The UK’s Propaganda Machinery and State Surveillance of Muslim Children

Julian Vigo

On 8 July, it was announced that Ofsted head, Sir Michael Wilshaw, in his advice notes on academies and maintained schools in Birmingham stated that Ofsted’s work to protect children from extremism would be a potential “waste of time” if local authorities did not improve the tracking of pupils in England who leave mainstream education.  A Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Wilshaw  singled out the cities of Birmingham, Luton and Bradford as potential radicalisation hotspots since “missing pupils” could be at risk of exposure to extremism.  Similar to the recent critiques by teachers who claim that they are forced into the role of “front-line storm troopers” to spy on pupils as part of the Prevent strategy, this latest comment by Wilshaw indicates a new low in governmental support for and training of professionals in education to continue this mandate which is proving to do more harm than good, whilst infusing the culture of learning with a side mandate to discriminate wholeheartedly against Muslim students.

I contacted Ofsted’s press office and asked if the location of students was tracked and if this tracking was uniquely related to Muslim students.  The answers I was given reveal the rather problematic and contradictory nature of these policies from Prevent to the handling of students within Ofsted’s mandate. The press office stated, “Ofsted inspects all registered schools against the same framework, regardless of any faith character…[w]herever there is evidence of concern.” Yet, in the very same email I was referred to this letter written by Ofsted Chief Inspector to the Secretary of State which makes reference to “the risks that some young people face, such as female genital mutilation, forced marriage, child sexual exploitation and falling prey to radicalisation.”  This document demonstrates its unique focus and mandate to profile Muslim students while the larger policy pays lips service to the “same framework” discourse.  It is clear to any Muslim parent what profiling looks like despite said policy doled out with a smile and the call for “concern.”

More troubling is the absolute lack of data linking precise acts of radicalisation to what Wilshaw claims to be “more than 250 children who had been removed from a council register without being located.”  When I asked for the data which would back up Wilshaw’s words, Ofsted communicated to me, “[T]his lack of tracking and recording of young people’s whereabouts could be leaving young people at risk, including from radicalisation and extremism.”  Notice the repeated use throughout Ofsted’s policy and press documentation of “could be.”  This means that the Chief Inspector of Education is drawing conclusions about radicalisation to further entrench the need for the profiling of Muslim students while also ensuring that the Prevent strategy is couched within flimsy language, thus guaranteeing the continuance of what is nothing other than an Islamophobic policy.  It is the perfect tautology where could be becomes the code for terrorist grooming.

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) has already come out in full force to critique Prevent rejecting this strategy which was designed to tackle extremism due to concerns that it causes “suspicion in the classroom and confusion in the staffroom.”  Aside from this strategy is the more frightening Research, Information and Communications Unit (Ricu), the UK government’s covert propaganda unit, which is designed to stop Muslims from joining ISIS.  Touting itself as a campaign providing advice on how to raise funds for Syrian refugees using the campaign, Help for Syria, Ricu has distributed leaflets to 760,000 homes throughout the country without alerting the recipients that these were government communications.  The Ricu initiative is contracted to private companies such as Breakthrough Media Network which in addition to Help for Syria has also produced content on Twitter, Facebook, radio, and The Truth about ISIS.

According to one former Breakthrough employee, the communications campaigns were designed according to objectives set by Ricu, and that the government administered the progress of products for which it had final say, underscoring that these messages are targeting “Prevent audiences”:  particularly British male Muslims, aged 15 to 39.  Inspired by Cold War propaganda models such as the Information Research Department founded in 1948 and the United States’s military PSYOPs (Psychological Operations), Ricu is funded by the Prevent programme in part and today its funding is £17m.  Vaunting this programme to the intelligence and security committee,Theresa May stated earlier this year that Ricu was “road-testing some quite innovative approaches to counter-ideological messages.”  The larger problem, however, is how the government is using its various branches of influence to spark fear and distrust, such as the Department of Education where Prevent is in full-force and now the head of Ofsted who signals the “concern” for children who are at “unregistered schools” where “they could be vulnerable to all sorts of influences including radical and extremist thoughts.”  Like the Prevent programme which operates on zero social science and complete conjecture as to what could be, the danger in positing a faction of British society, its youngest Muslim members, as possible radicalised future-terrorists.

Wilshaw’s comments are largely based on the “Trojan Horse” controversy from 2014 where,   Birmingham was at the centre of a controversy which focussed on an alleged plot by a small group of hardline Muslims to take control of a small number of the city’s schools. A leaked document claimed that non-Muslim staff were being removed an operation called Trojan Horse which was set to expand to other cities. Four separate inquiries were launched into the allegations and other claims, including a Birmingham City Council and a Department of Education probe. Ofsted also conducted inspections at 15 city schools. The outcome of these investigations were not conclusive and several reports were issued.  Russell Hobby, general secretary, National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said that his organisation did not “fully support the conclusions” of the Birmingham City Council’s report because of “too narrow a definition of extremism” and the fact that its process and terms of reference were crafted in such a way as to “exclude[s] critical evidence.”

Kevin Courtney, Deputy General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, in his blog, highlights one of the problems for teachers in implementing this strategy:

But there is a danger that the Governments Prevent strategy will close down space for debate which affords young people the opportunity to hear arguments against extremist views from any quarter….This is a crucial issue for teachers and that’s why teachers need support to carry on defending democratic values and tolerance in our classrooms. That tolerance must extend to respect for our Muslim students, the vast majority of whom have no time for the ISIS death cult.

And in speaking with several Muslim parents from London, they have reported feeling that their children are being targeted due to their religion because this is precisely what Prevent enacts—a focus on children which profiles students based upon their religion.

