M-Net Magic In Motion Academy Program (Internship+Scholarship) 2019 for Aspiring Film-makers

Application Deadline: 21st January, 2019

Eligible Countries: South Africa

To be taken at (country): South Africa

About the Award: Since 2014, the M-Net Magic in Motion Academy has given top film and TV graduates the opportunity to make their dreams come true when they were selected to participate in a year-long work readiness programme where they learnt from some of the country’s top producers while gaining far-reaching experience in the industry.

Type: Training, Internship

Eligibility: 

• Must have completed (in 2017/ or completing (in 2018),  a 3 year Diploma / Degree in Film and TV or related qualification
• A minimum of  C + Aggregate
• Applicants must ensure that all information included in their entry is valid and true.
• All applicant information will be subject to credit, criminal and verification checks.
• M-Net’s decision in the selection of the interns for the 2019 MiM Academy is final.
• M-Net shall not be responsible for any electronic system failure that results in any particular entry not being received for consideration.
• M-Net is not liable for the costs any applicant incurs during the process of their electronic application (example: airtime usage or payment at Wi-Fi café)
• Applicants are responsible for ensuring that all information which they include in their submission is valid and true.
• M-Net has the right to expand, limit, downscale and/or terminate the Magic in Motion  Academy at its discretion.
• Entry is limited to citizens of South Africa who meet the stated entry criteria.
• 2018 MiM Academy interns are prohibited from being selected again.
• There is no guarantee of employment at the end of the internship.
• Internships are only available in Gauteng, South Africa and to South African citizens.
• M-Net reserves the right to terminate any internship at any time.

Value of Program: 

• The Magic in Motion Academy interns will receive hands-on training in producing, directing, cinematography, production commissioning, concept creation, script writing, sound, art direction, editing, post-production and more. The course has been designed to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical implementation in order to produce highly employable professionals.
• Upon completion of the 12-month curriculum, M-Net will choose three exceptional interns to produce their own films with funding from M-Net and like years past, some of these movies could find their way onto a small screen near you.

How to Apply: 

• Applicants must apply directly to M-Net before 21 January 2019 should they wish to participate in the Magic in Motion Academy.
• To apply for this once in a lifetime opportunity, go to the Program Webpage (see link below)

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: Multichoice

Yenching Global Symposium 2019 for Young Leaders (All expenses paid to Beijing, China)

Application Deadline: 8th December 2018 at 11:59 p.m. (China Standard Time)

Eligible Countries: International

About the Award: Held on Peking University’s historic campus in Beijing, this three-day, fully-funded event invites prominent Chinese and international scholars with a noted passion for China in their work and research, along with leading professionals from a wide range of fields. In a rapidly shifting global arena, the 2019 Symposium, “Wǒmen: Retelling the China Stories,” re-explores China’s multi-faceted revival through a gendered lens.
Wǒmen: Retelling the China Stories will take place March 29th – 31st, 2019, and will feature keynote speakers, panels of academics and practitioners, interactive activities, site visits, and cultural immersion programming.

Type: Conference

Eligibility:

• Minimum of a bachelor’s degree in any field;
• Strong interest in learning about China and engaging in nuanced, interdisciplinary discussions which address critical societal issues relating to China;
• Available for the entirety of the conference, March 29-31st 2019 (and available for any required travel time to and from Beijing);
• Have not attended any of the previous Yenching Global Symposiums or Yenching Social Innovation Forums;
• English Proficiency;
• Leadership potential;
• Bonus: Involvement in China-related activities – academic, voluntary, professional, extra-curricular.

Number of Awards: Approx 200

Value of Award: Eligible delegates will receive free round-trip travel to and from Beijing, along with accommodation and meals for the length of the conference.

Duration of Programme: March 29th – 31st, 2019

How to Apply: APPLY NOW

• GOODLUCK!

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Growing the Leaders of Tomorrow HIV Research Fellowship 2018/2019 for Young Leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa

Application Deadline: 7th January 2019, 18:00 CET

Eligible Countries:  Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the, Congo, Republic of the, Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, United Republic of, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Type: Research, Fellowship

Eligibility: 
Mentors:

• The mentor must be either an Associate or Full Professor or Chief/Principal Research Officer with an established position at a research institute in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Submit their CV, including publication record in paediatric HIV clinical research;
• Demonstrate that they are the principal investigator of the proposed research project that the fellow will be contributing to and that direct research expenses and adequate infrastructure for the period of the fellowship will be provided for by other grants or sources of funding;
• Establish a mentorship plan that demonstrates how the fellowship will contribute to skill building and professional development of the fellow, as well as ensuring successful completion of the research project.

Fellows:

• The fellow must be a junior investigator with a doctoral degree (PhD) or a doctor of medicine degree (e.g., MD, MBBS or equivalent) obtained no more than ten years before the application deadline (after 15 March 2007) and who has less than five years of relevant research experience.
• The fellow must hold a passport from a country in sub-Saharan Africa.
• The fellow must fulfil one of the following criteria prior to the application submission deadline:
  • He/she is a clinical/research trainee (e.g., research or clinical fellow, senior medical resident/Registrar) at a sub-Saharan African academic institute or a sub-Saharan African institute whose primary mission is research.
  • He/she has a faculty or comparable position (e.g., assistant professor, lecturer, research officer) at a sub-Saharan Africa academic institute or a sub-Saharan Africa institute whose primary mission is research.
  • He/she is working at a sub-Saharan Africa organization with adequate research infrastructure to undertake the proposed research activities.
• The fellow (and mentor) must demonstrate that funding to support the direct costs of the proposed research is available.

Selection: The Fellowship Programme is guided by a Steering Committee (SC), which is comprised of leaders in paediatric HIV clinical research, with experience in sub-Saharan Africa.

