North Korea: The Deafening Silence around the Moon-Putin Plan

Joseph Essertier

“In the heart of appeasement there’s the fear of rejection, and in acts of fear there are mirrors of oppression.”

—Chris Jami

As the world hurtles ever closer to war in Asia, there is an Alice-in-Wonderland media narrative that has North Korea as the aggressor that must be controlled and punished at all costs. And in the face of that narrative, the deafening silence of intellectuals is starting to bear a remarkable resemblance to appeasement.

In 1938 one of the most heinous war criminals of the 20th century was planning to occupy Czechoslovakia, a country where about three million people of German origin lived. War seemed imminent as Hitler continued to make inflammatory speeches. The British prime minister Neville Chamberlain offered to go to Hitler’s retreat and discuss the situation personally. Chamberlain’s placatory efforts produced the Munich Agreement that he, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Édouard Daladier signed, handing over a large chunk of Czechoslovakia to Germany. People in Czechoslovakia felt betrayed, but Chamberlain was praised. He told the British public he had achieved “peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.” In later years the lesson drawn from the Munich Agreement was that expansionist totalitarian states must not be appeased.

Today it would seem the very same farce is being re-enacted in a contemporary version of appeasement that Chamberlain would have envied. History demands that we ask all the academics, intellectuals, media and the like who claim to represent the left-to-liberal spectrum, why they are so unconcernedly complicit with the United Nations in appeasing the blood-thirsty Trump administration. Some parrot the Alice-in-Wonderland narrative concerning North Korea; many others remain silent.

The Moon-Putin Plan: One Possible Path To Peace

One could be forgiven for not having heard of it since it disrupts the standard “North-Korea-Problem” narrative, but there is a realistic solution to the crisis that liberal and progressive appeasers are keeping silent about. This is the Moon-Putin Plan unveiled in September in Vladivostok. President Moon outlined it as nine “bridges” of cooperation linking South Korea to Russia via North Korea—“gas, railroads, ports, electricity, a northern sea route, shipbuilding, jobs, agriculture, and fisheries.” Siberian oil and gas pipelines would be extended to Korea, both North and South, as well as to Japan. Both Koreas would be linked up with the vast rail networks of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, including high-speed rail, and the Eurasian Economic Union, which includes the Trans-Siberian Railway. In the words of Gavan McCormack, “North Korea would accept the security guarantee of the five (Japan included), refrain from any further nuclear or missile testing, shelve (‘freeze’) its existing programs and gain its longed for ‘normalization’ in the form of incorporation in regional groupings, the lifting of sanctions and normalized relations with its neighbour states, without surrender.” This Moon-Putin Plan has the potential to satisfy all the states involved, possibly even the US. One would think, “Done deal. Problem solved.” Yet mainstream journalists in Japan and English-speaking countries have largely ignored it, and even very few non-mainstream journalists have covered it.

Why should this be so?

US and UN Atrocities

Let us review a few facts about crimes committed on the Korean Peninsula, not only those of the US but also those of the UN, the post-WWII institution that admittedly has often provided at least some kind of forum for states to settle their differences in a rational and just manner. On 12 December 1948 the UN General Assembly declared that the Republic of Korea (i.e., South Korea) was the only lawful government on the Peninsula. This was UN Resolution 195, and it was one of the UN’s worst moments, a gross injustice to the bulk of the population and a cause of the Korean War.

First, Resolution 195 was a violation of the UN’s own charter (most obviously Article 32) since North Korea was never invited to discuss the dispute over who was the legitimate government on the Peninsula. Second, the position of the US State Department and the UN had originally been that the government of South Korea could only have jurisdiction over those areas where the UN Commission on Korea had observed elections, which was only in some parts of the South. Third, during the elections, even at those polling places where the UN had been watching, there were rightist police and fascist, terrorist youth groups all around the polling places, just as under the Japanese colonizers. And fourth, the new president Syngman Rhee (1875–1965) was a tyrant and his government was riddled with notorious collaborators who had served the Japanese colonizers. Koreans knew they were in for a repeat—same injustice, different masters. The UN had lent the government the legitimacy it needed.

Especially in places like Cheju Island, where people had built their own self-governing committees, the rigged elections on the mainland caused tremendous anger. The residents had had a taste of undemocratic policies of the American occupation, and the unfair elections were the last straw. Only after thousands of political murders and imprisonments could an election be held on Cheju Island, one year after the mainland elections. In May 1949 an American Embassy official reported that “the all-out guerrilla extermination campaign…came to a virtual end in April with order restored and most rebels and sympathizers killed, captured, or converted.”

In the Taejon (Daejeon) Massacre from the 2nd to the 6th of July 1950, American officials stood idly by and took photos while Korean police massacred 3,000 to 7,000 political prisoners—men, boys, and women. The UN Command was known at that time for hiding the truth, and unsurprisingly, the UN Commission on Korea did nothing to investigate.

Or consider that the US Air Force (USAF)’s horrific bombing campaign in the Korean War, under the aegis of the United Nations Command, constituted genocide. Neither the United Nation’s Genocide Convention approved in 1948 and going into effect in 1951, nor the Red Cross Convention on the Protection of Civilians in Wartime of 1948 had the “slightest impact on this air war” in the words of the American historian Bruce Cumings, who has covered the history thoroughly, from all sides of the War, including the various ways in which Americans abused Koreans, both North and South, as well as about the abundant lies in North Korean government propaganda.

The Problem of Class Inequality

There has long been extreme class inequality in Korea and it is no accident that President Syngman Rhee was on the side of the ruling class. For centuries Korea had not been a society where there was a fair distribution of wealth between the “unproductive class” and the class of “cultivators,” i.e., a society where “each class enjoys its proper share of the whole annual produce,” to borrow the language of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. But some of those from the old aristocratic elite had been in the process of finding ways to escape parasitism and modernize their country. Just when they were starting to make progress, “global depression, war, and ever-increasing Japanese repression in the 1930s destroyed much of this progress, turned many elite Koreans into collaborators, and left few options for patriots besides armed resistance.”

