Election eve US jobs report reflects continuing stagnation

Barry Grey

The US employment report for October released by the Labor Department on Friday, four days before Election Day, provided a snapshot of an economy that continues to be mired in stagnation. The net nonfarm payroll increase was a tepid 161,000, with the bulk of the new jobs, as in previous months, made up of low-wage service and part-time positions.

Economists had predicted a payroll increase of 173,000. Even with a combined upward revision of 44,000 jobs for the months of August and September, the overall rate of job-creation has slowed markedly, averaging 181,000 a month through October as compared to 229,000 for all of 2015.

The number of long-term unemployed remained at 2 million, comprising 25.2 percent of those officially counted in the government tally. These are extraordinarily high numbers for the seventh year of a so-called “recovery.”

The decline in the official unemployment rate to 4.9 percent in October from 5.0 percent in September was not the result of workers joining the labor force and finding jobs, but the departure of 425,000 more working-age Americans, bringing the number of such workers who are outside the labor force to a near-record high of 94.6 million.

The labor force participation rate actually declined, reaching 62.8 percent in October versus 62.9 percent the prior month.

Manufacturing employment declined for the third straight month, with a net loss of 9,000 jobs. Mining continued to lose jobs, extending a monthly decline that has spanned two years.

A particularly telling indicator of the deterioration in the social and economic position of the American working class since the Wall Street crash of 2008 is the wholesale destruction of decent-paying full-time jobs and their replacement by part-time, contingent and temporary positions. The corporate elite, operating through the Obama administration, has carried out a far-reaching restructuring of social and economic relations to reduce the living standards and increase the exploitation of workers.

In October, according to the Labor Department, some 5.89 million employees were in part-time jobs but wanted full-time work. That figure is well above the level prior to the onset of the Great Recession, which officially began in late 2007. Of those who wanted a full-time job, 2.12 million said part-time employment was all they could find, the highest number in seven months.

This social crisis is obscured, deliberately, by the focus of the Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton election campaign on the raw jobs numbers. Much is made of the quantity of jobs created under Obama, in itself an inadequate number, while virtually nothing is said of their quality.

Jacob Leibenluft, a senior policy adviser to the Clinton campaign, hailed Friday’s employment report, calling the job numbers “another reminder of the progress we’ve made since the financial crisis: the longest streak of overall job growth of record, an unemployment rate below 5 percent and wages growing at their fastest pace since the recession.”

Labor Secretary Tom Perez similarly touted the report, releasing a statement declaring that “our economy demonstrates its continued strength month after month.” Like the Clinton campaign, he also seized on the report’s figures on wage increases, which have been presented in the media as a reversal of years of stagnating or declining wages.

The Labor Department reported that average hourly earnings for private-sector workers rose 2.8 percent in October compared with a year earlier, the highest annual wage growth since June 2009. Average hourly earnings rose 10 cents from September, or 0.4 percent, to $25.92 in October. Economists had expected a 0.3 percent increase.

“Americans have been waiting for a meaningful raise for too long, and today’s report confirms what we’ve seen over the last year—that they are getting one,” Perez declared.

Leaving aside the fact that wages are still rising more slowly than in previous periods designated as economic recoveries, and that more than half of the increases are eaten up by inflation, the real income of millions of working class families continues to decline.

A major factor is the runaway rise in out-of-pocket health costs, a process that has been accelerated and institutionalized by Obamacare. A Kaiser Foundation report issued in September noted that since 1999, health care premiums for employer-sponsored insurance plans have increased more than three times faster than wages.

The report said that workers today are paying an average of $18,000 for health insurance that covers fewer services, as companies shift costs to their workers by means of higher deductibles and co-payments and increases in the employees’ share of premium payments.

Suicides up sharply among US middle school children

Tom Eley

In a chilling new index of social despair, a report published on Thursday indicates that American children from 10 through 14 are now more likely to die from suicide than from car accidents.

In 2014, the last year for which data is available, 425 children between the ages of 10 and 14 killed themselves, as opposed to 384 children who died in car accidents, according to a chart released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on it Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

The chart, based on a CDC report published in April, shows an increase in suicides in the 10-14 age group from 1.25 deaths per 100,000 in 1999 to 2.25 in 2014, while the death rate for the same cohort over the same period from motor vehicle accidents declined. The two lines on the chart intersect in 2013.

