Australia’s new espionage laws target whistleblowers and political opponents

Mike Head 

The Espionage and Foreign Interference (EFI) Act that the Turnbull government and the Labor Party opposition jointly rammed through Australia’s parliament on June 28 radically extends the espionage offences in the Criminal Code.

Like the “foreign interference” legislation as a whole, the laws have been imposed in the name of combating unwanted influence by other countries, but the real targets are political opponents of the US-led anti-China war drive and other predatory operations by the corporate elite.

Eleven redefined espionage-related crimes have been created, going far beyond the previous application to spying by, or on behalf of, a foreign government.

The expanded provisions provide another means, on top of new secrecy offences, to criminalise the possession or release by anybody, including Australian citizens, of information that could “prejudice national security.”

As with the secrecy laws, the redefinition is particularly designed to prosecute and imprison those, like WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, who help publish material that exposes the war crimes and political abuses committed by the Australian government and its closest allies, primarily the US.

The espionage laws could also be used against people blowing the whistle on abuses committed against asylum seekers, or assisting to circulate revelations about the exploitative conduct of Australian companies operating in the Indo-Pacific or elsewhere.

“National security” is defined to include “the protection of the integrity of the country’s territory and borders from serious threats” and “the country’s political, military or economic relations with another country or other countries.”

This covers everything from enforcing Australia’s “border protection” regime of militarily repelling or imprisoning refugees, to shielding the US military-intelligence alliance and supporting the profit interests and plundering global activities of the Australian capitalist class.

The new main espionage offence carries a maximum punishment of life imprisonment, the most draconian penalty possible under Australian law. Espionage is redefined to include “dealing with information” that has a security classification or “concerns Australia’s national security.” There needs to be an intention to “prejudice national security,” and a result that information is “communicated or made available” to “a foreign principal or a person acting on behalf of a foreign principal.”

However, even if the accused person did not intend to harm “national security,” but is found guilty of being “reckless” as to that risk, the result can be imprisonment for up to 25 years.

“Foreign principal” includes not just overseas governments but “foreign political organisations” and “public international organisations,” such as the UN. In other words, divulging sensitive incriminating information to an overseas political entity or an international agency is now espionage, one of the most serious offences in the Criminal Code.

As with the new secrecy offences, “dealing with information” extends criminal liability well beyond stealing, covertly obtaining or leaking information—the activities traditionally associated with spies. “Deal with” is defined to include “collect,” “possess,” “make a record of,” “copy,” “alter,” “conceal,” “communicate,” “publish” and “make available.”

So, whoever is sent information, including a journalist or web site, and therefore “possesses” it, can be convicted, even if they have not published it. The same applies to WikiLeaks or other platforms set up to anonymously receive material from courageous whistleblowers.

One subdivision of the new espionage offences specifically covers dealing with information “on behalf of, or in collaboration with, a foreign principal or a person acting on behalf of a foreign principal.” This is the type of conduct normally associated with spying.

The existence of this specialised subdivision only makes clearer the government’s intent to apply the other espionage categories to people who are political opponents, not spies working for a government.

Another subdivision consists of “espionage‑\\related offences,” such as “soliciting or procuring an espionage offence or making it easier to do so.” This offence can be committed even if no espionage offence actually occurs, or it is impossible for such an offence to have resulted.

Similar provisions exist for another “espionage-related” crime, that of “preparing” for espionage. Both these offences are punishable by up to 15 years’ imprisonment.

The EFI Act likewise broadens several other offences carrying potential life imprisonment.

The crime of treason is redefined to extend to “materially assisting” any “enemy” engaged in “armed conflict involving” Australia. By contrast, the previous definition referred to “war with” or “armed hostilities against” Australia. No formal “war” or “hostilities” now need to be declared for this offence to be triggered.

The new crime can be committed even if the accused person is only “reckless” as to whether the “enemy” is actually “engaged” in armed conflict involving Australia.

“Materially assisting” is not defined. The phrase could extend to opponents of Australia’s military interventions who protest against the sending of troops. A 2006 law reform commission report said the formulation could cover urging conscientious objection or calling on soldiers to lay down their arms.

A crime of treachery has been extended to cover conduct that “involves force or violence” with the “intention of overthrowing” the federal government’s “lawful authority.” The previous offence of treachery referred only to “trying to overthrow” the Australian Constitution or a federal or state government. The extension could include supposedly violent demonstrations calling for the abolition of the Australian Federal Police or the intelligence agencies.

Sabotage offences are expanded to cover any action causing damage to public infrastructure—not just Defence facilities, as was previously the case—with intention to “prejudice national security.” This would include any federal government “infrastructure, facility, premises, network or electronic system” and all telecommunications, utilities and transport facilities, whether run by governments or corporate giants.

New related offences extend to “making public infrastructure vulnerable to misuse, unauthorised access or damage,” or planning any of these offences. Trying to hack into a government or corporate computer network, for example, has become punishable by up to 25 years’ imprisonment.

These are war preparations. Any action that allegedly compromises a system regarded as vital during war is now punishable as sabotage or sabotage-related.

Similarly, a new crime has been created of “advocating mutiny” of a member of the armed forces, while “reckless” as to whether such a mutiny would result, and even if none occurs. This replaces the previous “inciting mutiny” offence. “Advocates” is said to include “counsels, promotes, encourages or urges.” This extends beyond “incites,” which requires specific instigation.

“Mutiny” is broadly defined to include: “to resist such lawful authority in such a manner as to substantially prejudice the operational efficiency of the Australian Defence Force or of, or of a part of, a force of another country that is acting in cooperation with the Australian Defence Force.”

This could cover trying to enter a military base hosting US troops or seeking to disrupt joint exercises or weapons testing. It could extend to publicising (“promoting”) refusals by soldiers or sailors to carry out criminal or inhuman actions, such as repelling refugee boats or killing civilians alleged to be supporting hostile forces.

The penalty is up to seven years’ imprisonment.

