Sri Lankan president uses executive powers to run government

W.A. Sunil 

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has responded to Monday’s appeal court ruling by concentrating state power in his own hands and working with senior state bureaucrats to directly manage the government.

The interim court order was in response to a petition disputing the president’s October 26 sacking of Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister. Sirisena replaced him with former president Mahinda Rajapakse and then prorogued the parliament until November 14. When Rajapakse was unable to gain majority support in the parliament, Sirisena dissolved it.

The appeal was submitted by 122 MPs, including those from the United National Front (UNF), which is led by the United National Party (UNP), and two opposition parties, the Tamil National Alliance (TNL) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). Rajapakse immediately rejected the court order and appealed to the Supreme Court to reverse the decision.

On Tuesday, however, the Supreme Court resumed work on its legal response to 13 petitions filed by the UNF, the TNA, the JVP and other parties, which argue that Sirisena’s dissolution of parliament was illegal. Sri Lanka’s highest court, which is expected to deliver a judgment tomorrow, is also hearing five petitions supporting the president’s proclamation. The competing Sirisena-Rajapakse and Wickremesinghe factions hope that tomorrow’s Supreme Court ruling will back their respective bids for state power.

In a thinly-veiled rebuke of Monday’s interim court order, Sirisena’s media unit issued a statement advising all ministry secretaries to continue their duties. It declared: “The President has already given the necessary orders to all state services, Tri-forces and the police to fulfill their duties and responsibilities with commitment towards the general public of the country and for the national security.”

Sirisena’s autocratic actions are another dangerous sign that dictatorial forms of rule are being prepared.

In one of his numerous political manoeuvres to win parliamentary support for Rajapakse, Sirisena last week cynically promised the TNA that he would move to secure the release of Tamil political prisoners detained for years under the country’s draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act. Sirisena, however, dumped this “promise” on Monday, declaring that he could not take any decision on political prisoners “until the current [political] impasse was resolved.”

Sirisena and Wickremesinghe previously pledged to release Tamil political prisoners during their campaign in 2014–15 to remove Rajapakse as president. They quickly dropped these promises in response to agitation by the military and Sinhala chauvinist formations.

Addressing a Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) convention on Tuesday, Sirisena demagogically declared that he would end the ongoing political instability within a week. He did not explain how.

In a crude attempt to wash his hands of any responsibility for the imposition of International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity measures and the government’s anti-democratic actions, Sirisena declared Wickremesinghe had “destroyed the country and the economy” and that he would not reappoint him as prime minister.

Wickremesinghe continues to denounce Sirisena’s claims and has accused him of violating the constitution and acting like “Hitler and other dictators.” But Wickremesinghe and the UNP, like Sirisena and the SLFP, are notorious for their violation of democratic rights and repressive attacks on working people, including instigating the almost three-decade communal war against the Tamil minority.

The US and other international powers have responded to the ongoing political deadlock by increasing their pressure on the ruling elite. The US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Alaina Teplitz told the Colombo-based Dailyft.lk yesterday that “Sri Lanka and its leaders [have] to move promptly to resolve the political crisis in a transparent and democratic way.” She warned that the ongoing factional war was impacting “on some of our bilateral opportunities.”

Teplitz insisted that the US, which is hostile to Rajapakse’s return to power, had no “favourites” in the Colombo infighting. Her claim is bogus. Sirisena came to power as a result of a US-orchestrated operation that ousted Rajapakse because Washington considered him too close to China.

Rajapakse’s political emissaries, however, have already started discussions with Western diplomats arguing that he has changed.

Yesterday, the Daily Mirror reported that US, EU and other diplomats met with Wickremesinghe at Temple Trees on Wednesday evening. Citing an unnamed UNP source, the newspaper said the diplomats predicted that Sirisena “will have to do the right thing at some point of time and that they were confident of such an eventuality.”

This week the European Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka, the American Chamber of Commerce and the Delegation of German Industry and Commerce in Sri Lanka warned “that the current situation will result in many adverse economic and social consequences to the country, if it remains unresolved.”

The three leading global agencies—Fitch, S&P and Moody’s—have cut their ratings on Sri Lanka. A Fitch and S&P statement said: “Investor confidence has been undermined as evident from large outflows from the local bond market and a depreciating exchange rate.”

The ongoing political deadlock, the statement added, “exacerbates the country’s external financing risks, already challenged by the tightening of global monetary conditions amid a heavy external debt repayment schedule between 2019 and 2022.”

According to Fitch, Sri Lanka, which has only $7.4 billion in reserves, has debt repayment commitments—principals and interest—of $20.9 billion due between 2019 and 2022. The rupee has devalued by 17 percent in the year up to the end of last month.

Notwithstanding their current differences, whichever faction of the ruling elite gains state power in Colombo, it will not hesitate to use police state methods to impose the austerity program being demanded by Sri Lankan big business, the IMF and international finance capital.

Sri Lanka Central Bank Governor Indrajit Coomaraswamy commented at a recent Colombo meeting: “Right across the political spectrum, there is a commitment to the macroeconomic framework, which we have to stick to, given our debt and deficit dynamics as there’s little room to manoeuvre.”

The turn by all sections of Sri Lanka’s political elite towards autocratic forms of rule is a grave warning to the working class and the rural masses. The “democratic” posturing of the competing bourgeois factions and all their political allies, is a fraud. Workers, youth and the rural masses cannot stand on the political sidelines but must intervene with their independent program that fights for a workers’ and peasants’ government based on an international and socialist perspective.

