Cost And Indulgence: Gloating Over New Year’s Celebrations

Binoy Kampmark

The gloating over the forthcoming New Year celebrations has already commenced. The first big city to feature on the roundups in each news segment as the year is ushered in tends to be Sydney, self-proclaimed global city in the antipodes, ever keen to rub its vulgar confidence into the noses of rival Melbourne. And, for that matter, every other city since costly fireworks and light displays matter in the image table.

In the time zones where the new year festivities feature with clockwork regularity, Sydney is the first flash, the initiator of the world into another fairly meaningless measurement known as a year, humanity’s effort to combat all swallowing eternity. Organisers are interviewed confident that the display will be the “greatest ever”.

The problem with such an absolutist catch-all cliché as “greatest ever” is that it surely cannot happen each year. This improbability hardly bothers those behind putting together the event, whose job prescription eschews originality. The Sydney NYE committee, organisers and propagandists, find it entirely feasible that each event is surely greater than the other, and spread this gospel through media outlets without irony. Such optimism, such naked advertising!

This, after all, is an occasion to forget the year that was, to forget woe, crimes against humanity and barrel scraping politicians, appalling decisions and missteps and perhaps most importantly, forget the scruples about the environment and the heating planet.

Everything touching on these celebrations resembles self-promotion at its most cringe worthy, so much so it deserves the tag of grotesque. Even newspapers join the ride, casting aside editorial judgment in favour of back slapping confidence. “After a year that many were happy to leave behind,” went the Sydney Morning Herald at the start of 2017, “an estimated 1.5 million people packed the foreshore on Saturday for a double bill of fireworks climaxing with the world famous midnight pyrotechnics extravaganza.” These lines are already being copied to be re-run on the first day of 2018.

That account was more overawed than shocked at the sheer profligacy on display. The Roman Emperors equated displays of extravagance with the worthiness of power. The modern city bureaucrat equates firework displays with the desperate need to have a mention in every significant news outlet in the world. There were seven tonnes of fireworks used at the Sydney Harbour bridge show the last time, including 12,000 shells, 25,000 shooting comets and some 100,000 or so individual pyrotechnic effects. Millions had been expended ($7 million in one count).

These are not costs all are oblivious to. Even some of the blinded can attain a glimmer of sight. In 2015, a glummer assessment from the Australian Financial Review noted that the Sydney Harbour fireworks display would “cost ratepayers more than $900,000 – or $45,000 per minute – this year, up 40 per cent on the cost five years ago.”

The hefty $45,000 figure was arrived at after considering the initial “kids’ fireworks” component at 9 pm (children of all ages need convincing) lasting eight minutes, with the midnight extravaganza for the older ones going for a longer 12 exorbitant minutes.

Behind every bread and circus act is a political figure wanting to sooth and pacify, if for not for any other reason that old fashion tried bribery. Even before the concept of the ballot was invented, the approval of one’s rulers has been sought at intervals, if for nothing else than keeping citizens (or subjects) orderly and satisfied.

While Australians are known for occasional attacks of puritanical wowserism (the country’s head scratching drinking laws, its classifications scheme for film and television count as notable examples) no one wants to be accused of being an anti-fireworks warrior on the city council.

The AFR documented the response of a City of Sydney spokesperson, who claimed that the fireworks on the New Year’s Eve was “money well spent”. Going back to August, not a single councillor was willing to demur to expanding the budget for fireworks. There would be an influx of spectators; money would be spent, or thrown about, revenue generated for the city’s coffers. Other enterprises would also benefit: extortionate room costs from ideal vantage points, inflated prices for share-rides.

Not all are convinced by this bounty. In 2015, Lisa Nicholls petitioned the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, to “donate Australia’s New Year’s Eve fireworks money to our struggling farmers”. Far from the metropolitan centre of celebratory Sydney were those “who put food on your table and clothes on your back”. They risked “losing everything” after another year of crippling drought.

“How can we sit back on New Year’s Eve,” urged the petition, “and watch millions of dollars literally go up in smoke for a few minutes of our viewing pleasure when this money could do so much towards helping these farmers, the backbone of our country, to fight another day?” At its close, the measure had received 33,704 supporters. Ah, those unsatisfied spoilsports and irascible party poopers.

Such shows of indulgence must come with warnings of care. This has been a year of the spectacular mowing down incident, the murderous vehicle assault, the endangered tourist. Urban terrorism is alive and well, as are the placebo reassurances of the police. It’s all to do with bollards, come the officials. But this is a show for which no cost will be spared. The punters will be out. The pyrotechnics shall go on. Most of all, the City councillors will be happy.

Australian car attack highlights mental healthcare crisis

Will Morrow

Saeed Noori, the 32-year-old man accused of driving a vehicle into pedestrians in Melbourne’s central business district on December 21, was remanded in custody on Wednesday, following a brief court hearing. He has been charged with 18 counts of attempted murder, and one count of conduct endangering life.

Of the 20 people hospitalised from the incident, two remain in critical conditions—an 83-year-old man and a South Korean male aged in his 60s. Fortunately, no one was killed.

Noori’s lawyer Tass Antos indicated that his defence case would explore whether his client is mentally fit to make a plea or stand trial. Magistrate John Hardy ordered that Noori undergo a psychiatric examination.

What information has emerged about Noori paints a picture of a deeply unwell man. He has a long history of mental illness and addiction to crystal methamphetamine, commonly known as “ice.” According to the Weekend Australian, Noori was involuntarily admitted to an acute psychiatric ward for two weeks earlier this year. Previously, it was revealed that he was receiving treatment under a government-sponsored mental health plan, which provides for a limited number of psychological treatment sessions.

Noori appears to be one of the millions of victims, direct and indirect, of the illegal US and Australian wars over the past 25 years aimed at subjugating the resource-rich Middle East. Accompanied by his sister, brothers and parents, he arrived in Australia in 2004 as an 18-year-old refugee from Afghanistan, which was invaded in 2001 as part of a US-led neo-colonial regime-change operation.

