Czech Government Scholarships for Developing Countries 2017/2018 – Undergraduate, Masters and Doctorate

Application Deadline: 30th September 2016 | Offered annually? Not specified

Brief description: The Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport offers five scholarships for developing countries. Applications for these scholarships are open to all students from developing countries and/or countries going through a process of political and economic transition.

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

About Scholarship

Thanks to a generous contribution from the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, the Faculty of Social Sciences is able to offer a limited number of partial scholarships for students of all fee based programs in academic year 2016/17. A total of five scholarships are available, ear-marked for students from developing countries and/or countries going through a process of political and economic transition.

Upon a Decision of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, scholarships of the Government of the Czech Republic are granted to promote specific Bachelor’s, Master’s, follow-up Master’s and/or Doctoral study programmes in the full-time mode of study of a specific study programme pursued by a university (or its Faculty) for a period that equals the regular duration of studies. Scholarships are not transferable to other persons or other academic years. Once a scholarship is granted, neither the university nor the study programme and/or field of study may be changed.

Scholarship Offered Since: Not specified

Scholarship Type: Doctoral, Undergraduate and Masters studies

Selection Criteria and Eligibility

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

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

Number of Scholarships: A total of seven scholarships are available.

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

Value of Scholarships: 

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

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

Eligible Countries:

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

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

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

Visit scholarship webpage for details

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

Wild Turkey with H-Bombs: Failed Coup Raise Calls for Denuclearization

John LaForge

An explosive cocktail of military instability mixed with 11-foot long US nuclear bombs raises the specter of accidental or suicidal detonation in or near Turkey. This risk was brought into extreme relief by the attempted military coup there in mid-July.

In June, I warned in CounterPunch magazine and elsewhere that the Pentagon’s 50 to 90 B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs deployed at Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey are too dangerous to keep so close to a warzone — Incirlik is 100 miles from Islamic State territory — especially with racists Donald Trump and Ted Cruz pursuing the White House. Journalists with the Los Angeles Times, the Japan Times, Foreign Policy, or the San Antonio Express News don’t read my columns, but suddenly the Pentagon’s nuclear bombs in Turkey are a hot topic.

Tobin Harshaw reports for Bloomberg July 25 — although he mischaracterized the bombs — “Until recently, the question of whether the United States should continue to station nuclear missiles [sic] in Turkey was of interest only to a passel of national-security geeks and nonproliferation advocates. One failed coup later, the discussion has spread to CNN, The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post and elsewhere.”

Harshaw went on to validate an analysis by Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of Int’l Studies, who argues that in the wake of the failed coup, “Turkey is not a sensible base for nuclear deterrence.” But in the irrational, self-contradictory realm of nuclear war planning, the B61s are being stored at Incirlik because military hawks insist on “maintaining the capability to attack Iran” with H-bombs, Harshaw reported. Never mind that Russia and Pakistan would doubtless retaliate with their nuclear warheads if the US used its own against Iran.

The reasons why our military’s so-called “forward deployment” of the B61s amounts to nuclear madness were only highlighted by the bloody, hapless coup inside Turkey. The B61s’ uselessness and vulnerability — anti-war protesters have regularly snuck into NATO bases where B61s are stored — have been broadcast by major news outlets from New York to Tokyo:

1) The Los Angeles Times reported July 23: “The base was an operational center of the attempted coup,” which, US military experts said, demonstrated “a worrying level of instability in Turkey’s military command close to the B61s.” Wikipedia lists 20 terrorist strikes inside Turkey since 9/11.

2) The B61s stored at Incirlik are designed for the McDonnell Douglas Corporation’s long-range, high speed F-15E jet fighter and for Lockheed Martin’s F-16 jet fighter, according to the Washington Post. But none of these planes are based at Incirlik or in the Turkish Air Force. As the LA Times reported, “The US does not have aircraft at Incirlik qualified to deliver the weapons.” (“In order for the weapons to actually be used, the US would have to fly a squadron of aircraft into Incirlik to load the bombs, all of which would be observed by Russia and possibly make the base a target for a first strike,” the Times reported.)

3) The B61s are designed to prevent unauthorized use as they have safeguards known as “use controls” and “permissive action links.” But Robert Peurifoy, formerly of the Sandia National Laboratory where he, according to the LA Times, “designed the first use controls on weapons based in Europe,” said that the “use controls may only impede and delay a terrorist. … Either you keep custody or you should expect a mushroom cloud.”

4) General Eugene Habiger (USAF Ret.), a former commander of all Air Force and Navy strategic nuclear weapons (he led the Strategic Command from 1996 to 1998), told the San Antonio Express News July 22 “the bombs no longer have any military usefulness.” And Gen. Habiger warned, “It’s a very, very dangerous weapon in terms of military consequences, political consequences, and I think what happened in Turkey highlights the potential unintended consequences of having nuclear weapons forward deployed if there is no military requirement.”

5) The B61s will almost certainly never be used, according to Aaron Stein, a Turkey analyst at the Atlantic Council, who spoke to the LA Times. This common knowledge moved Gen. Habiger to ask, “Why does NATO need nuclear weapons?”

