New York City surpasses London, Tokyo for highest rents

Philip Guelpa

The shortage of affordable housing and the consequent high rates of homelessness in New York City, already severe before the 2008 crash, have worsened steadily since then. A recent study, reported by the Wall Street Journal, found that New York has now surpassed London and Tokyo as having the highest cost for rental apartments anywhere in the world.

While rents have increased dramatically, income has lagged far behind. A study by Apartment List reports that, while median New York rents have risen by 64 percent since 1960, median income rose only 18 percent, a difference of 46 percent. Not surprisingly, another study found that nearly two thirds of New Yorkers suffer severe economic hardship, leading many into homelessness. Research published last year found that workers earning the minimum wage of $8.75/hour cannot afford to live in New York City.

As a consequence of this disconnect between housing costs and incomes, homelessness has reached record levels. About 60,000 people, more than a third of them children, spend each night in homeless shelters, a situation that has now become chronic. Many thousands more are out on the street, living “in the rough.” A large proportion of the latter suffer from mental or physical illnesses. This level of homelessness is the highest since the Great Depression, and 87 percent greater than a decade ago.

Even the 60,000 figure understates the scale of suffering. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, during fiscal year 2015 “more than 109,000 different homeless men, women, and children slept in the New York City municipal shelter system.” That included over 42,000 different children. These numbers reflect the precarious economic circumstances faced by a significant portion of the city’s population, who live on the edge of homelessness.

Conditions in the homeless shelters continue to deteriorate. The horrid state of these shelters is no secret. A variety of reports have highlighted the problem for years, and yet no significant improvements have been made. The combination of grossly inadequate funding and a maze of absurd and contradictory bureaucratic procedures have created Kafkaesque conditions in which tens of thousands of homeless people are trapped.

As recently highlighted by the New York Times, in an article entitled “How Do Rent-Burdened New Yorkers Cope?” the acute lack of affordable housing and consequent sharp disconnect between stagnant or declining incomes and increasing housing costs force many of those who still have a home to pay substantial portions of their incomes for rent (in some cases over 50 percent). Consequently, they must subject themselves to severe austerity by making painful cuts in necessities such as food, clothing, and medical care.

One of the people profiled in the article, 70-year-old Parvati Devi, a retired hairdresser and manicurist, spends 51 percent of her income (consisting of Social Security and food stamps) on rent and utilities. She is a virtual prisoner in her home. “Today I’m staying in the house not to spend money. It’s difficult to have a quality of life,” she told the Times.

Another, Kay Urbant, who is in her 60s, was laid off in 2008 and has had difficulty finding steady work since then. She has also suffered from a cardiac condition. “I sometimes don’t sleep at night not knowing what I’ll do next.”

This kind of precarious existence leaves large numbers of city residents highly vulnerable to losing their homes. One unexpected expense can mean disaster.

By contrast, there is no shortage of housing affordable to the city’s wealthier residents. Indeed, the rush by developers to construct high-end units, facilitated by the loosening of regulations by the city, such as those on height restrictions, is reaching the point of creating a glut on the market. Some builders of new luxury housing are being forced to offer incentives in the competition to attract wealthy tenants.

In one rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn, the developer is offering three months free rent for those who sign a new lease. Even with this discount, one-bedroom apartments would still effectively cost approximately $3,400 per month, which is far out of reach for the majority of New Yorkers. According to a recent study, the median monthly rent for “entry level” apartments in Brooklyn rose 50 percent from 2009 to 2016, to $2,481. By contrast, during that same period, high-end units dropped 4 percent, to $4,783.

Overall, only about a quarter of the new apartments under construction are considered to be “affordable,” despite the tremendous demand. Even this is an overestimate, given the grossly unrealistic formula by which the city calculates what is affordable for most New Yorkers.

The extreme need was illustrated in one recent case in which 87,700 people applied for just 200 low- and middle-income apartments in one Brooklyn development. By contrast, it is projected that 38,000 new market rate units (i.e., affordable only to those with high incomes) will be built over the next three years.

The relative abundance of high-cost and high profit housing for those with high disposable incomes stands in sharp contrast to the critical deficit in availability of housing affordable for the great majority of city residents and the systematic depletion of assistance for those struggling to find a place to live.

Due to severe underfunding, city-issued rent assistance vouchers are available for only about a third of people in the shelters, and it is well documented that private landlords systematically discriminate against people who attempt to use these vouchers to help pay their rents. A variety of other federal and local programs providing rent assistance for low-income families, such as Section 8 and Human Resource Administration (HRA) vouchers, and the city’s Advantage program, which formerly provided a limited degree of assistance, have been severely cut back or eliminated altogether.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, have each proposed programs or made promises regarding housing and homelessness that have been unfulfilled or turned out to be far less than they appeared.

Cuomo, for his part, in a move apparently aimed at undermining de Blasio, a perceived political rival, torpedoed renewal of the state’s 421-a tax abatement program, which required a certain percentage of “affordable” units to be included in new housing developments that participated in the program. This program, which had been in place for decades, was quite lucrative for developers, but had a negligible impact on the shortage of affordable housing. Cuomo has repeatedly feigned interest in reviving or replacing the program, but has made no substantial efforts in that regard.

At the same time, the governor promised $2 billion to build “supportive housing” (designed for individuals suffering from substance addiction or mental illness), but has actually provided only $150 million. The lack of funding has markedly reduced availability of such units. In 2014, 6.3 percent of shelter residents were placed in supportive housing, in 2015 only 5 percent, and the projection for this year is 4.6 percent.

