Exonerate the Innocent; Incarcerate the Guilty

David Rosen

Three innocent men — Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart – were recently fully exonerated and released from a Maryland prison after spending 36 years in jail for a murder they did not commit.

On Thanksgiving, 1983, the-then teenagers were accused of killing a 14-year-old boy in the hallway of a Baltimore junior high school over his jacket.  The incident was part of what was then known in Baltimore as “clothing murders” because city youth were being attached over sneakers or sports apparel.

When the now-grown men were released, Baltimore States’ Attorney Marilyn Mosby admitted, “These three men were convicted, as children, because of police and prosecutorial misconduct. What the state, my office, did to them is wrong. There is no way we can ever repair the damage done to them. We can’t be scared of that and we must confront it.”

Mosby added, “I want to thank these men from the bottom of my heart for persevering for decades to prove their innocence. They deserve so much more than an apology.” Mosby says she will push for state legislation that would require the state to provide compensation for exonerees.

The unasked – and unanswered – question is what about the police and prosecutor who conspired in the “misconduct” that ended with Chestnut, Watkins and Stewart spending essentially two-thirds of the lives in prison for a crime they did not commit?

***

The role of exoneration takes on greater reality in light of Supreme Court Judge Learned Hand’s remarkable admission in his 1923 decision, United States v Garrison: “Our [criminal] procedure has always been haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted. It is an unreal dream.”

The “unreal dream” is, sadly, a very real nightmare.  A 2014 study the National Academy of Sciences, “Rate of False Conviction of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced to Death,” brings Hand’s nearly century-old insight to the present.  It reports the following:

False convictions, by definition, are unobserved when they occur: If we know that a defendant is innocent, he is not convicted in the first place. They are also extremely difficult to detect after the fact. As a result, the great majority of innocent defendants remain undetected.

Going further, it notes that “in the United States, however, a high proportion of false convictions that do come to light and produce exonerations are concentrated among the tiny minority of cases in which defendants are sentenced to death.” And as to all the rest who have been falsely tried and convicted, most of their cases go unaddressed.

The Innocence Project provides the following alarming statistics as of 2018 exonerations based on DNA information:

+  367 DNA exonerees to date;

+  28 percent of those exonerated were convicted based on false confessions;

+  37 states where exonerations have been won;

+  14 is average number of years served;

+  5,097.5 years is the total of years served;

+  26.5 years is the average age at the time of wrongful conviction;

+  21 of the 367 people exonerated served time on death row;

+ 41 of 367 people exonerated pled guilty to crimes they did not commit.

Looking broader than those exonerated based on DNA information, the National Registry of Exonerations identifies some 90-plus men and a few women who have been exonerated so far this year.  It also reports that since 1983, 2,522 people have been exonerated.  And the Death Penalty Information Center reports that between 1973 and 2018, 164 people have been exonerated from death row.

In a 1998 study, two legal scholars, Richard Leo and Richard Ofshe, argued, “In a criminal justice system whose formal rules are designed to minimize the frequency of unwarranted arrest, unjustified prosecution, and wrongful conviction, police-induced false confessions rank amongst the most fateful of all official errors.”  They go on to remind readers, “police elicit false confessions so frequently that social science researchers, legal scholars, and journalists have discovered and documented numerous case examples in this decade alone.”  The most troubling words are “so frequently.”

***

Among the most famous cases involving the exoneration and prison release of people falsely charged and convicted is the “Central Park Jogger” case.  In a spring night in 1989, a 28-year-old white woman was brutally raped and left in a coma while jogging in Central Park. Moving aggressively, the New York Police Department (NYPD) quickly arrested five teenagers of color – Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise – who were ultimately tried and convicted of the crime.  Their story has been beautifully told by Ava DuVernay in her four-part series, When They See Us.

As DuVernay shows, the police – led by an African American officer, Eric Reynolds — aggressively interrogated the five for up to 30 hours and got all to confess to taking part in the crime.  The case was prosecuted by Linda Fairstein, head of the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office from 1976 until 2002.

Then NYC mayor Ed Koch called the attack the “crime of the century” and future president Donald Trump ran full-page ads in many newspapers that read:

Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer … Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will. … How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!

Trump called for the five to get the death penalty.

In 2002, convicted rapist and murder, Mathias Reyes, admitted to the attack of the jogger and DNA evidence confirmed that he was the rapist. The convictions of the Central Park Five were vacated.  To this day, Reynolds and Fairstein continue to claim that Reyes didn’t act alone and, in all likelihood, acted with some or all of the Central Park Five.  More troubling, Trump continues to refuse to apologize for his ad and acknowledge the men’s innocents.

The U.S. “justice” system, first and foremost, protects police and prosecutors.  The Supreme Court has held that while cops have only limited immunity from lawsuits, prosecutors enjoy what’s known as absolute immunity for their conduct under most circumstances.  Only in the most extreme cases of abuse — including killings and with bodycam videos as evidence – do police get arrested and prosecuted.  Still less are prosecutors prosecuted for questionable, if not illegal, practices.

In New York, the most scandalous example of misconduct by a NYPD officer involves Detective Louis Scarcella, a once-renowned officer who in recent years has faced numerous allegations of misconduct. He is now retired at full pension.  However, most recently, a Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice ordered the release of Shawn Williams, the 14^th conviction based on Scarcella police investigation that’s been overturned.

