The United States of America – the Real Reason Why They Are Never Winning Their Wars

Peter Koenig

This essay is inspired by Professor James Petras’ article, describing that the US never wins wars despite trillions of investments in her war budget and obvious military superiority https://www.globalresearch.ca

Professor Petras is of course right, the United States is currently engaged in seven bloody wars around the globe (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya) and has not been winning one, including WWII. The question is: Why is that?

To these wars, you may want to add the totally destructive and human rights adverse war that literally slaughters unarmed civilians, including thousands of children, in an open-air prison, Gaza, the US proxy war on Palestine, carried out by Israel; plus, warmongering on Iran, Venezuela and North Korea. Let alone the new style wars – the trade wars with China, Europe, and to some extent, Mexico and Canada, as well as the war of sanctions, starting with Russia and reaching around the world – the fiefdom of economic wars also illegal by any book of international economics.

Other wars and conflicts, that were never intended to be won, include the dismantlement of Yugoslavia by the Clinton / NATO wars of the 1990s, the so-called Balkanization of Yugoslavia, ‘Balkanization’, a term now used for other empire-led partitions in the world, à la “divide to conquer”. Many of the former Yugoslav Republics are still not at peace internally and among each other. President Tito, a Maoist socialist leader was able to keep the country peacefully together and make out of Yugoslavia one of the most prosperous countries in Europe in the seventies and 1980s. How could this be allowed, socioeconomic wellbeing in a socialist country? – Never. It had to be destroyed. At the same time NATO forces advanced their bases closer to Moscow. But no war was won. Conflicts are still ongoing, “justifying” the presence of NATO, for European and US “national security”.

Then, let’s not forget the various Central American conflicts, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, the 8-year Iraq – Iran war – and many more, have created havoc and disorder, and foremost killed millions of people and weakened the countries affected. They put the population into misery and constant fear – and they keep requiring weapons to maintain internal hostilities, warfare and terror to this day.

All of these wars are totally unlawful and prohibited by any international standards of law. But the special and exceptional nation doesn’t observe them. President Trump’s bully National security Advisor, John Bolton, recently threatened the ICC and its judges with ‘sanctions’ in case the dare prosecution of Israeli and American war criminals. And the world doesn’t seem to care, and, instead, accepts the bully’s rule, afraid of the constant saber-rattling and threats being thrown out at the resisters of this world. Even the United Nations, including the 15-member Security Council, is afraid to stand up to the bully – 191 countries against 2 (US and Israel) is a no go?

None of these wars, hot wars or cold wars, has ever been won. Nor were they intended to be won. And there are no signs that future US-led wars will ever be won; irrespective of the trillions of dollars spent on them, and irrespective of the trillions to come in the future to maintain these wars and to start new ones. If we, the 191 UN member nations allow these wars to continue, that is. – Again, why is that?

The answer is simple. It is not in the interest of the United States to win any wars. The reasons are several. A won war theoretically brings peace, meaning no more weapons, no more fighting, no more destruction, no more terror and fear, no more insane profits for the war industry – but foremost, a country at peace is more difficult to manipulate and starve into submission than a country maintained at a level of constant conflict – conflict that not even a regime change will end, as we are seeing in so many cases around the world. Case in point, one of the latest ones being the Ukraine, after the US-NATO-EU instigated February 2014 Maidan coup, prepared with a long hand, in Victoria Nuland’s word, then Assistant Secretary of State, we spent more than 5 years and 5 billion dollars to bring about a regime change and democracy to the Ukraine.

Today, there is a “civil war” waging in eastern Ukraine, the Russian leaning Donbass area (about 90% Russian speaking and 75% Russian nationals), fueled by the ‘new’ Washington installed Poroshenko Nazi government. Thousands were killed, literally in cold blood by the US military-advised and assisted Kiev army, and an estimated more than 2 million fled to Russia. The total Ukraine population is about 44 million (2018 est.), with a landmass of about 604,000 km2, of which the Donbass area (Donetsk Province) is the most densely populated, counting for about 10% of population and about 27,000 km2.

Could this Kiev war of aggression end? – Yes, if the West would let go of the Donbass area which in any case will never submit to the Kiev regime and which has already requested to be incorporated into Russia. It would instantly stop the killing, the misery and destruction by western powers driven Nazi Kiev. But that’s not in the interest of the west, NATO, EU and especially not Washington – chaos and despair make for easy manipulation of people, for exploitation of this immensely rich country, both in agricultural potential – Ukraine used to be called the bread basket of Russia – and in natural resources in the ground; and for steadily advancing closer to the doorsteps of Moscow. That’s the intention.

In fact, Washington and its western EU vassal allies are relentlessly accusing Russia for meddling in the Ukraine, in not adhering to the Minsk accords. They are ‘sanctioning’ Russia for not respecting the Minsk Protocol (Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany agreed on 11 February 2015 to a package of measures to alleviate the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine), when in fact, the complete opposite is true. The west disregards the key points of the accord – no interference. But western propaganda and deceit-media brainwash western populations into believing in the Russian evil. The only ones meddling and supplying Kiev’s Nazi Regime with weapons and “military advisors” is the west.

The going strategy is lie-propaganda, so the western public, totally embalmed with western falsehoods, believes it is always Russia. Russians, led by President Putin, are the bad guys. The media war is part of the west’s war on Russia. The idea is, never let go of an ongoing conflict – no matter the cost in lives and in money. It’s so easy. Why isn’t that addressed in many analyses that still pretend the US is losing wars instead of winning them? – Its 101 of western geopolitics.

For those who don’t know, the US State Department has clearly exposed it’s plans to guarantee world primacy to the Senate’s Foreign Relations Commission. Assistant Secretary of State, Wess Mitchell, has declared that the United States is punishing Russia, because Moscow is impeding Washington from establishing supremacy over the world. It gets as blunt as that. The US openly recognizes the reason for their fight against Russia, and that Washington would not accept anything less than a full capitulation. See French version in ZE Journal: file:///C:/Users/Peter/Downloads/ZEjournal.mobi%20-%20Non%252C%20ce%20n%E2%80%99est%20pas%20un%20complot%E2%80%A6%20juste%20une%20pathologie.pdf

The full supremacy over the world is not possible without controlling the entire landmass of Eurasia – which for now they, the US, does not dominate. Mitchell added, contrary to optimistic hypothesis of earlier administrations, Russia and China are the most serious contenders to impede materially and ideologically the supremacy of the United States in the 21st Century, in a reference to the PNAC, Plan for a New American Century.

Then Mitchell launched a bomb, “It is always of primordial interest for the United States’ national security to impede the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers.” – This clearly means that the United States will shy away from nothing in the pursuit of this goal – meaning an outright war – nuclear or other – massive killing and total destruction – to reach that goal. This explains the myriad false accusations, ranging from outright insults at the UN by a lunatic Nikki Haley, the never-ending saga of the Skripal poisoning, to Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections – and whatever else suits the political circumstances to bash Russia. And these fabricated lies come mostly from Washington and London – and the rest of the western vassals just follows.

“War is hugely profitable. It creates so much money because it’s so easy to spend money very fast. There are huge fortunes to be made. So, there is always an encouragement to promote war and keep it going, to make sure that we identify people who are ‘others’ whom we can legitimately make war upon.” Roger Waters, Co-founder of the rock band Pink Floyd

Russia today is attacked by economic and trade “sanctions”, by travel bans, by confiscated assets they have in the west. The Cold War which propagated the Soviet Union as an invasive threat to the world, was a flagrant and absolute lie from A to Z. It forced the Soviet Union, thrown into abject poverty by saving the west from Hitler during WWII – yes, it was the Soviet Union, not the US of A and her western ‘allies’ that defeated Hitler’s army – losing between 25 and 30 million people! – Imagine! – by saving Europe, the Soviet Union became unimaginably devastated and poor.