Why indeed. As Jeffrey Lewis noted June 18, “after the events of the past weekend, leaving them in place seems positively terrifying,” and wild Turkey becomes that latest and best reason ever to permanently remove US nuclear weapons from other countries

SIDEBAR

How powerful is the B61 gravity bomb?

* Bloomberg News says the B61 is a “variable-yield” device, meaning the size of the explosion can be between .3 kilotons [300 tons] and 340 kilotons of TNT equivalent.

* The Los Angeles Times reports that it can be programed to have between 300 tons of TNT explosive force [.3 kilotons], and 170,000 tons [170 kilotons].

* Nuclear weapons analyst John Pike, with www.globalsecurity.org, says “yields range from “a few hundred tons to 160 kilotons.”

* The Nuclear Weapons Datebook, Vol. 1 (Ballinger, 1988) says the yield is from 100 to 500 kilotons.

To compare: the US Army Air Corp’s Hiroshima bomb, which incinerated 7 square miles and killed 140,000 people, was 15 kilotons.

Erdogan Moves Against the Gulen Movement in Turkey

Patrick Cockburn

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan started to use his powers under the newly-declared state of emergency today to close 15 universities and over one thousand schools alleged to have links to the Gulen movement, which is accused of having staged the failed military coup on 15 July.

The extent of the closures underlines the sizable nature of the network of influential educational establishments, charitable institutions and other associations built up by followers of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen in the last thirty years. Those now being shut include 1,043 private schools, 1,229 charities and foundations, 19 trade unions, 15 universities and 35 medical institutions.

Mr Erdogan has brought forward a meeting of the Supreme Military Council to 28 July, at which he will discuss with military chiefs his plans for purging and restructuring Turkey’s 600,000-strong armed forces – with the aim of bringing them under tighter government control. At least 124 generals and admirals out of a of 358, or over a third of the total, have been detained as it becomes clear that the conspiracy to subvert the armed forces was far larger than the small clique that the government originally alleged had taken part. Mr Erdogan has also used the powers granted by the state of emergency to extend the period in which some suspects can be detained – from four days up to a maximum of 30 days.

The attempted coup has provoked a serious row between Turkey and the US over the extradition of Mr Gulen, amid Turkish accusations that the US knew about the coup. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that a dossier requesting the extradition of Mr Gulen, and providing evidence of his guilt, will be ready in a week to ten days. The 75-year-old cleric has vigorously denied involvement, but non-governmental experts on his movement in Istanbul say that they have no doubt that Gulenist officers organised and conducted the coup attempt.

Mr Gulen’s nephew, Muhammed Sait Gulen, was detained in the northeastern Turkish city of Erzurum and will be brought to the capital Ankara for questioning, the Anadolu state news agency claimed on Saturday. Among possible charges that could be brought against him is membership of a terrorist organisation, the agency said.

There is a widespread popular conviction at all levels in Turkey that US government and its intelligence agencies were complicit in the coup. The Daily Sabah newspaper is asking its readers to vote on the question: “which institution of the US provided largest support for the Gulenist terrorist group?” They are asked to mark the appropriate box for the CIA, FBI, Department of State and the White House. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim called for the US to extradite Mr Gulen and to “stop standing up for savages who run over citizens with tanks, who strafe people from land and the air.”

President Obama has firmly denied Turkish allegations and demanded evidence of Mr Gulen’s involvement in the attempted putsch, but this is unlikely to dispel Turkish suspicions. Accusers say that the Gulenist movement is tightly run from the top, as in other religious cults, and is wholly under the control of its charismatic leader who is seen by some as having semi-divine powers. US security services were once interested in cultivating supposedly moderate Islamic movements such as the Gulenists as an alternative to salafi-jihadi extremists and this may explain their cosy relationship with Mr Gulen.

This war of words is unlikely to die away and Turkish leaders are angered by what they see as a tepid display of solidarity by Western leaders during the coup – followed by patronising admonitions not to over-react in purging those who tried to overthrow the government. Mr Erdogan complained about this on Saturday in an interview with France 24 television saying he could not understand why Turkey’s Western allies did not see that he had to impose stringent security measures after a coup that had killed 250 people. He said that “I’m under the impression that they [Western leaders] will only see that once all the political leaders of Turkey are killed, and then they’ll start to dance for joy.”

It is becoming clear that – leaving aside government paranoia – a large number of units from the Turkish armed forces took part in the coup on 15/16 July and that it nearly succeeded. The latest to be detained are 283 members of the presidential guard, which numbers 2,500 men. The hard core of the plotters were in the gendarmerie and air force and had allocated an elite unit to detain Mr Erdogan at his hotel in Marmaris on the Aegean coast at 3am on 16 July. But he had already left by the time they attacked because the plotters in operational charge of the event, fearing the imminent discovery of the coup, had brought forward its timing by six hours and were unable to tell this to the soldiers targeting Mr Erdogan who escaped shortly before they arrived.

There’s No Such Thing as a “Free Market”

Jill Richardson

The debates leading up to the election this year will no doubt invoke the “American value” of capitalism. But what, exactly, does that mean? And what should it mean?

