Colombia: Peace in the Shadow of the Death Squads

Daniel Kovalik

As the Colombian government and left-wing FARC rebels near the signing of a comprehensive peace accord, and though they have already signed a bi-lateral ceasefire which is largely holding, Colombia is still suffering from the worst human rights abuses in the Western Hemisphere. These abuses are being carried out by right-wing paramilitary groups (aka, death squads), which the U.S. and Colombian governments conveniently deny even exist.

These paramilitary groups, in accord with their long-time friend and ally, former President Alvaro Uribe, are openly and aggressively opposed to the peace accords, and will most certainly escalate their violence as a national referendum which will be held to ratify, or reject, these accords draws near.   Thus, as Insight Crime recently reported, the Colombian Electoral Observation Mission (MOE) estimates that nearly 250 municipalities (or more than 25% of the 1,105 municipalities in all of Colombia) “are at risk of violence or fraud affecting the referendum on an anticipated peace deal” with the FARC.  The departments of Choco, Arauca, Cauca and Putumayo – that is, departments with heavy concentrations of Afro-Colombians and indigenous – are among the departments with the greatest risk.   Antioquia, the department of Alvaro Uribe who was governor there, has the greatest number of municipalities at risk.

Meanwhile, the paramilitaries are already exploiting the opportunity presented by the FARC’s ceasefire to gain territory and exact more advantage for the economic elites – both domestic and foreign – which they serve.

For starters, Colombia again, according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), suffered more assassinations of trade unionists than any country on earth in 2015, and therefore earned its spot as one of the 10 worst countries in the world for workers’ rights.  As the ITUC explains in its annual report:  “Trade unionists have been murdered with impunity for decades in Colombia. In 2015, 20 murders of trade unionists were recorded in Colombia – the highest number in any country.”   And, not surprisingly, it is the paramilitaries who are carrying out such assassinations in the interest of capital.

In addition, 35 human rights defenders have already been killed in the first half of 2016.  This is an incredible figure.   Indeed, according to Colombia’s El Espectador, this year has been “one of the most violent in regards to the murder of human rights defenders and land claimants,” with the paramilitaries being the perpetrators of these crimes.    Indeed, one of the chief perpetrators of the violence, particularly against those advocating for the return of land stolen during the armed conflict, is the paramilitary group known as the “Anti-Restitution of Land Army.”  This group has been reinvigorated by the release from jail of infamous paramilitary leader Jose Gregorio Mongonez Lugo, also known as “Carlos Scissors.”   He was responsible in the first place for the violent theft of land in the banana region of Magdelena, Colombia, and has now returned to make sure that it is not given back to its rightful owners.

All of this bodes very badly for the prospects of peace in Colombia.   And indeed, one of Colombia’s great human rights defenders, Father Javier Giraldo, S.J., recently penned a sobering peace on this very subject, entitled, “Peace in Colombia?”   This piece was translated by the Colombia Support Network, and is well-worth a read, especially as you will never hear a voice such as his in the mainstream press.

As Father Giraldo opines, despite the progress of the peace talks in Havana which are quickly nearing a conclusion, “the country is profoundly polarized by the growth and the growing power of extreme right-wing forces.  It appears as if the forces of the Cold War are coming back to life, powered by the monstrous economic strength of multinational businesses that are rapidly defending their exclusionary interests, using their extremely powerful resources.”

Father Giraldo rightly notes that the Colombian government, while paying lip-service to peace, in fact seeks the surrender and ultimate destruction of both the guerillas as well as Colombia’s peaceful forces for social change.   As he explains:

the methods of persuasion that have been used to promote the peace agreements rely mostly on the practical impossibility of achieving social change by means of armed conflict, given the    gigantic and overwhelming military power of the government, supported by the imperial power with the greatest destructive reach in the recent history of humanity: the United States. . . . President Santos has instead, above all, on a peace that will benefit business leaders and transnational investors, who will be able to intensify their extraction of natural resources.  But meanwhile his government represses with cruel violence the social protests of communities affected by the ecological and social destruction that has been caused and continues to be caused by these multinational companies.

Father Giraldo then expresses a seldom-uttered truth which I have certainly learned upon my numerous trips to Colombia in the past 17 years – that while the paramilitaries oppose the peace process because it will grant some immunity for rebels, the “popular movements feel more fear of the impunity of the powerful and of the paramilitaries and the agents of the government, whose war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide greatly exceed, both in quality and in cruelty, the crimes of the insurgency.”

And, it is the impunity for the right-wing paramilitaries, who now control large swaths of the Colombian government, which is nearly total.   And again, this impunity is made by possible by the Colombian and U.S. governments’ denial of the very existence of the paramilitaries, as well as the mainstream media’s near total silence about Colombia and its horrible human rights situation – certainly the worst in the Western Hemisphere.  If peace in Colombia has any chance of succeeding, it will need to be supported and cultivated by people of good will throughout the world who are willing to tell the truth about Colombia and who are willing to provide accompaniment to the peace process.