Huawei executive Meng’s arrest sparks market turbulence

Nick Beams

The arrest of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in Canada at the request of the US Justice Department, which is seeking her extradition to the US to face charges that the high-tech Chinese communications firm traded with Iran in breach of US-imposed sanctions, sent share markets in Europe and Asia tumbling and produced major gyrations on Wall Street yesterday.

The wild day on Wall Street began when the futures market opened overnight and the CME Group that runs it halted trading for a brief period “due to volatility.”

When the trading began, the market plunged in the first two hours before a recovery later in the day which left the Dow marginally down by 80 points.

Earlier markets in Asia had fallen by between 2.5 percent and 3 percent on the news of the Meng arrest which threatens to render null and void any trade war ceasefire between the US and China. This was followed by similar falls in European markets which were down by around 3 percent. The European Stoxx 600 index was down by 3.1 percent—its worst one-day fall since Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016. The UK’s FTSE index fell 3.2 percent, its worst day in two years.

The market turbulence then spread to Wall Street and late morning trade saw the Dow off by 784 points. Combined with the 800-point fall on Tuesday—the market was closed Wednesday due to the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush—this meant the market had experienced a 1,500-point slide in a day and a half.

And then, in an expression of the increased volatility of the past two months, the market began to rise following a report by the Wall Street Journal that the US Federal Reserve was considering whether to signal to the markets that it was prepared to adopt a wait-and-see approach on interest rate increases next year.

The report said Fed officials did not know what their move on rates would be after an expected 0.25 percentage point increase later this month. The expectation had been that the central bank would continue rate rises into 2019. But there have been growing concerns that this could help push the economy into recession. Last month Fed chairman Jerome Powell indicated that its base was close to neutral, meaning that future rises could be slowed or even halted.

The market also received a boost from a speech delivered yesterday by Raphael Bostic, the president of the Atlanta Fed, in which he said the Fed was “within shouting distance” of neutral, that is a rate that neither stimulates nor slows the economy.

The news of Meng’s arrest and the extradition sought by the US came on top of considerable confusion over what was actually agreed to at the discussions between Trump and Xi last Saturday night, with different versions being put out by the two sides.

The move against Huawei does not directly relate to trade because it is based on a claim that the company breached US sanctions against Iran but if it stands it will effectively make any trade deal impossible.

As the equities strategist at the investment bank Jeffries, Laban Yu, told the Financial Times: “While China may stomach fines, investigations and market restrictions against its national champion, we do not believe it will tolerate the arrest of a CFO [chief financial officer],” and that if the US did not change course “trade negotiations are in serious jeopardy.”

The move on Huawei underscores the fact that the conflict is not over trade as such but is rooted in the drive by the US to maintain its dominance in high-tech development which it regards as a threat to its position.

The deepening US-China economic war was by no means the only factor roiling US and global markets. Clear indications that the world economy is slowing down, after a brief period of “synchronised” growth in 2017, is a major ingredient in the growing market turmoil.

The slowdown has been reflected in the sharp fall in oil prices over the past two months as supply has exceeded demand. The benchmark price for crude has fallen from more than $86 per barrel at the beginning of October to $58 yesterday amid forecasts that it would fall still further.

US shale producers featured prominently in yesterday’s Wall Street slide in response to the failure of OPEC, the oil cartel, to reach agreement on production cuts at its meeting in Vienna. Further talks, including with Russia, which is not a member of OPEC, will be held today and an agreement may be reached.

But the downturn in prices has already impacted heavily on US producers and their shares which fell between 6 percent and 9 percent yesterday. The decline is not only cutting profits but tightening credit in the junk bond market used to finance shale projects. There is now a 5.5 percentage point gap in the interest paid in the junk market compared to US Treasuries—the highest level in a year and a half.

The market is also reacting to fears of a recession as reflected the flattening of the yield curve—the convergence of interest rates on short-term government bonds and those on longer-dated securities. Earlier this week, the gap between the yield on the two-year and ten-year Treasuries narrowed to its lowest point in 11 years and yesterday the yield on three-year Treasuries rose above the five-year bond yield, raising the prospect of an inverted yield curve, widely regarded as a sign of recession.

The demonstrations in France and the global class struggle

Alex Lantier

The French government of banker-turned-President Emmanuel Macron is preparing for a major confrontation with “yellow vest” demonstrations and other protests this weekend, as the political crisis gripping the French state intensifies.

The interior ministry is planning to deploy 89,000 riot and military police throughout the country on Saturday, including 8,000 in Paris, backed by armored cars in the streets of the capital for the first time since 2005. This follows the positioning of snipers on Paris rooftops during last Saturday’s protest. Police are trying to intimidate protesters with threats that they expect fatalities and more arrests than at all the previous protests combined.

In a desperate attempt to play for time, the Macron government postponed and then announced the cancellation of the fuel tax that provoked the initial protests. However, anger continues to grow, bringing in broader sections of the population motivated by a diverse set of class issues. Demands for wage and pension increases, taxing the rich, and for a redistribution of wealth are spreading.

On Thursday, thousands of high school and university students participated in protests against education reforms and tuition increases. Police responded with repression and over 700 arrests. One video broadly shared online showed police rounding up students, whom they forced to kneel, some against a wall, in rows of dozens. This is just a preview of the state crackdown that will be meted out this weekend.

As the French government prepares a massive police-state crackdown, it is absurdly denouncing protesters as a danger to democracy. The Élysée presidential palace yesterday called on “political parties and trade unions, the business community to appeal for calm” and declared that it is “no longer time for political opposition, but for unity around our Republic.” Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said that protests threaten “the safety of the French people and our institutions.”

