Creating The 21st Century Internet

Kevin Zeese & Margaret Flowers

Ajit Pai, the former Verizon lawyer who is chair of the FCC, went too far last Thursday in undermining the Internet when he led the dismantling of net neutrality rules. As a result, he has fueled the energy needed to protect Internet rights. It is time for Movement Judo, where the energy created by the overreach of the FCC is turned into energy not just to overturn the FCC’s decision, but to also create the Internet we need in the 21st Century.

Over the past few months, there has arisen an epic mass mobilization in support of net neutrality and national consensus, with a University of Maryland poll finding 83% support for the Internet being open and equal to all. There was a record number of comments to the FCC on this issue over the summer. More than 1.2 million calls and 12.5 million emails went into Congress through the coalition site, Battle For the Net, and more than 700 protests were held across the country for net neutrality on December 7. The Internet is important to all of us and politicians who do not side with the people will pay a heavy political price.

This week, three FCC commissioners gave a handful of mega-corporations the power to control the speed of websites and where we go, what we see and what we pay for access to content on the web. The battle for the Internet is not over – it has just begun, and we will go into next steps to protect our Internet, but first we will start with a bigger question – what should the Internet be in the 21st Century?

Protest at the FCC the day before the FCC decision. By John Zangas of the DC Media Group.

What Kind of Internet Would You Like to See?

If the movement for Internet equality and justice were to put forward a vision for the Internet in the 21st Century, we could make that vision into a reality.

We start with the view that the Internet is a key venue for Freedom of Speech. It is a place where First Amendment protections should apply. Political speech should not only be protected in print and television, but it should also be protected in the digital world, including websites, video, social media and new outlets we cannot yet imagine.

Political speech on the Internet has been vital in recent years to putting new issues on the political agenda. Video of police violence, sometimes resulting in death, have brought these issues, that have been ignored for years, to the center of political debate. The movement for Black Lives Matter has resulted in prosecution of police,  widespread discussion and policy changes, e.g. police wearing cameras, new laws and policies.

The occupy encampments that swept the nation in 2011 would not have occurred without the Internet. Early in Occupy Wall Street a small number of people camped out in Zuccotti Park. It was on a weekend march where protesters were arrested and placed behind a mesh barrier by the police that occupy exploded. One high ranking officer went toward the captives and pepper sprayed them. This was caught on camera by multiple individuals and shared on the Internet. When the police tried to claim the protesters were being violent or threatening, the videos showed the opposite to be true. Seemingly overnight, hundreds of occupy encampments sprang up throughout the country. The political meme of the 99% became widespread and the issue of income and wealth inequality became part of the political dialogue.

These are two examples of many showing how equal Internet access has become critical to free speech and political development.

Part of free speech includes commercial speech and the Internet has been an essential element in new products and services that would not have otherwise reached enough people to support new businesses. This is why outside of the telecoms and cable companies, net neutrality is supported by businesses, especially small start-up enterprises.

The Internet has become a basic human right. The Internet is essential to function in modern society. People sign up for health insurance, apply for jobs, do research for school, develop income . . . many activities of life are now conducted online.

Human rights must be people-centered, as Ajamu Baraka writes, where they are “based on the popular needs and democratic aspirations of the people.”  There are basic principles that are always part of human rights standards that should be applied the Internet in the 21st Century, including:

Universality: Human rights must be afforded to everyone, without exception. People are entitled to these rights by virtue of being human. Currently the Internet does not meet this standard as 39 percent of black, Latino, working-class and people living in rural areas do not have Internet access.

Indivisibility: Human rights are indivisible and interdependent, i.e. if a government violates rights it affects people’s ability to exercise other rights such as the right to speak politically, participate in democracy or participate in commerce.

Participation: People have a right to participate in how decisions are made regarding protection of their rights.

Accountability: Governments must create mechanisms of accountability for the enforcement of rights.

Transparency: People must know about and understand major decisions affecting Internet rights.

Non-Discrimination: Human rights must be guaranteed without discrimination of any kind. This includes not only purposeful discrimination, but also protection from policies and practices which may have a discriminatory effect.

To achieve these principles requires a re-thinking of the Internet. The Internet was created through public investment and Internet access should be a public utility, not controlled by private corporations. Control of the Internet by the public includes community-developed Internet, municipal Internet or even nationalizing the Internet. Current rules blocking municipal ownership need to be reversed. Twenty-one states prevent or discourage the construction of public broadband networks. 

If there is corporate involvement in the Internet, monopolies should be prevented and corporations should be regulated so that human rights principles are not violated.Profiteering from the Internet has currently reached grotesque proportions, with Charter’s Tom Rutledge the highest paid CEO at $98.5 million in 2016, and this will worsen without net neutrality.

We already know the parameters of what we need. Jimmy Lee, an investor and adviser in socially minded start-ups, writes, a”forward-looking agenda must focus on expanding digital access and participation. We cannot build a more equal America, or a future with greater opportunity and economic mobility, if large numbers of Americans are stuck on the wrong side of a growing digital divide.” Everyone needs a free or affordable pathway to high-speed internet access.

It is time to develop national consensus on what we want the Internet to be in the 21st Century. What are the key principles or services needed? Comment on our Facebook page and discuss it in your own communities, organizations and Internet spaces. After we develop consensus, we must work to make it a reality.

Movement educator and author Rivera Sun describes how the Internet is as ubiquitous as salt was during British rule of India. When Gandhi began the salt march protest of the British monopoly over salt, no one expected it would bring down the British empire. Our fight for the human right to Internet access could be a key boomerang in response to the extremism of corporate power and the Trump era.

People outside of the FCC on the December 13th, the night befor the FCC vote. Some spent the night camping out in freezing cold temperatures.

The Immediate Campaign for Net Neutrality

The mobilized movement for net neutrality will do all it can in court, Congress and the streets to make sure the FCC decision against net neutrality does not stand. The outcome at the FCC was no surprise as Chairman Pai made false and inaccurate claims over the past year against net neutrality. What is a surprise is how strong the movement for Internet equality became in response to his extremism.

The task of the movement now is to turn that energy into political power. We must continue to stay active, involve more people and build the movement we need for an Internet that serves the people.

This week’s 3-2 vote of the FCC was a dramatic break with the history of the free and open Internet. The Internet has always been a common carrier where net neutrality rules and practices have always existed and were protected by commissioners from both parties. The former Chairman, Tom Wheeler, put rules in place  in 2015 that codified net neutrality practices and gave the FCC the power to enforce those rules. Ajit Pai dismantled the 2015 rules, and abdicated FCC authority over internet service providers, clearing the way for blocking, throttling, discrimination and profiteering by the nation’s largest phone and cable companies.

