Government of Canada Francophonie Scholarship Program (CFSP) for Developing Francophone Countries 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 18th November, 2016

Eligible Countries: Bénin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodge, Cameroun, Cap-Vert, Comores, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Kinshasa),Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Dominique, Égypte, Gabon, Guinée, Guinée équatoriale, Guinée-Bissau,  Haiti, Laos, Liban, Madagascar, Mali, Maroc, Maurice, Mauritanie, Niger
République Centrafricaine, Rwanda, Sainte-Lucie, Sao Tomé-et-Principe, Sénégal, Seychelles, Tchad, Togo, Tunisie, Vanuatu, Vietnam

To be taken at (country): Canada (Quebec, Canada)

Eligible Fields of Study: All

About the Award:Funding for this program is entirely within the Government of Canada has entrusted the management consortium Canadian Bureau for International Education (CBIE) and the World University Service of Canada (WUSC).

The long-term goal of the program is to promote the development of recipient countries by giving priority to:

• Training of trainers, particularly in the field of technical and vocational education
• Improving the skills of college and university personnel in the field of education and research
• Increasing and strengthening the skills of specialists and managers in the public and private sectors

Offered Since: January 1st, 2015.

Type: Masters and Doctorate

Eligibility: To be eligible for the Canada Francophonie Scholarship Programme:

• Candidates identified and selected may apply for university studies leading to a master’s and doctoral degree, for technical and vocational training, or for short-term internships.
• Institutions targeted by recipient countries conduct internal recruitment campaigns to identify qualified candidates who show the greatest aptitude for helping strengthen their institution’s capacities when they return to their country.
• Clinical training in pharmacy, medicine and dentistry is excluded.

Selection Criteria: Candidates must hold a key position so that the knowledge they acquire will benefit the capacity building of their institution.

Selection Process: 

• Candidates are selected by using a quota system for each recipient country. The quota approach allows recipient countries to define their own priorities for training, as well as the level of training required for the development of their institutions.
• A local advisory committee formed by representatives of various ministries selects candidates in their country. The accredited Canadian diplomatic mission acts as observer to ensure transparency of the selection process.
• The local advisory committee takes into account the candidates’ jobs in the sector or institution to be strengthened and the level of academic excellence as defined by host institutions. An equal number of applications by gender and country is required, and fluency of candidates in spoken and written French is also mandatory.
• Final admission to college or university is the sole responsibility of the relevant institution, and the scholarship becomes effective only when the candidate is admitted to the educational institution.

Number of Awardees:  1500 scholarships

Value of Scholarship: Fully-funded

How to Apply: Apply here

For full information on Canada Francophonie Scholarship Programme eligibility criteria, evaluation procedures, application requirements, funding levels, deadlines, and exclusions, visit theCFSP website (in French).

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Government of Canada

The Cyber-War on Wikileaks

Srećko Horvat

When the ruling class is in panic, their first reaction is to hide the panic.

They react out of cynicism: when their masks are revealed, instead of running around naked, they usually point the finger at the mask they wear. These days the whole world could witness a postmodern version of the infamous quote “Let them eat cake”, attributed to Marie-Antoinette, queen of France during the French Revolution.

As a reaction to WikiLeaks publishing his emails, John Podesta, the man behind Hillary Clinton’s campaign, posted a photo of a dinner preparation, saying “I bet the lobster risotto is better than the food at the Ecuadorian Embassy”.

A similar version of vulgar cynicism emerged earlier this month when Hillary Clinton reacted to the claim that she reportedly wanted to “drone” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (“Can’t we just drone this guy?”) when she was the US Secretary of State. Instead of denying her comments, Clinton said that she doesn’t recall any such joke, “It would have been a joke if it had been said, but I don’t recall that”.

One doesn’t have to read between the lines to understand that if Hillary Clinton had said that, she would have considered it a joke. But when emperors joke, it usually has dire consequences for those who are the objects of their “humor.”

Cyber-war Not with Russia…but WikiLeaks

During the last few months I have visited Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London several times and each time I came out of the Embassy, where he is spending his fifth year in political asylum under legitimate fear he might be extradited to the US, my thought was the following one: although he lives, without his family, in a postmodern version of solitary confinement (even prisoners are allowed to walk for up to one hour a day), although he has no access to fresh air or sunlight for more than 2000 days, although the UK government recently denied him safe passage to a hospital for an MRI scan, if his access to the internet would be cut off this would be the most severe attack on his physical and mental freedom.

The last time I saw him, which was only two weeks ago, he expressed the fear that, because he had already published leaks concerning US elections and with more to come, the US might find various ways to silence him, including pressuring Ecuador or even shutting down the internet.

What seemed a distant possibility only two weeks ago, soon became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When the Obama administration recently announced that it is, as Biden said, planing an “unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia”, the first victim was not Putin, but precisely Julian Assange whose internet was cut off just a day after Biden’s self-contradictory proclamation.

No wonder Edward Snowden reacted immediately by saying that “nobody told Joe Biden what ‘covert operation’ means.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, a covert operation is “an operation that is so planned and executed as to conceal the identity of or permit plausible denial by the sponsor.”

It is no secret anymore that the Ecuadorian government has come under extreme pressure since Assange leaked the Democratic National Committee email database. We don’t know yet whether the US pressured Ecuador to shut down the internet, but it is clear that the present US government and the government to come is fighting a war with WikiLeaks which is all but “covert”. Is it really a coincidence that Julian Assange’s internet access was cut off shortly after publication of Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speeches?

If at the beginning we still had a “soft” version of postmodern McCarthyism, with Hillary calling everyone opposed to her campaign a Russian spy (not only Assange, but also Donald Trump and Jill Stein), then with Obama’s recent intervention it became more serious.

With Obama’s threat of a cyber-war, the “soft” McCarthyism didn’t only acquire geopolitical significance, but at the same time a new mask was revealed: Obama is obviously trying to cement the public debate and make the Russian threat “real”, or at least to use it as a weapon in order to help Clinton to get elected. Moreover, this new twist in something that has already become much more than only US elections (US elections are never only US elections!), shows not only how Obama is ready to strengthen Hillary’s campaign, but it also reveals that a cyber war is already in the making.

