Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA) Feminist and Transformational Leadership Development Programme 2019 for African Women

Application Deadline: 28th February 2019

Eligible Countries: Countries in Eastern and Southern Africa


To be taken at (country): Nairobi, Kenya

About the Award:  This specific institute is inspired by the adoption of Agenda 2030 commonly referred to as Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2063 of the African Union, and therefore seeks to catalyze a cohort of feminist and transformational leaders who are able to analyze discrimination against women and girls from a feminist perspective and get seized with the courage to dismantle structures and systems that have for long hindered women’s advancement.   
The Akina Mama wa Afrika – African Women’s Leadership Institute was birthed  in 1997 and is based on a long standing model of POT (Personal Mastery, Organising Skills and Taking Action), a framework that provides a powerful and holistic feminist grounding for African women to define, analyse and articulate their experiences of inequalities and devise solutions for sustained change. 

Type: Training

Eligibility: The leadership development programme will be awarded to 25 women leaders, who have exemplified leadership in their organisations, communities and or have stood for elective office. Eligible candidates are African women between the ages of 25-40 years, based in Eastern and Southern Africa, who are able to participate in all activities- beginning with a residential institute scheduled to be held from the 25th- 29th of March 2019, in Nairobi, Kenya and commit to a one year peer mentorship programme.  

Number of Awards: 25 

Value of Award: Programme is fully-funded for all participants

Duration of Programme: 25th- 29th of March 2019

How to Apply: An application form is available at this link.

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Trump’s Coup in Venezuela: The Full Story

Eric Draitser

The US-sponsored coup in Venezuela, still ongoing as I write, is the latest chapter in the long and bloody history of US imperialism in Latin America. This basic fact, understood by most across the left of the political spectrum – including even the chattering liberal class which acknowledges this truth only with the passage of time and never in the moment – must undergird any analysis of the situation in Venezuela today. That is to say, the country is being targeted by the Yanqui Empire.

This point is, or at least should be, indisputable irrespective of one’s opinions of Venezuelan President Maduro, the Socialist Party (PSUV), or the progress of the Bolivarian Revolution. Imperialism, and its neocolonial manifestation in the 21^st Century, is there to pick clean the bones of the Bolivarian dream and return Venezuela to the role of subservient asset, an oil-soaked proxy state ruled by a right-wing satrap eager to please the colonial lords of capital.

But in providing analysis of the situation, the Left must tread carefully with the knowledge that though it may be weak, disorganized, fragmented, and bitterly sectarian, the Left remains the principal vehicle for cogent analysis of imperialism and its machinations. This historic role that the Left has played, from Lenin and Mao to Hobsbawm and Chomsky, is of critical importance as analysis informs discourse which in turn ossifies into historical narrative.

And with that weighty and historic responsibility, the Left is duty-bound to understand at a deep level what we’re witnessing in Venezuela. Moreover, the Left must beware the pitfalls of shallow, superficial analysis which can lead to poor understanding of material reality, and even poorer anti-imperialist politics.

It’s the Oil…Or Is It?

One could be forgiven for immediately assuming that the blatantly illegal coup, and its near instantaneous recognition by the Trump Administration (among others), is proof positive that the US has instigated the overthrow of the Bolivarian Revolution in a nakedly aggressive action to steal oil resources. Indeed, this would be a near textbook example of the sort of colonial policies visited upon the peoples of the Global South since the dawn of the colonial age.

And there’s no doubt some truth to the conclusion. As Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard noted on Twitter, “It’s about the oil…again,” referencing the parallel to the Bush Administration’s crime against humanity known as the Iraq War which was, in no small part, about enriching Dick Cheney’s Halliburton, and the US oil industry broadly speaking.

And Gabbard is correct to highlight statements by Trump’s National Security Warlock, John Bolton, whose every word oozes the sociopathy we’ve come to expect from this most hawkish of neocons. Bolton stated in a press conference, “We’re in conversation with major American companies now…it would make a difference if we could have American companies produce the oil in Venezuela. We both have a lot at stake here.”

Leaving aside the likely deliberate ambiguity of these statements – What are these “conversations”? Does this mean there was no production plan before the coup was initiated? etc. – it seems obvious that oil is a major motivating factor.

But why, exactly?

As anyone with even basic knowledge of the global oil market can tell you, there are a number of reasons why we should be skeptical of the idea that the US simply wants to rake in profits by stealing Venezuela’s oil, its primary resource and export revenue generator.

First, global oil prices have remained fairly depressed in comparison to the historic highs of just a decade ago. With the price per barrel hovering somewhere between $50 and $60 today, Venezuelan crude remains profitable, but due to its heavy qualities, it requires somewhat more expensive refining technologies, making it less attractive than some other oil reserves, most notably shale.

This is not to say that oil companies would not be interested in looting this natural resource, as evidenced by ExxonMobil desperately trying to control the Essequibo region which continues to be a source of competing territorial claims between Guyana and Venezuela. The USGS estimated roughly 15 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and 42 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves lie under the Guyana Suriname Basin, making it 2nd in the world for prospectivity among the world’s unexplored basins and 12th for oil among all the world’s basins – explored and unexplored.

However, from a pure profit perspective, Venezuelan oil remains far less profitable (and stable from an investor perspective) than investing in the Permian Basin in Texas where the fracking boom, also hampered by global oil prices, has continued unabated. Indeed, with the US becoming an exporter of oil, and potentially the most productive oil field in the world in the Permian Basin, the appetite for simply snatching Venezuela’s oil supply would seem to be less.

And yet, here we are. So, what gives?

The View from Washington and Moscow

In fact, the fixation on Venezuela’s oil is only part of the story. The real story is the politics, and geopolitics, behind control over the oil. Put simply, control of Venezuelan oil is part of the broader international conflict with Russia, and perhaps to a lesser degree China.

In 2016, as Venezuela’s economy was in freefall due in no small part to the historic lows in oil price ($35 per barrel in January 2016), the Maduro government took the controversial decision to stake 49.9% of its ownership in PDVSA’s US subsidiary, Citgo, to the Russian state oil company Rosneft in exchange for a $1.5 billion loan. In essence, the Kremlin gave Caracas a very temporary bailout with major strings attached. With this move, the Russians effectively became part owners of Venezuela’s primary asset.

