Military clashes raise danger of major escalation between Russia and Ukraine

Clara Weiss

The past week has seen a significant escalation of fighting between the Ukrainian army and Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass region. While the Western media is decrying an alleged “Russian aggression,” the military clashes have, in fact, taken place against the backdrop of a series of major provocations by the Ukrainian government which is calculating to receive NATO support in a potential war with Russia.

The level of tensions between Russia and Ukraine is greater now than at any time since a US-German-backed coup by far-right forces toppled the Yanukovich government in February 2014. The coup, part of a decades-long strategy by imperialism to encircle Russia, triggered the annexation of Crimea by the Kremlin and a civil war in the east of the country, which has claimed the lives of over 13,500 people.

A Ukrainian soldier, donning U.S. made equipment, takes his front line position at destroyed Butovka coal mine in the town of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Vitali Komar)

Earlier in March, Kiev approved a strategy aimed at “recovering Crimea.” The peninsula in the Black Sea is of major geopolitical importance and and home to the naval base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Any move by Kiev to seize it would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

On March 25, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky approved a new military strategy which emphasizes the need to prepare for the mobilization of the entire population in a war against Russia that would be conducted on Ukrainian soil. The strategy acknowledged that no such war could be won without NATO support and mentions Ukraine’s planned accession to the military alliance no less than 19 times.

In a recent interview, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, Colonel General Ruslan Khomchak, discussed a possible offensive to retake the separatist-controlled Donbass in East Ukraine. Acknowledging that such an offensive would require huge civilian casualties, Khomchak stressed that Zelensky “has every power to give the command or take a decision.”

At the same time, a hysterical anti-Russian atmosphere is being whipped up in Ukraine. Over the past months, Zelensky has cracked down on key outlets and TV channels of the pro-Russian faction of the Ukrainian oligarchy. The leader of the opposition, the billionaire Viktor Medvedchuk, who has close ties to the Kremlin, has been sanctioned. On Friday, the head of the Independent Miners’ Union, Mikhail Volyntsev, spoke in the Ukrainian Rada (parliament), accusing Russia of a supposed attack on Ukraine’s electrical grid.

This week, reports have emerged of significant Russian troop movements in Crimea and East Ukraine, involving infantry fighting vehicles and anti-tank missiles. Reports have also indicated that Belarusian troops are being mobilized on the border of Ukraine.

On Wednesday, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has warned that “Ukraine may take provocative actions which could lead to war.” He accused the US of using Ukraine as a means to create conditions for war, stating, “The West is preparing for nothing less than war with us.” That same day, Russian president Vladimir Putin met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron to discuss the situation in Ukraine.

On Friday, US President Joe Biden spoke with Zelensky for the first time since he took office. Biden pledged “unwavering support” for Ukraine against Russia. Throughout the week, there were at least three high-level calls between the American and Ukrainian government, involving Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The Wall Street Journal described the crisis as a “test” for the Biden administration.

Map of the Black Sea region

Since coming into office, the Biden administration has made clear that it would pursue an extremely aggressive course toward Russia. In one of his first foreign policy acts as president, Biden bombed an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia position on the Syria-Iraq border, a move that was targeted against not just Iran, but also Russia. At a NATO summit last week, the NATO powers launched a “NATO 2030” effort to prepare for nuclear war against Russia and China. Just before the summit, Biden called Putin a “killer without a soul” in an interview—an extraordinary attack on the head of state of another country—triggering a diplomatic crisis. Underlying the growing danger of war and the increasingly reckless moves of the imperialist powers and their allies is the profound crisis of the world capitalist system which has been significantly accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic.

In Ukraine, the social and political crisis is particularly sharp. Over a year into the pandemic, the coronavirus is ripping through the impoverished population completely unhinged. On April 1, 421 people died, and new daily infections hit the second highest number in the pandemic. Over 33,200 people have officially died from the virus, but the real number is likely much higher. With hospitals overwhelmed and some people reportedly taking medication meant for animals, an adviser to the Ukrainian health ministry recommended people who contracted COVID-19 to be prepared “to die at home.”

The same imperialist powers that have pumped billions of dollars into Ukraine’s far right and military to prepare for war against Russia have refused to provide any meaningful help with COVID-19 vaccine distribution. The Zelensky government has rejected the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, arguing that accepting it would mean a “geopolitical blow.” As a result, only 220,000 people out of a population of 44 million had received the first jab of a vaccine and only two individuals were fully vaccinated as of March 30. Millions of migrant workers have lost their jobs, while many more were laid off or experienced significant income losses. In the war zone in East Ukraine, millions of people lack access to drinking water, with some villages having no access to water at all, according to UNICEF. Like capitalist governments across the world, the Ukrainian government, far from doing anything to alleviate the social suffering, used the crisis to carry out further social attacks on the working class.

While the Ukrainian oligarchy’s reckless provocations are no doubt in part an effort to divert the enormous class tensions outward, the main driving force behind the conflict is the historic decline of US imperialism and its efforts to offset it by military means. Aiming to gain full control over the vast resources of the former Soviet Union, the US and NATO have systematically encircled Russia since 1991 and orchestrated numerous coups on its borders, including two in Ukraine, in 2004 and 2014.

A 2019 document by the RAND Corporation, one of the most important think tanks advising the US government, outlined a strategy of forcing Russia to “overextend” itself militarily in conflicts on its borders. The aim of this strategy is to weaken the Putin regime economically and politically while enabling the US to focus more directly on its main strategic rival: China. The military conflict in East Ukraine is a central part of that strategy.