Before the December 21 incident, Noori reportedly lived in a government-subsidised housing estate in Heidelberg West, which is among the 5 percent of most disadvantaged suburbs in the country. He is married and has a two-year-old son. His wife is said to be expecting their second child.

Medical health professionals responded by calling for an urgent government response to address the national crisis in mental healthcare, aggravated by decades of funding cuts at the state and federal level.

Patrick McGorry, professor of youth mental health at the University of Melbourne, told Australian Associated Press: “The system is completely unable to treat people safely, so we’ve had a great rise in suicides as well, and a smaller number of homicides. The public mental health system has basically been collapsing over the last 10 or 15 years, with inadequate funding.”

McGorry noted a series of similar violent events across the state of Victoria by mentally ill individuals, including in January this year, when another man with a history of mental illness and drug abuse drove a car into Melbourne’s crowded Bourke Street mall, killing six people.

McGorry said one Melbourne mental health service alone had reported 23 murders by patients in contact with the mental health system over 11 years. He added: “In the next 12 months we will see several murders which are preventable, committed by poorly treated psychiatric patients and we will see hundreds of suicides, which are mostly preventable.”

The well-known expert continued: “Every night in emergency departments, people are being turned away with serious mental illnesses.” McGorry estimated that 1 percent of the population used the mental health system, but that 3 percent were in need of it.

The mental health system crisis is a direct outcome of decades of bipartisan cutbacks and privatisations in the sector. The Keating Labor government led the assault. Its 1992 National Mental Healthcare Strategy committed state governments to close government-funded specialised psychiatric institutions, in the name of moving patients into “community care.”

In the state of Victoria, the Kennett Liberal government closed all 14 of the state’s psychiatric hospitals between 1992 and 2000. The result has been a catastrophe, with the burden of care left on families themselves, as well as grossly underfunded not-for-profit and community organisations that are forced to compete for resources. Crisis Assessment and Treatment Teams (CATT) function as stopgaps in emergency situations.

Approximately one in five Australians experience some form of mental illness each year. Among young people aged 15 to 19, the figure was 22.8 percent this year, up from 18.7 percent five years ago, according to the latest government National Mental Health Card report. Among people aged 15-24, suicide is the single biggest cause of death.

Crystal methamphetamine usage has reached epidemic levels. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, more than 250,000 Australians, about 1 percent of the population, use the drug. This is the highest per capita usage in the world, approximately three times higher than that of the United States.

The response of the media and political establishment to the December 21 incident, however, has sought to prevent any analysis of the broader social causes of such a tragedy. As always with such disasters, they have tried to channel people’s natural humanitarian response toward the victims in a reactionary direction.

Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews declared that the incident was an act of “evil.” Liberal-National Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull similarly labelled it a “despicable, cowardly act.” Such comments are intended to block any examination of the underlying state of society.

The corporate media, with the Murdoch outlets in the lead, is seeking to foment a lynch-mob atmosphere against Noori and the more than 600,000 Muslims living in Australia. Noori’s address has been published, along with a picture of his home.

In an article on December 24 in Murdoch’s Sydney-based Daily Telegraph, “Let’s call terrorism what it is,” right-wing commentator Miranda Devine denounced the government for failing to lay terrorism-related charges against Noori.

Government and police authorities, without any concrete evidence, initially aired the possibility that the event was a terrorist attack. They were forced to admit, however, following searches of Noori’s home and computer, that he had no connections to any terrorist organisation or ideology.

But for Devine, facts cannot be allowed to stand in the way. “Here we had a suspect who fit the profile of similar vehicle terrorist attacks in Nice, Jerusalem, Berlin, London, Stockholm, Barcelona, New York,” she asserted. “He’s a Muslim and a refugee.” Devine added: “Obviously the majority of Muslims in Australia are not terrorists, but the majority of terrorists are Muslims.”

A December 23 editorial in Murdoch’s flagship Australian newspaper declared that “the minority … have shown they are unwilling or unable to accept our way of life, founded on Judaeo-Christian values.” Warning darkly about an “encroaching threat in our midst,” the editorial called for “a public conversation on the deportation of troublemakers who are not Australian, the need to raise the bar much higher before granting that privilege or even the deportation of dual citizens who attack our security.”

As these comments demonstrate, for the political and media establishment, the essential purpose of such tragedies is to justify the destruction of core democratic rights and the waging of predatory wars, as has been pursued continuously over the past 16 years under the banner of the “war on terror.”

Zimbabwe government and opposition compete for imperialist backing

Chris Marsden 

Political life in Zimbabwe, since November’s military coup deposed President Robert Mugabe, has been dominated by the efforts of the Zanu-PF government to woo the major powers and international investors.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has done so while consolidating his grip on power, using the same generals that installed him in office.

Mnangagwa’s cabinet is led by army personnel, who made themselves millionaires under Mugabe. It includes coup leader Constantino Chiwenga as one of his deputies, alongside Kembo Mohadi, state security minister under Mugabe. General Sibusiso Moyo, who announced Mugabe’s detention on state television, is Foreign Minister and Chief Air Marshal Perence Shiri is Minister of Agriculture, Lands and Rural Resettlement. War Veterans leader Chris Mutsvangwa, who led protests to force Mugabe out, is Information Minister.

To underscore Mnangagwa’s commitment to free market economic reform, Finance Minister Patrick Antony Chinamasa’s first budget was framed as an appeal for investment, matched with pledges to curtail government spending.

Chinamasa’s “new economic order” is centred on a revision of the indigenisation law introduced by Mugabe, which formally required 51/49 percent black Zimbabwean ownership of companies worth more than $500,000. From April 2018, indigenisation will now be restricted to the diamond and platinum extractive industries.

Corporate income tax exemption for five years was announced for the energy sector, to be followed by a permanent rate of just 15 percent. This was accompanied by a tax amnesty on debts acquired prior to December 1, building on an existing amnesty window for the repatriation of public funds taken out of the country through illegal means.

