United Nations, diplomatic preparations for military intervention in Haiti met with widespread protests

Alex Johnson

As protests and violent clashes in Haiti rage, the United Nations, Washington and Ottawa are mulling over the deployment of foreign troops to quell widespread political and social opposition to Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

Demonstrators protest against fuel price hikes and to demand that Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry step down, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. [AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph]

Discussions among Haitian government officials and foreign diplomats have been held in recent days around how to crush the growing insurrectionary movement developing within Haiti’s working class and prop up the illegitimate, US-installed Henry regime. An intervention is seen as necessary to both safeguard the operations of American multinationals and repel the homicidal gangs affiliated with powerful sections of Haiti’s oligarchy.

In a letter sent to the UN Security Council last week, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made it a matter of “urgency” that one or more nations consider the Haitian government’s request for the deployment of an “international specialized armed force” to eliminate a blockade being imposed by gangs on the Varreux fuel terminal, located north of the capital Port-au-Prince, and buttress Haiti’s crumbling security forces. 

Thousands of demonstrators took to the capital Port-au-Prince this week to oppose the government’s request for a military deployment. The repeated occasions in which American imperialism and its allies imposed bloody colonial occupations to pursue their predatory economic interests are lodged deeply in the public’s memory. Demonstrators on Monday shouted against any plans for “foreign occupation” and reiterated their demand for the removal of Henry. 

Haiti’s national police responded with brutality, shooting several people and killing at least one young woman. According to the AFP, one protester denounced any invocation for the placing of “boots on the ground” while another claimed Henry’s regime, which was never formally elected by the population, had “no legitimacy to ask for military assistance.” 

The plans being crafted for a foreign occupation have nothing to do with ensuring the welfare of the Haitian masses, but of placing Haiti yet again under the direct control of one or another imperialist power to suppress dissent in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and secure the strategic interests of finance capital. 

The fraudulent rhetoric being issued to justify an expedition is associated with a bloody record in Haiti, replete over the last century with violent colonial takeovers that saw the death and torture of tens of thousands. The assassination of Haitian president Jean Vilbrun Guillaume in 1915 led to President Wilson sending in the US Marines under the pretext of resolving the nation’s “unstable” conditions. What transpired was the looting of Haiti’s treasury for two decades by American financiers, forced labor under the Corvée system enforced by troops, and the smashing of the cacos, a peasant-based nationalist rebel insurgency that rose up in response to the occupation. 

Guterres’ letter came two days after Haiti’s Council of Ministers adopted a resolution authorizing Henry to request an armed intervention in response to the rout of its security forces at the hands of a coalition of armed gangs.

The UN chief noted the specialized force “would, in particular, support the HNP (Haitian National Police) primarily in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area … to remove the threat posed by armed gangs.” Guterres had not suggested if the intervention would be a UN deployment. Thus far Washington has stated that it is reviewing Haiti’s request for military assistance. 

Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, Bocchit Edmond, echoed demands for an intervention by appealing on Monday that the United States and Canada take the lead in a so-called strike force sent to Haiti. It should be recalled that the same imperialist interests now sounding the tocsin for foreign intrusion introduced a military intervention from 2004 to 2017 known as MINUSTAH, under the auspices of the United Nations, that was complicit in countless human rights abuses, killed thousands of peaceful protesters and triggered the first modern outbreak of cholera.  

Whether or not a troop deployment to the island nation would be long-term or of a temporary duration has not been made entirely clear. What is strongly suggested however from the formulations of Guterres and the desperate appeals of Haiti’s ruling class is that plans are being drawn up for a substantial crackdown on the civilian population under the guise of combating “armed gangs.”

A few days prior to Guterres’ letter, the Organization of American States (OAS), headquartered in Washington D.C., released a statement during a session of its General Assembly acknowledging that the agency was “concerned” by the inability of Haiti’s police forces to maintain order. The OAS asked its member states to “urgently offer direct support to the Government of Haiti to improve the training of port security agents” and “strengthen the capacities and the means of the PNH.”

The drumbeat for closer US control over the Haitian government’s policymaking, and possibly another incursion in the Caribbean, is being sounded within the Democratic Party. On the same day of the OAS statement, the National Haitian American Elected Officials Network sent out a statement in coordination with Florida Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick calling on Biden to take “immediate” action on the country’s social breakdown. 

Opposing layers of Haiti’s corrupt political and academic establishment are seizing on the turmoil to make a bid to imperialism for their installation into power. The main opposition group is the Commission for a Search to a Haitian Solution to the Crisis, an organization comprising Clinton Foundation-backed operatives and privileged intellectuals that drafted the so-called Montana Accord, a petition for the overthrow of Henry’s regime. The Montana Accord group has expectantly come out against the government’s request for foreign intervention to reinforce Henry’s rule.

Fritz Alphonse Jean, the President-elect of the Montana Accord, labeled the calling for international military intervention in Haiti “shameful.” Steven Benoit, premier-elect of the Montana Accord, declared that the prime minister’s office had “committed a crime of high treason” and that they should “Prepare to pay the consequences.” 

The catalyst for the political crisis lies in the protesters’ demand that the unelected Henry be ousted from power and escalating class tensions—fueled by skyrocketing prices for basic necessities, including the government’s ending of subsidies for fuel that served as a lifeline for Haiti’s impoverished masses. The protest movement has grown at the same time as a renewed outbreak of cholera, the fatal waterborne diarrheal illness that killed about 10,000 people after the 2010 earthquake. 

