Ten thousand education workers strike at two Toronto universities

Carl Bronski

Teaching assistants and contract professors at York University in north Toronto began a strike Monday night after voting down a contract offer that failed to address concerns over job security for the non-tenured teaching staff and tuition costs for international graduate students.

The job action effecting 3,700 workers comes a day after picket lines went up at the University of Toronto (U of T), where over 6,000 teaching assistants are on strike against the administration’s inadequate funding package that has not increased since 2008. Strikers at both universities are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).

Over 100,000 students are affected by the strikes. At York, the university has cancelled all classes. At U of T, the administration has announced that classes will not be affected, although student tutorials and labs have been cancelled and grading discontinued. Despite the university’s assurances, some classes have already been postponed.

CUPE members at York voted by 71 percent against a contract offer after the local union bargaining team recommended that the administration’s proposals be rejected. At U of T, over 1,000 teaching assistants who attended a meeting to decide whether to send a proposed contract to a membership-wide ballot as part of the final ratification process, ignored the unanimous recommendation of their local union executive endorsing the tentative deal and voted overwhelmingly in a show of hands to reject the agreement. Observers said the rejection was by 90 percent or more.

Even before picket lines went up, the U of T’s chief spokesperson in the dispute, Provost Cheryl Regehr, made an unsuccessful attempt to interfere with the democratic vote, suggesting to the press that the decision of the mass membership meeting be unconstitutionally over-ridden in favour of a second “full” vote to be organized by the union.

The last strike by teaching assistants at U of T occurred in 2000. That dispute lasted three-and-a-half weeks. The strike at York follows a three-month job action six years ago that saw the Liberal provincial government use back-to-work legislation against the strikers.

During that dispute, local officials of CUPE threatened to challenge the legality of the back-to-work legislation and continue the strike. But it subsequently backed down after pressure from the national union. The CUPE leadership has reportedly long considered the York membership “too radical.” Angered by what they considered the CUPE leadership’s sellout of a bitter strike in 2000, the local six years ago sought to exclude the national from directly participating in the negotiations.

The strike at U of T arose over the school administration’s current system of poverty-level compensation. Although teaching assistants would be paid $43.97 per hour in the first year of the contract that was just rejected (a slight increase over the past contract), the staff are only entitled to earn a maximum of $15,000 per year–a stipend well below the Ontario poverty line. Furthermore, the limited amount of hours teaching assistants are allowed to work negatively impacts on students needing their assistance, especially under conditions where class and tutorial sizes continue to increase.

At York University, a major area of dispute is over the university’s practice of renewing teacher contracts at the very last minute (or not renewing them at all) and, if renewed, extending the offer for only one term or even one semester. The membership is demanding that non-tenured teaching staff be assigned to courses for up to three years.

Both disputes, however, highlight much broader issues in post-secondary education. Tuition costs have increased steadily over the past decade even as the quality of a university education continues to be diluted as schools embrace a business model philosophy geared towards the specific research demands of their corporate donors. In addition, the road for post-graduate students to a tenured professorship has become ever more difficult, with universities using contract employees to teach ever increasing numbers of classes. At York, 64 percent of undergraduate classes are now taught by contract faculty.

These trends are a North America-wide phenomenon. Last week, contract or “adjunct” professors and teaching assistants in college campuses across the United States staged protests and walkouts to highlight the plight of the super-exploited part-time instructors that now comprise the majority of faculty on campuses. In the United States, adjunct faculty, who perform the same tasks as full-time, tenured faculty now comprise 75 percent of the 1.8 million instructors at colleges and universities. Many work without any benefits and are essentially temp employees working from semester to semester without a contract and subject to termination at management’s whim. Nationally, the median salary per three-credit course is $2,700.

Spokespeople for the administrations at both U of T and York have cited the provincial Liberal government’s austerity strictures on net financial increases on newly-bargained contracts to justify their refusal to meet their employees’ demands. The executive officers of both universities, nonetheless, are happy to accept annual salaries ranging from $250,000 to $775,000.

The Liberal government of Premier Kathleen Wynne has insisted that the already cash-starved universities and colleges cut $40 million in spending from their budgets in 2014, and an additional $80 million this year.

The austerity budget the Ontario Liberal government tabled in May and which was hailed by the unions as the most “progressive” budget in decades stipulates that for three years beginning in 2015 there will be no increase whatsoever in government program spending. Due to inflation and population growth, this nominal spending freeze will translate into real, across-the-board, spending cuts of well over three percent per year or more than 10 percent by 2018. Moreover, this comes after years of Liberal austerity measures.

Declaring the recession over, the Liberals in 2010 announced a multi-year program of tax cuts for big business, while initiating, in the name of deficit reduction, an austerity drive. For much of this period, the government was propped up by the provincial New Democratic Party (NDP) of Andrea Horwath with the unions’ whole-hearted support.

Students at both York and U of T have voiced strong support for the striking workers. They too continue to suffer under the policies of the government. Already, the average Ontario undergraduate student pays $7,100 in annual tuition fees, graduating with an average debt of $27,000. Graduate students pay on average $8,000 in tuition per year. These figures do not take into account additional compulsory fees, which run into the hundreds of dollars per year. Under the government’s new tuition-fee framework, annual tuition in 2016 will cost $8,000 and $9,000 for undergraduate and graduate programs, respectively.

In their drive to channel ever-greater amounts of society’s wealth into their personal bank accounts, the ruling elite is determined to systematically reduce the living standards of education workers whilst returning to the days when only the sons and daughters of the wealthy had access to quality education. That is why the fight to defend the rights of education workers and students alike is, above all, a struggle for social equality and a vast redistribution of wealth to meet the needs of society as a whole.

Brad Duguid, Ontario’s Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities, announced that college and university undergraduate tuition fees will be allowed to rise by 3 percent per year for the next four years. Graduate university and professional programs will be allowed to raise their tuition fees by 5 percent per annum.

They are already paying the highest tuition fees in the country, and must contend with mounting debt, growing youth unemployment and stagnant wages.

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath praised last month’s Liberal post-secondary fee hike announcement, calling it a “good first step.” The trade union-backed NDP has propped up the minority Liberal government for the past year-and-a-half as it has implemented an austerity budget that cut billions from social spending and imposed concessions contracts on teachers by legislative fiat.

Students now shoulder 44 percent of university operating costs, up from 15 percent in 1980, when the average cost of tuition was $830.

To compensate for years of chronic under-funding, post-secondary institutions have increasingly courted the private sector for donations. Big-business influence on university campuses across the province is ubiquitous. Many buildings and even individual classrooms bear the names of corporate brands or wealthy donors. In philanthropy, as in business, the ruling class demands a profitable return on investment, and achieves this by pressing for research and academic programs to be ever more closely tailored to its needs.

