Canada scrambles to keep privileged ties with Trump-led America

Roger Jordan

Canada’s Liberal government has launched a major diplomatic offensive to convince the incoming Trump administration to maintain and expand the Canadian bourgeoisie’s economic and military-security partnership with the US, including privileged access to the US market.

Since the November 8 US election, Trudeau’s principal secretary, Gerald Butts, and his chief of staff, Katie Telford, have held at least a dozen meetings with top representatives of Trump’s transition team, including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and chief strategist, the neo-fascist owner of Breitbart News, Stephen Bannon.

Last week, shortly after the Liberals publicized their concerted efforts to “engage” with Trump, Trudeau shuffled his cabinet. The press uniformly interpreted Trump’s impending assumption of the US presidency as the chief reason for the shuffle. For his part, Trudeau said Canada’s government had to take into account the “shift in global context.”

For three-quarters of a century, Canadian imperialism has relied on its partnership with Washington to advance its global interests. Canada was a founding member of NATO, is tied to the Pentagon through the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and since the dissolution of the Soviet Union has participated in virtually every US war in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

The Canada-US military-security alliance is underpinned by a close economic partnership. Fearing the growth of protectionism in Washington and the increasing division of the world into regional trading blocs, the most powerful sections of the Canadian bourgeoisie changed course in the 1980s, abandoned their traditional “national policy” and pressed for Canada to forge a free trade agreement with the US.

The 1989 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and subsequently NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) provided a major boost to Canadian big business, especially in the 1990s. But they also increased Canada’s vulnerability to a turn on the part of its US rivals to protectionist policies. Currently 75 percent of Canada’s exports go to the US and in the case of the auto and oil industries, Canada’s largest export earners, the figure is closer to 100 percent.

Ottawa is troubled by Trump’s threats to downgrade NATO and otherwise turn away from the alliance system through which Washington has upheld North American global hegemony since World War Two. But its chief immediate concern is Trump’s pledge to renegotiate and potentially even tear up NAFTA. Although China and Mexico are the main targets of Trump’s protectionist pronouncements, there is considerable trepidation that Canada could be sideswiped by “Buy American” provisions and other nationalist measures that a Trump administration may adopt. On Friday, Trump’s press spokesman Sean Spicer explicitly referred to Canada for the first time as a potential target for protectionist measures.

Canada’s so-called newspaper of record, the Globe and Mail, published an alarmed report last week about the plans of the Republican Congressional leadership to introduce a “border adjustment tax.” Backed by House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, the measure would subject imports to a tax equivalent to the US corporate tax rate. With the Republicans intending to reduce corporate taxes to 20 percent, this would mean a 20 percent tariff on all imports. Such a measure would effectively spell the end of the integrated continental production lines used by the Detroit Three and to a lesser extent other automakers.

According to TD Bank assessment, worldwide only Mexico would be more adversely impacted by such a tax than Canada. Daniel Schwanen, vice-president of research at the right-wing C.D. Howe Institute, did not mince words when describing its impact: “On its face, this proposal is devastating. This could really hurt trade and millions of workers in Canada.”

Expanding Canada’s role in Washington’s wars

The Canadian ruling elite is seeking to convince its US rivals to exempt Canada from its reactionary America First protectionist measures by pledging to increase its support for Washington’s drive to offset the erosion in its global power through aggression and war.

The Globe and Mail reported Saturday that “security” has been a key issue in the discussions between Trudeau’s and Trump’s senior aides. While the Globe provided next to no detail on the substance of these discussions, it did raise whether Canada might join the highly provocative anti-China “freedom of navigation” exercises the US has staged in the South China Sea.

Canada’s press has been full of editorials and commentary urging the Liberals to increase military spending, with many urging a doubling of Canada’s current $20 billion defence budget so as to meet NATO’s target that member states spend 2 percent of their GDP on their militaries.

Last week, CBC carried a sensationalist article about Russia in which leading US and Canadian foreign policy experts spoke of the need to deepen military cooperation in the Arctic and deploy new equipment like military icebreakers to counter Moscow. The article cited Rob Huebert, an expert on Arctic issues at Calgary University, to promote fears of Russian aggression in the far north, “History,” said Huebert, “won’t allow us to forget that a state that uses military force to change borders to achieve political objectives usually does not stop that type of behaviour until they meet a capability that can push back.” He then ominously declared, “We have to make sure we can provide that type of pushback with our NATO allies.”

While Canada’s ruling elite has many misgivings about Trump and America First, it is all but unanimous in supporting the Trudeau government’s efforts to offer the closest collaboration with what will be the most right-wing and belligerent administration in US history. This was perhaps given its most explicit expression by the Globe, the traditional mouthpiece of the Bay Street financial elite, which argued in mid-November that Canada has to do everything it can to be inside Trump’s “walls.”

In other words, Canada must align itself so closely with Trump, whether in global economic disputes or Washington’s military-strategic offensives, that it is integrated into Trump’s Fortress America strategy, which seeks to resolve US imperialism’s crisis by offloading it, through protectionism, aggression and war, onto Washington’s acknowledged adversaries and ostensible allies around the globe.