A vague new offence of “interference with political rights and duties” outlaws the “use of force or violence, or intimidation, or the making of threats of any kind” that “results in interference with the exercise or performance, in Australia by any other person, of an Australian democratic or political right or duty.”

This crime, punishable by up to three years’ jail, replaces a narrower offence of interfering with political liberty. The new crime could cover participating in a counter-demonstration against a pro-military or far-right rally, or protests or strikes that allegedly obstruct a politician.

The government’s powers to strip Australian citizenship from dual citizens by arbitrary decree has been expanded to cover people convicted of many of the new offences. These powers were created by legislation that the Coalition government pushed through parliament, also with the Labor Party’s assistance, at the end of 2015.

Likewise, the telecommunications interception powers of the police and intelligence agencies, which have been vastly expanded under the banner of the “war on terrorism,” now extend to investigating all the new offences.

None of these details, or their implications, has been reported in the corporate media. Fearing opposition, the political and media establishment is doing everything it can to keep the population in the dark about these dramatic shifts in the legal system and their connection to the preparations for war.

To counter this conspiracy of silence, the WSWS is providing full coverage of the laws and the Socialist Equality Party (Australia) is holding public meetings to discuss them and raise the need for a powerful political movement in defence of democratic rights and civil liberties, and against the plunge toward war.

Spain’s Socialist Party prepares new austerity budget, boosts military spending

Alejandro López 

Spain’s minority Socialist Party (PSOE) government, installed in power last month with the help of the pseudo-left Podemos and regional nationalists, is preparing a new austerity budget for 2019. At the same time, it is carrying out a massive increase in defence spending.

The preparations for the 2019 budget come two weeks after the Spanish parliament passed the long-overdue 2018 budget, drafted by the previous right-wing Popular Party (PP) government. The 2018 austerity budget was adopted wholesale by the new PSOE government led by Pedro Sánchez, who just days before becoming prime minister had criticised it for “attacking the welfare state, not defending women, workers, the unemployed, nor the youth.”

Compared to eight years ago, the 2018 budget has 13 percent less spending for education, 8 percent less for health, 27 percent less for R&D, 35 percent less for culture and 58 percent less for infrastructure investments. The budget for the Spanish military, however, was increased by 10.5 percent over last year, the largest increase ever made by a Spanish government in the post-Franco era.

Demands for a new austerity budget in 2019 grew in late June, when a meeting of the Eurogroup of European Union (EU) finance ministers warned that Spain would miss its deficit target of 2.2 percent of GDP this year (it could be as high as 3 percent) and 1.3 percent next year.

In her first appearance before parliament, PSOE Minister of Economy Nadia Calviño declared, “Our commitment to budgetary stability is unmistakable,” adding that the Minister of Finance María Jesus Montoro was “working day and night” to tackle the deficit.

Last week, Calviño travelled to Brussels to submit less onerous deficit reduction targets—to 2.7 percent of GDP this year instead of the 2.2 percent and 1.8 percent of GDP in 2019, compared to 1.3 percent. Calviño pleaded, “If we tried to maintain the targets set by our predecessors of 1.3 percent of GDP we would have to adopt large scale adjustment measures which would have been tremendously damaging to the economic recovery… between 4 and 5 tenths could be lost in real GDP growth, and job creation would also suffer.”

It is still to be seen if the European Commission accepts Calviño’s revised targets. However, the Spanish media launched a frenzied campaign over the new targets and said that the government would have to impose drastic austerity cuts of around €6 billion, sooner rather than later.

This week, Rafael Doménech, head economist of Macroeconomic Analysis at BBVA, Spain’s second biggest bank, warned that the relaxed targets have “economic implications that must be highlighted” including “an increase in the structural deficit of the Spanish economy.”

More importantly, Doménech insisted, the government should “take advantage of the moments of growth like the current one” to force through cuts in the budget deficit. “Sooner or later a crisis will come,” he declared, which could result from a rise in the price of oil, the “progressive disappearance of extraordinary measures of monetary policy” such as quantitative easing and low interest rates “and, above all, the protectionist upturn that can lead to a commercial war.”

The concerns of the PSOE government and its backers in suggesting spreading cuts over a longer period of time are conditioned by fear of a social rebellion by workers and youth impoverished by years of austerity and under conditions of a growing strike wave.

According to the Spanish Confederation of Employers’ Organisations (CEOE), strikes in the first quarter of this year have caused the loss of over 8 million working hours, an increase of 51 percent compared to the same period last year. Amazon workers are striking again this week after similar action in March. In Spanish airports, industrial action amongst pilots, ground staff and air traffic controllers has reached historic levels, leading the media to dub it the “Airports hot summer.”

It was Podemos, the chief architect and supporter of the new government, which advised Sánchez, a week before Calviño attended the Eurogroup meeting, to pursue a deficit target relaxation policy. In the words of Podemos interim spokesperson in parliament, Ione Belarra, “The deficit reduction has to be more gradual; we have to negotiate, not give up.”

Belarra declared in an outburst of patriotic fervour that “Spain is not Greece. We are the fourth largest economy in the EU, we are a heavyweight, and that gives us room for negotiation in Brussels.”

What the PSOE and its backers in Podemos propose to negotiate with Brussels, however, is only continued austerity, though perhaps at a slower pace. Previous PSOE and PP governments have complied with the demands of the EU and financial institutions, slashed social spending, imposed labour reforms and bailed out the banks. On this basis, the PSOE government of José Luis Zapatero received an extension to meet the deficit targets in 2009 and the PP government of Mariano Rajoy received three, in 2012, 2013 and 2016.

Besides continuing austerity, the government has also announced its commitment to increased defence spending. Last Thursday, following US President Donald Trump’s demands at the NATO summit that member states increase spending to 2 percent of the GDP (and then to 4 percent), Sánchez said that he was “sympathetic” to Trump demands and that Spain would do so by 2024.

