Albert Einstein Global Fellowship for Researchers 2018

Application Deadline: 15th April, 2017

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Germany

About the Award:  The purpose of the fellowship is to support those who, in addition to producing superb work in their area of specialization, are also open to other, interdisciplinary approaches – following the example set by Albert Einstein.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Candidates must be under 35 and hold a university degree in the humanities, in the social sciences, or in the natural sciences.

At the end of the fellowship period, the fellow will be expected to present his or her project in a public lecture at the Einstein Forum and at the Daimler and Benz Foundation. The Einstein Fellowship is not intended for applicants who wish to complete an academic study they have already begun.

Selection Criteria: A successful application must demonstrate the quality, originality, and feasibility of the proposed project, as well as the superior intellectual development of the applicant. It is not relevant whether the applicant has begun working toward, or currently holds, a PhD.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value and Duration of Fellowship: The fellowship includes living accommodations for five to six months in the garden cottage of Einstein`s own summerhouse in Caputh, Brandenburg, only a short distance away from the universities and academic institutions of Potsdam and Berlin. The fellow will receive a stipend of EUR 10,000 and reimbursement of travel expenses.

How to Apply: Applications for 2018 should include a CV, a two-page project proposal, and two letters of recommendation.

Applications should be submitted by mail to:

Prof. Dr. Susan Neiman Einstein Forum Am Neuen Markt 7 14467 Potsdam Germany

OR

fellowship@einsteinforum.de For more information, call or fax the Einstein Forum at: phone: +49-331-271780 fax: +49-331-2717827

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Einstein Forum

L’Oreal-UNESCO Fellowship for African Women in Science 2017

Application Deadline: 19th April 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Sub- Saharan African countries listed below

To be taken at (country): Sub-Saharan African Universities

Eligible Field of Study: This program identifies and rewards talented young female scientists in the field of Life Sciences (such as biology, biochemistry, biophysics, genetics, physiology, neurosciences, biotechnologies, ecology and ethology) as well as Physical Sciences (such as physics, chemistry, petroleum engineering, mathematics, engineering sciences, information sciences, and earth and universe sciences).

About Fellowship: Founded in 1998, the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Sub-Saharan Africa Fellowships aims to promote and encourage young African women in science. Its programs reward established women scientists whose outstanding achievements have contributed to the advancement of scientific knowledge and of its benefits to society and provide support to promising young women who are already making significant contributions in their scientific disciplines.

Eligible Countries: South Africa, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Níger, Nigeria, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sao Tomé & Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Chad, Togo, Zambia and Zimbabwe

Offered Since: 2010

Eligibility: Applicants must meet the following general criteria:

• Having obtained Ph.D. degree in Life or Physical Sciences or pursuing studies leading to a Ph.D. degree
• Having the nationality of a Sub-Saharan African country
• Working in a Research Laboratory or Institution in one of the region’s countries or being- enrolled in a doctoral programme at a University in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Candidates must be no more than 40 years old by the end of the application period for- PhD and not more than 45 years for Post-doctoral.

Selection Criteria: The selection criteria of the candidate by the jury are the following:

• The candidate’s outstanding academic records (including number, quality and impact of the publications (impact factors to be submitted), conference presentations, patents…)
• The scientific quality of the research project
• The innovative nature and productivity of the research and its potential application in science
• The ability of the candidate to communicate and promote sciences to a younger audience and to encourage young African female scientists.
• The candidate’s career-path

Number of Fellowship: Every year, the Program honors 14 talented African women (12 for doc & 2 for Postdoc) for the quality of their research and encourages them to pursue a brilliant career in science in any Sub-Saharan African country.

2 out of the 14 Fellowships, one at doctorate and one at post-doctorate level, will be given to South African women working or studying in South Africa.

Value of Fellowship: €5,000 each will be granted to 12 African Ph.D. Students enrolled in- an African University. €10,000 each will be granted to 2 African postdoctoral researchers- working in a laboratory or research institute registered in one of the region’s countries.

Duration of Scholarship: not specified

How to Apply: Applications can be only made through the online platform www.fwis.fr by the candidates themselves.  An application is considered complete only if it includes all documents below:

• A detailed Curriculum Vitae (including outreach activities among youth, tutoring, etc.)
• Certified copies of the degrees or recent diplomas-
• A proof of having obtained a Ph.D. degree for postdoctoral candidates-
• A proof of being enrolled in an African University for doctoral candidates-
• A detailed project of maximum 2 pages, including:
  • The research project description
  • The proposed use of the grant motivating the candidature with some budget indications
• Letters of recommendation from the research supervisor and/or the director of the- scientific institution where the research project is carried or the Dean of the University under which the candidate is running her research
• The list of publications and patents

Incomplete files or received after the deadline for application, as well as candidatures that do not meet the requirements mentioned above, will not be taken into consideration.

Download and go through application rules and regulations from the Fellowship Webpage below before applying

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Fellowship Provider: Fellowship is granted by the L’Oréal Foundation and L’Oréal South Africa in partnership with the UNESCO Multi-Sectoral Office in Eastern Africa and the African Network of Scientific and Technological Institutions (ANSTI).

Whither Rights – Of Life, Food, And Everything In Between

Samar

The recent elections – from civic body elections in Maharashtra to Assembly elections across India – have indeed marked a watershed moment in the life of the Republic. Ironically, they have not done so for the discourse they have produced in the Indian media – discourse ranging from the imminent threat of fascism to sectarian strife. They have marked a watershed moment for the discourse set as a part of the campaigning itself.

The elections seem to have marked the death of rights and issue-based politics in India, seemingly “for good”. The disconnect, which has been apparent for a while, to anyone following electoral democracy in India, now seems to be complete and final. Going by the results one may actually conclude that either the Indian electorate is least interested in issues that touch, shape and define their immediate concerns, or they have become so tangential to the electoral process that results can be stolen in broad daylight.

