NNPC/Total Undergraduate Scholarships for Nigerian Students 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 31st October 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Nigeria

To be taken at (country): Nigerian Tertiary Institutions

Eligible Fields of Study: All

About Scholarship: Each year, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), and Total Upstream Companies in Nigeria (TUCN): Total Exploration & Production Nigeria Limited (Total E&P Nig Ltd) and Total Upstream Nigeria Limited (TUPNI), award scholarships to deserving Nigerian students in the tertiary institutions in the country.
The Total Scholarship scheme is aimed at promoting academic excellence and quality manpower development in the Country. This is one of the the many ways Total demonstrates its commitment to the educational development of Nigerian students. This is part of Total’s rich Corporate Social Responsibility. This scholarship scheme has been successfully carried out over the years.

Type: Undergraduate

Selection Criteria and Eligibility

1. Be a Registered FULL TIME undergraduate in a recognized Nigerian University
2. Be a certified 100 or 200 level student at the time of application
3. Show proof of SSCE or Equivalent Certificate.
4. Show proof of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) score.
5. Show proof of Admission letter from the University and Matriculation Number
6. Show proof of A-level or Equivalent Certificate (for direct entry students)

PLEASE NOTE:

• Students with less than 200 score in UTME need not apply
• Students with less than 2.50 CGPA of 5-point scale, or equivalent
• 300 level students and above need not apply
• Current beneficiaries of similar awards from other International Oil Companies (IOCs) need not apply

Number of Scholarships: Several

Value of Scholarship: Yet to be confirmed

Duration of Scholarship: Onetime financial support

How to Apply

1. Personal Information: Enter your name, date of birth and permanent home address Upload your recent passport photograph.
2. Contact Information: Enter your email and mobile phone information. Only use an active email and mobile phone number.
3. Origin: Enter your state and local government of origin data. You are required to upload a certificate or proof of origin from your local government or state.
4. University Information: Select your university, course and year of study. You will be required to upload your JAMB/University admission letter.
5. Result Information: Input your JAMB score or CPGA. You are required to upload your JAMB statement of result and university CPGA. For year two medical students, your JAMB score suffices.
   6. Review Application: Review your application ensure all fields have been correctly entered. Upload all the documents required:
   

   • Recent Passport Photograph
   • Certificate or Proof of Origin
   • Senior Secondary Certificate of Education (SSCE)
   • UTME result
   • JAMB/University Admission Letter
   • 1st Year Result showing CGPA

   7. Conclusion: Attest that all info given is true. Accept terms and condition. On screen alert will confirm that you have successfully completed the application. You will receive an email to confirm this too.
   You will need to register here 

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Sponsors: Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Total Upstream Companies in Nigeria (TUCN)

Important Notes: Total scholarship Application Forms must be completed online. Candidates will fully bear the cost transportation to test venue as no reimbursement shall be made. Candidates are therefore advised to choose text center closest to them.

After Four Decades of Chaos is Iraq Finally Stabilizing?

Patrick Cockburn

Changes of government in Iraq are often fiercely disputed and frequently violent. When the monarchy was overthrown in 1958, the young King Faisal II was machine gunned in the courtyard of his palace in Baghdad and his body later strung up from a lamp post.

Few of his successors met peaceful ends up to the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and political transitions in the following years have provoked extreme rancour inside Iraq and intense political pressure from foreign powers.

In contrast to this bloodthirsty tradition, the choice of the veteran Kurdish politician Barham Salih as president by the Iraqi parliament and his selection as prime minister of Adel Abdul-Mahdi, an independent Shia Islamist politician, was peaceful and low key.

The formal handover ceremony took place at the presidential palace in Baghdad’s Green Zone, where Mr Salih was saluted by an honour guard and received by outgoing president Fuad Masum.

The appointments were a long time coming – it is almost five months since the general election on 12 May – but, when they did come, they were welcome or, at least, accepted by almost all the main political players. Mr Abdul-Mahdi now has 30 days to put together a government and is likely to succeed in doing so.

The political climate is very different today from the last change of prime minister in 2014 when Haider al-Abadi took office after the Iraqi army had been routed by Isis, whose fighters were only an hour’s drive north of Baghdad.

Isis still carries out sporadic killings and bombings but on nothing like the scale of the past. Violence is at its lowest level in Iraq than at any time since 2003. The turnaround is really even more radical in that Iraq is no longer being engulfed by wars, crises, revolutions and sanctions as it has been over a period of almost 40 years since Saddam Hussein seized supreme power and invaded Iran.

Cynics in Baghdad contend that the lack of serious political strife is explained by the fact that Mr Salih and Mr Abdul-Mahdi are well-entrenched members of the Kurdish and Shia political elite that replaced Saddam Hussein 15 years ago and has misruled the country ever since.

Both men have held senior government posts in the past, leading to expectations that the politicians that chose them will get their normal share of ministries, jobs and contracts.

“Has any state as corrupt as Iraq ever really been reformed?” asked one political commentator with a long experience of Iraqi politics.

The pressure for reform of the kleptocratic state is greater than ever before. Popular discontent was underlined this summer by the mass demonstrations in Basra protesting the lack of electricity and water, supply failures that culminated in the drinking water becoming so poisonous that thousands of people were admitted to hospital after drinking it.

The electoral success of Muqtada al-Sadr, the populist nationalist cleric whose Sairoon Alliance topped the poll in the general election in May, showed the growing primacy of social and economic issues over sectarian solidarity.

Mr Sadr is well aware of the scepticism among many Iraqis who believe that his movement’s zeal for reform would evaporate once its leaders took office as ministers.