Genocide in Plain Sight: Shooting Bushmen From Helicopters in Botswana

Lewis Evans

In a healthy democracy, people are not shot at from helicopters for collecting food. They are certainly not then arrested, stripped bare and beaten while in custody without facing trial.

Nor are people banned from their legitimate livelihoods, or persecuted on false pretenses.

Sadly in Botswana, southern Africa’s much-vaunted ‘beacon of democracy’, all of this took place late last month in an incident which has been criminally under-reported. Nine Bushmen were later arrested and subsequently stripped naked and beaten while in custody.

The Bushmen of the Kalahari have lived by hunting and gathering on the southern African plains for millennia. They are a peaceful people, who do almost no harm to their environment and have a deep respect for their lands and the game that lives on it. They hunt antelope with spears and bows, mostly gemsbok, which are endemic to the area.

According to conservation expert Phil Marshall, there are no rhinos or elephants where the Bushmen live. Even if there were the Bushmen would have no reason to hunt them. They hunt various species of antelope, using the fat in their medicine and reserving a special place for the largest of them, the eland, in their mythology. None of these animals are endangered.

A shameful history of state persecution

Despite all this the Botswana government has used poaching as a pretext for its latest round of persecution. The increasingly authoritarian government of General Ian Khama sees the Bushmen as a national embarrassment. It wishes to see them forcibly integrated with mainstream society in the name of ‘progress’.

There are huge diamond deposits on, or close to, the Bushmen’s lands, as well as natural gas which is soon to be fracked out of the soil. Botswana would rather see wealthy foreign tourists on the Bushman’s lands – many of them western trophy hunters – as well as foreign corporations digging for resources underneath it. In their eyes, ‘primitive’ hunter gatherers are an inconvenience.

Between 1997 and 2002, hundreds of Bushman families were brutally evicted from their land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Their homes were destroyed, their wells were capped, their possessions were confiscated, and they were moved to government eviction camps en masse. Any who tried to resist were beaten, or even shot with rubber bullets.

There are close ties between the Botswana government and the infamous De Beers diamond corporation, and both have grown rich from the gemstones. Nevertheless, the government was savvy enough to know that diamonds alone would be an ugly excuse for wiping out an entire people, so they circulated absurd rumors.

The Bushmen were ‘poachers’, they said. They rode around in jeeps, they shot game on a massive scale with rifles, and posed a threat to the environment they had been dependent on and managed for millennia. They had to change, for the sake of ‘civilization’.

Despite a landmark court ruling in 2006 which the Bushmen won with the support of Survival International, the situation is still pretty terrible. Most of the Kalahari Bushmen are still living in government camps, and access to the Reserve has only been granted to a limited number of individuals. It is enforced under a brutal permit system, which sees children born in the reserve forced from their homes and family at the age of 18.

The permits are not heritable, and so when the present generation of Bushmen dies, their people will have effectively been legislated into extinction. The system was compared to the apartheid-era South African pass laws by veteran anti-apartheid activist and former Robben Island prisoner Michael Dingake.

The annihilation of a people – genocide in open sight

As if that wasn’t bad enough they aren’t even allowed to hunt to eat. In 2014, Botswana introduced a nationwide hunting ban, but gave a special dispensation to fee-paying big game hunters, who flock to the northern Kalahari and the Okavango Delta in the extreme north of the country to shoot animals for sport.

Such a dispensation was not extended to the tribal peoples who actually live in these territories, who are accused of ‘poaching’ and face arrest, beatings and torture while tourists are welcomed into luxury hunting lodges.

And now they are being shot at from helicopters. Botswana police scour the Kalahari, looking for people hunting with spears to intimidate and arrest. The government has introduced planes with heat sensors to fly over the Bushmen’s lands looking out for ‘poachers’ – in reality Bushmen hunting antelope for food.

Police and wildlife officials then use whatever brutality they consider to be necessary to enforce the ban.

This is an urgent and horrific humanitarian crisis. An entire people’s future is at stake. If the Bushmen cannot enter their land or find food there, they will have no option but to return to the government camps, where vital services are inadequate and diseases like HIV/AIDS run rampant.

Policies like this have been used by governments all over the world. It is easier and less shocking than simply exterminating people, but in the long-term it has a similar outcome. By denying people their land and basic means of subsistence, viable ways of living are abolished, and peoples’ land, resources and labor are stolen.

In a world of larger-scale and more headline-friendly crises, the plight of the Kalahari Bushmen risks being largely ignored. Nevertheless, the Bushmen – portrayed as backward and primitive simply because their communal ways are different – could face annihilation if the brutal shoot on sight policy is left in place.

Finland announces defence agreement with the US

Jordan Shilton

Finland’s government announced this month that it hopes to conclude a defence cooperation agreement with the United States prior to the US presidential election in November.