While Pai joked about being a pawn of the internet service providers at the Internet prom sponsored by the industry, his actions show he is lining up his next job rather than being a servant of the public interest. Former Chairman Tom Wheeler says the FCC action will turn the Internet into cable TV saying “Stop and think about it — cable operators pick and choose what channels you get. Cable operators pick and choose who they let on. Cable operators turn to you and say, ‘Oh you want that? That’s going to be a little bit more.’”

The first battleground for the people will be the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to pass a resolution of disapproval and reverse a decision by a federal agency. Congress must act with a majority of votes in both chambers and must do so within 60 legislative days — which is likely to take four to six months. The job of the movement is to demand that the representatives in the House and Senate reverse the FCC. Call Congress here.

Now that a movement has been created around net neutrality, the people-powered campaign needs to define what it wants and fight for it. We have the power to make sure that every person running for office in 2018 and 2020 stands with the people by treating the Internet as a human right where people have equal access to high quality and low cost Internet service. Just as we did in our campaign to stop the Trans Pacific Partnership, which at first seemed unstoppable, we need to make sure everyone running for office stands with the people on the Internet.

While both parties receive a great deal in donations, e.g. in the 2016 election cycle, the telecom industry donated heavily to Democrats, contributing a record $16.1 million to their campaigns and contributing $9.2 million to Republicans, people power can overcome the power of money. We saw with the mobilization around the FCC, millions are willing to take action. In addition, millions of small businesses will be hurt by the FCC ruling. Start-up businesses spoke up against it as did much of Silicon Valley and tech companies. Our movement is a broad one, which includes political activists, businesses, local governments, actors, musicians and artists as well as religious groups.

The movement also needs to work at the local level urging municipal broadband or even communities creating their own Internet. We need to break the regional monopoly control held over access to the Internet by a handful of companies.

Another immediate battleground will be in the courts. Nearly 20 state attorneys generals have announced they will sue the FCC over their decisions to repeal Title II net neutrality rules and to prevent state’s from taking action to protect net neutrality.  Free Press and other nonprofit organizations will also sue.

Multiple strong cases will be presented that argue the FCC was arbitrary, capricious and abused its discretion and violated the Administrative Procedures Act, especially since so many of the arguments made by the FCC were flawed and factually inaccurate, built on lies and showed a lack of understanding of the Internet. An unusual issue is likely to be the flawed public comment period. Pai promised to end net neutrality before the comment period began, making it a phony process, and the FCC did not remove millions of false comments made by bots. Pai refused to work with the New York attorney general investigating these abuses.

One of the early decisions the court will be asked to make is to stop the FCC decision from taking effect. A ruling on a preliminary injunction, never easy to get, seems to meet the legal standards in this case. Of course, a lot will depend on the inclinations of the judge assigned to the case. Litigation will continue through all of 2017 and into 2018, but the movement should not put all of its hopes into lawsuits. We need to continue to build the movement and make this a political issue that cannot be ignored.

Net Neutrality protest in Baltimore. One of more than 700 held on December 7, 2017 the Internet day of action.

The People of the Internet Have Power that Will Not be Ignored

Former FCC commissioner, Michael Copps, wrote: “Ajit Pai and his majority are turning their backs on the millions of Americans who fought for years to win strong net neutrality. This naked corporatism is Washington at its worst.” We know that if the people continue to mobilize and demand Internet justice, then Pai will not be the last word.

Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen wrote that “the recent history of net neutrality offers an encouraging story of the power of the people to protect the core democratic principle of free exchange and shows that even if things look bad, grassroots pressure holds the key to saving the internet as we know it.”

We share their optimism. The people’s response to threats to the Internet has been consistently powerful. Now we need to take power away from the political whims of appointed commissioners, take democratic control of the Internet and define the Internet we want for our future and for future generations. Ajit Pai may not realize it yet, but his abuse of power has awakened an Internet giant.

Peru’s President Kuczynski facing impeachment

Juan Gonzáles

Peru’s Congress voted last Friday to begin a debate over the impeachment of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski over his involvement in the massive bribery scandal that has engulfed the political establishment, not only in Peru, but throughout much of Latin America. Exposed as a result of the “Lava Jato” corruption probe into bribes and kickbacks involving Petrobras, these spreading scandals stem from the international activities of one of the Brazilian state-owned energy giant’s main contractors, the construction conglomerate Odebrecht.

The Congress, controlled by the right-wing opposition Fuerza Popular, led by Keiko Fujimori (daughter of Peru’s former dictator Alberto Fujimori), voted 93-17 to begin a debate on impeachment. The margin in favor of initiating the debate was more than enough to sustain an ultimate impeachment, which requires 87 votes in the 130-member Congress.

Earlier last week, it was revealed that Odebrecht had paid Kuczynski US$5 million in consulting fees between 2004 and 2013, when he was economy minister and head of then-president Alejandro Toledo's cabinet. Both Odebrecht and Kuczynski have claimed that the payments were legal. Toledo is now a fugitive from Peruvian justice, fighting extradition from the US to face his own bribery charges.

Virtually every leading figure in Peruvian bourgeois politics has been implicated in the spreading scandal. Former president Ollanta Humala and his wife have been jailed under preventive detention as prosecutors prepare a case against them. Keiko Fujimori, the leader of the right-wing opposition is under investigation, as is Lima’s former mayor Susana Villaran, who was backed by the Peruvian pseudo-left.

In addition, warrants for the arrest of five top business executives involved in the Odebrecht scandal have implicated the most powerful sections of the Peruvian bourgeoisie.

If Kuczynski, a former Wall Street financier, is brought down by the scandal, under the constitution he would be replaced by Martín Vizcarra his first vice president. Vizcarra, however, is also under investigation for his involvement in a corrupt contract with a Peruvian-Argentine consortium to build an airport near the city of Cusco. Formerly the transportation minister, he resigned from his post earlier this year and was subsequently sent to Canada as the Peruvian ambassador after the airport scandal broke.

If, as many believe, he were to be rejected as Kuczynski’s successor following an impeachment, the presidency would pass to the second vice president and current prime minister, Mercedes Aráoz.

Significantly, even as the crisis is discrediting Peru’s entire political establishment and state apparatus, Aráoz has been moving to concentrate more power in the hands of the executive branch of the government.

On Thursday, December 7, the Peruvian prime minister formally presented a request to the opposition-led congress seeking special powers to essentially rule by presidential decree. The initiative is being presented as a necessary measure for the fight against corruption as well as to simplify the process for an economic stimulus and dealing with natural disasters.

Araoz’s proposal would give the executive branch the power to introduce or alter any legislation in the country without the involvement of congress, effectively weakening the democratic principle of the separation and balance of powers between the different branches of government.

Peru has historically been one of the poorest and most unequal countries in Latin America, with poverty, especially among indigenous communities of the Andean highlands and Amazon jungle.

Only a decade ago, Peru’s economy was referred to internationally as the "Peruvian Miracle." Through over four decades of pro-market policies, the benefits of this “miracle” have accrued only to investors, both Peruvian and international, who used the resource-rich economy to enrich themselves by deepening the essential feature of capitalist society: social inequality.

