Margaret McNamara Educational Grants for Women from Developing Countries 2017/2018 in US & Canada

Application Deadline: The grant Application runs from: 15th September 2016 to 16th January 2017 | Offered annually? Yes

Accepted Fields of Study: Any field of study

To be taken at (country): United States (US) & Canada

About Scholarship: The Margaret McNamara Educational Grants (MMEG) provides grants to women from developing countries to help further their education and strengthen their leadership skills to improve the lives of women and children in developing countries. About $15,000 Education grants are awarded to women from developing and middle-income countries who, upon obtainment of their degree, intend to return to or remain in their countries, or other developing countries, and work to improve the lives of women and/or children.

Offered Since: 1981

Who is qualified to apply? Applicants must meet the following eligibility criteria:

• Be at least 25 years old at time of application deadline (see specific regional program application below);
• Be a national of a country listed on the MMEG Country Eligibility List (listed below);
• Be enrolled at an accredited academic institution when submitting application; and plan to be enrolled for a full academic term after award of the grant by the Board;
• Not be related to a World Bank Group, International Monetary Fund or Inter-American Development Bank staff member or spouse;

Number of Scholarships: Not Specified

Scholarship benefits: Approximately $15,000 per scholarship recipient

Duration: The grant is a onetime award to last for the duration of study

Eligible African Countries: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Rep., Chad, Congo, Dem. Rep., Congo, Rep, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt , Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Other Countries:

Afghanistan, Ecuador , Macedonia, FYR of , Albania, Arab Rep., Serbia, El Salvador, Seychelles, Malaysia, Antigua and Barbuda, Eritrea, Maldives, Solomon Islands, Argentina, Armenia, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh , St. Kitts and Nevis, Belarus, Georgia, Mexico, St. Lucia, Belize, Micronesia, Fed. Sts , St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Grenada, Bhutan, Guatemala, Moldova, Suriname, Bolivia, Mongolia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Syrian Arab Rep., Guyana, Tajikistan, Brazil, Haiti, Bulgaria, Honduras, Myanmar, Thailand, India, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Nepal, Cambodia, Iran, Islamic Rep. of, Nicaragua,Tonga, Iraq, Trinidad and Tobago, Cape Verde, Jamaica, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Palau, Turkmenistan, Chile, China, Kiribatii, Panama, Colombia, Korea, Republic of, Papua New Guinea, Ukraine, Comoros, Kosovo, Paraguay, Uruguay, Kyrgyz Rep, Peru, Uzbekistan, Lao PDR, Philippines, Vanuatu, Costa Rica, Latvia, Poland, Venezuela, RB, Lebanon, Romania, Vietnam, Croatia, Russian Federation, West Bank & Gaza, Yemen, Rep, Dominica, Samoa, Dominican Republic, São Tomé and Principe

How to Apply:  Apply via Scholarship Webpage link below.

Remember to read the Application Checklist & FAQs before applying, and when applying (after signing up), select “US-Canada program” in the first question of the application. If the programme name does not appear, the programme may be closed to new applications.

Visit Scholarship webpage for details

Sponsors: Margaret McNamara Educational Grants (MMEG)

Important Notes: Please make sure to submit ALL documents as listed. Only complete applications will be accepted. Decisions will be announced by April.

Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Scholarships for International Students 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 15th February 2017.

Offered annually? Yes

To be taken at (country): Netherlands

About the Award: Application for the scholarship is open for prospective IBA students (thus, not currently enrolled students) starting their studies in 2017/2018 from all non-EEA countries, provided they would be charged the non-EEA tuition fee.

Only students who are not recipients of any other scholarships exceeding the amount of 5,000 euro in total in that same academic year can apply for the scholarship.

Eligible Countries: The school may give preference to students with one of the following nationalities:

• Brazilian, Russian, Indian, Chinese, Taiwanese/Korean/Filipino, Indonesian/Vietnamese/Thai, Iranian/Iraqi, Azerbaijani/Georgian, Turkish, African (all countries), Mexican

Type: Bachelors in IBA (International Business Administration)

Eligibility: The scholarship will be awarded for the first year of the IBA programme, provided excellence in previous education is proven. As the scholarship will only be awarded for the first year, students should be aware that they will need to have sufficient means to cover the study costs of the second and third year.

Selection Process: 

• The RSM Scholarship Committee will decide on the local grade equivalents for the Dutch grade of 8.0 using (a.o.) the grade information included in the NUFFIC country modules.
• The decisions on the award of the scholarship will be made by the RSM Scholarship Committee.  This scholarship committee will determine award recipient(s) on 15 April 2017.

Value of Scholarship: The scholarship takes the form of a waiver being the amount of money that will be subtracted from the full non-EEA tuition fee. The waiver fully covers the difference between the non-EEA tuition fee and the EEA tuition fee. You will always have to pay at least the statutory tuition fee.  For the scholarship, no actual transmission of money takes place. The scholarship part of the non-EEA tuition fee will be subtracted from the full non-EEA tuition fee before the start of the academic year, enabling you to immediately pay the reduced tuition fee; either at once or in instalments.

The amount of the scholarship for the academic year 2017/2018 is approximately 6,900 euro.

