Gasoline and chemical truck drivers strike in France

Francis Dubois

Most truck drivers transporting dangerous materials in France went on strike on Friday and continued strike action throughout the weekend and on Monday.

Blockades were set up in front of fuel depots both in the provinces and the Paris area. Only one fuel depot in the Paris metropolitan area was functioning normally on Saturday according to Agence France-Presse. There are widespread reports of possible major fuel and gasoline shortages across the country.

Drivers transporting dangerous materials (gasoline, natural gas and chemical products) are demanding a large increase in hourly wages from the current miserly level of €9.73 (US $10.82), which is three cents less than the official 2017 minimum wage for a dangerous and stressful job; a 13th month bonus at the end of each year; limiting the working day to 10 hours; and regular medical check-ups. Earlier this year, in April, drivers in several trucking firms operating at the European level went on strike to raise similar demands.

The Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) and Workers Force (FO) unions are insisting that this strike—the last since the mobilization of millions of workers and youth last year against the reactionary labor laws pushed by the previous Hollande government—should be limited to trade union action in one industry.

In early May, the CGT and FO had proposed to include some of these demands in an industry-level contract for road transport. Employers' representatives refused, however. Now they are proceeding despite union threats of a strike, which has prompted the CGT and FO to ask the corporations to return to the negotiating table.

The CGT and FO are carefully seeking to avoid any serious interruption of industry and transport. When the blockade at the Donges refinery proved to be too effective, they suspended it.

“At Donges, we saw there were a few worries about fuel stocks at the Nantes airport, so we freed up a few trucks,” a CGT delegate told the press.

The unions are organizing the blockade so that most of the depots are not fully blocked, but simply sending out trucks more slowly than at normal times. The bosses are acting ruthlessly against the strikers, however, as a CGT spokesperson admitted, “The transport companies are hiring scabs and giving an exceptional €100 bonus to drivers who work.”

The government of newly-elected French President Emmanuel Macron also apparently acted to make sure gas stations and oil depots had large reserves before strike action began.

Despite the deep anger over deteriorating social conditions felt by the working class in France and across Europe, the trade unions are doing everything they can to block political opposition to Macron prior to next month's legislative elections. Their goal is to stabilize this government, which intends to pursue and intensify Hollande’s austerity policies.

The only way forward for the working class is to take the struggle out of the hands of the trade union bureaucracy and to develop it as a political movement against the Macron administration. The unions' initial discussions with Macron have made clear their willingness to collaborate with him. They are accepting the principle of imposing stepped-up austerity using Hollande's labor law, in the context of the ongoing French state of emergency, which allows the government to suspend basic democratic rights and violently attack strikes and protests.

The unions are calling strikes they know they cannot prevent to have something to “negotiate” with Macron and to hide their basic political alignment with his administration. The political parties tied to the trade union bureaucracy, like the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) or the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), both made clear that they supported Macron in the election, insisting that backing the former investment banker and militarist was the only way to stop neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen.

Now the unions are promoting the illusion that workers can achieve their demands by exerting pressure on Macron.

Last year, the CGT did everything, under the slogan of “generalizing strikes,” to block a general strike that threatened to develop against Hollande's labor law. While CGT leader Philippe Martinez carried out back-channel talks with then-Prime Minister Manuel Valls, his union federation played the key role in keeping Hollande in power so he could impose the labor law—which he did using anti-democratic emergency provisions in the French constitution allowing him to ram the law through without a parliamentary vote.

The emergence of the working class in struggle only a few weeks after Macron's election on May 7 confirms the correctness of the Parti de l'égalité socialiste's (PES) perspective in the presidential elections. It warned that the working class would face bitter struggles against the next president. Unlike the CGT and the NPA, which aligned themselves on the media consensus calling for an “anti-Le Pen vote” for Macron, the PES called for an active boycott of the election.

The PES was and is seeking to arm the working class with a perspective for a struggle against Macron, which is politically independent from all the capitalist parties, whose plans the trade unions are trying to impose, perhaps with a few minor modifications, on workers.

Workers will face a long and protracted struggle against Macron who is determined to carry out a frontal assault against workers' social rights. What is needed is a clear revolutionary perspective, that is socialist and internationalist. Since road transport is organized on a European-wide level and beyond, the mobilisation of French workers in industrial and political struggle can be effective only to the extent that it is coordinated with workers in Europe and internationally.

Workers should take the conduct of this struggle out of the hands of the trade unions by electing action committees to extend the strike, broaden the struggle to other layers of workers, including oil and transport workers, and mobilize their class brothers and sisters in other countries in struggle.

UK and US mount damage control operation over Manchester bombing

Robert Stevens

Recriminations between Britain and the United States over leaks from Washington in the aftermath of the May 22 Manchester suicide bombing have given way to combined damage control.

There has been no crisis in US-British relations on this scale in recent memory. US intelligence from the first moments leaked crucial details to the media about Salmand Abedi, the suicide bomber.

Prime Minister Theresa May and Home Secretary Amber Rudd both demanded of Britain’s closest military and intelligence sharing ally that the leaks stop.

As a result, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson flew to Britain Friday to discuss the crisis and held a joint press conference with UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Tillerson said, “We take full responsibility for that and we obviously regret that that happened.”

The conference was held after May met Trump at last week’s NATO summit in Brussels, during which she would have raised that the leaks were an existential threat to her government whose poll numbers were collapsing ahead of the June 8 snap general election. On Sunday, Trump, after stating that those who leaked the information would be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” tweeted that May “was very angry that the info the UK gave to US about Manchester was leaked.”

US Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, “I believe when you leak the kind of information that seems to be routinely leaked—high, high level of classification… I think it's darn close to treason.”

Behind the leaks is no doubt the ongoing factional warfare within the US ruling elite—giving the reference to treason an ominous coloration.

Britain’s scathing criticism of the US, even with their much-vaunted “special relationship” called into question, is because the leaks are so explosive and destabilising.

