MP disqualification crisis engulfs Australian government

Mike Head

A four-month political crisis in Australia, triggered by the disqualification of federal members of parliament for being entitled to citizenship of another country, is increasingly calling into question the survival of the Liberal-National Coalition government.

What began as a nationalistic purge of parliament, demanding the ouster of those lacking undivided loyalty to the Australian nation state, has spiraled into a full-scale constitutional crisis.

Beyond the immediate fate of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his severely fractured government, the affair has thrown into doubt the functioning of parliament itself.

Five MPs have already been removed and as many as 30 more now face being forced out, mainly on the reactionary basis that at least one of their parents was born overseas, allegedly entitling them to citizenship of that country. A wave of by-elections to replace MPs is looming, if not a sudden dissolution of parliament and the calling of a general election.

While to many, the ongoing saga may have the appearance of an absurd fiasco, it has a deeply anti-democratic content. A full-scale McCarthyite witch-hunt is underway, with every MP being required to prove their citizenship “purity.” In the past few days alone, scores of new names have been added to media lists of MPs likely to be expelled, following last week’s forced departure of Senate President Stephen Parry.

The disqualification affair has risen to a new level since October 27, when the High Court, the country’s supreme court, disqualified five MPs by applying a strict and literal interpretation of section 44(i) of the British-authored 1901 Constitution. That provision forbids any citizen from even nominating for parliament if they hold “allegiance” to a “foreign power” or are “entitled” to citizenship rights of another country.

The seven High Court judges unanimously insisted on “unqualified allegiance to Australia” and “single-minded loyalty,” free from any “foreign loyalties or obligations.” There could be no excuses, they declared, not even ignorance of potential foreign entitlements that could date back two generations. Significantly, the judges explicitly referred to the need to ensure undivided allegiance, and freedom from any overseas military service obligations, under conditions of war.

For months, Turnbull and Shorten both rejected calls for a full “audit” of all 226 members of the Senate and House of Representatives. Those demands were spearheaded by the Greens, whose leader Richard Di Natale highlighted his party’s unqualified commitment to the stability of Australian capitalism by insisting that two of the party’s senators had to quit as soon as the dual citizenship accusations were made against them. Murdoch’s media outlets then took up the demand, praising the Greens, and insisting on the necessity for unquestioned patriotism.

In the face of this agitation, Shorten last Friday performed a backflip on the audit question, followed on Monday by Turnbull, who announced a process requiring all MPs to disclose their possible dual citizenship entitlements.

So paralysed has the parliament become that Turnbull asked Shorten to agree that only “non-controversial” legislation be considered until the cloud hanging over the eligibility of so many MPs is resolved.

When Shorten rejected that request, after a two-hour meeting between the two leaders on Wednesday, Turnbull raised the stakes. Fighting for political survival, in the face of escalating media derision towards his inability to resolve the crisis, he threatened to use the government’s bare majority in the House of Representatives to unilaterally refer four Labor MPs to the High Court for disqualification, in the event that they had failed to complete the renunciation of their British citizenship before nominating for election.

Turnbull also informed a third party MP, Rebekha Sharkie, of the Nick Xenophon Team, that she should refer herself to the High Court. Earlier, Sharkie had indicated she might withdraw support for the government in a no-confidence vote.

Others caught up in the furore include extreme-right junior minister Alex Hawke, and several Liberal backbenchers, such as John Alexander. If any of these Liberals is removed, the government will lose its one-seat majority in the lower house. Already, the Coalition is ruling without a majority, because the High Court disqualified Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, the leader of the rural-based National Party. Having formally renounced the New Zealand citizenship he inherited from his father, Joyce is currently fighting a by-election for his seat.

Now some of the right-wing populists in the Senate have been named, including Senator Pauline Hanson, the leader of the anti-immigrant One Nation, and another xenophobic populist, Senator Jacqui Lambie.

Turnbull is currently proposing to give all MPs until December 7 to make declarations about their citizenship status. Shorten, responding to corporate and media demands for a speedier resolution, has insisted on a December 1 deadline. Labor also wants MPs to table documents to prove their sole citizenship—even showing where their grandparents were born—on pain of being charged with “serious contempt” of parliament if they “intentionally or recklessly” provide misleading information.

In an ever-more diverse country, where almost half the population has at least one parent born overseas, the High Court’s verdict bars millions of people from standing for election. Overnight, the court has rendered them second-class citizens. What comes next? Will they be relieved of their right to vote? What about other basic civil and political rights?

Moreover, in its extraordinarily anti-democratic decision, the court has arrogated to itself the right to determine the make-up of parliament and the future of a government. If the same literal interpretation of the Constitution were to be applied to the powers of the governor-general, the representative of the British monarch, he could simply dissolve the parliament. In 1975, Governor-General John Kerr invoked just such powers to dismiss the Whitlam Labor government, in the midst of a political and economic crisis. Today’s governor-general, Sir Peter Cosgrove, is a former military general. Under the Constitution, he is now also “commander-in-chief” of the armed forces.

Comments by corporate leaders provide an indication of the underlying economic and social crisis that has fuelled this political impasse. Westpac Bank chief executive Brian Hartzer this week denounced the “continuing inability from governments” to “set and stick with” policies to boost economic growth and restore business confidence.

Yesterday’s editorial in Murdoch’s Australian declared that the Turnbull government was “paralysed by indecision.” There was “growing doubt” that Turnbull was capable of shifting the debate to the “clear economic narrative” he promised when he deposed Tony Abbott as prime minister in September 2015. In particular, the newspaper demanded the reduction of the company tax rate from 30 percent to 25 percent to remain competitive against sweeping global tax cuts.

The editorial in yesterday’s Australian Financial Review warned of the “disastrous” instability of the political system since Julia Gillard knifed Kevin Rudd as prime minister in June 2010. “The uncertainty, including two governments with zero or tiny majorities, has brought only years of policy mediocrity,” it declared.

