Venezuela claims oil-rich territory controlled by Guyana as Pentagon carries out flight operations

Andrea Lobo

In a speech on Tuesday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro presented new official maps of the country including the Essequibo, an area the size of Greece that represents two-thirds of the territory claimed by neighboring Guyana. He announced “immediate” plans to exploit the region’s large oil, gas and mineral deposits.

Essequibo River highlighted [Photo: WikiCommons]

The speech took place after a referendum Sunday in which, according to Venezuelan authorities, more than 95 percent voted for turning the territory into a new Venezuelan state, rejecting a contested 1899 arbitration in Paris that drew the existing border, and opposing the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. 

“Now we really are going to recover Venezuela’s historic rights in Guayana Esequiba,” proclaimed Maduro.

Ahead of the vote, the UN-administered ICJ had ordered Venezuela to refrain from taking any actions until it rules on the border dispute, which could reportedly take years. 

For centuries the border dispute was driven by ambitions by the British colonial authorities in British Guiana to control gold deposits found in what was the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Granada, and Gran Colombia after that. 

At the end of the 19th century, as the new imperial power in the region, the US administration of Grover Cleveland backed the Venezuelan claim against Britain ahead of the 1899 international arbitration, which ruled in favor of Britain amid evidence of pro-British complicity of the judges.

After a series of coups and conspiracies by the MI5 and CIA against the bourgeois nationalist Cheddi Jagan and his People’s Progressive Party—at the time oriented to the Stalinist and Castroite leaderships—Guyana was granted “independence” in 1966. 

Today, oil deposits found only in 2015 off the shore of the Essequibo and a global context marked by preparations for a new redivision of the world through war have reignited the border dispute over the sparsely populated and remote jungles west of the Essequibo River, which Venezuela considers the natural border. 

The Biden administration responded initially to the referendum by posing as a peaceful bystander, with the US State Department calling for “a peaceful resolution of their dispute,” while also hypocritically calling on Venezuela to respect the 1899 ruling.

Since its birth, however, Guyana has been treated by US imperialism as an enclave ruled by puppets of transnational corporations, as evidenced by the hated agreement in 2019 to let a consortium led by US conglomerate ExxonMobil keep 50 percent of the proceeds from its Shabroek offshore oil block. 

US imperialism has been the main player stoking tensions in recent years, by building up the tiny and largely volunteer Guyanese military, and chiefly by frequent deployments of US troops to Guyana and Caribbean waters claimed by Venezuela, ostensibly for “exercises.” 

The Obama, Trump and now Biden administrations, meanwhile, imposed a devastating sanctions regime aimed at provoking a military overthrow of the Maduro government. Combined with a fall in oil prices, corruption and mismanagement, the sanctions plunged Venezuela into a crisis that shrank the economy by over 80 percent and triggered an exodus of over 7 million Venezuelans. 

In the most provocative move yet, the US Southern Command conducted flight operations over Guyana on Thursday, while posting a statement claiming to uphold “its commitment as Guyana’s trusted security partner.” 

This took place shortly after Guyanese President Irfaan Ali denounced Maduro for attempting to annex the territory and calling on the US to help “deter” Venezuela. 

Even as Washington supports and arms Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted in a call with Ali on Thursday that he could count on the United States’ “unwavering support for Guyana’s sovereignty.”

Amid its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and support for Israel as part of plans for a broader war in the Middle East, the Biden administration is eager to secure the Stabroek block, which is producing 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil, and is expected to double this amount by 2027. By comparison, Venezuela has been producing less than 800,000 bpd. 

More broadly, US imperialism seeks to keep key resources in the region, particularly the world’s largest oil deposits in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt, out of the hands of its main geopolitical rivals—China and Russia. 

As summarized in October by US Southern Command chief Laura Richardson, a few weeks after a visit to Guyana: 

“I worry about the extraction of these resources from these reserves of heavy crude oil, light sweet crude that was discovered off the shores of Guyana, the largest growing economy, 25 percent GDP growth anticipated for Guyana over the next 25 years. You have 60 percent of the world´s lithium in the lithium triangle, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and copper, gold. We have the Amazon. So the resources are so rich. And when you look at the strategic competition globally but then also in this hemisphere you want to make sure that adversaries and strategic competitors aren´t trying to go there for nefarious reasons to extract. This hemisphere has the potential to feed and fuel the world.

For its part, the Maduro administration is responding to both growing social opposition from below, amid a deepening economic and humanitarian crisis, and the intensified pressures from US imperialism. 

The Maduro and Biden administrations reached a deal in October for a license allowing Venezuela to sell oil, gas and gold in return for freeing so-called “political prisoners” and allowing the US-backed opposition candidates to run in general elections in 2024. While Washington said Maduro had until late November to fulfill these conditions, the US State Department declared this week that conditions have not been met but the licenses remain valid, suggesting ongoing talks.

