US Government TechWomen Program 2023

Application Deadline: 6th January 2023 09:00AM PDT (GMT-07:00)

Eligible Countries: Be citizens and permanent residents of Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Palestinian Territories, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan or Zimbabwe at the time of application and while participating in the program.

To be taken at (country): USA

Eligible Field of Study: Any STEM fields

About the US Government TechWomen Program: From the moment the Emerging Leaders arrive, they are immersed in the innovative, constantly evolving culture of Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. Emerging Leaders work closely with their Professional Mentors to design meaningful projects while exploring the San Francisco Bay Area with their Cultural Mentor and fellow program participants.

US Government TechWomen Emerging Leaders will:

• Challenge themselves with new questions and concepts
• Collaborate with like-minded women in their fields on an innovative project
• Network with influential industry leaders
• Discover their own innovative leadership style
• Create meaningful friendships with women from all over the world
• Explore the diverse communities of the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, D.C.
• Inspire the next generation of women and girls in their home countries

Type: Training, Fellowship

Eligibility: Applicants for US Government Techwomen Program must;

• Be women with, at minimum, two years full-time professional experience in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. Please note that internships and other unpaid work experience does not count toward the two-year professional experience requirement.
• Have, at minimum, a bachelor’s degree/four-year university degree or equivalent.
• Be proficient in written and spoken English.
• Be citizens and permanent residents of Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Palestinian Territories, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan or Zimbabwe at the time of application and while participating in the program.
• Be eligible to obtain a U.S. J-1 exchange visitor visa.
• Not have applied for an immigrant visa to the United States (other than the Diversity Immigrant Visa, also known as the “visa lottery”) in the past five years.
• Not hold U.S. citizenship or be a U.S. legal permanent resident.

Preference will be given to applicants who

• Demonstrate themselves as emerging leaders in their chosen professional track through their work experience, volunteer experience, community activities and education.
• Are committed to return to their home countries to share what they have learned and mentor women and girls.
• Have limited or no prior experience in the United States.
• Have a proven record of voluntary or public service in their communities.
• Have a demonstrated track record of entrepreneurialism and commitment to innovation.
• Demonstrate a willingness to participate in exchange programs, welcome opportunities for mentoring and new partnership development, and exhibit confidence and maturity.

US Government TechWomen encourages people with diverse backgrounds and skills to apply, including individuals with disabilities.

Selection: TechWomen participants are selected based on the eligibility requirements above. Applications are reviewed by independent selection committees composed of industry leaders and regional experts. Semifinalists may be interviewed by United States Embassy personnel in their country of permanent residence.

Number of Awardees: 100 women

Value of US Government TechWomen Program: International travel, housing, meals and incidentals, local transportation and transportation to official TechWomen events are covered by the TechWomen program. Participants are responsible for the cost of any non-program activities in which they wish to partake, such as independent sightseeing and non-program-related travel.

Duration of US Government TechWomen Program: The 2023 TechWomen program will occur over five weeks from September 2023 – October 2023. Due to the fast-paced nature of the program, arrival and departure dates are not flexible.

How to Apply for US Government TechWomen Program: CLICK HERE TO APPLY

• Interested TechWomen participants should apply based on the application requirements in link below.

Visit Programme Webpage for details

UK autumn budget means biggest fall in living standards for 70 years

Robert Stevens

Research on last week’s Conservative government’s Autumn Statement budget shows that it will lead to a devastating fall in workers’ living standards.

The Financial Times wrote that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s “£55bn plan for fiscal tightening” represented “the biggest drop in living standards for 70 years.”

The Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt leaves 11 Downing Street on his way to deliver his Autumn Statement to parliament. [Photo by HM Treasury / CC BY-ND 2.0]

The Treasury’s own analysis acknowledged that the budget resulted in the majority of households (around 55 percent) being left worse off. The working class, already largely pauperised after over a decade of austerity, are hardest hit.

According to the Resolution Foundation (RF), wages will continue to stagnate through to 2027, meaning almost 20 years of falling pay. The RF assessed, “The OBR’s [Office for Budget Responsibility] weaker forecast for pay means that real wages are now not expected to return to their 2008 level until 2027. Had wages instead continued to grow at their pre-crisis rate during this unprecedented 19-year pay downturn, they would be £292 a week – or £15,000 a year – higher.”

It notes that “the focus on ‘stealthy’ tax threshold freezes to raise revenue, rather than increases in tax rates, means that the overall effect of the government’s personal tax rises this parliament is to squeeze not just higher-income households, but those on middle-incomes too. A typical household faces a permanent 3.7 percent income hit from these measures – the same as the top fifth of households – and bigger than the 3 percent income hit that the very top twentieth of households will face.”

Surging energy costs will rise again next April by an average of £500 a year, hitting the poorest families hardest. The RF finds that government cost of living energy support will “cover less than a third of rising bills next year. The end of universal support and the scaling back of the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) means that households will be far more exposed to rising energy bills next year. For the typical household, the new support will offset just 30 percent of the rise in energy bills between 2021-22 and 2023-24, rising to 48 percent of the rise for the poorest fifth of households… Even after the new EPG and Cost of Living Payments, around one-in-eight families (3.3 million in total) will be paying over £2,000 more next year than they were in 2021-22.”

