Ghent University Full-fee Doctoral Scholarships for Developing Countries 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 6th March 2018

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To be taken at (country): Belgium

About the Award: These grants take the form of a so called “sandwich” scholarship: the candidate obtains a scholarship for maximum 24 months to work within a span of 48 months on an alternating basis on the PhD at Ghent University (‘North’) and at the university or research centre in a developing country (‘South’). Only for the periods the scholarship holder works at Ghent University the scholarship holder will receive a monthly income. The rest of the PhD research is done in the partner university, for which no funding is provided through this scholarship. For this part of the PhD research students must prove that they will be financed at their home university (e.g. fulltime PhD scholarship or salary).

Eligible Fields of Research: No restrictions are imposed on the field of research, nevertheless  preference will be given to topics that are relevant for development. Relevance for development measures the degree in which the action of development corresponds with the expectations of the beneficiaries, the needs of the country, global priorities and the policies of partners and donors.

The proposals must be submitted by a candidate, a promoter at Ghent University and a supervisor at the local institution.

Type: Doctoral

Eligibility:To be admissible for this call, all of the following requirements must be met:

• Candidates need to come from – and have the nationality of – a developing country (see country list in link below);
• There must be a guarantee that the candidate will be able to work on the PhD project at the partner university in a selected developing country (South). This implies that there must be a local PhD supervisor at the partner university or research center.
• A written  statement is requested from the university authorities stating that the candidate is either a fulltime PhD student or a staff member of this university and will be sufficiently exempted from teaching or other assignments as to be able to fully concentrate on the PhD research in the South.
• This statement should also mention that the candidate receives a local PhD scholarship or salary when working on the PhD at the partner university in the South.
• CSC scholarship holders are not eligible to apply for a Doctoral grants for researchers from developing countries. CSC students are referred to the call Cofunding for Chinese candidates PhD candidates holding a CSC scholarship (deadline October 2017).

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship:

• The value of the scholarship at Ghent University depends on, a.o., the researcher’s family situation.
• The Ghent University promoter also receives a bench fee to cover (part of) the operational costs, as well as the travelling costs of the student and both the Ghent University and the local promoter.

Duration of Scholarship: 

• The candidate obtains a scholarship for maximum 24 months which must be divided into several periods within a span of 4 years.
• Students are obliged to divide the scholarship into minimum 2 different research stays in Ghent (North) and need to return at least once to their home university (South)  in between (=‘sandwich- schedule’)
• The candidate must propose at least 12 months of locally funded research stay in the South after the first BOF funded stay in Ghent (North).
• Due to all practical arrangements (visa, housing, contract, …) students are advised to stay for long periods in Ghent (e.g. 1 year).
• This scholarship call does not intend to support students who plan only 1 research stay in Ghent.

How to Apply: Before applying for a PhD scholarship at Ghent university students Always need to find a professor from Ghent University who is willing to act as the supervisor (‘promoter’) of their doctoral research and who agrees to support their application. The best way to do this is by browsing the list of faculties and research topics available on our research directory

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: The Beacon Equity Trust.

Fondation Rainbow Bridge MBA Scholarships for Women from Africa and Asia 2018/2019 – France

Dates

• Application Deadline: Rolling.
• Decision Dates:
  • September 2018 Full-time intake: August 2018
  • January 2019 Full-time intake: August 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: for women from Asian or African countries

To be taken at (country): HEC Paris, France

Eligible Field of Study: Masters in Business Administration (MBA)

About the Award: The Fondation Rainbow Bridge Scholarship was established in memory of Muriel Dargent, Matthieu Dargent, Iris Dargent, and Muriel’s parents, all of whom disappeared in the December 2004 Tsunami.

A graduate of HEC in 1988, Muriel Dargent presented a strong role model for young women, juggling her responsibilities as wife, mother, and leader. As the Financial Director of Nihon L’Oreal in Japan, Muriel was fluent in English, Spanish and Japanese. The Fondation Rainbow Bridge will enable young women recipients to enrich their academic background by obtaining an HEC MBA. Please note that unfortunately you cannot apply for this scholarship if admitted after June 15th for the September intake and after November 26th for the January intake.

Offered Since: 2004

Type: MBA

Eligibility: Recipients of this scholarship are top-caliber female candidates who have been admitted to the HEC Paris MBA program (Full-time only) and who can demonstrate exemplary leadership skills in one or more of the following areas:

• Community work
• Charity engagement
• Sustainable development practices

Selection Criteria

• Only admitted candidates can apply for this scholarship.
• Women applying must come from an Asian or African country affected by a natural disaster, drought or famine.
• In addition, they must demonstrate a commitment to solving some of the social and economic issues affecting their countries while working for the long-term security of the people living there.
• Please note that unfortunately you cannot apply for this scholarship if admitted after June 15th for the September intake and after November 26th for the January intake.