Sample the crushing defeat of Irom Chanu Sharmila in Manipur, a Northeast Indian state relatively aloof from the discourse of sectarianism and intolerance which has engulfed the ‘mainland’ in recent times. A political observer may agree that nothing touches the lives of the citizens in Manipur more than the draconian Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) that empowers even a non-commissioned officer of the security forces to kill citizens merely on suspicion, with impunity. The Act, first introduced by British colonials, is a negation of everything that the Indian Constitution guarantees to its citizenry, beginning with the fundamental right to life, which cannot be taken away without due process of law. Now, an armed soldier shooting at someone and killing him or her merely on suspicion can be anything but the rule of law and is blatantly unjust and unconstitutional.

And, this is not the only way AFSPA flouts the Indian constitution. It stands in contravention to another fundamental right guaranteed to every citizen – the right to equality before the law. The AFSPA makes citizens of areas where it is imposed more unequal than other areas.

It was this injustice that moved Irom Sharmila Chanu and launched her into an epic resistance that has drawn parallels to that of Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. She went on a fast on

5 November 2000, after personnel of the Assam Rifles shot dead 10 civilians waiting at a bus stop in Malom, Manipur, and remained on this fast for 16 years, a period during which she was incarcerated and subject to force-feeding by the Indian State. She became the face of resistance to AFSPA and the heavy-handedness of the Indian forces.

Then, this year, she decided to fight the injustice democratically through electoral politics. However, the results show a consummate loss for her. She has secured only 90 votes against 18,649 secured by the winner and stands 4th, or second last in the constituency.

All this in a state that has lost countless lives to AFSPA and has seen all shades of protest against the Act. The protests have seen elderly mothers stripping naked in front of the Kangla Fort, the then headquarters of the Assam Rifles, the paramilitary force held responsible for most AFSPA killings. The protests have also seen repeated outbreaks of violence, including one where protesting citizens went berserk and torched the state assembly to vent anger.

None of this seems to have mattered to electoral politics and the issues that such politics revolve around. What exactly can matter to such political elections, if even the right to life does not matter? If one looks closer at the elections across the country, one can see how nothing much of importance to the people seemed to matter to the election results.

Even the agrarian crisis that has ensnared the lives of more than 300,000 farmers in India over recent years – more than 600 of them in the last three months alone, counting only 2 states, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh – has been of no consequence. Their suicides appear immaterial to election results across states.

This disconnect has been active for some time now. For a decade, 2004-2014, the Maharashtra electorate continued to return the coalition of the Indian National Congress and Nationalist Congress Party to power at a time when the crisis was peaking, despite the government’s categorical failure in arresting the crisis.

And it has not been limited to just one state, or even to one side of the political spectrum. So one cannot argue that there was some other diversionary factor in the discourse, for instance “the need to stop sectarian forces from grabbing power”.

The farm suicides were peaking in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh as well even as the electorate there kept returning the Bharatiya Janata Party to power in the same time frame, again, despite the government’s dismal failure in arresting the crisis.

This trend of disconnect has however become absolute. The campaign discourse this time had not even a token reflection of what is affecting people’s lives on a daily basis.

Only an outsider without any knowledge of the realities of the disconnect would be surprised how, in a country where widespread poverty keeps 58.4 % children of India below 5 years of age perpetually anaemic across states ruled by political opponents, there is no reflection of this in any state and local election campaigns. Anaemic children and dead citizens shot by AFSPA protected personnel do not even have a vote do they?

Is there a way out? Perhaps. Bringing back the right to life, to food, and to everything else fundamental in between, to the centre stage might be a way. How? We can get to that. But, first, is anyone even thinking about this – anyone, including the civil society?

Bangladesh, Social Media And Longings In A Bizarro World

Fazal M. Kamal

It definitely looks like law enforcement in Bangladesh–as also apparently in many other countries, e.g. reference: the British Home Minister’s recent opinions regarding social media, not forgetting similar persistent efforts in the US–is going through a phase that maybe described as mid-life crisis. That’s the time when people—especially men, we’re told, but lots of women too though theirs are somewhat different—say, do, think, whatever, bizarre stuff.

According to one expert (needless to elaborate, there are innumerable of them around the world) there are 14 signs of this often-hyped crisis, and here they are:

1.Buying a Sports Car. 2. Drastic Changes in Habits, Mood Swings, and Impulsive Decision-Making. 3. Shifts in Sleeping Habits.4. Obsession with Appearances. 5. Disconnecting from Old Friends, and Replacing Them with Younger Friends. 6. Feeling Tied Down, with No Chance for Change. 7. Thoughts of Death or Dying. 8. Changing Careers. 9. Leaving a Spouse or Having an Affair. 10. Bouts of Depression. 11. Increased Consumption of Alcohol or Drugs. 12. Listless and Bored.13. Assigning Blame. 14. Recent Traumas.

While an ordinary mortal’s crisis may not coincide or even seem similar to those of law enforcement entities, the critical point to note is the strangeness of the desires or wishes. As a footnote it can be added that at least a few of the signs appear creepily close to those experienced by those who maybe described as leading a “civilian life” of a mere citizen.

Anyhow, as it may be. Not too long back some from law enforcement expressed the plea—and that too right to the prime minister of the country—that they should be relieved from all strictures related to torturing/tormenting persons arrested by them and in their control. We shall leave the prime minister’s reaction to speak for itself since no clarification is required.

The latest demand of the law enforcing leadership relates to becoming a Facebooker. (Just a point of personal disclosure: This commenter has never been registered with the aforementioned Facebook and most certainly has no intention whatsoever to do so anytime in the future. One particular reason: With so much prying into an individual’s life, why bother?) Simply stated this is what law officials desire: Intending Bangladeshis should disclose their National Identification or at the very least their identities while signing up with Facebook.

It has been noted in various forums and publications that this country’s law enforcement mechanism and general guidelines, apart from upgraded training, require urgent reconsideration—even if the top brass could be feeling that since they’re functioning to help, assist and abet the political power, nothing else but only preserving the powers that be in a pleasant frame of mind matters. Apparently there’s ample evidence to bolster that conclusion.

More than clearly as events have shown, law enforcement units seem to be in need of being sensitized to the realities of the world—and that holds true for numerous other such organizations in numerous other countries too—including a essential quantity about the rights of citizens and the duties of law enforcement toward them, the state of the world since the time the Brits left these shores, and that professionalism will serve a lifetime but not pseudo-political pronouncements.