Institute for Fiscal Studies director Paul Johnson said, “Surging global energy prices have made the UK a poorer country. The result is an OBR forecast that the next two years will see the biggest fall in household incomes in generations.”

Speaking about the OBR’s report, he said, “The next few years look grim in terms of living standards, the biggest reduction in household incomes, possibly on record and certainly within recent generations, a 7 percent cut over the next two years.”

The IFS commented that the “Office for Budget Responsibility forecast suggests that this is going from bad to worse. This year we are set to see the largest fall in real household disposable income per head (4.3%) since the late 1940s; next year, we are set to see the second-largest fall (2.8%). 

“Modest growth is expected to return after that, but even by 2027-28 we are not expected to have had a single year of growth higher than the pre-2008 average since 2015-16. Average household income per head is due to be the same in 2027-28 as it was in 2018-19, and 31% below where it would have been if the pre-2008 trend had continued.”

Analysing real household disposable income per person, as “the broadest measure of living standards accounting for wage growth, price changes and the impact of the tax and benefits system”, the New Statesman said “the first consecutive annual falls” since “the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis” would “essentially wipe out all of the income gains of the previous eight years in just 24 months. This is a catastrophic forecast.”

It added, “In effect, the OBR expects the recession to be very different to the one that accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. In that instance the fall in GDP was rapid and extremely deep but the bounce back was also, at least initially, swift.

“More significantly, despite the biggest fall in economic output in at least a century, household incomes were relatively well protected by the furlough scheme, grants for the self-employed and higher Universal Credit payments. This time around the recession is expected to be shallower but to last much longer with a far slower recovery.”

Even as Hunt trumpeted the Tories’ “compassion” in increasing state pensions, benefits and tax credits by 10.1 percent (September’s CPI inflation level), this will not come into effect until next April. Even the lower measure of inflation (CPI) had already hit 11.1 the day before the budget. The more accurate RPI measure shot up at an even faster rate to 14.2 percent.

The IFS commented, “[O]ne must remember the backdrop for this rather ad hoc form of additional support for benefit recipients: the actual rates of ‘ordinary’ benefits (i.e. excluding the one-off grants) will, despite the 10.1% increase confirmed for April 2023, remain lower in real terms than prior to the current spike in inflation until at least April 2024.”

Research analysed by the University of Bristol and published in July by the abrdn Financial Fairness Trust, found, “One-in-six UK households (4.4 million) are now in ‘serious financial difficulties’, compared to one-in-ten (2.8 million) in October 2021 – an additional 1.6 million households. This is worse than any point during the pandemic. Of those 4.4 million in serious financial difficulties, to make ends meet 71% have reduced the quality of food they eat, 36% have sold or pawned possessions and 27% have cancelled or not renewed insurance.”

The research, based on monitoring the personal finances of households since the start of the pandemica sample of around 6,000 people—found that “31% had reduced the number of showers/baths taken; 60% had avoided turning on the heating; 33% had reduced use of the cooker/oven; 24% had heated only part of their home.”

Striking Royal Mail workers in Bournemouth, August 26, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

The trade unions bear the main responsibility for the devastating situation facing the working class. For decades, they have partnered with successive Tory and Labour governments and the corporations to hold down wages and attack working conditions.

Annual RPI inflation in the July-September period, the months prior to Hunt’s budget, stood at 12.4 percent. Annual regular “pay growth” for the same period was 5.7 percent, meaning a 6.7 percent real terms fall. In the public sector, pay growth was 2.2 percent, meaning a 10.2 percent fall. With RPI rising another almost 2 percent (14.2 percent) to October these calamitous falls in workers’ wages, overseen by the unions, are even more catastrophic.

Even as they oversee deals cutting workers’ pay in real-terms, the union leaders, backed by their local functionaries and pseudo-left apologists, spin these as “victories” that match inflation or are even inflation “busting”. The facts that workers are now two thirds through a period of wage restraint in which they will have lost £15,000 in pay comprehensively refutes all these lies. The working class cannot afford the union bureaucracy and its “victories”.

Lebanon faces first cholera outbreak in decades

Jean Shaoul

Lebanese and international officials have reported that the death toll from the country’s cholera outbreak—its first in three decades—has reached 18. There have been over 1,400 confirmed cases since the first was recorded on October 5.

Cholera, a disease that is relatively simple to treat with oral or intravenous hydration and antibiotics, has long been associated with the world’s poorest countries where access to clean water and basic sanitation is limited.

That an outbreak is taking place in 2022 in Lebanon, once a relatively affluent country, is due to the desperate poverty created by decades of imperialist wars in the Middle East, Washington’s proxy war for regime change in neighbouring Syria, the “let it rip” pandemic policies of the world’s capitalist governments, the plundering of the country’s resources by Lebanon’s corrupt financial elite, the 2020 Port of Beirut blast, the economic impact of the US/NATO war on Russia in Ukraine, and profiteering by the world’s pharmaceutical industry.

