Europe’s largest regional airline, Flybe, collapses citing coronavirus impact as final straw

Robert Stevens

Flybe, Europe’s largest regional airline, collapsed in the early hours of Thursday, leaving 2,400 workers unemployed and thousands of passengers stranded.

After years of management profiteering and asset stripping, the firm, now run by Connect Airways, a consortium including Virgin Atlantic, the Stobart group and Cyrus Capital, announced after midnight Wednesday that it ceased trading with immediate effect and that administrators had been appointed. Passengers were told not to travel to the airports after all flights were cancelled and Flybe’s 75 planes impounded.

A FlyBe airplane during takeoff (Wikipedia Commons)

The writing was on the wall, as the Financial Times (FT) revealed Wednesday, that after months of talks with the government, the UK-based airline had failed to secure a crucial £100 million loan required to keep it going.

The firm cited subdued demand as a result of the coronavirus as the other main reason why it went under. A statement pointed to “significant funding challenges…compounded by the outbreak of coronavirus which in the last few days has resulted in a significant impact on demand.”

The FT cited a source close to the airline saying, “The impact of coronavirus has made a bad situation worse. … It has been in a pretty precarious position for a while—it doesn’t take much to push it over the edge.”

In January, Flybe secured a pledge from Boris Johnson’s government to review the Air Passenger Duty (APD) paid on each flight taking off from the UK. This was too little, too late, with the FT reporting that the company was “increasingly concerned that any cuts to air passenger duty might not kick in until 2021, which would be too late for the airline to survive the coming months.”

Staff and passengers were given virtually no warning, with Flybe sending out texts at 2 a.m. to passengers warning anyone booked on one of their flights not to travel to the airport. Flybe arranged no alternative flights. Many left stranded will be unable to recoup their fares. Only those who paid more than £100 and with a credit card can be assured of a refund under consumer protection rules.

Chaos ensued, with the airline’s final flights either grounded minutes before take-off or diverted to the nearest airport in mid-air so that planes could be impounded. Seizure notices by airport authorities were slapped on planes as soon as they landed. Flybe’s entire operation was pulled, with its website no longer operating and scenes of workers and mechanics at the Engineering HQ and workshops in Exeter lugging their tools home in the dead of night.

One passenger described how his flight from Birmingham to Glasgow was diverted to Manchester in mid-air Wednesday evening: “The passengers were very patient and a collection was done among everyone on the plane for those affected. We were patient because I think we realised a delay for us is nothing compared to potential job losses. Everyone’s thoughts are with all the Flybe staff affected.”

Katherine Densham summed up the brutal way in which staff were discarded. Speaking at Exeter Airport, Flybe’s HQ, she broke into tears as she told the Daily Mail, “I’m not sure what I’m going to do now. I’ve worked for them since leaving college.”

Most of her colleagues had also worked for the firm straight from leaving college. After working for Flybe for 13 years, she explained how “we got an email from [chief executive] Mark [Anderson] telling us it was ‘all over, it’s all gone’.”

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was not commissioned by the Conservative government to operate flights to repatriate stranded travelers. The CAA claimed there was “enough capacity in the market for people to travel via alternative airlines, rail and coach operations.”

Workers also face the possible loss of their pensions. The British Regional Airlines Group (BRAG) fund is based in the Isle of Man. It is not covered by the UK’s Pension Protection Fund (PPF), which steps in to cover workers with a pension—with a 10 percent deduction in value—when firms collapse.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps washed his hands of any responsibility, declaring, “Unfortunately, with the situation that has developed with [coronavirus], an already weak company, I’m afraid, just hasn’t been able to survive.”

In January, Flybe only survived collapse after agreeing with the government to defer tax payments of “less than £10 million” with HM Revenue and Customs as it entered talks aimed at securing the £100 million loan.

The emergency discussions followed a decade of deep financial crisis for Flybe, faced with intensifying competition. Publicly floated for £215 million in December 2010, Flybe was sold to Connect Airways for just £2.2 million in January 2019.

The company was previously sharply affected by the 2008-2009 recession, which had a disproportionate effect on the UK’s regional economies, where most of the carrier’s business is located. Domestic air traffic fell 20 percent between 2007 and 2017. Flybe reported losses of £41.1 million in 2012-2013 and began a £65 million cost-cutting programme in 2013.

After a brief period of profitability in 2013-2014, the company’s shares slumped 23 percent in January 2015 with the announcement it would only just break even that year. A drop in passenger revenue and the need to maintain surplus aircraft—nine extra Embraer jets, at a cost of £26 million—were cited as the main causes.

The situation worsened from 2017. Between then and now, nine European airlines have gone out of business. Attempts by major European carriers to dominate the market led to a price war, which crashed fellow UK airline Monarch in 2017, making 1,900 workers redundant.

Flybe continued to pile up losses, £20 million in the year 2017-2018. Following the Brexit referendum vote in 2016, the value of the pound fell sharply. With fuel and aircraft leases paid for in dollars, a 39 percent increase in fuel prices in 2019 and continuing problems of excess capacity all contributed to its demise.

Operating from 30 airports in Britain, Flybe played a central role in domestic air travel as well as in linking the UK’s regional cities to the continent. At least another 1,400 jobs will go from the businesses that supply the airline.

The loss of the airline’s UK domestic connections will have a negative effect across the whole economy. Flybe operated about 40 percent of regional UK flights, with many regional airports highly dependent on its 8.5 million passengers annually. At its Exeter hub it operated 80 percent of flights and at nearby Southampton Airport 90 percent. It ran 81 percent of all flights at Belfast City Airport in Northern Ireland.

The trade unions refused to lift a finger to oppose the devastating job losses. Oliver Richardson, national officer for the Unite union, said only, “It is simply outrageous that the government has not learned the lessons following the collapse of both Monarch and Thomas Cook that the much-promised airline insolvency review has still not materialised.”