Defence minister Jussi Niinistö explained in a Reuters interview that the deal would cover joint military training, information sharing and research. Stressing Helsinki’s full commitment to deepening ties with Washington, Niinistö remarked with reference to the US elections, “It’s one of the reasons to have it done this autumn. But I’m certain we will continue to work together with either one of the main candidates winning.”

Conclusion of the deal would mark a further step in Finland’s integration into the aggressive drive of US imperialism to encircle and isolate Russia in Eastern Europe, the Baltic and the Nordic region. Finland and neighbouring Sweden, which were traditionally non-aligned during the Cold War, have both taken a series of steps over recent years making them NATO members in all but name.

Although no binding commitments are expected in the Finnish-US defence deal, it would provide for stepped up joint military exercises. Finnish and US troops trained in bilateral exercises for the first time in 2014, including cold weather training in Lapland and urban warfare in Helsinki.

The Centre Party-led government of Juha Sipilä, which also includes the conservative National Coalition Party and right-wing populist Finns Party, has made no secret of its desire to expand ties with NATO and the United States since coming to power last summer. In an unprecedented move in Finland, where opposition to NATO membership is strong among the population, Sipilä’s government refused to rule out considering NATO membership. This position was confirmed in a recent defence policy review, which acknowledged that a move to join would trigger a crisis with Russia.

Finland has, undoubtedly with US backing, also taken a series of provocative moves against Russia, with which it shares a 1,300 kilometre border to the east. In May 2015, the Finnish government wrote to over 900,000 reservists in the military to advise them of new deployment instructions during a potential war crisis. Just a month later, it was revealed that rapid response units (RRUs) had been quietly established several months before to patrol the Finnish-Russian border.

Earlier last year, it mobilised a significant contingent of military and coastguard forces to search for an alleged “unidentified object” off the coast of Helsinki. Although the media widely reported claims that the object was a Russian submarine, no evidence for this was ever found.

Finland’s expanding ties with US imperialism and increased integration into NATO are part of a broader process which is seeing the Nordic region becoming transformed into another front in the imperialist powers’ offensive against Moscow. Finland and Sweden have been integrated into NATO structures via the Partnership for Peace initiative launched in the 1990s. Soldiers from both countries participate in almost every major NATO exercise and have also deployed in NATO wars such as the occupation of Afghanistan, where both Finnish and Swedish troops served, and the bombardment of Libya in 2011, in which Swedish Saab Gripen jets took part.

Earlier this year, President Obama invited Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and Icelandic Prime Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson to a joint Nordic summit at the White House. According to president Niinistö, the meeting focused heavily on security and the Baltic Sea in particular, where the Obama administration has repeatedly vowed to go to war with Russia in defence of the tiny Baltic republics Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

In a joint statement issued following the meeting, the six leaders launched a broadside against Russia. Vowing to deepen military and security collaboration, including through exercises and strengthening defence capabilities, the statement declared, “The United States and the Nordic countries share a firm conviction that there can be no compromises over the international security order and its fundamental principles. Russia’s illegal occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea, which we do not accept, its aggression in Donbas, and its attempts to destabilize Ukraine are inconsistent with international law and violate the established European security order. The United States and the Nordic countries reaffirm our support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders.”

It continued, “The United States and the Nordic countries are concerned by Russia’s growing military presence in the Baltic Sea region, its nuclear posturing, its undeclared exercises, and the provocative actions taken by Russian aircraft and naval vessels. We call on Russia to ensure that its military maneuvers and exercises are in full compliance with its international obligations and commitments to security and stability.”

In reality, the portrayal of Russia as the aggressor is a transparent lie, aimed at concealing the central role being played by Washington in ratcheting up tensions in the region. Washington and its allies triggered the Ukraine crisis by sponsoring a pro-western coup in Kiev led by fascist forces, and followed this up by implementing vast deployments of NATO forces from the Black Sea in the south to the Arctic Circle in the north.

As part of the Pentagon’s dramatic increase in military spending on its defence assets in Europe beginning in 2017, US forces are to play a much more prominent role in military exercises in the Nordic area. The US military has established new forward bases in NATO member Norway where M1A1 Abrams tanks and amphibious assault vehicles are being stored.

US forces already took part this year in the Norwegian armed forces’ Cold Response 2016 exercises in February and March with equipment including mobile artillery, special operations units and Abrams tanks. Swedish and Finnish forces were also involved.

US troops followed this up in May with mechanised land exercises and air combat training in Finland. The air exercises saw eight F-15 US fighter jets participating with F/A-18 Hornets from Finland’s Karelia Air Command in training in the east of the country, near the border with Russia. Defence minister Niinistö said of the stepped-up US presence, “As a result the US is seeking out exercise opportunities on a broad front. This means we can take advantage of a higher level of US training activity to develop Finland’s defence capabilities.”