The US propaganda created the concept of the Iron Curtain which basically forbade the west to see behind this imaginary shield to find out what the USSR really was after WWII – made destitute to the bones by the second World War. Yet this Cold War and Iron Curtain propaganda managed to make the western world believe that it is under a vital threat of a USSR invasion day-in-day-out, and that Europe with NATO must be ready to fend off any imaginary attack from the Soviet Union. It forced the Soviet Union to using all her workers’ accumulated capital to arm themselves, to be able to defend themselves from any possible western aggression, instead of using these economic resources to rebuild their country, their economy, their social systems. That’s the west – the lying, utterly and constantly deceiving west. Wake up, people!!!

Here you have it, confirmed by Wess Mitchell. The US would rather pull the rest of the world with it into a bottomless and an apocalyptic abyss with its sheer military power, than to lose and not reaching her goal. That’s the unforgiving ruling of the deep state, those that have been pulling the strings behind every US president for the last 200 years. – Unless the new alliances of the East – i.e. the SCO, BRICS, Eurasian Economic Union – half the world’s population and a third of the globes economic output – are able to subdue the United States economically, we may as well we doomed.

As the seven present ongoing wars speak for themselves, chaos – no end in sight and intended – allow me to go back to a few other wars that were not won, on purpose, of course. Let’s look again at WWII and its sister wars, economic wars and conflicts. Planning of WWII started soon after the Great Depression of 1928 to 1933 – and beyond. Hitler was a ‘convenient’ stooge. War is not only hugely profitable, but it boosts and sustains the economy of just about every sector. And the major objective for the US then was eliminating the Bolshevik communist threat, the Soviet Union. Today its demonizing President Putin and, if possible, bring about regime change in Russia. That’s on top of Washington’s wish list.

In the midst of the Great Depression, in 1931, the US created the Bank for International Settlement in Basel, Switzerland, conveniently located at the border to Germany. The BIS, totally privately owned and controlled by the Rothchild clan, was officially intended for settling war compensation payments by Germany. Though, unknown to most people, Germany has paid almost no compensation for either WWI and WWII. Most of the debt was simply forgiven. Germany was an important player in Washington’s attempt to eliminating the “communist curse” of the USSR. The BIS was used by the FED via Wall Street banks to finance Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union.

As usual, the US was dancing on two weddings: Pretending to fight Hitler’s Germany, but really supporting Hitler against Moscow. Sounds familiar? – Pretending to fight ISIS and other terrorists in the Middle East and around the world, but in reality, having been instrumental in creating, training, funding and arming the terror jihadists. When WWII was won by the Soviet army at a huge human sacrifice, the US, her allies and NATO marched in – shouting victory. And to this day these are the lessons taught in western schools, by western history books, largely ignoring the tremendous credit attributable to the Soviet Union, to the Russian people.

And since the USSR was not defeated, the Cold War had to be invented – and eventually with the help of Washington stooges, Michael Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, the west brought down the Soviet Union – preparing the way for a unipolar world. This grandiose goal of the exceptional nation was however – and very fortunately – stopped in its slippery tracks by the ascent of Russian President Putin.

But that’s not all. For dominating Russia, Europe had to be ‘colonized’ – made into a “European Union” (EU) that was never meant to be a real union, as in the United States of America. The idea of a European Union was first planted shortly after WWII by the CIA, then taken over by the Club of Rome – and promoted through numerous conventions all the way to the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. The next logical step was to give the EU a Constitution, to make the EU into a consolidated Federation of European States, with common economic, defense and foreign relations strategies. But this was never to be.

The former French President, Giscard d’Estaing (1974 – 1981), was given the task to lead the drafting of an EU Constitution. He had strict instructions, though unknown to most, to prepare a document that would not be ratified by member states, as it would have bluntly transferred most of the EU nations sovereignty to Brussels. And so, the constitution was rejected, starting by France. Most countries didn’t even vote on the Constitution. And so, a federation of a United Europe didn’t happen. That would have been an unbeatable competition to the US, economically and militarily. NATO was eventually to take the role of unifying Europe – under the control of Washington. Today, the EU is ever more integrated into NATO.

What happened in parallel to the construct of a (non) European Union, was the European financial and economic colonization or enslavement, through the Bretton Woods Agreements in 1944. They created the World Bank, to manage the Marshall Plan, the US-sponsored European reconstruction fund, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to monitor and regulate the gold standard (US$ 35 / Troy Ounce), vis-à-vis the so-called convertible mostly European currencies. In fact, the Marshall Plan, denominated in US-dollars, was the first step towards a common European currency, prompted by the Nixon Administration’s exiting the gold standard in 1971, eventually leading to the Euro, a fiat currency created according to the image of the US dollar. The Euro, the little brother of the US fiat dollar, thus, became a currency, with which the European economic, financial and monetary policies are being manipulated by outside forces, i.e. the FED and Wall Street. The current President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, is a former Goldman Sachs executive.

These are wars, albeit the latter ones, economic wars, being constantly waged, but not won. They create chaos, illusions, believes in lies, manipulating and mobilizing people into the direction the masters of and behind Washington want them to move. These are the same masters that have been in control of the west for the last 200 years; and unknown to the vast majority of the western population, these masters are a small group of banking and financial clans that control the western monetary system, as we know it today. It was brought into existence in 1913, by the Federal Reserve Act. These masters control the FED, Wall Street and the BIS – also called the central banks of central banks, as it – the BIS – controls all but a handful of the world’s central banks.

This fiat financial system is debt-funding wars, conflicts and proxy hostilities around the world. Debt that is largely carried in the form of US treasury bills as other countries’ reserves. The continuation of wars is crucial for the system’s survival. It’s hugely profitable. If a war was won, peace would break out – no war industry profit there, no debt-rent for banks from peace. Wars must go on – and the exceptional nation may prevail, with the world’s largest military-security budget, the deadliest weapons and a national debt, called ‘unmet obligations’ by the US General Accounting Office (GAO) – of about 150 trillion dollars – about seven and a half times the US GDP. We are living in the west in a pyramid monetary fraud – that only wars can sustain, until – yes, until, a different, honest system, based on real economic and peaceful output, will gradually replace the dollar’s hegemony and its role as a world reserve currency. It’s happening as these lines go to print. Eastern economies, like the Chinese, with China’s gold-convertible Yuan, and a national debt of only about 40% of GDP, is gradually taking over the international reserve role of the US dollar.

The US of A, therefore, will do whatever she can to continue, demonizing Russia and China, provoke them into a hot war, because dominating, and outright ‘owning’ the Eurasian landmass is the ultimate objective of the killer Empire.

Peru’s supreme court sentences Shining Path leaders to new life prison terms

Cesar Uco

After five hours of deliberations, the Peruvian Supreme Court voted last week to sentence Abimael Guzman, his wife Elena Yparraguirre, Osmán Morote and seven other members of the Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) to life in prison for ordering the bombing in July 1992 of Tarata Street, a densely populated commercial area of the Miraflores district in Lima.

According to the daily Correo, “The Shining Path leadership is charged with crimes against public tranquility, terrorism in the form of aggravated terrorism and crimes against public health.”

