ARES Masters and Training Scholarships in Belgium for Developing Countries 2019/2020

Application Deadlines:

• 11th January, 2019
• 8th February, 2019

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Students from African and  developing countries

To be taken in: Belgium

About the Award: Each year, the Academy of Research and Higher Education (ARES) grants an average of 150 fellowships in the framework of the Masters and 70 fellowships in the framework of the internships to the nationals of the countries of the South.

Eligible Countries: Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cuba, Ecuador, Ethiopia (only for courses in English ), Haiti, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Peru, Philippines, DR Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, Vietnam.

Accepted Subject Areas (Masters): 

• Master of Specialization in Development, Environment and Societies
• Specialization Master in Human Rights
• Master of Specialization in Aquatic Resource Management and Aquaculture
• Master of Specialization in Risk and Disaster Management
• Specialized Master in Integrated Management of Health Risks in the Global South (IManHR)
• Specialized Master in International Development
• Master of Specialization in Transfusion Medicine
• Specialized Master in Microfinance
• Master of specialization in integrated production and preservation of natural resources in urban and peri-urban areas
• Specialized Master in Public Health Methodology
• Master of Science in Public Health – Methods of Research Applied to Global Health
• Master of Science and Environmental Management in Developing Countries
• Specialized Master in Transport and Logistics

Accepted Subject Areas (Training): 

• Internship in control and quality assurance of medicines and health products
• Research Initiation to Strengthen Health Systems
• Internship in Geographic Information System
• Internship in secondary resource development for sustainable construction
• Methodological internship in support of innovation in family farming

Type: Masters, Training

About the Award: Within the framework of the Belgian policy for development cooperation, the Minister for Development Cooperation and the Directorate-General for Development Cooperation entrust the Belgian Higher Education Institutions with the preparation of Postgraduate Programmes (Advanced Masters) and Training Programmes that are specifically oriented towards young professionals from developing countries.

International Courses and Training Programmes are part of the global study programmes of the Higher Education Institutions. They are open to all students who satisfy the conditions of qualification, but aim at proposing training units that distinguish themselves by their openness towards specific development issues.
Within the programme for International Courses and Training Programmes 2016-2017, ARES grants 130 scholarships for participation into the masters and 67 scholarships for participation into the training programmes.

Eligiblilty: The following will apply for the selection of holders of scholarships:

1. Originally from a developing country. To be eligible, applicants must reside and work in their own country at the time of filing;
2. Only nationals of the following countries are eligible to apply for scholarships ARES: Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cuba, Ecuador, Ethiopia ( only for courses in English ), Haiti, Madagascar, Morocco, Niger, Peru, Philippines, DR Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, Vietnam ;
3. Either under the age of 40 for courses and under 45 for training periods at the start of training;
4. Either holds a diploma comparable to a diploma of the second cycle of Belgian university education. However, for certain types of training, different requirements may be set out, which will be specified below;
5. Demonstrates a professional occupation in a developing country of at least two years after completing his / her second cycle or three years after the end of his / her studies when the candidate holds a post-graduate diploma a university in an industrialized country;
6. A good knowledge of written and spoken French. For courses organized in another language, it is necessary to have a good knowledge of the language of the course, written and spoken. The candidate will also be asked to commit to learning French in order to participate in everyday life in Belgium;
7. Apply for a single training

Selection Criteria: 

• The academic curriculum
• For courses, priority will be given to candidates who are already holders of a diploma third cycle, save in exceptional circumstances duly justified in the application.
• Priority will be given to candidates who have not already received a grant in Belgium.
• Professional experience
• Belonging to a partner institution: The commitment of the candidate in development activities
• Nationality requirements
• Gender equality
• The future reintegration prospects

Number of Scholarships: ARES grants 150 scholarships for participation into the masters and 70 scholarships for participation into the training programmes.

Value of Scholarship: Travel (internal and external), Monthly living allowance, Indirect mission costs, Installation costs, Tuition fees, Registration fee, Insurance costs, Housing allowance, Allowances for dependents, Return fees, In 1st session completion bonus (June).

Duration of Scholarship:  For the duration of the program

How to Apply: 

• Download the 2019-2020 form in English (15 pages – 119 KB) (for specialized master’s degrees in English).
• Download the 2019-2020 form in French (15 pages – 118 Ko) (for specialization masters in French).

It is important to go through the Application requirements and procedures on the Scholarship Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit the Scholarship Webpage for details

Sponsors: The University Commission for Development

Important: Applying for a ARES Masters and Training scholarship is absolutely free of charge. ARES does not charge any fee at any stage of the application or selection process. You may raise any question or concern about persons or companies claiming to be acting on behalf of ARES and requesting the payment of a fee by emailing ARES at maryvonne.aubry[at]ares-ac.be.
Any application containing cash will be automatically rejected.

The Root of the Internet’s Disrepute: Online Advertising!

Ralph Nader

In all the mounting media coverage of problems with the Internet, such as invasion of privacy, vulnerability to hacking, political manipulation, and user addiction, there is one constant: online advertising. Online advertising is the lifeblood of Google, Facebook, and many other Internet enterprises that profit by providing personal data to various vendors. Moreover, the move of tens of billions of dollars from conventional print and broadcast media continues, with devastating impacts, especially on print newspapers and magazines.

But does online advertising work for consumers? The Internet was once considered a less commercial medium. But today consumers are inundated with targeted ads, reviews, comments, friends’ reactions, and other digital data. Unfortunately for advertisers, consumers are not intentionally clicking on online ads in big numbers.

