AOSpine Middle East and Northern Africa Research Grant Award 2019 for spinal or spinal cord research

Application Deadline: 31st December, 2018
Award winners will be announced in February 2019.

Eligible Countries: Countries in Middle East and Northern Africa

To be taken at (country): Research must be done within the AOSMENA area.

About the Award: AOSpine Middle East and Northern Africa (AOSMENA) established research funding that is available to investigators who have a desire to perform high-quality, clinically relevant spinal or spinal cord research in basic or clinical science.  The purpose of these grants is to encourage new investigators by providing start-up funding of up to 10,000.00 Swiss Francs for one year.  Consideration is given to two-year applications, however, the 2nd year of the grant will require a separate application and peer review.

Type: Grants, Entrepreneurship

Eligibility:

• The primary applicant must be an active member of AOSMENA.
• The applicant must be a physician, surgeon, or scientist with focused interest in disorders of the spine/spinal cord and with an appointment at a university or hospital-based research institution.
• The applicant must not have received this grant in the preceding year.
• Location: research must be done within the AOSMENA area.
• · Cost-sharing of projects can only be allowed with local hospitals or societies but not with industry sponsors.
• · The grant application requires evidence that the investigator has the experience and resources to complete the proposed research.
• · AOSMENA must be cited as the source of funding in any publication, presentation or in any publicity resulting from the award or its results.

Number of Awards: The number and amount of research grants awarded each year are at the discretion of AOSMENA.

Value of Award: Each award will be in the amount of 10,000.00 Swiss Francs.
Funds will be distributed in the following manner:

• 5000 Swiss Francs – distributed at the beginning of the 1-year award cycle
• 5000 Swiss Francs – distributed at 6-month interval.  Subject to the other requirements of these General Guidelines, funds will not be distributed until the 6-month Progress Report (and other Progress Reports as deemed required) has been filed with AOSMENA.

Duration of Programme: 12 months

How to Apply: Applicant must present the following documents:

• o  Application form: filled and signed
• o  Letter of intent by primary investigator to AOSMENA.
• o  CVs of primary, and co-investigators.
• o  Projected budget.

All applications should be e-mailed to:

Mary Anne Smith
Senior Project Manager​
AOSpine Middle East and Northern Africa

msmith@aospine.org

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SUSDEV Masters Scholarships (VLIR-UOS) 2019/2020 for Students from Developing Countries – K U Leuven

Application Deadline: 1st February 2019

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To be taken at (country): Belgium

About the Award: This programme trains future sustainability leaders acquainted with the necessary interdisciplinary knowledge, skills and methodologies to address and solve intertwined socio-ecological challenges hindering the construction of more sustainable paths of development.

Type: Masters

Eligibility:

1. The applicant must be a national and resident of one of the 31 scholarship countries (not necessarily the same country) at the time of application:
   • Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea, Cameroon, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Niger
   • Asia: Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia, Palestinian Territories, Vietnam
   • Latin America: Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Peru
2. The applicant must be eligible for admittance to the selected Master programme at KU Leuven.
3. The maximum age for a Master programme candidate is 35 years for an initial masters and 40 years for an advanced masters. The maximum age for a training candidate is 45 years. The candidate cannot succeed this age on January 1 of the intake year.
4. Application for admission in one of the VLIR ICP programmes listed below leads automatically to a VLIR UOS scholarship application. No further action is needed if you meet all the prerequisites.

Number of Awards: 12

Value of Award: Scholarships are provided for the full duration of the master programme. It is not possible to apply for a partial scholarship.

Duration of Programme: 2 years

How to Apply: Applicants are encouraged to follow the application instructions before applying here

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Nuclear Treaties: Unwrapping Armageddon

Conn Hallinan

The decision by the Trump administration to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement (INF) appears to be part of a broader strategy aimed at unwinding over 50 years of agreements to control and limit nuclear weapons, returning to an era characterized by the unbridled development weapons of mass destruction.

Terminating the INF treaty—which bans land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of between 300 and 3400 miles— is not, in and of itself, a fatal blow to the network of treaties and agreements dating back to the 1963 treaty that ended atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. But coupled with other actions—George W. Bush’s decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 2002 and the Obama administration’s program to upgrade the nuclear weapons infrastructure— the tapestry of agreements that has, at least in part, limited these terrifying creations, is looking increasingly frayed.

“Leaving the INF,” says Sergey Rogov of the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies, “could bring the whole structure of arms control crashing down.”

Lynn Rusten, the former senior director for arms control in the National Security Agency Council warns, “This is opening the door to an all-out arms race.”

Washington’s rationale for exiting the INF Treaty is that the Russians deployed the 9M729 cruise missile that the US claims violates the agreement, although Moscow denies it and the evidence has not been made public. Russia countercharges that the US ABM system—Aegis Ashore—deployed in Romania and planned for Poland could be used to launch similar medium range missiles.

If this were a disagreement over weapon capability, inspections would settle the matter. But the White House—in particular National Security Advisor John Bolton—is less concerned with inspections than extracting the US from agreements that in any way restrain the use of American power, be it military or economic. Thus, Trump dumped the Iran nuclear agreement, not because Iran is building nuclear weapons or violating the agreement, but because the administration wants to use economic sanctions to pursue regime change in Teheran.

In some ways, the INF agreement is low hanging fruit. The 1987 treaty banned only land-based medium range missiles, not those launched by sea or air —where the Americans hold a strong edge—and it only covered the U.S. and Russia. Other nuclear-armed countries, particularly China, India, North Korea, Israel and Pakistan have deployed a number of medium range nuclear-armed missiles. One of the arguments Bolton makes for exiting the INF is that it would allow the US to counter China’s medium range missiles.

But if the concern was controlling intermediate range missiles, the obvious path would be to expand the treaty to other nations and include air and sea launched weapons. Not that that would be easy. China has lots of intermediate range missiles, because most its potential antagonists, like Japan or US bases in Asia, are within the range of such missiles. The same goes for Pakistan, India, and Israel.

