30 Apr 2016

Endeavour Vocational Education and Training (VET) Scholarship in Australia

Australian GovernmentDiploma/Assoc. Degree
Deadline: 30 June 2016 (annual)
Study in:  Australia
Next course starts: Jan-Nov 2017



Brief description:
The Endeavour VET Scholarship provides financial support for international applicants to undertake VET at a Diploma, Advanced Diploma or Associate Degree level in any field in Australia for up to two and a half years. VET provides occupational or work-related knowledge and skills. The courses are directly related to a trade, occupation or ‘vocation’ in which the applicant participates. These courses exclude degree and higher level programmes normally delivered by universities.
Host Institution(s):
Universities or Higher Educations Institutions in Australia.
Level/Fields of Study:
Diploma, Advanced Diploma or Associate Degree level in any field of study offered at Australian Universities
Number of Awards:
Not specified.
Target group:
Americas: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela.
Asia: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, China (People’s Republic), Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea (Republic of Korea – South), Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Vietnam.
The Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago.
Europe: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France (including Reunion), Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland).
Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.
Pacific: Fiji, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia (Federated states), Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand* (including Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau), Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna.
Scholarship value/inclusions/duration:
The scholarship value is up to $131,000. It includes travel allowance ($AUD 3,000), establishment allowance ($AUD 4,000), monthly stipend ($AUD 3,000; up to maximum programme duration on a pro-rata basis). Health and travel insurance will also be provided.  It will also include tuition fees up to the maximum study duration (up to $6,500 per semester).
The scholarship duration is 1 – 2.5 years.
Eligibility:
To be eligible for Endeavour Vocational Education and Training (VET) Scholarship, applicants must:
•  be aged 18 years or over at the commencement of their programme
•  be a citizen and/or permanent resident of a participating country (see above)
•  commence their proposed programme after 1 January 2017 and no later than 30 November 2017. Applicants who have already commenced or will commence their intended programme prior to 2017 are not eligible to apply
•  provide all relevant supporting documentation
• not currently hold or have completed, since 1 January 2015, an Australian Government sponsored scholarship and/or fellowship (directly administered to recipients by the Australian Government)
•  not apply for a category in which they have already completed an Endeavour Scholarship or Fellowship.
Application instructions:
As part of the eligibility requirements, Endeavour Vocational Education and Training Scholarship applicants must attach a formal admission letter from their proposed Australian institution. A conditional admission letter will be accepted at the time of application. Commencement must be for the 2017 academic year.
Applications are submitted through the Endeavour Online (EOL) system. The deadline for 2017 Round is 30 June 2016.
It is important to read the 2017 Endeavor Application Guidelines and visit the official website (link found below) for detailed information on how to apply for this scholarship.
Website:

McDonald Fellowships for Emerging Countries 2016

Application Deadline: The deadline for nominations is 30 June 2016.
Offered annually? Yes
Eligible Countries: Emerging Countries (all countries with a low, lower middle or upper middle income) as defined by the World Bank.
To be taken at (country): Established research institution in developed countries
Brief description: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) International Federation is offering the McDonald Research Fellowship for Emerging Countries in Medical fields
Eligible Field of Study: The program will accept applications from all areas of research related to MS and encourage applications in the areas of symptom relief, rehabilitation and palliative care.
About the Award
The McDonald Fellowship was formerly known as the Du Pré Fellowship.
Every year the MS International Federation offers a number of McDonald Fellowships to young researchers from emerging countries. Fellowships enable the recipient to travel to an established research institution to work with leading researchers in MS, with a view to returning to their own country to establish a programme of MS research that involves the application of the newly learned techniques.
Offered Since: Not specified
Type: Research fellowship
Eligibility
  • Candidates must be under 35 at the time of application and must be citizens of an emerging country as defined by the World Bank.
  • Candidates must be in one of the following situations:
  • working or studying in an emerging country at the time of nomination
  • working or studying in another country on a project which started within the six months prior to nomination
  • Studying in another country on a project supported by an MS International Federation grant.
  • The candidate’s focus of research should be an area of neuroscience relevant to MS.
  • Before nomination, candidates need to have identified a suitable project and discussed their involvement with the project supervisor of the institution.
  • It is anticipated that the award may be seen as a contribution to the country from which the candidate comes, as a step toward establishing greater expertise in MS research in that country.
  • The fellowship may also be used as a supplement for work related to MS by a candidate who has been accepted for training in a recognised institute (within the six months prior to nomination) but who doesn’t have enough money to cover the total cost.
  • The research should be in an area that makes it likely that the studies and expertise can be transferred to the candidate’s home country.

