OWSD Elsevier Foundation Awards 2020 for Early-Career Women Scientists in Developing Countries

Application Deadline: 29th August 2019

Eligible Countries: 

• Africa: Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Dem. Rep. Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
• Arab Region: Djibouti, Palestine (West Bank & Gaza Strip), Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Yemen.
• Asia and the Pacific: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Kiribati, Lao People’s Dem. Rep., Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.
• Latin America and the Caribbean: Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay.

To be taken at (country): USA

About the Award: Launched by The Elsevier Foundation, TWAS and OWSD, the Awards reward and encourage women working and living in developing countries in the early stages of their scientific careers. Awardees must have made a demonstrable impact on the research environment both at a regional and international level and have often overcome great challenges to achieve research excellence.
Nominations are invited from senior academics, including OWSD members, TWAS Fellows, ICTP visiting scientists and staff, national science academies, national research councils and heads of departments/universities both in developing and developed countries.

Type: Award, Research

Eligibility: The applicant must be a female scientist who has received her PhD within the previous ten years. The eligible subject fields for the 2020 awards include:

• Civil engineering
• Electrical engineering, electronic engineering
• Telecommunications/information engineering / Software engineering
• Computer science
• Mechanical engineering
• Chemical engineering
• Materials engineering
• Medical engineering
• Environmental engineering
• Environmental biotechnology
• Industrial biotechnology
• Nano technology

In addition, the applicant must have lived and worked in one of the following science and technology lagging countries above for at least 5 of the last 15 years:
Please note that an applicant, at the time of application, must NOT have an active research grant or fellowship with The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) or have already submitted an application for a TWAS programme within the same given year. Only one application per year is possible across all TWAS and OWSD programmes. Applicants will not be eligible to visit another institution in that year under the TWAS Visiting Professor programmes. An exception is made only for the head of an institution who invites an external scholar to share his/her expertise under the TWAS Visiting Professor programmes; she may still apply for another programme.

Selection Criteria: Applications will be judged in terms of:

• Scientific merit (eg. quality of publications)
• International and regional impact (eg. invitations to present or chair at meetings; organization or participation on workshops; collaborations with scientists from other countries; national or regional awards received)
• Capacity building – local, national and regional (eg. evidence of running MSc or PhD training programmes; developing and providing resources for students and young researchers; mentoring activities).

Evidence of innovation will be considered favourably.

Number of Awardees: 5 Awards. One woman is awarded for each of five regions in the developing world: Latin America and the Caribbean; East and South-East Asia and the Pacific; the Arab region; Central and South Asia; and Sub-Saharan Africa (see the list of countries in Africa above)

Value of Award:

• Cash prize of USD 5,000.
• All-expenses-paid trip to attend the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting, which will take place on 13-16 February 2020 in Seattle.

The 5 awards will be distributed as follows: one for each of the four regions of the developing world, plus an additional ¨floating” award for an outstanding candidate from any of these regions.

Duration of Award: Not stated

How to Apply: Applications are invited from women scientists from the eligible developing countries and they must be made online.
Applications must include:

• Candidate’s curriculum vitae
• Full list of publications
• At least one (preferably two) reference letter(s)
• Endorsement statement from a senior academic scientist (e.g. OWSD members, TWAS Fellows, visiting scientists and staff of The International Centre for Theoretical Physics – ICTP, national science academies, national research councils and heads of departments/universities, both in developing and developed countries).

Please note that the endorser cannot also be a referee.


Visit Awards Webpage for details

The Inhumane Treatment of Migrants Is Not New

CP Editor

Too Many Africans?

Stephen Corry

“What are all these famines in Ethiopia? What are they about? They’re about too many people for too little land. That’s what it’s about.”

– Sir David Attenborough

The cry that the world is overpopulated is more than two hundred years old, from a period when perhaps a billion people stood on the planet. There are now nearly eight times as many and it’s become normal to blame them – us – for the ills which beset “nature.” There are just too many of us, and we’re using up too many of the world’s resources. But how true is this really? And, what should be done about it?

A series of very different numbers are needed to point to a sensible answer. The first obviously is the number of people alive in any specific region at any time. This number is, equally obviously, changing every minute as babies are born and older people die, so the second important factor is the rate at which the overall population number is growing. That’s the basis for all forecasts. Sticking with these two numbers for the moment, there’s already a surprise: The world’s population is indeed increasing, but the rate of population growth has actually been falling since the 1970s. Not only that, but the fertility rate has been decreasing too. In the Global North, the richer countries (let’s call them the “North” as shorthand), it’s now below “replacement level,” as it is in nearly half the world’s countries. If that half were cut off from the rest of the world, the population there would be shrinking. This would bring problems for them fairly quickly because there wouldn’t be enough working people to look after those not able to look after themselves, but leave that aside.

That’s not actually happening because the North’s overall population isn’t getting smaller, it’s growing, albeit slowly (at a rate of 0.7% in North America and 0.2% in the EU). That’s because people are coming in from the Global South (the “South”), the poorer countries. So, it turns out that the North – by itself – doesn’t have any more of an overpopulation problem than it has done for the last couple of generations. But rates of population growth in the South are higher than in the North and above replacement levels. Overall population numbers there are growing, so if there really is an overpopulation problem, we have to look for it in the South, which is what most environmentalists mean when they blame “overpopulation.”

Let’s bring in another factor, population density, which is the number of people per square kilometre. Taking just sub-Saharan Africa (Africa is the region with the highest fertility, so is the key example), the rate of population growth is high (2.7%) but the population density is actually very low. In fact, in every one hundred km sided square, there are half a million people in Africa compared to well over four million in England. So, Africa does not have anything like the overpopulation problem that England has. Obviously, if its population continues to grow at the same rate as now, there would be overpopulation at some time in the future, and equally obviously to those who have experienced it, the overcrowding in big African cities is shocking.

Why is the rate of population increase very low in the North but high in the South? There are many probable factors, but one thing appears to be generally true: The rate drops when standards of living rise. Individuals have children for many reasons of course but some basic principles seem to apply, people with high living standards generally feel more secure and so less reliant on a large family to care for them in infirmity or old age and they think it less likely that their children will die in infancy. Whatever the reasons – and incidentally any idea that African women don’t already know how to limit fertility is pretty silly and racist – well-off people have fewer children on average than poor ones. So while it’s true that the sub-Saharan African population is increasing quickly, it’s into an area of the world which is much less populated than the Global North.