Today, one in five Peruvian children suffers from chronic malnutrition, despite the much celebrated progress. A razor-wire-topped “Wall of Shame” divides Lima’s poor population of Pamplona Alta from the exclusive development Casuarinas. Workers living in Pamplona Alta often have no running water, no plumbing and live on subsistence wages of about $3 per day. Many Pamplona residents have never been on the other side of the wall.

Oxfam has estimated that a poor resident in Lima pays 10 times as much for water as someone living in better-off areas like Casuarinas. Security walls and gated communities have proliferated in Lima, highlighting the ever-increasing social divide between poor and rich in the country. Poverty in rural areas remains high and reaches 60 percent in some areas.

President Kuczynski has been facing an abysmal 27 percent approval rating. In turn, he has systematically sought to deflect popular anger by blaming natural disasters for the prevailing social conditions and threatening that they will only worsen should international capital be denied carte blanche and flee the country. Against this backdrop, the corruption scandal is revealing a massive political crisis of the entire establishment.

Aráoz’s initiative fits in this context and should be understood as an ominous warning to Peruvian workers. Promoted under the veil of an “extreme measure” to fight corruption, it is more fundamentally the product of the world economic crisis brought about by the inherent contradictions of international capitalism, with Peru’s economic conditions driven largely by its trade and financial relations with major economies like the US and China.

Aráoz’s request for dictatorial powers is the logical outcome of Peru’s dependence on foreign capital. What is being prepared is a massive attack on workers under the false guise of combating corruption. The expansion of the executive branch will return the country to conditions that resemble the Fujimori era, when rampant free market pro-capitalist policies were coupled with harsh repression and the suspension of basic democratic rights.

Aráoz’s initiative came just a few months after congress granted her new cabinet a vote of confidence following a vote of no confidence in the previous government of Fernando Zavala last September.

The Peruvian so-called “left” parties support the reactionary essence of the proposal. Nuevo Peru’s spokesman Alberto Quintanilla didn’t oppose Aráoz’s request. “[W]e have differences in economic matters, because there’s nothing [in the proposal] about minimum wages or the domestic market,” stated Quintanilla.

In essence, Nuevo Peru is in basic agreement with the undemocratic takeover, but they are trying to prepare its introduction by deceiving the working class, packaging it together with a minimum wage hike, but then emboldening a state that will attack workers’ living standards and democratic rights through the implementation of executive orders targeted at removing any limitations on capitalist exploitation.

Aráoz’s proposal is scheduled to be voted upon next year.

Trade conflicts deepen at WTO meeting

Nick Beams 

A three-day meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, last week, barely received any media coverage. Nonetheless, it was very significant for it revealed the deepening divisions wracking the global trading system.

The eleventh ministerial meeting of the 164-member international trade organisation concluded without any final statement because of US intransigence over its wording. In fact, attempts to draft such a statement were abandoned last month when the US insisted on removing longstanding references to the role of the multilateral system in the world economy.

Under its “America First” agenda, the Trump administration has criticised the operations of the WTO for acting in ways inimical to the US and accused its disputes-settling procedures of creatively interpreting trade rules rather than applying them. In the lead-up to the meeting, US officials reportedly wanted language to be included in the final statement to prevent the WTO’s appellate body, which decides on trade disputes, from violating the “sovereignty” of its members.

The major outcome of the meeting was an agreement between the US, Japan and the European Union, reached on the sidelines, calling for action over “severe excess capacity” in areas such as steel and against state subsidies and state-owned enterprises. The agreement also opposed rules that require foreign investors to make available important technologies to the host country. The statement did not name China but it was undoubtedly the target.

In an editorial published today, the Financial Times commented that the “mounting tensions represent an existential test for the global trading system. At issue is whether China’s state-driven, hybrid system has become so divergent from free-market principles that fruitful cooperation is precluded.”

China has launched a case through the WTO against the US and the EU for their failure to support it being accorded “market economy status” in line with a commitment made when it joined in 2001 to grant such a designation within 15 years. China wants the status because that would make anti-dumping cases more difficult to be launched against it.

In the wake of the WTO impasse, tensions between the US and China are set to escalate. The US is expected to announce its national security strategy today. According to a source cited by the Financial Times, the strategy is “likely to define China as a competitor in every realm. Not just a competitor but a threat, and therefore, in the view of many in this administration, an adversary.”

The “America First” agenda is not only directed against China but the entire system of trade rules enshrined in the WTO, set up in 1995 as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, established in 1947.

US trade representative Robert Lighthizer spelled out the US position at the outset of the three-day meeting last Monday. Dismissing the official agenda to discuss new rules on fishing and e-commerce, he said: “It’s impossible to negotiate new rules when many of the current ones are not being followed.”

With the WTO unable establish new international regulations governing trade and the so-called Doha Round of negotiations that began in 2001 is regarded as dead in the water, the body has become a battleground for disputes between member nations.

“The WTO is losing its essential focus on negotiations, and is becoming a litigation-centred organisation,” Lighthizer said. “Too often members seem to believe they can gain concessions through lawsuits they could never get at the negotiating table.”

The US is not leaving its opposition at words. The Trump administration is blocking the WTO’s ability to fill vacancies on its appellate body, creating a backlog of cases. Here, as in other areas of trade, the Trump White House is continuing, while at the same deepening, the Obama administration’s policies.

Michael Froman, the chief US trade negotiator under Obama, told the Financial Times: “Our beef with the appellate body was that certain members were way too creative in creating law. It wasn’t about blowing up the binding dispute settlement procedure itself.”

It is not just the disputes-settling procedure that is under fire. After campaigning against the multilateral trading system, Trump appeared to at least hold back somewhat on actions against China following his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Trump’s Mar-a-Largo resort in Florida in April.

However, Trump’s outburst at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Vietnam last month marked a new offensive.

“Simply put, we have not been treated fairly by the World Trade Organisation,” Trump said, accusing others of gaming the system at the expense of the US. His remarks were directed against China without specifically naming it. “We can no longer tolerate these trade abuses, and we will not tolerate them,” he insisted.

The response of other leaders at last week’s WTO meeting was to issue vague but empty calls, without identifying the US directly, for countries to recognise the importance of the multilateral system.

Opening the conference, Argentine President Mauricio Macri appealed for a strengthening of the international system. “The problems of the WTO can only be resolved with more WTO, not less WTO,” he said, criticising those who pursue the “primacy of national interest.”

In his concluding remarks, WTO director-general Roberto Azevedo acknowledged that progress would have required a “leap” in members’ position, which was not seen. Trying to put the best face on a worsening situation, and in obvious contradiction to what had taken place, he claimed all members were in agreement that the WTO was the only organisation capable of policing global trade.

The overriding fear is that a complete breakdown will lead to the kind of trade wars that had such disastrous consequences in the Great Depression of the 1930s and played no small part in creating the conditions for World War II.