Intermediate range weapons—sometimes called “theater” missiles—do not threaten the US mainland the way that similar US missiles threaten China and Russia. Beijing and Moscow can be destroyed by long-range intercontinental missiles, but also by theater missiles launched from ships or aircraft. One of the reasons that Europeans are so opposed to withdrawing from the INF is that, in the advent of nuclear war, medium-range missiles on their soil will make them a target.

But supposed violations of the treaty is not why Bolton and the people around him oppose the agreement. Bolton called for withdrawing from the INF Treaty three years before the Obama administration charged the Russians with cheating. Indeed, Bolton has opposed every effort to constrain nuclear weapons and has already announced that the Trump administration will not extend the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) when it expires in 2021.

START caps the number of US and Russian deployed nuclear weapons at 1550, no small number.

The Bush administration’s withdrawal from the 1972 ABM treaty in 2002 was the first major blow to the treaty framework. Anti-ballistic missiles are inherently destabilizing, because the easiest way to defeat such systems is to overwhelm them by expanding the number of launchers and warheads. Bolton—a longtime foe of the ABM agreement—recently bragged that dumping the treaty had no effect on arms control.

But the treaty’s demise has shelved START talks, and it was the ABM’s deployment in Eastern Europe—along with NATO’s expansion up to the Russian borders—that led to Moscow deploying the cruise missile now in dispute.

While Bolton and Trump are more aggressive about terminating agreements, it was the Obama administration’s decision to spend $1.6 trillion to upgrade and modernize US nuclear weapons that now endangers one of the central pillars of the nuclear treaty framework, the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

That agreement ended the testing of nuclear weapons, slowing the development of new weapons, particularly miniaturization and warheads with minimal yields. The former would allow more warheads on each missile, the latter could increase the possibility of using nuclear weapons without setting off a full-scale nuclear exchange.

Nukes are tricky to design, so you don’t want to deploy one without testing it. The Americans have bypassed some of the obstacles created by the CTBT by using computers like the National Ignition Facility. The B-61 Mod 11 warhead, soon-to-be-deployed in Europe, was originally a city killer, but labs at Livermore, CA and Los Alamos and Sandia, NM turned it into a bunker buster, capable of taking out command and control centers buried deep in the ground.

Nevertheless, the military and the nuclear establishment—ranging from companies such as Lockheed Martin and Honeywell International to university research centers—have long felt hindered by the CTBT. Add the Trump administration’s hostility to anything that constrains US power and the CTBT may be next on the list.

Restarting nuclear testing will end any controls on weapons of mass destruction. And since Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) requires nuclear-armed powers to eventually disarm their weapons of mass destruction, that agreement may go as well. In a very short time countries like South Korea, Japan and Saudi Arabia will join the nuclear club, with South Africa and Brazil in the wings. The latter two countries researched producing nuclear weapons in the 1980s, and South Africa actually tested one.

The demise of the INF agreement will edge the world closer to nuclear war. Since medium range missiles shorten the warning time for a nuclear attack from 30 minutes to 10 minutes or less, countries will keep their weapons on a hair trigger. “Use them or lose them” is the philosophy that impels the tactics of nuclear war.

In the past year, Russia and NATO held very large military exercises on one another’s borders. Russian, US and Chinese fighter planes routinely play games of chicken. What happens when one of those “games” goes wrong?

The US and the Soviet Union came within minutes of an accidental war on at least two occasions, and, with so many actors and so many weapons, it will be only a matter of time before some country interprets a radar image incorrectly and goes to DEFCON 1—imminent nuclear war.

The INF Treaty came about because of strong opposition and huge demonstrations in Europe and the United States. That kind of pressure, coupled with a pledge by countries not to deploy such weapons, will be required again, lest the entire tapestry of agreements that kept the horror of nuclear war at bay vanish.

Who is Afraid of American Sanctions?

Elias Akleh

The American administration under Trump has become so addicted to waging economic sanctions; a new form of war, against other countries to a point where it does not hesitate to break international laws, to impose sanctions against its strategic allies, and to face the risk of international condemnation and isolation as a result.

Since his election (selection) as president, Trump has imposed economic sanctions and waged tariff wars against Russia, China, North Korea, Syria, Turkey, Sudan, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and many European corporations. All have been added to the still going on 58 years old sanctions against the small island of Cuba; an indication that most sanctions fail to achieve planned results.

In May 2018 Trump announced that the US will withdraw from Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) and will re-impose sanctions against Iran claiming the deal was bad for the US and needs to be replaced with another that includes a ban on Iran’s ballistic missiles. On November 5th, Trump has re-instated economic sanctions against Iran aiming to drive Iranian oil exports to zero.

The JCPOA was signed by Iran, US, Germany, England, France, Russia and China, and was unanimously approved by the UN Security Council Resolution 2231. It must be emphasized that although Iran has been complying with its commitment to the JPCOA as has been confirmed by Director General of the International Atomic energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano in September 10th2018, the sanctions against Iran have never been lifted. The JCPOA had resolved only Iran’s nuclear program and its oil trade. Iran restricted its nuclear activities and allowed inspections of its nuclear facilities in exchange for the release of its oil money that was held by international banks.

Re-imposing the sanctions was condemned by the whole international community except, of course, by Israel, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE). The European Union issued a statement regretting the US new sanctions against Iran. It states the following:

“Our aim is to protect European economic actors, who have legitimate commercial exchange with Iran in line with European legislation and the United Nations’ Security Council resolution 2231 … the 2015 agreement is crucial for the security of Europe, the region and the entire world.”

Russia rejected the sanctions and declared them illegal. China declared that it will continue its trade with Iran in confirmation to its commitment to the nuclear deal. South Korean and Indian industries depend greatly on Iranian oil. Iran’s neighbors; Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, consider Iran their major trade partner and their economies would be devastated without such trade.