After Macron recently hailed Philippe Pétain—France’s Nazi-collaborationist dictator during World War II—he is in no position to lecture anyone about democracy. The danger to democracy comes not from the struggles of workers and youth against the dictates of the banks, but from the capitalist ruling elite, represented by figures like Macron, cowering behind his phalanxes of riot police and tanks.

With the development of the protests, the basic class issues are coming to the fore. The New York Times, in a worried article published Thursday, noted that the protests in France are “not tethered to a political party, let alone a right-wing one.” Instead, “The uprising is mostly organic, spontaneous and self-determined. It is mostly about economic class. It is about the inability to pay the bills.”

It is the fact that the protests emerged outside of the existing institutions, including the trade unions, that has lent them an explosive character. Responding to the widespread support for the protests among workers, unions have called limited strike actions for next week. However, the aim of the unions, which have the closest connections to the state, is to contain and corral the movement, and thereby bring it under control.

Macron has no intention of acceding to the demand for social equality and a redistribution of wealth that are driving the protests. The actions of the government are dictated by the class interests that it represents and by the demands of the global markets and financial institutions.

Developments within France are a national expression of a global process. In every country, the ruling class is seeking to enforce a new round of attacks on wages and working conditions. However, the growth of the class struggle—propelled by grotesque levels of social inequality—is also developing as a global process.

It is to the international working class that French workers and youth opposed to Macron must turn for support!

The past year has been characterized by a significant intensification of class conflict around the world. The year began with protests by Iranian workers against social cuts, followed by strikes in Europe for wage increases by Turkish and German metalworkers. In the United States, teachers struck in defiance of the union bureaucracy, followed by teachers in Britain, Tunisia and France.

Strikes in France against Macron’s privatization of the National Railways broke out, together with student protests against Macron’s regressive education reforms. Workers in countries across Europe struck against Ryanair, and workers internationally struck against appalling working conditions at Amazon, run by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos.

The year is coming to an end amidst growing working-class anger internationally. After an explosive protest by tea plantation workers in Sri Lanka last month, organized on social media to demand a 100 percent wage increase, the tea plantation workers are mounting strike action despite union opposition. Anger is building among US auto workers, as the unions and corporate management jointly plot mass layoffs and plant closures as part of a global restructuring of the auto industry. And, largely unreported in the media, strikes involving hundreds of thousands of workers are shaking South Korea, Chile and other countries.

In its 1988 world perspectives resolution, the International Committee of the Fourth International pointed to the implications of the globalization of capitalist production for the development of the class struggle: “It has long been an elementary proposition of Marxism that the class struggle is national only as to its form, but that it is, in essence, an international struggle. However, given the new features of capitalist development, even the form of the class struggle must assume an international character. Even the most elemental struggles of the working class pose the necessity of coordinating its actions on an international scale.”

Developments are now confirming this prognosis. For the working class, this raises critical strategic questions. Anger and opposition are not sufficient. The working class needs organization and a political perspective .

To coordinate their struggles, workers need their own organizations, completely independent of the pro-capitalist trade unions. The Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES) calls on French workers and youth to immediately form committees of action in every workplace, neighborhood and school. These committees must unify the struggles now unfolding, prevent them from being dissipated and sold out, and organize actions to protect workers from repression.

In France, these committees would allow the “yellow vests,” largely drawn from rural and provincial city workers, to unify with the broadest sections of the working class, including immigrant workers in the suburbs of France’s largest cities, and to fight racist attempts to divide workers along ethnic lines.

The development of independent organizations of working-class struggle is inextricably connected to the building of a revolutionary leadership. In France and every country, the basic task facing the working class is the same—the overthrow of the capitalist system through the conquest of state power, the expropriation of the corporate and financial elite, a massive redistribution of wealth and the socialist reorganization of economic life.

The most critical issue of all is the construction of a Marxist leadership in the French and international working class. Only this way will the mass movement be able to acquire a consciously socialist character, opposing capitalism and war, and posing the question of the transfer of state power to the working class.

The Contours of Xi’s Chinese Nationalism

Palden Sonam

After China’s President Xi Jinping announced the ‘China Dream of Great National Rejuvenation’, the Communist Party of China (CPC) identified three important stages of development under three different leaderships: the Chinese people “stood up” under Mao Zedong; “became rich” under Deng Xiaoping; and are “becoming powerful” under Xi. Since Mao’s and Deng’s eras are long gone, naturally, Xi is the focus of this propaganda.

With his rise as the CPC’s core leader, Xi has embraced an authoritarian form of nationalism based on his strongman leadership in the quest to transform China into a ‘Great Power’, and has positioned nationalism as a route to realising the ‘China Dream’. The objectives of this Dream are expected to be achieved by 2049, coinciding with the 100th founding anniversary of the People’s Republic. To that end, the narrative of Chinese nationalism is anchored in two pillars: cultivating public support for the CPC leadership to achieve the China Dream; and delivering on some of the promises made in the China Dream with the underlying objective of increasing regime legitimacy and longevity.

The ‘strong leader’ and ‘powerful nation’ narrative appeals to China’s domestic population, which has for long been indoctrinated with memories of a ‘Century of Humiliation’. This historical sense of victim-hood and imposed inferiority makes Chinese citizens susceptible to falling for a belligerent form of nationalism that promises national power and pride. It is in this context that Xi’s ‘China Dream’ must be understood, in order to comprehend the long-term objectives of such nationalism, foremost of which is securing and sustaining the CPC’s authority. Additionally, the different strategies Xi deploys to boost a Party-authored version of nationalism too must be viewed in conjunction with his ‘China Dream’.

