Open Society Disability Rights Scholarship (LL.M) Programme for Africans 2017/18

Application Deadline: 2nd December, 2016

Eligible Countries: China;  Mozambique, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda; Argentina, Mexico, Peru

To be taken at (schools): Participating schools include:

• Faculty of Law, McGill University, Canada
• School of Law, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
• School of Law, University of Leeds, UK
• College of Law, Syracuse University, USA
• Washington College of Law, American University, USA

About the Award:  The Open Society Disability Rights Scholarship Program provides awards for master’s degree study to disability rights advocates, lawyers, and educators to develop new legislation, jurisprudence, policy, research, and scholarship to harness the innovations and opportunities offered by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

With the knowledge and networks gained through the program, we expect that fellows will deepen their understanding of international law and education, with a focus on disability rights, and gain the tools necessary to engage in a range of CRPD implementation strategies, such as: challenging rights violations in their home countries by drafting enforceable legislation consistent with the CRPD; utilizing enforcement mechanisms set forth in the convention; taking forward disability rights litigation requesting CRPD-compliant remedies; engaging in disability rights advocacy; and developing law, education, or other academic curricula informed by the CRPD.

Eligible Fields of Study: Bachelor of laws (LLB; in exceptional circumstances, those without a LLB but with substantial relevant experience may be considered); for inclusive education, a degree in teaching, public administration/policy, anthropology, social work, psychology, or related field.

Type: Masters scholarship, Fellowship

Eligibility: The Open Society Disability Rights Scholarship is open to those meeting the following criteria:

• be a citizen and legal resident of Argentina, China, Mexico, Mozambique, Peru, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, or Uganda at the time of application
• have work experience in the legal profession or advocacy focusing on human/disability rights and/or work in education with a demonstrated interest in advancing inclusive education
• have an excellent academic record with a bachelor of laws (LLB; in exceptional circumstances, those without a LLB but with substantial relevant experience may be considered); for inclusive education, a degree in teaching, public administration/policy, anthropology, social work, psychology, or related field
• have demonstrated leadership in the field of disability rights or education
• be proficient in spoken and written English or French and able to meet university-designated minimum scores on standardized language tests
• be able to participate in an intensive academic writing program in summer 2017
• be able to begin the graduate program in August or September 2017
• be able to receive and maintain visa or study permit required by host country
• demonstate a clear commitment to return to home country to advance the inclusion and full participation of persons with disabilities in their communities, or to aid ongoing disability rights work

The Open Society Disability Rights Scholarship does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. Candidates with disabilities are particularly encouraged to apply.

Selection: Competition is merit based, and selection is made on the basis of academic excellence, professional aptitude, leadership potential, and proven commitment to work in the field of disability rights in the home country.

Selection proceeds as follows:

• Preliminary Selection and Testing
• Interviews and Final Selection

Value of Scholarship: The fellowship provides:

• tuition and mandatory university fees;
• monthly stipend for room, board, and other living expenses;
• program-related travel;
• accident and health insurance during the program;
• funds for educational materials and professional development;
• all costs associated with pre-academic summer program and annual conference;
• support for students with disabilities to obtain reasonable accommodations necessary for participating in the program of study.

The fellowship does NOT provide funding for dependent family members.

Duration of Scholarship: 1 year

How to Apply: Apply here

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Open Society Foundation

Important Notes: Referees you list in the application will be automatically contacted by e-mail when you submit your application with a system-generated request to serve as your reference.  Since the deadline to receive reference letters is December 9, 2017, we strongly suggest you contact  references in advance with your request.   Referees can send letters to us directly using the link in the email they will receive from Submittable when you submit your application.

Alternatively, reference forms can be downloaded here and emailed directly to the appropriate regional coordinator.

A Deep State of Mind: America’s Shadow Government and Its Silent Coup

John W. Whitehead

Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system … a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state…. The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization… It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government…. This group … is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable.”

— Senator William Jenner, 1954 speech

Unaffected by elections. Unaltered by populist movements. Beyond the reach of the law.

Say hello to America’s shadow government.

A corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country, this shadow government represents the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.

No matter which candidate wins the presidential election, this shadow government is here to stay. Indeed, as recent documents by the FBI reveal, this shadow government—also referred to as “The 7th Floor Group”—may well have played a part in who will win the White House this year.

