Regional players manoeuvre to reengineer the Israeli Palestinian landscape

James M. Dorsey

A possible ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, is proving to be much more than an effort to end escalating violence that threatens to spark yet another Middle Eastern war.

United Arab Emirates-backed Egyptian and United Nations efforts to mediate an agreement, with the two countries’ nemesis, Qatar, in the background, are about not only preventing months-long weekly protests along the line that divides Gaza and Israel and repeated rocket and kite-mounted incendiary device attacks on Israel that provoke Israeli military strikes in response from spinning out of control.

They constitute yet another round in an Israeli-supported effort to politically, economically and militarily weaken Hamas and pave the road for a possible return to Palestine of Abu Dhabi-based former Palestinian security chief Mohmmed Dahlan as a future successor to ailing Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Ironically, Israeli discussions with representatives of Qatar that has long supported Gaza constitute recognition of the utility of Qatar’s long-standing relations with Islamists and militants that the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain cited as the reason for their 15-month-old diplomatic and economic boycott of the Gulf state.

Israel and Egypt have agreed that Qatar would pay the salaries of tens of thousands of government employees in Gaza. Mr. Abbas has refused to pay the salaries as part of an Israeli-UAE-Saudi-backed effort to undermine Hamas’ control of Gaza and give the Palestine Authority a key role in its administration. In response to a request by Mr. Abbas, Israel, moreover, reduced electricity supplies, leaving Gazans with only 3-4 hours of power a day.

Qatar has also been negotiating the return by Hamas of two Israeli nationals held captive as well as the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed in 2014 in Gaza.

Mr. Abbas’ economic warfare was the latest tightening of the noose in a more than a decade-long Israeli-Egyptian effort to strangle Gaza economically. Included in the moves to negotiate a long-term Israeli-Hamas ceasefire are proposals for significant steps to ease the blockade.

In a statement on Facebook, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Israel’s goal was to “remove the Hamas terror group from power, or force it to change its approach, i.e., recognize Israel’s right to exist and accept the principle of rebuilding in exchange for demilitarization.”

Mr Lieberman said he wanted to achieve that by “creating conditions in which the average resident of Gaza will take steps to replace the Hamas regime with a more pragmatic government” rather than through military force.

Ironically, involving Qatar in the efforts to prevent Gaza from escalating out of hand gives it a foot in the door as the UAE seeks to put a Palestinian leader in place more attuned to Emirati and Saudi willingness to accommodate the Trump administration’s controversial efforts to negotiate an overall Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Speaking in a series of interviews, Qatari Ambassador to the Palestinian territories Mohammed al-Emadi, insisted that “it is very difficult to fund the reconstruction of Gaza in an event of yet another destructive war.” He said he had “discussed a maximum of five- to 10-year cease-fire with Hamas.”

Mr. Abbas, like Hamas has rejected US mediation following President Donald J. Trump’s recognition earlier this year of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Mr. Trump startled Israelis and Palestinians this week by saying that Israel would pay a “higher price” for his recognition of Jerusalem and that Palestinians would “get something very good” in return “because it’s their turn next.” Mr. Trump gave no indication of what he meant.

The effort to negotiate a lasting ceasefire is the latest round in a so far failed UAE-Egyptian effort to return Mr. Dahlan to Palestine as part of a reconciliation between Hamas and Mr. Abbas’ Al Fatah movement. Mr. Dahlan frequently does UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed’s bidding.

US President George W. Bush described Mr. Dahlan during an internecine Palestinian power struggle in 2007 as “our boy.” Mr. Dahlan is believed to have close ties to Mr. Lieberman.

Hamas has since late March backed weekly mass protests by Gazans demanding the right to return to homes in Israel proper that they lost with the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 and in the 1967 Middle East war in an effort to force an end to the economic stranglehold. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said this week that “thanks to these marches and resistance” an end to Israel’s decade-long blockade of Gaza was “around the corner.”

Some 170 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and 18,000 others wounded in Israel’s hard-handed response to the protests designed to prevent protesters from breeching the fence that divides Gaza from Israel.

Ironically, Mr. Abbas may prove to be the loser as Israel and Hamas inch towards a ceasefire arrangement that could ultimately give Mr. Dahlan a role in administering the Gaza Strip.

“Gaza has become a de facto state as it comprises a set area with a central body that governs the population, has an army and conducts foreign policy. So, in a way, countries have to be pragmatic and negotiate with Hamas. Israel’s main interest is security—a period of complete calm in Gaza—and it is willing to do what is necessary to achieve this,” said Giora Eiland, former head of Israel’s National Security Council.

“Until recently, Cairo insisted that Abbas re-assume control over Gaza, which Hamas would not accept, specifically the call for it to disarm. Now, Egypt understands that this is not realistic and is only demanding that Hamas prevent (the Islamic State’s affiliate) in the Sinai from smuggling in weaponry. The only party that is unhappy with this arrangement is Abbas. who has been left behind. But this is his problem,” Mr., Eiland added.

A Hamas-Israel ceasefire and the possible return of Mr. Dahlan are likely to be but the first steps in a UAE-Egyptian-Israeli backed strategy to engineer the emergence of a Palestinian leadership more amenable to negotiating an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a geo-political environment that favours Israel.

Whether Mr. Trump’s remark that Israel would have to pay a price for his recognition of Jerusalem was a shot from the hip or part of a broader strategy is hard to discern. The White House has since sought to roll back Mr. Trump’s remarks.

With the jury still out Israelis, Palestinians and their regional allies have nonetheless been put on alert as they manoeuvre to ensure their place in whatever emerges from efforts to re-engineer the political landscape.

Death toll rises from Greek forest fires

John Vassilopoulos

The official death-toll from the fires in the Eastern Attica region of Greece rose to 96 after a 68-year-old man in intensive care died August 14. He was the thirteenth fire victim to die in hospital.

According to reports, 29 people remain in hospital, with eight in intensive care.

The Fire Service has declared that there are two remaining unidentified bodies, with the caveat “that [they] have available DNA.” But according to some reports, the death toll is likely to be higher, given that there are six bags to be examined from the scene—each of which most likely contains the remains of more than one person.

According to the General Secretariat for Civil Protection, the Attica region still has a fire risk status of category 4 (very high). Just over a week ago, another large fire broke out on the island of Evia off the coast of Attica, 57 miles north of Athens. According to reports, around 500 people were evacuated as a precaution from the villages of Kontodespoti and Stavros. Like Attica, Evia also continues to have a category 4 fire risk status.