De Blasio has promoted a “ mandatory inclusionary housing ” scheme, which is styled as a way of promoting the construction of affordable housing by providing developers with a variety of incentives, which would, in part, compensate for the loss of 421-a. The developers would be allowed to construct buildings with a majority of “market rate” units and a smaller number offered at what the city considers affordable rates. However, this program is meeting substantial local opposition from existing residents who justifiably fear that the supposedly “affordable” portion of the new apartments will, in fact, be out of their reach, due to the skewed method used by the city to calculate levels of affordability.

Even the durability of this supposed affordability is questionable. ProPublica recent revealed de facto collusion by the city with landlords. It revealed that the city has been extremely negligent in collecting data that would be needed to gauge landlords’ obligation to comply with rent caps for existing buildings receiving tax abatements under 421-a.

The administrations of both current Democratic mayor de Blasio and his predecessor, Republican Michael Bloomberg, have shown extreme favoritism to private developers for the construction of buildings with predominantly market rate apartments, covered by a fig leaf of supposedly affordable units. This, in effect, amounts to city-sponsored gentrification.

The inability of either Democrats or Republicans to make any meaningful improvement (indeed quite the opposite) with regard to the critical lack of affordable housing and the directly related increase in homelessness is not the result of bad policies or lack of funds. Rather, it expresses the reality that there is no solution to these twin crises under capitalism.

The idea that decent, affordable housing for all is a social right is anathema to the ruling class. All the programs now proposed are predicated on mechanisms whereby private developers can maximize profits. As also being experienced in the health field under Obamacare, if such programs fail to provide for the needs of the working class, the attitude is “so be it.”

A huge social explosion is imminent. The critical lack of affordable housing in New York and elsewhere must soon reach the point at which workers will no longer tolerate these unlivable conditions.

North Korea carries out fifth nuclear test

Ben McGrath & Peter Symonds

North Korea announced on Friday it had conducted its fifth nuclear test, timed to coincide with the 68th anniversary of the founding of the regime. The US and its allies immediately condemned Pyongyang and will undoubtedly use the detonation to ratchet up their pressure, not just on North Korea, but also China, in line with Washington’s confrontational “pivot to Asia.”

The test, eight months after the fourth one, was conducted underground at Pyongyang’s nuclear testing facility at Punggye-ri in the northeast of the country. North Korea previously conducted tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013. The magnitude of the blast has been variously estimated at between 10 and 20 kilotons, more than twice the size of the previous largest explosion, of 6 to 7 kilotons, in 2013.

“We successfully conducted a nuclear explosion test to determine the power of the nuclear warhead,” North Korea’s state television reported. “We will continue to strengthen our nuclear capabilities to protect our sovereignty. We have now standardized and minimized nuclear warheads ... We can now produce small nuclear warheads any time we desire.”

Pyongyang’s attempts to build a nuclear warhead that can be mounted on a ballistic missile are reactionary and in no way defend the North Korean people. In fact, the blast plays directly into the hands of the Obama administration, which has exploited North Korea’s nuclear program and the regime’s bellicose, but largely empty threats, to justify its military build-up in North East Asia and the strengthening of military ties with Japan and South Korea.

The North Korean test comes amid escalating geo-political tensions in Asia as the US seeks to reassert its dominance and undermine China through a diplomatic offensive and military expansion throughout the region. It comes in the wake of the East Asian Summit in Laos, where President Barack Obama further exacerbated maritime disputes in the South China Sea by insisting that China abide by the July 12 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling in The Hague that rejected China’s territorial claims in the sea.

After the detonation, Obama, who spoke with South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, denounced Pyongyang “in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability.” He called for “serious consequences,” including new sanctions. Discussion is underway in the UN Security Council on further punitive measures against Pyongyang.

Abe held a teleconference with Obama yesterday in which he reportedly told the US president that the international community had to make “a resolute response” and North Korea should pay “a price for its provocative actions.” Obama said he “completely agreed,” according to a Japanese official.

Park declared: “Such provocation will further accelerate its [North Korea’s] path to self-destruction.” All three South Korean parliamentary parties condemned the test. A belligerent statement by the military command warned: “We will bolster our deterrence strategy and missile combat ability in alliance with the US, including an operation plan for a pre-emptive strike [against North Korea].”

The stage is being set for a dramatic escalation of tensions. An article in the New York Times suggested that the US policy of “strategic patience”—the gradual escalation of sanctions on North Korea—had failed. The “uncomfortable choice” facing Obama was between “a hard embargo… [that] risks confrontations that allies in Asia fear could quickly escalate into war” or negotiations that would only “reward” North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

NBC news went further, listing other options that included a cyber attack or a direct military attack on North Korea’s nuclear facilities and arsenal. Joint US-South Korean exercises this year rehearsed new operational plans agreed last year—OPLAN 5015—for a pre-emptive attack on North Korea and “decapitation” raids on its top leaders, including Kim Jong-un.

The Obama administration is already ratcheting up its pressure on China, demanding that it take tougher measures against North Korea, its ally. US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter declared: “I’d single out China. It’s China’s responsibility. China shares important responsibility for this development and has an important responsibility to reverse it.”

Speaking at a press conference, Chinese Foreign Minister Hua Chunying called on North Korea to live up to its commitment of denuclearization and called for a return to six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan. He “urged all parties to speak and act cautiously with a larger picture in mind”—a remark directed as much at Washington as Pyongyang.

Beijing is caught in a bind. On the one hand, it opposes North Korea’s nuclear programs as they provide a pretext for the US to continue to expand its military presence and could be used by militarist sections of the ruling elite in Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear weapons. In South Korea, Won Yu-cheol, the former floor leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, again called for the country to build its own nuclear arsenal.

