HiiL Innovating Justice Challenge 2017 for Entrepreneurs

Application Deadline: 30th June 2017

Eligible Countries: The HiiL Justice Accelerator particularly encourages applications from Africa and the Middle East.

To be taken at (country): Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Field of Award: The HiiL Justice Accelerator has identified a few key “pain points” across the world, in which areas we particularly encourage applications:

• Crime and Law Enforcement — innovations improving relations between citizens and police or improving crime reporting
• Family Justice — innovations helping families solve disputes or injustices around, for example, divorce, birth, child rights
• Neighbor Disputes — innovations creating efficient, effective, and fair ways to solve disputes between neighbors
• Employment Justice — innovations addressing employment disputes, business formalization, work conditions or job security
• Migration Justice — innovations tackling injustices felt by migrants including rights enforcement, safe travel, and basic security needs
• Land Disputes — innovations solving land disputes over title/ownership or improving protection of property rights

Note that if your innovation does not specifically address one of these areas, you are still eligible to apply! Simply make sure to tell us how your startup 1) addresses a specific justice need in your community; and 2) has some sort of a legal element.

About the Award: In the way that justice is synonymous with fairness, justice can refer to a broad range of issues. Within this broad range of issues, the HiiL Justice Accelerator is focused on a particular aspect of justice: the legal element. There are two ways to apply:

• The Call for Innovations: The Call for Innovations is our primary call for teams working on a justice innovation. If you: 1) have a team; and 2) are actively working on a justice innovation, or have a strong idea and commitment to work on it, this is the right place for you!
• The Call for Talent: The Call for Talent is our primary call for individuals who can be leaders in driving justice innovation forward. If you don’t have a team but have a very useful skill set and are very driven to make a strong contribution to justice ventures or justice reform initiatives, apply here!

Eligibility: 

The Call for Innovations:

• The founder and applicant should be 18 years of age or older.
• The venture must be committed to providing access to justice underpinned by evidence showing justice needs
• The person(s) with whom we engage should be the founder or a co-founder of the organization and should be able to make key, high-level, and direction-shifting decisions (such as whether or not to take investments and who to partner with) on behalf of the entire organization.
• The innovation must be able to demonstrate a focus on creating strong social and justice impact, a potential to scale, and a viable route to reaching financial sustainability.

The Call for Talent:

• The applicant should be 18 years of age or older.
• The applicant should have proven entrepreneurial skills, talent, or mindset to create new innovations
• The applicant ideally should have an active engagement for justice or peace in their daily work, or be inspired to create such an engagement

Selection Criteria:

The Call for Innovations:

• New ventures or novel ideas with a strong potential of delivering concrete justice results for citizens, workers, families or small and medium-sized businesses.
• Innovative justice initiatives that are already making a difference.
• Unique initiatives that are financially sustainable, have measurable impact and are scalable across countries and regions.
• Internally driven, impact-motivated entrepreneurs and innovators creating new ideas in areas that need them most
• Partners around the world creating innovative services, ideas, and procedures that can empower and support HiiL’s work

The Call for Talent:

• Needs a “justice entrepreneur mindset”- active engagement for justce or peace; relevantqualifications in an area needed for justice innovation or an interesting new angle on justice; and ideally focused on one of the Pain Points listed below.
• Vision, tenacity, team builder, and inspired towards making justice accessible to all

Value of Award: 

The Call for Innovations: Winners receive:

• Up to 20,000 EUR in equity-free funding;
• Business Development Services and Acceleration;
• Showcasing and exposure internationally
• Access to an international network of mentors
• Potential future funding, and assistance finding more

The Call for Talent: Winners receive:

• 10 winners will be invited to local events, with some paid travel
• International exposure as a promising profile in justice innovation
• Potential support locally for ideas or activities
• Potential team members to carry out an idea
• Potential opportunities to assist justice ventures in their internationalization efforts

How to Apply: 

The Call for Talent process:

• Applicants fill in the application form by June 30.
• Some applicants will be contacted for an interview.
• The most promising potential justice leaders will be invited to participate in local events in September.
• Following the Boostcamp, we guide our Talent winners in one of the following ways:
  1. joining an existing local Innovation;
  2. bringing an existing innovation from another country into their own
  3. entering an incubation track, in which their own ideas are supported and developed
  4. entering into discussions with the Accelerator team to be a part of our efforts in their country.

Click here to apply to the Call for Innovations

Click here to apply for the Call for Talent

Visit Program Webpage for details

Scholarship Provider: HiiL

TWAS Research Grants Program in Basic Sciences for Scientists in Developing Countries 2017

Application Deadline: 11th May 2017

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

Fields of Research: Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics

About the Award: The TWAS Research Grants Programme in Basic Sciences was established in response to the needs of researchers in developing countries, particularly those attached to institutions that lack appropriate research facilities. Under this scheme, grants can be awarded for research projects in Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics either to individual young researchers, or to research units in the science-and-technology-lagging countries (S&TLC) identified by TWAS, to enable them to purchase the research facilities they need to enhance their productivity.

Eligibility: 

• Individual applicants must be nationals of developing countries. They must hold a PhD, be at the beginning of their careers, but already have some research experience. They must hold a position at a university or research institution in one of the S&TLCs and be under 45 years of age.
• Applications from women scientists and those working in Least Developed Countries are especially encouraged.
• Individual scientists who submit a satisfactory final report on a previous grant may apply for a renewal.

