Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) 2018 for African Entrepreneurs.

Application Deadline: 10th January 2018 at 23:59 GMT.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be taken at (country): Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) winners will be announced and awarded at a special ceremony. Venue and exact date will be announced by mid-April 2018 and will be posted on IPA website and other social media channels.

Eligible Fields: The Prize focuses on the following Innovation areas:

• Agriculture/Agribusiness
• Environment,Energy and Water
• Health and Wellbeing
• Information, Communication and Technologies (ICTS)
• Manufacturing and Service Industry

Innovations that fit into a thematic area not identified above are also welcome. However, the IPA Secretariat must be notified about this submission, with full details.

About the Award: IPA is an initiative of the African Innovation Foundation (AIF). The Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) honours and encourages innovative achievements that contribute toward developing new products, increasing efficiency or saving cost in Africa. The prize also promotes among young African men and women the pursuit of science, technology and engineering careers as well as business opportunities with potential of contributing to sustainable development in Africa.

The theme for Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) 2017 is “African innovation: Investing in prosperity”. This theme stems from the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No. 9 which calls on countries to build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation. AIF believes that funding streams, investment and resources are critical to obtain a clear value chain for innovation in Africa, contributing to sustainable development.

Previous Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) editions have held in Botswana (2016), Morocco (2015), Nigeria (2014), South Africa (2013) and Ethiopia (2012). Last year’s winners were selected from nearly 1,000 entries across 46 countries.

IPA is looking for applications in social and economic innovation including manufacturing and service industry, health and well-being, agriculture and agri-business, environment, energy and water, and ICT showcasing ground-breaking innovations. Other ventures are also welcome to apply, though.

Offered Since: 2011

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility:  Below are specific guidelines on who can apply and how to apply:

• Eligible innovations MUST be by Africans for Africa. Africans in the Diaspora can also apply if their innovations are of significance for Africa. People who do not hold citizenship of an African country are not eligible to apply. An exception will be made for Africans who hold the citizenship of a non-African country;
• A fully completed application form with a full description of the innovation must accompany each submission; if not, the entry will be disqualified;
• The innovation description should clearly illustrate the social and/or economic outcome and impact with regard to African development and the priority area chosen; it should also be in line with the IPA assessment and selection criteria.
• Application forms and description of the innovation should be in English, French or Portuguese. While the innovations can be conducted in any language including local languages, the submissions should be translated and submitted in English, French or Portuguese;
• Applicants are required to attach a letter of support/endorsement from an institution or an authority with knowledge of their innovation. This will serve as a testimony of how important the innovation is in addressing development challenges faced by Africans.
• Each mandatory question on the application form MUST be answered; if not, the application will be deemed incomplete and disqualified.
• There is no application fee and age limit, but the applicant must be in a position to defend their submission at any stage of the process.

Selection Criteria: In the overall assessment of winning applications, the winners are established with reference to:

• The uniqueness of their innovations and superiority to similar or alternative solutions;
• The size and nature of positive social impact that can be attributed to application of their innovation;
• The potential of the innovation to become a commercial success or sustainable (for social innovations)

The following are the five criteria to be considered:

1. Originality: The uniqueness of the product and its superiority in comparison with similar or alternative products in the market
2. Marketability: The extent to which the innovation sufficiently addresses the problem it seeks to solve at a cost or model that is accessible to the target market
3. Scalability: The extent to which the solution can be easily applied to other similar markets beyond the applicant’s immediate or local environment
4. Social impact: The ability of the innovation to create or effect positive or desirable change within the target community and beyond
5. Scientific/technical aspects: For tangible technical/scientific products; the extent to which the technical/scientific specifications of the innovation are grounded on established science and sufficiently address anticipated product risks.

Number of Awardees: 3

Value of Award: The IPA 2018 will consist of three Awards and support to all nominees which will be given following the criteria outlined above:

• First Prize (US$100 000): The overall winner whose innovation demonstrates the best innovation with clear business potential
• Second Prize (US$25 000): The innovator who best demonstrates a commercially-driven business innovation. Beyond the aforementioned five criteria, this Award will be carefully assessed on its marketability and commercial potential.
• Special Prize for Social Impact (US$25 000): The innovation that demonstrates the greatest social impact.
• 7 nominees each receive a voucher worth $5000

How to Apply: 

• All applications must ONLY be submitted through our online portal for the competition at: https://ipa.africaninnovation.org/s/login/
• Applications can be submitted in English, French or Portuguese.
• You can select your preferred language when you land at the link above.

A duly completed form with a full description of the innovation must accompany each submission; otherwise the entry will be disqualified. Each mandatory question must be answered fully and making a reference to the attachments does not replace answering the question and would lead to disqualification.

Before starting your application, please read the Terms and Conditions very carefully. You can access them here.

Visit Award Webpage for details

Award Provider:  African Innovation Foundation (AIF)

The Impact and Ignorance of the War on Public Broadcasting

Ezra Kronfeld

For years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has received around $445,000,000 from the Federal government; that’s about 0.01% of the budget. That may not seem burdensome for most (especially if you’re one of the millions of citizens who consumes their content), but for many of our representatives, not only should they not get more funding, but their whole organization should get even less, or be totally cut off.

President Trump, whose proposed budget would cut funding for the CPB entirely, said in March that we shouldn’t “continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for … the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.” Sure, it’s not like West Virginia has had a statewide broadcasting network for nearly 50 years; and there’s no way the CPB gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Michigan Radio, Detroit Public Television, and WDET-FM, right?