It’s harder to find incidents in which a prosecutor is prosecuted for misconduct; Fairstein wasn’t.  The Guardian reported on a 2016 case in which a Texas prosecutor, Charles Sebesta, was found guilty of extracting “false confessions and withheld testimony to convict Anthony Graves, who spent 18 years in prison before he was exonerated.”  The Texas supreme court-appointed board of disciplinary appeals said Sebesta’s behavior in the case was “egregious”.

Trump is not alone among today’s leading politicians who has supported questionable arrests and prosecutions.  In 2015, when former presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) was California Attorney General, she defended a state prosecutor, Robert Murray, who the Fifth Appellate District, the California Court of Appeal, accused of committing “outrageous government misconduct.” He was found to have falsified a transcript of a defendant’s confession.  In the works of The Observer, he “added two lines of transcript to ‘evidence’” to the defendant confessed that threaten the defendant with charges that carried a term of life in prison.

In admitting to the miscarriage of justice in the case of Chestnut, Watkins and Stewart, States’ Attorney Mosby said she will seek compensation for exonerees. This is an often-overlooked aspect of the legal process, what happens after the exonerated is released.

Maurice Caldwell served 7,494 days — 20-plus years — for second-degree murder that he did not commit.  In 2011, he was released from a California prison after another man confessed to the crime. As The Los Angeles Times reports, “at 43, he was released to the streets of San Francisco with only the prison-issued clothes he wore and a belief that good times were coming.”  For the last eight years, he’s suffered from health problems, PTSD and “the stigma of a conviction that makes it hard to find a job and a place to live.”  There’s justice and then there is justice.

The Right to Healthy Food: Poisoned with Pesticides

Colin Todhunter

Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written an open letter addressed to three senior officials in Britain: John Gardiner, Under Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the British government; Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England; and Chris Wormald, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and Social Security.

Her letter focuses on the issue of food and the herbicide glyphosate. But the issues she discusses should not be regarded as being specific to the situation in Britain: they apply equally to countries across the world which are facilitating the interests of global agrochemicals conglomerates.

For instance, according to a September 2019 report in the New York Times, ‘A Shadowy Industry Group Shapes Food Policy Around the World’, the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) has been quietly infiltrating government health and nutrition bodies. The article lays bare ILSI’s influence on the shaping of high-level food policy globally, not least in India and China.

Accused of being little more than a front group for its 400 corporate members that provide its $17 million budget, ILSI’s members include Coca-Cola, DuPont, PepsiCo, General Mills and Danone. The report says ILSI has received more than $2 million from chemical companies, among them Monsanto. In 2016, a UN committee issued a ruling that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup, was “probably not carcinogenic,” contradicting an earlier report by the WHO’s cancer agency. The committee, it turned out, was led by two ILSI officials.

And this brings us to Rosemary Mason’s letter.

In it, she describes how she established a very successful nature reserve in South Wales, which attracted huge numbers of insects, two bat species and many swallows, house martins and swifts. She says that it was miraculous. But disaster soon followed.

In 2011, the local council was asked to attempt to destroy Japanese Knotweed using the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup.  Japanese Knotweed had become resistant to Roundup in the 1980s. That meant that however much of the chemical was sprayed, it was impossible to kill it; the plant just grew bigger and stronger. Between 2012 and 2017, Mason notes that the number of insects on her reserve began to decline. It ultimately became a wildlife desert.

Mason asks:

“Monsanto, the British government and the UK and EU regulators say that glyphosate is safer than table salt. But would table salt kill all these insects that we recorded in our photo-journals or cause apocalyptic declines globally?”

She adds that the invertebrates in her nature reserve were poisoned. But that was only the half of it:

“My neurologist concluded that I had developed a toxic neurodegenerative disorder secondary to long-term exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides.”

Mason proceeds to outline the cosy relationship between the agrochemicals sector, Cancer Research UK and the British government, the result of which is to promote a disease narrative that diverts attention from the effects of toxic agrochemicals and place the blame on individual lifestyle behaviour, choice of diet and alcohol consumption. She asks:

“Where is the scientific evidence for this?”

Aside from the government’s collusion with pesticides manufacturers, Mason says the corporate media, most notably in Britain, are silent about pesticides that are poisoning the public:

“They haven’t informed the British people about the trials involving Roundup in the US. Bayer estimates that there are currently more than 42,000 plaintiffs alleging that exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides made by Monsanto caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In the UK, there were 13,605 new cases of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in 2015 (and 4,920 deaths in 2016).”

Mason refers to Robert F Kennedy Jr, one of the US attorney’s fighting Bayer (which bought Monsanto). He says that Monsanto told Bayer that a $270-million set-aside would cover all its outstanding liabilities arising from Monsanto’s 5,000 Roundup cancer lawsuits. However, Bayer never saw certain internal Monsanto documents prior to the purchase.

Kennedy explains that for four decades Monsanto manoeuvred to conceal Roundup’s carcinogenicity by capturing regulatory agencies, corrupting public officials, bribing scientists and engaging in scientific fraud to delay its day of reckoning.

He adds that Monsanto also faces cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of other injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts.

Moreover, strong science suggests glyphosate is the culprit in the exploding epidemics of celiac disease, colitis, gluten sensitivities, diabetes and non-alcoholic liver cancer which, for the first time, is attacking children as young as 10.

Whether as a weed killer or as a desiccant to dry oats and wheat immediately before harvest, farmers have been spraying Roundup directly on food. Roundup sales rose dramatically to 300 million pounds annually in the US, with farmers spraying enough to cover every tillable acre in the country with a gallon of Roundup.