Duration of Scholarship: The scholarship will be awarded for the first year of the IBA programme

How to Apply: When applying for the IBA programme in the online application form (OLAF) you will be asked to upload documents which will be used for evaluating your application. During this process you can also upload your scholarship application letter (maximum 1 A4 size page). The application letter should include the following information:

• an explanation why you would need a scholarship, comprising a description of your financial situation;
• an explanation why you would deserve a scholarship, comprising a description of academic excellence and if applicable other merits.
• if applicable: certified copies of other scholarships granted;
• a signed statement indicating that other scholarships awarded do not exceed the amount of 5,000 euro in total;
• the following documents are not required if you have already uploaded these for admission to the IBA programme: certified copies of the secondary education academic transcript (certified list of grades), and if applicable certified copies of transcripts from a higher education institution: to date, as available at the moment of application (normally already part of your application package).

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Erasmus University, Netherlands

VLIR- UOS Masters & Training Scholarships in Belgium for African/Developing Countries 2017/2018

Application Deadline: Application Deadlines depend on candidate’s chosen programme (See’How to Apply’ link below); deadlines generally between November 2016 – March 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Developing Countries

• Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea,Cameroon, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Rwanda,Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Niger
• Asia: Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia, Palestinian Territories, Vietnam
• Latin America: Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Peru, Suriname.

To be taken at (country): Belgium

Accepted Subject Areas: Only the following English taught courses at Belgian Flemish universities or university colleges are eligible for scholarships:

Master programmes (September 2017)

• Master of Human Settlements
• Master of Science in Food Technology
• Master of Aquaculture (IMAQUA)
• Master of Epidemiology
• Master of Development Evaluation and Management
• Master of Governance and Development
• Master of Globalization and Development
• Master of Agro-and Environmental Nematology
• Master of Rural Development
• Master of Statistics
• Master of Water Resources Engineering
• Master of Sustainable Territorial Development
• Master of Transportation Sciences
• Master of Cultures and Development Studies
• Master of Science in Marine and Lacustrine Science and Management (Ocenas and Lakes)

Training programmes organised in 2017 (14-90 days)

• Sustainable Development and Human Rights Law (SUSTLAW) (13/02/2017-05/05/2017)
• Health Management in Aquaculture
• Audio-visual Leaning Materials – Management, Production and Activities (AVLM)
• Food Safety, Quality Assurance and Risk Analysis
• Modern breeding techniques of maize
• I-EBQ (International training on Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Qualitative research methods)
• Clinical Nutrition – the North-South experience

About Scholarship

VLIR-UOS awards scholarships to students from developing countries to study for a master or training programme in Flanders, Belgium. VLIR-UOS funds and facilitates academic cooperation and exchange between higher education institutions in Flanders (Belgium) and those in developing countries, which aims at building capacity, knowledge and experience for a sustainable development.

The master programmes focus on specific problems of developing countries. These are designed to enable graduates to share and apply acquired knowledge in the home institution and country. In the shorter training programmes the focus is on transferring skills rather than knowledge, thus creating opportunities for cooperation and networking.

Selection Criteria: The following criteria will be taken into account for the selection of candidates for a scholarship:

• Motivation. The candidate who is not able to convincingly motivate his application, is unlikely to be selected for a scholarship.
• Professional experience: Preference will be given to candidates who can demonstrate a higher possibility of implementing and/or transferring the newly gained knowledge upon return to the home country.
• Gender. In case of two equally qualified candidates of different sexes, preference will be given to the female candidate.
• Regional balance. The selection commission tries to ensure that 50% of a programme’s scholarships are granted to candidates from Sub-Saharan Africa, provided there is a sufficient number of qualifying candidates from this region.
• Social background. In case of two equally qualified candidates, preference will be given to candidates who can demonstrate that they belong to a disadvantaged group or area within their country or an ethnic or social minority group, especially when these candidates can provide proof of leadership potential.
• Previously awarded scholarships: Preference will be given to candidates who have never received a scholarship to study in a developed country (bachelor or master).

Eligibility: You can only apply for a scholarship if you meet the following requisites.

1. Fungibility with other VLIR-UOS funding: A scholarship within the VLIR-UOS scholarship programme is not compatible with financial support within an IUC- or TEAM-project. Candidates working in a university where such projects are being organized, should submit a declaration of the project leader stating that the department where the candidate is employed is not involved in the project.
2. Age: The maximum age for an ICP candidate is 35 years for an initial masters and 40 years for an advanced masters. The maximum age for an ITP candidate is 45 years. The candidate cannot succeed this age on January 1 of the intake year.
3. Nationality and Country of Residence: A candidate should be a national and resident of one of the 31 countries of the VLIR-UOS country list for scholarships (not necessarily the same country) at the time of application.
4. Professional background and experience: VLIR-UOS gives priority to candidates who are employed in academic institutions, research institutes, governments, social economy or NGO’s, or aim a career in one of these sectors. However, also candidates employed in the profit sector (ICP and ITP) or newly graduated candidates without any work experience (ICP) can be eligible for the scholarship. The ITP candidate should have relevant professional experience and a support letter confirming (re)integration in a professional context where the acquired knowledge and skills will be immediately applicable.
5. Former VLIR-UOS scholarship applications and previously awarded scholarships: A candidate can only submit one VLIR-UOS scholarship application per year, irrespectively of the scholarship type. As a consequence, a candidate can only be selected for one VLIR-UOS scholarship per year.
6. The ICP candidate has never received a scholarship from the Belgian government to attend a master programme or equivalent or was never enrolled in a Flemish higher education institution to attend a master programme or equivalent before January 1 of the intake year

Number of Awardees: VLIR-UOS will award up to 180 scholarships to first-year master students and 70 scholarships to training participants.