I’m no economist, but I took a few economics courses while earning an undergraduate business degree. Growing up in a capitalist society, I thought I understood the basic concepts underlying capitalism — free markets, competitive advantage, and so forth.

Then I actually read The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, the founding work that described what we call capitalism in the first place. That was a game changer.

We’re all probably familiar with Smith’s ideas at some level.

The market regulates itself, as each of us operates based on our own self-interest. Businesses try to earn profits, and consumers try to meet their needs at the best prices. The market ensures that the demand of consumers is met with supply from business.

The government’s job, the doctrinaire thinking goes, is to get the heck out of the way. It doesn’t set prices or quotas. It just lets the market function.

Adam Smith cast this arrangement in glowing terms in 1776. He was describing England during the Industrial Revolution. He thought it was amazing that millions of individual actors, each operating based on self-interest, could so efficiently revolutionize society without any central planning at all.

Only, he was wrong.

In fact, the growing British Empire was undertaking economic interventions on a colossal scale — and would do even more in the centuries to come. The British set out all over the globe, claiming colonies in the New World and later India and Africa, setting up trade policies that benefited the British at the expense of the colonized.

The British imported cotton from their colonies for their own factories, as well as wheat to feed British workers in the isles. Colonial India, meanwhile, suffered several massive famines. Even as tens of millions of Indians starved to death, record amounts of Indian wheat were exported to feed British factory workers laboring in a so-called free market.

Before the Industrial Revolution, Indian textiles reigned supreme. But British authorities kept industrial textile technologies out of India in order to capture the global textile market, impoverishing the colony further.

Other British staples — tea and sugar — were also imported from British colonies. That sugar was produced by enslaved Africans in the Caribbean.

Some invisible hand.

Smith also overlooked the utter misery textile workers lived in, even in Britain. The system “worked” at making some people rich. But the squalid and wretched lifestyles of laborers, including children — which inspired the writing of Charles Dickens — were its cost.

We in America have meddled in markets plenty in our own right — not least through historical crimes like slavery and colonialism. But we’ve also developed more benign interventions that can actually help people.

We ban child labor, for example, and enforce (admittedly inadequate) minimum wage protections. We require businesses to offer safe and healthy workplaces. We ban the sale of dangerous drugs. We try to regulate pharmaceuticals to make sure they’re safe and effective.

In other words, capitalism with absolutely no government intervention is a myth — and always was.

We can debate the pros and cons of specific regulations. But if you hear a candidate claiming that capitalism means doing away with all regulations — or that any government interference in the market equates to socialism or communism — they’re being dishonest.

Cults Of Security And Terror: Fear Ahead Of The Rio Olympic Games

Binoy Kampmark

The Olympics remains a black hole of needless expenditure, sucking services into it with impending and merciless doom. Unused stadia, tracks left to moulder, services supposedly linked to urban renewal turned into dilapidated wonders. That is the Olympic legacy in its lingering aftermath.

Another feature of the Olympics is the tendency to turn a city into a super security haven, crawling with armed troops, security personnel and surveillance.  In London 2012, efforts to transform humble tenements into rocket launching pads was one of the stranger spectacles that bothered residents.

The Brazilian experience does not look like being anything different, though commentators have gotten on the highest of horses to claim that the state’s security remains “pre-9/11”. Well it might be that Brazilians are used to the presence of armed gangs and police on the streets, claimed The Independent, but they still lived in a world untouched by the knee-jerk security complex.  It is typical for those permanently immersed in the argot of security that the events of September 11, 2001 had to shape everything else. But not all countries felt that need.

In addition to traditional favela-bred woes, there are fears that the virus of ISIS-Islamic State inspiration will find form amongst Brazilians in an effort to inflict mayhem on locals and visitors.  This might well be, but in the reasoning of the security establishment, nothing about such an assessment is ever proportionate, let alone reasoned.

Last week’s arrest of 10 Brazilians (some reports put the figure at 12) suspected of planning attacks across the Rio games has been seen as a jolt. A country more accustomed to dealing with its own indigenous variants of violence and poverty did not need another incursion of ideological concern.  That was for other countries to wrestle with.

When it came to the arrests of alleged Islamic State members, a certain sense of panic moved through the body politic, a sweat inducing fear.  Were cells being cultivated in paradise?  Would the vicious lone-wolf make a long waited debut?  Judicial authorities in the state of Parana claimed to have intercepted calls suggesting a terrorist cell’s wishes to use “weapons and guerrilla tactics” in attaining its goals.

Operation Hashtag, as it was called, sparked confidence in certain officials within the presidential circle.  Something was being done, which is always the operating premise of the guardians.  “This shows,” claimed Brazil’s presidential chief of staff Eliseu Padilha, “that Brazil is on its toes and monitoring any suspects that could become a threat.”

Brazil’s security establishment, suggested Padilha, had been making visits to France to pick up tips in the aftermath of the Nice attacks.  How useful such tips are to keep Brasilia on its toes, given the specific Gallic context, is hard to see.

The arrests did not inspire confidence at all levels.  The Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes seemed unimpressed, merely seeing bungling children at play. They were dabbling “amateurs” who had flirted with social media rather than any serious terrorist game.