Flybe’s long-term decline was accompanied by a massive attack on its workforce facilitated by the unions. The company shed 1,100 jobs in 2013-2014 as part of an attempted turnaround. Unite and the British Airlines Pilots Association (Balpa) worked merely to “to avoid compulsory redundancies.” Balpa’s then-general secretary, Jim McAuslan, admitted in 2014, “Pilots have made huge sacrifices to help Flybe turn a corner.”

Flybe’s bankruptcy is likely to be the first of a new wave of many smaller airlines that could go under overnight as revenues and profits disappear.

On Thursday, the International Air Transport Association said that the world’s airlines could lose between $63 billion and $113 billion in revenues because of the coronavirus crisis. Major UK- and Irish-based airlines, including British Airways, Ryanair, Virgin, in line with most of the big Asian airlines, have already cancelled up to 25 percent of flights as passenger numbers have collapsed.

Local transmission of coronavirus increasing in Australia

James Cogan

In an alarming development that underscores the risk of a major virus outbreak in Australia, two doctors and a staff worker employed at three large public hospitals in Sydney are now confirmed as suffering from COVID-19—the infection caused by the coronavirus that was first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan last December.

The two doctors in Sydney, employed at Ryde Hospital in the city’s north and Liverpool Hospital in the south-western suburbs, had not travelled recently and do not have any known contact with an infected person. They had both attended a radiology seminar on February 18 with 77 other doctors and health professionals, raising the concerning possibility that the event was where they had been exposed to the coronavirus. Health officials, however, announced today that none of the other seminar participants are infected.

Eighty-four doctors and nurses from Ryde and Liverpool hospitals who spent more than 15 minutes in close proximity to their infected colleagues have been ordered to go into isolation and undergo testing. Sixty-one patients who were treated by them have also been instructed to self-isolate and be tested.

A warning outside a medical centre in Sydney, Australia due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. (Wikipedia Commons)

Today, a woman employed at Canterbury Hospital in Sydney’s inner west was diagnosed. She appears to have contracted the virus during a recent visit to Iran and worked two shifts before falling ill. At least 28 staff and three patients with whom she had contact have been placed into isolation.

Epping Boys High School, with close to 1,200 students and up to 100 teachers and other employees, was shut down yesterday after a 16-year-old who has been hospitalised tested positive to the virus. The boy’s mother works at Ryde Hospital and had contact with the infected doctor, but she is not infected herself. All staff and students have been instructed to “self-isolate” over the weekend.

A lecturer at the nearby Macquarie University returned infected from Iran in February. Management have issued assurances that he did not come to the university or have contact with other staff or students. People with whom he did have contacted are being tested.

On Tuesday, a 95-year-old woman infected with COVID-19 died at an aged care centre in Ryde. A worker at the facility is believed to have contracted the virus in Iran and passed it to at least three residents. The centre has been placed under lockdown and dozens of children from a nearby preschool who visited it recently are being tested.

The aged care centre death was the second known fatality from the virus in Australia. A 78-year-old man who was infected on the Diamond Princess cruise liner died on Sunday in Perth, Western Australia.

Across the country, there are currently 61 confirmed cases of COVID-19—a figure that reflects the fact that large numbers of people have simply not been tested. Just 10,000 tests have been carried out, overwhelmingly on people who recently returned from visits to China.

The cases that have emerged over the past week leave little doubt that people unknowingly carrying the virus have been working and interacting with others in Sydney and other major cities for weeks now. Of greatest concern is the fact that, in several cases, there is no clear indications of how people became infected.

New South Wales Health Minister Brad Hazzard admitted at a press conference yesterday: “I think at this point it’s fair to say that an evolution is happening in the spread of this virus. We are doing everything we can to try and contain it. But we also know that containment is an unlikely outcome.”

The prospect of a spike in infections exists in other states as well. In Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, 15 staff who worked in the emergency department of the private Mater Hospital have been told to go into isolation because they came into unprotected contact with a sick Chinese student studying at the University of Queensland who has been confirmed as COVID-19 positive.

The student’s case highlights the global dangers of the new coronavirus strain, due to the length of time that can seemingly pass before an infected person feels ill and displays symptoms. He had spent two weeks in Dubai to comply with Australian government bans on entry into the country for anyone who had been in mainland China in the past 14 days. He flew into Brisbane from the Middle East on February 23. He sought medical care two days later—well over two weeks after apparently contracting the virus in China.

People who had contact with him, including those on his flight to Australia, are now being contacted to be tested.

Frustration and anger are rising over the lack of pre-emptive action by federal and state governments since the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a global health emergency on January 30. Apart from the travel ban on people coming from China, little was done to prepare for the possibility of widespread infections, such as the roll-out of mass testing services and providing all health and emergency workers with appropriate protective gear and insisting it was worn.

The head of the Australian Medical Association, Doctor Tony Bartone, told the Guardian: “I have had many examples of doctors who are worried and concerned. They are worried that personal protective equipment is in short supply.… People are concerned about a lack of preparedness and capacity. Doctors need clear messaging about what’s expected of them.”

A general practitioner who was interviewed by the newspaper bluntly stated: “I don’t know of any GP practices that would be capable of testing or seeing a suspected case. In our practice we have four consult rooms plus a procedure room. We’d have to dedicate one room as an isolation room. And then you’d have to clean and disinfect the room—logistically it’s just impossible for several reasons, including that we don’t have the physical space.”

Public hospital doctors have noted that they lack sufficient beds and equipment to address the developing crisis. For decades, Labor and Liberal governments have slashed healthcare spending as part of a broader assault on social services.

Government ministers and officials are amplifying anxiety by repeatedly stating that they expect “millions” of infections—implying tens of thousands of deaths, particularly among the elderly. In the latest example, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy told a press conference yesterday that the government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison was preparing for scenarios “from the most benign through to some millions of people being infected over a period of several weeks.”

