Chemnitz: German Neo-Nazi terrorist group relied on extremist network

Christopher Lehmann

Over the weekend, the print edition of Der Spiegel reported on the government investigation into the extreme right-wing terrorist group Revolution Chemnitz, whose existence was uncovered at the beginning of the month. According to the Office of the Federal Prosecutor, the group was planning armed attacks on foreigners and political dissidents.

Analysis of the internet communications of the eight people who were detained shows that the members of this far-right group had made extensive efforts to obtain firearms. An armed “action” had been planned for the Day of German Unity on October 3. The aim of the group was said to be the use of assassinations to foment an extreme right-wing “revolution.”

“If the investigators are correct, they wanted to outdo the series of murders carried out by the National Socialist Underground (NSU),” Der Spiegel writes. The magazine notes that most of those arrested have been in the neo-Nazi scene for many years, participating in far-right music festivals, torchlight processions and parades. Such events are being held with increasing frequency, aided and abetted by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is the official opposition in parliament to the grand coalition government. Some of these right-wing terrorists have long been known to the police and the secret service.

One of them is Tom W. The 30-year-old already led a right-wing association 12 years ago, spreading fear and terror in central Saxony. His gang of thugs called itself “Sturm 34.” The name comes from an SA brigade that was stationed in the Mittweida region during the Nazi era. The judiciary in Saxony dragged out proceedings against the group for years and ultimately sentenced the leaders to “lenient probation.”

However, one important detail is left unmentioned in the Spiegel report. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution, as Germany’s secret service is called, was involved in the founding of “Sturm 34.”

Broadcaster Südwest Rundfunk (SWR) revealed in 2009 that one of the co-founders of “Sturm 34” was the former police officer Matthias Rott, who worked for the secret service. According to media reports, the Dresden district court had sought access to the CI (Confidential Informant) file on Rott from the Chemnitz-Erzgebirge police department. The file is said to include reports of conspiratorial meetings between Rott and state security officials. However, the Saxony State Interior Ministry refused to pass on the file, claiming that it could be detrimental to the welfare of the Free State of Saxony.

Although “Sturm 34” met all the criteria for the offence of establishing a criminal organization, the Dresden district court sentenced the defendants to a mere juvenile sentence of three to three-and-a-half years. The judge justified the minimal sentence with the claim that the accused lacked “an intellectual inventory.” Some years later, however, the Federal Court of Justice filed an appeal, and after delaying proceedings for many years, the Dresden district court had to sentence the five ringleaders, including Tom W., to probation and fines.

Broadcaster ARD’s programme MONITOR drew attention to the close links between the right-wing terrorists and the AfD. The programme revealed that several members of “Revolution Chemnitz” were spotted in early September on the so-called “funeral marches” of the AfD.

The authorities’ claims that the anti-immigrant rampage carried out by neo-Nazis in Chemnitz took them by surprise are not credible. The state government and the security organs must have had some foreknowledge because, since 2013, “Revolution Chemnitz” has had its own Facebook page. Anti-fascist activists have shown that even in the early stages of the group, a graphic, evidently a design for a group logo, was posted on its Facebook page. In the background can be seen “34” in large numerals, an allusion to “Sturm 34.” In the “Internet Atlas 2014” of the state branch of the secret service, the Facebook page was explicitly cited as belonging to a neo-Nazi group from Chemnitz.

A prohibition order of the Saxony Interior Ministry makes it clear that this Facebook page was used by the “National Socialists of Chemnitz” (NSC), banned in 2014. At that time, this group organized shooting practice, among other things.

In July 2017, the website posted an appeal, “Let’s go to Themar,” promoting the largest ever neo-Nazi concert in Germany. Not only was an earlier member of “Sturm 34” involved in this, there were also contacts with the NSU. “There are indications of several former NSC supporters having links to the ‘National Socialist Underground,’” the Saxony Interior Ministry document states.

The claim that “Revolution Chemnitz” has only now come to the attention of the investigating authorities is not believable. Rather, it is becoming ever more clear how closely the right-wing extremist and terrorist scene is linked to the AfD and the state apparatus.

In an interview with the Tagesspiegel, Robert Claus, an expert on such groups, pointed out the extensive scope and long-standing presence of right-wing extremist networks in Germany. He said, “There is a highly dangerous brown Chemnitz network, and it has existed for decades … The ‘Identitarian Movement,’ under observation by the secret service, plays a role in it.”

This network has been built up in Chemnitz and Saxony since the beginning of the 1990s. The hooligan group “Hoonara” (an acronym for hooligans, Nazis, racists) was founded by neo-Nazis from Chemnitz, Zwickau and Erfurt and was, until 2007, a leading organization in the region, existing alongside the neo-Nazi music label “Blood and Honour.” The scene in Chemnitz also had relations with the NSU. Groups broke up, but their members did not disappear. These networks are still organizing today. There has always been an overlap in the personnel of groups such as the National Socialists of Chemnitz, which was banned in 2014.

The following picture emerges from the report by Robert Claus: There are few right-wing milieus in Germany that are so closely connected and jointly undertake so much activity. The Chemnitz hooligan scene and the Chemnitz far-right associations have always been linked. This scene is closely related to the right-wing “Hools and Ultras” from Cottbus. They organize joint outings, fights, celebrations and attacks on political opponents.

According to Claus, the hooligan and neo-Nazi circles in Chemnitz and Cottbus have definite contacts with the Nazi party “III Weg” and the Identitarian Movement, which, in turn, maintains close ties to the AfD.

The “Empire Fight Team” from Leipzig had also been in Chemnitz, according to Claus. That the members know each other and are networked is obvious. Claus writes: “It comes from the far-right hooligan scene at Lokomotive Leipzig, including the group ‘Scenario Lok,’ which was also under observation by the intelligence services. Fighters from the gym also played a role in the attack on the left-wing district Leipzig-Connewitz.”

The Spiegel report states that the right-wing extremist marches in Chemnitz at the end of August would have affected the far-right groups “like a fire accelerator.” But that is only half the truth. What has strengthened and encouraged right-wing extremists is the fact that leading politicians and security officials have downplayed the right-wing scene and made the central slogan of the right—“Foreigners Out!”—the axis of the refugee policy of the grand coalition, comprised of the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats.