Moraes did note that the men were rather green converts, having come to Islam after conducting Internet driven research on jihadism, and exchanging sympathetic messages on such chat platforms as WhatsApp and Telegram.  (Others had also met in Egypt in efforts to learn Arabic.)  Among topics of discussion: weapons training, and the possibility of an online purchase of an AK-47 assault rifle from a Paraguayan-based outlet.

ABIN, the Brazilian secret service, whose members were turning scarlet with rage, suggested that the issue was far more serious, one of greater organisation than the minister was giving them credit for.

A federal police source cited in The Japan Times expressed irritation that the minister “gave the impression that this is a minor problem that does not represent a risk. That’s not right. We cannot spread that idea.”

The genie of fear is truly out of the bottle, roaming the land, sensible or otherwise.  “Amateurs or not,” claimed a former captain of an elite police squad in Rio de Janeiro, “they were organising themselves.” The Islamic States’s recruitment drive thrived on a perceived sense of disorganisation.

The Islamic State’s techniques, and the recent spate of international attacks, are taken to have come from a different stable, a separate blue print.  Robert Muggah, research director at the Rio de Janeiro-based think tank, the Igarape Institute, noted the qualitative difference about such organisations, that “they are more diffuse and widely distributed and may materialise where you don’t expect them.”

The official front from Brazil’s intelligence community, at least for the time being, is that the slate on specific plans for attacking the Olympics is not so much clean as tidy.  There is one fundamental fear: the lone wolf, a sort of terrorist parthenogenesis.

Modern states, with their muscular reach and brutal measures, remain incapable of detecting the point when an idea is implanted, and becomes a faith manifested in knife, bomb, or, in Nice, a murderous truck.  A bloated security state can hardly be the answer, since it was never a solution to begin with.

The Caged Kashmiris!

Mohammad Ashraf

(For three weeks now the entire Kashmir Valley has been turned into a huge prison with total blockade of communication within and with outside world)

The intention of the authorities in Delhi appears to cow down Kashmiris to the extent that they bite the dust and give up! This shows the utter lack of knowledge about the Kashmiris and their 5,000 year old history. Kashmir from the ancient times was known to be a very beautiful country somewhere in the Himalaya. One finds mention of Kashmir in almost all ancient chronicles of the Greeks, the Arabs and even the Chinese. There are no other people in this area who have such an ancient recorded history. It used to be the best seat of learning in this entire area. Kashmir had trade relations with Central Asia and people from far and wide used to come here for studies. The most important Buddhist Council which changed this religion from the strictest Hinayana School to the more acceptable Mahayana was held in Kashmir.

Kashmiris are proud of their ancient history. However, the country was an independent sovereign kingdom till the sixteenth century when Akbar, the Mughal King annexed it to his empire through treachery. Mughals had failed twice to capture Kashmir but then Akbar invited the then king Yusuf Shah Chak to Lahore for talks, arrested him there and attacked Kashmir. Being leaderless, Kashmiris still gave a fight and his son Yaqub Shah Chak fought a guerrilla war for six months but was ultimately captured in Kishtwar. Thus ended Kashmir’s independence in 1586!

Since that time the country of Kashmir has been under the occupation of outsiders who took turns in capturing it one after the other. After Mughals came the Afghans. Then came the Sikhs and finally, the Dogras purchased it from the British for a paltry sum of rupees seventy five lakhs along with its inhabitants. All the foreign rulers oppressed the local people so much that they ultimately became wretched serfs without any self-respect and dignity. The four centuries of slavery completely squeezed out of them every semblance of chivalry and manhood and they were turned into characterless bonded labour! However, there were occasional rebellions but these were put down with a harsh hand!

In spite of all the harshest conditions for last four centuries, Kashmiris have survived and are now more vigorous and vocal than ever before! There are no Mughals; there are no Afghans, there is no Sikh empire and there is no Dogra kingdom but the Kashmiris are still there! It is only their misfortune that when the whole sub-continent was having an awakening of freedom and they were expecting to free themselves from the centuries of slavery that they got locked up in a tangle which refuses to go away.However, they have not given up the hope of final salvation. It is the misfortune of the authorities keeping them down that they have not learnt a lesson from Kashmir’s history. Kashmiris will survive all the harshest measures and would still be there. However, on the contrary, the people oppressing themmercilessly may not be there like the oppressors of the earlier times!

For last three weeks the entire valley has been converted into a prison and a virtual concentration camp. There is continuous curfew in the entire valley without any relaxation or break. All communication links within Kashmir and with the outside world have been snapped. Nonstop protests are taking place all over the valley. Protesting teenagers, children and women are being showered with bullets and pellets. Over 50 people have been killed and more than 3,000 injured. As per latest reports, the pellets have affected the eyesight of over 185 persons. The newspaper presses and offices were sealed and papers confiscated. One used to hear about such harsh measures being taken in the countries behind the erstwhile “Iron Curtain”. Some of the measures are even harsher than the “Iron Curtain” measures! Kashmir is supposed to be an integral part of the democratic and secular republic of India. There is no record of similar measures ever having being taken in any other part of the republic of India. The authorities could have learnt a lesson from the happenings of 2008 and 2010. Kashmiris can never be cowed down and they always rise up whenever they feel their existence is being threatened.