Behind the nationalist rhetoric to be defending the “Fatherland” and the calls for “national unity,” the Maduro regime speaks for a section of the Venezuelan ruling class hoping to reach a new agreement with US imperialism on how to divide the profits from the exploitation of Venezuelan workers. It seeks to use its ties to China and Russia as leverage for this, as demonstrated by plans by Maduro to visit Moscow later this month, and the fact that Venezuela had continued exporting most of its oil to China despite US sanctions.

In this process, however, Maduro is following the same reactionary path as the Putin government when invading Ukraine in 2022 or the Iraqi Hussein government when invading Kuwait in 1990, which US imperialism exploited to carry out long-planned military operations against its targets. 

Despite the threats from the Pentagon, the Venezuelan Bolivarian Armed Forces have begun explicit preparations for a military takeover of the territory, including building roads and bridges on the northern end of the border, while Maduro said corporations operating in Essequibo have three months to leave. On Thursday, the Venezuelan Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino announced the designation of generals who will be in charge of the “Operational Zone for the Integral Defense of Guyana Esequiba.” 

Notably, the Lula da Silva government in Brazil has carried out its own military buildup along its borders with Venezuela and Guyana. Representing the regional power ambitions of the Brazilian oligarchy, Lula is effectively warning Caracas that it needs its permission to act. 

As demonstrated by the history of Guyana and similar disputes across South America since colonial times, it is through borders and nation states that imperialism exploits the workers and peasants and controls the resources, with the help of the local ruling elites.

Exposing the Pan-South-American pretensions of Hugo Chavez and his Bolivarianism, which were once combined with limited social reforms, the dead end of all bourgeois nationalist movements is being clearly revealed by the development of the crisis of global capitalism, with Latin America being increasingly dragged into a third world war.

Australian government rams through detention and citizenship-stripping laws

Mike Head

Scenes in the Australian parliament on Wednesday made a farce of any pretence of democracy. In fact, the real face of parliament was on display, spearheaded by a Labor government in imposing deeply reactionary laws.

Intent on proving itself more draconian than the Liberal-National Coalition, the Labor government again joined hands with the Coalition to push through two sweeping detention and citizenship-cancellation bills, overturning fundamental legal and democratic rights, without hardly a semblance of debate.

Both bills are blatant efforts to flout rulings by the country’s highest court that it is unconstitutional, even under Australia’s colonial-era 1901 Constitution, to punish people by executive decree without a judicial process, whether it be to detain them or strip them of citizenship.

Asylum seekers protesting at the Villawood detention centre in Sydney, 2011. [Photo by Adam.J.W.C. / CC BY-ND 2.5]

One bill, to impose a new regime of potentially indefinite “preventative detention” on immigration detainees, was rammed through the lower house, the House of Representatives, in less than 20 minutes late on Wednesday night. Despite objections, the government prevented any debate at all, including by abruptly adjourning the assembly just before 10 p.m.

That was after Labor and the Coalition had teamed up in the Senate to push the bill through that house on Tuesday in about three hours. These moves prevented any examination of the government’s 70 pages of amendments to enact the new detention powers, accompanied by an “explanatory memorandum” of nearly 150 pages.

All the more extraordinary was that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government had issued ultimatums demanding that both bills be passed by Thursday. It threatened to keep parliament sitting, beyond yesterday’s holiday shutdown, unless and until that was done.

Members of the House of Representatives were then suddenly told on Tuesday that the bill would be dealt with on Wednesday night, leaving some MPs unable to get back to Canberra in time for the unexpected session.

Under the bill, an unknown number of the 150 or so immigration detainees that the government was forced to release from indefinite detention by a November 8 High Court ruling can be locked way again.

All that is required is for them to have been previously convicted, in either a foreign or domestic court, of what is classified as a “serious violent or sexual offence” and for the immigration minister and a court to decide that there is just “a high degree of probability” that “the offender poses an unacceptable risk of seriously harming the community by committing” such an offence.

This amounts to punishment for a thought crime, based on an accusation of what the person might do in the future, not on what they have actually done. On this basis, people can be re-detained for three years at a time, possibly for the rest of their lives.

Even the information being used to justify their detention can be kept secret from them, shielded by a government claim of “public interest immunity.” That would doubtless cover dubious accusations by police or intelligence agencies.

Such “preventative detention” powers were introduced in 2005 by the previous Coalition government, with Labor’s total backing, for use against people convicted of vaguely-defined terrorism-related offences.

As the WSWS has warned throughout the “war on terrorism” proclaimed by US President George W. Bush in 2001 to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, such unprecedented measures, introduced on the false pretext of combatting terrorism, are being extended to cover much wider offences.

