NED Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellowship for Developing Countries 2016

Application Deadline: Application opens June 15 and closes October 15, 2016.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Citizens of any country may apply

To be taken at (country): Washington, D.C., USA

Brief description: The Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program offers five-month fellowships to practitioners to focus on strategies and best practices for developing democracy in their country of interest. Projects may address the economic, political, social, legal, or cultural aspects of democratic development and include a range of methodologies and approaches.

Eligible Field of Study: Topics focusing on the political, social, economic, legal, or cultural aspects of democratic development

About the Award: The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Established in 1983 with funding from the U.S. Congress, the Endowment makes hundreds of grants each year to support pro-democracy groups in Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Named in honor of NED’s principal founders, former president Ronald Reagan and the late congressman Dante Fascell (D-Fl.), the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program is a federally funded, international exchange program that offers practitioners, scholars, and journalists from around the world the opportunity to spend five months in residence at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), in Washington, D.C., in order to undertake independent research on democracy in a particular country or region. Located within NED’s International Forum for Democratic Studies, the program provides a rich intellectual setting for educational exchange and professional development. While in residence, fellows reflect on their experiences; engage with counterparts; conduct research and writing; consider best practices and lessons learned; and develop professional relationships within a global network of democracy advocates.

Two different Tracks exist for participants: Practitioner Track and Scholarly Track

Type: Fellowship Programme

Eligibility: Proficiency in the English language. Eligibility differs according to the Track an interested candidate may belong:

Participant Track:

Applicants interested in the practitioner track are expected to have substantial practical experience working to promote democracy or human rights in their country of origin or interest. There are no specific degree requirements for the practitioner track. A Ph.D., for instance, is not required of practitioner applicants. While there are also no age limits, applicants on the practitioner track are typically mid-career professionals with several years of professional experience in the field of democracy and human rights.

Examples of eligible candidates for the practitioner track include human rights advocates, lawyers, journalists, labor leaders, political party activists, diplomats, professional staff of civic or humanitarian organizations, and other civil society professionals from developing and aspiring democracies.

Scholarly Track

Applicants interested in the scholarly track are expected to possess a doctorate (a Ph.D., or academic equivalent) at the time of application, to have a proven record of publications in their field, and to have developed a detailed research outline for their fellowship project.

Examples of eligible candidates for the scholarly track include college and university professors, researchers, journalists, and other writers from developing and aspiring democracies. Distinguished scholars from the United States or other established democracies are also eligible to apply. Occasionally, a professional who is planning to write a book or other scholarly publication may qualify to apply on the scholarly track.

Number of Awardees:

Value of Fellowship: 

• Research
• Capacity Building
• Impact
• Exchange

Duration of Fellowship: Five (5) months

How to Apply: There are five steps to the online application process:

Step 1: Applicant Information
Step 2: Project Proposal for the Practitioner Track or for the Scholarly Track
Step 3: Letters of Recommendation
Step 4: Resume/CV and Biography
Step 5: Certification

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Foundation

Important Notes: The Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program does not award scholarship funds, loans, or any other type of financial aid to university students, graduate students, or postdoctoral researchers. In addition, our fellowship program is not an educational or training program leading toward an academic degree.

Austria Scholarships for International Students 2016 (Undergraduate, Masters & PhD Research Grant)

Application Deadline: 1 September  2016 | 

Offered annually? Yes

Brief description: Applications are accepted for the Scholarship Foundation of the Republic of Austria for grants and research promotion for Undergraduate, Masters & PhD students. Scholarships are also awarded for research periods at scientific research institutions in Austria (e.g. universities, Austrian Academy of Sciences, National Library, National Archive).

Eligible Field of Study: Natural Sciences, Technical Sciences, Human Medicine, Health Sciences, Agricultural Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, Arts

About Scholarship          

Foundation of the Republic of Austria is offering scholarships for international students (except Austrians). Applicants who are descendants of forced laborers (regardless of their country of origin) or people coming from countries that have suffered exceptionally from the Nazi regime, especially from the recruitment of forced laborers. Scholarships are awarded to pursue research on their diploma or master thesis or their dissertation at scientific research institutions in Austria.

Scholarship Offered Since: not specified

Scholarship Type: grants, research promotion for undergraduates, graduates, postgraduates

Eligibility: Eligible for application are

• descendents of forced labourers (regardless of their country of origin)
• or people coming from countries that have suffered exceptionally from the Nazi regime, especially from the recruitment of forced labourers.

Selection Criteria: Students meeting the above mentioned criteria can apply to pursue research

• on their bachelor thesis
• on their diploma or master thesis
• or their dissertation.

No scholarships are awarded for Bachelor, Master or Doctoral/PhD studies pursued in Austria, summer courses, language courses, clinical traineeships or internships. The scholarship grant is for research.

Applicants must not have studied/pursued research/pursued academic work in Austria in the last six months before taking up the grant.

Age limit:

Doctoral students: 40 years (born on or after March 1, 1976)
for other students: 35 years (born on or after March 1, 1981)

Number of Scholarships: not specified

Value of Scholarship:

1. monthly scholarship instalment: 940 EUR
2. Accident and health insurance: if necessary, the OeAD (Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research) will effect an accident and health insurance. The costs for the insurance have to be covered from the scholarship.
3. The OeAD provides scholarship holders with accommodation (student dormitory or apartment). Monthly costs: 220 to 470 EUR (depending on the level of comfort requested by the scholarship holder). The scholarship holder has to pay an administrative fee of 18 EUR/month to the OeAD for the provision of accommodation. The costs for the accommodation have to be covered from the scholarship.
4. Applicants from countries which are neither members of the EU nor members of EFTA, EEA or OECD can be granted a travel allowance. The lump sum depends on the country of origin.

