Italian Government Bachelors, Masters & PhD Scholarships 2019/2020 for Foreign Students

Application Deadline: 30th May 2019 by 2 p.m. (C.E.T.)

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Scholarships can be awarded only for study/ research projects at institutions within the Italian public education and research system.

Fields of Study: Courses for which grants are available:

•        Master’s Degree (Laurea Magistrale 2° ciclo)
•        Courses of Higher Education in Arts, Music, and Dance (AFAM)
•        PhD programmes
•        Research under academic supervision (Progetti in co-tutela)
•        Italian Language and Culture Courses

About Scholarship: The Italian Government awards scholarships for studying in Italy both to foreign citizens and Italian citizens resident abroad (IRE). The aim of these scholarships is fostering international cultural cooperation, spreading the Italian language, culture and science knowledge and promoting the economic and technological sectors of Italy all around the world.

Type: Masters, PhD, Research

Eligibility:

1. Academic qualifications: Applications must only be submitted by foreign students not residing in Italy and by Italian citizens living abroad (IRE)* holding an appropriate academic qualification required to enroll to the Italian University/Institute. https://studyinitaly.esteri.it/en/Recognition-of-qualification.
2. Age requirements: 
   • Applicants for Master’s Degree/Higher Education in Arts, Music, and Dance (AFAM) Programmes/ Italian Language and Culture Courses should not be over 28 years old by the deadline of this call, with the sole exception of renewals.
   • Applicants for PhD Programmes  should not be over 30 years old by the deadline of this call, with the sole exception of renewals.
   • Applicants for Research Projects under academic supervision should not be over 40 years old by the deadline of this call.
3. Language proficiency 
   • Applicants must provide a certificate of their proficiency in Italian language. The minimum level required is B2 within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR): (https://www.linguaitaliana.esteri.it/data/lingua/corsi/pdf/tabella_certificazioni.pdf).
   • Proof of proficiency in Italian is not required for courses entirely taught in English.
   • In this case applicants must provide a language certificate of their proficiency in English Language. The minimum level required is B2 within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
   • For Italian language and culture courses, applicants must provide a certificate of their proficiency in Italian language. The minimum level required is A2 within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR):

Number of Scholarships: not specified

Value of Scholarship:

• Normally, the scholarship holders are exempt from the payment of the university tuition fees, in accordance with existing regulations. However the Universities, as part of their autonomy, may not allow such exemption. Candidates are therefore recommended to contact the chosen Institution in order to be informed on eventual taxes or tuition fees.
• For the sole period of the scholarships granted by the Italian Government, the scholarship-holders are covered by an insurance policy against illness and/or accident. Air tickets are not granted, except for Chilean citizens.

Duration of Scholarship: 

• Grants are awarded for a period of study from January 1^st, 2020 to October 31^st, 2020.
• For renewals only, grants may be awarded for a period of study from November 1^st, 2019 to October 31^st 2020.

How to Apply: 

• Click here to access the registration form
• Before applying, please read carefully the Call for Procedure

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details

The Widespread Impact of Domestic Violence

Cesar Chelala

María Salguero knows how to leverage her background as a geophysical engineer on behalf of women. Since 2016, she has been tracking cases of femicide (also known as feminicide) all over Mexico. Femicide is the deliberate killing of a woman or girl because of their gender.

Every year, there are tens of thousands of missing women, men and children in Mexico, most of whom are believed to have been tortured and killed. According to government figures, there were more than 38,000 ‘desaparecidos’ in 2018. Salguero has been building a database with information about women who have been killed because official figures tend to minimize the problem. The women killed are at the end of a tragic spectrum of abuse of women at the hands of men.

Intimate partner violence is the most common kind of aggression experienced by women worldwide, both in developing and in industrialized countries. A great number of women suffer physical violence and a significant proportion among them are also victims of psychological violence. However, many women do not report the abuse they suffer because of cultural norms and fear of retribution.

Economic cost

Violence against women has a high economic cost for society. According to the United Nations, the cost of domestic abuse in the U.S. exceeds $5.8 billion per year: $4.1 billion for direct medical and health care services and nearly $1.8 billion for productivity losses. This kind of violence results in almost two million injuries and nearly 1,300 annual deaths. These costs are considered an underestimate since they don’t include those figures associated with the criminal justice system.

In addition, victims of domestic violence lose nearly 8 million days of paid work –this is equivalent to more than 32,000 full-time jobs- and almost 5.6 million days of household productivity annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S.

Extent of this phenomenon

The extent of this problem is equally serious in most countries around the world. According to recent research carried out by James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University and Ph.D. student Emma Friedel, after almost four decades of decline, homicide among romantic partners is now on the rise. While in 2014 1,875 people were killed by an intimate partner, there were 2,237 such deaths in 2017, of which the majority of the victims were female.

According to their research, four women a day are killed by domestic violence in the United States. They also found that since 2010, gun-related murders by intimate partners have increased by 26 percent, particularly since 2014. However, those kinds of murders involving other weapons such as knives, have continued to decline.

In Russia, for example, more than 14,000 women are killed every year in acts of domestic violence. And in China, according to a national survey, one-third of the country’s 270 million households cope with domestic violence.

Domestic violence is also rife in most African countries. According to a United Nations report, domestic violence in Zimbabwe accounts for more than six in ten murder cases in court. In Kenya and Uganda, 42% and 41% respectively of women surveyed reported having been beaten by their husbands.

Domestic violence is widespread in Arab countries as well. Studies carried out in the Arab world show that 70 percent of violence occurs in big cities, and that in almost 80 percent of cases those responsible are the heads of families, such as fathers or elder brothers. Both fathers and elder brothers, in most cases, assert their right to punish their wives, children and other members of the family in any way they see appropriate.

