Fires within the Arctic Circle

Farooque Chowdhury

All these news are alarming:

“Sweden Wildfire: Blistering heatwave sparks fires within Arctic Circle as Europe boils”.

“Two major forest fires raged out of control Monday on either side of Athens, killing at least 50 people, burning houses, prompting thousands of residents to flee and turning the sky over Athens a hazy orange from the smoke.”

“At least 44 people have died across Japan as extreme heat waves continue to grip the east-Asia nation.”

“Sweden faces ‘extreme’ risk of even more wildfires”.

“Denmark, southern Norway and northern Finland are experiencing extreme heat.”

Aircrafts and helicopters were battling the forest fires near Athens.

“Intense heat wave to build up across western Europe”.

“Sweden heatwave: hottest July in (at least) 260 years”.

The further a reader goes through the news coming from Japan in the east to Sweden in the west the more concern creeps in:

What’s happening?

Is it the Arctic Circle? Is there any error in the reports?

Are the numbers of dead 44 in Japan and 50 in Greece? Is the info correct?

The media reports are almost unbelievable as none of these are coming from the “cursed” South, the hemisphere that fails to provide its citizens adequate arrangements for a safe life. Two of the countries in the cited news – Sweden and Japan – stand on a strong technological-industrial base, and spend a lot of money behind arms.

All the news cited say:

“Wildfires are raging in Sweden gripped by the worst drought in 74 years. The fires have broken out across a wide range of territory north-west of the capital of Stockholm as the hot, dry summer continued to stir up the flames. A number of communities have been evacuated and tens of thousands of people have been warned to keep windows and vents closed to prevent smoke inhalation. Rail services have been disrupted.”

“The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency has called the recent fires the country’s most serious wildfire situation of modern times.”

“The severity has caused the government to appeal for help from other countries. Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway and Poland have responded by sending water-spreading helicopters and planes, and emergency personnel. Carl XVI Gustaf, king of Sweden, in a statement said he was ‘worried’ about the fires raging in 59 locations in Sweden.”

“Sweden is experiencing an unprecedented drought and soaring temperatures which have reached the highest figures in more than a century. Other than a negligible 13 millimeters of rain in mid-June the country has not seen any rain since May. Farmers are struggling to feed their animals. The heat also arrived early.”

“The lack of rain in Sweden is now so bad that the government is even considering state assistance for farmers struggling with the conditions.”

“Dangerous heat will threaten millions of people across Europe this week with no lasting relief in sight.”

“A heat wave is building up from Spain to Scandinavia.”

“Locations that may have their highest temperatures of the year this week include Madrid, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Stockholm.”

Japan

According to CNN, out of the 44 that have died since July 9, 11 lives were claimed on Saturday alone, with temperature remaining around the 38 degree Celsius mark in central Tokyo.

“The temperature rose past 41 degrees Celsius in Kumagaya, the highest ever recorded temperature in Japan. According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, the temperatures recorded have been around 12 degrees higher than the average temperatures.”

Greece

“Greece is seeking assistance from the European Union to battle forest fires.”

“A state of emergency has been declared in the eastern and western parts of greater Athens as fires raged through pine forests and seaside towns on either side of the Greek capital.”

“The blaze has created such thick smoke that the main highways between the Peloponnese and the Greek mainland have been shut down.”

The real curse

Climate crisis deniers will confidently claim: These are (1) mere accidents; (2) these are exceptional incidents due to weather pattern; and (3) these should not be cited as examples of anomaly in the climate system.

But, shall not the citizens in the countries experiencing unusual incidents in the nature search answers to the fires within the Arctic Circles and sudden surge of death due to increased temperatures? Citizens in the “cursed” South are concerned as they are experiencing unusual pattern in the nature, and their coping capacity is almost non-existent.

This reality is pushing many to search origin of the crisis in climate.

A few years ago, Fred Magdoff, professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont and adjunct professor of crop and soil science at Cornell University, and John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, discussed the issue in an essay – “What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism”.

They write:

“For those concerned with the fate of the earth, the time has come to face facts: not simply the dire reality of climate change but also the pressing need for social-system change.”

To them, knowledge is essential for survival: “Knowledge of the nature and limits of capitalism, and the means of transcending it, has therefore become a matter of survival.”

On climate change, they write:

“Climate change does not occur in a gradual, linear way, but is non-linear, with all sorts of amplifying feedbacks and tipping points. There are already clear indications of accelerating problems that lie ahead.”

Fred and Foster raised the issue of living standard:

“[T]here are biospheric limits, and that the planet cannot support the close to 7 billion people already alive (nor, of course, the 9 billion projected for mid-century) at what is known as a Western, ‘middle class’ standard of living. [….]

“A global social system organized on the basis of ‘enough is little’ is bound eventually to destroy all around it and itself as well.”

They raised the issue of economic system:

“[M]ost of the critical environmental problems we have are either caused, or made much worse, by the workings of our economic system. Even such issues as population growth and technology are best viewed in terms of their relation to the socioeconomic organization of society. Environmental problems are not a result of human ignorance or innate greed. They do not arise because managers of individual large corporations or developers are morally deficient. Instead, we must look to the fundamental workings of the economic (and political/social) system for explanations. It is precisely the fact that ecological destruction is built into the inner nature and logic of our present system of production that makes it so difficult to solve.”

On solutions, they wrote:

“‘[S]olutions’ proposed for environmental devastation, which would allow the current system of production and distribution to proceed unabated, are not real solutions. In fact, such ‘solutions’ will make things worse because they give the false impression that the problems are on their way to being overcome when the reality is quite different. The overwhelming environmental problems facing the world and its people will not be effectively dealt with until we institute another way for humans to interact with nature — altering the way we make decisions on what and how much to produce. Our most necessary, most rational goals require that we take into account fulfilling basic human needs, and creating just and sustainable conditions on behalf of present and future generations (which also means being concerned about the preservation of other species).”

They concluded by proposing a system:

“If there is to be any hope of significantly improving the conditions of the vast number of the world’s inhabitants — many of whom are living hopelessly under the most severe conditions — while also preserving the earth as a livable planet, we need a system that constantly asks: ‘What about the people?’ instead of ‘How much money can I make?’ This is necessary, not only for humans, but for all the other species that share the planet with us and whose fortunes are intimately tied to ours.”