Google’s search ads tackle people when they search for a product or service. A controlled study by eBay research labs in 2014 concluded that Google was greatly exaggerating the effectiveness of such ads—at least those bought by eBay. eBay’s researchers concluded that “More frequent users whose purchasing behavior is not influenced by ads account for most of the advertising expenses, resulting in average returns that are negative.” This is the “I-was-gonna-buy-it-anyway problem,” says an article in the Atlantic.

The Atlantic notes:

“Whether all advertising—online and off—is losing its persuasive punch…Think about how much you can learn about products today before seeing an ad. Comments, user reviews, friends’ opinions, price-comparison tools…they’re much more powerful than advertising because we consider them information rather than marketing. The difference is enormous: We seek information, so we’re more likely to trust it; marketing seeks us, so we’re more likely to distrust it.”

Some companies like Coca-Cola have cooled on using online advertising. But advertising revenues keep growing for Google, Facebook, and the other giants of the Internet. These companies are racing to innovate, connecting ads to more tailored audiences, which tantalize and keeps hope springing eternal for the advertisers. The Internet ad sellers also provide detailed data to advertise themselves to the advertisers staying one step ahead of growing skepticism. This is especially a problem when there is inadequate government regulation of deceptive advertising. It is the Wild West! Online advertising revenues are the Achilles’ heel of these big Internet companies. Any decline will deflate them immensely; more than public and Congressional criticism of their intrusiveness, their massive allowed fakeries, their broken promises to reform, and their openings to unsavory political and commercial users. If they lose advertising revenue, a major revenue bubble will burst and there goes their business model, along with their funding for ventures from video hosting to global mapping.

After reviewing the many major negatives attributed to the Internet, the New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo writes, “So who is the central villain in this story, the driving force behind much of the chaos and disrepute online?… It’s the advertising business, stupid.” He adds, perhaps optimistically, “If you want to fix much of what ails the internet right now, the ad business would be the perfect perp to handcuff and restrain.”

Randall Rothenberg, who heads a trade association of companies in the digital ad business, urges advertisers “to take civic responsibility for our effect on the world.” Then he shows his frustration by saying that, “Technology has largely been outpacing the ability of individual companies to understand what is actually going on.” All of this even before artificial intelligence (AI) takes root. Meanwhile, Facebook, Google, and Twitter keep announcing new tools to make their ads “safe and civil” (Facebook), open and protective of privacy. At the same time matters keep getting worse for consumers. The backers and abusers keep getting more skilled too (see Youtube Kids ).

In a recent report titled “Digital Deceit,” authors Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott wrote:

“The Central problem of disinformation corrupting American political culture is not Russian spies or a particular media platform. The central problem is that the entire industry is built to leverage sophisticated technology to aggregate user attention and sell advertising.”

If so, why isn’t more public attention being paid to this root cause? Not by the mass media which is obviously too compromised by the Congress, by academia, or by more of US before “We the People” become the conditioned responders that Ivan Pavlov warned about so many years ago.

Russia’s New Missile Defense System in Syria May Change Balance of Power in Middle East

Patrick Cockburn

Russia has completed delivery of a S-300 surface-to-air missile system to Syria in a move likely to change the balance of forces in the skies over the Syrian battlefields.

“The work was finished a day ago,” Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin in a meeting broadcast on television.

The decision to supply the sophisticated anti-aircraft system came in response to the shooting down of a Russian Ilyushin reconnaissance plane with the loss of all 15 on board by Syria on 17 September in an incident 22 miles off the Syrian coast for which Russia holds Israel ultimately responsible.

The friendly fire loss of the Russian plane is unsurprising since three of the world’s most powerful air forces – Russia, US and Israel – are frequently flying in or close to Syrian air space. In addition, there are Turkish and Syrian planes, backed up, in the case of Syria, by a ground-to-air defence system. With five air forces operating in close proximity some mishap always appeared inevitable.

Israel has expressed regret at the death of the Russian air force personnel and is concerned that the S-300s may make it more risky for its planes to continue a campaign against Iranian facilities in Syria. The missiles have the capacity to track dozens of targets at a distance of hundreds of miles. The state-owned manufacturer Almaz-Antey says they can also shoot down cruise and ballistic missiles.

Israel has long sought to prevent the delivery of the S-300s to Iran and Syria. Iran did buy the system in 2007 but it was only delivered in 2016.

“We have not changed our strategic line on Iran,” said Israeli education minister Naftali Bennett, a member of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet. “We will not allow Iran to open up a third front against us. We will take actions as required.”

Mr Putin has succeeded hitherto in maintaining good relations and a high level of cooperation with Syria, Turkey and Israel, despite their conflicting objectives in Syria.

Relations between Israel and Russia have been frayed by the 17 September shoot down when the Russians claimed that Israeli F-16s had used the reconnaissance flight of the Russian plane off Latakia to make an attack.

More is at stake than future Israeli air operations over Syria. US military power in the northern tier of the Middle East – notably in Syria and Iraq – stems primarily from the massive destructive power of its air force and its ability to use its planes and missiles at will.

This strategy worked successfully in the campaign against Isis in both countries in 2014-18 when local ground troops – the Kurds in Syria and government security forces in Iraq – defeated Isis thanks to US air support. Any radical improvement in Syrian air defences reduces US military options.

The US could not confirm yesterday that the S-300 missile batteries had been delivered. But the Russian Defence Ministry has published a video of the launcher, radar and command and control vehicle being unloaded.

Moscow will also support and upgrade Syrian electronic defences.

Syria hopes that Israel will be less free in future to carry air attacks on Syrian territory. Syria’s deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad said that: “Israel, which has gotten used to carrying out attacks under various pretexts, will now have to weigh and rethink before attacking again.”

