German government backs attempted right-wing coup in Venezuela

Johannes Stern

Germany’s grand coalition government, led by the Social Democratic Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who is currently touring Latin America, is playing a central role in the imperialist offensive against Venezuela. In a joint press release with the far-right Brazilian government, Germany’s Foreign Ministry gave its unconditional backing on Tuesday to the criminal attempted coup against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and declared its solidarity with the US puppet, Juan Guaido.

“Both sides reaffirmed their recognition of Juan Guaido as Venezuelan President with the task of organising free and fair elections to the extent that this is possible. They declare their solidarity with the Venezuelan people in their struggle to reestablish democracy,” read the statement. The “Brazilian side” also expressed its disappointment “over the expulsion of the German ambassador in Caracas by the Maduro regime.”

No lie is gross enough for the German government and its new ally in Brasilia. It is plain for all to see that the events in Venezuela are not about “reestablishing democracy,” but a US-led coup aimed at bringing to power a right-wing, pro-imperialist puppet regime in Caracas. Berlin is not only motivated to support this operation by the prospect of getting its hands on the world’s largest oil reserves, but also of expanding its political and economic influence throughout the region.

The German government is collaborating in this with the most right-wing government in Latin America, which it is simultaneously praising to the skies. Following his meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday and prior to his departure for Colombia, Maas said that while Bolsonaro had caused some confusion with some of his previous statements, “what I heard today about Brazil’s engagement on the international stage and what we were able to agree in a joint statement was exactly what we had hoped for.” It proved “the value of personal meetings,” and that one “shouldn’t just shake one’s head from afar.”

In the context of these comments, Maas’s remark that he went into politics “because of Auschwitz” takes on an entirely new meaning. A former army officer, Bolsonaro is an open fascist and admirer of the Brazilian military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985, and imprisoned, tortured, and killed tens of thousands of students and workers. Bolsonaro is notorious for his rants against blacks, homosexuals, and socialism. In one of his first speeches after his inauguration as president, Bolsonaro proclaimed, “Brazil über alles, God above all.” He then waved a Brazilian flag and declared, “That’s our flag, and it will never be red. Unless and only if our blood is necessary to keep it green and yellow.”

The fact that following his “personal meeting” with Bolsonaro, Maas no longer wants to “shake his head from afar” about such statements speaks volumes about the character of the grand coalition, the most right-wing German government since the downfall of the Third Reich. Its refugee policy is just as influenced by the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) as its rearmament of the police, intelligence agencies, and the army. In its foreign policy, the grand coalition is also working closely with the AfD. A member of Maas’s delegation to Iraq last year was Petr Bystron, the AfD’s representative on the German parliamentary foreign affairs committee.

The German imperialist offensive in Latin America, which the government intends to continue at a “Latin America-Caribbean conference” in Berlin on May 28, is also supported by the AfD. In an interview with Sputnik Deutschland, the AfD’s parliamentary group spokesman for foreign affairs, Armin-Paulus Hampel, praised Maas’s cooperation with Bolsonaro, stating, “Yes, the meeting is in general important, because I have to acknowledge that the German Foreign Minister is right about one thing: German policy has ignored South America for far too long.” However, he does not believe that the German government should intervene in South America with “basic demands for democracy, human rights, gender, and the ‘German do-gooders.’”

Maas apparently took this advice to heart. Alongside the support for the attempted coup in Venezuela, the joint Brazilian-German statements mainly focused on developing economic, foreign policy, and defence policy cooperation. Maas and his Brazilian counterpart, Ernesto Araujo, agreed to “breathe new life into economic cooperation and bilateral investment in close consultation with the private sector,” according to the statement.

In the “area of defence,” they acknowledged “the pace of progress” and confirmed “the interest in establishing a bilateral strategic dialogue.” Also discussed was “the participation of German firm Thyssenkrupp in the building of four light Tamandare-class frigates for the Brazilian navy.” Maas and Araujo also reaffirmed “their joint commitment to reform the UN Security Council to make it more representative, more legitimate, and more efficient.” They also agreed “to regularly exchange reports of our experiences in UN peacekeeping missions.”

Like Bolsonaro, Araujo is also a right-wing extremist nationalist, who denounces climate change as a “left-wing conspiracy theory” and boasts about combatting “cultural Marxism.” HIs father, Henrique Fonseca de Araujo, was a state prosecutor at the time of the military dictatorship and blocked the extradition of SS commander Gustav Franz Wagner, who was deputy commandant of the Sobibor concentration camp, to Israel, Austria, Poland, and Germany. Ernesto Araujo continues to defend his father to this day, claiming that he was merely acting according to “the rule of law.”

Even though the grand coalition is openly cooperating with fascist forces, the nominally “left” opposition parties also back its foreign policy. In a statement from May 1, Green Party foreign policy spokesman Omid Noripur “calls on the German government to insist that the issue of Venezuela remains high on the agenda of the UN and the European Union until new elections and a change of power has been made possible.”

The Left Party already gave its stamp of approval to the imperialist-led offensive against Venezuela at its European election party congress at the end of February. The Left Party is now serving as an informant and go-between for German imperialism in the region.

At the end of April, the Left Party European policy spokesman in the German parliament, Andrej Hunko, travelled to the country for 11 days to gain an overview of the situation. In a post on his Facebook page, he boasted that along with Maduro, he met “with Guaido and several other leading representatives of the opposition.” Guaido had “introduced him to a number of trade union leaders who oppose the government.” He also “took part in a parliamentary session as an observer.”