But Russia, being one of the world’s leading oil producers itself, surely had little interest in the oil per se. After all, Russian energy exports remain dominant in Europe, with expanding operations in Asia. Instead, Venezuelan oil was to be a potent lever against the US at precisely the moment the US was applying political and economic pressure on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine, among other things. It should be remembered that the Obama Administration had imposed sanctions against Moscow in March 2014 over the Russian annexation of Crimea, and later involvement in the civil war in Eastern Ukraine.

With the US and European sanctions, some of which targeted Russia’s oil industry, the Kremlin was desperate for strategies to leverage against the US both to extract a cost for the sanctions, but perhaps more importantly for potential future negotiations. Putin & Co. settled on, at least in part, Venezuela’s oil sector. By providing what amounted to a relatively small loan of $1.5 billion, Russia immediately became a dominant player in Venezuela’s oil, thereby becoming a power player with Washington’s political and economic strategy.

And indeed this strategy, or at least recognition of it, was confirmed by powerful US interests in early 2018 when a still shadowy group of US investors made a move to try to purchase the Russian stake in Citgo.

Essentially, the plan, which was revealed to Reuters by an anonymous investor who is part of the group, called for the investors to pay off Venezuela’s outstanding loan balance and then require Rosneft to terminate its lien and transfer the loan to new investors. As the investor told Reuters:

“The [Trump] administration should recognize that if it doesn’t do something pro-active here, it will face…limited options under almost any scenario, whether it is an attempt to foreclose by the current lienholder, further restrictions on Venezuelan crude oil imports into the U.S., or even in the event there is a positive political change in Caracas… This is a private sector solution to a public policy problem.”

It doesn’t get much clearer than that. US elites clearly felt that Russia’s foray into Venezuela’s oil sector was a strategic calculation designed to counteract US political and economic moves against Russia. Moreover, it seems obvious that there is/was a lack of faith on the part of segments of the ruling class that the Trump Administration would actively block Russia’s geostrategic maneuvers effectively, hence the need for a “private sector” solution.

And yet here we are, less than 12 months after the news of this potential strategy broke, and the Trump Administration is doing precisely what the ruling class demanded, namely targeting Venezuela’s economy, specifically the oil sector. As the recent move by the US Treasury makes clear, the US will use Venezuelan oil revenues as part of a hostage-taking strategy designed to force regime change which would make moot the question of Russian power in Venezuela as the new government would be, for all intents and purposes, a US puppet regime.

One can almost hear the shrill cries of Trump’s apologists on left and right who will cry in the night about the Deep State forcing Trump to do this, that he has no choice as it is the will of the ruling class which has weakened him with the Russiagate hoax.

But, leaving aside the unbearable blitheness of being MAGA-adjacent, the reality is that Trump has warmongered against Venezuela since well before the recent escalation, including in an infamous 2017 meeting at which ExxonMobil’s State Department CEO Rex Tillerson and former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster both were “stunned” at the stupidity of Trump’s expressed desire to invade Venezuela. According to the Associated Press:

“Trump alarmed friends and foes alike with talk of a “military option” to remove Maduro from power. The public remarks were initially dismissed in U.S. policy circles …But shortly afterward, he raised the issue with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, according to [a] U.S. official. Two high-ranking Colombian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing Trump confirmed the report.”

So, it seems Trump never needed any help getting to the war criminal perspective on Venezuela. In fact, it could be said that, ironically enough, it was an oil man and a Pentagon man who tried to talk him out of it. So much for the Deep State. Instead, it was simply that Trump needed the right kind of crazies around him to indulge his imperialist insanity; he has them now with a messianic Secretary of State in Pompeo and the aforementioned National Security Warlock Bolton.

Imperialism a la Carte

I’ve tried to highlight the more nuanced analysis of the energy issue, and how it ties to broader geopolitical questions so that, hopefully, leftists can see the full picture of the political context, rather than a one-dimensional, reductionist one. However, it must be said that oil is not the only issue requiring careful analysis.

There is also the question of mineral extraction, and there too Russia figures centrally. In late 2018, President Maduro, desperate to get additional financing amid crippling sanctions, announced that Venezuela had offered Russian mining companies access to gold mining operations in the country. While the Kremlin’s media platforms like RT and Sputnik did their usual spin, presenting this as simply mutually beneficial, friendly, and downright altruistic policy from Putin, the reality is that Russia sees in Venezuela much the same as what US interests see: a cash cow on its knees, easily controlled and exploited.

And of course, in addition to gold, there are plenty of other mining prizes to be had in Venezuela including nickel, diamonds, iron ore, aluminum, bauxite, natural gas, etc. Both Russia and China have a significant interest in all these minerals, and projects necessary to exploit them.

Washington is not necessarily most concerned with Russian and Chinese billionaires enriching themselves in Venezuela, though it is undoubtedly irksome.

Rather, the strategic planners inside the Beltway see in Venezuela today an opportunity to strike a death blow to socialism and anti-imperialist politics in Latin America. While they shed crocodile tears over elections, democracy, and corruption, the reality is that the vultures of Empire are circling around what they feel is a carcass to be stripped clean. No more Bolivarian Revolution means not even the pretense of, let alone substantive movement for, regional integration.

With Chavez gone, and Venezuelan people hurting and desperate, people like war criminal and newly appointed envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, see an opportunity to win a major victory in their endless fight against socialism on the one hand, and petro-capitalist Russia on the other hand. And if they can stick it to China in the process, depriving it of a significant export market and diplomatic foothold in the Western Hemisphere, all the better.

Ultimately, what we’re witnessing is the classic Monroe Doctrine policy from the US, albeit under 21^st Century conditions. With a consolidated right-wing front already in place under Duque (and his puppet-master former President Alvaro Uribe) in Colombia, Macri in Argentina, and Bolsonaro in Brazil, Washington sees Venezuela as perhaps the last domino to fall in South America (Bolivia notwithstanding). And with its demise, the region will be America’s backyard once more.

Unfortunately for the Empire, I’ve seen the Bolivarian Revolution with my own eyes, seen the commitment of poor and working-class people to the ideals of Chavez’s vision and of socialism from the ground up. These people, in their millions, are not simply going to watch as the US takes everything they’ve bled for these last twenty years. They’re not going to sit idle and play the victim.

If Trump thinks he will take Venezuela without a bloody fight, he’s even dumber than we thought.