The blockade of the Varreux fuel terminal has led to a crippling shortage of bottled water amid the resurgence of cholera, with 19 confirmed cases and 170 suspected cases, 40 being infants. The outbreak has reportedly reached Haiti’s National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince, one of the most overcrowded prisons in the world, where those incarcerated face serious illness and death. Inmates have told the press they believe more than 60 people have died since the outbreak began on October 2. 

Political rivals of Henry’s regime allied with layers of the ruling elite are vying for control over the nation’s most lucrative assets in Haiti’s coastal region. The Varreux terminal is a storage center holding about 70 percent of the country’s fuel and is being controlled by the G9 Family and Allies gang federation, headed by former police agent Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier. 

As of late September, the volume of fuel stored in the dock’s tanks amounted to 10 days of diesel consumption and 12 days of gasoline, while access to these facilities by government-appointed operators and trucking units have proven impossible. 

Tensions at the fuel terminal began to flare in July when Henry named a new director for Haiti’s customs agency amid an investigation from the US that his government was involved in illegal arms trafficking, an accusation that coincided with Haitian customs and police authorities interdicting roughly 120,000 rounds of ammunition on board a container ship at a ferry terminal in Port-au-Paix on July 1. 

Henry, after having his US visa revoked and facing mounting pressure to strengthen customs security, launched a crackdown at the seaports to collect an estimated $600 million in undeclared duties from Haiti’s wealthiest businesspeople and stop the gun trafficking trade that has fallen into the hands of G9. The former customs director, Rommel Bell, has been under investigation by Haiti’s anti-corruption unit, which has accused Bell of smuggling illegal arms. 

The involvement of state institutions in arming gangs can be traced back several years when a Florida gun shop owner,  Junior Joseph, was convicted in 2019 for trafficking illegal arms with the help of Haitian police and Senator Herve Fourcand. The former government led by President Jovenel Moïse, who was assassinated in 2021, and his Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK) collaborated with Chérizier in sanctioning extrajudicial killings and massacres against civilians, which included providing weapons and vehicles to the G9 gang alliance. 

Chérizier was a political sponsor of Moïse in the latter’s effort to use G9 to suppress social opposition to his corrupt regime and direct the gang federation against his political and business opponents until he was assassinated in July 2021. From then on Chérizier and his allies have vowed to depose Henry under the false banner of fighting for a “revolution.”

Henry has commanded a de facto dictatorship over the country since being handpicked to replace Moïse by the so-called CORE group of countries, which flung the surgeon into the prime minister’s role due to his being a longtime lackey of US imperialism. A year after the assassination, Henry heads a frail regime hated by Haiti’s working class and peasantry and menaced with gang warfare financed by sections of the ruling elite. The requests for “specialized forces” arises from the bitter internecine opposition Henry has faced from gang-affiliated cronies.

IMF cuts growth forecast amid warnings of global recession

Nick Beams

The International Monetary Fund has said more than a third of the global economy will contract either this year or next with the three major economies, the US, the European Union and China continuing to stall.

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, second from left, director of research at the International Monetary Fund, speaks at a news conference on the IMF's world economic outlook during the 2022 annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank Group, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, in Washington. [AP Photo/Patrick Semansky]

In its World Economic Outlook report issued at its semi-annual meeting in Washington yesterday, the IMF said growth would slow from 6 percent in 2021 to 3.2 percent in 2022 and to 2.7 percent in 2023. This is the weakest growth path since 2001, except for the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It said inflation, which was 4.7 percent in 2021, would be 8.8 percent for 2022, coming down to 6.5 percent in 2023 and then falling to 4.1 percent in 2023.

The growth figures are a continuation of the downward revisions the IMF made since its meeting in April. For advanced economies, growth is expected to come in at 2.4 percent this year, following growth of 5.2 percent in 2021 and then fall to 1.1 percent in 2023, with “the slowdown gathering strength.”

In the US, the world’s largest economy, growth is expected to be only 1 percent in 2023, falling from 1.6 percent this year. The projection for 2022 was revised down by 0.7 percentage points from the estimate in July “reflecting the unexpected real GDP contraction in the second quarter.”

For the US, the IMF said: “Declining real disposable income continues to eat into consumer demand, and higher interest rates are taking an important toll on spending, especially spending on residential investment.”

The forecast for the euro area is growth of 3.7 percent in 2022, falling to just 0.5 percent in 2023. The slowdown for Germany, the euro area’s largest economy and the world’s fourth biggest, is “especially sharp” with negative annual growth expected next year.

The IMF projected a “significant slowdown” for the UK with growth falling from 3.6 percent in 2022 to just 0.3 percent in 2023 as “high inflation reduces purchasing power and tighter monetary policy takes a toll on consumer spending and business investment.”

The growth forecast for China this year has been revised downward to 3.2 percent. This is the lowest growth rate in more than four decades, excluding the contraction at the start of the pandemic in 2020. Growth is predicted to rise to 4.4 percent in 2023, but this is still well below the target of the government for growth of above 5 percent.

Summarising the outlook in his foreword to the report, IMF economic counsellor, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, said: “The worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession.”

With higher energy prices, “winter 2022 will be challenging for Europe, but winter 2023 will likely be worse.”

Despite the worsening economic outlook, the IMF is insisting there must be no letup in the interest rate hikes by central banks, spearheaded by the US Federal Reserve, which are bringing financial turmoil and recession.

The rate hikes are being conducted under the banner of the fight against inflation, but the real aim is to induce an economic contraction—recession if necessary—to batter down wage demands as workers seek to redress the daily gouging of their living standards by the highest inflation in four decades.

