Algerian junta to slash energy subsidies amid mass protests

Kumaran Ira

As Algerian workers and youth descended into the streets for the 35th week of mass protests against General Ahmed Gaïd Salah’s military regime, its energy bill to slash subsidies and raise energy prices for Algerian workers provoked deep anger. The bill has made clear the imperialist interests served by the regime, which has announced a presidential election for December 12—the first election since the ouster of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Last Sunday, hundreds of people protested in front of parliament against the bill approved by the cabinet ministers. The cabinet also approved the 2020 budget, which cuts public spending by 9.2 percent and introduces new taxes to reduce a budget deficit that is expected to stand at 7.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Police units were deployed to crack down on protests, but failed to disperse the crowd. The main areas surrounding Zighout Youcef Palace, the seat of the People’s National Assembly, were invaded by angry protesters.

Protesters denounced the energy bill, chanting, “This country is not for sale,” “Legislators traitors,” and “You have pillaged this country.” One protester declared, “This is a law written by foreign companies in their own interests, even the regime admits this.”

Several days before, Energy Minister Mohamed Arkab had announced: “We have discussed with the big corporations that are ranked among the five best in the world, and we had the opportunity to notice two aspects that must be improved in the current hydrocarbon law—namely, the regulatory framework and the fiscal system.”

The Algerian national energy monopoly, Sonatrach, had held talks with a number of major energy companies, including US firms Exxon Mobil and Chevron and several European companies.

As world oil and gas prices fall, the Salah regime is pushing through a long-prepared energy reform. It aims to impoverish ordinary workers and escalate the looting of Algeria in the interests of imperialism and the Algerian bourgeoisie that has provoked the mass protests against the regime. Since the decline of oil prices in 2014, over 90 percent of households report that their living standards have fallen.

The Arab Weekly, which obtained a copy of the draft law, reports that “the government plans to lift subsidies on energy and electricity prices and subject them to international pricing. It continues: “Lifting the subsidies could lead to a nearly 300 percent increase in petrol, diesel and electricity retail prices, and most Algerians’ family budgets would not be able to handle the increases.”

Officials claim it is critical to eliminate the subsidies system, as most of the $15 billion budgeted for subsidies goes to people who, they cynically claim, “don’t need them.”

Political analyst Raouf Farrah told El Watan, “The government is not telling the Algerian people, but this project will mark a definite step backward in public oversight and implementation of oil projects in favor of the interests of transnational corporations.”

Trampling underfoot the mass opposition that had been focused on Bouteflika, the regime is trying to ram through a bill Bouteflika had discussed with the oil firms and hoped to pass upon securing a fifth term. Farrah said, “The main lines of this project were discussed and approved in talks with Total, Exxon, ENI and Repsol before February 22, 2019. Indeed, the Bouteflika regime aimed to modify the 2005 hydrocarbon law, partially amended in 2013, to obtain the political support of energy transnationals so they would back his bid for a fifth term.”

This brings fresh confirmation that the bourgeoisie in Algeria, as in all the former colonial countries, is incapable of establishing any genuine independence from imperialism. Bouteflika’s attempt to seek a fifth term provoked mass protests by workers and youth that led to his ouster by the Army in the spring. Yet even after Bouteflika’s ouster and the jailing of dozens of billionaires and top officials close to him on corruption charges, his illegitimate laws aiming to plunder Algeria are still proceeding, with the approval of the military authorities.

Algeria is Europe’s third-biggest natural gas supplier, and its natural gas wealth is at the center of its economy. Hydrocarbon exports represent more than 95 percent of foreign currency receipts and 40 per cent of the state budget. The sharp fall in energy prices since 2014 raised the public deficit to 9 percent of GDP in 2018, and the state has reacted with drastic austerity measures. Algeria’s dollar reserves have fallen over this time from $178 billion to $89 billion.

Over this same period, under Bouteflika, a tiny oligarchy linked to the top layers of the regime and its hold over Sonatrach was massively increasing its already obscene wealth. The top 10 percent of the Algerian population owns 80 percent of the country’s wealth, whereas 35 percent of the population lives in poverty, subsisting on less than US$1.25 per day.

The only progressive solution is for the workers to bring down the military junta, expropriate the billionaires now sitting in jail, and run Algeria’s energy industry as a public utility. The mass protest movement that erupted in February is coming up face to face with the reality that its fundamental aims can be achieved only through the revolutionary mobilization of the working class in a movement against capitalism and imperialism.

Fearing the upsurge of struggles in Algeria and across North Africa, as well as in Europe, the imperialist powers are seeking, in the name of “democracy” and “constitutional” changes, to work out a deal with various bourgeois forces in Algeria to quickly end the movement.

Last month, Marie Arena, president of the European Parliament’s subcommittee on human rights, declared her solidarity with the mass protests against Bouteflika that erupted in February. In a video on social media, she said, “Today the protesters are men, women, young people who are asking for democracy in Algeria. We support them here in the European Parliament by organizing a hearing with a number of actors in the current revolution in Algeria.”

She stated that the protesters “of course demand that elections be held, but not under the current model, not under the current regime, not with the rules of the current regime.” She went on: “They demand that there be changes in the Constitution, that there be political pluralism, that there be freedom of expression and association, which is not the case today in Algeria.”

Arena’s statement reeks of hypocrisy. The EU powers regularly support military regimes to suppress the working class while claiming cynically to support “democracy.” The EU openly collaborates with Egyptian military dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and tacitly supports his bloody terror against the Egyptian working class.

Fighting continues in wake of US-Turkish agreement on northern Syria

Bill Van Auken

Fighting continued in northeastern Turkey in the wake of an agreement struck Thursday between US Vice President Mike Pence and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At least 14 civilians were reported killed Friday in air strikes and shelling near the bitterly contested Syrian border town of Ras Al-Ain.

