March Toward Global War

Norman Pollack

The New York Times (NYT) is a trusted source of Administration thinking, particularly in foreign policy, more, an uncanny, sensitive barometer of deep-lying structural-military-diplomatic events which are presently culminating, beyond the New Cold War brewing since Clinton’s international posture in Europe and the Pacific, in the actuality of heated confrontation directed against both Russia and China. Under Obama, the page has turned. No longer can we pretend a chess match in which tough rhetoric and vast expenditures form a comfortable (and highly profitable) surrogate for open warfare, a stage of inner discipline favorable to the suppression of dissent, the creation of industrial-financial-commercial fortunes, and the habituation to violence (transmissible in spirit and acquiescence from urban settings to foreign interventions). Now is different. Capitalism in America has reached the point of definitive sclerosis, a terminal, pathological hardening of the ideological arteries, in which the overgrowth of the fibrous/ interstitial tissue of profit-madness, hubris, and conquest for its own sake, has won out, has defeated whatever has been left of the Constitutional rights of the American formative context. We are a long way from the late 18th century, and with brief exceptions, notably, those brought on by the struggles of the exploited and the persecuted themselves, the progression has been downhill all the way, coinciding with the falsification of government’s public trust and the concentration of private wealth and power.

So what is happening now is not surprising. Upper groups, in their narcissistic death wish, want it all, the entire globe at their feet—and sensing ultimate defeat are prepared to bring the curtain down. How else explain the rash of mediocrities scurrying for the presidential nomination in 2016 and receiving support from vested wealth, the latter secure in the knowledge there will be no deviation from the quest for eternal hegemony or bust in trying? How else the glib, unctuous response to climate change, or to drone murder, or to ever more dangerous brinkmanship, confident the show must and will go on—or else!—to the benefit of ruling groups? Here we owe NYT a debt of gratitude for displaying America as it really is, in power-wielding, policy-making circles.

***

I have in mind Peter Baker and Steven Erlanger’s article, “Russia Wields Aid and Ideology Against West to Fight Sanctions” (June 8), which conjures up a Russian threat to Europe under Putin’s megalomaniac unscrupulous direction. The occasion for the article, and Obama’s G7 meetings over the weekend is to ensure united EU approval for Russian sanctions over Ukraine, due to expire at the end of June. Obama is unquestionably the principal arm-twister, cheerleader, war monger here, using Ukraine as the symbol of Russian aggression when it was his own cabal of hawks who engineered the coup d’etat overthrowing the legitimate government and thus bringing to power one that was compliant with US-EU-NATO policy and wishes menacing Russia’s borders. Yet the NYT article refers to Putin’s “subterranean—and sometimes overt—efforts” to destabilize Europe through “win[ning] allies in the West.” Putin is the new Stalin, possibly still more dangerous and cagey than the original. Here is Biden, last month at Brookings, to set the tone: “’As it tries to rattle the cage, the Kremlin is working hard to buy off and co-opt European political forces [no mention of US-sponsored NGOs, staggering foreign military aid, numerous military bases, etc. exercising undoubted influence up and down Europe], funding both right-wing and left-wing anti-systemic parties throughout Europe.’” The purpose, “’to create cracks in the European body politic which he [Putin] can then exploit.’” Although the reporters see no problem about extending the sanctions, they knowingly add: “But there is no appetite for adding more sanctions, as some American officials would like.”

Horror of horrors, among Putin and Russia’s activities, besides expanding RT, its international television network, in delighting to point out “the foibles of the West” to the French and Germans, “American and European officials have accused Moscow of financing green movements in Europe to encourage protest against hydraulic fracturing, or fracking,” from a US perspective, a venomous deed. Thus far, the only concrete proof of support to the European Right has been a $11.7 M loan to Le Pen’s National Front in France “from the First Czech-Russian Bank in Moscow, which has been tied to the Kremlin.” But where bribery is difficult to prove, there are other forms of Russian influence, “’involv[ing],’” according to the Political Capital Institute in Budapest, “’professional and organizational help.’” Parenthetically I’m sure Russia has its own NGOs, too. Dempsey, US Joint Chiefs chair, “has expressed similar worries about what he calls Russia’s “’ability to employ other instruments of power’” besides armed force. Out of the mouths of babes, again Dempsey: “’President Putin considers NATO to be a threat and will look for opportunities to discredit and eventually undermine the alliance. Putin’s ultimate objective is to fracture NATO.’” Correct, though unsurprising. Only Fiona Hill, who worked at national intelligence on Russia, and is currently at Brookings, queried: “’The question is how much hard evidence does anyone have?’”

***

My NYT Comment on the Baker-Erlanger article, same date, follows:

Is Fiona Hill the only sane one left in Washington? For what we are seeing, under Mr. Obama’s direction, is the orchestration toward war. Baker’s article is laughable were it not that it forces the reader to THINK about what’s coming from the other side, to wit, US-led encroachment on both Russia and China, again more acutely by the present administration than its Republican predecessor, in a push for global supremacy.

Were it not for the existence of nuclear weapons, America would in a matter of weeks be engaged in a war with one if not both nations. When historians take the measure of Obama, they will see a synthesis of Joe McCarthy (massive surveillance) and the Dulles brothers (containment expanded into confrontation). I shudder to think of what awaits the world in the coming decade, the architecture already in the works for global conflagration, yes, under American initiative.

Fear and Learning in Kabul

KATHY KELLY

“Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world… Shall we say the odds are too great? … the struggle is too hard? … and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message — of longing, of hope, of solidarity… The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.”

– Dr. Martin Luther King, “Beyond Vietnam”

Kabul. 

I’ve spent a wonderfully calm morning here in Kabul, listening to bird songs and to the call and response between mothers and their children in neighboring homes as families awaken and prepare their children for school. Maya Evans and I arrived here yesterday, and  are just settling into the community quarters of our young hosts, The Afghan Peace Volunteers (APVs).  Last night, they told us about the jarring and frightening events that marked the past few months of their lives in Kabul.