Number of Awardees: 3

Value of Fellowship: 

• The final three awardees will be selected to receive a two-year fellowship of up to US$ 70,000 (US$ 35,000 per year).
• The fellowship funds are to provide a stipend for the fellow and can support travel to attend one scientific meeting to present results; fellowship funds are not intended to cover direct research expenses, which must be provided by the mentor’s institution or additional grants.

How to Apply: 

• Interested applicants may apply online via Fellowship Webpage
• GOODLUCK!

Visit Fellowship Webpage for Details

Unlike a Globalized Food System, Local Food Won’t Destroy the Environment

Helena Norberg-Hodge

If you’re seeking some good news during these troubled times, look at the ecologically sound ways of producing food that have percolated up from the grassroots in recent years. Small farmers, environmentalists, academic researchers and food and farming activists have given us agroecology, holistic resource management, permaculture, regenerative agriculture and other methods that can alleviate or perhaps even eliminate the global food system’s worst impacts: biodiversity loss, energy depletion, toxic pollution, food insecurity and massive carbon emissions.

These inspiring testaments to human ingenuity and goodwill have two things in common: They involve smaller-scale farms adapted to local conditions, and they depend more on human attention and care than on energy and technology. In other words, they are the opposite of industrial monocultures — huge farms that grow just one crop.

But to significantly reduce the many negative impacts of the food system, these small-scale initiatives need to spread all over the world. Unfortunately, this has not happened, because the transformation of farming requires shifting not just how food is produced, but also how it is marketed and distributed. The food system is inextricably linked to an economic system that, for decades, has been fundamentally biased against the kinds of changes we need.

Put simply, economic policies almost everywhere have systematically promoted ever-larger scale and monocultural production. Those policies include:

• Massive subsidies for globally traded commodities. Most farm subsidies in the US, for example, go to just five commodities — corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice — that are the centerpieces of global food trade. At the same time, government programs — like the US Market Access Program — provide hundreds of millions of dollars to expand international markets for agriculture products.
• Direct and hidden subsidies for global transport infrastructures and fossil fuels. The IMF estimates these subsidies and ignored environmental costs at $5.3 trillion per year — the equivalent of $10 million every minute.
• ‘Free trade’ policies that open up food markets in virtually every country to global agribusinesses. The 1994 NAFTA agreement, for example, forced Mexico’s small corn producers to compete with heavily-subsidized large-scale farms in the US; the recent re-negotiation of NAFTA will do the same to Canadian dairy farmers.
• Health and safety regulations. Most of these have been made necessary by large-scale production and distribution — but they make it impossible for smaller-scale producers and marketers to compete and survive. In France, for example, the number of small producers of cheese has shrunk by 90% thanks in large measure to EU food safety laws.

These policies provide a huge competitive advantage to large monocultural producers and corporate processors and marketers, which is why industrially produced food that has been shipped from the other side of the world is often less expensive than food from the farm next door.

The environmental costs of this bias are huge. Monocultures rely heavily on chemical inputs — fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides and pesticides — which pollute the immediate environment, put wildlife at risk and — through nutrient runoff — create “dead zones” in waters hundreds or thousands of miles away. Monocultures are also heavily dependent on fossil fuels to run large-scale equipment and to transport raw and processed foods across the world, making them a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, scientists estimate the greenhouse gas toll of the global food system at one-third of total emissions.

There are social and economic costs as well. In the industrialized world, smaller producers can’t survive, their land amalgamated into the holdings of ever larger farms— in the process decimating rural and small town economies and threatening public health. In the Global South, the same forces pull people off the land by the hundreds of millions, leading to poverty, rapidly swelling urban slums and waves of economic refugees. In both North and South, uprooted small farmers easily spiral into unemployment, poverty, resentment and anger.

There are also risks to food security. With global economic policies homogenizing the world’s food supply, the 7,000 species of plants used as food crops in the past have been reduced to 150 commercially important crops, with rice, wheat and maize accounting for 60 percent of the global food supply. Varieties within those few crops have been chosen for their responsiveness to chemical fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation water — and for their ability to withstand long-distance transport. A similar calculus is applied to livestock and poultry breeds, which are skewed toward those that can grow rapidly with inputs of grain and antibiotics in confined animal feeding operations. The loss of diversity even extends to the size and shape of food products: harvesting machinery, transport systems and supermarket chains all require standardization. The end result is that more than half of the world’s food varieties have been lost over the past century; in countries like the US, the loss is more than 90 percent. The global food system rests on a dangerously narrow base: without the genetic variety that can supply resilience, the food system is vulnerable to catastrophic losses from disease and the disruptions of a changing climate.

The Benefits of Local Food

The solution to these problems involves more than a commitment to ecological models of food production: it also requires a commitment to local food economies. Localization systematically alleviates a number of environmental problems inherent in the global food system, by:

• reducing the distance that food travels, thereby lessening the energy needed for transport, as well as the attendant greenhouse gas emissions;
• reducing the need for packaging, processing and refrigeration (which all but disappears when producers sell direct to consumers, thus reducing waste and energy use);
• reducing monoculture, as farms producing for local or regional markets have an incentive to diversify their production, which makes organic production more feasible, in turn reducing the toxic load on surrounding ecosystems;
• providing more niches for wildlife to occupy through diversified organic farms;
• and supporting the principle of diversity on which ecological farming — and life itself — is based, by favoring production methods that are best suited to particular climates, soils and resources.

Local food provides many other benefits. The smaller-scale farms that produce for local and regional markets require more human intelligence, care and work than monocultures, thus providing more employment opportunities. In the Global South, in particular, a commitment to local food would stem the pressures that are driving millions of farmers off the land.

Local food is also good for rural and small-town economies, providing not only more on-farm employment, but supporting the many local businesses on which farmers depend.

Food security is also strengthened because varieties are chosen based on their suitability to diverse locales, not the demands of supermarket chains or the requirements of long-distance transport. This strengthens agricultural biodiversity.