Equating the Party and the ‘Nation’Under Xi, China has witnessed a resurgence of ideological nationalism where the party is projected not only as the guardian of Chinese nationalism but also as the guarantor of China’s future. Xi demands public confidence in the party’s path and theory and his ‘Xi Jinping Thought’. In 2013, the Party further tightened its grip on Universities and prohibited discussions on matters such as free press and civil rights, branding them as ‘Western values’. In 2014, Xi called on Chinese artists to serve the masses and to aim for ideological success.

At the core of this ideological nationalism is the Party’s centrality in the Chinese state and society; and at core of the Party is Xi himself, as the new helmsman. In August 2018, the CPC launched a campaign to promote a “patriotic striving spirit" among the country's young and middle-aged intellectuals, to rally support for the party. By fusing the party and the ‘nation’ as one, Xi is attempting to cultivate a worldview that to love the CPC is to love the ‘nation’, and to serve the Party is to serve the people. Any criticism against the CPC is therefore considered anti-national and illegal—as is visible in the increasing repression of Chinese dissidents often on charges of subverting state power. This ideological nationalism also demands more ideological conformity and appreciation of his Thought from all sections of the society.

‘Great Technological Leap Forward’Through what is being referred to as ‘techno-nationalism’, Xi is attempting to induce patriotic pride through China’s technological success as well as ambition. The underlying strategic logic is that whoever dominates the future of technologies such as artificial intelligence will also dominate other critical sectors such as security and economy. Beijing’s eagerness and thrust to win the technological race is evident in the Made in China 2025 (MIC2025) strategic plan, and is reinforced by the 2018 propaganda film, Amazing China, which extols China’s technological achievements during Xi’s first term.

However, it is the former that sparked the clash of techno-nationalists in China and the US which culminated in a trade war. The objective of the MIC2025 is to transform China from a giant to a power in technological manufacturing and innovation by 2025, and a leading power in high-technology and innovation by 2049. This ‘great technological leap forward’ has been launched with a combination of vast resources and a nationalistic rhetoric of making China a tech superpower. Consequently, the US’ persistent pressure to modify MIC2025 will likely be seen as another form of national humiliation.

External Geopolitics and Internal Regime SupportXi uses geopolitical issues to generate nationalistic attitudes as another means to garner support for the regime. Under his leadership, China has, in both posturing and actions, intensified its claims over disputed territories extending from the East China Sea to the Himalayan borders.

He vowed to never cede “an inch of Chinese territory” and complete the ‘national reunification’ involving Taiwan. Geopolitical tensions have been ratcheted up with China’s neighbours due to Beijing’s increasing activities to assert control over disputed areas, such as through the establishment of the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea; the development of artificial islands in the South China Sea; the construction of a strategic road along the borders with India and Bhutan; and belligerent military drills targeting Taiwan. Simultaneously, Beijing has also accelerated its military modernisation with the objective of developing world class military prowess. More recently, Xi called on China’s Southern Theatre Command (which monitors the South China Sea and Taiwan) to get ready for war.

Looking AheadWhile the ‘Century of Humiliation’ discourse continues to be a powerful component of the CPC-tailored Chinese nationalism, Xi’s “great goal of national rejuvenation” is an important addition that may change the future narrative of Chinese nationalism from one driven by collective historical memory of humiliation to one driven by a collective aspiration to be the next superpower. Moreover, given China’s growing influence in the world, the CPC might view Xi’s triumphalism as a more effective strategy to shore-up regime-oriented nationalism.

M-Net Magic In Motion Academy Program (Internship+Scholarship) 2019 for Aspiring Film-makers

Application Deadline: 21st January, 2019

Eligible Countries: South Africa

To be taken at (country): South Africa

About the Award: Since 2014, the M-Net Magic in Motion Academy has given top film and TV graduates the opportunity to make their dreams come true when they were selected to participate in a year-long work readiness programme where they learnt from some of the country’s top producers while gaining far-reaching experience in the industry.

Type: Training, Internship

Eligibility: 

• Must have completed (in 2017/ or completing (in 2018),  a 3 year Diploma / Degree in Film and TV or related qualification
• A minimum of  C + Aggregate
• Applicants must ensure that all information included in their entry is valid and true.
• All applicant information will be subject to credit, criminal and verification checks.
• M-Net’s decision in the selection of the interns for the 2019 MiM Academy is final.
• M-Net shall not be responsible for any electronic system failure that results in any particular entry not being received for consideration.
• M-Net is not liable for the costs any applicant incurs during the process of their electronic application (example: airtime usage or payment at Wi-Fi café)
• Applicants are responsible for ensuring that all information which they include in their submission is valid and true.
• M-Net has the right to expand, limit, downscale and/or terminate the Magic in Motion  Academy at its discretion.
• Entry is limited to citizens of South Africa who meet the stated entry criteria.
• 2018 MiM Academy interns are prohibited from being selected again.
• There is no guarantee of employment at the end of the internship.
• Internships are only available in Gauteng, South Africa and to South African citizens.
• M-Net reserves the right to terminate any internship at any time.

Value of Program: 

• The Magic in Motion Academy interns will receive hands-on training in producing, directing, cinematography, production commissioning, concept creation, script writing, sound, art direction, editing, post-production and more. The course has been designed to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical implementation in order to produce highly employable professionals.
• Upon completion of the 12-month curriculum, M-Net will choose three exceptional interns to produce their own films with funding from M-Net and like years past, some of these movies could find their way onto a small screen near you.