They described how they felt when bomb explosions, nearby, awakened them on several mornings.  Some said they’d felt almost shell-shocked themselves discovering one recent day that thieves had ransacked their home.   They shared their intense feelings of alarm at a notorious warlord’s statement condemning a human rights demonstration in which several community members had participated. And their horror when a few weeks later, in Kabul, a young woman, an Islamic scholar named  Farkhunda, was falsely accused in a street argument of desecrating the Koran, after which, to the roared approval of a frenzied mob of perhaps two thousand men, members of the crowd, with apparent police collusion, beat her to death.   Our young friends quietly sort through their emotions in the face of inescapable and often overwhelming violence.

I thought about how to incorporate their stories into a course I’ve been preparing for an international online school that intends to help raise consciousness among people, across borders and share the results.  I hope the school will help develop movements  dedicated to simple living, radical sharing, service and, for many, nonviolent direct action on behalf of ending wars and injustices.

Essentially, when Voices members go to Kabul, our “work” is to listen to and learn from our hosts and take back their stories of war to the relatively peaceful lands whose actions had brought that war down upon them. Before we’d even departed, the news from Afghanistan was already quite grim.  Several dozen people dead in fighting between armed groups.  A Kabul hotel attack on international businessmen the week before.  We earnestly wrote our friends with a  last minute offer to stay away, in hopes that we wouldn’t make them targets of the violence.    “Please come,” our friends wrote us.  So we’re here.

The western presence in Afghanistan has already caused incalculable destruction, suffering and loss.  A recently released Physicians for Social Responsibility  calculated that since 2001 in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. wars have killed at least 1.3 million and quite possibly more than 2 million civilians.

The report chides U.S. political elites for attributing on-going violence in Afghanistan and Iraq to various types of internecine conflicts “as if the resurgence and brutality of such conflicts is unrelated to the destabilization caused by decades of military intervention.”

Our young friends have survived the ravages of war, and each of them struggles with trauma, as their parents and grandparents have before them.  When we have gone with them to visit refugee camps outside of Kabul, several have told of their own experiences as children, running away when their villages were attacked or occupied.  We learn from them about the sorrows their mothers endured when there wasn’t enough food to feed the family or fuel to carry them through heartless winters: when they themselves nearly died from hypothermia.  Several of our young friends experience terrifying flashbacks when they hear accounts in the news of Afghans killed by missiles or gunfire within the horrified sight of their own family members and loved ones.  They tremble and sometimes cry, recalling similar experiences from their own lives.

The story of Afghanistan in Western accounts is that Afghanistan cannot deal with its traumas, however much we try, with our bullets,  bases and  token schools and clinics, to help.  Yet these young people steadfastly  respond to their own traumas not by seeking revenge but by  finding ways to help people in Kabul whose circumstances are worse than theirs, particularly 750,000 Afghans living, with their children, in squalid refugee camps. 

The APVs are running an alternative school for street kids in Kabul.  Little  children who are the main breadwinners for their families find no time to learn basic math or “the alphabet” when spending  more than eight hours daily working in the streets of Kabul.  Some are vendors, some polish shoes, and some carry scales along roadways so that people can weigh themselves.  In an economy collapsing under the weight of war and corruption, their hard earned income barely buys enough food for their families.  

Children of the poorest families in Kabul will have better chances in life if they become literate. Never mind rising school enrollment figures often cited by the U.S. military as the benefits of occupation. The March 2015 CIA World Fact Book reports that  17.6 % of females over age 14 are literate; overall, in the teen and adult population only 31.7%  can read or write.

After getting to know about 20 families whose children work in the streets, the APVs devised a plan through which each family receives a monthly sack of rice and  large container of oil to offset the family’s financial loss for sending their children to informal classes at the APV center and preparing to enroll them in school. Through continued outreach among  Afghanistan’s troubled ethnicities, APV members now include 80 children in the school and hope to serve 100 children soon.   

Every Friday, the children pour into the center’s courtyard and immediately line up to wash their feet and hands and brush their teeth at a communal faucet.  Then they scramble up the stairs to their brightly decorated classroom and readily settle down when their teachers start the lessons.  Three extraordinary young teachers, Zarghuna, Hadisa, and Farzana, feel encouraged now because many of the thirty-one street kids who were in the school last year learned to read and write fluently within nine months. Their experimentation with different teaching methods, including individualized learning, is paying off—unlike  government school systems where many seventh graders are unable to read.

While leading a demonstration of street children, Zekerullah, who was once a street kid himself, was asked if he felt any fears.  Zekerullah said that he feared that the children would be harmed if a bomb exploded.  But his greater fear was that impoverishment would afflict them throughout their lives.

That message of courage and compassion will not — and cannot– always prevail.  But if we take note of it, and even more, if, learning from its example, we take action to exemplify it ourselves, then it offers us a path out of childish fear, out of panicked collusion in war, and out, perhaps, of war’s mad grip.   We ourselves arrive  in a notably better world when we determine to build it for others.   Our own education, our own victory over fear, and our own arrival as equals in an adult world, can begin or begin again – now.  

So let us begin.

10 Reasons the TPP Is Not a ‘Progressive’ Trade Agreement

Ralph Nader

“We have an opportunity to set the most progressive trade agreement in our nation’s history,” it states on BarackObama.com, the website of the president’s “Organizing for Action” campaign.

One must seriously question what President Obama and his corporate allies believe to be the definition of “progressive” when it comes to this grandiose statement. History shows the very opposite of progress when it comes to these democratic sovereignty-shredding and job-exporting corporate-driven trade treaties — unless progress is referring to fulfilling the deepest wishes of runaway global corporations.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) set our country’s progress back through large job-draining trade deficits, downward pressure on wages, extending Big Pharma’s patent monopolies to raise consumers’ medicine prices, floods of unsafe imported food, and undermining or freezing consumer and environmental rules.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is formally described as a trade and foreign investment agreement between 12 nations — Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. The White House is now pressuring Congress to Fast Track through the TPP. Fast Track authority, a Congressional procedure to limit time for debate and prohibit amendments to proposed legislation, has already passed in the Senate, although only after an unexpectedly rough ride.