Value of Scholarship: The scholarship covers ALL related expenses (full cost).

Duration of Scholarship: The master programmes will last for one or two academic years while the shorter training programmes will last 14 to 90 days.

How to Apply: 

• To apply for a scholarship, you first need to apply for the training or Master programme.
• To apply for a training or Master programme, visit the website of the training or Master programme of your interest. Follow the guidelines for application for the programme as mentioned on its website.
• In the programme application, you can mention whether you wish to apply for a scholarship. In case you do,  the programme coordinator forwards your application to VLIR-UOS.
• Applications submitted by the candidates to VLIR-UOS directly will not be considered!

Visit Scholarship Webpage for more details

Sponsors: The Flemish Interuniversity Council (VLIR) responsible actor for the Belgian government

Important Notes: All scholars are obliged to return to their country of origin as soon as possible after the study or training programme has ended. Candidates selected for a VLIR-UOS scholarship will be contacted by VLIR-UOS latest mid June.

How the West’s Economic Sanctions are Inflicting Suffering on Ordinary Syrians

Patrick Cockburn

The US and EU economic sanctions on Syria are causing huge suffering among ordinary Syrians and preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid, according to a leaked UN internal report. The embargo was supposed to target President Bashar al-Assad and contribute to his removal from power. Instead it is making it more difficult for foodstuffs, fuel and healthcare to reach the mass of the people.

Aid agencies cited in the report say they cannot procure basic medicines or medical equipment for hospitals because sanctions are preventing foreign commercial companies and banks having anything to do with Syria. A European doctor working in Syria says that “the indirect effect of sanctions… makes the import of medical instruments and other medical supplies immensely difficult, nearly impossible.”

The revelations in the internal UN assessment of the effect of sanctions on aid delivery, entitled Humanitarian Impact of Syria-Related Unilateral Restrictive Measures and leaked by the investigative publication The Intercept, open up the US and EU to the charge of hypocrisy, after criticising Syria and Russia for impeding the delivery of UN aid supplies to besieged cities in Syria.

The Intercept quotes an internal UN email from a senior official saying that sanctions have been a “principal factor” in degrading the Syrian health system and have contributed to a 300 per cent rise in the price of wheat flour and 650 per cent rise for rice, following a doubling of fuel prices in the last 18 months.

Syria was once largely self-sufficient in pharmaceuticals, but many plants were in the Aleppo area and have been destroyed or rendered unusable by the fighting. The email says that many of the plants that survived have now been forced to close because of the impact of sanctions on obtaining raw materials from abroad and the foreign currency to pay for them.

The report states that conflict in Syria is the greatest humanitarian crisis the world has seen since the Second World War with 13 million people, or two thirds of the population, in need of assistance. The disaster has led to the exodus of at least five million refugees and four million internally displaced people. The report says that the chaos has produced a weakening of the state and conditions that have fostered the growth of Isis.

US and EU sanctions are contributing to this humanitarian calamity while Mr Assad remains firmly in power. In many respects, the situation resembles that in Iraq between 1990 and 2003 when UN sanctions destroyed the Iraqi economy and helped dissolve its society while doing nothing to reduce the power of Saddam Hussein as Iraqi leader. Many critics of Iraqi sanctions argue that the mass impoverishment they produced contributed significantly to the political and sectarian breakdown after the invasion of 2003.

The same process is now taking place in Syria. The report says that “in totality, the US and EU sanctions in Syria are some of the most complicated and far-reaching sanctions regimes ever imposed.” It says that in parallel with the humanitarian crisis there is this complex network of non-UN sanctions targeting the government of Syria and some entities and individuals alleged to have contributed to violence and human rights abuses. The EU has imposed wide-ranging prohibitions on commercial and banking dealings with Syria as well control of the export of “dual use” items that might have some security application.

US sanctions are even more extensive, imposing a blanket ban on exports to Syria or financial dealings with the country. This includes foreign produced goods of which the US content is more than 10 per cent of the value of the finished item. There are supposedly means available for purely humanitarian goods to reach Syria, but in practice this is not the case.

The report quotes numerous examples of aid agencies in Syria which have found their work made very difficult or impossible by the Kafka-esque system of licenses, export controls, risk management assessments and other prohibitions that require expensive legal advice to navigate. For instance, the ban on “dual use” goods includes such items as drilling equipment and pipes used for water and sanitation which require a special license – even though a shortage of fresh drinking water is a major health hazard in Syria.