The initial leaks set off further revelations, including by French intelligence, indicating that the UK’s domestic intelligence agency MI5 knew Abedi and allowed him to travel to Syria and Libya without hindrance.

The May government’s own damage control operation has begun with the launching of two inquiries by MI5 into Abedi. The first, according to the Guardian, began last week on the spurious grounds of aiming “to quickly identify any glaring errors” regarding Abedi.

The second is to “look at the decision-making around Abedi before his attack.”

The Guardian reported a source who said “the key question, given what is now evident about the danger Abedi posed, would be: ‘Would different decisions be made?’” It added, “The longer review will look at the processes and systems used to assess suspects and what was known about any of the other main conspirators.”

It is already clear that what is being prepared is a cover-up. Abedi and his family were not only intimately known to British intelligence, but were used by them in 2011 as part of the British-backed regime change operation that resulted in the overthrow and murder of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Rudd quickly gave her a seal of approval to the inquiries, telling Sky News Monday, “As a first step, it is absolutely right.” This was in answer to the question, “Are you happy that MI5 should be investigating themselves?”

Rudd refused to comment on the information already available about Abedi and his family’s connections to British intelligence. “There's a lot of information coming out about what happened, how this occurred, what people might or might not have known… We shouldn't rush to make any conclusions at this stage,” she said.

The damage control operation also requires a ratcheting up of political dissembling to divert the public’s attention from the Manchester atrocity and establishing the truth about who is responsible. To this end, the only issues of security the Tories are prepared to countenance discussion on is Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s alleged connections to Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army more than three decades ago!

Government representatives and their media backers have in addition issued a series of hysterical anti-Corbyn diatribes—based around the accusation that he is a danger to national security—following a speech last Friday in which he suggested politely that Britain’s aggressive foreign policy was connected to the growth of terrorist attacks in the UK. Corbyn stressed this in order to persuade the ruling elite that what was required was not a retreat from foreign interventions, but a “smarter way to reduce the threat from countries that nurture terrorists and generate terrorism.”

On Monday, the Daily Mail published an editorial that did not once reference the Manchester bombing just days earlier, but targeted Corbyn and his Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott.

Headlined, “Corbyn, Abbott and a threat to our security”, it railed against “Corbyn’s attitude to terrorism that should ultimately disqualify him from ever being prime minister.”

Speaking about deaths as a result of terrorism—which flowed from Britain’s centuries long occupation of Ireland—the Mail declared, “[M]any victims and their families have been unable to move on. These are not trivial issues to be brushed aside—they are central to our national security.”

The government has been joined in the attacks on Corbyn by Labour right-wingers, along with a co-ordinated offensive by sections of the military. This is an escalation of attacks on Corbyn first made when he became Labour leader and was met with comments from an unnamed “serving general” that there would be a “mutiny” if he was allowed to come to power—given his declared opposition to the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system and criticisms of NATO.

The Sunday Express, under an inflammatory headline, “Corbyn is calling all Our Boys murderers,” aired the comments of Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded British troops in Afghanistan and General Lord Dannatt, the former head of the British Army.

Kemp said, “It's a despicable thing to suggest that, while they were risking their lives in Afghanistan, they were actually complicit in the terrorist act that caused the deaths of 22 innocent people.” He added, “We must face the fact that Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister would simply aid our enemies. He would rather support the likes of Hamas--every bit as fundamentalist as Islamic State—than oppose these extremists.”

Dannatt said Corbyn was espousing “outdated left-wing views” in an “extraordinary intervention just three or four days after a terrorist outrage."

He warned, “And let’s not forget that this is the man who had admitted that if he became prime minister, he would never press the nuclear button, so our nuclear deterrent would be rendered utterly useless.”

“For a country like Great Britain, one of the permanent members of the [UN] security council, a leading major power within NATO and Europe, it is very isolationist to say we are not going to get involved,” he added. “There will be circumstances in the future where we will just have to get involved.”

The government is covering up everything it can and throwing dirt at its opponents to prevent any genuine examination of the Manchester bombing. But this is not a scandal that is so easily swept under the table. That night saw 22 people killed, including many children. Many more are still critically injured. Yesterday it emerged that Tony Walter, a 52-year-old man who worked at a legal firm in London had killed himself at home within hours of Abedi’s bombing. Walter was a survivor of the London terrorist bombings of July 2007, in which 52 people were killed. He was within feet of one of the bombers when he detonated an explosive device on a Tube train after it left Edgware Road station.

aKoma Amplify II Fellowship for African Content Creators and Storytellers 2017

Application Deadline: 7th July 2017

Eligible Countries: See list below

To Be Taken At (Country): Applicants should reside or be available in one of these locations:

• Accra, Ghana
• Kigali, Rwanda
• Nairobi, Kenya
• Lagos, Nigeria

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: We are looking for originals, applicants cut from that unique creative ilk that defines an amazing creative. We are not looking for ordinary people. Instead we want content creators and storytellers that are non-conformists who are laser focused on making the authentic yet fantastic stories that Africa deserves, stories that the world will use as the lenses with which the real Africa is viewed. We are looking for photographers, videographers, writers, animators, graphic artists, storytellers. We are looking for those young, hungry creatives that are ready to take their creative aspirations to the next level

Selection Criteria: Amplify applicants should be open to challenging defaults, demonstrate resilience, and embody a multitude of viewpoints. Fellow characteristics we like include rigor, ownership, vision, grit, curiosity and teamwork. In addition to tangible evidence of progress in their craft, every potential Amplify should be able to show their passion for their country and Africa.

Selection Process: The Amplify II Fellows will be selected by the aKoma crew. We select Fellows based on their creative pursuits so far, content creation aspirations, alignment with Amplify’s vision, and other factors. We are interested in the possible range and impact of the potential Fellow’s work, the diversity of their creative work, and the ability to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by Amplify

This is a very competitive program. For some context on how tough the competition is, we received over 1,000 applications for the first cohort of 25 fellows in 2016

Yes, you have to really stand out.

Number of Awards: thirty (30) Fellows in total – ten in Lagos, ten in Nairobi, five in Accra, and five in Kigali.