Here are 10 reasons why the TPP is explicitly not a “progressive” trade agreement:

1. Over 2000 progressive groups recently sent a letter to members of Congress opposing fast track. “Fast Track is an abrogation of not only Congress’ constitutional authority, but of its responsibility to the American people. We oppose this bill, and urge you to do so as well,” the letter reads. See it in full here. On the other hand, supporters of the TPP and its autocratic, secret transnational governance, include Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Ag, oil/gas and mining firms, and the Chamber of Commerce–in short the plutocracy does not tolerate voices and participation by the people adversely affected.

2. Only six out of the 30 total chapters in the TPP have anything to do with trade. So what makes up the bulk of this agreement, which was shaped by 500 U.S. corporate advisors? Jim Hightower writes: “The other two dozen chapters amount to a devilish ‘partnership’ for corporate protectionism. They create sweeping new ‘rights’ and escape hatches to protect multinational corporations from accountability to our governments… and to us.”

3. After six years of secret negotiations, Fast Track legislation would allow President Obama to sign and enter into the TPP before Congress approves its terms. It then requires a vote 90 days after submission of this Fast Track legislation on the TPP itself and changes in existing U.S. laws to comply with its terms. No amendments would be allowed and debate would be limited to a total of only 20 hours in each chamber of Congress. By limiting debate and preventing any amendments to the agreement, Fast Track prevents challenges to any issues about how America conducts business with the countries included in the TPP. Some of the countries in the TPP — Brunei, Malaysia, Mexico and Vietnam, for example — have terrible human and labor rights records. Those conditions attract big companies looking for serf labor and their accommodating governments.

4. Millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost due to NAFTA and WTO being railroaded through Congress. The TPP would only expand these offshoring incentives. These types of deals ultimately increase the income inequality gap by displacing well-paid middle-class workers, negating any benefit to lower prices of goods. According to a report for the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the TPP would result in wage cuts for all but the wealthiest Americans.

5. The American people have yet to see the full text of the TPP — it has been negotiated in secret and shown to members of Congress under demeaningly strict secrecy. We only know about some of its terms because of leaks. But Wall Street and industry operatives, who seek to benefit enormously from the TPP, do have access to the text. Why so selectively secretive? Supporters of the deal outright told Senator Elizabeth Warren, “[trade talks] have to be secret, because if the American people knew what was actually in them, they would be opposed.”

6. The TPP allows corporations to directly sue our country if federal, state or local laws, government actions or court rulings are claimed to violate new rights and privileges the TPP would grant to foreign firms. Firms from TPP nations operating here could attack U.S. regulations over cancer-causing chemicals or environmental concerns before tribunals comprised of corporate lawyers that rotate by day and night between acting as “judges” and representing corporations attacking governments. These decisions then cannot be challenged in U.S. courts — and U.S. taxpayers will get stuck with the bill. So much for our precious sovereignty!

7. The proponents of the TPP claim that it will raise labor and environmental standards. However, the labor and environmental standards included in the TPP are equivalent (or less stringent) to modest ones agreed upon by House Democrats and President Bush in May 2007 in trade agreements with Peru, Panama and Colombia. These provisions have not been effective — Peru has since undermined these laws, and the Obama Administration has done nothing to enforce them. Nothing in the TPP suggests the unenforceable rhetoric– cited by President Obama — will be any different now.

8. TPP will further weaken America’s regulatory watchdogs — we can’t use our own government to over-rule TPP tribunal decisions that over-rule our health, safety and economic protections as non-tariff trade barriers. Senator Elizabeth Warren told POLITICO: “This deal would give protections to international corporations that are not available to United States environmental and labor groups. Multinational corporations are increasingly realizing this is an opportunity to gut U.S. regulations they don’t like.” Keeping the United States from being first in health and safety protections is un-American.

9. Prescription drug costs will increase. The TPP includes terms that would limit access to generic drugs and curtail government power to limit the price of drugs. See Public Citizen’s report “The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) threatens access to affordable medicines.”

10. The TPP could potentially undermine reforms of Wall Street and threaten U.S. financial stability by providing the institutions that caused the 2008-2009 financial crisis a path to circumvent U.S. regulations, such as limiting capital controls and prohibiting any taxes on Wall Street speculation. See the letter sent by Senators Warren, Markey and Baldwin last year to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman.

How Greed and Capital Triumph

Binoy Kampmark

“We might as well declare it a national holiday… I tell you what, any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today [to celebrate the America’s Cup win] is a bum.”

— Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, September 1983

The Alan Bond principle is an important one to wrestle with it. While it has its variants in other societies where plunder is the norm and kleptocracy lauded, it assumes other features. It is a principle of total illusion. Financial success is mistaken for durability and resilience. In the enterprising 1980s, when Australia was, for want of a better term, modernising, business tycoon Alan Bond became its symbol.

The Bond principle is inventive crookedness. He was, according to The Australian obituary, “the quintessential Aussie entrepreneur. Brash and confident, a supersalesman and champion borrower, he was a daring and determined a risk taker.” He was that “salesman who made life fun.” This is the wolf of Wall Street rationale: humble beginnings of drab and dourness leading to monstrous gains, glory and corruption. But take note: he made life fun.

Importantly, the editor is keen to import the new world narrative into Bond’s arrival at Fremantle, Western Australia when a nipper of 11 years old. Bond himself was one of a specific breed of migrant – a £10 Pom, those British citizens the Australian government encouraged to populate Australia in the aftermath of the Second World War. He found the port, even at that age, a moonscape of sheds and concrete wharves. Change was needed.

Praises for the Bond brand in light of his death on Friday came from across the quarters that long ago made a pact between the greed incentive and the work incentive. Australia’s labour movement effectively became an annex of the Bond principle during the Hawke years, driven by aspiration and material in outlook. Blue collar workers were encouraged to be white collar accumulators.