Wilshaw’s advice notes highlight certain perceived problems in certain schools in Birmingham, namely anti-western rhetoric, segregationism, perception of a worldwide conspiracy against Muslim, and intolerance of difference.   The irony, however, is that these notes, point for point, mirror the ethos of the Prevent strategy which is:  mired by anti-Muslim and anti-non-western rhetoric; is extremely segregationist in how it sets up a “we” and a “them; describes a worldwide conspiracy by radical Muslims against the west;  and through its repeated phrasing of British core values, establishes intolerance for anything that might challenge the purity of these values.

So in the forthcoming summer holiday which begins for British pupils this week, while many families will soon be deciding if to go camping, attend the Living Islam Festival, go to Camp Bestival, or even look for things to do in Bosnia or closer to home,  Muslim families must now worry about their movements being studied by government spying manoeuvres such as Ricu and other surveillance tactics covered by Prevent.  The use of such measures breaks a public trust such that there is no way of repairing the human cost of state surveillance and the social atrophy of ethnic and intra-cultural relations that posit one specific religion as toxic in a hyper-xeonophobic, post-Brexit era where British Muslims are certainly not immune to the hazards of looking or sounding “different.”

Power And The Bomb: Conducting International Relations With The Threat Of Mass Murder

Colin Todhunter

“Some fell to the ground and their stomachs already expanded full, burst and organs fell out. Others had skin falling off them and others still were carrying limbs. And one in particular was carrying their eyeballs in their hand.”

The above is an account by a Hiroshima survivor talking about the fate of her schoolmates. It was recently read out in the British parliament by Scottish National Party MP Chris Law during a debate about Britain’s nuclear arsenal.

In response to a question from another Scottish National Party MP, George Kereven, British PM Theresa May said without hesitation that, if necessary, she would authorise the use of a nuclear weapon that would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children. Previous PMs have been unwilling to give a direct answer to such a question.

But let’s be clear: a single modern nuclear weapon would most likely end up killing many millions, whether immediately or slowly, and is designed to be much more devastating than those dropped by the US on Japan.

On the other hand, opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has stated that he would not make a decision that would take the lives of millions. He said, “I do not believe the threat of mass murder is a legitimate way to go about international relations.”

It says much about the type of society we have when someone like Corbyn or Green Party MP Caroline Lucas is attacked by the mainstream and depicted as some kind of harebrained extremist who places ‘the nation’ in danger because they do not want Britain to renew its submarine-based Trident nuclear missile system (at the cost of at least £100 billion in ‘cash-strapped’ austerity Britain).

Chiming in with emotive gutter tactics, May suggested that those wishing to scrap Britain’s nuclear weapons are siding with the nation’s ‘enemies’.

Theresa May reading from the script

Politicians like May are reading from a script devised by the elite interests. Members of this elite comprise the extremely wealthy of the world who set the globalisation and war agendas at the G8, G20, NATO, the World Bank, and the WTO. They are from the highest levels of finance capital and transnational corporations. This transnational capitalist class, dictate global economic policies and decide on who lives and who dies and which wars are fought and inflicted on which people.

The mainstream narrative tends to depict these individuals as ‘wealth creators’. In reality, however, these ‘high flyers’ have stolen ordinary people’s wealth, stashed it away in tax havens, bankrupted economies and have imposed a form of globalisation that results in devastating destruction and war for those who attempt to remain independent from them, or structurally adjusted violence via privatisation and economic neo-liberalism for millions in countries that have acquiesced.

While ordinary folk across the world have been subjected to policies that have resulted in oppression, poverty and conflict, this is all passed off by politicians and the mainstream media as the way things must be.

The agritech sector poisons our food and agriculture. Madelaine Albright tries says it was worth it to have killed half a million kids in Iraq to secure energy resources for rich corporations and extend the wider geopolitical goals of ‘corporate America’. The welfare state is dismantled and austerity is imposed on millions. The rich increase their already enormous wealth. Powerful corporations corrupt government machinery and colonise every aspect of life for profit. Environmental destruction and ecological devastation continue apace.

And nuclear weapons hang over humanity like the sword of Damocles – not to protect the masses from the wicked bogeyman, but to protect the power and wealth of a US-led capitalist elite (that institutes all of the above) from competing elites in other countries or to bully, cajole and coerce with the aim of expanding influence.

The public is supposed to back this status quo. And ordinary young men (and women) are supposed to sign up to fight ‘their’ wars. In reality, to fight for what? Austerity, powerlessness, imperialism, propping up the US dollar and a moribund system. For whom? Monsanto, Occidental Petroleum, Soros, Murdoch, Rothschild, BP, JP Morgan, Boeing and the rest of the elite and their corporations whose policies are devised in think tanks and handed to politicians to sell to a largely ignorant public.

For those who are aware of the ruthlessness of imperialist intent and the death and destruction it brings, Theresa May’s comments may come as no surprise at all.

But what about the wider population? Those who swallow the lie about some ‘war on terror’ or Washington as the world’s policeman, protecting life and liberty. Those who believe the sanctimonious dross pumped into their heads by Hollywood, the BBC and other mainstream media about the US-led West being a civilising force for good in a barbaric world.

What civilised ‘values’ is May basing her threat of mass murder on when she talks about unleashing a nuclear weapon? The media and much of the public seem to shrug their shoulders and accept that nuclear weapons are essential and the mass murder of sections of humanity is perfectly acceptable in the face of some fabricated, whipped-up paranoia about ‘Russian aggression’ (or Chinese, Iranian or North Korean – take your pick).

Many believe nuclear weapons are a necessary evil and fall into line with hegemonic thinking about humanity being inherently conflictual, competitive and war-like. Such tendencies do of course exist, but they do not exist in a vacuum. They are fuelled by capitalism and imperialism and played upon by politicians, the media and elite interests who seek to scare the population into accepting a ‘necessary’ status quo.