These, among other necessary measures, may ultimately succeed in instilling in the relevant persons that asking for a total and comprehensive control of people’s life would appear to make things easier for the law enforcers (au contraire, if no acquiescence comes then it’ll provide them with material to explain away any inadequacy) but it could very well lead to a contrary impact; and it certainly would not go down well with the citizens whom, it perhaps might be added, the law is supposed to protect, serve and defend.

Following from the above, it seems the junior minister for telecommunication and another from the ICT ministry—along with her powerful law enforcement officials, of course—feel strongly the Bangladesh administration must have some control on the social media platforms especially Facebook, for whatever reasons which, though, must be seductive enough for them to unrelentingly pursue just as a Scottish king is said to have learnt about perseverance from a spider.

The ostensible cause, it appears, is the “dreadful influence” that is being wielded via Facebook (FB) which in turn is heinously impacting many people who in their turn are resorting to even more heinous actions. The professed obsession with Facebook—which doubtlessly will warm the cockles of M. Zuckerberg’s heart, and little wonder given that he and wife P. Chan feel they can afford to raise another child—of the junior minister and others in the Bangladesh administration would indicate that once the government can successfully bring Facebook under some degree of restraint this country would be free of all the various types of crimes, militancy, terrorism, et al.

But in this pursuit of exerting pressure on Internet outlets it clearly looks like we’ve been ignoring and overlooking more relevant realities. For instance to stem the tide of crimes the crime fighting machinery itself must function with some essential degree of efficiency, dedication, sophistication and fairness, among other factors, and just as importantly scrutinize the causes that are leading to those criminal incidents. In this context let us also look at another fact: In this nation’s avowed pledge to transform this country into a “digital” one we’ve evidently taken our eyes off the road.

As a consequence, according to a report of the Alliance for Affordable Internet, Bangladesh has gone down thirteen rungs in the Internet affordability drivers’ index among fifty-eight developing and least developed countries. This was caused, per the Alliance, due to the country’s slow progress in this sphere compared to the other nations. In the previous year Bangladesh occupied the 33rd place with a score of 39.13 while in the following year it slid to 46 with a score of 39.41 out of one hundred.

Against this backdrop lately there’s been much more talk of how the country’s authorities can oversee, control, and for all practical purposes administer Facebook for Bangladesh with the acquiescence of Facebook officials. Hence this fascinating report from a few days back: “Facebook has turned down a proposal to sign a memorandum of understanding on requiring national identity card or passport numbers/copies for Bangladeshis to open accounts on the social media website, Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Hoque said.” He also asserted that he told an FB manager, “[T]here must be some restrictions for opening a Facebook account.” Simply extraordinary, even if incredible.

A portion of the backdrop is also the fact that FB usually removes offensive materials if and when any government makes such a request (which, naturally, has to be grounded in reason). It also complies with other kinds of requests including deleting an account altogether if conditions so warrant. Bangladesh’s wish also elicited this reaction from Bangladeshi IT expert Sumon A. Sabir, as per a report, “I doubt if any other country had ever done this [made a similar request]….We were negatively portrayed when we blocked Facebook and some other social media sites in 2015.” Sabir also underscored that Facebook has a privacy agreement with its users and therefore it cannot breach at will. The last part evidently will demand some sophisticated thinking to comprehend.

Earlier news stories and administration pronouncements point to a remarkable reality, i.e. myriad government officials have been obsessing on FB for some time now and, as has been noted above, have exhibited extreme determination in their devoted efforts to get through to the FB management with different arguments. If FB wanted to accept all the expressed desires of the Bangladesh authorities, in all likelihood, they’d have to float a separate Facebook exclusively for the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Wow. Wouldn’t that be something to crow about! Sophisticated thinking not required here.

What, apparently, government leaders have been missing are the proverbial woods for the metaphorical trees. While various categories of crimes have moved northward, while intelligence on “militants” and/or “terrorists” have been moseying way behind their seeming activities, while the streets of Bangladesh have become deadly beyond belief as hundreds of lives are being lost merely because truck and bus operators are neither qualified to be behind the steering wheel and nor do they have to fear the wrath of the law—the roster could get pretty boring if this commenter wanted to go on—administration luminaries have all too evidently been zeroing in on the superficial instead of investigating the causes.

We’re talking of actions and what pass for thoughts in a milieu in which rationally managing vehicular traffic is incontrovertibly beyond available capability, in which murders remain unsolved mainly due to muddled circumstances, in which abductions by personnel associated with the law enforcement apparatus are often denied with the blandest of countenances, in which persons prone to fumbling with the TV remote control have automatic arms at their disposal—plainly this roster too could be monotonously long. The truth however is, it’ll be immensely more constructive and productive to unbolt paths to inform, educate, elucidate and provide modern training to people needing them rather than defending them from authenticity as if they’re retards.

Sebastian Gorka: Dreams of Fighting Jihad

Binoy Kampmark

Counter-terrorism has been a pop field for some decades. As vague as what it purports to counter, it has generated a pundocracy of sorts, guns and mouths for hire across the US imperium and its associate powers.

Much of this resembles the various fictions common during the Cold War: the notion that insurgencies could be defeated from the outside; the teeth chattering idea of a global Communist threat directed with intellectual clarity from Moscow or Beijing.  Human minds were, like puttee, pliable before the doctrinaires and ideologues. If you were told how to think, you would behave accordingly.

False rationalism pervades this entire field.  And there are few in this area more misguided on this point than Sebastian Gorka, President Donald Trump’s deputy assistant, former Breitbart editor and member of the White House Strategic Initiatives Group created by Stephen Bannon and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

The Gorka recipe for defence, spiked with anti-Islam fervour and dislike for misguided eggheads, neatly fits the Trump view of the world, though he remains, unlike his boss, a true ideologue.  Fake news, not to mention old-fashioned bias, is repeatedly alleged, and on that score, he is not always wrong.  (The assertion that networks can be pristinely objective is a fantastic one that needs debunking.)