More than 3,000 jobs in the youth service will be eliminated as the centrepiece of measures aimed at cutting public sector employment, accounting for 90 percent of the budget—US$5.1 billion in 2018.

The measures announced point to the extent of corruption within the regime. Headlined is a plan to enforce retirement at 65 from January. Like the attack on youth services, this is a move that will in fact benefit the new military-based faction by eliminating Mugabe loyalists. Bribes will be paid to ensure acquiescence. Staff retiring will be “assisted with access to capital, to facilitate their meaningful contribution towards economic development, including taking advantage of allocated land…”

Other measures include reducing the wage bill by continuing and enforcing the existing freeze on recruitment.

In a clampdown on perks, there will be cuts to free government cars (with a limit of one per person!), fuel benefit, business class travel, the excessive size of overseas delegations, bloated foreign service missions and to local staff bills averaging US$355,000 per mission per month!

(It should be noted that the salary bill for various Constitutional Commissions, which are supposed to provide for improved governance, is around US$11.6 million, inclusive of US$3.8 million for Commissioners, while the cars requested by these VIP’s cost US$10 million.)

The bulk of these cuts will fall on opposition faction representatives or those lower down the bureaucratic pecking order. But, as always, the real target of austerity will be the working class. The cap on recruitment, for example, has left 3,500 graduate nurses unemployed. The jobs that will be lost will continue to be those of doctors, nurses, teachers and other essential professions.

Mnangagwa spoke December 20 to a joint sitting of the country’s two houses of parliament, pledging, “We are determined to remove any policy inconsistencies of the past to make Zimbabwe an attractive destination for capital.” His government would soon unveil “a robust engagement and re-engagement programme with the international community in our continued bid to rejoin the community of nations.”

The government’s pledges were, like the coup that brought it to power, broadly welcomed in the imperialist capitals. Interviewed by Al Jazeera, Piers Pigou, senior consultant for southern Africa for the International Crisis Group (ICG), was asked whether “the military’s role in Zimbabwe’s post-Mugabe transition” would be “a help or hindrance to Mnangagwa’s inaugural promises of ‘a new democratic era’?”

Pigou replied that “the military can bring command management and discipline into a corrupt and venal political and economic environment,” even though there were “unresolved allegations” about “the involvement of senior military and other security sector figures in corruption, self-enrichment and other violations.”

The complaints by the pro-Mugabe G40 faction, designed “to delegitimise” the new order—“arguing it is the product of a coup, rightly or wrongly—are struggling to gain traction. The African Union (AU) and South African Development Community (SADC) have accepted the new order, as have the international community.”

This leaves the alliance of seven opposition parties, led by the Movement for Democratic Change of Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) insisting that the pro-business reforms and austerity measures do not go far enough. They are appealing for support from the United States and other imperialist powers to ensure they have a role in government alongside ZANU-PF, to push Mnangagwa’s agenda further to the right.

Former Finance Minister Tendai Biti of the People’s Democratic Party said that the government’s 4.5 percent growth prediction was wildly optimistic and called for more severe cuts to government expenditure. His alternative to the “modicum of economic reform” by the government is a no deficit budget, and job cuts that will make the 3,700 youth officers retrenched seem “just but a drop in an ocean considering the fact that the government employs around 550,000 workers.”

He called for the size of the civil service to be cut by half “in a phased period of three years.” The attracting of Foreign Direct Investment also required “the total repealing of the Indigenisation and Empowerment Act,” including in the extraction industries.

The opposition pitch has been made directly to Washington. In mid-December, MDC Alliance presidential candidate Tsvangirai dispatched a three-member international delegation made up of MDC-T vice-president Nelson Chamisa, MDC president Welshman Ncube and Biti, to Europe and to visit President Donald Trump’s offices.

In a Senate Debate December 12, Biti urged the US to maintain sanctions and other punitive measures on ZANU PF until after the 2018 general elections have been proved “free and fair”. Then the “international community” could “assist us” in engaging with “the World Bank, the IMF and the Paris Club of lenders.”

This conflict between rival bourgeois factions is being played out at the expense of the working class, in a country where 70 percent of the population live on less than $5 per day, and many earn substantially less.

Tsvangirai began his career as leader of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which is pro-MDC. Current ZCTU president, Peter Mutasa, warned in the Financial Gazette that only five percent of workers are in the formal economy. (The overwhelming majority work in the informal economy and are either underemployed, self-employed or unemployed and reliant on subsistence farming.)

“Some 120,000 people are working without pay and the few that are earning salaries are getting a fraction of their salaries, in most cases a third. Those who are earning salaries are earning a fraction of the poverty datum line; maybe a third,” he said.

The ZCTU “was staunchly against any International Monetary Fund (IMF) or World Bank imposed reforms,” he added. But his only concrete demand was for a role in governmental structures for the trade unions in imposing the economic measures required. He urged everyone “to sit down as Zimbabweans and agree on a planned economic development,” which meant empowering “trade unions who play a major redistributive role of getting the much-needed resources even for the government from successful businesses…”

Over 700 Yemeni civilians killed and wounded by US-backed Saudi airstrikes in December

Bill Van Auken

The US-backed Saudi monarchy and its allied Gulf oil sheikdoms have dramatically escalated their bombing campaign against Yemen, the poorest nation in the Middle East, killing scores of civilians within the last few days.

In the bloodiest of the airstrikes, Saudi warplanes targeted a crowded marketplace in Yemen’s southwestern Taiz province on Tuesday, killing 54 civilians.

While coverage of the bloodbath by the US and Western media has been scarce, Yemen’s Al Masirah television network published photos on its website showing the market’s bombed-out shops and the dismembered remains of slaughtered civilians. It reported that body parts had been thrown hundreds of yards from the blast sites.

Among the dead were at least eight children. Another 32 people were wounded in the bombing, including six children.

