Sri Lankan president calls for autocratic executive presidency

K. Ratnayake 

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena at a meeting with media heads last week called for the abolition of the 19th amendment to the constitution which clipped some of his powers as president. He blamed the amendment for “creating the current political instability in the country” and proposed to revert to the previous executive presidential system.

Sirisena’s attack on the 19th amendment, which he once hailed as a victory for democratic rights, is another expression of the drive by every faction of the ruling elite for autocratic forms of rule amid the deep political crisis in the country.

The 19th amendment was passed by the parliament in April 2015 just four months after Sirisena came to power. It limited the president’s term of office to two and his/her power to dissolve parliament was also reduced. Under the amendment, a constitutional council was set up to propose top judges and independent commissions such as for elections and the police.

Hailing these changes as a victory for democracy was a fraud. As the WSWS explained at the time, “it was designed to refashion the constitution to hoodwink the working class and poor by providing a democratic façade for repressive measures being prepared to ram through the austerity demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).” This is exactly what workers, the poor and youth have experienced over the past four years.

However, on June 25, President Sirisena told the media heads that “the amendment has created two power houses, the president and the parliament,” two leaders—president and prime minister—and “severely reduced the capacity to create cohesive and long-term policies.”

While saying he and the parliament were responsible for the amendment, Sirisena claimed it was “drafted on NGO [non-government organisation] requests” and the “clauses brought from the back door.”

The thrust of all these utterances is there must be only one “power house” and one leader—that is a strong autocratic ruler must be established.

Noting that the next presidential election takes place in four months, Sirisena declared it would be better to abolish the amendment before or after the election, regardless of who wins. Significantly, he added, “we need no new constitution. The constitution is in good shape when we get rid of both 18th and 19th amendments.”

The claim that the political instability is a result of the constitutional amendment is false. Rather, it is the result of bitter political infighting between the factions of the ruling elite—led by President Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and opposition leader, Mahinda Rajapakse—against the backdrop of enormous social opposition to their common agenda of austerity.

Sirisena came to power in 2015 January by exploiting the huge popular opposition against the government of then President Rajapakse. He was a senior minister in that government but suddenly declared his opposition to Rajapakse’s “dictatorship” and gross human rights violations and promised to abolish the executive presidency and transfer powers back to the parliament.

His defection was engineered by former President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Wickremesinghe, leader of the United National Party (UNP) who both backed Sirisena’s campaign. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) rallied behind Sirisena along with the pseudo-left groups including Nava Sama Samaja Party, United Socialist Party and Frontline Socialist Party. A host of academics directly or indirectly supported this fraudulent campaign for “good governance.”

Behind this façade, Sirisena’s campaign to oust Rajapakse was backed by the US and its regional strategic partner India. The US was hostile not to Rajapakse’s autocratic rule but his close relations with Beijing as the Obama administration was ramping up its confrontational “pivot to Asia” against Beijing.

Sirisena and his then ally Wickremesinghe, who was appointed as prime minister, abruptly shifted Sri Lanka’s foreign policy in favour of the US. They abandoned the promise to abolish the executive presidency and brought the limited 19th amendment to the constitution instead.

However, their collaboration was short lived. The so-called unity government was fractured as it became increasingly discredited among workers and the poor because of its implementation of IMF-dictated policies that slashed welfare measures and price subsidies, privatised and axed jobs. Opposition grew despite the unleashing of police and military repression against the struggles of workers, farmers and students.

This huge social opposition was reflected in the humiliating defeat in local government elections in February last year in which Sirisena’s party came a poor third, while the UNP ran second. Many voted for Rajapakse’s new party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), simply as a means of showing their opposition to the government.

Sirisena blamed Wickremesinghe and withdrew his party from the ruling coalition. Seeking a political realignment with the SLPP, he staged a political coup in October last year, arbitrarily removing Wickremesinghe as prime minister and replacing him with Rajapakse. The scheme failed, however, when Rajapakse failed to gain a parliamentary majority. Sirisena dissolved parliament, but the Supreme Court ruled that this decision was illegal. In the background, the US opposed Rajapakse’s return, compelling Sirisena to reappoint Wickremesinghe.

The rapid rightward shift by the entire ruling class was sharply expressed after the terrorist bombings of churches and hotels on April 21. Evidence is emerging that, not only the defence establishment, but political leaders, including Sirisena, Wickremesinghe and Rajapakse, knew well in advance of the impending terrorist attack but deliberately did and said nothing.

Sirisena and Wickremesinghe seized on the attack to impose draconian emergency laws and activate the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The military and police were deployed across the island in the largest operation since the end of the bloody anti-Tamil communal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. All of the opposition parties, including Rajapakse’s SLPP, the TNA and JVP fully supported these measures. The real target of these anti-democratic measures is not the terrorist threat but the emerging struggles of the working class.

The constitution that Sirisena now hails as “fine” was introduced by President J. R. Jayewardene in 1978. It concentrated sweeping powers in the hands of the executive president, effectively reducing the parliament to a rubberstamp. Jayewardene’s calculation was that an autocratic president was necessary to suppress the emerging opposition of the working class to his open market economic policies that were transforming Sri Lanka into a cheap labour platform for foreign investors.

Significantly when Sirisena called last week for the repeal of the 19th amendment, Rajapakse immediately welcomed the proposal. At the same time, he defended his own 18th amendment to the constitution that allowed unlimited terms for the president and boosted presidential powers to appoint judges and top state officials. Under the 19th amendment, it was repealed. Rajapakse is seeking to return to power under the slogan of a “strong and stable government.”