The April CDC survey found that more boys killed themselves than girls—275 versus 150. But the rate of increase over the period of study was much higher among girls—a threefold increase versus an increase of about one-third for boys. For all children ages 10-14, suicide is now the second-leading cause of death, according to the CDC, after the combined category “unintentional injury,” which includes car wrecks and other forms of accidental death. “Homicide” is fifth on the list, with 156 American children murdered in 2014.

Tellingly, the entire increase in the suicide rate took place after 2007, the year it hit its lowest point in the period of study, at .9 deaths per 100,000 children. Then, from the onset of the Great Recession until 2014, the suicide rate more than doubled, to 2.1 deaths per 100,000 kids.

The CDC did not offer explanations for the increase, but it is noteworthy that there has been a parallel increase in child poverty during the same years. According to Robert D. Putnam, professor of public policy at Harvard and author of Our Kids, a study of the impact of social inequality on American children, the data on the increasing suicide rate is “part of the larger emerging pattern of evidence of the links between poverty, hopelessness and health.”

To cite one example, Columbia University’s National Center for Children in Poverty has found that the percentage of children ages 12-17 living in poor and low income families increased by over 14 percent between 2008 and 2014, with nearly 10 million of America’s 24 million adolescents living in low-income households by the end of that period. “Research is clear that poverty is the single greatest threat to children’s well-being,” the NCCP web site states.

The increased suicide rate among 10-14 year-olds from 2007 also corresponds to a similar increase within the entire population, which has gone up by more than 2 percent per year since 2006, according to the same CDC report published in April. The overall suicide rate in the US in 2014 stood at a 30-year high—with sharp increases in every age group except for the elderly. In 2014, 42,773 Americans killed themselves, up from 29,199 in 1999.

The new CDC report on increased suicide among children follows publication of a 2015 study by Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case that found mortality rates rapidly increasing among low-income, middle-aged white Americans—an increase attributable in large measure to more suicide, alcohol and drug-related deaths. The death rate for whites with no more than a high school education, ages 45 to 54, increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014.

CDC epidemiologist Dr. Alex Crosby has studied the historical relationship between economic crisis and the suicide rate as far back as the Great Depression, when the number of suicides reached its all-time high. “There was a consistent pattern,” he told the New York Times in April. “When the economy got worse, suicides went up, and when it got better, they went down.”

No doubt other factors are at play in the growth of the child suicide rate. Life for American children is increasingly stressful, even beyond the immediate economic pressures that their families face. Educational “reform” under the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations has resulted in schools increasing standardized testing and emphasizing math and science “STEM” curriculum while rolling back recess, recreation, art, music and gym classes, which served as vehicles of self-expression and release for previous generations of American children.

There is also a dearth of funding for juvenile mental health services and suicide prevention. The US government finds endless money to conduct wars all over the world—with all of the unquantifiable impact that the resulting mood of violence and fear must have on children. It spent some $600 billion on the military in 2015. On the other hand, federal funding for suicide prevention at the National Institutes of Health stood at only $25 million in 2016—about the equivalent of four US Abrams tanks.

Capsized boats in Mediterranean leave 240 refugees dead

Martin Kreickenbaum

Two refugee boats capsized this week in the Mediterranean near the Libyan coast, leading to the deaths in a 48-hour period of about 240 people. This brings the total number of refugees who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean and reach Europe to 4,220, more than ever before in a six-month period. The European Union bears full, criminal responsibility for this massive loss of life.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, 31 refugees were rescued in the most recent incident. Statements made by the survivors indicate there were approximately 270 people on board the two dinghies. So far only 12 bodies have been recovered.

The two dinghies departed not far from the Libyan capital of Tripoli on Tuesday night. A few hours later, they capsized in the channel of Sicily, about 25 nautical miles from the Libyan coast. The rescue operation coordinated by the Italian coast guard, which included five ships, came too late to save most of the passengers.

Two severely injured people who survived the capsizing were transported by helicopter to Palermo, Sicily. The other survivors, most of whom came from Guinea in West Africa, were taken to the island of Lampedusa. A heartrending scene unfolded there, as reported by Pietro Bartolo, a doctor, in Repubblica, the Italian newspaper. At one point a desperate survivor showed Bartolo the photo of his child who was nowhere to be found after the disaster.