Let’s introduce a further factor, how much people consume. This is crucial because population only becomes a problem if it’s higher than a territory can provide for without wrecking its environment. “Consumption” obviously includes far more than just what people eat, and perhaps the most important thing is how much energy is needed to produce their food, housing, transport and everything else they consume. This isn’t straightforward. To take a simple example, someone might drive an ancient and inefficient car which uses lots of polluting fuel but if they keep it for decades and never travel very far, they might use less energy, and produce less pollution, than an electric car which is frequently traded in for a newer model. The same energy goes on making a new car as running an old one for several years, and the energy needed to propel both is very broadly the same, whether the fuel comes from an onboard tank or is drawn from a power station. Of course, there are thousands of variables, but the basic point is that the more people consume, the more impact they have on the environment. There isn’t a good way to measure this, but to get some inkling we can turn to the common measure for wealth, Gross Domestic Product (GDP). To put it simply, people from countries with a high GDP are likely, as a broad assumption, to consume comparatively more than those with a low GDP.

Applying this to our example of sub-Saharan Africa, we find that the average American’s GDP is about forty times higher than that of an average African. So, Africa’s population is indeed growing quickly, that’s true, but it’s thinly populated and its consumption per head is extremely low. Whatever their aspirations, many people there never get on a plane or travel by private car, they don’t get a new washing machine or TV every couple of years, they don’t use much electricity or fossil fuel, and they tend not to throw away vast amounts of food daily.

The conclusion must be that if overpopulation is a problem because it strains the world’s resources, then the first and most efficient way to address it is not in Africa at all, it’s to reduce consumption in the North, which currently uses far more than its share of resources. Secondarily, if rates of population growth continue to fall when standards of living go up, then the easiest way of addressing that – inside Africa – would likely be to stop the massive resource outflow from the continent, and ensure more of its vast natural wealth remains with and starts fairly benefiting its natural owners.

In other words, to address “overpopulation,” the richer countries must do two things – consume less and stop stealing Africa’s resources. Both imply less for the Global North, and of course that’s the real problem with my simplified explanation. It suggests that a solution to overpopulation and the overuse of scarce resources is nothing to do with reducing the number of Africans, but simply for there to be a more level playing field between them and those of us in the North who take and consume their wealth. But as the environmental movement and its anxiety about overpopulation comes mainly from the same place, the richer countries, it’s always going to be easier and more satisfying to pin the blame on too many poor Africans and to keep a blind eye on the main culprit – in the mirror. The fact that the one blamed is mainly Black, and the one blaming is mainly white should not escape attention!

And the famines in Ethiopia referred to by Attenborough? They have actually been going on for centuries, from when the country had far fewer people. The well-publicised ones in the 1980s – which gave us the catchy and inane, “Do they know it’s Christmas?” – were largely created by abusive government policies, land and resource theft, and war. In 1984, the BBC movingly described the famine as “biblical,” which might have alerted Attenborough and others to something of the history.

Can we stop blaming overpopulation on too many Africans?

Russia and the Manipulation of the Past

Monika Zgustova

“Several trucks brought the prisoners to the wood in which they themselves had earlier dug deep pits. The prisoners were then tossed onto the ground, face down. Then they were shot.”

This massacre took place in 1937 and formed part of the Great Purge which Stalin had initiated and in the course of which at least 700,000 political prisoners were executed. Mikhail Matveyev, a member of the NKVD, the Soviet secret services and the author of the above-cited declaration, had developed a system for mass executions: the prisoners were stripped in their cells, tied up in another cell, and then they were beaten with logs until they lost consciousness. Then they were finally taken to their place of execution.

It wasn’t until 1997 that the historian Yury Dmitriyev and his team at Memorial, a well-respected NGO, found the mass graves which Matveyev had ordered to be dug. The graves, which were in the area around Sandarmokh, in Karelia, contained the remains of 9,000 corpses. In the ‘Nineties, when the pro-democracy leader Boris Yeltsin was in power, this find was held to be significant. But this is no longer the case in the era of Putin, who declared just two years ago: “An excessive demonization of Stalin is one of many ways to attack Russia.”

Not long after Yury Dmitriyev had made another valuable find in 2016 – a list with over 40,000 names of Stalin-era secret service agents – the historian was accused of using child pornography. The material offered as proof were some photos of his adopted daughter, Natalia, who was then eight years old, nude pictures of whom were found on Dmitriyev’s computer by secret police agents. At the time, Sergei Krivenko, president of the Human Rights Council of Memorial, explained to the Moscow Times: “These accusations are baseless and we all know it. The secret services invented this story to cast aspersions on Dmitriev, whose work honors the victims of Stalin’s terror.” Yury Dmitriyev clarified that Natalia was a sickly child and that he had photographed her so as to keep track of her physical development.

Since then, Yury Dmitriyev has spent long periods of time in jail; other accusations were added to the original one, which alone cost him a year in prison. While he was driving to the funeral of a friend, several months ago, he was stopped by the police and accused of trying to flee to Finland. Dmitriyev was sent to jail yet again. On top of which, he was subjected to various psychological examinations against his will.

Meanwhile, the court case made Dmitriyev famous throughout Russia and well-known people from the cultural world (including Andrey Zvyagintsev, director of the film Leviathan) signed petitions demanding that the authorities cease persecuting the historian. The poet and playwright Alexandr Gelman said: “This trial has helped us to get to know a remarkable man. Only barbarians get to know such worthwhile people in this fashion, but that’s Russia for you. In this sense, the trial has been worth it.”

What can be concluded from all this is that in Putin’s Russia Soviet methods are being used, gleaned from decades of Stalinism. In the current climate, Stalin himself emerges from the past as a hero. In surveys in which Russians are asked about who they consider to be great personages, Stalin usually takes first place. Many Russians in the Putin era have forgotten about the Gulag, a subject which is frowned upon these days. Putin wants his citizens to have a favourable view of their past.

