American Muslims 17 years after 9/11

Abdus Sattar Ghazali 

17 years after 9/11 terrorist attacks, American Muslims remain on the receiving end since 9/11/2001 but their plight has taken a new twist under President Donald Trump whose anti-Muslim policies alarmingly fomented hate crimes against them. According to a report released in July by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, anti-Muslim bias incidents and hate crimes are up 83 and 21 percent respectively, as compared to the first quarter of 2018,

Tellingly, incidents involving government agencies, including the FBI and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, have also risen by 60 percent in this time period. For the second quarter of 2018, CAIR received 1006 reports of potential bias incidents, with 431 of these reports determined to contain an identifiable element of anti-Muslim bias.

Under President Donald Trump, the United States government has shown an “unprecedented level of government hostility” toward the Muslim religious minority in the country. Apparently, Trump is sending a green light for average people to mistreat Muslims. Consequently, many Americans view Muslims in the United States as insufficiently “American,” and almost 20 percent would deny Muslim citizens the right to vote.

It will not be too much to say that Islamophobia has entered the government. It is incorporated into the law, and becomes increasingly acceptable in America. Apparently, Muslims in America are more vulnerable to bigotry and Islamophobia as a result of President Donald Trump’s behavior and actions than they were after the 9/11 attacks.

The level of anxiety and apprehension was such a high level that many Muslims were fearful to public display signs of their faith. A number of Muslim women, for instance, were deciding not to appear in public wearing the scarf. Alarmingly, a Hijab-clad Muslim woman stabbed in Texas by two white males.

As Sophia McClennen of Salon pointed out, the month of June 2018 was an especially bad month for the seven-million Muslims in America. First, a new study of U.S. perceptions of Muslim Americans conducted by Dalia Mogahed and John Sides for the Voter Study Group showed that many Americans view Muslims in the United States as insufficiently “American,” and almost 20 percent would deny Muslim citizens the right to vote.

The Muslim Ban 3.0

Then in June, the Supreme Court upheld President Donald Trump’s decision to institute a ban on immigrants, refugees and visa holders from five majority-Muslim countries in a 5-4 decision. This is known as Muslim Ban 3.0 since it was the third iteration of the Muslim Ban.

The synergy of these two pieces of information is critical because it reveals a common attitude that Muslims pose a threat to U.S. security whether they are U.S. citizens or not, McClennen said adding: while these attitudes do break down heavily across party lines, it is noteworthy that the study indicated that even 12 percent of Democrats would consider denying Muslim citizens the right to vote. Their study also showed that 32 percent of Democrats favor targeting Muslims at U.S. airport screenings to ensure the safety of flights. That figure compares with 75 percent of Republicans.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority of the Supreme Court opinion upholding the travel ban. He emphasized that, despite ample evidence of President Donald Trump’s animus towards the Muslim community, the ban was a security issue and not an example of discrimination, “Because there is persuasive evidence that the entry suspension has a legitimate grounding in national security concerns, quite apart from any religious hostility, we must accept that independent justification.

As made clear by Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, where she referenced the court’s 1944 decision to uphold the internment of Japanese Americans, the practice of claiming national security needs in order to implement discriminatory policy is nothing new in this country. She argued that the court’s decision “leaves undisturbed a policy first advertised openly and unequivocally as a ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States’ because the policy now masquerades behind a façade of national-security concerns.”

Taken together the Supreme Court decision and the voter study reveal a mainstreaming of Islamophobia. Whether aimed at Syrian refugees or U.S. citizens, these attitudes, policies and practices underscore the reality that America really has a Muslim problem — a problem seeing Muslims as human beings deserving of dignity, human rights and respect, McClennen concluded.

Anti-Muslim Bias Incidents, Hate Crimes Spike in Second Quarter of 2018

Tellingly, anti-Muslim bias incidents and hate crimes are up 83 and 21 percent respectively, as compared to the first quarter of 2018, according to a report released in July by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.

Incidents involving government agencies, including the FBI and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, have also risen by 60 percent in this time period. For the second quarter of 2018, CAIR received 1006 reports of potential bias incidents, with 431 of these reports determined to contain an identifiable element of anti-Muslim bias.

The 2018 second quarter report records denial of religious accommodation as the number one type of bias incident. Many of these cases have occurred at an incarceration or detention facility, making this the number one location of anti-Muslim bias incidents in the second quarter of the year. This is the first time that detention facilities have been among the top five locations of bias incidents since CAIR has kept records of anti-Muslim discrimination.

The most prevalent trigger of anti-Muslim bias incidents in 2018 remains the victim’s ethnicity or national origin, accounting for 33 percent of the total. For the 341 cases in which a victim’s ethnicity or national origin was identified, the most frequent was “Middle Eastern/North African” at 39 percent.

The second most common was “Black/African-American” at 17 percent. At 14 percent, “South Asian” was the third most commonly targeted ethnicity. Seventeen percent of incidents occurred because of an individual being perceived as Muslim.

A Muslim woman’s head scarf (hijab) was a trigger in 16 percent of incidents. The report dataset is drawn primarily from the intakes CAIR conducts each year. With each case, civil rights and legal staff seek to ensure the highest possible level of accuracy. CAIR has reported an unprecedented spike in bigotry targeting American Muslims and members of other minority groups since the election of Donald Trump as president.

U.S. agencies fueled a national increase in Anti-Muslim incidents

Under President Donald Trump, the United States government has shown an “unprecedented level of government hostility” toward the Muslim religious minority in the country, according to a report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations released in April.

CAIR’s 2018 civil rights report, “Targeted,” disclosed that federal government agencies instigated more than one-third of anti-Muslim incidents in 2017.

Of the nearly 2,599 reports of anti-Muslim incidents CAIR received, 919 involved a government agency ― about 35 percent. The Customs and Border Patrol accounted for 348 of the reports, making up 38 percent of anti-Muslim incidents involving a federal agency, while the FBI accounted for 270 ― 29 percent of the government’s anti-Muslim incidents.

The Transportation Security Administration accounted for 72 incidents, or 8 percent of the government’s anti-Muslim incidents; Citizenship and Immigration Services accounted for 5 percent, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement accounted for 4 percent. In 12 percent of the cases, multiple federal government agencies were involved.

The overall 2017 figure for anti-Muslim incidents reported to CAIR featuring a government agency represented a sharp increase from previous years. In 2016, these type of incidents accounted for 24 percent of the total reported to the group. The figure was 22 percent in 2015 and 2014. The damning report also revealed that 464 reported incidents were specifically related to the Trump administration’s series of “Muslim ban” executive orders that began last year. They represented 18 percent of the total number of anti-Muslim bias incidents documented in 2017.

New Jersey Homeland Security cites ‘dramatic rise’ in violence by groups

A “dramatic rise” in violence by white supremacists, anti-government groups, anarchists and other domestic extremists means New Jersey will face new and growing challenges in the fight against terrorism in 2018, according to a report released in March this year.

The 2018 Terror Threat Assessment said extremists inspired by foreign organizations including the Islamic State group were still the top risk, but warned that other groups are expanding and committing more crimes.

“In the year ahead, homegrown violent extremists will remain our most persistent adversary,” said Jared Maples, director of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, which released the annual report.

“Couple this with the dramatic rise in violence between race-based, single-issue, and anti-government extremists and it is clear that our threat landscape has become more diverse than ever before,” he added.

Extremist groups have recruited at New Jersey college campuses and were behind a rash of hate crimes across the United States, from the stabbing of a black man in New York City to the mowing down of a protester at the “Unite the Right” Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness review tallied at least eight white supremacist groups that were active in 14 counties in the state last year. And there were arrests noted in several towns and cities.

International terror groups, white supremacists and anti-government militias are all harnessing the Internet to influence people and inspire them to commit attacks for their cause, said John Cohen, director of the Center for Critical Intelligence Studies at Rutgers and a former counterterrorism coordinator at the U. S. Department of Homeland Security.