Both Finland and Sweden participated in last month’s NATO summit in Warsaw, where the US-led alliance finalised plans to deploy a total of 4,000 troops to the Baltic republics and Poland, which will be backed up by a rapid response force of 40,000 capable of deploying to the region within days. Justifying the presence of non-NATO members at the alliance’s talks, an official pointed to the close collaboration that would take place in the event of a conflict in the Baltic region.

Defence minister Niinistö reinforced the message, noting that the interoperability between Finnish and NATO’s armed forces was more effective than that between NATO and some of its newer members.

On the sidelines of the summit, defence minister Niinistö signed a defence cooperation agreement with his British counterpart, Michael Fallon. The deal provided for increasing information sharing and joint exercises, with a particular focus on repelling chemical and biological arms.

The US is also actively encouraging the further integration of the Nordic countries’ militaries. In April 2015, NATO members Norway, Denmark and Iceland signed a defence cooperation agreement with Finland and Sweden which contained provisions to enable shared use of air space for military purposes, as well as joint planning on procurement and production of defence equipment.

Sweden and Finland are in the process of considering further developing their military collaboration into a treaty-based defence union, which is widely interpreted as the prelude to NATO membership. Talks are weighing the possibility of joint military units and the shared use of infrastructure.

Former Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen spelled out the implications of the move, stating, “I support the school of thought that one must be very precise in respect of questions dealing with war and peace. We can never be sure if the resources of our neighbour are at our disposal in times of need if our cooperation with Sweden is established on a voluntary basis.”

Pfizer gobbles up cancer drug maker in $14 billion deal

Brad Dixon

Drugmaker Pfizer is set to acquire the biotech company Medivation for $14 billion. The primary aim of the deal was to secure Medivation’s cancer drug Xtandi in order to better position Pfizer within the lucrative market for oncology medications.

Numerous drug companies have been circling around Medivation since April, like sharks after raw meat, including Sanofi, Merck, Celgene and Gilead, as well as Pfizer. The acquisition price of $81.50 per share represents a 118 percent premium over the company’s share price prior to March 30, when Medivation hired consultants for a possible takeover.

At the start of the year, Pfizer raised eyebrows when it increased the prices of 60 of its branded drugs by an average of 10.6 percent, while eight of the company’s products saw price increases of 20 percent or more. Similar price hikes can be expected for Xtandi, which is currently priced at $129,000 per year.

Xtandi, which works by inhibiting the androgen receptor, was approved in 2012 for treating prostate cancer patients who have failed to respond to first-generation cancer drugs. It has generated about $2.2 billion in worldwide sales over the past year, with US sales increasing by 69 percent. The drug is jointly marketed with the Japanese firm Astellas Pharma, which sells the drug outside the U.S.

“The product is just at the beginning of its growth cycle,” Pfizer CEO Ian Read told analysts. He believes that the drug will generate bigger sales if it gets approved for earlier use and is prescribed by urologists.

Along with Xtandi, the purchase will also give Pfizer access to two experimental drugs that the company says have high therapeutic potential: talazoparib, a PARP inhibitor being developed to treat cervical, lung, and ovarian cancers; and pidilizumab, an immunotherapy being developed to treat blood cancer.

The acquisition will double the size of Pfizer’s oncology business to about $5 billion. The company’s breast cancer drug Ibrance, priced at nearly $120,000 a year, is one of Pfizer’s biggest growth drivers.

Pharmaceutical companies are interested in developing (or acquiring) new cancer drugs because of their potential for bringing in exceptional returns—based on charging extraordinarily high prices. Thus, last year Abbvie purchased Pharmacyclics for $21 billion to gain shared ownership (with Johnson & Johnson) of the blockbuster cancer drug Ibruvica, priced at $130,000 a year.

The rise in the price of cancer treatments is truly astonishing. Between 1995 and 2013, the average launch price of anticancer drugs rose by 10 percent ($8,500) each year, adjusting for inflation and health benefits, reported an article last year in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

A 2014 article in the Journal of Oncology Practice noted that the price of patented cancer drugs since 2000 has increased between five- and ten-fold. The average annual costs of cancer therapy have risen from $10,000 before 2000, to between $30,000 and $50,000 in 2005, to over $100,000 in 2012. Drug companies, the article’s authors note, compete over everything except the price of the new therapies. In many cases, they seek to prevent or delay the entry of generic products after patent expiration through “pay-for-delay” arrangements.

There are no restrictions in the US on how much a company can charge for a drug. Moreover, the Medicare Reform Act of 2003 prevents Medicare from negotiating prices, while US law forbids individuals from importing prescription medicines from abroad. A friendly political and regulatory environment—despite the occasional outcry by legislators—is ensured by a bevy of lobbyists. In 2012, the pharmaceutical industry employed 2,500 lobbyists and spent $306 million on lobbying.