These particular unilateral American sanctions against Iran are unprecedented illegal and most dangerous events in the American history. For the first time in world history, the US; the host of the United Nations and the Security Council, is violating UNSC resolution 2231. Worst than that, Trump’s administration is threatening to punish other nations; the whole world in fact, who would abide by this particular legal resolution. This constitutes a mockery of international decisions and a criminal blackmail of responsible nations, who seek to uphold international laws and agreements. This American violation of UNSC resolution will marginalize and weaken international organizations such as the UN, SC, ICC, IAEA and others. The present international legal world order would be rendered irrelevant and could be gradually dissolved leading to international chaos.

For the first time in American history, its close allies such as EU, Japan, South Korea, India and even Turkey, firmly opposed the American policies, decided to create new financial and trade mechanism; Special Purpose Vehicle, based on barter system to circumvent American sanctions, and to continue doing business with Iran. Furthermore, the EU declared that its 1969 law would protect all and any European corporation, who wants to do business with Iran, from any lawsuit by non-European courts.

States and corporations started abandoning the use of Petro dollar and American banking systems and are using instead local currencies and local banks to pay for Iranian oil. India and Iran are using Indian currency; the rupees, to trade oil. South Korea is paying for Iranian oil via the Central Bank of Iran’s accounts at Woori Bank and the Industrial Bank of Korea.

All this could usher a new international economic and trade system independent from the hegemonic American financial system. This will gradually isolate the US further and will render its Dollar and its financial banking weaker.

Trump’s “America first” motto is perceived, although not openly expressed, by European leaders as similar to Hitler’s “Deutschland über alles”; “Germany over all” motto, and even more dangerously threatening world peace. Trump called to build the US/Mexico separation wall against “illegal criminal” Hispanic immigrants, imposed unfair trade tariffs against other nations, demanded EU to contribute more money to NATO, withdrew from climate agreement, recognized Jerusalem as capital of Israel in violation of all international agreements,  demanded UN member countries to blindly and automatically adopt American policies because the US is the largest financial contributor to the UN, cut American contributions to world organizations such as UNRWA, threatened to withdraw US from World Trade Organization, sold weapons to Saudi Arabia to continue its terrorist inhumane war against Yemen, is working to cover up the Saudi terrorist support in Syria and its local crimes against its own dissenters and journalists such as Khashoggi’s murder, is imposing unilateral illegal sanctions against other states, and lately but not lastly is withdrawing from nuclear INF treaty to allow the US to deploy advanced nuclear weapons into Europe.

Such policies had caused Donald Tusk; the President of the European Council, to warn of the emergence of “… a new phenomenon; the capricious assertiveness of the American administration … with friends like that who needs enemies… Trump’s doctrine is dangerous for Europe”

In his interview in French with Europe 1 radio Mr. Macron; the French President, criticizing Trump’s move to scrap the INF treaty with Russia that eliminated a whole class of missiles stationed in Europe, had suggested that Europe needs to form its own true European army to defend itself against Russia, China and even the US: “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America.” Macron’s sentiment was endorsed by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. Macron has also rebuked Trump’s nationalist policies in his speech during the WWI armistice centenary ceremony this Sunday Nov. 11th.

These strong oppositions from America’s European allies and the international condemnations of the sanctions against Iran had forced Trump’s administration to ease its sanctions by granting oil waivers to eight countries; Japan, South Korea, India, China, Taiwan, Turkey, Greece and Italy, for a period of six months. European Union did not receive such a waiver, which led Bruno Le Maire; the French economy minister, to complain to The Financial Times about Trump’s bullying stating that “Europe refuses to allow the US to be the trade policeman of the world.”

Trump’s administration is under the illusion that what they call “toughest sanctions” would bring Iran to its knees, and they are trying to sell this illusion to the public as John Bolton; the National Security Advisor, was trying to do on fox news. Bolton asserted that:

“sanctions are having enormous economic consequences … Iran is in a depression … the rial currency declined about 70% … inflation had quadrupled … the country is in recession … riots and demonstrations all around the country.”

The facts show that 40 years of real international toughest sanctions against Iran had failed to even weaken Iran’s economy and resolve. On the contrary, after all the devastation Iran had suffered during the eight years Iraq/Iran war, Iran had successfully flourished back to become one of the strongest economic and military country in the Middle East. During the last decade Iran had adopted what was described as a resistant economical plan that had modernized all Iranian industrial and technological avenues leading to self-reliance and self-sufficiency. Finally, the world was convinced that they could not accomplish any results except through negotiations that led to the 2015 JCPOA.

The American unilateral on-going 58 years long economic sanctions against the small island of Cuba had failed to bring Cuba to its knees, yet, Trump’s administration believes that its own unilateral sanctions against large powerful Iran would yield some results!

One may question what made the Trump’s administration risk losing its international political credibility, lose its closest allies, face isolation, and suffer probable economic and financial losses by imposing doomed to failure sanctions. To find the answer one must consider these sanctions as only one small piece in the puzzle of the New Middle East Project.

It is a very well-known fact by now that a Zionist Jewish elite owns and controls the Federal Reserve and almost most of the western banking systems, which fund Jewish lobbies to influence the foreign policies of most of the Western world for Israel’s benefit. It is also a well-known fact that the latest few American presidents, few of whom were not qualified for the position like Trump, would not have attained the presidency except through Jewish money. For such money and prestigious office, the selected president has to follow the dictates of the Jewish lobby, otherwise he would meet a fate similar to that of assassinated president Kennedy.

The Greater Israel Project was planned for the Middle East. The state of Israel was illegally and forcefully established on occupied Palestinian land. Yet, after three successive generations of Zionist Jewish Israeli soldiers got psychologically and emotionally exhausted by continuous wars, terrorist groups were brought into the region to destroy any Arab resistance axis to the project. Syria was the latest victim.

