Rave Foundation Training Scholarships for Developing Countries 2018 – Germany

Application Deadline: 15th May, 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Countries in Transition and Developing countries

To be taken at (country): Germany

Eligible Fields: 

• curators
• restorers
• museum technicians
• cultural managers

About the Award: Rave Scholarships support further practical training for young curators, restorers, museum technicians and cultural managers from countries in transition and developing countries who have arranged a guest period, a practical training or non-paid work at a museum, at a non-commercial gallery or at a non-commercial cultural institution in Germany.

The Rave Foundation is an independent charitable foundation administered by the ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen). Ifa is a mediating organization for German foreign cultural policy.

Type: Contest, Short courses

Eligibility: Scholarships will be awarded to candidates:

• who come from a transformation or developing country and are still living there,
• who did not have the opportunity yet to come for a longer stay or did not have further training or working stay in Germany,
• who finished their professional training not longer than five years ago and are not yet over 40. Those still studying or training at the time of application will not be considered for selection,
• who have found a non-commercial partner institution in Germany that has agreed to take care of them or agreed to a joint project,
• who can provide a positive statement from their own country (reference),
• Knowledge of one of the three languages German, English or French is a requirement.

Applicants who were rejected once cannot apply again.

Selection Process: The Rave Foundation committee will assess all applications. There is no legal claim to the award of a scholarship. The decision will be conveyed to the applicant in writing without stating reasons. Selections will be made within 3 months.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: 

• a monthly lump sum of 1,300 €uros
• travelling expenses (to and from Germany)
• health insurance

Duration of Scholarship: 3 to 6 months

How to Apply: The application should be accompanied by

• a fully completed application form,
• a CV (3 pages max.), including educational qualifications,
• a project sketch (1 page) developed together with the German institution – informing about tasks and responsibilities of the planned visit to Germany,
• consent form a non-commercial German institution to care for the applicant during the scholarship period in Germany,
• a letter of reference from the home country,
• an abridged report (1 page max.) on the current art scene in the home country
• a letter of motivation (1 page max.)

Applications are submitted by e-mail or mail to

Rave Foundation
c/o Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen
Charlottenplatz 17
D-70173 Stuttgart
Fax +49.711.2225194
rave-stiftung(at)ifa.de

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)

Afghanistan: Why We Won’t Leave

Peter LaVenia

Trump’s recent decision to add troops in Afghanistan has nothing to do with combating terrorism (or mining mineral resources, or confusing militants as to when the U.S. military might finally leave), no matter what the endless stream of pundits and think-pieces have argued since it was announced. After 16 years of occupation the Taliban control 48 of nearly 400 administrative units, the Islamic State has established a foothold, the United States supplies almost the entirety of the military and civilian budget, the Afghan military is incapable of functioning without U.S. support, opium production has increased so that Afghanistan supplies 77% of the world’s heroin, and by the end of the next fiscal year the total cost of the 16-year Afghan war alone will be $1 trillion. Afghanistan and Pakistan have engaged in their worst border clashes in years as militants shift back and forth between both countries at will. Chinese troops operate openly in the country and conduct joint security exercises with Afghan forces. Russia is now debating a military intervention, ostensibly to counter the growing Taliban threat.

Trump, like Obama, had promised on the campaign trail to end the war. The war itself is deeply unpopular, and his stance on ending the war (like Obama’s before it) may have helped secure his victory in crucial states with high casualty rates. Now less than a year into his term Trump has decided to increase troop levels by 3,900, which his generals had requested earlier this summer. Since it is unlikely to help his dismal popularity ratings, what rationale would he have to do so? The usual suspects – combating terrorism and stabilizing the Afghan state – collapse quickly with even cursory investigation. After 16 years the Afghan government is little more than a puppet state, and after spending nearly a trillion dollars the United States clearly has no desire to build an economy and social programs that would modernize the country and loosen the reactionary social relations that give the Taliban and IS strength. The plan itself is one simply recycled from the early Obama era when Joe Biden was its pitchman.

No doubt this is, in good part, due to the inertia of the American empire. Representatives of the military-industrial complex have done very well selling the War on Terror; the ruling class – or the Power Elite if you prefer – seem to have a consensus that the war must continue not only to aid their own pockets and to give the military a place to test its new toys, but also because the empire should not voluntarily leave a place once it has been conquered. While it is true that Trump has staffed his administration at higher levels with generals, the national-security state’s apparatus seems to be able to control policy much like previous regimes. It is merely more visible because Trump’s unpredictable nature has caused the apparatus to show its face more often than it likes, and the generals have been more willing to accept roles with overt policy-making implications that in previous eras would have been done behind closed doors.

The real reason is that Afghanistan is a forward operating base for the U.S. military in Asia in its attempts to counter China’s inevitable rise, whatever the official justifications for maintaining troops there are. China’s $900 billion Belt and Road Initiative aims to lay the trans-continental infrastructure to allow its transition from great power to world-hegemon. Its projected land routes go north around Afghanistan and south through Pakistan. Given that the United States recently began a “Pivot to Asia” strategy aimed at building an economic and military partnership with Asian states to balance China, and that the economic side of that – the Transpacific Partnership – was temporarily defeated, there has been an increased emphasis on its military part by the national security state.

