Palantir Technologies: A “CIA-backed startup”

Julie Hyland 

Statements by whistleblower Christopher Wylie to the parliamentary Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee on alleged activities by Cambridge Analytica were given wide coverage in the British media, especially the Guardian.

Allegations that Cambridge Analytica—which backed Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election—received Facebook data collected without users’ consent raise serious democratic issues. The campaign against it, however, has nothing to do with redressing these concerns.

This is made clear by the far more damaging allegation made by Wylie to the select committee that has largely been passed over to date.

The WSWS has reported on the real pedigree of Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, the behavioural research and strategic communication company, SCL.

Asked by the parliamentary select committee if there were other data companies operating similarly to Cambridge Analytica, Wylie specifically cited the data analysis giant Palantir Technologies.

“We actually had several meetings with Palantir,” Wylie said. “There were senior Palantir employees that were also working on the Facebook data. That was not an official contract between Palantir and CA, but there were Palantir staff who would come into the office and work on the data. And we would go and meet with Palantir staff at Palantir.”

To the extent that his statement received coverage, it is due to the fact that Palantir was founded by another pro-Trump oligarch, Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and a member of Facebook’s board of directors.

But the relations between Palantir—as with other social media corporations—and the US deep state have largely been passed over in silence.

So close are the connections between the data firm and the US state that in July 2017, the Guardian itself described Palantir as a “CIA-backed startup.”

The CIA’s venture capital branch, In-Q-Tel, was one of the first investors in the company when it was launched by Thiel in 2004. This was one year after the illegal invasion of Iraq, and Palantir played a major role in the so-called “counterterror” strategies employed by the Pentagon to occupy the country and quash opposition.

Palantir’s clients include a disproportionate number of US military, state and intelligence agencies. They include the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI, Homeland Security, the Defence Intelligence Agency and National Counterterrorism Centre, through to various police departments.

In 2013, Forbes listed Palantir’s advisers as including Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state under President George W. Bush, and former CIA Director George Tenet.

According to documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Palantir was instrumental in the mass illegal spying activities undertaken by Washington’s global surveillance network, Prism.

Palantir’s data-gathering services were also retained by Britain’s GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) spying agency as well as the Five Eyes intelligence alliance between the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Claims by Cambridge Analytica whistleblower used for new electoral investigation into Brexit

Julie Hyland

Lawyers acting on behalf of whistleblowers have called for the Electoral Commission to investigate if Vote Leave broke spending rules in the 2016 referendum on Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU).

Vote Leave was the official representative of those advocating withdrawal. Its leading members included Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. Now foreign secretary and environment minister, respectively, they are the lead proponents of a “hard-Brexit” policy in Theresa May’s Conservative government.

The Electoral Commission has already conducted two investigations into claims of Vote Leave wrongdoing and cleared the group. Under pressure from anti-Brexit groups, including the Good Law Project, it has opened a third investigation.

The latest accusations are based on statements by former Cambridge Analytica employee Chris Wylie and Shahmir Sanni, a volunteer with the pro-Brexit student group BeLeave.

Tamsin Allen, from legal firm Bindmans, said, “[T]here is a strong suspicion that the campaigns were very closely linked and coordinated, in which case it may be that Vote Leave spent huge sums unlawfully and its declaration of expenses is incorrect.”

The allegation is that Vote Leave circumvented electoral spending limits by donating £625,000 to BeLeave, which is said to be essentially part of the same campaign group. If this can be established, it would take Vote Leave spending over the £7 million legal limit.

Allen said there was ground to accuse Vote Leave’s campaign director, Dominic Cummings, “of having conspired to break the law,” due to discussions he had with BeLeave about its activities. It is also argued that Vote Leave and BeLeave shared the same office and retained the services of Canadian-based Aggregate IQ (AIQ).

AIQ is accused of being part of efforts by Cambridge Analytica to harvest Facebook profiles with the aim of influencing both the 2016 US Presidential election and the Brexit referendum the same year.

Allen said there are also “grounds to investigate” Vote Leave’s national organiser, Stephen Parkinson, and Vote Leave’s head of outreach, Cleo Watson, who are both now advisers to the government.

Vote Leave has rejected any wrongdoing, with Cummings stating that he will file formal complaints to the Electoral Commission and the Information Commissioner’s Office against spending by the Remain campaign.

The Electoral Commission’s latest investigation testifies to the deep tensions within the British bourgeoisie over Brexit. The referendum itself was conceived by then-Prime Minister David Cameron as a means of settling the faction fight within the Tory Party over UK relations with the EU, which, in turn, are bound up with broader foreign policy considerations.

The majority of the British bourgeoisie—including its financial and military/intelligence sectors—were in favour of a Remain vote. However, the Leave campaign—led by the Tory right and the UK Independence Party—was able to successfully exploit hostility to the EU, and the British establishment, to secure 51 percent in favour of Leave.

Last week Wylie, a Canadian citizen, gave evidence before Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. Ostensibly set up in January 2017 to investigate “fake news,” its real purpose is to manufacture a pretext for British and US imperialism’s provocations against Russia, while censoring and closing down alternative media sources that would expose its plans.

Wylie began work for SCL Group 2013—the parent company of Cambridge Analytica—in London. He says that as research director he helped establish Cambridge Analytica, with funds from Robert Mercer, the billionaire hedge fund manager and Donald Trump supporter. He left Cambridge Analytica in 2014 and told the select committee he felt “shock” and “horror” at Trump’s win in 2016.

