UK government enlists schools in NATO war drive against Russia

Tom Pearce & Margot Miller

Boris Johnson’s UK government is acting as the attack dog for US/NATO war plans against Russia. It is intensifying anti-Russian propaganda, whipping up nationalism and stepping up censorship. Schools and schoolchildren are not exempt from this assault.

On March 3, a chain of 1,800 school students from All Saints Roman Catholic school formed around York Minster cathedral in York linked by a ribbon in Ukraine’s national colours yellow and blue.

Pictures of children holding yellow and blue placards proclaiming, “Stand with Ukraine”, “Support Ukraine”, Save Ukraine—Stop the War”, “Innocent People are Dead” are shown throughout the media.

Year 7 pupils arrive back at Great Academy Ashton in Manchester as schools reopen after the summer holidays, Ashton-Under-Lyne, England, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. ( AP Photo Jon Super)

Other schools have told pupils to come into school in yellow and blue in order to “support Ukraine”.

Children and their families who want to provide aid for refugees and call for peace are being roped into the government’s war propaganda. They are being used to glorify an oligarchic Ukrainian state, established in a 2014 US/German backed coup, defended by fascist militias, and which was used as a stalking horse to lure the Putin regime into a conflict which could spiral into a world war.

The government is actively encouraging discussion in schools about the war in Ukraine, but only if it toes the official line. The government’s “The Education Hub” website features a section: “Help for teachers and families to talk to pupils about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and how to avoid misinformation.” It offers advice on “How to spot mis-and disinformation and how to help pupils do the same.”

The only acceptable information source is a totally compliant corporate media. The BBC’s Newsround, a current affairs programme established in 1972 that targets children aged 6-12 years old, is no exception.

Newsround ’s website states, “Many people in the Ukraine want the country to join NATO to avoid being dominated by Russia.” There is no mention of the eastward expansion of NATO since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, or of the long-term geopolitical strategy of the US to take on both Russia and China, or that the costs of this insane enterprise will be diverted from the education, health and welfare budgets.

UK government Education Hub offering "Help for teachers and families to talk to pupils about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and how to help them avoid misinformation."

Professed concern by the government and its allies for the effect that daily scenes of carnage and destruction are having on children’s mental well-being is sickening in its hypocrisy. Thanks to government pandemic policy, backed by the Labour opposition and education unions, children and their families have been subjected to devastating waves of infection, illness and death.

In the UK, 155 children have lost their lives to COVID-19 and at least 10,000 suffered the trauma and heartbreak of losing a parent or grandparent to the disease. Out of 119,000 children suffering Long COVID symptoms on March 3, 21,000 had suffered symptoms for a year or more.

They government is equally unconcerned about the refugees fleeing from the Ukraine conflict, making it very difficult for them to enter the UK.

When children protest the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel and the imperialist wars in the Middle East that have killed millions, they are referred to the government’s counter-terrorism Prevent programme. Anti-imperialist agitation is dubbed “extremism and radicalism” while pro NATO protests are in defence of “democracy.”

After demonstrations in 2021 against the 11-day military assault on Gaza by Israeli forces, the Middle East Eye reported that school students in Birmingham, Manchester, Rochdale, Leeds and London were disciplined and referred to Prevent for such misdemeanours as wearing “Free Palestine” badges and keffiyeh scarves, or putting up posters.

Some students said they faced detention, expulsion and being barred from exams if they protested for Palestinian rights on school property.

At the time, a person from Leeds tweeted, “The headteacher of Allerton Grange High school publicly calling the Palestinian flag a call to arms and a symbol of anti- Semitism. What does this tell any Palestinian child or child from a country fighting oppression!!”

Students involved in school strikes against climate change have also been threatened with Prevent.

The hypocrisy knows no bounds. Recently, a group of year six (11 years-old) pupils at Welbeck primary school in Nottingham wrote a letter to their local Labour MP Lilian Greenwood regarding the “partygate” scandal. The children appeared on Twitter holding their letters, which called on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to resign. The Conservative party accused teachers of “brainwashing” children.

On February 9, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi responded, “No school should be encouraging young people to pin their colours to a political mast.”

Two weeks later, the government hastily issued new, non-statutory guidance on political impartiality in schools. The guidance states, “When teaching about an ongoing humanitarian crisis and whether the UK should intervene militarily, teachers may just outline broad arguments in favour and against this option.” Also, “…many topics relating to empire and imperialism, on which there are differing partisan political views… should be taught in a balanced manner.”

Oppositional or socialist ideas that challenge the establishment’s narrative is barred: “Schools are responsible for ensuring that speakers, tools, and resources do not undermine the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty…” So-called British “values” were introduced into the school curriculum in 2014 as part of the Prevent strategy.

Presumably, many political and historical works available in UK libraries are now forbidden as source material. Any “differing partisan political views” —such as the Marxist concept that democracy under capitalism is only democracy for the ruling oligarchy, that the rule of law defends the profit system, that individual liberty is the liberty to expropriate the wealth of society by exploiting the working class—are off limits.

The guidance spreads the net of censorship as far as possible, continuing, “Schools should not under any circumstances work with, or use materials produced by, external agencies that take extreme political positions on these matters. This is the case even if the material itself is not extreme, as the use of it could imply endorsement or support of the organisation.”