It was Labour Prime Minister Bob Hawke who affirmed to Australians that traditional progressivism was running out of steam, an anachronism that needed to be excised. Centralist managerialism teamed up with corporate might. The corporate boss was your friend, even role model.

Bond’s perceived successes and obvious failings said much about the Australian materialist landscape. Crude capital, quick gains, minimal lasting investments, and personal gratification. True, he did create a private university, Australia’s first, after his name. He did become the country’s largest brewer at one point. He built property complexes. But his silver tongue tied the bankers and wooed the markets. In 1988, his financial empire totalled $12 billion in debts. By 1991, it had imploded.

It was subsequently bankrupted for $622 million, the second largest in personal bankruptcy history. The debt culture that we would see resurface globally in 2008 was already being given a dress rehearsal in the Australia of the 1980s. And just to remind us all that Gordon Gecko’s blood was running in his veins, Bond would reappear on the rich lists with a personal fortune valued at $265 million.

Losses eventually turn around. The system, we are told, works, especially if it involves trusts, shelf companies, tax havens and jurisdictions from Switzerland to Rarotonga. And such bankers of the quality of Jurg Bollag.

Bond’s behaviour was, to a large extent, overlooked in favour of other attributes. This proved similar to that bushranger of Victorian and Australian folklore, Ned Kelly, long incubated in the womb of mythology. Bond proved to be the bandit of the boardroom, losing and stealing billions instead of horses, and killing bank balances instead of police. Yes, he did spend time in prison for appropriating $1.2 billion to feed that sick patient that had become the Bond Corporation. But he was, according to finance analyst Tim Treadgold, the “likeable rogue”, part of the syndicate that broke the 132-year-old US hold on the America’s Cup in 1983.

This was another illusion at play: that success in sport and giving it to the Americans was somehow noteworthy of everything else. Preambles evaluating his legacy would commence with that 1983 victory, as if it was the only thing that really mattered to Australia in that decade was a US-dominated yacht race. “Alan Bond,” begins Neil McMahon, “gave Australia one its greatest ever sporting achievements in 1983, and then the fall came” (The Drum, Jun 5). Eden was victory at sea, but its participants would take the apple of profit and be eventually cast out.

The biggest culprit in cultivating this illusion was Bond’s greatest apologist, Hawke. The America’s Cup achievement became one of substance rather than tinsel. It unified the country – indeed, Hawke’s election theme, that platitudinous “Bringing Australia Together” dovetailed with a success that was individual to a financed syndicate.

A solitary sporting triumph became a nation’s supreme achievement, in Hawke’s words, “one of the great moments in Australian history” no less. “I just want to say to Bondy, to (Warren) Jones, to (John) Bertrand, the crew and of course not forgetting that marvellous Australian Ben Lexcen, that there’s not many occasions when an Australian prime minister knows that he can speak for every Australian.”

The Bond saga suggests that Australia’s potential of falling victim to a banana republic complex, one that former treasurer and prime minister Paul Keating warned against, is very much alive. It is one of baubles, future eating and financial babble. And it is not one that had disappeared. On the contrary, the Bond principle remains very much in action. It is the principle of tolerated lawlessness that takes rather than returns, appropriates, rather than develops. But for all of that, he was such likeable rogue.

Across the Sea

Grant A. Mincy

On the Moroccan Coast, nine migrants gaze across the Mediterranean Sea to Spain. Across the sea lies hope. There is a chance for freedom, a chance to carve out a good life. They have fled Syria, the Sudan, Yemen, Libya and other countries across the Middle East and North Africa. Poverty, war, terror, oppression and loss is all they can expect from their homeland.

Under the cover of darkness, at risk of capture, torture and/or death they fled. They subjected themselves to the brutality of a large human smuggling network, hid in tight spaces, traveled at length in silence and paid incredible fees. They kept cover under palm trees, moved along sand dunes and have slept very little. Tired, bone weary, hungry, but alive, they stand on the shoreline.

This is it. The last leg in a very long journey. But, the ancient Mediterranean is dangerous.

Choppy currents, large waves, great white sharks and other obstacles stand between the refugees and Europe. They have all heard the tales. They know thousands have drown on this eight mile voyage. But, just as thousands before them, they will risk their last breath and attempt to cross the sea with their families. Freedom is worth their last gasp of air.

They climb aboard their makeshift raft and push-off. Nervous, but hopeful, they paddle out to sea. Everything is fine at first, but the calm coastal waters soon turn violent off the continental slope. They are in too deep to turn back, but it is too dangerous to push ahead. They radio for help. With hearts pounding, people screaming, babies crying, the phone rings — the Spanish Coast Guard picks up. The Guard hears nothing but panic and the crashing of large waves, time to radio in another rescue.

Under heavy winds and high waves, the raft rips apart, the refugees are lost at sea. The Coast Guard pinpoints their location — all nine are rescued. They are hospitalized and suffering from hypothermia, but this time they are alive.

Stories like this are overlooked in common discussions about war. The 1800 people who have died this year, on this very voyage across the sea, are casualties of war. They survived the terrible ISIS regime and Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons. They survived endless drone campaigns that continue to lay waste to schools, neighborhoods, weddings and funerals. They survived the full might and militarism of western nation-states, civil wars and political instability. Though they died in the sea, they died seeking refuge from power and domination.

They died seeking refuge from the state.

War is the primary function of states. The resources necessary to build war machines and carry out global military campaigns are impossible by a community basis. Modern war exists because of the military establishment; the military establishment cannot exist without state organization.

As the state’s primary function is war, it is concerned with resources and territory — not to craft or cultivate markets, but to enhance its own power. War is the destruction of property, liberty and ultimately life. Thus, states can only destroy, they can never create — they are great agents of repression.

As we hear of people risking life and limb for a better life outside of the war torn regions of the world, may we remember that war is a global, state phenomenon. States are responsible for war.

If we care for others, we need humility. A peaceful existence requires resistance to the military establishment and thus the urge of war. Resistance to, and freedom from, war necessarily requires freedom from state. If we are to organize the peaceful society it is important to organize markets, cooperatives, institutions and federations absent of state control.