When a terrorist is not a terrorist?

In March 2018, the 23-year-old, Mark Anthony Conditt, who was behind a series of package bombings,

blew himself up in Austin as police tried to arrest him.  Police tracked down the bomber after obtaining CCTV footage of him posting two packages at a FedEx office in Austin. Conditt bought bomb-making materials at Home Depot, he had recorded a 25-minute confession video on his cellphone hours before he died after detonating one of his own devices. Authorities revealed Conditt had a target list of future locations to continue his reign of terror. The serial Austin bomber had been part of a Christian survivalist group that would discuss weapons and dangerous chemicals. His string of package bombs killed two people and wounded five in Texas.

“Why won’t Trump call Austin bomber what he is? A Terrorist,” this is the title of the story by Alice Salles of Carbonated TV. The Austin bombing suspect is being called a domestic terrorist by people on social media, but why won’t the media and the White House call him that?, she writes.

While police are still unsure of Mark Anthony Conditt’s motive for having allegedly planted the bombs, many people have pointed out that if Conditt were Muslim, the media and elected officials would already have called him a terrorist, Salles said adding: But since Conditt called himself a conservative, was white, and had been raised Christian, President Donald Trump doesn’t seem quick to jump on the word “terrorist” to describe the bombing suspect.

Tellingly, Conditt was part of a survivalist home school group that taught children how to use guns and discussed chemical reactions. Conditt was part of a group of students called the Righteous Invasion of Truth (RIOT), an organization that engages homeschooled kids on activities that range from studying the Bible to learning how to use guns. Many of its members were also interested in learning about dangerous chemicals, according to BuzzFeed.

Regardless of his motivations being unknown at this time, Conditt’s actions are terroristic in nature, if we’re to be consistent with other incidents that have been labeled as such, Carbonated TV said adding: whatever his reasoning, the bombings he perpetrated intimidated a community in Texas, and it seems like that was part of his intent.

“It’s hypocritical of some media outlets and lawmakers in Washington to fail to identify Conditt as a terrorist. Were he a person of color or a person who followed Islam, politicians would be throwing out the descriptor of “terrorist” without hesitation. That he isn’t described as much shows egregious discrepancies on the part of those more willing to do so in other situations, when white individuals aren’t the ones committing the crimes,” Carbonated TV emphasized.

Trump’s National Security and State Department picks alarm American Muslims

To top it off, it is not only Trump in the executive spouting of Islamophobic drivel, he has surrounded himself with Islamophobes.

In April, American Muslims were alarmed by President Trump’s choice of John Bolton as a new national security adviser and Mike Pompeo as a new secretary of state.

John Bolton is a notorious Islamophobe who as a history of ties to anti-Muslim extremists and organizations. He served as chairman of the New York City-based anti-Muslim organization, whose website regularly highlights negative stories about Muslim immigrants. It published the myth that certain cities with Muslim majority neighborhoods were off limits to those who did not practice the faith. In its posts, the institute consistently depicts refugees as rapists and hosts of “highly infectious diseases” that threaten the health of the German people.

Bolton has long been associated with anti-Muslim extremists Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller. He even wrote the forward for Spencer and Geller’s book “The Obama Administration’s War on America.” Geller endorsed Bolton as a presidential candidate. Bolton advocated for the Iraq War and promoted the false justification for the conflict. He has promoted anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and called for bombing Iran and North Korea.

In 2016, Bolton spoke at a conference of the American Freedom Alliance hate group. His speech at the conference, which had the overall theme, “Can Islam and the West Coexist?” contained a “joke” the punchline of which was that President Obama was a Muslim.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Trump’s pick to lead the State Department, has portrayed the fight against terrorism as an epic holy war. “The threat to America is from people who deeply believe that Islam is the way and the light and the only answer,” he told a church group in his hometown of Wichita in 2014. “They abhor Christians and will continue to press against us,” he said, “until we make sure that we pray and stand and fight and make sure we know that Jesus Christ as our savior is truly the only solution for our world.”

“By appointing these highly controversial individuals, the Trump administration is normalizing anti-Muslim sentiment,” says Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “Trump is sending a green light for average people to mistreat Muslims.”

Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric foments anti-Sharia bills

The imaginary sharia conspiracy is completely at odds with both facts and common sense. To borrow Maryland-based journalist and writer Arnold R. Isaacs, beyond any possible dispute, the sharia conspiracy is a fabrication, an imaginary threat conjured up to stoke public fear and hostility toward Muslims. No responsible official or opinion maker should give it any legitimacy. Yet, as the news agency Middle East Eye recently disclosed, it is presented as a real issue on the quintessentially establishment platform of President Trump’s official campaign fund-raising website. A survey on the site, titled “Listening to America 2018,” asks for visitors’ views on a number of issues including, in question 27, “Are you concerned by the potential spread of sharia law?” Given the continuing well-funded campaigns by the Islamophobes and continuing support from their enablers in the Trump administration, starting with the president himself, it seems unlikely that this trend will be reversed any time soon.

In February this year, the Idaho House has voted 44-24 in favor of anti-Sharia law bill known as HB-419, which seeks to forbid the recognition of any foreign law by Idaho courts.  Not surprisingly, Rep. Eric  Redman, the mover of the bill, read large portions of his opening debate word-for-word from the American Public Policy Alliance’s “American Laws for American Courts” website. The bill follows model legislation developed by the group. Redman’s version, like the most recent model legislation, doesn’t specifically mention Sharia, to avoid that constitutional problem, but it’s the most frequent example he and others use to explain why they feel it’s needed. Redman told the House that while no Idaho judge has made a decision based on foreign laws, it could happen.

The bill targets Muslims and fits into a long pattern of “unconstitutional” bills that demonize Muslims by barring Sharia, or Islamic law. HB-419 was passed by Idaho’s House of Representatives at a time when similar bills are being considered in several US states, including Montana, Oregon and Wisconsin.

According to the Haas Institute at the University of California at Berkeley:

Anti-Sharia law legislation has been dominating state legislatures all acrosѕ the country. No doubt emboldened by the President’s support fоr his agendas and initiatives.

In 2017 alone there were approximately 23 new pieceѕ of legislation that were introduced in 18 various states that would crack down on sharia law implementation in the United States.

If taken into account collectively that brings the total number of legislative efforts regarding anti-sharia law legislation to a total of 217 in 43 different states over an eight-year period since 2010.

The Haas Institute specifically records and monitors this type of legislation across the country.

Of the 23 bills introduced to state legislatures this year, only two became law – in Arkansas and Texas.

Four new states joined the growing list of legislatures where anti-sharia legislation has been attempted: Colorado, Connecticut, North Dakota and Wisconsin. All but one of the bills were introduced by Republicans. The exception was in Idaho where a committee with an unknown party affiliation was behind the move.

Heidi Beirich, an expert on anti-Muslim hate groups at the Southern Poverty Law Center, sees the rash of state bills as signs that the provocative language coming out of Trump’s circle is having an impact. “At the state level, the number one push for anti-Muslim activists is anti-sharia bills. It’s a recurrent effort.”

Trump himself called for all Muslims to be barred from entering the US when he was a presidential candidate, a sentiment that he has only barely tempered in his drive for a travel ban on several Muslim countries.

Several of the individuals he chose as key advisers also have a controversial track record.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist in the White House, once wrote a film script that warned of the country turning into the “Islamic States of America”. The short-lived national security adviser Michael Flynn called Islamism a “vicious c****r” inside all Muslims that has to be “excised”, while former White House aide Sebastian Gorka was once fired by the FBI as a counter-terrorism lecturer for his Islamophobic views.”

Senate recognizes rights and contributions of American Muslims

On the positive side, the American Muslims for support from US Senate, California State Senate and City of Santa Clara, recognizing their rights and contributions.