To be precise, however, the future president will actually inherit not one but two shadow governments.

The first shadow government, referred to as COG or Continuity of Government, is made up of unelected individuals who have been appointed to run the government in the event of a “catastrophe.” COG is a phantom menace waiting for the right circumstances—a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, an economic meltdown—to bring it out of the shadows, where it operates even now. When and if COG takes over, the police state will transition to martial law.

Yet it is the second shadow government—also referred to as the Deep State—that poses the greater threat to freedom right now. Comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes, this government within a government is the real reason “we the people” have no real control over our government.

The Deep State, which “operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government.

So who or what is the Deep State?

It’s the militarized police, which have joined forces with state and federal law enforcement agencies in order to establish themselves as a standing army. It’s the fusion centers and spy agencies that have created a surveillance state and turned all of us into suspects. It’s the courthouses and prisons that have allowed corporate profits to take precedence over due process and justice. It’s the military empire with its private contractors and defense industry that is bankrupting the nation. It’s the private sector with its 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances, “a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government.” It’s what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren refers to as “a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies”: the Department of Defense, the State Department, Homeland Security, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Treasury, the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a handful of vital federal trial courts, and members of the defense and intelligence committees.

It’s every facet of a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.

These are the key players that drive the shadow government.

This is the hidden face of the American police state that will continue long past Election Day.

Just consider some of the key programs and policies advanced by the shadow government that will continue no matter who occupies the Oval Office.

Domestic surveillance.

No matter who wins the presidential popularity contest, the National Security Agency (NSA), with its $10.8 billion black ops annual budget, will continue to spy on every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone. Thus, on any given day, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. Local police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike—including homes. Coupled with the nation’s growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Global spying.

The NSA’s massive surveillance network, what the Washington Post refers to as a $500 billion “espionage empire,” will continue to span the globe and target every single person on the planet who uses a phone or a computer. The NSA’s Echelon program intercepts and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax and email message sent anywhere in the world. In addition to carrying out domestic surveillance on peaceful political groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and several religious groups, Echelon has also been a keystone in the government’s attempts at political and corporate espionage.

Roving TSA searches.

The American taxpayer will continue to get ripped off by government agencies in the dubious name of national security. One of the greatest culprits when it comes to swindling taxpayers has been the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), with its questionable deployment of and complete mismanagement of millions of dollars’ worth of airport full-body X-ray scanners, punitive patdowns by TSA agents and thefts of travelers’ valuables. Considered essential to national security, TSA programs will continue in airports and at transportation hubs around the country.

USA Patriot Act, NDAA. 

America’s so-called war on terror, which it has relentlessly pursued since 9/11, will continue to chip away at our freedoms, unravel our Constitution and transform our nation into a battlefield, thanks in large part to such subversive legislation as the USA Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act. These laws completely circumvent the rule of law and the rights of American citizens. In so doing, they re-orient our legal landscape in such a way as to ensure that martial law, rather than the U.S. Constitution, is the map by which we navigate life in the United States. These laws will continue to be enforced no matter who gets elected.

Militarized police state. 

Thanks to federal grant programs allowing the Pentagon to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local law enforcement agencies without charge, police forces will continue to be transformed from peace officers into heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones. Having been given the green light to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, America’s law enforcement officials, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, will continue to keep the masses corralled, controlled, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.

SWAT team raids.

With more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by local police for relatively routine police matters and federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions, the incidence of botched raids and related casualties will continue to rise. Nationwide, SWAT teams will continue to be employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession.

Domestic drones. The domestic use of drones will continue unabated. As mandated by Congress, there will be 30,000 drones crisscrossing the skies of America by 2020, all part of an industry that could be worth as much as $30 billion per year. These machines, which will be equipped with weapons, will be able to record all activities, using video feeds, heat sensors and radar. An Inspector General report revealed that the Dept. of Justice has already spent nearly $4 million on drones domestically, largely for use by the FBI, with grants for another $1.26 million so police departments and nonprofits can acquire their own drones.

School-to-prison pipeline. 

The paradigm of abject compliance to the state will continue to be taught by example in the schools, through school lockdowns where police and drug-sniffing dogs enter the classroom, and zero tolerance policies that punish all offenses equally and result in young people being expelled for childish behavior. School districts will continue to team up with law enforcement to create a “schoolhouse to jailhouse track” by imposing a “double dose” of punishment: suspension or expulsion from school, accompanied by an arrest by the police and a trip to juvenile court.