The deal, described by Washington as a “ceasefire,” has been characterized by Ankara as merely a 120-hour “pause” in its offensive against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which served as the US military’s proxy ground troops in what was ostensibly a war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Under the terms of the deal, the YPG forces—regarded by the Turkish government as “terrorists” and an extension of the PKK Kurdish separatist movement in Turkey—are supposed to be withdrawn from a so-called “safe zone” extending 20 miles south of the Turkish-Syrian border.

At a press conference in Istanbul Friday, Erdogan stressed that it was Washington’s responsibility to assure the withdrawal of its erstwhile Kurdish allies from the border region. “If the promises are kept until Tuesday evening, the safe zone issue will be resolved,” he said. “If it fails, the operation ... will start the minute 120 hours are over.”

It has become clear, however, that there exists no agreement as to what territory the “safe zone” covers. While Pence announced on Thursday that this zone would extend 20 miles south into Syrian territory, he gave no indication as to what length of the Syrian-Turkish border would be involved.

Both US officials and spokesmen for the Kurdish forces have since indicated that the deal applies only to the roughly 80-mile stretch of the border area between the towns of Ras Al-Ain and Tal Abyad that Turkish forces have occupied. The Erdogan government, meanwhile, has stated that the “safe zone” will extend 275 miles from the city of Manbij, about 25 miles west of the Euphrates River, all the way east to the Iraqi border.

The realization of such a venture, however, would require either the collaboration of—or a direct military confrontation with—Syrian government troops backed by Russian military units, who have moved into the area, taking over bases abandoned by the US military in Manbij and establishing their presence in the cities of Kobani and Raqqa, as well as elsewhere on the Turkish-Syrian border.

Moscow’s position is that all of Syrian territory, including the territory marked out for a so-called safe zone, must be placed under the control of the Damascus government of President Bashar al-Assad. With the announced withdrawal of the 1,000 US troops deployed in northern Syria, Russia has emerged as the principal mediator between Turkey, the Syrian government and the Kurdish militia. It is unlikely a coincidence that the 120-hour deadline for the US-Turkish deal falls on Tuesday, when Erdogan is scheduled to fly to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin. According to some reports, representatives of the Assad government are also to be present.

While US President Donald Trump has made ludicrously grandiose statements about the ramshackle deal struck in Ankara, claiming that it had “saved millions of lives” and represented “a great day for civilization,” it has only intensified opposition within US ruling circles, where the withdrawal of US troops from Syria is seen as strengthening Russia’s hand in the Middle East.

This was apparent in a lengthy analysis published Friday by the Wall Street Journal, whose right-wing editorial board is generally a reliable supporter of Trump. It stated: “The decision by President Trump to leave Syria set in motion events that upended U.S. policy in the Middle East, cast doubt on America’s reliability as an ally and allowed Washington’s adversaries to fill the void: The Assad regime strengthens its hold. Russia expands its influence. And Iran sees greater freedom to ferry weapons to allies in the region, posing new threats to neighboring Israel.”

Similarly, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank with close ties to the US military and intelligence apparatus, commented: “The precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria now tilts the balance further in Russia’s favor. The PYD [Democratic Union Party, the political arm of the YPG militia], which Turkey regards as a terrorist group, is likely to fall further under Moscow’s sway, allowing Russia to play Turkey and the Kurds off one another. Already, the PYD has accepted the restoration of Assad’s control over northeastern Syria. Turkish-backed militias are racing to secure as much of the region as possible, but Russian forces have positioned themselves between the Kurds, Syrian forces, and the pro-Turkish militias, casting Moscow as the main powerbroker. The U.S. withdrawal also makes Russia’s ambition of reuniting Syria under Assad more achievable.”

Behind all of the denunciations of Trump for betraying the Kurdish nationalists—who offered their forces up as cannon fodder for the US imperialist intervention in Syria in the vain hope of securing autonomy—these are the real concerns that have generated a political firestorm over the US withdrawal.

Trump has sought to cast the withdrawal as a fulfillment of his campaign pledge to end Washington’s “forever wars” in the Middle East and Afghanistan, making a populist and nationalist appeal to broad antiwar sentiment. At the same time, however, he has increased the Pentagon’s budget to $750 billion, while seeking to focus US military might against American imperialism’s principal global rival, China.

From the beginning, the Democrats have focused their opposition to Trump on foreign policy questions of concern to the US military command and the intelligence agencies, particularly centering on what they view as an insufficiently aggressive posture in relation to Russia and Syria.

With Trump’s precipitous troop withdrawal in Syria and the subsequent signing of the agreement in Ankara conceding to all of Erdogan’s demands, this opposition has found growing support within the Republican Party as well, reflected in last Wednesday’s 354-60 vote in the House of Representatives condemning Trump’s actions in Syria, with Republicans joining Democrats by a margin of 2-to-1.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s staunchest supporters, joined with Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen in announcing that, despite the so-called cease-fire deal, they were moving “full steam ahead” with legislation calling for sweeping sanctions against Ankara. These include not only a halt to all US military collaboration with Turkey and a ban on arms sales, but also an investigation into Erdogan’s personal finances, fines against Halkbank, a large Turkish state-owned bank, and a ban on US investors buying Turkish sovereign debt. Similar legislation is also moving through the House.

Part of the deal struck in Ankara was a pledge that Washington would impose no further sanctions on Turkey and would withdraw those already imposed following a conclusive halt to the Turkish offensive in Syria. The imposition of Congressional sanctions will have the likely effect of shifting Ankara into even closer alignment with Moscow.

In the midst of the political controversies over the Turkish incursion into Syria, Amnesty International issued a report charging the Turkish military with “serious violations and war crimes, summary killings and unlawful attacks.” It said that both Ankara and the Syrian Islamist militias that it supports—formerly armed and funded by the CIA to overthrow Assad—had shown “a shameful disregard for civilian life.”

Meanwhile, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said Friday that it is conducting an investigation into verified reports that Turkish forces have used chemical weapons, white phosphorus shells, against civilian populations on the border, leaving Kurdish civilians, including young children, with horrific chemical burns.

