FAO - Hungarian Government Scholarship 2016-2017

The following Master of Science degree courses are being offered in English for the 2016-2017 Academic Year:

• Agricultural sciences
• Agricultural biotechnology
• Horticulture 
• Animal nutrition and feed safety

Universities
The following universities are participating:

• Szent István University, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
• Szent István University, Faculty of Horticultural Sciences (previously having belonged to the Corvinus University of Budapest)
• Kaposvár University, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Conditions

Courses will be offered provided the minimum number of students is reached.
The scholarship will cover:

• application and tuition fees throughout the study period;
• basic books and notes;
• dormitory accommodation;
• subsistence costs.

All of the above mentioned costs are financed by the Hungarian Government, according to the Agreement between FAO and Hungary in 2007. Scholarship students are entitled to the same health care coverage offered to Hungarian students during the course of the scholarship. The scholarship covers student costs only; family members are not supported within the frame of this programme.

Eligibility

Residents (who must be nationals) of the following countries are eligible to apply to the Scholarship Programme: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Macedonia, Madagascar, Mali, Myanmar, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Namibia, Nigeria, North-Korea, the Philippines, Serbia, Somalia, South-Sudan, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen.

Application and selection process

The selection process as described below applies to scholarships beginning in September 2016.
Student selection will take place in two phases:
Phase 1: FAO will pre-screen candidates and submit recommendations to the Ministry of Agriculture of Hungary that will send them to the corresponding University as chosen by the applicants. Students must submit only COMPLETED dossiers. Incomplete dossiers will not be considered. It is important to note that a favourable pre-screening in the first step does not guarantee selection.
Phase 2: Selected candidates may be asked to take a written or oral English examination as part of the admission procedure. The participating Universities will run a further selection process and inform each of the successful candidates. Student selection will be made by the Universities only, without any involvement on the part of FAO. Selected students will also be notified by the Ministry.

Candidates will be selected on the basis of the following criteria:

• Citizenship and residency of one of the eligible countries
• Excellent school achievements
• English language proficiency (for courses taught in English)
• Motivation
• Good health
• Age (candidates under 30 are preferred)

Application procedure

Interested applicants should prepare a dossier to be sent by e-mail consisting of:

• Application form duly completed
• A recent curriculum vitae
• A copy of high school/college diploma and transcript/report of study or copy of the diploma attachment
• A copy of certificate of proficiency in English
• Copies of relevant pages of passport showing expiration date and passport number
• A letter of recommendation
• Statement of motivation
• Health Certificate issued by Medical Doctor
• Certificate of Good Conduct issued by local police authority.

All submitted documents must be in English. Documents submitted in any other language will not be accepted. It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure that documents are duly translated and certified by a competent office; and that each document is saved with a name that identifies what it is.

Deadlines
Applications by interested candidates should be submitted by e-mail to FAO in the period

04 January - 28 February 2016

Paper copies of dossiers received by post or courier or any other way, will not be taken into consideration.

Important notes

As the number of scholarships is limited, interested applicants are strongly encouraged to submit their applications as soon as possible.
Applicants who were not selected in previous years may re-apply to the 2016-2017 Programme. These applicants will have to submit the complete dossier once again (by e-mail only!).
Please note that the duration of the scholarship cannot be extended.
A Scholarship Study Contract will be signed between the selected student and the Ministry of Agriculture of Hungary (MoAH), which is the donor of the program at the time of first semester registration.

Applicants wishing to explore external funding opportunities to cover the travel costs may do so at their own initiative. However, in view of the length of the process, applicants wishing to apply for 2016 scholarships are strongly encouraged to E-MAIL their application while they endeavour to identify funds or pending confirmation that such funds will be granted.
All queries concerning the programme or the application process should be sent by e-mail to

REU-Scholarship@fao.org

$50,000 OPEC/OFID Scholarships for Developing Countries 2016/2017

Brief description: The OPEC Fund for International Development – OFID Scholarship Award 2016/2017 is open for qualified applicants who have obtained or are on the verge of completing their undergraduate degree and who wish to study for a Master’s degree, to win up to $50,0000.

Accepted Subject Areas: The Scholarship is open to those students who wish to pursue studies in a relevant field of Development or Energy Studies such as: economics of development (poverty reduction, energy and sustainable development), environment (desertification), or other related science and technology fields.