“Instagram Helped Kill My Daughter”: Censorship Tendencies in Social Media

Binoy Kampmark

It is all a rather sorry tale.  Molly Russell, another teenager gorged on social media content, sharing and darkly rebelling, took her own life in 2017 supposedly after viewing what the BBC described as “disturbing content about suicide on social media.”  Causation is presumed, and the platform hosting the content is saddled with blame.

Molly’s father was not so much seeking answers as attributing culpability.  Instagram, claimed Ian Russell, “helped kill my daughter”.  He was also spoiling to challenge other platforms: “Pininterest has a huge amount to answer for.”  These platforms do, but not in quite the same way suggested by the aggrieved father.

The political classes were also quick to jump the gun.  Here was a chance to score a few moral points as a distraction from the messiness of Brexit negotiations.  UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock was in combative mood on the Andrew Marr show: “If we think they need to do things they are refusing to do, then we can and we must legislate.”  Material dealing with self-harm and suicide would have to be purged.  As has become popular in this instance, the purging element would have to come from technology platforms themselves, helped along by the kindly legislators.

Any time the censor steps in as defender of morality, safety and whatever tawdry assertions of social control, citizens should be alarmed.  Such attitudes are precisely the sorts of things that empty libraries and lead to the burning of books, even if they host the nasty and the unfortunate.  Content deemed undesirable must be removed; offensive content must be expunged to make us safe.  The alarming thing there here is that compelling the tech behemoths to undertake such a task has the effect of granting them even more powers of social control than before. Don’t they exert enough control as it is?

While social media giants can be accused, on a certain level, of faux humanitarianism and their own variant of sublimated sociopathic control (surveillance capitalism is alive and well), they are merely being hectored for the logical consequence of sharing information and content. This is set to become more concentrated, with Facebook, as Zak Doffman writes, planning to integrate Instagram and WhatsApp further to enable users “across all three platforms to share messages and information more easily”.  Given Facebook’s insatiable quest for advertising revenue, Instagram is being tasked with being the dominant force behind it.

The onus on production and exchange is on customers: the customers supply the material, and spectacle.  They are the users and the exploited.  This, in turn, enables the social media tech groups to monetise data, trading it, exploiting it and tanking privacy measures in the process.  The social media junkie is a modern, unreflective drone.

In doing so, an illusion of independent thinking is created, where debates can supposedly be had, and ideas formed.  The grand peripatetic walk can be pursued.  Often, the opposite takes place: groups assemble along lines of similar thought; material of like vein is bounced around under the impression it advances discussion when it merely provides filling for a cork-lined room or chamber of near-identical thinking.  All of this is assisted by the algorithmic functions performed by the social media entities, all in the name of making the “experience” you have a richer one.  Far be it in their interest to make sure you juggle two contradictory ideas at the same time.

Instagram’s own “Community Guidelines” have the aim of fostering and protecting “this amazing community” of users.  It suggests that photos and videos that are shared should only be done by those with a right to.  Featured photos and videos should be directed towards “a diverse audience”.  A reminder that the tech giant is already keen on promoting a degree of control is evident in restrictions on nudity – a point that landed the platform in some hot water last year.  “This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks.”  That’s many an art period banished from viewing and discussion.

The suicide fraternity is evidently wide enough to garner interest, even if the cult of self-harm takes much ethical punishment from the safety lobby.  Material is still shared.  Self-harm advisories are distributed through the appropriate channels.

Instagram’s response to this is to try to nudge such individuals towards content and groups that might just as equally sport reassuring materials to discourage suicide and self-harm.  Facebook, through its recently appointed Vice-President of Global Affairs, Sir Nick Clegg, was even happy to point out that the company had prevented suicides: “Over the last year, 3,500 people who were displaying behaviour liable to lead to the taking of their own lives on Facebook were saved by early responders being pointed to those and people and intervening at the right time.”

This is all to the good, but such views fail in not understanding that social media is not used or engaged in to change ideas so much as create communities who only worship a select few.  The tyranny of the algorithm is a hard one to dislodge.

In engaging such content, we are dealing with narcotised dragoons of users, the unquestioning creating content for the unchallenged. That might prove to be the greatest social crime of all, the paradox of nipping curiosity rather than nurturing it, but instead of dealing with the complexities of information from this perspective, governments are going to make technology companies the chief censors.  It might well be argued that enough of that is already taking place as it is, this being the age of deplatforming.  Whether it be a government or a social media giant, the same shoddy principle is the same: others know better than you do, and you should be protected from yourself.

The Private Wealth Within Nations, Now and in the Future

Eric Zuesse

The annual Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report is the gold-standard for estimates of private wealth around the world. The latest is Global Wealth Report 2018. It’s at:

https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/publications/research-institute/global-wealth-report-2018-en.pdf

Some aspects of this report (as in previous years) raise more questions than answers, but any informed estimations of where things stand economically within the world’s nations and even globally, has to take seriously what it reports. Following are key excerpts from — and my thoughts about these excerpts of — the current report:

page 6 of 60:

The report’s only mention of “Libya” is here: The “Change in household wealth per adult 2017–18” in Libya was +$22,000 per household, second only to the #1 largest, which was U.S., +$23,000. Unfortunately, no indication is given anywhere in the report as to what the percentage-increase was in either (or any) country. That’s the far more important figure. Though that figure cannot be calculated for Libya, it can be calculated for U.S., the country that was shown here to rank #1. On p. 40 of this report is shown that in the U.S., the “Wealth per adult over time” was rising at the same high percentage during 2012-2018 as it had been during 2002-2006, and is now a bit over $400,000. (The report says nothing whatsoever about Libya except what was just mentioned here, and the figures from which they calculated even that weren’t cited, much less mentioned.) The U.S. Census says that the average U.S. “household” is 2.58 people. If that’s 2 adults and .58 children, then the mean average U.S. household owns around $800,000, which would be the house etc. and other assets minus debts. If the comparable figure in Libya is, say, $80,000 (it’s just a guess, and probably way too high), then in 2018 the average Libyan household’s wealth during 2018 rose around 25%-30%, whereas in the U.S., it rose around 3%. Consequently, either something absolutely stunning happened in Libya during 2017-2018, or else this report made a huge error somewhere. That same page (40) asserts, as perhaps explaining America’s continuing rise: “The United States has a high proportion of assets (72%) reported as financial.” Around 30% of assets were real estate, which typically is comprised of the household’s house. (However, this would be only the value of the real estate that’s in excess of any existing mortgage or other debt upon it.) The assumption that the economists who wrote this report are making is that one of the reasons why the average mean wealth in U.S. is rising a higher dollar-amount than any other country’s is that an unusually large percentage of the privately held wealth in U.S. is in the form of investment securities such as stocks and bonds, and an unusually low percentage of it is in houses. They are assuming that the way to grow an economy is to “financialize” it. They are economists, and that’s the way most economists think, because economic theory supports that viewpoint. But is economic theory itself supported by the empirical evidence in economics? It is not. This was shown, for example, in the crash of 2008. But economists apply that theory anyway.