The WTO had to do some “real soul searching,” Azevedo said. “The system is not perfect but it is the best we have and we will all—all—deeply regret it if we ever lost it.”

Such appeals, however, cannot cover over the fact that the US, which was the chief architect of the post-war multilateral trading system, is now playing the central role in the system’s destruction as it seeks to counter its economic decline with ever-more aggressive nationalist economic policies.

Right-wing extremists enter government in Austria

Markus Salzmann

The conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) agreed on a coalition deal and presented the government’s programme and ministers on Saturday. The government is to be sworn in today.

It will be the most right-wing government in Vienna since the Austro-fascist state under Kurt Schuschnigg, who governed Austria as a dictator from 1934 until the Anschluss with Hitler’s Germany in 1938. The FPÖ is a member of the “Europe of Nations and Freedom” group within the European parliament, which includes France’s Front National, the Dutch PVV of Geert Wilders, Italy’s Lega Nord and other right-wing extremist parties.

Sebastian Kurz, the incoming chancellor, will be Europe’s youngest head of government at the age of 31. Over the past year, he took power within the ÖVP in a coup and has dictated the party’s course ever since. During the election campaign, he imitated the FPÖ’s anti-refugee agitation and law-and-order slogans.

While Kurz and the head of the Chancellor’s Office, Gernot Blümel, filled the seven ÖVP ministries with lesser-known individuals, characterised above all by their loyalty to Kurz, the six FPÖ ministers control a number of key posts. As many newspapers pointed out, the FPÖ controls “all forces in uniform.” For the first time since 1945, one party holds the posts of interior minister, foreign minister and defence minister.

The deputy chancellor will be FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache. He has enjoyed a long career in various far-right groups. Because of his participation in military sports with people later convicted as right-wing extremists, a complaint was filed against him due to a suspicion of National Socialist activities. He was even arrested at a neo-Nazi event in Germany 30 years ago.

FPÖ General Secretary Herbert Kickl will be interior minister. The former speech writer for Jörg Haider became notorious for election slogans such as “Home not Islam” and “Western lands in Christian hands.” When the FPÖ split in 2005, he broke with Haider and joined the more right-wing faction under Strache. Last year, he participated in a conference of the so-called Defenders of Europe in Linz, which brought together New Right and right-wing extremist ideologists. Kickl recently complained about the “uncontrolled immigration from non-EU states as well as the totally ill-considered opening of the labour market for Eastern European states.”

Mario Kunasek will be minister of defence. The 41-year-old junior officer is a long-time leading figure within the FPÖ who maintains close ties to the neo-Nazi camp. He has been documented as having connections with the Identity Movement and the Party of the People, an openly fascist party with neo-Nazis prepared to commit violence. In January 2016, he called on his Facebook page for asylum seekers to be blocked from entering the country.

FPÖ politician Norbert Hofer, who lost the 2016 presidential election to the Green Alexander Van der Bellen, will be minister for infrastructure. Hofer, who likes to portray himself publicly as a moderate, joined a right-wing extremist student league at the age of 37 as an honorary member.

Karin Kneissl, who is a non-party figure but was nominated by the FPÖ, is to serve as foreign minister. She is known for her sharp criticism of the EU and support for the independence of Catalonia. Kneissl cut her teeth for the FPÖ at the height of the so-called refugee crisis in 2015. Kneissl claimed that the refugees, most of whom had fled wars in Iraq and Syria, were largely economic refugees.

Justice Minister Josef Moser is also a former FPÖ member. The non-affiliated jurist ran in the election on the Sebastian Kurz List and was nominated by the ÖVP. Moser was recruited to the FPÖ in 1991 by Haider and led his office for a year. From 1992 to 2002, he was parliamentary group leader of the FPÖ. In 2004, he switched to the Austrian Administrative Court, where he repeatedly appeared in public to call for drastic budget cuts.

The new government’s program corresponds to its personnel. A major military build-up at home and abroad, a wide-ranging crackdown on refugees, social attacks and tax cuts are the core pillars of the government’s programme, “Together. For our Austria.”

The police will be significantly strengthened; 2,100 officers and 2,000 trainee posts will be created. The powers of the police and intelligence agencies will be expanded. The surveillance of internet communications will be broadened substantially. The plans for a military build-up are formulated in extremely vague terms. Reference is made in this area to the “appropriate, legal, organisational and budgetary equipping of the army.” However, already in the grand coalition when he served as foreign minister, Kurz was an advocate of significantly expanding the army.

The government is planning major attacks on refugees and foreigners. It intends to introduce stricter controls on Islamic kindergartens and private schools, and have the option to shut them down as a last resort.

Asylum seekers will be forced to hand over all of their money when they make an application so that it can be used to cover the costs of the procedure. The authorities will be given access to asylum seekers’ mobile telephones so that officials can confirm travel routes and identities by means of personal information and social media accounts. Asylum seekers will only receive benefits in kind and no money. In addition, the government wants to reduce the time-frame for filing an appeal during an asylum procedure.

According to the government’s programme, doctors’ confidentiality obligation will be relaxed if the illness of an asylum seeker is “relevant to primary care.” Given that primary care also includes health insurance, this could have a wide-ranging meaning and serve as a pretext to abolish democratic rights.

The attacks on the weakest sections of society are only the prelude to a major offensive against the working population. Basic social welfare benefits are to be regulated at a uniform rate across the country and benefits for a couple in a relationship will be capped at €1,500. This will mean painful cuts for the needy.

Under the heading “More justice in the building of social housing,” the programme plans the regular “adjustment of rent interest” (i.e., rent increases) in social housing, on which many people in major cities, particularly Vienna, rely. The goal is the elimination of the building of social housing as a whole.

The grand coalition has attempted for more than 10 years to cut pensions. Kurz and Strache are now firmly determined to enforce this. To this end, existing pension privileges will be eliminated and the retirement age repeatedly increased.

In line with Germany’s Agenda 2010, the government will change the reasonable job regulations for the unemployed. This will result, for example, in skilled unemployed workers in Vienna being forced into the tourist industry in Tirol for low wages.

With flexibility of the labour time law, protections for employees will finally be broken. The confirmed expansion of the workday to 12 hours is a first step to this end. The reintroduction of student fees to strengthen government finances will once again turn studying into a privilege for the rich. Additional cost-cutting will follow, since a so-called debt brake is to be added to the constitution.

When in 2000 then ÖVP leader Wolfgang Schüssel formed the first government with the FPÖ, led at the time by Haider, mass protests occurred in Austria and sanctions were imposed in Europe. Demonstrations have once again been called in Vienna, but the EU did not utter a syllable of criticism, even though the Kurz-Strache government is much further to the right than the Schüssel-Haider government.

In a country where the ruling class resorted to dictatorship in the early 1930s and largely backed the Anschluss with Nazi Germany in 1938, the shadow of the past is once again present.

