Eligible Fields of Study: 1. B.Sc. Bioresource Engineering (Agricultural Engineering) 2. Bachelor of Veterinary Science (B.V.Sc.), 3. B.Sc. Viticulture and Oenology 4. B.Sc. Plant Pathology 5. B.Sc. Entomology 6. B.Sc. Forestry and Wood Science 7. B.Sc. Marine Biology 8. B.Sc. Oceanography and Marine Biology 9. B.Sc. Ichthyology specialising in Aquaculture, National Diploma: Food Technology 11. National Diploma: Forestry 12. National Diploma: Marine Science.
Postgraduate studies (B.Tech, B.Sc., Hons., M.Tech., M.Sc., D.Tech. and Ph.D.) in different agricultural, forestry and fisheries fields of study relating to DAFF priority research projects.
About the Award: The bursary awards target the previously disadvantaged and impoverished persons from poverty-stricken and rural communities. People with disabilities are encouraged to apply. Successful candidates will be appointed as interns and placed with the relevant industry/research institution/institution of higher learning as young professionals. Successful candidates will also be allocated a mentor and will receive a monthly allowance from the department
Type: Bachelors, Masters and PhD
Eligibility: .
It is worth noting that certain fields of study are only available at certain institutions of higher learning:
B.Sc. Bioresource Engineering (Agricultural Engineering): University of KwaZulu-Natal
Bachelor of Veterinary Science (B.V.Sc.): University of Pretoria
B.Sc. Viticulture and Oenology: University of Stellenbosch
B.Sc. Forestry and Wood Science: University of Stellenbosch
B.Sc. Oceanography and Marine Biology: University of Cape Town
B.Sc. Ichthyology specialising in Aquaculture: Rhodes University
B.Sc. Entomology: University of Pretoria, Free State and Fort Hare
National Diploma: Forestry: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
National Diploma: Marine Science: Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Applicants must be South African citizens.
Applicants must complete the relevant bursary application forms available from the website address: www.daff.gov.za (Click the following: Food Security and Agrarian Reform Branch then Sector Education and Training and then Careers).
Applicants who apply for fields of study that are not listed above will not be considered.
Please note that communication will be limited to successful applicants only. If you have not received any communication from the department by 15 January 2018, after the National Bursary Committee has finalised the selection process, consider your application unsuccessful.
All completed bursary application forms together with certified copies of ID and certificates/performance results should be sent to the following address:
Selection Criteria:
The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries reserves the right to determine the total number of bursary allocations for the academic year based on the total budget available.
The National Bursary Committee will make use of the Bursary Scheme’s 14-point system to allocate points to shortlisted applicants.
The Bursary Scheme of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is in fulfillment of the sector strategic objective of elimination of skewed participation in the agricultural, forestry and fisheries sectors.
Number of Awardees:
Value of Bursary: The bursary will cover tuition, accommodation, books, meals and monthly allowance.
Eligible Countries: International Labour Organization (ILO) member countries.
About the Award: The objective is to encourage quality reporting on labour migration. Such reporting is all the more significant as media often promotes a toxic public narrative based on nationality, national origin, gender and migratory status misperceptions, reinforcing prejudice, intolerance and stigmatization against migrant workers and their families.
While not overlooking the negative aspects (e.g. often a hard reality of exploitation and violation of human and labour rights), applicants are also encouraged to highlight the positive contribution of migrant workers to countries of origin, transit, and destination as well as the key aspects such as their fair recruitment.
The 2017 Global Media Competition on Labour Migration will be contributing to the UN TOGETHER campaign (https://together.un.org/ ) which has the purpose of encouraging global action in promoting non-discrimination and addressing the problem of rising xenophobia against refugees and migrants.
Type: Contest
Eligibility: Professional journalists are invited to submit a maximum of two entries, one per each of the two following categories:
Written articles (online or print articles)
Media Production (photo journalism, audio, video)
Articles should not exceed 8000 words and videos/multimedia should not be longer than 10 minutes. Submissions must have been published between 1 January 2016 and 27 October 2017 to qualify.
Entries submitted should address either one of the following 2 thematic areas: (i) Labour migration aspects) Fair recruitment of migrant workers (guided by the General Principles and Operational Guidelines on Fair Recruitment. See link in Program Webpage below).
Refugees and displaced persons, where they are employed as workers outside their own countries, are considered migrant workers. As such, submissions covering international migrant workers and refugees (participating in labour markets outside their own countries) will be accepted.