To counter this, he said on Thursday that his bloc would not nominate “any minister whatever” for the new cabinet, giving Mr Abdul-Mehdi one year to carry out reforms or face “an uprising”, a threat which carries more weight since the burning of government and party offices in Basra.

“We have succeeded in pushing for an independent prime minister … and have encouraged him to form a cabinet without being put under pressure from parties or sects,” tweeted Mr Sadr. “We have issued our instructions not to nominate any member of our bloc to assume a ministerial post in the upcoming cabinet. We have agreed to give the premier a one-year ultimatum to prove his success and take serious steps to build Iraq and shun autocracy.”

Such reforms will be difficult to carry out because it is not only the elite that plunder Iraq’s oil revenues. At least $4bn a month is spent paying some 4.5 million state employees who often hold their jobs because of party or religious allegiance.

The choice of president and prime minister already shows that there is some change in who holds power in Baghdad and the Kurdish region. Mr Abdul-Mehdi is not from the Shia Dawa party that has provided the last three prime ministers, but from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), a religious party that has had close links with Iran. Mr Salih comes from the much-divided Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) that rules the east of the Kurdistan Regional Government territory.

Both appointments show a shift towards Iran and away from the US. This is significant because the US was hoping to see Mr Abadi, with whom it had cooperated successfully against Isis, stay on as prime minister. At one moment, he had seemed to say that he would go along with US sanctions against Iran.

Although Mr Abadi was prime minister when Mosul was recaptured from Isis and the oil city of Kirkuk reclaimed from the Kurds, he gained little credit for it among Iraqi voters.

The reduction in violence allowed them to focus on the mass theft of state resources under Dawa which has failed to improve, or even maintain, the infrastructure.

The choice of Mr Salih is a sign that the influence of Masoud Barzani, long the most powerful Kurdish leader, has been reduced by his referendum on Kurdish independence last year. This precipitated the advance of the Iraqi security forces on Kirkuk and other territories disputed with the Kurds. Part of Mr Salih’s party, the PUK, cooperated with government forces.

All Iraqi governments are, to a greater or lesser extent, fragile because of religious and ethnic differences, but the new government is a sign that Iraq is stabilising after four decades of violence and division.

Macedonia and NATO: the Implications for the Future

Stavros Mavroudeas

The area and the identity of Macedonia has been a contested terrain for many decades. Leaving aside references to antiquity, its modern form has its roots in the birth of national states in the Balkans in the beginning of the 20^th century with the protracted collapse of the Ottoman empire. During the latter’s rule the area of Macedonia has been inhabited by various ethnic groups. In the Balkans, Greeks were the first, from the 19^th century, to acquire a national identity and to construct a national state. Slavic people, in the Macedonian area, were the last to follow in this road and significant segments of them oscillated for a considerable period between different competing national identities (primarily Greek and Bulgarian). After several local wars and two world wars the Balkan area had been stabilized with established nation states that had, to a great extent, homogenized their populations by all the means available. Nevertheless, there remained several contested areas and significant ethnic minorities within every Balkan nation state.

The modern Macedonian issue was born after the Second WW. The northern part of the Macedonian area belonged to Titoist Yugoslavia and was inhabited mainly by Slavs. The southern Macedonian area belonged to Greece, was more or less ethnically homogenized – particularly after the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey – but also contained a Slavic ethnic minority. Before the 2^nd WW the Macedonian area was claimed by Bulgaria also, by trying to patronize its Slavic populations. Yugoslavia, in order to secure its southern area – from both Greece and Bulgaria – promoted a distinct Macedonian identity for the people of its southern area. A necessary corollary of this was the promotion of irredentism as the whole Macedonian area was considered the rightful home of the Slavomacedonian people. As usually happens in such cases, the creation of a modern national identity tries to find roots in the ancient times: thus, the ridiculous Slavomacedonian claim on Alexander the Great and the ancient Macedonian kingdom that was, in the end, part of the Greek world.

On the other hand, Greece promoted its own irredentism by claiming that the whole Macedonia – and the Macedonian identity – belong to it. The internal Greek politics and particularly the Greek civil war painted in blood this project. The situation was stabilized during the Cold War era as the two main adversaries belonged to different camps. However, with the collapse of the Eastern bloc and particularly with the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia under the auspices of the Western imperialisms, the whole situation destabilized abruptly. The big Western powers (the US and the EU) strived to expand their spheres of influence in the Balkans. Local elites and emerging bourgeoisies tried to expand their spaces and maneuvered between the big players. All of them fomented nationalisms as a means for their plans.

This is exactly what happened with the small former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). Once becoming separated from old Yugoslavia, it faced an acute existential problem as its miniscule political and economic size made it almost unviable. On top of that, the increase of its Albanian population endangered further its unity. This resulted in the exaggerated promotion of the Macedonian identity and the concomitant irredentism.

On the other side, Greek capitalism actually invaded economically FYROM’s and became one of the main Western economic powers in its economy. This was facilitated by FYROM’s drag in the EU’s orbit. Ironically, the bigger the political controversies between FYROM and Greece the bigger the economic influence of the latter in the former. Of course, all these under the wings and succumbing to the prevailing interests of the bigger Western powers. This resulted in a new stalemate: Greece blocked the further political integration of FYROM in the EU and NATO unless it dropped its Macedonian claims.

Recently, this stalemate became strained. The resurgence of Russia led the West to try to secure as much of the Balkan area it can under its influence. Thus, the incorporation of Montenegro, FYROM and possibly Serbia into NATO became a priority. This goes together with their incorporation in the EU (despite the increasing tensions between the US and the EU). For this reason, the West proceeds – extremely heavy-handedly and by blatantly neglecting existing political, social and national balances – to rearrange relationships and even to redraw borders in the very volatile Balkan area (which has produced several wars in the not very distant past).