Overcriminalization. 

The government bureaucracy will continue to churn out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, rendering the rest of us petty criminals. The average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to this overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal. Consequently, small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community will continue to have their farms raided.

Privatized Prisons. 

States will continue to outsource prisons to private corporations, resulting in a cash cow whereby mega-corporations imprison Americans in private prisons in order to make a profit. In exchange for corporations buying and managing public prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years.

Endless wars. 

America’s expanding military empire will continue to bleed the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour). The Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense.

Are you getting the message yet?

The next president, much like the current president and his predecessors, will be little more than a figurehead, a puppet to entertain and distract the populace from what’s really going on.

As Lofgren reveals, this state within a state, “concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue,” is a “hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.”

The Deep State not only holds the nation’s capital in thrall, but it also controls Wall Street (“which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater”) and Silicon Valley.

This is fascism in its most covert form, hiding behind public agencies and private companies to carry out its dirty deeds.

It is a marriage between government bureaucrats and corporate fat cats.

As Lofgren concludes:

[T]he Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change… If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda.

In other words, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, as long as government officials—elected and unelected alike—are allowed to operate beyond the reach of the Constitution, the courts and the citizenry, the threat to our freedoms remains undiminished.

So the next time you find yourselves despondent over the 2016 presidential candidates, remember that it’s just a puppet show intended to distract you from the silent coup being carried out by America’s shadow government.

The Burdens of World War III

Lizzie Maldonado

On separate occasions, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has casually threatened war against Russia and Iran. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has casually threatened war against China and North Korea. That these threats are largely without provocation is another topic entirely.

While America has not known even momentary peace in 15 years, it can seem surreal to consider the realities of a third World War.

In 1915, Russian Socialist Leon Trotsky penned a letter planning the October Revolution addressed to “Proletarians of Europe!” The world was one year into fighting The Great War and Trotsky warned against the ever-decreasing liberties of the people beyond massive loss of life and wealth — the appropriation of labor for the purpose of war.

“The burdens of war will consume the best energies of the peoples for decades, endanger the achievements of social reform, and hinder every step forward.” — Leon Trotsky

War consumes the best energies of the people

Less than one month after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt told Congress and the country:

“Powerful enemies must be out-fought and out-produced. It is not enough to turn out just a few more planes, a few more tanks, a few more guns, a few more ships than can be turned out by our enemies. We must out-produce them overwhelmingly, so that there can be no question of our ability to provide a crushing superiority of equipment in any theatre of the world war.”

And out-produce, we did.

When auto manufacturers transitioned from producing cars to producing weapons and tools of war, already efficient production ramped up to historic levels. PBS reported 3 million cars were produced in 1941, yet only 139 more were produced during the entirety of the second World War:

“Instead, Chrysler made fuselages. General Motors made airplane engines, guns, trucks and tanks. Packard made Rolls-Royce engines for the British air force. And at its vast Willow Run plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, the Ford Motor Company performed something like a miracle 24-hours a day. The average Ford car had some 15,000 parts. The B-24 Liberator long-range bomber had 1,550,000. One came off the line every 63 minutes.”

This massive scale in production was earned through widespread propaganda — from beloved Rosie the Riveter co-opting female empowerment for production’s sake to more overt threats — the “Japs”love when you call in sick. Everyone did their part.

In a farewell speech years after the end of World War II, President Dwight Eisenhower issued an ominous warning against the rise of war production:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Until the last of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of ploughshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.”

Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has been in a near-permanent state of semi-war. We are currently engaged in no less than seven conflicts of war, several without proper war authorization. Today, the Department of Defense (DOD) (formerly more aptly called the ‘Department of War’) is the nation’s largest employer with more than 2.4 million federal employees, hundreds of thousands more federal contractors, 20,000 estimated CIA personnel, and more than 800,000 in the National Guard and Reserve forces.

Even in the private sector, arms sales can make up staggering percentages of total sales for corporations who, not coincidentally, lobby the government on matters of defense. For example, more than 78 percent of behemoth Lockheed Martin’s total sales of $46.5 billion are made up of arms sales. It is of note that public corporations are also legally required to provide returns for shareholders above all other factors — including public welfare or environmental concerns.