The Role of Collaborators

“Extreme rightist power” is how Governor Yu Hae-jin described to the US Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) the people who helped him suppress democracy on Cheju Island. The “leaders who would subsequently shape ROK politics” had mostly collaborated with the agents of the Empire of Japan. (ROK = Republic of Korea). Those leaders were selected by one Col. Cecil Nist, who viewed them as “conservatives.” To give this group of mostly treacherous, non-patriots some credibility, the US Office of Strategic Services selected Syngman Rhee to give this group a veneer of legitimacy. A fluent speaker of English and a Christian convert, he had received years of indoctrination in higher education in the US, and although he had made efforts on behalf of Korean independence in his younger years, he was Washington’s man.

In contrast to WWII, where American soldiers and soldiers of most of the other UN Command states had fought against fascists, the war in Korea saw the US and UN using “extreme rightist power,” to fight against democracy. The Korean campaign represented a bizarre “vision of bringing freedom and liberty to a sordid dictatorship run by servants of Japanese imperialism.”

While it is true that the US has dominated the UN since its inception, especially during the Korean War, and while the UN Command forces were actually under the command of US generals, the UN Command also shares some of the responsibility for the many atrocities committed against Koreans. Can anyone really argue they have no responsibility to speak the truth about their conduct during the War? Rhee once described to an American reporter what he planned to do: “With bulldozers we will dig huge excavations and trenches, and fill them with Communists. Then cover them over.” Ironically, the UN appears comfortable with performing a similar act on its own past.

The Crimes of the UN Today

Some experts are now saying that war has already been declared on North Korea, a country that has yet to attack anyone. The UN has authorized UN member states to “interdict and inspect North Korean vessels in international waters (which amounts to a declaration of war),” according to Pepe Escobar. McCormack concurs, explaining that there is only a very fine line between the sanctions and “outright war.”

Gregory Elich writes, “U.S. officials are fanning out across the globe, seeking to cajole or threaten other nations to join the anti-DPRK crusade. Since most nations stand to lose far more by displeasing the U.S. than by ending a longstanding relationship with North Korea, the campaign is having an effect.”

And now Washington is talking about a “bloody nose” approach—hoping that we can just smash up their military equipment a little while they stand by and not attack Seoul.

According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, due to a drought that is worse than the one in 2001, the total harvest of staple crops such as rice, corn, potatoes, soybeans, wheat, and barley is far smaller than that of last year. Last month they reported, “Most households are anticipated to continue to experience borderline or poor food consumption rates.” This means that during the bitterest cold of the year in Korea in the midst of strong icy winds from Siberia bringing temperatures down to a daily average low of −13 °C and a high of −3 °C, 12 million innocents in North Korea will be suffering from hunger. The government food ration in North Korea is 300 grams of food, i.e., about two medium-size potatoes. So the sanctions are well-timed indeed for maximum suffering.

We are being told over and over that North Koreans are “secretive.” What are “our” governments, i.e., those of the UN Command, doing about that secretiveness? They are pressuring Beijing to shut down North Korean businesses. In other words, we are shutting down communication and all economic exchanges with them, establishing a pirate-like siege on their country. Does this make sense—that the best way to solve the problem is to cut off communications, cease doing business, and freeze/starve the civilian population to death? That is what the response of the UN means in diplomatic terms. As Winston Churchill once said, “To jaw-jaw always is better than to war-war.”

Among the 17 member nations of the UN Command, the only state with roots in that part of the world at the time of the Korean War, who would have had to live with the consequences of a divided country and continued civil war, was South Korea. But South Korea’s blood-thirsty dictator President Rhee had on his side the US as well as the other 16 member states of the UN Command, so the chances of his winning the entire Peninsula were high. As for Japan, it was under US Occupation during most of the War, but it played the role of an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” for USAF bombers, so in that sense it served the UN Command side. On the whole, the UN Command states stand to lose little and possibly even gain if it comes to war and the UN in general has a dark history with Korea, so one cannot expect fairness from them.

Conclusion

The Moon-Putin Plan not only has the potential to radically alter the current global system by setting up an alternative economic and cooperative Asian trading block where mutual aid takes precedence over old enmities but it is also one of the few options on the table that involves a pragmatic and peaceful alternative to Washington’s violent and greedy Open Door Policy. The Moon-Putin Plan must be worrisome for the Pentagon since it has the potential to end that long-standing ideology, the one that has driven humanity into this crisis.

The current crisis can be resolved by nuclear armageddon, or by a peaceful solution that brings about a new geopolitical order. There is no middle ground.  There is no room for appeasers of any kind, whether they be UN and government types or left-to-liberal intellectuals and activists. This is one of those moments in history when we must stand up and be counted. Must we repeat the words of Winston Churchill to Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain? “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”

The Cold Chill of Reality Returns to Italy

Tom Gill

The prosecco and panettone are finished, the befana has delivered her gifts. Natale is over. For millions of Italians the cold chill of reality has returned. The powers that be are trying to keep the mood music upbeat as the New Year starts. After a long economic winter, it is all going in the right direction on the economy and jobs, say the national and international media. But people are not feeling any thaw. Italy remains a deeply divided and disillusioned nation, full of fears for the future.

Italy is indeed riding somewhat of a rebound in the Eurozone economy but it remains fragile and the foundations are even weaker. A million jobs have been created the past four years ago – but they are mostly low paid and insecure, thanks to hire and fire labour reforms that came into force in February 2014. Youth unemployment is 36%, the third highest in Europe, after Spain and Greece. Growth is the highest since 2010 – but 1.7% is nothing to write home about. Italians are still materially worse off than a decade ago. The absolute poor – those unable to purchase a basket of basic goods and services – has soared 3 million to 4.7 million over the past 10 years. Wages have been kept back, and over the past year have fallen behind cost of living rises. On almost every socio-economic indicator, the south trails way behind. To take just one: GDP per capita in the mezzogiorno it is 44% lower than the rest of the country, and the gap is widening. But there are winners. The same as always. The owners of capital gobbled up 16 billion euros in dividends, according to the most recent annual figures from the Bank of Italy (a total of 45 billion euros since 2014). The millionaires club added 10% to its membership in 2016. Credit Suisse estimates there’s now close to 1.3 million with assets of seven figures or more. The richest 1% now account for 25% of the nation’s wealth.