Local food is also healthier. Since it doesn’t need to travel so far, local food is far fresher than global food; and since it doesn’t rely on monocultural production, it can be produced without toxic chemicals that can contaminate food.

Countering the Myths

Although local food is an incredibly effective solution-multiplier, agribusiness has gone to great lengths to convince the public that large-scale industrial food production is the only way to feed the world. But the fact is that the global food economy is massively inefficient.

The global system’s need for standardized products means that tons of edible food are destroyed or left to rot. This is one reason why more than one-third of the global food supply is wasted or lost; for the US, the figure is closer to one-half.

The logic of global trade results in massive quantities of identical products being simultaneously imported and exported — a needless waste of fossil fuels and a huge addition to greenhouse gas emissions. In a typical year, for example, the US imports more than 400,000 tons of potatoes and 1 million tons of beef, while exporting almost the same tonnage of each. The same is true of many other food commodities, and many other countries.

The same logic leads to shipping foods across the world simply to reduce labor costs for processing. Shrimp harvested off the coast of Scotland, for example, are shipped 6,000 miles to Thailand to be peeled, then shipped 6,000 miles back to the UK to be sold to consumers.

The supposed efficiency of monocultural production is based on output per unit of labor, which is maximized by replacing jobs with chemical- and energy-intensive technology. Measured by output per acre, however — a far more relevant metric — smaller-scale farms are typically 8-20 times more productive. This is partly because monocultures, by definition, produce just one crop on a given plot of land, while smaller, diversified farms allow intercropping — using the spaces between rows of one crop to grow another. What’s more, the labor ‘efficiencies’ of monocultural production are linked to the use of large-scale equipment, which limit the farmer’s ability to tend to or harvest small portions of a crop and thereby increase yields.

Making the Shift

For more than a generation, now, the message to farmers has been to “get big or get out” of farming, and a great number of the farmers who remain have tailored their methods to what makes short-term economic sense within a deeply flawed system. To avoid bankrupting those farmers, the shift from global to local would need to take place with care, providing incentives for farmers to diversify their production, reduce their reliance on chemical inputs and fossil fuel energy, and to seek markets closer to home. Those incentives would go hand-in-hand with reductions in subsidies for the industrial food system.

After decades of policy bias toward global food, some steps in this direction are being taken by local and regional governments. In the US, for example, most states have enacted “cottage food laws” that relax the restrictions on the small-scale production of jams, pickles and other preserved foods, allowing them to be processed and sold locally without the need for expensive commercial kitchens.

Several towns in the state of Maine have gone even further. Seeking to bypass the restrictive regulations that make it difficult to market local foods, they have declared “food sovereignty” by passing ordinances that give their citizens the right “to produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing.”

In 2013, the government of Ontario, Canada, passed a Local Food Act aimed at increasing access to local food, improving local food literacy and providing tax credits for farmers who donate a portion of their produce to nearby food banks.

Even bolder action is needed if there is to be any hope of eliminating the damage done by the global food system. A crucial first step is to raise awareness of the costs of the current system, and the multiple benefits of local food. No matter how many studies demonstrate the virtues of alternative ways of producing and distributing food, the destructive global food system is unlikely to change unless there is heavy pressure from the grassroots to change the entire system. That needs to start now.

Lynching: Casteist, Communal and Fascist Tool of Violence in India

Y. Srinivasa Rao

Violence has always been a tool of oppression, suppression and subordination. Though every form of violence is illegal according to the law of the land, dominant social forces (upper castes/classes) often justifies employing certain forms of violence as they believe that they are essential to keep the supposedly holy and sacred religious, social and cultural systems and customs alive without which foundations of not only customs and rituals which auxiliary to religion but also the very basic foundations of the religions itself would crumble. In India, most of the dominant religions have been employing lynching as tool of keeping followers and critiques in submission and in control respectively. However, caste and communal Hindus have been using it consistently than custodians of other religions. Caste Hindu society has the tradition of using lynching as a weapon of protecting the social hierarchy, religious, ritualistic and cultural purity. From Vedic times to today, lynching has been a tool of suppression for the lower castes in India. Despite the pressure from Buddhism in the early ancient India and Islam and Christianity in the early medieval and modern India, both the radical political communal/caste Hindus and uneducated but indoctrinated innocent/ignorant Hindus have been successful in employing violence. When social positions in the social hierarchy are sanctioned by religion, the social position alone cannot be protected as such protection does not hold the ground when it’s very roots are rooted in the religion. Therefore, in Hinduism, caste and religion are not two different entities. One cannot survive without the other. If caste as a social hierarchy was de-hinduised, chances are greater for the annihilation of caste system. It is impossible to de-hinudise caste. Every attempt to reform Hindu religion was met with clever strategies of not only to keep the religion safe but also it generated newer methods of expansion. The Hinduism’s response to reforms in medieval and modern times was aggressive Hinduisation of a culture that was hardly de-hinduised under the impact of the entry of new cultures and the hinduisation of a culture (mostly untouchable and adivasis) that is out of its ambit. For the appropriation of the non-Hindu culture into its fold and for keeping elements within its fold to be loyal its basic tenets, Hinduism has been using lynching. Every time, the social other within Hinduism fights for human dignity, decency and equality, they faced massacres, brutal deaths, public humiliation, physical violence, gang rapes, chopping of genitals and other body parts burning alive, beheading, inserting things into private parts and butchering. Physical violence is multifunctional. However, it is allocated with different functions according to the objectives of the perpetrators. In India, among the communities which continuously subjected to the lynching have been untouchables, adivasis and women. Lynching in India is not new. Its notoriety and unacceptability is only being recognised now. Uncountable episodes of physical violence (only reported) in the history of physical violence in India faced by dalits would inform that even after the independence the caste Hindus have refused to recognise dalits as humans with dignity and rights and continue to employ lynching as a tool of keeping them under control and reminding them of their social position. Employing lynching as a tool of control over dalits who questions the domination of the upper caste and becomes assertive to seek equality has not been seen as abnormal unusual as if it is not as crime. Lynching dalits was normalised because the casteless questioning the caste Hindus destabilises the social order. Therefore, lynching the rights conscious, aggressive and assertive dalits was seen essential to keep the social order intact. The story is the same with women across all castes and communities. Not until the communal other is subjected to the same violence, the abnormality of lynching is being recognised, debated and discussed. At least, now, lynching is being recognised as inhuman crime and the civil society is actively examining the political and social functions of lynching. Like Afro-Americans in United States of America, dalits have been at the disposal of the caste Hindus.