Real wages must be driven down even lower even as the IMF has acknowledged that “nominal wage growth in 2021 did not fully keep up with price inflation,” meaning that real wages were flat or falling and, against a backdrop of even higher inflation, this pattern continued into 2022.

While no mention was made by the IMF of their crucial role, this situation is the result of the sabotage by the trade unions in all the major economies of the wages struggles of the working class. The number one concern of the IMF, as it is of all governments and central banks, is that the working class breaks out of these shackles.

This issue was placed front and centre in Gourinchas’ policy prescriptions in his foreword. “Central banks around the world,” he wrote, “are now laser-focused on restoring price stability, and the pace of tightening has accelerated sharply.”

There should be no let-up because “under-tightening would entrench further the inflation process, erode the credibility of central banks, and de-anchor inflation expectations.”

In the language of the economic institutions of capital, “entrenching” inflation and “de-anchoring” expectations are code words for a situation in which workers realise, from their daily experiences, that the cuts to the living standards will continue unabated and escalate their action.

Gourinchas warned that as economies start “slowing down and financial fragilities emerge, calls for a pivot toward looser monetary conditions will inevitably become louder.” While financial policy should ensure the markets remain stable, “central banks around the world need to keep a steady hand with monetary policy firmly focused on taming inflation.”

In other words, the class war launched against the working class through the high interest rate regime must continue and be deepened, with financial authorities taking the necessary action to protect the casualties that may result on the side of finance capital.

As the IMF revises down its growth forecasts, with “the worst yet to come,” predictions of recession have been coming thick and fast.

Earlier this week, in a major interview with the US business channel CNBC, JP Morgan chief Jamie Dimon said the US economy would likely enter a recession in the next six to nine months. He warned that this could lead to “panic” in credit markets, noting that depressed market conditions for initial public offerings on Wall Street and high-yield debt deals could soon spread.

There could be a further 20 percent fall in Wall Street’s S&P 500 index which would be more painful than the 20 percent decline so far this year.

S&P Global Market Intelligence has downgraded its forecast for growth and says the US economy will enter a recession in the last quarter of this year. It predicted the GDP would contract by 0.5 percent next year, well down from its previous forecast of 0.9 percent growth. S&P cited the “broad tightening of financial conditions” as the chief reason for the downward revision.

The Bank of America has said that higher interest rates will lead to the loss of tens of thousands of jobs a month starting from the beginning of next year. There would be a loss of about 175,000 jobs a month in the first quarter of next year and the job losses would continue throughout 2023.

Michael Gapen, head of US economics at the Bank of America, told CNN the premise was now for a “hard landing” with the unemployment rate climbing to 5 percent or 5.5 percent over the next year from its present level of 3.5 percent.

Signs of tensions over the global consequences of the US interest rate hikes were evident in remarks by Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, to a conference of diplomats earlier this week.

He said central banks were being forced to lift rates to prevent their currencies falling against the US dollar, likening it to German domination of monetary policy before the establishment of the euro single currency.

“Everybody is running to increase interest rates, this will bring us to a world recession,” he said.

US imposes crippling controls on export of advanced chips to China

Peter Symonds

In a move aimed at crippling China’s hi-tech sectors, the Biden administration announced last Friday sweeping measures effectively banning the export to Chinese corporations of advanced computer chips and the equipment needed in their manufacture.

President Joe Biden attends an event to support legislation that would encourage domestic manufacturing and strengthen supply chains for computer chips in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus, March 9, 2022, in Washington. [AP Photo/Patrick Semansky]

While imposed on the basis of “national security,” the export controls will impact the broad range of China’s commercial sectors that involve artificial intelligence (AI), high performance computing or supercomputers. 

The latest export bans underscore the determination of US imperialism to weaken and ultimately subordinate China, regarded in Washington as the chief threat to its global hegemony. China, currently the world’s second largest economy and predicted to overtake the US by the end of the decade, is no longer simply the manufacturing hub for low-cost goods. It threatens American dominance in hi-tech areas where AI and high-end computing are necessary.

Paul Triolo, a technology expert at consultancy Albright Stonebridge, told the Financial Times that the US actions were a “major watershed” in US-China relations. “The US has essentially declared war on China’s ability to advance the country’s use of high-performance computing for economic and security gains,” he said. 

The latest controls extend the measures imposed by the Trump administration on the Chinese hi-tech corporation, Huawei, that effectively ended its position as the leading manufacturer of mobile phones and networking equipment. Huawei’s founder reportedly told staff that the company’s survival was at stake. Now the Biden administration is seeking to wreak devastation throughout hi-tech sectors of the Chinese economy.

The controls are based on a “foreign direct product rule” that is very far-reaching in scope. It effectively bans any US or non-US company from supplying targeted Chinese entities with hardware or software whose supply chain contains any American technology. Some 30 Chinese corporations have been placed on a list of “unverified” companies, giving them 60 days to satisfy stringent US requirements. Failing that, they will be placed on the “entity list” that bars US companies from supplying them with technology without difficult-to-obtain US licences.

There has been an extraordinarily rapid change in chip manufacture, as measured by the size and thus the number of electronic components in the circuitry that can be etched onto a silicon wafer. The size, measured in nanometres (nm) or billionths of a metre, is approaching molecular dimensions. The manufacture of advanced chips requires highly sophisticated equipment. Overwhelmingly, the most advanced 3nm and 4nm chips are produced by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSCM), Intel and Samsung. 