While the US government and the corporate media repeatedly promoted unsubstantiated claims of the use of chemical weapons by Syrian government forces to justify US military intervention, there has been no such outcry over the crimes of the Turkish regime.

General strike paralyzes Catalonia as over half-a-million demonstrate in Barcelona

Alejandro López

Yesterday, on the fifth day of protests and riots after the draconian ruling that sentenced nine Catalan nationalist politicians to nine to 13 years in prison, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched through Barcelona and a general strike paralyzed Catalonia. Broad sections of youth and workers mobilized to protest the police state that is emerging in Spain and more broadly across Europe.

During the morning, five columns of thousands of protesters, organized by the Catalan National Assemby and Òmnium Cultural under the slogan “Freedom March,” blocked highways leading to Barcelona. The columns started in Vic, Berga, Tàrrega, Girona and Tarragona and converged on Barcelona during the afternoon, where tens of thousands more had assembled. Protesters carried a giant banner reading, in English: “Free Catalan Prisoners Now.”

Protesters match into the city on the fifth day of protests in Barcelona, Spain [Credit: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez]

On the AP7 motorway at La Jonquera, near the city of Girona, demonstrators blocked traffic on the two routes connecting Spain and France. Protesters also blocked at least 20 major roads as they marched towards Barcelona for the mass rally with striking workers and students.

The major protest in the centre of Barcelona started at 5:00 p.m. and involved over half a million protesters, according to the police. Under the banners of the separatist trade unions Intersindical-CSC and Intersindical Alternativa, and the slogan “Your rights and freedoms, general strike,” hundreds of thousands marched shouting for the freedom of political prisoners, independence and against fascism. Many carried secessionist flags. Over 50,000 demonstrated in the other major Catalan cities of Lleida and Girona.

The demonstrations, however, were not primarily motivated by secessionist sentiment. There is a growing realization among broad layers of the Spanish population that the ruling class is moving rapidly to authoritarian forms of rule.

The draconian decision to imprison politicians for calling peaceful protests, years after the end of the fascist regime of General Francisco Franco, is being met by rising militancy and opposition among workers and youth. The ruling on Monday is an infamous and illegitimate verdict, which creates the precedent to outlawing as “sedition” any form of protest against the state. The ruling was made by a court that is discredited by its recent statements of support for fascist dictator Francisco Franco.

In recent days, tens of thousands of protesters, especially youth, have been involved in clashes with police. As numerous videos now show, many are chanting and throwing insults at the police in Spanish, not Catalan.

The mass protest in Barcelona coincided with a general strike in the region. The strike paralyzed the city. Train metro lines, regional routes and AVE fast-speed services were all affected, even as the regional Catalan government imposed reactionary minimum service requirements of between 25 percent and 50 percent of normal work levels.

In the education sector, over 50 percent of schoolteachers and 90 percent of university staff went on strike. Small shops also closed—72 percent, according to initial data. One third of civil servants went on strike. The port of Barcelona was also affected, as port workers struck against the labour reform and in defence of democratic rights.

The regional Department of Labour stated that electricity consumption dropped by 10.11 percent compared to the day before—a level similar to prior mobilizations such as the strike against the 2010 labour reform and the October 3, 2017 strike after the independence Catalan referendum.

Carmaker SEAT, a unit of Volkswagen AG, which produces 3,500 cars a day, halted production at its plant in Martorell, near Barcelona, from Thursday afternoon until Saturday, over concerns that the marches would disrupt traffic. Iberia cancelled 12 Friday flights between Barcelona and Madrid due to the strike, while Vueling grounded 36 of its scheduled journeys.

In some cases, major businesses promoted the strike. The Bon Preu group of supermarkets and gas stations announced the closure of all its establishments but said it would still pay its workers.

Although the separatist unions and the Catalan regional government called the strike a “success,” major sections of the working class—especially significant layers of industrial workers—did not participate. For Spanish-speaking sections of the working class in Catalonia, the slogan of the creation of a mini-capitalist Catalan republic, driven by pro-European Union and NATO forces with a long record of imposing social austerity on workers, is viewed with hostility.

Moreover, the Stalinist Workers Commissions (CC.OO) and the social-democratic General Union of Labor (UGT) unions boycotted the event and have refused to call any strikes or solidarity actions.

The ruling Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and its ally, the Stalinist-Pabloite Podemos party, are desperate to block a broader movement in the working class against the repressive, antidemocratic acting PSOE government of Pedro Sánchez. Podemos is supporting this government. On Monday, Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias called for people “to respect the law and accept the verdict.” He complacently concluded : “It is time for us to roll up our sleeves and work to rebuild bridges between a divided Catalan society and … Spanish society.”

On Wednesday, Iglesias met with Sánchez to make clear that he would not oppose any police escalation in Catalonia and even applauded the coordination of the regional Catalan police force and Spanish police forces during the crackdown.

Yesterday, Iglesias denounced youth in Catalonia clashing with police, calling the violence a “disaster” that was “doing a lot of harm” to chances to peacefully resolve the conflict.

In the past days over 100 protesters have been arrested, and clashes between police and protesters have injured over 350. The state has seized on the violent clashes as a pretext to escalate police-state measures. So far 10 protesters have been sent to jail without bail. In four cases, the judge argued that the defendants were trying to “prevent the execution of the final verdict issued by the Supreme Court.”

Yesterday, the government also activated the special forces unit of the paramilitary Guardia Civil, the Grupo de Reserva y Seguridad (Reserve and Security Group) unit, which was established in 2006 by the PSOE government. This group, whose stated mission is “the restoration of public order in large mass demonstrations,” played an infamous role in crushing the 2012 miners’ strike and attacking the 2017 Catalan referendum.

The National Court, descended from the Public Order Court set up by Franco to punish “political crimes,” has also ordered the Civil Guards to shut down the website and social media accounts of Tsunami Democràtic, the organisation that has coordinated the protests. The group was behind Monday’s attempts to occupy Barcelona airport. National Court Judge Manuel García Castellón has ordered an investigation of this platform for evidence of terrorism.

