NASA Hubble Fellowship Programme (NHFP) 2021

Application Deadline: 5th November, 2020, 7:00 PM EDT.

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): USA

About the Award: The NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) supports outstanding postdoctoral scientists to pursue independent research which contributes to NASA Astrophysics, using theory, observation, experimentation, or instrumental development.  The NHFP preserves the legacy of NASA’s previous postdoctoral fellowship programs. Once selected, fellows are named to one of three sub-categories corresponding to NASA’s “big questions”:

1. How Does the Universe Work? – Einstein Fellows
2. How Did We Get Here? – Hubble Fellows
3. Are We Alone? – Sagan Fellows

Type: Postdoctoral, Fellowship

Eligibility:

• The NHFP is open to applicants of any nationality who have earned their doctoral degrees in astronomy, physics, or related disciplines on or after January 1, 2018, or who will receive their degree before September 2021.  Applicants with a PhD award date prior to January 1, 2018 may be eligible in exceptional cases (see below). Graduate-student awardees who have not yet received their doctoral degree at the time of application must present evidence of having completed all requirements for the degree before commencing their fellowships.
• Eligibility of applicants for the 2021 class of NHFP Fellows may extend to those who received their PhD as early as January 1, 2017, if professional work was necessarily delayed by personal or family considerations. Such extended eligibility must be justified by emailing nhfp@stsci.edu at least 2 weeks in advance of the application deadline.  We realize that many applicants may have had their research programs disrupted by the pandemic. We will take this into account when granting extensions for next year (applicants for the 2022 class). Extensions this year are for people whose ability to put in a successful application last year was affected by their personal or family situation.
• NHFP Fellowships are open to English-speaking citizens of all nations. Qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, creed, color, age, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, veteran status, disability, or national origin. Women and members of minority groups are strongly encouraged to apply.

Number of Awards: Contingent upon NASA funding, 24 new fellowships will be awarded for 2021.

Value of Award: The NHFP provides salary support plus benefits for up to three years, and an additional allowance for travel and other research costs.

Duration of Programme: 3 years

How to Apply: Required application materials include the following:

Applicants must submit their materials via the web Application Form. These materials must include:

• Completed Application Form
• Curriculum vitae
• List of publications
• Summary of previous and current research (limited to three pages total).  Summary section references may be included in the references in the Research Proposal section.
• Research proposal, described below (limited to five pages total including references and figures).

Please do not attach anything not listed above (reprints, preprints, cover letter, etc.) to your application.

All materials submitted must be in at least 12-point font, single spaced, and all pages should be numbered.

Non-U.S. applicants should make sure that their applications will copy successfully onto 8.5 x 11 inch (21.6 x 28 cm) paper without loss (i.e., with 1-inch margins on all sides). Please keep each file to less than 2 MB.

When you fill out the application form you will be asked to specify the science categories and techniques that best match your proposed research. This is to help us match your proposal to reviewers. For a detailed listing and more information on how they are used in the review, see Science Categories and Techniques.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

COVID-19, Hunger, and State Violence are on the Rise in Zimbabwe

Imani Countess

Africa reports 1.3 million positive COVID-19 cases, leading some health officials to consider that the continent may have escaped the worst of the coronavirus.

In Zimbabwe, the health ministry reports low levels of the virus, with cumulative reports of 7,400 positive cases and 218 deaths by early September. Yet local sources believe that the infection rate is significantly higher and rising. The country’s coronavirus lockdown and curfew have worsened an already weak economy, and Zimbabwe is facing what the UN calls “desperate levels of hunger” exacerbated by a long-running governance crisis.

South Africa has meanwhile recorded over 640,000 cases and over 15,000 cumulative deaths.  The South African government has taken aggressive steps, including announcing a National State of Disaster, enacting lockdown restrictions, and creating a $26 billion special coronavirus budget, which provided cash benefits to at least 37 percent of the population.

The millions of Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa’s informal economy, however, were ineligible for those benefits. Without work and no ability to access funds, many migrants have returned home, leading some Zimbabweans to believe that the influx of returning residents has increased infections, particularly in rural areas.

The Zimbabwe government requires returning migrants to quarantine in government-run facilities. Those centers, however, lack testing equipment, running water, and hygiene supplies, and many quarantined individuals have fled these conditions before completing their quarantine. An unknown number of migrants have also re-entered the country through unofficial entry points, bypassing quarantine facilities and likely facilitating the virus’ spread to families and rural communities.

Anecdotal evidence indicates a high level of COVID-19 community spread and fears of significant undercounting. Families with symptoms are unable to access free testing and are unable to afford testing in private laboratories, which can cost $60 or more. In July, Zimbabwe’s parliament suspended activities after eight members tested positive. The country’s largest medical insurer, the Commercial and Industrial Medical Aid Society (CIMAS), closed after 27 employees tested positive, and several leading retail shops have closed for short periods after employees tested positive.

Economic upheaval and the pandemic threaten the global economy, but Zimbabwe was in economic freefall before the virus hit. The country’s health sector is broken, inflation stands at 319 percent, and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that drought, crop failures, and economic austerity are a daily challenge. “The delivery of health care, clean water and sanitation, and education has been constrained, and millions of people are facing challenges to access vital services,” the UN warns. Nearly half of the country faces severe food insecurity.

Since the 2017 military coup that removed President Robert Mugabe from office, attempts to shift to civilian-led government have failed. Instead, Mugabe’s successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwe, has consolidated and elevated a clique of military leaders, who have furthered the country’s decline.

Since Mugabe’s overthrow, opposition parties, trade unions, and social movements have organized, developed policy platforms (for example, the 2019 Citizen’s Manifesto), and held numerous public protests, demanding social and economic justice and adherence to the Zimbabwe Constitution.

Following these mass actions, soldiers and police have systematically raided, harassed, detained, and tortured known or perceived leaders.

Zimbabweans are frustrated with the country’s direction and rumors of a second coup abound, alongside calls from civil society, the labor federation, and progressive thought leaders for a transitional authority as the only way to prevent widespread violence.