Where the world of make-believe impresses itself upon Gorka is any rational assessment of the presidency and its meagre achievements so far. Calling them “fabulous”, Gorka repeatedly makes remarks to the extent that reporting on the inner workings of the Trump world bear “almost no resemblance to reality.”

This enables us to then assess what resemblance to reality Gorka assesses when it comes to his pet subject: the Global Jihadi scourge. On several fronts, Gorka fails to supply his audience with any explanation as to whether there is such a global jihadi problem, let alone what form it is meant to take.  To do so would naturally entail having to describe a fantasy, even a conceit.

A spate of murderous drive-down spectaculars in European cities instigated by assailants either inspired by Islamic State or some other group with apocalyptic credentials is hardly evidence of a globally coherent world strategy. Had there been a unified leader of Islam, a fact hardly tenable given its various sects and internal contradictions, then assertions of a global jihadi front might hold some water.

Gorka’s Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War reads much like the screeds on modernisation theory churned out during the initial stages of postcolonialism.  As long as money, bubble gum and US ideas of liberal capital were filling the nationalist void in the Third World, favour towards communism would be stemmed.  Such an argument ignored the obvious point that nationalism was the driving force to begin with, with communism being conscripted to that end.

Similar errors in analysis are made in dealing with the “Global” Jihadi problem.  Categories are conflated; entities reduced to a common denominator of world revolution.  The attacks of 9/11 were acts of “jihadi terrorism… but, more importantly, that event was linked to communism.  It was linked to fascism.”

This stunningly hollow reasoning would tend to neglect that US involvement in funding the mujahedeen in Afghanistan against the Soviets, not to mention propping regimes of such brutish reputation as Mubarak’s in Egypt, might also have had their share. Ideology, as ever, provides refined blinkers.

In Defeating Jihad, Gorka claims that the United States was caught unawares, and as chief defender of Freedom’s lands, “It is time for the America that vanquished the Third Reich and the Soviet Union to rise from its slumber.”

Tiresome moral references aspiring to clarity are made.  “It is time for us to speak truthfully about those who wish to kill us or enslave us.  It is time again to speak the words ‘evil’ and ‘enemy’.” The next error on equating threats follows.  “And it is time to draw a plan for victory, calling on strategies that have proved themselves against other totalitarian foes.”

Fictional formulas sell well in this field. Jihadists are rendered monolithic miscreants of the global order, requiring expunging. They are like Soviet-styled politburos, posing “existential threats” to the American way of life.  For Gorka, with his revamped neoconservative slant shaped by his own taste of Hungarian communism, it is all painfully clear. If only people were willing to listen to his revelation that Islam has a central motor, a vehicle for world domination that needs to be stopped in its tracks.

Essential, then, is a similar “Long Telegram” in the mould of former Soviet scholar, US diplomat and author of the doctrine of containment, George Kennan.  “If George Kennan had been a senior diplomat in the US embassy in Baghdad during the rise of ISIS in 2013 and had been asked to explain what was happening in the Middle East, his reply would have been practically the same as the Long Telegram.” Or perhaps not, as Kennan subsequently saw his analysis hijacked, condensed and ironed out for ideological purposes during the Truman administration.

Gorka finds it easy to plot a timeline of Islamic violence, claiming that the Jihadism of the last 30 years can be squarely rooted in the anti-modernism of various writers that gained traction in the nineteenth century. But this is hardly remarkable.  What is unfortunate is Gorka’s reading of history as having meaningful signs and parallels, showing the way for those bedazzled by faith.  Having gazed at its movement, he finds true meaning. It is precisely why such zeal is not merely dangerous, but ultimately worn.

Confronting European Racism

Prithiraj Dullay

That Europe has jumped to the Right and the Far Right is no longer a matter of debate. Each day sees a a new and closer ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of the rejected, the unwanted, the ‘other’ and those variously described as not belonging to Europe. To use an Apartheid term: the Non-Europeans. Each day sees a more outrageous ‘debate’ on what needs to be done to ‘the outsiders’, much of it, more at home in Nazi Germany of the 1930-40s than in the Europe of 2016. History is about to repeat itself, just 70 years on!

No wishful thinking is going to make that disappear. It is here. It is very real and in our faces: threatening, crude and setting up its message in neon lights. It is a message that we dare not ignore. If we do, we could be the victims of ‘the final solution’. Quite simply this means our annihilation in the name of a ‘Caucasian racial purity’, exactly what Hitler did!

There are those who wish the banning of Muslims from having children in Denmark for the next four years, to those like Donald (Duck) Trump who advocates the banning of Muslims entering the USA and the building of a new US Wall of shame to keep out Hispanics/Latinos. The Chinese Great Wall did not succeed thousands of years ago; what makes the Trump brigade believe that in the age of technology that they will succeed? Ask the Romans of more than 2000 years ago, of their failed attempt to keep out the ancestors of the present Europeans/Americans! Yes, they were the Barbarians of the time. Remember the Vandals, the Franks, the Visigoths, the Huns and the Vikings smashing down the walls of Roman civilization?

The European Neo-Nazi movement is a reality. Wishful thinking is not going to make them disappear. The Internet and social media has made it easier for these for peddlers of racial arrogance and bigotry to form linkages stretching from South Africa, the USA/Canada, Argentina and the whole of Europe. They have a common agenda. Remember the Norwegian, Anders Brevik who murdered over 70 of his fellow citizens and his reasons for doing so? Remember the teenage killer of the worshipers in Atlanta, USA? Remember Barend Strejdom, the killer of black South Africans in the 1990s in Pretoria? There are a host of other similar acts of unmitigated hatred. More recent are the spate of killings of black Americans by police across the USA. What are we to make of all of this? Just random killings? Racist judicial killings, or an unwillingness to recognize and accept black humanity?

This is a call for united action across Europe/USA/UK of all those who are excluded, discriminated against and made to feel the outsider, the ‘other’.