Glyphosate now accounts for about 50% of all herbicide use in the US. About 75% of use has occurred since 2006, with the global glyphosate market projected to reach $11.74 billion by 2023.

Kennedy asserts that never in history has a chemical been used so pervasively: glyphosate is in our air, water, plants, animals, grains, vegetables and meats. And it’s in beer and wine, children’s breakfast cereal and snack bars and mother’s breast milk. It’s even in our vaccines.

And yet, in the UK, as Mason explains, the Department of Health says pesticides are not its concern. None of the more than 400 pesticides that have been authorised in the UK have been tested for long-term actions on the brain; in the foetus, the child or the adult. But perhaps that’s to be expected: between May 2010 and the end of 2013, the Department of Health alone had 130 meetings with representatives of the agri-food industry.

Mason then says that the Department of Health’s School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme has residues of 123 different pesticides, some of which are linked to serious health problems such as cancer and disruption of the hormone system. Moreover, the scientific community has little understanding about the complex interaction of different chemicals in what is termed the ‘cocktail’ effect.

The effects of these toxins carry through to adulthood. Mason discusses the deleterious effects of glyphosate on the gut microbiome. Glyphosate disrupts the shikimate pathway within these gut bacteria and is a strong chelator of essential minerals, such as cobalt, zinc, manganese, calcium, molybdenum and sulphate. In addition, it kills off beneficial gut bacteria and allows toxic bacteria to flourish. She adds that we are facing a global metabolic health crisis provoked by an obesity epidemic linked to glyphosate.

Gut bacteria are vitally important to our well-being. Many key neurotransmitters are located in the gut. Aside from affecting the functioning of major organs, these transmitters affect our moods and thinking. Findings published in the journal Translational Psychiatry in 2014 provided strong evidence that gut bacteria can have a direct physical impact on the brain. Alterations in the composition of the gut microbiome have been implicated in a wide range of neurological and psychiatric conditions, including autism, chronic pain, depression and Parkinson’s Disease.

Mason then proceeds to provides evidence that shows that Britain (and the US) is in the midst of a barely reported public health crisis.

She refers to a letter written in 2013 by the late Marion Copley (US EPA toxicologist) to her colleague Jess Rowland. She accused Rowland of conniving with Monsanto to bury the agency’s own hard scientific evidence that it is “essentially certain” that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer, causes cancer. The date of the letter comes after Copley left the EPA in 2012 and shortly before she died from breast cancer at the age of 66 in January 2014:

“Jess, Since I left the agency with cancer [breast] I have studied the tumor process extensively… based on my decades of pathology experience. Glyphosate was originally designed as a chelating agent and I strongly believe that is the identical process involved in tumor formation.”

Dr Copley makes 14 observations about chelators and/or glyphosate, including that they are endocrine disruptors and suppress the immune system and damage the kidneys or pancreas, which can lead to clinical chemistry changes that favour tumour growth. She notes glyphosate kills bacteria in the gut: the gastrointestinal system is 80% of the immune system making the body susceptible to tumours.

Copley adds:

“It is essentially certain that glyphosate causes cancer.”

Mason concludes her letter by saying:

“The probability is that the population in Britain will increasingly suffer from the diseases associated with glyphosate-based herbicides and with the 400-odd pesticides that contaminate our food.

The deleterious effects of glyphosate on trees and crops will also continue because it is in the soil, water, air and rainfall.”

On the back of Brexit, the Conservative government in Britain is set to jump into bed with the US via a trade deal hammered out without public scrutiny or parliamentary oversight. That deal could see the gutting of food safety and environmental standards so that they are brought in line with those in the US. With its recent ‘landslide’ election victory (having gained just 29.5% of the electorate’s votes), it seems increasingly likely that, given his stated commitment to do so, Boris Johnson will usher in herbicide-tolerant GM crops.

US agrochemicals and GM seeds manufacturers must be salivating at the prospects of any such trade deal. With the privatisation of an increasingly burdened NHS likely to be part of a deal, private healthcare providers and insurers must be too.

Boeing suspends production of deadly 737 Max 8 aircraft

Bryan Dyne

Aerospace giant Boeing announced on Monday it is suspending production of the deadly 737 Max 8 aircraft starting in January. The plane was grounded nine months ago after two crashes—the first outside of Jakarta, Indonesia on Lion Air Flight 610, which killed 189 passengers and crew, and the second on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 a few minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa, costing a further 157 human lives.

While Boeing has insisted that the shutdown of the line will not result in any layoffs—the company has assured the 12,000 workers at the Renton, Washington production facility they will continue 737-related work or be reassigned to other facilities in the Seattle area—the announcement does not preclude the company from letting workers go in the future. If the plane is never put back into service, a distinct possibility, it will be the company’s employees and their families who will bear the consequences of the criminal activity of the company’s executives.

The shutdown of the line came the week after Boeing ex-employee Ed Pierson testified before the House that senior Boeing management were aware that the Max 8 was an unsafe plane prior to the twin disasters. He warned them twice in the months before the first crash that “deteriorating factory conditions” at the Renton facility were making aircraft that would eventually fall out of the sky and asked for the line to be shut down in order to ensure the planes were safe.

A Boeing 737 MAX 8 jetliner at the Renton, Washington assembly plant [Credit: AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File]

That same hearing also exposed the fact that the Federal Aviation Administration knew after the first crash that, unless the plane was grounded, the Max 8 would average one fatal crash every two or three years, far above what Boeing or the agency considers safe. The supposed regulatory agency suppressed this information for a year, a decision that allowed Boeing stock prices to soar in the run-up to hundreds more deaths.