Fascist forces cultivated by the right-wing atmosphere instigated by the ruling class are also intervening for the first time. On Thursday night, fascist thugs attacked protesters as they ran towards Diagonal Avenue, where the people had gathered. Some of them were wrapped in Spanish fascist flags, were armed with baseball bats and shouted “Franco! Franco!” One 23-year-old youth was severely beaten.

Speaking from Brussels after a Council of Europe meeting, acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez warned that “rule of law cannot yield to exaltation” and threatened that those responsible for “serious violent acts’ would be dealt with “sooner rather than later.”

Right-wing parties are calling for Sánchez to remove the Catalan regional government by invoking Article 155 of the constitution. In October 2017, the right-wing Popular Party (PP), with the support of the PSOE, invoked this article, used this power to suspend the democratically elected Catalan regional government and imposed elections under the presence of thousands of police forces sent by Madrid.

PP leader Pablo Casado demanded that Sánchez act with “urgency” in Catalonia against riots and compared the situation to the “kale borroka” urban guerrilla operations in the Basque Country in the 1980s and 1990s. The most common actions at the time included attacks on offices of political parties, burning cars, attacking housing, and destroying ATMs, bank offices, public transport and rioting using Molotov cocktails.

Madrid has a long record of brutal repression using reactionary antiterror laws against the Basque separatists. Casado effectively called for the use of the same antiterror laws against Catalan protesters.

Citizens leader Albert Rivera also urged Sánchez to invoke Article 155 to suspend the elected regional government and to send more police forces. He declared that the protests and strike was “general sabotage to everyday life of Spaniards.”

Suicide rates and suicidal behavior rise sharply among American youth

Trévon Austin

According to a report released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide rates among those Americans aged 10 to 24 years old sharply increased by 56 percent between 2007 and 2017. Within the same period, suicide ideation, or thoughts of suicide, and suicide attempts have doubled for adolescents and young adults. The rate of homicide deaths for this age group also saw an increase of 18 percent between 2014 and 2017, after an initial decrease of 23 percent from 2007 to 2014.

The CDC report shows that while the increase is particularly acute amongst young people, there had been a general increase in suicide rates across all ages and ethnicities by 30 percent from 1999 to 2016.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for youth aged 12 to 18 in the United States, behind unintentional injuries such as car accidents and drug overdoses. In 2017, suicides accounted for more than 2,200 deaths in the age group. Researchers suggest a number of risk factors that are associated with the rising epidemic, including childhood maltreatment, mental and neurological illnesses and poverty.

Within the span of a decade, suicide deaths increased from 6.8 deaths per 100,000 people to 10.6 deaths, with 2,449 more suicides in 2017 than in 2007. Previously, 10-to-14-year-olds had the lowest rates of suicide, but that rate tripled between 2007 and 2017.

Daniel Webster, the co-director for the Johns Hopkins Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence, told the Wall Street Journal that homicide deaths among youth in the US has decreased dramatically since the 1990s and were mostly in decline and stable through 2014 before the recent increase. Webster noted the growth in homicide death rates in 2015 and 2016 was largely concentrated in a limited number of cities, including St. Louis and Chicago.

Experts say the increased homicide rate is most likely related to the illicit drug trade, poverty, and police violence but are unable to point to a specific influence on the national shift. According to the CDC, school-related shootings account for less than 2 percent of all youth homicide deaths in the US and likely don’t influence the trend. However, data from the FBI suggests a slight decrease in the youth homicide rate in 2018.

A separate study released last week in the medical journal Pediatrics examined trends of suicidal behavior across groupings by ethnicities and sex of teenage high school students. The study found that self-reported suicide attempts among African American teenagers in high school rose by 73 percent between 1991 and 2017.

The study utilized results from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a school-based survey administered by the CDC, from 198,540 high school students in 9th through 12th grade who took the survey between 1991 and 2017. The survey asked participants a set of four questions on suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

While black youth were the only group to display an overall increase in the nearly three-decade period, all groups experienced an increase in suicide ideation, suicide plans, suicide attempts, and injury from attempt since 2009. The recent rise in suicide attempts is particularly concerning because the most prominent risk factor associated with suicide death is prior suicide attempts. In 2017, more than 111,000 youth 12 to 18 years old were seen in an emergency department for self-harm behavior.

Researchers behind the study also noted a shift in the sex disparity in youth suicidal behavior. Traditionally, girls are more likely to attempt suicide and have suicidal ideation, and boys are more likely to die by suicide. However, recent studies indicate that the gap in suicide deaths between sexes may be decreasing in youth aged 10 to 19 years.

A study from Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio found the number of children and young adults who have attempted suicide by poisoning, including drug and alcohol overdoses, has increased in the United States in recent years as well. A significant increase was observed between 2011 and 2018 with 71 percent of cases studied in the report consisting of girls and young women.

Using data from the National Poison Data System, which reports information from all 55 poison control centers across the United States, researchers found more than 1.6 million children and young adults aged 10 to 24 attempted to kill themselves by poisoning between 2000 to 2018.

This staggering number outlines the scope of the epidemic of suicide in the United States. Self-poisoning, defined as when a person intentionally overdoses on drugs or exposes themselves to toxic substances, is the most common form of suicide attempt among women of all ages. Its fatality rate is below 5 percent, meaning that individuals are likely to be rescued. This results in a suicide death rate that some researchers believe underestimate the severity of the issue.

While the factors behind the growth of desperation in youth is multifaceted and complex, the last two decades has been marked growth of staggering social inequality, unending violent wars overseas, unceasing police brutality at home, an ever-rising student debt burden, and persistent underemployment.

The latest CDC statistics on youth suicide are a stark confirmation, despite President Donald Trump’s boasting over record low unemployment figures and a booming stock market, of the complete failure of the capitalist system to meet the most basic needs of young people and the working class in general.