Selection Criteria: A panel of 5 distinguished judges will evaluate the top ten entries from each of the above-mentioned two categories. The decision of the ILO and judges on all matters relating to the contest is final, and no correspondence will be entered into at any stage. The ILO encourages entries that cover different aspects of labour migration and, as much as possible, reflect views of various concerned parties: government, employers, and trade unions’ organisations, migrant workers.
In addition to ensuring that competition submissions are aligned with the basic ethics of journalism, all submissions will be judged on the following criteria:
Creativity
Accuracy
Protection
Value and Number of Awards: A total of four winners (one per category, per thematic area) will receive $1,000 USD each. Winning entries will be featured on ILO website and widely promoted as an example of good journalism.
How to Apply: To enter the competition, please fill in the online entry form before 27 October 2017(latest 23:59, Central European Time). Entries are accepted in three languages: English, French, and Spanish. Entries in other languages will be accepted provided that the applicant presents a faithful translation in one of the three languages mentioned above.
Winners will be officially announced on 18 December to mark International Migrants Day.
Award Providers: The 2017 global media competition on labour migration is organized by the International Labour Organization in collaboration with the International Trade Union Confederation, the International Organization of Employers, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the International Federation of Journalists, Equal Times, Solidarity Center, Human Rights Watch, and Migrant Forum in Asia, as well as the International Training Centre of the ILO.
To be taken at (country): The fellowship must take place in a country other than the applicant’s current place of training. European applicants may choose to visit European or non-European units, while non-European applicants must choose to visit a European center.
Eligible Field of Study: Fellowships are available for clinical training or research training to young surgeons in the field of Surgical Oncology.
About the Award: The aim of this Fellowship is to allow young surgeons to visit a specialist center outside of their own country and help them expand their experience and learn new techniques. ESSO was founded in 1981 to advance the art, science and practice of surgery for the treatment of cancer. Central to achieving this objective is ESSO’s willingness to collaborate, interact and foster an open exchange with a range of other specialities.
Type: Medical Fellowships
Eligibility:
Applicants must be a specialist, trainee or junior doctor with a declared intention of specializing in a sub-specialty of surgical oncology (breast, upper GI, hepatobiliary and pancreatic, colorectal, endocrine, head and neck, thoracic, skin cancer and melanoma, gynaecology, urology, sarcoma).
Applicants must be or become ESSO members before the start date of the award.
Applicants must be younger than 40 years of age or be in a training grade
Both European and non-European citizens can apply. European applicants may choose to visit European or non-European units, while non-European applicants must choose to visit a European center.
Previous Fellowship recipients will be ineligible to apply for a second award.
Value of Scholarship: The Education and Training Committee grants two types of fellowships each year:
8 standard training fellowships (value 2.000 EUR): from 1 to 3 months
1 major training fellowship (value 10.000 EUR): from 4 to 12 months
How to Apply: Applications must be submitted in English only and include the following information:
A motivation letter describing the applicant’s area of interest, research plan and reasons behind the visit
A letter of support from their Head of Department
A letter of invitation from the Head of the Department they wish to visit
A proposal budget sheet estimating how the funds will be spent
All documents must be sent to ESSO Secretariat in a single PDF document.
Award Provider: The European Society of Surgical Oncology (ESSO).
Important Notes: All successful fellows will be expected to write a report about their experience and provide a testimonial and pictures for publication on the ESSO website within 3 months of return from the fellowship.
Please note you will need to download all documents in a single PDF document.
Application Deadline: For students with a January 1, 2018 start date, the deadline is 1stNovember, 2017.
Offered annually? Yes
Eligible Countries: Domestic andInternational
To be taken at (country): Canada
Eligible Fields of Study: Courses offered by the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research
About the Award: The FGSR Recruitment Scholarships attract the best and brightest students to the University of Alberta. The purpose of this scholarship is to recruit superior students at the doctoral level who have the potential to contribute to the University of Alberta’s community and research.
Type: Doctoral Recruitment Scholarships
Eligibility: The scholarship will be awarded to students who:
• are Canadian citizens, permanent residents or international students • are admitted to a doctoral graduate degree program by the department • will be registered full-time in a doctoral degree program • have an admission GPA of at least 3.7
Departments might have additional selection criteria. Candidates are advised to consult with the department into which they seek admission for more details.
Selection Criteria: Departments may choose to nominate individuals based on a variety of criteria including academic record, letters of appraisal, statement of program, applicant’s research, potential contributions to research, and other technical experience.
