Growth continues to slow in major economies

Nick Beams

Data from the world’s major economies, released over the past few days, show that the “synchronised” global slowdown pointed to by the International Monetary Fund is worsening.

In its report on the latest figures from China, the world’s second largest economy, Bloomberg said the “engines of China’s economy are spluttering with exports falling, factory output slowing, investment at a record low and consumption coming off the boil.”

The National Bureau of Statistics reported that value-added industrial output in October rose by 4.7 percent from a year earlier, down from a 5.8 percent increase in September and below the forecast of a 5.2 percent increase.

Electronics factory in Zhuhai, China [Credit: http://www.flickr.com-people-76224602atN00]

Retail sales rose by 7.2 percent, down from a rise of 7.8 percent in September and below the 7.8 percent forecast.

The most significant figure was the fall in fixed investment growth. It slowed to 5.2 percent for the first ten months of the year, the lowest level in comparable data going back to 1998.

Speaking to reporters yesterday, Liu Aihua, a spokesperson for the statistics bureau, said: “There are many external uncertainties. Domestic cyclical issues have coincided with structural issues. Downward pressure on the economy has increased continuously. Risks and challenges we are facing cannot be underestimated.”

Julia Wang, an economist at HSBC, told Bloomberg the “momentum for slowdown” was not over and because it was “so sharp” it could impact on the labour market at some point next year.

Growth in Japan, the world’s third largest economy, slowed sharply in the third quarter as the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe considers the size of a stimulus package. Abe ordered the package last week but the size is yet to be decided.

Gross domestic product expanded at an annualized rate of just 0.2 percent in the September quarter, compared to a rate of 1.8 percent in the three months to June and below the expected increase of 0.9 percent. The Japanese economy has been adversely impacted by the US-China trade conflict, tensions with South Korea, sparked by a conflict over reparations to victims of forced labour during World War 2, and a recent typhoon.

Figures released yesterday show that Germany, the world’s fourth largest economy, and the driving force of the eurozone economy, only narrowly escaped a technical recession—defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

The economy expanded by just 0.1 percent in the third quarter while the contraction for the second was revised down from minus 0.1 percent to minus 0.2 percent.

A research note by Claus Vistesen, the chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, cited by the US business channel CNBC, said there was “no recession, but most definitely a very weak economy.”

He said in some sense this was the worst of both worlds. “Today’s data confirm that the German economy has now stalled, but the headlines are probably not dire enough to prompt an immediate and aggressive fiscal response from Berlin.”

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said while the figures showed Germany had avoided a technical recession in the third quarter, economic development in the region was fragile.

Speaking to CNBC, Daniela Schwarzer, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, said there was “only a minor difference” between growth of 0.1 percent and a contraction of minus 0.1 percent.

“The truth of the matter is that Germany doesn’t have a robust growth perspective at the moment,” she said, pointing out that its export-dependent economy was being hit by the shift in international trade relations—a reference to the US-China trade war and the aggressive orientation of Washington towards the European Union.

Looking beyond the immediate situation, she continued: “The whole question is what will be the sources of future growth be for Germany and the challenge to actually structurally change the German economy is huge … There needs to be strong investment in education, research and innovation, and Germany needs infrastructure investment as well.”

One of the starkest expressions of the worsening situation in the global economy and its impact on the working class is contained in the latest economic data from the UK, the world’s fifth largest economy.

According to figures from the Office for National Statistics released on Monday, the UK economy grew by just 0.3 percent in the third quarter. While this was a recovery from the 0.2 percent contraction for the second quarter, growth over the year to September was just 1 percent—the lowest level since 2010.

A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed to the underlying worsening of the economic situation. It said that over the past 11 years productivity, as measured by output per hour worked, had grown “by just 2.9 percent. That is about as much as it grew on average every 15 months in the preceding 40 years.”

One of the consequences is lower wages, which are no higher in real terms than they were 11 years ago. According to a study by the Resolution Trust, “the past decade has been the worst for earnings growth since the Napoleonic Wars.”

The study punctured claims that the growth of employment numbers indicated economic health. It noted that a “deep recession in which wages fell dramatically followed by an unprecedentedly sluggish earnings recovery” meant household incomes dropped and more people sought employment.

Employment, it said, had increased particularly rapidly for women in their early 60s and those in the lowest income deciles. This was evidence that the increase in the pension age, combined with welfare cuts, had contributed to what it called the “labour supply shift” as working households tried to counter the wage squeeze and nonworking ones experienced an “income shock.”

In the United States, the world’s largest economy, where, in the midst of the rise of stock markets to record highs, President Trump claims to have “launched an economic boom the like of which we have never seen before,” economic growth was down to 1.9 percent for the third quarter and investment in the real economy is at its lowest level since 2015.

Data released yesterday showed that applications to collect unemployment benefits increased by 14,000 to 225,000 in the week to November 9, higher than all forecasts.

The economic slowdown, and in some cases outrights contraction, is extending beyond the major economies. The economies of Singapore and Hong Kong, heavily impacted by the trade war, are in recession.

The South Korean economy grew by 2 percent for the year to September, but this was the lowest rate for a decade. The manufacturing sector, the mainstay of the Korean economy, lost 81,000 jobs last month, with the country’s finance minister, Hong Nam-ki, telling reporters that government stimulus efforts were having little effect.

“We have expected fiscal spending to play the supporting role in adding vitality to the private sector,” he said. “However it is not working well, with limited spillover effects, making us worried.”

In Australia, where the central bank has cut its base interest rate three times this year, setting it at a record low of 0.75 percent in a bid to boost the economy, the Bureau of Statistics reported yesterday that total employment fell by 19,000 in October, the biggest decline since August 2016.

The Morrison Liberal government claimed that its tax cuts introduced in July, following its narrow re-election in May, would lift household incomes and boost spending at local businesses. Nothing of the sort has happened.

With private sector wages rising by just 0.5 percent in the September quarter, retailers are expecting a dismal Christmas period, according to a report by the accounting and finance firm Deloitte.