In a conversation with Masha Gessen, I asked this journalist of Russian extraction, who currently works for The New Yorkermagazine, what impressions she had after a recent visit to Russia, where she researched the Gulags and those elderly ex-prisoners who’d survived them. “Twenty years ago,” Gessen told me, “in many places in Siberia where there had once been Gulags, monuments were erected in honor of those who had lost their lives in the Stalin era, and there were projects to found museums dedicated to the Gulag. All that’s gone now.” The journalist visited the places she’d seen 20 years ago and where she’d met many people who really wanted to remember, to keep historical remembrance alive, to build more museums and monuments dedicated to the Gulag. Back then her guide was Inna Gribanova, a geologist dedicated to historical remembrance, specializing in the Siberian camps of Kolyma. But over the last few years Inna has become a different person, Gessen told me: not only did she not do anything to found the museums that the Gulag deserves, but she now claims that the witnesses to the Gulag were exaggerating the horrors they lived through. “And on top of everything,” Gessen added, “Gribanova has become a Putin voter.” Seeing my incredulity, Masha Gessen explained: “She got tired of being socially marginalized.”

Gessen is right. During my trips to Russia I could see how the museums dedicated to the Stalinist repression and to the Gulag weren’t exactly impressive. Lack of funding is not the only reason for this negligence; there is a noticeable lack of enthusiasm amongst the people who are working in these places, as if they know that their efforts are in vain. “Russia doesn’t want to remember; it’s trying to cover up its past with grandiloquence,” Masha Gessen said, confirming my impressions.

Russia today: repression, disinformation, falsification of history. This is happening in several spheres, including that of literature. One example of this is Zakhar Prilepin, a 42-year-old writer, a former solider in Chechnya, a militant in the Russian National Bolshevik Party and one of the best known names in contemporary Russian literature. His penultimate novel, The Abode, is about the 1920s in Russia’s first, and cruelest, Gulag, the one on the Solovetsky islands. The novel’s main character is a Dostoevskian parricide who killed his father to protect his mother; the political prisoners who beleaguer this common prisoner are depicted as subtly Machiavellian, completely unscrupulous people who deliberately spread slander and sow discord. In the context of a Russia whose historical memory is being eaten away by various attempts to throw doubt on the nature of Stalin’s crimes, the novel contributes to this tendency by questioning the ethical nature of the political prisoners and by relativising their suffering.

On the Solovetsky islands, and in many other Gulags, instead of building a museum for these forced labour camps, the authorities have decided to restore the old monasteries and dedicate them to the life and art of the monks who lived there before the advent of the Gulags: all this helps to highlight the glorious Russian past and to obliterate the memory of Soviet crimes.

According to the expression of one of Russia’s best known activists, Irina Fliege from Saint Petersburg, in Russia “the past continues to exist in the present and so still hasn’t become the past”. If the past invades the present, society can never regard it as being over and is therefore unable to examine it with all its details, including the most painful ones. The manipulation of the past due to current political interests is a feature peculiar to authoritarian regimes.

If You Provoke The Entire World, Something May Happen

Andre Vltchek

The United States believes that it is so invincible, exceptional and so frightening that no one would ever dare to protest, let alone defend its people against constant humiliation, economic embargos and military threats.

It used to be like this for quite some time. In the past, the West used to bully the world before and after each well-planned assault.Also, well-crafted propaganda used to be applied.

It was declared that things are done ‘legally’ and rationally. There were certain stages to colonialist and imperialist attacks: “define your goals”, “identify your victim”, “plan”, “brainwash your own citizens and people all over the world”, and then, only then, “bomb some unfortunate country back to the stone ages”.

Now, things are slightly different. “The leader of the free world” wakes up in the middle of the night, and he tweets. What comes from his computer, tablet or phone, (or whatever he uses), is spontaneous, unpolished and incredibly dangerous. Similar in substance to what made him wake up in the middle of the night, in a first place.

He does not seem to plan; he shoots off from the hip. Today, as I am writing this essay, he has declared that he has “five strategies for Venezuela”. Go figure. Bravo!

Earlier, as he was about to land outside London, he embarked on insulting the Mayor of the British capital, calling him names. A bit like we used to do to each other, when we were five years old, inthe neighborhood playground.

He has been regularly offending Mexico, and of course Iran, China and Russia.

He basically tells the leader of the most populous nation on earth – China – to “be there”, at the G20 Summit, or else.

Whenever he and his lieutenants are in the mood, they get busy antagonizing everyone: Cuba and Nicaragua, DPRK and Venezuela, Bolivia and Syria.

Of course, the main “culprits” are always the ‘biggest bad boys’, Russia and China.

Anyone, at any time, could easily land on the proverbial hit list of President Trump, and hawks of his United States of A. It could be India (which, during ‘good submissive times’ is called by the West the “biggest democracy”, or perhaps Turkey (militarily the second mightiest NATO country).  The world had been converted into an entity which appears to be run by a bloodthirsty and unpredictable dictatorship. The world is an entity where everyone is terrified of being purged, imprisoned, starved to death, or directly attacked, even liquidated.

It was always like this, at least in the modern history of the planet. Colonialism, neo-colonialism, imperialism: they have many different faces but one common root. Root that has been often hidden deep under the surface.

But this time it is all in the open, raw and brutally honest.

*

Both George W. Bush and Donald Trump have one thing in common: they are honest.

Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama were both ‘suave’ presidents. They were loved in Europe, as they knew how to speak politely, how to dine elegantly, and how to commit mass murder in a ‘rational, righteous way’; ‘old-fashioned, European-style’.

The brutal, vulgar ways of W. Bush and Donald Trump,have been consistently shocking all those individuals who are pleased when things are done ‘stylishly’ and ‘politically correctly’; be it a coup or the starvation to death of millions through embargos. Or be it invasions or ‘smart’ bombing (practically, ‘smart’ meaning very far from the inquisitive eyes).

But it is not only the ‘offended sensibilities’ of predominantly European population, that matter.

The danger is that someone might take Donald Trump seriously, and respond accordingly.

In the past, verbal insults similar to those unleashed now by the US President, could easily have led to a war, or at least to the breaking up of diplomatic relationships.

And now?