Not surprisingly, US cancer patients pay between 50 and 100 percent more for treatments than patients in other countries. A year’s worth of the chronic myeloid leukemia drug imatinib, for example, is priced at $92,000 a year in the U.S., but only $46,000 in Canada and $29,000 in Mexico. Similarly, as a group of US senators noted earlier this year, while Xtandi costs $129,000 per year in the U.S., it goes for $39,000 in Japan and Sweden and $30,000 in Canada.

A 2013 article, “Market spiral pricing of cancer drugs,” published in the journal Cancer, put the matter bluntly:

“What determines the escalating prices of cancer drugs? Pharmaceutical experts often cite the high research costs and the benefit or added value of the new cancer drug. We believe that neither argument is well-founded and that pharmaceutical companies may be using a third strategy: constantly raising prices on last year’s drugs and then pricing new ones above the new market price level; this is known as the Market Spiral Pricing Strategy.”

For instance, the price of the older cancer drug Gleevec has more than tripled in price since 2001. More recently, in 2012, 12 of the 13 cancer therapies approved were priced at over $100,000 per year. This is despite the fact that only one of these therapies improved survival by more than two months.

The article in the Journal of Oncology Practice estimates that 85 percent of basic research on cancer is funded by the public. This means that patients buying these high-priced treatments, if they can afford them, are essentially paying for them twice.

Donald W. Light, a professor of comparative healthcare systems at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, estimates that overall 78.7 percent of basic research funds dedicated to drug research in the U.S. come from the government and public programs, with industry contributing 12 percent and foundations 3.8 percent.

Basic research includes investigations into how a disease works, techniques for identifying potentially active agents against the disease and identifying good disease targets. Most of the research conducted by pharmaceutical companies involves applied research and development—such as biological screening and testing during clinical trials—building off the basic research funded by taxpayers.

Light wrote in 2006, “taxpayers are in effect partners in developing every drug, because their elected representatives have chosen to provide various tax deductions and credits to pharmaceutical companies that in effect mean that other taxpayers make up for what drug companies do not pay or receive as credits.”

The history of Medivation’s Xtandi is a case in point. The drug was identified in the early 2000s by Charles Sawyer, then a professor of medicine at UCLA and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Sawyer then collaborated with UCLA biochemistry professor Michael Jung who, along with his team, designed and synthesized Xtandi. This work was funded with public research grants. UCLA then licensed the experimental drug’s patent to Medivation in 2005.

In March of this year, 12 members of Congress requested that the NIH and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) exercise its “march-in rights” to lower the drug’s price. The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, which explicitly encourages universities to patent inventions developed using federal funding, allows the government to ignore the patent exclusivity of inventions developed with federal funds if the drugmaker fails to satisfy certain criteria such as the “health and safety needs” of patients.

The NIH and HSS refused to do so and, in fact, the federal government has never once sought to exercise its march-in authority.

Pfizer’s acquisition of Medivation, which the two companies expect to be completed by the end of the year, follows Pfizer’s failed $160 billion merger with the Ireland-based Allergan as part of its tax-inversion strategy. By shifting the company to Ireland, Pfizer would have lowered its tax-rate and freed up billions of dollars that it holds overseas to avoid paying US taxes. The companies called off the deal earlier this year after the Obama administration introduced new rules making corporate tax inversions less attractive.

This past May, Pfizer purchased Anacor Pharmacetuicals for $5.2 billion to gain access to that company’s eczema gel. Last year, Pfizer acquired Hospira, which sells generic hospital supplies, for $17 billion.

Pfizer’s acquisitions are part of the recent proliferation of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity both within the pharmaceutical sector and throughout US industry as a whole. There were 166 pharmaceutical M&A deals announced in 2015, up from 137 in 2014. The number of deals worth more than $1 billion was 30 in 2015, compared to 26 in 2014 and 20 in 2013, according to data published last month in The Pharma Letter.

The size of M&As in US industry as a whole have reached record highs. Last year set a record of $5 trillion in M&A value, beating the previous record in 2007 just before the onset of the financial crisis. Mergers and acquisitions this year, although lower than in 2015, were already valued at $642 billion in June (compared to $786 billion in June 2015), reports Fortune.

The rise in the number and value of M&As within the pharmaceutical industry is partly explained as a response to the loss of revenue from patents expiring on blockbuster drugs, and the ongoing crisis in research and development productivity.

More generally, the growth in merger activity is driven by financial investors seeking greater returns and efficiencies (i.e., job cuts) amidst the economic slowdown, the availability of cheap debt financing due to the Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates at historically low levels, and the need to keep up with competitors who are also consolidating.

US companies are current sitting on a cash hoard in excess of $2 trillion. Instead of putting the money to work through productive investments in the real economy, companies have been using it to fund share-buybacks, M&As, and pay raises for executives.

The merger frenzy is an expression the growth of financial parasitism in the US, reflected in the decline in manufacturing, the emergence of new speculative bubbles, and the vast redistribution of wealth upwards since the 2008 financial crisis.

