France as the best prerequisite for developing Germany into a military and political world power. They therefore support President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to establish a European finance ministry and a budget for the eurozone. They are also looking at the advantages of collaboration with a state that has nuclear weapons.

This spring, Die Zeit, wrote that “non-nuclear states like Germany face a deep dilemma” should the US no longer unconditionally guarantee their security. The newspaper, which is close to the SPD, raised the possibility of Germany co-financing the planned modernisation of France’s nuclear arsenal in exchange for the German government having limited powers to influence French policy.

The FDP, the CSU and sections of the CDU, on the other hand, strongly reject Macron’s plans. They fear Germany will be swept into the vortex of the next financial crisis if it has to provide financial support to France and other European Union countries. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) expressed his opposition to Macron’s proposal and instead demanded sharper control of finances by a European Monetary Fund.

Gabriel sharply criticised Schäuble over his statements. The Greens tend to be closer to the SPD on this issue, while Chancellor Merkel has so far remained silent.

All parties agree that the next federal government must engage in a massive program of rearmament at home and abroad. The dispute, however, is how to best realise this policy and the associated attacks on the working class. Should the SPD go into opposition and open the way for a coalition of the CDU/CSU, FDP and the Greens? Or should it participate in government in a coalition of the conservative Union parties in a kind of national unity government, in close collaboration with the German Federation of Trade Unions?

In 1999, a SPD-Green coalition paved the way for Germany’s first ever post-war foreign military mission. In 2014, former foreign minister and the current German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier took the lead in further militarising the country. Today, his successor, Sigmar Gabriel, is the chief advocate of an aggressive German foreign policy.

Whatever federal government emerges after the election in the Lower Saxony on Sunday, it will be a right-wing government, focused on military rearmament, preparation for war and police repression.

Sri Lankan government enforces UN sanctions against North Korea

Nanda Wickremasinghe 

On October 6, the Sri Lankan government issued extraordinary gazette notifications enacting the September 11 UN Security Council measures against North Korea. This announcement also followed US President Trump’s September 21 executive order imposing further crippling sanctions on Pyongyang.

The decision is an expression of the Colombo government’s backing for US intervention in the Korean Peninsula and for Washington’s aggressive policies more broadly. Like other countries in the region, Sri Lanka is under intense pressure to fall into line with US war plans.

The government issued the sanctions gazette without even notifying the parliament. It prohibits Sri Lankans from providing or receiving assets, financial services, technical training, advice, services or assistance related to North Korea’s nuclear program.

Also banned are bunkering services, supplies, servicing, leasing or chartering of vessels or crew services of vessels to North Korea. Moreover, North Korean financial institutions cannot open new branches, subsidiaries or offices in Sri Lanka.

A government-appointed Competent Authority (CA) will oversee the implementation of the regulations and may recommend the expulsion of North Korean diplomats. This authority has the power to freeze funds and other financial resources belonging to persons or institutions of the North Korean government and the ruling Korean Workers Party.

On September 15, the government sent its implementation report on sanctions imposed last November, noting its tough visa requirements on all North Korean nationals. Colombo refused to allow four delegates from North Korea to attend a Sri Lanka-North Korea Friendship Association meeting in March.

The government had been under pressure to take tougher measures. A UN report early last month noted that Sri Lanka was among several countries that allegedly violated sanctions by importing commodities from North Korea, including coal and iron. Other countries cited included China, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, France, Pakistan and Ireland.

The new UN sanctions intensify restrictions that have already compounded North Korea’s economic problems and the suffering of the masses. They have banned North Korea’s exports of coal, iron ore and seafood. A US official said more than 90 percent of North Korea’s reported exports are now blocked.

The increasing military pressure on North Korea is part of a US strategy to encircle China, which Washington considers a major obstacle to its global domination. This week, US supersonic bombers, joined by Japanese and South Korean fighter jets, flew near North Korea, threatening to trigger a conflict that would draw in China and Russia.

The government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has increasingly moved Sri Lanka into line with Washington’s war preparations against China and North Korea.

Sirisena was installed in office in January 2015 via a Washington regime-change operation to replace former President Mahinda Rajapakse. The US supported Rajapakse’s war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and his anti-democratic rule. However, Washington wanted him removed because he developed close relations with China to procure arms and finances for his war.

Since Sirisena took office, there has been a pro-US foreign policy shift, including on North Korea. In 2008 and 2009, Sri Lanka abstained when a resolution against North Korea’s “human rights violations” was presented in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Again 2014, Sri Lanka voted against a similar resolution.

