Finance as Warfare: the IMF Lent to Greece Knowing It Could Never Pay Back Debt

Michael Hudson

SHARMINI PERIES: The latest economic indicator showed that the Greek economy shrank by 0.4% in the last three months of 2016. This poses a real problem for Greece, because its lenders are expecting it to grow by 3.5% annually, to enable it to pay back on its bailout loan. Greece is scheduled to make a 10.5 billion euro payment on its debt next summer, but is expected to be unable to make that payment, without another installment from its $86 billion bailout.

A growing impasse between the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, Greece’s two main lenders, is threatening to push Greece into default, and pull out of the euro. Meanwhile, the Greece government told its lenders, that we now call “Troika” today, that it will not agree to any more austerity measures.  Joining us today, to take a closer look at the Greek situation is Michael Hudson. Michael is a distinguished Professor of Economics, at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He’s the author of many books, and the latest among them is, J is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in the Age of Deception.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Michael.

MICHAEL HUDSON: It’s good to be here. But I take issue with one thing that you said. You said the lenders expect Greece to grow. That is not so. There is no way in which the lenders expected Greece to grow. In fact, the IMF was the main lender. It said that Greece cannot grow, under the circumstances that it has now.

What do you do in a case where you make a loan to a country, and the entire staff says that there is no way this country can repay the loan? That is what the IMF staff said in 2015. It made the loan anyway – not to Greece, but to pay French banks, German banks and a few other bondholders – not a penny actually went to Greece. The junk economics they used claimed to have a program to make sure the IMF would help manage the Greek economy to enable it to repay. Unfortunately, their secret ingredient was austerity.

Sharmini, for the last 50 years, every austerity program that the IMF has made has shrunk the victim economy. No austerity program has ever helped an economy grow. No budget surplus has ever helped an economy grow, because a budget surplus sucks money out of the economy. As for the conditionalities, the so-called reforms, they are an Orwellian term for anti-reform, for cutting back pensions and rolling back the progress that the labor movement has made in the last half century. So, the lenders knew very well that Greece would not grow, and that it would shrink.

So, the question is, why does this junk economics continue, decade after decade? The reason is that the loans are made to Greece precisely because Greece couldn’t pay. When a country can’t pay, the rules at the IMF and EU and the German bankers behind it say, don’t worry, we will simply insist that you sell off your public domain. Sell off your land, your transportation, your ports, your electric utilities. This is by now a program that has gone on and on, decade after decade.

Now, surprisingly enough, America’s ambassador to the EU, Ted Malloch, has gone on Bloomberg and also on Greek TV telling the Greeks to leave the euro and go it alone. You have Trump’s nominee for the ambassador to the EU saying that the EU zone is dead zone. It’s going to shrink. If Greece continues to repay the loan, if it does not withdraw from the euro, then it is going to be in a permanent depression, as far as the eye can see.

Greece is suffering the result of these bad loans. It is already in a longer depression today, a deeper depression, than it was in the 1930s.

SHARMINI PERIES: Yeah, that’s an important… at the very beginning of your answer here, you were making this very important point, is that although the lenders – this is the Eurozone lenders – had set a target of 3.5% surplus as a condition on Greece in order to make that first bailout loan. The IMF is saying, well, that’s not quite doable, 1.5% should be the target.

But you’re saying, neither of these are real, or is achievable, or desired, for that matter, because they actually want Greece to fail. Why are you saying that?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Because when Greece fails, that’s a success for the foreign investors that want to buy the Greek railroads. They want to take over the ports. They want to take over the land. They want the tourist sites. But most of all, they want to set an example of Greece, to show that France, the Netherlands or other countries that may think of withdrawing from the euro – withdraw and decide they would rather grow than be impoverished – that the IMF and EU will do to them just what they’re doing to Greece.

So they’re making an example of Greece. They’re going to show that finance rules, and in fact that is why both Trump and Ted Malloch have come up in support of the separatist movement in France. They’re supporting Marine Le Pen, just as Putin is supporting Marine Le Pen. There’s a perception throughout the world that finance really is a mode of warfare.

If they can convince countries somehow to adopt junk economics and pursue policies that will destroy themselves, then they’ll be easy pickings for foreign investors, and for the globalists to take over other economies. So, it’s a form of war.

SHARMINI PERIES: Right. Michael, you were saying that the newly appointed ambassador, Ted Malloch of the Trump administration to the European Union has suggested that Greece should consider leaving the European Union, or the euro in particular.

What do you make of this, and will this be then consistent with what Greece is suggesting? Because Greece has now said, no more austerity measures. We’re not going to agree to them. So, this is going to amount to an impasse that is not going to be resolvable. Should Greece exit the euro?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Yes, it should, but the question is how should it do it, and on what terms? The problem is not only leaving the euro. The problem really is the foreign debt that was bad debt that it was loaded onto by the Eurozone. If you leave the euro and still pay the foreign debt, then you’re still in a permanent depression from which you can never exit.

There’s a broad moral principle here: If you lend money to a country that your statistics show cannot pay the debt, is there really a moral obligation to pay the debt? Greece did have a commission two years ago saying that this debt is odious. But it’s not enough just to say there’s an odious debt. You have to have something more positive.

I’ve been talking to Greek politicians and Syriza leaders about what’s needed, and what is needed is a Declaration of Rights. Just as the Westphalia rules in 1648, a Universal Declaration that countries should not be attacked in war, that countries should not be overthrown by other countries. I think, the Declaration of International Law has to realize that no country should be obliged to impose poverty on its population, and sell off the public domain in order to pay its foreign creditors.

The Declaration would say that if creditors make a debt that cannot be repaid, the debt is by definition odious, so there is no need to pay it. Every country has the right not to pay debts that are unpayable except by bankrupting the country, and forcing it to sell off their public domain to foreign countries. That’s the very definition of sovereignty.