Even in times without world wars, military action of this sort frequently and very literally consumes the best energies of the people.

War endangers the achievements of social reform

Deliberate attacks on civil rights like The Patriot Act and its bigger, badder relative the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), NSA surveillance, and the infringement of the rights of journalists and whistleblowers have followed heightened security in the unsettling times post September 11.

Meanwhile, as the public loses power in the political arena to hold an expansive centralized government accountable, austerity measures often reduce spending on infrastructure like education and health care or in supporting social reforms to redirect seemingly endless moneys to war. In these times, we send a clear message to the hungry, poor, overworked masses that there is not enough money for programs people need, but there is never enough money for ‘defense.’

Despite American defense spending swallowing that of the next seven nations combined, there is, in the eyes of war profiteers and budget wranglers alike, more money available for war in the future. That money will simply have to come from services the public relies on — for the greater good. When wars begin with manufactured consent (as we are teetering on under this exact premise with any one of three world powers — Russia, Iran, China), arguments to cut healthcare, social security and worker’s programs or to reduce commitments to transportation, energy, etc. can be made with seemingly sound mind. Of course, temporarily, the nation will need to squeeze the belt holding society together to pay for war, but the war is just! Support the troops!

Once we are at war, there is little use questioning the merit of the engagement itself, as we have seen plainly in the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or even in the burgeoning conflict with Syria increasing tensions with Russia. Once we are at war, it is all we can do to argue against the crippling measures of austerity.

“The movement was provoked by lack of bread. This, of course, is not an accidental cause. In all the belligerent countries the lack of bread is the most immediate, the most acute reason for dissatisfaction and indignation among the masses. All the insanity of the war is revealed to them from this angle: it is impossible to produce necessities of life because one has to produce instruments of death.”

— Leon Trotsky

George Orwell wrote in “1984” that the act of war was destruction of the products of human labor, that, if allowed to be used by the masses, would make the populace too intelligent and comfortable to be controlled by their governments.

If one cannot comprehend war being for the destruction of human labor, certainly we can understand it as a result. Not only the destruction of labor, but the socialization of massive debt and cost for war among the people who cannot withstand another squeeze as it is.

Trotsky addressed this as well, in the context of the first World War:

“The American bourgeoisie has earned billions from the blood of the European worker; but what did the American housewife, the workingwoman, get? Her share is scarcity, and the tremendous cost of living. It is the same in all countries, whether the bourgeoisie of one or the other country wins or suffers defeat. For the workers, the toiling masses, the result is the same: exhaustion of food stocks, impoverishment, enhanced slavery and oppression, accidents, wounds, cripples — all this pours upon the popular masses.”

And in the context of the second World War, former President Eisenhower:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

It is arguably easy to wage ideological warfare when the real price is paid by others. One may call these ‘hard choices’ all they like, but they are made from leather office chairs nonetheless.

It is also easy to look back on the War in Iraq and claim the populace was duped into supporting military action while conveniently ignoring the vivid reality of the time in which the populace largely clamored for war and clung to justification of it.

As the pieces fall into place for World War III, the words of the late American sociologist C. Wright Mills may be of use: “The immediate cause of World War III is the military preparation of it.”

When World War III comes, it will come with the support of the majority, as every world war to date has. It is likely that Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States. She has threatened overt military action against Russia in response to their unproven connection to leaks of communications within the Democratic National Committee. She has also repeated support for a no-fly zone over Syria, which, according to numerous experts, will result in war with Russia.

At which point, it’s probable even those who clamor for peace now will instead call for war when antagonized with a one-side portrayal of Russian villainy. How many of them will volunteer to join the civilian military? One could argue there should be a one-to-one ratio as one should not support war unless they are also willing to support it with their lives.

As long as the disconnect of ideological support for war ‘equals’ patriotism, the American public runs the risk of unwittingly bearing the heaviest burdens of war.

As an alternative, the toiling, oppressed and exhausted proletariat whose bodies are being factored into equations on collateral damage daily could choose to feel empowered by those who have historically rejected war, even under the often thin veil of ‘justice.’

The Most Dangerous Place in the World: US Pours in Money, as Blood Flows in Honduras

Mark Weisbrot

Since a 2009 military coup against the democratic government of President Mel Zelaya, Honduras has become the most dangerous country in the world for environmental and human rights activists. On October 17,two more prominent rural organizers, José Ángel Flores and Silmer Dionisio George, were assassinated in Colón. Flores was the president of the Unified Campesinos Movement of the Aguan Valley (MUCA), and George was a well-known leader from the same organization.