Current developments in the areas of temperatures and wildfires lead us to consider the ideas presented by Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster. The countries – Sweden and Japan – stand on capitalist system. Greece is another case – a capitalist country, a victim of capitalist plunder, a country whose population has been burdened with the load of capitalist anomalies, debt, bankers’ dictation and debt. Sweden and Japan are part of the world imperialist system while Greece is entangled in the system. The three countries’ present situation shows their level of preparedness to face the climate crisis. With so much resource in their command, Japan and Sweden are failing to cope with the crisis. This is the system’s – capitalism’s – failure.

A closer look will find:

Amount of profit, and amount of money spent for research on weapons system development are larger than amount of money spent for research to face climate crisis.

Profit enriches a few while climate crisis affects all – millions and millions of people.

This situation leads to the question: Isn’t it the time to question the governing system – capitalism?

Australian Defence Department seeks expanded powers over research

Mike Head

In another sign of preparations for war, the Australian Department of Defence (DoD) has requested sweeping new powers over research, publication and the export of all technology in Australia, whether directly related to military purposes or not.

Universities, in particular, would be placed under wartime-style scrutiny, prohibited from undertaking collaborative research with countries regarded as US enemies, especially China, while being drawn more tightly into research jointly funded by the Pentagon.

According to a DoD submission, research and export controls first imposed on universities and companies by the last Labor government in 2012 must now be drastically tightened because of an altered “national security environment.”

No explanation of that declaration was provided. Instead the submission asked: “How has the national security environment changed?” It answered: “See classified Annex A.”

In other words, the calculations involved in the shift are being hidden from the Australian population, in order not to further fuel anti-war sentiment.

Annex A undoubtedly relates to preparations for involvement in US-led wars, particularly against China and Russia, which were identified in the 2018 Pentagon National Defense Strategy as threats to American global military and economic hegemony.

The request for new controls over all research was unveiled last month, in a definite context. The Liberal-National government and the Labor Party were jointly ramming through parliament “foreign interference” laws designed to crack down, above all, on anti-war dissent and anyone linked to China.

For two years there has been a relentless drumbeat of anti-China propaganda in the Australian corporate media, fuelled by unsubstantiated claims by US-linked intelligence agencies of pervasive Chinese “meddling” in the country, including via university research projects.

New allegations continue to surface, ranging from the supposed threat of Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment supplier, subverting Australia’s proposed 5G network to Chinese students posting supposed misinformation on WeChat and other Chinese-language social media platforms.

One of the key reasons the DoD gave for demanding expanded powers under the 2012 Defence Trade Controls (DTC) Act was that “allied nations” could restrict Australian government, industry and university access to critical technologies unless “appropriate safeguards and protections” were introduced. “This could have significant consequences for ADF [Australian Defence Force] capability, inter-operability with partner forces and collaboration opportunities.”

The “inter-operability” and other demands are primarily those of the US ruling class and its military apparatus. Over the past decade, Washington has intensified its pressure for a greater Australian commitment to US preparations for war against China.

For all the propaganda about Chinese “interference” in Australia, Washington is politically intervening to ensure support for these military preparations.

The Defence submission calls for unlimited discretion to prohibit the publication of research, even for scientific purposes, and for warrantless entry, search, questioning and seizure powers to monitor compliance.

These are extraordinary powers, unprecedented since World War II. Under the 2012 Act, people currently face up to 10 years’ imprisonment for selling or otherwise “supplying” items on the Defence and Strategic Goods List (DSGL) or items covered by the Defense Trade Cooperation Treaty (DTCT) between Australia and the US.

Other offences cover “engaging in dealings” (such as research) relating to these items without a permit, and “publishing or otherwise disseminating” DSGL or DTCT technology to the public.

Until now, the listed items have consisted of either military or alleged “dual-use” technologies. Defence wants to extend these provisions to cover what is currently “uncontrolled technology”—that is, all technology.

Defence wants the power to issue bans simply by asserting “reason to believe the technology is significant to developing or maintaining national defence capability or international relations of Australia.”

At present, “authorised officers”—who can be military officers or senior departmental officials—can enter any premises, including a university, question anyone and require the production of items or documents that allegedly relate to technology covered by the US-Australia DTCT. Only 24 hours’ notice must be given, and no judicial warrant or any other kind of warrant is required.

Defence wants those powers extended to cover all technology, raising the prospect of military raids on universities and companies even though their research is not included on any prohibited list in advance.

Defence Minister Marise Payne launched the DTC Act review in April, and entrusted it to a long-time intelligence insider, Vivienne Thom, who previously supervised the operation of the “counter-terrorism” legislation as Inspector General of Intelligence and Security.

At least 14 technology and IT institutions have objected to aspects of the Department of Defence (DoD) submission.

Group of Eight (G8) chief executive Vicki Thomson, representing eight elite universities, stated: “The extension of controls to ‘uncontrolled,’ unspecified technology would create significant uncertainty for researchers and those with whom they work, given the possibility that the DoD may declare at any point in time that a technology is ‘emerging sensitive’ and subject to controls on transfers.”

Thomson alluded to likely bans on overseas researchers, and requirements for universities to check the citizenship status of all staff. “A wide range of people would be in question—including foreign born Australian researchers, international PhD students in Australian universities, visiting Fellows or other research colleagues from overseas, multi-national companies.”

Universities Australia, the peak body of the country’s 39 public universities, objected to the proposed banning of publication of technology at the “sole discretion” of Defence, “on the basis of information that is not open to public scrutiny.”

However, as the Defence submission revealed, the universities have already embraced, and helped enforce, military controls since the 2012 Act came into full effect two years ago. “Defence believes it has formed very productive relationships with key stakeholders over the past two years which have led to a high level of compliance with the DTC Act,” it said.

Defence promised to consult “affected groups” over its new demands “in the spirit of working together.” The university submissions welcomed this offer, pointing to the likelihood of closer collaboration with the military, despite their current objections.

Starved of government funding, the universities have become dependent on war-related research, as well as attracting full fee-paying international students.

The Australian government is striving to meet the Trump administration’s demands for higher military spending. The Liberal-National government has allocated $200 billion for military projects over the next decade and adopted a “defence industry plan” to make the country one of the top ten world exporters of weaponry.

A University of New South Wales (UNSW) submission warned the proposed restrictions could “seriously endanger” participation in an industry that “contributes hugely to Australia’s GDP, estimated at $15 billion per annum for UNSW’s research and technology impact alone.”

University managements are also tying their institutions into joint research with US universities on “priority projects” under the US Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI), which the government joined in 2017.

In May, Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne congratulated four universities for winning funding in this year’s round of applications for Pentagon partnerships to “develop game-changing military capabilities.”

Griffith University, UNSW and University of Technology Sydney, will work with Duke University, the University of Oregon and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on “integrated quantum sensing and control for high fidelity qubit operations.”