The report noted, “The Ukrainian military already is bleeding Russia in the Donbass region (and vice versa). Providing more U.S. military equipment and advice could lead Russia to increase its direct involvement in the conflict and the price it pays for it.” It then warned that such a strategy could come at a significant cost to the US itself and was extremely risky, yet it is precisely this strategy that the US has been pursuing.

Over the past seven years, the US has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the Ukrainian military, and US military advisers play a major role in training the Ukrainian army. The RAND Corporation acknowledged that all its proposed strategies involved the risk of an uncontrollable military escalation, including the deployment of nuclear weapons—risks US imperialism is clearly prepared to take.

Canada’s governments pave way for mass death as third COVID-19 wave surges

Roger Jordan

Canada’s third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is now surging across the country. Yet Canada’s governments, from Doug Ford’s hard-right Tory regime in Ontario to John Horgan’s purportedly “progressive” New Democratic Party administration in British Columbia, are refusing to take the emergency measures needed to stop the pandemic’s spread.

With ICUs reaching capacity, and health experts warning that the new more contagious and lethal COVID-19 variants are now driving the pandemic, governments at all levels are pursuing a policy of social murder. Prioritizing business profits over human lives, they are keeping virtually all workplaces and schools open.

The callous indifference of Canada’s elite to working people’s health and lives was epitomized by Thursday’s announcement from Ontario Premier Ford of a four-week “shutdown” that is anything but. While Ford talked of applying an “emergency brake,” he did little more than ease his ample weight on the accelerator, with the “boldest” step a ban on in-person dining and drinking.

A member of the Canadian Armed Forces working at a Quebec nursing home during last spring’s first wave. (Canadian Dept. of Defence)

Even sections of the corporate media felt compelled to admit that virtually nothing will change, especially in the areas of that province that have been hardest hit by the current surge in infections—Metro Toronto, the adjacent Peel Region, Hamilton, Sudbury and Thunder Bay.

Ontario’s schools will remain open, even though dozens have had to be ordered closed in recent weeks due to major COVID-19 outbreaks. The same is true of industrial workplaces, although they are being ravaged by COVID-19 as exemplified by the numerous outbreaks at Peel Region warehouses and factories, including the outbreak that has sickened hundreds of workers at Amazon’s 5,000-strong Brampton Heritage Road facility since January.

The toll the more infectious and deadly variants is taking on the working class is shown by the ever younger average age of patients ending up in ICUs. According to Maclean’s, the number of ICU patients in Ontario under 60 is 50 percent higher than it was on December 26, near the peak of the second wave.

Overall, the new variants are proving far more dangerous. Ontario’s Science Table recently reported that they pose a 63 percent higher risk of hospitalization, a 103 percent higher risk of ICU admission, and a 56 percent greater risk of death.

Ontario’s seven-day average of new daily COVID-19 infections reached 2,340 on Thursday, up from 1,600 just 10 days before. Meanwhile, the number of ICU patients rose to a record 421. During the winter, the provincial government repeatedly warned that any rise above 350 ICU patients with coronavirus would make it extremely difficult to provide adequate care to other patients.

Directly repudiating the scientific evidence, which indicates that schools are a major vector in the transmission of the new variants, Ford’s widely-hated Education Minister, Stephen Lecce, asserted Thursday that schools remain “safe.” There are no plans to order school closures province-wide, he added, even though a growing number of medical experts are warning that this is the only way to avoid a total collapse of the health care system. As Dr. Nathan Stall, a researcher at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital and a member of Ontario’s Science Table, bluntly put it in an interview with CTV News, “When you do not act to control the pandemic early, swiftly, and get things under control, and you push your healthcare system this far and you try and compensate not by preventing people from getting sick, but by building field hospitals and opening new hospitals, you are going to end up in this predictable situation where eventually, you can no longer cope.”

In neighbouring Quebec, Premier Francois Legault has enforced further school openings even as virus cases spike. Last week, he told English-language school boards in the Greater Montreal area to bring all students back for in-person learning, and followed up this week with a government decree that ordered the school boards to force all high school students to return to class full-time.

Skyrocketing infections nonetheless compelled his government to announce the closure Wednesday of schools in three areas, including Quebec City and Gatineau. Yet Legault plans to keep them closed for a mere 10 days, i.e., less time than the lifespan of a single virus infection.

Alberta recorded its highest daily increase in cases Wednesday since mid-January, when Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party (UCP) government was forced to open field hospitals in Edmonton and Calgary to cope with the overwhelming of hospitals. Alberta’s test positivity rate was 6.52 percent on Wednesday, the 10th day in a row that it had exceeded 5 percent. The World Health Organization advises that test positivity rates of 5 percent or more indicate that a pandemic is out of control.

Alberta, whose UCP government has repeatedly boasted of its support for an “open economy,” currently has the highest per capita infection rate of any province. Although the government claimed that its rush to reopen schools and the economy in January and February was tied to a drop in the number of ICU patients below 300, this figure was breached this week with no new restrictions being announced.

In BC, cases are also rising dramatically, driven by close to 200 confirmed cases of COVID-19 variants. On Wednesday, the province recorded more than 1,000 daily infections for the first time since the pandemic began.

John Horgan’s NDP government continues to refuse to close schools, and is still using a fraudulent system to inform the public about infections in education institutions. This consists of counting every outbreak in a school as an “exposure,” regardless of the number of infections it has caused. Due to this suppression of critical information, the full extent of the virus’ spread is totally unclear. There have been numerous reports of parents only finding out by accident that their child has been exposed to the virus.

Illustrating the rapid increase in infections across the country, active cases in Canada shot up from around 36,000 on March 23 to over 46,000 one week later. The peak of the first wave, which claimed over 8,000 lives, was around 34,000 active cases in late May 2020.