In 2015 and 2016, however, Sirisena’s government voted for UNHRC resolutions directed against North Korea.

In September last year and July and September this year, the government condemned ballistic missile tests by Pyongyang. Echoing the US, a September 13 Colombo statement declared that North Korea’s sixth missile test violated UN Security Council resolutions and was “a threat to peace and stability in the region and beyond.”

After the government imposed sanctions on North Korea, the leader of the opposition Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), Anura Kumara Dissanayake, criticised the procedure involved. He declared that foreign ministry officials had failed to inform parliament and called for a “detailed account on why the government arrived at the decision to impose sanctions.”

In reply, Foreign Minister Thilak Marapana said the country’s legislation required the foreign minister to promulgate regulations when the UN Security Council ordered sanctions on a particular country.

The JVP, which at times resorts to radical sounding phrasemongering, falsely claims that North Korea is socialist. The regime in Pyongyang, was never socialist but was based on the reactionary Stalinist perspective of “socialism in one country” from the outset. Its chief aim for decades has been a rapprochement with the US so as to open up the country as a cheap labour platform for foreign investors.

Dissanayake’s procedural criticism was simply to obscure the fact that the JVP did not oppose the substance of the government’s sanctions or its lining up behind the US preparations for war against North Korea. He was silent on another serious step, which directly ties Sri Lanka to the US military.

Before the government’s decision on sanctions, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe announced in parliament on July 22 that the government would extend the Accession Cross Services Agreement (ACSA) with the US without specifying a time period.

The original agreement was signed by the previous Rajapakse regime in March 2007 for a period of 10 years. The ACSA allows the US and Sri Lanka to transfer and exchange logistics supplies, support and re-fuelling services, either in kind or at cost, during peacekeeping missions, humanitarian operations or joint exercises.

Wickremesinghe said: “Extending the agreement with the US will be of the utmost importance given the global situation today … considering the current international political situation and developments it [the agreement] would be favorable to the country.”

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government is dragging the country into Washington’s war plans, with potentially catastrophic consequences for workers in the region and internationally.

IMF report points to financial dangers lurking beneath global growth

Nick Beams

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has forecast the best year for global economic growth since the 2008 crisis, but a rather different picture emerges from its analysis of financial conditions.

In its Global Financial Stability (GFS) report issued earlier this week, the IMF points to the build-up of $135 trillion of debt in the G20 economies. It also highlights the difficulties facing the world’s major central banks in trying to wind back the quantitative easing programs that have pumped trillion of dollars into the global financial system.

Presenting the report, Tobias Adrian, the head of the IMF’s financial department, said while the financial system was stronger, thanks to growth and low interest rates, “dangers in the form of rising financial vulnerabilities are starting to loom.”

Central bankers were maintaining easy policies to support growth and this was “breeding complacency and allowing a further build-up of financial excesses,” he stated.

“Non-financial borrowers are taking advantage of cheap credit to load up on debt. If left unattended, these growing vulnerabilities will continue to mount, threatening to derail the economic recovery when shocks occur.”

Adrian noted that before the financial crisis there were $16 trillion in relatively safe investment-grade bonds yielding more than 4 percent. “That has dwindled to just $2 trillion today. There is simply too much money chasing too few high yielding assets. The result is that investors are taking more risks and exposing themselves to bigger losses if markets tumble.”

Further details were provided in the report. It pointed out that today only 5 percent of investment-grade bonds yield more than 4 percent, compared with 80 percent ($15.8 trillion) before the crisis.

“Asset valuations are becoming stretched in some markets as investors are pushed out of their natural habitats, and accept higher credit and liquidity risks to boost returns,” it stated.

Indebtedness in major economies is increasing and now stands at 235 percent of gross domestic product for the G20 group of countries that make up about 85 percent of the world economy. Debt servicing pressures and debt levels in the nonfinancial sector were already high in several major economies, with Australia, Canada, China and South Korea singled out for specific mention.

Significantly, given its high and growing debt levels, Australia was one of the few major economies for which the IMF revised its growth outlook downwards.

While the IMF lifted its global growth forecast from 3.5 to 3.6 percent, it slashed its Australian figure to just 2.2 percent, compared to the 3 percent growth anticipated six months ago.

One of the report’s key aspects was to draw attention to the contradictions confronting central banks as they move to “normalise” monetary policy and pull back on the stimulus provided by quantitative easing that pumped trillions of dollars into global financial markets.

