Rolex Awards for Enterprise 2018 for Young Leaders. 100,000 Swiss Francs

Application Deadline: 30th June 2017.

Offered annually: Yes

Eligible Countries: Any nationality

About the Award: Since 1976, Rolex has honoured extraordinary individuals who possess the courage and conviction to take on major challenges. Each Rolex Award for Enterprise is given for a new or ongoing project anywhere in the world – one that deserves support for its capacity to improve lives, or protect the world’s natural and cultural heritage. These projects have touched all aspects of humanity by expanding knowledge or improving life on the planet.

Rolex Laureates are of all nationalities and backgrounds. They are united by a talent for independent thinking and the capacity to embrace projects that require creativity and determination in the face of considerable odds.

Focus Areas: They support pioneering work in the areas of the environment, applied science and technology, or exploration.

Eligibility Criteria: The Rolex Awards are open to anyone;

• over 18 years of age and under 30 years,
• of any nationality,
• whose ground-breaking project is helping to expand the knowledge of our world and improve the quality of life on the planet.

Selection Criteria: Projects are assessed on their originality, potential for impact, feasibility, and, above all, on the candidates own spirit of enterprise.

Prizes: The five winners will each receive 100,000 Swiss francs, double the amount of prize money previously offered to young Award winners. They will also benefit from worldwide publicity and receive a Rolex chronometer.

How to Participate: There is a two-phase application process: a pre-application, which can be submitted by any eligible candidate, followed by a full application to be submitted by some candidates, upon invitation only.

It is important to go through the program webpage for eligibility details before applying.

Visit program webpage for details to enter

Unilever Graduate Scholarship in the Sciences 2017/2018 – UK

Application Deadline: 19th May 2017.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): St Cross College in Oxford University, UK

Field of Study: Science-related fields. Preference will be given to those studying for degrees in engineering or biochemistry

Type: DPhil (Doctor of Philosophy)

Eligibility: The Scholarship is tenable at St Cross College only

Value of Scholarship: £3050. Scholarship winners will be guaranteed to have a room in College accommodation (at the standard rent) for the first year of their course.

Duration of Scholarship: The Unilever Scholarship in the Sciences is tenable for three years coterminous with College fee liability

How to Apply: An application form can be downloaded from this site, or requested by email. Written requests should be sent to the Academic and Admissions Assistant, St Cross College, St Giles’, Oxford OX1 3LZ.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider:  St Cross College, Oxford University.

God Hates Mexicans

Charles Pierson

People will believe anything if it flatters their vanity.  Think of the idea that Americans are God’s favorites and that the Almighty directs history for America’s benefit, even when that harms non-Americans, particularly non-Whites.

From the belief that divine providence guides America’s destiny came two more bad ideas.  American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny were heroic-sounding euphemisms used to justify the trampling of Native Americans and Mexicans in the course of the US Empire’s mad dash across the continent.

Divine providence was such a transparently self-serving and chauvinist notion that we can be thankful that it has vanished from American thinking.  Except that it hasn’t.  Michael Medved, nationally syndicated conservative radio host, makes the case for heavenly intervention on behalf of the United States in his new book, The American Miracle:  Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic.

Medved argues that the rise of the US cannot be explained naturalistically; there must have been a divine guiding hand.  The American Miracle opens with the “extraordinary coincidence” of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both dying fifty years to the day from the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Such a wildly improbable conjunction of events, writes Medved, could not have been mere coincidence.  In another early chapter, Medved describes how unusual weather conditions saved the Continental army following the disastrous Battle of Long Island.  A fierce storm on the night of August 29/30, 1776 kept British troop ships from reaching vulnerable American positions.  A dense fog, unprecedented during the Summer months, rose up towards morning and continued past daybreak, concealing the Americans and allowing them to make a strategic retreat from Long Island across the East River to Manhattan.  Incredibly, not one American life was lost during the retreat.

The Almighty also brought about the freeing of the slaves.  President Lincoln had determined not to issue an Emancipation Proclamation until there was a major Union victory; otherwise, Emancipation would be seen as an act of Northern desperation.  The Union victory at Antietam on 17 September 1862 gave Lincoln what he wanted.  That victory, Medved writes, came about through a literal miracle.  Confederate battle plans wrapped around three cigars were found by Union soldiers in a campground which Confederate troops had vacated the day before.  Possession of the Confederate plans ensured Union victory.  Five days later, on September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

Medved finds in such wildly improbable occurrences “a pattern for which the influence of some higher power remains the most rational explanation.”

Baloney.  Strange concatenations of unlikely circumstances happen everywhere, not just to Americans.  People in every nation can point to “evidence” that God loves them best.  Were George Washington’s many escapes from death testament to divine protection, as Medved insists?  Fidel Castro survived dozens of assassination attempts by the CIA and lived to be 90.  Washington only lived to be 67.  Did God love Castro 34% more than George Washington?

Washington and Fidel may just have been lucky.  Still, if you want to believe that God kept Jefferson and Adams alive long enough so that they could expire on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, be my guest.  That belief is harmless.  And if you believe as does Medved that the attempt on the life of President Andrew Jackson failed because God kept the powder in the assassin’s gun from igniting, that belief is harmless too (although even the reviewer for the conservative Commentary magazine questioned why God would want to save the life of this slaughterer of thousands of Native Americans).

What should disturb us, however, is occasions when, to hear Medved tell it, God’s intervention on behalf of America harms non-Americans, particularly non-Whites.  On such occasions, ruling elites use divine providence to justify American imperialism and racism.

Consider Medved’s chapter on the Mexican War.  The Mexican War divided the US public between extremists who wanted to seize all of Mexico and moderates who just wanted half.  Moderation won out.  The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed by the US and Mexico on February 2, 1848, formally ended the war and ceded California and large chunks of what would become New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado to the United States for $15 million.

Unknown to both Mexico and the Administration of President James K. Polk, gold had been discovered nine days earlier on January 24 at Sutter’s Mill, California.  The deal would not have gone through had Mexico known what it was losing.  Medved says that the timing of the discovery was no accident.  Medved quotes a French prospector who said at the time: “It had been so ordered by Providence, that the gold might not be discovered until California should be in the hands of the Americans.”