It noted that retailers began the year with high expectations but this optimism had faded “with a combination of weak consumer spending, higher input prices and a subdued economy resulting in some of the toughest trading conditions in recent history.”

Popular resistance mounts against Bolivian coup

Andrea Lobo

Tens of thousands of workers marched on Thursday from the predominantly working class and indigenous city of El Alto to the capital of La Paz—a distance of 15 miles—demanding the ouster of the coup regime that has assumed power in Latin America’s poorest country. The protesters continued to confront military repression into the night.

Jeanine Áñez, the right-wing vice president of Bolivia’s Senate, proclaimed herself president and named a far-right cabinet and new military leadership to organize repression of the growing resistance to the US-backed coup that overthrew the government of President Evo Morales on Sunday.

Workers and peasants march in La Paz, Bolivia [Credit: AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko]

Expressing widespread sentiments among those protesting, an indigenous worker in El Alto told a reporter, “We are here fighting because we will never again humiliate ourselves and kneel down to these transnationals that have always controlled and humiliated us until today.”

After asking Morales to resign last Sunday, the Bolivian Workers Central (COB), the main trade union confederation, threatened on Tuesday to call an indefinite general strike if the Áñez regime doesn’t “re-establish the constitutional order in 24 hours.” However, no further announcement has been made.

The timid response by Morales, the formerly ruling MAS and its aligned institutions like the COB has exposed their fears that an upheaval against the coup will turn into a political movement to overthrow the capitalist order that they have defended for 14 years.

Morales, who was whisked out of Bolivia by the Mexican Air Force, escaping an arrest warrant and threats by far-right groups, has now called for “talks with the four parties in Congress,” including those that carried out the coup. He has offered to return to Bolivia to help “pacify the country” and has called for the intervention of the Pope.

Right-wing thugs and police on Wednesday blocked members of the Bolivian Senate, including its MAS president Angela Salvatierra, from entering the legislature. Under pressure from the military, Salvatierra had announced her resignation, following the example set by Morales and his vice president, clearing the way for Áñez to proclaim herself president, without any confirmation by the national legislature, in which the MAS holds the majority of seats.

Early on Thursday, MAS legislators met and elected Sergio Choque as president of the lower chamber. Choque is a deputy for El Alto with a background in the Federation of Neighborhood Councils (FEJUVE) in the city that has largely led the anti-coup protests. He first called on “all mobilized sectors to calm down,” and then promoted a bill ordering the military to return to their barracks—an attempt to feed illusions that the military will obey the forces it just overthrew.

In recounting his escape to El País, Morales stated that “the United States called the foreign relations minister to tell me that they could take me anywhere. That was strange to me.” He opted for asylum offered by Mexico, which failed to convince Perú to allow Morales to use its airspace to fly there. Ultimately, the right-wing governments in Paraguay and Brazil agreed to facilitate Morales’ escape.

The coup regime has deployed bombers to fly over mass rallies, tanks and Humvees to patrol city centers and riot police and helicopters that have fired live rounds and tear gas into protests. Military and police caravans have terrorized working class neighborhoods. Local news outlets have reported on social media that many more have been killed in the towns surrounding La Paz, and that several national and local radio and tv stations have been taken off the air.

The Prosecutor’s Office has recognized that three protesters have been killed since Monday. In total, ten people have died and at least 400 have been injured since the October 20 presidential elections, which showed Morales winning with the lead needed to avoid a runoff.

Congress, where the MAS holds majorities, did not ratify the resignations of Morales, his vice president and the president of the Senate. Áñez was “confirmed,” without any legislative quorum, by about 20 opposition senators, surrounded by members of the military and the fascistic right-wing opposition. Despite this, the Constitutional Court ruled in favor of Áñez as the country’s legitimate president.

Washington, which denounced Morales for “stealing” the election on October 22, was the main instigator of the coup and the first to recognize Áñez as “interim president.”

However, eager to get on with the business of plundering the vast gas and mineral resources in the country, numerous other capitalist governments have recognized Áñez, including Brazil, the European Union and Russia, which has extensive contracts in Bolivia. Sergey Ryabkov, the Russian undersecretary of foreign relations, declared that “We view everything that preceded the power shift as actions that equal a coup… but it’s clear that she will be perceived as the leader of Bolivia until the issue of electing a new president is settled.”

Among those replaced by Áñez was the commander of the Bolivian armed forces, Williams Kaliman, who had “suggested” to Morales to step down on Sunday and placed the presidential sash on Áñez on Tuesday. The Argentine daily Infobae reported from “military sources” that there were demands for the army “to act on the streets against the protesters, but some commanders under Kaliman resisted,” leading the Áñez to assign a new leadership.

The new Interior Minister, Arturo Murillo, immediately announced, “I spoke with the new Defense Minister [Luis Fernando López Julio], a very interesting person to work in partnership with. We’ll have the military and police on the streets giving people security… All those in sedition will go to jail; we’ll pursue you.” The new minister of Communication, Roxana Lizárraga, announced that “the rule of law will be used against those journalists or pseudo-journalists involved in sedition.”

Meanwhile, the new minister of the Presidency, Jerjes Justiniano, is the lawyer of Luis Fernando Camacho, a fascistic businessman from Santa Cruz who became the face of the anti-Morales demonstrations since the elections. Far-right groups led by Camacho and presidential runner-up Carlos Mesa partnered with the Organization of American States (OAS) to exploit a one-day halt in the announcement of vote totals to allege an electoral fraud, without presenting any evidence.

The US-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) published a report last week stating that the final result was not in contradiction to the trend before the broadcasts stopped, arguing that there is “no statistical or evidentiary basis to dispute the vote count.”

As far-right flying squads were seen attacking indigenous protesters and passers-by in several cities, Camacho used “anti-establishment” demagogy to tap into growing social anger among sectors of the middle class and some politically disoriented layers of workers.

Highlighting the dangers presented by the fascistic layers being elevated by US imperialism, both Camacho and Áñez have long expressed the racist outlook of the landed oligarchy of the lowlands, which has historically oppressed the country’s indigenous majority and sought to divide the oppressed layers of the population.