So, I’m hoping to work with politicians of a number of countries to draw up this Declaration of Debtor Rights. That’s what’s been missing. There’s an idea that if you withdraw from the euro, you can devalue your currency and can lower labor standards even further, wipe out the pensions, and somehow squeeze out enough to pay the debt.

So, the problem isn’t only the Eurozone. True, joining the euro meant that you’re not allowed to run a budget deficit to pump money into the economy to recover – like America has done. But the looming problem is that you have to pay debts that are so far beyond your ability to pay that you’ll end up like Haiti did after it rebelled after the French Revolution.

France said, sure, we’ll give you your independence, but you’ll have to reimburse us, for the fact that we no longer hold you as slaves. You have to buy your freedom. You can’t say slavery is wrong. You have to make us, the slaveholders, whole. So Haiti took this huge foreign debt to France after it got its independence, and ended up not being able to develop.

A few years after that, in 1824, Greece had a revolution and found the same problem. It borrowed from the Ricardo brothers, the brothers of David Ricardo, the economist and lobbyist for the bankers in London. Just like the IMF, he said that any country can afford to repay its debts, because of automatic stabilization. Ricardo came out with a junk economics theory that is still held by the IMF and the European Union today, saying that indebted countries can automatically pay.

Well, Greece ended up taking on an enormous debt, paying interest but still defaulting again and again. Each time it had to give up more sovereignty. The result was basically a constant depression. Slow growth is what retarded Greece and much of the rest of southern Europe.

So unless they tackle the debt problem, membership in the Eurozone or the European Union is really secondary.

Australian state Labor government strengthens draconian anti-association laws

Erin Cooke 

Last November, after being in office for nearly two years, the Labor government in the Australian state of Queensland enacted legislation to replace one of the most notorious anti-democratic statutes adopted by the previous Liberal National Party (LNP) government—the Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act of 2013, commonly known by the acronym VLAD.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s new legislation, the Serious and Organised Crime Legislation Amendment Act, will replace the VLAD laws, once the latter’s key provisions have been phased out during the next two years. These provisions include the sweeping anti-association offence, which led to the prosecution of innocent people only remotely connected to an alleged “bikie gang,” and caused major public outcries.

Palaszczuk is following in the footsteps of her predecessor, the LNP’s Campbell Newman, and other state Labor governments, in strengthening laws that provide far-reaching powers to the police and courts under the guise of combatting organised “outlaw motorcycle groups.” She declared that the new laws would give Queensland the “toughest organised crime laws” in Australia.

Like many other measures taken by the Newman government, the VLAD laws provoked widespread opposition. This became part of the anger over the LNP’s deep public sector cuts and attacks on democratic rights that enabled Labor to claw its way back into office only three years after being defeated in a landslide election loss. Any illusions that a Labor government would restore civil liberties, however, have been dashed.

Labor’s legislation constitutes a further attack on basic legal and democratic rights, with provisions that can be used to crack down, even more broadly than the VLAD laws, on targeted organisations and individuals, including those associated with social unrest and political dissent. The highly complex legislation—the official explanatory notes run to 179 pages—retains many of the features of the VLAD laws, but, in some respects, goes further.

As with the VLAD legislation, the new Act will not just affect alleged “bikie gangs.”

Under the VLAD Act anti-association provisions, anyone convicted of committing a declared serious offence while a “participant” in an association (which includes taking part in one event), can be declared a “vicious lawless associate,” unless they can prove that the association does not have a purpose of “engaging in, or conspiring to engage in, declared offences.” This not only reverses the burden of proof for a criminal trial, but such proof may be impossible.

The VLAD provisions will eventually be replaced by a variety of new offences and police powers. These include a new offence of habitually “consorting” with “recognised offenders.” A recognised offender is anyone with a recorded conviction for an indictable offence punishable by at least five years imprisonment or other offences that can prescribed by ministerial regulation.

“To allow for a seamless transition to the new framework,” Labor’s Act continues the proscription of 26 entities outlawed by ministerial decrees under the VLAD laws and permits further banning declarations on vague grounds, such as activities that “may cause other persons to feel threatened, fearful or intimidated” or “increase the likelihood of public disorder.”

There is also a new broad definition of “criminal organisation” as “a group of three or more persons, whether arranged formally or informally who engage in, or have as their purpose (or one of their purposes) engaging in, serious criminal activity; and who, by their association, represent an unacceptable risk to the safety, welfare or order of the community.”

In order “to remove doubt,” the section expressly provides that it does not matter whether the group of persons has a name or is capable of being recognised by the public as a group, or has an ongoing existence or has a legal personality.

The term “engage in” serious criminal activity is defined to include: “organise, plan, facilitate, support, or otherwise conspire to engage in, or obtain a material benefit, directly or indirectly, from.”

Likewise, the new Act expands the VLAD laws ban on wearing “colours” associated with a motorcycle club. Previously, the wearing of gang colours and other identifying symbols was prohibited in licensed venues. Now this prohibition will be extended to all public places.

Labor’s Act retains mandatory sentencing, but because of the extent of opposition to this measure, the prison term has been lowered from 15 years, with 10 additional years for association office holders, to 7 years, with no extra time for office holders.

The Act goes further than the VLAD laws by introducing a scheme of three new “public safety protection orders,” purportedly to “pre-emptively disrupt criminal and anti-social behaviour and protect public safety.” To be issued by police or magistrates, these orders give vast powers to the police:

· Control orders will severely limit the freedoms of those convicted, who will be banned from attending certain places, and restricted in their use of electronic devices, where they work and with whom they have contact. These are infringements on basic freedoms of association, expression and movement.