People’s lack of confidence that the authorities will competently manage a serious crisis is being expressed in the form of panic buying of essential items and long-life food products. One of the largest supermarket chains, Woolworths, has now announced a ration on the amount of toilet paper and rice that a person can purchase, as shelves are being emptied within hours of opening each day.

The main preparation being made by the federal and state governments for a mass outbreak are plans to impose draconian restrictions on peoples’ movements, close schools and universities and order the cancellation of public events and gatherings. A growing number of companies with offices in Sydney are instructing their staff to work from home where possible and suspend any overseas corporate travel.

The impact of economic and social activity grinding to a halt will be greatest on the lowest paid sections of the working class. Over 2.6 million workers are employed on casual terms, especially in the hospitality and retail sectors that are being affected by a slump in tourism and domestic consumer spending. They have no paid sick leave or holiday entitlements and employers scaling back their operations can simply not offer them shifts, without having to go through a process of formally laying them off.

The working class and the rich: Class distinctions exposed by response to Covid-19 pandemic

Benjamin Mateus

In a news release dated March 3, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned “that severe and mounting disruption to the global supply of personal protective equipment caused by rising demand, panic buying, hoarding and misuse is putting lives at risk from the new coronavirus and other infectious diseases.” WHO estimates that manufacturers of such medical supplies will need to increase production by 40 percent if they are to keep pace with global demand.

The number of cases worldwide is approaching 100,000 with more than 3,300 deaths attributed to Covid-19. New cases in the United States and Europe continue to alarm authorities. Germany just reported 220 new cases yesterday, bringing the total to 482 cases. France, with 377 cases, reported 92 new cases and two more deaths. The United Kingdom, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium and Norway are seeing an acceleration of new cases. In total, 87 countries and territories around the world have been affected.

A woman wearing a face mask stands in a subway in Milan, Italy. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

The response among the haves and have-nots to the outbreak and ensuing panic that is gripping communities is starkly absurd and farcical in comparison. The working class in the United States lacks any significant savings to shoulder work disruption. From state to state, shelves at grocery stores are being emptied. Community after community is stocking up on essential goods as they foresee the possibility of forced self-quarantine to avoid catching Covid-19. Toilet paper, sanitary wipes and sanitizers are in short supply as stocks are being exhausted.

Millions of Americans do not have health care insurance and will be forced to face the economic realities of an overpriced health system that values fee for services. Many that do have health benefits face costly premiums or daunting co-pays and deductibles that can set them back financially into thousands of dollars of debt. The case in Florida has highlighted and confirmed these harsh realities. A young man from Miami with flu-like symptoms who had recently returned from China received a bill for $3,270, just to be told he did not have Covid-19, after seeking medical attention.

Former Vice President Joseph Biden and candidate for the Democratic Party nomination disingenuously told MSNBC reporters that under the ACA the testing for Covid-19 would have been free. What he did not mention is that the hospital charges, blood work, CT scans and nursing care would be duly charged.

Meanwhile, workers across the nation are learning that for nearly two decades bipartisan cuts have been made to public health programs and emergency preparedness readiness. Opportunities afforded by the experiences with SARS and the Middle East Respiratory syndrome to develop vaccine programs have gone unheeded, citing costs to produce such vaccines. This is the nature of for-profit medicine that demands a guarantee on such investments. The estimates for a vaccine discovery and production can run over a billion dollars.

Compounding this dire situation is the barbaric reality that almost a quarter of workers have no guaranteed sick leave. This impacts the service industries most harshly which are also the most exposed to the public because of the nature of their work. In the starkest expression of utter disdain for the health of Americans, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, a former drug company executive, told Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat from Illinois, that no promises could be made to make a vaccine affordable, let alone free for the public. “We can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest.”

According to an Uber driver by the name of Alvaro Balainez, 33 years old, “If one of us gets sick, we will have no choice but to keep driving. We don’t have medical savings, because we’re barely making enough to pay our rent or bills.” Despite public health warnings, these workers will be compelled, by the sheer realities of their non-existent bank accounts, to carry on working and gamble with their own health and those they will expose.

The Washington Post noted that workers who prepare foods at restaurants and school cafeterias or nursery and child day-care workers have the nation’s lowest rates of paid sick leave in the private sector, at 58 percent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that at least one in five food service workers have reported to work despite having symptoms of diarrhea or vomiting.

President Trump’s remarks only cut across the warnings made by health providers and infectious disease experts about the contagiousness of the disease and higher than expected fatality it poses when he said, “a lot of people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor. You never hear about those people. So, you can’t put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu- or virus. We have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work—some of them go to work but they get better.”

Such concerns are, however, beyond the care or consciousness of the well-to-do. Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson post selfies fitted with designer N95 facemasks that can filter for viruses as they board private jets to dash off to their isolated cabins in Aspen or yachts off the coast of Italy to essentially weather out the pandemic. These exclusive masks have been sold out from surgical department stores and people are on waiting lists to purchase them.

A new luxury-based industry is popping up out of the maelstrom caused by the pandemic that is gathering momentum—luxury brand hand sanitizers with floral notes packaged in designer shaped dispensers. Fanny pack survival kits containing an assortment of first-aid supplies and biohazard bags are selling for $50 to $100. Private jet companies are offering coronavirus-free flights to destinations of choice. Mid-sized jets across the country are going for $20,000.

Concierge medical services are offering wealthy members private VIP emergency room services. Doctors make house calls to the Hamptons to treat the wealthy so they can avoid the risk of being exposed in crowded hospitals. They are stocking their homes with antiviral Tamiflu, cold medicines like Sudafed, asthma medication like albuterol and powerful antibiotics. They are also making their bids to be first in line to have access to any vaccines that might be developed while they hole themselves in their vacation homes looking forward to spring skiing.

