Apply: TEDGlobal Fellowships 2017. Fully-funded to attend conference in Arusha, Tanzania

Application Timelines: 

• Opening date: October 4, 2016
• Closing date: November 13, 2016

Offered annually? Biannual

Eligible Countries: Global

To be taken at (country):  Arusha, Tanzania

Eligible Fields: Instead of business people, professionals, policy wonks and government officials,the TED Fellows program focuses on doers, makers, inventors, advocates, filmmakers and photographers, musicians and artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, NGO heads, and human rights activists.

About the Award: The TEDGlobal Fellowships is designed to bring together young trailblazers from a variety of fields who have shown unusual accomplishment and courage.

Twenty fellows will be selected to attend the TED Global conference to be held Aug. 27 to 30, 2017. Participants will also have the opportunity to attend pre-conference programs with training by speakers.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• In addition to impressive accomplishment, fine character and a good heart are two very important traits the TED Fellows programme looks for in every potential TED Fellow. More than anything, this focus on character has defined the success of the TED Fellows program.
• Candidates may apply to attend either TED or TEDGlobal.
• Anyone over the age of 18 is welcome to apply

Selection Criteria: TED Fellows are selected by the program staff, with extensive reference checking and consultation with experts across all fields. Selections are made by the group as a whole, not by individuals.

There is no algorithm for how we select our TED Fellows. We select Fellows based on their accomplishments in their respective fields, the potential impact of their work and also, most importantly, their character. The ideal applicant is multidisciplinary in their pursuits, and is at a moment in their career to maximize the support of the TED Community.

Number of Awardees: Twenty(20)

Value of Fellowship: 

• TED pays for round-trip economy airfare, ground transportation to and from the conference location, meals and shared accommodation on site.
• The TED Fellowship programme has the ability to slingshot candidate’s career forward.
• As a Fellow, the candidate will be introduced into a powerful network of innovators that can be future collaborators.
• By attending and speaking at the TED Conference, candidate will not only have the ability to spread their message far and wide, but will also meet people who may be able to help your career.
• Aside from the conference, Fellows have access to personal mentorship opportunities and speaker coaching following conference participation.
• Once you are selected as a TED Fellow all flights (or equivalent) to and from the TED conference, any visa needs, room, board + food while at the conference, and a conference pass will be covered.

Duration of Fellowship: One-year commitment that is centered around a TED Conference. However, “once a Fellow, always a Fellow”

How to Apply: Visit Award webpage to apply

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: TED

“The Stone Building” and the Post Coup Erdoğan Crackdown

Daniel Beaumont

This summer a colleague and friend Sevinç Türkkan asked me to help her with her translation of a work of fiction by the Turkish writer Aslı Erdoğan. The book’s title is The Stone Building—the stone building is a prison. In July and August Sevinç and I worked through her initial English translation (I can’t read Turkish and she only asked me to help with the English prose). But the more we worked, the more I became engrossed by what I was reading, a work of literature like nothing I had ever read.

On August 20th while we were still working on the translation, Sevinç texted me, “Aslı has been arrested.”

Aslı Erdoğan, besides being a novelist, is also a journalist and a human rights activist. If she had stuck simply to fiction, she would probably would not be sitting in a prison cell today in Istanbul.

Aslı Erdoğan was born in Istanbul in 1967. She attended Robert College and Boğaziçi University and worked in Geneva for CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), the largest particle physics laboratory in the World. After leaving CERN, she moved to Rio de Janeiro where she completed a PhD in physics. She began publishing fiction in 1990, and in 1996 she left her physics career, and returned to Istanbul to devote herself to writing full-time.

Her first short story won a literary prize, and since then her novels and short stories have won many literary prizes in Turkey and Europe. She has served as the Turkish representative to PEN, and in recent years she also served as a member of the pro-Kurdish newspaperÖzgür Gündem’s advisory board.

The Other Erdoğan

Aslı Erdoğan’s arrest and imprisonment is only one instance of how the other Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has exploited the failed coup attempt of July 15 to launch a general assault on opposition to his rule. Since July 15 the Turkish government has purged more than one hundred thousand people from the military, the police, the courts and the educational system. According to the BBC, he has imprisoned forty thousand people with no connection to the coup. Aslı Erdoğan’s only crime was serving on the editorial board of the newspaper Özgür Gündem, a newspaper that has stood up for Kurdish rights.

This is not the first purge conducted by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. When he became prime minister in 2003, he began purging the military of secularist Kemalist leadership to guard against his counter-revolution, that is, his plans to create an Islamicist Turkey. When the upheavals in Syria and the Arab World began, he allowed jihadis—including ISIS—free movement of people, weapons, oil and money across the border in order to bring down Bashar al-Asad. There is clear evidence that his son Bilal made huge profits from allowing ISIS to ship oil to and through Turkey.

On the August 21, 2011, there was a sarin gas attack in 2011on Ghouta just outside of Damascus. Obama had said the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian army would be a “red line” that could involve US military intervention in the Syrian conflict. Obama did not respond, and not withstanding the victims, the major result was journalistic pile-on in the rightwing media on Obama for not attacking Syria.

However, US Defense Intelligance Agency had already learned that the jihadi group Jabhat al-Nusra was aided by Turkey and Saudi Arabia “chemical facilitators” to obtain sarin gas. And the attack was almost certainly a Turkish intelligence “false flag” operation designed to suck the US into the Syrian civil war. Obama could not say that our NATO ally was involved in supplying chemical weapons to the jihadis, so he had to sit still while neo-cons foamed in the mass media about his “weakness.”

When the Kurds in Syria began to push back ISIS in Syria and close the border, ISIS struck back at Turkey, and it was only then that Recip Erdoğan, having aggravated every bordering state as well as Russia and Egypt began an “agonizing reappraisal” of his greatest foreign policy success, importing the Syrian civil war into Turkey.

His solution: reopen a war on the Kurds.

But Recip Erdoğan has controlling popular support. Despite his blunders, he has been able to direct the fear of his constituency in Turkey against “outsiders”—Kurds, Shia and Alawites in Syria.