· A magistrate can impose a “Restricted Premises Order” if a police officer “reasonably suspects” that unlawful or disorderly conduct is occurring. Police can then search the premises at any time without a warrant and seize property, including furniture and entertainment systems. The Commissioner of Police can forfeit anything seized by police, with no compensation. Premises previously shut down by the VLAD laws automatically will be declared restricted premises, unable to be reopened.

· Through “Public Safety Orders” the police will be able to prohibit a person or a group from entering a place or attending an event. All that is required is for a police officer to consider a person, or a person’s presence, a risk to “public safety.” Only bans of longer than seven days will require a magistrate’s approval.

The biggest problem with the VLAD laws, according to the Labor government, was that none of the 100 people charged under them was convicted. Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath said: “The bill delivers a reform package that is both legally robust and operationally strong.”

Over the past decade, on the pretext of protecting the public from “bikie gangs” or “criminal organisations,” LNP and Labor governments alike have introduced unprecedented laws that can and will be used against all those who come into struggle against ever-worsening economic and social conditions.

Under Palaszczuk, nothing has improved for workers and youth since the LNP was thrown out of office. The collapse of the mining boom has accelerated the destruction of full-time jobs and devastated many rural towns and working-class suburbs. Labor Party figures and their trade union associates are acutely aware that growing unemployment, the imposition of low-paid work and widening inequality, along with preparations for war, will provoke intense social and class struggles.

Plans to expand US Navy highlight vulnerable conditions of shipyard workers

Toby Reese & Genevieve Leigh 

In late January, President Trump issued a Memorandum to vastly expand the US armed forces. Among other demands, the memo calls for a rebuilding of the military, a review of US nuclear readiness, and a ballistic missile defense review. The document begins, “To pursue peace through strength, it shall be the policy of the United States to rebuild the U.S. Armed Forces.” A major pillar of these plans will be the expansion of the US Naval fleet.

In a speech given in October in Pennsylvania, Trump lamented the “badly depleted military” and claimed that the “Navy is the smallest it’s been since World War I. My plan will build the 350-ship Navy we need. This will be the largest effort at rebuilding our military since Ronald Reagan, and it will require a truly national effort.”

On January 27, the same day the Memorandum on “Rebuilding the U.S. Armed Forces” was released, the White House issued another press briefing detailing a “Manufacturing Jobs Initiative” that is to be carried out in concert with the rebuilding of the US war machine. The initiative involves industrial bosses as well as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Deputy Chief of Staff Thea Lee.

Taken together, these announcements represent two cornerstones of the policies of the American ruling class: a vast expansion of US militarism abroad and further attacks on the working class within the United States.

The plans to “rebuild” the Navy will be carried out on the backs of American workers. There is no side of the war machine that does not take a violent toll on the working class, from those who prepare the machines to those who use them, and most directly, on those they are used against. These war plans will not be creating safe, high-paying jobs for the working class, but rather will exacerbate the already deadly conditions of the poorly regulated shipbuilding industry.

Shipyard accidents and injuries

The workers who build and repair Navy ships operate under conditions with some of the weakest oversight of any federally contracted industry. In the decade spanning from 2005 through 2015, a total of 76 workers in the private shipbuilding and repair industry were killed on the job. According to the most recent federal labor figures, shipyard workers face an injury and illness rate that is approximately 80 percent higher than construction jobs.

Examples of these conditions have been exposed repeatedly over the last 15 years. In 2009, VT Halter Marine Inc.’s shipyard in Escatawpa, Mississippi, was forced to settle with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), agreeing to pay a reduced fine of $860,500, after admitting to willful violation of 12 safety rules that killed two men. A recent report in Politico describes the incident: “[T]he company had dispatched the men into a confined space with flammable vapors without testing the air. It didn’t give them explosion-proof lights. As the men worked, toxic fumes reached more than 600 times the legal limit, according to OSHA.”

Of two men who died in the explosion, one was an immigrant from Puerto Rico, only 25 years old. The other was a recently released felon, 52 years old. Just a month before the explosion, another worker was killed at a VT Halter shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, after falling 40 feet, working unharnessed and without handrails. He was 23 years old and left behind 4-year-old twins.

During the several-months-long investigation, and just months before the settlement was reached, the US Navy awarded the company another contract, worth $87 million, to build a 350-foot ship to improve submarine warfare.

The US government has given out over $100 billion in public money to the Navy and Coast Guard’s seven major private shipbuilders since October 2008. These contracts continue to funnel money into shipbuilding industries despite numerous citations for serious safety lapses that have endangered, injured and, in some cases, killed workers. The two arms of the political establishment operate in this field as if a part of separate bodies—one “shakes a fist” at these industries by imposing minimal fines, while the other routinely rewards them with massive contracts. Thus is the logic of the imperialist machine.

Although many commercial shipyards have moved overseas as a result of globalization and less expensive manufacturing in China, Korea, and Japan, the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 requires that government vessels be constructed within the borders of the US. Critics of this policy include longtime war hawk John McCain, who favors shifting the construction of oil and gasoline tankers to other countries that will further cut costs of shipbuilding. Trump, on the other hand, has promised that the plans to expand the Navy will mean the hiring of American craftsmen, pipe fitters and welders.

In 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote a lengthy policy article headlined “America’s Pacific Century,” calling for “a substantially increased investment—diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise—in the Asia-Pacific region” over the next decade.

In December 2016, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced that the department had completed a yearlong Force Structure Assessment, to evaluate long-term defense security requirements and upon review, “recommends a 355-ship fleet including 12 carriers, 104 large surface combatants, 52 small surface combatants, 38 amphibious ships, and 66 submarines” as part of the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan.