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe made a similar response. At a public meeting last week, he declared: “It is difficult to handle the government vehicle as it is manned by two drivers. When one driver tried to speed up the other tried to stop him.”

Sirisena’s call for the repeal of the 19th amendment is a sharp warning to the working class. Mired in deep economic crisis produced by the global slowdown and facing developing unrest among workers and the poor, the ruling class as a whole is preparing police state measures in its desperate bid to defend the capitalist rule.

Furniture retailer Conforama announces 1,900 job cuts in France in 2020

Anthony Torres

Compromised by financial scandal since 2017, South Africa’s Steinhoff corporation is now announcing mass layoffs and store closures at Conforama, the French furniture and white goods retailer that it owns. After having made public a corporate restructuring plan for 2020, Steinhoff has just announced 1,900 job cuts at Conforama, together with the closure of 32 stores.

In the face of sharpening competition, resulting in particular from the growth of online shopping, large retail chains are attempting to boost profits on the back of already super-exploited workers. Conforama management’s announcements of broad job cuts and store closures comes after multinational retailer Carrefour planned the elimination of 2,400 jobs and the closure of 272 stores last summer.

Conforama workers only learned about the mass layoffs occurring at their workplaces from the media. Amel Sbartaï, a white goods salesman at Conforama’s Pont Neuf store in Paris, which is slated for closure, told the press: “We were not expecting this, management had told us that there was nothing we should worry about. We were told that the Pont Neuf store in particular was Conforama’s flagship store. We were lied to.”

Workers at the Pont Neuf store spontaneously refused to work and gathered for a protest against the closure of their workplace, temporarily shutting it down, as reportedly took place in a number of other Conforama stores.

Very broadly, a new intensification of the economic crisis is driving the ruling class and corporate management to mount fresh attacks on workers in all industrial sectors with the complicity of the trade unions. Major retailers are hard hit. Moreover, major auto companies including Ford, GM and VW have also announced tens of thousands of job cuts this year in Europe, America and internationally.

In a July 2 press release, Conforama tried to justify slashing staffing levels: “Since 2013, Conforama in France has accumulated losses adding up to nearly 500 million euros [$US564 million].” It added that the retail chain was confronted with “profound transformations of the retail sector and in particular the emergence of specialized retail. In this context, our company has not sufficiently adapted itself and it is suffering a drastic fall in the profitability of its network of stores.”

Conforama added, “Steinhoff’s financial difficulties have drawn attention to this unviable situation,” which it claimed requires “strong and rapid measures to ensure Conforama’s survival and to protect as many jobs as possible in the longer term.”

The company’s objective is “a return to equilibrium in two years,” according to statements by sources close to management. Conforama had a net turnover of 3.4 billion euros in 2018. In April, the company made plans to obtain some 300 million euros in financing. Now thousands of jobs are to be axed as dozens of stores are shut down.

The trade unions are complicit in the attacks being prepared against the workers. A main works council (CCE) meeting scheduled for Tuesday morning, during which Conforama’s corporate restructuring strategy was to be laid out in detail by management and the unions, was ultimately canceled as both the bosses and the union bureaucrats decided not to show up. However, another CCE meeting is planned for July 11, according to Abdelaziz Boucherit of the Stalinist-led CGT union.

On LCI television, Laurent Berger, the national secretary of the CFDT union, blamed the mass layoffs on company incompetence: “Management committed enormous strategic blunders, by investing for example in football when they would have done far better to invest in modernizing products and stores.”

Berger was echoing the statements of corporate strategists seeking to justify the layoffs. Olivier Dauvers, a specialist in large retail operations, declared: “There has also been an insufficient modernization of the stores, it is sort of unpleasant to go into a Conforama if you are a consumer, it is not the store that makes you dream the most if you are in the market for furniture.”

Moreover, online sales have absorbed a large share of the market for large retailers like Conforama. Even more than in its physical stores, it is in online sales that Conforama has fallen behind. E-commerce, which represents approximately 15 percent of the French market, only constituted eight percent of the company’s sales. Moreover, Conforama’s South African parent company recently revealed a six billion euro hole in its corporate accounts that threatens both Steinhoff and Conforama with bankruptcy.

Berger’s criticisms are hypocritical, however, since the 2020 restructuring plans were announced in April and were preceded by talks with the unions, who were fully informed that mass layoffs were being prepared. However, they did nothing. They neither sought to mobilize retail workers more broadly nor to unite them with other workers in other industries targeted by job cuts.

At Carrefour, the unions felt obliged to call a few symbolic strike days out of fear of losing control of the workforce in France. However, they demoralized the workers and isolated them from Carrefour workers in Latin America, China and internationally even as Carrefour management attacks jobs on a global scale.

To defend Conforama workers, the struggle has to be taken out of the hands of the unions. Workers need their own organs of struggle, committees of action formed independently of the unions and established political parties, to coordinate an international struggle. As the “yellow vest” movement continues, having illustrated the enormous power of protests organized via social media independently of the trade unions, the decisive question is to mobilize far broader layers of workers internationally in defense of jobs and social conditions and against the capitalist system.

Facebook planning to ban ads which discourage voting in US elections

Kevin Reed

On June 30, Facebook announced plans to begin banning ads that discourage people from voting in US elections. In a Newsroom blog post called “A Second Update on Our Civil Rights Audit,” COO Sheryl Sandberg announced Facebook’s anti-democratic policy by writing that a cross-functional team had been dedicated to a full-time effort “to protect elections” by blocking “don’t vote” advertising.

Sandberg presented the “don’t vote” ad ban along with a series of new “civil rights” censorship measures. Among them are strengthening Facebook’s “ban against white supremacy” by blocking not only the posts of white supremacists, but also any “praise, support and representations” such as sharing slogans and symbols of “hateful content” by other users.