Following the far-right riots in Chemnitz, the then-president of the federal secret service, Hans-Georg Maassen, denied that there had been attacks on journalists, immigrants and left-wingers. He provocatively challenged the authenticity of videos showing neo-Nazis hunting down immigrants in Chemnitz. Maassen’s statements were, as the WSWS wrote, “a deliberate political provocation, which aims to strengthen the most right-wing forces in the government and state apparatus.” The latest findings regarding right-wing terrorism in Chemnitz fully confirm this assessment.

Journalist reported tortured and slain in Saudi consulate in Istanbul

Bill Van Auken

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded Monday that Saudi Arabia’s monarchical regime prove that the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi left its consulate in Istanbul after entering it a week ago to obtain a document he needed for his intended marriage to a Turkish woman.

Erdogan’s demand came in the wake of reports by Turkish security forces that they have hard evidence Khashoggi was tortured and killed and his body chopped into pieces and taken back to Saudi Arabia after he entered the consulate on October 2. Turkish sources told the Reuters news agency on Saturday that the disappearance was the result of “premeditated murder.”

Friends had attempted to persuade Khashoggi, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States for the past year, that it was too dangerous to go into the Saudi government-controlled facility. He had responded that the regime would not do anything against him in Turkey.

On the day he went in, he instructed his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, to call an adviser to Erdogan if he did not reemerge within four hours.

The man she called, Yasin Aktay, a former member of parliament for Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), told CNN: “Our security officials are investigating the issue in every detail. We have some concrete information; it won’t be an unsolved crime. We could determine his entrance but not any exit. That’s confirmed. We asked them [the Saudis], they say, ‘he left,’ but there is no such thing on the camera footage.”

Further details and speculation about the disappearance of Khashoggi have filled the Turkish press. The pro-government daily Hurriyat carried a front-page headline: “Did they take him out by cutting [the body] into pieces?”

The paper quoted the head of the Turkish-Arab Media Association, Turan Kışlakçı, as saying that 15 Saudi agents, who had arrived in Turkey and entered the consulate shortly before Khashoggi’s disappearance, left shortly after he entered the premises.

“On that day (October 2), 15 people entered the consulate before Khashoggi and got out an hour later. It is thought that he was killed once he got in and his body was dismembered, distributed to 15 people and taken away,” Kışlakçı said.

Other Turkish newspapers reported that the police are searching for several vehicles, including a black minibus with darkened windows that left the consulate shortly after Khashoggi had disappeared.

Erdogan’s statement Monday stressed that Turkish authorities were pursuing their investigation and that the Saudis “cannot save themselves by simply saying ‘he has left.’”

“If he has left, you must prove this, you will prove this, even if it is with visuals,” he said, adding that Turkish police were investigating “arrivals and departures” of “people who came from Saudi Arabia.”

The “visuals” described by Erdogan are apparently fairly clear: closed-circuit television footage shows Khashoggi entering the consulate, but never leaving it.

Erdogan heads a regime that has jailed more journalists than any other on the planet. His concern over the Khashoggi affair is bound up with the tense relationship between Ankara and Riyadh over a whole number of regional crises, in particular, the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar, with which Turkey is allied. At the same time, the Turkish government is anxious not to provoke a complete severing of ties with Saudi Arabia, which it views as a source of investment under conditions of Turkey’s deep economic crisis.

Washington has remained circumspect about Khashoggi’s disappearance. President Donald Trump responded to a shouted question as he left his helicopter on the White House lawn Monday, saying he was “concerned.”

“Right now, nobody knows anything about it. But there’s some pretty bad stories going around. I do not like it,” Trump said.

The Trump administration has deepened a long-standing relationship with the Saudi monarchy, which, under Obama and previous presidents, has overlooked massive human rights violations in the interests of propping up a dictatorial regime that serves as a lynchpin of US imperialist domination of the Middle East. It has also helped prop up US financial interests by guaranteeing the denomination of oil prices in dollars, while providing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of contracts for US arms corporations.

To further this relationship, the US ruling class and the corporate media promoted the image of the monarchy’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS)—the prime suspect in Khashoggi’s disappearance—as a “reformer.” He was feted on a whirlwind tour of the US last April, hosted not only by the Trump administration, but also by the likes of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

If the disappearance of Khashoggi has provoked more attention than Saudi Arabia’s mass beheadings and the routine execution and imprisonment of anyone who challenges the monarchical dictatorship, it is not only because of the brazenness and brutality of the apparent butchering of a Saudi citizen inside an overseas consulate.

Khashoggi’s journalistic career, which spans more than 30 years, has always been bound up with the interests of the Saudi monarchy and its intelligence services. He was a readily available source for the Western media to interpret the monarchy’s actions in a favorable light.

New York Times foreign affairs correspondent Thomas Friedman, who wrote a series of fawning columns praising MBS as a visionary reformer and savior of the Middle East, identified Khashoggi as one of his sources in a piece published on Monday. Friedman went so far as to say that if the charges of the Saudi regime murdering him were true, it would be worse than Riyadh’s war on Yemen, which has killed over 16,000, and threatened millions with starvation.

The obscenely sycophantic Friedman concluded that he was “praying for Jamal,” because if it was true Khashoggi had been murdered by the regime, Western leaders and investors could desert the great “reformer,” MBS.

In addition to his services as an interlocutor with the Western media, Khashoggi was also a longtime aide to Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi intelligence chief and later ambassador to the United Kingdom and the United States. One Turkish newspaper suggested that he had left the kingdom with secret intelligence documents.

Khashoggi’s decision to flee Saudi Arabia for the US came as the Crown Prince consolidated his power and initiated the mass detention last year of leading figures within the royal family and the Saudi ruling class at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Riyadh, where many were reportedly tortured and forced to fork over significant shares of their fortunes.