The result has been a massive 60 percent reduction in Lebanon’s economy, with GDP falling from about $55 billion in 2018 to an estimated $20.5 billion in 2021, the kind of contraction usually associated with wars, according to the World Bank.

A Syrian child receives the Cholera vaccine at a Syrian refugee camp in Bhanine village, in the North Lebanon province, Lebanon, Saturday, November 12, 2022. Lebanon and many neighboring countries are facing an outbreak of cases. [AP Photo/Bilal Hussein]

Cholera, a water-borne intestinal disease, spreads by the ingestion of water or food that has been contaminated by the waste of infected people. It causes uncontrollable diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to death within hours from dehydration if untreated. As 75 percent of those who contract cholera exhibit no symptoms, the real number of those infected in Lebanon could well be more than 5,000.

The disease was first identified in Lebanon’s rural areas, in the northern districts bordering Syria. Its presence was “probably due to population movements,” according to the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) technical team in Lebanon, Alissar Rady. It has spread rapidly throughout all eight governorates and 18 out of 26 districts.

Since late August more than 35,000 suspected cases of cholera and 92 deaths have been reported across Syria, where the WHO believes the outbreak probably started. Poverty levels have soared since the start of the war in 2011 that has devastated the country’s physical, economic and agricultural infrastructure. Syria’s cholera outbreak comes during the country’s worst drought in decades. Raw sewage is being pumped into the Euphrates River on which hundreds of thousands of people depend.

The WHO explains that Syria’s cases are linked to an outbreak that began in Afghanistan in June before spreading to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon.

“Most cholera cases in Lebanon have been in the camps, among the roughly one million Syrians who have taken refuge over the past decade from the conflict in their homeland,” Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said.

Children are at greater risk of developing severe cases, particularly if they are malnourished. In Lebanon, a quarter of all cholera cases have been reported among children between 0 and 4 years of age, according to the most recent UNICEF Lebanon situation report.

The country’s economic crisis has left broad swathes of the country subject to repeated and long electricity shutoffs. Unable to secure fuel, many of its main water treatment plants cannot pump water to households, with the South Lebanon Water Establishment recently announcing it would have to shut down services, leaving thousands without running water. Raw sewage is therefore being pumped into the rivers.

Adding to the crisis is the acute shortage of vaccines globally. The Indian subsidiary of French company Sanofi responsible for producing one of only two oral cholera vaccines available for use in humanitarian emergencies is set to halt production at the end of this year, just as the world faces an “unprecedented” series of deadly outbreaks.

This is despite repeated appeals from the WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Last month he warned that the climate crisis had “turbocharged” the spread of the disease as extreme weather events such as floods, cyclones and droughts reduce people’s access to clean water. He pointed out that the average fatality rate from the disease this year was almost three times the rate of the previous five years.

The WHO has responded by suspending two-dose vaccination to enable the available doses to be used more widely. Lebanon only took delivery of its first vaccines—13,000 donated by France—at the beginning of this month. Another 600,000 doses have been provided by the WHO for those most at risk, including frontline workers, prisoners, refugees, and their host communities.

Lebanon’s cholera outbreak takes place amid widespread poverty, collapsing public services and growing community tensions, with the global food and fuel crisis exacerbating the already dire situation. Some 80 percent of the country’s 6.8 million population are living below the poverty line. Lebanon’s currency has lost 95 percent of its value, driving up prices and demolishing purchasing power. Food prices have jumped 500 percent in the last year due to galloping inflation.

Access to basic goods, including food, water, healthcare (with hospitals only accepting payment in US dollars), education and transportation is in jeopardy. Four out of 10 school-aged migrants and Syrian refugees are out of education, while 14 percent of Lebanese children dropped out during 2020-2021. As fuel prices have soared with the ending of government subsidies in September, the cost of a ride in a shared taxi, the main form of public transport, has rocketed from 2,000 pounds pre-crisis to 50,000.

Emigration is at its highest level since the civil war of 1975 to 1989. According to a 2021 Gallup poll, a record 63 percent of people surveyed wanted to leave permanently, up from 26 percent before the crisis. Among those leaving are doctors, with the WHO reporting that most hospitals are operating at 50 percent capacity. Around 40 percent of doctors, mostly specialists, and 30 percent of nurses have permanently emigrated or are working part-time abroad.

Lebanon’s banks, owned by wealthy families that have lent to the state that defaulted on its hard currency debt in 2020, have frozen ordinary depositors out of their dollar accounts. They have severely limited all withdrawals based on exchange rates that wipe out up to 95 percent of their value. There has been a spate of well-publicized bank heists as desperate customers seek to withdraw their cash to pay for much-needed healthcare treatment for their loved ones.

All of this has been compounded by Lebanon’s long-running political crisis. The 89-year-old President Michel Aoun retired at the end of his six-year term of office without the warring factions in the country’s parliament—beholden to various regional paymasters in the Gulf and Iran—having agreed a successor. The president signs bills into law and appoints new prime ministers. Under the country’s sectarian constitution, the position must be held by a Christian.

On four separate occasions, the two rival Christian factions were unable to secure sufficient support for their presidential candidate, leaving Lebanon governed by a caretaker cabinet with limited powers—led by the country’s richest man Najib Mikati, who has been unable to form a government since his nomination to the post last May. 