“I dream of a Bolivia liberated of the indigenous satanic rituals; the city is not for Indians; they should leave to the highlands or Chaco,” Áñez declared in a 2013 tweet that has recently been scrubbed. In his rallies, Camacho continues to call for freeing Bolivia from “Satan” and “witchcraft.”

The Spanish election crisis and the treachery of Podemos

Alex Lantier

In Sunday’s Spanish general elections, a dangerous pattern seen time and again in Europe is repeating itself. As with the National Front in France, the Freedom Party in Austria, the Law and Justice Party in Poland, and the Alternative for Germany, extreme-right parties are emerging as the main beneficiary of the disintegration of discredited social-democratic parties.

In Spain the fascistic Vox party, which had less than 1 percent of the vote and no parliamentarians last year, has risen to 15 percent and doubled its number of legislators, to 52, since the last elections in April. Its officials openly hail the 1936 coup and the resulting civil war and mass murder carried out by fascist dictator Francisco Franco, whose regime held power from 1939 to 1978. Despite broad opposition in the working class to Francoism, however, it is surging. How is this to be explained?

The major factor in the growth of the extreme right in Europe, as in the United States, is the growth of malignant levels of social inequality. In Spain, after the 2008 Wall Street crash, unemployment surged to a quarter of the workforce and half the youth, even as Spain’s 26 billionaires amassed vast wealth. Growing anger at social inequality is the basic motive force driving mass protests in dozens of countries, including mass protests at police state repression of the Catalan independence referendum. Masses of workers and youth are striving to find a socialist alternative to capitalism.

Even amid growing popular opposition to capitalism and support for socialism, however, parties claiming to be “left” do not oppose capitalism. The empty and demagogic promises these pseudo-left organizations make disillusion and anger working people. There can be no clearer illustration of this than the response of Spain’s “left populist” Podemos (“We can”) party to the recent election.

Less than 48 hours after the election, Podemos leapt into a “pre-accord” with the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) to form a coalition government. The PSOE and Podemos are seeking further coalition partners among Catalan or Basque nationalist parties, to form a parliamentary majority for what various media outlets call a “progressive” or even a “far left” government. However, the PSOE-Podemos “pre-accord” commits them to European Union (EU) austerity and continuing the PSOE’s military spending increases and its police crackdown to impose “social peace” in Catalonia.

This morning, Podemos General Secretary Pablo Iglesias published an open letter, ostensibly addressed to the Podemos membership, announcing that Podemos will implement right-wing policies. He wrote, “The right-wing parties and media representatives of corporate power will hit us very hard, each step we take. We will be a minority in a government with the PSOE in which we will face many limits and contradictions, and we will have to give up on many things.”

Podemos is thus creating conditions for Vox to continue to grow, by posturing as the only opposition to the anti-worker policies of the political establishment.

Podemos, like its first cousin the Syriza (“Coalition of the Radical Left”) government in Greece, is based on fraudulent theories of “left populism” that reject the working class, class struggle, socialism, and revolutionary policies. Chantal Mouffe, the postmodernist writer and associate of leading members of the Syriza and Podemos parties, has laid these arguments out quite explicitly.

In her pamphlet For a Left Populism published last year, Mouffe declares: “What is urgently needed is a left populist strategy aimed at the construction of a ‘people,’ combining the variety of democratic resistances against post-democracy in order to establish a more democratic hegemonic formation. … I contend that it does not require a ‘revolutionary’ break with the liberal democratic regime.”

Even as Mouffe’s book appeared, her political charlatanry had been exposed by the Syriza government’s record. While Syriza promised voters to end EU austerity, it rejected revolutionary measures and an appeal to European workers for support against the EU; its “more democratic hegemonic formation,” was a government coalition formed in 2015 with the far-right Independent Greeks. In the end, Syriza utterly betrayed its election promises, imposing tens of billions in EU social cuts and imprisoning tens of thousands of refugees in detention camps in the Greek islands.

After the Syriza disaster, it is the turn of Podemos to help the PSOE assemble a “more democratic hegemonic formation.” Such a coalition would prove as hostile to workers in Spain as in Greece. Since it negotiated with the fascist Francoite regime a Transition to parliamentary rule in 1978, the PSOE has been the bourgeoisie’s principal instrument to impose EU austerity and wage imperialist wars, from Afghanistan to Libya. Podemos is now endorsing the reactionary policies the PSOE will pursue.

It would be worse than useless to appeal to the affluent university professors, state officials, army officers and union bureaucracy making up Podemos to pursue a less regressive policy. Podemos is opposed to any initiative by the working class that would in any way impinge on the wealth, property and material interests of its affluent middle class base.. Mouffe’s fraudulent theory of “left populism” seeks to provide theoretical legitimacy to the reactionary anti-socialist and pro-capitalist program of organizations like Podemos and Syriza.

Mouffe’s “left-populism” reeks of intellectual charlatanry and political cynicism. She writes, “It is to be expected that this left populist strategy will be denounced by the sectors of the left who keep reducing politics to the contradiction of capital/labor and attribute an ontological privilege to the working class, presented as the vehicle for socialist revolution. They will of course see this as a capitulation to ‘bourgeois ideology.’ There is no point answering these criticisms, that proceed from the very conception of politics against which I have been arguing.”

The fascist resurgence has exposed the bankruptcy of the pseudo-left. Its defense of capitalism and rejection of any policy that impinges the prerogatives of bourgeois property and wealth precludes any appeal to the working class. The role being played by Podemos essentially duplicates the treacherous role played by Stalinists and social democrats in the Spain of the 1930s. Their alliance with a section of the Spanish bourgeoisie in what was called a Popular Front ruled out revolutionary policies in the fight against General Franco and his fascist allies. The result was the crushing of the socialist revolution and Franco’s victory.

The lessons of the 1930s must be learned. The fight against fascism today requires an assault by the working class on capitalist property, aimed at the expropriation of the financial aristocracy.

US court rules routine border search and seizure of electronic devices unconstitutional

Kevin Reed

A US court ruled on Tuesday that searches and seizure of electronic devices of international travelers without suspicion by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at US airports and other ports of entry are unconstitutional and in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

In the ruling, Judge Denise Casper of the US District Court of Massachusetts halted the routine practice by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of searching without “reasonable suspicion” the personal computers, tablets and smartphones of travelers.