As examples of extreme political positions, the guidance includes “promoting the adoption of non-democratic political systems rather than those based on democracy, for any purpose; a publicly stated desire to abolish democracy, to end free and fair elections, or violently overthrow capitalism.”

The real concerns of the government are growing social tensions and the escalating class struggle, which threatens to derail the government and opposition parties’ warmongering. “Political impartiality” advice for schools is in fact a tool for imposing the ideology of the ruling class on children and families.

The education unions do nothing to oppose this reactionary agenda. Mary Bousted, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), responded to the new guidance by saying simply, “very good guidance already exists”. The NEU supports the 1996 the Education Act which states the promotion of “partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school” is forbidden (Section 406). It also requires that when political issues are discussed, pupils are offered a supposedly “balanced presentation of opposing views” (Section 407).

The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) has joined other unions in supporting sanctions against Russia, which will devastate the living standards of ordinary Russians who are not responsible for the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. The ASCL, and councils like Labour-controlled Manchester and Salford, is urging the government to remove Russian energy supplier Gazprom from the Crown Commercial Service’s School Switch Scheme, designed to help schools find the cheapest energy supplier.

German air force procures US nuclear bombers

Gregor Link & Johannes Stern

Caption: U.S. F-35 fighter jet preparing for deployment at Al-Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates (Staff Sgt. Chris Thornbury/U.S. Air Force via AP)

A few days after the German government announced a tripling of military spending, the biggest rearmament drive since Hitler is being put into action. The first purchase being made with the Bundeswehr’s 100 billion euro special fund is 35 US F-35 Lightning II stealth bombers, which can be used for nuclear strikes, among other things.

Lockheed Martin’s supersonic jets are currently considered the most modern fighter aircraft in the world and are used by seven European countries in addition to the US. Equipped with nuclear weapons, they can hide from enemy radar and, depending on the design, are capable of vertical take-off and landing. Their operational range of 1,090 kilometres corresponds to the distance between Passau in eastern Bavaria and Lviv in western Ukraine. The acquisition costs alone are estimated at well over 4 billion euros.

On Monday, Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht (Social Democratic Party, SPD) confirmed that the procurement of the F-35 fighter jets was to enable the German government to fight a nuclear war. Specifically for the task of nuclear sharing, the decision had been made in favour of the American carriers, which offered “a unique potential for cooperation” at the European and NATO level. Luftwaffe (Air Force) Inspector Ingo Gerhartz added that in the face of “Putin’s aggression,” a “credible deterrence” and “unity in NATO” were the “only answer.”

Under the NATO concept of so-called “nuclear sharing,” partner countries of the US—Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey—can deploy US nuclear weapons stationed in Europe. “The possible armaments include free-falling nuclear weapons in addition to a variety of guided and unguided missiles as well as cruise missiles and bombs,” says an article on the official website of the Defence Ministry.

At the US airbase in Büchel alone, 20 B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs are currently being fitted with precision-guidance systems. Although each of these hydrogen bombs has an explosive power several times those dropped on Hiroshima, they are considered “small” and “versatile” tactical weapons with high military operational value. According to Gerhartz, all 35 new F-35s “will go to Tactical Air Wing 33 in Büchel, where we also perform the role of ‘nuclear sharing’.”

With the acquisition of F-35 fighter aircraft, the German ruling class is massively accelerating its war plans. It represents a departure from earlier proposals to procure either American F/A-18 bombers or new Eurofighters to ensure nuclear sharing, as both these models would first have to be converted and certified for nuclear weapons use. This potentially years-long process has now been eliminated.

Apparently, the selection was also about securing key German-European technologies against possible US interference. Newsweekly Der Spiegel, for example, writes that the potential conversion of the Eurofighters to nuclear bomb capability “would have required the cooperation of the American side … among other things, for the systems that would have been necessary for docking and releasing the nuclear weapons.” This would also have meant “disclosing large parts of the Eurofighter technology to the Americans.”

Against this background, even the head of Airbus Defence and Space, Michael Schöllhorn, eventually conceded that “the F-35 represents the simpler and faster way for the Bundeswehr to fulfil its tasks for nuclear sharing,” Der Spiegel reports.

Schöllhorn and Airbus are also rejoicing because the upgrading of the Luftwaffe is not being limited to the procurement of the American F-35 fighter jets. By 2030, all 93 of its Tornados are to be replaced, including those covering the so-called Electronic Combat Role (ECR) and the conventional fighter-bomber role. And here, the decision was made for the “further development of the Eurofighter,” Lambrecht announced.

Immediately, 15 Eurofighter ECRs will be procured. A tweet from the Defence Ministry says: “The Eurofighter will also be retained for the armed forces and will be further developed for the electronic warfare role.” Thus, “important key technology will be retained in Germany & Europe. In addition, we are securing a strong German role in the future FCAS system.”

The “Future Combat Air System—FCAS” is an air combat system driven by Germany, France and Spain, which is to be operational by 2040. The plan is for an integrated system combining a manned sixth-generation multi-role combat aircraft, unmanned escort aircraft (remote carriers), drones, satellites and command and control aircraft, and possibly also having its own nuclear component.

The costs for the project are gigantic and go far beyond the 100 billion euros estimated in the “Special Assets of the Bundeswehr.” Financial daily Handelsblatt reported in 2019 that the system will devour “up to 500 billion euros by the middle of the century.”