Presiding over and facilitating this disastrous state of affairs is the Trudeau Liberal government. It spearheaded the reckless reopening of the economy, beginning in April 2020, and egged on the right-wing, anti-worker provincial governments to dismantle COVID-19 restrictions. The federal government provided them up to $19 billion in additional funding last year that was tied to reopening schools and the economy. Its September throne speech bluntly declared that any future lockdowns should be “short-term” and implemented at “the local level,” i.e., totally ineffectual. Meanwhile, the Trudeau government has lavished over $650 billion in emergency bailout funds on Canada’s big banks and corporations to ensure the protection of their profits and vast wealth.

Trudeau has all but washed his hands of any direct responsibility for the shambolic public health response to the virus’ second and third waves, which have driven total COVID-19 deaths to more than 23,000. His government has refused to eliminate Stephen Harper’s austerity cap on health care transfers to the provinces, which have starved hospitals of funding for years, helping create the abysmal conditions health care workers confront.

Like the provinces, the Liberal government is relying on the various vaccines to suppress the third wave—weeks or even months hence—and effectively telling the population, above all the working class, to fend for themselves till then. This under conditions where Canada’s vaccine rollout has been plagued by disorganization and shortages. According to Our World in Data, as of April 1, just 13.8 percent of Canadians had received a first dose and less than 2 percent were fully vaccinated.

The criminality of the ruling elite is confronting mounting opposition in the working class.

Six out of nine schools in the Sir Wilfred Laurier School Board in Greater Montreal rejected Legault’s order to return to full in-person learning. Students at Westmount High School in Montreal wore signs on their clothing this week to denounce the government’s reckless policy.

At Heritage School on Montreal’s South Shore, students walked out Wednesday in protest over the government’s plan. “We aren’t a game to be played, we’re not lab rats. Our lives matter,” remarked protest leader Desreen Howell. “We could catch COVID and have no choice. And the government, rather than doing what’s best for the students or teachers, is doing what will line their pocket.”

An Ontario teacher contacted the World Socialist Web Site to describe his recent experiences in Brampton, the epicentre of the pandemic in Canada’s most populous province. “My kids’ elementary school had an outbreak on Tuesday, but they didn’t close the school,” he said. “We kept them home yesterday and today. One of the students in my class asked for an extension for his assignment yesterday. When I asked why, he said he and his whole family came down with COVID–a family of five in Brampton. The dad is in a bad way. How are schools safe?”

“The government strategy to keep schools open so parents can go to work and maintain business profits is not working for us,” added Michael, a caretaker for the Toronto District School Board. “The resurgence merits a lockdown but the federal and provincial governments are staying status quo. They should have closed all non-essential workplaces and the big drivers of the infection rate—Amazon fulfillment centers and big plants. It is a losing battle because they won’t do the big lockdowns that are needed. The big giants, the Amazons, the President Choice warehouses, are profiting big time. There is a lack of financial support for people to stay at home to get the cases down.”

The only way the looming catastrophe produced by the ruling elite’s ruinous policies can be averted is through the independent political intervention of the working class.

Drone war whistleblower Daniel Hale pleads guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act

Kevin Reed

Former intelligence analyst and whistleblower Daniel Everette Hale pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 on Wednesday for disclosing “classified national defense information” to a reporter.

The documents that Hale provided to investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept contributed significantly to public awareness of the US military drone warfare and assassination programs developed during the Obama administration. The information helped to expose the existence of the secret programs, that drone strikes killed many more innocent people than their supposed “targets” and that US citizens had been killed extrajudicially by drone strikes in violation of their constitutional rights.

Daniel Everette Hale. (Nashville Police Department via AP, File)

The reason Hale cited for pleading guilty is because the Espionage Act charges prevent a public interest defense. In other words, Hale’s lawyers were barred from arguing that the need of the public to be made aware of the criminal activities of the US government was more important than his obligation not to disclose classified information to anyone.

With a trial set to begin next week, Hale was forced to plead guilty in order to avoid potentially spending decades in federal prison. Although four of the five counts still remain against him, he is scheduled for sentencing on July 13 and is expected to be punished with no more than ten years in jail. According to the Washington Post, Judge Liam O’Grady of the Eastern District of Virginia has “indicated that Hale’s sentence would probably not change based on the number of convictions and said he would take up that issue at sentencing.”

In a Justice Department press release, Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers said of the case, “Hale has now admitted what the evidence at trial would have conclusively shown: that he took classified documents from his work at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), documents he had no right to retain, and that he sent them to a reporter, knowing all along that what he was doing was against the law.”

Of course, Demers made no reference to the information that Hale brought to light or the fact that his exposures revealed activities carried out by the Obama, Trump and now Biden administrations that are known by everyone in the world for being against the law in the US and internationally.

Hale, 33, of Nashville, Tennessee, enlisted in the US Air Force in 2009 and received language and intelligence training and was assigned to work for the National Security Agency (NSA) and deployed to Afghanistan as an intelligence analyst. He left the Air Force in 2013 and went to work for a defense contractor at the NGA in July 2013. His specialty at NGA was political geography and he held top secret security clearances.

Unlike other whistleblowers—such as the former defense contractor and intelligence analyst Edward Snowden who was inspired to join the US military in the period after September 11, 2001—Hale entered the service out of desperation because he was homeless and had nowhere else to go. As he explained in an on-camera interview for the film “National Bird,” Hale was well aware before he joined the Air Force that he was joining something that he was against and that he disagreed with.

In his work at the NSA Hale was assigned to locate drone strike targets. He became increasingly disturbed by the uncertainty about how many civilians were killed in each strike and the fact that the government repeatedly claimed that those killed were combatants regardless of the actual facts.

