Homeless deaths rise more than 20 percent in England and Wales

Dennis Moore

Figures recently published by the Office for National Statistics show that 726 homeless people died in England and Wales in 2018, a rise of 22 percent on 2017. This is the highest recorded death-toll since reporting began and it is expected that the number will be higher for 2019.

The average age of those who died is 45 years for males and 43 for females. This compares to the average age of death in England and Wales of 76 years for men and 81 for women.

The highest number of deaths in 2018 occurred in London and the North West of England, standing at 148 and 103 people respectively, though there have been increases in deaths in the other parts of the UK.

These deaths come at a time when there have been repeated cuts to local authority budgets in the last decade, with many frontline services bearing the brunt of substantial cuts.

A homeless person in Manchester city centre sleeps as the temperatures reached freezing last January

Jon Sparkes, chief executive of the Crisis homelessness charity, commented, “It’s heart-breaking that hundreds of people were forced to spend the last days of their lives without the dignity of a secure home.”

Jessica Turtle from the Museum of Homelessness, a community driven social justice museum, said that people were mainly dying from drug and alcohol misuse, which is directly linked to cuts in services. “A lot of these deaths are preventable,” she said.

There is mounting concern over the dangers associated with the use of the synthetic cannabinoid Spice, known on the streets as Black Mamba.

The number of drug related deaths rose by 55 percent compared to 2017, with 131 deaths related to opiate poisoning, via heroin and morphine use, and the numbers of deaths from cocaine use increasing from 15 in 2017, to 30 in 2018.

John Hamblin CEO of Plymouth’s largest homeless charity, Shekinah Mission, spoke out recently about the deaths of homeless people, linking these deaths to cuts to funding from central government impacting on vital services for homeless people.

“Plymouth is doing some really good work but these figures are not any reflection on the efforts being done locally… Quite simply if you divest money from drug treatment services people will die.”

He went on to say, “You can’t remove that much money from local councils who worked to keep people off the streets and it not have a negative effect. This is not salami slicing—it’s amputation.”

In Middlesbrough in August this year, the deaths of five homeless people were linked to the redeployment of council staff in April. The council team, “Breaking the Boundaries,” had employed three dedicated workers to provide intensive support to rough sleepers living on the streets. Susan Gill, a community worker who runs the Neighbourhood Welfare homeless hub, and homeless cafe, said five homeless people she fed and helped at her homeless café on Princess Road in Gresham have died in the town since Breaking the Boundaries officers were removed.

Gill went on to say that the introduction of the draconian Universal Credit welfare payments had plunged many people into poverty, leaving them vulnerable to homelessness and mental health problems.

The number of homeless people dying in 2018 were just some of the 4,677 people who were classed as sleeping rough in England in the autumn of 2018, according to government figures. The figure for rough sleepers in 2018 was lower than the year before but is double that recorded in 2010.

The official rough sleeping figure is a vast underestimation of the real scale of homelessness. Last year, the Shelter housing charity estimated that there are at least 320,000 people in Britain sleeping rough or in temporary accommodation. Even this is a lower end estimation with the organisation explaining that its estimate does not include “sofa-surfers” and those sleeping in sheds, cars, etc.

IMF meeting confronts “synchronized” global economic slowdown

Nick Beams

The semi-annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which begins in Washington today and runs to the end of the weekend, is being held amid warnings that the world economy has entered a major slowdown and could be on the way to outright recession.

The IMF’s World Economic Outlook (WEO) report, due to be published today, will include a downward revision on previous growth forecasts, as foreshadowed in a major speech by incoming managing director Kristalina Georgieva last week.

Georgieva began by pointing out that two years ago the global economy was experiencing a synchronised upswing with growth in nearly 75 percent of the world economy on the rise. Today the world economy is in a synchronised global downswing with lower growth expected in 90 percent of the world.

“The widespread deceleration means that growth this year will fall to its lowest rate since the beginning of the decade,” she said, foreshadowing a downgrade by the IMF of its growth forecasts for both 2019 and 2020 in its WEO report.

Georgieva pointed to the increasing “fractures” in the world economy caused by the escalation of trade conflicts. In the past, she said, the IMF had warned of the dangers arising from trade disputes.

“Now, we see that they are actually taking their toll. Global trade growth has come to a near standstill.”

As a result, “world manufacturing and investment have weakened substantially” and there is a “serious risk that services and consumption could soon be affected.”

Georgieva warned that, because of the cumulative effect of trade conflicts, the fall in growth could be as high as $700 billion by 2020, or about 0.8 percent of the world economy, equivalent to the size of the Swiss economy.

“Disputes now extend between multiple countries and into other critical issues. Currencies are once again in the spotlight. Because of our interconnected economies, many more countries will soon feel the impact.”

The divisions go well beyond trade as the US campaign to block the international usage of the Chinese technology giant Huawei demonstrates.

The IMF chief warned that even if growth revived in 2020, “the current rifts could lead to changes that last a generation—broken supply chains, siloed trade sectors, a ‘digital Berlin Wall’ that forces countries to choose between technology systems.”

As has now become customary in IMF statements and speeches, Georgieva called on all countries to work together to produce a lasting solution on trade. But the prospects for such an agreement are rapidly receding.

The agreement reached between the US and China last week is not an end to the trade war but merely a highly unstable truce before conflict resumes over the central US demands that China scrap its subsidies to state-owned enterprises and take action to curb its technological development. These demands have been rejected by Beijing as being tantamount to the scrapping of its central economic policies.

Within days of the limited US-China deal being announced, there are even doubts that a final agreement will be signed off by presidents Trump and Xi in November.