Number of Awardees: Up to two scholarships

Value of Scholarship: € 20,000 per year

Duration of Scholarship: for the period of study

How to Apply

Essay Question: Please explain in 1,500 words why you should be named the Fondation Rainbow Bridge Scholar at the HEC Paris MBA Program, while identifying your post-MBA goals.

Personal Financial Statement: Applicants must submit a detailed description of their financial circumstances as well as a cash-flow forecast for the 16-month duration at HEC.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Fondation Rainbow Bridge

Fox International Fellowships for Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral Students 2018/2019 – Yale University

Application Deadline: Application deadlines are in January/February each year: specific dates will be announced by each Fox partner university.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Institutions: Yale University, United States  | University of São Paulo, Brazil  |  Fudan University, China | University of Cambridge, England  |  Institut d’Études de Politiques de Paris, France  |  Freie University of Berlin, Germany  |  University of Ghana, Ghana |  Jawaharlal Nehru University, India  | Tel Aviv University, Israel  |  The University of Tokyo, Japan  |  El Colegio de México, México  |  Moscow State University, Russia  | University of Cape Town, South Africa  |  Boğaziçi University, Turkey | University of British Columbia, Canada  | The Australian National University &  The University of Melbourne, Australia  |   The University of Copenhagen & The Copenhagen Business School, Denmark | National University of Singapore

To be taken at (country): Yale University, USA

Fields of Study: Fox International Fellowships seek applicants whose work has the potential to offer practical solutions to the problems which stand in the way of the world`s peace and prosperity. The fellowship focuses on such critical fields as: international relations and global affairs, law, environmental policy, public health, social sciences, economics, political science, business and finance, management, and contemporary history.

About the Award: The Fox International Fellowship is a graduate student exchange program between Yale and 19 world-renowned partner universities. Fox International Fellows are selected for their potential to become leaders in fields that are policy significant, historically informed, and socially meaningful. Such work is increasingly conditioned by the interdisciplinary and transnational character of knowledge and practice in the twenty-first century. Fellows’ research projects and academic interests reflect the areas toward which many of the world’s major decision-makers have gravitated, as well as those that have the potential to open new channels of debate.

The Fox Fellowship, through scholarship and civic engagement, aims to enhance “mutual understanding” between the United States and the home countries of our partner universities in order to provoke and contribute to productive dialogue around complex challenges and to offer current and enduring solutions. Initiated at the end of the Cold War, the focus on peace and conflict in general and U.S./Soviet interaction has expanded to include a host of twenty-first century challenges in every world region such as prosperity and development, poverty alleviation, environmental degradation, resource stewardship, and human rights.

Type: Fellowship, Doctoral, Masters.

The Fox Fellowship is NOT open to postdoctoral applicants. International student proposing projects in their home country are NOT eligible.

Eligibility: Graduate level students pursuing Doctoral or Masters level degrees and graduating master’s level students are eligible. Graduating bachelors’ level students of unusual merit and distinction may be considered but advanced, graduate level students are preferred. The Fox Fellowship is NOT open to postdoctoral applicants and international student proposing projects in their home country are NOT eligible.

Personal characteristics: The candidate must demonstrate commitment to serious research and also capacity for leadership and civic engagement in the larger community. The candidate clearly understands and has demonstrated commitment to being a “citizen ambassador.”

Strength of academic achievement: The candidate must demonstrate both excellence in relevant coursework as well as strong evidence of research ability in the field of endeavor they are proposing as their Fox Fellowship project.

Field of focus: A strong and specific research project with a focus in international relations and global affairs, environmental policy, public health, business and finance, social sciences, economics, political science, law, and contemporary history, with preference for topics of contemporary, applied and/or institutional relevance to enhancing the world’s peace and prosperity. The candidate’s overall program of studies or degree may come from different disciplines and departments as long as their project focuses on one or more of these fields.

Language skills: The candidate’s language skills must be sufficient both to succeed in their research project and to engage in the intellectual and social community of the host university and their colleagues in the Fox International Fellowship at Yale. Candidates for Fox Fellowships at Yale University have to provide recent TOEFL or IELTS scores demonstrating proficiency in English conversation, reading and writing. This requirement is waived only for applicants from partner institutions where English is the primary language of instruction.

Selection Criteria: The Yale Fox Fellowship selection committee makes the final decision based on the following criteria:

●    Quality of research proposal
●    Strength of academic achievement
●    Character and demonstrated leadership potential
●    Demonstrated personal commitment to being a “citizen ambassador”

Number of Awardees: Annually at least one student from each Fox exchange partner takes up residency at Yale, and at least one Yale student goes to each partner.