About Scholarship

OFID (The OPEC Fund for International Development) is pleased to announce that qualified applicants who have obtained or are on the verge of completing their undergraduate degree and who wish to study for a Master’s degree are welcome to apply for the OFID Scholarship 2016/2017

OFID scholarships will be awarded to four students or candidates for master’s degree studies. Applicants must be from a developing country (except OFID Member Countries),  and he/she must first obtain admission to pursue a Master’s degree studies in a relevant field of development, from any recognized university/college in the world.

Through its scholarship scheme, OFID aims to help highly motivated, highly driven individuals overcome one of the biggest challenges to their careers – the cost of graduate studies. The winners of the OFID Scholarship Award will receive a scholarship of up to US$50,000. The funds will be spread over a maximum of two years, toward the completion of a Master’s degree, or its equivalent, at an accredited educational institution, starting in the autumn of the academic year 2016/2017.

Scholarship Offered Since: Not Specified

Scholarship Type: Full masters scholarship

Selection Criteria

Applicants are responsible for gathering and submitting all necessary information. Applications will be evaluated based on the information provided. Therefore, all questions should be answered as thoroughly as possible. Once an application has been submitted, no changes will be allowed on it.

Eligibility

To be eligible to apply for the OFID Masters Scholarship, applicants:

• Must be between the ages of 23-32 at the time of submitting his/her application.
• Must have obtained or be on the verge of completing their undergraduate degree with a Baccalaureate from an accredited college/university, or its equivalent.
• Must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher on a 4.0 rating system, or its equivalent.
• Must be matriculated at an accredited university for the upcoming academic year starting August/September 2015, and must maintain full-time status for the duration of the Master’s Degree.
• Must be a national of a developing country (except OFID Member Countries)
• Must select a subject of study that pertains to OFID’s core mission, such as: economics of development (poverty reduction, energy and sustainable development), environment (desertification), or other related science and technology fields.

Number of Scholarship: Four

Scholarship Benefits

The winners of the OFID Scholarship Award will receive a full tuition scholarship of up to US$50,000. The funds will be spread over a maximum of one year, toward the completion of a Master’s degree, or its equivalent, at an accredited educational institution.

Duration: one year masters degree programme

Eligible African Countries: See the list of eligible developing countries for OFID Masters scholarship from the link below

To be taken at (country): Any recognized University in the world

Application Deadline: is May 1, 2016.

Offered annually? Yes

How to Apply

Applicants must complete the online application.

Within the on-line application, applicants must upload the required documents as listed below in Section III. All materials including the on-line application, recommendations, and other required information must be received no later than the deadline date.

Required Documents

• A completed on-line application form.
• A scanned copy of the applicant’s passport.
• A scanned copy of the last university degree or certificate.
• A scanned letter of acceptance from chosen educational institution, confirming your admission, subject of study and duration of the Master’s degree program (must not exceed one year).
• A proof of meeting any prerequisites, including language proficiency.
• A short essay – of about 500 words in English – giving reasons for applying for the OFID scholarship, explaining your educational goals, and clearly describing how you will use the experience gained from your Master’s degree studies to help in the development of your home country.
• Two letters of recommendation from professors and/or lecturers at applicant’s present university.
• Curriculum Vitae (CV)..

Only the winner will be notified by June 2, 2015 via OFID website at www.ofid.org.

Visit Scholarship Webpage  for more details

Sponsors: The OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID)

Five Revealing Facts About Homeless Youth

Lina Breslav

The federal government has set a goal of ending youth homelessness by 2020 with Opening Doors, a strategic plan released in 2010. But as the plan acknowledges, figuring out how many youth are homeless is no easy task.

This month, communities across the country will undertake the annual Point-in-Time (PIT) count of homeless adults, families, and youth in an effort to measure the number of sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons on a single night in January. Unfortunately, the PIT count generally undercounts youth experiencing homelessness, so some communities choose to conduct a targeted count of this critically vulnerable population.

As the date of the annual count approaches, it’s helpful to take stock of what we’ve learned about these youth.

