Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards 2023

Application Deadline: 30th June 2022 by 2pm Paris time (CEST)

Eligible Countries: Cartier reviews applications from 7 regions (Latin America, North America, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East & North Africa, Far East Asia, South-East Asia). One from each region wins this award.

To be taken at (country): exact location still TBC

About the Award: Since 2006, the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards have supported 219 female entrepreneurs worldwide. Each year, 21 finalists representing 7 regions (Latin America & the Caribbean, North America, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East & North Africa, East Asia and South Asia & Oceania) are selected during the first round of the competition. These finalists are then invited to attend the Awards week (exact location still TBC) during which the second round of the competition takes place. After the final jury evaluation, 7 laureates, one for each region, are announced on stage during the Awards ceremony.

Offered Since: 2006

Type: Entrepreneurship, contest

Eligibility: The Cartier Women’s Initiative Award is looking for committed female entrepreneurs heading initiatives with the potential to grow significantly in the years to come. The selection of the finalists and laureates of the competition is done by an independent international Jury of entrepreneurs, investors, business executives and other profiles engaged in the support of female entrepreneurship.

The project to be considered for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards must be an original for-profit business creation in its initial phase (2 to 3 years old) led by a woman:

• The “for-profit” requirement: the business submitted for the Award must be designed to generate revenues. We do not accept non-profit project proposals.
• The “originality” requirement: we want your project to be a new concept, conceived and imagined by the founder and her team and not a copy or subsidiary of an existing business.
• The “initial phase” requirement: the project you submit should be in the first stages of its development meaning between 2 and 3 years old.
• The main leadership position must be filled by a woman. A good command of English is required (both verbal and written) to take full advantage of the benefits the Award has to offer.
• All entrants must be aged 18 or the age of legal majority in their respective countries or states of citizenship, whichever is older, on the day of the application deadline.

Selection Criteria: The Jury evaluates the projects based on criteria of creativity, sustainability (potential for growth) and impact.

• The creativity criterion: the Jury looks at the degree of innovation shown by the overall business concept, the uniqueness of the project on the market or country where it is being developed.
• The sustainability criterion: the Jury examines the financial impact of the business, its revenue model, development strategy and other aspects indicating its chances of long-term success and future growth.
• The impact criterion: the Jury evaluates the effect of the business on society, in terms of jobs created or its effect on the immediate or broader environment.
• The overall quality and clarity of the material presented: the Jury is looking for motivated and committed entrepreneurs who are passionate about their initiatives. Being clear and concise, organizing your ideas and not repeating yourself will show that you are serious about your application.

Selection Process: 

• Round 1: The Jury selects 18 Finalists*, the top three projects of each of the 7 regions (Latin America, North America, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East & North Africa, Far East Asia, South-East Asia), on the basis of their short business plans. They receive coaching from experienced businesspeople to move to the next round.
• Round 2: The Finalists are invited to the final round of competition which includes submitting a detailed business plan and presenting their projects in front of the Jury.

Number of Awardees: Based on the quality of the plan and the persuasiveness of the verbal presentation, one Laureate for each of the seven regions is selected

Value of Competition: The 21 finalists, representing the top 3 businesses from each of the 7 regions, will receive:

One-to-one personalized business coaching prior to the Awards week

A series of business coaching workshops and networking sessions during the Awards week

Media visibility for the finalists and their businesses in the months leading up to the Awards week and interview opportunities with local & international press during the Awards week

PRIZE MONEY
The 7 laureates (1 from each region) will receive:

US$ 100 000 in prize money

The 14 finalists (the two runners-up from each region) will receive:

US$ 30 000 in prize money

AWARDS PACKAGE
In addition to the prize money, all 21 finalists will be awarded:

A scholarship to attend the six-day INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Executive Education Programme (pending admission to the programme based on eligibility criteria and selection process)

Ongoing support for the further growth and development of their business

How to Apply: Go here to apply

We suggest that you download the application form worksheet first and that you write your answers in a separate draft document. You may then copy & paste them into the online form once you are finished.

Visit Competition Webpage for details

Google for Startups Black Founders Fund for Africa 2022

Application Deadline?

31st May 2022

The winners will be announced on 29 July 2022.

Tell Me About Google for Startups Black Founders Fund for Africa:

Google has announced that applications for the second cohort of the Google for Startup Black Founders Fund for Africa are now open.

Following the success of the first cohort last year, Google will increase its commitment with an additional $1 million in funding, and support for 10 more founders this year.

This will result in a commitment of $4 million to 60 eligible black-founded startups across Africa.

What Type of Scholarship is this?

Entrepreneurship

Who can apply for Google for Startups Black Founders Fund for Africa?

• early-stage startups with black founders or diverse founding teams,
• startups that are benefiting the black community,
• operating and headquartered in Africa,
• startups with a diverse founding team with at least one black founding member;
• those having a legal presence on the continent and building technology solutions for Africa and the global market;
• those who have the growth potential to raise more funding and create jobs.

Which Countries are Eligible?

• The Black Founders Fund Africa is open to startups that meet the eligibility criteria in Botswana, Cameroun, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
• While these thirteen countries are the prime focus due to their active tech and startup ecosystems, strong applications from other African countries will also be considered.

How Many Awards will be Given?

60

What is the Benefit of Google for Startups Black Founders Fund for Africa?

Selected startups will receive between $50,000 and $100,000 non-dilutive cash awards and up to $200,000 per startup in Google Cloud credits, support in the form of training, and access to a network of mentors to assist in tackling the challenges unique to each startup.