Value of Fellowship: All Fellows at Yale receive the same award, which is commensurate to the level of funding received by doctoral students in the graduate school.  Awards include round-trip travel, accommodations in rental housing provided by the Fox Fellowship and a generous living stipend to cover expenses not already provided for by existing funds that you may have at your disposal. The Fellowship will also cover health insurance. All fellows are also able to apply for grants from a research travel fund up to U.S.D $2000.

Duration of Fellowship: 10 months

How to Apply: All applicants are encouraged to read the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)section before applying. For students at Fox Fellowship exchange partner institutions, click here.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Yale University

Google Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) Program for Computer Science Educators (Funding Available) 2018

Application Deadline: 2nd March 2018.

Eligible Countries: Countries in Africa, US, Canada, Europe and Middle East.

Purpose: Developing Computer Science educators globally for today’s 21st century students.

About the Award: Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) now Educator professional development (PD) is an annual funding program to improve the computer science (CS) educational ecosystem by providing funding for the continuation of CS teacher professional development worldwide. CS4HS provides funding to computer science education experts for the planning and development of CS teacher professional development. Driven by local needs, CS4HS funding brings educators together for a professional development opportunity with the goals of invigorating them about computer science and computational thinking, while providing tools and networking opportunities to help educators in the CS classroom.

Awards: Institutions may receive support of up to $15,000 each. Additional funding is available for projects with regional reach and the potential to scale nationally. This can be through MOOCs or collaborating with other organisations.

Eligibility: To apply for a CS4HS award you must meet the following requirements:

• Your professional development opportunity must include a plan for year-round communities of practice work that supports ongoing PD and advocacy for Computer Science.
• Affiliated with a university, technical college or an official non-profit organization.
• Project must develop high school teachers or student’s understanding of computer science and contain computer science content that will be relevant in the classroom.
• Project must be in the form of either a teacher training workshop or teacher and student training workshops, an online course (MOOC) or a teacher resource project.
• Previous applicants are welcome to apply, if adding a new dimension to former projects or launching a new computer science project.

Selection Criteria: The funding criteria for 2018 are:

• Educator Audience: Pre-service or in-service teachers who reach students ages 10-18
• Content: Professional development (PD) content based on the needs of your Educator Audience, mapped to your local/national CS standards (if relevant), and relevant for an in-class implementation of CS (i.e. standalone CS course, or interdisciplinary application of CS).
• Format and Schedule: PD delivered throughout the 2018-2019 academic year with a format and schedule based in meet the needs of your Educator Audience
• Support: Community of Practice (COP) that supports ongoing commitment of educators and implementation of CS content in the classroom throughout the 2018-2019 academic year.

How to Apply: START YOUR APPLICATION

Please read FAQs and make sure you meet the eligibility requirements before applying.

Tips for a successful application:

• Project contains computer science content.
• Project creates new materials that can be brought directly back to the classroom or used elsewhere by anyone (open source).
• Project has regional reach with the potential to scale nationally/internationally.
• There is careful budget consideration and a clear breakdown of how the funding will be used.
• Project provides a hands-on experience and includes activities for participants that are interactive and allows them to manipulate the subject themselves.
• There is follow up activity and continued learning for the target audience.
• How you will develop and/or support a Community of Practice

Visit Program Webpage for details

Note’s From Europe’s African Border

Vijay Prashad

Refugees do not show up in the Mediterranean Sea as if from nowhere. By the time they get into their flimsy boats on the Libyan coastline, they have lived many, many dangerous lives. They would have left their increasingly unproductive fields in western and eastern Africa, fled wars in the Horn of Africa, in Sudan and in places as far as Afghanistan, and travelled great distances to get to what they see as the final leg of their journey.

What they want is to make it to Europe, which — since the early days of colonialism — has broadcast itself as the land of milk and honey. Old colonial ideas and the wealth of Europe built from colonial labour beckons. It is a siren for the wretched of the earth. It has ended for many Africans in virtual concentration camps in Libya, where refugees that Europe does not want now linger — some sold into slavery.

To get to Libya, the migrants and refugees have to cross the Sahara Desert, which in Arabic is known, rightly, as the Greatest Desert (al-Sahara al-Kubra). It is vast, hot and dangerous. Old salt caravans — the Azalai — mostly managed by the Tuareg peoples would run between Mali as well as Niger and Libya. They would carry gold, salt, weapons and captured human beings as objects of trade.

Those old caravans still make their journey, moving from one water source to the next, the camels as exhausted as the Tuareg. Newer caravans have supplanted these older ones. Camels are not their mode of transport. They prefer buses, pickup trucks and jeeps to ferry humans and cocaine towards Europe, while guns and money comes southwards. These newer caravans drive along unmarked paths, heading between sand dunes, searching for old tire tracks that have been buried in disorienting sandstorms.