Duration of Scholarship: 1 – 4 months

Eligible Countries: all (except Austria)

To be taken at (country): Austria

How to Apply

The following documents have to be uploaded for the Online Application on www.scholarships.at/:

• fully completed Online Application form “Application for a Scholarship of the Scholarship Foundation of the Republic of Austria” including a CV and a project plan, describing the plans and completed preparatory work for the research stay in Austria
• two letters of recommendation from university lecturers. For these letters of recommendation no specific form is required; they have to contain the letterhead, date and signature of the person recommending the applicant and the stamp of the university / department and must be no older than six months at the time of application
• confirmation of supervision by a supervisor at the chosen Austrian university, university of applied sciences or research institution
• scanned passport (showing the name and picture of the applicant)
• university graduation certificate of your diploma, master, PhD or doctoral studies at a university outside Austria resp. proof of enrollment at a study programme at a university outside Austria
• confirmation, that proves your participation in a study programme (Bachelor, Master/Diploma or PhD) at your home university
• for descendants of forced labourers: processing number or photocopy of the letter of information or other relevant proofs

Visit scholarship webpage for details to apply

Sponsors: OeAD-GmbH on behalf of and financed by the Scholarship Foundation of the Republic of Austria

New Zealand: Labour, Greens sign Memorandum of Understanding

Tom Peters

New Zealand’s opposition Labour and Green Parties signed a one-page Memorandum of Understanding on May 31, agreeing to “work co-operatively to change the government” in the 2017 election.

The agreement describes the Labour-Greens alliance as “a stable, credible, and progressive alternative” to the conservative National Party, which has been in power since 2008. Commentators such as the trade union funded Daily Blog and former Greens MP and blogger Keith Locke presented the MoU as a shift to the left by the Labour Party.

In reality, the agreement is an attempt to trap workers and youth, who are moving to the left under the impact of the economic crisis, behind capitalist parties that have no substantial differences with National’s agenda of austerity and militarism.

The 2011 and 2014 elections were marked by record levels of abstention, particularly among young people, reflecting widespread hostility towards the entire political establishment. Labour, which is widely recognised as no alternative to National, received its lowest vote in 80 and 92 years respectively. Over the past eight years the party has languished in the polls with 30 percent support or lower, and has had four different leaders.

Underscoring the collapse in support for the Labour Party, well-informed political blogger Richard Harman recently wrote that its membership might have sunk below 5,000, that is, lower than the Greens’. Tens of thousands of workers left Labour in disgust following the Labour government’s wave of pro-market restructuring, mass sackings and privatisations in the 1980s, which led to soaring social inequality.

The MoU, which aims to prop up this despised party of big business, demonstrates once again the reactionary politics of the Green Party. Like its sister parties in Germany and Australia, the NZ Greens are not a “left” alternative but a party of nationalism, militarism and big business. James Shaw, elected Green Party co-leader last year based on his experience as a business consultant for HSBC bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers, has described himself as “a huge fan of the market” and promoted Margaret Thatcher as a model environmentalist.

The Greens supported the 1999-2008 Labour government, including its decision to send troops to join the US occupation of Afghanistan, and the Australian interventions in East Timor and the Solomon Islands. Now the party has signalled its willingness to formally enter a Labour-led coalition government.

Labour leader Andrew Little addressed the Greens’ annual conference on June 4 to promote the agreement. He declared that a Labour-Green government would “deliver a better, fairer New Zealand” that would “lift people out of homelessness.” He made vague promises to reduce child poverty and increase funding for health and education. Little’s speech was greeted with a standing ovation.

Neither party, however, has announced a policy that would lift the estimated 300,000 children out of poverty. Labour’s housing policy, if implemented, would result in 10,000 new homes per year, to be sold at unaffordable market prices, while the Greens have called for the construction of only a handful more state-owned houses. More than 40,000 people are homeless. In the 2014 election both parties pledged to keep a tight lid on spending and ruled out reversing National’s corporate tax cuts and its increase to the Goods and Services Tax.

In line with its previous tacit support for US-led wars, the Greens made no criticism of Labour’s support for US militarism, including Little’s recent demand for a major escalation of the war in Iraq, Syria, Libya “and other parts of the Middle East.”

Foreign policy was not publicly discussed at the Greens’ conference because the entire political establishment supports the military-intelligence alliance with Washington, in exchange for US backing of New Zealand’s neo-colonial operations in the Pacific. Labour has openly endorsed the aggressive US “pivot” to Asia, a strategy to encircle and prepare for war against China.

Shaw told Newshub on June 8 that the Greens support the government’s plan, outlined in its Defence White Paper, to spend $20 billion over the next 15 years on new military hardware, including frigates, aircraft and drones. Labour’s defence spokesman Phil Goff demanded that the government go even further in recruiting more personnel for the armed forces. The purpose of the increased military spending is to integrate New Zealand into US war preparations against China.

Shaw declared in his conference speech that the Greens and Labour wanted a future where “children of Syrian refugees will play with those of Chinese migrants, Pasifika [Pacific Islanders] and Tangata Whenua [Maori] and seventh generation Pakeha [Europeans].”

In reality, both parties have joined the right-wing, anti-immigrant New Zealand First Party in whipping up anti-Chinese xenophobia. Labour has blamed immigrants, particularly Chinese people, for taking New Zealanders’ jobs and driving up house prices.

The Labour and Green leaders have stressed that their Memorandum is not an “exclusive” deal and have invited NZ First to join them. The three parties contested the 2014 election in a de facto alliance, and last year Labour and the Greens helped NZ First leader Winston Peters win a by-election in the Northland electorate.

The Greens’ embrace of NZ First is a measure of their sharp shift to the right. NZ First was founded in the 1990s on a platform of opposing what it called an “invasion” of Asian immigrants. In June 2005, the Greens’ then-co-leader Rod Donald denounced Winston Peters as “the ugly face of New Zealand politics” and said his proposal for a dedicated squad to snatch and deport “undesirable” immigrants “echoes Hitler’s Germany.”

In May 2013, after Peters’ gave a speech scapegoating Chinese people for gambling, prostitution, crime and social inequality in Auckland, current Greens co-leader Metiria Turei told TV3 that Peters was a “racist,” but did not rule out going into coalition with NZ First.

On June 1, 2016, Turei told Radio NZ: “I have no concerns at all about working with Winston Peters and New Zealand First in future, if that’s what they’re interested in.”