We cannot expect the end of war without first realizing a vibrant stateless society — a society where every human being is free to pursue their interests and develop their capacities into individual and social account.

Netherlands Fellowship Programmes (NFP) – Masters, PhD for Developing Countries 2015/2016

Brief description: Netherlands Fellowship Programmes (NFP) 2015/2016 is open for  Masters, PhD and Short Courses applicants from Developing Countries

Accepted Subject Areas: The NFP offers you three sub-programmes to choose from:

• Master’s degree programmes
• Short courses
• PhD studies

About Scholarship

The Netherlands Fellowship Programmes (NFP), funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the budget for development cooperation, are designed to promote capacity building within organizations in 51 (previously 62) countries by providing training and education to mid-career staff.

The overall aim of the NFP is to help alleviate qualitative and quantitative shortages of skilled manpower within a wide range of governmental, private and non-governmental organizations. This is done by offering fellowships to mid-career professionals to improve the capacity of their employing organizations.

Scholarship Offered Since: Not Specified

Selection Criteria

Priority will be given to candidates who:

• live and work  in Sub-Saharan Africa;
• are women;
• belong to a priority groups and/or are from a marginalised region as defined by the Dutch embassy in your country. You can find these priorities on the embassy’s website.

Eligibility

To be eligible for an NFP fellowship you must:

• be a mid-career professional with at least three years’ relevant work experience;
• be a national of, and working and living in one of the countries on the NFP country list (see below) valid at the time of application;
• be nominated by your employer, who pledges to continue paying your salary and guarantees that you will be able to return to the same or an equivalent position at the end of your fellowship period;
• have been unconditionally admitted by a Dutch institution to one of the Master’s degree programmes or Short courses on the 2015-2016 course list, or have agreed upon a PhD research proposal with the Dutch institution.
• not already have received an NFP fellowship for a master’s degree programme or a PhD fellowship.
• not be employed by:
  – a multinational corporation
  – a large national and/or commercial organisation
  – a bilateral donor organisation
  – a multilateral donor organisation
  – an international NGO.
• have completed and submitted an NFP PhD study, master’s degree programme or short course application, including all the required documentation, before the applicable fellowship application deadline;
• be employed in an area to which the study will make a relevant contribution;
• be full-time available for the entire period of the programme or course and be physically and mentally able to take part in the entire programme;

Number of Scholarships: Several

Value of Scholarship: The fellowship is a supplement to the candidate’s salary and a contribution towards the expenses related to the course or study programme.

Duration of sponsorship: for the period of course

Eligible African Countries: Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Guinea-Bissau, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya, Cape Verde, Uganda, Mali, Zambia, DR Congo, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Egypt, Namibia

Other Developing Countries outside Africa?

Afghanistan, Eritrea, Nicaragua, Albania, Armenia, Georgia, Pakistan, Autonomous Palestinian Territories, Peru, Bangladesh, Guatemala, Philippines, Bhutan, Honduras, Bolivia, India, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Iran, Suriname, Jordan, Cambodia, Thailand, Kosovo, Colombia, Macedonia, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Yemen, Cuba, Moldova, Mongolia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nepal

To be taken at: Netherlands

Application Deadline: application starts 3 February 2015 and closes 23 July 2015 and October 2015

Offered annually? Yes

How to Apply

Visit this link for details on how to apply for NFP

Sponsors

The NFP is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the budget for development cooperation.

Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Scholarship 2015 Netherlands

Scholarship Name: Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Scholarship Programme

Brief description: Scholarships in Netherlands for mid-career professionals from Middle East and North Africa 2013/2014

Accepted Subject Areas: You can use an MSP scholarship for a number of selected short courses in one of the following fields of study:

• Economics
• Commerce
• Management and Accounting
• Agriculture and Environment
• Mathematics
• Natural sciences and Computer sciences
• Engineering
• Law Public Administration
• Public order and Safety
• Humanities
• Social sciences
• Communication and Arts

About Scholarship

The MENA Scholarship Programme (MSP) enables professionals from ten selected countries to participate in a short course in the Netherlands. The overall aim of the MSP is to contribute to the democratic transition in the participating countries. It also aims at building capacity within organisations, by enabling employees to take part in short courses in various fields of study.
There are scholarships available for short courses with a duration of two to twelve weeks.

Target group

The MSP target group consists of professionals, aged up to 45, who are nationals of and work in one of the selected countries.
Scholarships are awarded to individuals, but the need for training must be demonstrated within the context of the organisation for which the applicant works. The training must help the organisation develop its capacity. Therefore, applicants must be nominated by their employers who have to motivate their nomination in a supporting letter.

Scholarship Offered Since: Not Specified

Selection Criteria

The candidates must be nationals of and working in one of the selected countries.

Who is qualified to apply?

A candidate applying for a MENA scholarship must:

• apply for a course on the MENA course list 2015;
• not have received a MENA Scholarship in the three years prior to the start of the proposed
• MENA course;
• complete a MENA scholarship application form and submit all the required documentation to the
• Netherlands Embassy;
• be a national of and working in one of the seven selected countries;
• be a mid-career professional with at least three years’ work experience;
• not be employed by:

–          a multinational corporation (e.g. Shell, Unilever);

–          a large national and/or commercial organisation;

–          a bilateral donor organisation (e.g. USAID, DFID, Danida, Sida, BuZa, FinAid, AusAid, ADC, SwissAid);

–          a multilateral donor organisation, (e.g. a UN organisation, the World Bank, the IMF, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, IADB);

–          an international NGO (e.g. Oxfam, Plan, Care).

• meet the admission requirements of the selected course. As such he or she must have at least a diploma or a bachelor’s degree in one of the selected fields of study and meet other educational or professional requirements, which may vary per course
•  offer evidence of proficiency in speaking and writing the language of instruction (English in most cases).

Number of Scholarship:  Several

Value: A MENA scholarship is a contribution to the costs of the selected short course and is intended to supplement the salary that the scholarship holder must continue to receive during the study period.