However, the focus of this article is Aslı Erdoğan, and how she has gotten caught up in the regional catastrophe set in motion by the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 that ultimately engulfed Syria. Her present predicament represents the injustice done to many tens of thousands of other people arrested in Turkey since July 15.

On August 25, PEN International posted this:

In an interview given to the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet  from the detention centre where she is being held, Erdogan – who suffers from asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes – said that she is being held in awful conditions and has been denied essential medication for five days, as well as requests for water.

PEN International considers the conditions of Asli Erdogan’s detention wholly unacceptable and calls on the Turkish authorities to immediately provide better conditions, ensure immediate access to medication and to her doctors as a matter of extreme urgency.

The work of fiction that Sevinç Türkkan and I have now translated, consists

of three short stories and a novella, “The Morning Visitor,” “The Wooden Birds,” “The Prison,” and The Stone Building. “The Morning Visitor” concerns a woman who lives in a dingy confining apartment who receives a visit from a strange man. “The Wooden Birds” tells of a group of young women live in a tuberculosis sanatorium who once a month get to spend a day on an outing. “The Prison” is about an unmarried pregnant woman’s restless day in Istanbul, unhappy in every setting until she finally ends up in front of a prison, a stone building. The Stone Building is an often delerious account of someone imprisoned and tortured who recalls it and relives it.

After Sevinç and I finished going through her initial English translation line by line, I asked her to let me go through it one more time by myself. Sometimes the words reminded me of the prose poems of Rimbaud. Sometimes they made me think of Burroughs—but beyond those semblances there was an original and compelling voice unlike anything I had heard. Reading it again, I saw the essential unity of the stories and the novella. They make up a single piece of literature with a single theme, confinement. Beyond the irony of sharing a surname with her persecutor, there is a much more profound irony. In the Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has created, Aslı Erdoğan has through her courageous human rights advocacy and journalism written herself into what she had written and spoken out against in The Stone Building. Confinement and silence.

The Cant Of The Powerful: Killing People To Save Them

Arshad M Khan

Friday, October 7 went by quietly unnoticed by major US media. It was the 15th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan — a war with no foreseeable end in sight. The number of troops due to remain in Afghanistan has been raised 50 percent to 8400. Drones based in Pakistan continue to play their deadly role. On the anniversary date, attacks on security checkpoints in the Chashma area of Maiwand district in the southern part of Kandahar province resulted in a gun battle lasting several hours. Afghan officials concede three soldiers died and four were wounded. The Taliban claim the surrender of an entire battalion and one tank.

As incongruous as it might appear in hindsight, there was much talk of ‘nation building’ in the Bush years. What we have seen instead are a Middle East and large parts of North Africa on the receiving end of death, destruction and displacement, on a scale unheard of since the Second World War. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, even Ukraine are fractured states, the ensuing misery for their citizens a natural consequence.

Iraq is back in the news again not just for the reinsertion of U.S. forces, but also for a new planned battle to recapture Mosul from the IS — a battle likely to be another hell for its Sunni citizens who probably do not relish a return of the now essentially Shia Iraqi military.

Sectarianism, Balkanization of states, a rending of the delicate fabric of these multi-ethnic, multi-religious societies may not have been the stated aim but are certainly the aftermath. The fact is when the same scenario is repeated time and again, many see it as the goal of U.S. policy disguised in platitudes. Hence the ill-will towards Americans across a wide swathe of lands running from North Africa to India. It is a sobering prospect in an inter-connected world.

The most troubling aspect of the Afghanistan war is one basic irrefutable fact: Neither the Afghan people nor their government had any involvement in the 9/11 attack. Yes, Osama bin Laden was a guest in the country but only because he had helped in repelling the Soviet invasion. The Afghan government requested evidence, the U.S. reply: surrender him or else … . To neighboring Pakistan Richard Armitage delivered the notorious line, ‘we’ll bomb you back into the stone age,’ according to then President Pervez Musharraf.

Were there no other alternatives to full-scale war? How about a police action targeting bin Laden’s group? Or, for a peaceful solution, how about the possibility of surrender to an international tribunal that would have guaranteed no death penalty. He claimed to be a leader conducting war, and, it is fair to say, many other wartime leaders have ordered far worse. A guest in a world where honor is important might have been obliged to accept such surrender terms, but certainly not the demands of a revanchist superpower intent on his execution.

The war made enemies out of friends, and left nuclear-armed Pakistan considerably less stable by importing religious extremism — bombings and terror attacks, once almost unheard of are now quite common.

Based on lies, as the Chilcot report in Britain affirms, the Iraq war was even more egregious and has left unimagined problems in its wake. Given these experiences and Libya to boot, one would have thought arming jihadi groups — wasn’t the Osama bin Laden experience enough?– was playing with fire. But here we are again: fighting a secular government in Syria that was never a threat, and trying to replace it with jihadis who harbor a visceral U.S. hatred.

The logic that prevails is of insiders, who, too, harbor visceral hatreds but cloak their arguments. Who ever heard of killing people to save them?

The Despotism Of British Sterling

Binoy Kampmark

While British Prime Minister, Theresa May, keeps insisting that Brexit pathway will be a smooth, relatively painless process filled without dramatic compromise to lifestyle and outlook, the traders, stockbrokers and wolves of the City have gone about their own business.  They, the suggestion goes, knew better, whereas the idiotic Brexiteer ventured to the ballot in total ignorance.

Central to the post-Brexit dark is discussion about the British pound, which has been accorded magical powers to reward, anoint or strip.  Reading its fortunes is tantamount to consulting a wizened oracle, though the results are sometimes puzzling.

The last few days have seen the currency take a bruising, a spectacle not reflected in the bullish performance of the FTSE 100.  While the pound fell below $1.23 against the US dollar, the stock exchange closed near an all-time high, hitting an intra-day record of 7,129.83.

The rush for the tea leaf readers, insensible or otherwise, was on, and Michael Saunders of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee suggested that the giddy decline would continue. “Given the scale and persistence of the UK’s current account deficit, I would not be surprised if sterling falls further, but I am fairly agnostic as to whether further depreciation is likely.” As expected, a not particularly useful assessment, hugging escapist agnosticism.