1. 9:

Wealth inequality [worldwide]

While the bottom half of adults collectively owns less than 1% of total wealth, the richest decile (top 10% of adults) owns 85% of global wealth, and the top percentile alone accounts for almost half of all household wealth (47%). The shares of the top 1% and top 10% in world wealth fell significantly between 2000 and 2008: the share of the top percentile, for instance, declined from 47% to 43%. However, the trend reversed after the financial crisis. The share of the top 10% was little affected. But in 2016 the share of the top 1% rose back above the level we estimate for 2000. The trend in the share of the top 1% partly reflects the trend in the share of financial assets in the household portfolio, which fell during 2000–08 and then began to rise after the global financial crisis, raising the wealth of many of the richest countries, and of many of the richest people. 

The share of financial assets peaked in 2015 and has been declining since then. In previous reports, we predicted that wealth inequality would follow suit – possibly with a slight lag – and there is evidence that this is now the case. The share of the top decile and the top 5% remains at the same level as in 2016, while the share of the top 1% has edged down from 47.5% to 47.2% according to our best estimate.

That “edge” “down from 47.5% to 47.2%” is far too tiny to constitute any ‘evidence’ confirming that “wealth inequality would follow suit” from “The share of financial assets … declining since” 2015. The economists who did the report are simply hoping there, that economic theory isn’t trash and can be relied upon for making economic predictions. But that is hoping upon something that has already been empirically proven to be false, many thousands of times.

Further informative on this page is “Figure 5: Share of top 1% of wealth holders since 2007, [eleven] selected countries, % of wealth”:

Russia has the world’s highest inequality of the eleven countries analyzed: 55% to 65% of private wealth being owned by the nation’s richest 1%

Second-worst is India: 49-54%

Third is Brazil: 38%-45%

Fourth is U.S.: 39%-41%

Fifth is Germany: 29%-34%

Sixth is China: 28%-33%

Seventh is Canada: 24%-26%

Eighth is UK: 20%-25%

Ninth is Italy: 18%-24%

Tenth is France: 17%-23%

Eleventh is Japan: 17%-18%

However, here’s a better indication of these nations’ total inequality, and not merely the top 1% versus everybody: it’s the mean average wealth per adult, divided by the median average wealth per adult. Inequality is shown by the mean even if (as in Germany, for example) the inequality is more the result of the top 10% than of the top 1%. These ratios, of the mean divided by the median, will be shown here as calculated by me from pages 40-54 in this report. The higher this ratio is, the more the given nation is unequal in per-person wealth:

Russia=7.3

India=5.4

Brazil=3.9

U.S.=6.6

Germany=6.1

China=2.9

Canada=2.7

UK=2.9

Italy isn’t shown on these numbers.

France isn’t shown on these numbers.

Japan=2.2

1. 11:

Our estimates suggest that the lower half of the global population collectively owns less than 1% of global wealth, while the richest 10% of adults own 85% of all wealth and the top 1% account for almost half of all global assets. Since the global financial crisis, wealth inequality has trended upward, propelled in part by the rising share of financial assets, and a strengthening US dollar. These underlying factors appear to be waning, so that it seems more likely that wealth inequality will fall in the future rather than rise. 

So, here they are saying that in addition to “the share of financial assets in the household portfolio” causing wealth-inequality to rise, a “strengthening US dollar” has also been causing wealth-inequality to rise. The strength of the U.S. dollar, as against all other currencies, is — and ever since the 1970s has been — propped up by the Sauds setting the value of oil in dollars. Consequently, the economists who wrote this report are here alleging that the private agreement, between Nixon and King Saud (and sustained by both governments ever since), has helped to cause the soaring wealth-inequality globally after 1980. This is a very interesting assumption. But one hopes that the report’s data are less unreliable than the report’s assertions (such as that) are.

1. 41:

[China] Growth champion 

While the United States is still far ahead in terms of total household wealth and the number of citizens in the top wealth categories, China has advanced so rapidly this century that a wealth gap that once appeared unassailable could vanish within a generation. It is China, rather than the United States or Japan, to which much of the developing world looks for a model, inspiration, and often assistance, in wealth creation.

Whereas financial assets were 72% in U.S., they were only around 35% in China. Would the economists who did this report be therefore assuming that China’s future economic growth will be hobbled by its relatively low percentage of private assets that are financial? If so, might that assumption be based upon flaws in existing economic theory?

1. 43:

[Russia] Changing Fortunes

According to our estimates, the top decile of wealth holders owns 82% of all household wealth in Russia. This is a high level, greater even than the figure of 76% for the United States, which has one of the most concentrated distributions of wealth among advanced nations. Also interesting is that it is higher than the top decile share of 62% in China. The high concentration of wealth in Russia is also reflected in the fact that it is estimated to have 74 adults who are billionaires, despite its modest level of wealth per adult. 

(According to Forbes, there are 585 Americans who are billionaires.)

Normally, extreme wealth-concentration is found in kingdoms and other dictatorships. For a nation to depend mainly upon the aristocracy (the extremely wealthy) for growth is to produce an economy that will fail and whose only significant possibilities for growth are conquests of foreign lands. (Of course, for aristocrats to steal more from the public in their own country would be another way to do that, but it wouldn’t increase their country’s growth; and, besides, it would greatly increase the likelihood of a revolution in their country, which might kill them; so, foreign conquest does have an inevitable appeal to any aristocracy — the appeal of “take it from people elsewhere” instead of “take it from your own countrymen.” Ever since at least 1898 in the U.S., foreign conquests by the military or by coups have increasingly been the aristocracy’s chief method for growth.)