There is no quick resolution for Zimbabwe’s dire situation. In the U.S., progressives are appropriately engaged in combating racist, right-wing authoritarian forces here. But can progressives, as one Washington, D.C.-based solidarity leader famously said, “walk and chew gum at the same time?” The fight for economic equality, shared prosperity, and dignity is global, and should be fought on multiple fronts. Zimbabwe needs urgent material aid and visible public support.

Material aid programs can create a lifeline, and the donor collaborative ZimAlliance has a solid track record of delivering financial and humanitarian support to community-based organizations in Zimbabwe. ZimAlliance also provides legal and bail assistance funds for police and military targets, including opposition party members, journalists, human rights activists, and labor leaders.

TrustAfrica, a Dakar-based 501(c)(3) philanthropy, serves as both fiscal manager and grants administrator for the Alliance. You can make a direct credit card donation to the ZimAlliance here.

Social media is also useful. According to one source, social media in Zimbabwe has flagged missing persons and ongoing abductions. The absence of immediate social media attention can lead to total disappearances or brutal murders that the state can simply deny any knowledge.

In response to police violence this summer, Zimbabweans launched the #Zimbabweanlivesmatter and #Zimbabwelivesmatter, which garnered tweets from national artists across Africa, Zimbabwe’s Diaspora, and global figures, including President Barack Obama. Use your social media platforms to keep the public eye on Zimbabwe. On Facebook and Twitter, share, tweet, and retweet: #Zimbabwelivesmatter and #Zimbabweanlivesmatter.

A Manifesto for Our Times: the Challenge to Abolish Systemic Racism

Alice Walker, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jeff Mackler, et al.

Massive opposition to SYSTEMIC RACISM… a racism and the inseparable generalized social inequality that permeate every institution in U.S. society, are the only serious explanations for the magnificent, unprecedented, defiant daily multi-racial mass mobilizations in 2000+ U.S. cities and towns. In the face of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic and police repression courageous millions have taken to the streets. The resounding declarations of Black Lives Matter! and No Justice, No Peace! have reverberated across the world. An unprecedented 84 percent of the U.S. population, according to CNN polls, agree with the anti-racist demonstrators.

It is this SYSTEMIC RACISM, not just the police murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks, that has infuriated the vast majority. That daily racist police murders of unarmed Blacks has been the norm for decades is no longer denied with impunity. Minneapolis is but one example: Twenty percent of the population of 430,000 is Black. But when the police employ violence — with kicks, chokeholds, punches, shoves, takedowns, Mace and Tasers — nearly 60 percent of their victims are Black – seven times the rate of whites. Sixty-three percent of those recently killed by Minneapolis police – 19 people – were Black; 17 percent – or 5 people – were white.

INGRAINED RACISM: And a century and a half before these murders, during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era, 1865 to 1876, 2,000 racist lynchings of Black men, women and children were recorded, that is, after the Emancipation Proclamation. And another 4,400 lynchings between 1877 and 1950. And countless more since. And two more in Los Angeles last week. And four looped lynch ropes ominously tied to trees in an Oakland, CA park just days ago!

SYSTEMIC RACISM: That is, the school-to-prison scenario, where ever-segregated, underfunded schools in the communities of the poor “graduate” near majorities of functionally illiterate students channeled into the ever-privatized-for profit mass incarceration prison-industrial-complex to work at Fortune 500 corporations at slave wages rates averaging 50 cents per hour. Half of the incarcerated are people of color. The nation that ranks first in the number of billionaires ranks first in the number and percentage of its population in jail.

SYSTEMIC RACISM: When COVID-19 deaths of Blacks, Latinx and Native Americans are nearly triple the rate of whites and quality health care, if any health care, is absent for the great majority.

SYSTEMIC RACISM in the poverty wage, part time, “gig” economy, “flexible” workforce largely of the poorest “essential workers” forced back to work in deadly unsafe/unprotected conditions to boost the profits of corporate America. The common racist wage differential applies more than ever today; “The darker the skin color, the lower the wage rates.” And triply so for the lowest rungs of the scale largely occupied by poor, Black women.

SYSTEMIC RACISM AND CLASS EXPLOITATION when $trillions in the recent CARE corporate bailout legislation were gifted to behemoth corporations – with a handful of billionaires getting $457 billion – while a one-time pittance is allocated, if at all, to exploited and oppressed working people.

SYSTEMIC RACISM when 43 percent of the military’s soldiers are Black, Brown and Native American people – victims of the economic draft – and trained to police the world at a cost one $trillion annually while our cities decay, our environment destroyed, our waters polluted, our schools fail, our health care disappears, our jobs deemed obsolete, our wages cut, our children go hungry and our hopes for a better future increasingly dashed.

Today, with undaunted millions in the streets, frightened figures in power have conceded more in days than in multiple decades, indeed centuries. Statues honoring the secessionist slaveocracy have been removed at the hands of the people and even by decree of local and state governments and in the nation’s capital. Their portraits have been ordered disappeared from the halls of Congress. Promises of “police reform” have been instantly announced in cities across the country. Generations of racist brutality and discrimination are pledged to be remedied with the passage of a piece of paper. Buildings honoring racist Klan member U.S. senators and their ilk have been instantly renamed. A handful of police chiefs have resigned. A few racist cops have been charged with murder and may be convicted in contrast to yesterday where such charges, not to mention convictions were the rarest of exceptions.

Spectacle of U.S. troops taking the knee

Even the nation’s leading generals, who oversee U.S. imperial wars of intervention around the world, counseled caution with regard to sending active duty troops, 43 percent of whom are people color, to quell the massive anti-racist protests. “The right of the people peaceably to assemble,” they asserted, rather than be subjected to threats of martial law, at least for now, had to be respected. At least for now! No doubt the rebellious spectacle of U.S. troops taking the knee or otherwise fraternizing with rather than repressing their sisters and brothers was a risk to be avoided. And Juneteenth, June 19, when federal troops arrived in Texas in 1865 to announce the end of slavery, is to be declared a national holiday. That is supposed to fix everything.

