Germany’s Fascism for the 21st Century

 Thomas Kilkauer

Originally invented in Milan in the year 1919 by Benito Mussolini as FasciItaliani di Combattimento, fascism is making a comeback in the 21st century. One recent sign are Germany’s Neo-Nazisholding a rally of about 8,000 in Chemnitz (East Germany) in August 2018. With that, Germany’s newish crypto-Nazi party, the AfD, seems to getcloser to the ‘fascist turn’ it has proclaimed for so long. The Neo-Nazi march in Chemnitz was applauded and cheered by ‘ordinary people’ as violent Neo-Nazis attacked anyone not too German looking. As always, fascism searched for scapegoats. It directs attentions away from the crisis of capitalism. From Germany in 1933 to Chile, to Turkey, to Poland, Hungary and the USA, increasingly capitalist regimes become openly terroristic. In these systems, fascism becomes a mass movement that offers an escape route out of the looming capitalist, neoliberal and environmental crisis.

In Germany, the impact of a more recent economic crisis was handed downwards resulting in severe cuts to welfare provisions. This occurred under a Green and social-democratic coalition government that adjusted Germany’s once mighty welfare state downwards to the ideological dictate of neoliberalism. True to neoliberalism’s main ideology of increasing competition, this shift also reinforced worker against worker competition, spiked with an ‘aggression against the losers of the economic crisis’. Rising fascism is not a break with neoliberalism. Instead, it is a continuation of a ‘gradual down sliding into barbarity’.

The new radical right is breeding the ideological legitimacy needed to sustain the constant downward sliding towards barbarity. It does this by shifting resentment towards ‘racism, cultural conservatism (Social-Darwinism) and –this is central– towards Anti-Semitism’. Much of this is directed against those that the ideologies of capitalism and fascism view as ‘surplus labour’. These are people for whom capitalism has no further use. For them,rising fascism, nationalism and the ideology of the Volksgemeinschaft offers the illusion of security. Challenged by increased competition and neoliberal capitalism, this applies increasingly to the middle class as it is about to be converted into the precariat. The economic onslaught on the middle-class spits this group into two sub-groups. Both can be governed by fear. The first group includes those who have already become part of the precariat (the working poor, the poor, the Lumpenproletariat, etc.) while the second group includes those still inside the relative affluent middle-class but who are afraid of joining the precariat.

This is the key to understanding what mainstream media like to mislabel as populism. Many so-called populist parties are not populist parties. They might use populism’s main idea of setting the pure people against the corrupt elite. If anything, populism is more of a propaganda method than a full blown political ideology. In any case, it is only part of the picture. In reality, the rise of fascism in the 21st century is a reaction to the ever-rising economic insecurity delivered by neoliberalism. This increasingly challenges, if not destroys, the once mighty middle class. The deliberate shifting of wealth from the middle class toward the capitalist class under the ideological heading of neoliberalism is set to shrink, if not annihilate 20th century’s middle class. To re-direct potentially revolutionary energies of this process, 21st century fascism’s forces are called up once again. The hope is that they will deflect forces that might challenge capitalism. In this process, new scapegoats (migrants, refugees, etc.) are invented while old ones are dusted off (Jews).

A key ideology of this is a mythical ‘return to the nation’, hyping up ultra-nationalism. The hope is that this will keep the crisis of capitalism outside of the nation. As a consequence, an idyllic picture of the nation, the homeland, the Volksgemeinschaft is presented. For that, one of older enemies has re-emerged, namely the ‘Jewish World Conspiracy’. In this Anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, there is a secret group planning the dissolution of Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland, etc. In each country a new kind of ‘Baby-Hitler’ claims to protect its population against the likes of Rothschild, Soros, etc.While all this is on the way, mainstream media are at ‘extreme pains to avoid any association with the pre-fascist period of the 1930s’. BjörnHöcke is the ideological Führer of the AfD. ‘Even someone like him who, as a quasi-Goebbelsdouble, uses outright Anti-Semitic hate speech, is not called a Nazi’.

While Anti-Semitism remains prevalent inside the AfD, it is camouflaged by a pretended pro-Israel policy that aligns the neo-fascist AfD with Bibi Netanyahu’s arch conservatism. Since German Nazism has murdered millions of Jews, the AfD is at pains to divert attention away from its own Anti-Semitism. As a consequence, the its new and by now far more visible enemy is the Muslim refugee. But the AfD’s move towards fascism is by no means plain sailing.

After a speech by the AfD’s court-certified Nazi Slut Alice Weidel, the boss of Siemens had enough. He said that he preferred ‘the headscarves of Muslim girls tothe headscarves of the BDM girls’. The BDM was the Nazi’s youth organisation for German girls. Siemens boss Joe Kaeser also said that ‘the nationalism of the AfD damages the reputation of our country’. Since German capital is part of what is known as a global supply chain and heavily depends on exports, the core of Germany might not agree with the AfD’s ultra-nationalism. In addition, Germany is not facing a strong enemy. Germany’s communists are at the margins, its social-democratic party favours neoliberalism, and its trade unions organise rather than challenge capitalism. With them out of the way, the AfD can freely work towards changing Germany’s political culture towards fascism.

Much of the shift of Germany’s political culture to the right started with what might be called the radical right’s big bang. Typically for a country like Germany, it came with a book. It was the publication of Sarrazin’s book Germany abolishes itself.It is a book that sold millions of copies. It features crude Social Darwinism while hyping up fear of a looming economic decline impacting on Germany’s still large middle class. Like nobody in Germany’s post-war history, Sarrazin installed xenophobic fear into the middle class. Simultaneously, he offered a scapegoat, namely ‘genetic sub-humans like social welfare recipients and Muslims’. It insinuated that those can be ‘transported into concentration camps and that we do not want to know what happens after that’. The book and its ideology stabilised capitalism.

The ultimate historical consequence of such early themes was the death factory of Auschwitz. But 21st century fascism is not there yet, if it ever will. Today, fascism is still at its pre-fascist phase. The second break through for the AfD was its 2017 election to Germany’s federal parliament. But already a month before that, the AfD showed its true authoritarian face in the state parliament of Lower Saxony. It installed a commission to examine left wing terrorism. By this, the AfD means virtually anyone who disagrees with the party itself. This came at time when,

• the Neo-Nazi NSU had just murdered ten people,
• 8,000 Neo-Nazis marched in Chemnitz,
• attacks on refugees are a daily occurrence,
• Neo-Nazis openly hunt anyone not too German looking,
• Neo-Nazis attack a Jewish restaurant in Chemnitz, and
• BjörnHöcke delivers almost carbon copy Goebbels speeches.

This is why one of the founding members of the AfD and former president of Germany’s powerful employer association (BDI), Hans-Olaf Henkel who left the AfD in disgust, said Höcke talks like Goebbels.Perhaps one of the strongest barriers against rising fascism in Germany might turn out to be Germany’s economy and its extreme dependency on exports. This might even prevent a ‘final solution of the refugee question’. What it does not prevent are the calls of AfD supporters cheering ‘drown them, drown them, drown them’ at an anti-refugee rally when told about refugees drowning while crossing the Mediterranean Sea. These are the first signs of fascist fantasies of an impending annihilation of human beings. The AfD calls the open advocacy of fascist terrorism the ‘courage to break taboos’.