In the US, Khashoggi was given a column in the Washington Post to express fairly mild criticisms of MBS’s rule. The last such column he wrote for the paper, however, criticized Saudi Arabia’s prosecution of the near-genocidal war against Yemen, backed by indispensable military-logistical support from the Pentagon. The war, aimed by both Riyadh and Washington at precluding any expansion of Iranian influence in the region, has sharply divided the royal family, elements of which have blamed MBS for drawing the kingdom into a quagmire.

Whatever Khashoggi’s services to the Saudi monarchy and US imperialism, his reported torture, murder and butchering at a government consulate in Istanbul, if true, represents an act of savagery that exposes the essence of Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East and, more generally, US policy throughout the region.

One only need ask what the reaction would have been had a similar fate befallen a Russian, Iranian or Venezuelan national to understand the unbridled hypocrisy of the “human rights” pretensions of US imperialism.

Brutal conditions at Greek refugee camps condemned

John Vassilopoulos 

There are currently over 17,000 refugees held in appalling conditions on the Greek islands of Chios, Samos, Lesbos, Kos and Leros. They are caged in detention centres that have the capacity for only 6,000 people.

The most notorious of these is the Moria camp on Lesbos, recently described by the BBC as “the worst refugee camp in the world.” With a capacity of just over 3,000, the camp’s inmates total three times that number, with a third of them children.

The appalling conditions are a direct consequence of the filthy deal cut between the European Union (EU), Turkey and the Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) government in March 2016. Alexis Tsipras’ pro-austerity government became an enthusiastic jailor for the EU, presiding over what are essentially concentration camps. The deal stipulates that all refugees crossing into Greece from Turkey be interned until their case is processed, with the plan that they are ultimately deported back to Turkey.

According to figures from the UN Refugee Agency, nearly 30,000 refugees, most of them women and children, crossed the Aegean from Turkey into Greece in 2017. So far this year, nearly 23,500 have made the same journey, with Lesbos receiving over half of them. Most of those arriving are from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, all of them war-torn countries destroyed by US and EU-backed conflicts.

Describing living at the camp as “a life of lines,” a recent New York Times article outlines a typical day for Afghan farmer Rahmuddin Ashrafi. Rahmuddin arrived at the camp in June with his wife and three children.

“The family’s typical day begins at 4 a.m. when Mr. Ashrafi joins a line for water and bread that is usually served four hours later at 8 a.m. At around 9:30 a.m., he joins the line again for lunch, which tends to arrive after another four hours of waiting. Two hours later, he joins another four-hour line for dinner. On the days when he needs to line up for official paperwork, or to visit the doctor—his three-year-old daughter was recently hospitalized with appendicitis—he sometimes has to skip meals altogether or rely on leftovers from other Afghans.”

“Before, I thought that Greece would be one of the best places to live,” Ashrafi told the newspaper. “Now I feel it would have been better to drown while crossing the sea.”

Referring to the sanitary conditions at Moria, a joint statement by 19 NGOs declared, “The sewage system does not work and filthy toilet water reaches the tents and mattresses where children sleep. This, despite funds for sewage system improvement having been approved for some time.”

In a September blog post on Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Liz Clark, a British doctor volunteer on Lesbos, wrote that “there are between 62-70 people for every toilet and 84 people for every shower. … This is respectively twice and three times more than the international minimum standards in a humanitarian emergency.”

She added, “Those seeking medical treatment have to provide an appointment slip, or somehow prove their need to see a healthcare provider to the police officers that control entry to the enclosure where the clinic is situated.”

The appalling conditions, along with the painfully slow and complicated asylum process—which few of the refugees fully understand—places extreme psychological pressure on people already traumatised as victims and witnesses of atrocities in their home countries.

In an open letter published on MSF’s website in September, Dr. Alessandro Barberio, a psychiatrist working at the MSF Lesbos Project, wrote: “In all of my years of medical practice, I have never witnessed such overwhelming numbers of people suffering from serious mental health conditions, as I am witnessing now amongst refugees on the island of Lesbos. The vast majority of people I see are presenting with psychotic symptoms, suicidal thoughts—even attempts at suicide—and are confused. Many are unable to meet or perform even their most basic everyday functions, such as sleeping, eating well, maintaining personal hygiene, and communicating.”

Incidents of violence between inmates, including sexual violence against women, are widespread at Moira, as are suicide attempts and acts of self-harm, including among children.

Since 2015, some €1.6 billion was allocated by the EU, supposedly to tackle Greece’s refugee crisis. This would have amounted by 2017 to €7,000 per refugee. According to a Guardian report last month, “Of the €561m of long-term funding allocated by the European commission, only €153m has so far been disbursed.”

Allegations of corruption regarding the funds that have been released are surfacing.

At the centre of these is Defence Minister Panos Kammenos, who is leader of the far-right Independent Greeks, Syriza’s junior coalition partner. According to material published in the Greek daily Fileleftheros, it is alleged that companies with close ties to Kammenos routinely inflated charges for services at the Moria camp, ranging from catering to plumbing. Kammenos responded by filing a defamation action against three of the newspaper’s journalists, which resulted in them spending one night in custody. Following the report, the EU’s anti-fraud agency launched an investigation.

Kammenos’ authoritarian actions provoked an outcry in Greece and internationally regarding press freedoms in the country.

The response of the Syriza government to this humanitarian catastrophe is to brutally crack down on all opposition. In a letter to the mayor of Lesbos last month, Immigration Minister Dimitris Vitsas boasted that the government had increased the police presence inside the facility.

The director of Moria is former army brigadier Yiannis Balpakakis, who was on a Syriza candidate list for election in Lesbos as recently as 2014.

Speaking last month to Sto Kokkino, a radio station owned by Syriza, Balpakakis—in the teeth of all evidence—dismissed reports about the appalling conditions. He claimed Moria’s toilets and facilities are clean while food was distributed in 45 minutes, with queues only forming because “many just go and sit in the queue to chat, because they have nothing else to do.” He said, “Many NGOs, which are now planning ahead for 2019 and are trying to find donors, are creating a completely negative situation so that they can be seen as saviours and get funding.”