Sánchez’s promise means a doubling in five years of defence expenditure from the official figure of 0.93 percent of Spain’s GDP. Some of this will be accomplished by bringing onto the defence balance sheet expenditure that has been hidden by previous governments in order to circumvent the widespread anti-militarist, anti-NATO sentiment that exists in Spain. According to the Delàs Center for Peace Studies, Spanish military spending really amounts to €18 billion, or 1.64 percent of GDP.

Last week, the PSOE government authorized €5 billion in spending on new weaponry this year to confront the “urgent needs” of the armed forces. Defence Minister Margarita Robles used the well-worn excuse that the additional spending would create jobs in “many areas affected by the economic crisis”. The same logic, of course, has not been applied to health, education and culture.

Podemos staged a show of rhetorical opposition to Sánchez and Robles’ announcements. Its parliamentary defence commission spokesperson, Juan Antonio Delgado, meekly protested, “If the priority is to spend on defence what we do not have, they [the government] should not count on us.”

In his speech, however, Delgado not only accepted the principle of increased expenditure if money can be found, but made an open appeal to the army and police. He said the Defence Minister should change the previous government’s policy of sacking soldiers older than 45, “which affects 60,000 soldiers,” adding: “They have already sacked a thousand.”

He concluded by insisting, “I’m not opposed to the modernization of the Armed Forces, but there are other priorities in our country… Spain, for example, needs 20,000 policemen and civil guards.”

General strike and ongoing protests in Panama against electricity rate hike

Andrea Lobo

A general strike brought most of Panama to a halt on Monday as social anger toward planned rate hikes on electricity continues to grow and merge with opposition to social inequality and ongoing attacks against workers’ living standards across different sectors.

Ongoing protests, barricades, and violent clashes with the police since last week forced the conservative Panameñista Party government of president Juan Carlos Varela to appeal Monday for “social peace” and suspend the 8.4 percent increase in electricity prices for households that consume more than 300 kWh.

While claiming that the Congress will debate a supplementary budget of $300 million to cover the $60 million increase in electricity costs, Varela warned “if the fiscal disbursement is not approved … other areas of the state will be affected.” In other words, the government will ensure the working class pays through a tariff hike, future regressive taxes, social cuts and other attacks against the public sector.

Already, an IMF-dictated fiscal responsibility law being discussed in Congress is expected to reduce the public deficit to 1.5 percent. According to an IMF mission last month, this will require the government “curb the growth of current expenditures to provide additional room for needed strategic public spending.” One of the explanations of the tariff hike given by the state transmission authority ETESA is that the government needs to cover the costs of a recently-built transmission line. After the construction last October of the country’s third transmission line, president Varela and ETESA both promised lower rates for consumers.

However, both are now referring to the need to make “engagements” with the construction companies and the private firms that control the distribution and generation of electricity. Varela has also blamed rising oil market prices.

Along with 17 other sectors of workers, more than 90 percent of public teachers participated in the 24-hour strike against the tariff hike. This follows a series of strikes by teachers in March and April protesting still unpaid benefits and demanding an increase in the public education budget to 6 percent of GDP.

The education-sector ASOPROF and the construction-sector trade union SUNTRACS are struggling to contain the growth in militancy among workers.

Construction workers, who produce about one-sixth of Panama’s GDP, were recently on strike for four weeks demanding a 60 percent wage increase, which the trade union offered to 44 percent, while the Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (CCIAP) demanded 4 percent. After Monday’s protests, construction workers have staged mass marches everyday in downtown Panama City, where thousands have joined them in roadblocks and rallies.

SUNTRACS successfully isolated the strike without any wage increase and ended it by virtually stopping the payment of strike pay. However, the anger surrounding the electricity price hikes has given a new impulse to the workers’ demands and to the condemnations of the union.

On Tuesday, workers condemned a video posted on SUNTRACS’s Facebook page in which current national secretary of the union, Saúl Méndez, promises to struggle against the tariff hikes. One worker called him a “thief” and blamed him for “selling out the strike.” Another worker declared: “Lyrics and more lyrics, they seem good, but they are masked with pity in order to defend the system.”

Commenting about the consequences of the demobilizing tactics of the trade union, another worker posted earlier during the week, “Disgraceful, it’s your fault that they are firing people now. That strike was a hoax.”

A trade union representative defending the role of SUNTRACS online, Francisco Almengor, was asked by the WSWS about these criticisms. “It’s not because of the union … certain union representatives are not doing their job correctly and yield to the interests of companies” he claimed, adding, “we know that companies have their policy and we respect that.”

As part of the growing class struggle in Panama, on Tuesday, the workers at the state water and sewage authority IDAAN began an indefinite strike involving 70 percent of the staff or 2,100 workers. They are demanding a new wage formula and unpaid benefits amounting to $6 million.

IDAAN is widely hated for cutting water from about 4,000 households each month due to unpaid bills, denying the right to running, potable water.

The attacks on IDAAN workers and poor households are both aligned with a deliberate policy to bankrupt and privatize the water supply. Such efforts have been in place since the Ernesto Pérez Balladares (PRD) government had to postpone the privatization of the water system due to mass protests. The June 2018 projects list published by the Varela administration lists the incorporation of a private company into the administration of IDAAN and the “implementation of a new legal and operational structure for efficient and exemplary operation as a public company.”

The transformation of the state electric authority IRHE into seven private companies for the generation and distribution of energy by the Balladares administration in 1997 followed a similar path with the government claiming that the utility was bankrupt and that the state couldn’t afford the needed investments for infrastructure. Now, the workers and consumers are being forced to incur the entire cost of new infrastructure and international price shocks, while padding the profits and interests of the construction and electrical companies, on top of the banks providing the credits for these projects.

Since this period, telecommunications, ports, railways, sugar and cement companies and other sectors have been privatized, transforming thousands of jobs with decent salaries and benefits into superexploited and precarious labor.