Wealth-inequality started soaring in the U.S. when Ronald Reagan became the President in 1981 and has continued soaring ever since, so that the U.S. now is among the least-equal countries. And yet, American growth also continued, despite the growing inequality, and it has continued because increasing portions of that growth are now in financial assets, and also because the U.S. dollar has remained the world’s reserve currency. Being the reserve currency means that the U.S. Government can have huge deficits and soaring debt, and that the economy can have enormous trade-deficits every year, all without the foreign-exchange-rate of the dollar being adversely affected. This globally unique advantage that the U.S. and especially its aristocracy have is the foundation-stone of America’s current leadership in the world. This unique advantage exists because in the 1970s Richard Nixon switched the dollar off the gold-standard and onto the oil-standard, in that agreement with the King of Saudi Arabia — the global oil-champion. That model of national economic growth is dependent upon the world’s wealthiest person’s, the Saudi King’s, continued alliance with America’s aristocracy. It has caused America’s wealth-concentration to soar. And, since virtually only the aristocracy and their millions of hirees (such as lobbyists, bankers, lawyers, accountants, and propagandists) have the wherewithall to ‘invest’ (gamble) in financial assets, the U.S.’s soaring inequality in both income and wealth is the result.

America’s increasing wealth-inequality is unlikely to reverse as the authors predict. Instead, the tendency toward revolution, which has accompanied the increased inequality, can only continue. And any further efforts by America’s aristocracy to extract even more from their fellow Americans will only increase yet further that revolutionary tendency. In fact, this is the reason why America’s billionaires need, even more than before, to conquer foreign lands, and to extract from people abroad even more advantageous terms. It’s safer that way, for any aristocracy which is approaching the limit of what it can extract from its own public without sparking a revolution. This is why the frequency of America’s coups and invasions is likelier to rise, before America’s median wealth will rise (such as the report’s authors assume). Unless America increases its coups and invasions in order to increase its mean wealth, America’s median wealth will, at best, only stay stuck where it is, or else go down (which would produce a revolution here).

The difference between America and Russia, then, is that Russia’s currency, even after the year 2000, isn’t the world’s reserve currency. Russia isn’t even aiming to make it so. However, if the world now is bifurcating into a U.S. bloc and a China bloc, then Russia might serve, at least at the start, as being China’s Saudi Arabia. China would then receive natural resources from Russia, and would pay in its currency, and Russia would buy gold on the open market, with that currency. Beyond this initial period, non-carbon energy-sources might be booming, and gold might again become the world’s natural reserve-currency. Then, at that stage, if not earlier, Russia should be concentrating increasingly upon developing its human capital. And, beyond that human-capital-buildup stage, Russia would then be the high-tech and arts and sciences leader of the world. All of this is, of course, presuming that neither WW III nor global warming will have intervened to prevent it.

The biggest down-side to America’s having the world’s reserve currency is that it has produced an aristocracy of unequalled arrogance. Therefore, in the short term, America is likelier to become increasingly violent and more overtly a police-state than a more equal — and more equal-opportunity — society. Because of America’s aristocracy, America’s glory-days are over. As any sort of “city on a hill,” America’s best days are in its past, rough though those were. America’s long-term future is bleak. It starts that now already with the world’s highest percentage of its people in prison— the highest percentage in prison of any nation on the planet. If this means that it’s a police-state, then it already is leading the world as being that.

Now Chad, then Mali: Why African Countries Are Normalizing with Israel

Ramzy Baroud

Forget the hype. Israel’s ‘security technology’ has nothing to do with why some African countries are eager to normalize relations with Israel.

What is it that Israel is able to offer in the technology sector to Chad, Mali and others that the United States, the European Union, China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa and others cannot?

The answer is ‘nil’, and the moment we accept such a truth is the moment we start to truly understand why Chad, a Muslim-majority country, has just renewed its diplomatic ties with Israel. And, by extension, the same logic applies to Mali, another Muslim-majority country that is ready to normalize with Israel.

Chadian President, Idriss Deby, was in Israel last November, a trip that was touted as another Benjamin Netanyahu-engineered breakthrough by the Israeli government and its allied media.

In return, Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, paid Deby a visit to N’djamena where they agreed to resume diplomatic ties. In their joint press conference, Deby spoke of ‘deals’ signed between Chad and Israel, but failed to provide more details.

Israel may try to present itself as the savior of Africa, but no matter how comparatively strong the Israeli economy is, Tel Aviv will hardly have the keys to solving the woes of Chad, Mali or any other country on the African continent.

Israeli media is actively contributing to the fanfare that has accompanied Netanyahu’s ‘scramble for Africa’, and is now turning its focus to preparations under way for another ‘historic visit”, that of Malian President, Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga, to Israel in the “coming weeks”.

Netanyahu is keen to schedule Maiga’s trip just before the April 9 date, when Israelis go to the polls to vote in the country’s early general elections.

Israel’s motives to normalize with Africa are inspired by the same reasoning behind Netanyahu’s international outreach to South America and other regions in the global South.

Despite the Trump-Netanyahu love affair at the moment, Israel has no faith in the future of the US in the Middle East region. The current Donald Trump administration, as the previous Barack Obama administration, has made clear and calculated moves to slowly deploy out of the region and ‘pivot’ elsewhere.

This has alerted Netanyahu to the fact that Israel would have to diversify its alliances as an American veto at the United Nations Security Council is no longer a guarantor to Israel’s regional dominance.

For years, Netanyahu has pursued an alternative course, which has become the only path for Israel to escape its international isolation. Unfortunately for Palestinians, Israel’s new strategy, of seeking separate alliances with UN General Assembly members seems to be paying dividends. Israel now hopes that other countries that have historically stood on the side of Palestinians – voting for Palestinian rights as a bloc at the UN – will follow the Chad and Mali examples.

The struggle between Israel and Arab countries in Africa, according to Dan Avni – a top Israeli Foreign Ministry official during the 1950s and ‘60s – is “a fight of life and death for us.” That statement was made during a time that the US had not fully and ardently committed to the Israeli colonial project, and Israel was in a desperate need to break away from its isolation.

Following the expansion of the Israeli colonial project in Palestine and other Arab countries after the 1967 war, the US unconditional political, economic and military support for Israel has addressed many of Israel’s perceived vulnerabilities, empowering it to become the uncontested bully of the whole region. At the time, neither Africa mattered, nor did the rest of the international community.