In a healthy democracy, for the ‘left behind’ elections offer hope for better days ahead. But both the economy and the body politic of Italy are very sick. Polls are due in early March. The over-riding narrative is that a new electoral law – removing a bonus in seats for the winning party – will result in no clear winner, leading to political instability. A return to the bad old days, it is said. But while Italy has had 64 governments since 1946 it managed an ‘economic miracle’ that projected it from a war-torn economic laggard into the big league of wealthy manufacturing nations.

The main issue today is what parties and what programmes will feature in the next government. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tangentopoli corruption scandals put an end to the Christian Democrats and Italian Communist Party that respectively ruled and opposed within the mostly civilising constraints of the Cold War until the early 1990s. Today, the global capitalist gloves are off, and the ballot papers in Italy will be dominated by right-wing populist and otherwise politically confused forces that are now spreading like wildfire across the West.

Yet again, there’s the Forza Italia party of billionaire tax fraud and four times prime minister Silvio Berlusconi who first entered politics 24 years ago. Although his conviction means he is not able to stand for parliament, the 81-year-old is confident he pull off another coup with a hand-picked front man as PM. The 81-year-old media mogul’s on-off allies and main competitors on the right since the mid-1990s, the nasty League, led by Matteo Salvini, are bullish too. Italy’s original anti-immigrant party, they have left their secessionist roots behind and now have national ambitions (hence “Northern” has been dropped from the name).

There’s the other Matteo (Renzi) and his Democrats, which has been leading the outgoing government and includes former communists and christian democrats. Renzi (think Tony Blair or Emmanuel Macron) was PM for nearly 3 years until December 2016 and is hoping for a comeback. His chief achievements were to slash labour rights but he badly misjudged things when he sought – and failed – to bulldoze the Italian constitution, the Magna Carta that was fingered by American bankers as a block on completing the corporate takeover of Europe’s fourth largest economy.

Then there’s the Five Star movement, the frontrunner, but not by much. A pirate style party founded 9 years ago by comedian and blogger Beppe Grillo whose promise of shaking up Italian politics failed to deliver. Its maverick leader, stubborn focus on corruption, and refusal to do deals with other parties helped it win 100 seats in the lower house and power in a number of cities. But with a haphazard mix of right and left policies, its parliamentary opposition and performance locally has mostly been weak and ineffectual. In Rome, it has suffered the humiliation of sleaze in Mayor Virginia Raggi’s administration.

Immigration will likely to be a top issue with all three main parties taking a hard line, including the once dovish Democrats. When Paolo Gentiloni took over from Renzi as PM a year ago he saw it as his top priority to slow migration to Italy: half a million migrants had arrived in the previous three years, more than the population of Florence. He struck a dodgy deal with the Libyans. This slashed arrivals of those fleeing war and collapse in Africa and the Middle East but  left huge numbers of men, women and children at the mercy of slavers and torturers. The Democrats have also joined the rest on the matter of the children to immigrants’ who were already on Italian soil. Renzi and Gentiloni formally supported the idea but last month Democrats failed to turn up in sufficient numbers to a crucial vote on granting citizenship in the last days of the outgoing parliament. The Five Star movement – which over the years has wavered between a League-style xenophobia to more liberal positions – failed to show at all.

The relationship with Europe, in what was once a bulwark of the EU, will be a major issue too. Studies and polls earlier this year showed only around half of Italians back the euro and just 17 percent of Italians said they were satisfied with the direction the EU, half the EU-average.

The League, Five Star and Forza Italy have flip-flopped on the issue of membership of the common Euro currency but all have talked of launching a parallel currency to try and mitigate some of its lethal economic effects. Salvini’s plan is for 70 billion euros worth of small denomination, interest-free bonds to be issued by the Treasury to firms and individuals owed money by the state as payment for services or as tax rebates. They could then be used as money to pay taxes and buy any services or goods provided by the state, including, for example, petrol at stations run by state-controlled oil company ENI. For the League this is to prepare for Italexit. For the other two parties, it is more of a bargaining tool to force Brussels to loosen the Europe’s draconian budgetary rules that impose austerity on Euro states.

Berlusconi, and the Five Star at least, like Le Pen in France, are currently backpeddling on talk of Euro-rupture. Five Star once promised a referendum on membership but shortly after taking over the Five Star in the autumn Luigi Di Maio declared loyalty to the EU, arguing that a popular vote on euro membership was now a ‘last resort’, if Europe didn’t play ball. Berlusconi, replaced by former European Commissioner and Bilderberg member Mario Monti 2011 as his tenure as PM (replete with sex scandals and a sovereign debt crisis) threatened the entire European project, is trying to position himself as a safe pair of hands. Laughable as that is, he’s playing on fears of Salvini and the smaller Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party, who are most closely connected with Benito Mussolini’s political heritage and who now have many like-minded counterparts in high places in various European capitals.

There’s also been efforts among the main parties to show, after years of anti-worker ‘reforms’, that they do care. Both Five Star and Forza Italia are proposing versions of a basic universal income. De Maio plans a ‘citizenship income’ of 780 euros a month for nine million people. Never to be outdone, Berlusconi has followed suit with a plan for a monthly ‘dignity income’ of 1,000 euros . (Italy currently lacks a minimum wage). Neither pledge – costing around 84 to 157 billion euros respectively –  is credible without a significant a significant break from European budgetary constraints, or a significant rise in tax income. A comprehensive wealth tax has long been ducked by the main parties and no party has pledged to do anything serious about the zillions lost in evasion and avoidance. This is of course unsurprising when it comes to Silvio, who clearly is disinclined to pay them and is once again floating cuts in taxes.