For last 70 years it has not been possible for the outside forces to bring down Kashmiris on their knees. They have risen up again and again and will continue to do so in future also. A British author has observed that no outsider has ever been able to know what is really in the heart of a Kashmiri and it is only a kind word and a joke which brings out the best in a Kashmiri.The authorities in Delhi stillseem to believe in cowing down and subduing people rather than winning them over. Probably they have forgotten the saying of the most famous illustrious son of Kashmir, Kalhana, “The country of Kashmir may be conquered by the force of spiritual merit, but not by the force of soldiers!” The time seems to have run out for Delhi and there appears no turning back now!

Scorching Global Temps Astound Climate Scientists

Nika Knight

Record global heat in the first half of 2016 has caught climate scientists off-guard,reports Thompson Reuters Foundation.

“What concerns me most is that we didn’t anticipate these temperature jumps,” David Carlson, director of the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) climate research program, told Thompson Reuters Foundation late Monday. “We predicted moderate warmth for 2016, but nothing like the temperature rises we’ve seen.”

“Massive temperature hikes, but also extreme events like floodings, have become the new normal,” Carlson added. “The ice melt rates recorded in the first half of 2016, for example—we don’t usually see those until later in the year.”

Indeed, extreme weather events are currently wreaking havoc around the world.

In Southern California, firefighters are battling one of the “most extreme” fires the region has ever seen. The so-called sand fire had consumed 38,346 acres as of Wednesday morning and forced the evacuations of 10,000 homes, and one person has died.

Meteorologist Eric Holthaus reported on the unusual fire last Friday in Pacific Standard:

The fire, which started as a small brush fire along the side of Highway 14 near Santa Clarita, California, on Friday, quickly spread out of control under weather conditions that were nearly ideal for explosive growth. The fire doubled in size overnight on Friday, and then doubled again during the day on Saturday.

“The fire behavior was some of the most extreme I’ve seen in the Los Angeles area in my career,” says Stuart Palley, a wildfire photographer based in Southern California. “The fire was running all over the place. … It was incredible to see.” There were multiple reports of flames 50 to 100 feet high on Saturday, which is unusual for fires in the region.

Time-lapse footage filmed on July 23 showed the fire’s tall flames and rapid growth:

“Since late 2011,” Holthaus explained, “Los Angeles County has missed out on about three years’ worth of rain. Simply put: Extreme weather and climate conditions have helped produce this fire’s extreme behavior.”

The fire is an omen of things to come, according to Holthaus: “Even if rainfall amounts don’t change in the future, drought and wildfire severity likely will because warmer temperatures are more efficient at evaporating what little moisture does fall. That, according to scientists, means California’s risk of a mega-drought — spanning decades or more — is, or will be soon, the highest it’s been in millennia.”

As University of California professor Anthony LeRoy Westerling wrote Tuesday in theGuardian: “A changing climate is transforming our landscape, and fire is one of the tools it uses. Expect to see more of it, in more places, as temperatures rise.”

Meanwhile, in India’s northeast, Reuters reported Tuesday that over 1.2 million people “have been hit by floods which have submerged hundreds of villages, inundated large swathes of farmland and damaged roads, bridges and telecommunications services, local authorities said on Tuesday.”

Reuters added that nearly 90,000 people are currently being housed in 220 relief camps.

“Incessant monsoon rains in the tea and oil-rich state of Assam have forced the burgeoning Brahmaputra river and its tributaries to burst their banks—affecting more than half of the region’s 32 districts,” the wire service reported.

Local officials also told the media that “more than 60 percent of region’s famed Kaziranga National Park, home to two-thirds of the world’s endangered one-horned rhinoceroses, is also under water, leaving the animals more vulnerable to poaching.”

An unusually heavy monsoon season has also devastated communities in northern China,AFP reported Monday, with nearly 300 dead or missing and hundreds of thousands displaced after catastrophic flooding hit the region.

And in Iraq, temperatures last week reached such unprecedented heights that a chef literally fried an egg on the sidewalk. The TODAY show tweeted footage of the incident:

It’s hot enough to fry eggs on the street in Iraq where temperatures topped 120 degrees https://t.co/SLUnY4Pq1m

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) July 21, 2016

Stateside, the heat dome continues to inflict scorching summer temperatures across the country. In one Arizona locale, for example, meteorologists are predicting a scorching high temperature on Wednesday of 114° Fahrenheit. One Arizona resident posted a video Tuesday desperately asking people to pray for the state as it faces more hot weather. “It is still six billion degrees,” the resident lamented. “Lord, we need you.”

Yet there appears to be little relief in sight: for the first time ever, USA Today reported Tuesday, the U.S. federal government’s climate prediction center is forecasting hotter-than-normal temperatures for the next three months for “every square inch” of the country.

Nearly two thirds of New Yorkers suffer severe economic hardship

Philip Guelpa

Newly released research on economic hardship in New York City reveals the reality of extreme inequality and the distorted view of economic conditions in the working class provided by official poverty statistics.