Since the Max 8 was announced in 2011 to when the fleet was grounded in March, the corporation increased in value by nearly $200 billion, making its continued sale and operation critical for Boeing’s bottom line.

However, it is unclear when, or even if, production of the Max 8 will resume. Boeing was originally supposed to submit a comprehensive fix to the fatal aircraft in September, and the company line was that the plane would fly again by the end of 2019. Numerous problems, however, have been uncovered with the aircraft and the certification process itself, resulting in months of delays. As a result, Southwest and American Airlines have canceled flights on Max 8 jets until April, while United has canceled its Max 8 flights until June.

While Boeing is promising to shift the workers at Renton to other jobs for the time being, the companies that make critical components, including the engines, ventilation systems, wings and fuselages, are poised to lose a significant amount of income.

This includes large corporations such as General Electric. When Boeing reduced its production of the Max 8 from 52 to 42 a month in April, GE, which makes the engines for the jet, announced it would lose $1.4 billion throughout the rest of the year. It is poised to lose five times that much in 2020 if the Max 8 stays grounded.

The situation at Spirit AeroSystems is worse. The Wichita, Kansas-based company earns 80 percent of its revenue from Boeing, a significant portion of that from making fuselages for the 737 Max. While no layoffs have been announced, both the company and Kansas governor Laura Kelly have said that the state may have to pay salaries for Spirit workers if the grounding continues. The company has dozens of Boeing hulls waiting to be delivered sitting outside at the company’s Wichita factory.

Other companies, including Senior PLC, United Technologies Corp., Honeywell, Hexcel, Woodward and Meggitt, make numerous other equipment ranging from landing systems, avionics, pylons, thrust reversers, smoke detectors and engine nacelles. There are an estimated 642,000 employees at these companies alone, many of whom work on Boeing systems and are at risk of losing their jobs if the production of the Max 8 is halted for any significant length of time or ended permanently.

Meanwhile, the Boeing executives who oversaw the development and production of the 737 Max 8 have been cashing in. During the rise in the company’s stock after the first crash, Chief Financial Officer Gregory Smith, Executive Vice President John Keating, general counsel Michael Luttig and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenberg all sold Boeing shares worth $9.5 million, $10.1 million, $9.5 million and $6.5 million, respectively.

These sums were all made just one month before the second crash. Boeing admitted at the time that it was aware of the potentially lethal issues with certain Max 8 computer systems and was attempting to introduce a software patch even as another of its planes plunged into the ground.

Officials at the FAA informed Reuters that the current plan is to have Boeing’s beleaguered jet back in the air by March. Agency administrator Steve Dickson stated that they are attempting to be “very detailed rather than try to rush a partially completed project,” and that they are waiting for answers from Boeing about the aircraft.

No doubt the families of the 346 dead individuals would have appreciated such a comprehensive review of the Max 8 before the planes crashed. Instead, a variety of reports and leaks have shown that the agency was well aware of the problems with the Max 8, particularly the software known as MCAS, which has been determined to be the immediate cause of the crashes. Documents and congressional testimony show that the agency handed oversight of this system to Boeing and did not insist on grounding the plane after the first crash even after its own internal review suggested it would happen again.

Rather than criminal murder investigations and charges against executives following the crashes, the ability for Boeing and other aerospace manufacturers to regulate themselves continues unabated. At the end of 2018 the House Transportation Committee, headed by Democratic Representative Peter DeFazio from Oregon, approved the FAA Reauthorization Act, which was passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump, expanding a law passed in 2005 that allows airplane companies to operate without independent oversight or safety inspections. Even if the Max 8 stays grounded, the framework exists for similar or greater air travel catastrophes to happen again.

Indian state intensifies repression of mass protests against anti-Muslim citizenship law

Deepal Jayasekera

India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is intensifying its repression of the wave of protests that have erupted across India against its Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)—a discriminatory, anti-Muslim law rushed through Parliament in just three days earlier this month.

In several of India’s largest states, including Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, BJP-led state governments have imposed state-wide bans on all public gatherings of more than four people, under a British colonial statute, Section 144 of the Criminal Code. This is meant not just to intimidate opponents of the CAA, but to legitimize violent police repression of any anti-CAA demonstration, rally or meeting. Indian authorities have also cut off internet and mobile phone services for days at a time for tens of millions of people, including in parts of the national capital region, Delhi.

To date, at least 25 people have died in the protests. They include an eight-year-old boy trampled to death by a stampede of protesters fleeing a violent police assault in Varanasi, the city and district for which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the local MP.

Police shot and killed two people in Mangaluru, Karnataka, on Friday, while repressing anti-CAA protests. One of the victims was a day-laborer who was bringing his children home from school.

Eighteen of the deaths have come from Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous state and one of its most impoverished. All of these occurred since last Thursday, as police sought to quell the burgeoning opposition to the CAA and the Modi government.

Led by Chief Minister Yogi Aditayanath, a notorious Hindu supremacist under criminal indictment for inciting attacks on Muslims, Uttar Pradesh has gone the furthest of any state in illegalizing the opposition to the CAA. Last Thursday, it announced that it was placing the entire state and its 230 million people under Section 144 for the next 15 days.