The main opposition parties have sought to channel anger along their reactionary agendas. Ahead of the elections in May 2019, the presidential pre-candidate of the right-wing Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), Zulay Rodriguez, who is currently the favorite in the polls and the most promoted by the corporate-controlled press, has advanced a lowest common denominator of anti-corruption and anti-elite populism.

On Wednesday, she introduced a bill in Congress with demagogic demands like those proposed by the Mexican president elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, including cuts to salaries, benefits and expenses for top government officials.

None of these proposals are intended to change the desperate economic conditions of the Panama working class. Despite having the fastest rate of growth in Latin America during the last decade—led by real estate, commercial and financial investments, along with the recent canal expansion—inequality is also growing rapidly. Panama was listed by the World Bank last year as one of the top 10 countries with highest inequality in the world, where one fourth of the population has no access to health care services and one fifth live under the official poverty line.

According to the Wealth X report in 2012, 115 millionaires in the country collectively own assets worth $16 billion, almost half of that year’s national GDP. It is this local financial oligarchy and, even more so, the financial interests in Wall Street and Europe, that define the policies of the government and the unions.

Amid a growing upsurge of the class struggle in Panama and internationally, the only way to make available the resources for social rights like electrical power, running water, quality education, health care, decent wages and guaranteed jobs is by expropriating the fortunes of the financial elite and all major corporations and turning them into public assets controlled democratically by the working class to meet all social needs.

This requires workers to form rank-and-file committees in workplaces independent of the trade-unions and to link their struggles across all sectors and internationally as part of the fight for socialist revolution.

EU and Japan sign trade deal

Nick Beams

Amid considerable fanfare about the need to defend free trade and in an obvious push back against the protectionist measures of the Trump administration, Japan and the European Union have signed the world’s largest bilateral trade pact.

The deal has been five years in the making but the impetus to have it finalised was accelerated by the US trade war measures which have targeted both parties. Japan has been hit by Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership, advanced by the Obama administration, and was not granted an exemption from the imposition of US tariffs on steel and aluminium.

The EU was also refused a carve-out from these measures and now faces the threat that the US will impose a 25 percent tariff on its auto exports, on the grounds of “national security.”

Tensions between the EU and the US have also been ratcheted up with the decision by the European Commission to impose a record €4.3 billion fine on Google in an anti-trust ruling. The EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager, who two years ago ordered the clawing back of €13 billion from Apple, found that Google had engaged in “very serious illegal behaviour” using Android as a vehicle to cement the dominance of its search engine, hitting consumers and competitors.

The EU-Japan trade pact, which will go before both sets of parliaments before coming into effect, covers one-third of the global economy. Involving significant concessions on both sides, the deal will lead to the reduction of significant Japanese tariffs on European wine, cheese and other foods, while the EU will end tariffs on Japanese cars and auto parts.

Overall it eliminates about 99 percent of the tariffs on Japanese goods sold to the EU and about 94 percent of the tariffs on European exports to Japan, rising to 99 percent in the future. The difference reflects continued protection on rice imports, which is a politically sensitive issue in Japan.

In a joint statement issued at the signing ceremony in Tokyo on Tuesday, Japan and the EU said: “We underline the crucial role of the rules-based multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as its core and continue to fight protectionism.”

There was no mention of Trump by any of the participants but there was no doubt where the message was directed, coming in the wake of his designation of the EU as a “foe” in international trade.

“In giving full effect to this agreement, Japan and the EU are sending a powerful message to promote free, fair and rules-based trade, and against protectionism,” the joint statement said.

Hailing the agreement at a joint news conference with European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said: “The EU and Japan showed an undeterred determination to lead the world as flag-bearer for free trade.”

Tusk said it was “the largest bilateral trade deal ever” and that it was “sending a clear message” against protectionism.

The day before the Tokyo signing ceremony, Tusk pointed to the growing dangers of trade war following discussions at the annual EU-China summit in Beijing. The two parties agreed for first time in three years to issue a joint statement, noting progress towards a bilateral investment treaty and the setting up of a working party to examine ways of improving the functioning of the WTO.

Tusk called on Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Chinese leadership to embrace the proposal in order to “prevent conflict and chaos.” The move to reform the WTO reflects agreement in the EU with US criticism of the state-subsidies for Chinese industries and Beijing’s drive to increase its technological and industrial base. Both claim that China has a case to answer on the issue of its investment practices and appropriation of intellectual property.

But the EU maintains action on these issues should take place through changes to the WTO rules and not the unilateral imposition of tariffs.

Pointing to the stability produced by the post-war international trading system, now under attack from the Trump administration, Tusk said it was “the common duty of Europe and China, but also America and Russia, not to destroy this order but to improve it.”

That means “not to start trade wars, which turned into hot conflicts so often in our history, but to bravely and responsibly reform the rules-based international order.”

Tusk’s citing of “hot conflicts” is a reference to the trade wars of the 1930s, which brought about the virtual disintegration of the world market and played a significant role in creating the conditions for the eruption of World War II.

A warning of the economic impact of trade war has come in the latest update on the global economy issued by the International Monetary Fund earlier this week. It kept its forecast for global growth this year and the next at 3.9 percent but warned that escalating trade tensions could derail an upswing.

“The risk that current trade tensions escalate further—with adverse effects on confidence, assets prices, and investment—is the greatest near-term threat to global growth,” IMF chief economist Maurice Obstfeld said in his prepared remarks on the update.

The IMF warned that if the threats to erect tariffs were carried out, global output would drop by as much as 0.5 percent below its projected level by 2020. Obstfeld said the US would be “particularly vulnerable” as it would be the target for retaliatory action.

He said financial investors seemed “broadly complacent” about the risks facing the global economy and warned that financial markets were “susceptible to sudden re-pricing if growth and expected corporate profits stall.”

While the EU-Japan deal has been hailed as a blow from free trade against protectionism, closer examination leads to a different conclusion.

In an editorial on the agreement, the Financial Times gave only a “measured cheer” in what it called “dark days for the global trading system.” It stated that, while it was welcome, the agreement fell “short of an adequate response to the threats to global commerce.”

