NCF Foundation PhD Grants for Conservation Researchers in Nigeria 2017

Application Deadline: 9th December, 2016.

Eligible Countries: Nigeria

To be taken at (country): Nigeria

Type: PhD, Research Grants

Eligibility: 

1. Candidates must be Nigerian citizens.
2. Candidates must have M.Sc. Degree or equivalent qualification in Biological Sciences, Social Sciences or Law (Environmental Law/Protection) but related to environmental resources management.
3. Candidates must have secured admission into a Nigerian university towards a PhD degree in any of the fields stated in No. 2 above.
4. Candidates must develop acceptable research proposals that meet NCF’s vision and mission.
5. Proposals must have correlation with local and national environmental conservation challenges and issues.

Selection Criteria: Candidates will be selected based on (among others) the quality of their research proposal.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

How to Apply: No paper application will be considered.  Applicants should not submit more than one proposal for consideration.

Applications must be submitted online via given website with the following:

• A progress report (on letter head paper) from the applicant’s Project Supervisor(s) stating how far he or she has gone in his or her research work and his/her role in the initial review,  as well as the relevance to the  objectives of the grant is a very essential condition for considering any application.
• 200-word justification, with relevance to natural and environmental resource management and biodiversity conservation.
• A 3,000-word project proposal to be submitted should reflect the Title, Introduction/Statement of Problem, Objectives, Methodology and Expected Output etc.
• Curriculum vitae (not more than 2 pages detailing research and work experience).
• Scanned copy of admission letter.

Note: Reference letter is an equivalent of a Progress Report from the Supervisors(s).

Click here to apply

Visit Programme Webpage for details

Award Provider: The Nigerian Conservation Foundation, Chevron Nigeria Limited

Important Notes: Please be informed that all applications will be acknowledged while only successful candidates will be contacted by the Foundation.

30 University of Edinburgh Global Research Scholarship for International Students 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 1st February 2017 | 

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International students

To be taken at (country): University of Edinburgh UK

Subject Areas: All fields offered at the university

Type: PhD

Selection Criteria

• Applicants must be of outstanding academic merit and research potential.
• Although candidates with an upper second class honours Bachelor’s degree (or the overseas equivalent) can be considered, in order to be competitive you should really have a first class Bachelor’s degree supplemented by an excellent Master’s degree.
• Other factors such as financial status, nationality and the proposed field of study are not taken into account.

Eligibility: The Edinburgh Global Research Scholarship is open to overseas students undertaking a research degree and may be held in any field of study. Applicants must be liable to pay tuition fees at the rate applicable to overseas students and must have already applied for admission to a full-time PhD research programme of study.

• The University of Edinburgh will not generally consider candidates who have already obtained a PhD, or formal equivalent, as a result of direct research training.
• Students already on programme can not be considered for these awards.
• Please also note that if you have applied for consecutive registration where you will start your Master’s programme of study in 2016 and your PhD the following year in 2017, that you will not be eligible to apply for an award in 2017.
• Edinburgh Global Research Scholarships cannot be held concurrently with fully-funded scholarships such as a Commonwealth Scholarship, or a Marshall Scholarship.

Number of Scholarships: 30

Benefits: Each award covers the difference between the tuition fee for a UK/EU graduate student and that chargeable to an overseas graduate student. The awards do not cover maintenance expenses.

Duration: Subject to satisfactory progress, the awards are tenable for up to three years.

How can I Apply?

The closing date for applications is 1st February 2017.

Please note you will not be able to access the online application form unless you have applied for admission to the University of Edinburgh.

The online scholarship application form is located in EUCLID and can be accessed via MyEd our web based information portal at https://www.myed.ed.ac.uk

When logging in to MyEd, you will need your University User Name and password. If you require assistance, please go to http://www.ed.ac.uk/student-systems/support-guidance

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details

Important Notes: All applicants will be notified of the outcome by the end of May 2017.

(LSTM) Masters Scholarships for Medical Doctors from Developing Countries 2017/2018

Application Deadline: Thomas Mark scholarship application forms will be sent only to applicants holding a conditional offer for the MTP. Applications for the MTP are accepted all year round, however, candidates wishing to apply for the Thomas Mark scholarship must apply for the MTP by midnight 30th November 2016 and return their scholarship application form by midnight 31stDecember 2016.

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To be taken at (country): Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), Liverpool (UK)

Eligible Field of Study: MSc in Tropical Paediatrics

About the Award: LSTM’s MSc in Tropical Paediatrics produces graduates who are experienced, committed, informed, proactive and capable of taking substantial and leading professional roles.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: To be considered for one of the scholarships, applicants must be:

• A national of a developing country
• Working currently in a developing country and planning to return to work in a developing country upon completion of the programme.

Selection Criteria: Applicants are required to demonstrate a strong interest in research, evidenced by published papers and conference presentations.

Value of Scholarship: The scholarship will cover tuition fees, flights, accommodation, and a living allowance.

Duration of Scholarship: 1 year

How to Apply: Eligible students offered a conditional place on a course will automatically be sent a scholarship application form.

Award Provider: Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

At Risk of Being Dupes: Life in Russia Under Sanctions

David Smith-Ferri

Here in Russia, where I have been traveling as part of a small delegation organized by Voices for Creative Nonviolence,  the people with whom we have spoken have no illusions about war and its effects. “We remember what war is like,” Nikolay, a scientist and businessman, told us. “We have a genetic memory,” referring to close relatives – parents, grandparents – who passed on their experience of the Great Purge and/or the siege of Leningrad, when nearly a million Russians died of starvation and disease because Germany cut off all imports and exports. “Three of my grandmother’s brothers and four of my grandfather’s brothers died in the war. My mother was born in 1937. She was lucky to survive the war. She lived in a village that the Nazis overran on their approach to Moscow. They bombed and burned it. Half the village burned. She just happened to be in the other half of the town when they set it on fire. Many of her friends died.”