On the other hand, the Chinese government is acutely concerned that intense pressure on the crisis-ridden North Korean regime could precipitate its collapse—a situation that the US and South Korea could exploit to try to install a government aligned with Washington on China’s northern border. As a result, Beijing is wary about cutting off essential supplies, including of oil and food, to Pyongyang.

The chief responsibility for the tense situation on the Korean Peninsula lies with Washington. The Obama administration has effectively scuttled any return to the six-party talks by insisting that North Korea give up its nuclear programs in advance of any negotiations.

The US is likely to further increase its military presence as part of its build-up throughout the region against China. Immediately after the fourth test in January, Washington began discussions on deploying “strategic weapons” to the Korean Peninsula—in other words, nuclear warheads and delivery systems. Washington and Seoul also used the opportunity to agree in July on the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery to South Korea.

The US election campaign is playing into the tensions. Republican candidate Donald Trump blamed his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for allowing the North Korean nuclear program to grow in strength and sophistication. “Hillary Clinton’s North Korean policy is just one more calamitous diplomatic failure from a failed secretary of state,” he said.

Both candidates have clamored to present themselves as more militaristic than the other during the campaign, an indication that no matter who becomes president, the risk of war will increase.

Media misinformation and the US election’s war agenda

Bill Van Auken

The arrest Thursday of two North Carolina men on charges that they successfully hacked the online computer accounts of CIA Director John Brennan, the deputy FBI director and other senior American officials, as well as the computer systems of the Justice Department and other agencies, has cast a revealing light on a central theme promoted by the Hillary Clinton camp and the US media in the 2016 presidential election campaign.

Last July, WikiLeaks posted some 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails that included a damaging exposure of the DNC’s attempt to rig the party’s primaries in favor of Clinton and against her rival Bernie Sanders. Ever since then, Clinton and the media have insisted that the source of the leak was Russian intelligence, and that this was evidence of an attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to interfere in the US election.

In the first instance, this allegation, which was a virtually instantaneous response to the leak, was used to quash any discussion of the actual content of the emails, which provided genuine evidence of the Democratic Party establishment’s interference in the process. Then, as Clinton executed a sharp pivot to the right, it formed a foundation of her attempt to portray Republican rival Donald Trump as a dupe of the Kremlin and an unreliable candidate for directing US war aims.

This narrative was promoted enthusiastically by the New York Times, which published wholly unsubstantiated “news” stories citing unnamed US officials claiming a “high degree of confidence” that the source of the emails was Russia. This in turn fed editorial columns, such as that of the Times’ Paul Krugman, describing Trump as the “Siberian candidate.” As is often the case, the rest of the media followed the lead of the Times, the lack of a single fact to back up these allegations notwithstanding.

What this week’s arrests in North Carolina make clear is that the hacking of the DNC’s emails did not require the resources of Russian intelligence. The charges against the two men are still unproven. Clearly, however, they indicate that there are many, many individuals with the skill sets needed to carry out that kind of data breach, and undoubtedly many of them with more direct motives than Vladimir Putin for exposing the dirty machinations of the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign.

The affidavit in support of the arrests submitted by the FBI in a federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia, identified the two defendants as Andrew Otto Boggs, 22, and Justin Gray Liverman, 24, who are said to be part of a “conspiracy,” i.e., a hackers’ group, that identified itself as “Crackas with Attitude.”

Other members of this “conspiracy,” who were not charged in the US, were two 17-year-old and one 15-year-old British youths, who were identified by their online aliases: “Cracka,” “Derp,” and “Cubed.”

Between them they were able to access the emails, voicemails and online accounts of the head of the CIA, the number-two man at the FBI, as well as officials at the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Presumably, similar individuals, without the backing of Russia’s FSB or any other intelligence agency, would have been able to do the same thing in relation to the DNC.

There is ample reason to believe that the charges of Russian interference have been made up out of whole cloth. The aim here is not only to further the electoral strategy of Hillary Clinton, who is seeking to win the election by attacking Trump from the right and locking in the support of both the Republican Party establishment and Washington’s immense military-intelligence complex. It is also to further the anti-Russia agenda that is today the focal point of US imperialist global strategy, while preparing public opinion for the prospect of war.

The New York Times today functions openly and unabashedly as a mouthpiece for both this Clinton campaign strategy and these broader geostrategic aims of US imperialism. It carries out this rotten role under the guiding hand of state-connected figures like the paper’s new editorial page editor, James Bennett, whose brother is a US Senator from Colorado and whose father was an assistant secretary of state and head of the US Agency for International Development, which has long served as a front for the CIA.

That these elements will not tolerate any diversion by the media from the official line being propagated by the Times was made clear in the paper’s hysterical reaction to the “Commander-in-Chief Forum” broadcast by NBC on Wednesday. A Times editorial published Friday, headlined “A Debate Disaster Waiting to Happen,” went after the moderator of the event, NBC’s Matt Lauer, insinuating that he was guilty of both negligence and bias.

Lauer, according to the Times, “neglected to ask penetrating questions, call out falsehoods or insist on answers when it was obvious that Mr. Trump’s responses had drifted off.” It went on to charge that he “seemed most energized interrogating Mrs. Clinton about her use of a personal email server while secretary of state.”

Lauer, a talk show host and news anchor, was no better nor worse than any of the other media talking heads in terms of questioning the two candidates. Little was revealed by the broadcast, outside of the subservience of both parties, the media and the entire US political setup to American militarism.