The pound has been hitting a few snags in the hype, and purchasing power matters to such to such publications as The Economist, which has asserted that Brexit threatens that “gold mine” of “government bonds, London property, and sterling itself.”  Good old Mr Foreigner tends to be keen in owning such assets, a feature that drives up the price of sterling.  This, it asserts, usually results in the “Dutch disease” whereby exports become more expensive, impeding the competitiveness of local industries.

Brexit, claims the publication, removes that disease while undermining the gold mine, or oil deposits, if you wish to push the analogy.  “Brexit is a little like Saudi Arabia swearing off the oil business, declaring it would rather work for an honest living even if that makes its people poorer.”  This might well be deemed “noble,” but reflected a distinct lack of imagination or awareness on the part of the voter, falling for a misguided policy “so that they could work harder for what they get” (The Economist, Oct 11).

One of the central features that the debate pivots on is re-orientating the focus away from the zealous provision of financial services, Britain’s long trumpeted strong suit, with a focus on manufactured goods and tourism.

This, suggests Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journal (Oct 7), may well lead to a useful study in “deglobalization,” with the raising of fences, and the refocusing on the internal dynamics of the country.  Such is the consequence of reasserting some crude variant of sovereignty, however much it is disliked by the rampant free market vigilantes.  “In the end Britons may be a bit poorer than if they’d stayed, but more self-reliant and more in control of their own borders.”

The economic gatekeepers like Saunders, who had a stint as a Citigroup economist before entering the Bank of England establishment, saw promise in a lower pound precisely because it would ease the burden for exporters.  Never mind what those items might be.  “If you didn’t have a drop in the pound, the effect may be a particularly weaker export performance and the drop in the pound will probably offset that.”

Some of the economic preachers have become little Pollyannas.  The IMF’s former deputy-director for Europe, Ashoka Mody, was beaming with enthusiasm for the UK “rebalancing,” claiming it to be “a stunning achievement that a once-in-a-fifty-year event should have gone so smoothly.”

The former Governor of the Bank of England, Lord King, sees a post-Brexit environment in terms of a wonderland of prospects, again ones which feature the exploits of a lower pound economy suitably placed to wage economic assault.  Hadn’t Britain been attempting to have lower house prices, a lower exchange rate accompanied by higher interest rates for some time?

Naturally, many of these assumptions (the “may” brigade is the only one in full employment in Britain these days) is based on the UK getting bullish in its supply of products, a point that gets increasingly complicated in the event of being prized out of chains in the European Union. Those priding British sovereignty have simply assumed that Britons will be cleverer and more resilient in that regard.  They will find magical markets unhindered by the sluggishness of the Euro zone.

Again, the battle between market place, with the mammon of prosperity paraded before Britain, and the virtues of reforming a system that is not only creaking but in some cases collapsing, continues to play out.  Central to that battle remain the fortunes, if one can call them that, of British sterling.

Australian tax department seeks to fast-track sackings

Terry Cook

According to media reports, the Turnbull government is demanding changes to the work agreement (EBA) covering 18,000 employees at the Australian Tax Office (ATO) to make it easier to arbitrarily dismiss workers for “under performance.”

Epitomising the corporate backing for the ongoing assault on public sector workers, the Canberra Times, a Fairfax Media publication, on October 4 reported the proposed changes under the provocative headline: “Public service prepares to sack the Tax Office slackers.”

Such scurrilous labelling, designed to portray public sector workers as lazy and overpaid, is routinely rolled out by the mainstream media in a bid to fashion public support for government assaults on jobs, basic services and working class conditions.

The changes are part of a sweeping overhaul of wages and conditions that the Liberal-National government is attempting to impose across the public service during protracted negotiations for new EBAs. Agreements covering 100,000 workers in 13 government departments expired almost three years ago.

During that period, workers at the ATO and elsewhere have overwhelming rejected regressive contract offers by departments that would have stripped away conditions while imposing the government’s 2 percent annual pay cap. Many “offers” have been far below even this figure.

The latest government offer to ATO employees contains a pay increase of 6 percent staggered over three years, but not backdated, resulting in an effective pay freeze for the past three years. In return, workers must deliver millions of dollars in savings each year. Similar ultimatums have been made in other departments.

The reported changes involve replacing the current two-step performance counselling process with a fast-track one-step procedure for employees deemed by line managers to be “under-performing.”

Under the present rules, a manager must offer workers assistance to improve their performance, such as role clarification and training. Affected employees also can be offered alternative duties. They have a right of appeal if they believe they have been unfairly treated.

Under the proposed changes, a manager would be obliged only to hold a discussion with a worker and if the employee fails to improve in a time specified by the manager, “underperformance measures may commence,” leading inevitably to dismissal.

The dismissal plan is bound up with the government’s ongoing agenda to destroy thousands of jobs across the public sector in line with the demands of the financial and corporate establishment for drastic cuts to public spending.

Amid massive job cuts, resulting in ever-increasing workloads, thousands of public sector workers would be unable to keep up with the ramped-up demand and face being charged with “underperformance.”

There is evidence that line managers are already making increased allegations of poor performance to remove workers. According to the latest Australian Public Service Commission data, 76 employees were sacked for underperformance in the 2015-2016 financial year, with another 60 fired for misconduct. This was an increase on 2014-2015, when 64 workers were dismissed for “underperformance” and 57 were sacked for misconduct.

If the fast-track measures are pushed through at the ATO, they will become a benchmark for similar changes across the public sector to assist the government to impose job cuts.

The government has already foreshadowed winding up 250 public sector bodies and is conducting “reviews” into a host of other departments, with the view to closing them or reducing staff.

Job cuts are continuing, with a further 810 slated to go at the Department of Human Resources, 300 at the Immigration Department and 344 in Social Services. As of February, 3,000 jobs had been shed at the ATO, with another 1,700 to go by the end of year. This amounts to 20 percent of the department’s workforce. Over the past decade, under both Labor and Liberal-National governments, over 16,500 federal public sector jobs have been axed.

This ongoing assault has been possible only because the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) has worked overtime to restrict all opposition to limited stoppages and impotent protests, and to ensure that public sector workers remain divided on a department-by-department basis.