Value of Awards: The Fellowship cost will be fully-funded.

Duration of Program: There will be two rounds:

• The first round will run through July 7th
• A final round will run from the 7th to the 14th of July, when we will announce the Amplify II Fellowship recipients

How to Apply: APPLY

Visit Program Webpage for Details

Award Provider: aKoma, MasterCard Foundation

Wits/International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) joint PhD Scholarships for African Students 2017

Application Deadline: 15th June, 2017

To Be Taken At (Country): South Africa and The Netherlands

Fields of Study: PhD applicants are encouraged to select from a range of topics in international law, society and development such as:

• Critical, development-oriented aspects of trade and investment
• Socio-economic deprivation
• Human rights and humanitarian law
• Gender
• Health and the environment

About the Award: The ISS-Wits joint programme forms part of the ISS research group on Governance, Globalisation and Social Justice (GGSJ). Research performed by members of the group explores how and to what extent particular governance arrangements help or hinder the achievement of goals of social justice.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Applicants must be at entry-level for a PhD with an average of at least 70% in a Master’s degree within a relevant area.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Awards: Applicants who are successfully admitted to the programme will be waived of tuition fees from both ISS and Wits.

Duration of Program: Not stated

How to Apply: Interested applicants may apply for entry into the ISS-Wits Joint PhD Programme by emailing the following to Ms Raquel McBride (Raquel.McBride@wits.ac.za):

1. An expression of interest that outlines the gist of the PhD study that you wish to undertake (approximately five pages in length excluding your preliminary bibliography);
2. Academic transcript; and
3. Curriculum Vitae.

Visit Program Webpage for Details

Award Provider: Wits School of Law, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS)

Jane M Klausman Women in Business Scholarships for International Students 2017/2018

Application Deadline: Applications must be completed and presented to Zonta clubs according to the club’s assigned deadline. A club recipient is selected, and the application is presented to the governor/regional representative by 1st July, 2017. The district/region recipient is selected, and the application is presented to Zonta International Headquarters by 1st September 2017. International recipients will be contacted by their Zonta club leader by mid October 2017.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Any country where Zonta international club has presence.

Eligible African Countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, Mongolia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo

Eligible Field of Study: Buisness related courses

About Scholarship: Because Zonta International believes in gender equality, the Jane M. Klausman Women in Business Scholarship program helps women pursue undergraduate and master’s degrees in business management and overcome gender barriers from the classroom to the boardroom. The Jane M. Klausman Women in Business Scholarship was established in 1998 from a generous bequest by Jane M. Klausman, a member of the Zonta Club of Syracuse, New York, USA, and the 1990-1995 Zonta International Parliamentarian. Since the program’s inception, Zonta has awarded 399 Scholarships to women from 50 countries.

Offered Since: 1998

Type: Scholarships for women in business

Selection Criteria and Eligibility: Women pursuing a business or business-related degree who demonstrate outstanding potential in the field are eligible.  Online students are also eligible.  Members and employees of Zonta International or the Zonta International Foundation are NOT eligible to apply for the Scholarships.

Number of Scholarships: Up to 32 scholarships

Value of Scholarship: Zonta International awards scholarships of US$1,000 each at the district/region level and twelve international scholarships in the amount of US$7,000 each.

The Jane M. Klausman Women in Business Scholarships are awarded annually and may be used for tuition, books or living expenses at any university, college or institution offering accredited business courses and degrees.

Duration of Scholarship: Onetime financial grant

To be taken at (country): Any country

How to Apply: The Jane M. Klausman Women in Business Scholarship program operates at the club, district/region and international levels of Zonta International. To apply, please contact the Zonta club nearest you.  Applicants must be nominated by a local Zonta club. Applications selected by Zonta clubs are sent to their respective Zonta Governors/Region South America Representative. A district/region evaluating committee selects one applicant per district/region to submit to Zonta International Headquarters.  The Zonta International Jane M. Klausman Women in Business Scholarship Committee selects twelve international recipients from the district/region applicants.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Sponsors: Jane M. Klausman Women in Business Scholarships are made possible through investment income generated by the Klausman bequest, and by generous contributions from Zontians, Zonta clubs and friends of Zonta.

We Must Look to the Past, Not ISIS, for the True Nature of Islam

Robert Fisk

After the Manchester massacre… yes, and after Nice and Paris, Mosul and Abu Ghraib and 7/7 and the Haditha massacre – remember those 28 civilians, including children, killed by US Marines, four more than Manchester but no minute’s silence for them? And of course 9/11…

Counterbalancing cruelty is no response, of course. Just a reminder. As long as we bomb the Middle East instead of seeking justice there, we too will be attacked. But what we must concentrate upon, according to the monstrous Trump, is terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. And fear. And security. Which we will not have while we are promoting death in the Muslim world and selling weapons to its dictators. Believe in “terror” and Isis wins. Believe in justice and Isis is defeated.

So I suspect it’s time to raise the ghost of a man known as the Emir Abdelkader – Muslim, Sufi, sheikh, ferocious warrior, humanist, mystic, protector of his people against Western barbarism, protector of Christians against Muslim barbarism, so brave that the Algerian state insisted his bones were brought home from his beloved Damascus, so noble that Abe Lincoln sent him a pair of Colt pistols and the French gave him the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. He loved education, he admired the Greek philosophers, he forbade his fighters to destroy books, he worshipped a religion which believed – so he thought – in human rights. But hands up all readers who know the name of Abdelkader.

We should think of him now more than ever. He was not a “moderate” because he fought back savagely against the French occupation of his land. He was not an extremist because, in his imprisonment at the Chateau d’Amboise, he talked of Christians and Muslims as brothers. He was supported by Victor Hugo and Lord Londonderry and earned the respect of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (later Napoleon III) and the French state paid him a pension of 100,000 francs. He deserved it.