The S-300 missiles will at the very least make Israel more cautious and less likely to take for granted Russian acquiescence in Israeli operations against Iran in Syria. It has also deployed the even more advanced S-400 missile batteries to its own bases in Syria.

Israel gives advanced warning to the Russians of any of its air actions in or close to Syria which has allowed some 200 attacks since the start of 2017 to be carried out in relative safety.

A Russian complaint about the shooting down of the Ilyushin reconnaissance plane is that only one minute’s warning was given. This was too short a period for them to alert the Syrians as to what was happening. An explanation for this could be that the Russians and Syrians must inevitably inform their Iranian allies about Israeli intentions leading Israel to keep the warning time as short as possible.

The shooting down of the Russian aircraft and the delivery of the S-300 is a sign that the military balance is changing to the advantage of the Syrian government.

Since the end of 2016, President Bashar al-Assad has recaptured the most important armed opposition strongholds in East Aleppo, East Ghouta and Deraa, leaving only one, the large opposition enclave in Idlib untaken. He can now focus more time to pushing back against Israeli military operations affecting Syria.

Israel and the US continue to speak of the build up of Iranian influence either directly or through local proxies in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. But Iranian influence probably peaked in Syria and Iraq in 2015 when governments in both countries were under intense military pressure from Isis and needed all the foreign help they could get. Israeli attacks will not stop, but they will be riskier.

Bad Farm Policy Contributes to Natural Disasters

Anthony Pahnke & Jim Goodman

Good farm policy works for rural people by stabilizing prices, encouraging the growth of rural communities, and helping farm families deal with natural disasters. This last point is particularly relevant now, as fires rage in the Western US, tornadoes, hurricanes and floods destroy communities around the country, and drought grips much of the South. Yet, instead of creating sensible farm policy that could lessen the effects of climate change and keep farmers on the land, our government promotes environmentally and economically disastrous overproduction.

The direction of most US farm policy concerning the environment and who actually profits from the system, is misguided. Yes, money is made in the food industry, with for example, Land O’Lakes reporting record profits in 2017, and the world’s largest producer and exporter of meat, the Brazilian- based JBS, making huge profits from its control of just under 25% of the US beef market. Meanwhile, farmers are paid a fraction of the food dollar while bearing all the risk, including the brunt of extreme weather. Many farms depend on tax-payer subsidized crop insurance programs that guarantee a profit to private insurance companies. Then consider the conservation title of the Farm Bill, which should encourage farmers to take land out of production and finance environmentally-sustainable practices. Why did politicians cut conservation funding by $6 billion in 2014? The 2018 farm bill will make even deeper cuts, ending the Conservation Stewardship Program, which helps farmers start or improve responsible land, soil, and resource management practices.

This country is experiencing one of the worst farm crises in generations. Low prices are driving grain, dairy, and livestock producers into debt and foreclosure, while Donald Trump’s trade war with China, Mexico, and Canada further depress prices. Production costs including feed, labor, and machinery, are far in excess of sales revenues, as extreme weather adds even more volatility to an occupation plagued by uncertainty.

There is a single factor that overrides the environmental, economic, and cultural crisis of rural America – overproduction.

Since the 1970s, farmers were told to ‘get big or get out,’ and ‘plant fence row to fence row.’ Emphasizing production rather than stewardship has exacerbated the effects we experience following extreme weather. Fond du Lac county, Wisconsin, had 17 tornadoes touch down on August 28^th. Similarly, throughout the state, tornadoes and subsequent flooding destroyed roads, homes, and farmland. The problem is that fence-row-to-fence-row farming of row crops leads to erosion, as heavy machinery compacts the soil and agrochemicals reduce soil biodiversity and water-holding capacity. As small farms get pushed out, the remaining farmers expand and focus on commodity grain crops. In 2018, soybean acreage in Wisconsin reached a record 2.7 million acres, up 7% over 2017, while corn acreage remained constant at 3.9 million acres. These two crops now dominate over half of the state’s cropland. Less than 25% of Wisconsin’s 10.1 million crop acres are devoted to pasture/hay/alfalfa and over 100,000 acres of this perennial forage is converted yearly to corn and soybeans.

Farm policy must remedy, instead of contribute to the environmental problems that climate change aggravates. Establishing a price floor and ceiling for all commodity farm products would help small producers keep farming by stabilizing prices. This would also promote conservation, by removing incentives for surplus production while also promoting diversified cropping systems.

Current farm policy sacrifices stewardship on the altar of profitability. Controlling price and supply would return power to farmers and rural communities. Unfortunately, the Washington power structure cares little for the environment or working families.

Britain and the Black Gold of Mesopotamia

Jacques R. Pauwels

The First World War was a contest between two blocs of imperialist powers, whereby a major goal was the acquisition, preservation, and/or aggrandizement of territories – in Europe and worldwide – considered to be of vital importance for the national economy of these powers, mostly because they contained raw materials such as petroleum.

We have seen that this conflict was ultimately won by those powers that were already most richly endowed with such possessions in 1914: the members of the Triple Entente plus the United States. Uncle Sam admittedly became a belligerent only in 1917, but his oil was available from the very start to the Entente and remained beyond the reach of the Germans and Austrian-Hungarians throughout the war because of the British naval blockade.

Let us take a brief look at the role played by Britain in this struggle of imperialist titans.

Britain strode into the twentieth century as the world’s superpower, in control of an immense portfolio of colonial possessions. But that lofty standing depended on the Royal Navy ruling the waves, did it not? And a serious problem arose as the years following the turn of the century witnessed the rapid conversion from coal to petroleum as fuel for ships.

