MIT-AFRICA Empowering the Teachers Fellowship Programme 2017 for African Academics

Application Deadline: 1st December, 2016

Eligible Countries: Nigeria

To be taken at (country): Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston, USA

About the Award: MIT-Empowering the Teachers (MIT-ETT) is a teaching-focused fellowship, offered by MIT-AFRICA together with its corporate partner NNPC/Total E& P Nigeria Ltd. MIT-ETT enables Nigerian faculty in science and engineering to experience a semester at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Selected fellows will observe instruction in their disciplines and work as a group under the guidance of MIT faculty member, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Akintunde Ibitayo Akinwande to prepare innovative curricula and approaches to teaching that can be introduced into their home universities on their return.

The aim is to facilitate in African institutions improved teaching content development that is geared towards (1) students-centered content delivery (2) problem solving and (3) creativity. This amongst other things will result in the development new courses and the modification of existing curricula to ones that are geared towards critical thinking, open ended problem solving and hands-on design but also promote innovation and creativity. While at MIT, these African academics developed new course content for their home universities which are consistent with the objectives of developing these skills in their students.

During their semester at MIT, Fellows do the following:

• observe instruction in their own disciplines & subjects
• interact with MIT faculty teaching in their own disciplines & subjects
• develop courses based on problem-solving approach inspired by equivalent course at MIT
• discuss & explore curricular enrichment & reform through both formal and informal interaction with the MIT community

The ultimate goal is to reform their current curricular using new materials, approaches and methods that exemplify the best of MIT’s practices: problem-solving, student-centered, innovation and bringing knowledge to bear on the world’s greatest challenges.

Type: Fellowship/Training

Eligibility: MIT-ETT welcomes applications from all qualified faculty who are:

•  Interested in developing new curriculum and teaching methods and consider themselves to be change-agents;
• A faculty member holding a PhD and teach in a department corresponding to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering or Petroleum Engineering at a university in Nigeria;
• Lecturer One rank. Applications will be thoroughly vetted.

Selection: Candidates will be interviewed in Abuja by MIT faculty and representatives from NNPC/Total E & P during the last week of January 2017. If selected for interviews, you will be notified of your date and time in early January 2017.

MIT-Empowering the Teachers will select up to nine outstanding young faculty fellows from the disciplines of electrical engineering, computer science, computer engineering, mechanical engineering and petroleum engineering from Nigerian universities to spend a semester at MIT in Fall 2017 and Spring 2018. Selected fellows will observe instruction in their disciplines and work as a group to prepare innovative curricula and approaches to teaching that can be introduced into their home universities on their return.

Value of Fellowship: MIT-Empowering the Teachers will cover the travel, living and instructional materials expenses of the participants. The home universities of the successful applicants will commit to provide paid leaves of absence during the period of the MIT program.

The faculty selected to participate in the MIT-ETT program will spend a full semester at MIT observing classes similar to ones they themselves currently teach. They will work on new curricular materials and teaching approaches for adoption in their own classes. During their stay at MIT, they will participate regularly in at least two MIT subjects (including lectures, recitations and tutorials) that correspond to courses the faculty members teach at their home universities. They will attend twice-weekly MIT-Empowering the Teachers Seminar meetings, one which will focus on curriculum review and development led by Professor Akinwande.

Duration of Fellowship: 6 months

How to Apply: To apply, please visit: http://misti.mit.edu/empowering-teachers .

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider:  MIT-AFRICA together with its corporate partner NNPC/Total E& P Nigeria Ltd.

US Government Global Undergraduate Exchange Program (Global UGRAD) for Emerging Leaders 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 31st December, 2016

Eligible Countries: International (See list below)

To be taken at (country): United States

Eligible Field of Study: Students from all academic disciplines are encouraged to apply for the Global UGRAD program. Possible fields of study include the humanities, arts, social sciences, mathematical science, natural and physical sciences, engineering and applied science.

About the Award: The Global Undergraduate Exchange Program (Global UGRAD) provides a diverse group of emerging leaders with a scholarship for one semester of non-degree academic study at a U.S. college or university. The program is sponsored by the U.S Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and aims to recruit participants from underrepresented, non-elite backgrounds. Successful applicants can expect an in-depth exposure to U.S. society, culture, and academic institutions, as well as an opportunity to enhance their professional skills.

All participants will be enrolled in full-time, non-degree, undergraduate course work chosen from their host institution’s existing curriculum. Participants will be required to take one, 3-credit U.S. studies course to enhance their understanding of the United States. Participants will live in campus housing facilities with American peers, and will be required to participate in twenty hours of community service. There will also be a virtual arrival orientation and an in-person end-of-program workshop.

Global UGRAD is a substantive exchange program designed to expose students to the U.S. educational system, society, and culture. Finalists represent diverse disciplines, from architecture to engineering, biochemistry to literature and education.  A small number of students will also receive additional English language training in the US prior to the start of their academic program. All students are required to participate in volunteer community service activities and are encouraged to participate in professional development activities as part of the Global UGRAD Program. Exposure to U.S. civil society, as well as the cultural and ethnic diversity of the United States, gives the participants a strong example of tolerance in a democratic society.

Type: Undergraduate non-Degree Exchange Programme

Eligibility: The Global UGRAD Program is open to anyone who is/has:

• over 18 years of age;
• a citizen of a UGRAD participating country, currently residing in that country;
• enrolled as an undergraduate in good standing at any accredited university, public or private, and has at least one semester remaining at their home university at the conclusion of the UGRAD program;
• completed secondary education in their home country;
• a solid command of written and spoken English (English Language training for some finalists is possible);
• able to begin studies in the United States in August 2017 or January 2018 (selected participants may not defer to a later date);
• eligible to receive and maintain the US student exchange visa (J-1) required for the program;
• cleared by a physician to participate in the program;
• committed to returning to their home country after the completion of the program.