Shaw went further, telling TVNZ on June 5: “Our relationship with New Zealand First has improved markedly over the course of the last few years. Metiria [Turei] has quite a close personal relationship with [Peters].” He pointed out that the Greens’ recently-appointed chief of staff, Deborah Morris-Travers, is a former NZ First member who served as minister for youth affairs in the 1996-1999 National Party-NZ First coalition government.

The Green Party leaders have built their “close personal relationship” with NZ First as the latter has made constant xenophobic attacks on foreign students, Pacific Islanders, Muslims and Chinese immigrants. Like Labour, NZ First supports the military build-up against China. It has called for greater military spending and proposed that unemployed teenagers undergo army training.

The Labour-Greens-NZ First bloc is not a progressive alternative to the National government. If elected next year, it will intensify the assault on the working class at home, attack immigrants, and continue the country’s war preparations against China.

ISIS-linked operative murders police commander and his wife near Paris

Alex Lantier

In a gruesome and horrific crime, a man apparently linked to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) murdered a police commandant and then his wife, an administrative worker in a police office, in the city of Magnanville, 60 km northwest of Paris.

The assailant mortally stabbed Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, identified in press reports as a 42-year-old official in the judicial police of Les Mureaux, outside his house on Monday evening. He then took Salvaing’s 36-year-old wife Jessica Schneider and their three-year-old child hostage in their residence, launching a standoff with the RAID (Research, Assistance, Intervention, Deterrence) police special forces unit.

The assailant then posted on Facebook pictures of his victims and a call to murder policemen, prison wardens, journalists and rappers. He also called for terror attacks on the Euro 2016 football cup, declaring, “The Euro cup will be a graveyard.”

At a briefing later yesterday, Paris prosecutor François Molins said, “During his negotiations with the RAID, the killer said he was a practicing Muslim, adding that he had pledged allegiance three weeks before to the commander of the faithful of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He also said he had responded to a call by this emir to ‘kill unbelievers, at their home with their families’.”

The RAID unit assaulted the house at midnight Tuesday, killing the assailant and discovering Schneider’s lifeless body and the couple’s young child. Schneider’s throat had been slit in front of the child, whom authorities described as “physically unharmed but traumatized.” The young orphan is now receiving psychiatric treatment.

Yesterday morning, French intelligence and police services identified the deceased assailant as Larossi Abballa. As in the Charlie Hebdo and November 13 mass shootings in Paris last year, and the March 22 Brussels bombing last year, Abballa was well-known to the intelligence services. Inexplicably, he was somehow able to develop ties with ISIS and plan his attack with impunity, though he was under intense police surveillance.

A 25-year-old man with a substantial police record of petty crime, he was arrested in 2011 and convicted in 2013 of participating in an Islamist terror network. He had received a three-year sentence, the last six months of which were suspended, for “criminal associations aiming to prepare terrorist acts.” He was apparently involved in Islamist networks running between Pakistan and France, and sentenced along with seven other defendants.

Domestic intelligence agencies opened an “S” file on Abballa, his phone was tapped, and he was being followed by judicial police due to his ties with a man who had traveled to fight in the Syrian war. Abballa “did not seem to pose a sufficient and concrete enough threat” to justify further action, however, according to intelligence officials who spoke to Le Parisien .

ISIS reportedly claimed responsibility for the killing yesterday, identifying Abballa as an ISIS fighter. The US-based SITE intelligence group issued a translation of an article it had found posted to the web site of the ISIS news agency Amaq, declaring: “Islamic State fighter kills deputy chief of the police station in the city of Les Mureaux and his wife with blade weapons.”

At 7 a.m. yesterday, as he went into a crisis meeting at the Elysée palace, President François Hollande promised that “full light will be shed” on “this abominable event.”

Gilbert Collard, a close associate of neo-fascist National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen, denounced the PS government for allowing the attacks to unfold, writing on Twitter that “Islamist terrorism is now into our houses: government of incompetent cowards.”

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve responded shortly afterwards, denouncing the murder as an “abject terrorist act” as he came out of the meeting with Hollande. “The government is totally mobilized,” Cazeneuve insisted, indicating that he would go visit “immediately the policemen who are colleagues of the two police officials who were killed.”

The horrific murder of the two policemen only served to intensify the right-wing atmosphere that prevails in official French circles. Prime Minister Manuel Valls demanded “national unity” behind the police, who are currently engaged in a bitter crackdown against masses of workers who are fighting the government’s unpopular and socially regressive labor law.

Several members of the right-wing Les Republicans (LR) party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy called for imprisoning everyone on whom the intelligence services have opened an “S” file. This would imply the conversion of France into a police state, since intelligence services can open “S” files at will, and this would effectively allow them to imprison anyone arbitrarily simply by opening up an “S” file on them.

The investigation is only beginning, and more important facts about the circumstances in which the attack was planned and then unfolded will doubtless come to light. However, the evidence available so far already makes clear that this crime is deeply rooted in the proxy war for regime change pursued by the NATO powers in Syria from which ISIS emerged.

As in the previous terror attacks in France and Belgium, a major factor in the assailant’s ability to prepare the attack under the noses of the police will likely have been the tacit support that Islamist networks recruiting fighters for the Syrian war receive from European intelligence services.

The most striking example of this was the attack this spring in Brussels, where Belgian intelligence had received detailed warnings as to the identity and targets of the attackers. Nonetheless, the attackers were not arrested, and security at the target locations was not increased in the run-up to the March 22 attacks—a decision that proved to have deadly consequences.

Whatever the personal merits of Salvaing and Schneider—who were widely praised by their colleagues and friends as a dedicated professional and a devoted mother closely involved in the municipal schools, respectively—the attempts by top French officials to exploit the killings to whip up a law-and-order atmosphere reek of hypocrisy.

Through their wars in Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and beyond, France and the other NATO powers bear immense responsibility for creating the conditions in which the attack was carried out. Moreover, the attacks in Paris, Brussels, and now Magnanville—in which ISIS fighters brought to France and Belgium the methods they have used in Syria ever since NATO launched its war in the country in 2011—are themselves reminders of the criminal character of this war.