Some 1.5 million Syrian refugees are living in Lebanon in appalling, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in informal settlements and collective shelters without legal rights.

The government has announced a “voluntary” repatriation scheme, even as it incites discrimination against refugees. It follows a similar scheme in 2018 when Lebanon repatriated around 400,000 refugees. Few in the run-down camps in central Bekaa, eastern Lebanon, said they would sign up. Amnesty International’s Syria researcher Diana Semaan said simply, “Syria is not safe for returns,” pointing out that past returnees had been subject to rights violations including detention, torture, rape and forced disappearance.

Successful launch of Artemis I: In the footsteps of Apollo, but no further

Bryan Dyne

The Artemis I mission launched from the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, November 16 at 1:47 a.m. Eastern Time, marking the first successful test of NASA’s Space Launch System. The mission’s goal is to send the main payload, an uncrewed Orion spacecraft, into orbit around the Moon and then safely return to Earth’s surface. The mission is slated to last for 26 days and is serving as a test flight for future crewed missions that will possibly once again land humans on the surface of the Moon.

There has been a great deal of of official fanfare surrounding the launch promoting various reactionary sentiments. Vice President Kamala Harris voiced American nationalism, asserting “America is charting a path back to the Moon.” President Biden placed identity politics front and center, declaring, “This ship will enable the first woman and the first person of color to set foot on the lunar surface.” And NASA Administrator Bill Nelson muddled science and religion, claiming that Artemis will “explore the heavens.”

Above all, there has been an attempt to equate Artemis to the Apollo missions. The New York Times, for example, wrote that the launch was “evoking the bygone Apollo era.” The Washington Post claimed that the launch was a “major milestone” for NASA and appropriated the comment of Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan, who said as he left the lunar surface near the end of Apollo 17’s mission in 1972, “we shall return.”

This first high-resolution image, taken on the first day of the Artemis I mission, was captured by a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar arrays. The spacecraft was 57,000 miles from Earth when the image was captured, and continues to distance itself from planet Earth as it approaches the Moon and distant retrograde orbit. [Photo: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Office of Communications]

From a scientific standpoint, Artemis is at best retracing Apollo, not going beyond it. While the Space Launch System (SLS) is currently the most powerful rocket flying, it still falls short of the thrust provided by the Soviet Union’s Energia super-heavy lift launch vehicle, which had a short-lived career in the 1980s, and the Saturn V, which was used for nine crewed flights to orbit and land on the Moon, and to launch the space station Skylab.

In particular, while the Saturn V was able to lift its payload to the Moon and enter orbit in just a few days, the SLS only has enough thrust to just barely get the Orion spacecraft to the point where the Moon’s gravity is stronger than Earth’s, at which point the Moon’s gravity is used to pull the spacecraft into orbit. An astronomer who spoke to the WSWS said, “It’s like coasting to the top of a hill with barely any extra to get over it, then coasting down slightly into the hollow beyond.”

The result is that while the Apollo missions reached the Moon in two days, it will take the Orion six days to fly by the Moon and another four to actually enter orbit. And while there is certainly a scientific argument for lowering the energy requirement to enter lunar orbit, the reality is that the SLS is the cheapest rocket that NASA was able to produce to return to the Moon, not necessarily the most effective one.

Of course, certain advancements have been made. The Orion spacecraft is powered by solar panels instead of batteries, so missions can extend theoretically for months. It is also much larger than the command and service modules of the Apollo era, allowing six astronauts to travel comfortably aboard instead of three cramped together. And several modern advances in computing have been incorporated to make the spacecraft overall more capable of extended spaceflight.

Overall, however, Artemis is largely a rehash of Apollo. It is launched using what is essentially a smaller Saturn V with solid rocket boosters attached, along with re-used main engines from decommissioned space shuttles to further cut development costs. None of the myriad ideas to take spaceflight beyond 1960s rocketry that were developed over many decades have been considered, much less used, nor is there any significant funding for moving past what is ultimately a very expensive and inefficient endeavor. 

There are, moreover, geostrategic aspects of Artemis that are essentially the same as those of Apollo. It should not be forgotten that there might not have been a US space program if the Soviet Union had not launched Sputnik in 1957, forcing President Eisenhower to respond with the launch of Explorer 1 three months later. And President Kennedy only announced a manned mission to the Moon after a series of further successes and firsts by the USSR. There was a very real need to ensure that the image of American capitalism was not undermined by the ongoing triumphs of the workers state, degenerated as it was, that emerged from the 1917 October Revolution.

Today, the US return to space is also driven by geopolitical conflict, this time in response to efforts by China to develop its own space exploration program, even as the American ruling elite tries to maintain its hegemonic world position. There have been attempts since the 1990s to prevent technical information related to space flight from reaching either the Chinese government or Chinese corporations. The Obama administration worked to codify these attempts into law and oversaw the passage of the Wolf Amendment in 2011, which formally prevents NASA from interacting “in any way” with the Chinese National Space Agency. 