In case Westerners have not realized it, yet – people all over the world are indignant. I talk to Libyans, Afghans, Iraqis, Venezuelans, Cubans, Iranians: they hate what comes from Washington; hate it with passion. They know that what is being done to them is terrorism, thuggery. But for now, they do not know how to defend themselves. Not yet, but they are thinking.

The entire world now resembles a brutal ghetto, or a slum, where a heavily armed gang controls the streets, and in fact every corner and alley.

At least in the past, subjugated people were able to hide behind decorative words and ideological pirouettes. They were able to ‘save their face’. They were sodomized in the name of ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’. Now,a horrible reality is flying directly into all directions: “You will do as you are told!” “It is us who will decide.” “Obey, because we said so”. Entire proud nations are being reduced into states of slaves or even worse –lap dogs.

*

As everyone is well aware of, even lackeys and slaves often hold grudges. And abused dogs can bite.

Throughout history, slaves rebelled. True heroes came from rebellious and enslaved nations.

This, what we have now on our planet, is not good, not a healthy situation.

The more countries that are being intimidated, the higher the chances are that somewhere, soon, things will let go; collapse.

Only terrible fear, so far,assures that if a Syrian or a Libyan or an Afghan city is leveled to the ground, there is no real retaliation: urban areas in the USA stay intact.

Only incredible patience of the Russian or Chinese leaders guarantees that, so far, even as their economies are being battered by ridiculous sanctions, the two powerful nations do not retaliate and ruin the US financial system (which is only a paper tiger).

Trump dares. He tortures and humiliates more than half of the world, then looks straight ahead and laughs: “So what are you going to do now?”

So far, the world is doing nothing.

Even the proud and mighty Iran is not ‘crossing the line’.As millions of its people are suffering because of insane sanctions, the Iranian navy is not yet engaging the US battleships that are sailing very near its shores.

Even as more and more US bases are being built right next to both Russia and China’s borders, so far there are no substantial military bases being erected by Moscow or Beijing in places such as Nicaragua, Cuba or Venezuela.

*

All this may change, soon.

And the so much dreaded (by Washington) “domino effect” may actually take place.

Non-Western leaders have also their ‘bad days’ and terrible nights. They also wake up in the middle of the night, and think, want to communicate and to act.

Imagine an Iranian leader, waking up at 2AM, and suddenly feeling overwhelmed by wrath, because Iranian men, women and children are suffering, for no reason, as a result of the perverse sadism being regurgitated by the West. What if he Tweets an insult, too? What if he just orders, on a spur of the moment, to have all those obsolete US aircraft carriers and destroyers that are floating in the vicinity, be sunk? Iran can do it: everyone knows that it can! Technically, militarily, it is easy: those ships are just sitting ducks.

Then what? Will Washington nuke Iran?

Someone may say: The West is killing millions every year, anyway. Better to fight it, in order to stop it, once and for all. Others may join. And then, then what? Will Trump give orders to kill tens of millions, just to maintain control over the world?

What if the US navy vessels bump into a Russian or a Chinese ship, as they almost did in the South China Sea, recently? What if a Russian or Chinese ship sinks, dozens of sailors die. And there is a retaliation? Then what?

What if Syria has enough and begins shooting down Israeli military jets that are bombing it, and attacking North American and European ‘special forces’ that are still located, illegally, on its territory?

The US is engaged all over the world. France and the UK, too. And if you talk to the people in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, you very soon realize what the real feelings towards Washington are!

If you provoke the entire world, something very terrible may happen!

Now, there is an entire coalition of powerful nations, ready to defend themselves, and also defend each other. Militarily, economically, and ideologically.

The world is not a slave of the West, or the United States. It is not a latrine.

This is the new world. Considering the horrors that were spread by the West, for many long years and centuries, Asia, Africa, “Latin America”, the Middle East and Oceania, are unbelievably patient and forgiving. But the USA and Europe should not take this tolerance for granted. They should not provoke its former and present victims.

Now, we (the people from the previously ruined part of the world) are beginning to speak up: about what is being done to us – to China and Russia, to South America and Africa, and the Middle East. With awareness comes courage. With courage comes pride.

Do not misinterpret our kindness. It is not a weakness. Not anymore. Think twice before you speak (or Tweet). Think a thousand times, before you act!

Billionaires, Vanity And Modern Democracy

Arshad M Khan

The bullying in Washington is the current trend.  On Monday, the British ambassador resigned his post after Trump refused to deal with him.  Well-liked in Washington and the halls of Congress, his downfall was an honest assessment of the Trump administration as ‘inept’ and ‘dysfunctional’.  The letters were leaked in the U.K.

Suppose the president tweets comments contrary to current established policy, does that mean a policy change?  Do departments adapt promptly.  Nobody knows.  That’s dysfunctional, and everyone knows it.  In the meantime, he has enjoyed 17 golf outings since February averaging three a month.  No wonder he is that rare president who does not seem to age in office from the stresses of the job.  Obama’s hair turned gray.

But then a lighter hand on the tiller has kept us out of war, whereas Obama, the Nobel Peace Laureate, destroyed Libya and escalated in Afghanistan.  The consequences are still being felt in Southern Europe particularly, through the hordes of refugees still continuing to arrive.  Also in the resurgence of anti-immigration political parties in northern Europe.

The supreme irony is the fact of refugees being rescued from ramshackle boats and dinghies or often dying in one part of the Mediterranean while the Obamas cruise on a billionaire’s luxury yacht in another.  Is that a metaphor for democracies in the modern world?  One is also reminded of Mr. Modi’s specially woven pinstripe cloth repeating his name endlessly on the stripes in the material.

Fortunately, the current president does not like the sea, or we would never see him in Washington.  As it is he has had 14 visits to golf clubs (not as much time on the course however) since the beginning of June.  He once had a small yacht that lay anchored in New York until he sold it.  His pleasures have generally centered on the more mundane:  cheeseburgers and women — the younger the better, although perhaps not as young as those that have gotten his friend Jeffrey Epstein in trouble again.  To be fair, Trump had a falling out with him ‘about 15 years ago’ he said recently.  ‘I was not a fan of his, I can tell you,’ he added although he called him a ‘terrific guy’ in 2002.