The following items are covered:

• subsistence allowance
• international travel costs
• visa costs
• course fee
• medical insurance
• allowance for study materials.

The allowances are considered to be sufficient to cover one person’s living expenses during the study period. The scholarship holders must cover any other costs from their own resources.

Eligible African Countries: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Syria and Tunisia

To be taken at (country): Netherlands

Application Deadline: August 2015

Offered annually? Yes

How to Apply

Visit scholarship webpage for details

Sponsors: The MENA Scholarship Programme is initiated and fully funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Sri Lankan government facing deepening financial crisis

Saman Gunadasa

Just six months after coming to office, the minority government in Sri Lanka has borrowed 378 billion rupees ($US2.8 billion) via treasury bills and bonds, surpassing the figure of 260 billion rupees for the whole of last year. In addition, the government raised $US1 billion last week by issuing 10-year sovereign bonds and development bonds at an interest rate of 5.26 percent per annum.

At a press conference on May 29, Central Bank governor Arjuna Mahendran and Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake boasted that the purchase of the bonds in a short time was an “expression of confidence on the government.”

This is not the case. The government issued the bonds to offset its expenditure. More than 75 percent of the bonds were bought by global funds, mainly from the US but also from Europe and Asia, seeking relatively high returns. As in the past, the money could be withdrawn when investors find more profitable prospects, sending a shock wave through the economy.

Most of the latest borrowings are needed just to repay loan instalments and interest on existing debt. The previous government of President Mahinda Rajapakse took out large loans to finance the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and substantial infrastructure projects following the LTTE’s defeat in 2009.

A recently published 2014 Central Bank Report noted that total government debt increased to 7.39 trillion rupees last year, up from 6.79 trillion rupees in 2013. Total foreign debt increased by 5.2 percent to 3.33 trillion rupees in 2014, from 2.96 trillion rupees in 2013. Karunanayake recently admitted that country’s debt service payment was “extremely high”—equivalent to 95.4 percent of government revenue.

The increased borrowing demonstrates that the government is facing a dire financial crisis. Last month, former President Chandrika Kumaratunga warned that the government was not in a position “to pay state sector salaries to everyone.”

Karunanayake made a desperate appeal last Friday to exporters and expatriate workers to send their money back to Sri Lanka, promising higher returns. The Central Bank imposed a 5 percent penalty on exporters who hold their US dollars for more than 90 days and a 2 percent monthly penalty after that—effective as of last Monday.

The parliamentary opposition parties opposed some tax proposals announced in the interim budget in February, including a 25 percent tax on company profits last year of over 2 billion rupees and a 250 million rupee tax on mobile phone operators. This “one-time tax” is mainly aimed at the big business supporters of former President Rajapaske.

Karunanayake told reporters last week that the minority government “is being held hostage by a majority Opposition.” In April, the opposition rejected Karunanayake’s proposal to increase the government borrowing limit by 400 billion rupees, claiming it would increase inflation.

Compounding the government crisis, strong downward pressure on the rupee led to a devaluation of nearly 4 percent last week. Even though the Central Bank intervened to try to prop up the currency, it reached 138 rupees to the US dollar last Monday, before recovering to 135 rupees.

For some time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has demanded a “more realistic exchange rate,” as have exporters. However, the government is seeking to prevent a further devaluation before a general election expected in the next few months.

A fall in the value of the rupee would lead to rising prices, further fuelling opposition to the United National Party (UNP)-led government installed after President Maithripala Sirisena won the January 8 presidential election.

Sections of the corporate elite have expressed deepening concern over the political uncertainty and worsening economic problems. They are demanding major economic “reforms” that will drastically affect jobs, wages and price subsidies for workers and the poor.

Indrajith Coomaraswamy, deputy chairman of the big business think tank Pathfinder, told a media conference in late May: “[T]he longer you wait, the more intense the pain will be, so we need to achieve macroeconomic stabilisation as soon as the elections are over... It’s not enough to do incremental changes. We need major reforms.”

“Macroeconomic stabilisation” means reducing the budget deficit by implementing the IMF’s austerity measures, which will hit working people. Last year’s budget deficit of 6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) surpassed the IMF’s target of 5.2 percent. The IMF warned that without a huge effort to increase tax revenues, this year’s budget deficit target of 4.4 percent of GDP would not be achieved.

The IMF turned down the Sirisena government’s request for a $US4 billion loan to restructure the ballooning public debt—in effect, a vote of no confidence in the government’s failure to slash spending.

Coomaraswamy called on the government to stop further borrowing. “The debt dynamics have changed substantially and the scope for the state to borrow is no longer there,” he said. “The budget deficit is likely to deteriorate as a result of the non-fundable ‘budget handouts’ that we saw in the recent past... It’s only a matter of time that we will have tax increases, expenditure cuts, interest rate increases and depreciation of currency or some mix of this prescription.”

Pathfinder executive director Luxman Siriwardene bluntly justified the austerity agenda by attacking workers and the poor, and blaming them for the economic crisis. “Is it fair that people who are sitting around and doing nothing get a wage increase of 10,000 rupees?” he declared. “We must change this entitlement mentality.”

The right-wing UNP government has no disagreement with the anti-working class agenda being demanded. However, with a general election due to be called, it has held off implementing far-reaching attacks on living standards in the hope of gaining a majority in parliament.

Whichever parties form the next government after the election will quickly ditch their promises and launch a far-reaching assault on the social conditions and democratic rights of the working class and the urban and rural poor.

Australian government vilifies human rights commissioner

Mike Head

For the second time in four months, the Abbott government has denounced Australian Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs for criticising the extensive violations of basic legal and democratic rights by successive Australian governments.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton yesterday renewed the government’s hounding of Triggs, blatantly trying to force her to quit her statutory position, which is not due to finish until 2017. Dutton accused her of becoming a “political advocate,” which made it “very difficult to continue on.”