This development can only be understood if one examines the bankruptcy of the former workers’ parties and movements. Today, Social Democrats and trade unions, who formerly participated in protests, are just as right-wing as Kurz. The SPÖ declared its willingness to enter a coalition with the FPÖ, something that has already occurred at the state level. The trade unions are among the strongest advocates for cooperation with the FPÖ.

President Van der Bellen, whose victory over the FPÖ’s candidate Hofer was praised as a victory over right-wing extremism, did not impose any conditions on the formation of the new government, even though he had options to do so. He merely insisted that it declare its unrestricted loyalty to the European Union, which it subsequently did.

This was made all the easier because there are a number of right-wing governments in Europe. It is well known that Strache would like to make Austria the fifth member of the Visegrad group of states made up of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, all of which are governed by nationalist, right-wing regimes. The FPÖ also concluded a treaty of friendship with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia.

While Kurz and Strache appeared before the cameras in Vienna, Europe’s right-wing extremists met in nearby Prague. Both Geert Wilders and Marine le Pen were in attendance. They praised the FPÖ’s entry into the government as “historic.” Le Pen spoke of “tremendous news,” while Wilders declared it to be an “excellent result.”

UN condemns Iraq’s mass hanging of accused ISIS fighters

Bill Van Auken

The human rights arm of the United Nations has declared that it is “shocked and appalled” over the mass hanging of 38 men accused of being members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or Al Qaeda at a prison in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah last Thursday.

The mass execution was ordered by the government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi less than a week after it proclaimed victory in the war against ISIS, the Islamist militia that overran roughly a third of the country beginning in 2014. The hangings constitute yet one more war crime in the bloody US-backed war in Iraq and Syria that has claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives.

This is the second mass hanging to be carried out by the Iraqi regime in less than three months. On September 25, 42 people were executed at the same prison.

“We are deeply shocked and appalled at the mass execution on Thursday,” UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Liz Throssell told reporters in Geneva.

“Given the flaws of the Iraqi justice system, it appears extremely doubtful that strict due process and fair trial guarantees were followed in these 38 cases,” the UN spokesperson added. “This raises the prospect of irreversible miscarriages of justice and violations of the right to life.”

Amnesty International issued a statement condemning the mass hanging: “The death penalty should not be used in any circumstances and especially in Iraq, where the government has a shameful record of putting people to death after deeply unfair trials and in many cases after being tortured to ‘confess.’”

Among those executed in the latest mass hanging was a man in his 60s, who has been in Iraqi jails since 2010 as a suspected Al Qaeda member, and an accused ISIS member who held dual Swedish-Iraqi citizenship. Sweden protested the execution, summoning the Iraqi ambassador to lodge its protest.

There are an unknown number of other foreign nationals in Iraqi jails as suspected ISIS fighters. One of those imprisoned is a 17-year-old German girl who was captured after government forces overran the ISIS-controlled stronghold of Mosul earlier this year. She had come to Iraq at the age of 15 after being contacted over the Internet by a member of ISIS promising marriage. Prime Minister al-Abadi said recently that she too could face the death penalty.

Human Rights Watch has estimated that some 20,000 individuals are currently imprisoned as suspected ISIS members in Iraq. In most cases, they have been swept up by US-backed Iraqi security forces and allied militias, which have treated every fighting-age male in areas that were under ISIS control as suspects.

“Iraqi justice is failing to distinguish between the culpability of doctors who protected lives under ISIS rule and those responsible for crimes against humanity,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director.

Iraqi “justice” in terror cases is based on a system of drumhead courts which convict defendants in large part based on confessions extracted through torture. Prisoners are routinely subjected to beatings with metal rods and cables, suspension in stress positions and electric shocks, along with mock executions and threats of rape of female relatives.

Those who are given summary trials on terrorism charges are, in their overwhelming majority, convicted not of carrying out any concrete terrorist action, but rather merely on the basis of suspicion of membership in the proscribed groups. The anti-terror laws have been used to suppress opposition to the regime in Baghdad, particularly on the part of the country’s Sunni minority, which had protested heavy handed government repression before ISIS established its control over a large swathe of Iraqi territory.

While the UN has protested the mass executions, the fact is that representatives of the major imperialist powers have all expressed their support for the extra-judicial killing of all those suspected of belonging to ISIS.

US Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis repeatedly described the US strategy in Iraq and Syria as one of “annihilation,” while Washington’s envoy to the so-called anti-ISIS “coalition,” Brett McGurk, declared that the US “mission is to make sure any foreign fighter who is here, who joined ISIS from a foreign country and came into Syria, they will die here in Syria.”

This same policy was echoed by the British government, whose international development minister Rory Stewart stated in October in regard to recruits to ISIS from the UK that they had renounced “allegiance towards the British Government” and “unfortunately the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them.”

Similarly, French minister of the armed forces, Florence Parly declared, “If the jihadis perish in this fight, I would say that’s for the best.”

This policy has been faithfully implemented by the Iraqi regime in its successive US-backed sieges of ISIS-held cities including Tikrit, Fallujah and Mosul in which the wholesale destruction of urban areas and mass deaths of civilians under US bombs and shells were followed by summary torture and executions of males rounded up in the aftermath of the battles.

While the policy of “annihilation” enunciated by Washington has been realized in the mass killing of civilians, in terms of ISIS itself, its application has been highly selective.

In the siege of the Syrian “capital” of ISIS, Raqqa, US officials oversaw the mass evacuation of some 4,000 ISIS fighters to eastern Deir Ezzor province in October. Rather than killing them, they were bused out in a four-mile-long convoy together with their weapons, ammunition and explosives in order to turn them against Syrian government forces attempting to regain control of the border with Iraq and Deir Ezzor’s oil fields.

UN rapporteur “shocked” by deep poverty in US

Eric London

On Friday, United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston published a report on poverty and democratic rights in the United States titled “Statement on Visit to the USA.”

In 1831, the French intellectual and diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to the United States and compiled notes on what he saw, publishing an optimistic report titled Democracy in America. One hundred and eighty six years later, Alston, an Australian academic and New York University professor, traveled through a country in the throes of a social catastrophe. His report might well be titled Destitution in America .

Alston recently concluded his trip through California, Alabama, Georgia, Puerto Rico, West Virginia and Washington DC, visiting working-class neighborhoods and talking with experts and local officials.

“I have seen and heard a lot over the past two weeks,” he writes. “I met with many people barely surviving on Skid Row in Los Angeles, I witnessed a San Francisco police officer telling a group of homeless people to move on but having no answer when asked where they could move to, I heard how thousands of poor people get minor infraction notices which seem to be intentionally designed to quickly explode into unpayable debt, incarceration, and the replenishment of municipal coffers, I saw sewage-filled yards in states where governments don’t consider sanitation facilities to be their responsibility, I saw people who had lost all of their teeth because adult dental care is not covered by the vast majority of programs available to the very poor, I heard about soaring death rates and family and community destruction wrought by prescription and other drug addiction, and I met with people in the South of Puerto Rico living next to a mountain of completely unprotected coal ash which rains down upon them, bringing illness, disability and death.”