In April, the California State Senate proclaimed “the month of April 2018 as Arab American Heritage Month.” Senate Concurrent Resolution commemorates the month of April as “Arab American Heritage Month” in California and recognizes the important contributions of Arab Americans to our state. “the resolution is part of a broader effort toward creating awareness and paying respect to California’s approximately 800,000 Arab American residents. In addition, celebrates the achievements of Arab American Californians and highlights their commitment and contributions to their communities,” said Senator Newman (D-Fullerton).

Similarly, in June the Senate adopted a resolution recognizing the rights and liberties granted to people of all faiths in the United States, including American Muslims, and the many valuable contributions Muslims have made to the nation throughout its history.

The resolution was sponsored by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), titled “Recognizing the freedom of Muslims of the United States to exercise their religion and participate in the civil systems of their country.”

The resolution specifically raises awareness about the millions of American Muslim, who as a community, have contributed to the nation by serving “in the Armed Forces of the United States for generations,” and as “scientists,” “inventors,” “athletes,” “entrepreneurs,” “Members of Congress,” “Ambassadors of the United States,” “business owners, firefighters, police officers, physicians, laborers, service workers, and teachers.”

In July the City of Santa Clara has recognized the month of August as “Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month” through a proclamation.

Record number of Muslim Americans make bids for elected office

July 16:  Despite all odds, around 90 Muslim Americans had launched campaigns for national or statewide offices this election cycle, a number that Muslim groups and political observers say is unprecedented in the post-9/11 era.

Many, however, have faced anti-Muslim backlash. From Congress to state legislatures and school boards, Muslim Americans spurred to action by the anti-Muslim policies and rhetoric of President Trump and his supporters are running for elected offices in numbers not seen since 9/11, say Muslim groups and political observers.

But recent primaries have whittled the field down to around 50, a number that still far exceeds the dozen or so that ran in 2016, Shaun Kennedy, co-founder of Jetpac, a Massachusetts nonprofit that helps train Muslim American candidates, told the Associated Press.

Among the candidates to fall short were California physician Asif Mahmood, who placed third in June’s primary for state insurance commissioner, despite raising more than $1 million.

And in Texas, wealthy businessman Tahir Javed finished a distant second in his Democratic primary for Congress, despite an endorsement from Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer of New York.

Nine candidates for Congress are still in t he running, according to Jetpac’s tally. At least 18 others are campaigning for state legislature and 10 more seek major statewide and local offices, such as governor, mayor, and city council. Even more are running for more modest offices like local planning board and school committee.

At present there are two Muslims in the House of Representatives, Keith Ellison and André D. Carson. Both are members of the Democratic Party.

André D. Carson is the U.S. Representative for Indiana’s 7th congressional district since 2008. Rep. Andre Carson easily defeated three Democratic challengers to win his party’s nomination in central Indiana’s 7th District last May.

Keith Maurice Ellison was elected from Minnesota’s 5th congressional district in 2007. Ellison was the first Muslim to be elected to the U.S. Congress. He is also the first African American to have been elected to the U.S. House from Minnesota. Keith Ellison is not contesting for the House of Representatives. He is now a candidate for Minnesota Attorney General.

Why America Is a Dictatorship

Eric Zuesse

America is a country in which dollars count far more than voters do, and that’s what all of the data shows. And that’s a dictatorship by the richest.

This kind of country, this kind of country, and this kind of country, get this kind of President. And the rulers blame it on the public, instead of on the billionaires, the actual rulers themselves (the behind-the-scenes rulers). These rulers selected the politicians and offered those to the public to select from in ‘elections’ — and they then blame the public for the choices that the public make, from amongst these bad final options that the aristocracy has provided to them.

Billionaires despise the public, and have no intention of allowing the public to have better leaders than this — but they allow the public to have only leaders who serve their bosses, namely, those billionaires themselves.

Any teacher who says otherwise is simply contradicting the data. The data are clear on this: America is a dictatorship by the few richest under 1%, over the many more than 99%, who are commonly called “the public.” It’s an aristocracy, and it’s run like one. The public’s loyalty to this dictatorship — to this aristocracy or rule-by-the-richest — is retained by the deceit of calling the public “citizens,” instead of “subjects” (like in the bad ‘good old days’), but the reality now is that they’re subjects, not citizens.

Citizens exist only in an authentic democracy. Subjects are merely the people against whom the aristocracy’s laws are imposed. Subjects are not citizens. The aristocracy’s media spin them as being “citizens” in a “democracy.” Almost all of the public are fooled by that lie.

Like former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has said of today’s America (with such honesty so that none of the major ‘news’ media reported it):

“Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. … At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell.”

When a foreign government is a dictatorship by the aristocracy, it’s called an “oligarchy,” but when one’s own nation is, the term that’s supposed to be used is instead an “aristocracy”; and so Carter was here referring to his own country in the way that only foreign aristocratic dictatorships are supposed to be referred-to. That terminological usage might have added to the shock-value, but none of the major (i.e., none of the aristocratically controlled) media reported his statement, in any case.

Bloody siege of Yemeni port resumes as US certifies Saudi concern for civilians

Bill Van Auken

US-backed forces led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates renewed their assault on Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeidah on Wednesday, carrying out as many as 60 airstrikes on the densely populated city.

Saudi-backed mercenary ground forces have reportedly cut off the main road linking Hodeidah with the Yemeni capital of Sana’a, threatening to cut off food and medical imports upon which at least 22 million people, three-quarters of the population, depend. An estimated eight million Yemenis—a number equivalent to the entire population of Switzerland—are already confronting famine.

Aid groups have warned that the renewed assault on Hodeidah threatens to not only kill tens of thousands of civilians, but to push millions more over the brink of starvation.

The ferocious new Saudi-UAE assault came on the same day that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a criminally cynical statement certifying that the two US-allied Gulf oil monarchies “are undertaking demonstrable actions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure resulting from military operations.”

The “certification” was required under the terms of a toothless amendment to the $717 billion 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed into law by President Donald Trump last month. Inspired in part by the international outcry over the initial launching of the Saudi-led siege of Hodeidah in June, the measure required the secretary of state to report to Congress within 30 days that Saudi Arabia and the UAE were seeking to end the more than three-year-old war, ameliorate what is universally recognized as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and reduce the slaughter of civilians.

The ostensible penalty for a failure to provide such assurances would be the cut-off of funding for US tanker jets providing the mid-air refueling that makes it possible for Saudi and UAE warplanes to carry out the continuous aerial bombardment of Yemen. These airstrikes are responsible for the vast majority of the well-over 10,000 deaths of civilians since 2015, when Saudi Arabia initiated the war to stop Houthi rebels from establishing their control over the entire country and to reinstall the US-Saudi puppet government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who currently resides in Riyadh.

The pretense of Congressional Democrats that such a requirement would do anything to halt the mass murder being carried out in Yemen was quickly dispensed with by the Trump administration on Wednesday. Pompeo accompanied his certification with a report obtained by the AFP news agency in which he acknowledged that the US “recognizes that civilian casualties have occurred at rates that are far too high in the Saudi-led coalition’s campaign in Yemen.”

Pompeo’s certification was immediately echoed by US Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis, who assured the American public that “the governments of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are making every effort to reduce the risk of civilian casualties and collateral damage to civilian infrastructure resulting from their military operations to end the civil war in Yemen.”

The seal of approval for US-backed Saudi and UAE military operations follow a series of recent atrocities, including an August 9 airstrike in which a Saudi warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb on a bus full of children returning from a summer camp, killing 40 children and 11 others. This was followed by another murderous attack on refugees fleeing Hodeidah in which a Saudi missile killed 22 children and four women.

Even before these attacks, a United Nations human rights committee issued a report late last month that detailed Saudi airstrikes against residential areas, marketplaces, funerals and weddings claiming thousands of victims. It made it clear that all those involved, including the Pentagon, are guilty of war crimes.