How to Apply: 

• Applicants must apply directly to M-Net before 21 January 2019 should they wish to participate in the Magic in Motion Academy.
• To apply for this once in a lifetime opportunity, go to the Program Webpage (see link below)

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: Multichoice

Yenching Global Symposium 2019 for Young Leaders (All expenses paid to Beijing, China)

Application Deadline: 8th December 2018 at 11:59 p.m. (China Standard Time)

Eligible Countries: International

About the Award: Held on Peking University’s historic campus in Beijing, this three-day, fully-funded event invites prominent Chinese and international scholars with a noted passion for China in their work and research, along with leading professionals from a wide range of fields. In a rapidly shifting global arena, the 2019 Symposium, “Wǒmen: Retelling the China Stories,” re-explores China’s multi-faceted revival through a gendered lens.
Wǒmen: Retelling the China Stories will take place March 29th – 31st, 2019, and will feature keynote speakers, panels of academics and practitioners, interactive activities, site visits, and cultural immersion programming.

Type: Conference

Eligibility:

• Minimum of a bachelor’s degree in any field;
• Strong interest in learning about China and engaging in nuanced, interdisciplinary discussions which address critical societal issues relating to China;
• Available for the entirety of the conference, March 29-31st 2019 (and available for any required travel time to and from Beijing);
• Have not attended any of the previous Yenching Global Symposiums or Yenching Social Innovation Forums;
• English Proficiency;
• Leadership potential;
• Bonus: Involvement in China-related activities – academic, voluntary, professional, extra-curricular.

Number of Awards: Approx 200

Value of Award: Eligible delegates will receive free round-trip travel to and from Beijing, along with accommodation and meals for the length of the conference.

Duration of Programme: March 29th – 31st, 2019

How to Apply: APPLY NOW

• GOODLUCK!

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Growing the Leaders of Tomorrow HIV Research Fellowship 2018/2019 for Young Leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa

Application Deadline: 7th January 2019, 18:00 CET

Eligible Countries:  Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the, Congo, Republic of the, Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, United Republic of, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Type: Research, Fellowship

Eligibility: 
Mentors:

• The mentor must be either an Associate or Full Professor or Chief/Principal Research Officer with an established position at a research institute in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Submit their CV, including publication record in paediatric HIV clinical research;
• Demonstrate that they are the principal investigator of the proposed research project that the fellow will be contributing to and that direct research expenses and adequate infrastructure for the period of the fellowship will be provided for by other grants or sources of funding;
• Establish a mentorship plan that demonstrates how the fellowship will contribute to skill building and professional development of the fellow, as well as ensuring successful completion of the research project.

Fellows:

• The fellow must be a junior investigator with a doctoral degree (PhD) or a doctor of medicine degree (e.g., MD, MBBS or equivalent) obtained no more than ten years before the application deadline (after 15 March 2007) and who has less than five years of relevant research experience.
• The fellow must hold a passport from a country in sub-Saharan Africa.
• The fellow must fulfil one of the following criteria prior to the application submission deadline:
  • He/she is a clinical/research trainee (e.g., research or clinical fellow, senior medical resident/Registrar) at a sub-Saharan African academic institute or a sub-Saharan African institute whose primary mission is research.
  • He/she has a faculty or comparable position (e.g., assistant professor, lecturer, research officer) at a sub-Saharan Africa academic institute or a sub-Saharan Africa institute whose primary mission is research.
  • He/she is working at a sub-Saharan Africa organization with adequate research infrastructure to undertake the proposed research activities.
• The fellow (and mentor) must demonstrate that funding to support the direct costs of the proposed research is available.

Selection: The Fellowship Programme is guided by a Steering Committee (SC), which is comprised of leaders in paediatric HIV clinical research, with experience in sub-Saharan Africa.

Number of Awardees: 3

Value of Fellowship: 

• The final three awardees will be selected to receive a two-year fellowship of up to US$ 70,000 (US$ 35,000 per year).
• The fellowship funds are to provide a stipend for the fellow and can support travel to attend one scientific meeting to present results; fellowship funds are not intended to cover direct research expenses, which must be provided by the mentor’s institution or additional grants.

How to Apply: 

• Interested applicants may apply online via Fellowship Webpage
• GOODLUCK!

Visit Fellowship Webpage for Details

Unlike a Globalized Food System, Local Food Won’t Destroy the Environment

Helena Norberg-Hodge

If you’re seeking some good news during these troubled times, look at the ecologically sound ways of producing food that have percolated up from the grassroots in recent years. Small farmers, environmentalists, academic researchers and food and farming activists have given us agroecology, holistic resource management, permaculture, regenerative agriculture and other methods that can alleviate or perhaps even eliminate the global food system’s worst impacts: biodiversity loss, energy depletion, toxic pollution, food insecurity and massive carbon emissions.

These inspiring testaments to human ingenuity and goodwill have two things in common: They involve smaller-scale farms adapted to local conditions, and they depend more on human attention and care than on energy and technology. In other words, they are the opposite of industrial monocultures — huge farms that grow just one crop.

But to significantly reduce the many negative impacts of the food system, these small-scale initiatives need to spread all over the world. Unfortunately, this has not happened, because the transformation of farming requires shifting not just how food is produced, but also how it is marketed and distributed. The food system is inextricably linked to an economic system that, for decades, has been fundamentally biased against the kinds of changes we need.