However, if Lauer is to be accused of having dropped the ball by failing to go after Trump, he should also be indicted for failing to confront Clinton over the barefaced lies she spouted before the audience of military veterans.

She defended her enthusiastic backing for the war of aggression that devastated Libya by recycling the proven lie that it was needed to stop an imminent massacre.

She told the audience, “We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again. And we’re not putting ground troops into Syria.” This, under conditions in which there already close to 6,000 troops deployed in Iraq and several hundred in Syria. Clinton has herself repeatedly declared her support for establishing a “no-fly zone” in Syria, which would entail a massive escalation of US military intervention and a greatly heightened threat of direct military confrontation with Russia.

If there is an indictment to be made of the NBC forum, it applies with equal if not greater force to the Times and the entire US media. It has deliberately concealed the growing threat of global war, even as the US elections unfold under conditions of escalating tensions in the Middle East and increasingly reckless military brinksmanship by US imperialism on Russia’s borders and in the South China Sea.

If there is one line of questioning Lauer should have pursued with both big-business candidates it is the following: What do you think will be consequences of a war with Russia or China? What do you think the US and the rest of the planet will look like the day after it begins? What portion of humanity do you expect will survive?

Of course no one in the corporate-controlled media is interested in raising the real dangers confronting the masses of working people in the US and around the world. Instead, they are engaged in deliberately covering them up.

This makes all the more important the role of the World Socialist Web Site in exposing these threats and developing a political strategy to guide the fight against war; and all the more vital the support of its readers in sustaining the WSWS and laying the basis for the continuous expansion of its coverage and global reach.

230 Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme for International Students 2017/2018

Application Deadline: opens from 1st September 2016 to 1st December 2016 | 

Offered Annually? Yes

Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong offers PhD Fellowship to International students 2017-2018

The Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS), established in 2009 by the Research Grants Council (RGC), aims at attracting the best and brightest students in the world to pursue their PhD programmes in Hong Kong’s institutions. About 200 PhD Fellowships will be awarded each academic year. For awardees who need more than three years to complete the PhD degree, additional support may be provided by the chosen institutions. The financial aid is available for any field of study.

Fellowship Worth

The Hong Kong PhD Fellowship provides an annual stipend of HK$240,000 (approximately US$30,000) and a conference and research-related travel allowance of HK$10,000 (approximately US$1,300) per year to each awardee for a period of up to three years. More than 230 PhD Fellowships will be awarded in the 2017/18 academic year*. For awardees who need more than three years to complete their PhD studies, additional support may be provided by the chosen institutions. For details, please contact the institutions concerned directly.

* Institutions in Hong Kong normally start their academic year in September.

Eligibility: Candidates who are seeking admission as new full time PhD students in the following eight institutions, irrespective of their country of origin, prior work experience, and ethnic background, should be eligible to apply.

• City University of Hong Kong
• Hong Kong Baptist University
• Lingnan University
• The Chinese University of Hong Kong
• The Hong Kong Institute of Education
• The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
• The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
• The University of Hong Kong

Applicants should demonstrate outstanding qualities of academic performance, research ability / potential, communication and interpersonal skills, and leadership abilities.

Selection Criteria: While candidates’ academic excellence is the primary consideration, the Selection Panels will take into account factors as follows:

• Academic excellence;
• Research ability and potential;
• Communication and interpersonal skills; and
• Leadership abilities.

Number of Scholarships: More than 230 PhD Fellowships will be awarded in the 2015/17 academic year

Selection Panel: Shortlisted applications, subject to their areas of studies, will be reviewed by one of the following two Selection Panels comprising experts in the relevant board areas:

• sciences, medicine, engineering and technology

• humanities, social sciences and business studies

Application Process: Eligible candidates should first make an Initial Application online through the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme Electronic System (HKPFSES) to obtain anHKPFS Reference Number by 1 December 2016 at Hong Kong Time 12:00:00 before submitting applications for PhD admission to their desired universities.

Applicants may choose up to two programmes / departments at one or two universities for PhD study under HKPFS 2017/18. They should comply with the admission requirements of their selected universities and programmes.

As the deadlines for applications to some of the universities may immediately follow that of the Initial Application, candidates should submit initial applications as early as possible to ensure that they have sufficient time to submit applications to universities.

Visit Scholarship webpage for more details

Carnegie Corporation of New York Fellowships for Sub-Saharan African Countries, 2017/2018

Application Deadline: Online application must be submitted by 18th November 2016 |

 Offered annually? Yes

Fellowship Name: Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa.

Brief description: The Social Science Research Council is funding three types of fellowships to support the completion of doctoral degrees and to promote next generation social science research in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. The fellowships support dissertation research on peace, security, and development topics.

The fellowships are:

• Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship
• Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Fellowship
• Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowship

Field of Study: The fellowships support dissertations and research on peace, security and development topics.

About the Fellowships: The programme, launched in June 2011, responds to a shortage of experienced faculty in African higher education. The Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa program provides fellowships to nurture the intellectual development and increase retention of early-career faculties in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.

The doctoral dissertation research fellowship supports 6-12 months of dissertation research costs of up to US$15,000 on a topic related to peace, security, and development.

Proposal development fellowships are intended to support doctoral students working on developing a doctoral dissertation research proposal as well as students who recently completed a master’s degree and seek to enroll in a PhD program.

The doctoral dissertation completion fellowship supports a one-year leave from teaching responsibilities and a stipend up to US$15,000 to permit the completion of a dissertation that advances research on peace, security, and development topics.