A military coalition of Syria, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah was able to defeat the terrorist groups. This coalition forms an obstacle to the expansionist Greater Israel Project, and might become the seed of a new world order competing with the old American unilateral world order. Trump exposed this fear when he answered reporters who asked him about the effectiveness of the sanctions. He stated:

“when I came in office it looked like Iran would take over the Middle East, it was a question of literally less than years, very quickly, and now nobody is talking about that.”

Trump’s administration seems to have received Zionist orders to destroy this dangerous seed no matter what the cost is, including the use of economic sanctions and MESA; Arab NATO-like alliance.

The establishment of the illegal expansionist terrorist state of Israel in the heart of the Arab World has been the root of all evil in the region for the last hundred years. Unfortunately, as long as Israel exists more devastating wars are in the future of the Middle East, and the whole world will not be spared of its evil effects.

American Gun

David Sparenberg

Another mass shooting in America!  They are so frequent they are anticipated.  I favor stick gun control, and the application of the Second Amendment of the Constitution should be challenged as it now stands before weapons’ technology but continues to be interpreted along antiquated guidelines. How little is commonly known about the original purpose and history of the Second Amendment, founded, as it was, on the fear of slave revolt!   Automatic and semi-automatic weapons are weapons of mass destruction.  Their design is to serve one purpose alone, to kill as many people on the ground as possible, as rapidly as possible.

But gun control laws, which I support, will not change the climate of mass shootings on their own.  As a people, the American people crucially need to overcome the culture of violence and free ourselves from the pandemic fear at our throats—working to end the economics of violence and our being duped into complicity if not conspiracy by the politics of fear.  We fear ourselves, to the same measure as our popular ignorance and over-exposure to negative, shallowing and life demeaning influences.  We fear one another and “the other”—the newest arrival, the outsider, the stranger, our neighbors across the urban jungles, along the roaring, junky littered streets, our neighbor next door, edgily defined by boundaries of private property, fences and suspicion.  Too many here are possessed by the demons of worth contraworthlessness, distrust, hatred.  Demons lurking in the dark compounds of the collective psyche; the abyss of unhealed, unforgiven and unforgiving national history.

This United States of America was founded on shining ideals.  But the United States of America; increasingly with the resources to aspire to empire; became manifest through genocide against indigenous populations,rape and devastation of a continental environment; replacing pristine eco-systems with plots and plans of defoliation and toxicity for profit; and the perfidious, racist institution of slavery.  How much of our fear, our hatreds, our obsession with the American gun, is rooted in this dark history, the nightmare realities buried alive under the broken promises of the American dream?

We cannot discern a truthful answer to this important inquiry until we have more profoundly and integrally confronted and wholeheartedly worked through the unlearned heritage of these obscure and obscene realities. Until we come to terms with denial, deception and euphoric memory loss as the conditional, commodity-based thoughtlessness of American life.

The immediate question therefore is this: How many mass shootings until critical mass, how many more citizens gunned down, until we decide enough is truly enough or, full on, hell bent, we jump into a free-for-all shoot out?  Mass murder takes lives and it also destroys social fabric.  We could then ask the question again: How long before we, as a people, are moving toward a clear conscience and altered consciousness regarding shared life?  Indeed (literally, in-deed) before we make, as a touchstone of community, the process of change to be realized as solid, substantial and sustainable truth:  Guns are not required in the values of American identity, unless, under moral collapse, we accept deadly force as a first and final reaction.But nobody needs to be an outlaw or cowboy; nobody needs to be a gunslinger to be qualified to be an American.

In conversation with a co-worker and friend on the latest mass shootings, he gave voice to an ancient proverb, saying, “When you ride on the tiger’s back, you end up in the tiger’s mouth.”  America is in the tiger’s mouth.  Prying the jaws open again and again is expedient, but not a cure and not a solution.  We stop devouring and being devoured only when the tiger is tamed.  The raging man-eater in individual hearts and minds exorcised.  The raging man-eater in politics and practice—the self-absorbed thinness of alienated, isolated and festering life that prowls, ever present, behind masks and pretense; barely below the eroded surface of our shining ideals, defanged and pacified.

Consider:  Must we be utterly broken, popularly maimed, absolutely terrified for so long and at what loss and suffering before we attain the humility of acceptance and come together in true humanity?  Not as nationalists, to be sure, but as a nation-world of human diversity?  Great perhaps by virtue of affirmations and ethical responsibility, but definitely not subject to political propaganda and not abjectly waiting our turns to become victims or shooters.   On the other hand, what we keep evading under and within the status quo of the American gun is the call to action: Fear poisons decency,

envenoms democracy. On the loaded roulette table of nihilism and absurdity life is cheap and with each loss—the most recent and the upcoming mass shootings (already annually in the hundreds)—life gets cheaper.

Ludwig Binswanger, one of the founders of existential psychoanalysis, studying the rise of totalitarianism in Fascist Europe in the 1930s-40’s said that if we want to understand the future of a nation, we should study that nation’s present-day criminals.  Past is prelude to the present; present prelude to the future.  If this formula is correct and uncorrected, the prognosis for America’s future—under the dictatorshipof the American Gun—is bloody.

Is Russia Arming the Taliban to Avenge Loss of Ukraine?

Nauman Sadiq

On November 9, Russia hosted talks between Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, the members of the Taliban from its Doha, Qatar office and representatives from eleven regional states, including China, India, Iran and Pakistan. The meeting showcased Russia’s re-emergence as a proactive global power and its regional clout.

At the same time when the conference was hosted in Moscow, however, the Taliban mounted concerted attacks in the northern Baghlan province, the Jaghori district in central Ghazni province and the western Farah province bordering Iran.

In fact, according to a recent report by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the US-backed Afghan government only controls 55% of Afghanistan’s territory. It’s worth noting that SIGAR is a US-based governmental agency that often inflates figures. Factually, the government’s writ does not extend beyond a third of Afghanistan. In many cases, the Afghan government controls city-centers of districts and rural areas are either controlled by the Taliban or are contested.