On the same day, warplanes attacked a farm in the al-Tuhayta district of Yemen’s western Hodeida province killing an entire family of 14, including women and children.

Yemeni sources reported that Saudi and allied warplanes carried out more than 45 airstrikes on Wednesday targeting several Yemeni cities and killing at least another six civilians, including a family of five whose house was targeted in the port city of Hodeida.

According to the Al Masirah television network the number of Yemenis killed and wounded in Saudi airstrikes since the beginning of December had risen to 600 before the latest round of casualties beginning on Tuesday.

This bloody new phase in the more than 1,000-day-old war by the wealthy and reactionary Arab monarchies against impoverished Yemen is driven by the House of Saud’s frustration over its inability to shift the military stalemate and made possible by the unrestrained support from Riyadh’s Western allies, principally the US and Britain.

The stepped up bombing campaign has come partly in response to the failure of a Saudi-backed coup by the former Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh against his erstwhile allies, the Houthi rebel movement. The abortive effort ended in Saleh’s death and the routing of his supporters earlier this month.

Riyadh has also been shaken by the firing of missiles from Yemen targeting both the international airport and the House of Saud’s royal palace. Both missiles were brought down without causing any casualties.

Washington has long relied upon the Saudi monarchy as a pillar of reaction in the Arab world, arming it to the teeth and in the process reaping vast profits for US arms corporations.

During his trip to Saudi Arabia in May, US President Donald Trump signed a $110 billion arms deal with the Saudi regime. While the agreement represented the single largest arms deal in US history, it represented a continuity with the policy pursued by the Democratic administration of Barack Obama, which had struck a $29 billion agreement to sell F-15s the Saudis—representing the previous largest single US arms deal—and had a total of $100 billion worth of weaponry slated for sale to the kingdom.

In addition to providing the warplanes, bombs and missiles being used to slaughter Yemeni civilians, Washington is a direct accomplice and participant in the assault on Yemen, a flagrant war crime that has produced the greatest humanitarian catastrophe on the face of the planet. US Air Force planes are flying refueling missions that keep Saudi fighter bombers in the air, while US intelligence officers are assisting in the targeting of airstrikes and US warships are backing a Saudi sea blockade that is part of a barbaric siege of the country aimed at starving its population into submission.

While an estimated 13,600 civilians have lost their lives to the US-backed Saudi military campaign launched in March of 2015, that death toll has been massively eclipsed by the number of lives lost to hunger and disease resulting from the destruction of basic water and sanitary infrastructure, along with factories, farms, medical facilities and other vital resources, and the blockading of food, medicine and humanitarian supplies.

Almost three years into the war, 21.2 million people, 82 percent of the population, are in need of humanitarian assistance, lacking access to food, fuel and clean water,. An estimated 8 million people are on the brink of starvation, while soaring food prices have placed essential commodities out of reach for all but the wealthiest layers of Yemeni society.

The International Committee of the Red Cross announced last week that the number of cholera cases had topped 1 million, the worst epidemic in modern history, while the country has also been hit by an outbreak of diphtheria, a disease that has been almost entirely eradicated in the rest of the world.

The apocalyptic scale of the human suffering in Yemen has moved some in the West to make timid criticisms of the Saudi regime. Thus, French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly called Saudi King Salman on December 24 to advocate a “complete lifting’ of the blockade of Yemen. Macron made no move, however, to amend the 455 million euro arms deal struck with Riyadh by his predecessor, François Hollande, providing weapons being used to murder Yemeni civilians.

Similarly, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator Jamie McGoldrick pointed to the latest mass casualties resulting from Saudi bombings to condemn the “complete disregard for human life that all parties, including the Saudi-led coalition, continue to show in this absurd war.”

The reality is that the overwhelming majority of deaths have been caused by illegal Saudi aggression. The war, from the standpoint of both Riyadh and Washington, moreover, is not “absurd,” but rather part of a broader regional strategy being pursued by US imperialism to prepare for a military confrontation with Iran, which has emerged as an obstacle to the drive to assert American hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East.

Finally, the New York Times published an editorial Thursday saturated with hypocrisy and deceit. Titled “The Yemen Crucible,” it accuses the Trump administration of applying “a double standard” to the catastrophe in Yemen by denouncing alleged Iranian arms support for the Houthi rebels, while “having nothing bad to say” about the Saudi bombing campaign.

The Times, a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party establishment, raises the possibility that Iran “could be in violation” of a UN Security Council resolution barring it from the export of missiles and other weapons, and guilty of “escalating a crisis” that could lead to war with Saudi Arabia.

Referring to the recent performance of the US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who appeared at a US military hangar in Washington with what was claimed to be debris from an Iranian-supplied missile fire by the Houthi rebels at Riyadh, the newspaper acknowledged that the presentation recalled the “weapons of mass destruction” speech delivered by then US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN Security Council in preparation for the US invasion of Iraq.

Of course the Times supported that war of aggression in 2003 and became one of the main propagandists of the “weapons of mass destruction” lie used to justify it.

The editorial utters not a word of criticism of US arms sales to the Saudi regime—much less about the Obama administration’s initiation of Washington’s support for the war on Yemen—and concludes with claims of seeing signs that the Trump administration is exerting “constructive influence on the Saudis.”

These lies and omissions make clear that if and when Washington embarks on a potentially world catastrophic war against Iran, the “newspaper of record” will once again provide its services as a propaganda organ for American militarism.

Cold wave, house fires prove lethal for US homeless, poor

Patrick Martin

A record cold wave extending from the Upper Midwest through the Great Lakes and into New England contributed to numerous deaths across the United States Christmas week. Homeless people and the elderly were particularly at risk, but the greater stress imposed by severe weather has yet again laid bare the social crisis affecting all sections of the working class.

Deaths due to hypothermia (exposure to extreme cold) were reported in Chicago; Cincinnati, Ohio; Rapid City, South Dakota; and Ogden, Utah over the Christmas holiday period.