But now, a new Great Game is changing the rules once more. Not only is the US losing its grip in the Middle East and Africa – thanks to the rise of Russian and Chinese influences, respectively – Washington is also busy elsewhere, desperate to sustain its dwindling global hegemony for a bit longer.

Although ties between Washington and Tel Aviv are still strong, Israeli leaders are aware of a vastly changing political landscape. According to Israeli calculation, the ‘fight of life and death’ is drawing near, once again.

The answer? Enticing poor countries, in Africa and elsewhere, with political support and economic promises so that they would deny Palestinians a vote at the UN.

It is no surprise that the governments of Chad and Mali are struggling, not only economically, but also in terms of political legitimacy as well. Torn in the global struggle for dominance between the US and China, they feel pressed to make significant choices that could make the difference between their survival or demise in future upheavals.

For these countries, an alliance with Israel is a sure ticket to the Washington political club. Such membership could prove significant in terms of economic aid, political validation and, more importantly, an immunity against pesky military coups.

Considering this, those who are stuck discussing the Israeli ‘charm offensive’ in Africa based on the claim of Israel’s technological advancement and hyped water technology are missing the forest for the trees.

It is important to note that it is not the road to Tel Aviv that N’Djamena and Bamako are seeking, but rather the road to Washington itself. In Africa, as in other parts of the global South, it is often the US, not the UN that bestows and denies political legitimacy. For African leaders who enjoy no democratic credence, a handshake with Netanyahu could be equivalent to a political life insurance.

So, for now, Israel will continue to walk this fine line, usurping American resources and political support as always, while learning how to walk on its own, by developing a foreign policy that it hopes will spare it further isolation in the future.

It is yet to dawn on Israeli leaders that, perhaps, a shortcut to breaking its isolation can be achieved through respecting international law, the rights of the Palestinian people and the territorial sovereignty of its neighbors.

Diplomatic ties with Chad and Mali may garner Netanyahu a few more votes next April, but they will also contribute to the Israeli illusion that it can be an international darling and an Apartheid regime, simultaneously.

More ministers quit Australia’s disintegrating government

Mike Head

Two more senior government ministers announced last weekend their decisions to quit at the imminent federal election, highlighting both the intensifying breakup of the Liberal-National Coalition and the broader fear in ruling circles of the rising social and political discontent.

Human Services Minister Michael Keenan, a prominent Liberal, announced his departure last Friday, followed the next day by Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion, the National Party leader in the Senate. That brought to three the number of such announcements in the past week, following that of Industrial Affairs and Women’s Affairs Minister Kelly O’Dwyer.

Desperate to hold his government together until the election, which he must call by mid-May, Prime Minister Scott Morrison asked all three to remain in their posts until after the poll, effectively making them lame duck ministers.

The departures are another indication of the worsening factional war tearing apart the Coalition, one of the two wings of capitalist rule since World War II. More fundamentally, the entire political establishment has become increasingly discredited and unstable over the past decade, featuring a succession of short-lived prime ministers. It is now being further destabilised by the implosion of a seven-year real estate bubble, warnings of the dire implications of the far-reaching economic warfare launched by the US against China, and the resurgence of working class struggles internationally after decades of widening social inequality.

More high-profile exits are expected, according to various media reports, notably that of former Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop and ex-Small Business Minister Craig Laundy. Like O’Dwyer, both are members of the Liberal Party’s “socially progressive, economically conservative” wing who opposed the removal of their standard-bearer, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, last August.

Morrison has become a vehicle through which the Coalition’s most right-wing elements, gathered around Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and ex-Prime Minister Tony Abbott, are aggressively seeking to refashion the Coalition parties along Trump-style, semi-fascistic lines to divert the deepening popular disaffection in nationalist, anti-immigrant and anti-Chinese directions.

Last week’s installation of right-wing indigenous businessman Warren Mundine as a party candidate, at the expense of a locally-elected candidate, underscored the faction’s determination to bulldoze its plans through, even if it means wrecking the Coalition’s chances of holding onto office.

Keenan, 46, once a rising star in the Liberal Party, previously held the portfolios of justice and counter-terrorism but was demoted from cabinet by Morrison despite backing Turnbull’s removal. He was evidently regarded as unreliable by the Abbott-Dutton camp because he earlier supported Turnbull’s ouster of Abbott in 2015.

Similar pressures confronted Scullion, 62. Such is the political turmoil that he was the only minister to serve in the same portfolio under the three Coalition prime ministers since 2013—Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison. But he only became a central leader of the rural-based National Party after Turnbull ousted Deputy Prime Minster Barnaby Joyce, an Abbott supporter, who has agitated to return as party head.

Members of the Turnbull faction are mounting rear-guard actions against the Morrison-Abbott wing to cement its control of the Liberal Party.

Dutton, Abbott and two other figures centrally involved in Turnbull’s ousting, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Health Minister Greg Hunt, are facing challenges in their electorates by dissident “liberals” of the Turnbull type, who are running as “independents.”

Abbott’s seat is being contested by a number of such people, mainly campaigning against his pro-coal industry stance of opposing action on global warming while agreeing with the core corporate program of the Liberal Party. Similarly, a former Clean Energy Finance Corporation chief executive, a proponent of “green business,” is running against Frydenberg. Julia Banks, who currently sits in parliament as an independent after defecting from the Liberal Party in protest over Turnbull’s ouster, is reportedly considering standing against Hunt.

Australian columnist Peter Van Onselen, who has Liberal Party sources, last weekend warned that the Coalition could break apart if it lost the election. “Internally, the Liberal Party is deeply divided, with moderates and conservatives at war across state divisions,” he wrote. “If it loses the next federal election, there is a genuine risk that the Coalition could dissolve.”

Van Onselen pointed to these “problematic” tensions being exacerbated by other formations striving to outflank the Coalition on the right. He named Senator Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, David Leyonhjelm’s Liberal Democrats, Bob Katter’s Australian Party and Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party. To that list could be added the Conservative National Party recently registered by Senator Fraser Anning, who openly advocates stopping immigration and returning to the racist White Australia policy on which the Australian federation was founded in 1901.

These groups are jockeying to exploit the widespread hostility toward all the establishment parties, Coalition, Labor and Greens, which have for decades helped enforce a corporate assault on working class jobs, working conditions, living standards and basic services.

These far-right parties are striving to channel the disaffection in jingoistic and patriotic directions as the gap widens between rich and poor, the economy lurches toward recession, and US-China war tensions intensify, raising the likelihood of Australian involvement in a catastrophic nuclear conflict against China.