On our last evening in St. Petersburg, we were glad to have dinner at a Georgian restaurant with a young Russian woman whom we had met the day before at a friend’s home. Alina is bright and open and unselfish. In rapid-fire English with a slight British accent, she spoke passionately about the harsh effects of Russia’s worsening economy and its causes. “The drop in global oil prices and the sanctions against Russia are hurting our economy. And it’s causing a lot of pain for people. Especially for elderly people who are on a fixed income. And it’s worse outside of the cities, where salaries are really low, but the cost of living isn’t so different (from the cities). You’ve only been in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but it’s really bad in the provinces. If you went there, you wouldn’t believe it.” This confirmed what we’d heard when we met days earlier with Russian social workers. Alina told us that “food in Russia is cheap for foreigners and expensive for Russians, and it’s getting worse. I spend almost half my salary on food. And transportation and housing are really expensive, too.”

I’m reminded of travel to Iraq which I undertook in the mid-1990s when small groups of U.S. and British people went to Iraq in defiance of federal law and in opposition to a brutal international economic embargo. We were portrayed as fools playing into the hands of the “enemy.”   Mainstream media convinced people that Saddam Hussein was not only a threat to vital U.S. interests in the region but also a person with imperial ambitions who would stop at nothing to accomplish them. Comparisons were made with Hitler, as if the means at his disposal were comparable, despite the fact that the Iraqi army, including its vaunted Republican Guard, had collapsed in a matter of weeks when the U.S. invaded in 1991, and the economic embargo had strangled Iraq’s economy and destroyed its ability even to care for itself, let alone pursue regional domination.

All of this, of course, was widely understood by the U.S. media, but it didn’t stop an energetic and unyielding portrayal of Saddam Hussein as a credible threat to the world. And so U.S. people, who surely could have handled a more complex analysis, came to accept and believe this. More, they came to see the economic warfare as a point of honor, U.S. foreign policy once again working for the benefit of the world (even if the world wasn’t grateful!), including Iraqi people who clearly needed help deposing a cruel and dangerous dictator.

This failure of the U.S. media to break its addiction to governmental propaganda provided necessary cover for U.S. foreign policies that caused hundreds of thousands of children under the age of five to die from preventable diseases, primarily related to water-borne infections. They died in large numbers day after day, month after month, year after year, unnecessarily, while their desperate parents held them, while exhausted doctors could do nothing to save them because they couldn’t get the once easily-obtainable antibiotics and rehydration fluids.

Despite the magnitude of the carnage in Iraq, despite the heart-rending scenes playing out daily in hospitals and homes, despite easy access to abundant and reliable information and images, the mainstream media (with notable exceptions in later years) averted its eyes and stuck to its narrow obsessive-compulsions.  And the children died As early as 1996, UNICEF published a report stating that 4,500 Iraqi children under the age of five were dying each month, victims of a brutal, lethal economic warfare.

The U.S. levied sanctions against Russia in 2014, stating they were in response to Russian military actions in Ukraine, and today the White House openly identifies increased sanctions as a possible response to Russian support of the Syrian government. Just as the American media ignored the effects of the sanctions regime on ordinary Iraqis, so today it fails to consider the plight of ordinary Russians when analyzing the success of sanctions. An October 26^th article in the Chicago Tribune noted that sanctions are implicated in a 3.7% contraction of the Russian economy in 2015, with a further contraction expected over 2016, but the author failed to consider possible hardships on Russian people, as if economies somehow only effect government revenues and not people’s lives.

While the current sanctions regime may strike people in the U.S. as a justifiable, tempered, nonviolent policy, it begs many questions, not least of all: who gives the U.S. the right to do this? Of course, this is a forbidden question. The U.S. right to levy sanctions against Russia and to pressure European nations to participate is as sacrosanct as its right to build military bases in countries along Russia’s border. Does anyone in the media question that? It is as sacrosanct, apparently, as the U.S. right to engage in military action in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and anywhere else it chooses.

So, if Russia deserves to be sanctioned for its actions in Europe, does the U.S. not also deserve to be sanctioned for building these bases and participating in NATO military exercises in countries bordering Russia? Why are Russian military actions in Syria different than U.S. military actions in Syria and elsewhere in the region? Who was there to sanction the U.S. for its role in the horrible bombing of the MSF hospital in Afghanistan and the bombing of hospitals in Yemen? Who sanctions the U.S. when its drones bomb a wedding party or a civilian convoy, or when targeted assassinations kill innocent civilians, as they often do? Or when U.S. airstrikes kill civilians, as happened just days ago in Kunduz, Afghanistan?

U.S. people can learn something important from our Russian counterparts – that is, ordinary Russians who are at least as opposed to war as we are. They seem to understand the double standard operating in mass media and the danger it poses. But until we see it and start asking difficult questions, we are at risk of being dupes, not of Vladimir Putin but of our own government.

Agencies of Fear

Andrew Cockburn

The intrusion of the FBI into the 2016 presidential election may have come as a shock to most people, but it should not have surprised anyone who has spent time in the Oval Office.  Stretching back to the days of J. Edgar Hoover, presidents have learned, sooner or later, that while they may revel in the title of “Chief Executive,” their command of coercive bureaucracies, such as the FBI and the intelligence agencies, along with the military services, and others, is limited at best.

At worst, presidents may find these powerful institutions actively colluding with their political enemies.  Currently, we have credible reports of agents in the New York FBI Field Office defying their nominal superiors in the justice department to dig with zeal into the Clinton Foundation on the basis of nebulous leads from a partisan and largely discredited screed by a former Bush speechwriter.

Richard Nixon would have found this a familiar scenario.  Early in his presidency, he came to appreciate how little control he exerted over the assorted fiefdoms of the intelligence and law enforcement bureaucracies.  His solution was to set up a whole new police agency with extraordinary powers, the Drug Enforcement Administration, using the cover of a war on drugs, that would be under his direct control.  Recognizing this for the threat it was, the entrenched institutions struck back, crippling Nixon with media leaks, notably those from “Deep Throat”, deputy FBI director Mark Felt.