Since the tragedy, much of the media has concentrated on the high number of illegally constructed buildings. In an interview with RealNews last week, Giorgos Stathakis, the Environment Minister of the pseudo-left Syriza government, stated that 200-300 buildings that have been built illegally in forests, coastal areas and by riverbeds, have been earmarked for demolition by the middle of September. Stathakis said earlier this month that there are 2,300 illegally built buildings within forests and 700 on the beach in the region.

Illegal construction played a central role in the havoc wrought by the fire, but this has only happened with the complicity of successive governments. All the major parties have bent over backwards to accommodate the predatory interests of the construction and tourism sector in developing prime real estate locations like Mati and to eventually legalise buildings that were constructed illegally.

In interviews with different news outlets, former environmental inspector Margarita Karavasili—who was also in charge of urban development in Mati 25 years ago—painted a devastating picture of what passes for urban planning in Greece:

“I remember that it was impossible for [Mati] to be included in the plan given that more than 80 percent of the area was forest. There was a lot of pressure on me to exempt parts of the region and lift their definition of woodland. Perhaps these pressures yielded results in the years that followed after I left the ministry.

“At times I felt threatened in the sense that if I didn’t do [what they asked] you and your children would be in danger. This was well known to ministers whom we would inform. We tried to protect ourselves, in order to do our job properly.

“From 2006-2008 pressures intensified again, that construction spread up the beach sealing off the beach in all its lengths with houses, clubs and hotels. It seems that in Mati, where the tragedy took place, there was no access to the beach because of all the walls.

“In Mati there were not sufficient roads. There was the issue of the fact that the entire coastal and beach area had been blocked off by hotels, buildings and fences, despite the fact that buildings have to be 100 metres away from the beach.”

Far from ushering in a new regime of urban planning, the demolitions will be subordinated to the same commercial interests that led to the tragedy.

The municipality of Marathon, where Mati is located, has already petitioned for the area not to be reforested, while Stathakis stated, “The way in which we will be able to reconstruct Mati is through the method of Special Spatial Planning, a flexible tool, which is mainly used in big investment projects, but which we have also chosen for instances of natural disasters.”

This situation is hardly unique to Mati. A recent report by state broadcaster ERT covered the legal battle between locals and property owners, who block access to the sea along 1km of the coastal road in the Kasandra peninsula in the Chalkidiki region of Northern Greece. Home to large areas of forestland, Chalkidiki is vulnerable to forest fires, and its current fire risk status is category 3 (high). Residents in the area recounted how a forest fire in 2006 in the area did not claim any victims, given that access to the sea still existed at that time.

The demolitions ordered by the government also seek to cover up the underfunding in the fire service, with forest protection now allotted only a paltry 0.035 percent of the national budget while the fire service’s budget has been severely cut in the last eight years since the first austerity programme was signed with the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Speaking to the Observer, the head of the Federation of Firefighters, Dimitris Stathopoulos, stated that 30 percent of fire engines were useless due to the cuts. “About 15% of our fleet of 1,750 trucks are off the roads because they have chronic problems and are old,” he said. “Another 15% are in need of spare parts which we can’t afford.”

Fire victims have demonstrated outside parliament to protest inadequate governmental assistance to victims of the fire. Syriza has earmarked a paltry €5,000 benefit per property affected, with just over 4,000 applications lodged so far.

The government’s response is in stark contrast to the response by the working class, which mobilised to provide drugs, food, water and other essentials to the victims. An outpouring of solidarity came from workers in neighbouring Turkey who defied the nationalist rhetoric stoked by the ruling elites of both countries and posted messages of solidarity—with #Yunanistan (Greece in Turkish) becoming one of the top hashtags trending globally, while “get well soon neighbour” was a top trend in Turkey. Hundreds rallied at the end of last month in the coastal city of Izmir outside the Greek consulate in solidarity with the victims.

In response to the public backlash against the government’s handling of the fire, Syriza Civil Protection Minister Nikos Toskas resigned on August 3.

Syriza bears a large responsibility for the tragedy, having been in power for three and half years in which it has imposed crushing austerity measures. In March, 2017, Syriza implemented €34 million in cuts to the fire service, and their cuts to the public health service and other emergency services were critical factors in the deaths of so many people in preventable fires.

Syriza is now so widely hated that it polls at an all-time low of 12 percent, while its right-wing junior partner, the Independent Greeks, has an approval rating of just 1 percent.

A criminal lawsuit with the charge of “manslaughter with intent and possible malice” has been launched by Barbara Voukaki, who lost her husband and two children in the blaze, against leading members of the central and local government, including Toskas, Interior Minister Panos Skouletis, Attica Prefect Rena Dourou and Marathon Mayor Ilias Psinakis, as well as senior fire service and police officers.

The lawsuit states, “The charges against politicians concern the fact that they had not opened roads, had not prepared for the summer season, had not created fire-protection zones, had not provided working hydrants and water trucks, had not informed residents to evacuate their homes, and finally did absolutely none of the things that the law provides for.”

With the suit citing members of parliament and sitting ministers, before the case goes forward there must be a vote on whether to lift immunity on the MPs and ministers named. Given the current public mood, this could easily escalate the crisis in the government. Fytrou’s lawyer Vassilis Kapernaros stated, “It’s a case in which there is ample evidence regarding the oversights of those responsible. There will be a lot of revelations.”

Spanish Socialist Party government’s progressive veneer cracks

Paul Mitchell

Within two months of coming to power, the progressive pose struck by Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE) has become thoroughly discredited. So too has that of the pseudo-left and Stalinist forces that support it.

The PSOE was installed in June as a minority government following the ousting of Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP) administration. It came to power with the help of the Unidos-Podemos coalition (Podemos, United Left – IU – and the Green party, Equo) and the Catalan and Basque nationalists.

PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez, now prime minister, promised his incoming government would be “socialist and equal” and carry out a raft of progressive policies.

Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias said his party would support the PSOE’s no-confidence in the PP vote “without qualifications.” He declared, “I want to think that it will be responsible and try to organize an integrating government, a government that gives stability to Spain, a government that assumes the challenges of the country in a post-corruption era.”

The PSOE made various feints at a progressive reform agenda—designed first of all to appeal to its own upper middle-class social base and these same layers who gravitate around Podemos. However, its fundamental agenda was one of further austerity for the working class, stepped-up militarism in the service of Spain’s geo-strategic ambitions and the restabilising of the Spanish state in the wake of the Catalan independence crisis.

Sánchez swore his oath of office on June 2 without the customary Bible or crucifix. Five days later, he announced that 11 of his 17 ministers would be women. The PSOE then announced a more humanitarian migration policy. Sánchez welcomed the rescue ship Aquarius to dock in Spain after its exclusion by the Italian and Maltese governments and granted the migrants on board temporary residency.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska promised to reverse the former PP government’s policy of instant deportation of migrant workers at Spain’s fortified north African enclaves, declaring, “I’m going to do everything possible to see that these razor wire fences at Ceuta and Melilla are removed.”