Individuals in the following circumstances are not eligible for the Global UGRAD Program:

• U.S. citizens and permanent residents of the United States;
• Individuals currently studying, residing, or working outside of their home country;
• Local employees of the U.S. missions abroad who work for the U.S. Department of State and/or the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); employees are also ineligible for one year following the termination of employment;
• Immediate family members (i.e. spouses and children) of U.S. Department of State and USAID employees; family members are also ineligible for one year following the termination of employment;
• Current World Learning employees and their immediate family members.

Number of Awardees: Global UGRAD will provide a select group of approximately 250 students with scholarships for one academic semester of undergraduate, non-degree study in the United States.

Value of Scholarship: The scholarship will cover international travel, tuition, room and board, accident/sickness insurance, a small monthly stipend, and funding for books.

Duration of Scholarship: One semester

Eligible Countries: Algeria, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, China, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Georgia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Macedonia, Mauritania, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Oman, Palestinian Territories, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Korea, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, UAE, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zimbabwe.

How to Apply: Apply online

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: U.S. Department of State

LSE Masters Scholarship for Female Students in MENA Countries 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 26th April 2017.

Eligible Countries: Middle East and North African countries

To be taken at (country): UK

Type: Masters in Law (LLM)

Eligibility and Selection Criteria: This scholarship is available to support female students from Africa intending to study for the LLM. Preference will be given to applicants from north Africa.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The scholarship is expected to be to the value of £5,000.

Duration of Scholarship: Duration of programme

How to Apply: To be considered for this scholarship, you must have completed the 2017/18 LSE Graduate Financial Support Application form and received an offer of admission(conditional or unconditional) by 5pm UK time on 26 April 2017. You must complete Section G – Personal Statement.

When you submit an application for admission to a taught masters programme, the Graduate Admissions Office will acknowledge your application and provide information about how to set up an LSE For You online account. This account will allow you to track the progress of your application for admission, and will provide you with access to the LSE Graduate Financial Support Application Form. The LSE Graduate Financial Support Application form will be available until 26 April 2017.

Selection for this scholarship will take place between May and July 2017 and we will only notify the successful recipient(s) by the end of July 2017. If you have not heard from the Financial Support Office by the end of July 2017, you must assume your application has been unsuccessful. We will notify successful applicants only.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Important Notes: If you complete the LSE Graduate Financial Support Application form, you will also be considered for support from the LSE Graduate Support Scheme. Being unsuccessful with your application to the Graduate Support Scheme does not preclude you from being considered for other awards such as this one.

The Day Vladimir Putin Passed NAFTA

Rob Urie

The U.S. is entering a dangerous political phase where a distant and cloistered political class threatens the use of state power to legitimize itself in the face of declining popular support and serial military calamities of its own making. In 2001 the George W. Bush administration used the opaque and as yet not fully explained events of 9/11 to claim legitimacy as faux protector of the American people as it launched catastrophic wars that destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan and unleashed ongoing chaos across the Middle East.

With uber-hawk and unindicted co-conspirator Hillary Clinton favored to win election under a cloud of suspicion for pay-to-play practices as Secretary of State and in widely declining economic circumstances an imperative to change the subject will assert itself the day after election day. Having demonstrated a propensity for wanton slaughter in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and the streets of major American cities (1994 ‘Crime’ bill), Mrs. Clinton is already busy stoking a new Cold War with Russia to cover her own activities.

The neo-con choice of Russia as menace-of-opportunity joins a long history of defining American politics through negation. In the original (‘classic?’) Cold War national identity served as an envelop-of-convenience for conciliatory economic policies within the U.S. and repressive and opportunistic policies abroad. Since the 1970s selective (class based) economic liberalization has cut labor and the poor adrift as a self-serving ruling class has gorged itself at the public trough through bailouts, privatizations and special privileges.

The Cold War was always largely a business enterprise— the communist boogeyman was used by the U.S. to overthrow democratically elected governments and install business-friendly regimes that would answer to U.S. (corporate) interests. Its resurrection is to reassert a national ‘envelop’ as cover for economic interests now ‘freed’ to treat a growing portion of the domestic population as imperial subjects. Growing resistance suggests a need for more convincing misdirection if the status quo is to be maintained.

Ongoing neo-con claims that Russia invaded Ukraine are to cover the U.S. role in facilitating a coup against the popularly elected government there and depend on American ignorance of the longstanding Russian naval base at Sevastopol for plausibility. Furthermore, against explicit promises not to do so, since the early 1990s the U.S. (through NATO) has built military bases in Eastern Europe surrounding Russia. This as the U.S. embarks on a multi-decade program to ‘upgrade’ its nuclear weapons arsenal.

Surrounding Russia with NATO (U.S.) military bases is generally analogous to the
Russians building military bases on the Mexican and Canadian borders with the U.S., only without the historical precedent of sequential, devastating land invasions that the Russians have faced. What cloistered neo-cons in the U.S., led by Hillary Clinton, call military ‘strength’ is a perpetual upping of the ante where each step is ‘rational’ in some political-economistic sense while the broader enterprise risks collective suicide.

As strategy, doing so leaves either capitulation or full scale confrontation as likely responses. A ‘third-way’ was tried when American economists were sent to post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s to ‘help’ with privatization of the Russian economy. The result was a bifurcated economy where 99% of Russians were deeply immiserated while select ‘oligarchs,’ were made stupendously rich. Luckily for the economists, enough Russians died from privation during their ‘experiment’ to leave few witnesses to the fiasco.

For cynical Americans raised on Cold War propaganda, the idea of Western academics scamming gullible Russians with long-discredited capitalist ideology might be good for a laugh were these same people not the ‘brain trust’ behind the bi-partisan governing consensus in the U.S. in 2016. The economics used to loot Russia were absolutely conventional, the very same used by Bill Clinton to ‘liberate’ Wall Street from social accountability, to liberate the American working class from gainful employment and to ‘free’ the American poor from burdensome food and rent money.