Sometimes the hobbling of executive power may emanate not from widely recognized instruments of power, such as the FBI, but from more obscure but nonetheless potent corners of the enforcement universe.  Thus the Obama Administration’s signature foreign policy achievement, the agreement to limit Iran’s uranium enrichment program, is currently being actively undermined by a little-known branch of the U.S. Treasury, OFAC, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which supervises the enforcement of US sanctions around the world.

Under the agreement hammered out by Secretary of State John Kerry in July 2015, Iran agreed to curtail its nuclear program in return for the lifting of an array of economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other western powers in recent years.  The most onerous of these controls were those enjoining banks from doing business with nominated Iranian banks and other entities, with savage penalties levied on anyone who infringed the rules.  The effect has been to deter international banks from doing any business of any kind with Iranian banks, for fear of inadvertently triggering a billion dollar fine from the U.S. sanctions police.

Recognizing that the Iranians might lose faith in the agreement if promised rewards from the ability to trade freely with the rest of the world do not appear, the Obama Administration has taken steps to remedy the situation, or thinks it has.  Speaking recently at a ceremony in London honoring his role in negotiating the deal, Kerry announced that so long as banks make a pro forma effort to ensure they were not dealing with a sanctioned institution (there are still plenty of those) OFAC would not penalize them  even if it turned out they were wrong. “OFAC… has made it very, very clear that if you do due diligence in the normal fashion,” said Kerry, “and later it turns out it was some unenforceable entity that pops up, you will not be held accountable for that.”

Except that OFAC has different ideas.   As detailed by attorney Tyler Cullis, a specialist in sanctions regulations, writing in the blog SanctionLaw, OFAC states on its own website that the “normal” due diligence cited by Kerry is absolutely not “necessarily sufficient.” Instead, Treasury’s Acting Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Adam Szubin, OFAC’s boss, has made it clear that anyone doing banking business with Iran had better exercise “enhanced (my emphasis) due diligence,” essentially meaning they have to prove their counterparties are pure as the driven snow, or they will get it in the neck.

The consequences are predictable; international banks will deem it smart to pay attention to the sanctions cops rather than the diplomat and steer clear of Iranian business, with consequent disillusionment over the deal in Iran and the neutralizing of a key administration success.

As Nixon might have said, par for the course.

US-backed Forces Launch Raqqa Offensive as Terror Fears Grow in Europe

Patrick Cockburn

A Syrian Kurdish and Arab force backed by US air strikes has launched an offensive against the Islamic State’s de facto Syrian capital at Raqqa aimed at maximising pressure on Isis when it is already under attack in Mosul in Iraq. Anti-Isis forces advanced six miles in the first four hours of the attack, capturing many villages and farms.

The move against Raqqa, a city of 320,000 people on the Euphrates River, is by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which numbers about 30,000 fighters, of whom 20,000 are seasoned Kurdish fighters and 10,000 are drawn from the Sunni Arab population of northern Syria. The US is keen not to provoke Turkey which has denounced the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) as terrorists.

US officers say that one reason for seeking to isolate and capture Raqqa now is that it is at the centre of planning and execution of Isis terrorist operations against Europe, the US and the wider world and they fear such an operation is about to be launched. General Stephen Townsend, the US commander of Operation Inherent Resolve, which is aimed at eliminating Isis, said last week that “we know they’re up to something. And it’s an external plot; we don’t know exactly where; we don’t know exactly when.” He added that this uncertainty was creating “a sense of urgency.”

It would be keeping with Isis’ actions in the past that it seeks to counter-balance setbacks on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria by staging spectacular terrorist atrocities abroad that show that it is still to be feared and can strike when and where it wants. It carried out two suicide bombings in Iraq on Sunday killing 25 people and wounding 50 in the cities of Tikrit and Samarra.

The US-led war against the Caliphate declared after Isis captured Mosul in June 2014 has now reached a critical stage with Isis’s many enemies closing in on all sides. Iraqi troops, whose offensive against Mosul started on 17 October, are meeting strong resistance in the east of the city with one unit surrounded and cut off for a time when Isis fighters appeared behind it.

The assault on Isis in both Syria and Iraq is very much orchestrated by the US and dependent on US-led airstrikes to destroy Isis positions. This may be more difficult to do as Iraqi army units move into Mosul which may have as many as 1.5 million people still in it. Some are seeking refuge behind the advancing government troops, but the numbers on the main road east of Mosul did not seem very large on Sunday, possibly because it is too dangerous for people to leave their houses and the Iraqi Army has told them to stay there.

The opening of the Raqqa offensive brings with its political complications that may exceed the military difficulties because Turkey does not want Raqqa to fall to a force dominated by the YPG, which is the Syrian arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has been fighting a guerrilla war against the Turkey Army since 1984. The US has been trying to avoid an armed confrontation between the YPG and Turkey or Turkish backed forces, a possibility that has grown since Turkey had its local allies seize Jarabulus and a strip of territory along the Syrian-Turkish border in August.

The mainly Kurdish SDF will be moving into a fertile area north of Raqqa where the population is Sunni Arab. There are doubts among the Syrian Kurds about suffering casualties trying to take an Arab city, which they cannot keep, when they would prefer to move west and link up their present swathe of territory with the Kurdish enclave at Afrin further west, but this is being resisted by Turkey. The Syrian Kurds are doing what the US wants because their future is very dependent on US military and political support. The SDF said it had received weapons from the US, including anti-tank missiles, and some 50 US advisers are reported to be accompanying the advance to call in airstrikes.

The SDF spokesman Talal Sillo was quoted as saying that “we want to liberate the surrounding countryside, then encircle the city, then we will assault and liberate it,” he said. Asked about the possibility of intervention by Turkey or its local allies, he replied: “Of course, to begin the operation, we have made sure there will be no other forces but the SDF in the operation.”