Georgia woman’s execution postponed for second time in a week

Kate Randall

For the second time in less than a week, a Georgia woman’s execution has been postponed only hours before her lethal injection was scheduled to take place. The move by prison authorities is the latest macabre twist in Georgia authorities’ drive to execute the first woman in the state in 70 years.

Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 46, received a temporary reprieve last Wednesday when her execution scheduled for that day was postponed due to winter weather and “related scheduling issues.” Her execution was then rescheduled for 7 p.m. local time the following Monday at the state prison in Jackson.

As the hour approached, the Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) stated that prior to the execution, pentobarbital, the drug to be used in the lethal injection, had been sent to an independent lab to test its potency, and that it fell within the “acceptable” testing limits.

However in the hours leading up to the scheduled execution, “The Execution Team performed the necessary checks,” according to DOC, and “at that time, the drugs appeared cloudy.” Prison officials said they immediately consulted with a pharmacist, and that in “an abundance of caution,” the execution had been postponed.

On news of the postponement, cheers went up outside the prison among the several dozen people who were standing vigil in support of Gissendaner, including some women who had been in prison with her. However, their relief will most likely be short lived. Although a new execution date has not yet been set, Gissendaner has exhausted all likely avenues of appeal.

Gissendaner was convicted and sentenced to death for the February 1997 murder of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner. Last Wednesday, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, the only entity in Georgia authorized to commute a death sentence, denied Gissendaner’s appeal for clemency. A federal judge in Atlanta also rejected a request to halt her execution, a decision that her lawyers appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

With her execution approaching on Monday, Gissendaner’s attorneys appealed to the Board of Pardons and Paroles to “bestow mercy” and commute her sentence to life without parole. Although the board said they would consider the last-minute appeal, at around 6 p.m. Monday they announced that their previous decision would stand, clearing the way for the execution. Also on Monday, the Georgia Supreme Court voted 5-2 to deny her appeal.

Gissendaner did not commit the murder of her husband, according to prosecutors, but plotted with her boyfriend at the time, Gregory Owen, who ultimately carried out the murder, stabbing the victim to death. Owen pleaded guilty and received a life sentence with eligibility for parole after 25 years and testified against Gissendaner at her trial. Gissendaner turned down a similar plea deal.

In a clemency petition, Gissendaner’s attorneys cited the post-conviction testimony of her trial lawyer, Edwin Wilson, who said that he hadn’t thought a jury would sentence her to death. “I guess I thought this because she was a woman and because she did not actually kill Doug,” Wilson is quoted as saying, adding that he should have urged her to take the deal.

Gissendaner would be the first women put to death in Georgia since the 1945 execution of Lena Baker, a black maid. Baker was executed after being convicted in a one-day trial for killing her white employer. She was issued a posthumous pardon by Georgia authorities in 2005, after six decades of lobbying by her family, who maintained that she likely killed her boss because he was holding her against her will. Baker said at trial that he had threatened her life and appeared ready to hit her with a metal bar before she fired the fatal shot.

Since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 1,402 executions have been carried out in the US states that practice the death penalty. Gissendaner would be the 16th woman put to death.

Capital cases in Georgia have been pivotal in charting the modern course of the US death penalty. A 1972 case involving a Georgia death row inmate, William Henry Furman, led to a de facto moratorium on capital punishment in the US from 1972 to 1976. The US Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia, however, did not outlaw the death penalty outright, but called only for consistency in its application.

Furman, an emotionally disturbed and mentally disabled African-American, was convicted of carrying out a murder during a home invasion and was sentenced to death after a one-day trial. Ruling in the case, a five-member majority on the Supreme Court called a temporary halt to executions because of “the discretion of judges and juries in imposing the death penalty,” which enable it “to be selectively applied, feeding prejudices against the accused if he is poor and despised, and lacking political clout.”

Another Georgia case, Gregg v. Georgia, led to the reinstitution of the death penalty in 1976. In the case of condemned inmate Troy Leon Gregg, the justices ruled that the death penalty serves two principal social purposes, retribution and deterrence, and does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment.” The high court held that the state of Georgia could constitutionally put Gregg to death. Gregg escaped from prison and died following a bar fight before he could be recaptured and executed.

As with all state-sponsored killings, Kelly Gissendaner’s execution will do nothing to contribute to the societal good. The drive on the part of authorities to see her death sentence carried out is based on vengeance and will not prevent similar brutal crimes. In fact, if anything her execution will worsen conditions for other incarcerated inmates.

In a vigil on the eve of her scheduled execution, those gathered argued that the mother of three had turned her life around in prison, earning a theology degree in 2011, and going on to counsel other prisoners on gaining education and training to prepare for life outside prison. The condemned woman’s lawyers have argued that in an effort to keep this information out of the clemency proceedings, prison employees who might have testified to Gissendaner’s rehabilitation and model behavior behind bars were intimidated by prison authorities.

Douglas Gissendaner’s parents and sisters were intent on Kelly Gissendaner’s execution, but two of the couple’s three children asked the parole board to spare her life. In statements submitted with the clemency application, Kayla and Dakota Gissendaner wrote that they had moved from bitterness to anger to forgiveness in their relationship with their mother.

“The impact of losing my mother would be devastating. I can’t fathom losing another parent,” wrote Kayla Gissendaner. “My mom has touched so many lives. Executing her doesn’t bring justice or peace to me or to anyone.”

In their clemency petition, Gissendaner’s lawyers also emphasized that prosecutors had originally offered a deal to their client that would have spared her life. “At one time, therefore,” the lawyers wrote, “all the parties involved in the case thought a sentence less than death was appropriate for Ms. Gissendaner.”

Cleveland court filing alleges Tamir Rice caused his own death

Tom Hall

A response filed last Friday by the city of Cleveland to a lawsuit by the family of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was shot and killed November 22 by police while playing with a pellet gun, has prompted widespread outrage for callously blaming Rice for his own death.

Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann within one second of his arriving on the scene in response to a 911 call about a child playing with a gun in a nearby park. Despite Rice’s murder being captured on video, Loehmann remains at large while the case has been referred to a local grand jury, reminiscent of the infamous cover-ups of the murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in Staten Island last summer.

Meanwhile, the city’s response to the lawsuit filed in January on behalf of the family by attorneys Walter Madison and Benjamin Crump makes clear its refusal to admit any wrongdoing in Tamir Rice’s killing. The affirmative defense contained in Friday’s filing argues that the killing was “directly and proximately caused by the failure of [Tamir Rice] to exercise due care to avoid injury,” that the damages claimed by Tamir’s family were “caused by their own acts,” and that the government of Cleveland is legally immune from being held responsible for the killing. The filing also asked that the case be dismissed with prejudice.