By banning the export of the most advanced lithography equipment needed to etch chips, the US export controls seek not only to block access to the latest chips but to obstruct Chinese efforts to develop its own chip manufacturing capacity. 

The bans extend restrictions put in place in July requiring top US toolmakers—KLA Corp, Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc—to end exports of equipment capable of making 14nm or smaller chips to wholly Chinese-owned companies.

Jim Lewis, a technology analyst at the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), likened the US controls to those put in place at the height of the Cold War. He told Reuters: “This will set the Chinese back years. China isn’t going to give up on chipmaking ... but this will really slow them [down].”

The new controls also ban “US persons”—both citizens and companies—from providing direct or indirect support to Chinese companies involved in advanced chip manufacturing. “That is a bigger bombshell than stopping us from buying equipment,” a human resources executive at a Chinese semiconductor plant told the Financial Times. “We do have [US passport holders] in our company, in some of the most important positions,” she said.

The bans are likely to impact on non-US corporations. Washington has been pressuring the Dutch-based chip equipment supplier ASML to stop selling deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machinery to China that can be used to make chips as advanced as 5nm. The US also has been pressing Japan to bar the export of similar equipment. The controls will affect foreign companies operating chip manufacturing plants inside China, such as SK Hynix, one of South Korea’s two main memory chip producers.

At the same time, the measures will impact heavily on American corporations, as the Chinese semi-conductor market accounts for nearly a quarter of global demand. US equipment maker Applied Materials derived 33 percent of its sales from China last year and its peer Lam Research 31 percent. Intel is expected to be hard hit, because many of most advanced chips are used in Chinese supercomputers. 

China responded angrily to the new bans. “Out of the need to maintain its sci-tech hegemony, the US abuses export control measures to maliciously block and suppress Chinese companies,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told the media. “It will not only damage the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies, but also affect American companies’ interests.” 

An article in the Asia Times earlier this month suggested that Chinese companies were developing alternatives to work around already heavy US restrictions. It cited the case of one of China’s largest chipmakers, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, which it declared “recently shocked the US by announcing that it had produced 7nm chips” despite being denied access to the most advanced chipmaking equipment. 

The very fact that the US Commerce Department has announced the latest extensive export controls in order to block Chinese military development underscores the fact that the US is preparing for war. While seeking to undermine China’s technological advances, the US is engaged in shoring up its own supply chains in the event of conflict. 

The technology bans are on top of the huge trade tariffs imposed on Chinese goods by the Trump administration that have been maintained by Biden.

The US measures designed to undermine the Chinese economy go hand in hand with a US military build-up throughout the region, along with military provocations in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait close to the Chinese mainland. 

Last century, the US provoked a war in the Pacific with Japan by imposing an oil embargo in the 1930s aimed at strangling the Japanese economy. Likewise, the latest US export controls on computer chips point to the extreme tensions between the US and China and the advanced character of US war preparations.

IBM Fellowship Awards Program 2022

Application Deadline: 5th November 2022

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Fellowships vary by country/geographic area

About the Award: The IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Awards Program is an intensely competitive worldwide program, which honors exceptional Ph.D. students who have an interest in solving problems that are important to IBM and fundamental to innovation in many academic disciplines and areas of study. This includes pioneering work in: cognitive computing and augmented intelligence; quantum computing; blockchain; data-centric systems; advanced analytics; security; radical cloud innovation; next-generation silicon (and beyond); and brain-inspired devices and infrastructure.

IBM brings together hundreds of researchers who possess deep industry expertise across domains. Collaborating with clients in the field and in its global THINKLab network, IBM addresses some of the most challenging problems and creates disruptive technologies that hold the potential to transform companies, industries and the world at large. For more than seven decades, IBM has collaborated with clients and universities to work on multi-disciplinary projects that quickly lead to prototypes, as well as long-term projects that last for years. IBM has an environment that nurtures some of the most innovative and creative thinking in the world.

Eligible Fields of Study: The academic disciplines and areas of study include: computer science and engineering, electrical and mechanical engineering, physical sciences (including chemistry, material sciences, and physics), mathematical sciences (including big data analytics, operations research, and optimization), public sector and business sciences (including urban policy and analytics, social technologies, learning systems and cognitive computing), and Service Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME), and industry solutions (healthcare, life sciences, education, energy & environment, retail and financial services).

Focus areas include the following topics of particular interest:

• Hybrid Cloud
• Quantum Computing / Quantum Systems
• Artificial Intelligence
• Cloud / Open Source Technologies
• Security / Cyber Security
• Data Science
• Systems

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• Students must be nominated by a doctoral faculty member and enrolled full-time in a college or university Ph.D. program. The faculty member is encouraged to contact an IBM colleague prior to submitting the nomination to assure mutual interest.
• Students from Europe and Russia may be nominated in their first year of study in their doctoral program.
• Outside of Europe and Russia, students must have completed at least one year of study in their doctoral program at the time of their nomination.
• Students from U.S. embargoed countries are not eligible for the program.
• Award Recipients will be selected based on their overall potential for research excellence, the degree to which their technical interests align with those of IBM, and their academic progress to-date, as evidenced by publications and endorsements from their faculty advisor and department head.
• While students may accept other supplemental fellowships, to be eligible for the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award they may not accept a major award in addition to the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship.

Selection Criteria: 

• Preference will be given to students who have had an IBM internship or have closely collaborated with technical or services people from IBM.
• The IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Awards program also supports our long-standing commitment to workforce diversity. IBM values diversity in the workplace and encourages nominations of women, minorities and all who contribute to that diversity.