Significantly, the Trudeau government has let it be known that if push comes to shove, Canada will abandon Mexico to conclude a separate trade agreement with Trump. Arguing that Ottawa must put Canada’s interests first, an unnamed “key” Trudeau advisor said, “Our goal isn’t to save world trade.”

Trudeau has sought and secured the assistance of veteran Conservatives in seeking to persuade the Trump administration of Canada’s economic and strategic importance to US global power. This includes former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, whom Trudeau has reportedly asked to use his personal friendship with Trump to argue “Canada’s case,” and Derek Burney, who was Mulroney’s chief of staff and later served as Canada’s US ambassador.

The centerpiece of Trudeau’s cabinet reshuffle was the promotion of Chrystia Freeland from International Trade to Foreign Minister and effective government point person for Canada-US relations. A former international financial journalist and Thomson-Reuters executive, Freeland has close connections to both the Canadian and global financial elite. She is also an outspoken advocate of “free trade” and a firm ally of the far-right, anti-Russian regime in Ukraine. In a clear illustration of what the government views to be its principal foreign policy issue, Trudeau has left Freeland in charge of the Canada-US trade file, rather than her successor at International Trade.

Trudeau also moved veteran senior cabinet minister John McCallum from the Immigration Ministry to the post of ambassador to China. This was widely seen in the corporate press as a sign that the Liberals are determined to push ahead with greater trading and investment ties with China, possibly even including a free trade agreement. The sending of such a senior figure to Beijing could also be aimed at strengthening Ottawa’s hand in talks with the Trump administration, since it underscores Canada’s readiness to orient more towards China in the event of Trump insisting on the imposition of punitive protectionist measures.

The unions, Trump and Trudeau

Trudeau is well aware that a close alignment with a Trump administration that is deeply reviled by workers in the US and internationally for its militarism and anti-immigrant chauvinism will trigger popular opposition in Canada. The Liberal Prime Minister has thus taken the decision to keep a certain degree of distance in public from the new US president. Trudeau announced last week that he would not attend Trump’s inauguration, but would instead begin a cross-country tour to hear from “grassroots” Canadians. He also cancelled plans to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, a gathering place for the handful of billionaire plutocrats who control the vast majority of the world’s wealth.

Such public relations stunts are the desperate attempt of a crisis-ridden ruling elite to prevent the eruption of social opposition, while at the same time ruthlessly pursuing its interests in alliance with US imperialism.

The fourteen months of Liberal Party rule have confirmed in spades the utterly fraudulent character of Trudeau’s “progressive politics,” which the trade unions, the NDP and pseudo-left all shamelessly promoted prior to the 2015 federal election. Trudeau’s government has initiated a vast program of privatization to expand the presence of super-rich private investors in Canada’s public infrastructure; deepened military collaboration with the US by sending troops to the Mideast war and to Eastern Europe to menace Russia; retained the antidemocratic measures brought in by previous Conservative and Liberal governments under the guise of the “war on terror”; and overseen a further growth in social inequality.

Having assisted the Liberals to power, the unions are now playing a foul political role by stoking Canadian nationalism while seeking to deepen their cooperation with the Trudeau government. Unifor President Jerry Dias, fresh from imposing concessions contracts on 23,000 workers at the Detroit Three’s Canadian operations, has hailed Trump’s planned renegotiation of NAFTA, claiming that it will allow “Canadians” to get a better deal. Writing in the Globe and Mail last week, Unifor’s former economist Jim Stanford argued that Canada can now position itself to slash its auto trade deficit with Mexico by limiting market access, that is by pushing impoverished Mexican workers onto the unemployment lines.

Leo Gerard, the Canadian-born president of the Canada-US United Steelworkers union, has met with Canada’s US ambassador, David McNaughton, to develop a joint USW-government strategy to lobby the Trump administration in favour of a North American protectionist, i.e. trade war, policy aimed against China and other Asian and European steel and aluminum producers.

Eight billionaires control as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population

Nick Beams

Eight billionaires, six of them from the United States, own as much combined wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population, some 3.6 billion people, according to the latest report on global inequality from the British-based advocacy group Oxfam.

The report was released Monday, on the eve of the annual World Economic Forum in the mountain resort of Davos, Switzerland, at which many of the ultra-rich will converge this week. The Oxfam document contains a range of figures that highlight the staggering growth of social inequality, showing that the income and wealth gap between a tiny financial elite and the rest of the world’s people is widening at an accelerating rate.

New data made available to Oxfam reveals that wealth is even more concentrated than the organization had previously believed. Last year, Oxfam reported that 62 people controlled as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity. In its latest report, the charity notes that “had this new data been available last year, it would have shown that nine billionaires owned the same wealth as the poorest half of the planet.”

Oxfam writes that since 2015, the richest 1 percent of the world’s population has owned more than the rest of the world put together, and that over the past quarter century, the top 1 percent has gained more income than the bottom 50 percent combined.