The shock and horror settling over Magnanville and all of France after Monday’s attack give an idea of the character of the far greater impact of the NATO war upon Syria: hundreds of bombings and raids by NATO-backed Islamist “rebels” triggered a war in which over 250,000 people have lost their lives and over 10 million were forced to flee their homes.

The social roots of the mass shooting in Orlando

Barry Grey

It took barely 48 hours for the initial official narrative about the massacre in Orlando, Florida—that it was an ISIS-directed attack on the US homeland—to unravel. Whatever role Omar Mateen’s sympathies for Islamic terrorism may have played in his decision to carry out a mass killing at the Pulse gay bar with a military-style assault rifle, it is now acknowledged by the government that there is no evidence that his actions were directed by ISIS or any similar organization.

Moreover, it has emerged that Mateen was largely driven by a combination of personal emotional and psychological demons, including a conflicted sexual identity, and backward, reactionary and racist views that have much in common with home-grown right-wing and white supremacist groups.

These revelations have not prevented the president of the United States, the presumptive presidential nominees of both major political parties and the corporate-controlled media from continuing to exploit the deaths of 49 victims, the injuries, some life-threatening, of another 53, and the grieving of thousands of family members and friends to push a preexisting agenda of war abroad and repression within the US.

Without seriously attempting to align their prescriptions with the facts that have thus far emerged about the killer and his crime, they continue to seize on this latest in an endless series of mass shootings in America to push the so-called “war on terror,” which has played such a sinister role in creating the social environment that breeds these types of horrific events.

It is now known that Mateen’s evident homophobia coexisted with frequent visits to the Pulse bar and an active presence on social media used by homosexuals. Former coworkers have come forward to describe the killer’s far-right and racist views. Daniel Gilroy, who worked alongside Mateen between March 2014 and March 2015, can been seen in an interview posted on the New York Times web site describing his encounter with the future mass murderer.

Gilroy stated that he was “not surprised” when he heard that Mateen had carried out the Orlando massacre. “He was very racist, very sexist, anti-Jew, anti-homosexual and he made it known by derogatory statements as much as he could.” Gilroy has added that Mateen often talked about killing blacks. When his employer failed to heed his complaints about Mateen, Gilroy quit the firm.

The homicidal eruption of Omar Mateen, while the worst mass shooting in modern American history, is anything but an aberration. Thus far in June, according to the Gun Violence Archive web site, there have been 18 mass shootings in the US. Gunshot homicides totaled 8,124 in 2014, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Gun homicides in America kill about as many people as car crashes. They occur at an almost exponentially greater rate than in all other advanced industrialized countries. In the US, the death rate from gun homicides is about 31 per million people per year. In Germany, the figure is two per million; in England, only one. In Japan, the likelihood of dying from a gunshot is roughly the same as an American’s chance of being killed by lightning—one in 10 million.

The question that is imperiously raised by such facts is: What is it about American society that so frequently leads mentally unstable individuals to resort to mass murder, often combined with suicide? This is a question that the political and media establishment does not care to—or dare to—address. The reason is that it leads rapidly to an exposure of the malignant state of American capitalist society.

Instead, what is offered is a cynical and dishonest rehash of past cover-ups for the system that generates such levels of social dysfunction and violence. The official response to each new incident of mass killing is a stereotypical combination of war mongering and demands for further surveillance on the population and other police-state measures. From the Democrats, the recipe also includes demands for gun control, as though the prevalence of guns is the cause, rather than a symptom, of the disease.

From the Republicans, and especially their current likely presidential candidate, the fascistic billionaire Donald Trump, the response features new and even more savage attacks on immigrants in general, and Muslims in particular.

This was fully on display Tuesday when President Obama gave a speech following a meeting of his National Security Council. Flanked by his secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of the Homeland Security Department, the director of national intelligence and other security officials, Obama declared the central priority arising from the Orlando massacre to be the intensification of the war to “destroy” ISIS.

He touted his recent actions escalating US military violence in both Iraq and Syria, including the deployment of additional Special Forces troops and additional assets such as attack helicopters. He boasted of having “taken out” more than 120 top ISIS leaders, and alluded to plans to escalate the US military intervention in Libya.

He then moved to demands that Congress, meaning the Republicans, pass legislation restricting gun ownership, and concluded with a denunciation of Trump for calling for a ban on Muslim immigration and other discriminatory measures against immigrants, primarily from the standpoint of the exigencies of the “war on terror” and US neocolonial operations in Muslim countries.

Of course, as always, nothing was said about the direct responsibility of his own policies and the wars of the past quarter-century in Central Asia and the Middle East for the rise of ISIS, both in the sense of its roots in the catastrophe unleashed by US mass killing and destruction and Washington’s deliberate stoking of sectarian conflict, and in the more immediate sense of CIA backing for ISIS and its forebears and their arming and financing by Washington’s despotic regional allies.

All of this is an attempt to conceal the real causes of mass violence in America, which lie in the decay and malignant crisis of American capitalism. Obama presides over the latest chapter in 25 years of unceasing war abroad, beginning with the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, and relentless attacks on the social conditions and democratic rights of the working class at home, carried out alike by Democratic and Republican administrations.

Never-ending war has been accompanied by the militarization of social life and politics within the US. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the impact of this daily reality within the borders of the United States, especially on the most unstable social elements. Political reaction, national chauvinism, anti-immigrant racism—the most backward sentiments have been systematically cultivated in order to pursue an agenda of imperialist war and the impoverishment of the working class.

To prepare for the inevitable growth of social resistance, the police have been turned into a militarized occupation force in working-class communities, using terror, brutality and outright murder.

The betrayal and collapse of the unions, their alliance with the ruling elite against the workers and suppression of class struggle, have added to the social malaise.

Now, however, we are seeing both in the US and internationally the beginnings of a new upsurge of class struggle, driven by immense anger over the colossal growth of social inequality and the brazen criminality of the ruling elite. This prefigures the inevitable revival of social revolution.