Yes, GOP lawmakers have attempted to defund public broadcasting for years. There was of course Mitt Romney’s famed Big Bird remark, as well as calls in 2012 from congressman Doug Lamborn and infamous former senator Jim DeMint to cut funding for the CPB, arguing that “in today’s media landscape, consumers have many news and entertainment choices, unlike when the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act to create and fund CPB was passed.”

It’s clear that many of us benefit from public radio and television; whether you’re a parent whose kids watch programs like Sesame Street, or a small-town worker who relies on his local news station, or really anyone who regularly consumes public media, the ongoing war being waged upon the CPB directly affects you.

In Breaking Through Power, Ralph Nader remarks that “as viewers and listeners of PBS and NPR know too well, the sponsorship from commercial firms has augmented the budgets of these non-profit media. Such funding is just crumbs for One Percenters like the Koch brothers, but a lifeline for those who have no other way to get a real piece of the pie.” Fortunately, despite sponsors like Koch and ExxonMobil, programs like Frontline have tackled the growing issue of climate change, and PBS does generally provide bold and ethical journalism. That said, if the CPB’s financial security continues to be this up-in-the-air, they may be forced to make compromises with the evil bastards they are forced to work with.

The empowerment of the CPB should be of the utmost concern for all who wish to maintain an independent public media, which is beholden to none other than the people.

Dismantling White Supremacy

Margaret Flowers & Kevin Zeese

Last weekend, tens of thousands of people marched in Washington, DC in the combined March for Racial Justice and March for Black Women. Native Americans joined black and brown people to lead the march.

At the march, Rev. Graylan Hagler said, “White Supremacy has been given aid and comfort by a so-called president and so-called administration, and so-called leaders of that ideology are comforted and feel that they are back as a centerpiece of American political life.”

From coast to coast, it is true that white supremacists are active and are being more visible than they have in decades. This weekend,  Richard Spencer held another torch rally in Charlottesville. In Houston, fascists attacked a left-wing book fair, and the book fair organizers had to take action to protect attendees while police did not respond. Similar events happened in Portland, OR, San Diego, New York and Washington, DC.

Not all events are successful. In San Francisco, International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU Local 10) members and allies prevented a right-wing racist and violent group from holding a rally, thwarting the group at every attempt. And sometimes, white supremacists have to go to great lengths to hide their gatherings. David Lewis reports on how he infiltrated a secret convention in Seattle and saw how fascism is growing in Seattle the liberal city of the Northwest.

White supremacy is not new, and it manifests itself in many ways, not only in overt white supremacists, but also culturally and systemically. With the rise of open white supremacy, there are discussions about and controversy over how to respond.

Is there room for racism in civilized debates?

This issue is particularly pertinent for us right now because a local Baltimore League of Women Voters chapter is holding a series of panel discussions on immigration to which they invited speakers from anti-immigrant white supremacist groups that are listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The initial panel was protested by the local Green Party and others after The League refused to dis-invite the speaker and he was prevented from completing his presentation. He left the event.

This sparked discussion in our community and raised many questions: Was this an infringement on his right to free speech? Is this starting a slippery slope to shutting down people’s right to free speech? Should he have been allowed to speak and then challenged during the question and answer period? What is hate speech and should it be prohibited?

We speak about this topic as two white European-Americans who were raised in middle class households that condemned discrimination and bigotry. We have experienced white privilege throughout our lives. We are engaged in ongoing education about white supremacy and how we end it. Our thoughts are:

First, it should be clear that in a legal sense, individuals do not violate another individual’s right to free speech. The right to free speech is guaranteed by the First Amendment, which prevents the government, not individuals, from infringing on a person’s right to free speech. As long as the government protects the First Amendment, there is no slippery slope. Whether the government does protect free speech at present is a whole other conversation.

Second, when it comes to what private organizations do, this is another matter entirely. Organizations and institutions do not have a requirement to include those who espouse hate. They are not required to give a platform to or legitimize white supremacist views. In fact, one could argue that it is anti-social to do so. Professor Matt Pratt Guterl, from Brown University, explains it well in “How American’s Faith in Civilized Debate is Fueling White Supremacy.” when he writes about a debate between WEB DuBois and racist Lothrop Stoddard in 1920′s describing it as based on “the bizarre premise that there are two sides equally deserving our attention.” No, the white supremacist view should not be given legitimacy.

The essential idea is that the question of whether or not racism and white supremacy should exist has been answered. We have already agreed that we have equal human rights, even though we have not yet achieved them. Guterl writes that “Institutions should remember, though, that they exist to foster new ideas and better understandings” and that “mindfulness, civility, and respect are more closely aligned with oft-celebrated concepts like diversity and inclusion.”

Guterl writes about a public debate between W.E.B. Du Bois and a racist, Lothrop Stoddard. He concludes, “We should hear this story and think, with horror, of the obscene false equivalency at the heart of this confrontation – the bizarre premise that there are two sides equally deserving our attention. We should think it a travesty that a man of Du Bois’s erudition and intellect should have to prove that his race deserved to survive.”

Hate speech is legally defined as “speech that is intended to insult, offend, or intimidate a person because of some trait (as race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, or disability).” A Supreme Court ruling earlier this year found that hate speech is protected from government repression under the First Amendment. Yet, while many injustices are technically legal, that does not mean we should defend them.