Physical and mental effects

Female victims of violence suffer a wide variety of health problems such as organ and bone damage, miscarriage, exacerbation of chronic illness, gynecological problems and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS,. Often, they also suffer long-lasting psychological problems including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleep and eating disorders, emotional distress, and suicide. Often, abusers prohibit their victims, mostly women, from pursuing career opportunities and other education and personal empowerment activities.

Organizations such as Sanctuary for Families in New York City are training gender violence survivors to find living wage jobs in the competitive New York City market. Over the past five years, for example, the organization Sanctuary for Families has trained over 560 survivors of gender violence. 88 percent of them have graduated and secured a living wage job. To better protect women, efforts like this should be replicated throughout the country.

Effect on children and the family

Worldwide, the percentage of women who are battered during their pregnancy is 25% to 45%. Domestic violence by a partner has been associated with higher rates of infant and child mortality and morbidity.

Because children often are in the middle of such disputes, they are also affected by domestic violence. A government survey found that 27 percent of those surveyed said that their children had also been victims of violence, particularly of a psychological nature. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC,) there is a 45 to 60 percent chance of co-occurring child abuse in homes where violence between partners occurs.

Children who grow up in families where there is domestic violence are prone to a wide range of behavioral and emotional disturbances. One of three abused children becomes an adult abuser or victim. Often, the psychological scars on children who have seen their mothers beaten last for several years. Among those effects are excessive worry or sadness, guilt, frequent lying, shame, and fear of harm or abandonment.

Moving forward

Because of the extent of this phenomenon, global momentum for more effective action is building. However, at the global level, the response is still inadequate. In the U.S., for example, there are more animal shelters than shelters for battered women. Ending global violence against women requires passing and systematically enforcing appropriate legislation for the protection of women. It also demands that we assess the real magnitude of the problem and educate our societies on the value and rights of women and girls. Actively promoting gender equality may be the best prevention against future violence.

ISIS Feeds Off the Chaos of War

Patrick Cockburn

Western governments have been swift to pledge action to strike at Isis, as it becomes clear that the organisation was behind the suicide bombings that killed 253 people in Sri Lanka.

A video released by Isis after the attacks shows Zahran Hashim, an Islamic preacher and alleged leader of the bombers, pledging allegiance together with six other men – also thought to be bombers – to the self-declared caliph and leader of Isis, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Western leaders, as is usual, are proposing easy or unattainable action that will do little to damage Isis capabilities – such as trying to limit its access to social media – while steering clear of potentially more effective but difficult to implement policies to eradicate Isis that might be contrary to their national interests.

The best way to weaken Isis to the point where it can no longer orchestrate or carry out mass slaughter, like that in Sri Lanka last Sunday, is to bring an end to the wars in the Middle East and North Africa which over the last forty years have produced al-Qaeda and its clones, of which Isis is the most famous and most dangerous.

Governments deny that they are in any way responsible for Isis staying in business and point to the western-backed offensives against it which led to the last piece of the Islamic State being over-run on 23 March.

As a territorial entity Isis has been eliminated, but that does not mean that it cannot carry out guerrilla and terrorist attacks, as has happened in the last few months in Iraq and Syria. These are little reported because they take place in the vast deserts on the Iraq-Syrian border or they target regimes we do not like, such as the Syrian government in Damascus.

Isis was born out of war. In 2001, at the time of 9/11, al-Qaeda – out of which Isis was to emerge – consisted of a network of fanatics and a few hundred fighters in camps in Afghanistan. They were so few that they had to hire local Afghan tribesmen to fill out their numbers in propaganda videos.

It was the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 that turned the al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi into a powerful military movement. When forced out of its strongholds by a reinforced US presence and weakened by opposition from within the Sunni Arab community in 2007, al-Qaeda in Iraq retreated to its hideouts, waiting for better times.

These were not long in coming with the advent of the Syrian civil war in 2011 which the movement had the resources in men and weapons, to turn to their advantage. I remember Iraqi leaders in Baghdad telling me in 2012/13 that unless the war in Syria was quickly brought to an end, it would reignite the insurgency in Iraq.

They were soon proved right. Isis, as it was now called, astonished the world by emerging from its fastnesses to capture Mosul in 2014 and sweep through western Iraq and eastern Syria.

Western powers certainly wanted to defeat Isis but also did not want to do anything that would enable rivals and opponents – Russia, Iran and Bashar al-Assad – to win a clear victory in the Syrian war. They demanded that Assad go long after it was obvious that he was going to win after receiving Russian military support in 2015.

Stirring the pot in Syria in order to thwart Russia, Iran and Assad was much in the interests of Isis which could exploit the fact that opposition to it was fragmented.

Opportunities exist for Isis wherever government authority is weak or non-existent and it can put down roots. When defeat looms in eastern Syria this year, Isis moved thousands of surviving fighters next door into western Iraq. In Mosul and Raqqa, once the de facto Isis capitals in Iraq and Syria, assassinations and suicide bombings have started again. Kurdish-led forces are regularly ambushed. In Syrian government held territory near Palmyra, a series of Isis attacks in April killed 36 and captured ten pro-Assad soldiers.

In Iraq, Isis cells are reactivating in Sunni areas that surround Baghdad which, in the not-so-distant past, were the staging posts for the prolonged and devastating suicide bombing campaign that killed thousands.

It is probably only a matter of time until Isis succeeds in staging a Sri Lanka type multiple bombing once again in the Iraqi capital. The last big bomb in Baghdad was on 3 July 2016, when a refrigerator truck packed with explosives blew up killing 340 civilians and injuring hundreds more. This should be a moment when the US could do all it can to resist the coming onslaught. Instead Washington is giving priority to pressuring the Iraqi government to impose US sanctions on Iran – something that is bound to divide Iraqis and aid Isis.