Balpakakis’ provocative comments should be seen in the wider context of the criminalisation of aid workers by the Syriza government, in collusion with the EU whose anti-immigration diktats it is implementing. Last month 30 members of the Emergency Response Centre International (ERCI) were charged with people-trafficking offences, including former Olympic Gold medallist Sara Mardini. In 2015 Mardini saved 18 refugees by swimming their waterlogged dingy to the shores of Lesbos. Her lawyer, Haris Petsalmikos, stated, “The accusations are more about criminalizing humanitarian action. Sara wasn’t even here when these alleged crimes took place but as charges they are serious, perhaps the most serious any aid worker has ever faced.”

The intimidation of aid workers, especially those who carry out rescue patrols in the Aegean, is a central plank of the EU’s anti-immigration policy. By allowing refugees to drown in the sea, the EU seeks to deter people fleeing war-torn countries from attempting the journey to Greece.

October 3 marked five years since the tragedy which saw 369 migrants lose their lives, when the boat they were travelling in sank off the coast of the island of Lampedusa. Since then thousands more have drowned in the Mediterranean, with over 1,000 perishing already this year.

Moria’s refugees suffer from policies intended to make life as harsh as possible, in order to deter people from attempting to reach Greece. A British official representing the European Commission admitted as much at a private meeting of Greek, EU and NGO officials at the start of last month. According to the New York Times, the official “suggested keeping standards low at Moria in order to deter future migration to Greece.”

Anti-immigrant policies are central to the ruling elite’s effort to divert popular anger against the austerity policies presided over by successive Greek governments—and substantially worsened by Syriza—at the behest of the EU to create a situation where the local population and refugees are competing for ever scarcer resources.

This was underscored recently following recent heavy rainfall in Lesbos, when the army withdrew an initial offer to shelter 1,200 Moira inmates. According to Kathemerini, the offer was withdrawn because the authorities did not want to be seen giving priority to refugees at the expense of the local population.

Marriott hotel workers strike spreads to Hawaii

Kevin Martinez

More than 2,700 hotel workers in Honolulu and Maui walked off the job on Monday, joining Marriott workers who began striking last week in the San Francisco area. Nationwide, 7,700 workers from 23 hotels are now on strike in eight cities.

Strikes are ongoing in Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, San Diego and Detroit. Workers are demanding better pay and safer working conditions. While there is growing support for a nationwide strike, the UNITE HERE union has sought to limit and isolate the strikes, negotiating piecemeal with the bosses for separate deals with each hotel.

Workers picketed five Marriott hotels in Hawaii: Sheraton Waikiki, Royal Hawaiian, Sheraton Princess Kaiulani, Westin Moana Surfrider and Sheraton Maui. About 95 percent of the 3,500 workers in Local 5 authorized a strike last month. However, workers at Waikiki Beach Marriott and the Sheraton Kauai, who voted to strike, were still working on Monday morning.

The owners of the Hawaiian hotels, Kyo-ya Hotels & Resorts, issued a statement the same morning stating the company has “implemented contingency plans” to continue operating the five hotels on strike while adding “there have been some adjustments to staffing levels and services being offered at our properties.”

The strike in Hawaii comes after months of negotiations over job security, improved wages and work overloads. Workers also want a say in how new technological changes can improve working conditions rather than lead to the elimination of jobs.

Jenny Johnson, a dinner cook at Sheraton Waikiki for the last seven years, told Hawaii News Now, “We’re asking for one job to be enough,” adding, “We want a fair contract so that our members can work and afford to put food on their table and still be able to sit down and enjoy their dinner with their families.”

In a news release, the president of UNITE, Donald Taylor, declared that “UNITE-HERE union members are going to change the lives of all workers in our industry.”

In fact, the union is doing everything it can to ensure that workers are isolated and defeated. Hotel workers in Chicago have been scraping by with $300 to $400 a week in strike pay. Hotel workers in Detroit, who began their strike Sunday morning, are not currently receiving strike pay.

Taylor and the top executives at UNITE-HERE receive six-figure annual salaries, with Taylor alone making $315,000, more than ten times what hotel workers make on average. Union workers also have to pay almost $700 a year in dues.

Now that workers in Hawaii have joined the growing national hotel strike, it is critical that workers break from the isolation imposed on them by UNITE HERE and the trade unions by forming rank-and-file committees. Hotel and service workers face the same issues as UPS and Amazon workers, as well as teachers and nurses who have gone on strike this year.

Nothing can be won through isolated, individual strikes. Hotel workers should form independent workplace committees to expand the strikes, linking up the struggles of workers in different cities as part of a broader mobilization of the working class. These committees must formulate demands that meet the real needs of workers for livable wages, full healthcare coverage and job protections.

PTDF Scholarship 2018/2019 for Undergraduate & Postgraduate Students to Study in Nigerian Federal Universities

Application Deadline: 

• Application Opens: Today, 8th October 2018
• Application Closes: Friday, 16th November, 2018

Eligible Countries: Nigeria

To be taken at (country): Nigeria

About the Award: The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) is the Federal Government agency with the mandate of developing indigenous human capacity and petroleum technology to meet the needs of the oil and gas industry. The Fund hereby invites applications from qualified Nigerians to apply for the 2018/19 Undergraduate, Masters and PhD scholarships for students in Nigerian Federal Universities.

Type: Undergraduate, Masters and PhD

Eligibility:
A). (LSS) Undergraduate:

• Applicants must be full time students in any of the Federal Universities
• Applicants must be in their second year of study
• Course of study should be related to oil and gas industry
• Students must have been admitted into the University in 2017/18 academic year only
• Possess 5 credits in WAEC/SSCE/NECO including English Language and Mathematics
• Possess a minimum Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 3.5 on scale of 5 or 3.0 on a scale of 4 which is equivalent to 2.1 in the first year for the 2017/18 batch of students
• Applicants should provide their transcripts for the first year of study

Undergraduate applicants who meet the above requirements are to upload the following documents:

• Evidence of statement of WAEC/SSCE/NECO results with at least 5 credits, including English Language and Mathematics
• Letter of admission into the University
• First year academic transcript(s)
• Evidence of state of origin and local government
• Personal statement of a minimum of 100 words stating reasons for undertaking the course of study
• Recent passport photograph