It is not a cyber war with Russia, but with WikiLeaks.

And it is not the first time.

What would Clausewitz say?

In 2010, when the Collateral Murder video was published, the Afghan and Iraq war logs were released, and we witnessed one of the most sinister attacks on freedom of speech in recent history. VISA, Mastercard, Diners, American Express and Paypal imposed a banking blockade on WikiLeaks, although WikiLeaks had not been charged with any crime at either state, federal or international level. So if the US government successfully convinced payment companies representing more than 97% of the global market to shut down an independent publisher, why wouldn’t they pressure Ecuador or any other state or company to cut off the internet?

The US is not only rhetorically trying to “get” Assange (it is worth to check out the Assassinate Assange video for evidence of the verbal masturbation of US officials), he poses a serious threat to the major elite factions in the US to remain in power. No wonder panic is rising in the US, which is now going even so far that a 16-year-old boy in Britain has been arrested on criminal charges related to the alleged hacking of email accounts used by CIA director John Brennan, which WikiLeaks published in October 2016.

What WikiLeaks obviously successfully challenged–and maybe one day (“history is written by the victors”, remember?) it will be learned in military strategy– is what the Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz would call the “centre of gravity” (Schwerpunkt), which is the “central feature of the enemy’s power”.

Instead of speaking about the Russians, we should start speaking about the Schwerpunkt of the actual leaks, their real essence. Just take the following quotes by Hillary Clinton exposed by WikiLeaks, which reveal her true nature and the politics behind her campaign: “We are going to ring China with missile defence”, “I want to defend fracking” and climate change environmentalists “should get a life”, “you need both a public and a private position”, “my dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders”.

What WikiLeaks has shown is not only that Hillary is a hawkish war-monger, first it was Libya (over 1,700 of the 33,000 Clinton emails published by WikiLeaks reference Libya), then it was Syria (at a Goldman Sachs conference she explicitly stated she would like to intervene in Syria), tomorrow it will be another war.

It is now clear – and this is the real “centre of gravity” where we should focus our attention – that the future Clinton cabinet may already been filled with Wall Street people like Obama’s was. No wonder WikiLeaks revelations create utter panic not only in the Democratic Party itself but also the Obama administration.

One question remains, isn’t WikiLeaks, by leaking all these dirty secrets, influencing the US elections? Yes, it certainly is, but the current criticism misses its point: isn’t the very point of organisations such as WikiLeaks to publish the material they have and to influence public opinion?

The question should finally be turned around: isn’t the US mainstream media the one influencing the US elections? And isn’t Obama, by announcing a cyber-war with Russia, influencing the elections?

WikiLeaks is not only influencing the US elections, but transforming the US elections – as they should have been from the very beginning – into a global debate with serious geopolitical consequences at stake. What WikiLeaks is doing is revealing this brutal fight for power, but, as the old saying goes, “when a wise man points at the Moon, the idiot looks at the finger”. Instead of looking at the finger pointing to Russia, we should take a look at the leaks themselves.

If democracy and transparency means anything today, we should say: let them leak!

America’s New “Gulf of Tonkin” In The Red Sea: Another Excuse To Invade Yemen, Syria, And Then Iran!

Taj Hashmi

Signs are ominous! On Thursday Oct 13, US Tomahawk cruise missiles destroyed pro-Iranian / anti-Saudi Houthi rebels’ radar sites in Yemen, “retaliating after failed missile attacks this week on a U.S. Navy destroyer”, U.S. officials claimed. Washington has again complained about Houthi missile attacks on a US naval ship on Saturday, Oct 15. Meanwhile, Iran has deployed two warships off Yemen threatening to further escalate tensions after the US missile attacks. It’s most likely – if not inevitable – that the US military machine is going to invade Yemen, Syria, and finally, Iran.

One believes the allegation against the Houthi rebels is a part of the US design to stage another Gulf of Tonkin type false flag operation to justify another US-sponsored long-drawn war in the region a` la Vietnam and Iraq. We know the North Vietnamese “attack” on a US naval ship on August 4, 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin – that never happened – was an American fabrication to justify a full-fledged invasion of North Vietnam, in the name of protecting Southeast Asia from “communist aggression”. It was very similar to Saddam Hussein’s non-existing Weapons of Mass Destruction that prompted the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

While Americans are engrossed in Donald Trump’s vulgar and offensive comments on women, and allegations about his sexual misconduct with multiple women in the past, seemingly the US Administration is busy teaching the pro-Iranian Houthi rebels a lesson, with a view to intimidating and eventually invading Iran! It’s least likely that Houthi rebels who have been simultaneously fighting the pro-Saudi Yemeni regime and Saudi Arabia itself, would open another front against America, which has the most powerful and reckless military in the world.

Now, what the Houthi insurgency or rebellion is all about! This sectarian and class rebellion against the autocratic Yemeni government began in 2004. By 2015 the Zaidi Shiite Houthis captured around half of the country, including the capital, San’a. Shiite Houthis in southern Saudi Arabia also joined the rebellion. What was originally a class movement of Houthis (slightly less than half of the Yemeni population) turned into a civil war, and the Saudi and Iranian interventions in Yemen turned the rebellion into a proxy war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran. The US is solidly behind the Saudi monarchy. Some Sunni Muslims have also joined the Houthis in their struggle to overthrow the autocratic President Mansour al-Hadi. By now around 7,000 people have been killed and around 40,000 injured

Seemingly it’s almost inevitable that the US is going to turn its proxy war against the Houthis through Saudi Arabia into a direct US-Houthi confrontation, as a prelude to invading Syria and Iran. Since Iran is a common enemy of some of Washington’s staunchest allies in the region, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia, it can’t stomach a Saudi defeat at the hands of Houthi fighters, or any pro-Iranian forces, at all. The US military intervention in Yemen and Syria – if not Iran – is likely to happen while Obama is the lame duck President after November 8, or soon after hawkish Hillary Clinton enters the White House in January. All polls indicate she’s going to trounce Donald Trump. Then again, as President Eisenhower implied in a speech, there are lobbies more powerful than the President to drag the country into unnecessary wars.