“Far from trickling down, income and wealth are being sucked upwards at an alarming rate,” the report states. It notes that the 1,810 dollar billionaires on the Forbes 2016 rich list own $6.5 trillion, “as much wealth as the bottom 70 percent of humanity.”

Over the next 20 years, some 500 people will hand over to their heirs more than $2.1 trillion, an amount larger than the gross domestic product of India, a country of 1.3 billion people.

Oxfam cites recent research by the economist Thomas Piketty and others showing that in the United States, over the past 30 years the growth in incomes of the bottom 50 percent has been zero, while the incomes of the top 1 percent have risen by 300 percent.

The same process is taking place in the world’s poorest countries. Oxfam notes that Vietnam’s richest man earns more in a day than the country’s poorest person earns in 10 years.

The report points to the systematic character of the siphoning of global wealth to the heights of society. The business sector is focused on delivering “ever higher returns to wealthy owners and top executives,” with companies “structured to dodge taxes, drive down workers’ wages and squeeze producers.”

This involves the most barbaric and criminal practices. Oxfam cites a report by the International Labour Organisation estimating that 21 million people are forced labourers, generating $150 billion in profits every year. The world’s largest garment companies all have links to cotton-spinning mills in India that routinely use the forced labour of girls.

Small farmers are also being driven into poverty: in the 1980s, cocoa farmers received 18 percent of the value of a chocolate bar, compared to just 6 percent today.

The extent of corporate power is highlighted in a number of telling statistics. In terms of revenue, 69 of the world’s largest economic entities are now corporations, not countries. The world’s 10 largest companies, including firms such as Wal-Mart, Shell and Apple, have combined revenue greater than the total government revenue of 180 countries.

Although the authors avoid any condemnation of the profit system per se, the information provided in their report amounts to a stunning verdict on the capitalist system. It highlights in facts and figures two central processes delineated by Karl Marx, the founder of modern socialism.

In Capital, Marx explains that the objective logic of the capitalist system, based on the drive for profit, is to produce ever greater wealth at one pole and poverty, misery and degradation at the other. In the Communist Manifesto, he explains that all governments are but the executive committee for managing the affairs of the capitalist class.

This is exemplified in the tax policies and other “business-friendly” measures undertaken by governments around the world. The Oxfam report notes that technology giant Apple is alleged to have paid a tax of just 0.005 percent on its European profits.

Developing countries lose around $100 billion a year as a result of outright tax dodging and the exemptions granted to companies. In Kenya, $1.1 billion is lost to government revenue every year because of exemptions, an amount nearly twice the country’s annual health budget.

Government tax policies work hand in hand with tax dodging and criminality. The report cites economist Gabriel Zucman’s estimate that $7.6 trillion of global wealth is hidden in offshore tax havens. Africa alone loses $14 billion in annual revenues because of the use of tax havens: enough to pay for health care that would save the lives of four million children and employ enough teachers to ensure that every African child went to school.

There is one significant omission from Oxfam’s discussion of accelerating inequality. It makes no mention of the critical role of the policies of the world’s major governments and central banks in handing over trillions of dollars to the banks, major corporations and financial elites through bank bailouts and the policies of “quantitative easing” since the eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008.

A discussion of these facts would raise uncomfortable political issues. The report opens by favourably citing remarks by US President Barack Obama to the UN General Assembly in 2016 that a world in which 1 percent of the population owns as much as the other 99 percent can never be stable.

But the very policies of the Obama administration have played a key role in creating this world. After rescuing the financial oligarchs from the results of their own criminal actions with massive bank bailouts, the Obama administration and the US central bank ensured their further enrichment by providing a supply of ultra-cheap money that boosted the value of their assets.

Under Obama, the decades-long growth of inequality accelerated, along with the descent of the ruling class into parasitism and criminality. He paved the way for the financial oligarchy to directly seize the reins of power, embodied in the imminent presidency of casino and real estate billionaire Donald Trump, to whom Obama will hand over the keys to the White House on Friday.

The overriding motivation behind the Oxfam report is fear of the political consequences of ever-rising inequality and a desire to deflect mounting anger over its consequences into harmless channels. It advances the perspective of a “human economy,” but maintains that this can be achieved on the basis of the capitalist market, provided corporations and governments change their mindsets.

The absurdity of this perspective, based on the long-discredited outlook of British Fabianism, which has dominated the thinking of the English middle classes for well over a century, can be seen from the fact that the report is directed to the global financial elites gathered at the Davos summit this week, with a call for them to change their ways.

The bankruptcy of this outlook is demonstrated not only by present-day facts and figures, but by historical experience. A quarter century ago, following the liquidation of the Soviet Union, the air was filled with capitalist triumphalism. Freed from the encumbrance of the USSR, and able to dominate the globe, liberal capitalist democracy was going to show humanity what it could do.

And it certainly has, creating a world marked by ever-rising inequality, the accumulation of wealth to truly obscene levels, oppression and anti-democratic forms of rule, criminality at the very heights of society, and the increasingly ominous prospect of a third world war.