Not coincidentally the rise in the suicide rate for young people has accompanied the growth of so-called deaths of despair from drug and alcohol overdoses and disease associated with addiction amongst working-age adults. Millions lost their homes or jobs in the economic collapse of 2008 only to see the banks who were responsible for the disaster bailed out with trillions of dollars. The greatest transfer of wealth in history was carried out on the backs of the working class to save capitalism resulting in the human catastrophe which is now finding expression in these grim statistics.

Continued rise in STDs highlights bipartisan attack on American healthcare system

Erik Schreiber

The incidence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) increased sharply in 2018, according to an annual report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The increase continues a trend that has persisted for at least a decade and is the result of a conscious, bipartisan attack on the health of the working class.

The CDC report “is a cause for deep concern about dangerous gaps in our public health infrastructure,” according to a press release from the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association. The data indicate “neglect of critical public health investments” that has “damaging impacts to public, as well as individual, health,” the groups said.

The transmission STDs is entirely avoidable if individuals have knowledge of and access to the appropriate preventive measures. If an infected person goes without treatment, however, STDs can cause infertility, facilitate HIV transmission, and create stigma. The CDC report mainly focuses on three STDs: chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis.

Chlamydia was the most common of the three in 2018, when 1,758,668 cases were reported to the CDC. “This case count corresponds to a rate of 539.9 cases per 100,000 population, an increase of 2.9 percent, compared with the rate in 2017,” according to the report. In fact, the rates of reported cases have increased over each of the last five years.

Chlamydia incidence is highest among teenagers and young adults. In 2018, the overall rate of reported cases among females between ages 15 and 24 increased 1.0 percent over the 2017 level and 11.8 percent over the 2014 level. Similarly, rates among men increased 37.8 percent from 2014 to 2018.

Reports of chlamydial infection have been increasing since at least 2000. “During 2000–2011, the rate of reported chlamydial infection increased from 251.4 to 453.4 cases per 100,000 population,” according to the report. This represents a staggering 80 percent increase during this period.

Gonorrhea was the second most common STD in 2018. “Rates of reported gonorrhea have increased 82.6 percent since the historic low in 2009,” the report notes. From 2017 to 2018 alone, the rate of infection increased 5.0 percent (6.0 percent among men and 3.6 percent among women).

The increase in gonorrhea infection is particularly alarming, since N. gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes it, can develop resistance to antibiotics quickly. According to the report “In 2018, more than half of all infections were estimated to be resistant to at least one antibiotic.” The CDC has recommended various cephalosporins (a class of antibiotics) to treat gonorrhea infection, but the bacterium is developing resistance to these medications.

In its investigation of syphilis, the report examines all stages of the disease, including primary and secondary syphilis (i.e., the most infectious stages) and congenital syphilis (i.e., infection transmitted to a baby from its mother). In 2018, the total case count of reported syphilis in all stages was the highest recorded since 1991. The number of reported cases increased 13.3 percent from 2017 to 2018. Furthermore, incidence has increased almost every year since its historic low in 2001, when the disease had been on the brink of eradication.

The rate of congenital syphilis has been rising each year since 2013. In 2018, 41 states reported at least one case of congenital syphilis. The national rate in 2018 was 39.7 percent higher than it was in 2017 and 185.3 percent higher than it was in 2014. “During 2017–2018, the number of syphilitic stillbirths increased (from 64 to 78 stillbirths), as did the number of congenital syphilis-related infant deaths (from 13 to 16 deaths),” according to the report. “The resurgence of syphilis, and particularly congenital syphilis, is not an arbitrary event, but rather a symptom of a deteriorating public health infrastructure and lack of access to health care.”

As the CDC itself implies, the continuing increase in STD incidence is a scandal and an indictment of both capitalist parties. President Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress have cut the CDC’s budget during every year of his presidency. The budget was reduced from $6.4 billion in 2017 to $6.3 billion in 2018 and to $5.6 billion in 2019.

After cynically declaring a national emergency on the border with Mexico last year, Trump directed the Treasury and the Department of Defense to reallocate $6.7 billion in funds—more than the CDC’s 2019 budget—to pay for building a border wall. These funds already had been appropriated by Congress for other purposes, and Trump’s action violated the Constitutional separation of powers. Nevertheless, the Senate approved the impeachable offense by voting to “back-fill” the money.

President Barack Obama and the Democrats also did their best to make workers, rather than the federal government, foot the bill for health care. Obama’s signature domestic initiative, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), required that people without insurance from their employer or a government program buy insurance from a private insurance company. Rather than challenging the for-profit health care industry, the ACA has guaranteed it a continuous flow of profits.

The Democrats and Republicans are as united in their support for war spending as they are in their attacks on workers’ health. Both parties collaborated to provide a historic $738 billion for the military in fiscal year 2020 while allotting only $632 billion for all other discretionary spending categories combined.

The CDC report, together with the bipartisan budgets, show that there is no constituency in the ruling class that will guarantee the fundamental right of the working class to healthcare. If it is to secure its most basic needs, the working class must organize independently of both capitalist parties on the basis of socialist program fighting to reorganize society to meet human need and rather than the interests of private profit.

Ukrainian President Zelensky adopts Steinmeier formula amid mass far-right protests

Clara Weiss

On October 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a document affirming that Ukraine will follow the so-called “Steinmeier formula,” which calls for elections in eastern Ukraine. The formula is named after the current German president and former foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who devised it in 2016 after having played a critical role in the US- and German-backed far-right coup in Kiev in February 2014.

The resulting civil war in eastern Ukraine has claimed the lives of at least 13,000 people and wounded as many as 30,000 more. It has displaced millions.

The Steinmeier formula proposes a series of steps to realize the 2015 Minsk agreement. It is extremely vague and ambiguous, stipulating nothing clearly except elections in the Donbass that could result in a semi-autonomous status for the eastern Ukrainian territories of Donetsk and Luhanks, which are now ruled by pro-Russian separatists. Steinmeier himself has repeatedly emphasized that virtually every aspect of his “formula” is subject to further negotiation. Polls indicate that over two thirds of Ukrainians do not know what to make of the formula, with about 23 percent opposing and 18 percent supporting it.