The Russian reaction to being immiserated was to turn away from the American-style economic liberalization that remains the Democrats’ core economic program in the U.S. The seeming inability of the American political class to learn from its mistakes proceeds from the assumption that current outcomes are mistakes in any sense recognizable to it. Highly cloistered class divisions leave it impervious to the negative consequences of its economic policies much as it is to those of its foreign policies.

Following passage of NAFTA economic competition was used to explain the engineered immiseration of the American working class. But without commensurability of circumstances the idea of a global labor market makes little sense. The implausibility of displaced auto workers in Detroit packing up their families and possessions to live for $10 per day in southeastern China illustrates the conundrum. ‘Capital,’ connected capitalists with extensive social resources, can build factories abroad. But without a standing army to repatriate profits, that scheme has never worked very well.

Conversely, with the racial repression that followed the nominal end of slavery in the U.S., at what point did American Blacks receive the market wage that no longer suppressed wages more broadly? Notice the formulation: Blacks whose wages were held down through systematic racial repression (Black codes, convict leasing, Jim Crow and now mass incarceration) acted in a ‘market’ sense to lower the wages of wage-dependent Whites. This is the ‘market’ explanation of race relations in a market economy when the (liberal) premise of market-driven outcomes is applied.

It is this latter point— that rigged economic institutions produce rigged outcomes, that liberal Democrats try to explain away with identity politics. NAFTA, like the TPP that follows, is designed to shift economic power from labor to capital. It is also designed to exploit residual imperial relations to divide labor along engineered lines of division. In the U.S. the state created and enforced racial repression to serve economic interests. This is the residual of imperial relations that to which NAFTA was added.

By siding with existing economic power Western liberals chose the paradox that by destroying the institutions that make markets ‘free’ like labor unions and collective bargaining (see Adam Smith on manufacturer combines suppressing wages) economic outcomes can still be claimed to be ‘market’ based. In a general sense in the case of Russia, the Russian people wanted none of it once it became clear that American intentions were collaborative looting of the Russian economy.

Americans have a longer history of market mythology to wade through. If slaves produce goods that have economic value then demand for wage labor is reduced relative to the goods produced and the difference accrues to capitalists. If NAFTA ‘frees’ capitalists to produce goods in Mexico or China under neo-colonial conditions (see Foxxcon suicide nets) a similar process takes place. This sleight-of-hand works by tautologically defining all labor, including slave labor, as freely undertaken.

It is hardly accidental that Barack Obama, and soon most probably Hillary Clinton, frame corporate-power enhancing agreements like the TPP in terms of geopolitical competition. Much as Democrats use Republicans (and vice-versa) as foils, the U.S. powers-that-be need a Russian ‘strongman’ and Chinese economic ‘connivance’ to sell trade deals and foreign entanglements to an already hard-pressed American working class. Here the relation of economic interests to geopolitics re-enters.

Like her husband before her, Hillary Clinton has committed to the economically paradoxical position of increasing social spending and balancing the Federal budget. Bill Clinton addressed this paradox by reneging on his promise to increase social spending. In terms of factual possibility, balancing the budget has always been a canard used by Republicans (and national Democrats) to cut social spending. There is no fact-based reason why a balanced budget is either necessary or virtuous.

The political-economic position that this leaves Mrs. Clinton in is that her major benefactors on Wall Street and in executive suites want policies that weaken the position of labor and immiserate the bottom 90% or so of the population. And the pressure relief value of increased social spending will be ‘off-the-table’ much like it has been under Barack Obama and Bill Clinton so as to balance the budget. Even if neo-Keynesian pleaders get through to her the response will be ‘public-private partnerships,’ privatization and tax cuts that benefit the wealthy.

The political problem for the establishment is that the polity is in various stages of open revolt. In the long-held American tradition of dividing to conquer, Mrs. Clinton has drawn battle lines in a class war by dismissing the most economically put-upon half of the polity as ‘deplorables,’ as racist hicks who lack the vocabularies and table manners to properly earn their keep. That these same people had jobs until the Clintons sent them to Mexico and earned their keep until Wall Street cut their pay to nothing helps clarify precisely who it is that is deplorable.

Russia re-enters as the mythical boogeyman, a/k/a convenient foil, for the remote and calcified ruling class to pin its own misdeeds on. Julian Assange has now clarified that, Clinton ‘team’ assertions to the contrary, Russia is not the source of the Wikileaks revelations that will serve as fodder for ongoing investigations if Mrs. Clinton wins election. A crisis of legitimacy is all but guaranteed. If ‘things’ begin to unwind as circumstances suggest they might, expect the war drums to beat louder.

The Coming Plague of Poverty Among the Elderly: Clinton’s Plan For Gutting Social Security

Alan Nasser

In the recent Wikileaks revelations confirming Hillary Clinton’s duplicity, one of the clearest disclosures of her policy plans concerns her intention regarding Social Security. She stated that she would return to the position of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, charged with producing recommendations for reducing the deficit, i.e. cutting government social spending.

The Commission, or “Simpson-Bowles committee”  -named after co-chairs former Wyoming Republican senator Alan Simpson, and Erskine Bowles, former Morgan Stanley board member and chief of staff under Bill Clinton-  was appointed by Obama in 2010. Among its members were some of the most persistent deficit hawks. Most significantly, the Commission was stacked with leading enemies of Social Security flailing their arms over the “impending insolvency” of the program. The day before his appointment as co-chair, Simpson said in an interview with the Washington Post: “How did we get to a point in America where you get to a certain age in life, regardless of net worth or income, and you’re ‘entitled’? The word itself is killing us.” (Feb. 17, 2010) In a later e-mail he described Social Security as “a milk cow with 310 million teats,” and had characterized its beneficiaries as “greedy geezers.” Bowles’s record was in line with Simpson’s. He had earlier negotiated with Newt Gingrich how best to cut safety net programs. The ultimate objective was to privatize Social Security.