Mabus went on to state, “To continue to protect America and defend our strategic interests around the world, all the while continuing the counter terrorism fight and appropriately competing with a growing China and resurgent Russia, our Navy must continue to grow.” Numerous policy analysts, think tanks, and politicians in the Democratic and Republican parties have recognized the declining economic power of the United States in relation to China and have, over the past few years, pursued diplomatic measures and more-aggressive military action in the region seeking to contain China.

Long-term plans to expand the Navy, which have already been under way, are in line with Trump’s call to bring jobs back to the US. His slogan “Make America Great Again” in reality means an intensification of the attacks on the social position of shipyard and other workers in order to further enrich American corporations and make them more competitive on the global market. Trump’s plans represent a further shift to the right in a process that began under Obama with the restructuring of the auto industry and the halving of workers’ wages with the dedicated complicity of the unions.

Famine threatens millions in the Horn of Africa as Washington prepares expanded war in Somalia

Thomas Gaist 

Even as starvation and malnutrition threaten more than 10 million lives in the Horn of Africa countries of Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, the United States and its allies are preparing a massive expansion of military operations throughout the region.

“With nearly half its population (five million people) facing severe food and water shortages, Somalia is now on the verge of a famine. Malnutrition rates across Somalia have already reached critical levels and are expected to worsen in the coming weeks. Thousands of families are on the move in search of food and water, and many are now crossing the border into Ethiopia,” Save the Children noted.

The Save the Children report states further that at least 70 percent of those children screened in the Dollo Ado refugee camp in Ethiopia show signs of malnutrition. Drought conditions in that country are forcing children to drop out of school, putting them at risk of early marriage and forced migration.

According to Save the Children, the upsurge in hunger is the outcome of below-average rainfall during successive wet seasons, causing food and water prices to skyrocket, herds to die and crops to fail. Cereal prices are at record highs in Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania, while maize yields are down across southern Africa as a result of new pests including the fall armyworm.

According to the World Food Program (WFP), the devastating drought in the Horn of Africa is producing a humanitarian crisis in Somalia and driving urgent needs in Kenya and Ethiopia. “The number of people in crisis and emergency food insecurity levels [Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) 3 or above] now stands at 11.2 million people, with 2.9 million in Somalia, 5.6 million in Ethiopia, and 2.7 million in Kenya,” the WFP reported.

The WFP found that the drought is developing alongside an escalating humanitarian and political crisis in South Sudan, where more than 5 million people are in need of urgent assistance and more than 1.2 million South Sudanese have already fled to neighboring countries.

“In six months, we’ll be facing a catastrophe and a famine on a scale we cannot imagine,” United Nations humanitarian chief for Somalia Peter de Clercq said Thursday. UN Food and Agriculture director Maria Semedo warned African governments that without massive influx of food aid, the situation will become “a disaster like the famine in 2011.”

The Horn of Africa is already plagued by mass hunger. Ten million Ethiopians went hungry last year as a result of drought, and 6 million are currently in dire need of food assistance. More than half of Somalis lack access to adequate nutrition, according to the latest UN figures.

Nearly 40 percent of Kenyan children experience stunted growth as a result of inadequate nutrition, according to the WFP.

Amid the developing humanitarian disaster in the region, President Barack Obama approved the sale of $400 million in weapons to the Kenyan military on the day before he left office in January. Nairobi announced shortly after that on January 29 that it would soon dispatch troops to support the US-backed regime in South Sudan.

The civil war in South Sudan has reached “catastrophic proportions for civilians,” with “record numbers” fleeing their homes under threat of “mass atrocities,” according to a secret UN report leaked to AFP.

Six years after its establishment as the world’s “newest country,” the US-backed South Sudanese regime is barely able to pay its soldiers enough to eat. Inflation stands at over 800 percent and “cash is so devalued it barely buys food for a week,” local sources told Reuters.

Although presented as a “natural disaster,” famine in Africa is ultimately the product of more than a century of oppression of the continent by world imperialism amplified by the ongoing crisis and breakdown of world capitalism. The poverty of the African masses, the absence of basic social infrastructure, and the reliance of much of the population on subsistence farming have persisted even as Western companies and governments have extracted vast sums of wealth from the continent.

Africa has repeatedly suffered major famines during the post-World War II period, including: Somalia (1991-1992, 2010-2012), Sudan (1998), Ethiopia (1958, 1983-85), Uganda (1980-83), the Sahel desert region (1968-1972) and Nigeria (1967-70).

Even as bourgeois economists celebrate numerically high economic growth rates in a handful of African countries, conditions for the vast majority of Africans have only deteriorated further during the 25 years since the dissolution of the USSR. The wealth creation that has occurred has gone exclusively to benefit a small layer of African elites and their American and European backers. Africa’s governments have abandoned anything resembling nationalist or “left” policies aimed at defending the interests of their populations from the predations of foreign capital. They have moved steadily to deepen their integration into the US-dominated capitalist world order.

The incompetency of Africa’s elites to meet the social needs of the African masses is matched only by their enthusiasm for waging wars, invariably sponsored by the US and NATO powers. The past quarter century has seen a huge explosion of military violence and inter-state conflict on the continent. Between 1990 and 2011, the African continent saw over 400 armed conflicts, according to research presented by Dr. Paul Williams of the Elliott School of International Affairs during a January conference held by the US Africa Command (AFRICOM). Williams also reported that between 2011 and 2017, the total number of wars in Africa grew by 60 percent.

The United States has repeatedly seized on famines to escalate its military operations on the continent. The 1992-1993 American-led military intervention in Somalia, “Operation Restore Hope,” was launched in the name of insuring food security to the population. During the 2006 and 2011 famines in Somalia, Washington backed invasions led by Ethiopian military forces, who blockaded much of the country, while tens of thousands starved, in the name of combating the Islamist militia al Shabaab.

American-backed military forces have been operating on Somali soil continuously since the 2006 invasion. In 2007, African Union (AU) forces deployed to Mogadishu in support of the US-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Ethiopian forces were withdrawn in 2009, but returned as part of US-backed Kenyan-led intervention beginning in October 2011.