This caused Albion, richly endowed with coal but deprived of oil, to search frantically for plentiful and reliable sources of the “black gold,” of which preciously little was available in its colonies. For the time being, oil had to be purchased from its biggest producer and exporter at the time, the US, a former colony of Britain, increasingly a major commercial and industrial competitor, and traditionally not a friendly power; this dependency was therefore intolerable in the long run.

Some oil became available from Persia, now Iran, but not enough to solve the problem. And so, when rich oil deposits were discovered in the Mosul region of Mesopotamia, a part of the Ottoman Empire that was later to become the state of Iraq, the ruling patriciate in London – exemplified by Churchill – decided that it was imperative to acquire exclusive control over that hitherto unimportant part of the Middle East.

Such a project was not unrealistic, since the Ottoman Empire happened to be a big but very weak nation, from which the British had earlier been able to snatch sizeable pieces of real estate ad libitum, for example Egypt and Cyprus. But the Ottomans had recently become allies of the Germans, so the planned acquisition of Mesopotamia opened up prospects of war with both these empires.

Even so, the need for petroleum was so great that military action was planned, to be implemented as soon as possible. The reason for this haste: the Germans and Ottomans had started to construct a railway that was to link Berlin via Istanbul to Baghdad, thus raising the chilling possibility that the oil of Mesopotamia might soon be shipped overland to the Reich for the benefit of a mighty German fleet that already happened to be the Royal Navy’s most dangerous rival. The Baghdad Railway was scheduled to be finished in . . . 1914.

It was in this context that London abandoned its long-standing friendship with Germany and joined the Reich’s two mortal enemies, France and Russia, in the so-called Triple Entente, and that detailed plans for war against Germany were agreed upon with France. The idea was that the massive armies of the French and Russians would crush Germany, while the bulk of the Empire’s armed forces would move from India into Mesopotamia, beat the pantaloons off the Ottomans, and grab the Mesopotamian oil fields; in return, the Royal Navy was to prevent the German fleet from attacking France, and token assistance to French action against the Reich on the continent was to be forthcoming in the shape of the comparatively Lilliputian British Expeditionary Corps. But this Machiavellian arrangement was elaborated in secret and neither Parliament nor the public were informed.

In the months before the outbreak of war, a compromise with Germany was still possible, and was admittedly even favoured by some factions of the British political, industrial, and financial elite. However, such a compromise would have meant allowing Germany a share of Mesopotamia’s oil, while Britain wanted nothing less than a monopoly. And so, in 1914, laying hands on the rich oil fields of Mesopotamia was really London’s real, though unspoken, or “latent,” war aim. When the war erupted, pitting Germany and its Austrian-Hungarian ally against the Franco-Russian duo as well as Serbia, there seemed to be no obvious reason for Britain to become involved. The government faced a painful dilemma: it was honour-bound to side with France but would then have to reveal that binding promises of such assistance had been made in secret.

Fortunately, the Reich violated the neutrality of Belgium and thus provided London with a perfect pretext for going to war. In reality, the British leaders did not give a fig about the fate of Belgium, at least as long as the Germans did not intend to acquire the great seaport of Antwerp, referred to by Napoleon as “a pistol aimed at the heart of England”; and during the war, Britain herself would violate the neutrality of a number of countries, e.g. China, Greece, and Persia.

Like all plans made in preparation for what was to become “the Great War,” the scenario concocted in London failed to unfold as anticipated: the French and Russians did not manage to crush the Teutonic host, so the British had to send many more troops to the continent – and suffer much greater losses – than planned; and in the distant Middle East, the Ottoman army – expertly assisted by German officers – unexpectedly proved to be a tough nut to crack.

In spite of these inconveniences, which caused the death of about three quarters of a million soldiers in the UK alone, all was well in the end: in 1918, the Union Jack fluttered over the oil fields of Mesopotamia. Or rather, almost all was well, because while the Germans had been squeezed out of the region, the British would henceforth have to tolerate the presence there of the Americans, and eventually they would have to settle for the role of junior partner of that new superpower.

Fascism’s Return to Italy

Michael Leonardi

Riace (pronounced Riach with a long A at the end) is a small Calabrian town in the south of Italy on the Ionian Sea.  This area of Calabria is known for its spectacular coastline, white sand beaches and beautiful aquamarine waters. It is also known for its powerful mafia, l’ndrangheta, that dominates the territory with its clan-controlled corruption that infiltrates most aspects of the political and economic reality, while orchestrating the global heroin trade through the region’s massive industrial ports. But Calabria is also renowned for its utopian visionaries and struggle for a better human condition.

Like many Calabrian towns, the old historic village of Riace sits up in the hills, where it would be protected from invasions by pirates and invaders during medieval times. There is a more modern sea side development down below that is geared to summer tourism and beach goers. The area around Riace is arid and desert like with white colored earth dotted with olive groves and fruit trees that seem struggling to survive.  Also, like many southern Italian towns, by the 1990s, Riace itself was largely a ghost town struggling to survive. Its narrow winding streets and charming stone buildings were largely abandoned when a major tomato canning facility shut down and its citizens went looking for work in the industrialized north.

By 1998 the old agrarian way of life that was far more sustainable and locally based around food production and artisanal shops had disappeared with the onset of “Americanization,” mass production and mass consumerism. Riace’s abandoned economy could not even support a local bar/café or restaurant due to its shrinking population, and its local schools were at risk of shutting down. Like many southern Italian towns, it was on the verge of becoming uninhabited altogether.

It was in 1998 that a boatload of 200 Kurdish refugees escaping political persecution in Iraq, Syria and Turkey came ashore on a beach near Riace. As many well know, for decades there has been a flood of migrants struggling to reach the mainland of Europe. They come from the exploited, poverty starved and war-ravaged regions of Africa and the Middle East. Thousands of these refugees haven’t made it and have died at sea during their perilous journey.  They come from countries like Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Rawanda, to name a few that are more commonly known for their strife, famine and war.