The incredible claim that an unarmed 12-year-old boy was responsible for his own death provoked mass outrage over the weekend, prompting Cleveland officials to backpedal. The city is now attempting to paint the filing as the result of a mere oversight or breakdown in communication. Barbara Langhenry, the city’s law director, claimed that the lawyer who drafted the document used “routine” legal formulae and failed to understand “that this is an emotional situation and not take that position with a child.”

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson held a press conference Monday to offer a tepid “apology” to Tamir’s family. Making the highly implausible claim that he only became aware of the wording of the court filing that very Monday, Jackson apologized only for the poor choice of words, and promised a new filing in the next few days.

“We are apologizing to the family and to the citizens of Cleveland for our poor use of those words and our insensitivity,” Jackson said, making clear that the new filing would differ not in substance but only in the “use of words.” Jackson then began to shed literal crocodile tears, affecting being choked up, comparing his grandson to Tamir Rice, while continuing to cover up for the shooting and denying any responsibility by the city.

The Rice family and their attorneys held their own press conference yesterday in response, which rejected the mayor’s phony “apology.” They replayed the widely circulated surveillance video showing the murder, with a counter added on the top right corner of the screen which measured the time between the arrival of Loehmann’s cop car and his shooting of Tamir Rice at .792 seconds. “The city’s answer is disrespectful to my son Tamir,” his mother Samira Rice said. “I have yet to receive an apology from the police department or the city of Cleveland in regards to the killing of my son and it hurts.”

Attorney Benjamin Crump, who has also represented the families of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, rejected out of hand the city’s claim that the filing was a mistake or oversight. “The city had over 30 days to deliberate and articulate its decision on Tamir Rice and they chose the words that they chose … Any time that they try to justify—other than to say that they made a mistake—anything short of that is disrespectful from the family.”

The current version of the civil suit against the city of Cleveland, filed at the end of January, names officer Loehmann and his partner Frank Garmback as well as more than a hundred 911 operators and city employees as additional defendants. It contains 27 allegations, ranging from civil rights violations to the battery of Tamir’s 14-year-old sister, Tajai. Tajai was tackled to the ground, handcuffed and placed in the back of a squad car after she ran toward Tamir as he lay dying, while Loehmann and Garmback failed to administer first aid. After arriving at the scene, Samira Rice was forced by police to choose between staying with Tajai or accompanying Tamir to the hospital.

The police killing of Tamir Rice was one of several throughout the country last year involving victims holding toy weapons, including an earlier incident in the state of Ohio. In August, police in Beavercreek shot John Crawford III in a local Walmart while he held a pellet gun that he had just picked up off the shelf. The shooting took place within seconds of police arriving on the scene, and was also caught in its entirety on surveillance cameras. All of the officers involved escaped charges after a grand jury declined to indict them.

A lawsuit over that killing is also pending, to which Beavercreek officials have also responded by denying any responsibility and asking for the case to be dismissed. They argue that the shooting was the “direct and proximate cause of intervening superseding third parties over whom these Defendants had no control.”

US-trained Afghan security forces committing “systematic” torture and extra-legal killings

Thomas Gaist

Afghan government security forces and affiliated paramilitary units, developed under the US occupation, are engaged in a daily, ongoing campaign of terror against the country’s civilian population, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released this week, “Today We Shall All Die.”

The puppet regime in Kabul, established by the US and NATO powers after the overthrow of the Taliban government in October 2001, presides over a web of criminalized security forces and politicized crime syndicates that oppress and plunder the population, all while drawing on a steady stream of resources from Europe and North America, HRW found.

“The administration of former President Hamid Karzai installed many powerful warlords and failed to confront others, while many others have been funded by and worked alongside international forces, further entrenching them politically into the fabric of Afghan society. In this way impunity in Afghanistan is both a domestic and foreign problem for which the solution resides not only in Kabul but in foreign capitals such as Washington, DC,” HRW wrote.

Forces aligned with the Kabul government regularly commit a range of criminal violations of the basic rights of the population, including extra-legal killings, disappearances, extortion, robbery, rampant sexual abuse and arbitrary detentions. Money flowing into Afghanistan from US and European governments for security and logistics contracts is channeled by high-ranking Afghan officials to maintain private militias, HRW found.

“The perpetrators of these abuses are persons in positions of authority or persons who operate with their backing … they occupy positions in almost every level of government, from local militia commanders to ministerial rank,” HRW reports.

To prepare the report, HRW interviewed some 120 members of communities across eight Afghan provinces that have been affected by the violence. Based on these interviews, HRW drew up eight case studies of leaders within the official Afghan security forces and the broader network of semi-formal militant groups that wield power in the hinterland.

One militant leader highlighted by the report, Abdul Shujoyi, was recruited as a fighter for the Afghan Security Guards (ASG) and worked directly with US occupation forces beginning from at least 2009.

Elder villagers interviewed by HRW stated that “everyone has seen [Shujoyi] with the Americans,” with the militant leader paying frequent visitings to a US facility known as Forward Operating Base (FOB) Anaconda.

Shujoyi spends “a good deal of time on the US base at Khas Orugzgan,” according to investigative work published by the Sydney Morning Herald. “Cover by US Special Forces has emboldened and protected Shujoyi,” a reporter for the Herald found on the basis of extensive interviews with local sources.

By 2011, at the instigation of US Special Forces officers who used their connections to the government to override the opposition of the local governor and tribal leaders, Shujoyi rose to command elements of the Afghan Local Police (ALP), a militia network set up by US forces occupying the country in coordination with the government in Kabul.

ALP forces under Shujoyi’s command repeatedly raided villages around Kukhtaba, robbing and murdering inhabitants, including children, in 2011 and in following years, HRW reported. Multiple accounts from villagers state that Shujoyi’s forces killed local children by stoning.

In November 2012, local residents submitted a list of 121 victims they said were killed by Shujoyi’s men since 2009, while also reporting that militants under Shujoyi’s command regularly raped villagers, and stole their motorcycles and wheat yields at gunpoint.

HRW highlighted another figure, Commander Azizullah, who served as a senior officer with the Afghan Security Guard (ASG), while it was involved in joint combat operations with US forces.

A UN report from 2010 found that Azizullah repeatedly engaged in arbitrary detention and execution of children. After joining the ALP in 2011, reports emerged that Azizullah was overseeing similar abuses, including forcible conscription of child soldiers into his militias.

A village teacher told HRW that he was arbitrarily detained and savagely beaten by ALP militiamen led by Azizullah during a 2012 raid. The ALP forces arrived in Ranger trucks accompanied by US military personnel, the teacher said.

Azizullah remained in command of a local ALP detachment as of June 2014, according to HRW.

Kandahar police chief Abdul Razziq, a man with close ties to the US military who received praise from a top US general for establishing “security” in areas under his control, encourages systematic use of torture by forces under his command, a separate UN report found.