There are other US imperialist interests bound up with Artemis. Despite the many international treaties and agreements to exclude outer space from warfare, it is still very much considered a battleground, as exemplified by the establishment of the US Space Force in 2019. The ability of other nations, above all China, to launch probes to Mars, to land rovers on the Moon and even to launch their own space station (China’s Tiangong space station was launched in 2021) are seen primarily as military threats.

Such interests of course also drive the Chinese Communist Party, and that of every bourgeois government. The division of the world into competing nation-states means that competition is extended to space. Rockets are not primarily for science, but for prestige and threats among world powers.

Arguably the major difference between the Apollo and Artemis missions is the vast increase of private business interests invested in the success of the program. That is not to say there were not business interests heavily involved in NASA’s early space program. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, just to name a few aerospace and defense companies, have always been involved in building US spacecraft. But there was genuine innovation that led to the development of several technologies used in both in rocketry and across daily life.

Now, multibillion dollar-efforts are designed solely to enhance the portfolios of select individuals. The most infamous is Elon Musk, which has often claimed SpaceX will be the way forward for space travel, a claim echoed constantly by a slavish corporate media. And yet despite vast increases in technology over the past several decades, including several in computing, miniaturization and 3D printing from which Musk can draw, the flagship Falcon Heavy is only 45 percent as capable as the Saturn V. 

Musk is joined by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his company Blue Origin, as well as Richard Branson’s The Spaceship Company. And the latter two are barely interested in genuine spaceflight, more interested in providing suborbital flights so that ultra-wealthy patrons, like themselves, can claim the title astronaut. 

There is also a more sinister aspect to the drive by private companies to conduct space flight. Many companies, Musk most of all, have made a point of having private missions to the Moon and even Mars. They are ultimately an attempt to stake private claim on whole worlds, with no oversight or regulations and the ability to exploit both resources and labor on a hitherto unseen scale. How could workers on the Moon, after all, possibly protest if their lives can just be snuffed out on the whim of one individual turning off life support?

Such is the logic of the Artemis project, and space exploration as a whole, under capitalism. What should be the continued expansion of humanity’s drive to understand and master nature is inevitably subordinated to the expansion of human exploitation and private profit.

Sri Lankan president presents IMF-dictated budget

Saman Gunadasa

On November 14, Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is also the finance minister, presented the 2023 budget, along the lines dictated by the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) savage austerity program. The government will receive a bailout loan from the IMF only if its demands are implemented.

Wickremesinghe, however, stated in his budget speech that “the economic reforms we are bringing are not limited to the reforms agreed upon with the IMF.”

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe arrives at the parliamentary complex in Colombo, Sri Lanka on Aug. 3, 2022. [AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena]

The budget did not include any measures to address the brutal social conditions facing workers and the poor, who are struggling with hyperinflation, shortages of essentials and starvation.

As the budget was being presented, a World Food Program (WFP) survey said nearly seven in ten households—68 percent of the country’s population—are turning to coping mechanisms such as eating less of their preferred foods, and reducing the number and size of meals. According to the WFP, 3.4 million people are being prioritised to receive emergency assistance.

Sri Lanka’s statistics and census department reported in October that annual inflation stands at 66 percent and food inflation 86 percent. However, Professor Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University in the US recently said the real inflation rate was 115 and called the official figures a “complete fiction.” 

The budget forecasts expenditure of 5.8 trillion rupees ($US15.8 billion), up from 4.4 trillion estimated for this year. The new spending is to be funded through a massive increase of tax revenue by 69 percent. Wickremesinghe plans to slash the budget deficit to 7.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023 from this year’s 9.8 percent, and to produce a surplus of 2.3 percent.

These figures indicate that an immense burden will be placed upon working people.

* The government has increased the CESS taxes (levied to fund hundreds of different services) by about 15 percent, and will further increase import costs for many essential items. 

* Value added tax (VAT) will be increased again next April. In September, the government raised this tax from 12 to 15 percent on all goods and services.

*A surcharge tax will be imposed at the point of importation on diesel, petrol and crude oil, thus lifting prices. The new taxes come on top of increases introduced in September.

* The finance minister also announced an end to the “pay as you earn” income tax regime for state institutions from January next year, a change which will affect public sector workers. Sri Lanka’s state banks and some state-owned enterprises (SOE) currently pay their employees’ taxes as a concession.

* The budget announced the privatisation of several SOEs, including Sri Lankan Airlines, Sri Lanka Telecom, the Colombo Hilton and Waters Edge hotels, and the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation and its subsidiaries. More privatisations are in the pipeline.

* A presidential commission will be appointed to propose “reforms” to the public sector, which employs 1.45 million people. Wickremesinghe complained that “a large portion of the government revenue has to be spent on their salaries and wages.” The government already has plans to slash the number of public employees by half.

Wickremesinghe also announced changes to labour legislation, which he said “are necessary for economic transformation.” Wickremesinghe said an insurance scheme will be implemented to cover private sector workers who lose their jobs, hinting that this would make it easier for businesses to sack workers while maintaining low wages—something that has long been demanded by the corporate elite.

Wickremesinghe spoke of “creating an internationally competitive workforce with high skills in the next ten years.” In fact, the economic reforms proposed in the budget are intended to maintain a cheap and disposable workforce that international finance capital can exploit to the hilt.