Successive governments, both Labor and Coalition, have failed to enact the austerity agenda being demanded by the financial elite. Every move to slash healthcare, education, aged care and welfare has provoked widespread popular opposition. Mass political hostility towards the political establishment as a whole is intensifying as sweeping job losses, falling wages and soaring living costs impact on the lives of millions of ordinary working people.

The purging of parliament indicates a concerted bid by the ruling elite to divert this discontent into nationalist and xenophobic directions. Both the Turnbull government and the Shorten Labor opposition have signalled their unconditional support for a US-led war on the Korean Peninsula, despite mass anti-war sentiment. Already, the witch-hunt against the alleged “foreign allegiances” of Australian politicians, and the railing against “Chinese influence” in domestic politics, business and education, recall the widespread victimisations carried out in Australia during World I and World II against “foreigners” at the time, i.e., long-standing residents who happened to be born in Italy or Germany.

Paradise Papers shed light on how giant companies and the super-rich avoid taxation

Gabriel Black 

This past Sunday, a group of newspapers, in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), began releasing leaked documents from a law firm and several companies who specialize in aiding the super-rich and giant corporations with avoiding taxes.

The Paradise Papers, as they are known, are a collection of 13.4 million electronic documents that were originally leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Many of the documents originate from a law firm called Appleby that employs a network of lawyers who set up shell corporations in the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Island, Guersney, the Isle of Man, Jersey and other tax havens to protect the wealth of their powerful, wealthy clients. Other documents originated from corporate service providers Estera and Asiaciti Trust, as well as business registries in 19 tax havens that show the shell companies used to avoid taxes.

The Paradise Papers come a year and a half after the Panama Papers exposed millions of files from the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which like Appleby, hid and stored the ultra-rich’s fortunes in tax islands across the Atlantic.

The documents implicate several of the largest corporations in the world in the use of off-shore accounts to hide money from taxation. Apple, Facebook, Uber, Nike, Walmart, Allianz, Siemens, McDonald’s, Yahoo!, and Allergan are some of the major corporations listed.

The documents also reveal how a variety of extremely wealthy individuals, politicians, businessmen and celebrities, have used the services of Appleby to hide their wealth offshore. The Queen of England, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s adviser Stephen Bronfman, the Queen of Jordan, and hundreds of corporate executives from around the world have been tied to the leaks.

The Boston Consulting Group estimates that at least $10 trillion is stored in offshore bank accounts, avoiding taxes. A study from inequality expert Gabriel Zucman this May found that, on average, at least a quarter of the wealth of ultra-high-net-worth individuals was stored abroad in tax havens.

Below are some of the newly revealed findings:

* Following scrutiny of Apple’s use of Ireland as a tax haven in 2014, Apple used Appleby’s services to transfer huge sums of its offshore wealth to Jersey, a tax haven in the British Isles.

Appleby stressed to its employees that it must be “extremely sensitive concerning publicity” in servicing Apple—ensuring no word would get out about what Apple was doing. Documents show that two of Apple’s Irish subsidies were transferred over to Jersey; however, one mysteriously disappeared. The Guardian suggests that this may be due to one subsidy taking over the other.

In 2016, Apple was reported to have $181 billion stored away outside of the US—despite the vast majority of its operations occurring within the US. Since 2014, Apple has made $122 billion of profits outside the US, but that has only been taxed at a rate of 5.4 percent, according to the Guardian.

* The largest commodity trading company in the world, Glencore, used its offshore holdings to secretly loan millions of dollars to an Israeli billionaire who placed political pressure on the Democratic Republic of Congo to give a Glencore owned business mining rights in the Congo. The loan was effectively a large bribe that was only told to be repaid if Glencore did not receive the mining rights.

The Israeli billionaire in question, Dan Gertler, has been cited by the UN and the US Department of Justice for bribing DRC officials with huge sums of money, mainly used to buy weapons, in exchange for giving him critical mineral rights in the geologically rich country.

* The papers document how multiple members of the Trump Administration use offshore tax havens.

Steven Mnuchin’s former bank, CIT Bank, exploited offshore tax havens to sell private jets to the ultra-wealthy.

Rex Tillerson is named as director of Marib Upstream Services Company, whose nominal headquarters is in Bermuda. In reality, it was used by ExxonMobil to avoid taxes on its $5 billion natural gas venture in Yemen. Yemen later nationalized the operation, prompting the owner of the firm, Ray Hunt, a close friend of Tillerson, to sue the country, unsuccessfully, in international court. This occurred before the outbreak of the US-backed Saudi-led war against the country in 2015.

Gary Cohn, Trump’s chief economic adviser, is shown in the documents to be the head of 22 different entities in Bermuda, all offshore shells of Goldman Sachs which the bank used to avoid taxes. Randal Quarles, supervisor of the Federal Reserve, led the investment of half a billion dollars in an offshore company that is under investigation by the US for tax evasion.

Billionaire Carl Icahn, a former adviser to President Trump on financial regulations, owns a $250 million mining company whose operations are in Brazil but is registered in the Isle of Man, Luxembourg and Malta in a complicated scheme that allows it to avoid taxes.

* The Queen of England’s estate parked millions of dollars in a Cayman Islands fund. Part of that fund went to a retailer, BrightHouse, which has been cited for exploiting poor families through its rent-to-own scheme.

The documents also show how a lobby group for offshore businesses, the International Financial Centres Forum, furiously worked to prevent changes to UK law that would crack down on its tax havens. It boasted of having “superb penetration” in its access to and influence over the highest members of the UK government.

* Over 100 renowned global universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, and University of Pennsylvania use offshore tax havens to park sections of their endowments whose total value exceeds $500 billion.

The Paradise Papers further expose what is already well known: the ultra-rich, who literally own the world, have a set of rules and laws that are entirely different from those faced by the vast majority of the population. While working people around the world struggle to get by day to day and flinch when they are asked to hand over a few thousand dollars in taxes to the government each year, the ultra-rich scheme and manipulate to avoid paying any tax on their unimaginably vast sums.