Soon after Trump’s inauguration, he began working with the Guardian and Observer newspapers on exposures of Cambridge Analytica’s data-gathering programme that included harvesting the Facebook profiles of 50 million people.

Wylie told the select committee that such activities may have altered the outcome of both the US presidential election and the Brexit referendum.

Claims by AIQ that it is a separate entity from SCL and Cambridge Analytica are “weasel words,” he said. There was a “common plan and common purpose” between AIQ and the Leave campaigns, said Wylie.

Describing AIQ as a “proxy money-laundering vehicle,” Wylie said that “Cummings…just went round and found places he could launder money through to give it to AIQ so they could overspend. And that is my genuinely held belief.”

An AIQ employee had told him that the relationship between Vote Leave and BeLeave was “totally illegal” because “you are not allowed to coordinate between different campaigns and not declare it.” He said, “I don’t feel confident in the result [of the referendum]” as a result.

Wylie presented no evidence to back up his claims. Asked directly if he could supply any, he replied, “[N]ot in the form of documentation.”

Challenged as to whether £625,000 could really have decided the outcome of the referendum, Wylie argued that just 600,000 people decided the referendum between Leave and Remain, and it was “incredibly reasonable” to say it had.

Wylie has been denounced as a charlatan and a liar. Cambridge Analytica denied the allegations and said that Wylie had been a “part-time contractor” who left the organisation in 2014 and would not have knowledge of the company’s workings beyond that date. It was also pointed out that, while Wylie says his accusations are motivated by objections to data harvesting techniques, the whistleblower had offered to supply his own services to Vote Leave in January 2016 for the referendum but was turned down.

Simultaneous with Wylie’s statements, BeLeave whistleblower Shahmir Sanni told the Observer that he had passed information to the Electoral Commission that lead figures in the Vote Leave campaign violated referendum spending rules and attempted to destroy the evidence.

Sanni, formerly secretary of BeLeave and now employed by the right-wing TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign group, alleges that the £625,000 donation Vote Leave made to BeLeave was not a genuine donation and that it was channelled to AIQ as part of a coordinated operation. He also alleges leading Vote Leave personnel—including Cummings—tried to destroy evidence of this coordination by removing themselves from the Google Drive both campaign groups shared. Cummings said this was “factually wrong and libellous.”

Wylie also claimed that Facebook was aware of the large-scale harvesting of users’ data. His allegations were used by the select committee to repeat its demand that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg answer the charges in person.

The serious questions raised about the vast amounts of data at the unchecked disposal of Google, Facebook and Twitter are being used to bring the corporate giants into even closer alignment with the demands of the US and British intelligence agencies for sweeping Internet censorship measures.

At the forefront of this campaign are the Guardian, Observer and New York Times in alignment with the Democratic Party in the US and the Blairite Labour right in Britain.

As Wylie finished his testimony, it was reported that Zuckerberg had finally agreed to demands by leading Democrats to testify before Congress.

China imposes tariffs as trade war hots up

Nick Beams

China has imposed tariffs on a range of US imports, making good on its commitment of two weeks ago to retaliate for the imposition of tariffs by the US on steel and aluminium. The tariffs, which appear to target areas where US President Donald Trump has enjoyed political support, cover a range of agricultural products.

Imports of American pork will be hit by a tariff of 25 percent, along with eight other products, while a 15 percent tariff will apply to fruit and 120 commodities. The total value of the products to be hit is around $3 billion per year.

China criticised the steel and aluminium tariffs, imposed under section 232 of a 1962 US trade act on “national security” grounds, as causing “severe damage to our country’s interests.” The finance ministry said the counter-measures were intended to “protect our country’s interests and balance the damage created by the US’s 232 measures.”

Trump has not commented so far on the Chinese moves but they appear to have had an impact on the stock market. Yesterday’s fall on Wall Street left the Dow Jones index down by more than 450 points at end of the day, after falling at one stage by more than 750 points.

According to the Wall Street Journal, stocks “tumbled” as “sliding technology shares and rising global tensions dragged major indexes lower.” The Financial Times said US markets had “tumbled into correction territory … as deepening declines for technology companies and rising trade tensions unnerved investors.”

The S&P 500 index fell by 2.2 percent, leaving it more than 10 percent below its high in January—a fall defined as a “correction”—and below the 200-day moving average that is regarded as key market indicator.

In and of themselves, the Chinese tariffs, while dealing a blow to agricultural producers, may not have a broader impact, but the concern is over what could follow. The Trump administration is in the process of deciding on imposing tariffs on up to $60 billion worth of Chinese goods in response to what it alleges are violations by China of American intellectual property rights.

China has yet to respond directly to the US threat and is waiting for the outcome of negotiations on the issue with members of the Trump administration. However, Beijing is reported to be preparing tariffs on imports of US sorghum and possibly soybeans if the measures go ahead.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer indicated during a Senate finance committee hearing on March 22 that the US would not be deterred from the imposition of tariffs by the threat of Chinese retaliation.

He said it was “not possible to take the position that because of soybean farmers we’re not going to stick up for our rights in a whole variety of ways, and have hundreds of billions of dollars with the other exporters and domestic producers be punished because of unfair trade.”

The US treasury department is preparing a response to the alleged infringements by China on technology, with indications that the list of potential targets will come within the next few days.