Underlining the complexity of the present situation, an SDF official, Rezan Hiddo, said Turkey has been an “obstacle” to the Raqqa campaign all along. He said that if Turkey moves against Kurdish areas in northern Syria then the Kurds would stop their campaign directed at Raqqa, adding: “we cannot extinguish the fire in our neighbours’ house if our home is burning.”

Isis is using its traditional mixture of suicide car bombs, snipers, booby traps and Improvised Explosive Devices, but these no longer create the terror they once did. Counter-measures are more effective. Major General Maan al-Sadi told Iraqi state television that Isis fighters had launched more than 100 car bombs against his forces in east Mosul, which is only one of the fronts in the fighting. A Counter Terrorism unit came under attack from the rear after advancing into east Mosul, when Isis fighters emerged from houses behind them and isolated the convoy, preventing reinforcements from getting through. Surrounded and low on ammunition, they had to shelter in houses before they finally got out on Saturday. He Isis news agency Amaq released footage on Sunday of captured or destroyed military vehicles, including the burnt wreckage of a Humvee it said was taken in the eastern district of Mosul. Fighters shouted “Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest)” and unloaded ammunition and communications equipment.

Twenty Years of Dictatorial Democracy

James Bovard

The presidential campaign has mortified millions of Americans in part because the presidency has become far more dangerous in recent times.  Since 9/11, we have lived in a perpetual emergency which supposedly justifies trampling the law and Constitution.  And the illegalities will not end after Tuesday’s vote count.  Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have signaled that they will perpetuate power grabs in the next four years.

For generations, politicians have touted voting as a magical process which almost automatically  protects the rights of everyone within a 50 mile radius of the polling booth. But the ballots Americans have cast in presidential elections since 2000 did nothing to constrain the commander-in-chief.

Bush’s declaration in 2000 that America needed a more “humble” foreign policy did not deter him from vowing to “rid the world of evil” and launching the most catastrophic war in modern American history. Eight years later, Barack Obama campaigned as the candidate of peace and promised “a new birth of freedom.” But that did not stop him from bombing seven nations, claiming a right to assassinate American ciizens, and championing Orwellian total surveillance.

Bush was famous for “signing statements” decrees that nullified hundreds of provisions of laws enacted by Congress. Obama is renown for unilaterally endlessly rewriting laws such as the Affordable Care Act to postpone political backlashes against the Democratic Party and for effectively waiving federal immigration law. Both Bush and Obama exploited the “state secrets doctrine” to shield their most controversial policies from the American public.

While many conservatives applauded Bush’s power grabs, many liberals cheered Obama’s decrees. After 16 years of Bush-Obama, the federal government is far more arbitrary and lethal. Richard Nixon’s maxim – ‘it’s not illegal if the president does it’ – is the lodestar for commanders-in-chief in the new century.

There is no reason to expect the next president to be less power hungry than the last two White House occupants. Both Trump and Clinton can be expected to trample the First Amendment. Trump has talked of shutting down mosques and changing libel laws to make it far more perilous for the media to reveal abuses by the nation’s elite. Clinton was in the forefront of an administration that broke all records for prosecuting leakers and journalists who exposed government abuses. She could smash the remnants of the Freedom of Information Act like her aides hammered her Blackberry phones to obliterate her email trail.

Neither candidate seems to recognize any limit on presidential power. Trump calls for reviving the torture that profoundly disgraced the United States during the George W. Bush era. Clinton opposes torture but  believes presidents have a right to launch wars whenever they decide it is in the national interest. After Clinton helped persuade Obama to bomb Libya in 2011, she signaled that the administration would scorn any congressional cease-and-desist order under the War Powers Act.  She continues to tout the bombing of Libya as “smart power at its best.”

If Americans could be confident that either Trump or Clinton would be leashed by the law, there would be less dread about who wins on Tuesday. But elections are becoming simply coronations via vote counts. The president will take an oath of office on Inaugural Day but then can do as he or she damn well pleases.

We now have a political system which is nominally democratic but increasingly authoritarian. The proliferation of despotic precedents in the past 15 years would have horrified America’s Founding Fathers. The Rule of Law has been defined down to finding a single federal lawyer to write a secret memo vindicating the president’s latest unpublished executive order.  And Washington has never had a shortage of weaselly lawyers.

By the end of the next presidential term, America will have had almost a 20-year stretch of dictatorial democracy.  Washington’s disdain for the highest law of the land is torpedoing the citizenry’s faith in representative government. Forty percent of registered voters have “lost faith in American democracy,” according to recent  Survey Monkey poll.

The United States may be on the verge of the biggest legitimacy crisis since the Civil War. Whoever wins in November will be profoundly distrusted even before being sworn in.  The combination of a widely-detested new president and unrestrained power almost guarantees greater crises in the coming years.

Neither Trump nor Clinton are promising to “make America constitutional again.” But, as Thomas Jefferson declared in 1786, “an elective despotism was not the government we fought for.” If presidents are lawless, then voters are merely designating the most dangerous criminal in the land.

The Incapacity Of Indian Jails

Shrikrishna S. Kachave

I won’t be wrong if I comment that our Indian Jails have been a haven or a temporary home to many of the guilty, under trials and also to those, against whom the system has failed to prove the charges thereby spending their years of sorrow within the confines of darkness and doom.

When prison population goes beyond its authorized capacity of accommodation, it is known as Overcrowding. This overcrowding in the prisons is an important human rights issue as it forms the cause for the deterioration of the general living conditions of the prisoners. Thus, it further creates hindrances in the reformation process of the inmates. In such a scenario, the prison officers fail to implement correctional measures in the jail, which the inmates are otherwise ought to be reformed so as to enable them to live a dignified life in the society.