As a further step towards the privatisation of public healthcare, the budget introduced a user-pays system for a percentage of wards in some major hospitals, beginning with the Colombo national hospital.

Free health services were a major gain won by the working class in past struggles. Successive governments, particularly since 1977, have systematically cut back on public healthcare, paving the way for mushrooming private health institutions, including hospitals.

Showing the priorities of the government, the budget allocated 539 billion rupees for the security forces and police, while providing only 322 billion rupees for health and 232 billion for education. The Wickremesinghe regime is preparing for increasingly brutal police and military action to crush opposition from workers and the poor to the relentless assault on living standards.

Wickremesinghe glorified the capitalist profit system as the solution to the country’s economic crisis. “From the small entrepreneur in the village to the large-scale entrepreneurs, everyone was treated as exploiters. We must change this situation,” he declared.

At the same time, Wickremesinghe cynically blamed the crisis on ordinary people’s supposed greed. He declared that the population “would like to see budget proposals that appear to be relief on the surface even if it means indebtedness to the world. We lost our way because of taking that popular route.” 

He continued: “We are not having a wedding by being in debt to the world” and added: “[What] did we do? Borrowing the hard-earned money of other countries and spending it on our consumption. We got lazy day by day.”

In reality, successive regimes amassed huge debts not in order to alleviate conditions for workers or the poor, but to build infrastructure to facilitate business investment.

The global economic crisis, which grew worse over decades, was exacerbated by the “let it rip” coronavirus policies adopted by governments around the world. The US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine further accelerated the inflationary crisis in every country.

The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, Sri Lanka’s main big business lobby, issued a statement praising the budget: “We trust the commendable proposals in the budget will see timely implementation and will continue to involve private sector consultation.”

At the same time, the chamber called on the government to go further in its attacks on workers by removing the “mandated” wages system in the plantations. Previous governments have ordered that tea plantation workers be paid the inadequate 1,000 rupees (US$2.72) per day. Not a single plantation company adhered to this requirement, and they have all imposed back-breaking workloads on the workers.

Sri Lanka’s opposition parties, which agree with the IMF austerity demands, made some token criticisms of the budget in an attempt to divert the widespread anger among masses of people.

Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) leading MP Harsha De Silva applauded the budget for containing “good reforms,” but asked for a general election to select a “good team” to implement these reforms effectively.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna-led National People’s Power (PPP) MP Vijitha Herath said, “This could be called a ‘Muppet’ Budget,’ which has aligned with all the reforms set by the IMF.” This party is also calling for a general election to deliver a so-called “new mandate” to implement the austerity program.

Thus far, not a single trade union has uttered a word about the budget. All of them are supporting the IMF program. 

The working class should take the lead in preparing its own counter-offensive against this brutal austerity drive.

Millions of workers and poor people took part in mass struggles in the four months beginning in April, demanding an end to intolerable inflation, shortages of essentials including food, medicine and fuel. They demanded the resignation of former President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his regime.

Rajapakse fled the country and his government collapsed. However, the trade unions supported by the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party betrayed this struggle, diverting it behind the SJB and JVP’s demand for an interim government made up of the various bourgeois parties.

This betrayal has allowed the unelected President Wickremesinghe to implement the IMF-prescribed austerity and unleash repression against workers, the rural poor and students.

Mass shooting at gay nightclub in Colorado leaves at least 5 dead and 25 injured

Jacob Crosse

As of this writing, at least five people are dead and 25 more are injured following the latest mass shooting in the United States, which occurred late Saturday evening.

The shooting took place at the Q Club, the longest operating and largest gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

A makeshift memorial near Club Q, a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022 where a mass shooting occurred late Saturday night that left at least 5 dead and 25 injured. [AP Photo/Geneva Heffernan]

In a press conference Sunday, Colorado Springs Police Chief Adrian Vasquez said that emergency services began receiving multiple calls concerning a shooting at the club at 11:56 p.m. and that police were on the scene by midnight.

Vasquez acknowledged that police did little to stop the rampage, noting that by the time police arrived, two people inside the club had already subdued the gunman.

“We owe them a great debt of thanks,” Vasquez said Sunday morning.

Police have identified the suspected shooter as 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, a local resident. This author was unable to locate any social media profiles linked to Aldrich. However, this is not the first time Aldrich has had significant police contact and there is no question police knew of Aldrich before Saturday’s incident.

In June 2021, Aldrich was arrested on multiple and serious charges after his mother called the police and, according to a statement from the El Paso County, Colorado, Sheriff’s Office, warned that “her son was threatening to cause harm to her with a homemade bomb, multiple weapons, and ammunition.”

The police statement said that Aldrich’s mother was not home at the time she made the call and that she did not know where her son was. Police were able to locate Aldrich at a separate residence about one mile away from his home and about 15 miles from where Saturday’s massacre took place.

In the incident last year, according to police, once Aldrich was located he refused to surrender, prompting the police to evacuate a quarter-mile radius around the residence as a precaution, due to the suspected bomb threat. Eventually, after nearly two hours, Aldrich surrendered to the police.