Put simply, economic policies almost everywhere have systematically promoted ever-larger scale and monocultural production. Those policies include:

• Massive subsidies for globally traded commodities. Most farm subsidies in the US, for example, go to just five commodities — corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice — that are the centerpieces of global food trade. At the same time, government programs — like the US Market Access Program — provide hundreds of millions of dollars to expand international markets for agriculture products.
• Direct and hidden subsidies for global transport infrastructures and fossil fuels. The IMF estimates these subsidies and ignored environmental costs at $5.3 trillion per year — the equivalent of $10 million every minute.
• ‘Free trade’ policies that open up food markets in virtually every country to global agribusinesses. The 1994 NAFTA agreement, for example, forced Mexico’s small corn producers to compete with heavily-subsidized large-scale farms in the US; the recent re-negotiation of NAFTA will do the same to Canadian dairy farmers.
• Health and safety regulations. Most of these have been made necessary by large-scale production and distribution — but they make it impossible for smaller-scale producers and marketers to compete and survive. In France, for example, the number of small producers of cheese has shrunk by 90% thanks in large measure to EU food safety laws.

These policies provide a huge competitive advantage to large monocultural producers and corporate processors and marketers, which is why industrially produced food that has been shipped from the other side of the world is often less expensive than food from the farm next door.

The environmental costs of this bias are huge. Monocultures rely heavily on chemical inputs — fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides and pesticides — which pollute the immediate environment, put wildlife at risk and — through nutrient runoff — create “dead zones” in waters hundreds or thousands of miles away. Monocultures are also heavily dependent on fossil fuels to run large-scale equipment and to transport raw and processed foods across the world, making them a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, scientists estimate the greenhouse gas toll of the global food system at one-third of total emissions.

There are social and economic costs as well. In the industrialized world, smaller producers can’t survive, their land amalgamated into the holdings of ever larger farms— in the process decimating rural and small town economies and threatening public health. In the Global South, the same forces pull people off the land by the hundreds of millions, leading to poverty, rapidly swelling urban slums and waves of economic refugees. In both North and South, uprooted small farmers easily spiral into unemployment, poverty, resentment and anger.

There are also risks to food security. With global economic policies homogenizing the world’s food supply, the 7,000 species of plants used as food crops in the past have been reduced to 150 commercially important crops, with rice, wheat and maize accounting for 60 percent of the global food supply. Varieties within those few crops have been chosen for their responsiveness to chemical fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation water — and for their ability to withstand long-distance transport. A similar calculus is applied to livestock and poultry breeds, which are skewed toward those that can grow rapidly with inputs of grain and antibiotics in confined animal feeding operations. The loss of diversity even extends to the size and shape of food products: harvesting machinery, transport systems and supermarket chains all require standardization. The end result is that more than half of the world’s food varieties have been lost over the past century; in countries like the US, the loss is more than 90 percent. The global food system rests on a dangerously narrow base: without the genetic variety that can supply resilience, the food system is vulnerable to catastrophic losses from disease and the disruptions of a changing climate.

The Benefits of Local Food

The solution to these problems involves more than a commitment to ecological models of food production: it also requires a commitment to local food economies. Localization systematically alleviates a number of environmental problems inherent in the global food system, by:

• reducing the distance that food travels, thereby lessening the energy needed for transport, as well as the attendant greenhouse gas emissions;
• reducing the need for packaging, processing and refrigeration (which all but disappears when producers sell direct to consumers, thus reducing waste and energy use);
• reducing monoculture, as farms producing for local or regional markets have an incentive to diversify their production, which makes organic production more feasible, in turn reducing the toxic load on surrounding ecosystems;
• providing more niches for wildlife to occupy through diversified organic farms;
• and supporting the principle of diversity on which ecological farming — and life itself — is based, by favoring production methods that are best suited to particular climates, soils and resources.

Local food provides many other benefits. The smaller-scale farms that produce for local and regional markets require more human intelligence, care and work than monocultures, thus providing more employment opportunities. In the Global South, in particular, a commitment to local food would stem the pressures that are driving millions of farmers off the land.

Local food is also good for rural and small-town economies, providing not only more on-farm employment, but supporting the many local businesses on which farmers depend.

Food security is also strengthened because varieties are chosen based on their suitability to diverse locales, not the demands of supermarket chains or the requirements of long-distance transport. This strengthens agricultural biodiversity.

Local food is also healthier. Since it doesn’t need to travel so far, local food is far fresher than global food; and since it doesn’t rely on monocultural production, it can be produced without toxic chemicals that can contaminate food.

Countering the Myths

Although local food is an incredibly effective solution-multiplier, agribusiness has gone to great lengths to convince the public that large-scale industrial food production is the only way to feed the world. But the fact is that the global food economy is massively inefficient.

The global system’s need for standardized products means that tons of edible food are destroyed or left to rot. This is one reason why more than one-third of the global food supply is wasted or lost; for the US, the figure is closer to one-half.

The logic of global trade results in massive quantities of identical products being simultaneously imported and exported — a needless waste of fossil fuels and a huge addition to greenhouse gas emissions. In a typical year, for example, the US imports more than 400,000 tons of potatoes and 1 million tons of beef, while exporting almost the same tonnage of each. The same is true of many other food commodities, and many other countries.

The same logic leads to shipping foods across the world simply to reduce labor costs for processing. Shrimp harvested off the coast of Scotland, for example, are shipped 6,000 miles to Thailand to be peeled, then shipped 6,000 miles back to the UK to be sold to consumers.

The supposed efficiency of monocultural production is based on output per unit of labor, which is maximized by replacing jobs with chemical- and energy-intensive technology. Measured by output per acre, however — a far more relevant metric — smaller-scale farms are typically 8-20 times more productive. This is partly because monocultures, by definition, produce just one crop on a given plot of land, while smaller, diversified farms allow intercropping — using the spaces between rows of one crop to grow another. What’s more, the labor ‘efficiencies’ of monocultural production are linked to the use of large-scale equipment, which limit the farmer’s ability to tend to or harvest small portions of a crop and thereby increase yields.