What the hell had the Mexicans done to piss God off?  The US had been the aggressor in what Mexicans aptly call la intervención norteamericana.  The Mexican War was a blatant land grab which the US cloaked in the half-baked notion of Manifest Destiny.  In asking for a Declaration of War, President Polk told Congress that Mexico had “invaded” US territory.  Polk knew that was false.  Americans were the invaders.  Washington sent troops into Mexico pursuant to a bogus claim that the border of Texas (which had become a US state in 1845) extended as far south as the Rio Grande (p. 241).  Medved unquestioningly accepts Polk’s bogus claim as sincere.  The US House of Representatives did not.  In November 1848, the House voted to censure President Polk for starting an unnecessary war.

As for Manifest Destiny, Medved is fine with it.  Medved told a caller to his December 2 show that he was glad the US acquired California.  California, he said, had been going to waste under the Mexicans.  The Mexicans, and the Spanish before them, had done nothing to develop California.  Or to populate it.  Medved tells us that in 1848, a mere “7,500 people of European ancestry” (because Whites are the people who matter) lived in California. California must have seemed to Americans like a land without people for a people without (enough) land.

Today, the phrase “Manifest Destiny” has gone out of fashion, replaced by the secular doctrines of “humanitarian intervention” and the “right to protect” (with its hip abbreviation “R2P”).  Don’t be fooled.  These are simply this season’s imperialist styles.  The US still goes where it pleases and takes what it wants.

“U-S-A!  U-S-A!”

Why then does God “shed his grace” on America rather than let loose the thunderbolts we deserve?  It is not because Americans are better than other people, Medved assures us.  Medved explains that God blesses the US “not as reward for distinctively righteous behavior but as an exercise of his inscrutable will” (p. 21).  I’ll say it’s inscrutable.  In the case of the Mexican War, God’s will was downright perverse if we believe that God gave victory to the nation that started the war.

Medved insists that God’s grant of His favor imposes “obligations” on America towards the rest of the world.  Tell that to the Pentagon and State Department.  Medved is aware of the left’s criticism of US foreign policy, but rejects it.  Medved points out that America’s military interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. (it is a lengthy “etc.”) added no territory to the US.  Yes, but what Medved does not consider is that it is less hassle for an imperial power to rule indirectly from outside than directly from inside.  Medved also declares that US military interventions have largely not benefited the US, but are carried out at great expense.  To US taxpayers, certainly, but the military-industrial complex does just fine.

I told a priest in my antiwar group about Medved’s book.  He replied by telling me about eisegesis.  Don’t confuse that with exegesis.  In exegesis, believers approach a biblical text with an open mind with the purpose of determining the text’s meaning.  Eisegesis, on the other hand, is imposing your own meaning on Scripture.  My friend said that it sounded like that is what Medved was doing.

Medved sees himself in The American Miracle as telling history’s greatest success story.  It has not been a success story for non-Whites.  It still isn’t.  The US robbed Mexicans of half of their country in the 1840s.  Medved’s subtext, whether he intends this or not, is that God hates Mexicans.  Why else would He hand half of Mexico—including California’s gold—to the American aggressors?  It seems like many Americans hate Mexicans, too.  We have just been through a Presidential election where 62,979,636 voters cast their ballots for a candidate who promises mass deportations.  That’s 46.1% of all votes cast.  (To his credit, Michael Medved rejects Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations.)

God must hate Native Americans, too.  Western expansion drove Native Americans from their homes, and to this day, Whites continue to displace Native Americans.  Running an oil pipeline through a mostly White city like Bismarck, ND is unthinkable.  But Whites don’t have a problem with the Dakota Access Pipeline fouling Native American water and destroying Native sacred grounds at Standing Rock.  (Medved has referred to the water protectors on air as “morons.”)

My purpose has not been to attack religion.  My purpose has been to attack the misuse of religion in the service of imperialism.  It is a misuse of religion to suggest that God blesses one people by bringing calamity down on another.  It is a misuse of religion to suggest that God favors the strong over the weak, Americans over non-Americans, Whites over non-Whites.  I prefer to think that God blesses the downtrodden, the victims of injustice, not the conqueror.  I do not know how many Americans share Medved’s views.  Let’s hope it is not many.  That would be a blessing.

1,000 former GM Opel workers facing joblessness in Germany

Dietmar Henning

Two years ago, GM-Opel closed its plant in Bochum, eliminating around 3,300 jobs. Some 2,600 workers were moved into a so-called “transfer company” with the agreement of the IG Metall union, the works council and the management. Now, around 1,000 Opel workers face what they feared all along: they will lose all employment by the beginning of the year.

About 750 Opel workers left the transfer company at the end of 2015. As a rule, these older workers, born before 1962 (“near pension age” workers) are registered unemployed so as to bridge their time until they can take early retirement. However, each year they draw early retirement benefits they are hit with a statutory pension reduction of 3.6 percent.

According to the TÜV Nord Transfer Company, in the last year, only 750 workers could be placed in a new job. Another 150 signed work contracts for 2017. None of these figures have been confirmed, however.

The “future earnings for the majority of the transferred employees lie below what they currently receive from the transfer company”, acknowledges TÜV Nord Transfer on its web site.

Over the last few years at Opel Bochum, IG Metall and the works council agreed to pay cuts of about 20 percent, supposedly to “secure the location” for continued production. During the first year of the transfer company, workers were paid 80 percent of their last net salary and in the second year this was reduced to 75 percent. Yet this is still more than former Opel workers can expect to be paid in the future!

No wonder “many [have] hesitated to take the decision to leave the transfer company”, as its managing director Hermann Oecking said.

Oecking sought to justify the poor employment outcomes by saying more than 300 Bochum Opel workers have limited health and 1,800 were over 50 years old. But that was all known in advance.

