Anzac As Apologia And Religion

Binoy Kampmark

Soaked to the core, Melbournians gathered around the War Memorial in thousands, gazing at the flickering, all-resistant eternal flame in an annual tribute to Australia’s fallen.  Each year, the secular religion of Anzac (the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) receives more adherents, gathers a few more followers, and nabs a few more converts among the young.

This also shows in budget outlays.  Between 2014 and 2018, $562 million will be expended in commemoration services of the First World War. This staggering amount exceeds that of other nations involved in the conflict, including the combined budgets of Germany, Russia, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Romania and the United States.  France, by way of example, is set to spend 120 million euros. (To date, only 30 million of it has been secured from public institutions.)

What the Anzac Day ceremonies do not do is reflect on political folly and irresponsibility. This is the event’s greatest triumph: that of political deflection.  Human sacrifice is the enormous tent under which political blunders and military catastrophes are subsumed, negating any questioning about decisions made and engagements undertaken in conflict.

Gallipoli in 1915 was a defeat of monumental proportions for the Anzac soldiers, a needless slaughter born from a Churchillian gamble.  Editors and politicians chose to see it differently, finding in murderous folly a “baptism of fire”.  Importantly, it was an invasion of the Ottoman state, a violation of sovereignty that has somehow been lost in the annals of saccharine reflection.

The modern disaster theme, with wheels of doom re-invented for the next futile deployment, can be gathered in the latest visit of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to Iraq and Afghanistan.  These are both engagements without end, costly to life and tax payer, and do little to mark out, let alone define, the national interest.

In the case of Iraq, the need to train local security forces always seemed absurd given the existence of a functioning state prior to the ill-conceived, illegal invasion of 2003, of which Australia was an enthusiastic participant.

Having essentially destroyed Iraq, crippling its infrastructure and disbanding its security forces before a hail of sectarian vengeance, Australian soldiers and personnel then found themselves in acts of feeble reconstruction.

The public relations here is typical, and again an annex of the deflection program so resonant in Anzac Day propaganda: Australian forces deemed worthy participants in the Building Partner Capacity Mission at Taji, responsible, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, for the training of more than 20,000 Iraqi Security Forces and 3,000 federal police.

As this training takes place, suicide bombers continue to act as deep, bloody reminders about this mission.  Another is the presence of Islamic State or Daesh, a target of the Australian Special Operations Task Group assisting the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service, this, the offspring of a deranged mother of necessity in the wake of Iraq’s sectarian violence in a post-Saddam world.

The vulgar pieties across the networks further serve to show how journalists have become votaries to the Anzac cult. Priests and priestesses interview veterans and politicians about the current role of Anzac and its importance.  Points about how best to rehabilitate the broken on returning from conflict are bandied about without asking the question as to why they were sent to a distant theatre to begin with.  Questions are asked about how best to educate children on the subject.

The Anzac Day Commemoration Committee states the prosaic point about carrying the rituals through the young.  “By building young children’s understandings about traditions, facts and folklore of ANZAC Day, the many real life stories of sacrifices and heroism of everyday Australians will not be lost, but be handed down to future generations.”

The battle over what those facts are, let alone the mythologies that tend to obscure them, is not something of interest to the memorialisers.  (A few rear guard actions have been fought against this, notably by David Stephens and Alison Broinowski in the edited collection The Honest History Book.)

More important are the social activities that might engage the entire family, as war can be so much fun.  The South Australian Advertiser lists five ways “to keep children entertained in South Australia on Anzac Day.

These include horse drawn trams to Granite Island “where eagle-eyed kids can keep an eye out for penguins” or seeing the Anzac Day Variety Concert at Elizabeth’s Shedley Theatre.  To expend energy, children will find Lollipop’s Playland and Café a treat. And so it goes on.

The rituals of the secular religion demand consistency.  Turnbull has followed, unreflectively, in the steps of a historically dysfunctional continuum.  There is no self-examination, merely belief. There is no questioning, merely acceptance.

Turnbull’s Facebook page supplies us an example: “More than 100,000 men and women have died in the service of our nation.  Many have been left wounded in body and spirit.  Their sacrifice has protected our liberty and our values.  And their legacy continues in the work of those who serve today.”

Such statements suggest that the issue of true accountability, the need to haul the political classes and decision makers before a tribunal of informed opinion, is most needed.  These are the individuals, from Prime Ministers to generals, who persist in needlessly damaging Australian citizens and those who suffer their virtue and values.  Anzac Day remains their great apologia, their alibi, and their exoneration.

Life expectancy on the rise in US, but only for the rich

Kathleen Martin

A recent report published by the National Bureau of Economic Research reveals that life expectancy is on the rise, but only for the wealthy. In 1980, a man in the highest quintile could expect to live five years longer than a man in the lowest quintile. As the inequality gap grows continually wider each day, so does the difference in life expectancy, which is up to a 12.7-year difference in 2014.

The richest quintile in the US today can expect to live seven years longer than their parents’ generation, while the poorest quintile is living six months less on average than the previous generation. From 1980 to 2010, the difference in what the rich versus the poor can expect in government benefits upon retirement has increased from $103,000 to $173,000.

Ronald Lee, professor of demography and economics at University of California Berkeley, co-chaired the study and spoke to the World Socialist Web Site on some of the findings. “If you hold everything else constant, the change amounts to about $150,000 per person over their lifetime. Think about the benefits a person gets from the government after 50. They get Social Security, they get Medicare, Medicaid, and other things—disability, perhaps, and so on,” Lee said. “The longer you live, the more benefits you receive. So when poorer people live quite a lot shorter lives than the richer people, it also means they’re getting less in benefits.”

Sections of the population with less money end up paying more overall into the Social Security system from which they do not ultimately benefit, due to their shorter life span. The report states that “our key finding is that changing the mortality and health regime from that of the 1930 to the 1960 cohort causes the gap between average lifetime benefits received by men in the highest and lowest quintiles to widen by about $130,000. The change arises from the impact of mortality on benefits and not on taxes.”

“The study is about this growing gap between socioeconomic status, and it’s extremely fundamentally important, but the most important question is, why does this occur and what can be done? These are really quite terrible differences,” Lee said. “The systems have become a lot less progressive over the years, based on this inequality. And that’s an important and useful point, but not as important as the main question.”