All this is linked to AfD slogans like ‘close the border, foreigners out, and forced labour for useless parasites’. This is, of course, extended to ‘scapegoats like southern Europeans, Arabic people, Jews, Russians, and Americans’. Right-wing supporters read about this in their very own echo chambers that have become ‘the digital home of the new right’. Inside their echo chambers, people will never read the truth. They will never read about the ‘concentration camp like conditions in refugee camps in Libya where people are tormented while others simply disappear deemed to be of no further use’. If they get lucky,captured refugees are traded on open slave markets.

If you seek to help refugees,as Germany’s chancellor did in 2015, the AfD abuses you. The AfD’s second in command, Alice Weidel,calls the government a ‘puppet of the Allied Forces’. They are the AfD’s invented enemies, used to collect voters and supporters.Much of this forms the ‘existing fascist potential in Germany’ today with Neo-Nazis dreaming of a ‘clearing storm of steel, blood, sweat, and tears’. Much of the distribution of such right-wing ideologies is financially supported by the businessman ‘August von Finck junior.He is the son of August von Finck senior who was a Nazi party member while stealing Jewish banks in a process called Aryianization’. Today, his son finances the AfD.

Then as today, these people fight Jews. Among them is one of Europe’s number one right wingand Neo-Nazi hate figure, George Soros. By 2018, the merger between Anti-Semitism and anti-Islamism had progressed most substantially in Hungary where one even finds conspiracy theories such as the dangerous hallucination that ‘the Jews are the enforcers of the refugee crisis’. Obviously, this goes hand in hand with the ideological rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators like Miklos Horthy. Being a lifelong Anti-Semite, Horthy is now seen as ‘an exceptional statesman’. Still, Hungary’s right wing and Anti-Semitic Victor Orban appears to be closer to the nationalist Benjamin Netanyahu than to the Hungarian liberal Soros’. Hungary’s extreme right wing strongly believes in an eternal ‘Soros Empire’ as well as dark ‘international forces’ that are behind the country’s current misery. Orban said, ‘we fight enemies that have no homeland…they are cunning, vicious and mean’.

Similar to Hungary’s crypto-fascists, Germany’s very own semi-fascists of the AfD also seek to eliminate virtually all memory of the Holocaust. By July 2017, the Central Council of Jews in Germany made a statement saying, ‘one gets the feeling that the AfD has lost all inhibitions to engage in hate speeches against Jews’. It marked the return of the ‘hallucination of the eternal Jew seen as a parasite’. The imagined Jew is set against the ‘racially pure nation’. Such fascistic ideologies are ‘high on the agenda during times of social and economic crisis and whenever the continuation of the entire structure is in danger’. This marks‘the time of marginalisation, discrimination and ultimately the destruction of entire sections of a population’.

Historically, all this is not new. What is new is that decades after Auschwitz, we know what happened, who did it and who the victims were. Today, we can look back in the knowledge that the assessment made by the New York Times on the 21st of November 1922 was tragically wrong. The NYT wrote,‘Adolf Hitler’s Anti-Semitism shouldn’t be overrated. Anti-Semitism is only used to collect voters. Hitler is just another patriot. Those who carry his swastika flag might not even know themselves what they want’. People believed that nobody could have foreseen the Wannsee Conference of 1942. Who could have thought, in 1922, that barely twenty years later, ‘a small group of irrational madmen and right-wing extremists would actually do what they had preached all along’. Today, many see the AfD as just another populist party. Is the real danger of the AfD to underestimate it?

, ‘the situation in Germany is comparable to the time of pre-fascism during the 1920s and 1930s when increasingly successful reactionary parties were capable of influencing, if not directing, the political situation in Germany’. Even one of the founding members of the AfD (a party member until 2015) has seen the truth behind the AfD’s populism. The former president of Germany’s powerful employer association BDI called the AfD NPD light.The NPD was Germany’s real Neo-Nazi party until the AfD took over. Like the Nazi’s eternal Jew and the Jewish world conspiracy, the AfD also thinks that ‘everything bad comes from outside’ of the Volksgemeinschaft. In slightly different variations, this ideology appears in the Ukraine (Wolfsangel – the fascist wolfs trap,in Poland– ‘Neo-Nazi and clerical fascism’, in Hungary (Pfeilkreuzer), Austria (former Neo-Nazi Strache),etc.

It becomes increasingly more difficult to see the AfD as just another populist party when, for example, in the East German city of Jena AfD supporters shout they will build a new ‘railway from Berlin to Auschwitz’. The sheer volume of Nazi statements coming from the AfD and its surrounding network indicates that the party has long ago left behind the concept of being just another populist party. One of the many examples is the AfD’s Ulrich Oehme. His slogan is ‘Everything for Germany’. This is the very same slogan that was engraved on the dagger of every SA man. After he was told that the use of the slogan is illegal, Oehme declared that he stood by what he said. He reformulated the old SA slogan to ‘have a heart for Germany’. Like the real Nazis, today’s AfD voices mean what they say:

• the AfD’sBjörn Höckeand former Neo-Nazi author (fake name LandolfLadig) believes in Nazism;
• the court found that certified deputy AfD boss Alice Weidel can be called Nazi Slut;
• the AfD’sWolfgang Gedeon thinks the Protocols of the Elders of Zionare literally true;and
• the ‘AfD’s Sebastian Koch was an active Neo-Nazi for many years’.

Conceivably, the AfD is ‘just another normal (Nazi) party’ inside which political staffers like Marcel Grauf can have a ‘closed fascistic worldview’. The AfD’s Grauf also glorifies Hitler and Mussolini. He believes that Germany’s state can solve financial difficulties by ‘taxing the Jews’. Grauf said, I ‘prefer to rape Sophie Scholl rather than Anne Frank’. He dreams of a civil war so that he can piss on the graves of his enemies. Grauf also wants to shoot and kill Germany’s former vice-chancellor and foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel. The AfD man worships the Norwegian Neo-Nazi killer Breivik who killed 77 people in 2011. His AfD boss Andre Poggenburg holds similar views. He believes that the left is ‘a tumorous cancer on Germany’s Volks-body’. Perhaps these (and many more) are not just mishaps. Perhaps they establish a pattern – the pattern of Neo-Nazism.

Not surprisingly, the AfD likes to present itself as just another populist party – a party that fights against political correctness whenever it can. But when challenged, the party goes to court. In one case, it tried to act against those who called ita ‘right-wing extremist party’. The AfD lost in court. The AfD was eager to prevent this because Germany’s political law distinguishes between a right-wing radical and a right-wing extremist party. The former is against Germany’s constitutional state, e.g. democracy, the latter is set to destroy Germany’s constitutional state. It can be made illegal.