If we take a cursory look at the insurgency in Afghanistan, the Bush administration toppled the Taliban regime with the help of the Northern Alliance in October 2001 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack. Since the beginning, however, Afghanistan was an area of lesser priority for the Bush administration.

The number of US troops stationed in Afghanistan did not exceed beyond 30,000 during George Bush’s tenure as president, and soon after occupying Afghanistan, he invaded Iraq in March 2003 and American resources and focus shifted to Iraq.

It was the Obama administration that made Afghanistan the bedrock of its foreign policy in 2009 along with fulfilling then-President Obama’s electoral pledge of withdrawing the US troops from Iraq in December 2011. At the height of the surge of the US troops in Afghanistan in 2010, they numbered around 140,000 but still did not manage to have a lasting effect on the relentless Taliban insurgency.

The Taliban are known to be diehard fighters who are adept at hit-and-run guerilla tactics and have a much better understanding of the Afghan territory compared to foreigners. Even by their standards, however, the Taliban insurgency seems to be on steroids during the last couple of years.

They have managed to overrun and hold vast swathes of territory not only in the traditional Pashtun heartland of southern Afghanistan, such as Helmand, but have also made inroads into the northern provinces of Afghanistan which are the traditional strongholds of the Northern Alliance comprising Tajiks and Uzbeks.

In October 2016, for instance, the Taliban mounted brazen attacks on the Gormach district of northwestern Faryab province, the Tirankot district of Uruzgan province and briefly captured the city-center of the northern Kunduz province, before they were repelled with the help of US air power.

This outreach of the Taliban into the traditional strongholds of the Tajiks and Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan bordering the Russian satellite states Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan has come as a surprise to perceptive observers of the militancy in Afghanistan.

It is commonly believed that the Taliban are the proxies of Pakistan’s military which uses them as “strategic assets” to offset the influence of India in Afghanistan. The hands of Pakistan’s military, however, have been full with a homegrown insurgency of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) since 2009 when it began conducting military operations in Swat and the tribal areas.

Although some remnants of the Taliban still find safe havens in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan, the renewed vigor and brazen assaults of the Taliban, particularly in the Afghanistan’s northern provinces as I described earlier, cannot be explained by the support of Pakistan’s military to the Taliban.

In an August 2017 report for the New York Times, Carlotta Gall described the killing of the former Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a US drone strike on a tip-off from Pakistan’s intelligence in Pakistan’s western Balochistan province in May 2016 when he was coming back from a secret meeting with Russian and Iranian officials in Iran. According to the report, “Iran facilitated a meeting between Mullah Akhtar Mansour and Russian officials, Afghan officials said, securing funds and weapons from Moscow for the insurgents.”

It bears mentioning that the Russian support to the Taliban coincides with its intervention in Syria in September 2015, after the Ukrainian Crisis in November 2013 when Viktor Yanukovych suspended the preparations for the implementation of an association agreement with the European Union and tried to take Ukraine back into the folds of the Russian sphere of influence by accepting billions of dollars of loan package offered by Vladimir Putin to Ukraine, consequently causing a crisis in which Yanukovych was ousted from power and Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.

Although the ostensible reason of Russia’s support – and by some accounts, Iran’s as well – to the Taliban is that it wants to contain the influence of the Islamic State Khorasan Province in Afghanistan because the Khorasan Province includes members of the now defunct Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Russia’s traditional foe, the real reason of Russia’s intervention in Syria and support to the Taliban in Afghanistan is that the Western powers are involved in both of these conflicts and since a New Cold War has started between Russia and the Western powers after the Ukrainian crisis, hence it suits Russia’s strategic interests to weaken the influence of the Western powers in the Middle East and Central Asian regions and project its own power.

In order to grasp the significance of the New Cold War between Russia and the Western powers, on March 4, Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent working for the British foreign intelligence service, and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury. A week later, another Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov was found dead in his London home.

Skripal was recruited by the British MI6 in 1995, and before his arrest in Russia in December 2004, he was alleged to have blown the cover of scores of Russian secret agents. He was released in a spy swap deal in 2010 and was allowed to settle in Salisbury. Theresa May’s government concluded that Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a Moscow-made, military-grade nerve agent, Novichok, and expelled 23 Russian diplomats. In a tit-for-tat move, Kremlin also expelled a similar number of British diplomats.

Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump assured their full support to Theresa May and also expelled scores of Russian diplomats. Thus, the relations between Moscow and the Western powers have reached their lowest ebb since the break-up of the former Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in December 1991.

Although Russia might appear as an aggressor in these instances, in order to understand the real casus belli of the New Cold War between Russia and the Western powers, we must recall another momentous event that took place in Deir al-Zor province of Syria a month before the poisoning of Skripals who have since recovered.

On February 7, the US B-52 bombers and Apache helicopters struck a contingent of Syrian government troops and allied forces in Deir al-Zor that reportedly killed and wounded scores of Russian military contractors working for the Russian private security firm, the Wagner group. The survivors described the bombing as an absolute “massacre” and Kremlin lost more Russian citizens in one day than it had lost during its entire military campaign in support of the Syrian government since September 2015.

The reason why Washington struck Russian contractors working in Syria was that the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which is mainly comprised of Kurdish YPG militias – had reportedly handed over the control of some areas east of Euphrates River to Deir al-Zor Military Council (DMC), which is the Arab-led component of SDF, and had relocated several battalions of Kurdish YPG militias to Afrin and along Syria’s northern border with Turkey in order to defend the Kurdish-held areas against the onslaught of the Turkish armed forces and allied Free Syria Army (FSA) militias in their “Operation Olive Branch” in Syria’s northwest.

Syrian forces with the backing of Russian contractors took advantage of the opportunity and crossed the Euphrates River to capture an oil refinery located east of Euphrates River in the Kurdish-held area of Deir al-Zor.