Number of Awardees: Each department is assigned an allocation. Individual graduate departments are responsible for selecting nominees based on eligibility criteria and allocations.
Value of Scholarship: Scholarships will be offered in increments of $5,000.
Duration of Scholarship: The department may decide how many increments of $5,000 to offer a student.
How to Apply: There is no application form; eligible students are considered on the recommendation of the admitting department. Students cannot apply for this scholarship.
The department completes the nomination form, attaches the required document(s) listed on the form and submits to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research (FGSR) via email at grad.awards@ualberta.ca by the nomination deadline. The FGSR reviews the nominations for eligibility and completeness and forwards them to the Graduate Scholarship Committee for adjudication.
Eligible Field of Study: All researches in emerging infection diseases like the Zika virus, or chronic illnesses such as asthma and hypertension. The list of research is flexible but must be restricted to health, small or epidemic.
About the Award: Scientists in many areas of research are affected by the growing need to better understand health issues that affect the world’s population. Whether they’re studying emerging infection diseases like the Zika virus, or chronic illnesses such as asthma and hypertension, scientists work with massive amounts of data and must push the limits of computer technology. Resolving health-related humanitarian crises as well as smaller-scale problems requires innovation on all fronts, including computer science. The Microsoft Azure Public Health Research Award aims to support researchers who are able to find applications for their work in this area.
Whether it’s a computer with more memory, a cluster with thousands of cores, a big data platform, an internet of things solution, or open-source machine learning at scale, you can achieve more using the cloud. Microsoft Azure for Research awards offer large allocations of cloud computing for a candidate’s research project, and already supports hundreds of researchers worldwide across all domains.
Type: Research/Grants
Eligibility: To qualify for the programme, candidates must be affiliated with an academic institution. In addition to individual investigator projects, Microsoft is interested in projects that will support access to services and data of value to researchers and those in disciplines concerned with public health.
Number of Awardees: Several
Faculty, researchers, and graduate students are qualified to submit proposals for Azure awards for research projects. Masters and undergraduate students require a faculty project supervisor to submit their proposal. The Azure for Education program provides free cloud computing for teaching classes of students.
Value of Programme:
Microsoft Azure can help researchers do their research better, bigger, and faster.
The awards program provides free access to significant amounts of cloud computing resources for a year, so researchers can easily experiment and scale up their project quickly to achieve more.
Submitting a short proposal is easy, and they will receive a decision within just a few weeks.
This is an ongoing program, with proposals evaluated every two months.
Duration of Programme: Not stated
How to Apply: Researchers can apply for the Microsoft Azure Award for Public Health Research cloud computing resources by providing a simple proposal that states the project’s intent and an outline for how your project will use the resources. Please note the following application requirements:
Length: Your proposal should be no longer than three pages.
Title: Your proposal title must begin with “Public Health” to ensure that your proposal is considered for this award.
Deadlines: Proposals can be submitted throughout the calendar year and are due on the fifteenth of even-numbered months. Proposals are reviewed and award recipients are notified within four to eight weeks.
Eligible Field of Study: Scholarships are provided to study any one of the courses available at participating Mexican institutions except Business administration, Plastic surgery, accounting, marketing, dentistry, Odontology and advertising.
About Scholarship: For decades, the Mexican cultural diplomacy has worked in different successful programs, such as the human capital training through scholarships for academic degrees awarding and research work performing in different areas of knowledge.
The Directorate-General for Educational and Cultural Cooperation, through the Academic Exchange Department, designs and manages the Ministry of Foreign Affairs´ Scholarship Program for Foreigners. The scholarships of the Mexican Government present two programs: the scholarship for academic studies and the scholarship for special programs.
The scholarships for academic studies are offered to take complete programs for Specialization, Master´s or PhD Degrees, and Postgraduate Researches. Likewise, the offer includes academic mobility for Bachelor´s and Postgraduate Degree. On the other hand, the scholarships for special programs are offered to take short-term fellowships addressed to Visiting Professors, Researchers in Mexico´s issues, Media Contributors, Art Production Fellowships, etc.
Type: Specialization, Bachelor’s, Master’s or PhD Degrees, and Postgraduate Researches including short-term fellowships
Selection Criteria and Eligibility: The scholarships will be awarded on academic excellence.
