Right-wing extremist network behind fascist synagogue attack in Germany

Ulrich Rippert

The day after the right-wing terrorist attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany this week was dominated by hypocritical statements of shock and sympathy from government circles.

Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democrats, CDU) told the IG Metall trade union congress in Nürnberg that she was “shocked” and “affected” by the attack. Merkel added that she is mourning with the families and friends of those murdered. In confronting hate and anti-Semitism, the state must make full use of all its resourcesm the Chancellor stated. “There is no tolerance for it.”

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democrats, SPD), declared it a “day of shame and disgrace” as he laid a wreath at the site of the attack that killed two people. Anyone displaying even a slight degree of acceptance of right-wing extremism bears a share of the guilt with the perpetrator, he said.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, of all people, even repeated the words of a party colleague, describing some Alternative for Germany (AfD) officials as “ideological inciters” of the terrorist attack.

Similar statements were mouthed in June after Kassel District President Walter Lübcke (CDU) was murdered in cold blood by a fascist gunman. At the time, decisive action against the far-right was also announced, but what followed was the exact opposite. While the wide-ranging network of right-wing extremist terrorists in the police, army and intelligence agencies was left untouched, it was those who oppose them who were targeted for persecution.

The reality is that the “ideological inciters” of the right-wing terrorist attack hold top positions within the state and security apparatus, the intelligence agencies, the military and the federal government. They have not only embraced the AfD’s slogan of “foreigners out!” on refugee policy; Seehofer himself dismissed the rampage of fascist thugs targeting foreigners and Jewish institutions in Chemnitz in the summer of 2018, declaring that if he were not a government minister, he would have joined the right-wing demonstrations.

According to initial investigations, the fascist gunman in the Halle attack had close ties to a right-wing extremist network with intimate connections to the state apparatus. The initial claim that the attack was the work of a single gunman has been contradicted by a growing number of facts.

It is now clear that Stephane Balliet, a 27-year-old German citizen from Saxony-Anhalt, opened fire on the synagogue Wednesday, where over 50 people had gathered to celebrate Yom Kippur, intending to carry out a bloodbath.

He repeatedly sought to use explosives to secure entry to the building, and apparently planned to murder as many participants as possible. After failing to break through the door, he shot a passer-by and another man in a nearby kebab shop. Shortly afterwards, he injured two further people as he fled from the police. He was then arrested and handed over to the federal prosecutor’s office on Thursday.

Balliet wore military fatigues and was in possession of several high-powered firearms. Four kilograms of explosives were found in his car. He communicated with his supporters through a camera on his helmet. He livestreamed footage of the attack on the synagogue and kebab shop, and his killing of the passer-by, on the video platform Twitch.

A die-hard anti-Semite and neo-Nazi, Balliet began his video with a denial of the Holocaust, and continued, “The origin of all problems is the Jews.” Balliet referred to himself as part of an online SS group, declaring, “Nobody expects the internet SS.”

During the attack, Balliet played the music of right-wing extremist Alec Minassian, who carried out an attack in Toronto, Canada in April 2018 by driving his vehicle into pedestrians. He killed 10 people and injured an additional 16. Prior to the attack, Minassian served for two months in the Canadian Armed Forces, and completed his recruitment training a few months prior to the attack. His ideological mentor, in turn, was the mass murderer Elliot Rodger, who shot and killed six people in California in 2014 and injured 14 more.

Australian cyber conference “disinvites” US whistleblower and Assange supporter

Oscar Grenfell

In an act of politically-motivated censorship, the organisers of CyberCon, one of Australia’s largest cyber security conferences, “disinvited” US whistleblower Thomas Drake and Australian academic Dr Suelette Dreyfus just days before they were to deliver presentations at the event.

Drake and Dreyfus had been scheduled to speak at the Melbourne conference, which attracts several thousand participants each year, since November 2018. They were told last week that their talks were “incongruent” with the conference and had been summarily cancelled. Drake was informed of the decision only shortly before he was due to fly from the United States for the event.

There is no question that the cancellation was a political decision, likely involving government agencies. It was undoubtedly motivated by the principled support of Drake and Dreyfus for persecuted whistleblowers and publishers, and their own records of activism in defence of internet freedom.

Drake is a former employee of the US National Security Agency (NSA), who spoke-out in the mid-2000s against what he described as the organisation’s wasteful spending and its turn to procuring technologies aimed at mass communication intercepts.

Drake was charged with 10 felony counts, which the Justice Department was later compelled to drop in 2011. He refused to cooperate with an FBI investigation into other whistleblowers and has continued to publicly denounce mass surveillance and other attacks on democratic rights.

Dreyfus, an academic at the University of Melbourne, is a computer and informations expert who has advocated for decades to improve whistleblower protections.

She was an early collaborator of Julian Assange and is one of the few Australian academics who has consistently condemned the US, British and Australian persecution of the WikiLeaks founder for his role in the exposure of American war crimes and global diplomatic conspiracies.

Drake and Dreyfus have both stated they were told by the Australian Information Security Association, which organised the conference, that the cancellation of their talks was at the request of a “conference partner.”

Partner organisations include the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the country’s electronic eavesdropping agency, which collaborates closely with the NSA and other members of the “five eyes” spying network in mass surveillance operations.