In his televised farewell speech from the White House on January 17,1961, Eisenhower singled out the Military-Industrial Lobby – an informal alliance between US military and the defence industry, seen together as a vested interest which influences public policy – as the mastermind behind all post-WWII conflicts in the world. Interestingly, the unedited version of his speech  also included “Congressional Lobby” as the third most important contributory factor behind US-sponsored wars. His warning against the Military-Industrial Lobby was particularly significant. One who had famously served as the commander of the Allied forces during WWII knew the human, material, and moral cost of modern warfare. He visualized the potential danger the Lobby posed to freedom and democracy, in the long run. He was candid, desperate, helpless, and sincere in appealing to his own people:

“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Arundhati Roy has also raised two very interesting questions in this regard: “Do we need weapons to fight wars? Or do we need wars to create markets for weapons?” In 2007, General (ret.) Wesley Clark spelled this out in the most unambiguous terms that the US would invade several countries in the Middle East at the dictates of the powerful Military-Industrial Lobby. He exposed Pentagon’s hidden agenda of invading “seven countries in five years” – all Muslim-majority in Africa and Middle East, including Iran – just for the sake of it (for the rich dividends or “profits” of war). So, there’s no room for any imagination about what’s on the cards.

So, one may surmise with a little bit of skepticism and tons of worries and anxieties about the suffering of innocent civilians in Yemen, Syria, and eventually Iran, both at the hands of pro-US Saudi troops, and members of the US armed forces. It’s not that relevant here if Iran would disintegrate like post-Saddam Iraq, or would become a resolute adversary, or even become a winner against America like Vietnam. It would be too trite an assumption that Russia would remain a casual observer of the joint US-Saudi (and possibly Israeli) invasion of Iran. As Eric Zuesse, investigative historian and author of books on the Holocaust, and the Iraq War, believes if elected, Hillary Clinton would “do this again”, invade Syria (and possibly Iran) as she did it in Libya. He is also positive about Russia taking an active role on behalf of the victims of any such invasions in the near future.

Last but not least, let’s hope the new leadership in the US would take lessons from the past: America hasn’t won a single war since Korea, but its illegitimate armed interventions in scores of countries in the East and West during the last seven decades were directly responsible for millions of deaths of unarmed civilians in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Let’s hope peaceniks like Bernie Sanders would prevent the hawks in the next Administration from invading any country, including Iran, Syria, and Yemen. What former Defense Secretary Robert Gates told fellow Americans at the Eisenhower Library last year is very pertinent to this discussion:

“Does the number of warships we have, and are building, really put America at risk, when the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined — 11 of which are our partners and allies? Is it a dire threat that by 2020, the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China? These are the kinds of questions Eisenhower asked as commander-in-chief. They are the kinds of questions I believe he would ask today.”

Will “They” Really Try To Kill President Duterte?

Andre Vltchek

Rodrigo Duterte, the outspoken President of the Philippines has by now, most likely, joined the concealed, prestigious and permanent hit list of the Empire.

The hit list isvery long; it hasalready been long for several decades. One could easily lose count and get confused: how many personalities have been marked and secretly condemned to death? How many of them actually died?

It reads like a catalogue ofillustrious world leaders:from Patrice Lumumba (Zaire), Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran), Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Sukarno (Indonesia),Juvénal Habyarimana(Rwanda), Salvador Allende (Chile)toMuammar Gaddafi (Libya), Al-Basheer(Sudan) and Fidel Castro (Cuba), to name just a very few.

Some were directly assassinated; others were ‘only’ toppled, while only a handful of ‘marked’ leaders actually managed to surviveandto stay in power.

There were several grave crimes committed by almost all of them, very similar crimes.They include:defending the vitalinterests of their nations and people, refusing to allow the unbridled plunder of natural resources by multinational corporations, and standing against the principles of imperialism. Simple criticismof the Empire has also been often punishable by death.

Mr. Duterte is committing all those horrid crimes,which have been mentioned above. He seems to be ‘guilty as charged’. He is denying nothing; he even appears to be proud of the charges that are being brought against him.

‘Is he bored with his life?’ some are asking. ‘Is he out of his mind? Is he ready to die?’

Is he a hero, a new Asian Hugo Chavez, or just an out of control populist?

He is definitely risking a lot, or maybe he is even risking absolutely everything. He is now committing the most unforgiveable sins in the eyes of the Western regime: he is openly insulting the Empire and its institutions (including the UN, NATO and the EU). He is even spitting in their faces!

‘To make it worse’, he is not only chatting; he is taking decisive actions! He is trying to help the poor in his country, he is flirting with the Communist Party and with the socialists, and on top of it he is basically asking both China and Russia for assistance.

The sparks are flying. Periodically such people and institutions like Obama, Pope, the US, the EU, and the UN get advised to go to hell, or are re-Christened as son-of-a-bitches or son-of-a-whores!

And the people of the Philippines absolutely love it. Duterte won elections with tiny margins, but his latest approval rating towers at an astounding 76%. Some would therefore argue that if ‘democracy’ is truly the ‘rule of the people’ (or at least it should be reflecting the will of the people), then all is exactly as it should be in the Philippines.

*

While Eduardo Climaco Tadem, Professorial Lecturer of Asian Studies

(University of the Philippines Diliman), is critical of Duterte’s ‘un-presidential’ speech writing and for him “scoring negatively on the issue of civil and political human rights”, he is clearly impressed by his achievements in several other spheres. As he recently wrote to me in a letter:

“Positive initiatives on other fronts have been taken. The appointment of Communist Party cadres to cabinet positions for agrarian reform, social work and development, and anti-poverty programs is good. Other left wing and progressive personalities occupy other cabinet positions in labor, education, health, science, and environment. More important, positive initiatives have been taken on moving land distribution forward, ending labor contractualization, reaching out to and learning from Cuba’s health programs, and curtailing the environmentally destructive operations by big mining corporations. Moreover, peace negotiations with both the CPP and the MILF/MNLF have been revived with initial steps that are looking good.

An independent foreign policy has been announced and Duterte no longer kowtows to the US and Western powers, unlike previous presidents before him. He is also mending fences with China and taking a different and less belligerent track in resolving the territorial disputes in the South China Sea…”

That is all ‘bad’, extremely bad as far as Washington, London and Tokyo are concerned. Such behavior never goesunnoticed and unpunished!