Central banks, it said, envisaged having to provide continuing economic and financial support with interest rates rising only slowly and the “gradual normalizing” of monetary policy expected to take years.

The “unconventional” monetary policies of the past period—ultra-low, and in some cases even negative interest rates, and the buying of financial assets by central banks under the quantitative easing program—had changed the working of financial markets. They were now “much less predictable than in previous cycles.”

That is, the very policies of the central banks have created completely uncharted territory as far as the workings of financial markets are concerned, with no historical precedents to provide a guide. In other words, these key institutions are, to a great extent, flying blind.

According the GFS report: “Abrupt or ill-timed shifts could cause unwanted turbulence in financial markets and reverberate across borders and markets. Yet the prolonged monetary support envisaged for the major economies may lead to the build-up of further financial excesses.”

The IMF analysts examined a downside scenario in which the “repricing of risks,” that is, rising interest rates, was combined with falling asset prices and a pullback of investment in emerging markets.

Such a situation would lead to a “significant” tightening of financial conditions and a fall in global output of about 1.7 percent relative to current predictions. According to this model, the impact would be about one-third as severe as the global crisis of 2008-2009.

However, given the new conditions that have emerged as a result of the policies since the global meltdown, the outcome could be more severe. In reality, the estimate is not much more than an educated guess.

As far as the banking system is concerned, the report said the health of what it called globally systematically important banks (GSIB) was continuing to improve because of stronger capital and liquidity requirements.

But banks representing about $17 trillion in assets, around one-third of the GSIB total, “may continue to generate unsustainable returns” even by as late as 2019. That is, they still do not have a sound business model and “problems in even a single GSIB could generate systemic stress.”

The report drew attention to the state of Chinese banks, warning that the “size, complexity and pace of growth” in the country’s financial system “point to elevated financial stability risks.” Chinese banking sector assets have risen from 240 percent of GDP at the end of 2012 to 310 percent at present.

Publicly, central banks and financial authorities more generally try to portray themselves as being in control of the capitalist economy. But behind the scenes a very different picture emerges.

For the past three decades and more, central bank monetary policy has been based on the so-called Phillips curve. This purports to establish a relationship between unemployment and inflation: as the jobless rate falls, inflation starts to increase because of increased wage demands. Based on this model, interest rates should be increased as inflation starts to rise.

However, in the period since the global financial crisis, while the headline official rate of unemployment has fallen, wages have either stagnated or declined and inflation remains persistently below the targets adopted by central banks of around 2 percent. This is largely due to the fact that the labour market has undergone a major transformation in all advanced economies with the replacement of full-time jobs with part-time, contract and casual employment.

The perplexity in ruling financial circles under post-2008 conditions was summed up in a major article published in the Financial Times (FT) this week. It reported that as central bankers gathered in Washington for the annual IMF meeting “there was a crisis of confidence.”

“Their models are failing and there are doubts whether they understand the effects of interest rates and other monetary policies on the economy.” The FT warned that the new “masters of the universe” might not understand the workings of the economy and “their well-intentioned actions could prove harmful.” While the central banks had always had their critics, “such profound doubts have never been so present in their narrow world.”

This assessment points to the fact that, in the period since 2008, far from having overcome the contradictions in the system over which they preside, the ruling financial elites have simply created the conditions for a new and potentially even bigger disaster.

Why is the US at war in West Africa?

Eddie Haywood 

The October 4 killings of four US Green Berets in Niger has provided a rare glimpse into the far-reaching American military operations throughout the African continent which have been conducted almost entirely in secret.

Pentagon officials on Friday told reporters that the ambush was carried out by a self-radicalized group supposedly affiliated with ISIS. The Pentagon additionally admitted that at least 29 patrols similar to the one that was fatally ambushed have been carried out by American soldiers in Niger.

According to AFRICOM, the US military command based in Stuttgart, Germany, the US special forces deployed to Niger are tasked with providing training, logistics, and intelligence to assist the Nigerien military in fighting militants affiliated with Al-Qaeda in Mali and Boko Haram in neighboring Nigeria. AFRICOM has officially stated that its forces interact with the Nigerien army in a “non-combat advisory” capacity.

The circumstances surrounding the ambush which resulted in the deaths of the four Green Berets expose AFRICOM’s claim of non-engagement as a lie. The killings occurred during a joint patrol of elite American soldiers and Nigerien forces in a remote hostile region on the border with Mali known for frequent raids conducted by Islamist militants. Some 800 US commandos are deployed to bases in Niamey and Agadez making quite clear the offensive role that the American military is playing in Niger.