Value and Duration of Fellowship: 

• US country awards: $60,000 in award year one; $35,000 in award year two
• Other country awards: vary between $6,000-$25,000 each award year depending on country
• All IBM PhD Fellowship awardees will be mentored by an IBMer in order to collaborate on a research or technology project for the duration of the award period and are strongly encouraged to do an internship during the first or second year of their award.

How to Apply: Visit Fellowship Webpage (See Link below) to access the Nomination form.

Interested candidates are advised to read the eligibility requirements and FAQ before applying

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

600 Million Metric Tons of Plastic May Fill Oceans by 2036 If We Don’t Act Now

Tina Casey

Fossil fuel stakeholders have been seeking new revenue in the petrochemical industry in general, and plastics in particular.

As the private transportation sector shifts focus to batteries, biofuels, and green hydrogen, fossil fuel stakeholders have been seeking new avenues of revenue in the petrochemical industry in general, and in plastics in particular. That’s bad news for a world already swimming—literally—in plastic pollution. Product manufacturers and other upstream forces could reverse the petrochemical trend, but only if they—along with policymakers, voters, and consumers—continue to push for real change beyond the business-as-usual strategy of only advocating for post-consumer recycling.

Plastic, Plastic Everywhere

Some signs of change are beginning to emerge. Public awareness is growing over the plastic pollution crisis, including the area of microplastics. A study commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund in 2020 found 86 percent of consumers in the United States were willing to support measures to cut down on plastic pollution, such as single-use plastic bag bans and increased recycling. Private sector efforts to reduce plastic packaging are also beginning to take effect.

However, these trends won’t necessarily lead to a global slowdown in plastic production or use, let alone a reversal. The United States, for example, is both a leading producer of plastic and the largest source of plastic waste in the world. The OECD estimates that, under a “business-as-usual” scenario, plastic waste will triple globally by 2060. Petrochemical producers are also eyeing growing markets in Asia and Africa.

Even if some nations kick the plastic habit, the global benefit of their efforts could easily be offset by rising demand for plastics elsewhere in the world. In a 2016 report titled, “The New Plastics Economy,” the World Economic Forum (WEF) noted that global plastic production totaled 311 million metric tons in 2014, up from just 15 million metric tons in 1964. The WEF also anticipated that the total plastic production would double to more than 600 million metric tons by 2036.

One key driver that is fueling plastic production is the increased availability of low-cost natural gas in the U.S., which was a result of the George W. Bush administration’s successful efforts to lift Clean Water Act protections on shale gas operations, resulting in “billions of gallons of toxic frack fluid from being regulated as industrial waste,” according to Greenpeace USA. By 2018, the shale gas boom of the early 2000s was credited with stimulating a decade-long petrochemical buildout in the U.S. totaling 333 chemical industry projects since 2010, with a cumulative value of $202.4 billion. Of interest from a global perspective, almost 70 percent of the financing was from direct or indirect foreign sources.

Another driving force on the supply side is the shift from crude oil (petrol) to oil for plastic production, a trend fostered in part by a glut of ethane produced by the fracking boom. The decarbonization of the transportation sector does not necessarily slow down crude oil production to refineries. “As traditional demands for oil—vehicle fuels—are declining as the transport sector is increasingly electrified, the oil industry is seeing plastics as a key output that can make up for losses in other markets,” noted a November 2021 article in the Conversation. Consequently, refiners are becoming more dependent on the petrochemical market.

Steppingstone to Change: Recycling

The impacts of plastic production and waste are already manifold, from the local destruction and greenhouse gas emissions caused by oil and gas drilling and refinery operations to the ever-increasing load of plastic waste in the environment including microparticles in the air, water, soil, food supply, and ultimately in the human body.

Plastic is also a major threat to wildlife, and in particular, marine species, as so much plastic waste ends up in the world’s oceans. Unless we take concrete steps and “change how we produce, use and dispose of plastic, the amount of plastic waste entering aquatic ecosystems could nearly triple from 9-14 million… [metric tons] per year in 2016 to a projected 23-37 million… [metric tons] per year by 2040,” according to the United Nations Environment Program.

Fossil energy stakeholders have long touted a downstream solution to reduce plastic pollution—namely, recycling. The generations-long failure of this strategy is all too obvious: As the United Nations Environment Program points out, “Of the seven billion tonnes of plastic waste generated globally so far [since the 1950s], less than 10 per cent has been recycled.” Despite recent advances in recycling technology, the amount of recycled plastic in the production stream mostly remains pitifully low across the world. Nations with lax environmental regulations—mainly poor countries—have become destinations for mountains of mismanaged plastic waste, in addition to bearing the weight of pollution related to plastic processing.

Recycling is still important, but the resolution of the plastic crisis requires swift and practical action several steps upstream, at the seats of source and demand.

Seeds of Change

Absent the political will to turn off the plastic spigot at the source, the task is left to supply chain stakeholders and individual consumers.

That is a monumental task, but not an insurmountable one. The rapid evolution of the renewable energy industry illustrates how the global economy can pivot into new models when bottom-line benefits are at play, along with policy goals and support from voters, consumers, and industry stakeholders.

In terms of reducing upstream consumption of petrochemicals, consumer sentiment can influence supply chain decisions, as demonstrated by three emerging trends that can drive the market for more sustainable products and packaging.