The terms for the elections will be set by the so-called Normandy Format, which includes Germany, France and Russia, but not the United States.

Thousands of far-right nationalists, who were heavily involved in the 2014 coup and the ensuing civil war, protested on October 3 and October 14 against the Zelensky government on Kiev’s Independence Square. Officials of the former Poroshenko government joined the rallies, where the Steinmeier formula was denounced as a “concession” and “capitulation” to Russia.

Former president Poroshenko openly backed the demonstrations, stating, “We feel solidarity with the present actions and calls heard from among veterans, and we will not allow the ruin of the Ukrainian state.”

Zelensky felt compelled to give a press conference lasting 14 hours to defend his adoption of the formula. He emphasized that elections in the Donbass would be held only after Russian troops had withdrawn. Russia continues to deny that it has any troops in Ukraine.

The Kremlin has welcomed the support by Kiev for the Steinmeier formula, describing it as a “step in the right direction,” but has remained notably low key about the negotiations, with very limited coverage in the Russian press and few official statements. After five years of economic warfare and military encirclement by the imperialist powers, Russia’s economic and political position has been dramatically weakened, a fact Zelensky is no doubt trying to exploit.

Zelensky’s move comes shortly after a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine, which was heavily supported by Berlin and Paris. It also takes place amid a dramatic intensification of the political crisis in Washington, where the CIA and the Democratic Party are using a call between Trump and Zelensky in July as the basis for an impeachment inquiry.

The adoption of the Steinmeier formula is part of Kiev’s maneuvers between US imperialism, on the one hand, and Berlin and Paris, on the other. Especially since 2014, Ukraine has become heavily reliant on US military support, forming a bulwark in Washington’s build-up for war against Russia. At the same time, Ukraine has extensive economic ties with the EU, and especially with Germany. Speaking to Foreign Policy magazine, a source close to Zelensky said that the Ukrainian president regarded the adoption of the Steinmeier formula as a political concession to France and Germany.

While the representatives of German and French imperialism like to present themselves as the “peace makers” in Ukraine, there is, in fact, nothing benign about their increasingly heavy involvement in the affairs of the country.

The involvement of Berlin stands in the tradition of the attempts by German imperialism to control the region as part of its drive to dominate Europe. Germany has occupied Ukraine and Eastern Europe in two world wars. In collaboration with local fascist forces, the Nazis murdered up to 7 million people in Ukraine, including roughly one million Ukrainian Jews.

Following the coup in February 2014, the then-German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had his picture taken alongside the Ukrainian neo-fascist Oleh Tyahnybok from the Svoboda party. Speaking as the president of Germany, Steinmeier omitted any reference to the Holocaust in his speeches in Poland on the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II in September of this year.

If Berlin is now pushing for a settlement of the conflict in the east of Ukraine under its own supervision, this is bound up with, first, the economic interests of the German bourgeoisie, which sees its business harmed by the ongoing war, and second, the growing conflict with US imperialism.

Since the coup in February 2014, the German bourgeoisie has aggressively expanded its involvement in the Ukrainian economy and politics. According to the German government, the number of those employed in Kiev at the Society for International Development (GiZ) and the KfW bank, both arms of the German government, has grown sevenfold since 2014. In 2016, Germany founded a separate chapter of its Foreign Chamber of Commerce (AHK) to represent the interests of German businesses in Kiev.

Some 1,000 German firms are now active in Ukraine. Nevertheless, business representatives and politicians have complained that they have not been as successful economically as expected under Poroshenko. Earlier this year, the German carmaker Volkswagen (VW) announced it would relocate one of its factories in Ukraine to Slovakia, amid an almost complete collapse of Ukrainian auto production.

The trade war between the EU and the US and the economic crisis Europe have heightened the significance of the markets in Eastern Europe for Germany. Trade with Eastern Europe recently surpassed that with both China and the US. Numerous German political commentators have stressed the need for Germany to defend its interests in the region to offset the economic impact of the trade war as well as the Brexit crisis.

Beyond these economic interests, Ukraine is at the center of the growing conflict between the imperialist powers over strategy vis-à-vis Russia. While Germany has played a central role in the EU and NATO military build-up against Russia, sections of the German bourgeoisie have watched with apprehension as their close business ties with Russia have been undermined by economic sanctions. The US sanctions, in particular, have hit not only Russian companies, but also their international, and especially German, partners.

Germany is also pushing the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would expand direct gas flows from Russia to Germany. The project is bitterly opposed by the US, Ukraine and most East European countries, and the Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to impose sanctions on companies involved in it.

France, which similarly has seen its relations with the US worsen significantly, has also played a major role in the latest moves by Zelensky. The Financial Times assessed Macron’s push for the Russian-Ukrainian prisoner swap in August as part of his attempts “to strengthen European ties to Russia to secure Moscow’s cooperation in other international crises, in particular the dangerous dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions,“ where France and Germany have clashed with the US.

The Zelensky government is trying to exploit these divisions between the imperialist powers to somehow improve the bargaining position of Ukraine. While appealing to Germany and France for negotiations on eastern Ukraine, Zelensky has doubled down on the criticism he made of Merkel and Macron in his July 25 phone call with Trump. In the call, Zelensky denounced Merkel and Macron for not doing enough for Ukraine. Last week, he added that he had “spoken a lot with [Merkel and Macron] about“ Nord Stream 2, and that he could not agree with their positions on the project.

Zelensky is also motivated by domestic considerations. His government just announced the most comprehensive privatization program since the restoration of capitalism in the 1990s, and he is trying to free his hands to implement this escalation of the Ukrainian oligarchy’s class war on the working class. The planned factory closures would result in the layoff of potentially tens of thousands of workers in a situation where most of the population is already living in dire poverty.