The response of the Empire came almost immediately this time.

On September 20, 2016, the International Business Times reported:

“The Philippines government has claimed that a coup d’état is being masterminded against President Rodrigo Duterte and said the administration is cracking down on the suspected plotters. A government spokesperson said some Filipino-Americans in New York are planning to oust the abrasive leader.

Without revealing the names of the suspected plotters or their plans, the Philippines government Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said those conspiring against Duterte should “think twice… ‘I have received information from credible sources in the United States. Yes, we have names but I don’t want to mention it. We are looking [at] it seriously. We are investigating it,’” said the senior government official.

The coups, the assassination plots. Soft coups, hard coups: Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Paraguay, Honduras, and Sudan, half of Africa… All in just the few last years…and now the Philippines? Bravo, the Empire is accelerating! The work ethic of its cutthroats is clearly improving.

*

President Duterte has it all figured out. As mentioned above, he has already defined President Obama as a ‘son-of-a-bitch’, ‘son-of-a-whore’, and recently suggested that ‘he goes to hell’.

That is even tougher than what President Hugo Chavez used to say about George W Bush, also known as “Señor W”. And President Chavez, according to many Latin American analysts, ended up paying for his openness, antagonism towards the Empire and imperialism in general,with his own life.

The truth is that the Empire never forgives those who show it a mirror. It kills mercilessly for the tiniest signs of disobedience, rebelliousness.Its propaganda apparatus and its right hand – the mass media – then always manage to craft a suitable explanation and justification. And the public in both North America and Europe is fully complacent, indoctrinated and passive; it only defends its own narrow interests, never the victim, especially if the victim is from some far-away country inhabited by ‘un-people’.

The great Indonesian President Sukarno was overthrown and destroyed(among other things) for shouting publicly at the US ambassador: “To hell with your aid!” …And of course, for defending the interests of his people against the Empire. Patrice Lumumba was assassinated for daring to say that Africans have no reason to be grateful to the colonizers.

Duterte says much more. He is bitter and he has countless reasons to be. The United States murdered more than one million Philippine people, most of them at the end of the 19th andthe beginning of the 20th Century. In recent history, it has turned this once proud and promising nation into a doormat, into a humiliated semi-colony, fully dependent on Washington’s whims. Capitalist and totally pro-American, the Philippines hasevolved, like Indonesia, into a ‘failed state’, a social disaster and an intellectual wasteland.

*

President Duterte has managed to put in place a determined cabinet of like-minded thinking intellectuals and bureaucrats.

As RT reported recently:

“Duterte’s foreign secretary, Perfecto Yasay, who has at times tried to downplay his boss’s comments, released a statement on Facebook titled “America has failed us” in which he says that, while there are many “countless things that we will be forever grateful to America for,” the US has never fully respected Philippine independence.”

“After proclaiming in July 4, 1946 that the Filipinos had been adequately trained for self-determination and governance, the United States held on to invisible chains that reined us in towards dependency and submission as little brown brothers not capable of true independence and freedom,” the FM said in the statement.”

Such statements very rarely appear in the pages of Western mainstream media publications, where Duterte and his cabinet are uninterruptedly demonized and ridiculed.

This is how the latest headlines on the Philippines read:

‘Drug-dealing daughter of playboy baron Antony Moynihan is shot dead in the Philippines’ (Daily Mail).

‘The president of Philippines has been accused of feeding a man alive to a crocodile’ (The Journal.ie via Yahoo UK & Ireland News)

‘Special Report – in Duterte’s war on drugs, local residents help draw up hit list’ (Reuters)

‘Duterte killed justice official, hitman tells Philippine senate’ (AFP)

Nothing about the fight for social justice! Nothing about the battle against Western imperialism.

The war on drugs…

Yes, many people in the Philippines are genuinely concerned that the ‘bodies are piling’ and the approach of this government could be defined as too heavy-handed, even intolerable.

But the situation is not that simple. This is not Europe. This is Asia with its own culture dynamics and problems. In Philippines, the crime rate has reached grotesque heights, unseen almost anywhere else in Asia Pacific. Much of the criminality is related to drugs. And people are genuinely fed-up. They demand decisive action.

For many years, Mr. Duterte used to serve astheMayor of Davao, a city on the island of Mindanao. Davao used to be synonymous with delinquency; a tough place to live and many say, almost impossible placeto govern.

Mr Duterte is honest. He openly admits that he could not have lasted long as a mayor of Davao, if he ‘was following the 10 Commandments’. Perhaps no one could.

He is extremely sensitive to criticism of his human rights record. Whether it comes from the UN or EU or the US, his reply is mostly defiant and consistent: “Fuck you!”

And that is what usually gets reported in the West.

But what is omitted is that Rodrigo Duterte usually continues, explaining:

You tell me about human rights? What about those millions you are killing allover the world, including recently in Iraq, Libya and Syria? What about the Filipino people that you had slayed? And what about your own people, African-Americans who are being slaughtered by police, every day?

He does not hide his deep allergy towards Western hypocrisy. For centuries, the United States and Europe have beenkilling millions, plundering entire continents, and then they reserve the right to judge, criticize and boss around others. Directly, or through institutions they control, like the United Nations. Again, his reply is clearly Sukarno-esque: “To hell with you! To hell with your aid!”

But you will not read this on the pages of the The New York Times or The Economist. There it is all about the ‘war on drugs’, about the ‘innocent victims’ and of course about the ‘strongman’Duterte.

*

The situation is evolving rapidly.

Recently, President Duterte ordered a halt to a military drill, dubbed as the ‘Philippines Amphibious Landing Exercise’ (Phiblex).It began on 4th October and was scheduled to run for more than one week. Around 1,400 Americans and 500 Filipino troops are involved in the war games, some dangerously close to the waters near the disputed islands in South China Sea.

According to several leading Filipino intellectuals, the US has been using the Philippines for its aggressive imperialist ambitions in the region, consistently antagonizing and provoking China.