Conceivably, all this fits to what the AfD organised in Chemnitz in late August 2018 when 8,000 Neo-Nazis, AfD supporters, etc. marched in the biggest Neo-Nazi show of force seen in Germany since Adolf Hitler’s real Nazis marched in Germany’s streets. The AfD’s Chemnitz march included Neo-Nazis hunting everyone not too German looking, Pogrom-like violence, showing off the Hitler salute, and openly fascist street terror. For the first time in post-war Germany, violent Neo-Nazi militia brought its terror to German streets. AfD boss Gauland later commented it was just a ‘normal reaction’ of the people. As a consequence, Germany’s ‘right-wing extremist forces are getting more confident by the month’. All this might indicate that we indeed live in times of pre-fascism.

42 percent Americans say Islam ‘is incompatible with US values’

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

A large proportion of mainstream Americans think Islam is incompatible with American values, according to a survey by the New America foundation and the American Muslim Institute.

The “Americans’ Views of Muslims Survey” was conducted leading up to the midterm elections in November 2018 – a time period when myths and misinformation about Muslims have figured prominently in some local, state, and federal elections, the New America said adding: “The research provides insight into public perceptions of Muslim Americans at both the national and local levels in Houston, Orlando, Tampa, and the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, where over samplings were done.”

Available data indicates that Americans are increasingly leery of Muslim Americans and that they do not view Muslim communities as part of mainstream society. And since 2015 there has been an alarming increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes across the country.

According to the findings announced on Thursday (Nov 1),  56 percent of Americans believed Islam was compatible with American values and 42 percent said it was not.

About 60 percent believed US Muslims were as patriotic as others, while 38 percent they were not.

The study said that although a big majority of Americans – 74 percent – accepted there was “a lot” of bigotry against Muslims existed, 56 percent said they were concerned about extremism spreading within the Muslim community.

The joint study found that Republicans were more likely to hold negative perceptions of Muslims and Islam, with 71 percent saying Islam was incompatible with American values. About 56 percent of Republicans also admitted they would be concerned if a mosque was built in their neighborhood.

A slight majority of Republicans disagreed with the statement that having more than 100 Muslim candidates in the midterm elections was a positive thing.

Discrimination against Muslims is evident to respondents and skepticism around hate crime reporting is low. A majority of non-Muslim Americans (71%) agree there is a lot of discrimination against Muslim Americans, levels akin to discrimination against Transgender people (68%) and Blacks (67%).

Robert McKenzie, a senior fellow at the New America foundation and one of the authors of the study, said there were a number of factors that contributed the shaping of anti-Muslim sentiment, and that they were not limited to the political right.

Rabiah Ahmed, an American Muslim media relations specialist, told Al Jazeera rising Islamophobia had consequences beyond the Muslim community.

“I think Islamophobia is not just a Muslim problem but an American problem, so it needs to be addressed by all sectors of society,” she said.

Ahmed argued that Muslims could not afford to not engage with other communities, and had a duty to “plug information gaps” to dispel negative ideas about the community.

However, she also said politicians, segments of the media, and religious leaders from other communities had played a role in stoking anti-Muslim bigotry.

“Just as Muslims have a responsibility to lean in, other faith based communities also need to lean in. So when they see their priest preaching divisive rhetoric about Islam, they need to stop that.””Fears of Muslims comes from the acts of extremists (and) it comes from the Islamophobia industry, a very well connected, very well funded industry, which makes it their mission to try to marginalize and disenfranchise American Muslims.

The New America foundation report comes amid a notable rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric in US political discourse and within the media.

Last month, a report by Muslim Advocates found 80 instances of “clear anti-Muslim rhetoric” by candidates running for political office.

That included unfounded claims that Muslims were plotting to establish Islamic law in the US.

US President Donald Trump also used anti-Islam rhetoric in his election campaign, and has introduced executive orders targeting Muslims, such as his  infamous ban on Muslims from several predominantly Muslim countries entering the US.

Rising anti-Muslim bigotry also comes amid a rise in hatred targeting other religious and ethnic minorities.

Within the last week, there has been a spate of far-right violence in the US, with a foiled pipe bomb campaign targeting anti-Trump politicians and media outlets, a racially motivated shooting of two African-Americans in Kentucky, and the mass killing of 11 Jewish worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Will Saudi Arabia Survive Unchanged After Jamal Khashoggi

Askiah Adam

While the body of the murdered Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post has not been found, the government of Saudi Arabia has admitted that he is dead, killed during an interrogation gone wrong in their Consulate in Istanbul. But the Turkish President Erdogan insisted that it is a pre-meditated murder, which the Saudi Attorney General owned up to recently.

Interestingly, a recent report in the British daily, the Express, reported that the British Government Command Headquarters (GCHQ)had intercepted communications from Saudi Intelligence some two weeks before Khashoggi’s disappearance, containing instructions for the latter’s capture and forced return to Saudi Arabia, which according to British intelligence sources was left open ended should there be resistance. Apparently they advised Riyadh against it but, as has transpired, the Saudis had obviously ignored them. But the source was at pains to point out they have no idea whether the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohamad bin Salman (MbS), was even aware. The question though is, why was Khashoggi not advised of this threat — apparently Washington too was not in the dark — because in an interview with the BBC Khashoggi’s fiancée said he had not shown any visible signs of fear.

We are told by British intelligence sources that Khashoggi was about to whistleblow on the Saudis use of chemical weapons in Yemen, which means he was viewed as a security menace by the Saudis. This leak, if true, explains the attempted rendition, if not the murder.

But, what is puzzling is the furore caused in Washington and many European capitals, one that has been kept on the boil by mainstream media suggesting that this incident will not go away without costing Saudi Arabia dear, the lack of hard evidence notwithstanding and the blunder of Saudi admission fatal.

And so, what could be the aftermath of the Khashoggi murder on Saudi Arabia?

Top of the list of possibilities is regime change. Many observers, including Washington insiders, argue for possible regime change. That initial reports went out of their way to implicate the Crown Prince would suggest this. One interviewee on Al-Jazeera’s “Inside Story” says that Saudi Arabia will now no longer be considered a reliable ally as long as the Crown Prince runs the country. His track record damns him: he ‘kidnapped’ the Lebanese Prime Minister and forced him to resign; the war on Yemen which he escalated that has turned out to be genocidal in intent; and, the imprisonment of feminist activists.

It is also no secret that the Crown Prince has made enemies from among the Royal princes. He detained the richest among them in Riyadh’s Ritz Carlton to shake them down like a Mafia boss, albeit for the country’s treasury. This did not endear him to them. Additionally, in the resulting mayhem two princes were killed. They would want revenge and ousting MbS would be a dream come true, but such decisions belong to the House of Saud’s Allegiance Council, comprising the ruling family’s senior princes, who agreed to Mohamad Bin Salman’s appointment as Crown Prince in the first place.

But the return of self-exiled Prince Ahmad bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, brother to King Salman, in the last few days, with his safety guaranteed by the Americans and British might yet spell sweet revenge for the Crown Prince’s enemies. Ahmad bin Abdul-Aziz, a member of the Allegiance Council was one of the few who did not support Mohamad bin Salman’s appointment. However, he himself was by-passed by the Council for the position of Crown Prince, which opted, instead, for his brother Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud because they deemed him too weak. Nayef’s health it was that opened the way for Mohamad bin Salman.

In standing behind the weak Prince Ahmad doWashington and London then feel he can be asked to do their bidding at will?