Number of Awardees: not specified
Value of Scholarship: The fellowship consists of a two-year grant, around UK £30,000 per year, to cover travel and living costs, and an additional contribution of UK £2,000 per year to the host institution.
It is anticipated that part of the second-year grant to the host institution will be used to cover the expenses of the candidate attending the annual congress of ECTRIMS, the European Committee for Treatment and Research in MS.
Duration of Scholarship: two years
How to Apply
For more information, including a list of possible host institutions, please contact the head of international research, Dr Dhia Chandraratna, using the contact us form from the link below.
Award Provider: The executive committee of the MS International Federation ‘s International medical and scientific board
Important Note: The MS International Federation requires a short report at the end of the first year of the fellowship. Second-year funding depends on the submission of this report.
Upon completion of the fellowship, a final report is required. This should detail:
  • What the recipient has gained from the fellowship
  • Their achievements in the project field
  • The area of expertise which is being transferred back to the country of origin.
In addition, the MS International Federation requests electronic copies of papers, abstracts and posters resulting from the fellowship.

Hungry and Frightened: Famine in Ethiopia 2016

Graham Peebles

Millions of the poorest, most vulnerable people in Ethiopia are once again at risk of starvation. Elderly men and women, weak and desperate, wait for food and water; malnourished children lie dying; livestock, bones protruding, perish.
According to a statement issued by the World Food Programme (WFP) on 6th February, over 10 million of the most vulnerable require urgent humanitarian assistance. This figure was published in the Joint Government and Humanitarian Partners’ Document (HRD) in December last year, and does not take into account the seven and a half million people who annually receive support from Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme – PSNP, (established in 2005 to enable, “the rural poor facing chronic food insecurity to resist shocks, create assets and become food self- sufficient), taking the total in need to almost 18 million. The worst affected areas, according to USAID, are the pastoral areas of Afar and Ogaden Region – where people rely totally on their livestock – and the agricultural lowlands of East and West Haraghe – close to the capital Addis Ababa.
The WFP explain that the level of humanitarian need in Ethiopia has “tripled since early 2015…caused by successive harvest failures and widespread livestock deaths. Acute malnutrition has risen sharply, and one quarter of Ethiopia’s districts are now officially classified as facing a nutrition crisis.” With a shortage of food, families are forced to make children drop out of school to take up menial jobs to survive; such children, lacking a decent education, are unable to find well-paid jobs in adulthood, and so the spiral of exclusion, poverty and deprivation continues.
Poverty and Chronic Food Insecurity
Ethiopia is a large country (385,925 sq. miles), with a population of just over 101 million (13th largest in the world), which is growing at a yearly rate of around 2.5% (over double the world-wide average). Conflicts resulting in migration from the neighbouring states of Sudan, South Sudan, and Eritrea has brought an influx of refugees and asylum seekers, which according to USAID amount to more than 733,000.
More than half the population live on less than $1 a day; over 80% of the population live in rural areas (where birth-rates are highest), and work in agriculture, the majority being smallholder farmers who rely on the crops they grow to feed themselves and their families.
The people of Ethiopia have suffered chronic food insecurity for generations: the major reason, as is the case throughout the world, is poverty. Other causes are complex; some due to climate change, others result from the ruling regime’s policies. Action Aid (AA) reports that unequal trading systems are a factor. The Ethiopian government purchases crops from farmers at low, fixed prices. International organisations encourage Ethiopia to produce cash crops to export, which reduces the land available for growing domestic crops – yes, Ethiopia – where millions rely on food aid every year – exports food. The country’s top exports are Gold (21%) Coffee (19%), vegetables and oily seeds, followed closely by live animals and khat – a highly addictive narcotic.
The agricultural system itself is another major cause. Individuals do not own land; it is assigned, AA states, “according to the size of a family, and redistributed every few years.” This means that every time land is redistributed “it is divided between more people”, so each farmer gets less. The lack of investment, combined with the need for large yields from a small area, leads to soil degradation, resulting in poor harvests.
The Oakland Institute (OI) in their report on the country’s land sales makes clear that drought (15 droughts since 1965), state-fuelled armed conflict, as well as “inappropriate government policies (land tenure, access to markets, etc.), rapid population growth and lack of infrastructure,” add to the list of causes.
Land grabbing and hunger
Since 2008 the EPRDF government has been leasing huge amounts of fertile agricultural land to so-called “foreign investors’’: international corporations, domestic agents, fund managers, and nations anxious to secure their own future food security.
Detailed research by the OI in 2011 estimated that “3,619,509ha of land have been transferred to investors, although the actual number may be higher.” Incentives to investors include exemption from import taxes, income taxes and custom duties as well as ‘easy access to credit’; the Ethiopian Development Bank will contribute up to 70% towards land costs – which are extremely cheap to begin with.
Land is sold with the understanding that it is totally cleared of everything – including people, by government forces. Indigenous communities, who have lived on the same land for generations are displaced and herded into camps – the universally condemned ‘Villagization’ programme. OI state that over a million people have been affected, and that, “the loss of farmland, the degradation and destruction of natural resources, and the reduction of water supplies are expected to result in the loss of livelihoods of affected communities.” Despite this, the ruling regime maintains that the land sold – all land is state owned (with formal and informal land rights) – is unused, and is being leased off ‘without affecting farmers’.