According to an update supplied by the UP police yesterday, they have “bound down,” that is taken into preventive detention, 5,400 people, and arrested more than 700 others. In an attempt to shift the blame for the violence and fatalities, police spokesman O.P. Singh said several hundred police have been injured in clashes with anti-CAA protesters. He even tried to attribute the many protester gunfire-deaths to bullets supposedly shot at the police, but that went astray.

Modi and his BJP have cynically tried to dress up the CAA, which for the first time makes religion a criterion for determining Indian citizenship, as a humanitarian gesture. In fact it is a patently anti-Muslim measure and part of a broader scheme to place a question mark over the citizenship status and rights of all of India’s more than 200 million Muslims.

The CAA effectively grants Indian citizenship to all non-Muslims who migrated or whose ancestors migrated to India from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh prior to 2015, ostensibly because they may have been victims of religious persecution. However, the same does not apply to people from minority Muslim sects that have also been targets of state repression and/or communal violence in these three countries, nor to the Rohingya, who were chased out of neighbouring Myanmar in 2017.

In fact, even as the Modi and his chief henchman, Home Minister Amit Shah, boast about India providing a haven to Bangladeshi Hindus, the BJP government is detaining Rohingya refugees, whom it has labelled a “security risk,” in camps and moving to expel them at the earliest opportunity.

The CAA is meant to pave the way for the government to establish a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC). Under the NRC, all of India’s 1.3 billion people will have to document to the satisfaction of the BJP-led government that they are citizens. But, as a result of Muslims’ exclusion from the CAA, only they will do so under the threat of being declared “stateless,” losing their citizenship rights, and potentially being interned in detention camps or expelled.

In Assam, the only state hitherto subject to the NRC, Indian authorities have ruled 1.9 million people, most of them Indian-born Muslims, stateless.

The CAA and NRC are the latest in a long series of BJP provocations aimed at realizing the Hindu right’s longstanding goal of transforming India into a Hindu Rashtra or state, in which Muslims and other minorities will have to defer to Hindu supremacy.

The sudden eruption of mass opposition to the CAA has surprised and shaken the BJP government. Muslim youth have been in the forefront of the protest movement. But it has touched all parts of the country and cut across communal and caste lines, drawing Hindu, Sikh and Dalit youth and working people into the streets alongside their Muslim brethren.

The opposition parties, including the Congress Party, till recently the Indian bourgeoisie’s principal party of national government, and their Stalinist allies in the twin Communist parliamentary parties, are seeking to exploit the growing hostility to the BJP and to harness it to the reactionary framework of official politics. This includes boosting illusions that the Indian Supreme Court and other state institutions can be relied on as secular bulwarks against the BJP’s Hindu communalism and authoritarianism. In fact, the Supreme Court, like the Congress Party, has a long record of capitulating to and conniving with the Hindu right and attacking democratic rights.

On Saturday, rail and road travel in Bihar, India’s third most populous state, was crippled by an anti-CAA bandh called by the Rashtriya Lok Dal, a regionalist and caste-ist party that is the main opposition in the state legislature. Police reportedly detained more than 1500 people.

Yesterday, the Congress Party Chief Minister of Rajastahan, Ashok Gehlot, led a march against the new citizenship law of close to 300,000 people in the state capital, Japiur.

Rajasthan and eight other state governments including those of West Bengal, Punjab, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh, have vowed that they will not implement the NRC. That the governments of Bihar and Odisha, which are led by BJP allies, have also felt compelled to declare their opposition to the NRC, after voting for the CAA in national parliament, is a further indication of the widespread character of the opposition to the BJP government’s Hindu supremacist agenda.

The BJP government is nonetheless insisting that it will go ahead with the NRC forthwith, and that any state that tries to block it will be violating the Constitution.

Yesterday, Modi gave a major address in Delhi, which has seen widespread anti-CAA protests.

Notwithstanding his own lifelong membership in the shadowy fascistic RSS and record of heinous communal crimes, including presiding over the 2002 anti-Muslim Gujarat pogrom as the state’s chief minister, Modi claimed that India’s Muslims have nothing to fear from the CAA.

He accused the Congress and “urban Naxals” of defaming the country and seeking to “push not only New Delhi but other parts of the country into a fear psychosis.” “Urban Naxals” is a BJP smear term, meant to associate government opponents with the Maoist insurgency in highland jungle India, so as to justify their repression.

In an admission of the scope and scale of the unrest, Modi also charged the opposition of “trying every tactic to push me out of power.”

Modi’s rally was meant to kick off a BJP-RSS counter-offensive of press conferences, marches, and door-to-door campaigning through which it will seek to rally its fascistic base.

The BJP government’s Hindu chauvinist measures, including the CAA and NRC, are an attempt to whip up communal reaction and to split the working class and oppressed under conditions of growing opposition to the government’s “pro-investor” policies and austerity measures and India’s transformation, as the result of thirty years of neo-liberal reform, into one of the world’s most unequal societies.

With India’s economic situation going from bad to worse, both domestic and international capital are agitating for the Modi government to intensify its class-war assault. On a visit to India last week, the IMF’s chief economist, Gita Gopinath, said the “extent of the slowdown of the Indian economy had surprised many, including us here at the IMF.” She urged the government to reduce the budget deficit more quickly, even while diverting large sums to bailing out India’s beleaguered banks, and to make it easier for businesses to lay off workers and acquire large parcels of land. “Politically,” said Gopinath, “the time—early in the government’s second term—is right for structural reform.”

The Trump administration and the US political elite have said next to nothing about the latest communal and authoritarian actions of the Modi government, just as they have ignored the BJP government’s constitutional coup against Jammu and Kashmir and the ongoing state-of-siege imposed on the disputed Muslim-majority region. This is because India is seen as critical to the US military-strategic offensive and war plans against China.