The US Air Force responded with full force, knowing well the ragtag Arab component of SDF – mainly comprised of local Arab tribesmen and mercenaries to make the Kurdish-led SDF appear more representative and inclusive – was simply not a match for the superior training and arms of Syrian troops and Russian military contractors. Consequently, causing a carnage in which scores of Russian citizens lost their lives, an incident which became a trigger for the beginning of a New Cold War which is obvious from the subsequent events.

Australia: Welfare cut leaves asylum seekers facing destitution

Max Newman

In April, the Liberal-National Coalition government, then headed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, announced it would strip welfare payments from those asylum seekers temporarily living in Australia on bridging visas, and force them to look for work.

Since August, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has continued the policy, which affects refugees still waiting, often for many years, to have their protection visa applications finalised.

As of February, some 13,300 people relied on these payments. So far, roughly 1,000 people have been cut off. A new report by the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) reveals that this has placed almost 80 percent of them at risk of homelessness and destitution.

The Labor Party fully backed the decision to end the Status Resolution Support Service (SRSS). Shayne Neumann, Labor’s immigration spokesman, declared that welfare “abuses” needed to be stamped out.

The paltry level of the SRSS payment has already pushed people into deprivation. It was set at 89 percent of the poverty-level Newstart unemployment benefit, leaving asylum seekers with just $270 a week.

The SRSS provided essential casework services to help asylum seekers find cheap accommodation, as well as torture and trauma counselling. Now, overburdened charities are the sole suppliers of food and housing supports.

The RCOA surveyed the clients of 24 of these non-government organisations and concluded that 79 percent were at risk of homelessness and destitution without the SRSS. Of the 24 organisations, 17 were already providing emergency food and housing relief to people.

Just 8 percent of respondents had full-time work and only 20 percent were considered “job ready.” Two-thirds were unable to find employment or were not looking because of care requirements, age or poor health.

The Home Affairs Department claims to be cutting off only asylum seekers who have the capacity to support themselves. In April a departmental spokesperson said: “Individuals on a bridging visa with work rights and who have the capacity to work are expected to support themselves prior to being granted a substantive visa or departing Australia.”

The RCOA survey, however, revealed extensive evidence that very vulnerable people have been affected. “It’s undeniable,” RCOA deputy director Rebecca Eckard said. “We know of people who are already couch-surfing, people staying in parks, living in each other’s cars. It is, unfortunately, very much happening.

“If it weren’t for some of the community organisations providing not just emergency relief but giving free housing or heavily subsidised housing, people would be completely on the streets.”

The government specifically targeted people studying full-time. The departmental spokesperson said: “If an adult chooses to study full-time, when they are able to work, they are not eligible for SRSS income support.”

A young female asylum seeker, Sarvenaz, told the Guardian she lost her benefit payments on her first day of study. “They actually didn’t tell me, they just cut it off without explanation,” she said. “I went to Centrelink to check what’s going on and they said because you were studying we have to automatically stop your payment from the beginning of the semester.”

Sarvenaz and her family had been on bridging visas for over four years. Initially forbidden to work, and then unable to find jobs, Sarvenaz and her sister volunteered with a charity organisation and enrolled at a university. Sarvenaz’s course required full-time attendance and she was ineligible for any student welfare support.

Sarvenaz commented: “How do people expect someone to arrive to this country—who doesn’t have access to the services, who is stressing from the trauma they have been through and is an applicant who hasn’t been processed, and doesn’t have skills to work with and whose education history isn’t accepted—[to] find work?”

The government has branded these people the “legacy caseload.” The Greens-backed Gillard Labor government placed approximately 30,000 asylum seekers on bridging visas in 2012, when it scrapped permanent protection visas. The visas denied the right to family reunion and to work.

In dealing with the “legacy caseload,” the government has introduced measures to speed up their deportation. In 2014, the Fast Track Assessment Program abolished previous rights to appeal visa refusals to a tribunal. Instead, the Immigration Assessment Authority (IAA) performs “on paper” reviews, in which applicants have no right to produce additional evidence. Since the IAA commenced operation, the application success rates have dropped from 90 percent to 70 percent.

In March 2017, with Labor’s support, the government announced that refugees on bridging visas had 60 days to complete complex visa application documents or face deportation.

This year, the government stripped income support from around 190 refugees who had been transferred to Australia for medical treatment from the immigration prison camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. The refugees were thrust onto bridging visas and evicted from community detention houses.

Successive Coalition and Labor governments in Australia have pioneered the cruel and inhumane treatment of asylum seekers. Their “border protection” regime seeks to make refugees scapegoats for the deteriorating working and living conditions inflicted on the working class.

Sri Lankan political crisis deepens: Prime minister splits from president

W.A. Sunil 

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena’s unconstitutional decision last Friday to dissolve parliament and call a general election has only deepened the political crisis in Colombo following his dismissal of Ranil Wickremesinghe and installation of former president Mahinda Rajapakse as prime minister on October 26.

Less than 36 hours after the dissolution of the parliament, Rajapakse abruptly quit the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), of which Sirisena is the president, to join the relatively new Sri Lanka Podujana Party (SLPP) led by his brother Basil Rajapakse, and to launch his election campaign.

Under pressure of a deepening economic crisis, rising social discontent and intensifying geo-political tensions, the political establishment in Colombo is fracturing. In the 2015 presidential election, Sirisena broke from Rajapakse and ran against him with the support of the opposition United National Party (UNP) and the backing of the US and India.

The resultant “national unity” government of Sirisena and UNP leader Wickremesinghe collapsed on October 26. Now the opportunist reunion of Sirisena with Rajapakse is falling apart, leaving the president isolated and the SLFP, one of Sri Lanka’s two longstanding bourgeois parties, facing a potential collapse.