The scholarships for academic studies are offered to take complete programs for Specialization, Master’s or PhD Degrees, and Postgraduate Researches. Likewise, the offer includes academic mobility for Bachelor’s and Postgraduate Degree. On the other hand, the scholarships for special programs are offered Preferred to take short-term fellowships addressed to Visiting Professors, Researchers in Mexico’s issues, Media Contributors, Art Production Fellowships, etc.
Candidates cannot be living in Mexico at the time of application.
Except in special cases, scholarships cannot begin in November or December.
Requests for information and all scholarship applications must be submitted to the Mexican embassy or concurrent embassy of the applicant’s country or to the designated Mexican institution. Only applications that fulfill all of the requirements will be considered.
All documents and forms must be in Spanish or submitted with translations into Spanish.
Candidates will be informed of the results by the corresponding Mexican embassy or designated Mexican institution.
The scholarships are not transferable and cannot be deferred to future years.
Number of Scholarships: Several
Value of Scholarship: -Enrollment fees and tuition -Health Insurance -Transportation from Mexico city to the Host Institution -Monthly Stipend
Duration of Scholarship:
-Undergraduate and graduate academic mobility programs- one academic term (quarter, trimester or semester)
-Graduate research and postdoctoral fellowships-12 months (1 month minimum)
-Specialization-1 year
-Master’s degree- 2 Years
-Doctorate- 3 years
-Medical specialties and subspecialties- 3 Years
Eligible Countries
Africa: Algeria ,Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Nambia, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Saharawi, Arab Rep., Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe
North America: United States, Canada and Canada / Province of Quebec
Latin America: Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela)
Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico (Commonwealth), Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago
Asia: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Kingdom of China, People’s Rep., India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Democratic Rep., Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Islamic Rep. of Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Kingdom of Timor – Leste, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Socialist Rep. of
Pacific: Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Independent State, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu
Middle East: Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestinian National Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen, and
Non-self Governing Territories: American Samoa, Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Guam, Montserrat, New Caledonia, Pitcairn, Saint Helena, Tokelau, Turks and Caicos Islands and United States Virgin Islands
“In the next few decades we’ll be driving species to extinction a thousand times faster than we should be,” Dr. Stuart Pimm, conservation ecologist, Duke University.
“It is quite possible that the baby boomer generation is the most impactful generation that this planet has ever seen,”(Source: Racing Extinction directed by Louie Psihoyos, Discovery Channel, 2015).
The Great Suffocation
Imagine for a moment that phytoplankton, the foundation of the aquatic food web startlingly dies off. All of a sudden gone! Phytoplankton feeds everything from microscopic zooplankton to multi-tonne Blue Whales (the largest animal on Earth). But first and foremost, every 2nd human breath is oxygen produced by phytoplankton. Without phytoplankton, life dies.
According to Dr. Boris Worm, marine research ecologist at Dalhousie University and head of the Worm Lab study of marine biodiversity: The planet has lost 40% of plankton production over the past 50 years, primarily as a consequence of climate change/global warming. “We are changing the geology of the planet. We are changing the ocean chemistry… The anthropocene means that what happens to this planet is now in our hands.” (Boris Worm, et al, Global Phytoplankton Decline Over the Past Century, Nature Vol. 466, Issue 7306, July 29, 2010 and interview in Racing Extinction)
“Falling oxygen levels caused by global warming could be a greater threat to the survival of life on Earth than flooding, according to researchers from the University of Leicester.” The study claims an increase of water temps of six degrees Celsius, which could occur as soon as 2100, could stop oxygen production by phytoplankton. (Source: Global Warming Disaster Could Suffocate Life on Planet Earth, Research Shows, University of Leicester Press Office, Dec. 1, 2015).
Deadly Ocean Acidification
When cars, trucks, planes, and factories emit carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, it doesn’t all stay there. The ocean absorbs one-third up to one-half. In turn, CO2 reacts with water and forms carbonic acid resulting in a more acidic ocean, prompting the question: What is the problem with acidic ocean water? Answer: Drop seashells in a glass of vinegar. Over time, the shells dissolve.
For a real time example of changing ocean chemistry, professional hatcheries of shellfish in America have already experienced too much ocean acidification. Ocean water intakes for inland shellfish hatcheries killed off shellfish larvae because of excessive acidity.
Taylor Shellfish Farms (100 years of farming the World’s Best Oysters) Bill Dewey claims: “The rate of change that we’re seeing in the ocean and the changes it’s going to create in our food chain, it’s going to be dramatic and it’s going to be in our lifetime. The things that we’re used to eating may not be available any more, and we’ll need to transition to eating jellyfish or something like that.” (Source: Racing Extinction)
Bon appétit, tonight’s menu: Boiled Jellyfish.