Last Wednesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper met with their Indian counterparts, respectively S. Jaishankar and Rajnath Singh, in the second ever annual 2+2 meeting. They agreed to step up Indo-US strategic cooperation across the Indo-Pacific region, including through increased military cooperation between the Indian Navy and the US Indo-Pacific, Central and African Commands.

Australian fires bring growing global climate crisis into stark relief

James Cogan

Fires claimed more lives and property across Australia over the weekend, while once again blanketing cities such as Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in dense clouds of smoke. More than 200 major fires are still burning out-of-control and, with extreme heat and no significant rainfall predicted in much of the country, the situation is expected to worsen over the coming weeks and months.

Towns and hamlets in the Adelaide Hills suffered some of the greatest devastation, as fire tore through farms and vineyards. South Australian Premier Steven Marshall reported that at least 86 homes were destroyed, along with hundreds of outbuildings and vehicles. Ron Selth, 69-years-old, was killed while he attempted to defend his home from the flames in the small township of Charleston. Firefighters and residents were injured trying to protect property.

A firefighter in Queensland [Credit: Queensland Fire and Emergency Services Facebook]

In New South Wales (NSW), an extensive area of forest is burning in the mountain ranges, in what are now the largest fires in the state’s history. Since September, some 2.7 million hectares have gone up in flame. The 70,000-strong volunteer Rural Fire Service (RFS) has been stretched to breaking point mobilising the personnel to fight fire fronts that are more than 11,000 kilometres in length.

On Saturday, naval helicopters had to be called in to rescue people threatened by fire into the coastal communities of Fisherman’s Paradise and Sassafras to the south of Sydney. On Thursday night, two volunteer firefighters from Sydney were killed and three injured in a vehicle accident while fighting the fires in the nearby town of Buxton.

More than 60 fires are burning in south east Queensland. In Victoria, huge fires are raging in forests in Gippsland, to the east of Melbourne. In Western Australia, an out-of-control bushfire north of Perth had burnt more than 11,000 hectares with residents on Saturday being urged to leave while they still could.

Nationally, some 1,000 homes have been destroyed so far in the 2019–2020 fire season, with the traditionally worst period in January and February still to come. Thousands of unpaid volunteer firefighters have suffered major financial losses due to being repeatedly asked to take time off from their employment. Dozens have been injured.

The extensive fires in Australia follow the blazes that have engulfed large areas of California, Siberia, Borneo and the Amazon. In Siberia alone, Greenpeace estimates that some 12 million hectares have been burnt out this year. The unprecedented character of fires in country after country highlights the growing danger to humanity of global climate change.

The fire emergency brings into stark relief the lack of conscious planning and preparation, at both the national and state level, for the impact of climate change. Capitalist governments around the world, to protect corporate profit and the fortunes of the wealthy, have blocked any serious reductions in carbon emissions and left their populations to face the consequences.

The Climate Council report, The Facts about Bushfires and Climate Change published in November 2019, stated: “[F]or well over 20 years, scientists have warned that climate change would increase the risk of extreme bushfires in Australia. This warning was accurate. Scientists expect extreme fire weather will continue to become more frequent and severe without substantial and rapid action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Firefighters have drawn similar conclusions in line with the science. The former chief of NSW Fire and Rescue Greg Mullins told the Guardian: “Just a 1 Celsius temperature rise has meant the extremes are far more extreme, and it is placing lives at risk, including firefighters. Climate change has supercharged the bushfire problem.”

Highlighting the degree to which the continent is drying, tropical rainforest in northern NSW and Queensland, where fires historically did not take hold, have gone up in flames this year.

Craig Lapsley, the former emergency management commissioner in Victoria, told the media on December 17: “We’ve got fires in multiple states now and potentially we’ll have fires in all states and territories in the end of December, January and February, which is a first for Australia. That is a turning point. That’s telling us it is different.”

The lack of preparation for this “new normal” is graphically shown in the reliance on volunteer firefighting services with insufficient funding and equipment. While tens of billions of dollars have been spent equipping the Australian military with everything from mini-aircraft carriers, to F-35 jet fighters and new combat vehicles, no serious investment has taken place to equip firefighting services with state-of-the-art aircraft, helicopters and trucks and staff them with well-paid, highly-trained professionals.

Several former heads of the emergency services spoke on their concerns in a feature published in the December 21 edition of the Saturday Paper.

Naomi Brown, previously chief executive of the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council, told the paper: “The way we’re dealing with fires now has been terrific, it has worked for many years. It is now unsustainable. The need for volunteers 24 hours a day, months on end, is going to make life very, very difficult. There is no doubt we need a national look at this. We need a serious plan.”

Greg Mullins noted: “One of the problems for resourcing firefighters at the moment is that we lease large aircraft from the USA. Other countries are after them, like Chile. We have to get in early to get enough of them.”

Traditionally, both aerial and ground firefighting resources have been able to be shifted from state to state, and even from country to country. Australian firefighting crews often deploy to the US, for example, and vice versa. Under conditions in which major blazes are taking place simultaneously, this is increasingly not possible. The fire season began this year in Australia in September, when California was ablaze.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a climate change sceptic, is currently the target of much of the anger over the decades of political indifference to the development of more extreme fire dangers.

On December 10, he dismissed the prospect of paying volunteer firefighters on the grounds that “they want to be out there defending their communities.” Two days later, he rejected the 2020 Climate Change Performance Index that ranked the Australian government’s efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions as the worst performing internationally.