The bill also introduces stronger police powers and harsher imprisonment terms, of up to five years, for breaching any of the many electronic shackling, curfew and other restrictions imposed on released detainees by the legislation that Labor and the Coalition rushed through parliament last month.

Further, the bill provides the government and a judge to alternatively place someone under a “community safety supervision order.” That is a potentially even harsher regime of constant ankle bracelet monitoring, curfew and house arrest than in the initial shackling bill.

Labor’s new citizenship-stripping bill was likewise pushed through the Senate in just three hours on Wednesday, a day before the government’s deadline.

This bipartisan bill hands amorphous and politically-loaded powers to judges to revoke citizenships, thus depriving people of basic civil and democratic rights. Acting on a government application, they can rule that a person’s “serious offences” have “repudiated their allegiance” to Australia by rejecting “Australian values.”

The bill describes these values as consisting of “values, democratic beliefs, rights and liberties that underpin Australian society.” Yet, the bill itself overrides “democratic beliefs, rights and liberties.”

The “serious offences” listed in the bill include terrorism-related acts, advocating mutiny, treason, espionage, foreign interference and foreign incursion.

Because of the broad legal definition of terrorism, a person could lose their citizenship for supporting the right of people in Gaza to resist the ongoing Israeli genocide. Likewise, the extensive “foreign interference” offences could cover anti-war and anti-government activists.

So far, citizenship-stripping legislation has been restricted to dual citizens—those holding citizenship of another country. But that covers millions of Australians in an increasingly diverse population. Moreover, the High Court rulings striking down the previous legislation do not prevent any extension to sole citizens.

On both fronts, successive Coalition and Labor governments fought tooth and nail, all the way to the High Court, to defend their previous arbitrary powers to detain people or revoke their citizenships. Now the two ruling parties have teamed up to restore such powers, despite both bills likely to be challenged as unconstitutional as well, according to legal experts.

This entire bipartisan political operation over the past month has been accompanied by a foul witch hunt by the Labor government, the Coalition and the media against formerly indefinitely detained refugees and immigrants, effectively depicting them all as murderers and rapists.

Some of the most vulnerable members of society, brutalised by years in detention, often after fleeing wars or persecution, are being vilified and victimised by the government and the complicit media in order to justify police-state measures.

Five ex-detainees have been arrested already, amid a hue and cry by the media and political establishment alleging that they have committed crimes since being released, but without any proven evidence, let alone convictions by a court of law. The principle of innocent until proven guilty has been thrown out the window!

For example, one of those arrested and promptly demonised by media headlines is a 45-year-old Sudanese refugee, accused by the Australian Federal Police of allegedly failing to comply with a curfew and stealing luggage at an airport. No details have been reported.

In court, a magistrate was told that the refugee is “a diagnosed schizophrenic, requires medication for HIV and suffers from diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.” No doubt, being incarcerated indefinitely would have contributed to those mental and physical health problems.

There is a chilling connection between this witch hunt-inflamed operation and the same bipartisan line-up to back the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Both bills set precedents that can pave the way for broader use against the deepening opposition to this barbaric agenda and the other US-led or supported wars being waged or prepared against Russia and China.

There is mounting working-class hostility toward the government and the ruling class as a whole, fueled by a mounting cost-of-living crisis and the resurgence of the unchecked COVID-19 pandemic.

Under these conditions, the Labor government and the Coalition are lurching further and further toward authoritarian methods of rule, as is occurring in the US, the UK, across Europe and in Argentina. This week’s proceedings in parliament must be taken as a warning of that.

Question mark raised over the world’s most important financial market

Nick Beams

The current edition of the Economist, one of the world’s leading financial magazines, carries an extraordinary headline.

It poses the question: “Is the world’s most important asset market broken?”

US Treasury Department Building, Washington, D.C. [Photo: Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division]

The article deals with significant problems in the $25 trillion US Treasury market where government debt is bought and sold, and which forms the key foundation for the entire global financial system.

Those problems have surfaced in a series of crises in recent years. In 2019 there was turmoil in the repo market where holders of financial assets use them as collateral to obtain cash short-term, sometimes overnight, as part of their daily operations.

Interest rates in these usually routine transactions, which grease the wheels of the financial system, rose to unprecedented heights, as much as 10 percent at one point, before the Federal Reserve intervened to stabilise the situation.

Then came the market freeze in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic when, in a so-called “dash for cash,” no buyers could be found for US government debt, supposedly the safest financial asset in the world, for several days.

The Fed intervened injecting $4 trillion into the financial system—at one point it was said to be spending a million dollars a second—and became the backstop not only for US Treasury bonds but many other forms of debt.

The intervention not only stabilised the situation but created the conditions where financial oligarchs were able to rake in hundreds of billions of dollars during the worst period of the pandemic.

Since then, there have been problems with the issuing of new government debt. The Treasury modified its last issue of debt earlier this year somewhat away from the longer end of the market in order to mitigate against turbulence.