The study, titled: Dynamics of Disadvantage in New York City, was prepared by the Robin Hood Foundation, a New York City anti-poverty non-profit, and Columbia University’s Population Research Center. The latest report is the third in a series on poverty in the city.

The researchers undertook a program called Poverty Tracker, which collected data by surveying 2,300 New Yorkers encompassing the full range of income levels in multiple visits over the course of two years.

The principal finding of the study is that nearly two thirds, 63 percent, of New Yorkers experienced at least one of the three criteria of disadvantage, as defined by the researchers, at least once during the survey’s two-year time span. These include poverty, material hardship, and poor health.

For a significant number of those surveyed these were not occasional occurrences, as bad as those are in themselves, but chronic conditions.

The most persistent form of disadvantage was found to be severe material hardship, defined as an acute inability to meet daily needs (e.g., running out of food or utility cut offs due to inability to pay bills). Twenty-three percent, nearly a quarter, of those surveyed were found to lack basic necessities at both the beginning and end of the survey period, indicating a more or less continuous condition.

The trend identified by the study is notably downward. During the period examined, while 10 percent of those interviewed left the material hardship category, 13 percent entered.

Poor health (limiting the kind or amount of work a person can do) was found to persist for 17 percent of those surveyed and poverty for 9 percent.

The latter figure is deceptive. Nearly one quarter (22 percent) of those surveyed reported incomes below the poverty line, either at the initial canvas or in the follow-up one year later, demonstrating that large numbers of people are living a fragile existence, hovering at the very edge of what is defined as poverty. Again, a larger number entered poverty (12 percent) than exited (10 percent) over the span of the study.

It is significant that the study’s definition of poverty was broader than the city’s official statistics, which are based on pre-tax income alone. The Robin Hood/Columbia University measure of poverty gauged what they refer to as Annual Resources—post-tax cash income plus in-kind benefits minus necessary expenditures for medical care and work expenses—providing a more realistic view of actual economic conditions.

Thirty-one percent of those surveyed dipped below the study’s poverty line at least once during the period. This is significantly higher than the roughly 20 percent reported by the city using its own measure.

One effect of the city’s unrealistic poverty assessment bears on housing. The city uses only pre-tax income as a statistic on which it bases its calculations regarding eligibility for affordable housing, excluding many who should be eligible for reduced-rate housing using a more comprehensive measure.

The picture that emerges is one of widespread, persistent economic deprivation. If the study’s results are projected to the whole of the city’s population, roughly 8.5 million, nearly 2 million residents (23 percent) suffer severe material hardship on a continuing basis.

Earlier studies have also criticized the official methods used to gauge poverty and found that by more accurate measures nearly half of New Yorkers are poor or near-poor.

The researchers also found that while public assistance programs and private philanthropy had some effect in keeping people from falling into poverty, an 8 percent difference between those who received assistance and those who did not, there was virtually no difference (2 percent) for those exiting poverty, as defined by the study. This finding puts the lie to those who claim that the poor get a “free ride” from such programs. Furthermore, at a time when assistance programs are being severely cut or eliminated altogether, the limited break on descent into poverty will soon evaporate altogether.

Looking at the study’s results another way, only 37 percent of those surveyed, just over a third, did not experience any episodes of disadvantage during the study period. Given the city’s high cost of living and large low-wage sector, many of these people are only scraping by.

The report offers no recommendations for addressing the conditions it identifies other than to state that official statistics are inadequate to represent the real conditions faced by city residents.

In the third year of the supposedly progressive mayoral administration of Democrat Bill de Blasio, these findings illustrate in the harshest terms the emptiness of the mayor’s campaign pledge to fight inequality and what he called the “tale of two cities.”

This is further demonstrated by the persistently high rate of homelessness in the city (approximately 60,000 individuals in shelters on a daily basis and thousands more on the streets) and the continuing acute shortage of affordable housing.

This is an indictment, not merely of de Blasio, but of the entire political establishment, both Democrat and Republican, under which these conditions have been worsening for decades. The sole purpose of these two big business parties is to defend the interests of the city’s financial and corporate elite, while the overwhelming majority of the population sinks further into misery.

Survey reveals majority of British see themselves as working class

Simon Whelan

This year’s annual British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey revealed that 60 percent of the British public describe themselves as working class. This includes half of the people employed in managerial and professional occupations.

The report conducted by NatCen Research declared its intention to uncover the consequences of seven years of austerity for social and political attitudes in Britain, by looking at the effect of austerity on public attitudes in five important areas of life—social class, benefits, work, the National Health Service and politics.

Of the more than 4,300 British citizens surveyed, more than three out of four expressed the opinion that the class divide, i.e., social inequality, is “very” or “fairly” wide. It found that those who viewed “society as divided between a large disadvantaged group and a small privileged elite, feel more working class…”

A growing proportion of those surveyed said they believed social mobility to be in decline. Nearly three out of four surveyed believe it is “fairly” or “very difficult” to move between classes, a significant rise from 65 percent in 2005.