There is a similar pattern across the wider Middle East and North Africa where no less than seven wars, large and small, are being fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and north east Nigeria. These flare up or die down on occasion but they never come to an end.

The reason for these wars – the true breeding ground for Isis and its kin – is that foreign powers have plugged into local civil wars and want to see their proxy either to come out on top or, at worst, avoid defeat. Libya is a good example of this: would be leader of Libya General Khalifa Haftar, backed by Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, France and Russia are fighting a government in Tripoli supported by Qatar, Turkey, Italy, Tunisia and Algeria.

Such divisions and rivalries are repeated in conflict after conflict and mean that Isis will always be able to lodge itself somewhere in the chaos.

At the same time, one needs to keep a sense of proportion about Isis’s capabilities: the atrocities it carries out in Colombo, Baghdad, Paris, Manchester, Westminster and elsewhere are geared to dominate the news agenda, provoke fear and project strength. But none of these things win wars and the defeat of the caliphate earlier this year was real and irreversible.

This does not mean that Isis will not try to resurrect itself as a guerrilla movement relying heavily on terrorist attacks on soft targets. It is, at bottom, a military machine led by experienced military men who adapt their strategy and tactics according to circumstances. Talk in the west about cutting Isis off from the social media as if that would be a mortal blow misses the point.

Social media may be a powerful tool for Isis but it would survive without it. Savage cult-like movements similar to Isis such as the Nazis in Germany and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia existed long before the internet and were able to spread their toxic message without use of it..

The only effective way to bring an end to Isis is to end the wars that produced it. A large part of the Middle East and North Africa have become a zone of conflict where international and regional rivalries are fought out through local proxies. So long as that goes on Isis will continue to exist.

Students’ suicide – social problems

Sheshu Babu

Summer is not only ‘cruelest’ season with rising heat and water connected problems to people but also it is a ‘ testing’ time for many young students who dream of bright future and decent life. This is also a peak season for suicide- related incidents for secondary and higher secondary as well as competitive exam writing youth. Whenever results are declared, one may find failures or average performers committing suicides due to depression and inability to sustain reality of failure in the exams.

Rise in numbers

According to the American College Health Association (ACHA), the suicide rate among young adults ages 15 – 24 has tripled since 1950s and suicide is the second most common cause of death among college students.( College and Teen Suicide Statistics, by Jackie Burrell, updated November 03, 2018, verywellmind.com) . As stress is a major factor, many lack coping skills and find ways to come out of trauma. Warning signs include academic problems, depression, mood swings,withdrawal, feeling of hopelessness,disregard for personal appearance, increased substance use, increased risk-taking and/or an obsession with death.

India has one of the world’s highest suicide rates for youth aged 15 to 29 according to 2012 Lancet report. (Every Hour one student commits suicide in India, Devanik Saha, updated May 08, 2017, hindustantimes.com) According to data available from National Crimes Records Bureau(NCRB) ,2015, every hour, one student commits suicide.

Flaws in the system

Student life is one of the most vulnerable phase in the life of human being. Adolescent characteristics like personal relations, swings in moods, desires and fears of future and aspirations or goals make youth react quickly to incidents which they are not prepared to face. Failures in Board Exams, competitive entrance exams, job related exams adversely affect the mental health and drive many to attempt suicide.

One of the major cause is the system of present education which gives undue weight to marks, rankings, widening differences of good and bad schools and colleges and lack of quality education to all. The rich elite pay heavily for getting their children educated in reputed institutions while poor are forced to study in ‘ government’ institutions where the basic infrastructure is woefully lacking. The teachers in elite institutions are well- equipped with knowledge and are paid for their labor while ordinary school and college teachers are both underpaid and under – equipped in training students. Thus, when the students face competitive exams at the All India Level, elite and rich students fare better than poor rural students.

Capitalist education

Knowledge has become ‘capital’ and teachers with higher educational achievements are recruited by corporate institutes who pay them more than most government teachers. That is why, students from corporate college like Narayana, Sri Chaitanya in Andhra and Telengana, Academies at Kota, FIITJEE and others in west and north India have good chance of cracking JEE Mains and Advanced rather than those who study in ordinary rural schools and colleges. These rustic students are denied good quality education. Hence, their desperation is more and due to chances of failures, they are more prone towards committing suicides. Opportunity for education is more for the rich.

Inclusive education

As long as private educational institutions exist, only some students get chance of good learning skills and face competition with skill and tact. Those who cannot afford money to spend for education will have to struggle to compete. Government should take complete responsibility to educate every child till the completion of post- graduate studies. All the students must be given equal importance and trained well- learned teachers should be appointed in all levels of schools and college institutes. Inclusive education without any sort of discrimination must be implemented and vacancies should be filled. A student should be given the freedom to choose any career of his/ her . Evaluation must be made on the interest of student to learn and marks or ranks should not be the basis of entering an institution. Constant mental support by parents and teachers, instilling confidence, emphasizing the fact that there are number of alternatives to choose from and driving depression and hopelessness from the student will immense help to avoid the thought of committing suicide.

A healthy country thrives only when its young population is healthy and educated in every respect. Present commercialisation of education is dividing and destroying youth power. Urgent steps are needed to curb the growing instances of committing suicides in the event of failures.

Want to curb violent attacks? Curb civilisationalism

James M. Dorsey

Decades of Saudi global funding of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism is perceived to have created breeding grounds for radicalism in Muslim communities even if it was largely not directly responsible for the rise of jihadism.

The same is true for civilisationalism of which jihadism is just one expression as are intolerant, supremacist expressions of Evangelism, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Civilisationalism, wittingly or unwittingly, plays with the fire of processes of radicalization that may or may not lead to political violence, a fixture of human history.