Underlining the incident is Niger’s configuration in Washington’s imperialist offensive across Africa. The expanding levels of US military forces arrayed across the continent have increasingly taken on the character of an occupying army. According to the Pentagon, there are a total of 1,000 American troops in the vicinity of the Chad River Basin which includes northern Niger, Chad, and the Central African Republic. An additional 300 troops are stationed to the south in Cameroon.

After its establishment in 2008 as an independent command, AFRICOM has significantly expanded American military influence and troop deployments on the African continent. Measuring the breadth of US military expansion is the construction of a $100 million base in Agadez in central Niger, from which the US Air Force conducts regular surveillance drone flights across the Sahel region.

Augmenting the special forces contingent in the region are military personnel stationed at several dozen bases and outposts including a US base in Garoua, Cameroon.

The special operations units in Africa have their genesis in 1980, after the Pentagon created Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to conduct a raid on the US embassy in Tehran, Iran to rescue American hostages. Over the years, SOCOM has vastly broadened its scope, and currently has forces stationed on every continent around the globe.

Made up of various units of the US military, including Green Berets, Delta Force, and Navy Seals, SOCOM carry out a broad spectrum of offensive operations including assassinations, counter-terrorism, reconnaissance, psychological operations, and foreign troop training. Under AFRICOM, these forces form a subgroup of SOCOM designated as Special Operations Command in Africa (SOCAFRICA).

Between 2006 and 2010 the deployment of US special forces troops in Africa increased 300 per cent. However, from 2010 to 2017 the numbers of deployed troops exploded by nearly 2000 per cent, occupying more than 60 outposts tasked with carrying out over 100 missions at any given moment across the continent.

The scale of the military expansion which began in earnest under the Obama administration is part of a renewed “scramble for Africa”, comprised of a reckless drive for economic dominance over Africa’s vast economic resources which threatens to transform the entire continent into a battlefield.

The immediate roots of the Niger ambush can be traced to the 2011 US/NATO war in Libya which resulted in the removal and assassination of Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi. Under the Obama administration, Washington cultivated and armed various Islamist militant groups with ties to Al-Qaeda as a proxy force to carry out its aim of regime change. The resulting US/NATO bombardment left Libyan society in shambles, and the Islamist fighters spilled forth and out across North Africa and south to the Sahel.

In 2012, as a consequence of a US and French backed coup against the government in Bamako, Tuareg rebels in Northern Mali took advantage of the chaos resulting from the coup to stage a rebellion. After the Tuareg militants began taking control over cities and territory as it cut deeper into southern Mali, France with the Obama administrations backing deployed 4,000 troops to the country to neutralize the Tuareg rebels, eventually stabilizing the government it placed in Bamako.

While the Tuareg rebellion may have been halted by the US-backed French offensive, Islamist fighters from Libya were pouring into Mali, with many taking up arms against the Western backed puppet government. The Islamist fighters largely united into one large group, declaring allegiance to Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM). The military forces of Niger and Chad which participated in the US/French intervention in Mali have become frequent targets by the Islamist militants who began conducting cross-border raids and launched attacks on patrols and garrisons.

The rise of these warring Islamist militias which have transformed West Africa into a battlefield is the end result of Washington’s decades-long strategy in cultivating these forces as a proxy army in its wars for regime change, at first, in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and subsequently in Africa.

Underscoring France’s military deployment are the French economic interests it seeks to protect not only Mali, but throughout West Africa, the region which was once part of its colonial empire. In Niger, the French energy giant Arven has established mining operations extracting the country’s rich uranium resources.

For its part, Washington has enlisted the participation of the military forces of Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Mali in its drive for dominance of the Sahel and West Africa, with all of these countries featuring US outposts or bases.

A key element of Washington’s military expansion in the region are the significant economic resources that it aims to secure for American corporate interests. On behalf of these interests, and complimentary to its military operation, Washington has constructed a $300 million embassy in Niamey.

Washington’s military interventions in Africa must also be seen as an effort to offset China’s growing economic influence on the continent. Beijing in recent years has secured investment deals with African governments in nearly every sector of Africa’s economy.

China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) purchased the permit for oil drilling in Niger’s Agadem Basin, and CNPC also constructed and operates the Soraz refinery near Zinder, Niger’s second largest city. Deals by Beijing for the construction of pipelines traversing through Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Cameroon are currently in the development stage, causing no small amount of consternation in Washington.