The decision was in response to a 2017 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of 11 international travelers whose electronic devices were searched, and in some cases seized, by US authorities upon entry into the US. Ten of the plaintiffs are US citizens and one is a lawful permanent resident.

The 48-page ruling states, “the Court declares that the CBP and ICE policies for ‘basic’ and ‘advanced’ searches, as presently defined, violate the Fourth Amendment to the extent that the policies do not require reasonable suspicion that the devices contain contraband for both such classes of non-cursory searches and/or seizure of electronic devices.”

As of January 2018, the Department of Homeland Security defines a basic search as a manual review of the contents of a device by a security officer and an advanced search as “any search in which an officer connects external equipment, through a wired or wireless connection, to an electronic device, not merely to gain access to the device, but to review, copy and/or analyze its contents.”

It should be pointed out that Judge Casper, by adopting the standard of “reasonable suspicion,” stopped short of ruling in favor of the plaintiff’s challenge to “warrantless” searches of electronic devices at the border. Under the standard of “probable cause,” law enforcement authorities are required to obtain a court ordered warrant for the search and seizure of evidence that a crime has been committed.

Although the Fourth Amendment specifically states that “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause” for searches and seizures and “particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons and things to be seized,” the District Court based its determination on exceptions to these requirements. In this case, the precedent of the border exception, “grounded in the recognized right of the sovereign to control, subject to substantive limitations imposed by the Constitution, who and what may enter the country.”

The ruling details several episodes of the abusive behavior by US border agents toward the traveling public at US ports of entry. In one such case, the ruling states, “Nadia Alasaad has twice had her iPhones searched at the border over her religious objections to having CBP officers, especially male officers, view photos of her and her daughters without their headscarves as required in public by their religious beliefs.”

The description goes on, “During the second search, which was of her daughter’s phone, Alasaad alleges, and Defendants have not disputed, that a CBP officer mentioned a photograph that had been on Alasaad’s phone during her earlier search but was not present in the second search.”

In another incident, the judgment says, “As to one such Plaintiff, Wright, a computer programmer, CBP also extracted and retained data, including attempting to image his laptop with MacQuisition software and extracting data from the SIM cards in his phone and camera, from his electronic devices, and retained it for a period of fifty-six days, even if the parties agree that this data has now been returned to him.”

Another case, although not part of the lawsuit, was widely reported last summer when a 17-year-old incoming Harvard freshman from Palestine, Ismail B. Ajjawi, was stopped at Boston’s Logan International Airport and, after his phone and computer were searched, was deported. DHS officials cancelled Ajjawi’s visa and denied him entry into the US due to anti-US government posts found on his social media account that were made by his friends and not by him.

The ruling also establishes “substantial risk of future harm” from the routine searches because, once a traveler’s device has been examined, the record of this is maintained by DHS in their various security databases such as the Automated Targeting System (ATS) and the Investigative Case Management (ICM). In the case of ATS, a copy of any data obtained in any “prior border encounters” that included an advanced search is available to homeland security agents.

According the CPB itself, the agency conducted more than 33,000 searches of electronic devices at US ports of entry in 2018. This is approximately four times the number of searches compared to just three years ago.

In the original lawsuit, the plaintiffs wrote, “Border searches of electronic devices intrude deeply on the private lives of all travelers and raise unique concerns for the journalists, lawyers, doctors, and others who carry particularly sensitive information about their news sources, clients, and patients,” adding that the warrantless searches “turn the border into a digital dragnet.”

In response to the ruling, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Sophia Copp said, “This is a great day for travelers who now can cross the international border without fear that the government will, in the absence of any suspicion, ransack the extraordinarily sensitive information we all carry in our electronic devices.”

While Judge Casper’s decision stipulates that border officers must now demonstrate “individualized suspicion” of illegal contraband before they can search a traveler’s device, the specifics of how this procedure will be implemented are not spelled out. That such enormous loop-holes are left in a ruling that purports to protect the international traveling public against “unreasonable searches and seizures” demonstrates that no confidence can be placed in the courts to defend democratic rights.

The blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment by federal, state and local law enforcement, including homeland security officials, is taking place across the country and at the US borders each day in multiple forms. These practices have been on the rise since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which has been used by the political establishment, judicial system and law enforcement to dispense with constitutional and democratic norms for nearly two decades.

The launching of illegal wars of aggression abroad and attacks on democratic rights at home are two prongs of the response by the ruling elite to the decline of American capitalism as an economic and political power in world affairs. The target of all of these measures is ultimately the working class, the only social force capable of fighting for and defending democratic rights and stopping the descent into an authoritarian and military dictatorship.

India-China and the Sometime Pickle of Civilisational Connects

Vijay Shankar

The Peloponnesian War (431- 404 BCE), was a significant event of the ancients as it reshaped the Hellenic world. A hegemonistic Athens and its trading vassals was challenged by Sparta backed by the xenophobic Peloponnesian League. In the end, the Spartan side came on top. But the central question that emerged was, what made like peoples (civilisationally) fight a long and debilitating war? Explanations rarely go beyond Graham Allison’s "What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta," and yet what remains unexplored is the invidiousness of civilisational 'hook ups'.

Through history, as many wars have been fought as there have been civilisationally connected peoples. The Mauryan campaigns of the 4th century BC began with war and conquest of the Nanda Empire; interestingly the protagonists shared a common progenitor. The Crusades (1096-1291 AD) began with Pope Urban II’s call for a war to recover the holy land from Muslim rule. It degenerated to a riot of pillage ending in the fall of Jerusalem and victory for the Muslims. The war ironically was fought between peoples of the ‘Word’. The interminable wars in Europe waged between 12th and 17th centuries AD were largely fought over family rivalries, prestige, and succession. The Colonial Wars that found roots in piracy before expanding into a world-wide feuding network of discriminatory trade practices was a confrontation between practitioners of 'western civilisation' that culminated in the World Wars of the 20th century, fought for domination and imperial glory.