Where do we go from here?

We begin with the proposition that the term police reform is an oxymoron. Derek Chauvin’s knee has been on our necks for four centuries. His police ancestors were the slave patrols of yesteryear formed to track down escaped slaves. They were the post Civil War police who arrested en masse Black Code designated “vagrants” turned into instant prisoners transferred to plantation chain gangs to work free for former slave owners; they were the racist Bull Connor heads of Birmingham’s Public Safety Commission hired to enforce the state’s “separate but equal” Jim Crow laws; they were and remain the scab-herding cops employed to break union strikes and club civil rights demonstrators. They are all part of the system’s inherent function to maintain the social order of the few against the vast majority.

Abolitionist Frederick Douglass said it well, “Power cedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will.”

Malcolm X, a century later came to the same conclusion, “Power never takes a back step – only in the face of more power.” Malcolm added: “I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. too: “Since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.”

The instant largely cosmetic concessions won to date in a matter of days and weeks affirm what Frederick Douglas, Malcolm X and Dr. King learned from bitter struggle – with regard to Malcolm X and Dr. King at the cost of their lives taken with the full knowledge, if not complicity, of the government’s spies.

SYSTEMIC RACISM in U.S. society will be fundamentally altered only with profound changes in relations of power between those who hold and abuse it, and their victims – between the one percent who own nearly half the wealth of the nation and the vast majority who live pay check to paycheck, and the Black, Latinx and Native Americans who are compelled to live on even less.

Democratic Community Control: The Right of Self-determination

The right of Black, Brown and Native American people to democratically control and govern their own lives and communities will emerge today with the formation of new, united and independent organizations dedicated to the freedom struggle in all its manifestations. The struggle to disarm, defund, and disband the racist institutions of police power can only be envisioned in this context – in a political, social and economic framework where the $billions spent on the institutions of racist police repression can be deployed to defend and safeguard our interests not theirs – where the $trillions spent on bailing out the corporate elite, and the $trillions more transferred to them in “tax reform” bills will be spent on re-building the nation’s poor neighborhoods, inner cities, and tribal lands.

The movement we aspire to bring forth in alliance with all exploited working people will fight for:

* Free quality health care and education for all from the cradle to the grave, including generalized virus testing and PPE now!

* An end to all evictions and foreclosures during this COVID-19 pandemic and depression era! Limitations on rent to no more than 20 percent of household income!

* $Billions for human needs not endless wars of imperial intervention and murder. No to sanction wars, drone wars, Secret Operation wars, death squad assassination wars and privatized army wars!

* An end to racist deportations. Tear down the walls! Full amnesty and equal rights for all! No human being is illegal!

* An end to the violence and discrimination against women and LGBTQI+ people!

* Save the earth! Stop the impending fossil fuel-induced climate catastrophe. Nationalize the entire fossil fuel corporate monopolies for a rapid transition to a safe, ecologically sustainable energy system. Jobs for all at a living wage for all replaced workers during the transition! No to environmental racism and to toxic waste dumping!

UNITY! UNITY! UNITY!

The example of the most poor and oppressed uniting to advance their freedom struggle has already inspired working people of all races and creeds to join in wholeheartedly. The courageous spectacle of unprecedented numbers of inspired white youth standing firm and side by side with their Black, Latinx and Native American sisters and brothers, in defiance of curfews, police clubs and exploding noxious gas grenades, portends wondrous victories to be won now and in the immediate future. The construction of ever-broadening united coalitions and movements to advance humanity’s best aspirations for a new world where SYSTEMIC RACISM and SYSTEMIC INEQUALITY and SYSTEMIC SEXISM and MISOGENY are truly relegated to history’s distant and dark past is within our reach. What was impossible, unimaginable, unexpected, unthinkable yesterday is on the order of the day today.

Thanking the Founding Fathers for Our Constitutional Mess?

Melvin A. Goodman

 

“On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

– H.L. Mencken

“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.”

– H.L. Mencken

We cannot blame the Founding Fathers for the “democracy” that we have because we don’t truly have a democracy.  In fact, the Founding Fathers did everything they could to avoid the possibility that the entire citizenry would have an essential role in electing our government.  After all, they created the Electoral College that placed Donald Trump in the White House in 2016…and could keep him there for another four years.

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were antidemocratic and conspired to restrain the “turbulence and follies of democracy” and what a New York delegate referred to as “popular phrenzy.”  The brilliant nationalist from New York, Alexander Hamilton, who has been lionized for all time in the popular play by Lin-Manuel Miranda, emphasized that “all communities divide themselves into the few and the many.”  According to Hamilton, the few were the “rich and well-born,” and the many were the “mass of the people…who were “turbulent and changing” and “seldom judge or determine right.”  Hamilton believed it was vital to give the “rich” a “distinct permanent share in the government.” James Madison prevailed; he believed it would suffice to create strong institutional filters on the powers of the ordinary citizen.

The most important “filter” was the Electoral College, which meant the President would be chosen not directly by the voters, but by electors chosen by the states.  In Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers required each state to “appoint…a number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives” to select a president.  Similarly, the Senate would be chosen indirectly, and the Supreme Court would be chosen by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate.  Only Benjamin Franklin spoke up forcefully for the “virtue and public spirit of our common people.”

Over the past two hundred years, hundreds of bill have been introduced in the House of Representatives to abolish or reform the Electoral College, which the late Senator Estes Kefauver (D-TN) in 1961 called a “loaded pistol pointed at our system of government.”  The closest the Congress got to reform was in 1969 when it passed a constitutional amendment to create a binding national vote.  It had the support of President Richard M. Nixon, but it died in the Senate where southern segregationists killed it.