The life sentences for the bombing of Tarata Street come on top of previous life prison terms for “terrorism” and “treason” dictated against the Shining Path leaders in 1992 by a secret military court, after they were captured by Peruvian intelligence forces. Several appeals followed, but all ended up in courts upholding the original sentences.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office, reports El Comercio, will appeal the acquittal of the defendants in the Tarata Case in relation to drug-trafficking charges.

The timing of the new terror trial serves a definite political function under conditions in which the entire Peruvian state apparatus, and in particular the judicial system, is enveloped in a wave of corruption scandals.

The former Wall Street banker, Pedro Pablo Kuczynki, was forced to resign as president in March over charges relating to the sprawling corruption scandal involving the Brazilian construction giant Odebrechet.

His successor, President Martín Vizcarra, confronts a spreading crisis involving audiotapes of high-ranking judges, prosecutors and attorneys bargaining over verdicts, sentences and positions.

Under these conditions, the re-prosecution of Shining Path serves to divert public opinion by reviving the widespread resentments among the Peruvian people over the crimes committed during the 20-year war fought between the guerrilla group and the Peruvian Army.

In its final report, Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that 69,280 people had been killed or disappeared between 1980 and 2000; 54 percent at the hands of Shining Path and most of the rest by the Peruvian Army. The overwhelming majority of the victims were drawn from the country’s 6 million citizens of indigenous origin, who make up about 20 percent of the population.

On the evening of July 16, 1992, two vehicles parked on Tarata Street, each loaded with 250 kilograms of explosives, were detonated, killing 25 people and wounding more than 200. The explosion was so powerful that it damaged 183 homes, 400 businesses and 63 parked cars.

The attack on a busy commercial center of Miraflores marked a turning point in public perception of the fight against Shining Path. For the first time, the bloody struggle had exacted victims in a neighborhood frequented by Lima’s upper classes, who had remained largely indifferent to the death and suffering experienced by the indigenous population in the Andes.

Adhering to the Maoist doctrine of peasant-based guerrilla warfare in the countryside, Shining Path began violent operations in the early 1980s. Its main source of recruitment was from among college students from Huamanga University in Ayacucho, where Abimael Guzman taught philosophy, the Huancayo University, also located in the central Andes, and the La Cantuta teachers’ university, along with two major national universities in Lima—National University of San Marcos and the National University of Engineering.

It began operations in Lima in 1983. In addition to blowing up electricity pylons, creating blackouts in large parts of the capital, Shining Path members set fire to factories and attacked bourgeois party offices. Eventually it would expand its operations, blowing up car bombs in the streets.

Initially, Shining Path gained popularity among the most oppressed peasant youth who were attending university in the highlands. It was able to capitalize on centuries of oppression and neglect by the central government toward the poorest Andean regions of the country—Ayacucho, Huancavelica and Apurimac.

By 1991, Shining Path controlled most of Peru’s central and southern Andean region. The war cost the lives of tens of thousands of innocent peasants with mass casualties inflicted by both the Peruvian Army and Shining Path.

Shining Path soon lost its façade of a guerrilla movement fighting to liberate the Andean people from the oppression of the state. It began holding summary trials in the villages of poor peasants, accusing them of passing information to the Peruvian Army. Trials turned into mass executions.

Losing popularity among the peasants, who found themselves in the crossfire between the Peruvian Army and the guerrillas, by 1985 Shining Path turned increasingly toward acts of terrorism, including the assassination of leaders of leftist groups, local political parties, trade unions and peasant organizations.

Meanwhile, the killing of students suspected of being sympathizers of Shining Path was directed from the highest level of the government. Former president Alberto Fujimori, who claimed victory in the 1990s for capturing Abimael Guzman, was found guilty, together with his sinister adviser Vladimiro Montesinos, of crimes against humanity for having ordered the “La Cantuta” and “Barrios Altos” massacres carried out by the Colina death squad. Fujimori and Montesinos were condemned to 25 years incarceration for these crimes, along with separate sentences for acts of corruption.

In contrast to the re-prosecution of the Shining Path leadership, in December 2017, former president Kuczynski pardoned Alberto Fujimori, who remains free to this day.

There are still more Shining Path-related trials yet to come. According to El Comercio, “This ruling does not end the judicial processes of the terrorist leaders. They have to face two other trials. … One of them is the process for the killing of 117 peasants from the Ayacucho town of Soras in 1984.”

The other case involves a different set of defendants, who have not been implicated in any acts of violence or terrorism. These are the leaders of the Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights (Movadef), founded in November 2009, and led by Alfredo Crespo, Abimael Guzman’s defense lawyer. They are facing charges of being members of Shining Path and having received money from drug trafficking to finance their activities.

The group has focused on demanding a general amnesty for all those jailed in connection with Peru’s 20-year dirty war, from the Shining Path prisoners to Fujimori and members of the security forces. In 2011, the group sought recognition as a political party in order to run in elections, but its petition was denied by federal election officials.

Australia’s financial newspaper warns of another global crash

Mike Head

“It will happen again.” That was the headline on last weekend’s Australian Financial Review marking the tenth anniversary of the liquidation of the US investment bank, Lehman Brothers, which began the global financial breakdown of 2008–09.

The newspaper published multiple articles warning that another crash is inevitable and that it would likely be even worse for international and Australian capitalism, because of the escalation of financial and household debt, the intensifying US-China economic war and the collapse of cooperation between the major economic and military powers.

Significantly, the edition’s accompanying editorial also sounded an alarm on the state of Australia’s political system, describing it as “shaken and fraying on the extremes” and “dysfunctional, producing five prime ministers in as many years.” Moreover, “declining loyalty has drained the political parties of meaning.”

Behind the backs of the working class, the corporate and financial ruling class is discussing the likelihood of a catastrophic economic failure that will unleash social suffering and class conflicts that the existing political system will not be able to contain.

This provides a further insight into the factional warfare that led to the ouster of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last month and which is tearing apart the Liberal-National Coalition, one of the two pillars—with the Labor Party—of capitalist rule since World War II.

The prospect of a financial meltdown and an all-out trade war is propelling a drive to refashion the Liberal Party and the political establishment as a whole along extreme right-wing authoritarian, nationalist and xenophobic lines to divert and suppress the anticipated eruption of working class and political unrest.

Writing from Washington, the financial newspaper’s economics correspondent Jacob Greber gave a sense of the discussions underway about the fragile state of the world economy. “While the next crisis is unlikely to be a repeat of the GFC [global financial crisis], it will almost certainly echo,” he wrote. “The triggers will be different, and are by definition unknowable. But it will be just as scary and just as sudden when it finally bites.”

Despite Greber’s remarkable admission that the source of the next crisis would be “unknowable” as far as corporate analysts are concerned, he listed factors that were likely to make the coming meltdown even more “scary” and “sudden” than the GFC.

“[M]any of the things that came together in 2008 to prevent another Great Depression may not be available next time,” Greber noted. These included the “unprecedented cooperation between the world’s central banks” and China’s willingness to help bail out the US financial system. Today, President Donald Trump’s “America first” approach had thrown that into “serious doubt.”

Greber also referred to the bipartisan agreement of the US Congress in 2008 to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial markets to stabilise the banks, followed by other “unconventional” measures. These featured record low interest rates and the pumping of billions more dollars into the hands of the financial oligarchs via “quantitative easing.”