Mohamad bin Salman is too valuable to the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) because he is instrumental to the further strengthening of the Saudi-Israel relationship. Between Mohamad bin Salman and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, the ground is being prepared for the Kushner proposed Palestine solution which, according to leaks, would be overwhelmingly advantageous to Israel. But might not a Crown Prince completely compliant to American will — the King posing no obstacle because of alleged dementia — achieve the same end and thus eliminate any resistance even by this most powerful Jewish lobby group?

As to the war on Yemen, if this latest manoeuvre works, it can be fashioned at will depending on its primary objective. Whose war is it? Both Washington and London are fuelling it, the former even with boots on the ground. Iran is accused of supporting the rebels. Reports, though denied by Tehran, allege Iran arms the rebels. Saudi Arabia is spooked by the Iranian influence over the Houthis, the rebels. Iran has become an excuse for reinforcing the American role in Yemen which has its own history. And, it is worth remembering the civil war in Yemen has its roots in the 1960s when the foreign powers involved were Egypt and the British. Surely a straightforward civil war is easily solved, but not this one. One doubts, therefore, that a regime change by Washington would alleviate the suffering of the Yemenis.

But is a regime change without challenge? According to the media the Sauds as a family feels that Mohamad bin Salman is too tainted and has injured their image. But they have already decided that Ahmad bin Abdul-Aziz is “too weak” to even be a Crown Prince, what more a King, when the time comes. Rumours though, suggest that Ahmad bin Abdul-Aziz has gathered support from a few powerful princes.

What of the ulama around whom the family’s stranglehold on the throne has revolved? Can a divided Royal family rely on a fatwa that will support one against the other, if the people are to be placated when Ahmad bin Abdul-Aziz is clearly the choice of ‘infidels’? Furthermore, history has shown how much a strong leader is valued by the family, the reason why King Faisal was able to overthrow his older brother, the easy-going King Saud.

Should Washington and London’s political interference in the Saudi succession fail what other options are left to the Zionist imperialists?

While a revolutionary change in Saudi Arabia is hard to envision, there is talk of establishing a constitutional monarchy. The close cooperation between the Royal household and Islam has always meant that the citizenry is not open to change without a fatwa by the ulama. And, although a binary fission among the ulama class is said to exist both sides are conservative Wahhabis who view democracy as damaging to Islam.

But, is the “unreliable” Mohamad Bin Salman with the absolute power he wields, tempered only by his father, a threat to the American economy? Saudi Arabia, through its leadership of OPEC, is pivotal to the survival of the Petrodollar, the instrument that guarantees the US dollar’s status as the world’s premier reserve currency. It is this that has allowed America to borrow with impunity allowing her to execute a policy of perpetual (imperialist) war. Today the US national debt is over US$20 trillion. A collapse of the Petrodollar then is dangerous, if not fatal, to the US economy.

If Mohamad bin Salman, the undependable, threatens the economic security of the US would Washington decide to invade Saudi Arabia, when left without option? The war of words between the two countries began just before the Khashoggi murder. Furthermore, historical evidence shows that at the height of the oil embargo of the 1970s America had plans to invade but that was averted by the then King’s rabid antagonism towards Communism. The threatened defeat of America at the hands of Communist Vietnam ended the embargo.

Today, the US finds its premier global position threatened. Could this be why the Crown Prince has built strong relations with Russia? President Putin has remained aloof from the hyper-excitement of Washington and Europe with regard the Khashoggi ‘murder’ case saying that he is not privy to information that makes judgment possible. The Russian delegation to the MbS inspired “Davos in the Desert” was substantial. In fact, many think that Russia will benefit most from the Jamal Khashoggi fallout.

Why Pakistan Army Killed ‘Father of Taliban’?

Nauman Sadiq

On Friday evening, Maulana Sami-ul-Haq was found dead in his Rawalpindi residence. The assassination was as gruesome as the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He was stabbed multiple times in chest, stomach and forehead.

Sami-ul-Haq was widely known as the “father of the Taliban” because he was a renowned religious cleric who used to administer a sprawling religious seminary, Darul Uloom Haqqania, in Akora Khattak in northwestern Pakistan. During the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s, the seminary was used for training and arming the Afghan so-called “Mujahideen” (freedom fighters), though it is now used exclusively for imparting religious education. Many of the well-known Taliban militant commanders received their education in his seminary.

In order to understand the motive of the assassination, we need to keep the backdrop in mind. On October 31, Pakistan’s Supreme Court acquitted a Christian woman, Aasiya Bibi, who was accused of blasphemy and had been languishing in prison since 2010. Pakistan’s religious political parties were holding street protests against her acquittal for the last three days and had paralyzed the whole country.

But as soon as the news of Sami-ul-Haq’s murder broke and the pictures of the bloodied corpse were released to the media, the religious parties reached an agreement with the government and called off the protests within few hours of the assassination.

Evidently, it was a shot across the bow by Pakistan’s security establishment to the religious right that brings to mind a scene from the epic movie Godfather, in which a horse’s head was put into a Hollywood director’s bed on Don Corleone’s orders that frightened the director out of his wits and he agreed to give a lead role in a movie to the Don’s protégé.

What further lends credence to the theory that Pakistan’s security establishment was behind the murder of Sami-ul-Haq is the fact that Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a close associate of the Taliban’s founder Mullah Omar, was recently released by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies and allowed to join his family in Afghanistan.

Baradar was captured in a joint US-Pakistan intelligence operation in the port city of Karachi in 2010. His release was a longstanding demand of the Afghan government because he is regarded as a comparatively moderate Taliban leader who could play a role in the peace process between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

Furthermore, Washington has been arm-twisting Islamabad through the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to do more to curtail the activities of the militants operating from its soil to destabilize the US-backed government in Afghanistan and to pressure the Taliban to initiate a peace process with the government. Under such circumstances, a religious cleric like Sami-ul-Haq, who was widely known as the “father of the Taliban,” becomes more of a liability than an asset.

It’s worth noting here that though far from being its diehard ideologue, Donald Trump has been affiliated with the infamous white supremacist ‘alt-right’ movement, which regards Islamic terrorism as an existential threat to America’s security. Trump’s tweets slamming Pakistan for playing a double game in Afghanistan and providing safe havens to the Afghan Taliban on its soil reveals his uncompromising and hawkish stance on terrorism.

Many political commentators in the Pakistani media misinterpreted Trump’s tweets as nothing more than a momentary tantrum of a fickle US president, who wants to pin the blame of Washington’s failures in Afghanistan on Pakistan. But along with tweets, the Trump administration also withheld a tranche of $255 million US assistance to Pakistan, which shows that it wasn’t just tweets but a carefully considered policy of the new US administration to persuade Pakistan to toe Washington’s line in Afghanistan.

Moreover, it would be pertinent to mention here that in a momentous decision in July 2017, the then prime minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif was disqualified from holding public office by the country’s Supreme Court on the flimsy pretext of holding an ‘Iqama’ (a work permit) for a Dubai-based company.

Although it is generally assumed the revelations in the Panama Papers, that Nawaz Sharif and his family members own offshore companies, led to the disqualification of the former prime minister, another critically important factor that contributed to the downfall of Nawaz Sharif is often overlooked.