One of the more striking conclusions from the data shows that the life expectancy disparity between blacks and whites is shrinking. While one would assume it is due to an increase in the life expectancy for blacks, it is actually the inverse. Poor whites have been living shorter lives, reducing the gap between the races living at the same levels of poverty.

“I couldn’t believe it. I actually didn’t believe it at first,” Lee said on the shocking statistics, “but it turns out it’s true. The [life expectancy] gap between blacks and whites had been shrinking for 20 years or so.”

The opioid epidemic, as a result of the deindustrialization of large parts of the Midwest and South, has had a huge impact on the life expectancy of working class whites. Additionally, poor access to health care and increasing costs of medications, coupled with cuts to health care coverage, have resulted in the decreased life expectancy rates. “I don’t think we should reduce Social Security, especially for the people at the bottom. We don’t call for policy changes in the report, but what the report points to is the necessity for policymakers to be aware of and sensitive to this issue of fairness across income levels,” Lee said.

“One of the ‘problems,’ if you want to call it that, of Social Security and Medicaid funding, to some degree, is that people are living longer. But to the extent that that’s the problem, in reality it just is not currently sustainable. And if you look at one of the key articles that was published years ago, the gains in life expectancy have all been accruing at the top half of the income distribution, and almost none at the bottom half.”

The report also states: “Simulations assume that Social Security and Medicare benefits will continue to be paid in the future, even though the trust funds from which these benefits are projected to be exhausted. … Assuming that benefits will be paid as written under current law is the approach used by the Congressional Budget Office in its long-term budget projections and seems more in accordance with Congressional intent than assuming an abrupt cut in benefits in the future when the trust funds run out.”

While Trump claimed during his campaign for president that he would not cut Social Security benefits, Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has told news outlets that he is “working on” persuading Trump to adopt entitlement reforms that would cut funding to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and disability money.

22,600 retired US coal miners face loss of health benefits on May 1

Samuel Davidson

Nearly 23,000 retired coal miners and their spouses will be cut off health insurance on May 1 unless Congress passes a stop gap measure to shore up the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) Health and Retirement Funds.

Many of the retirees have worked decades and have debilitating diseases such as black lung and emphysema, which are contracted from breathing coal dust. Others were hurt in crippling accidents and only receive a pittance in disability benefits. The retirees and disabled miners are too young to receive government-funded Medicare benefits.

Donald Trump won the election in mining states like West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Ohio, in part because of promises made to “bring back coal” and “stand up for the miners.” Since taking office he has rolled back pollution controls and other government regulations to boost corporate profits while remaining silent on the impending disaster facing tens of thousands of miners and their families.

About 16,000 of those facing an imminent cutoff worked at St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, and its spin-off Patriot Coal. These companies and others deliberately used the bankruptcy courts to escape paying into the UMWA funds. Peabody filed for bankruptcy in 2016, while Patriot filed for insolvency protection in 2012 and again in 2015. Other miners affected by the benefit cuts worked for Walter Energy or Alpha, both of which declared bankruptcy.

A mine near Logan, West Virignia

The funds were set to run out of money last winter and miners were sent letters informing them their health coverage would stop in December. At that time, Congress agreed to a four-month extension. Money for the 22,600 miners will run out by the end of this month.

Retired coal miners from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area spoke to the World Socialist Web Site about the hardships retirees face. “I worked 22 years,” Edwin explained, “But I came out when a roof fell and messed up my leg. After that I couldn’t work anymore, so I retired.”

His mine had changed ownership numerous times, he said. “It went from Ellsworth to Bethlehem Mines, to Beth Energy, to 84 Mining. Then Consol came in and they shut it down. These companies don’t want to give up anything. If you take health benefits from retirees and widows out here and in West Virginia, people will have nothing to live on. You take that away where are they going to go?

“It’s wrong to do that to people. They don’t know you once you’re out of the mines. These companies just say you’re a number—and that hurts.”

“They try to kick you off insurance,” continued Russell, who had 10 years at the same mine. “They try to kick you off everything they possibly can. They are grimy, that’s the only way I can put that. Miners put into it [the retirement fund], so why shouldn’t they keep getting it out?”

Speaking of the history of struggle among coal miners, Edwin explained, “My sister was a union rep and she was awesome. She used to go out there and lay down in front of trucks trying to move coal during strikes. She had a family, but she would lay down there and go to jail. She was something. You don’t really have anybody fighting like that now,” Russell added.

“If you don’t stay together, you can’t win anything,” Edwin concluded.

Opposed to any serious struggle, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) has called on miners to prostrate themselves before Congress and appeal to the corporate-controlled politicians to protect benefits, which were won only through the bitterest class battles against the coal companies and the government.

A coal train

UMWA President Cecil Roberts has called on retirees to urge Congress to pass the Coal Miners Protection Act, which would transfer funds from the Abandoned Mine Lands Reclamation Fund to the Multiemployer Health Benefit Plan and the 1974 United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) Pension Plan. Even if the measure were passed it would do nothing to protect pension funds, which could face insolvency by the end of the year. Moreover, the deal could include higher out-of-pocket costs or benefit reductions for current or future retirees.

The Coal Miners Protection Act (House Resolution 179) introduced in January by West Virginia Republican Congressman David McKinley and now in committee, “prohibits the pension plan from making certain changes to benefits during any year in which a transfer is received,” but does not preclude pension cuts in any other year. It would also relieve companies with UMWA contracts of the obligation “to pay unassigned beneficiaries premiums or backstop premiums if transfers under SMCRA (Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977) are less than the amount required to be transferred.”

The bill, which is being pushed by several Democrats with close ties to the mining industry, including West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin III, would bail out the coal bosses and their servants in the UMWA.

Health care and pensions were never granted to miners by the coal operators. In 1946, 400,000 miners struck--as part of the massive post-war strike wave involving 4.6 million workers in some 5,000 walkouts—and defied President Truman’s threat to draft strikers into the military and order them back to work. A deal signed between UMWA leader John L. Lewis and US Secretary of the Interior Julius Krug established a royalty system that compelled the operators to pay a fee on every ton of coal the miners extracted.

From its inception in 1947, however, the new system was riddled with contradictions. Because the arrangement was based on the tonnage of coal produced, not the number of workers, the UMWA cleared the way for mass layoffs in the 1950s through the introduction of new mining technology.