In a rare moment of candor, a then-editor of The New York Times, Fred Brock, wrote an article critical of the Social-Security-is-going-broke alarmists titled “Save Social Security? From What?” (Business section, November 1, 1998). Brock attributed the faux hysteria to “hidden agendas…..Wall Street would love to get its hands on at least some of the billions of dollars in the Social Security trust fund . . . But knowing that the idea [of full privatization] won’t fly politically, [politicians] are pushing for partial privatization, in which individuals would invest a portion of their contribution in the stock market, all in the name of rescuing the system.”

Bowles’s efforts to undo Social Security through “partial privatization” began during the Clinton regime. The left-liberal economist Robert Kuttner, in his 2007 book The Squandering of America, detailed how Washington elites of both Parties had been planning to weaken Social Security since the Clinton Administration. Steven Gillon’s 2008 book The Pact included letters and interviews with reliable sources illustrating Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich’s collaboration to get Congress behind a plan to begin turning Social Security’s so-called trust fund over to Wall street, which would manage, for a fee, retirees’ benefits. Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin had prodded the president to work with Gingrich not merely to reduce benefits and extend the retirement age, but to begin the privatization of Social Security. Clinton appointed Bowles as his intermediary. But the Monica Lewinsky scandal caused both embarrassed Congressional Democrats and Gingrich to distance themselves from Clinton. The privatization plan fell apart.

A waiting game was now under way.

Hillary Clinton’s speeches to the captains of finance strongly imply that she would resume the project of privatizing Social Security. Hers will be a gradual, stealth approach. The opening salvo will be further cuts in benefits and extensions of the full-benefit retirement age. But these alone will not satisfy Wall Street. The privatization plan will be resurrected, first in the form of legislation once again to begin “partial privatization.” In the end, the objective will be to turn the program into a broker’s-fee-for-service plan entirely in the hands of Wall Street. Retired workers will no longer be unqualifiedly entitled to Social Security benefits. Their fortunes will be tied to the vagaries of the stock market and other speculative ventures favored by brokers. And retirees will pay for this “service.” There will be no refunds when the market goes belly-up.

What Do Retirees Now Get From Social Security?

Because so many seniors have scant savings and have been employed in low- to middle-wage jobs, poverty threatens the majority absent government income supplements raising them above the poverty line. 1 in 3 working Americans has zero retirement savings, and the median working-age couple has a mere $5,000 in retirement savings. The Social Security Administration reminds us that “Social Security is the major source of income for most of the elderly.” It is in fact the federal government’s biggest domestic program, paying benefits to around 1 in 6 Americans and to over 90% of the elderly. With Social Security benefits in decline as the retirement age is steadily raised, the future portends especially hard times for old folks and for the population as a whole, because the elderly are a growing percentage of the entire population.

An outstanding feature of American society well before my 20 year old daughter reaches middle age will be a serious poverty plague among the growing numbers of the elderly. This is evident in the current state of Social Security and the most reliable projections for its future.

Social Security benefits are conspicuously modest. In the countries included in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average public pension benefits replace about 61% of median earnings. The corresponding figure for the U.S. is 37%, after subtracting (escalating) Medicare premiums. The U.S. ranks 26 out of the 30 OECD nations in this respect. The average retiree receives $1,328 a month in Social Security benefits. A third of beneficiaries receives 90% of their income from the program and 61% receive more than 50% of their income from the program. It is a telling indication of the niggardliness of the median household income that paltry Social Security payments kept 22 million from poverty in 2015. Thus, without Social Security benefits, 41% of elderly Americans would have incomes below the official poverty line, whereas with the program, “only” 9 percent do.

Social Security also benefits the non-elderly, and they too will be hit by Clinton’s announced offensive. More than 1 million children were lifted from poverty last year. Some received benefits because a parent died or became disabled or retired, and some live with relatives who receive Social Security. Some 12 million disabled persons received benefits in 2015. According to the Social Administration itself, “That is barely enough to keep a beneficiary above the 2014 poverty level ($11,670 annually).” All in all, without Social Security 20.5% of the total population would be in poverty; because of the program, “only” 13.5% are in poverty. The total number lifted out of poverty by Social Security in 2015 is 22,090,000.

The Simpson-Bowles Recommendations for Social Security

The figures above make it clear that Clinton’s planned attack on Social Security will significantly raise total poverty, particularly among the elderly, the disabled and children. Clinton’s planned revival of Simpson-Bowles virtually guarantees this outcome. What were the recommendations of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform? The emphasis is on cutting benefits by three means.

First, the retirement age would be increased. The then-retirement-age of 66 was to be increased to 67 by 2022 for people born in 1960 and later. Early retirees would be able to claim reduced benefits at 62. The Commission recommended that both the full and the early eligibility age would continue increasing after 2022. At an unspecified time before 2050 the early eligibility age would rise to 63 and the full retirement age would increase to 68. By 2070 the early eligibility age would reach 64 and the full retirement age would climb to 69.

The recommendations would force the elderly either to work full time into the years when their physical capacities have undergone normal decline, or stop working when their bodies tell them that persistent work effort is bad for their mental and physical health and thus suffer the penalty of reduced benefits and an even lower standard of living. The recommendations amount to escalating cruelty to the elderly.

What may not be obvious at first glance is that any increase in the full retirement age entails a cut in benefits for each and every retiree irrespective of the age at which they file. Because the full retirement age is the age at which full benefits are paid, so that workers who file sooner collect permanently reduced benefits and those who file later get larger benefits, raising the retirement age means that the early retiree suffers a deeper reduction and the later retiree gets a smaller increase. The economic security of everyone in the system is jeopardized whenever the retirement age is raised. And Social Security “reform” means gradually raising the retirement age.

Clinton’s announced plan means a wholesale assault on the entire elderly population.

The second means of cutting benefits consists in changing the formula for determining payments so as to reduce benefits.