As a young leftist activist at the time, the future and current mayor, Domenico Lucano, had a vision. He proposed to house these refugees in the abandoned and crumbling hillside town of Riace instead of having these people endure the months long stays in the migrant detention camps around the south of Italy.  From there his vision grew. In 1999 Domenico Lucano, known as Mimmo, created an association called the Future Cities project and embarked on a plan to repopulate his town of Riace with migrants from all over the world. Challenging the racism and fear of strangers that fueled anti-immigrant trends, Lucano envisioned the creation of an integrated community with local residents and migrants from all around Africa and the Middle East working side by side to revive the town and rejuvenate the local economy. His vision steadily became a reality and has been heralded as a model of human dignity, solidarity and integration by the United Nations and human rights organizations, activists and leaders from all over the world.

With funding from the European Union geared toward supporting the subsistence needs of the migrant population, Mimmo Lucano thought outside the box and invested in the creation of artisanal shops, restaurants and social centers that employed and empowered the migrant population while rejuvenating the local economy. Local citizens worked side by side with migrants and a harmonious model of integration was created that became known as the world’s foremost model of welcoming immigrants while rejuvenating the local economy. In 2012 Lucano created a local currency that was able to be used by residents in the shops, restaurants and local cafes. The town of Riace was reborn with a resilient and beautiful celebration of human dignity and respect for diversity. By 2014 there were residents representing over twenty countries and the schools were thriving with local and migrant children growing side by side and many citizens that had abandoned the town returned home from the north to participate in this Future Cities model for humanity.

Contrasting the eco-mafia run garbage collection system in the Ionian region of Calabria, Mimmo Lucano created a door to door recycling system using 13 donkeys and run by two local cooperatives employing locals and migrants working side by side. The town of Riace reduced its garbage output by 50 percent using this model and was planning on a production of donkey milk as well. The donkeys were also part of therapy sessions that are proven to improve the social and psychological condition of children and adults suffering from PTSD, related to the traumas that many of these migrants have endured, autism and other such ailments. Human and animal interaction has proven effective in alleviating some of the negative symptoms associated with these conditions.

Despite its amazing successes, Riace’s Future Cities project has not been welcomed with open arms by the local mafia and is now under a full fledged attack by the xenophobic and racist Italian government led by interior minister Matteo Salvini. The mafia in Calabria is brutal and has seen Riace’s model of integration and dignity as a threat. In Calabria there are documented cases of present day slavery where migrant workers are exploited to harvest crops and clean streets and often are only provided tents to sleep and one meal a day as compensation. In 2010 there was an actual slave revolt in the nearby town of Rosarno against the local mafia, and slavery continues until this day, now being fueled by the xenophobia, racism and neofacism of the state.

Beginning in 2017 the funding provided to Riace to support its migrant population was cut off and the mayor was indicted for the misuse of funds, aiding illegal immigration and illegally contracting garbage removal. These indictments by the state just so happened to coincide with the impending release of a TV series based on the model of Riace called “Tutto il mondo e’ un Paese,” (All the World Is One Country) produced by RAI, the Italian state television. This series depicts Riace as a beautiful model of human solidarity that runs completely counter to the racist and neofascist politics of the coalition government between the populist 5 Star Movement and the historically xenophobic Lega Nord. On the pretext of these indictments this series, featuring some of the biggest stars of Italian cinema was blocked from the airwaves.   In the late spring of this year Domenico Lucano began a hunger strike to protest the State’s attack on Riace.  This summer people converged on Riace from all over the world to demonstrate their support and solidarity for the project.

Two weeks ago I was able to go to Riace and witness the situation on the ground firsthand and meet briefly with the mayor. The situation is terrible. All the shops and initiatives have been shut down. The mayor was extremely distressed and frantic. Some of the migrant residents were leaving to try and find work elsewhere. An online collection of 300,000 euros was not enough to keep the Future Cities project operational and there were forces working to have the association evicted from its headquarters.

After years of economic crisis and government stagnation after Berlusconi and the abysmal failure of the Italian Democratic Party created in the guise of the US Democratic party, a tide of neofascism is sweeping the country. The populist 5 star Movement founded by comic turned politician Beppe Grillo has taken a sharp right turn and formed a coalition with the xenophobic, blatantly racist and anti-immigrant Lega Nord. Matteo Salvini, the interior minister has become the de-facto leader of the country and has singled out the mayor of Riace with derogatory slurs and insults. Just last week Salvini announced anti-immigrant legislation that would slash funding to the immigrant community. This comes after months of the closed border polices and severe restrictions being placed on search and rescue missions by human rights organizations. Close to 2,000 migrants are known to have died at sea trying to cross the Mediterranean so far this year, but many fear that this number is a low estimate as it is difficult to determine what is happening as the ports are on lockdown.

Now, this Tuesday, Mimmo Lucano, the mayor of Riace was put under house arrest for aiding illegal immigration into the country. It is truly a travesty of justice and a frightening moment as fascism has returned to Italy with state sponsored persecution of political dissidents happening again. As I write a mass mobilization is underway with a major demonstration of solidarity being organized in Riace this Saturday and in major cities across the country. There is a resistance on the rise but it is facing an emboldened racist and fascist police state that has been empowered bilaterally by the Trump administration. Italians are comparing this situation to the persecution under Hitler in Nazi Germany. And just this week the US Ambassador to Italy, Goldman Sachs operative, Republican financier and Trump stooge Lewis Eisenberg stated that Italy is the quintessential model of democracy in the world. Tutto il Mondo e’ Un Paese, All the World is One Country. Time to rise together.