The truth is none of the main parties are on the side of the 99%. The appearance of Grillo’s successor, De Maio, at the annual meeting of bankers and top business executives in Cernobbio, near Lake Como, in September was a reminder that the business casta (as opposed to the political establishment it has long raged against) will be safe in his hands. With the Democrats and Forza Italia in alliance – formal or implicit – for years, a recent change in the statutes of Five Star to lift its ban on party political alliances (hailed as a healthy bit of realism) actually signals even less choice at the ballot box.

Some are investing hopes in a left splinter of the Democrats – Liberi e Uguali (Free and Equal People). But among the leaders are some of the chief architects (ex-PM Massimo D’Alema) of the once great communist party’s morphing into a cheerleader of neo-liberalism. It also includes former Renzi government ministers (Pier Luigi Bersani). Moreover, Liberi e Uguali has already indicated it is prepared to team up with the Democrats. Voters opting for them – as with similar austerity-lite initiatives and tie-ups with centrist forces in the past – will be in for yet more betrayals and disillusionment.

Potere al Popolo or Power to the People, is a more serious proposition for those wanting a left turn , precisely because it is not seeking a quick root to power, at any cost, but aims to build a new movement rooted in labour and social struggles.

Founded mid-December, Power to the People is backed by the Cobas unions, labour organisations independent from the three great union confederations that have been organising some of the most exploited workers, and a variety of grassroots protest and social movements. It has also enjoys support from the self-managed social centres – centri sociali – like Naples’ Je so pazzo. Two of the more significant elements of a much-diminished communist diaspora, Communist Refoundation and the Italian Communist Party, have also endorsed the project. And for activists and voters on the left who successfully rallied against Renzi’s attempt on the constitution a year ago it provides a political platform that’s an alternative to the League and Five Star that led that battle.

Power to the People is highly unlikely to break through the minimum 3% needed to get any parliamentary seats. But supporters feel it could eventually become Italy’s answer to Melenchon’s La France Insoumise, Spain’s Podemos Unidos and Britain’s Momentum (and Jeremy Corbyn’s revitalised Labour Party).  There is much that is different in each, but this is true in as far as they all seek to combine social movement activism with a serious left project for state power.

Power to the People has pledged to reverse Renzi’s attacks on labour rights, abolish healthcare charges, introduce a wealth tax, reverse privatisations of ‘strategic’ infrastructure, nationalise parts of the finance sector and gradually introduce forms of ‘popular control’. It also has plans to slash military spending and withdraw from NATO. Most significantly, it calls for an exit from the Maastricht and “other neo-liberal” EU treaties. Although not advocating a Brexit-style unilateral break, by signalling the need for a Left Exit from Europe represents a clear shift from the past pro-European positions adopted by Italy’s radical left, including sections of the communist movement. It puts the question of reclaiming national sovereignty – until now championed in Italy and elsewhere almost exclusively by the neo-fascist and nationalist right – centre-ground.

One of the more high profile candidates – all would-be parliamentarians are being chosen by local communities based on their ‘social curriculum’ – is Giorgio Cremaschi. A former leader of the FIOM metalworkers union, unashamed class warrior and long-time campaigner for a Lexit, Cremaschi argues that it is time to give up the ghost on reforming the existing European set up. He says: “The EU is an enemy, and we want to break from it.”

The biggest prize for the new radical left party could be Italy’s youth, the group with the biggest stake in radical change. The highest percentage in the EU not in education, training or work, young Italians are unsurprisingly a huge migrant group: 285,000 fled the country in 2016, more than the number of foreigners who arrived on the peninsula. A No vote in a referendum on EU membership would gain 51% of the under 45s backing, compared to just 26% of the over 45s, according to a recent study. Potere al Popolo’s stance will be tapping a rich seam: one that will otherwise continue to be mined and manipulated, with ever worse consequences, by Salvini, Berlusconi & Co.

IITA Research Fellowships for Young Academics and Professionals ($10,000 grants for the study of Youth Engagement in Agribusiness and Rural Economic Activities in Africa) 2018

Application Deadline: 28th February 2018 

About the Award: The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) received a three-year research grant for “Enhancing capacity to apply research evidence in policy for youth engagement in agribusiness and rural economic activities in Africa” funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

The research grant program seeks to contribute to policy development in youth engagement in agribusiness and rural economic activities in Africa. It is designed to provide opportunities to engage youth to improve the availability and use of evidence for youth policies and decisionmaking related to youth participation in agribusiness and rural economic activities by providing them with:

• funding, support, and the expertise of IITA’s scientists;
• skills and competencies in social and economic research;
• and a community of other fellows with whom to exchange ideas.

Scope

We seek research project fellows for the study of Youth Engagement in Agribusiness and Rural Economic Activities in Africa. This is not a one-time invitation for applications, but rather a continuing call for research on this topic in 2018, 2019, and 2020

Type: Research, Fellowship

Eligibility:

• The research will be carried out in the following countries: Benin, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Senegal, and Zambia.
• Applicants must not be more than 40 years old at the time of application.
• Applicants must be a young scholar at a research institute or university in Africa or a student registered in a PhD or Master’s program in recognized universities in Africa, majoring in agricultural economics, agribusiness, or economics or a related social science, and must have finished their university course work.
• The duration of the research should not exceed 6 months.

Selection Criteria: Evaluation criteria will include the importance of the proposed policy issue, the strength of the methodological model, and proposed analysis of the study. Additionally, the review criteria will include: Is the policy issue clearly defined? What is already known on the issue? How does the methodology relate specifically to the policy  question? Does the analytical plan fit the question and the data? Is the applicant qualified to carry out the proposed study?