“Senior administration officials” told the Wall Street Journal they are looking at 1,300 different product categories covering high-tech areas, including semi-conductors, communications and aerospace.

After the list is announced, US industry will have 30 days in which to comment before the administration decides which products to hit.

Key sections of the Trump administration regard the Chinese regime’s “Made in China 2025” plan, aimed at moving into hi-tech products, as a long-term threat to the US domination in these areas.

So far, the Chinese measures have been relatively restrained, indicating its reluctance to escalate the developing trade war with the United States. A major consideration in this response has been to cultivate its relations with Europe and, if possible, form a common front against the US measures, or at least prevent Europe and Japan joining the US in trade disputes.

According to a comment by Arthur Kroeber of Gavekal Dragonomics, a Beijing-based research group cited by the Financial Times, this is a key aspect of Chinese policy. “China knows it can hold its own in a commercial conflict with any individual rival, including the US. But a concerted effort by the industrial democracies to constrain China’s mercantilist development program would cause it much more pain,” he wrote.

The Xi Jinping regime is under internal pressure to step up its actions. The Financial Times reported that “some influential commentators in China have called for a more robust response to the US’s next set of tariffs” aimed at technology.

For its part, the US is seeking to win Europe to its side by offering to hold talks until the beginning of May to secure permanent European exemptions from the steel and aluminium tariffs. The Trump administration has been somewhat vague about the talks, which will not only cover overcapacity in steel, which the US regards as emanating from China. They will also probe whether the European Union will side with the US on the issue of technology and China’s alleged theft of intellectual property rights.

Recent events, beginning on March 1 when the Trump administration announced the steel and aluminium tariffs, followed by the threats over technology three weeks later, point to the accelerating speed of the trade conflicts.

A year ago, the meeting of G20 finance ministers in Germany received a shock when the Trump administration vetoed a reference to “resisting protectionism” being included in the final communiqué.

Today, trade war has broken out. The major combatants are engaging in the initial manoeuvres of a global conflict that has the potential to repeat the disasters of the 1930s on even-wider scale.

Explosive social conditions in Spain behind moves toward police state

Vicky Short

The arrest and detention of former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont in Germany, on the request of Spanish authorities, represents a sinister attack on political opposition. It marks another step toward police-state rule in Europe.

Behind this development lie economic, political and social tensions now finding expression in a growing movement of the European working class. This is especially the case in Spain, which in the last weeks has seen strikes by Amazon workers and mass demonstrations by pensioners to demand decent pensions and social security.

Despite the boast by the ruling right-wing Popular Party (PP) government and the European Union (EU) that Spain’s economy has survived the 2008 economic crisis that crippled the country for almost a decade and is well on the road to recovery, working people—whether Catalan, Basque or Spanish-speaking—confront appalling and worsening social conditions.

Nearly three and a half million Spanish people are unemployed. Although the headline figure of 16.5 percent unemployed is down from 26.3 percent in 2013, this is small comfort, as a high number are in temporary, low-paid employment. According to official statistics, 21.5 million contracts were signed in 2017, of which 90 percent were temporary.

Oxfam Intercom ranks Spain as having experienced the third-highest growth of inequality in the EU since 2007. The organisation notes that the richest 1 percent of the Spanish population accounts for a quarter of the national wealth. It reports that 7,000 new millionaires were created in 2017. The fortunes of Spain’s top three richest people are equivalent to the wealth of the poorest 30 percent, i.e., over 14 million people.

Meanwhile, the exploitation of the Spanish working class has intensified. While hourly productivity has increased by 6 percent since 2012, wage costs have only increased by 0.6 percent. A recent survey revealed that 68 percent of Spanish people think that it is difficult or impossible for the average worker to increase their savings, no matter how hard they work.

Ten and a quarter million people live below the official poverty line. This is a poverty rate of 22.3 percent, the third highest in the EU. An estimated 27.9 percent of the population—nearly 13 million—are at risk of poverty and social exclusion; 22.3 percent, or 9 million families, are living on less than €684 [$US841] per month and more than 1 million subsist on barely €342.

The European Network against Poverty and Social Exclusion’s 7th Report (“The State of Poverty Following the Risk Indicator of Poverty and Social Exclusion in Spain--2008-2016”), reveals that a significant portion of the Spanish poor consists of adults with a medium or high level of education, working and with small children in their charge.

Up to 27 percent of poor Spaniards live in homes without lighting, with water leaks, rot on walls and floors and dirty surroundings.

The number of food banks, particularly in the big cities, is on the increase, where people using them include not only the homeless but a large number of the working poor. One of every three children in Spain today is at risk of poverty and social exclusion.

After coming to power in 2011, the PP’s government imposed tough austerity measures and was strongly criticised for raiding a €66.8 billion pension reserve fund.

This latter development explains the mass demonstrations by retirees last month. Tens of thousands rallied in Madrid, as well as Barcelona, Bilbao, Seville and Granada, to denounce the government’s 0.25 percent increase in pensions as inadequate.

“The 0.25 percent increase is shameful,” said former waiter Jose Maria Elias, 66, to the AFP news agency. He was one of the thousands demonstrating in Madrid. “Let all the corrupt people return what they stole and put it in the pension fund,” he said, referring to the numerous corruption scandals of affecting the ruling PP. “They have demolished our public pension system,” said Josefa Albala, 77, who added that she uses her retirement money to help feed her unemployed daughter.