All this has now changed.

The government has treated the docking of the Open Arms rescue ship in the traditional manner, with the migrants on board held in detention until the police decide what to do with them. Most are expected to be deported to their countries of origin.

The persecution of migrants attempting to enter Ceuta and Melilla from Morocco has increased. The PSOE government is defending their instant deportation by the Civil Guard and is continuing with the former PP government’s appeal to the European Court of Human Rights to overturn its condemnation of Spain’s “forced return” of two African immigrants at Melilla in 2014.

Spain has also been instrumental in the European Union last month giving Morocco millions of euros more in anti-migrant funding. Police stations have been transformed into detention centres, and raids by the Moroccan security forces increased. Around 1,800 people were arrested in the first week of August, driven south in buses and dumped in the Sahara. Two young Malians, one of them 16, died in the raids.

The PSOE has also reneged on its promise to reverse the PP’s education “reforms”, which made religious education compulsory in schools and promoted single-sex education. Instead, the government will only “modify” the most “disturbing” elements of the PP model, leaving untouched compulsory religious indoctrination of the country’s children.

The PSOE is also stalling over its much-publicised symbolic gesture to exhume the fascist dictator General Francisco Franco from the Valley of the Fallen monument, which also contains the remains of 34,000 Nationalist and Republican soldiers. Faced with the opposition of Franco’s family, the PP and the military—some 600 retired officers have now signed a petition—the date for the exhumation has been continually delayed.

“We want the Valley to be a public place of honour to peace, democracy and common memory,” said Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo. The idiocy of such a suggestion and the insult it throws at Franco’s victims was noted by Victoria Prego in El Independiente, who commented, “What happens is that the Government wants to hide Franco so that his grave does not receive visitors, just as it wants the Valley of the Fallen not to be seen by the Spanish as a Francoist monument but as a center of interpretation of History.

“But that will be impossible for an immovable reason: that monument is Franco’s work from the beginning to the end… the Valley of the Fallen is inseparable from the figure of Francisco Franco, and there is no one who is prepared to recognise it.”

Elsewhere the new government is escalating attacks on democratic rights. Not only is it continuing to jail Catalan political prisoners after last year’s independence referendum, under the fraudulent charge that they attempted to violently overthrow the state, but it is maintaining the PP’s law on public security, known as the “gag law.” This curtails freedom of speech, prohibits mass gatherings and imposes fines for protesting and making comments on social media.

The PSOE has also abandoned its manifesto promise to overturn the PP’s labour reforms, which attack collective bargaining and lower dismissal costs. Instead the “most damaging” aspects will be changed only if they have the consensus of the “social partners” involved, beginning with the employers.

The government has announced that its promised one billion euro banking tax to finance an increase in pensions will not be of an “immediate” character. It has refused to publish the “list of shame” of 700 companies and individuals granted tax amnesties that it had constantly demanded of Rajoy.

Sánchez has retreated on his plans, stated while in opposition, to bring in “a renewed, exemplary monarchy” and is now refusing to open a congressional commission of inquiry into corruption allegations against the former king, Juan Carlos.

Last week in an article in El Diario, Unidos-Podemos leaders sought to distance themselves from their rotten role in covering for the PSOE. They revealed that the PSOE had refused to discuss their pleas for a PSOE-Podemos Unidos coalition government once the censure motion was passed, or to consider any of the 20 policy proposals submitted by Iglesias.

Feigning outrage, they complained how the PSOE had changed from “a discourse of change” in opposition “to do what the PP was doing” and refused to consult with them. Podemos deputy and Unidos Podemos group coordinator Txema Guijarro declared, “The Government had a clear commitment and is not respecting it,” adding, “It starts to manifest a very typical PSOE syndrome: it does one thing in the opposition and another in the government, when the time comes to act, they are always ready to disappoint.”

Guijarro made the ludicrous assertion that the coalition’s main function in the coming months will be to “control” the PSOE government. But proof that compliance rather than control will continue came in the same El Diario article. In the case of the 2019 budget, which the PSOE failed to get through Congress recently because the PP and Citizens voted against and Unidos-Podemos abstained, the paper declared that the government “does not plan to change its strategy… It will present the same proposal, summoning the groups [that support it] to yield.”

Australian prime minister faces ouster by extreme-right faction

Mike Head

For the fourth time in just eight years, an elected Australian prime minister appears likely to be removed by a political coup inside the ruling party before finishing a single term in office. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s likely ouster tomorrow by the most right-wing faction in the Liberal Party underscores the instability wracking the entire parliamentary order.

After hours of parliamentary chaos today, Turnbull announced at 1:00 p.m. that if he received a petition from a majority of Liberal Party members of parliament he would call a party room ballot at midday on Friday, resign as leader and quit parliament at an ensuing national election. Both the right-wing ex-Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and Treasurer Scott Morrison, representing Turnbull’s “moderate” faction, have declared their intention to stand for the party leadership.

In a last-ditch bid to block Dutton, Turnbull said he expected to receive advice from the attorney-general tomorrow morning about Dutton’s eligibility to sit in parliament. An alleged financial interest in federal government-subsidised childcare centres could disqualify Dutton under section 44 of the Constitution.

Whatever the immediate outcome of the turmoil, the schism tearing apart the ruling Liberal-National Coalition will worsen. The Liberal Party, a mainstay of capitalist rule since World War II, along with the Labor Party, is breaking apart in the face of the tensions produced by the explosive growth of social inequality over the past four decades, declining working-class living standards and the immense pressures produced by the intensifying conflict between the US and China.

Dutton is seeking to refashion the party, and realign the political order, on the basis of anti-immigrant scare-mongering, “law and order” repression and anti-China nationalism and militarism, as a means of diverting mounting popular discontent and political disaffection along nationalist and xenophobic lines.

The moves underway to install Dutton as prime minister are not driven by any calculations that he would improve the chances of the Coalition retaining office in the next election, which must be called by May. Although Turnbull’s increasingly unpopular and discredited government is headed for a catastrophic defeat, Dutton is loathed by broad layers of people. That is due to his ruthless persecution, as home affairs minister, of refugees, his previous push, as health minister, to slash medical funding and his demonisation of African immigrants, whom he has accused of forming “gangs” that are terrorising the population of Melbourne.