At least one party had 28 girls to a so-called calendar-girl party at Mar-a-Lago (Trump’s estate and club) in Florida, meaning selection of a calendar girl.  The male celebrities attending, according to the man assigned the task of finding the girls, happened to be Trump and Epstein, and no one else!  So surprised, the man still remembers the story.  The falling out between Trump and Epstein was rumored to have been a business deal.

It brings us to the second resignation, that of Alex Acosta the Labor Secretary.  A Harvard-educated lawyer, Mr. Acosta was the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida when he made a generous agreement with Epstein who had been charged with sex crimes.  For a 13-month sentence of mostly community work, usually from his mansion, Mr. Epstein was protected from further prosecution.  In a clear rebuke to Acosta, the case has been re-opened with a new charge of sex-trafficking minors.

As a result, Mr. Acosta has had to bow to the chorus of calls for his resignation.  The real question:  How ever did Trump get elected?  A mainstream press failure?

Euthanasia bill before New Zealand parliament

John Braddock 

A bill that would make assisted-suicide legal in New Zealand passed its second reading in parliament on June 26, and is one step closer to becoming law. The End of Life Choice Bill, sponsored by leader of the far-right ACT party David Seymour, is being treated as a “conscience” vote, with MPs not bound by party policy.

There were 70 votes for the bill, including 32 Labour MPs plus Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and 50 against. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters’ right-wing NZ First Party backed the bill—but on condition it goes to a referendum. The Greens, part of the coalition government, also voted in favour. The bill, which had more than 39,000 public submissions, now goes to the house for further debate, where major amendments may be proposed, before its final reading.

Currently, euthanasia is illegal in New Zealand and it is also illegal to “aid and abet suicide” and to “incite, procure or counsel” someone else to commit suicide.

In the bill’s current form, people over 18 would be able to request a fatal dose of medication if they have less than six months to live or are suffering from a “grievous and irremediable medical condition.” Seymour has promised to amend the bill in the coming stage to limit euthanasia to people who have “a terminal illness that is likely to end the person's life within six months,” and to state that age, disability or mental illness cannot be reasons to grant consent.

As a basic democratic question, everyone should have the right to decide when to die, and the state should have no power to compel someone to continue in pointless suffering. However, against a background of widespread poverty among the elderly, the increasing erosion and privatisation of healthcare and deepening austerity measures, including talk of slashing aged pensions, there is no doubt many people feel under pressure to take their lives because they lack financial and psychological resources or social support.

In response to the widening social crisis, New Zealand’s overall suicide rate in 2018 was the highest since records began, with 668 deaths. Mainly working-class Maori men continued to be disproportionately represented: 97 died, up 12 percent on 2017. Female suicides increased by 44 compared to the year before. NZ has the highest death rate for young people among developed countries, with 35 deaths per 100,000 for those aged 10–24 years.

The ACT Party leader claims his bill will provide “choice” for people who are sufficiently ill to seek assisted suicide. Seymour declared “it is possible to design a law that gives choice for those who want it and protection for those who want nothing to do with it.” He said the fact that similar legislation was being adopted by many countries, including Canada and the Australian state of Victoria, showed it was becoming “normal.” He claimed most opponents had “religious convictions.”

In fact, the growing prevalence of legislation legalising suicide is testimony to the mounting social crisis in country after country, in which the lack of adequate social services, including health and aged care, for the aged and chronically ill, and their families contribute to feelings that it is pointless to continue living. ACT played no small part in creating this social disaster. Established in 1993 by former Labour Party finance minister Roger Douglas, it sought to extend the 1984–90 Lange government’s pro-business program of flat tax, privatisations, “small” government and sweeping attacks on the working class.

Opposing the legislation, some 1,000 doctors have signed an open letter saying they “want no part in assisted suicide.” The doctors declare that their focus is on saving lives and care for the dying, rather than taking lives, which they deem unethical. The letter states: “We are especially concerned with protecting vulnerable people who can feel they have become a burden to others, and we are committed to supporting those who find their own life situations a heavy burden.” It also upholds the right of patients to decline treatment.

Sinead Donnelly, a palliative medicine specialist, told Radio NZ that in Oregon USA, where assisted suicide is legal, statistics show the most common reasons people have for requesting such a procedure are “feeling a burden,” “fear of institutionalisation” and loneliness—that is, “societal issues,” not medical ones. The NZ legislation, she argued, will increase such pressures.

The public health system is in deep crisis. In 2018 New Zealand was among the worst of a dozen similar countries for waiting times for elective surgery, specialist appointments, and treatment after diagnosis. It ranked third-to-last on measures of health equity, and last for access to diagnostic tests. The Cancer Society has described access to treatment for cancer, one of the major killers, as a “postcode lottery” depending on which District Health Board (DHB) area patients live in.

Sections of the media, academics and political establishment are expressing concern about the proportion of the health budget spent on the elderly, particularly as the population ages. According to the Ministry of Health, people over 65 make up 15 percent of the population but use 42 percent of health services.

Over the last decade, DHB spending on older people increased twice as fast as their overall expenses and 5 times as fast as inflation. DHBs spend $NZ983 million on support services for older people, of which 60 percent goes to residential care.

The implicit solution is to slash or “rebalance” the health budget to save billions of dollars. It is no accident that the demand for access to euthanasia, previously politically unpalatable, is brought forward at a time of deepening austerity and attacks on the social rights of working people.

While organisations such as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society and Exit International have conducted high-profile campaigns for a law change, attempts to legislate for euthanasia in 1995 and 2003 failed to get through parliament. Following the 2014 election, Labour MP Maryan Street’s euthanasia bill was dropped and the party’s then-leader Andrew Little declared it was “not an issue Labour should be focused on.”

The treatment of the terminally ill is a serious and difficult social issue, not given to simple solutions. In 1998 the WSWS warned: “There are many reasons to be wary when euthanasia is offered as a solution to the problems of the sick and the elderly. The precedents of this century—the Nazis were the most enthusiastic proponents of this practice—are not hopeful. There is enormous potential for abuse and discrimination, for distortion of the decisions of the terminally ill by economic circumstances and social conditions.”

The warning remains extremely prescient.