The International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted by the United Nations in 1965, clearly states that “all propaganda and all organizations” based on ideas or theories of racial or ethnic superiority should be illegal and that states should take “positive steps to eliminate them.” We would do better as a society to debate the best ways to eliminate white supremacy.

What is white supremacy?

Of course, to eliminate white supremacy, we must understand what it is. Van R. Newkirk discusses this in “The Language of White Supremacy.” White supremacy is not limited to those people who identify as such or who behave in a certain way. He writes that the definition is much more expansive, and he quotes Frances Lee Ansley: “I refer instead to a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.”

White supremacy is the state of Mississippi taking control of Jackson’s schools away from the people of Jackson. It is policies designed to break up and destroy black communities in Baltimore (Cliff DuRand expands on this here). It is families in Flint, MI that lack clean water or in Detroit that have their water shut off for being a few hundred dollars behind in their bills while just down the road Nestlé  pays $200 a year to bottle and sell public water.

White supremacy is the attack on public sector unions when it is public jobs that have brought greater prosperity to black families. It is a system of college admissions that favors the wealthy when blacks have much less wealth than whites through centuries of policies that denied them. It is economic inequality in St. Louis that is maintained through racist and violent policing.

It is policies that perpetuate environmental injustice, which Basav Sen explains are just as devastating to communities as the overt white supremacy witnessed in places like Charlottesville. And it is not only the disgraceful lack of action to bring timely aid to our people in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, similar to what happened after Hurricane Katrina, but also blatant discrimination by the US in the Marshall Islands.

And it is evident in US foreign policy, which devalues the lives of black and brown people all over the world. Medea Benjamin describes the justifiable outrage over the murder victims in Las Vegas but the silence on the anniversary of the murder of even more Yemenis at a funeral last year. Another example is the brutal ethnic cleansing in West Papua under Indonesian occupation that was made possible more than fifty years ago by the New York Agreement, which left out participation by West Papuan people. They are still bravely fighting for their right to independence.

Dismantling White Supremacy

In our recent experience with the League of Women Voters in Maryland, we were accused of “falling for identity politics that are being used to divide and weaken people.” So, as we work to dismantle white supremacy, let’s recognize that there is already a wide racial divide in the United States. It is obvious every day through the examples given above and more. A powerful way to resist being divided is to unite around efforts to end institutions and policies of white supremacy. We cannot hope to unite as equals and as a strong society until that is accomplished.

To do that, we need to move past allowing white supremacist ideas and theories to have a legitimate place in public debates. They have no place in our society except in textbooks so that future generations understand how destructive they were once upon a time.

Bill Bigelow of Rethinking Schools has an article for “Columbus Day,” which many cities and states celebrate as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Bigelow  writes that in his review of children’s textbooks, he found “these books teach young readers that colonialism and racism are normal.” There is a long history of mis-education in the United States. Indeed, one candidate at the League of Women Voters panel informed us that we had open borders hundreds of years ago when “nobody was here,” completely ignoring the tens of millions of indigenous people in North America before settlers came.

Peter Saudek describes his journey from being a child surrounded by lessons and symbols that warped his perception of Native Americans to his awakening to the realities of settler-colonialism.

Bigelow leaves us with excellent advice this holiday weekend:

“Let’s pull down the monuments, let’s make the holidays more inclusive, let’s rewrite the textbooks and children’s literature. But let’s also challenge the fundamental structures of ownership, power, and privilege that have given us such a skewed constellation of heroes and holidays.”

Canada integrating universities into its militarist foreign policy

Laurent Lafrance

An important aim of the new national defence policy Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government announced last June is to integrate the country’s universities more fully into the ruling class’ aggressive and increasingly militarist foreign policy.

The 113-page defence policy document outlines policy changes to draw universities, individual academics, and “promising” graduate students into playing a more important role in developing high-tech armaments and formulating strategy and propaganda for the aggressive assertion of Canadian imperialism’s interests and ambitions around the world.

The defence policy calls for a major rearmament program as well as the “modernization” of NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defence Command), in furtherance of the Canadian Armed Forces’ participation in ongoing and future US-led wars around the globe.

The real objective of the policy was made clear by Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland in early June when she said Canada must be ready to use “hard power,” i.e. wage war, to defend its interests under conditions of growing “threats” arising from the rise of China, “Russian expansionism,” and the collapse in popular support for the US-led world capitalist order.

The document commits the government to a $62 billion increase in military spending over the next two decades, including a 73 percent hike in the next 10 years, which will boost the annual defence budget from its current level of $18.9 billion to $32.7 billion in 2026-27. It includes plans for an additional 5,000 troops, the purchase of 88 fighter jets rather than the 65 proposed by the previous Conservative government, 15 new warships, the procurement of armed drones for surveillance and combat, and additional armoured and supply vehicles for the army. Canada’s military will also develop a team of cybersecurity experts to conduct offensive cyber warfare.

The defence policy argues that in all these initiatives the Canadian Armed Forces must collaborate more closely with the “academic community.” In other words, the Canadian ruling class wants to transform universities into research laboratories for the military, including in the development of new high-tech armaments, cyberwar software, aerospace technologies, and electronic and photographic surveillance.