The victim in Chicago was a 62-year-old man, whose name has not been released, found unresponsive in his car the day after Christmas. His was the fourth death in Chicago attributed to exposure since the current cold season began in late October. The other victims were all men suffering from multiple health problems aggravated by alcoholism.

The man found dead Tuesday at a bus stop in downtown Cincinnati, 55-year-old Kenneth Martin, was homeless. In Rapid City, Alan Jack, aged 69, was found dead outdoors early Christmas morning. The 79-year-old woman, Verna Marriott, found dead the morning of December 23 in Ogden was suffering from dementia and had wandered from the home she shared with her daughter’s family in the middle of the night.

An even greater death toll comes from the rising number of house fires, frequently triggered by space heaters or other precarious methods of keeping warm in severe weather. These fires for the most part represent the intersection of the cold wave with the bad housing conditions endured by impoverished layers of the working class.

Twelve people died Thursday night, including a one-year-old child, as the result of a fire which ripped through an apartment building in the Bronx, New York City's poorest borough. While a cause of the fire has yet to be officially determined, initial reports indicate that the fire was caused by a space heater. The fire comes less than two weeks after a house fire in Brooklyn killed a mother and her three children.

Two fires in eastern Iowa over the weekend killed nine people, including four children, bringing the total number of fire deaths in 2017 in Iowa to 51, the highest level in more than a decade.

Four members of one family died in a house fire early Christmas Day in Blue Grass, just west of Davenport. One of the four residents escaped but later died in the hospital. The other three died inside their home.

A second fire in a Davenport mobile home December 21 killed a mother and her four children. The mobile home had no working smoke detectors and, because it was owner-occupied, was not subject to fire department inspection.

Kelsey Clain, 23, and two of her children, Jayden Smead, five, and Carson Smead, two, died at the scene. Isabella Smead, nine months, died in hospital December 24, and Skylar Smead, four, died similarly on Tuesday, December 26.

In the neighboring state of Minnesota, a house fire Tuesday in Hibbing killed four people, including two grandparents, Steven and Patricia Gillitzer, and two grandsons, Todd Gillitzer, nine, and Anteus Adams, three. A third grandson, Jonathan Gillitzer, eight, was rescued by his grandfather and survived, but Steven, a retired firefighter, died trying to save other members of his family.

Firefighters from five departments fought the blaze in temperatures of around 20 below zero Fahrenheit, with wind chills as low as 35 below. The house had smoke detectors which were sounding when firefighters arrived at the scene. There were two other fire deaths in Minnesota since Christmas Day, bringing the total for the year to 63, the most since 2002.

Two children were killed in a house fire in East Franklin, Pennsylvania, northeast of Pittsburgh, on Thursday morning, December 28. The 13-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy were caught by a fast-moving fire, but five other residents—the children’s mother, her boyfriend, and three siblings escaped by jumping out second-floor windows. The day before, a 16-year-old boy was killed in a house fire in nearby South Bend, Pennsylvania.

Cold weather stretching into the southern portion of the Plains states created treacherous driving conditions. Four women—two teenagers, a 20-year-old and a 47-year-old—died Tuesday in a car crash near Abilene, Kansas caused by icy roads. The car hit a guardrail on a bridge and went over, landing 25 feet below on its roof, according to the state highway patrol.

The cold shattered records throughout the affected area, home to half the population of the United States. International Falls, Minnesota, proverbially the coldest spot in the continental US, set a record low of minus 36 degrees Fahrenheit Wednesday morning, four degrees below the 1924 record. Detroit tied its previous record of minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit the same day.

The National Weather Service issued extreme-cold advisories for New England, the Northeast, the Midwest and parts of the West. The forecast for New Year’s Eve in New York City was a wind chill in negative numbers, some 40 degrees colder than normal. City officials said that emergency shelter space was being opened for thousands of homeless people who might otherwise be on the streets this week.

As the cold wave set in, city after city across the United States has reported record annual death tolls among the homeless. Memorial services were held in several hundred cities on December 21—the shortest day and longest night of the year—to mark these tragic events.

The cities involved include many that might not be thought of as centers of homelessness and premature death—Charlotte, North Carolina, with 28 deaths, triple the previous high; Nashville, Tennessee, with 118 deaths; Denver, Colorado, with 232 deaths.

These grim totals were dwarfed by the figure from Los Angeles, a staggering 805 deaths among the homeless, up from 719 in 2016. The city is the center of US homelessness, and particularly of those living on the streets rather than in shelters or doubled-up with relatives and friends.

By one estimate, documented in a three-minute clip posted on Instagram on Christmas Day, there are 20,000 people living on the streets in downtown LA’s Skid Row alone. The UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty visited this area as part of his recent tour of high-poverty areas in the United States, and cited it as part of his report, which concluded that for many millions of people, “The American Dream is the American Illusion.”

Macron turns France’s labor decrees on auto workers

Alex Lantier

Yesterday, automaker PSA Peugeot-Citroën announced that it is preparing deregulated mass sackings, in the first use of French President Emmanuel Macron’s labor law decrees in a major industrial firm. Talks with the trade unions, whose approval for the mass sackings is required according to the Macron decrees, are to begin on January 9.

The move by Europe’s second-largest automaker is part of a relentless international assault on workers’ jobs, working conditions and social rights. After the 2008 Wall Street crash and global crisis, as governments worldwide poured trillions of dollars into the coffers of the same banks whose speculation had caused the crisis, the French state paid billions of euros to bail out PSA and Renault. In return, the auto giants are sacking workers to funnel billions of euros more in wealth created by the working class into the pockets of the superrich.

The policy spearheaded by Macron, who is now broadly viewed with contempt and distrust in France as the “president of the rich,” aims to throw the working class back decades. With PSA subsidiary Opel Vauxhall poised to cut 4,500 jobs in Germany alone, tens of thousands of PSA jobs across Europe are threatened. A decade after the Detroit auto bailout slashed the wages of newly-hired workers by half, the goal is to impose speed-up, increase flexibility of working times, and transition to a workforce largely made up of temporary workers, who in France are paid little over €9 per hour.