1 Many youth who leave home are not ready to be self-sufficient. Youth are likely to leave home because of a bad situation rather than feeling ready. A hallmark of readiness is the ability to meet basic needs, such as food, shelter, medical care, and work, and many homeless youth have trouble meeting these needs. In one study, about half of homeless youth had difficulty getting enough food and a majority had spent at least one day in the past month without anything to eat. 
This is not surprising because we know that developmentally, many young people are not ready to be out on their own. Neuroscience research finds that the brain continues to experience major development during adolescence and early adulthood. In fact, because we know that hitting an 18th birthday does not necessarily indicate readiness for adulthood, most states have extended foster care past the age of 18 to respond to the needs of a population that are now more accurately described as “emerging adults.”

2 Most homeless youth return home. We know that most homeless youth return home. And this can happen quickly. In one study of 1,682,900 underage runaway youth and youth forced to leave home, 99.6 percent returned home and most were gone for less than a week. In a different study of newly homeless adolescents in Los Angeles, California and Melbourne, Australia, most newly homeless adolescents returned home for significant amounts of time within two years of becoming homeless. This doesn’t mean that all youth remain home permanently. But they do maintain connections, even while away from home. In another study, 41 percent of homeless youth who owned a cell phone reported using it to stay connected to their families.

3 Many homeless youth attend school. Homeless youth face enormous challenges when it comes to attending school, but many still attend. Based on our tabulations using the Runaway and Homeless Youth Management Information System, we find that 65 percent of homeless youth ages 12 to 18 were attending school regularly and 20 percent were attending school irregularly.
It’s possible that schools don’t know just how many of their students are homeless. One innovative approach is the Homeless Youth Estimation Project, a direct-to-student survey designed to provide an estimate of the number of youth within a school district living somewhere outside of home temporarily. Results from 12 high schools in New England indicate high rates of youth disconnection from permanent and stable homes.

4 Many youth remain connected to the internet and social media, despite being homeless. One study found that 80 percent of homeless youth use the internet at least twice a week, with many seeing the web as a way to create and maintain social networks and locate services. Homeless youth can use the internet and connections on social media to maintain relationships and stay in touch with family and friends.

5 When it comes to sex work, homeless youth are being coerced and manipulated, and participate out of desperation. Homeless youth are particularly vulnerable to being coerced into the commercial underground sex economy. In a 2008 study in New York City, a great majority of sexually exploited children expressed a desire to change their circumstances, but felt that they were doing what they had to do to survive.

American Jews And Israel: A Divorce In The Making?

Alan Hart

In a very interesting piece on his web site (Mondoweiss) Philip Weiss has speculated that the day is coming when American Jews will divorce Israel.

If it really happens the president of the day will be free to use the leverage America has to cause or try to cause Israel to end its defiance of international law and denial of justice for Palestinians. And if an American president gave that lead European governments would follow him or her.

According to Weiss an important “sociological trend” is underway.

“American Jews, even mainstream ones indoctrinated to love Israel, are breaking more and more publicly with the Jewish state. The Netanyahu government is proving to be embarrassing to American Jews; they do not want to be associated with rightwing apartheid policies… The divorce that we have long predicted on this site is now on the horizon; and in years to come this separation will yield an even bigger reward: mainstream American Jews will declare themselves anti-Zionist.”

In support of his speculation Weiss quoted Gary Rosenblat. He’s a hard-core supporter of Israel and the editor and publisher of The Jewish Week. In an article for it and as summed up by Weiss he revealed that Jewish leaders are saying that it’s getting impossible to sell Israel to young Jews.

“American Jewish leaders confide that generating support for the Jewish state is becoming increasingly difficult these days – even within the Jewish community, and especially among younger people.

“The hard fact is that Israel’s leadership is moving in a direction at odds with the next generation of Americans, including many Jews, who want to see greater efforts to resolve the Palestinian conflict and who put the onus for the impasse on Jerusalem. It is not only President Obama who feels that way… Whether or not it is fair, the strong perception today is that the Israeli government is moving further right, and intransigent, at a time when the rest of the world is fed up with the Israel-Palestinian impasse.”

A related point made in Weiss’s article was that when the present generation of major Jewish funders passes raising substantial dollars for Israel will be much harder.

Weiss concluded with this prediction.

“This crisis will not end until American Jews declare Zionism is racism. And one day they will.”