The real issue is that there are hardly any decent-paying jobs for skilled workers in the de-industrialized Ruhr area. Opel was not the only industrial company that has shed jobs. At its highpoint in the 1980s Opel employed about 20,000 workers in Bochum. In addition to the Opel job cuts, tens of thousands of other positions have been eliminated by Nokia, Thyssen, Outokumpu, Johnson Controls and other companies.

The new jobs that have been created are almost exclusively in the low-wage sector. The official unemployment rate currently stands at 10.6 percent. Of the more than 18,500 unemployed in Bochum, almost one in five is over 55 years old and around 7,800 are considered long-term unemployed.

This means many former GM-Opel workers have been forced into precarious, low-paid and temporary jobs, mostly in logistics and as truck drivers, some in security companies. Only a few found work as electricians or mechanics.

The 1,000 Opel workers now being kicked out of the transfer company face the same conditions or worse, including reliance on welfare.

The chief beneficiary of this process has been the operator, the TÜV Nord Transfer GmbH, which has pocketed a good part of the 550 million euros that Opel provided for the “social contract agreement” from the Bochum closure of Bochum plant.

Around 150 workers will remain in the transfer company until June 2017, and around 100 “hardship cases” have the opportunity to stay in it for another year. IG Metall executives announced that the “conciliation committee” chaired by former President of the Bremen State Labour Court, Martin Bertzbach, has decided this designation will apply to those severely disabled, with at least a 70 percent disability, and for employees in the lower wage groups with a 50 percent disability.

The Opel works council members who negotiated all this have not shared the fate of the rank-and-file workers. They were all moved to the spare parts warehouse (Plant III), which was spun off a decade ago, initially to Caterpillar and then to Neovia, before being bought back by Opel again in early 2016, or more precisely by “Opel Group Warehousing GmbH”.

They are now complaining that Opel has not complied with the agreements of recent years. In early December, Opel Bochum works council chairman Murat Yaman, the successor to Rainer Einenkel, who has since retired, moaned that the 100 manufacturing jobs promised at the Bochum site had “still not been clearly defined and not implemented”. The agreed “transfer of vocational training to a sustainable training factory” was “far away”.

Opel has since devolved training to the “Career Workshop” of Deutsche Edelstahlwerke (DEW). The manager of this outsourced company is former DEW personnel director Burkhard Hartmann.

Meanwhile, the union-backed division of Opel workers continues. Since August, Opel has imposed short-time work hours at its plants in Rüsselsheim and Eisenach because of declining sales in the UK following the Brexit referendum. The end of this is not in sight, according to an Opel spokesman.

The 1,800 employees at the Eisenach factory were notified at a staff meeting on 16 December that instead of manufacturing the Adam and Corsa models, they will build the successor to the SUV Mokka X model in 2019. The Adam and Corsa will then be produced in Zaragoza, Spain.

The Eisenach works council chairman Bernd Delete claimed this decision was good for Eisenach, saying, “Now we can have a relaxed Christmas holiday”. Most workers regarded this announcement with caution, writes the Thüringer Allgemeine, citing an Opel worker saying, “Whether everything turns out this way, we will see—and much water will flow under the bridge by 2019.”

A few days later, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that a new large SUV to hit the market in 2019 will be built at the GM-Opel plant in Rüsselsheim. Currently, 3,800 employees produce the Insignia model at the company's headquarters. Wolfgang Schäfer-Klug, chairman of Opel and the central works council, said jobs at both plants had been secured by those decisions.

Workers should not take anything IG Metall and works council representatives say for good coin. They are closely allied with the top management and helped to work out the cuts and closure plans before implementing them on behalf of the company. In doing this, they deceived and blackmailed the workforce. This can be clearly seen by the closure of Opel Bochum, the first, but not the last, auto plant in Germany to close since the end of World War II.

Holiday season highlights social desperation in New Zealand

John Braddock

The Christmas holiday season has served to highlight the dire social conditions faced by increasing numbers of New Zealanders. Social agencies and charities reported being “swamped” this year by a record demand for food parcels and other essential items.

At the Auckland City Mission, thousands queued over the two and a half weeks before Christmas for parcels of basic necessities including meat, cereals, canned food, yoghurt and occasional treats. The City Mission is a prominent voluntary welfare provider, and its services are often overstretched during the holiday period.

On Christmas Day, the Mission typically provides meals for 2,000 people, prepared and served by 600 volunteers, and distributes 8,000 presents to needy children. This year, an Auckland cafe also put on a free meal for another 160 people struggling to make ends meet, including several who travelled from the outer working class suburbs of Papatoetoe and Manurewa.

Mission spokeswoman Diane Robertson said there had been 3,000 food parcels handed out between December 7 and 18, more than ever before. They had expected that number across the entire month of December. Around 125 food parcels were distributed on the first day of the Christmas period, compared to 39 last year. Families were queuing nightly outside the mission’s Hobson Street premises from 1 a.m.

“The reason really is that more people are in need,” Robertson explained. “Realistically we know families are just struggling so much and every year it just gets harder.”

Recipients go through a rigorous process to get a food parcel and are first seen by onsite government Work and Income (WINZ) staff to check whether they are entitled to welfare payments. Christmas gifts for children are a one-off and recipients’ details are recorded.

The Mission depends on public donations. With more than 300 families queuing every day, a plea was issued for more donations to meet the demand, costed at more than $1 million. Fundraising manager Alexis Sawyers said there was less to go around this year because donations had been sluggish while first time visitors “in desperate need” had increased.

Chrissie McKee, a west Auckland grandmother on her first visit to the mission told Fairfax: “I knew there would be a queue but I didn’t think there would be people sleeping here since 1 a.m. This is where [former prime minister] John Key needs to be.”

McKee and her husband can no longer work for health reasons and are caring for their five-year-old grandson. “Really, we’ve got about $200 odd a week and we’re supposed to get by on that when we’re all in and out of hospital,” she said.

Former truck driver Gordon Brown lives in a $590 per week rental house in west Auckland, splitting costs with his wife, son, friend Philip Hardy and his wife, step-daughter and nephew. Brown, who has an inoperable heart condition, said: “Each week we do have to choose between paying power bills or the doctor’s fees.”

Hardy said there was only $36 from his benefit left to feed himself and his family, after rent.

