US-China trade deal leaves basic conflict festering

Mike Head

In a somewhat bizarre and deranged political extravaganza at the White House yesterday, US President Donald Trump signed a supposed “phase one” trade agreement with China, claiming it to be “the biggest deal there is anywhere in the world, by far.” Clearly, Trump was desperate to proclaim some kind of “victory” in the US economic war against China.

For almost an hour, Trump rambled through a long list of congratulations aimed at his closest advisers, cabinet members and dozens of the business leaders gathered at his feet. The assembly included the CEOs of some of the world’s biggest financial, industrial and technology companies, such as News Ltd, Boeing, Honeywell, Citibank, UPS, AIG, JPMorgan Chase, Dow Chemical and ConocoPhillips, Blackstone and Citadel, a prominent hedge fund.

“Most of you, I can say, you’re doing fantastically well,” Trump told the business leaders. “Thank you Mr President,” he said, as if on their behalf. He nervously noted that while the confrontation with China had triggered stock market falls—more than $US1 trillion in one day in August—since his arrival in the White House there had been “141 days where we had all-time” highs.

For all the bombast, the interim deal—arrived at after two years of aggressive “America First” trade-war measures against China, disrupting and reducing global trade, triggering financial market meltdowns and fueling a worldwide slump—resolves none of the fundamental issues at stake.

Not only does it leave most of the punitive US tariffs and Chinese counter-tariffs in place. It does not address the core demands issued by Washington, which have been for the wholesale restructuring of the Chinese economy to prevent it from overtaking that of the US, particularly in high-tech industries. This underlying offensive has been set aside, for now, for a so-called phase two deal, for which no timetable has yet been set.

Trump said he would remove tariffs on more than $US300 billion of Chinese goods only “if we do phase two.” He added: “Otherwise we have no cards to negotiate with.” While expressed in the gangster language of a billionaire speculator, this epitomises the drive by the US ruling elite to escalate the confrontation with China in order to shore up the global supremacy that it secured by victory in World War II.

As China’s delegation, led by Vice Premier Liu He, stood in stony-faced silence, America’s TV networks gradually tired of the spectacle, switching their coverage away to moves in the House of Representatives to send articles of impeachment to the Senate.

After nearly an hour, the Chinese vice premier was invited to read out a message from President Xi Jinping, in which he applauded the negotiations. “It also shows that our two countries have the ability to act on ... equality and mutual respect,” Xi’s letter stated. To make “even greater progress,” Xi wrote, “I hope the US side will treat fairly Chinese companies and their regular trade and investment activities.”

Whatever hopes the capitalist regime in China has for a mutually-profitable and power-sharing settlement with US imperialism, the underlying conflict will only intensify. Just two days before the White House ceremony, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo provocatively threatened China.

In a speech at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute in California, he said Iranian leader Qassem Suleimani was killed as part of a broader strategy of deterring challenges by US foes that also applies to China and Russia—exposing the assertion that the Suleimani was assassinated because he was plotting imminent attacks on US targets.

“The importance of deterrence isn’t confined to Iran,” Pompeo said. “That’s the whole point of President Trump’s work to make our military the strongest it’s ever been.” He cited the imposition of tariffs on Chinese imports as an aspect of the administration’s strategy. “We’re restoring credibility to deterrence,” he said.

Even in the short-term, many aspects of the “phase one” deal remain unclear. US officials said the agreement would reduce some tariffs and allow Beijing to avoid additional taxes on almost $160 billion of the country’s goods. The Trump administration also said it received commitments from China to purchase billions worth of goods and crack down on alleged intellectual property theft.

The administration refused to make public all details of the agreed Chinese purchases, but listed specific targets for four industries in 2020 and 2021. These included $75 billion in manufactured goods, $50 billion in energy, $40 billion in agriculture and as much as $40 billion in services.

About two-thirds of all US imports from China—roughly $370 billion worth—would still be covered by tariffs after the deal is signed, according to a December analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. And more than half of US exports to China would still be subject to retaliatory tariffs, the institute said.

“Steep tariffs are the new normal,” wrote Chad Brown, a senior fellow at the institute and former economist at the World Bank, pointing to the wider use of trade war measure by the US, including against Japan and the European powers.

The US ruling class remains intent on reversing China’s rapidly-gained ascendancy in developing artificial intelligence, 5G mobile networks and other technology that will be critical for economic and military activity this century. China and the US are already locked in a fight over US demands for bans on Chinese tech company Huawei, a leading global provider of telecoms equipment used to build 5G networks.

Trump has vowed that the phase one pact will be followed up with phase two negotiations, despite widespread scepticism that anything will happen before the US election in November, if at all.

Zhu Feng, dean of the School of International Relations at Nanjing University, said this week he did not expect Beijing and Washington to reach a phase two deal in 2020. “The US will still try and force China to change its economic structure,” he said. “China will make some concessions in this area, but the US should also make a similar level of concession.”

Significantly, US Democrats condemned Trump for not going far enough to beat China down. They sought to whip up nationalist and protectionist sentiment, claiming to be wanting to protect American workers and farmers, while aligning themselves with the most aggressive elements within the military and intelligence apparatus.

“President Trump’s ‘phase-one’ trade deal with China is an extreme disappointment,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who represents New York, wrote in a twitter post, sharing a clip of himself criticising the agreement from the Senate floor before it was signed. “He’s conceding our leverage for vague, unenforceable ‘promises’ China never intends to fulfill.”

Schumer echoed the official statement issued by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in December, shortly after Trump announced the pending deal. “Trump got rolled by the Chinese,” the DNC said. “Trump agreed to major concessions to China without addressing the major structural issues he promised to fix or even undoing all the damage that’s been done since he promised to take on China.”