The Prespes agreement between Greece and FYROM is such a case. First, the West instigated almost openly a governmental change in FYROM by marginalizing a part of its elite that was subservient to the West but at the same time wanted a better deal with Greece. Then, the West employed the weak and completely subservient to US interests SYRIZA government to pass hurriedly a settlement with FYROM. The end result is a disaster for the peoples of the Balkans. Irrespective of the technical details of the agreement which do not matter, its authoritarian imperialist imposition aggravates nationalist tensions in both countries. Of course, the West is indifferent to this so long as it passes its plans. Afterall, in the end, it can play also with local nationalisms.

But there is a problem in these imperialist games: at some point people have to vote. Such a point was the referendum in FYROM. Despite the blatant Western intervention in internal affairs and the lack of even a major political party opposing the agreement (as the FYROM elite is terribly weak, corrupted and depended from the West), the majority of the population voted with their feet and by a meagre participation actually rejected the agreement. This was a terrible slap in the face to the Western arrogance. Furthermore, it showed the rapidly diminishing charm of the EU as the sweetener of joining it (and supposedly gaining economically) was turned down. Spontaneously, the people of the poorer Balkan country have probably sensed something that the Greek people learned through pain and tears the recent years: the EU is not the paradise but the hell for the peoples and for the countries laying in its periphery.

Nevertheless, the West did not learn its lesson and proceeds with greater impertinence. All of them – big and small, from NATO’s general secretary and the German foreign ministry to the preposterous Greek SYRIZA and FYROM politicians – pronounce the referendum as a success and demanded the implementation of the agreement. Their ludicrous argument is that 91% of those voting (that were merely the 35% of the eligible voters) supported the agreement. It does not require great intelligence to grasp that this is a direct insult to the very basic rules of democracy. Wouldn’t it be better if only a few ‘enlightened elites’ and foreign agents had voting rights instead of the whole population?

Notwithstanding, the West and its local stooges proceed to try to impose the agreement. Currently, their main effort is to practically bribe and/or blackmail some corrupt FYROM MPs in order to pass it the parliament. Ironically, Alexis Tsipras suggested so; probably banking on his well-known expertise on how turning a popular vote to its opposite. As an obedient puppet of his masters, he forgets that in this case it is the turn of his government to begin rocking dangerously.

The West’s plans for the Balkans are bringing again, few years after the bloody Yugoslavian disintegration, tensions and upheaval in the area. They are fomenting nationalism and promoting imperialist conflict. The peoples of the Balkans have nothing to gain from this.

Particularly for the poor populace of FYROM – and contrary to their elites – their country’s participation in the EU and NATO would worsen its condition. These are imperialist organisations infamous for sowing misery and wars in their path. The participation in the EU would make the weak and already dependent FYROM economy even weaker. Greece, and the other euro-peripheral economies have a bitter taste from this participation that made their economies weaker and simple appendages of those of the euro-core economies. It is indicative that other Balkan economies linked to the EU were lucky not to participate at least in the European Monetary Union (EMU). This shielded them from grave consequences during and after the global capitalist crisis of 2008. Moreover, NATO is always the long arm of US aggression and its record is well-known. Instead of stabilization and peace it brings conflicts and war. Its march to the East sows gunpowder in the Balkans.

Concluding, the failure of the Western plans for the Balkans is the only way to keep the possibility of amicable and cooperative relations between the Balkan peoples alive.

There is No Legitimate Reason to Impose Sanctions on Iran

Vijay Prashad

A friend in Tehran tells me that he marvels at the attitude of the United States ruling establishment towards Iran. ‘Why do they hate us so much’, he asks? It is a fair question. His country, he says, is not perfect, but it is certainly not a threat to the world. The current government – led by Hassan Rouhani (Iran’s seventh president since the 1979 Revolution) – is moderate in many ways, its foreign minister – Javad Zarif – a man of dignity. Certainly, my friend says, there are elements inside the higher reaches of government that are erratic. But, ‘don’t all countries have such people in power’, he says, the smile pointing towards India’s Narendra Modi and Donald Trump of the United States. Can any country these days, he eggs me on, say that it does not have its own version of Trump?

In 1953, the United States and its allies overthrew the democratically elected government in Iran. The reason why Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh bothered the West was that he began to nationalise the oil sector. Oil firms could not tolerate this. He had to go. The overthrow of Mosaddegh brought to power the repellent Shah of Iran, who then ruled Iran with an iron fist till the Revolution of 1979. Two years into the Shah’s reign, the United States and Iran signed a Treaty of Amity – a normal agreement signed between countries to promise fair treatment on a wide variety of matters. It is important to underscore that the US signed this treaty not with a democratic government – which it had overthrown – but with the autocratic regime of the Shah – which it had installed.

This week, the United States withdrew from the Treaty of Amity (1955). US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States should have torn up the treaty in 1979, thirty-nine years ago. Iran has never reneged on that treaty, despite the fact that it was signed by an autocratic regime.

Nor has Iran reneged on the 2015 nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) that it signed with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the European Union – an agreement ratified by the full UN Security Council.

The United States unilaterally walked away from the nuclear agreement earlier this year, which provoked Iran to sue the US in the International Court of Justice. This week, the Court ruled in Iran’s favour. My friends in Tehran say that they would have been surprised if the Court had not ruled on Iran’s behalf. There was no reason why the US should have withdrawn from the 2015 agreement nor why the US should threaten to increase sanctions on 5 November. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Nuclear Security Report (2018) notes, ‘Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’. This sentence is clear enough. At the IAEA’s Board of Governors meeting this September, its Director General Yukiya Amano said that he hoped Iran would continue to fully ‘implement its commitments’. There was no sense that Iran has violated the agreement. Based on this, and on the Treaty of Amity, there was no other option for the International Court of Justice. It had to rule on Iran’s behalf.