The trade conflicts are not confined to the US and China. This week the US is set to impose tariffs against a range of European products in response to a finding by the World Trade Organisation that subsidies paid to the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus in contravention of WTO rules adversely impact its US rival Boeing.

The European Union has indicated it will respond when the WTO brings down an expected finding that Boeing was assisted by tax breaks, also in contravention of WTO rules.

The trade conflict between the US and the EU could intensify in November if Trump goes ahead with a threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on European auto exports on “national security” grounds. The threat is the sharp end of the drive by his administration to impose a trade deal in which European markets are opened to American agricultural exports—a demand which EU negotiators have insisted is off the table.

In a preview of the IMF meeting, a Bloomberg article painted a sombre picture of the world economy.

Spanish police attack mass protests against prison terms for Catalan nationalists

Alejandro López & Alex Lantier

Protests erupted across Catalonia Monday after Spain’s Supreme Court handed down harsh jail sentences against 12 Catalan nationalists on trumped-up charges relating to the October 1, 2017 Catalan independence referendum.

Within minutes of the Monday morning verdict, thousands of protesters descended into the streets to demand the release of the defendants, occupying public squares and blocking highways in cities across the region. In Barcelona, the regional capital, they shut down major arteries such as the Via Laietana and Passeig de Gràcia. According to police figures, 25,000 people protested in Girona, 8,000 in Tarragona, 4,000 in Sabadell and thousands more in dozens of smaller Catalan cities.

In addition to highways, protesters blocked RENFE national railway lines and the Barcelona metro.

Clashes erupted in the early evening as police attacked tens of thousands of people rallying in downtown Barcelona and marching on El Prat airport. Shouting “Do it like Hong Kong,” protesters attempted to blockade and occupy airport terminals. The airport was forced to cancel 108 flights on Monday and 20 Tuesday due to traffic disturbances and the occupation of its facilities.

Police violently charged protesters to prevent them from fully occupying Terminal 1 of the airport, and protesters accused the security forces of firing rubber bullets and noxious foam. French journalist Elise Gazengel was repeatedly beaten by police and tweeted pictures of her bruises.

Overall, 78 protesters were hospitalized, including 38 who were still in hospital at the end of the day. Three people were arrested.

The sentences are the illegitimate result of a show trial that is part of the drive by the ruling class to create the legal framework for a fascistic police state in Spain. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) has explained its principled differences with the pro-capitalist, secessionist and pro-European Union (EU) perspective of the Catalan nationalist parties. However, it opposes, and calls on all workers to oppose, the prison terms imposed on the defendants despite the state’s failure to prove a case against them.

Following the incarceration of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by the British authorities, we are now witnessing the return of political prisoners being held in Western Europe for the first time since the fall of the fascist dictatorships in Portugal in 1974 and Spain in 1978. Their frame-up and imprisonment have far-reaching implications for the working class, the central target of police state repression in Spain and internationally.

Already in June, the Supreme Court demonstrated its politically criminal character by ruling that Generalissimo Francisco Franco became Spain’s legitimate head of state when he launched the fascist coup against the Republic in 1936 that triggered the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) government and the Stalinist-Pabloite Podemos party have maintained a deafening silence on this ruling. However, it gives the court ruling against the Catalan nationalist prisoners the character of a retroactive legitimization of Franco’s fascist repression of left-wing politics.

The Supreme Court found the defendants guilty on various counts of sedition, misuse of public funds and disobedience. It handed down sentences totaling over 100 years in jail, including:

* Thirteen years in prison and electoral ineligibility for ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia) leader, former deputy Catalan premier and EU parliamentarian Oriol Junqueras, who was prevented from taking his European Parliament seat.

* Prison and electoral ineligibility for 12 years for former regional ministers Raül Romeva, Jordi Turull and Dolors Bassa; for 11.5 years for former Catalan parliamentary speaker Carme Forcadell; for 10.5 years for former regional ministers Joaquim Forn and Josep Rull; for 9 years for Jordi Sánchez and Jordi Cuixart, the leaders of the Catalan National Assembly and Òmnium Cultural associations.

* A draconian fine of €200 per day for 10 months for former regional ministers Santi Vila, Meritxell Borràs and Carles Mundó, who are all barred from running for office for 1 year and 8 months.

The entire framework of the show trial organized by the Supreme Court was illegitimate. The PSOE government invited the recently formed pro-Franco Vox party to assist the state in prosecuting the defendants. It indicted the defendants on charges of rebellion, that is, “rising in a violent and public manner” against the state authority. In fact, they supported a peaceful referendum and called peaceful demonstrations.

There was large-scale violence, but it was organized by the right-wing Popular Party (PP) government in Madrid, not by the referendum supporters. The PP government ordered a brutal police crackdown on peaceful voters that left over 1,000 injured and was witnessed by millions on social networks around the world.

Conflict erupts over European Central Bank’s return to “quantitative easing”

Nick Beams

A bitter conflict, characterised by one leading banking economist as a “War of the Roses,” has broken out in European banking and financial circles over last month’s decision by the European Central Bank to further loosen its monetary policy.

At its meeting on September 12, the ECB’s governing council decided to send its base interest rate further into negative territory. It is reducing the rate from minus 0.4 percent to minus 0.5 percent, and resuming its €2.6 trillion asset purchasing program, after a hiatus of nine months, at the rate of €20 billion a month.

There was an immediate response. Reflecting the long-standing opposition to the quantitative easing policies in German financial circles, the Bild tabloid depicted the outgoing ECB president Mario Draghi as “Count Draghila”—a vampire, sucking dry the investments of savers. This has been a continuing theme of this section of the press.