The programme assists fellows to develop research opportunities and skills, obtain doctoral degrees, and participate in robust research communities. Toward this end, the project features a thematic focus in order to renew basic research agendas addressing peace, security, and development topics as well as strengthen interdisciplinary social science research capacity on these issues.

Offered Since: June 2011

Type: PhD research level.

Selection Criteria: Strong proposals will offer clear and concise descriptions of the project and its significance. Proposals should display a thorough knowledge of the relevant social science literature that applicants will engage and the methodologies relevant to the project. In addition, applicants must demonstrate that all proposed activities are feasible and can be completed in a timely manner. All proposals will be evaluated for these criteria by an independent, international committee of leading scholars from a range of social science disciplines.

Fellows must be willing to attend two workshops sponsored by the SSRC each year that are intended to help early-career faculty produce scholarly publications. We anticipate awarding as many as 45 fellowships in total across all categories each year.

Eligibility: All candidates must:

• be citizens of and reside in a sub-Saharan African country
• hold a master’s degree
• be enrolled in a PhD program at an accredited university in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, or Uganda
• have an approved dissertation research proposal

As of May 2015, the program prioritizes applicants holding a faculty position or demonstrating a durable commitment to higher education, but does not restrict eligibility to such individuals.

The program seeks to promote diversity and encourages women to apply.

Number of Fellowships: 45 fellowships are awarded each year.

Value of Fellowships: 

• The doctoral dissertation research fellowship supports research costs of up to US$15,000 on a topic related to peace, security, and development.
• The doctoral dissertation proposal fellowship supports short-term research costs of up to US$3,000 to develop a doctoral dissertation proposal.
• The doctoral dissertation completion fellowship supports a one-year leave from teaching responsibilities and a stipend up to US$15,000 to permit the completion of a dissertation that advances research on peace, security, and development topics.

Duration of Fellowship: Fellowships are offered each year. The doctoral dissertation research fellowship is about 6-12 months

Eligible Countries: Citizens of and reside in a sub-Saharan African country while holding a current faculty position at an accredited college or university in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, or Uganda

How to Apply: All applications must be submitted using the online application portal.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for more details

Sponsors: Carnegie Corporation of New York

Libeling Leakers: Julian Assange, Wikileaks and the Russian “Connection”

Binoy Kampmark

What was the New York Times thinking in making the suggestion? Evidently, its patriotic sense has been affronted by the disclosures from WikiLeaks that have sprinkled more than a bit of dust on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. In doing so, Julian Assange and the organisation, so claimed the paper, had wangled its way into the Kremlin’s agenda.

Easy to ignore is the fact that the Clinton campaign remains sordidly compromised, a derelict reminder of political atrophy in an already miserable desert of options. When reality television populism starts looking good, we know how cruelly empty that desert has become.

This fearful Grey Lady of the fourth estate, self proclaimed paper of record, has tended to bungle at crucial points in its long history. While it has to be credited with a role in the fall of President Richard Nixon and Watergate, it has also moved into the realm of chest beating (at or least patting) and judgment, when deemed necessary.

Two forces have featured in this chest thumping, though neither can be said to be equivalent. Russia and WikiLeaks have both been mentioned in the context of US politics, supposedly keeping company. The analysis of this connection firstly makes the rather trite assumption that Russia might be involved in manipulating the scene, which then follows with questions about the WikiLeaks “connection”.

This connection was supposedly consecrated by the release of 20,000 emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee timed to perfection. The DNC Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, tendered her resignation in light of its revelations. “To say that this is an unflattering portrayal of Team Clinton,” observed John R. Schindler, “is like saying the Titanic had issues with ice” (Observer, Jul 25).

What Schindler went on to assume was that the source of those leaks had been Russian intelligence. “[I[ndependent cybersecurity experts easily assessed [this] as being the work of Russian intelligence through previous known cutouts.” Callouts were given to COZY BEAR or APT 29, and FANCY BEAR or APT 28, hacking groups assumed to have a Kremlin connection, if not drive. Schindler makes the rather silly point that signing off a hack with a Russian name in Cyrillic suggests anything at all. How shallow the monolingual world is, by nature.

Schindler’s analytical imagination then falters in attempting to link the dots. In releasing material that has a provenance to Russian hackers, “WikiLeaks is doing Moscow’s bidding and has placed itself in bed with Vladimir Putin.”

The language is a neat libel assuming that an organisation that releases material provided to it by an individual, or entity, is then doing that body’s bidding, all body and consciousness, as a subservient political instrument. WikiLeaks has, in fact, shown itself to be very much independent, much to the irritation of governments and in certain instances its supporters. The devil’s work is often trying.

At the New York Times, the strategy and outlook adopted by Schindler is replicated. The first is demonising Russia as a disinformation giant, weaponising information to weaken opponents. Neil MacFarquhar is certainly one captivated with the notion that Russia has that “powerful weapon” which he calls “the spread of false stories.” (How frightfully original.)

One particular suggestion, pitched on Aug 28, was that the Swedish debate about whether it should join NATO was corrupted by Moscow-driven disinformation, among them suggestions that the state might become custodian of nuclear weapons; or that Russia might be attacked from Swedish soil “without government approval”. These contentions are never directly addressed.

Even MacFarquhar had to accepting that finding the provenance in the rich undergrowth of networks and information over such claims was nigh impossible. The Swedish defence minister had not made an official statement about it, but that did not stop the remark that “numerous analysts and experts in American and European intelligence point to Russia as the prime suspect”.

Imbuing networks of information with personality, notably of the negative sort, has become something of a pastime.  Alex Gibney personifies this pattern. Not that he is entirely being the mad hatter towards Wikileaks. His relationship, like many with Julian Assange, is thorny. And it shows.