Number of Awardees: 20

Value of Programme:

• Awards for Research Grants are up to $10,000 (Proposals with a reasonable higher budget can also be selected depending on the quality of the research proposal).
• Grantees will be supervised by one IITA scientist in close collaboration with their national/university supervisor.
• Grantees will be offered training on research methodology, data management, and scientific writing;
• Grantees will be offered training on production of research evidence for policy-making.

How to Apply: To apply for the Research Fellowship, applicants must submit the following:

• Completed application form (download application form here).
• Copy of the passport or other statement of citizenship.
• Curriculum Vitae (CV), work history and education. CVs should be no longer than two pages.
• Proof of registration at an accredited university for MSc and PhD programs.
• Proof of employment at a research institute or university in Africa.
• Research proposals should be organized in the order listed below, and page limitations for components must be observed. Please include your last name and first initial in the uploaded document’s name (example: LastName_FirstInitial_proposal.pdf). The Research proposal must include the following components in one PDF document:
  1. The proposal narrative should not be more than seven pages in length, single-spaced, in 12-point type with 1″ margins. Approximately three pages should be devoted to the problem statement/policy issue, theoretical framework, review of current literature, and research questions. The remaining four pages should include the methodology, contributions to policy, work plan, and dissemination plan. Applicants must present a clear and well thought out methodology and the analysis to be done. The brief dissemination plan should include the intended audience and relevant journals where the research findings might be submitted for publication and professional meetings where the findings might be presented (7 pages maximum).
  2. The conceptual model(s) that outline the framework or design of the study (2 pages maximum).
  3. Contribution to the field to briefly describe the potential contributions this research will make to the field of youth engagement in agribusiness and rural economic activities in Africa (200 words maximum).
  4. Reference list. A list of all references included in the text or in the models. Use complete citations, including titles and all authors. (No page limit)
  5. Budget. There is no specific template for the budget. It may be a simple 2-column format or a more complex spreadsheet.

Visit Programme Webpage for details

Award Provider: IITA

Egypt’s Executions Spree Alarms UN HR Commissioner

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed deep shock over the execution of 20 people in Egypt within one week, amid concerns that due process and fair trial guarantees did not appear to have been followed.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Tuesday, January 2, five men who had been sentenced to death by an Egyptian military court were hanged in Alexandria, four of whom had been convicted for an explosion near a stadium in Kafr al-Sheikh on 15 April 2015 that killed three military recruits and injured two others.

On December 26, 15 men convicted on terrorism charges were reportedly executed, found guilty by a military court of killing soldiers in Sinai in 2013.

“We understand the defendants were tried by military judges on the basis of legislation that refers cases of destruction of public property to military courts and in view of the victims being from the Egyptian Military Academy,” HCHR spokesperson Liz Throssell told reporters on Friday at the regular news briefing in Geneva.

“Civilians should only be tried in military or special courts in exceptional cases,” she continued.

Ms. Throssell also said it is important that all necessary measures are taken to ensure that such trials take place under conditions which genuinely afford the full guarantees stipulated in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Egypt is a State party.

Despite security challenges facing Egypt, particularly in Sinai, Ms. Throssell maintained, “executions should not be used as a means to combat terrorism.”

Military courts typically deny defendants the rights afforded by civilian courts, Throssell said, citing reports “that the prisoners who were executed may have been subjected to initial enforced disappearance and torture before being tried”.

According to figures from Cornell University’s Death Penalty Worldwide, there has been a sharp increase in executions in the years since Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power.

From 2011, the year that former President Hosni Mubarak was deposed, to 2013, Egypt executed one person.

In 2014, Egypt executed 14 people. The following year, 22 more people were executed, and at least 44 people were executed in 2016.

Egypt extends state of emergency

Execution spree came as US-client President Abdul Fatah El-Sisi extended the state of emergencyon Tuesday.

Egyptian authorities first imposed a nationwide state of emergency in April 2017, after two church bombings killed at least 45 people. Similar extensions were announced in July and October last year.

The measure grants the president, and those acting on his behalf, the power to refer civilians to State Security Emergency Courts for the duration of the three-month period.

There is no appeal process for State Security Emergency Court verdicts.

It also allows the president to intercept and monitor all forms of communications, imposing censorship prior to publication and confiscating extant publications, impose a curfew for or order the closure of commercial establishments, sequestration of private properties, as well as designating areas for evacuation.

The emergency measures allow security forces to detain people for any period of time, for virtually any reason. They also grant broad powers to restrict public gatherings and media freedom.

Lifting the state of emergency, initially imposed following late President Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981 and lasted for three decades under his successor Hosni Mubarak, has been one of the key demands of the January 2011 popular uprising.

In June 2012, Egypt’s state of emergency finally came to an end.

However, in January 2013, emergency law was reintroduced by elected President Mohamed Morsi for 30 days, to curb renewed unrest.

In August of the same year, and following a military coup led by then defense minister Sisi against Morsi, Egypt’s military-backed government then declared a one-month state of emergency following the violent dispersal of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in what came to be known as Rabaa al-Adawiya massacre in which hundreds of civilians were killed at hands of police and security forces.

60,000 imprisoned

Since Sisi took power in 2013, human rights conditions in the country continued to deteriorate.

Human rights organizations found that around 60,000 were imprisoned between 2013 and 2017.To accommodate them, the Egyptian authorities decided to build 10 additional prisons. The facilities that already house these prisoners are extremely overcrowded, according to Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights.

In August 2016, the Egyptian Coordination of Rights and Freedoms released a report on prison conditions in Egypt under Sisi, documenting 1,344 incidents of torture – including direct torture and intentional medical neglect – in detention facilities and prisons between 2015 and 2016.

There are also reports of forced disappearances. Amnesty International recorded three to four disappearances a day between 2015 and 2016. Amnesty states that the number could be much higher since a lot of families fear the repercussions from reporting a disappearance case.

Furthermore, Sisi issued a decree in 2014 that allowed the military wider jurisdiction, where civilians were prosecuted by the military courts. These trials contained almost no evidence and were based on investigations led by National Security officers. Human Rights Watch said that this “formed the basis of 7,400 or more military trials of civilians” since Sisi issued the decree.