On this occasion, however, it received support from higher levels. The day after the meeting, Klaus Knot, the head of the Dutch national bank, issued a statement calling the ECB’s actions “excessive.” Jens Weidmann, president of Germany’s Bundesbank said Draghi was “overshooting the mark” and Robert Holzmann, the head of Austria’s central bank, said the decision was a “possible mistake.”

Two weeks after the decision, the rift over the ECB decision was highlighted by the decision of the German representative, Sabine Lautenschläger, to resign from the ECB’s executive board. A known opponent of a further easing of monetary policy, her term did not expire until 2022.

According to the initial reports of the September meeting, as many as nine members of the 25-member governing council spoke out against the decision. The extent of the opposition has been confirmed in the minutes of the meeting released last week. These show that while there was broad agreement on the need to take action to counter the ongoing slowdown in the eurozone economy, there was significant opposition to the package announced by Draghi.

Most of the opposition centred on the decision to resume bond purchases. The minutes recorded that “a number of members” argued that the case for such action was “not sufficiently strong.”

In announcing the decision, Draghi told a news conference there was a “clear majority” in favour of the measures” and that an “ample degree of monetary accommodation” was needed to ensure 2 percent inflation over the medium term.

However, it has since emerged that the decision to restart the bond-buying program was taken over the objections of ECB officials. Three members of the ECB’s governing council leaked the contents of a letter sent to Draghi by the central bank’s monetary policy committee days before the decision which advised against the resumption of asset purchases.

Reporting on the leak last week, the Financial Times said it came as opponents of Draghi’s loose monetary policy “fight a rearguard action to put pressure on [former International Monetary Fund managing director] Christine Lagarde for her to change course after she takes over at the ECB on November 1.”

It is not the first time the committee’s advice has not been followed, but it is a relatively rare occurrence. The ECB did not officially comment on the leak but the ECB vice-president Luis de Guindos called for internal critics on the governing council not to make public their dissent.

“There are 25 of us and, for sure, there are sometimes different views, but when a decision is taken by a clear majority, it is important to defend it,” he said. “It would be much better if we tried to reduce the level of surrounding noise.”

However, in view of the widening differences, the “noise” level seems certain to rise, not decrease. This is because there is a deepening rift over the direction of monetary policy in view of its failure to provide a real boost to the eurozone economy.

Pointing last week to the intensification of the conflict, Carsten Brzeski, chief economist for Germany at ING, said: “The ECB seems to be in the middle of a War of the Roses. Christine Lagarde’s first task as new ECB president will be to fix the rift.”

The widening divisions make that a tall order. The extent of the gap was highlighted by a statement issued in the name of six former central bankers earlier this month.

It said the loose monetary policy of the ECB was based on “the wrong diagnosis” and risked eroding the ECB’s independence.

“As former central bankers and as European citizens, we are witnessing the ECB’s ongoing crisis mode with growing concern,” the statement signed by former German, Austrian, Dutch and French central bankers said.

“The ECB essentially justified in 2014 its ultra-loose policy by the threat of deflation. However, there has never been any danger of a deflationary spiral and the ECB itself has seen less and less of a threat for some time. This weakens its logic in aiming for a higher inflation rate. The ECB’s monetary policy is therefore based on a wrong diagnosis.”

Nationalists win parliamentary elections in Kosovo

Markus Salzmann

Following snap parliamentary elections on October 6 in Kosovo, and a week of coalition talks, there will in all likelihood be a change of government.

The nationalist Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) won the most votes (25.9 percent). It was followed by the Democratic League (LDK) with 25.2 percent. The loser of the election, the Democratic Party (PDK), which has been in power since 2007 and achieved only 21.3 percent in last week’s poll, has conceded defeat.

The election had little to do with democracy. Twenty years after the Western powers bombed the former Yugoslavia, plunging it into a bloody civil war and establishing a protectorate in Kosovo where bitter poverty and crime are commonplace, corrupt, nationalist and reactionary cliques are fiercely fighting for power. The turnout of just 44 percent shows that the majority of the population rejects the policies of the narrow layer that runs the country.

The governing coalition of former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj’s Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AKK) with the PDK and the smaller party Nisma, also lost votes, achieving around 11 percent. The outgoing government was dubbed the “war coalition,” as all three parties emerged from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which fought an armed struggle against Serbia.

The election became necessary following Haradinaj’s resignation in July. The former KLA commander, accused of committing war crimes in the 1990s, and current interim head of state Hashim Thaci, also a former KLA commander and war crimes suspect, symbolize the elite that has ruled since independence in 2008.

The probable head of government will be the leading candidate of Vetevendosje, Albin Kurti. The former student leader had organized nationalist student protests in the late 1990s, specifically to stir up ethnic tensions with the Serbian population. Until recently, he had argued for the establishment of a “Greater Albania,” which included Albania and Kosovo, as well as the Presevo Valley in southern Serbia and a significant part of Northern Macedonia and the Greek region of Epirus. In the election campaign, he moderated his tone so as not to repel influential financiers and possible coalition partners. For example, saying, it was not possible to carry through such a unification “at the moment.”

Kurtis’ most likely coalition partner is the LDK. The party is headed by lawyer Vjosa Osmani, who set herself the goal of fighting corruption in the country. Osmani, who holds a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh, has strong links with the IMF and the World Bank. She regards the rampant corruption in Kosovo as an obstacle to the boundless exploitation of the poverty-stricken land by Western companies and banks. The LDK is associated with Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and is favoured by most European powers as a party of government.