There is no reason why the United States should ramp up its sanctions against the 82 million people of Iran.

Against all evidence, the United States – and other Western powers – continue to reiterate the view that Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons. But, there is no evidence of Iran’s interest in nuclear weapons apart from the statements by Western and Israeli leaders. In the 1990s, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, wrote a fatwa that condemned nuclear weapons. This fatwa built on one written by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that was written in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War and was against the use of any chemical or biological weapons. Khamenei’s fatwa was not released, but in October 2003 he made an oral fatwa against the production and use of any weapons of mass destruction. This was in the context of the US war on Iraq and threats of a US expansion of that war into Iran. The IAEA has not found any evidence of nuclear weapons production in Iran. What Iran had begun – with US help from 1957 – was a nuclear energy programme.

The UN’s position against Iran is in bad faith. All the member states and the UN secretariat know that Iran has no nuclear weapons programme. Yet, they have allowed the US and Israel to push against Iran. They have allowed Iran’s people to suffer under an intolerable sanctions regime and are now allowing Iran to go through an even tighter sanctions policy. No legal shield from Europe is going to help. No mild criticism of the United States is sufficient. My friends in Tehran – who have their own differences with their government – appeal to the world, asking for a break with the US-Israeli position on Iran, an opening to the people of Iran who are being strangled by the sanctions.

In 2010, the brilliant Iranian artist Farah Ossouli did a miniature painting called Put Your Gun Down. It depicts two angels, the woman feeding water to a bird and the man with a gun in his lap. They have their backs to each other. It looks like hope has been banished. But, the picture has a strong name – put your gun down. That was the message of the 2015 nuclear agreement and the message against sanctions, another form of war. It remains the message today.

Cracks in the House of Saud

Patrick Cockburn

Over the past half century, critics have often predicted the fall of the House of Saud or emphasised the fragility of its rule. They were invariably proved wrong because the Saudi monarchy enjoyed limitless oil revenues, had the support of the US, and avoided becoming a front-line combatant in Middle East crises.

Saudi strengths and weaknesses may have been long debated but the Kingdom’s vulnerabilities have seldom been so starkly on display as they were last Tuesday because the coincidence of two very different events. Before a rally in Mississippi, President Trump stated – brutally and without qualification – the dependence of the Saudi monarchy on US support and the price it must pay for such backing.

“We protect Saudi Arabia,” Trump told the cheering audience. “Would you say they’re rich? And I love the King, King Salman. But I said ‘King – we’re protecting you – you might not be there for two weeks without us – you have to pay for your military’.” Outbursts by Trump tend to be more calculated than they sound and he only humiliates allies in this way when he knows he can get away with it.

Trump’s contemptuous reference to the instability of Saudi Arabia was given greater significance by another dramatic event which happened a few hours earlier some 6,000 miles away in Istanbul. The prominent Saudi journalist and critic of his country’s government, Jamal Khashoggi, failed to emerge from the Saudi consulate where he was doing some paperwork relating to his divorce and impending marriage.

Khashoggi has not been seen since. The Turkish authorities, no doubt delighted to be able to present themselves as defenders of journalistic freedom, say he is still inside the consulate. Saudi officials claim that he left the building, though surveillance cameras prove he did not do so on foot, so, if he did leave, it was presumably in a diplomat’s car, possibly in the boot. Khashoggi’s fiance was left waiting disconsolately outside the consulate gates.

The best that can be hoped for is that the blast of international criticism over the incident will lead Khashoggi to reappear, perhaps denying that he was ever detained. This was the bizarre experience of the Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri in November last year when he disappeared during a visit to Riyadh and resigned his post on television before reappearing thanks to French government pressure.

The fate of Khashoggi, whatever the outcome of the present furore, carries an important message about the present state of Saudi Arabia. If he has been forcibly detained, as the Turkish government says, then it is a self-harming act of stupidity. It elevates him from being a minor irritant to a cause célèbre and a continuing mystery about his whereabouts ensures that the story is not going to go away.  

It is early days yet but the Khashoggi disappearance has released a torrent of negative publicity about Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. This was wholly predictable. It is a curious fact about publicity that horrendous events – like the Saudi-led war in Yemen that has brought five million children to the verge of starvation – has failed to make its way to the top of the international news agenda. The slaughter is too great and the place too distant and ill-reported for most people to take on board and react to the horrors underway there. 

Something on a smaller scale, like the disappearance of a critic of the Saudi government while his fiance waits for him in the street, is much easier to understand and respond to. Often, the all-too-common disappearance of journalists has the simple objective of silencing them and intimidating others. “Let them hate us so long as they fear us,” is the point being crudely made.

But the crown prince had hoped for a more positive image in the international media and his expectations have seldom been disappointed. Take a look at the piece by The New York Times columnist Thomas L Friedman in November last year about the four hours he spent with him: “We met at night at his family’s ornate adobe-walled palace in Ouja, north of Riyadh,” he writes. He describes Saudi Arabia as being in the throes of its version of the Arab Spring that ‘”will not only change the character of Saudi Arabia but the tone and tenor of Islam across the globe. Only a fool would predict its success – but only a fool would not root for it.”