In their statement, the cops said they did not find any explosives in either residence. Notably, the police did not indicate whether any ammunition or weapons were located or seized.

In the 2021 incident, Aldrich was charged with two counts of felony menacing and three counts of first-degree kidnapping. However, the charges were later dropped and, according to a report in the Gazette, Aldrich called an editor at the newspaper this past August and requested that the story be removed or updated because the “entire case was dismissed.” The Gazette reported that the case has since been sealed by the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

The police have refused to confirm that the two incidents are related. Neither have they denied a connection.

In a second press conference, held Sunday night, Vasquez confirmed that the shooter had yet to speak with police and did not appear to have said anything at the crime scene. Vasquez confirmed that police investigators recovered a pistol, an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, additional rounds and magazines at the club following the shooting.

Vasquez said that the club did not garner a lot of attention from the police, noting that it was “low-key” from a “police perspective,” and was “not on our radar as a high volume of calls or anything like that.”

In a report on the shooting in the New York Times, owners of the club, Matthew Haynes and Nic Grzecka, confirmed after viewing security camera footage that an unarmed patron stopped the shooter.

“He saved dozens and dozens of lives,” Haynes said. Grzecka told the Times that the shooting lasted less than two minutes before the gunman was subdued with the help of another person.

Haynes said the gunman entered the club with “tremendous firepower” and was apparently wearing a military-style flak jacket.

Joshua Thurman, a patron who was in the club during the shooting, described the terrifying situation to local media. “This is our only safe space here in The Springs,” Thurman said. “So for this to get shot up, what are we going to do now? Where are we going to go? Yea we can ‘rebuild’ and ‘come together,’ but what about those people who lost their lives for no reason?”

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According to Gun Violence Archive (GVA), this year in the US there have been at least 602 mass shootings, which are defined as shootings in which at least four people, not including the gunman, are shot.

So far this year, per the GVA, nearly 18,000 of the more than 39,000 gun deaths in the US are due to homicide, while over 21,000 people used a gun to commit suicide. There has not been a single week in the US this year without at least four mass shootings. In July alone, the GVA recorded 89 mass shootings.

Colorado Springs, with a population just under half a million, is the second-largest city in Colorado. It is home to major US military installations.

This includes Fort Carson, a sprawling 137,000-acre Army base and home of the 4th Infantry Division, Peterson Air Force base, Schriever Air Force Base and the United States Air Force Academy, the premier officer training installation of the US Air Force.

The city is home to a growing Christian nationalist movement, heavily linked to the Republican Party and the military. The website MinistryWatch.com, which brands itself as a website “Empowering Donors to Christian Ministries,” noted in a 2021 article that more than “500 ministries call Colorado Springs home.”

It notes that organizations based in Colorado Springs “bring in over $2.5 billion a year,” with one of the “most well known” being Focus on the Family, the far-right Christian fundamentalist organization founded by James Dobson in 1983 after close consultation with the Ronald Reagan White House.

For decades, the organization has worked closely with Republicans in shaping anti-gay and anti-abortion messaging, while ginning up the vote for Republican candidates.

On November 27, 2015, Christian terrorist Robert Lewis Dear, animated by right-wing smears against Planned Parenthood promulgated by Republicans and their allies on the religious right, attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic located in Colorado Springs, murdering three people including a police officer, and injuring nine others.

During his trial, Dear proclaimed, “I am guilty, there’s no trial. I’m a warrior for the babies.” He added, “Kill the babies, that’s what Planned Parenthood does.”

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, a Republican, confirmed that at least 19 of the injured victims had gunshot wounds. Suthers said that other patrons suffered injuries trying to escape the carnage. He characterized the attacker as a “lone gunman” and said it was “premature” to determine a motive for the shooting.

However, he did acknowledge that the incident had “all the appearances of a hate crime.”

The mayor confirmed that the person who stopped the shooting did so by grabbing a handgun from Aldrich and bludgeoning him with it. “It was quite something,” Suthers told the Times. “It happened quite quickly.”

Colorado Springs is politically dominated by the Republican Party, which has increasingly made anti-gay agitation a part of its right-wing propaganda, creating an atmosphere conducive to such acts of homicidal violence.

So far this year, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has documented “more than 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills” introduced in 23 states by Republicans, aimed at limiting the rights of transgender persons. This includes Florida’s “Don’t say gay” bill, enacted earlier this year.

Deadly attacks against LGBTQ persons have continued throughout 2022. Last Wednesday, HRC reported that at least 32 transgender people had been murdered in the US thus far in 2022, compared to 57 last year. HRC notes that the figures are likely a vast undercount, given that many trans persons are misgendered following their death.

Turkey bombs Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq

Barış Demir & Ulaş Ateşçi

The Turkish Defense Ministry announced early Sunday morning the start of “Air Operation Claw-Sword” targeting Kurdish nationalist militias in northern Iraq and northern Syria. According to the statement, Qandil, Asos and Hakurk in northern Iraq and Kobane, Tel Rifaat, Cizire and Derik in northern Syria were hit. Mass protests were reportedly organized in many places in northern Syria against the air strikes.