The global tax system is rigged not simply in favor of the well off or even the wealthy. Rather, it is run for the ultra-rich—individuals whose net worth soars well beyond 10 or even 100 million dollars.

Indeed, while trillions of dollars are stored beyond the reach of taxation, the ruling class of the United States has the audacity to debate whether or not to further lower already nominal taxes on the ultra-rich. While workers everywhere are told there is no money left for social programs like health care and retirement, the reality is that there are trillions of dollars available for such programs, but these resources are kept hidden, locked, and out of site, by those that rule.

NATO summit escalates preparation for war with Russia

Alex Lantier 

On Wednesday and Thursday, the defense ministers of the NATO countries met in Brussels to discuss plans for a major military escalation in Europe. As the Trump administration stokes conflict with Russia and China in the Pacific with threats of US nuclear attack against North Korea, NATO planned a major upgrade of its military facilities in Europe to wage war with Russia, as well as a renewed intervention in Afghanistan.

NATO is planning two major new military command centers in Europe. One, likely in France or Portugal, would coordinate large-scale naval operations to transport US troops to Europe and destroy Russian warships in the Atlantic. The other, likely in Germany or Poland, would coordinate ground transport of NATO forces across Europe to attack Russia—including ensuring that internal borders in Europe did not halt rapid transit of NATO strike forces to the east.

In its article reviewing these plans prior to the summit, the German news magazine Der Spiegel bluntly wrote, “In plain language: NATO is preparing for a possible war with Russia.”

In his press conference in Brussels, NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg tried to blame this situation on Russia. “We reduced the command structure at the end of the Cold War, because tensions went down,” said Stoltenberg, “[but] we have seen a Russia which has over many years invested heavily in their military capabilities, modernized their military capabilities, which are exercising not only conventional forces but also nuclear forces, and which has been willing to use military force against a neighbor: Ukraine … NATO has to be able to respond to that.”

Claims that the NATO buildup is a response to Russian aggression are political lies. Russia is carrying out military exercises on its own soil. It is NATO that, after a quarter century of Middle East wars and toppling a pro-Russian Ukrainian government with a coup in Kiev in 2014, is sending its troops up to Russia’s borders. Trump’s threats to annihilate North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on the anniversary of the US atom bombing of Nagasaki this year, was an unmistakable sign of the aggressive and frankly insane role of the NATO imperialist powers.

At the Brussels summit, NATO officials made clear they are planning a major land war in Europe against Russia, which fields the world’s second-largest nuclear arsenal after the United States. Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimondas Karoblis said building the new bases was key, as delay in transporting troops and weapons across Europe to fight the Russian army “means more casualties, additional risks and losses ... Time is very important here.”

Explaining the comments of Karoblis, the Washington Post claimed that “the speed with which NATO can respond to any Russian aggression could make the difference between fighting to defend NATO borders and a much more grinding effort to retake territory that has already been lost.”

Such discussions of NATO war planning hide from the public that what NATO is planning is a war that would rapidly escalate towards a devastating nuclear exchange between NATO and Russia that would leave hundreds of millions or even billions of people dead.

This is widely recognized by government officials and foreign policy analysts. Mike Kofman of the US Center for Naval Analyses wrote that the “problem with the fixation on conventional deterrence in the Baltic fight is that, just as in the old standoff between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, this battle is fraught with opportunities for nuclear escalation. Most Russian experts I know in the military analysis community, including those in Russia, don’t see much of a chance for conventional battle with NATO to stay conventional.”

Reviewing the risk of a NATO-Russia war breaking out in the Baltics, the US web site the National Interest commented, “Such a war will almost certainly escalate into a full-up nuclear war between the planet’s only two nuclear superpowers—which means everyone loses.”

Nonetheless, the Brussels summit aggressively pushed a NATO buildup in the Baltic states and Scandinavia against Russia. Finland joined 11 other countries in a program to acquire large stockpiles of US air-to-ground precision-guided weaponry. This came after Sweden held its largest military exercise in 23 years in September, with 19,000 Swedish personnel and US, French, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Estonian and Lithuanian forces. In March, Sweden brought back the draft in a policy that defense officials said was aimed to prepare the country for war with Russia.

More broadly, the NATO summit discussed war plans around the world. The EU powers made a commitment to send 3,000 more troops to participate in the US-led occupation of Afghanistan. Amid escalating tensions between Turkey and its principal NATO allies, the United States and Germany, a deal was reportedly struck between Turkey, France, Italy and Spain to collaborate on developing missile systems for Turkey.

This drive to war is objectively rooted in policies pursued by the NATO powers, led by the United States, for over a quarter century since the Stalinist dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Washington waged wars with the support of various European powers in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and beyond. While Washington aimed to use its military might to cement its world hegemony as the dominant power in the NATO alliance and dominate the Eurasian landmass, these wars proved to be horrific, bloody and costly debacles that altogether claimed millions of lives.

While Washington is threatening a major war in East Asia, aimed in the final analysis at blunting the growing challenge to US imperialist interests posed by China, conflicts are also surging inside the NATO alliance itself. Especially after Germany’s 2014 decision to re-militarize its foreign policy, the election of Trump, and Britain’s vote to exit the European Union (EU) in 2016, which removed America’s closest European military ally from the EU, tensions among the major NATO powers have exploded.

These tensions came to the fore shortly after Trump’s election, when Trump threatened to impose tariffs in an attempt to cut off German car exports to the United States.

In a planning document consulted by Der Spiegel, “Strategic Perspectives 2040,” the German army foresaw the possibility of a “disintegration of the EU” and the eruption of wars across Europe. After “decades of instability,” it wrote, one could have a situation where “EU enlargement is largely abandoned, other states have left the EU, and Europe has lost its global competitiveness in many areas. The increasingly disordered, sometimes chaotic and conflicting world has dramatically changed the German and European security environment.”

