BCFN Foundation Scholarship for Food and Nutrition Researchers 2017 – Italy

Application Deadline: 28th June 2017 11:59 p.m. Eastern time.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Global

To be taken at (country): Italy

Eligible Field of Study: The BCFN YES! Research Grant Competition offers the opportunity to put into action concrete proposals that will have the objective of making more sustainable one or more themes of the agri-food system (in terms of environmental, social, health and/or economic aspects). Among others, the following areas of particular interest are considered:

• Sustainable and healthy diets;
• Urban food systems and policies;
• Resilient agriculture, land use change and agroecology;
• The nexus between climate change, energy and food;
• Sustainable water management;
• Food supply chains;
• Ecosystems and ecosystem services;
• Healthy lifestyles;
• Food waste reduction;
• Food policy development;
• Food security: availability, access, utilisation, stability;
• Communication technologies and networks;
• Youth and women’s involvement in agriculture;

About the Award:The BCFN Foundation is strongly committed to addressing the future challenges of food. The Foundation is focused on reducing hunger, fighting food waste, and promoting healthy lifestyles and sustainable agriculture. In 2015, with the help of the BCFN Alumni –young thought leaders from 20 countries representing five continents – the BCFN Foundation drafted the Youth Manifesto on Food, People and the Planet. The document resulted from an intense workshop in which the young pictured change through seven key roles for the food system: policymakers, farmers, activists, educators, the food industry, journalists and researchers.

Type: PhD and postdoctorate Degree

Eligibility: The 2017 BCFN YES! Research Grant Competition is designed for individual or multidisciplinary and cross-national research teams of a maximum of three components. The Competition encourages the participation of teams from different disciplines and countries who wish to combine their expertise in innovative approaches.

• Students/applicants who are currently pursuing doctoral degrees are eligible, as well as researchers/applicants with a PhD or a doctoral degree received after December 2014.
• All the Participants must be under the age of 35 at the date of December 31, 2016.

Selection Criteria: The BCFN YES! Research Grant Competition Evaluation Committee will evaluate the proposals with the assistance of additional members (experts in specific sectors) in those cases where the methodology warrants. The proposals will be judged on:

• Consistency with the topic areas and the BCFN Foundation’s mission;

Significance of the problem; – Design of the study; – The investigator’s qualifications (possession of the requisite skills); – The appropriateness of the schedule and the likelihood that the work will be accomplished on time; – Completeness of the application. Submissions will be disqualified if they exhibit one or more of the following: – Lack of adherence to submission requirements; – Poor quality in the writing; – Poor organization of material; – Lack of specificity on required elements; – Lack of appropriate instrument samples; – Lack of appropriate theoretical framework

Number of Awardees: Three (3) teams

Value of Award: The Recipients shall present a preliminary report at the February 2017 first BCFN Advisory Board Annual Meeting. Upon submission by the Recipients to the Advisory Board of the BCFN Foundation of quarterly reports documenting the progress of the Research, BCFN Foundation will pay the grant in two periodic installments as the research progresses:

• The first tranche (10,000 €) after the winning ceremony – December 2016;
• The second tranche (10,000 €) after BCFN advisory board meeting – July 2017

How to Apply: BCFN encourages submission of:

• Either new or ongoing research projects;
• Either unfunded proposals projects that are co-financed by a research institute, trust, foundation, university, private companies, venture capital funds angel investors. Details of research timeline and supplemental sources of financial support should be specified in the application form.

Go here to register for the competition.

Visit Award Webpage for details

Award Provider: Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN)

Important Notes: Contestants should read the Competition Documentation before applying.

DRD/DAAD Masters & PhD Full Scholarships for Africa (Study in South Africa & Germany) 2017/2018

Application Deadlines:

• the MA in Development Studies (next deadline 31st July 2017, online application is available in the “How to apply” section of the Programme!)
• the Master in Public Administration (next deadline 31st July 2017, online application is available in the “How to apply” section of the Programme!)
• the MA in Development Management (Bochum Programme, next deadline 31st December 2017)
  (separate online application platform, access and guidelines via “How to apply” section of the Bochum programme or via the course homepage)
• the different PhD options at the centre (PhD UWC) (next deadline 31st July 2017, online application is available in the “How to apply” section of the Programme!)