The Left Party’s stance largely overlaps with that of the government, but it is pushing for Germany to advance its imperialist interests more independently of Washington and to assess the situation on the ground more realistically. One problem is “that the European governments often base themselves on the reports and narratives of the most extreme elements in the opposition,” which are working closely with the United States, continued Hunko. The German government also believed that the Maduro government “would be overthrown in a few days or weeks.” But this was “a totally inaccurate assessment of the situation in the country.”

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) is the only party that opposes all of the imperialist intrigues of the parliamentary parties, and is arming the growing opposition among the working class to the return of fascism, militarism and war with a socialist perspective. Our statement on the European elections declares, “The SGP is standing in the European elections in May 2019 to oppose the rise of the far-right, the growth of militarism, and glaring social inequality. Together with our sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International, we fight across Europe against the EU and for the unification of the continent on a socialist basis. This is the only way to prevent a relapse into fascist barbarism and war.”

Honduras cracks down on teachers, doctors and students protesting privatization drive

Andrea Lobo

Since last Friday, Honduras has been rocked by growing strikes and demonstrations by teachers, health care workers, high-school and university students and their supporters against legislation that facilitates budget cuts, mass firings and the privatization of public education and the healthcare system.

The government of Juan Orlando Hernández (known as JOH) —a continuation of the regime installed by a US-backed coup in 2009— mobilized riot police to repress protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets and beatings. Dozens of demonstrators have been injured and at least 10 detained.

May Day march in Tegucigalpa

On Monday, when more than ten thousand workers and youth were marching in the capital, Tegucigalpa, a plainclothes police officer, identified as Jairo Alberto Flores López, was seen in videos speaking on a communication radio and shooting at demonstrators with a pistol while running next to riot police. One of the bullets hit the chest of José Humberto Duarte, a 54-year-old teacher, barely missing his vital organs.

The constant deadly attacks by the armed forces of the US puppet regime in Tegucigalpa against workers and youth struggling for their social and democratic rights exposes the farce of the “human rights” pretexts that US imperialism uses for its neo-colonial wars, invasions and regime-change operations across the world, most recently in its efforts to overthrow the Maduro government in Venezuela.

Teachers and doctors across Honduras struck on Monday and Tuesday and joined May Day demonstrations on Wednesday, a holiday. Their chants included “bring down the dictatorship” and “JOH leave.”

The protests in Honduras are part of a growing upsurge of the class struggle across the continent and internationally in opposition to social austerity and attacks on jobs, wages and benefits. Regionally, they follow the longest strike in Costa Rican history last year, also led by teachers, and mass protests against pension cuts in Nicaragua and student protests in March against water privatization in El Salvador.

María Dilia Paz, a teacher demonstrating in Tegucigalpa on Monday, described her conditions to TeleSur, “We do everything we can to make ends meet. You know how the electrical service is, and if you are late one day they cut you off. Our children at times go with little food. They don’t get snacks because we don’t have any.”

The 65,000 teachers in the country get paid hourly wages at poverty levels—between $2.70 and $3.80 per hour of classes.

Demonstrators clash with police in Tegucigalpa on May Day (@daviddelapaz)

Thousands joined marches and roadblocks in other major cities, from the northern San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba, to Comayagua and Choluteca in the south. On Monday, protesters blocked the border with Nicaragua at Guasaule and were violently removed by Honduran police.

Three government buildings, including the city hall and a drug store, were set on fire on Monday in the capital, reportedly by demonstrators, and the headquarters of the ruling party was damaged on Wednesday.

Government officials and the corporate media have claimed that the structural reforms—composed of vague language about allowing the ministries to “revise the budget and yearly operating plan”—aim to “save” $300 million that will be re-invested.

These reassurances, however, ring hollow for workers and youth who have witnessed years of cuts and deterioration in these vital public services as well as the outright stealing of funds by the ruling clique, including hundreds of millions of dollars taken from the healthcare system to finance JOH’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The General Workers Central (CGT), which is aligned with the regime, openly backed the measures, while the Trade Union of Public Education Employees and the Honduran Medical Association have opposed them on the basis of getting a seat at the table in further talks.

On Tuesday, National Party legislators announced that they would suspend the final ratification of the bills to continue the talks with the unions and opposition parties. In response, the trade unions and the doctors’ association called off further strikes.

Workers recognize that any negotiation with this puppet regime of the US and Honduran financial elites cannot result in “the public services Hondurans deserve,” as union and government officials claim. Reports on the bills have been accompanied prominently in the media by news of ongoing meetings between the government and the International Monetary Fund since April 8, taking place both in Washington, DC and Tegucigalpa.

Teachers and students march in Tegucigalpa on Tuesday (@HispanTV)

The media outlets have highlighted a rescue package involving the “restructuring” of the state electric company ENEE; however, the main goal of the talks with the IMF has been to receive new credits to cover the growing public debt in exchange for deeper austerity measures and privatizations.

On Tuesday, the advisor of the Honduran Council for Private Businesses (Cohep), Arturo Alvarado, a former finance minister, announced that a deal was close. “We got explanations that there will not be any tax increases,” he said, “what is coming relates to governance or how to improve the quality of expenditures, particularly in education and health care.”

All political parties and the trade unions represent the interests of capitalists whose profits depend on the ability of Honduras to attract foreign investments as a cheap labor platform with low or nonexistent taxes and social security costs.

The think-tank on external debt Fosdeh has calculated that debt servicing will exceed 45 billion lempiras (US$1.85 billion) this year, surpassing the 39.6 billion lempiras (US$1.6 billion) budget for health care, social security and education combined. This would mean a 33 percent increase in the disbursement to the international and local financial vultures since 2018 and would amount to nearly a third of the total government budget.