His concludes that the government does not recognize “rights that guard against dying of hunger, dying from a lack of access to affordable health care, or growing up in a context of total deprivation.”

Forty million Americans live below the official poverty line, with 18.5 million living in deep poverty. The US infant mortality rate is the highest in the developed world. Obesity is rampant. The US is 36th in the world in access to water and sanitation. Its incarceration rate is the highest in the world. Youth poverty is nearly double the rest of the industrialized world. “Neglected tropical diseases” are “increasingly common.”

Hookworm is spreading in poor areas of Alabama as sewage flows openly through homes and streets. The US is 35th out of 37 among all industrialized countries in terms of inequality and poverty.

The UN report suggests that poverty and inequality are the product of the domination of the political system by a corporate oligarchy. “Successive administrations, including the present one, have determinedly rejected the idea that economic and social rights are full-fledged human rights,” Alston notes.

His statement begins:

“My visit coincides with a dramatic change of direction in US policies relating to inequality and extreme poverty. The proposed tax reform package stakes out America’s bid to become the most unequal society in the world, and will greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income inequality between the richest 1 percent and the poorest 50 percent of Americans. The dramatic cuts in welfare, foreshadowed by the president and Speaker Ryan, and already beginning to be implemented by the administration, will essentially shred crucial dimensions of a safety net that is already full of holes.”

The report notes that at the federal level, proposals to cut Medicare will be “disastrous.” Underfunding the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) will “have devastating [effects] on the health of millions of poor children.” If funding for the Federal Qualified Health Centers (FQCHs) is eliminated, “9 million patients could lose access to primary and preventative care.”

Alston describes a situation where the police, courts and public agencies treat impoverished workers like criminals. “In many cities and counties the criminal justice system is effectively a system for keeping the poor in poverty while generating revenue to fund not only the justice system but diverse other programs,” he writes.

Over 730,000 people are in jail, “of whom almost two-thirds are awaiting trial, and thus presumed to be innocent.” The government sets bail at extremely high levels, “which means that wealthy defendants can secure their freedom, while poor defendants are likely to stay in jail.”

Intrusive policing policies for welfare, food stamps and other public benefits include forcing workers to undergo drug tests, in-home inspections and other humiliating procedures.

“Calls for welfare reform take place against a constant drumbeat of allegations of widespread fraud in the system,” Alston writes. “The contrast with tax reform is instructive. In that context, immense faith is placed in the good will and altruism of the corporate beneficiaries, while with welfare reform the opposite assumptions apply.”

Alston rejects the notion that poverty is primarily a racial issue. “The poor,” he says, “are overwhelmingly assumed to be people of color, whether African Americans or Hispanic ‘immigrants.’ The reality is that there are 8 million more poor Whites than there are Blacks… The face of poverty in America is not only Black or Hispanic, but also White, Asian and many other colors.”

Child poverty is widespread across races: “Contrary to the stereotypical assumptions, 31 percent of poor children are White, 24 percent are Black, 36 percent are Hispanic and 1 percent are indigenous.”

Conditions for Native Americans, ignored by Black Lives Matter and other identity politics groups, are particularly deplorable. At the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, conditions are “comparable to Haiti... Nine lives have been lost there to suicide in the last three months, including one six-year-old. Nevertheless, federally funded programs aimed at suicide prevention have been de-funded.”

The growth of inequality has “steadily undermined” democratic forms of rule, Alston writes. In fact, democracy is incompatible with the ruling class’s efforts to expand and protect its wealth at the expense of the working class. This process is not accidental, but the product of the policies implemented by both major capitalist parties, whose aim over recent decades has been to eviscerate all benefits and protections won by the working class through more than a century of social struggle.

The corporate-controlled media is complicit in the growth of inequality and poverty. This shocking and disturbing UN report, which speaks frankly of the immense levels of economic inequality and destitution in America, reflecting the stark class divide that dominates US social and political life, has barely been reported by the establishment broadcast and print media. Meanwhile, the same media outlets are devoting endless coverage to allegations of sexual harassment made for the most part by wealthy and privileged women against prominent figures in the worlds of entertainment, the arts and politics.

Industrial carnage continues in US workplaces

Jerry White

On Saturday evening, 62-year-old Samuel Martinez was pulled into a waste grinding machine and killed at a meat-packing plant in Canton, Ohio, 60 miles south of Cleveland. The Guatemalan native, who was pronounced dead at the scene, is the latest known victim of the industrial carnage that claims nearly 5,000 lives each year in the United States.

A coroner’s investigator said Martinez stepped into a chute and his leg was caught in a waste augur at the Fresh Mark meat processing plant. The company issued a perfunctory statement declaring that it is cooperating with local authorities to determine the cause of the death and that it is committed to the well-being of its employees.

In fact, the company, which produces bacon, ham, hot dogs and deli meats under the Sugardale Foods, Sugardale Foods Service and Superior’s Brand Meats trademarks, has a record of hazardous conditions and safety violations. In 2011, 20-year-old Marcos Perez-Velasquez, also a Guatemalan native, was electrocuted while he was attempting to plug a 220-volt fan into a 480-volt plug while standing in water.

A quick search of the Internet found an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) report on a 2009 incident in which a worker lost two fingers when he tried to unjam a pepperoni machine. OSHA issued a “serious violation” fine of only $2,125.

The workers at the Canton plant, which employs 750 people, are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, which has a decades-long record of collaborating with management in the slashing of wages and benefits and enforcement of speedup, contributing to repetitive motion injuries, amputations and deaths.

While anti-immigrant chauvinists blame Latin and Asian workers for driving down wages and conditions, the large influx of immigrants into the meatpacking industry followed the betrayal of a series of bitter strikes in the 1980s, including at Iowa Beef Processors, Cudahy, Hormel and Oscar Mayer, which transformed the factories into cheap-labor sweatshops like Fresh Mark.

Conditions at the Canton plant can be ascertained from recent employee reviews posted on the Internet. One worker wrote: “Terrible company to work for... Bad management. Production driven and fast pace work environment. Only supervisors get bonus. Company doesn’t care about their production workers… No medical benefits for dependents. No dental insurance, work there for 8 years. Hostile work environment, union non-existent in favor of company… Takes 5 years to get top rate of $13.65. You start at $ 9.00. Watch your pay stubs hours and rate... company will cheat you out of your money. Would not recommend.”

Another wrote: “Management is horrible. The union is for the company and not for the employees. They would work us 10+ hours a day 7 days a week for months on end. They show no appreciation to their employees at all!”