The mayor of Lampedusa, Giusi Nicolini, called the deaths “genocide.” “Humanitarian corridors must be set up immediately or else we will never stop counting the dead,” he said.

This most recent refugee catastrophe follows on the heels of a series of incidents in the central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy over the past few weeks. On October 27, a Danish merchant ship rescued 339 refugees from the sea. They had been tossed into the water when their dinghy capsized due to bad weather. Fifty-one refugees are missing from this episode, and only one corpse was recovered from the water.

On the night before that disaster, the Libyan coast guard reported that a dinghy with 126 refugees on board capsized 23 nautical miles from Tripoli, not far from the location of the most recent tragedy. A coast guard ship rescued 29 survivors, but an additional 97 refugees remained missing.

At almost the same time, a ship belonging to the aid organization Doctors without Borders (MSF) discovered a dinghy with 29 dead bodies on board. They had all succumbed to petrol vapours. Only three days later, the Libyan Red Cross reported that 16 corpses had washed up on the coast of Zuwarah in northwestern Libya.

With two months to go, the deaths of 4,220 people trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2016 are already a horrifying record. In the course of the previous two years, a total of 3,279 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean, according to statements by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The Mediterranean route has produced the highest number of refugee fatalities by far. The IOM estimates that more than 5,530 refugees have died worldwide so far this year. Some 299 refugees have died on the US-Mexico border, 149 have died in Central America, 435 in the Sahara and North Africa, 94 in the horn of Africa, 96 in the Middle East and 61 in Southeast Asia.

It is striking that the number of fatalities in the Mediterranean has risen so dramatically even though a smaller number of refugees has taken this route this year. Last year, over a million travelled to Europe, compared to only 340,000 this year.

The deaths are taking place in the central Mediterranean even though the European Union and NATO have enormously increased the number of ships in the sea. In fact, however, these ships are not responsible for rescuing refugees, but for keeping them out of Europe.

In October 2014, the European Union made a conscious decision to accept an increase in the number of deaths in order to deter refugees. With the blocking off of the Balkan route earlier this year, the refugee deal with Turkey and the so-called “war on traffickers,” the EU has drastically and deliberately increased the risks for refugees.

A study titled “Destination Europe,” from the MEDMIG (Mediterranean Migration) project, released November 2, noted that “Since the beginning of 2016 the rates of death have increased from 1 in 54 to 1 in 46 people among those crossing via the Central Mediterranean route and from 1 death in every 1,063 arrivals to 1 death in every 409 arrivals via the Eastern Mediterranean route.”

Another of the group’s research papers alleges that “European governments have contributed to the European ‘migration crisis’ by blaming people smugglers, rather than conflict, for increased migration to Europe. The failure to open up safe and legal routes to protection and the focus on border security has actually driven demand for the smugglers.”

In previous years traffickers used discarded merchant and fishing boats with satellite telephone and GPS equipment. Today, in order to avoid detection by stepped up surveillance, they rely almost exclusively on dinghies that are not suited to maritime conditions. In addition, according to the report, traffickers were now “looking for alternative routes” or sending “boats onto the water at night when they were less likely to be detected and also to be rescued.”

Meanwhile, the European Union is strengthening its military presence on its outer borders. At the beginning of October, the new European Border and Coast Guard Agency, which replaced Frontex, was deployed. The new agency not only has more extensive refugee deterrence and deportation powers than Frontex. It is also has significantly more personnel and supplies at its disposal, including over 1,500 permanently deployable border soldiers, its own ships, airplanes and helicopters, and a yearly budget of €330 million ($US 367 million).

The response of EU Commissioner for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, to the deaths of 4,220 refugees dripped with cynicism. Speaking to the news media at the opening of the Bulgarian-Turkish checkpoint Kapitan Andreevo, he called the agency a “symbol of a Europe that is efficient in addressing the migration and security challenges we are facing in cooperation with our neighbours. A symbol that we are determined to preserve our freedom of movement, without internal borders.”