While making a phony pretense of threatening the aerial refueling operation, the Congressional measure in no way called into question other elements of the massive support Washington provides for the near-genocidal war against the impoverished Yemeni people. This includes the hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of US arms deals with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, intelligence-sharing and targeting assistance, the backing of the US Navy for the crippling blockade of Yemen and the deployment of US special operations troops on the ground in support of the Saudi offensive.

Aid groups denounced Pompeo’s statement. “With Secretary Pompeo’s certification, the State Department demonstrated that it is blindly supporting military operations in Yemen without any allegiance to facts, moral code or humanitarian law,” Oxfam America said in a statement.

These “facts” were being made on the ground in Yemen even as Pompeo and Mattis issued their hypocritical statements in Washington.

“Multiple sources have reported that dozens, if not scores, of people have been killed in the past 24 hours after Saudi-UAE-led coalition attacks,” Al Jazeera’s correspondent reported. Other reports indicated that Saudi and UAE warplanes and helicopter gunships are bombing and strafing vehicles carrying civilians attempting to escape the besieged city.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have justified their renewed onslaught against Hodeidah based upon the failure of the UN to revive peace talks last Thursday in Geneva.

Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs, tweeted on Wednesday that the failure of the Houthi rebels to send a delegation to Geneva was “further proof that the liberation of Hodeida is what is needed to bring them to their senses & constructively engage in the political process.”

In reality, the Houthis failed to appear in Geneva because the Saudis and the UAE blocked their exit from the country, refused to guarantee their ability to return and rejected a demand for an evacuation of wounded from the capital of Sana’a.

What is now unfolding, with the “humanitarian” seal of approval of Pompeo and Mattis, is a catastrophic escalation of a war whose victims will number in the millions.

Driving this slaughter is US imperialism’s determination to assert its hegemony over the entire Middle East and roll back the influence of both Iran and Russia, the same objective that is fueling the dangerous escalation toward a major war in Syria. The continued existence of a regime in Yemen that is not under the thumb of both Riyadh and Washington is seen as an intolerable challenge to this strategy.

Five million deaths a year due to poor-quality health care

Kate Randall

A new analysis published in the Lancet this month reveals what can only be described as an epidemic of poor-quality health care in the world’s low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Researchers found that of the 8.6 million deaths worldwide treatable by health care, poor-quality care is responsible for an estimated 5 million deaths per year, more than the 3.6 million resulting from insufficient access to care.

These findings are part of a two-year project of The Lancet Global Health Commission on High Quality Health Systems, which is the work of 30 academics, policymakers and health systems experts from 18 countries. The new analysis exposes that while some LMICs have made progress in improving access to care, this access is no guarantee of improved health. The total number of deaths attributed to poor-quality care is estimated to be five times higher than annual global deaths from HIV/AIDS.

Researchers found that poor and more-vulnerable segments of the population in LMICs are far more likely to lack access to high-quality health care. “Quality care should not be the purview of the elite, or an aspiration for some distant future; it should be the DNA of all health systems,” said Dr. Margaret E. Kruk of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, who chairs the commission and is one of the study’s authors.

The analysis shows that as social inequality continues to widen and the super-rich become increasingly richer, millions are dying because adequate resources are not allocated to promote public health and properly train medical professionals. The 8 million deaths in LMICs due to overall poor-quality health systems led to economic welfare losses of US$6 trillion in 2015 alone.

The deadly impact of poor-quality care is found across Latin America, Africa, Asia, and eastern Europe, with India and Southern and Central Africa seeing the highest death rates. The researchers note that these are most likely conservative figures.

• In India, an estimated 1.6 million deaths were due to poor-quality health care, with an additional 838,000 deaths due to insufficient access to care.

• In China, 630,000 deaths per year were due to poor-quality care, with 653,000 deaths due to poor access.

• In Brazil, 153,000 deaths per year were due to poor-quality care, with 51,000 due to insufficient access.

• In Nigeria, 123,000 deaths per year were attributed to poor quality care, with 253,000 due to insufficient access.

Dr. Kruk notes: “The impact of poor-quality care goes well beyond mortality, but can lead to unnecessary suffering, persistent symptoms, loss of function, and a lack of trust in the health system.” In other words, in addition to the estimated 5 million people who die annually due to poor-quality care, there are millions more who are living in misery as a result of diseases and conditions that are potentially treatable.

Vulnerable groups such as refugees and prisoners are less likely to receive high-quality care, as are people with stigmatized health conditions, such as HIV/AIDS, mental health and substance abuse disorders.

News of this epidemic of poor-quality health care and its deadly impact in LMICs comes as the wealth of a group of “ ultra high net worth” (UHNW) individuals is soaring to new heights globally. Individuals with a minimum $30 million in wealth collectively own $31.5 trillion, increasing by 16.3 percent between 2016 and 2017.

In Asia, where millions of people die each year due to poor-quality health care, there were 68,970 UHNW individuals in 2017. The wealth of these oligarchs shot up 26.7 percent from the previous year. The Asian group is not far behind the ultra-wealthy in the United States, which had 90,440 UHNW individuals, with a combined total wealth of $11 trillion.

At the same time, recent World Bank/World Health Organization research shows that in 2017, half the world’s population could not access needed health services, while 100 million people are plunged into extreme poverty each year due to health care expenses.

The World Health Assembly and the United Nations General Assembly have postured as leaders of the universal health care (UHC) movement, calling on countries to “urgently and significantly scale up efforts to accelerate the transition towards universal access to affordable and quality healthcare services.”

Such bodies, however, accept the domination of capitalism and imperialism over the LMICs, as well as the rule of capital in the wealthiest industrial countries. The Lancet analysis shows that the stated goals of various international organizations for the provision of global UHC are a fraud, as they do not take into account how quality care would be provided even if this aim were achieved.

With similar cynicism, the World Bank Group identifies its “twin goals” as “ending extreme poverty and increasing equity and prosperity” around the world. In reality, this banking group’s raison d’être is assuring policies that subordinate the economies of the oppressed countries to the interests of international finance capital through loans and “grants.”

The resources do indeed exist for providing high-quality health care to every individual on the planet. This will necessitate confiscating the trillions hoarded by the super-rich to be allocated to meet the basic needs of the world’s population. This requires a revolutionary solution to the health care crisis and the establishment of truly socialized medicine.

In new cost-cutting move, PSA subcontracts Opel operation in Germany

Marianne Arens

In accordance with the announcement by the Opel Executive Board earlier this month, the automaker will subcontract its ITEZ research and development centre in Rüsselsheim, Germany to French engineering firm Segula Technologies, which will take over the majority of the facilities and “up to 2,000 employees”.

With this move, the systematic dismantling of the Opel Group—which was sold by US carmaker General Motors to French auto company PSA last year—has taken another significant step forward.

The ITEZ Adam-Opel-Haus and Design Centre and the Dudenhofen test track still employ almost 8,000 engineers, developers, designers and others. Opel and GM previously used the location for research and development, including for the development of the Ampera electric car.

Opel CEO Michael Lohscheller announced September 5 that the sale to Segula was the best solution for the development centre, which he said has suffered from a “drastic reduction in orders”. The centre, company officials say, has only been working at 40 percent capacity for some time.

This will leave the fate of the developers and researchers at Rüsselsheim in limbo. Segula has 11,000 employees worldwide and already works for PSA, the maker of Citroën, Peugeot and other brands, in France. The company intends to build up its Northern Europe headquarters in Rüsselsheim, Germany, by acquiring plants from Opel’s vehicle and drive train development facilities.

Segula, according to the deal negotiated with Opel, is supposed to take on up to 2,000 engineers and developers and guarantee them protection against dismissal up to 2023. This cannot hide the fact that conditions for these employees will worsen. Since the main customer will continue to be the PSA/Opel Group, the employees shifted to Segula will likely work for significantly less pay and under worse conditions in order to guarantee Segula a profit.