Internationally, the financial aristocracy is preparing a historic attack on the working class for 2018. Siemens is cutting 15,000 jobs in order to reap billions in profits, while GE has planned 12,000 job cuts. In Europe, governments are preparing a round of new social attacks to finance multi-billion euro military spending increases and tax cuts to rival the one just passed in the United States, which funnels $1.4 trillion largely to the wealthy, while devastating key US health care and social programs.

This onslaught will provoke explosive opposition of revolutionary dimensions among workers internationally, which will raise critical questions of perspective and strategy. A struggle cannot be waged based on a search for a nationally-based compromise with the capitalist class: none is on offer. It can only be victorious if it is waged as an international struggle against capitalism, armed with a revolutionary and socialist perspective, and opposed to the union bureaucracies and petty-bourgeois political parties which are aligned with the bourgeois state machine.

This emerges particularly clearly in the experience of the workers in France. Macron and his predecessor, Socialist Party (PS) President François Hollande, trampled public opinion to impose the diktat of the banks. Fully 70 percent of the French population opposed the PS labor law. Yet the PS repressed mass protests against it, invoking the state of emergency to send tens of thousands of police to assault student protests and crush strikes, while the union bureaucracy carried out a cowardly climb-down in the face of police repression.

Macron’s policies lack any pretense of democratic legitimacy. Elected by default in May, amid broad disaffection with the contest between Macron, a reactionary banker, and neo-fascist Marine Le Pen, his Republic on the March (LRM) party won a legislative majority in June elections in which less than half of voters chose to participate. Yet LRM acted as if it had a broad mandate for its policies of mass sackings and the evisceration of social rights established by generations of workers struggles during the 20th century.

In addition to writing the key provisions of the state of emergency into the anti-terror law and pre-ordering a four-year supply of anti-riot weaponry, Macron imposed as decrees the most unpopular measures the PS had temporarily removed from the labor law in order to defuse protests. Macron’s decrees include the provision for unregulated mass sackings PSA is now using. It allows firms to sack workers even if they are highly profitable, and to deny sacked workers training benefits or re-hiring privileges, even if the firm’s financial situation improves.

There should be no illusions in the union bureaucracies and their allies in the petty-bourgeois pseudo-left parties: they will organize no effective opposition to Macron. They already agreed in July 2012 to a massive concessions deal at the Sevelnord PSA plant in northern France, now hailed in the press for establishing the PSA’s downsized workplace of the future. Jean-Pierre Mercier, a member of the Workers Struggle (LO) party and union bureaucrat who oversaw the 2013 closure of the PSA plant at Aulnay, now leads the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor’s (CGT) PSA work.

The Macron decrees make official the trade unions’ evolution into organs of the capitalist state, that have lost their working class base and are largely financially subsidized and controlled by the employers. They help plan and provide legal sanction to mass layoffs, referendums on whether to accept pay cuts to keep plants open, and other attacks against their own members.

Strikes and protests by auto workers in Serbia and Romania, Siemens workers in Germany, and beyond are initial signs of a political counter-offensive of the working class that will bring it into headlong conflict with the ruling class and its various political agencies. Fifty years after the May-June 1968 general strike launched a wave of revolutionary struggles across Europe, the growth of workers’ struggles will have a decisive impact on the situation in every country. It raises sharply the necessity of building independent organizations of the working class and its revolutionary vanguard.

Workers face the task of building their own organizations and committees in workplaces and neighborhoods—independent of and opposed to the unions and petty bourgeois parties—to discuss and organize opposition to the attacks that will emerge from Macron’s illegitimate decrees. Their activity must be connected to clear anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and socialist demands addressing the needs of the masses. After the ruling elites in 2008 pumped trillions of dollars virtually overnight into the banks, the claim that there is no money for these needs is absurd and must be rejected.

These organizations must fight to defend workers’ social rights on a European and international scale. In a world of globally-coordinated production, auto workers cannot live decent lives in Western Europe if they earn €380 monthly in Serbia, or €140 in Tunisia. This underlines the bankruptcy of nationally-oriented policies of the unions and parties like LO, and the urgent necessity of a new political leadership in the working class: sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country, fighting war, austerity and dictatorship.

The ICFI will fight to promote the growth of independent workers organizations and to link them to an international, socialist and anti-war movement to take state power and reorganize economic life on the basis of social need, and to replace the bankrupt European Union with the United Socialist States of Europe.

India and Blue Economy in the Bay of Bengal

Vijay Sakhuja

India’s effort to harness Blue Economy received a boost with the establishment of the International Training Centre for Operational Oceanography  (ITCOocean). The Centre will operate under the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad, known for its expertise in ocean sciences and services, including advisory to society, industry, government agencies and the scientific community through sustained ocean observations.

The ITCOocean would serve as the specialist institution for Operational Oceanography, a field of study relating to systematic and long-term measurements of various changes in the oceans and atmosphere, and undertake interpretation and dissemination of data in the form of ‘now-casts’, ‘forecasts’ and ‘hind-casts’ to a number of stakeholders. The centre is expected to commence work in June 2018 and will train technical and management personnel engaged in various sectors of the Blue Economy such as fisheries, seabed and marine resource development, shipping and ports, coastal tourism, marine environment, coastal management, etc.

The ITCOocean can potentially support the development of Blue Economy in the Bay of Bengal through capacity building in at least five ways. First, it can serve as a regional hub for collation and dissemination of scientific data among the regional science centres and communities. For instance, in Bangladesh, the National Oceanographic and Maritime Institute (NOAMI), Bangladesh Oceanographic Research Institute (BORI) and National Oceanographic Research Institute (NORI) can be part of the ITCOocean network for Bay of Bengal Blue Economy initiatives.