Last month a cyber-attack on ICBC, a Chinese bank, disrupted settlements in the Treasury market for several days.

The Economist article describes the Treasury market as “a network of mind-bending complexity” which touches almost every financial institution.

“Short-term bills and long-term bonds… are issued by Treasury. They are sold to ‘primary dealers’ (banks and broker dealers) in auctions. Dealers then sell them to customers: foreign investors, hedge funds, pension funds, firms and purveyors of money-market funds. Many buyers raise money to buy Treasuries using the overnight repo market, where bonds can be swapped for cash. In secondary markets high-frequency traders often match buyers and sellers using algorithms. Participants, in particular large asset managers, often prefer to buy Treasury futures—contracts that pay the holder the value of a specific Treasury on an agreed date—since it requires less cash up front than buying a bond outright. Each link in the chain is a potential vulnerability.”

As a result of the recent crises, regulators are seeking to impose new controls under conditions where the debt market has grown by leaps and bounds and the conflict in Congress over the “debt ceiling” continually threatens to push the US into a debt default.

Government debt is now equivalent to around 100 percent of GDP, up from 71 percent a decade ago. Servicing it now comes to a fifth of all government spending and is one of the fastest growing categories.

On the regulatory front some minor changes have been introduced by the Treasury, the Economist characterises them as “fiddles,” which provide greater data, with the main push coming from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The SEC has directed attention to the so-called basis trade which links the market for Treasuries to the futures market. Because there is a very slight difference in price there is the opportunity for profit and it has been eagerly seized on.

Hedge funds can go short by selling a futures contract and then buying the Treasury bond in the market when the contract becomes due at a marginally lower price. They can then go to the repo market to obtain more cash to finance more basis trades. Because the price differences are so small, this requires a large amount of borrowed money to make it profitable.

As long as everything goes smoothly, there are large profits to be made. But in times of turbulence, futures exchanges will make margin call—that is demand that borrowers put up more cash. This is believed to be one of the reasons for the “dash for cash” in 2020, which led to the Treasury market freeze.

The SEC is proposing that the hedge funds that are most active in the market are designated as broker dealers meaning they are subject to stricter regulations. It is also considering rules that would limit the amount they can receive from banks to finance their operations.

As could be expected, the hedge funds are having none of it, with Ken Griffin, the head of Citadel, one of the largest and most profitable funds, saying the SEC was “searching for a problem.”

The hedge funds developed their highly profitable operations under conditions where interest rates were at an historic low and they could count on the Fed to come in as the backstop to the market if trouble developed.

But these conditions have changed with the lifting of interest rates since March 2022. On top of this, there is a question of how far the Fed can go in continually bailing out the financial markets when there is growing concern about its stability.

This is reflected in the rising price of gold in recent days as the question is increasingly raised: how long can the US go on just issuing new dollars at the press of a computer button to finance itself? This is inherently unsustainable and that being the case then, as the old saying in financial circles has it, being unsustainable means at some point it must stop.

The increase in interest rates is having an impact in the broader economy—an issue which was the subject of analysis by Bloomberg financial columnist John Authers this week.

He began by noting that there had been a strange non-event in that the widely anticipated wave of corporate defaults because of rising interest rates had not eventuated, at least not yet.

But there have been two of major significance. The recent bankruptcy of WeWork was the largest by a US company since the global financial crisis (GFC) while the demise of the Austrian real estate group Signa was Europe’s biggest post-GFC insolvency.

Both these major developments proceeded “relatively quietly.”

However, the calm may not last as Authers cited research on the worsening debt position of US corporations in the higher interest rate environment.

According to one metric devised by New York University academic Edward Altman, in the last century more than half of all American companies were strong and healthy.

“That number had now dropped to below 10 percent for the first time on record,” Authers wrote, adding that “the number of companies that are imminent risks for bankruptcy has been rising consistently, and has reached a new high.”

In the era of low interest rates, companies had become “more and more accustomed to taking risks with their financial health and getting away with it.”

He also cited other findings on so-called “zombie firms,” that is companies that do not produce enough profits to cover their interest expenses.

The research found that over a three-year period, “slightly more than a fifth of US companies” fell into this category.

On the surface the capitalist economic engine may appear to be running smoothly as finance capital rubs its hands at the prospect of rate cuts. But lift the hood and from the Treasury market to the gold market and the corporate world, there are growing signs of a major malfunction.

Growing tensions between Ukrainian President and army leadership as staggering death toll comes into view

Jason Melanovski

Zelensky on August 22, 2022 [Photo: Ukraine Presidential Archive]

Following the catastrophic failure of the “counteroffensive” the Zelensky regime is facing a disastrous political situation amid growing popular opposition to his government, and escalating conflicts with the military leadership.