The deal follows a familiar pattern. Increasingly, the auto industry outsources parts of its research and development to subcontracting firms to lower costs and hedge against changes in market conditions. The large automakers face increasing risks from the immense costs associated with electric car technology and mounting global competition, which is increasingly taking the form of a trade war. Brexit and the recent lira crisis in Turkey (where Opel exports) has significantly increased these risks. Under such conditions, wage reductions and temporary work are on the rise in the engineering profession, and the pressure on permanent workers and their former gains is increasing.

In July, the French daily Le Monde announced that intensive talks about the sale of the Opel development centre would be held with Segula and three other car service providers (Altran, Akka, Bertrandt). These moves are part of the restructuring program called PACE!, which the Opel works council and the IG Metall union signed off on last year, shortly before the takeover of Opel and Vauxhall by the PSA group.

Following a slice-and-dice tactic, the cuts agreed to by the unions so far have been implemented step by step. As car expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer told broadcaster ZDF in July, the board and the unions had “deliberately not announced everything all at once”, because otherwise “one would have been afraid of triggering a revolution or a strike”.

Acknowledging the value of the unions, management at the Rüsselsheim Development Centre announced in early September, “We want to discuss with our social partners exactly how the selection of employees [who would switch to Segula] will take place.”

At the end of July, PSA and Opel management announced that the company had generated a profit of more than €500 million in the first half of 2018, making money for the first time after nearly twenty years of losses. The reason for this was not an expansion of sales, however. On the contrary, Opel’s European market share continues to shrink and is only about half what it was in 2010. At that time, Opel had a market share of 10.2 percent, now it is only 5.6 percent.

Profits have increased, company officials boasted, due to a reduction of fixed costs by 28 percent over the last twelve months. This “success” has been achieved through the collusion of IG Metall and other unions in the increased exploitation of the Opel workforce and attacks on contract workers and subcontractors.

In Opel plants outside Germany, around 17,000 workers are being blackmailed into giving up past gains and their jobs are being systematically decimated. With the help of the respective national trade unions, PSA and Opel/Vauxhall in the United Kingdom, Poland, Spain, Hungary and Austria have reduced wages by threatening to close factories. But all the concessions accepted by the unions have not saved jobs. The workforce is still threatened with job losses, such as in the Opel plant in Vienna-Aspern, where 600 of 1,400 jobs will be cut by the end of next year.

A worker familiar with the conditions at a PSA Citroën plant in Spain told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter, “The union does nothing to protect workers. If you don’t vote for one union or another you get in trouble. Management will hire a person in the morning and they will quit by lunchtime because of the pressure to meet production quotas. They’re always looking for new people. The new hires will get paid €800 and will have to do the same work as senior workers making €1,500 a month.”

The contracts for hundreds of temporary workers have been terminated at Opel plants in Germany since the turn of the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, short-time working has been introduced on the assembly lines, and the IG Metall is supporting gradual job cuts and wage reductions.

In May 2018, the union approved a management plan for the destruction of twenty percent of permanent jobs. By 2019, 3,700 of today’s approximately 18,500 employees will be pushed out “voluntarily” by means of partial retirement, early retirement and severance payments. This means the permanent loss of better-paid and more secure positions for the next generation.

Union representatives have also agreed to other labour cost reductions. Opel workers are being forced to give up the wage increases agreed to in February in the metalworking and electronics industries. The concessions were sold to the workforce by the IG Metall officials as the cost for supposed job guarantees until 2023. The worthlessness of this promise can be seen in the recent sell-off of the Rüsselsheim development centre, where Opel workers will be handed over to lower paying subcontractors.

The pledges by PSA to “further invest in all locations” are always linked to the statement “if these plants remain competitive”. The viability of the production plant in Eisenach is particularly uncertain. Some 450 out of 1,300 posts are to be slashed, which is one in three jobs. The long-term continuation of two-shift operations in Eisenach is also uncertain.

In addition to the decline in sales the impending conversion to electric cars could lead to the destruction of 100,000 jobs in the German auto industry over the next few years, according to a study conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute in June 2018. In drive train technology, almost half of jobs could be wiped out.

This has aggravated the situation not only at Opel, but also in other car companies. Ford is already speculating about the fate of its production plant in Saarlouis, near the French border, and its development centre in Cologne.

In the face of this attack autoworkers take the initiative by building rank-and-file factory committees independently of the IG Metall. These committees must fight to unite workers throughout Europe, North America and around the world in a common struggle to defend the right of all workers to good-paying and secure jobs. This must be combined with a political struggle for a socialist policy, including the transformation of PSA and the auto giants into public enterprises, collectively owned and democratically run by workers themselves.

China and Russia strengthen ties to counter US threats

Peter Symonds

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin met in Vladivostok on Tuesday and pledged greater strategic and economic cooperation aimed at countering the US.

The Trump administration is accelerating its trade war measures against China, with preparations to impose another $200 billion of tariffs on Chinese goods, while imposing further sanctions on Russia.

Moreover, the Pentagon’s National Defence Strategy, unveiled at the beginning of this year, declared that great power competition, not terrorism, is the primary focus of US military strategy. It branded China and Russia as “revisionist powers”—that is, countries that pose a threat to the existing “international rules-based order” dominated by the US imperialism.

Neither Xi nor Putin named the United States or Trump but they left no doubt that stronger ties between China and Russia were a reaction to punitive US measures. In an obvious reference to Washington, Xi declared that the two countries would cooperate “to oppose the policy of unilateral actions and trade protectionism.”

The Chinese president noted that he had met Putin three times this year and the two countries held “similar or identical positions on international matters.” China-Russia cooperation, he declared, is “gaining ever more importance against a backdrop of growing instability and unpredictability on a global scale.”

Putin declared that his talks with Xi had paved the way to enhance “the comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation between Russia and China.” He noted that the two leaders had discussed “military-technical co-operation.” Putin referred, in particular, to their identical views on the need for a “political and diplomatic settlement of the situation on the Korean peninsula” and urged Washington to normalise relations with North Korea.

Significantly, Xi and Putin met as more than 3,000 Chinese troops, along with 30 fixed-wing aircraft, joined huge Russian military exercises known as Vostok in Siberia. China and Russia have held joint war games regularly, but foreign participation in these annual drills have been limited previously to Russia’s closest allies from the former Soviet Union. In the past, these specific drills were used to prepare for war against China.

The Russian military billed this year’s week-long Vostok exercises as the biggest since 1981, with around 300,000 Russian personnel and more than 1,000 aircraft, 36,000 tanks and scores of ships.

Vasily Kashin, an analyst from the Moscow-based Higher School of Economics, told the Wall Street Journal that China’s exercises with Russia provided “much-needed foreign experience that is crucial if Beijing wants to establish an internationally-capable fighting force.”

Xi was in Vladivostok to participate in the Eastern Asian Forum, established by Putin in 2015 to attract foreign investment to the Russian Far East. The fact that Xi attended for the first time, along with a delegation of nearly 1,000 Chinese businesspeople and officials, was aimed at underscoring the growing ties between the two countries.

Facing pressure and threats from Washington, Beijing and Moscow have enhanced their cooperation despite conflicting interests. In 2014, the two countries signed a landmark agreement on oil and gas sales to China that had been long delayed due to haggling over prices.

Russia also has been reluctant to sell hi-tech weaponry to China, fearing there was still the potential for it to become an adversary. However, in recent years, Moscow has begun selling some of its most advanced weapons to Beijing, including the S-400 surface-to-air missile system and Su-35 fourth-generation fighter jet.

Putin was clearly seeking to expand economic ties with China as a means of circumventing sanctions imposed by the US and its allies. The Russian president told the media that he and Xi had paid “special attention to trade and economic cooperation.”

“We noted with satisfaction that bilateral trade increased by almost one third in the first six months of the year, reaching $50 billion,” Putin said. “We have every reason to believe that by the end of the year, trade will reach a record high of $100 billion.”

On the sidelines of the Eastern Asian Forum, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba signed a deal with the state-owned Russian Direct Investment Fund, Russian internet group Mail.ru and telecom company MegaFon to establish a Russian online shopping portal.