In addition, India, alarmed at China’s rise and open provocation on its eastern flank, has already signed an historic agreement to allow U.S. warships and aircraft to use Indian bases for “refueling, repair, and other logistical purposes.” The United States conducted joint naval war games with India and Japan this summer. It is clear that the United States is turning towards India at the same time as Pakistan moves closer to China’s sphere of influence. China has signaled its displeasure at these containment efforts, even as it expands its military footprint into the South China Sea and Africa. Given that Afghanistan borders the northern and southern route of China’s New Silk Road, and India has openly aligned itself with the United States, what is the likelihood of American troops leaving Afghanistan?

Because of this, it is more likely we will see an open-ended presence of the U.S. military in Afghanistan than troops leaving for good at any point in the short or medium-term. Indeed, there is no domestic political group that will force the war to end. The anti-war Left in the United States is virtually non-existent outside of a small fraction of consistently anti-imperialist groups. Bush and Obama’s presidencies proved the bulk of protesters over the last decade to be anti-Republican Wars, but quite happy to ignore the imperial actions of a Democrat. The litmus test for any leftist movement going forward has to be its stance on foreign policy and consistent, unwavering anti-imperialism. Until then the rationale for keeping troops in Afghanistan is just too great for the American empire as it looks to balance the rise of China and to shore up alliances with regional powers like India. America’s longest war will get that much longer, and unfortunately there’s not much yet we are likely to do about it.

Haiti in Crisis: What Next After the Stolen Election?

ROBERT ROTH

Addressing an overflow audience in Oakland in late April, Dr. Maryse Narcisse, presidential candidate of Fanmi Lavalas, the party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, spoke about the necessity of reforming the justice system, investing in education and health, and the decisive role of women in the fight for democracy. Reflecting on the devastation wrought by both the 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew, she focused on the growing threats posed by climate change to the island nation and the need for a vigorous environmental campaign to meet that threat. She emphasized that the Lavalasmovement “places human beings at the center.”

Dr. Narcisse spoke in the wake of the selection of Haiti’s new president, Jovenel Moise, a right-wing businessmen and protégé of former president Michel Martelly, who took office via an electoral process so replete with fraud and voter suppression that opposition forces called it an “electoral coup.” She denounced the stolen elections and the corrupt electoral commission that validated the outcome.  But she reiterated that the deteriorating economic and social conditions in Haiti would be the catalyst for renewed protest in the days and months ahead. “There is no choice”, she stated, “but for the people to resist. And Lavalas will be there to support them.”

We can see the truth of this throughout Haiti. Market women – the very heart of Haiti’s economy and the foundation of so many Haitian families’ ability to survive – have been targeted by police trying to move them off the streets of Port-au-Prince, where they have been selling their goods for generations.  When the women organized themselves and refused to move, police burned down their stalls.

On July 10 – 12, 2017, during three days of peaceful protest for an increase in the minimum wage, Haitian police attacked the workers from the industrial park in Port-au-Prince with tear gas, batons and cannons shooting a liquid skin irritant. They beat a woman who had recently returned to work from giving birth. A few days later, a young book vendor was shot to death in Petionville, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, by a police officer in front of horrified witnesses, who tried to prevent the police from quickly removing the body and covering up the crime. They were attacked with batons and tear gas.

There has been a 35 cents increase in the price of gasoline – which was already higher than what we pay here in the United States. The government has also announced plans to reduce government subsidies for oil and gas, which will send the price even higher. The rise in the cost of transportation combined with a hike in the price of food has made already untenable living conditions even worse for the vast majority of Haitians.

Former president Michel Martelly came to power in 2011 touting his plan to build new schools and make education free for all.  Instead, investment in public education has remained stagnant while tuition for private schooling has skyrocketed. Teachers have been on strike for months, demanding that they be paid after not receiving their salaries for up to two years.  This despite the fact the Haitian government adds a surcharge to every international phone call and money transfer, supposedly to fund education. Students have also protested, both in support of their teachers and to denounce the failure of the government to invest in their education. They too have been met with violent repression, exemplified by a recent incident when the rector of the National University of Haiti used his SUV to run over a student protester, landing the student in the hospital in critical condition. A video captured the gruesome sequence. No charges have been filed in the case.

The Haitian government has a solution for the crisis in education – more prisons. There are now more than 10,000 Haitians locked up in prison, the majority of whom have never been charged or sentenced.  Prisoners are frequently beaten, receive no health care, and live in overcrowded cells, where epidemics spread rapidly. When United Nations soldiers from Nepal introduced cholera to Haiti in 2010, the disease swept through Haiti’s prisons, killing hundreds. At the recent opening of a new prison in Haiti’s central plateau, the head of Haiti’s national police, Michel-Ange Gedeon, boasted about the increase in prison construction, saying:  “In every society, whenever schools fail in their mission, prisons are built in a cascade to try to right the ship.  If offenders are to be neutralized, then prisons are needed to contain them.”  This is Haiti’s version of mass incarceration, so well known to Black and Brown communities here in the U.S.