The government is also seeking to use universities as think tanks and propaganda departments for Canadian imperialism. It aims to use them more explicitly and systematically to recruit and train academics who can assist in developing Canada’s geostrategic-military policy and promoting an aggressive foreign policy, including by providing “humanitarian” and “social justice” pretexts for imperialist war. In this regard, it is important to note that Canadian academics, politicians and retired officers including Michael Ignatieff, Lloyd and Tom Axworthy, General Romeo Dallaire, and Jennifer Welsh played an important role in fashioning and popularizing the so-called “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine that the US and Canada have repeatedly invoked to justify imperialist “regime-change” wars.

The latest effort by the Canadian bourgeoisie to cloak its predatory ambitions in “progressive” garb is a defence policy pledge, which will no doubt find favour among the well-paid purveyors of identity politics on campuses across the country, to significantly increase the percentage of women and “visible minorities” serving in the armed forces.

An explicit aim of the new defence policy is to draw top-level students into Canadian military-strategic/foreign policy circles. The policy statement calls for developing “collaborative networks of academic and analytic communities,” so as to be able to “broaden the diversity of the pool of experts that we can draw upon.”

As part of its increased military budget, the CAF will dedicate $4.5 million per year in a revamped and expanded “defence engagement program.” According to the document, this money will be used to develop networks of researchers and experts, a new scholarship program for graduate students and post-Doctoral fellows as well as the expansion of an existing “expert-briefing” program.

The defence policy statement also announced the launching of a new program called Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEAS), which will see $1.6 billion invested over the next 20 years to develop “new cooperative partnerships with the private sector, universities, and academics.” Fields of research for these new “clusters” will include “surveillance, cyber tools for defence, space, alternative fuels, remotely-piloted systems, data analytics, and counter-improvised explosive device solutions.”

The Liberals’ defence policy exposes the fraudulent character of Prime Minister Trudeau’s anti-war posturing during the 2015 election campaign. In fact, his government has expanded Canada’s involvement in Washington’s military-strategic offensives in the Middle East as well as against Russia and China.

While the Liberals are intent on expanding the Canadian bourgeoisie’s economic and military partnership with the US, the crisis of American capitalism is also pushing them to strive for a larger role for Canada in world affairs and this is a key aim of the new defence policy. One of the major points Foreign Minister Freeland made in her June speech is that Canada must set its “own clear and sovereign course” and this requires that it expand its capacities to intervene militarily in conflicts around the globe.

Longstanding collaboration between universities and the military

The new defence policy notes that the Canadian Armed Forces has worked with academia for many years and that continuing to do so “will deepen the Government’s understanding of global threats and the complexity of modern conflict.”

It commits the Defence Ministry to working more closely with Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, the ministry in charge of Canada’s economic policy, including financing university science research aimed at fostering a “competitive, knowledge-based economy.”

Mechanisms are already well established for merging universities with the imperialist agenda of the Canadian bourgeoisie. Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC), an agency of Canada’s Department of National Defence (DND), explains on its website that it “provides the DND, the Canadian Armed Forces and other government departments as well as the public safety and national security communities, the knowledge and technological advantage needed to defend and protect Canada’s interests at home and abroad.”

DRDC also claims that “Universities can generate knowledge, provide access to resources and develop highly-qualified personnel in support of the (military’s) Science & Technology investment in defence and security”; and it stipulates that the required science and technology should be accessed directly from industry and academic institutions “in areas where DRDC cannot or should not be the source of supply and where legal, security or sovereignty issues are not impediments.”

The ties between the military, private companies and academia have expanded rapidly over the past decade. An anti-militarist group called “De-militarize McGill,” active at Montreal’s McGill University, exposed that one of Canada’s principal research universities has increasingly become the site of a wide range of military research projects, for both the Canadian military and the US Air Force. It reported that between 2011 and 2014, McGill received more than $1 million in defence contracts from Canada’s Department of National Defence.

The student organisation revealed through documents gained from access-to-information requests that some McGill professors led research aimed at developing software for guided missiles and for drones to be used in urban warfare. Other researchers were involved in developing lethal thermobaric explosives and tools for surveilling social media, profiling real-world communities, and influencing and controlling social movements that might destabilize governments.

In 2016, De-militarize McGill showed that McGill professor and director of the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Laboratory, Wagdi Habashi, used the CFD lab to develop military software that was then sold to aerospace companies via his own private company, Newmerical Technologies International. The lab is funded in large part by aerospace manufacturers Bombardier, CAE, and Bell Helicopter Textron, all of which have close ties to the Canadian and US militaries.

The CFD software, called FENSAP-ICE, is used to optimize the design of drones and to develop discrete anti-icing systems. As Habashi noted in a 2009 paper, UAV (drone) missions during the NATO war in Afghanistan were marked by “unforeseen mid-level icing encounters.” FENSAP-ICE sought to provide a new form of ice protection. Habashi’s company also sold software to Lockheed Martin in the early 2000s for use in the development of the F-35 fighter jet.

Many more such examples were exposed by De-militarize McGill, and it is not hard to imagine that military-oriented research, often conducted without public scrutiny, is widespread across Canadian universities.

The arms industry is a major player in Canada. A governmental study published in 2014 showed that the Canadian defence industry had annual sales of almost $10 billion in goods and services, produced by close to 640 firms. The industry boasts that it accounts for some 63,000 jobs spread throughout Canada and contributes $6.7 billion to GDP. This has increased in recent years and continuing expansion is a specific defence policy goal. According to IHS Jane’s, the defence industry publisher that tracks military spending, Canada ranked sixth overall among all arms-exporting countries in 2016 and became the second biggest arms-seller to the Middle East after the United States.