Making the Shift

For more than a generation, now, the message to farmers has been to “get big or get out” of farming, and a great number of the farmers who remain have tailored their methods to what makes short-term economic sense within a deeply flawed system. To avoid bankrupting those farmers, the shift from global to local would need to take place with care, providing incentives for farmers to diversify their production, reduce their reliance on chemical inputs and fossil fuel energy, and to seek markets closer to home. Those incentives would go hand-in-hand with reductions in subsidies for the industrial food system.

After decades of policy bias toward global food, some steps in this direction are being taken by local and regional governments. In the US, for example, most states have enacted “cottage food laws” that relax the restrictions on the small-scale production of jams, pickles and other preserved foods, allowing them to be processed and sold locally without the need for expensive commercial kitchens.

Several towns in the state of Maine have gone even further. Seeking to bypass the restrictive regulations that make it difficult to market local foods, they have declared “food sovereignty” by passing ordinances that give their citizens the right “to produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing.”

In 2013, the government of Ontario, Canada, passed a Local Food Act aimed at increasing access to local food, improving local food literacy and providing tax credits for farmers who donate a portion of their produce to nearby food banks.

Even bolder action is needed if there is to be any hope of eliminating the damage done by the global food system. A crucial first step is to raise awareness of the costs of the current system, and the multiple benefits of local food. No matter how many studies demonstrate the virtues of alternative ways of producing and distributing food, the destructive global food system is unlikely to change unless there is heavy pressure from the grassroots to change the entire system. That needs to start now.

Lynching: Casteist, Communal and Fascist Tool of Violence in India

Y. Srinivasa Rao

Violence has always been a tool of oppression, suppression and subordination. Though every form of violence is illegal according to the law of the land, dominant social forces (upper castes/classes) often justifies employing certain forms of violence as they believe that they are essential to keep the supposedly holy and sacred religious, social and cultural systems and customs alive without which foundations of not only customs and rituals which auxiliary to religion but also the very basic foundations of the religions itself would crumble. In India, most of the dominant religions have been employing lynching as tool of keeping followers and critiques in submission and in control respectively. However, caste and communal Hindus have been using it consistently than custodians of other religions. Caste Hindu society has the tradition of using lynching as a weapon of protecting the social hierarchy, religious, ritualistic and cultural purity. From Vedic times to today, lynching has been a tool of suppression for the lower castes in India. Despite the pressure from Buddhism in the early ancient India and Islam and Christianity in the early medieval and modern India, both the radical political communal/caste Hindus and uneducated but indoctrinated innocent/ignorant Hindus have been successful in employing violence. When social positions in the social hierarchy are sanctioned by religion, the social position alone cannot be protected as such protection does not hold the ground when it’s very roots are rooted in the religion. Therefore, in Hinduism, caste and religion are not two different entities. One cannot survive without the other. If caste as a social hierarchy was de-hinduised, chances are greater for the annihilation of caste system. It is impossible to de-hinudise caste. Every attempt to reform Hindu religion was met with clever strategies of not only to keep the religion safe but also it generated newer methods of expansion. The Hinduism’s response to reforms in medieval and modern times was aggressive Hinduisation of a culture that was hardly de-hinduised under the impact of the entry of new cultures and the hinduisation of a culture (mostly untouchable and adivasis) that is out of its ambit. For the appropriation of the non-Hindu culture into its fold and for keeping elements within its fold to be loyal its basic tenets, Hinduism has been using lynching. Every time, the social other within Hinduism fights for human dignity, decency and equality, they faced massacres, brutal deaths, public humiliation, physical violence, gang rapes, chopping of genitals and other body parts burning alive, beheading, inserting things into private parts and butchering. Physical violence is multifunctional. However, it is allocated with different functions according to the objectives of the perpetrators. In India, among the communities which continuously subjected to the lynching have been untouchables, adivasis and women. Lynching in India is not new. Its notoriety and unacceptability is only being recognised now. Uncountable episodes of physical violence (only reported) in the history of physical violence in India faced by dalits would inform that even after the independence the caste Hindus have refused to recognise dalits as humans with dignity and rights and continue to employ lynching as a tool of keeping them under control and reminding them of their social position. Employing lynching as a tool of control over dalits who questions the domination of the upper caste and becomes assertive to seek equality has not been seen as abnormal unusual as if it is not as crime. Lynching dalits was normalised because the casteless questioning the caste Hindus destabilises the social order. Therefore, lynching the rights conscious, aggressive and assertive dalits was seen essential to keep the social order intact. The story is the same with women across all castes and communities. Not until the communal other is subjected to the same violence, the abnormality of lynching is being recognised, debated and discussed. At least, now, lynching is being recognised as inhuman crime and the civil society is actively examining the political and social functions of lynching. Like Afro-Americans in United States of America, dalits have been at the disposal of the caste Hindus.

Since its emergence, the radical right in India with clear objectives and intentions, has been employing lynching to achieve temporary and long time objectives as well. From 1990s, India has witnessed many small and large communal riots and every episode has performed their allocated functions. However, there is a difference between the communal riots of pre and post 2015. Mahammad Aklaq’s in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh lynching is beginning of new era in the history of violence in India. While the Gujarat communal riots 2002 where more than thousand Muslims killed were to take revenge against Godhra train accident where hindu sadhus were burned to death for which Muslims in the Godhra railway station were allegedly involved, Mahammad Aklaq lynching was not revenge against crime. It was an incident that was used as a stage for announcing the arrival of the right-wing radicals to the nation. The way he was killed by mob and the way the law and order responded spelled out what is in store for India. From Aklaq’s in on 28th September 2015 to Subhod Kumar Singh murder on 3rd December 2018, India has witnessed 87 killings in the name of beef, cow theft, cattle trade, disrespecting sentiments and skin trade so on. Selecting cow as a symbol of Hindu religion to invent enemy provided justification and continuity to the lynching. Since, Hindus are majority India, no minority group, be it a caste minority or religious minority, even if they were troubled, discriminated and tortured would involve in physical violence against Hindus. They believed in democratic institutions and fought for justice.