In tune, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was among the most vociferous critics. “Trump’s deal with China won’t fix a failed trade policy that has destroyed 3.7 million US jobs,” he tweeted yesterday. In effect, Sanders, like the other presidential contenders, is blaming Chinese and other overseas workers for the ruthless job destruction, cost-cutting and profit-gouging of the US corporate oligarchy.

This reactionary bid to split increasingly poverty-stricken and angry American workers from their global counterparts serves to heighten the danger of a catastrophic military war with China.

Malians protest to demand departure of French occupation troops

Alex Lantier

More than a thousand Malians demonstrated on Monday in Independence Square in the capital, Bamako, to demand the withdrawal of French troops who have occupied Mali since 2013. Anger is exploding against the carnage produced by French intervention and against the official lie that served to justify it: that France would wage a global war against jihadist terrorist networks that threaten to conquer Mali.

As a mass strike breaks out against President Emmanuel Macron and anti-war sentiment rises among the ‘yellow vests’ in France, and protests continue against the Algerian military dictatorship, objective conditions are emerging for an international workers’ struggle against the neocolonial wars waged by France and its imperialist allies across Africa.

Demonstrators in Bamako brandished posters “France Get Out,” and chanted slogans like “France out”, “Down with France” and “The Barkhane Forces must leave.” Operation Barkhane is the official name of the French military intervention in Mali.

Many demonstrators stressed that their anger was not directed against the French but against the foreign policy of French imperialism. “We are not angry with the French people, but against the policies of their state,” one demonstrator told Le Monde.

Likewise, a woman protesting in Bamako said, “France must withdraw its army from our lands. That’s why the Malian people are here, that’s why the Amazon that I am, is here.”

Another demand was to overcome the rivalries between Tuaregs, Dogons, Fulani and other ethnic groups that the French occupying forces and their German auxiliaries are playing on. One protester called for a march on Kidal, a northern Tuareg town at the centre of French military operations: “Soon, we must march on Kidal, in the coming days. If there is no improvement, there will be no change. We will march on Kidal. Even if everyone, all of Mali, dies, we will march on Kidal.”

Another demonstrator pointed to the complicity between Paris and the Islamist or ethnic militias active in Mali: “Despite the massive presence of the world's largest armies, the terrorist groups continue to operate and are even growing in strength. We must therefore beware of these nocturnal arsonists who suddenly turn into firemen at dawn. These foreign powers use terrorism to control the immense wealth of the region.”

Vast anger is rising in Mali against the French occupation, following NATO’s war in Libya, where Paris destroyed Moammar Gaddafi’s government with the help of jihadist militias. France then invaded Mali in 2013, supposedly to protect Malians from jihadist militias coming from Libya. In 2020, 80 percent of Malians are critical of the French presence, according to a poll for Maliweb.

The protest in Bamako follows a number of strikes and demonstrations against France and its neo-colonial puppet, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. Malian teachers and railway workers went on strike in 2019 because Paris and Keïta, who are spending hundreds of millions of euros on the war, refused to pay their salaries. And after several protests in Bamako and elsewhere in 2019, another demonstration against French interference took place on January 3 near Bandiagara in central Mali.

These demonstrations defied the slanderous statements of Macron and Keita, who accuse opponents of the French occupation of Mali, that is, the vast majority of the Malian population, of playing into the hands of Al Qaeda and Islamic State militias.

On December 31, in presenting his New Year’s greetings, Keïta said he was “convinced” that most Malians felt a “sense of gratitude” towards the French occupation troops, adding: “This should not be confused with a minority of activists, snipers or centrifugal forces who are trying to play the game of terrorists.”

This slander only reinforces the contempt Malians feel for Keïta and the regime in Bamako. A demonstrator in Bamako told the French press: “The president cannot make himself clear. All African presidents are chosen by France. They are under its domination.”

Even as anger mounts against his presidency and repeated attacks by the police on strikers in France, Macron denounced opposition to the war in Mali, which he called “anti-French.” He declared, “I cannot and will not have French soldiers in the Sahel, as long as ambiguity persists regarding anti-French movements, that are sometimes led by politicians.”

Meanwhile, Macron has intensified the war in Mali in defiance of public opinion in both Mali and France. On Monday, he held a summit with the “G5 Sahel” countries--Niger, Chad, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali—to announce the deployment of 220 more French troops to Africa. Le Monde wrote that Paris had convened this conference “to obtain a 'clarification' from the countries of the region after accusations of interference and neocolonialist aims.”

Convened in Pau, the five governments of the Sahel signed a shameful statement defending the French intervention opposed by the workers and oppressed masses of the region. In this statement, they “expressed the wish for the continuation of France's military engagement in the Sahel.” They also “expressed their gratitude for the crucial support provided by the United States and expressed the wish for its continuation.”

Many political questions remain to be clarified in order to build a real fight against the neo-colonial wars in Africa. African Solidarity for Democracy and Independence, a party linked to the petty-bourgeois New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) in France and which has welcomed French interference in 2013, joined the demonstration on Monday as well as Keita’s Rally for Mali (RPM). The Group of Patriots of Mali (GPM), whose members are calling for Russian military intervention in Mali, organized the rally.

It is impossible, however, to fight against imperialism and war by calling on one or another capitalist regime.

The best allies of Malian and African workers in the struggle against oppression by France, or other imperialist powers, are the European and American working class fighting against wars and the reactionary policies of their own governments. A broad opposition is developing among these workers to the neo-colonial wars which the imperialist powers have been waging for decades in Africa and the Middle East.

“It is always the same ones who rule everywhere, and it is the same ones who do the same damage everywhere. When you talk to a Malian who tells you about Total and Bolloré, you realize that we all have the same enemy, the same parasites, the same people who are trying to destroy all nations,” a worker who was demonstrating against Macron this weekend in Paris told the WSWS.

Such comments underscore the need to consciously build an anti-war movement among the international working class to end the wars in Mali and throughout Africa and the Middle East.