Sollis Health, an exclusive New York-based private health service, is providing home delivery of respiratory masks that include custom fitting. There have also been reports of an eccentric heiress in Southampton, New York, building a high-grade medical isolation room, stocked with kitchen, foods and medical supplies, designed with a self-contained negative pressure ventilation system. This is the prototype for virus “Safe Rooms” that will come into vogue.

Experience in China revealed that infections occurred in family clusters. The afflicted were tended to by the household, exposing everyone to the infection. This will be true in the United States, in Europe or in any country where this infection will catch a toehold, then run rampant. The class distinctions to the pandemic have in mere weeks come to light showing the irresponsible and depraved response to what should be a globally coordinated effort to contain and mitigate this deadly pathogen.

The rich and their astronomical wealth play like Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, running to a deserted villa in the countryside of Florence, escaping the black death wiling away the time in their fantasies till the plague runs its course.

International court approves probe of US war crimes in Afghanistan

Bill Van Auken

An appellate panel of the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled Thursday that an investigation leading to the potential prosecution of US officials for war crimes during Washington’s nearly two-decade-old war in Afghanistan can move forward.

Fatou Bensouda, the court’s Gambian-born chief prosecutor, whose US visa was revoked for her pursuit of the probe, praised Thursday’s ruling, stating, “Today is an important day for the cause of justice in Afghanistan.”

The ruling overturned a decision by ICC pretrial judges last year that a case involving crimes by the US and its puppet regime in Afghanistan “would not serve the interests of justice” because of the abject refusal of Washington and Kabul to cooperate. This decision was taken in the context of US threats of retaliation against the court, including economic sanctions and even the arrest of its members if the investigation was allowed to move forward.

The judges of the ICC appeals panel.

The appeals judges ruled that last year’s decision was in contradiction to the ICC’s own statutes, holding that “It is for the prosecutor to determine whether there is a reasonable basis to initiate an investigation.” The appeals judges said that the pretrial panel had no business deciding whether the case served the “interests of justice,” but only whether there were grounds to believe that crimes had been committed and that they fell under the court’s jurisdiction.

The investigation is one of the first to be launched against a major imperialist power by the ICC, whose prosecutions have largely been limited to crimes committed by regimes and leaders in impoverished African countries. A preliminary investigation has also been launched into war crimes carried out by British forces in the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Unlike the US, the UK is a signatory to the agreement establishing the international court.

The ICC’s prosecutors first opened a preliminary probe into crimes against humanity and war crimes in Afghanistan nearly 14 years ago.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded to Thursday’s ruling with the bellicose threats that have been the trademark of Washington toward the ICC since its founding by a decision of the United Nations in 2002. Describing the investigation as a “political vendetta” by an “unaccountable political institution masquerading as a legal body,” the secretary of state vowed that Washington would “take all necessary measures to protect our citizens from this renegade, unlawful so-called court.”

He characterized the ICC appeals judges’ ruling as “reckless” because it was issued after Washington had signed a so-called “peace deal” with the Taliban five days earlier. That agreement has already begun to unravel, with the US military carrying out air strikes against the Taliban after the Islamist movement launched multiple attacks on forces of Afghanistan’s US-backed puppet regime. The unstated assumption in Pompeo’s remarks is that “peace” in Afghanistan can be achieved only based on a cover-up of Washington’s crimes.

Asked whether the Trump administration would retaliate against the court, the secretary of state said that measures would be announced within “a couple of weeks about the path that we’re going to take to ensure that we protect American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, our intelligence warriors, the diplomats that have worked for the State Department over the years to ensure that the ICC doesn’t impose... pressure on them in a way that doesn’t reflect the noble nature of the undertakings of every one of those Americans.”

The concern in Washington is not for the troops, but rather that the real authors of the crimes in Afghanistan will someday be held to account: the presidents and their cabinets along with the top generals, the leading politicians of both major parties, the big business interests that supported the war and the media pundits who promoted it.

Pompeo went on to insist, “We have a solid system here in the United States. When there’s wrongdoing by an American, we have a process by which that is redressed.” The character of this “solid system” was made clear last year with Trump’s pardon of convicted war criminals, including two US Army officers convicted and jailed for illegal killings in Afghanistan.

The ICC prosecutor Bensouda requested the investigation of war crimes in 2017, saying there was evidence that US military and intelligence agencies had “committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence” against detainees in Afghanistan.

In its ruling Thursday, the ICC Appeals Chamber declared it “appropriate to amend the appealed decision to the effect that the prosecutor is authorized to commence an investigation into alleged crimes committed on the territory of Afghanistan since May 1, 2003, as well as other alleged crimes that have a nexus to the armed conflict in Afghanistan.”

The prosecutor has already indicated that this extension of the investigation involves the “nexus” between the torture centers set up at Bagram Air Base and other US installations in Afghanistan to so-called “black sites” run by the CIA in countries like Poland, Lithuania and Romania. It could as well link to the infamous Abu Ghraib detention and torture facility in Iraq, where US military interrogators were sent after torturing prisoners in Afghanistan. It could also potentially encompass the drone assassinations and massacres of thousands carried out by successive US administrations in neighboring Pakistan.

The war crimes carried out by US imperialism since it invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 are innumerable. They began at the outset with massacres of unarmed detainees, including hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners of war who were asphyxiated and shot to death in sealed metal shipping containers after the siege of Kunduz.

Among the most infamous crimes were those exposed in an investigation into a so-called “Kill Team” formed by a unit of the US Army’s 5th Stryker Brigade sent into Kandahar Province as part of the Obama administration’s 2009–2010 “surge,” which brought the number of troops in Afghanistan to roughly 100,000. As members of the team themselves acknowledged—and documented in grisly photographs—they set out to systematically murder civilians and mutilate their bodies, taking fingers and pieces of skulls as trophies.