Under these conditions, NATO officials stressed their plans for continued collaboration with the EU even as EU countries, led by Germany and France, announced plans for a joint military pact. The Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), to be signed in Brussels on November 13, is reportedly designed to pool resources to create joint EU weapons systems, set up an EU military command structure, and facilitate joint operations by EU troops of different nationalities. However, this pact would exclude not only the United States but also Britain, which is leaving the EU.

NATO officials, aware of broad opposition to war with Russia in the European population, proposed that the EU help coordinate the broader political efforts for promoting the war drive. NATO will be in close talks with governments, banks, police and intelligence services across Europe which are tasked with trying to impose war plans on the European population.

Stoltenberg said, “Of course, military mobility is not just about the military. It requires a whole-of-government approach. So it’s important that our defense ministers make our interior, finance and transport ministers aware of military requirements.”

The main danger in this situation is that broad masses of the working class in Europe and around the world are not aware of the how pressing the possibility of a catastrophic global war truly is, and how devastating the casualties from such a conflict would be. This is why the WSWS stresses the urgency of building an international anti-war movement based on the working class and a socialist and anti-imperialist perspective, and asks for its readers’ active support in spreading its materials opposing war.

Crown Prince extends purge of rivals in Saudi Arabia

Jean Shaoul

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has expanded his purge of leading Saudi business and political figures, including some of the 20,000 princes. On Wednesday, the authorities carried out further arrests, amounting to 500 over the last few days, and froze more than 1,700 bank accounts under the pretext of clamping down on corruption.

It follows the arrest on Saturday of 11 princes and 38 government ministers and former ministers, including Prince Miteb bin Abdullah—son of the former King Abdullah and head of the National Guard, the 100,000-strong military force charged with protecting the Royal family and oil facilities, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal—one of the richest men in the world who was close to King Abdullah, and a senior executive in the Bin Laden Group construction firm. They are accused of money laundering, bribery, extortion and exploiting public office for personal gain.

The purge plays well with the Saudi public, given the industrial-scale corruption in royal and business circles. Prince Bandar bin Sultan famously said in an interview with PBS in 2001, “If you tell me that building this whole country, and spending $350 billion out of $400 billion, that we had misused or got corrupted with $50 billion, I’ll tell you, yes. But I’ll take that anytime.”

The crackdown, targeting the faction around King Abdullah, came just hours after the aging and ailing King Salman appointed bin Salman to head up the recently established anti-corruption body which has the power to seize their assets. Its aim is to strengthen Salman’s branch of the royal family and ensure a smooth succession to bin Salman when the 81-year-old king abdicates or dies.

The 32-year-old bin Salman was named as crown prince in June by his father, after the arrest of former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Naif. Since then, bin Salman has brought the main levers of power—the military, the economy, foreign policy and the media and entertainment industries—under his control, while other key positions are held by his branch of the family.

The scale of the purge testifies to the mortal crisis wracking the venal ruling clique in Riyadh that treats the country as its personal fiefdom. Isolated from the broad mass of the population, the House of Saud is embroiled in factional rivalries and divisions that have led to a rapid turnover of Crown Princes and Deputy Crown Princes in the last few years.

In the last two weeks, two princes have died under circumstances that remain unclear. Prince Abdelaziz bin Fahd, a son of King Fahd who was critical of the removal from office of the former Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, is believed to have been shot while resisting arrest, while another prince died in a helicopter crash near the border with Yemen.

These deaths and the arrests have raised widespread fears about the stability of the Kingdom, one of Washington’s key allies in the oil- and gas-rich region, on which it depends in its on-going efforts to establish its unchallenged global hegemony. Riyadh, along with the other Gulf monarchies, provides the crucial Sunni axis against Shi’ite Iran and its allies, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iraq’s powerful Shi’ite parties, which the US views as a regional threat.

Saudi Arabia’s stock market fell due to concerns about the economic impact of its anti-corruption purge, with shares in companies linked to people detained in the investigation particularly affected.

But US President Donald Trump has given bin Salman and his purge his approval, tweeting “Some of those they are harshly treating have been ‘milking’ their country for years!”

The arrests follow last September’s round-up of more than 70 people, including influential clerics, writers, academics and judges on the Specialized Criminal Court that handles terrorism cases. The 70 are close to former Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, who was formerly in charge of the court, with claims that they were inciting violence against the state. Some had apparently voiced their opposition on social media to bin Salman’s austerity measures, subsidy cuts and privatisation of state assets, while others had criticised Riyadh’s blockade of Qatar.

Presiding over the largest known oil reserves in the world, the House of Saud maintains its grip on power and the country’s vast oil wealth by a system of brutal repression, including public executions, torture and detention without trial, and outlaws all public protests, strikes and expressions of dissent. This is combined with its championing of an extreme version of Sunni Islam, Wahhabism, and a system of public welfare that includes free public services such as healthcare and education, public sector jobs and subsidies for basic commodities to compensate for the gross inequality that characterises Saudi society.

Systemic discrimination against the Shia minority has been a major catalyst for unrest in the oil-producing Eastern Province, as has the gross exploitation of migrant labour from South and East Asia, which constitutes about one third of the country’s 32 million population. But social unrest is being driven by intense social and economic contradictions that affect the Sunni majority as well.

The official unemployment rate is 12.8 percent, not counting underemployment and not to mention the large numbers of women who are excluded from the labour market. This is set to double by 2030. For young people—70 percent of Saudi Arabia’s population is under the age of 30—conditions are far worse. The unemployment rate among 20-24-year-olds is close to 30 percent. Many graduates cannot find work.

The Saudi monarchy sought to temporarily suppress social and political tensions that erupted in the wake of revolutionary movement that toppled longstanding dictators Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, and rocked the ruling al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain in 2011. It intensified repression and pledged an extra $36 billion in benefits and social programs a year, including a 15 percent pay hike for public employees and increased aid for students and the unemployed, with a further $58 billion for education, health care and infrastructure.