Value and Duration of Award: 

• Research Grants to individual scientists amount to a maximum of USD 15,000.
• The grants, which are normally provided for a period of 24 months, may be used to purchase scientific equipment, consumables and specialized literature (textbooks and proceedings only). They do not cover salaries of researchers and/or students, field expenses, or travel expenses. In addition, the purchase of laptops and laboratory animals is not supported.

How to Apply: APPLY NOW

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: The TWAS Research Grants Programme in Basic Sciences is generously supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the Italian government.

Important Notes: Please note that a researcher may only submit one application at a time and for only one kind of grant (either as an individual applicant, as a research unit or COMSTECH). Applicants cannot apply for other TWAS programmes i.e. Postdoctoral, Visiting Scholar and Visiting Researcher programme within the same year in order to be present in their home country throughout the duration of the grant.

Pitch Your Business at Startup Open Global Competition for Entrepreneurs 2017

Application Deadline: 30th September 2017

About the Award: Startup Open recognizes the most promising ventures from around the world– based on their growth potential, passion, creativity, level of idea development, and pitching skills.

Type: Contest

Eligibility: 

• All applications must be submitted in English.
• Applications will be accepted from May 1, 2017, until September 30, 2017.
• It is not required that a startup be incorporated, but a company cannot be incorporated over 18 months to compete.

Selection Process: A diverse cast of entrepreneurial leaders will judge and select the entries to advance. The finalists will then compete for a grand prize trip to the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) in Istanbul, Turkey in 2018. The finalists will receive feedback from investors and experienced entrepreneurs, and participate in the GEW People’s Choice online voting during Global Entrepreneurship Week November 13-19, 2017.

Applicants will have until September 30 to submit a qualifying startup.

Value of Contest: One winner of Startup Open receives an all expenses paid trip to Istanbul, Turkey where they will receive VIP delegate credentials to the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in March 2018. The GEC brings together entrepreneurs, investors, global leaders and startup champions from more than 160 counties.

As part of the experience, the Startup Open winner will have the opportunity to: showcase their startup on a global scale; gain valuable insight from successful and experienced entrepreneurs; hear from and meet world leaders, economists and other experts regarding programs, policies and research aimed at advancing entrepreneurship; and, experience all Istanbul has to offer that makes it an emerging hub for innovation and creativity.

• Prizes are nontransferable.
• Prizes must be accepted as awarded.

How to Apply: Applications will only be accepted online through the Startup Compete platform or through an officially approved National Competition.

Visit Contest Webpage for details

Award  Provider: Global Entrepreneurship Network

ALU School of Business MBA Scholarship for African Students (Fully-funded) 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 7th May 2017

]Eligible Countries:  African countries

To be taken at (country): ALU School of Business, Mauritius

Eligibility: cSholarship applicants must first submit an ALUSB MBA application to be eligible to apply for The Chairman’s Scholarship for Excellence in Business Leadership.

Number of Scholarships: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: All university tuition and fees

• 6 round-trip tickets to Kigali for in-person intensives (3 times per year)
• Accommodation for in-person intensives (6 weeks total)
• Mentorship by seasoned business executives
• Registration fee for The African Leadership Network (ALN) Annual Gathering ($1000 value)

How to Apply: ENTER SCHOLARSHIP CONTEST HERE

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Scholarship Provider: African Leadership College (ALC)

Academy Robert Bosch Fellowship for Young African Scientists 2017

Application Deadline: 31st May 2017

Eligible Countries:  Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique or Tanzania

About the Award: The fellowship is open to a young African scientist (citizens of Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique or Tanzania) with a focus on transition processes and developments in relations between Central Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.

The fellow will be based full-time at Chatham House, London for the initial three months and final three months of the fellowship.  For the intervening three months the fellow will be based full-time at a research institute in Prague.

Fellows are hosted by and based in a research team at Chatham House. During the fellowship, the fellow will conduct a research project of their own design which falls within the research topic below.

The parameters for the research topics have been designed in broad terms to allow applicants to devise a project that appeals to their own research interests.

Eligibility: 

• Applications will be accepted from applicants holding dual nationality which includes one of these countries above.
• It is required that the applicant holds a completed BA degree or equivalent, Masters degree with an international focus is preferred.
• The fellowship is aimed at candidates at the mid-stage of their career and who come from academia, NGOs, business, government departments, civil society or the media. They should possess knowledge of, and an interest in, one of the policy-related challenges laid out in the research topics in ‘Research Topics.’

Value of Fellowship: The fellow will receive a monthly stipend of approximately £2,600.  Modest provision is made for the costs of relocation, fieldwork, and possible publication costs.

Duration of Fellowship: The fellowship is for a 9-month term from mid-September 2017 to mid-June 2018.

How to Apply: The recruitment round for 2017 is between 3 April and 31 May and applications must be submitted via the online application portal.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Chatham House

Accenture Internship Programme for Young Nigerians 2017

Application Deadline: Ongoing

Job Number: 00467356

Eligible Countries: Nigeria

To be taken at (country): Lagos, Nigeria

About the Award: The Internship Program has been specifically designed to enable you gain hands-on experience in a variety of fields as you develop essential core skills in our Business Functions (Consulting, Technology & Internal Corporate Functions). As a member of the Consulting and Technology team, you will have the opportunity to work with leading business and government organizations to address some of their most significant challenges.

Together with talented and diverse colleagues, you could be involved in the analysis and development of transformational business models, through to helping clients integrate and operate them.  In addition to this, you will also get the opportunity to develop strong leadership, problem solving and people management skills. As a member of Internal Corporate Functions, you will get an opportunity to contribute to the running of Accenture as a high- performance business through specialization within a specific functional area, and grow into internally focused roles by deepening your skills and/or developing new skills within an internal functional area.