Throughout the long-stalled EBA negotiations, the union hoped that forcing workers to continuously vote on government “offers” would eventually wear down resistance, particularly in key departments, opening the floodgates to the imposition of regressive outcomes across the public sector.

In line with this agenda, at the end of last month the CPSU rushed to comply with a directive by the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to end limited rolling stoppages by Border Force employees, following an application to the industrial tribunal by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP).

The suspension could clear the way for the FWC to enforce an arbitrated outcome in the DIBP dispute, along the lines sought by the government—a course supported by the CPSU.

A CPSU bulletin on September 30, ordering union members to immediately end industrial action, hailed the FWC ruling with the heading: “Member action wins Fair Work hearing.” It declared the CPSU will argue in the commission for a “termination of bargaining instead of simply suspending industrial action, as this means arbitration and a resolution.”

The CPSU, like every other union, insists that the FWC is an “independent umpire,” in which workers should place confidence. It is nothing of the sort. The FWC is part of the state apparatus, which includes the courts and the police, and is used to enforce corporate demands.

Introduced by the Labor government in 2009, with the full support of the trade unions, the FWC is armed with a barrage of anti-strike provisions and the power to impose severe penalties on workers. The industrial laws also allow the FWC to impose a settlement in a dispute if the parties fail to reach an agreement.

Since its inception, the commission has intervened in dispute after dispute, from the airlines to the waterfront, to shut down industrial action and ensure outcomes in line with the employers’ requirements.

The unions support the industrial laws because they provide them with further means to contain disputes and enable them to convince employers that they are the most reliable means of policing the workforce.

If the government, with the aid of unions and the FWC, can foist its cost-cutting demands on the border protection workers, the same modus operandi—so-called arbitration—will be utilised throughout the public sector.

US death toll rises in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew

Nick Barrickman

Tens of thousands in the southeast United States continue to be impacted in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, which came ashore late last week. Thirty-eight people have died due to circumstances caused by the storm, including record flooding.

Over the weekend, areas throughout the southeast US—including the states of Florida, Georgia,  South Carolina,North Carolina and Virginia—saw record levels of rainfall. According to Climatesignals.org, three tide gauges from Georgia to Virginia saw record-setting storm surges from Friday through Sunday. In addition, areas farther inland saw flooding for hundreds of miles. One location, Fayetteville, NC, saw more than double its previous rainfall record of 6.80 inches Saturday, when it rained more than 14 inches in a single evening.

More than half of the deaths, 20, occurred in North Carolina, as cities and towns have been inundated with surging rivers along the shores. As of Wednesday, 110,000 people in North Carolina still remained without power in their homes. Over 4,200 of the state’s residents have been evacuated to shelters in nearby schools and recreation centers. Throughout the state, over 2,000 people required emergency evacuation, including 100 needing airlifts, as floodwaters destroyed nearly 7,000 homes.

In Greenville, over 10 percent of the city’s more than 90,000 residents have been evacuated. The city’s regional airport has grounded flights until October 20 and nearby East Carolina University has canceled classes.

“Certain parts of the state were still going through ongoing floods. And now we have other parts of the state that are about to deal with some very serious circumstances, especially along two of our major rivers,” said North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, referring to conditions along both the Tar and Neuse rivers in the northeast part of the state.

As of Monday October 10, as many as one-third of the state’s 100 counties remained under an official state of emergency. On Monday night, a North Carolina state trooper shot and killed a man in the town of Lumberton in the state’s southeast. According to a statement released by the governor, the police killing occurred in a “swift water” incident as police were involved in search and rescue. The name of the individual killed is being withheld until further information is available.

McCrory warned residents, “[d]o not get near the water … It will kill you” while declaring that it was “unacceptable” that some still had not evacuated high-danger areas.

Hurricane Matthew’s record rainfalls occurred even as the storm system dissipated and the hurricane was downgraded to a post-tropical storm. “When it comes to extreme precipitation, the human fingerprint is clear,” stated the website Popular Science. The website noted that as global temperatures increase, higher levels of condensation will be stored in the atmosphere, leading to increased rainfalls.

“While Matthew didn’t produce many iconic scenes of palm trees felled by high-speed winds,” it added, “[t]he biggest hazards often come in small doses—a million tiny drops that add up to a devastating flood.”

Aside from excoriating the public for supposedly failing to take the flood warnings seriously, US officials offered little more than public gestures of hand-wringing and empty condolences to the millions affected by the storm and floods. Such were the statements of President Barack Obama, who was in North Carolina Tuesday to stump for Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton: “A lot of communities are dealing with terrible flooding… Lives have been lost, and so the entire country has been thinking about North Carolina.”

As is the case in such circumstances, aside from a few rhetorical platitudes, no serious steps will be taken to compensate those who have had their livelihoods and homes destroyed by the hurricane.

Nor will the crumbling US infrastructure be upgraded in order to cope with the predicted effects of disasters caused by climate change. According to a 2013 infrastructure report in North Carolina, 29 percent of the state’s dams are considered “high hazard,” meaning that their failure could lead to significant loss of life, homes, utilities, highways or roads and commercial buildings. According to the report, less than 30 percent of dams deemed “high hazard” have emergency action plans put in place that meet federal standards.

In addition, the report notes that over 60 percent of communities statewide lack steady storm water infrastructure funding, meaning they are forced to raise funds locally for any significant infrastructure projects, a task which is considerably harder to do in more impoverished areas.

An article published Wednesday in the Washington Post details the social impact of the flooding in North Carolina. “The flooding has dealt a direct blow to the poorest section of North Carolina, a tract of farmland and towns struggling after losing manufacturing jobs,” it says. The Post quotes Rev. William Barber, the president of the state’s chapter of the NAACP, as saying “[w]hen a flood like this hits, the pain of it is exacerbated by the poverty… What we’re talking about, particularly in eastern Carolina, are some of the poorest communities in the country—black and white, who already had economic challenges before something like this.”