Other measures are being intensified with the supposed aim of “fighting discrimination” in Facebook housing, employment and credit ads by blocking targeting by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, age, gender or zip code. Sandberg also wrote that Facebook is building a team to protect against “misinformation related to the census” in 2020 that will be enforced by artificial intelligence.

Specifically, on the 2020 elections, Sandberg wrote that the Facebook team is “already working to ban ads that discourage people from voting, and we expect to finalize a new policy and its enforcement before the 2019 gubernatorial elections. This is a direct response to the types of ads we saw on Facebook in 2016. It builds on the work we’ve done over the past year to prevent voter suppression and stay ahead of people trying to misuse our products.”

The reference to the 2016 elections is important because the practice of annual “civil rights audits” at Facebook is one of the responses to relentless and unsubstantiated criticisms—emanating from the US intelligence establishment—that the social media company enabled Russian meddling and facilitated the victory of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the last presidential election. Among the many absurd assertions about “Russian interference” has been the claim that “inauthentic behavior” by “bad actors” spread divisive ideas that upset the otherwise smooth functioning of American democracy.

Among the claims of this false narrative from 2016 is that African Americans in particular were the target of a voter suppression campaign conducted by the Russians. The report of special counsel Robert Mueller asserted—without substantiation—that the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) created false social media identities “with the goal of sowing discord in the US political system.”

Additionally, several reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee last December claimed that the IRA conducted a social media “voter suppression campaign” by posing as fed-up Americans and targeting African-American and Democratic Party voters. Among these reports is one entitled “The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency” published in December by New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company from Austin, Texas that is managed by former State Department and US military intelligence staffers.

In this report—based on data provided to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet (Google’s parent company)—claims of “voter suppression tactics targeting African-American voters” on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram by the IRA are advanced without substantiation. In one revealing assertion, the New Knowledge report says that these social media posts included “advocating Black voters stay home, or vote for Jill Stein,” the Green Party’s 2016 presidential candidate.

This statement says more about the objectives of the bogus “Russian meddling” campaign than all of the reams of documents and transcripts of testimony over the past two and a half years. Here, one can see how the US intelligence community and the Democratic Party establishment are teaming up with their supporters in Silicon Valley to censor content on social media that encourages the public to reject the two-party system.

Among the many specious rationalizations for the outcome of the 2016 elections was that the refusal of voters to turn out for Democrat Hillary Clinton, as well as those who voted for Stein, helped secure the victory of Republican Donald Trump.

The irony that banning “don’t vote” political ads is being presented as part of Facebook’s efforts to advance “civil rights on our platform” was evidently lost on Sandberg. Her claim that any advertising campaign advocating a boycott of the US elections will be shut down as a “misuse of our products” is actually an overt act of political censorship and an attack on civil rights.

The tactic of vote boycotting is an entirely legitimate policy for parties and individuals who find no one to vote for in an election and wish to offer an alternative political program to voters. This is particularly the case in the United States where the two capitalist parties hold a monopoly over electoral politics and masses of people are left with a choice between two equally despised candidates, as was certainly the case in the 2016 elections. Those claiming that “don’t vote” campaigns must be banned are, in reality, trying to ensure that one of the two parties are voted for as the “lesser of two evils” i.e. the Democrats.

Although it may come as a surprise to Sandberg and her intelligence community advisors, abstention is actually one of the choices in all democratic systems. In every democratic process—including those of a non-governmental character governed by Robert’s Rules of Order where the majority rules—abstention is one of the three options available to voters. Election boycotts are regularly campaigned for in countries around the world, except for those countries with compulsory elections.

As a matter of fact, the number of voters who abstain in US presidential elections—that is, the number of registered voters who do not go to the polls and cast a vote on election day—is a substantial percentage of the population.

For example, according to the US Census Bureau there were 245.5 million Americans ages 18 and older in November 2016 with about 157.6 million of them registered to vote. Leaving aside the fact that there were 87.9 million American adults who are not registered to vote—greater than the number of votes for either of the two candidates running for president—according to the Office of the Clerk of the US House of Representatives, the total number of people who voted in 2016 was 136.8 million.

This means that nearly 21 million people abstained from voting for either Clinton or Trump in 2016. This number is many magnitudes greater than either the number of votes in critical Midwest industrial states (approximately 80,000) that swung the electoral college to Trump as well as the number of popular votes that Clinton won over Trump (2.86 million).

As analyzed here on the World Socialist Web Site, the election of Donald Trump was not the product of “Russian interference,” voter abstention or votes for third party candidates. Clinton ran a reactionary campaign based on identity politics and proved incapable of attracting popular support, particularly in the Midwest. Trump’s election was also the product of a rejection of the Democratic Party after eight years of the Obama presidency where the promised era of “hope and change” never arrived.

In the run up to the 2020 elections, Facebook is intervening on behalf of a faction of the ruling elite to block alternatives to the Democratic Party. Under conditions where masses of people are entering the class struggle, moving to the left and toward socialism, this intervention is taking the form of censorship of oppositional and left-wing political perspectives.

Facebook’s policy that all “don’t vote” campaigns must be silenced is politically reactionary. It is ultimately directed at diverting workers, students and youth—who are striving to find the genuine socialist alternative to the two parties of American capitalism, the Socialist Equality Party—back into the dead end of support for the Democratic Party.