The Rajapakses formed the SLPP, based on their faction of the SLFP, to contest local elections earlier this year. Exploiting mass hostility to the “unity” government, they won a convincing victory over both the UNP and Sirisena’s faction of the SLFP. This widespread opposition, which is also expressed in strikes and protests by workers, students and peasants, is a key factor in the political crisis.

While Sirisena has been politically weakened by Rajapakse’s decision, he has over the past two weeks concentrated significant state power in his own hands as president. He controls the military and police as well as the state media and other ministries. Having already acted in flagrant disregard of the constitution on two occasions, Sirisena could use the autocratic powers of the executive presidency again in a desperate bid to stay in power.

Workers, youth and the rural poor must be warned: none of the factions of the ruling class will defend the basic rights of working people. They will ruthlessly impose the austerity dictates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and big business. The sham claims of all these politicians of big business that they defend democracy must be rejected.

In a Tweet on Saturday, Mahinda Rajapakse declared that “a general election will truly establish the will of the people and make way for a stable country.” His younger brother and former defense secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, told a public meeting on the same day that “there is no stronger step than this to strengthen democracy in the country.”

However, both Mahinda Rajapakse and his brother were notorious while in power for their ruthless prosecution of the communal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Tens of thousands of civilians were slaughtered in the final government offensive in 2009. The Rajapakse government presided over a police-state regime responsible for assassinating or “disappearing” political opponents, journalists and many Tamil youth.

Moreover, Rajapakse backed the unconstitutional actions of Sirisena in sacking Wickremesinghe, proroguing parliament, and, when a parliamentary majority could not be achieved through bullying and bribery, calling a new general election. The election is scheduled for January 5 and the new parliament will meet on January 17, allowing enough time for backroom horse-trading in case no single party wins a majority.

The UNP, with the support of two opposition parties, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), has vowed to go to the Supreme Court to challenge the dissolution of parliament. However, the chief justice and supreme court judges are appointees of the president and are likely to rule in his favour, despite his obvious breaches of the constitution.

A UNP leader and former finance minister Mangala Samaraweera declared to the media on Saturday, that his party would fight against the “tyrant” President Sirisena’s “shock sacking of the legislature.” Grandstanding as a “democrat,” he proclaimed: “We will fight in the courts, we will fight in parliament and we will fight at the polls.”

Like Rajapakse and Sirisena, the UNP uses the constitution when it suits and dispenses with democratic and legal forms when it does not. The UNP has a long history of anti-democratic measures, including the abolition of the citizenship rights of Tamil plantation workers in 1948, the imposition of the draconian Public Security Act and the establishment of the executive presidency in 1978.

UNP leader Wickremesinghe was central to the regime-change operation orchestrated in Washington to oust Rajapakse as president and install Sirisena via the 2015 elections. The US, which had backed Rajapakse’s war against the LTTE and turned a blind eye to the military’s atrocities, was hostile to his government’s close ties with China.

Not surprisingly, the US and its allies—the UK, EU and now Australia—have lined up with the UNP and Wickremesinghe. The latest US statement on Saturday warned that the dissolution of the parliament “jeopardizes Sri Lanka’s economic progress and international reputation” and called on the president to “respect his country’s democratic tradition and the rule of law” and fulfil “the commitments to good governance and democracy upon which he and his government were elected.”

What utter hypocrisy! With the assistance of the pseudo-left organisations, the trade unions and various NGOs, Washington dressed up its 2015 behind-the-scenes machinations to oust Rajapakse as the defence of “good governance and democracy.” If it does not get its way, US imperialism will not hesitate to carry out another regime-change operation to ensure Colombo toes its line.

The intervention of the major powers will only compound the intense political crisis in Colombo that left the ruling class divided, perplexed and fearful. The editorial in this weekend’s Sunday Island declared: “The president of this so-called Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka has thrown the country from the frying pan into the fire… The country is now in untested waters and a return to stability must be a priority.” But it stopped short of stating how.

As in 2015, the pseudo-left Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP) has lined up with UNP and Wickremesinghe, while others such as the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) and the United Socialist Party (USP) have again begun to campaign for a “broader front of left parties, civil organizations and mass organizations.” Either directly or indirectly, they all function to keep workers and youth tied to one or the other bourgeois party and to block a struggle to overthrow the crisis-ridden capitalist system.

The working class must break from all these political charlatans. It cannot postpone the necessary practical and political preparations for the defence of democratic and social rights. It is vital that workers—Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim—unite and start to take matters into their own hands. A political struggle against all the bourgeois factions is needed so as to rally the urban poor and rural masses in the fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government based on socialist policies. That is the perspective for which the Socialist Equality Party fights.

Fujimori’s new detention sets reconfiguration of Peruvian politics

Armando Cruz

After a seven-day judicial hearing, Keiko Fujimori, longtime leader of the right-wing populist fujimorista movement and its party Fuerza Popular (FP), was sentenced to 36 months (three years) of “preventive detention” by Justice Richard Concepcion Carhuancho. Fujimori is now detained along with four other people, her closest political advisors, while being investigated for forming a “criminal organization” inside the FP and using it as a cover for laundering money received from the giant Brazilian construction multinational Odebrecht as part of its program of bribing the whole Peruvian political establishment as well as those of other countries in the region.

Fujimori and Co. were originally detained on October 10 under orders by Concepcion on the same money laundering charges. The decision shocked the whole country as Fujimori—with her extensive connections in Peru’s judiciary and business elite—was seen as an “untouchable.” Moreover, at the start of the year, she had been the leading politician, according to polls.

Under Peruvian law, a judge can order the detention of a presumptive criminal under investigation to minimize the risk of escaping the country. Fujimori’s lawyers appealed the initial decision, and three judges unanimously overturned the detention order. Fujimori and her fellow party leaders were freed after seven days of their ten-day detention. The judges argued that Fujimori and the rest posed no risk of flight or obstruction of justice.