In October 2016, one of Pakistan’s leading English language newspapers, Dawn News, published an exclusive report dubbed as the ‘Dawn Leaks’ in Pakistan’s press. In the report titled ‘Act against militants or face international isolation,’ citing an advisor to the prime minister, Tariq Fatemi, who was fired from his job for disclosing the internal deliberations of a high-level meeting to the media, the author of the report Cyril Almeida contended that in a huddle of Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership, the civilian government had told the military’s top brass to withdraw its support from the militant outfits operating in Pakistan, specifically from the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.

After losing tens of thousands of lives to terror attacks during the last decade, an across the board consensus has developed among Pakistan’s mainstream political forces that the policy of nurturing militants against regional adversaries has backfired on Pakistan and it risks facing international isolation due to belligerent policies of Pakistan’s security establishment. Not only Washington, but Pakistan’s ‘all-weather ally’ China, which plans to invest $62 billion in Pakistan via its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects, has also made its reservations public regarding Pakistan’s continued support to the aforementioned jihadist groups.

Thus, excluding a handful of far-right Islamist political parties that are funded by the Gulf’s petro-dollars and historically garner less than 10% votes of Pakistan’s electorate, all the civilian political forces are in favor of turning a new leaf in Pakistan’s checkered political history by endorsing the decision of an indiscriminate crackdown on militant outfits operating in Pakistan. But Pakistan’s security establishment jealously guards its traditional domain, the security and foreign policy of Pakistan, and still maintains a distinction between the so-called ‘good and bad’ Taliban.

Regarding Pakistan’s duplicitous stance on terrorism, it’s worth noting that there are three distinct categories of militants operating in Pakistan: the Afghanistan-focused Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants; and foreign transnational terrorists, including the Arab militants of al-Qaeda, the Uzbek insurgents of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Chinese Uighur jihadists of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Compared to tens of thousands of native Pashtun and Punjabi militants, the foreign transnational terrorists number only in a few hundred and are hence inconsequential.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised of Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus. The ethnic factor is critical here. Although the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) like to couch their rhetoric in religious terms, but it is the difference of ethnicity and language that enables them to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state apparatus, while the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants have by and large remained loyal to their patrons in the security agencies of Pakistan.

Although Pakistan’s security establishment has been willing to conduct military operations against the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which are regarded as a security threat to Pakistan’s state apparatus, as far as the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the Afghanistan-focused Quetta Shura Taliban, including the Haqqani network, are concerned, they are still enjoying impunity because such militant groups are regarded as ‘strategic assets’ by Pakistan’s security agencies.

Finally, after Trump’s outbursts against Pakistan, many willfully blind security and defense analysts suggested that Pakistan needed to intensify its diplomatic efforts to persuade the new US administration that Pakistan was sincere in its fight against terrorism. But diplomacy is not a pantomime in which one can persuade one’s interlocutors merely by hollow words without substantiating the words by tangible actions.

The double game played by Pakistan’s security agencies in Afghanistan and Kashmir to destabilize its regional adversaries is in plain sight for everybody to discern and feel indignant about. Therefore, Pakistan will have to withdraw its support from the Afghan Taliban and the Punjabi militant groups, if it is eager to maintain good working relations with the Trump administration and wants to avoid economic sanctions and international censure.

Ireland votes to remove blasphemy from the constitution and re-elects Michael D. Higgins as president

Dermot Byrne & Steve James 

The Republic of Ireland voted last week to remove the word “blasphemous” from article 40.6.1 of its constitution, five months after the country’s voters agreed to liberalise abortion laws.

Although no-one has been prosecuted for blasphemy since 1885, the decision, supported in every single electoral constituency, underscores the failing grip of the Catholic Church and a left and liberalising sentiment among broad layers of the population.

Some 65 percent of voters voted to remove the offence of blasphemy from the constitution, almost the same as May’s vote for abortion reform and slightly higher than the 62 percent who supported same sex marriage in 2015. Even Donegal, the only constituency to reject removal of the anti-abortion Eighth Amendment from the constitution, and Roscommon-South Leitrim, which opposed same-sex marriage in 2015, voted in line with the rest of the country.

On the same day, Michael D. Higgins was elected as Irish president for a second seven-year term. Higgins, who claims to be a socialist, won 56 percent of the vote for the largely ceremonial role, compared with 39 percent in 2011.

His run for a second seven-year term was supported by both Leo Varadkar’s Fine Gael governing party and the main opposition party, Fianna Fail.

Fianna Fail have been propping up Varadkar’s minority government under a “confidence and supply agreement” for the past two and a half years. The two-party duopoly has facilitated a vast transfer of wealth from the working class to the top 10 percent in society.

The Irish Labour Party, which was reduced to just seven seats in the 2016 general election, also backed Higgins, who is a former Labour TD (member of parliament).

With the candidate of all the main parties a nominal “socialist,” the most striking feature of the election was the degree of political alienation among working people. The turnout of 44 percent was the lowest recorded of any election in Ireland since the foundation of the state.

Higgins, portrayed as a “national treasure,” with a “Miggle D. Giggles” laughing stuffed toy being sold in aid of charity this Christmas, won a record 822,566 first preference votes. However, only 1,473,900 people voted out of a possible 3,401,681. No doubt, the turnout would have been lower still without the poll to remove blasphemy as an offence.

Growing political alienation is rooted in rising social inequality and hardship for the working class. The Irish economy went into meltdown in 2009 when the Fianna Fail government bailed out the banks to the tune of €64 billion. Since then, the share of wealth owned by the ruling elite responsible for the catastrophe has been increasing dramatically. The top 10 percent of the country’s richest households holds 53.8 percent of the national wealth, while the poorest 20 percent of households now owe more than they own.

Emergency accommodation figures for September show that there are now collectively 9,698 homeless people in Ireland. The number of homeless children is now 3,829. There has been a steady increase in the adult figures as well, to 5,869. Last month 88 more families entered emergency accommodation. There are now 800,000 people living in poverty, one in six of the population and 700,000 on healthcare waiting lists.

During the crash property prices collapsed, builders went bust and construction workers left the country. As the state went bankrupt, it cut funding for social housing and for the past 10 years no social housing was built at all.

Higgins, in contrast, will join the ranks of the very wealthy. As president he will receive €250,000 [$US285,000] annual salary, plus another €300,000 as a special unaudited allowance.

While the greatest shift in the election was to “none of the above,” the poll saw the surprise emergence of a right-wing candidate, Peter Casey, a millionaire and television “dragon” investor from the Irish version of the BBC’s Dragons’ Den. Casey is an admirer of US President Donald Trump, and advocate of close relations with the United States and has previously expressed support for Ireland leaving the European Union (EU) along with the UK.

Over the course of his campaign, Casey repeatedly attacked welfare claimants, while claiming to speak for the “average working family of John and Mary with two kids.” Casey also attacked Travellers. Commenting on a dispute between Tipperary county council and local Travelling families who refused to take accommodation because there were no facilities for their horses, he accused them of “camping on other people’s land” and complained, “This is great for my property value now that I’ve got three dozen caravans down the road.”