According to the Justice Department press release, Hale began his collaboration with “a reporter” in April 2013 while he was still in the Air Force. The document states, “Hale met with the reporter in person on multiple occasions, and communicated with the reporter via phone, text message, email, and, at times, an encrypted messaging platform. Then, in February 2014, while working as a cleared defense contractor at NGA, Hale printed six classified documents unrelated to his work at NGA and soon after exchanged a series of messages with the reporter. Each of the six documents printed were later published by the reporter’s news outlet.”

In total, Hale is accused of printing 36 documents from his computer including 23 that were unrelated to his work at NGA and he gave 17 of these to the reporter, 11 of which were marked either “secret” or “top secret.” The information contained in these documents—which detailed the protocol for ordering drone strikes and exposed civilian casualties and the internal discussion within the military over the accuracy of the intelligence before and after the strikes—was used by Scahill in a series of articles for The Intercept and appeared in a book he wrote in 2016, The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program.

In court on Wednesday, Hale admitted that he was the author of a chapter written by an anonymous author in Scahill’s book called, “Why I Leaked the Watchlist Documents.” In an interview published on The Intercept on October 15, 2015, an anonymous source (presumably Hale) tells Scahill that the “outrageous explosion of watchlisting—of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong.”

Jesselyn Radack, an attorney representing Hale, issued a statement about the guilty plea through the organization Whistleblower and Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts which said, “Daniel Hale may have pleaded to a count under the Espionage Act, but he is not a spy. He was accused of giving an investigative journalist truthful information in the public interest about the secretive US drone warfare program.”

Radack also explained the broader implications of the prosecution of Hale and others under the Espionage Act, “the government repeatedly chooses the heavy-handed Espionage Act to punish media sources and whistleblowers. The government’s use of the Espionage Act against media sources has everything to do with chilling speech and journalism and nothing to do with justice. … The U.S. government’s policy of punishing people who provide journalists with information in the public interest is a profound threat to free speech, free press, and a healthy democracy.”

Another organization, Defending Rights & Dissent, issued a statement that it stands with Hale as a courageous and heroic whistleblower. At the time of Hale’s indictment, the organization issued a statement of support for him that was signed by 50 civil rights groups, journalists, and anti-war and other activist organizations.

Chip Gibbons, Policy Director for Defending Rights & Dissent, has been involved in the campaign to defend Hale and pointed to the political alignment against whistleblowers who expose the crimes of US imperialism. “It is a disgrace to this country that time and time again when brave truth tellers, many of them relatively young, expose the crimes of our government it is they who go to jail. Shame on both [political] parties for their role in this and Congress for failing to act. … Hale’s case spans three administrations, including presidents from both major parties. Espionage Act abuse to prosecute whistleblowers is a bi-partisan disgrace.”

Scahill wrote an open letter to the Biden administration pleading for the Democratic Party president to “stop the war on journalism” that goes back to the administration of George W. Bush, which “used the Espionage Act and sought to jail reporters who refused to give up their sources, not to mention killing journalists in war zones.”

The killing of journalists in war zones is a reference to the infamous “Collateral Murder” video provided by Chelsea Manning to WikiLeaks and published online by editor and founder Julian Assange in 2010. Assange remains in jail in London as he awaits possible extradition to the US to face 17 counts under the Espionage Act for exposing war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Archegos meltdown: another warning of a deep-seated crisis

Nick Beams

The blowup of the private investment firm Archegos last month has not set off a crisis of the global financial system. But the type of highly speculative operations in which it was engaged, financed to the tune of tens of billions of dollars by some of the world’s biggest banks, certainly have the potential to do so.

In the wake of the debacle, a number of questions arise: how many more, much bigger, time bombs are out there ticking away? Where are they located, and what could set them off?

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Writing in the Financial Times, columnist Gillian Tett noted that when an avalanche takes place on a snowfield, the root cause is not an idiosyncratic shock, but instability in the underlying snowpack.

The immediate trigger of the Archegos avalanche was the decisions by the US media group ViacomCBS to take advantage of the near tripling of its share price over the past year—one of many companies whose shares have skyrocketed as a result of the trillions of dollars pumped into the financial system by the Fed—to issue a further $3 billion worth of stock.

This set off a fall in the company’s shares which hit Archegos because it had made big bets on the share price continuing to rise, together with similar bets on other companies, including Chinese tech stocks, which also had started to fall.

Archegos, a so-called family firm set up in 2012 by Bill Hwang, who had been convicted of illegal share trading and forced to pay a $44 million fine, had financed his deals with funding provided by major banks using a derivative known as total return swaps.

Under this system, the banks purchased shares, in return for a lucrative fee, which they held, agreeing to pay Archegos what it would have received had it actually owned the shares. If the price went up or dividends were paid, then the bank paid a return to Archegos. But if the investment failed, then Archegos would have to pay the bank.

The extent of the leverage was extraordinary. Attracted by the fat fees from such services, the banks enabled Archegos to amplify its buying power, sometimes by as much as eight times its own capital.

When the share price of ViacomCBS and other stocks bought on behalf of Archegos began to fall sharply, the banks made a margin cal,l requiring Archegos to put up more collateral to the banks. When it was unable to do so, there was a rush for the exits as the banks then sought to sell off the stocks they held in order to try to minimise their losses.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were first out the door and managed to escape with relatively little damage. But the Japanese investment bank Nomura and Credit Suisse were not as fast and now face losses of $2 billion and $3 billion to $5 billion, respectively. Total losses incurred by the banks that financed Archegos could reach as much as $10 billion.