Type: Internship

Eligibility: 

• Applicant must be undergoing an undergraduate/post graduate course in a Reputable University
• Minimum of 2nd Class Upper CGPA in any discipline as at the time of application
• In addition to an uploaded CV, applicant will be required to upload a valid School ID card, transcript, an academic reference letter, letter of admission as well as a letter of introduction for the internship program from the School (if applicable)

Job Requirements

• High level of Interest in Consulting
• Eagerness to contribute in a team-oriented environment
• Ability to work creatively and analytically in a problem-solving environment
• Good communication (written and oral) and interpersonal skills
• Sustained high levels of focus, effort and energy
• Sets challenging objectives to achieve high standards of performance

Number of Internships: Not specified

Value of Internship: This is an unpaid internship programme

Duration of Internship: Interns will be engaged on a 2 to 6-months’ placement depending on the period of your internship..

How to Apply: Apply online.

Visit Internship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Accenture

Australia Beckons a War With China

John Pilger

Australia is sleep-walking into a confrontation with China. Wars can happen suddenly in an atmosphere of mistrust and provocation, especially if a minor power, like Australia, abandons its independence for an “alliance” with an unstable superpower.

The United States is at a critical moment. Having exported its all-powerful manufacturing base, run down its industry and reduced millions of its once-hopeful people to poverty, principal American power today is brute force. When Donald Trump launched his missile attack on Syria — following his bombing of a mosque and a school — he was having dinner in Florida with the President of China, Xi Jinping.

Trumps attack on Syria had little to do  with chemical weapons. It was, above all, to show his detractors and doubters in Washington’s war-making  institutions — the Pentagon, the CIA, the Congress — how tough he was and prepared to risk a war with Russia.  He had spilled blood in Syria, a Russian protectorate; he was surely now on the team. The attack was also meant to say directly to President Xi, his dinner guest: this is how we deal with those who challenge the top dog.

China has long received this message. In its rise as the world’s biggest trader and manufacturer, China has been encircled by 400 US military bases — a provocation described by a former Pentagon strategist as “a perfect noose”.

This is not Trump’s doing. In 2011, President Barack Obama flew to Australia to declare, in an address to parliament, what became known as the “pivot to Asia”: the biggest build-up of US air and naval forces in the Asia Pacific region since the Second World War. The target was China.  America had a new and entirely unnecessary enemy. Today, low-draft US warships, missiles, bombers, drones operate on China’s doorstep.

In July, one of the biggest US-led naval exercises ever staged, the biennial Operation Talisman Sabre, will rehearse a blockade of the sea lanes through which run China’s commercial lifelines. Based on a Air-Sea Battle Plan for war with China, which prescribes a preemptive “blinding” attack, this “war game” will be played by Australia.

This is not urgent news. Rather, the news is the “threat” that China poses to “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea by building airstrips on disputed reefs and islets. The reason why — the “noose” — is almost never mentioned.

Australia in the 21st century has no enemies. Not even a melancholy colonial imagination that conjured Asia falling down on us as if by the force of gravity can conjure a single contemporary enemy. No one wants to bomb or occupy Australia.  Well, not yet.

As Australian political, military and intelligence establishments are integrated into the war plans of a growing American obsession — the shift of trading, banking and development power to the east —  Australia is making an enemy it never bargained for. A frontline has already been marked at Pine Gap, the spy base the CIA set up near Alice Springs in the 1960s, which targets America’s enemies, beckoning, of course, massive retaliation.

Last October, the opposition Labor Party’s defence spokesman, Richard Marles, delighted the US admirals and generals at a conference in Hawaii by demanding that Australian naval commanders should have the authority to provoke nuclear-armed China in the disputed South China Sea. What is it about some Australian politicians whose obsequiousness takes charge of their senses?

While the coalition government of Malcolm Turnbull has resisted such a clear and present danger, at least for now, it is building a $195 billion war arsenal, one of the biggest on earth — including more than $15 billion to be spent on American F-35 fighters already distinguished as hi-tech turkeys. Clearly, this is aimed at China.

This view of Australia’s region is shrouded by silence. Dissenters are few, or frightened. Anti-China witch hunts are not uncommon. Indeed, who, apart from former prime minister Paul Keating, speaks out with an unambiguous warning? Who tells Australians that, in response to the “noose” around it, China has almost certainly increased its nuclear weapons posture from low alert to high alert?

And who utters the heresy that Australians should not have to “choose” between America and China: that we should, for the first time in our history, be truly modern and independent of all great power: that we should play a thoughtful, imaginative, non-provocative, diplomatic role to help prevent a catastrophe and so protect “our interests”, which are the lives of people.

Corruption and Poverty in Bulgaria

Louis Proyect

One of the more important developments cinematically over the past decade has been the emergence of social criticism films in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. Generally, the films focus on the continuation of elite privileges under new neoliberal regimes. One of the more remarkable Russian films is Yury Bykov’s “The Fool” that I reviewed for CounterPunch in 2015 and that thankfully can now be seen on Youtube. The fool is a plumber named Dima studying construction engineering who after seeing cracks in the building where he works and lives concludes that they can widen to the point of bringing down the building over the heads of everybody within it. When he brings the emergency to the attention of local officials who don’t want to spend a penny on evacuating the tenants, they launch a vendetta to crush him and cover up their shady deals that led to the defects in the first place.