Russian government resigns after Putin’s state of the nation address

Clara Weiss

On Wednesday, a few hours after the conclusion of Putin’s annual state of the nation address to the Federal Assembly, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced that his government would resign, effective immediately. Putin has nominated Mikhail Mishustin, an almost unknown figure, to be Medvedev’s successor and has asked the current cabinet to remain active until he has picked their successors within the next week. Mishustin’s nomination is set to be confirmed by the Duma (parliament) on Thursday.

The unexpected resignation of the entire Russian government comes amid staggering social tensions and escalating war tensions between the US and Iran which threaten to draw in the entire South Caucasus region and Russia itself. The global resurgence of the class struggle, in particular, is sending shock waves through the oligarchy which has engaged in massive assaults on the working class in recent years, while vastly enriching itself.

Putin’s state of the nation address which preceded the announcement of the government’s resignation was dominated by desperate attempts to promise remedies to a social crisis for which the Kremlin and the oligarchy bear direct responsibility.

Putin described the raising of incomes as the top priority of the government, promised a series of measures aimed at providing more state support to poor families, in particular, in order to facilitate a reversal of the long-standing decline of the Russian population. Thus, he proposed a monthly payment of 5,500 rubles ($89,50) per child between 3 and 7 to families with multiple children. He also demanded that, starting 1 September 2020, schools offer free food to children from first through fourth grade.

He furthermore declared that salaries for doctors, teachers and state employees had to be paid based on his 2012 May decrees. Recent years have seen a number of protests by teachers, doctors and paramedics, in particular, many of whom receive wages that place them below the official poverty level of just $150 per month. Putin also addressed the acute medicine shortages for life-threatening diseases like cancer and other illnesses like schizophrenia which have affected untold thousands last year and angered millions. He promised that the state would take over payments for several drugs and asked the government to organize the import of critical medicines that are not registered in Russia.

Putin also proposed a number of changes to the Constitution. These include a formal, slight increase the powers of parliament, allowing it to approve the nomination of the Prime minister by the president, and an increased role of the State Council which Putin currently heads. The proposed changes are believed to be designed to ensure that Putin, who played a leading role in Russian politics for two decades, can continue to play a leading role beyond the end of his last term in 2024.

Putin stressed that Russia had to remain a “presidential republic” with the main military and political powers effectively lying with the president. He proposed changing the requirements for presidential candidates from a minimum of 10 years of permanent residency in Russia to 25 years. This move was clearly intended to undermine the legal basis for members of the liberal opposition, many of which have lived for a longer period in the West or are still residing there. Putin also advocated banning any kind of foreign citizenship not just for presidential candidates but for all running for or holding official government office on a federal or regional level. Putin, who is now serving his fourth term as president, also suggested to limit the terms a president can serve to two.

He announced a national referendum on these proposed constitutional changes with media reports suggesting a bill might be proposed before the summer of 2020.

Underlying the sharp political crisis within the Russian oligarchy are growing class tensions and the escalating war crisis in the Middle East.

The reshuffling of the government is not least of all aimed at deflecting mass social anger about far-reaching austerity measures all the while ensuring that the basic course will continue.

In 2018-2019, Medvedev government, with the full support of Putin, rammed through a reform raising the retirement age, against the opposition to this measure by 90 percent of the population. In what has been the most dramatic assault on living standards of the working class since the 1990s, the age of retirement for men was raised from 60 to 65 and for women from 55 to 60, effective since 2019.

The pension reform has been overwhelmingly perceived as a blatant act of plunder by the state and has been a critical factor causing a dramatic decline in the popularity of the government and Putin himself. According to the polling agency VTsIOM, 30.9 percent of Russians trusted Putin in November 2019 down from 70 percent in 2014. The same poll indicated that only 22.5 percent trusted Medvedev. Other leading politicians, including defense minister Sergei Shoigu and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, enjoyed the trust of only 13.1 and 11.2 percent of the population respectively.

The assault on pensions has come on top of a decline in real incomes, growing poverty and further austerity measures. Real incomes for the vast majority of Russians have plummeted five years in a row and are, according to a report in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 6.4 percent below their level in 2013. Prices for most food items have risen on average by 50-80 percent in 2015-2019. One in eight Russians now officially live on less than $150 a month. The actual number is likely to be much higher. According to the newspaper Vedomosti, 27 percent of those aged 18 to 30, 34 percent of those aged 31 to 40 and 38 percent of people aged above 60 perceive themselves to be “extremely poor.”

The Russian government has engaged in far-reaching austerity over the past years, forcing the working class and lower middle class to shoulder the burden of the economic crisis in the country that has been dramatically exacerbated by the US and EU’s economic sanctions in the wake of the Ukraine crisis in early 2014. Since 2012, spending in health care has been slashed by 16 percent and in education by 14 percent. An estimated 80 percent of Russian schools are now housed in unsafe or poorly maintained buildings and hundreds of hospitals have been shut down in recent years, leaving entire sections of the population, especially in the countryside, without immediate access to medical care.

Meanwhile, Russia’s leading oligarchs, all of which have close ties to the government and Putin, in particular, have been massively expanding their wealth. According to Bloomberg, Russia’s richest men Vladimir Potanin alone increased his personal fortune by $8.5 billion within one year. Vagit Alekperov, the head of Russia’s largest independent oil producer Lukoil, added $6.2 billion, and now owns $22.3 billion. In all, Russia’s richest collectively increased their personal wealth by 21 percent up to $51 billion.

Even though Russian economists see the economy plunging into a recession, with almost zero growth in the manufacturing sector in the last quarter of 2019 and a decline in oil production, Russia was the best performing equity market in the world last year. Companies registered with the Moscow stock exchange increased their payout of dividends from 1.8 trillion rubles in 2018 to 2.7 trillion rubles in 2019.