Now there are new political prisoners – many of them associated with the Lavalas movement – who were arrested during the sustained wave of protests over the stolen elections.  As living conditions worsen and protests sharpen, the prisons will fill even more.

All of this, added to the impact of Hurricane Matthew (the biggest storm to hit Haiti in 50 years) has led more Haitians to flee the country. In early July, the Coast Guard intercepted and sent back to Haiti 107 Haitians in a small, dangerously overcrowded boat south of the Bahamas. There are over 4,000 Haitians right now in Tijuana, living in refugee camps. Recruited by occupying forces of Brazil to work in the Rio Olympics, they were pushed out after the Games ended.  Hoping for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the United States, which has been granted to Haitians since the 2010 earthquake, they instead have been deported or placed in detention camps if they cross the border.  When Haitian president Moise traveled to the United States and met with Vice President Mike Pence in June, he refused to meet with Haitians worried about the changes in their TPS status, telling them to “calm down.” In their joint communiqué, Pence and Moise did not mention the migration crisis but did pledge to jointly pursue “an economic reform agenda to attract investment and generate growth. Moise’s handshake with Pence symbolized just how much of a compliant partner his regime is with the U.S. government as it seeks even more control over Haiti’s economy and future.

The United Nations Military Occupation Forces (MINUSTAH), which has functioned as a colonial overseer since the 2004 coup, is set to scale down its operation, but will remain in Haiti under its new acronym MINUJUSTH (United Nations Mission For Justice Support). MINUJUSTH will consist of 1185 police officers, and will continue to train and support the Haitian National Police – the same police who beat, tear-gassed and shot pro-democracy protesters during the last electoral cycle.

Lieutenant General Cesar Lopes Loureiro, the head of the Brazilian forces that have been in command of MINUSTAH since the beginning of the occupation, recently issued a glowing report on the accomplishments of MINUSTAH. But he was silent about UN responsibility for the cholera outbreak, and failed to mention the numerous cases of rape and other sexual assaults by UN soldiers. The UN has still not compensated the victims of the cholera epidemic, and it has given impunity to the many soldiers charged with raping Haitians during the long occupation.  And there was not one word about the killings by UN soldiers of people in pro-Lavalas neighborhoods like Cite Soleil and Bel-Air, or in the Port-au-Prince prison. Whether the UN calls its operations MINUSTAH or MINJUSTH, the continued presence of its forces, even in the guise of a reframed mission, is a clear assault on Haiti’s sovereignty.

What now looms on the horizon is the resurrection of the Haitian military. This has been a key goal of right-wing Haitian forces since President Aristide got rid of the army in 1995. Jovenel Moise has stated that he wants the army in place within two years. The beginnings of that new army have been in the works for years, training at military bases in Ecuador.

In a statement to the Miami Herald, the president of the Haitian Senate, Yuri Latortue, who was a central organizer of the 2004 coup, said, “In Haiti we are used to having an army.” Referring to the U.S. occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934, which created the modern Haitian army, Latortue went on to say, and “The Americans understood that if we have the police but not an army, we will not get anywhere.”

When Haitian activists speak of the Haitian Army, there is a chill in the air. Before Aristide disbanded it, 40% of Haiti’s budget went to the military. In a country with fewer than two doctors per 10,000 people, there was one soldier per 1,000 people. The Army has long been Haiti’s central institution of repression; the main organizer of coups against elected officials, helping to enforce the Duvalier dictatorships and those that followed before the rise of Lavalas. It was the Haitian Army that overthrew Aristide in 1991 and initiated a reign of terror that took over 5000 lives before Aristide returned in 1994.

The goal of the 2004 coup, like the 1991 coup that preceded it, was not only to topple the Aristide government, but also to rid the country of the powerful grassroots movement that has activated, energized and given voice to Haiti’s poor. That goal has not been accomplished. A stolen election cannot hide this reality.

Throughout her campaign, Dr. Narcisse, often accompanied by former President Aristide, was greeted by tens of thousands of supporters in the poorest communities of Haiti. A vibrant Lavalas presence was evident across the country. In the face of decades of COINTELPRO-style counterinsurgency, including imprisonment, the killing and exile of thousands, attempts to buy off activists and encourage internal strife, Lavalas once again showed its significant base among Haiti’s majority population. In or out of government, this strength will serve as a bulwark against the harsh austerity program already being put into place by Moise and his U.S. sponsors.

At the end of her speech in Oakland, Dr. Narcisse highlighted the grassroots work of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy. In the midst of the cholera epidemic, mobile health clinics from the Foundation treated patients who had nowhere else to go.  After the devastation caused by Hurricane Matthew, President Aristide and Lavalas activists went to Les Cayes, Jeremie and other hard-hit areas to provide medical support, food and clothing. On Haitian Mother’s Day, hundreds of women filled the Foundation to get medical care for themselves and their children.  Other clinics took place in mid-July, including on President Aristide’s birthday on July 15^th. And the University of the Aristide Foundation (UNIFA) continues to grow, providing higher education for over 1,200 students, most of whom could never afford other universities in Haiti.

This is a movement that is not going away. As Lavalas digs in for the long haul, those in solidarity with Haiti have to do so as well.