This follows the October 9 assassination attempts against Tomás Gómez Membreño, the general coordinator of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), and COPINH community leader Alexander García Sorto.

Unfortunately, this continuing wave of political violence has a lot to do not only with the corrupt, repressive government that rules Honduras, but also with the United States government. Washington played a major role in consolidating the 2009 military coup and continues to supply tens of millions of dollars of military and security aid annually to the government.

On March 2, Berta Cáceres, the former general coordinator of COPINH and winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, was murdered. She had been organizing, with some success, against a number of environmentally destructive projects that proliferated after the 2009 coup. One of them was the Agua Zarca dam, which threatens the environment and rights of the indigenous Lenca community. The movement that she helped organize forced the largest dam producer in the world to pull out of the project, and has halted construction since last year.

A Honduran soldier subsequently told the media that Berta had been targeted by the military for assassination.

The murder of Berta Cáceres provoked so much international outrage that 42 members of the US Congress have cosponsored the Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act (HR 5474). It calls for the suspension of all US military and security aid to Honduras so long as the Honduran government fails to protect social activists and so long as the country’s security forces continue to perpetrate human rights violations with impunity, among other conditions.

To the consternation of human rights advocates in Honduras and the US, on September 30, the State Department certified that Honduras had met the human rights conditions attached to their 2016 military and security aid, against all the violent evidence to the contrary. Without this certification, Honduras would have lost half of this aid.

The Berta Cáceres Act probably cannot be passed at this time, in the Republican-controlled Congress. A number of Republican leaders in Congress openly supported the 2009 military coup; the Obama administration nominally opposed it, but took other measures to help the coup succeed. For example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in her 2014 book, “Hard Choices,” that she worked to prevent Zelaya, the deposed democratically elected president, from returning to office.

Zelaya had succeeded in preventing the expansion of environmentally destructive megaprojects; he had also presided over an economy that reduced inequality, poverty, and unemployment, and substantially increased the minimum wage, before he was overthrown. Notably, he also was working to resolve claims by campesinos that their land holdings in areas like the Aguan Valley that had been illegally seized by powerful land barons and plantation owners.

President Juan Orlando Hernández has refused to meet with Salil Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty International, which condemned the murder of Flores and George. On October 20, Honduran security forces used excessive force to break up a demonstration protesting the mishandling of the Berta Cáceres murder investigation by Honduran authorities. The social movements want the government to identify the higher-ups who are responsible for the assassination, not just the shooters.

In another sign that the rule of law does not apply to the murder of indigenous leaders, the file for Cáceres’ case was reported robbed from the prosecutor on September 29.

The terrible human rights situation in Honduras, including environmental destruction of indigenous lands and the ongoing flood of refugees fleeing violence is a natural result of the overthrow of a democratically elected, reform government, and its replacement with repression and militarization.

Unfortunately, at the highest levels of the US “national security state,”Honduras is seen as a pawn in a geopolitical Cold War II chess game. It holds one of the US’ few remaining Latin American military bases. And so the numerous calls from almost 100 members of Congress at a time, for a cutoff of military and security aid until the government puts an end to impunity, have mostly fallen on deaf ears.

This will not necessarily change if the Democrats win the Senate on November 8. But in any case there is plenty that Congress can do even now. Individual Senators, for example, on committees such as appropriations and foreign relations, can make it enormously difficult, and maybe impossible, for US security aid to be disbursed to Honduras. This kind of justified obstructionism could put tremendous pressure on the Honduran government to respect human life and rights.

Royal Bank of Scotland accused of corrupt practices with small business investors

Jean Shaoul

A cache of emails leaked by a whistleblower confirms previous allegations that the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) deliberately destroyed the livelihoods of its small business customers to boost its own profits. Furthermore, the record shows that Britain’s political and financial authorities knew all about it and never lifted a finger.

RBS is Britain’s largest high street and investment bank and the biggest lender to small and medium businesses. It was one of several high street banks that faced collapse in 2008. The then Labour government stepped in to rescue the banks from the results of their own reckless and socially criminal practices, allowing them to continue operating without any change of direction or additional supervision.