In a “daily order on the use of the 100 billion euro special assets of the Bundeswehr,” also published on Monday, Lambrecht and Inspector General Eberhard Zorn left no doubt that the just announced rearmament was only the beginning of preparing the German military for full-scale war.

First, he said, it was necessary to “close gaps in the current stockpiles. Our formations, the companies, battalions, brigades, divisions, ships, boats, batteries, and aircraft units will not only be fully equipped, but also with uniform materiel,” the order says. In addition, “new capabilities will be built, and research and development will be advanced to this end ... for example, in the fields of artificial intelligence or space.”

There was a need for “a Bundeswehr that maintains capabilities across the entire military spectrum—above all, for national and alliance defence, but also for international crisis management.” The goal was “a fully equipped force that can hold its own in combat immediately and everywhere.” Every soldier must be “ready to be deployed at short notice in our core mission of national and alliance defence.”

The Defence Report, which was presented yesterday by Eva Högl (SPD), the commissioner for the armed forces, took the same line. According to the report, 2022 will be “a year in which the Bundeswehr will be challenged more than ever before in its core mission of national and alliance defence.” The “decisive action of the government and the announcement to create a special fund of 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr as well as to increase the defence budget” were “therefore very welcome.”

The Daily Order justifies the massive rearmament and war plans with “Putin’s war of aggression on Ukraine,” which “calls into question fundamental rules of the European peace order.” Similar formulations can be found in the Defence Report. It is the familiar, mendacious propaganda.

In fact, the now proclaimed “foreign policy turning point” was meticulously prepared behind the backs of the population for a long time. The “special assets of the Bundeswehr” were also discussed by the SPD, Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greens during their coalition negotiations last October. This is not about the defence of “peace” or “freedom” but the enforcement of geostrategic and economic interests by military means.

It is a fact that the “first war of aggression in Europe since the end of the Second World War” was not waged by Russia but by the imperialist powers. Thirty years ago, the recognition of Croatia and Slovenia, in violation of international law, at the instigation of Germany and the USA triggered a terrible civil war in the former Yugoslavia. This was followed in 1999 by NATO’s bombing of Serbia, which culminated in the violent secession of Kosovo.

Then came the interventions and regime change operations in Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011) and Syria (since 2014), which were in violation of international law which cost millions of lives and reduced entire countries to rubble.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is reactionary, but NATO is also the aggressor in Eastern Europe. It has systematically encircled Russia, and it orchestrated a right-wing coup in Ukraine in 2014 to bring a pro-Western regime to power in Kiev. The same regime change operation is now being pursued by the imperialist powers against Moscow itself, threatening to provoke a third world war.

Like Chancellor Scholz’s earlier war speech in the Bundestag, the Defence Report and the Order of the Day are warnings. Eighty years after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Hitler’s Wehrmacht (Army) and the war of extermination in the East, Germany is again preparing for war against Russia. The Luftwaffe, which is now being massively upgraded and prepared for the use of nuclear weapons, is already playing a key role in this.

“We, as an air force, were the first to have an answer to the crisis in Ukraine,” Gerhartz boasted in a recent Luftwaffe video on the procurement of the F-35 fighter jets. “We were the first as an air force to move our Eurofighters to Romania. We are flying our jets over Poland; we flew with the Tornados over the Baltic Sea to pick up electronic signals.” More tanker aircraft are now being brought to Eastern Europe, and “air defence will also be moved.”

German population shows solidarity with Ukrainian refugees in Berlin, authorities display indifference

Carola Kleinert

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 2.5 million people have fled the country on foot, by car, bus or train since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine on February 24. Their main destination so far is Poland, where a large majority—more than 1.5 million people—are currently living; hundreds of thousands continue to flee to the west.

In Germany, more than 110,000 refugees from Ukraine have been officially registered since the beginning of the war. More than 80,000 refugees have officially arrived in the capital Berlin. There is no way of confirming how many so-called unreported refugees there are, i.e., people accommodated via relatives or friends.

Refugees rest in a subway hall after fleeing from the Ukraine at the main train station in Berlin, Germany, Monday, March 14, 2022. Germany's Interior Ministry said Monday that it has so far registered 146,998 refugees from Ukraine coming to the country. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

As in 2015, when tens of thousands of people sought refuge from the wars in the Middle East, especially from Syria, working people in Berlin have responded with overwhelming solidarity from the outset, even with more than 10,000 arriving on some days.

On the other hand, the “reception structures” allegedly set up by the state government, the Berlin Senate, were initially barely visible; they have since collapsed. The images of refugees arriving at the central train station during the first days of the conflict immediately called to mind the failure of the state to deal with the 2015 refugee crisis.

At that time, the refugees stood in queues for days in the summer heat at the State Office for Health and Social Affairs (Lageso). Today it is the State Office for Refugee Affairs (LAF). They waited without water and shade to register in order to acquire the right to food and accommodation.

The fact that the catastrophe of that time has yet to be repeated is not due to the ruling parties, the Social Democrats, Left Party, and Greens. Quite the opposite!

Berlin aid organisations and hundreds of volunteers welcomed those arriving at Berlin Central Station and the Central Bus Station (ZOB), provided them with immediate necessities, took them in or organised a “bed for the night” with other supporters.