Co-operation and equality are as much a part of any arbitrary aspect of ‘human nature’ as any other defined characteristic. These values are, however, sidelined by a system of capitalism that is inherently conflict-ridden and entangled in its own contradictions and which fuels wealth accumulation for the few, exploitation (of labour, peoples and the environment), war and a zero-sum class-based system of power.

Much of humanity has been convinced to accept the potential for instant nuclear Armageddon hanging over its collective head as a given, as a ‘deterrent’. However, the reality is that these weapons exist to protect elite, imperialist interests or to pressure others to cave in to their demands. If the 20th century has shown us anything, it is these interests are adept at gathering the masses under notions of the flag, ‘the bomb’ and king/god/goodness (or whatever) and country to justify their slaughter.

Theresa May is on cue with her finger-pointing ‘enemy of the state’ rhetoric concerning opposition to nuclear weaponry.

Now and then, though, the reality of a nuclear armed world comes to the fore, as May’s response demonstrates. But to prevent us all shuddering with the fear of the threat of instant nuclear destruction on a daily basis, it’s a case of don’t worry, be happy, forget about it and watch TV. It was the late academic Rick Roderick who highlighted that modern society trivialises issues that are of ultimate importance: they eventually become banal or ‘matter of fact’ to the population.

People are spun the notion that nuclear-backed militarism and neoliberalism and its structural violence are necessary for securing peace, defeating terror, creating prosperity or promoting ‘growth’. The ultimate banality is to accept this pack of lies and to believe there is no alternative, to acquiesce or just switch off to it all.

There is an alternative

Instead of acquiescing and accepting it as ‘normal’ when someone like May advocates mass murder in the name of peace or she and others accuse those who refuse to comply as being a danger to the nation, it is time to move beyond rhetoric and for ordinary people to take responsibility and act.

Writing on the Countercurrents website, Robert J Burrowes says this about responsibility:

“Many people evade responsibility, of course, simply by believing and acting as if someone else, perhaps even ‘the government’, is ‘properly’ responsible. Undoubtedly, however, the most widespread ways of evading responsibility are to deny any responsibility for military violence while paying the taxes to finance it, denying any responsibility for adverse environmental and climate impacts while making no effort to reduce consumption, denying any responsibility for the exploitation of other people while buying the cheap products produced by their exploited (and sometimes slave) labour, denying any responsibility for the exploitation of animals despite eating and/or otherwise consuming a range of animal products, and denying any part in inflicting violence, especially on children, without understanding the many forms this violence can take.”

Burrowes concludes by saying that ultimately, we evade responsibility by ignoring the existence of a problem.

The ‘problem’ humanity faces goes beyond the threat of nuclear war.

The ‘problem’ encompasses not only ongoing militarism, but the structural violence of neoliberal capitalism, aided and abetted by the World Bank, IMF, WTO and trade deals such as NAFTA or the proposed TTIP. It’s a type of violence that is steady, lingering and a daily fact of life under globalised capitalism.

Of course, not everything can or should be laid at the door of capitalism. Human suffering, misery and conflict have been a feature throughout history and have taken place under various economic and political systems. Indeed, in his various articles, Burrowes goes deep into the psychology and causes of violence.

Burrowes is correct to argue that we should take responsibility and act because there is potentially a different path for humanity. In 1990, the late British MP Tony Benn gave a speech in parliament that indicated the kind of values that such a route might look like.

Benn spoke about having been on a crowded train, where people had been tapping away on calculators and not interacting or making eye contact with one another. It represented what Britain had become under Thatcherism: excessively individualistic, materialistic, narcissistic and atomised.

The train broke down. As time went by, people began to talk with one another, offer snacks and share stories. Benn said it wasn’t too long before that train had been turned into a socialist train of self-help, communality and comradeship. Despite the damaging policies and ideology of Thatcherism, these features had survived her tenure, were deeply embedded and never too far from the surface.

For Tony Benn, what had been witnessed aboard that train was an aspect of ‘human nature’ that is too often suppressed, devalued and, when used as a basis for political change, regarded as a threat to ruling interests. It is an aspect that draws on notions of unity, solidarity, common purpose, self-help and finds its ultimate expression in the vibrancy of community, the collective ownership of productive resources and co-operation. The type of values far removed from the destructive, divisive ones of imperialism and capitalism, which May and her backers protect and promote.

The Futility Of Collective Punishment: Russia, Doping And WADA

Binoy Kampmark

Collective punishment has a primitive resonance. It lacks focus, is disproportionate, and is, by nature, poor in its judgment.  It suggests that responsibility is cultural, total, and institutional, flickering in the moment of vengeance.

At international law, concepts of collective punishment are generally frowned upon.  The Geneva Conventions prohibit such measures in, or instance, the implementation of disciplinary measures,  or the application of collective penalty “for individual acts” (Geneva POW Convention, Art 46, para 4; Geneva Convention III, Art 87, para 3).  The 1977 Additional Protocol I also makes that injunction clear.

Despite such cautionary injunctions, the temptation to exclude in wholesale fashion does crop up from time to time.  Those in the business of punishment remain tempted.  In the case of the Olympics and the issue of doping, it has found form in voices favouring a ban of Russia for the Rio de Janeiro Games.  Much of this had already been given a spur with the finding of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upholding a ban on the country’s 68 track and field athletes.

The state has been accused largely for adopting what is termed the Disappearing Positive Methodology. Officials were said to have swapped dope-contaminated urine for non-dope equivalents to guarantee a subsequent clean result.

According to Richard McLaren’s World Anti-Doping Agency report, the instigation of that program came from the Russian ministry of sport in 2010 in light of the country’s poor showing at the Winter Olympics at Vancouver.  Twenty-eight sports were implicated.