In media comments, Dutton has mapped out a far-right agenda, along the lines of Trump in the US and similar tendencies in Europe, such as the National Front of Marine Le Pen in France; the United Kingdom Independence Party and the fascistic Alternative for Germany (AfD). He has called for the slashing of immigration—blaming migrants for the lack of infrastructure—more draconian policing measures and a more confrontational line against China.

Key lieutenants in his leadership bid include prominent ex-military figures, such as Senator Jim Molan, an ex-general who once headed the US-led operations in Iraq, and Andrew Hastie, a former Special Air Services (SAS) commander in Afghanistan who now heads parliament’s security and intelligence committee.

Both Molan and Hastie are closely associated with the US military and intelligence agencies. They have been on the frontline of demands for greater military spending and measures directed against China, including the recently passed “foreign interference” legislation. Their support for Dutton indicates Washington’s blessing for Turnbull’s ouster.

Also notable in Dutton’s camp are ministers in charge of the security, police and intelligence apparatus, such as Justice Minister Michael Keenan and Law Enforcement and Cyber Security Minister Angus Taylor. Dutton himself was elevated by Turnbull last year to take a new home affairs “super-ministry,” placing him in charge of the federal police, the Australian Border Force and the immigration department.

A bitter split has opened up between the big business “moderate” wing of the party, personified by Turnbull, a former merchant banker, and the “conservative” faction that is seeking to claw back support from layers of the population who have turned to right-wing populists like Pauline Hanson’s anti-immigrant One Nation.

If Dutton takes office, ousted figures such as Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop may quit parliament, potentially forcing an early election. At least three National Party MPs have reportedly threatened to resign from the Coalition, depriving the government of its one-seat majority.

Turnbull survived an initial Liberal Party room challenge by Dutton on Tuesday, securing 48 votes to 35, but was further destabilised by ministerial resignations. This morning, three key cabinet ministers—Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, Jobs Minister Michaelia Cash and Communications Minister Mitch Fifield—demanded that Turnbull resign or call another party room ballot.

Parliament was then thrown into turmoil as the government pushed through a motion to adjourn the House of Representatives early, cancelling the daily question time.

Another fatal blow to Turnbull was yesterday’s final vote in the Senate to reject his central economic policy—Trump-style multi-billion dollar tax cuts for the largest large companies operating in Australia. Pauline Hanson baulked at voting for the bill despite a last-minute offer by the government to exclude the country’s loathed four big banks from the handout.

That defeat followed Turnbull’s abandonment of his other signature policy, a so-called National Energy Guarantee to attract investment in electricity generation. Dutton’s coal industry-backed supporters, led by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, threatened to cross the floor of parliament and defeat that bill because it retained a vague commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2030.

Significantly, Turnbull’s allegedly inadequate commitment to the intensifying confrontation by Washington against China—first under Obama and now Trump—was cited by Dutton supporters as a reason for moving against him.

After aligning himself unconditionally behind Washington’s war preparations against China since taking office in September 2015, Turnbull this month gave a speech hailing the country’s “very deep” relationship with China, Australian capitalism’s largest export market.

Former Turnbull minister Concetta ­Fierravanti-Wells declared yesterday that a Dutton government would block any bid by China’s ­Huawei to tender to contracts to build Australia’s 5G network and reject an application by Hong Kong’s CK ­Infrastructure Holdings to buy a large section of the country’s gas pipelines.

“There is a view that our position on China needs to be a lot clearer, a lot crisper and lot more definitive,” she said. In January, as minister for international development, Fierravanti-Wells accused China of financing “roads to nowhere” in the Pacific, driving small island countries into unsustainable debt and “duchessing” regional leaders.

For months, leading figures in Washington, and Australia’s US-connected intelligence and security chiefs, have insisted that the government must ban any involvement by Huawei, one of the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment suppliers, just as the last Labor government barred Huawei’s participation in the country’s National Broadband Network.

In an effort to head off the move against Turnbull and stake his own claim for the leadership, Treasurer Morrison this morning announced a 5G network ban on Huawei, as well as ZTE, another Chinese telco giant, because they were “likely to be subject to extrajudicial directions from a foreign government.”

The extreme-right tendencies emerging internationally can only gain a hearing because of the decades-long assault on the social rights and living standards of the working class by pro-capitalist parties once falsely described as the “left.”

Backed by the trade unions, the Australian Labor Party—like the US Democratic Party, Labour in Britain, the French Socialist Party and the German Social Democratic Party—has been at the forefront of this attack, as well as presiding over militarism and the undermining of democratic rights.

If a Labor government takes back office as a result of the collapse of the Coalition, it will deepen the onslaught on the working class imposed by the previous pro-corporate Labor governments from 1983 to 1996 and from 2007 to 2013, as well as continue Australia’s frontline involvement in Washington’s conflict with China.

Right-wing populist Imran Khan sworn in as Pakistan prime minister

Sampath Perera

The right-wing, Islamic populist Imran Khan was sworn-in as Pakistan’s prime minister last Saturday, amid protests from opposition parties that Pakistan’s “deep state” had muzzled them during the campaign for last month’s national and provincial assembly elections and rigged the results.

A onetime cricket star whose Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf (or Movement for Justice) was long an also-ran in Pakistani politics, Khan is assuming the reins of government of a country whose economy is teetering on the verge of collapse. Moreover, Islamabad’s relations with the United States, for decades its most important ally, have become so estranged that Washington is threatening to nix an emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Khan devoted much of his first televised address as prime minister to blaming the parties that respectively led the country’s last two governments and have dominated its politics for the last three decades—the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)—for the economic crisis. “Never in Pakistan’s history have we faced such difficult economic circumstances,” said Khan. “In our entire history,” he continued, “we haven’t been as indebted” as “we have become in the last ten years.”

Khan, who has vowed to slash expenditures across the board, announced the formation of a committee to mount a nationwide drive to “cut expenses.” In an attempt to lend legitimacy to an austerity and privatization drive that will further impoverish Pakistan’s workers and toilers, Khan pledged to fight corruption, increase tax collections from the rich, and eschew the perks of office, including by reducing the prime minister’s personal staff from over five hundred to just two.

In the July 25 election, Khan’s PTI captured 151 of the 342 National Assembly seats. Its parliamentary majority is dependent on the support of smaller parties, including the Karachi-based MQM-P and the Balochistan National Party-Mengal, and independents.

In last Friday’s National Assembly election for prime minister, Khan polled 176 votes as against 96 for Shehbaz Sharif—the current PML (N) president and brother of the former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. The latter was stripped by the Supreme Court of the prime ministership in July 2017, after being found guilty of corruption charges, and was jailed in the run-up to this year’s election in what was widely perceived as a politically-motivated and manipulated prosecution.