But the prospects of forming a stable government look bad. Twenty of the 120 seats in parliament are reserved for different ethnic minorities, and the faction of the oppressed Serbian minority has 10 seats. In the north of the country, in the predominantly Serb-inhabited areas, the list supported by Belgrade won almost 100 percent of the vote.

Around 120,000 Serbs live in Kosovo. Their stronghold lies in the city Mitrovica, divided between ethnic Serbs and Albanians. In the rest of the country, they live in about a dozen enclaves. Like Russia, China and some EU countries, Serbia did not recognize the independence of the former Serbian province of Kosovo in 2008.

A minority administration of the former governing parties might also be possible, which would then depend on receiving support from the minority representatives in parliament. The latter had supported Haradinaj partly because they were afraid of losing all rights under a Kurti government. Kurti not only announced that he would limit the rights of minorities, he has long demanded a ban on imports of goods from Serbia.

This would represent another escalation going beyond the introduction of the 100 percent duty on Serbian goods. This tariff, which excludes products of American, European and Asian manufacturers, was enacted by the old government. As a result, the prices for basic foods exploded.

Especially in the Serbian part of Mitrovica, where there are close economic links with Serbia, this has led to dramatic supply shortages. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić accused the government in Pristina of wanting to force the Serbs in Mitrovica to emigrate and continue the ethnic cleansing—which cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Syrian army, Iran threaten counterattack against Turkish invasion of Syria

Alex Lantier

The war unleashed by Turkey’s invasion of Syria, targeting formerly US-backed Kurdish forces, escalated out of control this weekend as the Syrian army and Iran moved to counterattack. With Turkish troops and allied Al Qaeda militias advancing deep into Kurdish-held territory in Syria, the Middle East is only days away from an all-out war between the major regional powers that could trigger a global conflict between nuclear-armed world powers.

UN reports show that 130,000 Syrians have fled their homes in the region amid the Turkish offensive, and Turkish officials claim they had “neutralized” at least 415 Kurdish fighters. Turkish troops seized the cities of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, amid heavy fighting including ongoing Turkish air raids, and seized a road crossing that cut off US and Kurdish troops in Kobani. Turkish troops also fired artillery at US troops near Kobani in what former US envoy Brett McGurk said was “not a mistake,” although Turkish officials later denied this.

Smoke billows from fires on targets in Ras al-Ayn, Syria, caused by bombardment by Turkish forces [Credit:"AP Photo/Emrah Gurel]

Turkey’s Syrian “rebel” allies, the Islamist Syrian National Army (SNA, formerly the Free Syrian Army), are executing Kurdish civilians in areas they hold, according to multiple reports. Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf was executed; her bullet-riddled car appeared in a video surrounded by SNA fighters. Beyond Al Qaeda-linked calls to destroy infidels, the British Daily Telegraph noted, the SNA’s main outlook “is sectarian: they are anti-Kurdish and they are Arab chauvinists.”

Yesterday evening, the Syrian army announced it would march on the area. The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported: “Syrian Arab Army units began moving north to confront Turkish aggression on Syrian territory... The movement comes to confront the ongoing Turkish aggression on towns and areas in the north of Hasaka and Raqqa provinces, where the Turkish forces committed massacres against locals, occupied some areas and destroyed infrastructure.”

The Syrian army has reportedly reached an agreement with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia, whose alliance with the United States was broken by Washington a week ago. Under this agreement, Syrian army troops would reach the city of Kobani near the Syrian-Turkish border in 48 hours. On Saturday, President Donald Trump had authorized the remaining 1,000 US troops in Kobani to withdraw, and US forces were in full retreat across northern Syria this weekend to avoid being cut off by advancing Turkish troops.

Iran, which has deployed tens of thousands of troops as well as drones to Syria in recent years to back the Syrian regime against a NATO-led proxy war, indicated it would support the Syrian army.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s Advisor for International Affairs Ali Akbar Velayati met with Syrian Ambassador to Iran Adnan Mahmoud yesterday in Tehran. He gave Iran’s “full support to Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, calling for the withdrawal of the Turkish forces,” SANA reported. Velayati added, “The principled policy of Iran is based on supporting the people and government of Syria and defending their righteous stances in a way that entails continuing joint cooperation until terrorism and terrorist organizations are completely eliminated.”

At the same time, military tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia are surging amid mutual attacks on tankers carrying Persian Gulf oil supplies that are critical to the world economy. Last month, the US and Saudi governments blamed a September 14 missile attack on Saudi oil facilities that caused a sharp rise in world oil prices on Iran, without providing any evidence. Then on October 11, two missiles hit the Iranian tanker Sabiti off Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast.

Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, said yesterday that Iran would retaliate against unnamed targets for the attack on the Sabiti. “A special committee has been set up to investigate the attack on Sabiti... Its report will soon be submitted to the authorities for decision,” Shamkhani told Fars News. “Piracy and mischief on international waterways aimed at making commercial shipping insecure will not go unanswered.”

Saudi officials declined to comment on the Sabiti attack, and officials with the US Fifth Fleet in the Gulf sheikdom of Bahrain claimed to have no information on it. But there is widespread speculation in the international media that the attack was carried out by Saudi Arabia or with its support.

The conflicts erupting between the different capitalist regimes in the Middle East pose an imminent threat not only to the population of the region, but to the entire world. Workers can give no support to any of the competing military plans and strategic appetites of these reactionary regimes. With America, Europe, Russia and China all deeply involved in the proxy war in Syria, a large-scale Middle East war could strangle the world oil supply and escalate into war between nuclear-armed powers. The working class is coming face to face with the real possibility of a Third World War.