Since the Second World War, Canada’s armaments industry has been deeply integrated into the American military machine. With the 1956 Defence Industry Productivity Sharing Agreement, the defence sector became the first industry to achieve a form of Canada-US free trade, giving Canadian arms manufacturers duty-free access to the US market.

The growing military involvement of Canada’s academic institutions should be vigorously opposed by students and youth. Universities and colleges should be institutions where science and knowledge are taught and research and experimentation encouraged with the aim of elevating the intellectual and cultural level of the population—not tied to the military and to private enterprises dedicated to enabling an aggressive, militarist foreign policy in pursuit of profits, resources and strategic advantages for Canadian big business.

New Zealand: Pike River mine disaster families make Supreme Court appeal

Tom Peters

The Supreme Court in Wellington heard an appeal on October 5 by family members of some of the 29 men who died in the 2010 explosion at the remote Pike River Coal (PRC) mine. The families sought a judicial review of the government regulator WorkSafe’s decision in 2013 to drop charges against PRC chief executive Peter Whittall.

In February, the Court of Appeal rejected the families’ case. The five Supreme Court judges have not said when they will make a decision.

No one has been held accountable for the disaster despite a 2012 Royal Commission finding that it was entirely preventable and that PRC had prioritised production over safety. Government regulators allowed PRC to operate despite flagrant safety breaches, including no adequate emergency exit, and inadequate ventilation and methane gas monitoring.

In 2013, PRC was found guilty of safety breaches and ordered to pay $3.41 million in reparations, but the company was bankrupt and refused to pay. In December that year, WorkSafe reached a back-room deal with Whittall’s lawyers to drop 12 health and safety charges against him in exchange for payment to the families by Whittall and other company directors of the $3.41 million.

Police also decided in July 2013 not to press any charges over the disaster. Earlier this year it emerged that police had suppressed video footage taken inside the mine, which proved it could be re-entered safely to gather evidence. The mine has never been re-entered and the 29 bodies have not been recovered.

The families’ lawyer Nigel Hampton argued in the Supreme Court that the “bargain,” made by WorkSafe and Whittall without the approval of the families, was “unprecedented, unprincipled and unlawful.” He said it “sets a dangerous precedent” for wealthy individuals to be able to buy themselves out of prosecutions.

In response, WorkSafe’s lawyer Aaron Martin declared there was no “improper bargain” because WorkSafe was not “benefiting” from the non-prosecution of Whittall. In fact, any trial would inevitably have exposed the regulator’s failure to prevent the explosion and the role played by successive governments in deregulating safety in the mining industry.

Martin descended into semantic sophistry. He admitted “there was an understanding” that WorkSafe would drop charges against Whittall in exchange for the payment to the families, but then added, “that doesn’t mean there was a deal.”

The lawyer said WorkSafe decided a prosecution of Whittall was “not in the public interest” because of “a range of factors,” including the probability of a “long, costly trial,” which would have covered material already examined by the Royal Commission. Under questioning, Martin admitted there was no evidence WorkSafe had considered dropping the charges prior to the offer of payment.

Kath Monk, Bernie Monk, Sonya Rockhouse and Anna Osborne outside the Supreme Court

Anna Osborne, whose husband Milton died in Pike River, told the World Socialist Web Site that the regulator’s defence was “absolute nonsense.” She described the Royal Commission as “a farce,” adding, “I think it was done way too early. What came out of it was best guesses as to what happened and we’ve got no real answers and still no accountability. What I’d like to see is an independent inquiry to properly get to the bottom of it all.”

Sonya Rockhouse, who lost her son Ben, said if the families succeed in their application for a judicial review it would be “a moral victory” against the government. She added, “There’s a lot more we would like to happen. We’d like Whittall to be brought back; we’d like the charges to be reinstated. None of that realistically is going to happen.”

Rockhouse said the families would continue to demand justice “because no one’s been held to account, not one person.” She pointed out that after 96 people were crushed to death in 1989 at the Hillsborough stadium in Britain, it took 28 years before any of the police officers whose actions led to the disaster were charged.

The families hope the next government will organise a manned re-entry of the drift tunnel that leads into the mine. Seven years after the disaster, the opposition Labour, Green and New Zealand First Parties have promised to carry out a re-entry. Following the inconclusive election result on September 23, NZ First is currently deciding whether to form a coalition government with the National Party or the Labour-Greens bloc.

The government-owned company Solid Energy had wanted to permanently seal the mine entrance and only backed down earlier this year after months of protests by the families, which gained widespread public support.

Bernie Monk, whose son Michael died in the mine, told the WSWS that former Prime Minister John Key had made empty promises to re-enter the mine and retrieve the bodies. He said although many people were excited by the opposition parties’ promises, “I’ll never be excited till the job is finished.”

Monk said the Pike River case “needs to be reopened, that’s pretty obvious,” and a re-entry of the mine “will bring a lot of evidence.” He added that the families were still trying to obtain more information held by the police about the mine. “We’re fighting for justice and accountability in New Zealand,” he said.

None of the political parties has committed to reinstating charges or called for reopening the criminal investigation.