The fact that the deal does not include China and the US points to its essential character. Rather than signifying the development of freer global trade, it represents a move towards the fracturing of the world market into a series of rival blocs in which countries come together against a common enemy.

That danger can be seen in the actions of the Abe government. In the face of rising protectionism in the US, it is pushing ahead with its own agenda—attempting to revive the TPP, minus the US, and now securing the agreement with Europe.

AppsAfrica Innovation Awards for Innovative African Mobile and Tech Ventures 2018

Application Deadline: 7th September 2018

Eligible Countries: African countries

To Be Taken At (Country): Africa Tech Summit Kigali.

About the Award: The AppsAfrica.com Innovation Awards identify and celebrate the leading African innovations from across the continent, providing winners with global publicity across multiple channels, recognition and networking with 300+ industry peers and investors at the Awards party.

Categories: There are 14 categories. Applications are welcome from mobile or technology ventures with services launched in at least one African market for the following award categories;

1. 1. Disruptive Innovation Award: Business models are being disrupted across the continent using technology and innovation. This award seeks to recognise the disruptive innovations and new business models that are changing Africa. Entries open across all sectors.
   2. Health Tech Award: This award celebrates the use of technology to improve health services in Africa. Entries may include a new service, device, software, hardware or use of apps, SMS, IVR or social media.
   3. Best African App Award: This award recognises the best applications successfully launched on any platform to target African consumers or businesses. Entries are welcome across all sectors and platforms.
   4. Enterprise Solution Award: This award celebrates enterprise services across Africa. Entries welcome from innovative ventures and mobile services streamlining, improving and helping business across Africa.
   5. Blockchain Award: Few technologies have received as much attention in Africa as blockchain over the past year. This award will recognise initiatives that are utilising blockchain technology to increase the speed, efficiency, accuracy, transparency or cost-effectiveness of any sector in Africa.
   6. News & Entertainment Award: Mobile news and entertainment is now a burgeoning industry across Africa. This award seeks to recognise the best news and entertainment innovations. Examples include music, literary, gaming, children’s entertainment, lifestyle and video.
   7. Educational Award: Delivering education has many challenges in Africa. This award recognises services which are striving to improve education by utilising mobile or other technologies.
   8. Fintech Award: This award recognises the best fintech innovation including digital currency, bitcoin, mobile money, wallets, P2P, money remittances & transfers, point of sale or funding platforms.
   9. Agritech Award: This award recognises the best tech innovations driving agriculture across the continent. This includes but is not limited to hardware, software, drones, big data, IoT services, mobile services or any technology supporting farmers, improving yields or supply chains in Africa.
   10. Social Impact Award: This award recognises an inspiring use of technology that has a positive social impact for an African community while contributing to economic and social development.
   11. IoT  Award: This award recognises the most innovative internet of things (IoT) applications, devices, products or services from brands, companies, agencies or platforms that have excelled in utilising IoT across Africa in any sector.
   12. mCommerce Award: This award is dedicated to celebrating the new wave of mobile commerce initiatives across Africa. Entrants might include online platforms, retail brands, portals, apps, classifieds, comparison sites and many more driving mCommerce across Africa.
   13. Changing Africa Award: This award seeks to recognise the leading companies driving game changing initiatives across Africa for the masses. Entrants might include MNO’s, leading tech platforms, hardware providers, banks, connectivity providers, OEM’s or any tech company driving progress across multiple African countries in any sector. 
       
   14. Mobility Award: This award seeks to recognise the leading ventures using technology such as hardware, software, robotics, drones or innovative mobile services that improve mobility, logistics or supply chains in an African market.

Type: Contest

Eligibility: 

• The Appsafrica.com awards celebrate the positive impact in 14 categories from ventures who can clearly demonstrate innovation using mobile or technology to meet the needs of any African market.
• The awards are open to all individuals or entities who can clearly demonstrate suitability for the categories entered.

Selection: Applications will be assessed by a team of expert judges who are selected based on their knowledge, influence and contribution to the improvement of technology and business in Africa.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: Award winners benefits include;

• AppsAfrica.com Innovation Award
• Global exposure across multiple media channels
• Exhibition space at Africa Tech Summit (ATS) 2019
• 2 x delegate passes to ATS 2019
• Global online publicity on AppsAfrica.com
• One years MEF Membership (one overall winner selected by MEF)
• Online publicity in MEF global newsletter

Timeline of Program:Shortlisted finalists will be announced in October 2018.

How to Apply: Enter your submission in your preferred category.

Visit Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: AppsAfrica

Japan-WCO International Masters Scholarships for Young Customs Officials in Developing Countries 2019

Application Deadline: 10th August 2018

Offered annually? Yes

To be taken at (country): Aoyama Gakuin University (AGU) Tokyo, Japan

Accepted Subject Areas? Strategic Management and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

About Scholarship: The Japan-WCO Human Resource Development Programme (Scholarship Programme) provides a grant covering travel, subsistence, admission, tuition and other approved expenses to enable promising young Customs managers from a developing member of the WCO to undertake Master’s level studies at the Aoyama Gakuin University (AGU) in Tokyo, Japan.
The Scholarships in Japan provides Customs officials from developing countries with an opportunity to pursue Master’s level studies and training in Customs related fields in Strategic Management and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) at the university in Tokyo, Japan.
The Master degree programme comprises two segments: an academic segment and a practical segment. The academic segment starts with focused teaching of foundational skills in strategic management and IPR. It then moves to a range of applied topics which help students understand how to design, implement, and evaluate public policies, in particular customs policy, in accordance with development strategies for organizations. The practical segment is taught in co-operation with the Japan Customs, including the Japan Customs Training Institute.

Type: Masters

Who is qualified to apply?