Serious consideration of whether Weiss is guilty of wishful thinking and being naively optimistic or could be proved right by events to come requires the asking and answering of this question.

Why, really, have the overwhelming majority of the Jews of the world, American Jews especially, supported Israel (the Zionist not Jewish state) right or wrong and/or remained silent even when they were deeply troubled by its policies and actions?

It’s worth recalling for starters that prior to the Nazi holocaust, and as I document in detail in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, most Jews of the world did not support Zionism and many were opposed to it. Those who voiced their opposition believed the Zionist enterprise was morally wrong. They also believed it would lead to unending conflict. But most of all they feared that if Zionism was allowed by the major powers to have its way it would one day provoke anti-Semitism.

Though it was Britain that gave Zionism a spurious degree of legitimacy with the Balfour Declaration in 1917, if there had been no Nazi holocaust it is most likely that there would have been no Israel because without Adolf Hitler as its best recruiting sergeant Zionism would probably have failed to command enough financial and political support to impose its will on the Palestinians.

Also to be recalled is that from the creation of Israel mainly by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing in 1948 until the Six days War of 1967 most Jews of the world were not much interested in Israel. At an early point in its life Prime Minister Ben-Gurion was very concerned that not enough Jews were coming in to start a new life there and give Israel the manpower needed for territorial expansion. One consequence of Ben-Gurion’s concern was that Mossad agents posed as Arab terrorists and bombed Jews out of Iraq and into Israel.

It was the 1967 war that dramatically changed how most Jews of the world thought about Israel and that was because they believed without question the big, fat lie Zionism told in the countdown to the war.

The lie was that the Arabs were intending to attack and that Israel was in real danger of being annihilated.

The truth was that despite some stupid Arab rhetoric to the contrary which played into Zionism’s hands, the Arabs were NOT intending to attack. It was a war of Israeli aggression not self-defense.

For those readers who still believe that Israel’s Jews were in danger of being driven into the sea I recommend Chapter 1 of Volume Three of my book which is titled America Takes Sides, War With Nasser Act II and the Creation of Greater Israel.

In this chapter I quote a number of Israeli leaders who years after the events in most cases said on the record that they knew that Arabs were not intending to start a war. Here are just five examples.

In an interview with Le Monde on 28 February 1968, Yitzhak Rabin, who was Chief of Staff in the 1967 war, said:

“I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on 14 May would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.”

On 14 April 1971, a report in the Israeli newspaper Al-Hamishmar contained the following statement by Mordecai Bentov, a member of Israel’s wartime national government.

“The entire story of the danger of extermination was invented in every detail and exaggerated a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territory.”

On 4 April 1972, General Bar-Lev, Rabin’s predecessor as Chief of Staff, was quoted in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv as follows.

“We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the Six Days War and we never thought of such a possibility.”

In the same newspaper on the same day, General Ezer Weizman, who was Chief of Operations during the Six Days War, was quoted as saying:

“There was never any danger of annihilation. This hypothesis has never been considered in any serious meeting.”

In an unguarded public moment in 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin said this:

“The Egyptian army concentrations did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We decided to attack him.”

But the vast majority of the Jews of the world (probably 99 percent of them) believed Zionism’s pre-war propaganda. They were absolutely convinced that the Arabs were about to attack and that Israel’s existence was in real danger. In the absence of the truth, which was not on the mainstream media’s agenda, they were brainwashed by Zionist propaganda.

One result of Israel’s stunning military victory was that most Jews of the world were not only greatly relieved, they were proud like never before to be Jewish and campaigners for Israel. Some took Israel’s victory as indication of Divine Intervention, proof that the Jews were indeed the Chosen People and evidence that God would be with Israel whatever it did.

And that was the beginning of the real love affair between most Jews everywhere and Israel.

Now to my answer to the question of why, really, the overwhelming majority of the Jews of the world, American Jews especially, have supported Israel right or wrong and/or remained silent even when they were deeply troubled by its policies and actions.

For starters it has to be said that criticism of Israel can and does tear Jewish families apart. And that alone seems to be reason enough for some (many?) American and European Jews to remain silent.

But there’s much more to it.