Delivering a human rights address last Friday night, Triggs, a law professor, warned of a “growing threat to democracy” produced by the terrorism laws, refugee detention, mandatory sentencing and anti-association legislation imposed by Liberal-National and Labor governments alike over the past 15 years.

“Respective governments have been remarkably successful in persuading parliaments to pass laws that are contrary, even explicitly contrary, to common law rights and to the international human rights regime to which Australia is a party,” she said.

Triggs said the latest proposal by the government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott to strip citizenship from suspected terrorists who are “potentially dual nationals” was an example. “Not only may this idea violate Australia’s international obligation not to render a person stateless, but also the detention may be at the discretion of a minister without recourse to judicial processes,” she said.

The human rights commissioner referred to the coming 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the 1215 English charter that enshrined the principle of habeas corpus—no detention without trial. “Magna Carta has something to say about this: it provided that no man is to be ‘outlawed or exiled’ except by the law of the land,” she said.

Triggs listed “scores of laws” that flouted basic civil and political rights, including the three “anti-terrorism” laws imposed late last year and the data retention legislation passed in March that requires the storage of all telecommunications data for two years for access by the police and intelligence agencies. Each measure had the support of the Labor Party opposition.

“Many laws introduced with unseemly haste before Christmas in the name of national security go well beyond what might be deemed necessary, creating a chilling effect on freedom of speech and the press and breaching the right to privacy,” Triggs said.

Referring to the data retention laws, Triggs noted: “As the metadata will be collected in respect of most of the 23 million Australians, and those involved in terrorism or paedophilia are very few, it might be said that the act employs a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”

Turning to last year’s “Foreign Fighters Act,” Triggs explained that it introduced a new offence of advocating terrorism, “an imprecise crime whose scope may cover, for example, opposing the Assad regime in Syria or supporting Palestinian efforts to gain statehood.”

Other “national security” laws passed last year created an offence punishable by up to 10 years in jail for disclosing information about a “special intelligence operation.” This was likely to “have a chilling effect on legitimate public debate about security operations,” Triggs said.

The commissioner cited numerous examples of the expansion of “discretionary” ministerial powers, including:

* Powers to detain indefinitely various classes of individuals, including asylum seekers and the mentally-ill.

* The holding of four indigenous men with intellectual and cognitive disabilities for years in a Northern Territory maximum security prison.

* The indefinite detention of refugees, including children, because of adverse “security” assessments “without meaningful access to legal advice or judicial review.”

* The reduction of freedom of association from “anti-bikie” gang laws.

Triggs’s comments did not go beyond her official remit to scrutinise the country’s performance in meeting its formal international human rights commitments, including under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the international Refugee Convention.

Nor did her comments in any way challenge the bipartisan policy of “stopping the boats” of refugees trying to reach Australia, or the underlying geo-strategic agenda of the “war on terror”—support for US-led military interventions in the Middle East and globally.

However, by defying the government’s intense attacks on her, she has become something of a lone voice, alerting the public to the police-state powers being imposed domestically. Her stand highlights just how far the rest of legal and political establishment has abandoned any defence of fundamental legal and political rights.

Abbott and his ministers previously attacked Triggs in February, following the release of a report exposing the appalling conditions facing child refugees in detention camps run by the Australian government on Christmas Island and Nauru.

One of the reasons for the assault on Triggs is that the government is preparing to go far further in revoking citizenship rights. Today’s Australian carries a front-page “exclusive” report by its foreign editor Greg Sheridan, that the government “could be planning something much more decisive, radical and controversial in its approach to stripping Australian citizenship from dual nationals who pose a terrorist threat.”

Sheridan, who has close connections within the government and the security apparatus, reported: “If a person is stripped of their passport, they no longer have a legal right to be in Australia. In the case of illegal immigrants, the Abbott government has shown a willingness to detain people at length while they negotiate with the nation of their citizenship to take them back.”

Sheridan ended on an ominous note. He predicted that “if the government gets this power it will not be primarily symbolic and it will not be used rarely… It will become a big new factor in Australian politics and culture.”

Such plans recall the mass internment of “aliens” (non-citizens) during both world wars, including people of German, Italian and Japanese descent. The official history of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), published last year, revealed that ASIO kept nearly 5,000 people on lists for potential internment during the 1950s, covering not just “aliens” but other people regarded as a “security risk,” such as Communist Party members and sympathisers.

The Labor opposition has accused the government of bullying Triggs. Yet Labor reopened the hellhole refugee detention centres on remote islands and aligned itself unconditionally behind all the terrorism, data retention and citizenship laws. In parliament last week, Labor leader Bill Shorten declared that the opposition was committed to passing the proposed legislation to strip citizenship from suspected terrorism supporters, without even seeing any details of the yet-to-be released laws.

The hypocrisy of the political establishment knows no bounds. Australian governments, Labor and Coalition, have repeatedly backed Washington in its use of bogus “human rights” pretexts to mount diplomatic provocations and military interventions. These include the 2011 war on Libya, the ongoing regime-change operation in Syria and the renewed US-led war in the Middle East.

Yet, when Australia’s official human rights monitor points out that successive governments have increasingly eviscerated basic democratic rights and international law, a high-level political campaign is waged to malign her. This is a warning of how far the Australian ruling elite is prepared to go to seek to silence and intimidate any opposition to the bipartisan program of war, austerity and the overturning of core legal and political rights.

Fraud charges and shareholder revolt at Deutsche Bank

Verena Nees

The annual general meeting of Deutsche Bank on May 21 took place against a background of severe turbulence due to the numerous scandals enveloping Germany’s largest financial institution. On Sunday the chairman of the bank’s Supervisory Board announced that the current joint heads of the bank, Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen, would be stepping down from their posts.

The furore surrounding Deutsche Bank has profound causes rooted in economic and political developments since the 2008 financial crisis.

The general meeting in Frankfurt, attended by about 5,000 shareholders, gave rise to fierce criticism of the corporate executives’ policies. Anju Jain and Jürgen Fitschen received only about 61 percent of the vote, instead of the customary 95 percent. The financial pages of major media outlets proclaimed that a “shareholder revolt” and even a “revolution” had taken place.