Since its emergence, the radical right in India with clear objectives and intentions, has been employing lynching to achieve temporary and long time objectives as well. From 1990s, India has witnessed many small and large communal riots and every episode has performed their allocated functions. However, there is a difference between the communal riots of pre and post 2015. Mahammad Aklaq’s in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh lynching is beginning of new era in the history of violence in India. While the Gujarat communal riots 2002 where more than thousand Muslims killed were to take revenge against Godhra train accident where hindu sadhus were burned to death for which Muslims in the Godhra railway station were allegedly involved, Mahammad Aklaq lynching was not revenge against crime. It was an incident that was used as a stage for announcing the arrival of the right-wing radicals to the nation. The way he was killed by mob and the way the law and order responded spelled out what is in store for India. From Aklaq’s in on 28th September 2015 to Subhod Kumar Singh murder on 3rd December 2018, India has witnessed 87 killings in the name of beef, cow theft, cattle trade, disrespecting sentiments and skin trade so on. Selecting cow as a symbol of Hindu religion to invent enemy provided justification and continuity to the lynching. Since, Hindus are majority India, no minority group, be it a caste minority or religious minority, even if they were troubled, discriminated and tortured would involve in physical violence against Hindus. They believed in democratic institutions and fought for justice.

Cow has helped to target four supposedly common enemies of hindutva: Muslims, Christians, dalits anti-hindus (Secularist, rationalists, atheists and humanists). Except the fourth, rest of the communities, either as eaters of beefs or as leather traders are connected with cattle if not cow alone are first stamped as cultural/religious enemies and then getting killed in broad daylight. For hindutvawadis, Muslims are historical enemies, Christians are convertors and dalits are ideological enemies. The fourth is a composite community which is drawn from all sections of society is also ideological enemies even if some of them are Hindus by identity if not in practice. All of these have to be brought into submission one or other way for realising the dream of Hindu Rastra. When for the first time, India has witnessed, lynching, a never before kind of violence where  a person could be killed on rumour/s by mob and it is then be followed by the backing of the law and order to the perpetrators of crime instead of the victim and the relatives of the killed are continuously victimised with counter cases and torture, the nation began to see a pattern that is emerging that would encourage the mob to go on killing spree with guilt, fear of law, remorse and victims to face heat of law and order, humiliation, pain and suffering.

When Akhalq family was slapped with chargers of holding beef and when Pehlu Khan’s son was shot at while going to court, it became quite clear that BJP government at centre and its governments in twenty states which would draw certain amount of political capital from such communal mob attacks have been directly/indirectly granting licences to mobs to kill their ‘enemies’. If Hindutvawadis of post-2014 took it for granted that they can kill for any alleged violation of Hindu religion and culture, it is impunity they enjoy from the law and order maintaining agencies. In other words, script is written by the perpetrators of the crimes and the government acts according to the script. They both involve a reciprocal relationship. Freehand to the fringe elements generated required political capital for BJP governments, fringe elements grow at the support of the government into powerful social organisations which furthers their social position and power.  When a social group which is majority in the nation places its religious and cultural identity as a national identity, it naturally acquires the rights of defining what is nation, who are nationalists, what is national culture? It is the case with white Europeans in USA, Israelis in occupied Palestine and Hindus in India. Here, democracy is subjected to severe suffocation. Majoritarian governments consciously transform democracies into authoritarian rule, use democracy as a tool of fulfilling its goals or eventually, if majority is in power for long, democracy might die a natural death. It is always be indifferent to democracy. When it acquires political power it’s declaration as an unchallengeable power symbolically comes through various actions of the government machinery and groups belong to its ideology. Lynching of the religious, caste and ideological enemies is just one of part of it.  The majoritarian government in consultation with the ideological think tanks draws plans and strategies to reap maximum out of the given opportunity. In the process of doing so, all time-tested, accepted and appreciable traditions of democracy would either be diluted, criticised, dumped and demeaned. Democracy, unfortunately, allows these governments and the majority to enjoy more powers than the common citizens of the nation. Even laws would be amended to allow the majority to dance on the streets. In the post-2014, the emergence of Gau Rakshak, moral policing and Ghar Vapsi groups throughout the nation backed by the local and state governments went on rampage on roads, beating, injuring, insulting and humiliating citizens of the nation, especially in north and northeast India explains how governments were backing these grops. Gau Rakshas and anti-Romeo groups came into existence after Yogi became Chief Minister of Uttara Pradesh have been acting on behalf of police and assisting police. Except in very cases where police were attacked by the right-wing groups, police are working with the fringe groups from beginning to the end. They have been showing great intelligence in producing alternative facts to reduce the severity of crime and to criminalise the victim and finally dilute the case.