One trend is the growing level of public awareness of the ocean plastic crisis. Images of plastic-entangled turtles and other sea creatures can spark an emotional charge that gets more attention from consumers than street litter and landfills. The tourism, hospitality, and fishing industries are also among other stakeholders that have a direct interest in driving public awareness of ocean plastic.

In a related development, the public awareness factor has rippled into the activist investor movement, which is beginning to focus attention on the financial chain behind the petrochemical industry. In 2020 the organization Portfolio.earth, for example, launched a campaign on the role of banks in financing petrochemical operations.

The second trend that is gaining momentum is related to new recycling technology that enables manufacturers to replace virgin plastics with waste harvested from the ocean. However, this circular economy model must be implemented from cradle to grave and back again in order to prevent waste from ending up in the ocean, regardless of its content.

In a similar problem-solving vein, new technology for recycling carbon gas can provide manufacturers with new opportunities to build customer loyalty through climate action. The company LanzaTech provides a good example of growth in the area of recycling carbon. The company’s proprietary microbes are engineered to digest industrial waste gases or biogas. The process yields chemical building blocks for plastics as well as fuels. Other firms in this area are also harvesting ambient carbon from the air to produce plastics and synthetic fabrics, among other materials.

A third trend is the emergence of new technology that enables manufacturers to incorporate more recycled plastic into their supply chains overall. In the past, bottles and other products made from recycled plastics failed to meet durability expectations. Now manufacturers are beginning to choose from a new generation of recycled plastics that perform as well as, or better than, their virgin counterparts.

The problem is that all of these trends are only just starting to emerge as significant forces for change. In the meantime, fossil energy stakeholders have no meaningful incentive to pivot toward supporting a transition out of petrochemicals, let alone a rapid one.

In fact, for some legacy stakeholders, the renewable energy field appears to be an exercise in greenwashing. Shell is one example of an energy company that touts its wind and solar interests while expanding its petrochemical activities. An even more egregious example is ExxonMobil, which continues to publicize its long-running pursuit of algae biofuel, an area that is still years away from commercial development.

Until policymakers, voters, and consumers exercise their muscle to reduce plastic pollution at the source, the petrochemical industry will continue feeding the global plastic dependence regardless of the consequences for public health and planetary well-being.

Shipwrecks of refugees boats off Greek islands kill at least 23, many people still missing

John Vassilopoulos

Two separate shipwrecks of boats carrying refugees across the Aegean occurred within hours of each other last Thursday, resulted in at least 23 deaths.

Bodies of migrants are seen next to floating debris after a sailboat carrying migrants smashed into rocks and sank off the island of Kythira, southern Greece, October 6, 2022. Residents of Kythira pulled shipwrecked migrants to safety up steep cliffs in dramatic rescues after two boats sank in Greek waters, leaving at least 23 people dead and many still missing. [AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis]

The latest mass fatalities of refugees off Greek islands happened just days after at least 86 people drowned when a boat carrying refugees from Lebanon sank, on September 24, off the coast of Tartus, Syria.

The first shipwreck occurred on the eastern side of the island of Lesbos, off the coast of Turkey, when a dinghy carrying around 40 people capsized due to heavy winds, resulting in 18 deaths—16 young women, one adult male and one 15-year-old boy. Most of those on the boat were reportedly of African descent, likely from Somalia. 15 of the survivors had swum to the surface and were discovered in the surrounding mountains by members of the UN’s High Commission for Refugees, who handed them over to the authorities. Another 10 survivors were discovered trapped on rocks underneath a military outpost on the coast.

The second shipwreck occurred a few hours earlier when winds between 90 and 100 kilometres per hour forced a sailboat carrying 95 refugees to crash onto rocks east of Kythira’s main port of Diakofti. The island is located off the coast of the Peloponnese in southern Greece.

The boat sank five minutes after impact with a coastguard spokesman saying it was “completely destroyed”. The refugees, including 18 children, were mainly from Afghanistan with some from Iran and Iraq. The boat set sail two days prior from Turkey and was on route to southern Italy. The crash occurred 20 minutes after people on the boat had called 112, the Europe-wide emergency number. Only seven bodies were recovered and eight people are still missing.

The terrible plight facing refugees fleeing war-torn and poverty-stricken homelands were visible in the harrowing scenes following the Kythira shipwreck. Video footage published by Kythira News showed desperate survivors at the bottom of the steep cliff, hanging on for their lives in windy conditions with waves crashing against them, waiting to try to climb up a rope to be pulled to safety.

Refugee shipwreck at Diakofti - Coast Guard official at the edge of the cliff is rescuing castaways

That the fatalities were not higher was down to the heroism of locals who descended to the cliff edge to help with rescue efforts.

Speaking to The Press Project, one of the rescuers said, “More than 50 locals promptly descended to the area of the shipwreck to help with blankets, dry clothes and various emergency supplies. There is a rescue team on the island that was mobilised immediately and helped co-ordinate locals to participate in the rescue effort. 10 people in a row used ropes to pull up one by one from the cave [at the bottom of the cliff] the 80 people they managed to save. It was impossible for helicopters and coast guard vessels to approach the rocky shore in the dark and with the waves coming from the north.”

Another clip from the Hellenic Coastguard, taken from a wider angle, showed the great peril the refugees were in, stranded at the bottom of a massive cliff face.

A short clip from the Hellenic Coastguard, taken from a wider angle, showing the refugees stranded at the bottom of the steep cliff face

In a tweet Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis hypocritically expressed his “sorrow at the tragic loss of human lives” and blamed human traffickers “exploiting innocent desperate people.” Coast guard officials, speaking to conservative daily Kathimerini wrote that while human traffickers in the past would not sail when weather conditions were bad they now “send people to their deaths in order to earn cash fast.”