This week, Deloitte Access Economics issued the latest warning of economic turmoil ahead. It said Australia’s “main risk is a continuing slowdown in China,” not the sharp downturn in real estate prices or the high levels of household debt, which meant “Australian families are more vulnerable to higher interest rates than families in almost any other nation in the world.”

With the Coalition unraveling, elements within the ruling capitalist class are preparing to back the return of yet another Labor government as a means of containing social unrest and restabilising the parliamentary order.

According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “7.30” program, media oligarch Rupert Murdoch has invited Labor Party leader Bill Shorten to meet him in the United States whenever Shorten is next there. It has become a tradition for Australian prime ministers, Labor and Coalition alike, to pay court to Murdoch, who has long used his media outlets to either support or destabilise governments in Australia, Britain and the US. For now, Shorten has declined the offer but said he will meet with Murdoch’s team in Australia, which is headed by Murdoch’s son, Lachlan.

Last weekend, the Australian Financial Review published a feature promoting Labor’s shadow treasurer Chris Bowen as a “new Keating,” pledged to carry through an updated version of the pro-market restructuring imposed by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments of 1983 to 1996, which worked closely with the trade unions to brutally redistribute wealth to the corporate elite at the expense of the working class.

Shorten has sought to capitalise on the Coalition’s crisis and make a pitch to big business by accusing the government of “running out of puff” and “barely limping to the end of its term.” With “fresh chaos and continuing disunity in the government,” the “big issues are just not getting addressed,” he said on Monday.

He did not specify the “big issues” he meant. But whichever party heads the next government, it will seek to make the working class pay for the emerging crisis by further gutting social spending, driving down real wages and breaking up working conditions. At the same time, it will boost military spending to meet Washington’s demand for Australia to remain unconditionally behind the US offensive against China.

While portraying themselves, for electoral purposes, as champions of a “fair go” for workers, the Labor and union bureaucrats are fully aware they will be called upon to try to derail and suppress working class resistance. At Labor’s national conference last month, Shorten said a Labor government was needed to overcome mounting “distrust and disengagement, scepticism and cynicism” toward the political system.

Venting the real hostility of the Labor and union apparatus to the re-emergence of working class struggle, party president Wayne Swan, who was treasurer in the Rudd and Gillard governments from 2007 to 2013, denounced the “yellow vest” movement in France, in which hundreds of thousands of workers have joined demonstrations against President Emmanuel Macron. “Mob violence has returned to the streets of Paris after 50 years,” he said, referring to the general strike movement of 1968 that shook capitalist rule in France and triggered similar upheavals around the world.

Greek parliament votes in support of Macedonia name change

Katerina Selin

Greece’s parliament voted Friday to ratify an agreement that changes the name of its northern neighbour Macedonia, which has been officially known since the early 1990s as FYROM (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).

In July, the two countries’ prime ministers, Alexis Tsipras and Zoran Zaev, agreed on the new name, the Republic of North Macedonia, at a meeting near the border at Lake Prespa, which has shores in Greece, Macedonia and Albania. The agreement brought to an end a decades-long dispute over Macedonia’s name.

The Prespa agreement, which has been enthusiastically welcomed by the media and politicians in Europe and the US as a historic peace deal, in reality pursues reactionary goals. It is aimed at paving the way for the rapid integration of the small Balkan country into NATO and the European Union (EU).

Athens blocked that process for years with the nationalist argument that northern areas of the country might be up for grabs if its neighbour used the name Macedonia, which is also the historical name for a province in that region of Greece.

Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left), the governing party, was dependent on the votes of other parties to pass the agreement. A slim majority of 153 out of the 300 deputies voted for the deal. Together with Syriza (145 votes), other backers of the deal included deputies from the Movement for Change (Kinal, which also includes the former social democratic PASOK), the liberal Potami, and Syriza’s far-right coalition partner, the Independent Greeks (Anel). Voting against were the conservative New Democracy (ND), the Stalinist Communist Party of Greece (KKE), deputies from Anel, and the neo-Nazi Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn). There was one abstention.

The parliamentary debate, which extended over several days, was accompanied by demonstrations of right-wing extremist and nationalist forces opposed to the change of name. Over 100,000 people gathered in front of the Greek parliament on Sunday prior to the vote and clashed violently with the police. Right-wing thugs sought to force their way into the parliament building. The police responded with a violent crackdown and fired tear gas. On Thursday, when the vote was originally scheduled, further protests took place. The neo-Nazis from Golden Dawn chanted right-wing extremist slogans in parliament and accused the government of betrayal.

The Stalinist KKE and LAE (Popular Unity), which emerged out of a split from Syriza, held their own protests outside the US embassy in Athens.

The KKE also opposed the Prespa deal on nationalist grounds. In the parliamentary debate, KKE general secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas explained his party’s vote in opposition to the deal by saying that “the fundamental source of irredentism [territorial claims on the part of Macedonia] still exists.” References to a Macedonian people, and a Macedonian nationality and language could lead to future challenges on Macedonia’s part. At the demonstration, he described the KKE’s position as “patriotic.”

Zoe Konstantopoulou, former parliamentary speaker for Syriza and now leader of the pseudo-left Course of Freedom (Plevsi Eleftherias), called in the newspaper Ta Nea for a referendum on the deal.

Negotiations to resolve the name dispute began a year ago, when the Greek and Macedonian prime ministers met at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In February, right-wing demonstrations dominated by the Greek Orthodox Church, sections of the military and Golden Dawn took place against the talks.

One of the most vehement proponents of this ultra-nationalist opposition is Panos Kammenos, leader of Anel and until recently defence minister in Tsipras’ government. A few days after the Macedonian parliament voted on January 11 to accept the agreement, Kammenos resigned from his post, telling members of his party in parliament to reject the deal and end their support for the coalition government.

Tsipras then tabled a vote of confidence in his government in parliament, and was able to secure victory thanks to a handful of rebel Anel deputies. This removed speculation about an immediate end to the Syriza government for the time being. However, it remains uncertain whether the government can remain in office until elections scheduled for the autumn.

By forming a coalition with Anel in 2015, Tsipras nourished and strengthened the ultra-right forces who are now outraged at the Macedonia agreement. He relied on them to drown the anger of the working class toward his austerity policies in nationalist reaction. Although Kammenos’ resignation called the government’s continued existence into question, he and Tsipras praised each other and exchanged words of thanks for close and trustworthy collaboration.