The aid organisation Moabit hilft e.V., which gained prominence around the world during the refugee crisis of 2015, openly denounced the “terrible food situation on site” at the beginning of the first week. There are “unfortunately only sporadic individual deliveries on the part of the Senate,” the organisation reported, and thus “currently no sufficient supply of food and water.”

“For up to 20 hours a day,” the volunteers are battling “so that a humanitarian catastrophe does not take place, they arrange medical care, organize donations in kind, coordinate and distribute people throughout the city, drive people to accommodation, organise and arrange accommodation, arrange security and arrivals…,“ Moabit hilft e.V. wrote on their Facebook page .

The two main political leaders in the Senate, Franziska Giffey (SPD), the mayor of Berlin, and Katja Kipping, the senator for Integration, Labour and Social Affairs (Left Party), have rejected the criticism.

In unison, they emphasize the “huge challenge” (Giffey) in the face of the flow of refugees, the “historic responsibility” (Kipping) which the state of Berlin could not “handle alone,” and make a few token criticisms about the responsibility of the federal government. In an interview with the Berliner Zeitung, Kipping expressed her “infinite” gratitude to “the volunteers” and promised that “we will gradually assume more responsibility for the situation at the central station.”

On the regional news programme on rbb last Sunday, Giffey reacted extremely irritably when the presenter referred to the loud criticism of the Senate in recent days and asked why there had been hardly any state representatives at the central station. Giffey replied, visibly struggling: “So you know, I find this question, frankly, embarrassing!”

The ruling class has a problem. It exploits the suffering of the refugees when it comes to advancing its own rearmament and war plans against Russia. At the same time, it has become clear after just a few days that they are hardly treating refugees from Ukraine any better than the hundreds of thousands who fled from the Middle East to Germany during the 2015 refugee crisis.

The nervousness of the ruling parties also stems from the enormous deterioration of the social and political situation in the entire country and, in particular, in the capital, which has a population of more than 3.6 million.

The impoverishment of large parts of the population, caused by decades of austerity, property speculation, an extreme lack of affordable housing and surging rent hikes, has been exacerbated by the ruling class’s pandemic policy.

Against the housing shortage, the majority of the population voted in a referendum to expropriate housing companies, which the government coalition rejected. The government is now faced with the problem of housing war refugees. This will further exacerbate the serious housing problem faced by the working population as a whole.

In its second term in office, the coalition has not managed to alleviate the housing shortage or end homelessness nor has it been able to move the already stranded refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, the Middle East and parts of Africa from residential containers and refugee shelters to decent apartments.

Over half of the refugees in the state-run accommodation—some have lived there since 2015—have official residence status and are therefore actually entitled to their own apartments.

At the end of last year, 98 percent of the State Office for Refugees’ accommodations were already occupied, which is why closed container homes had to be used again and temporary homes at the Tempelhofer airfield and a container village in Pankow had to be reopened.

Although the refugees from Ukraine are welcomed by the war-mongering parties for political reasons, they are resorting to hostels, churches, vacant buildings and five new temporary homes to house them. Sports halls have not yet been occupied as in 2015. However, the established practice of mass housing with not even a minimum of privacy and inadequate sanitary facilities has already been reactivated.

On Friday, 360 refugees were accommodated in the Berlin Exhibition Hall. Hundreds of sleeping places are being set up in the old Tegel airport. More than 400 field beds were set up as emergency quarters in Terminal 5 of the old Schönefeld airport building.

While the Berlin Senate was discussing appealing for help from the military, Giffey firmly rejected the proclamation of a state of emergency, which was called for by district offices due to overwhelming demand for their services.

This would allow, for example, accommodations to be requisitioned for the refugees. In addition, it would be easier to involve employees and volunteers from administration and companies in support and to procure “necessary materials, such as tents, beds and mobile toilets” despite “expenditure restrictions under the current provisional budget planning,” as the Tagesspiegel put it.

In contrast to the obvious unwillingness of the Senate to take care of the desperate and traumatized people, Berliners have taken in many refugees in despite their own mostly very cramped living conditions. The Tagesspiegel referred to a “hard to comprehend mass of people” staying in private homes.

The hypocrisy and racism of the state government was crowned with the evacuation of the temporary homes where refugees were living in Berlin-Reinickendorf, in order to create space for the newcomers from Ukraine.

Last week Tareq A. of the Berlin Refugee Council announced on Twitter that the families, some with school-age children, had to leave their accommodations within 24 hours and move to an alternative location far away. The State Office for Refugees was not interested in the fact that the families were taken out of their homes and the children were removed from their classes. These people are obviously “second-class refugees!”

The forced evacuation of refugees met with sharp criticism and horror on social media. “This is all incredible! How can that be, @katjakipping? I don’t know at all how anyone can reach such a decision…,” declared one poster. Another commented, “You probably could only go this far if there are good refugees who are wanted and those you can’t be bothered to take care of.”

On the Facebook page of Social Senator Kipping, Halina S. sharply denounced the Left Party’s “humanitarian aid” and explained: “As always, the commitment of the government always comes at the expense of the weakest. This is nothing less than an absolute scandal…”

The forced evacuation of the refugees was “a completely ill-considered and absolutely retraumatising move that is both senseless and thoughtless. The people who will bear the emotional costs is clear: the volunteers, the refugees, the psychologists, the doctors, who have worked with people for years to stabilize them; but certainly no one who stands on the podium in the Berlin Senate and makes speeches. I am absolutely outraged how your actions are damaging people most severely and how years of work are being destroyed. But that’s nothing new from the Senate.”