China and Russia signed agreements aimed at “consolidating Russian-Chinese regional, production and investment cooperation in the Far East.” They outlined a program for developing bilateral “trade, economic, and investment cooperation” in Russia’s Far East for the next six years. The two countries also “reaffirmed their interest in broadening the use of national currencies in mutual payments,” thus avoiding the use of US dollars as the means of trade.

Xi told the media: “Our trade is making progress. Both sides are actively working on the rapprochement of the projects One Belt, One Road and the EAEU [Eurasian Economic Union], promoting large strategic projects in the energy sector, aviation, space and transport links, and also developing our cooperation in new spheres, such as finance, agriculture, and e-commerce.”

The reference to China’s massive One Belt, One Road infrastructure plan for linking Eurasia, and the EAEU, proposed by Russia for economic and political cooperation between former Soviet republics, is significant. Potentially these are rival plans to bring the vast Eurasian landmass under the domination of Moscow or Beijing. That Xi is offering a “rapprochement” on this key issue signals that the two countries are putting aside their differences, for the time being at least.

Russia and China are not formal military allies and both sides are well aware that significant strategy and economic differences remain. While looking to consolidate ties to counter the threat posed by the United States, Moscow and Beijing are each willing to cut a deal with Washington at the expense of the other, should the opportunity arise.

The intransigence of the Trump administration, however, is driving the two countries into each other’s arms, just as it is destabilising long-established alliances of the US with European powers and Japan.

This instability is not simply a product of the erratic and reckless policies of the Trump administration. The volatility reflects the drive by US imperialism to arrest its historic decline through economic and military means. Once again, as in the 20th century, rival economic and political blocs are forming, as the precursor to world war.

One in every nine human beings goes hungry

Patrick Martin

The number of hungry people in the world continues to grow, reaching 821 million in 2017, or one in every nine people, according to the report, “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018,” released Tuesday in Rome by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and other groups.

The figures are horrific: 151 million children under five years old, 22 percent of the world’s total, are “stunted” by malnutrition; one in every ten children in Asia is described as “wasting,” with weights well below what they should be given their heights; a staggering one in three women of child-bearing age suffers from anemia, in large measure from poor diet.

The report’s authors warn of “alarming signs of increasing food insecurity and high levels of different forms of malnutrition,” but offer no prescription to resolve the deepening crisis except the pious wish that more should be done to bring an end to the military conflicts, including civil wars, which are the primary cause of food insecurity, and to counteract climate change, the second most important cause.

The 821 million hungry people in the world include an estimated 515 million in Asia, 256.5 million in Africa, 39 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and perhaps 20 million in the rest of the world.

The last figure is undoubtedly a gross underestimate, since it largely accepts the claims of governments in the advanced capitalist countries that hunger and malnutrition are non-existent. If accurate figures could be obtained for the number living on the brink of starvation in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the European Union, the total for the world would likely top 1 billion people.

Credit: World Food Program

These figures demonstrate the utter failure of capitalist system. The productive forces—land, machinery, agricultural technique—are more than adequate to feed the human race. There is a super-abundance of food on the planet. But the profit drive of giant agribusiness corporations, and the reactionary nation-state system, dividing humanity with its artificial and completely outmoded boundaries, keep a billion human beings from obtaining the food they need as a minimum condition of a decent existence.

The UN report found that 2017 was the third year in a row in which the number of people who aren’t getting enough to eat has risen. This figure has risen from 783.7 million in 2014, for a total rise of more than 38 million. In 2017, severe food insecurity, defined as a family running out of food and going at least a day without eating, was up in every region of the world except Europe and North America.

The sharpest increases in malnutrition were in Africa and South America, as well as in the country of Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula across the Red Sea from East Africa, which has been ravaged by war and a blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with US backing. High levels of malnutrition were found in South Asia as well, but these were largely unchanged from 2016 to 2017.

Over a longer time frame, since 2005, the FAO found that the number of malnourished people in Africa had increased by 60 million, while the number in Asia declined significantly.

Particularly striking was the change in North Africa, once a comparatively prosperous area, where the number facing malnutrition fell from 9.7 million in 2000 to 8.5 million in 2010, before soaring to 20 million last year. Similarly, the number facing malnutrition in Western Asia—the Middle East—rose from 20.1 million in 2010 to 30.2 million in 2017.

The combined increase across this vast region, extending from Morocco to Iran, is more than 20 million people added to the rolls of those on the brink of starvation, during the period that coincides with the US-NATO attack on Libya, the revolutionary uprising and its bloody suppression in Egypt, the ongoing civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and the aftermath of the war in Iraq.

The FAO’s 2017 report on food security focused largely on the impact of these wars, as well as similar conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and Somalia in driving up the number facing hunger. The agency’s 2018 report focuses mainly on the impact of the second most important cause of hunger in the twenty-first century, climate change.

According to the report, “climate variability—extreme droughts and floods—are already undermining production of wheat, rice and maize in tropical and temperate regions, and that the trend is expected to worsen as temperatures increase and become more extreme.”

It continued, “Hunger is significantly worse in countries with agricultural systems that are highly sensitive to rainfall and temperature variability and severe drought, and where the livelihood of a high proportion of the population depends on agriculture.”

Drought, linked to the long-term changes in weather patterns associated with climate change, has devastated four different population centers: southern Africa, including South Africa, the enclaves of Lesotho and Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe Malawi and Madagascar; the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda; West Africa, from Mali to Senegal; and parts of the Indian subcontinent, especially southern Sindh province in Pakistan and neighboring regions in India, which are densely populated.

Wasting is a syndrome that has the most pernicious effect on children’s health, both short-term and long-term. Children affected by wasting accounted for 875,000 deaths in 2013, the last year when studies are available, 12.6 percent of all deaths of children under five years of age. Of these, 516,000 were related to severe wasting, essentially deaths by starvation and related diseases.

Half of all the children afflicted by wasting live in South Asia, and the countries with a prevalence of 15 percent or more include India and Sri Lanka. Also in this category are Papua New Guinea, Yemen, and four countries in East Africa: Eritrea, Djibouti, South Sudan, and Sudan.

What all these countries have in common—although there is not a word of this in the UN report—is that they are former colonies of the world’s imperialist powers, which continue to dominate the world economy and exploit the resources of the “less developed countries,” whether through direct investment, loans, or austerity demands enforced by the International Monetary Fund.

Among the worst-off countries are those like Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia, subjected to imperialist wars and imperialist-instigated civil wars, which in some cases have extended for more than a generation.

Nutrition is an increasing concern, not just for the billions in Asia, Africa and Latin America, who constitute the majority of the world’s population, but for the working class in the advanced capitalist countries, where living standards have been driven down for more than three decades.

According to the UN report, the second-largest nutritional crisis involves the spread of obesity, particularly in North America. This too is a disease of poverty. “Food insecurity contributes to overweight and obesity, as well as undernutrition, and high rates of these forms of malnutrition coexist in many countries,” the report explains. “The link between food insecurity and overweight and obesity passes through diet, which is affected by the cost of food. Nutritious, fresh foods often tend to be expensive. Thus, when household resources for food become scarce, people choose less expensive foods that are often high in caloric density and low in nutrients, particularly in urban settings and upper-middle- and high-income countries.”

Some 13 percent of the world’s adults, or 672 million, are medically obese, about one person in eight, with the highest rates by far in the United States. The lowest rates of obesity are in Africa and Asia, although rates are rapidly increasing.

