German minister of defence to head European Commission

Peter Schwarz 

After weeks of wrangling, European leaders agreed on Tuesday to nominate a new European Union leadership.

The new head of the EU Commission will be the current German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen. The European Central Bank (ECB) will be headed by the current director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde of France. The President of the European Council will be Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel and the new EU High Representative, the bloc’s chief diplomat, will be Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell.

The President of the Commission still needs to be ratified by the European Parliament, where there is considerable resistance to von der Leyen. As the 751 European parliamentarians from 28 member states vote by secret ballot, the proposal could still fail in the parliament.

Yesterday, however, the European Parliament elected Italian David Sassoli as its new president and thus filled the fifth top job of the EU with a Social Democrat, as proposed by the heads of government. Von der Leyen and Lagarde come from the conservative camp, Michel is a Liberal and Borrell is a Social Democrat.

The proposal of the heads of state and government is a clear political signal. It stands for the expansion of the EU into a military superpower under German-French domination.

The dispute over the new leadership of the EU has shown how deep the contradictions, rifts and conflicts currently are in the EU. They run between North and South, East and West, between different economic and foreign policy interests and parties. They are so sharp that compromise and unanimous solutions seem increasingly impossible.

On June 20-21, the regular EU summit in Romania failed to agree on a successor to Jean-Claude Juncker as head of the European Commission. Chancellor Angela Merkel had insisted on the German Manfred Weber, who was the lead candidate of the conservative European People's Party (EPP) for the European elections, while French President Emmanuel Macron strictly rejected Weber.

When it became apparent that Weber could not command a majority among either the heads of state and government or the European Parliament, Council President Donald Tusk drafted a new proposal, in consultation with Merkel and Macron on the side-lines of the G20 summit in Osaka. The new lead candidate for President of the Commission was to be the Dutch Social Democrat, Frans Timmermans, and the EPP should be given the posts of President of the Parliament and the EU High Representative. The Council presidency would go to a liberal.

But this proposal failed at a special EU summit on June 30 due to the fierce resistance of the East Europeans. They will not forgive Timmermans, who as EU Commissioner made a legal ruling against Poland and Hungary. Despite 19 hours of negotiations, which lasted until the morning hours of Monday, no solution seemed in sight. The summit was postponed to Tuesday.

The surprise suggestion that Ursula von der Leyen should be appointed Commission President was then described by many commentators as a “miracle.” All the heads of government could unite on von der Leyen because, more than anyone else, she stands for the arming of the European Union to become a military power that can oppose both the USA and China.

The 60-year-old doctor and mother of seven is one of the most ambitious and ruthless politicians in Germany. Her father, Ernst Albrecht, was state premier of Lower Saxony for 14 years. Von der Leyen herself has been a member of the Merkel government since 2005, first as family minister, then as labour minister and since December 2013 as minister of defence.

Since she took over the defence portfolio, German military spending has risen from 30 to 45 million euros. She enjoys good links with NATO and was a leading figure in pushing the alliance’s military march to the border with Russia. That is why she also enjoys the support of the Eastern European governments. At the same time, she is pushing forward the project of a European army, which is also supported by Macron, and is involved in the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) mission in the Central African Republic and Mali, where Germany works closely with French troops.

According to several reports, von der Leyen was proposed for the Commission chairmanship by Macron and not Merkel. For the French president, it was particularly important to secure the ECB leadership for France. The German candidate to head the ECB, Jens Weidmann, president of the Deutsche Bundesbank, is a strict supporter of a restrictive monetary policy. Macron wanted to prevent this at all costs.

As head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde is also responsible for austerity programs. As a member of the so-called troika, the IMF has worked on all the austerity dictates that have ruined the Greek people. Lagarde had also proposed a debt reduction for the heavily indebted country, which was strictly rejected in Berlin.

Prior to joining the IMF in 2011, Lagarde spent four years as French Finance Minister in the conservative government of François Fillon. She was later condemned for authorizing 403 million euros in compensation to the dubious businessman Bernard Tapie.

The proposal of the heads of state and government would considerably strengthen the predominance of Germany and France in the EU. If von der Leyen is confirmed by the European Parliament, she would be the first German Commission chair since Walter Hallstein 52 years ago.

Charles Michel, who is to become Council President, is also considered a confidant of Emmanuel Macron. Like Macron's party La République en Marche, he too belongs to the liberal grouping in the European parliament. As Belgian Prime Minister, Michel had been in coalition with the nationalist New Flemish Alliance. He is therefore credited with working more closely with far-right parties such as the Italian Lega, which significantly increased their weight in the European elections.

The future EU High Representative Josep Borrell looks back on a long career in the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE). From 2004 to 2007, he was President of the European Parliament. A year ago, the newly installed Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had appointed him Spanish Foreign Minister. Borrell is a strict opponent of Catalonia's independence, the region of his birth.

The slate proposed by the European heads of state and government means a clear shift to the right, towards militarism and stronger German-French supremacy in Europe. It will not resolve the conflicts within the EU but will further aggravate them. This applies not only to the Eastern European member states, which are no longer represented at all in the EU’s leading offices, but also to the relationship between the Western European powers.

For example, the conservative media in Germany expressed outraged at the nomination of Lagarde. Die Welt commented, “With the nomination of Lagarde, EU governments have missed their last chance of returning to the Stability Union.” Like today's ECB chief Mario Draghi, she stands “for a course that benefits debtor rather than creditor nations.”

Bombing of detention center in Libya kills at least 44 refugees

Bill Van Auken

Scores of African refugees were killed or wounded when the detention center in which they were being held in a western suburb of the Libyan capital of Tripoli took a direct hit in a bombing early Wednesday.