• A candidate must be a customs officer of a developing member of the WCO with quality work experience of at least three years in the field of customs policy and administration in his/her home country.
• Preference will be given to candidates who have experience in IPR border enforcement, and who are expected to work in the IPR-related section of their Customs administration after this Scholarship Programme.
• A candidate must be in good health and preferably under 40 years of age as of April 1, 2019.
• Individuals who have already been awarded a scholarship under the Japan-WCO Human Resource Development Programme in the past will not be entitled to apply for this Scholarship Programme.
• After the completion of the Programme, the candidates should continue to work in their home Customs administration for 3 years at least.

How Many Awardees: Not specified

What are the benefits?

• A monthly stipend of 147,000 yen which covers living expenses such as food, clothing, and other daily expenses, as well as accommodations, transportation, medical treatment, insurance, and various miscellaneous expenses related to your study at AGU.
• Admission(290,000 yen) and tuition fees (902,000 yen) of  which will be paid directly to AGU by the Japan-WCO Human Resource Development Scholarship Program. (as of 2016).
• Round-trip economy-class air tickets between candidate’s home country and Japan. Airfare is provided for the scholar only and the travel must be on the date specified by AGU.

How long will sponsorship last? For the duration of the masters programme

How to Apply: Candidates interested in applying for the scholarship should submit applications for admissions for the 2018/2019 Programme. ID and Password for the online application will be obtained by submitting the ONLINE REGISTRATION FORM (Link is at the top right corner of the Scholarship Webpage. When registering, enter Login ID and password of your own choice and indicate your interest in the WCO Scholarship) on the Web site by the application deadline. 

Visit  Scholarship Webpage for Details

Award Providers: World Custom Organization, Aoyama Gakuin University.

The USA and Russia: Two Sides of the Same Criminal Corporate Coin

Dan Corjescu

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.

—  Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”

There are many modern myths. One of them is about the events of 1989 as being the culmination of a grand historical struggle for freedom and liberty.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

For years prior to 1989 the West through a combination of both legal business and criminal activity had interpenetrated the Communist elites with lucrative deals and promises of all kinds.

This situation was even more pronounced in “non-aligned” Yugoslavia who for years had maintained CIA and American and West European business contacts.

In effect, the “cold war” witnessed a rapid convergence between the economic and power interests of both Western and Communist elites.

The “Communists” (in name only of course) quickly realized the economic benefits available to them through at times open at times clandestine cooperation with Western business/criminal interests.

Eventually, Communist elites realized that they had an unprecedented economic opportunity on their hands: state privatization made possible, in part, with active Western participation.

For them, “Freedom” meant the freedom to get rich beyond their wildest dreams.

And the 1990’s were just that. A paradise for thieving on an unimaginable scale all under the rubric of the rebirth of “capitalism and freedom”.

The true outcome of that decade was that the old communist elites not only retained their social and political power behind the scenes; they also were able to enrich themselves beyond anything the communist dictatorships could ever hope to offer them in the past.

Yes, the price was to give up imperial, national, and ideological ambitions. But it was a very small price to pay; since the East European elites had ceased to believe in any of those things years earlier.

The only firm belief they still held was the economic betterment of themselves and their families through the acquisition by any means of as many asset classes as possible. In effect, they became the mirror image of their “enemy” the “imperialist capitalist West”.

This was not a case of historical dialectics but historical convergence. What appeared as a world divided was actually a world waiting to be made whole through the basest of criminal business activity.

But being clever thieves they knew how to hide themselves and their doings behind superficially morally impeccable figures such as Vaclav Havel and Lech Wałęsa, to name just a few. These “dissidents” would be the faces they would use to make a good part of the world believe that 1989 was a narrative of freedom and not outright pubic theft which it was.

Yes, people in the east, even in Russia, are freer now than they were. But it should never be forgotten that the events of 1989/1990 were not even remotely about those revolutionary dreams.

It was about something much more mundane and sordid. It was about greed. It was about the maintenance of power. And finally it was about money.

How deep has the Western nexus of power and wealth gone into the heart of the East? So far indeed that one can easily question to what extent a country like Russia is truly a “national” state anymore and rather just a territory open to exploitation by both local and global elites.

For that matter, we can ask the same question about the USA.

Today, and for a long time, the USA and Russia are two sides of the same criminal corporate coin.

That Trump and Putin are seemingly almost interchangeable on an aesthetic level should not be a jarring surprise to anyone.

We have totally converged.

State of the BRICS class struggle: Repression, Austerity and Worker Militancy

Patrick Bond

South African workers prepare to host the BRICS 

Across the world, trade unions are under unprecedented threat, as just witnessed in the United States in the Janus vs. AFSCME Supreme Court decision which denudes an already weak labour movement of public sector power and funds. Where, then, does organisational hope for working people lie?

The greatest potential for labour internationalism may one day exist within the largest combined proletariat: the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) bloc. The BRICS state leaders meet in Johannesburg from July 25-27 and union officials gather in Durban the following weekend. Since 2012, the BRICS Trade Union Forum (BTUF) has brought labour leaders together, attempting to traverse extremely difficult terrain using an ever-changing roadmap.

Unfortunately, it is becoming obvious that along this path, BTUF leaders suffer a well-known problem: signaling to the left while driving the vehicle towards the right, as the ground underneath the vehicle keeps shifting. For the BTUF to reach the desired location would require major adjustments in navigation, new passengers and very different maneuvers.

Overall, BTUF membership is uneven across the BRICS’ working classes. The absolute size of trade union membership and density (i.e. the percent of the workforce unionised) vary, with China’s high numbers reflecting workers’ often frustrating ‘company union’ status:

+ China: 240 million; 90% of workforce

+ India: 87 million; 33% of workforce

+ Russia: 24 million; 32% of workforce

+ South Africa: 3.3 million; 30% of workforce

+ Brazil: 17 million; 17% of workforce

South Africa’s BTUF affiliates are the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu), allied with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) since the 1980s, with 1.7 million members; the traditionally most conservative (and historically white) Federation of Democratic Unions of SA (Fedusa), with 700,000; and the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu), which has radical pan-Africanist rhetoric but suffers substantial internal strife, with 260,000.