Khashoggi was one of those “fools” who balanced between reasoned criticism and outright dissent. Going by Friedman’s account of Saudi public opinion he was a lonely voice because “not a single Saudi I spoke to here over three days expressed anything other than effusive support for this anticorruption drive.” But could it be that this impressive display of unanimity might have something to do with the fact anybody expressing a hint of criticism – like economist Essam al-Zamel – may find themselves clapped in jail on charges of terrorism and treason.

Hagiographic journalistic reports on Saudi Arabia may be more difficult to retail in future in the wake of the Khashoggi scandal. Already, some longtime backers of the country are jumping ship. One of them, Elliott Abrams, is quoted as saying that “the Saudi government is either keeping him [Khashoggi] in the consulate building or has kidnapped him and taken him to Saudi Arabia.” He warns that the reputation of the current Saudi government could “be harmed irreparably.”

The proposed economic reforms in Saudi Arabia have always sounded like wishful thinking. Deep scepticism is the correct approach to government-backed radical change in any country dependent on revenues from oil and other natural resources. Anticorruption campaigns simply redistribute the spoils to a new gang of well-connected predators. Much of the population has got too used to getting well-paid patronage jobs in return for little or no work. Domestic industry and agriculture cannot compete unless heavily subsidised. The system is too convenient to too many to be uprooted: opposition to corruption and patronage gets a thumbs up so long as it involves no personal sacrifice of any kind.   

Saudi economic problems are serious, but not necessarily disastrous. More destabilising for the Kingdom is the extent to which Saudi Arabia is now demonstrably operating beyond its real strength in the region as its its more adventurous foreign policy over the last three years backfires.  

The list of failures is impressive: Saudi-led bombing in Yemen since 2015 has not defeated the Houthis, but it has produced the greatest manmade famine on earth; increased help for the Syrian armed opposition the same year provoked Russian military intervention and has brought President Bashar al-Assad close to victory; the quarrel with Qatar has weakened all the Gulf monarchies; confrontation with Iran is a conflict that can never be won.

As Mikhail Gorbachev discovered after the first heady days of trying to change the Soviet Union, reforms are more likely to capsize an existing systems of government than improve it.

Machines and labour – increase in poverty

Sheshu Babu

Since introduction of automated machines in factories and offices, labor force is being slowly dispensed with. For instance, before mechanization and computerization, banks used to employ clerical staff for writing ledger accounts. But after introducing computers to note transactions, many posts were removed on the pretext of ‘downsizing’ or ‘ right sizing’ . The banking industry, which was ‘labour intensive’ began to employ less in clerical cadre and instead, the persons with computer knowledge started to be filled so that they could displace more than the actual required personnel. Similar is the case with other firms. In an article on the impact of automation,( Manufacturing Jobs and the Rise of the Machines, January,29, 2013, hbr.org) ,Andrew McAfee states , “I believe that technological unemployment (and underemployment) is a real and growing phenomenon” . Analysing impact of robotics and computers in the industrial sector, he states that manufacturing employment has been on a steady downward trend in US since 1980. (It may have increased after the end of the Great Recession but the boost is leveling out). He also states that the trend has been downward in Japan and Germany since 1990 and China since 1996 . This decline in manufacturing employment is a global phenomenon Citing a Bloomberg story, he agrees with the summary, ” some 22 million manufacturing jobs were lost globally between 1995 and 2002 as industrial output soap” A’d 30 percent. … ” . It indicates that growth of output in industry need not reflect welfare of people.

Job Displacement

Increase in use of computers, automated machines or robots will increase output but displace labor to a large extent. ‘ In part the opposition to spread of technology springs simply from a more or less visceral fear of scientism , which is often taken to imply the dehumanization of humankind. ‘ (Does More technology Create Employment ?, By R. H . Mabry and A. D. Sharplin, March 18, 1986, www.cato.org). In 1983, the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research forecast the existence of 50,000 to 100,000 industrial robots in the United States by 1990, resulting in a net loss of some 100,000 jobs. The present situation of low employment generation has its roots mainly in use of mechanization of basic jobs thereby making the labor look for other alternatives.

Wealth accumulation and poverty

Over the years, top industrialists have been accumulating wealth rapidly. The top 1% of industrialist rich own 99% of wealth. The Forbes list ( March 06, 2018, forbes.com) has pinned down 2,208 billionaires who are worth $ 9.1 trillion up 18% last since last year. According to Oxfam, 62 people are as wealthy as half of world’s population in 2016. ( the guardian , 18 Jan 2016). The wealth of poorest dropped by 41% between 2010 and 2015.

Since the richest own firms, industries and manufacturing plants, they employ more and more machines by reducing manual labor. This results in more displacement of semi- and unskilled- labour who loose their bread earning capacity and are pushed to extreme poverty.

Machines and capitalism

Therefore, increased use of modern science in industries is leading to production of goods by machines and services through the use of computers. Manual calculations or recording of transactions and accounting is being computerised leaving scores of clerical staff jobless. A few computer operators are being hired to complete office work while machines are being employed to complete routine work leaving labourers, who are already reeling under poverty, jobless. This is a dangerous consequence of capitalism as few capitalists are dictating terms. They are using scientific inventions to their advantage and advancement. The rich- poor gap is ever widening and poor are being pushed to extreme poverty. The number of poor is rising. Hence, the problem which is grave must be addressed soon. Otherwise, the gap may still widen in future .

Australian encryption bill becomes a global test case for surveillance

Mike Head

Acting as part of the US-led “Five Eyes” intelligence network, the Australian government is seeking to push through parliament an encryption-cracking bill that would set an international precedent for far-reaching internet surveillance.

Despite widespread opposition, reflected in more than 14,000 submissions by concerned individuals and companies, the government tabled the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018 in parliament last month with only minor amendments.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National government seems intent on getting the bill into law before the end of the year. It has scheduled only a one-day public hearing by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee. The members of that committee, including those from the Labor Party, have close connections with the US and allied spy agencies.