They lured one of their victims, a 15-year-old boy named Gul Mudin, toward them before throwing a grenade at him and repeatedly shooting him at close range. After bringing his father to identify the body, they took turns posing and playing with the corpse, before cutting off one of the boy’s fingers. Members of the team also described throwing candy from their Stryker armored vehicle while driving through villages and then shooting children who ran to pick it up.

US soldier with the body of 15-year-old Gul Mudin.

While the Pentagon sought to pass off these atrocities as the work of a few “bad apples,” the killings were known to their commanders and other units that participated in similar acts. They were the product of a criminal colonial occupation in which troops were taught to regard the entire civilian population as potential enemies and less than human.

The number of Afghans killed in the conflict is estimated at over 175,000, with many more indirect victims of the war’s destruction. Nearly 2,400 US troops have been killed, along with tens of thousands more wounded. US crimes include indiscriminate air strikes that wiped out wedding parties, village meetings and hospital patients and staff.

Among the most extensive exposures of US war crimes were those contained in the so-called “Afghan War Diaries,” some 91,000 documents given by the courageous US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning to WikiLeaks in 2010. In retaliation, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is now imprisoned in the UK facing extradition to the US on Espionage Act charges that carry a 175-year prison sentence, or worse. For her part, Manning is being held in indefinite detention in a US federal detention center in Virginia for refusing to testify against Assange.

Washington’s virulent hostility to any international investigation into its crimes was clear as soon as the ICC was founded in 2002. The Bush administration repudiated it from the outset, and the US Congress followed suit through its passage by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of a law protecting all US personnel from “criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not a party.” The same year, Bush issued a memorandum declaring that the US would not be bound by the Geneva Conventions in its war in Afghanistan.

US officials have sardonically referred to the anti-ICC law passed by Congress as the “Hague Invasion Authorization Act,” as it provides for the use of military force to free any US citizens facing charges before the ICC, which sits in The Hague, Netherlands.

The US reaction to the ICC’s Afghanistan investigation is an explicit repudiation of international law and the abandonment of any pretense that Washington is guided by anything other than the predatory interests of US imperialism. On this, the Trump administration and its ostensible opponents in the Democratic Party are agreed. Their unconditional defense of the war crimes carried out in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere is a warning to the working class that far greater crimes are being prepared as US imperialism prepares for “great power” conflicts.

Microsoft Research EMEA PhD Award 2020 for PhD Students in Computer-related Fields

Application Deadline: 1st April 2020 at 4:59 PM PST

Eligible Countries: Countries in Europe, Middle East & Africa

To be Taken at (Country): Countries in Europe, Middle East & Africa

About the Award: A research award for PhD students in computing related fields in their 3rd year or beyond at universities in EMEA.
Microsoft actively seeks to foster greater levels of diversity in our workforce and in our pipeline of future researchers. We are always looking for the best and brightest talent and celebrate individuality. We invite candidates to come as they are and do what they love.

Type: Research, PhD

Eligibility:

• Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Students should support this mission and embrace opportunities to foster diverse and inclusive cultures within their communities.
• PhD students must be enrolled at a university in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) and their research must be closely related to our research themes at Microsoft Research Cambridge:
  • All Data AI
  • Cloud Infrastructure
  • Confidential Computing
  • Future of Work
  • Game Intelligence
  • Healthcare Intelligence
  • Biological Computation

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• Award recipients will receive $15,000 USD for academic year 2020–21 to help them complete research as part of their doctoral thesis work.
• Microsoft will arrange and pay for travel and accommodations for award recipients to attend the PhD Summit. The two-day workshop is held at one of the Microsoft Research labs in the fall. It will provide award recipients an opportunity to present their research, meet with Microsoft researchers in their research area and receive career coaching.
• Award recipients will be offered an internship at Microsoft Research’s Cambridge lab.

How to Apply: Doctoral students enrolled in their third year or beyond of PhD studies at universities in EMEA may directly apply.

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

AIMS NEI Fellowship Program 2020 for Women in Climate Change Science

Application Deadline: 15th April 2020, 23:59 CAT.

About the Award: Applications are invited from outstanding female scientists currently residing anywhere in the world. Successful applicants are expected to execute in a suitable African host institution a self-initiated project with the potential to contribute significantly to the understanding of climate change and its impacts, and/or to the development and implementation of innovative, empirically grounded policies and strategies for mitigation, adaptation, and/or resilience.
This Fellowship Program was made possible by a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada, www.idrc.ca, and financial support from the Government of Canada, provided through Global Affairs Canada (GAC), www.international.gc.ca.
It is part of a broader effort by AIMS NEI to build the intellectual capital needed to solve the myriad challenges to Africa’s development resulting from climate change.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: To be eligible, applicants must be:

• female
• in possession before the fellowship start date of a doctorate in a quantitative discipline, including, but not limited to, applied mathematics, climatology, physics, chemistry, computer science, theoretical biology, and engineering
• currently employed, on either a permanent or a temporary basis, in a non-profit work environment, including government
• actively engaged in research, policy, and/or practice relevant to climate change modelling, mitigation, adaptation, and/or resilience
• the lead and/or senior author of at least one refereed publication on a topic relevant to climate change modelling, mitigation, adaptation, and/or resilience.

Selection Criteria: All reviews done by the Selection Committee members and other reviewers will be based on the following criteria:

• Quality of applicant: academic qualifications; quality of publications; experience in climate change-related work; real-world impact & recognition (e.g. through awards) of prior work.
• Quality of proposed project: relevance to climate change modelling, practice and policy; strength of connection to the mathematical sciences; experience of applicant in project topic; quality of project design; feasibility; suitability of proposed host institution environment and of named collaborator; quality and realism of budget projections.
• Potential impact of proposed project on scientific knowledge, practice and policy.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The fellowship is worth up to USD 35,000. The exact amount of the fellowship will be specified at the time of the award. This amount will be paid to the Fellow in three installments in accordance with a schedule that will be defined at the time of the award. Fellows must submit accurate banking details (using the form provided below) to avoid undue delays in receiving their fellowship payments.