Industrial size farms have been built and foodstuffs (not eaten by the native population) grown for export, – back to their homeland – India for example. Very little, if any, of the food grown is going into the Ethiopian food market, and there are attractive government incentives in place to ‘ensure that food production is exported, providing foreign exchange for the country at the expense of local food supplies’. Oakland found that these commercial agricultural investments, by national and multi-national companies “increase rates of food insecurity” in Ethiopia, and that, despite “endemic poverty and food insecurity, there are no mechanisms in place to ensure that these investments contribute to improved food security.”
OI makes clear that in addition to these land sales, ‘state-fuelled armed conflict’ is an underlying cause of food insecurity. One of the worst affected areas in the current famine is the Ogaden (or Somali) region in the Southeast corner of the country. The majority ethnic Somali population has been under military control since 1992. People fleeing the area report large-scale arrests of civilians, torture, rape and murder, as well as the destruction of land, cattle and property, and confiscation of humanitarian aid by government military and Para-military forces. With international media and most humanitarian aid groups denied access to the region since 2007, independent information on the conflict and the impact and extent of the current famine is in short supply.
Official duplicity
The ruling regime, that appears to be more concerned with its international image than the suffering of those in need, has presented an ambiguous, contradictory picture of the famine.
In a recent interview Arkebe OQubay, the ‘special adviser to the Prime-Minister’ told Bloomberg that the countries greatest achievement since 1984, was that “we are being able to feed ourselves. In 1984 we were struggling to feed our 40 million-population, but now we have 95 million population and we have food security.” This is pure fantasy: Ethiopia (according to most recent, 2012 figures) remains the largest recipient of food aid in the world, and millions are today at risk of starvation.
Shortly after this claim from his ‘special adviser’, the Prime Minister himself, Hailemariam Desalegn appealed for help in supplying humanitarian aid to the millions in need, saying, ESAT News report; “it is the responsibility of the international community to intervene before things get out of hand.”
The EPRDF government owns most of the media inside the country, exerts tight controls on any marginally ‘independent’ publications and seeks to restrict and condition reporting by international media. Interviewed by foreign news agencies, officials smugly reject claims of widespread human rights violations and paint themselves as a democratic government bringing economic prosperity, opportunity and stability to the country: A fabricated image, far from the truth.
With the government more or less controlling the flow of news about the situation in the drought-hit areas, detailed, open and honest information is hard to come by. The sole independent Ethiopian broadcaster ESAT News, which has reliable contacts in the country, carries the account of an aid worker who recently spent time in the worst affected regions – Afar in the North East and Ogaden in the South East. He reports that, “the famine was already taking its toll on humans and livestock………[and] that the situation in places near Jijiga and Shinile in Somali [or Ogaden] region was very serious.” He saw, children whose skins were fused with their bones at feeding centers in the regions,” and at a health center in Afdem (in central east part of the Ogaden), met “hunger stricken bony children.”
The government proudly boasts that the Ethiopian economy has been growing, by between 7% and 8% (UK GOV figures) for almost a decade, that malnutrition and famine are no longer possible and that within a decade Ethiopia will be a middle ranking power. Nevertheless Ethiopia finds itself ranked 174th out of 188 countries in the UN Human Development Index (inequality adjusted). This suggests that whatever ‘growth’ the country has achieved, it has not changed the lives of the majority of Ethiopians, and, as is evidenced by the millions suffering from hunger and malnutrition, has clearly not eradicated food insecurity – which should be the first priority of the government.
Donor response
The scale of the current crisis has led the UNOHCA to call for $1.4 billion of funding to supply emergency food and water, to ‘in excess of 15 million’ people. So far donors have been slow to come forward, prompting Save the Children’s Ethiopia Director to describe the reaction as “the worst international response to a drought that he has seen.”
Around 45% of the total has been donated, including $200 million from the ruling regime. However the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) says it has less than a third of the money it needs to keep the aid coming.
America has offered some small-scale additional support, sending, CNN reports, “20 disaster experts to provide technical assistance, conduct humanitarian assessments and coordinate relief efforts with partners on the ground,” as well as “$4 million in maize and wheat seed for more than 226,000 households.” This level of assistance, whilst welcome, is nowhere near enough, and it seems the motive is far from pure. “Climate-related threats pose an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows and potential conflicts over basic resources like food and water,” said USAID spokesman Ben Edwards. It seems the US is concerned about ‘stability’ in Ethiopia and the wider region, not human welfare; fearing that a lack of food and work may drive young people into the hands of extremist groups, and encourage migration, adding to the huge refugee flows.
The UNOCHA estimates the total current cost of worldwide humanitarian demand to be $21 billion. With Syria on fire, a huge refugee crisis in Europe, urgent demand in Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq, in addition to ongoing international development commitments (including Ethiopia), donor nation resources (and attention) is turned elsewhere.
The need for sharing
It is the poor who die of hunger related causes throughout the world; it is the poorest people in rural Ethiopia – who constitute some of the poorest people on Earth – who are currently at risk. Every day 35,000 children in the world die of starvation and its attendant causes, but we live in a world of plenty; there is no need for a single man, woman, or child, – in Ethiopia or anywhere else, to die because they do not have enough food or water to survive. Oxfam report that, the world now “produces 17% more food per person today than 30 years ago. But close to a billion people go to sleep hungry every night.” And they all live, more or less, in seven countries: India, China, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan.
Food, like water, shelter, access to education and health-care is a human right, and is enshrined as such in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Like all natural resources it should be shared equitably amongst the people of the world, so that nobody, anywhere – specifically the famine-affected regions of Ethiopia, where so many are once again in dire need – experiences food-insecurity and dies of hunger.