How to Apply for Google for Startups Black Founders Fund for Africa?

Those interested in applying for the Google for Startups, Black Founders Fund Africa can find more information here.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

What Russian Folklore Can Tell Us About Russia

Melvin A. Goodman

Image Source: 田中良三 – A humorous Atlas of the World – Public Domain

“Russia is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

– Winston Churchill, 1939.

“Russia is the only country with an unpredictable past.”

– Winston Churchill, 1939.

Winston Churchill identifies the problems in understanding Russia, although Russian aphorisms provide insight into Russian behavior, particularly their excessive support for the national security state.  The emphasis on national security gives Russian President Vladimir Putin a great deal of leeway in a wartime situation, and explains the overwhelming support from the Russian people for his war.  Russian history is largely the history of war, as Russia found itself engaged in military confrontation between the 13th and 20th centuries.  For most of its history, Russia anticipated confrontation on its long border with China in the East; with the legacy of the Mongols on its “sensitive southern frontier,” and with the Western invaders—Napoleon and Hitler.  Putin and his ilk come by their paranoia, xenophobia, and siege mentality quite naturally.

The extreme barbarism of the Russian invasion has led to greater Western military support for Ukraine as well as decreased focus on ending the fighting, enforcing a cease-fire, and arranging security guarantees for Russian and Ukraine. The international community is increasingly convinced that the United States is more interested in inflicting long-term damage on Russia than in securing a diplomatic resolution to the war.  While the Russian Army is preoccupied with tactical operations against a courageous Ukrainian military, Putin has had to deal with the prospect of war with the West, stemming from a Russian-American proxy war.

The prospect of an expanded war demands greater caution on the part of Russian and American decision makers.  Before the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agrees to admit two additional members—Sweden and Finland—perhaps NATO should consider the long-term consequences of such a decision.  One way to get a handle on traditional Russian thinking is to examine Russian parables over the years, which point to Russian feelings of victimhood and a willingness to make sacrifices to defend the interests of the motherland.  The U.S. campaign of sanctions against Russia has seemingly had no impact on Putin’s thinking because he knows that Russians will respond valiantly and make sacrifices when faced with challenges.

Various aphorisms address Russian victimhood and sacrifice.  These parables don’t help us understand the senseless barbarity of Putin’s war against Ukraine, but we know enough from precedents such as Czar Peter’s savage massacre of Ukrainians in the 18th century, and Stalin’s famine against Ukrainians in the 20th century.  There was also terror against the Russians themselves as manifested in the Gulag and Stalin’s Great Terror in the late 1930s.

“THE BEAR DANCES, BUT THE GYPSY GETS THE KOPECKS.”

Russians believe that they have made great sacrifices over the years, but have never benefitted from their valor.  Russian history emphasizes Moscow’s role in stopping the aggression of Napoleon and Hitler.  It is Russia’s firm belief that WWII was fought and won on the eastern front, and that the United States and Britain delayed opening the second front in order to increase the number of casualties for both Germany and Russia.  The fact that three-quarters of the German Army and three-quarters of their fatalities were on the eastern front provides some justification for these strongly-held beliefs.  Russian veterans have told me that no other nation could have stood up to the German Wehrmacht.

“DON’T CARRY RUBBISH OUTSIDE THE HUT.”  

Russians do not share the Western belief in the importance of free speech and free press.  In view of their security concerns, Russians believe that allowing the media to identify vulnerabilities would invite adversaries to exploit them.  Mikhail Gorbachev’s program of glasnost was opposed by Russia’s national security community, which believed it would create opportunities for exploitation. Russia’s political culture revolves around a sense of victimhood, highlighting adversaries who exploited Russia’s vulnerability.  

Putin’s extreme censorship regulations on all journalists and broadcasters in Russia is accepted as a security necessity by most Russians.  The right to free speech, free press, and free assembly have been denigrated by Russia throughout history.  As a result, Putin, like his predecessors, lives by lies, fearing that truth would threaten the leader as well as the led.

“YOU CAN MAKE A RUSSIAN HOLD HIS TONGUE, BUT YOU CAN’T STOP HIM FROM DRAGGING HIS FEET.”  

Initially the invasion of Ukraine in February led to spontaneous protest demonstrations in dozens of Russian cities.  But these protests were short-lived, and the response of the Russian police and security services was quick and violent.  In general, Russians are not likely to protest the actions and decisions of their leaders.

“THE TALLEST WHEAT IS THE FIRST TO BE CUT DOWN BY THE WIND.”  

The Russian brutality against its own citizens may help explain the brutality of the Russians in Ukraine, which Putin refers to as “southwestern Russia.”  Conversely, it is important not to underestimate genuine Russian support for Putin and his war as well as the overwhelming loyalty of the average Russian toward the state.

“DON’T TRY TO SKIN A BEAR BEFORE IT IS DEAD.”  

The steady expansion of NATO to accommodate the desires of former East European states in the Warsaw Pact and former Soviet Republics in the Baltics ignored legitimate Russian national security concerns.  It was the most fateful decision of the Clinton administration, and it repudiated guarantees from Secretary of State James Baker that the United States would not “leap frog” over Germany to create a presence in East Europe if the Soviets withdrew their 380,000 military forces from East Germany.  The Russians lived up to the agreement, and Putin often reminded the West that NATO membership for either Ukraine or Georgia would be crossing a red line.  Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel reminded President George W. Bush of the red line when the Bush administration considered membership for Ukraine and Georgia.