Libyan officials reported that 44 of the refugees had been killed outright and another 130 wounded, but the death toll was expected to rise as bodies were still being pulled from the rubble and many of those wounded suffered grievous injuries. Survivors of the bombing were seen late Wednesday still huddled near the bombed-out detention center, terrified of another attack and having no means of seeking safety.

Photographs published by the Libyan media showed a horrific scene, with the floor of the detention center, located in a hanger-style building, littered with bodies, severed limbs, clothes, bags and mattresses, and the walls covered in blood.

Bodies laid out after bombing of migrant dentention center east of Tripoli. Credit UNHCR

The attack was the bloodiest single incident in a renewed civil war that has gripped the country for the past three months, killing at least 700 people and displacing an estimated 90,000.

The Tripoli-based government blamed the attack on warplanes supporting the Libyan military strongman “Field Marshal” Khalifa Haftar, whose forces have laid siege to Tripoli since April in a bid to topple the UN-backed President Fayez Serraj, whose weak puppet regime is dependent upon a collection of Islamist militias for support.

Haftar’s forces, with their strongholds in eastern and southern Libya, claim to act in the name of a rival government located in Tobruk based upon a House of Representatives elected in 2014. They insisted that the damage was done by a mortar attack by militias supporting the Tripoli regime. Borrowing a page from the Pentagon, a statement issued in the name of Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) stated, “Our air forces are meticulous in their targeting and take into account all the measures that protect civilians.”

The LNA had announced on Monday that it would carry out increased airstrikes on the Libyan capital as “traditional means” of besieging the capital were not working, according to Al Jazeera. It warned civilians to stay away from areas of “confrontation.”

Of course, the African refugees, detained against their will and under inhuman conditions by the Libyan regime and its militia backers, had no means of heeding this advice. The hangar where they were imprisoned was located adjacent to military facilities belonging to the militias in the eastern Tripoli suburb of Tajoura.

After its roof was damaged in an attack two months ago, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued a warning about the dangerous position of the prison.

“We called for an urgent evacuation then; they remained detained inside that center and sadly people have paid the tragic price of that with their lives last night,” Charlie Yaxley, spokesman for the Mediterranean and Africa at the UNHCR, told Al Jazeera.

The LNA’s escalation of its airstrikes follows the fall of the town of Gharyan, about 50 miles south of the capital, to militias backing the Tripoli regime. The LNA had taken the town in April and had been using it as a base for its siege of Tripoli.

The reversal of fortunes for Haftar’s army followed Turkey’s more aggressive intervention in support of the government of President Serraj, providing it with arms and flying armed drones out of the Tripoli airport on its behalf. The LNA claims to have destroyed three of these drones on the tarmac.

The LNA, meanwhile, has received major military support from the dictatorship of Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt, as well as from the Persian Gulf oil monarchies of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Both Egypt and the UAE have sent warplanes to provide air cover for the LNA. The aim of these regimes, which constitute Washington’s closest allies in the Arab world, is to install a military-dominated dictatorship along the lines of what exists in Cairo.

While the US and European powers are all formally committed to supporting the puppet regime of President Serraj in Tripoli, President Donald Trump spoke by phone with Haftar, after he had launched his offensive in April, discussing what the White House described as their “shared vision” for Libya.

Haftar, a former general in the Libyan army who turned coat after being captured during Libya’s war with Chad in the 1980s, was brought by the CIA to the US, living for 20 years near the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He was sent back to Libya to join the US-NATO war for regime change in 2011 that ended in the toppling and lynch mob murder of the country’s long-time ruler, Muammar Gaddafi.

Last week, it was reported that militias loyal to the Tripoli regime captured US-made Javelin anti-tank missiles after taking control of an LNA base. The missiles were in shipping crates whose markings indicated that they had been provided by Washington to the UAE.

The United Nations Security Council held a closed-door meeting late Wednesday on the latest atrocity in Libya but was unable to produce a statement condemning the attack because the US representative refused to sign on without approval from Washington. This under conditions in which various governments and agencies have denounced the slaughter of refugees as a crime against humanity.

The hypocrisy of these denunciations is breathtaking. The mass killing that took place outside of Tripoli is the direct outcome of policies pursued by all of the major imperialist powers in their drive to lay hold of Libya’s oil reserves, the largest on the African continent, and in their global war against refugees.

The US-NATO rape of the country in 2011, carried out under the false banner of “human rights” and preventing an allegedly imminent massacre of dissidents in the eastern city of Benghazi, killed tens of thousands of Libyans and destroyed the country’s infrastructure and institutions, setting the stage for eight years of unending conflict and civil war.

Meanwhile, the fate of those slaughtered in Tajoura, along with that of thousands of others held in concentration camps throughout Libya, is the direct result of a reactionary campaign waged by the major European powers. They have trained, armed and financed the Libyan coast guard to intercept refugees seeking to escape war, oppression and poverty by crossing the Mediterranean. Those who are captured are returned to concentration camps in Libya, where they are imprisoned under conditions that have been described as tantamount to torture, in many cases held for ransom, sold into slavery or murdered.

A particularly foul and crucial role in this imperialist onslaught has been played by an entire coterie of pseudo-left organizations, politicians and academics in Europe and America who amplified and embellished upon the phony pretexts of “humanitarian” intervention to justify a war of imperialist aggression against a former colonial country.

German chemical company BASF cuts 6,000 jobs

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

Last week, chemical company BASF announced it was cutting 6,000 jobs, half of them in Germany. The moves were in reaction to the demands of the financial markets and investors to drastically reduce personnel costs and increase profits in the face of growing trade-war measures

In a press release, the company said the “organizational reorientation” was creating “more profitable growth” for BASF. The administration will be streamlined and processes simplified. The company, which has around 122,000 employees worldwide, wants to achieve “savings of €300 million”.