The Finance Secretariat, moreover, calculates that business tax exemptions, particularly for maquiladoras at the 24 Export Processing Zones (EPZ) in the country, will amount to 37 billion lempiras ($1.5 billion) this year. Meanwhile, the average salary for the 132,000 workers making clothes, auto parts and other products at maquiladoras is $40 per week.

In other words, in the most unequal country of the Americas, billions are transferred each year from the wealth created by the working class to the financial and corporate elites through debt payments and tax exemptions, while more than 60 percent of the population lives in poverty.

The rural areas are also simmering with social opposition. On April 2, farmers across the country were joined in protests by Lenca indigenous groups from the western Intibucá department, who marched to Tegucigalpa to demand debt pardons and oppose foreclosures surrounding the near-bankruptcy of the state-owned National Bank for Agricultural Development (Banadesa). Hundreds carried out peaceful marches and set up roadblocks in more rural departments in the north (Colón), south (Valle) and east (Olancho) of the country.

The sustained concentration of land, the building of dams, deforestation and severe drought have pushed thousands of the most impoverished peasant families to the brink of starvation and forced many to migrate north.

The Trump administration, however, is ramping up its attacks against immigrants to cultivate its fascistic base, including the militarization of the border, the illegal erosion of asylum rights, threats to end the Temporary Protected Status for 57,000 Hondurans, and mass deportations. Hundreds of thousands seeking to escape the desperate and deadly conditions in the country and cities in Honduras, with its widespread gangs and brutal state repression, are being sent back.

The latest demonstrations signal coming social upheavals involving the broadest sectors of workers and oppressed. US imperialism and the Honduran client elite have been preparing by strengthening the repressive apparatus and using electoral fraud and the military to keep their preferred political representatives in power. This saw the killing of 32 demonstrators in protests against the electoral fraud in November 2017.

Since the 2009 coup, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the Honduran military budget has tripled, to a proportion of the GDP not seen since 1990. This doesn’t include hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from the Pentagon, which uses its military bases in Honduras as a launching platform for interventions across the region.

Newly elected Ukrainian President Zelensky backs anti-Russia campaign

Jason Melanovski

Just over a week after being elected President of Ukraine with over 70 percent of the votes, comedian Volodomyr Zelensky has backed new anti-Russian legislation and sparked a public conflict with Moscow over the granting of Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens.

In the immediate wake of Zelensky’s election, Ukraine’s Parliament passed a bill escalating the official state discrimination in the country against the Russian language. Russian artists and artworks have already been banned from entering the country and the popular Russian-language social media platform Vkontakte has been banned since 2017.

Among the blatantly discriminatory and anti-democratic measures included in the new bill are requirements that 90 percent of national television content be in Ukrainian, that service sector workers speak in Ukrainian, and that schools and universities teach solely in Ukrainian.

While special permission has been granted to English and the other official EU languages in both publishing and education, Russian, which is the predominant language in most of Ukraine’s major cities, has essentially been targeted in the bill. Violators of the new language bill will be subject to fines of $125 to $440.

Hungary has protested the bill’s passage as discriminatory against the country’s Hungarian-speaking minorities in the southwest of the country. Poland and Romania sharply opposed earlier iterations of Ukraine’s language law as well.

Zelensky has made few comments on the blatantly discriminatory bill. Implicitly signaling his support he promised to “review” the bill once in office and proclaimed his support for the status of Ukrainian as the country’s sole official language.

Responding to this latest open provocation, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree last week permitting Ukrainian citizens residing in Donetsk or Luhansk to obtain a Russian passport within three months of submitting an application. Later in the week, Putin proposed expanding the offer of easy access to Russian passports to all Ukrainian citizens regardless of residency status within the separatist regions. Ukraine does not recognize dual-citizenship with any country.

In the separatist-controlled territories in the East, Ukrainians regularly travel to Russia to shop and visit friends and family members. In addition, tens of thousands of Ukrainians have moved to Russia in recent years to find jobs as migrant workers. Since the beginning of the war in Donbass, which followed the US- and German-backed fascist coup in February 2014, over 300,000 Ukrainians have applied for citizenship in Russia and it is estimated that over 2 million Ukrainians now live in Russia, fleeing both violence and social devastation.

NATO and the major imperialist powers seized upon the passport legislation to yet again step up their anti-Russia propaganda. The United States called Moscow’s passport decree part of the continued “assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The EU issued a similar statement.

While much of Zelensky’s support in the presidential elections was due to the fact that he is a well-known Russian-speaking media figure who eschewed the openly right-wing ethnic and linguistic nationalism of incumbent President Poroshenko and made appeals to the widespread anti-war sentiments, he has seized upon the passport decree by Putin to quickly assure the imperialist powers that he will continue the anti-Russian propaganda and policies of his predecessor.

In a Facebook post on Saturday night, Zelensky mockingly offered Ukrainian passports to Russian citizens sarcastically stating: “We know perfectly well what a Russian passport provides…the right to be arrested for a peaceful protest” and “the right not to have free and competitive elections.”

Zelensky hypocritically added that compared to Russians “we Ukrainians have freedom of speech, freedom of the media and the internet in our country.” This is a blatant lie in a country where references to communism and the victory of the Red Army and Russian art works are officially banned. Fascist bands like the state-backed Azov Batallion regularly assault civilians and stage bloody pogroms against minorities such as the Sinti and Roma.

Just before the passport decree was issued, Zelensky had also suggested that the EU and United States impose further sanctions on Russia if Ukrainian citizens were granted Russian passports.

American media outlets, including CNN, have praised Zelensky for “getting tough on Putin.”

Although there was some initial concern, especially in Washington, about Zelensky’s appeals to popular anti-war sentiments and promises to enter direct negotiations with Putin during the election, the NATO powers have thrown their support behind the new president.