Surviving the sand

The Sahara is dangerous. The journey in a pickup truck could take three days, at best, or the refugees and cocaine mules could find themselves dying from dehydration, extremists, smugglers or the security forces in the region.

There are many people ready to prey on the travellers and on the smugglers, whose cars are routinely stolen. No proper account exists of dead refugees. This June, the UN Refugees Agency reported the death of 44 migrants who died of dehydration and heat stroke when their truck broke down between the Nigerien cities of Agadez and Dirkou.

The UN had saved at least 600 migrants between April and June. “Saving lives in the desert is becoming more urgent than ever,” said Giuseppe Loprete, the Niger Chief of Mission for the International Organisation for Migration.

To prevent migrants from reaching the Mediterranean, France has asked five African countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger) to join its G5 Sahel Initiative. The Sahel is the belt that runs across Africa below the Sahara Desert.

The European Union has also contributed to this project. The Europeans want to move their southern border from the northern edge of the Mediterranean Sea to the southern rim of the Sahara Desert. French military bases run across the Sahel, as the United States builds an enormous base in Agadez (Niger) from where it will fly drones to provide aerial support. The military has arrived in the Sahel to stop the flow of migrants.

Cocaine trail

Agadez, where the United States military is spending $100 million to build its drone base, sits at the crossroads of our contemporary crises. Refugees come to it in desperation — their land made miserable by trade policies that discriminate against small farmers and by desertification caused by carbon capitalism. As the United States government has made it difficult for cocaine to enter the U.S. from Central America, the cocaine mafia have moved its operations to this central belt of Africa. A leading politician in Niger, Cherif Ould Abidine, who died in 2016 was known as Mr. Cocaine. Billions of dollars of cocaine now moves through the Sahel into the Sahara and upwards to Europe. The pickup trucks that carry refugees and cocaine go past the town of Arlit, where French multinational corporations are harvesting uranium (Oxfam noted in 2013, ‘One of every three light bulbs in France is lit, thanks to Nigerien uranium’). So here we have it: refugees, cocaine, uranium and a massive military enterprise.

Men from Gambia and from Mali wait outside a smugglers’ compound. His Toyota Hilux, the camel of this new trade, sits near the gate. The men are wearing sunglasses. This is their defence once they enter the desert. They are apprehensive. Their future, however grim, must be better than their present. These are gamblers. They are willing to take the chance. The engine fires up. They throw their modest belonging onto the truck. It is time for their azalai.

The World’s Real Nuclear Menace Isn’t North Korea

Joshua Cho

With growing speculation of war with North Korea and familiar apocalyptic rhetoric in recent times, the United States and North Korea have participated in increasingly bellicose exchanges. These recent exchanges range from President Trump calling on other nations to stop financing and trading with North Korea because it’s a “very serious nuclear menace,” redesignating North Korea as an official state sponsor of terrorism, to more North Korean nuclear missile tests and American and South Korean joint war games.

In light of the nuclear brinkmanship with North Korea bringing frequent comparisons to the Cuban Missile Crisis and discussion of hypothetical worst-case scenarios, it’s worth reviewing the United States’ record and examining whether North Korea is really the belligerent nuclear menace the world needs to liberate itself from. As critics of American foreign policy have noticed, the United States’ leaders, its media and its citizens never quite seem to recognize the full consequences of their country’s actions in other regions, or investigate its long history of conflict with North Korea.

To begin in chronological order, touring around the globe, it’s been noted by international relations scholars and historians that the Korean War is partly known as “The Forgotten War” because Americans have largely forgotten “the utter ruin and devastation” the United States inflicted upon North Korea. It’s not widely known that the United States’ own leaders have admitted to have “killed off” approximately 20% of North Korea’s population throughout the war by targeting “everything that moved.” Or that the United States destroyed more cities in North Korea than it did in Germany or Japan during World War II by dropping more bombs than it did throughout the entire Pacific Theatre. When there were few urban targets left to bomb, the United States began to bomb dams that supplied water for the production of rice—one of the quintessential food commodities in Asia—which led to mass starvation during and after the war. While Americans may not remember the carnage across the other side of the world, North Koreans have never forgotten the destruction on its own peninsula, nor the American threats to use nuclear weapons during the war which first inspired Kim Il-Sung to obtain his own nuclear deterrent decades ago.

Looking at events throughout the next few decades, it’s apparent that American policymakers either fail to consider, or disregard, how their duplicitous dealings and illegal military interventions across the world could inspire smaller countries like North Korea to seek more cost-effective and credible deterrents to an American invasion than large standing armies, in the form of nuclear weapons.