“I worked for the company for 10 years in Canton, Ohio,” another worker said. “The company management is full of liars and trouble-makers. There is harassment that goes on regularly by management and other hourly employees. The company has a high turnover and the management can’t understand why. I would not recommend working for this company in any capacity. You might live to regret it.”

The daily toll of fatalities and injuries in America’s workplaces is largely ignored by the corporate-controlled media, which is focused on the concerns of the corporate elite and the most affluent sections of the upper-middle class. While providing daily coverage of the campaign against alleged sexual misconduct being spearheaded by the Democratic Party, the media shows little interest in industrial fatalities and injuries. These are seen as collateral damage in corporate America’s war for profits and the dizzying upward surge of stock prices on Wall Street.

With only the rarest of exceptions, no companies, owners or top executives are held accountable for the preventable deaths of workers forced to labor under hazardous conditions.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release its Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries for 2016 on Tuesday. Its most recent report found a total of 4,836 fatal workplace injuries in 2015, up from 4,821 in 2014 and the highest number since 2008.

The BLS has already reported that there were nearly 3.7 million nonfatal work-related injuries and illnesses in 2016. These, however, are notoriously underreported. The true yearly toll of injuries and illnesses, according to the AFL-CIO, is 7.4 million to 11.1 million.

Due to changes introduced by the Trump administration, OSHA no longer keeps a running list of industrial fatalities on its web site, nor does it publicize the names of the victims. Only in the relatively rare cases when OSHA issues a citation will it list the fatalities, meaning scores if not hundreds of deaths are going unreported.

Since the beginning of the month, local media outlets have reported scores of fatal workplace injuries, including the following:

• William Stubbs, 51, was killed at the Pleasantdale Road facility of United Parcel Service (UPS) on Friday, December 16, near the company’s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. The 17-year veteran worker was crushed by a truck at a loading dock.

• Bruce Biron, 55, a 25-year employee at the Ethan Allen furniture plant in Beecher Falls, Vermont, died December 13 while “performing maintenance on machinery within a silo,” according to state police.

• Charles Jones, 57, of Shannon, North Carolina was killed December 12 when the wheels of a dump truck rolled over him. The accident is being investigated by the North Carolina Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Division.

• Alfred Cadena, 61, was crushed and killed in the early morning hours of December 11 at the ArcelorMittal steel mill in East Chicago, Illinois.

• On December 9, Ivan Bridgewater III, a 41-year-old electrician, died as a result of “blunt force trauma” at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant (KTP) in Louisville. The nature of the trauma and its cause have not yet been revealed.

• On December 1, 31-year-old contract worker Yesenia Espinoza was struck by a falling 14-inch pipe and killed while working on a construction project at the ExxonMobil refinery in Beaumont, Texas, 84 miles northeast of Houston.

In a newly published book, Dying to Work: Death and Injury in the American Workplace, author Jonathan D. Karmel writes: “The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 11 million. The odds of being killed in a terrorist attack in the United States are 1 in 20 million. Yet, since 2001, the US government has spent more than $1 trillion in antiterrorism measures, excluding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For these improbable events, we spend considerable more time, treasure, and worry than we do about the very real and personal risk to, for example, a hotel housekeeper. For workers in America, the workplace is a dangerous House of Horrors. Some would say it is a jungle.” Here Karmel alludes to Upton Sinclair’s famous 1906 exposure of the meatpacking industry.

In addition to the 4,836 workers the BLS reports were killed on the job in 2015—an average of 13 workers every day—another 50,000 to 60,000 die every year from work-related illnesses such as Black Lung disease, silicosis and asbestosis. This computes to an average of 137 per day. All told, some 150 workers die each day because of hazardous conditions.

These conditions will only worsen as the Trump administration, staffed by billionaires and corporate proponents of deregulation, eliminates what few health and safety protections for workers still in place. According to the Charleston Gazette, the administration is preparing to overturn a three-year-old rule meant to reduce exposure to coal dust, which causes Black Lung disease among miners. A new regulatory agenda published by the White House said the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration would seek ways the coal dust rule “could be improved or made more effective or less burdensome.”

The rule was put in place in the last years of President Obama, after the Democratic administration delayed implementing it for many years. The rule was prompted by studies showing a growing incidence of the most deadly form of Black Lung, including among younger miners.

The United States of Inequality

Andre Damon

Last week, as Congress rushed to pass a tax bill that will transfer trillions of dollars to the financial oligarchy, two separate teams of experts published damning reports documenting the growth of social inequality in the United States.

On Thursday, a group of leading inequality researchers, including Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, published its 2018 World Inequality Report, which shows that the United States is far more unequal than the advanced economies of Western Europe, as well as much of the rest of the world.

The researchers reported that the income share of the top 1 percent of US income earners rose from 10 percent in 1980 to 20 percent in 2016, while the income share of the bottom 50 percent fell from 20 percent to 13 percent over the same period. The bottom 90 percent controls just 27 percent of the wealth today, compared to 40 percent three decades ago.

Another graphic indictment of American society was offered by Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, who argued in a report published Friday that the prevalence of extreme poverty amid unimaginable opulence in the US is a violation of basic human rights.

The fact that the United States has invaded, bombed and destabilized countries all over the world on the pretext of defending “human rights” is no doubt one of the reasons the corporate-controlled media has chosen to bury both of these reports.

Alston writes of the “sewage filled yards in states where governments don’t consider sanitation facilities to be their responsibility,” of “people who had lost all of their teeth because adult dental care is not covered by the vast majority of programs available to the very poor,” and of “soaring death rates and family and community destruction wrought by prescription and other drug addiction.”

He notes that the extreme concentration of wealth has eroded the foundations of American democracy, writing: “There is no other developed country where so many voters are disenfranchised… and where ordinary voters ultimately have so little impact on political outcomes.”

In its Sunday edition, the New York Times published an editorial titled “The Tax Bill That Inequality Created.” The newspaper criticizes the bill being rammed through Congress for “lavishing breaks on corporations and the wealthy while taking benefits away from the poor and the middle class.” The editors add, “What many may not realize is that growing inequality helped create the bill in the first place.” A “smaller and smaller group of people” have become “in effect, kingmakers,” seeking to “bend American politics to serve their interests… rich families have supported candidates who share their hostility to progressive taxation, welfare programs and government regulation of any kind.”

The editors place the onus on Republicans, though they acknowledge that “donations from Wall Street and corporate America have… pushed many Democrats to the center or even to the right on issues like financial regulation, international trade, antitrust policy and welfare reform.”

There is a striking disconnect between the Times’ portrait of American society and its prescription, which, in the end, is to support the Democratic Party. The editorial concludes by hailing the election of right-wing Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama as proof that “inequality in America does not have to be self-perpetuating.”

The Times does not see fit to mention that in the 2016 elections it wholeheartedly backed a candidate, Hillary Clinton, who is completely beholden to “Wall Street and corporate America.” Nor does it recall that just last month it published an editorial declaring its full support for corporate tax cuts, the heart of the Republican tax plan. The Times wrote, “If Republicans worked with Democrats, they could reach a compromise to lower the top corporate tax rate.”