“No one knows exactly how marine life around the world will fare as the seas continue to sour, but fear is spreading. ‘People who are aware are panicked,’ said Dewey, who recently traveled to New York to speak at the United Nation’s first Ocean Conference. ‘The level of awareness is increasing rapidly and the story is getting out there.” (Source: Lisa Stiffler, Investigate West, Climate Change Turns Puget Sound Acidic and Region’s Signature Oysters Struggle to Survive, July 10, 2017).
It is very discomforting (and then some) to read Dewey’s prophetic words: “People who are aware are panicked.” Skyrocketing CO2
“The rate of carbon dioxide growth over the last decade is 100 to 200 times faster than what the Earth experienced during the transition from the last Ice Age,” Peter Tans, atmospheric scientist at ESRL, said in a press release. “This is a real shock to the atmosphere.” (Source: Brian Kahn, Carbon Dioxide Is Rising at Record Rates, Climate Central, March 2017).
According to Dr. Jen Veron, former chief scientist, Australian Institute of Marine Science: “There’s been five mass extinctions… there’s been one common factor in all, a massive increase in carbon dioxide, and we’ve never had a carbon dioxide spike like we’re having now” (Source: Racing Extinction)
Unfortunately, growth of CO2 in the atmosphere is accelerating, not decelerating or holding steady, even though CO2 from fossil fuels has barely grown over the past three years. Ouch! In 2016 CO2 grew by more than 3.00 ppm, a new record and considerably higher than the rate in 2015. This is deeply troubling. The reasons are multi-fold but significantly, it is believed the oceans have turned from carbon sinks to new sources of CO2 emission. “Oceans appear to have turned from sinks into sources of CO2, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.” (Source: Accelerating Growth in CO2 Levels in the Atmosphere, Arctic News, Feb. 25, 2017).
It is mind boggling how much science-based evidence exists about the destructiveness of human-generated carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The world community knows this. Otherwise, why did 195 countries adopt the Paris Agreement in 2015?
Interestingly, Trump’s exit strengthens the Paris Agreement. Several governing details have not yet finalized. Negotiators will be working between now and 2020, committing those details to paper. If the U.S. had stayed in the agreement, Rex Tillerson’s State Department would have veto power in the talks, likely weaken the agreement even more than it already stands.
Still, with/without Trump, too little too late remains the major question mark overhanging the Paris Agreement, and furthermore, it’s not properly structured to stop the extinction event.
Congress has responded to the president’s apparent intention to improve ties with Moscow with a bill imposing new sanctions on Russia, which Trump has now signed into law. (There was no choice. Trump governs under the cloud of Russian “collusion” and Congress could override a veto.) The law does not just punish Russia, but its European trading partners, most notably Germany, which imports over a third of its natural gas from the nearby country in the natural, normal way.
But U.S. policy now, under the Trump administration, is to promote U.S. energy exports to Europe to replace Russian ones. It is both old-fashioned Cold War Russophobia and old-fashioned inter-capitalist, inter-imperialist contention.
The sanctions bill has been promoted as one that appropriately penalizes Russia for its international misbehavior. The always-cited examples being the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the (alleged) invasion of Ukraine in 2014. (As though these in any way rival in their impact and ramifications of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, based on lies, in 2003, or the U.S./NATO-led assault on Libya sold in the UN Security Council as a “humanitarian” intervention supported by Russia, that turned out to be a grotesque regime change operation culminating with Hillary Clinton’s public orgasm following Muammar Gadaffi’s sodomy-murder. “We came, we saw, he died!”)
Hillary Clinton on Gaddafi: We came, we saw, he died
Russia is always depicted in the corporate media as an “adversary.” It acts, we are told ad nauseam, against U.S. “interests” around the world. Its involvement in Syria is (to support the survival of the secular modern Syrian state against the most savage opponents imaginable) is somehow objectionable (whereas U.S. bombing of Syria, condemned by Damascus as a violation of Syrian sovereignty and clearly in violation of international law, is treated as a matter of course). Its role in the bombing of Aleppo, resulting in the reconquest of the city from al-Nusra and its allies, was depicted by the U.S. media as a bad thing. Meanwhile U.S. bombing of Mosul, to retake that city from ISIL, is treated as heroic, however many thousands perish in “collateral damage.” Anyway CNN won’t cover it and has fewer reporters on the ground there than RT does.