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Sub-Saharan Africa

To be taken at (country): School of Government, University of the Western Cape, South Africaand Ruhr-University of Bochum, Germany

Eligible Field of Study: Scholarships are available for full-time students of

• MA in Development Studies
• Master in Public Administration
• PhD options at the CDR

About Scholarship: In order to adequately prepare the next generation of leaders through research-oriented training it is not sufficient to have the possibility to award scholarships to promising candidates from all over Sub-Saharan Africa, but it is also necessary to maintain a strong research focus on the work of the centre and to cooperate closely with other leading universities in the region.

Type: Masters & PhD

Selection Criteria and Eligibility: Requirements for application and application procedure

• Applicants should be from Sub-Sahara Africa
• Applicants should have an outstanding academic record – at least 70% of your last degree
• Applicants should apply within 6 years of having completed their previous degree
• The study must have been completed at an internationally recognized university
• The previous degree (Baccalaureus or Master) should have been an academic discipline which is related to Development Studies or Public Administration
• South African students are required to have an honours degree in order to be admitted to a Masters degree course. Other students need the equivalent of a 4 year undergraduate degree
• Applicants must provide evidence of proficiency in English, both written and spoken. This can be TOEFL test or a similar standard test or a letter from an academic institution
• Work and/or voluntary experience in your field of interest would be a recommendation
• Women are encouraged to apply
• Applicants must be able to study fulltime at the UWC for the required period.
• South African students are encouraged to apply

Number of Scholarships: not specified

Value of Scholarship: Scholarships include monthly allowances of 650 Euro plus travel allowances for Master candidates and 900 Euro plus travel allowances for PhD candidates. More information about requirements for application and application procedure is provided in link below.

Duration of Scholarship: for period of the programme

How to Apply: You will have to fill in an electronic application form As the e-form can only be submitted once, please make sure that your application is complete before submitting it!

Essay

MA applicants will have to write a one page paper about 1 of the following 4 topics:

1. François Bourguignon, a former Chief Economist of the World Bank referred to the “poverty growth inequality triangle”: Discuss this comment, critically evaluating the role of inequality in the current study of development in Africa.
2. Write critically on perceptions about governance in Sub Saharan Africa.
3. It has been claimed that climate change could potentially interrupt progress toward a world without hunger. Consider the evidence for this claim and discuss how climate change might impact on food security.
4. Discuss the relationship between social movements and civil society in a specific SSA country of your choice.

Visit scholarship webpage for details

Sponsors: DAAD

Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Awards for Sustainable Solutions 2017

Application Deadline: 30th June 2017

If you enter your full submission by 9th June, you’ll have a chance to win a special two-hour tailored mentoring session. So get started today!

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): London, UK

About the Award: The Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Awards are all about supporting and celebrating inspirational young people from all over the world with existing initiatives, products or services that are tackling some of the planet’s biggest sustainability challenges.

This year, the Awards will recognise initiatives in four key areas:

1. Farm to Table: In this category, we are looking for inspiring entrepreneurs who are working on sustainable initiatives relating to food and drink production right through to consumption.
2. Opportunities for Women: We are seeking initiatives that help to tackle the discrimination and disadvantages millions of women face around the world. You might be working to help provide access to skills and training for women, and creating opportunities for women to actively, safely
3. Waste: Are there entrepreneurs out there with ingenious initiatives that help to tackle waste – to reduce, reuse or recycle waste throughout the pre-production, production and consumption lifecycle? Initiatives should demonstrate a clear business
4. Water: Are you working on an initiative that tackles water scarcity, or one that addresses water pollution or sanitation and hygiene issues? We are looking for solutions that conserve or reduce the amount

Type: Contest

Eligibility: Anyone from around the world, aged between 18 and 35 (as of 30 June 2017), who is working on an initiative in one of our four categories; Farm to Table, Opportunities for Women, Waste and Water. Your initiative must have already progressed beyond the idea stage and started making an impact.

Selection Process: The Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Awards will recognise up to eight winners in 2017. Two finalists in each of the four categories will be selected from a video interview process and invited to an Accelerator Programme in Cambridge, where they will work with experts from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, Unilever and other guest experts.

A winner will be selected out of each of the four categories. Those category winners will go forward to pitch to a guest judging panel who will then decide on the overall winner of the 2017 competition.

Number of Awards: 8

Value of Program:  The overall winner will receive the ‘HRH The Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize.’

All will attend a special prize event hosted in London.