Language Wars

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin

If it is a truism that after a war the victor writes the history, then it could be argued that the victor also chooses the language in which the history will be written. If it is a war of the colonised against the coloniser then the language takes on a special significance as typically the coloniser imposes their language on the colonised.

Paulo Freire described the way in which cultural conquest leads to the cultural inauthenticity of those who are invaded. They then start to take up the outlook of the invader in terms of their values, standards and goals. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire wrote that cultural invasion would only succeed if the invaded believed in their own cultural inferiority. When convinced of their own inferiority they would see the coloniser and his culture as being superior. Over time, as people become more alienated from their own culture they would see only positives in the culture of the invader and desire to become more and more like them, “to walk like them, dress like them, talk like them.”

However, post-revolutionary, post-colonial situations are complex and reversal of cultural norms a difficult process. The African writer Chinua Achebe wrote about the problems of communication in post-colonial African countries asserting that African writers wrote in English and French because they are “by-products” of the revolutionary processes that led to new nations-states and not just taking advantage of the global French and English language book markets.

This then leads to a difficult situation with competing groups, some using the native languages for the first time on a state level competing with the remnants of the old order who may only be able to speak the language of the former coloniser. As new nation states, post-revolution, usually have more pressing practical problems that need to be dealt with, and in a language the majority can understand, the cultural aspects tend to be put on the back boiler until some time in the future when they may even be forgotten about entirely.

Yet, the regularity with which language issues crop up around the world today is significant and points to a sharpening of political tensions. As inter-élite competition increases, language becomes a battleground upon which political power is augmented or maintained.  The Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci identified the problem very clearly when he noted that the rise in language issues meant that something more serious was bubbling below the surface. He believed that the makeup and widening of the governing class and their need to have popular support led to a change in the cultural hegemony in society. This usually happens when different ethnic or language groups in society become dissatisfied with the services and benefits the state bestows on them and assert a new identity based on language and ethnic history.

In most post-colonial situations language issues centre around struggle over which languages will be taught in schools, the language used in parliament and national media, and even placenames and personal names. In a recent article by Aatish Taseer, he writes about the changing politics of India where placenames have become sites of contention.  He notes the fact that there are many competing ideas of history and even “names reflect that very basic need of having the world see you as you see yourself.” He believes that a former self-confidence in India has given way to a new oversensitivity and a desire to control India’s image.

Taseer sees the source of this oversensitivity as the strengthening of Hindu nationalism which has undergone changes in recent years. In the past people referred to Varanasi by its multiple names including its Muslim-era name Banaras and its ancient Sanskrit name, Kashi. The rise of Hindu nationalism has politicized culture and, according to Taseer, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has been built on a weaponized idea of history. Ignoring Muslim sensitivities as a minority ethnic group in India, the B.J.P. president, Amit Shah, described the Muslim period as part of a thousand-year history of slavery in Goa last year.

This monolithic view of Muslims and Muslim culture only serves to stereotype and demonise Muslims and imply that a minority group is oppressing a majority rather than the other way around. The maintenance of power by a linguistic and/or political majority by imposition of its beliefs and linguistic norms on a minority has a long history in Ireland since the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922. While initially the conservative nationalist forces which won the civil war after British withdrawal (except for the northern 6 counties) brought in some measures for the protection and promulgation of the Irish language (Gaelic), the project declined and soon became associated with the radical nationalist ideology of the defeated forces instead.

The weakness of the current situation for Gaelic can be illustrated with an example of a conservative backlash which played out in Dingle in 2011, a popular small town in the southwest of Ireland. The difficulties and complexities of name change could be seen in the decision to officially rename the town ‘An Daingean’, its original Gaelic name. As placenames in Ireland are in English (Anglicised versions of Gaelic names) and Gaelic, they can become focal points for cultural conflict as Gaelic speakers try to move away from historical colonial influence. The local people fought back and after six years the President at the time, Mary McAleese, reinstated the town’s name back to the Anglicised version ‘Dingle’. Many of the local people saw the Anglicised name as a tourism brand and feared a loss of business through tourist confusion with its Gaelic name.

Similar preference for the language of the colonizer can be seen in a recent article on Algeria in The Economist. In the article the competing school languages of French and Arabic were joined by Berber, made even more complicated by the lack of decision on which of its six dialects to teach. Berber is spoken by around 25% of Algerians and was only recognized last year despite independence from France in 1962. The writer notes that “Algeria’s French-speaking élite prefer their old masters’ lingo.” One adviser to the education minister, Nouria Benghebrit, stated that Arabisation was a mistake and that Algerians “shouldn’t confuse the savage, barbaric colonialism of France with the French language, which is a universal vehicle of science and culture.”

These negative overtones towards Arabic and Berber have parallels in Ireland that Gaelic speakers will recognise from Irish history. In the late nineteenth century, the increased support for Gaelic provoked reaction from various quarters particularly in the academic field. T. W. Rolleston, speaking at the Press Club in 1896 described the language as unfit for thought or consideration by educated people. Supporters of Irish and other aspects of Gaelic culture were seen as parochial traditionalists looking backward and trying to hold back the tide of history.