The third way the Committee would lower benefits is to reduce cost-of-living adjustments. The idea is to devise a different measure of inflation in order to lower cost-of-living adjustments by 0.3 percentage points a year. A number of tricks have been effected to underestimate inflation and hence lower the estimated cost of living. E.g., the substitution hypothesis assumed that when the price of hamburger went up the typical consumer would substitute chicken in the “basket of goods” stipulated to reflect the cost of living. Hence, the measure would not count a rise in the price of ground beef as inflation. What was actually measured was the cost of maintaining a declining standard of living.

All these strategies functioning to put the squeeze on seniors are implemented on top of a system whose basic structure already fails to do what it is allegedly intended to do, to protect the elderly’s buying power. In addition to fudging inflation estimates, the weight attached to various components of the basic market basket of goods is skewed against the elderly, precisely in order to depress Social Security payments. Older Americans tend to spend a greater portion of their budgets on medical care and housing than do younger people. Yet less weight is assigned to medical care and housing costs, which have risen more than 7% and 5% respectively since this time last year, and more weight to gasoline, which has declined deeply over the same period. And because the Consumer Price Index excludes the spending patterns of those over the age of 62, it does not include one of the fastest growing costs for retirees, rising Medicare premiums. It is as if the idea was to hit the elderly especially hard. As if indeed.

It is no surprise, then, that the scandalously inaccurate estimates of increases in the cost of living actually increase the cost of living for everyone, especially seniors. The COLA increase for 2017 will be a niggardly 0.3%. From 2010 to 2016, the COLA was increased, respectively, by the following percentages: 0.0, 0.0, 1.7, 1.5, 1.7, 0.0 and 0.0.

Clinton vs. Obama on the Simpson-Bowles Recommendations

Obama opted not to endorse all of the recommendations of the Commission but to “build on the fiscal Commission’s model.” He accepted most of the major tenets of the Commission but went slower on their implementation. Austerity measures would be implemented over 12 years instead of 10. But he adhered to one of his principal reasons for putting the Commission together, that Social Security benefits would soon increase deficits to unsustainable levels. He supported the Commission’s aim to cut Medicare and Social Security. But his Social Security and Medicare cuts would be smaller than the Commission’s recommendations.

Clinton will at the least swallow whole the Simpson-Bowles recommendations. All stops will be pulled. The woman holds popular sentiment in contempt, so public disapproval will count for nothing. Let us not forget that a principal function of neoliberal policy is to do away with democratic government, a requirement if the distribution of private and public resources is to be consistently to the benefit of the plutocracy. Those most dependent on government assistance  -the elderly, the unemployed and the disabled-  will be hit hard.

The elderly tend to be more politically active, at least with respect to voting behavior. Their demographics are noteworthy. Between 2012 and 2050, the United States is expected to experience considerable growth in its older population. People 65 and over represented 14.5% of the population in the year 2014 but are expected to grow to be 21.7% of the population by 2040. By 2050, the population aged 65 and over is projected to be 83.7 million, almost double its population of 43.1 million in 2012. By 2060 there will be about 98 million older persons, more than twice their number in 2014.

The elderly are growing both in number and as a percentage of the population. They will be hit very hard under financialized neoliberal capitalism. Will they quietly bemoan their fate, or will they be among the historical descendants of Occupy and the Sanders movement, making up a growing force of resistance to an increasingly austere and repressive (dis)order?

Will The American Political Nightmare End With The Election?

Arshad M Khan

In a few days the election, and what to many Americans is a political nightmare, will be over. But will it? Who can imagine Trump graciously disappearing from the scene if he loses, or for that matter Hillary. He is likely to parlay his greater celebrity into a new enterprise, and she into another run with the same political cronies at her side. The character of these candidates and the language of politics both outrage, although the seeds for the latter were sown a long time ago.

Rush Limbaugh was a disc jockey in the 1980s, until he initiated a career in radio commentary. No holding back was his style. Blend in humor, extreme right-wing positions and a gloves-off stance in his criticism of his opposition, and he now commands an audience of 13 million listeners and numerous imitators ranting on local radio across the nation. It has accustomed vast numbers of Americans to a tone of disrespect alien to civil discourse and polite disagreement.

On the television front, Roger Ailes a long-time Republican political operator helped Rupert Murdoch in building up his Fox News into the top rated cable news channel. Mr. Ailes’ formula used the Limbaugh script jazzed up for television. Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, the loud conservative commentators, delivered the red meat to an increasing viewership, while serious journalism supplemented them with increasing respectability. The previously invincible Ailes might have been forced out due to numerous sexual improprieties but the channel’s significance is now undeniable — it hosted one of the presidential debates in this election.

Andrew Breitbart, after stints at the Drudge Report and Huffington Post, started Breitbart.com. With current Alexa rankings of 134 in the US and 746 globally, it remains one of the most successful right-wing sites. Its formula also appeals to the outrage of the deprived — Donald Trump’s favorite demographic. Again, in the footsteps of Limbaugh, the site targets liberalism — ‘limousine liberals’ taking advantage of hard-working Americans, shipping jobs overseas often in league with RINOs (Republicans in name only) who have betrayed their constituents.

Young Andrew Breitbart died of a heart attack in 2012 at he age of 43. The site has been run since by Stephen K. Bannon, who is now the official chief executive of the Trump campaign. It was Mr. Trump’s poke-in-the-eye to the Republican establishment.

Should he lose the election, can anyone seriously believe this penultimate spinner of outrage will retire in silence. No, his enhanced celebrity and his billions open up another business opportunity an entrepreneur like Trump is unlikely to miss. Trump TV comes to mind. If Andrew Breitbart did do well without any financial backing, the prospect of a well-funded Trump media behemoth is not difficult to imagine. After all, the time is ripe as the audience for Fox News and Limbaugh et al continues to age.

The new investigations of Hillary Clinton’s emails attached to a sordid case has cut her lead into a virtual tie, and there is now a distinct possibility Trump will win. And if he wins?