I was inspired by the philosophy of South African Black Consciousness leader, Steve Biko who was murdered by the Apartheid Gestapo-like police in 1977. He forcefully articulated the call for struggle in the late 1960s against the abomination of white supremacy, through a unity of those who were discriminated against on the basis of race/colour. His powerful message was explicit: You are not discriminated because you are African, Coloured or Indian. You are discriminated because you are not white.

Now let us extend Biko’s thinking to the present. You are not discriminated against because you are Syrian, Iraqi, Somalian, Turkish, Indian, Bangladeshi, Afghan, Armenian, South African, Sudanese (or more). The bigotry stretches from Sicily, Italy, the northern side of the Mediterranean, and across the whole of Europe, no matter whether you see it as East or West Europe. You are discriminated against because you represent a threat on so many levels.

• You are not perceived as Caucasian.
• You are not of the Judaeo-Christian faith. Even if you are such as Ethiopians of Jewish faith in Israel, you will be excluded and the women sterilized.
• Your colour is not ‘right’ and is therefore unacceptable. I presume ‘right’ is Nordic, Aryan, blond and blue eyed as the Fuhrer suggested.
• You are perceived as uneducated and simplistic
• You are prepared to work for slave wages in ungodly conditions.
• You are too different to be integrated/assimilated into European culture.
• You are most likely an Islamic terrorist.
• You represent a sexual threat to the European male, based on the myth of persons of colour being more well endowed and far more sexually active.
• That you are more likely prone to stealing/fraud.
• That you do not ‘belong’ here.
  (Perhaps we need to ask: Did you ‘belong’ or had any moral conviction when you enslaved, colonised, indentured, bombed us into submission?)

Biko advocated a coming together of the various peoples who shared a discriminatory existence, so as to form a united front against a common adversary. Individual acts of heroism/bravery were fine as expressions of non-compliance, but failed to dent the monolith of unbridled racism.

His solution was for a coming together of all persons who were marginalized, discriminated and excluded so as to speak with a united, powerful voice. A voice that said: No more! Enough is enough. You have NO right to determine my destiny at any level.

This is exactly my call. Let us unite in the face of the accelerating fascism and Neo-Nazism. The Far Right is organising itself as never before. The present racist contexts are appropriate for the casting off of their masks. It is time for the formation of a European-wide secretariat, with branches in every country. Let us understand and accept that unity is power.

We need to respond with a greater unity right across Europe, the USA, the UK and wherever the horror of Apartheid rears its inhuman head.

Humanity On The Road To Extinction?

Prithiraj Dullay 

We live on a beautiful and a delightful planet, which is so awesome and so perfect that we wonder at its creation. This has to be the greatest gift given to humanity by the force that created our world. We can call this force ‘God’ or some other force. We can only marvel at the purity and its absolute greatness. It was this ‘force’ that also created the magnificent Universe in which we live. We are a miniscule part of this vastness. Every religion pays tribute to this great gift.

Yet, so far into our search into space and billions of dollars later, we have not found anything remotely matching the fabulous Earth we live upon. I will not be so arrogant as to presume that there is no intelligent life among the billions of planets and galaxies that make up the Universe, which is so vast that it boggles the human imagination. At our moment in time, we are light years away from discovering any hospitable planet that can support life forms as complex as those on Earth, let alone the means to travel through such vast inter-planetary or inter galactic spaces! All we have is our Earth. Nothing else for the immediate future!

Generations from now, perhaps, we may find life forms comparable to those on our Earth, or we may not! Seen from space, our Earth is that magnificent blue-green-brown planet that hangs so delicately in the vast black velvet of space. Our beauty hangs in isolation. Truth be told: Right now we are on our own in the never ending vastness of deep space.

Why the ‘Force’ chose Earth for development is not for me to speculate. I am just grateful that my home is on planet Earth, in the present known Universe, which is violently hostile to the development of life, as we know it. Maybe ‘the Force’ intended that the Earth be first to be populated and that in some future time, other planets would be ready to accommodate us, as we overflowed Earth? Is it possible that we were ‘chosen’ to populate the Universe? I cannot answer that; like you, I can only speculate.

My great concern is why we should even think of colonizing another planet, when we have shown scant respect for the great gift of ‘Earth’ that we already have? Without any doubt, we can only continue where we left off viz. our great selfishness in driving our present world to near extinction in the name of making a vulgar profit. It is in this context that I wish to find an explanation of our attitude to gross and utterly mad exploitation of Mother Earth.

While I was still in exile in 1988, some 22 years ago, the ANC journal ‘Sechaba’ published my piece “Environmental Destruction in South Africa” in which I warned about the dangers of the pursuit of profit over all else and for the need for progressive forces to fight against the rape of our common heritage viz. our environment. The trade unions and the formations of progressive forces rallied to the call. Sadly, today a great many of our progressive forces have succumbed to the demon money god. In doing so, they have embraced the very forces of greed over the common good. Read this as a betrayal.

I have provided this introduction so as to contextualize how we railed against the forces of Apartheid for its neglect ‘of our people’. Yet after the defeat of Apartheid, we are still faced with the spin doctors of the new order, who want us to believe that we need to hush-hush and accept the non-existent benefits of our silence and complacency. Please read another betrayal here.

So, now we have reached the stage of using a very warped logic for the continued pillage of the Earth and its resources. When we closely examine the beneficiaries of the new order, and those who are seeking our support, we find amongst them many of our ‘comrades’. Read here   yet another betrayal!

On a national scale let us critically examine the role of Eskom. It is true that Eskom warned government as late as 1999 of the impending energy crisis and again in 2003. The Minister in the Energy sector chose to blithely ignore the observations and recommendations. She was not demoted for her short-sightedness; instead she was promoted into the deputy presidency! That should have already warned us about what was to come; instead we chose to believe in those who had no belief in themselves! Here, add yet another betrayal.