Putin’s nomination of Mikhail Mishustin as prime minister, who has overseen the Federal Tax Agency since 2010, and has ties to representatives of international finance capital through his previous position as the head of the investment management company UGF Capital, makes clear that the new government will continue and escalate the social attacks on the working class.

In addition to these growing class tensions and prospects of a further deepening of the economic crisis, the oligarchy is feeling besieged by the escalation of the drive to war by US imperialism. The killing of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani at the beginning of the year was met with a remarkably muted response by the Kremlin who had had close ties to Suleimani. It further fueled ongoing heated debates about the foreign policy orientation of the country under conditions where an open war by the US with Iran threatens to draw in Russia directly and spill over to its borders in the South Caucasus.

Germany: Auto manufacturer Opel to wipe out 4,100 jobs

Peter Schwarz

German automaker Opel plans to cut another 2,100 jobs in Germany by the end of 2021. The news was announced by the company’s Human Resources manager Ralph Wangemann and Works Council Chairman Wolfgang Schäfer-Klug at a meeting of the workforce at the company headquarters in Rüsselsheim on Tuesday.

These layoffs are just the tip of the iceberg. The Opel executive has been given a green light by the works council and the IG Metall union to wipe out an additional 2,000 jobs by the end of the decade. After these cuts take place, out of the 19,000 employees who worked for Opel in Germany before the company was sold by General Motors to the French company PSA in 2017, just 8,100—less than half—will remain.

In addition, thousands of jobs in related supply industries have been lost, jobs which are not covered by protection against compulsory layoffs. The logistics service provider Rhenus SCR, which employed 700 people two years ago in Rüsselsheim, has announced it is shutting down operations and shedding its remaining 95 workers. Opel terminated its contract with the company and plans to carry out the same work with its own workforce.

The Lear Corporation, which produces seats for Opel, also plans to close its plant in Ginsheim-Gustavsburg after reducing the number of its employees from 400 to 250.

As has long been the case in Germany’s auto and engineering industries, the plans for layoffs were worked out and signed off by the so-called “employee representatives” in the trade unions before the workforce was even informed. The unions and works councils regard as their top priority the suppression of any opposition on the part of the workforce and to smoothly facilitate the company’s strategy.

Citing comments from “trade union circles,” Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper wrote that the agreement is painful, but the “best possible solution” with “Opel boss Lohscheller fiercely determined to further reduce the number of staff. Unfortunately, this cannot be prevented entirely.”

As is customary in such cases, well-paid works councillors and union officials claim that job cuts will be implemented in a “socially acceptable” manner and that the company has committed to avoid “compulsory layoffs” until 2025.

In practice, this means that short term contract workers will be the first to be fired, while older workers will be pushed out of the company via partial or early retirement and severance payments. This is to apply to workers born before 1963, i.e., from the age of 57. For those affected, the end result is a reduced pension and the prospect of a retirement in poverty. Their jobs are gone forever—with devastating effects for the regions concerned.

If Opel makes use of its agreed option of slashing more than 2,100 jobs, then the ban on compulsory redundancies will be gradually extended up until 2029. The deal is just as absurd as it is cynical: the more workers lose their jobs, the longer alleged protection against dismissal applies!

This latest round of job cuts comes at a time when Opel is once again posting increasing profits: 859 million euros in 2018 and 700 million euros in the first half of 2019.

When PSA took over Opel two-and-a-half years ago, PSA boss Carlos Tavares set a target of a six percent profit margin by 2026. Now, thanks to the services of the works council and IG Metall, he can achieve this goal much earlier. Although sales have dropped significantly, the slashing of 6,800 jobs has produced such an increase in individual worker productivity that the group is once again generating high profit levels.

In fact the worst is yet to come. “With the new job cuts,” writes the Handelsblatt, “Opel boss Lohscheller is reacting on the one hand to underutilisation in his factories and the shift in auto manufacturing to electro-mobility. On the other hand, he is responding to a certain extent to the expected merger of parent company PSA with the Italian-American rival Fiat Chrysler (FCA).”

As the result of this merger, which will produce a colossus comprising 16 different brands and an annual turnover of 170 billion euros, “thousands of jobs are likely to be on the line,” the Handelsblatt predicts. This applies not only to production, but also to research departments. FCA currently has 18,000 auto developers, PSA over 19,000, with 4,000 of them based in Rüsselsheim, PSA’s largest research and development center. “Experts consider at least a third of these positions”—over 12,000—“to be obsolete.”

The PSA takeover of Opel and the forthcoming merger with Fiat Chrysler are part of a global process of concentration that is wiping out hundreds of thousands of jobs worldwide—in France, Italy and Spain, as well as in Germany, the United States and many other countries. Auto workers are being subjected to increasingly brutal exploitation while profits, stock prices and managers’ salaries soar to astronomical heights.

Workers confront not only the global auto companies and their multi-billionnaire shareholders, but also the unions and works councils that support the company offensive and divide workers by playing off one factory and location against another. Not a single job can be defended without breaking with these organisations which have been bought and paid for by the company.

The defence of jobs, wages and social rights requires an international strategy and a socialist program. Developments in the auto industry show “the madness of the capitalist system, in which every technological advance serves to increase the exploitation of the working class, fill the pockets of a small minority and plunge hundreds of thousands into misery,” as we wrote two months ago, when Audi announced the cutting of 9,500 jobs. “It is a powerful argument for transferring the car industry to social ownership, putting it under worker control and planning rationally.”

The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party call for the establishment of independent action committees organised and led by ordinary workers. In contrast to the pro-capitalist unions, such action committees must defend the rights and needs of the working class, which are incompatible with the interests of capitalists. These committees must be based on the principle of internationalism and the unity of the working class, which faces the same corporations and financial interests around the world. Their goal is to organise resistance to corporate attacks and establish contact with other action committees around the world.