Other government-funded bodies also participated in the event. The powerful Home Affairs ministry, which has been at the forefront of a broader campaign of online censorship, gave a closed-door briefing on its 2020 “cyber-security” strategy, which the media was barred from attending.

In comments to the Guardian, Drake condemned the censorship as “Orwellian.” “This is the first time ever I’ve been censored at a conference. How ironic it is here in Australia,” he said.

The former NSA employee explained: “If you are a whistleblower, you are persona non grata. I think there was significant pressure at the last minute at what appears to be a review of the entire agenda.”

Dreyfus placed the cancellation in the context of a broader assault on whistleblowers in Australia, telling the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC): “There's now a culture of fear about speaking up. Nothing highlights this quite so much as disinviting speakers who have been confirmed.”

Drake’s planned presentation was entitled “The Golden Age of Surveillance.” An abstract of the talk, posted on a website created to oppose the conference’s censorship, stated: “What does it mean for our society to increasingly live in a virtual matrix where more and more of our lives are under the persistence gaze of the digital panopticon? What does it say when our post 9/11 world has turned surveillance into a global growth industry feeding the demands for data about us of all kinds, no matter where you live?”

The abstract continued: “Mr. Drake has already lived that future and will share his experience from the frontlines of freedom on just how deeply society has backdoored and buried itself in the insatiable appetite to know virtually everything about anybody at any time driven by fear and safety.”

Mexico: 100,000 university workers strike as López Obrador’s vows deeper austerity

Andrea Lobo

About 100,000 university employees went on strike across Mexico Wednesday to protest the bankruptcy imposed by the federal government on nine state universities and to demand greater funds for public education.

At least 30 universities joined the strike, which was called by the National Confederation of University Workers (CONTU). Management at the bankrupt universities have informed workers that they will soon stop paying wages and benefits indefinitely since they have not received money for payrolls since August. Some universities could close before the end of the year.

In his daily morning press briefing on Wednesday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador denounced the strike as “blackmail” aimed at appropriating the “people’s sacred money.” He stated, “We are all obligated to act with austerity, and I can speak like that because I have the moral authority,” citing the cuts in the budget for the Presidency and for other top officials.

While promising a higher budget for universities in 2020, López Obrador sought to scapegoat striking educators for any future regressive policies. “We have to act with discipline,” he added, “because, if money is handed right and left, then it would turn into a deficit and we would have to raise taxes; create new taxes; impose fuel price hikes, like before; ask for loans, increase the debt, like before.”

López Obrador’s filthy tactic is of a piece with the so-called “education reform” implemented under his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and effectively continued under López Obrador’s Morena party. The legislation set up a system of teacher evaluations aimed at charging teachers with “underperformance” to scapegoat them for the social crisis in the country and to justify greater cuts in spending and privatizations.

Social anger against López Obrador’s education policies has escalated since the beginning of the year. In January and February, teachers in the southern states of Michoacán and Oaxaca struck and blocked key railway lines to protest the non-payment of benefits. In February, thousands of workers of the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM) struck to demand a major raise in spending and salaries, and they were soon joined by the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), and the Universities of Oaxaca, Coahuila and Chapingo.

All of these strikes were sold out by the trade unions despite coinciding with the wildcat strikes in Matamoros and strikes by tens of thousands of teachers across the United States and Latin America. The CONTU is doing the same, as demonstrated by its one-day “Hollywood strike” aimed at releasing tensions. At the same time, the leader of CONTU, Enrique Levet, is a proven class enemy of teachers and the working class. As a PRI legislator in Veracruz, Levet eagerly campaigned in favor of Peña Nieto’s education reform during 2012-13.

The bankruptcy of universities and the response by López Obrador exposes the anti-working class character of the Morena administration and the farce of its “austerity” for top officials. Two weeks after his July 1 election, López Obrador presented his plan of “republican austerity” to the incoming congressional Morena majority. The program was sold as a set of measures to eliminate privileges and posts of senior bureaucratic offices, and involved 222,600 layoffs. However, the vast majority of employees fired have been operational workers and technicians.

For instance, two-thirds of the 16,000 employees fired earlier this year from the ministry of environment (Semarnat) were rank-and-file workers. These mass layoffs led to a one-day wildcat strike in February at the Semarnat that spread nationwide.

López Obrador is not only continuing but is escalating the massive transfer of wealth to Mexico’s financial aristocracy and Wall Street under the Pact for Mexico—involving the education reform, oil privatization and massive social cuts—implemented by Peña Nieto. When oil prices fell, Peña Nieto used virtually the same language as López Obrador, declaring in September 2015, “The government is committed to budget austerity. Facing the current economic environment, the government of the Republic must tighten its belt.”

Now, Morena, which grew in popularity during the protests against the Pact for Mexico, has upheld the policies of the previous governments and vowed to pay the massive debt incurred. Under Morena rule, Mexico increased its debt payments to Wall Street and Mexican financiers by 21.7 percent in 2019, dedicating fully 13 percent of the federal budget to servicing the debt.

Furthermore, the Morena administration’s first major policy was the creation of what López Obrador touted as “the largest free trade zone in the country” on the northern border, cutting the value added taxes from 16 to 8 percent and the income taxes from 30 to 20 percent, depriving the federal government of 41 billion pesos or US$2.1 billion per year. Most of this money is going to boost the dividends and stock prices of the investors of the transnational corporations in the region.