The struggle for the recognition of Irish as a modern language meant suffering the indignity of a challenge from Rolleston to prove that a piece of prose from a scientific journal could be translated into Irish and then back into English by another translator, without loss of meaning. This was duly carried out successfully by Hyde and MacNeill, two leading Irish nationalists, and accepted by Rolleston. (Of course, the strong historical connection between Arabic and science should also be mentioned here.)

The dubbing of Gaelic speakers as ‘parochial traditionalists’ is still used to swipe at people who assert their linguistic rights [Gaelic is the first official language of Ireland alongside English], won through many decades of political and cultural struggle with the state. The association of Gaelic with radical nationalism has always been a thorn in the side of conservative Anglophiles in Ireland.

Linguistic issues around the world are shaped, as in Ireland, by problems such as negative attitudes, the difficulties of learning new, or old, languages, and élite control of the state and the education system. As Gramsci notes, when cultural conflicts arise we can be sure that something more serious is happening entailing a closer look at local ideologies of inter-élite and class struggles. In Ireland, the fortunes of the Gaelic language rose and fell according to the cultural and ideological needs of the ruling class. The language movements were harnessed when considered a political threat and dismissed when weak.

This can be seen globally where the role of language can be positive or negative depending on the politics of the groups involved. Language is not inherently progressive or reactionary but acts as a carrier of culture as well as a means of communication. Openness towards diverse and different languages and cultures in society implies openness and tolerance towards different groups and a guard against monolithic simplification and racist provocation. When language issues arise they can also demonstrate that for minority groups, the survival of their language depends just as much on social and economic issues (emigration, unemployment, poverty) as the rights it is accorded by the state.

In Ireland, the refusal to accord linguistic rights by British colonialism to Gaelic speakers played an important part in the move of cultural nationalists to political nationalism and the subsequent War of Independence. Colonisers and conservative dominant élites both learned that their own ‘parochial traditionalism’ could be the author of their downfall in the play of history.

The State of Labor on Labor Day

CHARLES DERBER

The state of labor on Labor Day, 2017, is precarious, and can only be rectified by a Left, that reasserts class politics and takes its lead from a “universalizing” anti-stystemic labor movement.

Severe problems began with the Reagan revolution, which enshrined a ruthless global capitalism and sought to destroy unions. While the GOP and their corporate allies were destroying New Deal worker protections, the Democrats were doing little to stop them. The Clintons’ centrist Third Way took the Democrats out of a New Deal frame and into an embrace of Wall Street and the corporations, cementing the US as the only advanced Western nation with no party of labor.

Outsourcing and robotics, as well as deep cultural divides among workers, have intensified the problem, but they also have political solutions.

Trump, while elected because of the real crisis among workers, has not offered a solution for his white working class base; his extreme anti-union, austerity, and deregulatory policies will hurt them more.

This opens the door to what we call a “universalizing” strategy in which progressives in unions, the Democratic Party and social justice movements – as well as much of the general public that has turned fiercely anti-Establishment –come together to fight the ruling system and create a new New Deal, one that involves new kinds of unions and political policies –and a new labor focus on the Left – through four key new approaches.

1) Union leaders, working with their political allies, must connect better with their own members’ core interests. This means intensely challenging the global corporate power that is hollowing out the working class here, and requires labor working with political allies to rein in corporate power, build public infrastructure and expand social welfare protecting all Americans. If white workers’ core economic interests are protected, they are far more likely to unite across racial and cultural differences for a better standard of life. European unions, even where they represent less than ten percentage of the labor force, as in France, have succeeded for decades in winning support among culturally conservative workers by winning political power and preventing corporate oligarchy. Bernie Sanders attracted many white working class votes, proving that progressive populism here can draw culturally conservative workers, but not enough unions supported him in 2016.

2) As workers are increasingly people of color and female, the labor movement must connect better with other social justice movements, such as civil rights and feminist movements, as well as environmental and peace movements. These movements are all fighting the same systemic nexus of power and can only succeed together. The United Steelworkers has set a model of this by building vigorous alliances between labor and civil rights organizations, showing how to unite racially around shared interests.

3) The Left must move away from its current form of identity politics. We need a strong identity politics – especially in the Trump era where women, people of color, immigrants and other Left “identity communities” are under threat. But since the 1960s, the Left has largely abandoned its focus on labor and class politics, leaving an identity politics stripped of class alliances and awareness. This is a devastating situation for the Left; by giving up on changing capitalism, Left identity politics becomes a strategy for doing better within the capitalist regime, thereby reinforcing it. Only a new strong alliance between identity politics and class politics can create a viable Left; this Labor Day is a crucial moment for the Left to recognize its abandonment of class politics, allowing Trump to capture more and more white workers.

4) Labor must help transform the Democratic Party, especially by connecting with the progressive Sanders wing of the Party and allied social justice movements as well as with the broader population not in unions. Joining with the Sanders “revolution” in politics and on the street, labor can reach a majority of the angry and scared working population by being as systemically disruptive as Trump, but with very different politics, The new politics would make a genuine commitment to creatings good jobs and social protections in healthcare, education, and retirement now being dismantled by Trump and the GOP. Unions need to support a new assertive public sector and universalize its aims toward comprehensive social welfare and universal human rights, as seen in European nations. In the US, service unions such as nurses and teachers, as well as traditional industrial unions like the USW, are moving this way.