• The winner of the ‘HRH The Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize’ will receive a €50,000 cash award and one-to-one mentoring support tailored to their specific needs for a duration of 12 months.
• The category winners will receive a €10,000 cash award and one-to-one mentoring support tailored to their specific needs for a duration of 12 months.
• The category finalists will receive a €7,000 cash award and one-to-one mentoring support tailored to their specific needs for a duration of 12 months.

How to Apply: To submit your entry, you’ll need to create a profile and complete the application form. You’ll need to tell us all about your initiative’s story so far, and your vision for its future. The more you can share, the better.

Apply here

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: Unilever

EducationUSA Opportunity Funds Program (OFP) for Undergraduate and Graduate Nigerian Students 2017

Application Deadline: 16th June 2017

Eligible Countries: Nigeria

To be taken at (country): United States

About the Award: There are many determined and talented, low-income students in Nigeria who only require financial resources and access to information to better their educational future. For the 11th year, the United States Embassy, Nigeria seeks to identify academically qualified and highly motivated, low-income students in Nigeria to join the EducationUSA Opportunity Funds Program (OFP).

OFP’s mission is to assist talented and determined, low-income students who are good candidates for financial assistance from U.S. colleges and universities but lack the financial resources to cover the up-front cost of obtaining admission.

OFP works closely with students through regularly scheduled meetings and seminars to assist them throughout the application process to secure admission and scholarships to attend colleges and universities in the United States. OFP finances the cost of the application process, including registration fees for required standardized examinations and provides free membership to the U.S. EducationUSA Advising Center for its participants. OFP expects a sincere commitment from the students to give their energy and time to the program so that they may achieve their dreams of study in the United States.

Type: Undergraduate, Graduate

Eligibility: Applicants are welcome from all the states in Nigeria. However, students must be able to reach our offices in Abuja or Lagos on a monthly basis during the program for full participation. Participants will work with our EducationUSA Advisors from June 2017 – August 2018 to try to secure places and financial assistance to begin study in the U.S. in August 2018.

Selection Criteria: The selection of finalists for OFP is highly competitive, given limited funding. We look for applicants with:

• Strong academic record/ transcript
• Robust participation in extracurricular activities
• Involvement in leadership roles
• Excellent community service participation
• Financial Need

NOTE:  Undergraduate Applicants– If WAEC results are not available; the student must be currently in SS3. If WAEC results are available, they must be from May/June WAEC.

Students who have already started a University education are NOT eligible to apply.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Program: OFP finances the cost of the application process, including registration fees for required standardized examinations and provides free membership to the U.S. EducationUSA Advising Center for its participants.

How to Apply: Send an email to AbujaEducationusa@state.gov or LagosEducationusa@state.gov requesting an electronic undergraduate or graduate application form.

Then, fill and send relevant documents listed in the Program Webpage (link below) to AbujaEducationusa@state.gov or LagosEducationusa@state.gov

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: EducationUSA

Important Notes: Entrance into this program is no guarantee of a scholarship or financial assistance to study in the US.

Crushing Puerto Rico: Drastic Budget Cuts Will Only Deepen Debt Crisis

Michael Sainato

Puerto Rico’s debt crisis has been in a downward trajectory for years as the U.S. Territory’s debt has ballooned to over $120 billion. On May 17, federal court proceedings began with it’s creditors on how to restructure the debt. The territory is ineligible for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, like what the City of Detroit filed, causing Puerto Rico to seek relief in federal court.

The impacts of the debt crisis have been devastating for Puerto Rico and its residents. Public health and infrastructure projects have been place on hold, a brain drain caused by drastic education cuts has been forcing people to migrate from the territory, and will likely have long-lasting economic consequences for the region, and government workers’ pensions will take substantial losses.

“The failings of the local government to really develop and solve the economic development policy or strategy have condemned Puerto Rico to the collapse that we have slowly, and more recently, more quickly, seen in the economy. I blame congress, I blame the local government, the elite, and I blame the bondholders each for not doing what they had to do to ensure that we did not end up where we are,” Dr. Hector Cordero Guzman, a Professor at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College of the City University of New York, told me in a phone interview.

Vulture hedge funds swooped into Puerto Rico to capitalize on the debt crisis, buying up bonds after prices dropped and now hope in court to recover as close to 100 percent of the original bond value as possible. Obama signed the bipartisan Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act in June 2016, forcing those hedge funds to negotiate with the Puerto Rican Government, though Slate reported, the act keeps Puerto Rico, “reliant on well-heeled lawyers and consultants for the foreseeable future—all without contemplating the new revenue needed to pay for them,” likely putting Puerto Rico’s economy on hold for years until the negotiations eventually come to an agreement.