India’s state of siege in Kashmir continues

Wasantha Rupasinghe

With the blessing of India’s Supreme Court and the staunch support of big business and virtually the entire opposition, the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government continues to subject Jammu and Kashmir to an unprecedented security lockdown and communications blackout.

Since August 5—for the last 69 days—the 13 million residents of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) region have been denied all cell phone and internet access. Tens of thousands of Indian army troops and paramilitaries remain deployed in cities, towns and villages across J&K to brutally suppress any anti-government actions, and to police curfews and restrictions on people’s movements whenever and wherever they are imposed. Security forces have detained thousands of people without charge, including boys as young as 9 years old, while steadfastly refusing to provide any accounting of the number of detained, their names, and current whereabouts.

This state of siege was implemented to enforce the BJP’s August 5 constitutional coup. Without warning, let alone any consultation with Kashmiris, the government stripped J&K of its special semi-autonomous constitutional status by presidential fiat, and then downgraded and bifurcated what had been India’s only Muslim-majority state. Henceforth, J&K is to be governed as two Union territories, effectively placing the region under permanent central government trusteeship.

Modi’s assault on J&K has multiple reactionary objectives. These include strengthening India’s hand against neighbouring Pakistan and China, and whipping up chauvinism and bellicose nationalism to energize the BJP’s Hindu supremacist activist base and intimidate and divide the working class under conditions of a deepening economic crisis and mounting social opposition.

Government officials claimed that “normalcy” would be quickly re-established in J&K. But long before the security lockdown entered its current tenth week, they stopped giving any clear indication of when cell phone and internet service will be restored or those detained without charge released. Modi’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, who personally supervised the initial phases of the stage of siege from Srinagar, J&K’s largest city, has cynically said that the lifting of the cell phone and internet restrictions “depends on” Pakistan ceasing to use these networks to send “signals” to “operatives.”

For decades, the Indian establishment and especially the BJP has presented the popular alienation from Indian rule in J&K, and the separatist insurgency that has convulsed the region since New Delhi brutally suppressed the protests that erupted in response to its rigging of the 1987 state election, as entirely attributable to the machinations of Pakistan.

The reality is the communications blackout, like the state of siege as whole, is driven by the Indian authorities’ fear of mass popular opposition.

So isolated is the government, that it has detained hundreds of Muslim pro-Indian J&K politicians and activists, including three former Chief Ministers and the leading cadre of the J&K National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party.

Notwithstanding the government crackdown and the complicity of much of the media, numerous reports have emerged documenting massive human rights violations by Indian security forces acting at the behest of Modi and the BJP government.

At the end of September, a team of five women’s rights activists who visited J&K between Sept. 17 and 21 published a report, “Women’s Voice: Fact-Finding Report on Kashmir,” providing evidence of numerous instances of arbitrary state violence, including night-raids and torture.

The report said Indian authorities had arrested an estimated “13,000 boys” in J&K since August 5. “Boys as young as 14 or 15 are taken away, tortured, some for as long as 45 days. Their papers are taken away, families not informed.”

The report adds, “Women in villages stood before us with vacant eyes. ‘How do we know where they are? Our boys who were taken away, snatched away from our homes.’”

UK ruling class considers whether to entrust Corbyn with overcoming Brexit crisis

Chris Marsden

Parliament will meet in extraordinary session October 19 to discuss the almost inevitable failure to reach a Brexit agreement with the European Union (EU).

Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his intention to schedule the Saturday session—coinciding with the end of an October 17-18 European summit—after his proposed alternative to the EU Withdrawal Agreement was rejected because it includes provisions for a customs border between Northern Ireland and the Republic in the south, an EU member state.

Johnson’s office revealed details of a 30-minute phone call he held with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with a “Downing Street source” citing her saying there could only be a deal if Northern Ireland stays in the EU customs union. If not, then a deal is “overwhelmingly unlikely” by the October 31 deadline, she is said to have commented.

This was denounced as an EU “veto on us leaving the customs union.” Talks “are close to breaking down,” Number 10 said, with an EU-UK agreement “essentially impossible not just now but ever.”

Johnson was backed by the Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster, who praised him for having “flushed out Dublin’s real intentions to trap Northern Ireland in the EU customs union forever.”

The Downing Street statement was denounced by Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer and other pro-Remain MPs—proving that Johnson knew his proposals would be rejected so he could then blame the EU for not reaching a deal.

European Council President Donald Tusk accused Britain of playing a “stupid blame game,” when “At stake is the future of Europe and the UK as well as the security and interests of our people.” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has warned that a no-deal Brexit would “lead to the collapse of the United Kingdom.” Then, during a sitting of the European Parliament, its president, David Sassoli, said that any Brexit delay should only be for either holding a second referendum or a general election.

Making things worse for Johnson, according to the Times, five cabinet ministers, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan, Minister for Northern Ireland Julian Smith, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, Health Minister Matt Hancock and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox are poised to resign if it comes to a no-deal Brexit. Moreover, if the Tory Party commits to a no-deal Brexit in an election manifesto, the Financial Times reports that up to 50 MPs and three ministers could quit the party.

Fuel was added to the fire by a Downing Street briefing threatening to cut security ties with EU countries that support a Brexit delay—calling this “hostile interference in domestic politics.”