Over the next several decades, the funds were undermined by the coal companies’ demands for waivers, the growth of non-union coal production, the wave of corporate bankruptcies and finally the plummet in coal production. In the name of making US coal producers more competitive against their foreign rivals, the UMWA signed one sweetheart deal after another.

To overcome the militant resistance of the miners, former union president and now AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka and current UMWA President Cecil Roberts, deliberately betrayed strikes against AT Massey, Pittston, Peabody and others in the 1980s and 1990s. By the 2000s, tens of thousands of miners had lost their jobs and conditions had been thrown back decades—with deadly disasters at Sago and Upper Big Branch mines and a spike in the deadliest forms of black lung disease.

1984-85 AT Massey strike in Kentucky

The solvency of the funds was further undermined by the 2008 financial crash and the collapse in the global demand for coal. US coal production peaked in 2011 reaching nearly 1.1 billion tons, largely based on growing international demand for coal and steel. The slowdown in China—where nearly two million coal miners and steelworkers are losing their jobs—and around the world drastically reduced demand. In 2016, total US coal production had fallen to just 728 million tons with exports of just 60 million tons. The drop in the price of natural gas—which power plants now use more than coal—worsened the situation further.

As part of Patriot Coal’s bankruptcy restructuring, the UMWA negotiated a Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association (VEBA) in place of the company's standard payment into the union-controlled funds. While the arrangement provided union bureaucrats with lucrative posts managing the VEBA, Patriot Coal and Peabody later used the bankruptcy courts to renege on their commitments to pay $400 million into the new scheme.

As far as the coal operators, Congressmen and UMWA executives are concerned miners are simply living too long after retirement. They are determined to solve the pension and health care “crisis” by reducing benefits and killing off workers sooner.

If miners and their supporters are to defend their hard-fought benefits they must reach out to the tens of millions of other workers facing similar attacks, including truck drivers, teachers and other public and private sector workers, to build a powerful industrial and political counter-offensive against big business, Trump and both corporate-controlled parties.

If the social rights of workers, including the right to health care and a comfortable retirement, are to take precedence over private profit and the squandering of trillions on war, workers must fight for the nationalization of the mining and energy industry as part of the socialist transformation of the economy.

Labour outlines pro-business “soft Brexit” policy for June 8 vote

Robert Stevens

Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer delivered Labour’s first major policy statement in the snap General Election on June 8 to position it as the party of “soft Brexit,” a negotiation with the EU that seeks to preserve access for UK business and finance to the European Union (EU) Single Market.

Pressured by the sizable anti-EU constituency among Conservative MPs and in the wider party, Tory Prime Minister Theresa May is committed to a “hard Brexit” that includes Britain’s departure from the Single Market.

Starmer had previously outlined Labour’s six tests for assessing May’s negotiations on the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU. These include UK businesses retaining the “exact same benefits” as they “currently have as members of the Single Market and Customs Union.”

The aim of Starmer’s speech was to go as far as possible in declaring Labour’s support for this objective, while still abiding by its pledge not to challenge the “will of the people” as expressed in last year’s referendum vote to leave the EU.

Starmer said Labour, if elected, would repeal the whole of May’s Brexit strategy and “replace it with fresh negotiating priorities that reflect Labour values and our six tests.” He added, “Labour’s White Paper will have a strong emphasis on retaining the benefits of the Single Market and the Customs Union as we know that is vital to protecting jobs and the economy.”

Big business could not be hampered in any Brexit deal, warned Starmer: “That means we will seek continued tariff-free trade between the UK and the EU, no new non-tariff burdens for business, regulatory alignment and continued competitiveness for goods and services.”

Attacking the government’s strategy of beginning trade missions to non-EU countries prior to Brexit, Starmer said, “rather than focusing on hypothetical new trade deals…Labour will focus above all else on securing strong trading arrangements with the EU.”

Labour would also replace the Conservatives’ proposed “great repeal” bill—in which all current EU law is to be repatriated/incorporated into British law, to be modified/removed by the UK parliament at a later date—with an EU rights and protections bill.

Labour’s agenda over Brexit is no less reactionary than that of the Tories. Its central preoccupation is satisfying the concerns expressed by the majority of Britain’s bourgeoisie, which supported Remain and whose interests are bound up with the EU. Some 44 percent of the UK’s exports go to the EU, while the City of London’s financial services are accessed across the continent.

In his speech Tuesday, Starmer also said Labour, if elected, would not make controlling immigration part of its negotiating position. But he added that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet had “agreed that reasonable management of migration and moving away from freedom of movement has to be part of the referendum result.”

“We recognise that immigration rules will have to change as we exit the EU, but we do not believe that immigration should be the overarching priority,” Starmer said.

The Guardian claimed that Corbyn “had previously strongly defended free movement of citizens within the EU.” In reality, he stated in January that “Labour is not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle.”

The gyrations in Labour’s position reflect the requirements of business to be able to access a skilled European workforce, while at the same time the party panders to the anti-immigrant sentiment whipped up during last year’s referendum.

To this end, Starmer said that from “day one” a Labour government would “guarantee that all EU nationals currently living in the UK will see no change in their legal status as a result of Brexit, and we will seek reciprocal measures for UK citizens in the EU.”

Borrowing from the “left populist” rhetoric of defeated French presidential challenger Jean-Luc Melenchon, Shadow International Trade Secretary Barry Gardiner said of Labour’s approach, “The government has a nationalistic way of looking at Brexit rather than a patriotic one. … Patriots believe you can love your own country and cooperate with others.”

Starmer’s pitch opens the door to a rejection of Brexit at the end of the two-year negotiating period, but still doesn’t go far enough for the most determined Remain faction of the bourgeoisie—represented by former party leader Tony Blair, in alliance with the Liberal Democrats.

Indeed, the hardening of Labour’s position reflects in large part the intense lobbying and continued influence of Blair in the party. This is reinforced by the fact that Blair not only speaks for powerful voices within ruling circles in Britain but also in the United States, where the Democrats and the US military backed Remain and have waged largely successful political warfare to reverse Donald Trump’s support for Brexit, for the EU’s break-up and his questioning of the NATO alliance.

May’s own motives in calling a snap election are in part bound up with this. She hopes to strengthen her position in negotiations with the EU so that London is still able to play a role in defending US/UK shared interests on the continent, especially as regards breaking down trade restrictions and preserving NATO’s monopoly against German-led plans for an independent European military capability.