B). (LSS) MSc. (Requirements for application):

• Applicants must possess full time admission letter into any of the Federal Universities
• A minimum of Second Class Upper (2.1) in an oil and gas related field or a 2.2 with a minimum working experience of 2 years in the oil and gas industry;
• Possess at least 5 credits in WAEC/SSCE/NECO results;
• National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) certificate or Letter of exemption;
• Applicants must be computer literate;
• Letter of admission into the University;
• Academic transcript;
• Evidence of state of origin and local government;
• Personal statement of a minimum of 1000 words stating reasons for undertaking the course of study;
• Recent passport photograph

C). PhD (LSS) (Requirements for application):

• Applicants must possess full time admission letter into any of the Federal Universities
• A minimum of Second Class Upper (2.1) in an Oil and Gas related field or a 2.2 with a minimum working experience of 2 years in the oil and gas industry;
• Possess at least 5 credits in WAEC/SSCE/NECO results,
• National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) certificate or Letter of exemption;
• Applicants must be computer literate;
• A minimum of 2.2 in their first degree and a minimum of merit as a second degree certificate in an oil and gas related discipline;
• Valid admission letter of not more than one year;
• Academic transcripts;
• Evidence of state of origin and local government;
• Research area must be relevant to the oil and gas industry;
• PhD research proposal of not more than 6 pages to include topic, introduction, literature review, research question(s), novelty, methodology, mode of data collection(s), expected outcome(s), relevance to the industry and appropriate references
• Recent passport photograph

Selection Criteria: A selection panel will be constituted to assess applications using the following criteria;

• Academic merit as evidenced by quality of degrees, full academic transcripts, other professional qualifications acquired and relevant publications to be referenced by applicants
• Membership of professional bodies
• The viability of the study/research plan (PhD applicants only)
• All applicants are required to make a case for their scholarship by submitting a statement of purpose stating the reason(s) they wish to undertake the study, the relevance of the proposed study to the industry and its expected impact on national development

Number of Awards: Not specified

Duration of Programme: Duration of candidate’s course

How to Apply: Online application form can be accessed from the APPLICATION WEBSITE: www.ptdf.gov.ng at no cost to applicants. Instructions on how to access the online form is stated on the PTDF website. Applicants are advised to read through the requirements before applying. To start the application process, applicants are required to key-in their email address and select a password for a pin to be generated. The generated pin would enable applicants to access the form and complete their bio data.
Applicants are advised to scan copies of the following documents and attach to their online application forms:

1. First Degree Certificates or Statement of Results
2. NYSC Certificate or letter of exemption
3. WAEC/GCE/SSCE/NECO Results
4. Academic Transcript(s)
5. Admission Letter
6. Personal Statement
7. State and Local Government Identification Letters
8. Recent Passport Photograph

Additional scanned documents required from PhD applicants:

1. Second Degree Certificates or Statement of Results
2. PhD research proposal

PhD Applicants are to follow the link provided below on the format of organization and structure for proposal write up
Organization and Structure of PHD Proposal
PhD RESEARCH AREAS:
PhD research areas have been provided to enable applicants chose areas of research (see application drop box)

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Important Notes: Applicants need to note the following:

• Application is restricted to Federal Universities only
• Possession of valid admission letter into the University is compulsory for all applicants
• Postgraduate applicant’s admission letter should be within a validity period of 12 months
• Postgraduate applicants who meet the requirements shall be shortlisted for interviews before final selection of successful candidates
• Undergraduate applicants must have completed their first year and are currently in their second year of studies
• Only undergraduate applicants undertaking studies in oil and gas related fields will be considered and the final selection shall be based on the grades on their transcripts
• Admission for part-time studies shall not be considered for all category of applications
• The scholarship is highly competitive and merit driven. Selection of candidates shall be based on equitable representation of the 36 States of the Federation and Federal Capital Territory (FCT)

Syria and the S-300s: Re-Centering the People in the Global Struggles for Power

Ajamu Baraka

“The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world [….] No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity, much less dissent.”

– Gore Vidal

One of the most amusing elements of the current anti-Russian hysteria produced by U.S. state/corporate propagandists is the notion that Russia is this bold, aggressive challenger to “U.S. and Western interests” when the reality has always been the opposite. In the tumultuous period after the Soviet Union disintegrated, the Russian Federation emerged as the dominate power under the leadership of the clownish BorisYeltsin.

The Russian capitalist oligarchy that developed during that period and expanded under the leadership of Vladimir Putin has always just wanted to be part of the global capitalist game. They had demonstrated on more than one occasion their willingness to cooperate with the agenda of Western powers.  However, they wanted to be respected with their regional interests recognized.

But as result of greed, hubris and just plain incompetence, U.S. policy-makers, especially the amateurs running foreign policy during the Obama years, pushed the Russians out of their preferred zone of caution in international affairs, with Syria being exhibit A. Forcing the Russians hand in Syria was followed by the Ukraine when the U.S. sparked a coup in that nation as the second front against Russian “intervention” in Syria.

So it was quite comical to see how the announcement that Russia will deliver the S-300 air defense system to the Syrian government was met with feigned horror by U.S. and NATO forces. This decision was taken after the U.S. allowed or didn’t stop the Israeli Air Force from playing games that resulted in a Russia cargo plane being shot out of the air by Syrian ground defenses who mistook the Russia plane for an Israeli aircraft.

Without an adequate air defense system capable of covering the entire nation and strategic territories within Syria, the Israeli Air Force has had almost unimpeded access to Syria air space during the Syrian war to attack military forces associated with the Syrian government, Hezbollah and the Iranian state.

Yet in their zeal to push out anti-Russian propaganda, the state/corporate propagandists in the U.S.  exposed once again Russia’s conservatism and acquience to the global colonial U.S./EU/NATO agenda. While the headlines screamed traitor at Turkish President Erdogan for concluding a deal for the Russian S-400, the most advanced system the Russians are selling on the open market, very few seemed to have noticed that those wily, evil Russians that were propping up their partner in Syria hadn’t even delivered on the S-300 sale to the Syrian state that had been concluded five years ago!