Onassis Fellowships Program 2020/2021 for International Scholars

Application Deadline: 28th February, 2020

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International (Non-Greek citizens)

To be taken at (country): Greece

Field of Study: The Program covers courses in the following academic fields:

• Humanities:
• Social Sciences
• Economics/Finance:
• Arts

The consideration of an eventual interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary approach/dimension for the proposed research would be highly appreciated.

Type: Post-doctoral, Fellowship

Eligibility: The Program covers scholarly research in Greece only and in the fields stated above.

1. Eligible to participate are the following candidates:

• Persons of non-Greek descent
• all applicants should have already completed their Ph.D.
• Cypriot citizens are also eligible to apply for Category D and E fellowship only, provided they permanently reside and work outside Greece
• Persons of Greek descent (second generation and on) are also eligible to apply for a fellowship or scholarship, provided they permanently reside and work abroad or currently study in foreign Universities
• Category D and E also applies to Scholars of Greek descent or citizenship provided they have a professional academic career of at least ten (10) years in a University or Research Institute abroad
• The above mentioned clarification (d) also applies to Ph.D. candidates of Greek descent or citizenship, who pursue post-graduate studies outside of Greece (Category C – please see below), have conducted their high school studies and have obtained a degree outside Greece and permanently reside outside Greece for more than fifteen (15) years

2. Former Fellowship Recipients of the Foundation can re-apply for a fellowship only if five (5) years have elapsed since their previous fellowship scholarship.

3. Former Fellowship Recipients of the Foundation who have twice received a fellowship cannot apply again to the Onassis Fellowships Program for International Scholars.

4. No extension of the duration of the fellowship beyond the period mentioned in this announcement for each category will be permitted.

5. It is not possible to postpone or defer the fellowship to a later academic year

Number of Awardees: up to ten [10]

Value of Scholarship:

 1. Coverage of the travel expenses for a round trip air-ticket from and to the country and place where the fellowship recipient permanently resides, for the grantee only, for the beginning of the scholarship and upon definite departure from Greece that amount a) up to Three Hundred Euros (€300.-) for a European country or b) up to One Thousand Euros (€1,000.-) for a transatlantic trip or travel to and from countries of Asia and Africa. Fellowship recipients will be solely responsible for the purchase of their tickets

2. A monthly allowance of One Thousand Five Hundred Euros (€ 1,500.-) for subsistence, accommodation and all other expenses.

Duration of Scholarship: up to Three [3] months during the academic year October 2019 – September 2020

How to Apply: Candidates are kindly requested to read carefully the text of the scholarship announcement listing the terms and conditions of the scholarship and the available specializations and study levels before completing and submitting the online application.
The required supporting documents can also be submitted by the candidate in person or via a representative at the mentioned address in the Link below.


Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

West African Research Association (WARA) Residency Fellowship 2020 for African Researchers

Application Deadline: 15th February 2020 11:59pm

Eligible Countries: West African countries

About the Award:  Each residency will last 4-8 weeks and will provide the visiting scholar with opportunities for library research, guest lecturing, and/or collaborative work with American colleagues.

Type: Research, Fellowship

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: WARA will pay the round-trip travel costs of the selected scholar as well as a stipend of $3500 to help cover meals and local transportation costs. Host institutions are encouraged to provide additional support in the form of housing, office space, library privileges, laboratory facilities, or other supports for the period of the residency.

Duration of Program:  4-8 weeks

How to Apply: All applications must be submitted online and will include:

• Name and contact information for representative of WARA host institution
• A 50-80 word abstract of the proposed residency, clearly indicating the purpose of the Residency (clearly indicate the host institution contact person)
• A proposal of no more than six (6) double-spaced pages profiling the visiting scholar, his or her proposed residency activities, how the residency will contribute to the goals of WARA, the expected impact or outcome of the residency, and any support that the host institution is prepared to contribute
• Curriculum vitae for the visiting scholar
• A letter of interest from the scholar
• A letter of support from a relevant administrator (dean, department chair, etc.) at the host institution
• Proof of citizenship in the form of a copy of the scholar’s passport (please note: only scholars who are eligible for non-immigrant visas to the U.S. will be considered)

All applications for WARA grants, including the WARA Residency Fellowship, must be submitted through the online application.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Important Notes: Please note that applications can only be made by WARA member institutions for the purpose of bringing a specific scholar to their campus. Applications from individual scholars will not be accepted.

Paradigm Initiative Digital Rights and Inclusion Media Fellowship 2020

Application Deadline: 15th February 2020

Eligible Countries: African countries

To Be Taken At (Country): Nigeria

About the Award: The Fellowship is a 5-month program designed to immerse outstanding, early career, journalists in digital rights and digital inclusion advocacy – and intervention efforts – in Africa. Selected journalists will work with Paradigm Initiative on various projects and contribute to improving public understanding of digital rights and inclusion issues.

Type: Fellowship (Professional)

Eligibility: To be eligible for the Paradigm Initiative Digital Rights and Inclusion Media Fellowship:

• The Fellowship is open to journalists affiliated with mainstream print and online newspapers in Africa
• We are especially interested in women journalists
• Interested candidates must demonstrate previous coverage of human rights and/or tech issues and interest in advocacy journalism
• Interested candidates must not have spent more than ten years in journalism. We are most interested in outstanding, early career journalists

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• Fully-funded trip to attend the Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum (DRIF) in Abuja, Nigeria, in April 2020.
• Digital Rights / Inclusion training at the Paradigm Initiative headquarters in Lagos (Nigeria), in addition to communication with team members from other offices in Africa.
• Fully-funded 2-week residency program to visit Paradigm Initiative offices in Nigeria (Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Aba).
• 4-month virtual training and collaboration with Paradigm Initiative and partners.
• Fellowship may also include fully-funded local and international travels to participate in and cover relevant events related to Digital Rights and Inclusion.
• Interaction with leading stakeholders in digital rights advocacy.
• Paradigm Initiative will provide fellows with a monthly stipend, and a one-time research grant, during the fellowship period.