This history brings into focus another anniversary: the centenary of the Russian Revolution. Despite its subsequent betrayal at the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the Russian Revolution demonstrated imperishably, and for all time, that a world beyond capitalism and all its social ills and malignancies is both possible and necessary. Its lessons must inform the guiding perspective for the immense social struggles that are going to erupt out of the social conditions detailed in the Oxfam report.

West African Research Association (WARA) Travel Grants 2017 for African Scholars

Application Deadlines: 

• 15th March 2017
• 15th September 2017

Eligible Countries: West African countries

To be taken at (country): Any African country of candidate’s choice.

About the Award: The WARC Travel Grant program promotes intra-African cooperation and exchange among researchers and institutions by providing support to African scholars and graduate students for research visits to other institutions on the continent

Type: Research Grants

Eligibility: This competition is open only to West African nationals, with preference given to those affiliated with West African colleges, universities, or research institutions.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Grants: The WARC Travel Grant provides travel costs up to $1,500 and a stipend of $1,500. Travel grant funds may be used to:

1. attend and present papers at academic conferences relevant to the applicant’s field of research;
2. visit libraries or archives that contain resources necessary to the applicant’s current academic work;
3. engage in collaborative work with colleagues at another institution;
4. travel to a research site.

Duration of Grants:  

• Between July 1, 2017 and December 31, 2017  for the 15th March 2017 deadline and
• between January 1, 2018 and June 30, 2018 for the  15th September 2017 deadline

How to Apply: All applications must be submitted online at:

https://fs9.formsite.com/westafricanresearchassociation/form33/index.html

Complete applications will include uploaded word, pdf, or jpgs of all of the documents listed below.

• A brief (50-80 word) abstract of the activity to be funded, beginning with a clear statement of purpose
• A description (6 double-spaced pages maximum) of the applicant’s research and how the proposed travel is relevant to this work. This should be presented in language understandable to non-specialist readers
• A curriculum vitae with research and teaching record when relevant
• If attending a conference, an abstract of the paper to be read and a letter of acceptance
• If visiting another institution, an invitation from host institution
• If travel is to consult archives or other materials, a description of the collections to be consulted and their significance to the applicant’s research
• For graduate students, a letter of recommendation by the professor overseeing their research
• Proof of citizenship (scan of the applicant’s passport).

Visit Grants Webpage for details

Award Provider: Funding for WARA’s Fellowship Program is provided by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State through a grant from the Council of American Overseas Research Centers.

Important Notes: Please note: this competition is open only to West African nationals eligible for non-immigrant visas to the U.S. WARC Travel Grantees must agree in writing to submit to the WARC Library in Dakar two copies of their dissertation/thesis, articles, and all other publications arising from the research funded through this grant. They must also agree to make public presentations on their research to 1) their academic institution, and 2) their local communities and to submit reports on these to WARA.

Please note that late & incomplete applications will not be considered.

Are You a Young Blogger or Writer? Volunteer to Become a Commonwealth Correspondent

Application Deadline: Ongoing

Eligible Countries: All

About the Award: The Commonwealth Correspondents is a global network of emerging young leaders and aspiring writers and social commentators aged 15 to 29.

Correspondents are keen to tell other people about ordinary or extraordinary events occurring in their community, town, country or region. They want to explain how issues in the local, national or international news have affected them or made them think about certain subjects.

Most of all, Correspondents are keen to spark conversation and debate with other young people through their article writing.

Type: Volunteerism

Eligibility: To become a Correspondent, you have to adhere to the Editorial Code and commit to writing regularly to the Commonwealth website.

• Will respect the Commonwealth’s principles and values, including those of tolerance and understanding.
• Will not use this website to make accusations against any named individuals or organisations, or otherwise make defamatory allegations.
• Will take a balanced approach in all reporting and strive to put across alternative views and counter arguments.
• Will not plagiarise, or copy, the work of others.
• Will obtain, if they are under 18 years of age, the permission of a parent or guardian to contribute.
• Will take good care and never put themselves or anyone else in danger.
• By submitting any content (i.e. articles, pictures and videos), give the Commonwealth Secretariat copyright to distribute or republish said content on its websites or other platforms. (Refer to the site’s copyright permissions for more information.)
• Give permission for content (i.e. articles, pictures and videos) to be offered by the Editor and Commonwealth Secretariat to other media outlets and platforms free-of-payment. (Republication will not entail commercial benefit, but will give added exposure to contributors’ work, YourCommonwealth.org and the Commonwealth Youth Programme.)
• Will not claim to represent the Commonwealth Youth Programme or Commonwealth Secretariat unless employed as such. 

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Program: There are many benefits of becoming a Correspondent:

• It is satisfying to know your articles are being read by other young people and policy makers across the world.
• Your articles may influence opinion across the Commonwealth and within governments.
• It is a great thing to add to your resume/curriculum vitae – likely to impress future employers.