Big Business and the Overtime Rule: Irrational Complaints

Dean Baker

Business lobbyists have been up in arms in recent months over what they claim is President Barack Obama’s anti-business turn. They point to a number of policies and executive orders that they contend are anti-business.
Three of these policies have gotten the most attention:
* The first is a rule requiring overtime pay for salaried employees making less than $50,440 a year.
* The second is a rule requiring that financial advisers have a fiduciary responsibility towards their clients.
* The third is tightening up tax regulations so that it will be more difficult for a huge company like Pfizer to relocate to another country to avoid much of its U.S. tax liability.
In each case, the business lobbyists have complained that the new regulations will hurt business, costing jobs and leading to higher prices. In actuality, in each case, Obama is simply implementing commonsense reforms that should have been in place long ago.
This is most clear with the overtime rule. This is a question of requiring employers to pay time and a half to workers who put in more than 40 hours a week. This is part of the Fair Labor Standards Act that went into effect in 1938.
While the standard for overtime pay is straightforward for hourly workers, it is less clear with salaried workers. The issue is that salaried workers tend to have more authority and control over their time.
Furthermore, it is often difficult to determine exactly how many hours they spend on the job. Under the law, supervisory employees are therefore exempted from the requirement for overtime pay.
However, if the law exempted all salaried employees from the requirement, companies could just switch everyone from hourly pay to being salaried and thereby avoid ever having to pay overtime.
To prevent this gaming, the Labor Department has a salary floor, which essentially assumes that a low-paid employee is not really in a management position.
This is a perfectly reasonable policy, but this floor has not kept pace with inflation. Until the new Obama rule, it was set at just $23,700 a year, less than $12 an hour.
The Obama rule essentially moves that floor from a 1970s level to one appropriate today, in effect saying someone earning less than $25 an hour is not really management.
The other two changes are in the same vein. Currently many financial advisers are paid a commission to get their clients into certain investments. Most people are not terribly sophisticated on financial matters and are likely to trust the advice from a financial adviser without asking many questions.
The fiduciary rule simply says that an adviser cannot be paid a commission for putting clients into a specific investment. The adviser must act in what she understands to be the best interest of the client. Note that this does not mean that the advice cannot be mistaken. Mistakes happen. The point is to prevent corruption and deception.
The last point is straightforward. We have a corporate tax code with the expectation that U.S. companies will be subject to that tax code.
But many of our largest companies are now treating paying taxes as optional. The latest fad has seen them merge with smaller companies located in lower-tax countries abroad.
The firms can then have most of their income appear in that country and avoid paying U.S. income taxes on it. Obama put in place new rules that make it much harder to pull off this little trick.
In all these cases, Obama is proposing regulations that serve important public goals at minimal cost to business. It’s difficult to look at the evidence and take the business complaints seriously.