German defence minister visits Niger and Mali in preparation for massive combat operation in the Sahel

Gregor Link

The German government is preparing to expand its Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) mission in Mali and Niger into a massive combat operation and to extend it indefinitely. This was made clear by Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) during her first visit to the region last week.

“We must be prepared to stay here longer,” Kramp-Karrenbauer told the troops in Gao, northern Mali. The “changed security situation” required that the “self-protection” of the Bundeswehr troops be “appropriately taken into account” in the future “continuation of mandates.”

The minister’s programme included a demonstration of Germany’s Heron drone, the arming of which has been under consideration in government circles for months.

Germany needed “structures” in Mali to “stabilise” the government of the impoverished and war-torn country. For this, it was “necessary” to continue the deployment of the German military for as long as it took to “really train the local forces.” In addition, the various economic and military missions—above all France’s brutal combat mission “Barkhane”—are to be more closely interlinked with the mandates of the Bundeswehr in future.

The defence minister also intends to further strengthen the alliance with the regime in Niger, which has been armed to the highest standards by Germany. According to a report by Die Welt, Kramp-Karrenbauer is concerned with “developing bilateral relations,, “training” Nigerian forces and supplying further “military equipment.”

The Nigerien government is closely allied with Germany and has been taking extremely tough action against migrants for years. Even today, the “poorest country in the world”—measured by the UN Development Index—spends an unprecedented 18 percent of its national budget every year on investments in increasing state powers.

The Bundeswehr military base in Niamey, the capital of Niger, serves German troops as an indispensable logistics centre for deployments in Mali and other countries. The French army also maintains a command post in the city from which it controls its drone strikes against alleged “terrorists” in Mali. Here, the minister visited elite soldiers of the Special Forces Command of the Navy (KSM), who for months have been training special units of the Nigerien army in an unmandated mission.

The day before their appearance in Gao, Kramp-Karrenbauer had visited the EU programme EUTM in Koulikoro in central Mali. The “showcase for cooperation with European forces,” as the minister calls the military mission, trains proxy troops of the Malian government and in February became the target of a large-scale vehicle bomb attack. Only a week ago, at least 38 government soldiers, 15 rebels and 2 civilians died in an attack on two Malian army camps in the region.

Between November 2018 and March 2019 alone, 547 civilians lost their lives in Mali, and as of May 2019, nearly 200 UN soldiers had been killed. The war, which has lasted for more than six years, has cost the lives of at least 6,000 people and triggered a refugee crisis in the course of which tens of thousands have been displaced from their homelands.

At the same time, the neo-colonial campaigns of France and Germany in the country create the conditions for an escalating wave of ethnic violence. Hardly a month has passed without a massacre between the population groups. The Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, which supports the military operation, reports that the regime in Bamako, supported by Germany and France, is cooperating with militias that “terrorise the population in order to assert their influence in contested regions.”

The UN report on Mali published last Monday also states that the government troops trained by the West are committing bloody crimes. “Security forces and national defence forces” were responsible for the “extrajudicial killing of four Mondoro district men” and for at least one case of “torture that led to the death of the victim detained in Gao,” it said. In at least three cases, the “state authorities did not investigate or prosecute.”

Given the sharp tensions between the regime and large sections of the population, it can be assumed that the real extent of state violence is even greater. Only at the beginning of the year, the government had to resign as a result of mass protests and strikes in the capital.

In Mali, the Bundeswehr in turn supports the hated Bamako regime and is itself becoming more and more involved militarily. As the Neue Zürcher Zeitung reports, the soldiers of the occupying powers will in future appear side by side with the troops of the Malian government. Already, the Bundeswehr is combing its huge operational area “day and night” with patrols from “eleven armoured vehicles” equipped “with machine guns and grenade launchers.”

Germany and France are pursuing imperialist interests in Mali. The West African country is geo-strategically important and rich in raw materials. It contains at least three large deposits of uranium—in Falea, 200 miles west of Bamako, and in the city of Samit in the north of the country. Mali is now the third largest gold producer on the African continent after Ghana and South Africa. Industry analysts of the South African Public Investment Corp. (PIC) expect another “gold rush in West Africa” due to “low investment costs in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and the Ivory Coast.”

With its neo-colonial occupation of Mali and the comprehensive militarisation of the entire Sahel region, the German government can rely on the support of the media and all parties in the Bundestag (parliament)—including the Left Party and the Greens.

Kramp-Karrenbauer was accompanied by a delegation that included various journalists from the major newspapers and several members of the Bundestag. Criticism from this entourage came exclusively from the right. Business daily Handelsblatt, for example, complained of an alleged “sluggish provision” of supplies to the Bundeswehr in Mali. According to the newspaper, Tobias Lindner, security spokesman for the Greens, “explained” to the defence minister that the federal government “had to change the framework agreements.”

Tobias Pflüger, defence spokesman for the Left Party, who cynically calls himself a “peace researcher” although he regularly visits German troops in areas of deployment, criticised Kramp-Karrenbauer for not having coordinated the trip closely enough with the soldiers on the ground. “The minister, or at least her team, must have known that the trip was being planned at the same time as a troop rotation,” he told newsweekly Der Spiegel, “Anyone who overlooks or ignores something like this is rightly drawing the troops’ ire.”

Pflüger and the Left Party are particularly disturbed by the fact that the military operation in Niger has so far been conducted without an official mandate. “We criticise the fact that the Gazelle mission in Niger, although it involves ‘fighting with weapons,’ is being conducted without a mandate from the German Bundestag,” Pflüger writes on his homepage. “I call on the German government to put an end to this lack of a mandate and, if soldiers are already in Niger, to present a mandate for the Gazelle military mission.”

IMF cuts growth forecast and points to rising financial risks

Nick Beams

The International Monetary Fund has cut its forecast for global growth this year to its lowest level since the global financial crisis and recession of 2008-2009 and warned that deepening trade conflicts make the outlook “precarious.”