In fact, the refugee policy of the Berlin Senate is inhumane and corresponds at its core to the line of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). The Berlin Council of Refugees pointed out at the beginning of the month that the notorious deportations under the Interior Senator Andreas Geisel (SPD) have continued under his successor Iris Spranger (SPD).

From January 2021 to January 2022, 1,126 people were deported by the Berlin Ministry of the Interior, 645 of whom were arrested by the police between midnight and 6:00 a.m. In addition, 141 Roma were deported to Moldova, the “poor house of Europe,” in December 2021 and January 2022, although deportations in winter for humanitarian reasons are supposed to be avoided.

The deeply humane solidarity with refugees within the population stands in stark contrast to the deadly “fortress Europe” policy supported by all parties represented in parliament. The hypocritical and media-hyped policy towards the refugees from Ukraine cannot conceal this fact.

US Fed targets wage demands as it lifts interest rate

Nick Beams

As anticipated, the US Federal Reserve yesterday lifted its base interest rate by 0.25 percentage points and indicated it expects to raise it by a similar amount at each of the six remaining meetings this year.

It has also said it will start to reduce the Fed’s asset holdings of $9 trillion at a “coming” meeting, possibly as early as May, in another move to tighten monetary policy to counter rising inflation, now running at its highest level in four decades.

Prices rose at an annual rate of 7.9 percent in February with predictions the inflation rate could hit double digits because of higher oil prices and price hikes in other basic commodities due to the war crisis in eastern Europe.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testifies before the Senate Banking Committee hearing, Thursday, March 3, 2022 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Tom Williams, Pool via AP)

The main impetus for the decision was the fear in ruling financial circles that inflation is going to drive a push by workers for higher wages to combat the decline over the past three decades and the rapid worsening of living standards over the past two years.

Fed chair Jerome Powell made clear a clampdown on higher wages was the central issue in his opening remarks to the press conference following the meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).

He said the economy was very strong against “the backdrop of an extremely tight labour market and high inflation.” He described the labour market as continuing to “strengthen” and “extremely tight.” The demand for labour was “very strong” and “wages are rising at their fastest pace in many years.”

He did not mention the fact that even though there have been some increases, the level of real wages is falling behind the present level of inflation, and the expected rises in coming months.

The same themes were repeated in the question-and-answer session following his opening remarks as Powell returned again and again to the wages issue.

In response to one journalist, who noted that many economists were saying inflation could not be brought down without higher unemployment, Powell said there was a “very, very tight labour market, tight to a level that’s unhealthy.”

In response to another question, he said that wages had moved at a “higher rate than in a very long time.” Returning to this theme at a later point, he said wages were moving up faster than is consistent with the Fed’s target rate of 2 percent inflation.

The Fed’s interest rate increases will make virtually no impact on price rises which are the result of supply chain bottlenecks and now the surge in commodity prices. Rather their aim, as Powell indicated, is to reduce demand in the broader economy and bring down the ratio of job vacancies to job seekers from its present level of 1.7.

In other words, even before workers try to claw back some of the trillions of dollars that have been siphoned off by the corporations over the past decades because of low wages, the Fed will seek to ensure this movement is crushed. This was the content of Powell’s repeated assertions that the aim of the Fed was to ensure that inflation did not become “entrenched.”

How far Powell is prepared to go was indicated in revealing remarks he made at a Senate hearing on March 3.

Republican senator Richard Shelby asked whether he would follow the example of Fed chair Paul Volcker in the 1980s, who drove up interest rates to record highs, inducing the deepest recession to that point since the 1930s, to drive down wages.

In response, Powell launched into a hymn of praise. After describing Volcker as a great public servant, he concluded: “I would hope history will record that the answer to your question is yes.”

There was another remarkable feature of Powell’s press conference.

With one exception there were no questions on what effect the turmoil in international financial markets would have on the US and Fed policy. Surging commodity prices and the danger of an imminent Russian default have led to parallels being drawn with the collapse of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998 when Russia last defaulted, and warnings that the global financial system faced a possible Lehman moment.

However, the sole questioner who referred to the financial dangers, asking whether there were any concerns about the effect of the sanctions on Russia, was simply brushed aside.

Powell started by declaring that central bankers were in favour of the sanctions but then said he was reluctant to comment any further because sanctions were the province of governments, and the role of central banks was to provide technical assistance.

After an initial dip, the response on Wall Street was favourable.

The Dow rose by more than 500 points, an increase of 1.5 percent. The S&P 500 was up by 2.2 percent, bringing its rise over the last two days to 4.4 percent, the largest such increase since April 2020. The tech-heavy NASDAQ index was up 3.8 percent, its largest increase since November 2020.

Described by the business channel CNBC as a “relief rally,” the rise in the market was largely because the Fed decision did not contain any surprises.

Yesterday’s rate increase and those to follow had long been expected and largely “priced in” to market calculations. Wall Street was no doubt heartened by the fact that FOMC member James Bullard was in a minority of one with his call for an immediate 0.5 percentage point hike.

Yields in the bond market went higher, with the rate on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rising to 2.18 percent, its highest level since May 2019. This reflects a general expectation that the Fed will not pull back from its present course of higher interest rates because of the war crisis.