While the hedge funds may not profit as much as they would have initially liked off Puerto Rico’s crisis, younger generations are paying the price as the largest budget cuts in public higher education in the history of the United States paralyze local universities. Students have led protests and several faculty have resigned and protested.

Dr. Cordero-Guzman added, “students are up in arms, and many campuses of the university are closed. There are threats to universally do away with the entire university, and then end up blaming the students for having closed it, when this was perhaps the plan all along. It’s troublesome and disconcerting, and the public should really be informed about what Puerto Rico, and University of Puerto Rico has been asked to do right now.” He argued the university system is the largest source of human capital for Puerto Rico, and the debt crisis will not be solved by allowing the largest driver of economic growth in the region to disappear.  “Puerto Rico needs capital, and Puerto Rico needs ideas for the development of particular industry media, in tourism, in services, so it can be globally competitive. That requires funding, that requires capital, that requires support, that requires infrastructure, and on the case of bankruptcy, it really doesn’t have the resources to be able to do this thing.”

Dr. Guzman-Cordero noted that the current crisis in Puerto Rico needs immediate and long-term economic development solutions through policy to end the crisis. If the Puerto Rican economy continues to decline, the debt crisis will only worsen. He added, “the question is, do we want to let Puerto Rico go down on a debt spiral, and migration to continue on an accelerated pace, and giant segments of the population move to the mainland? Or are we going to do something to stop that debt spiral? The only way to do it is through investment and resources, and concerted know-how being put to use in Puerto Rico. As opposed to a control board simply asking for budget cuts, and treating this as an accounting exercise.”

Canada’s Mess in the Caribbean

Yves Engler

A recent photo in French daily Liberation hints at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce’s role in facilitating tax avoidance, which is partly an outgrowth of Canadian banking prowess in the Caribbean and Ottawa’s role in shaping the region’s unsavoury financial sector.

Just before the second round of the French presidential election documents were leaked purporting to show that Emmanuel Macron set up a company in a Caribbean tax haven. The president-elect’s firm is alleged to have had dealings with CIBC FirstCaribbean, a subsidiary of Canada’s fifth biggest bank.

While Macron denies setting up an offshore firm and contests the veracity of the documents, this is immaterial to the broader point. If the documents are a fraudulent political attack, those responsible chose CIBC First Caribbean because it is a major player in the region and has been linked to various tax avoidance schemes.

CIBC registered 632 companies and private foundations in the tax haven of the Bahamas between 1990 and May 2016, according to documents released in the Panama Papers.

CIBC was named 1,347 times in a cache of leaked files concerning secret tax havens released by the Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 2013.

FirstCaribbean was implicated in the 2015 FIFA corruption scandal. To avoid an electronic trail of a $250,000 payment to former FIFA official Chuck Blazer, a representative of FirstCaribbean allegedly flew to New York to collect a cheque and deposit it in a Bahamas account.

In 2013 the US Internal Revenue Service sent FirstCaribbean a summons for information on some of its customers who may have been evading US income tax and the CIBC subsidiary was placed on an IRS list of “financial institutions where taxpayers receive a harsher penalty if they are found to have undisclosed accounts.”

CIBC is apparently popular with wealthy, well-placed Africans. Economist Thierry Godefroy and legal expert Pierre Lascoumes write that the “Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is known as the bank of many African dignitaries” while French Africa specialist François-Xavier Verschave called it “the nefarious CIBC, favourite bank of African oil dictators.” In 1997, for instance, the Toronto-based financial institution was the conduit of a $22 million transfer from Geneva to the British Virgin Islands for Kourtas, which was owned by Gabonese dictator Omar Bongo.

CIBC is not only the Canadian bank with operations in a Caribbean financial haven. In fact, Canadian institutions dominate the region’s unsavoury banking sector. In 2013 CIBC, RBC and Scotiabank accounted for more than 60 percent of regional banking assets. In 2008 The Economist reported Canadian banks controlled “the English-speaking Caribbean’s three largest banks, with $42 billion in assets, four times those commanded by its forty-odd remaining locally owned banks.” With their presence in the region dating to the 1830s, Canadian banks have been major players in the Caribbean since the late 1800s.