Steroid cocktails ingeniously designed to evade detection were also concocted, much of this taking place under the direction of whistleblower Dr. Grigor Rodchenko as head of the Moscow laboratory.  The role of the intelligence services (the FSB), of which Rodchenko admitted to being a member, seemed to the final nail in this widening coffin.

Such findings stirred former WADA head, John Fahey, to insist that the only appropriate measure here was a collective one.  If the IOC were to exclude Russia “I think they would be applauded.” Doing so would be a “statement in favour of clean athletes.  What is the point of having that sort of sanction if you don’t use it.”

In the case of the doping allegations regarding Russia, athletes who have trained for years risk being deprived a run at the Olympics. Not that a disruption of proceedings at Rio should not be entertained.  Having been conceived and practiced as a monument to racial, cultural and political pursuits at stages of its history, the Olympics has never been nobly inclined.  Athletes have tended to be hostages to the fortunes of others.

The idea of excluding a country wholesale brings with it dangers that decision makers may well not see. It eliminates specific, untainted talents who also deserve to be protected in international sport. It also violates that great presumption of innocence by pre-emptively judging the conduct of all athletes.

This is not a point that bothers Fahey, who lazily assumes that allowing athletes not affected by a doping program to participate would put “the IOC in a precarious position in terms of its credibility.”  It is hard to believe how the IOC could possibly get through such a decision untainted.

The broader issue of creating further fracture within the institutional framework of sport is also very much at the forefront of arguments. Banish Russia, ostensibly to uphold broader Olympic values, which in any case are deeply artificial as they are, is not a grand precedent to emulate. When we are speaking of the Olympic brand, what is meant is never clear.  The ideal, for one, has long ceased to be relevant.

Former International Olympic Committee vice president Kevan Gosper, a figure involved in the boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980, told ABC News Radio that a return to that move is far from desirable.  “I can’t remember anything quite so complicated involving the welfare of athletes, doping, and one of the most important countries – not only political – but in terms of Olympic history.”[3]

There are also structural impediments. The move on the part of the International Association for Sport in June was to expand its powers regarding moves against members in contravention of the anti-doping rules.  Deferral to individual sports bodies, in other words, seems to be the accepted norm.

Furthermore, it also suggests that the state in question will have no incentive not to remain rogue.  Group punishments can actually negate the incentive to alter, eliminating any deterrent effect. The history of the Olympics, far from being one of harmonious interaction, has been characterised by prejudice, politics and power.  Beware, as Gosper notes, making “the wrong move with an important country like Russia”.

Two more shootings by New Zealand police

Chris Ross

New Zealand police shot two men in separate incidents earlier this month, killing one and leaving the other in a critical condition. The shootings are part of an increasing resort to lethal force by police officers.

On July 12, Armed Offenders Squad officers shot and killed Nick Marshall, 36, in a warehouse where he worked and lived in the industrial suburb of Frankton, Hamilton. The heavily-armed unit was executing a search warrant as part of an investigation into drugs supply and firearms possession.

Before any inquiry had begun, Assistant Police Commissioner Allan Boreham rushed to defend the shooting. He told the media Marshall brandished a gun “in very close proximity” to police, was told “multiple times” to put it down, but “continued to present the firearm and was subsequently shot.” Boreham said the shooting was “unfortunate” but “unavoidable.”

Marshall’s girlfriend Kendall Eadie, apparently the only witness apart from the police, completely contradicted Boreham’s statement. She told Fairfax Media she was standing metres away from Marshall when he was shot and insisted he was unarmed. “They busted in our front doors, then they announced themselves,” she said. “They forced entry and fired shots. That was that. They didn’t ask my boyfriend to put his hands up; they shot at him three or four times.” She described the shooting as “completely unnecessary. In my eyes it was murder. There was no threat.”

Eadie’s statements raise disturbing questions. Firstly, was Marshall armed? Oddly, Fairfax Media reported that “on Wednesday morning,” i.e., the morning after the shooting, “a pump-action shotgun and a live cartridge were found at the spot where he had been standing.” Could the weapon have been planted?

Boreham told reporters the shooting “happened very quickly,” which raises the question: was Marshall given enough warning and time to surrender? There is also another question. Why was the paramilitary Armed Offenders Squad called out to conduct the search and why did they aggressively storm the property? Marshall had no criminal record and there is no evidence he was violent in the past.

Just two days after Marshall’s death, eyewitnesses captured cellphone footage of police shooting another man, who has not been named, at close range on a street in Rotorua. According to police, the man appeared to be affected by methamphetamine and was holding a machete, which he used to hit a police vehicle.

The 35-year-old was tasered three times and pepper-sprayed before being shot twice in the stomach. The man was surrounded by police officers and it is not clear that he posed an imminent threat to them or to members of the public. He remains in hospital in a critical condition.

The so-called Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) will investigate the latest shootings. The IPCA only has the power to gather evidence and make disciplinary recommendations, not to prosecute police officers. More fundamentally, it is part of the same state apparatus as the police and almost always finds in favour of the police.

The victims of police violence are typically people whose lives have been profoundly disrupted by unemployment, debt, poverty and often drug addiction. Police claim they found a “small amount” of methamphetamine and firearms at Marshall’s property in Hamilton. The Dominion Post cited unnamed sources who claimed he was addicted to the drug.

Until recently Marshall owned Marshall Transmissions Limited, a car maintenance company, which was highly profitable a decade ago, and employed about 30 people. The business was sold last year after it accumulated unsustainable debts. Marshall lost his house, prompting him to move into the warehouse to live and work repairing cars and, allegedly, firearms.