A recent article in the Economist citing internal Ukrainian government polling data revealed that support for President Volodymyr Zelensky has crashed to just 32 percent, following the failure of the country’s counteroffensive over the summer and the outbreak of open political struggle with the military led by General Valery Zaluzhnyi. The Economist went on to characterize the relationship between Zelensky and Zaluzhnyi as “terrible.”

Conversely, support for Zaluzhnyi stood at 70 percent. Even the head of Military Intelligence Kirill Budanov polled better than Zelensky with an approval rating of 45 percent.

So far Zelensky and his entourage have responded to such reports by blaming “Russian propaganda.” However, on Monday, Ukraine’s major online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, released a report documenting the growing rift between Zelensky and the military, and his fears of Zaluzhnyi’s entry into politics.

According to the article titled, “War vs. Politics: What is really going on Between Zelensky and Zaluzhnyi,” Zelensky and his cabinet first began to view Zaluzhnyi as a problem in spring of last year as government polling continued to show rising support for the military and Zaluzhnyi specifically. 

Unnamed “Western” organizations cited in the article have clearly been following the decline of Zelensky and rise of Zaluzhnyi. “Some foreign organizations recently conducted focus groups in Ukraine to see for themselves what political niches have now appeared in our country,” an unspecified Ukrainian high-ranking official told Ukrainska Pravda, who asked the influential outlet not to specify either his name or his position.

In April, the relationship drastically turned for the worse when Zaluzhnyi attempted to create his own charity to support the war effort, raising the ire of the head of the President’s Office, Andriy Ermak. The outlet detailed Zelensky’s meddling in military decisions and his attempts to undermine Zaluzhnyi by creating “parallel tracks” of communication with other rival military officials such as Alexander Syrsky, commander of the ground forces, and Air Force Commander Nikolay Oleshchuk.

Tensions between Zelensky and the army leadership further grew when, earlier in August, Zelensky dismissed the country’s regional draft commanders following a corruption scandal in which military officials were reportedly accepting bribes of up to $10,000 to avoid conscription. Since then, there has been a sharp drop in conscription and staffing levels, deepening what is already a severe shortage of man power at the front.

Now, Ukraine is reportedly considering a new mobilization plan that will include the conscription of teenagers, elderly men, women and the forced return of Ukrainian men of military age across Europe, who fled the country to avoid fighting in the bloody NATO-backed war.

In October, Zaluzhnyi came out with an essay and a major interview with the Economist, admitting that Ukraine was in a disastrous military situation and that the war had reached a “stalemate.”

Shortly thereafter, Zelensky and his entourage decided to cancel the presidential elections due to be held next year. In an open endorsement of dictatorial forms of rule, Zelensky stated at the time, “And if we need to put an end to a political dispute and continue to work in unity, there are structures in the state that are capable of putting an end to it and giving society all the necessary answers.”

The same day that Zelensky announced that the elections were cancelled, one of Zaluzhnyi’s closest assistant and friend blew himself up with a hand grenade that had been delivered to his home as a “birthday gift” by someone in the military. Zelensky also initiated another purge of the military. 

The political crisis of the Zelensky regime is a symptom of a much broader crisis of the entire Ukrainian ruling class and the disastrous war, waged by the imperialist powers in the country, against Russia. The first signs of growing opposition to the war have emerged with protesters across the country demanding that a time limit be set for deployment to the front. With virtually every household affected and the staggering human toll of the war, the widespread and growing reluctance to fight within the Ukrainian population are becoming all but impossible to deny. 

Last week, Zelensky’s former political advisor Alexey Arestovich revealed that between 200,000 and 300,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the war, while discussing the failure of a proposed peace agreement reached in Istanbul in Spring 2022. An agreement that was subsequently squashed by UK Prime minister Boris Johnson. Arestovich stated that NATO is unlikely to offer Ukraine a full membership anytime soon while Ukraine suffers the burden of fighting and dying. “Where is NATO? Does it accept us or not? And will it accept us? ... Then the 200 thousand [Ukrainian servicemen] or whatever, 300 thousand, would still be alive.”

Never before has someone so close to the Zelensky regime as Arestovich even admitted to the massive losses of life suffered by Ukrainian forces in the war. The numbers appear to confirm the figures cited by the Kremlin, which claims that over 125,000 soldiers have lost their lives since the start of the counteroffensive in June alone. Ukraine’s pre-war population stood at around 40 million, 300,000 deaths constitute 0.75 percent of the total population; many more are wounded and permanently crippled. 

Arestovich further suggested that 4.5 million Ukrainian men, nearly half of the Ukrainian male population, had fled abroad to avoid military service and that 30 to 70 percent of military units consist of “refuseniks” who have gone AWOL. A woman in Ukraine told the WSWS that some front units have only two to three, instead of the required 30 soldiers fighting. 