Sydney University and UNSW will partner with the University of Tennessee, Ohio State University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute on a project in material sciences.

This program is part of a wider picture. Universities in Australia, as in the US and internationally, are becoming integral components of military networks preparing for high-tech warfare. This is taking place via a string of research initiatives and expanding ties with military contractors, such as the new Lockheed Martin research centre at the University of Melbourne.

The creeping militarisation of universities is taking place behind the backs of students and staff, most of whom have no idea of its scale and implications.

New Cuban constitution strikes references to “communism,” recognizes private property

Alexander Fangmann

On June 22, Cuban state media reported that the government had approved the draft for a new constitution, replacing the current one put in place in 1976. Preliminary reports described the “blueprint” for the constitution as a “total reform,” with the process presided over by former president Raúl Castro with the involvement of a hand-picked group of high level officials, including current president Miguel Díaz-Canel. It is expected that final approval will occur via a referendum to be completed by November 15.

Altogether, the announced changes herald a new stage in the Cuban government’s dismantling of the radical reforms enacted in an earlier period by the petty-bourgeois nationalist regime of Fidel Castro.

Among the most significant of the announced changes are a “recognition of the role of the market and new forms of property, including private,” and a recognition of “the importance of foreign investment for the economic development of the country, with the appropriate guarantees.” While written in the oblique style of the Cuban bureaucracy, the decision to strike references to “communism” from the document makes the meaning clear enough. Not only will there be an expansion of the operation of the market to further sectors of the economy, but also a legal reintroduction of private property in the means of production and protections for foreign investments and property.

These constitutional changes are meant to enshrine and deepen many of the changes already enacted by the Cuban regime under Raúl Castro in recent years. One of these is the creation of the cuentapropistas, or “self-employed.” This group, which numbers at least 600,000, or more than 10 percent of the total labor force, was created largely through the elimination of jobs in the state sector. Some reports estimate that as many as four in 10 Cubans of working age are involved in the private sector in some way, as it is the only way to get access to the currency increasingly needed to make ends meet as austerity initiatives have led to dwindling state subsidies.

Many of the small businesses created by the cuentapropistas, including the more successful restaurants, salons and construction companies, have long complained about the unclear legal status of their businesses. By recognizing private property, which already exists in fact, the door is opened for the future sale and purchase of these businesses, as well as a vast expansion of their number and a further shrinking of vast sections of the stagnant and largely unprofitable state sector.

More importantly, the Cuban government is desperate to integrate the Cuban economy more directly into the world market, primarily by attracting foreign investment and offering up Cuban workers to direct exploitation by foreign capital in exchange for a cut of the proceeds, along the model of China. Indeed, the wealth of the Chinese Stalinists, and their ability to pass along property to friends and relatives, has no doubt fueled the Cuban ruling elite’s desire for a legal regime in which that is possible.

In 2014, changes to laws on foreign investment made possible firms with 100 percent foreign ownership, and in the past year Foreign Trade and Investment Minister Rodrigo Malmierca has announced that at least 11 such ventures have been initiated. The recognition of their private property and the addition of protections for foreign investment to the constitution is no doubt intended to allay fears that the government might back out of a partnership, demand a renegotiation of the terms or even expropriate a business were it to become successful.

The Cuban regime is basing itself on the recognition that it may no longer be able to count on Venezuela to supply the island with enormous oil subsidies. As Cuba only produces enough energy to meet 30 to 40 percent of its domestic needs, any change to this arrangement would necessitate devastating cuts in energy consumption or devastating cuts of other crucial imports, like food, in order to come up with the US dollars necessary to purchase energy on the world market.

The government hopes to avoid at all costs a return to the “Special Period” of the 1990s, when the dissolution of the USSR ended its support of Cuba’s economy. The result was widespread economic collapse and hunger, as well as protests against the government, like the Maleconazo of August 1994.

Back in 2016, a deputy editor of Granma warned that announced cuts to energy consumption could lead to protests, and this time “there is no Fidel to go to the Malecon,” that is, to personally defuse social tensions. Unlike in 1994, there is also now no safety valve of relatively easy entry into the United States for the Cubans most unhappy with the regime since Barack Obama ended the “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy just before leaving office.

This concern has no doubt accelerated as a result of the seemingly abrupt halt to the rapprochement with Washington following the election of Donald Trump, which resulted in the reimposition of travel restrictions as well as a drastic curtailment of consular services and diplomatic personnel at the US embassy in Cuba following extremely murky claims of brain damage and other neurological symptoms among embassy staff.

It is on this basis that the Cuban regime is willing to risk allowing private property, which would create a basis for long-term wealth and power outside of the petty-bourgeois nationalist bureaucracy, and, through the foreign investment guarantees, a more strongly defendable beachhead for international capital.

The government hopes to shore up its support among these growing petty-bourgeois layers through the creation of a new post of prime minister, thereby diluting the power of the presidency, and also through the legalization of same-sex marriage. No doubt it aims to use the latter to burnish its “progressive” credentials internationally, after decades of harassment and persecution of LGBT individuals.

Despite the claims of the Cuban regime that the changes “must be incorporated into the constitutional text, by virtue of our experiences constructing socialism,” and that the “irrevocability of socialism and the political system” will remain a clause in the constitution, the truth is that what exists in Cuba is not socialism and never was.

While the petty-bourgeois nationalist Castro regime was able to take the power that fell into its hands, in the absence of a revolutionary workers party, and impose radical measures, even to the point of nationalizing the means of production, the result was never socialism, which can only be established on the basis of a revolution carried out by the working class internationally.

For Cuban workers to defend themselves against the assault by the Cuban government and prepare for such a revolution, it is above all necessary to establish a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Cuba.

UK minister lies to parliament as debt rises and welfare claimants go unpaid

Paul Bond

The chaos surrounding the government’s Universal Credit (UC) welfare benefit system reveals starkly its punitive character.

Last month, the National Audit Office (NAO) issued a damning report of UC, now eight years into rollout, saying its “larger claims…are unlikely to be demonstrable at any point in the future. Nor for that matter will value for money.”

Work and Pensions Secretary Minister Esther McVey, who lied to Parliament about the content of the NAO report, is still in her post. In Parliament, McVey flatly misrepresented the NAO’s report. Falsely claiming the NAO had agreed the UC was working, she said the report had called for rollout to be speeded up. The NAO’s head, Sir Amyas Morse, issued an open letter correcting her distortions.