Many desperate and vulnerable people have become addicted to methamphetamine. Following the latest shootings, Ross Bell of the Drug Foundation told TV3’s “The Nation” that the number of meth users was on the rise because “the supply is increasing, prices are down.” The response of the government has been punitive. Between 2013–14 and 2014–15, the number of convictions related to methamphetamine use jumped by 28 percent.

Vanessa Caldwell from the National Committee of Addiction Treatment told the program that 80 percent of the government money to address drug addiction was spent on “police and Corrections [prisons]” and only 20 percent on treatment. Bell added that many people seeking treatment for drug addiction were turned away because of the drastically underfunded public health system.

There is considerable public anger over the latest shootings. Rotorua mayor Steve Chadwick felt compelled to respond to the criticism of the police on social media, telling Newstalk ZB it was “absolutely wrong” to compare the shootings with “what’s happening in the [United] States.” Thousands of people in the US have protested against a wave of unprovoked killings by police.

In fact, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of deadly force by New Zealand police. They have fatally shot 31 people since 1941, including five in the past 18 months. No officers have been charged in relation to any of these killings.

Last month, police shot and killed 57-year-old Mike Taylor after a call-out over a domestic dispute in Paeroa. His partner, who witnessed the shooting, denounced it as a “cold-blooded execution.”

This followed the killings last year of David Cerven, a 21-year-old Slovakian national, in Auckland and 25-year-old Pera Smiler in Upper Hutt. Cerven was unarmed and witnesses stated that Smiler was preparing to surrender when he was shot.

As in the US, police have become more heavily armed. In 2008 the then-Labour government armed cops with Tasers. Police Commissioner Mike Bush announced last year that all officers would have access to these very painful and dangerous 50,000-volt weapons. A decision in 2011 meant all police vehicles now carry pistols and rifles.

The latest shootings have again prompted media speculation about whether all officers should carry sidearms. The Dominion Post carried a front-page headline on 15 July asking “should police get guns?” Police Association President Greg O’Connor declared: “70 percent of frontline police said they should be armed.”

The immediate public defence of the recent shootings by the police hierarchy should be taken as a warning. An atmosphere is being cultivated in which police killings become routine, with impunity for the officers involved. The response of successive governments, both National and Labour, to the worsening social crisis produced by their policies has been to give police more weaponry and powers. These methods will be used in the future to intimidate and suppress the opposition and resistance of workers to the endless austerity attacks on their living standards.

Severe heat wave spread across much of US

Evan Blake

Over the past week, heat wave conditions have spread across much of the United States, affecting tens of millions of people. In the eastern two-thirds of the US, heat indices surpassed 100 degrees Fahrenheit in numerous cities.

For the first time in at least a decade (as far back as records go), parts of the country’s three largest metropolitan areas—New York, Los Angeles and Chicago—simultaneously received heat wave alerts from the National Weather Service (NWS) Friday morning. Other large cities, including Philadelphia, Kansas City, St. Louis, Phoenix and Minneapolis, were also under heat watches, warnings or advisories. In total, over 122 million Americans across 26 states received heat alerts of varying degrees from the NWS.

In the past week alone, at least eight deaths have been attributed to the extreme heat. These have included a four-year-old girl in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, a 12-year-old boy in Arizona, an elderly man in Memphis, Tennessee, and five other heat-related deaths in Roseville, Michigan.

The heat wave stems from a high pressure ridge located at the middle and upper levels of the atmosphere, which is reflecting heat downward and preventing the formation of clouds and precipitation, in the process forming what is referred to as a “heat dome” of intense heat and humidity. The high pressure also traps air pollutants closer to the ground, diminishing air quality. First centered in the Midwest, the “heat dome” has been broadening geographically, covering the eastern two-thirds of the country and reaching Southern California this week.

“It’s oppressive and dangerous for people exposed to this condition,” Chris Vaccaro, a spokesman for the NWS, told the Los Angeles Times. “This is the most significant heat wave of the year,” Vaccaro added.

In the past month, the National Climatic Data Center recorded that 570 American cities have broken their daily highest maximum temperature measurements, while another 450 have tied their historical peaks.

Last month’s State of the Climate report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed that temperatures in June were the highest on record for the month, making it the 14th consecutive record-breaking month. The report also noted that the first six months of 2016 were the hottest recorded since measurements began in 1880.

Despite the North and Southeast regions experiencing reduced temperatures Sunday, the heat wave is forecast to continue and deepen throughout the coming week. The NWS has issued an excessive heat warning through Monday for large parts of the country, including northern Delaware, central and southern New Jersey and southeast Pennsylvania.

As a consequence of the extreme heat, numerous wildfires have erupted across the country in recent weeks, with the most severe taking place in California, Wyoming and Utah.

In Los Angeles, which has been intermittently experiencing heat wave conditions since early June, the Sand Fire erupted Friday in Santa Clarita Valley, rapidly growing to cover a swath of over 22,000 acres by Sunday afternoon.

The Sand Fire was initially centered in uninhabited areas near State Route 14. Fueled by raging winds Saturday night, the fire now threatens hundreds of homes in a Santa Clarita neighborhood, forcing roughly 1,500 residents to evacuate. As of this writing, 18 structures have been destroyed by the fire, while one possibly fire-related death has been reported. The fire remains only 10 percent contained.

In Monterey County in Northern California, a wildfire erupted Friday and has burned over 6,500 acres, forcing nearby residents to flee. Officials estimate that the fire threatens roughly 1,000 homes.

The Lava Mountain Fire, located in the Shoshone National Forest in northwest Wyoming, began Thursday night during a lightning storm. The fire quadrupled in size Sunday, growing to 4,269 acres, and is zero percent contained. In northeast Wyoming, the Hatchery Fire has burned 3,000 acres and threatens multiple structures.