The National Party-led government, which Key headed from 2008 until his resignation on December 5, has imposed harsh austerity measures. Tens of thousands have been pushed off benefits, forced into insecure work or left to fend for themselves. Thousands of jobs have been axed since the 2008 financial crisis, including mass layoffs in the public sector and state-owned companies.

Following decades of welfare cuts by successive National and Labour Party governments, child poverty has soared. WINZ has reduced its emergency food grants by 28 percent over the past six years. Spokesman for the Council of Christian Social Services, Trevor McGlinchey, declared in June that “a ‘new normal’ of desperation to find housing, food and sufficient income to survive has emerged for many families.”

Last May, reports of people in Auckland living in cars made international news reports. In response, Te Puea Marae (Maori meeting house) in south Auckland opened its doors to accommodate 56 families over the winter. Marae chairman Hurimoana Dennis said the “tidal wave” of desperate requests to house parents and children “just bowled us right over.” A crowdfunding web page dedicated to the initiative raised more than $90,000 in donations.

Housing costs are responsible for plunging more people into poverty. This is particularly acute in the country’s largest city, Auckland, where more than half the houses are now worth more than $1 million, according to the New Zealand Herald. Rents are setting record highs. Median rents across all Auckland property categories are $510 per week, having increased 21 percent over five years. Some 40 percent of the city’s population depends on rental accommodation.

While the country’s property bubble is a major source of profit for the ruling elite, it has imposed an immense burden of debt on working-class families. Three out of five homeowners have a mortgage, with a median value of $172,000. According to the Treasury, household debt has risen by 26.2 percent in five years to a total of $246 billion.

Nationwide, 42,000 people are homeless, equivalent to nearly one of every 100 people. The number of homeless people has increased by 19 percent since 2006.

The New Zealand Herald reported on December 22 that a group of Auckland families faced a bleak Christmas in cramped motel rooms at a cost to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) of thousands of dollars each week. The tenants had been placed under the MSD’s emergency accommodation scheme while waiting for social housing.

Hazel Waipouri and her two granddaughters have been living in a single-bedroom unit at one motel for four months. “It’s terrible, traumatic, bad,” Waipouri said. “We’re stuffed in one room, we’re all getting sick.”

In the regional centre of Tauranga, people have resorted to sleeping in public toilets as the city’s homelessness worsens. A report in December by the Tauranga Homelessness Steering Group found a lack of affordable housing to be a growing problem for low-income people. It noted that emergency accommodation for women and children is deficient and mothers fear losing their children if they admit to having nowhere to live.

UK: Appalling warehouse working conditions exposed at JD Sports

Joe Mount

A Channel 4 News investigation has revealed that sportswear retailer JD Sports imposes draconian working conditions at its warehouses in northern England.

During a five-week investigation, undercover reporters for Channel 4 television recorded evidence of an oppressive and super-exploitative regime at the firm’s distribution centre in Rochdale, Greater Manchester that supplies UK stores. Video footage shows a supervisor explaining to an undercover reporter, “Three strikes and you’re sacked.”

The Rochdale warehouse employs 1,500 low-wage employees, hundreds of whom are on agency contracts.

Job insecurity and constant surveillance create Dickensian conditions of exploitation. One team leader is recorded warning, “No sitting down, no, you get fired. I’ve sacked people for sitting down.” Workers discuss the harsh policies which make their jobs “worse than a prison.”

Workers receive one strike for wearing branded clothes, two for using a mobile phone and one strike for bringing in food or drink, according to an internal company document brought to light by Channel 4. Management guidelines detail the strict regulations and punishments to be imposed on staff. The rules are reportedly less than two years old and remain in use.

Channel 4 News reported, “The investigation found many new staff taken on at the warehouse are employed through an employment agency called Assist Recruitment, which says it has been working with JD Sports for 12 years.

“The agency recruits are given ‘zero hours contracts’ with no guarantee of work and are paid the minimum wage of £7.20 per hour. The contracts allow the agency to dismiss them instantly without notice.

“After 12 weeks of work, the agency then guarantees just 7.5 hours of work per week.”

The company issued a pro forma denial of Channel 4’s findings and announced an internal investigation and the retraining of its supervisory staff.

JD Sports PLC, founded in 1981, reported first-half profits of £77.4 million based on £1.5 billion annual revenue. The company, which operates over 800 stores in the UK, has sponsorship and supplier deals with several major football clubs. It has been majority owned by the Rubin family since a 2005 takeover by the Pentland Group holding company, whose chairman Stephen Rubin is the 33rd wealthiest person in Britain, having a net worth of £1.2 billion.

The company’s aggressive business practices were set out by CEO Peter Cowgill, who remarked on a series of international acquisitions by the company: “It is part of our global plans. JD is about to conquer the world.” Cowgill takes home £1.4 million per year, half of which is salary and the other half, bonuses.

Six percent of the company is owned by Sports Direct, which was involved in a similar scandal surrounding its working conditions at its distribution centre in Shirebrook, England, last year.

A Guardian exposure revealed that Sports Direct operates a “six strikes” in six months and out policy. A “strike” was characterised as a “crime” against the company and includes “errors”, “excessive/long toilet breaks,” “time wasting,” “excessive chatting,” “horseplay,” “wearing branded goods” and “using a mobile phone in the warehouse.”

Workers at Sports Direct were promised a minimum wage of £6.70 an hour, but a raft of disciplinary measures and deductions meant they often earned less. Among the disciplinary measures in place, resulting in cuts in pay, were that if workers clocked in one minute late—or clocked off one minute early—they were docked 15 minutes’ pay.

The Channel 4 Investigation can be viewed online.

Following Channel 4’s exposure, Iain Wright MP (Labour), chair of the Commons’ Business Innovation and Skills Select Committee, said JD Sports employees were “treated like scum” and that company directors would be called to appear before a panel of MPs in the new year.

Such toothless parliamentary panels are public relations exercises to give the appearance of accountability. They have no power to punish the guilty since the rapacious activities of big business are mostly legal.