Zelensky received congratulations from German chancellor Angela Merkel, US President Donald Trump and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He had also met with French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss his stance towards Russia prior to winning the second round of the election.

In an interview with Poland’s conservative Rzeczpospolita newspaper, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker stated that he did not see “any significant difference between him and Poroshenko, if we are talking about Russia.”

The right-wing US-Ukraine Foundation think tank recently revealed that Zelensky’s “top advisor” had met with its representatives in a bid to assuage their concerns over his ability to confront Russia following the first round of elections in March.

Though the US-Ukraine Foundation—like most of the Washington establishment—had been clearly in favor of a continuation of the Poroshenko regime, the think tank’s representative “came away relatively confident that a Zelensky presidency will continue to facilitate Ukraine’s Western orientation although not as intently as Mr. Poroshenko’s would have.” The foundation also revealed that Zelensky’s “top advisor” had met with the EU.

In a sign of evident concern about the widespread hostility within the working class to Poroshenko and the 2014 coup that was expressed, if in a very distorted form, in the election of Zelensky, US think tanks and establishment press have published a flood of pieces urging Washington to escalate its intervention in Ukraine to further the war preparations against Russia.

Michael Carpenter, senior director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, gave vent to this view last week in the Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post. Carpenter, a one-time foreign policy advisor to former Vice President and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, insisted that the West had to “shake off its self-diagnosed ‘Ukraine fatigue’ and replace its wait-and-see attitude with a more strategic policy of proactively supporting military, anti-corruption and economic reforms in this strategically important country.”

Far from showing any kind of “fatigue,” the US, in particular, has massively escalated its direct intervention in Ukraine with the coup in 2014. Between 1992 and 2014, the US pumped an estimated $5 billion into Ukrainian “civil society” including various NGOs and right-wing political tendencies which then played a major role in the coup that toppled pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.

Since 2014, the US has stationed military advisors throughout the country, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) alone spent another $2 billion in the country. Carpenter’s piece in the Post can only be understood as a call for a significant escalation of the already well-advanced military build-up against Russia which expresses the foreign policy agenda of the Democrats in the 2020 election.

In a similar vein, Stephen Blank, from the American Foreign Policy Council, proposed that “Ukraine and NATO should enter into a new Lend-Lease deal giving bases there to NATO in return for the transfer of usable but surplus naval and other capabilities that Ukraine’s armed forces can use effectively.” Such a move would dramatically heighten the possibility of a full-scale war breaking out between nuclear-armed Russia and NATO over Ukraine.

Echoing these same wildly militaristic plans, the Republican House of Representative member Michael McCaul published an article in the National Interest calling for the creation of a “Black Sea strategy where the United States, NATO, and other US allies can regularly deploy naval assets there to better support Ukraine against Russia.”

Up to 400,000 jobs threatened as US sanctions deepen crisis of Russian auto industry

Clara Weiss

In mid-April, Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska declared that the Russian auto company GAZ might declare bankruptcy and collapse under the impact of US sanctions. According to a report in the Financial Times, this could threaten up to 400,000 jobs, including tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs.

Deripaska owns a two-thirds share of GAZ through his JSC Russian Machines company and is among the oligarchs close to Putin who have been targeted by the US sanctions imposed in early 2018 by the Trump administration. Deripaska managed to get the aluminum giant RUSAL and his company EN+ off the sanction list in December 2018, by giving up his majority share. He has declared that he is in negotiations with the US Treasury Department over removing GAZ from the sanctions list as well but doubts they will be successful.

Last year, the German auto company Daimler pulled out of the GAZ group, and Volkswagen declared earlier this year that it was forced to discontinue negotiations with GAZ. US sanctions ban foreign companies from entering into contractual relations with Russian companies and individuals targeted by the sanctions. The sanctions also ban Russian companies and individuals from accessing US and Western credits.

According to Deripaska, the company has “no chance of surviving” if the sanctions are continued. He said GAZ could shortly declare bankruptcy and might be nationalized.

The GAZ group controls some of Russia’s oldest and biggest auto factories. Among them is the GAZ (short for Gorkovsky avtozavod or Gorky Auto Factory) in Nizhny Novgorod, which was co-founded by the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy (VSNKh) and Ford in 1932 as part of the industrialization efforts of the Soviet Union. The factory famously survived the Second World War when it switched to the production of tanks for the Red Army to fight the invading Nazi Wehrmacht. In a process typical of the restoration of capitalism in Russia, the factory was taken over by Nikolai Pugin, the former Soviet minister for the auto industry, after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. It passed over to the hands of the newly formed GAZ group in 2005. Despite massive cuts especially in the wake of the 2008 crisis, when about half of the factory’s workers were laid off, the plant still employs some 25,000 workers.

Other major factories controlled by the GAZ group include the LiAZ bus factory near Moscow, which employs over 2,000 workers, and the Ural Automotive Plant, founded in 1941, in the city of Miass in the Chelyabinsk region in the Urals, which employs some 4,000 workers.

The declaration of the GAZ group’s potential bankruptcy comes just weeks after the American car company Ford officially announced it was shutting down its Russian production, destroying some 3,700 jobs, as part of a global wave of layoffs. The possible collapse of the GAZ group is part of the global restructuring of the auto industry. This has found a particularly sharp expression in Russia, which, since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, has been targeted by blatant acts of economic warfare through sanctions by US and European imperialism.

Russian media reports have indicated that Ford’s decision to withdraw from Russia was at least in part a response to the sanctions. The Russian auto market has shrunk severely over the past years, largely as a result of a staggering rise in poverty and decline in real wages. The entire Russian auto industry is reported to be running at only 40 percent of capacity.