Well, we have come to expect the unexpected. Obama’s ‘change’ became ‘more of the same’ and the Nobel Peace Laureate has bequeathed seven wars, a refugee crisis in Europe, hundreds of thousands dead, and confrontation with Russia, the other major nuclear power. Amidst all the spewed hatred, Trump’s views on Putin and Russia might well diffuse this dangerous tension.

New Zealand moves to restore relations with Fijian regime

John Braddock

Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama made a three-day state visit to New Zealand last month, the first since his 2006 military coup. Bainimarama was invited by Prime Minister John Key, reciprocating Key’s trip to Fiji in June, also the first in ten years by a New Zealand prime minister.

The invitation would have been prepared in close consultation with Washington and Canberra. The local US allies, Australia and New Zealand, regard Fiji, the largest South Pacific island state, as critical to their own hegemony over the region and are increasingly concerned about China’s growing diplomatic and economic presence.

The visit coincided with deepening turmoil in the Asia-Pacific, highlighted by the crisis surrounding the Obama administration’s anti-China “pivot.” US strategy is facing serious setbacks following threats by Philippines President Duterte to “separate” from Washington. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, the pivot’s central economic initiative, which was signed in Auckland last February, is also in doubt in the face of opposition from US presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Bainimarama told reporters he wanted a stronger engagement with New Zealand. “I am very pleased the prime minister has worked with me to take our relationship to another level; a relationship in which we let bygones be bygones,” he said. The two leaders declared they were “looking forward, rather than reflecting on the past.”

Relations had soured with the imposition of sanctions by Australia and New Zealand following the 2006 coup. The regional powers were driven by concerns that the regime could destabilise the region and open the way for Beijing. The sanctions backfired, however. Bainimarama countered with a “Look North” policy, receiving economic, diplomatic and military aid from China, Russia and elsewhere. He also encouraged other Pacific island states to take a more “independent” path.

Bainimarama’s installation as prime minister followed the victory of his Fiji First Party in the 2014 elections, held under conditions of press censorship, military provocations and severe restrictions on opposition political parties. The authoritarian regime, which rests on the military, rules largely through fear and intimidation. Although sanctions were lifted after the elections, relations deteriorated as geostrategic tensions in the Pacific generated by Washington’s aggressive “pivot to Asia” intensified.

Key’s June trip to Suva, Fiji’s capital, was almost derailed when Bainimarama publicly aired his grievances over the attitude of the local powers toward his government. Last month, he hit out at “interference” in Fiji’s domestic affairs after comments by Key over the arrest of six leading Fijian opposition figures at a political forum. Key had declared he was keeping a “watch” on the situation and warned the Fiji government against doing anything “silly.”

Bainimarama began last month’s trip to New Zealand by issuing effusive thanks for the aid given by New Zealand and Australia in the wake of Cyclone Winston, which struck Fiji in March, causing 44 deaths and widespread destruction.

Canberra and Wellington, in fact, exploited the cyclone devastation to send warships, aircraft and hundreds of military personnel to Fiji. While this was characterised as a “humanitarian and disaster aid” mission, the intervention followed a gift of weapons to the Fijian military by Russia and dovetailed with the intensifying militarisation of the Pacific.

Bainimarama also announced during last month’s trip that he would rescind an eight-year ban on three New Zealand journalists seen as critical of his government. He said lifting the ban was part of the “diplomatic process.”

Topics discussed included development and aid, the PACER Plus regional free trade agreement, defence links and regional sport. Key had previously indicated he wants to keep Fiji in the PACER Plus talks. According to Bainimarama, PACER is too one-sided in its present form and would burden Pacific island nations. Fiji would not sign, he said, “until there are better terms” on infant industries, a “most favoured nation” clause and labour mobility. Key said he would seek to “accommodate the demands.”

Key told the media that human rights in Fiji were still an area where “discussion and engagement” was needed. “I have always said the restoration of democracy in Fiji was a good and important step, but it does evolve over time,” he declared.

Democratic rights in Fiji have never been a concern of the local powers. In June, Key dismissed the 2006 military coup as “ancient history.” Last month Key declared, echoing Bainimarama, that he was keen to “look forward now and not necessarily look back, that’ll be good for both Fiji and New Zealand.”

Fiji is regarded in Australia and NZ as spearheading a thrust by Beijing into the South West Pacific. According to the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, China has overtaken Australia as the biggest source of aid to Fiji, and will soon surpass Canberra’s aid to Samoa and Tonga. Trade between China and the Pacific doubled last year to $US7.5 billion. Strategic analyst Paul Buchanan falsely claimed on Radio NZ last month that unless China is pushed back, the South Pacific is “going to become like a Chinese lake,” supposedly “like the South China Sea.”

New Zealand continues to pursue a precarious balancing act over relations with China, its second most important trading partner. Late last month, Deputy Prime Minister Bill English cancelled a planned meeting with two Hong Kong “democracy” activists, Martin Lee and Anson Chan, following advice from New Zealand foreign affairs officials that the meeting could be “diplomatically sensitive.”

Behind the diplomatic manoeuvring lies the ever-growing threat of war. The US “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific is forcing all the states in the region, no matter how small, to take sides. Key recently gave clearance for the destroyer USS Sampson to visit Auckland during this month’s celebrations for the Royal New Zealand Navy’s 75th anniversary. The visit marks the end of a 30-year-old military stalemate between the countries that was triggered when the Lange Labour government banned nuclear warships.

Successive Labour and National administrations since 2001 have worked to restore defence ties. Key declared last week that the relationship with the US “is truly in the best shape it’s been since the anti-nuclear legislation was passed.”

Australia: Hazelwood power station closure threatens thousands of jobs

Oscar Grenfell 

ENGIE, a major French energy multinational, announced on Thursday it will close the Hazelwood coal-fired power station, in southeastern Victoria, in March 2017.