When the French invaded Algeria, Abdelkader Ibn Muhiedin al-Juzairi (Abdelkader, son of Muhiedin, the Algerian,1808-1883, for those who like obituaries) embarked on a successful guerrilla war against one of the best equipped armies in the Western world – and won. He set up his own state in western Algeria – Muslim but employing Christian and Jewish advisors – and created separate departments (defence, education, etc), which stretched as far as the Moroccan border. It even had its own currency, the “muhamediya”. He made peace with the French – a truce which the French broke by invading his lands yet again. Abdelkader demanded a priest to minister for his French prisoners, even giving them back their freedom when he had no food for them. The French sacked the Algerian towns they captured, a hundred Hadithas to suppress Abdelkader’s resistance. When at last he was defeated, he surrendered in honour – handing over his horse as a warrior – on the promise of exile in Alexandria or Acre. Again the French betrayed him, packing him off to prison in Toulon and then to the interior of France.

Yet in his French exile, he preached peace and brotherhood and studied French and spoke of the wisdom of Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and Ptolemy and Averoes and later wrote a book, Call to the Intelligent, which should be available on every social media platform. He also, by the way, wrote a book on horses which proves he was ever an Arab in the saddle. But his courage was demonstrated yet again in Damascus in 1860 where he lived as an honoured exile. The Christian-Druze civil war in Lebanon had spread to Damascus where the Christian population found themselves surrounded by the Muslim Druze who arrived with Isis-like cruelty, brandishing swords and knives to slaughter their adversaries.

Abdelkader sent his Algerian Muslim guards – his personal militia – to bash their way through the mob and escort more than 10,000 Christians to his estate. And when the crowds with their knives arrived at his door, he greeted them with a speech which is still recited in the Middle East (though utterly ignored these days in the West). “You pitiful creatures!” he shouted. “Is this the way you honour the Prophet? God punish you! Shame on you, shame! The day will come when you will pay for this … I will not hand over a single Christian. They are my brothers. Get out of here or I’ll set my guards on you.”

Muslim historians claim Abdelkader saved 15,000 Christians, which may be a bit of an exaggeration. But here was a man for Muslims to emulate and Westerners to admire. His fury was expressed in words which would surely have been used today against the cult-like caliphate executioners of Isis. Of course, the “Christian” West would honour him at the time (although, interestingly, he received a letter of praise from the Muslim leader of wildly independent Chechnya). He was an “interfaith dialogue” man to please Pope Francis.

Abdelkader was invited to Paris. An American town was named after him – Elkader in Clayton County, Iowa, and it’s still there, population 1,273. Founded in the mid-19th century, it was natural to call your home after a man who was, was he not, honouring the Rights of Man of American Independence and the French Revolution? Abdelkader flirted with Freemasonry – most scholars believe he was not taken in – and loved science to such an extent that he accepted an invitation to the opening of the Suez Canal, which was surely an imperial rather than a primarily scientific project. Abdelkader met De Lesseps. He saw himself, one suspects, as Islam’s renaissance man, a man for all seasons, the Muslim for all people, an example rather than a saint, a philosopher rather than a priest.

But of course, Abdelkader’s native Algeria is a neighbour of Libya from where Salman Abedi’s family came, and Abdelkader died in Syria, whose assault by US aircraft – according to Abedi’s sister – was the reason he slaughtered the innocent of Manchester. And so geography contracts and history fades, and Abedi’s crime is, for now, more important than all of Abdelkader’s life and teaching and example. So for Mancunians, whether they tattoo bees onto themselves or merely buy flowers, why not pop into Manchester’s central library in St Peter’s Square and ask for Elsa Marsten’s The Compassionate Warrior or John Kiser’s Commander of the Faithful or, published just a few months ago, Mustapha Sherif’s L’Emir Abdelkader: Apotre de la fraternite?

They are no antidotes for sorrow or mourning. But they prove that Isis does not represent Islam and that a Muslim can earn the honour of the world.

The Afghan Toll

Vijay Prashad

The American war in Afghanistan will soon enter its 16th year. Over this period, the United States and its allies have lost close to 3,000 soldiers, while an unknown number of Afghans have died. The official figure for the Afghan dead, above 150,000, is laughable. Each year, as the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) finds, the percentage of women and children among the official death toll increases, many of the deaths a result of aerial bombardment.

Afghan sources say that the number of war dead must be near the million mark. The human toll has been considerable. In 2016, over half a million people fled their homes because of the conflict. This is the highest number of displacements since 2008. Of the estimated population of 32 million Afghans, almost two million have been displaced by the conflict; about three million are refugees from the almost 40 years of war in the country. In the five months that ended in May, UNAMA found that already 90,000 people had been displaced.

The “spring offensive” of the Taliban began with a burst. On April 21, a handful of Taliban fighters infiltrated the Afghan National Army’s 209th Corps base in Balkh, a province in northern Afghanistan. They killed 140 Afghan soldiers. It was a devastating attack, which came a week after the U.S. dropped the 21,600-pound (9,798-kg) Mother of All Bombs (MOAB), the largest non-nuclear bomb in the world, on Nangarhar, Afghanistan. The bomb landed on the village of Asadkhel. The U.S. military said that 94 Islamic State fighters were killed. Journalists have not been permitted to the site, although it should be said that the district is home to 1.5 million people. It was as if the Taliban paid no heed to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to drop “Madar-e Bamb-ha”, the Dari translation of the grotesque device. The Balkh attack almost seemed as a directed snub. The Taliban now controls over 40 per cent of Afghanistan, with its hold cemented in north-eastern Helmand province, north-western Kandahar province, north-western Zabul province and Uruzgan province. Its forces could soon be in command of southern Afghanistan, which would put the Taliban in charge of the length of the country’s border with Pakistan. The assassination of Taliban leaders seems to have barely dented its ability to push hard against the Afghan Army and the Army’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies.