Trump’s threats against Iran aggravate German-American tensions

Johannes Stern

In a militarist speech at the White House, US President Donald Trump announced new sanctions against Iran and threatened to terminate the 2015 nuclear agreement with the country. “Iran is not living up to the spirit of the deal,” said Trump yesterday. As a result, there will be new “tough sanctions” imposed on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, described by Trump as a “corrupt terror force.”

The US government will not re-certify the deal negotiated in 2015 and will leave it up to Congress to “strengthen” it. Should Iran not come to terms with the US Congress and others, Washington will terminate the agreement. The agreement “is under continuous review,” warned Trump, “our participation can be cancelled by me, as President, at any time. As we have seen in North Korea, the longer we ignore a threat, the worse that threat becomes.”

Trump’s aggressive course of action against Iran has elicited strong reactions in Berlin. Shortly after Trump’s speech, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel stepped before the cameras to declare: “That is a problematic and, in our view, dangerous sign. The deal with Iran showed for the first time that it is possible to prevent war through negotiations and, above all, to prevent a country from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

Gabriel, along with other leading political and media figures, have previously warned of the far-reaching military, political and economic consequences that could follow such a step. “A termination of the Iran agreement would turn the Middle East into a hotbed of crisis,” Gabriel said in an interview with Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland.

Asked if Trump was playing with “world peace in the matter of Iran,” Gabriel responded: “It would be a devastating blow to nuclear disarmament. Some states could see the breakdown of the Iran agreement as a sign that they should acquire nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.”

This concerns “far more than Iran,” added Gabriel. “It would be completely futile to push North Korea toward the adoption of a security treaty if the Iran deal falls through.” The world would “not be safer or more peaceful if we set the most dangerous element, the nuclear weapons, on edge again.” The agreement with Iran must “not be abandoned,” added Gabriel, because the “immediate threat of a new war would return.”

Gabriel’s warnings having nothing to do with pacifism. As the leading spokesperson for German and European militarism, his declared objective is the building of a Berlin-dominated European Army capable of enforcing its global interests independently of NATO and the US and, if necessary, against the latter.

“Europe’s security is Europe’s own responsibility,” writes the Social Democrat Gabriel in his latest book. “We must become capable of strategizing and acting from a foreign and security policy standpoint, because it is still insufficient. This includes defining our European interests and articulating them independently of the United States. This self-interest also requires to some extent an emancipation from the course charted by Washington.”

With Trump’s new Iran strategy, Gabriel and large sections of the German ruling class believe the time has come to put this aspiration into practice. One must tell the Americans “that their behaviour brings we Europeans to a common position with Russia and China against the US in the Iran question,” says Gabriel.

Like Germany, France and Great Britain, Beijing and Moscow are signatories to the 2015 Iran agreement and oppose its termination. Even politicians and media figures who have been rather pro-American and supported US-led wars, now speak openly of a break with the US.

The chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the German parliament, Norbert Röttgen (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) told the ZDF-Morgenmagazin that Trump is posing “the question of the United States’ compliance” with the agreement. Röttgen declared, “That is very fundamental. The Europeans will not follow them. We will have a transatlantic wedge between the US and Europe.”

The lead article in the latest edition of Die Zeit states that “America’s European partners, even the Brits, agree: the agreement must be obeyed. Should Trump break it, that would also mean a break with his partners. The Europeans must then try alone to maintain the diplomatic containment of the Iranian troublemakers. Inevitably without America—on the side of China and Russia.”

The German foreign office leaves no doubt that fundamental economic and geostrategic conflicts lie behind the breakup of the transatlantic alliance. Asked whether the answer to Trump’s Iran policy was significantly more European investment in Iran, Gabriel answered, “Yes. But if the United States threatens investment in Iran with punitive actions against the relevant businesses, then not much will be done with investment. That cannot be in our interest.”

Berlin, like Paris and London, has arranged contracts worth billions in Iran and sees Trump’s course as a threat to its efforts to develop new energy resources and markets for Germany’s export economy in Iran. As a result, the German economy had great hopes in the Iran agreement and the related suspension of sanctions in January 2016. The Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) reportedly expected a doubling of trade from €2.4 billion (2015) to €5 billion within two years and within five years an increase to €10 billion.

A return to the US-dictated sanctions regime would be “a blow to business for the significantly revived trade relations,” Volker Treier, the DIHK foreign business chief, commented to the German Press Agency. The German economy has “relied on the international agreement and with it the new conditions of lighter sanctions,” Treier added. After all, Iran has the second-largest natural gas and fourth-largest oil reserves in the world and the exploitation of this potential would be “very difficult” under new sanctions.