This is the lesson of the parliamentary select committees held in June regarding the business practices of Sports Direct and British Home Stores (BHS). The hearings were called after the horrifying working conditions were revealed at Sports Direct’s warehouse. BHS collapsed following nearly a century in operation after the company was run into the ground and asset-stripped by its owners. Among the crimes committed at BHS was the plundering of the workers’ pension fund to the tune of £500 million.

Expressing the contempt of the British oligarchy for any impingement on their profit-making, Sport Direct owner Mike Ashley initially refused to appear before the parliamentary committee, calling it a “joke.” The billionaire was eventually forced to answer publicly, but has suffered no real consequences. The current Sports Direct chairman, Keith Hellawell, following Ashley’s lead, recently claimed an “extreme political, union and media campaign” had damaged the reputation of the firm. Despite a fall in profits, the company recently acquired a £40 million corporate jet. These figures are what constitute the arrogant corporate elite that view workers only as the raw material for their vast self-enrichment.

Vince Cable, former business secretary and acting leader of the Liberal Democrats stated of JD Sports, “it’s abundantly clear to me the way this company is operating: which is completely unacceptable, disproportionate, oppressive and exploitative of its workforce.” Cable, associated with the neo-liberal “Orange Book” wing of his party, is no enemy of business and maintains close connections with the corporate elite. He held a senior post as Secretary of State for Business in the 2010–2015 Conservative-Liberal Democrats government that began the sharp turn to austerity on behalf of the British bourgeoisie in the wake of the 2008 global financial crash.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) responded by barring JD Sports from using government Job Centres to hire staff to work at the Rochdale facility until it was convinced that “workers are being treated appropriately.”

This is just a sop to divert attention from the fact that a succession of governments, Labour and Conservative, have over the last three decades created the conditions for the legal, uninhibited exploitation of workers by removing restrictions on business and cutting spending on welfare benefits in order to force the poorest layers of society to accept low-wage jobs with grotesque working conditions. They have been assisted by the complicity of the trade union bureaucracy and a compliant media.

The further revelations of horrific working conditions lifts the lid on the precarious conditions faced by millions of workers, especially the most exploited and the youth, at transnational corporations such as Sports Direct, JD Sports, Amazon, Boots, etc. These corporations form part of a globally integrated network of retail chains that sell products manufactured by cheap labour around the world and use low-wage warehouse and retail staff in countries such as Britain.

They are not isolated cases but part of broader drive to intensify the exploitation of the entire working class, who are being driven into a race to the bottom with their counterparts in every country.

British workers face pay squeeze in 2017

Richard Tyler

British income growth in 2017 is projected to be “hovering around, or even below, zero for the second half of the year,” according to a report by the Resolution Foundation think tank.

Following an “unprecedented squeeze on real incomes during the deep recession of 2008-09 and the years that followed,” incomes for low and middle earners had grown slightly in the last year by 2 to 3 percent, while inflation had remained “near zero,” Torsten Bell, director of the think tank, said. Although earnings had “only just returned to pre-crisis levels,” the UK was now “on course for fast, significant and repeated falls in real earnings growth early in the new year.”

Bell said this risked a return to a pay squeeze, as wages stagnated or fell and prices began to climb, while the economic reality of Britain exiting the European Union (EU) begins to bite, following June’s referendum vote to leave.

“Almost all of this drop is driven by rising inflation, as the impact of sterling’s post-referendum depreciation feeds through into higher import prices and filling up your car gets more expensive following recent oil price rises,” said Bell.

The price of basic foodstuffs is set to increase drastically over the next period, with Bell stating, “… there is a lot of uncertainty about month to month movements in both inflation and earnings figures, leaving aside uncertainty about the impact of Brexit. Supermarket competition may continue to hold down food prices, or it may not. But what there is almost total consensus on is that the direction of travel for price rises is up—and there is little sign of wage rises following suit.”

Commenting on the figures, senior research and policy analyst Laura Gardiner said the foundation’s forward-looking analysis suggested, “… an earnings growth freefall and a return to wage stagnation is just around the corner.”

Figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal the impact of the 2008 global economic meltdown crisis—and subsequent £1 trillion bailout of the banks—on wages in the UK.

UK wages and prices 2007 to 2016

For most workers, the value of real wages began falling and failed to keep up with inflation for at least six years (see chart below) between 2008 and 2014. Despite modest pay increases from late 2014, the value of wages lost in the preceding period has still not been recouped by most workers.

In November, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) wrote that British workers faced the “worst decade for pay in 70 years.” It noted that, “average earnings fell 9 percent between 2008 and 2013 as wages failed to keep pace with inflation.” Moreover, the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast real wage growth would stall next year, and “even by 2021 average earnings will be below their 2008 level.”

According to the IFS, the “pain in the next few years” is likely to be concentrated “most heavily on low and middle-income families.” This was because continuing austerity measures being carried out by Theresa May’s Conservative government meant real terms cuts to means-tested benefits, so that “poorer households face a much sharper drop in incomes.”

The chancellor’s Autumn Statement (budget) made clear not only that there will be no let-up in austerity, the Conservatives have carried out an additional £12 billion in welfare cuts in the 18 months since the last general election, but that none of the more than £100 billion in cuts imposed by successive Labour and Tory governments since 2008 will be reversed. Chancellor Philip Hammond stressed his budget “re-states our commitment to living within our means.”

The Resolution Foundation and IFS warnings bookend the speech made earlier this month by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney who pointed out that British workers had suffered a “lost decade” in which real wage growth was the slowest since the 1860s.

With the end of 2016, workers in Britain have seen one attack after another on their pay, conditions and benefits, fueling the numbers in poverty and those who go hungry.

• One-in-three people have experienced poverty in Britain in the last three years.

• 13.5 million live in low-income households, 21 percent of the UK population.

• 3.8 million are in poverty, with the largest group being female employees.

• 55 percent of working families are in poverty—a record high.

• 3.9 million children now live in families that struggle to make ends meet—29 percent of all children—with two-thirds of poor children living in households with at least one working adult.

• 8.4 million struggle to put food on the table, over half of these regularly go a day without eating.