The use of derivatives has proved very popular among banks in recent years because it has enabled them to obtain fees without having to report their dealings.

According to a report in the Financial Times, in 2019 global banks earned an estimated $11 billion from equity financing via the use of derivatives, including total return swaps used by Archegos, double the level in 2012. And the rate of their use has been accelerating.

The New York Times reported that there has been a sharp rise in the use of stock-related derivatives in the recent period. The amount of outstanding equity derivatives has more than doubled since 2015, rising from $50 billion to more than $110 billion in the first half of 2020, according to calculations by the Bank for International Settlements.

The implosion of Archegos as a result of a margin call draws attention to the significant expansion of this form of speculation over the past year as banks have sought to take advantage of the ultra-cheap money provided by the Fed.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that according to the US Financial Industry Regulation Authority, margin loans have risen from $479.3 billion a year ago to more than $813 billion, outstripping even the accelerated growth in the market capitalisation of Wall Street.

The Archegos debacle has brought forward the now familiar calls following every incident of financial turmoil for greater oversight and regulation by authorities. The Securities and Exchange Commission issued what amounted to a pro forma statement that it was monitoring the situation.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the party’s advocates for greater oversight, said in an emailed statement that the Archegos meltdown had “all the makings of a dangerous situation.”

“We need transparency and strong oversight to ensure that the next hedge fund blowup doesn’t take the economy down with it,” she said.

But such calls, based on the illusions promoted so assiduously by the Democrats over decades, that the capitalist financial system can somehow be regulated and made to work in the interests of society, have been exposed by long experience.

There were similar calls after the implosion of Long Term Capital Management in 1998. But then came the tech wreck of 2000-2001 and the collapse of Enron. This was followed by the sub-prime mortgage speculative bubble that sparked the global financial crisis of 2008.

The response of the Democrats in the Obama administration was to bail out the banks. The Fed, under the chairmanship of Ben Bernanke and then Democrat appointee Janet Yellen, now Treasury Secretary in the Biden administration, provided the banks, hedge funds and Wall Street speculators with trillions of dollars of essentially free money to continue the very activities that led to the 2008 crash.

And as for the Dodd-Frank legislation, introduced under the claim that it would prevent a recurrence of the 2008 collapse, the increased use of derivatives at the centre of the Archegos debacle, was the outcome of the efforts by the banks and Wall Street to get around the very minor restrictions it imposed.

As the managing principal of the financial consultancy firm Finadium, Josh Galper, told the Financial Times that the growth of the equity swap market at the centre of the Archegos operations developed as the “natural outgrowth” of the Dodd-Frank regulations.

The outcome of this process has been that rather becoming more transparent, the system has become even more opaque. The increased use of financial derivatives means that several banks can provide financing to a single client without other banks being aware of it. Consequently, if a bank thinks it can reduce its exposure by offloading it to another bank it can find that the bank is also exposed to the same fund.

The Archegos event is not a one-off isolated incident, but another indication of broader trends. It comes in the wake of the Wirecard debacle last year and Greensill meltdown earlier this year, both of which involved major banks.

Fuelled by the endless supply of money from the banks, used to finance ever-increasing speculation, the entire global financial system is heading at ever greater speed towards a disaster.

One indication of that speed came on Thursday when Wall Street’s S&P 500 index set a new record high of 4000 in the midst of the largest decline in global growth, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, since the Great Depression. It took 1227 trading days for the S&P to advance 1000 points from 2000 to 3000, but the advance from 3000 to 4000 was achieved in just 434.

The threat of another financial disaster—the consequences of which will far outstrip the devastation of the 2008 crisis—now hangs over the entire global economy. The answer is not calls for greater regulation to try to contain the explosive contradictions of the financial system for experience has shown that is impossible.

The only viable and realistic perspective is the fight for a socialist program—the taking of political power by the working class, ending the domination of society by the financial oligarchy, and the complete economic reorganisation of society starting with the bringing of the entire financial system into public ownership under democratic control.

MISF Du Pré Grants 2021

Application Deadline: 30th June 2021

Eligible Countries: Emerging Countries

About the Award: MISF offers Du Pré Grants to MS researchers from emerging countries to enable them to make short visits to established MS research centres outside their own country, either to learn from each other or to carry out parts of joint research projects. The aim is to encourage cross-fertilisation of skills through collaborative research projects. Two of the annual awards are supported by Stichting MS Research (the Dutch MS Research Foundation).

Type: Research

Eligibility: All candidates must:

• Be educated to post graduate level (at least MSc, but preferably PhD/MD) in an area relevant to multiple sclerosis (MS)
• Be citizens of a low- or middle-income country (all countries with a low, lower middle or upper middle income as defined by the World Bank)
• Focus their research proposal in an area relevant to multiple sclerosis

Candidates must also be in one of the following situations:

• Working or studying in a low- or middle-income country (all countries with a low, lower middle or upper middle income as defined by the World Bank) at the time of nomination
• Working or studying in another country on a project which started within the six months prior to nomination
• Studying in another country on a project supported by an MS International Federation grant

Candidates are expected to return to their own countries at the end of the study period where they will contribute to advancing care and research in MS. A strong plan of how to continue one’s work after the award has ended is recommended.

The grant may also be used as a supplement for work related to MS by a candidate who has been accepted for training in a recognised institute (within the six months prior to nomination) but who doesn’t have enough money to cover the total cost.

Candidates and Host supervisors are required to read and sign the Terms and Conditions of the award (see below).

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Research: Each grant is likely to be between UK £2,000 and £4,000, to a maximum of £5,000. The funds are intended to go towards travel and living costs, or to top up an existing grant to extend a visit.

Duration of Research: Visits generally last between two and six months.