The working class must not underestimate these dangerous developments. As in the first half of the last century, the competition between the imperialist powers for markets and raw materials is leading once again to trade war and military conflict. Only a politically conscious intervention by the working class based on a socialist program can put a stop to the warmongers and prevent another catastrophe.

Novo Nordisk International Talent Program (Funded to Study at University of Copenhagen) 2018/2019

Application Deadlines:

• 25th October, 2017
• 1st April, 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Universities: The International Alliance of Research Universities are:

• University of Cape Town 

Others are:

• Australian National University
• ETH, Zürich
• National University of Singapore
• Peking University
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of Cambridge
• University of Oxford
• The University of Tokyo
• Yale University

Harvard University is also included in the Novo Nordisk International Talent Program.

To be taken at (country): University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Eligible Field of Study: Bioinformatics, Biochemistry, Biology, Biology-Biotechnology, Public Health, Food Innovation and Health, Global Health, Human Nutrition, Human Biology, Human Physiology, Immunology and Inflammation, Health Informatics, Chemistry, Medicine, Medicine and Technology, Molecular Biomedicine, Nanoscience and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

About the Award: Novo Nordisk International Talent Program is a scholarship programme set up to assist students from the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) in a range of select academic fields seeking to study abroad at the University of Copenhagen.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: To be eligible to apply, candidate must:

• be enrolled in a degree programme at a IARU university or Harvard University
• apply for admission to UCPH as an exchange or guest student
• study at third year Bachelor’s level or Master’s level while at UCPH in one of the following programmes:
  Bioinformatics, Biochemistry, Biology, Biology-Biotechnology, Public Health, Food Innovation and Health, Global Health, Human Nutrition, Human Biology, Human Physiology, Immunology and Inflammation, Health Informatics, Chemistry, Medicine, Medicine and Technology, Molecular Biomedicine, Nanoscience and Pharmaceutical Sciences
• meet a GPA requirement of minimum 3
• engage in study activities pertaining to metabolism, insulin, haemoglobin and obesity

Selection Criteria: The programme gives priority to applicants who display a strong academic background and have submitted an ambitious study plan for their stay at the University of Copenhagen.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: 

• The scholarship may be spent towards the cost of tuition fees, travel costs, insurance, and other expenses incurred in connection with studying abroad at UCPH.
• The scholarship will typically amount to approximately EURO € 1200 a month. Depending on the costs and length of the study abroad at UCPH, it may increase up to EURO € 26000 in total.

Duration of Scholarship: Scholarships are awarded for up to one academic year.

How to Apply: To submit an application, you will be required to prepare following documents:

• Application form
• A copy of your transcript of records in English, including both Bachelor’s and Master’s grades

The application comprises of an application form, containing a motivated study plan and a list of the courses you plan to attend during your studies abroad as well ad enclosed transcripts of records, including both Bachelor’s and Matser’s grades (if applicable). The application and requested documents are submitted through this link.

You will be requested to submit your GPA, including both Bachelor’s and Master’s grades – if you have Master’s grades.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Novo Nordisk International Talent Programme

Important Notes: Candidates may expect to hear about the outcome of their application 4-8 weeks after the application deadline.

College of Europe Fully-funded Postgraduate Scholarships for MENA Countries 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 17th January 2018

Eligible Countries: The countries concerned are: Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Tunisia and Ukraine.

To be taken at (country): Bruges, Belgium. Natolin (Warsaw), Poland

Type: Postgraduate

Eligibility: 

• All applicants to the College must hold a relevant university degree. Candidates must submit a formal application for admission, which consists of an online application.
• Applications need to be submitted with all the requested supporting documents before the closing date.

Number of Awardees: Not Specified

Value of Scholarship: These scholarships cover academic expenses, accommodation, meals and travel costs.

Duration of Scholarship: 1 year

How to Apply: 

•  Candidates are requested to visit the website of the College www.coleurope.eu and check the academic and language requirements.
• Candidates have to register and apply online.
• Candidates have to submit the online application form including the requested documents (cf. application instructions).
• After the deadline (17th of January 2018), all applications will be evaluated by the study departments at the College of Europe and a preselection will be made. Preselected candidates will be invited for an interview with the Professors/assistants of the department(s) they have applied for. The final decisions on admission and scholarships will be taken after all interviews of the candidates from the ENP countries. Candidates will be contacted by e-mail.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: College of Europe