Dan Coats, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, told the U.S. Senate that regardless of any action by the U.S., “the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018”. What he meant was that U.S. interests would not be met through the government of Ashraf Ghani and the security presence of the Afghan National Army. The Taliban is likely to continue to make gains. It is expected to seize a city in this “spring offensive” and consolidate its position through that tactical victory. The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army General John Nicholson, has called for an increase of several thousand troops. A leaked suggestion from the White House to send an additional 3,000 to 5,000 U.S. and other NATO troops followed swiftly. This leak came a month before Trump was to address NATO directly, which is to happen on May 25. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told Trump that he was “open” to sending additional troops to Afghanistan. NATO formally ended its combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014. There is hesitancy amongst its member states, apart from the U.S., to expand its presence in Afghanistan. Germany’s Angela Merkel and Britain’s Theresa May are uneasy with the prospect. Both face elections this year, and both know that the American war in Afghanistan is unpopular in their countries.

Silence in the U.S.

During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton raised the matter of the American war in Afghanistan. The war has cost the U.S. at least $23 billion a year, with an additional $117 billion on reconstruction. Of that reconstruction money, 61 per cent, $71 billion, went towards the creation of the Afghan National Army. The U.S.’ surge in 2010, which brought 100,000 troops into the country, failed to stem the Taliban’s drive. By 2014, that strategy was silently dropped. There was little discussion about it then. With the great loss of life on all sides, the waste of resources and the futility of U.S. war aims, one would have thought that the question of Afghanistan would have been raised in the debates or in the speeches. But there was virtual silence on it.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a U.S. monitor for the money spent, has released 35 reports of considerable merit. They make for harrowing reading. They show that corruption has been endemic to the process of reconstruction. Little can be seen for the billions of dollars spent to rebuild Afghanistan. Roads remain of poor quality and schools and medical clinics are promised but do not appear. In Balkh province, where the Taliban had attacked the Army base, the staff of SIGAR found that only 30 per cent of students who had been reported enrolled in schools were seen at any one time. Teachers were absent. Buildings erected with concrete “dissolved in rain” or had walls and roofs that collapsed.

The U.S. has spent at least $8.5 billion in its counternarcotics campaign to end, effectively, opium production. But this has been utterly wasted. The drug trade is worth about $1.56 billion and contributes almost 7.4 per cent to Afghanistan’s gross domestic product. The report SIGAR released in April showed that drug production increased by 43 per cent in 2016, with drug eradication “nearly imperceptible”. Opium cultivation increased by 10 per cent, with the main growth in regions where the Taliban is in control (Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul). The U.S. says that 60 per cent of the Taliban’s funds come from the opium trade. At this point, 80 per cent of the world’s heroin comes from Afghan opium. There is no effective strategy to reduce the trade.

Strikingly, SIGAR notes that this corruption resides deep in the Afghan Army. On March 28, 2017, the Afghan Ministry of Defence fired 1,394 officials for corruption. In 2016, 35 per cent of the Afghan security forces were killed: 6,800 soldiers and police. SIGAR points out that “about 35% of the force does not reenlist each year”. The problems in the Afghan Army are deep: “unsustainable casualties, temporary losses of provincial and district centres, weakness in logistics and other functions, illiteracy in the ranks, often corrupt or inefficient leadership, and over-reliance on highly trained special forces for routine missions”.

No wonder that the Taliban has been making swift gains over the past few years. Its adversary is not prepared to contain its advance.

Trump’s surge

Matters are so grave that the Afghan government had to welcome warmly the old war dog Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of the Hizb-e Islami, who was known as the “Butcher of Kabul” for his siege of Kabul between 1992 and 1996. Considered a serial violator of human rights, Hekmatyar is now back as a player in the Kabul political scene. On May 13, Hekmatyar met former Afghan president Hamid Karzai to talk about the increased death of civilians. Karzai, at the end of his presidency, began to be critical of the U.S. style of warfare in Afghanistan. He argued that the night raids and the aerial attacks killed more innocent civilians than combatants. Karzai has since become bolder with his pronouncements and is one of the most vocal protesters against the use of the MOAB on his country. He said that it “is a brutal act against innocent people…. A bomb of that magnitude has consequences for the environment, for our lives, for our plants, for our water, for our soil—this is poison.” The meeting of Karzai and Hekmatyar suggests the formation of a new anti-American pole inside the Kabul political class.

It is in this context that Trump’s White House has suggested an increase in U.S. troops in the country. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s National Security Adviser, hastily noted that there had been no decision yet to increase troop levels. McMaster, who was instrumental in the 2007 Iraq surge, is aware that in the White House a potential troop increase is already being called “McMaster’s War”. If it fails, the blame will be on him. If it succeeds, Trump will certainly take the credit.

It is unlikely that even an increase of 5,000 U.S. troops will have an impact on the Taliban’s rush towards Kabul. The style of U.S. warfare is likely to increase civilian casualties, and the deterioration of the Afghan National Army will not raise the population’s confidence. The Taliban, which had been delegitimised for its cruel rule 20 years ago, has now positioned itself once more as the only viable force to bring stability to the country. The reality of this is clear to many in U.S. intelligence. The return of the Taliban would be a major blow to U.S. prestige, the worst U.S. military defeat since Vietnam. Every contingency will be taken to prevent that outcome, even the destruction of Afghanistan.

Australia’s billionaires celebrate a “wealth boom”

Mike Head

The ever-widening social gulf in Australia was put on display by last week’s publication of this year’s Australian Financial Review (AFR) Rich 200 List.

Under conditions where millions of people are experiencing falling wages, worsening under-employment and deepening budget cuts to social spending, the publication proclaimed: “Australia is in the middle of a wealth boom.”

From a handful of billionaires before the 2008 global financial breakdown, the country now has 60. Summing up its estimates, which are from 2016, the newspaper boasted: “The top 10 wealthiest Australians are worth about $75 billion alone, while the average wealth for the 200 list members is a whopping $1.16 billion.”

The accumulation of fortunes at the expense of the vast majority of the population sped up during the year. The total wealth of the list mushroomed from $197.3 billion to $233.1 billion—a rise of about 18 percent—while average real wages fell. Every month, the super-rich collectively amassed another $3 billion, or $100 million per day.