Military units established in UK state schools

Liz Smith

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has announced that new army cadet units will be allocated to 150 state schools. The announcement, made at last week’s conference of the ruling Conservatives, is shaped by an agenda to escalate militarism, war and austerity. Fallon said the scheme would give young cadets “the skills and confidence they need to thrive.”

The first of an initial 25 units was launched on October 4 at Rockwood Academy in east Birmingham. Rockwood Academy, formerly Park View School, was at the centre of the highly dubious “Trojan Horse” investigation into allegations of an Islamist takeover of academy schools in Birmingham—England’s second largest city. At the time, Ofsted, the official schools inspectorate, downgraded Park View from outstanding to inadequate, saying it was failing to safeguard pupils from extremist influence.

Rockwood, Fallon said, was “a phoenix from the ashes of a Trojan horse school that is now instilling British values, instead of promoting religious segregation.”

According to its website, Rockwood Academy, run by CORE Education Trust, has become one of the latest schools to join the Cadet Expansion Programme (CEP). Gary Newbrook, a Contingent Commander who is based permanently at Rockwood Academy, said, “The Combined Cadet Force is designed to instil values in young people that will help them get the most out of their lives, and to contribute to their communities and country.”

Ofsted has upgraded Rockwood to “good” and praised the school in its latest report for how “fundamental British values are promoted highly effectively.”

Attempts made previously to get such schemes embedded into schools met with little success. Troops to Teachers, set up in June 2013 by the Tories, had little uptake with only 28 qualifying out of a target of 2,000. Currently, there are about 300 school cadet units across the UK, but fewer than 100 in the state sector with more than two-thirds in private schools.

According to the Rockwood website, the government remains on course to achieve its manifesto target of creating 500 cadet units in schools by March 2020. Fallon supported this target, stating that “the Armed Forces provide the most apprenticeships... I am setting a target to deliver 50,000 apprenticeships over this Parliament.”

One of the ways in which the army is pushed in schools is through careers days, where they put on an attractive show designed to appeal to all levels of academic ability but particularly those for whom school is a struggle.

Applications for pupils to join the army are accepted at the age of fifteen-and-a-half, and military training can start at sixteen, either at Harrogate Army Foundation College in Yorkshire, or Welbeck Army Defence sixth-form College in Loughborough. The UK is the only European Union country to permit 16-year-olds to join up and start military training. According to human rights organization Child Soldiers International (CSI), only 17 other countries, including Zambia and El Salvador, allow it. In June, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child asked the government to “reconsider its active policy of recruitment of children into the armed forces and ensure that recruitment practices do not actively target persons under the age of 18 and ensure that military recruiters’ access to schools be strictly limited.”

Annual events such as the November Armistice—commemorating the end of the First World War—are used in schools to promote the military rather than the traditional reflection on the huge loss of lives in conflicts since the 1914-18 war.

Militarisation of education complements the government’s “PREVENT strategy” and “Channel” programme. Since July 2015, teachers have been legally obliged to report any suspected “extremist” behaviour to police. This has turned teachers into a spying agency for the authorities, with children as young as four being referred to police.

ForcesWatch, a nonprofit founded in 2010, aims to scrutinise the ethics of armed forces recruitment practices and challenge efforts to embed militarist values in civilian society. Coordinator Emma Sangster told the Guardian, “Recruitment is a process, it’s not a single event.” During visits to school, armed forces recruiters, “drip feed things of interest to children of school age. They sanitise what conflict involves, and also glamorise it. They focus on adventure, which young people are desperate for.”

Rachel Taylor, CSI programme manager, says that the risks children bear in the forces may be greater than if they were to enlist later. A study by CSI and ForcesWatch showed that those who joined at 16 were twice as likely to be killed in Afghanistan as those who joined at 18 or older. Taylor says, “This is because they’re channelled into the most dangerous roles when they’re recruited... So, although the Ministry of Defence always says ‘it’s not dangerous to join at 16 because you aren’t deployed until you’re 18’, our response is ‘it’s your age when you enlist that determines the degree of risk you face over your whole career.’”

The Labour Party is not opposed in principle to the recruitment into the armed forces of children. In his response to Fallon’s announcement, Clive Lewis—until last week Labour’s shadow defence secretary—made no mention of the fate of thousands of young people who are being dragooned into the war machine. Instead, Lewis attacked Fallon’s conference speech from the right, on the basis that government cost-cutting, “weakened and demoralised our Armed Forces, leaving them poorly-equipped, over-stretched, under-paid and too often living in squalid conditions.” Lewis railed against the decision not to use British steel to build armaments.

German Chancellor Merkel backs oppressive Ethiopian regime

Johannes Stern

To conclude her three-day Africa visit which also took her to Mali and Niger, German Chancellor Angela Merkel travelled to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa on Tuesday where she was welcomed with military honours.

Her reception speaks volumes about the reactionary character of the return of German militarism to Africa. Just two days prior to the chancellor’s visit, the Ethiopian regime declared a six-month state of emergency in order to undertake even more brutal measures to suppress popular protests.

On the previous weekend, heavily armed security forces attacked a mass rally to mark the traditional harvest festival of the Oromo people. Fifty-five people were killed, according to official statistics, but opposition sources reported more than 650. Youtube videos showed helicopters dropping tear gas onto the crowd of people and security forces firing into the crowds.

According to media reports, the army has shot more than 1,000 people since the protests broke out last November in the Oromo and Amhara regions.

The protests are directed against the government of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which has governed the country in an authoritarian manner since 1991 and brutally suppressed all opposition. The uprising by the Oromo and Amhara peoples was triggered above all by the government’s land policy, which compels impoverished farmers to sell off their land for next to nothing to the state in order for it to be sold off to foreign investors.

With a population of 92 million and an average gross national income of $570, Ethiopia is among the poorest countries in the world. The economic growth of the past decade has benefited only a small corrupt ruling elite. The vast majority of the population lives below the absolute poverty level. According to World Bank data from 2015, more than 30 percent of the population in 2011 had to live on less than $1.25 a day.

The repressive measures of the regime are so obvious that even sections of the bourgeois press in Germany could not avoid discussing it. “If we had peace in this country, then 200 people would not have died in this way,” Biru Tadese, the father of a victim, told ARD. “Who should we complain to? The government acts like God. Who should we talk to? We just bury our dead. I saw how they loaded bodies onto trucks like wheat or corn. But these are human beings.”