Fourteen high-ranking Russian navy officers die in fire on nuclear-powered submarine

Clara Weiss 

On July 1, a fire on the nuclear-powered submarine AS-31 “Losharik,” killed 14 high-ranking Russian navy officers. Seven of them were captains of the first rank, the equivalent of captain in the US Navy. Three were captains of the second rank, two were captains of the third rank, and two had been awarded the order of “Hero of Russia,” the highest possible military order in Russia. The other two were a captain-lieutenant and a medical officer. The Losharik submarines are operated by the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research which is reporting to the Russian military intelligence agency GRU.

The vessel is considered top secret and worth an estimated $1.5 billion. Details about how it looks and what it can do have been shrouded in secrecy since its first deployment in 2003, but it is reportedly capable of carrying out high-level intelligence operations on the seafloor, including the detecting and cutting of communication and internet cables.

Information about the submarine disaster was not released until the evening of July 2. The Russian Navy has classified details about the fire as a “state secret.” Russian President Vladimir Putin called the death of the 14 officers a “big loss for the Russian navy and army.”

The fire reportedly began around 9 p.m. local time on Monday in the Barents Sea in the Russian Federation. The Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has declared that the fire began in the submarine’s battery compartment, and that the vessel, worth an estimated $1.5 billion, could be repaired and redeployed.

Reports in the newspapers Kommersant and Gazeta.Ru, both based on anonymous sources in the Ministry of Defense and military, suggested that the cause for the fire was a short circuit. According to Kommersant, it occurred in one of the electrical rooms of the underwater nuclear power station AS-31 that powered the submarine. Initially, there were conflicting reports as to whether the fire occurred on the Losharik or a potential mother submarine, the Podmoskovye.

The submarine carried a crew of 25 people. While some reports have suggested that all were navy officers, others said that one or two civilians were on board. According to the official version, the submariners died from toxic chemicals released by the fire, trying to protect a civilian and the submarine. Five survivors were later hospitalized with smoke inhalation and concussion. Ten of the fourteen bodies have not yet been recovered.

The Ministry of Defense has declared that the nuclear reactor powering the submarine had not been damaged and that no radiation had been released. Norwegian authorities found no elevated levels of radiation as of Wednesday. A report by the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority, according to which they had been notified by the Russians of a gas explosion aboard the vessel, was denied by the Kremlin.

Why such a large high-ranking crew would be on board the submarine has not been explained.

The military columnist Alexander Golts noted, “We’re talking about a top-secret military division whose responsibilities are outside the broader considerations of the Russian army. ...It [could be] a chance to collect information: roughly speaking, they [military service members] collect everything that lands on the bottom of the sea. That primarily means debris from weapons testing, which is something every agency in the world searches for. It’s also known that countries whose militaries are opposed with one another install sensors, all possible monitors, on the ocean floor to track the submarine routes of their potential opponents. There are connective cables deep on the ocean floor. If you can connect to them, you can discover quite a lot. In times of conflict, destroying those cables can destroy a potential opponent’s ability to communicate.”

A report by the Drive drew attention to the fact that the official newspaper of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), attached a hitherto unseen drawing of the newly developed Belgorod submarine, a version of the Oscar II-class submarine, to a report on the submarine disaster. It is unclear whether this in any way indicates that the Belgorod, construction for which was officially launched in April this year, was involved in the incident. The longest submarine in the world, the Belgorod is designed as the country’s first operational launch platform for the Poseidon nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed long-range torpedo.

The Poseidon reportedly has unlimited range and is difficult to detect. According to the Drive, “the weapon is meant to give Russia a second-strike deterrent capability that is entirely immune to U.S. missile defenses.” Other “special missions” for which the submarine was constructed include intelligence gathering and acting as a mother ship for smaller manned and unmanned submarines like the Losharik. Unconfirmed reports of the fire on Monday suggested that a larger mother ship, the Podmoskovye submarine, was deployed in the Barents Sea alongside the Losharik.

Monday’s submarine disaster is the third major Russian submarine disaster in less than two decades. In 2000, at least 118 died when the nuclear submarine Kursk sank after several explosions during naval exercises in the Barents Sea. In 2008, 20 people died in a gas leak on the submarine K-152 Nerpa in the Sea of Japan.

The fire is a blow to the Kremlin and the Russian oligarchy, putting into question its military capacities amidst an international military buildup, led by the US and NATO. For the working class, the Losharik disaster is a chilling reminder of the advanced state of the preparations for world war.

Whatever the exact reason for its deployment on Monday, there is little question that it was bound up with the efforts of the Russian state to prepare itself for a possible assault by the US and NATO, which could involve nuclear weapons.

Recent years have seen a massive escalation of an international arms race. Especially since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, which was triggered by the US- and EU-backed fascist coup in Kiev, NATO, the EU and the US have aggressively built up their military in an open effort to prepare for war against Russia. Earlier this year, the US announced its withdrawal from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which prohibits the deployment of land-based missiles with ranges of up to 5,000 miles. Just last week, the US Senate approved the largest military budget in US history of $750 billion.

While the Kremlin has recently cut back on military spending, the Russian government has taken steps in recent years to modernize its army and navy in case of war.

In this arms race, submarines are playing an important role. Submarines are central to the gathering of military intelligence. Since vessels like the Losharik can detect and cut internet and other communication cables on the ground of the ocean, they can also play a central role in cyber warfare. Just last month, the New York Times revealed that the White House had secretly launched massive cyber attacks on Russia. Earlier this year, the Kremlin announced that it was preparing its own Russian internet that could function if the broader internet was shut down in case of war.