In Utah, the West Antelope Fire has grown to over 13,000 acres, by far the largest in the state. The Choke Cherry Fire near Ibapah, Utah has burned over 1,600 acres since it began July 18.

On Friday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) officially denied federal assistance to the victims of the devastating 36,000-acre Erskine wildfire in highly impoverished Kern County, located north of Los Angeles in California’s Central Valley.

The fire erupted June 23, ultimately destroying 285 homes and killing two people. In their rejection notice, FEMA callously declared, “we have determined that supplemental federal assistance is not necessary.”

The heat wave crisis presently engulfing a majority of the United States undoubtedly stems from global warming, which scientists have repeatedly warned will cause an ever-increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as “heat domes.” To resolve such a monumental problem as climate change requires a socialist revolution by the international working class, to rebuild society in the interests of the vast majority, not the handful of plutocrats currently plunging mankind toward the abyss.

Leaked emails show Democratic National Committee targeting Sanders campaign

Isaac Finn

On July 22, WikiLeaks released almost 20,000 internal emails from Democratic National Committee (DNC) members, casting light on the dirty dealings of the DNC as it worked to undermine the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and assist the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Throughout the primary, DNC officials were in contact with a number of newspapers, networks and news websites, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Politico, and RealClearPolitics. At one point, DNC communications director Luis Miranda released an email from Sanders to DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to the Wall Street Journal.

In May, Wasserman Schultz also demanded that someone from the DNC contact MSNBC to pressure the network to apologize for allegations that Wasserman Schultz was unfair to Sanders and should step down from her post. Other DNC officials indicated in the email chain that they had already contacted MSNBC.

The exchange came after the Democratic Party in Nevada organized a rigged convention to ensure a Clinton majority, followed by a campaign to cast Sanders supporters as violent. DNC deputy communications director Mark Paustenbach sent an email to Miranda, stating, “Wondering if there’s a good Bernie narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never ever had his act together, that his campaign was a mess.” He adds later, “It’s not a DNC conspiracy, it’s because they never had their act together.”

Paustenbach also made an “agreement” with Kenneth Vogel, a journalist at Politico, which allowed the deputy communications director to read an article on Clinton’s fundraising operations before Vogel sent it to his editor.

In another email from May 5, Brad Marshall, the chief financial officer of the DNC, apparently speculated about how to use Sanders’ religious views, or lack thereof, against him in the Kentucky and West Virginia primaries. “It might [make] no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief,” Marshall wrote. “My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”

Marshall has since denied that he was referring to Sanders.

Sanders, who has endorsed Clinton, has largely downplayed the significance of the emails. In an interview with CNN’s Jack Tapper, he said that the documents were “not a shock” to him, and he repeated previous statements about the need to reform the Democratic Party in order to attract working class and young voters. He also avoided criticizing the Clinton campaign, and reiterated the need for his supporters to block Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

On Saturday, members of the DNC agreed that Wasserman Schultz, a close Clinton ally, would not have a major speaking role at the convention. She has since announced that she would resign from her post as chairwoman following the convention because of her leaked emails, saying it was “the best way” for her to help get Clinton elected. This insignificant concession is aimed at facilitating Sanders’ ability to convince his supporters to back Clinton.

Significantly, Clinton and other Democratic Party officials have claimed that the leak was the product of Russian hackers. The hack was initially done in June, when hackers under the name Guccifer 2.0 gained access to the DNC’s database on opposition research on Trump. Despite claims, the DNC has not provided any specific evidence that the hackers were from Russia.

Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, stated that, “experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, [and are] releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.”

Over the last week, Democrats have denounced Trump as the preferred candidate of Moscow. This is in line with Clinton’s aim of campaigning in the elections on the basis that she is a more committed and reliable defender of American imperialism.

MEETAfrica European Mobilization for Entrepreneurship 2016

Brief description: This program aims to support 80 African entrepreneurs graduates of the French or German teaching in the creation, in their country of origin, companies with strong technological or carrier solutions Innovative in the agricultural, industrial or services.

Up to 65 African entrepreneurs resident in France school graduates French will be joined. Up to 15 African entrepreneurs resident in Germany school graduates German will be joined.

Application Deadline: 15th September, 2016

Offered annually? No

Eligible Countries: Algeria, Cameroon, Mali, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Africans in France and Germany.

To be taken at (country): Algeria, Cameroon, Mali, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, France, Germany

Eligible Fields of Funding: Agricultural, Industrial or Services.

About the Award: MEETAfrica (European mobilization for entrepreneurship in Africa), is a European program to support entrepreneurship African diasporas, coordinated by Expertise France and financed by the European Union.

It is for students at the end of university studies, young researchers or young qualified professionals, originating in one of the partner countries (see below) and residing in France or Germany who wish create an innovative entrepreneurial activity in their country of origin.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: To be eligible, candidate must:

• Be a national of one of the six project target countries (Algeria, Cameroon, Mali, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia);
• Be a resident or student home in France or Germany;
• carrier be an innovative business creation project / technological nature in one of the six target countries;
• Hold or being acquired a degree in French higher education level of bachelor, master, doctorate or post-doctorate;
• Be under 35 years.

Number of Awardees: 80

Value of Programme: 15,000 euros

Duration of Award: One-time

How to Apply: Download and fill the Application form on the Programme Webpage

Visit Programme Webpage for details

Award Provider: European Union.