Bykov has described his film as a treatment of the central dilemma facing his country: conscience versus survival. Now playing at the Film Forum in New York is a Bulgarian film titled “Glory” that is closely related to Bykov’s film thematically. Like Nima, Tzanko Petrov (Stefan Denolyubov) is a humble worker—a railway lineman who we first see setting his watch meticulously to a radio announcement before going off to work. This is important because linemen must be aware of the exact time to the second to avert oncoming trains.

After synchronizing his watch, Petkov meets up with his co-workers on the railroad tracks they are assigned to maintain. Walking a few dozen or so yards ahead of them, he stumbles across a most remarkable find: millions of dollars in Bulgarian currency strewn across the tracks—its origin unknown. Unlike the rest of his crew or most Bulgarians for that matter, Petkov thought the natural thing to do was contact the police.

His altruistic act turned him into an instant celebrity, something that the state railway corporation—the Bulgarian Amtrak in effect—decided to turn to its advantage. The head of its PR department is a woman named Julia Staykova (Margita Gosheva) who is the quintessential post-Communist hustler. Her main interest is to make an amalgam of this most unusual worker’s idealistic behavior with that of the crooked top executives she serves.

When she goes out with a cameraman to interview Petkov, she is disconcerted to learn that he is a very bad stutterer. Her plans to turn him into a photogenic icon are thwarted by this as well as his overgrown beard that she urges him to trim. She is also not very happy with his shabby clothing. Why couldn’t this hero be more attentive to superficial details? When Staykova returns to her office, she and her underlings laugh at a tape of the interview. They agree with her boss that his stuttering practically outweighs his strengths as a human being but they are stuck with him anyhow.

Next on the PR agenda is to stage a ceremony where Petkov will receive some meaningless awards. Before the cameras roll, he sits next to the director of the railway company who will bestow the awards. Petkov cannot resist letting him in on what the average worker thinks, at least an honest one. He asks why the workers are owed back pay and when will they receive it. He also offers information about theft of railway resources by employees such as selling purloined locomotive diesel fuel on the black market. The director squirms uncomfortably waiting for the ceremony to begin. Where did Petkov get the nerve to bring up such nettlesome questions? Didn’t he understand that when it comes to conscience versus survival, it is survival that must be victorious?

At part of the ceremony, Petkov is to receive a new watch to replace his Slava (Glory), a keepsake from his father whose dedication is engraved on the back of the dial and one he has relied on for his work as a lineman. The Slava watch-making factory was established in the Soviet Union in 1924 and perhaps might be a symbol of the proletarian solidarity that men and women like Petkov foolishly still believe in.

Petkov grudgingly puts his watch in Staykova’s care while the director presents him with a cheap, brand-new watch that does not even keep accurate time. Meanwhile, Staykova misplaces the watch and keeps putting Petkov off as he grows increasingly worried over the possible loss of an heirloom that also has such practical value. The clash eventually spills over into the corruption issues that Petkov raised with the director to the point of turning him into a victim of forces deeply rooted in the Bulgarian bureaucratic capitalist machine dedicated to survival rather than conscience.

“Glory” is a tremendous film and likely to make it my best of 2017 feature films. It is also one that puts a spotlight on the discontent that is ripping apart the fabric of eastern Europe society. In 2013, protestors blockaded the Bulgarian parliament in protest of the corruption that “Glory” dramatized. The NY Times reported:

Metodi Litsev, 34, who has participated in the protests, compared them to clashes in Turkey and the Occupy movement, saying, “If there weren’t protests in Taksim or Wall Street, we might not have found the moral example to seek our emancipation.”

As it happens, this protest movement ebbed just as it has in the USA. Elections were held a couple of weeks ago that resulted in a victory for the incumbent GERB party (“Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria”) that is roughly equivalent to the party in power in Kiev and that stepped down in 2013 because of the street protests. Its leader is one Boyko Borisov, a former Communist whose claim to fame is mastery of the martial arts and playing soccer. Historically, many wrestlers, martial arts experts and secret agents with such skills had been pampered under Communism. Once the system collapsed, they became unemployed just like samurai warriors during the Meiji Restoration. Many like Borisov became politicians while others went to work for organized crime. As GERB’s leader, Borisov emphasized the need to end corruption in Bulgaria. Journalists have dismissed this as purely for show since he has been linked both to the Bulgarian mafia and white-collar criminals like the railway chief in “Glory”.

How bad is corruption and poverty in Bulgaria? Bad enough to drive ten men to self-immolation in 2013 as the protest movement was at its height, just like the Tunisian fruit vendor Tarek Bouazizi in January 2011. Vice Magazine reported on the self-immolation epidemic in 2013 :

Some say the inspiration for it all was a 36-year-old photographer named Plamen Goranov, who burned himself on February 20 in front of City Hall in Varna, a resort city on the country’s Black Sea coast. According to investigative journalists, Varna’s commerce is controlled by a business group called TIM, which the former US ambassador to Bulgaria, James Pardew, accused of racketeering, prostitution, and extortion in a 2005 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. TIM, he said, was the “up-and-coming star of Bulgaria’s organized crime.” Plamen set himself on fire to protest TIM’s alleged relationship with Varna’s mayor, Kiril “Kiro” Yordanov. Before he set his body aflame, he propped up a sign demanding the “resignation of Kiro and all the city council by 5 PM.”