In the Basque region in northern Spain, where nationalism has been heavily promoted in an attempt to divide the Spanish working class, tens of thousands took to the streets without national flags. Many of those protesting have a militant history of struggle in major working class battles, including the Bilbao shipyards and Bizkaia steel mills, decimated by the Socialist Party government in the 1980s.

Young people are hit hardest by unemployment, poverty and social exclusion. The jobless rate for those between the ages of 16 and 19 is as high as 60 percent. It is more than 40 percent for those aged between 20 and 24, and 25.6 percent for those between 25 and 29.

Tens of thousands of young people have left Spain, seeking work elsewhere. A recent report from the Consejo de la Juventud de España (Council of Spanish Youth) portrays a generation marked by unemployment, precariousness and emigration.

Since 2012, over 1 million well-educated young adults have left the country. “We do not go voluntarily, they throw us out,” is their slogan. Many of them are nurses, doctors and scientists. Where they are able to find employment it is usually at lower rates of pay. Those less fortunate eke out a living in restaurants, cafes and hotels on low wages.

Those who remain in Spain are either dependent on family members, on very small welfare benefits when they can get them, or move from temporary job to temporary job. These contracts do not include paid leave or sick pay and offer little protection for workers, who can be fired without explanation or notice.

Most are unable to afford their own accommodation and so must continue to live with parents or family. The average age at which Spaniards leave the family home is now 29.

If the ruling class has been able to implement these levels of misery and poverty, it is due above all to the role of pseudo-left political forces.

This year marks the seventh anniversary of the 15-M Movement or Indignados (“angry ones”), which arose against unemployment, economic hardship and the austerity measures imposed by the widely despised 2004-2011 Socialist Party government. The main leaders and spokespersons of the movement then made careers out of these protests, emerging as the new leaders of the pseudo-left parties and “social movements.”

Alberto Garzón, for example, once a spokesperson for the Indignados in Malaga, is now general coordinator of the United Left. Ada Colau, the former leader of the anti-evictions platform PAH, is now mayor of Barcelona, busy breaking strikes and persecuting migrant street vendors. The once angry university professors, Pablo Iglesias and Iñigo Erejón, now lead the pseudo-left Podemos, whose main role is to block the development of an independent programme, perspective and political leadership in opposition to capitalism.

Such is the rotten role of these forces that since Podemos’ founding the number of demonstrations, rallies and other spontaneous actions has plummeted. Now, a movement of the working class and youth is starting to re-emerge once again after having experienced first-hand the austerity imposed by Podemos-led local and regional governments and their close relations with the Socialist Party.

Game-changing Technologies for Future Naval Operations

Vijay Sakhuja 


Two new weapon technologies - Solid State Lasers (SSLs) and Electromagnetic Railgun (EMRG) - can augment ship defence against incoming missiles, high speed projectiles and unmanned vehicles/drones. Experts argue that if these are successfully deployed, surface warfare could witness a ‘revolution’. Further, these technologies can potentially overcome the limitations of onboard stowage of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), and material efficiency of ‘multiple-barrel, rotary rapid-fire cannons’ or the Close-in Weapon System (CIWS), that may necessitate withdrawal from combat for reloading or repairs. These technologies are currently at various stages of development and deployment, and China and the US have either showcased some of them or made the development status public. 

Early this year, photographs of a Chinese Type 072III-class landing ship, Haiyang Shan, berthed at the Wuchang Shipyard in Wuhan and fitted with an EMRG went viral. This was perhaps the first time naval-watchers were seeing an EMRG on a Chinese warship. By March, China’s official military website carried a picture of Zhang Xiao, of the PLA Navy’s University of Engineering, receiving a National March 8 Red Banner for her work in electromagnetic launching technology. 

The Chinese EMRG project is being developed under the leadership of Rear Admiral Ma Weiming of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Zhang Xiao is a core member of the team. She was quoted as saying that after "hundreds of failures and more than 50,000 tests" the technology was ready for use. The associated power supply system also underwent repeated tests. According to Song Zhongping, a military expert and TV commentator, the Chinese EMRG "has a more stable and [provides] continuous power supply" than the US’ EMRG. The US began work on the EMRG earlier than China and has conducted more experiments.

The US Navy has an active EMRG programme and the last known test was in 2008. Two key technological challenges associated with this US$ 500 million programme involve engineering and metal for the barrel, and supply of high electromagnetic charge for the gun, which only new Zumwalt class of mega-destroyers can provide. 

However, the US Navy is a leader in the use of directed energy weapons at sea. USS Ponce, while on deployment in West Asia in 2014, had tested a 30-kilowatt first generation SSL, the Laser Weapon System (LaWS). This US$ 40 million system is considered value-for-money given that the cost of a missile is in millions of dollars when compared with a single shot from a directed energy weapon like the LaWS. It is capable of "frying drones in midair and burning out the motors of helicopters and small watercraft," "without endangering the lives of any onboard personnel," which is in accordance with the US Naval Handbook (2007) that states, “US military forces will not employ laser weapons specifically designed to cause permanent blindness.”

The US Navy plans to install an advanced version of the LaWS (more powerful and with greater range) onboard USS Portland, the latest landing platform dock ship of the San Antonio-class. The ship will enter service in April and is programmed to take part in the 2018 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises.