• When fully implemented, further benefit “reforms” will cost 2.1 million in-work families over £30 a week and 1.1 million out-of-work families at least £44 a week.

• Over 7 million people are in “precarious employment,” including self-employment, temporary work and zero-hours contracts.

• The number of self-employed reached 4.7 million, with over half on low-pay as compared to 30 percent of employees.

• 460,000 are falsely classified as “self-employed”—costing as much as £314 million a year in lost tax and employers National Insurance Contributions.

“New Year’s Eve in Cologne”: The scapegoating of Muslims and refugees deepens

Lena Sokoll

In Cologne as well as in other cities, this year’s New Year’s Eve celebrations were accompanied by a martial police operation. The number of state police was increased tenfold to 1,500. An additional 300 federal police and 600 crowd control police patrolled Cologne. The cathedral was surrounded by 40 newly-installed surveillance cameras and bag checks were instituted in the area around it.

In a clear case of racial profiling the German police stopped and controlled the papers of hundreds of dark-skinned men in and around the central station and environs. Police used a special racist designation—NAFRIs—to identify their victims.

One year after the events in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, it has become clear what really happened in 2016. Pickpocket gangs often engage in so-called “distraction scams” or sexual provocations at such events as the Munich Oktoberfest or various carnival festivities, but this time they were blown out of all proportion and used to whip up a racist hate campaign against refugees and Muslims.

This racist campaign served as a pretext for restricting fundamental democratic rights. The right to asylum was largely eliminated and the law on sexual crimes was expanded. The state apparatus was built up on a scale unprecedented during the period after World War II.

Racist slogans of the kind spread by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Pegida were introduced into the political mainstream. Sympathy for refugees, which was widespread in the German and European population, was denounced as “naiveté” and a security risk.

The clearest evidence that the “events on New Year’s Eve 2016 in Cologne” were a hysterical fiction is the police and court investigations that took place afterwards. The findings of the investigations make it clear that nothing more happened last year than what always accompanies the consumption of a large amount of alcohol at such crowded gatherings.

Proceedings were initiated against 330 accused and only 30 cases made it to sentencing. Only three of these cases involved a finding connected with a sexual crime. The legal proceedings reveal a picture of young petty criminals, who were fined or given suspended sentences for crimes such as cell phone theft.

The real criminal party in the “events in Cologne on New Year’s Eve” was the police campaign against foreigners, which was organized in the following days and in which all political parties and the entire media without exception took part. This campaign continues to this day.

However, the fact that only three of the accused were sentenced for sexual crimes is now being used to justify a further arming of the state. Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière sharply criticized the investigating authorities and the judiciary at the end of 2016. “It is completely incomprehensible that after such a large number of sexual attacks so few perpetrators have been sentenced. I view that as a problem,” said the CDU politician to the Bild am Sonntag. The judiciary should “judge with all harshness.” In addition, he said that the trials lasted far too long. The thrust of these remarks is clear: there should be speedy trials handing out tough sentences, even if without evidence.

Let us review the facts once again.

The events at the main train station in Cologne on New Year’s Eve a year ago were the object of an extensive police investigation as well as hearings and inquiries on the state and national level. It has been established as fact that approximately 1,000 people were involved in festivities outside the train station and in the neighbouring grounds of the cathedral, that firecrackers were set off and that much alcohol was consumed. In and around the train station there was pickpocketing and in some cases the victims were distracted by jostling and groping.

The police evacuated the square shortly before midnight because of the danger of mass panic caused by the launching of fireworks, but later allowed people to return. After the reports of theft and sexual harassment came in, the police assembled a force of 150 and accompanied women to the train station. In the train station itself, there were 70 police on duty. The operation was so normal from the point of view of the police that the next day there was talk of a “relaxed deployment situation.”

Thomas Fischer, a federal judge in Karlsruhe recalled in his regular column in the Zeit that the situation is the same or worse every year at the Cologne Carnival or the Munich Octoberfest. It is sad that this happens, but it had never before prompted a larger debate.

However, a campaign was initiated at the beginning of January to discover a “collapse of civilization” and “new form of organized criminality” in the Cologne events. In a blanket designation, the “perpetrators” at the Cologne Main Train Station were identified as refugees and North Africans and the crimes committed were from then on no longer presented as pickpocketing, but as the expression of “Muslim norms of masculinity” (Julia Klöckner, state president of the CDU in Rhineland-Palatinate).

North Rhine Westphalia Interior Minister Ralf Jäger (Social Democratic Party, SPD) told the Cologne tabloid Express: “We do not tolerate groups of North African men organizing in order to degrade defenceless women with bold sexual attacks.”

The number of reports rose dramatically from 100 on New Year’s Eve to more than 1,200 in the following days. The reports included 500 sexual attacks. However, in spite of all the investigations and inquiries, there is still no detailed analysis of the supposed victims. Anyone can suddenly claim to have been harassed at the Cologne Main Train Station at the time in question. In the end, there were more criminal charges than participants.

The only thing that is certain is that representatives of the intelligence agencies and the security apparatus had already sharply attacked the refugee policy of the Merkel government weeks earlier and that the Cologne New Year’s Eve events were dramatically exaggerated and exploited for the purpose of a racist campaign. At the same time, fundamental democratic rights were restricted, the law on sexual crimes was expanded as a result of New Year’s Eve in Cologne and a massive expansion of domestic repression was initiated.

Moreover, the hysterical campaign concerning the New Year’s Eve events in Cologne had an even more specific political function. The supposedly massive attacks by aggressive groups of men on defenceless women were used as a pretext by the Left Party and its pseudo-left appendages to advocate the arming of the state and to integrate themselves into ruling class politics.

The Left Party did not view the debate about the events on New Year’s Eve as an attack on asylum and civil liberties, but stood on the side of a strong state in the name of the fight against sexual violence and for the rights of women.

The Left Party in Cologne welcomed a situation in which “in the future the police will be reinforced in troubled spots during public celebrations.”