Referring to the professional murderers and thugs surveyed in the report, HRW noted that “the Afghan government has empowered rather than apprehended them” and has done so “with the backing of the US and other international supporters.”

Indeed, what the psychopathic criminals depicted in the HRW report all have in common is their close collaboration with the US military and its special operations units. In its drive to reorganize and dominate global politics, US imperialism forges alliances everywhere, with the most depraved forces, as the necessary instruments of its global agenda of subjugation and mass murder.

Before leaving office, in the wake of the US-orchestrated power sharing agreement that placed Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah in power last fall, the Karzai government granted sweeping amnesty to state criminals, HRW reported. As under Karzai, top Afghan military, intelligence and administration officials of the Ghani regime directly carry out and supervise murder, torture and rape, HRW found.

The formal end of US combat operations in Afghanistan on December 31, 2014, has by no means halted the US-directed slaughter. US commandos continue to carry out a “secret war” throughout the country, coordinating and directly executing targeted assassinations against anyone suspected of opposing the government.

The first act of the Ghani regime’s “national unity” government was to sign off on the permanent occupation of the country by some 10,000 US troops, who will continue to enjoy full legal immunity for civilian “collateral damage” produced by their operations.

Netanyahu delivers anti-Iran tirade to US Congress

Bill Van Auken

The speech delivered Tuesday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to an extraordinary joint session of the US Congress consisted of a hysterical anti-Iran tirade and an implicit denunciation of the Obama administration for what was portrayed as an outright betrayal of the security interests of both Israel and the US.

Netanyahu’s appearance, organized behind the back of the White House, marked an unprecedented—and constitutionally dubious—bid by an American political party to bring a foreign head of state before Congress in order to condemn and undermine the policies of a sitting president.

For Netanyahu, who described his trip to Washington as a “historic, even fateful mission,” the political motives were transparent. With Israeli elections just two weeks away and polls showing his support fading, the speech provided Netanyahu with a means of shifting attention from deteriorating economic and social conditions in Israel to the supposed “existential threat” posed by Iran’s nuclear program.

It also gave him the opportunity to be televised accepting multiple standing ovations from the US Congress. Democrats and Republicans proved equally obsequious to the Zionist lobby, rising to their feet at least 15 times during the 39-minute diatribe.

While roughly 55 of the 232 Democrats in both houses of Congress stayed away from the address—not out of disagreement with Israeli policy, but out of loyalty to Obama—the party’s congressional leadership showed up.

The speech was delivered simultaneously with a third session of talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in the Swiss town of Montreux. The negotiations between Iran and the P5+1—the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany—are proceeding under the pressure of a March 31 deadline to reach a tentative agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.

Netanyahu’s clear aim was to derail any deal with Tehran. US officials had feared he would use the speech to disclose classified information on the negotiations in order to achieve this aim. Instead, the Israeli prime minister relied on crude scaremongering and Islamophobia in what was clearly an attempt to convince Congress to intervene and disrupt the talks.

He portrayed Iran as both a terrorist state and an expanding empire that would resort to nuclear war to achieve its aims.

“We must all stand together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror,” he said, adding that “the greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons.”

The deal being negotiated by the Obama administration, he charged, would “inexorably lead to a nuclear-armed Iran whose unbridled aggression will inevitably lead to war.”

No one in either major party or in the corporate media pointed out the hypocrisy that saturated Netanyahu’s speech. The head of the Israeli government, which possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, charges Iran, a signatory to the pact, with nuclear malfeasance. The Israeli government, which has waged repeated wars of aggression against the Palestinian people and all of its Arab neighbors, while recognizing no restrictions on its borders, accuses Iran, which has invaded no one, of “aggression.”

To promote these lies, Netanyahu equated Iran not only to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but even to Nazi Germany.

At one point, he turned the attention of Congress to the presence in the gallery of Elie Wiesel, who has made a lucrative career as Washington’s semi-official Holocaust spokesman, and repeated the refrain “Never again.” Wiesel was seated with Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, who finds herself at the center of multiple corruption scandals within Israel itself.

This cheap invocation of the Holocaust to justify a policy of aggressive war against an oppressed country is as fraudulent as it is morally obscene.

President Barack Obama responded to the speech by stating that there was “nothing new” in Netanyahu’s remarks and that he had failed to “offer any viable alternative.”

An unnamed “senior US official” who spoke to the Washington Post was more blunt, declaring, “The logic of the prime minister’s speech is regime-change, not a nuclear speech.” The official added, “Simply demanding that Iran capitulate is not a plan.”

This is the essence of Netanyahu’s policy. His demand that Iran accept the complete dismantling of all of its nuclear facilities—to which it is entitled under international law—cannot be achieved by negotiations, but only through a war to subjugate the country.

Washington has itself repeatedly engaged in saber rattling against Iran, with US representatives insisting even this week that should Tehran fail to accept or subsequently violate a nuclear agreement, the military option remained “on the table.”

Since the end of 2013, however, after it was compelled to back down from its threat to launch an air war against the Iranian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Obama administration has shifted its policy toward reaching an accommodation with Iran.

It is this policy, not the danger of nuclear attack, that Tel Aviv sees as an existential threat. The Zionist regime requires a continuous state of war and confrontation to sustain its rule. A deal with Iran would undermine its central claim to legitimacy.

Before the 1979 Iranian revolution, US imperialism relied on the dictatorial regime of the Shah as a pillar of stability and counterrevolution in the Middle East. Elements within the US ruling establishment no doubt harbor the hope that such a relation can be revived. As Netanyahu’s appearance demonstrated, there are sharp divisions within the US ruling elite over how to pursue such a strategy.

In its latest military intervention in Iraq and Syria, Washington has coordinated its actions with those of Iran, which has supplied the Shia-dominated Iraqi regime with substantial military aid. The Wall Street Journalreported Tuesday that in a newly launched operation to retake the Iraqi city of Tikrit, Iran was “throwing drones, heavy weaponry and ground forces into the battle, while the US remained on the sidelines.”

Israel, which has provided logistical support to the Islamist “rebels” in Syria and has tried to forge a de facto anti-Iranian alliance with the reactionary Sunni monarchies of the Gulf, perceives any thaw in US-Iranian relations as a threat to its hegemonic aims in the region, as well as to Washington’s unconditional support for the aggressive policies with which it pursues these aims.

Tel Aviv opposes Iran in large measure because its aid to the Syrian government, to Hezbollah in Lebanon and to Hamas in Gaza, while posing no existential threat to Israel, limits Israel’s ability to militarily impose its dictates on the peoples of the region.

Washington, on the other hand, is pursuing far broader objectives. Its negotiations with Tehran are directed not merely at curbing its nuclear program, but at creating conditions in the region that will facilitate US imperialism’s “pivot” toward escalating military confrontation with both Russia and China.