UC is a regressive benefit payment system for working-age people that combines all entitlements into one payment. It replaces income support, income-based jobseeker’s allowance, income-related employment and support allowance, housing benefit, child tax credit and working tax credit.

Figures this month from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) show claimants going up to two months without income in February. An estimated 4,500 people were not paid in full within 10 weeks of their initial claim, and 2,300 were not paid in full within 14 weeks. The target period is five weeks. One in six claimants do not get payment in full and on time. A quarter of new claims last year were paid late.

A recent survey of housing association tenants has revealed that UC tenants are more than twice as likely to be in debt as are other tenants. Tenants on UC across 118 housing associations are in £24 million of rent arrears. Nearly three-quarters of UC tenants are in debt, compared with less than a third of other tenants.

Ostensibly intended to simplify the payment of benefits and get claimants back into work, UC is a vehicle for imposing austerity measures and cuts against the working class. It has been estimated that UC will cost 2 million in-work families £1,600 a year and more than 1 million out-of-work families £2,300 a year.

Proposed by then DWP Secretary Iain Duncan Smith in 2010, UC was due for implementation by 2013. The scheme has been vastly more expensive than originally suggested. The NAO now suggests it could cost more than the system it was designed to replace. Its report notes that government claims UC would save £8 billion annually were based on “unproven assumptions.” It expressed “significant doubts” about the achievability of the government’s stated aims, pointing out those ministerial claims about UC leading 200,000 into work and saving £2.1 billion in fraud and error could not be measured or proved.

By May of this year, 920,000 claimants were on UC, 37 percent of them in work. By 2022, more than 7 million households are due to move onto UC, which has a built-in delay period and is paid in arrears after assessment of income. Any further delays are thus catastrophic for recipients, who are already financially vulnerable. The NAO said the fact that the DWP does “not accept” UC has caused hardship.

Measures exist for claimants to receive cash advances to cover shortfalls, but claimants are not made aware of this. The advances are loans, however, and must be repaid.

Following the NAO report, several charities called for a delay in rolling out UC. Paul Farmer, of mental health charity Mind, said, “[E]ven those who are severely unwell and at crisis point are still being required to look for work or risking losing their benefits.” He pointed to “a real lack of support” for those who cannot manage an online claim or monthly payments, leading to “a cycle of debt, housing problems, and deteriorating health.”

Emma Revie of the Trussell Trust anti-poverty charity called for a truly universal support system of benefits “that is funded, that people are aware of, and that includes debt support and advice for everyone moving onto the new system.” The Trust’s food banks have seen the impact of delays and reductions in benefits: “People living with physical or mental health conditions skipping meals for days at a time, young families facing eviction, and single men with insecure work struggling to afford the bus fare to work.”

For the ruling class, the entire benefits system is an expensive concession that must be undone gain by gain. The NAO said the DWP “gives the unhelpful impression of a department that is unsympathetic to claimants.” The DWP’s disclaimer for late payments confirms this: the department says these are mostly “a result of unresolved verification issues,” implying they are largely the fault of claimants.

The reactions of Duncan Smith and McVey offer a truer picture of the contempt of the ruling class for their critics. Duncan Smith simply dismissed the NAO report as “shoddy.”

McVey went somewhat further and lied to MPs. She claimed the NAO had called for UC to be rolled out more quickly. In fact, as Morse’s letter explained again, the NAO recognised some “regrettable early delays” but now recommended ensuring UC was fit for purpose before proceeding further.

McVey falsely told MPs the NAO had agreed UC was working—an extraordinary claim given the NAO’s statement that many of the DWP’s assertions could not be measured or proved. McVey insisted claims UC would help 200,000 into work were robust and had been signed off by the Treasury. The NAO said this was unmeasurable and that the DWP had accepted this.

Morse said McVey’s statement UC was working “has not been proven” and that the DWP “has not measured how many [UC] claimants are having difficulties and hardship.” McVey repeatedly cited a survey of claimants suggesting 83 percent are satisfied with the department’s service. Yet, the survey revealed 40 percent of respondents experiencing financial difficulties and 25 percent saying they were unable to make an online claim.

McVey’s statement was criticised, and in response she claimed the NAO report was unreliable and outdated, because it had not considered recent changes to UC. In fact, the NAO acknowledged the specific policy changes she mentioned, discussing DWP data up to May 2018. Morse’s letter also explained that the DWP had agreed and signed off the NAO report shortly before publication, indicating its acknowledgement of up-to-date content.

With publication of Morse’s open letter, criticism turned on McVey’s falsehoods. She was recalled to Parliament to answer on misleading MPs but apologised only for claiming the NAO had demanded speeding up rollout, saying she had “inadvertently misled” MPs.

Her barely coherent apology was tempered by the claim that “[w]hat I meant to say was that the NAO had said that there was no practical alternative to continuing” with UC. In fact, the NAO had noted that, despite its failure to deliver, the government had committed so much to UC that “[t]here is really no practical choice but to keep on with the rollout.” In other words, the government has already pushed the policy through.

McVey is determined to brazen it out, and the episode demonstrates that no criticism or comment will be considered until the UC offensive against the working class is complete.

Labour Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Margaret Greenwood initially said McVey had broken the ministerial code and should resign. But within a week, this had been translated into an attempt just to dock McVey a month’s pay, similar to the sanctions imposed on benefit claimants deemed not to have complied with imposed commitments. This was duly defeated in a vote by 305 to 268.

Two months ago, Labour diverted criticism of Transport Secretary Chris Grayling into a similar silly stunt, attempting to fine him the cost of a railway season ticket. That vote was also lost. Even as safety valves for the ruling class go, these are threadbare.

Ryanair workers set to strike across Europe

Steve James

Pilots and cabin crew at European budget airline Ryanair are taking part in strike action today. The strikes, which will impact hundreds of flights, involves workers in Ireland, Portugal, Belgium and Spain, and reflects sharply deepening class tensions in the airline industry and across the continent. Ryanair pilots in Germany are also being balloted for industrial action.

As with last week’s strikes by Amazon warehouse workers in Germany, Spain and Poland, the actions by Ryanair employees show the potential and necessity for a coordinated continent-wide movement of the working class in defence of jobs and living standards.

Pilots based in Ireland are holding a third 24-hour strike today, following similar actions on July 12 and 20. The one-day actions follow ballots in which 99 percent of pilots based in Ireland and directly employed by the airline voted to strike. More than 250 Ireland-based pilots are self-employed agency staff and not involved in the dispute. Sixteen flights on July 24 to and from the Republic of Ireland have been cancelled with around 2,500 passengers affected. The July 12 strike resulted in 30 flights being cancelled, while last week, pilots picketed Ryanair’s headquarters in North Dublin.