The root cause of American and European Jewish support for Israel right or wrong and/or silence on the matter of its defiance of international law and denial of justice for the Palestinians is the unspeakable fear that Holocaust II may at some point be inevitable.

This fear is the product of persecution on and off down the centuries which climaxed with the Nazi holocaust and Zionism’s propaganda to the effect that the world has always hated Jews and always will. Zionism’s message to the Jews of the world is in effect, “You will need Israel one day so don’t question whatever it does to keep itself secure.”.

It is therefore not surprising that very many Jews of the world believe that in the event of another great turning against them Israel will be their refuge of last resort, so, they tell themselves, say nothing and do nothing that could assist Israel’s enemies and put this insurance policy at risk.

Despite all of that I think it’s not impossible that Weiss could be right and that time and events will see American (and European) Jews breaking with Zionism and all its represents. But in my view it won’t happen as a consequence of more and more Jews becoming “embarrassed” by Israel’s policies and actions. Embarrassment is not a strong enough motivation to cause the Jews of the world (American and European Jews especially) to do what they must if they are to best protect their own interests.

What is it that they must do?

Short answer – they must open their closed minds to the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel.

If they did they would discover that Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab military force and that it could have had peace with the Palestinians many years ago on terms which any rational government in Israel would have accepted with relief.

In other words, exposure to the truth of history would prove to them that Zionism’s version of it – a version to which most Western politicians and the mainstream media are still attached – is, generally speaking, a pack of propaganda lies.

Perhaps even more to the point is that exposure to the complete truth of history would make American and European Jews of today aware of the warnings that were voiced by Jewish leaders who opposed Zionism before the Nazi Holocaust. As I indicated above, their main fear was that if Zionism was allowed by the major powers to have its way it would one day provoke anti-Semitism.

What it has been provoking for many years is a rising, global tide of anti-Israelism, but the danger for American and European Jews is that this could be transformed into anti-Semitism if American and European Jewish support for Israel right or wrong is interpreted as complicity (even if by default) in Zionism’s crimes.

The most explicit warning of this danger was delivered by Yehoshafat Harkabi, the longest serving Director of Israeli Military Intelligence in his 1986 book Israel’s Fateful Hour. In my book I quote him at length but here in one paragraph with my emphasis added is the essence of his warning.

“Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots.

Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world.

If Harkabi was alive today (he died in 1994), and given that Israel is not going to change course and that its brutal oppression of the Palestinians will only get worse and worse, I think he might agree with me that unless the Jews of the world divorce themselves from Zionism, anti-Israelism will be transformed into anti-Semitism at some point in the future.

It’s that vision of the future that ought to motivate American, European and other Jews of the world to come to grips with the truth of history and the conclusion it invites – that Zionism is their real enemy.

The problem for some and perhaps many American, European and other Jews of the world is that divorcing Zionism would mean that they were saying, in effect, that they no longer had need for the insurance policy of Israel as a refuge of last resort. And that would raise a perfectly valid question. How can they be certain they will be safe and secure in their American, European and other homelands if they do abandon the Zionism?

My answer (as in my book) is this.

After the Nazi holocaust, and because of it, the giant of anti-Semitism would have gone back to sleep, remained asleep and, in all probability, would have died in its sleep – IF Zionism had not been allowed by the major powers, first Britain and then America, to have its way, as Balfour put it “right or wrong”.

In that light I say there is every reason to believe that the Jews of the Western world will remain safe and secure if they demonstrate by divorcing Zionism they are not complicit, even by default, in its crimes.

Putin Calls Out Obama On A Big Lie

Eric Zuesse

“In 2009, US President Obama said that the missile defense only serves as protection from Iranian nuclear missiles. But now there is an international treaty with Iran that bans Tehran from developing a potential military nuclear project. The International Atomic Energy Agency is controlling this, the sanctions against Iran are lifted – but still the US are working on their missile defense system. Only recently a treaty with Spain was signed, a deployment in Romania is being prepared, the same will happen in Poland in 2018, and in Turkey, a radar unit is being installed.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that in an interview with Germany's Das Bild, published on January 11th, but the press has ignored this very serious charge — an accusation of deception, bad faith, outright lying, on the part of the U.S. President. 