French shipbuilder DCNS hit by massive data leak on Scorpene submarine

Kumaran Ira

Yesterday, the Australian reported that it had seen more than 22,000 pages of leaked documents outlining critically sensitive technical details on Scorpene-class submarines that French state-owned shipbuilder DCNS has designed for Indian Navy.

The Murdoch-owned daily wrote, “The leaked DCNS data details the secret stealth capabilities of the six new Indian submarines, including what frequencies they gather intelligence at, what levels of noise they make at various speeds and their diving depths, range and endurance—all sensitive information that is highly classified. … It also discloses magnetic, electromagnetic and infra-red data as well as the specifications of the submarine’s torpedo launch system and the combat system.”

The Australian saw 4,457 pages on the submarine’s underwater sensors, 4,209 pages on its above-water sensors, 4,301 pages on its combat management system, 493 pages on its torpedo systems, 6,841 pages on its communications systems, and 2,138 on its navigation systems.

This massive leak is a major blow for DCNS, threatening the $A50billion (€34.3billion) contract it won in April to build a next generation of 12 submarines for Australia. The Australian raised concerns over the leak of the documents, fearing the impact on the security of the Australian Navy.

Amid the US “pivot to Asia” and Washington’s war drive against China, Australia is upgrading its navy for war against China and expanding its submarine fleet. DCNS won the highly coveted Australian contract over Germany’s ThyssenKrupp AG and Japan’s state-backed Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corporation. DCNS redesigned its nuclear-powered Shortfin Barracuda to meet Australian specifications for a stealthy, diesel-electric-powered vessel capable of matching the long range of Australia’s current Collins-class submarines.

The Australian noted, “[DCNS’s] proposed submarine for Australia—the yet-to-be-built Shortfin Barracuda—was chosen ahead of its rivals because it was considered to be the quietest in the water, making it perfectly suited to intelligence-gathering operations against China ... Any stealth advantage for the navy’s new submarines would be gravely compromised if data on its planned combat and performance capabilities was leaked in the same manner as the data from the Scorpene.”

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull admitted that the leak was “concerning,” but tried to downplay its impact for the Australian navy. “It is a completely different model, it is a different submarine,” he said.

DCNS and the French defense ministry have refused to comment, though DCNS suggested that Indian companies might be responsible for the leak. In a statement, DCNS declared that “an in-depth inquiry will be carried out by [French] national security agencies.” These investigations, it added, will determine “the exact nature of the documents that were leaked, and the potential damages to our clients as well as the identity of those responsible.”

Although it did not immediately authenticate the leaked documents, DCNS raised the prospect that the leak was part of an “economic war” waged by its competitors after it won the Australian submarine contract. “Competition is harder and harder,” a DCNS spokeswoman said, “and all methods can be used in this context.”

“There is India, Australia and other prospective clients, and other countries could raise legitimate questions over DCNS. It’s part of the tools in economic war,” she said.

The Australian said the leak apparently occurred in 2011: “[T]he data on the Scorpene was written in France for India in 2011 and is suspected of being removed from France in that same year by a former French Navy officer who was at that time a DCNS subcontractor.” This subcontractor reportedly shared the data more widely while working with a company in Southeast Asia.

If this is the case, the timing of the Australian’s report, five years after the leak occurred but shortly after DCNS won the Australian contract, suggests that the leaked documents were indeed presented to the Australian as part of economic warfare campaign. A country trying to derive military advantage from its knowledge of the Scorpene would have no reason to announce that it had this information and allow India or DCNS to devise countermeasures. DCNS’ competitors, on the other hand, have every reason to discredit it by revealing its inability to hide sensitive information.

In any case, the initial reactions to the leak point to the extraordinarily sharp economic and military tensions of contemporary capitalist society. While corporations expect their competitors to use under-handed or illegal means as a matter of course, revelations of key details via leaks or cyber-warfare immediately has vast military and diplomatic implications amid the explosion of military tensions and rivalries in Asia.

As explosive tensions mount between the United States and China, Washington fears that US stealth torpedo-launch systems installed in the French-built Australian submarines could be compromised and exploited by China. “If Washington does not feel confident that its ‘crown jewels’ of stealth technology can be protected,” the Australian wrote, “it may decline to give Australia its state-of-the-art combat system.”

After the leak of Scorpene data, Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar said that India is investigating the leak to “find out what has happened.”

In a statement, the Indian Defense Ministry said, “The available information is being examined at Integrated Headquarters, Ministry of Defence (Navy) and an analysis is being carried out by the concerned specialists. It appears that the source of leak is from overseas and not in India.”

Indian officials acknowledged that the issue was very serious. They expressed concerns that India’s regional rivals, China and Pakistan, might have gained access to the sensitive technical data on the submarine. The same type of submarine is also used by Malaysia and Chile and is soon to be used by Brazil.

Uday Bhaskar, a former naval officer, said that the leak of sensitive technical data would seriously damage the submarine: “A submarine is all about not getting detected—and all the technical details relate to the acoustic signature of the submarine, and the kind of noise it makes. With all these things in the public domain, a navy of another country can tune in and pick up signals off our boat.”