The PPP had initially indicated that it would vote for Shehbaz Sharif as a show of protest against the military, judiciary and bureaucracy’s machinations in favour of Khan and his PTI. But in the end, the PPP abstained in the prime ministerial election.

A similar spectacle occurred in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province and the traditional PML-N stronghold. Although the PML-N had won narrowly more Punjab Assembly seats, the PTI, using the leverage gained from its victory at the Centre, was able to rally independents and smaller groupings, including the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), the party set up by General Musharraf to support his US-backed dictatorship.

For four years beginning in June 2013, Nawaz Sharif headed a right-wing government that imposed IMF austerity, collaborated with the US in waging war in Afghanistan, and bowed to the military’s demands for greater powers, including the reinstitution of military courts and the death penalty, and the expansion of “anti-terrorism” operations to large parts of the country.

Nevertheless, Sharif and the military crossed swords over his attempt to pursue closer relations with India, and over whether the civilian government or military would wield supervisory authority over the $60 billion, geo-strategically significant China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

That the July 25 election was far from free or fair is incontrovertible. But it is also true that there has been a huge erosion of popular support for both the PML-N and PPP, because of their imposition of IMF austerity, connivance in the US occupation of Afghanistan, and flagrant corruption.

For the time being, both Pakistan’s ruling elite and international capital, as attested by commentary in the likes of the Economist and Financial Times, view Khan, given his image as a political outsider and populist appeal, as the best frontman for a government that will be tasked with imposing socially incendiary spending cuts and pushing through a fire-sale of state-owned enterprises.

The records of those Khan has chosen for his cabinet underscore the incoming government’s pro-austerity orientation and its eagerness to work hand-in-glove with the military, which has directly ruled Pakistan for almost half of its seven decades as an independent state and continues to effectively control its foreign and security policies.

Twelve of the 21 top appointees—16 minister and 5 advisers—served in Musharraf’s dictatorial regime and five were ministers in former PPP governments.

Khan’s appointments to the Finance and Foreign Affairs portfolios exemplify the unbroken link between the PTI and the anti-working class and pro-imperialist policies of its predecessors.

Finance Minister Asad Umar was until recently reputedly Pakistan’s highest paid CEO. In recent weeks, he has been boasting of an IMF-backed plan to swiftly reorganize the management and corporate structure of 200 public sector enterprises, so as to ensure they make profits and can be rapidly sold off to investors.

As his foreign minister, Khan has named Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who served in the same capacity in the PPP-led government from 2008 to 2013. Qureshi is known to be well liked in Washington. During his previous tenure as foreign minister, the Obama administration dramatically escalated the illegal US drone war in Pakistan’s the tribal areas with the tacit support of the Pakistan government and military, killing thousands of innocent men, women and children.

Khan first gained significant popular support by demanding an end to drone war and denouncing the PPP government’s relations with Washington as “slavery.” However, he has long scaled back such rhetoric. Under conditions where the Trump administration has threatened to punish Pakistan, including by stripping it of its status as a “Major non-NATO ally,” if it does not more slavishly implement the US Afghan war strategy, he has limited himself to calls for a more equitable relationship between Islamabad and Washington.

Khan’s appointment of Qureshi is clearly meant to signal that his government is anxious to mend fences with Washington.

Khan’s vapid promises of an “Islamic welfare state” will quickly prove to be a cruel hoax.

A self-avowed rightist, who promotes himself as a “born-again Muslim” promoting “Islamic values,” Khan has long cultivated close ties with the military and the religious right, including through his support for the country’s draconian “blasphemy laws” and the state persecution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim minority.

Argentina on the brink of financial meltdown

Cesar Uco 

The crisis of the Turkish lira, driven by the strengthening of the US dollar, combined with the increase in US interest rates in recent months and sharply exacerbated by the Trump administration’s imposition of punishing trade tariffs, has spread to a number of “emerging markets” economies, which borrowed heavily during the years of low interest rates. Argentina has now joined Turkey in imposing currency mega-devaluations, threatening a national economic collapse.

Last week, in a desperate attempt to keep the national currency, the peso, from going into freefall, the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA) increased the short-term interest rate to 45 percent, the highest in the world, in a bid to attract profit hungry investors. The Argentine peso closed last Friday at 30.62 pesos to the US dollar, losing 22 percent of its value against the dollar in just the last three months, equivalent to an annualized devaluation of 124 percent.

Above all, the Argentine ruling establishment fears a bank run, which, given the intensification of the class struggle in the country, could detonate mass popular upheavals against the bourgeois state led by right-wing President Mauricio Macri.

The decision to hike the interest rate to 45 percent followed the Central Bank’s inability last Thursday to sell sufficient amounts of its reserves to support the peso. Last Thursday, the bank “bid US$500 million, of which it sold only US$55 million,” according to the Argentine daily El Clarin. The day before, the bank had successfully sold US$781 million. But on Tuesday the BCRA conducted an auction of US$500 million, managing to sell only US$200 million, according to Reuters.

Argentina has a credit rating of B, according to Standard & Poor’s—equivalent to the rating of subprime mortgages prior to the collapse of the housing bubble that led to the world financial meltdown of 2008. Argentine country risk remains high at 667 basis points.

With massive outstanding short-term debt, Argentina is facing a potential calamity in the financial sector that provides industry, including transnational corporations, with the necessary credit to function. Access to short-term funds is vital for companies to pay workers’ salaries.

In past years, this funding was made available by the Central Bank issuing Letras del Banco Central, Lebac, the Argentine equivalent of US Treasury bills. At this point, there are about 1 trillion pesos or US$33.5 billion of outstanding Lebac.

Since the Fed put an end to its quantitative easing policy, emerging markets are having difficulties in servicing their debt in US dollars, as well as in national currencies that maintain a high correlation to US interest rates.

By May 2018, as the financial crisis became apparent, Argentina secured a loan from the IMF for US$30 billion in a desperate effort to slow inflation and to prevent a bank run.

But the IMF loan was not enough to contain the devaluation of the peso. Over the past month it reached an annualized rate of 199 percent, comparable only to the Turkish lira.

The Central Bank and the Ministry of the Treasury are coordinating efforts to move away from short-term debt, the Lebac—usually with maturities of around 1 month—the Argentine equivalent to one-month US Treasury bills. As long as world interest rates remained low, the Lebac program became a major source of short-term funding.

BCRA President Luis Caputo has declared that the Lebac program needs to be completely dismantled by the end of the year. The notes are a major source of funding for Argentine banks, which hold about 50 percent of the Lebac, with the other 50 percent in the hands of common investment funds, public corporations, enterprises and individuals.