Putin’s public declarations in support of the invasion have taken advantage of Russia’s view of its national security.  Putin’s emphasis on the need to “denazify” Ukraine seemed bizarre and even risible to a Western audience, but Russian memories of the loss of 27 million citizens in World War II meant that Russians would understand the need for military force against Ukraine.  Similarly, Putin has called attention to the outpouring of Western support for Ukraine as an “existential threat” to Russia.  Russians seem indifferent to the terror that they incite, believing that the historical lessons from the Mongol occupation and the invasions of Napoleon and Hitler require vigilance and brutality.  Any internal opposition would then have to consider the domestic terror of political assassination and police brutality that Putin has reintroduced.

In view of the Russian obsession with its own state security, the recent spate of U.S. statements emphasizing the importance of Western weaponry and intelligence to the Ukrainian war effort is counter-productive.  The remarks of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin feed Putin’s charge of an existential threat.  Any U.S. acknowledgement of participation in the war on Ukraine’s behalf is helpful to Russia’s propaganda efforts to blame the United States for the war.  As Mel Gurtov noted in Counterpunch last week, we should not be in the business of “providing Putin with a pretext for widening his war.”

It is particularly fraught that a Russian-Ukrainian war has so quickly turned into a proxy war between the United States and Russia.  The time and energy that Putin must devote to war against Ukraine must now be shared by the need to respond to political and military moves of NATO, particularly the United States.  If Putin genuinely believes that Western support for Ukraine amounts to an “existential threat” against Russia, then we shouldn’t assume that the Kremlin’s nuclear threats are merely an exercise in psychological warfare.

For that reason, Biden’s national security team should reassess its thinking about the war and examine U.S. goals and risks. The expansion of NATO led to this war; further expansion could lead to a wider war.  The primary goals should be ending the fighting, securing a cease-fire, and discussing security guarantees for both Russia and Ukraine.  Security guarantees for Ukraine are a certainty but, as long as Russia does not feel secure vis-a-vis its European neighbors, it will be difficult for West and East Europe to feel secure.

NATO membership for Sweden and Finland would double the length of the border between Russia and NATO countries, thus increasing the risk of a confrontation with Russia.  American elite and public opinion have spent an inordinate amount of time exaggerating the power of the Soviet Union and Russia over the past hundred years so the Biden administration must anticipate that the notion of security guarantees for Russia may come as a shock to the American public.

Imperialist powers back Israel’s assassination of Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

Jean Shaoul

Ten-strong rows of Israeli security forces in full combat gear brutally attacked Palestinians mourning the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh, the widely respected Al Jazeera journalist, on Friday. They grabbed Palestinian flags from mourners as they tried to carry her coffin to Jerusalem’s Old City and then to the Roman Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion.

The 51-year-old Palestinian-American reporter, clad in a press vest and helmet and standing in open view near a roundabout, had been covering constant raids by Israeli security forces in the West Bank city of Jenin, when she was targeted and shot by Israeli snipers Wednesday morning. Another journalist was hospitalised. After her death, police stormed her family’s home demanding they take down the Palestinian flag and end the gathering and singing.

Such were the police beatings on the day of the funeral that the pall bearers nearly dropped the coffin. Soldiers fired sponge-tipped bullets and threw stun grenades at the crowds gathered at the hospital morgue until Abu Akleh’s family were forced to change plans and whisk her coffin away in a car as a police officer removed the Palestinian flags covering it.

Israeli police confront mourners as they carry the casket of slain Al Jazeera veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during her funeral in east Jerusalem, Friday, May 13, 2022 (Credit: AP Photo/Maya Levin)

Israel’s assassination sparked outrage and sorrow, with thousands of Palestinians turning up to greet her coffin and help carry it through the West Bank cities of Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah. Despite restrictions preventing Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza entering East Jerusalem, mourners, Christian and Muslim, came from all over Israel, making this the biggest Palestinian funeral in decades, exceeding that of Yasser Arafat in Ramallah in 2004.

The Israeli authorities had tried to pin the blame for Abu Akleh’s killing on the Palestinians, claiming she fell as they fired on Israeli soldiers and issuing a blatantly faked video clip of Palestinian fighters in a narrow alleyway as “proof”. The US embassy, rejecting any responsibility to investigate the death of an American citizen—Abu Akleh held dual Palestinian-US nationality—rushed to tweet the same clip.

After visiting the site of the clip, the human rights group B’Tselem said it was impossible for Abu Akleh to have been hit from there. On Friday, the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) public prosecutor concluded after an autopsy and interviews with witnesses that Abu Akleh had been deliberately shot in the head by Israeli forces. In the face of the overwhelming evidence, Israel has had to retract its claim, admit that Israeli forces might have killed her and offer the PA a “joint investigation” into her killing. The PA is demanding an independent international investigation.

In a comment revealing Israel’s determination to prevent its criminal actions in support of a decades-long illegal occupation seeing the light of day, military spokesman Ran Kochav said, “So this thing can happen.” He described Abu Akleh as “filming and working for a media outlet amidst armed Palestinians. They’re armed with cameras, if you’ll permit me to say so.”

The army has the full-throated support of fascistic legislators such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Israel’s far-right settler movement.

The murder of a journalist reporting on Israel’s brutal repression of the Palestinians flows inexorably from the escalating class tensions within Israel/Palestine amid increasingly conflicted international relations throughout the world. For the last two months, Israeli troops have been carrying out almost daily raids across the occupied West Bank in pursuit of “terror suspects,” killing at least 30 Palestinians and injuring hundreds. Jenin, where the venal PA has lost control, is the particular focus of attacks. This comes in the wake of a series of killings of 19 Israelis by desperate Palestinians with few known connections to each other or to armed groups.