Blair was provided with the opportunity to publish a major op-ed by the pro-EU Guardian, on the same day as Starmer’s announcement. In it he stressed his credentials as “someone who led the party for 13 years and through three elections.”

Outlining the strategy Labour must adopt, he rejected any attempt to stick to the “conventional election response of an opposition” such as urging, “vote Labour to keep the Tories out and return a Labour government.”

There could be no avoidance of opposing Brexit, which was “the dominant election issue”. After claiming that he has “not urged tactical voting” against Labour, which could make him subject to disciplinary action, Blair went on to argue for precisely that.

“It is up to each voter to make up their mind on how they will vote. I only want people to make an informed choice,” he declared, before stressing, “This is not the time to fight a conventional partisan election,” but rather “rallying people to a more reasonable and open position on Brexit across the party divide.”

In reality, Blair’s calculations go beyond tactical voting and point to a broader project of securing a political realignment between the Labour right, the Liberal Democrats and some pro-Remain Tories. This would likely gather greater momentum after the general election, given that the Liberal Democrats are now centred on winning Tory voters and do not want an association with Labour, and the Tories are scenting blood as a result of Labour’s crisis.

Indeed, Tory MPs Dominic Grieve, Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan yesterday all quit the Open Britain pro-EU membership pressure group, in protest against its targeting of leading pro-Brexit, mainly Conservative MPs, in 20 seats. Had they not done so, May would have had no option but to expel them—something Corbyn will not countenance when it comes to Blair and his supporters when they call for a vote against Labour.

What lies behind the German elite’s celebration of Macron?

Johannes Stern 

Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the first round of France’s presidential election has unleashed a veritable wave of celebration among the German ruling class.

Shortly after the first projections on Sunday evening, which showed Macron slightly ahead of the second-placed candidate, the neo-fascist Marine Le Pen of the National Front, the German government’s spokesman wrote on Twitter, “Good that Emmanuel Macron was successful with his course of a stronger EU+social market economy. All the best for the coming two weeks.”

The chairman of Germany’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, Norbert Rötgen (Christian Democrats), enthused on the Phoenix television channel, “I think it cannot get better for Germany and Europe. I believe that we can now be hopeful that Macron will be president.”

Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor, the Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel, declared during his three-day visit to the Middle East, “Of course I am happy that Emmanuel Macron led in the election. He had the strongest result of all candidates and will now go into the second round and I am sure he will be the new French president.” He would “do everything personally” to “continue to support” Macron. He would be “an excellent president,” but was “also an incredibly friendly person and a good friend.”

The so-called opposition parties also popped the champagne corks. Green Party chairman Cem Özdemir praised Macron on Twitter by commenting, “Merci, la France! Thank you #France! Best of luck to Emmanuel Macron! Onwards to the second round!” The chairman of the free market Free Democrats (FDP), Christian Lindner, wrote, “A signal for Europe, a signal of renewal. Emmanuel Macron also gives Germany courage.”

And the Left Party, which supported the “left” nationalist Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round, is now urging a Macron victory, even though they are aware that this would mean a further deterioration of living standards for the working class. The Left Party co-chair Bernd Riexinger wrote on Twitter, “Bitter: #Macron deserves support because he is up against #lePen, but his demands continue the previous misery unaltered.”

The media and politicians are publicly justifying their support for Macron by citing their alleged opposition to nationalism and racism. As Gabriel explained, he was happy “about the result” because Macron would certainly “overcome right-wing extremism and right-wing populism, and the anti-Europeans in the second round.”

Who does the German Foreign Minister think he is kidding? In reality, the outgoing Socialist Party government under François Hollande, to which Macron belonged until 2016, adopted the FN’s policies step by step. After the Paris terrorist attacks of November 2015, Hollande invited le Pen to the Elysée Palace and imposed a state of emergency under which basic democratic rights were suspended. The PS subsequently pursued the goal of establishing in the French constitution a provision for revoking citizenship, a legal measure which provided the basis for the persecution of the leaders of the Resistance under the Vichy regime and the transportation of Jews to death camps.

The establishment parties in Germany are playing a similar role in rehabilitating right-wing extremist politics. They are equally responsible for the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in two senses. Firstly, they have created the miserable social conditions which drive many workers to desperation and enable right-wing demagogues to exploit them. Secondly, under conditions of deepening social and political crisis in Europe, they ever more openly encourage xenophobia and nationalism so as to divide the working class and stabilise their own rule.

Why is Macron being applauded in Berlin as a progressive saviour and crowned the victor before the second round on 7 May has even taken place?

For one thing, Macron, a former Rothschild banker and economic minister under outgoing French President Hollande, is the most explicit advocate of the interests of European finance capital and demands an intensification of the austerity policies in France called for by Berlin and Brussels throughout Europe.

Significantly, the German Dax stock exchange reached a record high on Monday of 12.398. Stefan Kreuzkamp, chief investment strategist for Deutsche Asset Management, enthused, “Following this result I would say, Vive la France! Europe lives on. And European stocks.”

The second reason is the declared goal of Germany’s ruling elite of dominating the EU from Berlin in order to play the role of a global power. “We will only have influence if we jointly, Germany and France in particular, make Europe a genuine actor in the world,” stated German President and former Social Democrat Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier just days before the first round of the election, in an interview with French newspaper Sud Ouest .

As an advocate for the EU and European militarism, Macron is an ally in these megalomaniac plans. Under conditions of “the United States’ new orientation, a united Europe becomes even more important,” Steinmeier noted, referring to the aggressive “America first” policies of Donald Trump. If the unification of Europe fails, “as nationalist and populist parties want in France, we will not be players but the pawns of other powers,” he warned.

But above all, the ruling class fears a revolutionary movement of the working class. In its last edition, the German weekly Der Spiegel focused on the question of whether “the country’s [France] institutions have been manoeuvred into a pre-revolutionary situation due to the incapability of officeholders. Whether what is today still called a state is already reminiscent of the world of kings, of the rotten Ancien Regime prior to the French Revolution.”

The bourgeoisie’s position must indeed be desperate—it is relying on Macron, although he is one of the “incapable officeholders” who has manoeuvred France into a “pre-revolutionary situation!”