Can Bulgaria’s Socialist Party bring such misery to an end? This party emerged out the country’s ruling Communist Party that renamed and remodeled itself after the system collapsed in 1989. Whether it has much to do with Scandinavian type social democracy is open to question. Most Bulgarians would probably liken it to Greece’s Syriza.

Then there is Bulgaria’s Donald Trump, a businessman named Veselin Mareshki. Like GERB, he represents himself as an enemy of corruption. He calls his new party Will, maybe having Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will” in the back of his mind. The NY Times described him as “a blunt-talking anvil of a populist who preaches patriotism, strict immigration controls, friendlier relations with Moscow and, above all, the need to ‘sweep away the garbage’ of a corrupt political establishment.”

If I were a Bulgarian, I’d shy away from GERB, the former Stalinist party and their Donald Trump. What’s the alternative? I’d say young people who exemplify the values of the fictional hero of “Glory” as well as the directors of that film.

If Assad Must Go, So Must All The Warmongers

Irwin Jerome

The real truth revealed by the chemical weapon tragedy in Syria’s Idlib Province is that as the world continues to tear itself asunder and make a mockery of the United Nation’s concept of international law and the sovereign rights of nations – supposedly intended to protect them from such unprovoked, preemptive attacks by rogue countries like the United States and its unilateral 59 Tomahawk cruise missile attack – is that so much acrimony and mistrust now exists to the point that the world teeters all the more dangerously on the edge of a potential World War III?

In the critical first days of the chemical weapon tragedy and the United States loose cannon/lone wolf response, the world’s corporate media in the West especially did virtually nothing to get at the real truth about what really caused this tragedy. Instead it mostly offered up little more than propaganda, bogus allegations and glowing accolades about President Trump’s showing his “presidential timber” as a warrior-leader, who now has proven himself capable of taking swift, decisive action against what the corporate media described as a chemical attack committed by Assad and his Government against innocent Syrian civilians and especially innocent, helpless children and babies. Historically, it was yet another classic false flag Vietnam ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ Resolution, Iraq ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ moment in time when Deep State Fifth Columnists – who always are gathered in the shadows of whatever geopolitical event, once again sought, as they always do – mobilize – through sabotage, disinformation, espionage or outright aggression with whatever external military forces – any excuse to foment another new war and commit yet another unprovoked attack against whatever country upon which it has imperial designs.

But if Assad and his family now must go for his/their alleged guilt in the recent chemical weapon attack in Idlib Province, then so must go the whole lot of world leaders and their families of rogues and criminals who are complicit in the horrendous reality of so much that has been the history of the world, especially during the last century up to the present day. If the Assad’s now must go for the part they play in all this than so should: Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Netanyahu, Merkel, the Saudi Royal Family and a host of lesser lap dog war monger leader-followers in countries throughout the world.

In short, the world desperately needs a completely new make-over from top to bottom and regime changes throughout its length and breadth. Otherwise, the same Fifth Column of the Deep State and its multitude of: neo-conservative/alt-right plotters, corporate media propagandists, arms merchants and manufacturers of the materials of war, Wall Street financiers and speculators will only continue to endlessly fan the flames war, death and destruction in the Middle East and everywhere else as they have for countless decades, regardless of the murders of however many hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, the utter devastation of whole countries and subsequent tsunami waves of refugees and immigrants who continue to sweep throughout every country in the world, creating endless political chaos and ideological backlash. To all those who relish creating such a dark, obscenely-evil world, rather than one based upon light, peace and tranquility, the world is considered nothing more than an abstract algorithm to be endlessly manipulated for their own advantage.

So to say, “Assad Must Go!”, is to say nothing significant will ever change for the better any more than it did when Saddam Hussein, Moammer Gadhafi, Osama Bin Laden and a host of other mad men who were removed and eliminated also finally “Had To Go!”. One could argue that it instead only makes world events so much more worse because such mad men represent nothing more than the tip of an iceberg of what is constantly going on everywhere in the world.

The corporate media’s subterfuge, spin and hype has run riot over this latest chemical weapon tragedy in Syria. To try to make sense of it all is a crazy maker of Orwellian doublespeak of epic proportions. Some contend the whole problem began when President Trump received a fraudulent briefing on the Syrian event that some say originated from one Shajul Islam, a British-accused terrorist who was previously put on trial in the UK for terrorism offences and kidnapping, yet mysteriously was allowed to travel to Syria to join al-Qaeda’s fight to overthrow Assad where he is affiliated with a British Intelligence project, known as the White Helmets, who are funded by the British Foreign Office and USAID, and are the ones who provided the graphic images of the victims of the Idlib attack that were shown “as evidence” to the UN Security Council and Donald Trump.

British journalist Peter Hitchens telling description of the terrorist-controlled site of the Idlib Province attack immediately calls into question the source of such questionable ‘evidence’ when he commented, “No independent Western journalist could go there. He or she would be kidnapped or killed within hours. Any report which came from that region is filtered through people who you never see. These are groups like Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, alias the al-Nustra Front, alias al-Qaeda, the Syrian ‘opposition’ which Britain and the U.S. have been supporting for years…the same movement which destroyed the Manhatten Twin Towers.”

Yet U.S. military authorities, the CIA intelligence network and British MI5 already knew full-well before Trump’s ordered attack that the chemical weapons in question came not from the Assad government’s air force but from the warehouse/ammunition depot of an al-Qaeda based terrorist group that operated in the region. And the White Helmets only operate in terrorist-controlled areas, as they are in fact members of al-Qaeda. So, it begs the question who in the Deep State is behind the scenes mouthing who or what to say and do in all this? Is it Trump and his administration dictating to the generals and military what to say and do or is it the other way around? if President Trump was either lied to or kept ignorant of these facts by individuals in his administration or those within his national security/intelligence chain of command they should now all be exposed, fired from whatever their current position, criminally-charged with war crimes against humanity and, perhaps, even executed for treason?