With Kammenos’ blessing, Tsipras used the resignation of the defence minister to strengthen the far-right and militarist tendencies in the state. He appointed the supreme commander of the Greek armed forces, Evangelos Apostolakis, as defence minister.

The online publication militaire.gr, which speaks for the Greek armed forces, was delighted, writing, “The left-wing Tsipras, who they all said would dissolve the armed forces, appoints a member of the armed forces in Evangelos Apostolakis as defence minister. This is the first time since the fall of the junta that something like this has happened, and it’s a positive step.”

Tsipras gave Apostolakis “full freedom to select the leadership team that he thinks will get the most done. Apostolakis’ demands are well known, operational readiness, a rapid reorganisation of the armed forces, and the concentration of the existing weapons arsenal,” noted militaire.gr .

The Prespa agreement is fully endorsed by the EU, NATO, and the US. This is due to concrete political considerations. They are pressing ahead urgently with North Macedonia’s integration into NATO and the EU to push back Russia and China, who are also trying to secure their interests in the region.

The struggle for spheres of influence in the Balkans has a long and bloody history. Due to its location on the fault lines of Europe, Asia and North Africa, the area was transformed prior to and during the First World War into a battlefield for the European great powers.

The Greek-Macedonian conflict, like other smoldering flashpoints in the region, is the direct product of Western imperialist intervention in the Balkans during the 1990s. Confronted with mounting working class resistance to the devastating consequences of capitalist restoration, the ruling elites in the former Yugoslav republics deliberately incited national, ethnic and religious tensions to divide the workers and break their resistance.

They were supported in this strategy by the Western powers, above all Germany and the US, who had an interest in dividing up the Balkans, to better exert their dominance over it. This resulted in ethnic cleansing and horrific wars. NATO ultimately intervened in 1999 to destroy what remained of Yugoslavia. The result was the breakup of Yugoslavia, a country with 23 million inhabitants, into no fewer than seven individual states.

The wars have left behind numerous bitter conflicts that can be incited at any time and exploited for political interests. The Balkan region threatens to become a powder keg once again.

The shadow of Great Power conflicts also hung over the West Balkan conference in London last July, which concluded without any concrete outcomes. Although the EU plans to invest up to €150 million [$US196 million] in the region during 2019 and 2020, it has ruled out accepting any new members prior to 2025. At the same time, fears are growing that rivals could gain a foothold in the Balkans. The Financial Times warned ominously of a “vacuum which other powers—China and Russia—want to fill.”

China intends to involve the states in southeastern Europe into its plans for a new Silk Road, and has invested substantially in the region’s infrastructure. Last July, Greek parliament speaker and Syriza politician Nikos Voutsis promised in an interview with the Chinese news agency Xinhua that the Prespa agreement would also benefit Beijing. It would help “to open the New Silk Road initiative to trade.” The assurances to China underscore that the deal to resolve the naming dispute will not bring peace and stability to the Balkans, but in fact will further incite conflicts.

The German bourgeoisie in particular hopes that it can expand its field of economic exploitation further into the Balkans through North Macedonia and combine it with its economic crushing of Greece. Germany played a leading role in the austerity dictates of Greece’s international lenders, pushing for cuts and privatisations from which German companies now hope to profit.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel rushed to Athens prior to the vote on Macedonia to support her Greek counterpart. International media outlets praised Tsipras to the skies as they sought to defend him against resistance to the deal within Greece. The German daily Die Welt published a tribute to Tsipras, who had, at a time of a “leadership crisis in the West, proved he possessed rare statesmanlike qualities ... farsightedness, energy, and bravery.” The Financial Times took a similar line in a piece entitled “How Greece’s Alexis Tsipras went from firebrand to statesman.”

High-ranking representatives of the EU and NATO celebrated the result of the parliamentary vote. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg described the deal as a “historic decision,” which overcomes “a hurdle for the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration.” He praised “the leadership and bravery from Prime Minister Tsipras, and also from Prime Minister Zaev,” and vowed to press ahead quickly with North Macedonia’s acceptance as a NATO member. The New York Times stressed the significance of the deal for the US and Europe, and described it as a “win for the West.”

EU Council President Donald Tusk tweeted triumphantly, “Zoran, Alexis—well done! Mission Impossible fulfilled.” In a joint statement, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini, and EU Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn added that Skopje and Athens had “written a new chapter in our common EU future.” European Parliament deputies Udo Bullmann (SPD), Ska Keller (Greens), and Gabi Zimmer (Left Party) reportedly went so far as to urge Tsipras’s and Zaev’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

For his part, Tsipras described the parliamentary vote as a “historic day,” and wrote in an article at the weekend for the Greek Economist that 2019 would be a “historic year” where everyone can be “optimistic” once again. With cynical self-praise that will be recognised as an affront by every Greek worker and refugee, Tsipras wrote that in Greece “a progressive government has managed to get Greece out of the memorandums, secured financial stability, achieved justice for the majority, and conquered the refugee crisis with humanity and solidarity.” The Prespa agreement was yet another success, he added.

Knowing full well that many cuts agreed on in the last year of Greece’s bailout programme still have to take effect in 2019 and will further worsen the already terrible social situation, Tsipras resorted to an even more blatant lie. “A structural element of our strategy is redistribution,” he wrote. He referred to planned wage increases, which amount to a drop in the bucket.

At home, Tsipras is using the dispute over Macedonia’s name and the nationalist hysteria being whipped up by the opposition to divert attention away from the austerity measures and suppress the class struggle. The reality is that Syriza has organised one of the greatest transfers of wealth in Greek history, from the bottom to the top of society. The social consequences are horrendous. As the Prespa agreement was being debated in parliament, a review of Greece’s reform progress by its international lenders took place, the second such review since the formal end of the bailout programme. Officials from the lenders pushed yet again for more privatisations and cuts.

Working class resistance to austerity policies and militarism must be directed against both factions of the ruling elite, the right-wing extremists just as much as the Syriza government, which has proven to be a loyal appendage of the US and European bourgeoisies. Only the unification of Greek workers with workers in the Balkans and throughout Europe in the fight to overthrow capitalism and establish a socialist Europe can put an end to the ruthless exploitation of the working class and the dangerous national rivalries.