Speaking in Geneva, Kerry pointed toward this shift, declaring, “Israel’s security is absolutely at the forefront of our minds, but frankly, so is the security of all the other countries in the region, so is our security in the United States.”

Netanyahu’s provocation in the US Capitol has been accompanied by statements from both Democrats and Republicans reaffirming support for Israel, which translates into over $3 billion a year in mostly military aid. In an interview with Reuters Monday, Obama said Netanyahu’s actions would not prove “permanently destructive.”

Such reassurances notwithstanding, Netanyahu’s speech is not the cause of the tensions between Washington and Tel Aviv, but rather a symptom of an increasing divergence of strategic interests between US imperialism and its Israeli client state.

Wealth of world’s billionaires surges past $7 trillion

Joseph Kishore

The combined net worth of the world’s billionaires has reached a new high in 2015 of $7.05 trillion, according to the latest compilation published by Forbes magazine on Monday.

There are a record 1,826 billionaires, each with an average wealth of $3.8 billion. Relative to last year, the world’s billionaires have increased their combined wealth by more than 10 percent, from $6.4 trillion in 2014, while the total number of billionaires has grown by 11 percent.

In introducing its report, Forbes noted the striking disconnect between the continued surge in the wealth of the world’s ultra-rich and the state of the world economy. “Despite plunging oil prices and a weakened euro, the ranks of the world’s wealthiest defied global economic turmoil and expanded once again,” the magazine commented.

This growth in the wealth of billionaires is bound up with the continued rise in global equity markets. The FTSE All-World Index surged to record highs last month, and US markets have continued to break records. Stock ownership is overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, who have been the prime beneficiaries of “quantitative easing,” record low interest rates and other government policies.

The wealth of the world's billionaires

The United States, the home of Wall Street and center of global financial capital, again has far and away the highest number of billionaires—536. Since the beginning of the so-called “economic recovery,” in 2009, some 95 percent of all income gains in the United States have gone to the top 1 percent. Meanwhile, nearly one in four children in the country lives in poverty.

At the top of the list of billionaires in the US are familiar names, including Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, whose individual wealth alone surged by $3.2 billion, to $79.2 billion. Among Americans, Gates was followed by investor Warren Buffet, the list’s biggest gainer for the year, who now has a net worth of $72.7 billion, up $14.5 billion from last year.

Further down the list, one finds individuals like hedge fund manager Steven Cohen, a personification of the essentially criminal character of American capitalism. A year ago, Cohen’s former hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, pleaded guilty to insider trading charges. Cohen himself was never charged, and he simply transferred his fortune to a new firm, Point72 Asset Management. Cohen made $1.3 billion last year, bringing his total net worth to $11.4 billion.

If categorized as a separate country, California, with 131 billionaires, would be second on the Forbes list, following only the US as a whole and China. Among the new billionaires in California are Travis Kalanick and Garett Camp, co-founders of Uber, a car-sharing service that specializes in coordinating drivers who are paid low wages, with uncertain and irregular hours. Such labor is increasingly being seen as a model for the American economy as a whole.

Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecommunications magnate, was second on the global list, with $77.1 billion. Half of Mexico’s population of 122 million people lives in poverty, defined as an income of less than about $6 a day (2,329 pesos a month). Slim’s personal fortune is roughly comparable to the combined annual income of these 60 million impoverished Mexican workers.

While Slim is the richest single individual in Latin America, the country with the largest number of billionaires in the region is Brazil, with 54. Half of Brazil’s 60 million children live in poverty.

Overall, the country with the second largest number of billionaires is China, with 213, followed by Germany, India and Russia.

China, which remains a cheap labor platform for world capitalism, is home to 71 of the 290 billionaires on the Forbes list this year, or about a quarter of the total. The richest individual in China is Wang Jianlin ($24.2 billion), a real estate magnate, followed by Jack Ma ($22.7 billion), the founder of Alibaba Group, an Internet trading company.

A surge in equity markets in China last year has benefited not only Chinese billionaires. Forbes commented, “If you invested in the companies run by billionaires on the top 20 China billionaire list, you’re tracking their wealth right into your brokerage account.” The initial public offering of Alibaba last year became an international spectacle of speculation and greed, netting global investors tens of billions in profits.

On India, Forbes commented that the country’s 90 billionaires “are riding high on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise of ‘good times.’” The right-wing Hindu fundamentalist politician, elected last year, has quickly pushed through a raft of pro-business measures, while promoting the country as the world’s sweat shop.

The richest Indian is Mukesh Ambani (net worth of $21 billion), the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Limited. About 60 percent of the population in India, or 750 million people, live on less than $2 a day.

Russia has seen a significant decline in the number of billionaires, from 111 to 88, dropping from third to fifth on the overall list of countries. This is one result of the economic crisis that has engulfed the country, due to the sharp drop in oil prices and crippling economic sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe. One of the primary aims of these sanctions is to encourage a section of the Russian oligarchs, fearful of the impact on their wealth, to turn against the government of Vladimir Putin.

Certain broader comparisons are revealing. The debt that Greece owes the banks of Europe, for example, is about $90 billion. The wealth of the world’s billionaires is more than 77 times this amount.

In the United States, the city of Detroit has a debt of $6.9 billion, or one one-thousandth of the collective wealth of the world’s billionaires.

Both Greece and Detroit have been dragged through a disastrous restructuring dictated by the banks and endorsed by the entire political establishment, resulting in mass impoverishment and the decimation of living standards.

The Forbes list gives expression to the parasitic character of world capitalism as a whole. Whatever the particular sector of the economy with which their wealth is associated—finance, manufacturing, telecommunications—the fortunes of the ultra-rich are invariably tied to surging stock markets.

The concentration of such enormous sums in the hands of so few is not simply the product of abstract economic processes, but deliberate government policies, intensified since the financial crash of 2008. As the World Socialist Web Site noted at the time, the crisis was “the form in which a fundamental restructuring of the American and global economy, and the social and class relations upon which it is based, is taking place.”

Since 2009, when the policies of bank bailouts, near-zero interest rates and “quantitative easing” were fully implemented, the wealth of the world’s billionaires has nearly tripled. Led by the Obama administration in the US, the ruling class has funneled trillions of dollars into the financial markets while carrying out a relentless assault on the working class.

The universal character of these processes makes clear that what is at issue is the very nature of the existing economic order. The extraordinary growth of social inequality and the immense transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top are expressions of a bankrupt and diseased social system, capitalism. The decay and crisis of this system are producing the means for its own demise—the eruption of social conflict and class struggle on a world scale.

The police killing in Los Angeles

Andre Damon & Barry Grey

On Sunday, in broad daylight and in full view of horrified bystanders, six police officers converged on a homeless, mentally unstable man living in a tent on Los Angeles’s Skid Row, only a few blocks from downtown.