How to Apply:

• Complete all sections of the online application form
• The Host needs to provide a supporting statement at the end of the application*
• Add names and contact details of 2 referees, including the applicant’s current supervisor or employer
• Ask your two referees to send a reference letter each to research[at]msif[dot].org before the deadline

Visit Research Webpage for details

BeyGOOD Global Citizen Fellowship Program 2021

Application Deadline: 21st May 2021.

Eligible Countries: South Africa & Nigeria

About the Award: This dynamic Program will take Fellows through a five-phase curriculum, specifically designed to equip them with the skills and tools they need to thrive –– not just during their time with Global Citizen but also in any future professional environment.

Throughout the Program, Fellows will be immersed in the use of digital technology for social change, storytelling tactics that shift attitudes, the importance of building lasting professional relationships, and the role of innovation in a constantly changing world.

Four Fellows (based on merit) will travel to New York City in September 2019 to experience Global Citizen’s annual festival in Central Park. The fellows will spend seven days with different teams and departments, while meeting influential people –– all of which will advance their growing skill sets.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility:

• Ages 21-25 (by time of application).
• South African and Nigerian residents and citizens only.
• Applicants without a tertiary qualification preferred. 
• Applicants should be able to prove that they are active Global Citizens, either through the work they do in their communities or through Global Citizen’s website and/or app (Google Play Store OR App Store)

• Applicants should be available full-time from 05th July 2021-30 June 2022
• Family household income of under R120 000/3055563 Naira, and/or families that are headed by a single parent.
• Applicants must be able to house themselves in Johannesburg and Lagos for the duration of the program. 
• Those from minority and underrepresented communities are strongly encouraged to apply.

Number of Awards: 15

Value of Award: The Fellowship Program involves educational travel trips which include:

• Round trip airfare from Johannesburg to Cape Town (June 2019). 
• All trip-related meals.
• All trip related lodging and transportation.

In order to be eligible for educational travel:

• Applicants should be available to attend 90% of learning sessions in Johannesburg. 
• Applicants should attend all training sessions pre- and post trips.

Duration of Programme: 1 year

How to apply:

Submit a 2-3 minute video or 500-700 word essay answering the following: 

• How do you identify with BeyGOOD as a Global Citizen?
• How would becoming a Fellow assist you to positively impact your country?
• What specific issues are you taking action on and why?

Send your applications to us via email: fellowship@globalcitizen.org

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Chinese Government Scholarship – Bilateral Program 2021/2022

Application Deadline: 15th April 2021

Eligible Countries: International

To Be Taken At (Country): China

About the Award: The Bilateral Program supports undergraduate students, graduate students, general scholars and senior scholars. Undergraduate scholarship recipients must register for Chinese-taught credit courses. Graduate and non-degree scholarship students can register for either the Chinese-taught program or the English-taught program if applicable.

Type: Undergraduate, Masters, PhD

Eligibility:  

• Applicants must be a citizen of a country other than the People’s Republic of China, and be in good health.
• The requirements for applicants’ degree and age are that applicants must:
  • be a high school graduate under the age of 25 when applying for the undergraduate programs;
  • be a bachelor’s degree holder under the age of 35 when applying for the master’s programs;
  • be a master’s degree holder under the age of 40 when applying for the doctoral programs;
  • be under the age of 45 and have a high school diploma (or higher) when applying for the general scholar programs;
  • be a master’s degree holder or an associate professor (or above) under the age of 50 when applying for the senior scholar programs.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The Bilateral Program provides both full scholarships and partial scholarships.

Duration of Program:

• Undergraduate students: 4-7years
• Master’s students: 2-5 years
• Doctoral students: 3-6 years
• General scholars: up to 2 years
• Senior scholars: up to 2 years

How to Apply:

• Step 1 – Apply to the dispatching authorities for overseas study of your home country for CGS opportunity;

• Step 2 – Apply to your target university for the Pre-admission Letter once recommended by the dispatching authorities as an eligible candidate (you will receive an Award Letter for CGS Candidate);

• Step 3 – Complete the online application procedure at CGS Information Management System for International Students (Visit http://www.csc.edu.cn/studyinchina or http://www.campuschina.org and click “Application Online” to log in), submit online the completed Application Form for Chinese Government Scholarship, and print a hard copy. You should consult the dispatching authorities for overseas study of your home country for Instructions of CGS Information Management System for International Students and Agency Number;
• Step 4 – Submit all of your application documents to the dispatching authorities of your home country before the deadline.

It is important to find out the Application documents required on the Program Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Program Webpage for Details

IDRC/SIDA Artificial Intelligence for Development (AI4D) Africa Scholarships 2021

Application Deadline: 3^rd May 2021

About the Award: The AI4D scholarships has been designed to target the following four categories of beneficiaries;

• Category 1 -Registered PhD students
• Category 2 – Disadvantaged Female Students and Students from Low Income Countries:
• Category 3 – Early Career Academics
• Category 4 – Post-doctoral researchers
• Category 5  – Senior Scholars

Please read detail of each category and click the link to the category of scholarship you wish to pursue and follow the subsequent application instructions.

Category 1 -Registered PhD students: Invitation will target candidates who are already registered for PhD, have finished course work as well as research proposals. This will be open to all universities offering PhD in AI (or any of its derivatives). Eight in-country scholarships (4 female and 4 male) will be given for a period of two years. Selection will be based purely on the quality of the candidates and proposals. This call will be done twice, 4 admitted in Year 1 (Cohort 1) and 4 admitted in year 2 (Cohort 2).