But the huge cost of disastrous wars in Syria and Yemen and the global slump in oil prices—from more than $110 a barrel in mid-2014 when they provided 90 percent of state revenues to around $35 in 2015 and $55 now—sounded the death knell for such measures. The fiscal deficit is expected to reach $53 billion in 2017, while reserves have fallen sharply from a record $737 billion in August 2014 to $487 billion in July 2017.

The government therefore moved to cut the subsidies, privatise a 5 percent stake in oil giant Saudi Aramco, along with airports, electricity, water, transport, retail, schools and healthcare, repatriate its foreign workforce to make way for local labour and introduce VAT.

At a stroke, this destroyed the social contract that had bought domestic peace. Within six months, Saudi Arabia had cut the budget deficit from $98 billion to $79 billion in 2016. But this was not enough as GDP fell by 2.3 percent. It has contracted by 3.7 percent in the first quarter and 2.3 percent in the second quarter of this year compared with the same period last year.

In 2016, bin Salman launched his Vision 2030 to wean the country off dependency on oil and public-sector jobs in favour of private sector employment. Two weeks ago, he unveiled his plans for NEOM, a megacity on Saudi Arabia’s western Red Sea coast incorporating a tourist resort with no restrictions on bathing and alcohol and an economic trade zone. To secure a social base among the better-off layers of Saudi society, he has announced that women will be allowed to drive and attend football matches from April 2018 and relaxed rigid rules on public entertainment, music and films. He has also curtailed the powers of the religious police and clerics.

US-Saudi blockade threatens millions of famine deaths in Yemen

Bill Van Auken 

Saudi Arabia’s shutdown of all of Yemen’s seaports, airports and border crossings announced on Monday threatens to unleash famine of world historic proportions, leading to the deaths of millions, the United Nations and major aid groups have warned.

“There will be a famine in Yemen,” the UN’s chief humanitarian officer Mark Lowcock told the UN Security Council Wednesday, unless steps are taken to assure the flow of humanitarian aid through all sea and airports.

“It will not be like the famine that we saw in South Sudan earlier in the year where tens of thousands of people were affected,” he said. “It will not be like the famine which cost 250,000 people their lives in Somalia in 2011. It will be the largest famine the world has seen for many decades, with millions of victims.”

Lowcock delivered a stark description of what he had witnessed in a trip to Yemen at the end of last month, stressing that 2 million children in Yemen under the age of five are “acutely malnourished and at grave risk of dying.”

“In Hudaydah, I met seven-year-old Nora. She weighs 11 kg—that is the average weight for a two-year-old, not a seven-year-old,” he said. The doctor at the hospital where she was being treated told him that the facility was turning away large numbers of severely malnourished children because it lacks the means to treat them.

Lowcock also pointed out that the Yemen Humanitarian Response Plan, which is supposed to deal with the worst humanitarian crisis on the face of the planet, is only 57 percent funded, with just $1.3 billion of the $2.3 billion needed to prevent millions from dying of starvation and disease.

In addition to mass starvation, Yemen is confronted with the worst cholera epidemic in living memory, with more than 2,100 people having died of the disease since April and the number of cases expected to climb to 1 million by Christmas.

The mass hunger and spread of disease are the direct product of the savage Saudi-led bombing campaign that has targeted factories, farms, hospitals, schools, residential buildings, and water supplies and sewage treatment plants.

Riyadh announced its total blockade Monday in supposed response to the firing of a missile from Yemen Saturday that was brought down near Riyadh’s international airport. The Saudi monarchy charged that the missile was supplied by Iran and represented an “act of war” by Tehran. Iran denied the charge. While Tehran has supported the Houthi rebels who control the capital of Sanaa and most of western Yemen, it has denied arming them.

For their part, the Houthis have insisted the missile was of their own manufacture and that its firing was justified retaliation for the relentless Saudi bombing of Yemeni civilians.

The UN Security Council, which heard a rabid denunciation by US Ambassador Nikki Haley of Iran’s unsubstantiated role in the firing of a missile that claimed not a single life, made no condemnation whatsoever of the Saudi blockade.

Instead, the Security Council issued a perfunctory statement through its current president, Italian Ambassador Sebastiano Cardi, lamenting the “dire humanitarian situation in Yemen,” and affirming “the importance of keeping all of Yemen’s ports and airports functioning.” Italy, like the UK and a number of other European countries, is competing with the US for multi-billion-dollar arms sales to the Saudi regime.

Riyadh has claimed that it is stopping all shipments into Yemen in order to block arms supplies to the Houthis, but in reality the action is part of a two-and-a-half-year-old war against the country’s civilian population and a deliberate attempt to starve it into submission.

This war is being waged by the Saudi monarchy and the other Sunni oil sheikdoms to prevent the emergence of any regime not under their thumb—and potentially aligned with Iran—on the Arabian Peninsula.

It continues only thanks to the indispensable military and political support of Washington, which began under the Obama administration and has only intensified under Trump. This involves not only massive arms deals, but also the US refueling of Saudi warplanes bombing Yemen, as well as intelligence and logistical aid. US Navy warships are deployed off the Yemeni coast, ostensibly to guard the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, but in practice as a reinforcement of the Saudi blockade.

Given the depth of the current crisis, aid organizations and medical professionals have warned that the tightened blockade can become the tipping point in which mass hunger—with 7 million people already facing “famine like” conditions and 17 million “food insecure”—and rampant disease turn into the cascading deaths of millions.

“If I have to compare Yemen to a person, I would say that this person is very sick, this person is very weakened, and is being drip-fed, so if you want to keep the patient alive, we need to reactivate drip-feeding as soon as possible,” International Committee of the Red Cross Regional Director for the Near and Middle East Robert Mardini told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

“If access shuts off entirely, even for a single week, then disaster will be the result,” Save the Children director Tamer Kirolos said. “This is the nightmare scenario, and children will die as a result.”