Booing and howling rebukes, shareholders railed against the numerous legal suits involving the financial institution, and the horrendous penalties curtailing the bank’s profits and consequent investor dividends. Having registered a market capitalisation of €43 billion in April, Deutsche Bank ranked at only 46th place among the major international banks.

Since April 28, court proceedings have opened against five German bank managers, including current co-CEO Jürgen Fitschen, former board members Rolf Breuer and Josef Ackermann, and other executive members. They are charged with fraudulent collaboration in a particularly severe case, relating to the bankruptcy of media entrepreneur Leo Kirch. The prosecution accuses them of having tried to deceive the court with lies and illegal collusion in a civil case last year. That trial had led to an extrajudicial payment of €925 million.

Deutsche Bank was also punished in April by US and British regulators, with a record fine of €2.5 billion, because of its intense involvement in the Libor and Euribor manipulations. The systematic falsification of the Libor benchmark interest rate had brought the participating banks, including UBS (Switzerland), Barclays, Citigroup and JPMorgan, fantastic profits, while defrauding small investors, homeowners and retirees of millions.

Last year, Deutsche Bank was involved in about 6,000 lawsuits and, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper, had to lay out at least €6 billion alone for penalties and settlements. In addition to the Libor scams, these cases also dealt with manipulation in gold price fixing [daily collusion among the big banks regarding their trading volume in gold, in order to influence the gold price], exchange rate manipulation, tax fraud in the trading of CO2 certificates, fraudulent securities transactions, etc.

Shortly before the bursting of the US housing bubble in 2007, Deutsche Bank had sold securities that were toxic with US housing loans, although it had long foreseen the collapse of the market. It fobbed off allegedly secure financial instruments to local governments, massively increasing their interest payments and thus their eventual debts.

Despite the large penalties arising mainly from the investment business scams, Deutsche Bank announced in April a new “Strategy 2020,” which amplifies and prioritises investment banking, while largely abandoning retail banking and the small customer sector. The Postbank, purchased only seven years ago, is to be sold off; jobs will be slashed and numerous branches closed.

The shareholders gathered in Frankfurt, especially the major investors and fund managers, criticised “Strategy 2020” because they considered it not radical enough to maximise profits.

Union Investment portfolio manager Ingo Speich said that, after the bank’s “eight lost years,” it is now confronted with another five unprofitable transition years of restructuring costs amounting to billions of euros. Hans-Christoph Hirt, manager of the huge British pension fund and shareholder advisor Hermes EOS, also expressed his doubts as to whether the objectives of “Strategy 2020” would be achieved, and recommended that the executive board should be dismissed.

Klaus Nieding, vice president of the German Society for the Protection of Securities Holders (DSW) said that representatives of small shareholders complained that they would have to foot the bill for the “investment bankers’ casino gambling” by ending up with meagre dividends.

Adopting a blatantly nationalist tone, he attacked investment banker Anshu Jain, who originally came from India but has long been active in the US and London, and is blamed by Niedling for the Libor scandal. He charged that Deutsche Bank’s attempt to rise to the position of a global investment bank involved engaging “foreign investment bankers as mercenaries” and thereby paving the way for the scandals in the first place. Quoting an old saying, he warned: “If a farmer sets a fox to guard the hen-house, he shouldn’t be surprised when it makes a meal of the chickens—and the farmer will eventually suffer the same fate.”

Hans-Martin Buhlmann from the Association of Institutional Private Investors took the same line, calling for Anshu Jain to step down.

A few days after the annual general meeting, the works council at Deutsche Bank’s Frankfurt headquarters joined the small shareholders in their campaign against “foreign investment banker” Anshu Jain. It arranged for the distribution of a leaflet, headed “Wind of Change? Wind of Jain?”, which indirectly demanded Jain’s resignation, declaring: “A radical new beginning here would restore our credibility and create a genuine spirit of optimism.”

The ver.di trade union, whose members comprise the works council and whose chairman Frank Bsirske is a member of the bank’s supervisory board, declined to comment. Bsirske and the other nine workers’ representatives had agreed to the cost reduction programme in April.

Despite the criticism of Anshu Jain from the shareholders and the Frankfurt works council, his power on the board has been strengthened. On the eve of the annual general meeting, the executive and supervisory boards had accepted primary responsibility for “Strategy 2020.” As a consequence, several other board members had to surrender their seats. In addition to the outgoing head of the private customers division, Rainer Neske, these included investment banker and Asia region manager Alan Cloete, who had been targeted in the Libor scandal, and Deutsche Bank UK director Colline Grassie.

The proceedings against Deutsche Bank reveal the extent to which it is enmeshed in the parasitic machinations of the global financial elite. But the prosecution is also a consequence of political calculations related to the great power ambitions of German imperialism. The fact that international financial markets are still dominated mainly by US and British banks on Wall Street and in the City of London continues to exasperate the German bourgeoisie. By focusing on investment banking, it aims to expand the role of Deutsche Bank as a global player.

This was expressed quite bluntly in an editorial in the Die Zeit weekly newspaper on May 28. Under the headline “Farewell to the Idyll,” journalist Uwe Jean Heuser stresses: “Germans need their own bank. Those in positions of power should fight for it, even though to do so would be unpopular.” According to Heuser, it is pointless to complain about Deutsche Bank; it is “strategically necessary” to create a “bank of international standing.”

The journalist refers to the debt crisis in 2008, when Josef Ackermann as head of Deutsche Bank mediated the government “bailout” at the federal chancellery, ensuring that Deutsche Bank was—indirectly—the party to benefit the most. Summing up, Heuser asks: “Who will the government call in the next crisis? JPMorgan?” Die Zeit bemoans the fact that the close relationship between Washington and Wall Street is exploited to the benefit of US interests, and demands the same arrangement for Germany. “As nice as it would be,” writes Heuser, “to have a single global market, the world is a long way from achieving such a thing.”