So: here is what the record says about that allegation:

Here are links to the complete interview:

Part One, Jan. 11: http://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/wladimir-putin/russian-president-vladimir-putin-the-interview-44104378.bild.html

Part Two, Jan. 12: http://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/wladimir-putin/russian-president-vladimir-putin-the-interview-44096428.bild.html

Here is the historical record:

On 17 September 2009, the White House issued “Remarks by the President on Strengthening Missile Defense in Europe.” He said there: “This new ballistic missile defense program will best address the threat posed by Iran's ongoing ballistic missile defense program. … Our clear and consistent focus has been the threat posed by Iran's ballistic missile program, and that continues to be our focus and the basis of the program that we're announcing today.”

All the rest of Putin's account is likewise entirely accurate.

U.S. President Barack Obama lied, about a very important matter. The people calling him out on it should be more than just the Russian President. This is an issue — World War III — that affects the entire world. 

There is no issue that's more serious than this. But, where is the press on it?

Only one English-language site carried Bild's English-language translation — the rabidly anti-Russian Business Insider, which was founded by the Wall Street fraudster, Henry Blodgett. Wikipedia says of him: “In 2002, then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer published Merrill Lynch e-mails in which Blodget gave assessments about stocks which allegedly conflicted with what was publicly published.[6] In 2003, he was charged with civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.[7] He agreed to a permanent ban from the securities industry and paid a $2 million fine plus a $2 million disgorgement.[2]” His site's headline for this article was “Putin defends Russia's recent aggression, blames US and Europe for rising tensions.” The headline for the same article at Bild  was: “PUTIN — THE INTERVIEW: ‘For me, it is not borders that matter.'” The Blodget site posted five reader-comments to the interview: all were rabidly anti-Putin, such as, “The man is a Machiavellian sociopath. Just what Russia has always had, and probably needs”; nothing was commented about the lie that Putin alleged to have been asserted by Obama. All of them ignored it. 

In other words: There was no press-coverage of the U.S. President's lie. Obama had asserted a globally mega-important lie, which displays Obama's building up toward a war between the United States and Russia, and doing it under the false pretext that the U.S. is preparing for a war against Iran (instead of for a nuclear WW III against what is actually the world's other major nuclear power, Russia — and while constantly demonizing and lying about Russia's leader); Putin called the U.S. President on that single mega-lie, and the press ignored this entire mega-important matter, which could end in global annihilation.

What kind of ‘press' is this? What kind of ‘democracy' is this?

It's even worse than that:

Here is another passage from the interview that Germany's Das Bild  published on January 11th, of Russian President Vladimir Putin:

BILD: In your last interview with BILD, ten years ago, you said that Germany and Russia had never been as close as in 2005. What is left today of this special relationship?

Putin: The mutual sympathy of our peoples is and will remain the foundation of our relations.

BILD: And nothing has changed?

(Before speaking the next sentence, the President starts to sneer.)

Putin: Even with the help of anti-Russian propaganda in the mass media, Germany has not succeeded in damaging this sympathy…

BILD: Do you mean BILD?

Putin: I do not mean you personally. But of course Germany's media are heavily influenced by the country on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

BILD: That's news to us.

It's not news to Udo Ulfkotte, who had for decades been a very successful journalist in Germany, working for the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, and other leading media, but recently quit and went public about his having long secretly helped the CIA and worked for them as a regular propagandist against Russia. Ulfkotte said that it was the only way to get ahead in the ‘journalism' profession in Germany. 

He was heavily criticized, at the time, for having given this interview with Russian Television. However, the highly respected political and economic blogger who goes under the name of Tyler Durden, headlined on 9 October 2014, “German Journalist Blows Whistle On How The CIA Controls The Media,” and he explained that there was lots more evidence, from other leading journalists, confirming Ulfkotte's allegations, just not quite so specific to the anti-Russia angle. It seems that the same propaganda operation of which Ulfkotte had once been a part, was now aiming to smear him by means of the operation's other ‘journalists', but his charges can hardly be denied — they're an undeniable part of post WW II history, starting with the Cold War but continuing right into our own time. In fact, the CIA had (and maybe still has) an entire operation codenamed “Mockingbird,” which was proud of its success in controlling virtually all international ‘news' ‘reporting' in the United States and, to a large extent, also in Europe.