Tellingly, El-Sisi, who in 2013 overthrew of democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, is expected to run for another term. The date for this election will be announced soon.

GMOs, Global Agribusiness And The Destruction of Choice

Colin Todhunter

One of the myths perpetuated by the pro-GMO (genetically modified organisms) lobby is that critics of GMOs in agriculture are denying choice to farmers and have an ideological agenda. The narrative is that farmers should have access to a range of tools and technologies, including GM crops.

Before addressing this issue, we should remind ourselves that GMOs have been illegitimately placed on the commercial market due to the bypassing of regulations. Steven Druker’s book Altered Genes,Twisted Truths (2015) indicates that the commercialisation of GM food in the US was based on a massive fraud. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) files revealed that GM foods first achieved commercialisation in 1992 but only because the FDA covered up the extensive warnings of its own scientists about their dangers, lied about the facts and then violated federal food safety law by permitting GM food to be marketed without having been proven safe through standard testing.

If the FDA had heeded its own experts’ advice and publicly acknowledged their warnings that GM foods entailed higher risks than their conventional counterparts, Druker says that the GM food venture would have imploded and never gained traction anywhere.

It is highly convenient for the pro-GMO lobby to talk about choice while ignoring such a massive subversion of democratic procedures and processes which could (and arguably is) changing the genetic core of the world’s food.

The denial of choice is a very important accusation. But just what is it that critics are said to be denying farmers? The pro-GMO lobby say that GM crops can increase yields, reduce the use of agrochemicals and are required if we are to feed the world. To date, however, the track record of GMOs is unimpressive.

If we turn to India, we can now see that Bt cotton has largely been a failure. GM cotton has hardly been a success elsewhere either. Although critics are blamed for Golden Rice not being on the market, again the reality is that after two decades problems remain with the technology.

A largely non-GMO Europe tends to outperform the US, which largely relies on GM crops. In general, “GM crops have not consistently increased yields or farmer incomes, or reduced pesticide use in North America or in the Global South (Benbrook, 2012; Gurian-Sherman, 2009)” (from the report ‘Persistent narratives, persistent failure’).

GM agriculture is not ‘feeding the world’, nor has it been designed to do so. The choice for farmers between a technology based on broken promises (as further outlined in this NYT piece) and conventional non-GMO agriculture is no choice at all.

“Currently available GM crops would not lead to major yield gains in Europe,” says Matin Qaim, a researcher at Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Germany. He adds that as far as herbicide-resistant crops in general are concerned: “I don’t consider this to be the miracle type of technology that we couldn’t live without” (quoted in another New York Times article, Doubts about the promised bounty of GM crops.)

A choice between proven non-GMO agriculture and a failing or less effective GMO model (with all the serious health, environmental and social impacts) is nothing but a false choice.

And if the GMO agritech industry wishes to perpetuate the idea that one of its main motives is to promote ‘choice’ and help farmers (and thus consumers) then why does it work to ultimately deny choice? Once the genetic genie is out of the bottle, there may be no way of going back.

Roger Levett, specialist in sustainable development, argues (‘Choice: Less can be more, in Food Ethics, Vol. 3, No. 3, Autumn 2008):

“If some people are allowed to choose to grow, sell and consume GMO foods, soon nobody will be able to choose food, or a biosphere, free of GMOs. It’s a one-way choice, like the introduction of rabbits or cane toads to Australia; once it’s made, it can’t be reversed.”

There is sufficient evidence showing that GM and non-GM crops cannot co-exist. Indeed, contamination seems to be part of a cynical industry strategy. For instance, with GM food crops already illegally growing in India, what future India agriculture? What future farmers’ choices?

It is convenient to paint critics of GMOs as being authoritarian and possessing an ideological agenda. Whether it is Bayer, Monsanto or one of the other major agritech/agribusiness concerns, the real agenda is clear: elite commercial interests and the maximisation of profit for shareholders are the driving forces behind GM agriculture.

Critics of GMOs and transnational corporations did not have a leading role in drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to create seed monopolies. Monsanto did. Critics did not write the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. The global food processing industry had a leading role in that (see this). Whether it involves Codex, the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture aimed at restructuring Indian agriculture or the proposed US-EU trade deal (TTIP), the powerful agribusiness/food lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers.

From the World Bank’s ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ to the Gates Foundation’s role in opening up African agriculture to the global food and agribusiness oligopolies, democratic procedures at sovereign state levels have been bypassed to impose seed monopolies and proprietary inputs on farmers and to incorporate them into a global supply chain dominated by powerful corporations.

From the destruction of indigenous agriculture in Ethiopia to the ongoing dismantling of Indian agriculture at the behest of transnational agribusiness, where is the ‘choice’?

Ukraine’s agriculture sector is being opened up to Monsanto. Iraq’s seed laws were changed to facilitate the entry of Monsanto. India’s edible oils sector was undermined to facilitate the entry of Cargill. And Bayer’s hand is likely behind the ongoing strategy behind GM mustard in India. Whether through secretive trade deals, strings-attached loans or outright duplicity, the global food and agribusiness conglomerates have scant regard for choice or for democracy.

Localisation and traditional methods of food production have given way to globalised supply chains dominated by transnational companies policies and actions which have resulted in the destruction of habitat and livelihoods and the imposition of corporate-controlled, chemical-intensive (monocrop) agriculture that weds farmers and regions to a wholly exploitative system of neoliberal globalization.

Whether it involves the undermining or destruction of what were once largely self-sufficient agrarian economies in Africa or the devastating impacts of soy cultivation in Argentina or palm oil production in Indonesia, the role of transnational agribusiness has been devastating.

What choice do we as consumers have over the tens of thousands of synthetic agrochemicals contaminating our soil, oceans and food. How did they get on the market in the first place? Again, largely as a result of fraud.

What choice do consumers have over GM food when food conglomerates and Bayer have spent large sums of money to prevent labelling?