Then Chancellor of the Exchequer Alastair Darling took an 83 percent stake in RBS, pumping in £45 billion of taxpayers’ money, and authorised a slew of other measures worth nearly one trillion pounds to keep the banks afloat. No one faced sanctions or criminal charges. Since then, successive governments have enforced draconian austerity measures on the working class and youth, privatising and gutting public services and slashing the social safety net on which millions of families depend, in order to pay for the bailout.

The government urged the banks to lend to small businesses as a way of “rebalancing the economy” away from the dependency on financial services. Instead, secure in the knowledge that it had government backing, RBS used its privileged position to rob and cheat the very people it was supposed to protect and support.

Buzzfeed News and the BBC’s current affairs programme Newsnight have published RBS documents, marked “secret,” revealing that after the bailout RBS ramped up its efforts to squeeze cash out of its struggling small business customers by pushing about 12,000 firms into its controversial “turnaround division,” the Global Restructuring Group (GRG).

GRG insisted that they sell off their assets to RBS’ property division, West Register, and take out additional loans and financial products, supposedly to protect against rising interest rates, and threatened to pull the plug on them if they refused. As a result, GRG’s loans to its customers rose five-fold between 2007 and 2012 to more than £65 billion.

This was not some rogue operation but deliberate policy. An RBS email in 2008 urged its staff to mount “a dash for cash” from the bank’s business customers because the bank was in financial difficulties and needed more money. An RBS executive described how in the “Project Dash for Cash,” staff were asked to look out for companies that could be restructured or have their interest rates bumped up. Other documents show that where business customers had not defaulted on their loans, bank staff would search for reasons to justify moving the business to GRG or ways to “provoke a default.”

Customers could be moved into the GRG group simply for falling out with the bank. According to the leaked documents, RBS was passing information about properties held by customers transferred to GRG to West Register even before the companies had agreed to sell them. Of the 1,483 business customers transferred to GRG in 2012, only 452 cases were returned to normal banking.

The bank paid its staff higher bonuses as a reward, based on the fees charged for “restructuring” customers’ debts, cutting their loans and generating cash from them.

Many of the small businesses pushed into the GRG say that they lost their businesses, their health--both physical and mental health due to the stress--their homes and in many cases experienced family break-ups. RBS faces litigation from a number of businesses suing the bank for improperly valuing their assets and bullying them to force them out of business.

These latest revelations support the allegations made in a November 2013 report by Lawrence Tomlinson, a multi-millionaire business advisor to the government, about RBS’ and other banks’ practices, following widespread concerns about the banks’ operations. His report found:

· “Many examples” of property revaluations without site visits, and mistakes in documentation

· Property taken over by RBS later sold for a price higher than the bank’s own valuation

· In one “very clear example,” the reasons a business was put into GRG “changed throughout the conversation”

· One business submitted evidence that their time in GRG had cost them £256,000 in fees alone

Tomlinson said, “The treatment that some of these companies have had is horrendous,” adding, “RBS did more than its fair share to fuel this, and commercial property lending was one of the key drivers of our near collapse as valuations rapidly plummeted.”

RBS’ chief Sir Philip Hampton said he took Tomlinson’s allegations “extremely seriously” and commissioned “an independent report” from City lawyers Clifford Chance, who apparently found “no evidence” to back up the claims.

Business Secretary in the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition, Vince Cable, acknowledged that the Tomlinson report had produced solid evidence, but kicked the bank’s criminality into the long grass. He ordered the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to conduct a “skilled persons report” into these allegations, which were by no means the first to have surfaced. He also referred the report to the Prudential Regulation Authority. The Serious Fraud Office was also reportedly considering holding an investigation.

Nothing has come of any of these enquiries. Three years later, the FCA has still not published the report it commissioned from two firms of consultants, Mazar’s and Promontory, or even named a date of publication. While the FCA claims that “a number of steps” are still required before it can publish its findings, the government is believed to have played a role in withholding its report.

The Treasury Select Committee held an enquiry into the allegations in 2014 at which senior executives at GRG, Derek Sach and Chris Sullivan, treated MPs with the financial oligarchy’s customary disdain for the truth, insisting that GRG was “not a profit centre.” RBS and GRG executives repeated that statement 27 times, saying it was “totally inappropriate” to call it a profit centre.