Travellers have long been the subject of discrimination in Ireland and suffer multiple forms of deprivation. Traveller women are five times more likely to commit suicide than the general population and live on average, 11.5 years less. Just 13 percent of Travellers complete secondary education and just one percent make it to university.

Casey’s other comments drew less media attention, but were of a piece with his attempt to mobilise support in the upper layers of the petty bourgeoisie and in more socially backward rural areas on an anti-working-class platform. Besides attacking welfare claimants, he called for the re-introduction of water charges, which were the target of widespread protests by workers in recent years. He also opposed liberal abortion laws.

Casey was originally predicted to get just one percent of the vote, but secured 23.3 percent, or 342,727 votes. His vote was lower in urban centres and higher in both rural areas and among older voters. With the combined vote of the other right-wing candidates at just 14.5 percent, his “success” was duly noted—with Donegal Fianna Fail asking him to join their party and the right-wing tax cutting, anti-abortion Renua Ireland offering him their party’s leadership. Casey has offered to either become the leader of Fianna Fail or set up a New Fianna Fail.

The media is likewise urging a shift rightwards as its preferred response, with the Irish Times telling all politicians to “get real” and insisting on the “need for a more mature and realistic discussion about politics and the choices facing policymakers” and avoiding raising “false expectations.”

Sinn Fein’s inability to sustain its pretence of representing a left alternative to the major parties was the other significant feature of the election. Its candidate, Liadh Ni Riada, is currently a member of the European parliament.

Ni Riada secured a disastrous 93,987 or 6.4 percent of the vote, compared with 243,030 and 13.7 percent garnered by the late Martin McGuinness in 2011. Sinn Fein haemorrhaged votes to both Higgins and Casey, with the Irish Independent commenting, “Once proud outsiders who mopped up a fair few protest votes themselves, as Sinn Fein get closer to real power in Dublin’s Leinster House, they are becoming more a part of the establishment against which they have traditionally railed.”

The collapse of Sinn Fein and the Labour Party, and their eclipse by the right-winger Casey, underscores the urgent need for a genuine party of the working class in Ireland to prosecute a determined struggle for socialism against all factions of the Irish elite. The Socialist Equality Group in Ireland is seeking to build this party, as a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Massive increase in police violence across UK

Alice Summers 

Incidences of police brutality have risen rapidly in the UK in the last year. According to the statistics supplied by the police themselves, violence and deaths at the hands of police officers have both seen a marked increase.

Figures from a Metropolitan Police online database show that just in London, the Met used violence against individuals a staggering 41,477 times in the five month period between April and August this year.

The data reveal that methods of force, including handcuffs, batons and tear gas, as well as attack dogs, Tasers and guns, were used an average of 270 times a day just in the capital. This compares to an already appallingly high 151 times a day in the corresponding period last year—a 79 percent increase in incidents of police brutality.

Episodes of police violence from just these five months are almost on a par with the total number of incidents from the whole of last year (April 2017-April 2018), when there were 62,153 occasions of force being used by the London police.

Many of the incidents relate violent police methods such as using pressure points to restrain and handcuff individuals. However, in the same period, police officers also fired or aimed Tasers at suspects 2,663 times and trained real firearms on suspects 591 times in London—an average of nearly four times a day.

Since last year, police firearms operations have risen by nearly 20 percent nationally, with some areas seeing an increase of 53 percent. There were around 18,700 police firearms operations across the UK in 2017-18.

The London boroughs in which police violence has been most widespread are Westminster, which saw 2,837 incidences of police violence between April and August, then Lambeth (2,571), Brent (2,489), Southwark (2,000) and Hackney (1,739).

With the exception of Westminster, which is the location of important landmarks such as the Houses of Parliament and the Queen’s residence at Buckingham Palace, these boroughs are predominantly working-class areas with high levels of poverty, deprivation and unemployment.

In these boroughs, police harassment, assault and abuse are daily facts of life, often with terrible and tragic consequences for the working-class inhabitants.

The case of Julian Cole, a young black man who was violently restrained and arrested by police outside a nightclub in Bedford is a prime example. During the arrest in 2013, in which he was forcefully restrained and dragged unconscious to a police van, Cole suffered a broken neck and serious injuries to his spine at the hands of three police officers.

The serious injuries he suffered during the police assault left him in a permanent vegetative state, requiring 24-hour care.

An Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) disciplinary panel, which was set up to investigate the circumstances of Cole’s arrest, found that the three officers who restrained him, Hannah Ross, Nicholas Oates and Sanjeev Kalyan, had committed gross misconduct and lied about the events of the night. They had falsely claimed that Cole had walked to the police van and been “chatty” during their journey to the police station, when in fact his neck had been broken and he had gone into cardiac arrest long before that.

The officers were also found to have committed misconduct by not carrying out any of the basic welfare checks on Cole after he had been restrained.

Rather than being prosecuted for the violent assault, which left the young man permanently and seriously disabled, the three officers were merely dismissed from their posts in the police service last week, with the Crown Prosecution Service finding that no criminal action had occurred.

For others, encounters with police end even more tragically than did that of Julian Cole. According to the annual statistics compiled by IOPC, in the 2017-2018 financial year 283 people lost their lives following contact with police.

Of these deaths, 23 occurred in or following police custody, 57 were apparent suicides following custody and 29 related to road traffic incidents. There were also four police shootings (three of which were related to terrorism) and 170 unspecified “other” deaths at the hands of the police.

The IOPC figures show that more people were killed after contact with police in the 2017-2018 period than in any other year in the last decade.

This escalation of police violence has come amidst calls from senior police officials to ramp up the militarisation of the police. Citing the threat of terrorism, Simon Chesterman, the armed policing lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, called in March for the routine arming of all frontline police officers with Tasers, declaring, “if an officer wants to carry it and they can meet the standard, they should be allowed to carry it.”

Chesterman went further still in May, advocating the rolling out of real firearms among police officers, supposedly to counter the terrorism threat. In a paper prepared by Chesterman for a meeting of police chiefs, he called for the routine arming of frontline constables with guns, stating his apparent concern that it could take too long for fully trained armed officers to respond to a terrorist attack in rural areas.

Much of the coverage of this increase in police violence in the bourgeois media has focused on the fact that police brutality disproportionately targets black people and other ethnic minorities. Black people in London were involved in 39 percent of incidents of police violence since April 2018, despite making up only 13 percent of the capital’s population.

While racism plays a role in police violence, the media’s focus on race obscures the fundamental class character of police brutality.

The militarisation of the police and the proliferation of police violence is not the result of a few bad apples within the police force, but flows necessarily from the nature of the capitalist state as an instrument of class repression. The police exist to defend the political and economic system of capitalism, a system of immense inequality and brutality.

This turn to increased violence and repression must be seen in the context of rising class antagonisms worldwide and the global crisis of capitalist rule. To combat the growing unrest of the working class, governments across the world are increasingly acquiring an authoritarian character and strengthening the repressive powers of the intelligence agencies and an increasingly militarised police force.

This repressive apparatus, which is justified as a proportionate response to terrorist attacks, is primarily aimed at combating the political mobilisation of the working class, through violence, intimidation and censorship.