Entirely absent from the Times’ account is any explanation of why and how the United States has come to this point, or what the colossal levels of social inequality imply for the future of American society. This is because to do so would mean raising the question of the capitalist system itself, which the newspaper fervently supports.

The present situation did not arise from nowhere. Nor is it simply the product of the nefarious operations of one party. The emergence of oligarchic forms of rule, or “kingmakers,” is the product of a long historical evolution.

The ideological foundations of 20th century American capitalism—the “American Dream,” the idea that the development of American capitalism would “lift all boats,” that each generation would be better off than the last—are now a distant memory.

During the first part of the last century, the American ruling class responded to the eruption of class conflict and the threat of socialist revolution, represented above all by the Russian Revolution, with social reforms—Roosevelt’s New Deal (including Social Security), increases in taxes on the wealthy, and the Great Society programs of the 1960s (including Medicare and Medicaid).

These measures, however, were implemented within the framework of preserving a social and economic system based on private ownership of the banks and corporations. Moreover, they were premised on the strength of American capitalism and its dominant position in the world economy.

The shift in ruling-class strategy corresponded with a shift in the position of American capitalism. Over the past half-century, the ruling class has sought to offset the decline in its economic position externally through military aggression and internally through the upward redistribution of social resources from the great mass of the population to the financial oligarchy. The results can be seen in the curve of social inequality, which shows the top one percent steadily amassing a greater share of wealth and income.

The trajectory has continued under both Democrats and Republicans. The Times editorial refers to the enormous growth of inequality over the past three decades. However, during this period Democrats occupied the presidency for 16 years (two terms for Clinton, two terms for Obama), compared to 12 years for Republicans (one term for Bush Sr, two for Bush Jr.). The processes of deregulation and financialization and the slashing of social programs have continued unabated, regardless of the political party controlling the White House and Capitol Hill.

All the institutions of American society have had their role to play in this social counterrevolution. The trade unions have transformed themselves into appendages of corporate management, relinquishing all claim to being “workers’ organizations.” During the 1980s, they isolated and suppressed every single strike or struggle against the onslaught of the rich. Today, they serve as cheap-labor contractors and industrial police for the ruling class, while providing comfortable sinecures for the upper-middle class functionaries that control them.

The Trump administration and its tax bill, far from being an aberration, are the continuation of this class policy.

The state of American society—to which ruling classes around the world look as a model—is a confirmation of Marxism. Capitalism is characterized by an irreconcilable conflict between the working class, the vast majority of humanity, and the ruling elite. The state is not a neutral arbiter, but an instrument of class rule. The working class must organize itself independently, with the aim of restructuring social and economic life.

The Democrats are no less terrified of this prospect than the Republicans. Hence the endless attempts to divert and disorient—from the anti-Russia campaign to the current hysteria over sexual harassment being promoted by the New York Times, among others.

When the Workers League in the US took the decision to form the Socialist Equality Party 22 years ago, it noted that the dominant feature in political life was “the widening gap between a small percentage of the population that enjoys unprecedented wealth and the broad mass of the working population that lives in varying degrees of economic uncertainty and distress.”

This analysis has been confirmed over the subsequent two decades. Just as the meteoric rise of social inequality is the inexorable outcome of the capitalist system, so too is the socialist transformation of society the only means to rid American and world society of the scourge of social inequality and the domination of the financial oligarchy, whose grip over social and economic life has become the principal obstacle to human progress.

ENS de Lyon Ampère Excellence Scholarships for International Students 2018/2019 – France

Application Deadline: 18th December, 2017

Offered Annually?  Yes

Eligible Countries: Countries where the CEF procedure applies (See list below)

To Study at (Country): France

Field of Study: All Masters programs in the Exact Sciences, the Arts, and Human and Social Sciences (except FEADép Master’s programs).

Type: Masters

Eligibility: Eligible candidate must:

• be a foreign national
• be 26 years old maximum at the application deadline (born after 11 January 1991).
• Candidate for admission in Masters Year 1: provide proof that you have obtained a Licence (equivalent to 180 ECTS European credits) or an equivalent diploma/level recognized by the ENS deLyon.
• Candidate for admission in Masters Year 2: provide proof that you have successfully reached Masters Year 1 level (equivalent to 240 ECTS European credits) or have attained an equivalentdiploma/level recognized by the ENS de Lyon (e.g. MPhil).

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship:  1,000€ a month during one or two academic years

List of Eligible Countries: Algeria, Argentina, Benin, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo (Brazzaville), Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Gabon, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Lebanon, Madagascar, Mali, Marocco, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Peru, Senegal, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, USA, Vietnam.

How to Apply: Interested candidates are to complete and submit the online application forms and upload supporting documents by 18 December 2017, 12h00 pm (Time at Lyon – France).

It is important to read the grants and scholarships (part “Funding your master’s: scholarships of excellence”) and visit the official website (link found below) to access the application form and for detailed information on how to apply for this scholarship.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: ENS de Lyons

Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Imomoh Scholarship for African Students 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 15th April 2018

Eligible Countries: African countries included in the SPE African Region list (See in link below)

To be taken at (country): USA

Field of Study: Petroleum Engineering and other related Degrees related to the oil and gas industry. The Gus Archie Scholarship is restricted to first-year petroleum engineering students.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: 

• Must be pursuing a master’s degree in petroleum engineering
• Must be from a country in the SPE Africa Region
• Comply with sanction policy (View in link below)
• Complete the electronic application submission process

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: USD 2,000

Duration of Scholarship: single payment

How to Apply: 

• Submit the online application form by noon CDT (UTC-5) on 15 April.
• You must submit at least one recommendation and documentation for entry exams (if applicable).

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Egbert Imomoh

University of Tampere Masters Scholarships for International Students 2018/2019 - Finland

Application Deadline: 17th January, 2018

Eligible Countries: Non-EU/EEA citizens

To be taken at (country): Finland

About the Award: A substantial number of scholarships will be available for the most talented fee-paying students. The scheme consists of two scholarship categories.

• The University of Tampere tuition fee scholarships cover either 100% or 50% of the tuition fees in a two-year Master’s degree programme.
• The University of Tampere global student award for academic excellence scholarships cover 100% of the tuition fees and include a 7,000 € annual scholarship to cover the student’s living expenses during the two-year Master’s degree programme.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: To be eligible to apply for a Master’s programme at UTA, an applicant must

• have a completed university level Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in the field of the desired programme or in a closely related subject.
• English Language Requirement: University accepts the following tests as a proof of a good command of English

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Duration of Scholarship: 2 years

How to Apply: During the admissions process, the applicants have the possibility to indicate their wish to apply for the scholarships. The decision on the granted scholarship will be communicated to the applicant together with information on admission.

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Award Provider: University of Tampere