The so-called “excellence program” is aimed directly against blue and white collar workers and should significantly increase profits. By increasing synergies, “from the end of 2021, an annual contribution of 2 billion euros will be achieved.” Immediately after the announcement of the job losses, BASF’s share price rose significantly.

The majority of the jobs being cut in Germany will affect the company headquarters in Ludwigshafen, where 40,000 people are employed. BASF CEO Martin Brudermüller wants to implement massive savings in all areas—in production and logistics as well as in research and development—and to sell off BASF subsidiaries.

Management is justifying its action by pointing to the first signs of a general economic downturn, declines in sales in the auto industry and the negative effects of the trade dispute between the major BASF sales markets of the United States and China. BASF is using these developments to drastically intensify the exploitation of the workforce and to maximise profits.

BASF after-tax profts amounted to 4.7 billion euros over the past year. But the investors and financial oligarchs were not satisfied. They said the billion-dollar gains were 20 percent below the average of recent years and demanded a radical cost-cutting program.

Last autumn, CEO Martin Brudermüller, who had been in his post for about a year, announced a significant reduction in staff as part of a comprehensive restructuring of the company. But that was not enough for the shareholders. At the BASF shareholders’ Annual General Meeting (AGM) in early May, they demanded the job cuts be extended and accelerated.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported that investor representatives at the AGM said the company had “a growth and profitability problem” which needed to be addressed. The FAZ commented, it was “a warning shot that should not be ignored”.

The company’s main rival, Bayer, has demonstrated what activist investors can achieve. Last week, the notorious American hedge fund Elliott announced that it now holds a stake of about 2 percent in Bayer. The hedge fund, managed by US billionaire Paul Singer, “only has to play with the idea of a break-up and already the share price increases,” writes the FAZ. The newspaper regards the recently announced job cuts at BASF as a “flight forward”.

This is not an isolated case. In recent months, the industry competitor Bayer has announced the reduction of 4,500 jobs, Thyssenkrupp wants to reduce 6,000, Siemens 2,700.

A study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) last autumn concluded that a hasty conversion of production to electro-mobility in the German auto industry would endanger 600,000 jobs and ruin a large proportion of the suppliers, including the chemical industry. Last week, Ford announced the reduction of 12,000 jobs in Europe. General Motors has announced 14,000 layoffs, Volkswagen 7,000, Jaguar 4,500 and Tesla 3,000.

But these measures still do not go far enough for the shareholders. In an article, the magazine Capital calculates that the reduction of 6,000 jobs at BASF is far from sufficient. BASF CEO Brudermüller has already signaled that he can imagine many further measures to “increase synergies, reduce interfaces and achieve more flexibility and creativity”.

A central element of the new corporate structure should be a “Corporate Centre” in which nearly 1,000 specialists analyze all areas of the company and advise the Executive Board in its decisions. In parallel, a unit called “Global Business Services” is to be set up, which aligns all corporate divisions even more closely with the financial interests of investors.

As a first step to reassure investors, Brudermüller promised a noticeable increase in dividends at the Annual General Meeting in May. The company said it is committed to its “ambitious dividend policy of increasing the annual dividend” and is paying 2.9 billion euros to its shareholders this year.

The BASF board received its most important support from the trade unions. The IG BCE union and the works council are ready to support the cuts program and justify it to the employees. They merely demand they be involved in all decisions at an early stage.

The chairman of the works council and deputy chairman of the BASF Supervisory Board, Sinischa Horvat, announced that he, together with his works council colleagues, would immediately start negotiations with the management board in order to “continue the existing site agreement.” He emphasized that the current works agreement excludes redundancies until the end of 2020. But everyone knows that the phrase “excludes redundancies” is code for accepting job losses.

The IG BCE in the Ludwigshafen district also spoke immediately of an “entrepreneurial decision”, that is to say, a decision that is not objectionable and that is implemented in partnership with the company management, the union and the works council.

BASF is also receiving support from the parties in the Bundestag (parliament). This was made clear by Kerstin Andreae, economic policy spokeswoman of the Greens in the Bundestag. A month ago, she called CEO Brudermüller a “role model for other managers”. For this reason, for several months he had also been a member of the party’s economic policy advisory board. “The verve with which he campaigns for climate protection” made Bruderüller unusual, said Andreae, “even if he, like any CEO, is driven by the shareholders’s claims.”

The global war on refugees

Will Morrow

A series of events in the past two weeks have prompted mass outrage at the systematic mistreatment and brutalization of refugees by capitalist governments all over the world.

Hundreds of thousands of people have expressed their opposition to Saturday’s arrest of Carola Rackete, the 31-year-old German sea captain of the refugee rescue ship Sea Watch 3, by the Italian government and its fascistic interior minister, Matteo Salvini. Rackete’s supposed “crime” was to rescue 52 African refugees, including pregnant women and children, stranded in the Mediterranean Sea on June 12, and provide their safe transfer to the Italian territory of Lampedusa.

For over two weeks, the Sea Watch had sailed through the Mediterranean in search of a port in the European Union (EU) to land. No EU government, including France, Germany and Spain, would accept the few dozen refugees—leaving the crew with no choice but to land at Lampedusa, in defiance of the Italian government’s illegal ban on all maritime arrivals of asylum seekers.

The ordering of Rackete’s release by Italian judges last night was a response to the immense outpouring of popular support for her in the working class. As of yesterday, a fund set up by a German comedian to support Sea Watch’s legal fees had raised more than 800,000 euros, and another on Facebook over 400,000 euros, from more than 25,000 donors. Over 330,000 people signed a petition calling for Rackete’s immediate freedom.