The big aid agencies are universal in their condemnation of the present system and the way in which it compounds the miseries caused by the war. None of the agencies are named in the report, but one large one from the EU complains that it has to apply for a license to send goods to Syria through national government bureaucracies, but officials there do not know what the criteria is for doing so. This means endless delays and many commercial companies and banks want to have nothing to do with Syria for fear of unwittingly breaching sanctions and opening themselves up to heavy fines.

These fears are not exaggerated. The report notes that “non-US banks have paid billions in US dollars in sanctions related penalties, mostly to US regulators.”

Staying within the law is also expensive. One aid agency said that the cost of legally sending laptops to their staff in Syria was greater than the laptops had cost in the first place. It is not just government-held parts of Syria that are affected. One major EU charity, partly funded by the EU itself, planned “to deliver humanitarian assistance to besieged areas inside Syria.” For this it needed to bring funds from the bank it usually used to another country near Syria but it did not not conceal the fact that the final destination was Syria. This turned out to be a mistake. The bank objected that it was at risk because of sanctions and other prohibitions. The charity concludes by saying that “the planned humanitarian assistance has still not been delivered.”

In effect, the US and EU sanctions are imposing an economic siege on Syria as a whole which may be killing more Syrians than die of illness and malnutrition in the sieges which EU and US leaders have described as war crimes. Over half the country’s public hospitals have been damaged or destroyed. Syrian doctors in Damascus complained to The Independent about the difficulty in obtaining medicines and spare parts for medical equipment purchased before the war.

In other parts of Syria the health situation is far worse. The report says that “British doctors working in Aleppo have indicated that over 80 per cent of those requiring urgent medical treatment die as a result of their injuries, or lack of basic care, medicine and equipment.”

Nevertheless, the World Health Organisation says that brand name US medicines “cannot be procured due to the embargo situation.” In general, living conditions have fallen disastrously with electricity supply about ‘three hours on three hours off’ in the capital.

Maintenance and spare parts for the electricity system have both been hit by sanctions. There private generators but the report says that power has “become too expensive for most Syrians, and many live without electricity.”

As Syrians sit in the dark, US and EU sanctions are combining with war to destroy their country.

Sex, Lies, Videotape…and Hacked Emails

Dave Lindorff

The “town-meeting”-formatted “debate” between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Sunday night was, as could have been expected, a disappointing affair, with the two moderators generally avoiding any real challenge to the lies and distortions of the two candidates and declining to push them into critical areas that have been ignored throughout this fall’s presidential campaign — like climate change, an increasingly dangerous conflict between nuclear powers that could trigger a likely nuclear world war, and the worsening income gap in the US which, let’s face it, neither candidate has a program or even a desire to combat.

On balance though, while both candidates were awful, I would say the night went worse for Clinton. Trump’s challenge in this second outing, coming right after the release of an 11-year-old video in which he boasted of assaulting women, was firstly to defuse that damaging revelation, and secondly to avoid losing his cool and making outrageous extemporaneous statements that would worsen his standing as a sober “leader.” He largely met both challenges, apologizing for his lewd boasting and his obnoxious and abusive behavior as described in the video, which he dismissed as “locker-room talk” that he wasn’t proud of, and sticking for the most part to criticisms of Clinton’s actual actions (and inaction) and to her words. His performance probably was adequate to at least staunch the stream of defections of Republican candidates and Republican voters from his campaign and support base.

Clinton meanwhile, had the challenge of trying to get the public to trust her. In this she failed miserably. Smirking frequently when she was being accused by Trump of serious crimes and of blatant and repeated lying, she clumsily tried to dodge some serious and valid charges he made against her. These on-screen actions and lame efforts to change the subject will only succeed in making her less trusted by those voters who have still not made up their minds about which candidate, if any, to back on November 8.

For example, when Trump hammered at Clinton for having deleted and then “bleached” from her hard drive over 30,000 emails — actions taken after she had already received subpoenas for them — she tried to dodge the issue by referring, in a complete non-sequitor, to the 50,000 emails that “I did provide.” It was hardly an adequate response, and effectively simply confirmed her crime of obstruction. The two moderators, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and ABC’s Martha Raddatz, did almost nothing to press her on this failure to respond.

Clinton was even worse when it came to the matter of statements we now finally have learned she made in those secret private and highly-paid speeches she give to executives of some of the world’s biggest banks — speeches she for almost a year has stubbornly refused to make public. Portions were released over the weekend by Wikileaks, which had obtained emails hacked from Clinton 2016 Campaign Chair John Podesta’s email server.

Thanks to those hacked emails, we now know that Clinton told executives at Goldman Sachs, one of the felonious too-big-to-fail banks whose toxic mortgage products brought us the 2008 fiscal crisis and the resulting Great Recession that is still dragging down incomes and ruining lives in the US, speaking thusly of progressive forces inside the Democratic Party membership:

“…while the minority base (of the party) is probably still dominated by the Democratic messaging, a coalition of subaltern interests is forming that could, with an extremely weak Republican nominee, create an aperture for either a 3rd Party victory or, in essence, an election inflection point where an insurgent candidate could actually co-opt (take over) a major party.