The US Navy is also seeking funding support of US$ 300 million in the financial year 2019 budget for the Navy Laser Family of Systems (NLFoS). Meanwhile, the Department of Defense has awarded Lockheed Martin a US$ 150 million contract for two prototypes of “high energy laser with integrated optical dazzler and surveillance,” or HELIOS, which will be installed on USS Arleigh Burke fitted with Aegis Combat System and AN/SPY-1 targeting radar for ballistic missile defence.

Unlike China and the US who are competing for technological superiority in the naval domain, the Russians have chosen to focus on land-based transport trailers fitted with lasers, and there are plans for fitting laser systems on aircraft. Russia is fielding a laser weapon system called Peresvet, named after the 13th century monk who died in battle against the Mongol army. According to Russian Deputy Defence Minister Yuri Borisov, Russia is ahead of its competitor, the US. President Putin told Russian lawmakers that Russia has "achieved significant progress in laser weapons" and had gone past the stage of "a concept or a plan," and that Russian troops have been "armed with laser weapons." Russia is also known to have developed an aircraft-mounted laser system that can hit satellites and will be "fitted aboard a brand-new, as-yet-unnamed aircraft, as part of a new anti-satellite “complex” that will likely involve ground and radar elements as well."

The battlefield environment at sea is becoming more ‘complex and murky’ with a variety of classic munitions such as missiles and projectiles in the inventory of both medium and small-size navies, and “pesky” threats from unmanned aerial vehicles and ships, and armed speed boats, and now, swarm drones carrying ordnance. Naval planners may have to develop new strategies and fleet architecture that relies on emerging technologies of the kind discussed above. These plans are sure to impact budgets and shipbuilding expenditures.

EDCTP Grant Proposal Writing Workshop for French-speaking Scientists from sub-Saharan Africa (Funded to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire) 2018

Application Deadline: 22nd April 2018

Eligible Countries: Countries in sub-Saharan Africa

To Be Taken At (Country): Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

About the Award: The objectives of the workshop are to inform researchers about the main EDCTP funding mechanisms, its grant review process and the eligibility criteria through hands-on and practical sessions on grant proposal writing.
The workshop will be hosted by the Institut Pasteur de Côte d’Ivoire (ITPC) in Abidjan from 30 May to 01 June 2018.

Type: Workshop

Eligibility: The workshop will be conducted in French and is aimed at French-speaking scientists from sub-Saharan Africa in early stages of their career.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: Participants will be selected as part of a procedure open application and will benefit from free training. Priority will be given to candidates who have received their diplomas in the last five years, and those from organizations that have not yet received EDCTP funding.

Duration of Program: 30 may-1 june 2018

How to Apply: Applications should be submitted in French via email to weinberg[at]edctp.org no later than
22 April 2018 at 18:00 CEST. Late submissions will not be considered.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: EDCTP

Important Notes: Please note that participation at this workshop is independent from any EDCTP call for proposals and does not guarantee funding from EDCTP at a later stage.

Transparency International School on Integrity Anti-Corruption Training for Future Leaders (Fully-funded to Lituania) 2018

Application Deadline: 1st May 2018

Eligible Countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Turkey and Ukraine.

To Be Taken At (Country): Mykolas Romeris University student campus in Vilnius, Lithuania

Type: Training                                                                                                                                                                    
Eligibility: 

• The Transparency School is open to senior students, graduates and young professionals under the age of 35.
• We welcome individuals from public, private, non-governmental and academic sectors, from all academic backgrounds.
• Transparency School does not discriminate its applicants on the grounds of race, color, national origin, disability, sex, gender identity, religion, political beliefs, marital, familial or parental status, sexual orientation or any other basis.

Number of Awards: limited

Value of Award: Full scholarships cover international travel, tuition and accommodation expenses.

Duration of Program: 2nd – 8th July 2018

How to Apply: 

• Students seeking to receive full scholarships are encouraged to apply as soon as the application process opens.
• If you wish to apply for a scholarship, make sure to fill out the appropriate section in the online application form, stating your reasons for applying.
• Submit all required documents

Apply now

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Transparency School is organized in cooperation with Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius.

Hong Kong Jockey Club Fellowships for Association of Commonwealth Universities 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 6th May 2018

Eligible Institutions: ACU member institutions

To Be Taken At (Country): Hong Kong and any ACU member institution in a country other than Hong Kong.

About the Award: Fellowships are not intended for degree courses, or for postdocs. The ACU cannot arrange fellows’ attachments, travel or accommodation, nor can it work out itineraries for them. Applicants should be aware that ACU Fellowships allow for small scale conference or course attendance within a wider fellowship programme, but applications where the primary or sole purpose is the attendance of a conference or course will not be considered.
Two types of fellowships are available

• Inward fellowship – Tenable at The Chinese University of Hong Kong or The University of Hong Kong.
• Outward fellowship – Tenable at any ACU member institution in a country other than Hong Kong.

Both fellowships can be used for either a collaborative academic research visit, or a collaborative fact-finding visit.

Fields of Study: Awarded for any of the priority subject areas:

• Education
• Health and related social sciences
• Information technology
• Information management
• STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects
• Sustainable development
• University development and management

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• Inward fellowship – Applicants must be professional or academic staff of, or a nominee of, an ACU member university in a country other than Hong Kong.
• Outward fellowship – Applicants must be professional or academic staff of, or a nominee of, The Chinese University of Hong Kong or The University of Hong Kong.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: Up to GBP £5000 and intended to cover:

• international economy return airfare and other travel costs
• medical insurance and visa fees
• board and lodging fees
• research costs

Duration of Program: The tenure of the fellowship must be for a period of less than six months, and travel must take place between 1 August 2018 and 31 July 2019.