The Italian ruling, however, is in no way a retreat from the crackdown aimed at all those trying to save refugees. Rackete is to be expelled from Italy and remains under legal threat. Italy has charged Pia Klemp, the captain of the Juventa ship that saved 14,000 people, and who was arrested in 2017, for “aiding and abetting illegal immigration.” She faces 20 years in prison.

With disgusting hypocrisy, European officials, including German Social Democratic President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, have mildly criticized Salvini and shed crocodile tears for the refugees. But everyone knows that it is the EU, with France and Germany at the forefront, that has erected “Fortress Europe” with barbed wire and machine guns, ended rescue missions in the Mediterranean, and turned Europe’s southern sea into a vast cemetery. Salvini only states most bluntly and crudely the policy of the entire EU.

In 2015, the EU announced “Operation Triton” while training Libyan militias as a coast guard to catch refugees fleeing to Europe and return them to concentration camps in Libya, where there is documented evidence of torture, rape, killings and the selling of refugees into slavery. While the EU ended its rescue operations, crew and ship captains from humanitarian NGOs have been persecuted and had their sailing rights stripped.

In the last three years, at least 14,000 people have drowned in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. A report published last week by the Spanish pro-refugee organization Caminando Fronteras found that at least 1,020 people had drowned in 70 shipwrecks in the Strait of Gibraltar between Morocco and Spain alone from January 2018 to June 2019.

Eighty years after governments internationally turned back Jews fleeing the Nazi regime to a near-certain death in 1930s Europe, the EU is adopting a policy of mass murder to send refugees a message: trying to exercise their legal and democratic right to asylum in Europe will likely lead to death by drowning.

In the United States, the Trump administration has created a network of immigrant concentration camps inside the country and along the US-Mexico border, where conditions are so abusive that Dr. Lucio Sevier, a pediatrician who visited centers housing children in Texas last week, said they were more akin to “torture facilities.”

Yesterday, Democratic Representative Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez reported on a trip to a detention center in Texas in which women were kept in cells without water and told by border guards to drink out of toilets. A day earlier, a secret Facebook group was revealed by ProPublica in which fascistic border guards posted violent jokes about immigrants and sexual threats against Cortez before her visit.

The popular revulsion and opposition to Trump’s fascistic immigration policies was expressed in a demonstration by more than 200 American Jews outside an ICE detention center in New Jersey on Sunday, chanting “Never again means now!” Thirty-six were arrested, with one young arrested protester reporting she felt “good” because her grandparents, who fought against the Nazis, “would want me to stand up against concentration camps.”

The global assault on refugees extends far beyond Europe and America. On June 27, US President Trump hailed the anti-immigrant policies of the Australian Liberal/National coalition government and Labor Party opposition. Trump declared “much could be learned” from the bipartisan Australian policy of Operation Sovereign Borders, which utilizes the military to intercept and block all refugees attempting to reach Australia, in violation of international law.

The fact that the attack on refugees is a universal process shows that it is not due to the fascistic personalities of individual politicians, like Trump and Salvini. It is a particularly foul manifestation of a new, historic breakdown of the capitalist nation-state system. Tens of millions of men, women and children are fleeing the social breakdown and mass killings produced by a quarter-century of war in the Middle East and Africa, waged by the United States and its EU imperialist allies.

There are more refugees today than at any time since World War II. A UN report published last week stated that the number of people forcibly displaced around the world has almost doubled from 43.3 million in 2009 to 70.8 million in 2018. Every minute in 2018, 25 people were forced to flee their homes. Just under 1 percent of humanity, one in every 108 people, are refugees.

In 1940, two years before Europe’s fascist regimes launched the “Final Solution” genocide of the Jews, the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky warned: “Today decaying capitalist society is striving to squeeze the Jewish people from all its pores; seventeen million individuals out of the two billion populating the globe, that is, less than 1 percent, can no longer find a place on our planet! Amid the vast expanses of land and the marvels of technology, which has also conquered the skies for man as well as the earth, the bourgeoisie has managed to convert our planet into a foul prison.”

Today, capitalist governments, facing a deepening crisis of the global order and mounting domestic political opposition, are promoting the types of nationalism and xenophobia that characterized the fascist right in the 1930s. The universal adoption of draconian anti-refugee policies is the means by which the extreme right is being rehabilitated by the ruling elites all over the world.

As with anti-Semitism in the 1930s, the authoritarian measures directed against refugees are aimed against the working class as a whole. The concentration camps that are today deployed against refugees can be used tomorrow against workers and political opponents of war and militarism, austerity and social inequality.

The powerful support for refugees in the working class can and must be mobilized. But the only means to prevent a renewed relapse into barbarism and war is to arm the opposition to fascistic attacks on refugees with a conscious socialist and internationalist program. This means rejecting all attempts to scapegoat immigrants for the social crisis produced by capitalism and defending the right of every worker to live wherever he or she wants—with full citizenship rights, including the right to travel and work.

Only the taking of political power by the working class internationally can free society’s resources from the control of a corporate oligarchy and guarantee a high standard of living for every person in the world, free from poverty and oppression.

Nominate: The Aurora Prize for Humanitarian Work 2020 – USD1Million Cash

Application Deadline: 31st October, 2019

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All countries

To be taken at (country): Yerevan, Armenia

About the Award: On behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors, the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity will be granted annually to an individual whose actions have had an exceptional impact on preserving human life and advancing humanitarian causes.
Nominations are open for the 2020 Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, a global humanitarian award granted by the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative on behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors. The Aurora Prize is seeking the stories of selfless individuals who demonstrate exceptional courage, commitment and impact at personal risk for the sake of others.
Anyone can nominate a candidate who they believe has risked their life, health, freedom, reputation or livelihood to make an exceptional impact on preserving human life and advancing humanitarian causes.