Another crucial function of nuclear submarines is that of nuclear deterrent. In 2015, Vice noted that, “Nuclear ballistic missile submarines are considered the nuclear deterrent of last resort because they’ve historically been the most reliable and best protected part of the nuclear arsenal. Even if an attacker can hit every single square inch of a country in a surprise nuclear attack, the attacker would still be vulnerable to a devastating counterattack launched by nuclear subs hiding at sea. Because of this, the majority of the US nuclear arsenal is submarine-based. A guaranteed ability to counterattack goes a long way in preventing enemies from getting an itchy nuclear trigger finger.” The report highlighted that military strategists in Washington were preparing for the possibility of “terrain-involved submarine warfare” which could involve the placing of nuclear weapons on the bottom of the sea.

International Labour Organization report documents growing assault on wages

Nick Beams

A report issued by the International Labour Organization (ILO) yesterday shows that workers’ share of global income has fallen “substantially” over the past two decades, with a systematic redistribution of wealth to both capital and the top income earners.

Globally, the share of national income going to workers is declining, having fallen from 53.7 percent in 2004 to 51.4 percent in 2017, while the share going to capital rose from 46.3 percent to 48.6 percent. This is part of an ongoing trend, only temporarily interrupted by the 2008–09 global financial crisis.

However, the overall redistribution of wealth from labour to capital is only part of the picture.

One of the most significant findings in the report documents how social inequality is widening. Income is being siphoned up to the highest levels at the expense of middle-income earners, defined as the middle 60 percent of workers. Their share of total wages fell from 44.8 percent in 2004 to 43 percent in 2017.

In what it described as a key finding, the report states: “The data show that in relative terms, increases in top labour incomes are associated with losses for everyone else, with both middle class and lower-income workers seeing their share of income decline.”

This is particularly the case in the major economies. “In several high-income countries,” the report states, “the evolution of the labour income distribution between 2004 and 2017 follows a ‘hockey stick’ pattern: substantial losses for the middle and lower-middle class, and large gains for the top. This pattern can be found, among others, in Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom.”

This pattern of large gains for the upper income earners, coupled with losses for much of the rest of the income distribution, was particularly marked in Britain, where the report found that the largest losses were for the percentiles ranging from 7 to 50 percent. It also found that the increases for the top income earners were “more pronounced” than in the US and Germany.

On a global scale, the report found that the top 10 percent received 48.9 percent of total wages, the next decile received 20.1 percent, and the remaining 80 percent received 31.0 percent. The lowest 20 percent received only 1 percent of total labour income.

Commenting on the report, Roger Gomis, an ILO economist, said: “The majority of the global workforce endures strikingly low pay and for many having a job does not mean having enough to live on. The average pay of the bottom half of the world’s workers is just 198 dollars per month and the poorest 10 percent would need to work more than three centuries to earn the same as the richest 10 percent do in one year.”

A number of factors have worked to create this situation. First, the ILO data is yet another confirmation of the analysis of Karl Marx, denounced by bourgeois economists down through the decades, that the essential objective logic of the capitalist mode of production is the accumulation of massive wealth at one pole and poverty and misery at the other.

This logic has been reinforced by the policies carried out by governments and financial institutions around the world, particularly since the eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008.

The injection of trillions of dollars into the financial system in order to boost the value of share prices and other financial assets has been one of the key mechanisms for the transfer of wealth up the income scale. Much of what constitutes the increase in wages for the upper 10 percent is derived from the escalating incomes of those involved in the top-level speculative operations of the financial system.

At the same time, governments are working to enhance this redistribution of income through tax cuts benefiting top income earners—the latest example being the passage of major tax cuts for the wealthy by the Australian parliament yesterday, with bipartisan support, following the lead of the Trump administration.

However, the key factor in facilitating this process has been the role of the labour and trade union bureaucracies, together with the social democratic parties, in suppressing the opposition of the working class. All over the world, the cuts in real wages, documented by the ILO report, have been accompanied by the actions of the trade unions in doing whatever they can to prevent and shut down opposition.

This is not merely the product of the total subservience and treachery of individual union leaderships—though that abounds—but flows from the nature of the trade unions themselves, rooted in their national-based structures and orientation.

Their response to the globalisation of production and finance over the past three decades has been to make their “own” capitalist class more “internationally competitive” through cuts in real wages and the imposition of changes in working conditions to facilitate greater exploitation. Consequently, they have undergone a transformation: from organisations that once carried out a limited defence of workers’ wages and conditions within the framework of the profit system, to the chief enforcers of the dictates and demands of capital.

In this role they have been aided and abetted by all the pseudo-left organisations, which have worked to promote the deadly illusion that workers’ struggles must be directed through the unions and that social change can come only through the Democratic Party in the US or via social democratic parties in other countries.

However, a new factor has now entered the scene. The ongoing and intensifying offensive by the ruling elites is provoking an upsurge of the class struggle—seen in the strikes by teachers and educators in the US and elsewhere, the “yellow vest” movement in France, the wildcat strikes in Mexico, strikes against wage freezes in Europe and the mass protests in North Africa.

The crucial issue confronting this growing movement, as yet only in its initial stages, is the development of a program and perspective. It must be based, first of all, on the understanding that all the great social issues confronting the working class, reflected most clearly in the escalation of social inequality, arise from a systemic crisis of the global capitalist order.

This means they can be resolved only with a program that is equally systemic, aimed at their root cause. That is, the growing struggles of workers around the world must be armed with an internationalist socialist program directed to the overthrow of the profit system, the taking of political power by the working class and the building of the world party of socialist revolution to lead this struggle.