Contrary to what the Left Party would like to make people believe, there is no lesser evil for the French working class in the second round of the election. French workers confront two candidates both of whom stand for war and major social attacks. While Macron, at least for now, supports the transformation of the EU into a German-dominated military union which will prepare for trade war and war with the US and Russia, le Pen stands for the division of Europe into hostile nation-states, which would also ultimately mean war.

UK adult social care system on verge of collapse

Dennis Moore

Massive numbers of British workers who provide care to adults in nursing homes, or in their own homes, are quitting their jobs in the face of shortages and high workloads that make it increasingly impossible to work. The impact is being felt by the most frail and vulnerable in society.

According to data gathered by the charity Skills for Care, in 2015-16, an estimated 338,520 care workers left their jobs, equivalent to 928 people a day, and of those 60 percent stopped working in social care altogether. A total of over 1.3 million were employed in the adult care sector in England.

The average front line, full-time care worker earns just £7.69p an hour, or £14,800 a year. Last year the average median salary was around £27, 600 for a full-time worker in the UK.

One in four social care workers was employed on a zero hours contract, and last year it is estimated that one in 20 job vacancies remained empty, a shortage of 84,320 care workers.

These figures point to the fact that social care providers are struggling to retain staff, with the industry’s staff turnover reaching 27 percent, twice the average for other professions in the UK.

The data was released at the same time as a letter written to Prime Minister Theresa May, from the chairman of the UK Homecare Association, which warned that the adult social care system has begun to collapse.

The fact that workers in the sector are often low paid, in what is a very demanding and difficult job, leads to difficulties retaining staff.

The number of people aged 85 and above in England has increased by almost a third in the last decade, and will more than double over the next two decades. This substantial section of the population will require increased health services and care support as they get older.

Disability Free Life Expectancy (DFLE) at age 65 has been falling from its peak in 2010-12. This is a measurement of the number of people who have reached the age of 65 without having already started to suffer from a condition that leaves them in poor health beyond the age of 65.

DFLE had increased from 2005-07 to 2009-11, with men gaining 0.4 years and women 0.5 years of good health. However, since that time women have lost 60 percent, and men a staggering 75 percent, of the gains made in an earlier part of the decade.

This is leading to more people in later life living with multiple long-term health conditions, with resultant social care needs.

Class background plays an enormous role in DFLE. A woman aged 65 has an expected 3.3 years of healthy living in the poorest areas, compared to 16.7 in the most affluent areas, representing a near fivefold difference.

In the five years preceding 2015-16, there were spending cuts of £160 million in older people’s social care. It is estimated that by 2020-21, total spending would need to increase by a minimum of £1.65 billion (to £9 billion) to be able to meet demographic and unit cost pressures alone.

Analysis by the Age UK charity shows that there are 1,183,900 older people over 65 who do not receive the help they need to carry out essential daily living activities, an increase of 17.9 percent over last year, and a 48 percent increase since 2010.

The charity estimates that an additional £4.8 billion a year would be required to ensure that every older person, who currently has one or more unmet needs, has access to social care--rising to £5.75 billion by 2020-21.

Local government spending on social care, meanwhile, will fall by 8.3 percent in real terms between 2015-16 and 2019-20. Spending remained relatively constant at around £8 billion a year, but has now rapidly declined, falling to just £6.3 billion in real terms in 2015-16.

Huge cuts have been made to public spending over the last decade to pay for the £1 trillion bailout of the banks that followed the 2008 global financial crash.

Total local authority spending on social care for older people has dropped by £1.57 billion in just six years. This is coupled with wider cuts to local authority budgets, with the National Audit Office estimating that local authority funding was reduced in real terms between 2010-11 and 2015-16.

The Care Quality Commission, which oversees standards of care, reports that 81 percent of councils have reduced spending on adult social care in the same period.

This has led to local authorities trying to acquire the cheapest contracts from care providers. This is part of the so called competitive tendering process, and has been a major contributory factor to the social care debacle.

An investigation by the BBC’s Panorama found that 95 private care firms have cancelled contracts with UK councils, as they are unable to provide even the most basic social care service at the price demanded by the councils. A devastating knock on effect of this is the closure of many home care companies and attendant job losses, with 69 closing just in the three months to January.

The immense pressures that care workers face in their day-to-day work, in a demanding and vastly under resourced profession, is a major factor in the increase in the rate of suicide among care workers in the last three years.

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that the suicide rate for care workers is now twice the national average. More women care workers are taking their lives than in any other UK profession.

The government claims it will invest £2 billion over the next three years in adult social care and take on more apprentices in the sector.

This in no way addresses any of the causes of the crisis.

The exodus of workers from the profession comes as the Centre for Workforce Intelligence estimates that at least 2 million more carers will be required by 2025 for home care and care homes, just in England alone. Nothing is being done to increase low rates of pay and ease demanding workloads. There is no remedy for the fact that many employed in adult social care are on exploitative zero hours contracts—leaving them in a constant state of insecurity, not knowing if they will have work from one day to the next.

For the capitalist class the care of the elderly and disabled has become an unaffordable burden as the economic crisis deepens.

In a society marked by increasing inequality, the priority is not to look after those who have reached the end of their working lives, the disabled in need of care or the working conditions and pay of those who do their best, with few resources, to try and hold together a collapsing system of adult care.

Rail companies Bombardier and Siemens plan merger

Gustav Kemper 

Since the beginning of 2017, the two companies Bombardier and Siemens have been engaged in secret merger negotiations behind the backs of their employees. According to reports by the financial news agency Bloomberg, the two firms want to merge their train-building and signal technology operations into a joint venture to compete with Asia, above all China, in the important export markets. The consolidated corporation could achieve estimated annual revenues of €13 billion.

Thousands of jobs would hang in the balance if there were a merger, since the range of products manufactured by the two corporations overlap in many areas. Bombardier produces various regional and high speed train models in its plants in Görlitz, Bautzen and Henningsdorf, and Siemens Mobility produces similar models in the plants in Krefeld and Munich.

Bombardier is already engaged in negotiations with IG Metal and the works councils to cut 2,500 jobs at its German plants. The largest layoffs would take place at the Görlitz and Henningsdorf locations.