How to Apply: Fellows are required to submit a 1000-2500 word report within two months of the end of the fellowship.

• Apply here

Applicants must submit a proposal for their fellowship and provide proof of support for their fellowship from their host institution, as well as from their head of department at their home institution.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Association of Commonwealth Universities

The Iraq War Fueled the Destruction of the Middle East

Cesar Chelala

Fifteen years after it started, the Iraq war has nearly destroyed the country, one of the most prosperous in the Middle East, and destabilized the whole region by intensifying internecine and religious conflicts and giving rise to new and violent groups. And the human and material costs of the war keep mounting.

In addition to the American soldiers who were killed or injured, the war has had a considerable negative effect on the U.S. economy. The war has also had a negative impact on U.S. troops’ morale There  has also been a  high rate of suicides prevalent among those returning from the war.

Like a malicious octopus, the ill-named Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) has extended its deadly tentacles into nearby countries, and turned the region into the unmanageable mess it is today. Major Danny Sjursen, a U.S. Army strategist who fought in Iraq recently wrote, “That ill-fated farce of an invasion either created the conditions, or exacerbated the existing tensions, which inform today’s regional wars.”

The war has increased Sunni-Shiite tension, fostered the emergence of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and strengthened Iran as a military power in the region. Following the U.S. led invasion, the Iraqi Shiite Arab majority took a central role in government, an unprecedented event in the Middle East, which also encouraged the Shiites across the region. In a persistent crisis, the Sunnis in Iraq rebelled against the Iraqi Shiites, launching a rebellion against them that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

There was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq before the U.S. and British invasion. It first appeared in Iraq in 2004, when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi formed an alliance with Al-Qaeda, pledging his allegiance to Osama bin Laden in return for his endorsement as the leader of the group’s franchise in Iraq. Al-Qaeda’s main targets were Iraqi Shiites, whom they attacked during religious processions or at their mosques and shrines. After 2007, Al-Qaeda was considerably weakened after the U.S. funded Sunni groups called “Awakening Councils” to expel this organization from Iraq.

Although less powerful than during its peak years, Al-Qaeda continues to be active in its violent activities, whose targets now also include Syria and Yemen. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemeni branch of Al-Qaeda, is now thriving in Yemen, taking advantage of the chaotic environment in the country. A ravaged country, Yemen continues to be one of the poorest countries in the world.

In Syria, Al-Qaeda still has a presence, albeit less powerful now. Jabhat al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda’s ideological heir, and Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group it formed, remain in eastern Ghouta, northern Hama and western Aleppo provinces, contributing to the prolongation of Syria’s bloody war.

At the same time, the militants of ISIS, the brutal offshoot of Al-Qaeda, have no restraints in pursuing brutal tactics to cement an Islamic emirate. In an ISIS propaganda video, after bulldozing the Syrian-Iraq border, an ISIS militant says, “We will break the barrier of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, all the countries. This is the first of many barriers we will break.”

The Iraq war has proved to be a disaster for the Middle East. The destruction of Iraq, Syria, the ravaging of Yemen and a region swamped in weapons are connected, either directly or indirectly, to the Iraq war. It may be tempting to think that the war had some redeeming value. However, considering its consequences, one can only conclude that nothing will assuage the savage wounds of this senseless war.

The Ignorant and the Arrogant: How Pompeo and Bolton Bring Us Closer to War in the Middle East

Patrick Cockburn

Armed conflict between the US and Iran is becoming more probable by the day as super-hawks replace hawks in the Trump administration. The new National Security Adviser, John Bolton, has called for the US to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal of 2015 and advocated immediate regime change in Tehran. The new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has said the agreement, which Trump may withdraw from on 12 May, is “a disaster”. Trump has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he will not accept a deal with “cosmetic changes” as advocated by European states, according to Israeli reporters. If this is so, then the deal is effectively dead.

The escalating US-Iran confrontation is causing menacing ripples that could soon become waves across the Middle East. The price of crude oil is up because of fears of disruption of supply from the Gulf. In Iran, the value of the rial is at its lowest ever, having fallen by a quarter in the last six months. In Iraq, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi admits his greatest fear is a confrontation between the US and Iran fought out in Iraq.

A dangerous aspect of the super-hawk approach to Iran is similar to that of the Bush administration in the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In both cases, those calling for use of armed force had, or have, lethally little knowledge of what they were/are getting into. Pompeo had a simple solution to the Iranian problem when he was still a congressman, telling reporters it would take “under 2,000 sorties to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity”.

Optimists, though these have become fewer on the ground in Washington in the last few weeks, are dismissive of such bellicose rhetoric. But whatever Trump and his lieutenants think they are doing, their words have consequences. Governments have to take threats seriously and devise counter-measures to meet them in case the worst comes to the worst. In the wake of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, American neo-conservatives boastfully proclaimed it would be “Baghdad today, Tehran and Damascus tomorrow”. These slogans were enough to ensure the Syrian and Iranian governments did everything in their power to make sure that the US could not stay in Iraq.

Looking back, the invasion of Iraq marked the turning point for the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon powers – the US and the UK – on the world stage. The fraudulent justification for the war and the failure of those who launched it to get their way against relatively puny opponents turned a conflict which was meant to be a show of strength into a demonstration of weakness. Foreign intervention in Libya and Syria in 2011 produced similar calamities.