Ignoring the protests of shocked and outraged onlookers, the police proceeded to tase and beat the unarmed man. Three of the cops fired a total of five shots into their prostrate victim, killing him.

Like a number of similar police atrocities in the US in recent months, this event was taped by a witness. The four-minute video has circulated around the world, evoking in millions of people a combination of revulsion and disbelief. The wanton murder of a human being. Why? For what reason?

The killing of Charley Saturmin Robinet, known as “Africa,” is only the latest in a string of police atrocities. Virtually every day, somewhere in “democratic” America, uniformed thugs wearing badges savagely beat or kill someone—almost always someone who is struggling to make ends meet in a society dominated by wealth and privilege.

Police killed 1,102 people last year. Nearly 200 more have died at the hands of police since the start of this year. The list of victims includes eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York; twelve-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio; sixteen-year-old Jessica Hernandez in Denver, Colorado; and Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Pasco, Washington.

In each case, the response of the local, state and federal governments has been the same—to shield the killer cops. Rigged grand juries refused to indict the officers who killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner, despite eyewitness accounts and even video evidence establishing that the victims were unarmed and posed no threat to their killers.

Obama administration officials have leaked to the press the fact that the Justice Department will not bring federal charges against Darren Wilson, the Ferguson cop who murdered Michael Brown.

Last week, authorities in Cleveland argued in court that Tamir Rice bore responsibility for his own death at the hands of the police because he was playing with a toy pistol.

The net result of the string of police murders, which sparked nationwide protests, has been an unambiguous signal from the state that the police can beat and kill with impunity. Not a single cop has been prosecuted. On the other hand, hundreds of protesters have been arrested and dozens of people have been charged for criticizing the police in social network postings.

The brutality and violence of social relations in America found expression in another horrific and very public event this week. On Monday, for the second time in less than a week, the execution of a Georgia woman was postponed only hours before her lethal injection was scheduled to take place. Forty-six-year-old Kelly Renee Gissendaner was returned to death row to face yet another date with the executioner. This in a country whose Constitution bans “cruel and unusual punishment!”

The particular circumstances behind Sunday’s killing of Robinet are indicative of the broader state of social relations in the US. Los Angeles’s Skid Row is home to some 1,700 homeless people, many of them mentally ill, who have ended up in the street as a result of decades of budget cuts and chronic mass unemployment.

The police officers involved in the shooting are part of the “Safer Cities Initiative,” a special unit formed for the purpose of cracking down on “quality of life” crimes, i.e., harassing and brutalizing the poor and destitute, as part of a drive to force the homeless out of an area targeted for gentrification.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that “an explosion of downtown development and gentrification” has put “pressure on city officials to clean up the street.” As one Skid Row resident told the Times, “The cops don’t want us here. They tried to make an example out of [Robinet].”

These practices are mirrored in cities throughout the country. In Detroit, water and utility shutoffs are being used to drive out much of the city’s poor population, while a portion of the city center is transformed into an enclave for the wealthy.

The psychopathic actions of cops reflect the increasingly malignant and explosive social contradictions building up within the United States. The American ruling class, whose wealth and property the police and the state apparatus as a whole defend, looks on the working class with a combination of hatred and fear.

The Wall Street oligarchs and corporate CEOs are aware that their relentless attacks on working people and youth, compounded by their own insatiable greed, are leading inevitably to social upheavals. Their basic response is to crack down violently on every expression of social opposition and build up the infrastructure of a police state.

Hence the transformation of police forces across the country into domestic counterinsurgency paramilitaries. The working population within the country is looked upon in a similar manner as the people of Iraq and Afghanistan—as a hostile and potentially insurrectionary force.

More and more, the methods of foreign occupation are directly applied within the US. In Boston in 2013 and Ferguson in 2014, the police and military were used to lock down entire cities.

All of this has been promoted at the highest levels of government. The Obama administration has overseen the transfer of billions of dollars in military hardware to local police forces. It has defended the Defense Department’s program to arm local police with tanks, helicopters and military-grade weapons.

This is in line with the White House’s defense of the NSA domestic spying program, its assertion of the right to assassinate American citizens, and its shielding of those responsible for the Bush administration’s torture program.

Military-police repression within the United States is the outcome of endless war abroad and social counterrevolution at home. It is the response of the ruling class to the staggering growth of social inequality.

War, inequality and dictatorship are the inevitable products of capitalism. The defense of democratic rights, including the right to live, is inseparable from the fight to overthrow this brutal, corrupt and obsolete social order, and establish a new, egalitarian form of social organization—socialism.

Open Letter to Somalia President

Abdinur Sh. Mohamud

It was barely two years ago when literally the whole nation rejoiced over your rise to power and elated on the notion that an ordinary civil society leader can assume the presidency of a war ravaged fragile state where warlord-ism reigned for so many years. In retrospect, your relative obscurity and detachment from Somalia’s past ills, gave you the edge and made you a safe bet over other deeply entrenched contenders. In essence, you were afforded a lifetime opportunity to serve your nation, bestowed without reservation, the highest favorable rating imaginable, carrying on your shoulders the hope and aspiration of a war fatigued society. Because of your humble background, contagious smile and soothing demeanor, Somalis and friends of Somalia were relived in your selection and found in you a ray of hope that the nation’s intractable political conflict may be a thing of the past and a new dawn for effective leadership, statehood and development is in the offing.  In fact, you are among rare leaders afforded a massive political mandate sufficient to carry the nation forward, rekindle its dimming appetite for nationhood and restore social and political stability.

Mr. President, it is not an overstatement to underscore the fact that unfortunately you did not live up to these expectations and on the contrary the nation may return back to a period of conflict and mayhem if the current political trajectory prevails before the expiration of your term. 

Mr. President, a great deal of opportunity and momentum were lost during your presidency and a very valuable political capital carelessly squandered that could have catapulted the nation into political stability. Consequently, public confidence in your leadership is at arguably all-time low, clan-ism and warlord-ism is unabashedly on the rise and after a sharp military and economic decline, Al-shabab is breathing once again and flexing its muscles in and around your presidential compound.

Mr. President, I am writing this letter not as a critic of your administration, but out of concern for our country’s future and a burning desire to shake your inner spirits for immediate positive change before it is too late. My concern, Mr. President, is that if left to your own devices, you may leave Somalia much worse than you found it.Here is a glimpse of current political realities that your advisors may not relate to you.