In 2014, US media confirmed that American forces have been secretly active in Somalia from the very beginning of the Ethiopian-led invasion, further implicating American imperialism in a war that has produced thousands of officially registered deaths and displaced more than 1 million Somalis.

The past year has seen numerous signs that a US military escalation in Somalia is being prepared. American soldiers are increasingly involved in open combat and Washington is spurring Kenya to assume a larger military role. In October 2016, unnamed “senior military officials” informed the New York Times that 200-300 US Special Forces soldiers have been operating jointly with Kenyan and Ugandan troops, carrying out “more than a half-dozen raids per month,” inside Somalia.

In November, the Obama administration expanded the Pentagon’s authority to wage war in Somalia. The new “Somalia campaign” is based on “a blueprint for warfare which President Obama has embraced and will pass along to his successor,” official sources told the Times in October.

US Special Forces, in coordination with troops from the Somali National Army, as well as the Kenyan, Ugandan and Ethiopian militaries, are organizing warfare from the capital Mogadishu. US intelligence officers are involved in interrogating prisoners, and air strikes organized by American forces are claimed to have killed hundreds of Al Shabaab fighters in recent months.

US forces were directly involved in combat in southern Somalia alongside Somali National Army (SNA) units in January, including raids against the southern port city of Kismayo. American commandos are also involved in operations in Kenya’s Boni forest, which lies on Somalia’s southwestern border. Kenya’s military has steadily escalated its operations in the area since 2015, and is constructing a 435-mile-long wall along its eastern border.

As millions face starvation, the US and its regional allies are engaged in cutthroat political struggles and intrigues. Rivalries within Africa’s national elites, amplified and manipulated by the US and European powers, are setting the stage for an array of potential new conflicts to be overseen by President Donald Trump.

Forces within the US-backed Egyptian and South Sudanese regimes are conspiring to destabilize Ethiopia, according to African media. In January, a “dirty deal” was allegedly struck between Egyptian military dictator General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and South Sudan President Salva Kiir to back opposition groups, including the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF).

Similar meetings were held between al-Sisi and his Eritrean counterpart, Isaias Afwerki, in Cairo, as “a deliberate move” and “to pressure Addis Ababa,” according to Egyptian sources cited by the New Arab. Cairo is anxious over Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD) project, which would give Ethiopia the ability to choke off the supply of Nile river water north through Sudan and Egypt.

In a phone call last month with Sisi, Trump pledged US military support to the dictatorship in its so-called war on terror in Egypt and across the continent. “President Trump underscored the United States remains strongly committed to the bilateral relationship, which has helped both countries overcome challenges in the region for decades,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer stated at a press briefing.

The only response of the imperialist powers to the vast human catastrophe brewing in the Horn of Africa is escalated war and the further destabilization of African nation states, aimed at re-imposing colonial-style rule. The most basic demands for peace and bread can only be achieved through a movement of the entire African working class united across all national and ethnic lines, fighting for socialism against imperialism and its national bourgeois collaborators.

State of Child Health report in UK reveals devastating impact of austerity

Liz Smith

Poverty and social inequality are blighting the lives of nearly one-in-five children in the UK according to a new report from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH).

In its State of Child Health 2017 report, the RCPCH looked at 25 health indicators including asthma, diabetes and epilepsy as well as obesity, breast feeding and mortality rates.

The RCPCH found infant mortality (children under one year) is more than twice as high in the poorest compared with the richest socio-economic groups.

The UK ranks 15 out of 19 European countries for infant mortality, with only Denmark, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia having higher death rates.

While rates of infant death have declined in the last 40 years, this trend has slowed in the last 20 years compared to other European countries.

Neonatal (before 28 days) mortality accounts for between 70 and 80 per cent of infant deaths. The great majority of these are due to perinatal (22 weeks prior to one week after birth) causes.

Conditions related to preterm birth are the most common cause of death in infancy. Here, there is a strong relationship with maternal health as well as congenital (hereditary) malformations.

The RCPCH argues that many of the factors causing preterm births could be prevented by reducing poverty and promoting social health. Smoking and poor maternal nutrition before and during pregnancy play key roles, as does maternal age—where the infant mortality rate is 6.1 deaths per thousand for those under 20 years as opposed to 3.4 per thousand for mothers aged 25-29 years.

In 2010, the Child Medical Officer—the most senior advisor on health matters in government—produced a report showing the critical role of a child’s early years in determining life chances. But the government’s regressive social policy has meant deep cuts to early years’ services.

In the last six years, over 313 children’s centres—which ensured the most vulnerable families were supported during pregnancy and early years—have been closed nationally. Dozens of NHS maternity units have been shut since 2010, while a recent State of Health Visiting survey found that caseloads for 85 percent of qualified and registered nurses and midwives have doubled over the past two years.

Amongst older children (1-9 years) the main causes of death are cancer, injuries, poisonings, congenital conditions and neurological and developmental disorders. Preterm birth also contributes to mortality for up to 10 years after birth.

There is a strong association between deprivation and the risk of death throughout childhood, with children in deprived areas more likely to die. In 1970, the UK was among the best 25 percent of countries for childhood deaths, and by 2008 in the bottom quartile.

The gap in health inequality between rich and poor is highlighted in Wales. Between 2009-2013, the rate of death in children less than eight years living in the most deprived quintile of the population was 70 percent higher than in the least deprived quintile.

Among school age/adolescent children, the chief causes of death are injuries, violence and suicide, followed by cancer and substance misuse. Again, the data show a strong relationship between deprivation and health inequalities. A recent study of suicide deaths in England from 2001-2011 found the mean rate of suicide among 15-19 year olds living in the most deprived areas was 79 percent higher than those living in the least deprived areas. In the latter part of the decade, the gap began to narrow.