“This coalition, a collection of generally under-represented, low social captial individuals, has become increasingly networked and increasingly motivated. This group that our analysts are calling (makes air quotes) bucket of losers could not only be a significant force in the next election, but could, on an outside percentile, even win.”

This is clearly a reference to the very forces that came together around the insurgent primary campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders. “Bucket of losers”? Quite a characterization of Sanders’ supporters, right? That’s sure not going to help her win over those millions of Sanders primary voters. Not to mention the remarkable denigration of Clinton’s supported core supporters, the “minority base” of the party, whom she says are “still dominated by the Democratic messaging.” How is this kind of condescension supposed to make those in that “minority base” feel?

Also damaging was a snippet of another purloined speech, where Clinton spoke of her brazenly two-faced approach to campaigning, vowing for example to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that she had as recently as last fall called “the Gold Standard” of trade deals, saying she opposed a pipeline for Canadian tar sands oil, when as Secretary of State she was pushing hard for its approval, and her campaign claim to want to rein in the big banks when in fact she was telling the bankers paying richly for her closed-door speeches that she thought they should be writing the regulations.

As Clinton said in another one of those paid private speeches to financial institutions, it’s critical for a politician to have both a “public and a private” position on some issues. She explained:

“If everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least…So, you need both a public and a private position.”

In that same speech, she said:

“You just have to sort of figure out how to — getting back to that word, ‘balance’ — how to balance the public and the private efforts that are necessary to be successful, politically, and that’s not just a comment about today.”

As these hugely damaging words, which Clinton had successfully kept hidden from the voters for over a year now, were finally exposed, and she was asked by Trump to explain them at the “debate,” her response was to ignore the question and to divert attention instead to the unproven allegation by Obama administration sources that the evil Russians had hacked Democratic Party emails and to claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “trying to influence the outcome” of the US election in favor of Trump.

Clinton also lamely tried to pretend her talk in one secret speech about having both “public and private” positions on issues was a specific reference to Abraham Lincoln’s having turned to a one-time political opponent to help him pass a specific piece of legislation. This was clearly not true, and of course the only way for her to prove that would have been to release the entirety of her private paid speech — something she will not do.

Trump’s riposte that she was shamelessly trying to compare herself to “Honest Abe” was on the mark and, one of his better lines of the night, elicited loud laughs and guffaws that had to be quieted by moderator Cooper. (Trump missed his best moment, though, when he could have said, “Honest Abe wasn’t a friend of mine, but I do know a bit about him, and you, Madam Clinton, are not Abraham Lincoln.”)

Now of course virtually all politicians lie, and we all know that politicians during campaigns say one thing and then often, once elected, do the opposite. But many of those who are planning to vote for Hillary Clinton are deluding themselves by believing that her promises to help them are real. Clearly, as she has told her big banker bankrollers, they are not. She has no intention of seriously reining in the too-big-to-fail banks, and equally clearly, she was not some innocent internet naif when she had the private server she used illegally during her years as secretary of state erased and “bleached” so her email messages during that period — a time when she and her husband became fabulously wealthy, clearly through infuence peddling — could never be recovered and read.

On balance, it was a bad night for Clinton, who thanks to Wikileaks and her own stumbling and dissembling on stage stands exposed as a crooked politician whose words on the campaign trail cannot be believed, and whose actions show that she considers herself to be above the law.

Voters may well and properly conclude from this campaign that Donald Trump cannot be trusted, whether it’s promising to “make America great again,” or to “end poverty” in America’s inner cities, or claiming he actually pays taxes. They may believe too that Trump the sexual predator of 2005 is still alive and abusing and debasing women in 2016. But after Sunday’s pitifull performance, surely no one can any longer pretend that Hillary Clinton is in any way a progressive candidate or a person of any integrity or credibility.

The real losers though, are the American public, who continue to be deprived of a real debate in this election by the corrupt exclusion of third-party candidates from these fraudulent presidential debates. As Jill Stein, presidential candidate of the Green Party — blacked out of this election by the corporate media — told Democracy Now! in that program’s offering of a kind of three-way debate following the Trump-Clinton televised show:

“The American people have very serious issues before us, and we need to get past this debate over whether Hillary or Donald is more corrupt, who has the more offensive history.

“Let me, you know, just say, there are critical issues before us. The American people have really had it economically. This recovery has been a recovery at the top, despite some minor—minor suggestions that income is rising. Indeed, this is only a small amount among lower- and middle-income families…An entire generation is locked in debt. Black lives are struggling for safety, walking down the street or driving down the street. Millions of immigrants are living in fear of deportation. Donald Trump has shown that the Republicans are the party of hate and fearmongering, but the Democrats are the party of deportation, detentions and night raids.

“We have wars for oil that are massively expanding, have no end. The Obama administration is now bombing seven countries. This is bankrupting our budget. Half of our discretionary budget is being spent on these wars, which are not making us more safe, but rather less safe. Almost half of your income taxes are going to this massive Defense Department, which is not really not a Defense Department, it is an offense department.