The Left Party factional heads in federal parliament, Sahra Wagenknecht and Dietmar Bartsch, are using the events in Cologne as a pretext for advocating the arming of the state. Bartsch declared that the problem is the “inadequately equipped police” and—in the budget debate in parliament in September—he demanded “a state more capable of action.” This would include “well trained and equipped personnel in public service, especially in the police.” Wagenknecht is openly cozying up to the right wing. Speaking on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, she said: “whoever abuses the right to hospitality, has also lost the right to hospitality.”

The pseudo-left groups surrounding the Left Party have also taken advantage of the opportunity and called for a strengthening of the state and police apparatus under the cloak of “anti-sexism.” For instance, the SAV in Cologne expressed the view that sexual attacks can be prevented with police presence and deployments. Addressing the New Year’s Eve events, they said, “if the police had stayed in the square, the attacks could not have taken place.”

The long-time Pabloite Angela Klein wrote in January 2016 in International Viewpoint: “The left cannot compensate the state’s failures by its own structures. Therefore women have no choice but to demand sharper laws, which force the police to act.”

The year that began with a racist campaign connected with the New Year’s Eve events in Cologne ended with the attack in the Christmas market in Berlin by someone whose close connections with the intelligence agencies are becoming increasingly clear. This event was also used immediately to attack foreigners and to continue arming the police and the state.

Immediately following the attack in Berlin, the police were supplied with sub-machine guns everywhere in Germany, including Cologne, to conduct armed patrols of cities. The intensification of state sponsored animosity toward refugees and the campaign for a massive arming of the state apparatus in recent days show that growing sections of the ruling class are aiming for a much more right-wing government despite Merkel’s about-face in refugee policy.

US Special Operations troop deployments in Africa surged in 2016

Eddie Haywood 

At the close of 2016, Africa saw a dramatic surge in the number of US Special Operation forces deployed across the continent. Since 2006, the US military has increased its operations in Africa from just 1 percent of overall global Special Operations to more than 17 percent.

The rate at which troops have been surged on to the continent far surpasses that of any other region in the world, including Washington’s substantial military operations in the Middle East. There were 700 Special Operation commandos deployed across Africa in 2014; by 2016, the number had more than doubled, to 1,700.

According to a report in the Intercept, the US has deployed elite military forces in 33 nations across the African continent at any given moment, comprising 60 percent of the continent’s 54 countries. Since 2014, these commandos have carried out hundreds of operations in Africa.

The Special Operations force is made up of the “elite” fighting personnel from all four US military branches, and includes Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and Rangers. These are the same elite forces that were responsible for the operation that led to the assassination of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011.

These troops are party of the US Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, which largely carries out its dirty work in secret. Well aware that its wars are deeply unpopular with the American population, the Obama administration has utilized these groups of elite killers, as well as private contractors, to carry out its brutal operations away from the public eye.

The SOCOM operations in Africa are themselves a component of the Pentagon’s US Africa Command (AFRICOM), the military command post overseeing the entire continent. It is part of a cooperative relationship between SOCOM, the State Department and the respective African nations’ government and military forces.

Headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, AFRICOM, through a variety of organizations and military cooperatives, carries out training of African military forces, oversees weapons and military equipment sales, and provides military advisors to African governments. In others words, AFRICOM is the spearhead of Washington’s objective of hegemony over the continent.

Africa contains vast economic resources that are coveted by wealthy Western corporate and banking interests. The decline of American capitalism is expressed by Washington’s turn to military force to meet the insatiable lust for profit by the American aristocracy.

The exponential growth of SOCOM in Africa represents a new stage in Washington’s drive for global dominance. While the US government deploys the phony pretext of the “War on Terror,” the justification for every intervention across the globe since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the real target is China, and to a lesser extent Russia, and the two nations’ economic influence on the continent.

In an interview conducted last September with US Special Operations Commander and Brigadier General Donald C. Bolduc in African Defense, a US military trade publication, Bolduc made clear that SOCOM’s objective on the African continent is to ensure the continent’s vast economic and natural resources remain in the hands of Western capitalists.

“We’re supporting African military professionalization and capability-building efforts,” Bolduc said. “The [Special Operations forces] network helps create specific tailored training for partner nations to empower military and law enforcement to conduct operations against our mutual threats.”

Further making clear that Washington’s aim is to neutralize threats posed by its economic rivals, Bolduc said, “The “triple threat” facing Africa—population growth, resource scarcity and continued instability—is producing vulnerable populations primed for extremist recruiting while creating opportunities for exploitation from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.”

SOCOM is currently conducting offensives coordinated with national militaries in Libya, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda, Central African Republic, Mali, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the case of Libya, SOCOM is attempting to secure the installation of Washington’s puppet government set up in the aftermath of the US and NATO-led assault in 2011, which culminated in the assassination of Muammar Qaddafi, killed tens of thousands and left the country in ruins.

In Somalia, SOCOM is largely tasked with providing security to the Western puppet government in Mogadishu, which wields little influence outside the capital, where much of the country is ruled by tribal warlords and the Islamist terrorist militia Al-Shabbab. Somalia’s vast coast along the Gulf of Aden, which forms the waterway for much of the world’s oil traffic, makes it a prime target for Washington.

China’s economic influence on the African continent is widespread, and comprises significant mining enterprises, oil extraction, and infrastructure investments. Washington’s expanded African military operations are ultimately aimed at curbing this Chinese influence.

SOCOM’s cooperative offensive with the US-backed government of South Sudan is aimed at counteracting China’s oil infrastructure investments in the country, which also include Sudan to the north. Washington has targeted Sudan and its president, Omar Bashir, for not cooperating with its agenda for the region and his friendly relations with China.

The carving off of South Sudan in 2011 was done with the backing of the US and Europe with the aim of putting in place a pliant government subservient to Western interests and asserting control over a substantial portion of Sudan’s oil fields. The imperialist power’s drive for control of Sudan’s oil extraction has led to the massacre of thousands.

The crisis of American capitalism is fueling Washington’s drive to utilize its military power to reassert its dominance as the world’s sole economic power. The fact that the United States currently has military operations of one kind or another on every continent in the world underscores the desperation and recklessness with which Washington pursues its aim of global hegemony.