(Going back further, much of the capital used to establish the current incarnation of CIBC came from supplying the Caribbean slave colonies. The Halifax Banking Company was the first bank in Nova Scotia and the founding unit of today’s CIBC. The Halifax Banking Company’s leading shareholder and initial president, Enos Collins, was a ship owner, who made his wealth by bringing high-protein, salty Atlantic cod to the Caribbean to keep hundreds of thousands of “enslaved people working 16 hours a day.” He was also a privateer, licensed by the state to seize enemy boats during wartime, and according to a biography, likely captured and resold slaves in the region.)

Ottawa shaped post-independence Caribbean banking regulations. Beginning in 1955, a former governor of the Bank of Canada and director of the Royal Bank of Canada, Graham Towers, along with a representative from the Ministry of Finance, helped write the Bank of Jamaica law of 1960 and that country’s Banking Law of 1960. These laws, which became the model for the rest of the newly independent English Caribbean, pleased Canadian banks. In The Banks of Canada in the Commonwealth CaribbeanDaniel Jay Baum writes, “the overall and firm impression with which one is left after reading the [Bank] Act is that its drafters did not intend to control the foreign operations of Canadian banks, or that if they intended to, they failed to do so.” More to the point, notes Towers of Gold, feet of clay: the Canadian banks, “West Indian banking laws, when they were written, were written with our help and advice and for our benefit.”

Alain Deneault details the work of Canadian politicians, businessmen and Bank of Canada officials in developing taxation and banking policies in a number of Caribbean financial havens in his 2015 book Canada: A New Tax Haven: How the Country That Shaped Caribbean Tax Havens Is Becoming One Itself. Deneault writes: “Beginning in the 1950s, at the instigation of Canadian financiers, lawyers, and policymakers, these jurisdictions changed to become some of the world’s most frighteningly accommodating jurisdictions. In 1955, a former governor of the Bank of Canada most probably helped make Jamaica into a reduced-taxation country. In the 1960s, as the Bahamas were becoming a tax haven characterized by impenetrable bank secrecy, the Bahamian finance minister was a member of the board of administrators of the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). A Calgary lawyer and former Conservative Party honcho drew up the clauses that enabled the Cayman Islands to become an opaque offshore jurisdiction.”

Another way Canada has enabled the offshore financial infrastructure is by signing tax treaties and Tax Information Exchange Agreements with Caribbean tax havens. Due to a 2011 Tax Information Exchange Agreement, Deneault writes, “subsidiaries of Canadian companies that record their profits in the Caymans can now transfer them to Canada without paying any taxes.”

While they’ve proliferated in recent years, the first double taxation treaty Canada signed with a Caribbean tax haven dates to Wayne Gretzky’s inaugural season in the NHL. In 1980, Joe Clark’s short-lived Conservative government signed a double taxation treaty with Barbados. This allowed Canadians to park their international profits in Barbados, which taxes companies at between 0.25% and 2.5%, and transfer them here without paying tax in Canada.

Ottawa has actively defended the Caribbean financial system. In response to a push for greater regulation of the offshore world, in 2009 Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty told the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund (where Canada represents most members of the Commonwealth Caribbean as well as Ireland): “Some of our Caribbean countries have significant financial sector activities. There is a risk that changes to financial sector regulation in advanced countries could have negative unintended consequences on these activities. In particular, there is a risk that measures taken against non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens, could have unintended negative impacts on well-regulated, transparent, financial centres. I believe that this should be avoided. Countries that comply with international standards should be protected from such measures.”

Canada has shaped the Caribbean’s opaque financial sector and CIBC seems to be at the centre of international offshore tax avoidance.

Let’s go Canada! Time to clean up the mess we created in the Caribbean.

Neurology Study Reveals What We Already Know: People of Color Get Worse Healthcare

JESS GUH

Maybe one day we’ll spend more energy addressing racism instead of continuing to prove it exists.

In the most recent issue of Neurology, Dr. Altaf Saadi and colleagues reveal the disheartening news that African Americans and Hispanic Americans receive lower quality neurologic care than their white counterparts.

Analyzing data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey from 2006-2013, they found that Black patients were 30% less likely to see an outpatient neurologist even after adjusting for social factors such as insurance coverage. Hispanic patients were 40% less likely.