How to Apply: To apply, please complete this online application form and submit by the 15th April 2020, 23:59 CAT with the following documents attached:

• a completed personal details form, including a detailed budget for all non-project-related activities;
• a completed project proposal form, including a detailed budget for all project-related activities;
• a curriculum vitae; and
• an electronic copy of a representative publication in climate change modelling, its causes, climate change mitigation, adaptation and/or resilience in which the applicant is the lead and/or senior author.

Supporting documents should be saved as a pdf in the format: “name of the research program_type of_document_ AIMSentity/centre_monthyear of applying_first and last name of applicant.” For instance, “MS4CR fellowship_application form_AIMS-NEI_Apr2020_SarahJake”.
Applicants should request that three confidential letters of support be emailed to ms4cr-fellows@nexteinstein.org, using as subject “MS4CR fellowship application support letter-first and last name of applicant” by the application deadline. Two of these letters should come from the applicant’s immediate supervisor at her home institution and the named collaborator at her proposed host institution. At least one letter should come from a referee who is qualified to assess the applicant’s experience in climate change research, practice, and/or policy. You should share with your referees a copy of the ‘Terms of Reference for Fellows’ and the ‘Instructions for Referees’ document. These can be downloaded on the website.
Incomplete applications will not be evaluated.

• It is important to go through the Application process on the Program Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

A Pandemic of Fear

Evaggelos Vallianatos

A microscopic virus has been unsettling global business as usual: killing people all over the world, hospitalizing countless others, and spreading a pandemic of fear. The Los Angeles Times reported March 1, 2020, the novel corona virus “sends shudders daily across the planet.”

In an area the size of a quarter of the United States, China has locked down over 100 millions of its citizens. Travel restrictions are affecting 780 million Chinese.

The human machine

This unpredictable intrusion of an invisible being into the vast human machine is slowly grinding down the world in its deadly track.

The human machine is exceedingly complex. It’s made up of armies, nuclear bombs, international trade, construction, buying, selling, travelling, waging war, logging of forests, the burning of the Amazon, plundering each other and the natural world, rural exodus to the overcrowded cities, obese and hungry people sleeping next to each other: some sleeping in luxury and others in the streets. Meanwhile, in the midst of these social and ecological calamities, privileges rain on the rich and super rich billionaires.

Government officials and the World Health Organization see no connection between this hell on Earth, the failed international order and the virus. They confine themselves in issuing instructions on the magnitude and symptoms of the corona disease. Not a word that perhaps this sort of thing – anthropogenic onslaught on the Earth resembling biological warfare — is likely the explanation for the corona virus.

Too many people

This thinking is alien to societies / countries absorbed by their daily struggle for survival. They have populations growing out of bounds. In 1800, the planet had 1 billion people. In 2019, world population was 7.7 billion. The numbers of people keep increasing, even doubling every few decades. This assures class tensions, exploitation of the weak by the powerful, impoverishment of the natural world and perpetual waves of migrants and refugees seeking a better life.

Populations of tropical countries in the south are growing faster than those of the north. Some of them are exploding internally and spilling over borders. War, as in Syria, and higher temperatures make this population movement inevitable, tragic, and dangerous.

Climate chaos

At the same time, the world machine is being threatened by a different, much more dangerous climate. This is the result of decades-old apathy, especially on the part of northern countries, which have been responsible for most of the pollution of the Earth for more than a century. Yet they keep ignoring corporate and state decimation of forests, lands, and seas. The primary fuels behind such attacks include petroleum, natural gas, and coal.

Climate scientists have been telling “policy makers” the world over that burning fossil fuels is bad. It’s triggering the potential end of life. It’s morally abhorrent and monstrous. It’s undermining civilization.

Scientists explain that rising world temperature is melting the ice on mountains and seas, with the result rising and warmer sea and ocean waters are undermining seacoasts and islands.

Climate change is changing agriculture for the worst. Industrialized agriculture is becoming less productive and more deleterious. Corporate managers and scientists continue fiddling with the genetic engineering of crops. They also continue increasing the amounts of toxic and carcinogenic pesticides they spray the very food people eat.

Animal farms are major sources of greenhouse gases. However, they have become symbols of affluence. Mass slaughtering and eating of animals is fashionable and on the rise. Animal factories are now in China producing meat for hundreds of millions of urban people. Such dive into factory agriculture bodes ill for the efforts of China to get reacquainted with its ancient agrarian culture, much less ecological civilization.

Warmer seas and oceans are increasingly becoming less hospitable to life, including fish. Add commercial overfishing, and the future of fish supplementing human diet becomes problematic and dark.

Climate change sounds abstract. It is not. It’s a cosmic force brought to life by human ecocidal activities, especially industrialized agriculture, the logging and burning of forests, and the burning of fossil fuels. This awakened climate is a gigantic monster transforming the Earth into a hostile place for humans and wildlife.

Fragility of life

This is big deal because the Earth has always been Mother Earth: source of all life, animal and human, and civilization. Humans have reached a state of technological wherewithal that threatens their own existence (with any deployment of nuclear weapons) or the slower undermining of their civilization (with burning fossil fuels and aggressive ecocidal policies).

What should we say about these facts? Dare we connect them to science and progress?

I have been criticizing such abysmal and immoral developments for decades. It’s not that we have not had warnings about the fragility of life or the toxic effects of public policies for private profit rather than public good.