The last few years have seen the massive growth of censorship measures across Europe and the United States. In the name of combating “disinformation” and “fake news”, governments across the world are introducing legislation seriously curtailing freedom of speech.

In addition to targeting left-wing, antiwar and socialist websites, the World Socialist Web Site among the most affected, internet censorship measures have also been taken against popular social media accounts exposing and denouncing police violence. Facebook recently deleted numerous pages by groups opposing and publicising incidents of police violence such as Police the Police, Cop Block and Filming Cops.

Sri Lankan crisis: Washington intervenes to maintain its political influence

Deepal Jayasekera 

The Trump administration has responded to Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena’s October 26 political coup and the subsequent political crisis, by seeking to ensure that the turmoil will not impact on US geo-strategic operations against China.

Sirisena unconstitutionally removed Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister and replaced him with former President Mahinda Rajapakse. The US ruling elite was hostile to Rajapakse because of his pro-Chinese stand and backed Sirisena to oust him in the 2015 presidential election.

Washington is concerned that if Rajapakse were to consolidate his hold on power in the bitter infighting against Wickremesinghe it would seriously affect its carefully cultivated military and political relations with Colombo.

After dismissing Wickremesinghe, Sirisena prorogued the parliament until November 16 to allow Rajapakse, via various horse-trading deals, to garner support from additional MPs and challenge Wickremesinghe’s claims to have majority parliamentary support.

At a media briefing on Wednesday, US journalists repeatedly questioned US State Department deputy spokesperson Robert Palladino about the Trump administration’s attitude to the political situation in Sri Lanka.

One correspondent asked whether the US still considered Wickremesinghe “the legitimate prime minister” of Sri Lanka. Was his ouster “unconstitutional” and a “coup” and did it require US action, the reporter asked.

Palladino provided no direct answers to these questions. He said, however: “The United States believes the determination should be made in accordance with the Sri Lankan law and due process. So again, we call on the president in consultation with the speaker to reconvene parliament immediately and to allow the democratically-elected representatives of the Sri Lankan people to fulfill their responsibility to affirm who will lead their government. And we urge all sides to uphold the law and to respect due process.”

This has been the US State Department’s refrain since the beginning of the crisis and is similar to Wickremesinghe’s stance. The sacked prime minister has called for parliament to be recalled so he can show he has a majority and continue in office.

Another correspondent asked about China’s role and noted “at least one member of parliament in Sri Lanka has accused Beijing of contributing to the ouster of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe.”

One journalist referred to previous remarks made by Palladino about Washington’s concern about “creeping Chinese influence” in Latin America. “This [Sri Lanka] is a case where you have a similar situation, or at least allegations of a similar situation,” the reporter asserted. “What is the [US] embassy in Colombo doing?”

An Associated Press (AP) article about the media briefing, published in the New York Times on October 31, said: “The political upheaval and challenges to the democratic process could endanger improvements in US-Sri Lanka relations since Rajapakse lost power in elections in 2015…

“For the past three years, as Sri Lanka has had a fragile unity government, the US has expanded relations that were curtailed during the later years of Rajapakse’s rule, including renewed military cooperation.”

Since 2015, the US Asia-Pacific Command has developed close relations with the Sri Lankan military, trained Sri Lankan soldiers, established a marine unit, invited the military for joint exercises and sent warships to the Indian Ocean island.

Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate’s Appropriation Committee, told AP that if Rajapakse’s appointment as prime minister were allowed to stand, it would “pose a grave challenge to US engagement with that government.”

Leahy said Rajapakse ran “the government as a criminal enterprise, making sweetheart deals with China, persecuting the Tamil minority and wrongly imprisoning political opponents and journalists.”

Washington’s concerns have nothing to do with defending democracy, due process or the Sri Lankan constitution. The US is concerned that the political gains it made in ousting Rajapakse and installing Sirisena as president will be weakened and its geo-strategic operations against China undermined.

Sirisena and Wickremesinghe now blame each other for violating “good governance” and “democratic principles.” But in 2015 Sirisena joined hands with Wickremesinghe and former President Chandrika Kumaratunga in a conspiracy orchestrated in Washington to remove Rajapakse.

Successive Washington administrations backed Rajapakse’s renewed war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from mid-2006 until 2009, in which tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were killed. The US turned a blind eye to the Rajapakse government’s anti-democratic methods and abuses of human rights. Both Sirisena, as a senior minister in Rajapakse’s cabinet, and Wickremesinghe, in the opposition, were enthusiastic supporters of the brutal war.

Washington only began criticising Rajapakse after he developed close relations with Beijing, and China emerged as the main supplier of military weapons and funds to his government during the final months of the war. India, determined to advance its interests in the region, backed Washington’s moves against China.

The US then presented a series of resolutions in the UN Human Rights Council calling for an investigation of the Rajapakse regime’s abuse of human rights during the war against the LTTE. These resolutions sought to pressure Colombo into distancing itself from Beijing. When Rajapakse maintained his relations with China, Washington moved to oust him.

Deep-seated hostility among working people, the rural poor and the Tamil masses against Rajapakse’s anti-democratic rule was exploited by Sirisena, Wickremesinghe and others, with the backing of pseudo-left organisations such as the Nava Sama Samaja Party, the trade unions and academics, to provide the political operation with a democratic garb.

Claims by Sirisena and Wickremesinghe, who now stand in hostile camps, to be defending democracy are a complete fraud and exposed by their role in 2015 regime-change operation. Rajapakse who once vehemently denounced Sirisena, is now allied with him.

While these sections of the Sri Lankan ruling elite furiously denounce each other, they all defend the interests of big business and international finance capital, and will, as in the past, brutally suppress the struggles of the working class and the poor for social equality and genuine democratic rights.

YouTube Learning Fund 2019 for African Youtubers

Application Deadline: 30th November, 2018 at 23.59 PST.

About the Award: The Program is designed to support creators looking to build unique, multi-session content in the category that is most organic to applicant’s brand and voice. Multi-session content consists of multiple videos that are sequential in nature–building on top of one another. Where rights permit, the video output should be made available globally.

Learning can take a lot of different shapes – everything from math and machine learning to languages and lawn tips. We see people coming to YouTube everyday to learn something new. Many of these learning stories are powered by an incredible community of creators like you, whose videos have demonstrated the appeal of content that enriches as well as entertains.
In July, we announced YouTube Learning, an initiative to support all those who use YouTube to share their knowledge with the world and the millions of users who come to our platform to learn. This includes investing in:
– Improving the learning experience on YouTube
– Supporting educational creators via the YouTube Learning Fund
– Expanding support for learning partners around the world

Type: Grants, Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: Eligible projects must

• Come from applicants that manage at least one YouTube channel with a minimum of 25,000 subscribers
• Demonstrate a strategy to develop multi-session content – multiple videos that build on one another
• Clearly depict the intent to teach in a factual, informative, and trustworthy manner, indicating expertise and / or a scrupulous approach to accuracy, including but not limited to research, fact checking, and objectivity

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: Amounts will vary based on the application details.