According to Reuters, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported on Tuesday that a shipment of chlorine tablets needed to provide safe water was turned away at the border by the Saudi forces. It also voiced fears that 50,000 vials of insulin for diabetics due to be delivered next week would be blocked.

Doctors in the capital of Sanaa told Al Jazeera that even before the Saudi announcement of a total blockade, critical drugs were running dangerously short. Unless they are restocked, they said, many of their patients will die.

“We’re running dangerously low on medical supplies and won’t have anywhere near the necessary vials of pain-relief medication, insulin, and other specialist medicines for our patients,” Abdulrahman al-Ansi, a doctor at Sanaa’s al-Mutawkil hospital, told the news agency.

“Unless Saudi Arabia eases its restrictions and allows food and medical supplies, I could end up losing all of my cancer patients—even those suffering from diabetes [a treatable disease]—will die. Hundreds will perish in the next week alone.”

The immediate impact of the total Saudi blockade has been a 60 percent rise in the price of fuel and a doubling of the price of cooking oil virtually overnight. Food prices are soaring.

What is unfolding in Yemen is not only the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, but also one of its worst war crimes carried out by US imperialism and its reactionary Gulf State allies. Without any debate in Congress, and to the utter indifference of the US corporate media, Washington is pursuing its quest for hegemony over the Middle East through a war that threatens to kill millions.

US Justice Department forces RT America to register as “foreign agent”

Trévon Austin 

RT, the Russia-based TV and Internet broadcaster, announced Thursday that the US Department of Justice has forced it to register as a “foreign agent” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Washington has given the outlet until Monday to register as a foreign agent or its director could be arrested and its assets frozen.

The move is a product of the ongoing anti-Russia witch hunt being led by the Democratic Party, together with the US intelligence agencies, aimed at delegitimizing and outlawing domestic political opposition.

The Justice Department’s actions will have a chilling effect on the numerous independent journalists who have either worked for or appeared on RT, as well as on press freedom in the United States as a whole.

“In demanding RT America register as a foreign agent, the government has produced no evidence that RT qualifies as a foreign lobbying outfit, nor has it bothered to explain how this network is different from Al Jazeera, the BBC, or other state broadcasters,” Max Blumenthal, senior editor for AlterNet’s Grayzone Project, and a regular guest on RT America, told the World Socialist Web Site.

“The only conclusion to draw is that the US government is targeting RT on political grounds, on the basis of its role as a platform for critical perspectives on American foreign policy, and as a test case for a wider campaign of media suppression,” he added.

On January 6, the US Director of National Intelligence issued a report on “Russian intervention” in US politics, which denounced RT as a platform for oppositional sentiment in the United States.

The report alleged that the “channel portrayed the US electoral process as undemocratic and featured calls by US protesters for the public to rise up and ‘take this government back.’”

The report continued, “In an effort to highlight the alleged ‘lack of democracy’ in the United States, RT broadcast, hosted, and advertised third-party candidate debates and ran reporting supportive of the political agenda of these candidates. The RT hosts asserted that the US two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a ‘sham.’”

The Director of National Intelligence report further denounced favorable coverage by RT of the Occupy Wall Street movement, declaring, “RT framed the movement as a fight against ‘the ruling class’ and described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations.”

The World War II-era Foreign Agents Registration Act required companies or individuals considered to be working on behalf of a foreign government in the US to disclose their funding and relationship with foreign governments or actors with the DOJ. According to RT, over 400 entities are registered under the act, but not a single media outlet is included in the list.

The DOJ originally sent a letter to RT America in September suggesting that the company was obligated to register under FARA. Registration under the law would require the outlet to disclose confidential information, including the personal information of its staff. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated the action would “have serious legal consequences” and “compromise the safety of [RT] employees.”

RT America has announced that it will comply with the DOJ’s demand, but will challenge the decision in court. RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan claimed the decision placed freedom of speech in the US under question.

“We believe this requirement is not just contrary to the law, and we intend to prove it in court. This requirement is discriminatory, it contradicts both the principles of democracy and freedom of speech,” she said. Simonyan added, “It deprives us of fair competition with other international channels, which are not registered as foreign agents.”

In his statement to the WSWS, Mr. Blumenthal condemned the silence of international human rights organization on the crackdown against RT. “So far, liberal civil liberties and human rights organizations have said nothing about the government’s assault on RT America. In their silence, groups from the ACLU to Amnesty International to the Committee to Protect Journalists, have made themselves accomplices in a McCarthyite crusade that is whittling away at press freedom.”

In last week’s congressional hearings on “extremist content,” lawmakers demanded that social media companies take decisive action in censoring “harmful content.” Members of Congress chastised representatives from Google, Facebook, and Twitter into testifying their social media platforms had been used by a foreign power to influence the 2016 elections.

Earlier this month, Google removed Russia Today from its list of “preferred” channels on YouTube. At one of the hearings, Senator Dianne Feinstein pressed Google’s legal counsel on why it took so long for YouTube to revoke the status of Russia Today as a “preferred” broadcaster. She demanded, “Why did Google give preferred status to Russia Today, a Russian propaganda arm, on YouTube? ... It took you until September of 2017 to do it.”

California Democratic representative Jackie Speier asserted that RT “seeks to influence politics and fuel discontent in the United States.” She asked: “Why have you not shut down RT on YouTube? … It’s a propaganda machine… the intelligence community says it’s an arm of one of our adversaries.”

In addition to its crackdown on RT, Google has made sweeping changes to its search engine and news service that have dramatically slashed traffic to left-wing, antiwar, and progressive web sites, including the World Socialist Web Site, which has had its search traffic from Google fall by 74 percent since April.

The Justice Department’s action will dramatically intensify this campaign for online censorship, targeted first and foremost against left-wing political opposition.

Three billionaires are wealthier than half the US population

Eric London

According to a report published Wednesday by the Institute for Policy Studies, the three richest Americans—Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett—now own more wealth than the poorest half of the US population, some 160 million people.