“And the climate is in meltdown. We are seeing superstorms now in the Caribbean, a thousand people tragically killed in the country of Haiti, illustrating again how it is people of color and people in undeveloped nations and poor people who are really on the front lines of climate change; extended drought, continuing fires in the—in the West of the country. We have a climate crisis here.

“And these two are bickering about who is more abusive and who has been more derelict in their responsibilities towards the American people. And I—personally, I think they’re both right.”

Just imagine if 90 million American voters could have heard that response on Sunday night!

Russia And Turkey Sign Strategic Turkish Stream Gas Pipeline Deal

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Turkey and Russia Monday (Oct 10) signed the Turkish Stream gas pipeline agreement.

The signing of the strategic deal came after a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin who was in Istanbul to attend the 23rd World Energy Congress which gathered 10,000 participants, including four presidents, 250 energy ministers, academia, policy­makers and CEOs of top energy companies.

This was Putin’s first trip to Turkey since a bilateral crisis sparked by Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian war plane over Syria last November. Putin and Erdoğan have met on two occasions – since a Turkish June initiative to normalize ties after the plane crisis – in Putin’s home city of Saint Petersburg and then on the sidelines of the G-20 in China.

In a bid to normalize relations with Russia, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in June expressed regret for the downing of a Russian warplane. “I would like to send my condolences to the family of the Russian pilot who lost his life and express one more time that I share their pain; may they excuse us,” Erdogan said in a statement. “I believe that we will leave behind this current situation, which is to the detriment of both countries, and rapidly normalize our relations,” Erdogan added in a speech later on in the day.

Russia’s Gazprom and Turkey’s BOTAŞ in 2014 signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, with a capacity of 63 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year from Russia to Turkey across the Black Sea.

However, talks on the project were halted last year after Turkey shot down a Russian air force jet and Moscow retaliated with trade sanctions but since then the two countries have made significant progress to mend relations.

In August last at a joint news conference with his Russian counterpart in St. Petersburg, President Erdoğan said that building the gas pipeline quickly was a priority. In September Gazprom announced it had received first regulatory approvals from Turkey, allowing the project to move into implementation phase.

Putin said Monday the need to develop the Turkish Stream natural gas project had been stressed in his talks with Erdoğan, adding that Russia also actively planned to expand it hydrocarbon exports eastward to China, Japan and India. “Russia will further interact in energy with all interested parties for mutual beneficial partnerships on an equal footing,” he added.

“Gas cooperation between Russia and Turkey could be scary for the European Union,” said Akin Unver, assistant professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul and an expert in regional energy.

“The EU wants to diversify suppliers and link eastern Mediterranean gas to Europe in the long run … if Russia bypasses all that with TurkStream that would not help.

EU officials fear that TurkStream will be expanded to bypass Ukraine as a transit route for supplies to Europe, increasing dependence on Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom and shutting in alternative supplies from the Caspian region.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak has said Turkey will “play a large role as a transit country” to supply Europe – the very prospect which worries EU officials. Brussels is instead promoting a chain of pipelines known as the Southern Gas Corridor to transport gas from the Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan to European markets by 2020.

Akkuyu nuclear plant.

Turkey and Russia have also reached consensus on the acceleration of the process for the Akkuyu nuclear plant.

Erdoğan said on Monday that Turkey is seeking ways to implement plans for a third nuclear power plant and aims to produce 10 percent of its electricity from nuclear power in the coming years.
Russia is currently developing Turkey’s first nuclear plant by the Mediterranean.

In May 2010, Russia and Turkey signed an agreement that a subsidiary of Rosatom — Akkuyu NGS Elektrik Uretim Corp. (APC: Akkuyu Project Company) — would build, own, and operate a power plant at Akkuyu comprising four 1,200 MW VVER units.

The agreement was ratified by the Turkish Parliament in July 2010. Engineering and survey work started at the site in 2011.

The construction of the first unit was scheduled to begin in 2016, with the four units put into service in 2022–25. In 2013, Russian nuclear construction company Atomstroyexport (ASE) and Turkish construction company Ozdogu signed the site preparation contract for the proposed Akkuyu nuclear power plant.

The contract includes excavation work at the site. The official launch ceremony took place in April 2015, and the first unit is expected to be completed in 2022.

Relations between Ankara and Moscow were strained after Turkey brought down a Russian military jet on Nov. 24, 2015 after it allegedly violated Turkey’s airspace near the Syrian border.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in December 2015, that the fate of the Akkuyu nuclear plant, which is planned to be built in Turkey by Russia, will be left to the companies involved in the project to decide.

Speaking at his annual press conference in Moscow, Putin said the decision over whether the Akkuyu nuclear power plant will be realized belongs to the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation, Rosatom, and its partners in Turkey.  “Russia will not take any step that would harm its economic interests,” he added.

The Russian president also spoke about the downing of a Russian warplane on Nov. 24.  Putin said: “It cannot be said that we see Turkey as an enemy country, yet our relations deteriorated. I do not know how to get out of this situation,” adding that it was up to Turkey from now on. “If Turkey thought that we would retreat from Syria following the downing of the plane, Russia is not that country,” Putin added.

The thaw between Russio-Turkish relations began with the virtual apology of President  Erdoğan in June and accelerated after the abortive coup against President Erdogan in July last. Russia was among the first countries to condemn the coup attempt.