The farther back we look, the more we note that despite there being civilisational ties, nations went to bloody wars, rather than find alternatives. Was it because they knew each other too well? Or were causes due to the nature of nation-states involved – their creation, development, and quest for self-sufficiency? What is clear is that no modern nation can leanon a unique history that is in itself self-explanatory. Because a civilisation in its life span is faced by a succession of challenges that often fragment the whole, resulting in each element providing solutions as best as they may. It brings about self-sustaining divisions that live, work, and fight to the dictates of traditions common to them to the exclusion and oftenin conflict with the other elements. Against this backdrop, how relevant and to what effect is the current government in India backing its civilisational ties with China to build a mutually beneficial relationship?

Colonial exhaustion and defeat of imperial powers in the 20th century gave rise to Communism in China and its evolution to a "centrally controlled market economy that tolerated political activity only by the Party;" it is the antithesis of the development of parliamentary democracy in India. Ironically, history attributes the entry of Mahayana Buddhism in 3 BCE from its home in India for the part it played in developing Chinese civilisation and its implanting amongst the Sinic people. These civilisational bonds over the millennia grew as human interaction and trade flourished, first over land and then by sea.

Imperial competition in the 18th and 19th centuries spurred by search for resources, increasing demand, and lure of easy wealth marked the advent of colonial empires and the breakdown of traditional linkages. Awkwardly, trade networks now were routed through the parent colonist. An unintended fallout of this disruption was nationalistic fervour that neither had the experience of managing affairs of the state nor could they see beyond the coloniser and their reviled formula of trade-settlement-conquest. The artificially stretched geography had effectively fragmented civilisational bonds and replaced it by concepts that came unstuck rather than coalescing.

In this milieu, it must come as no surprise that China and India opted for self-government so profoundly different and with such a varied interpretation of what and who was the 'self' to be governed. While the former claimed exclusive authority of people freed of feudal and capitalistic exploitation and holding membership of the Chinese Communist Party, the latter derived its authority from a more abstract interpretation of what represented the will of the nation under one constitution. There are inconvenient anomalies to both concepts. That being as it may, the reality is that China and India share borders that extends over 3,500 km ridden by 'cartographic incongruities'. Concurrently, historical events such as the invasion of Tibet, flight of the Dalai Lama to India, stoking of Maoist insurgencies in India, the lack of a consensual basis for boundary resolution be it the Johnson, MacDonald, or McMahon lines, a border war, and the underlying looming strategic competition, have all served to stress relations.

Even the approach taken by the two countries to development and growth cannot be at greater odds. China, since the mid-seventies, has become the manufacturing hub of the world; while India since the mid-nineties has become the favoured destination for outsourcing of a range of services from software development and call centres to 'back-room' services and sophisticated research reports for analysts and decision-makers. India’s primary aim is of being a dominant knowledge power. But tensions remain, not just caused by legacy.

For China it is the inability to reconcile a free market economy with a repressive authoritarian regime. It has chosen to distract its people through whipping up nationalistic passions and implementing aggressive revisionist policies. For India, it is its population and the nature of its polity that tends to hold it back. Both have a common quest, to achieve and sustain great power status. China’s striving for dominance in the political arena is backed by first-rate military capability. Challenged by the international system, it has turned a competitive face to relations with other powers.While India would appear to have chosen a cooperative slant, its exertion of power is through international bodies, its success at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and to win support at the UN on its stand on climate change, renewable energy, and terrorism are issues that have not gone unnoticed.

Given this state of play, and the harsh fact that the principle of nationalism is almost always intimately linked to the idea of war, it will take an act of great statesmanship between the two diverse Asian giants to bury their differences and build upon their hoary civilisational bonds. But even if this were to be so, the question that begs to be answered is: to whose benefit, and to what end?

Trump’s Abandonment of Syria’s Kurds: A Catalyst for Division in Europe?

Pieter-Jan Dockx

On 6 October, after a phone call with his Turkish counterpart, US President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of US forces from Kurdish-held areas in Syria. The move allowed Turkish President Erdogan to launch his long sought-after military operation against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG)—a group that formed the backbone of the US-led campaign against the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria, but is considered a terrorist organisation in Turkey. Trump’s decision will not only have long-term consequences with regard to Syria, West Asia, and foreign relations in general, but is also likely to impact European politics.

Repercussions for Europe

Trump’s decision could reinvigorate the IS, which in turn will negatively impact Europe. Due to the Turkish threat, the YPG has halted its operations against the IS and relocated forces northwards. The ensuing security vacuum could form an opportunity for the militant group to regain strength. Following the Turkish offensive, IS militants have already escaped from Kurdish-controlled prisons owing to lack of manpower. European policymakers would want to avoid an emboldened IS—after all, the IS attacks in Paris and Brussels were coordinated from Syria and carried out by militants who returned from the country.

Instability in Syria could again lead to high numbers of migration to Europe. During the 2015 European refugee crisis, around 4,30,000 Syrian refugees relocated to Europe as a result of the Syrian civil war. Recently, the rate of arrivals through the eastern Mediterranean route has again started increasing. With growing instability in Syria, Erdogan threatening to send Syrian refugees living in Turkey towards Europe, and no viable European refugee relocation mechanism in place, European leaders fear a repeat of the 2015 scenario.

The White House’s move to end its support for the YPG and leave Syria also means that the European powers have lost their main allies­—and therefore the associated leverage—in the conflict. In the absence of an effective strategy on Syria, the Europeans have mostly relied on the US and its Kurdish allies on the ground to fight the IS and maintain influence, albeit limited, on the broader conflict. With the US gone and the YPG’s subsequent re-alignment with the Assad regime, it will be increasingly difficult for the Europeans to achieve their objectives in Syria.

By retracting the defence guarantees for the YPG vis-à-vis Turkey, President Trump is also casting doubts over the role of the US as the guarantor of Europe’s security in relation to Russia. Uncertainty over US commitment to NATO allies had already emerged during the George W Bush presidency, but has peaked under Trump, who has called NATO "obsolete." This is especially alarming for the Baltic states and Poland, who rely heavily on the US for security.