In Austria as well, where Bombardier employs 550 workers in Vienna in competence centres for trams, many jobs are in danger. Siemens also runs a plant in the same city, which produces trams and subway cars with a workforce of 1,200. If the Vienna plants were merged, an unknown number of the jobs at Bombardier and Siemens would be endangered.

While thousands of jobs at both corporations as well as supply industries are in danger, shareholders of both companies are rejoicing over the prospects if the merger succeeds. The Wirtschaftswoche quoted analysts of the French financial service provider Kepler Cheuvreux, according to which “Siemens shareholders alone could profit from the merger in five years by €1.5 to €2 billion.”

The merger plans are a reaction to the growing competitive struggle worldwide, and are part of preparations for global trade war. Siemens and Bombardier have asked the German government to support them against European Union cartel laws that currently stand in the way of the merger.

The unions are integrated into the merger talks at the highest level, but are maintaining a policy of absolute silence with their own members. The works councils and IG Metall union representatives have already been in talks with the management of Bombardier for weeks over the so-called “necessary” restructuring, and increase in the efficiency and profitability of the corporation.

Henningsdorf works council head, Michael Wobst, openly admitted that the works council has no objection to cuts “even if it is painful here and there.” Behind the scenes, a tooth and nail struggle over advantages for individual locations is taking place. A Bombardier works council in Görlitz confirmed this to the WSWS: “There is already a small internal competition taking place.”

Likewise, the IG Metall head in Krefeld at Siemens, Ralf Claessen told the Westdeutsche Zeitung: “I say this quite openly: the Krefeld location is so well equipped with regard to technique, organization and manpower that it could even be strengthened by such a fusion.”

This local patriotism of the unions is totally reactionary and only serves to play the workers against one another at a time when the growing cooperation and the merger of the corporation urgently requires an international collaboration of employees in all locations.

Bombardier and Siemens are preparing themselves for an increasingly competitive struggle and trade war. For decades, the leading producers of rail cars have been engaged in outsourcing production to countries where railway traffic is sharply on the rise, above all in India and China. In these countries, they can profit from the prevailing low wages.

The statements made by Peter Spuhler, the CEO of the family-owned small Swiss producer Stadler Rail AG (with a 2014 revenue of 1.87 billion Swiss francs), provide an indication of the situation on the world market. In March, he spoke with the Swiss Business Club Mittelland about the demand for the localization of the production of trains in the country of each purchaser. “That always has to be weighed. If we don’t want it, someone else wins, and if we do it, we cannibalize our existing plants in Europe.”

He said that Chinese producers have already won contracts in Asia with price differences of 30 percent. Margins were too small for developing new products and technologies, Spuhler complained. In January 2016, Stadler Rail ordered an increase in weekly working time for Swiss employees from 39.5 to 42.5 hours without overtime pay. In order to secure contracts abroad, Stadler had already bought up production and service locations in Berlin, Budapest, Siedlce (in Poland), Prague, Kouba (in Algeria) and Minsk.

Bloomberg reported several days ago that PricewaterhouseCoopers projects that investments in subway projects in Asia will reach a volume of $230 billion in the next 15 years. Bombardier and the French corporation Alstom already opened plants in 2008, which are supposed to serve the Asian markets from now on. They want to “exploit India’s large pool of engineers and cheap skilled labour,” according to one report.

India has already become an important country for export to Africa, South America and Europe for auto producers such as Hyundai, Ford Renault SA and Suzuki Motor Corp. In the past year, 3.5 million automobiles were exported from India. The case of the Maruti Suzuki workers, sentenced to life in prison because they fought for their rights, demonstrates the conditions under which workers are exploited there.

On the Chinese market as well, the leading European corporations, Siemens and Alstrom, are vying with Bombardier, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Hyundai Retem for contracts with the Chinese state railway.

When the Chinese market opened in the mid-1980s, joint venture corporations began collaborating with Chinese producers:

* Alstom is engaged in production in single and joint venture operations in the states of Shanghai, Qingdao and Xi'an.

* Siemens collaborates with partners in Tianjin and Beijing.

* Bombardier runs its own plants in Shanghai, Beijing, Qingdau and Suzhou as well as carrying out joint ventures in Qingdao, Changchung, Changzhou, Shanghai and Nanjing. It signed a cooperation agreement in September 2016 with the Chinese producer CRRC.

* Kawasaki cooperates with CSR Sifang Locomotive and Rolling Stock Co., Ltd. in Qingdao.

If the trains manufactured in China were then used in Chinese railways, the obligatory technology transfer of common operations with the Chinese producers would lead to a rapid technological development of their own products.

The China Railway Rolling Stock Group (CRRC), which is the product of a mid-2015 merger of northern and southern Chinese producers, has emerged as a serious competitor on the world market. In 2014, the CRRC, which has 180,000 individual workforces, branches or production facilities in over a hundred countries, had a revenue of $34.5 billion, more than double the revenue of Bombardier and Siemens put together in this branch.

Thousands of workers are closely bound up together in the daily worldwide process of production of the joint venture corporations, or in projects that require the cooperation of competing corporations. For example, the new intercity bus ICE 4 for the Deutsche Bahn involves collaboration in development and production between Siemens (two thirds of the order volume) and Bombardier (a third of the volume). The Bombardier plant in Görlitz produces bodies for the ICE 4 and delivers them to the Siemens plant in Krefeld, where each train is manufactured by a workforce of 2,500 workers.

US defense secretary makes crisis trip to Afghanistan

Bill Van Auken

US Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis arrived in Kabul Monday in what amounted to a crisis intervention under conditions of mounting disintegration within Afghanistan’s puppet government and military.

Mattis’s arrival came just two days after an attack by the Taliban on one of the Afghan National Army’s largest bases, in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, that inflicted what Afghan officials are admitting is a death toll that could climb to 200 soldiers.

Even as the US defense secretary was arriving, his Afghan counterpart, Abdullah Habibi, as well as Army Chief of Staff Qadam Sha Shahim, were resigning their posts over the disastrous attack, which was carried out by gunmen wearing Afghan army uniforms, some of them apparently Taliban supporters who had joined the military.

Habibi was trained in the Soviet Union and fought on behalf of the Moscow-backed government against the CIA-funded mujahideen Islamist forces, while Shahim’s background was as a commander in Jamiat-e-Islami, one of the more powerful mujahideen groups.