We have known for two centuries that the Electoral College was a flawed institution.  In the election of 1824, Andrew Jackson won the popular vote and a plurality of the electoral vote.  The election, however, was decided by the House of Representatives where John Quincy Adams gained the support of Henry Clay be offering him the position of Secretary of State.  This was known as the “corrupt bargain,” and Jackson campaigned successfully on the basis of the corrupt bargain to defeat Adams in 1828.  Then there was the mess of 1876, which wasn’t settled until several days before the inauguration, when the Democratic candidate, Samuel Tilden, allowed his Republican opponent, Rutherford Hayes, to enter the White House in return for removing Federal troops from the South and thus putting an ending to Reconstruction.

In the past two decades, the electoral college gave us George W. Bush and Donald Trump, who were not popularly elected.  Al Gore had more than 500,000 votes than Bush, and Hillary Clinton had nearly three million more votes than Trump.  Our history would have been far different with different electoral outcomes.  Bush’s deceitful invasion of Iraq in 2003 is only one example.

In view of the current imbroglio over an appointment to the Supreme Court, the eventual confirmation of Trump’s third justice will mean that two presidents without a popular majority (Bush and Trump) will have placed five judges on the court, creating the most conservative court in American history.  There is overwhelming popular support for the Affordable Care Act and women’s right to an abortion, but five conservatives could end both.

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have passed resolutions to create a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that would force electors to vote in favor of the winner of the national election and not their own state elections.  These states and the District represent 196 electoral votes, so additional states are needed to represent an additional 74 electoral votes.  Today, every electoral vote in the small state of Wyoming represents 90,000 votes, while every electoral vote in the state of California, which is the fifth largest economy in the world, represents 715,000 votes.  When James Madison, who drafted so much of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, was asked to explain why the Founding Fathers accepted the Electoral College, he admitted that they were tired and impatient.

The Founding Fathers did additional damage in Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution that gave state legislatures the power to establish the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections.”  This important power should not be in the hands of partisans or even bipartisans, but in the hands of nonpartisans.  The Founding Fathers believed that allowing state legislatures to enact election procedures would ensure control, but it is state legislatures that are threatening the count of mail-in and absentee ballots as well as the clarity of election results.

An excellent example of a state official threatening the sanctity of a free and fair election is taking place in Ohio where federal courts have been unable to enforce fairness.  A federal judge in Ohio has ordered the State of Ohio to allow more that one drop box per county for ballots.  Ohio’s Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, has ignored the judge’s order and, as a result, the 800,000 voters in Hamilton County (Cincinnati); the 1.23 million voters in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), the 500,000 voters in Summit County (Akron) and in Montgomery County (Dayton); and the 1.3 million voters in Franklin County (Columbus) will have only one drop box.  These boxes, moreover will be moved from accessible downtown locations to far less accessible suburbs. LaRose contended that the judge’s order came too late to respond.

The Congress created more potential confusion in 1887, when it passed the Electoral Count Act to resolve disputed elections by declaring that State electoral results that are submitted six days before the meeting of the Electoral College will be considered “conclusive.”  The Electoral College meets in each state capitol on December 14th, and it is possible that this year’s vote count will not meet the deadline.  Any delays, moreover, simply allow Trump and his  “personal lawyer,” Attorney General William Barr, more grist for the mill of a flawed election.

Many of the original anti-democratic features of the Constitution have been addressed by creating direct elections to the Senate and full participation in elections for women and Blacks.  But, In addition to reforming or abolishing the Electoral College, we need to return to the Emoluments clauses in the Constitution, which Trump has observed in the breach; the importance of releasing tax returns, which probably is the key to understanding Trump’s obsequious posture toward Russia; and to ensure that never again can the Attorney General and the Department of Justice serve as the personal lawyer and law firm of the president.  Of course, the most loathsome aspect of the Constitution was the moral failure of dealing with slavery, the “peculiar institution,” and introducing the three-fifths clause to allow southern states to get a third more seats in the House of Representatives and a third more electoral votes.

Australian police not charged over death of Aboriginal woman

Karen Maxwell

Last month, the Victorian state Labor government’s Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) announced that no charges would be laid against the police officers involved in the death of Aboriginal woman Tanya Day, nearly three years ago. She died from a brain haemorrhage while being held by the police for four hours.

Neither the DPP nor the government gave any reasons for this decision. The DPP did not even directly inform Day’s family and their lawyers.

In a statement issued through the Human Rights Law Centre, Day’s family said prosecutors seemed to have based their conclusion on “a police investigation that we have said all along was flawed and lacked independence.” They added: “We are devastated and angry. The two police officers who failed to properly check on our mum, have been let off. It is not good enough that such an important decision was made behind closed doors, without any input from our family or the broader Aboriginal community.”

Tanya Day (Credit: instagram.com/justicefortanyaday)

The circumstances of Day’s death, and the failure to hold any police officer to account, shows the increasing impunity with which the forces of the state treat the poorest and most oppressed sections of the working class, especially Aboriginal workers and young people.

On December 5, 2017, Day, a 55-year-old grandmother, travelled on a train in country Victoria to visit her youngest daughter in Melbourne. After she fell asleep, the conductor deemed her to be “unruly” and called police to remove her when the train pulled in at Castlemaine station. Police took her off the train at 3.14 p.m., arresting her for “public drunkenness,” and drove her to the Castlemaine police station in a divvy van. She was placed in a cell at 4 p.m., to “sober up.”

Day received no medical or welfare assistance, even though, in her intoxicated state, she was unbalanced and presented a high risk of falling. CCTV footage captured her stumbling, falling and knocking her head against cement on four occasions.

Sergeant Edwina Neale was asked during the inquest why she conducted no falls risk assessment before placing Day in the cell. Neale said she did not know the arrested woman had the potential to fall. When it was suggested that she could have taken Day to hospital for observation, rather than a prison cell, Neale replied that she had never taken anyone to hospital because they were “merely drunk.”

While Day was in the cell alone, “physical checks” on her welfare consisted of Leading Senior Constable Danny Wolters taking a glance through venetian blinds on the cell window, and engaging in a quick verbal exchange, all in the space of 6 or 7 seconds. At 4.50 p.m., Day fell forward and hit her forehead hard against the wall. This impact caused a brain haemorrhage that remained undetected until police entered the cell at 8.03 p.m. to prepare her for release.