Telcos, internet companies, device manufacturers and website and social media hosts face fines of up to $10 million for each instance of “non-compliance.” They would be compelled to facilitate the cracking of encryption codes and remove other barriers to government agencies accessing private data. Individuals can be fined up to $50,000.

The intelligence and police forces would be able to issue technical assistance requests (TARs), technical assistance notices (TANs) and technical capability notices (TCNs). These would compel any company or individual to build capabilities or functionalities to provide any information required by the agencies.

These powers would potentially affect any website or Facebook page. According to government ministers, they would apply to encrypted messaging services such as WhatsApp, as well as “any entity operating a website.”

Despite repeated government denials that it would force service providers to build back doors to break passwords and undermine encryption, the legislation states otherwise. While section 317ZG of the draft bill says communications providers “must not be required to implement or build a systemic weakness or systemic vulnerability,” section 317E sets out a long list of “acts or things” that providers can be compelled to do.

These include “(a) removing one or more forms of electronic protection ... (c) installing, maintaining, testing or using software or equipment … (h) modifying, or facilitating the modification of, any of the characteristics of a service provided by the designated communications provider.”

The vague language appears to permit the type of demand that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) made in 2016 when it sought a court order to compel Apple to help unlock an iPhone belonging to a suspect in a shooting.

Government agencies would only have to allege that a TAN or TCN is “reasonable and proportionate” and “practicable and feasible.” These are undefined and sweeping terms. There would be no review process before notices are issued and the bill is silent on how a recipient could challenge a notice as unlawful.

Moreover, the bill’s strict non-disclosure provisions mean that “affected persons”—that is, internet users—would never know a notice has been issued. Section 317ZF provides that individuals who disclose information regarding a notice may be subject to five years’ imprisonment.

The legislation would also make it easier for the political surveillance agencies, such as the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), to search computers covertly. Current laws permit them to monitor communications and data during transmissions. The changes would allow them to access and copy stored data, building on the “metadata access” laws pushed through, with the Labor Party’s support, in 2015.

This is part of a wider build-up of police-state powers in the hands of the capitalist state apparatus. Repeated barrages of legislation have been imposed by one government after the next, Liberal-National and Labor alike. Supposedly aimed at combatting terrorism, these powers are designed to monitor and crack down on political dissent.

A number of civil rights organisations, such as Digital Rights Watch, the Human Rights Law Centre, Amnesty International and Access Now, this month joined industry bodies, including those representing transnational internet companies like Google, Facebook and Apple, in an “Alliance for a Safe and Secure Internet” to object to features of the bill.

Most of these groups signed a submission warning that the bill’s definition of “designated communications providers” could affect hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of individuals in Australia and around the world.

As the submission documented, the bill’s Explanatory Document states that “designated communications provider” would extend to anyone who “provides an electronic service that has one or more end-users in Australia.” This could include banks, media companies, insurers and universities, as well as news sites and those of political parties.

Likewise, “electronic services” are broadly defined. They “may include websites and chat fora, secure messaging applications, hosting services including cloud and web hosting, peer-to-peer sharing platforms and email distribution lists, and others.” These powers would apply globally, since the notices could be served outside Australia.

Aware of popular hostility to internet censorship, the “Safe and Secure Internet” alliance is posturing as a defender of civil liberties. A spokesman, Communications Alliance chief executive John Stanton, said: “The scope of this legislation sets a disturbing first-world benchmark and poses real threats to the cybersecurity and privacy rights of all Australians.”

The alliance’s perspective, however, is to seek certain modifications of the bill. It wants to enhance the already extensive collaboration between governments, the political spy agencies and the social media conglomerates to control or manipulate the internet in order to restrict access to left-wing and progressive web sites, and especially the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS).

“Instead of trying to ram this legislation through the committee process and the parliament, the government needs to sit down with stakeholders, engage on the details and collectively come up with workable, reasonable proposals that meet the objective of helping enforcement agencies be more effective in the digital age,” Stanton said.

Government officials told the Australian Financial Review the industry had generally been co-operative with requests for information, but sought a legal framework because of concerns that customers would hold them legally liable for disclosing information to agencies.

A meeting of cabinet members from the so-called Five Eyes global spying network, held in Australia on August 28–29, demanded access to encrypted emails, text messages and voice communications through legislation. Representing the US, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, they issued a statement on combatting “ubiquitous encryption,” declaring the necessity to crack open “end-to-end encryption” tools.

Given the importance of encryption for online retail, banking and other corporate and financial purposes, the statement denied any “intention to weaken encryption mechanisms.” Nonetheless, the five governments “agreed to the urgent need for law enforcement to gain targeted access to data,” subject to further “discussion with industry.”

As the WSWS has proven, these governments and their European counterparts are increasingly working in partnership with social media companies to implement anti-democratic restrictions on internet access. This went to a new level in April 2017, when Google announced new algorithms, aimed at limiting or blocking access to socialist, anti-war and other critical websites. Facebook and Twitter have since adopted similar measures.

UN report warns of catastrophic consequences of climate change within 20 years

Bryan Dyne

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report Monday calling for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” in order to limit human-induced global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“If the current warming rate continues,” the report states, “the world would reach human–induced global warming of 1.5°C around 2040.” Avoiding the disastrous consequences of climate change, the report stated, requires transforming the world economy in a way that has “no documented historic precedent.”

The report, prepared by 91 scientists from 44 countries, is the latest UN paper reviewing the scientific evidence of climate change and its current and projected impact on every ecosystem on Earth. It contrasts the changes to the environment that would occur in a scenario where warming is limited to 1.5 degrees versus of 2 degrees Celsius.