This was a pack of lies. A confidential internal document, approved two years earlier by Sach, stated that GRG was “a major contributor to the bank's bottom line.” Indeed, the GRG group made nearly £1.2 billon for RBS in 2011. The leaked documents show that even Deloitte, RBS's own auditor, was concerned there was a “reputational risk” of “perceived conflicts of interest.”

Just weeks later, then RBS chairman Sir Philip Hampton was forced to admit it was a profit centre. He compounded the bank’s dishonesty by saying there had been a “lack of clarity,” but that it had been “an honest mistake.” Fully three years later, the MPs are “considering” re-opening the case because “they were misled.”

These latest crimes in the bank’s retail division follow numerous examples of the most egregious criminal activity on the part of RBS--and other British banks--that have attracted derisory fines. In almost every case, it was the US, not the British authorities, that imposed the penalties. They include:

· Mis-selling mortgage bonds to credit unions in the US in the run up to the 2008 banking crisis. RBS faces fines that are likely to exceed £10 billion.

· Mis-selling payment protection insurance (PPI), resulting in compensation payments of £4.3 billion, with the final bill set to rise far higher.

· Tax evasion by an RBS subsidiary’s Swiss operation over a 10-year period until 2014.

· Rigging Libor, a key benchmark lending rate, between 2006 and 2010.

· Rigging the foreign currency rate Forex.

· Breaching US sanctions regulations.

· Money laundering.

BRICS summit riven by geo-political rivalry

Deepal Jayasekera

Held in Goa, India on the weekend of Oct. 15-16, the summit meeting of the heads of government of the BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) was the occasion for a huge amount of diplomatic maneuvering and wrangling.

The summit concluded with the issuing of a statement that claimed BRICS is a “strategic partnership” bound together by “solidarity and cooperation.” In reality, the cut-throat maneuvering during and around the summit testified to the explosive character of contemporary world geo-politics, particularly under conditions where the US is pursuing military-strategic offensives against nuclear-armed Russia and China.

At its establishment in 2009, BRICS was touted as a bloc of the leading “developing” countries that could act as an economic and geo-political counterweight to Washington and Wall Street, and more generally the imperialist powers.

Seven years on, this has been exposed as an illusion. Most of the BRICS countries are mired in deep economic crisis due to the collapse of the commodity-price boom, which is itself bound up with the dramatic slowing of economic growth in China. Moreover, the most powerful BRICS states, China, Russia and India, are pursuing different and to a large degree opposed geo-political agendas.

Most significant is the dramatic intensification of the strategic competition between India and China.

Under Narendra Modi and his 27-month-old BJP government, India has become a veritable “frontline” state in Washington’s drive to strategically isolate, encircle and prepare for war with China. New Delhi has opened India’s military bases to routine use by US warplanes and warships; expanded bilateral and trilateral military-strategic cooperation with America’s principal Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia; and repeatedly parroted Washington’s provocative stance on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The US has reciprocated by proclaiming India a “major defense partner,” thereby giving it access to the Pentagon’s most advanced weapons systems.

In response to the burgeoning Indo-US “global strategic” partnership, China has expanded its longstanding strategic ties with India’s arch-rival, Pakistan.

India was determined to use the BRICS summit to advance its campaign to isolate, bully and threaten Pakistan, including having it labeled a “state sponsor” of terrorism and internationally ostracized. Claiming that Islamabad was responsible for the Sept. 18 attack on the Uri military base in Indian-held Kashmir, the Modi government ordered military strikes inside Pakistan little more than two weeks before the Goa summit. It then boasted that the strikes had inflicted “heavy casualties” on anti-Indian Islamist “terrorists” and their Pakistani “protectors.”

Modi, in his capacity of summit chairman, placed “terrorism” at the center of the BRICS deliberations and various meetings held on the summit’s margins. On the first day of the summit, India’s prime minister made an obvious and highly provocative reference to Pakistan when he said that the “mother-ship of terrorism” was situated in South Asia. The next day, he was even more forthright. “Tragically,” declared Modi, “the mother-ship of terrorism is a country in India’s neighborhood. … Terror modules around the world are linked to this mother-ship. This country shelters not just terrorists. It nurtures a mindset. A mindset that loudly proclaims that terrorism is justified for political gains. … BRICS must speak in one voice against this threat.”