The Russians said that they failed to deliver the system that the Syrians purchased due to a request from the Israeli government in 2013. This decision took place a year after the debacle of Geneva I, the United Nations sponsored conference to resolve the Syrian War, where the Russians appeared ready to abandon Assad as long as the Syrian state was maintained, and their interests protected.  Getting rid of Assad but maintaining the Syrian state was also U.S. policy at the time.

However, instead of a negotiated settlement in which the Russians would play a role, the Obama administration rejected Geneva I believing that it could topple the government in Syria through its jihadist proxies. The U.S. knew that those elements were never going to be allowed to govern the entire nation but that was the point. The Syrian state was slated to be balkanized with its territory divided and a permanent presence by the U.S. directly on the ground. Those forces in Syria would be bolstered by the thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq that had been reintroduced as a result of the U.S. reinvasion supposedly to fight ISIS – that it helped to create.

Although the Russian position on Assad came out just a year after the Chinese and Russians gave the green light to the U.S. and NATO to launch a vicious war on Libya is old news, it points out how in the global game of power relations the peoples of the former colonial world continue to lose. The Russians, like the Chinese, have demonstrated repeatedly their willingness to collaborate with the U.S. and the “Western colonialist alliance,” even as successive U.S. administrations have singled them out, along with Iran and Venezuela, as geostrategic threats to U.S. global hegemony.

This observation is not meant to be another Russia and China bashing that plays into the hands of the reactionaries driving U.S. policies who see military conflict with those two nations as inevitable. Instead what is being argued here is the absolute necessity for African/Black people and oppressed peoples and nations to be clear about the international correlation and balance of forces and competing interests at play so that “we” the people are not confused regarding our objective interests.

Russian intervention in Syria was not as cynical as the U.S. and Western European powers, which knew from the beginning that “progressive” forces in Syria could not win a military conflict. Nevertheless, they encouraged those forces to engage in military opposition while the U.S. and its allies decided to back various Islamist forces – not for democratic change – but to destroy the Syrian state.

Maintaining an independent, critical perspective on the national and global dispensation of social forces means not having any illusions about the world and the national, class and racial politics in play. We need to be clear that supporting Syria’s attempt to assert full sovereignty over its territory was only a secondary concern for the Russians. The back seat given to the Syrian government in the negotiations between Russia, Iran, and Turkey regarding Idlib confirms that. Protecting Russian interests in Syria and the Mid-East was and is the driving force for Russian military and diplomatic activity, nothing else!

The delivery of the S-300 anti-aircraft system to Syria resembles the Russia cooperation with the U.S., Israel and Turkey on the Turkish Afrin operation,which was basically an invasion of Syria by Turkey in order to establish a “buffer zone”. These are all decisions based on the objective interests of Russia and secondarily the interests of the Syrian government.

It remains to be seen how the deployment of the S-300’s will alter the situation on the ground in Syria. It would not be surprising if the deployment was limited and only covered the territory around Latakia, the site of the Russian air base and close to its warm-water port. It may not be in Russia’s interests to allow the Syria government the means to block Israeli intrusions into Syrian air space. If the Syrian government had the ability to really ensure the security of its national territory from Israeli intrusions, it could mean that Russia would have less leverage over the Syrian government to force a withdrawal of Iranian forces from Syria. Additionally, the land corridor and security of the “Islamic pipeline” between Iran, Iraq and Syria could be secured that may not be necessarily conducive for maintaining Russia’s share of the energy market in Europe.

The U.S. and Israel overplayed their cards and made a strategic blunder by precipitating the shooting down of the Russian cargo plane. Although National Security Adviser John Bolton claims that the decision to supply Syrian forces with the S-300 is a “significant escalation,” the escalation really took place in 2012 when the Obama administration decided to allow U.S. vassal states to significantly increase military support for radical Islamic forces. Michael Flynn revealed this as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency– something the Obama forces never forgot.

Syria has been a difficult object lesson for the left that has had a devastating consequence for the people of that embattled nation. Hundreds of thousands have died, and millions have been displaced primarily because left and progressive forces lacked the organizational, but more importantly, the ideological, political, and moral clarity to mount an opposition to the machinations of their national bourgeoisie in Europe and the U.S.  The very idea that the bourgeois leadership of their respective states might have some benevolent justifications for military intervention in Syria revealed a dangerous nationalist sentimentality that is driving the left version of white supremacist national chauvinism.

Before the dramatic rightist turn of the left in the U.S. and Europe over the last two decades, the left – at least much of the Marxist-Leninist left – opposed Western imperialist intervention out of a theoretical and principled commitment to the national-colonial question in the global South. As citizens in “oppressor nations,” opposing their own bourgeoisie’s interventions into oppressed nations was seen as a responsibility for the left and indeed was a measurement of what was actually an authentic left position.

That stance has virtually disappeared.

The first response by the Western left to plans or actual interventions by their nation’s ruling class is a strange conversation regarding rather or not the intervention is justified or not based on the nature of the government being toppled by the intervention.

For those of us who are members of oppressed peoples and nations, it is quite obvious that without independent organizations and global solidarity structures buttressed by the few progressive states that exist on the planet, we cannot depend on any bourgeois state to really care about our humanity or on the radical or left forces in Northern nations to put a brake on repression and intervention against non-Europe states and peoples.

The bloodletting will continue in Syria. Candidate Trump raised some serious questions about the wisdom of U.S. policies in Syria and indicated that he might be willing to reverse U.S. involvement. But President Trump surrendered to the pressure from the foreign policy establishment and the warmongering corporate press. Instead of extricating the U.S., the administration announced a few weeks ago that the U.S. will essentially engage in an illegal and indefinite occupation in Syria.

There is reasonable doubt that Israel and the U.S. will allow the deployment of the S-300s even if the Russians followed through with the delivery. Which means the possibility of another dangerous escalation in the conflict at any moment. It also means why despite one’s opinion about the nature of any government’s internal situation, it is important to reaffirm and defend the principles of national sovereignty and international law in opposition to the arbitrary and illegal interventions to effect a change in government by any outside forces.