Membership figures ebb and flow. Aside from Fedusa which won back a public sector union last year, all have lost support. After the traumatic 2012 Marikana Massacre of 34 Lonmin platinum mineworkers who were on a wildcat strike, Cosatu’s National Union of Mineworkers (Num) surrendered much of its membership (down from 300,000 to 187,000) to the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (250,000 workers).

Even if divided and weakened, South Africa probably hosts the most advanced and coherent of the BRICS union federation affiliates, and certainly boasts the most militant proletariat. Yet due to internal rivalry following ideological and strategic divergences, the BTUF specifically excludes the SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) and its 680,000 members.

Saftu’s formation last year, after Cosatu’s leader Zwelinzima Vavi and the 350,000-strong National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) were expelled, followed by the Food and Allied Workers Union (with 130,000 members) and a few others. The reason was Saftu’s much stronger opposition to ANC neoliberalism and state corruption than Cosatu’s loyalist members, at the time led by Num.

Saftu is excluded from the BTUF on spurious grounds: it has not been admitted to the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac), a corporatist institution which critics argue is a ‘toy telephone,’ often irrelevant.

As Cosatu itself warned in 2016,“Government continues to boycott and undermine Nedlac by sending junior bureaucrats with no decision making powers, while big business continues to condescendingly treat Nedlac as a platform, where they think that they can go make presentations and not engage. We will shut down Nedlac if these social partners keep undermining and undercutting it in this manner.”

However, such threats aside, Cosatu remains committed to building Nedlac and as a result, the boycott of Saftu – especially of its leader Vavi and Saftu’s metalworkers affiliate (South Africa’s largest union by far) led by Irvin Jim – shifts the BTUF ideological orientation much more to the centre. As a result, the BTUF is likely to maintain its status quo approach, no matter how dangerous this is for members, societies and the environment.

That route forward is merely continuation of predictable annual meetings in which trade unionists endorse the business-as-usual BRICS agenda, even while huge changes are underway in geopolitics, economics and environment – nearly all of which undermine labour, the broader society and the natural environment.

A different route would be to confront these contradictions head on, and to pursue greater shopfloor and grassroots unity. On July 21-22, the weekend before the BTUF meeting and just before the BRICS leaders’ summit, Saftu will gather thousands of its members plus civil society allies for a Workers’ Summit, which will more clearly spell out major policy and political differences with the other federations.

For example, in April, Saftu put tens of thousands of workers on the streets against a proposed minimum wage – one strongly supported by the other three federations but which ranges between just $0.80-$1.50/hour, i.e., ‘paltry’ according to Vavi. (The realistic poverty line is $110/person/month.) However, there are occasionally signs of potential unity amongst left-leaning trade unions.

Such shopfloor resistance was witnessed when in mid-June, tens of thousands of Num mineworkers and Numsa metalworkers at the parastatal electricity supplier Eskom engaged in wildcat protests – allegedly using intimidation and ‘sabotage’ –sufficient to create a rolling national blackout. The unions’ objective was to discredit Eskom’s 0% wage offer (the inflation rate is 4.5%), and they immediately succeeded in gaining a new offer above 6.5%. South Africa’s capitalist class was visibly unnerved by this show of strength, a precedent that might even lead to formal institutional Num-Numsa reconciliation, as Num’s more critical leaders won greatly increased power at their recent electoral convention.

Moreover, Num is now threatening to end electoral support for the ANC and transfer it to the SA Communist Party (SACP), a party itself debating whether to enter the 2019 election probably as a pressure point to make SA president and ANC leader Cyril Ramaphosa more amenable to its demands. The SACP already has several cabinet positions, yet core ANC policies are still neoliberal. (Recent exceptions include free tertiary education won through intense student battles, land “expropriation without compensation” – so far more rhetorical than real – and a National Health Insurance plan that appears perpetually underfunded.)

BTUF labour remains repressed, super-exploited but (unevenly) militant

This is also apparent on home turf, for in some BRICS countries, the labour movement is extremely weak, e.g. China, which is characterised by state control, lack of autonomy, migrant labour discrimination, low wages and wildcat strikes (often harshly repressed). Conditions are worsening due to new technologies and to fewer freedoms to organise.

The 2018 International Trade Union Congress Global Rights Index has South Africa in the second rank of countries where workers have won basic rights (i.e., among the world’s best 38), a decline from 2014 when it was in the highest group, alongside European social democracies. Next is Russia, in the third rank of countries, i.e., facing “regular violations of rights,” followed by Brazil in the fourth rank, with its “systematic violations.” The worst group – including China and India – are labeled as countries with “no guarantee of rights.”

One result is a relatively low level of absolute wages in the BRICS, illustrated within a sectoral case study: the textile industry. In 2011, South African textile workers were paid €3.8/hour, compared to €2.8 in Brazil, €0.8 in coastal China, €0.7 in India and €0.5 in inland China (the average wage in rich countries was €16.8/hour, but lower still are prevailing wages in places with vast labour reserves such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, at €0.3/hour).

Profits soar up the value chain, to the copyright owners and brand managers usually in the Global North, for as the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) remarks, “Even in a simple jacket, physical components, including labour, fabric, lining, buttons, sleeve heads, shoulder pads, labels and hangtags, account for only 9% of the price; the remaining 91% of the value is for intangible assets, including a wide range of services such as retail, logistics, banking and marketing.”

In other words, within a complex world division of labour characterised by global supply chains, the power of corporations controlling upstream value-chain components means that both BRICS and hinterland economies continue to suffer from super-exploitative processes: a wage rate that is often lower than the cost of reproducing labour-power.

As an example, South Africa’s Bantustan system was typical of the migrant labour relations that left caring for children, sick workers and the retired as a task for women in far-off settings, with little or no state support. This form of internal migrancy has usually emerged because it is extremely profitable, insofar as the employer does not bear the full cost of social reproduction. Such a system characterises labour on the east coast of China, as well as sites like Marikana where mineworkers killed in 2012 were all migrants.