The Kurdish-led SDF militias in Syria, vastly outgunned by Turkish forces and vulnerable to air strikes, warned US officials in talks leaked by CNN that they would appeal for Russia to attack Turkey and protect SDF and Syrian army forces. As Turkey is legally a NATO ally of Washington and the European powers, such an attack could compel the United States and its European allies to either break the 70-year-old NATO alliance or go to war with Russia to protect Turkey.

Japan's 2019 Defence White Paper and the Contest for Southeast Asia

Sandip Kumar Mishra

In Japan’s annual Defence White Paper released on 26 September, China’s growing military might has been given priority over North Korea’s belligerence as the country's main security threat. This is the first time Japan has so explicitly identified China as a security threat greater than North Korea. This article looks at how this document clarifies Japan's determination to not only contest China in the Western Pacific and the East China Sea (ECS), but also increase its footprint in Southeast Asia.

Japan's threat assessment derives from a range of factors. One is China's deployment of "air and sea assets in the Western Pacific and through the Tsushima Strait into the Sea of Japan with greater frequency." China has also been noted to be revisionist in the South China Sea (SCS). Further, the document shows Japan's acknowledgement of the deep strides it still has left to make with regard to defence and foreign policy in the region as compared to China.

Despite raising defence expenditure by 10 per cent in the past seven years, and buying more US-made stealth fighters and other advanced weapons, Japan is still nowhere close to China's US$ 177 billion defence budget. China spends almost three times more than Japan on its security. Further, China has also offered huge economic allurements to countries in the region through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). As per an Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimate, Southeast Asia would need around investments of around US$ 210 billion per annum in infrastructure to sustain the region's present growth trajectory from 2016 to 2030, which makes BRI incentives difficult to turn down.

Unlike Japan's growing strategic proximity with India and Australia and alliance with the US, its overtures towards Southeast Asia are not accorded as much coverage. However, there are nuances in this big picture narrative that play to Japan's interests, and the latest defence document shows that it has been working quietly but consistently to engage in Southeast Asia.

Japan's approach to Southeast Asia is two-pronged. First, it has undertaken greater engagement by sending, on a frequent basis, Japan Maritime Self Defense Forces (JMSDF) and its ships throughout the region. It also conducts bilateral and multilateral exercises with its partner countries. It has donated multiple patrol boats, maritime surveillance aircraft, and helicopter spare parts to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

Japan's premise is that if it is able to help buttress their maritime capacity, these countries could play a vital role in the Indo-Pacific strategy, which is intended to address an ‘assertive’ China as well as ensure a ‘free and open’ SCS. After all, 80 percent of Japan's oil supply and 70 percent of its trade pass through these waters. Perhaps in an attempt to camouflage much of this security assistance, Japan’s International Cooperation Agency (JAICA) and the Japanese Coast Guard use Overseas Development Assistance programmes to provide support, with very few directly routed through the Ministry of Defence.

Second, Japan is interested in further enhancing economic and developmental assistance to the region. It is interesting to note that despite a lot noise about BRI, Japan is still ahead of China in terms of its economic assistance Southeast Asian countries. At present, Japanese involvement in various regional projects is worth US$ 367 billion. This is more than Chinese involvement in these projects, which adds up to US$ 255 billion. Japanese assistance is dispersed quite widely across the region, with engagement in Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand, with the first three receiving a lion's share of the assistance. China is engaged in building the East Coast Rail project in Malaysia, and investing in the Philippines' 'Build, Build, Build' infrastructure initiative.

These countries appear to be more at ease with receiving Japanese economic assistance than Chinese because of reports about its 'debt trap' diplomacy through BRI, which has been witnessed recently Sri Lanka, Djibouti, and the Maldives. In fact, Japan’s consistent economic support has provided the strategic space to many of these countries to renegotiate terms with China. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad, for example, initially cancelled the East Coast Rail Link project with China in August 2018, and revived it only after renegotiation that has resulted in a substantial reduction of costs that Malaysia would have to bear.

Given China's military might, deep pockets, geographical proximity, and historical-cultural linkages to Southeast Asia, it is going to be a gargantuan task for Japan to pose itself an alternative on an equal footing. At the same time, it is possible for Japan to limit strategic space for China in the region and reduce its options–particularly if this is undertaken in conjunction with the US, India, and Australia.

African Peacebuilding Network (APN) Individual Research Grants 2020 for African Researchers

Application Deadline: 15^th January 2020 11:59pm (EST)

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be taken at (country): Research can be done about one or several African countries. Grant may support travel outside of Africa for research and conferences related to the specific project.

About the Award:

Field of Study: The fellowships support dissertations and research on peace, security and development topics.
Support is available for research and analysis on the following issues:

• Root causes of, and emerging trajectories of violent conflict;
• Natural Resource Conflict;
• Geographies and histories of conflict and peace;
• Theory and practice of conflict mediation;
• Resilience, conflict prevention and transformation;
• State and non-state armed actors, transnational crime, extremism, displacement and migration;
• Post-conflict elections, democratization, governance and economic reconstruction;
• Statebuilding, including state-society relations and state reconstruction;
• Transitional justice, reconciliation, and peace;
• The economic and financial dimensions of conflict, peacekeeping, and peace support operations;
• Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and peacebuilding;
• UN-AU-REC Partnerships and Peace Support Operations;
• Digital media, technology, and peace;
• Cultures, media, and art(s) of peace;
• Gender, youth and peacebuilding;
• Water conflict and peace;
• Health, post-conflict development, peace, and security; and
• Prevention of mass atrocities.