Chief Ministers, central and state ministers, people’s representatives, bureaucrats and leaders of right-wing organisations did not waste time in coming in support of the criminals. Akhlaq to Subhod Kumar Singh, a common pattern that is quite visible is that valorisation of the criminals and criminalisation of the victims. No matter how heinous the crime was, communal social solidarity and institutional help was quite quick. Individuals involved in lynching have been welcomed, honoured, glorified as heroes, offered jobs and loans, appointed as leaders of communal organisations and offered seats of assembly and parliamentary constituencies. This, many ways, normalises the abnormal criminality. And this will continue as long as the majority is in power

Are we to prepare ourselves to get humiliated, beaten, and killed at the will and wish of the majority in this nation? Subhodh Kumar Singh’s son asked heart touching question i.e. whose father is going to be next (to be killed in the name of cow)? His question to the nation indicates how it became vulnerable and weak in protecting its foundational ideologies, composite culture and social fabric built in the course of seven decades with immense contribution of people belong all sections of society. Indian civil society’s collective response to Aklaq’s lynching was a response of a matured democratic society that respects and protects every citizen’s rights across caste, colour and community. This kind of response was not, of course, limited to Dadri murder alone. However, these responses, sometimes, found to be pragmatic according to the caste/communal priorities. Dalits, women, Christians, Muslims and adivasis suffering under the hands of common enemy, have to build network for a sustained social solidarity which could be activated to render assistance and moral support to the victims after the crime committed but it should also be able to prevent crime from happening by developing self protecting mechanisms and by carrying sustained movement to put pressure on the government. As long as we don’t equate upper caste killings of lower for the reason of caste with that of Hindu killing Muslims, Buddhists and Christians for cultural/religious reasons, a united response to lynching would not be possible and lynching will not be stopped.

Australian government to impose encryption-cracking bill with Labor’s support

Mike Head

After days of intensive backroom collaboration, the opposition Labor Party today sought to assist the crisis-wracked Liberal-National Coalition government to push through encryption-cracking and computer-accessing laws during the final hours of this year’s last parliamentary session.

Labor’s support for the bill, with only token amendments, will hand extraordinary powers to the spy and police forces, setting a global precedent that has been demanded by the US intelligence and military establishment.

The Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018 will allow an array of state and federal agencies, including the Australian Border Force, to access encrypted and other privacy-protected communications, including WhatsApp or iMessage conversations.

They also will be able to secretly hack into and manipulate people’s computers—a power currently reserved for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the domestic political spy agency.

This is a fundamental attack on basic democratic rights, including privacy, free speech and the right to organise, especially against the corporate and political establishment. It is part of an escalating barrage of measures designed to suppress dissent and social unrest.

By helping Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government fast-track the slightly amended bill—allowing almost no public debate in parliament—the Labor Party sent two clear signals to the ruling capitalist class.

The first is that the Labor leaders will try to prop up this government until it calls a federal election, either in March or May, in an effort to stabilise the increasingly loathed and discredited parliamentary order. Labor does not want the government brought down in a way that could open the door for a wider working-class movement against the entire political establishment.

The second message is the Labor Party is ready to form a repressive government under conditions of emerging economic slump, mounting popular discontent and a US-led drive for war against China.

In the final two-week parliamentary session of the year, Labor also joined hands with the government to bring forward four other bills with police-state provisions. These will allow the government to call out the military to put down domestic unrest; fast-track a new “foreign interference” register; strip citizenship from anyone convicted of even a minor terrorism-related offence; and permit Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) operatives—Australia’s foreign spies—to kill people to protect their clandestine missions.

The government proclaimed a victory after Labor dropped a request for them to agree to initially push through a temporary version of the encryption and computer hacking laws, supposedly limiting their use to federal agencies targeting terrorists and paedophiles.

Attorney-General Christian Porter described the deal as a “massive win.” He said Labor had “moved very substantially” from its so-called compromise offer, which would have delayed part of the bill until the outcome of a parliamentary intelligence and security committee review.

Labor’s legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus said the government had “trashed” the intelligence committee process but welcomed the retention of the bipartisan unity that has imposed wave after wave of new measures to boost the powers of the state apparatus.

“Labor has spent five years responsibly improving national security legislation to make Australians safer, and we have done the same thing today,” Dreyfus said. In fact, Labor has worked hand-in-glove with the Coalition since 2001, both in opposition and in office, to impose one package of draconian laws after another.

These included the metadata retention legislation of 2015, which already gave the police and intelligence agencies the power to access everyone’s online data, going back up to two years. There has been bipartisan agreement on expanding such powers since 1979, when ASIO first obtained the legal authority to tap into telecommunications and computers.

“They already have powers to hack end points, where information is not encrypted,” Monique Mann, a Queensland University of Technology law and technology researcher, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Labor’s request for a narrower initial regime was not driven by any concern for democratic rights. Instead, it voiced the interests of the internet and social media conglomerates, which said handing the powers to a broad range of government agencies would increase the danger of encryption-cracking tools falling into unwanted hands. The companies were concerned that this could threaten the highly-profitable use of encryption by themselves and other giant corporations, including banks and retail operators.

Under the deal struck between Labor and the Coalition, the anti-encryption powers will be available to investigate “serious crimes”—defined as all terrorism and child sex offences, and other offences punishable by imprisonment for three years or more. This covers a wide range of offences, including the new crimes of being involved in “foreign interference” or failing to register under the “foreign influence transparency scheme.”

As a supposed safeguard against abuse, law enforcement and spy agencies will not be able to issue “technical capability notices,” which can force companies to install software or modify their systems to enable encryption-cracking, unless both the attorney-general and communications minister approve. Placing this process in the hands of two senior cabinet ministers can hardly be regarded as a protection. Instead, it facilitates the use of the new powers for political purposes.

The agreed bill contains a definition of “systemic weakness”—which companies cannot be asked to create—and stipulates that disputes about what constitutes such an impermissible “back door” will be determined by a former judge and a person with technical expertise. Giving such figures scrutiny over these disputes may assuage the telco giants but it will not protect ordinary people.

Where companies are compelled to comply with encryption-breaching notices, or agree to do so voluntarily, these processes will remain hidden from retail users. It will be illegal for companies to inform their customers that they have handed information over to the authorities.

According to an ABC report, technology giants like Apple and Google already voluntarily assist the authorities. During July-December 2017, for instance, Australian police made 120 requests for Apple account details, which could include someone’s iCloud content. Apple provided data in 64 percent of these cases.