Another father named Khala complained, “My son just went out to charge his phone. They shot him from behind as he tried to run away from them. He never threw any stones, nothing. He is a teacher. My son died even though he did nothing bad.”

None of this prevented Merkel from meeting with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and the commission president of the African Union (AU), Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. She presided over the opening of the so-called Julius Nyerere building for peace and security, which was funded by Germany to the tune of €30 million, as planned. It will serve as the headquarters for the AU and has a conference hall as well as a store and headquarters to lead military interventions.

It is becoming ever clearer that an important factor in the imperialist powers’ offensive in Africa is the fear of a revolutionary upsurge of the masses as took place in Egypt and Tunisia five years ago. At a joint press conference with Desalegn, Merkel offered German support for the Ethiopian police and warned, “The hatred and dissatisfaction towards the political institutions is growing to such an extent that the acceptance of the state is no longer there.”

In her speech to the AU, Merkel also made clear to the African regimes that she supports the suppression and brutal exploitation of their populations in the name of “peace and security.” She cynically declared, “The African Union and its regional organisations have demonstrated how important the ability to act is. With rapid reactions and negotiations, it has been possible to prevent several large-scale outbreaks of violence. This experienced responsibility saves lives and opens new perspectives.”

Merkel made clear the “perspectives” she was talking about in her subsequent remarks. She called for the prevention of illegal migration, caused by Africans “with completely wrong impressions” setting off for Europe. To this end she referred to the migration partnerships with the European Union (EU). Under these agreements, despots like the Egyptian dictator al-Sisi, Sudan’s Omar el-Bashir and even Desalegn himself will receive €1.8 billion from the EU to detain refugees in Africa and keep them away from Europe.

In addition, Merkel praised Germany’s military interventions in Africa. Of the German army’s military operations in Mali, she said, “Germany is making its own contribution there. Up to 600 German soldiers are involved in MINUSMA. Securing the stability of Mali is of decisive significance for developments throughout West Africa.”

Berlin is now apparently advancing similar plans in other parts of Africa. Merkel referred to the Democratic Republic of Congo and how “ten years ago […] German soldiers ensured that the presidential elections took place peacefully.” Now “the issue is whether free elections take place,” to “protect Congo from a deep crisis.”

“The situation in Burundi” caused her “great concern.” One could see there “the danger that old conflicts could flare up once again.” By contrast, “the engagement of the African Union in Somalia” was impressive. Now more than ever it was necessary to “direct all forces to stabilise Libya.” For this, she explicitly encouraged “the African Union to intervene and brings its influence to bear to resolve the conflict.”

While Berlin officially opposed the NATO bombardment of Libya in 2011, it has been pushing more strongly into Africa since the foreign policy shift carried out in 2013-14. This has not only included German imperialism’s traditional spheres of influence during the colonial period, but also those of its historic rivals.

An article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung entitled “In the French sphere of influence” remarked in noticeably excited tones, “The European security mission in Mali […] is strongly characterised by German influence” and is taking place in a region “which was previously an exclusively French sphere of influence and area of interest.” Alongside the “terror threat” and the “pressure of economic migration ...France’s declining security resources” had contributed to the destabilisation of countries on the southern border of the Sahara and “created new conditions.” Mali showed “[t]he answer the European Union is trying to give–with overwhelmingly German weight.”

The FAZ left no doubt that the German-European mission in Mali is only the prelude to a much broader process of recolonising the continent, which is rich in resources and has a large population. The intervention was spreading “also into Mali’s neighbours.” Four further states in the Sahel region–Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania–would be “incorporated into the military and civilian strengthening of their security forces.” The Eucap Sahel mission, which “was led by German diplomat Albrecht Conze,” was “preparing a much more energetic expansion into neighbouring countries.”

“Diplomats under the EU flag” were currently being sent “to the capital cities of the countries concerned to register their security deficits.” It would soon become clear “how many forces from European countries would be required to cover them.” Germany would “certainly then have to mobilise more forces.”

Therefore it was timely that “the German air force is in the process of building an air transportation base in the heart of the Sahel zone in Niamey, the capital of Niger.” €10 million had already been allocated for the coming year “to establish waiting rooms and permanently accommodate the German contingent.”

Haiti’s hurricane devastation: A tragedy rooted in capitalist oppression

Bill Van Auken

One week after Hurricane Matthew struck the southern coast of Haiti, the full dimensions of the devastation inflicted on the people of this impoverished Caribbean nation are only beginning to emerge.

The unofficial death toll has risen well past 1,000. Tens of thousands are injured and unable to receive medical aid, with hospitals and clinics badly damaged and lacking basic supplies such as painkillers and antibiotics, not to mention power and clean water. The United Nations estimates that 2.1 million Haitians--more than 20 percent of the country’s population--have been affected by the storm, with 1.4 million in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

What is still to come will almost certainly be worse. The crops of Haiti’s southern coast have been wiped out and there are warnings of famine. Cholera cases are again on the rise. The disease has already claimed the lives of over 10,000 Haitians after being introduced into the country by United Nations “peace-keeping” troops.

The immense suffering from Hurricane Matthew comes less than seven years after the 2010 earthquake, which killed 230,000 people, injured 300,000 more, and left over 1.5 million people homeless. As we wrote at the time, the people of Haiti were “…victims not merely of a natural catastrophe. The lack of infrastructure, the poor quality of construction in Port-au-Prince and the impotence of the Haitian government to organize any response are determining factors in this tragedy.

“These social conditions are the product of a protracted relationship between Haiti and the United States, which, ever since US Marines occupied the island nation for nearly 20 years beginning in 1915, has treated the country as a de facto colonial protectorate.”

This bitter legacy of imperialist oppression remains the essential factor in the horrific impact of natural disasters like Hurricane Matthew.

In the wake of the 2010 earthquake, international donors pledged $10.4 billion for Haiti, including $3.9 billion from the US. The chief figure overseeing this relief effort was Bill Clinton, whose previous “gift” to the people of Haiti was a trade deal that eliminated tariffs on rice imports from the US subsidized by the American government, bankrupting Haiti’s own rice producers and leaving the country unable to feed itself.