For the American ruling class—all the more reason to seek to deflect internal social tensions outward by means of nationalism and war.

For the working class—there is only one answer to the sickeningly routine eruption of homicidal violence in America, the path of socialist revolution to put an end to the diseased system that produces such horrors.

Venezuela: Crisis and Propaganda

JOSÉ L. FLORES

The political and economic crisis in Venezuela is showing little signs of easing up. Similarly, the propagandistic reporting of this crisis is showing little signs of easing up. How did Venezuela find itself in this dire situation? The U.S. media maintains that this crisis is a result to Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution and the communist redistribution policies, which are implemented and maintained by President Nicolas Maduro. However, this is a multi-faceted situation with several contributing factors. One cannot blame every woe of Venezuela’s economy on Maduro, nor could one blame every woe on Maduro’s right wing rivals. One thing is for sure Venezuela’s economy is unmixed and is much too dependent on oil revenues. This dependence on oil, along with the U.S. hatred for Venezuela and its people, has made Venezuela’s economy venerable to foreign manipulation.

It is unanimous, between the left and right, that Venezuela’s economy is much too dependent on oil and must be diversified. However, the conclusion of how this economic situation occurred is much more contested. For instance; why doesn’t Venezuela have a vibrant agricultural sector? Venezuela imports most of its food and the industry has been on decline since the 1950s. The importation of food would be a fact with or without the Bolivarian Revolution. This can be concluded by simply following the statistical trends. Venezuela’s traditional home grown foods include corn, rise, coffee, sugarcane, vegetables, beef, pork and fish all of which are the perfect ingredients for a nation to have a thriving agricultural industry. However, Venezuela cannot compete in the international market, or in its own market with respect to agriculture. This is due to the United States’ highly protectionist and highly subsidized agricultural sector, which is solidified by the so called trade deals passed around the globe. While the world must submit to neo-liberal and laissez faire policies, the U.S relies on subsidized market interference. Since Venezuela cannot compete agriculturally, Venezuela imports food and pays for it with its oil. Unfortunately, the government has staked their entire future on oil revenues and the economy is completely subject to how well that commodity does on the market.

The United States has doubled its domestic production of oil in the last decade. Since Russia is in a similar situation as Venezuela, with respect to an oil economy, they are pumping out huge amounts of oil to keep up with the price of their economy. It is also known that Saudi Arabia is pumping its domestic oil at capacity. Supply is up and demand is low, due to alternative energy industries and the popularity of environment friendly cars. Furthermore, low demand has led to a decline in investment. These contributing factors have led to low oil prices and for low revenues for Venezuela. Recently, Iran, Venezuela and Ecuador have all urged the OPEC cartel to cut worldwide oil production in order to bring prices back up. OPEC refused and this decision was mostly supported by Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf allies. It just so happens that the dictators of the Middle East are proxies of the U.S. and Iran, Venezuela and Ecuador are targets of the U.S. economic policies.

Suppose institutions like Wall Street, the Defense Department, the State Department, the Department of Agriculture and Energy were all just watching this turmoil from its periphery. Given the United States involvement in Latin America would not this situation seem remarkable? Consider the past two decades of Venezuelan and United States relations. The U.S. has been exposed for financing and fomenting, through it intelligence apparatus, the massive protests in Venezuela. What would the U.S. government do if Venezuela was proved to be funding and fomenting the Black Lives Matter movement in the Ferguson riots? The U.S. staged a coup d’etat against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, which luckily only lasted a couple of days. Suppose Maduro was working with the Republicans and the U.S. Military in order to oust President Obama; how would we react? Currently, the U.S. and its allies at the Organization of American States are trying to kick Venezuela out of the hemisphere by revoking its membership in the OAS. Suppose Venezuela was working with its allies to kick the U.S. out of the United Nations or the OAS; how would the U.S. government react?

In 2005 Venezuela offered tons of food, billions of dollars in oil, water, medical experts, medical aid and equipment to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.  How is the U.S. returning the favor to the Venezuelan people as medical shortages are costing lives, there is no food to buy in the grocery stores and the government is collapsing? The biggest privately owned food supplier, Empresas Polar SA, is urging for foreign aid. These calls are being ignored even as the managers of Empresas Polar SA are fellow capitalists and allies of the United States. When civil society collapsed in New Orleans and chaos reached Louisiana, Venezuela was trying to help the situation on the gulf by offering aid for the victims. This aid was very much needed as the wealth of the U.S. was dedicated to destroying Iraq and murdering Iraqi citizens. Now that Venezuela needs help, they are offered nothing by the United States.

Maduro is playing with fire by putting his military on high alert and warning of a possible foreign invasion. The United States loves to invade countries and murder people. Maduro should not be provoking the murderous military leaders of the United States. Venezuela desperately needs to diversify its economy by bringing back agriculture, building up their infrastructure and returning to manufacturing. Perhaps Maduro should step down as president and perhaps he should be voted out. However, choosing Henrique Capriles as president, a man who urges the Venezuelan army to dispose of Maduro in an illegal coup and is a United States intelligence figurine, would result in a far worse situation for Venezuela. Venezuela will not fix its economy by simply abandoning the Bolivarian social programs, just like the opposition is calling for. The U.S. did not come out of the Great Depression by eliminating social programs and cutting spending. On the contrary, the United States got out of the Great Depression with extremely high government spending, massive social programs and investments.

Venezuela is going through a rough period and needs the help of the international community and the solidarity of international citizens. Ultimately, Venezuela is going to have to make some difficult decisions but it is not the U.S. responsibility to subvert the economy and the people of Venezuela. The United States should be providing aid and reparations. If the U.S. is using economic warfare to punish Russia, Ecuador and Venezuela it would not be the first time. However, if it is true the United States government should be exposed internationally and everywhere around the globe for the murderous, tyrannical, spying, meddling, torturing, militarist country that it is.

Russia And China Have To Step Up Ideological War

Andre Vltchek

These days you may get hugs from many common people in the Middle East or Latin America when you say that you are Russian, but such emotional outbursts are mainly intuitive. After being bombarded by extremely effective and negative Western propaganda for years and decades, people of the world still know very little, if anything, about two enormous countries that have been proudly resisting the Western imperialism – Russia and China.