Mission: The Aurora Prize aims to recognize and support those who risk their life, health, freedom, reputation or livelihood in order to save and aid individuals that suffer as a result of today’s tragedies, especially man-conceived disasters and crimes against humanity.

Offered Since: 2015

Type: Contests/Award

Eligibility: Any individual or group of people that perform(s) an extraordinary act of humanity may be nominated to receive the Aurora Prize. The Aurora Prize Laureate is recognized for the exceptional impact their actions have made in preserving human life in the face of adversity, risking their health, freedom, reputation or livelihood.

Selection Criteria: Nominations are carefully vetted and reviewed through a rigorous process. The Laureate is determined by the Selection Committee based on the following criteria:
Courage: The extent to which the Nominee’s actions demonstrate:

• Courage in helping others survive
• Having overcome significant risks for the sake of helping others survive
• Going beyond the call of duty of professional obligations for the sake of helping others survive

Commitment: The extent to which the Nominee’s actions demonstrate:

• An explicit intention to help others survive
• A direct involvement in helping others survive
• Being motivated by altruistic intentions

Impact: The extent to which the Nominee’s actions demonstrate:

• An impact of saving lives on the Nominee’s community, country or globally
• A long-term effect in saving lives
• Inspiration to others to save lives, directly or indirectly
• Saving lives of a large number of individuals

Any members of the public, including members of national assemblies, governments, academic and other institutions, can nominate candidates for the Aurora Prize.

Number of Awardees: 1

Value of Award: The Aurora Prize Laureate will be honored with a US $100,000 grant. In addition, that individual will have the unique opportunity to continue the cycle of giving by selecting an organization that inspired their work to receive a US $1,000,000 award.

How to Apply: Visit Award Webpage to apply

Visit Award Webpage for details


Award Provider: 100Lives by IDeA Foundation initiative.

Bayer Foundation International Fellowship Programme 2019 – Germany

Application Deadline: 14th July, 2019.

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Germany

About the Award: The Fellowship Program consists of five scholarship programs that offer tailored financial support. Important requirements for the support: The project to be supported must be innovative and international. Scholarships are granted to students and young professionals (up to two years after graduation) from Germany wishing to realize a study or research project abroad or to foreign students/young professionals pursuing a project in Germany.

The Bayer Science & Education Foundation supports students and young professionals that would like to study or work outside of their home country with the Bayer Foundation Fellowship Program, which consists of five scholarships.

1. Life Sciences: Students and young professionals in the fields of biology, molecular biology, bioengineering, bioinformatics, chemistry, biochemistry, pharmaceuticals and computational life sciences can apply for the Otto Bayer Scholarship.
2. Medicine: Students and young professionals in the fields of human and veterinary medicine, medical science, medical engineering, public health and health economics can apply for the Carl Duisberg Scholarship.
3. Agro Sciences: Students and young professionals in the fields of agro sciences, digital farming, agronomy, crop sciences, green biotechnology, environmental sciences and sustainability can apply for the Jeff Schell Scholarship.
4. Biology and Chemistry Educators: Student teachers in biology and chemistry (up to Master’s degree level) can apply for the Kurt Hansen Scholarship. Here, the focus is on study projects, internships, summer courses as well as supplemental courses of study.
5. Apprentices: Apprentices and young professionals in non-academic professions can apply for the Hermann Strenger Scholarship. Here, foreign assignments like projects, internships, supplemental courses or on-the-job assignments in the following fields are in focus:
   • Careers in healthcare
   • Technical or scientific occupations
   • Business administration

Type: Fellowship, Research

Eligibility:All applicants should have a high level of commitment, dedication and an innovative project plan. Scholarships are granted to students and young professionals (up to two years after graduation) from Germany wishing to realize a study or research project abroad or to foreign students/young professionals pursuing a project in Germany.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The financing generally covers the cost of living, travel expenses and project costs. Each applicant is asked to set up an individual cost schedule to be approved by the Foundation Council.

Duration of Scholarship: Duration of course

How to Apply: The following application documents are required for the Otto Bayer Scholarship, Carl Duisberg Scholarship, Jeff Schell Scholarship and Kurt Hansen Scholarship:

• Confirmation letter from the foreign host institute/university on the planned project from September 2019 to August 2020
• A description of the project (duration of 2-12 months) with financial plan within the timeline of September 2018 to August 2019. The project can consist of special study courses, laboratory assignments, research projects, summer classes, internships, Master’s or PhD programs.
• Most recent transcripts
• Any additional documents that would enhance the application
• Job application photo (no photo of your passport, please)
• CV
• The amount per fellowship is individual, but limited per 20.000€ per request.

For the Hermann Strenger Scholarship, applicants must submit the following:

• Confirmation letter from the foreign host institute/university on the planned project from September 2019 to August 2020
• Most recent transcripts with good to excellent grades
• A description of the project (duration of 2-12 months) with financial plan. The project can consist of
  special study courses, laboratory assignments, research projects, summer classes or internships
• Job application photo (no photo of your passport, please)

Apply Here

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: The Bayer Fellowship Program

Morland Writing Scholarship 2019 for African Writers (£18,000 Cash Prize)

Application Deadline: 30th September, 2019

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: The Scholarships are open to anyone writing in the English language who was born in an African country or both of whose parents were born in Africa.