If we are on the edge of a fresh crisis in the Middle East, centring on Iran, then the US is in a much weaker position than it was pre-Trump. Domestically divided and short of allies, it can no longer control the rules of the game as it once did. Over the last year there are two examples of this: in May, Trump visited Saudi Arabia giving unequivocal backing to its rulers and blaming the troubles of the region on Iran. But it turned out that the prime target of Saudi Arabia and UAE was not Iran but tiny Qatar. All Trump had achieved was to break the previously united front of Gulf monarchies against Iran.

In another major misjudgement by the US in January, the supposedly moderate Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that the US would be keeping its forces in Syria after the defeat of Isis, and intended to get rid of President Bashar al-Assad and roll back Iranian influence. This ambition was largely fantasy, but the Russian and Turkish reaction was real. Four days after Tillerson’s arrogant declaration, the Turkish army poured into northern Syria with Russian permission and within two months had eliminated the enclave of Afrin, inhabited by Kurds who are the only US ally in Syria. The Kurds are now rather desperately hoping they will not be left in the lurch by the US in the event of a Turkish military assault on the main Kurdish-held territory in north-east Syria.

I was in the Kurdish-held zone in Syria earlier this month and wondered what the US will do if the Turks did decide to advance further. The north Syrian plain east of the Euphrates is dead flat with little cover, while the main Kurdish cities are right on the Turkish border and highly vulnerable. The US only has 2,000 troops there, and their effectiveness depends on their ability to call in devastating airstrikes by the US air force. This is a powerful option, but would the US really use it in defence of the Kurds against Nato ally Turkey?

What Trump claims was President Obama’s weakness of will and poor negotiating skills was in reality an astute ability to match US means to US interests and avoid being sucked into unwinnable wars. This was never really understood by the Washington foreign policy establishment, which is stuck in the pre-2003 era when US strength was at its height in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Still less is it grasped by super-hawks like Bolton and Pompeo, with no idea of the political and military minefields into which they are about to stumble.

The US establishment and its allies may be aghast at Trump withdrawing from the nuclear deal, but it looks more than likely he is going to do it. Sanctions on Iran may be reimposed, but these are never quite the winning card that those imposing them imagine, whatever the suffering inflicted on the general population. Sanctions unilaterally imposed by Trump may damage Iran, but they will also isolate the US.

Whatever the outcome of a confrontation between the US and Iran, it is not going to “Make America Great Again”. The northern corridor of the Middle East, south of Turkey and north of Saudi Arabia, has always been the graveyard of US interventionism: this was true of Lebanon in the 1980s when the US embassy was blown up, and when 241 US services personnel (including 220 marines) were killed by a truck bomb in Beirut. This was true in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, and Syria from 2011 to the present day. The US has commonly blamed Iran for these frustrations, an explanation that has some validity, but the real reason is that the US has been fighting a sect rather than a single state. All these countries where the US has failed either have a Shia majority, as in the case of Iran and Iraq, a plurality, as in Lebanon, or are a ruling minority, as in Syria. As the most powerful Shia state, Iran has an immense advantage when it comes to fighting its enemies in such a sympathetic religious terrain.

The new line-up in Washington is being described as “a war cabinet” and it may turn out to be just that. But looking at ignorant, arrogant men like Bolton and Pompeo, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that it will all end in disaster.

Facebook and the Rise of Anti-Social Media

Rob Urie

It was a bit over four years ago that journalist Glenn Greenwald reported that British ‘intelligence,’ GCHQ, had developed a program to spread politically targeted disinformation over the internet. The revelation came from a presentation made to the ‘Five Eyes alliance,’ which includes the NSA and was released by Edward Snowden. In the context of Federal and commercial data collection, revelations that Facebook data was used for ‘private’ political purposes is both more and less than meets the eye.

As was widely reported with less manufactured outrage at the time, the Obama administration used Facebook data in Mr. Obama’s 2012 presidential bid in approximately the same manner that Cambridge Analytica is now accused of doing. Thanks to Edward Snowden, it has been known since 2013 that the NSA was using Facebook data for political purposes. And prior still, in 2011 the CIA reported that it was ‘using’ social media, some of which it had funded, toward its own ends.

There is good reason for political pushback here. A wide variety of corporate and state actors have instantiated the internet into the fabric contemporary economic and political life. With a history of bad faith and bad acts, the fantasy that the CIA, NSA and FBI serve national interests begs the question of whose nation? Past targets including the Black Panther Party, Occupy Wall Street and antiwar protestors were as (more) capable of defining American interests as government technocrats.

The ‘innovation’ of Five Eyes, the consortium of Anglophone intelligence agencies, is to expand the realm of competitive Party politics to that of national agencies working toward their own ends in a hidden supranational realm. The alternative frame of competitive state actors is undermined by the decision of GCHQ to reveal its methods to its ‘external’ partners. Precisely how do national governments ‘manage’ the methods and agendas of supranational agencies when they can evade national restrictions through ‘external’ relationships?

Following the Church Committee’s revelations in 1975 of U.S. intelligence agency’s illegal actions against U.S. and overseas citizens engaged in legitimate political dissent, the CIA, NSA and FBI moved to evade newly restrictive laws by ‘outsourcing’ political disruption to nominally private corporations. Facebook and Google were directly or indirectly funded by the CIA early on— to what ends? By evading the spirit of the law and hence the will of Congress, these agencies represent particular, not national, interests.