INSEAD Alumni Fund (IAF) Women’s Scholarship(s) 2017/2018

Brief description: The INSEAD Alumni Fund (IAF) is offering scholarships to Women from any country to study for an MBA degree at one of the world’s leading and largest graduate business schools, INSEAD

Application Deadline for January 2017 Class (Round 1): 6th June, 2016

Application Deadline for January 2017 Class (Round 2): closes 3rd August, 2016

Application Deadline for August 2017 Class (Round 1):  Opens 24th of October, 2016 – closes: 5th November, 2016

Offered annually? Yes

Scholarship Name: INSEAD Alumni Fund (IAF) Women’s Scholarship(s)

Eligible Field of Study: Masters in Business Administration

About Scholarship: The INSEAD Alumni Fund (IAF), created in 1977, raises funds from alumni for INSEAD’s development. A significant portion is allocated to scholarships that will underwrite the breadth of diversity of INSEAD participants: country of origin, background, gender, etc. The IAF Women’s Scholarships support INSEAD’s commitment to bring outstanding women professionals to the MBA Programme and to increase representation of women in leadership positions in the business community. Some 10 to 15 awards are made per class and most are allocated at the time of admission based on merit.

Scholarship Offered Since: 1977

Scholarship Type: MBA Scholarships for women

Selection Criteria and Eligibility

INSEAD seeks bright, dynamic and motivated women who are making significant achievements in their professional and/or personal lives. Merit scholarships will be awarded to recognize these outstanding women. Their financial situation may also be taken into consideration.

Essay topic : No essay required

Number of Scholarships: 10 to 15 awards are made per class

Value of Scholarship: € 20,000

Duration of Scholarship: for the period of study

Eligible Countries: Any country

To be taken at (country): INSEAD, France.

How to Apply: To be considered for these scholarships please submit your application on line before the specified deadlines. Candidates will also be considered for the INSEAD Judith Connelly Delouvrier Scholarships.

Visit Scholarship webpage and description page for details

Sponsors: The INSEAD Alumni Fund (IAF)

INSEAD Greendale Foundation Scholarship (in France & Singapore Campuses) for African Students 2017/2018

Application Deadline for January 2017 Class (Round 1): 6th June, 2016

Application Deadline for January 2017 Class (Round 2): closes 3rd August, 2016

Offered annually? Yes

Scholarship Name: INSEAD Greendale Foundation Scholarship

Brief description: Financial Aid Opportunity for MBA postgraduate students from Southern and Eastern Africa in 2016 to study Abroad in France or Singapore for the 2017/2018 admission session.

Subject Areas: MBA programme

About Scholarship

INSEAD is considered one of the world’s leading and largest graduate business schools, with campuses in Europe (France), Asia (Singapore) and a research centre in Israel. The Trustees of the Greendale Foundation provide access to the INSEAD MBA programme to disadvantaged Southern and East Africans who are committed to developing international management expertise in Africa and who plan their careers in the Southern and East African regions. Scholarship recipients must return to work in these African regions within 3 years of graduation. In the event this condition is not met, the recipients will be asked by INSEAD to refund their scholarship within the fourth year after completion of the MBA Programme.

Scholarship Offered Since: Not Specified

By what Criteria is Selection Made?

These scholarships are granted under various criteria and essentially there are two basic categories of scholarships:

• Need-based: demonstrate financial need
• Non-need based: based on merit, nationality, gender, professional background, leadership abilities, field of previous studies etc.

Who is qualified to apply?

Candidates must be nationals from Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa (disadvantaged backgrounds), Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia or Zimbabwe (from disadvantaged backgrounds)who have undergone the major part of their education in Southern or East Africa. Preference will be given to those who have worked there prior to INSEAD. The candidate’s financial situation will also be taken into consideration.

How Many Scholarships are available? Not Specified

What are the benefits?

€35,000 for each scholarship recipient

How long will sponsorship last? The scholarship is a onetime financial award to cover for tuition fee

To be taken at (country): France or Singapore

How to Apply

Essay topic:

1) In 350-400 words, describe (a) why you wish to undertake the INSEAD MBA (b) How you envisage contributing to the future development of Southern or East Africa after graduation, and (c) why you should be selected for this scholarship.

2) In 150-200words, provide a concise but accurate description of your financial circumstances as well as a cash flow forecast for the year at INSEAD (details of income set against all expenditures)

Visit the Scholarship Webpage

Sponsors: The Greendale Foundation

Important Notes:

All scholarship applications are online except where mentioned in the scholarship description. To submit an application, first follow the Scholarship Guide and get yourself registered.

Scholarship awards are deducted from the last installment of your tuition fees.

Volatile America

Robert Koehler

In a flash I thought, oh God, the civil war has started.

Then the headlines shifted and, for the moment, “normalcy” returned. It’s a Trump-sated normalcy that’s anything but, of course, and the most recent heavily reported violence (at least as I write these words) — the murder of three police officers in Baton Rouge — blends into the endlessly simmering turmoil known as the United States of America.

And the civil war, in fact, started long ago. But until recently, only one side has been armed and organized. That’s why the two latest police killings, by disciplined, heavily armed former military men, loose a terrifying despair. The victims are fighting back — in the worst way possible, but in a way sure to inspire replication.

When people are armed and outraged, the world so easily collapses into us vs. them. All complexity vanishes. People’s life purpose clarifies into a simplistic certainty: Kill the enemy. Indeed, sacrifice your life to do so, if necessary. I fear this is still the nation’s dominant attitude toward its troubles. We’re eating ourselves alive.

One way this is happening was described in a recent New York Times story, headlined: “Philando Castile Was Pulled Over 49 Timesin 13 Years, Often for Minor Infractions.” Castile, who as the world knows was shot and killed by a police officer during a routine traffic stop on July 6, was a young man caught in a carnivorous system pretty much all his adult life. Every time he started his car, he risked arrest for “driving while black.” The Times quotes a Minneapolis public defender, who described Castile as “typical of low-income drivers who lose their licenses, then become overwhelmed by snowballing fines and fees.” They “just start to feel hopeless.”