The reality is that refugees crossing into Europe are taking ever greater risks to avoid detection by the authorities due to Greece’s brutal pushbacks policy—the forcing of refugees back across the border into Turkey.

Shortly after the two tragedies occurred, prominent Greek activist Iasonas Apostolopoulos who leads search and rescue operations of refugees in the Aegean and the Mediterranean tweeted, “In Lesbos they set forth with wind strength at 7 on the Beaufort Scale so that they were not detected by the Greek Coast Guard and pushed back. In Kythira they were trying to get to Italy directly from Turkey (100 times more difficult) for the same reason.”

Illegal under international law, the pushback policy is routinely carried out by the Greek government as part of the EU’s Fortress Europe policy of denying the right of desperate refugees  to seek asylum within the EU. A recent investigation revealed that the Greek authorities even force desperate asylum seekers to participate in the pushbacks in return for being allowed transit through Greece into Europe. As for the traffickers, Greek police routinely work with them when carrying out their pushback operations.

According to figures compiled by Aegean Boat Report, pushbacks have increased substantially in the last two years. In 2021, 632 boats were pushed back into Turkey—nearly double the number of boats the year before. This has already been surpassed in 2022 with 697 boats pushed back so far this year.

This policy has led to a rise in fatalities as refugees take greater risks to cross dangerous seas in ramshackle vessels. According to the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) 2,062 people died or went missing while trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2021, up from 1,449 the year before. By the end of September this year, 1,522 people were reported dead or missing.

Heinous crimes against refugees by the authorities are commonplace. On October 4, The Press Project reported, “For a whole month, 8 refugees were detained illegally and arbitrarily in the detention facilities of Samos Police Station, without accommodation, hygiene and clothing. Among the 8, a young refugee, Madi, who for 26 days remained detained in a cell fenced with bars - similar to a cage - which was located inside the cell where the 7 men were staying. The refugees made the ‘mistake’ of entering from Evros and coming voluntarily in order to register and apply for international protection at the Samos Police Station. The result was their illegal detention in deplorable conditions, despite the fact that 46 million euros have been invested in Samos to create the Closed Controlled Facility, which serves this purpose.”

Apart from a brief press release from the border agency Frontex expressing the agency’s “deepest condolences” regarding the Lesbos shipwreck, there has not been a single statement from within the EU to even acknowledge the tragedy. Recent reports have revealed that Frontex routinely takes part in Greece’s pushback operations.

In addition to shifting the blame onto traffickers the Greek government has used the tragedy to ramp up sabre-rattling against Turkey amid rising geopolitical tensions as result of the ongoing war in Ukraine. In a tweet on October 8 Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said, “Urgent call to Turkey to take immediate action to prevent all irregular departures due to harsh weather conditions…. EU must act.”

This follows a tweet Mitarachi posted one day before the tragedies occurred of video purportedly showing “footage from Turkish coastguard violently pushing forward migrants to Greece, in violation of international law and the EU joint statement.” Mitarachi’s claim unraveled after Aegean Boat Report replied, “This video is over 3 years old, and you know it, deliberately misleading people. This video do not show a “push forward” as you say, it shows Turkish coast guard trying to violently stop a boat from crossing towards Greece, this is what EU paid them to do under the EU-Turkey deal”.

Whatever their regional rivalries, the Greek and Turkish elites remain united in enforcing the EU’s Fortress Europe policy.

The lies and hypocrisy of Greece’s New Democracy government were more than matched by the pseudo-left Syriza, the main opposition party in parliament. Following the tragedies, a joint statement by Syriza MPs called on Turkey “to stop weaponizing refugees, which it continues to do while the EU leadership tolerates this, and to respect its obligation according to international rules.”

The statement called “on the Greek government to finally abandon the catastrophic role of the jailor of Europe, and well as Europe’s leadership to stop pretending that they don’t see dead people in the Mediterranean and take the initiative for a just asylum and migration policy.”

If anyone knows anything about being the jailor of Europe it is Syriza, which boasts of its anti-immigration record. In power between 2015 and 2019, Syriza set up camps to intern refugees fleeing hardship and persecution, at the behest of the EU. The most notorious was on Moria, on Lesbos, dubbed “the worst refugee camp on Earth” before it burned down in September 2020.

Bulgaria elections offer no way out of the political crisis

Andrei Tudora

The Bulgarian elections took place on October 2, the fourth round of elections held in the Eastern European country this year. The previous government, led by the liberal We Continue the Change party (PP) of Prime minister Kiril Petkov, ruled the country for about 8 months, in a coalition that included the “post-Stalinist” Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP). The ruling coalition collapsed in a no-confidence vote held in June.

Former Bulgaria Prime Minister Boyko Borissov leaves, after a press conference in Sofia, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022. [AP Photo/Valentina Petrova]

On an official voter turnout of just 39 percent, the strongest party was the Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB), led by former PM Boyko Borissov, with 25 percent of the vote. The PP lost 5 percent compared to the previous November elections, with 20 percent of the vote. The party will lose 24 seats in Parliament and will have 53 seats to GERB’s 67.

The third party was the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), which generally draws votes from Bulgaria’s Turkish minority, with 13 percent. The fascist VAZ party took 10 percent and will have 27 seats in parliament, the largest far-right presence since Ataka won 6 seats in 2017. At the time, the fascists were invited into the Government by Borissov. The Socialist Party continues to lose votes and became Bulgaria’s fourth-largest party with 9 percent of the vote.