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Turkey and Russia Monday (Oct 10) signed the Turkish Stream gas pipeline agreement.

The signing of the strategic deal came after a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian n President Vladimir Putin who was in Istanbul to attend the 23rd World Energy Congress which gathered 10,000 participants, including four presidents, 250 energy ministers, academia, policy­ makers and CEOs of top energy companies.

This was Putin’s first trip to Turkey since a bilateral crisis sparked by Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian war plane over Syria last November. Putin and Erdoğan have met on two occasions – since a

Turkish June initiative to normalize ties after the plane crisis – in Putin’s home city of Saint Petersburg and then on the sidelines of the G-20 in China.

In a bid to normalize relations with Russia, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in June expressed regret for the downing of a Russian warplane. “I would like to send my condolences to the family of the Russian pilot who lost his life and express one more time that I share their pain; may they excuse us,” Erdogan said in a statement. “I believe that we will leave behind this current situation, which is to the detriment of both countries, and rapidly normalize our relations,” Erdogan added in a speech later on in the day.

Russia’s Gazprom and Turkey’s BOTAŞ in 2014 signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, with a capacity of 63 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year from Russia to Turkey across the Black Sea.

However, talks on the project were halted last year after Turkey shot down a Russian air force jet and Moscow retaliated with trade sanctions but since then the two countries have made significant progress to mend relations.

In August last at a joint news conference with his Russian counterpart in St. Petersburg, President Erdoğan said that building the gas pipeline quickly was a priority. In September Gazprom announced it had received first regulatory approvals from Turkey, allowing the project to move into implementation phase.

Putin said Monday the need to develop the Turkish Stream natural gas project had been stressed in his talks with Erdoğan, adding that Russia also actively planned to expand it hydrocarbon exports eastward to China, Japan and India. “Russia will further interact in energy with all interested parties for mutual beneficial partnerships on an equal footing,” he added.

“Gas cooperation between Russia and Turkey could be scary for the European Union,” said Akin Unver, assistant professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul and an expert in regional energy.

“The EU wants to diversify suppliers and link eastern Mediterranean gas to Europe in the long run … if Russia bypasses all that with TurkStream that would not help.

EU officials fear that TurkStream will be expanded to bypass Ukraine as a transit route for supplies to Europe, increasing dependence on Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom and shutting in alternative supplies from the Caspian region.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak has said Turkey will “play a large role as a transit country” to supply Europe – the very prospect which worries EU officials. Brussels is instead promoting a chain of pipelines known as the Southern Gas Corridor to transport gas from the Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan to European markets by 2020.

Akkuyu nuclear plant.
Turkey and Russia have also reached consensus on the acceleration of the process for the Akkuyu nuclear plant.

Erdoğan said on Monday that Turkey is seeking ways to implement plans for a third nuclear power plant and aims to produce 10 percent of its electricity from nuclear power in the coming years.
Russia is currently developing Turkey’s first nuclear plant by the Mediterranean.

In May 2010, Russia and Turkey signed an agreement that a subsidiary of Rosatom — Akkuyu NGS Elektrik Uretim Corp. (APC: Akkuyu Project Company) — would build, own, and operate a power plant at Akkuyu comprising four 1,200 MW VVER units.

The agreement was ratified by the Turkish Parliament in July 2010. Engineering and survey work started at the site in 2011.

The construction of the first unit was scheduled to begin in 2016, with the four units put into service in 2022–25. In 2013, Russian nuclear construction company Atomstroyexport (ASE) and Turkish construction company Ozdogu signed the site preparation contract for the proposed Akkuyu nuclear power plant.

The contract includes excavation work at the site. The official launch ceremony took place in April 2015, and the first unit is expected to be completed in 2022.

Relations between Ankara and Moscow were strained after Turkey brought down a Russian military jet on Nov. 24, 2015 after it allegedly violated Turkey’s airspace near the Syrian border.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in December 2015, that the fate of the Akkuyu nuclear plant, which is planned to be built in Turkey by Russia, will be left to the companies involved in the project to decide.

Speaking at his annual press conference in Moscow, Putin said the decision over whether the Akkuyu nuclear power plant will be realized belongs to the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation, Rosatom, and its partners in Turkey.  “Russia will not take any step that would harm its economic interests,” he added.

The Russian president also spoke about the downing of a Russian warplane on Nov. 24.  Putin said: “It cannot be said that we see Turkey as an enemy country, yet our relations deteriorated. I do not know how to get out of this situation,” adding that it was up to Turkey from now on. “If Turkey thought that we would retreat from Syria following the downing of the plane, Russia is not that country,” Putin added.

The thaw between Russio-Turkish relations began with the virtual apology of President Erdogan  in June and accelerated after the abortive coup against President Erdogan in July last. Russia was among the first countries to condemn the coup attempt.

New Zealand doctors vote for nationwide strike

John Braddock & Jeremy Lin

New Zealand’s resident doctors, including junior house officers and senior trainee specialists, have voted to strike for 48 hours on October 18. Doctors last took industrial action in 2008, when two 48-hour strikes were held.