To be taken at (country): Candidate’s home country

Eligible Works: The Scholarships are meant for full length works of adult fiction or non-fiction. Poetry, plays, film scripts, children’s books, and short story collections do not qualify.

About the Award: It can be difficult for writers, before they become established, to write while simultaneously earning a living. To help meet this need the MMF annually awards a small number of Morland Writing Scholarships, with the aim being to allow each Scholar the time to produce the first draft of a completed book. 
At the end of each month scholars must send the Foundation 10,000 new words that they will have written over the course of the month. Scholars are also asked to donate to the MMF 20% of whatever they subsequently receive from what they write during the period of their Scholarship. This includes revenues as a result of film rights, serialisations or other ancillary revenues arising from the book written during the Scholarship period. These funds will be used to support other promising writers. The 20% return obligation should be considered a debt of honour rather than a legally binding obligation.

The Foundation will not review or comment on the monthly submissions as they come in. However, each Scholar will be offered the opportunity to be mentored by an established author or publisher. In most cases the mentorship will begin after the book has been finished and the Scholarship period has ended. At the discretion of the Foundation, the cost of the mentorship will be borne by the MMF. It is not the intention of the MMF to act as editor or a publisher. Scholars will need to find their own agents and publishers although the MMF is happy to offer advice.

Type: Contest

Eligibility: The only condition imposed on the Scholars during the year of their Scholarship is that they must write. They will be asked to submit by e-mail at least 10,000 new words every month until they have finished their book or their Scholarship term has ended. If the first draft of the book is completed before the year is up, payments will continue while the Scholar edits and refines their work. 

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Scholars writing fiction will receive a grant of £18,000, paid monthly over the course of twelve months. At the discretion of the Foundation, Scholars writing non-fiction may receive a grant of up to £27,000, paid over a period  of up to eighteen months.

Duration of Scholarship: The Scholars may elect to start at any time between January and June in the year following the Scholarship Award. Their payments and the 10,000 word monthly submission requirement will start at the same time. The Foundation may exercise its discretion to offer non-fiction writers a longer Scholarship period of up to 18 months.

How to Apply: To qualify for the Scholarship a candidate must submit an excerpt from a piece of work of between 2,000 – 5,000 words written in English that has been published and offered for sale,. This will be evaluated by a panel of readers and judges set up by the MMF. The work submitted will be judged purely on literary merit. It is not the purpose of the Scholarships to support academic or scientific research, or works of special interest such as religious or political writings. Submissions or proposals of this nature do not qualify.

They should be sent by e-mail to scholarships@milesmorlandfoundation.com Please do not submit anything in hard copy or by terrestrial post.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details


Award Provider: Miles Morland Foundation

Pan African “Teach a Man to Fish” Awards for Entrepreneurship in Education 2019

Application Deadline: 16th August, 2019

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo (Democratic Republic of the), Congo-Brazzaville (also known as Republic of the Congo), Côte d’Ivoire (commonly known as Ivory Coast), Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Western Sahara, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

About the Award: The Pan African Awards reward the very best projects which are using enterprise and entrepreneurship to innovate in the field of education. The awards are generously supported by The Saville Foundation, a charitable foundation based in South Africa. Teach A Man To Fish manage the awards using their expertise in enterprise education and highlight inspirational models and projects through their large network of educational organisations and schools.
Participants must follow these guidelines:

• Is your education or training project based in Africa?
• Does your organisation actively demonstrate the success of their entrepreneurial approach to education? See above for our meaning of ‘entrepreneurship in education’.
• Is your education project innovative and inspiring?
• Does your organisation have a large network of young people?
• Can you show that your project has had a positive impact on young people and your community?

Type: Contest

Eligibility: The main criteria for becoming successful are:

• They’re entrepreneurial- they have innovative ways of tackling problems in education, they generate their own income, or they empower future generations of entrepreneurs.
• They’re sustainable- they are financially, socially and environmentally sustainable in the future and that look beyond donations and subsidies as their primary source of income.
• They create Impact- they achieve measurable results in terms of educational achievement and economic outcomes for participants and the wider community.

Number of Awardees: Three (3)

Value of Award: 

• First prize of $15,000, 2^nd and 3^rd prizes of $5,000.
• Alongside winners will also benefit from enhanced visibility and enhanced sponsorship and donor opportunities.
• In addition, applicants that reach the shortlist stage will be invited to apply for the Future Partner Prize. For this prize, organisations are required to submit ideas on how they could partner with Teach A Man To Fish to take the School Enterprise Challenge programme to a wider audience. Winners will receive a cash prize and will work further with Teach A Man To Fish to become a future partner.
• For exceptionally high performing organisations, it is possible to win both a top prize and the partner prize.
• All winners will also win a fully funded spot for one delegate at the annual Education That Pays conference.

Duration of Award: Not stated

How to Apply: Applications are now open. To get your application ready:

1. Read about the competition, eligibility criteria and application tips in the Application Guide (Link below).
2. Review the Terms and Conditions (Link below)
3. APPLY NOW

Visit Award Webpage for details

TWAS-DBT Postgraduate Research Fellowship 2019/2020 for Developing Countries – India

Application Deadline: 15th July 2019

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To be taken at (country): Applicants may be registered for a PhD degree in their home country, or may enrol in a PhD course at a host laboratory/institute in India.