Duterte’s government is determined to movemuch closer to China and away from the West. It is very likely that the Philippines and China will be able to resolve all disagreements in the foreseeable future. That is, if the US will be out, kept permanently at bay.

To demonstrate its goodwill towards China, and to show its new independent course, Manila is also planning to cancel all 28 annual military exercises with the United States.

President Duterte knows perfectly well what is at stake. To mark his 100 days in office, he has given several fiery speeches, acknowledging that the West may try to remove him from the office, even kill him:

“You want to oust me? You want to use the CIA? Go ahead… Be my guest. I don’t give a shit! I’ll be ousted? Fine. (If so) it’s part of my destiny. Destiny carries so many things. If I die, that’s part of my destiny. Presidents get assassinated.”

They do. They often do get assassinated.

But recently, one after another, countries all over the world are joining the anti-imperialist coalition. Some are prevailing; others get destabilized (like Brazil), economically devastated (like Venezuela) or fully destroyed (like Syria). All defiant nations, from Russia to China, the DPRK and Iran are demonized by Western propaganda and its mass media.

But it seems that the world has had enough. The Empire is crumbling; it is panicking. It is killing more and more, but it is not winning.

Are Filipinos joining this alliance? After only 100 days in the office, it seems that President Dutertehas made up his mind: No more servitude! No coming back!

Is he going to survive? Is he going to stay on his course?

How tough is he, really? One has to have nerves of steel to confront the Empire! One has to have at least nine lives to survive the countless intricate assassination plots, elaborate propaganda schemes, and trickeries. Is he ready for all this? It appears that he is.

The elites of his country have fully sold out to the West; the same as those of Indonesia and to a great extent, Thailand and Malaysia.

It will be an uphill struggle. It already is.

But the majority of his nation is behind him. For the first time in modern history, Filipino people may have a chance to take control over their own destiny, in their own hands.

And if the West does not like what is pouring out from Manila? President Duterte doesn’t care. Hehas declared that he has already prepared plenty of counter-questions. And if the West cannot answer them:

“If they are unable to answer, son of a whore, go home, you animal. I will kick you now. Do not piss me off. It cannot be that they are brighter than me, believe me!”

Most likely, they are not; they are not brighter than him. But they are definitely more ruthless, more brutal.

What are they accusing him of? Of a ‘war on drugs’, that has taken around 3,000 lives?

How many lives has the West (or those ‘son-of-whores’, as many would call it these days in the Philippines) taken after the end of WWII, all over the world? Is it 40 or 50 million? Depends how it is calculated: ‘directly’ or ‘indirectly’.

The Empire will almost certainly try to murder President Duterte, most likely soon, very soon.

In order to survive, to keep on going, to keep fighting, to defend his battered and exploited country, he will most definitely have to permanently forget all about the 10 Commandments.

Your Hard-Earned Money Is Going Towards Subsidies For The Biggest Pollutors- Big Oil companies

Chaitra Yadavar

Even today, the fossil fuel industry remains one of the biggest contributors to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, raising the temperature of the earth by 1.5 degrees which is lethal for life to survive. For these ‘Big Oil’ companies are bringing about an economic cost for the world in terms of impact of climate change. But these companies are not required to pay that cost. The poorest nations, the low lying countries are the ones who are bearing the brunt and paying the costs.

In 2011, fossil fuel use created 33.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.1

The 3 types of fossil fuels that are used the most are coal, natural gas and oil. Coal is responsible for 43% of carbon dioxide emissions from fuel combustion, 36% is produced by oil and 20% from natural gas.2

Source: Le Quéré, C. et al. (2013). The global carbon budget 1959–2011, www.whatsyourimpact.org

In many cases, the impacts will come to the fore after many years of the emissions. Several countries like the European Union have given heavy subsidies to the Big Oil companies but have cut the subsidies for the renewable sector.

In the COP 22 to be held at Morocco this year, several International organizations, countries will come together to discuss issues of importance in relation to Climate change and making a legislation where the Big Oil is asked to pay for damages they cause is imperative.

Big Oil getting subsidies?

The International Monetary Fund, (IMF) recently issued a report saying that total worldwide subsidies to energy, mainly fossil fuel energy, amounted to $5.2 trillion a year. This includes the unpaid cost of carbon pollution and the social costs imposed by businesses (including climate damages) that they don’t have to pay for.

It is one of the most chilling facts from the above report that the industry which is one of the biggest culprits responsible for GHG emissions is the one getting the most amounts of subsidies.

Climate change is getting worse and the chance to avoid harsh impacts is reducing. Therefore governments are getting serious about putting some sort of price on carbon emissions, whether explicit (a tax) or implicit (regulations). Soon, 1/3rd of the world’s carbon emissions will be priced in some way. Businesses that now emit carbon pollution for free (or cheap) will soon see their costs rise.

With proper accounting, the fossil fuel business doesn’t look like such a profitable industry at all.

Burden on Tax-payers:

It’s also a good reminder that we are, in carbon terms, making hay when the sun is shining, using up resources that only appear cheap because we’re shifting the costs to poor and future people, who don’t have the political power to stop us. It is grossly irresponsible.

One of the most serious aspects of the climate crisis is the fact that fossil fuel companies are passing on huge financial risks to taxpayers and politicians are simply turning their backs on the problem instead of holding those companies accountable.

At each stage of the fossil fuel product life cycle, taxpayers in various countries are increasingly burdened with a string of costs such as those associated with fracking-induced earthquake swarms, pipeline explosions, abandoned infrastructure, diseases, water pollution and of course the costs of climate change.

Alongwith the social costs of climate change which the people are paying for, they also have to face some serious hazards of pollution caused by fossil fuel industry like asthma, bronchitis, cancer, nasal congestion, pulmonary inflammation, acidic rain, earthquakes, pipeline explosions.

Fossil Fuel Bond programs:

A concept called Fossil fuel risk bond programs — a policy innovation proposed by Center for Sustainable Economy, USA — can help reverse this glaring inequity by shifting the economic risk back where it belongs: on the polluters.

As stated in its latest report, fossil fuel risk bond programs are essentially systematic efforts by state and local governments to evaluate and respond to the financial risks they face at each stage of the fossil fuel lifecycle in their jurisdictions.