Greber cited a warning by Wall Street Journal economics commentator Greg Ip that “polarisation, populism and protectionism” would mean “far less political will” in a now “dysfunctional” Washington to deal with the crisis. These references primarily related to the instability triggered by the Trump administration, but it was the preceding eight years of the Obama White House that saw the burden of the collapse imposed on the working class, via the destruction of jobs and cuts to wages.

Making a parallel warning, the Australian Financial Review editorial voiced concern about the “deepening distrust” in “politics, business and even media.” In Australia, as in the US, the political elite displayed complete unity in propping up the banks and finance houses at the expense of workers’ jobs and conditions.

Among the voices warning of the potential consequences of the next crisis are Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan, the prime minister and treasurer in the last Labor government, who boast of “saving the banks” in 2008–09 by guaranteeing their borrowings and deposits and providing $42 billion in economic stimulus packages to spur retail spending.

Together with the much larger stimulus provided by the Chinese regime, which boosted Australian mining exports for several years, these measures averted a crash. However, the record profits of the banks and corporations went hand in hand with an intensified offensive against workers’ jobs and living standards.

Moreover, the bonanza handed to the finance houses by the Labor government, combined with record low official interest rates, fuelled a speculative property bubble that sent house prices soaring.

Prices are now declining, under conditions in which Australian households are now saddled with some of the highest mortgage debts in the world—exceeding 200 percent of disposable income. Falling house values, stagnant wages and rising interest rates threaten to cause immense financial stress that could see many lose their homes.

On average, house prices in Sydney, the most expensive city, have dropped 6 percent since last September and forecasts of future falls range up to 40 percent. One forward indicator, housing finance, is 8.3 percent below last year’s peak. Investor loans, which rose to 40 percent of the total and fuelled the bubble, have decreased by 28 percent since 2015.

Overshadowing these indicators are escalating measures by Washington, including punitive tariffs on Chinese imports, to prevent China from challenging US supremacy. Any major economic crisis in China, Australian capitalism’s largest export market, will have vast implications.

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s typically downplayed September board minutes, “members observed that there were still significant tensions around global trade policy and that this represented a material risk to the outlook.”

In recent weeks already, the leading Australian share market index has fallen from near 6,400 to below 6,200, and the Australian dollar has dropped and wavered around 71 to 72 US cents, a far cry from its peak above the US dollar in 2012.

Given the uncertainty, the central bank left its official cash rate unchanged at 1.5 percent, where it has sat for more than two years, but warned that the next move is likely to be up. Any such move, even by 0.5 points, would see millions of households trapped in debt, unable to pay their mortgages as house values fall.

Increasingly, corporate media commentators are calling into question the ability of the Liberal-National government, currently headed by Scott Morrison, to deal with the mounting social tensions and political disaffection. In the same edition of the Australian Financial Review, Australian Broadcasting Corporation political correspondent Laura Tingle said the Morrison government offered only the prospect of a “depressing circus for some time to come.”

With the Coalition wracked by political rifts, the Labor Party could lead the next government. But its role would be to try to shore up the profit system by handouts to the financial oligarchy and deepening the assault on the jobs and conditions of the working class, as the last Labor government did from 2007 to 2013.

Report shows that US police militarization does not reduce crime

Erik Schreiber 

Militarizing police forces does not reduce crime or make police officers safer, according to a study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .

“On average, militarized police units do not appear to provide the safety benefits that many police administrators claim,” said Jonathan Mummolo, Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, the study’s author.

The results of Mummolo’s research may not seem surprising, but they directly contradict the assertions of law enforcement officials across the country, from the local to the federal level.

After police responded to the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri with assault rifles and tanks, Col. John Belmar, the top police officer in the county, claimed that military equipment had kept civilians and officers safe during the protests. “Had we not had the ability to protect officers with those vehicles, I am afraid that we would have [had] to engage people with our own gunfire,” Belmar told USA Today. “I really think having the armor gave us the ability not to have pulled one trigger.” If the armor was necessary to prevent the police from firing, one wonders why they carried assault rifles in the first place.

At a 2016 press conference, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City would be providing $7.5 million worth of military helmets and vests to its police force. “An attack on our police officers is an attack on all of us,” he said. “And we have to make sure we’re taking every measure available to protect our officers with the latest gear, the latest technology, given the horrible scourge of guns in this country, and how we’ve seen these guns turned against law enforcement.”

Militarization of the police started in the 1990s under the Department of Defense’s Program 1033, which provides surplus military gear to federal, state, and local police under the guise of the War on Drugs. Examples of this war-making equipment included grenade launchers, armored vehicles and bayonets. These armaments flowed steadily to the police over the decades, with more than $5 billion in surplus gear transferred to date.

People around the world were shocked and outraged at the brutal response to the protests in Ferguson, and by the way that the police force had been transformed into an occupying army. As part of an effort to ease popular anger, the Obama administration slightly restricted, but did not eliminate, police departments’ ability to obtain surplus military gear.

“Those restrictions went too far,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he addressed the 63rd Biennial Conference of the National Fraternal Order of Police last August. “We will not put superficial concerns above public safety.” Any reservations about turning police into soldiers who fight battles against citizens were thus “superficial,” in the eyes of the Trump administration. Sessions described the weapons as “life-saving gear” that are needed to fight “terrorism” and “crime.”

Mummolo’s research shows that such talk is no more than a pretense. For his research, he defined police militarization as “a continuum defined by a combination of equipment, tactics, and culture that centers on violent conflict.” It is difficult to categorize certain localities as militarized because the degree of militarization varies from place to place. Mummolo overcame this difficulty by focusing on special weapons and tactics (SWAT) teams, which are modeled on military special forces units and represent “a heightened commitment to the use of militarized equipment and tactics.”

Through a public records request, Mummolo obtained information about every SWAT deployment in Maryland over the five-year period from fiscal 2010 through fiscal 2014. Maryland agencies had recorded all SWAT activity uniformly because of a state law, since expired, that had required them to do so. There were approximately 8,200 SWAT deployments during the period that Mummolo studied.

To determine the extent to which police militarization affects crime and officer safety, Mummolo combined data from the federal Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies surveys (which describe whether agencies provide SWAT services) with FBI data on violent crimes and the FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted database.

Mummolo found that, far from fighting violent crime or terrorism, the purpose of approximately 91 percent of SWAT deployments was to serve search warrants.

Deploying a SWAT team for this purpose is to apply excessive and overwhelming force. The operation “often involves percussive grenades, battering rams, substantial property damage, and, in rare cases, deadly altercations stemming from citizens’ mistaken belief that they are experiencing a home invasion,” said Mummolo.

Less than 5 percent of deployments were responses to “barricade” scenarios, which involve an armed suspect who refuses to surrender to police. The data “show that the vast majority of SWAT deployments occur in connection with nonemergency scenarios,” said Mummolo. The soldiers-policemen enter homes forcibly in 68 percent of deployments and seize property in 84 percent of deployments. This shameless brutality can have no purpose other than terrorizing the working class.

The demographic makeup of Maryland’s localities varies in racial diversity. Mummolo found that the higher the percentage of black residents in an area, the greater the volume of SWAT deployments per 100,000 residents in that area. This correlation persisted after Mummolo controlled for local unemployment, education, household income levels and local crime rates. The data confirm that SWAT teams are used to attack the poorest layers of the population.

When he examined the data to evaluate the effect of a department’s use of a SWAT team on violent crime, Mummolo concluded that “there is no evidence that acquiring a SWAT team lowers crime or promotes officer safety…. Using the available data, the benefits of increased deployments [on crime and officer safety] appear to be either small or nonexistent.” These findings expose the claims of Belmar and Sessions as fraudulent.