Rapprochement with Russia

European policymakers could manage all these negative consequences by improving their relationship with Russia. While Russia was already the most important actor in Syria, the US withdrawal has made Moscow the indispensable power broker in the conflict. Whether the objective is to fight the IS, stem refugee flows, or influence Syria’s post-conflict transition, none is likely to be achieved without involving Russia. Moreover, the ineffectiveness of the EU strategy of sanctioning the Assad regime and withholding reconstruction funding further increases the need for engagement with Moscow.

The increasingly unreliable nature of the US commitment to defend Europe in the face of possible Russian aggression can similarly be overcome by strengthening ties with Moscow. Since the Bush Jr era, European powers have contemplated stronger military capabilities independent from the US. While steps have been taken in this direction—especially during the Trump presidency—matching Russia’s military capabilities is likely to take decades. Hence, without the US, deterrence is not a viable option for the EU in the short-term, necessitating the need for a strategy of appeasement.

European Division

Whether European policymakers choose to confront the repercussions or decide to restore their relationship with Russia to mitigate them, divisions are likely to arise, both within and between countries. This division could in turn hinder EU policy-making in other unconnected domains.

Islamist attacks and large inflows of refugees have both been important drivers of polarisation and the rise of the far-right. The issue of immigration has also led to disagreements within the EU; between those advocating relocation quotas for refugees and those opposing it. Recent regional elections in both Germany and Italy have reaffirmed the continued strength of its far-right parties. Differences over refugee quotas also remain, as the leaders of France, Germany and Italy struggle to make the other EU member-states agree to a voluntary relocation system.

Rapprochement with Moscow, on the other hand, is likely to exacerbate Europe’s East-West divide. Western European countries like Germany and France—the two main foreign policy actors in the EU—have traditionally been more dovish with regard to Russia. Recently, French President Macron called for a reset of EU relations with Russia. However, a policy of appeasement will face opposition from Central and Eastern European states, who fear Russian aggression akin to its intervention in Ukraine.

Regardless of how Europe decides to deal with this new reality, Trump’s decision to abandon US' Kurdish allies in Syria is likely to trigger division on the continent. The anticipated disagreement over migration or the EU’s Russia policy could subsequently also spill over to other policy domains—like climate change—further exacerbating the EU’s already complex and slow-moving decision-making process.

ISHR Human Rights Defenders Advocacy Programme (HRDAP) 2020 – Geneva, Switzerland

Application Deadline: 1st December 2019 midnight Geneva time.

Eligible Countries: International

To be Taken at (Country): Geneva, Switzerland

About the Award: In 2020, ISHR is particularly seeking applications from women human rights defenders working in conflict, post conflict and occupation settings. In addition, our work with migrant rights defenders aims to support coalitions and strategies to push back on the criminalisation of solidarity, as well as to ensure that the UN human rights mechanisms do their part to meaningfully raise the issue of migrants’ rights violations.
The training will take place in Geneva between 8 and 19 June 2020 and provides defenders with opportunities to put their advocacy skills directly into action at the 44^th session of the UN Human Rights Council. Get a taste of the programme here, and find out more about how to apply here.
ISHR’s Human Rights Defender Advocacy Programme (HRDAP) equips defenders with the knowledge and skills to make strategic use of the international human rights system. It also provides an opportunity for participants to directly engage in lobbying and advocacy activities at the UN level to effect change on the ground back home.
As well as receiving training modules on all the UN human rights mechanisms from a range of experts, participants will also have the opportunity to build networks in Geneva and around the world, carry out lobbying of UN member States and UN staff, and learn from peers from a range of regions working on a range of human rights issues.
The programme brings togethers 16 committed human rights defenders from extremely different contexts and working on a wide range of areas: migrant rights; women human rights defenders in conflict, post-conflict & occupation settings; business, environment and human rights; the human rights of LGBTI persons; reclaiming civil society space and increasing protection of human rights defenders.
At the end of the training, 100% of participants were either “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with the overall programme, and they all also felt that they would be able to apply what they learnt to their own day-to-day work. ISHR will look to build upon this success in 2020.
Participants will take part in:

1. A short online learning component, prior to face-to-face training, to enable you to consolidate your existing knowledge and develop your advocacy objectives;
2. Intensive training in Geneva during June, to coincide with the 44^th session of the Human Rights Council. The training will focus on ways to effectively use international human rights mechanisms and to influence outcomes;
3. Specific advocacy at Human Rights Council sessions and other relevant meetings, with regular feedback and peer education to learn from the experiences, including expert input from leading human rights advocates.

Type: Training

Eligibility: For the June 2020 training course, ISHR will consider applicants working on at least one of the focus topics of the 44 th session of the Human Rights Council highlighted above and/or one of ISHR’s strategic priorities. Final decisions regarding participants will be based upon the following criteria:

• Match between applicants’ area of work/expertise and ISHR’s strategic priorities and/or the opportunities provided by the 44 th Human Rights Council;
• Applicants’ knowledge of human rights and their experience and willingness to engage with the UN human rights system and integrate it effectively into domestic level advocacy;
• Applicants’ experience of carrying out advocacy at the national and/or regional level;
• Applicants’ advocacy responsibilities and role within their organisation;
• Applicants’ willingness to contribute to peer education in a diverse group of participants;
• Applicants’ demonstrated commitment to the principles of human rights, including the principles of universality and non-discrimination;
• Communication, language and organisational skills;
• The potential for a strategic partnership between ISHR and the applicants’ organisation;
• Whether applicants or their organisations have been recommended by a strategic partner.

The course will be carried out in English. ISHR cannot provide translation. In identifying and selecting participants,
ISHR will work closely with leading human rights organisations in each of the specific respective focus areas and across the world.

Course requirements: Prior to attending the training and advocacy programme in Geneva, participants are expected to

• Complete a short online learning component consisting of guided reading in preparation of the course and forum discussions (approximately 12 hours of work over six weeks);
• Develop and submit a set of personal advocacy objectives for the visit to Geneva.
• Prepare some advocacy tools/documents to support advocacy activities in Geneva.