Russia is depicted as “provocative” when it mobilizes military forces within its own territory (and Belarus), in response to massive NATO exercises involving 31,000 troops in Poland last June that the German foreign minister criticized as “warmongering.”
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev matter-of-factly tweeted: “The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way.” But where will this power lead?
The concept, as articulated by Sen. John McCain and Sen. John Hoeven in a 2014 Wall Street Journal op-ed, is to “liberate our allies from Russia’s stranglehold on the European natural-gas market.” But as the Washington Post has observed, “The problem is that Europeans don’t necessarily want to be liberated. Russian gas is much cheaper than American LNG, and could become even cheaper to undercut the United States if it entered the European market. American LNG suppliers prioritize their own profits over America’s strategic advantage anyway, and are likely to want to target more lucrative markets than Europe, such as Japan. Finally, the Russian gas supply is likely to be more reliable than the United States’, since it involves predictable long-term contracts, whereas U.S. production capacity rises and falls, as it becomes cheaper and more expensive to extract American unconventional hydrocarbons.”
The McCain-Hoeven piece was of course written before there was any talk about Russian “election meddling.” But that issue was used to justify the sanctions bill. That, plus miscellaneous Russian actions, basically in response to U.S. actions (as in Ukraine, where—as everyone should know—Hillary Clinton’s crony Victoria Newland helped organize a putsch in February 2014, designed to pull Ukraine into NATO, although that effort has failed and anyway lacks German support).
The U.S. at this point (under Trump) is taking actions towards Russia that recall those of the Truman administration. The warm, fuzzy (and miserable, abjectly weak) Russia of the 1990s under Yeltsin is now a reviving world power within an emerging Eurasian trade system. The relationship between Russia and China will stay strong even if the U.S. takes measures to sabotage trade relations between Russia and Europe.
Meanwhile, the sanctions law has produced general European outrage. This is not the anti-Trump outrage that accompanied his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. It is outrage at the U.S. legislature for its arrogance in demanding Europe shoot itself in the foot, to show Washington deference. In other words, the entirety of the divided, troubled U.S. polity is seen as a problem. This is as a new Pew Research Center report showing that only 49% of the world’s people now hold a positive view of the U.S.
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern have publicly condemned the law, which could prevent them from benefiting from the planned Nord Stream 2 pipeline, declaring: “we cannot agree with threats of illegal extraterritorial sanctions against European companies which take part in the development of European energy supply.” Brigitte Zypries, head of Germany’s Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, says the new sanctions are “against international law, plain and simple… Americans cannot punish German companies because they [do business] in another country.” The foreign ministers of Germany, France, Austria, Italy and Spain have protested. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said the bill could have “unintended unilateral effects” on the EU’s energy security, adding, “America first cannot mean that Europe’s interests come last.”
This is not just a provocation of Russia, but of the whole world. It’s leveled by a bipartisan effort, and general (although insane) consensus that Russia is trying to revive the Soviet empire, is constantly interfering in foreign countries’ elections, and represents an “existential” threat to the U.S. and its freedoms, etc. (Because—reputable media talking heads opine routinely—Putin hates freedom and wants to oppose it, by electoral interference in Germany, France, Italy, etc.)
U.S. politicians—many of whom who do not believe in global warming or evolution, and cannot find Syria or Ukraine on the map—have boldly gone where no one has gone before: to risk a trade war with traditional allies, to force them to more firmly embrace the principle of U.S. hegemony. This when the U.S. GDP has dropped below that of the EU, and U.S. clout and credibility in the world—in large part due to global revulsion at the results of U.S. regime-change wars—is at low ebb.
Medvedev predicts that “relations between Russia and the United States are going to be extremely tense regardless of Congress’ makeup and regardless of who is president. Lengthy arguments in international bodies and courts are ahead, as well as rising international tensions and refusal to settle major international issues.” No bromance here.
Meanwhile Sen. Lindsey Graham—an extreme reactionary and warmonger now lionized my the mainstream media as some sort of “moderate” and adult in the room—informs NBC’s Today Show that reports that “there is no military option” on North Korea are “just false.”
“There is a military option: to destroy North Korea’s nuclear program and North Korea itself. He’s not going to allow — President Trump — the ability of this madman [Kim Jong Un] to have a missile that could hit America. If there’s going to be a war to stop him, it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die over here — and he’s told me that to my face.”