What choice does the public have when governments become de facto mouthpieces of the industry as they collude behind closed doors with powerful corporations?

What choice did Mexican farmers and consumers have over their right to healthy food

when NAFTA (driven by the powerful food/agribusiness lobby in the US) drove farmers out of business and consumers towards bad food and poor health?

What right have corporations like Monsanto and Bayer to damage (see this too) health as well as natural resources that belong to humanity collectively? These entities with histories of criminality have convinced governments and the public that they have a right to own humanity’s collective resources.

And with that in mind, how will a Monsanto-Bayer merger and increasing consolidation of the seed and agrochemical sector increase choice? It won’t. It hints at of a dark future of corporate monopolies.

In their rush to readily promote neoliberal dogma and corporate-inspired PR, many government officials, scientists and journalists take as given that profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets. There is the premise that water, food, soil and agriculture should be handed over to powerful and wholly corrupt transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.

These natural assets (‘the commons’) belong to everyone and any stewardship should be carried out in the common interest by local people assisted by public institutions and governments acting on their behalf, not by private transnational corporations driven by self-interest and the maximization of profit by any means possible.

And that’s the real agenda. That’s the bottom line where choice is concerned.

We have been living in the shadow of global agribusiness and its impacts for too long.

When pro-GMO/pro-big agribusiness lobbyists take aim at critics, alleging they are denying choice and have an ideological/authoritarian agenda, they should look a little closer to home.

But to quote the writer Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Foreign Minister Asif Says Pakistan Alliance With U.S. Over

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Pakistan’s alliance with the United States seems to be coming towards an end following the US decision to suspend security aid, Pakistan Minister of Foreign Affairs Khawaja Asif told the Wall Street Journal on Friday (Jan. 5).

Asif said he believes the US-Pakistan relations are now at risk, especially after the tensions heightened and moods turned sour when President Donald Trump warned Islamabad to “do more” against terrorists, to whom, he alleged, the country provides safe havens.

“We do not have any alliance [with the US], this is not how allies behave,” the minister told WSJ.

On New Year’s Day, US President Donald Trump tweeted that the US had “foolishly” given Pakistan over $33 billion in aid over the past 15 years, adding that Islamabad gives “safe havens to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help”.

“No more!” Trump added.

The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal said the foreign minister’s statement further ratcheted up an increasingly tense exchange in the past week between the two countries, which have maintained a rocky anti-terror collaboration since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “Those ties have frayed but not broken despite differences over Afghanistan, India and the 2011 U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, which was undertaken without Islamabad’s prior knowledge.”

In that fraught context, the two countries’ relations appeared likely to continue in a grudging, distrustful way, given that Washington and Islamabad haven’t taken more drastic steps or moved to actually dissolve the bulk of their complex ties, WSJ added.

For Washington, jettisoning support for a longtime nuclear-armed ally in a strategic location isn’t easy. For its part, Pakistan fears a full break could lead the U.S. to apply its leverage in international forums to hurt the country’s economy, according to WSJ.

A long-festering dispute lies at the heart of the conflict between the two countries: The U.S. accuses Pakistan of harboring jihadists who kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, while Islamabad says Washington doesn’t adequately acknowledge Pakistan’s role in decimating al Qaeda or its sacrifice of thousands of lives after joining America’s war on terror, the WSJ report said adding:

“Islamabad also sees the U.S. growing ever closer to its archenemy India, with the Trump administration even inviting New Delhi to take a bigger role in Afghanistan—a move experts say all but guaranteed Pakistan’s pullback from cooperating with the U.S.  . The cleavage could push Pakistan further into the arms of China and complicate America’s effort to end the Afghanistan war, its longest-running conflict. BMI Research, an economic-analysis firm based in London, said in a report Friday that the U.S. suspension of aid “will likely accelerate Pakistan’s geopolitical drift towards China.”

New York Times: Dealing with Pakistan is both vital and difficult

Afghan officials have pleaded with three American presidents to reconsider their support for Pakistan, which was both receiving billions of dollars in American aid and harboring the leaders of a Taliban insurgency that the United States has struggled to defeat, the New York Times said adding:

“But when President Trump suspended nearly all American security aid to Pakistan on Thursday for what he called the country’s “lies and deceit,” any jubilation in the halls of power in Afghanistan — and there was some — was leavened with worry over how the move might affect a complex war that has pushed the Afghan government to the brink.

“If there is one consensus among Afghan leaders and their American counterparts, it is that dealing with Pakistan is both vital and difficult. The question on the table after the cutoff of military aid to Pakistan is who will come under the most pressure: the Pakistanis, or the coalition fighting the Taliban.”

Muhammed Umer Daudzai, a former Afghan interior minister and ambassador to Pakistan, was quoted as saying:  “The pressure on Pakistan had come too late, with the country having developed regional allies who would help it weather the financial toll. The financial sanctions may not bite Pakistan because they have developed alternatives.”

Mr. Daudzai also said. “The only area the impact could be huge, but it’s a bit too early to judge, is the field of air force. The Pakistani system is still hugely dependent on the U.S. It can take a long time to switch from that.”

Trump backs Bill to end all aid to Pakistan

Not surprisingly, President Donald Trump Saturday (Jan 6) supported Senator Rand Paul’s proposal for a bill to stop the US aid to Pakistan for failing to clamp down on terror groups and divert the money for building roads and bridges in the US.

“Good idea Rand!” Trump tweeted, sharing a video of Republican Senator promoting his bill to stop US aid to Pakistan and use the money towards domestic infrastructure projects.

“I’m introducing a bill to end aid to Pakistan in the coming days. My bill will take the money that would have gone to Pakistan and put it in an infrastructure fund to build roads and bridges here at home,” Paul said.

The Trump administration Thursday suspended about USD 2 billion in security aid to Pakistan for “failing to clamp down on the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network terror groups and dismantle their safe havens.”