Most of the jails were built in the nineteenth century or at the turn of this century. They are in a state of disrepair and are overcrowded. The Shah Commission reports that on the eve of the Emergency, in as many as 15 of the 27 States and Union Territories, the actual population of the prisoners far exceeded the authorized accommodation. In Assam there were 7909 prisoners in accommodation meant for 4,930; Bihar- 38,407 as against 21,140; Madhya Pradesh-16,66 as against 12,388; Orissa-l0,222 as against 6,668; Mahaarashtra-19,786 as against 14,801; West Bengal-25,999 as against 20,237; Delhi 2,699 as against 1,273. And with the imposition of Emergency thousands more were added.

Whereas the total capacity of the jails in the country is 3,66,781, the total number of jail inmates as on 31-12-2015 are 4,19,623.  The Occupancy rate of our Indian Jails as in 2015 was 114.4% which clearly implies the apathy of our Jails. Out of this which 67.2% of the total inmates are under-trials.  So isn’t this in a way, a mockery of the Fundamental Rights bestowed to the accused by our Constitution. With the over-burdening and high pendency of cases every day, the judiciary is falling short not only of infrastructure but also of work-force to support it. As such, it is directly impacting the condition of the inmates in a bad way.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), D&N Haveli reported the highest overcrowding in prisons (276.7%) followed by Chhattisgarh (233.9%) and Delhi (226.9%).Also a total of 3,599 under-trials were detained in jails for more than 5 years at the end of the year 2015. Uttar Pradesh had the highest number of such under-trials (1,364) followed by West Bengal (294). Such statistics are enough to get oneself an idea of the startling condition of the jails in India.

Acquitted in Babri anniversary train blasts case, Nisar was among 3 who walked free in May 2016. He said, “I have clocked 8,150 days of the prime of my life inside the jail. For me, lie is over. What you are seeing is a living corpse”. “I was yet to be 20 years old when they threw me in jail. I am 43 today. My younger sister was 12 when I saw her last. Her daughter is 12 now. My niece was a year old. She is already married. My cousin was two years younger than me, she is now a grandmother. A generation has completely skipped from my life.” These words uttered by Nisar are a complete reflection of our criminal justice system which compels us to think of the system we live in.

In my conclusion, I would say that it is not the incapacity of the jails, but rather the inability of the state machinery which is lacking in its willpower to reform the present state of our jails, which sometimes has also been a home to the stalwarts viz. Politicians, actors and entrepreneurs amidst others, however to them with certain exceptions*.

Newfoundland pushes ahead with Muskrat Falls project amid mass protests

Janet Browning

Despite longstanding and increasingly vocal opposition to the environmentally destructive and highly speculative Muskrat Falls hydro-electric dam project, the Newfoundland and Labrador government-owned Nalcor began flooding the reservoir for the dam last weekend.

Dwight Ball, the province’s Liberal Premier, announced last Saturday that the government had given Nalco the go-ahead to begin flooding what will ultimately be a 41 square kilometer (16 square mile) reservoir. Nalcor engineers have argued they need to raise the water level in the reservoir to 25 meters now so as to prevent winter candle-ice from damaging dam infrastructure.

The Muskrat Fall project has been controversial since it was announced in 2012 by Danny Williams’ provincial Progressive Conservative government and Stephen Harper’s federal Conservative administration.

The focus of the most recent protests are well-founded concerns about the impact of mercury contamination on the local population, which is largely Inuit and Innu.

Studies have shown that flooding Muskrat Falls to create a dam reservoir without first clearing away all, or at least much, of the vegetation and top-soil will dramatically increase methylmercury levels in the water and food chain. This risks poisoning residents downstream in Mud Lake, Rigolet and Happy Valley-Goose Bay (HVGB) who live off fish and other wildlife, like seals, that feed on fish.

Methylmercury, explains a recent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) article, “forms in nature when bacteria reacts with mercury in water, soil or plants” and becomes increasingly concentrated and toxic as it moves up the food chain. At the top of the food chain, in fish and seals, the concentrations of methylmercury will be “10 million times the concentration” found in the local water, explains Trevor Bell, a Memorial University professor who has studied the danger that methylmercury poses to the people leaving south of Muskrat Falls.

Nalcor and the government have long known that the flooding will raise methylmercury levels. But they have claimed the toxin will be rapidly washed into, and dissipated, in Lake Melville, the estuary below Muskrat Fall that is the Inuits’ traditional hunting and fishing grounds.

However, scientific studies have shown the increased levels will persist for decades, putting the local population at severe risk of poisoning and/or the loss of their food supply.

A study by a team of Harvard researchers found that if, as the government and Nalcor propose, only some of the vegetation is cleared from the reservoir, methylmercury levels could rise by as much as 380 percent.

Despite the scientific studies and growing popular anger, Nalcor and the Liberal government continue to downplay the risk of contamination, or blithely declare, as did federal Liberal MP Nick Whalen, that it can be easily mitigated by providing “compensation” to the Inuit for the loss of their food source. Removing all the organic material, as the Harvard researchers recommended, was, they insisted, prohibitively expensive.

There are also concerns that the dam is being built on unstable ground. “It is a very uneasy feeling to be living near the Churchill River below Muskrat, let me tell you that much, HVGB resident Edward Mesher told the World Socialist Web Site. “I’m convinced this whole thing is about certain people profiting greatly from the construction contracts who really don’t understand the likely outcome or care about the people around here at all.”

As Nalcor moved to initiate flooding last month, a wave of protests erupted and continued for the better part of two weeks. Protesters, including native elders, occupied part of the Muskrat Falls worksite and picketed the main gate, succeeding in shutting the project down for several days, as workers expressed their solidarity. In a livestreamed appeal, the protesters said they didn’t want to put anyone out of a job, just protect their food and water.

In a further expression of the depth of the anger with the government and Nalcor, local mayors in Labrador said they would not allow Nalcor to transport equipment through their towns. There were also protests on the island of Newfoundland, including in Corner Brook and at the provincial legislature in Saint John’s.

Scores were arrested on contempt of court and trespass charges. The government has refused to drop these charges despite reaching a settlement on October 26 with the official native leadership—the Innu Nation, the Nunatsiavut Government and the NunatuKavut Community Council.