From 6.38 p.m. onward, Day lay on the floor of the cell. This was observed by Wolters during a check at 6.42 p.m. Neale said she did not check on Day because, “she’s an intoxicated human being who was sleeping on the floor, which is not unusual for intoxicated people.”

At 8.03 p.m., Neale and Wolters entered the cell but could not rouse Day to full consciousness. They observed an oval-shaped bruise on her forehead and called for an ambulance. Day was taken to a regional hospital in Bendigo, and then transferred to a hospital in Melbourne, where she died from her injuries 17 days later.

For all deaths in custody, the standard process is an initial investigation by the police themselves, via the Professional Standards Command. The actual purpose of this procedure is to ensure that officers escape any accountability. A coroner’s investigator (also a police officer) then carries out an “investigation,” and the results are handed to a coroner, who conducts an inquest.

On average, these inquests occur two years after the victim’s death. The inquest is designed to create the illusion of a transparent and independent process, while the role of the coroner is only to “determine causal factors and identify systemic failures with a view to preventing similar deaths from occurring in the future” (as explained in the coroner’s report into Day’s death).

Typically, inquests end with toothless recommendations, similar to those of previous inquests, and nothing changes.

Day’s coronial inquest began in August 2019. Coroner Caitlin English announced her findings seven months later, in April 2020. She found that Neale and Wolters had taken “a minimised approach to the medical needs” of Day. She said the “quality of the checks, indicated by their speed, did not meet the standards of the official guidelines,” resulting in their failure “to take proper care of Ms Day’s safety, health and welfare.”

English also found that Wolters was not a credible witness due to apparent “contradictions” in his evidence. These related to the officer’s evidence, in which he asserted: “I didn’t ever actually see her hit her head at any stage.”

Yet in the emergency call that Wolters made to Ambulance Victoria, he is recorded as saying: “She has fallen over in the cells. I seen her slip over an hour ago.”

The paramedic who arrived first at the police station, Sarah Harrup, stated in her evidence that she clearly recalled Wolters describing the fall to her, and she inferred from this that he had witnessed it on CCTV. In her electronic patient record, Harrup had written: “Approx 7 p.m., police witnessed the patient, via cell camera, roll from a slouched/seated position on the bed (approx. 30 cm high), and strike her forehead on the ground. States that patient immediately got up (denies loss of consciousness).”

The coroner noted that during the inquest, Wolters had rejected the accuracy of the paramedics’ accounts. She added that due to Wolters’ lack of credibility, her ability to accept other aspects of his testimony was “impaired.”

English directed that the case be referred to the DPP for a criminal investigation, as an indictable offence may have occurred. But the DPP declared on August 27 that no such offence had occurred.

Among her recommendations, English called for the abolition of the criminal offence of public drunkenness. Day’s arrest had been made solely on the basis of that law.

Such a recommendation was made nearly 30 years ago, in 1991, by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, but the Victorian and Queensland state governments have refused to implement it.

The Hawke federal Labor government launched the Royal Commission in 1987, to head off growing public indignation with the mounting numbers of unexplained deaths of Aboriginal people in custody. Tanya Day’s uncle, Harrison Day, was one of the deaths investigated by the Royal Commission.

No police officer was charged with homicide as a result of the Royal Commission, giving a green light for killings to continue. Since 1991, 434 Aboriginal people have died in custody, and not a single police officer has been charged.

In December 2019, the indigenous incarceration rate was 2,536 per 100,000, compared to 218 per 100,000 for non-indigenous people. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders make up 2 percent of the Australian population, but 27 percent of prisoners.

While systemic racism is clearly involved, indigenous people, along with immigrants, refugees and working class youth, are victimised because they are the among the most impoverished and vulnerable layers of the working class.

The purpose of the Royal Commission, and the hundreds of coronial inquests that have followed, has been to promote the illusion that the capitalist state can be pressured into reducing its violence against the working class, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike. The DPP’s decision to lay no charges over Tanya Day’s death is a signal that both Labor and Liberal-National governments will continue to provide police with a free hand to commit such crimes with impunity, as the economic and social crisis pervading the lives of ordinary working people escalates throughout the country.

Indian and Chinese militaries dig in for prolonged border standoff, as “de-escalation” efforts flounder

Rohantha De Silva & Keith Jones

The latest attempt to defuse the more than five-month-long India-China border dispute and avert a catastrophic military clash between the rival nuclear-armed powers appears to be floundering.

Since their foreign ministers met Sept. 10 on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, Indian and Chinese officials have held just one substantive meeting to discuss pulling back the tens of thousands of troops, tanks, and fighter jets each has “forward” deployed at or near their disputed, 3,470 kilometer-long Himalayan border. Held on Sept. 21, that meeting ended after more than 10 hours of talks, with only an agreement the two sides would meet again at an undetermined future date.

Each side is adamant that the onus is on the other to initiate “de-escalation” by withdrawing troops they claim have crossed over onto their side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the countries’ de facto border.

Encouraged by Washington, India has taken an increasingly belligerent and provocative stance.

Publicly, India continues to depict its troops’ seizure in late August of a series of strategic heights near Pangong Lake, which traverses the junction between Chinese-held Aksai Chin and Indian-held Ladakh, as a defensive action taken to preempt imminent Chinese “aggression.”

However, India’s far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and military have let it be known, through planted media leaks, that the seizure of a half-dozen “tactically vital” Kailash Range mountain-tops was, in fact, planned weeks in advance, and involved several thousand troops.

“The top brass and field officers sat with the drawing board,” a source in the security establishment told the Indian Express. “Each and every move, to the last detail, was mapped. And just before the operations, reconnaissance was carried out. It took close to a month to do all this, in complete secrecy. With some luck on our side, it was achieved without too much fuss.”