The pilots, members of the Irish Airline Pilots’ Association (IALPA), are seeking “a fair and transparent mechanism” based on seniority to allocate pilots to a particular Ryanair base, to arrange transfers between bases and for annual leave. The one-day strikes are the first ever of Irish-based Ryanair pilots, and only the second ever of Ryanair pilots anywhere.

The actions have taken place despite the best efforts of the IALPA to stop them. The IALPA is part of the Forsa trade union, which emerged last year out of a merger of a number of smaller public service unions. Forsa officials made their priorities clear to the Irish Mirror, before the July 12 strike. “We regret the fact that it’s come to this. Pilots don’t want to be on strike. They know it’s bad for passengers, for the airline, for Ireland’s economy and tourism sector and for pilots themselves.”

The strike follows a sustained push last year by Ryanair pilots across the European continent for better conditions and a means of overcoming the fragmentation imposed upon them by the company. A series of open letters sent from 60 local Employee Representative Councils, bodies with which Ryanair hitherto preferred to negotiate, culminated in a short-lived European Employee Representative Council that claimed to speak for over 4,000 Ryanair pilots across 80 bases and 30 countries.

Led by a group of senior pilots, they used a major rostering calamity at Ryanair, which resulted in the loss of as many as 700,000 passenger flights, to force the company into recognising trade unions—something opposed by Ryanair over its previous 32-year history.

Ryanair, in the end, only agreed to the recognition as it sought the assistance of the trade union bureaucracy in maintaining control of the workforce.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Ryanair cabin crew in Belgium, Portugal and Spain are also due to strike in a coordinated action—impacting some 600 flights and up to 75,000 passengers—against the brutal levels of exploitation in the industry.

Up to 400 cabin crew in Portugal held three one-day strikes this year, prompting a number of flight cancellations. Strikes took place at Lisbon, Porto and Faro airports.

Workers are striking in pursuit of demands for leave, sick pay, an end to cabin sales targets, minimum legally defined rest periods, an end to agency working, predictable working hours and a seniority system. They also want an end to the current system in which they are all forced to open an Irish bank account.

A recent Ryanair Crew Summit, organised by the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) of trade unions and its European wing, the European Transport Workers Federation, listed 34 demands, one of which is for workers’ employment contracts to explicitly recognise the national law and jurisdiction of the country in which the particular worker is based.

Currently all Ryanair cabin crew are employed under Irish law.

As result, Spanish cabin crews, for example, are forced to rely on the European Union’s health insurance, rather than the Spanish system, to receive medical treatment in Spain, despite living there. Staff also report being unable to get a mortgage in Spain because their pay was delivered in Ireland.

Workers also have complained about disciplinary measures being imposed for calling in sick more than twice a year, and of being threatened with transfers to the Lithuanian branch of Ryanair if they fail to meet the company’s notorious requirements for onboard sales of snacks, perfume and scratch cards.

The summit was attended by representatives of cabin crew from 80 percent of Ryanair bases attended and ground crew from 100 percent.

Under pressure of the growing militant mood, the ITF was forced to warn in early July, “If the company does not begin to negotiate with unions in good faith and deliver real improvements for workers across its network, it risks a summer of industrial action.”

However, as with the pilot’s action, the long warning period ahead of this week’s industrial action offered by the trade unions has given the company ample time to co-ordinate its response. Ryanair claimed that as many as 85 percent of the passenger journeys affected by the cabin crew action had already been rescheduled or been offered refunds.

In effect, the trade unions are seeking to prove their credentials in controlling a highly concentrated, highly mobile, and internationalised workforce in a crucial sector of the transport industry.

Underscoring the point, immediately after announcing the impact of the July 25 and 26 strikes, Ryanair recognised the FIT CISL union in Italy. It has also recently recognised Verdi in Germany and Unite in the UK.

Ryanair hailed its new allies and sought to use these to pressure striking workers. “Ryanair hopes that the cabin crew unions in Spain, Portugal and Belgium [where agreements have not yet been concluded] will soon follow this example by engaging in negotiations with Ryanair rather than disrupting Ryanair customers by going on unnecessary strikes.”

The company’s leading personnel officer, Eddie Wilson, also hailed the union recognition agreements as “a further sign of the progress Ryanair is making with trade unions since our December 2017 decision to recognise unions, with over 66% of our cabin crew now covered by recognition agreements.”

Since its foundation, Ryanair has championed a particularly brash and sneering tone towards its millions of passengers and its workforce staff. The company’s business model relies on low pay and using large numbers of a single aircraft, the Boeing 737, to keep maintenance costs lower than its rivals. As a result, the company is now the largest airline in Europe and one of the largest in the world. It flies to 33 countries and has over 80 bases.

On a daily basis, the efforts of its European-wide workforce provide an example of coordination and advanced organisation that could be of an enormous benefit to society.

Instead, under capitalism and the division of workers along national lines, the benefits accrue only to the CEOs and their financiers. Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary recently purchased a €10 million Baroque palace in Majorca in Palma’s Old Town. O’Leary’s net worth is estimated at around €850 million. Last year, the company reported that its 37.6 million passengers pushed revenue up to €2.1 billion, although fuel and labour costs forced a 20 percent slump in pre-tax profits over the first three months of this year to €319 million.

French presidential scandal: Mélenchon defends the riot police

Francis Dubois & Alex Lantier 

On Saturday, Unsubmissive France (LFI) leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon sharply attacked French President Emmanuel Macron in an interview with Le Monde. Discussing the illegal attack on peaceful protesters by a top Macron aide, Alexandre Benalla, who was captured on video beating an anti-austerity protestor while wearing a riot police uniform. In his comments, Mélenchon made no appeal to mass anger among workers against austerity and police repression. Instead, he advanced the demands of the police forces against Macron.

Mélenchon told Le Monde that the main issue behind the public outcry which has erupted over the publication of the video is that the police hierarchy has lost confidence in the president after Macron approved disciplinary action against police officials. “A political crisis has erupted,” Mélenchon said. “The National Assembly is paralyzed. The police hierarchy is also, because three dismissals have upended a rule that is as old as the high public service itself: officials serve and obey, but it is politicians that take the blame.”

Mélenchon added more specifically that Interior Minister Gérard Collomb, the civilian official charged with overseeing the police, had lost the confidence of the security forces: “The Interior Minister is already disqualified. He has lied, a lot! No policeman can believe him anymore. Of course he will resign, and many more, as well.”