However insincere, Johnson was forced to reassure Damian Green, leader of the One Nation caucus of Tory MPs, that no-deal would not be in the manifesto.

Parliament was prorogued Tuesday until October 14, when Johnson’s legislative agenda will be outlined in the Queen’s Speech. But debate on this will now run into whatever plans emerge from the opposition parties to stop a no-deal Brexit by the October 19 extraordinary parliamentary session.

The depth of the crisis is indicated by the fact that the Commons has only sat on a Saturday on four occasions since 1939—including to consider the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, during the Suez crisis in 1956 and on the last occasion in response to the invasion of the Falklands/Malvinas Islands in 1982, fully 37 years ago.

Richest 400 Americans paid lower taxes than everyone else in 2018

Trévon Austin

According to an analysis by noted economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, previewed this week by New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, the wealthiest American households paid a lower tax rate last year than every other income group for the first time in the country’s history.

Saez and Zucman, both professors at the University of California Berkeley, detail the phenomenon of declining taxes for the richest Americans in their soon-to-be released book, The Triumph of Injustice .

The pair compiled a historical database composed of the tax payments of households in various income percentiles spanning all the way back to 1913, when the federal income tax was first implemented. Their research uncovered that in the 2018 fiscal year the wealthiest 400 Americans paid a lower tax rate—accounting for federal, state, and local taxes—than anyone else.

The overall tax rate paid by the richest .01 percent was only 23 percent last year, while the bottom half of the population paid 24.2 percent. This contrasts starkly with the overall tax rates on the wealthy of 70 percent in 1950 and 47 percent in 1980.

Los 400 estadounidenses más ricos pagaron menos impuestos que el resto en 2018

The taxes on the wealthy have been in precipitous decline since the latter half of the 20th century as successive presidential administrations enacted tax cuts for the rich, suggesting that they would result in economic prosperity for all. Taxes that mostly affect the wealthy, such as the estate tax and corporate tax, have been drastically cut and lawyers have been hard at work on behalf of their wealthy patrons, planning out the best schemes for tax avoidance, seeking to drive tax rates as close to zero as possible. The impetus for the historical tipping point was the Trump Administration’s 2017 tax reform, which was a windfall for the super-rich.

Supported by both the Republicans and Democrats, the two parties of Wall Street, Trump’s tax cuts were specifically designed to transfer massive amounts of wealth from the working class to the ruling elite.

FISA court documents expose illegal FBI mass surveillance

Kevin Reed

In an unprecedented development, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released redacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) documents on Tuesday that disclose details of the illegal FBI electronic surveillance of US citizens.

The disclosures—contained in 20 documents published on the website of the ODNI—show that since 2017 the FBI has been violating provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) as well as the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans by searching through their e-mail, text messages and phone calls.

The ODNI document release stems from a FISC order on April 5, 2018, which found that the FBI’s procedures concerning the “querying of United States persons” were insufficient, resulting in violations of federal law. The Trump administration appealed the decision to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISC-R), which then affirmed on July 12, 2019, the original 2018 ruling.

The portion of the FISA law that was found to be violated by the FBI is known as Section 702, which grants authority to US intelligence and law enforcement to search the online communications of non-Americans located outside the US under very specific conditions. Section 702 was adopted in 2008 as part of the FISA Amendments Act that modified the original FISA law adopted in 1976 and it specifically bars the targeting of US citizens for warrantless electronic surveillance.

In one episode reported in the FISC documents, in March 2017 the FBI queried the database of e-mail, texts and phone calls of more than 70,000 FBI employees or contractors. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The bureau appeared to be looking for data to conduct a security review of people with access to its buildings and computers—meaning the FBI was searching for data linked to its own employees.” The documents say that the agency did so against the advice of its general counsel.

In another example from April 2018, the FBI queried the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of 57,000 US individuals. In both instances, the FBI claimed the searches were necessary as part of an effort to uncover foreign intelligence information.

Several other incidents involved querying the data of specific individuals instead of the batch queries. In these cases, the FISC court of Judge James E. Boesberg determined that the FBI had not provided sufficient justification for its belief that the queries would yield foreign intelligence information.

It should be pointed out that the FISC rulings and documents released by ODNI take as a given the existence of the NSA database of e-mail, text messages and phone calls of everyone. The reprimand of the FBI is that the agency did not properly utilize the database, document its reasons for querying it and dispose of the information obtained after it was collected.

This discrepancy was noted by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden in a tweet on Tuesday: “The worst part? The government argues the existence of a warrantless, internet-scale mass surveillance program isn’t the problem, merely the lawless way the FBI uses it against Americans, [because] ‘of course’ the other 93-97% of the human population have no rights.”

Secret US government data collection of e-mail and phone call data has been going on at least since the days following the events of September 11, 2001. The exposures made by Snowden showed that this data collection takes two forms: upstream and downstream (also known as PRISM).

Upstream collection is the interception and storage of communications as they pass through the fiber-optic backbone and infrastructure of the global telecommunications system. This involves the collection of a large mass of data that is filtered based on IP addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses and made available to indexing and analysis based on the queries of targeted individuals.

Downstream collection involves government access to the servers of the telecommunications service providers and tech companies such as Verizon, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Apple and copying the data that resides there. These companies are prohibited from telling their customers that their data has been retrieved by the government.