While American officials compare the situation in North Korea with the 1960s Cuban Missile Crisis by depicting North Korea as an irrational and unpredictable adversary willing to initiate nuclear destruction, the real comparison lies in the United States’ refusal to live under the same threat it subjects to other countries, which forms a straight line of continuity to the present.

Historians have long known that John F. Kennedy lied to the American public by claiming that the Eisenhower-Nixon administrations had allowed a dangerous missile gap to grow in the Soviet Union’s favor, despite the opposite being the case. And that Nikita Khrushchev was inspired to equalize the balance of power by dispatching Soviet nuclear weapons to Cuba upon learning that the United States had stationed its nuclear weapons near the Soviet Union in Turkey, and to deter the United States from launching an invasion of Cuba. This fear of invasion was a justifiable concern considering the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in the previous year and the CIA’s ongoing Operation Mongoose at the time, which tried to undermine the Castro regime through assassination attempts and sabotage.

However, the United States found the mere perception of an even playing field intolerable as it dispatched a naval blockade, considered an act of war in international law, to prevent further missiles from reaching Cuba. All of this happened despite Kennedy’s own assessment that the blockade would increase the probability of war to climb as high as 50%. We now know that even top-level decision makers like former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara were rendered speechless decades later upon learning that both the United States and Cuba had severely underestimated the risk of nuclear war at the time.

In the end, nuclear war was barely averted by the heroism of Soviet submarine officer Vasili Arkhipov, who disobeyed orders to to launch a nuclear torpedo in response to his superiors’ panic over depth charges dropped by American ships during the blockade. The United States struck a deal with the Soviet Union to lift the blockade, provide a promise not to invade Cuba and to secretly remove the missiles in Turkey in exchange for the public removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. The mere semblance of a rational quid pro quo was unacceptable to the United States, which insisted on the risky optics of humiliation in order to reinforce its hegemonic principles that Cuba had no right to possess a deterrent to what seemed like an imminent American invasion, and that the United States should enjoy an offensive nuclear capacity denied to the Soviet Union.

Later on during the Reagan era, the United States illegally invaded Grenada to enact regime change in 1983, while simultaneously ratcheting up the annual joint United States-South Korea war games simulating possible invasions of North Korea near its borders. Kim Il-Sung was reportedly unsettled by the idea that the United States could perceive the tiny spice island of Grenada as a threat, and feared that nothing less than a nuclear deterrent would be sufficient to keep Pyongyang outside the crosshairs of Washington. Three years after the invasion of Grenada, the North Korean regime established its Ministry of Atomic Energy Industry to formally declare its intent to develop a nuclear weapons program, which exists to this day.

Moving towards the twenty-first century, the Bush 43 administration’s illegal invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime in March 2003, which had long given up Iraq’s nuclear weapons despite the Bush 43 administration’s lies about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), would serve as one example of a dictatorship being toppled due to the lack of a credible nuclear deterrent. Another example would follow with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who announced that Libya would also give up its biological and chemical weapons stockpiles in addition to its infant nuclear weapons program in December 2003. Even though George W. Bush celebrated Libya’s decision at the time, declaring that the world should take away the lesson that “leaders who abandon the pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them, will find an open path to better relations with the United States and other free nations,” the succeeding Obama administration would go on to deliver the exact opposite lesson by assisting in the ouster of Gaddafi in 2011. Observing the situation in Libya, a North Korean official at the time explicitly remarked that the “Libyan crisis is teaching the international community a grave lesson,” claiming the West’s deal with Libya was “an invasion tactic to disarm the country.”

More towards the present, President Trump’s decision to “decertify” the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in October—despite worldwide acknowledgment that Iran has fully kept its side of the deal—has led some journalists to note that it’s more accurate to report that the United States was reneging on its JCPOA commitments, drawing parallels with its inconsistent foreign policy in Libya. The United States’ refusal to honor its agreement has bolstered the popularity of the hardline Iranian view that the United States and Saudi Arabia can’t be trusted.

There is remarkable irony in the United States betraying its JCPOA commitments considering the previous hysteria claiming that Iran was “the gravest threat to world peace,” despite not having invaded a single country in over 200 years. It’s a little known fact that Iran’s own Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, Javad Zarif, actually critiqued the JCPOA because it didn’t go far enough towards ensuring peace in the Middle East—calling on Israel to join Iran in establishing a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East—which Iran incidentally first proposed to the UN General Assembly in 1974.