Fields of Research: 
01-Agricultural Sciences
02-Structural, Cell and Molecular Biology
03-Biological Systems and Organisms
04-Medical and Health Sciences incl. Neurosciences
05-Chemical Sciences

Eligibility: Applicants for these fellowships must meet the following criteria:

• Be a maximum age of 35 years on 31 December of the application year.
• Be nationals of a developing country (other than India).
• Must not hold any visa for temporary or permanent residency in India or any developed country.
• Hold a Master’s or equivalent degree in science or engineering.
• For SANDWICH Fellowships, be registered PhD students in their home country and provide the “Registration and No Objection Certificate” from the HOME university (sample is included in the application form); OR
• For FULL-TIME Fellowships; be willing to register at a university in India.
• Be accepted at a biotechnology institution in India (see sample Acceptance Letter included in the application form). N.B. Requests for acceptance must be directed to the chosen host institution(s), and NOT to DBT.
• Provide evidence of proficiency in English, if medium of education was not English;
• Provide evidence that s/he will return to her/his home country on completion of the fellowship;
• Not take up other assignments during the period of her/his fellowship;
• Be financially responsible for any accompanying family members.

Number of scholarship: Several

Value of Scholarship: DBT will provide a monthly stipend to cover for living costs, food and health insurance. The monthly stipend will not be convertible into foreign currency. In addition, the fellowship holder will receive a house rent allowance.

Duration of Award: Up to five years.

• SANDWICH Fellowships (for those registered for a PhD in their home country): The Fellowship may be granted for a minimum period of 12 months and a maximum period of 2 years.
• FULL-TIME Fellowships (for those not registered for a PhD): The Fellowship is granted for an initial period of up to 3 years.  Such Fellowships may then be extended for a further 2 years, subject to the student’s performance.  Candidates will register for their PhD at a university in India. DBT will confirm any such extensions to both TWAS and the candidate.

How to Apply:

• Before applying it is recommended that applicants read very carefully the application guidelines for detailed information on eligibility criteria, and other key requirements of the application procedure.
• Applications for the TWAS-DBT Postgraduate Fellowship Programme can ONLY be submitted to TWAS via the online portal and copy of the submitted application must be sent to DBT by email.

Apply Here

Visit Scholarship webpage for Details

Hidden Plastics: Glitter Gum and the Air we Breath

Graham Peebles

The plastic contamination of the natural world flows from three main sources: complacency, apathy and ignorance, a poisonous trinity that is itself the result of a narrow and destructive approach to living. While there are signs of a shift in attitudes among many people, resistance to changing the lifestyle habits that feed the environmental crisis, is strong.

This apathy is partly fueled by a lack of knowledge about what products contain plastic and the impact it has; feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis and ignorance about the interrelated nature of the Environmental Emergency more broadly. Underpinning these is the corrosive core of the issue: deep complacency within governments and businesses.

Reducing plastic use is essential if we are to clean up the seas and rivers, safeguard marine life and sea birds, and start to decontaminate the air we breathe. Unseen by the naked eye, tiny plastic fibers are all around us. According to research carried out by King’s College London and featured in the excellent BBC series, War on Plastic with Hugh and Anita, in the square mile of the City of London – home to St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Stock Exchange – the air is filled with an estimated two billion plastic fibers. And that’s just one area in one city, in one country, and of course, as it’s airborne pollution it cannot be contained, it moves where the wind takes it; there is no such thing as national air pollution or national water pollution.

The King’s College team found eight different types of micro plastic in the air: Acrylic fibers and Polyester were the most common, both of which come from clothing made of synthetic textiles. We are literally shedding plastics into the atmosphere. Tests were also undertaken indoors; special filters were installed in two homes in an average street in Bristol. Here too, micro plastics were collected. Shocking and alarming, frightening to many, a source of anxiety and hopelessness – there is no alternative air to breath.

It’s not clear what the long term health impacts are of inhaling plastic micro fibers over a life-time; respiratory diseases including wheezing and asthma probably, heart conditions perhaps, and detrimental impacts on mental sharpness – the brain doesn’t function well in filth. Studies are underway in various countries to investigate if there is a link between air pollution and dementia.

Concealed Pollutants

Carrier bags, water bottles, supermarket packaging etc., these are obvious sources of plastic, but there are a whole host of products that one may not realize contain plastics, products that do not announce the fact. Hidden plastics.

Globally its estimated that 16 billion disposable coffee cups are used every year, they appear to be made of a sort of paper/card but they are lined with polythene; this strengthens the cup, but makes it difficult to process resulting in a tiny percentage being recycled. In the UK, e.g., Eradicate Plastic states that only 0.25% of the 2.5 billion cups used every year get recycled. A simple solution is for cafes to only offer reusable cups or for customers to supply their own. Teabags are another source of hidden plastic; on average one-third of a bag is heat-resistant polypropylene – plastic. An economic alternative is to buy loose tea in recyclable packaging.

Chewing gum is commonly made from polymer, who knew. A kind of synthetic rubber also used to make car tires. Non-digestible and water insoluble, no matter how long it’s chewed it will never break down. Glitter, gold, silver red, it’s a micro plastic – cosmetic glitter and craft glitter on cards etc., and it can’t be recycled. Cigarette butts also contain plastic – cellulose acetate, same compound used in the manufacture of sunglasses. Cigarette butts are the most common form of rubbish in the world, although somewhat surprisingly, a survey conducted by Keep America Beautiful “found that 77% of Americans do not think of cigarette butts as litter.”

While these and other products with concealed plastics are contributing to plastic pollution, the biggest source of hidden plastics is disposable wipes – wet wipes. In industrialized countries wipes are numerous and commonplace, a ubiquitous symbol of the consumer society; baby wipes, multi-surface wipes, metal wipes, window wipes, hand wipes, toilet wipes – rather than toilet paper, you name it wipes. Convenient, throw away and for many people indispensable. They are made up of up to 80% plastic and are a significant source of plastic pollution in sewers, rivers and oceans.