How to Apply: For more information or to apply to become a Commonwealth Correspondent, please email patricia@yourcommonwealth.org.

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: YourCommonwealth

Important Notes: For more information or to apply to become a Commonwealth Correspondent, please email patricia@yourcommonwealth.org.

DAAD-CARTA PhD Scholarships for Eastern African Scholars 2017

Application Deadline: 10th February, 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Eastern African countries

About the Award:  The long-term impacts of the scholarships are: strengthening teaching and research at higher education institutions in Eastern Africa region, solving development issues in the region and strengthening universities, research institutes and research networks in Eastern Africa, and contributing to the establishment of regional networks between these institutions. This is in line with CARTA’s objective of producing a critical mass of high-quality graduates trained to address complex issues surrounding health and development in Africa, retain them in the region, and provide them a vibrant intellectual environment as well as viable and challenging research and growth opportunities.

Type: Scholarship

Eligibility: 

• Applicants must be CARTA fellows in the Eastern Africa region.
• Applications are only open to those who are in the very early stages of the PhD programme.
• They must demonstrate strong commitment to research capacity building at their institutions as well as potential for research leadership.
• The last degree of the applicant must have been completed less than six years ago at the time of application.
• The applicant must be a citizen of a country in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Selection Criteria: Candidates will be selected on the basis of their previous research and academic achievements and the quality of their research proposals. The PhD proposals must demonstrate relevance to development.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The funding includes:

• Stipends covering the cost of living including accommodation
• Fees including cost of research and academic monitoring, tutorial and other support, university registration and tuition fees
• Health insurance
• Optional research stay in German for up to six months

Duration of Scholarship: Funding is generally granted for a period of 3 years.

How to Apply: Applicants must submit the following documents:

• A 10-15 page PhD proposal related to health and development with a detailed work plan
• Abstract of the proposal on one page
• Signed CV (please use Europass CV template (http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu)
• Certified copies of all university degrees and transcripts
• Admission letter or an official letter assuring admission. The letter should include a fee structure
• Recommendation letter by head of department indicating that you are a staff member and how you will be integrated into the staff development agenda of the university.

Application documents should be submitted to the CARTA Program Manager; carta@aphrc.org  and copied to applications@daadafrica.org  by 11:59 PM (Nairobi Time) on or before February 10, 2017.

The email should have on the subject line: Application for 2017 DAAD Scholarship.

CARTA will communicate to pre-selected candidates to log into the DAAD portal https://portal.daad.de/irj/portal  and register themselves and submit an application.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: DAAD

University of Tokyo Global Science Course Scholarship for Transfer Students 2017/2018 – Japan

Application Deadline: 7th April, 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Japan

Field of Study: Chemistry

Type: Undergraduate

Eligibility: Prospective students must have successfully completed or will be completing their first two years of studies in a comparable undergraduate program at an accredited higher educational institution before enrolling into GSC. It is also necessary for prospective students to have received secondary and tertiary education outside of Japan.

Students are required to be proficient in English.

Number of Awardees: A few

Value of Scholarship: 150,000 Japanese yen per month

Duration of Scholarship: Up to two consecutive years

How to Apply: Please visit the following webpage regarding application procedures- http://www.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/GSC/admissions/application.html

Visit Scholarship Website for Details

Award Provider: School of Science, the University of Tokyo

120 MasterCard Foundation Scholarships at EARTH University for Africa, Latin America and Caribbean Students 2017/2018 – Costa Rica

Application Deadline: 25th May 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Regions: Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean

To be taken at (country): Earth University, Costa Rica

Accepted Subject Areas: Courses offered at the university which are mainly in Agricultural sciences and Natural resources management

About Scholarship: EARTH University, Costa Rica has a seven-year partner with the MasterCard Foundation to provide scholarships to young leaders from disadvantaged communities in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Through the partnership, the Foundation will provide 120 undergraduate scholarships amounting to $19.5 million to EARTH students for 7 years. Approximately one-third of the scholars will come from Sub-Saharan Africa and the rest from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Offered Since: 2012

Type: Undergraduate scholarships for African, Latin America and the Caribbean

Selection Criteria: Recipients of The MasterCard Foundation scholarships meet all of EARTH’s selection criteria. As part of the partnership agreement, the university seek to award these scholarships to qualified candidates whose financial circumstances would otherwise prevent them from attending university.

Eligibility: The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program targets talented but financially disadvantaged secondary and prospective undergraduate students from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean who are committed to giving back to their community in Africa.

Number of Scholarships: A total of 120 scholarships will be awarded within 7 years

Value of Scholarship: Recipients will receive their full education at no cost; Full tuition and other expenses. Other benefits will include:

• Leadership development
• Comprehensive scholarships
• Support for transition to secondary school, University or the workforce
• Life skills
• Mentoring and counselling

Duration: Scholarship is for the full four duration of undergraduate study.

How to Apply: The first step to receiving a scholarship from this program is to apply to EARTH by May 25th. EARTH does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, ethnic origin, religion, gender or nationality in its education and admissions policy.