Business organisations generally backed the Labor-Coalition deal for shielding their interests. Ai Group chief executive Innes Wilox said the changes “appear to go some way to addressing a number of the concerns … Protecting the security of communications and information between businesses and their customers is of fundamental importance.”

The Australian bill is regarded as a test case for similar legislation in the US and other places, and will facilitate surveillance across the global US-led “Five Eyes” spy network. Capitalist governments, in collaboration with social media companies like Google and Facebook, also are implementing restrictions on internet access, particularly designed to limit or block access to the World Socialist Web Site and other left wing, anti-war and progressive websites.

Mexico’s new president to grant amnesty to those who profited from corruption

Don Knowland 

The lopsided vote for Mexico’s new president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his MORENA party in the July elections arose in no small part from his pledge to end governmental corruption. Outrage over corruption in the last government drew him many voters.

In his inaugural speech on Saturday, López Obrador stressed that “the main cause of economic and social inequality in Mexico, as well as of the insecurity and violence that have plagued it,” had been the dishonesty of government officials and the “small minority” that had profited from “peddling influence”. His administration’s prime objective thus would be to end that corruption, as well as the absence of criminal sanctions—impunity—for it.

The Bank of Mexico said something along the same lines in its quarterly report last month—that Mexico’s economy “could not advance” without an end to corruption and violence.

Most might conclude that prosecution for past corruption would be likely to help deter corruption in the future. And for much of the campaign AMLO had insisted that corrupt government officials would be prosecuted.

However, later in the campaign he began to backtrack, suggesting that, while he would not halt ongoing prosecutions, such as those of corrupt state governors, others might not be prosecuted for past activity.

Two weeks before his inauguration López Obrador clarified that he in fact would grant an amnesty to those who committed acts of corruption in the years prior to his government, including even past presidents. He insisted, “I do not think it’s good for the country that we get bogged down in persecuting corrupt suspects.” That is, publicly airing the scale of corruption would only trigger more outrage in the population and discredit the entire framework of bourgeois rule.

In his speech on Saturday López Obrador reiterated that position: “I propose to the people of Mexico that we draw a final line under this horrible history and make a new start: In other words, that there be no persecution of former officials and that the current authorities breathe easily about any pending issues.” When that statement was greeted with jeers, he said he would put the issue to a national “consultation.”

Many now assert that during the election campaign López Obrador, who lost two prior presidential runs due to electoral fraud, entered into a compact with Peña Nieto that he and the members of his government would not be investigated for corruption in exchange for a promise they would not interfere with his campaign.

López Obrador has repeatedly said that he will fund his social programs with money that would otherwise be diverted to graft. But his amnesty policy means that corrupt government officials will keep the hundreds of millions of dollars they pocketed, while businessman who had paid bribes will likewise hold on to the billions they garnered.

They will not be poured back into government coffers to fund the promises AMLO has made to fight poverty and increase pension and education funding.

In his speech on Saturday made no mention of pardoning those driven by poverty to commit low-level crimes who fill Mexico’s prisons.

Lopez Obrador in his inaugural speech Saturday also tied the “insecurity and violence” that have plagued Mexico—the killing and disappearance of hundreds of thousands and skyrocketing murder rate since the federal government launched the war on Mexico’s drug cartels a dozen years ago—to widespread government corruption.

Funds from the drug gangs did stuff the pockets of government officials both petty and high. A desire to end the resulting violence also was a significant motivation behind the massive rejection of the old parties in the July election.

López Obrador’s amnesty for past corruption is perhaps curious in light of the testimony that is being given in the criminal trial in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, who is charged with being the co-leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa narcotics cartel.

In an extraordinary series that appeared two weeks ago in Mexico’s Bloomberg-affiliated El Financiero, columnist Raymundo Riva Palacio, depicting Mexico as a “narco state,” outlined the scale of payments made by the cartel to high-level officials that are alleged in El Chapo’s case. Because of such massive payments, Mexico’s government favored certain cartels over others in their internecine wars, including through military action, thereby fueling the waves of violence.

For example, according to the US government’s main witness, who is the brother of the co-leader with Chapo Guzmán of the Sinaloa cartel, it paid millions of dollars to the secretary of public security under Peña Nieto’s predecessor, president Felipe Calderón. The right-arm to Marcelo Ebrard, who was López Obrador’s secretary of public security when he was mayor of Mexico City (2000-05) and is now is serving as his new foreign minister, also received millions for protection of the cartel.

The US government’s prosecutor in the Chapo Guzmán case has also told the court that the government of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who, along with his brother, had long been accused of having entered into arrangements with drug cartels, had the archbishop of Guadalajara killed in 1993 in Guadalajara’s airport, and then pinned the crime on Guzmán and his cartel. Salinas was a trusted adviser to Peña Nieto during his ascent to political power.

Perhaps more significantly, the lawyers for Chapo Guzmán assert that the evidence in his trial will show that Peña Nieto received six million dollars in bribes for protection of the cartel when he was governor of the state of Mexico (2005-2011). If true, there would be little reason to conclude that similar arrangements would not have continued into his presidency.

Instead of initiating investigations, and then prosecutions, based on whatever may be established in the Chapo Guzmán case in terms of high-level government corruption, López Obrador intends to grant an amnesty unless “the people demand” prosecution.

MORENA’s deputies in Congress are initiating a constitutional reform to permit such a procedure. A “consultation” with the people of Mexico on his amnesty proposal is projected for March (as well as on his decisions to form a National Guard composed of military units, and a business advisory council to meet regularly with the country’s wealthiest businessmen).

Hackers reveal British government’s interference in Spanish politics

Alejandro López

Documents leaked by internet hackers of Anonymous reveal how a supposedly independent think-tank based in the UK is a government funded and controlled operation of misinformation and fake news.