How Saudi Money Keeps Washington at War in Yemen

Ben Freeman

It was May 2017. The Saudis were growing increasingly nervous. For more than two years they had been relying heavily on U.S. military support and bombs to defeat Houthi rebels in Yemen. Now, the Senate was considering a bipartisan resolution to cut off military aid and halt a big sale of American-made bombs to Saudi Arabia. Fortunately for them, despite mounting evidence that the U.S.-backed, supplied, and fueled air campaign in Yemen was targeting civilians, the Saudi government turned out to have just the weapon needed to keep those bombs and other kinds of aid coming their way: an army of lobbyists.

That year, their forces in Washington included members of more than two dozen lobbying and public relations firms. Key among them was Marc Lampkin, managing partner of the Washington office of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck (BHFS), a company that would be paid nearly half a million dollars by the Saudi government in 2017. Records from the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) show that Lampkin contacted Senate offices more than 20 times about that resolution, speaking, for instance, with the legislative director for Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) on May 16, 2017. Perhaps coincidentally, Lampkin reported making a $2,000 contribution to the senator’s political action committee that very day. On June 13th, along with a majority of his fellow senators, Scott voted to allow the Saudis to get their bombs. A year later, the type of bomb authorized in that sale has reportedly been used in air strikes that have killed civilians in Yemen.

Little wonder that, for this and his other lobbying work, Lampkin earned a spot on the “Top Lobbyists 2017: Hired Guns” list compiled by the Washington publication the Hill.

Lampkin’s story was anything but exceptional when it comes to lobbyists working on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was, in fact, very much the norm. The Saudi government has hired lobbyists in profusion and they, in turn, have effectively helped convince members of Congress and the president to ignore blatant human rights violations and civilian casualties in Yemen. According to a forthcoming report by the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative program, which I direct, at the Center for International Policy, registered foreign agents working on behalf of interests in Saudi Arabia contacted Congressional representatives, the White House, the media, and figures at influential think tanks more than 2,500 times in 2017 alone. In the process, they also managed to contribute nearly $400,000 to the political coffers of senators and House members as they urged them to support the Saudis. Some of those contributions, like Lampkin’s, were given on the same day the requests were made to support those arms sales.

The role of Marc Lampkin is just a tiny sub-plot in the expansive and ongoing story of Saudi money in Washington. Think of it as a striking tale of pay-to-play politics that will undoubtedly be revving up again in the coming weeks as the Saudi lobby works to block new Congressional efforts to end U.S. involvement in the disastrous war in Yemen.

A Lobby to Contend With

The roots of that lobby’s rise to prominence in Washington lie in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As you may remember, with 15 of those 19 suicidal hijackers being citizens of Saudi Arabia, it was hardly surprising that American public opinion had soured on the Kingdom. In response, the worried Saudi royals spent around $100 million over the next decade to improve such public perceptions and retain their influence in the U.S. capital. That lobbying facelift proved a success until, in 2015, relations soured with the Obama administration over the Iran nuclear deal. Once Donald Trump won the presidency, however, the Saudis saw an unparalleled opportunity and launched the equivalent of a full-court press, an aggressive campaign to woo the newly elected president and the Republican-led Congress, which, of course, cost real money.

As a result, the growth of Saudi lobbying operations would prove extraordinary. In 2016, according to FARA records, they reported spending just under $10 million on lobbying firms; in 2017, that number had nearly tripled to $27.3 million. And that’s just a baseline figure for a far larger operation to buy influence in Washington, since it doesn’t include considerable sums given to elite universities or think tanks like the Arab Gulf States Institute, the Middle East Institute, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (to mention just a few of them).

This meteoric rise in spending allowed the Saudis to dramatically increase the number of lobbyists representing their interests on both sides of the aisle. Before President Trump even took office, the Saudi government signed a deal with the McKeon Group, a lobbying firm headed by Howard “Buck” McKeon, the recently retired Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. His firm also represents Lockheed Martin, one of the top providers of military equipment to the Kingdom. On the Democratic side, the Saudis inked a $140,000-per-month deal with the Podesta Group, headed by Tony Podesta, whose brother John, a long-time Democratic Party operative, was the former chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Tony Podesta later dissolved his firm and has allegedly been investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for serving as an unregistered foreign agent.

And keep in mind that all this new firepower was added to an already formidable arsenal of lobbying outfits and influential power brokers, including former Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who, according to Lee Fang of the Intercept, was “deeply involved in the [Trump] White House hiring process,” and former Senator Norm Coleman, chairman of the pro-Republican Super PAC American Action Network. All told, during 2017, Saudi Arabia inked 45 different contracts with FARA-registered firms and more than 100 individuals registered as Saudi foreign agents in the U.S. They proved to be extremely busy. Such activity reveals a clear pattern: Saudi foreign agents are working tirelessly to shape perceptions of that country, its royals, its policies, and especially its grim war in Yemen, while simultaneously working to keep U.S. weapons and military support flowing into the Kingdom.

While the term “foreign agent” is often used as a synonym for lobbyist, part of the work performed by the Kingdom’s paid representatives here resembles public relations activity far more than straightforward lobbying. For example, in 2017, Saudi foreign agents reported contacting media outlets more than 500 times, including significant outreach to national ones like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and PBS, which has aired multiple documentaries about the Kingdom. Also included, however, were smaller papers like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and more specialized outlets, even ESPN, in hopes of encouraging positive stories.