The people’s movements for social justice and human rights around the world must not allow the people to be drawn into the machinations and contradictory struggles and conflicts between essentially capitalist blocs, which include the Russians and the state-capitalism of China. This is not to suggest a moral or political equalization between the emergence of capitalist Russia and China and the systematic degradation unleashed on the world by the Pan-European colonial/capitalist project that emerged in 1492 with the invasion of the “Americas.” That would be a perversion of history and divert us from the primary global contradiction and target: The Western capitalist alliance and the corporate and finance oligarchy at its center.

In the competition between blocs and the real possibility of global conflict, we must be vigilant not to repeat the tragic mistake made before the first world war when workers enthusiastically signed up as cannon fodder in the clash of capitalist empires. Imperialist war really is a class issue!

Totalitarian capitalist domination is not a figment of our imaginations, it is real. Penetrating the ideological mystifications that divert us away from the matrix of power that distorts consciousness and renders the people as collaborators in their own subjection is the task of the moment.

The global order is changing, the only question is what will emerge. Will the new order be a multipolar one dominated by emerging capitalist states or will a new transitional order develop that is oriented toward an association of states and people’s movements moving toward authentic de-colonization, ecological rationality, and socialist construction?

There is still time for the people to choose.

Food, Justice, Violence and Capitalism

Colin Todhunter

In 2015, India’s internal intelligence agency wrote a report that depicted various campaigners and groups as working against the national interest. The report singled out environmental activists and NGOs that had been protesting against state-corporate policies. Those largely undemocratic and unconstitutional policies were endangering rivers, forests and local ecologies, destroying and oppressing marginalised communities, entrenching the corporatisation of agriculture and usurping land rights.

These issues are not unique to India. Resistance against similar practices and injustices is happening across the world. And for their efforts, campaigners are being abused, incarcerated and murdered. Whether people are campaigning for the land rights of tribal communities in India or for the rights of peasant farmers in Latin America or are campaigning against the fracking industry in the UK or against pipelines in the US, there is a common thread: non-violent protest to help bring about a more just and environmentally sustainable world.

What is ultimately fuelling the push towards the relentless plunder of land, peoples and the environment is a strident globalised capitalism, euphemistically termed ‘globalisation’, which is underpinned by increasing state surveillance, paramilitary-type law enforcement and a US-backed push towards militarism.

The deregulation of international capital movement (financial liberalisation) effectively turned the world into a free-for-all for global capital. The ramping up of this militarism comes at the back end of a deregulating/pro-privatising neoliberal agenda that has sacked public budgets, depressed wages, expanded credit to consumers and to governments (to sustain spending and consumption) and unbridled financial speculation. In effect, spending on war is in part a desperate attempt to boost a stagnant US economy.

We may read the writings of the likes of John Perkins (economic hitmen), Michel Chossudovsky (the globalisation of poverty), Michael Hudson (treasury bond super-imperialism) or Paul Craig Roberts (the US’s descent into militarism and mass surveillance) to understand the machinations of billionaire capitalists and the economic system and massive levels of exploitation and suffering they preside over.

Food activists are very much part of the global pushback and the struggle for peace, equality and justice and in one form or another are campaigning against violence, corruption and cronyism. There is a determination to question and to hold to account those with wealth and power, namely transnational agribusiness corporations and their cronies who hold political office.

There is sufficient evidence for us to know that these companies lie and cover up truth. And we also know that their bought politicians, academics, journalists and right-wing neoliberal backers and front groups smear critics and attempt to marginalise alternative visions of food and agriculture.

They are first to man the barricades when their interests are threatened. Those interests are tied to corporate power, neoliberal capitalism and the roll out of food for profit. These companies and their cheerleaders would be the last to speak up about the human rights abuses faced by environmentalists in various places across the world. They have little to say about the injustices of a global food regime that creates and perpetuates food surpluses in rich countries and food deficits elsewhere, resulting in a billion people with insufficient food for their daily needs. Instead all they have to offer are clichés about the need for more corporate freedom and deregulation if we are to ‘feed the world’.

And they attempt to gloss over or just plain ignore the land grabs and the marginalisation of peasant farmers across the world, the agrarian crisis in India or the harm done by agrochemicals because it is all tied to the neoliberal globalisation agenda which fuels corporate profit, lavish salaries or research grants.

It is the type of globalisation that has in the UK led to deindustrialisation, massive inequalities, the erosion of the welfare state and an increasing reliance on food banks. In South America, there has been the colonisation of lands and farmers to feed richer countries’ unsustainable, environment-destroying appetite for meat. In effect what Helena Paul once described in The Ecologist as genocide and ecocide.  From India to Argentina, we have witnessed (are witnessing) the destruction of indigenous practices and cultures under the guise of ‘development’.

And from various bilateral trade agreements and WTO policies to IMF and World Bank directives, we have seen the influence of transnational agricapital shaping and benefitting from ‘ease of doing business’ and ‘structural adjustment’ type strategies.

We also see the globalisation of bad food and illness and the deleterious impacts of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture on health, rivers, soils and oceans. The global food regime thrives on the degradation of health, environment, labour and communities and the narrowing of the range of crops grown resulting in increasingly monolithic, nutrient-deficient diets.

Whether it includes any or all of the above or the hollowing out of regulatory agencies and the range of human rights abuses we saw documented during The Monsanto Tribunal, what we see is the tacit acceptance of neoliberal policies and the perpetuation of structural (economic, social and political) violence by mainstream politicians and agricapital and its cheerleaders.

At the same time, however, what we are also witnessing is a loosely defined food movement becoming increasingly aware of the connection between these issues.

Of course, to insinuate that those campaigning for the labelling of GM food, the right to healthy food or access to farmers markets in the West and peasant movements involved with wider issues pertaining to food sovereignty, corporate imperialism and development in the Global South form part of a unified ‘movement’ in terms of material conditions or ideological outlook would be stretching a point.

After all, if you campaign for, say, healthy organic food in your supermarket, while overlooking the fact that the food in question derives from a cash crop which displaced traditional cropping systems and its introduction effectively destroyed largely food self-sufficient communities and turned them into food importing basket cases three thousand miles away, where is the unity?