The study uses its results to also suggest that if only greater care is taken by the authorities in the deployment of military gear, police-community relations will benefit. “…[P]olice may suffer reputational damage when they deploy militarized units,” said Mummolo. “These results suggest that the often-cited trade-off between public safety and civil liberties is, in the case of militarized policing, a false choice.” In other words, the aim is to convince the authorities to proceed with more caution as they continue their campaign to defend the status quo of record inequality and exploitation.

To examine how exposure to images of militarized police affects the public’s attitude toward law enforcement, Mummolo conducted two surveys. He concluded that viewing photos of militarized police decreased respondents’ support for police funding and decreased “confidence” in the police.

One illuminating result is that Mummolo found little evidence that race influenced people’s response to images of militarized police, despite lower baseline levels of confidence in the police among African-Americans. This result suggests that workers regardless of their race correctly identify the police as their antagonists.

The reputational costs of militarization to law enforcement are “troubling,” said Mummolo, “since prior work shows that negative views of police inhibit criminal investigations and are associated with stunted civic participation.”

Contrary to what the report suggests, however, the police are not interested in greater “civic participation” in working class communities. Riot gear, percussion grenades, and assault rifles are not intended to encourage civic engagement, but to suppress it. Police terror is a means of silencing the working class and sending the message that any resistance to deteriorating working and living conditions will entail a heavy cost.

The repeal of the very mild Obama-era restrictions on police acquisition of military equipment comes as the struggles waged by teachers, UPS employees, and other workers across the country are intensifying. The fight for a living wage, for adequate health care, and for a more human existence is the real “terror” that militarized police are intended to combat.

Facebook expands censorship to photos and videos

Mike Ingram

A September 13 statement by Facebook Product Manager, Antonia Woodford, titled “Expanding Fact-Checking to Photos and Videos” marks a significant escalation of the company’s censorship efforts.

Under the pretense of combating so-called “fake news” and “Russian interference” the social media giant has spent the last two years assembling an army of censors and established partnerships with 27 so-called fact-checker partners in 17 countries. The partners, include the Associated Press, (AP) Agence France-Presse (AFP), Pagella Politica in Italy, Animal Politico in Mexico and others, together with fact checking sites such as Factcheck.org, PolitiFact and Snopes.com. At the end of last year, Facebook announced a partnership with the right-wing The Weekly Standard prompting widespread outrage.

As the WSWS reported, the role of this latest partnership was highlighted last week when The Weekly Standard flagged an article posted by ThinkProgress with the headline “Brett Kavanaugh said he would kill Roe v. Wade last week.” The article was flagged as false on the preposterous claim that the word “said” in the headline implied a direct quote, rather than the dictionary definition of “indicate,” “show,” or “communicate.” The ThinkProgress incident is only the latest indication of the political character of the censorship by Facebook.

It is unknown exactly how many posts have been flagged as false by Facebook or its fact checker partners since the program began two years ago. A false flag will reduce future traffic by 80 percent, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Now the program is to be expanded to photos and video—a process that was first detailed in March this year.

The March statement headlined “Hard Questions: What is Facebook Doing to Protect Election Security?” by VP of Product Management, Guy Rosen, announced, “We’re fact-checking photos and videos, in addition to links. We’re starting in France with the AFP and will be scaling to more countries and partners soon.”

The global expansion of the censorship campaign to photo and video was announced in the September 13 statement. Woodford wrote, “We know that people want to see accurate information on Facebook, so for the last two years, we’ve made fighting misinformation a priority. One of the many steps we take to reduce the spread of false news is working with independent, third-party fact-checkers to review and rate the accuracy of content. To date, most of our fact-checking partners have focused on reviewing articles. However, we have also been actively working to build new technology and partnerships so that we can tackle other forms of misinformation. Today, we’re expanding fact-checking for photos and videos to all of our 27 partners in 17 countries around the world (and are regularly on-boarding new fact-checking partners).”

The statement says that Facebook has “built a machine learning model that uses various engagement signals, including feedback from people on Facebook, to identify false content.” The company then sends photos or videos to fact checkers, “or fact-checkers can surface such content on their own”, Woodford writes. “Many of our third-party fact-checking partners have expertise evaluating photos and videos and are trained in visual verification techniques, such as reverse image searching and analyzing image metadata, like when and where the photo or video was taken,” she continued.

Based on research conducted since March, Facebook claimed that photo and video “misinformation” falls into three categories, “(1) Manipulated or Fabricated, (2) Out of Context, and (3) Text or Audio Claim.”

The claim that Facebook is motivated by the need for accurate content was refuted in an analysis presented last month by one of the company’s other “partners”, the prominent military think-tank, the Atlantic Council.

After Facebook announced last month that it had shut down the event page for a counter-protest to a fascist demonstration called by the organizers of last year’s Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, during which left-wing demonstrator Heather Heyer was murdered by a right-wing extremist. The company also announced that it had shut down 32 other pages, including ones opposing police violence and defending immigrant rights.

The Atlantic Council issued a report which said that the shut down by Facebook targeted “the left of the political spectrum” and that the pages were an attempt to “infiltrate left-wing American communities.” The report said these pages “sought to promote divisions and set Americans against one another.”

The report stated that events created by “inauthentic” groups “have a very real, organic, and engaged online community” but that “the intent of inauthentic activity appeared to be designed to catalyze the most incendiary impulses of political sentiment.”

It is not so-called “inauthentic” groups that are the catalyst for incendiary political sentiment but the conditions of social inequality, police repression and war confronting millions of people throughout the world. Facebook’s attempt to suppress photo and video postings is an intensification of the company’s attempt to hide the true state of American and world society—and more importantly the mounting opposition to it—from the population.

Video footage of police killings has been the catalyst for demonstrations across the United States. A search in the video section of Google for “police shooting” yields 97 million results. The overwhelming majority of these are either bodycam or witness footage of unarmed victims of police violence.

Images of immigrant children sitting in cages after being torn from their mothers’ arms by immigration officers likewise provoke the justified outrage of millions of working people throughout the world.

Photographs of the body of three-year-old Alan Kurdî, who drowned in the Mediterranean See in 2015 after his family fled war torn Syria along with thousands of refugees trying to reach Europe were spread around the world, prompting international outrage.

These are the types of “incendiary” images Facebook is seeking to suppress. Over the past two years, Facebook, along with other technology giants such as Google and Twitter have become the self-appointed arbiters of “fake news” and “authoritative content.”

Working with the intelligence agencies and both Democrats and Republicans, the technology giants are seeking to effectively blacklist any viewpoint opposing that of the official political establishment. The main target of this blacklisting is left-wing and, in particular, socialist viewpoints.

The World Socialist Web Site has been in the forefront of the fight against Internet censorship, exposing the conspiracy to censor the Internet beginning with Google’s implementation of new algorithms in April 2017 that were aimed at blocking access to the WSWS and other anti-war and progressive web sites. Google’s actions resulted in a 70 percent drop in search traffic to the WSWS. Google was quickly followed by Facebook and Twitter. The latest action by Facebook is a further escalation of this and must be opposed.

New police raids and Europe-wide manhunt against G20 opponents

Sven Heymanns

In a major raid in three federal states, police searched a total of 15 apartments yesterday morning and arrested one person. According to the police, the action was directed against suspects who were said to have participated in riots on the periphery of the G20 summit in Hamburg in July last year.