America’s “60 families,” whose massive wealth was documented in journalist Ferdinand Lundberg’s 1937 exposure, have been replaced by just three billionaires whose combined wealth is over $264 billion.

The Institute for Policy Studies report, “Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the rest of us,” reveals that the richest 25 Americans are wealthier than the bottom 56 percent of the US. The net worth of the 400 richest is roughly equal to that of the bottom two thirds of the country, a total of 200 million people. According to the report’s authors, the US has become “a hereditary aristocracy of wealth and power.”

The unprecedented concentration of wealth is an international phenomenon. Oxfam reported in June 2017 that the world’s 5 richest people own as much as the poorest half of the world’s population, down from 80 people in 2015. Today, each of the top 5 billionaires owns as much as 750 million people, more than the total population of Latin America and double the population of the US.

Wealth share by wealth decile. Credit: People’s Policy Project

The IPS report explains that the US data “underestimate[s] our current levels of wealth concentration” because “the growing use of offshore tax havens and legal trusts has made the concealing of assets more widespread than ever before." A 2017 report published by Alstadsaeter, Johannesen, and Zucman titled “Who owns the wealth in tax havens?” estimates that the world’s superrich have between $5.7 and $32 trillion hidden from taxation or statistical analysis.

While the superrich dominate the commanding heights, the bottom 90 percent face hardship and crisis that vary only in terms of immediacy. The IPS report measures the net worth of working class families by subtracting the value of durable goods like automobiles, household appliances and furniture. According to its estimate, over 19 percent of US households—roughly 60 million people—have “zero or negative net worth” when durable goods are subtracted.

Beyond the poorest 20 percent, the report explains, “even those low- and middle-income families who do have some wealth often don’t have any liquid assets—cash or savings—at their disposal. Over 60 percent of Americans report not having enough savings to cover a $500 emergency.”

Even above the roughly 200 million people with nothing saved, conditions for the 60th to 90th percentile are similarly difficult. The bulk of this section of the working class’s net worth derives from housing equity, and when this is subtracted, most lack enough to survive through a few years of retirement. According to a recent study of Census data by the Economic Policy Institute, retirement account savings have plummeted in recent years among all age groups.

The IPS report is based on data from the US Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which the World Socialist Web Site analyzed in detail last month. While the extremely wealthy have accumulated vast sums of wealth, a broader layer, comprising the top 10 percent, has also greatly enriched itself in recent years at the expense of the working masses. The richest 10 percent of the US—the social and political base for gender and identity politics—owns 77.1 percent of total wealth, while the bottom three quarters owns just 10 percent.

The explosion of social inequality is not an accidental process. It is the product of a decades-long campaign by both the Democratic and Republican parties to transfer trillions of dollars from the working class into the pockets of the rich. The “accomplishments” of both parties over the course of the last forty years are a litany of tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts to social programs, the deindustrialization of broad swaths of the Midwest, gutting corporate regulations and spending trillions on imperialist war, state surveillance and mass deportation and incarceration.

The Obama administration marked a milestone in this protracted social counterrevolution defined by the Wall Street bailout of 2008-2009, the restructuring of the auto industry in 2009 and the bankruptcy of Detroit in 2013-14. With the help of the Democratic administration, the ruling elite cashed in on the financial crisis.

As a result, the United States is now an oligarchy. Through its immense wealth and control of the major corporations, the superrich have established total domination over all of the official institutions of political, cultural and intellectual power.

The courts, the congress, and the president not only operate on behalf of competing interests within the aristocracy, they are increasingly personally staffed by millionaires and billionaires, as expressed most directly in the figure of Donald Trump. The military wages permanent war across the globe to protect corporate profits. The mainstream media is nothing more than the official propaganda wing of the American oligarchy. The trade unions, in their typically brutish and corrupt form, are paid off by the corporations to police the workers and suppress opposition.

The obsessions and preoccupations of this privileged layer of the population are entirely alien to the concerns of the bottom 90 percent. The cost of health care is skyrocketing; thousands of immigrant families are torn apart each week by deportation; nearly 100 people die each day from opioid abuse; student debt crushes a whole generation; millions remain devastated by floods, fires and hurricanes; entire states have been stripped of women’s health clinics; one veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes; and on and on.

Congress holds no hearings on these subjects. Its calendar is booked full with hearings on alleged Russian interference in US politics and the need to bring social media and tech companies to heel by censoring antiestablishment media. The Democrats and Republicans are working around the clock to reach a deal on a tax bill that will hand over trillions to the wealthy and corporations, with Senate Republicans announcing their version just yesterday.

The astronomical growth of inequality and the absence of any institutional mechanisms by which the population can address its social grievances presages an historic explosion of the class struggle. Strikes and protests involving tens of millions of workers and youth are inevitable, but they must be guided by a socialist program.

The billionaires’ wealth must be expropriated and redistributed to those in need. The corporations through which they derive their riches must be seized, placed under democratic control and reorganized by the workers themselves to serve public need and not private profit.

Companies like Bezos’ Amazon can be used to deliver medicine, food, water and construction equipment to disaster zones and impoverished areas. Gates’ Microsoft software and programming development can be harnessed to introduce an unprecedented degree of social planning into the world economy, allowing for production to be controlled so as to eliminate scarcity of basic resources and reverse environmental degradations. All industries can be made to serve the interests of the human race.

Under socialism, across all industries and in all countries, workers will come together in their workshops, plants and offices to plot a course for wielding the world’s productive forces in pursuit of equality and progress. But the ruling class will not give up its wealth voluntarily. To join the fight for socialism, contact us today.

Science Without Borders Challenge for Primary/Secondary School Students 2018

Application Deadline: 23rd April, 2018 by 11:59 pm (Eastern Standard Time).

Results Announcement Expected: May 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Online

About the Award: The theme for the 2018 Science without Borders Challenge is “Why Coral Reefs Matter.”