They looked at neurologic diseases such as stroke, headache, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and epilepsy. According to the CDC, strokes kill over 130,000 Americans each year, about 5% of deaths. Strokes are also the leading cause of long-term disability. Furthermore, the risk of stroke is nearly twice as high for Black Americans as opposed to whites. Yet, despite higher rates of stroke, Black Americans are seeing neurologists, the experts on strokes, less.

The authors postulate that there are likely simultaneous factors. The first factor they cite is low health literacy. Not only are patients unaware of all the possible follow up care than prevent another stroke or minimize the impact of a recent one, folks might not even recognize the symptoms of stroke, multiple sclerosis, or Parkinson’s disease to begin with.

Folks of color are more likely to have their care across more than one healthcare system making it difficult for the primary care doctor, the emergency room doctor, the neurologist, and the hospital doctor to coordinate their care. If you live in the Southeastern United States, the number of neurologic specialists is far lower than anywhere else in the country.

And finally, the impact of implicit bias and stereotyping cannot be underestimated. Though most doctors are well intentioned and would like to be “color-blind” study after study has shown that we have also absorbed the subtle messages that society sends us that folks of color are inferior or less deserving of care. As this study points out, even at high volume specialty sites, Black and Hispanic patients get delayed care compared to whites.

But perhaps the most distressing part of this article is that time and resources were put towards it at all. We already know that Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, get lower quality care and that they die younger because of it. David Hatcher, former Surgeon General reports that from 1991-2000, 880,000 excess deaths could have been averted had the health of Black Americans matched that of whites.

In fact, we’ve known this for almost 15 years. In 2003 the Institute of Medicine published a 764-page report that reviewed hundreds of studies. In the report, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, they found that even when controlling for factors outside of the hospital system (insurance coverage, location, severity of disease, socioeconomic status etc), disparities remain. The bottom-line? Not only does racism on a societal level cause people of color to have worse health outcomes, so do the unconscious biases of those working in the healthcare system.

In fact, Unequal Treatment already looked at stroke outcomes.

We don’t need more studies showing that there are racial health inequities. We already know they exist. The authors of this study assert that this study is groundbreaking because it’s the first “nationwide stud[y] examin[ing] disparities in the use of neurologic care for people with a broad range of neurologic conditions.”

Why would there be any reason to think that this data would be any different then the hundreds of similar studies about race and medicine that have been done before? Furthermore, when it comes to naysayers, why would one more study help them understand if the hundreds of studies before didn’t in the first place?

Instead of spending precious resources on reproving what we already know, we should be spending it on trying to address the problem. In fact, implementing projects to close these racial inequities are quite difficult. While many attempts frequently improve outcomes overall, they do not impact the gap at all. Some even act to increase the disparity.

For example, we know that colonoscopy rates are lower amongst people of color. One intervention to try to address this is to send electronic messages or letters to patients reminding them when they are due for colon cancer screening. The problem with this is that it doesn’t help my patients who don’t speak English and don’t have access to the internet. At the same time, my white patients will find this useful at a much higher rate. While the intervention might improve colonoscopy rates across both groups, it will improve it more in the white group, thus actually making the disparity larger.

Addressing health inequity is not an easy task. Research is supposed to help us solve problems that we don’t know how to fix not tell us stuff we already know. We would be better off spending research time and money on finding solutions as opposed to “rediscovering” the same problem over and over again.

How Russia Became “Our Adversary” Again

Paul Street

United States-of-Americans are routinely told by politicians and corporate media pundits and talking heads that Russia is their enemy – an “adversary state.”  The assertion has been normalized.  It passes without challenge or justification.

Forget for now the question of whether and how “our adversary Russia” intervened significantly on Donald Trump’s behalf in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.  Put aside the glaring absence of any smoking gun evidence to back that charge up and contemplate the fundamental matter of how and why Vladimir Putin’s Russia became “our enemy” in the first place.

For those of us old enough to remember the long Cold War era, the designation of Russia as a leading global U.S. foe carries no small irony. From the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 until the collapse of the officially Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites in the early 1990s, Russia was an ideological and political enemy of the Western capitalist “elite.”