While the police have massively cracked down on the G20 demonstrators for over a year, even those suspected of merely having thrown a bottle, entire groups of neo-Nazis in Chemnitz, Köthen and other cities witch-hunt migrants, journalists and left-wingers and receive cover from the highest levels of the state apparatus.

On Tuesday, a 35-year-old man from Hamburg’s Winterhude district was arrested. He was supposedly known to the police before the G20 summit and involved in riots in the Schanzenviertel. According to the Hamburger Morgenpost, he is accused of having thrown stones and bottles 19 times and looted two supermarkets. Apartments were searched in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, and also in Dortmund. However, there were no further arrests.

According to police, the searches involved more than 10 suspects. They are said to have participated in riots in the Schanzenviertel as well as in the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration. They are accused, inter alia, of serious breaches of the peace, resisting law enforcement officers, assault and the plundering of supermarkets. According to Hamburg police spokesman Timo Zill, all the suspects had long been in the sights of the investigators. The police confiscated computers and cell phones, among other things.

Yesterday, the Hamburg police also launched a pan-European search for four alleged “violent criminals.” They are said to have been involved in setting fire to cars on the Elbchaussee on July 7, 2017. Those being sought are three men and one woman; one of the men is suspected of living mainly in France. The head of the special commission “Black Block,” Jan Hieber, said that the suspects’ activities were a “commando action”—a term usually attributed to terrorists like the Red Army Faction.

Significantly, the police also published several photos that supposedly show the wanted persons. The police spokesman rushed to emphasize that their publication had been approved by the court following an application by the state prosecutor’s office. Last December, in cooperation with Bild newspaper, the police had already published photos of hundreds of demonstrators and thus massively infringed their personal rights. As the WSWS wrote at the time, “Nothing comparable has taken place since the founding of the German Federal Republic.” The action was so scandalous that even many bourgeois commentators declared the behaviour of the police “unlawful.”

The massive police crackdown on alleged rioters is completely disproportionate. It serves to justify the further massive increase in the powers of the security apparatus and to prepare for the persecution and suppression of all left-wing protests. The violence surrounding the G20 summit was largely provoked by the police and then exaggerated in the media. All the horror stories in the police reports, leaked unchecked by the media, turned out to be lies.

For example, no evidence has been found to support the claim that protesters sought to throw stones and Molotov cocktails from roof tops. Despite intensive searches and a forensic investigation, the police have not been able to present any such objects, and despite comprehensive video surveillance, they are not able to definitively document their use. In fact, many of those who were on roofs or scaffolding were found to be film crews or curious onlookers.

A few weeks after allegations that the police had had “masses of bottles, bollards, and firecrackers deliberately thrown at them” from the ranks of a demonstration, as the police report said, a police video was leaked that refuted the story completely. The video clearly showed that there was no use of force against the police, but that the police in turn ran towards the demonstrators, who were shot at from the rear with water cannons.

Meanwhile, it is also known that the police themselves had infiltrated numerous provocateurs into the counter-protests of the G20 summit. During a court case against a G20 protester in May, a plainclothes police officer from a Saxony Police Arrest Unit interviewed as a witness said he and three other colleagues had disguised themselves among the demonstrators of the “Welcome to Hell” demo. They had dressed in dark clothes and “pulled up a black scarf under their nose,” Der Spiegel reported from the trial. “We got a clothing subsidy for such garments from our employer,” the police officer told the court. The Hamburg head of the German police union, Joachim Lenders, described the infiltrating of plainclothes police officers into left-wing demonstrations at the time as “common practice.”

The “Welcome to Hell” demo took place five days before the G20 summit and was violently broken up by the police after only a few hundred metres because some of the participants had their faces covered. This procedure then served as a pretext for a brutal police crackdown on peaceful demonstrators at numerous other protests. In the style of a civil war exercise, more than 20,000 police officers from all over Germany had been gathered in Hamburg, turning the city into a veritable garrison and suspending numerous basic rights. Among other things, numerous journalists were briefly deprived of their accreditation.

In the weeks following the summit, these “acts of violence” by alleged “left-wing extremists” were then used as a pretext to prepare an unprecedented campaign against “left-wingers.” Among other things, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, at that time still justice minister, had called for a “Rock against the left” concert. The fact that right-wing extremist groups such as the youth organization of the German National Party (NPD) and the “hooligans against Salafists” had called for participation in the protests—and numerous neo-Nazis had participated in them—did not come up.

The new “constitutional protection report” drawn up by the secret service, published a few weeks ago, makes clear that the narrative about supposed left-wing riots on the periphery of the G20 summit hides the real motive: to criminalize left-wing politics as being anti-constitutional and to portray the G20 protesters as fanatical left-wing extremists. “The emphases of left-wing extremist agitation” in 2017 were “decisively” influenced by the summit. The “violence against police officers and the extent of street crimes practiced there” are “striking examples of the attitude prevailing among violent left-wing extremists towards violence,” reads the introductory section on “Left-Wing Extremism.”

Since then, this portrayal of the G20 protests has been used to criminalize any left-wing opposition. This year, for example, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) was named for the first time in the secret service report, even though there is no accusation it has been involved in any violent action. Just a few weeks after the G20 summit, the then-Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière had used the events in Hamburg as an opportunity to ban the left-wing website linksunten.indymedia.

Wall Street pay up 13 percent while workers’ wages stagnate

Barry Grey

The Office of the New York State Comptroller reported Monday that both profits and pay at Wall Street securities firms soared at double-digit rates last year and are continuing their spectacular rise in 2018. The report is the latest in a series of financial surveys showing that 10 years after the Wall Street crash of September 2008, the concentration of wealth at the very top of society continues to increase.

Announcing the release of the report, New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli boasted, “Wall Street profited every year since the end of the recession in 2009, and compensation last year reached its highest point since the financial crisis.”

The average bonus paid to the stock traders and speculators in New York City rose by 17 percent last year to $184,220, the highest in a decade. The average salary, including bonuses, increased by 13 percent to $422,500, also the highest since 2008. This figure, well within America’s top 1 percent income bracket, is 5.5 times higher than the rest of the private sector in New York City.

Pretax profits in the securities industry totaled $24.5 billion in 2017, the highest level since 2010. This is an increase of 42 percent over 2016, which saw a 21 percent rise in profits. In the first half of 2018, profits totaled $13.7 billion, a rise of 11 percent and the highest level since 2010.

The “recovery” from the 2008 crash and the Great Recession engineered by both Republican and Democratic administrations (Bush, Obama and Trump) has been a systematic effort to utilize the crisis triggered by the criminal actions of Wall Street bankers and speculators to restructure the economy for the benefit of the financial oligarchs and at the expense of the working class.

By means of a vast transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich and the super-rich, the losses suffered by the financial elite in the global meltdown have not only been fully recouped, its wealth has been massively increased. In 2008, the 400 wealthiest people in America had a net worth of $1.5 trillion. That figure has since doubled to nearly $3 trillion.

Ten years ago, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, today the richest man in the world, had a net worth of $8.7 billion. It now stands at over $160 billion, an 18-fold increase.

Workers’ wages have stagnated or declined. Between 2016 and 2017 the wage of a typical US worker grew by a negligible 0.3 percent. This year, wages are barely keeping pace with inflation. Meanwhile, according to a report published last month by the Economic Policy Institute, average CEO pay at America’s 350 largest companies grew by 17.6 percent between 2016 and 2017. The typical chief executive received $18.9 million in compensation.