Growing Insecurity

Mr. President, you promised the Somali people a national vision in your post-election plan called the “six pillar policy”, giving heightened emphasis on national security and signaling your unwavering pledge to restore peace and security to the nation. This now forgotten policy focused on the creation of political stability; speeding up of economic recovery; rebuilding peace and removing main drivers of conflict; improving institutional capacity for public service delivery; and increasing international partnerships. Mr. President, the welcome sound of these well-intentioned slogans aside, Somalia is nowhere closer to achieving any of these critical objectives, and on the contrary remains less secure today than the day you were elected president. Even with the support of over 22,000 African troops , Al-shabab seems to have an invisible psychological grip over the nation, rendering your Government noticeably ineffective. It is undeniable fact that parliamentarians, senior public officials and other innocent civilians continue to lose their lives under your watch with no sense of alarm and serious investigation to bring perpetrators to justice. In fact, one gets the impression that you have resigned to accept the status quo as an inherent part of Somali life, when you were principally elected to be the change agent for peace, security and a better Somalia.

The question many continue to ask today, Mr. President is, whatever happened to your security, security, and security pledge? Was it all an empty rhetoric?

Even though Al-Shabab is militarily on the decline, the political climate created by the endless squabble in the highest levels of your government gives it the breathing space to reconstitute, rearm and wreak havoc on the defenseless public. Undoubtedly, Al-Shabab remains a clear and present danger that acts at will with the added potential to regroup and possibly regain political power. 
     
Rampant Corruption

Political corruption is not new and limited to Somalia. However, as the nation’s foremost national figure, you were elected to set the example of high moral conduct and establish a political culture where ethical practices for good governance, transparency and accountability have the potential to thrive. As a trained academic and social activist, you appeared from a distance the right man for the job, given your first-hand knowledge of Somalia’s social and political ills. Instead, you and your associates unfortunately stand accused of widespread corruption, allegedly ready to sell the nation’s natural resources to the lowest bidder. In fact, the U.N. Monitoring Group is not alone in making these allegations; ordinary citizens now began to scrutinize Government contracts signed with local and foreign agents in secrecy. Whether true or not, your detractors succeeded in painting you and your team as political opportunists with a bent desire for quick riches. Moreover, dismissive denials from your administration continue to fall on deaf ears with far reaching economic and political consequences to the nation.

As a civil society practitioner, you should have known the egregiousness of these allegations; distanced yourself from those directly accused of corruptive practices and reassured the public of your innocence. Instead, you ill-advisedly went on the offensive, questioned the motive of your accusers, blinded yourself from the prevalence of corruptive practices in the war ravaged country and waged a losing battle against your accusers. In doing so, Mr. President, you lost credibility; much needed public confidence in your presidency; and in the process lost international community support which the country desperately needs.

Ineptness and political conflict at the helm

Mr. President, through their political representatives, the Somali people elected you to the highest office of the land, not as a member of a political party or religious group, but on your own individual merits. Not a small feat, one might add. However, as soon as you assumed power, your allegiance to an inexplicable political group became quite evident, even though you denied their existence on numerous occasions. In fact, having a team of political advisers is an advantage and not in and of itself a crime. However, holding the business of the public hostage, time and again, to the personal and political wishes of a few is nothing short of a political suicide.  Mr. President, the public expected you to serve the nation honorably by upholding the constitution, advancing sound policies and solid public infrastructure and institutions of good governance. Instead, you wasted precious national time and resources on petty political squabbles with ineffective public officials you singlehandedly picked yourself in the first place. Moreover, your political selections and appointments for crucial public posts leave much to be desired, given the wealth of human resources potential available to the nation.

Clan-Federalism Run Amuck 

As enshrined in the national constitution, Federalism is the system of governance and political framework chosen for the country provided that it is eventually ratified through a public referendum. Even though this was necessitated by clan acrimony and two decades of statelessness, many contemporary citizens remain apprehensive about its potential to balkanize the nation. Mr. President, you were expected to fairly discharge your constitutional duties by ushering the development of viable regional states,  and ensuring a transparent process that fosters political legitimacy and public ownership for all stakeholders, all the while maintaining the supremacy of the Federal Government. However, you and your Government seem to have politicized the process by suppressing legitimate voices, creating multiple co-presidents with their peculiar foreign policy machinations competing with your Government, in clear violation of the constitution, and effectively diminishing the prestige of the Federal Government. Mr. President, this unhealthy social and political engineering designed, as your critics contend, to advance your potential to retain the presidency for a second term, may sound benign in the short term, but has the potential to rekindle inter-clan warfare to peaceful communities as it already has in some regions.

Trivializing Negotiations with Somaliland

It is commendable, Mr. President, that your Government continues to engage in a political dialogue with our brothers in Somaliland. Unfortunately, it has taken more than two decades to establish meaningful dialogue on the status of Somaliland and the potential to enhance cooperation with the Somaliland administration. However, these talks appear haphazardly organized and continue to send confusing and sometimes alarming signals to the Somali public.  Granted that Somaliland administration and its representatives on these talks appear primed for the cause and sharply express their objectives without reservation, the Federal Government’s position on these talks seems at best rudimentary, trivial and somewhat treacherous. Make no mistake, Mr. President, the issue of Somaliland is an existential matter for the nation, potentially threatening its sovereignty and territorial integrity and deserves heightened urgency, sound national policy framework guiding the talks and full stakeholder awareness. A national policy predicated on the national constitution emphasizing the sanctity of Somali unity addressing the question of Somaliland must be developed and disseminated to the Somali public.

Inability to promote citizenship and national unity

As a nation emerging from prolonged civil war, the country remains polarized across clan and regional lines with little public affinity or Government initiated programs enhancing social cohesion. Regional identities and clan narratives currently suffocate the desire for citizenship and national unity. While the clan power structure invests heavily in the nation’s disunity and clan based power-and resource sharing, national unity, remains elusive and to the new generation an ancient concept. Naturally, presidents occupy the bully pulpit of the nation they serve and have the unique responsibility to advance citizenship, mobilize public support or pacify the nation when necessary. Mr. President, regional narratives and new social identities continue to threaten the core national identity that undergirds the country that you currently lead. It should not surprise you to know that some Diaspora communities today even reject the singing of the Somali national anthem in public events where regional states are celebrated. Unfortunately, your Government has done very little to reverse this dangerous course, advance citizenship, suppress clan loyalties and promote national unity.

Moreover, Mr. President, effective leaders mourn visibly with their public in times of crisis, mingle with their troops to boost morale, honor fallen public servants killed in the line of duty and galvanize the nation to stand with the Government to enhance security and public welfare.

Mr. President, I am privileged to know you in person; hold you in higher esteem and continue to believe that that you possess what it takes to seriously change the course of the country and leave behind a positive legacy. Unfortunately, Somalia faces crisis of epic proportions in the fight against balkanization, clan-ism and Al-shabab in that order. In fact, the menace of Al-Shabab strengthens and thrives as the drumbeat for clan-ism and regionalism gets louder.