Modi subsequently told a BRICS “outreach” session to which India’s partners in the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand) had been invited, that terrorism is Pakistan’s “favorite child.” Islamabad, he continued, must be sent a “clear message”: mend “its ways or be isolated in the civilized world.”

The Goa summit declaration denounced terrorism at length and promised that the BRICS states will increase their cooperation to fight it. However, the declaration made no reference to the attack on the Uri military base or to “cross-border” terrorism, prompting much angry commentary in the Indian press.

Modi has been encouraged in his hardline stance against Islamabad by the strong backing that the US and other major powers, including Germany and Russia, have given India’s “surgical strikes” inside Pakistan.

Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping had a testy bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit. Xi refused to drop China’s opposition to India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which governs nuclear trade, or its “technical” hold on New Delhi’s efforts to have Masood Azhar, the leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (J-e-M), a Pakistan-based Islamist militia, placed on the UN “terrorist” blacklist.

It is not known if Modi and Xi discussed the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a series of transport and pipeline links between western China and Gwadar, an Arabian Sea port in Pakistan’s southwestern province, Balochistan. However, in recent months New Delhi has bitterly denounced the CPEC, claiming that it will go through parts of Pakistan that are rightfully Indian. And, in a move aimed at both destabilizing Pakistan and thwarting the CPEC, New Delhi has recently signaled its support for the nationalist-separatist insurgency in Balochistan.

While en route to Goa, Xi visited Bangladesh and announced billions of dollars in loans and investments as part of Beijing’s “One Belt One Road” initiative, which aims to develop energy and transport infrastructure across Eurasia. It was not lost on India’s increasingly bellicose media that Xi was able to trump several times over the $2 billion credit line that Modi announced for Bangladesh when he visited Dacca in March.

Probably the most significant geo-political development in Goa was the attempt of Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin to revive the longstanding, but increasingly frayed, strategic partnership between New Delhi and Moscow.

Russia was India’s most important military-strategic partner during the Cold War and the alliance with Russia remains vital for India’s nuclear program and military. However, India’s ever-deepening alliance with Washington, including major US weapons purchases, has rattled Moscow, especially since the 2014 US-led regime change operation in Ukraine, the subsequent NATO build up on Russia’s borders, and the intensifying US-Russian conflict over Syria.

Moscow has attempted to signal its concerns to New Delhi through a limited rapprochement with Pakistan. Russia recently sold attack helicopters to Pakistan, in a first-ever arms deal with Islamabad, and in September Russia and Pakistan held their first-ever joint military exercise.

Meeting in Goa for the annual India-Russia heads of government summit, both Modi and Putin went out of their way to emphasize the strength and unique importance of the Indo-Russian strategic alliance.

In an attempt to shore it up, they announced billions of dollars’ worth of arm sales and energy deals.

Russia will sell India its most advanced surface-to-air missile system and stealth frigates. The two countries will also jointly produce helicopters.

India is allowing the majority Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft to take a controlling stake in India’s Essar Oil and related port facilities. The deal is the largest ever foreign takeover of an Indian company and constitutes a major boost to Russia’s economy, which has been hard-hit by Western sanctions and low oil prices.

Through video-conferencing Modi and Putin laid the foundation for the third and fourth units of the Russian-built Kudankulam nuclear power plant. Earlier in the week the plant’s second reactor had been hooked up to India’s electricity grid. Putin said Russia is ready to build a dozen more nuclear power plants in India over the next two decades.

After his talks with Putin, Modi characterized India’s relationship with Russia as “truly unique and privileged.” He also reiterated India’s stand on Syria, which is at odds with that of the US, although not directly supportive of Russia’s military intervention. Expressing his delight with India’s stance, Putin said, “We are conducting a comprehensive dialogue on a wide scale of international issues, in which Indian and Russian approaches are close to each other or coincide.”

Putin was at pains to downplay the significance of Moscow’s recent overtures to Islamabad and reiterate Moscow’s strong support for India’s purported “anti-terrorist” strikes in Pakistan.

“Russia’s clear stand on the need to combat terrorism mirrors our own,” declared Modi.

India is eager to maintain close strategic ties with Russia as a counterweight to China and to preserve some room for maneuver in its increasingly close and dependent alliance with US imperialism. However, Washington has repeatedly signaled that its long-term goal aim is to degrade and break the Indo-Russian partnership—to bring India’s geo-political posture in alignment with its own not just in respect to China, but also Russia and the Middle East.