United Nations Regional Course in International Law Programme for African Scholars 2019

Application Deadline: 22nd October 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: African countries (see list below) 

To be taken at (country): Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Fields of Study: The Regional Courses may include seminars on the following topics: Introduction to international law, Treaty law, State responsibility, International peace and security, Peaceful settlement of international disputes, Diplomatic and consular law, International organizations, United Nations institutions and law making, The Work of the International Law Commission, African Union law and institutions, Organization of American States law and institutions, International human rights law, Movements of persons, International humanitarian law, International criminal law, International environmental law, International watercourses, Law of the sea, International trade law, International investment law, Legal research, Legal drafting

About the Award: The 2018 United Nations Regional Course in International Law for Africa will be organized by the Codification Division of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs in cooperation with Ethiopia, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the African Union. The Regional Course will be conducted in English.
The Regional Courses provide high-quality training by leading scholars and practitioners on a broad range of core subjects of international law, as well as specific subjects of particular interest to the countries in a given region. In addition, the interactive nature of the training allows the participants to share experiences and exchange ideas, which promotes greater understanding and cooperation on legal matters in the region.
The Regional Courses are intended to enable qualified professionals, in particular government officials and teachers of international law from developing countries and countries with emerging economies, to deepen their knowledge of international law and of the legal work of the United Nations and its associated bodies.

Type: Short course, Fellowship

Eligibility: To qualify for the Regional Course, candidates

• must have a legal background with professional experience in the field of international law.
• are required to submit a medical certificate of good health and to certify that they are able to attend the entire course period.
• Fluency in spoken and written English is also required.

Selection Criteria: When selecting participants for the Regional Courses:

• due consideration is given to the candidates’ qualifications, to the scope of their professional duties, to the relevance of the training to their professional duties and to gender balance.
• Applications from female candidates are strongly encouraged.
• Due consideration is also given to those candidates who are already present in Addis Ababa.

Number of Awardees: The course will accommodate up to 30 participants.

Value of Programme: The fellowships cover the fellowship recipient’s travel in economy class, accommodation, meals, medical insurance, participation in the Regional Course and the training materials. In accordance with the policies and procedures governing the administration of United Nations fellowships, participants will also receive a stipend to cover other living expenses.
Qualified candidates may also apply for self-funded positions. Self-funded participants bear all costs associated with their participation (travel, accommodation and living expenses). Training materials and lunches during the weekdays are provided to all participants.

Duration of Programme: The Regional Course will be held at the facilities of the ECA in Addis Ababa, from11 February to 8 March 2019.

Eligible countries: The Regional Course is open to candidates from the following countries: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cabo Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

How to Apply: Download and fill the Application Form at the right hand corner

Visit Programme Webpage for details

Award Provider: United Nations

Nokia Foundation Scholarships for International Students to Study in Finland 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 1st October 2018

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Finland

About the Award: Nokia Scholarships are granted to individuals pursuing a doctoral degree in information or telecommunications technology or in clearly related supporting scientific disciplines. Scholarship can be granted for doctoral studies in a Finnish university or to a Finnish applicant for doctoral studies abroad.

Type: PhD

Eligibility: The applicant must receive a commitment statement from his/her principal supervisor, who must be a professor, docent, or senior scientist at the university at which the student is pursuing their degree. The statement must be submitted to the application database by the supervisor. The scholarship can be granted no more than two times to the same individual.

Number of scholarships: Not specified

Duration of Scholarship: The scholarship can be granted no more than two times to the same individual.

How to Apply: Nokia Scholarship Application

Visit scholarship webpage for details to apply

The U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Israel (vs. Iran and the World)

Gary Leupp

The increasingly embattled and reviled, soon to fall Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the “Iran nuclear deal”) in May.

He did so in order to fulfill a campaign promise, and express his pathological resentment for his predecessor by undoing an Obama achievement. That’s how the whole world understands it—especially as his idiocy becomes widely acknowledged— even by his inner circle of frustrated leakers in an unfolding drama of White House chaos.

Trump is a very unusual U.S. president, pursuing peace with North Korea, for example, while seeking regime change in Iran. Where’s the consistency, ask foreign leaders?  They understand that the U.S. leader is not guided by any coherent ideology and is hence unpredictable and often irrational. They also know that the conditions Mike Pompeo set for the U.S. to return to the agreement were outrageous, humiliating and designed for rejection.

Trump has not only withdrawn the U.S. from the agreement but sought to block its implementation by imposing secondary sanctions on countries trading with Iran. These infuriate European officials and have produced strong protest. It’s preposterous to demand that Daimler AG cancel plans for Mercedez-Benz manufacture in Iran until Tehran ceases support for Hizbollah or the Syrian army.  Europeans vow to find ways to escape U.S. efforts to sabotage trade. The Chinese will surely continue to purchase Iranian oil; so will the Indians, South Koreans, Turks, Italians, and Japanese. These are Iran’s top petroleum customers.

Who in the world supports the U.S. in its efforts to sabotage of the JCPOA? Who supports it in its drive to inflict economic pain, and then, according to the plan, the overthrow of the regime making use of MEK and other proxies? There are two countries whose leaders do, emphatically: Saudi Arabia and Israel. Unlikely bedfellows, would they not seem, even though united in hostility to Tehran?

Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy governed by harsh Sharia law. It is the land of two of Islam’s holiest sites,  the homeland of Sunni Islam. Its royals view the Islamic Republic of Iran as a bastion of (Shiite) heresy and rival for regional influence. They see it as operating through any other Shiite forces in the region: various political parties and militias in (primarily Shiite) Iraq; the Alawite-led but secular government of Syria, commanding as it does the continuing loyalty of the Syrian Arab Army; the (Shiite-based) Hizbollah political party and militia in Lebanon; the mass movement of the Shiite majority in Sunni-ruled Bahrain; the Houthis of Yemen, etc.

The Saudi government does not publicly target Shiism; there is a significant (rather oppressed) Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia itself. It does not represent itself as defender of the truth faith, at war with the heretical Shiites, but as a U.S. and British ally (and huge arms customer) concerned with “maintaining stability” in the region—stability of the status quo constantly threatened by Persian trouble-making.

Israel is of course a unique sort of parliamentary republic, a democracy of sorts (it being understood that Palestinians are second-class citizens). Religious law does not pertain as it does in many Islamic countries (although Jewish rabbinical courts are part of the justice system). Israeli leaders don’t care about Sunni-Shiite differences as they care about Iran’s support for numerous Arab enemies of Israel. And of course, they’ve said for years that Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map. (The Iranian president had quoted the late Ayatollah Khomeini as saying that “the occupation of Jerusalem will vanish from the page of time” but this was distorted and the misquote used to this day endlessly to justify the baseless charge that Iran plans to nuke Jerusalem.)

Iran, they keep saying, is an “existential threat” to Israel. It supports Assad, Hizbollah, at times Hamas. The Shah overthrown in 1979 had been a friend, but his successors call for “Death to Israel!” Binyamin Netanyahu has for decades shrieked about the immanent likelihood of an Iranian nuclear test; but it was all a ploy to get the U.S. to bomb Iran. Neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama took the bait. (Dick Cheney probably would have. Or John McCain.)

Their joint efforts to urge U.S. action against Iran have brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into what is now an openly admitted relationship, a de facto anti-Iranian alliance. It is also an alliance against the Syrian regime that is aligned with Iran, Hizbollah, (sometimes) Hamas, and contests Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights. With the U.S., these two countries constitute what we can call an axis—an axis opposed to the rest of the world’s right to deal with and trade with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In Syria, the Syrian Arab Army with its international allies (including of course Russia) has largely won the conflict initiated in 2011, fueled by foreign jihadis. Al-Qaeda (Tahrir al-Sham) forces are concentrated now in Idlib Province—perhaps 10,000 according to Staffan de Mistura, UN special envoy on Syria. There are tens of thousands of others in aligned groups. They’ve been corralled there and now the Army is closing in. The pacification of that province could mark the end of the war and perhaps the end of the neocon project of region-wide regime change. (But again, Trump is unpredictable.)

It’s not clear that U.S. efforts to sabotage of the Iran Deal will work (and bring down the mullahs). But in the meantime, the U.S. may try to sabotage the reconquest of Idlib. When someone like Pompeo depicts this final chapter to a tragic conflict as a humanitarian catastrophe, it raises the prospect of U.S. force to prevent that humanitarian capacity. (Remember Libya?)