Number of Awards: 16

Value of Award:

• The tuition fee is 3000 Swiss Francs (CHF), and the average cost of travel, accommodation, meals, perdiem and programme logistics administration is approximately 4000 CHF for the two-week period. ISHR relies on contributions from partner organisations and participants to be able to deliver HRDAP.
• While we may be able to offer a small number of scholarships to cover the full or partial costs of participation, and without prejudice to your eligibility for such a scholarship, we also consider whether and how much participants or their organisations are prepared to contribute to the programme in selecting participants and determining the number of programme places.
• We therefore encourage all participants to seek other sources of funding, as the ability of applicants to either fully or partially pay the aforementioned costs may be one of the determining factors in deciding on the number and composition of the group of participants. Participants who are unable to meet those costs are invited to request a full or partial scholarship.
• Full scholarships cover the whole cost of 7000 CHF, whilst partial scholarships may cover either the 3000 CHF tuition fee or part of the participants’ accommodation, meals and per diem, or travel costs, or programme logistics and administration. Scholarships will be attributed at ISHR’s discretion.

Duration of Award: 8 and 19 June 2020

How to Apply: By midnight Geneva time on 1 December 2019 each applicant must:

• Submit a completed application form available at https://forms.gle/T9iU61dQEnkiLyyT7;
• Email 2 letters of recommendation, including one from their organisation, to hrdap2020@ishr.ch.

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Thomson Reuters/Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Generation Africa 2020 for Africans with Remarkable Stories (Fully-funded to Johannesburg, South Africa)

Application Deadline: Ongoing

Eligible Countries: African countries

About the Award: It’s often the people behind the stories that hold the power to help change the world for the better.
We are looking for 12 young Africans ready to become champions for global development issues to take part in a unique, six-day, fully-funded programme by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aimed at developing storytellers who could inspire change on a global platform. Know that person? 
The course has been developed by communications and media experts at the Thomson Reuters Foundation and will aim to enhance the profile of 12 African story-tellers. The training comprises communication techniques, public speaking and presentation skills, effective use of social media, handling the media, and more. They will then be prepared to share their stories in a global arena. 
Generation Africa aims to help young Africans, whose personal experiences have shaped their determination to help others facing challenges across the continent, to tell their stories globally. If you know someone with a remarkable story, we would love to help them share it.

Type: Training

Eligibility: 
1)    Must have a compelling personal story
2)    Your story relates to either health, development or poverty reduction
3)    Your story illustrates a challenge faced by others living in Africa
4)    Your English is fluent enough to benefit from a six-day course in the English language
5)    You are willing to have details of your personal story shared with the public
Candidates must be available to attend a 6-day training programme in Johannesburg late February/early March 2020. 

Number of Awards: 12

Value of Award: Fully funded

Duration of Programme: 6 days

How to Apply:  We are particularly seeking individuals with a personal story to share that highlights he need to take action around global health, family planning, nutrition, agriculture, financial inclusion and gender equality. If you know someone who has a story with the power to change lives, please share it with us via our nomination form. 

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage (see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

David Cameron and the Decline of British Leadership

Patrick Cockburn 

Critics lament the disintegration of the British political establishment under the impact of repeated shocks from the Brexit earthquake. Competent politicians and experienced civil servants head for the exit or are evicted to make way for more ideologically acceptable successors. Whatever one thought of the members of Theresa May’s final cabinet they were better than the clutch of opportunists and fanatics appointed by Boris Johnson.

The Brexit crisis has become an all-encompassing explanation of all that is wrong with Britain, with many idealising the sunlit uplands where we dwelt before the 2016 referendum. Retired civil service mandarins and politicians recall how everything used to run smoothly and sweetly before the Brexit barbarians stormed the gates and they lost their jobs.

It should be easy enough to check such rosy recollections because many of the retired politicians – if not the mandarins – use their retirement to write memoirs of great length and detail that need to appear swiftly if carefully hoarded nuggets of secret information are to appeal to the reader.

Publishers publicise such books by talking up those revelatory chunks where the author is rude about his successor or exposes the treachery and incompetence of old friends and allies. Editors and reviewers scan the index to see what old scores are being settled. Often ignored in all this, and dismissed as yesterday’s news, is fascinating information about what some powerful figure actually thought and did when he or she was in charge.

David Cameron’s autobiography For The Record is one such recently published volume that is deeply illuminating about how the author, as prime minister, responded to issues of war and peace. As one would expect from his public persona, he is fluent and plausible in describing his role in the wars in Libya and Syria sparked by the Arab Spring, but he is shallow and ill-informed about the forces at play. What comes across is that, like many more openly bellicose political leaders, the mild-mannered Cameron liked playing general and did so with enthusiastic but wrongheaded amateurism.

Cameron recalls with pride his role in the bombing of Libya in 2011, justifying it on the grounds that Muammar Gaddafi’s tanks and troops were advancing on Benghazi where they would massacre the population. He says that “on 20 March, American, British and French aircraft destroyed Gaddafi’s tanks, armoured carriers and rocket launchers, and his forces began to retreat. Benghazi was saved, and a Srebrenica-style slaughter averted. I’ve never known relief like it.”

There are a few things wrong with this as a description of what happened: a report by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee later revealed that the belief that Gaddafi would “massacre the civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence”. It pointed out that Gaddafi had retaken other towns from the rebels and not attacked the civilian population.

Nor was Benghazi saved: drone footage of the city taken recently show that the centre of the city has been destroyed, not by Gaddafi’s soldiers but in the fighting over many years between the militias that overthrew him. Had Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and Hillary Clinton not intervened militarily in the Libyan civil war then Benghazi might really have been saved, along with those who were killed and wounded in the long years of fighting that followed foreign intervention.

I was particularly interested in Cameron’s take on the Libyan conflict because, soon after the bombing started, I visited the frontline south of Benghazi where more journalists were visible than rebels. There was the occasional puff of smoke on the horizon when a shell exploded, but otherwise not much fighting going on.