Workers must be warned: a class gulf separates Mélenchon from masses of workers hostile to Macron’s austerity and militarist policies. The Benalla Affair has exposed the illegal and gratuitous character of the police forces’ repression of peaceful protests, but Mélenchon is not trying to mobilize working class opposition to the rising police state machine. He is making himself the spokesman for anti-democratic police agencies that are increasingly trying to overcome all limits placed on their vast repressive powers.

For a number of years, and above all since the imposition in 2015 of a state of emergency suspending basic democratic rights, the ruling class has cultivated the security forces as a chief base of political support. Mélenchon postures as the defender of the legitimate interests of the police hierarchy but there is nothing progressive in the anger and complaints of police commissaries and Interior Ministry functionaries. This social layer, largely won to neo-fascism, is comprised of professionals of repression and the most aggressive defenders of the financial aristocracy.

Now, politicians who are trampling workers’ social demands underfoot are all rushing to defer to the security forces. The prosecutor’s office and the General Inspectorate of the National Police have all launched investigations and the National Assembly has launched a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the matter. They are not opposed to Benalla’s brutality, which is commonplace in the riot police, but his decision to “illegally” take over the police’s role, which he “usurped,” according to Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet.

All the official opposition parties are rallying to defend the police. On Twitter, neo-fascist deputy Sébastien Chenu complained that the video of Benalla “harms the image of the security forces” while conservative deputy Eric Ciotti said: “The courts must urgently investigate this affair, which harms the rule of law.” Socialist Party (PS) secretary Olivier Faure complained that the scandal is undermining the image of an “exemplary Republic” that he wanted Macron to defend.

On Friday, the opposition in the National Assembly demanded that Collomb and Prime Minister Edouard Philippe testify in person. Philippe came, referred to the judicial proceedings that have been launched, and said he was pleased that the affair is “now in the hands of the judiciary.”

Mélenchon is swimming in this stream of political forces demanding that people “understand” the legitimate anger of the police. Asked by Le Mondewhether he would now take back his occasional criticisms of the press corps, Mélenchon laughed and replied that the press is “a system that is usually hostile to us, except now, but this is an exception (laughter).”

In fact, LFI and Mélenchon are closely enmeshed in the army, intelligence and police machine. Their defense of the police is of a piece with the petty bourgeois, anti-Marxist populism promoted by Mélenchon. In the decades that have elapsed since he arrived in a bourgeois government as a member of the PS under François Mitterrand in 1981, and since the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the USSR in 1991, LFI’s different political components have all become parties of the capitalist state.

Mélenchon’s security and foreign policy advisors—retired officer Djordje Kuzmanovic and Alexandre Langlois, an official of the General Intelligence (RG) domestic spy agency and leader of the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor’s (CGT) police union—are integral parts of the repressive apparatus the state aims at the working class.

LFI is intervening in a deepening crisis of the police machine itself. The state of emergency was first imposed in 2015 and the vast repression of social protests like the 2016 movement against the PS labor law and the 2018 strikes against rail privatization have stretched France’s vast police apparatus to the breaking point. One sign of the crisis is the suicide rate among policemen, which is three times the national average.

The mock indignation, disarray or outright panic in the political establishment in this affair reflects their fear that the police agencies directed against the workers could collapse amid growing social struggles and amid deep conflicts between the Elysée and the police.

When asked by Le Monde about the potential existence of a “secret illicit security cabinet at the top levels of the state,” Mélenchon signaled that powerful factions of the ruling class would use this crisis to exert enormous pressure on or even get rid of Macron. He insisted that the crisis is “at Watergate levels. The entire world is now aware of this. … Mr. Macron thought the affair would stop by itself. He committed a grave error. Now no one will let this go.”

Developing the parallel between the Benalla affair and the crisis that led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon, and posturing as a “democratic” opponent of Macron, Mélenchon provocatively insisted that Macron “is organizing a personal militia. … We live in a Republic! We should remember it.”

He continued, “A crisis is a crisis, its outcome is unpredictable. We will have done what we should do as a democratic opposition. You have seen no provocations or exaggerations from us. We are working in the limits of parliamentarism. These are institutions that we disapprove of, but that we respect. But if they destroy them, they will have done out work.”

These musings of Mélenchon are reactionary. A “destruction” of parliamentary institutions by one or another faction of the ruling elite and its allies in the police establishment, whether or not they are tied to LFI, would not represent the opposite of a revolutionary struggle to free the working class from capitalist exploitation. All the factions of the police—those tied to Mélenchon, to Macron, or to the neo-fascists—are hostile to the working class and the youth, and the fact that Mélenchon speaks for the riot police exposes the anti-working class politics of his party.

UCSF Preterm Birth Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme for International Researchers 2019/2021 – USA

Application Deadline:15th September, 2018 11:59 PM PST.

Eligible Countries: International

To Be Taken At (Country): USA

About the Award: The UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative (PTBi) is a multi-year, transdisciplinary and multi-sector research effort aimed at reducing the burden of prematurity.
Philanthropically funded by Marc and Lynne Benioff and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the PTBi applies scientific, clinical, and community expertise to address prematurity, the leading cause of childhood death worldwide. We have two parallel arms that are geographically focused in California and East Africa and conduct place-based discovery and implementation science research across the reproductive life course.
Postdoctoral scholars from a variety of disciplines come together to acquire skills necessary to conduct powerful, collaborative research that is place-based, stakeholder-engaged, relevant, and likely to haveimpact on a critical health epidemic affecting millions of familiesacross the world

Type: Fellowship (Academic)

Eligibility: This Fellowship is open to US and non-US citizens. Fellows cannot hold concurrent active faculty positions. Candidates are eligible if they have completed any one of the following:

• MD with or without residency training in obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, medicine, family and preventive medicine or another relevant specialty
• PhD, ScD or DrPH in biomedical or social sciences
• Nursing degree with completed doctoral training PhD, DNP

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The fellowship offers the following:

• Salary support based on UCSF equity rules and travel/supplies stipend
• Access to research and education funds through an intramural application process
• Research and career guidance from highly regarded UCSF investigators
• Fellows seminars with a rotating schedule of didactic content, works in progress, and journal clubs
• Leadership opportunities and network building through PTBi sponsored events (e.g., Collaboratories, Annual Symposium)
• Professional development curriculum in conjunction with the UCSF Center for AIDS Research

Duration of Programme: 2 years

How to Apply: Please submit the Fellowship application materials listed below as a single PDF to fellowship manager Nicole Santos (Nicole.Santos@ ucsf.edu) by 11:59 PM PST, September 15, 2018. Interviews will take place in November and December 2018 with notification of final decision no later than January 15, 2019.