Avramopoulos thanked the employees of Frontex: “Throughout all these months of the ongoing refugee crisis, these people have been working tirelessly and it is thanks to them that today we are in a much better situation than one year ago.” He ended his speech with a barely concealed threat to the refugees: “It is now our duty and responsibility for those who arrive at our borders to keep delivering in the same vein on all aspects of our comprehensive migration policy.”

The European Union is cooperating ever more closely with North African countries to stop the flow of refugees before they even reach the coast of the Mediterranean.

In Tunisia, the German federal police is training border guards. The Zeit reported that the Tunisian forces were being supplied with trucks, pick-ups, speedboats, trailers with lamp posts for watching the border at night, thousands of combat helmets and flak jackets, hundreds of protective barriers and telescopes, dozens of thermal imaging cameras and night-vision devices, and, in the near future, Dingo armoured vehicles.

In order to keep out refugees, the EU also supports dictatorships in Sudan and Ethiopia, where a state of emergency was recently declared. For European weapons companies, refugee deterrence has become a billion-euro business in which above all Airbus, Leonardo-Finmeccanica and Thales have muscled in to provide thermal imaging cameras, drones and helicopters.

Turkish government moves to crush Kurdish parliamentary HDP party

Alex Lantier

Yesterday, Turkish police arrested at least 11 top members of the majority-Kurdish Democratic Peoples’ Party (HDP), including party cochairs Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahattin Demirtaş.

Leading Turkish parliamentarians across the country were assaulted, arrested and frog-marched into police custody. Police seized Demirtaş after raiding his home in the capital, Ankara, and stormed Yüksekdağ’s residence in Diyarbakır, the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast. Also arrested were HDP lawmakers Ferhat Encü, Leyla Birlik, Selma Irmak, Abdullah Zeydan, İdris Baluken, Sırrı Süreyya Önder, Ziya Pir, Gülser Yıldırım and Nursel Aydoğan.

A crowd protested around Baluken’s home in Diyarbakır as police seized him and tried to force him into their vehicle. “Get your hands off me! I represent thousands of votes. You can’t shove my head and take me like that,” Baluken told police officers before they forced him into the vehicle and drove him away to detention.

As HDP officials were rounded up, a car bomb exploded in Diyarbakır, killing two police and seven civilians and wounding over 100 people. The attack, claimed by the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), reportedly targeted a police building. The HDP denies having links to the PKK.

The move to decapitate the HDP, a major parliamentary party in Turkey, shows that the state of emergency imposed in response to the failed NATO-backed coup in July against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is rapidly transforming Turkey into a presidential dictatorship. These powers will, sooner rather than later, be turned against social and political opposition in the working class. With Kurdish nationalist fighters in Turkey and Syria already clashing with Turkish forces, moreover, the arrest of top HDP officials will only intensify the ethnic tensions and bloodshed in the Near East.

After Demirtaş posted a statement on Twitter that “Police are at my door with a warrant to forcibly take me away,” social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and YouTube were taken down in Turkey. Ars Technica reported that Skype was also being choked inside the country. Turkish officials have often blocked Internet access after major crises—including the October 2015 bombings in Ankara, and the arrests of two co-mayors of Diyarbakır last month—in order to censor information and limit social protest.

Yüksekdağ, Demirtaş, and the other HDP officials were arrested for refusing to testify in probes of their alleged support for terrorism. These charges relate to the October 2014 battle between Kurdish and Islamic State (IS) forces in Kobane, Syria; a December 2015 Democratic Society Congress (DTK) meeting in Diyarbakır province, where HDP officials demanded broad autonomy for Kurdish areas in the region; and for alleged ties to the banned Kurdish Communities Union (KCK).

HDP members are reportedly issuing a common defense against these charges, which was prepared when the Turkish parliament voted to lift its own immunity in June in order to facilitate crushing the HDP.

“Only the people who have elected me can question me about my political activities,” the joint defense declares. “We are the elected representatives of the people. We represent the people who voted for us, not ourselves. I am standing in front of you as a parliamentary representative and a member of parliament with impunity. I will never allow anyone disrespect to the identity that I represent and the will of my people.” The defense adds that HDP officials will not “be extras in a judicial theater play ordered by Erdoğan.”

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım supported the arrests yesterday, insisting that officials should “pay the price” for “terror” activities. He confirmed that the state had deliberately taken down the Internet for “security” purposes, adding that the shutdowns were temporary.