Given that societies’ moral and ethical backbone invariably is rooted in values promoted by religion, religion often provides a convenient civilizationalist framework for the justification of violence. Religion, however, is seldom, if ever, the driver.

Recent attacks on mosques in New Zealand, churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka, synagogues in the United States and numerous other incidents across the globe demonstrate that civilizationalist ideologies that promote supremacy and exclusivism and dehumanize the other resonate with the most vulnerable groups in society.

Perpetrators of violence, irrespective of social background or economic class, tend to be people who are on the lookout. More often than not they are susceptible to charismatic figures, struggle to deal with personal problems or seek to fill a void in their lives.

They can be loners or products of a group that increasingly isolates them from society and/or convinces them of an imaginary threat posed by one segment of society.

What acts of political violence, recent and longer ago, demonstrate is that the fire civilisationalists play with more often than not erupts at home rather than on the other side of the globe.

The fire fuels the politics of fear on which civilisationalists thrive, distorts inter-communal relations, hijacks public debate, and disrupts development of inclusive policies that would significantly reduce the risk of violence.

A recent study of Saudi foreign fighters, the second largest contingent to join the Islamic State in Syria, showed that civilisationalism was their main driver. Products of an education system that long promoted a Sunni Muslim ultra-conservative brand of Islam that was exclusivist and supremacist, particularly towards Shiites, many of them were driven by sectarian concerns.

Those concerns stemmed from the decision of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a member of a sect deemed heretical by ultra-conservatives to project his brutal suppression of anti-government protests as a struggle against Sunni militants and the support he enjoyed from predominantly Shiite Iran and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia.

Anthropologist Scott Atran and journalist Jason Burke note that the phenomenon of foreign fighters joining struggles far from home does not contradict the fact that most recent and less recent acts of political violence were carried out either by homegrown loners or militants.

Some were instigated by recruiters who were nonetheless dependent on locals susceptible to their civilizationalist ideology.

Civilisationalism’s witting or unwitting appeal to vulnerable individuals is mirrored in the perpetrators of non-political incidents such as mass shootings who often are troubled males groping with personal problems and/or demons.

The fact that civilizational and political violence draw from the same pool that produces troubled mass shooters calls into question efforts to prevent incidents that almost exclusively focus either on civilizationalist notions that marginalize groups through stereotyping and other techniques, or criminalization and security measures.

What the communality of the pool highlights is that violence, political or not, is as much a security and law enforcement issue as it is one of public health and social service. It calls for mechanisms that provide early warnings, stop individuals from going off the deep end, and offer them the assistance they need to deal with their personal problems, grievances and voids.

Two separate incidents in October 2014 prove the point.

On first glance, Jaylen Fryberg, a popular freshman, who opened fire on classmates during lunch at a high school near Seattle, appeared to be a happy student. He was a well-liked athlete who shortly before he went on his shooting spree had been named his school’s freshman homecoming prince.

Mr. Fryberg, who shot himself during the incident, no longer is able to explain what prompted him to shoot fellow students and put an end to his own life. But the subsequent police investigation suggested that he was angry at being rebuffed by a girl that chose his cousin rather than him.

By contrast, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a 32-year old convert to Islam, who killed a guard at Ottawa’s National Monument and then stormed the Canadian parliament, had all the trappings of a troubled down-and-out individual.

Canadian media reported that Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau had a history of mental illness and a criminal record that included drug possession, theft, and issuing threats. He was addicted to crack cocaine and spent the last weeks of his life in a homeless shelter.

The Globe and Mail quoted a friend of his, Dave Bathurst, as being told by Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau that the devil was after him. “I think he must have been mentally ill,” Mr. Bathurst said.

The cases of Messrs. Fryberg and Zehaf-Bibeau raise the question of what the difference is between a school shooting and a politically motivated terrorist attack in terms of how societies can pre-empt violence.

The cases suggest that community engagement as well as social psychological and psychiatric services may be as important as security and law enforcement. Both Mr. Fryberg and Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau had issued cries for help in their own ways.

Writing on Twitter, Mr. Fryberg warned the woman who had rejected him that “your gonna piss me off… And then some (expletive) gonna go down and I don’t think you’ll like it.” Several days later, he tweeted “It breaks me… It actually does… I know it seems like I’m sweating it off… But I’m not… And I never will be able to.”

Mr. Bathurst, like Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau, a convert to Islam, was perhaps the one person Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau appeared to confide in. He described how he felt being persecuted by the devil.

Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau’s sense of alienation was deepened when the mosque that he and Mr. Bathurst attended asked him to no longer come to prayer because of his erratic behaviour.

Messrs. Fryberg and Zehaf-Bibeau’s communalities point, on the one hand, to a need for policies and tools that allow society to step in before individuals like them resort to violence.

On the other hand, they highlight the threat posed by civilizationalist ideology, irrespective of its religious, national or civilizational packaging.

Both cases, together with the attacks in New Zealand, Sri Lanka and the United States suggest that the rise of civilisationalists, be it to the highest office in the land or as increasingly acceptable social and political groups, raise the spectre of a world in which violence becomes the new normal.

Sri Lanka – Candidate for a New NATO Base?

Peter Koenig

Sri Lanka, Easter Sunday, 21 April 2019: More than half a dozen bomb blasts shook the country killing from 250 to more than 350 people. Depending on who counts, the death toll varies. The devastation took place in in several catholic churches and luxury hotels. Other explosions, including from – what they say – are suicide bombers, have since killed another several dozens of people. Many are children, women – christen worshippers. Why the luxury hotels? Western (Christian) tourists?

Yesterday, another explosion ripped through a suspicious building, killing 18, including children and women. Again, they, the ‘authorities’, say suicide bombers, who didn’t want their ‘cache’ to be discovered. Conveniently they are all dead – the “suicide bombers”. Nobody can ask them any questions.