Other geopolitical analysts even go so far as to say that the sources President Trump used to claim Syrian culpability for the chemical weapon attack began with the British, exclusively, and its corporate media who are the same Fifth Columnists who, for a multitude of nefarious reasons, have been coordinating an international attack on Trump’s Presidency in an effort to destroy any positive potential for healthy, non-violent relationships with Russia and China so as to rebuild the U.S. and world economy. However, Trump is making the same mistake in Syria as President Bush did in Iraq when he only listened to those British and American Intelligence advisors who were/are clearly bent again on a war for which there is no compelling reason, the unintended consequences of which are certain to be catastrophic.

The Rupert Murdoch war propaganda machine likewise has gone into high gear over Syria, just as its atrocious Sun newspaper in the UK and Sydney, Australia’s Daily Telegraph attacked anyone who questioned the corporate media’s Big Lie. During the Iraq War Murdoch’s media labeled all those who opposed it as scum and traitors, while labeling all those who now question the Assad/Syrian chemical attack spin as sick trolls. The British & Australian governments, in turn, initially cheered Trump after his cruise missile attack and applauded him for resorting to war when they had previously criticized Trump when he attempted to make peace overtures to Russia and China. Yet others go so far as to suggest that Trump was intentionally ‘played’ and set up as the ‘fall guy’ by both al-Qaeda and the British Royal Family itself for the near world holocaust that might have occurred and still could because of Trump’s cruise missile attack. It’s very curious that this all occurred on the eve of President Trump’s historic meeting with China’s Xi JinPing that many had hoped would lead to a new and peaceful paradigm for economic and scientific progress in the world beyond all the mindless, senseless wars.

By contrast, the level of political acrimony in the world continues to escalate beyond anything that has come before. Progressives and peace activists are constantly ridiculed and made caricatures of by the corporate and social media. Trump, like the dupe that he is, beyond his war-mongering in Syria, continues to play into the hands of alt-right Fifth Columnists when he declares, like the bully that he is, “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will, too!”

So many political analysts and pundits now wonder, “How has the world come to all this?” For starts, it has come to all this because ever since the Fifth Columnists in the Democratic Party, like Hillary Clinton, Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland and other hardliner neo-conservatives in the Obama Administration, committed their violent intervention in the civil war of Libya, and then further enflamed the geopolitical scene by their covert interventions with a Nazi movement that led to a violent coup in the Ukraine. Almost all the pro-interventionist editorial pages in the United States corporate media since Trump’s attack against Syria have similarly supported his interventionist actions, suggesting that the actions he took showed that he finally had “become president”, as if such despicable actions are what makes a real man of a president. Editorials in such major U.S. papers as the: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, New York Daily News, Washington Post, New York Post, Chicago Sun-Times and Denver Post heralded Trump’s preemptive attack against Syria. Even normally progressive editorials like the San Jose Mercury News and LA Times have been ambiguous about their moral and geopolitical position on Trump’s attack, while the New York Times even couched Trump’s attack in terms of making one “feel some sense of emotional satisfaction…and feeling good as a result of the attack”. The Pittsburg Post Gazette again even went so far as to refer to Syria and North Korea together as Russia and China’s moderate little proxies. While various pundits in the U.S. corporate media actually waxed poetically about the 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles that Trump hurled at Syria’s sovereign territory.

One in particular, MSNBC’s breaking news anchor Brian Williams bumped MSNBC Rachel Maddow to report Trump’s attack on Syria. Invoking a line from the song “First We Take Manhatten”, by the late Canadian poet-singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, Williams described the Tomahawk cruise missiles as they lifted off of the decks of the U.S. warships, as “beautiful pictures in the night”. His description of the cruise missiles seemed almost orgasmic if not religious. It was a reminder of something Leonard Cohen himself once said about that song when he revealed its meaning in an interview. Cohen commented, “I think it means exactly what it says. It is a terrorist song…There’s something about terrorism that I’ve always admired; the fact that there are no alibis or no compromises. That position is always attractive”.

Brian Williams and Leonard Cohen’s remarks call to mind a particular scene from the 1970 sci-fi movie “Planet of the Apes” that involved an Alpha-Omega Bomb; a large atomic bomb that was designated as a “Doomsday Bomb” to be used only as a last result that the few remaining human survivors referred to as The Divine Bomb. It had been placed at the altar of what used to be St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the irradiated ruins of New York City. This ‘Divine Bomb’ was venerated by a subspecies of psychic mutant-humans who religiously safeguarded the missile and its operational launch system. The mutants believed they owed their very existence to this missile and worshipped it as a deity. They wore specifically designated latex masks to hide their grotesque features and only during their liturgical services to worship the bomb would they take off their masks to, “reveal their innermost selves unto their God”.

The implied suggestion is that what is being revealed here about the innermost nature of the United States as a whole – all its politicians, citizenry and violent history – by and large has demonstrated a constant fixated upon war since its very origins and probably won’t ever change until, in the end, it finally extinguishes itself and, in the process, unfortunately, possibly the entire world at the same time. As is commonly stated in many news reports and history books it simply is a very violent and violence-prone society that would rather happily spend the bulk of its national GDP and life blood of its people upon war materials, the conducting of war, and the funding of other societies in the world – like Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others – who practice the same ideology, rather than on other more peaceful, non-violent, countries and solutions that would otherwise lead to an entirely different, more tranquil world and human being way of life.