Monk said he had heard of recent attempts to cut staff at WorkSafe’s specialist mining inspectorate, which was boosted following the Pike River disaster. He said a WorkSafe employee “came to me personally and asked me to do something about it. The disasters are going to start all over again.”

Monk listed those he held responsible for the disaster in addition to the company: “The Department of Labour [now WorkSafe] cut back the inspectorate in 1992 under the National Party. The Labour Party didn’t do anything [to reverse the cuts]; they were in power for three terms. They have honestly come forward and told us that.”

He continued: “Mines Rescue did work at Pike River; they knew that that mine was unsafe. And number four is the unions, because they did not do their job.”

The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, now called E Tu, represented about half the workforce at Pike River. It worked hand-in-hand with the company. The union knew about safety breaches at the mine, which had prompted one walkout by workers in protest, but it never organised industrial action to ensure the mine was safe.

The union made no public statement about the unsafe conditions. Immediately after the explosion EPMU leader Andrew Little, who later became the Labour Party leader, defended Pike River Coal. He told the media there was “nothing unusual” about the mine and nothing that the union had been concerned about.

Outgoing German finance minister warns of financial bubbles

Nick Beams

The outgoing German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has warned the policies of the world’s major central banks have created the danger of a new financial crisis due to the formation of speculative bubbles in the system.

His concerns were voiced in an interview with the Financial Times, published on Monday, as he steps down from his position as the country’s finance minister after eight years to take up the post of speaker in the German parliament.

Schäuble, who has been one of the chief architects of the austerity measures that have devastated the conditions of workers, pensioners and youth in Greece, along with other European countries, told the newspaper he objected to the term (austerity), saying it was an Anglo-Saxon way of describing a “solid financial policy.”

“The IMF and others agree with us that we are in danger of encouraging new bubbles to form. We have no idea where the next crisis will happen but economists all over the world are concerned about the increased risks arising from the accumulation of more and more liquidity and the growth of public and private debt. And I myself am concerned about this too,” he said.

These remarks are a telling admission on two counts. First, that another crisis will take place, with potentially even more devastating consequences than 2008, indicating that governments and central banks have done nothing to overcome the conditions that led to the meltdown a decade ago. And secondly, that they “have no idea” about how and when it might occur, much less have put in place measures to prevent it.

Schäuble, whose views reflect those of key sectors of German finance capital, also warned there were risks of stability in the euro zone as a result of large amounts of non-performing loans held by major banks.

His warnings of the dangers of a financial bubble echo those of the Deutsche bank chief John Cryan. In speech last month, Cryan warned of “signs of financial bubbles in more and more parts of the capital market where we wouldn’t have expected them.” He called for an end to the “era of cheap money,” saying it was causing “ever greater upheavals.”

As a result of their quantitative easing policies since 2008, the world’s four major central banks—the US Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan and Bank of England—now hold $14 trillion of financial assets. This compares with their holdings of $6 trillion before the financial crisis. The Fed has increased its holdings from around $800 billion to $4.5 trillion.

The Fed has ended quantitative easing and has announced that it will start to run down its asset holdings to the tune of $100 billion a month from the start of next year. But interest rates remain at historically low levels and the monthly reduction in holdings is small compared to the overall holdings. Announcing the decision last month, Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen emphasised she did not want to spark any “outsized” movement in financial markets as a result of the new policy.

With the current program due to expire in December, the ECB has yet to indicate how it will reduce its purchase of financial assets. At present it has €2.3 trillion on its balance sheet.

The official rationale for the ECB policy is that it was needed to lift inflation near but below 2 percent. However, there are indications that asset purchases may extend well into 2018, possibly at a lower rate, because inflation is still stuck at around 1.5 percent and may even go lower.

The minutes of the ECB September meeting, released earlier this month, indicated that the central bank could remain an active force in European bond markets longer than had been previously expected. According to the minutes, members of the EBC governing council expressed the wish “to keep monetary conditions across the 19-member area loose and cement the region’s economic recovery.”

The next meeting of the ECB scheduled for October 26 has been described by analysts at the finance corporation ING as “likely to be one of the greatest balancing acts” in the central bank’s history.

The ECB would have to announce some kind of tapering in the bond-purchasing program, while, at the same time, “it will have to try to avoid markets interpreting the announcement as overly hawkish, thereby leading to a premature tightening of financial conditions,” they wrote.

So far as its official policy is concerned, the ECB is caught in a contradiction. On the one hand, the limited economy recovery in the euro zone points to a cutback in the level of financial support it is providing. But on the other hand, the rise in the value of the euro is pushing inflation further below the bank’s target rate because of the cheapening of imports.

The main danger of a new financial bubble appears, at this point, to be in the stock markets. The US market continues to trade at record highs while markets in Japan and Europe have also lifted.

Last Thursday, the S&P 500 index closed at its sixth daily consecutive record, its longest streak of highs since 1997 during the dotcom boom. But despite warnings that stocks are historically overvalued—only during 1929 and the lead-up to the collapse of the dotcom bubble have valuations been higher, according to finance economist Robert Shiller—the market continues to rise.

The mood was summed up by one financial analyst, cited by the Wall Street Journal. He likened the situation to 1996 when the head of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, pointed to “irrational exuberance” yet the market kept rising for the next three years.

Last week the financial web site MarketWatch reported that the market appeared to be in a “melt-up stage” driven by excessive credit and by a “timid Fed” reluctant to raise interest rates.