Sanctions and Defiance in North Korea

Mel Gurtov

Sanctions on North Korea have failed.
North Korea has now been sanctioned five times by the United Nations Security Council for its nuclear and missile tests: resolutions 1718 (2006), 1874 (2009), 2087 (2013), 2094 (2013) and 2270 (2016).  UNSC Resolution 2270 is the strongest one yet, spelling out in great detail the proscribed goods and requiring that all parties neither import them from nor export them to North Korea.  Each resolution obliges the members to carry out the terms of the sanctions and (as the April 15 press statement of the UNSC says) “facilitate a peaceful and comprehensive solution through dialogue.” This is a case of mission impossible for two fundamental reasons: the sanctions will not work, and the fact of them impedes any chance for a “peaceful and comprehensive solution.”
Foremost among the obstacles to an effective North Korea sanctions regime is smuggling along the China-DPRK (North Korea) border.  Military items disguised as ordinary goods seem easily able to evade detection thanks to inconsistent inspection by border guards, bribery, false declarations, and North Korean firms based in China that actually belong to military-run trading companies.  Since these practices are surely well known to the Chinese authorities, it seems fair to assume they have no strong interest in preventing or at least substantially reducing it—something they could accomplish with a more intensive border inspection process.  That China is not doing so no doubt reflects its oft-stated position that the North Korean nuclear issue is the result of other countries’ policies, not China’s, hence that resolving it is others’ responsibility, mainly the US.
This is not to say that China is refusing to follow the UNSC’s latest resolution (UNSCR 2270).  Beijing’s criticism of North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests has become increasingly harsh and open over the last few years, and voting to approve UN sanctions is one way to underscore its criticism.  Reports indicate, for example, that China has closed its ports to North Korean coal and iron ore exports.  But the Chinese have created a large loophole.  At their insistence, 2270 allows for humanitarian trade affecting people’s “livelihood.”  Thus, as China’s foreign ministry spokesperson said on March 4, “We will earnestly observe the UNSCR 2270. The resolution prohibits the DPRK’s export of coal, iron ore and iron, but those that are deemed essential for people’s livelihood and have no connection with the funding of the DPRK’s nuclear and missile programs will not be affected.”  As a result, China’s exports to North Korea actually rose about 15 percent in the first three months of 2016 compared with 2015, and Chinese imports rose nearly 11 percent.
These figures come from a Chinese customs official.  They may underplay the actual trade figures, which are said to have been deleted from official PRC trade reports in order to hide the volume and character of the trade.
China is hardly alone when it comes to evading sanctions on North Korea. The DPRK operates numerous entities that do business abroad in illicit goods.  Namibia, Iran, and Russia are usually mentioned in this regard.  Two specialists call these trading entities “North Korea, Inc.”  Their research concludes that “sanctions have actually improved North Korea’s ability to procure components for its nuclear and missile programs.”
The reason is that the trading firms, mainly in China and Hong Kong, have been willing and able to pay a higher price for these goods to middlemen, who in turn are willing to take greater risks to sell.  The writers acknowledge the great difficulty in getting ahead of the curve when it comes to identifying the North Korean firms and finding ways to put them out of business.  In the end, they say, only diplomacy will resolve the problem.
Reflagging and renaming North Korean ships is another common tactic, as is falsely claiming a ship’s destination as (for example) China rather than the DPRK.  For example, an unpublished UN report describes how the North Koreans used a Singapore branch of a Chinese bank to pay for their ships to transport weapons through the Panama Canal.  Then there is the story of a British banker who, according to the Panama Papers, set up a front company in Pyongyang, registered in the British Virgin Islands, to sell and procure arms.
North Korea’s military program also benefits from the fine line that often exists between civilian and military items.  Commercial trucks, for example, can be used to mount a variety of weapons.  A Chinese-made truck used in both China and North Korea for mining operations has reportedly been adapted by the North Korean military for its new mobile rocket-propelled artillery system.  Six mobile intercontinental missiles (possibly fakes or mock-ups) paraded in Pyongyang in April 2012 likewise were mounted on Chinese-made trucks.
When all is said and done, the most likely scenario is that the new round of sanctions will produce no better results than previous rounds.  This is so not only because North Korea has many ways to procure items needed for its military purposes, and plenty of willing private sellers.  China, as North Korea’s principal trade partner for many years, is not going to watch the North disintegrate in spite of Beijing’s discomfort over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs.  China’s leaders will do more than previously to enforce sanctions, such as inspection of cargo bound for and incoming from North Korea; but they will do a good deal less than the US wants, especially when it comes to border inspections.  For just as President Obama has hawkish advisers who want to turn the screws on North Korea even tighter in hopes of regime change, President Xi has people around him who think resisting US pressure is strategically more important to China than undermining Kim Jong-un.  Secretary of State John Kerry may well say that China’s approach “has not worked, and we cannot continue business as usual.”  But the Chinese have a perfectly good comeback, namely, that Washington and Pyongyang must find a way back to the negotiating table.

The Big Lies and the Small Lies

Manuel E. Yepe

Havana.
Any reasonably sane person would assume that after the recent public acknowledgment by US President Barack Obama of the foreign policy errors that are implicit, and even explicit, in his efforts to normalize political relations with Cuba, there would be a process of apologies and explanations for the big and small lies that the immense defamation apparatus of Washington has spread about Cuba around the world, trying to justify its economic, commercial and financial blockade against the rebel island.
Even in the simplest parts of the propaganda war against Cuba, we find evidence of the lies with which the smear campaign has sought to support its purposes –to the embarrassment of honest Americans who are becoming aware of the truth- as the curtain is drawn aside as a result of the timid measures that the White House has taken citing legal incapacity to eliminate the shameful blockade.
An example of this is provided by JosĂ© Manzaneda, site coordinator of CubainformaciĂ³n that originates in Spain and is dedicated to promoting solidarity with the island on the Internet. Manzaneda recalls one of the many deceitful facets of the propaganda campaign against Cuba that somehow now clashes with the truth.
Cuba has rock bands in all genres –from heavy metal to hardcore, death metal, alternative rock and punk. The Caribbean country hosts local and international groups that take part in thirteen festivals of rock music (CaimĂ¡n Rock, Brutal Fest, Festival Metal HG among them) and has a unique experience in the world: a state-owned Cuban Rock Agency devoted to the promotion, distribution and hiring of rock bands. Despite this, during the recent Havana concert by the English band the Rolling Stones, the US-financed media from around the world devoted extensive space to promote their stale falsehoods against Cuba.
Manzaneda notes that Spanish channel La Sexta, in its coverage of the Stones’ artistic visit, said “Cuba has vibrated to the sound of those “Satanic Majesties” (…) and showed their trademark tongue after 40 years of rock censorship in the island “.
Another Spanish channel, Cuatro, repeated the same nonsense about the alleged “censorship” that Cuba applied to the music of the British band “whose music had been banned in Cuba until now”.
The same lie was repeated by Antena 3, another Spanish channel: “The Rolling Stones displayed their energy in the same island where their sound was banned until recently.”
Other media did not go that far but repeated over and over the same message: not now, but for decades the Cuban Revolution “censured”, “discriminated” or “banned” rock “.
Meanwhile, the international corporate media insisted on another message openly more counterrevolutionary: the concert was due to a supposed transition, an opening, or even a political “spring” in Cuba. “A concert that marked the cultural opening of Cuba,” said Deutsche Welle TV). “A historic event that shows the opening of Cuba to the West –that albeit slow, is already unstoppable.” (Cuatro TV).
In almost all news reports, this great concert was linked to the absurd events and incomprehension towards rock that occurred in Cuba in the 60s. But the reality is that if the Rolling Stones and other big bands did not act earlier on the island it was not due to obstacles from Cuba other than economic. There were big free concerts in Havana, like the Manic Street Preachers in 2001 and Audioslave in 2005. All of these, as with the Stones now, were funded by the artists themselves.
Manzaneda recalls: “It is not Cuba that has made a cultural opening to the world. What has really changed is that the US government and its accompanying media have modified their policy of aggression against Cuba. And now, for a band like the Rolling
Stones,
 performing on the island they are no longer at high risk of reprisals and
smear campaigns; but rather the opposite.”
It is true that in the early years of the Revolution, and until the mid 70s, rock and English language were not broadcast by Cuban radio stations as part of an inexperienced and naive defensive reaction against the huge cultural aggression promoted and financed by the United States.
In those years, Cubans certainly committed many errors of this type, including their dislike of persons that were then, and remain today, idols of US American youth, who were inspired precisely by the ideals and struggles of Cuban youth and their leaders, such as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