Euripides, that genius of a poet in fifth century BCE Athens, speaks as if he were alive today. He urges us to live responsibly every day as if that day was our last. Death, he says, is an obligation. It’s the price we all pay. No person alive today can speak with authority of being alive or dead tomorrow. No matter what scientific  studies you do, there’s no way of predicting the future. No man can pin down dark fortune. We are only humans, so think human thoughts. Pay attention to Aphrodite and the pleasures she brings. Drink some wine and you will enjoy yourself. Life for those solemn and irresponsible people is not life but catastrophe (Alcestis 780-802).

Inhuman power

That catastrophe has been encoded on the DNA of those who have been building nuclear bombs and still keep them as potential bullets against their enemies. Holding on to such destructive and genocidal weapons makes possible all other atrocities against the natural world and against humans. Nothing is worse that the obliteration of nuclear power. It freezes humans to the inhuman camp of exterminators.

Nuclear power is inhuman power. It has been normalizing all other evils in the world: burning and clear-cutting of forests, mining the public lands for petroleum, plundering the natural world, industrializing farming to mine the land for food and the burning of fossil fuels and ignoring the consequences of climate change.

I don’t pretend to know the origins of corona virus: the source for the current worldwide health emergency. On February 28, 2020, Congressman Ami Bera, chairman, Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and Nonproliferation, described the corona virus as a “rapidly evolving public health threat.”

It would not be farfetched guessing, as I have already done, the origins of the virus pandemic in the deleterious human effects on the natural world, our Mother Earth. Biologists should be asking the scientific and philosophical question if undisturbed wild life is a source of deadly diseases. I doubt it is. Diseases come from ecological disturbances, too much cold, too much heat, bad food, no food, and pollution and wars. Conventional reports, however, suggest that the corona virus emerged in December 2019 in the wild animal markets of the large city of Wuhan, China.

Reimagining the world

If I am right in my speculation, a real rather than a cosmetic solution of the pandemic would require the remaking of our world: banning nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants; enforcing a strict worldwide population control like that of China; ending fossil fuels, replacing them with solar, wind and other renewable forms of energy; returning to small-scale democratic and ecological farming without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. And, of course, a worldwide ban of the plundering of the natural world.

I know this is a dream unlikely to go very far. But I am a dreamer in love with the good and the beautiful. The least I can do, and I am doing, is to speak truth to power.

UN and other climate scientists have given policy makers about ten years for the elimination of fossil fuels.

The challenge of reinventing and making the world is immense. The fire of Prometheus is still burning among us. Let’s use it for the benefit of all humanity. Focus in the restoration of environmental and public health. Nothing is possible without health. Herophilos, a third century BCE Greek physician, wrote in his “Regimen” that when health is absent wisdom all but disappears, science is obscure, strength dissipates, wealth is useless, and reasoning impossible (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.50).

In our case, the wealth of the billionaires the world over could be put to good use in this epic struggle of rebuilding our wrecked environment and civilization.

The Great Indian Liberal Trap

Parvez Alam

Today, worldwide people/citizens have lost the spaces of freedom of expression. The dissent or a slight deviation of an individual from ‘largely accepted discourse’ which has ‘liberal’ labels are seen as an expression of either ‘conservatism’ or often abused term ‘extremism’. The liberal framework normalises its own conservatism/extremism through one way dialogues of preachers who denounce ‘other’ discourses which challenges the dogmatic worldview by pointing the weaknesses of a ‘largely accepted discourses’. Instead, ‘other’ cultural manifestations/narratives which have equally passed the test of ‘rationality/natural justice’ are bullied because it doesn’t even resonate into the ‘common’ sensibilities of in ‘a universalist framework’. So, those cultural sensibilities are suggested to liberalise their framework instead ‘liberal’ itself reforming its own pitfalls.

In ‘history of ideas’ the discursive formations have been intervening time to time to challenge the ‘largely accepted’ discourse because of ‘spaces’ available for freedom of expression. The subversive and transgressive nature of thought process has given birth to the dissenting traditions which indeed have been refining the ‘common’ sensibilities. Now, due to the changing character of liberalism turning more militant on ‘the meek and the weak’ cultures in contemporary times, overpowering them epistemologically as well as coercively has claimed to be victorious on all the spaces, be it social, economic and the political.

The rigid boundaries of liberal markers do not allow penetration of ‘alternative imagination’ for even namesake interactions. The dialectical imagination provides the space for convergences of wide-ranging contradictions and harbouring dissents as their own neighbour. Interestingly, intellectuals of our times have been engaging more of those questions which were not their own. This alienates intellectuals from the social needs and mores of cultural communities without addressing their anxieties. Perhaps this is also a reason for intellectuals who have been switching strategically their (ideological) positions from beginning with progressiveness to more belief in being ‘relevant’ to be in the club of ‘largely accepted’ discourse. The role of intellectuals with ‘progressive and counter-hegemonic’ intent has declined for obvious reason as they have lost their own authenticity because they listened to their own cacophony than the people’s voice. Now they have definitely got spaces to speak but they are accomplice in the production of the crises.

We are living in the times of abysmal abnormalities. Violence has taken the precedence over dialogue. Witch-hunting is becoming vogue in the social sphere. Hatred is cherished. Surveillance and censorship is no exception. Everyday life is shaped by confusion and uncertainty. Facts and emotions are wedded to construct logic and truth. Justice means denial of justice of one to suit the consciousness. All kinds of fallacies are palatable as science. This is happening under the banners of ‘liberalism’ and democracy which champions and promotes the numerical strength rather than saving the Truth. The truth seekers (rationalists) are dubbed as ‘threat to the indigeneity’ and their bodies are turned into corpses. We are living in the ‘state of exception’ (German political philosopher Schmitt explains that sovereign assumes special power to transcend the rule of law in the name of public good. So nation, national interest are always a buzz words and authorities creates a sense of insecurity of the nation) where any ‘alternative conception’ (even a simple question) becomes an impediment in the realization of installing a ‘glorious past’.