I recently spent five weeks in Latin America, where the West openly supports the entire wide spectrum of counter-revolutionary movements, literally overthrowing one progressive government after another. I worked alongside the left-wing intellectuals there, helping to define the way forward, to rescue the Process.

But I was shocked by how little is known there about both Russia and China - for decades two natural allies of the patriotic Latin American Left.

“Are you for Putin or against?” And: “Is China really as capitalist now as we read?”

These were two most commonly asked questions.

Not in Cuba, of course. Cuba, almost free of most of propaganda media outlets of the Empire is actually one of the best-educated and informed societies on Earth. There, people know all about those long decades and centuries of the epic struggle of the Russian people against Western imperialism. There, it is very well known that China is essentially and once again increasingly a Communist (and successful) nation with clear central planning, which uses some controlled capitalist practicesin order tobuilda prosperous society for its people.

But even in such educated countries like Argentina and Chile, even in those centers of progress and revolution like Ecuador and Venezuela, the two world giants are often misunderstood. The majority of people in Latin America may feel sympathy for both Russia and China,but there is no deep knowledge of the realities there.

It is truly discouraging, because the Latin American Left is one of the essential components of the front against Western imperialism, standing shoulder to shoulder with Russia and China, but also South Africa, Iran and other proud nations.

It is easy to understand the reasons behind all this. Even in some of the most revolutionary nations of Latin America, the Western mass media outlets have been managing to retain their presence, often through the right-wing big business cable TV and satellite distributors. Most of the biggest newspapers are still in the hands of local business interests.

And so the negative and misleading messages about Russia and China are spread constantly. People are bombarded with them from the television screens, from the pages of mass-circulation newspapers, and from the imported (Western) films.

Many are resisting. They instinctively want to cling to both Russia and China. But they don’t have enough “ammunition”; not enough positive and inspiring information is available to them. In the meantime the critics are armed tothe teeth with toxic propaganda that is mass-produced in New York, Los Angeles, London and Madrid.

And the situation is much worse in Asia.

There, the Empire has truly and fully mobilized allavailable resources, in order to discredit its two main adversaries.

Speaking to my friends and colleagues in such places like Indonesia and Philippines, I was told that most of the people there know little, even close to nothing about Russia. It is still perceived through the Cold War and post-Cold-War stereotypes. The Western propaganda apparatus has been portraying Russians as cold, aggressive, brainwashed and dangerous.

Great Russian culture, Russian arts and the exceptional warmth of the Russian people, are something almost totally unknown in most of the Asian nations.

Great foreign policy successes of Russia, like those in Syria, are twisted and turned into the crimes, even in Muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, where “people should definitely know better”.

In India, which had been for decades very close to the Soviet Union, the situation is somehow brighter, but only among the extremely small and educated group of its citizens. There, like in many other parts of the world, pro-business and pro-Western mass media is skillfully defending the interests of the West, demonizing all that is standing in the way of the Empire.

China is being targeted with an even greater and more malicious force than Russia. Successful and Communist China is the worst nightmare for the West and for the local, Asian ‘elites’.

The entire propaganda apparatus is now in overdrive, spreading ideological attacks and negative messages. The most peaceful major country on Earth is being portrayed as an aggressor and threat to regional and world peace. In the Philippines and elsewhere, the global Western regime is arousing the cheapest and extremely dangerous bellicose forms of nationalism.

The local Chinese diaspora of Southeast Asia that consists mainly of the anti-Communist elements, descendants of the people who left China after the revolution, are playing an extremely important and destructive role.

Nobody seems to notice that the United States/NATO is encircling both Russia and China with its military bases, while deploying new offensive missile systems. Nobody talks about those tens of millions of people who were massacred during the Western invasions of Asia during the 20th century.

And the situation is not much different in Africa and elsewhere.

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True, both Russia and China have invested some substantial resources in order to counter the Western propaganda. The RT, Sputnik and NEO (New Eastern Outlook), have all become extremely effective global information and intellectual detoxification outlets.

But the West is still investing more. The ideological war is even something that is lately being discussed openly in Washington. The more Russia and China resist andthe more they defend themselves; the more Western propaganda steps up its indoctrination campaigns.

Clearly, both Russia and China have to do more, not only for their own interests, but also for the good of the world.

The great achievements of China and Russia have to be explained in detail. Such information should be spread to all corners of the planet.

In this field, China should learn from Russia, as the Chinese media outlets now available abroad are still too ‘timid’ and too reconciliatory. It requires real strength and determination to counter the mighty and centuries-old Western propaganda and brainwashing schemes.It also requires large financial budgets.

But the intellectual ‘resistance’ and the ideological wars should not be fought only in the fields of the politics, news and analyses. The tremendous cultural and intellectual achievements of both China and Russia should be made available to the populations on all continents. China has done so already a lot, mainly through its Confucius Institutes. It should be doing more, and so should Russia.

Both countries are in possession of marvelous cultural wealth, overflowing with wisdom and arts. Their humanism is much deeper than that of the West -the West that has been mainly building its wealth, for centuries, by plundering thePlanet.

For as long as one can remember, both Europe and North America had been committing genocides, while enslaving entire continents. At the same time, they have been engaging in self-glorification, promoting their political, economic and cultural concepts. They claimed cultural superiority. And they have been doing it with such force, such ruthlessness and in the end with such success, that they have managed to fully indoctrinate most of the world into accepting that there is really no alternative, no other way (except the Western way) forward.

There are naturally other ways, and needless to say, much better ones!

In fact, before European colonialism began ruining and enslaving the planet, almost all parts of the world were living in much more developed and gentler societies than those of the West.

Now very little is known about this fact. Alternatives are not discussed in the mainstream, anymore. The search for a better world, for more humanistic concepts, is almost totally abandoned; at least in the West and in its colonies and ‘client” states.

It as if this horrid nightmare, into which the world had been forcedinto by the global Western dictatorship, is the only imaginable future for our human race.