Because you see, North Korea threatens the United States (as opposed to the reverse). At least, this is what every cable news anchor wants you to believe. Don’t think about the 40,000 U.S. troops in South Korea (why, when South Korea has a massive, well-trained military, and there are no foreign troops in the north?), or the massive annual joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises, or THAAD, or the Bush/Cheney sabotage of north/south rapprochement and collapse of the multi-lateral nuclear agreement. Don’t talk about the whole history of U.S. hostility to the north.
The U.S. has told Pyongyang it must not continue its nuclear program designed to defend itself. Thus in Graham’s view it invites justifiable annihilation. The glint in his eye when he says that is scary. So is the Today Show’s Matt Lauer respectful reception of his assertion that Trump may have to choose between “national security” and “regional stability”—which is to say, between risking the possibility that the west coast could be hit by a hypothetical North Korean nuke in the future, and attacking it—so rationally, so necessarily, so justifiably, so well-explained, so popularly applauded—producing, however unfortunately, the death of half a million East Asians.
Trump told that to Graham, “to his face” he testifies.
Meanwhile we’re told that Russia threatens the U.S.—in places like Syria and Ukraine. And Iran threatens the U.S., just by being what it is. And China threatens the U.S. (because of island-building or something). Mexico (according to Trump) threatens the U.S., by sending us rapists and drug-traffickers, while Canada threatens us by exporting to us its lumber. It’s not just Trump railing about how the world laughs at us, takes advantage of us, treats us so unfairly. Both branches of government agree that the U.S. is a victim.
1,800 U.S. nukes are on high-alert status. Russia has a comparable number. All the people “over there”—on the Korean peninsula, or who knows? Central Europe—could be destroyed by a military option, for not obeying a weakening power. I don’t think it will happen. But then I don’t know just how unhinged and amoral Trump is, and how he relates to his generals.
And the now overt, standard, crazy Russophobia of the media and the liberal shift towards McCain-mentality (as though it should be the comforting, default and responsible worldview) is scary. So is Trump’s inevitable capitulation to the Russophobes.
One can only hope that Europe says no, and that U.S. demands and overreach in time undermine the metastasizing NATO alliance, the central problem to begin with.
We’re embarking on a revolutionary era, an era that promises to be more radical even than the 1930s. No society of overwhelming decadence and moral rot, luxuriantly productive of elite human fungi whose function is but to drain the vitality of the whole, is destined to last very long. No society that can throw up a bewigged slug as its leader has much of a future. As it parasitizes itself to death, new social forms are bound to sprout in abundance (through the energy of activists and organizers).
The core of the protracted revolution, of course, is to create new institutions, ultimately new relations of production. Every revolution is essentially a matter of changing social structures; the goal of transforming ideologies makes sense only as facilitating institutional change. Nevertheless, to spread new ways of thinking, new values, can indeed serve as an effective midwife of revolution, and thus is a task worth undertaking.
The fundamental moral transition that has to occur (in order, for example, to save humanity from collective suicide) is from a kind of nefarious egoism to a beneficent communism. This is the ideological core of the coming social changes, this shift from individualistic greed—“Gain wealth, forgetting all but self”—to collective solidarity. We have to stop seeing the world through the distorted lens of the private capitalist self, the self whose raison d’être is to accumulate private property, private experiences, private resentments, finally private neuroses, and instead see the world as what it is, a vast community stretching through time and space. Such a change of vision might facilitate the necessary institutional changes—which themselves, later, will naturally engender and instill this communist-type vision.
The very notion of “private property,” of “this is mine, and I alone earned it,” has to be recognized as a form of moral idiocy or insanity. Here, I would do better to quote the old anarchist Kropotkin than to offer my own formulations, which would pale beside his. In his classic The Conquest of Bread, Kropotkin explained just how stupid is the idea of entitlement to a private piece of property (as though “no one else deserves it”):
Take a civilized country. The forests which once covered it have been cleared, the marshes drained, the climate improved. It has been made habitable. The soil, which bore formerly only a coarse vegetation, is covered today with rich harvests… Thousands of highways and railroads furrow the earth, and pierce the mountains. The rivers have been made navigable; the coasts, carefully surveyed, are easy of access; artificial harbors, laboriously dug out and protected against the fury of the sea, afford shelter to the ships…
Millions of human beings have labored to create this civilization on which we pride ourselves today. Other millions, scattered through the globe, labor to maintain it. Without them nothing would be left in fifty years but ruins.