The Kingdom’s image in the U.S. clearly concerned those agents. Still, the lion’s share of their activity was focused on security issues of importance to that country’s royals. For example, Saudi agents contacted officials at the State Department, which oversees most commercial arms transfers and sales, nearly 100 times in 2017, according to FARA filings. Above all, however, their focus was on Congress, especially members with seniority on key committees. As a result, at some point between late 2016 and the end of 2017, Saudi lobbyists contacted more than 200 of them, including every single Senator.

The ones most often dealt with were, not surprisingly, those with the greatest leverage over U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia. For example, the office of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who sits on both the appropriations and armed services committees, was the most contacted, while that of Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) was the top Democratic one. (He sits on the appropriations and foreign relations committees.)

Following the Money from Saudi Arabia to Campaign Coffers

Just as there’s a clear pattern when it comes to contacting congressional representatives who might help their Saudi clients, so there’s a clear pattern to the lobbying money flowing to those same members of Congress.

The FARA documents that record all foreign-agent political activity also list campaign contributions reported by those agents. Just as we did for political activities, the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative program conducted an analysis of all campaign contributions reported in those 2017 filings by firms that represented Saudi interests. And here’s what we found: more than a third of the members of Congress contacted by such a firm also received a campaign contribution from a foreign agent at that firm. In total, according to their 2017 FARA filings, foreign agents at firms representing Saudi clients made $390,496 in campaign contributions to congressional figures they, or another agent at their firm, contacted on behalf of their Saudi clients.

This flow of money is best exemplified by the 11 separate occasions we uncovered in which a firm reported contacting a congressional representative on behalf of Saudi clients on the same day someone at the same firm made a campaign contribution to the same senator or House member. In other words, there are 10 other cases just like Marc Lampkin’s, involving foreign agents at Squire Patton Boggs, DLA Piper, and Hogan Lovells. For instance, Hogan Lovells reported meeting with Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) on behalf of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia on April 26, 2017, and that day an agent at the firm made a $2,700 contribution to “Bob Corker for Senate 2018.” (Corker would later decide not to seek reelection.)

While some might argue that contributions like these look a lot like bribery, they turn out to be perfectly legal. No law bars such an act, and while it’s true that foreign nationals and foreign governments are prohibited from making contributions to political campaigns, there’s a simple work-around for that, one the Saudis obviously made use of big time. Any foreign power hoping to line the pockets of American politicians just has to hire a local lobbyist to do it for them.

As Jimmy Williams, a former lobbyist, wrote: “Today, most lobbyists are engaged in a system of bribery, but it’s the legal kind.”

The Saudi Lobby Today

Fast forward to late 2018 and that very same lobby is now fighting vigorously to defeat a House measure that would end U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen. They’re flooding congressional offices with their requests, in effect asking Congress to ignore the more than 10,000 civilians who have died in Yemen, the U.S. bombs that have been the cause of many of those deaths, and a civil war that has led to a resurgence of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. They’ll probably mention Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent “certification” that the Saudis are now supposedly taking the necessary steps to prevent more civilian casualties there.

What they’re not likely to mention is that his decision was reportedly driven by the head of the legislative affairs team at the State Department who just happens to be a former foreign agent with BGR Government Affairs, one of 35 FARA registrants working for Saudi Arabia at this moment. Such lobbyists and publicists are using the deep pockets of the Saudi royals to spread their propaganda, highlighting the charitable work that government is doing in Yemen. What they fail to emphasize, of course, are the Saudi blockade of the country and the American-backed, armed, and fueled air strikes that are killing civilians at weddings, funerals, school bus trips, and other civilian events. All of this is, in addition, helping to create a grotesque famine, a potential disaster of the most extreme sort and the very reason such humanitarian assistance is needed.

In the end, even if the facts aren’t on their side, the dollars are. Since September 2001, that reality has proven remarkably convincing in Washington, as copious dollars flowed from Saudi Arabia to U.S. military contractors (who are making billions selling weapons to that country), to lobbying firms, and via those firms directly into Congressional coffers.

Is this really how U.S. foreign policy should be determined?

Achieving religious harmony in a world of fear and populism

James M. Dorsey

This is a tough time for men and women of the cloth, at least those whose message is one of peace, tolerance, mutual respect, equality and inter-faith dialogue.

Underlying the rise of populism, nationalism, protectionism, fear of the other, anti-migrant and anti-foreigner sentiment, and hate speech is an erosion of the norms of debate. Articulation of hate speech has become permissible, if not fashionable. Often blunt and crude language employed by leaders, politicians and some people of the cloth help shape an environment in which civility has been lost.

Intolerant, racist and supremacist have risen in significance even in democratic societies that project themselves as open, tolerant guarantors of equal rights irrespective of nationality, ethnicity, religion, colour or sexuality. Suppressing those voices through laws and bans drives hate speech and racism underground, it doesn’t erase or eradicate it. Countering it with a message of tolerance and mutual respect won’t erase it either but can help shape an environment in which those principles become dominant again.

Let’s face it, prejudice is a fact of life. Its inbred in whatever culture each of us adheres to and whatever education at home and in schools that we have enjoyed, irrespective of how conservative or liberal our family and societal backgrounds are. We all were raised on implicit or more explicit notions that our culture is best or by implication other cultures are not as good.

In other words, prejudice is not the issue, its how we deal with it, how we manage it. The problem arises when we lose our sense of relativity, when we adopt an absolutist approach, the high way or no way. It arises when pluralism is thrown out the window and we abandon the notion that our world is populated by a multitude of equally valid faiths, worldviews and belief systems.

To quote Mahatma Gandhi, a deeply religious Hindu, who said in 1942: “I believe with my soul that the God of the Qur’an is also the God of Gita and that we are all, no matter by what name designated, children of the same God. My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures… To ascent to such a doctrine is for me a denial of God.”