Earlier in October, the Centre for Economic Policy Research in Europe released a report titled, “The impact of the war on human capital and productivity in Ukraine,” detailing the huge socioeconomic losses as a result of the war from which Ukrainian society may never recover. 

The report stated, “Rebuilding damaged and destroyed physical infrastructures is estimated to reach 130% to 330% of Ukraine’s pre-Covid GDP .… It may take even longer and prove more difficult to offset the negative consequences of the war on Ukraine’s human capital.” The report continued “For Ukraine, losses in human capital are estimated to peak between now and 2035 at around 3.6% (0.9% due to learning losses and 2.7% due to skill losses of workers). The effect will last around 35 years and will diminish until the last cohort affected retires from the labour force at the age of 65 in 2085.” 

These figures are all the more staggering since they were calculated without knowledge of the true casualty toll, which is a closely guarded secret within the Ukrainian ruling class. Figures such as those cited by Arestovich, who is cynically attempting to build his  own political brand in opposition to the increasingly unpopular Zelensky regime, give only an inkling of the true death toll of the conflict. 

Nevertheless, Arestovich’s claims, combined with a devastating report this week from the Washington Post detailing the failure of the summer counteroffensive, are clear evidence of the disastrous military situation and the criminality of the imperialist war pursued by NATO against Russia in Ukraine.

GROW (Graduate Research On Worldwide Challenges) PhD Program 2024

APPLICATION DEADLINE:

31st January 2024 at 23.59.59 CET .

Tell Me About Award:

We are a network of internationally collaborating universities from the Netherlands with longstanding collaborations with our partners at the African continent.

We will launch an international PhD programme that offers tomorrow’s leaders a unique opportunity to do high quality and novel research, related to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals on the African continent.

Supervision for the PhD students will be provided by globally renowned professors, supported by societal actors and academics from our African partners. With the projects we aim to make a real contribution to understanding and addressing the urgent worldwide challenges.

For GROW, five high ranking Dutch universities have joined up with 22 African academic and 17 non-academic partners to raise funds for 51 four year PhD positions with candidates from anywhere in the world to pursue scientifically challenging research that in some way links Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) in Africa with Europe. Funding from Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions COFUND programme of the European Union has been granted. The possibilities are manifold, as fellowships are available in the Natural Sciences, Social Sciences & Humanities, and Engineering. The Triple-I design of the GROW programme offers the PhD students the chance to equip themselves with an advanced, future-proof set of scientific and complementary skills that they will take with them as they pursue high-flying careers in a world that is becoming ever more complex and interconnected.

TYPE:

PhD

Who Can Apply?

• No doctoral degree: Eligible candidates must not have a doctoral degree at the date of their recruitment. Researchers who have successfully defended their doctoral thesis but who have not yet formally been awarded the doctoral degree will not be considered eligible.
• Nationality: Candidates of all nationalities and countries of origin are eligible, unless national, international, or European legislation or embargos prohibit specific (combinations of (sub) disciplines and) countries of origin. The appointed PhD students must comply with the following mobility rule: they must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in The Netherlands for more than 12 months in the 36 months immediately before the deadline of the co-funded programme’s call. Compulsory national service, short stays such as holidays and time spent as part of a procedure for obtaining refugee status under the Geneva Convention113 are not taken into account.
• Entry Requirements: Applicants must have completed a university degree that entitles them to embark in a doctoral programme in the Netherlands (Master of Arts (MA), Master of Science (MSc), or Master of Laws (LLM)). The degree must be dated less than 10 years prior to the call deadline. The eligibility window can be extended by 6 months per child for the mother, (additional) maternity or paternity leave (actual time up to 6 months per child), training for medical specialists (3 years), compulsory and reserve military service (actual time), or for refugees/ researchers at risk (up to 3 years). Documentation providing evidence must be included with the application.
• Enrollment: The Candidate must be available to enroll full-time in the PhD program at the Host institution in The Netherlands; eventual suspensions for family or personal reasons shall be discussed with the granting authority.
• English Certificate: Doctoral Candidates are required to have high level in the English language (if not native speakers). English level of short-listed applicants can be assessed during the selection interview and a mandatory passed test could become part of the Go-No Go decision after year 1 of the project.
• Affinity with Africa: Doctoral Candidates will need to demonstrate a strong connection with the African continent and / or an understanding of the context of Low and Middle Income settings.
• Network: After selection, we expect the PhD students to actively participate in the events organized by the programme, such as training/network events, and outreach activities targeting different audiences. The candidates are aware of and adhere to the principles set out in the Commission Recommendation on the European Charter for Researchers.

WHICH COUNTRIES ARE ELIGIBLE?

• Candidates of all nationalities and countries of origin are eligible, unless national, international, or European legislation or embargos prohibit specific (combinations of (sub) disciplines and) countries of origin.
• Doctoral Candidates will need to demonstrate a strong connection with the African continent and / or an understanding of the context of Low and Middle Income settings.