• Current NIH-style biosketch or CV
• 1-page personal statement
• 2-3 page research concept focused on decreasing the burden of preterm birth, including significance, proposed aims and methods, and community/location of interest
• 1/2 page description about why you want to train at UCSF, including any educational courses or training opportunities you would like to pursue
• Copy of medical, nursing or other clinical degree (if applicable)
• A recent writing sample
• Proof of US citizenship or residency, or visa status/eligibility for non-US citizens or residents
• Three letters of reference (sent separately)

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Marc and Lynne Benioff and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Czech Government Scholarships for Developing Countries 2019/2020 – Undergraduate, Masters and Doctorate

Application Deadline: 30th September 2018.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries. See list below

To be taken at (country): Public Universities in Czech Republic

Eligible Fields of Study: Students who are applying for study in Economics, Agriculture, Informatics, Environment and Energetics at public universities in the Czech Republic.

About the Award: Thanks to a generous contribution from the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, the Faculty of Social Sciences is able to offer a limited number of partial scholarships for students of all fee based programs in academic year 2019/20. A total of five scholarships are available, ear-marked for students from developing countries and/or countries going through a process of political and economic transition.
Upon a Decision of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, scholarships of the Government of the Czech Republic are granted to promote specific Bachelor’s, Master’s, follow-up Master’s and/or Doctoral study programmes in the full-time mode of study of a specific study programme pursued by a university (or its Faculty) for a period that equals the regular duration of studies. Scholarships are not transferable to other persons or other academic years. Once a scholarship is granted, neither the university nor the study programme and/or field of study may be changed.

Type: Doctoral, Undergraduate and Masters

Selection Criteria and Eligibility:

• The scholarships are intended solely to promote the studies of adults who are foreign nationals from developing third countries in need. Neither a citizen of the Czech Republic, nor a citizen of a member state of the European Union, nor any other foreign national with a permit to permanent residence on the territory of the Czech Republic may, therefore, be granted this type of scholarship. Furthermore, the scholarships may not be granted to persons under 18 years of age. (The applicants have to turn 18 as of 1 September of the year when they commence studies in the Czech Republic at the latest.)
• In Bachelor/ Master/ Doctoral Study Programmes plus one-year Preparatory Course of the English language (Which is combined with other field-specific training): Government scholarships of this category are awarded to graduates from upper secondary schools, or Bachelor’s / Master’s degree courses, as applicable, Who can Enroll only in Study Programmes in which instruction is given in the English language. Depending on the subject area, Applicants are normally required to sit entrance Examinations at the higher education institution Concerned. Successful passing of Entrance examination constitutes a precondition for the scholarship award; or
• In follow-up study Programmes Master or Doctoral Study Programmes: Government scholarships of this category are awarded to graduates of Bachelor or Master Study Programmes, respectively, Enroll in the WHO study Programmes with instruction in the English language.

In addition, the Scholarship Review Board will take into consideration applicants’ results from their earlier studies. Priority will be given to students who have not previously had the opportunity to study abroad.

Number of Scholarships: A total of seven (7) scholarships are available.

Duration of Scholarships: These Government Scholarships are designed to cover the standard length of study plus one-year preparatory course of the Czech language(which is combined with other field-specific training).

Value of Scholarships: 

• The scholarship covers the necessary costs related to staying and studying in the Czech Republic. The scholarship amount is regularly amended.
• Currently the amount paid to students on a Bachelor’s, Master’s or follow-up Master’s study programme stands at CZK 14,000 per month
• Whereas the amount paid to students of a Doctoral study programme stands at CZK 15,000 per month.

The above scholarship amounts include an amount designated for the payment of accommodation costs. Costs of accommodation, food and public transport are covered by scholarship holders from the scholarship under the same conditions that apply to students who are citizens of the Czech Republic. Should health services exceeding standard care be required by the student, s/he shall cover them at his/her own cost.

Eligible Countries: The students from the following developing countries are eligible: Afghanistan, Gambia, Mozambique, Bangladesh, The Guinea, Myanmar, Benin, Guinea-Bisau, Nepal, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Niger, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Cambodia, Korea, Dem Rep., Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Kyrgyz Republic, Somalia, Liberia, Tajikistan, Comoros, Madagascar, Tanzania, Malawi, Togo, Congo, Dem. Rep, Eritrea, Mali, Uganda, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Zimbabwe, Albania, Indonesia, Samoa, Armenia, India, São Tomé and Principe, Belize, Iraq, Senegal, Bhutan, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Bolivia, Kosovo, South Sudan, Cameroon, Lao PDR, Sri Lanka, Cape Verde, Lesotho, Sudan, Congo, Rep., Marshall Islands, Swaziland, Côte d’Ivoire, Micronesia, Fed. Sts., Syrian Arab Republic, Djibouti, Moldova, Timor-Leste, Egypt, Arab Rep., Mongolia, Tonga, El Salvador, Morocco, Ukraine, Fiji, Nicaragua, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Nigeria, Vanuatu, Ghana, Pakistan, Vietnam, Guatemala, Papua New Guinea, West Bank and Gaza, Guyana, Paraguay, Yemen, Rep., Honduras, Philippines, Zambia, Angola, Ecuador, Palau, Algeria, Gabon, Panama, American Samoa, Grenada, Peru, Antigua and Barbuda, Iran, Islamic Rep., Romania, Argentina, Jamaica, Russian Federation, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Serbia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Seychelles, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, South Africa, Botswana, Lebanon, St. Lucia, Brazil, Libya, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Suriname, Chile, Macedonia, FYR, Thailand, China, Malaysia, Tunisia, Colombia, Maldives, Turkey, Costa Rica, Mauritius, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Mexico, Tuvalu, Dominica, Montenegro and Uruguay

How to Apply: All applicants shall fill in the electronic application form available on the website and successfully register (i.e., obtain an application identification number by sending a completed application form to the pertinent authority electronically). The applicant shall send the completed application form to the Mission in electronic form, i.e., by completing online registration.

Visit scholarship webpage for details

Sponsors: Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, the Faculty of Social Sciences

Women Techmakers/Firebase Travel Grants to Attend 3rd Firebase Summit 2018 in Prague, Czech Republic

Application Deadline: 20th August 2018

Eligible Countries: International

To Be Taken At (Country): Cubex Centre, Prague, Czech Republic.