Trump asserts unchecked presidential powers

Patrick Martin

In the wake of the eight-page letter sent Tuesday evening by the White House to the House of Representatives declaring the Trump administration’s defiance of the impeachment inquiry, the president and his attorneys are elaborating a theory of unchecked executive authority, a presidential dictatorship in all but name.

The scope of presidential immunity from Congress asserted in the letter sent by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone is essentially unlimited. The letter makes the president the decision-maker over whether Congress has the right to bring impeachment proceedings against him and how they are to be conducted, in direct violation of the constitutional separation of powers, which makes Congress a branch coequal to the executive.

As far as legal arguments go, the White House letter amounts to declaring the Constitution null and void. In its claims that the inquiry is not “necessary,” “authorized” or “valid,”

it simply ignores the plain text of the document, which declares (Article 1, Section 2), “The House of Representatives … shall have the sole Power of Impeachment,” and the House (Article 1, Section 5) “may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.”

The president has no power to declare an impeachment inquiry “constitutionally invalid” or claim that it “lacks the necessary authorization for a valid impeachment.” He is not the supreme arbiter of constitutionality and has no control over the manner of his own impeachment. If impeached, he may defend himself at the Senate trial, presided over by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

In the letter, Cipollone writes, “Put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen.” Aside from the dubious character of Trump’s victory, which came via the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote, this complaint is absurd in a letter about impeachment, which by definition includes the removal of an elected president.

As for the American people feeling “deprived,” Trump’s approval rating has remained in the low 40s throughout his presidency—a first for any US chief executive. Polls published Tuesday, one conducted by the Washington Post and the Schar School of George Mason University, and the other by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, showed support for the impeachment inquiry by a sizeable majority, and a plurality for actually removing Trump from office, both figures having sharply climbed over the past three months.

Particularly disturbing to congressional Republicans were figures showing 28 percent of Republican voters supporting the impeachment inquiry, a figure that rises to 40 percent for Republican-leaning adults ages 18 to 39. Nearly 20 percent of Republicans supported Trump’s removal from office.

Nearly as reactionary as the White House letter was the argument voiced by Justice Department lawyers in federal court in Washington Tuesday. The Trump administration is fighting efforts by House Democrats to obtain grand jury material used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections.

Justice Department lawyers argued that judicial actions taken during the impeachment inquiry into President Richard Nixon were wrong. In particular, they objected to the decision of Federal District Judge John Sirica to turn over grand jury materials on the Watergate burglary to the House Judiciary Committee, an action that marked a critical step in the process leading to Nixon’s forced resignation.

According to press reports, Chief US District Judge Beryl A. Howell responded, “Wow, okay,” adding, “As I said, the department is taking extraordinary positions in this case.” The judge made no immediate ruling but appeared to be inclined to reject demands that she overturn a 46-year-old precedent, an appeals court ruling in Haldeman v. Sirica that has long been regarded as a legal milestone.

Simultaneous with Trump’s opposition to House subpoenas and demands for documents in the impeachment inquiry, his lawyers were in court in New York City asserting a diametrically opposed principle: that the president cannot be prosecuted or even investigated by a state prosecutor because only Congress has jurisdiction over misdeeds by a president.

Last week, the Justice Department intervened in a federal lawsuit filed by Trump against the Manhattan district attorney seeking to block a subpoena for his income tax returns. The argument there was that a sitting president cannot be investigated, period—a position that would have shut down the Mueller inquiry before it started.

Federal Judge Victor Marrero issued a ruling Monday dismissing the Trump lawsuit and ordering Trump’s accountants to provide his tax returns to the Manhattan DA. This action has been stayed pending a further appeal. But Marrero wrote in his 75-page opinion that Trump was seeking “a vision of presidential immunity that would place the President above the law,” and declared, “This Court cannot endorse such a categorical and limitless assertion of presidential immunity from judicial process.”

The great danger in this political crisis is that Trump’s Democratic Party opponents are aligned with powerful sections of the military-intelligence apparatus and are basing the impeachment inquiry entirely on actions by Trump that offend the CIA and Pentagon, not those that genuinely threaten the democratic rights of the American people.

Australia Awards Scholarships (Masters and Short Courses) for 1,000 African Students 2020/2021

Application Deadlines: 

• Australia Awards Masters Scholarships: 6th December 2019
• Australia Awards Short Courses Scholarships: 17th January 2020

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroun, Cape Verde, Comoros, Congo(Republic of), Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia etc

In addition to the above, the following countries are eligible for Short Course Awards (SCAs)


Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Mauritania, Niger, North Sudan, Republic of Guinea, South Sudan

About the Award: There are two categories of Award: Australian Awards Scholarships for Masters to undertake higher degree studies in Australia at Masters level. And Australia Awards Scholarships for Short Courses, to undertake short-term, targeted professional training courses, in Australia and/or in Africa, in a range of development-focused sectors.
Australia Awards Scholarships, a cornerstone of the Australian Government’s development assistance program for Africa, provide access to postgraduate education, training and professional development opportunities for suitably qualified Africans from eligible countries. On their return to the workplace, Australia Awards Scholarships Alumni are expected to contribute actively to development in their home countries.

To be taken at: African or Australian Universities.