Mr. President, Somalia deserves a transformative national figure, willing to surround himself with diverse and qualified professionals to hold this tattering nation together at this critical time. And with all due respect, if you are unable to do so for the remainder of your term, please spare the nation more despair and agony and gracefully consider vacating the office.

Promoting Grassroots Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the IGAD Member States

Mengsteab Tesfayohannes & Mussie Tessema

Introduction

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is an eight-country trade and developmental regional bloc in the greater Horn of Africa. It includes eight states: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, the Republic of South Sudan, and the republic of Sudan. The region is one of the most geo-politically important corners of the world in terms of its diversified climate, potential mineral and human endowments, agricultural endowments, natural panoramic tourism attractions, archaeological and historical heritages, water resources, etc.  Unfortunately, the region did not benefit from its vast potential resources and capabilities as required during the past several decades.

This was due to internal and external destabilizing factors related to past colonialism, ethnicity, tribalism, resource sharing, poverty, superpower rivalry, porous borders, hegemonic desires, ineffective macro-economic management, lack of good governance and undeveloped institutional and socio-economic infrastructures and weak participation of the bulk of the population in vital political and socio-economic developmental activities.

However, the region is now rising up towards a better position. We can validate this optimism by observing the major socio-economic development indicators. In countries like Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Uganda, noticeable growth has been registered during the last 20 years (World Bank, 2013; African Development Bank Report, 2012; IMF, 2013; IGAD Report,2010). However, the region still has a long way to significantly exploit its vast potential of human and physical resources’ endowments and curb its deep-rooted socio-economic, political and peace and security problems (Healy, 2011; Headey, 2012).
 
Benefiting from the Technological and Entrepreneurial Innovation

During the last thirty years, our world has gone through an avalanche of socio-economic, technological and political changes and developmental milestones (Rodrick, 2014; Lin, 2011). Ground breaking technological inventions and entrepreneurial innovation are now mushrooming everywhere including in the developing nations. Our planet is becoming vastly interconnected, more interdependent and fast integrating. Acquiring useful knowledge at all levels is now cheaper than any time before due to the power of modern information technology and wider outreach of educational facilities.Nations have now more opportunities to benefit from the currently available global stock of knowledge and technological revolution.

The IGAD nations should also benefit from this widely available window of opportunities and valuable vast resources.  This can be done by promoting entrepreneurial innovation in a broader way. Promoting entrepreneurship and innovation by expanding its outreach in a smarter way and sediment it as a culture in everyday life of the society in general and that of the young population in special is essential. The young generation in particular needs to actively engage in the national economic developmental process at mega, macro, mezzo and micro levels incorporating all stakeholders. It is true that enhancing the vital nation building process, among others, emanates from disseminating the culture of innovation and entrepreneurial initiatives among the bulk of the population. IGAD nations can attain sustainable socio-economic development by boosting the capability and competitiveness of entrepreneurially motivated private sector stretching all the way up to the survivalist business (entrepreneurial) activities in both urban and rural areas.

Searching for an Alternative Gem

One important strategic action that should be taken is searching for an alternative gem for the establishment of an effective strategic and foundational roadmap focused on promoting innovation and entrepreneurial activities in the midst of the population at large in a broader, deeper and dynamic fashion. Popularizing entrepreneurial innovation at the grassroots level is not simply about how one creates a business or the workings of the economy. It is more about how we organize today’s society (Brenkert, 2002). As the developmental strategy guru, C.K., Parhalad (2002) said it rightly, “popularizing entrepreneurial innovation at all levels has a pivotal role to play in creating fortune at the bottom of the pyramid and creating a more sustained and better world.” Genuine entrepreneurial initiatives and innovative activities are helpful solutions to enhance the eradication of poverty and promote justified income inequality in national economies. Above all, ensuring active grassroots participation in the developmental process is essential for sustainable economic progress. If the desired opportunity is given, the populace has the wisdom, proven ability and prudence to actively engage in solving the acute and chronic socio-economic developmental problems surfaced in the region.

What IGAD Nations Should Do

IGAD nations are keen to popularize grassroots entrepreneurship education as one of their major national development agendas. However, recognition alone is not sufficient if it is not complemented with effective implementation course of actions and modalities. Therefore, concerted efforts should be exerted by all stakeholders including concerned governmental organs, private sectors agencies, academic institutions, business cooperatives, established entrepreneurs and many other segments of society. These comprehensive efforts are needed in order to build and mobilize the desired resources and capabilities for the broader promotion of grassroots entrepreneurship and innovation in both rural and urban areas. The desired resources and capabilities can be categorized as: Physical and Infrastructural; Technological and Operational; Economic (Financial, etc.); Human, managerial and governance at all levels; Information and Knowledge (KNOW HOW, KNOW-WHAT, and KNOW-WHY); and Socio-Cultural and Political.

The pertinent question is: what should be done to acquire the desired resources and capabilities to promote and popularize grassroots entrepreneurship and innovation among the ordinary population in a broader sense? This leads to the necessity of proper and savvy utilization and management of the available scarce resources and capabilities. It is true, IGAD members are developing nations. Their resources and capabilities are limited. They need to work hard and take further savvy courses actions to build-up their desired resources and capabilities are indispensable. This means that they need to deal with the HOWs and WHYs of enhancing their desired resources and capabilities as the main preconditions for achieving the intended objectives.

It is true that society’s developmental dynamics should be considered, measured and evaluated in several dimensions in order to have a full and holistic framework. These are: economic, technological, political, human, environmental, socio-cultural, historical, scientific and geographical dimensions. In the same way, it is also useful to develop grassroots entrepreneurship eco-system that incorporated at least the contribution and involvement of the following core stakeholders: Government sectors’ support; Civil society organizations and community based infrastructures; Educational establishments support; Business Sector Support; Internationally geared  technical, human capacity and economic endowments support; Diaspora’s Support; and other stakeholder capacities. Developing comprehensive and participative eco-system framework can help to gain a wider outreached support and facilitation. It is useful for IGAD nations to build customized Entrepreneurship Eco-System that reflects their unique objective situation.

Conclusion

Academic institutions and educators in the region have a mandate to create an entrepreneurial climate in the experiential learning environment all the way up to the most disadvantaged and poverty stricken segment of the population. Finally let me quote the words of wisdom, from the able and renaissance leader, President Paul Kagame, 

“I submit to you that Africa’s position and relevance in the world in an increasingly competitive global environment will be ensured by a leadership and people that refuse to be second best and that stand up for their shared interests” 

If policies and implementation strategies are formulated in congruence with the existing and forthcoming social and economic situations at all specified levels, the expected result will be undoubtedly fruitful. I believe that assessing the possibilities and problems of promoting grassroots based economic development approaches in the region can be a viable precondition for achieving sustainable economic development that each member nation aspires to do so.