The Palestinians’ longstanding fury over the almost daily killings—58 Palestinians have been killed so far this year—settler violence against their farms, homes and property, evictions, house demolitions and settlement expansion has been exacerbated by the deteriorating economic and social conditions in the West Bank and Gaza, particularly in the aftermath of US sanctions on Russia that have pushed up the cost of fuel, fertilisers and food.

Israel has the full support of the major imperialist powers that posture as defenders of democracy and basic democratic rights. What is at stake is the survival of all the autocratic regimes, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, along with Israel, on which imperialism depends in the resource-rich region.

While the United Nations Security Council unanimously condemned Abu Akleh’s killing and called for “an immediate, thorough, transparent, and impartial investigation into her killing,” the US used its influence to water down a resolution that omits any reference to Israel’s violence at the funeral, and to block an international investigation.

Israel can rely on the western, corporate and state-controlled media to regurgitate its lying version of events.  Even now, the media organisations that initially reported Israel’s version of Abu Akleh’s assassination are merely stating that the circumstances of her death are under investigation. So one-sided was the New York Times coverage of the assassination that Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a US-based group opposed to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, asked its members to write to the newspaper’s editors to demand better coverage. Sonya E Meyerson-Knox, communications director of JVP, told Middle East Eye that instead of reporting the facts confirmed by other journalists, video clips and human rights groups, “the western media has simply parroted talking points from the Israeli military.”

So egregious is Israel’s record of attacking Palestinian journalists that on Sunday, the anniversary of the Nakba—as the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 is known—when about 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to flee their homes, journalists held up 55 paper press jackets outside the BBC headquarters in central London, one for each of the journalists killed by Israel since 2000. This protest was part of the day’s March for Palestine from the BBC to Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s office in London, attended by 15,000 people.

The event followed the UK government’s announcement on May 10 that it would introduce legislation banning local councils, universities and other public bodies from participating in boycott and divestment campaigns aimed at ending international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

On Friday, a court in Berlin upheld a ban on all Palestinian “Nakba Day” demonstrations in the German capital over the weekend. Germany, a key supporter of Israel, has long remained silent over the government’s brutal crackdown in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The court justified its ban on five Palestinian demonstrations by claiming they risked inflammatory or anti-Semitic chants, intimidation and violence. Palestinian organisers have insisted repeatedly that they do not condone anti-Semitism. The court also cited the “high degree of mobilisation” around Nakba Day as a relevant factor, a reference to the fact that last year more than 10,000 people attended a demonstration to mark Nakba Day and protest Israel’s murderous bombardment of Gaza that started on May 10.

The ban also applied to a meeting planned for Friday evening by Jüdische Stimme, a Jewish group that supports Palestinian rights, centred on the assassination of Abu Akleh.

Last month, the German media reported that Jews had been subject to anti-Semitic insults at a pro-Palestine protest in Berlin. However, Jüdische Stimme’s chairperson Wieland Hoban said that this was just a pretext to prevent Palestine solidarity, commenting, “The killing of Palestinian journalists is an attempt to kill information, to kill truth, which is exactly what the Berlin police are doing by suppressing demonstrations.” The German authorities deployed more than 1,000 officers to enforce the ban on Palestine solidarity demonstrations, attacking, kettling and arresting demonstrators.

Baby formula shortage leaves millions in need across United States

Alex Findijs

The severe shortage of baby formula across the United States continues to affect millions of families. Nationwide, there is a 43 percent deficit of infant formula, with some states and metropolitan areas seeing more than 50 percent of normal supply missing from grocery store shelves. 

People wait in line during a baby formula drive to help with the baby formula shortage Saturday, May 14, 2022, in Houston [AP Photo/David J. Phillip]

Prices have risen by an average of 18 percent with increasingly common reports of price gouging emerging around the country. 

Baby formula is a critical food product for millions of infants. Around three-quarters of all infants in the United States receive formula within their first six months, and many require it as their primary form of nutrition. 

The shortage has been developing over the past two years as the pandemic disrupted supply chains, resulting in a roughly 20 percent shortage at the beginning of this year. 

The issue was made significantly worse though when Abbott Nutrition was forced to close one of the nation’s largest formula manufacturing plants in Sturgis, Michigan. The plant was shut down in February after a bacterial outbreak in baby food sold by Abbott caused illness in at least four infants, killing two of them. 

Abbott issued a voluntary recall of products made at the facility and shut it down as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted an investigation into the outbreak.

The company claims that the strain of bacteria found in the infected infants was not discovered at the plant. However, an FDA investigation conducted from January 31 to March 18 found multiple health issues in the facilities. 

According to the report, the FDA found evidence of the dangerous bacteria Cronobacter sakazakii “in medium and high care areas of powdered infant formula production” and that Abbott “did not ensure that all surfaces that contacted infant formula were maintained to protect infant formula from being contaminated by any source.” The FDA’s investigation has so far identified five different strains of Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria in the plant. 

Additional revelations about the health violations made by Abbott were revealed in a whistleblower report provided to the FDA by a former Abbott employee at the Sturgis plant. The report accused management of falsifying records and health procedure documents, releasing untested formula for sale, taking active steps to prevent the discovery of bacteria in products during an FDA audit in 2019, and failing to take proper measures to resolve long standing issues with the safety of the products produced. 

Notably, the report stated that Abbott insisted on using paper documentation rather than electronic in order to better falsify and hide documentation from regulators. 