These government-backed organizations are dominated by the tiny, indigenous petty bourgeois elite, which has close ties to the political establishment in St. John’s. This elite is profiting from various business ventures associated with the Muskrat Fall development, including through the Nunatsiavut Group of Companies.

Under the October 26 agreement, the government claims that Nalcor will closely monitor methylmercury levels and will henceforth make all its decisions “using scientific-based research. This claim has already been belied by its insistence that it is too costly to remove all vegetation and top-soil from the reservoir.

At its unveiling, the Muskrat Falls development was trumpeted by the Williams Conservative government as a “green, clean and renewable” project that would provide a boost to Newfoundland’s economy, generating larger revenues through electricity exports to Nova Scotia and the northeastern US. However, the price of electricity has fallen, while project costs have soared. Initially budgeted at $6.2 billion, the Muskrat Falls hydro-electric project is now expected to cost nearly double that, $11.6 billion.

It is now widely conceded that Muskrat Falls is a boondoggle. But with so much money invested in the project and so much of the business elite having banked on profiting from it, there is no question of it being abandoned.

Instead the Newfoundland and Canadian ruling elite as a whole are preparing to place the burden for the cost overruns and profit shortfalls on the province’s population through electricity rate increases and further austerity.

Last month, as the protests erupted against the Muskrat Falls project, several provincial Liberal ministers joined Barry Perry, the CEO of Fortis, the St. John’s-based international power utility, in New York to celebrate Fortis’ launch on the New York Stock Exchange.

Newfoundland Premier Ball had himself been scheduled to join Perry in ringing the bell at the opening of NYSE trading on October 17, but according to press reports had to cancel.

While the people of Newfoundland and Labrador will bear the environmental and financial burdens of the Muskrat Falls project, Fortis, which owns the transmission lines by which the electricity the project generates is to be transported to markets in Newfoundland and beyond, expects to cash in, literally all the way to Wall Street.

Beijing bars two Hong Kong legislators from taking their seats

Peter Symonds

In a heavy-handed move yesterday, the top Chinese legislative body effectively banned two elected Hong Kong legislators from taking their seats in the territory’s Legislative Council for advocating independence from China.

Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching were among six young political activists who won seats in the council elections in September on the basis of calling for independence or greater autonomy from China. All were prominent in the 2014 protests that erupted against Beijing’s decision to restrict the nomination of candidates in the 2017 election, the first by universal suffrage, for Hong Kong’s powerful post of chief executive.

A protracted dispute emerged in the council after Leung and Yau refused to take the standard oath of office last month, which includes swearing allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region as part of China. Instead, displaying a banner that read “Hong Kong is not China,” the two pledged allegiance to the “Hong Kong nation.” Their modified oath provocatively included a derogatory Japanese term for China.

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing yesterday issued an official interpretation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law that “those who support Hong Kong independence do not qualify to run for and serve as members of the legislature” and should face legal consequences. In addition, it ruled that those who failed to take the oath of office solemnly should not be permitted to take it again.

In comments to the media, Standing Committee Deputy Secretary-General Li Fei branded Leung and Yau as “traitors.” Advocating separatism, he declared, was not a matter of legal opinion but a legal issue and those doing so should be punished by law. In a particularly menacing threat, he added: “Traitors of the country will not have good endings.”

The NPC ruling pre-empts the outcome of a case before the Hong Kong courts to determine whether Leung and Yau should be permitted to retake their oath of office. It also calls into question the status of the other four legislators, some of whom stop short of calling for full independence but advocate some form of “self-determination.”

Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997 on the basis of “one country, two systems,” not to promote democracy in its former colony, but rather to ensure that it remained a major Asian financial centre. Underpinning its legal system is the Basic Law, which stipulated that Hong Kong was part of China and that the Legislative Council and chief executive—relics of British colonial rule—would eventually be elected by universal suffrage.

Beijing has rarely used the right of the NPC to interpret the Basic Law. It has done so in this case out of growing fears that the advocacy of Hong Kong independence will encourage separatist movements in other parts of China including Tibet and Xinjiang. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is also fearful that calls for democratic rights in Hong Kong will spill across the border and trigger similar demands, including by the working class, for greater democratic and social rights in China.

However, the leaders of the 2014 protest movement base themselves on backward appeals to Hong Kong parochialism and, in the case of Leung and Yau, are explicitly hostile to immigrants and tourists from mainland China. The two stood as candidates for Youngspiration, which in July last year organised a protest to demand that Hong Kong authorities deport a 12-year-old boy who had overstayed a visa and lived with his grandparents for nine years.

None of the organisations that dominated the 2014 protests—the Hong Kong Federation of Students, Scholarism and Occupy Central—had any orientation to the working class or appealed more broadly to workers and youth over unemployment, social inequality and the lack of public services in Hong Kong.

These groups had no basic disagreements with the so-called pan-democrats—more longstanding parties and organisations representing layers of the Hong Kong elite who want greater autonomy for the territory from China. Their overriding concern is that Beijing’s intrusion into Hong Kong’s political and economic life will harm its status as a leading financial centre.

The Financial Times commented yesterday: “Many legal experts and opposition politicians argue that by unseating elected politicians through a decree, Beijing has dealt another serious blow to autonomy and the rule of law in Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s independent legal system is one of the territory’s main attractions for foreign investors.”

For corporations doing business in China, including private Chinese companies, Hong Kong’s legal protection of private property, solid commercial law and well-established court system offer a security for investors that is not available in China. While capitalist property relations have flourished under the CCP regime for more than four decades, the legal framework that guarantees private property and profits is still relatively rudimentary.

Both the pan-democrats and the newer separatist organisations such as Youngspiration represent layers of the corporate elite and upper middle classes in Hong Kong who are determined to maintain their territory’s competitive advantage and the associated profits, business opportunities and careers that go with it.