The Lebac will gradually be replaced by one-year maturity notes issued by the BCRA (Nobac) and letters of liquidity (Leliq). The latter is destined to become the main source of funding in the future. The cost of closing down the Lebac program is estimated at US$7 billion, which will come out of the Treasury reserves in US dollars.

In an effort to stabilize the economy, the Argentine government last week placed longer term debt—US$1.64 billion worth of government bonds maturing in 2020 (BODEN 2020) and US$514 million treasury notes (LETES)—with maturities of between 210 and 378 days.

As the US dollar strengthens against all major currencies, Argentina is looking to China to negotiate a currency swap—Chinese yuan vs. Argentine pesos—for US$4 billion, to be used in reinforcing falling reserves. This represents a move away from economic dependence on the US, despite the right-wing Macri’s affinity for Donald Trump.

Argentina’s inflation reached its peak in 2016 with an annual rate of 40.3 percent, the highest in the world, and in 2017 the Consumer Price Index rose 24.8 percent. It is expected that 2018 will close with an inflation rate of between 30 to 40 percent, more than double the BCRA target.

In remarks delivered Friday in northwestern Jujuy, one of Argentina’s poorest provinces, Macri publicly acknowledged the obvious, that both Argentina’s financial crisis and the measures his government is taking in response are resulting in the erosion of working class living standards and a steady growth in poverty. “This devaluation brought a rebound in inflation, and inflation is the largest driver of poverty, and regrettably, we are going to lose some of the gains we have made in poverty reduction,” Macri told a news conference.

Last year, Argentina’s official statistics agency, Indec, claimed that the poverty rate fell to 25.7 percent from 30.3 percent in 2016.

The Argentine economy is projected to contract 0.3 percent this year. In his remarks Friday, Macri offered cold comfort to the Argentine population. “Next year the economy will grow,” he said. “Not much, but it will grow.”

In the face of inevitable social unrest, the government will have to increasingly resort to repressive measures, including the use of the military. Last month, Maci signed a decree allowing the use of the armed forces in domestic policing for the first time since the savage military dictatorship that ruled the country in the 1970s and 1980s.

The second prop upon which the Macri government depends to suppress the resistance of the working class is the trade union bureaucracy.

Throughout the first half of this year, hundreds of thousands of workers—among them teachers, steelworkers, teamsters and other sectors—have held demonstrations expressing their anger over the loss of real wages to inflation.

This led to a 24-hour general strike on June 24 that paralyzed Buenos Aires and most major Argentine cities. The main trade union, Confederacion General de Trabajadores (CGT), has called a total of three general strikes against the Macri-IMF attacks on workers’ living standards. In April and December 2017, workers also staged one-day general strikes.

The CGT’s role is to contain the rising movement of the Argentine working class within the confines of capitalism, limiting the general strikes to 24 hours and preventing popular upheavals from challenging capitalist rule.

Meanwhile, the bureaucracy’s ostensible “left” opponents, particularly the pseudo-left groups that comprise the opportunistic parliamentary bloc known as the Workers Left Front (Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores, FIT)—the Workers Party (PO), Workers Socialist Party (PTS) and Socialist Left (IS)—seek to channel the working class behind the right-wing unions and the bourgeois state by advancing the call for putting pressure on the CGT’s Peronist bureaucrats to fight.

The decisive question posed by the deepening of the economic crisis is the building of a new revolutionary leadership in the working class, based upon the perspective of socialist internationalism fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Venezuela’s Maduro government imposes capitalist shock therapy

Bill Van Auken

Venezuela remained in a state of chaos Tuesday, four days after President Nicolas Maduro announced a series of economic measures, including a 95 percent currency devaluation and a conversion of the country’s old currency “the strong bolivar” to a new one, the “sovereign bolivar,” by lopping off five zeros from the new banknotes.

The country’s fractured right-wing opposition claimed credit for reduced economic activity after an end to a long holiday weekend, but the closure of businesses and reduced public transportation appeared to have more to do with confusion over the new currency regime than the “general strike” called by the collection of discredited US-backed right-wing parties that make up the so-called Broad Front (Frente Amplio) previously known as the MUD (United Democratic Roundtable).

While the Venezuelan right cast its call for a general strike as an action in defense of the country’s impoverished and exploited working class, one of the principal objections of the Fedecamaras, the business association that is a pillar of the right-wing opposition, was to Maduros’ inclusion of a 3,000 percent increase in the country’s minimum wage, which it claimed would bankrupt Venezuelan businesses.

The increase, which raises the Venezuelan minimum wage from $1 a month to $30 a month, is an accommodation by the government to the wave of strikes involving nurses, electrical workers, textile workers, public school teachers, university lecturers and various other sectors of the workforce.

The new $30 is still a starvation wage amounting to less than half the amount needed to meet essential monthly necessities. It less than a third of the official monthly wage of Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, and less than a tenth of the prevailing minimum wage in most of Latin America’s major economies.

In a statement issued on Monday, Maduro claimed that his new plan would usher in an “economic miracle” and represented a “revolutionary formula ... unique in the world.”

The derisory minimum wage hike aside, the plan introduced by Maduro has all the earmarks of capitalist shock therapy, in which the full weight of Venezuela’s profound economic crisis is to be placed on the backs of the country’s working class.

In addition to the massive devaluation, the plan includes an increase in the country’s value-added tax (VAT) from 12 percent to 16 percent, which will be translated into across-the-board consumer price hikes. Subsidies on gasoline prices are also being lifted in a bid to raise them from what had been among the lowest in the world to prevailing international rates. Previous attempts to impose such increases had led to riots in Venezuela.

This has been accompanied by tax exemptions for capitalist corporations, including energy transnationals seeking to exploit the country’s oil wealth, as well as the lifting of currency exchange controls introduced in 2003 in an attempt to control capital flight.

The Maduro government has promoted its measures as the path to a “zero deficit,” the same goal enunciated by right-wing capitalist governments throughout Latin America.

While the government and its supporters claimed that the roll-out of the new currency regime was a success, average Venezuelans saw it as just a further aggravation of the protracted crisis. Withdrawals of the new “sovereign bolivar” were limited to 10 (1,000,000 of the old “strong bolivar”) at ATMs — the equivalent of 17 US cents. Bank tellers were allowed to give out only 50 of the new bolivars.

The government has affirmed that it will pay the increased costs of the new minimum wage for small and medium-sized capitalist enterprises for the first 90 days, but no clear provisions have been introduced for it to do so.

The immediate effect of the new measures was a sharp rise in prices following Maduro’s announcement on Friday, further intensifying the hyperinflation that the IMF has projected will reach 1,000,000 percent for the whole of 2018. Rising prices have been accompanied by severe shortages in basic food and medical supplies.