The closure of the Sturgis factory due to these persistent problems set fire to a manufacturing and supply chain tinder box in the United States. 

Abbott is one of four companies that produce 90 percent of all baby formula sold in the United States. Foreign imports are aggressively limited, with a tariff of 17.5 percent designed to protect domestic producers, who manufacture 98 percent of the nation’s supply. 

These producers are then offered near monopoly control over entire states through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC. The WIC program provides affordable infant formula to families in need through a rebate program contracted between the state government and a single company. 

Through a bid system, companies like Abbott compete to secure exclusive rights to sell baby formula to WIC participants, who are only allowed to purchase formula from one company. The contract is secured through a rebate to the state, typically upwards of 85 percent. This causes the company to take a loss on formula sold through WIC but is offset through the preference to place their products on store shelves and dominance over the market. 

WIC sales make up about half of all infant formula purchases, meaning that any company able to secure a contract is virtually guaranteed to control the market in an entire state. A recent analysis of WIC programs from 2006 to 2015 found that when a company secured a WIC contract its sales of eligible products increased by 300 percent. The study also noted a “spillover” effect, where sales of non-related products by the same manufacturer also increased substantially. An additional 2004 study by the Department of Agriculture found that WIC-contracting companies raised their prices after securing the contract. 

These programs have resulted in the extensive market consolidation in the hands of a few companies and in a few plants. Abbott currently holds contracts in at least 31 states, which it provides formula to from just five factories. With the Sturgis plant closed, its capacity to provide to all its contracted states has been severely limited. 

Abbott and the FDA reached a deal Monday to restart production within the next two weeks pending the company meeting certain requirements. However, company officials have noted that it will take another six to eight weeks for formula to reach shelves once production resumes. 

This time scale will leave millions of families without a critical source of nutrition for their children. Not only do many mothers have difficulty with breast feeding for various physical reasons, but the vast majority of working class mothers are restricted from breast feeding due to social and economic constraints. 

The United States federal government does not guarantee paid family leave, and many employers do not even provide unpaid leave without new mothers risking losing their jobs. Without the time and structural support for breastfeeding, American mothers are made far more dependent on formula than in other Western countries. 

According to the aid organization Save the Children, the percent of mothers breastfeeding their infants at six months in Norway is 99 percent compared to just 44 percent in the United States. Mothers in the US receive no paid maternity leave, while mothers in Norway are given at least 36 weeks of paid maternity leave. 

Simply put, the more time a mother is allowed to spend with her child the more able they are to breastfeed. If they are not provided that time, they are forced to concede substantial financial resources to do so. 

According to an analysis by the business news outlet Quartz, a woman working 50 hours a week and making $60,000 a year could lose up to $14,250 in order to breastfeed her child for just the first six months. 

The response of the ruling class to this crisis has been woefully inadequate. The FDA took months to begin its investigation of Abbott and waited longer still to take action against the company. The Biden administration has issued only a terse list of promises to increase foreign imports and domestic production and to “cut red tape.” 

President Joe Biden has stated that there is “nothing more urgent we’re working on than that right now.” This can hardly be taken seriously. While Biden has pushed Congress to approve $40 billion for weapons shipments to Ukraine, he has so far made no such demands to prevent hunger among infants. 

For their part, the fascistic fear mongers in the Republican Party have concocted conspiracy theories that migrants detained at the Southern border are the cause of the shortage, calling on the Biden administration to cease shipments of baby formula to detention centers, in violation of federal law. Such calls are effectively demands for the forced starvation of migrant children. 

Turkey threatens veto as Finland, Sweden to join NATO against Russia

Barış Demir

Amid the US-led war against Russia in Ukraine, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has indicated his concerns and opposition to moves by Finland and Sweden to join NATO. For a new country to join NATO, all 30 member states must be unanimous in supporting it.

On Friday, Erdoğan said: “We are following developments regarding Sweden and Finland, but we don’t hold positive views.” Referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which the Turkish state bans as terrorist, he added, “the Scandinavian countries, unfortunately, are almost like guesthouses for terrorist organizations. PKK, DHKP-C are nested in the Netherlands and Sweden. I go further; they also take part in the parliaments there.”

Erdoğan also referred to rising tensions in the Aegean and Mediterranean with French-backed Greece: “The [Turkish] governments before us made a mistake regarding over Greece’s [return] to NATO. You know the attitude that Greece has taken towards Turkey by backing NATO, so we do not want to commit a second mistake in this regard.” He was referring to the Turkish military junta’s approval of Greece’s return to the alliance’s military wing after the NATO-backed coup in 1980 in Turkey.

Erdoğan maintained this stance yesterday. Regarding today’s visit of the Finnish and Swedish delegations to Turkey, he said: “They will come to Turkey on Monday. Will they come to persuade us?” He continued, “First of all, we would not say ‘yes’ to those who imposed sanctions on Turkey to join NATO, a security organization, during this process.”

US officials have indicated they are confident that Erdoğan will ultimately capitulate to pressure from the NATO imperialist powers to admit Sweden and Finland into NATO.

“If that’s what they [Finland and Sweden] choose to do, I’m very confident that we will reach consensus on that,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters after a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Berlin on Sunday. He said, “I don’t want to characterise the specific conversation that we had either with the [Turkish] foreign minister or within the NATO sessions themselves, but I can say this much: I heard almost across the board, very strong support (for Sweden, Finland) joining the alliance.”