The closure will directly destroy up to a thousand jobs, with the flow-on impact threatening thousands more. It will further devastate the economically-depressed Latrobe Valley, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in Australia.

Reports have indicated that the move could see power prices across Victoria rise by up to 25 percent. State government figures indicate a 4–8 percent hike, but even that would exacerbate the financial difficulties facing millions of working class households.

The announcement is the culmination of decades of job cuts across the Latrobe Valley and the energy sector, including at Hazelwood, overseen by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments and enforced by the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU).

Announcing the shutdown, Alex Keisser, ENGIE’s chief executive in Australia, made clear that the plant was no longer sufficiently profitable for the company’s wealthy shareholders.

“ENGIE in Australia would need to invest many hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure viable and, most importantly, continued safe operation,” Keisser said. “Given current and forecast market conditions, that level of investment cannot be justified.”

The plant employs around 750 workers—450 permanent workers and 300 contractors—and a number of casuals. ENGIE also announced it will sell its other Latrobe Valley plant, Loy Yang B, which has about 150 full-time staff and 40 contractors, and its Kwinana cogeneration plant in Western Australia. There is no certainty either will find a buyer.

The Hazelwood shutdown is part of a global restructure of ENGIE’s operations, spurred by mounting competition in the energy sector, the fall in commodity prices and stepped-up demands from the financial markets for ever-greater returns.

In February, the company’s incoming chief executive, Isabelle Kocher, foreshadowed plans to slash costs annually by €10 billion to €20 billion, through the sale or closure of production and exploration sites, and a turn to renewable energies. At the end of 2015, the ENGIE had total assets of over €160 billion.

The company has sought to suppress and intimidate the widespread opposition to the closure. In the days before the announcement, workers were warned not to make any comments to the media.

The CFMEU, which has collaborated with Hazelwood’s owners through successive rounds of job cuts, signalled it will seek to enforce an “orderly closure” of the plant.

Speaking to the Australian Financial Review, CFMEU state secretary Geoff Van Dyke touted the company’s worthless claims that 200 workers may remain employed in the demolition of the plant over the next five years.

Trevor Williams, the CFMEU’s mining and energy president for Victoria, called for more time, essentially so that the trade union could better assist the closure, on the pretext of supposedly providing workers with other opportunities. He stated: “If it needs to be closed we believe it should be done in a phased-out way which would give us an opportunity to make arrangements for the workers.”

At the same time, Williams admitted that the union was fully aware of long-standing plans for the closure. “Some of us have seen this coming for quite some time,” he said, noting “talk off and on for the last 20 years” about a shutdown.

While the union, and state and federal politicians, have cynically feigned concern, the policies they have implemented are responsible for the dire social crisis in the Latrobe Valley.

In the early 1990s, the Labor state government of Joan Kirner initiated the privatisation of Victoria’s electricity industry, which was completed by the Liberal government of Jeff Kennett. Over the ensuing years, under successive Labor and Liberal governments, up to 15,000 jobs have been destroyed in the Latrobe Valley, which was historically the state’s main centre of electricity production. More than 6,000 of those job cuts were in the electricity sector. Across the state, the number of electricity workers fell from 21,500 in 1990 to just 8,000 in 2005.

Privatisation programs implemented by Labor and Liberal governments in other states have resulted in similar attacks on the jobs, wages and conditions of workers.

The assault on jobs in the Latrobe Valley has escalated in recent years. In 2014, the Energy-Brix coal-powered station closed, with at least 70 workers sacked. The same year, Hazelwood unveiled a series of voluntary redundancies aimed at downsizing the workforce.

Unemployment in the town of Morwell, near the Hazelwood plant, stands at an estimated 19.7 percent. A 2015 report listed the town among the seven most disadvantaged areas in Victoria by a range of social indicators. Youth unemployment is endemic. Hazelwood was one of the few local facilities employing skilled workers and tradesmen, making a mockery of the claims that its workforce will be “retrained” and assisted to find employment elsewhere.

As for moving house to find work, the protracted decline in home values in the Latrobe Valley makes that almost impossible. According to a real estate web site, the median house price in Morwell is $153,000, compared to $773,669 in Melbourne, the state capital, which is about 150 kilometres away.

Underscoring the central role of the major capitalist parties in these attacks, federal Energy and Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg, a key member of the Turnbull Liberal-National government, and the state Labor government’s state Treasurer Tim Pallas, travelled to France late last month for backroom meetings with ENGIE heads. The timing of the visit indicates that the purpose was to prepare to police the plant’s shutdown.

Other politicians claimed that the closure of the plant, a significant emitter of carbon dioxide, is a victory in the struggle against climate change. Last September, Greens federal MP Adam Bandt responded to rumours of the impending closure by declaring: “This good news is the start of Victoria’s energy transition, where dirty coal is replaced with clean renewable energy.”

In reality, as ENGIE’s corporate heads have made plain, the decision is based purely on profit-making motives. Bandt and the Greens, indifferent to the plight of workers in the Latrobe Valley, speak for an affluent layer of the middle class, with ties to various renewable energy corporations. They defend the capitalist profit system, whose anarchic operations are responsible for the climate change crisis.

The state and federal governments have announced “rescue” packages for the Latrobe Valley, reportedly totalling $266 million. The state Labor government’s initiative is clearly about exploiting, not alleviating, the region’s social crisis. It wants to transform the region into an “economic growth zone” by providing businesses with tax breaks and financial incentives to take advantage of cheap labour in the area.

The Hazelwood closure is part of an escalating offensive against the working class across the country, and internationally, stemming from the breakdown of the global capitalist system. It comes hard on the heels of the closure of Ford’s auto assembly plants in Australia, destroying thousands of jobs.

The only way to oppose the shutdown is through a break with the thoroughly corporatised trade unions, the Labor Party and the entire capitalist political establishment, in the fight for a workers’ government and socialist policies, including placing the major energy companies under public ownership and democratic workers’ control.