As a result of low wages paid to the majority of BRICS workers, labour’s input into GDP is relatively low. In most of the five (except South Africa), the recent period (2011-15) has witnessed a deterioration of the contribution of labour to GDP, according to UN DESA. Fixed capital investments that would raise labour productivity have been weak. Instead of incoming Foreign Direct Investment taking advantage of wage differentials, recent years witnessed much less capital-deepening investment.

One additional factor in labour productivity is worker militancy. One way to measure business-labour relations is the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual listing – based on polling 14,000 business executives from 137 economies – of shopfloor collaboration on a spectrum from most ‘confrontational’ to most ‘cooperative.’ In the 2017-18 Global Competitiveness Report, three of the BRICS – South Africa, Brazil and Russia – rated amongst the most confrontational third of the world’s national workforces.

Indeed, South Africa has ranked as having the world’s most militant proletariat since 2012, the year of the Marikana Massacre. The other two BRICS, India and China, are measured as having amongst the world’s more cooperative half of national workforces.

WEF militancy rank

+ South Africa: 1
+ Brazil: 32
+ Russia: 48
+ India: 82
+ China: 88

Of course, the supposed average-level ‘cooperation’ in the two largest BRICS may disguise intense pockets of labour militancy: in China there are several thousand illegal wildcat strikes per year, and in India in September 2016 there was a national strike of an estimated 180 million workers, the largest in world history.

There is extreme variability in these BRICS labour experiences, resulting in unevenness and diversity of trade unions and federations. Still, universal trends are bringing BRICS workers into closer alignment, especially worsening casualisation and the 4^thIndustrial Revolution’s technological displacement of workers, as well as growing surveillance and privacy threats.

Workers demand insourcing and a 4^thIndustrial Counter-Revolution

The 4^th Industrial Revolution – conjoining latest advances cybertech, robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), nanotechnology, biotechnology, etc – is a major theme in the 2018 BRICS summit. Naturally, official rhetoric has downplayed the likelihood of vast service sector unemployment, intensified social engineering and e-totalitarianism such as China’s ‘social credit,’ or technological disasters of the sort anticipated when AI and robotisation are combined.

In their official BTUF statements, the trade unions asked leaders to assist in the “de-monopolisation of the world market of software and IT-equipment, internet infrastructure management” (2016). This was based upon a valid critique of tech-corporate power, and was especially appropriate in India from where the resolution emanated. In 2017, however, “We appeal to the BRICS governments to seize the opportunities brought by the new round of industrial revolution and the digital economy” – yet the BTUF failed to identify the many associated dangers.

Against these trends, resistance to surveillance, robotisation and casualisation is not impossible. In South Africa there was an outcry by Cosatu’s banking union the South African Society of Bank Officials in 2018 against a major bank (Nedbank) for its planned replacement of 3000 workers with 260 robots.

More successful were campaigns in 2015 for the ‘insourcing’ of thousands of university workers across the country, with a consequent rise in wages by a factor of two to four. (Regrettably, it was mostly student activism that won this demand, with most unions absent from the #FeesMustFall and #OutsourcingMustFall campus struggles.)

However, the South African labour movement’s consistent demands to ban outsourcing in all sectors have been rejected by the ANC. The more militant unions, including not just Saftu but also some in Cosatu, lost campaigns against the introduction a sub-minimum youth wage in 2015, and against new labour legislation which includes a weakening of unions’ ability to call strikes.

The most important legal cornerstone of the 4^thIndustrial Revolution is corporate intellectual property, and destruction of these commercial rights applied to essential medicines was also the objective of South African workers during the early 2000s, in the case of Big Pharma’s monopoly control of AIDS drugs. Just as stigmatisation of HIV+ South Africans was peaking, Vavi and Cosatu trade unionists formed a courageous alliance with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), demanding free medicines for more than five million affected people.

Although this campaign fatally soured relationships with then-president Thabo Mbeki, who was an AIDS denialist, international allies joined TAC and Cosatu to win a Trade Related Intellectual Property System exemption in 2001. As the medicines then became free by virtue of generic companies’ provision, via South African state health clinics, life expectancy rose from 52 in 2004 to 64 over the subsequent dozen years.

And in a battle against President Jacob Zuma lasting through most of the 2010s, Cosatu (along with the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance) undermined state surveillance capacity and Public Private Partnerships – both also crucial to the 4^thIndustrial Revolution – with successful activism against e-tolling on Johannesburg-area highways.

In campaigns that have not yet been won, trade unions have also worked closely with the Right2Know movement, demanding free data and airtime so as to achieve the right to communicate, and opposing surveillance and Big Data social control. R2K welcomed Cosatu’s crucial support against Zuma, to continually derail the so-called secrecy bill (“Protection of State Information” bill) which would have hampered whistle-blowing.

At the time, in 2011, the unions also strongly opposed the commodification of information, lack of transparency, and other threats associated with the emerging 4^thIndustrial Revolution. Vavi endorsed the 1955 Freedom Charter: “The law shall guarantee to all their right to speak, to organise, to meet together, to publish, to preach, to worship and to educate their children… All the cultural treasures of mankind shall be open to all, by free exchange of books, ideas and contact with other lands.”

All of this represents a 4^thIndustrial Counter-Revolution, in which potentially vital technology (e.g. AIDS medicines) is appropriated as part of the world commons, and destructive Big Data and surveillance techniques are regulated or prohibited, bottom up.

These are some of the most encouraging signs of counter-power. But within the BRICS, when it comes to discussions about the dangers of outsourcing and 4^thIndustrial Revolution, such signals are muffled to the point of silence.

Indeed, when trying to promote workers interests here and in nearly all other crucial socio-economic battles, the record of BTUF advocacy by national trade union leadership in the BRICS countries reveals many more disappointments than successes.