HOW MANY AWARDS?

51

What Is The Benefit Of Award?

The GROW programme is a four year international PhD programme that offers tomorrow’s leaders a unique opportunity to do high quality and novel research with supervision from globally renowned professors on pressing issues affecting the people of Africa, and make a real contribution to understanding and addressing worldwide problems, notably the UN – Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

HOW LONG WILL AWARD LAST?

4 years

How To Apply:

Application Portal is open. Click here

Learn more about the GROW Programme and how to apply in the webinar 5 Dec 2023 10-12 AM CET. Click here to register.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

A huge jobs massacre is unfolding in Germany’s auto industry

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

A jobs massacre is unfolding in the German auto industry, the likes of which the sector has not seen since the Second World War. For some time now, manufacturers in Germany and their suppliers have been using the transition to electric vehicles (EV) to cut jobs and increase exploitation. In the meantime, they have fallen behind in the global competition because their competitors offer cheaper and technically more sophisticated models.

Ford workers demonstrate after the announcement of the closure of the Saarlouis plant, June 22, 2022

On Friday, the Munich-based Ifo Institute reported a further decline in business expectations in the German automotive industry based on a company survey. To ensure that their returns continue to rise, shareholders are now unequivocally demanding that the 800,000 or so workers employed by manufacturers and their suppliers must take a beating.

No jobs, no social benefits, no working conditions, no wages are safe. Studies predict that up to 40 percent of jobs will be lost as a result of the switch to EVs, which would mean more than 300,000 jobs going.

The harbingers of this earthquake are becoming ever clearer. In 2022, the Federal Statistical Office reported a year-on-year decline in employment of just over one percent, or 11,800 employees, in companies producing motor vehicles and motor vehicle parts. Most recently, 774,300 people were employed in this sector, 60,000 fewer than in the record year of 2018.

The supplier industry is particularly affected. The decline in employment there was 6 percent compared to the previous year, the sharpest fall in percentage terms since 2005. With an average of 273,900 employees, the level of employment among suppliers fell to its lowest level since 1997.

Reports in recent weeks indicate that this trend is set to worsen.

Volkswagen

The Volkswagen Group has sales problems, especially with its electric models. At a general meeting in its Wolfsburg headquarters at the beginning of the week, VW brand boss Thomas Schäfer declared that “the VW brand” was “no longer competitive.”

The “efficiency programme” pushed forward by VW Group CEO Oliver Blume aims to save €10 billion by 2026 and increase the VW core brand’s return on sales from 3.4 percent to 6.5 percent. This can only be achieved through massive job cuts. Schäfer emphasised that it was therefore necessary to “tackle the critical issues, including personnel.”

At the VW software subsidiary Cariad, 2,000 of the 6,500 jobs will be cut over the next two years.

VW’s Zwickau site, which employs 10,000 and is the first to exclusively produce electric cars, is cutting back production due to weakening demand. Production of the ID.3 and the Cupra Born is being paused for the rest of the year, as the production target has been completed. After the temporary contracts of 269 employees were not extended this year, 500 temporary jobs are to be cut next year.

Meanwhile, the IG Metall union and the works council are working at full speed on new mechanisms to cut thousands of jobs. VW personnel director Gunnar Kilian, who came over from IG Metall, warns: “We have to reduce our costs and manage with fewer staff.” He wants to make the targeted use of partial retirement to cut jobs.

Works Council Chairwoman Daniela Cavallo supports the cutbacks and wants to implement them in a “socially responsible” manner. VW brand boss Schäfer urges: “Now we have to finalise the key points of the agreement together with the employee side by the end of the year.”

Ford

At Ford in Cologne, it is still not clear which electric model will be built and when in the completely remodeled factory. Thousands of jobs will be cut in research and development and administration. In development alone, around 1,700 of the 3,600 employees are to leave the company over the next three years. The research centre in Aachen, which most recently employed a good 200, will be closed in just over six months.

At a plant meeting on Thursday, it was announced that the entire product development operation at the Cologne-Merkenich site will be outsourced to a separate limited company. This is usually the first step in downsizing or divesting a business unit.

Meanwhile, the works council in Saarlouis is winding up the Ford plant there. Since the company announced a year and a half ago that the plant would be closed, the works council has been stringing along the workforce until investors supposedly arrive and at the same time cutting jobs. This year alone, 650 jobs have been cut, and on January 1 the number of employees will fall by a further 250 to 3,850.

Nobody believes in new investors anymore. The works council, led by Markus Thal, is crafting a so-called “social collective agreement” for 2,850 employees in Saarlouis, who will lose their jobs by mid-2025 at the latest. A thousand are to be able to continue working on a short-term basis until 2032.