We are failing as a society, as a community, as a people to make our ‘nation’ stronger. The territorial consciousness has taken a leap forward in pushing marginalised and downtrodden communities into the ‘black hole’ never to be traced again. The militant autochthonous politics is on march and we as a society have become a silent spectator as if we endorse what is about to come. Everyone is busy in speaking but we have lost our listening capacity. The screams and maims of our own neighbours are going deaf on our ears. We are in the trap of liberal euphemism. We are watching but not seeing. We are unable to see the pain and sufferings of millions because of losing eyesight. We are unable to feel the goose bumps while witnessing the lynchings. We are unable to smell the stink of Power (populist authoritarianism/majoritarianism). This amounts to disability because gradually we are losing our senses. We have become a disabled society with lot of scars in our hearts and one day we will be doomed as a human race without any trace.

This may sound more apocalyptic but this is not the crises to go. This may not be substantiated with historical evidences because it is going to be first of its kind and it will remain the last. Carl Sagan puts it aptly: “The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves”.

India is also into that same pale blue dot.

Eastern Mediterranean: A microcosm of regional and global battles

James M. Dorsey

The Eastern Mediterranean has become a flash-point for the meshing of geopolitics, the struggle for regional hegemony, battles for control of resources, religious soft power rivalry, and blatant interference in the politics of others.

The complex and dangerous juxtaposition of multiple conflicting interests broadens the focus beyond Russia, when it comes to meddling in elections, to include countries like Turkey, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. It blurs the lines between multiple conflicts such as the wars in Syria and Libya and the struggle for control of the Eastern Mediterranean’s newly found gas deposits. And it positions contested waters as the latest venue in which Russia and the West battle for influence.

Laying bare the multiple disputes being fought on the back of the Eastern Mediterranean with its natural gas reserves of 122 trillion cubic feet resembles peeling an onion.

Lining up on opposing sides are Middle Eastern, North African, and Eastern Mediterranean nations, Gulf states, Turkey, Russia, and Europe.

Perhaps, most fundamental is the degree to which Europe going forward will be able to reduce its dependence on Russian gas imports. Russia currently satisfies approximately 40 percent of the European Union’s gas needs.

The ability to reduce Russian imports with gas from the Eastern Mediterranean potentially would allow Europe to adopt a more forceful stand in the struggle between Western liberalism and Russian civilisationalism that is likely to shape a new world order.

EU dependence has so far prompted European nations to temper their defense of Western values against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s civilizationalist* policies that include territory grabs in the Caucasus and Ukraine, intimidation of Central Asian nations, and support for Western far-right, neo-Nazi, and anti-immigration forces designed to weaken liberal democracy and strengthen groups more empathetic to the Russian leader’s worldview.

“The bad news is that the Moscow-Washington confrontation will continue; the good news is that there will be some guardrails built around it. . . .The Eastern Mediterranean, however, is emerging as an area where Russia, again, is competing with the West,” said Dmitri Trenin, head of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Mr. Trenin argued that it was the Eastern Mediterranean rather than Ukraine, Crimea, the Baltics, the Arctic, or south-eastern Europe where tension could flare the most.

If for some nations like Greece, Cyprus, and Lebanon the struggle to control the Eastern Mediterranean’s resources is primarily about economics, for others, including Egypt and Israel it’s about projecting power. That is no truer than for Russia and Turkey, even if their interests against the backdrop of recently diverging positions on the battlefields of Libya and Syria, may differ rather than converge.

Turkey raised the stakes with its military backing of Libya’s internationally recognized Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) against United Arab Emirates, Saudi, Egyptian, and Russian-backed rebel leader Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA).

A GNA-Turkish maritime agreement that created an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the Eastern Mediterranean favoring expansive Turkish claims and the building of relations between Khalifa Haftar and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad link the war in Syria to the Eastern Mediterranean and the fighting in Libya. All at a time when Turkey and Russia maneuver to avoid a direct military clash in Idlib, the last stronghold of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (SNA) rebels against Russian-backed Syrian government forces.

The economic zone, or EEZ, would block a planned pipeline that would link the EU to Israeli and Cypriot gas supplies.

If successfully enforced, the zone, coupled with Turkey’s military performance in Syria with the downing of three Syrian warplanes in as many days, would signal to regional hegemonic hopefuls, namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE, that financial muscle may not be enough to impose their will.

Ironically, one key to accommodation that could have reduced the risk of the ideological and geopolitical fuse blowing up and may have contributed to creating an environment of cooperation rather than confrontation lies on the divided island of Cyprus.

Turkey, beyond insisting that Turkish participation is a sine-qua-non for any successful exploitation of Eastern Mediterranean gas, has opposed a role for predominantly Greek-Cypriot Cyprus without the inclusion of the island’s self-declared independent Turkish Cypriot north.

Turkey, which has troops in the north ever since it invaded the island in 1974, is the only country to have recognized the region as an independent state.

The idea of including northern Cyprus may be a pie in the sky in an environment in which geopolitics is a zero-sum game with civilizationalists, nationalists, and autocrats leaving little space for power sharing. And Europe is too preoccupied with internal problems, and most recently with a new looming Syrian refugee crisis, to project a cohesive and inclusive policy approach.

Scholar and commentator Hussein Ibish cautioned that “all the elements that have compelled the parties to the eastern Mediterranean natural gas competition to develop local alliances that are increasingly melding with other strategic, diplomatic, and political contests appears likely to continue.”

Mr. Ibish blamed tension in the Eastern Mediterranean on the “strongly pro-Islamist orientation” of Turkey as “a budding would-be regional economic and political hegemon” rather than on multiple would-be hegemons.

Nonetheless, his conclusion stands that in the Eastern Mediterranean “disputes arising over narrow issues such as natural gas reserves will continue to take on far broader significance.”