Electricite De France (EDF) Pulse Africa Awards 2019 for African Energy Start-ups

Application Deadline: 12th July 2019

Eligible Countries: African countries

To Be Taken At (Country): Paris, France

About the Award: Wishing to contribute in facilitating access to energy alongside the agents of change in the
continent, EDF’s International Division initiates a call for projects and launches the “EDF Pulse Awards” in Africa (hereinafter referred to as ” EDF Pulse Africa), in order to be sustainable and effective as a development partner.
The contest is open to start-ups, micro-enterprises and small businesses in Africa that develop innovative solutions in the field of energy. Within the framework of this call for projects, a Grand Jury will award three (3) prize classes, known as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes of the Jury, to the project winners in one of the following fields. EDF reserves the right to reward a favorite project with one (1) prize called “Special Prize”:

• Off-grid electrical production: in this category, the Grand Jury may reward one innovative solution for the production and / or storage of electricity in off-grid area (solar, hydroelectric, wind, thermal, etc.)
• Electrical uses and services : in this category, the Grand Jury may reward an innovative product or service with low power consumption or a common use of electrical services (Hardware ex: household appliances, tablets, fans, cooling systems … / Services eg mobile money, breakdown service …)
• Access to water: in this category, the Grand Jury may reward one innovative solution to improve access to water through electricity (agriculture, domestic use, etc.)

Type: Award, Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: Any participating structure must satisfy the following requirements:

• Be a structure (start-up, micro-enterprise …) of less than 30 people.
• Be domiciled in Africa.
• Be established by July 12, 2019.
• Introduce an innovation that uses or produces electricity, and falls within the scope of one of the 3 categories mentioned above.
• Be the bearer of a project with an advanced stage of development:
• Be in the pre-commercialization phase (or be marketed for less than one year).
• Have a prototype by November 21, 2019, allowing the demonstration of the proposed solution to the general public, at the time of the Grand Jury.

Selection Criteria: Projects received will be assessed on the basis of the following selection criteria:

• Clarity and understanding of the proposal
• Innovative and differentiating features of the solution
• Progress for the society brought by the solution
• Relevance of the business model
• Evaluation of the team (vision, complementarity, experiences, skills …)

These criteria will be taken into account at each stage of the selection process

Selection: Based on the candidatures selected by the selection panel, a jury composed of EDF Group managers and external experts will meet in October 2018 to select ten (10) finalists (all  domains). The finalists selected will be presented to the Grand Jury in November 2019.

Number of Awards: 3

Value of Award:

• In preparation of the grand oral, the representatives will participate to three (3) day coaching session and support in order to the grand jury.
• The costs of transport and accommodation in France of each finalist representative will be borne by the Organizer
• The awards ceremony will be filmed and distributed or redisplayed on the Internet, especially on social networks.
• Each winner will receive a trophy “EDF PULSE AFRICA 2018 PRIZE”
• The three (3) laureates will receive from EDF an allocation for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes: 15K €, 10K € and 5K € respectively. This allocation will contribute to the development of their projects. The endowment will be paid by bank transfer or check to the winning team structure.
• The three (3) winners will benefit from easy access to financing and possible development of partnerships with EDF Group companies in Africa.

Participants must personally meet all costs related to the visa application process

How to Apply: All participants must complete and submit an electronic file on the competition website. The complete brief includes:

• One (1) editable PDF application form (annexed to this regulation) presenting:
  • The structure, its team and its motivations;
  • The developed solution or product, as well as its market and economic model;
  • The stage of advancement: tests, prototypes, fund raising, commercial contacts, support and partners, awards…
• One (1) project photo in high definition, JPEG or PNG format, 800 x 600 pixels minimum
• One (1) team photo in high definition, JPEG or PNG format, 800 x 600 pixels minimum

The application form for the EDF Pulse Africa Prizes, duly completed, must be submitted by a legal representative or founder of the company on behalf of the latter.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Award Providers: EDF

Princeton Arts Fellowships 2020/2022 for International Early-Career Artist(e)s

Application Deadline: 17th September 2019

Eligible Countries: All

To Be Taken At (Country): USA

About the Award: The PAF is a two-year fellowship that includes teaching one course or leading a project each semester.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Artists whose achievements have been recognized as demonstrating extraordinary promise in any area of artistic practice and teaching.

• Applicants should be early career composers, conductors, musicians, choreographers, visual artists, filmmakers, poets, novelists, playwrights, designers, directors and performance artists–this list is not meant to be exhaustive–who would find it beneficial to spend two years teaching and working in an artistically vibrant university community.
• One need not be a U.S. citizen to apply.
• Holders of Ph.D. degrees from Princeton are not eligible to apply.
• This fellowship cannot be used to fund work leading to a Ph.D. or any other advanced degree.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: An $81,000 a year stipend is provided.

Duration of Program: 2 years

How to Apply: All applicants must submit a resume or curriculum vitae, a personal statement of 500 words about how you would hope to use the two years of the fellowship at this moment in your career, and contact information for three references. In addition, work samples are requested to be submitted online (i.e., writing sample, images of your work, video links to performances, etc.)

Applicants can only apply for the Princeton Arts Fellowship twice in a lifetime.

APPLY HERE

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Life Among the Rubble: Mosul 18 Months after “Liberation”

T. J. Coles

Recent news of drought has brought Mosul, Iraq, to the attention of Western media; for the drought has led to the discovery of ancient ruins of archaeological significance. But let’s not forget the other news: the UN report on returnees. The refugees are returning to the carnage wrought upon the city by the US and its allies under the pretext of “liberating” it from Daesh: carnage that transformed much of the city to modern ruins.