Opel

In the meantime, it is apparent that Opel will disappear from the market in the short- rather than the medium-term. Sales of Opel and its British sister brand Vauxhall have almost halved to 428,000 vehicles in Europe in the last seven years. Since the takeover of Opel by the French group PSA (Peugeot/Citroën)—now Stellantis—in August 2017, many thousands of jobs have been cut at the car manufacturer.

In particular, the development centre and the administration in Rüsselsheim are gradually being wound down. At the end of 2021, 7,000 people still worked there, but parts have now been sold and thousands of jobs have been cut. Last week, around 100 employees in the Computer Aided Design (CAD) department were informed, in part via video conference, that their department would be closed.

In Italy, the Stellantis Group, which was created in 2021 through the takeover of Fiat Chrysler Automotive (FCA) by PSA, plans to cut 15,000 of the remaining 45,000 jobs.

ZF Friedrichshafen

ZF Friedrichshafen, Germany’s largest supplier after Bosch, is currently playing out all possible redundancy scenarios in order to put pressure on its 165,000 employees worldwide. In this context, the management is threatening to cut more than 7,000 jobs at the Saarbrücken plant. Around 10,000 employees there currently still produce transmissions almost exclusively for vehicles with combustion engines.

Plant management and works council representatives are using these threatening scenarios to develop so-called “target image processes” for future orders. Based on these fictitious plans, massive concessions are then extorted from the workers and supposed “plant safeguarding contracts” are agreed that are not worth the paper they are written on. This is what happened, for example, to the 5,500 employees in the commercial vehicle division at the Friedrichshafen site. Truck, railway and marine gearboxes are manufactured there, among other things.

The 590 workers at the Eitorf site near Bonn in North Rhine-Westphalia and their 350 colleagues in Gelsenkirchen will lose their jobs over the next few years. The Group Works Council expects the shock absorber plant in Eitorf to close its doors by 2027 at the latest.

The ZF site in Gelsenkirchen, which has long been threatened with closure, will close even faster. As production of the remaining steering systems and cable harnesses is now coming to an end, ZF management says that “the basis for production at the location will be lost in the coming months.” In these two ZF plants, job security will end at the end of the month.

Mahle

Piston specialist Mahle (with almost 72,000 employees at the end of 2022) is also restructuring its production. It was only in August that the Stuttgart-based company sold its entire thermostat division with around 600 jobs. Thermostats are used to regulate the cooling water temperature of internal combustion engines and are therefore less in demand with the move to EVs.

Just a few weeks ago, Mahle concluded a new future collective labour agreement with IG Metall, which rules out compulsory redundancies at the German sites until 2025. But in Germany, jobs in large companies are rarely destroyed using compulsory redundancies. An army of trade union officials and works council reps are working on plans and mechanisms to achieve this using different means.

Mahle is now also taking a different approach. In Wustermark, Brandenburg, where pump systems are produced, the company has converted the site into a limited company. IG Metall has announced that Mahle could separate the entire site from the corporation and sell it.

Vibracoustic

The 410 employees of Vibracoustic in Weinheim (with around 12,000 employees worldwide) were informed in mid-November that their jobs would be relocated to France and India. They manufacture rubber anti-vibration systems and air suspension systems to reduce noise and vibrations in vehicles.

Tire manufacturers

The tire industry in Germany is also under threat of redundancies. There are currently 12 tire factories in the country, four of which are to be closed in the coming years.

The US company Goodyear is ending its production in Fulda and Fürstenwalde, which have a total of 1,800 employees. French manufacturer Michelin is closing its truck tire plants in Karlsruhe and Trier by the end of 2025. In addition, the production of new tires and semi-finished products will be discontinued in Homburg. Michelin is relocating its customer centre from Karlsruhe to Poland. More than 1,500 will be affected.

The automotive supplier and tire manufacturer Continental had previously announced it would be eliminating 5,500 administrative jobs worldwide, 1,000 of them in Germany. From 2025, €400 million are to be saved annually. Continental employs more than 100,000 people in the automotive business, around a quarter of them in administration.

These announcements are just the tip of the iceberg. But with all this bad news, the managers and executive board members can count on the support of their “social partners”, i.e., the trade unions and the works councils, with whom they will “coordinate” the jobs massacre.

IG Metall and its works council reps take on the task of suppressing opposition within the companies and sabotaging any struggle in defence of jobs. They promote the reactionary view that workers and their exploiters share the same interests and that production sites can only be maintained by working together with the management to reduce “costs” and cut wages and jobs.

The trade unions and their works council reps divide workers between plants and play those in one country against those in all the others, like the Ford works council in the so-called bidding contest between Saarlouis and Valencia to see which plant would cut the most costs. In the end, there is nothing left on either side. While workers are made redundant with a pittance, the shareholders stuff their pockets, and the works council and trade union officials also make a handsome return.