While conceding that much was appropriate in leaking the documents on the DNC, he finds imputing darker aims to Assange irresistible. Incapable of accepting that the salient criterion here should be what the material reveals, he has to go to motive, imputing the sinister and the calculating. When it came to the dance of manipulations taking place in the DNC, Gibney could only obsess about why WikiLeaks did it.

Rather than worrying about the US as sick patient, bacterially infected by an environment that has produced a Clinton-Trump race, he ponders the motives of Assange. Was the Australian national in bed with Russian intelligence?

“We still don’t know who leaked the DNC archive, but given Mr. Assange’s past association with Russia, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that it was a Russian agent or an intermediary.” What we don’t know can always be a nice precursor to pure, post-factoid speculation. Slander comes easily to Gibney, as it does to the other coterie of analysts who have attempted to understand Assange’s world.

All doubts about the New York Times on this interpretation were alleviated by a piece (Aug 31) authored by Jo Becker, Steven Erlanger and Eric Schmitt, that suggested that “Russia often benefits when Julian Assange reveals the West’s secrets.”

Here, the slander is drawn that converts Assange into an anti-Western force, with an agenda that dovetails with that of the Kremlin. Forget how rotten the state of the union is – focus on Assange and his motives, that he does not criticise other powers – such as Russia. As WikiLeaks retorted, the organisation “has published more than 650,000 documents about Russian [sic] & president Putin, most of which is critical.”

Perhaps it might be better to keep referring back to the content of the material released, with all its onerous implications, rather than the imaginary motivations of the man releasing it. The proof lies in the released, rather hot pudding, not the individual who released the recipe.

Syria: Potential Fuse For Greater Conflagration

Eresh Omar Jamal


As the world is now well aware, Syria has been consumed by violence for years now. What people are less aware of, however, is why it has been raging for so long. According to the western narrative, the Syrian conflict — the deadliest conflict of the 21st century — started with Assad’s forces violently clamping down on peaceful oppositions and protestors in March 2011, and will not end until the dictator, Assad, is removed from power, which is why they have vowed to continue their support for what they say are the legitimate democratic opposition groups.

The alternative narrative, mainly propagated by Assad and governments outside the western alliance bloc — Russia, China, etc. — is that outside forces are funding, arming and training violent opposition groups, to bring about regime change in Syria, which is keeping the conflict ongoing, and has nothing to do with bringing democracy to Syria.

Before digging deeper, it is important to remember that some of the same allegations that are now being made against Assad — of being a dictator, oppressing his own people, etc. — were also made against Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi prior to the interventions in both Iraq and Libya. Other allegations later proven to be false — Saddam having weapons of mass destruction, for example — were also made by the accusers, who, ironically, had good relations with both Saddam and Gaddafi, prior to condemning them.

What has followed those interventions is now as clear as day. Libya, which was the richest country in Africa before the intervention, is now a failed state. Iraq has had no end to violence since the 2003 intervention and is also a failed state.

Despite the disastrous interventions in Iraq and Libya and the fact that the majority of Syrians, even according to western polls, support Assad, (Le Figaro poll: Over 70 percent want Syria’s Assad to remain in power, RT, October 31, 2015) the West has kept insisting that ‘Assad must go’ in the ‘interest of democracy’. And to justify their stance, western governments have pointed to several atrocities allegedly committed by Assad against his own people. Some of which are, at best, dubious.

Take the West’s allegation of Assad using chemical weapons in March 2013 for instance. In a report titled “Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence,” Richard Lloyd, a former United Nations weapons inspector, and Theodore Postol, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, after examining the delivery rocket’s design, concluded that the Sarin gas “could not possibly have been fired at East Ghouta from the ‘heart’, or from the Eastern edge, of the Syrian government controlled area”. Their claim has also been backed by others, including US missile experts (MIT study of Ghouta chemical attack challenges US intelligence, RT, January 16, 2014). Meanwhile, Die Welt a German daily reported that “the British secret service was in possession of a sampling of the used Sarin [on August 21, 2013, in Ghouta]. An analysis [of which] showed it not to be Sarin from the Syrian regime, but from the inventory of al-Nusra.”

This indicates that western governments, through their intelligence wings, knew that Assad may not have been responsible for the attack, as concluded by the UN’s Carla Del Ponte (UN’s Carla Del Ponte says there is evidence rebels ‘may have used sarin’ in Syria, The Independent, May 6, 2013).

Why then did the West try to justify an intervention in Syria under that pretext? Why does it keep insisting then that it must have been Assad, without any conclusive evidence? It may have something to do with Assad’s refusal to let a Qatari pipeline run through Syria, as I argued in my article ‘Why Turkey is so important’ published by The Daily Star on August 17. With that in mind, the West has admittedly supported what they call ‘moderate opposition groups’ such as the Free Syrian Army and others.

However, according to former CIA officer Ray McGovern, the groups that the US is funding are not really moderates but are considered to be extremists by many (‘US pretends there are moderates in Syria, Russia understands they are all terrorists’, RT, August 27). Syrians too seem to feel the same. A survey conducted by the Opinion Research Business International found that 81 percent of Syrians believe that ISIS “is a foreign/American made group”. Such suspicions may not be totally baseless.

As a former director of the US National Security Agency, General William Odom once remarked, “the US has long used terrorism” to achieve its objectives… “In 1978-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism — in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation” (America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group, Centre for Research on Globalisation, September 19, 2014). On the British side, former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook similarly wrote a column for The Guardian in which he remarked that “Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies” (The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means, July 8, 2005).