Human activity has already caused approximately 1 degree Celsius of warming. The last three years—2015, 2016 and 2017—were the three warmest years on records going back to 1880, and 17 of the 18 warmest years have occurred since 2000.

Global warming has contributed to a series of ecological disasters, including larger forest fires, longer heat waves, stronger hurricanes and more torrential typhoons. The most recent of these is Hurricane Michael, which is currently bearing down on the Florida coastline and is expected to be one of the most powerful storms to strike the region.

Even a limited further warming will have far reaching consequences. The report states that if warming reaches 1.5 degrees, food shortages will multiply poverty in every country. The Arctic Ocean will be totally free of sea ice at least once a decade, potentially causing the extinction of the myriad of animals that rely on that ice to flee from predators and raise young.

Coral reefs will decline by 70–90 percent, wiping out the habitat that about a quarter of the ocean’s creatures rely on to survive. Weather across the globe will become more damaging and deadly. The report estimates that if warming reaches the projected levels, it will cause damages of between $54 and $69 trillion dollars worldwide.

To achieve the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees would require the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions to 45 percent of their 2010 levels by 2030 and their elimination completely by 2050, or in just over three decades. This would require a complete transformation in global energy production and transportation infrastructure.

“Limiting warming to 1.5°C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes,” said Jim Skea, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III in the report’s press release.

The increasingly dire warnings from the scientists stand in stark contrast with the response of world governments. In the US, the Trump administration has been openly skeptical of the reality of human-caused climate change. He responded to questions about the UN report on Tuesday by dismissing its significance. “I want to look at who drew it. You know, which group drew it. I can give you reports that are fabulous and I can give you reports that aren’t so good.”

Representatives of the other major capitalist governments responded complacently. In Germany, the only official who spoke on the report was Deputy Environment Minister Jochen Flasbarth, who deflected questions about Germany’s rising carbon emissions with answers promoting the German green technologies industry.

Media outlets including the New York Times and the Guardian have taken this latest report as an opportunity to attack Trump and other political figures who deny climate change or have openly opposed “carbon taxes,” such as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro. The Times wrote of the “despair since last year when Mr. Trump declared he would pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord.”

The Paris Agreement, which was ratified by 195 countries in 2015, is a non-binding treaty that calls for world governments to voluntarily reduce their carbon emissions to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. While it is presented as a “landmark” treaty, in reality it acts as a way for countries and companies such as ExxonMobil to participate in carbon trading and carbon tax schemes to maximize their profits while only implementing token reductions in carbon emissions.

Moreover, the latest UN report makes clear, the limit set by the Paris Agreement would still result in massive damage across the world. An increase of 2 degrees would cause the complete destruction of coral reefs and possibly the loss of plankton, the foundation of the world’s food chain. Even at its best, the world envisioned by the Paris Agreement would be catastrophic for humanity and life on Earth.

The urgent measures needed to address climate change come into conflict with the two basic contradictions of the world capitalist system: the contradiction between a global economy and the division of the world into rival nation-states, and the contradiction between socialized production and the subordination of economic life to the accumulation of private profit.

That is, the global coordination and scientific planning required to organize the necessary transformations in energy and infrastructure is prevented by the fact that each capitalist state represents competing ruling elites, and the economy as a whole is controlled by the corporate and financial elite.

The development of mankind’s productive forces is not only impacting the environment, it has also made it possible to address this impact in a rational way. However, the development of these resources to tackle climate change—along with war, poverty and inequality—requires a complete socialist reorganization of economic life. The economy must be placed in the democratic control of the working class, the only social force capable of establishing a society based on human need, including a healthy global environment.

The far-right threat in Brazil and the role of the Workers Party

Bill Van Auken

Last Sunday’s general election in Brazil was a political earthquake that reduced to rubble parties that had long dominated the political landscape. At the same time it exposed the complete rot of the bourgeois democratic order established in the wake of the 20-year military dictatorship imposed by the US-backed coup of 1964.

That Jair Bolsonaro, a fascistic and buffoonish former army captain and nine-term deputy in the Brazilian Congress, could win a stunning 46 percent of the vote, coming within a hair’s breadth of an outright victory, exposes the immense danger of a return of Latin America’s largest country, with a population of over 200 million people, to fascist-military rule.

His nearest challenger, Fernando Haddad, the candidate of the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT) trailed Bolsonaro by nearly 17 points. The two will face off in a second-round election on October 28.

The regions where Bolsonaro beat Haddad by even wider margins than the national total included all of the cities of the so-called ABC industrial belt surrounding Sao Paulo, the center of the Brazilian auto and metalworking industries, birthplace of the Workers Party and scene of the mass strikes of 1978-1980 that forced an end to the military dictatorship. These cities, where the now-jailed former PT President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva got his start as a metalworkers’ union leader, gave Bolsonaro 50 percent of the vote, as compared to barely 20 percent for the PT’s Haddad.

Similarly, Bolsonaro won 45 percent of the vote, against 20 percent for Haddad, in Rio Grande do Sul, a PT stronghold in the period before Lula’s 2002 election and the place chosen for the founding of the World Social Forum in 2001.

In the state of Rio de Janeiro, Bolsonaro won every single city, including the capital, with its long history of left-wing activism, and Volta Redonda, a steelmaking center and site of bitter union struggles.

Even in the Northeast, the country’s poorest region, which benefited the most from the minimal social assistance programs instituted under Lula—a region considered a political bastion of the PT—Bolsonaro won 23 out of 26 state capitals.