The Fed’s policy, however, may have an impact on financial markets.

Speaking to CNBC, David Kelly, chief global strategist as JP Morgan Asset Management, said: “I just want the Fed to maintain some flexibility. In the long run, we have to get rates back to positive levels. But there’s a lot of uncertainty out here, and remember we’ve got a lot of financial assets which are built on the edifice of super low rates, and you just can’t raise those rates up to normal levels overnight and expect nothing bad to happen.”

In other words, the US financial system, inflated to an unprecedented degree by the Fed, which has pumped trillions of dollars into it, could be blown over by the effect of interest rises in the US or by major turbulence in international markets.

Goethe Talents Scholarship 2022

Application Deadline: 31st March 2022

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To be taken at (country): Berlin, Germany

About Goethe Talents Scholarship: Are you a young musician, composer, singer-songwriter, instrumentalist between 20 and 30 years old from a transition or developing country? You want to work professionally in the music field, with your own label or with a booking agency or want to use your music more target-oriented? If you have made first experiences in your field already, Goethe Talents Scholarship will help you to reach the next level.

Pop-Kultur Festival in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut offers activities to experience the Music City Berlin in the run-up to the Festival: Studio visits, jam-sessions, short traineeships in selected companies of the Berlin creative industries, listening sessions and meetings with scholarship holders of Musicboard Berlin GmbH, as well as many other activities, such as visiting concerts will be taking place during the week before Pop-Kultur. Networking will be a big part of the experience.

Type: Short course

Eligibility:

• All Goethe Talents Scholarship participants will have to prepare a short input talk of approximately 15 minutes in advance about their experience in the music field thus far and about the music scene in their respective country.
• Advanced English skills are crucial to attend the programme, as there is no translation available (B2 minimum). Participants will be tested in advance by a local Goethe-Institut.
• Participants need work experience in the field of music and will have to provide proof of at least three projects they participated in.
• Participants should be willing to exchange and engage with a diverse group in the field of music production and performance.
• Participants should cover all additional expenses that might occur during their stay.
• All applications are for individual persons only. No accompanying persons can be sponsored or included in the programme.

Note: Participants who do not board their booked flights or cancel their programme on short notice are obliged to reimburse Goethe-Institut and Musicboard Berlin for any expenses accrued.

Number of Awards: 10

Value of Goethe Talents Scholarship:

• The participation fee, accommodation, travel expenses, hospitality (per diem) for the period of 18 August to 29 August will be covered by the Goethe-Institut.
• Goethe-Institut will also book and pay for flights and help with visas.
• Additionally, Musicboard Berlin will give a free festival ticket plus access to Pop-Kultur’s networking area for professionals to all talents, organise accommodation (breakfast included), cover health insurance and public transportation within Berlin.

Duration of Award: August 18th to August 29th, 2022.

How to Apply for Goethe Talents Scholarship: Interested artists can apply here before 31 March.

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

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Reports expose UK, US arming of Ukraine military including fascist forces

Julie Hyland

Britain is to escalate its armament of Ukraine’s military forces, including fascist battalions, Downing Street has pledged. The UK is looking to supply the Kiev government with Starstreak high velocity surface-to-air missiles, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said, threatening, “Britain will not be deterred by Russia from supplying weapons to Ukraine.”

The statement was made after reports that three British ex-special forces personnel were killed in a Russian attack on a military facility close to the Polish border on Sunday. Their deaths have not been officially confirmed and the British government denies its military personnel are on the ground in Ukraine.

Soldiers stand near the anti-tank missile systems 'Stugna' in the Kiev armored plant in Kiev, Ukraine, Thursday, November 15, 2018. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

This is a lie. Thousands of foreign mercenaries, many from military and fascist backgrounds are active in Ukraine and UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in February that she “absolutely” backed Britons going to Ukraine to fight Russia. The government subsequently said that it would be illegal for Britons to leave in order to fight in Ukraine, but this was for the record. Nothing has been done to stop anyone from traveling there.

The criminal character of the Russian invasion cannot detract from the fact that NATO has been involved in unending provocations against Moscow since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Having backed the right-wing Maidan coup in 2014, it has stepped up the arming and training of Ukrainian forces as part of efforts for regime-change in Moscow, and the carving up of Russia, in much the same way that NATO dismembered Yugoslavia.

Notwithstanding official denials, evidence proves that NATO is already covertly at war against Russia in Ukraine.

A report from the House of Commons library “Military Assistance to Ukraine 2014-2021”, was released on March 4. It states, “UK military assistance to Ukraine is longstanding”. Officially this commenced with “bilateral military assistance” in October 2014, shortly after the Maidan putsch but unofficial military ties go back to 1991.

That year Ukraine joined NATO’s North Atlantic Cooperation Council as a partner country and the Partnership for Peace programme in 1994.

In early 2015, the UK’s Operation Orbital was announced, involving “non-lethal” military equipment and 'guidance and training to the Ukrainian armed forces through several advisory and short-term training teams.” In the two years between 2015 and 2017, the UK “gifted” £2.2 million of non-lethal military equipment to Ukraine. This has been expanded ever since. In November 2019, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed that Operation Orbital would be extended until March 2023. The operation includes “Training for defensive operations in an urban environment.”