It is not. And there are two great countries on this planet, Russia and China, which can offer many alternatives. They are strong enough to withstand all the pressure from the West. They have hearts, brains; they have the know-how and resources to offer alternatives and to re-start millennia old, essential discussions about the future of our humanity.

But in order for this to happen, the world has to first know about both Russia and China. It has to understand their cultures.

The war against imperialism should be fought not only on the battlefields; it shouldbe fought on the airwaves, at the printing presses, in the concert halls and theatres. Kindness, humanism, internationalism and knowledge can often serve as weapons much more powerful than missiles, strategic bombers and submarines.

Debt soars for students in England

Thomas Scripps

In the past two weeks, a letter authored by a British Civil Engineering graduate, Simon Crowther, and a petition launched by Alex True, a Durham Engineering student, received significant attention on social media for their criticisms of the Conservative government’s tuition fee policy.

Crowther’s letter drew attention to the crippling amounts of debt being accumulated by students on loans taken out to fund their studies and accommodation at university.

The letter, shared more than 17,000 times on Facebook, revealed how his student loan had grown to a total of £41,976 by the end of this March, after accruing interest of up to £180 a month. He described how he and his fellow students felt they had been “cheated by a government who encouraged many of us to undertake higher education, despite trebling the cost of attending university.”

True’s petition, launched a week later, echoed Crowther’s concerns over ballooning interest payments. It also drew attention to the government’s decision, in November of last year, to freeze the income threshold at which student loans must start being paid back—and start accruing interest—at £21,000.

The government had promised to raise the threshold with average earnings. True explained, “A retrospective change to an agreement made three years ago, when those taking out the loans were only 18, meant that my trust in the system was undermined massively. I was one of those people who deliberated a lot before going to university about the costs and the loans. It certainly wasn’t in the small print.”

At time of writing, the petition had received nearly 130,000 signatures, enough to trigger a debate in Parliament.

The huge and ready support for Crowther and True’s criticisms is unsurprising. As the first groups of students begin to graduate under the new tuition fee system of £9,000 a year, the dire implications of the fee rises are beginning to make themselves felt.

While studying, students accrue interest on their loans at the Retail Price Index (RPI) rate of inflation plus 3 percent and this rate continues until the April after a student graduates. Under the old system, interest was only charged according to the rate of inflation. Under the new system, if RPI stays at its current rate of 1.6 percent, students like Crowther can expect to be charged interest of 4.6 percent, much higher than most mortgages and even many personal loans. For the next 30 years, graduates are charged on a sliding scale of the rate of RPI inflation once they are earning £21,000 up to RPI plus 3 percent if the student earns £41,000.

The government’s retrospective freezing of the repayment threshold at £21,000 until 2021 means students must start paying interest on their loans long before they have any chance of paying them off. As a result, the average graduate will pay back an additional £3,000 more than they were expecting, with the burden falling more heavily on the poor. Those on incomes closer to the median (lower than the average) will have to pay an additional £6,000. Prior to enacting this measure, the government consulted students on the change and found 84 percent of respondents in opposition. They ignored their opinions and pressed ahead with the freeze anyway.

Responding to the students’ criticisms, a spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills stated, “Our student funding system is fair and sustainable. It removes financial barriers for anyone hoping to study, and is backed by the taxpayer with outstanding debt written off after 30 years. … Graduates only pay back at 9 percent of earnings above £21,000 and enjoy a considerable wage premium of £9,500 per year over non-graduates.”

These claims ignore the immense pressures resulting from thousands of pounds of debt hanging over individuals well into their 40s and 50s.

A study by the Sutton Trust educational charity in April found that English students were graduating with the highest levels of academic debt in the English-speaking world, at an average of £44,000. Students from the United States graduated with an average of just over £20,500, Canada £15,000, Australia £20,900, and New Zealand £23,300. For the poorest university students, hit by the recent abolition of the maintenance grant, average graduation debt was over £50,000.

Ultimately, according to a similar study conducted by the Sutton Trust and Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in 2014, 45 percent of graduates will have to pay back more than they initially borrowed. The vast majority (nearly three quarters) will be unable to repay their loans in full and will remain in debt until 30 years after their graduation.

The effects of such crippling levels of individual debt on poorer students is made plain by a recent IFS report, which found that graduates from richer backgrounds earned more on average than graduates from poorer backgrounds with identical degrees. The income gap between the richest 20 percent of graduates and the remaining 80 percent was £8,000 a year for men and £5,300 a year for women.

In part, this is a reflection of the social advantages held by the rich in the form of networks of family connections, more widely available internships and the like. However, it also indicates the impact of debt on richer and poorer students, with those from disadvantaged backgrounds less able to wait for more lucrative employment opportunities and pressured to take the first jobs that come their way. The data used by the IFS was acquired throughout the years 1998-2011, before the tripling of tuition fees.

The government’s guarantee that debt will be written off after 30 years, under conditions where public spending is being slashed to an unprecedented degree, simply amounts to a promise to make further assaults on workers and youth to fund a failing university policy. Under measures outlined in the recent White Paper on education, students from poorer backgrounds will be pushed out of top-tier education entirely.

The full implications of the government’s tripling of tuition fees in 2010-12 are now clear. Concerns over debt have already caused a collapse in part-time university enrollment. As the scale of student loan repayments becomes known and the cost-of-living crisis bites more sharply, we can expect growing numbers of disadvantaged students to follow the same path and forego higher education altogether.

As the World Socialist Web Site wrote in 2011, following the vote on raising fees, “A high quality and comprehensive education will increasingly become the preserve of the wealthy elite, as the soaring costs of further and higher education will fast become prohibitive for the vast majority of working families.”

The financial skulduggery behind the collapse of UK retailer BHS

Jean Shaoul

Documents and a parliamentary committee inquiry into the collapse of the high street retailer British Home Stores (BHS) highlight the criminality and gangsterism that characterises British capitalism today.