There was a lot of confusion, and still is, all through Sri Lanka. Nobody claimed credit for the massacres. There were rumors that Sri Lanka’s President received warnings ahead of the attacks from foreign intelligence, but ignored them. The President denies these allegations. And the explosions continue.

Finally, the verdict is in. The culprits are an Islamic terrorist group, associated with ISIS. What else is new.

Sri Lanka’s population is composed of about 70% Buddhists, 13% Hindus, almost 10% Muslims, mainly Sunni, the Salafi version, and about 7% Christians. The New York times reports that the accused mastermind of the terror attacks was strongly influenced by Wahhabism, the same extreme hardliners that control most of Saudi Arabia.

Hatred between religions seems on the rise. In New Zealand a few weeks ago a white supremacist assaulted a mosque, killing 50. This past weekend, a shooting in a Synagogue near San Diego, California, killed a woman. The murderer said he was inspired by the New Zealand massacre. Are these spontaneous, interreligious mini-wars part of a foreign directed ‘divide to conquer’ effort, a strategy that has been used by empires for centuries, but seems to be alive and well with the current Washington based empire?

MintPress News reports that “Sri Lanka Easter attacks are the handiwork of terrorists returning from fighting in Syria, practicing the Saudi-backed Wahhabi Salafist ideology,” adding, “though not confirmed yet, they, [the attacks], are in keeping with the modus operandi of Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi terrorism worldwide. [The] Saudi sponsorship of Salafi Wahhabi dogma [is found] across the globe. From Boko Haram to ISIS, and from the Taliban to Al Qaeda, a common ideological thread runs through these terror groups. This is the Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi Salafi ideology whose South Asian counterpart is Deobandi.  For abbreviation purposes, it is becoming increasingly common to term this interconnected ideology as WSD (Wahhabi Salafi Deobandi).”

May we expect a wave of Saudi-sponsored WSD terrorism in the east too? – Is the horror Saudi government protected by the US, because it does its bidding? And this bidding leads to making gradually Islam extremism the justification for NATO bases around the globe? – Perhaps in Sri Lanka, tomorrow? So far Sri Lanka is clean from NATO. Sri Lanka has not even an association agreement with NATO.

Just look at the world-geostrategic location of Sri Lanka, linking the Arabian Sea with the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka may also have a direct, open-sea connection with the small British island of Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Archipelago, north-east of Madagascar. Diego Garcia hosts the US’s largest Navy base outside the American Continent. Many of the drone killings in Yemen, Syria and other places in the Middle East originate from Diego Garcia. The “civil war” in Syria was (and still is) largely directed from Diego Garcia, as well as from Djibouti.

Wouldn’t it be logical for NATO to set up base in Sri Lanka to control South East Asia? Saudi guided WSD attacks would create the necessary chaos justifying all the AngloZionist secret services – plus NATO – to descend on Colombo, to create further protests and anarchy – a never-ending internal strife, giving the war industry a new never-ending flow of profit, hence, further justifying the never-ending war on terror – and, thereby, moving yet an inch closer to Full Spectrum Dominance over Mother Earth and her hapless spectators, what western humanity has become – a bunch of complacent consumers, drenched in turbo-capitalist market ideology, too comfortable to go on the barricades.

The key and engine to all of this is NATO, whose modus operandi is killing for a living, for dominance and for profit. If there is ever to be Peace – and that’s what the vast majority of the inhabitants of this globe wants – I’m not exaggerating pretending that 99.99% of world population wants to live in peace – then NATO must go, NATO must be dismantled.

So, Europe which has the largest membership in NATO (27 out of 29 nations) has to put the money where her mouth is: Europe calls for Peace, Europe claims to be Peace-loving – really? Then put your money into creating Peace – pulling out of NATO, refusing at once to fund this killing machine under the pretext of “protecting Europe”. Protecting Europe from what? From whom? – Not from Russia – despite all the highly propagandized and highly corporate-funded Russiagate / Russia phobia, exacerbated by a new artificially implanted fear – China. These countries have no history of expansion, like the west.

They only seek friendly relations of trade, of transport, cultural and research interconnectivity within the supercontinent, Eurasia, and ultimately, they promote a multi-polar world. The best example is the Chinese President Xi’s ingenuity – the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that just finished its highly successful forum in Beijing – where more than 120 nations signed memoranda of understanding (MOU) and cooperation agreements with China for tens of billions of dollars equivalent. – What a way of cooperating, instead of sowing western-style belligerence.

Europe and the rest of the world is not in danger, except in danger of itself for being a vassal of the US and for hosting 30-plus NATO bases which would be first in the line of fire, if the east is forced to defend itself from that permanent Pentagon-NATO driven aggression.

Europe withhold your funding for NATO, get out of NATO, dismantle NATO, – NOW, before NATO sets up yet another base in Asia, before NATO spreads more death around the globe.

General Motors reports $2.1 billion first-quarter profits as job cuts take their toll

Shannon Jones

General Motors reported $2.1 billion in first-quarter 2019 net profits, higher than analysts’ expectations, amid continuing signs of a slowdown in auto sales. The first quarter results were about double the $1.1 billion reported for the same period one year ago.

The company says that it is on target to save between $2 billion to $2.5 billion in 2019 due to its cost-cutting measures, including the closure of five auto plants in North America and the elimination of some 14,000 salaried and production jobs. The cuts are taking a widening toll as yet another company dependent on GM business, Ohio-based Falcon Transport, closed its doors last weekend.

GM’s reported profits came despite a seven percent decline in new vehicle sales in the US in the first quarter and continued steep sales declines in the critical Chinese market, where GM sales fell 17 percent. The company overcame these setbacks with sales of its highly profitable light trucks and SUVs.