Ukraine was given Enhanced Opportunity status with NATO in June 2020, which “provides Ukraine with preferential access to NATO’s exercises, training and exchange of information and situational awareness, in order to increase interoperability. In September 2020, Ukraine hosted Exercise Joint Endeavour, with British, US and Canadian troops, the first exercise under Ukraine’s new enhanced status.”

In October that year, a Memorandum of Intent between the UK and Ukraine agreed to develop Kiev’s naval capabilities. Contracts underway involve “the sale and integration of missiles” on Ukraine’s Navy patrols, the “development and joint production of eight fast missile warships” and “Assistance in building new naval bases in the Black Sea and Azov Sea.”

The briefing states that the UK has trained 22,000 Ukrainian military personnel as part of these initiatives.

Britain has followed the US lead. Ukraine has been a “leading recipient of US foreign and military aid since the early 1990s. In the first decade after independence, Ukraine received almost $2.6 billion in US aid. In the years leading up to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine was receiving an estimated $105 million per annum, including foreign military financing,” the Commons report states.

“In 2014 the Obama administration provided significant non-lethal military equipment to Ukraine… At the time, the Obama administration, with the support of Congress, indicated that it was considering providing Ukraine with lethal weapons if ‘diplomacy fails to end the crisis in the east’”.

It was the Trump administration that officially decided to provide Ukraine with “major defensive lethal weaponry”.

“It was the withholding of Ukrainian security assistance and specifically the provision of lethal weaponry that was linked to the first impeachment trial of President Trump in 2019,” the report states. The “pause” was lifted in September 2019, after which, in August 2021, “the US and Ukraine also signed a Strategic Defense Framework to provide a foundation for strengthening defence cooperation. Among its priorities are defence industry reform, strengthening cooperation with respect to security in the Black Sea, cyber defence and intelligence sharing, and countering Russian aggression.”

An indication of who is receiving this funding is given by the Declassified website which published photos of a meeting in Kiev last year, believed to be in September 2021, between three British commanders of Operation Orbital and three officers from Ukraine’s National Guard (NGU).

“The NGU was formed in 2014 to incorporate an array of paramilitary and volunteer battalions which were fighting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine,” Declassified writes. “This included a neo-Nazi unit, the Azov Battalion, which reportedly has a thousand soldiers.'

The MoD “believed… the meeting to be private and should not have been publicised.” “There is no mention of the meeting in any UK records that are publicly available” but the photo was originally posted by the NGU on social media who reported that Lt Col Andy Cox, deputy commander of Orbital, was in attendance.

The NGU report quoted Cox as promising “the British military is ready to involve representatives of the National Guard of Ukraine in the training activities being conducted today for units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to develop their combat capabilities.”

An MoD spokesperson denied the claims to Declassified, stating that the “meeting was a routine engagement… to improve mutual understanding.”

Declassified reports that four months before the meeting, the same “NGU website posted a statement to mark the Azov Regiment’s seven-year anniversary. Titled ‘Seven years of victory’, it gushed with extravagant praise for the neo-Nazi unit.”

Citing a 2021 report from the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, Declassified discloses that a member of another fascist militia, Centuria, several of whose members currently serve in Ukraine’s military, “received 11 months of officer training at Britain’s elite military training facility Sandhurst, graduating in 2020.”

While the MoD officially denies involvement, Britain’s media is openly crowing about UK’s role in the NATO war against Russia.

Last week, the Daily Telegraph boasted “The inside story of how Britain armed Ukraine’s resistance to Russia.”

“The true story of how the world armed Ukraine is both fascinating and inspiring”, it writes. MI6, special forces, US intelligence and cyber warfare operatives “have all played their part”.

Ukrainian Colonel Yevgen Bondar told the Telegraph, “We are getting a lot of serious help. The NLAWs [Next-generation Light Anti-tank Weapons] took out three tanks and one armoured fighting vehicle. Burnt them out. Burnt beautifully.”

Describing the NLAWs, an Anglo-Swedish munition, as “a great leveller in the battle between Russian and Ukrainian armed forces”, the Colonel said, “The NLAW is a wonderful thing. A Javelin [the American-made portable anti-tank missile] has better range—but in the city, [NLAW] is better”.

“Each NLAW costs £30,000 and is single-use”, the newspaper reports. Britain has sent 3,615 NLAWs to Ukraine, including 2,000 supplied before the Russian invasion. “And that is just a small part of the total. To date, more than 17,000 missiles, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, have been sent to Ukraine by the democratic West in the biggest emergency supply mission since the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49. And with every hour that passes, thousands more weapons, bullets, helmets, ballistic vests, high energy rations and night-sights pour in.”

The newspaper cites the leading role of the Obama administration in providing military aid and funding to Ukraine that began the organising and training of a “130,000-strong army of reservists. Some are already battle-hardened after fighting in the disputed Donbas region.”

US Cyber Command has cyber-mission teams around Eastern Europe, the Telegraph states, to “disrupt” Russian communications and digital attacks, while US intelligence sharing troop movements with Ukraine.

The US and UK are among14 countries to have supplied Ukraine with arms. “Neutral” Sweden and Finland sent thousands of anti-tank weapons, while Germany has supplied Ukraine with 1,400 anti-tank rockets and 500 Stingers. The Netherlands is sending 40 Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons, 400 missiles and 200 Stingers. Other countries are supplying thousands of pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, ammunition and sniper rifles.