The other parties have announced their reluctance to form a coalition with the widely despised Borissov, who was ousted from power by months-long protests in 2020 and 2021, and the parliamentary set-up is dominated by a deep crisis.

Immense pressures are being brought upon Bulgarian society. Bulgaria is the poorest country in the EU, with over 20 percent of the population living below the official poverty line and a further 32% of the population at risk of poverty and social exclusion according to Eurostat data. The global prices hikes and spiraling inflation as well as the resurgence of workers’ struggles internationally, are radicalizing workers in Bulgaria.

Borissov, the winner of Sunday’s poll, was ousted from power twice in the last decade by mass protests over energy protests.

Bulgaria was also brutally hit by the ongoing Covid pandemic. Having renounced public health measures and seen their health care systems collapse, Eastern European countries had one of the highest per capita death rates in the world. Bulgaria registered an official death toll of 37,718, for a population of around 7 million people.

An article in Nature in April by Antoni Rangachev, Georgi K. Marinov & Mladen Mladenov underlined the excess deaths in the country, particularly in the working age population. In total, they calculate the excess deaths in the 40-64 population group at 11,986.

Above all, Bulgaria is caught up in the geopolitical maelstrom triggered by the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. Borissov’s government worked with the EU to block the South Stream pipeline linking Russia with the Balkans and Central Europe via the Black Sea, bypassing Ukraine.

The Greece-Bulgarian pipeline was unveiled with much fanfare on October 1 and will bring gas from Azerbaijan to Bulgaria. The pipeline will shore up gas imports in Bulgaria, which was almost entirely dependent on Russian gas. Present at the opening in Sofia was Azeri president Ilham Aliyev, who recently was emboldened to break a cease fire with Armenia and restart a war in the Caucasus.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the restoration of capitalism and mounting NATO-Russian wars in recent decades have driven a resurgence of wars across the region.

The Bulgarian bourgeoisie is increasingly hostile and provocative against neighboring North Macedonia. North Macedonia’s territory has historically been a target of Bulgarian expansionism and regional ambitions. On this, the Bulgarian ruling elites are united, regardless of formal political association. It was Borisov’s government that first blocked EU-North Macedonia negotiations, in order to force concessions from the Macedonians over language and “national identity”.

President Radev, close to the BSP and considered an enemy of Borisov, maintained pressure on Macedonia, with the support of the PP government.

In April, Bulgarian Premier Peskov and Vice President Iliana Iotova unveiled a “Bulgarian cultural club” in the North Macedonian town of Bitola, named after the infamous fascist collaborator Vancho Mihailov.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Mihailov led the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), a terrorist organization in the service of the Bulgarian state. A determined anti-communist, Mihailov became an ally of Mussolini and the fascist Ustase movement. The IMRO participated in the Bulgarian occupation of Macedonia and parts of Greece, as well as the Holocaust in these regions. Mihailov would flee to Italy and become a collaborator of the CIA against Yugoslavia.

After the restoration of capitalism and similar to the fate of fascist leaders in other countries, the Bulgarian bourgeoisie would rehabilitate Mihailov and the IMRO, as it sought to resume its predatory interests in the region.

Bulgaria’s irredentist ambitions are not only tolerated but encouraged by the EU, giving the lie to the imperialist fantasy that the EU is a harmonious association of nations. To sever Bulgaria’s links to Russia, it has allowed the Bulgarian elites to continue blackmailing Macedonia.

Germany is also intent to bring Macedonia firmly into its economic sphere by completing its EU accession, in order to counter Russian and Chinese investment and influence in the country.

The so-called “French proposal” pushed by the EU powers this summer enshrined Bulgarian ambitions on the future course of the Macedonian accession to the EU. The document provoked an intense crisis in both countries. It led directly to the downfall of the PP government in Bulgaria, when the right-wing There is Such a People party left the coalition because the document offered what they viewed as insufficient concessions. The “French proposal” was passed through the Bulgarian parliament with broad support from all political factions.

In North Macedonia, the plan was passed through parliament by the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia government. There were widespread, often violent street protests throughout the summer. These protests were organized and led by the far right and ultranationalist forces, led by the VMRO-DPMNE party. The VMRO was founded in 1990, in explicit opposition to the country’s founding by the mass Yugoslav partisan armies in December 1945. Initially cultivating ties to Bulgaria, the party later distanced itself from Sofia.

These forces represent a faction of the bourgeoisie that opposes Bulgarians ambitions in order to maintain the stranglehold over “their own” working class and carve their own deals with the imperialist powers. The participation of the Levica party in these protests only underscores the bankruptcy of this “left populist” party hailed by pseudo-left groups in the region.

A political confrontation is being prepared between the Bulgarian workers and this corrupt political establishment. The main political responsibility for this lies with the BSP and the pseudo left groups that gravitate around it.

The legacy of Stalinism has been a tragic one in Bulgaria as in the rest of Eastern Europe. The BSP, having participated in capitalist restoration in Bulgaria, has seen its vote collapse since the 2017 elections, when it took 26 percent of votes. It opposed Covid measures, and later it joined forces with the PP to cut ties with Russia and back the NATO war drive.

In August, the “Progress” platform was initiated in order to put some organizational distance between the pseudo-left milieu and the BSP. Calling Bulgaria a “critical, constructive and full partner in European and Euro Atlantic structures”, Progress’ stated aim was to “push the BSP and other political forces to take a course towards a real modern left.', in the words of publicist Stanislav Dodov.