Welcoming the earthquake’s death and destruction as a golden opportunity for further capitalist profit-making, the former Democratic president vowed that the aid money would allow Haiti to “build back better.” Nearly seven years later, the universal question asked by Haitians is “what happened to the money?”

Today, just as in 2010, Haiti remains the poorest and most socially unequal country in the Western Hemisphere. While the masses of Haiti remain mired in poverty, the former US president and his wife Hillary, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, have seen their own wealth soar, raking in an estimated $230 million in income since Bill Clinton left the White House.

The couple parlayed lives supposedly spent in “public service” into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a political machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists essentially of a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business support for the Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal fortunes. The basic components of the operation are lavishly paid speeches to Wall Street and Fortune 500 audiences, corporate campaign contributions, and donations to the ostensibly philanthropic Clinton Foundation.

It was the foundation that played a prominent role in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Its most visible legacy is a low-wage garment factory run by a South Korean company known for its use of violence and intimidation to subdue its workers, alongside a pair of luxury hotels catering to businessmen seeking opportunities to extract profit from the oppression of the super-exploited Haitian working class.

In an investigation of the foundation’s activities in Haiti, ABC News wrote that the garment factory “has under-delivered on projected jobs.” It continued: “Haitian workers have accused managers of bullying and sexual harassment. And…after opening its factory in the Haitian industrial park--built with $400 million in global aid--the Korean firm became a Clinton Foundation donor and its owner invested in a startup company owned by Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff.”

The report made clear that the relief operation did more for the “Friends of Bill” than for the Haitian masses, and that those who coughed up donations to the Clinton Foundation were rewarded with opportunities to mount profitable ventures in Haiti.

In addition to Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff at the State Department, the Democratic candidate’s younger brother, Tony Rodham, also cashed in on the Clinton connection in Haiti, including through his position on the advisory board of a US company that in 2012 secured the first gold mining permit issued in the country in half a century. The Haitian Senate subsequently put a hold on the controversial permit.

The Clinton Foundation is emblematic of the role played by imperialist “humanitarianism.” In Haiti, it serves as an instrument for shoring up Washington’s semi-colonial domination under conditions in which US imperialist hegemony is being challenged by the growth of Chinese trade and investment elsewhere in the hemisphere. In Syria, it provides the pretext for a proxy war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The real relationship of the Clintons to Haiti was further exposed by the decision of the Department of Homeland Security Secretary to resume the deportation of Haitian refugees. While temporarily suspended because of the hurricane, the deportations are to begin as soon as possible. In the meantime, the refugees are being imprisoned in detention camps.

While the Obama administration claimed the action was warranted because of improved conditions in Haiti, it was driven by proof of the exact opposite, in the form of thousands of Haitian refugees arriving at the US-Mexican border. The decision was taken in large part out of fear that allowing them into the country could undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.

Anger over the conditions in Haiti is growing. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned Monday, “Tensions are already mounting as people await help.” Among the first moves of the UN has been to extend for six months the mandate of the UN Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH), which deploys armed “peace-keepers” in Haiti. US Marines have also been deployed to the country and are reportedly operating with the Haitian National Police against “looters.”

Overcoming the legacy of imperialist oppression in Haiti is possible only through the revolutionary struggle of the Haitian workers and oppressed, in unity with the workers in the United States and internationally, to put an end to the capitalist system.

The Battle for Aleppo and the Imminent Regional Shifts

Ranjit Gupta

Aleppo, the crossroads of civilisation for millennia, Syria’s largest city, and its main commercial and cultural centre, is also the most important strategic gateway from Turkey into Syria. Controlling Aleppo is essential for any ruler to control Syria. Therefore, the battle for Aleppo is crucial for the future of Syria and indeed the Levant.

 

Aleppo was the last city to join the uprising against Assad. It got divided into government and rebel-controlled areas around mid-2012, along lines that had remained largely unchanged till fighting intensified greatly - particularly from June 2016 onwards - culminating in the current relentless, indiscriminate and the most lethal bombardment of rebel controlled parts of the city by Russian and Syrian air forces in nearly six years of war. Hospitals have been hit and civilian casualties are rising as supplies run out and soon, supply routes will no longer be available. 

 

Having little or no choice left, the main insurgent groups in Aleppo such as Ahrar Al Sham, who are themselves ultra-radical, have coalesced under the umbrella of Jaysh al-Fateh and inevitably joined hands with al Qaeda linked Jabhat Fatah al Sham (formerly known as the Jabhat al-Nusra Front). This renaming is a ruse that nobody takes seriously. Even moderate rebel groups backed by the West have little option but to ally with these radical salafi jihadis. However, none of this can be a justification for what has now become a no holds barred aerial assault, the worst of the five-and-half-year old war. On 08 October 2016, China, which has consistently voted with Russia on UN resolutions relating to the Syrian crisis, felt constrained to abstain on the Franco Spanish Resolution demanding an immediate halt in the aerial strikes on Aleppo in the UN Security Council.  Nevertheless Russia brazenly vetoed this Resolution, making it abundantly clear that it is determined to ensure that the Assad regime wins control of Aleppo, immaterial of what the world thinks. 

 

Russia is well aware of US President Barack Obama’s steadfast refusal to get militarily involved in Syria; and now in the past four months of his presidency, chances of assertive US counter intervention are almost nil. Other Western countries have supplied arms but have refrained from military intervention against Syrian President Bashar al Assad in Syria like they had done in Libya; and with Europe facing multiple internal challenges, they cannot take any meaningful counter action. West Asian Sunni countries are simply incapable of doing so and in any case, Saudi Arabia is deeply involved in the debilitating, self-defeating Yemeni quagmire of its own creation. Finally, the most assertive foreign power that could have done something meaningful - Turkey - has changed its policies dramatically in the wake of the coup in Ankara, with Erdogan and Putin having met 3 times in three months – in St Petersburg in August 2016; at the G20 summit in September 2016; and in Istanbul in October 2016. 