The benefits would be tremendous for districts, states and cities and countries struggling with rising climate-related costs with no clear way to pay for them. For example, consider a district in which coal extraction takes place that is also suffering the severe effects of climate change in the form of regular floods.

Climate risk trust funds maintained by that district could be used to: (1) compensate homeowners for fracking-related earthquake damage which occurs in countries like United states and Canada; (2) pay for the costs of filtering water contaminated by the reservoir leaks; (3) pay for the increased public service cost burden associated with oil towns; and (4) relocate infrastructure from floodplains.

In particular, fossil fuel risk bond programs provide a way to speed up the funding necessary to put scores of people to work — including displaced oil, gas, and coal workers — while reducing fossil fuel consumption, decommissioning obsolete fossil fuel infrastructure, restoring mines, and implementing climate adaptation projects to help make communities safe in the face of climate disasters.

Glaring examples:

To take a very practical example, Fort McMurray, a place in Alberta, Canada has experienced one of the scariest signals of climate change in 2015 — an huge wildfire of epic proportions that burned large portions of the city to the ground. Over 1,600 structures were lost. The economic toll is more than $1 billion. The irony, of course, is that the city lies at the epicenter of the tar sands industry, producing oil that packs an enormous climate change cost.

If fossil fuel risk bond programs would have been in place, the city, province, and federal governments would have adequate funding to respond to this disaster, help residents rebuild, and invest in a future beyond fossil fuels. Instead, they are left with a blackened landscape and a mountain of debt that has yet to be tallied.

Talking about India:

To take a very local example, every year in India, the Brahmaputra river causes heavy destruction in Assam. From 2012 to 2016 itself, 8900 villages have been destroyed, more than 1 crore people were affected and 1,34,000 houses were destroyed, 15.36 lakh hectares of land was destroyed due to the swelling up and floods caused by the river Brahmaputra as reported by anarticle in the Indian Express. “Whenever we take one step forward towards development, floods and erosion push us two steps backwards. While we spend around Rs 12,000 crore on development every year, floods and erosion cause a loss of about Rs 10,000 annually,” says Assam Chief Secretary V K Pipersenia.

Part of this loss could have been reduced if there would have been strictures on the fossil fuel and Coal companies in India to pay for the damage they are causing and those funds would have been put towards providing rehabilitation to the 8900 villages in Assam!

Adaptation is therefore necessary to minimise climate change vulnerability and threats to life, human health, livelihoods, food security, properties, amenities, species and ecosystems.

Sadly, most developing countries cannot afford the cost of putting in place adaptation measures.

Climate Change adaptation:

To mitigate climate change, the world agreed in Paris to cut greenhouse gas emissions to keep global warming below 1.5oC to avoid tragic impacts in the COP21 which was held there.

The annual adaptation costs are projected to rise to US$50 billion per year in Africa and US $250–500 billion across all developing countries by 2050 even if global warming is limited to 2oC this century.

Nonetheless, even in the best mitigation and adaptation scenario, climate instigated loss (irreversible impacts of climate change such as deaths, extinction of species, loss of heritage) and damage (recoverable impacts of significant economic cost such as damage to property and infrastructure) are likely to remain for years.

The cost of loss and damage is high and rising.

The global cost of residual damage is estimated at US$275 trillion between 2000 and 2200 for all countries. This does not include non-economic losses though. The cost is extremely high if very little or absolutely no action is taken (~US$1,240 trillion).

What can we do?

Make the Big Oil pay for the large scale damages that they are causing to the environment. The industry should either be fined or a legally binding framework should be established to make the companies finance Loss and Damage from an impact and legal point-of-view.

As a way of phasing out fossil fuels, after stopping the industry from the climate negotiations, we need to take the second and an important: to make the perpetrators pay for adaptation, loss and damages. The fossil fuel companies have not only contributed to climate change but also amassed huge profits in the process whereas the common folks and the poorest countries are paying the price!

Revolutionary Islam And Regime Change In Ethiopia

Thomas C. Mountain

With ethnic uprisings spreading across an Ethiopia now ruled by martial law there is only one nationally based organization in place to lead the eventual regime change in the country and that is the revolutionary Islamic movement.

Presently all the liberation resistance movements in Ethiopia are ethnically based with their senior leadership in exile, mainly in neighboring Eritrea. The only organization with a national presence is the revolutionary Islamic religious community, whose recently freed leaders have sworn to liberate Ethiopia from the western backed Tigrayan ethnic minority regime presently ruling the country.

The revolutionary Islamic community in Ethiopia has a nation wide network of mosques and religious schools, with very respected locally based leaders and can provide the only legal point of assembly in the country.

Just as in the Iranian revolution in the late 1970’s where the only place revolutionaries could gather without being attacked by the police is the mosques, especially for large gatherings for Friday Prayers, the Islamic community in Ethiopia can provide the only place for the opposition to meet especially now that any and all gatherings are banned under Martial Law and the State of Emergency.

The regimes Agazi death squads have shoot to kill orders and the only place of safety for meetings is in the mosques, though how long the regime will tolerate this is not certain.

Having attacked the Islamic community four years ago, gunning down many and locking up the recently released leadership, the Ethiopia regime may be planning on cracking down on Muslims in a new wave of terror.

The maxim is oppression breeds resistance and even the Washington Post’s Editorial Board knows this, having pointed out how martial law and an iron fist will only lead to further protests and the eventual explosion that will drive the regime into exile and leave Ethiopia without any leadership.

The ensuing power vacuum could see the revolutionary Islamic community taking leadership and bringing unity to Ethiopia, for even if the country is divided along ethnic lines all Muslims no matter what tribe worship together in their mosques.

Most Ethiopians are muslims and their religious practices for centuries past forbid them from discriminating by ethnicity when it comes to their worship. The very idea is foreign to the country.

And Ethiopia’s Muslims practice a very tolerant Sunni variant and have lived side by side with their Christian brothers and sisters for over a millennia, sitting together to break bread and even intermarrying. Thank god the wahabi virus has not yet taken root in the country.

Even the CIA via its execrable media front Freedom House a few months ago insinuated that regime change maybe necessary in Ethiopia and with the recent massacres and growing protests matters may come to a head more quickly than expected. It maybe sooner rather than later that revolutionary Islam finds itself leading regime change in Ethiopia.