It defined melt-up as a “dramatic and unexpected” rise in an asset class “driven in part by a stampede of investors who don’t want to miss out on the rise rather than by improvements in fundamentals.”

This brings to mind nothing so much as the famous comment of Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince who noted in July 2007: “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.”

While there were signs at that time of a major crisis in formation, the financial boom continued. But it led to the greatest economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression. Present conditions, in which rising markets are fuelled not by growth in the real economy, but by ultra-cheap money point in the same direction.

British government prepares further draconian legislation to censor Internet

Steve James 

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd’s speech at last week’s Conservative Party conference elaborated on the government’s proposal for a Commission on Countering Extremism, announced in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing in May.

The measures being put together to expose “extremism and division” amount to a fundamental attack on democratic rights, free speech and privacy.

Rudd described “extremism” in sweeping terms, underscoring that the government is seizing on recent attacks as the pretext for all-embracing Internet censorship and the criminalisation of free speech. Besides “warped Islamist ideologies,” Rudd insisted, “violent and non-violent extremism in all its forms—anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, Islamophobia, intolerance of women’s rights—these, and others, cannot be permitted to fester.”

Rudd and her government’s view of extremism could be extended ad infinitum to all forms of political dissent and criticism . “The safer Britain I want to build is a united one,” she said.

The home secretary asserted that recent attacks “include an element of online radicalisation.” She complained that “extremist and terrorist material can still be published online, and is then too easily accessible on some devices within seconds.”

Following last month’s bombing at Parsons Green Underground station in London, calls for further Internet censorship were being made before the bomber’s identity had even been established.

Contrary to Rudd’s assertions, the main and only proven common element between the recent terroristic attacks on innocent concertgoers and tube travellers is that the perpetrators have been known to the police and security forces for an extended period.

Nevertheless, the government intends to change the law “so that people who repeatedly view content deemed terroristic online could face up to 15 years in prison.”

Currently, material falling foul of section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 has to be saved locally to a computer drive or printed to be deemed criminal. In future, if the government gets its way, the mere act of repeatedly viewing a video stream of a site deemed extremist without “reasonable excuse” could be enough to merit a jail sentence. According to the Home Office, “reasonable excuse” will be restricted to academics, journalists and others who may have what the Home Office view as a legitimate reason.

Rudd also harangued the giants of social media, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft, with whom she is already collaborating closely, to “bring forward technology solutions to rid your platforms of this vile terrorist material.” “Act now,” Rudd went on. “Honour your moral obligations.”

Under the guise of clamping down on images of child abuse, Rudd made clear that she wanted widespread deployment of crawler technology, described as Project Arachnid, to rapidly identify offensive images and automate their instant removal. “Our investment,” Rudd continued, “will also enable internet companies to proactively search for, and destroy, illegal images in their systems.”

A technology that can identify images of child abuse can target images of anything else and, in the hands of the Home Office and the Web giants, would be used to suppress alternative opinions, and consolidate the immense worldwide program of Web censorship already being developed.

Rudd used the same hysterical technique to propagandise for the government’s attack on encryption, the basis of most secure data transmission on the Internet. “We also know that end to end encryption services like Whatsapp, are being used by paedophiles. … I do not accept it is right to allow them and other criminals to operate beyond the reach of law enforcement.”

According to this logic, all means of communication and transport, not to mention public utilities, should be suppressed because paedophiles and other criminals use them.

Under powers contained in the Investigatory Powers Act, which came into force last year, Rudd can already issue a technical capability notice (TCN) to demand companies undermine the security of their own technology. Any organisation with over 10,000 users in the UK can be instructed to alter their product to allow interception of communications and metadata collection.

In practice, the government confronts major problems in pushing through its attack on encryption because so much of modern finance and industry depends on it. Moreover, by the nature of encryption, which involves the exchange of keys generated at each end of a communication session, and which are then used to encrypt traffic during that session, the very notion of a “back door” is fraudulent.

Encryption either works, or it has been broken. Once an exploit exists, it is only a matter of time before its use becomes widespread, with potentially catastrophic consequences, as was shown with the Wannacrypt ransomware outbreak earlier this year, which brought much of the National Health Service to a standstill but was based on the Eternal Blue exploit developed by the US government’s National Security Agency (NSA).

Rudd has been repeatedly advised, including by industrial and technical commentators by no means otherwise hostile to her government’s agenda, where this might lead. Speaking in the House of Lords last month, Baroness Martha Lane Fox, founder of LastMinute.com, criticised earlier comments from Rudd banging the drum against encryption. Fox described Rudd’s approach as “asinine” and “alarmist and a disservice to the people we serve.”

None of this bothers Rudd, however, who is one of the candidates to replace Theresa May when her premiership finally disintegrates. Rudd declared that she doesn’t “need to understand how encryption works to understand how it’s helping the criminals.”

More than mere ignorance is on ostentatious show here. Nor should one rely on a scenario where the “voice of sanity” within ruling circles somehow acts as a counter to the sharp turn to state repression. For Rudd, the target is neither potential terrorists nor sex criminals but the entire working population at a time of acute and growing social and political tensions.

Rudd’s initial focus is on clamping down on opposition to British imperialism’s predatory wars in the Middle East, but this will inevitably be extended to cover all anti-war sentiment and commentary at a time when Britain and its major ally, US imperialism, are threatening North Korea with military intervention as part of a general patter of threats and aggression against Both China and Russia.