 

Turkey’s primary priority in Syria henceforth will be curbing the Syrian Kurds. Russia knows it has a relatively free hand and is taking the fullest advantage of current regional and global geopolitical ground realities.

 

It may take a few weeks or even a few months but Assad’s victory in Aleppo is now assured, backed up also by the proactive involvement of Iranian patronised Hezbollah and various Shia militias. With victory in Aleppo, Assad will have gained control of all the major cities – Damascus, Hama, Homs, Latakia, etc. However, to gain full control of even the Western two-fifths of the country - which includes these cities and where 70 per cent of Syria’s population lived - Assad has to gain control over the highly strategic Idlib province that is still largely under the control of the rebels. This will take time, possibly even a couple of years.

 

Winning control of Aleppo will not mean an end to the war in Syria. Peace in Syria is many years away. The main consequences of an Assad/Iran/Russia victory in Aleppo are likely to be following:- 

 

1. Possibilities of any new regime or even transitional arrangements towards a new regime would become largely academic.

 

2. Assad will continue as the ruler of Syria albeit only of a truncated part of the country for the foreseeable future until such time as Russia and Iran decide that they are ready for an alternative.

 

3. Syria will find itself de facto partitioned into a western part under Assad; the relatively sparsely populated, comparatively arid and economically weak central part where the rebels will be jostling for control with Assad on the one hand and the Islamic State on the other; a de facto Kurdish autonomous zone along much of the border with Turkey – which will face continuous assaults from the Islamic State (IS), some rebel groups and, in some locations, from the Assad regime also, but pre-eminently from Turkey; and, finally, territories under the control of the (IS) that will be under full-scale assault from all sides, particularly from Western powers.

 

4. The effort to overthrow Assad will be transformed into a long-term Sunni guerrilla insurgency. The situation in Syria becoming an Afghanistan like scenario cannot be ruled out. 

 

5. However, the most significant consequence will be a very considerable reshaping of the geostrategic landscape of West Asia. Iran will emerge as the undisputed regional hegemonic power. Russia will upgrade its naval and air bases into major facilities on a permanent basis and ensure a long-term strategic niche role for itself in West Asia and the eastern Mediterranean. The more than a century old unchallengeable Western domination of West Asia will finally end.

Understanding our “Blindspot” to Make Peacebuilding Comprehensive

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera

“The sailor cannot see the North —but knows then needle can.”

– Emily Dickinson, in a letter to a mentor, TW Higginson, seeking an honest evaluation of her talent (1862)

The young soldiers and Tamilians who sacrificed their lives to a cause that was created by a previous generation perhaps did not know the underlying politics of why they had to fight. The younger generation has taken a burden passed to them by certain political leaders that they have not seen nor heard. At the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa, one could study the past life during the apartheid period and understand what had gone wrong. Photographs of racial discrimination such as separate walk ways for transport to the most horrific pictures is exhibited. What if Sri Lanka had a museum to educate our younger generation of the mistakes done during the past such as the burning of the Jaffna Library, the bombing by the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at the Central Bank, and the several other atrocities? 

The modern world is at the fourth industrial revolution. Our lives, however, still revolve around the slogans of old and ideas of the yesteryears. A white officer shooting an African American and many other incidents around the world are still heard of and looked at from a racial bias view because most of us are wired in that way due to the environment we live. 

The recent “Eluga Tamil” (Arise Tamils) demonstrations will not do any good for the younger generation and the Sri Lankan nation at large. This slogan, which was used and given much hype by the Chief Minister of the Northern Province, CV Wigneswaran, is a lie to elevate his position for his own benefit and not that of the entire society or the nation. How does a rising of one ethnic group help another at a time when the nation is going through reconciliation in a mode for ethnic harmony? The very same slogan was used in the past by Chelvanayakam and Amirthalingam, which was neither helpful to the community they represented nor the nation. The 76-year-old CV Wigneswaran, a former judge of the Supreme Court, needs to get an honest evaluation of his conduct before he utters such words.

The Race Implicit Association Test (IAT) (bit.ly/TtkoCZ)is a good test to examine how biased we are towards our own race and how we see others. As a nation, we Sri Lankans have been living with these biases for a long time. According to Mahzarine Banaji and Anthony Greenwald, we all have hidden biases, and the phenomenon is called “blindspot.”  Blindspot is the metaphor for the section of the mind that houses hidden biases. For example, the IAT test gets you to mark pleasant words and African American children’s faces on one side and unpleasant words with European American children faces on another side which gives us results to understand the biases we do not see clearly by ourselves. The association of words association to race, such as hatred, grief, agony etc. could be more with the faces of African American children than those of European American children. 

A progressive society would look at words and deeds towards ethnic and religious harmony and not the other way. “Eluga Tamil” definitely does not look at the correct path. Good people are those of us who strive to align our behaviour with our intentions. Well intentioned people should not speak of a rise of one ethnic group but the rise of a common identity, a Sri Lankan identity. This is the new identity President Maithripala Sirisena wishes to establish with his new vision. 

Stereotyping – i.e. associating a group with an attribute – is another area. Assuming that all Tamils want Eelam is one of them. The first scientific research on stereotypes was published in 1933 by Princeton psychologists Daniel Katz and Kenneth Braly. They found that one could identify a group with an attribute that could evolve over time into a different attribute. The 1933 stereotype of African Americans did not include associating the word ‘athletic’; but modern studies would do so prominently. ‘Scientific’ and ‘technical’ were not part of 1930s stereotype of Chinese origin people but almost certainly appear in modern day stereotypes. A race with one set of attributes could evolve to be different one with societal changes over time. Certain issues of the world have unfortunately remained static and have not evolved in a positive direction even after brutal battles. For instance, India and Pakistan are still lost in the past trying to figure out the difference between borders and frontiers. 

Indian columnist Dr. Miniya Chatterji rightly points out in assessing the situation of recent military attacks of India and Pakistan, that “The reality is that we have placed ourselves in a conundrum of our own making. Political institutions were made by us to grant us order in society so that we can be busy ourselves with more instinctual activities.” It is important all South Asian leaders refer to this statement and establish order before launching whatever the political vision.