Eligibility:

• All applicants must be already registered in an AI study (machine learning, expert system, natural language processing, intelligent robotics etc.) under a supervisor, have finished coursework as well as research proposal. The applicant must attach a letter of support by their supervisor, and a copy of the PhD study admission letter.
• All applicants should have competent academic credentials and demonstrate motivation and commitment to pursue an academic career.
• All applicants should have thorough knowledge of the language of instruction within their host university of choice (English, French or Portuguese).
• All applicants must be nationals or permanent residents of any sub-Saharan country.

Each successful student will receive a partial scholarship of up to $ 27,000 distributed as shown below

• Tuition fees for two years ($ 4000)
• Research activities ($ 17,000)
• Traveling support for the supervisors ($ 6,000)

Apply here

Category 2 – Disadvantaged female students and students from low income countries: Considering that both women and students from low income countries which are not endowed with universities that can offer PhD in AI, may be disadvantaged to access PhD education in AI, a call for proposals will be made targeting these two groups of people. The applicants in this category should have completed MSc in areas relevant to AI, and wishing to pursue PhD studies in AI. Such candidates can only pursue PhD in other well-endowed African countries. Successful candidates will work with senior professors identified in category 3 below.4 Women scholars will benefit from this scheme, 1 per region (southern, eastern, western and central Africa), while an additional 4 students from low income countries will be supported, each for 30 months. This call will be done once in year 1 (Cohort 3).Eligibility:

• Each applicant must have successfully completed a Master’s degree in any of the following disciplines; AI, Computer Science, IT, IS, Electronic Engineering, or a related field.
• All applicants should have competent academic credentials and demonstrate motivation and commitment to pursue an academic career.
• All applicants should have thorough knowledge of the language of instruction within their host university of choice (English, French or Portuguese).
• All applicants must be nationals or permanent residents of any sub-Saharan country.

Each successful student will work under a professor who will receive a grant of up to US$ 45,500 which will cover the following:

• Tuition fees for PhD student (US$ 6000)
• Living allowance for PhD student (for 30 months=US$15,000)
• Two return Air ticket to study country (US$ 750 return per trip= US$1500)
• Research activities (US$ 17,000)
• Traveling support for the supervisors (US$ 6,000)

The process of identifying professors is ongoing.

Apply here

Category 3 – Early Career Academics: Under the ECA scholarship, 8 Early Career Academics will be supported. This will mainly target those ECA who have capacity to supervise PhD and MSc students.

Eligibility:

• Each applicant must have held a PhD in AI and ML, for the last 3 – 5 years as at application.
• All applicants should have competent academic credentials and demonstrate motivation and commitment to pursue an academic career.
• All applicants must be nationals or permanent residents of any sub-Saharan country.

Each successful ECA will receive a scholarship of US$ 68,000. This will cover:

• Tuition fees for one PhD student for two years (US$ 4000)
• Tuition fees for two MSc students (US$4000)
• Research costs (US$ 25,000)
• Research infrastructure (US$ 30,000)
• Traveling costs (US$ 5,000)

Funding would be for 2 years.

Apply here

Category 4 – Post-doctoral researchers: It is assumed that there may be challenge getting suitable female ECA. Therefore, the programme will also support 4 post-doctoral positions for female candidates and those from disadvantaged countries to build capacities for AI research and training in their universities. The program will support each successful post-doctoral candidate with 4 MSc positions.

Eligibility

• Each applicant must have held a PhD in AI and ML, for not more than 2 years as at application.
• All applicants should have competent academic credentials and demonstrate motivation and commitment to pursue an academic career.
• All applicants must be nationals or permanent residents of any sub-Saharan country.

Each successful candidate will receive a scholarship of US$ 63,000:

• Tuition fee for 4 MSc students = US$ 8,000
• Research activities = US$ 20,000
• Research infrastructure = US$ 30000
• Traveling cost = US$ 5,000

Funding would be for 2 years.

Apply here

Category 5 – Senior Scholars: Under this scholarship, senior scholars will be requested to submit research proposals in the area of AI and ML. Successful professors or scholars will be supported with fully sponsored PhD student to be selected among the short listed candidates from category 2 above.

Eligibility

• Each applicant must have held a PhD in AI and ML, for atleast 5 years as at the time of application.
• Should be at least senior lecturer.
• All applicants should have competent academic credentials and demonstrate motivation and commitment to pursue an academic career.
• All applicants must be nationals or permanent residents of any sub-Saharan country.

Each successful scholar will receive a grant of US$ 45,500 which will cover the following:

• Tuition fees for PhD student (US$ 6000)
• Living allowance for PhD student (for 30 months=US$15,000)
• Two return Air ticket to study country (US$ 750 return per trip= US$1500)
• Research activities (US$ 17,000)
• Traveling support for the scholar (US$ 6,000)

Funding would be for a period 2 years.

Apply here

Visit Program Webpage for Details

Global Billionaire Wealth Surges $4 Trillion Over Pandemic, While the Cost of Vaccinating the World is Estimated at $141.2 Billion

Chuck Collins & Omar Ocampo

As over 2.8 million people have died globally from Covid-19 in the past year, the wealth of the world’s billionaires has surged.

The planet’s 2,365 billionaires have seen their wealth increase $4 trillion, or 54 percent, during the pandemic year. Their combined wealth rose from $8.04 trillion to $12.39 trillion between March 18, 2020 and March 18, 2021.

Thirteen billionaires saw their wealth increase over 500 percent (see the “500 Percent Club” below).  Many of them are connected to companies that benefited enormously from the conditions of the pandemic, including having their competition shut down or diminished.

There are 270 new billionaires on this year’s global list, while 91 billionaires fell off the list.