This is not utopian but urgent and realistic. Labor is already beginning to take these steps as inequality grows, economic conditions decline, and a new anti-Establishment American majority demands major change. Labor Day is now a pivotal political moment for labor and the entire nation and world.

The Flawed Institution: Australian Marriage And The Same-Sex Debate

Binoy Kampmark

It’s a pretty curious thing to see: marriage being defended at all.  Like slavery, and not necessarily inconsistent with it, marriage is an institution. It embraces codes. It imparts obligations, duties, and rights.  And it creeps up on you.

In Australia, flawed campaigns are being waged in its name.  This has been occasioned by an absence of parliamentary will.  Abdicating a responsibility that was clearly given to them by the High Court of Australia in the 2013 case between the Commonwealth and the Australian Capital Territory, parliamentarians will be waiting for the results of a postal plebiscite that should not be taken for granted by anybody.  The farce will then continue on what form of bill will be voted upon, if, indeed, there will be a bill put forth at all.

Taking this survey into account (the wording by the Turnbull government on this is intentional) is, however, hard to take seriously.  Lacking the austere gravitas and purpose of a referendum, it only promises to take the temperature of the Australian populace, a reading of that confused patient known as the public.

Then there is the nagging question of whether the plebiscite will even go ahead.  A sword of Damocles hangs over its very legality, and the holder of that weapon – the High Court of Australia – may yet find against it.  Advocates against it have argued that such a measure cannot bypass parliamentary will.

As for the arguments for marriage, these have been variant and even idiosyncratic.  Conservatives groups for gay marriage argue that you strengthen it by virtue of expanding it.  The more, it seems, the merrier.  The stance is outlined by Nick Greiner, former New South Wakes premier.

Those in favour of not enlarging the tent – such as Senator Matt Canavan – embrace the erroneous notion that an ancient institution should not be changed in terms of gender.  What has been done for millennia must be right. (He forgets that the same arguments could be used in apologias for genocide, slavery and domestic violence.)

The good senator is somewhat confused in insisting that the institution needs more than love.  It would be far more accurate to say that property and securing it against challengers has been the traditional role of marriage.  Love tended to be found outside it.

The issue of marrying for love is a charmingly recent phenomenon.  It was very much the understanding in European aristocratic circles that marriage would only ever be to keep the line of succession safe. If you so happened to be a Hapsburg operating the levers of power five hundred years ago, you would also see marriage as a means of acquiring other properties (states, possessions, colonies).

The issue of children raises other fascinating points.  For Canavan, the bond between males and females called for “a special word and a special institution” because of its link to breeding. A strict reading of marriage as a breeding machine puts those heterosexual couples who don’t wish to add to their global carbon footprint at odds with the religiously minded.  Marriage entails issue, and blessed are the breeders, despite adding to population bomb.  Even on that score, same-sex couples can have children, even if a heterosexual element is still required to supply the, to put it indelicately, raw matter.

As for the issue of miracles, nothing could be less so.  Offspring tend to be an automatic affair that only promises to disappear when the process of reproduction becomes sexless, a dry, mess free laboratory matter sketched in such dystopian delights as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

The campaign has also given a foretaste of the nastiness to come. The pro-marriage conservatives insist that children who are raised in any environment that is not hetero-normative are bound to have a few screws loose.

Again, we have a problem of false attribution of value: since the conventional marriage produces children, it follows that it is good.  This is hardly a good argument when stacked up against those dysfunctional children who come from that euphemised context of a “broken home”. Broken homes also produce broken children, and heterosexual couples can be damn good at it.

Advocates for the status quo have also brought the issue of freedom of religion into play.  But this is a deceptive and disingenuous way of introducing discrimination via the backdoor.  Traditional anti-discrimination statutes would thereby be circumvented by the bigoted notion that you could refuse to hold a service or bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.

The novelty of this debate is seeing how advocates from the Left perspective have marched in favour of same-sex marriage when marriage itself has lost its appeal to many progressives.  The only argument left, then, is the equality of choice: same-sex couples should be perfectly entitled to enter into a flawed, anachronistic institution should they wish to. We should all be entitled to make our own mistakes.

Cuba Has A Higher Life Expectancy Than The U.S- Why?

Arshad M Khan

So frequently is the word ‘freedom’ employed in the political vernacular, it has come to mean whatever the listener desires. For Mr. Trump, it is one word in the volcanic plume countering a society’s rhythm, designed to attract attention. That he has garnered in spades, enough to win him the highest office in the land.

To many freedom is an absence of worry. The desire and need for a social fabric knit well to support the basic prerequisites: food, shelter, health and education. None of them charity, because they are an investment in the fundamental source of a society’s well-being: human capital.

The selfishness of the haves has contributed to loss of competitiveness. The old GM was paying $100-$200 per car in health insurance costs, and manufacturers were also forced to provide remedial education for high school graduates to enter the world of complex modern manufacturing. Neither was a similar burden on competitors from Japan and Germany. Suffice to say though that this was not the only reason for problems.