Expectations

• Fellows will be expected to participate in all scheduled activities.
• Fellows will be expected to publish, in their affiliated media (Print, TV, Radio, Online), at least 15 reports on digital rights and inclusion issues during the fellowship period. Fellows will retain full editorial direction on the stories.
• Fellows will be expected to continue to provide coverage to digital rights and inclusion issues after their fellowship.

Duration of Programme: 5-month programme (Fellowship will run from April 2020 to August 2020)

How to Apply: Fill the application FORM before 15th February 2020.

Visit the Programme Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Paradigm Initiative

Who Wins and Who Loses in the Iran Crisis?

Patrick Cockburn

In the latest phase of the US-Iran confrontation, who came out on top is not clear-cut; both countries made gains and losses from the crisis and some of its the results are still to come.

By ordering the assassination on 3 January of general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Quds Force, the external arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, President Trump claims to have eliminated a terrorist mastermind and all-round anti-American monster. In practice, Soleimani had started making mistakes, notably in using extreme violence to quell protesters demanding reform in Iraq, thereby alienating much of the majority Shia community that was previously favourable to Iran.

Operationally, the Iranian state loses little from the elimination of its most famous general who has become a religious and nationalist martyr, enabling the Iranian leadership to rally popular support against the US and US-imposed sanctions. Vast crowds supportive of the government have replaced protesters on the streets of Tehran and other cities.

Trump does gain from his willingness to order the killing of Soleimani, the senior Iranian security official orchestrating the Iranian campaign of limited attacks on US allies that escalated dramatically last summer. While seeking to retain deniability, Iran was clearly behind the harassment of shipping in the Gulf and, above all, the drone and missile strikes on Saudi oil facilities in September. The US had been weakened in the Middle East by Trump’s lack of response to these attacks and unwillingness to defend allies. The conviction had grown that he would never risk a war. The killing of Soleimani shows that he is.

The Iranian ballistic missile strikes on two US bases in Iraq, Erbil in Kurdistan and al-Asad in the western desert, were clearly symbolic, pre-announced and geared not to hurt anybody. Significantly, the US did not, so far as it is known, try to shoot the missiles down or retaliate. Iran sent multiple messages through third parties that this was the beginning and end of their military retaliation for the death of Soleimani.

The US insisted that this assurance must include Iranian proxy forces, such as pro-Iranian paramilitary groups in Iraq, who have been ordered not to target American forces, according to the Pentagon. The rush of attacks by pro-Iran forces on US or US allies predicted by many commentators is unlikely to occur, at least in the short term.

This is a military gain for the US: devastating attacks on the US or US allies carried out by shadowy but Iranian-linked perpetrators have long been a feature of Iran’s way of making war. This supposedly gave Iran deniability, but the tactic has been used so often that Iranian culpability was glaringly obvious. Post-Soleimani, it is beginning to look outdated as a military method.

Iranian prestige was certainly dented by the ease with which the US killed its general. On the other hand, the willingness of the US to allow Iran to fire its missiles at its bases and not to retaliate shows that Trump takes Iran seriously and really does not want a war, if he can avoid it. The millions of Iranians in the streets to mourn Soleimani may help dent the credibility of hawks and neo-conservatives, who have claimed that the Iranian regime is about to founder.

Iraq will continue to be the main arena where the US-Iran confrontation is fought out. This has always been in Iran’s interest because it has far more power in Iraq than the US. This influence was being sapped by the increasingly anti-Iranian tone of the mass protests that began last October. If these ebb because of the changed political situation, this will be an important political gain for Iran.

Trump is increasing sanctions on Iran in response to its missile attack, however ineffective and ritualised it may have been. If these sanctions seriously affect Iraq, which buys many things such as gas and electricity from Iran, this is bad news for Iraqis, but it will take time for it to become clear whom they blame.

As for the 5,200 US troops in Iraq, Iran and its local allies say they want them out, but many Iraqi leaders would like to keep them as a guard against a revived Isis and a counterpoise to Iran. For all the Iranian rhetoric about cleansing the Middle East of US forces, the presence of isolated detachments of US soldiers in Iraq provides Iran with an easy target in any renewed crisis.

The outcome of the latest phase of the crisis is something of a dead heat. The elaborate diplomatic manoeuvres over the Iranian missile attack on Erbil and al-Asad shows how keen both sides are to avoid an all-out war. The chaos and turmoil engendered by the assassination shows how difficult it will be to do this.

Demonizing the Shia: How the West Perpetuates False Claims About Iran’s Regional Influence

Patrick Cockburn

I was in Iraq in April 1991 when government security forces crushed the Shia uprising against Saddam Hussein’s regime, killing tens of thousands and burying their bodies in pits. I had been expelled from Iraq to Jordan at the start of the rebellion in March and then, to my surprise, allowed to return, because Saddam wanted to prove to the world that he was back in control.

I was taken along with other journalists to see Grand Ayatollah al-Khoei, the vastly influential spiritual leader of the Shia in Iraq and elsewhere, who was being held in a nondescript house in Kufa in southern Iraq.

He lay on a couch looking all his 92 years, surrounded by Iraqi security men who were hoping that he would condemn the rebellion.

I asked him what he thought of it. For some minutes I thought he had not heard my question, but then, speaking in a low gasping voice, he said: “What happened in Najaf and other cities is not allowed and was against God.”

His words were deliberately ambiguous, but I had no doubt that he was speaking of the hideous vengeance being exacted by military units loyal to Saddam, the killing of Shia men, women and children regardless of whether or not they had taken part in the uprising.

The Shia had risen up against Saddam in the final days of his defeat in Kuwait by the US-led coalition. While they were not expecting full-scale foreign support, they did believe that the coalition would stop Saddam using his remaining tanks and helicopters against them. But the US conflated the Iraqi Shia with Iran, where the Shia are the overwhelming majority, and had decided that it was not in American interests to see the rebellion succeed.