The average CEO in the US now makes 312 times what the typical worker makes, up from the 20-to-1 ratio that prevailed in the 1960s. This means that, on average, a CEO receives in a single day almost as much as the average worker makes in an entire year.

This vast diversion of wealth and resources to the bank accounts of a parasitic elite has untold human consequences. America is today a country where life expectancy is on the decline, infant mortality and maternal mortality are on the rise, drug abuse and suicide are at record highs, major storms routinely devastate entire regions lacking basic infrastructure, and millions of workers are forced to work two or three poverty-wage and often part-time or temporary jobs.

The baseline for workers is becoming the brutal sweatshop conditions of Amazon, which has grown massively since the 2008 crash by exploiting the systematic destruction of decent-paying, secure jobs. In 2018 America there is the growing phenomenon of the homeless Amazon worker.

The growth of social inequality is the result of a bipartisan assault on the working class. The redistribution of wealth was greatly accelerated under the Obama administration, which responded to the financial crash of 2008 by instituting a series of policies whose net result was the greatest transfer of wealth from the bottom layers of society to the top in history.

These policies included the multi-trillion-dollar bank bailout, near-zero percent interest rates and the money-printing operation known as “quantitative easing.” These measures pumped trillions of dollars into the financial markets and provided the banks and hedge funds with virtually free credit, enabling them to mount new speculative operations similar to those that triggered the financial meltdown and Great Recession in 2008.

The vast inflation of stocks and other financial assets was made possible by the continuing suppression of the class struggle and workers’ wages by the trade unions, which all but banned strikes in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash. Wage-cutting and the growth of low-paying part-time and temporary jobs dramatically lowered the social position of the working class. This was combined with cuts in healthcare, pensions, education, housing, food stamps and other vital social programs.

The orgy of self-enrichment of the financial oligarchy has continued and accelerated under Trump with the enactment last December of a multi-trillion-dollar package of tax cuts for corporations and the rich. Trump’s tax cuts have triggered a new round of mergers and acquisitions, stock buybacks and dividend payments that will increase the wealth of CEOs and investors by an estimated $2.5 trillion by the end of 2018.

Obama shielded the bankers whose fraudulent activities led to the Great Recession. In 2011, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a 650-page report on the Wall Street crash that documented the criminal practices of major banks and the collusion of rating agencies and government regulators. The chairman of the subcommittee, Michigan Senator Carl Levin, told a press conference that Senate investigators had found “a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing.”

The report was a dead letter from the day it was released. Not a single top banker was criminally charged, let alone prosecuted and jailed. Instead, they were made even wealthier. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein have both become billionaires, despite playing key roles in creating the sub-prime mortgage Ponzi scheme and then profiting off of its collapse in 2008.

The United States is ruled by a corporate-financial oligarchy, which controls both major parties and all of the official institutions—Congress, the courts, academia and the media. This year has already seen a resurgence of class struggle and a growth of anti-capitalist and pro-socialist sentiment in the working class, not just in the US, but around the world.

The response of the ruling class is two-fold. First is a turn to authoritarian forms of rule, seen both in Trump’s fascistic attacks on immigrants and encouragement of far-right political forces, and the Democrats’ promotion of the FBI, the CIA and the military as the supposed alternative to Trump. There is not a trace of democratic or progressive content in the ongoing political warfare in Washington. Both sides are pro-war, anti-democratic and anti-working class.

The Democrats, for their part, are opposing Trump on the basis of his supposed reluctance to confront Russia militarily and expand the US war in Syria. They are running dozens of former CIA agents and military officers in the midterm elections. Their heroes are the former CIA director and drone assassination mastermind John Brennan and the late war-monger John McCain. They are spearheading the censorship of left-wing and anti-war websites on the internet in the fraudulent name of combating Russian “meddling” and “fake news.”

The other prong of the ruling class response to the growth of working class militancy and anti-capitalist sentiment is the promotion of fake “progressives” and “socialists” such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, and organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, which are aligned with the Democratic Party and seek to channel working class opposition back behind that party of American imperialism.

Ashinaga Fully-funded Undergraduate Scholarships for Orphans from Sub-Saharan African Countries 2019

Application Deadline: 16th December 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Field of Study: courses offered at candidate’s choice higher institution

To be taken at (country): Higher institutions outside of Africa, in countries such as Japan, US, UK etc

Eligible Countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea Conakry, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Republic of Congo, Senegal and Togo.

About Scholarship: Ashinaga presents the “Ashinaga Africa Initiative” aiming to provide higher education to 20 brilliant students from Sub-Saharan African countries each year, some of which are among the poorest in the world, and encourage them to become leading professionals in their own countries.
We search and screen for potential candidates: orphaned or bereaved students with academic potential but who cannot afford to apply to university. We provide them with a concentrated study camp for six months at Ashinaga’s facility, Kokorojuku, in Uganda and Senegal, where they are given dedicated support and assistance with their study of various subjects and languages, as they prepare to apply to highly ranked universities around the world. We also provide them with a full scholarship and living expenses for four years during their studies abroad.
We expect to see these young, educated people go back to their own countries and establish democratic and fulfilled societies, bringing people a higher national income and high-quality education. This movement will eventually contribute to the overall wellbeing of Sub-Saharan countries by helping to break the cycle of poverty, even though the effects will not be immediate, as they are when food or equipment is donated.
There is a theory that the African population will expand to more than three billion by the end of this century. We believe if we can create a bright future for Africa, a continent with so much potential, humanity’s global prospects will be bright as well.

Offered Since: 2014

Type: undergraduate

Eligibility: Applicants must:

• Have lost one or both parents;
•  Have completed 12 years of education (primary and secondary school) within the last two years;
• Were born after 1st October, 1996;
• Have an outstanding academic performance at high school and were amongst the top students in their class;
• Be willing to return home, or to Sub-Saharan Africa, and contribute to society in Sub-Saharan Africa after graduating from university;
  (See the full list of requirements here)

Number of Scholarships: up to 20

Value of Scholarship: The Ashinaga (100-Year Vision) Scholarship provides a full scholarship that covers the cost of tuition, accommodation (during the terms and vacation), insurance, flight, and provides monthly stipend which covers food and necessary academic costs.

Duration of Scholarship: for the period of undergraduate studies

How to Apply: There are three ways to apply for the Ashinaga Africa Initiative, although the Program prefers online applications or those sent by email. There is no application fee, and you must never pay anyone to apply or to apply on your behalf.

• Completed application form
• Working email address and telephone number
• Document proving the death of one or both parents, such as a death certificate
• Proof of age, such as a birth certificate, national ID or passport
• Secondary school/high school graduation certificate
• Results from final national exams
• Academic report cards from the last two years of high school/secondary school
• Passport-style photo of yourself

It is important to go through the Application instructions in the Scholarship Webpage before applying.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details

Award Sponsors: Ashinaga.

Important Note: Please note that if you apply by post, all submitted documents will not be returned to you. Therefore, you must send copies of documents ONLY.
This application and the selection process are FREE. Any person requesting payment at any stage of the process, does against Ashinaga’s will, and should not be paid.

Washington Post Newsroom Internships for Students Worldwide 2019 – USA

Application Deadline: 12th October 2018

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): USA

About the Award: Come be a reporter, photographer, videographer, multiplatform editor or producer, news or digital designer, graphics reporter or developer, or social media producer. Apply for the Washington Post Newsroom Internships.