APPLY NOW

Visit scholarship webpage for Details

Sponsors: MasterCard Foundation.

Global Warming Clobbers Ocean Life

Robert Hunziker

The waters of the Pacific off the California coast are transparently clear. Problem is: Clear water is a sign that the ocean is turning into desert (Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA).

From Alaska to Central America, and beyond, sea life has been devastated over the past three years like never before. Is it Fukushima, or nature running its own course, or some kind of perverse wrath emanating from global warming? For a hint, scientists refer to the lethal ocean warming over the past few years as “the Warm Blob.”

After all, global warming hits the ocean much, much harder than land. Up to 90% of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming is absorbed by the ocean, which is fortuitous for humans. Just imagine the chaos if the situation were reversed: Mobs of regular ole people morphing into maddened gangs striving for food, huddled in far northern latitudes while Mid America scorches brittle crops in sandy soil, a dystopian lifestyle.

“Upper ocean heat content has increased significantly over the past two decades” (Source: Climate Change: Ocean Heat Content, NOAA, Climate.gov, July 14, 2015). More than 3,000 Argo floats strategically positioned worldwide measure ocean temps every 10 days.

Scientists classify the Warm Blob phenomenon as “multi-year ocean heat waves,” with temperatures 7° F above normal and up to 10°F above normal in extreme cases. How would humans handle temperatures, on average, 7° to 10°F above normal? There’d be mass migrations from Florida to Alaska, for sure. As it happens, sea animals do not do well. They die in unbelievably massive numbers; all across the ocean… the animal die-offs are unprecedented. Scientists are stunned!

After years of horrendous worldwide sea animal die-offs, 2016 was a banner year. Is this out of the ordinary? Sadly, the answer is: Yes.

The numbers are simply staggering, not just in the Pacific, but around the world, e.g., the following is but a partial list during only one month (December 2016): Tens of thousands of dead starfish beached in Netherlands; 6,000 dead fish in Maryland waterway; 10 tons of dead fish in Brazilian river; tens of thousands of dead fish wash up on Cornwall, England beach; schools of dead herring in Nova Scotia; 100 tons of fish suddenly dead in Indonesia; massive fish deaths ‘state of calamity’ in Philippines; thousands of dead crayfish float down river in New Zealand; masses of dead starfish, crabs, and fish wash ashore in Nova Scotia, and there are more and more….

In fact, entire articles are written about specific areas of massive die offs, for example: “Why Are Chilean Beaches Covered With Dead Animals?” Smithsonian.com, May 4, 2016. Chilean health officials had to resort to heavy machinery to remove 10,000 dead rotting squid from coastlines earlier in the 2016 year. Over 300 whale carcasses hit the beaches and 8,000 tons of sardines and 12% of the annual salmon catch… all found dead on beaches, to name only a few! You’ve gotta wonder why?

According to Nate Mantua, research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, California: “One of the things that is clear is there’s a lot of variation from year to year along the Pacific Coast, and some of that is tied into natural patterns, like El Niño,’ Mantua said. ‘But what we saw in 2014, ‘15 and the first part of ‘16 was warmer than anything we’ve seen in our historical records, going back about 100 years” (Mary Callahan, Year in Review: Ocean Changes Upend North Coast Fisheries, The Press Democrat, Dec. 25, 2016).

Fishermen bitterly claim the ocean is changing like never before. Meanwhile, scientists study those weird changes but do not fully understand the problem. Unfortunately, the general public does not see changes hidden within water; otherwise, they, the general public, might organize and demand their politicians in Washington, D.C. fight climate change/global warming. According to John Largier, professor of coastal oceanography at UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, “Climate change syndrome is definitely having an impact,” Ibid.

As it happens, the world climate system is interconnected, interwoven such that climatic stress originated at sea spills onto land, e.g., the Warm Blob was first observed and linked to a high-pressure ridge stationed over the north Pacific in 2011. This ridge diverted winter storms, thereby exacerbating California’s drought meanwhile weakening winds that ordinarily absorb ocean heat and stir up the cold water necessary for immensely productive Northern Coast breeding grounds for marine wildlife.

Morosely, too-warm ocean water serves as breeding ground for the infamous deadly “red tide,” a bloom of single-celled organism that thrives in warmer waters, producing a neurotoxin called domoic acid, resulting in enormous numbers of sea lion fatalities and massive destruction of Dungeness crab fisheries and all kinds of other trouble.

Too-warm water also contributes to the collapse of bull kelp forests, which are the ocean’s equivalent of the tropical rain forest; meanwhile, purple urchins thrive and multiply in explosive fashion in the poisonous environment, devouring remaining plant life. Thereby, out-competing hapless red abalone, the shellfish that people love.

Collapsing food chains are evident up and down the Pacific Coast earmarked by large die offs of Cassin Auklets, a tiny seabird, as well as massive numbers of Common Murres. The sea lions and fur seals suffer from starvation and domoic acid poisoning. In early 2013 scientists declared the sea lion die-off an “unusual mortality event.”