SOCOM’s expanded buildup in Africa, together with the provocative actions against Russia from the outgoing Obama administration, the threat of the incoming Trump administration to target China, and Washington’s extended military operations in the Middle East, threatens the world’s population with an even broader conflagration between nuclear-armed powers.

Islamic State claims New Year attack on Istanbul nightclub killing 39

Alex Lantier & Halil Celik

Yesterday, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militia claimed responsibility for a bloody terror attack on Istanbul’s Reina nightclub. Around 700 people were celebrating the New Year at the nightclub when, at 1:30 a.m. on January 1, an individual armed with an assault rifle shot unarmed security guards at the nightclub and entered the premises, shooting and killing 39 patrons, including 15 foreigners. Sixty-five others were wounded.

Police operations had been stepped up in Istanbul in the two weeks before the attack, after Turkey's National Intelligence Agency (MİT) received warnings that ISIS was preparing attacks on nightclubs or parties in Istanbul, the capital city of Ankara, or other major Turkish cities. A total of 147 ISIS suspects were detained, including at least 63 ISIS members, according to Interior Ministry sources. Eight ISIS members were detained in Ankara while planning an attack on New Year's Eve.

On New Year’s Eve itself, amid a state of emergency in Turkey, some 25,000 police officers were on duty and patrolling the streets in Istanbul to guard against a possible terror attack. The US embassy warned of terror attacks on New Year’s Eve and recommended that American citizens in Turkey not celebrate the New Year in crowded places.

Astonishingly, a lone gunman nevertheless was able to take a taxi to a location near the upscale nightclub, which is across the street from a police station. He then walked to the club, pulled an assault rifle from his bag, and launched an assault that killed or wounded over 100 people—largely Turks and tourists from other Muslim countries.

ISIS hailed the horrific attack in a statement it released, denouncing Turkey for allying with the United States and the European powers against it in the fighting in Iraq and Syria. It declared, “In continuation of the blessed operations that Islamic State is conducting against the protector of the cross, Turkey, a heroic soldier of the caliphate struck one of the most famous nightclubs where the Christians celebrate their apostate holiday.”

“We let infidel Turkey know that the blood of Muslims that is being shed by its airstrikes and artillery shelling will turn into fire on its territories,” the statement added.

Immediately after the attack, Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) announced a gag order, submitting reporting of the attack to state censorship. A massive man-hunt is still underway across Turkey to locate the shooter and identify potential accomplices.

Anti-terrorism experts who looked at footage of the security cameras at the nightclub said that the shooter seemed well-trained and efficient in the use of his assault rifle and shot wounded victims in the head, execution-style. He cleaned his weapon and changed his clothes, spending 13 minutes in the nightclub’s kitchen, and later escaped the scene by hailing a taxi. Police who examined the videos are working on the hypothesis that he is an ISIS fighter aged roughly 25, from the ex-Soviet republics of Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan, or the Xinjiang region of western China.

The initial account of the attack that is emerging raises serious political issues, however. How was a lone gunman, who was carrying out a mass shooting near a police station amid a high alert and under a state of emergency, allowed to slaughter people undisturbed for over a quarter of an hour, and then to escape?

In the aftermath of the attack, rumors spread that police deployments to secure the area around the nightclub had been deliberately scaled back just before the attack—raising the issue of whether some section of the authorities had foreknowledge of the shooting.

Yesterday, the US Embassy in Ankara felt compelled to react to these rumors by issuing a statement denying any US foreknowledge that an ISIS attack would target the Reina nightclub. “Contrary to rumors circulating in social media, the US government had no information about threats to specific entertainment venues, including the Reina Club, and the US government did not warn Americans to stay away from specific venues or neighborhoods,” it said.

Turkish and international officials simply issued statements condemning the attack, however. Turkeys ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) promised to “end” terror, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that the goal of the attack was to spread chaos. The opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) called for intensifying the security crackdown in Turkey and attacked recent Islamist statements by some AKP deputies denouncing New Year’s celebrations.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz said that US President Barack Obama “expressed condolences for the innocent lives lost, directed his team to offer appropriate assistance to the Turkish authorities, as necessary, and keep him updated as warranted.”

European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini condemned the attack from her Twitter account, writing: “2017 starts with an attack in Istanbul. Our thoughts are with victims and their loved ones. We continue to work to prevent these tragedies.”

In fact, this horrific shooting flows from the military intervention of the United States and the EU into the Middle East and Turkey and, in particular, the AKP government’s collaboration with the US-led proxy war in Syria. If ISIS has a large network of dozens or even hundreds of operatives inside Turkey, this is because the CIA and its European and Middle East allies used Turkey as a staging ground to arm and support Islamist opposition militias operating across the border in Syria.

The Turkish ruling elite’s decision to turn Turkey into a major staging post to arm opposition militias carrying out raids, terror bombings, and war crimes in Syria has not only had horrific consequences for the population of Syria. The devastation and depopulation of Syria also plunged Turkey into escalating bloodshed.

ISIS has repeatedly carried out terror attacks, and the Turkish army’s crackdown on the Kurdish population—fearing that Washington would strengthen Kurdish nationalists too much by arming Syrian Kurdish militias as proxies in Syria—plunged the country’s Kurdish areas into civil war.

ISIS was responsible for the bloodiest single attack in Turkey’s history, on October 10, 2015, killing at least 109 people and wounding more than 500 in a twin suicide bombings against a peace rally in Ankara. In 2016, the Islamic State carried out six terrorist attacks in Turkey, in which 127 people were killed and some 320 others wounded.

Split-offs from the Kurdish nationalist movement such as the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) also carried out several terror attacks, including bombings in December in Istanbul and Kayseri.

In this New Year’s attack, the specific grievance cited by ISIS was the Turkish government’s alliance with Russia and Iran to try to crush Islamist opposition militias like ISIS inside Syria. Last week, Turkey negotiated a ceasefire in Syria with Russian and Iranian officials covering much of Syria, but it has pressed on with bloody attacks on Al Bab aiming to seize ISIS’ capital in Syria, Raqqa. ISIS appears to have retaliated by organizing another terror attack on Turkish soil.