ANCIENT RUINS DISCOVERED

Mosul is a city in Iraqi Kurdistan with a population of 1.3 million; 60% of whom are Sunni Arabs, around 25% of whom are Kurds. Ongoing drought has brought Mosul to the attention of Western media, as receding water levels at Kemune reservoir reveals the ruin of a 3,400 year-old palace. Researchers from the University of Tübingen and the Kurdistan Archaeology Organization reckon that the palace was part of the Mittani Empire (circa 1450-1350 BCE). According to one archaeological history, “[Mittani’s] end as independent realm can be dated to the time of Hittite king Šuppiluliuma I in the middle of the 14th century BC.”

Echoes of the conquests and rivalry of the ancient past haunt both recent history and the present. The so-called Mosul Question was a territorial dispute in the early-20th century between the British and Ottoman empires, with both parties wanting a share of the region’s oil. In the latter-part of the 20^th century, Iraq’s one-time US-British-backed dictator Saddam Hussein launched the Anfal genocide against Kurds who have historic and ongoing links to the region. A couple of years ago, the US-approved leaders of the central Iraqi government and the regional Kurdish authorities squabbled over control of Mosul, anticipating that Daesh would be defeated.

But the discovery of ancient Mittani ruins coincides with darker news. A recent report by the UN International Organization for Migration documents the effects of the US-led coalition bombardment of the city. It begins: “Entire neighborhoods have not yet been rebuilt, basic services are insufficient in some areas, and poor sanitation is contributing to serious public health problems and the spread of diseases. Furthermore,” the report continues, “reports of harassment and violence against civilians by state as well as non-state actors are undermining efforts to build trust in state institutions and authorities.” Western-led humanitarian intervention is the price that Iraqis pay for being an oil-rich, militarily vulnerable nation.

MAKING ENEMIES

Daesh (a.k.a., Islamic State) was largely the by-product of US-British savagery in Iraq. Having left the nation politically and infrastructurally decimated by decades of unprecedented sanctions, military occupation, and divide-and-conquer strategizing, the more extreme Islamic elements in Iraq—backed by foreign powers for their own geostrategic interests—sprouted from fertile ground. The US Army’s Strategic Studies Institute launched an unusually scathing attack on the Bush II administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and how it and the succeeding Obama administration handled the occupation. Ignoring moral questions and focusing solely on tactics, as well as blaming the US-backed politician Ahmed Chalabi, the report (worth quoting at length) says that the growth of the Islamic State Organization (ISO):

“did not occur in a vacuum … The ISO would not exist, or at this level of severity at least, had the ruling Shia elements in Iraq following the USG [US Government] occupation made the essential, painful choices required to pursue a new social compact with the nation’s Sunni population. Or, had the USG not operationalized Ahmad Chalabi’s long-dreamt of goal of imposing a punitive de-Ba’athification,”

meaning the dismantling of Iraq’s political, military, and policing infrastructure. It goes on:

“Or, had the USG not imposed the disastrous policy of dissolving the Iraqi armed forces and security forces, numbering in the hundreds of thousands; or had been prepared for a Sunni insurgency; or had developed a realistic post-occupation, longer-term stabilization policy based in a keen and learned awareness that the USG’s decapitation, occupation, and empowerment of Iraq’s Shia would profoundly destabilize an existing equilibrium in Iraq; or understood that the decapitation of the Iraqi regime would profoundly alter the terms of the broader Sunni-Shia rivalry inaugurated by the emergence of a Shia revolutionary State in 1979, and thereby further energizing proponents and antagonists who view this schism as a difference so wide as that between God and the Devil; or, finally, had the USG not first gone into Iraq the wrong way, and later repeated the error by disengaging from Iraq the wrong way.”

Even though US-British violence created Daesh, the US-British answer to defeating Daesh was more violence.

AIR AND GROUND WAR

In June 2014, Daesh took Mosul, triggering a refugee flight of half a million. According to the timeline, by September ten Arab majority states announced their participation in the US-led anti-Daesh coalition. Britain started bombing Iraq, again, on September 30th with Paveway IV and Brimstone missiles. As well as using Reaper drones in its anti-Daesh operations, the UK supplied 275 ground troops. By the end of the destruction of Mosul, the UK had 600 personnel on the ground in Iraq. Maj. Gen. Rupert Jones boasted that “the UK was the second biggest contributor from a military perspective in the campaign.” According to Forces.Net, the British Army trained 75,000 Iraqi military personnel at Camp Taji and other bases. Many of those who fought in Mosul committed war crimes, including torturing and murdering alleged Daesh members. In particular, the US-trained 16^th Division executed suspects, including children.

These atrocities pale in comparison to the devastation of the aerial bombardments.

In 2016, the US-led coalition dropped 30,743 bombs on Iraq and Syria. In 2017, it dropped 39,577. In 2018, the coalition dropped over 6,800 bombs. In February 2018, Pehr Lodhammar of the UN Mine Action Service reported that the “liberation” of Mosul had left 11 million tonnes of debris, burying two-thirds of the unexploded bombs (UXB). The anti-mine, anti-UXB operations will take the UN a decade to complete; assuming that their budget isn’t reduced. It took the agency 12 months to remove 25,000 explosive remnants in Mosul alone. The BBC reported that UK Ministry of Defence bombs “malfunctioned and strayed off target” sometimes by “hundreds of metres,” adding to the civilian death toll which reached up to 10,000; 11,000, according to the same Forces.Net source noted above. Mosul resident and civilian, Abdel Rahman Ali, lost five children to the blitz. “Nobody destroyed us except the coalition,” he told the BBC.