About the Fellowship: A core component of the APN, the Individual Research Fellowships program is a vehicle for enhancing the quality and visibility of independent African peacebuilding research both regionally and globally, while making peacebuilding knowledge accessible to key policymakers and research centers of excellence in Africa and around the world. Fellowship recipients produce research-based knowledge that is relevant to, and has a significant impact on, peacebuilding scholarship, policy, and practice on the continent. For its part, the APN works toward inserting the evidence-based knowledge that grant recipients produce into regional and global debates and policies focusing on peacebuilding.

Research Fellowships Proposals
The APN is interested in innovative field-based projects that demonstrate strong potential for high-quality research and analysis, which in turn can inform practical action on peacebuilding and/or facilitate inter-regional collaboration and networking among African researchers and practitioners.
Proposals should clearly describe research objectives and significance, with alignment between research questions and goals and research design/methods. Proposals should also demonstrate knowledge of the research subject and relevant literature, and address the feasibility of proposed research activities, including a timeline for project completion. Applicants should also discuss the likely relevance of the proposed research to current knowledge on peacebuilding practice and policy and situate it within existing literature. We strongly encourage the inclusion of a brief, but realistic, budget outline, keeping within the allotted amount for the grant and fitting appropriately within a six-month project and the page limit required.

Type: Research Grants

Eligibility: 

• All applicants must be African citizens currently residing in an African country.
• This competition is open to African academics, as well as policy analysts and practitioners.
• Applicants applying as academics must hold a faculty or research position at an African university or research organization, and have a PhD obtained no earlier than January 2009.
• Applicants applying as policy analysts or practitioners must be based in Africa at a regional or subregional institution; a government agency; or a nongovernmental, media, or civil society organization, and have at least a master’s degree obtained before January 2014, with at least five years of proven research and work experience in peacebuilding-related activities on the continent

Number of Awardees: 16

Value of Award: up to $15,000

Duration of Programme: Fellowships are awarded on a competitive, peer-reviewed basis and are intended to support six months of field-based research, from June 2020 to December 2021.

How to Apply: Apply here


Visit Research Webpage for details

Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Scholarships 2020/2021 for Study in Europe

Application Deadline: Most consortia will require applications to be submitted between October and January, for courses starting the following academic year.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: EU and Non-EU Countries

To be taken at (country): European Universities/Institutions participating under approved Erasmus Mundus Action Joint Programmes.

Eligible Fields of Study: See links below

About the Award: About 116 Masters courses are supported by the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degrees (EMJMDs) scholarships. The field(s) of study covered are usually: Agriculture and Veterinary, Engineering, Manufacture and Construction, Health and Welfare, Humanities and Arts, Science, Mathematics and Computing, Social Sciences, Business and Law.

Type: Masters (Joint Degree)

Eligibility: Erasmus Mundus Joint Programme defines its own selection criteria and admission procedures. Students or scholars should contact the Consortium offering the Masters Programmes for more information.

Number of Awardees: Not specified.

Value of Scholarship: The programme offers full-time scholarships and/or fellowships that cover monthly allowance, participation costs, travelling and insurance costs of the students.  Scholarship amounts can vary according to the level of studies, the duration of studies, and the scholar’s nationality (scholarships for non-EU students are higher than for EU students).

Duration of Scholarship: EMJMDs last between 12 and 24 months.

How to Apply: Students, doctoral candidates, teachers, researchers and other academic staff should address their applications directly to the selected Erasmus Mundus masters and doctoral programmes (Action 1) and to the selected Erasmus Mundus partnerships (Action 2), in accordance with the application conditions defined by the selected consortium/partnership

You are advised to consult in advance the websites of each of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Programmes that interest you. There you will find all necessary information concerning the content of the course, its structure, the scholarship amounts as well as the application and selection procedures. Deadline varies depending on the programme but falls around December to January.
It is important to visit the official website (link below) and an EMJMD site for detailed information on how to apply for this scholarship.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details


Award Provider: European Commission

Inequality is Literally Killing Us

Sam Pizzigati

What do the folks at the U.S. Census Bureau do between the census they run every 10 years? All sorts of annual surveys, on everything from housing costs to retail sales.

The most depressing of these — at least this century — may be the sampling that looks at the incomes average Americans are earning.

The latest Census Bureau income stats, released in mid-September, show that most Americans are running on a treadmill, getting nowhere fast. The nation’s median households pocketed 2.3 percent fewer real dollars in 2018 than they earned in 2000.

America’s most affluent households have no such problem. Real incomes for the nation’s top 5 percent of earners have increased 13 percent since 2000, to an average $416,520.

The new Census numbers don’t tell us how much our top 1 percent is pulling down. But IRS tax return data shows that top 1 percenters are now pulling down over 20 percent of all household income — essentially triple their share from a half-century ago.

Should we care about any of this? Is increasing income at the top having an impact on ordinary Americans? You could say so, suggests a just-released Government Accountability Office study.

Rising inequality, this federal study makes clear, is killing us. Literally.

The disturbing new GAO research tracks how life has played out for Americans who happened to be between the ages of 51 and 61 in 1992. That cohort’s wealthiest 20 percent turned out to do fairly well. Over three-quarters of them — 75.5 percent — went on to find themselves still alive and kicking in 2014, the most recent year with full stats available.

At the other end of the economic spectrum, it’s a different story.

Among Americans in the poorest 20 percent of this age group, under half — 47.6 percent — were still waking up every morning in 2014. In other words, the poorest of the Americans the GAO studied had just a 50-50 chance of living into 2014. The most affluent had a three-in-four chance.