“What we cannot say, what no one can say, is those programs (to reduce greenhouse gasses), of themselves, are in any way directly linked to any fire event,” Morrison declared.

In reality, south east Australia has become progressively drier since the 1990s, with a 15 percent decline in late autumn and early winter rainfall and a 25 percent decline in average rainfall in April and May. Average temperatures have increased across the country, and lead to more frequent extreme fire conditions.

December 17, 2019, experienced the hottest ever recorded national average temperature of 41.9 degrees Celsius (107.4 degrees Fahrenheit). The previous recorded high was 40.9C on December 16, which exceeded the 40.3C registered in January 2013.

Morrison only stoked public outrage by secretly going on Christmas holidays in Hawaii as much of the country burned and the major cities were choked in toxic smoke. In the face of a storm of criticism, he went into damage control, issuing a public apology on Friday and returning to Australia to meet with the families of the two firefighters who lost their lives.

Morrison’s attitude is simply a graphic example of the contempt and indifference of governments, not only in Australia, to the impact of climate change on the lives of millions of people. Under capitalism, corporate profits and the competing national interests of rival ruling classes block any rationale plan to address this global disaster.

The necessary political changes depend upon the working class taking matters into its own hands. Society on a world scale must be completely reorganised on the basis of socialist planning, to achieve massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and to counter for the myriad consequences of global warming.

Making Sense of China's Diplomatic Fig Leaf to South Korea

Sandip Kumar Mishra

China, after a period of bad blood with South Korea, appears to be offering a fig leaf to its neighbour. What is the background to this latest development, and what is in it for the China, as well as South Korea and the US, who are all stakeholders in the region?

Background

In 2016, China put unprecedented pressure on South Korea after the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system on the Korean peninsula. China saw this as an attempt by the US to change the balance of power in the region. It also read the situation as diminishing Chinese clout in its neighbourhood. All of these led to a strong response from China, which had economic and diplomatic implications for South Korea. South Korean businesses suffered, and the country was unable to use  Beijing’s proximity with Pyongyang in attempts to address the North Korean nuclear issue. This has meant that even though there is commonality in the Chinese and current South Korean dispensation's approaches towards North Korea, which argue for a diplomatic solution, there has been scant coordination between them.

Regional and Extra-Regional Dynamics: As Thing Stand

China’s growing distance from South Korea also meant Beijing moving closer to Pyongyang. In fact, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un have had several meetings in 2018 and 2019, and Kim has been quite successful in coordinating his moves with Xi in dealing with the US. Meanwhile, South Korea has not able to convince the US about the value of their bilateral alliance. The US-South Korea relationship has grown increasingly bitter in recent years over the issue of cost-sharing for US troop presence on the Korean peninsula. If North Korea disengages with the nuclear dialogue process with the US, South Korea and the US may drift apart further. Trust between the two allies is at a historic low.

The US is also not happy with South Korea's reluctance to unequivocally join the Indo-Pacific strategy. On the other hand, South Korea is dissatisfied with Washington’s lack of mediation in worsening Korea-Japan ties, with some seeing it as tacit US support to a more aggressive Japanese foreign policy under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Over the last two years, South Korea’s disputes with Japan on various issues have intensified. This was reflected in Japan's decision to remove South Korea from its ‘white list’ of countries, and South Korea’s reluctance to extend the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA).

China's Outreach to South Korea

It is on the basis of these developments and their future potentially negative impact that China is now attempting to explore a new beginning with South Korea. In early December 2019, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Seoul for high-level discussions on a variety of mutual issues of concern. Although some meetings have indeed taken place in the recent past between Chinese and South Korean leaders, they have been mostly symbolic. Wang Yi's visit is significant first because this is the first high-level meeting between the two countries since December 2017, when South Korean President Moon Jae-in went to Beijing.

Importantly, while the recent meeting did not bring any forward movement on the THAAD issue, a sense of reconciliation was quite visible. South Korea reiterated China’s crucial role in addressing North Korea's nuclear programme, and the Chinese foreign minister demanded South Korean cooperation in its fight against "the global rise of unilateralism," without naming any specific country. Wang Yi emphasised China and South Korea's geographical proximity, and their roles as friends and partners, and went so far as to say that they would never acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear power.

China also appears to be looking forward to Moon Jae-in’s visit to Chengdu to attend the South Korea-Japan-China summit on 24 December 2019. Hua Chunying, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, has said that this would be an opportunity to conduct in-depth discussions on issues of mutual interest. The Chinese Ambassador to South Korea, Qiu Guohong, has also announced a forthcoming visit by Xi Jinping to South Korea in order to bring the countries closer.

Overall, it is clear that China is making a diplomatic overture towards South Korea. The objective of getting the bilateral relationship back on track would also be to put further distance between Seoul and Washington. Even if  China is unable to achieve this objective, these attempts will still contribute to strengthening South Korea's fence-sitting on the issue of the Indo-Pacific, and therefore its role in the US' emerging strategic calculus for the region.  

Government of Italy Invest Your Talent Scholarship and Internship Program 2020/2021 for International Students

Application Deadline: 27th February 2020

Eligible Countries: Scholarships are awarded to citizens, permanently resident in their home country, of the following list of countries:  Azerbaijan, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Mexico, People’s Republic of China, Tunisia, Turkey, Vietnam.