This marks an intensification of a three-decade process. Since 1984, when the Rich List was first published during the first year of the Hawke Labor government, the total holdings of those on the list has increased more than tenfold, from $20 billion.

For those at the top of the list, the rise has been even more spectacular. Property developer Harry Triguboff, the country’s biggest apartment builder, has increased his fortune since 1984 from $25 million to $11.45 billion—a 485-fold bonanza.

These results are part of an accelerating global social polarisation. According to an Oxfam report earlier this year, the world’s eight richest people now collectively own as much the combined wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people. As recently as 2010, an estimated 388 individuals held the same total wealth as the poorest half.

This year’s Forbes The World’s Billionaires report counted a record of 2,043 billionaires—the first time over 2,000 people were listed—with a total worth of $US7.67 trillion, up from $7.1 trillion in 2015.

Triguboff personifies the predominantly parasitic character of the capitalist class in Australia, as elsewhere around the globe. Much of the “wealth boom” comes from the soaring value of share portfolios and property prices, while factories, mines and retail stores shut down, with workers suffering layoffs and losses of pay, conditions and welfare support.

Counting Triguboff, of the wealthiest 15 on the list, seven made their gains mostly from a five-year housing-led real estate surge that has placed home ownership out of reach for most young working class people. That bubble, based on speculative investment, is now showing signs of bursting, threatening the jobs of thousands of construction workers and the homes of heavily debt-laden households.

James Packer, now worth $4.75 billion, makes his money from casinos and Len Ainsworth, on $3.10 billion, built his prosperity on producing poker machines, which notoriously fleece working people.

Most of the others in the top 15 benefitted from a partial recovery of global iron ore prices: mining heiress Gina Rinehart ($6.06 billion), Glencore chief executive Ivan Glasenberg ($6.85 billion), Fortescue Metals Group chairman Andrew Forrest ($6.4 billion), and Bianca Rinehart (Gina’s daughter) $2.74 billion. Forrest’s worth doubled in a year on the back of higher share prices, buoyed by the ore rebound.

While the mining magnates depend heavily on China, Australian capitalism’s largest export market, even more powerful billionaires rely on investments in the United States. That includes the richest man, Anthony Pratt. His personal wealth of $12.6 billion is now mostly based on the rapid growth of his privately-owned Pratt Industries, a recycling and cardboard box business in the US built on the exploitation of poorly-paid workers.

Also prominent in that camp is Frank Lowy ($8.26 billion), whose Westfield empire owns shopping malls across the US, and media baron Rupert Murdoch. His $US12.2 billion fortune is not counted on the Rich List because he became an American citizen in 1985.

The implications of the American connection were showcased earlier this month when US President Donald Trump hosted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull aboard an ex-World War II aircraft carrier in New York to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Coral Sea battle against Japan.

In front of Murdoch, Lowy, Pratt, Dow Chemical chief Andrew Liveris and other major business figures, Turnbull gave an ongoing commitment to back Washington in war. He emphasised: “The United States is the largest foreign investor in Australia and the United States is our largest overseas investment destination.”

Trump led a standing ovation when Pratt pledged to invest $US2 billion over the next decade on new packaging plants in the US. Pratt Industries typifies the anti-working class content of Trump’s “America First” program to “create jobs” in the US by undercutting pay and conditions elsewhere. Most of Pratt’s 7,000 US employees are on low wages, with machine operators on about $14 an hour, while Pratt’s wealth grew by $2.25 billion last year—about $108,173 an hour.

In Australia, Pratt’s Visy is notorious for its provocative attacks on workers’ jobs and conditions. In 2010, more than 70 striking Visy workers were arrested after the company used police, security guards, helicopters and scab labour to combat a two-week strike over cuts to pay and conditions, and greater use of temporary workers. The strike was isolated and eventually sold out by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.

Pratt’s companies are also known for avoiding paying tax. In 2016, the Australian Taxation Office reported that despite more than $2.5 billion in revenue in 2013–14, Pratt Consolidated Holdings paid no taxes. Pratt commented: “All I can say is that we abide by all the laws, as any good ethical company does.”

According to the AFR editorial accompanying the Rich List, however, business taxes must be slashed and governments must do more to drive up profits. Governments are “taxing wealth creators hardest to pay for redistributive spending.”

Contrary to the myth of egalitarianism, Australia is one of the most unequal industrialised countries in the world. A report last year, based on previously unavailable official data, showed that the top 1 percent is now estimated to own about 20 percent of total household wealth. The richest 10 percent own more than half, while the poorest 40 percent own less than 3 percent.

For all the celebrations of the wealth explosion, there are fears in ruling circles of social unrest. The AFR Magazine that contained the Rich List drew attention to the “latest offering” from luxury storage specialists Agresti—a fully-serviced Strong and Panic Room that can protect an entire family.

“From this fortified enclosure you can monitor the outside world via CCTV, use a secure phone line to call for assistance, surf the net while waiting for law enforcement, and avail yourself of what Agresti calls ‘anti-intrusion tools,’ aka remote-controlled pepper spray.”

Those on the Rich List are aware that the glaring inequality is generating widespread disaffection and creating the conditions for social and political convulsions.

India’s boycott of China’s Belt and Road summit highlights deepening tensions

Wasantha Rupasinghe

India’s decision to boycott the May 14-15 One Belt, One Road (OBOR) forum in Beijing underscores the escalating geo-political frictions between India and China, mostly bound up with New Delhi’s growing relations with Washington.

The forum was the international launch of the OBOR project initiated by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. Invoking the history of the Silk Road of medieval times, OBOR envisages the construction of ports, railway lines, roads, pipelines and power plants connecting the major economic centres of China and Europe.

Under the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has increasingly lined up with the US military-strategic offensive against China.

By opening India’s air bases and ports for use by US warplanes and battleships last August, the Modi regime transformed India into a veritable “frontline state” in the US war preparations against China. Ships of the US Seventh Fleet, the armada at the centre of US war plans against China, will be serviced at an Indian shipyard.