The arrests came only days after the arrest Monday of a dozen top journalists, including editor Murat Sabuncu, at the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet. They face charges of working for the PKK and for Feithullah Gülen, a Muslim cleric exiled in the United States whom Erdoğan accuses of launching the July coup against him.

US and European officials condemned the crackdown on the HDP, with White House spokesman Josh Earnest declaring Washington “deeply disturbed” by events in Turkey.

European Union (EU) chief diplomat Federica Mogherini issued a statement declaring that the HDP coleaders were “trusted and valued interlocutors” of the EU. It added that the arrests “compromise parliamentary democracy in Turkey and exacerbate the already very tense situation in the South East of the country.”

US and EU warnings about the accelerating collapse of Turkish parliamentary democracy are hypocritical and false, painting the imperialist powers as defenders of democracy in Turkey. Above all, they have worked to undermine parliamentary democracy in Turkey, criticizing Erdoğan’s policies from the standpoint of their imperialist interests.

Less than four months ago, Washington and Berlin tacitly backed a coup, organized out of NATO’s Incirlik air base in Turkey, that nearly toppled Erdoğan. While fighters from Incirlik and army troops tried to murder Erdoğan and seize key infrastructure around Turkey—reprising plans of NATO-backed coups in Turkey of 1960, 1971, and 1980—US and European officials made only bland statements calling for “continuity” in Turkey. The coup was aimed above all at breaking up Erdoğan’s developing ties with Russia and China.

Erdoğan, having narrowly escaped with his life, is now launching a broad crackdown inside Turkey, targeting all suspected supporters of Gülen, Kurdish nationalist groups and the media.

The policy being pursued by Erdoğan is no doubt deeply reactionary. However, it does not require deep political insight to see that he is above all reacting to crises caused by the Syrian war, for which the United States and the European powers bear primary responsibility.

When Washington and the EU pressured Erdoğan to drop his “zero problems with neighbors” foreign policy and embrace their war for regime change in Syria five years ago, this proved to have vast and unforeseen consequences. Turkey became a key transit point for the supplying of NATO-backed Islamist opposition militias in Syria like ISIS and the Al Nusra Front.

Above all, the precarious peace in Turkey between Turks and Kurds collapsed when Washington then sought to use Syrian Kurdish militias as proxies on the ground in Syria. By nourishing Kurdish separatist aspirations in Syria and nearby regions of Turkey, which also fell victim to terror bombings by IS networks in Turkey, the NATO proxy war in Syria dragged Turkey itself into a civil war.

The Erdoğan government’s current aggressive military intervention in Syria and Iraq, primarily in an attempt to block the emergence of a separate Kurdish state along its southern border, goes hand in hand with an attempt to crush internal opposition.

Both are also sharpening tensions with the imperialist powers. As Erdoğan clashes with Washington over the Obama administration’s refusal to allow Turkish troops to fully participate in the US-led onslaught against Mosul, tensions are also erupting between Erdoğan and EU officials over the crackdown on the media.

On Thursday, Erdoğan sharply attacked German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had said the day before that the detention of the Cumhuriyet journalists was “highly alarming,” and he accused Germany of supporting terrorism.

“Terror is like a scorpion. Eventually it will bite the one who is carrying it. I don’t see a bright future for Germany. It has become a place where terrorists take refuge. There are racist attacks against Turks in Germany. It is unacceptable that Germany protects terrorists,” Erdoğan said, adding, “If Germany doubts whether [the Gülen organization] is a terrorist group, I invite them to come and visit the Turkish Parliament and Special Forces buildings, which were bombed on July 15.”

Université Sorbonne Paris Cité (USPC) INSPIRE Research Fellowship for International PhD Students 2017

Application Deadline:  9th January 2017

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (University): Eligible Doctoral Schools affiliated with USPC, France.

Candidates may apply for an INSPIRE PhD contract in any discipline with the support of a research group affiliated with one of the eight following higher-education institutions of USPC: Sorbonne Nouvelle 3 -Paris , Paris Descartes University , University Paris Diderot , Paris 13 University ,EHESP , INALCO , IPGP and Sciences Po. Research groups in CNRS, INED, INRIA, INSERM and IRD laboratories affiliated with one of the eight institutions listed above are also eligible to support a candidate for an INSPIRE fellowship.