“The inequality of life expectancy,” as economist Gabriel Zucman puts it, “is exploding in the U.S.”

The new GAO numbers ought to surprise no one. Over recent decades, a steady stream of studies have shown consistent links between rising inequality and shorter lifespans.

The trends we see in the United States reflect similar dynamics worldwide, wherever income and wealth are concentrating. The more unequal a society becomes, the less healthy the society.

On the other hand, the nations with the narrowest gaps between rich and poor turn out to have the longest lifespans.

And the people living shorter lives don’t just include poorer people. Middle-income people in deeply unequal societies live shorter lives than middle-income people in more equal societies.

What can explain how inequality makes this deadly impact? We don’t know for sure. But many epidemiologists — scientists who study the health of populations — point to the greater levels of stress in deeply unequal societies. That stress wears down our immune systems and leaves us more vulnerable to a wide variety of medical maladies.

We have, of course, no pill we can take to eliminate inequality. But we can fight for public policies that more equally distribute America’s income and wealth. Other nations have figured out how to better share the wealth. Why can’t we?

Right Kind of Green: Agroecology

Colin Todhunter

The globalised industrial food system that transnational agri-food conglomerates promote is failing to feed the world. It is responsible for some of the planet’s most pressing political, social and environmental crises.

Whether it involves the undermining or destruction of what were once largely self-sufficient agrarian economies in Africa or the devastating impacts of soy cultivation in Argentina, localised, traditional methods of food production have given way to global supply chains dominated by policies which favour agri-food giants, resulting in the destruction of habitat and peasant farmer livelihoods and the imposition of a model of agriculture that subjugates remaining farmers and regions to the needs and profit margins of these companies.

Many take as given that profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets. There is the premise that water, seeds, land, food, soil, forests and agriculture should be handed over to powerful, corrupt transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.

These natural assets (‘the commons’) belong to everyone and any stewardship should be carried out in the common interest by local people assisted by public institutions and governments acting on their behalf, not by private transnational corporations driven by self-interest and the maximization of profit by any means possible.

Common ownership and management of these assets embodies the notion of people working together for the public good. However, these resources have been appropriated by national states or private entities. For instance, Cargill captured the edible oils processing sector in India and in the process put many thousands of village-based workers out of work; Monsanto conspired to design a system of intellectual property rights that allowed it to patent seeds as if it had manufactured and invented them; and India’s indigenous peoples have been forcibly ejected from their ancient lands due to state collusion with mining companies.

Those who capture essential common resources seek to commodify them — whether trees for timber, land for real estate or agricultural seeds — create artificial scarcity and force everyone else to pay for access. Much of it involves eradicating self-sufficiency.

Traditional systems attacked

Researchers Marika Vicziany and Jagjit Plahe note that for thousands of years Indian farmers have experimented with different plant and animal specimens acquired through migration, trading networks, gift exchanges or accidental diffusion. They note the vital importance of traditional knowledge for food security in India and the evolution of such knowledge by learning and doing, trial and error. Farmers possess acute observation, good memory for detail and transmission through teaching and storytelling. The very farmers whose seeds and knowledge have been appropriated by corporations to be bred for proprietary chemical-dependent hybrids and now to be genetically engineered.

Large corporations with their seeds and synthetic chemical inputs have eradicated traditional systems of seed exchange. They have effectively hijacked seeds, pirated germ plasm that farmers developed over millennia and have ‘rented’ the seeds back to farmers. Genetic diversity among food crops has been drastically reduced. The eradication of seed diversity went much further than merely prioritising corporate seeds: the Green Revolution deliberately sidelined traditional seeds kept by farmers that were actually higher yielding and climate appropriate.

Across the world, we have witnessed a change in farming practices towards mechanised industrial-scale chemical-intensive monocropping, often for export or for far away cities rather than local communities, and ultimately the undermining or eradication of self-contained rural economies, traditions and cultures. We now see food surpluses in the West and food deficit areas in the Global South and a globalised geopoliticised system of food and agriculture.

A recent article on the People’s Archive of Rural India website highlights how the undermining of local economies continues. In a region of Odisha, farmers are being pushed towards a reliance on (illegal) expensive genetically modified herbicide tolerant cotton seeds and are replacing their traditional food crops.

The authors state that Southern Odisha’s strength lay in multiple cropping systems, but commercial cotton monoculture has altered crop diversity, soil structure, household income stability, farmers’ independence and, ultimately, food security. Farmers used to sow mixed plots of heirloom seeds, which had been saved from family harvests the previous year and would yield a basket of food crops. Cotton’s swift expansion is reshaping the land and people steeped in agroecological knowledge.

The article’s authors Chitrangada Choudhury and Aniket Aga note that cotton occupies roughly 5 per cent of India’s gross cropped area but consumes 36 to 50 per cent of the total quantum of agrochemicals applied nationally. They argue that the scenario here is reminiscent of Vidarbha between 1998 and 2002 – initial excitement over the new miracle (and then illegal) Bt cotton seeds and dreams of great profits, followed by the effects of their water-guzzling nature, the huge spike in expenses and debt and various ecological pressures. Vidarbha subsequently ended up as the epicentre of farmer suicides in the country for over a decade.

Choudhury and Aga echo many of the issues raised by Glenn Stone in his paper ‘Constructing Facts:Bt Cotton Narratives in India’. Farmers are attracted to GM cotton via glossy marketing and promises of big money and rely on what are regarded as authoritative (but compromised) local figures who steer them towards such seeds. There is little or no environmental learning by practice as has tended to happen in the past when adopting new seeds and cultivation practices. It has given way to ‘social learning’, a herd mentality and a treadmill of pesticides and debt. What is also worrying is that farmers are also being sold glyphosate to be used with HT cotton; they are unaware of the terrible history and reality of this ‘miracle’ herbicide, that it is banned or restricted in certain states in India and that it is currently at the centre of major lawsuits in the US.