But selfishness is not all with regard to healthcare, the focus of this piece. The biggest culprit by far is general complacency. Added to a Republican majority in Congress and Donald Trump, there is little hope in the near future.

Reading about healthcare recently, I came across an article in a prestigious magazine offering a solution. Affiliated to Stanford, the authors were a MD/MBA candidate and a venture capitalist adjunct. It says it all. Why would a doctor want an MBA? It is not an uncommon program, by the way. The answer is simple and obvious: the medical profession is big business. Did the authors have a prescription? Indeed they did. Force everyone to have insurance and force insurers to insist on primary care.

As a percent of GDP, the U.S. spends more on healthcare than any other industrialized nation. Yet it lags far behind in measures like child and maternal mortality, life expectancy an chronic illness.

A survey last November by the New York based Commonwealth Fund compared the U.S. with 10 other advanced countries. The Netherlands came out on top; the U.S. dead last. By coincidence, the Dutch are the tallest people on earth. “U.S. adults are sicker and have the highest rates of material hardship,” observed Robin Osborn who led the survey.

Of note, despite dilapidated facilities in Cuba, universal healthcare has paid off. Life expectancy is higher than the U.S. by about a year.

The slogan ‘Medicare for all’ is catchy, and, were it to happen, would transform healthcare. All the same, Medicare has gaps throwing people back into the arms of insurers, and into the morass of bills from hospitals, accounting by insurers as to what is covered, and arguments back and forth; not to mention overcharges by hospitals, which have their own litany of unbelievable tales.

In the British system — under attack by the Conservatives for some time and being gradually dismantled — no one ever sees a bill. It allowed post Second World War generations of poor and disadvantaged to bring up healthy, educated children who contributed to the growth of the country.

If there is an answer to the problems in the U.S. system, it will have to come from independent experts. Profit oriented hospital corporations buying up community hospitals and headed by multi-million salaried CEOs is not the answer. Neither are for-profit insurers. Who has the guts to pour ‘liquid plumber’ down this clogged-up drain? That is the real question. The Canadian politician who fought for their healthcare system is a national hero. Any takers here?

Climate Breakdown

Kevin Zeese & Margaret Flowers

Climate breakdown, as George Monbiot calls it, is happening before our eyes at the same time the science on climate change grows stronger and has wider acceptance. Hurricane Harvey, which struck at the center of the petroleum industry – the heart of climate denialism – provided a glimpse of the new normal of climate crisis-induced events. In Asia, this week the climate message was even stronger where at least 1,200 people died and 41 million were impacted. By 2050, one billion people could be displaced by climate crises.

Climate disasters demonstrate the immense failure of government at all levels. The world has known about the likely disastrous impacts of climate change for decades. Next year will be the thirtieth anniversary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which  operates under the auspices of the United Nations and was founded in 1988. The IPCC published the first of five reports in 1990. Thousands of scientists and other experts write and review the reports and 120 countries participate in the process. The most common surprises in successive reports are more rapid temperature increases and greater impacts than scientists had predicted.

We can No Longer Ignore the Science and the Evidence Before Us

The science on climate change has become extremely strong as the final draft of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Climate Science Special Report showed. The document was leaked last month because scientists feared the Trump administration would amend, suppress or destroy it. The report describes overwhelming evidence of man-made climate change impacting us right now and the urgent need to get to zero net carbon emissions.

It is not just science that confirms the climate crisis, it is also people’s experience with extreme weather, constant record breaking temperatures, and deadly heat waves as well as collapsing mountains in Alaska, the shrinking Colorado River and an ice free Arctic as a few examples. People have experienced a series of extreme storms – Hurricanes Harvey, Katrina and Sandy being the most notable this century –droughts, fires and other physical evidence that make it hard to deny climate catastrophe. Climate denialism requires shutting one’s eyes to obvious realities when the truth is the Earth is warmer than it has been in 120,000 years.

There is no doubt that these storms are made more deadly by climate change. Harvey was a tropical storm until it went over the warm Gulf of Mexico and grew into a hurricane with record rainfall. Climate expert Michael Mann explains that warmer water resulted in greater moisture being absorbed, more rain and more flooding. Sea level rise added to the greater flooding. The stalling of the storm over Houston was also predicted by climate forecasters because the jet stream pattern has changed. Climate change had the same effects on Hurricane Sandy in New York City.

Science is denied because many profit from the dirty energy status quo and denying or even hiding the existence of climate change. There is litigation against oil and gas companies and an SEC investgation because records show they knew their products were causing climate change going back to the 70s but funded research to hide reality.  ExxonMobil is being sued by shareholders for misleading investors and faces shareholder challenges. Coastal communities are suing dozens of oil and gas companies for continuing to pollute after they knew the damage they were doing. Former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, now the Secretary of State, used a fake email account to discuss climate change and many of those emails are now missing. Youth suing over the destruction of their environment and climate change are seeking Tillerson’s testimony and emails. There are many climate criminals to point to with the dirty energy companies at the top of the list. There are 100 companies responsible for 71 percent of green house gas emissions. Good government would hold them responsible.

Climate protesters outside of White House. Photo by Susan Walsh for AP.