UNESCO/Czech Republic Joint Fellowships for Developing Countries 2017 – Bachelors and Masters

Brief description: UNESCO in association with the Government of the Republic of Czech is offering a number of fellowship opportunities for Bachelors and Masters studies to students from developing nations.

Application Deadline: 30th September 2016 (Midnight Paris time)

Offered annually? No

Eligible Countries: Developing countries. Other invited Member States entitled to submit candidatures are:

– Uzbekistan;

– Yemen and

– Zimbabwe

To be taken at (country): Czech Republic

Eligible Fields of Study:  The donor country highly recommends the following field of studies: Natural Resources and Environment, Forestry Engineering, Tropical Agriculture, Water and Landscape Management, Economics and Finance, Environment, Ecology and Environmental Protection, Informatics, Engineering Informatics, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Energy Engineering.

Preference will be given to students who will take these fields of study.

The courses to be undertaken for the programme are: natural resources and environment, forestry water and landscape management, technology and environmental engineering, economics and finance would be given priority.  Note:  There is no possibility to change the field of study/study programme once the fellowship is awarded.

About the Award: In order to promote human resource capacities in the developing Member States and to enhance friendship among peoples of the world, the Government of the Czech Republic has placed at the disposal of UNESCO three long-term fellowships for undergraduate studies (which comprises the Bachelor’s and Master’s study programmes for the academic year 2017-2018) for the benefit of certain developing Member States. 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 permanent residence permit on the territory of the Czech Republic may therefore be granted this type of scholarship.

The studies being conducted in Czech language, the candidates to benefit from these fellowships will be required to take a special language and preparatory course before starting their studies. The Czech language course will be provided by the Charles  University in Prague.

Offered Since:

Type:

Eligibility: Language requirement would be English or French

Selection Criteria: Selection will be made on a competitive basis and priority will be given to applicants who, apart from meeting the academic qualifications required, opt for the fields of study enumerated above. It is important to note that there is no possibility to change the field of study or the study programme once the fellowship has been awarded.  We would also wish to emphasize that only applications with complete documentation shall be considered for evaluation. 

Number of Awardees:

Value of Fellowship: 

Facilities offered by the Government of the Czech Republic

1. Tuition is free of charge
2. A monthly allowance of 14,000 Czech Crowns (1 euro = approximately 25 crowns) for students undertaking bachelor and master’s study programmes (Should this allowance be considered insufficient, the applying Member State may consider granting a partial contribution, or, the candidate may have to seek other funds from private sources to complement this allowance)
3. Accommodation at the student dormitories at reduced rates (to be paid by the fellow from the monthly allowance mentioned in (2) above)
4. Access to meals (to be paid with the monthly allowance) in the student dining halls
5. Access to discounts for urban transportation
6. The Ministry of Health provides medical care to fellows.

Facilities offered by UNESCO

1. UNESCO will cover international travel expenses within the framework of the Fellowships Programme under the Regular Programme.  Upon selection of the candidates, UNESCO will undertake the necessary action to authorize tickets to the beneficiaries before their departure for the Czech Republic.  And,
2. A special one-time allowance of US$200 to cover transit and other miscellaneous expenses.

Duration of Fellowship: 3 to 6 years

How to Apply: All applications should be endorsed by the relevant Government body (such as the National Commission or Permanent Delegation), must be made on a Czech fellowship application form, filled out in English in electronic form until 30 September 2016 (http://registr.dzs.cz/registr.nsf/unesco).

The registration will be open for application until 30 September 2016 (Midnight Paris Time). After filling out the application, the candidate is requested to submit an online motivation letter and take a test.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: UNESCO, Czech Republic

Important Notes: 

• All foreigners who are to study in the Czech Republic are required to obtain a long-term residence permit. Details of the procedures to be followed to obtain this visa will be provided to selected candidates.
• Selected candidates will be required to provide a certificate attesting a clean criminal record
• No provision to finance or lodge family members can be made. It is the National authorities’ responsibilty to ensure that all candidates are duly informed of the above conditions prior to submission of their applications for these fellowships.

Microsoft Research Cambridge PhD Scholarships in Africa, Europe & the Middle East 2017

Application Timeline: Application Opens: 1st September, 2016

Application Closes: 26th September 2016
Notification of results: Stage 1 ~ By the end of October 2016
Stage 2 ~ By the end of December 2016

Offered annually? Yes

Brief description: Microsoft Research Cambridge PhD Scholarship Programme in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) to be taken at students country of study

Accepted Subject Areas: The courses are:

• Computational Science
• Computer-Mediated Living
• Constraint Reasoning
• Machine Learning and Perception
• Online Services and Advertising
• Programming Principles and Tools
• Systems and Networking

About Scholarship

The Microsoft Research PhD Scholarship Programme in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) was launched in 2004 and has so far supported more than 200 PhD students from more than 18 countries and 51 institutions. Each year by September, PhD supervisors from academic institutions in EMEA are invited to submit their proposals for collaborative research projects with Microsoft Research Cambridge. Applications are then peer reviewed and approximately 20 projects are selected for funding. PhD students are appointed to the selected projects and begin their research in the following academic year under the supervision of their academic supervisor, with co-supervision from a researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge.