This phoney war did not last long and Cameron explains why: “By May 2011 the war had sunk into stalemate, and needed a renewed focus. I agreed deals with France to commit Apache helicopters to help the rebels. I was on the phone to the leaders of the Gulf states to encourage their continued involvement which turned out to be crucial.”

In other words, Gaddafi was overthrown primarily by foreign powers and not by an indigenous rebellion. It requires considerable naivete on Cameron’s part to imagine that the Gulf states, the last absolute monarchies on earth, planned to replace Gaddafi with a secular democracy.

A dangerous blindness similarly pervades Cameron’s chapter on his frustrated attempts to take military action in Syria to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. He is disappointed that Barack Obama is not as gung-ho as himself and sometime feels that he picks up more information from the members of the Syrian diaspora he runs into than he does from his own diplomats.

He is angered by the action of the House of Commons and Obama in refusing to sanction air strikes in Syria after the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Damascus in August 2013. It becomes clear, however, that he never decided if this was to be a prolonged air campaign in support of the rebels until they were victorious or a slap on the wrist for Assad with a one-off cruise missile attack,which he would certainly have shrugged off, as he was to do when the US did launch such an attack in 2018.

It is worth studying what Cameron did, or thought he was doing in the Libyan and Syrian conflicts, because war reveals a political leader’s level of judgement as does nothing else. There has been much criticism of Cameron’s decision to first hold, and then lose, the referendum on membership of the European Union, but his second-rate attributes as a leader were already evident in his decisions about these two wars.

These failings are not confined to Cameron, but to what used to be called the British ruling class as a whole: its members have a a certain provinciality and sense of superiority that makes it difficult for them to play a weak hand well when negotiating with the EU. Such assumptions blend with inner self-doubt which sees Cameron continually trotting off to see Obama or Vladimir Putin, though this never seems to get him very far.

It is worth reading Cameron’s book to understand his failings since most of the party leaders in the upcoming general election are even worse.

De Facto Martial Law in the Philippines

Yoko Liriano

In 2010, I was a summer intern for the largest, progressive human rights organization in the Philippines, Karapatan: Alliance for the Advancement of Peoples Rights. As a non-Filipino, I never imagined that I would become so involved in the Filipino cause. Faced, however, with the dire human rights situation as well as the fervor of the people’s movement – I realized that I not only supported the cause, but that I wanted to dedicate my life to the Philippine struggle. Suffice it to say, that summer changed my life.

A few months before my internship, 43 health workers held a workshop on community health in Morong, Rizal province. They were raided by the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), held incommunicado in a military camp, tortured, and imprisoned on the basis of trumped up charges and planted evidence. The 26 women of the “Morong 43” were held in one very cramped and damp cell. By the time I visited them in May, two of the women were close to giving birth, and many were sick. The conditions in the jail were palpably horrendous, and visitors were subject to strip search. While humiliating, it did not come close to the torture described by the prisoners, nor the pain of a child’s longing to be with their wrongfully imprisoned mother.

One of the Morong 43 was Merry Mia Clamore, a physician. She is the wife of the Deputy Secretary General of Karapatan, Roneo “Jigs” Clamor. Their son, Diego, five years old at the time, taught me what it meant to feel powerless and be powerful at the same time. Diego, who we lovingly called “Egoy,” would speak at rallies and press conferences about the “bad guys” who took his mom, a doctor that healed people in hospitals and in the community. In the office, while Jigs worked, Egoy would stare out of the window and cry for his mom to come home.

The building that houses the Karapatan office also houses the offices of the National Union of Peoples Lawyers (NUPL), whose lawyers often represent the victims and families that Karapatan serves, and BAYAN, an alliance of mass organizations dedicated to national liberation and democracy. Many working in the building are themselves survivors of human rights violations. The guards in the garage were victims of torture, and the cleaning staff were parents of extra-judicially killed student activists. At the time, the Chair of Karapatan was Marie Hilao-Enriquez, sister to the first detainee, Liliosa Hilao, to be killed by the martial law regime of Ferdinand Marcos.

Today, when the AFP calls the Bayan and Karapatan building a safe house, they’re right. This building where I worked that summer and the place I go to every time I am in the Philippines was indeed a safe refuge for survivors and their families. We cooked, we ate, we interviewed victims, prepared affidavits, and played with the children and the cats. The AFP, however, is wrong to call the building a place for rebels or storage for firearms. I have slept many nights in that building. I have worked in every office, used every bathroom, rummaged through every closet for political t-shirts and placards. I have climbed through the piles of old banners and paint cans in the garage. I have hung my laundry to dry in all the tiny specks of yard and fire escapes. Let me tell you, there is just no space to hide any guns or bombs or rebels. The offices requested the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to conduct a search, and they also found no guns and no bombs.

But there is something the AFP should be afraid of in that building: The powerful, resilient, bad ass, lawyers, activists, cultural workers, and human rights defenders. They have worked tirelessly throughout the decades to fight for the rights and welfare of the Filipino people. As the Duterte Regime and its goons continue to harass, arrest and kill innocent people, the families and survivors who are thrust into activism also grow. Let me tell you that hell hath no fury like a mother whose son survived an assassination attempt.

In the past several days, a Karapatan human rights defender has gone missing in Mindanao, over 50 peasant organizers and cultural workers were arrested in Negros, and offices of progressive organizations have been raided. De facto martial law is in effect throughout the Philippines, and the death toll under the Duterte regime has far surpassed the numbers under Marcos. It is estimated that 3257 were killed under Marcos’s Martial Law. As of December 2018, the chair of the Commission on Human Rights estimated that the Duterte’s death toll could be as high as 27,000.

Let this be a warning to the Duterte regime, a lesson from the Marcos era: fascism does not bode well for sitting presidents. When people are dying from hunger and oppression, they become desperate. The will of the people to survive and fight back is much stronger than any blow by the state. Killing unarmed people only forces them to the mountains to pick up arms. The intense political repression of Marcos’ Martial Law regime of the ‘70s strengthened the people’s movement that eventually ousted him. State repression remains the biggest recruiter to the progressive movements and even to the guerilla army. The world is watching, we are advancing the solidarity movement for the Philippines, and we are rooting for the Filipino people.