For this year’s Challenge, use your imagination to create a piece of art that illustrates a made-up Reef SuperSpecies. A Reef SuperSpecies is an organism (plant or animal) that has found a way to adapt to a deadly threat facing coral reef ecosystems. You can make up an organism or base your organism off of an already existing reef organism.

 The Science without Borders Challenge was created to get students and teachers interested in ocean conservation through various forms of art. This annual contest inspires students to be creative while learning about important ocean conservation issues.

Offered Since: 2013

Type: Contest

Eligibility: The Science Without Borders Challenge is open to primary and secondary school students 11-19 years old.  Students must be enrolled in primary or secondary school, or the home school equivalent. College and university students are not eligible for this contest.

Work will be judged in two categories, with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes awarded for each:

• 11 – 14 year-olds
• 15 – 19 year-olds

We encourage teacher submissions! Be sure each entry has the name of the artist and their age written in pencil on the back of it. If your student(s) are under the age of 13, make sure the COPPA form is completely filled out for each one. The artwork can be shipped in one package.

Selection Criteria: 

• All artwork must be an original work by the contestant and shall not infringe on any copyrights or any other rights of any third parties. For instance, drawing a character from a cartoon or movie is not considered an original work.
• The artwork must be 2D such as a painting or drawing. Acceptable media include: paint, pencil, marker, crayon, ink, and oil pastel. Digitally created artwork, including photographs, are not accepted.
• You must send your original artwork. Digital copies of artwork are NOT permitted.
• All submissions must be made by an individual artist. Group submissions are not permitted.
• Participants may submit only 1 art piece.
• Write your first and last name and age in pencil on the back of your artwork.
• Fill out all required information on the Entry Forms (pages 5-7).
• Artwork and art descriptions may be used in publications and distributed to the media.
• The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation reserves the right to disqualify artwork deemed offensive.
• If the explanation of artwork or the artwork itself is plagiarized, then it will be disqualified.
• Entries that do not comply with all of the contest rules will be disqualified.

Selection Process: A panel of artists, educators, and scientists will be formed to judge the Science Without Borders® Challenge. Artwork will be evaluated on the quality of the artwork, originality, and adherence to the theme.

Number of Awardees:

Value of Contest: Winners of the Science Without Borders® Challenge will be publicly announced. Prizes awarded to contestant winners are as follows:

• 1st Place: $500
• 2nd Place: $350
• 3rd Place: $200

How to Apply: Contestants must submit Entry Forms with their submission. It is preferred that you submit your forms online at www.lof.org/SWBChallenge. All fields on the Entry Forms must be filled out in order to be considered for awards.

All original artwork should be mailed to:

Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation
Science Without Borders® Challenge
130 Severn Avenue, Suite 100 Annapolis, MD 21403
USA

Download your Entry Form

FOR STUDENTS UNDER THE AGE OF 13 All participants (USA and international) under the age of 13, must have a parent/guardian fill out the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Notice Form (page 9 of the Entry Form). Send this form in with your artwork. If we do not receive this form and you are under the age of 13, you will be disqualified from the Science without Borders® Challenge.

Visit Contest Webpage for details

Award Provider: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation

MasterCard Foundation Scholarship Program at Arizona State University and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Fully-funded) 2018

Application Deadline: 17:00GMT, 17th November, 2017

Eligible Countries: African countries

To Be Taken At (Country): Ghana (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology) and USA (Arizona State University)

About the Award: The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program at ASU and KNUST provides academically talented yet economically disadvantaged young people in Ghana and Africa with access to quality and relevant University education. The Scholars Program embodies an array of mentoring and cultural transition services to ensure the scholar’s academic success, community engagement and transition to employment opportunities which will further the goal of social and economic transformation of Africa.

It aims to train a cohort of students in a 3+1+1 International Accelerated Degree Program (IADP) to contribute to societal change and transformation of the African Continent.

Type: Undergraudate

Eligibility: For the 2018/2019 Academic Year Application,

• All applicants must be in one of the following programs of study;
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Human Resource Management
  • Logistics and Supply Chain Management

• All Applicants must be in their third year of study.
• All Applicants must have a minimum CWA of Second Class Upper Division.
• The Applicant must have No Outstanding Trails.
• The Applicant must have Critical Economic Needs.
• The Applicant must have Proven Records of Leadership and Community Engagement(s).
• Females and Physically Challenged Applicants shall be given top priority.
• The Applicant must be prepared to Go-Back and Give-Back to his or her Community.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The Scholarship includes:

• Comprehensive financial support (full tuition, fully paid on-campus accommodation, learning materials, transportation and monthly stipend).
• Regular group meetings with other scholars that focus on personal and professional development opportunities and activities tailored to build societal relationships and scholars’ capacity.
• Continued academic support through academic mentoring, virtual learning, life and career coaching, and tutoring.
• Opportunities to participate in leadership congresses, community services and mentoring (Go-back Give- Back), and uniquely sourced internships.
• An academic environment where faculty and students engage with global issues.
• The prestige of becoming part of the growing family of the MasterCard Foundation Scholars Alumni and the Global Scholars Community.
• The opportunity to be enrolled on an accelerated Master’s Degree after undergraduate studies

How to Apply:  Download a copy of the 2018/2019 application form.  Download Application Form

Submit the completed application form by hand to:

The Program Manager,
MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program at KNUST,
Office of the Dean of Students, KNUST
Private Mail Bag
Kumasi, Ghana

Applications close at 17:00GMT, 17th November, 2017

What Next?

Only shortlisted applicants will be called for interviews which would be held at the KNUST Secretariat of MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program at the Office of the Dean of Students.
Interviews will be done by an independent panel constituted by the Vice Chancellor of KNUST.

Verification of ALL examination results and information provided, as well as community visits of SUCCESSFUL applicants, will be conducted before admission is approved.
Award of the Scholarship will be published on the University’s website

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Mastercard Foundation