The NPC ruling sets the stage for an escalating political confrontation. Opposition legislator Claudia Mo told the Financial Times that the decision was the “beginning of the end” for Hong Kong. “From now on, Beijing can do what it wants, telling Hong Kong courts and judges how to rule on anything that’s politically sensitive. It’s a sad situation but we have to fight on because if we don’t, we won’t get anything,” she said.

Last week, the Hong Kong Bar Association declared that an intervention by Beijing would “deal a severe blow to [Hong Kong’s] judiciary.” Lawyers and barristers were planning to hold a “silent march” in protest today.

On Sunday thousands of protesters marched through Hong Kong holding signs saying “Defend the rule of law” and demanding the resignation of Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying. Police estimated the number at 8,000 while organisers put it at 13,000. Later in the evening, a group of hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police outside the Chinese government’s liaison office in Hong Kong.

Indo-Pakistan tensions escalate

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Geo-political tensions between India and Pakistan surged over the weekend as cross-border firing continued in both directions along the Line of Control (LoC), the de-facto border between the Indian- and Pakistani-held portions of disputed Kashmir. More than two dozen people, mostly civilians, have been killed in military exchanges over the past two weeks.

According to an Indian defence spokesperson, in the latest incident on Sunday, two Indian soldiers were killed and two more soldiers and three civilians were injured in the Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch district by Pakistani fire. Lt. Col. Manish Mehta boasted: “Indian troops [are] responding befittingly and have caused heavy damage to Pakistani army posts.”

An Indian intelligence sources cited by the media declared, “While Pakistan targeted Victor post of the Indian Army, their Copra post caught fire in retaliatory fire by the Indian troops. Pakistan has also suffered some casualties in retaliatory fire. However, their exact number could not be known.”

The artillery exchange on Sunday took place after a lull of four days. On the previous Sunday, the Indian military said it inflicted “heavy casualties,” destroying four Pakistani army posts in the “Keran sector” of Pakistani-held Kashmir. The “massive fire assault” was supposedly in retaliation for the beheading of an Indian soldier by “terrorist” infiltrators on October 28.

The ongoing clashes along the LoC highlight the dangerous standoff that has brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war. The Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is waging an aggressive military campaign against Pakistan, blaming it for Islamic separatist attacks on an Indian army base in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir on September 18.

The governments of both India and Pakistan are whipping up reactionary chauvinism and militarism, creating explosive tensions on the subcontinent. Accusations of spying have led to diplomatic expulsions and withdrawals from each other’s capital. The Pakistan Express Tribune reported on November 4 that both countries “may temporarily recall high commissioners.”

Last Thursday, in an unprecedented move, the Pakistani Foreign Office named eight Indian diplomats in Islamabad as agents of India’s intelligence agencies—the notorious Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Indian Intelligence Bureau (IB). Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told the media: “As you are aware, a number of Indian diplomats and staff belonging to the Indian intelligence agencies RAW and IB have been found involved in coordinating terrorist and subversive activities in Pakistan under the garb of diplomatic assignments.”

Pakistani authorities outlined a long list of charges: “espionage, subversion and supporting of terrorist activities in Balochistan and Sindh,” “sabotaging the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC),” “creating unrest in Gilgit-Balistan,” “damaging Pakistan-Afghanistan relations,” “fabricating evidence to portray Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism,” “fueling sectarianism and maligning Pakistan with propaganda on human rights issues,” “carrying out activities in AJK [Pakistani-held Kashmir] detrimental to the Kashmir cause and misleading the international community about indigenous movement for self-determination in IOK [Indian-held Kashmir].”

Indian Prime Minister Modi has made no secret of his government’s backing for separatist movements in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. He has cited Islamabad’s alleged atrocities in that province to counter Pakistan’s accusations of human rights abuses by the Indian military in Indian-held Kashmir. Modi has exploited the Balochistan issue in international forums like the UN as part of a diplomatic campaign to isolate Pakistan.

India is opposed to the CPEC, a network of rail links, highways and pipelines connecting western China with the Pakistani port city of Gwadar. New Delhi cites the fact that the CPEC runs through Gilgit-Balistan and Pakistani-held Kashmir—areas claimed by India—but its real concern is that the corridor could give a boost to both Pakistan and its other regional rival, China.

Under Modi, India has forged even closer ties with the US as it seeks to encircle China with allies and strategic partners. The CPEC offers China an alternate means of importing energy and raw materials from Africa and the Middle East. The Pentagon’s war planners have foreshadowed the imposition of a naval blockade of China using key “choke points” such as the Malacca Strait in the event of conflict with China.

The diplomatic feud was triggered on October 27 when India declared Pakistani High Commission staffer Mehmood Akhtar as persona non-gratia for alleged espionage activities. Akhtar was arrested by Delhi police allegedly with “sensitive defence documents” for the Pakistani military spy agency, the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). He was expelled from India.

The Indian government has been backed by the US in its bellicose campaign against Pakistan following the Uri attack. Washington regards New Delhi as an important partner in its “pivot to Asia”—a comprehensive strategy aimed at undermining the influence of, and preparing for war with China. The US has showered India with important concessions, including a civilian nuclear deal that gives India access to global nuclear market, an offer of advanced defence technology and support for New Delhi’s strategic outreach into South East Asia and Africa.

Despite its formal calls for “restraint” on both sides and appeals for a “negotiated settlement,” the US has supported India’s moves to isolate Pakistan internationally by branding it a “terrorism sponsoring” state. It has blamed Islamabad for the terrorist activities of separatist groups in Indian-held Kashmir and backed the Modi government’s military aggression, including its so-called “surgical strikes” inside Pakistan’s territory on September 28-29.

The escalating geo-political tensions between India and Pakistan underscore the utterly reactionary nature of nation-state structure in South Asia, created through communal partition of British India into a Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu-dominated India in 1947. The decades-long geo-political rivalry in South Asia has already led to three declared wars and countless war crises between India and Pakistan. Now an all-out war between India and Pakistan could become the trigger for a catastrophic global conflict that would draw in the US, China and all the nuclear-armed powers.