Second, Blue Economy is data-intensive which is a function of the collection of observations generated through satellites, research vessels, sea-based sensors including those embedded in the ocean floor, and weather modelling. These systems, devices and processes generate tens of terabytes of data and require technology and expertise to interpret it for operational uses. Further, oceanographers and scientists operate with diverse data types obtained bya variety of national technical means and methodologies. At ITCOocean, an oceanographic data bank for use by the regional scientific community can support regional initiatives to study and harness the oceans in a sustainable manner.

Third is human resources training in oceanography and creating a gene pool of professions to support national Blue Economy programmes in regional countries. India has an excellent track record of training scientists, and in the last few years, besides training scientists for their own needs, the INCOIS faculty has trained 105 scientists from 34 other countries in various aspects of operational oceanography.

Fourth is supporting innovation for ocean-related disruptive technologies which are transforming modern day operational oceanography. Big data, artificial intelligence, augmented reality/virtual reality, blockchain technology and additive manufacturing commonly known as ‘3D printing’ are mushrooming and driving innovation to augment operational oceanography. For instance, 3D printing technologies support real-life applications in oceanography through hydrodynamics, biomechanics, locomotion and tracking and surface studies. Another significant use of 3D printing is in preparing coral reef replicas and thereafter seeding coral to restore damaged reefs.

Fifth, ITCOocean is also an important diplomatic tool for science diplomacy. The Indian government has promoted Blue Economy in multilateral forums at regional and sub-regional levels such as the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). As far as the latter is concerned, the 15th BIMSTEC Ministerial Meeting's joint statement notes that member countries agreed to constitute a Working Group to develop Blue Economy. In that spirit, Bangladesh hosted an international conference in October 2017, where it was noted that the lack of scientific marine knowledge and technology could be the Achilles Heel of Blue Economy development in the Bay of Bengal. 

It is fair to argue that Bangladesh has been most proactive among the Bay of Bengal littorals to develop Blue Economy. Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has stated that Bangladesh will have to ensure 5 per cent contribution of Blue Economy to the GDP to achieve the targeted 8 per cent economic growth in 2019, 9 per cent in 2025, and 10 per cent in 2030.

Bangladesh merits a leadership role for the development of Blue Economy in the Bay of Bengal; however, it is constrained by a number of factors that potentially inhibit this a mandate given that it is yet to develop advanced technological skills to study the oceans. To address this critical gap, the Bangladesh government has decided to acquire a modern survey ship in 2018. In this context, India is well-placed to support Bangladesh to develop scientific capacities, including training for oceanographic research. Additionally, ITCOocean is an important institution to support Bangladesh’s needs of operational oceanography.

Bangladesh has established scientific technical collaboration with Norway through the Nansen-Bangladesh International Centre for Coastal, Ocean and Climate Studies (NABIC); likewise, ITCOocean has tied up with Norway’s Nansen Scientific Society and the Research Council to collaborate in teaching and research. It will be useful to pool resources to augment cooperation among the Bay of Bengal littorals and bring together regional initiatives under one roof.

Although ITCOocean is well-positioned to support high-end Operational Oceanography, there would also be a critical need to establish vocational institutions to promote, train and skill workers that are adept at understanding the oceans and working in industries that support Blue Economy.

Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) Gender Institute 2017 – Dakar, Senegal

Application Deadline: 15th March 2018

Eligible Countries: African universities

To be Taken at (country): Dakar, Senegal

About the Award: Over the last two decades, CODESRIA has convened an annual gender institute to fortify efforts at integrating gender research and scholarship into the mainstream of social science in Africa. The overall objective of the gender institute continues to be to contribute to a greater awareness about gender issues in African social research milieus, the integration of gender analysis into social research undertaken in Africa, and the inclusion of gender approaches in the agenda of social science debates on methodology. Besides, the institute has served as a strategy to catalyze efforts by feminist academics in the universities to create space for women’s studies as a new epistemology in the study of the disciplines and challenge the prevailing androcentric view of society and culture. Ultimately, these efforts were not meant to be ends in themselves. They were part of the broader efforts to make universities in the continent much better and entrench them as critical spaces for the continent’s transformation.

Candidates submitting proposals for consideration as laureates should critically interrogate the outcomes of feminist and gender scholarship in connection to the broad debate on the role of higher education in social transformation; understood more generally as the radical and fundamental changes in society’s core institutions, the polity and the economy, with major implications for relationships between social groups or classes, and for the means of the creation and distribution of wealth, power and status. Proposals should more specifically interrogate issues revolving around trends in knowledge production and consumption, its content, quality, utility and demand for Africa’s transformation and its fit with regards to sustainable development concerns in Africa.

Type: Call for Papers

Eligibility: 

• Candidates submitting proposals for consideration should be PhD students or early career academics in the social sciences and humanities and those working in the broad field of gender and women studies.
• Scholars outside universities but actively engaged in the area of policy process and/or social movements and civil society organizations are also encouraged to apply.
• Africa-based academics and non-African scholars who are able to support their participation are also encouraged to submit proposals for consideration.

Number of Awards: The number of places available for laureates of this Institute is only twenty (20).

Durat   ion of Program: May 14-25, 2018.

How to Apply: Applications for consideration as laureates for the Institute should include:
1. One duly completed application form in a World format (see attached document in Program Webpage Link below);
2. An application letter indicating institutional or organizational affiliation;
3. A curriculum vitae;
4. A research proposal of not more than ten (10) pages, including a descriptive analysis of the work the applicant intends to undertake, an outline of the theoretical interest of the topic chosen by the applicant, and the relationship of the topic to the problematic and concerns of the theme of the Institute;
5. Two (2) reference letters from scholars or researchers known for their competence and expertise in the candidate’s research area (geographic and disciplinary), including their names, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses;
6. Copy of the Applicant’s passport.

All applications should be sent by email to: gender.institute@codesria.sn .