As has been the case in all countries where the US has engaged in this kind of economic warfare, be it Iran or North Korea, the sanctions have hit the working class hardest. While oligarchs like Deripaska, who became wealthy through plundering the resources of the Soviet Union and the super-exploitation of the Russian working class, have seen their personal wealth reduced—Deripaska’s fortune reportedly declined from US$10.7 billion in 2010 to US$3.3 billion in 2018—millions of Russian workers have plunged from poverty into utter destitution.

The sanctions and the declining oil price on the world market have triggered a rapid devaluation of the ruble, which is now worth 50 percent less than a decade ago. The number of people officially living in “extreme poverty” has climbed to almost 20 million in 2018, which is roughly 13 percent of the total Russian population of 140 million. Based on numbers by the news agency RIA Novosti and the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta from December 2018, about half of the population earns less than 26,900 rubles a month (US$415). According to the Business Insider, in 2013, before the onset of the sanctions, Russians were able to buy 40 percent more goods and services than they could in 2018.

A recent study found that 80 percent of Russian households are struggling to buy even basic necessities. According to the study, 10 percent of households could not afford to eat meat or fish three times a week, 11 percent of households cannot afford to buy vital medicine, over a third of households cannot afford two pair of shoes, 49.1 percent cannot afford even a week of holiday per year and 52.9 percent cannot afford sudden, unexpected expenses.

Meanwhile, Putin and his government officials have themselves photographed with shoes, watches and cars whose value often exceeds by many times anything the average Russian worker will ever earn in a lifetime.

Deripaska is one of the most widely hated oligarchs and universally known for having become rich through winning the bloody aluminum wars raging within different sections of the rising mafia-oligarchy in the 1990s. He is now trying to exploit the sanctions to whip up Russian nationalism and portray himself as a victim, alongside the Russian population, of the US economic warfare. However, the truth is that the Russian oligarchy under the Putin regime has responded to the economic warfare by imperialism by deepening their own assaults on the Russian working class. Most significantly, in 2018 the Russian Duma rammed through the raising of the retirement age for women and men by five years, a measure that was opposed by over 90 percent of the population.

The working class in Russia cannot confront the escalating attacks by imperialism and the Russian oligarchy without turning to a socialist program and breaking from all sections of the political establishment and the trade unions. Russian workers must oppose the reactionary nationalism promoted by the Putin regime and the capitalist class. Workers internationally, including teachers in Poland and the United States, the Netherlands, India, Hungary, and Mexico, have begun to go on a counter-offensive against decades of growing social inequality. They are the true allies of Russian workers in their fight against austerity, layoffs and the danger of war.

The sentencing of Julian Assange: A legal travesty

Andre Damon

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher and journalist, was sentenced to almost a year in prison by a UK judge Wednesday in what can only be called a show trial.

The sentence, handed out to cries of “shame” by protestors, is aimed at keeping Assange imprisoned, unable to receive visitors or hold private conversations, as the White House moves to extradite him for exposing US war crimes.

In the tradition of British class justice, the judge not only passed a prejudiced and excessive sentence, but insulted Assange. She told the journalist, effectively detained at the Ecuadorean embassy in London for seven years, that he was guilty of “exploiting your privileged position to flout the law and advertise internationally your disdain for the law of this country.”

The sentencing came just one day before the beginning of Assange’s extradition hearing. The very fact that the United States, a country that practices torture, capital punishment, and operates outside the framework of international law, is seeking to extradite Assange constitutes prima facie evidence that his reasons for seeking asylum were entirely justified.

The judge made no serious effort to refute the arguments of Assange’s defense, documented in a nine-page note of mitigation, that surrendering to British authorities would open him to the type of illegal persecution that led the government of Ecuador to grant him asylum.

Assange sought and received political asylum because of his “fear that he would be surrendered to the USA by Sweden, and be subjected to treatment there, including persecution and indefinite solitary confinement, relating to his involvement in WikiLeaks’ publication of sensitive US military and diplomatic materials (such as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture had concluded happened to Chelsea Manning).”

Ecuador granted the persecuted journalist asylum, “based upon its assessment of a well-founded risk of him being refouled [extradited] by Sweden to the USA and there being subjected to persecution, inhuman treatment and physical harm.”

Ecuador’s decision took into consideration the fact that “Sweden also had, at the material time, a long and unfortunate history of illicit co-operation with the USA in the mistreatment of detainees and their rendition.”

The document referenced a pair of rulings by the UN’s Committee Against Torture, describing Sweden’s “total surrender of power” to US authorities carrying out illegal rendition and torture. These judgements found, in the words of Assange’s lawyers, that “Sweden had passively allowed US military personnel to mistreat detainees on Swedish soil (including stripping, blindfolding, hooding, manacling, forcible sedation by forced anal suppository, handcuffing into specially designed stress position harnesses etc.) and in delivering them to torture in third states.”

Despite the lying arguments made by the New York Times and Washington Post that Assange is facing extradition for a minor computer hacking charge and faces no danger to his life, the Justice Department has made clear that it is investigating him for “obtaining and disseminating secret information,” a charge that could lead to prosecution under the Espionage Act and be punishable by death.

The legal proceeding against Assange is not, in fact, an extradition, but a rendition, reminiscent of the treatment of “terrorism suspects” who were snatched on the streets of Europe or the Middle East, bound and shackled with bags over their heads, and flown to America’s torture “black sites” or Guantanamo Bay.

It has been three weeks since Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy on April 11 and hauled off to Belmarsh Prison, called the UK’s Guantanamo, where he has been held in isolation, denied his right to meet with lawyers and family members, and subjected to what his father called “touchless torture.”