Most of what Cambridge Analytica is alleged to have done: acquire and analyze a large quantity of data in concert with psychologists who used the results to craft targeted, tactical and subliminal programs to sway large numbers of people into doing what it wants them to do, is standard practice for professional marketers. Outrage that psychological coercion is being used in the realm of the political begs the question of how using it to sell goods and services is any less ‘political?’

As Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels demonstrated in the first half of the twentieth century, whether or not propaganda— psychology in the service of commercial and / or political interests, ‘works’ is a function of who is using it and how it is used. The idea of ‘nation’ behind various incarnations of nationalism is a historical artifact, as are the social divisions of race, class and gender. Distinctions between psychological coercion and appeals to history— e.g. the current ‘Russian meddling’ hysteria, are less clear cut than commercial psychologists might suggest.

Micro-targeting can be conceived to augment mass appeals, to clean-up around the edges as in the battle for the votes of a few thousand suburban Republicans that has consumed national Democrats for the last three decades. But in terms of numbers, this strategy looks past the proverbial forest for the trees. Were U.S. voter participation rates to rise to those of other so-called developed nations, tens of millions of voters would be ‘in play.’ In this sense micro-targeting seems more an effort to avoid politics than an extension of it.

The GCHQ (British ‘intelligence’) presentation in Glenn Greenwald’s 2014 article served as the apparent template for Cambridge Analytica’s (CA) business model. Its starting position is of control of the internet, which CA doesn’t have. The follow-on is malevolent frat-boy 101— use every lever at one’s control to crush other actors. In this realm CA was / is but one actor among many. But it is control over the internet that gives the Five Eyes programs their political power, not brilliant insights into the human psyche.

For those who haven’t thought about it, the internet is insidious because of the very capacity that Cambridge Analytica claims to be able to exploit: customization. Users have limited ability to confirm the authenticity of anything they see, read or hear on it. Print editions can be compared and contrasted— technology limits print media to large-scale deceptions. With the capacity to create entire realms of deception— identities, content, web pages and entire online publications, trust is made a function of gullibility.

Differences between commercial and political goals disappear when economic power drives political results. Cambridge Analytica is a business whose ‘product’ is political outcomes. The internet, its alleged realm, is a late-capitalist ‘hive-mind’ where degrees of control determine authority. In this sense CA is an intelligence agency wannabe, a commercial result of a system where commerce and politics revolve around power and control. Phrased differently, the Five Eyes (NSA, CIA) are Cambridge Analytica with actual power through their control positions.

Public outrage that Facebook had inadequate controls is misdirection in the context how much information is controlled by political interests including Five Eyes. Politically motivated business interests— the Koch Brothers for one, own and control larger and more insidious databases than Facebook and regularly use them to enhance their own power. Facebook’s value to Five Eyes is the façade of joint interests implied by voluntary contributions to it. This gives cover to more explicitly malevolent data collection entities like the NSA.

Any thought that Cambridge Analytica is a moral outlier must get past the history of marketing in the service of selling unnecessary wars and convincing six year old Indonesian children to smoke cigarettes. Facebook made Mark Zuckerberg stupendously rich through speculation that its platform could be ‘monetized,’ meaning that both the platform and its embedded data could be sold to commercial interests. Facebook’s defense to date, that it didn’t intentionally allow CA to download its data, could most probably be restated as: it didn’t intend to let CA do so without direct payment to it. This is similar to the half-stated purposes the American intelligence agencies have given for their own data collection activities.

Social media exists atop computers developed by the Federal government, runs on the internet developed by the U.S. military (ARPA / DARPA), is transmitted through telecommunications channels controlled by companies acting in concert with the Federal government and was partially funded by the CIA through venture capital funds. The fantasy of spontaneous generation comes from the generation of children too enamored with technology and ignorant of history to have known that they were entrusting their publics ids to deeply malevolent forces.

More broadly, Americans have long had a paradoxical relationship with the idea of the ‘social.’ Social media is a claim about human being through the posture that the social is an aggregation of individual representations (postings). The architecture of social media reifies Reaganite / Thatcherite individualism complete with the paradox that deep and historical social contexts are needed to make individualism possible.

Social media is a logical extension of this tendency complete with the murky motives that drove Reaganism / Thatcherism. It is only superficially ironic that this ‘individualism’ was / is a strategy for social control. As freedom from political coercion, economic coercion was (1) de- politicized and (2) simply assumed away. The value of Facebook to the CIA, NSA and FBI is political and to Facebook stockholders it is economic. In both realms value is the measure of social control that can be garnered from it.

The potential disruption that the Cambridge Analytica fiasco poses is greater than has been publicly stated to date. Once it is popularly understood that nothing online is trustworthy, a tipping point if you will, regaining trust will mean plausibly exorcising the methods of deceit. As the methods of deceit are the commercial backbone of the internet and more broadly, modern commerce, there would ultimately be less to recover than is likely currently being imagined.

This isn’t to suggest more than a hiccup on the march toward capitalist Armageddon. As one who saw the promise in the early days of the internet— I suddenly had access to thousands of academic papers that I didn’t know existed, the cynical farce of social media provided clear evidence that the scramble for social control was on. The serial public ‘disappointments’ that are sure to follow l’affaire Facebook are as certain as they are too long in coming.