All this when large agribusiness concerns wrongly insist that we need their seeds and proprietary chemicals if we are to feed a growing global population. There is no money for them in traditional food cropping systems but there is in undermining food security and food sovereignty by encouraging the use of GM cotton and glyphosate or, more generally, corporate seeds.

In India, Green Revolution technology and ideology has actually helped to fuel drought and degrade soils and has contributed towards illnesses and malnutrition. Sold under the guise of ‘feeding the world’, in India it merely led to more wheat in the diet, while food productivity per capita showed no increase or actually decreased. Nevertheless, there have been dire consequences for the Indian diet, the environment, farmers, rural communities and public health.

Across the world, the Green Revolution dovetailed with an international system of chemical-dependent, agro-export mono-cropping and big infrastructure projects (dams) linked to loans, sovereign debt repayment and World Bank/IMF directives, the outcomes of which included a displacement of the peasantry, the consolidation of global agri-food oligopolies and the transformation of many countries into food deficit regions.

Often regarded as Green Revolution 2.0, the ‘gene revolution’ is integral to the plan to ‘modernise’ Indian agriculture. This means the displacement of peasant farmers, further corporate consolidation and commercialisation based on industrial-scale monocrop farms incorporated into global supply chains dominated by transnational agribusiness and retail giants. If we take occurrences in Odisha as a microcosm, it would also mean the undermining of national food security.

Although traditional agroecological practices have been eradicated or are under threat, there is a global movement advocating a shift towards more organic-based systems of agriculture, which includes providing support to small farms and an agroecology movement that is empowering to people politically, socially and economically.

Agroecology

In his final report to the UN Human Rights Council after a six-year term as Special Rapporteur, in 2014 Olivier De Schutter called for the world’s food systems to be radically and democratically redesigned. His report was based on an extensive review of recent scientific literature. He concluded that by applying agroecological principles to the design of democratically controlled agricultural systems we can help to put an end to food crises and address climate-change and poverty challenges. De Schutter argued that agroecological approaches could tackle food needs in critical regions and could double food production in 10 years. However, he stated that insufficient backing seriously hinders progress.

And this last point should not be understated. For instance, the success of the Green Revolution is often touted, but how can we really evaluate it? If alternatives had been invested in to the same extent, if similar powerful and influential interests had invested in organic-based models, would we now not be pointing to the runaway successes of organic-based agroecological farming and, importantly, without the massive external costs of a polluted environment, less diverse diets, degraded soils and nutrient deficient food, ill health and so on?

The corporations which promote chemical-intensive industrial agriculture have embedded themselves deeply within the policy-making machinery on both national and international levels. From the overall bogus narrative that industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world to providing lavish research grants and the capture of important policy-making institutions, global agri-food conglomerates have secured a perceived thick legitimacy within policy makers’ mindsets and mainstream discourse. The integrity of society’s institutions have been eroded by corporate money, funding and influence, which is why agroecology as a credible alternative to corporate agriculture remains on the periphery.

But the erosion of that legitimacy is underway. In addition to De Schutter’s 2014 report, the 2009 IAASTD peer-reviewed report, produced by 400 scientists and supported by 60 countries, recommends agroecology to maintain and increase the productivity of global agriculture. Moreover, the recent UN FAO High Level Panel of Experts concludes that agroecology provides greatly improved food security and nutritional, gender, environmental and yield benefits compared to industrial agriculture.

Writer and academic Eric Holtz-Gimenez argues that agroecology offers concrete, practical solutions to many of the world’s problems that move beyond (but which are linked to) agriculture. In doing so, it challenges – and offers alternatives to – plunder which takes place under a prevailing system of doctrinaire neoliberal economics that in turn drives a failing model of industrial agriculture.

The scaling up of agroecology can tackle hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation and climate change. By creating securely paid labour-intensive agricultural work, it can also address the interrelated links between labour offshoring by rich countries and the removal of rural populations elsewhere who end up in sweat shops to carry out the outsourced jobs: the two-pronged process of neoliberal globalisation that has devastated the economies of the US and UK and which is displacing existing indigenous food production systems and undermining the rural infrastructure in places like India to produce a reserve army of cheap labour.

The Declaration of the International Forum for Agroecology by Nyeleni in 2015 argued for building grass-root local food systems that create new rural-urban links, based on genuine agroecological food production. It went on to say that agroecology should not become a tool of the industrial food production model but as the essential alternative to that model. The Declaration stated that agroecology is political and requires local producers and communities to challenge and transform structures of power in society, not least by putting the control of seeds, biodiversity, land and territories, waters, knowledge, culture and the commons in the hands of those who feed the world.

It involves prioritising localised rural and urban food economies and small farms and shielding them from the effects of rigged trade and international markets. It would mean that what ends up in our food and how it is grown is determined by the public good and not powerful private interests driven by commercial gain and the compulsion to subjugate farmers, consumers and entire regions.

There are enough examples from across the world that serve as models for transformation, from the Oakland Institute’s research in Africa and the Women’s Collective of Tamil Nadu to the scaling up of agroecological practices in Ethiopia.

Whether in Europe, Africa, India or the US, agroecology can protect and reassert the commons and is a force for grass-root change. This model of agriculture is already providing real solutions for sustainable, productive agriculture that prioritise the needs of farmers, citizens and the environment.