At the same time that the Western powers were accusing Russia of interference in democracy, the UK government and its intelligence services MI5 and MI6 were busily preventing the nomination of a Spanish official to Director of National Security, one of Spain’s top advisory roles. (See pic 1)

Details of the operation carried out by the Integrity Initiative (II), a project launched in 2015 by the Institute of Statecraft, have been published by the web site CyberGuerilla.org. It is a trove of documents allegedly hacked from II, showing carefully worked out campaigns, costs and internal guidelines, as well as names of individuals cooperating with the network.

Anonymous shows that the network:

1. Is mainly funded by the UK government through the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

2. Cost £1,961,000 ($2.5 million) this year.

3. Has received £168,000 in funding from HQ NATO Public Diplomacy and £250,000 from the US State Department.

4. Is controlled by figures in the UK who manipulate “clusters” of politicians, high-ranking military officials, academics and journalists.

5. Clusters are said to operate in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Norway, Serbia, and Montenegro.

6. Its activities are carried under absolute secrecy via named intelligence services operatives in British embassies.

The Integrity Initiative poses as “Defending Democracy against Misinformation,” but does exactly the opposite, spreading fake news against Russia in order to defend the national interests of the UK and its imperialist allies, influence Russian speakers in Europe and North America and “change attitudes in Russia itself”.

An example of II’s activities was the operation launched last June against the nomination of Army reserve colonel Pedro Baños as Spain’s Director of National Security. Attached to La Moncloa, the official residence and workplace of the prime minister of Spain, the director’s role is to advise the PM on existing and potential threats to the country and possible responses.

II’s operation started after it was warned that the new Socialist Party (PSOE) government under Pedro Sánchez, which had just been elected in parliament through a no confidence vote, was considering Baños and was about to confirm his appointment on June 7, 2018.

Immediately, newspapers like El Mundo and El País published articles accusing Baños of “sympathy for Russia.” Proof of this for El País was his “regular presence” on Russia Today and Sputnik, media outlets funded by the Putin government. Further “evidence” was his tweet in response to a survey showing a domestic popularity rating of 74 percent for Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Wouldn’t we love to have a political leader half as popular right here in the European Union!!!”

Baños was also quoted as saying, “Which country has everything that we lack? Russia does. We will not gain anything by provoking Russia. So Russia wants to have its own sphere of influence? Of course it does, just like the United States or China do. It also wants to have its markets and like-minded countries nearby.”

Numerous articles also put in doubt Baños’ sanity for his participation in the popular offbeat TV show Cuarto Milenio that often investigates topics such as conspiracy theories, ufology and parapsychology.

Baños reflects a minority realpolitik opinion within the Spanish ruling class which opposes provocative military actions and sanctions against Russia. He sees the need to defend Spain’s imperialist interests through a European army and closer relations with Russia—positions also held by sections of the German and French ruling elite.

The UK-sponsored II, however, saw Baños as a threat to British national interests and an obstacle to its anti-Russia campaign. According to the hacked documents, at midday on June 7, 2018, the Spanish Cluster, obviously through informants at the highest levels of the PSOE, “hear that a well-known pro-Kremlin voice, Pedro Baños, is to be appointed at the weekend (09.06.2018) as the Director of the National Security Department (DSN), which works closely with the Spanish PM’s office (La Moncloa) and is very influential in shaping policy.”

An action plan is drawn up laying out how Institute of Statecraft Fellow and Spain Cluster leader Nicólas de Pedro will alert “the rest of the cluster members and prepare[s] a dossier to inform the main Spanish media. The cluster starts a Twitter campaign (see app 1), trying to prevent an appointment.”

Spanish Cluster members also include Borja Lasheras and Quique Badia-Masoni, writers and journalists well known for their hysterical anti-Russian positions. They are supported by II Team UK members Chris Hernon, Simon Bracey-Lane and Ben Robinson, and StopFake Spanish Desk members Alina Mosendz and Serbian Cluster member Jelena Milic.

At 15:45, “The head of the Spanish cluster urgently contacts the British cluster, which activates the II network in order to create international support for the Twitter campaign. The British Cluster creates a group in the WhatsApp messenger (see Appendix 4) to coordinate the reaction on Twitter, gets contacts on Twitter to spread concerns and encourage people to ‘retweet’ the material. He publishes material written by the head of the Spanish cluster Niko de Pedro on the Spanish version of the StopFake website, which is also ‘retweeted’ by key influential figures.”

The Spanish cluster then sends material to El País and El Mundo to publish. On the same day, El País publishes, “Spanish PM taps Russia supporter for National Security Director.”

The documents reveal that by 19:45, barely eight hours after the start of the operation, the “campaign [had] raised significant noise on Twitter … Contacts in the Socialist Party confirmed that this information reached the Prime Minister. Some Spanish diplomats also expressed their concern. In the end, both the People’s Party and the Civil Party (Ciudadanos) asked the Prime Minister to stop the appointment.”

The following day, the government drops Baños and nominates general Miguel Ángel Ballesteros instead.

The operation against Baños is a graphic illustration of the inner workings of the intelligence services in collaboration with alleged “independent” journalists and academics. The same forces that accuse Russia of meddling in European nations’ internal affairs are themselves meddling to stop elected governments from nominating officials when it conflicts with their interests. They use social media in the same way they accuse the Kremlin of using it.

By showing the real sources of information on which they rely, newspapers like El País or El Mundo are exposed as conduits of the intelligence services to support the suppression of maverick political viewpoints, in this case, Baños’ call for closer relations with Russia.

Last year, El País carried out a frenzied and paranoid campaign claiming that the Catalan crisis was not sparked by the Popular Party government’s violent repression of the secessionists, but was the result of Moscow and its “fake news.” It quoted experts and specialists working for Spanish think tanks like Instituto Elcano and Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), and the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The leaked documents show that many members of these think tanks are members of the “Spanish Cluster” of the Integrity Initiative. The most notorious is Senior Analyst for Instituto Elcano, Mira Milosevich-Juaristi who testified last year in parliament to claim that Russia was promoting fake news.