First developed in 1958 by Arthur Julius in the US and marketed as ‘moist towelettes’, global usage is now estimated at 450 billion a year, about 14,000 every second. Friends of the Earth state most wet wipes are not flushable or biodegradable, no matter what the labeling claims. Yet huge numbers are flushed down the toilet, presumably by people who imagine they will magically dissolve or just disappear. In fact, they mass together in the sewers of the world together with fat deposits creating ‘Fatbergs’, mountains of filthy waste, which block sewers.

Hundreds of thousands of wet wipes flushed down toilets in London have carved out a new ‘riverbed’ in the Thames. Far from unique, this is happening in rivers around the world. The waste in the rivers flows into the oceans, the plastics slowly become smaller and smaller until, as micro plastics and Nano plastics they become part of the fabric of the sea. Ingested by marine life, some of which enters the food chain, these microscopic plastics are even in the sea salt we cook with.

Simplicity of Living

For years, environmentalists have been calling on governments to ban the sale of wet wipes, but, complacent and duplicitous, none have done so. Rather the ‘non-woven’ industry has been allowed to regulate itself. This cowardly approach is symptomatic of the way governments have up until now responded, by not acting. Why not ban wet wipes? They are certainly not indispensable; they are just another needless ‘thing’ in a world that is literally suffocating under the weight of unnecessary stuff. In the absence of a ban, and such a common-sense step is unlikely, stop buying them! Use a flannel, soap and water to wash with, use recycled toilet paper, make your own multi-surface cleaner. Simplicity of living needs to be the message.

If, and it’s a big ‘if’, we are going to really respond to the environmental crisis, governments must impose regulations on business, substantial regulations not inadequate half-hearted measures within prolonged timeframes. Otherwise they will either not act, or act in a piecemeal fashion. Take plastic production: according to Greenpeace, far from reducing it “corporations have plans to … quadruple production by 2050.” Businesses must be forced to change their practices. If e.g. you want to drastically reduce the use of plastic carrier bags then just tell shops (all shops and market traders) that they cannot any longer provide them, neither free nor for sale.

Last year the European Union announced a range of measures on single-use plastics including wet wipes. By 2025 all wet wipes packaging within EU countries must be labeled as containing plastics; better than nothing certainly, but why wait six years? Measures like this need to be implemented immediately, forcing companies to do what they should be doing anyway – informing the public what is in their products.

In addition to accurate and clear labeling, recyclable packaging and ethical production, manufacturers should be required by law to pay to clean up the environmental mess that their products cause; making the ‘polluter to pay’ should be extended to all areas of waste pollution including investment in state-of-the-art recycling plants. Businesses, large and small are driven by profit and short-term gain, and corporate governments are obsessed with economic growth no matter the impact on the environment. Partners in mass environmental vandalism, they are complacent and blind to the scale of the crisis.

Large scale public protest (like the Extinction Rebellion and the Youth for Climate Change actions), civil disobedience, and coordinated boycotting of products that are contaminating the environment is the only thing that will make government and business act within a timeframe dictated by environmental need, not the blind demands of the market. We cannot go on as we have been and Save Our Planet. It’s an Environmental Emergency, and we need to respond to it as such. Saving Our Planet calls for actions rooted in Love, and the corporate state knows nothing of Love.

Is the US Trade Deficit With China Exaggerated?

Dean Baker

For many years we regularly saw news stories, like this Washington Post piece, telling us that the official data on the bilateral U.S. trade deficit was hugely exaggerated. The argument was that we count the full value of a final good imported from China in calculating our trade deficit, even though much of the value added came from other countries.

The classic case is an iPhone exported from China to the U.S. We would count the full value of the iPhone as an import from China even though the vast majority of the value added came from other countries. This Post piece cites a study showing that the trade deficit with China would be reduced by 40 percent if we subtracted the value of all intermediate goods produced in third countries. (An honest assessment would also add in the intermediate goods manufactured in China that come to the U.S. in imports from the Japan, the European Union, and elsewhere.)

This argument about an overstatement of the China trade deficit was frequently used to argue that people were wrong to be concerned about the bilateral trade deficit. Remarkably, now that Trump has embarked on his trade war with China, the media are telling us that China’s exports to the U.S. actually were a huge deal for its economy.

The NYT ran the strongest piece in this vein, telling readers that the trade war truce “could enshrine a global economic shift.” The homepage lead said that it could “unseat China as the world’s factory floor.”

For fans of logic and arithmetic, we can’t both have China’s trade deficit with the U.S. being no big deal and also a scenario where reducing the deficit unseats China as the world’s factory floor. To see what the actual story might be, a little data is helpful.

The U.S. trade deficit with China peaked at $420 billion in 2018. China’s GDP measured in dollar terms is $14.2 trillion this year. (Measured at purchasing power parity it’s $27.3 trillion. For this question, it is appropriate to use the exchange rate measure.)

If we use the great wisdom from the Washington Post piece and say that our trade deficit with China is just 60 percent of the official figure, then it came to $252 billion in 2018. If we assume an extreme effect of the trade war and the deficit falls by 50 percent (that’s way more than the impact seen to date), China would see a reduction in its trade surplus with the U.S. of $126 billion. That’s just under 0.9 percent of its GDP. It’s a bit hard to believe a loss of net exports equal to 0.9 percent of China’s GDP of 0.9 percent of GDP will fundamentally alter its position in the global economy.

Even if we use the official data the loss would be $210 billion or just under 1.5 percent of GDP. It’s still hard to imagine that fundamentally changing China’s economy, and this is assuming an impact of the trade war that is absurdly high.

Anyhow, the moral of this story is that our top media outlets are perfectly willing to play with the data to tell a story. They don’t care if their story directly contradicts other stories they tell. They just assume that no one will notice.