The Finnish and Swedish governments refer to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to justify joining NATO and abandoning their long-standing policies of official neutrality. This provocative move, essentially planned in Washington, Berlin and London, forms part of decades of NATO expansion, which provoked Russia into its reactionary invasion of Ukraine. The entire Scandinavian region is to be transformed into a potential war zone in a conflict with Russia.

All these attempts raise the danger of the Ukraine war escalating into a direct military conflict between Russia and NATO and a nuclear world war. However, the reaction of Erdoğan, who is the head of a country that has NATO’s second largest army and has been supporting the NATO expansion against Russia for decades, has nothing to do with principled opposition to NATO or war.

Ankara supports NATO’s Ukraine policy, including the far-right coup NATO organized in Kiev in 2014, and supplies critical Bayraktar TB2 armed drones to the Ukrainian army.

However, Ankara does not participate in the economic embargoes and sanctions against Russia. Moreover, it criticizes the policies of NATO powers, especially the US and Britain, to continue or even expand the war in order to weaken Russia.

There is mounting concern in Turkish ruling circles at the scope of NATO’s war on Russia. NATO officials have made clear they intend to forcibly break up Russia—notably seizing Crimea, which Russia counts as its sovereign territory—and topple President Vladimir Putin. The Turkish ruling elite is no doubt deeply concerned at the prospect of NATO-Russian war and of a bloody disintegration of Russia, just north of Turkey.

Last month, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu warned: “Until the NATO meeting, we thought the war would not last long. However, after the NATO meeting, an opinion emerged. There are countries that want this war to continue. Their aim is to push Russia back.”

Turkey has broad military-economic ties with Russia. It purchased S-400 air defense systems from Russia despite US objections, and obtains nearly one-third of its natural gas directly from Russia via pipelines. Russia is currently still building the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in Mersin. Turkey also imports most of its wheat from Russia. Moreover, Russian tourists are critical for Turkey’s hospitality industry to provide much-needed foreign exchange reserves.

While fearing the war’s consequences for Turkey, the Turkish bourgeoisie also sees US moves to escalate the war drive as an opportunity to advance its regional interests and bargain with the major imperialist powers. “We did not close the door for Sweden and Finland to join NATO,” Erdoğan’s spokesperson İbrahim Kalın commented, revealing Ankara’s pragmatist bargaining approach.

However, a Turkish veto of Sweden and Finland joining NATO would pose a serious challenge to the US-led imperialist war drive against Russia, and could place Erdoğan once again in the gunsights of Washington and Berlin. The two leading NATO powers backed a failed 2016 coup attempt, plotted by officers who tried to assassinate Erdoğan during the coup.

Ankara wants its NATO allies to stop supporting the Kurdish nationalist People’s Defense Units (YPG) in Syria. Foreign Minister Çavuşoğlu said, “The reason for Turkey’s stance is quite clear. NATO is not a union, not an organisation. NATO is an alliance. What does this require? It is not just a matter of security; it requires shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity. Especially when there is a threat to security in any area. Unfortunately, the countries we mentioned openly support PKK-YPG terrorist organizations.”

Turkey is in conflict with the US on this issue. While Washington supports the YPG as a proxy force in its ongoing occupation in northern Syria against President Bashar Assad’s government, Turkey sees the YPG as a terrorist organization and part of the PKK. The Turkish ruling class considers it of strategic importance to prevent the emergence of any Kurdish state led by the YPG on its borders. For this, Ankara has repeatedly invaded Syria since 2016, occupying parts of the country.

However, NATO’s ongoing regime-change war in Syria which began in 2011 threatens increasingly to bring Turkey into conflict with Iran, another country targeted by Washington. Turkey recently held talks with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the main powers in Washington’s anti-Iran axis, while Syrian President Assad held talks with the UAE and Iran.

Unconfirmed reports claim that Russia has begun to reduce its presence in Syria due to the Ukraine war, and Iranian-backed forces have settled in these regions. This indicates a growing risk of direct confrontation between Iran-backed militias, which Israel regularly targets in Syria, and Turkish armed forces in the country.

Amid all these events, there is an upsurge of the international class struggle amid a surge in food prices, which have risen with the Ukraine war and NATO sanctions against Russia.

Mass protests erupted in Iran last week after the government announced an end to subsidies on basic foodstuffs. In Turkey, where high costs of living have become unbearable for millions of workers’ families, 2022 started with a wildcat strikes wave.

US hosts special ASEAN summit as conflict with China deepens

Ben McGrath

Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met for a special two-day summit with US President Joe Biden in Washington last week as part of a diplomatic offensive against China.

For US imperialism, the meeting provided an opportunity to escalate its confrontation with Beijing in the Indo-Pacific even as it prosecutes the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Moscow. However, disagreements were evident within ASEAN over the US agenda.

The ASEAN-US Special Summit in Washington DC, 2022 (Photo: Facebook/ASEAN)

The ASEAN-US summit took place May 12 and 13, and was the first to be held in Washington in the organization’s 45-year history. It was also the second special summit held in the US following a 2016 meeting hosted by then President Barack Obama in California.

Biden exploited the summit to again accuse Beijing of planning an unprovoked invasion of Taiwan, comparing it to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In reality, the US is goading and antagonizing Beijing over regional territorial disputes and Taiwan, just as the US and NATO deliberately provoked the war in Europe.

Calling the meeting the launch of a “new era in US-ASEAN relations,” Biden told assembled leaders that “the breadth of our discussions reflects just how vital the Indo-Pacific and ASEAN region are to the United States of America, from our perspective.”