Three other top commanders along with at least a dozen other officers were also reportedly sacked by the government of President Ashaf Ghani over what was the most punishing attack suffered by the US puppet forces since the US invasion of October 2001 and the toppling of the Taliban government.

At a press conference in Kabul, Mattis denounced the attack and described the Taliban as a “barbaric enemy” that had to be defeated. This, from the head of a military that has carried out countless massacres in Afghanistan, its occupation having left hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, while turning millions into refugees.

The “barbaric” character of the US military operation was spelled out barely a week and a half before Mattis’s arrival in Kabul with the dropping on Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar Province of the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), the most destructive weapon used anywhere since the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Mattis’s unannounced trip to Afghanistan comes less than a week and a half after President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Gen. H.R. McMaster, made his own visit to Kabul. The stepped-up attention to Washington’s longest-ever war appears to be bound up with plans for another escalation of the US troop deployment there.

Currently close to 9,000 US soldiers are deployed in Afghanistan, including both those described as trainers and advisers of the Afghan National Army and Special Operations units that are involved in search and destroy missions both unilaterally and alongside Afghan puppet forces.

US commanders have reportedly asked for an additional 3,000 to 5,000 US troops to be sent into the fighting to reverse what they have described as a “stalemate”—in reality a steady loss of territory by the US-backed regime to insurgent forces.

Last Friday’s attack came amid a deepening crisis of the Afghan security forces, which are reportedly suffering a 33 percent annual attrition rate due to casualties, desertions and declining re-enlistments.

A report released at the beginning of this year by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction made clear that, despite the Pentagon pouring some $70 billion into arming and training the Afghan National Army, the force is steadily losing ground to insurgent groups, while suffering record casualties. The report found that casualty rates soared by 35 percent last year, with the Afghan army suffering 6,700 deaths, three times the number inflicted on US forces during nearly 16 years of the American occupation.

“The numbers of the Afghan security forces are decreasing, while both casualties and the number of districts under insurgent control or influence are increasing,” the report stated.

It also pointed to wholesale corruption in which “ghost soldiers” are kept on the rosters so that senior officers can pocket their pay, leaving many units grossly undermanned. It added that “soldiers at outposts don’t always get ammunition, food, and water they need” because higher-ups divert and sell supplies.

Among the most significant elements in Mattis’s press conference in Kabul Monday was the intervention by the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, who was asked about allegations made by US military officials, speaking not for attribution, that Russia was supplying the Taliban with support, including arms. Nicholson responded that he was “not refuting” such reports, an oblique statement that was headlined by the US corporate media as a direct charge of Russian intervention.

Mattis sounded a similar note, declaring: “We’re going to have to confront Russia where what they’re doing is contrary to international law or denying the sovereignty of other countries. For example, any weapons being funneled here from a foreign country would be a violation of international law unless they’re coming through the government of Afghanistan for the Afghan forces, and so that would have to be dealt with as a violation of international law.”

Again, for the Pentagon chief to indict Russia for “denying the sovereignty of other countries” or having “funneled” weapons to non-government forces is indeed rich, given the US history in Afghanistan itself during the CIA-orchestrated war of the 1980s, as well as the subsequent invasion of Iraq and the US regime change operations in Libya and Syria.

Russia has denied providing any military aid to the Taliban, and the real source of Washington’s ire appears to be Moscow’s attempt to mediate a peace settlement between the insurgent forces and the Kabul government. On April 14, the day after the US military dropped the massive bomb on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Russia hosted a conference to that end in Moscow that was attended by all the countries of the region, including Pakistan, India and China, but boycotted by the US. There is every reason to believe that the use of the MOAB was directed at Russia as much as it was at ISIS.

Launched nearly 16 years ago in the name of fighting terrorism and avenging the attacks of September 11, 2001, the war in Afghanistan had as its strategic aim to further US hegemony over the region of Central Asia, which boasts the second largest proven reserves of oil and gas in the world, in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Just as the war, waged at an estimated cost of $800 billion, has failed to secure the US-backed puppet regime in Kabul, it has also done nothing to further US imperialism’s broader aims. Russia continues to dominate energy exploitation in the region, while China is steadily increasing its own role, with the building of pipelines directing these vital resources to the east, rather than the west.

Under these conditions, an escalation of the US intervention in Afghanistan will be carried out as part of a broader buildup toward military confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia and China, from eastern Europe, to Syria, the South China Sea, the Korean peninsula and beyond.

French ruling elite rallies around Macron

Anthony Torres & Alex Lantier 

After the historic elimination of both of France's major parties, the Socialist Party (PS) and The Republicans (LR), in the first round of the presidential election, the bulk of the French ruling elite is trying to rally behind ex-banker Emmanuel Macron to stop the neo-fascist National Front (FN).

The PS and LR national committees both met yesterday to vote resolutions supporting Macron. The PS national committee voted it unanimously. In a decision underlining its own bankruptcy, this body postponed drawing any balance sheet of its historic defeat, in which the PS received 6.12 percent—the lowest score for a French social-democratic party since Gaston Defferre's 5.01 percent in 1969, shortly before the foundation of the current PS.

“The time for explanations has not come. Today, it is time for action,” said PS First Secretary Jean-Christophe Cambadélis. “On May 7, I will vote, we will vote for Emmanuel Macron. I will do it without hesitation, without ambiguity, without conditions, as we did for Jacques Chirac faced with Jean-Marie Le Pen” in 2002.

The LR committee supported a statement without a vote, after tense discussions between those who wanted to call for a Macron vote and those who wanted to call to defeat Le Pen. The second line won out, and LR formally declared: “Abstention cannot be a choice faced with the FN. We call for a vote against Marine Le Pen so she loses in the second round of the presidential elections, and we will launch immediately thereafter our legislative campaign to present our alternate program, the only one capable of improving the situation in France.”

Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Unsubmissive France (UF) and allied petty-bourgeois parties are entertaining a similar ambiguity, implying that they would understand if their voters backed Macron on the second round without explicitly endorsing him. UF leaders Clémentine Autain and Pierre Laurent of the Stalinist French Communist party (PCF) both called to “beat” Le Pen.

By supporting Macron ostensibly to block a neo-fascist dictatorship, or asking their voters to do it without them, the traditional parties of the French bourgeoisie and the post-1968 petty bourgeois student movement are committing a monstrous political fraud.