And it has been nearly eight weeks since the jailing of Chelsea Manning, the courageous whistleblower who helped expose US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, for refusing to testify against Assange. Manning has been held in solitary confinement for much of her imprisonment and, according to her lawyer, denied appropriate medical care.

The persecution of Assange and Manning comes as the United States is intensifying its efforts at regime change in Venezuela, while escalating its conflict with Russia and China. By jailing the founder of WikiLeaks, which documented and exposed US war crimes, the United States is seeking to silence opposition to its unpopular and criminal wars.

Assange’s persecution takes place under conditions of growing class conflict and social opposition. The ruling class is well aware that its policies of war and social counter-revolution are encountering mass resistance, which will increase. By making an example of Assange, it is seeking to silence all news outlets that oppose the dictates of the financial oligarchy.

The attitude of political organizations and tendencies to the persecution of Assange defines their character. Those who have actively or tacitly supported this pseudo-legal abomination have upon them a black mark that can never be washed clean.

This includes the Trump administration, which is demanding the extradition of Assange; the Democratic Party, which has campaigned against Assange as part of its anti-Russia campaign; the media, which has vilified him and spread lies and slander; and the middle-class pseudo-left organizations that lent credence to the trumped-up rape allegations used as the pretext for his persecution. All oppose Assange because they support American imperialism.

The social force that must come to the defense of Assange and Manning is the international working class. Unlike the affluent and complacent functionaries that staff the mainstream media outlets, the Democratic Party and its pseudo-left appendages, the working class has a vital stake in the defense of democratic rights.

Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Fellowship Programme for Member Countries 2019

Application Deadline: 31st August 2019 9:59:00 PM

Eligible Countries: FAO Member countries.

To Be Taken At (Country): FAO Regional, Sub-regional, Country Offices or Headquarters

About the Award: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) leads international efforts to defeat hunger and to support development in member countries in the areas of agriculture, fisheries and forestry. FAO’s mandate is to raise levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of rural populations and contribute to the growth of the world economy.
The Fellowship Programme is designed to attract fellows, typically PhD students, researchers and professors, who have an advanced level of relevant technical knowledge and experience in any field of the Organization. They are willing to fulfil their specialized learning objectives and at the same time, contribute their technical expertise and knowledge through time-bound arrangements with FAO. Assignments should be in line with FAO Strategic Objectives and UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility:

• Graduate or post-graduate degree (Master’s or PhD) or be enrolled in a PhD programme.
• Working knowledge of at least one FAO language (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian or Spanish). Knowledge of a second FAO language will be considered an asset. Only language proficiency certificates from UN accredited external providers and/or FAO language official examinations (LPE, ILE and LRT) will be accepted as proof of the level of knowledge of languages indicated in the online applications.
• Be nationals of FAO Member Nations
• Age: no age limits.
• Candidates should be able to adapt to an international multicultural environment and have good communication skills.
• Candidates with family members (defined as brother, sister, mother, father, son or daughter) employed by FAO under any type of contractual arrangement are not be eligible for the Fellows Programme.
• Candidates should have appropriate residence or immigration status in the country of assignment.

Selection Criteria: Candidates may be assigned in a field relevant to the mission and work of FAO.

Number of Awards: Numerous

Duration of Program: According to time bound agreement with hiring office

How to Apply: 

• To apply, visit the recruitment website Jobs at FAO  at FAO and complete your online profile. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Only applications received through the recruitment portal will be considered.
• Candidates are requested to attach to their application a research proposal, copy of their academic qualifications and copies of their language proficiency certificates.

Visit Program Webpage for Details

Important Notes: 

• Qualified female applicants and qualified nationals of non- and under-represented member countries are encouraged to apply.
• Persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply.
• All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.
• FAO strongly encourages candidates from the Global South and Indigenous Peoples to apply to this Call for Expression of Interest

Italian Government Bachelors, Masters & PhD Scholarships 2019/2020 for Foreign Students

Application Deadline: 30th May 2019 by 2 p.m. (C.E.T.)

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Scholarships can be awarded only for study/ research projects at institutions within the Italian public education and research system.

Fields of Study: Courses for which grants are available:

•        Master’s Degree (Laurea Magistrale 2° ciclo)
•        Courses of Higher Education in Arts, Music, and Dance (AFAM)
•        PhD programmes
•        Research under academic supervision (Progetti in co-tutela)
•        Italian Language and Culture Courses

About Scholarship: The Italian Government awards scholarships for studying in Italy both to foreign citizens and Italian citizens resident abroad (IRE). The aim of these scholarships is fostering international cultural cooperation, spreading the Italian language, culture and science knowledge and promoting the economic and technological sectors of Italy all around the world.

Type: Masters, PhD, Research

Eligibility:

1. Academic qualifications: Applications must only be submitted by foreign students not residing in Italy and by Italian citizens living abroad (IRE)* holding an appropriate academic qualification required to enroll to the Italian University/Institute. https://studyinitaly.esteri.it/en/Recognition-of-qualification.
2. Age requirements: 
   • Applicants for Master’s Degree/Higher Education in Arts, Music, and Dance (AFAM) Programmes/ Italian Language and Culture Courses should not be over 28 years old by the deadline of this call, with the sole exception of renewals.
   • Applicants for PhD Programmes  should not be over 30 years old by the deadline of this call, with the sole exception of renewals.
   • Applicants for Research Projects under academic supervision should not be over 40 years old by the deadline of this call.
3. Language proficiency 
   • Applicants must provide a certificate of their proficiency in Italian language. The minimum level required is B2 within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR): (https://www.linguaitaliana.esteri.it/data/lingua/corsi/pdf/tabella_certificazioni.pdf).
   • Proof of proficiency in Italian is not required for courses entirely taught in English.
   • In this case applicants must provide a language certificate of their proficiency in English Language. The minimum level required is B2 within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
   • For Italian language and culture courses, applicants must provide a certificate of their proficiency in Italian language. The minimum level required is A2 within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR):

Number of Scholarships: not specified

Value of Scholarship:

• Normally, the scholarship holders are exempt from the payment of the university tuition fees, in accordance with existing regulations. However the Universities, as part of their autonomy, may not allow such exemption. Candidates are therefore recommended to contact the chosen Institution in order to be informed on eventual taxes or tuition fees.
• For the sole period of the scholarships granted by the Italian Government, the scholarship-holders are covered by an insurance policy against illness and/or accident. Air tickets are not granted, except for Chilean citizens.