Washington also designated India as a major defence partner, allowing New Delhi to purchase advanced US weapons systems, on a par with Washington’s most trusted allies.

This closer relationship between India and the US has caused deep fissures between India and China, and India and Pakistan, India’s historical arch-rival. In response to the US “strategic favours” to New Delhi: Beijing and Islamabad have strengthened their own strategic ties.

The $US50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a flagship OBOR initiative. Rail, road and pipeline links will connect western China with Gwadar, Pakistan’s newly-built Arabian Sea port in southwestern Baluchistan. India has maintained its opposition to the project, citing “sovereignty issues” because it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, which New Delhi claims is part of India.

Just hours before the Beijing forum started, Indian external affairs spokesman Gopal Baglay stated: “No country accepts a project that ignores its core concerns on sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

To legitimise India’s stance, the statement raised suspicion over China’s mega-project, claiming it violated “international norms, good governance, rule of law, openness, transparency and equality.” Allegedly, it would “create an unsustainable debt burden for communities,” breach “balanced ecological and environmental protection and preservation standards” and lack a “transparent assessment of project costs.”

New Delhi’s real concerns are that the CPEC will boost Pakistan’s beleaguered economy and allow China to substantially boost its strategic influence in South Asia, which the Indian capitalist class views as its own region of hegemony and exploitation.

At the same time, India is acting on behalf of Washington, which sees the CPEC as a means for China to circumvent US plans to blockade China’s economy by seizing Indian Ocean and South China Sea “chokepoints” in the event of a war or crisis.

US Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Scott Swift visited India on May 5 amid China’s attempts to get India to participate at the Beijing forum. There is little doubt that Swift discussed the forum issue with Indian officials. He said both countries want to counter China’s “increasing presence” in the Indian Ocean.

After meeting with civilian and military leaders, Swift publicly questioned the intent of OBOR. Complaining that Chinese warships were making an “OBOR tour” in the Pacific Ocean, he declared: “Right now there are more questions than answers.”

Swift claimed Chinese actions were adding a sense of “anxiety” to the region, with uncertainty about the goals of the OBOR being raised “in every country I visit.” Swift said his discussions with Indian officials covered what India and US could do to provide “stability” in the region.

Talking about the annual US-Japan-India Malabar naval exercises, Swift added, “There would be a deepening of our understanding on how to operate those platforms on anti-submarine warfare.” This emphasis on anti-submarine warfare obviously targets China’s increased naval presence in the Indian Ocean.

On March 13, the South China Morning Post reported that China’s People’s Liberation Army will increase its fighting force to 100,000 personnel, allowing for deployment at Gwadar in Pakistan and Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. On March 16, the Hindu reported that Masood Khalid, Pakistani ambassador to China, said Pakistan had deployed more than 15,000 troops to protect the CPEC, as well as a naval contingent for the protection of Gwadar Port.

US National Security Advisor Lieutenant General Herbert McMaster met with Prime Minister Modi on April 18—Modi’s first meeting with a senior member of the Trump administration. According to the India Strategic web site, McMaster “shared his perspective” with Modi on “the security situation across Asia and in the extended region, including in Afghanistan, West Asia and North Korea.”

Confronted by India’s intensifying alignment with Washington, Pakistan’s reactionary bourgeois elite, which for decades served as a satrap for US imperialism, is today tightly holding China’s hand. At the same time, cross-border firings between India and Pakistan, both of which have nuclear weapons, point to the danger of a confrontation that would have grave consequences for millions of people across the Indian sub-continent.

India has been at loggerheads with China on three other fronts. One is India’s bid to secure membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which regulates the global nuclear trade. While the US has backed India’s bid, China has objected that India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Secondly, New Delhi has demanded China end its opposition to the Indian government’s attempt to add someone to the UN international terrorism “blacklist”—Masood Azhar, the chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based Islamist insurgent group active in Indian Kashmir.

Thirdly, India continually promotes the exiled Tibetan “spiritual” leader Dalai Lama, whom China regards as a “dangerous separatist.” Fresh tensions arose in April when India invited him to visit disputed Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing calls southern Tibet. The US further stoked the conflict when a Congressional delegation led by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi visited the Dalai Lama on May 9.

A significant layer of the Indian ruling elite seem worried by India’s failure to participate in OBOR. Jayshree Sengupta from the Observer Research Foundation, an Indian think tank, published an opinion column titled “Missing OBOR a big mistake” on May 20. “The main thing is that the Chinese, and not Indian, firms will become more prominent in the neighborhood, cashing in on their willingness and urgency to join OBOR,” he wrote.

Nevertheless, New Delhi, acting in concert with the US, is aggressively seeking to block China’s activities, sending unmistakeable signals of escalating tensions.

On May 22, Reuters noted: “The failure of China’s efforts to bring India on board, details which have not been previously reported, shows the depths to which relations between the two countries have fallen over territorial disputes and Beijing’s support of Pakistan.”

British intelligence received warnings that Manchester bomber was plotting attacks

Laura Tiernan

Explosive allegations have emerged that the UK’s MI5 intelligence agency had prior warning of Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi planning a terrorist atrocity.

On May 22, Abedi detonated a shrapnel-laden improvised explosive device outside a performance in Manchester by American singer Ariana Grande, killing 22 people, many of whom were children, and wounding 116.

According to the Mail on Sunday, “the FBI told MI5 that Abedi was part of a North African Islamic State cell plotting to strike a political target in the UK.”

The FBI passed these warnings to MI5 in January, after placing Abedi on their terrorist watch list in 2016. An unnamed “security source” told the Daily Mail that the FBI informed MI5 that Abedi “belonged to a North African terror gang based in Manchester, which was looking for a political target in this country.”

He continued: “Following this US tip-off, Abedi and other members of the gang were scrutinised by MI5. It was thought at the time that Abedi was planning to assassinate a political figure. But nothing came of this investigation and, tragically, he slipped down the pecking order of targets.”