Without explicitly naming China, Biden stated that US was seeking “an Indo-Pacific that is free and open, stable and prosperous, and resilient and secure.” Washington regularly demonizes Beijing declaring it to be a threat to the “free and open” Indo-Pacific and to the so-called “international rules-based order.”

Washington’s real fear is that China’s economic expansion constitutes a threat to US global domination—that is, the post-World War II order in which it set the international rules to meet its own economic and strategic interests.

The joint statement released after the meeting struck a similar note, stating, that the US and ASEAN “share relevant fundamental principles in promoting an open, inclusive, and rules-based regional architecture, in which ASEAN is central, alongside partners who share in these goals.”

In fact, Washington, for more than a decade, has stoked tensions in the region between China and ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam over territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The US Navy has repeatedly staged provocative “freedom of navigation operations,” sending its warships into waters claimed by China around islets under its control.

The ASEAN-US joint statement made several references to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the SEA (UNCLOS), which the US has never ratified, indirectly justifying these naval provocations. “We are dedicated to maintaining peace, security, and stability in the region, and to ensuring maritime security and safety, as well as freedom of navigation and overflight and other lawful uses of the seas as described in the 1982 UNCLOS,” it stated.

The aim of such denunciations, veiled or otherwise, is to paint China as a threat to “freedom” in the Indo-Pacific region while allowing for the development of Washington’s military plans with its allies. In particular, the US and Australia have denounced a security agreement recently signed by China with the Solomon Islands and issued barely veiled threats of regime-change against the government of the small Pacific Island state.

Biden pledged $150 million to ASEAN during the summit to try to offset the $1.5 billion in development aid pledged by Beijing to ASEAN in November. The largest allocation was $60 million towards military cooperation in the South China Sea. This includes dispatching a US Coast Guard ship to the region to work with ASEAN-member fleets, on the pretext of preventing illegal Chinese fishing.

However, there are broad differences among the ASEAN countries in their stance towards Russia and China. So while both were undoubtedly discussed behind closed doors, public statements avoided direct condemnations. Only Singapore has imposed sanctions on Russia. Vietnam and Laos abstained from passing a UN resolution in March condemning Russia over Ukraine. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand have adopted more neutral positions.

On Ukraine, the summit’s joint statement did not follow the US in condemning the Russian invasion. It reaffirmed “our respect for sovereignty, political independence, and territorial integrity” and reiterated “our call for compliance with the UN Charter and international law.” It called for “an immediate cessation of hostilities” and a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Similar divisions exist among ASEAN members about fully lining up with the US-led war drive against China. Prior to the summit, Kurt Campbell, the US Indo-Pacific coordinator, publicly declared that Taiwan would be on the agenda and hypocritically claimed that the US wanted “to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.” However, no reference to Taiwan appeared in the summit’s joint statement.

Amalina Anuar, a senior analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore, told Al Jazeera, “[I]f we’re talking about persuading ASEAN members to align with the US, it’s doubtful that ASEAN members would move away from neutrality. ASEAN and China are in the same neighborhood and are interdependent in many ways, not least economically. ASEAN is not looking to exclude China from the regional architecture because of this.”

Cambodia in particular has close relations with Beijing while Indonesia is heavily reliant on Chinese investment. In addition, the leaders of both Myanmar and the Philippines were absent from the summit, with the former excluded following a military coup in 2021 and the latter going through a leadership change. The new Ferdinand Marcos Jr. administration in Manila appears likely to follow in the footsteps of outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte in developing closer relations with Beijing.

To offset these economic relations, Washington is working on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), which Biden plans to formally launch during his upcoming trip to Asia this week. The IPEF, announced last October and similar to the defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is meant to put US trade and interests at the center of economic relationships in the region. The administration intends to implement its plan through executive orders rather than risk facing Congressional opposition.

At the end of this week, Biden will travel to Northeast Asia where he will meet with new South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on May 21 in Seoul and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on May 23 in Tokyo. The following day, Biden will take part in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) summit—a quasi-military alliance directed against China—with Kishida and the leaders of India and Australia.

Finland and Sweden formally announce application for NATO membership

Jordan Shilton

Swedish Social Democratic Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson formally announced Monday that Stockholm will submit an application to join NATO. The move followed a parliamentary debate in which almost all parties voted in favour of the move. The Greens and ex-Stalinist Left Party, which have helped keep the Social Democratic minority government in power for the past eight years, voted against.

Sweden’s decision came one day after Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Prime Minister Sanna Marin confirmed Sunday that Helsinki will apply for NATO membership. Although a parliamentary vote is necessary to finalise the process, this is seen as a formality since Niinistö and Marin represent the two largest parties, the conservative National Coalition Party and the Social Democrats.

Helsinki and Stockholm’s formal applications to join the aggressive Western military alliance were prepared in close consultation with the major imperialist powers. Washington, Berlin and London see in NATO’s expansion the opportunity to open up a second front in their drive to bring about regime change in Moscow and reduce Russia to the status of a semi-colony of Western imperialism.

Representatives of NATO and the imperialist powers sought to cover up this reality over recent days with Orwellian propaganda about “democracies” coming together in a “defensive” alliance to ensure “security” in Europe.