Equally staggering are the votes for the Brazilian Congress, with Bolsonaro’s Social Liberal Party (PSL) going from one seat to 52, just four shy of the 56 seats (out of 68) retained by the Workers Party. The center-right parties that had previously held the presidency and major power in the legislature, the PSDB and the MDB, both saw their congressional delegations cut nearly in half.

Just as significant was the record rate of abstention and blank ballots, which accounted for a third of the electorate, roughly equal to the number who voted for Bolsonaro. Moreover, every poll indicated that there was more opposition to each of the candidates than support.

Who is responsible for the unprecedented vote for a candidate of the far right in Brazil? First and foremost, it is the Workers Party, which ruled Brazil for 13 years, from Lula’s first election to the impeachment of his successor, Dilma Rousseff, in 2016.

The vote on Sunday amounted to a popular referendum on the devastating social and economic crisis confronting the majority of the Brazilian population as a result of the financial crisis that hit the country in 2013, and the policies introduced by the PT government to place the full burden of this crisis on the backs of the working class. This condemned 14 million workers to unemployment, while leading to reduced real wages for those still on the job, along with a sharp growth in social inequality.

The election also expressed popular outrage over the systemic corruption exposed in the Lava Jato investigation into bribes and kickbacks at the state-owned energy conglomerate Petrobras. An estimated $4 billion was siphoned from public coffers into the pockets of politicians and their corporate backers, while millions confronted unemployment and deepening poverty. Lula, convicted on extremely flimsy evidence involving a beachfront apartment, was nonetheless at the center of this scheme.

Haddad and the Workers Party were unwilling and unable to appeal to the working class or present any program that could attract popular support against the fascistic demagogy of Bolsonaro, whose political rise was nurtured by the PT, which allied with him in the Brazilian congress.

Whether the hostility of the majority of the population to Bolsonaro—as well as to Haddad and the rest of the political establishment—will result in the neo-fascist’s defeat on October 28 remains to be seen. What is unquestionable, however, is that the second-round election will produce the most right-wing government in Brazil since the fall of the military dictatorship.

The Workers Party’s pseudo-left satellites are now speaking in terms of a “national united front against fascism.” This front is to include, if possible, the traditional right-wing parties as well as various reactionary media outlets, such as O Globo and Veja magazine, which have been critical of Bolsonaro.

The PT is appealing to the Brazilian ruling class and international capital on the grounds that it will be better able to suppress the resistance of the working class through its ties to the bureaucratized union confederation, CUT, and that Bolsonaro will be more likely to provoke a social explosion.

Anyone believing that Bolsonaro is merely a noxious aberration and that his defeat at the hands of the PT will produce a flowering of democracy in Brazil is living in a dream world.

The turn by the entire Brazilian establishment to the right found stark expression in a speech delivered barely one week before the election by the president of the Brazilian Supreme Court, Dias Toffoli, in which he declared that he no longer wanted to speak in terms of military coup or dictatorship when referring to the CIA-backed seizure of power by the Brazilian armed forces and overthrow of the elected government of Joao Goulart in 1964. Rather, he would speak of it as the “movement of 1964,” suggesting that the military coup was legitimate and caused by the “errors” of the political parties.

Toffoli’s speech came just weeks after his selection of a reserve army general, whose appointment was suggested by the head of the military high command, Gen. Eduardo Villas Boas, as the chief advisor to the high court. The general appointed was reportedly one of a number of top military officers who helped formulate Bolsonaro’s campaign program.

Judge Toffoli, it should be noted, rose to his judicial position as a loyalist of the Workers Party, serving as the legal representative for the presidential campaigns of Lula in 1998, 2002 and 2006.

This increasing elevation of the military into every aspect of political life in Brazil has been fostered by the PT, which oversaw the deployment of the army into Rio’s favelas (shanty towns) after having “blooded” its troops in the UN-sponsored occupation of Haiti. Bolsonaro has attempted to exploit the growth of the military’s power, indicating that his defeat at the polls would be illegitimate and would justify the army intervening on his behalf.

The PT has paved the way to the present dangers confronting the Brazilian working class. Sharing responsibility are the various pseudo-left organizations that played a pivotal role in founding and promoting the Workers Party.

Among them is the Morenoite-Pabloite alliance, the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), which saw its share of the vote Sunday reduced to just 0.6 percent—compared to 7 percent when it first ran candidates in 2006. It has declared its support for the PT and Haddad in the second round.

From the outset, the leading role in the formation of the PT was played by organizations that broke with the Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, in the 1960s, some of them promoting the theory that Castroism and guerrilla war had supplanted the necessity of building Marxist parties within the working class. This political orientation contributed to catastrophic defeats for the working class and the rise of military dictatorships throughout Latin America.

Under conditions of massive strikes and militant struggles by students against Brazil’s military regime, these same elements joined with sections of the union leadership, the Catholic Church and left academics to found the Workers Party. It as well was to serve as a substitute for the building of a revolutionary party and the fight for socialist consciousness in the working class. The PT was to provide a unique Brazilian parliamentary road to socialism. The dead end of that road—personified in the rise of the fascist demagogue Bolsonaro—has clearly been reached.

The Brazilian working class cannot defend itself as part of a “united front” with the PT and its appeal for support to the Brazilian ruling class. The only road forward lies in uniting the struggles of Brazilian workers with those of the entire Latin American working class, as well as the workers of North America, against the common enemy—finance capital and the transnational corporations.

Such a struggle requires a decisive political break with the Workers Party and all of its pseudo-left satellites. The most urgent question is the building of a new revolutionary leadership in the working class, based upon the assimilation of the long history of struggle for Trotskyism embodied in the International Committee of the Fourth International.