The company’s earnings also received a boost from the upward valuation of its holdings in ride hailing company Lyft and French automaker Peugeot. GM has invested heavily in the still speculative autonomous vehicle sector. Last year, its GM Cruise, a self-driving car unit, spent $728 million and expects to invest $1 billion in 2019.

Reflecting the relentless pressure of the financial markets for ever-greater rates of return, GM’s stock declined after its quarterly profit report.

Announcing the earnings report, GM CEO Mary Barra told investors that “Looking at ways to cut costs is a top priority. We have assigned vice presidents to do it. We are attacking it with quite a bit of energy.”

Last November, the company announced the closure of five plants including the Oshawa, Ontario assembly plant, assembly plants in Lordstown, Ohio and Detroit-Hamtramck, Michigan and two transmission plants, one outside Detroit and other near Baltimore, Maryland. Mass layoffs of salaried employees were carried out in February. Production ended in early March in Lordstown, when 1,600 workers were laid off, with only a skeleton maintenance staff remaining. The Detroit-Hamtramck plant is reduced to a crew of 700, with production slated to end there in January 2020, just after the 2019 national contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers union.

As part of its cost cutting, GM is also focusing on ways to squeeze suppliers, ensuring further attacks on auto parts workers, already one of the most exploited sectors of the US workforce.

Barra has been rewarded for her efforts; she is one of 20 highest paid US CEOs, raking in $21.87 million in 2018, about 281 times the pay of a typical GM worker.

The pressure of a continuing global sales slump and changing technologies ensures that GM and the other US automakers will insist on further concessions in the 2019 contract negotiations set to begin this summer with the UAW. Both Ford and Fiat Chrysler have carried out layoffs in recent months. GM has already made it clear that it will use the announced layoffs and plant closings as a weapon to intimidate workers and beat back demands for the restoration of past concessions, including ending the abuse of temporary part-time workers and the two-tier wage structure.

The UAW has done nothing to oppose the layoffs and plant closures and has indicated that it will use the threat to jobs as an argument for further concessions. The UAW and the Unifor union in Canada have instead sought to stoke up hatred against workers in Mexico and China to divert anger over job cuts and prevent any linkup between American workers and their brothers overseas.

The UAW is widely hated for its collaboration with management and its efforts to divide workers by pitting so-called legacy workers against temporary part-time workers and second-tier workers. This hatred has only deepened after the exposure that FCA executives paid UAW officials more than a million in bribes to sign pro-company contracts in 2015 and earlier.

GM’s bumper profits are further fueling this anger as it is more and more obvious that they come directly at the expense of workers, their families and communities that are being devastated by plant closings. To add insult to injury, GM paid $0 in corporate income tax last year on $4.3 billion in profits. Since 2009 the automaker has extorted over $1 billion in tax breaks from Michigan and Ohio in the name of supposedly preserving jobs.

Some 1,300 workers at GM plants targeted for closure have already accepted forced transfers to other facilities. In many cases this involves moving hundreds of miles, the uprooting of families and the disruption of lives. Those not able to transfer, including temporary and contract workers, face the prospect of permanent layoff.

The closure of the Lordstown plant, which up until a few years ago employed as many as 5,000 workers, is already having a much broader impact throughout the economy. One casualty has been Ohio-based Falcon Transport. The trucking company employing 550 workers abruptly announced its closure Saturday night, sending a text message to employees stating, “We regret to inform you that Falcon Transport is not able to continue operations and will be shutting down effective today. Please stop any work you are doing for the company effective immediately...”

Many drivers were left stranded in locations all across the United States.

Falcon Transport had GM as one of its biggest customers and is apparently out of business due to the closing of the Lordstown plant. The company had been operating since 1901 and as recently as 2017 had employed 800 people. It was subsequently acquired by private equity firm Counterpoint Capital Partners, which evidently decided to cut its losses at the expense of workers.

On Monday, former Falcon Transport workers filed a class action suit noting that owners violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act that requires companies with 100 or more employees to provide 60 days’ notice before closing. They are asking for payment of wages equal to the sixty-day notice. One former Falcon Transport worker told local news station WKBN, “It is the most terrifying, horrible situation you could possibly ever be in. I was there for almost eight years. I think I should have an explanation. I should have been, at least, told.”

Already a number of supplier plants in the Lordstown area have shut down, including Comprehensive Logistics, with 180 workers, Magna’s Lordstown Seating Systems, with 120 workers and Ledec, with 73 workers.

Even before the final closure of the Lordstown plant, the unemployment rate in the surrounding Mahoning Valley was 6.0 percent, far higher than the statewide average of 4.7 percent, which is the seventh worst in the US.

An April 26 report in online news journal Pacific Standard details some of the social impact of the closure of the Lordstown plant. It notes that for every job lost due to a plant closing there are typically up to 10 jobs lost in the broader economy.

Terry Armstrong, the superintendent of Lordstown schools, said he expected to lose 75 students and 21 staff and tutors due to families leaving the area. He said he had hired a therapist to counsel children whose parents had been laid off.

In Austintown, 20 miles south of Lordstown, the local school superintendent said that they are preparing to lay off 10 percent of their staff, 40 teachers.

The GM plant closures have become a battleground as the 2020 presidential election cycle begins. Both President Trump and various Democratic Party presidential hopefuls have launched barbs at GM while demagogically claiming sympathy with laid-off workers. Their solution is completely reactionary, lining American workers up behind trade war measures against the foreign rivals of US capitalism, a program whose logic leads to world war while imposing endless pay cuts on US workers.

US threatens UK over Huawei involvement in 5G network

Robert Stevens

The United States has threatened to end electronic surveillance coordination with Britain after the government gave approval, in principle, for Chinese telecom giant Huawei to assist in building the UK’s next generation 5G data network.