The irony is only heightened when we consider that the United States possesses an additional obligation to engage in good faith efforts towards establishing a NWFZ in the Middle East as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as well as the Bush administration’s appeal to UN Security Council Resolution 687 to provide some pseudo-legal basis for its invasion of Iraq—claiming that Iraq had failed to live up to the resolution’s obligation to disarm itself of WMDs—when Article 14 of Resolution 687 called for the elimination of Iraqi WMDs for the explicit purpose of creating a NWFZ in the Middle East.

Aside from North Korea, another nuclear power the United States is presently antagonizing is Russia, which has led some observers to liken the current relationship to be that of a new Cold War for quite some time. One can recite a litany of American provocations against Russia ranging from the still unproven allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election to the United States’ proven interference in Russian elections, from the hypocritical accusations of war crimes in Syria that the American-backed rebel forces seeking regime change also committed, to the Obama administration’s use of deceit in persuading Russia not to veto a UN Security Council resolution permitting the use of force in Libya, which would teach Vladimir Putin the “lesson” that weakness and compromise would be exploited by the United States.

But these examples ignore the United States’ more direct contributions to heightened nuclear tensions with Russia. Despite the Bush 41 administration’s verbal “iron-clad guarantees” made to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward,” in exchange for the reunification of West and East Germany in 1990 and agreements to halt the arms race, ban chemical weapons and drastically reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles, succeeding administrations began to treat Russia as a defeated nation who “lost” the Cold War ever since.

The succeeding Clinton administration would proceed to illegally bomb Serbia and violate prior promises by expanding NATO to include former Warsaw Pact countries, tarnishing the Russian population’s perception of the United States. Currently, NATO’s eastern expansion has reached Russia’s borders with NATO troops deployed in Poland and the Baltic States, which would be analogous to the United States finding Mexico, Cuba, Canada and most of South America welcoming Russian bases and troops in a military alliance against it. Notwithstanding the barrage of propagandistic charges of “Russian aggression,” NATO’s expansion and the Obama administration’s support for a violent coup ousting pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych is responsible for provoking Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Crimea.

Adding insult to injury, the Obama administration’s placement of ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems near Russian borders was a continued reversal of the short-lived Nixon-Ford administrations’ policy of détente. It’s common knowledge among nuclear strategists around the world that BMD systems are offensive weapons by nature—designed to secure a nuclear first-strike advantage by neutralizing the threat of retaliatory nuclear strikes—and serve as a “Trojan Horse” for the militarization of outer space, as BMD systems depend on satellites that must be protected from the anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons readily available to other nations. The threat BMD systems pose to international stability was what led the United States and the Soviet Union to sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 1972.

The ABM Treaty was promptly violated by the Reagan administration’s infamous Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or “Star Wars” program—a large subsidy for American high-tech industry under the guise of its fantastical aims of constructing orbiting “battle platforms,” with uranium and plutonium powered hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons—with the ABM Treaty later being unilaterally abrogated by the Bush 43 administration in 2001. Concerns about the destabilizing effects of deploying BMD systems have already materialized with Russia recently testing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) designed to penetrate them.

But even critics of dishonest American foreign policy around the globe for fostering North Korea’s distrust often neglect to mention the history of the United States reneging on its commitments with North Korea itself. The Clinton administration was able to get North Korea to freeze its plutonium production for eight years (1994-2002) through the Agreed Framework of 1994, signed an additional agreement to mutually cease bearing “hostile intent,” and had indirectly worked out another deal to buy all of its medium and long-range missiles until the Bush 43 administration named North Korea as part of the “Axis of Evil,” threatening it with the possibility of “preemptive” war.

In spite of this setback, the Bush 43 administration was able to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons under the six-party talks in 2005—in return for a light-water nuclear reactor for its medical and energy needs and an end to aggressive rhetoric—only for the same administration to quickly undermine the agreement by renewing its threats of force, withdrawing its offer of a light-water reactor and freezing North Korean funds in foreign banks.

The succeeding Obama administration’s foreign policy wouldn’t diverge very much from its predecessors by continuing the United States’ aggressive rhetoric, and by enacting harsh and politically ineffective sanctions which punish the population for the actions of its insulated leadership. However, some differences include its State Department providing assistance in the production of a graphic film depicting Kim Jong-Un’s head exploding, increasing cyberattacks to sabotage North Korea’s missiles and simulating nuclear strikes with stealth bombers.

The situation has only deteriorated under the Trump administration with its destabilizing statements and policies around the world, which is increasing pressure on other nations to pursue nuclear weapons. President Trump and his fellow Republicans have illegally threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea and cause its “extinction.” Despite the corporate media’s frequent barrage of misleading headlines implying that the North Korean leadership won’t surrender its nuclear weapons under any circumstances—and refusal to report the timing of North Korea’s missile tests in the context of the annual joint American and South Korean war games simulating nuclear first-strikes, invasions, and assassinations of the North Korean leadership near its borders—the truth is that North Korea has repeatedly offered to give up its nuclear weapons program. The Trump administration has rejected China and North Korea’s numerous proposals to freeze North Korea’s nuclear and missile program in exchange for ceasing the threatening joint war games. It’s possible that the offers are insincere and that North Korea can’t be trusted to follow through on its commitments, but the point remains that diplomacy hasn’t been seriously pursued and that the United States’ own trustworthiness is hardly any better.