Priority Fields (varies by African country)

• Agriculture/Food Security
• Education
• Health
• Public Policy (including public sector management, public sector reform, trade, international diplomacy)
• Environmental Management
• Natural Resource Management (including mining related subjects)
• Technical and Vocational Education & Training (available for Short Courses only)
• Energy (including Natural Gas and Oil Technology)
• Infrastructure
• Natural Resource Management
• Transport (including Ports, Roads and Airports Management)

Offered Since: 1980

Type: Masters taught degrees and short courses

Eligibility: To be considered for a masters scholarship or short course award, applicants must meet their country’s eligibility requirements. In general, the following requirements apply

• Citizen of an eligible African country
• Minimum academic requirement: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent
• Mid-level to senior-level professional, currently employed in a relevant field
• Meet relevant post-graduate work experience requirements
• Demonstrate a clear vision of how the knowledge gained through the scholarship will be used to improve policy, practice or reform in their home country
• Satisfactory English proficiency to enable full participation in a training course delivered in English
• Satisfy all requirements of the Australian Government for the appropriate student visa (subclass 500).

Target Group

• You are a national of an African country. See country list below
• You are an early or mid-career professional working in the Public Sector, the Private Sector or a Non-Government Organisation (Civil Society) in one of the listed priority fields of study.
• You wish to undertake a Masters degree in Australia in one of the listed priority fields of study. You cannot study a Masters of Business Administration.
• You have a clear vision for how you will use the knowledge gained through the Masters degree to improve policy, practice or education in the proposed field of study.
• Gender Equality: Australia Awards target equal participation by women and men. Applications from women are strongly encouraged, and mechanisms are in place to support women applicants and Awardees.
• Disability Inclusion: Australia Awards aim to ensure that people with a disability are given fair and equal opportunity to compete for and obtain a scholarship. Applications from people with a disability are strongly encouraged. Mechanisms are in place to support applicants and Awardees requiring specific assistance.

Number of Scholarships: Up to 1,000

Value of Scholarships: This is a Full government sponsored scholarship

Duration of Scholarship: For the duration of candidate’s programme

How to Apply:

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Orskov Foundation Grants 2020 for Students in Developing Countries

Application Deadline: 31st December 2019

Offered Annually? Yes

Offered Since: 2006

Eligibility: If your application does not meet all the following criteria it will not pass the initial shortlisting for consideration by the Trustees.

• Applications from students registered at university in a country not classified by the UN as lower middle income, or low-income will NOT be funded.
• Applications seeking funding for equipment, or attendance at conferences, will NOT be funded.
• Applications seeking scholarships to cover the costs of complete Bachelor, Masters or Doctorate courses, or parts of Bachelor, Masters or Doctorate courses will NOT be funded
• Applications seeking funding to cover the costs of Bachelor, Masters or Doctorate research projects will NOT be funded
• Applications that cannot demonstrate the potential to alleviate poverty and/or provide sustainable environmental benefits will NOT be funded.
• Applications from students not studying degrees related to agriculture, land use or the environment will NOT be funded.

If you have got this far then keep reading, as the next section contains some important guidance that must be followed for a student application to be successful.

• The student grants are only provided to help support costs of training at a university or similar organisation other than the university/college in which you are registered at the time of the application.
• Eligible students MUST be registered for graduate degrees and MUST be able to demonstrate that they have full support from the relevant university department/organisation that they are seeking training from.
• Preference will be given to support training aimed at sustainable land use problems with an emphasis on animal, plant and soil interactions, where it can be demonstrated that, in addition to contributing to knowledge, they will (a) have the potential to alleviate poverty and (b) provide sustainable environmental benefits, including adaptation/mitigation to the impact of climate change. Training outwith these areas will not be funded.
• The Trustees will only consider projects with a budget up to a maximum of £2,500.   This is the upper limit, not an indication that you should request this amount.
• Applicants will be expected to provide a budget and FULL justification for the funding claimed. Applicants that do not provide an adequate breakdown of the anticipated expenditure will not be shortlisted for evaluation.
• Please do not send any additional documentation, such as exam results, CVs, letters of support, etc.  These will not be used in the evaluation of your application.  Appropriate references will be sought for student applications that pass the evaluation stage.
• Projects will be selected by an open application process.  Grants will be awarded in March/April.
• The deadline for receipt of applications is 31st December each year. Applications received after this date will not be considered for evaluation.
• All applicants will be sent notification that their application has been received.  Applicants will also be sent an email in March or April of the following year to inform them whether they have been successful or not.  We will use the contact email address that you include on your application form, so please ensure that it is the correct address.
• All successful student applicants will be expected to provide a full report at the end of their funding period.  This report will outline the outcomes from the application and a breakdown of the expenditure made.
• Applications MUST be submitted using the Orskov Foundation application form and sent as a MS WORD attachment to an email.
• All applications must be submitted in English.
• Each section of the application form has been included for a reason.  In order to evaluate your application against all the others received you must include text in each section of the application form, otherwise your application will not be shortlisted.