The freezing of all security assistance to Pakistan comes after President Trump in a New Year’s Day tweet accused the country of giving nothing to the US but “lies and deceit” and providing “safe haven” to terrorists in return for USD 33 billion aid over the last 15 years.

The suspended amount also include USD 255 million in Foreign Military Funding (FMF) for the fiscal year 2016 as mandated by the Congress. In addition, the Department of Defense has suspended the entire USD 900 million of the Coalition Support Funds (CSF) money to Pakistan for the fiscal year 2017 and other unspent money from previous fiscal years.

South Australian Labor government slashes public sector jobs

Oscar Grenfell 

The South Australian state government of Labor Premier Jay Weatherill announced 750 public sector job cuts in a budget review late last month. This is part of a broader raft of austerity measures aimed at slashing government spending by $370 million over the next four years.

State Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis said the cuts would include the axing of 263 public servants and staff reductions in the state-run SA Water and Urban Renewal Authority corporations.

Homestart, a state-run corporation that provides home loans, will be forced to deliver 100 percent of its profits to the government over the next two financial years, up from the current 60 percent, supposedly in lieu of retrenchments.

The measures underscore the extent to which state-run utilities have been corporatised by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments. Koutsantonis said departmental “chief executives” would have “maximum flexibility” to “deliver these savings.”

In other words, the job cuts have not been specifically earmarked, so all public servants will live in fear of being victimised and sacked.

The retrenchments are a direct response to a protracted campaign by the corporate and financial elite for cutbacks to the public service. Articles and editorials in the Murdoch press, including its national flagship, the Australian, have declared that the state’s public sector is “bloated.”

The announcement follows the Labor government’s abandonment of proposals for a limited bank tax, which was slated to raise $370 million over the next four years. The limited tax, which would not have affected the banks’ bottom line, was vociferously denounced in the financial press, and blocked in the state’s parliament.

The latest cuts follow a spate of redundancies in the public sector. While official figures are scanty, the number of public sector positions destroyed since the 2008 financial crisis by the state’s Labor governments are estimated in the thousands.

In 2014 alone, Labor eliminated 885 positions. The following year, it introduced plans to reduce the number of public servants by 4,000 over four years, including through the contracting out of government services.

Over the past five years, some 600 teachers at TAFE vocational colleges have been made redundant, as the state government has sought to wind back publicly funded education, in line with the pro-business education agenda spearheaded by the former federal Labor governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

The union that covers public sector workers, the Public Service Association (PSA), signalled its support for “cost reductions,” while fraudulently claiming to oppose the sackings. Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last month, PSA official Neville Kitchin endorsed calls for “efficiency dividends” that he said had been “identified in recent reports.”

The PSA, along with all of the major unions, backed the re-election of a state Labor government in 2014, after it had imposed major cuts, and has enforced each round of redundancies.

The South Australian cutbacks form part of a broader offensive against the jobs, conditions and wages of public sector workers, imposed by state and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, with the crucial assistance of the trade unions.

Last September, in its first budget, the Western Australian (WA) Labor Party government eliminated 3,000 public sector jobs. The retrenchments, part of a four-year $1.7 billion reduction in public sector spending, are set to be completed in the 2017–18 financial year. The job cuts followed the amalgamation and restructuring of public sector departments reducing the number from 41 to 25, and the introduction of an effective four-year wage-freeze in May, just two months after Labor’s election.

The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), the national public sector federation, backed the pro-business measures, having campaigned for Labor in the 2017 WA state election on the bogus pretext that it would halt public sector cuts and privatisations. Backing the amalgamations, WA CPSU secretary Toni Wilkinson stated: “Some of our members believe this is an opportunity to get things right in the delivery of government services.”

At a national level, the CPSU has pushed through regressive enterprise agreements covering major public sector departments in the past 18 months. During a three-and-a-half year dispute, the federal Liberal-National Coalition government sought to impose a 2 percent annual pay rise cap and a raft of cuts to jobs and conditions.

Throughout the dispute, the CPSU’s primary concern was that it could be side-lined by the government, depriving it of its position at the bargaining table, where it trades away the jobs, wages and conditions of the workers it falsely claims to represent.

Despite members’ resistance, the CPSU ultimately pushed through regressive deals at a host of federal workplaces, including the Australian Tax Office (ATO), that ratified the government’s push for an effective wage freeze, and further cuts to jobs and conditions.

The perfidious role of the union continued their support for cuts to the public sector, which began in 1987 when Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s Labor government introduced “efficiency dividends”—continuous funding reductions.

From 2007 to 2013, the Labor governments of Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd eliminated up to 14,500 public sector jobs. In 2013, the Rudd government increased the “efficiency dividend” from 1.25 percent to 2.25 percent, paving the way for further cuts by Coalition governments.

The assault on public service employees is one front in a wider agenda, aimed at forcing the working class to pay for the deepening crisis of the profit system. In South Australia, the shutdown of car manufacturing and other industrial production has led to deepening social distress. Real unemployment in the state is estimated at over 10 percent, and more than 200,000 people live below the official poverty line. Indices of social distress and alienation such as drug addiction are growing.

In working-class suburbs such as Elizabeth, a former hub of car production in northwestern Adelaide, unemployment is as high 33 percent. Between 1981 and 2011, the number of manufacturing jobs in the state declined from 100,000 to an estimated 74,000. The closure of GM Holden last year is expected to result in 20,000 indirect job losses, on top of the 1,400 workers directly retrenched.

Under these conditions, Labor’s public sector cuts are another indication that the March 17 South Australian election will be dominated by pledges from the main parties to slash spending, further eroding the conditions of the working class.

Nick Xenophon, a right-wing populist ex-senator, whose newly-created SA Best party is polling level with the Liberal-Nationals and Labor in the lead-up to the elections, criticised the public sector sackings. His attitude to austerity, however, was underscored by reports that his federal party, the Nick Xenophon Team, reached an agreement with the Coalition government to slash welfare payments and entitlements for the most oppressed sections of the working class.