Speaking after a three-day G7 foreign ministers meeting on Saturday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock claimed, “Every democratic country should be happy that democracies with strong defence capabilities will make the joint alliance stronger.” She added that NATO is not pushing both countries to join. Instead, these two “strong democracies” are joining in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Baerbock then hosted a NATO summit in Berlin, where foreign ministers from NATO’s 30 member states joined their colleagues from Finland and Sweden to consult on a “very, very fast” approval of the membership applications, as Baerbock put it. “Their membership in NATO would increase our shared security,” added NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

In reality, there is nothing “democratic” about Sweden and Finland’s decision to join the world’s most aggressive military alliance, which has been responsible for spreading death and destruction from the Balkans to Afghanistan and Libya over the past three decades. The move has much more the character of a conspiracy engineered by the most powerful imperialist states, above all, Britain, Germany and the United States. Together with their accomplices in the Finnish and Swedish ruling elites, they are rushing to present the population of the region with a fait accompli: that they now live on a new frontline in a rapidly escalating military conflict with Russia.

As late as March, Andersson stated that Sweden would not join NATO, declaring that it would destabilize security in the region. Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist remarked the same month, “Sweden’s membership in NATO means fundamentally changing the security line. This affects the safety of our immediate region.”

According to an analysis by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, which is aligned with Germany’s Free Democratic Party, “Finnish diplomats in Brussels started informal discussions with the defence alliance on 25 February, the day after the war started, and government officials have been on a diplomatic whirlwind tour ever since.”

At a NATO meeting attended by Finnish and Swedish officials on February 26, participants discussed special intelligence-sharing arrangements for both countries with NATO. “They need to be fully informed because of their strategic position for Russia,” a diplomatic source told EURACTIV.

Politico likewise described the “intense schedule of meetings at home and abroad” over recent weeks. Marin and Andersson travelled to a German cabinet retreat near Berlin in early May to obtain pledges of military support from Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who heads a government engaged in the largest rearmament programme since Hitler’s Third Reich. Meanwhile, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde traveled to the US and Canada to make arrangements with the Biden administration and Trudeau government.

The imperialist powers are eager to bring Sweden and Finland into NATO not only due to their relatively well-equipped militaries but, above all, due to the countries’ geostrategic location. Finland shares a 1,300-kilometre border with Russia that is within striking distance of St. Petersburg. Swedish membership in NATO would leave Russia totally encircled by NATO members in the Baltic Sea and make it easier for the alliance to supply its battlegroups in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the event of an attack on Russia.

The two membership applications must be approved by all 30 NATO members before Finland and Sweden can join. This could prove to be a stumbling block in the imperialist powers’ drive to conclude the membership process as soon as possible. On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed his opposition to Helsinki and Stockholm joining the alliance, saying they were “guest houses for terrorist organisations.” Erdogan accused Sweden and Finland of supporting the banned Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) against which Ankara has waged a bloody military conflict for decades. Finland and Sweden have dispatched delegations to Ankara for talks aimed at resolving the dispute.

The political establishments in Helsinki and Stockholm have been striving to become NATO members for well over two decades. In the mid-1990s, Finland and Sweden joined NATO’s “Partnership for Peace” programme, which was a key instrument in the US-led military alliance’s aggressive expansion up to the borders of Russia in the Baltic region and in Eastern Europe. Finland and Sweden went on to send troops to support the neocolonial occupation of Afghanistan, while Swedish fighter jets participated in NATO’s savage bombardment of Libya.

In 2017, Finland and Sweden then joined the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), a British-led military alliance of Baltic and Nordic countries aimed explicitly at Russia. The goals of the alliance were to enable NATO members to launch military attacks without the delays required for consultation within the military alliance and engage non-NATO members in joint military exercises with NATO equipment.

Russia’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine—which was intentionally provoked by the transformation of Ukraine into a NATO member in all but name after the US- and German-backed Maidan coup in 2014—was seized upon by the imperialists, and the plan for NATO expansion involving the Swedish and Finnish governments has long been in the works. The main obstacle was always strong opposition to the military alliance among the Swedish and Finnish populations, but this was overcome through a sustained barrage of pro-war propaganda and a vicious anti-Russia campaign portraying the nationalist Putin regime as the main aggressor.

As Petteri Orpo, head of the conservative National Coalition Party in Finland, put it during a recent trip to Washington for consultations with Biden administration officials, “For 16 years, we have supported NATO membership, and now it’s possible. Thanks, Putin.”

A striking feature of the pro-war consensus that has emerged within Finnish and Swedish ruling circles as they prepared to join NATO is that it was led primarily by the Social Democratic parties, who owed their considerable popularity for much of the 20th century to their professed opposition to war and military violence.

Marin’s Social Democrats, who currently head the government in Helsinki, voted at a national executive meeting on Saturday by a 53-5 vote with 2 abstentions for NATO membership. At a similar meeting held a day later by Sweden’s Social Democrats, who currently govern in a minority tolerated by the Greens and Left Party, Andersson obtained agreement from the party executive. Reflecting the significant skepticism towards NATO that still exists, the Social Democrats felt compelled to pledge that if Sweden’s application is accepted, the party will “work to ensure that Sweden expresses unilateral reservations against the deployment of nuclear weapons and permanent bases on Swedish territory.”

Just four days earlier, Andersson hosted British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who confirmed London’s readiness to provide Sweden with military assistance as part of a mutual security pact. Asked if this would include nuclear weapons, Johnson told the media, “When it comes to our nuclear deterrent, that’s something we don’t generally comment upon, but what I’ve made clear is that it’s up to either party to make a request, and we take it very seriously.”

Tacit approval from the ex-Stalinist and pseudo-left parties has played a no less important role in suppressing opposition in the population. Li Andersson, leader of the Left Alliance and Education Minister in Marin’s government, declared last week that while she personally opposed joining NATO, she saw no reason to resign from the government if Finland filed an application to join.