The Baños case is just one of the highlighted campaigns of Integrity Initiative, but according to Anonymous, similar operations have been carried out in numerous other EU states.

Parliamentary debate on Brexit deal begins after three defeats for May government

Robert Stevens

Theresa’s May’s minority Conservative government lost three crucial procedural votes in parliament Tuesday, immediately ahead of five days of debate on her deal with the European Union (EU) on the UK’s exit from the bloc.

A cross-party opposition motion found the government in contempt of parliament for failing to publish in full the legal advice on Brexit—the first time in history such a motion was passed. This followed Attorney General Geoffrey Cox publishing only a summary of the advice statement Monday, insisting that disclosing the full advice was not in the “national interest.” MPs rejected this by 311 to 293, with some Tory MPs voting against the government or abstaining. This forced the government to publish the full advice Wednesday.

Earlier MPs voted by 311 to 307 against a government amendment to the motion by leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom, which attempted to refer the legal advice issue to an investigation by the Privileges Committee.

A still more serious defeat followed, when MPs voted by 321 to 299 to give parliament the power to amend any motion on a deal with the EU that May would have to put before the Commons within 21 days of her current proposal being rejected in the December 11 vote. The move to assert parliament’s power over a Plan B was led by the pro-EU Tory and former attorney-general, Dominic Grieve, and backed by another 26 rebel Tories.

Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has propped up May’s government for the last two years through a “confidence and supply” arrangement with its 10 MPs. In the vote over the publication of the legal opinion, the DUP sided with the five other opposition parties.

Labour has scheduled a vote of no-confidence on the May government immediately after the December 11 vote, and May’s fate may be determined immediately by the position adopted by the DUP. The DUP was understood to be prepared to vote down May’s EU deal, even before the publication of the legal advice that contains provisions anathema to the Unionists.

Wednesday’s publication of the advice confirmed that Cox told May last month that the EU deal effectively classified the UK to a “third country” as far as Northern Ireland was concerned, requiring compliance checks on items crossing the UK/Northern Ireland border. The advice also states that the EU can decide in the future that the Withdrawal Agreement should no longer apply to Britain, leaving Northern Ireland under the so-called “backstop” arrangements indefinitely in a separate status within a customs union with the Republic and therefore with the EU.

The no-confidence vote takes precedence over any other business. If May loses it, a range of possible scenarios opens up. She could choose to step down, to give way to a Brexiteer, or a leadership contest could be triggered. Or she might stagger on and return to Brussels to extract any concession from the EU that could placate her opponents and try to win a second parliamentary vote.

Labour has called for the queen to recognise it as leader of a minority government, while Corbyn has said a general election should be called. This would require acceptance by the government, given the fixed term parliament act, and there is no enthusiasm for this in the Blairite wing of the party either. They are focused on demanding a second referendum over Brexit in order to break the deadlock. Labour’s conference confirmed that a People’s Vote would on the table should there be no general election and that the option to remain in the EU should be included.

Whatever happens, Britain is in the grip of a historic crisis of rule that threatens to unleash mass social upheavals. In a Daily Telegraph comment Wednesday, Philip Johnston noted, “The term ‘constitutional crisis’ is often bandied about in British politics but such an event is mercifully rare.” This one is rarer still, involving “a clash between the executive and Parliament,” of which “The most extreme example in our history was, of course, the English Civil War, where differences that could not be sorted out by political means were dealt with on the battlefield.”

Johnson pointed to the fuel tax protests in France as a warning as to what might develop in the UK. “Amid all the apocalyptic predictions for Brexit, civil unrest is considered unlikely and un-British. Yet we only have to look across the Channel at the gilet jaunes, or yellow vests, movement to see how a sense of grievance can quickly descend into mob violence.”

He warned, “There is a tradition of the mob, especially in London, that used to terrify the life out of the authorities in the 18th and early 19th centuries … constitutional crises can be perilous because the normal processes of representative democracy have broken down.”

The repressive arms of the state are likewise gearing up for repression of the working class. Speaking to the LBC Radio, Cressida Dick, the commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, was asked by host Nick Ferrari, “Is there an aspect of civil unrest of some sort [in the Met’s planning]?” Dick replied, “There is certainly a potential for protests. We are in London. It is the protest capital of the world. We are preparing for all scenarios, and deal or no-deal the police will be here.”

Social tensions in Britain have reached fever pitch. In his report last month, after investigating “staggering” levels of “extreme poverty” in the UK, UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston also warned, “This could well lead to significant public discontent, further division and even instability.” It is in this context that discussions have been held between MI5 and MI6 and Corbyn, on the role a Labour government would have to play in suppressing social discontent.

Despite the constant invoking of the “will of the people” by both the pro-EU and anti-EU wings of the bourgeoisie, this is a debate deliberately confined to ruling circles on how best to defend the interests of British imperialism. Whichever side wins, the working class will pay in a deeper assault on jobs, wages and conditions to make Britain competitive in the frenzied struggle for global markets and through the turn to domestic repression and global militarism.

As the Socialist Equality Party insists in its recently published congress resolution:

“The task facing working people is not to help resolve the crisis facing the bourgeoisie, as Corbyn and the Labour Party insist, but to secure its independent class interests in a common struggle with its class brothers and sisters throughout the European continent. The International Committee’s European sections, the SEP in Britain, the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES) in France and the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) in Germany, together with our co-thinkers in Turkey, Ireland and throughout the world, seek to mobilise the working class against the nationalist splintering of the European continent and the growth of far-right movements, while rejecting any support for the EU and its constituent national governments. The rule of the financial oligarchy and its governments must be broken and replaced with government of, by and for the working class—a socialist Britain as part of the United Socialist States of Europe. The adoption of this perspective would bring the most powerful social force into action—the European working class.”