Elderly poor suffering hypothermia in Australia

Margaret Rees

A record-breaking winter in Australia’s southern state of Victoria in 2015 prompted an investigation that found alarming indications of the effect of cold on the elderly poor, who were found to be suffering hypothermia inside their homes

The study, entitled “Cold and Lonely,” examined the cases of 217 hypothermic patients at three Alfred Health hospitals in south-eastern Melbourne, Victoria’s capital, between July 2009 and September 2016.

These hospitals serve a population of about 700,000 people, about a sixth of the city’s population, so the data gives only a partial view of the extent of the underlying social crisis.

Hypothermia patients found indoors accounted for 78 percent of hospital presentations, with elderly socially-isolated people over-represented. Of these, 65 percent were on pensions and 42 percent lived alone. Moreover, 87 percent of hypothermic elderly patients were found indoors.

Exposure-related hypothermia—being found outdoors when the maximum temperature was less than 20 degrees C—accounted for 22 percent of the hospital presentations. It was significantly associated with lower age and alcohol or drug-induced intoxication.

Inpatient deaths also were significantly higher among indoor patients compared to exposure patients (16 percent against 2 percent respectively). Body temperatures recorded in the emergency departments ranged from 23.9 to 36.4 degrees C.

Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah, one of the study’s authors, told the WSWS: “It was quite an unexpected finding. We didn’t expect the majority of people to be found indoors… The patients who were found indoors had an eight times higher rate of dying than those found outdoors.

“People vulnerable to hypothermia were especially the elderly, even inside their own homes. Their homes were not adequately heated. They were socially isolated. We defined social isolation as living alone, having very few social supports around them, no friends or family, nothing documented in their medical history…

“We found the trend was patients who lived alone had worse outcomes. Their mortality was higher. This is not a medical problem; this is a social problem... Poverty, social isolation, inability to pay heating bills are probably factors behind this observation.”

The results point to an often-hidden social crisis—the avoidance or under-consumption of heating by people who must ration their energy use so they can pay their electricity and gas bills. Power prices increased by an average of 12 percent in Victoria each year between 2006 and 2016, the same period covered by the “Cold and Lonely” study.

The Labor Party bears particular responsibility for this social blight. It has been in office in the state since 2014, presiding over the public health and housing systems.

A Victorian Council of Social Services (VCOSS) survey, “Battling On—Persistent Energy Hardship,” published in 2018, found that in 2014–2016, 1.8 percent of Victorian households (45,000 households) were persistently unable to heat their homes. Another 3.6 percent were temporarily unable to do so. Nationally, 1.6 percent were persistently unable to heat their homes.

Of those unable to heat their homes, half did not report persistent payment difficulty. They paid energy bills on time by restricting or foregoing heating. Households with persistent heating inability had especially low incomes—half were in the lowest 20 percent of incomes. Also, 60.4 percent of these households included at least one person with a long-term health condition or disability.

An earlier VCOSS study, entitled “Power Struggles. Everyday battles to stay connected,” published in 2017, said: “People make significant sacrifices to pay energy bills. This can include restricting or entirely foregoing heating or cooling … or going without lighting.”

People renting are more likely to have persistent energy hardship. Brotherhood of St Lawrence research showed that the largest cohort of households unable to heat their homes (37 percent) were private tenants.

The VCOSS study pointed out: “Under current laws, landlords are able to lease structurally unsound homes with no or inadequate insulation, old and inefficient heating (if heating is provided at all), a lack of proper ventilation and aged, expensive hot water systems.”

The study included case studies of participants living in draughty homes who use no heating in winter due to energy costs. Others went to bed early in cold weather.

One elderly male pensioner, living alone, did not replace his gas heater after it broke down. He told interviewers: “I bite the bullet… if it’s cold, I’ll put a jumper on.” If he still felt cold, he went to bed early.

A number of elderly people gave similar accounts to the WSWS.

Brian, 83, lives alone in his own home, which is in need of repair, but repairs are too expensive. He recently lost his part-pension. “Six years ago I didn’t have to worry about money the way I do now,” he said. He closed down his gas account and relies on electricity. Asked how he heats his home in cold weather, he replied: “I use the electric blanket.”

Brian suffered a heart attack three years ago, so must live close to a hospital. “I do need to be warm, because of that,” he said.

John, 76, a pensioner, lives alone in a public housing flat. There is a heater, but it doesn’t give out much heat. “I don’t put the heater on at all,” he explained. “I wear a lot of clothes. I have a big thick doona and I take a hot water bottle to bed.

“The hot water in the flat is paid for by the housing commission. I don’t use much gas. Electricity is $78 for one bill... I would like the windows to be double glazed the way they are in Europe. That keeps in the heat.”

Enrico, 75, a pensioner, lives in a rented two-bedroom house with his daughter, who is also a pensioner. He worked in the building industry for 50 years, but lost his life savings in a swindle. “Now I pay $330 a week rent,” he said. “I can’t find anything cheaper. If you’re a pensioner, they won’t give you a chance.

“I use heating only when necessary, if I’m desperate, because it costs so much money. If I’m really cold, I only put the heater on for half an hour, not even an hour. I have a lumbar problem in the spine. I stuffed up my back working in the building industry. I’m in pain 24 hours a day.”

Aged 66, Fay lives in a public housing flat, which she says is “pretty cold. It is quite draughty. The balcony door has dropped and there is a gap.”

Fay is angry about her power bills because no matter how low her usage, she still has to pay the supply charge, which is often much greater than the usage. “I complain nearly every bill. My last two gas bills were astronomical. I had a gas bill of $56.30, and my actual usage was $1.83. Once a month I put complaints on their site.

“When I’m cold I just go to bed early and use a hot water bottle. I have a little fan heater in the kitchen. My heater in the lounge was not on once... The supply charge, it’s killing me. I try and budget. I put x amount to pay it each fortnight, so I don’t have bill shock. You shouldn’t have to live like this.”

The “Cold and Lonely” report has uncovered a glaring social problem of fuel poverty affecting older people that, if compounded by poor health, can have serious outcomes for those affected. It adds to studies conducted globally showing a direct connection between intensifying social inequality and poor health under capitalism.

UN calls on Spain to free jailed Catalan nationalist politicians

Alejandro López

The United Nations (UN) Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) has called for the “immediate release” of four Catalan political prisoners currently in detention waiting for a verdict in the show trial mounted by the Spanish government, 20 months after they were incarcerated.