In a foreword, NatCen noted how the financial crash of 2008 and the austerity that followed still exert a lasting impression on the British economy, including slower economic growth, declining living standards and stagnant wages.

The authors note that the political response of the Conservative and previous Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition governments was austerity in the form of public spending cuts and tax increases. Cuts to the welfare and further regressive forms of taxation, have, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), reduced average annual household income by £1,127.

The IFS notes that austerity is set to continue and deepen until the end of the decade at least. However, the report was published ahead of June’s referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU), which will result in further economic contraction and an acceleration of austerity.

The BSA research offers ample evidence of the continuing leftward political trajectory of tens of millions of people in response to seven years of savage financial austerity and public spending cuts. Standing at 45 percent, public backing for more taxation and public spending is back at pre-crash levels and its highest point for a decade. Almost as many want to see spending and taxation increased as would like them to stay the same.

Alongside a growing enthusiasm for funding public services goes a rise in opposition to welfare cuts. A majority of those surveyed oppose cuts to welfare and almost four out of ten think the government should spend more on benefits—higher than at any time since 2003.

The BSA found a high level of support for the National Health Service. In contrast to the years of government propaganda that the NHS is “ringfenced” and not being cut, the reality is that more than £20 billion in “efficiency savings” were made during the last parliament. This is why 93 percent stated the NHS is facing a funding problem, with 32 percent (up from 19 percent in 2014) identifying it as a “severe” funding problem. Forty-five percent of those who are dissatisfied think the NHS has a “severe” funding problem compared with just 26 percent who are satisfied.

The attitudes and opinions expressed in the research are testament to the enduring significance of social class as the primary determinant of life under capitalism.

In recent decades, politicians from both main parties have tried in vain to disabuse British workers of their stubborn belief that the country is stratified by class or even the merest suggestion that family social class background is the key determinant of life chances. In 2013, former Prime Minister David Cameron famously made the preposterous claim that politics in the UK was not run by a private school-educated elite, of which he of course, is a member.

Although politicians and the media have declared ad nauseam that “the working class is dead,” or that “We’re all middle class now,” the survey shows that many Britons adhere to working class identity regardless of career movement into supervisory or managerial roles or qualification for professional positions.

The response of the authors of the report and media commentary was one of incredulity. The authors concluded that workers were suffering mass class myopia and were mistaken about how much things have improved. Their attitude resembles former Conservative Prime Minister Harold McMillan’s infamous flippant response of “You’ve never had it so good!” when a heckler demanded “What about the workers?”

Echoing the attitude of the NatCen Research authors, the Guardian commissioned Lynsey Hanley, a visiting fellow in cultural studies at Liverpool John Moores University, to write, “Although just 25 percent of people now work in routine and manual occupations, 60 percent of Britons regard themselves as working class, a phenomenon described as a ‘working class of the mind’ that has withstood dramatic changes in the labour market.”

The authors of the report attempt to explain away growing consciousness of class as a failure of managerial and professional layers to understand the nature of social inequality!

The report acknowledges that family background is an important indicator of class self-identity. Having parents who worked in a manual or routine job, for example, meant respondents were more likely to state a working class allegiance. But the study suggests that people who they considered to be middle-class (professionals, managers and supervisory positions), identified as working class because they perceive themselves and others like them as disadvantaged in a society dominated by a tiny wealthy elite.

These layers will not acknowledge the simple fact that the reason why nearly two thirds of the British population consider themselves workers is because objectively they are.

Indeed, the ranks of the working class are being swelled, not reduced, by changes associated with the globalisation of commodity production and the proletarianisation of professions previously viewed as middle class.

Regardless of gender, ethnicity or nationality, whether they are white collar or blue, craft, labour, technical, retail or knowledge workers, what workers all share in common, regardless of superficial differences, is their non-ownership of the means of production and exploitation by the class that does.

The survey provoked concerns among the ruling elite as to its implications.

Noting the majority of British people identifying as workers the Financial Times nervously noted, “Exactly the same proportion—60 percent—identify themselves as working class as did in 1983, a year before a bitter miners’ strike which heralded a wave of deindustrialisation that wiped out many traditional working class jobs.”

The FT are not the only ones looking nervously over their shoulder. Kirby Swales on behalf of NatCen Social Research wrote in the BSA survey’s foreword, “ ... for the most part the changes are not big attitudinal leaps, but rather small steps. This is of course usually how attitudes change. But a cohesive democracy should worry about a public that describes society as divided by class and says social mobility is decreasing... We must think about how we can find consensus on a way forward for the health service and the welfare state. Because with austerity expected to continue until at least 2020 these small steps might well add up to a leap.”

The origins of the attack in Ansbach, Germany

Christoph Vandreier

The horrific attack in Ansbach by a psychologically unstable person, who had fled from Syria to Germany, is being exploited by politicians from all parties to step up attacks on refugees and press ahead with the strengthening of the state apparatus. By contrast, there is silence on the real causes of the violent outburst.

On Sunday evening, a 27-year-old man set off an explosive device concealed in his backpack at the entrance to a music festival in the Bavarian town of Ansbach. The individual apparently wanted to gain access to the festival grounds, but was prevented from entering because he did not have a ticket. The explosion killed the perpetrator and injured 15 people, four of them seriously.