Now Trump warns Russia (in a tweet) against “recklessly” attacking Idlib. And the Israeli press reports that the U.S. is identifying Syrian government chemical weapons centers to strike, if necessary (as though there are such centers). RT reports a false-flag operation is probably being planned. There may be some release of sarin that the U.S. will use as a pretext for strikes—to protect the civilians of Idlib, of course.

The Saudis have been big supporters of some of the groups in Idlib; the Israelis continue to bomb Syrian army forces; the U.S. insists on its right to intervene and has thousands of troops in the country. They’re all there, probably coordinating strategy with Washington, towards both Syria and Iran.

The Exceptional Nation (that elected an idiot); the Nation-State of the Jewish People (that named a square and a high-speed train station after Trump); the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia headed by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques (who awarded Trump a gold medal). Such a fine Axis of Evil! But the axis pivots on Trump,  who may not be long on his throne.

Of course the evil that men do lives after their impeachments or whatever ignominious end. Pence who never dines with women other than his wife might have a fine time with the Saudis, and since he believes God gave Israel to the Jews (Gen. 12:3 etc.) he’ll have a fine time with the Israelis. But he may be perceived just as Trump is perceived by the world now: as an idiot incapable of providing positive leadership to anything, an abject bootlicker so outclassed by the likes of Merckel, Putin, Xi, Macron, Abe, etc. that he will not be able to put Humpty Dumpty back again.

May the Axis shatter on the rocks of defeat in Syria, Iranian resistance, world powers’ rejection of U.S. hegemony, Israeli isolation and a crippling U.S. political crisis.

The Struggle of Small Farmers in Argentina’s Crisis

Vijay Prashad

Thirty years ago, in my economics text book, the section on international trade referred to Argentina. It would be better – said the author – for Argentina to concentrate on production and export of beef, while Germany should put its resources towards electronic products. This was the essence of the comparative advantage theory – do more of what you do best, rather than diversify your economy. It seemed churlish. It condemned Argentina to produce raw materials, while Germany went ahead with technological development.

Argentina, at that time, was still a major producer and exporter of beef. We had no access to José Hernández’s epic poem Martín Fierro, about the gauchos of the pampas, the cowboys of the plains of Argentina, but we knew of the ferocious compadritos (hoodlums) and cuchilleros (knife fighters) from the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges. There were cowboys mixed in here, loners who sat on their horses on Argentina’s flat-lands and gathered their cattle for the market.

No longer do these horsemen define the Argentine economy. It is more accurate to portray the soybean farmer as the protagonist of the country’s fortunes. Much of this has to do with the growth of the Chinese market, where rising living standards have shifted dietary habits – including more meat consumption. The soybeans go to feed the pigs of China. It is remarkable that from 1960 to 2013 the world soybean harvested area increased from 20 million hectares to 120 million hectares. Argentina became one of the major suppliers to the Chinese market. Four problems confound Argentina’s soybean trade:

+ The price of soybean has declined, with Argentina selling more volume but its farmers receiving less profit on their sale. In 2012, soybean sold at US$17.5/bushel, but now sells at US$8.4/bushel.

+ China buys more raw soybeans rather than soybean oil, which means that it retains the value-added parts of soybean production for its own industries.

+ Argentina’s right-wing government cut back on taxes for soybean export, which hurt its public revenues. Now, with the currency crisis, the government is going to reinstate the taxes.

+ A drought hurt Argentina’s soybean crop, to make up for which the industry purchased 120,000 tonnes from farmers in the United States. Environmental problems will continue to pose problems for Argentina’s soybean sector. Soybeans leach the soil.

Who Remembers Us?

Soybean production takes up about half of Argentina’s arable land. It is no longer cattle that run through the pampas; it is now the soybean flowers that tilt in the breeze.

WILDO WALKS ME THROUGH THE FIELDS

Wildo Eizaguirre likes to talk about farming. He farms only one hectare of land, which he rents from a real estate company. On this farm, Wildo is forced to be creative. The farm is near the town of La Plata, whose markets survive on the fresh produce grown by Bolivian migrant farmers such as Wildo. In greenhouses made of found wood and plastic sheeting, the farmers grow tomatoes and peppers, chard and lettuce. Barrels of home-made fertilizer line the edges of the farmland. Some of these fields are worked in an organic method, but others – such as those that grow tomatoes – have to be treated with chemicals. Wildo’s farm is clean. He works hard at that. He smiles proudly when I mention it.

Small farmers like Wildo find it difficult to survive. Half of their costs go to rent, while a third more goes to electricity. Farmers like Antonio García as well as Elsa and Mabel Yanaje suggest – as well – that the rent is a dead weight for them. The cost of land is prohibitive and their tenure on the land is uncertain. It prevents the farmers from making capital improvements to the farm or even from buying equipment (such as tractors) to make their labour more productive. Neither do these farmers own the fields nor do they control the pathways to the market. Brokers buy their produce at the lowest prices and then take them to be processed or sold directly to supermarkets. The money is made elsewhere than on the fields.

Wildo and the farmers around him belong to the Movement of the Excluded Workers (MTE), which is a part of the Confederation of Workers in the Popular Economy (CTEP). The concept of ‘popular economy’ (la economía popular) refers to activities inside the informal sector that are designed to benefit the workers in the sector and not the chain of accumulation that otherwise takes maximum advantage of them. In February this year, 40,000 workers of the CTEP and MTE marched to the headquarters of their provincial government demanding the declaration of a food emergency. These are people who work the land and who work to keep the city clean, but they have very little food to show for it. Hunger stalks their world. It is hunger, the sharp downturn of the economy and the lack of dignity shown to them that lead these workers to groups like CTEP and MTE.

In the CTEP office (Buenos Aires) I meet Juan Grabois, one of the leaders of CTEP. Most of the leaders of the Argentinian left are deceptively young – Juan is only 35 years old. It has to be remembered that the military Junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983 killed the entire fruit of the left’s leadership. Young men and women like Juan Grabois came to politics when their country almost literally dissolved in the crucible of IMF policy making in 2001-02. Argentina exploded in a million directions, ordinary people blockading the streets and banging pots and pans – these were the piqueteros. Young people like Juan Grabois and Milagro Sala (now in prison) as well as Manuel Bertoldi and Itai Hagman of the political formation Patria Grande came of age in this period. They organised the Movement of the Unemployed Workers and the Movement of the Excluded Workers, student groups and feminist groups, platforms for the indigenous and platforms for the disillusioned. These young people are today the backbone of Argentina’s rapid regrowth of a genuine left.

Grabois pushes back his long hair as we talk about Argentina’s economic troubles, its currency slipping into oblivion against the US dollar. He has interesting ideas about the social wages that are needed to create a new Argentinian project – one in which, as he says, ‘no member of society suffers deprivation’ and every person is able to find a way to live. If such a new basis is not created, he feels, Argentina – like other parts of the world– will slip into permanent chaos. The crisis cannot be handled with military force. No new dictatorship is on the horizon. No police can fire enough tear gas to end the misery.

The people of CTEP and MTE are serious. In the countryside, I visit a processing shed set up by the MTE. Here, the organisation intends to store produce and process it to provide the farmers with a better deal. Maria Eugenia Ambort, a militant with MTE, tells me about MTE’s range of work. A few years ago, the MTE along with the Barrios de Pie (a militant group based in the neighbourhoods of Argentina) created community kitchens on the streets as a way to focus on the hunger crisis. Nothing that is meaningful to the workers is alien to the work of the MTE.

Wildo is a philosopher of the small farmers. ‘The land’, he says, is ‘predictable’. He knows when to plant his tomatoes and he knows when to harvest them. What is not predictable, he says, is the market. Wildo would like to live in a world where he is not defined by the power of capital. That is the world he is fighting to build.