About the Award: At Google, we believe a diversity of attributes, experiences, and perspectives are needed to build tools that can change the world. Everyone deserves the opportunity to pursue a career in computer science and technology, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, ability or military service. We understand that, for some folks who are underrepresented in computer science and technology, there are barriers to attending leading tech conferences. We are committed to breaking those down. As such, we’re excited to offer the Women Techmakers & Firebase Travel Grant for the Firebase Summit on 29th October 2018 in Prague, Czech Republic.
Join to learn how Firebase helps mobile app teams of all sizes across the entire development lifecycle, from building your app, to improving app quality, to growing your business. You’ll also get the opportunity to ask questions and give feedback directly to the team that builds Firebase.

Type: Grants

Eligibility:

• Applicants must be a university student or a technology industry professional.
• Eligibility for each group is as follows:
  • University Students: A student enrolled in a bachelors, masters or PhD program (or equivalent) for the 2018-2019 academic year or a current student who is graduating in 2019 or later.
  • Technology Industry professionals: A professional software engineer working in the industry.
• Persons who are (1) residents of Italy, Brazil, Quebec, or embargoed countries, (2) ordinarily reside in embargoed countries, or (3) otherwise prohibited by applicable export controls and sanctions programs are not eligible to apply for the Women Techmakers & Firebase Summit Travel Grant.  
• Applicants must be available to attend the conference in its entirety, meaning they must be available to travel to the conference on October 29th in Prague, Czech Republic.
• Current Google employees, aside from interns, are not eligible to apply for this travel grant.  
• Applicants must be 18 years of age or older as of July 17, 2018

Selection criteria: All eligible applications will be reviewed by both the Women Techmaker & Firebase teams. Recipients of the Women Techmaker & Firebase Travel Grant will be selected based on the overall strength of their application materials compared to the entire applicant pool.

Number of Awards: Not Specified

Value of Award: To encourage attendance at our Firebase Summit, Women Techmakers will provide selected recipients airfare or train travel fare to and from the summit and/or hotel accommodations as a travel stipend of up to $500 USD offered through our travel agency partner.

Duration of Programme: 29 October 2018 (8:00am – 10:00pm)

How to Apply: Please complete the below application by August 20th, 2018. We’ll be notifying accepted applicants by September 5th, 2018. If you have any questions, please email firebase-summit@google.com with “travel grant program” in the subject line and our team will be in touch shortly.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details   and   Google WebPage Here

Award Providers: Women Techmakers, Google

Important Notes: Please note that payment for visas and/or expenses outside of travel (air/train/hotel) will not be covered. In addition, costs for travel (air/train/hotel) above $500 USD will not be eligible for reimbursement.

Ecuador’s Agenda: Squeezing and Surrendering Assange

Binoy Kampmark

It is perhaps typical in a time where a star of the fleshy celluloid wonder Baywatch, heavy in bust and known for her sexual adventures, should feature as a political voice.  Pamela Anderson’s views are treated with judicious seriousness – at least in some quarters.  Her association with Julian Assange has given needless room for columns on what, exactly, their relationship constitutes.

Having such defenders as Anderson has added to his conspicuous support base, but it will not move those bureaucrats who are chewing pens in anticipation and pondering options as to how best to eject him from the Ecuadorean embassy (compound would be more fitting) in London. Easily missed amidst the titter of celebrity gossip is the plight of an ailing Assange, who is facing the next critical stage of his stay at the Ecuadorean embassy.

Since the changing of the guard in Ecuador, President Lenín Moreno has shown a warmer feeling towards the United States, and a desire to raise the issue of Assange’s stay in the embassy with US Vice President Mike Pence with the urgency of man desiring to be rid of a problem.  The UK government has also been brought into the mix. The forces against Assange are marshalling themselves with a renewed impatience.

A squeeze evidently designed to break the will of WikiLeaks’ publisher-in-chief was commenced in March, with a change of the embassy’s Wi-Fi password effectively blocking his use of the Internet.  Phone calls and visitations have also been curtailed. The bill of Ecuadorean hospitality, if it can be termed that, also became a subject of discussion – some $5 million expended on security and Assange’s various activities.  Attitudes to a troublesome guest have hardened.

The press circuit has increasingly thickened in recent days with speculation about a round of high-tier discussions being conducted by Ecuador and the UK government on Assange.  The Ecuadorean paper El Comercio has remarked upon the talks. It was a turn that was unsurprising, with Moreno unimpressed by Assange’s feats and credentials, the Australian being viewed back in January as an “inherited problem” who had created “more than a nuisance” for his government.

According to Glenn Greenwald, the report that those discussions did more than touch on the matter of handing Assange over to UK authorities “appears to be true”. This might trigger an indictment from US authorities and possible extradition proceedings, a point made acute by the promise of US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions back in April to “seek to put some people in jail”, with Assange’s “arrest” being a priority.  “Can’t wait to see,” quipped Greenwald, “how many fake press freedom defenders support that.”

RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan smells that something nasty is brewing.  “My sources tell [Julian] Assange will be handed over to Britain in the coming weeks or even days.  Like never before, I wish my sources were wrong.”

That particular process, it would seem, is being headed by Sir Alan Duncan of the Foreign Office, the same individual who had an impulse back in March to call Assange that “miserable little worm” before fellow parliamentarians.

The line that Assange has been in arbitrary detention has never quite cut it in Duncan’s circles and he has been dangling a carrot with spectacular condescension. “It is our wish,” he told Parliament last month, “that this can be brought to an end and we’d like to make the assurance that if [Assange] were to step out of the embassy, he would be treated humanely and properly and that the first priority would be to look after his health, which we think is deteriorating.”

Such comments are always rounded up by that fanciful notion that Assange is “in the embassy of his own choice”.  That line on inventive volition was reiterated by Britain’s new foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, who issued a statement of praise for Britain as “a country of due process” keen to see that Assange “face justice for those [serious] charges”: “At any time he wants to he is free to walk out onto the street of Knightsbridge and the British police will have a warm welcome for him.”

Such grotesquely insincere concerns about health, fashioned as a weapon and an incentive by Duncan, would be academic should Assange find himself on the dismal road to US custody, where promises of a firm and icy welcome have been made.  He would be merely nourished and fattened for a notoriously cruel prison system, analogous to the doctor healing a person on death row.

Anderson herself makes the relevant point about her urgent advocacy for Assange. “My role is to let people know that he’s a human being and not just a robot or a computer, and that he’s really sacrificing a lot for all of us. He hasn’t seen sunlight in six years. His skin is transparent.”

In what is nothing less than a war about what we can see, know and interpret, those who wish to preserve the traditional models of power and the clandestine state remain adamant: Assange is a trouble maker who must disappear.