Duration of Scholarship: 

• Grants are awarded for a period of study from January 1^st, 2020 to October 31^st, 2020.
• For renewals only, grants may be awarded for a period of study from November 1^st, 2019 to October 31^st 2020.

How to Apply: 

• Click here to access the registration form
• Before applying, please read carefully the Call for Procedure

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details

The Widespread Impact of Domestic Violence

Cesar Chelala

María Salguero knows how to leverage her background as a geophysical engineer on behalf of women. Since 2016, she has been tracking cases of femicide (also known as feminicide) all over Mexico. Femicide is the deliberate killing of a woman or girl because of their gender.

Every year, there are tens of thousands of missing women, men and children in Mexico, most of whom are believed to have been tortured and killed. According to government figures, there were more than 38,000 ‘desaparecidos’ in 2018. Salguero has been building a database with information about women who have been killed because official figures tend to minimize the problem. The women killed are at the end of a tragic spectrum of abuse of women at the hands of men.

Intimate partner violence is the most common kind of aggression experienced by women worldwide, both in developing and in industrialized countries. A great number of women suffer physical violence and a significant proportion among them are also victims of psychological violence. However, many women do not report the abuse they suffer because of cultural norms and fear of retribution.

Economic cost

Violence against women has a high economic cost for society. According to the United Nations, the cost of domestic abuse in the U.S. exceeds $5.8 billion per year: $4.1 billion for direct medical and health care services and nearly $1.8 billion for productivity losses. This kind of violence results in almost two million injuries and nearly 1,300 annual deaths. These costs are considered an underestimate since they don’t include those figures associated with the criminal justice system.

In addition, victims of domestic violence lose nearly 8 million days of paid work –this is equivalent to more than 32,000 full-time jobs- and almost 5.6 million days of household productivity annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S.

Extent of this phenomenon

The extent of this problem is equally serious in most countries around the world. According to recent research carried out by James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University and Ph.D. student Emma Friedel, after almost four decades of decline, homicide among romantic partners is now on the rise. While in 2014 1,875 people were killed by an intimate partner, there were 2,237 such deaths in 2017, of which the majority of the victims were female.

According to their research, four women a day are killed by domestic violence in the United States. They also found that since 2010, gun-related murders by intimate partners have increased by 26 percent, particularly since 2014. However, those kinds of murders involving other weapons such as knives, have continued to decline.

In Russia, for example, more than 14,000 women are killed every year in acts of domestic violence. And in China, according to a national survey, one-third of the country’s 270 million households cope with domestic violence.

Domestic violence is also rife in most African countries. According to a United Nations report, domestic violence in Zimbabwe accounts for more than six in ten murder cases in court. In Kenya and Uganda, 42% and 41% respectively of women surveyed reported having been beaten by their husbands.

Domestic violence is widespread in Arab countries as well. Studies carried out in the Arab world show that 70 percent of violence occurs in big cities, and that in almost 80 percent of cases those responsible are the heads of families, such as fathers or elder brothers. Both fathers and elder brothers, in most cases, assert their right to punish their wives, children and other members of the family in any way they see appropriate.

Physical and mental effects

Female victims of violence suffer a wide variety of health problems such as organ and bone damage, miscarriage, exacerbation of chronic illness, gynecological problems and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS,. Often, they also suffer long-lasting psychological problems including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleep and eating disorders, emotional distress, and suicide. Often, abusers prohibit their victims, mostly women, from pursuing career opportunities and other education and personal empowerment activities.

Organizations such as Sanctuary for Families in New York City are training gender violence survivors to find living wage jobs in the competitive New York City market. Over the past five years, for example, the organization Sanctuary for Families has trained over 560 survivors of gender violence. 88 percent of them have graduated and secured a living wage job. To better protect women, efforts like this should be replicated throughout the country.

Effect on children and the family

Worldwide, the percentage of women who are battered during their pregnancy is 25% to 45%. Domestic violence by a partner has been associated with higher rates of infant and child mortality and morbidity.

Because children often are in the middle of such disputes, they are also affected by domestic violence. A government survey found that 27 percent of those surveyed said that their children had also been victims of violence, particularly of a psychological nature. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC,) there is a 45 to 60 percent chance of co-occurring child abuse in homes where violence between partners occurs.

Children who grow up in families where there is domestic violence are prone to a wide range of behavioral and emotional disturbances. One of three abused children becomes an adult abuser or victim. Often, the psychological scars on children who have seen their mothers beaten last for several years. Among those effects are excessive worry or sadness, guilt, frequent lying, shame, and fear of harm or abandonment.

Moving forward

Because of the extent of this phenomenon, global momentum for more effective action is building. However, at the global level, the response is still inadequate. In the U.S., for example, there are more animal shelters than shelters for battered women. Ending global violence against women requires passing and systematically enforcing appropriate legislation for the protection of women. It also demands that we assess the real magnitude of the problem and educate our societies on the value and rights of women and girls. Actively promoting gender equality may be the best prevention against future violence.