The Devil Capitalism

Gary Engler

Okay, here’s the proposition — you can have a good job, decent pay, lots of overtime, but only if you give me your grandchildren or maybe your great-grandchildren.
Would you make this deal with the devil?
This is pretty much the choice currently offered workers by the captains of the carbon extraction, transportation and burning industries.
In fact, in a more general sense, it seems to be the choice being forced upon many governments around the world by the devil, which has taken the form of our current economic system.
Capitalism is asking us to choose between jobs and the future livability of our planet. Capitalism tells us it makes sense to flood some of the best food growing land in B.C. and build a dam to provide electricity for Alberta’s tar sands; capitalism says build more pipelines across B.C. and allow hundreds more oil tankers every year to sail through pristine waters; capitalism doesn’t care that more carbon extraction will guarantee our planet is cooked.
Capitalism, especially the current neoliberal version, says profitability should be the sole criteria by which we decide what gets built, what services are provided and who works. If there’s a profit to be made, let’s invest in it. Don’t do it if there’s no profit to be made. The ‘invisible hand’ of the market will solve all our problems.
Profits bring jobs, the capitalist devil whispers in our ears. Jobs! So you can overcome or avoid the misery of unemployment. Jobs! So you won’t fall behind on your mortgage, your credit card payments or your student loan. Jobs! So you will be able to buy ever more stuff that you don’t really need but somehow those great commercials convince you otherwise.
“Think about the jobs!” the devil/capitalism repeats over and over again. When brave critics ask: “What about the consequences to our environment?” the devil/capitalism answers: “Don’t listen to those Leap-ing people. They’re radicals. They’re tree-hugging, moonbeam-chasing hippies. They’re Indians. They’re anti-development. They’re socialists. They’re from downtown Toronto. Think about the jobs!”
So what do we do? Listen to the devil and build more pipelines, tar sands plants, fracked oil wells, housing that requires ever more carbon-spewing automobiles and tell ourselves that we are not responsible for what happens to our grandchildren?
Or do we cast out the devil? Tell the beast we do not have to choose between jobs and the environment, that in fact there will be more jobs in a sustainable energy-based economy. Proclaim loudly that, if forced to choose between capitalism and the environment, we will choose the environment every glorious day on this wondrous planet.
The truth is the devil’s way leads to hell on earth. Building our economy solely on capitalist greed for profit has placed us all, lobster-like, into a pot of hot water that is only a few degrees away from cooking our great-grandchildren. Our most critical task right now is figuring out a way of getting out of the pot and turning down the heat.
The good news is the devil’s way is not the only way, despite the constant media bombardment proclaiming that to be so. Humankind has followed the devil/capitalism path for only a relatively short time. We have tens of thousands of years of history proving that we can organize our lives around values other than greed for profit. Even today, in the midst of the most capitalist-dominated period ever, most of our lives, outside of paid work, is based on love, caring, sharing, solidarity, respect and doing what’s best for our collective future. This is called family and community.
If we can just come to the understanding that an economic and political system can also be based on these ‘community values’ we would have a path to building a viable alternative to the mess we are in.
The devil promotes the idea that we have no alternative to the way things are, but if all the people who care about their grandchildren come together to talk about a better way we can have jobs, lower the temperature and save our planet for future generations.