• Reporters: Clear, concise, energetic writing is highly valued. Conventional coverage of news events should be demonstrated, but a higher value is placed upon enterprise reporting that shows creative, inventive or investigative skills. Writing for the web is also highly valued. Please indicate your reporting assignment preference: General Assignments (includes national and health/science), Foreign (assignments would be in the Washington newsroom), Arts, Entertainment and Culture, Local, Sports or Editorial. No more than three clips.
• Visual Journalists: For digital photographers, candidates must be proficient in Photoshop CS, photo management software, and Mac and PC platforms. Your application must include a portfolio. Videographers must be proficient in all aspects of digital video/audio and editing software, including Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere. Experience with voiceover narration and HTML is helpful. Required portfolio must be attached. Please indicate your assignment preference: Photography or Video.
• Multiplatform Editors: Successful editors must be able to edit for multiple platforms, writing headlines that are tailored for print and digital audiences. Editors must also have a keen understanding of style, grammar and sentence structure, and must be able to edit for clarity. We also value editors who can detect problems in stories and work with others to make them better. Writing captions for photo galleries, proofing pages and the ability to work calmly under intense deadlines are also requirements, as is strong news judgment. Include up to six examples of news or feature stories you have edited, preferably files that include a headline and caption(s) for web or print.
• Multiplatform Producers: The producer will be responsible for updating the web and mobile sites with fresh content and making sure article pages have critical web elements. We are looking for interns with solid news judgment, the ability to write smart headlines and blurbs and experience at packaging web stories, photo galleries and videos. An ideal candidate also will be adept at analyzing traffic data and web trends, understanding search engine optimization, be a quick and effective problem solver and be able to quickly learn to use new web publishing tools.
• News & Digital Designers: The designers craft the visual presentations of our content across platforms. We are looking for interns capable of creating innovative storytelling presentations and then tailoring them to all of our platforms. A candidate must be a strong visual designer, able to work well on deadline and have experience working well with photography and video. They should be proficient in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Photoshop, and InDesign. Send a portfolio that includes five to 10 examples of your digital design work. The portfolio should be contained in one PDF or link on your application form.
• Graphics Reporters and Developers : The graphics reporters and developers tell visual stories and present data on the web. A candidate should be able to utilize the entire storytelling toolbox — writing, reporting, charting, coding, mapping and data visualization — and know how to weave it all together to tell engaging stories. The candidate will create, or assist in creating, news applications such as data-driven maps, databases, social media apps, widgets and mobile tools that will either stand alone or be paired with other digital content. They will work closely with reporters and editors in the newsroom, either through mining existing data on the web, taking in feeds, or working with digital producers to imagine new ways to present information. They will work with the design and development team to indicate, design and help develop tools digital producers can use to enhance engagement. Candidates must be proficient in CSS(3), HTML(5), JQuery, JavaScript and must have experience in developing with databases, XML, JSON, PHP and/or Django. Send a portfolio that includes five to 10 examples of your work. The portfolio should be contained in one PDF or link on your application form.
• Social Media Producers: The producers foster engaging and useful conversation on washingtonpost.com and social media platforms. We are looking for students who have an ability to identify and participate in online communities, big and small. Familiarity with web publishing and basic HTML is required. Please send at least one sample of an online discussion you’ve led and include links to your personal social media handles and/or accounts you have managed. The most successful candidates live and breathe the Internet and can write well, too.
• Audio Producers: The producer helps record, write and edit audio stories for long-form and short-form podcasts, and works collaboratively with reporters and editors to find and bring to life Post reporting. The ideal candidate has a background in sound design, audio production or both. Our producers combine traditional journalistic skills with creative approaches to telling stories through sound. We also value a producer who brings creative approaches to promotion and community-building. Proficiency in either Adobe Audition or Pro Tools is required. Please include three links to audio clips with your application.

Type: Internship

Eligibility: To be eligible for the Washington Post Newsroom Internships,You must be a college junior, senior or graduate student enrolled in a degree program on Oct. 12, 2018. You must have had at least one professional news media job or internship.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The Washington Post Newsroom Internships are paid. For summer 2018, the salary was $750 per week.

Duration of Programme: 3 months

How to Apply: Complete the online application and attach all relevant materials, including résumé, work samples and autobiographical essay. All work submitted must be in English.

Visit Programme Webpage for details

Chivas Venture Accelerator Programme for Social Entrepreneurs (USD$1,000,000 Funding) 2019

Application Deadline: 31st October 2018

To be taken at (country): In each participating country.

About the Programme: The Venture is a global search to find and support the most promising startups with the potential to succeed financially and make a positive impact on the lives of others.
The most promising startups – one from each country participating in The Venture – will make it to the global final and have a chance to win a share of $1 million in funding.
In 2014, Chivas Regal launched The Venture, a $1million annual fund and global search to reward those who are using business to create positive change. Over the last two years we have invested $2 Million in a new generation of extraordinary startups, that do well by doing good, because we believe generosity and success go hand in hand.

Type: Entrepreneurship contest

Eligibility: The Venture is looking for exceptional startups that use business innovatively to transform communities and solve global challenges. Social businesses that are creating a better future. Whatever it is, if it’s brilliant and can create real, positive change then we want to hear from you.

• The Venture is looking for social entrepreneurs who have a registered, for-profit startup or business.
• The Venture is searching for businesses in seed stage (which means the product is still in prototype stage and the business is not yet generating revenue from customers or users yet), startup stage (which means the business has a working prototype of its concept, ideally with some demonstrable user traction, generating a maximum of US $500,000 – or local currency equivalent – in annual revenues and has been incorporated for no more than three years) or growth stage (which means the business is beyond the working prototype stage, and can show significant user traction and sales, generating a maximum of US $1 million – or local currency equivalent – in annual revenues and has been incorporated for more than three years).
• You will have a strong vision, a compelling idea and a solid business plan.
• You’ll also need to showcase how your business has a positive impact and articulate how funding would help to take your business to the next level.
• You must be over 25 to enter The Venture.

Selection Process: Each country participating in The Venture will select one winner to go to the global final. The selection process will vary between countries so please be sure to check your local Terms & Conditions to find out more.

If you are successful at the national final, you will head to The Venture’s Accelerator Week; an intensive five days of learning, where finalists will receive world-class mentorship and support in preparation for the high stakes pitch in July. The week will involve expert trainers and inspirational mentors recruited by the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship.

After the Accelerator Week, you will have the chance to inspire the public to vote for your startup in order to receive funding. During the voting period, we will allocate $250,000 of the $1Million fund by giving people the chance to vote for their favourite startup.

Final Pitch: At an exclusive event in front of a live audience of business experts, influencers and changemakers, you will have the opportunity to pitch to The Venture’s global panel of judges, who will decide where the remaining share of the $1Million fund will be awarded.

Selection Criteria: Every submission will be judged on five criteria. These criteria are:

• Market opportunity and size.
• Demonstrable impact: measurable social or environmental impact and a model that can scale.
• Sound business model and organizational strategy.
• Financial feasibility and sustainability: can earn revenue.
• Skills, experience and commitment of management team.

Number of Awardees: Not specified.

Value of Contest: 

• A share of the $1 million fund!!!
• finalists will also take part in a variety of intensive business master-classes at some of the world’s leading businesses to help them sharpen their skills.
• business and pitching support
• The global finalists will feature on The Venture website and crowdfunding site IndieGogo. Our international campaign will reach millions of people around the world, offering incredible exposure for your business.
• The Venture is an international project with some of the participating countries offering additional prizes.

How to Apply: Apply now
It is highly important to go through the FAQ page before applying.

Visit Contest Webpage for details

Award Provider: Chivas Regal