After state crackdown, Turkey’s HDP halts its parliamentary activities

Halil Celik 

On Sunday, Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) declared that it would halt all its parliamentary activities. In a press conference on Monday, HDP spokesperson Ayhan Bilgen said that they would not attend to the general assembly or commissions of the Turkish parliament, saying, “We have decided to halt our work in the legislature.”

The decision came as a response to the arrest of nine HDP lawmakers on November 4, including its co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdag, who were imprisoned for alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish nationalist organisation waging guerrilla war against the Turkish state.

The legal grounds of the detentions were prepared last May, when the immunity of more than 130 representatives, largely from opposition parties, was lifted by a parliamentary vote with the support of the social-democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

The political beheading of the HDP came days after the arrest of Gültan Kışanak and Fırat Anlı, the co-mayors of the Kurdish-populated southeastern province of Diyarbakir for alleged links with the PKK, on October 30. Since the last general elections of November 2015, thousands of Kurdish politicians and activists, from both the HDP and its sister party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), have been arrested on similar charges.

Also, on November 5, an Istanbul court arrested nine journalists and executives of Cumhuriyet, one of Turkey’s oldest and best-known newspapers. This stunning operation, following the last wave of bans on some 20 television and radio stations a week ago, was based on accusations that the suspects were “committing crimes on behalf of the ‘Fethullahist Terror Organisation’ (FETO) and the PKK.”

This all takes place as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) move towards an authoritarian presidential system by drafting a new constitution. Erdogan and his government have already gained the full support of the fascistic MHP, which incessantly calls for the arrest of HDP deputies as “legal extensions of the PKK”, the reintroduction of capital punishment, and the invasion of northern Syria and Iraq.

The latest state of emergency decree on October 29—which dismissed an additional 10,000 civil servants and banned 15 media outlets—has also given Erdogan the power of appointing rectors to universities directly without considering the preferences of academics. Authority to directly appoint rectors was part of an omnibus bill that the AKP sought to pass in recent months, but that was ultimately retracted.

Having largely acquiesced to the government’s authoritarian measures, especially since the failed coup attempt of July 15, the opposition CHP was finally alarmed by the last wave of detentions of Cumhuriyet journalists and HDP lawmakers.

Covering up his support to the parliamentary vote to lift the HDP’s legislative immunity, Kilicdaroglu condemned the detention of the HDP deputies, saying: “We are against the jailing of politicians, scientists and journalists over their views. If you defend democracy, then you should recognise that those who come to power with elections should go with elections. If not, you will slaughter democracy.”

Speaking to supporters in Izmir, on November 4, Kilicdaroglu also criticised the AKP government for its cross-border operations in Syria and Iraq. In fact, Kilicdaroglu has declared his party’s support to the Turkish army’s cross-border operations, so long as they target the PKK in northern Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Turkish military continues to deploy tanks, armoured vehicles, and thousands of troops to Silopi, a Kurdish-populated town near the Iraqi border, challenging the Iraqi government’s decision opposing Turkish participation in the offensive on Mosul. Ankara has insistently demanded that Turkish troops be allowed to actively participate in the attack against the Islamic State in Mosul.

On Saturday, Erdogan threateningly said that his government would have a “different response” for Shi’ite militias if they “cause terror” in Tal Afar, a city west of Mosul largely populated by Iraqi Turkmen.

The state terror launched by the government at home is tightly coupled with Ankara’s escalating warmongering moves in the Middle East, which would easily spark a conflagration—a regional war in the Middle East, and a broader war between NATO and Russia.

All events of the last decade have proven that CHP or HDP and their satellite trade unions cannot and do not want to oppose the authoritarian and militarist agenda of the imperialist powers and the Turkish ruling class, carried out by the AKP government. For years, these two bourgeois “left” parties sought a reconciliation with the AKP, under cover of a impotent calls for “peace and democracy.”

Just a few months ago, the CHP, in the name of fighting the July 15 coup attempt, obeyed the so-called Yenikapı spirit—i.e., national unity behind the AKP government. The HDP complained for its part of its exclusion from the “national consensus” reached by the AKP, CHP and MHP after the attempted coup.

Now, even as they are targeted by the government, these two bourgeois opposition parties and their allied trade union bureaucrats and pseudo-left followers are swearing allegiance to the “rule of law,” calling on workers to respect the rule and order, and relying upon the support of US and European imperialism.

This docility is not accidental; the difference between the AKP government and these opposition parties is not of principle but on tactical differences over how best to serve the vital interests of the imperialist system. Thus, both the CHP and HDP support the predatory, US-led war in the Middle East in the name of “human rights and democracy” and “national interests”, as does the AKP. Their conceptions of what these “national interests” are differ from each other, however.

The CHP—together with the AKP and MHP—supports the Turkish invasion in Syria, while the HDP aims to exclude Ankara from the ongoing imperialist re-division of Iraq and Syria, so long as Ankara does not accept the Kurdish nationalists as its main partner.

The role of the Kurdish nationalist movement, constitutionally represented by the HDP, is no less reactionary. A movement serving as US imperialism’s main proxy force in Syria and Iraq—whose leader, PKK head Abdullah Ocalan, has for years called for a Turkish-Kurdish axis based on the “National Oath” of the Ottoman Parliament in 1920 (a declaration recognising parts of Greece, Bulgaria, Georgia and Iraq as Turkish territory)—cannot seriously oppose the dictatorial and militarist drive of the Turkish government.

Whatever decision the HDP may take, it will not be in the interests of either the working class and the youth or of Kurdish suffering masses in their struggle for social and political liberation. On the contrary, seeking a greater share of profits from the exploitation of Kurdish working class and poor peasants by global conglomerates, the HDP’s actions, based on the perspective of identity politics, inevitably escalates the social counterrevolution and the danger of war.