An Indian intelligence officer elaborated: “There were three forces at our disposal—the Special Frontier Force (SFF), the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and, of course, the Indian Army. Units were specifically picked to take over particular heights with SFF commandos leading at many places. … The Chinese continue to dominate Black Top and Helmet Top, but we have surrounded them on heights around it.”

The BJP government’s ordering of this reckless action, which has been all but universally celebrated by the Indian media and political establishment, attests to its readiness to risk triggering a large-scale armed clash with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Such a clash, given the fraught character of Sino-Indian relations and the surge in world geopolitical tensions—above all, Washington’s all-sided diplomatic, economic, and military-strategic offensive against Beijing—could easily cascade into all-out war, invariably drawing in other major powers.

With Beijing insisting that India must withdraw from the positions it took on Aug. 29-30 before it will pull back any of its own troops, and New Delhi adamant that it will not relinquish its tactical advantage until China has stood down at multiple border hot-spots, both sides are apparently digging in for a long, tense standoff.

According to Indian news reports, the Indian military is rapidly erecting shelters and other infrastructure that will allow it to sustain its deployments in the coming winter months in what is inhospitable mountainous terrain. These include positions nearly 15,000 feet (4,570 metres) above sea-level.

With the government’s assent, the Indian military has also effectively repudiated a 1996 Sino-Indian agreement barring their troops from resorting to live-fire encounters along the LAC. Indian Army personnel are under orders, reported the Economic Times last week, to “shoot” Chinese troops if they attempt to dislodge them using “improvised weapons.”

Indian army officers wearing masks as a precaution against the coronavirus walk past the funeral pyre of their colleague Colonel B. Santosh Babu, at Suryapet, about 140 kilometers (87.5 miles) from Hyderabad, India, Thursday, June 18, 2020. (AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.)

On the night of June 15, 20 Indian soldiers, including a colonel and an unknown number of PLA troops were killed in a savage clash fought with knives and clubs on a ridge in the Galwan Valley. But neither side violated the agreement not to resort to live-fire.

India also used the official induction on Sept. 10 of the first five of the 36 fifth-generation Rafale fighter jets it has purchased from France to send a message to Beijing.

“The induction of Rafale,” tweeted Defence Minster Rajnath Singh, “is a very important step in light of the security conditions that prevail, or I would say, that have been created along India’s borders.”

Speaking to the press yesterday, the head of India’s air force, Air Chief Marshal R.K.S. Bhadauria boasted about the role the Rafale fighter jets and recently purchased US-made Apache and Chinook helicopters and Globemaster transport planes are playing in the border conflict.

Emphasizing that the Indian military is in a heightened state of war readiness, the air marshal declared, “The present security scenario along our northern frontiers is at an uneasy no war no peace status. Our defence forces are prepared for any eventuality.”

Like India, Beijing has deployed some 50,000 troops and advanced weaponry along the LAC, and has issued, particularly through the state-owned Global Times, its own provocative threats of military action against India.

But there is a striking dichotomy between the importance the India-China border dispute is being accorded by their countries’ respective media outlets, and in the role it is playing in their internal politics.

While Beijing portrays the border dispute as a secondary issue and publicly contends that the differences between India and China over the LAC should not be allowed to define their bilateral relationship, the Indian ruling elite claims Chinese “aggression” constitutes an existential threat.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP government are using the border crisis to divert attention from the health and socioeconomic catastrophe triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Its ill-prepared lockdown, and even more ruinous “reopening” have resulted in a pandemic that is raging across the country, and in mass deprivation. As of yesterday, India had more than 6 million COVID-19 cases and 96,318 deaths, respectively the world’s second and third highest tallies. While there has been a slight rebound from the 23.9 percent GDP contraction India suffered between April and June, tens of millions have lost their livelihood and hundreds of millions have seen their meagre incomes shrink.

By whipping up bellicose nationalism, the far-right BJP government seeks to paint opposition, above all from the working class, as “anti-national,” if not outright seditious, and thereby legitimize its suppression.

With strong support from the dominant sections of India’s ruling elite, the BJP government is also using the border crisis to integrate India still more completely into the US strategic offensive against Beijing.

Recent weeks have seen a flurry of new initiatives to strengthen strategic ties with Washington and its most important Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia. This includes steps to jointly counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and to prod US and Japan-based companies to transfer production from China to India, and make India an alternate manufacturing production chain hub.

Yesterday, India announced that the US-led Quad—a “strategic dialogue” between the US, Japan, Australia, and India—will take place when its foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, visits Tokyo next week. The Oct. 6 meeting is expected to announce enhanced intelligence sharing among the four, and explore the possibility of joint military exercises. Recently, India’s Chief of Defence Staff, Bipin Rawat, said the Quad could become the means of ensuring “freedom of navigation” in the Indian Ocean, a statement widely interpreted as an Indian offer to mount joint naval patrols with the US and its closest allies.

During his visit to Japan, Jaishankar will also hold bilateral talks with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and his Japanese and Australian counterparts, respectively Motegi Toshimitsu and Marise Payne.

Washington demonstratively intruded into the current Indo-Chinese border dispute within days of its eruption last May. In marked contrast from its public professions of neutrality during the 10-week standoff between Indian and Chinese troops on the Doklam Plateau in 2017, Washington labelled China the aggressor.

In the ensuing five months, both the Trump administration and its Democratic opponents have repeatedly drawn parallels between the tensions along India and China’s Himalayan border, and the US-fomented South China dispute.

Desperate to thwart China’s rise, Washington is recklessly inciting India, both to increase pressure on Beijing and so as to harness the Indian bourgeoisie still more tightly to its reckless and incendiary drive for world hegemony, with potentially incalculable consequences for the people of the region and the world.

US National Security Council Director for South and Central Asia, Lisa Curtis, told a Sept. 17 webinar, titled “India in the Indo-Pacific: New Delhi’s Theater of Opportunity,” the India-China border dispute has “further reinforced the importance of the US-India strategic partnership and it has strengthened the US resolve to work towards building that relationship as a bulwark against Chinese aggression.”