The claims by Prime Minister Theresa May that Abedi acted as a “lone wolf” and was known by Britain’s security services only “to a degree” lie in shreds. It is simply not credible that an individual planning to assassinate a British “political figure”—that could conceivably include the prime minister, foreign secretary or the queen—would be allowed to “slip” under the radar.

Abedi was effectively given a free hand by MI5 to launch a terrorist attack. The Daily Mail’ s revelations add to mounting evidence of the role of British intelligence services and successive governments in cultivating Islamist terror networks and protecting these “assets” as part of their regime-change operations in Libya and Syria.

On Thursday, a report by Middle East Eye (MEE) exposed what it described as an “open door” policy by the previous Conservative government of David Cameron allowing members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) to travel to Libya in 2011 as part of military operations to overthrow Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. May was home secretary in that government. Abedi’s parents were both members of the LIFG. These individuals were able to travel freely between the UK, Libya, Syria and other locations.

Former rebel fighters interviewed by the MEE explained how British security services assisted their movements, providing them with passports and clearing them for departure. Belal Younis, who travelled to Libya in 2011, said he was asked by an MI5 officer, who had detained him for questioning after a trip to Libya in early 2011, “Are you willing to go into battle?”

“While I took time to find an answer,” Younis told MEE, “he turned and told me the British government have no problem with people fighting against Gaddafi.”

During a subsequent trip to Libya in May 2011, he was questioned by counter-terrorism police in a British airport lounge, but an MI5 officer interceded and he was “waved through.” The MI5 officer later called Younis to say that he had “sorted it out.”

Many of those who travelled to Libya had previously been under counter-terrorism control orders, with tight restrictions on their movement and Internet activity. However, the control orders were lifted in 2011 as Britain joined US and French efforts to topple Gaddafi.

Unknown to the British people, including the families who lost loved ones last Monday night, Manchester was at the centre of operations that funnelled rebel fighters into Libya. Younis told the MEE’s reporters, “The majority who went from here were from Manchester.” Another interviewee said of the young recruits he encountered during a visit to a rebel camp in Misrata that same year, “They had proper Manchester accents.”

Another British-born fighter told the MEE they were also allowed to travel to Syria, where Islamist groups, offshoots of Al Qaeda and backed by the US and Britain, have been fighting to overthrow the government of Bashar Al-Assad. Abedi himself was allowed to travel to Syria. “No questions were asked,” Younis said. Another British-Libyan said he had worked for the British SAS in Benghazi to edit slick video recruitment and marketing packages showing fighters being trained by both the SAS and Irish Special Forces.

In Saturday’s Daily Mail, Peter Oborne alleged direct collusion by MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service, with terrorist organisations in Libya and Syria. Oborne, associate editor of the Spectator and former chief political commentator at the Daily Telegraph, wrote, “MI6 officers were complicit in creating a generation of British-born jihadis who are prepared to do anything, and kill anyone—even young children—in their efforts to destroy this country.

“There is every reason to speculate that Salman Abedi’s evil handiwork at the Manchester Arena on Monday night was in part a direct consequence of MI6’s meddling in Middle Eastern and North African affairs.”

Oborne singled out MI6’s role under the Labour government of Tony Blair, when its former chiefs, Sir Richard Dearlove and Sir John Scarlett, “allowed [MI6] to become a propaganda tool for the Labour PM’s clique of war-mongers.”

Scarlett drafted the infamous dossier on Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, used by Blair to stampede Britain into war.

“MI6 has failed to learn the lessons from this debacle,” Oborne wrote, pointing to the “hundreds” of British citizens who “were allowed to travel abroad to join jihadist organisations.”

Britain’s sordid dealings with the LIFG and other Al Qaeda-linked groups stretch back to the 1980s. The LIFG was spawned from the mujahedeen and built up by the US in Afghanistan as part of its destabilisation of the Soviet Union. Since then, the fate of the LIFG has directly tracked shifts in British and American foreign policy.

In 1996, British intelligence agencies paid LIFG leaders huge sums to attempt to assassinate Gaddafi, according to leaks from senior French intelligence officials and former MI5 officer David Shayler. In 2004, after the Blair government’s rapprochement with the Libyan regime, MI6 helped seize LIFG leader Abdel-Hakim Belhaj and his deputy Sami al-Saadi. According to British historian and author Mark Curtis, Belhaj was handed over to the CIA, tortured, and then sent back to Tripoli to spend six years in solitary confinement, where MI6 agents reportedly questioned him.

In 2011, in response to the Arab Spring, the US and Britain set in motion long-standing plans for regime-change operations in the Middle East. Anti-terrorism control orders against LIFG leaders were lifted because, according to Curtis, the British government “once again found that its interests—mainly concerning oil—coincided with those of Islamist forces in Libya.”

The 22 dead and scores injured in Manchester, no less than the people of Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and countless other countries invaded and occupied, are the victims of British imperialist intrigue and are regarded as “collateral damage.”

These explosive revelations raise a number of questions that must be answered:

• Why did MI5 drop its investigation into Salman Abedi, and who authorised this?
• Why was he able to travel freely throughout the European Union and Middle East, including to known terror hubs?
• Did MI5 inform Theresa May’s government of the threats to strike a political target in Britain?
• How was he able to receive thousands of pounds in student loans to finance his activities, including travel and the renting of multiple residencies in the lead-up to last Monday’s attack, despite not attending university?

Last week, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn earned the enmity of the media for pointing to the obvious connection between Britain’s involvement in colonial-style wars and the heightened danger of terrorism. The Guardian led the attack, with Jonathan Freedland insisting, “It’s a delusion to think that the terror attacks are just about foreign policy,” and Paul Mason declaring, “The ‘blowback theory’, which blames Islamist terrorism directly on western expeditionary warfare, is both facile and irrelevant in this case.”

However, Corbyn was silent on the political responsibility of successive Labour and Tory governments for launching wars of aggression and even promised to give the army and the security services additional resources. He has so far said nothing about revelations that MI5 had forewarning of Abedi’s attack.