Eligible Field of Study: 

• Social Sciences and Humanities
• Physical Sciences and Engineering
• Life Sciences

View broad list in link below

About the Award: Comprising over 10,000 professors and researchers from its eight higher education institutions* and five research institutes**, USPC offers a research-intensive university environment. Each year, approximately 1100, out of more than 6000, doctoral candidates defend their PhD theses, corresponding to about 10% of the annual doctoral cohort in France. Under the auspices of INSPIRE, USPC aims to recruit doctoral candidates of the highest caliber to join its research groups and enhance the standing and visibility of its Graduate Schools, and of the University, at an international level.

The three-year PhD fellowships will be awarded through a strictly merit-based selection process.

Attention will be paid to equal opportunity issues concerning all aspects of INSPIRE.

The highly competitive call in 2016 resulted in the recruitment of 29 INSPIRE doctoral fellows across all disciplines. Altogether, these 60 PhD fellowships, comprising doctoral fellows recruited in 2016 and 2017, are co-financed by the European Union through the Horizon 2020 (H2020) Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action, COFUND and by USPC via the French Government’s Investissements d’avenir programme.

Type: PhD Research Fellowship

Eligibility: 

Academic criterion

• As per definition by the European Commission, as an Early Stage Researcher, you need to have obtained the degree which would formally entitle you to embark on a doctorate in France, no more than four years before the start date of the INSPIRE PhD contract.

The PhD contract will commence on the 1st of September 2017. Therefore your Masters degree, or other equivalent diploma, should have been granted on, or after, the 2nd of September 2013, or should be granted by the 31st of August 2017.

• You must not be enrolled in a PhD programme nor have *ever* been enrolled in one.
• You must not already be in possession of a PhD degree.

You will be asked to sign a declaration of honour attesting to the above.

2.    International criterion

• ESRs will need to comply with the conditions of the EU-mobility rule (incoming mobility): applicants must not have had their main residence, or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.), in France for more than 12 months during the three years immediately prior to the deadline for the call (12H on Monday the 9th of January 2017); compulsory national service in the home country, and/or short stays of less than a month, such as holidays in France, are not taken into account.

Namely, you shouldn’t have spent more than 365 days in France between the 10th of January 2014 and the 9th of January 2017.

• Stays in the country of past and present residence are also limited by the EU-mobility rule: candidates whose project require significant time spent abroad are advised to contact the INSPIRE helpdesk inspire@uspc.fr as soon as possible.

You will be asked to sign a declaration of honour attesting to the above.

3.    Submission criterion

• All required data and documents need to be submitted via the web-based portal by 17h on the 9th of January 2017.
• Applications in SDVS and SET will need to be submitted in English. Applications in HALL and SS may be submitted in French or English.
• Missing documents will render the application null and void.
• Applicants can apply to more than one research group at USPC – they have to inform the concerned thesis supervisors in this case.
• Thesis supervisors may present more than one candidate provided they include co-supervisors (“co-encadrant.e” or “co-tutelle”) in the application.

4.    Research-topic criterion

• The proposed research project should be supported by the host research group at USPC and should not be excluded from EU funding due to ethical issues.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: These PhD fellowships are remunerated above that of a standard French PhD contract with a gross monthly salary, including employer costs, of ~2600 €. This salary includes unemployment insurance, work-site insurance, and health insurance as well as a pension plan. After standard deductions, this will amount to a net salary of ~ 1500 € (a typical gross salary after deduction of employer costs is around 1900 €).

Duration of Fellowship: 3 years

How to Apply: The online application platform is now open and candidates may submit their application material here: http://self.parisdescartes.fr/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Inspire.woa

All required information, and documents, will need to be filled in or uploaded via the application portal in English (HALL, SDVS, SET and SS) or in French (HALL and SS).

• HALL: Humanités, Arts, Lettres et Langues / Humanities, Arts, Literature and Languages
• SDVS: Sciences du Vivant et de la Santé /Life and Health Sciences
• SET: Sciences Exactes et Technologie/ Exact Sciences and Technology
• SS: Sciences Sociales / Social Sciences

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider:  European Union

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.