The RCPCH also examined dental care. It found that 31-41 percent of children across the UK show evidence of tooth decay. This is the most common reason why children aged 5-9 years are admitted to hospital. The causes cited are high sugar diets, poor oral hygiene and lack of access to dental care.

Poor oral health can have a major impact on a child’s physical health—causing pain, infections, altered sleep and eating patterns—leading to school absence and the need for dental extraction, say the report’s authors.

Poverty due to falling income is linked by the report to large numbers of households experiencing food poverty, with a subsequent impact on nutrition. Food parcel donations to families increased from 128,697 in 2011-2012 to over one million in 2014-2015. The report draws particular attention to the steep rise in housing costs—which has increased for those living in relative poverty from 19 to 29 percent.

One of the most common long-term medical conditions among children and young people in the UK is asthma. The report finds the UK has the highest prevalence of emergency admission and death rates for childhood asthma in Europe. Asthma rates in the UK are among the highest in the world, with an estimated 1.1 million children currently receiving treatment. The number of reported deaths is also amongst the highest.

The RCPCH found that Type 1 diabetes is an increasingly common childhood condition. The UK is currently sixth-highest in the world for new cases of Type 1 diabetes with 28.2 per 100,000 being diagnosed per year. Early diagnosis is essential. Otherwise diabetes can become life threatening. The report found that there is a strong social gradient in diabetes control, with more deprived groups having poorer outcomes.

Children living in the most deprived areas are far more likely to be overweight or obese compared to children in the least deprived areas: in England, 25.8 percent compared to 18.0 percent; in Scotland, 25.1 percent compared to 17.1 percent; and in Wales, 28.5 percent compared to 22.2 percent. This is in stark contrast to the early 1970s where obesity prevalence was greater in children from the most affluent areas than in the most deprived

“At the beginning of the 20th century, one-in-six infants did not live until their first birthday in the UK,” writes the report’s senior editor Professor Russell Viner. The RCPCH warns that there have been huge improvements in child health in the UK in the past 100 years, but that there “has been a slowing of progress” in the last two decades.

The implications of this assessment—that the long arc of progress in public health is slowing, threatening a return to the conditions of the Victorian era— is a devastating indictment of the relentless austerity imposed by successive Labour and Conservative governments, and their partners in the trade union bureaucracy.

Trump’s Homeland Security memos: Millions at risk of deportation as crackdown looms

Eric London

The Trump administration is set to give final approval to two leaked memos signed by Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, according to multiple press reports. The basic content of the memos will be largely unchanged from the versions made public over the weekend. An official announcement adopting the memos is expected this week.

The full implementation of these protocols would fundamentally alter the demographic makeup of the United States and would result in one of the largest forced migrations in world history. The new DHS protocols place millions of migrants at risk of removal and threaten to upend the lives of millions more family members and friends.

A Texas immigration lawyer who wished to remain anonymous for fear the government would punish her clients told the World Socialist Web Site, “The highlights of the memo have shaken the core of those we serve as fear has seeped in, leaving them doubtful of the immediate future.”

The total number of migrants who can be arrested, detained and deported immediately without a court hearing is likely in the hundreds of thousands, as the memos expand the “expedited removal” process to include migrants located anywhere in the US who cannot prove two years of residence. Previously, only migrants captured within 100 miles of the border and within 14 days of their entry could be removed without appearing before a judge.

The memos prioritize the removal of migrants with criminal records, as well as those who have been charged with a criminal offense; those who have “abused any program related to receipt of public benefits” or those who “in the judgment of an immigration officer otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security.”

Though it remains to be seen exactly how officials will implement these sweeping and vaguely worded protocols, the Los Angeles Times estimated that 6 million migrants entered without documentation or inspection and technically fall under the new priority standard. In addition, parents who pay to help their children join them in the US will now be deported or criminally prosecuted on the absurd ground that they are aiding “human trafficking.”

The deportation of even a significant fraction of those affected will require a massive police presence in major American cities. The new DHS protocols will deputize tens of thousands of local police to stop immigrants with “reasonable suspicion” that they are an undocumented worker. This will result in mass racial profiling of Latinos, Africans, Asians and others, not limited to US border regions.

The memos call for the hiring of 10,000 immigration agents and 5,000 border patrolmen, who will fill the courts and detention centers with immigrants, in many cases tearing them away from their children, parents or other loved ones. These officials, local police, the National Guard and perhaps other branches of the military will be mobilized to crush resistance to deportation in heavily migrant neighborhoods and among sympathetic demonstrators.

Conditions at the border will become extremely harsh. All migrants captured crossing the border will now be placed in detention centers either before they are removed without trial or as they await their potentially years-long legal process to conclude. These facilities will become increasingly crowded and conditions will worsen. Deaths in detention facilities are already common as guards withhold medicine and otherwise deny migrants’ medical care.

“The Rio Grande Valley is one of the most highly policed areas of the country,” said John-Michael Torres of La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) in an interview with the WSWS. LUPE is an immigrant rights group based along the Texas-Mexico border. “Border communities are similar to the rest of the country: we are made up of diverse, tight-knit communities from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, with people who are proud of where they live…We don’t want our communities to be divided by border walls and our families divided by deportations.”

Under the DHS memos, asylum seekers will now have to prove they have a “significant possibility” of satisfying the complex legal requirements for asylum to avoid expedited removal, whereas before they only needed to show they had a “credible fear” of returning to their home country to win a hearing before a judge.