People inspect a site damaged by Turkish airstrikes that hit an electricity station in the village of Taql Baql, in Hasakeh province, Syria, Sunday, November 20, 2022. [AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad]

The ministry said the airstrikes “were carried out in line with the right of self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.” Turkish warplanes are reportedly using Syrian airspace, which is controlled by Russia, whose government is therefore tacitly allowing the bombings to take place.

This operation against the US-backed People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) comes amid NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.

According to the Turkish Defense Ministry statement, the bombardment targeted “shelters, bunkers, caves, tunnels, ammunition depots and so-called headquarters and training camps” belonging to the PKK and YPG, claiming that civilians were not harmed. However, according to ANHA (Hawar News Agency), 11 civilians, including ANHA reporter İsam Ebdullah, were killed and 6 people, including another journalist, were wounded in the bombardments. The report claimed that 14 Syrian soldiers were also killed.

Syria’s state-owned Sana news agency confirmed the deaths of Syrian soldiers but did not state how many were killed.

Turkish Interior Ministry blamed the PKK and YPG for a rocket attack on the Öncüpınar Border Gate in Kilis yesterday, which injured 8 security personnel. Anadolu Agency also reported that four rockets were fired at Karkamış district of Gaziantep province from northern Syria yesterday evening, and that the rockets landed in empty areas. The YPG was held responsible for the rockets in the report.

Farhad Shami, head the media center of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the YPG is the backbone, reported that airstrikes destroyed the COVID-19 Hospital in Kobane, the power plant in Derik and grain stores in Dahir al Arab.

SDF General Commander Mazlum Ebdi warned in a statement that the conflict could escalate. He said, “We don’t want a big war to break out. But if the Turkish state insists on war against us, we are ready for a great resistance. The war is not only limited to here, it spreads everywhere and everyone is affected by this war.” The PYD added, “Russia and the International Coalition led by the United States are responsible for the atrocities committed by the Turkish state against our people.”

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government presented the operation as a response to last Sunday’s terrorist attack targeting civilians on Istiklal Street, one of Istanbul’s most crowded centers. The Defense Ministry described the air strikes as “Payback time! The scoundrels are being held to account for their treacherous attacks,” while Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin tweeted: “The day of reckoning for İstiklal!”

The Turkish government blamed the PKK and YPG for the terror attack that killed six people, including two children, and wounded 81 others, but they denied the allegation. Ahlam Albashir, the alleged main perpetrator of the attack, allegedly testified that she was “a member of the YPG” but also that they had “threatened to harm her siblings” to force her to carry out the attack. After the incident, 19 people were arrested and 29 were deported.

Beyond the suspicions about Albashır, who is said to be an “intelligence officer of the YPG,” revelations from the fascistic Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), an ally of the Erdoğan government, placed phone calls to Albashır has raised doubts about official statements. Mehmet Emin İlhan, the head of the MHP’s Güçlükonak district in Şırnak, claimed that the telephone line registered to him had been illegally obtained and that he had not spoken to Albashır.

This raises the issue of whether Erdoğan’s blaming of the PKK and the YPG for the terrorist attack in Istanbul were in fact part of Ankara’s planning of an operation in Syria targeting Kurdish militias.

Significantly, in recent days, the US Consulate General in Erbil also issued a warning to US citizens on its web site, stating that it is “monitoring credible open-source reports of potential Turkish military action in northern Syria and northern Iraq in the coming days. The U.S. government continues to strongly advise U.S. citizens to avoid these areas.”

Ultimately, the Erdoğan government has seized on this terrorist attack as a pretext for a new operation against Kurdish nationalist forces in Syria and Iraq. In fact, Ankara’s preparations to invade Syria date back to May. “We will soon start taking new steps regarding the incomplete parts of the work we have started to create safe zones 30 kilometers deep along our southern borders,” Erdoğan declared on May 23.

However, at the time, Ankara could not get the green light for a new operation from Washington which was using the YPG as a proxy force against President Assad’s regime in Syria, and from Russia and Iran, which support the Assad regime.

The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Group call on workers to oppose the use of a terrorist attack as a pretext for militarism and war and warn workers internationally of the dangers of military escalation. The fact that Syrian government soldiers have already been killed points to the possibility of further escalation between Turkish and Syrian forces. Growing tensions between Damascus and Ankara, an ardent supporter of NATO’s war for regime change in Syria, escalated into direct confrontation in 2020.

Since 2016, Ankara has launched numerous operations in Syria to prevent the emergence of a Kurdish state on its southern borders, demanding that its NATO allies, particularly the United States, stop using the YPG as a proxy force in Syria. The Turkish Armed Forces and their Islamist proxies currently control around 10 percent of Syria, home to 4.4 million people.

In addition, the Erdoğan government is facing an explosive economic and social crisis at home. Official annual inflation has reached 85 percent, while tens of millions of working people have suffered unprecedented impoverishment. As discontent grows within the working class, Turkey is heading for presidential and parliamentary elections in 2023.

In these circumstances, Erdoğan is seeking to suppress class tensions and re-consolidate his support base by promoting Turkish nationalism and militarism. The government also aims to expel Syrian Arab refugees from Turkey by forcing the YPG militia out of northern Syria so it can place the refugees there.