Investigators suggested that the perpetrator had links to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) because corresponding material was found on his mobile telephone and in his room at a refugee accommodation centre in Ansbach. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, publishing a video allegedly showing the suspected attacker pledging allegiance to the group and warning of attacks. Whether the person depicted in the video was actually the attacker remains unclear.

The attacker was clearly a very unstable and insecure man. According to investigators, he had already attempted suicide twice and was for a time in psychiatric care.

Regardless of how close the ties to ISIS were, the evidence to date regarding the attacker’s background points to him having been traumatised and possibly radicalised by his experiences in the Syrian war, the stresses of fleeing and the inhumane treatment in Germany.

The Bild newspaper reported having seen the man’s asylum application. According to the paper, he applied for asylum in Germany two years ago under the name Mohammad D. In it, he stated that his wife and children were killed in a grenade attack in the Syrian city of Aleppo. He had also been injured by shrapnel from a grenade.

According to his file, when he fled from Syria, he first arrived in Bulgaria where he was detained. His serious injuries were not treated there. He made an application for asylum in Bulgaria and received subsidiary protection.

Subsequently, he allegedly travelled on to Austria, where he was once again registered as a refugee. When he finally arrived in Germany and applied for asylum, it was rejected on the grounds that D. had already been registered in Bulgaria and must therefore be deported to that country in line with the Dublin III agreement.

The deportation was repeatedly delayed due to the injuries and suicide attempts, but without D. ever being granted a right to reside in Germany. Like 170,000 people in Germany, he was only granted a suspension of deportation.

Deportation continued to hang over the already traumatised man like a sword of Damocles.

It is possible that some of his assertions in the asylum application will turn out to be embellished or untrue. But it is beyond doubt that it is the wars led by the Western powers in the Middle East that create the conditions for such attacks.

The imperialist wars in Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Syria have laid waste to cities and destroyed entire societies. Terrorist militias like ISIS were systematically promoted and armed by the US to overthrow Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad.

The desperate people seeking to flee the hell of the conflict have been shot on the Turkish border, drowned in the Mediterranean and detained in camps in Greece.

If they eventually reach Germany, they are confined to inhumane camps, which often disregard the most basic requirements of hygiene and are only appropriate for short-term accommodation. They are exposed to endless harassment and more often than not deported to allegedly safe third countries or their country of origin.

It is this increased brutality in both foreign and domestic policy that produces the violence expressed in the Ansbach attack. It is therefore equally as disgusting as it is revealing that representatives from the Left Party to the CSU and Alternative for Germany (AfD) exploited the attack to intensify agitation against refugees and to demand a further strengthening of the state apparatus.

Sahra Wagenknecht, leader of the Left Party’s parliamentary fraction, immediately attacked Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy from the right on Monday, declaring in a press statement, “The events of recent days show that the acceptance and integration of a large number of refugees and migrants is connected with serious challenges and is much more difficult than Merkel’s light-minded ‘We can manage this’ last autumn would have had us believe.”

She spoke out in favour of closer surveillance of refugees and called for the German government to “retain the trust of the people in the capacity of the state and its security forces to act.” Then on Tuesday, she explicitly raised criticisms that the police had been “cut to nothing and dismantled.”

The Green Party mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer, stated on Facebook that it was inevitable that people would be asking, “what it means when in Wurzburg an Afghan, in Munich a German-Iranian and in Reutlingen a Syrian attacked people with weapons.” His party colleague, Baden-Württemberg state premier Winfried Kretschmann, has already passed a package of additional security measures worth €30 million and announced stricter checks of refugees.

CDU parliamentary deputy Armin Schuster rejected the so-called welcoming culture with which millions of people expressed their solidarity with refugees. “We require a farewell culture,” said the domestic policy expert. His parliamentary colleague Torsten Frei went even further, speaking of a “culture of deportation,” summing up the ruling elite’s contempt towards refugees.

The same goes for Berlin’s interior state senator Frank Henkel, who has been waging an aggressive campaign for a strong state for months. “We have obviously imported a few totally bestialised people,” he stated, grotesquely dehumanising the refugees.

CSU head Horst Seehofer also intends to intensify the surveillance of refugees and announced a “significant strengthening” of the police. In addition, he called into question protection against deportation for people whose home countries are torn by war.

Much of the media joined in the chorus of agitation. Jasper von Altenbockum argued in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that it was no longer important what factors contributed to acts of violence. The only important things were that fewer refugees be let into the country and that the police be strengthened, even if this was done at the expense of “quality of life.”

Such a blunt appeal for a police state has previously only come from the extreme right. The same applies to many of the remarks cited above. In the cross-party support for the strengthening of the state, a fundamental social truth is being revealed: the interests of the ruling elite are no longer compatible with the needs of the vast majority.

This is especially evident in the inhumane treatment of refugees, but is not limited to this. While a tiny elite has amassed vast quantities of wealth, capitalism has nothing to offer the great majority apart from poverty and war. This is why the state is being strengthened and is using ever more chauvinist agitation to enforce the interests of the ruling elite.