Even the New York Times reported on March 14, 2015, that “[the CIA] has sometimes inadvertently financed the very militants it is fighting”. That their support was actually ‘inadvertent’, however, is quite hard to believe. As according to the Financial Times (London), militants in Syria were being supported by regional powers and “The Americans, of course, knew what was going on… [but had] ignored it”. That too, despite recognising Assad’s popularity in their own assessment report which was unearthed by the Information Clearing House; (NATO Data: Assad Winning the War for Syrians’ Hearts, June 4, 2013) refusing to sway from its seemingly crumbling narrative.

I say crumbling because many high ranking officials within western administrations have already broken free from it. They include the likes of General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, who said on CNN that “ISIS got started through funding from our [America’s] friends and allies”. Former US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, who told Congress in 2014, in response to a question by Republican Senator Lindsay Graham that “I know [of] major Arab allies [to the US] who fund them [ISIS]”. Former head of the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Michael T. Flynn, who admitted to Mehdi Hasan on Al-Jazeera in 2015 that it was a “wilful decision” by the US government to support an insurgency [ISIS] composed of “Salafists, Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra”, among others.

And although this in itself is concerning, what is of even more so is the refusal on part of western governments to back down from its aim to remove Assad despite Russia entering the fray. Because now we have Russia doing air raids in Syria after being requested to do so by the Syrian government. We have NATO countries doing their air raids, ‘illegally under international law’, as they have not been invited by the Syrian government to enter its airspace, nor been given permission to do so by the UN Security Council. Turkey reportedly has entered Syria recently, allegedly, by some, to fight ISIS, and by others, to fight the Kurds. China said that they too are going to increase their involvement in Syria to help the government fight extremists.

What this means is that Syria is quickly turning into a powder-keg that can blow up any minute, leading to a much greater conflagration. Thus, it is best now for all sides to let cooler heads prevail rather than escalate the violence that has already led to millions of Syrians fleeing the war-torn country as refugees — contributing to the displacement of the highest number of people since the end of World War II — any further.

The super-powers involved have a special responsibility in that regard, as it is the unimaginable suffering of the Syrian people, who have, perhaps, had the least say in all of this, that is the greatest tragedy humanity is facing by allowing the crisis to perpetuate for this long.

African Union: The West’s Gendarme In Africa

Thomas C. Mountain

The African Union is the west’s gendarme in Africa with it’s combined national armed forces increasingly primed to invade and occupy rather than keep the peace. The latest potential victim of the African Union, backed by its big brother, the UN, is South Sudan. Before that Burundi was threatened with invasion by the AU “peacekeepers”. And this is just the beginning of a list of intended targets and actual invasions and occupations.

The African Union has its corrupt, western funded hands in almost every dirty war on the continent, ranging from the invasion of Somalia (and the subsequent spawning of Al Shabab) to the war in Azawad (Mali) to the most dirty of them all, the carnage in the Congo.

A lot of flowery rhetoric is spoken by and about the AU but the historical record tells a far different story. To start with, the AU’s predecessor, the OAU, was founded in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia while Ethiopia was a colonial power fighting an anti-independence war against the Eritreans, a war that would see success for Eritrea in 1991. Remember now, the OAU was founded as an “anti-colonial” organization so heaquartering the organization in Addis Ababa launched the outfit two faced from the start.

Addis Ababa itself is founded on the Oromian town of Finefine, captured by Abyssinian Imperialism (Europeans weren’t the only empire builders in Africa), colonized, and annexed to the ethnic Amhara/Abyssinian ruled empire.

The Abyssinians, or Ethiopians, colonized the Oromo peoples in the Horn of Africa along with the Anuak, Bengul, Sidhama, Afars, Somali/Ogadeni and Tigrayans (amongst others) in creating the modern Abyssinian empire of the Menelik and Haile Sellasie line which was ended by the military coup of 1974.

The Oromo, whom make up 40% of the Ethiopian population are the largest nationality in Africa with their language being the second most popular on the continent. Colonizing these once proud and mighty people was no small feat, requiring decades and large amounts of european weaponry supplied mainly by the Italians. No matter the bravery and daring of it’s mounted calvary, for which the Oromos were greatly feared by their enemies, firearms will eventually overcome spears and arrows, and the defeat of the Oromo by the Abyssinians began one of the largest, most barbaric, genocidal even, destruction’s of a people in history.

Off to a bad start the OAU continued through out the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s to spout righteous words of African independence all the while overseeing or standing idly buy as western interests raped and pillaged our continent all in the name of “democracy and sovereignty”. The OAU actively supported the Ethiopian counter insurgency against the Eritrean independence fighters right up until Eritrean rebel tanks drove through the gates of Addis Ababa and chased the Soviet, backed dictator Mengistu out of the country.

Eventually the OAU morphed into the African Union and its role as the gendarme in Africa came to the fore. In 1998 Ethiopia invaded Eritrea, an egregious violation of the AU’s charter never mind Ethiopian goons ransacking the Eritrean Embassy and brutalizing Eritrean diplomats in Addis Ababa, all with the quiet acquiesense of the AU leadership.

During the subsequent two year war, while Ethiopian troops were raping and pillaging their way across the Eritrean countryside the AU sat on its hands and did nothing to stop this crime, instead secretly supplied aid and comfort to the Ethiopian regime.

Today, while the western backed Tigrayan ethnic minority regime in Ethiopia is tottering and its Agazi death squads open fire on Oromo and Amhara demonstrators, killing thousands across the heart of Ethiopia, the AU stands silent or when pressed, mutters a few words of the need for non violence by both sides.