The increasingly intolerable conditions for Venezuelan working people have led to a wave of economic migrants fleeing the country in seek of work elsewhere in Latin America or farther abroad. The flow of Venezuelan migrants has led to a violent reaction in northern Brazil, where mobs attacked a migrant camp, as well as official restriction being placed upon their entry by both Ecuador and Peru, which are now demanding passports from Venezuelans passing south through Colombia.

US Vice President Mike Pence issued a denunciation of the Maduro government’s new economic measures, declaring that they “will only worsen the lives of the Venezuelans.”

Washington has imposed a series of increasingly punishing sanctions aimed at creating the maximum economic turmoil in the country, with the aim of preparing conditions for regime change. These have included a ban on Venezuela’s borrowing or selling assets in the US financial system, making it impossible to restructure its $60 billion debt. There are increasing threats that the Trump administration may escalate these measures with a ban on the import of Venezuela oil.

US government strategists are banking on the increasingly intolerable economic and social conditions triggering a coup by the Venezuelan military bringing to power a more pliant regime.

The military has been a central pillar of the Venezuelan government since the coming to power of Maduro’s predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, a former career army officer and coup leader, in 1999. His “Bolivarian socialism” rested heavily on the military command, which filled many of the top posts in the government and profited immensely off of its control of government contracts, key economic sectors and illicit activities.

The arrests of two senior military officers in the wake of the August 4 attempted drone assassination of Maduro during a speech before troops in Caracas indicates the potential for fissures within the military command under the combined pressure of US imperialism and the growth of extreme class tensions within Venezuela itself.

Venezuela’s workers and oppressed masses confront immense dangers under conditions of a growing threat of violent conflict between two reactionary and repressive factions of the country’s ruling class, as well as that of a military intervention by US imperialism. These threats can be answered only by means of the mobilization of the working class independently of both the government and the right-wing opposition, as well as their respective trade union affiliates, in a political struggle to put an end to capitalism as part of a socialist revolution throughout the Americas and internationally.

Brutal conditions in US prisons drive inmates to strike

Matthew Taylor

Prisoners incarcerated at various state and federal correctional facilities across the United States began a 19-day strike Tuesday to protest the inhumane living conditions imposed upon them, the slavery-like work regimes they are forced to labor under, and the reactionary sentencing laws that strip away their constitutional rights and prevent them from challenging in court the conditions of their confinement.

The strike, which is being spearheaded by an intra-prison organization known as Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, was called in response to the recent riot at Lee correctional institution in South Carolina where 7 inmates were killed and another 17 injured. At the prison, which is notorious for its overcrowding and brutality, the correctional staff allowed the violence to continue for hours and left injured inmates untreated.

First among the actions called for by the inmates are work strikes. Prisons in the United States typically have two different forms of employment. First are institutional jobs, such as working in the kitchen, laundry, or performing janitorial work. Second are “industry” jobs, in which prisoners work in on-site workshops that produce manufactured goods for businesses that have a contract with the prison system.

Wages for this work vary across the prison system. For institutional jobs, in many states, prisoners are paid nothing for their labor. In other prisons, inmates are paid a flat rate, usually equal to no more than a dollar a day, at the very most. Industry jobs are often paid by the hour, with wages starting as low as 20 cents per hour.

In the federal prison system, wages for institutional jobs range from 12 cents to 40 cents per hour, for a seven-hour minimum workday. Federal industry jobs start at 23 cents per hour and top out at $1.15 per hour.

In most prisons, inmates are required to work. Those who refuse are placed in solitary confinement, known in institutional parlance as “administrative segregation,” where an individual is confined to his or her cell for 23 hours a day and kept isolated from other convicts. Due to the impoverished background of most inmates, whose only other source of income is money sent to the prison by family or friends, this work is the only source of income to procure necessities such as postage stamps, writing materials, and items from the prison commissary to supplement the inadequate and low-quality food prisoners are forced to eat.

Because of the compulsory nature of this arrangement, modern prison labor in the US can rightfully be labeled modern-day slavery. The second demand of the prisoners pointedly addresses this, calling for “An immediate end to prison slavery. All persons imprisoned in any place of detention under United States jurisdiction must be paid the prevailing wage in their state or territory for their labor.”

The striking prisoners have also called for sit-ins, hunger strikes and a boycott on spending inmate money. Within the prison system, telephone calls, commissary foods, and other services are outsourced to contractors who are then allowed to charge exorbitant rates for their services. A 15-minute phone call in the Kentucky state prison system, for example, costs an inmate and his family $5.70. The prison then typically receives a substantial financial kick-back from the contractor.

This fraudulent price gouging is a universal feature of US prisons.

The third and fourth demands advanced by the inmates call for the abolition of the Prison Litigation Reform Act as well as the Truth in Sentencing and The Sentencing Reform Act. The first piece of legislation, passed by Congress in 1996, greatly restricts the ability of inmates to seek relief within the court system for violations of their constitutional rights. It requires inmates to prove that they have exhausted all “administrative” remedies—internal panels of prison guards empowered to rule on inmate grievances—before they can file suit against the prison system. Because these kangaroo courts operate without external oversight and are staffed by the same individuals charged with violating the inmate’s rights in the first place, it is virtually impossible for an inmate whose rights have been violated to seek justice.

The Sentencing Reform Act abolished parole for federal prisoners, compelling them to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. The Truth in Sentencing laws includes a variety of measures passed by state legislatures, which include mandated sentences for certain crimes, restrictions on parole for various crimes, and other repressive measures. California’s notorious “three strikes” law, requiring a life sentence for a third conviction, even for a minor crime, is the most well-known of these laws.

These laws were passed with bipartisan support in the 1980s and 1990s. Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, legislators sought to boost their credentials as being “tough on crime” at the expense of the millions of poor workers who saw their living standards collapse in the wake of the shift in the US economy away from manufacturing and the abandonment of the class struggle by the trade unions.

As millions of jobs disappeared, crime rates spiked, largely fueled by a massive influx of cocaine imported into the US by drug cartels allied with right-wing Latin American regimes supported by the CIA and the Pentagon. The legislation passed by Congress caused the prison population to swell rapidly, doubling in the 1990s. Much of the legislation deliberately targeted the black population, particularly the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which set mandatory minimum sentences for cocaine-related convictions.

The key provision in that law set the mandatory sentence for possession of crack cocaine, which plagued black neighborhoods in the 1980s, at 100 times that for powder cocaine, more common among white users. The result of that and other discriminatory laws has seen the incarceration of African Americans, already disproportionate, rise to approximately 37 percent of the prison population. In comparison, African Americans make up 13 percent of the US population as a whole.