To Be Taken At (Country): Italy

About the Award: Scholarships are awarded for courses of Master’s degree (Laurea magistrale or Master universitario) at Italian Higher Education Institutes (state-owned institutions or institutions legally recognized by the relevant state authorities) partners of the Invest Your Talent in Italy Program. The program includes the attendance of a mandatory internship at selected Italian companies partners of the initiative.
The aim of the Program is to foster cooperation among Italian Universities and Italian companies in order to promote their internationalization by sustaining higher education courses tailored to the needs of the labor market. Thanks to this Program, young foreigners, educated in Italy and properly trained in their specific fields of expertise, will have the opportunity to make a working experience at selected Italian companies, partners of Invest Your Talent in Italy.

Type: Masters, Internship

Eligibility: Applications may be submitted only by those who meet the following requirements by the deadline of this call.
Academic qualifications: Applications may only be submitted by those candidates referred to in Article 2 who hold the required academic qualifications (Bachelor’s Degree) to enroll in the chosen Master’s degree Program (Laurea Magistrale or Master Universitario).
Age requirements: Candidates may apply if they are no more than 28 years old on the deadline of this call, except for the only renewals.
Language skills:

• Candidates should submit an English language certificate as proof of their proficiency in English .
• Candidates should hold at least a B2 level certificate within the Common European Framework of
  Referrqence for Languages (CEFR).
  Proof of proficiency in Italian is not mandatory but will be taken in consideration in the selection process.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• Candidates who have been granted scholarships under the Invest Your Talent in Italy Program are exempted from the payment of tuition fees except for the regional tax for “Diritto allo Studio”.
• Grantees must subscribe a health insurance policy to bear any expenses due to illnesses or accidents.
• Grantees will receive 888 euros monthly allowance every three months on their Italian bank account. The first installment of the scholarship can only be received after the University enrollment according to the necessary administrative procedures

Duration of Program: The scholarship will cover a period of study of 9 (nine) months starting from October 1, 2020. Students will receive the installment every three months.

How to Apply: Only those students who have submitted their application for one of the postgraduate courses (laurea Magistrale or Master) included in the Program can apply for a IYT scholarship:
http://www.postgradinitaly.esteri.it/postgradinitaly/en/how-to-apply

 REGISTRATION


Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) Scholarships 2020/2021 for Students in Muslim Communities (Undergraduate, Masters, PhD)

Application Deadline: 28th February 2020

About Scholarship: The IsDB is pleased to announce that calls for scholarship applications for the academic year 2020/2021 are now opened through a new portal to receive online applications for the following programmes:

1. Undergraduate Scholarship Programme
2. Master Scholarship Programme
3. PhD Scholarship Programme
4. Post-Doctoral Research Programme
5. IsDB/ISFD Scholarship Programme for Vocational Education and Training (VET)
6. Joint Programme with The World Academy of Science (TWAS) in Trieste, Italy for Sustainability Science, Technology and Innovation

Type: Undergraduate, Masters, PhD, Research

Eligibility: To be eligible for this scholarship, the student/applicant must be able to meet the basic criteria for their preferred programme.

Number of Scholarships: Several

Value of Scholarship: The Programme covers all relevant expenses during students’ study period, including tuition fees, health and living costs as determined by the IsDB.

Duration of Scholarship: for the period of study

To be taken at (country): Consistent with the concept of the Programme, students must get admission or be in the first year in their own countries.
On exceptional basis and where admissions in professional courses are not possible or not available in any particular country, the IDB assists to place students from these countries in IsDB member countries, which have been generous enough to provide places for the IsDB students in their universities.

How to Apply: Interested candidates for the programme must fill in the appropriate application form in the link below.

Visit scholarship webpage for more details

Google for Startups Accelerator: Sustainable Development Goals 2020 for Social Impact Startups

Application Deadline: 5th January, 2020

Eligible Countries: Countries in Europe, Middle East & Africa

About the Award: There is no shortage of problems facing humanity, but there is a shortage of successful startups solving them. We aim to fix that.
Our goal for the Google for Startups Accelerator: Sustainable Development Goals is to empower technology startups to build and scale viable social impact companies to solve the world’s biggest problems with the best of Google: our people, our network, and our advanced technology.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: 
We expect to run multiple cohorts of startups through this accelerator over the next several years. Over time, we want to gather a portfolio of startups from around the world that are collectively working on the full range of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. For our first class, we’ve chosen to focus on startups that are based in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
We’re looking for:

• Startups should have a technology-based product. In particular but not exclusively, we’re best positioned to work with startups that address a unique problem with data/artificial intelligence or machine learning.
• Startups should have some level of market traction with their product/service and are past the “idea stage” with some initial customer validation.
• Startups should be able to identify a large market opportunity for significant impact. 
• Startups should equally be driven by both the business case for the product/service and the social impact that their product/service can have. 
• The startup’s founding team and/or key team members should be able to demonstrate that they have the technical skills, business skills, and social impact mindset to grow a company in the social impact sector.

Physical commitment is only required for 3 weeks.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: Startups accepted into the sustainability accelerator can expect the following equity-free support from Google:

• 1:1 mentoring and support from a combination of Google mentors and carefully chosen external mentors
• Assistance with technology, product, design, growth (including fundraising), and leadership training
• Pairing with a Google Startup Success Manager to help connect your startup with specific resources within and outside Google
• Inspirational keynote talks, panel discussions, and workshops with relevant experts
• Membership in a collaborative, supportive community of relevant social impact partners 

How to Apply: APPLY NOW 

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details