While there are some differences between the Trump administration’s foreign policy and its predecessors’, the United States’ general pursuit of overwhelming supremacy in all terrains of warfare including land, air, sea and outer space (also known as “full-spectrum dominance”), has remained largely intact. President Trump has called for a tenfold expansion of the United States’ nuclear stockpile in spite of the numerous arms reduction treaties the United States is committed to. His administration is also rushing to enact Obama administration programs to “modernize” the “nuclear triad,” estimated to cost over $1 trillion across three decades, to improve precision targeting and reducing blast yields to make nuclear first-strikes more thinkable.

The “Trojan Horse” for the militarization of space represented by the installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) BMD system in South Korea—to secure a nuclear first-strike advantage against China and North Korea—is expected to trigger a new arms race in the region in addition to another arms race for space weapons. Despite virtually universal support for the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) Treaty in the UN since 1985, including Russia and China, the United States has continually refused to negotiate the PAROS Treaty in the UN’s Conference on Disarmament because of its large technical advantages in BMD systems and potential space weaponry.

South Koreans and American military officials, academics, and journalists are certainly correct to note that North Korea’s “realist” foreign policy has remained remarkably consistent and predictable in comparison to President Trump’s unpredictability and frequent commitments to keeping “all options on the table.” However, to imagine that the Trump administration’s unpredictable posture regarding nuclear weapons is a large deviation from the norm of past administrations is a mistake. The United States has consistently refused to adopt a “no-first-use” pledge in order to keep the option of a nuclear first-strike open. A 1995 STRATCOM report entitled the Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence during the Clinton administration mentioned that it would be detrimental for the United States to portray itself as “too fully rational and cool-headed,” and recommended that it project an “irrational and vindictive” national persona with some “potentially ‘out of control’” elements instead.

The hegemonic principles are consistent: the United States and its allies should possess an offensive nuclear capacity to destroy their enemies denied to other nations, and can flout international law and their foreign obligations on a whim.

The North Korean government is a contemptible and authoritarian regime that’s justly condemned for its numerous human rights violations, but as foreign policy critics like Noam Chomsky have pointed out, there’s no logical connection between a regime’s domestic brutality and the threat it poses abroad. Although the United States is increasingly degenerating into an impoverished and totalitarian society with its own internal human rights abuses, there’s no doubt that American citizens enjoy a greater degree of liberties than North Koreans. There’s also little question that the United States has unleashed far more violence and aggression abroad. The latest international poll found that the United States is considered to be the greatest threat to world peace, beating out all other competitors—including North Korea—by decisive margins. A casual examination of the United States’ record abroad can yield similar damning conclusions: the United States is the world’s nuclear menace, not North Korea.

Lamenting Venezuela’s “Humanitarian Crisis” While Blocking Its Resolution

Roger D. Harris

A New York Times headline screams “As Venezuela collapses, children are dying of hunger.” Lurid pictures show dead infants. A companion “article of the day teaching activities,” asks: “Why do some young children choose to live on the streets instead of at home with their families?”

The key to understanding the wellspring of the Times’ indignation about humanitarian issues confronting Venezuela is hinted at in the by-line to the article: “Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world.” The stakes are high for the US empire.

The back story is that the Times and the rest of the corporate media have cheered on US government policies that have contributed to the current grave situation in Venezuela, while obstructing solutions other than regime change.

Although the Times caterwauls about the Venezuelan president’s “drive to dictatorship,” the newspaper of record fails to support mediation between the current government and elements of the now demoralized opposition who are willing to accept an outcome short of regime change. Rather, the Times blithely opines “No nation should have to suffer such a leader.”

Regime change in Venezuelan would only put into power an unpopular opposition with no plan or inclination to address economic recovery. When the Venezuelan people went to the polls, as they did in the last two most recent elections, they supported the present Maduro government despite the difficulties that the Times so melodramatically cherry picks. The voters knew survival would be worse under the US-backed opposition.

Challenges of the Venezuelan Economy

While there is no denying the economic emergency that Venezuela is currently facing and the concomitant suffering it is causing its people, understanding its context is essential to seeing a way out.

After a string of oligarchic governments dating back to 1959 and the neoliberal economic collapse and deterioration of living conditions for working people in Venezuela of the 1990s, Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998. He instituted measures, which displeased Washington and its sycophantic press:

+ Using Venezuela’s vast oil wealth for social programs, rather than enriching the rich.