How The Insurgencies In Middle East Are Not Terrorism?

Nauman Sadiq

The definition of the term “terrorism” has been deliberately left undefined by the Western powers to use it as a catch-all pretext to justify their interventionist policy in the energy-rich Islamic countries. Depending on context, “terrorism” can mean two markedly distinct phenomena: that are, religious extremism or militancy.

If terrorism is understood as religious extremism, then that is a cultural mindset and one cannot possibly hope to transform cultures through the means of war and military interventions; if anything, war will further radicalize the society.

However, by terrorism, if the Western powers mean militancy, then tamping down on militancy and violence through the means of war does makes sense because a policy of disarmament and de-weaponization can be subsequently pursued in the occupied territories.

That being understood that the Western powers aim to eradicate militancy through wars, but then a question arises that who were the Libyan and Syrian so-called “rebels” who were, and still are, being supported by the Western powers in their purported wars of “liberation” of those hapless countries? Are they not armed to the teeth militants?

Notwithstanding, it can be argued that war and militancy are only means to an end and it’s the objectives and goals that determine whether such wars are just or unjust. No-one can dispute this assertion that the notions of “just wars” and “good militants” do exist in the vocabulary; empirically speaking, however, after witnessing the instability, violence and utter chaos and anarchy in the war-ravaged countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, the onus lies on any “liberal interventionist” to prove beyond doubt that the wars and militants that he justifies and upholds are indeed just and good.

In political science, the devil always lies in the definitions of the terms that we employ. For instance: how do you define a terrorist or a militant? In order to understand this we need to identify the core of a “militant,” that what essential feature distinguishes him from the rest?

A militant is basically an armed and violent individual who carries out subversive activities against the state. That being understood, now we need to examine the concept of “violence.” Is it violence per se that is wrong, or does some kind of justifiable violence exists?

In the contemporary politics, I take the view, on empirical grounds, that all kinds of violence is essentially wrong; because the ends (goals) for which such violence is often employed are seldom right and elusive at best. Although democracy and liberal ideals are cherished goals but such goals can only be accomplished through peaceful means; expecting from armed and violent militants to bring about democratic reform is naïve and preposterous.

The Western mainstream media and its neoliberal constituents, however, take a different view. According to them, there are two distinct kinds of violence: justifiable and unjustifiable. When a militant resorts to violence for the secular and nationalist goals, such as “bringing democracy” to Libya and Syria, the misinformed neoliberals enthusiastically exhort such form of violence.

However, if such militants later turn out to be Islamic jihadists, like the Misrata militia and Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, or the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front, Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham in Syria, the credulous neoliberals, who have been misguided by the mainstream narrative, promptly make a volte-face and label them as “terrorists.”

More to the point, there is a big difference between an anarchist and a nihilist: an anarchist believes in something and wants to change the status quo in the favor of that belief, while a nihilist believes is nothing and considers life to be meaningless.

Similarly, there is also a not-so-subtle difference between a terrorist and an insurgent: an Islamic insurgent believes in something and wants to enforce that agenda in the insurgency-hit regions, while a terrorist is just a bloodthirsty lunatic who is hell-bent on causing death and destruction. The distinguishing feature between the two is that an insurgent has well defined objectives and territorial ambitions, while a terrorist is basically motivated by the spirit of revenge and the goal of causing widespread fear.

The phenomena of terrorism is that which threatened the Western countries between 2001 to 2005 when some of the most audacious terrorist acts were carried out by al-Qaeda against the Western targets like the 9/11 tragedy, the Madrid bombing in 2004 and the London bombing in 2005; or the terrorist acts committed by the Islamic State in Europe in the last couple of years; those acts were primarily the result of intelligence failure on the part of the Western intelligence agencies.

However, the phenomena which is currently threatening the Islamic countries is not terrorism, as such, but Islamic insurgencies. Excluding al Qaeda Central which is a known transnational terrorist organization, all the regional militant groups like the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, al Shabab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria, and even some of the ideological affiliates of al Qaeda and Islamic State, like Al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula, Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, the Islamic State affiliates in Afghanistan, Sinai and Libya which have no organizational and operational association with al Qaeda Central or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, respectively, are not terror groups, as such, but Islamic insurgents who are fighting for the goal of enforcing Sharia in their respective areas of operations; like their progenitor, the Salafist State of Saudi Arabia.

Notwithstanding, after invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, and when the American “nation-building” projects failed in those hapless countries, the US policymakers immediately realized that they were facing large-scale and popularly-rooted insurgencies against foreign occupation; consequently, the occupying military altered its CT (counter-terrorism) approach in the favor of a COIN (counter-insurgency) strategy.

A COIN strategy is essentially different from a CT approach and it also involves dialogue, negotiations and political settlements, alongside the coercive tactics of law enforcement and military and paramilitary operations on a limited scale.

The goals for which Islamic insurgents have been fighting in the insurgency-wracked regions are irrelevant for the debate at hand; it can be argued, however, that if some of the closest Western allies in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, have already enforced Sharia as part of their conservative legal systems and when beheadings, amputations of limbs and flogging of criminals are a routine in Saudi Arabia, then what is the basis for the US declaration of war against Islamic insurgents in the Middle East who are erroneously but deliberately labeled as “terrorists” by the Western mainstream media to manufacture consent for the Western military presence and interventions in the energy-rich region under the pretext of the so-called “war on terror”?