This will be difficult for migrants to do, especially without a lawyer present. ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials regularly block attorneys from contacting their clients in prison, trick migrants into signing incriminating documents with the false promise of release and write reports including false testimony that ruin a migrant’s asylum case. To make matters worse, the memos also call for sending asylum seekers back to the country from which they entered the US (almost always Mexico) while they wait for their case to conclude. This will result in an abrogation of their basic due process rights, which attach to non-citizens only when they are on US soil, as evidenced by the memos’ requirement that migrants participate in any court hearings by teleconference only.

The order calls for the construction of a new militarized infrastructure of walls and jails that will house new entrants and those waiting to be deported. The language of the memo signed by Kelly calls for ICE and CBP to “take all necessary action and allocate all available resources to expand their detention capabilities and capacities at or near the border with Mexico to the greatest extent possible.”

The orders also severely restrict both prosecutors’ ability to halt removal proceedings based on their discretion and the government’s ability to temporarily allow immigrants to exit and re-enter the US for humanitarian reasons, like to visit a dying parent in Mexico.

Millions of migrants in the US are making urgent plans for the possibility of deportation as fear grows of additional round-ups. Last week, the Trump administration arrested 680 migrants, including a student with valid DACA paperwork, and many without criminal records.

Families across the country are now scrambling to organize their paperwork and to make arrangements to place their citizen children in the care of friends or family. Immigrants are flooding the consulates of their home countries with calls for help. Rumors of ICE raids spread rapidly across social media even when unfounded, giving a sense of the level of fear and desperation. Teachers in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods report high levels of fear and anxiety among young children, many of whom are US citizens, who worry that the government will take their parents away.

The defense of the millions of migrants facing deportation in the US and of the millions more seeking refuge in Europe requires mobilizing the working class internationally. This must take place on the basis of a socialist, anti-war and anti-capitalist program.

The conditions that give rise to migration—war and poverty—and the harsh conditions migrants face in the US and Europe are both the product of the capitalist system and cannot be solved by appeals to capitalist politicians. Only by reorganizing the world economy on a socialist and egalitarian basis can the right to travel freely across the world without fear of detention or deportation be secured for all.

How many people would die in a war between the US and Russia?

Andre Damon

The American ruling class is locked in a ferocious internal conflict centered on issues of foreign policy and war. The Democratic Party, along with a section of Republicans and most of the media, is conducting a hysterical campaign against Donald Trump for his supposed conciliatory attitude toward Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. These forces are fronting for the intelligence establishment, which is determined to prevent any retreat from the policy of aggressive confrontation with Moscow carried out by the Obama administration.

Trump, for his part, speaks for elements in the ruling elite and the state who view Iran and China to be the more immediate targets for US provocation and preparations for war, and would like to tamp down the conflict with Russia for now so as to peel it away from Tehran and Beijing.

There is not an ounce of democratic content on either side of this struggle between reactionary and war-mongering factions of US imperialism. The Democrats, however, are seeking to use unsubstantiated allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election to hijack popular opposition to the Trump administration and corral it behind the drive to war with Russia.

For months, the front pages of leading newspapers have featured “news” stories, based on the alleged statements of unnamed officials, about supposed meddling by Russia in the political affairs of the US and other countries. Nationally syndicated columnists have denounced Putin as a dictator, tyrant and murderer bent on dominating Europe and subverting American democracy.

Members of congress have declared Russia’s alleged intervention in the US election an “act of war” (in the words of John McCain) and vowed to “kick Russia’s ass” (Lindsey Graham).

This campaign takes place in the context of a major buildup of US and NATO military forces—troops, tanks, heavy weapons—on Russia’s western border, and an imminent military escalation in Syria, where US-backed “rebel” militias are fighting Syrian government forces supported by Iranian troops and Russian war planes and military advisors.

Whether in the Baltics or the Middle East, conditions are present for a clash between US and Russian forces, even if unintentional, to spark a full-scale war between the world’s two biggest nuclear-armed powers.

Yet neither the media nor the politicians agitating for a more aggressive posture toward Moscow discuss where their policy is leading, much less the likely consequences of a war between the US and Russia.

How many people would die in such a war? What are the odds that it would involve the use of nuclear weapons? On these life-and-death questions, the commentators and politicians, who drone on endlessly about Trump’s supposed softness toward Putin, are silent.

Behind the scenes, however, the intelligence agencies and Pentagon, along with their allied geo-strategic think tanks, are engaged in intense discussions and detailed planning premised on the possibility, indeed inevitability, of a major war with Russia. Plans are being laid and preparations made to wage and “win” such a war, including through the use of nuclear weapons.

One does not have to look far to find the people who are heading up the war planning. Yesterday, President Trump appointed Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, an army strategist, as his new national security advisor.

The selection of McMaster is broadly seen as a concession to Trump’s anti-Russia critics in the political and intelligence establishment. He is the leading figure in an Army project called the Russia New Generation Warfare study, whose participants have made repeated trips to the battlefields of eastern Ukraine to study Russia’s military capabilities and devise strategies and weapons systems to defeat them. McMaster has called on the US to prepare for high-intensity conventional war with Russia, involving not only long-range missile systems and stealth aircraft, but also “close” combat.

Beyond conventional warfare, US think tank strategists are discussing what it would take to “win” a nuclear war. The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) recently put out a 140-page report, “Preserving the Balance: A US Eurasia Defense Strategy,” which discusses this issue in detail. The CSBA is headed by Andrew Krepinevich, the report’s author, and includes on its Board of Directors figures such as former Under Secretary of the Army Nelson Ford, former CIA Director James Woolsey and retired general Jack Keane.

“There is a need to rethink the problem of limited nuclear war in which the United States is a direct participant, or between other parties where the United States has a major security interest,” Krepinevich writes. “As opposed to the global apocalypse envisioned in the wake of a superpower nuclear exchange during the Cold War, there will very likely be a functioning world after a war between minor nuclear powers, or even between the United States and a nuclear-armed Iran or North Korea. US forces must, therefore, be prepared to respond to a range of strategic warfare contingencies along the Eurasian periphery.”