Last week, Theresa May’s Conservative government agreed to allow Huawei to supply “noncore” infrastructure, in the face of US calls for a boycott of Huawei’s products. The US is hostile to any of its allies using products from Huawei, warning that this threatens NATO security and allows China critical economic dominance.

The decision was immediately condemned by Rob Joyce, a senior cyber security adviser to the US National Security Agency and a former adviser to US President Donald Trump, who said, “We are not going to give them [China] the loaded gun.”

He added of the UK’s decision, “We have got to understand all the details of that and decide what that means,” warning, “What we will be insistent on is UK decisions can’t put our information at risk, but the good news is that the UK already understands that.”

The political tension between the US and China meant that the Huawei issue had to be discussed and agreed at the UK National Security Council (NSC) last week. So secret are the NSC’s deliberations that the exact make up of its personnel is not known. It does include the prime minister and brings together cabinet ministers and senior officials involved in foreign and defence policy, as well as representatives from the intelligence agencies and the armed forces.

According to sources, the NSC was spilt down the middle over the decision to allow Huawei access, with the Guardian reporting that the “decision at Tuesday’s NSC meeting was forced through, according to one source, on the casting vote of the prime minister with a formal announcement expected later in the spring once further technical safeguards had been prepared.”

The decision was expected to remain a secret until then. But political tensions in Britain, centred on exiting the European Union (EU) and post-Brexit trade strategies amid developing trade war and mounting political instability globally, meant details of the meeting were leaked within hours to the pro-Brexit Daily Telegraph .

This was the first time that deliberations from the NSC had ever been leaked, prompting an escalation of the crisis of the already dysfunctional Tory government. The leak forced senior cabinet ministers known to be opposed to developing ties to China to issue denials that they leaked the decision. These were Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt and Trade Secretary Liam Fox. Some are considered possible candidates to replace May in the event of a leadership contest.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill immediately announced an inquiry to uncover the source of the leak. It was reported that this might involve cabinet members who were present at the NSC meeting being asked to hand over their phones for examination and allowing access to their email records.

On Monday, the US stepped up its condemnation of the UK with Robert Strayer, a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department, stating that Huawei “was not a trusted vendor” and any use of its technology in 5G networks was a risk. He warned that if an ally cooperated with Huawei, the US would “have to reassess the ability for us to share information and be interconnected.”

With this, the Trump administration was making a direct threat to shut Britain out of the “Five Eyes” electronic surveillance system it leads. As well as the UK, the US is demanding that the other members, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, also exclude Huawei.

After Washington’s arm twisting, Australia and New Zealand have already blocked telecoms companies from using Huawei equipment in its 5G networks, and Canada is reviewing its relationship with the company.

These are issues of vital importance for British imperialism, following the 2016 referendum decision to leave the EU.

Writing in the Financial Times, Charles Parton, an associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute think-tank and an adviser to Parliament’s select committee on foreign affairs, declared, “We might sleep more soundly at the decision over Huawei if we thought that our ‘Five Eyes’ allies would not cut co-operation, as the US has threatened. This alliance underpins the UK’s claims to be a global power. It is immensely important, not just for the intelligence exchanged, but for co-operation over developing methods of collecting future intelligence. The opposition of the three ministers most closely connected to the intelligence world suggests unease at the reaction of Five Eyes allies. Again, is this a risk worth taking for a Huawei system of dubious quality?”

Backing up Strayer was pro-US Tory MP Bob Seely, also a vociferous opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government in Moscow, who stated, “Robert Strayer’s remarks are common sense. Huawei cannot, by definition, be a trusted vendor. It is required by law to cooperate with Chinese secret services. It is close to, if not part of, the Chinese state.”

The Guardian noted that “sources close to Boris Johnson,” a leader of the Tories hard Brexit faction who is a favourite to succeed May, were “indicating the former foreign secretary could be willing to ‘look again’ at the Huawei approval if he were to become prime minister.”

Johnson is an outspoken supporter of the Trump administration and is demanding that the UK departs the EU in order to be free to sign free trade deals with the US and other powers globally.

However, for all the invocations of Britain stepping “out of Europe and into the world,” the Huawei fiasco makes clear that the US calls the shots. It will not countenance Britain taking actions seen as contrary to America’s geostrategic interests.

This is a major threat to the UK, which has sought deepening cooperation with China since it became a founder member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2015. That decision angered Washington, which saw the bank as a rival to the US-controlled World Bank in the Asia Pacific, but the Obama administration stopped short of threatening a break with the UK. No longer.

The NSC decision was followed a few days later by Chancellor Philip Hammond arriving in Beijing as an enthusiastic participant at the second Belt and Road Initiative forum hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Hammond was among 5,000 foreign delegates from more than 150 countries, including 37 heads of government or heads of state.

Hammond declared his support for a deepening of economic ties and hailed the “truly epic ambition” of the Belt and Road Initiative—a massive infrastructure scheme aimed at linking China throughout Eurasia via land and sea, enhancing China’s global position.

A Treasury statement cited Hammond’s speech in which he declared there were opportunities for British companies in the fields of “design, engineering financing, public-private partnerships and legal services.”

He continued, “The forthcoming Economic and Financial Dialogue in June will continue the golden era of relations between China and the UK. By deepening our cooperation on financial services, trade, and investment with international partners, we can ensure Britain’s global future.”

Hammond went as far as suggesting the UK could scale back its criticism of Chinese operations in the South China Sea. This was in sharp contrast to the US’s response to the conference. Not only did President Donald Trump not attend, but there was no senior American representative at the forum. Tensions between London and Washington will inevitably escalate as a result, especially as any retreat by the UK will hand in initiative to Germany, France and other EU powers in seeking relations with Beijing.