And all the while AU sponsored soldiers in Somalia rape and murder, sell arms on the black market to their erstwhile enemies, Al Shabab, and in general smuggle and racketeer with the leadership of the AU turning a blind eye. And that’s just in Somalia, how many other AU sponsored armies from the Congo to the Central African Republic to Mali are supposedly “keeping the peace” is some of the most violence wracked places on the planet?

Being the west’s gendarme in Africa comes with a cost, for where there is oppression there will be resistance and the AU is heading for a crisis. It’s host, the Ethiopian regime, seems to be nearing its end and Africa’s largest nation, the Oromo, have seen the light of liberation at the end of a long very dark tunnel. The scent of freedom and independence is in the air mingling with the smoke of street fires fronting blockaded roads.

Do the western funded AU fat cats at their desks in Addis Ababa think the eventually independent Oromos will continue to welcome the AU in their hard won new capital of Finefine a.k.a. Addis Ababa? Or will the AU,, the west’s gendarme in Africa, call for troops to invade and occupy a newly independent Oromia? Or any of the rest of the Ethiopian nationalities crying out for freedom and independence, as they try to cut themselves loose from the decaying corpse of the Abyssinian Empire.

Fragility in Pakistan

Rana Banerji

The US based non-profit organisation, Fund for Peace (FFP), which works to prevent conflict and to promote sustainable security by building relationships and trust across diverse sectors, annually prepares a Fragile States Index (FSI). It has listed Pakistan in the `High Alert’ category, evaluating key aspects of the social, economic, and political environment there over time. 

The FFP examines circumstances behind the conflict landscape worldwide. This includes a detailed study of social indicators, demographic pressures, condition of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), factors behind uneven economic development, political and military conditions, and the impact of external intervention factors, including foreign aid.

Political & Military indicators

The recent (08 August 2016) terror attack in Quetta, Balochistan, Pakistan, provides the best illustration of how the Pakistani military elite continue to remain in denial. They described it as a conspiracy for subverting the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Such obfuscation not only trivialises the death of so many and loss of the cream of Baloch intelligentsia and its legal fraternity, which has been very vocal and active in raising issues like enforced disappearances, it also reflects a muddled approach towards meeting the challenge of terrorism.

The functioning of the parliament in Pakistan continues to remain superfluous or irrelevant, at best of times a rubber stamp. In the aftermath of Quetta, when some important parliamentarians and political leaders from Balochistan questioned a possible security lapse and demanded that Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif make the heads of the security institutions accountable, they were viciously attacked from many sides, including by important members of cabinet.

 

Parliamentarians, particularly of non-Punjabi origin, feel they have no right to criticise the security agencies of the country on the floor of the house.As if that was not enough, high level meetings after the Quetta tragedy decided to appoint monitoring committees to oversee implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP).

These committees will be constituted from different government departments and agencies, without even any pretence of parliamentary oversight. The parliament is handy as a factory for producing draconian laws (law for controlling cyber-crime is the latest example) but it has been unable to evolve into a forum for formulating policies or overseeing their implementation.

 

The security apparatus should have a monopoly on use of legitimate force. The social contract is weakened where affected by competing groups. Extremist ideologies such as Salafism and Takfirism that inspire religious extremism and terrorism were mainstreamed during the Zia martial law years (1977-1988). These have yet to be fully and honestly confronted. So far, nothing seems to have changed in terms of policy of selecting between`good’ and `bad’ Taliban. The civilian facade of the security state is too weak to assert itself.While carrying this baggage, how can the state implement any consistent anti-terrorist policy?

 

Corruption in government has persisted, both in its civilian and military complements. The initial furore over the Panama Papers leaks’ enquiry seems to have petered into a stalemate. 

When human rights are violated or unevenly protected, the state is failing in its ultimate responsibility. In the context of the refugees’ movement to Europe, Pakistan is listed at the high end with a rating of almost 9, with only Afghanistan among regional countries figuring at a higher score.

Economy

The government’s economic policy remains largely debt-driven, with debt servicing and repayment taking increasing shares of the federal budget each year. Total public debt continues to be well above 60 per cent. Though Finance Minister Ishaq Dar announced Pakistan’s intention to bid goodbye to International Monetary Fund (IMF) assistance very soon, with the IMF programme drawing to a close and earlier debts maturing, debts from the IMF increased by 54.5 per cent.

   

Budgetary allocations for debt servicing and repayment have seen a steady rise over the last few years. The provision of adequate budgetary allocations for health, education, and sanitation services - key roles of the state - remain stymied due to over-emphasis on defence and debt servicing. For the fiscal year 2016-17, total debt and liabilities have increased by 12.7 per cent, now making up 73 per cent of the GDP. Compared to the previous year, there has been a 12.4 per cent increase in the total debt stock during July-March (FY16). Debt accumulation has an inflationary impact, which is adverse for short-term financial stability.

On the revenue front, while both tax and non-tax revenue targets have been reportedly achieved during the outgoing year, there has been no significant shift in direct and indirect tax shares. Instead, there has been hefty rise in the use of withholding taxes (WHT) to meet revenue needs. Little attention has been paid to expanding the tax base and alleviating poverty through a systemic shift to progressive taxation of rural and urban elites.

Though these parameters seem to justify the FFP’s evaluation, we in India, can hardly take any solace from the findings. India is listed at `Elevated Warning’ stage with a score of 79.6 compared to Pakistan’s 101.7. Sri Lanka is shown as the most improved state in 2016 under the FFP’s Conflict Assessment System Tool (CAST) rating. India is behind Bangladesh and Bhutan as well. A sobering thought!