South Africa grew explosively since 1994: new malls, new housing estates, new factories and tens of thousands of new homes. Even an imbecile would have guessed that with growth comes the demand for more energy. The bright sparks gave themselves huge bonuses and perks and then began shutting down electricity to major urban areas. There was just not enough energy to support our growth. Some years down the line Eskom has raised an astronomical loan to build one of the largest coal fired power stations in Africa at Medupe and to fund its blinkered energy programme that places a massive reliance on a fossil fuel: coal. Did anyone one of the bright sparks factor into the equation that using coal is horribly polluting and that thousands of our people will pay with their health/deaths? Did they not understand that we need to REDUCE our carbon emissions and not move in the opposite direction? Has it not been made clear that carbon build up contributes to global warming, to the melting of the huge glaciers and ice sheets? Is it just a question of making a quick profit and bolting, with the severely negative impact on the Earth of no consequence?  Our coal fired power stations and our smoke spewing industries make our country the 13th worst polluter in the world and certainly the very worst in Africa. Do we have any moral right to do this to our own people and then to export acid rain across our borders into Mozambique and Zimbabwe? Acid rain over the Lowveld is killing some of our most productive and fertile land. Global warming and all its terrible consequences is no fantasy.

It very real and it is HAPPENING NOW!  Permanent coastal flooding is a real possibility for Durban, Cape Town and all the towns along our very long coast line. Be assured we will reap the whirlwind in just a few decades. Many alive today will still be around then and will curse us for our greed and more for our sheer stupidity. We know what has to be done to prevent this from happening but there is no will to do what is right for humanity and for the Earth.

If the Polar ice caps melt, it will raise the oceans by as much as 70 metres! Much of central Durban and all of the foreshore area of Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, Mossel Bay, Margate, Port Shepstone, Balito, Richards Bay will be submerged! Think about it: when the sea rises it will flow deep into our rivers, raising its level to 70m above where it is now! It will devastate all riverside communities. There will be no Robben Island, no St Lucia and all the low islands around the world will have disappeared as a monument to the greed of mankind.

Seen from another perspective, South Africa has the enormous potential to turn all of this around and become one of the leading countries in terms of Sustainable Development.  We could show the world that there is another way to living: not in competition with nature but harnessing its fantastic potential sustainably for the common good of all our people. Add to this, that going down this path has the further potential of creating jobs for tens of thousands. This  could make the country a leading force for global change away from coal and oil to renewable energy .

• Recent research has shown that South Africa can get an astounding 70% of its energy needs from the wind. It’s free and non-polluting and the wind is always there.
• What of catching and using the massive number of hours of sunshine that bathe our country? The Northern Cape has some of the most concentrated sunshine in the world! Let us cover our barren deserts with solar panels and make them productive.
• Why don’t we use the vast potential of biogas to provide energy in all our rural areas?
• We have yet to harness the electricity generating potential of ocean currents and of the waves of the sea.
• Re-cycling has the very real possibility of reducing landfill wastes. We can re-cycle just about anything. The bio degradable waste can then be buried and the resulting methane gas be tapped as a source of energy.
• All our 21 universities have the potential to generate the ideas and produce the proto types to slot into a new way of looking at our needs that can be met without destroying our great planet.

It is time to stop the rape and pillage of the Earth. It is time to use clean technologies to protect the environment and to coax it into giving up its bounties in a sensible and sustainable way. South Africa has the technology, the human expertise and money. It just needs the political will to make the change. Let us learn to respect the intricate ‘web of life’. We need to again become a part of nature.

Let us frame the question in another way: Do we really have a choice? I think not!

Preventing Starvation By Filling Backpacks

Sally Dugman

Any amount of income above these amounts listed below translates to one’s family presumably not being in poverty in the USA. So no or very few government benefits accrue for those involved in low income status if above the federal impoverishment guidelines. To put it all in a realistic perspective, let’s look at the monthly cost for a one room apartment in Worcester, a city close to where I live:

Studio Apartments –

from $450.00/mo

One room with a bathroom in the mix is above five thousand dollars a year in cost. It may or may not have a kitchenette attached to the room.

Can one quite fit his or her family into one small room with a bathroom included? No? Then let’s go upscale for a one bedroom apartment in the town next to mine:

… 1 BR / 1 BA In Shrewsbury 01545! It’s $1100 per month or $13,300 per year.

Now let’s tabulate wage into the mix: “Massachusetts Minimum Wage is $11.00 effective January 1, 2017 … Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, effective July 24, 2009 …” — From Massachusetts Law about Minimum Wage – Mass.Gov

Meanwhile a family will get no or usually only surreptitious help, as mentioned, unless under the amount posed by these fixed tight national guidelines:

Federal Poverty Guidelines | Families USA

2016 Federal Poverty Guidelines

Household size
2                             $16,020
3                             $20,160
4                             $24,300
5                             $28,440

Do our government workers coming up with these unrealistic, fantasy tabulations even understand that these are unmanageably low numbers given the price of home heating, household insurance, medical insurance, prescription costs, food, electricity, car insurance and car gas, assorted taxes, water bills, electricity and so on? Let’s, too, add in the costs of clothing as children in one’s family outgrow their current outfits, along with the price for school supplies.

How can oneself and a family live in such a standard of lacks? How ridiculous a consideration!

So a nightmare ensues for many families across the USA except that you can’t wake up from the bad dream. It’s daily reality instead for them, not a night-dream that one can shake off when the light of day dawns and dispels the horror!

Shame on our overall fairly wealthy USA society! How dare we collectively let such a pathetic condition exist! Such an insurmountable demise for those involved in such paucity as they barely scrape by in housing alone! No wonder that so many families wind up living in cars or tents despite the cold, snow, rain, etc.

No food at home (if you even have a home)? Oh well — suck it up! That’s the view that my own sister faced.

My sister, a former elementary school teacher, used to get so alarmed when school breaks, vacations from school, would happen. So she and her friends would pay for and collect hundreds of dollars of food with money out of their own pockets to provide it. Then my sister would secretly tuck the food into backpacks carried home by financially poor school children for which some only got one solid meal a day – the lunch served at school.

She and her friends wanted to ensure that starvation didn’t exist during vacations — a time not fun one iota for these destitute children as their bellies hurt. Is vacation time from school a happy time for these kids?

Hardly! They dreaded school vacations. It would give some of the children panic attacks in advance.

Why, though, should my sister and her friends have to take up the brunt of our societal deficits to feed young children? More centrally, why should these children suffer when their parent often work eighteen hours a day apiece with a two parent family income?