The USSR was no workers’ paradise.  For all its formal allegiance to Marx and Engels, it was a militantly hierarchical class society ruled by a tyrannical state. After World War Two, it held brutal military power over Eastern Europe and East Germany. Still, Soviet-era Russia created an urban and industrialized society with real civilizational accomplishments (including cradle-to-grave health-care, housing, and food security and an impressive educational system and cultural apparatus) outside capitalism.  It pursued an independent path to modernity without a capitalist class, devoid of a bourgeoisie, in the name of socialism. It therefore posed a political and ideological challenge to U.S-led Western capitalism – and to Washington’s related plans for the Third World periphery, which was supposed to subordinate its developmental path to the needs of the rich nations (the U.S., Western Europe, and honorarily white Japan) of the world-capitalist core.

Honest U.S. Cold Warriors knew that it was the political threat of “communism” – its appeal to poor nations and people (including the lower and working classes within rich/core states) – and not any serious military danger that constituted the true “Soviet menace.”  Contrary to U.S. “containment” doctrine after World War II, the ruling Soviet bureaucracy was concerned above all with keeping an iron grip on its internal and regional empire, not global expansion and “world revolution.” It did, however “deter…the worst of Western violence” (Noam Chomsky) by providing military and other assistance to Third World targets of U.S. and Western attack (including China, Korea, Indonesia, Egypt, Syria, Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos).  Along the way, it provided an example of independent development outside and against the capitalist world system advanced by the superpower headquartered in Washington.

To make matters worse from Washington’s “Open Door” perspective, the Soviet Empire kept a vast swath of the world’s natural and human resources walled off from profitable exploitation by global capital.

All of this was more than enough to mark the Soviet Union as global public enemy number one for the post-WWII U.S. power elite, which had truly planet-wide imperial ambitions, unlike Moscow.

The Soviet deterrent and alternative to U.S.-led capitalism-imperialism collapsed once and for all in the early 1990s.  Washington celebrated with unchallenged invasions of Panama and Iraq. The blood-drenched U.S. President George H.W. Bush exulted that “what we say goes” in a newly unipolar, post-Soviet world. Russia reverted to not-so “free market” capitalism under U.S.-led Western financial supervision and in accord with the savage austerity and inequality imposed by the neoliberal “Washington consensus.” Chomsky got it right in 1991.  “With the collapse of Soviet tyranny,” he wrote, “much of the region can be expected to return to its traditional [subordinate] status, with the former high echelons of the bureaucracy playing the role of the Third World elites that enrich themselves while serving the interests of foreign investors.” The consequences were disastrous for many millions of ordinary Russians.

The West said, “welcome to the machine” and “enjoy your new freedom to starve and die young.” The Soviet tyranny was turned into an oligarchs’ wonderland, a neoliberal wasteland combining untold new opulence for the fortunate Few with a stark decline in social and living standards for the Many.  Russia remains a capitalist nightmare and plutocrats’ playground.

So, what happened?  How did “our” Cold War super-enemy become “our” brand new top “adversary” all over again, more than a quarter century after the tearing down of the Berlin Wall? The bottom line is that proud, post-Cold War Russia finally experienced too much brazen humiliation and betrayal at the hands of the U.S.-led West. It got up off the canvass under national/nationalist strongman Putin (a former KGB Lieutenant-Colonel wise in the ways of the West) and marshalled enough of still-intact natural and military resources and patriotic to challenge the American Empire’s hubristic claim to the right to rule Eurasia with impunity. “What we say goes” hit a new wall of Russian dignity and power.

One of the many dirty little secrets of the U.S. Cold War was that anti-communism functioned as a pretext and cover for Washington’s Wall Street-fueled ambition to force open and run the entire world system in accord with its multinational corporate elite’s globalist- “Open Door” political-economic needs.  From this imperial perspective, the real Cold War enemy was not so much “communism” as other peoples’ struggles for national, local, and regional autonomy and independence. The enemy remains long after the statues of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin have come down.

It doesn’t matter than Russia is no longer “socialist.” Nationalist and regional push-back against Uncle “We Own the World” Sam has been more than sufficient to get Putin designated as the next official Hitler and Russia targeted as a malevolent opponent by the U.S. elite political class and media. Mike Whitney puts it very well in a recent CounterPunch essay:

“What has Russia done to deserve all the negative press and unsupported claims of criminal meddling?…Just look at a map. For the last 16 years, the US has been rampaging across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Washington intends to control critical oil and natural gas reserves in the ME, establish military bases across Central Asia, and remain the dominant player in an area of that is set to become the most populous and prosperous region of the world…”

“But one country has upset that plan, blocked that plan, derailed that plan. Russia. Russia has stopped Washington’s murderous marauding and genocidal depredations in Ukraine and Syria, which is why the US foreign policy establishment is so pissed-off.  US elites aren’t used to obstacles.”