There was even a case in which a soaring news-reporting star at CNN, who had already won three Emmy Awards, was fired and blacklisted for having reported that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were sending tanks and troops into Bahrain slaughtering peaceful Shiites who were demonstrating for equal rights with Bahrain's Sunni minority, in that nation where a sectarian fundamentalist-Sunni royal family rule the country. Unlike in Syria, where a non-sectarian and anti-fundamentalist Shiite leader, Bashar al-Assad, rules (and enjoys majority support from his nation's majority-Sunni public), and where the U.S. President, Barack Obama had been planning his overthrow from the moment when Obama had become President in 2009, these demonstrators against Bahrain's royal family were actually spontaneous, and the United States and its Saudi royal family ally were determined to crush it. But this CNN reporter simply refused to cover up and sugar-coat the ugly reality, that the U.S. were working with the Sauds to crush incipient democracy in Bahrain. So, she was fired and blacklisted for that. No matter how terrific a reporter she was, and even despite her being also the prettiest news reporter on television, and the one that her professional colleagues expected to have a stellar future, she couldn't even get a job in the field afterwards, because she had refused to deceive when and as required to, and that's the cardinal sin in ‘journalism,' in what American PR calls ‘the Free World' — as if, after the end of communism in Russia, any basic sense still remains to that now-lying phrase, other than to serve as a basis for the secret war that the United States has continued against Russia after the end of communism there.

Could it really be that the ‘reporters' for Bild  don't know the score, as they were pretending?

To judge by their ‘reporting' (so biased there as to ignore the reality to which the facts that they were reporting were responses, reacting to — especially Putin's reacting against Obama's overthrow of the Russia-friendly democratically elected President of Ukraine in February 2014 and against Obama's ethnic-cleansing to get rid of the people in the area of Ukraine that had voted more than 90% for him), they know it all too well.

They know the reality; only their readers don't — and, apparently, won't.

Obama's entire case against Russia, and especially his cases regarding Ukraine and regarding Syria, are lies, but they're ceaselessly spread throughout the West. On January 17th, at the final Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Debate before voting starts in the Presidential primaries, even the least-hostile-to-Russia candidate in both of America's political parties, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, started from the assumption of Obama's lies as being truths. For example, he said, “And we all know, no argument, the secretary [former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the leading candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination] is absolutely right, Assad is a butcher of his own people, man using chemical weapons against his own people. This is beyond disgusting.” But actually, Obama, and his then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the Saudi King, and President Erdogan of Turkey, and Emir Thani of Qatar, had organized that sarin gas attack so as to make it seem to have come from Assad's forces, in order to provide an excuse for the U.S. to bomb Syria to remove Assad from power. An MIT study of the evidence concluded “The US Government's Interpretation of the Technical Intelligence It Gathered Prior to and After the August 21 Attack CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CORRECT.” (Their emphasis.) Is it possible that even Senator Sanders didn't know that? Or was even he  lying?

Anyone who doubts that the claim to be ‘democratic' ‘news' media in a ‘democracy,' is such a hoax, needs to see this (and especially its pie-chart at 18:20 on that video), from the brilliant Sibel Edmonds, explaining how profoundly corrupt it actually is, so that one can understand how the current reality really works.

What kind of ‘democracy' is this?

US blizzard: At least 27 dead, hundreds of thousands without power

Nick Barrickman & Eric London

A strong winter storm system (named “Winter Storm Jonas”) moved through the eastern United States over the weekend, burying major cities and towns from the Carolinas to New York under record-setting amounts of snow. So far, 27 people have been confirmed dead from car crashes, hypothermia and other tragedies that would have been prevented had there been fully funded safety response programs and a safe transportation infrastructure.

As in Flint, Michigan with its lead-poisoned water, people are killed because the social needs of the population are entirely subordinated to the corporate drive for profit.

Eighty million people were impacted by the storm, roughly one quarter of the population of the US. The mid-Atlantic and southern Appalachian states of Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland were hit the hardest, with some areas reporting three feet or more of snow. The coastlines in New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia were battered by hurricane-force winds, causing significant flooding and power outages. In New Jersey and the Carolinas, over 190,000 homes reported power outages. Thousands remained without electricity on Sunday. Tens of thousands of flights were canceled and thousands of car crashes were reported from state to state.