Scholarship Offered Since: 2004

Scholarship Type: Research PhD Scholarship.

Selection Criteria

Following receipt of the applications, each is carefully reviewed by expert researchers from universities and Microsoft Research. Among the best proposals, those which are most closely related to the research carried out at Microsoft Research in Cambridge are selected.

Eligibility: Only PhD supervisors should apply. If their project is selected, the supervisor has until 31 March 2017 to find the best possible student for the project; otherwise, the PhD Agreement will be terminated automatically. Only applications from institutions in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa will be considered

For an application to be considered, the following key requirements apply:

1. The institute agrees to the terms and conditions in the MRL Term Sheet.
2. The applicant must be in dialogue with the prospective Microsoft supervisor prior to the submission deadline and jointly drafting the proposal.
3. The proposed research must be closely related to the research topics listed above carried out at Microsoft Research in Cambridge.

Number of Scholarship: 20

Scholarship Benefits: Each Microsoft scholarship consists of an annual bursary up to a maximum of three years. The monetary value of the award varies by country to reflect local differences in costs and overheads. Payment is made directly to the institution. The amount of the scholarship is the maximum amount Microsoft Research pays to the institution. In addition, every Scholar receives a fixed hardware allowance and conference allowance.

Duration: Maximum of three years

Eligible Countries: Europe, the Middle East, and Africa

To be taken at (country): Candidates home country.

How to Apply: Applications must be submitted by academic institutions, such as from a PhD supervisor or departmental secretary.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Sponsor: By Microsoft Research.

Important Notes:

Only PhD supervisors should apply. If their project is selected, the supervisor has up to one year to find the best possible student for the project.

After a student is identified, the scholarship provider request a CV and two strong letters of recommendation (in English and preferably not from the supervisor) from professors who are familiar with the student’s work. The scholarship committee may decide to interview the student by telephone.

What Did the Olympics Really Do for Humanity?

Abubakar N. Kasim

One might ask. After the too much excitement, fancy celebrations, and multibillion dollar gathering, what is next? What benefits did it bring to humanity?

What did the poor get out of the abundant wealth that was spent for these games?

It is sad to say that not only the poor didn’t get anything; some of them have lost their livelihoods and places of living altogether for the construction of the arenas.

In her article The Olympics Are a Colossal Waste and a Shameful Distraction Sonali Kolhatkar stated, “The poorest sectors of society within the host countries experience displacement and other forms of oppression as authorities work hard to impress visiting athletes and spectators.”

In Brazil, the first South American country to serve as the international showcase, this was certainly true; more than 20,000 families were displaced to make way for Olympics-related infrastructure. In fact, the state of Rio de Janeiro, where the games are being held, is in such desperate financial circumstances that state workers are not being paid and healthcare centers cannot even afford to take on the Zika virus crisis. Rio declared bankruptcy ahead of the games, and the state’s governor declared a “state of calamity.”

The only benefactors were big corporations who have milked the cow to the last drop of the milk, not leaving anything behind for the destitute.

I wish such force of unity would have been mobilized for the betterment of mankind, to fight poverty, and help those who are living in deplorable conditions around the world and at own backyards such as the homeless and the Aboriginal people.

After the excitement there is nothing substantial on the table to change the deplorable conditions around the world even in the same country where the games were held.

People are dying of hunger; thousands are being killed like ants, no regard to human life of whatsoever. While we only view the terrorist killings– and rightly so – as awful, we hardly pay attention to the other type of systematic and targeted killings by drone’s attacks which terrorize civilians. The US drones have killed so many people in the poor countries. The number of the civilians killed in these attacks might never be known.

The excitement over the Olympics is artificial. It   is like a balloon filled with air and then bursting and losing  all its power into the thin air.

What should we be excited for when the same country where the Olympics is held have abandoned its poor people and driven them out of their homes as reported by the Daily Mirror?

Why should a black man run, when he has been running for over 400 years from pain, humiliation, and suffering?

Why should a black man kick the football when he has been kicked for half a millennium?

How could Canadians get excited about these games when we have abandoned our own Aboriginals who living in crisis as documented by a United Nations report?

Who cares weather athletes wear a bikini or burkini? This is nothing but a distraction to the real issues.

Humanity ought to come back to its senses and stops arbitrary killing, be it by bombs, bullets, pathetic individual acts or state sponsored ones, be it by engineering seeds of crop to suffocate the poor of its food supply.

The 4.6 billion which was the estimated cost of the Brazil Olympics would have benefited almost the entire human race.