However, despite the provisos, among an increasing number of food activists the struggle for healthy food in the West, wider issues related to the impact of geopolitical IMF-World Bank lending strategies and WTO policies and the securing of local community ownership of ‘the commons’ (land, water, seeds, research, technology, etc) are understood as being interconnected.

There is an emerging unity of purpose within the food movement and the embracing of a vision for a better, more just food system that can only deliver genuine solutions by challenging and replacing capitalism and its international relations of production and consumption.

Pakistani poker: Playing Saudi Arabia against China

James M. Dorsey 

Desperate for funding to fend off a financial crisis fuelled in part by mounting debt to China, Pakistan is playing a complicated game of poker that could hand Saudi Arabia a strategic victory in its bitter feud with Iran at the People’s Republic’s expense.

The Pakistani moves threaten a key leg of the USD60 billion plus Chinese investment in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a crown jewel of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative.

They also could jeopardize Chinese hopes to create a second overland route to Iran, a key node in China’s transportation links to Europe. Finally, they grant Saudi Arabia a prominent place in the Chinese-funded port of Gwadar that would significantly weaken Iran’s ability to compete with its Indian-backed seaport of Chabahar.

Taken together, the moves risk dragging not only Pakistan but also China into the all but open war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Pakistan’s first move became evident in early September with the government’s failure to authorise disbursements for road projects, already hit by delays in Chinese approvals, that are part of CPEC’s Western route, linking the province of Balochistan with the troubled region of Xinjiang in north-western China.

In doing so, Pakistan implicitly targeted a key Chinese driver for CPEC: the pacification of Xinjiang’s Turkic Muslim population through a combination of economic development enhanced by trade and economic activity flowing through CPEC as well as brutal repression and mass re-education.

The combination of Pakistani and Chinese delays “has virtually brought progress work on the Western route to a standstill,” a Western diplomat in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad said.

Pakistani Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid, in a further bid to bring Pakistani government expenditure under control that at current rates could force the country to seek a $US 12 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has cut $2 billion dollars from the US$8.2 billion budget to upgrade and expand Pakistan’s railway network, a key pillar of CPEC. Mr. Rashid plans to slash a further two billion dollars.

“Pakistan is a poor country that cannot afford (the) huge burden of the loans…. CPEC is like the backbone for Pakistan, but our eyes and ears are open,” Mr. Rashid said.

The budget cuts came on the back of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party projecting CPEC prior to the July 25 election that swept him to power to as a modern-day equivalent of the British East India Company, which dominated the Indian subcontinent in the 19th century.

PTI criticism included denouncing Chinese-funded mass transit projects in three cities in Punjab as a squandering of funds that could have better been invested in social spending. PTI activists suggested that the projects had involved corrupt practices.

Pakistan’s final move was to invite Saudi Arabia to build a refinery in Gwadar and invest in Balochistan mining. Chinese questioning of Pakistan’s move was evident when the Pakistani government backed off suggestions that Saudi Arabia would become part of CPEC.

Senior Saudi officials this week visited Islamabad and Gwadar to discuss the deal that would also involve deferred payments on Saudi oil supplies to Pakistan and create a strategic oil reserve close to Iran’s border.

“The incumbent government is bringing Saudi Arabia closer to Gwadar. In other words, the hardline Sunni-Wahhabi state would be closer than ever to the Iranian border. This is likely to infuriate Tehran,” said Baloch politician and former Pakistani ports and shipping minister Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo.

Pakistan’s game of poker amounts to a risky gamble that serves Pakistani and Saudi purposes, puts China whose prestige and treasure are on the line in a difficult spot, could perilously spark tension along the Pakistan-Iran border, and is likely to provoke Iranian counter moves. It also risks putting Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, who depend on China economically in different ways, in an awkward position.

The Saudi engagement promises up to US$10 billion in investments as well as balance of payments relief. It potentially could ease US concerns that a possible IMF bailout would help Pakistan service debt to China.

A refinery and strategic oil reserve in Gwadar would serve Saudi Arabia’s goal of preventing Chabahar, the Indian-backed Iranian port, from emerging as a powerful Arabian Sea hub at a time that the United States is imposing sanctions designed to choke off Iranian oil exports.

A Saudi think tank, the International Institute for Iranian Studies, previously known as the Arabian Gulf Centre for Iranian Studies (AGCIS) that is believed to be backed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, argued last year in a study that Chabahar posed “a direct threat to the Arab Gulf states” that called for “immediate counter measures.”

Written by Mohammed Hassan Husseinbor, an Iranian political researcher of Baloch origin, the study warned that Chabahar would enable Iran to increase its oil market share in India at the expense of Saudi Arabia, raise foreign investment in the Islamic republic, increase government revenues, and allow Iran to project power in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

Mr. Husseinbor suggested that Saudi support for a low-level Baloch insurgency in Iran could serve as a countermeasure. “Saudis could persuade Pakistan to soften its opposition to any potential Saudi support for the Iranian Baluch… The Arab-Baluch alliance is deeply rooted in the history of the Gulf region and their opposition to Persian domination,” Mr. Husseinbor said.

Noting the vast expanses of Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan Province, Mr. Husseinbor went on to say that “it would be a formidable challenge, if not impossible, for the Iranian government to protect such long distances and secure Chabahar in the face of widespread Baluch opposition, particularly if this opposition is supported by Iran’s regional adversaries and world powers.”

Saudi militants reported at the time the study was published that funds from the kingdom were flowing into anti-Shiite, anti-Iranian Sunni Muslim ultra-conservative madrassas or religious seminaries in Balochistan.

US President Donald J. Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton, last year before assuming office, drafted at the request of Mr. Trump’s then strategic advisor, Steve Bannon, a plan that envisioned US support “for the democratic Iranian opposition,” including in Balochistan and Iran’s Sistan and Balochistan province.

All of this does not bode well for CPEC. China may be able to accommodate Pakistan by improving commercial terms for CPEC-related projects and Pakistani debt as well as easing Pakistani access to the Chinese market. China, however, is likely to find it far more difficult to prevent the Saudi-Iranian rivalry from spinning out of control in its backyard.