How to Apply: If you would like to apply for individual support  from the Orskov Foundation follow these easy steps:

• STEP 1. Read the Guidelines to see if you are eligible to apply.
• STEP 2. Complete the application form. The application form can be downloaded as a Word file, or in pdf format.
• STEP 3. Submit your application form by email to: contact@orskovfoundation.org

Visit Programme Webpage for Details 

Award Provider: The Scottish Government Small Grants Scheme

Heinz-Kühn-Foundation Journalism Scholarships 2020/2021 for Junior Journalists in Developing Countries – Germany

Application Deadline: 30th November, 2019

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries and Germany

To be taken at (country): Various countries

About the Award: The foundation awards Journalism Scholarships to young journalists from North-Rhine-Westphalia for six-week or three-month reporting trips in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The foundation also provides funds to enable candidates from developing countries to gain professional journalism experience in North-Rhine-Westphalia for up to three months.
The aim of the Heinz-Kühn-Foundation is to support the training and professional development of junior journalists.

Type: Training

Eligibility: Young journalists from North-Rhine-Westphalia and developing countries are eligible for a scholarship if they satisfy the following requirements:

• have a keen interest in development issues;
• have already gained substantial professional experience in journalism (a completed college education is desirable);
• are not older than 35 years of age; and,
• have a good command of the official language of their host country (candidates from abroad must at least have a basic knowledge of the German language).

Selection: Decisions are taken by the board of trustees of the Heinz-Kühn-Foundation on the recommendation of the selection committee.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Scholarship holders get

• a lump-sum contribution towards living expenses in the host country (with scholarship payments covering training and living expenses in the host country);
• a lump-sum allowance for flight and travelling expenses (the foundation pays a return air ticket for candidates from abroad);
• an allowance to cover costs of research materials (e.g. literature);
• an allowance for trips within the host country; and,
• (if neccessary, for scholarship holders from abroad) a German language course of up to four months at the Düsseldorf or Bonn based Goethe-Institut.

Duration of Scholarship: In the lead up to the scholarship and throughout the duration of the Journalism Scholarships, the Heinz-Kühn-Foundation will provide support.

How to Apply: Journalists who meet the requirements for a scholarship should first contact the foundation to discuss possible host countries and their topics of interest.
The foundation’s postal address is:
Ministerpräsidentin des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen
Heinz-Kühn-Stiftung
Fürstenwall 25
40219 Düsseldorf
The following documents should be enclosed with the application:

• curriculum vitae in tabular form and a photograph;
• certificates of vocational training and present occupation;
• foreign languages certificates;
• German candidates should provide a detailed statement explaining their reasons for applying, their choice of host country and proposed topic of research.
• Candidates from abroad should provide a letter of motivation in German.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Heinz-Kühn-Foundation

Danish Government Cultural Agreement Scholarships 2020/2021 for International Students

Application Deadline: 2nd March 2020 at 23:59 (CET)

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries:

• China
• Japan
• Egypt
• Russia
• Republic of Korea

To be taken at (country): Denmark

Eligible Field of Study: All

Type: Masters and PhD

Eligibility: Scholarship will only be considered if the student fulfills the following requirements:

• Is a citizen of a country outside the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA)
• Does not have permanent residence in an EU or EEA country
• Is NOT studying in Denmark through an exchange programme or any other study agreement which is tuition fee waiving
• Has shown good academic results previously from former studies or passed exams
• Has passed an English language test, preferably an IELTS test with a score of 6.0 or similar recognised test with a high score provided for academic studies
• Scholarships are only available to master’s and PhD-level students. However, bachelor’s degree students wishing to study Danish language and literature can also apply if they have studied the Danish language for two years.
• scholarships are only offered to students enrolled in full-degree studies at higher education institutions in the countries listed above.
• PhD students must likewise be employed at, or affiliated with, higher education institutions in the above-mentioned countries.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Danish Government scholarships programme covers 30-50% of the tuition fees, which means that the rest must be paid by the student. Students who are awarded a scholarship from UCN may under certain circumstances also receive an additional partial monthly living costs scholarship.

Duration of Scholarship: Danish Government Scholarships may be awarded for the entire duration of a study programme or for single semesters.

How to Apply: To be considered for a scholarship, the applicants must:

• Fill in the scholarship application form including a motivation letter stating the reasons for applying to UCN and the reasons for applying for the specific programme in question
• Apply and be accepted to one of the English-taught study programmes which UCN offers

Furthermore the students must attach:

• Documentation of passed exams (translated into English)
• Documentation of relevant working experience
• References (if any)
• Copy of passport
• Documentation of applying for a programme at UCN

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

USA State Department Electronic Diversity Visa Lottery (DV-2021) – Live & Work in the US

Application Deadline: 5th November 2019 12:00PM EST (GMT -5)

Offered Annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: For DV-2021, natives of the following countries are not eligible to apply, because more than 50,000 natives of these countries immigrated to the United States in the previous five years:
Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam.
Persons born in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, and Taiwan are eligible.

About the Award: The Department of State administers the Congressionally-mandated Diversity Immigrant Visa Program annually. Section 203(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides for a class of immigrants known as “diversity immigrants” from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States.
For Fiscal Year 2021, 55,000 Diversity Visas (DVs) will be available. There is no cost to register for the DV program.Applicants who are selected in the program (selectees) must meet simple but strict eligibility requirements to qualify for a diversity visa.
Applicants who are selected in the program (“selectees”) must meet simple but strict eligibility requirements to qualify for a diversity visa. The Department of State determine selectees through a randomized computer drawing. The Department of State distributes diversity visas among six geographic regions, and no single country may receive more than seven percent of the available DVs in any one year.
The entry form will only be available for submission during this period and this period only. Entries will NOT be accepted through the U.S. Postal Service.