Speaking at the same webinar and in the same vein, Shivshankar Menon, India’s National Security Adviser under the previous Congress Party-led government, said that while formally India is not a treaty ally of the US, it is increasingly ready to act in concert with Washington and do things for US imperialism in the manner of a treaty ally.

Said Menon, “Many more people would accept that idea that we would start doing things with the US, for the US, that actually US allies would do—without an alliance." …

“I think,” he continued, “the actual practice of interoperability, of taking on particular roles and of fitting into a larger common strategy—I don’t see that being problematic today.”

Duterte extends Philippines “state of calamity” as pandemic worsens

Owen Howell

Faced with a pandemic that is spreading out of control and a deepening economic crisis, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced last week that a “state of calamity” would be extended for an entire year.

Imposed in March, the six-month state of calamity recently expired. The extension, until September 2021, may be lifted or prolonged further as circumstances warrant, the president told a news conference.

The state of calamity allows national and local governments to draw emergency funds from anywhere in the country, in order to address the economic slowdown caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Officials are also able to control the prices of basic commodities like rice and cooking oil, the government proclamation explained.

Moreover, the measures permit a rapid mobilisation of police and military forces when summoned by the government. Duterte followed the declaration by ordering all law enforcement agencies to ensure “peace and order” in areas affected by the pandemic.

Duterte reviewing troops (Credit: Presidential Communications Operations Office)

The Duterte administration first introduced emergency measures on March 17 when the number of infections was nearing 200, with around a dozen deaths. The figures have since soared to more than 307,000 confirmed cases and over 5,400 deaths. Due to extremely low testing rates and incorrect data, the real numbers are undoubtedly higher.

In an attempt to justify the extended emergency powers, Duterte claimed there had been “significant strides” in the pandemic response, BenarNews reported. However, “the number of COVID-19 positive cases and deaths continue to rise despite efforts and interventions to contain the same.”

The truth is that the health crisis has been grossly neglected in favour of implementing repressive police-state measures and reopening businesses as quickly as possible.

Aside from the continued lack of testing and contact tracing across the archipelago, hospitals and other medical facilities remain grossly understaffed. There are approximately 65 doctors and nurses per 10,000 people in the Philippines. Hundreds of thousands of nursing graduates remain unemployed, despite the urgent need for new staff.

Health workers are underpaid, overworked, and often lack appropriate protection from the virus, leading some to describe themselves as “priso-nurses.” Thousands have appealed to the government to be allowed to travel abroad to earn a living, Reuters reported earlier this month.

The government said a partial lockdown would be enforced in the central city of Iloilo for two weeks due to infection spikes. Yet, the Boracay Island beach resort in a nearby region was planned to reopen to local tourists.

Efforts to revive the tourism industry, a key source of the country’s revenue, are drawing criticism. A newly constructed artificial beach in Manila Bay, designed to benefit nearby waterfront hotels, has come under fire from social media and public commentators. Many suggested the millions of pesos used to fund the project should have been invested in containing the pandemic.

On September 14, even as the country reached a record-high 259 coronavirus deaths in one day, the government decided to incrementally reduce the minimum physical distancing on public transport to just 30 cm. Epidemiologists pleaded with the government to reconsider its increased abandonment of restrictions. “This will be risky, reckless and counter-intuitive and will delay the flattening of the curve,” Anthony Leachon, ex-president of the Philippine College of Physicians, told news channel ANC.

Duterte has utilised the pandemic to ramp up state repression, continuing to incite extrajudicial executions with impunity. These killings are carried out under the name of a “war on drugs” that has claimed an estimated 30,000 lives since Duterte’s election in 2016.

Duterte responded last week to critics of the extended state of calamity who accused his administration of not doing enough to address the public health crisis. “What ‘enough’ do you want?” he declared. “There are hospitals, beds and funeral parlours. Everything is there… The only thing that we can do, really, is to wear a mask, wear a face mask, and that’s it and wait for the vaccine.”

Duterte has staked his pandemic response on a vaccine being available by December and leaving the nation “better off” by January.

This is essentially an admission that no serious action to curb the spreading virus will be taken, as the government presses on with its economic reopening, with scant regard to the cost to lives. The extension of emergency measures comes as the extent of the pandemic’s economic and social impact is becoming clearer to the Filipino ruling elites.

Gross domestic product is expected to fall to its worst rate in at least 36 years, surpassing the 1984 debt crisis during the waning years of President Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship. The ASEAN +3 Macroeconomic and Research Office (AMRO) has projected that the economy, one of the fastest-growing in the region before the pandemic, will contract by as much as 7.6 percent this year, a sharp reversal from the almost 6 percent growth in 2019.

The shrinkage will be compounded by declining foreign remittances, a major prop for domestic consumption and local growth. Around 600,000 overseas workers had been repatriated as of mid-August, adding to the rising pool of unemployed. More than 10 million people so far have lost their jobs due to the pandemic.

Millions are reportedly threatened with starvation, with broad sections of the working poor in Manila forced to gather scraps of food on the streets. In a short film documenting the growth of poverty and social inequality, Channel News Asia spoke with an impoverished informal worker, Bernadette Sablaza, 64, who said: “We’re not afraid of COVID. We’re afraid of dying from hunger.”

The intensifying anger within the working class and rural masses is fuelling a crisis within the political establishment. While his approval ratings plummet and his administration is discredited in the eyes of millions, Duterte is accusing Vice President Leni Robredo, leader of the opposition, of undermining his handling of the pandemic.

Robredo, who sits in Duterte’s cabinet but heads the Liberal Party, has begun to openly question the administration’s delayed economic stimulus packages and reliance on a future vaccine. She speaks for factions of the ruling class that demand further corporate restructuring and bailouts, and a closer alignment with the United States against China.

This establishment opposition to Duterte is backed by the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). After assisting and supporting Duterte’s rise to power in 2015–2016, the CPP and its allied organisations are now trying to channel the hatred of workers and youth toward Duterte behind pro-US factions of the bourgeoisie, including the military.