Last week, BHS’ administrators announced they had received no acceptable bids for the company, which was worth more broken up than sold in its entirety. BHS will be wound down, its stores and assets sold off to pay off the creditors. The closure will leave 11,000 workers at BHS’ 164 stores without jobs, up to 20,000 workers, including retired workers, with greatly reduced pensions, and unpaid taxes and redundancy costs that will cost the taxpayers around £36 million.

BHS, for long a major player on Britain’s high streets, collapsed last April with debts of £1.1 billion. Its owners, Retail Acquisitions Ltd, a financially dubious outfit, was headed by Dominic Chappell, a twice bankrupt former racing driver with no previous retail experience, who was interested in acquiring—and selling—BHS’ property portfolio.

Chappell had bought the financially distressed BHS from billionaire Sir Philip Green, in March 2015 for just £1, reportedly after being introduced to Green by Paul Sutton, a convicted fraudster, with whom he had had business relations.

During his 15 years at the helm, Green, who ranks 29 of 1,000 in the Sunday Times ’ rich list, had bled the company dry. His Arcadia group starved it of much needed investment, allowed the pension fund to run up a deficit of hundreds of millions, loaded the company with debt payable to his other companies, from whom BHS also purchased services, and used BHS’s assets to secure the loans. At the same time, Green funnelled money out of BHS in the form of dividends to his wife, who resides in Monaco for tax purposes, thereby avoiding UK tax.

But crucially, Green provided loans to Chappell’s Retail Acquisitions and held on to £35 million of BHS’ assets as security. He is now BHS’ chief creditor who must be paid first, ahead of unsecured creditors, including the tax authorities and outstanding employee claims.

The promised £120 million that would secure BHS’ future—the apparent basis for the deal—never materialised and the situation went from bad to worse. Despite negotiating a rent reduction and selling some of its property, BHS was unable to pay its creditors or to plug the £571 million pension deficit. After Green’s Arcadia Group demanded “immediate” repayment of the £35 million loan, BHS called in the administrators, who have said that the unsecured creditors, including the pension fund, may get as little as 3 pence in the pound.

Following the outcry over BHS’ collapse, two parliamentary investigations—rather tame affairs that provide an opportunity for back-benchers to grandstand while the witnesses evade their questions—were announced. Last Wednesday, the business select committee heard damning evidence about the company bosses and their business practices.

Nine BHS managers had sent a letter to the 11,000 staff—and the BBC—claiming that Chappell’s Retail Acquisitions consortium had not raised “sufficient funds to keep the business going.” They also alleged the group caused costs to spiral because they failed to “give confidence” to credit insurers and suppliers.

Darren Topp, BHS’ chief executive, accused Chappell, BHS’ former owner, of having his “fingers in the till”—a reference to the £25 million in fees, interest payments, and payments to entities related to his family that Chappell and his firm took during their 13-month ownership. Topp also claims that Chappell threatened to kill him when he questioned a transfer of £1.5 million.

Another former executive Michael Hitchcock told the committee that he had been “duped” by Chappell. He said, “I think the technical term is a mythomaniac. The layperson’s term is he was a premier league liar and a Sunday pub league retailer. At best.” He said that Chappell had promised to invest millions in the company but had failed to do so.

Chappell, for his part sought to pin the blame on BHS’ former owner. He claimed that Green had pushed BHS into administration after going “insane” and had a “crazy rant” when he found out Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct, whose nefarious business practices were the subject of another business select committee inquiry the previous day, was interested in buying it.

He went on to admit he had made an undisclosed profit on BHS and claimed to be unaware of the pension deficit until the day he bought the firm, which if true speaks volumes for his own failure and that of his financial advisors to scrutinise BHS’ finances.

The Insolvency Service and the Pensions Regulator are also investigating BHS’ financial affairs, and the Serious Fraud Office is considering launching an investigation.

The administrators reported that they had uncovered a number of financial transactions within BHS requiring further investigation, and raised questions about transactions under Green.

The parliamentary pensions committee has summoned Green to answer questions on Wednesday about his management of the company, the pension fund and his decision to sell BHS to Chappell. Labour Party MP Frank Field, who chairs the committee, has called on Green to put £571 million into the pension scheme, with other MPs saying that Green should be stripped of his knighthood if he refuses to plug the gap.

Green, who denies Chappell’s allegations and claims he was “duped” into selling BHS to him, demanded that Field resign from the inquiry, accusing him of seeking to destroy his reputation, and has refused to attend unless he does so. This was a reference to Field’s comments to the Financial Times on Friday that his committee “would just laugh at him” if Green offered less than £600 million.

While the press have called the revelations “extraordinary” and “shocking,” implying that the events behind the collapse of BHS are a “one-off,” these corporate practices are the norm. Refusing to maintain the value of their employees’ pension fund, paying top executives and their advisors massive salaries and fees, massive loans to fund dividend pay-outs, inter-company transactions, and takeovers and all the rest, all go under the benign term of “creating shareholder value.”

As Britain’s manufacturing continued its inexorable decline, Britain’s high street retailers became the stock market darlings. They are now revealed to be nothing more than liars, fraudsters and thugs whose chicanery takes place under the nose of the government, pension regulators, the auditors and financial advisors charged with exercising “due diligence” over takeovers, as well as their regulator, the Financial Reporting Council, the banks and a pliant media.

But none of this could happen without the criminal complicity of the trade unions that never lift a finger to protect their members against corporate skulduggery and attacks on workers’ jobs, pay, working conditions and pensions.

According to the Centre for Retail Research, there have been a massive 358 retail company failures since the 2007 recession, affecting 28,000 stores and 262,972 workers. In April, another well-known high street retailer, outfitters Austin Reed, with 155 stores, including Viyella and Country Casuals, and almost 1,000 staff, called in administrators just a few days after being taken over by hedge fund Altieri Investments and disposing of some of its stores and brand names to Boundary Mills/Edinburgh Woollen Mill.

The comments of John Hammett, general secretary of the shop workers’ union Usdaw, are typical. He said the news was devastating but not necessarily the end of the road. “There were a number of potential buyers here and the question is why they haven’t been successful,” he said. “We need to make sure that every opportunity has been covered before we accept defeat.”