Then, state anti-corruption attorney Jose Domingo Perez, who is part of the legal investigation team into the Odebrecht “Lava Jato” corruption scandal in Peru, announced that he had sufficient evidence to start an investigation into money laundering schemes involving Fujimori and a large group of FP members and requested that Concepcion hold a hearing where he could make the case for 36 months of preventive detention.

The judicial hearings started on October 24 and were televised, achieving record viewing audiences and capturing most of the attention of the national media. Outside the building where the hearings were taking place, fujimorista followers and anti-fujimoristas engaged in street skirmishes.

On October 31, after seven days, Concepcion ordered Fujimori and her four close advisors to be detained for 36 months. Today, Fujimori is in a woman’s prison in the Chorrillos district of Lima, after District Attorney Domingo Perez ordered her detention. Also, Perez has announced he will solicit further hearings for other FP members.

Concepcion had previously placed former president Ollanta Humala (2011-2016) and his wife/accomplice Nadine Heredia under preventive detention for 18 months, while prosecutors investigated if and how they received Odebrecht’s bribes. Fujimori and Co. received a far longer detention because they are being investigated under the framework of the “Law against Criminal Organizations”.

Perez—who has been lionized for having managed to put Keiko Fujimori, a widely hated figure, behind bars—was helped by fresh evidence supplied by a secret witness. The witness voluntarily brought to the investigators’ office screenshots of a message chat used by the fujimorista caucus in Congress on which they discussed, among many other machinations, how to “shield” two high-ranking members of the judiciary: former Supreme Court member Cesar Hinostroza and current Attorney General Pedro Chavarry.

Both men were exposed by audiotapes leaked by an independent journalist group in July as being part of a secret criminal organization (labeled the “Port’s White Collars”) inside the judiciary. The audiotapes made clear that Hinostroza, Chavarry and many other judges and attorneys were part of a corrupt scheme that sold favorable sentences or major posts inside the state to wealthy individuals, businesses and even drug cartels. The audiotapes mention fujimorista congressmen and Keiko herself as being their most important allies. Hinostroza stopped an investigation into then-FP secretary Joaquin Ramirez, who had been accused of laundering money obtained through drug trafficking.

Fujimorista congressmen obstructed at least two petitions to investigate Hinostroza for participation in the “White Collars” group. Then, at the beginning of October, amid mounting political and public pressure, Congress—controlled by the fujimoristas—finally lifted its protection of Hinostroza. However, it delayed the decision, in a seemingly deliberate manner, so that Hinostroza could secretly escape the country on October 17, flying to Spain, where he was, nonetheless, detained under a petition of the Peruvian government. Peruvian authorities have declared that they will seek his extradition.

Meanwhile, Chavarry is currently being protected. Fujimorista congressmen have voted against petitions by other congressmen for his removal as Attorney General. During the last months, from his position of power, Chavarry sacked prominent attorneys investigating either Fujimori or APRA’s former president, Alan Garcia, and their ties to the Lava Jato scandal. He also has been engaged in a war of words with District Attorney Perez, after he called Chavarry “morally unfit” for his post.

On top of the detention of its leader, the FP has also been hurt by several resignations inside the Congress caucus and the party. With Fujimori’s detention, the party’s abysmally low approval ratings and its disastrous results in the last municipal and regional elections, there is mounting fear within the FP that the party is entering its terminal stage and the time has come to jump ship as fast as possible.

Given the extremely personalistic character of FP and the whole fujimorista movement, it cannot survive without a member of the Fujimori family leading it. Keiko is now detained; her father Alberto (who ruled between 1990 and 2000) is holed up in a private clinic in order to avoid going back to jail after a judge nullified the pardon provided by then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski last December; and Keiko’s brother Kenji has retired from politics after being politically destroyed in a vote-buying scandal set up by Keiko that precipitated Kuczynki’s fall.

Fujimorismo was a right-wing populist movement that appealed to working class and lower-middle class layers on the basis of the “legacy” of the original Alberto Fujimori’s government: especially its limited welfare programs for the poor and its defeat of the nationalist-Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso.

On the other hand, it was the favorite party of wide layers of the ruling class, many of whom were the main beneficiaries of Alberto Fujimori’s regime, whose other key “legacy” was a set of neoliberal reforms that privatized national industries and eliminated labor rights, creating major profit increases for multinationals and national companies.

The political obliteration of fujimorismo may push some of its disillusioned followers—or at least, those who voted for Keiko in the last election thinking that she would improve their conditions—toward the pseudo-left coalitions of Frente Amplio (FA) and its split-off, Nuevo Peru (NP).

FA’s candidates Veronika Mendoza and Marco Arana managed to achieve third place in the last elections (behind Kuczynski and Fujimori), and this was seen as comeback for “left-wing” politics in the country after having been nearly absent for more than two decades.

Then, Mendoza and her followers decided to split from FA and form their own coalition. In part, this was to exploit the growth of Mendoza’s popularity among a generation that has only known right-wing governments, but more important was the tacit preference the political establishment has given to Mendoza over Arana, the main leader of FA, who is seen in ruling circles as an unreliable “left-wing extremist” after his years as an activist against mining multinationals in the environmentally damaged region of Cajamarca.

Amid their break-up, both factions demonstrated their utter subordination to the stabilization of bourgeois rule. They made clear their opposition to the independence of the working class by telling workers and youth that they had to vote for Kuczynski in the run-off against Fujimori, or Peru would be under the grip of a “narco- fujimorista” dictatorship.

NP spokesmen have confirmed that they won’t be able to present the necessary signatures needed for achieving ballot status for their movement by the current deadline of this month; meaning that they won’t be able to participate in the next elections as an independent party. They managed to obtain just 6 percent of the 750,000 signatures needed. They cited the lack of funds for the logistics of collecting the signatures throughout the country and the lack of interest from their own members. In order to further the electoral aims of their movement, NP officials are now considering entering into alliances with right-wing parties.