Job Satisfaction Under Perpetual Stagnation

David Rosen

Do you hate your job?  Do you dread getting up on Monday morning and schlepping to the office, factory, store, desk or wherever that serves, at best, as a place to earn a few dollars to meet ever-increasing needs?  Or are you excited by the challenges and opportunities that Monday morning represents, the problems you’ll deal with, the fellowship with co-workers, the sense of accomplish that comes with a job well done and the money you’ll make?
Americans are deeply dissatisfied with their jobs.  A 2015 Conference Board report stated, “for the eighth straight year, less than half of US workers are satisfied with their jobs.”  It found that only 48.3 percent were satisfied, really happy, at work.  In 2013, it reported that 47.7 percent of workers were satisfied with their jobs – a minuscule increase of 0.6 percentage points. The Conference Board has been conducting annual job satisfaction surveys since decades.  It found that the country hit bottom in 2010 when only 42.6 percent reported satisfaction and, in the report’s words, “well below the historical level of 61.1 percent in 1987.”
A 2015 Gallup survey suggests a different perspective on job satisfaction, finding that overall job satisfaction was up compared to 2005.  It arrived at this assessment examining a half-dozen variables, including health insurance benefits, vacation time, retirement plan, promotions, on-the-job recognition, flexibility and wages.
However, it warned: “Despite large improvements over the past 10 years [since 2005] in how they view many aspects of their jobs, less than half of employed Americans say they are “completely satisfied” with the recognition they receive at work for their accomplishments (45%) and the health insurance benefits their employer offers (40%).”  It concluded, “Even
sinsexsubfewer are ‘completely satisfied’ with the retirement plan offered (35%) and their chances for a promotion (35%).”
The great restructuring of capitalism is underway – and it is changing the lives of everyone on the plant, including U.S. working people.  Capitalism is evolving from an international system of nation states to a global system of financial plunder.  And nowhere is it felt – or struggled over – more than at the workplace.
Officially, the U.S. has steadily been climbing out of the worst of Great Recession.   In January, President Obama proudly proclaimed in his State of the Union address:
Let me start with the economy, and a basic fact: the United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world. We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history. More than 14 million new jobs; the strongest two years of job growth since the ’90s; an unemployment rate cut in half. Our auto industry just had its best year ever. Manufacturing has created nearly 900,000 new jobs in the past six years. And we’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.
Unfortunately, the president failed to address two key issues — stagnant wages and high turnover especially among the low-wage jobholders.  Overall, the jobs created have been at lower wages than previously periods of recovery and the median household real incomes has not recovered from the recession.
Earlier this year, the National Association of Counties reported that only 7 percent (or 214 counties) of the nation’s 3,069 counties have recovered from the Great Recession – thus, 93 percent have not recovered.  Four indicators — total employment, the unemployment rate, size of the economy and home values – determined recovery.  Americans continue to suffer.
Many factors contribute to deepening sense of dissatisfaction, but none more so than wage stagnation.  In September 2015, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) painted a grim picture of the historic condition now gripping the nation in terms of wages:  “Since 1973, hourly compensation of the vast majority of American workers has not risen in line with economy-wide productivity.”  It then stressed, “In fact, hourly compensation has almost stopped rising at all. Net productivity grew 72.2 percent between 1973 and 2014. Yet inflation-adjusted hourly compensation of the median worker rose just 8.7 percent, or 0.20 percent annually, over this same period, with essentially all of the growth occurring between 1995 and 2002.”
EPI’s assessment was confirmed by a December 2014 study conducted by Monster and the Wage Indicator Foundation. It found that wages in small firms (<10 employees) are typically just about $14 per hour, while U.S. wages in larger firms (5,000+ employees) are double that of a small firm, $30 an hour.   It noted, “while employees at larger companies in the U.S. might be raking in higher wages, employees across the board are still relatively dissatisfied with how much they make.”  It added, “more than 65% of employees are not satisfied with their pay.”  Almost as an afterthought, it offered an up-beat assessment of deepening worker dissatisfaction:  “Despite the unhappiness with wages, the majority of employees in the U.S. (77.6%) are relatively satisfied with the work relationships they have with their colleagues, showing interpersonal interaction may trump wages.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) divides the U.S. labor force into three categories: Employed, Unemployed and Not-in-Labor-Force (NLF).  Perhaps most troubling is the dissatisfaction among NLF workers.  According to the BLS website, Jobenomics: “Since year 2000, the Not-in-Labor-Force cadre grew from 68.7 million to 94.1 million, an increase of 25.4 million citizens, who often become dependent on public and familial forms of financial assistance.”
Turnover is particularly high among low-wage jobs (e.g., the hospitality industry) and “contingent” — “gig” or on-demand — workers.  The BLS defines contingent workers as those holding “nonstandard work arrangements” or those without “permanent jobs with a traditional employer-employee relationship.”  It further distinguished between: (i) “core” contingency workers are agency temps, direct-hire temps, on-call laborers and contract workers; and (ii) “non-core” workers are independent contractors, self-employed workers and standard part-time workers who work fewer than 35 hours per week.  Non-core temps — notably writers, programmers, filmmakers and other “hip” indies — are the media darlings highlighting the new “entrepreneur” economy and to distort the perilous conditions faced by this growing segment to the workforce.
These workers are part of America’s new proletariat. They share many of the same conditions: no employer-sponsored health insurance, 401Ks or FLEX accounts; no Social Security employee contribution or unemployment compensation; no sick or vacation pay; no chance to join a union or move up the corporate ladder.  A 2015 survey of 1,330 gig workers reported in Information Week found that nearly half (48.5%) attributed low pay “being the most common cause of attrition.”  They do share the one attributed that Marx identified 150 years ago: They have nothing to lose but their chains.
The first lap of the 2016 electoral horse race is nearing the finishing line and the two current leaders – Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — are preparing for a head-to-head joust for the presidency.  Thanks to fierce grassroots and labor organizing, the $15 per hour minimum wage has become law in California, New York State and Seattle.  Pushed vigorously by Bernie Sanders and embraced with conditions by Clinton, wages and job dissatisfaction may become an issue in the November electoral showdown.  If Clinton and the Democrats aggressively push this issue they might force a decisive wedge in Trump’s fictitious nationalist rhetoric.