Zionism Is Racism

Ludwig Watzal

Hardly any knowledgeable person doubts that Zionist ideology is the purest form of racism. Zionism is Jewish disguised racism as a raison d’etat. Israel comes right after the U. S., as far as racism is concerned. That is why the U. S. donates to this racist regime $ 3.8 bn per year in order to keep this occupation regime going. Should anybody doubt the racism of the Israeli leadership, read the following article.

Racism among the Israeli leadership is legendary. It started out with the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, saying: “Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment (… Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” Or David Ben-Gurion when he advised his General Staff; “We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.” But the dehumanization of the Arab population started already shortly after the Zionist colonizers arrived in the Land of Palestine.

The former terrorist and later Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a speech before the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, termed the Palestinians as “beasts walking on two legs”. Or for the infamous Golda Meir “There is no such thing as a Palestinian.” One could go on and on with the racist statements of the Israel political establishment, not to speak of the violent racism of the colonial settlers in the Palestinian Occupied Territories that make the life of the Palestinians a living hell.

I guess that any intelligent Israeli knows who the real perpetrators are. The former Attorney General, Michael Ben-Yair, wrote in the daily Haaretz: “The Intifada is the Palestinian’s people’s war of national liberation. (…) We enthusiastically chose to become a colonialist society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the Occupied Territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities (…) We established an apartheid regime.”

How come that all this seems to be unknown to the U. S. political establishment and their fawning media class? Can it be that former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was right saying during an Israeli cabinet meeting; “Don’t worry, we control the United States.” Sharon’s dictum seems close to the truth when watching the behavior of the U. S. political class towards Israel. Most of the members of both houses of Congress are more concerned with Israel than with the well-being of their own constituency.

Just take Netanyahu’s appearances before Congress. In 2011, Netanyahu made President Obama look like a fool when he repudiated Obama’s views on the Middle Eastern conflict. The deputies had nothing better to do than jump up 29 times and frenetically cheer to Netanyahu’s chutzpah. They behaved slightly better when Netanyahu tried to torpedo Obama’s Iran deal before the Congress. This appearance happened without the consent of the Obama administration. The Israeli ambassador, Ron Dermer, and the speaker of the House, John Boehner, wrapped up this political deal behind the back of the Obama administration. American self-esteem would have required to declare the Israeli ambassador persona non grata and banish him.

All these events are still overshadowed by Hillary Clinton’s servility towards Netanyahu. Clinton has not only threatened Iran with total “obliteration” if the country should dare to attack Israel but has also promised to Media mogul and mega-donor Haim Saban to go after the BDS movement after her election to the U. S. presidency. WikiLeaks published an email in which Clinton wrote that a “Potemkin peace process is better than nothing.” Such a Potemkin peace process has been followed by the U. S. in the last 36 years. This email showed further how influential Israel’s ambassador Dermer is and how Clinton and her staff are in the pocket of the Israelis.[3] It shows who calls all the shots in U. S. politics.

Apart from her Israel loyalty, Hillary Clinton, and her Ziocon supporters are threatening Russia with a nuclear attack if President Vladimir Putin does not dance to Washington’s pipe. The U. S. media does not report on this Clinton threat as they do not report on Clinton’s lying to Congress or her dubious email traffic that was a severe violation of U. S. national security for which she should have been indicted. They also did not report on Clinton’s using the “N-Word” for an African American. Instead of debunking Clinton and her lies and racism, the media keeps on demonizing Donald Trump for his misogynic rhetoric and former behavior. Rather of electing Hillary Clinton to the White House, the American people should put her in jail.

The election of Hillary Clinton will not only be a disaster for the Palestinian people but also to the world as a whole.

UN committee condemns Australia’s Nauru refugee camp

Max Newman

A United Nations organisation this month expressed “grave concern” about the living conditions inside the Australian detention centre in the small Pacific island state of Nauru.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) conducted a review of the treatment of refugee children in Nauru, focusing on the Australian-controlled Regional Processing Centre (RPC), a prison indefinitely housing 306 men, 55 women and 49 children who sought to reach Australia by boat to seek asylum.

In a 17-page report, the committee said the conditions in the RPC, combined with the uncertainty of indefinite detention is “generating and exacerbating mental health issues, leading to feelings of hopelessness and often suicidal ideation.”

Citing evidence from the Moss report, an Australian government-funded review published last year, the committee said children living in the camp face “inhuman and degrading treatment, including physical, psychological and sexual abuse.”

The committee said there were also reports of “intimidation, sexual assault, abuse and threats of violence against families” living in refugee settlements outside the RPC.

The CRC’s report noted that many of the children experienced trauma prior to their arrival in Nauru and the “subsequent impact of prolonged periods of living in detention-like conditions” resulted in cases of “attempted suicide, self-immolation, acts of self-harm and depression.”

Also highlighted was the lack of health care services at the centre. This exacerbated the suffering of those imprisoned, as many “have developed chronic conditions as a result of living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions.” The report added that the main medical provider in the RPC has no paediatrician and there is limited access to clean and safe drinking water.

The CRC was also “concerned at reports indicating that some international organisations have been subjected to intimidation,” citing the attempted media blackout on the camp via an increase in visa fees for journalists from $US200 to $8,000 in 2014.

The report urged the Nauruan government to immediately transfer all “asylum-seeker children and their families” out of the RPC and to find permanent “resettlement options for refugees, in particular, for children and their families” and ensure they are given “lawful stay and reasonable access to employment.”

Thus, while the report detailed the torturous conditions, it directed its recommendations at impoverished Nauru, when the chief responsibility for these prison camps rests with successive Australian governments.

Nauru is a tiny nation of around 10,000 people, blighted by a long history of British and Australian colonial oppression, producing poverty and economic backwardness. After heavy phosphate mining exhausted the island’s resources, eliminating the country’s only export revenue, unemployment levels skyrocketed to 90 percent in 2000.