Cow has helped to target four supposedly common enemies of hindutva: Muslims, Christians, dalits anti-hindus (Secularist, rationalists, atheists and humanists). Except the fourth, rest of the communities, either as eaters of beefs or as leather traders are connected with cattle if not cow alone are first stamped as cultural/religious enemies and then getting killed in broad daylight. For hindutvawadis, Muslims are historical enemies, Christians are convertors and dalits are ideological enemies. The fourth is a composite community which is drawn from all sections of society is also ideological enemies even if some of them are Hindus by identity if not in practice. All of these have to be brought into submission one or other way for realising the dream of Hindu Rastra. When for the first time, India has witnessed, lynching, a never before kind of violence where  a person could be killed on rumour/s by mob and it is then be followed by the backing of the law and order to the perpetrators of crime instead of the victim and the relatives of the killed are continuously victimised with counter cases and torture, the nation began to see a pattern that is emerging that would encourage the mob to go on killing spree with guilt, fear of law, remorse and victims to face heat of law and order, humiliation, pain and suffering.

When Akhalq family was slapped with chargers of holding beef and when Pehlu Khan’s son was shot at while going to court, it became quite clear that BJP government at centre and its governments in twenty states which would draw certain amount of political capital from such communal mob attacks have been directly/indirectly granting licences to mobs to kill their ‘enemies’. If Hindutvawadis of post-2014 took it for granted that they can kill for any alleged violation of Hindu religion and culture, it is impunity they enjoy from the law and order maintaining agencies. In other words, script is written by the perpetrators of the crimes and the government acts according to the script. They both involve a reciprocal relationship. Freehand to the fringe elements generated required political capital for BJP governments, fringe elements grow at the support of the government into powerful social organisations which furthers their social position and power.  When a social group which is majority in the nation places its religious and cultural identity as a national identity, it naturally acquires the rights of defining what is nation, who are nationalists, what is national culture? It is the case with white Europeans in USA, Israelis in occupied Palestine and Hindus in India. Here, democracy is subjected to severe suffocation. Majoritarian governments consciously transform democracies into authoritarian rule, use democracy as a tool of fulfilling its goals or eventually, if majority is in power for long, democracy might die a natural death. It is always be indifferent to democracy. When it acquires political power it’s declaration as an unchallengeable power symbolically comes through various actions of the government machinery and groups belong to its ideology. Lynching of the religious, caste and ideological enemies is just one of part of it.  The majoritarian government in consultation with the ideological think tanks draws plans and strategies to reap maximum out of the given opportunity. In the process of doing so, all time-tested, accepted and appreciable traditions of democracy would either be diluted, criticised, dumped and demeaned. Democracy, unfortunately, allows these governments and the majority to enjoy more powers than the common citizens of the nation. Even laws would be amended to allow the majority to dance on the streets. In the post-2014, the emergence of Gau Rakshak, moral policing and Ghar Vapsi groups throughout the nation backed by the local and state governments went on rampage on roads, beating, injuring, insulting and humiliating citizens of the nation, especially in north and northeast India explains how governments were backing these grops. Gau Rakshas and anti-Romeo groups came into existence after Yogi became Chief Minister of Uttara Pradesh have been acting on behalf of police and assisting police. Except in very cases where police were attacked by the right-wing groups, police are working with the fringe groups from beginning to the end. They have been showing great intelligence in producing alternative facts to reduce the severity of crime and to criminalise the victim and finally dilute the case.

Chief Ministers, central and state ministers, people’s representatives, bureaucrats and leaders of right-wing organisations did not waste time in coming in support of the criminals. Akhlaq to Subhod Kumar Singh, a common pattern that is quite visible is that valorisation of the criminals and criminalisation of the victims. No matter how heinous the crime was, communal social solidarity and institutional help was quite quick. Individuals involved in lynching have been welcomed, honoured, glorified as heroes, offered jobs and loans, appointed as leaders of communal organisations and offered seats of assembly and parliamentary constituencies. This, many ways, normalises the abnormal criminality. And this will continue as long as the majority is in power

Are we to prepare ourselves to get humiliated, beaten, and killed at the will and wish of the majority in this nation? Subhodh Kumar Singh’s son asked heart touching question i.e. whose father is going to be next (to be killed in the name of cow)? His question to the nation indicates how it became vulnerable and weak in protecting its foundational ideologies, composite culture and social fabric built in the course of seven decades with immense contribution of people belong all sections of society. Indian civil society’s collective response to Aklaq’s lynching was a response of a matured democratic society that respects and protects every citizen’s rights across caste, colour and community. This kind of response was not, of course, limited to Dadri murder alone. However, these responses, sometimes, found to be pragmatic according to the caste/communal priorities. Dalits, women, Christians, Muslims and adivasis suffering under the hands of common enemy, have to build network for a sustained social solidarity which could be activated to render assistance and moral support to the victims after the crime committed but it should also be able to prevent crime from happening by developing self protecting mechanisms and by carrying sustained movement to put pressure on the government. As long as we don’t equate upper caste killings of lower for the reason of caste with that of Hindu killing Muslims, Buddhists and Christians for cultural/religious reasons, a united response to lynching would not be possible and lynching will not be stopped.