In its written evidence to the British government, Amnesty International says: “Our field research constitutes prima facieevidence that Coalition strikes, which killed and injured civilians in Syria and Iraq, violated International Humanitarian Law (IHL).” Criticizing what it calls a “crisis in accountability,” Save the Children’s written evidence notes that $700 million-worth of damage was wrought on each of Mosul’s 54 residential districts. Save the Children concludes: “In Mosul, the UN Security Council also found that at least 4200 civilians were killed by EWIPA [explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas] between October 2016 and July 2017. Research undertaken by the UN suggests that in such settings, over 90 percent of the casualties are civilians.”

IN CONCLUSION

Instead of being decapitated and immolated by Daesh, thousands of inhabitants of Mosul were blown to pieces and incinerated by US-British bombs. UN International Organization for Migration’s recent report notes that, at its peak, nearly one million residents fled the city. By now, 350,000 or so remain “internally displaced persons” (IDPs). “Many IDPs are unable to return because their houses have been destroyed, either by [Daesh] or during the battle, and renting or buying new property is prohibitively expensive.” They are some of the millions of refugees generated by the US-British imperial war machine. Mosul is a small part of a much larger tragedy: one of US global hegemony in the age of Full Spectrum Dominance.

UAE withdraws from Yemen: Managing alliances and reputational threats

James M. Dorsey


A United Arab Emirates decision to withdraw the bulk of its forces from Yemen shines a spotlight on hard realities underlying Middle Eastern geopolitics.

The pullback suggests that the UAE is preparing for the possibility of a US military confrontation with Iran in which the UAE and Saudi Arabia could emerge as prime battlegrounds.

It also reflects long-standing subtle differences in the approaches of Saudi Arabia and the UAE towards Yemen.

It further highlights the UAE’s long-standing concern for its international standing amid mounting criticism of the civilian toll of the war as well as a recognition that the Trump administration’s unquestioning support may not be enough to shield its allies from significant reputational damage.

The withdrawal constitutes a finetuning rather than a reversal of the UAE’s determination to contain Iran and thwart political Islam witness the Emirates’ involvement in the Libyan civil war and support for renegade field marshal Khalifa Belqasim Haftar as well as its support for the embattled Sudanese military and autocrats like Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

While the UAE may have withdrawn the bulk of its troops from key regions of Yemen, it leaves behind Emirati-trained local forces that will continue to do its bidding. The withdrawal, moreover, is not 100 percent with the UAE maintaining its Al-Mukalla base for counterterrorism operations.

The UAE’s commitment to assertive policies designed to ensure that the small state can continue to punch above its weight are also evident in its maintenance of a string of military and commercial port facilities in Yemen, on the African shore of the Red Sea, and in the Horn of Africa as well its hard-line towards Qatar and rivalry with Turkey.

As part of its regional and international projection, the UAE is keen to maintain its status as a model for Arab youth and preferred country of residence.

The UAE’s image contrasts starkly with that of Saudi Arabia, the custodian of Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest cities.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s policies, including the clampdown on domestic critics and the Yemen war, have prompted embarrassing calls by prominent Islamic scholars for a boycott of the pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam.

Wittingly or unwittingly, the withdrawal leaves Saudi Arabia and Prince Mohammed, the instigator of the more than four-year long war that has sparked one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, exposed.

Nonetheless, despite differing objectives in Yemen, the UAE too suffered from the reputational fallout of bombings of civilian targets that were largely carried out by the Saudi rather than the Emirati air force.

Operating primarily in the north, Saudi Arabia focussed on countering Iranian-backed Houthi rebels whose stronghold borders on the kingdom while the UAE backed South Yemeni separatists and targeted Muslim-Brotherhood related groups.

With the withdrawal, the UAE may allow differences with Saudi Arabia to become more visible but will not put its alliance with the kingdom at risk.

If past differences are anything to go by, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are able to manage them.

The differences were evident in recent weeks with the UAE, unlike Saudi Arabia, refraining from blaming Iran for attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Oman.

Leaked emails written by Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE’s influential ambassador in Washington, laid bare the Emirates’ strategy of working through the Saudi court to achieve its regional objectives despite viewing the kingdom as “coo coo.”

Similarly, differences in the two countries’ concept of Islam failed to rock their alliance despite the effective excommunication in 2016 of Saudi-backed ultra-conservatism at a UAE-sponsored conference in the Chechen capital of Grozny.

The alliance is key to the two countries’ counterrevolution aimed at maintaining the region’s autocratic status quo in the face of almost a decade of popular revolts, public protests and civil wars.

The UAE-Saudi-led counterrevolution is driven by Prince Mohammed and his UAE counterpart, crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed’s desire to shape the Middle East in their mould.

The UAE rather than the kingdom was the driver behind the Qatar boycott with Saudi King Mohammed and Prince Mohammed initially reaching out to the Qatar-backed Muslim Brotherhood when they came to power in 2015.

Four years later Saudi Arabia, is unlikely to radically shift gears but could prove less intransigent towards the group than the UAE.

While preparing for possible conflict with Iran may be the main driver for the withdrawal, it is unlikely to protect the UAE from damage to its reputation as a result of its involvement in Libya and Sudan as well as its draconic clampdown on dissent at home.

Mr. Haftar’s UAE-armed forces are believed to be responsible for this week’s bombing of a detention center for African migrants in the Libyan capital Tripoli that killed 40 people and wounded 80 others.

The bombing came of the heels of a discovery of US-made missiles on one of Mr. Haftar’s military bases packed in shipping containers stating they belonged to the “UAE Armed Forces.” The UAE has denied ownership.

The UAE’s withdrawal from Yemen will likely help it evade calls for Yemen-related arms embargoes.

Libya, however, could prove to be the UAE’s Achilles heel.

Said Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: “You are surely aware that if these allegations prove true you may be obligated by law to terminate all arms sales to the UAE.”