Coalition forces stood aside as Saddam’s tanks, with helicopters overhead, smashed their way into Shia cities like Karbala, Najaf and Basra, and then began their mass executions.

Three decades later, the US and its allies are still making the same mistake, treating the millions of Shia in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and Afghanistan as if they were Iranian agents.

Down the centuries, the Shia have been one of the most savagely persecuted religious minorities; they fear today that in the wake of the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, they are once again being demonised, as Donald Trump denounces all who oppose the US in the Middle East as Iranian proxies.

Yousif al-Khoei, the grandson of the grand ayatollah and the head of the London-based Al-Khoei Foundation, told me that the confrontation between Iran and the US was already leading to “the rise of anti-Shia sentiment”. He receives many calls from non-political but very worried Shia who hear what they interpret as crude anti-Shia propaganda being spouted in Washington.

“The threat to demolish ‘cultural sites’ in Iran was shocking to hear from a US president,” said Khoei. “Ordinary Shia express fear that this may mean attacking our holy places and institutions where faith and culture are intertwined.” He told me how young Shia are angered by potential “gross violation of the Shia faith” by US threats to holy sites and shrines that have only recently been targeted by Isis. “We are still recovering from the losses Isis inflicted on the Shia,” he said.

One of the most significant developments in the Middle East since 1945 has been the rise of the previously marginalised and impoverished Shia communities in many – though not all – of the region’s countries, above all Lebanon and Iraq, the latter becoming the first Shia-ruled state in the Arab world since Saladin overthrew the Fatimid dynasty in Egypt in 1171.

Yet American and British politicians too often treat the rise of the Shia as if this was purely the outcome of unjustifiable Iranian interference. Western leaders find it convenient to adopt the anti-Shia propaganda line pumped out by Sunni states like Saudi Arabia, which persecutes its own Shia minority, and Bahrain, which has an even more oppressed Shia majority.

In both countries, Shia demanding civil rights are punished as terrorists and alleged proxies of Iran. Often, the Sunni authorities are convinced by their own propaganda: when the Bahraini government, backed by Saudi troops, crushed the Arab Spring protests on the island in 2011, Shia doctors in a nearby hospital were tortured to make them admit that they were receiving orders from Iran, though a high-level international investigation found no evidence of Iranian involvement in the protests.

After the US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003, its military commanders were paranoid about alleged Iranian plots to foster resistance to the occupation. In fact, it needed no fostering, because neither Shia nor Sunni wanted Iraq to be occupied by a foreign military force.

Old propaganda claims have resurfaced over the last week about Iran assisting the predominantly Saudi 9/11 bombers or enabling an IED campaign against British troops in southern Iraq, as if Iraq at that time was not knee-deep in discarded munitions.

Such self-serving conspiracy theories, whether they are being peddled in Washington, London, Riyadh or Abu Dhabi, are counterproductive. They foster a sense of Shia solidarity that is to the benefit of Iran. We saw this over the last week, as anti-government protests in Iran in 2019 were replaced this year by crowds numbering millions jamming the streets of Iranian cities to mourn General Soleimani, that very same government’s top military commander.

At the heart of Shi’ism, more than in most religions, is martyrdom, and Soleimani is now being elevated in the eyes of Shia – and not just in Iran – to the status of a warrior martyr who died fighting for the faith.

The triumphant Iraqi army commanders I saw in the wrecked Shia cities of Iraq in 1991 all tried to persuade me that the Iranians had been the driving force behind the rebellion. Much the same nonsense is being uttered today about an Iranian hand being behind anything the west and its allies do not like in the Middle East.

When they claim to be targeting Iran, they are in practice targeting the Shia community as a whole – a mistake for which both they and the Shia are likely to pay a high price.

Gone Fishing? No Fish but Plenty of Pesticides and a Public Health Crisis

Colin Todhunter

There is mounting evidence that a healthy soil microbiome protects plants from pests and diseases. One of the greatest natural assets that humankind has is soil. But when you drench it with proprietary synthetic chemicals or continuously monocrop as part of a corporate-controlled industrial farming system, you can kill essential microbes, upset soil balance and end up feeding soil a limited doughnut diet of unhealthy inputs.

Armed with their synthetic biocides, this is what the transnational agritech conglommerates do. These companies attempt to get various regulatory and policy-making bodies to bow before the altar of corporate ‘science’. But, in reality, they have limited insight into the long-term impacts their actions have on soil and its complex networks of microbes and microbiological processes. Soil microbiologists are themselves still trying to comprehend it all.

That much is clear when Linda Kinkel of the University of Minnesota’s Department of Plant Pathology said back in 2014: “We understand only a fraction of what microbes do to aid in plant growth.”

And it’s the same where ‘human soil’ is concerned.

People have a deep microbiological connection to soils and traditional processing and fermentation processes, which all affect the gut microbiome – the up to six pounds of bacteria, viruses and microbes akin to human soil. And as with actual soil, the microbiome can become degraded according to what we ingest (or fail to ingest). Many nerve endings from major organs are located in the gut and the microbiome effectively nourishes them. There is ongoing research taking place into how the microbiome is disrupted by the modern globalised food production/processing system and the chemical bombardment it is subjected to.

The human microbiome is of vital importance to human health yet it is under chemical attack from agri-food giants and their agrochemicals and food additives. As soon as we stopped eating locally-grown, traditionally-processed food, cultivated in healthy soils and began eating food subjected to chemical-laden cultivation and processing activities, we began to change ourselves. Along with cultural traditions surrounding food production and the seasons, we also lost our deep-rooted microbiological connection with our localities. It was traded in for corporate chemicals and seeds and global food chains dominated by the likes of Monsanto (now Bayer), Nestle and Cargill.

Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason says that glyphosate disrupts the shikimate pathway within these gut bacteria and is a strong chelator of essential minerals, such as cobalt, zinc, manganese, calcium, molybdenum and sulphate. In addition, it kills off beneficial gut bacteria and allows toxic bacteria to flourish. She adds that we are therefore facing a global metabolic health crisis linked to glyphosate.

Many key neurotransmitters are located in the gut. Aside from affecting the functioning of major organs, these transmitters affect our moods and thinking.  There is strong evidence that gut bacteria can have a direct physical impact on the brain. Alterations in the composition of the gut microbiome have been implicated in a wide range of neurological and psychiatric conditions, including autism, chronic pain, depression and Parkinson’s Disease.

Recently published research indicates that glyphosate and Roundup are proven to disrupt gut microbiome by inhibiting the shikimate pathway. Dr Michael Antoniou of King’s College London has found that Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate cause a dramatic increase in the levels of two substances, shikimic acid and 3-dehydroshikimic acid, in the gut, which are a direct indication that the EPSPS enzyme of the shikimic acid pathway has been severely inhibited. The researchers found that Roundup and glyphosate affected the microbiome at all dose levels tested, causing shifts in bacterial populations.

This confirms what Mason has been highlighting for some time. However, she has also been pointing out the environmental degradation resulting from the spiraling use of glyphosate-based herbicides and has just written an open letter to the Principal Fisheries Officer of Natural Resources Wales (NRW), Peter Gough (NRW is the environment agency for Wales).

The letter runs to 20 pages and focuses on glyphosate and neonicotinoid insecticides. She asks who would re-authorise a pesticide that is toxic to aquatic life with long lasting effects and is causing serious eye damage along with various forms of cancers and a wide range of other health conditions?

She answers her question by saying the European Glyphosate Task Force and Jean-Claude Juncker President of the EC along with various regulators in Europe who have basically capitulated to an industry agenda. Mason argues that the European Glyphosate Task Force (who actually did the re-assessment of glyphosate) omitted all the studies from South America where they had been growing GM Roundup Ready crops since 1996. She discusses the suppression of key research which indicated the harmful effects of glyphosate.

The Principal Fisheries Scientist Wales sent Mason two NRW Reports two years ago. In it, Mason discovered that giant hogweed on the River Usk bank had been treated with a glyphosate-based herbicide. NRW had also admitted to not studying the effects of neonicotinoids, which had been introduced in 1994. Mason pointed out to NRW that run-off from farms of clothianidin in seeds would be enough to kill off aquatic invertebrates.

In early January, NRW attempted to explain the absence of salmon and trout in the River Usk on climate change (warming of the river), rather than poisoning of the river, which is what Mason had warned the agency about two years ago.

In Britain, information on emerging water contaminants has been suppressed, according to Mason, and there is no monitoring of either neonics or glyphosate in surface or ground water. In the US, though, measurements of these chemicals have been carried out on farmland and their correlation with massive declines in invertebrates by separate agencies and universities in the US and Canada.

Mason notes there has been 70 years of poisoning the land with pesticides. Although the National Farmers Union and the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs in the UK say fewer pesticides are now being applied, the Soil Association indicates massive increases of increasing numbers of pesticides at decreasing intervals (official statistics obtained via a Freedom of Information request).

Readers should consult the full text of Mason’s open letter on the acamedia.edu site to gain wider insight into the issues outlined above and many more, such as government collusion with major agrochemical corporations, the shaping of official narratives on illness and disease to obscure the role of pesticides and Monsanto’s poisoning of Wales.

What Mason outlines is not specific to Wales or the UK; the increasing use of damaging agrochemicals and government collusion with the industry transcends national borders. Nation states are becoming increasingly obsolete and powerless in the face of globalised capitalist interests that seek to capture and exploit markets, especially in the Global South.

What follows is the e-mail that Mason sent to Peter Gough by way of introducing her letter to him.

Dear Peter,

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) classified glyphosate as a substance that is toxic to aquatic life with long lasting effects

Your colleague Dave Charlesworth declared on BBC 1 Breakfast last week that the declines in salmon and trout were due to climate change and warming of the rivers. I told you just over 2 years ago that it was due to pesticides and showed you the proof from assorted NRW documents you sent me.

Why are NRW, the government, ‘top’ UK doctors, farmers, the corporations, the media and global pesticides regulators protecting the agrochemical industry? All of you could suffer from the effects of pesticides in food, in water, in the air and in rain. Why don’t you inform the people?

Monsanto claims that Roundup doesn’t affect humans, but their sealed secret studies that scientist Anthony Samsel obtained from the US EPA, shows evidence of cancers and that bioaccumulation of 14C labelled glyphosate occurred in every organ of the body (page 9).

The NFU and Defra deny they are responsible for 70 years of poisoning the land and the subsequent insect apocalypse; they should read their own document “Healthy Harvest.” The National Farmers’ Union (NFU), the Crop Protection Association (CPA) and the Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC) combined to lobby the EU not to restrict the 320+ pesticides available to them. The publication is called: HEALTHY HARVEST. [1] (Pages 6-9)

The Department of Health and the Chief Medical Officer for England claim that parents are responsible for obesity in primary school children. However, Pesticides Action Network (PAN) analysed the Department of Health’s Schools Fruit and Vegetable Scheme and found that there were residues of 123 pesticides in it, some of which are linked to serious health problems such as cancer and disruption of the hormone system.

When PAN informed them, they said that pesticides were not the concern of the DOH. (Page 14, 13-16).

Dr Don Huber, Emeritus Professor of Plant Pathology, Purdue University, US, speaking about GMO crops and glyphosate, said: “Future historians may well look back upon our time and write, not about how many pounds of pesticide we did or didn’t apply, but by how willing we are to sacrifice our children and future generations for this massive genetic engineering experiment that is based on flawed science and failed promises just to benefit the bottom line of a commercial enterprise.” (Page 18)

Kind regards,

Rosemary