Where is fairness and justice in this overall scenario? If you can picture something outside of my view of this deplorable situation, I’m glad for you!

Meanwhile I’m in this orientation: How dare we let this situation happen! How outrageous, infuriating and thoroughly unacceptable, especially since I do not want my sister to suffer on account on the sufferings of others, who comprise of little children, whose backpacks she started stuffing a week in advance of school vacations!

Simply wrong! Totally wrong!

It was disturbing to learn that my sister chased down as many as she could of all of the poor children at her school to, during her lunch break, stuff their school backpacks with food starting a week in advance of vacations. It was vexing and intolerable to watch her suffering for their own suffering!

How dare she and they be put in such a broken condition! It’s a sick disgusting level of lack in care in our society exhibited in the mix.

Meanwhile, it’s my sister involved and I’m fiercely protective of her. So why should she and her friends, who she induced to follow her pattern, have to help pay for these disadvantaged children to eat during school vacations? Outrageously a pitiful condition and I do not want her, my sister, to feel pain for these children. Ditto for her friends! Ditto for the kids!

Personally I don’t want any of them to face trouble. So how dare there be a system in place that forces my kindly sister and her friends to feed children when they can’t have their one meal a day at school? How intolerable a state of affairs when pantries are bare at home through no fault of their parents!

How dare a broken social system be prevalent — one that financially and emotionally compromises my sister and her friends, along with the starving kids, especially in the overall wealthy USA. Disgusting – no – way worse than disgusting since the level of wrong is so absolutely and intolerably wrong!

Let’s get real. It’s hard for even one person to live on $28,440 in the USA, let alone a family of five.

It’s unrealistic in the extreme. Such stupidity is shown in the process of accepting this amount as a federal standard, along with utter negligence towards others, those less fortunate than are my sister and her pals!

So thank goodness that Venezuela’s government stepped up to help. How could these impoverished Americans, hard working members of society, do basically all right else wise?

Many desperately require  JOE-4-OIL | Citizens Energy. (Sign up for the provision if you need it in the USA!)

Yeah – one of the Kennedy offspring, Joe Kennedy, stepped up, along with a largely socialist nation — one contemptible to the USA. It’s because this South American government kicked out the international oil companies, paid them off and directed towards using surplus money from oil in their lands to serve society in general rather than provide profits for the gargantuan oil companies, themselves.

How infuriating to many members of our government here in the USA! How infuriating for the oil companies! Venezuela is greatly hated on account since the country cut money to serve the upper echelon of society via profits to instead serve lower members of society in their own land … and ours.

Yet, what a travesty it is that families have to rely on such foreign derived charity to stay warm. What a travesty it is that their children starve if not for good Samaritans like my sister and her friends, wanting no praise and awards, quietly try to help!

I’m sorry if I seem disturbed and vituperative. However, the whole arrangement described here is not right. Why should families, my sister and her friends have anguish over school vacations? Why should a largely socialist nation, Venezuela, have to keep these families warm? … Shame on the USA and its unrealistic poverty standards! What a total disgrace for us all!

Australian government withholds report on death of unemployed teenager

John Harris & Oscar Grenfell 

The federal Liberal-National government of Malcolm Turnbull continues to block the release of an internal review into the tragic death of Josh Park-Fing in April last year. The 18-year-old was killed in an accident while participating in the punitive Work for the Dole program, which forces the unemployed into unpaid, and often unsafe labour, in order to receive their poverty-level Newstart welfare payments.

The report into Park-Fing’s death by Workplace Health and Safety Queensland was given to Australia’s employment minister, Michaelia Cash, in September 2016. Since then, the government has refused to release its contents, and other documents, in a bid to cover-up the conditions that led to the accident and those that face about 100,000 other Work for the Dole participants.

Park-Fing’s Work for the Dole placement was rubbish collection at the Toowoomba showgrounds in south-east Queensland. He reportedly fell from a flatbed trailer after a tractor towing it slipped a gear and jolted. The teenager suffered critical head injuries and died on the way to hospital.

According to the Australian Unemployed Workers Union (AUWU), one person at the site had expressed concerns to the supervisor about driving a tractor. He was allegedly told that he would be penalised if he did not drive the vehicle.

Park-Fing’s placement was overseen by NEATO Employment Services, a private firm contracted by the federal government to manage Work for the Dole. Other contractors include Max Solutions and Mission Providence, which are both subsidiaries of US corporations with annual revenues of over a billion dollars.

The Department of Employment replied last August to an AUWU request for information into Park-Fing’s bluntly declaring that internal reports were being withheld to protect NEATO and the Work for the Dole program. It claimed that disclosure of information on the death “may cause harm to the organisation’s commercial interests” and “affect their ability to retain and attract networks of employers.”

The government is seeking to cover-up its own culpability. In 2015, the Liberal-National government, then led by Tony Abbott, expanded Work for the Dole to include all unemployed people under the age of 50 who have received welfare payments for six months or more.

The scheme, first introduced in 1998 and maintained by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments, previously targeted the long-term unemployed and was managed by the government welfare bodies.

People aged under 30 must now carry out 25 hours of work a week. Those aged 30 and 49 are compelled to do 15 hours a week. They do not receive any additional payment. Newstart unemployment benefits average just $38 a day.

Expansion of the program was explicitly aimed at corralling hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers into low-paid labour, in line with the demands of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and other pro-business lobby groups. In May last year, the government also unveiled a youth “internship” program, which would force unemployed young people into 25 hours of work a week for private businesses, with an average wage on top of welfare benefits of just $4 an hour.

The number of unemployed pushed into Work for the Dole soared from 54,000 to over 100,000 between 2015 and 2016 and has led to a major spike in accidents and injuries.

Last November, the Australian Associated Press reported that there had been 500 injuries at Work for the Dole sites in the 2015–16 financial year, up from 90 the previous financial year. The majority of these were caused by lifting or carrying heavy objects. Almost a quarter of those on the scheme suffered cuts, lacerations or punctures, others reported fainting, heart attacks, burns or eye injuries. More than five percent were bitten by insects or animals while working, with allegations that in some areas workers were not provided with protective clothing or shoes. An audit of 200 Work for the Dole sites by Ernst and Young last June, released in February this year, found that 36 percent did not meet the average safety benchmark.