In an earlier report entitled “Rethinking Armageddon,” Krepinevich argued that the use of a “small number” of battlefield nuclear weapons should be included among the appropriate responses by a US president to conventional threats from Russia.

During the Cold War, the “limited” use of nuclear weapons was seen as an invitation for a full-scale nuclear exchange and the destruction of the planet. Now such discussions are considered “respectable” and prudent.

These plans are being realized in the US military arsenal. The US is currently in the midst of a $1 trillion nuclear weapons modernization program commissioned under Obama. The program centers on the procurement of lower-yield, maneuverable nuclear weapons that are more likely to be used in combat. However, the Defense Science Board, a committee appointed to advise the Pentagon, recently called on the Trump administration to do more to develop weapons suitable for a “tailored nuclear option for limited use.”

What would be the human toll from such an exchange? Numerous Pentagon war games conducted during the Cold War concluded that the “limited” use of nuclear weapons would not only cause millions of civilian casualties, but quickly escalate into a full-scale nuclear exchange that would destroy major cities.

A 1955 war game titled Carte Blanche, which was responding to a Russian invasion of German territory with the use of a “small” number of battlefield nuclear weapons, resulted in the immediate deaths of 1.7 million Germans, the wounding of 3.5 million more, and millions more dead as a result of fallout radiation.

In one 1983 war game code-named Proud Prophet, NATO initiated a limited nuclear first strike on Soviet military targets. But rather than backing down, the USSR initiated a full-scale nuclear retaliation, prompting the US to reply in kind. When the proverbial dust had settled, half a billion people were dead and European civilization destroyed.

More contemporary studies have shown similarly disastrous outcomes. A 2007 report by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War suggested that a “limited” nuclear exchange could lead to the deaths of over a billion people, mostly as a result of widespread climate disruption. The US National Academy of Sciences concluded that a “large-scale nuclear war” would lead directly to the deaths of up to four billion people.

The eruption of such a war at the hands of the nuclear arsonists who preside over crisis-ridden American capitalism is a real and present danger. In fact, as the McCarthyite-style anti-Russia agitation indicates, absent the independent and revolutionary intervention of the working class in the US and around the world, it is an inevitability.

Such is the criminality and recklessness of the American ruling elite and its political representatives on both sides of the aisle. Escalating war is a conspiracy of the elites, into which the masses of people are to be dragged and sacrificed.

Anyone who doubts that the American ruling class is capable of such acts should look to the historical record. The United States dropped nuclear bombs, which today would be considered “low-yield” and even “tactical,” on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just to warn off the Soviet Union. Truman and company killed over 100,000 people on the day the bombs were dropped, and another 100,000 died from radioactive poisoning over the ensuing four months.

Today, when the United States faces economic and geopolitical challenges far greater than those of an earlier period, it will operate all the more ruthlessly and recklessly.

The growing movement in opposition to the Trump administration must be inured against any and all efforts of the Democratic Party to infect it with the virus of imperialist war-mongering. The ongoing protests against Trump’s billionaire cabinet and his attacks on immigrants and democratic rights are only the heralds of a movement of the working class. It is necessary to politically arm this emerging movement with the program of socialist internationalism and the understanding that the fight against war and dictatorship is the fight against capitalism.

United Nations Volunteer Programme 2017

Application Deadline: 19th March 2017

Eligible Countries: All

Type: Short program/Volunteer

Eligibility: 

• Master’s degree in social sciences, political science, public or business administration, economics or related fields
• 5 years of relevant professional experience and proven track record in managing and implementing programmes in the context of development or in the area of humanitarian relief or in crisis management. Work experience with the United Nations is an asset.
• Fluency in English is required. However, since many of the upcoming vacancies require bilingual candidates, we strongly encourage candidates who are fluent in English and, in addition, French or Spanish or Portuguese to apply. Any additional language (such as Arabic or Russian) is an asset, and another UN official language is highly desirable.

Selection: The selection process may include the following steps: telephone screening/video interviewing, technical assessments and competency based interviews. Since this process will be for a group of candidates, and not be limited to one assignment, we do expect the entire process to take up to three months.

Eligibility criteria for UN Volunteers and UNV Programme Officers who are currently serving will be communicated separately to all UNV Field Units.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Duration of Program: Not stated

How to Apply: UNV is currently building up a Talent Pool, which includes qualified, pre-assessed and evaluated candidates earmarked to become the next generation of UNV Programme Officers.

Already registered candidates are able to apply by using the application code indicated in this general Description of Assignment (DOA). Non-registered candidates have to use the application code available in the DOA after registering their profile in the UNV database. The current call goes from February 16th until March 19th 2017.

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: United Nations Volunteers

City University of London President Scholarships for Undergraduate International Students 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 30th September 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): UK

Type: Undergraduate

Eligibility: To qualify for the President’s International scholarship, candidate must:

• Be an international student (i.e. from outside the UK/EU and paying the overseas fee)
• Be applying for your first year of undergraduate study in 2017/18
• Achieve grades AAA or above in ‘A’ levels or IB 35 or above in the International Baccalaureate* with the exception of courses in the Cass Business School (see below) and the School of Arts and Social Sciences (see below)
• For courses in the Cass Business School, achieve grades A*AA or above in ‘A’ Levels (or A*A*A for Actuarial Science) or IB 38 or above in the International Baccalaureate (or IB 39 for Actuarial Science)
• For Journalism based in the Schools of Arts and Social Sciences, achieve grades A*AA or above in ‘A’ Levels or IB 38 or above
• Accept an offer from City as your first choice

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: £2,000

Duration of Scholarship: For 3 years

How to Apply: Students will have to register by 30th September 2017 in order to be considered for the Scholarship.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: City University of London