+ Promoting an independent foreign policy, while creating regional alliances.

+ Encouraging and empowering popular participation in the affairs of state.

A coup in 2002, backed by the US and cheered by the Times, failed to remove Chávez. Instead, Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution enjoyed spectacular successes as it openly declared itself socialist, a term anathema to the US government and its corporate media.

Poverty rates were reduced in half; extreme poverty rates were cut even more. Community radio stations, communes, and cooperatives were created. Well over a million homes were built for the poor. Regional alliances, excluding the US, came together. And the majority of people affirmed and reaffirmed what has become known as Chávismo in election after election.

Then in 2013 Hugo Chávez died, and his successor Nicolás Maduro became president of Venezuela in a closely contested election. Maduro inherited not only the mantle of Chávismo, but a constellation of challenges that would have plagued Chávez himself had he continued: widespread and deeply ingrained corruption coupled with bureaucratic inefficiencies, a dysfunctional currency system, and an ingrained and recalcitrant criminal element.

Further, Chávez had granted amnesty to the perpetrators of the 2002 coup. These same “golpistas” are now among the leadership of a violent opposition to Maduro. What appeared to be a gracious gesture in 2002 has come back to plague and threaten the very existence of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Yet all these challenges to the success of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela pale in significance compared to two cataclysmic external factors.

+ The social programs that Chávez had instituted as well as aid to other countries had been subsidized by an oil commodity boom. Meanwhile, the costs of the existing inefficiencies and corruption were partly obscured in an economy flush with petrodollars. Then the bottom fell out of the oil market.

+ Last but by no means least has been the enduring hostility of the US empire, promoting, funding, and emboldening both the internal opposition and Venezuela’s international opposition such as US client narco-states Colombia and Mexico.

The result is that, despite bold measures, the economy and by extension living conditions in Venezuela continue to trend downward.

The Times in Service of the US Empire

In an unbroken trajectory, the US empire has worked to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela from its inception. George W. Bush tried to depose Chávez in the failed military coup of 2002. His successor, Barak Obama, declared Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” and imposed sanctions on Venezuelan officials. Now Donald Trump has echoed Obama’s nonsense about Venezuela posing a national security threat to the US and doubled down with new sanctions and even threats of military intervention.

The US policy is not based on mutual respect for national sovereignty and the rule of international law, but aimed at regime change in Venezuela. The Times and the other corporate media are mouthpieces for this policy. While crying crocodile tears about the suffering of the Venezuelan people, they support policies that relentlessly exacerbate human misery as a means of undermining popular support for the Bolivarian Revolution. These media are the promoters of the very conditions that they hypocritically claim to be opposing.

The recent US sanctions are designed to prevent economic recovery in Venezuela. The sanctions cut off needed access to international credit and block the Venezuelan government from restructuring its debt. US President Trump’s executive order in August, which barred dealings in new debt and equity issued by the Venezuelan government and its state oil company, has frozen over $3 billion in Venezuelan assets.

Some of the consequences of the economic war against Venezuela, are:

+ Funds were frozen for the import of insulin, even though Venezuela had the money.

+ Colombia blocked a shipment of the anti-malaria medicine Primaquine.

+ Payments were suspended to foreign suppliers for three months holding up the arrival of 29 container ships carrying supplies needed to process and produce food products.

These recent developments synergize with the on-going economic war by the traditional oligarchy in Venezuela, which takes the form of withholding goods from the market to create shortages, trafficking in contraband, and manipulation of the currency.

While hurting the people, the irony of the US sanctions is that they have bolstered the popularity of the Maduro government and exposed the complicity of the opposition.

All the Fake News That’s Fit to Print 

A Times video, “Strongmen who’ve started blaming ‘fake news’ too,” fingers the corporate media’s usual suspects: Russia, Iran, China, and Myanmar. Highlighted among the “strongmen” is Venezuela’s President Maduro, who is mocked for thinking that “fake news was part of a western conspiracy to hurt his country.” The Times self-servingly attempts to rebut Maduro, claiming that surely his view cannot be the case because the very news that Maduro criticizes is from the US, which has “a free and vibrant press.”

In short, the Times laments the consequences of the policies it supports, while opposing solutions short of regime change. The hostility of the Times to the Bolivarian Revolution is not predicated on humanitarian grounds. If it were, the Times would be defending its gains rather than polemicizing for a neoliberal counter-revolution.

The Venezuelans should be allowed to solve their own problems. The responsibility of the US citizenry and its press alike should be to oppose interference by our government, which translates to no sanctions and no meddling in Venezuela’s internal politics.