There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have cooperated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of man. Thousands of writers, of poets, of scholars, have labored to increase knowledge, to dissipate error, and to create that atmosphere of scientific thought without which the marvels of our century could never have appeared. And these thousands of philosophers, of scholars, of inventors…have been upheld and nourished through life, both physically and mentally, by legions of workers and craftsmen of all sorts…
By what right then can anyone whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say – This is mine, not yours?
As he goes on to argue, the wage system itself, which is conceptually and institutionally a close relative of private property, is morally absurd. And not only because it’s repugnant for people to be forced to rent themselves to others in order to survive. Or because wage-earners necessarily can’t receive the full equivalent of the value they have produced (for then the capitalist couldn’t make any profit). Perhaps equally ridiculous is the idea that it’s possible to “measure” labor at all, to quantitatively compare workers’ contributions, when there are so many qualitative differences between the work that each person does. How can one say whose work is more valuable than another’s? Why should a plumber’s work be considered less valuable than an engineer’s? Why a financial consultant’s more valuable than a sanitation worker’s? (If anything, the reverse makes far more sense.)
The only principle that makes logical and moral sense is “to put the needs above the works, and first of all to recognize theright to live, and later on the right to well-being for all those who take their share in production.” Society has to be rid, once and for all, of the obsessive “who deserves what?” mentality, the apportioning mentality, the “mine vs. yours” pathology.
“If middle-class society is decaying,” Kropotkin writes—thereby, incidentally, proving the timelessness of his thoughts—“if we have got into a blind alley from which we cannot emerge without attacking past institutions with torch and hatchet, it is precisely because we have given too much to counting. It is because we have let ourselves be influenced into giving only to receive. It is because we have aimed at turning society into a commercial company based on debit and credit.”
Actually, as I’ve written elsewhere (following David Graeber), even contemporary capitalist society, whose utopia is to make everyone an enemy of everyone else (that’s what thoroughgoing privatization would mean), couldn’t function without a substratum of implicit communism. Everything would instantly break down if people stopped giving what they could to those in need, whether money, time, free labor, gifts, advice, ideas, or encouragement. Social life itself is essentially communistic, based on community, generosity, and sympathy. The general systematization of private property is a perversion.
Kropotkin’s arguments suffice to answer the misanthropic refrain of conservatives that “it’s wrong to give something to people who have done nothing to earn it.” But other answers are possible. One might point out that people born into the middle or upper class have done nothing to “earn” their privileged position. The wealthy haven’t earned the inheritance they receive from their parents. White Americans didn’t earn their skin-color or the fact that they weren’t born in, say, a Haitian slum. People who benefit from charisma or physical beauty or intelligence did nothing to earn that; they were born with it. They deserve no credit for it. Somebody who happens to meet the right person at the right time and is launched on a successful career is the beneficiary of luck—as, in short, every “successful” person is, in innumerable ways.
Nor does any of this begin to address all the ways that the wealthy or corporations or Silicon Valley entrepreneurs benefit from state policy designed to give them what they want and to strip the poor of the right to live. Through the agency of the state (e.g., its corporate welfare programs, defense budget, patent and copyright protections, and, to some extent, interest payments on bonds), the population subsidizes the power and wealth of people whose ideology is to shame those who benefit from state programs. According to their own ideology, then, these “libertarians” in the business class ought to have their property confiscated, since, strictly speaking, they have “earned” none or little of it.
In fact, to the degree that our economy has become mainly a rentier economy, owned by parasites on the productive labor of others, it is sheer farce to talk about property-owners’ right to their wealth—which is to say their right to exclude others from ownership. For where would this right come from, if there isn’t even a pretense of their having earned all they own? How rich would Bill Gates be without the “rent” he receives from ridiculously stringent copyright protection for Windows and other Microsoft products? He is merely the lucky beneficiary of government policies that serve to hinder the diffusion of knowledge and wealth.
All this private property-exalting thinking, therefore, has to be cast aside onto the dung-heap of history. Rather than Reverence for Property, we ought to strive for something like the Reverence for Life that Albert Schweitzer wrote about and embodied. That is, we ought to explicitly embrace the moral communism (“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”) to which we’re already implicitly committed whenever we act as though guided by the Golden Rule, which is to say whenever we act morally at all. To be moral is, in essence, to act like a communist.
“Let us go then, you and I,” and bring forth the moral revolution.