ISIS Feeds Off the Chaos of War

Patrick Cockburn

Western governments have been swift to pledge action to strike at Isis, as it becomes clear that the organisation was behind the suicide bombings that killed 253 people in Sri Lanka.

A video released by Isis after the attacks shows Zahran Hashim, an Islamic preacher and alleged leader of the bombers, pledging allegiance together with six other men – also thought to be bombers – to the self-declared caliph and leader of Isis, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Western leaders, as is usual, are proposing easy or unattainable action that will do little to damage Isis capabilities – such as trying to limit its access to social media – while steering clear of potentially more effective but difficult to implement policies to eradicate Isis that might be contrary to their national interests.

The best way to weaken Isis to the point where it can no longer orchestrate or carry out mass slaughter, like that in Sri Lanka last Sunday, is to bring an end to the wars in the Middle East and North Africa which over the last forty years have produced al-Qaeda and its clones, of which Isis is the most famous and most dangerous.

Governments deny that they are in any way responsible for Isis staying in business and point to the western-backed offensives against it which led to the last piece of the Islamic State being over-run on 23 March.

As a territorial entity Isis has been eliminated, but that does not mean that it cannot carry out guerrilla and terrorist attacks, as has happened in the last few months in Iraq and Syria. These are little reported because they take place in the vast deserts on the Iraq-Syrian border or they target regimes we do not like, such as the Syrian government in Damascus.

Isis was born out of war. In 2001, at the time of 9/11, al-Qaeda – out of which Isis was to emerge – consisted of a network of fanatics and a few hundred fighters in camps in Afghanistan. They were so few that they had to hire local Afghan tribesmen to fill out their numbers in propaganda videos.

It was the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 that turned the al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi into a powerful military movement. When forced out of its strongholds by a reinforced US presence and weakened by opposition from within the Sunni Arab community in 2007, al-Qaeda in Iraq retreated to its hideouts, waiting for better times.

These were not long in coming with the advent of the Syrian civil war in 2011 which the movement had the resources in men and weapons, to turn to their advantage. I remember Iraqi leaders in Baghdad telling me in 2012/13 that unless the war in Syria was quickly brought to an end, it would reignite the insurgency in Iraq.

They were soon proved right. Isis, as it was now called, astonished the world by emerging from its fastnesses to capture Mosul in 2014 and sweep through western Iraq and eastern Syria.

Western powers certainly wanted to defeat Isis but also did not want to do anything that would enable rivals and opponents – Russia, Iran and Bashar al-Assad – to win a clear victory in the Syrian war. They demanded that Assad go long after it was obvious that he was going to win after receiving Russian military support in 2015.

Stirring the pot in Syria in order to thwart Russia, Iran and Assad was much in the interests of Isis which could exploit the fact that opposition to it was fragmented.

Opportunities exist for Isis wherever government authority is weak or non-existent and it can put down roots. When defeat looms in eastern Syria this year, Isis moved thousands of surviving fighters next door into western Iraq. In Mosul and Raqqa, once the de facto Isis capitals in Iraq and Syria, assassinations and suicide bombings have started again. Kurdish-led forces are regularly ambushed. In Syrian government held territory near Palmyra, a series of Isis attacks in April killed 36 and captured ten pro-Assad soldiers.

In Iraq, Isis cells are reactivating in Sunni areas that surround Baghdad which, in the not-so-distant past, were the staging posts for the prolonged and devastating suicide bombing campaign that killed thousands.

It is probably only a matter of time until Isis succeeds in staging a Sri Lanka type multiple bombing once again in the Iraqi capital. The last big bomb in Baghdad was on 3 July 2016, when a refrigerator truck packed with explosives blew up killing 340 civilians and injuring hundreds more. This should be a moment when the US could do all it can to resist the coming onslaught. Instead Washington is giving priority to pressuring the Iraqi government to impose US sanctions on Iran – something that is bound to divide Iraqis and aid Isis.

There is a similar pattern across the wider Middle East and North Africa where no less than seven wars, large and small, are being fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and north east Nigeria. These flare up or die down on occasion but they never come to an end.

The reason for these wars – the true breeding ground for Isis and its kin – is that foreign powers have plugged into local civil wars and want to see their proxy either to come out on top or, at worst, avoid defeat. Libya is a good example of this: would be leader of Libya General Khalifa Haftar, backed by Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, France and Russia are fighting a government in Tripoli supported by Qatar, Turkey, Italy, Tunisia and Algeria.

Such divisions and rivalries are repeated in conflict after conflict and mean that Isis will always be able to lodge itself somewhere in the chaos.

At the same time, one needs to keep a sense of proportion about Isis’s capabilities: the atrocities it carries out in Colombo, Baghdad, Paris, Manchester, Westminster and elsewhere are geared to dominate the news agenda, provoke fear and project strength. But none of these things win wars and the defeat of the caliphate earlier this year was real and irreversible.

This does not mean that Isis will not try to resurrect itself as a guerrilla movement relying heavily on terrorist attacks on soft targets. It is, at bottom, a military machine led by experienced military men who adapt their strategy and tactics according to circumstances. Talk in the west about cutting Isis off from the social media as if that would be a mortal blow misses the point.

Social media may be a powerful tool for Isis but it would survive without it. Savage cult-like movements similar to Isis such as the Nazis in Germany and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia existed long before the internet and were able to spread their toxic message without use of it..

The only effective way to bring an end to Isis is to end the wars that produced it. A large part of the Middle East and North Africa have become a zone of conflict where international and regional rivalries are fought out through local proxies. So long as that goes on Isis will continue to exist.