The newspaper reports that “military experts have speculated that British special forces are on the ground in Ukraine, wearing Ukrainian army uniforms, acting as observers.”

Nickel crisis points to fragility of global finance

Nick Beams

The extreme fragility of the global financial system in the wake of the sanctions imposed on Russia by the Western powers has been highlighted by the negotiations involving some of the world’s biggest banks to resolve the crisis in the nickel market that erupted last week.

Yesterday it was announced that major banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Standard Chartered, had reached an agreement with the Chinese metals firm Tsingshan Holding Group not to press to close out the company’s position in nickel trades or to make further margin calls. Such calls are demands for additional cash from the company that result from its failed bets in the nickel market.

Tsinhshan had shorted nickel in a series of contracts in anticipation that its price would go down. However, in the wake of the war crisis in Ukraine, the price shot up, leaving the company with a potential loss of billions of dollars. The company is the world’s biggest stainless steel producer and a big consumer of nickel.

Trader James McCarthy, foreground, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

After trading at around $30,000 per tonne, the price of nickel jumped to $50,000 on Monday of last week on the London Metal Exchange (LME). It then doubled to $100,000 the following day, whereupon the exchange closed its nickel market and left it closed until yesterday.

Following the agreement, the LME is expected to reopen today.

The deal between the banks and Tshingshan does not fully resolve the issue as the company is still on the hook for the money it owes. It is a standstill arrangement aimed at working out an agreement for new credit provisions and for the company to settle its “nickel margin and settlement requirements.”

In effect, the major banks have decided not to immediately press ahead with their margin calls lest this spark a wider crisis.

While it plans to reopen, the LME has said it will introduce daily price limits for all metals, including nickel. Members will be asked to disclose all contracts in derivatives markets of more than 100 tonnes.

Announcing the decision, the LME said it had noted that a “large client of the market has now published details relating to the support of a banking consortium, which could suggest that the potential for further disorderly conditions may be mitigated.”

The nickel market is relatively small and Tsinghan’s losses, while running into billions of dollars, did not in and of themselves pose a threat. But the wider implications of the incident did.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that producers and manufacturers of nickel-related products in China have said their operations have been adversely affected. More than half a dozen Chinese companies have sent notices to their customers and investors warning of problems in supplies, price increases or the inability to meet orders.

Jilin Jien Nickel, which manufactures nickel sulfate and nickel chloride in eastern China, issued a letter to customers last week advising them it was likely to lose money because of the increased cost of imported raw materials.

“A ruthless game of capital has come to us with lightning speed,” the letter said. “It has brought an unprecedented survival crisis to those responsible and hardworking enterprises’ including us.” It warned that “huge losses are no longer avoidable.”

According to the WSJ, the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, whose members include hundreds of firms, both state-backed and privately owned, said last week it was highly concerned about the “irrational surge” in nickel prices on the LME which had caused serious damage to companies in the global nickel supply chain.

On top of the effects in the real economy, there is the impact on financial markets and the cloud of uncertainty hanging over all commodities trading and the associated complex web of derivatives contracts that can be hit by violent price swings.

A comment in the WSJ headlined “Will Financial Stability Get Nickel-and-Dimed?” posed the question of whether the nickel crisis, which left the world’s biggest producer struggling to find billions of dollars to fund margin calls, was the “canary in the nickel mine” for the whole financial system.

It was common for commodity producers and miners to hedge their prices, the article noted, but when prices swing wildly there could be a mismatch in cash flows and traders must post additional collateral to meet margin calls from their lenders.

Nickel is by no means the only globally traded commodity to experience wild price swings. Coal prices in Asia doubled in February and March before falling back. Aluminium and wheat prices have experienced surges, and the price of oil continues to gyrate. It has risen as high as $130 in recent days and then fallen to just below $100.

Traders who make deals can be caught out to the tune of billions of dollars virtually overnight if they are on the wrong side of these rapid movements.

As the WSJ comment noted: “No one knows exactly what lies ahead for commodity prices but the idea that Tsingshan is the only company out there with big hedges that could go very wrong might prove optimistic.”

Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Poszar has likened the present situation to that which set off the global financial crisis of 2008—the collapse of prices for collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) based on mortgage-backed securities.

In a note written earlier this month, Poszar said: “Russian commodities are like subprime CDOs were in 2008.” The financial markets froze then because investors became unsure how much exposure their counterparties had to toxic subprime-based financial assets. Now the uncertainty is how much exposure financial traders and speculators have to Russian assets and Russian produced commodities.

Financial Times writer Patrick Jenkins has also pointed to the broader effects of the sanctions on Russia, saying he was “not sure that the potential impact for the world outside Russia has been fully acknowledged.”

The spiraling cost of commodities could “take out financial operators, large and small, mainstream and marginal,” he said, citing the suspension of nickel trading by the LME in a comment piece published earlier this week.

Jenkins likened the present situation to the crisis in 2008, which was set off by the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers. He noted that since then the world has been awash with free money because of central bank policies, resulting in inflated asset prices and debt levels that have risen to new records.

“Be under no illusion: Russians will not be the only ones to suffer under Russian sanctions. The world should remember Lehman and brace for a global financial and economic shock,” he concluded.