Unemployed people impacted by the unsafe practices are denied basic rights. Families of those killed in Work for the Dole accidents are only eligible for payments of $250,000 compared to up to $750,000 paid to the families of those who perish in paid work. Work for the Dole participants are also denied workers compensation because they are officially classified as “volunteers.”

The Labor Party and the Greens have sought to head-off mounting anger by posturing as opponents of the assault on the unemployed. Last month, they passed a motion through the Senate demanding the release of the report into Park-Fing’s death. The Australian Unemployed Workers Union is heavily involved in this fraudulent campaign, with the union promoting the lie that the government can be compelled “to create a fair and humane welfare system.”

In reality, the attacks on the unemployed are part of a bipartisan austerity agenda aimed at forcing the working class to pay for the deepening crisis of capitalism. Labor has previously called for the expansion of Work for the Dole. It initially welcomed the government’s youth internship scheme, before announcing its own version of the program last year, also aimed at pushing unemployed youth into ultra-cheap labour.

Moreover, from 2007–2013, the Labor governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard maintained Work for the Dole and carried out sweeping attacks on the most vulnerable welfare recipients. The Gillard government, propped up by the Greens, forced 100,000 single parents onto Newstart unemployment payments, stripping many of hundreds of dollars a month.

Six months after Hurricane Matthew, hunger and desperation grip Haiti’s south

John Marion

Nearly six months after Hurricane Matthew devastated Haiti’s Grand’Anse, Nippes, and Sud departments, hunger and desperation are pervasive. There have been multiple reports of people eating poisonous plants or tree bark just to stave off hunger, and in the city of Jérémie people are still living under tarpaulins sent by USAID after the storm.

According to Le Nouvelliste, an elderly couple in the town of Candache hanged themselves because of hunger. Jean-Claude Fignolé, a writer and member of the Board of Christian aid group Food for the Poor, told the web site that “there is a level of distress that words can’t express.” Benoit Jean Guerrier, the parliamentary deputy from Moron/Chambellan, has voiced a fear of food riots.

While Jovenel Moïse, the protégé of former President Michel Martelly, won a majority (55 percent) in the November 20 presidential election and thereby avoided a runoff, only 20 percent of eligible voters turned out nationwide. Having received only 600,000 votes in a country of nearly 11 million people, Moïse and his allies in the ruling elite are aware of the precariousness of their position.

On March 22, Food for the Poor found 240 people, including 84 women and 62 children, living in a cave near Jérémie in Grand’Anse. The President and CEO of the organization told the Miami Herald that “they have no food. They have no water. They have no shelter. It really is a crime against humanity.”

Aside from the Miami Herald, whose coverage was picked up by Haiti-Libre, Radio Television Caraibes, and other French-language outlets, the American press has been silent about the conditions facing those found in the cave.

After visiting Jérémie last week, the vice president of another NGO told Herald that “I don’t want to say that there could be mass starvation right away, but we could start to see 10, 20, and 30 people at a time dying.”

A March report from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that of the 2.1 million Haitians affected by the hurricane last October, 1.4 million still don’t have enough food or safe drinking water. Educational resources for more than 300,000 children are lacking, and more than half a million people don’t have adequate shelter.

Shortly after the storm, UN Special Adviser David Nabarro demonstrated the callousness of the organization’s approach, saying during a visit that “so many excellent things are already happening … as the people themselves are hard at work, readjusting their lives so they are protected from the elements.”

Three months later, at the beginning of January, Oxfam reported that 80 percent of crops which would have normally been harvested in January and February in the Sud and Grand’Anse deparments were destroyed by the storm.

The Haitian government has estimated a total of US $2.9 billion in losses to crops, livestock, houses, and infrastructure from Matthew. OCHA is seeking to raise less than $300 million this year for humanitarian aid in Haiti, of which only 13.2 percent had been received as of this writing. The United States has contributed a measly $16.9 million. The Haitian gourde has been depreciating rapidly against the dollar, making this level of “aid” even more insulting.

MINUSTAH, the UN police and military force which has been used to suppress dissent since the 2004 coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has a budget of nearly $350 million for the year ending June 30, 2017.

The Haitian government budgeted 10.7 billion gourdes (US$152,700,000 at the current exchange rate) for its Ministry of Justice and Public Security, which includes the National Police of Haiti, in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2017; a further 11.6 billion gourdes were budgeted for paying off government debt. The Ministry of Public Health and Population received only 5.5 billion gourdes, while Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development received slightly more than 7 billion.

18.3 billion was allotted for the Ministry of Public Works, Transportation, and Communications in a budget that was decided before Matthew devastated the infrastructure in much of the south.

The gourde is falling rapidly against the dollar, while government revenues from a PetroCaribe agreement with Venezuela are unsteady because of world oil prices. Haitian government attempts to increase revenues by charging more for gasoline provoked protests in Port-au-Prince in February 2015.

Having developed the National Police of Haiti (PNH) to their satisfaction, the United States and UN are planning to end the MINUSTAH mission—which is widely hated for its history repression, sexual crimes and for causing the cholera epidemic—and let the PNH suppress domestic opposition. Coming out of his first working meeting with the heads of the police and army on March 28, Moïse’s Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant emphasized to the press that private property and investments will be protected but that specific plans are being kept secret.

In an article headlined “Private Sector Receives Assurances ahead of Final Election Results,” the Haiti Sentinel reported in December about a meeting between interim President Jocelerme Privert and members of the Economic Forum of the Private Sector and the Association of Haitian Industries (ADIH).

Georges Sassine, the president of ADIH, said afterward that “‘we came out of the meeting with the feeling that we are on the same wavelength with the executive … we have put all that we have in the balance so that the process succeeds.”

After the confirmation of Moïse’s election, the Forum issued a statement offering to “put itself from here on out at the disposition of the President and his collaborators.”