Historic Failure of Government

The three decade life of the IPCC has coincided with deep corruption of government by the energy industry, sprawl developers and other dirty energy profiteers. The anti-science movement in the United States, which includes government officials, industry and others who deny climate change exists, provides cover for elected officials to do nothing or act inadequately on the urgent reality of climate chaos so that corporations continue to threaten the planet.

The United States elected a climate denier, Donald Trump, who describes climate change as a hoax and has appointed officials who are complicit in denying climate change, closely tied to polluting industries and favor policies that result in climate breakdown, and many of whom were part of the misinformation network on climate. Trump has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement, putting the US out of step with the world on the issue. The Trump administration has sought to hide evidence of climate change, but people have been sharing climate documents with other governments and scientific groups before he hid them. Thirteen cities joined together to publish Trump-deleted climate data. Trump has conducted a witch hunt against believers in climate change. These actions have resulted in the unusual step of climate scientists protesting the Trump administration.

But, even presidents who recognize climate change reality have not taken action to confront it.  Unlike Trump, President Obama played a more hidden hand in his undermining of climate policy. His energy strategy favored “all of the above” energy including oil and gas and his office approved carbon infrastructure and off-shore drilling. Obama showed dirty energy extraction is a bi-partisan concern, as Alison Rose Levy clearly reminds us. Obama undermined the 2009 Copenhagen climate accord and weakened the Paris agreement. He was preceded by the marinated in oil Bush-Cheney administration. Those two administrations wasted 16 years of critical time to respond to climate change.

Federal decisions had local impacts as can be seen in Houston, the fourth largest city. The federal government inadequately regulated superfund sites, pollution from oil refineries and chemical plants in the area. These were all part of “Cancer Alley” or the “Chemical Coast” – names used to describe the petrochemical capital of the United States. When flooding came, so did disaster in these areas. A  1.5 mile radius around one chemical plant had to be evacuated and toxic waste sites flooded.  Of course, the environmental racism that led to these dangerous polluters being put in poor neighborhoods, usually communities of color, is now resulting in massive pollution in those areas and will cause health problems.

But inadequate response to climate change often includes state and local governments (some states and cities are taking positive steps). Texas is an example of decades of failed government as it has taken no action to adapt to climate change over the last three decades. Bills were introduced to do so but the legislature failed to act. Why? Because the laws included the words “climate change,” e.g. calling for a “climate change vulnerability assessment” and were perceived as a threat to the oil and gas industry.

The metropolitan area of Houston contains 6.5 million people over urban sprawl the size of New Jersey. Zoning regulations allowed for unregulated growth, even in areas prone to flooding, creating a large population on a flood plain. The area has had a long relationship with the petrochemical industry which has been able to get its way, but being business friendly to the industry is going to become very costly. The city is sinking at 2.2 inches a year in large part because of oil and water being pumped from under it.

The failure to act on climate for the last three decades also means that government will spend more as each crisis has multi-hundred million or even multi-billion dollar costs. In addition, people today are leaving a bill of hundreds of trillions of dollars to future generations. It would be much less expensive if government acted responsibly and put in place infrastructure and technology to adapt to climate change as well as to ameliorate it now. The disaster in Houston is an opportunity to make those changes.

The historic failure of government action on climate change shows a fatal flaw in a representative democracy that is based on the corruption of big business money and serves the corporate interests who profit from the flawed status quo.

People Rise to the Challenge

Throughout much of this history, particularly in the 21st Century, people have been challenging the dominance of the oil, gas and coal industries and pushing government to confront climate change.

Even before Trump came into office, there were massive protests during the Obama administration against the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, the Dakota Access Pipeline and other carbon infrastructure throughout the country.  People protested the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which is an arm of the oil and gas industry disguised as a federal agency. Obama’s FERC commissioners were a rubber stamp for the industry, now, Trump’s FERC continues the practice.

People were escalating actions during the Obama era saying the time for direct action on climate change is now. Protests were on an upswing before Trump was elected. Last September, Bill McKibben recalculated the climate math showing how time was running out.

From the first day of the Trump administration people were taking action. Climate activists blockaded Trump’s inauguration making it more difficult for people to attend. In addition to protests against specific carbon energy products, people mobilized for #DayAgainstDenial Protests across U.S. to call attention to climate change.

People pushed businesses and local governments to pledge to reduce carbon emissions resulting in over 1,400 U.S. cities, states and businesses vowing to meet Paris climate commitments.  Last week, nine eastern states jointly agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent more than their previous target.

There is widespread climate change action, which is ‘unstoppable’ despite Trump’s policies. In fact, Trump’s presidency may be leading to an escalation in movement action as people know we can no longer hope to win by simply voting or speaking out. People are showing they are willing to risk going to jail for a livable future. And, we have begun to see cases where juries are not willing to convict people for climate change protests.

Climate change affects each of us and is an issue that unites us. When crisis hits, we need to act as a community in mutual aid of each other. Those community relationships can be built now so we are ready in times of crisis.

The only way we can mitigate and adapt to climate breakdown is by working together toward the common goals of reducing our carbon footprint, moving to a net zero carbon energy economy as soon as possible and putting in place the infrastructure needed to adapt to the climate crisis.