In the battles in the late 1940s and 1950s over a proposed national ban in India on the slaughter of cows, Gandhi declared himself a worshipper of cows whom he regarded with the same veneration as he viewed his mother. Yet, Gandhi, went on to say that “the Hindu religion prohibits cow slaughter for the Hindus, not for the world. The religious prohibition comes from within. Any imposition from without means compulsion. Such compulsion is repugnant to religion.”

On a visit in 1942 to a German camp populated by Indian prisoners of war captured from the British during fighting in North Africa, Subhas Chandra Bose, a deeply religious leader of the Indian independence movement, reportedly warned inmates that “if you use religion to unite yourself today, you leave the door open for someone to divide you later using the same sentiments.”

Recent history validates Bose’s warning, not only in India and Pakistan, but across the globe expressed in Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and anti-Shiism, just to name a few, as well as in conflicts, wars and brutal repression in places like Syria, Yemen and the north-western Chinese province of Xinjiang.

Many of you represent faiths with multiple sects, legal schools and interpretations – proof that your belief system in the narrow context of that system is open to multiple interpretation. Some of those interpretations may be intolerant, anti-pluralistic, supremacist. They too are a fact of life, like it or not. Countering them depends on the social environment one creates, a sphere within which men and women of the cloth have an important role to play as well. It is also a function of the social and economic policies implemented by governments.

Indeed, the key is not suppression, what is suppressed doesn’t go away, at best it goes into hibernation, only to re-emerge at some point in the future. The key is containment, communities and societies that make discriminatory, racist, supremacist expressions socially taboo. That key is not enforcement by force of law but by social custom and an environment in which those expressions are continuously challenged in public debate, social settings and individual encounters. I am not talking about political correctness that stifles debate.

Leaving aside those whose beliefs are absolute and intolerant of any other view, a majority of people gravitate towards the middle. It’s what some call moral shock or what former trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb dubbed black swans coupled with economic, social and societal uncertainty and political manipulation that drives people towards more literal, absolutist, intolerant beliefs.

It is those circumstances in which normally tolerant communities and societies become more amenable to those beliefs. It’s what allows men like Slobodan Milosevic or Bashar al-Assad to turn societies where inter-communal relations and inter-marriage were the norm into wastelands in which one community tries to exterminate the other.

Think of Bosnia Herzegovina in the 1990s that seemingly transformed overnight from a beacon of harmony into a hell or the tensions in multiple countries ranging from Bahrain to Nigeria or the tenth parallel that journalist Elizabeth Rush aptly described as the fault line cutting across Africa and Asia between more strident forms of Islam and Christianity.

The last two decades have witnessed a renewed hardening of fault lines, not just ones between strands of Islam and Christianity, but across the board. This latest round started in 2001 with the moral shock of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington and subsequent attacks across Europe as well as in Asia and Africa that continue until today. 9/11 was the death knell of multi-culturalism and the cradle of the latest wave of Islamophobia and rising anti-Semitism.

The economic financial crisis of 2008/2009 with its decimating effect on the lower and middle classes, the flourishing of jihadism, the impact of heinous attacks close to home and the fear, a human being’s most irrational emotion, that generated the breeding ground for populism, nationalism, protectionism and the return to primordial, absolutist beliefs propagated by multiple sources, including men and women of the cloth.

To be sure, the groundwork for this pre-date 9/11, fuelled by some strands of Christianity, massive Saudi funding across the globe of ultra-conservative strains of Islam, and the use of religious intolerance by leaders and governments because it served a political purpose.

Pakistan illustrates what this can produce. The tolerant and live-let-live types live in a bubble, primarily in Pakistan’s three foremost cities, Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. The gravity of society has shifted towards intolerance, anti-pluralism and supremacism. Ultra-conservatism has been woven into the texture of segments of society and the culture of some institutions of the state. It is a world in which absolute truth rules supreme, discrimination based on an absolute truth is anchored into law, competence is determined not exclusively on the basis of merit but on what faith one adheres to, democratic freedoms are curtailed. Mob lynching becomes acceptable, violence against minorities the norm, and anti-blasphemy the tool.

It’s a trend that is not unique to Pakistan and not unique to the Muslim world. It is a trend that is nurtured by the rise of populism, nationalism, authoritarianism and autocracy visible across Western societies, the Muslim world and Israel, in other words irrespective of cultural-religious roots.

In most, if not all of these countries, significant segments of the population have no real stake in society. Intolerance, anti-pluralism, racism and supremacism fuel the perception of disenfranchisement and marginalization that often produces a sense of not having anything to lose. It is some combination of religious ultra-conservatism, exclusivist ethnic and nationalist sentiment, and lack of a stake that creates breeding grounds for militancy and extremism.

Men and women of the cloth working in Singapore are in many ways privileged. While Singapore regulates hate speech or expressions it believes would undermine harmony, it has been successful in ensuring that all segments of the population have a stake in society – perhaps the most important factor in combatting discrimination, racism and supremacism as well as militancy and extremism.

Singapore demonstrates messages of tolerance and inter-ethnic and inter-faith harmony can and will be heard in a political and social environment that fosters mutual respect and dialogue.

There is however one caveat. Peace and harmony in society requires peace and harmony at home. The divisions and animosity between different religions and ethnicities at large are reflected in divisions and animosity within faith groups.

Tolerance, mutual respect and dialogue starts in one’s own community and its message is as credible as one practices it without exception. That probably requires a redefinition of the concept of absolute truth. That’s a tough order, but no one claims that ensuring that a peaceful and harmonious existence and future would be easy. It also is a litmus test of one’s sincerity.