Two of the inmates’ demands directly address this. Demand five calls for “An immediate end to the racial overcharging, over sentencing, and parole denials of Black and brown humans. Black humans shall no longer be denied parole because the victim of the crime was white, which is a particular problem in southern states.” Demand six calls for “an immediate end to racist gang enhancement laws targeting black and brown humans.”

The gang enhancement laws referenced set increased penalties for crimes if the individual convicted can be proven to be a member of a gang. New inmates are often encouraged to identify which street gang they belong to upon entering prison, so they can avoid being housed in units with rival gangs. This is one of the primary means by which prison officials maintain de facto segregation among the inmates and prevent them from taking unified action in their common interest.

Demands seven through nine call for inmates convicted of violent crimes to not be denied access to rehabilitation programs, for states to increase funding for rehabilitation programs, and for inmates to be allowed access to Pell grants so as to be able to pursue college degrees.

Amidst the frenzy of anti-crime legislation passed over the last 40 years, most states gutted various educational programs offered in prisons. This was typically justified as a means to cut state and federal budget deficits, which were caused by the slashing of taxes on corporations and the wealthy over the same period.

The final demand reads: “The voting rights of all confined citizens serving prison sentences, pre-trial detainees, and so-called ‘ex-felons’ must be counted. Representation is demanded. All voices count!”

The United States has the largest prison population in the world, both in total numbers and as a percentage of the population. With 716 out of every 100,000 individuals incarcerated, the US prison population accounts for 22 percent of the global prison population.

It is unknown how many of the 2.3 million incarcerated individuals currently inside US jails and prisons will participate in the strike.

The dates chosen for the beginning and end of the strike are symbolic. On August 21, 1971, imprisoned Black Panther George Jackson was murdered by correctional staff at San Quentin prison in California after allegedly staging an escape attempt. On September 9 of that same year, inmates at Attica state prison in New York staged an uprising in opposition to the brutal conditions they faced. Their rebellion was crushed four days later by the state police under orders of Governor Nelson Rockefeller, ending with 29 inmates killed by police.

At that time, as today, millions of workers around the world were engaged in protests, strikes and other militant actions in opposition to US imperialism and the capitalist system as a whole. This found expression, albeit in an elementary and distorted form, in the uprising of the inmates at San Quentin, Attica and other prisons.

Today, as prison conditions have become unbearable, inmates in the United States, who find only enemies within the capitalist two-party system, have once again been compelled to take action to end the brutal conditions they suffer under.

Inmates, their families, and supporters must be warned: Though the struggle you have launched is necessary and brave, it is doomed to failure if it is confined to demands for reform within the prison system aimed at bourgeois politicians. The grotesque conditions that have driven you to strike are the result of the decaying capitalist profit system, which seeks to prop itself up through the ever-greater exploitation of the working class. The especially repressive state of affairs in US prisons is a concentrated expression of this reality.

No true reform is possible under capitalism. Only the mass mobilization of the working class, aimed at the destruction of the profit system and its replacement with a socialist workers’ state, can set the conditions for the abolition of the police-state laws that have incarcerated millions.

HEC Paris-Forté Foundation MBA Scholarship for International Women Scholars 2018/2019

Application Deadline: Ongoing.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): France

About the Award: As part of the school’s partnership with the Forté Foundation, the HEC Paris MBA Program will offer exceptional women significant scholarships per graduating class. By opening educational pathways, the HEC Forté scholarships will help improve leadership opportunities for women in business.
Essay – “Please explain in 1,500 words why you should be the Forté Scholar at the HEC MBA Program”.

Type: MBA

Eligibility: 

• Only admitted candidates can apply for this scholarship. 
• Candidates should have demonstrated a commitment to women via personal mentorship or community involvement.
• Candidates should please note that unfortunately, they cannot apply for this scholarship if admitted after June 15th for the September intake, and after November 26th for the January intake.

Selection Criteria:  Recipients of the Forté Scholarship are high-quality candidates who meet the school’s standard selection criteria and have demonstrated exemplary leadership skills in:

• Academics
• Team building
• Community work
• Creative activity

Amount of Award: Variable, up to €15,000

Number of Awardees: A minimum of 3 scholarships for the September intake, a minimum of 1 for the January intake.

How to Apply: Once admitted into the HEC Paris MBA Program, candidates will have the opportunity to apply for HEC MBA Scholarships. Candidates will receive guidance in applying for a scholarship from the Admissions Officer

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: HEC MBA School

Aspen New Voices Fellowship for Researchers from Developing Countries 2019

Application Deadline: Ongoing

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

About the Award: The Aspen Institute’s New Voices Fellowship is seeking 25 fellows, 10 of whom are experts on sexual and reproductive health and rights and 15 of whom are experts on other development topics. These other topics could include agriculture, health, development economics, governance, human rights and environment/climate change, among others.
The Aspen Institute’s New Voices Fellowship is a year-long media skills, communication and leadership program designed for standout development professionals from the developing world. Candidates for the Fellowship are expected to have both a record of significant professional achievement and a desire to share their perspectives on global development with a broader international audience. The Fellowship is open by nomination only.
While the fellowship is non-resident and not full-time, it does require a significant and sustained time commitment as fellows write opinion articles, participate in interviews with local and international media, and speak at international conferences. All expenses related to the fellowship are paid, including certain media-related travel costs.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Candidates for the Fellowship are expected to have both a record of significant professional achievement and a desire to share their perspectives on global development with a broader international audience.

Value of Fellowship: 

• All expenses for the fellowship
• funds for Fellows to participate in media-related activities and conferences.

Duration of Fellowship: 1 year. The fellowship is non-resident and not full-time.  However, there will be two major meetings during the fellowship year, where candidate will be expected to travel and take part in intensive media training. These are usually each about 5 days long. In addition, most fellows estimate spending about 5 hours per week working on fellowship-related activities, including meeting with their mentors, taking part in interviews, and writing opinion pieces.

How to Apply: 

• Ask someone to nominate you. This person could be a mentor, supervisor or professor. We ask that this person know you and your work well.
•  We will review your nomination. If you pass through the first round, we’ll be in touch with you directly, asking you to submit an application. This application involves two essays and a series of questions.
•  Once the New Voices team has reviewed applications, we will ask a small group of finalists to participate in an interview via Skype or phone. From this group, we will choose the final class of Fellows.

Nomination Webpage

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Aspen Institute’s New Voices Fellowship

Important Notes: Please note, this is not a fellowship for journalists or others trained and working in communications.