The analysis was conducted for the Patriotic Millionaires (and their affiliated UK Millionaires) and Millionaires for Humanity by the Institute for Policy Studies –Program on Inequality, drawing on research from Forbes, Bloomberg, and Wealth-X.

While billionaires were getting richer, the pandemic caused the global economy to shrink by 3.5 percent in 2020, according to the International Monetary Fund. COVID-19 has been an accelerant on global inequality, with acute adverse impacts on women, youth, the poor, the informally employed, and those who work in contact-intensive sectors.

The Need for Wealth Taxation

If global billionaires had paid an annual wealth tax in 2020, modelled on the “Ultra-Millionaire Tax” levy proposed by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, they would have paid an estimated $345 billion in wealth taxes. Based on the current expectations of wealth growth, a small wealth tax such as this would raise $4.14 trillion over the next decade.  Of course, there is no institutional body to levy such a global wealth tax and this is for illustrative purposes.

The “Ultra-Millionaire Tax” would levy an annual 2 percent wealth tax on assets over $50 million –and a 3 percent tax on assets over $1 billion.  Our estimates track this law by exempting wealth under $50 million and tax assets between $50 million and $1 billion at a 2 percent rate.

The annual revenue from this wealth tax would be more than twice the estimated $141.2 billion cost of delivering COVID-19 vaccines to every person on the planet, according to estimates from Oxfam.

The U.S. accounts for less than one-third of billionaire wealth on the global list. In the US alone, if this tax was applied to US billionaires on the Forbes Billionaires List, this would generate $120 billion a year, or $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

Wealth in the United Kingdom

In the UK, between March 2020 and 2021, the 54 UK billionaires saw their wealth increase £40 billion (US $54.9 billion), a gain of 36 percent. Their combined wealth increased from £112.3 billion (US $154 billion) to £152.36 billion (US $208.9 billion).

In the same year the UK economy shrank by a record 9.9 percent and the number of people on Universal Credit – a welfare payment that supports people out-of-work or on a low income – increased by 98% to 6 million people.

In December 2020, the UK Wealth Tax Commission recommended that a one-off wealth tax in the UK, of 1 percent over 5 years, could generate £260 billion if applied to individuals with wealth over half a million pounds. If the 54 billionaires in the UK paid a one-time 5 percent wealth tax, exempting £500,000, it would raise an estimated US $8.6 billion, or £6.28 billion.

Pandemic Wealth Gainers: The 500 Percent Club

Fourteen global billionaires have seen their wealth increase more than 500 percent over the pandemic. Here they are, with a summary of their percent gain and amount of wealth increased over past year.

Zhong Shanshan (3,300 percent/$66 billion gain), Saw his wealth rise an eye-popping 3,300 percent during the pandemic year, from $2 billion to $68 billion. The wealth surge was the result of two of his companies going public in 2020, Nongfu bottled water and Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy.

Tatyana Bakalchuk (1,200 percent/$12 billion gain), Founded the e-commerce apparel company, Wildberries. Her wealth increased by $12 billion over the pandemic, rising from $1 billion to $13 billion.

Zuo Hui (714 percent/$15.9 billion gain), China. Chair of Homelink, China’s largest real estate brokerage company. Wealth increased $15.9 billion, from $2.2 billion to $17.9 billion

Bom Kim (670 percent/$6.7 billion gain), Wealth has increased 670 percent, from $1 billion to $7.7 billion over the pandemic year. Founder of the e-commerce giant Coupang, the Amazon of South Korea. Kim’s fortune surged as high as $11 billion after the company’s IPO in early March.

Dan Gilbert (642 percent/$41.7 billion gain), Owner of Quicken Loans, which capitalized on cloistered citizens tapping online financing. His wealth increased 641.5 percent, from $6.5 billion to $48.2 billion over the pandemic year.

Cheng Yixiao (614 percent/$13.5 billion gain), Co-founder of Kuaishou, a video platform based in Beijing. His wealth increased $13.5 billion, from $2.2 billion to $15.7 billion during the pandemic year.

Su Hua (583 percent/$16.9 billion gain), Also a co-founder of video platform and live-streaming app, Kuaishu. Hua’s wealth increased $16.9 billion during the pandemic year, from $2.9 billion to $19.8 billion.

Ernest Garcia II (567 percent/$13.6 billion), US. Wealth increased 566.7 percent, from $2.4 billion to $16 billion during the pandemic year.  Biggest shareholder of Carvana, the online car sales and auto-financing giant.

Elon Musk (559 percent/$137.5 billion gain), Musk is now the third wealthiest person in the world as his shares in Tesla, Space-X and other companies that he owns continue to climb. His wealth increased $558.9 percent, from $24.6 billion to $162.1 billion during the pandemic year (down $9.9 billion from March 17, 2021, so fluctuating wildly).

Brian Armstrong (550 percent/$5.5 billion gain), US. Chief executive of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the country. Wealth increased 550 percent, from $1 billion to $6.5 billion during the pandemic year.

Chan Tan Ching-Fen (540 percent, $8.1 billion gain), Hong Kong. Wealth comes from Hang Lung Group, a large real estate founded by her late husband. Wealth increased $1.5 billion to $9.6 billion, an increase of $8.1 billion over the pandemic year.

Bobby Murphy (531 percent/$10.1 billion gain), US. Wealth increased 531 percent, from $1.9 billion to $12 billion during the pandemic year. Co-founder of Snapchat, with his Stanford fraternity brother, Evan Spiegel (490%/$9.3 billion gain).

Forrest Li (500 percent, $9.5 billion gain), Li’s wealth increased $9.5 billion, from $1.9 billion to $11.4 billion during the pandemic year. He is owner of the online gaming and e-commerce platform, Sea.