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: CODESRIA

Masters Fellowships in Public Health and Tropical Medicine for Low and Middle Income Countries 2018 – UK

Application Deadline: 26th March 2018

Eligible Countries: Low and Middle Income Countries

To be taken at (country): UK

About Scholarship: This scheme strengthens scientific research capacity in low- and middle-income countries, by providing support for junior researchers to gain research experience and high-quality research training at Masters Degree level.

Research projects should be aimed at understanding and controlling diseases (either human or animal) of relevance to local, national or global health. This can include laboratory based molecular analysis of field or clinical samples, but projects focused solely on studies in vitro or using animal models will not normally be considered under this scheme.

Type: Masters, Fellowship

Eligibility: Interested candidate should apply if they:

• are a national of a low- or middle-income country
• hold a clinical or non-clinical undergraduate degree in a subject relevant to public health or tropical medicine.

You must also:

• be at an early stage in your career with limited research experience (but you must have a demonstrated interest in, or aptitude for, research)
• have sponsorship from an eligible host organisation in a low- or middle-income country
• have a research proposal that is within our public health and tropical medicine remit.

Candidate CANNOT apply if they are:

• intending to be based in the UK, Republic of Ireland or another high-income country(opens in a new tab) (although your taught course can be anywhere in the world)
• a researcher in India – instead see the Wellcome Trust/Department of Biotechnology India Alliance(opens in a new tab)
• currently applying for another Wellcome Trust fellowship.

Selection Criteria: 

• the quality and importance of your research question(s)
• the feasibility of your approach to solving these problems
• the suitability of your choice of research environments
• the suitability of the taught Master’s course you select – it should take place at a recognised centre of excellence and provide you with training that will complement your research project.

Benefits: The support includes:

• A stipend
• travel costs (eg outward and return airfares)
• approved tuition fees, according to the rate charged by the training organisation. We usually provide funds at the level charged to the UK/EU students, rather than the overseas student rate.
• Wellcome Trust supports distance learning taught Master’s degrees.
• If your stipend is liable for tax in the country you’re based in, Wellcome Trust will provide costs to cover the taxed amount.

Duration: This fellowship normally provides up to 30 months’ support. A period of 12 months should normally be dedicated to undertaking a taught Masters course at a recognized centre of excellence, combined with up to 18 months to undertake a research project.

Eligible African Countries: Algeria, Angola,  Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Dem. Rep. , Congo, Rep., Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Federation Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey , Uganda, Ukraine,  Rep. Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Other Countries: Afghanistan, Albania, American Samoa, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh,  Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Arab Rep., El Salvador, Fiji, The Georgia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iran, Islamic Rep. Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Korea, Dem Rep., Kosovo, Kyrgyz, Republic Lao PDR, Lebanon, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malaysia, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Micronesia, Fed. Sts., Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Mayotte, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea,  Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Russian, Samoa, São Tomé and Principe, Serbia, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. ,Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Syrian, Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, RB Vietnam,  West Bank and Gaza Yemen,

How to Apply

Visit the Scholarship Webpage for details

Wellcome Trust Training Fellowships in Public Health and Tropical Medicine for Low and Middle Income Countries 2018

Application Deadline: The preliminary application deadline is 9th May 2018 and full application deadline is 17th July 2018.

Eligible Countries: Low- and middle-income countries

To be taken at (country): Fellowships can be taken in Low- and middle-income countries (See list of countries below)

Eligible Field of Study: Fellowships are awarded in the field of Public Health

About the Award: This scheme offers research experience and training to early-stage researchers from low- and middle-income countries. The scheme aims to support research that will improve public health and tropical medicine at a local, national and global level.

Type: Postdoctoral, Research

Eligibility: A researcher can apply for a Training Fellowship in Public Health and Tropical Medicine if:

• They’re a researcher based in a low- or middle-income country.
• They must want to undertake a guided period of research so that you can consolidate your existing experience and explore new areas of research.
• They must be a national of a low- or middle-income country and have:
  • a PhD and be an early-career researcher or
  • a degree in a subject relevant to public health or tropical medicine and some initial research experience or
  • a degree in medicine and be qualified to enter higher specialist training and some initial research experience.
• If you don’t have a PhD, we’d expect you to register for one if you’re awarded this fellowship.
• You must have an eligible sponsoring organisation in a low- or middle-income country that will administer the fellowship for the full duration of the award.
• If you’ve been away from research (eg for a career break, maternity leave, or long-term sick leave), we’ll allow for this when we consider your application.

Selection Criteria:

• your research experience
• the quality and importance of your research question(s)
• your knowledge of the scientific area
• the feasibility of your proposal
• the suitability of your choice of research sponsors and environments
• your vision of how this fellowship will contribute to your career development.

We encourage fellows to collaborate with researchers in other low- and middle-income countries.

At the end of this fellowship, you should be able to show:

• you have the potential to be an independent leader in your area of research
• you have the skills and experience to apply for more advanced (intermediate level) funding schemes.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: Support includes:

• A basic salary (determined by your host organisation)
• Personal removal expenses
• Research expenses, directly related to your proposal
• course fees – in most cases, you must register for your higher degree at a local academic organisation.

Duration of Fellowship: 3 years. A Training Fellowship in Public Health and Tropical Medicine is normally for three years, and can be held on a part-time basis. The fellowship can be for up to four years if you want to do Master’s training or a diploma course relevant to the research proposal.

List of Countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Dem. Rep., Congo, Rep., Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Arab Rep., El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia,  Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iran, Islamic Rep., Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Korea, Dem Rep., Kosovo, Kyrgyz Republic, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya,Lithuania, Macedonia, FYR, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Micronesia, Fed. Sts., Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Samoa, São Tomé and Principe, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, RB, Vietnam, West Bank and Gaza, Yemen, Rep., Zambia and Zimbabwe.

How to Apply: Applicants must submit their application through the Wellcome Trust Grant Tracker (WTGT).

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Wellcome Trust