Nursing sea lion mothers are unable to find enough forage like sardines and anchovies. Pups, searching for food, strand on beaches filled with curious sunbathers with a natural proclivity to cuddle the hapless cuties that could easily result in fierce attacks. As it happens, lifeguards run along sandy beaches warning beachcombers beware!

Still, wildlife die-offs are an ancient phenomenon, mentioned by Aristotle in his Historia Animalium (4th Century B.C.). In the U.S. in 1884, hundreds of tons of dead fish bellied up in lakes around Madison, Wisconsin. This knowledge of the past gives one pause when considering whether an all-out alarm is warranted this time around. After all, isn’t it nature’s way?

No, this time it is different, much different. The all-out alarm is warranted with bells clanging! Yes, of course part of nature’s cycle over the eons involves wildlife die-offs. That’s nature, but nowadays nature is out-of-whack! Ring the bells; blast the sirens!

As published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Recent Shifts in the Occurrence, Cause, and Magnitude of Animal Mass Events, Vol. 112, no. 4, Aug. 5, 2014) it was found that worldwide animal die-offs are increasing in both number and magnitude, even after statistically correcting for the fact that mass deaths are now more likely to be documented than in the past.

“Every biologist I spoke with who is researching mass-mortality events said that many wildlife die-offs today really could be signals of serious problems with the ecological fundamentals of the planet” (Source: J.B. MacKinnon, On Animal Deaths and Human Anxieties, The New Yorker, April 21, 2015). That is the worst possible news you can ever hear.

As for only one example amongst many, the typical number of bird deaths per reported die-off was about 100 in the 1940s. Today it is 10,000 and reported much more frequently than 75 years ago.

Bottom line, the ecosystem is under fierce attack, and it is real, very real indeed with too much global warming, too much ag runoff, too much heavy-duty massive overfishing, likely too much nuclear radiation, and deadly acidification caused by excessive CO2 concentrations (already damaging pteropods at the base of the marine food chain) as the ocean absorbs anthropogenic CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, similar to the upper atmospheric conundrum where 400+ ppm of CO2 (anything over 350 ppm leads to serious planetary trouble over time) is already heating up the planet as the ocean absorbs 90% of that heat. Thank your lucky stars for that… but only transitorily!

As stated by the Environmental Defense Fund: “Oceans are at the Brink”- For decades, the ocean has been absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) dumped into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. It has absorbed a lot of the extra heat produced by elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. But even the ocean has limits!

Going forward, how will the Trump administration confront this messy, possibly fatal and very complex situation, since fossil fuels are the main driver behind climate change/global warming?

Will the Trump administration initiate a nationwide renewable energy plan, similar to Communist China? Accordingly: (Michael Forsythe, China Aims to Spend at Least $360 Billion on Renewable Energy by 2020, New York Times, January 5, 2017)

Modi’s Man-Made Calamity: How Many Will Die?

Walt Gelles

At this point, every sane and responsible person in India should be asking:  How many tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of people in India are going to die from hunger, starvation, malnutrition and disease as a result of Modi’s demonetisation?

Reports from the rural and semi-rural areas of India, from towns and villages, already indicate that hunger is widespread because of the nonexistence of cash. This artificial crisis was created on November 8, 2016 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi arbitrarily declared 86% of the nation’s currency worthless as legal tender—a draconian diktat taken without any prior discussion with his cabinet, Parliament, or the people.

The so-called demonetisation policy has had devastating effects across all sectors of Indian society, crippling businesses and farmers, causing retail stores and vendors to shut down, increasing unemployment, and forcing ordinary people to lose billions of man-hours and woman-hours waiting in endless queues at banks to exchange unusable currency notes or to withdraw the meager cash allowed.

But the worst-hit are the poor, the day-laborers, and the rural and semi-rural working class who make up around two-thirds of India’s population—over 650 million people.  The majority of these people have no bank accounts or credit cards.  Nationwide, only 53% of Indians have bank accounts, and more than 300 million people have no government-approved ID which they needed to convert their hard-earned cash into approved denominations.

Ironically, those worst-hit are the people who helped vote Modi into power, believing his populist rhetoric.  Now, while they and their families go hungry, they outwardly give lip-service approval to Modi’s dictatorial scheme, which was supposedly designed to root out “black money”, ie, money that the rich and well-off hide from the tax authorities.  But inwardly, they are seething with anger at what is being done to them.

It is clear that India’s corporate-controlled mainstream media will continue to grossly underreport the havoc that Modi has wreaked upon the nation with his disastrous, ill-conceived experiment in social engineering. It is also clear that the opposition parties in India are weak, divided, corrupt, and unable to come together and put an end to this unfolding tragedy.

Massive relief efforts should be underway to help all those who face shortages of food, medicine, and cash.  Whether this means an immediate reversal of demonetization or interim measures, they should be carried out nationwide.  But this is not happening.  Instead, Modi arrogantly and defiantly defends his suicidal policy, while his party has launched a huge propaganda campaign extolling the benefits of India’s supposed transition to a digitalized cashless society.  This is insane, as over 95% of the country’s transactions are done in cash.