Mass protests intensify against Algerian regime

Will Morrow

The mass protest movement that forced the removal of Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika at the beginning of the month is continuing, with growing demands for the downfall of the regime and mounting expressions of opposition to the military.

Last Friday was the tenth successive week of protests since February 22. Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in the capital, Algiers, in Oran, Constantine, Bejaia and other cities and towns. For the second successive week, gendarmes put up roadblocks on all the major highway routes leading to the capital, turning away all traffic in an attempt to reduce the number of protesters in Algiers.

Nonetheless, AFP reported that the crowds of protesters filling the streets of the capital stretched for kilometres. The protesters chanted “The system must go,” and “You have pillaged the country, thieves!” News outlets reported a marked increase in slogans directed against the military and General Ahmed Gaid Salah, including, “The people do not want Gaid Salah or Bouteflika.” The Washington Postreported that demonstrators chanted, “The army isn’t the solution,” and called for Salah to “get out.”

A protest last month in Bejaia

The military, which is the backbone of the government, intervened to remove Bouteflika at the end of March in order to preserve the regime while seeking, unsuccessfully, to put an end to the protests. Bouteflika’s long-time ally and speaker of the legislative body, Abdelaker Bensalah, has been installed as interim president until elections are called on July 4.

Protesters have rejected this transition as a fraud aimed at removing only a figurehead while keeping the existing regime in power. They have denounced the government of Bensalah and Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui as a “government of shame.”

“We want this system to leave and all the thieves to be judged,” Zohra, a 55-year-old teacher who travelled 350 kilometres to attend the Algiers demonstration with her 25-year-old son, told AFP.

Over the past two weeks, the regime has arrested a series of close Bouteflika allies in the security forces, as the military has consolidated its direct control over the state apparatus. On Monday, Abdelghani Hamel, the former head of the country’s police forces, faced trial on corruption charges.

At the same time, under the banner of an “anti-corruption” campaign aimed at providing a semblance of democratic reform, scores are being settled between different factions of the ruling elite. Five billionaires were arrested in the past week and are facing corruption charges, including four brothers close to Bouteflika’s inner circle: Reda, Abdelkader, Karim and Tarek Kouninef.

Isaad Rebrab, the country’s richest individual and founder and chairman of Cevital, Algeria’s largest private company, was arrested on Monday.

The crisis facing the government, confronted with mass opposition, was expressed in the army’s announcement, reported by Tout sur l’Algérie (TSA), that government ministers will not hold their first planned meeting on May 2. While the meeting was organized to provide a semblance of credibility to the government, with ministers to give oral answers to pre-written questions by the military, the event was called off for fear it would only trigger protests. TSA reported that the “announcement of such an event” alone was widely denounced on social media.

The ongoing protests in the working class and among young people reflect the deep opposition to conditions of social inequality and poverty. The millions who forced the removal of Bouteflika were not seeking a new fig-leaf government controlled by the military and representing the country’s billionaires and their imperialist backers, but a revolution to improve their conditions of life.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

While a tiny layer of multi-millionaires and billionaires in the regime has enriched itself over decades, official youth unemployment is close to 30 percent in a country where approximately two-thirds of the population is under 30.

The explosive social anger was expressed in clashes in the eastern city of Tebessa on Sunday. Private security guards for the private bottled mineral water company Youkous fired birdshot at local villagers protesting outside the factory to oppose the lack of water for the town.

“In the morning, 20 of us went to [the factory] to find a solution for the lack of water that has affected our town for a long time and has gotten worse since the building of this factory,” one villager told El Watan. “Around 11, we were attacked by individuals with batons, swords and other arms…”

When the protesters fought back, “armed men began to shoot from the roof.” Thirteen people were shot, including one youth. Later that day the factory was reportedly burned down.

A France Info report on April 4 indicates the scale of the crisis in the public health care system. Doctor Mohamed Taileb told the news outlet: “We are lacking syringes. The gloves are torn.” He said that the facial masks necessary for treating patients with tuberculosis were no longer available. “This is not normal,” he added. “I risk my safety… Many materials to operate are missing. Glasses, oxygen masks.”

The growing struggles of the Algerian workers and youth are part of an international upsurge of struggles by the working class, including in Sudan, where protests are continuing to escalate against the military government, and in Morocco, where strikes are spreading.

The official opposition parties—stretching from that of the former prime minister Ali Benflis to the pseudo-left Socialist Workers Party (PST), which is allied with France’s New Anti-capitalist Party, and Louisa Hanoune’s Workers Party—are working to block a political struggle against the military dictatorship. They are instead seeking to channel workers and youth behind appeals for the regime to carry out democratic reforms.

Benflis issued a statement on Saturday warning the military that the holding of its sham elections on July 4 would be politically dangerous under conditions where none of the parties has any popular credibility. He wrote: “To stick stubbornly to holding presidential elections … can only expose the country to an electoral parody without candidates and without voters, and as a result the president will lose all legitimacy.”

Louisa Hanoune of the Workers Party (PT) is repeating the main demand of the PT and PST for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, aiming to provide a pseudo-democratic fig leaf for the continued rule of a military dictatorship. Hanoune warned that the “management of this phase of transition proceeds through a national sovereign constituent assembly, an ideal solution which corresponds to the wishes of the people desiring change…”

Such statements are aimed only at sowing illusions in the working class and blinding it to the dangers it confronts, while blocking a determined revolutionary offensive. While opposition is growing to the military government, which waged a brutal civil war in the 1990s that killed over 200,000 people, the regime is preparing a violent crackdown.

The social interests of the working class and the fight for a democratic government can be achieved only through the fight by the working class—in opposition to all of the pro-capitalist parties—to take political power into its own hands, expropriate the billions of dollars plundered by the corporate and financial elite, and establish a workers’ government as part of the fight for socialism internationally.