In 2001, under its so-called Pacific Solution, the Howard Liberal-National government took advantage of this impoverishment to strike a deal with Nauru to build a detention centre in the middle of the island. Nauru became so reliant on the associated income that when the centre was temporarily shut down in 2007, the country lost 20 percent of its income overnight. About 100 Nauruans lost their jobs. About 1,000 other people, or 10 percent of the population, reportedly had depended on their wages.

Since the Greens-backed Gillard Labor government reopened the camp in 2012, Australia has used Nauru as a permanent holding camp for asylum seekers, refusing to allow any to settle in Australia. Prime Minister Julia Gillard declared that the detainees must have “no advantage” over the millions of refugees languishing in camps in the Middle East and Africa, which effectively meant indefinite detention.

The cruelty inflicted on refugee children, described in the CRC report, was pioneered by the Keating Labor government in 1992, which introduced mandatory detention of asylum seekers, including children. Australia became the first Western country to implement such a regime.

The UN report follows a series of recent revelations and condemnations of the inhumane conditions in Australia’s detention facilities on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. In August this year more than 2,000 incident reports were leaked, detailing serious levels of abuse and trauma in the Nauru camp. Dubbed the Nauru Files, over half the incident reports involved children.

The current Liberal-National government has not commented on the UN committee’s findings. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton spent the end of last month in the United States promoting Australia’s refugee policy as the “best in the world.” Dutton reiterated that the refugee arrangement between Australia and Nauru would “continue for decades.”

According to Fairfax Media, citing “well-placed sources,” the Turnbull government is continuing to look for another destitute country in which to dump the refugees. Last year, the Murdoch press reported that this search included the impoverished Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan.

Australia: Five workers killed in industrial incidents within a week

Terry Cook

Over a seven-day period this month, five Australian workers were killed in a series of shocking incidents in construction and transport. Initial reports suggest that these fatalities were avoidable.

On October 6, Ashley Morris, 35, and Humberto Leite, 55 were crushed between two 9-tonne concrete slabs while working in a construction pit on a $37 million stable development at Brisbane’s Eagle Farm Racecourse. The men, both fathers, were already dead when Queensland Ambulance Service personnel arrived on site.

A construction trade union spokesman told the media that the slabs may have been poorly braced by a sub-contractor, but he declined to name the firm involved. He said three of four slabs had been placed in the hole when one fell to the ground.

The union revealed that two workers had walked off over safety concerns before the incident. One worker reportedly said “someone’s going to die here.” The primary contractor, Brisbane-based Criscon, has refused so far to comment on the deaths.

Unsafe conditions in the construction industry were further laid bare on October 10. Marianka Heumann, 27, died when she fell 60 metres down a ventilation shaft from the 15th floor of the 38-storey Finbar and Hanssen luxury apartment construction project in East Perth, Western Australia. The young German woman was on a working holiday and had been employed on the site as an unskilled labourer for only three months.

Heumann was applying silicone to ceilings. She finished the job set for the day but returned when she noticed a small area she missed. She had reportedly already removed the safety harness she was wearing during her shift.

Hanssen Construction managing director Gerry Hanssen told the media that each new worker “gets a safety induction before they start, on the site.” However, one of Heumann’s co-workers told reporters that while the German woman was a careful worker, “many times we worked without protection.”

Moreover, the industry safety watchdog WorkSafe reported it had received five complaints about safety on the project since construction commenced in late 2105, and issued two improvement notices to the company—one for “edge protection” and another for “excessive debris” on the site.

In 2008, Hanssen Construction was fined $174,000 by the Federal Magistrates Court in Perth over its treatment of overseas workers in relation to pay and conditions, and was found guilty of 21 breaches of the Workplace Relations Act.

Heumann’s death reignited questions about inadequacies in training and induction of inexperienced backpackers and young workers in one of the country’s most dangerous industries. Anyone can easily obtain a “White Card” qualification to work on a building site, just by paying a small fee and completing a short online course. Previously, applicants were required to attend one-day courses.

In the transport sector, two truck drivers, Chris Blake, 46, and Peter Cardilini, 50, were killed on October 6 in the Sydney suburb of Erskine Park. A prime mover owned by the A.K. Group and driven by Blake swerved onto the wrong side of the road, colliding with a loaded Austral Brick truck that had just pulled out of the company’s yard. Both vehicles instantly exploded on impact.

Police investigating the crash said they found evidence of poor fatigue management by the A.K. Group after searching the company’s premises and reviewing driver logs. Eight defect notices were issued for two trucks on the site, including for mechanical and brake issues as well as oil and fuel leaks. Several other trucks were taken to a Roads and Maritime Service facility for closer inspection.

More workers die in the transport, postal and warehousing sector each year than in any other industry. Safe Work figures show that 48 of 184 workplace deaths in Australia last year were in this sector. Only agriculture, forestry and fishing, with 46 deaths, had a comparable toll.

With increasingly cut-throat competition for contracts, transport companies seek to slash costs by cutting back on vehicle maintenance and placing pressure on drivers to meet shorter delivery deadlines, leading to fatigue, speeding and the overloading of trucks.

Such conditions are becoming the norm. In a 2015 survey of more than 1,000 trucking businesses by statutory authority Safe Work Australia, 20 percent admitted they broke safety rules to complete work on time. One in five agreed they “consider minor incidents a normal part of daily work.”

So far this year, there have been 132 industrial-related fatalities in Australia. Of these, 42 were in the transport, postal and warehousing sector and 21 in the construction industry.

The deaths, many of which are preventable, stand as a damning indictment of the capitalist system and all its political servants, who put profits above the lives of ordinary working people. Successive governments, Liberal-National and Labor, have backed corporate restructuring and deregulated safety, including cutting spending on regulation and sharply reducing the number of safety inspectors.

In the wake of every industrial death, the trade unions ritualistically feign concern for safety. Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) national secretary Dave Noonan said the union would provide grief and trauma counselling for the construction victims’ co-workers. “This is a high-risk industry. We lose too many lives in these types of accidents,” he said.

However, the unions are wholly complicit in the undermining of conditions. For decades, they have worked to contain opposition by workers to the relentless elimination of jobs, the removal of safety practices, the imposition of longer shifts and around-the-clock working, all in the name of making employers competitive. The ongoing workplace deaths are the deadly consequence of this process.