Macron is not a democratic alternative to Le Pen. He wants to extend France's state of emergency that suspends basic democratic rights, impose drastic austerity, and re-establish the draft, claiming that war is now “a possible outcome of politics.” To impose such a program, he would intensify attacks on democratic rights and repression of mass protests carried out under current PS President François Hollande. These policies are not ultimately compatible with bourgeois democracy.

There is no question that the FN descends directly from the tradition of French fascism and is a mortal threat to the working class. However, it would also be a fatal error for workers to align themselves with the perspective of a Macron presidency, based on the ruling elite's proclamations that it is a “lesser evil” compared to Le Pen.

If the bulk of the ruling elite backs Macron, this does not signify that they intend to “block” a neo-fascist dictatorship, as they claim. Rather, they would prefer a dictatorship imposed by Macron, an ally of the European Union (EU) and the NATO military alliance, to one imposed by Le Pen, who hopes to by an ally of Trump and the Kremlin against Berlin.

The reluctance of Mélenchon or Nathalie Arthaud, the candidate of Lutte Ouvrière (LO-Workers Struggle), to immediately endorse Macron reflects their consciousness and fear of the opposition he will provoke among the workers. Their sympathies lie with the PS-backed candidate—they endorsed Hollande in 2012 and Chirac in 2002—but they fear exposing their left flank if they now endorse a banker and ex-PS minister after Hollande's disastrous presidency. They are thus maneuvering to try to preserve what remains of their “radical” reputation, the better to mislead and strangle workers' struggles against Macron and the PS.

The fact that the French electorate faces a choice between Macron and Le Pen, like the election of Trump as US president, testifies to a deep crisis of democracy, with revolutionary implications. The essential question posed by the disintegration of the PS is the building of a party that represents the working class. However, this requires a ruthless break with Mélenchon, Arthaud and similar forces and the struggle for genuine Trotskyism, the perspective advocated by the Socialist Equality Party in France.

Since the 2002 election crisis, the hostility of the different PS satellites to building a working class party is unmistakable. In 2002, Lutte Ouvrière, the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR, today the New Anti-capitalist Party) and the Workers Party (today the Democratic Independent Workers Party) received 3 million votes.

They rejected, however, the call of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) for an active boycott of the Le Pen-Chirac second round after the elimination of PS candidate Lionel Jospin. This would have laid the basis for a political movement of the working class against the wars and social attacks Chirac was preparing. They aligned themselves with the PS' campaign for a Chirac vote, demonstrating their hostility to millions protesting the Chirac-Le Pen second round in France, and internationally the millions protesting the looming war in Iraq.

Since then, the PS and the pseudo-left parties have backed attacks on Muslims, including laws against the veil and burqa, imperialist wars in the Middle East and Africa, and austerity in France under Hollande and in Greece under Syriza (the “Coalition of the Radical Left”). Hollande invited Le Pen to the Elysée and thus helped “de-demonize” the FN.

A broad radicalization of workers has taken place since 2002 in France. Two-thirds of the population says it feels that the class struggle is a daily reality of life. However, due to the political void on the left reflected by the rallying of LO and the LCR to Chirac's camp, the FN has been able to present itself as the main oppositional tendency with populist attacks on the PS and demagogic, law-and-order pledges to defend the French people.

Today, the ongoing political collapse of the PS and its allies is the product of the decades of betrayals and reactionary policies they have carried out against the workers.

Running Benoît Hamon, the PS was wiped out in virtually every locality across France. Hamon's 6.12 percent after Hollande's presidency is comparable to the collapse of Pasok in Greece after Prime Minister Giorgios Papandreou's drastic austerity policies. While they hope to unite in the short term behind Macron, PS leaders openly speak of a disintegration of their party. One said he feared the period after the legislative elections: “On June 18, there will be one PS legislative group in the National Assembly. But six months later, I don't know.”

Macron did best in western France, outside the main industrial centers, and in central urban areas where the upper-middle class is concentrated. He got over 30 percent in only three of France's 100 departments, Ille-et-Vilaine in Brittany, plus the wealthiest parts of the Paris area, downtown Paris and the Hauts-de-Seine.

Mélenchon did best in southern France. In traditional PS strongholds like Ariège and Seine Saint Denis, the working class northern suburbs of Paris, he received over 26 percent of the vote. He came first with 30 percent among youth aged 18 to 24 and the unemployed. Many youth decided to vote for Mélenchon after US strikes on Syria, to oppose the rising danger of war.

Among manual workers, however, Marine Le Pen came first with 37 percent to Mélenchon's 24 percent. The FN candidate took 43 percent of the vote among households earning less than €2,000 monthly, far ahead of Mélenchon (22 percent). Her best scores were in rural areas and in the old industrial areas of eastern and particularly northeastern France—former PS and Communist Party bastions, where these two parties oversaw massive de-industrialization in order to crush militant sections of the working class, particularly miners, steelworkers and auto workers.

University of Winnipeg President’s Scholarship for International Students 2017/2018: Canada

Application Deadlines:

• 2nd June, 2017 and
• 2nd October, 2017.

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Canada

About the Award: The University of Winnipeg President’s Scholarship for World Leaders will be given to international students entering any of the University’s divisions for the first time  through the following ways –

1. Undergraduate,
2. Graduate,
3. Collegiate ,
4. PACE or
5. ELP

Type: Undergraduate, Postgraduate

Eligibility: Candidates must meet the following criteria:

• Have a minimum 80% admission average or equivalent
• Be an international student
• Entering first year of any program
• Demonstrate exceptional leadership qualities
• Apply for admission by the scholarship deadline date

Number of Awardees: 

• English Language Program: 3
• Professional, Applied Continuing Education: 3
• Undergraduate: 3
• Collegiate: 3
• Graduate: 3

Value of Scholarship:

• English Language Program: $3,500
• Professional, Applied Continuing Education: $3,500
• Undergraduate: $5,000
• Collegiate: $3,500
• Graduate: $5,000

How to Apply: Please submit your completed form and documents to:

Awards and Financial Aid
The University of Winnipeg
515 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9
CANADA

Only complete applications received on time will be considered. Documents sent with your application will not be returned. Scanned applications are accepted in PDF or JPG format.

Scanned applications and associated documents should be sent to awards@uwinnipeg.ca.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: University of Winnipeg