The UN WGAD investigates arbitrary detentions that are alleged to be in breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, it has no powers to enforce its decisions. In 2016, it found that the conditions under which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London amounted to “arbitrary detention.”

Its report is a devastating exposure of Madrid’s show trial of Catalan nationalist politicians after its brutal crackdown on the 2017 Catalan independence referendum. The Catalan nationalist parties are pro-austerity parties, tacitly backing NATO wars and the EU, advancing a demand for Catalan secession that is reactionary and divides workers on the Iberian peninsula. But Madrid’s crackdown is an attack on basic democratic rights and a threat to illegalise all opposition, including workers’ strikes and protests, to the state. This is unprecedented since the fall in 1978 of the Spanish fascist regime set up by Francisco Franco.

The report considers the detention of Joaquim Forn, Raül Romeva, Josep Rull, and Dolors Bassa, all former regional ministers of the Catalan government, as “arbitrary” for violating articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among others, these articles regulate the rights to a fair trial, the presumption of innocence, and freedom of expression or political participation. In its report, it calls upon Madrid to undertake an independent and comprehensive investigation on the violation of the detainees’ rights.

The former regional ministers are among the 12 Catalan officials who were tried at the Supreme Court’s show trial, and are now awaiting a verdict. Nine of the defendants, charged with rebellion related to the 2017 independence referendum, face up to 25 years in prison. The three other defendants face lesser charges of disobedience and misuse of public funds.

It comes months after the WGAD published a first report on the cases of Jordi Sànchez, leader of the Catalan National Assembly, and Jordi Cuixart, president of Òmnium Cultural, as well as Oriol Junqueras, Catalonia’s vice regional premier in 2017.

The latest report concluded stating that their detention was “arbitrary” as it “aimed at suppressing political group members in order to silence their claims in favour of self-determination.” It also said the jailed politicians’ actions around the September 20-21 demonstrations in 2017, one of the core arguments of the accusation against the Catalan leaders at the trial, “were not violent and nor did they incite violence.”

Spain’s acting Socialist Party (PSOE) government has reacted frantically to the reports. In response to the first, in May, it accused the body of “impartiality” and a lack of “independence,” and called for the removal of two of the five experts composing the WGAD. To the recent report, acting Justice Minister Dolores Delgado dismissed the report outright, saying that the reports “contain distorted information on the reality” in Catalonia.

The PSOE government in alliance with Podemos has overseen the show trial that concluded last month. The verdict is expected before November. The PSOE government’s reaction to international criticism to the crackdown on the Catalan nationalists follows the same line as its predecessor, the right-wing Popular Party (PP). It shows that the Spanish ruling class as a whole backs the campaign against the Catalan nationalists.

The pseudo-left Podemos party also supports this policy. Its leader, Pablo Iglesias, currently in talks with the PSOE to form a coalition government after April’s general elections, promised “loyalty in state questions,” such as the Catalan issue. A member of its leadership told daily El País that in the talks with the PSOE, “We do not have red lines. We understand, due to the share of votes, that the government leadership in the Catalan question must be led by PSOE. We are going to be loyal.”

If the crackdown on the Catalan nationalists enjoys near-unanimous support in the political establishment, it is because, amid mounting social anger after a decade of EU austerity, the Catalan issue has become the vehicle through which the ruling class is seeking to attack democratic rights and rehabilitate authoritarian forms of rule and fascist politics.

After four months and the testimony from 422 witnesses on the events leading up to the unilateral independence referendum on October 2017 and the Catalan parliament’s subsequent declaration of independence, the case has revealed that the prosecution has no evidence to show the accused instigated violence to achieve independence.

Since the beginning, the case has been a fraud. The judicial panel is presided by Justice Manuel Marchena and is composed of six other justices, most of them having close ties with the PP.

Lacking any concrete evidence, the prosecution has resorted to falsifications to back up accusations of “use of violence” required by the charges of rebellion and sedition. Several police officers and civil guards claimed they saw “hatred reflected in the eyes” of demonstrators. One went so far as to say that “in the years of struggle against drug trafficking” he had not felt “as much fear” as he had felt before those eyes. Unsurprisingly, presiding Judge Marchena refused to allow the defence to show videos that would have challenged the narrative of the police officers.

The prosecutors also tried to demonstrate that the nationalists used the Mossos d ’ Esquadra regional police to back up their secessionist aims. They were accused of foot-dragging on referendum day, and failing to do their part to enforce a court order to stop the vote, thereby forcing the unleashing of mass violence that led to more than a thousand injured by national police and civil guards.

One of the trial’s surprises was the assertion by former Catalan police chief Josep Lluís Trapero that he was ready and willing to arrest separatist politicians after the regional parliament approved any unilateral independence declaration.

Coinciding with the end of the trial, repression against the Catalan nationalists has only intensified. The PSOE-controlled Prosecutors Office is now prosecuting several top officials of Catalan public television TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio, Catalonia’s main public radio station, charged with belonging to a criminal organisation.

The Prosecutors Office has also asked this week that regional Catalan Premier Quim Torra be barred from public office for a year and eight months and face a €30,000 fine for refusing to take down yellow ribbons on government buildings before April’s Spanish elections. These ribbons have come to symbolise support for jailed and exiled Catalan-nationalist leaders.

Madrid also enjoys the full backing of the European Union (EU), which has recently appointed Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Borrell, a Catalan, is a rabid anti-secessionist. The PSOE named him after he participated in demonstrations against Catalan nationalism called by Sociedad Civil Catalana (Catalan Civil Society), a group tied to the far right.

The European Parliament has also de-facto supported barring Puigdemont, Junqueras and former regional minister in exile Toni Comin from taking their seats, as Madrid has not recognised them as members of the EU body after elections in May. All were elected. However, Madrid has barred them from pledging allegiance to the Spanish constitution, a necessary requirement to be recognised as a Member of the European Parliament.

The European Court of Human Rights also recently rejected by a unanimous vote a case brought by Catalan separatist politicians alleging violations of their freedom of expression and assembly over the 2017 independence referendum. It defended the Spanish Constitutional Court’s suspension of a plenary session of the Catalan parliament, arguing it “pursued legitimate goals” such as “maintaining public safety, defending public order and protecting the rights and freedoms of others.”