Al Jazeera America: Goodbye to All That Jazz

David Anderson

This month something unusual happened on TV for many New Yorkers and other Americans – a news channel went blank. After four years, Al Jazeera America has ceased operations.
So an obscure foreign TV network goes dark. So what? The problem here is it leaves the US TV cable viewer almost without a serious international network. At all.  A news cruise around the dial of most cable operators will leave the viewers with a surprisingly small number of news channels.
One can watch cable giants such as CNN or Fox, MSNBC and the like, and be left with the impression that almost nothing happens beyond the borders of the United States.
They have occasional foreign coverage of big bleeding stories, anything about terrorism, and a small amount of international economic news. Cable news here is parochial at best.
Fox and CNN can hardly be called serious news, nor can they ever be accused of being anything except incredibly America centered and infested with two generally extreme and cartoonish points of view; a hard right fairytale on Mr. Murdoc’s side, and CNN’s ceaseless time filing Blitzeresque droning.
The picture is just as awful when it comes to broadcast; a sample of any of the large networks’ evening or morning fare gives the viewer a feeling they are watching TV which is pitched to the intellectual and educational level of a ten year old.
The decline of American  news bureaus outside the US over the past 25 years is a symptom and a cause of American TV news organizations’ ever decreasing geographical range and interest.
This lack of access, and perhaps the horrible possibility that Americans have been trained over the last generation to value a childish celebrity obsessed junk culture of morons, spelled lights out for Al Jazeera.
What’s left for cable subscribers is PBS and foreign news channels with an international bent like the BBC, and increasingly (though increasingly slowly) other Al Jazeera-like foreign government networks such as CCTV from China, NHK from Japan (often joked as being Japan’s BBC) in English, and the hilariously slanted Kremlin mouthpiece RTT.   RTT is what professors of journalism could show their students as an example of utterly biased “reportage”.
Al Jazeera America, a subsidiary of Al Jazeera Media (Qatar) bought Canadian Current TV and combined was the closest thing we had to a serious in depth American international news channel. They have 50 (but no doubt a decreasing number of) non US news bureaus, a large budget, and a wealth of international talent. Their award winning coverage has earned various accolades within their community and an impressive number of American, Australian, British presenters and writers have defected, if you will, to Al Jazeera. They attracted viewers and  journalists who care for more than “celebrities and shouting” – as Al Jazeera themselves put it in reference to US TV infotainment.
The closing of nearly all overseas news bureaus by American media companies is in part due to changed realities of journalism and modern mass communications, but this trend of reduced interest in overseas events  was established by the mid 1990s, well before the internet was a force in journalism.
The main reasons for Al Jazeera America’s death are firstly the dramatically lowered price of oil which effects all of the owner’s -the Qatari government – finances. There has been an across the board cut for everything the petrocarbon rich Gulf Arab country supports. Additionally, Al Jazeera used to be a very unpopular name in the United States with citizens as well as cable companies (in Time Warner’s case) hungry to use the bandwidth in favor of less controversial and intellectual stations. It required a grass roots effort in NYC to even have Time Warner Cable put it on its dial at all.
As a brand, the network has come a long way since before the Gulf War II when Donald Rumsfeld toyed with the idea of actually bombing their office in Afghanistan – mainly in response to their airing of Bin Laden’s tapes. But that is what it is remembered for in the American media sphere and it was often mocked by Fox as being a nest of Islamic terrorism and apologists.  Its general liberal bent has earned it further ire from the big cable and broadcasting establishment.
Being Qatari government funded they are not beholden to advertisers – as their unimpressive advertising suggested. Ads didn’t pay the bills and their advertisers were like those of late night infomericals;- cheap face creams, personal injury attorneys, and late night drunk dial impulse purchases.
Its not the end of the world – there’s still Al Jazera International in its various online forms, but not on our TV screens with American perspectives and talent, and not with a full network in New York with other US branches to provide its 24 hour a day news, analysis, documentaries and specials. Devotees can and will access it online, just as many Americans did before Al J America was on our TVs.
But it is sad fate for the hopeful standard bearer in grown up international news, and is symptomatic of a more isolated, parochial, dumbed down America.