The story goes on: “The episode, to many, is a heartbreaking illustration of the disproportionate risks black motorists face with the police . . . The killings have helped fuel a growing national debate over racial bias in law enforcement.”

A growing national “debate”? Oh, the politeness! How much racism should we allow the police to show before we censure them? It’s like talking about the “debate” we used to have over the moral legitimacy of lynching.

Here’s Gavin Long’s contribution to the “debate”: “One hundred percent of revolutions, of victims fighting their oppressors, from victims fighting their bullies, one hundred percent have been successful through fighting back through bloodshed. Zero have been successful through simply protesting. It has never been successful and it never will.”

Long, the former Marine, who served a tour of duty in Iraq, shot and killed three police officers in Baton Rouge on July 17, 10 days after Micah Johnson, the former Army Reservist, who served a tour in Afghanistan, shot and killed five police officers in Dallas.

America, America . . .

What we have here is a toxic mixture of racism and militarism and guns. We’re in the midst of an endless war against evil — or terror, or whatever — in the Middle East, a war that has pretty much been fought by low-income recruits who see military service as a way out of poverty. This war is a planet-wrecking disaster, though the raw horror created by our bombs and missiles overseas remains largely outside U.S. public awareness. Fifteen years in, it’s simply “war” — the background noise of American greatness. The consequences are somebody else’s problem.

For instance, this sort of news, as reported earlier this week on Common Dreams, hardly makes it into the debate:

“Dozens of civilians, including children, were killed on Monday andTuesday by U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria.

“The strikes appeared to have been a mistake, with the civilians taken for Islamic State (IS or ISIS) militants, the U.K.-based human rights group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group told the AFP news agency.

“Fifty-six civilians were killed on Tuesday by coalition forces, and 21 civilians were killed by the coalition on Monday. The 77 civilian deaths included at least 11 children.”

But they’re not Americans, so such deaths just aren’t that important to us.

Indeed, the war — and the trillions of dollars it costs — go virtually unmentioned in the surreal race for the presidency that’s currently underway. Also unmentioned is the fact that the war is being brought home to our gun-saturated society by former soldiers fighting back against racist policing the way soldiers always fight back: They’re killing “the enemy.”

The potential volatility of this barely noticed situation is enormous. If protesters decide to arm themselves as they confront heavily armed police, the violence on both sides could morph into civil war.

The only defense against this is awareness, respect and disarmed openness on all sides of the conflict — openness of the sort that took place this past Sunday in Wichita, Kansas. On the same day, coincidentally, as the police killings in Baton Rouge, members of Black Lives Matter and the Wichita police department co-sponsored what they called a “First Steps Cookout”: an outdoor party with “free food — provided by the police, the community, and local businesses — and the opportunity to have open conversations with law enforcement,” according to Huffington Post. Nearly a thousand people attended.

This is what takes courage: to get to know your “enemy.” I know at the deepest level of my being that we can walk together toward such awareness. This is the only chance we have to disarm our volatile future.

Empirocracy

Sher Ali Khan

In my inbox just now was an email from a well known very right wing UK weekly publication that has long considered itself the collective output of the highest intelligence on the planet and whose editors have clearly long believed the world’s political and economic leaders would not be able to survive without imbibing of the wisdom on their pages.

The headline that leapt out from this subscribe for 99 cents type email was something to the effect of democracy in Turkey under threat …

The word democracy gets used and misused so much that I get really confused by what is meant by it at all. I suppose the standard box to be ticked is regular elections. And the next one people like is that the players play by the rules of the game. Call it rule of law, and never mind that the law in too much of the world, democratic or otherwise, means very different things to people in different income brackets. But the confusion in my mind is now so great that I would imagine Turkey can well be regarded as a democracy and can equally well be regarded as the furthest thing from a democracy. I suppose part of my confusion is how differently stories are told based on who is doing the telling.

But what I have always gotten a particularly big kick out of is how Britain and the US (Britus?) have gone on and on, for as long as I can remember, about how other nations conduct themselves, both internally as well as in their external affairs and relationships. Founded on the patronising and almost paternalistic premise that they are somehow better than everyone else and haughtily look down on everyone else and have some sort of right to sit in judgment on how other nations conduct their affairs. And not just to sit in judgment but rather to play very active roles in micromanaging the affairs of as many nations as they can, usually not in very nice ways and in ways that frequently involve lots of death and destruction and carnage and loot and plunder and generally setting back the socio-economic and intellectual development of these countries as much as possible. And all the while lecturing the world on democracy and human rights and how to make the world a better place.

So while I’m not sure whether Turkey is or is not a democracy and therefore really have no idea whether its democracy is or is not under threat, I’d like to suggest the revival of a word I know was in use in the early 20^th century but do not really have a clear idea of what it meant: Empirocracy.

For my proposed revival of this word, the definition I’d like to suggest is this: The firm conviction of former and current empires which have brutally raped and pillaged and suppressed and downtrodden as much of the world as they were able to for as long as they were and are able to that it is their firm right to continue to do as much of exactly that for all time to come. And while they are doing exactly that shall also have the right to lecture all the world on how to act and how not to act because they as its past and present rulers know best.

So while Britus practices Empirocracy by invading people and fighting useless destructive wars and killing truly enormous numbers of people all over the planet, whether directly or through cheaply bought proxies – curious that not too many other nations try to do this, except the odd Britus protectorates like Saudi Arabia, the head of the United Nations human rights body – it should spare those on the receiving end of its drones and its mercenaries and its jet fighters and all the other evil goodies in its plentiful arsenals the sanctimonious piety on democracy, human rights and all the rest of it.

And the day that Empirocracy can be returned to the dustbin in which it belongs because it no longer has any meaning and can go back into welcome disuse, the world will be a far far better place for everyone in it.