Germany’s Grand Coalition intensifies war policy in the Middle East

Johannes Stern 

The German government intends to continue the war mission of the Bundeswehr (Germany‘s Armed Forces) in Syria and deploy the Air Force in the entire region beyond October 31, contrary to the provisions of its current parliamentary mandate. This was announced by government spokesman Steffen Seibert at a press conference in Berlin earlier this week.

For years, Germany has made “a considerable and internationally recognized contribution to the anti-IS coalition,” explained Seibert. The Bundeswehr was “active in aerial reconnaissance, in aerial refuelling and also in the training of Iraqi units.” Now the German government “together with our allies, with the American side, is talking about how the engagement in the region should develop further.”

The deployment of German ground troops, as formally requested by the US government and its special envoy for Syria, James Jeffrey, for the training of Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, is allegedly not planned, according to Seibert. At the same time, he made it clear that the German government was preparing to expand its involvement in the US-led anti-IS coalition behind the back of the population.

This would involve “a whole series of both military and civilian components that could be suitable for achieving stabilization on the ground in the region.” The German approach was that “we want to continue our previous measures as far as possible.” For one thing is clear: “The challenge posed by the so-called Islamic State has by no means disappeared. The coalition has succeeded in taking over areas that ISIS previously held in Syria and Iraq. But the danger of the Islamic State continues.”

That's the familiar propaganda. In reality, the main concern of the imperialist powers is not the struggle against ISIS, which itself is a product of the brutal war for regime change in Syria, which cost 400,000 lives and destroyed large parts of the country. The actual war aim was and is the overthrow of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the installation of a pro-Western puppet regime in Damascus.

In contrast to the attack on Iraq in 2003 and the Libyan war in 2011, Germany participated in the Syrian intervention from the very beginning. As early as 2012, the Federal Foreign Office, together with the government-linked think tank Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) and part of the Syrian opposition, launched the project “The Day after” and published a “Vision for a Post-Assad Order.”

Now that Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies are nearing a military victory and the United States is escalating its war preparations against Iran, the European powers are increasing their own military presence in the region to assert their economic and geostrategic interests.

According to media reports, France and Great Britain have responded to the US government's request and agreed to send additional soldiers to Syria. Paris and London would increase their troops by 10 to 15 percent, a US government representative told Foreign Policy magazine on Wednesday. Italy is also on the verge of sending additional armed forces. Similarly, a number of Balkan and Baltic states are “almost certain” to send soldiers to replace US troops, the magazine writes, citing another source.

In Germany, too, leading politicians of the governing parties are pleading for the deployment of ground troops to Syria. CDU chairman Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said in an interview that German ground troops in Syria were “a big leap for us.” But one must “always be aware: it is also a matter of our own security in Germany, not just what the United States wants.”

The deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Johann Wadephul, told representatives of the German Press Agency that the request from Washington should not be “reflexively rejected.” After all, “this region is about our security and not American security.”

The CDU defence expert and chairman of the Bundestag's reservist working group RAG, Patrick Sensburg, emphasized in an interview with Focus that the US demand for ground troops was by no means off the table. It was also “our obligation to ensure peace in the region” and “to assume greater responsibility.” After all, “the fight against the IS is far away from the USA and close to Europe … You can't always say, 'Let the Americans do it'.”

Leading social democrats, who had already strongly condemned US plans to withdraw from Syria last December, have also made it clear that they essentially support Washington’s request.

The USA had “moved away from its withdrawal plans because of international criticism, among other things. Because the IS is still a real danger in the region,” said Fritz Felgentreu, defence policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag. “Now the U.S. expects support from the same countries. That's understandable.” One should “therefore evaluate with the other countries of the anti-IS coalition what is still necessary now and which country can take over which task.”

Even the opposition parties in the Bundestag are not fundamentally opposed to an expansion of the mission and the deployment of ground troops. However, they stress that it must serve German and European interests in the region to a greater extent.

Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, deputy leader of the FDP parliamentary group, told the German daily Die Welt: “As long as there is no political solution for Syria, we don't need to talk about German ground troops.” The US inquiry, however, showed that it would not work in the medium term without a European contribution. “The condition for this must be that Europe be equally involved in the development of a new political order in Syria. It can't continue with the previous approach.”

Tobias Lindner, the Greens' spokesman on defence policy, made similar remarks according to Die Welt. “German ground troops in Syria would only be conceivable at all if there were a mandate from the UN Security Council and a credible peace perspective,” he said.

Most aggressively, the Left Party, which from the beginning has been pursuing a policy of war in Syria, is pushing for greater foreign policy independence from the USA. Dietmar Bartsch, leader of the parliamentary group of the Left Party in the Bundestag, demanded that Germany should not be a “recipient of orders from the United States.” Tobias Pflüger, the Left Party's spokesman on defence policy, warned that the US administration was “concerned only with replacing its soldiers, so that they also have a free hand in other fields.” Germany should “not allow itself to be drawn further into the Syrian war.”

In fact, German-European military planning is not limited to Syria. On Thursday, the Süddeutsche Zeitung published a comment calling upon the German and European powers to join the anti-Iranian military coalition to secure the Strait of Hormuz that US President Donald Trump is seeking to establish. “Freedom of navigation is a great good, especially for a nation as dependent on exports as Germany. It must also be defended in crisis regions such as the Persian Gulf.”

The newspaper's proposal: “Warships from Europe or Asia” should “secure the bottleneck from the Gulf of Oman to the Persian Gulf”, through which “40 percent of the world's oil exports” passes, and the Bab el-Mandab Strait, the entrance from the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea.

European ships “would be less provocative for Iran than American or Saudi patrol boats” and at the same time “a further signal to Tehran that Europe wants to maintain the nuclear agreement but does not accept the aggressive regional policy of the Islamic Republic unopposed.”

The Süddeutsche Zeitung claim that another armada of warships in the powder keg of the Middle East would be “a contribution to crisis prevention” is obviously absurd. It would rather increase the danger of a direct military confrontation with Iran, which could quickly ignite the entire region and lead to a possible confrontation with the nuclear powers Russia and China and thus to a third world war.