Regardless, the root factors that are primarily responsible for spawning militancy and insurgency anywhere in the world is not religion but socio-economics, ethnic differences, marginalization of disenfranchised ethno-linguistic and ethno-religious groups and the ensuing conflicts; socio-cultural backwardness of the affected regions, and the weak central control of the impoverished developing states over their remote rural and tribal areas.

Additionally, if we take a cursory look at some of the worst insurgency-plagued regions in the Middle East, deliberate funding, training and arming of certain militant groups by regional and global powers for their strategic interests has played the key role.

Back in the ‘80s, during the Soviet-Afghan war, the Afghan so-called “mujahideen” did not spring up spontaneously out of nowhere; the Western powers, with the help of Saudi money and Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, trained and armed those “freedom fighters” against their archrival, the Soviet Union. Those very same Afghan “mujahideen” later mutated into the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Similarly, during the Libyan and Syrian uprisings, the Western powers, with the help of their regional client states, once again trained and armed Islamic jihadists and tribal militiamen against the hostile regimes of Qaddafi and Bashar al Assad. And isn’t it ironic that those very same “moderate rebels” later transformed into Ansar al Sharia, al Nusra Front and the Islamic State?

While formulating their security policies, military strategists generally draw a distinction between intentions and capability of adversary, and they always prepare for the latter. Similarly, the ideology of militants, whether it’s ethno-religious or ethno-nationalist, only has a tangential importance; it’s their capability: that is, their funding, training and arming, that decides the strength and success of a militant organization.

Pompeo, Power And WikiLeaks

Binoy Kampmark

“Vested interests deflect from the facts that WikiLeaks publishes by demonizing its brave staff and me.”

Julian Assange, The Washington Post, Apr 11, 2017.

The Central Intelligence Agency’s current director, Mike Pompeo, has a view of history much like that of any bureaucrat as understood by the great sociologist Max Weber. The essential, fundamental purpose of bureaucracy is a rationale to manufacture and keep secrets. Transparency and accountability are its enemies. Those who challenge that particular order are, by definition, defilers and dangerous contrarians.

On Thursday, April 13, Pompeo was entertained by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, an opportunity of sorts to sound off on a range of points. Pompeo’s theme is unmistakeable, opening up with a discussion about Philip Agee’s “advocacy” as a founding member of CounterSpy, which called in 1973 for the outing of CIA undercover operatives.

Richard Welch, a CIA station chief working in Athens and identified in a September 1974 issue of CounterSpy, was duly deemed a victim of Agee’s stance.  “When he got out of his car to open the gate in front of his house, Richard Welch was assassinated by a Greek terrorist cell.”

Agee is then the mint and mould for the current WikiLeaks agenda, deemed by Pompeo to be compromised in “the harm they inflict on the US institutions and personnel”.  What bothers Pompeo is their zeal, their determination, even romance, those self-touted “heroes above the law, saviours of our free and open society.”

Pompeo’s methods are blunt, and shower generous disdain on the notion that free speech protections should extend to such an organisation as WikiLeaks.  “It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

This is the language of fear about the fifth columnist, that WikiLeaks is mimicking the CIA, even surpassing it.  (Such flattery!)  The organisation “encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence.”  Gravely, claims the CIA director, “It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information.”  Never mind what that information actually revealed.

For the director’s myopic appraisal of the world, only the select should be in a position to steal.  “We steal secrets from our foreign adversaries, hostile entities and terrorist organizations. And we’re damn proud of it.”

These words are hardly going to fluster Assange, though they have provided the main front man of WikiLeaks food for thought about what individuals like Pompeo really think about democratic virtue, given the continuous insistence by US officials that they keep the sacred flame of liberty alive the world over.  The very defender of the US Republic is willing to ignore a fundamental feature of that Republic’s existence: the need for public debate about the limits of power.

Assange is aware of this, noting how the “American idea”, or the United States as “idea” throbs within his mind and body. It is precisely that idea that needs conservation, even purification.  What Pompeo is really bothered about is how similar the intelligence goal is for an organisation charged with the task of dealing in secrets, be it their theft and exposure, or their protection.

What matters in such information environments, and notably the one so currently crowded by a noisy battle between digital rabblerousers and orthodox followers of the closed society, is where they fit in holding the powerful accountable.  All positions ultimately turn on matters of power and how information is best wielded.

Assange uses his piece in the Washington Post not merely to rubuff the CIA’s position, but to reference the words of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address: “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

The motives, then, are “identical to that claimed by the New York Times and The Post – to publish newsworthy content. Consistent with the US Constitution, we publish material that we can confirm to be true irrespective of whether sources came by that truth legally or have the right to release it to the media.”

Assange also reminds readers of an old, proposed taxonomy on the issue of how the fourth estate might function in terms of accuracy and content with President Thomas Jefferson’s own proposal.  An editor might wish to “divide his paper into 4 chapters, heading the 1st, ‘Truths.’  2nd, ‘Probabilities.’  3rd, ‘Possibilities.’  4th, ‘Lies.’  The first chapter would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic papers, and information.”

The modus operandi is significant here: the exposure of truths deemed inconvenient, complicating, disrupting.  Reduced to that dimension, Pompeo’s supposedly patriotic bile seems one of simple objection, an age old struggle between those who wish to know, and those who prefer to keep ignorance central to the argument.  The ever tantalisingly relevant point remains: Who is so entitled?