“For the last quarter of a century – since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union – the world had been Washington’s oyster. If the president of the United States wanted to invade a country in the Middle East, kill a million people, and leave the place in a smoldering pile of rubble, then who could stop him? …Nobody.  Because Washington owns this fu**ing planet and everyone else is just a visitor…Capisce?.”

“But now all that’s changed. Now evil Putin has thrown up a roadblock to US hegemony in Syria and Ukraine. Now Washington’s land-bridge to Central Asia has been split in two, and its plan to control vital pipeline corridors from Qatar to the EU is no longer viable. Russia has stopped Washington dead-in-its tracks and Washington is furious.”

“The anti-Russia hysteria in the western media is equal to the pain the US foreign policy establishment is currently experiencing. And the reason the foreign policy establishment is in so much pain, is because they are not getting their way.  It’s that simple. Their global strategy is in a shamble because Russia will not let them topple the Syrian government, install their own puppet regime, redraw the map of the Middle East, run roughshod over international law, and tighten their grip on another battered war-torn part of the world.”

“So now… Putin must be demonized and derided. The American people must be taught to hate Russia and all-things Russian…Russia must be blamed for anything and everything under the sun…”

Forget the charges of Trump-Russia collusion.  Trump’s main Russia problem is that he came into the White House from outside the elite Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) ruling class establishment.  Unlike the plugged-in U.S. power and imperial elite, the orange-haired brute never got the Zbigniew Brzezinski-crafted, David Rockefeller-endorsed CFR memo on the grave peril Moscow still poses to “the international system sponsored by the United States.”  (True, it’s unlikely that Trump could have followed the memo). Candidate Trump showed his lack of ruling class credentials by admiring Putin’s authoritarian manliness and calling for a stand-down from Obama and Hillary Clinton’s reckless, Brzezinski-esque provocation of the Kremlin in Eastern Europe and Syria. He foolishly called for normalized relations with the vodka-swilling Eurasian power that arose from the grave to once again become Washington’s “all-purpose [global] punching bag” (Whitney).

After Herr Donald was ironically installed in the White House by leading Russophobe and  “lying neoliberal warmonger” (LNW) Hillary Clinton, Russia-hating took on a new and seductive political meaning for Democrats and their many U.S. media allies. The Russiagate narrative has proved irresistible to these actors for three basic reasons. First, they have naturally wanted to delegitimize the early Trump administration for standard partisan reasons. They’ve seen tarring Trump as a treasonous friend of a leading “foreign adversary” as useful for that purpose.

Second, highly placed NATO-expansionist New Cold Warriors in both major parties (e.g., John McCain) and the media have wanted to keep the heat on Moscow. The baseless Russia election-hacking and collusion charges have been tools for the New Cold War camp to hedge in Trump’s promises of rapprochement with Russia. The Russiagate scam is part of why Clockwork Orangutan found it necessary to absurdly tell Russia to “give Crimea back” to Ukraine and why he theatrically launched 59 cruise missiles onto a Syrian airbase.

Third, the Russian interference allegation has been made in part to help the DNC and the neoliberal Democratic Party establishment avoid responsibility for blowing the 2016 election. The Democrats ran a wooden, Wall Street-captive, and corruption-tainted candidate (the aforementioned LNW) and a vapid and elitist campaign that couldn’t mobilize enough working- and lower-class voters to defeat the epically noxious and unpopular Trump in key states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. The “Moscow stole it” narrative is a fancy version of “The dog [bear?] ate my homework” for a dismal dollar-drenched Democratic Party that abandoned the working class and the causes of peace, social justice and environmental sustainability long ago.

The “inauthentic opposition” party (as the late Sheldon Wolin aptly described the neoliberal Democratic Party) would rather not take a long, hard and honest look at what it has become. It does not want to concede anything to those who dream (naively) of turning it into an authentic peoples’ and opposition party with a bold progressive vision and agenda. The “Russia did it” charge works for establishment Democrats hoping to stave off demands from leftish-progressive-populist types in their own party.

This perverse political logic works to sustain the strange new neo-McCarthyite anti-Russian madness, which is rooted in the U.S. imperial agenda, not any relevant Russian influence on U.S. life and politics.