The same concerns inform proposals for a new Espionage Act to replace the Official Secrets Acts of 1911, 1929 and 1939. Still at the level of proposals with the Law Commission, the statutory body that reviews and updates legislation in line with government demands, the Espionage Act proposals, “Protection of Official Data: A Consultation Paper,” include measures that would, according to the British-based Open Rights Group (ORG):

• Make persons who are not British subjects or citizens, and who have never been on British territory, potentially chargeable and subject to extradition;

• Eliminate the requirement to prove that any alleged release of information actually caused damage;

• Prohibit a defence of prior disclosure unless information was already “lawfully in the public domain”;

• Include economic information as a punishable disclosure;

• Prohibit any form of public interest defence.

The ORG noted that the proposals are in part a reaction to the efforts by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and former NSA agent turned whistle-blower Edward Snowden to expose imperialist war crimes and secret electronic surveillance of the population, although neither Assange nor Snowden is mentioned in the Law Commission documents.

In 2013, Snowden exposed the extent of Internet surveillance organised by the British and US intelligence agencies. WikiLeaks continues to reveal numerous vast data troves exposing the machinations of the rich and powerful to the world’s working population, despite Assange’s incarceration in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. Seeking to guard against future such exposures, the Law Commission insists it is “necessary to ensure sensitive information is safeguarded against those whose goal is to obtain it contrary to the national interest.”

Ten dead, thousands displaced as wildfires rip through northern California

Trévon Austin

At least 10 people have died and more than 20,000 evacuated, in what authorities are calling one of the most destructive fire emergencies in California’s history. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, an estimated 1,500 structures have been destroyed and 73,000 acres burned.

Firefighters are battling at least 15 different fires spread across eight counties—Napa, Sonoma, Lake, Mendocino, Yuba, Nevada, Calaveras, and Butte.

The largest of the blazes began around 10 p.m. Sunday night and spread rapidly due to 50 mph winds and dry conditions in Napa and Sonoma counties, a region known for its vineyards and wineries. The fires sent smoke as far south as San Francisco, about 60 miles away.

The fire spread so quickly that some residents received an official evacuation notice three hours after they had already evacuated in the face of the advancing flames.

A group of elderly evacuees in Sonoma County, California

A large section of Santa Rosa, a city with about 175,000 in Sonoma County, has been ordered to evacuate. Over 200 patients were forced to evacuate from Kaiser Permanente Hospital and Sutter Hospital, including expectant mothers. At Kaiser Permanente, nurses had to race patients away from the area in their own personal vehicles.

Over 100 patients have been treated at local Napa and Sonoma county hospitals for fire-related illnesses—including burns, smoke inhalation and shortness of breath.

The immediate cause of the fire is unknown but authorities noted that dry conditions made it easy for the fires to spread. Janet Upton, a deputy director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told the New York Times that October is typically the busiest month for wildfires in California. Low humidity, dry conditions, a buildup of vegetation, and heavy winds known as diablo winds create prime conditions for wildfires to spread rapidly. “Combined, that’s a recipe for disaster,” she noted.

“I’ve been with the department for 31 years, and some years are notorious,” Upton said, concluding, “I’m afraid that 2017 is going to be added to that list now.”

Governor Jerry Brown issued an emergency proclamation for Napa, Sonoma and Yuba counties. “These fires have destroyed structures and continue to threaten thousands of homes, necessitating the evacuation of thousands of residents,” his emergency proclamation stated.

“This is really serious. It’s moving fast. The heat, the lack of humidity and the winds are all driving a very dangerous situation and making it worse,” Brown said at a news conference. “It’s not under control by any means. But we’re on it in the best way we know how.”

Napa County Fire Chief Barry Biermann pointed to a lack of resources that exacerbates the danger posed by wildfires and limits the ability to contain fires when they break out. “As of right now, with these conditions, we can’t get in front of this fire and do anything about the forward progress,” he said. Firefighters have been forced to focus on evacuation efforts.

Because fires are blazing in more than one part of California, firefighters are not able to focus their efforts on properly combating the flames.

Additionally, state and federal budgets have not kept up with the increasing scope and intensity of wildfires. At the beginning of this month, before the latest fires, Cal Fire had used $250 million of its $426.9 million emergency fund which was expected to last until June of next year.

On federal lands, which account for one-third of the state, there is no emergency fund for fighting wildfires, meaning that money is taken from fire prevention and forest health budgets, only exacerbating the dangers.

“So real work on the ground to reduce the intensity of fires isn’t getting done or is being delayed,” the director of Cal Fire, Ken Pimlott, told KQED news earlier this month. “It really just further exacerbates the intensity of fires because we can’t get on the federal ground in particular to get the fuels treated.”

Recent budget cuts have also hampered efforts to prevent and battle wildfires. California’s proposed 2017-18 budget cut funds for local efforts to remove dead trees to just $2 million. Acres of dead trees are a central problem fueling wildfires.

Cal Fire saw funding slashed nearly in half from $91 million to $41.7 million for the extended fire season, increased firefighter surge capacity, Conservation Corps fire suppression crews, and aerial assets.

Active wildfires were reported across the state this weekend. A fire burning through Orange County in Southern California burned multiple structures and forced residents of about 1,000 homes to evacuate. The wildfire spread over more than 4,000 acres and has burned at least six buildings in Anaheim.