Many more months will elapse before the government prints up the replacement currency and before the Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) have been recalibrated with the necessary new hardware and software.  Right now, almost none of the ATMs work, despite the government/media lies and misinformation.  While the bureaucrats and banks dither, how many people will die from hunger, starvation, or preventable disease because they and their children couldn’t get food or medical treatment?

Perhaps it is time for intervention on a global scale.  This issue should be brought before the attention of the United Nations.  If necessary, resolutions should be passed condemning India’s government for its monumental negligence, inhumanity, and murderous scheme which affects one-sixth of humanity.  Other groups that monitor human rights worldwide should be involved as well.

We Must Not Demonize And Threaten Russia

John Avery

Eisenhower’s warning

In his famous farwell address, US President Dwight Eisenhower eloquently described the terrible effects of an overgrown military-industrial complex. Here are his words:

“We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions…. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence, economic, political, even spiritual, is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government…[and] we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

In another speech, he said: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. “

The devil’s dynamo

The military-industrial complex involves a circular flow of money. The cash flows like the electrical current in a dynamo, driving a diabolical machine. Money from immensely rich corporate oligarchs buys the votes of politicians and the propaganda of the mainstream media. Numbed by the propaganda, citizens allow the politicians to vote for obscenely bloated military budgets, which further enrich the corporate oligarchs, and the circular flow continues.

Today the world spends more than 1.7 trillion dollars ( $1,700,000,000,000) every year on armaments. This vast river of money, almost too large to be imagined, is the “devil’s dynamo” driving the institution of war. Politicians notoriously can be bought with a tiny fraction of this enormous amount; hence the decay of democracy. It is also plain that if the almost unbelieivable sums now wasted on armaments were used constructively, most of the pressing problems now facing humanity could be solved.

Because the world spends almost two thousand billion dollars each year on armaments, it follows that very many people make their living from war. This is the reason why it is correct to speak of war as an institution, and why it persists, although we know that it is the cause of much of the suffering that inflicts humanity.

We know that war is madness, but it persists. We know that it threatens the survival of civilization, but it persists, entrenched in the attitudes of historians, newspaper editors and television producers, entrenched in the methods by which politicians finance their campaigns, and entrenched in the financial power of arms manufacturers, entrenched also in the ponderous and costly hardware of war, the fleets of warships, bombers, tanks, nuclear missiles amd so on.

The military-industrial complex needs enemies

The military-industrial complex needs enemies. Without them it would wither. Thus at the end of the Second World War, this vast power complex was faced with a crisis. It was saved by the discovery of a new enemy: Communism.

This new enemy saved the military-industrial complex for a long time, but at the end of the Cold War, there was another crisis: the threat that arms profits would be converted into a  “peace dividend”. Would this be the end of unlimited corporate greed? Heaven forbid! There was a desparate search for a new enemy. What about Islam? The Crusades could be revived, and all would be well. This seemed, for a long time to be a good solution.

But recently, with the Middle East in flames, Islam no longer seemed to be a sufficiently strong enemy justiify the collossal budgets of armaments industries. A new enemy was urgently needed. One  look at our mass media tells us the solution that our military-industrial complex has come up with: Revival of the Cold War!

Nuclear war by accident or miscalculation.

As a concequence of our oligarchy’s decision to revive the Cold War, we are witnessing increasing demonization of Russia as well as flagrant provocations, such as the recent massive NATO manovres on Russia’s borders.

With unbelievable hubris and irresponsibility, western politicians are risking the destruction of human civilization and much of the biosphere through a thermonuclear war. Such a cataclysmic war could occur through technical or human error, or through escalation. This possibility is made greater by th fact that despite the end of the Cold War, thousands of missiles carrying nuclear warheads are still kept on a “hair-trigger” state of alert with a quasi-automatic reaction time measured in minutes.

A number of prominent political and military figures (many of whom have ample knowledge of the system of deterrence, having been part of it) have expressed concern about the danger of accidental nuclear war.

Colin S. Grey, Chairman of the US Institute for Public Policy, expressed this concern as follows: “The problem, indeed the enduring problem, is that we are resting our future upon a nuclear deterrence system concerning which we cannot tolerate even a single malfunction.”

General Curtis E. LeMay has written, “In my opinion a general war will grow through a series of political miscalculations and accidents rather than through any deliberate attack by either side.”

Bruce G. Blair  of the Brookings Institute has remarked that “It is obvious that the rushed nature of the process, from warning to decision to action, risks causing a catastrophic mistake.”… “This system is an accident waiting to happen.”

The duty of civil society

Civil society must make its will felt. A thermonuclear war today would be not only genocidal but also omnicidal. It would kill people of all ages, babies, children, young people, mothers, fathers and grandparents, without any regard whatever for guilt or innocence. Such a war would be the ultimate ecological catastrophe, destroying not only human civilization but also much of the biosphere. Each of us has a duty to work with courage and dedication to prevent it.