Australian government hit by legal challenges to two senators

Mike Head

Australia’s government, already fragile and wracked by in-fighting since its near-defeat at the July 2 election, was thrown into further disarray this week by moves to constitutionally disqualify two senators on whose votes the government was relying to push through its legislation.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was forced yesterday to postpone key bills because of the uncertainty surrounding the numbers in the Senate, which may not be resolved for many months as the two cases are heard by the High Court, the country’s supreme court.

These bills include a draconian measure—the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) bill—to suppress industrial action by construction workers. The previous blockage of the bill by the Senate was the chief trigger cited by the government to call the July 2 double dissolution election of all members of both houses of parliament.

Such is the popular hostility to the government, and the opposition Labor Party, that the election saw the Liberal-National Coalition barely cling to office with a one-seat majority in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, the upper house, the government now only holds 30 of the 76 seats because a record number of “crossbench” senators were elected, mostly right-wing populists seeking to exploit the widespread disaffection from the rest of the political establishment.

Two of those senators, it appears, may have been legally disqualified from standing for election. Moreover, the government has long known this, but sought to cover-up the issues in the hope of securing the votes of the pair for the ABCC bill and other major legislation, including sweeping cuts to welfare entitlements.

The first case involves Bob Day, a millionaire house builder and former Liberal Party candidate who originally won a South Australian Senate spot in 2013 on the ticket of Family First, a misleadingly named right-wing Christian party. He is accused of breaching section 44(v) of the Constitution, which declares that a person with “any direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth” shall “be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator.”

Documents have revealed that the government was aware, from February 2014 onward, that Day’s use of a building in which he held a financial interest as his electoral office, which would be leased by the government, was legally dubious. In fact, a special minister of state overrode a Finance Department recommendation to agree to the deal. After various legal manoeuvres, a formal lease was ultimately signed last December.

This arrangement began to unravel after Day was re-elected on July 2, as his building empire crumbled. His Home Australia Group of companies eventually went into liquidation, owing $19 million, leaving about 200 angry customers with unfinished homes and throwing hundreds of building workers and contractors out of work.

On August 4, Day approached the current special minister of state, Senator Scott Ryan, about rent on the electoral office. According to the government’s account, Ryan then discovered there may be a constitutional breach. But it was not until two months later, on October 7, that Ryan terminated the lease and the government secretly sought legal advice from barrister David Jackson. That advice, delivered on October 27, reportedly said Day’s election was possibly invalid, forcing the government to refer the issue to the High Court.

In the meantime, Day announced, on October 17, he would resign from the Senate, supposedly to assist the victims of his corporate collapse. On October 26, Day reversed his position, insisting that the fate of the ABCC bill and other legislation was “too important” to allow a Senate vacancy. On November 1, however, Day quit the Senate, effective immediately, while still insisting he had not violated the Constitution.

The second High Court challenge, which was revealed within 24 hours of Day’s case, seems also to be entangled with a financial collapse. It concerns Rod Culleton, who secured a Western Australian Senate seat as a candidate for Pauline Hanson’s anti-immigrant One Nation party.

At the time of the July 2 election, as was reported in the media, Culleton had been convicted of larceny, an offence punishable by more than 12 month’s jail. That appeared to place him in breach of section 44(ii) of the Constitution, which disqualifies anyone from standing for election who “has been convicted and is under sentence, or subject to be sentenced, for any offence punishable under the law of the Commonwealth or of a State by imprisonment for one year or longer.”

After the election, Culleton succeeded in having the conviction annulled. That bid to retrospectively dodge the Constitution, however, was challenged in the High Court in September by two former business associates of Culleton, who claim he owes them money. The High Court sent word to the government on September 28, alerting it to the constitutional challenge.

Again, the government, fully aware of the issue, continued to cover it up for as long as possible. According to Attorney-General George Brandis, he finally sought legal advice from Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson on October 13, and that advice, delivered on October 28 was that Culleton had not been “duly elected as a senator.”

The High Court action is not Culleton’s only legal trouble. One of his companies, Elite Grains, had a creditors’ meeting this week, another company is being liquidated and a Perth businessman has filed a bankruptcy petition against Culleton for a $205,536 debt, which could also disqualify the senator. In addition, Culleton faces a stealing charge over the alleged theft of a hire car from bank-appointed receivers in 2015.

Evidently, Brandis ultimately felt compelled to obtain advice from Gleeson, after previously seeking to block the solicitor-general from giving legal opinions that could potentially expose the illegality of government actions. In May, during the lead-up to the July 2 election, Brandis issued a “Legal Services Direction” prohibiting Gleeson from providing legal advice to anyone else, including the governor-general, the formal head of state, without Brandis’s written, signed consent. That conflict, at the highest levels of the state apparatus, eventually forced Gleeson to resign last month.

The outcomes of the two High Court challenges remain uncertain, adding to the political instability. Both cases will hinge on the vagaries of the court’s interpretation of the Constitution, as well as the Commonwealth Electoral Act. In the words of one constitutional law academic, the rulings will depend on whether the judges apply the section 44 provisions “strictly.”

According to some analysts, if the challenges succeed, the court could order vote recounts for the two Senate seats, possibly resulting in the Labor Party picking up one or both.

This turmoil has intensified the government’s precariousness, following the public rifts that erupted last month, triggered by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whom Turnbull deposed in September 2015.

Increasingly, doubt is being expressed in the corporate media about the capacity of the government, and the parliamentary system itself, to deliver the agenda of slashing social spending, and cutting wages and workers’ conditions, demanded by the financial elite.

Yesterday’s editorial in the Australian Financial Review concluded as follows: “An environment that was already unconducive for good government or getting important legislation passed is about to get even worse. As Australia drifts towards losing its AAA sovereign credit rating, which in turn would flow onto a downgrade for our banks, Parliament appears incapable of doing anything about it.”

These anti-democratic rumblings are another warning sign that acute political, economic and geo-strategic conflicts lie ahead.