Zambia seeks suspension of debt service payments in Africa’s first pandemic-related default

Stephan McCoy

President Edgar Lungu’s government has asked international bond holders to suspend interest payment demands on US$3 billion worth of international bonds beginning this October.

The bonds, issued since 2012, are just part of Zambia’s $12 billion debts that have increased from 20 percent of GDP to 78 percent. Several reports estimate the real debt figures are at least double the official statistics, mostly due to off-balance-sheet loans from China for public-private partnership infrastructure deals that may include the underlying assets as collateral.

Two-thirds of the bondholders must agree to the deferral for Zambia’s plan to proceed in a meeting set for September 29.

The freeze of debt servicing, if agreed, would be the first de-facto African debt default on private creditors since the start of pandemic, with Angola, Ethiopia and Ghana also seen as likely to default and Kenya saying it is at risk of debt distress. Chad has asked Glencore Plc, the world’s largest commodities trader, and other private lenders to suspend $100 million in payments on its debts this year.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), more than a third of African countries are approaching debt distress, prompting fears in world markets that there will be a run on bond markets as other African countries move to default on their debt.

It testifies to the scale of the economic disaster affecting much of sub-Saharan Africa. Head of fixed-income research at Tellimer Ltd. in London, Stuart Stevens told Bloomberg, “Zambia may open the door for other distressed sovereigns. The longer the pandemic persists, and the longer it takes for countries to recover, the higher the likelihood that countries that already had weaknesses coming into the crisis will have to restructure.”

Zambia’s economic crisis has been years in the making. The country recorded growth in the decade following debt relief in 2005 up to 2015, but IMF-dictated privatization of major state-owned companies, particularly the country’s copper mines—its main source of income—led to drastic cuts in government expenditure and social welfare programs. Social protection measures have fallen to just 2.4 percent of the 2020 budget.

Heavily dependent on multinational copper mining corporations that are notorious for paying barely any taxes, the government saw its budget deficit rise to 10.9 percent of GDP in 2019.

In April, when Glencore, the British multinational commodity trading and mining company headquartered in Switzerland, sought to mothball Zambia’s Mopani Copper Mines, the government blocked the move as illegal and threatened to revoke Glencore’s licence, in order to bolster its own position in the Copperbelt province ahead of next year’s elections.

Glencore is anxious to sell off its stake in the mine to the government, but it is far from clear how the government can pay for it and fund the mine’s running costs. Zambia’s total foreign exchange reserves stood at $1.43 billion at the end of June, equivalent to just 2.3 months of import cover, according to the central bank.

The Zambian ruling class presides over staggering levels of social inequality and poverty. One in every two Zambians lives below the poverty line. Only 700,000 of the nearly 8 million Zambians living in poverty are on any sort of social protection program. 90 percent of the workforce is in the informal sector—with the large majority working in agriculture. Of those working in the informal sector, 90 percent earn their salary on a day-to-day basis.

The onset of the pandemic-led recession saw copper prices fall by up to 16 percent as global demand plummeted. The currency fell 28 percent against the US dollar, on top of a 21 percent fall in 2019, while inflation rose to 16 percent, exacerbating the dire plight of Zambian workers and their families.

The government is accelerating the back-to-work drive as the economic situation in the country worsens. President Lungu announced the reopening of schools, colleges, and universities—closed since March 20—between September 14 and 18, along with bars and other entertainment venues.

It is now attempting to push teachers and students back to school so that parents can be herded back into the workplace to resume pumping out profits for multinational corporations and the national bourgeoisie. The government has utilized a temporary lull in the number of cases, and according to the government the “insignificant number of pupils and students who have contracted” COVID-19 in earlier examination classes, to justify a further lifting of restrictions.

While some 14,550 cases have been confirmed and 332 deaths so far, the virus is guaranteed to spread unchecked as testing remains abysmally low and contact tracing and quarantine measures have virtually been abandoned.

The country’s efforts to secure relief from the IMF have met with opposition from Washington that fears any debt relief given to Zambia would benefit China. Beijing has lent the country $11 billion, much of which is secured against roads, airports and mines, as part of the private-public partnership deals on many infrastructure projects. The IMF has insisted that Zambia resolve these issues before it agrees a loan.

The economic crisis has led to tensions within the ruling class over how to proceed, as the government is reluctant to impose further cuts and tax rises before next year’s elections and with Lungu making ever more erratic and authoritarian moves. The ruling Patriotic Front (PF) has declared Lungu as its presidential candidate, despite controversy regarding his eligibility to run for a third term.

Political repression has increased. Independent media platforms have been shut down, including Prime TV in April this year. Student unions at universities have been suppressed. Prominent activists who questioned the government over issues such as corruption have been harassed by the police, arrested on trumped up charges, or denounced as opposition sympathisers and Western agents.

Amnesty International reported that the police were seen indiscriminately beating up people on the streets and in pubs, after they were found in public during the lockdown. National police spokesperson, Esther Katongo, speaking on national television, said that the police had adopted a strategy to “hit” and “detain” anyone found on the streets. “We hammer you, we hit you, then we do detention. If you escape, you are lucky.”

Last month Lungu fired Denny Kalyalya, the governor of Zambia’s central bank who had worked for years at the World Bank. Grieve Chelwa, a professor at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business said, “There’s been a struggle for control over the central bank… [the firing] might be a response to the government’s failure to push through a constitutional amendment that would remove the responsibility of printing currency from the Bank of Zambia.”

In an effort to deflect rising social discontent outward, the government has ramped up tensions over a long-standing border dispute with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) over a handful of villages in the northeast of the country along the shores of Lake Tanganyika—Kubanga, Kalubamba and Moliro. While the two countries signed a treaty in 1989 to end the dispute, its terms have not been implemented as both sides claim encroachment on their territory. In March, the Zambian government deployed troops to the Congolese side of the border, leading to clashes with one soldier dying on each side.