The doctors’ claim to reduce working hours is part of negotiations for a collective employment agreement with the country’s 20 District Health Boards (DHBs). Strike notices were given to the DHBs by the NZ Resident Doctors Association (NZRDA) on Monday. The nationwide strike by 3,200 doctors is in pursuit of demands for what the NZRDA says are “safer rosters and safer hours.”

The doctors are joining a groundswell of opposition by health sector workers internationally to the assault on working conditions and the destruction of public health. Tens of thousands of doctors and nurses from the USA and Britain to Papua New Guinea, have recently moved to strike over excessive workloads and attacks on pay, along with deteriorating conditions in hospitals. In every case, these struggles have taken place in defiance of governments driving through austerity measures in collaboration with trade unions which have manoeuvred to call off strikes and impose sell-out settlements.

Resident doctors in New Zealand’s public hospitals work rosters that can include seven nights in a row and 12 days in a row. The union wants DHBs to agree to replace the seven nights with a maximum of four nights in a row followed by three days off, and change the 12 days in a row, followed by two days off, to rosters with a maximum of 10 days followed by four days off.

The action was called after mediation failed following 10 months of negotiations.

The DHBs offered to reduce the number of consecutive night shifts from seven to four over the next two years, and committed to “reviewing” the maximum number of consecutive day shifts over the next two years. A DHB spokeswoman ingenuously claimed the offer would deliver “some of the best hours of work in the world.”

NZRDA national secretary Deborah Powell said the offer did not go “far enough,” with no guarantee that the reduction of consecutive night shifts would be permanent and no guarantee of recovery time between four consecutive night shifts and the following day shifts. The DHBs denounced the planned strike as “a pay claim in the guise of a health and safety issue.”

Doctors told the media they voted to strike because they have “no choice” and the exhaustion caused by long working hours is putting patient safety at risk. According to a survey conducted by the union, 1,182 doctors said they had made mistakes at work due to fatigue, and 275 had fallen asleep driving home after work.

One doctor, Helen Saywell, told Radio NZ’s “Checkpoint” program that the fatigue which hits after a week of consecutive overnight shifts should be “of concern to everybody.” After her first run of seven night shifts in a row, she fell asleep on the job at 3am, and was so “bone-tired” that she didn’t wake up when her pager went off. “It also made me question how I could possibly be making safe judgment calls if I was literally hanging onto consciousness by my fingernails,” she said.

Richard Chen said he was currently working 12 days straight, with two 15-hours shifts in the middle—roughly 115 hours on duty between “weekends.” The dispute was never about pay, he said. Chen explained that any reduction in working hours would result in a loss of salary in most cases.

The atrocious conditions have been imposed over three decades by governments of all stripes, abetted by the trade unions that have negotiated and enforced successive employment contracts while suppressing any struggles over draconian working hours.

A DHB spokesperson, Julie Patterson, noted that the present system had been in place since the 1980s. In this period, the Labour government launched its pro-market assault on the working class, which included sweeping attacks on public health and education on behalf of big business.

The protracted erosion of funding has produced a deepening crisis in the health system. According to the OECD, the rate at which NZ performs elective surgery is less than half the rate of most advanced countries—and around a third of the rate of Australia, Canada and most of Europe.

New Zealand also ranks poorly on indices for access to diagnostic tests, time taken for treatment after diagnosis, and time taken to see a specialist. The average wait for joint replacement surgery, the most common procedure among the elderly, has risen to 304 days. An estimated 174,000 New Zealanders in need of publicly-funded surgery are not even on a waiting list.

This situation has worsened since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis. The Council of Trade Unions estimates a funding shortfall in government health expenditure of at least $NZ1.2 billion since 2009. The Canterbury DHB revealed this week that it is $35 million in debt, with budget deficits forecast every year until at least 2021. With access to public treatment now far from assured, those who can afford it are increasingly being forced to turn to private healthcare.

There is widespread sympathy in the working class for the struggle of the resident doctors and the defence of public health more generally. The ruling elite is therefore looking to the union to quickly settle the dispute within the existing funding and workload framework. After warning that patients would “bear the brunt” of the strike, the Dominion Post absurdly declared that to resolve the roster impasse, “funding priorities need to be looked at,” and some doctors’ duties should be “picked up by experienced senior nursing staff or distributed widely to other health professionals.”

The NZRDA is indicating that it will collaborate to impose a settlement acceptable to the government, big business and health authorities. The NZRDA’s own claim, for a start, does nothing to resolve the chronic workload issues facing doctors and other staff within the hospital system.

The NZRDA leadership is already seeking to make a deal with the DHBs. Interviewed on TV One last Tuesday, Powell declared that she had been involved in negotiating doctors’ employment conditions for “nearly thirty years,” and was confident that a settlement could be reached.

In the event of the strike going ahead, a so-called Life Preserving Services agreement previously negotiated with the health unions ensures non-striking staff, including senior doctors, nurses and 300 residents who are non-union members will keep the hospitals functioning. Ian Powell, executive director of the senior doctors union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, said members would be expected to work longer hours to ensure no patients are “harmed as a result of the strike.”