How to Apply: Please apply via the application form here.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Award Provider: Youtube

Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge 2019 for Innovative Student Entrepreneurs

Application Deadline: 11th January 2019

Eligible Countries: All

About the Award: How can your innovative technology solution solve the world’s most pressing social and environmental problems?
The third annual Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge aims to recognize new innovative solutions that leverage technology for social impact from student entrepreneurs around the world. The Challenge is open to students and recent alumni from any college or university.

Type: Contest

Eligibility:  For participants to be eligible, at least half of the team’s members must be students currently enrolled at a post-secondary institution or have received a degree after March 1, 2017. If entering as a business entity, at least 25% of the business must be owned by individuals that meet the above qualifications. Individual students and recent grads may also apply. For detailed eligibility requirements, please click here.

Eligible solutions (technologies, products or services) must:

• Incorporate IoT/digitization as part of the solution
• Have a positive social, environmental or economic impact (e.g. health, education, accessibility, critical human needs (food, water, disaster response/recovery, safety, etc.)

Value of Award: USD$300,000

In addition to a cash infusion to develop your solution, it will be reviewed by Cisco technology experts and high-profile judges. You’ll receive peer and industry validation for your solution, as well as have a great opportunity for global recognition and publicity.

How to Apply: Apply Now!

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Cisco

Airbus BizLab #Africa4Future Joint Accelerator Program 2019 for African Startups

Application Deadline: 30th November 2018

Eligible Countries: African countries

About the Award: #Africa4Future is a “Joint Accelerator Program” between Airbus BizLab & GIZ Make-IT in Africa. The program contributes to UN SDG # 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, and looks to foster the development of aerospace technologies with a goal of helping to solve development challenges in Africa. We focus on early-stage tech start-ups with technologies aimed at unmanned logistics and remote sensing, including automation and drones, electrification, blockchain, artificial intelligence, data analytics and material composites and manufacturing.
The program is implemented by a MEST & Innocircle consortium. MEST is a non-profit Pan-African organization where startups, entrepreneurs and members of the tech community can come together to meet, work and build. Innocircle is a South African based innovation consultancy focusing on co-creating the future with a global network.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: Early-stage tech start-ups with technologies aimed at unmanned logistics and remote sensing, including automation and drones, electrification, blockchain, artificial intelligence, data analytics and material composites and manufacturing.

Number of Awards: 10

Value of Award: The top ten applicants will have the opportunity to join a six-month acceleration program, starting on 7th January 2019. The teams will benefit from:
– Access to industry-leading experts
– Feedback on technology and business model
– Showcase at Paris International Airshow (France) and CeBit Hanover (Germany)
– Opportunity to launch a collaboration project with Airbus
As part of the program, you will participate in a mix of virtual business support and physical workshops. The preliminary programme includes:
15-17 January: Kick-off in Kenya
11-21 March: Workshop in Europe
03-15 May: Workshop in South Africa
19-26 June: DemoDays in Paris and Hanover
From January to June, all startups will have access to virtual mentoring and co-working spaces in Accra (Ghana), Lagos (Nigeria), Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Cape Town (South Africa) and Nairobi (Kenya).
Travel, accommodation and food will be covered for one person per startup for all workshops. Attendance to workshops are compulsory.

Duration of Programme: Jan 7-Jun 30 ’19 (6 months)

How to Apply: APPLY

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Commonwealth Foundation Grants 2019 for Civil Society Activities

Application Deadline: 7th January 2019 at 5pm GMT.

Eligible Countries: Commonwealth countries

About the Award: The Foundation offers grants of up to £200,000 over four years in support of innovative project ideas and approaches that seek to strengthen the ability of civic voices to engage with governments and that have the potential to improve governance and development outcomes through their active participation.
The Foundation believes in the power of stories and storytelling for social change and will award grants for creative approaches that have the potential to influence public discourse.
All proposals must ensure that the cross cutting theme of gender is mainstreamed throughout the project.

Fields of Funding: We are interested in supporting projects that strengthen civic voice so that it:

• Is more effective in holding governance institutions to account
• Enhances involvement in policy processes
• Shapes public discourse

Your project should address one or both of the following outcomes and may include the use of creative expression to achieve project aims:

1. Stronger civic voices engaging in policy processes to hold government to account:

Your project will strengthen the capacity of civic voices in contributing to:

• Monitoring government commitments and action
• Supporting the implementation of the sustainable development goals or other international agreements, and related local and national policy agendas
• Advocating policy priorities to government that address gender and other power imbalances, disparities and discrimination
• Strengthening participatory methods of engaging in regional national and local governance processes
• Raising awareness and advocating for specific policy issues

2. Public discourse more reflective of less-heard voices

• Your project will support less heard voices to contribute to public discourse on development issues
• Your project will support less heard voices to access policy spaces and/or platforms with the potential to amplify voices and influence public discourse

Type: Grants

Eligibility: To be eligible for a grant, the following criteria must be met:

1. The applicant and, when applicable, partner(s) are registered not for profit civil society organisations (CSOs).
2. The applicant and, when applicable, partner(s) must be based in a Commonwealth Foundation member country and the project should take place in an eligible Commonwealth Foundation member country. A list of countries eligible under this call is available at Annex 1.
3. The application is for funding for a maximum of £50,000 per annum
4. The applicant is applying for funding for a maximum of four years
5. The applicant does not have an existing grant from the Commonwealth Foundation at the time the application window is open.
6. The average of the applicant’s total income over the last two years is less than £3m
7. The project must address one or both Commonwealth Foundation’s outcomes
8. The applicant will provide the following documents as part of the application:
   • a completed logic model using the Commonwealth Foundation template
   • a copy of the organisation’s registration certificate1 (the official registration document provided by the relevant authorities in the country concerned)
   • a copy of the organisation’s most recent audited accounts (it must include both the accounts and the opinion of the external auditor who has certified them; it should not be older than December 2016)
   • a copy of the registration certificate for all partner organisations

Selection Criteria: The application for a grant is a two-stage process: preliminary application and full application. Only shortlisted organisations will be invited to submit a full application.
Preliminary applications will be assessed on the criteria below:
1. The application has a clear problem definition.
2. The application clearly demonstrates that it is demand driven and relevant.
3. The project must address one or both Commonwealth Foundation outcomes
4. The application clearly shows how the planned activities will deliver outputs that lead to the project outcomes.
5. The organisation(s) has the capacity to deliver the submitted proposal.
6. The project must mainstream gender in the project design and project plan
Full applications will be assessed on the criteria below, in addition to the criteria used at the preliminary application stage:
1. The application clearly illustrates a strategy to sustain the positive outcomes from the project beyond the duration of the funding received from the Commonwealth Foundation
2. There is a clear Monitoring and Evaluation strategy for the project
3. The project includes a strong gender analysis of the problem, mainstreams gender and identifies how the anticipated change specifically impacts women and girls.
The selection process is highly competitive and selected projects will have been designed to undertake work that has the potential to lead to one or more of the outcomes in the Foundation’s strategic logic model.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: up to £200,000 over four years

How to Apply: To apply applicants will need to complete and submit an online application form using the online application system in the link below.
It is important to go through every helpful application detail before submitting.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details