Before beginning the entry process, you can verify that your picture(s) comply with all requirements in the Photo Tool.

Type: Contests/Awards

Eligibility:
Requirement #1:

• Individuals born in countries whose natives qualify may be eligible to enter.
• If you were not born in an eligible country, there are two other ways you might be able to qualify.
• Was your spouse born in a country whose natives are eligible? If yes, you can claim your spouse’s country of birth – provided that both you and your spouse are named on the selected entry, are found eligible and issued diversity visas, and enter the United States simultaneously.
• Were you born in a country whose natives are ineligible, but in which neither of your parents was born or legally resident at the time of your birth? If yes, you may claim the country of birth of one of your parents if it is a country whose natives are eligible for the DV-2019 program.

Requirement #2:

• Each DV applicant must meet the education/work experience requirement of the DV program by having either:
• at least a high school education or its equivalent, defined as successful completion of a 12-year course of formal elementary and secondary education;

OR

• two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation that requires at least two years of training or experience to perform. The Department of State will use the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*Net Online database to determine qualifying work experience.

Number of Awards: Not specified

How to Apply: 

• Applicants must submit entries for the DV-2021 program electronically at dvlottery.state.gov between noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT-4), October 2, 2019, and noon, Eastern Standard Time (EST) (GMT-5), to November 5, 2019.
• Do not wait until the last week of the registration period to enter, as heavy demand may result in website delays.
• No late entries or paper entries will be accepted.
• The law allows only one entry by or for each person during each registration period.
• The Department of State uses sophisticated

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: US Department of State


Important Notes: As indicated in the instructions, for the purposes of eligibility some countries include components and dependent areas overseas.  If you are a native of a dependency or overseas territory, please select the appropriate country of eligibility.  For example, natives of Macau S.A.R should select Portugal, and natives of Martinique should select France.

Education is a Neglected Casualty of Wars and Displacements

Cesar Chelala

One of the neglected consequences of the recent wars and civilian conflicts in many parts of the world is their effect on people’s education, particularly children’s education. Because of the close connection between education and health, these events have had a severe effect on people’s health –particularly on children- and on the countries’ development.

In many of the countries in conflict there are attacks on students, teachers, schools and universities, while the military uses schools routinely for their activities. Girls and women are targets of attacks because of their gender. The recent wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria have had devastating effects not only because of the huge number of deaths but also for their impact on education.

Education can increase children’s nutritional levels and their health status, particularly among the poor. In India, the mortality rate among children of educated women is almost half that of children of women without formal education. In the Philippines, primary education among mothers has reduced the risks of child mortality by half, and secondary education reduces that risk by a factor of three.

Children with primary education –particularly in developing countries- can help their families make nutritional decisions that will affect the health of the whole family. The level of education in relation to health is particularly important among women. It has been found that better education, particularly among mothers, is widely associated with better children’s health. In addition, education for women is closely associated with later marriage and smaller family size.

Deteriorating conditions in Syria have led hundreds of thousands of people to leave their country and seek refuge in other places. Before the conflict, 97 percent of school-aged children in Syria attended school, and Syrian literacy rates surpassed 90 percent for men and women, above the regional average. Today, inside Syria, over 2 million children do not attend school, while more than half a million Syrian refugee children are not in school in neighboring countries.

Lebanon’s health, social and education services have borne the brunt of the huge number of incoming Syrian refugees. Lebanon has not received the proper international governmental assistance to confront this crisis. However, several NGOs have been providing succor to the Syrian refugees.

Both the Lebanese government and the Lebanese people have shown considerable understanding and willingness to help their Syrian neighbors. However, the problems created by the influx of refugees have reached such enormous dimensions that they have strained the relations between both the Syrian and Lebanese people and their governments.

Although the aid the NGOs offer to Syrian refugees is invaluable, the need is overwhelming. “During times of conflict and insecurity, maintaining access to education is of vital importance for children’s protection and development,” states Save the Children.

In the Americas, the seemingly unending waves of refugee families coming into the U.S. have jeopardized their children’s education. In many cases, immigration authorities in the U.S. mistreat those seeking asylum. Children’s education and their quality of life have suffered as a result.

The policy of separating children from their parents has had dreadful consequences, and many children suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. In many cases, the result of this separation is that children end up being cared by other children. “The care of children by children constitutes a betrayal of adult responsibility,” said Gilbert Kliman, A San Francisco psychoanalyst, who has evaluated dozens of children and parents seeking asylum.

Recent statistics indicate that by the end of 2019, around 539,000 Central Americans will be displaced, the bulk of whom will request asylum in the U.S. In 2018 alone, 49,000 children and adolescents dropped out of school in El Salvador. It is estimated that in Guatemala and Honduras, more than 2 million children may not be attending school.

In the Northern Triangle –i.e., in those three countries– individuals are escaping from a dramatic escalation in organized crime and poverty. Although in most cases whole families flee together, at times children make this dangerous trip north alone, thus becoming some of the world’s most vulnerable refugees.

Neglecting to deal with the effects of war on education will only aggravate these problems, and with its consequence on children’s health and well being. As Nelson Mandela eloquently stated, “It is not beyond our power to create a world in which all children have access to a good education. Those who do not believe this have small imaginations.”