Governors in 11 states declared states of emergency, while major highway closures and travel bans were put in place. Preparations were largely limited to police measures as practically all transit was brought to a halt. In New York City, police officials warned motorists to “Stay off the road… We don’t want to have to arrest you.” Similar warnings were given in Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia. In Virginia, Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe ordered the mobilization of 700 members of the US National Guard.

In a country that is supposedly the most advanced in the world, the ability of storms to bring life to a standstill for a vast portion of the country is an indictment of an economic system devoid of any rational planning. Despite the fact that storms are common features of life (increasingly so today due to climate change), the ruling class has neglected basic infrastructure and disaster planning to such a degree that dozens of preventable deaths occur each time a major storm hits.

Many of those who were killed in the most recent storm were workers attempting to drive to or from work. One Kentucky transportation worker was found keeled over in his snowplow after likely freezing to death while seeking to clear the roads.

A Greenville South Carolina couple died in their homes after suffocating from carbon monoxide. The couple, 87-year-old Robert Bell and his 86-year-old wife Ruby, lived through the Great Depression and World War Two but died after losing power during the storm. They had set up a generator in the garage, and although they left the door open to protect themselves, the door closed during the night likely due to wind or snow.

A 23-year-old New Jersey mother and her one-year-old son died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in a car they had left running to stay warm. The tailpipe became blocked with snow, and when the car was discovered by the woman’s husband, he found that only his 3-year-old daughter was alive. She remains in “very critical condition.”

The death toll likely does not take into consideration unaccounted-for homeless people, despite efforts by charities to shield the homeless from the storm. In New York City, more than 3,300 of the city’s homeless population of 60,000 are not able to find spots in the city’s shelters. In Philadelphia, there are roughly 4,000 homeless people on a given night, only some of whom are able to find spaces in shelters. Homelessness in the state of Massachusetts rose 40 percent between 2007 and 2014, while funding for homeless families fell by 6 percent in the same period.

For the most part, the wealthy do not suffer from these catastrophes, though they were inconvenienced by the most recent storm. The New York Times published an article yesterday lamenting how theatergoers were disappointed because the storm prevented them from seeing a $1,000-a-ticket Broadway show.

“For the 2,600 people who had tickets to the Saturday matinee and evening performances of ‘Hamilton,’ the cancellations were a particularly low blow,” the Times wrote. The investment website Bloomberg reported pleasantly that “stock, bond, and commodities markets in New York are planning to operate on regular schedules Monday.”

Though storms may be natural phenomena, the death tolls are almost entirely manmade. In the United States, a neglected, crumbling infrastructure is to blame. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the US a “D+” in infrastructure in its 2013 report card.

1,836 people died in Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and another 195 were killed during Hurricane Ike three years later. 285 perished in Hurricane Sandy, which passed through the East Coast in 2012. Blizzards are also commonly deadly in North America. In 2010, the North American Blizzard left 41 dead—28 in Mexico and 13 in the US. The “Storm of the Century” led to the deaths of over 350 in the Eastern United States in 1993, with the Blizzard of 1996 killing over 150 people in the same part of the country.

Yet despite the regular occurrence of storms, nothing is done to prepare major American cities for their inevitable impact.

In October, the US House passed a bill that would slash $20 million from the Federal Transit Administration. In particular, the bill targeted transportation funding to public transit in “high density” states across the mid-Atlantic. From 2010 to 2012, Congress slashed funding for Federal Emergency Management Agency preparedness grants in half—from $3.05 billion to $1.35 billion. From 2003 to 2014, spending on transportation and water infrastructure has decreased by 4 percent as a share of GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Spending by the federal government on transportation and water infrastructure declined by 19 percent over the same period.

State governments have also slashed their funding for transportation as well. Republican presidential candidate and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, whose administration slashed $175 million from his state’s transportation budget in Fiscal Year 2015, sought to transform the blizzard into an election promotion, declaring “What you see in New Jersey today are results… And that’s why the people of the United States should strongly consider supporting me for president of the United States, because when the chips are down, I deliver.”

The ruling class’s funding priorities reveal their parasitic social character. Earlier this month, the US Navy announced that over $80 billion would be spent upgrading its nuclear submarine fleet.