Apart from the headline numbers in the World Economic Outlook report issued on Tuesday, the most significant aspect of the IMF’s update on the state of the world economy was its forecast on continuing low growth in four key sectors.

It found that the global “big four”—the US, China, Japan and the eurozone—would not see any improvement in their growth rates over the next five years.

The IMF predicted the world economy would grow by only 3 percent this year, down from 3.6 percent in 2018 and 0.3 percent below the forecast at its April meeting.

The Global Financial Stability Report issued on Wednesday added to the darkening outlook. It warned that continuing low interest rates were leading investors to take greater risks in an effort to maintain their returns on capital, and that could have an adverse impact on the broader economy.

“The search for yield among institutional investors—such as insurance companies, asset managers and pension funds—has led them to take on riskier and less-liquid securities,” Tobias Adrian, the IMF’s financial counsellor said. “These exposures may act as an amplifier of shocks.”

The low-interest rate regime was supporting the economy at present, but was putting growth at risk in the medium term.

The IMF’s WEO report said global growth was expected to rise to 3.4 percent in 2020—a downward revision of 0.2 percentage points from its forecast last April. But it warned that even this limited projected upturn, unlike the “synchronised slowdown,” was “not broad based and is precarious.”

Growth for the advanced economies is projected to slow to 1.7 percent in 2019 and 2020. If a global pickup does take place, it will be as a result of expansion in emerging market economies. More than half of this would be driven by “recoveries or shallower recessions in stressed emerging markets, such as Turkey, Argentina and Iran.” In other words, the projected recovery rests on very shaky foundations, given the ongoing slowdown in the major economies.

The report itself acknowledged that the risks to its baseline outlook were “significant.” It warned that “should stress fail to dissipate in a few key emerging market and developing economies that are currently under performing or experiencing severe strains, global growth in 2020 would fall well short of the baseline.”

Further escalation of trade tensions and policy uncertainty could further weaken growth. Financial market sentiment could also deteriorate, resulting in tighter financial conditions that would impact heavily on vulnerable economies.

“Possible triggers for such an episode include worsening trade and geopolitical tensions, a no-deal Brexit withdrawal … and persistently weak economic data pointing to a protracted slowdown in global growth,” it stated.

For the US, the IMF expects the economy to slow from 2.4 percent growth this year to 2.1 percent in the election year of 2020—well below the Trump administration’s target of growth of 3 percent or more.

Largely as a result of the weakness in the German economy, economic growth in the eurozone is expected be only 1.2 percent this year, rising to 1.4 percent in 2020.

The growth rate of the Chinese economy is also forecast to slow. The IMF predicts that it will fall from 6.1 percent in 2019 to 5.5 percent in 2024, with the forecast for this year 0.2 percent lower than the prediction in April.

A rare moment of truth on the US support for Al Qaeda

Patrick Martin

There was a rare moment of truth during Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate. Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, an Iraq war veteran, said that while Trump had Kurdish blood on his hands, “so do many of the politicians in our country from both parties who have supported this ongoing regime-change war in Syria that started in 2011, along with many in the mainstream media, who have been championing and cheer-leading this regime-change war.”

This was directed not only against the Obama-Biden administration, which began the US covert intervention in Syria, but against the New York Times and CNN, the co-sponsors of the debate, who have been among the most strident in denouncing Trump’s order to withdraw from Syria.

Gabbard continued, “As president, I will end these regime-change wars by doing two things, ending the draconian sanctions that are really a modern-day siege, the likes of which we are seeing Saudi Arabia wage against Yemen, that have caused tens of thousands of Syrian civilians to die and to starve, and I would make sure that we stop supporting terrorists like Al Qaeda in Syria who have been the ground force in this ongoing regime-change war.”

This remarkable admission that American imperialism was allied in Syria with Al Qaeda—the supposed main enemy in the “war on terror” now nearly 20 years old—was passed over in silence by the three media “moderators,” two from CNN and one from the Times, and by the other eleven candidates.

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a military intelligence veteran of the Afghanistan war, tried to rebut Gabbard’s claim that Syria was a US-backed “regime-change” war. He reiterated the conventional presentation of the war as a struggle to defend civilians from the brutality of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, while not acknowledging that Washington and its allies among the Gulf sheikdoms had funneled money, weapons and Islamist gunmen for years in an effort to put a stooge regime into power in Damascus.

Gabbard responded, “So, really, what you’re saying, Mayor Pete, is that you would continue to support having U.S. troops in Syria for an indefinite period of time to continue this regime-change war that has caused so many refugees to flee Syria, that you would continue to have our country involved in a war that has undermined our national security, you would continue this policy of the U.S. actually providing arms in support to terrorist groups in Syria, like Al Qaeda, HTS, al-Nusra and others, because they are the ones who have been the ground force in this regime change war? That’s really what you’re saying?”

Buttigieg had no answer on the facts, merely declaring that Gabbard was advocating the same policy in Syria as Donald Trump. As for the corporate media, there was virtually no mention of Gabbard’s charge of a US-Al Qaeda alliance in Syria, and no attempt to refute it. Even to discuss that connection would call into question the entire foreign policy of American imperialism in the Middle East.

Gabbard is neither a pacifist nor an opponent of imperialism, but a serving military officer in the Army Reserve who did two tours of duty in Iraq, including in 2005 at the height of the war, and took several weeks off from the campaign in August for a unit training exercise in Indonesia—part of the US preparations for a future war with China.

“In short, when it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk,” Gabbard told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald in 2016. “When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove.”

Her views tend towards outright Islamophobia. She criticized the Obama administration for refusing to use the term “Islamic radical terrorism” to describe Al Qaeda, along the lines of ultra-right operatives like Steve Bannon, Trump’s onetime political counselor and former campaign manager. Bannon invited her to the White House where she met Trump early in 2017, one of the first congressional Democrats to do so. She later travelled to Syria and had a face-to-face meeting with President Bashar al-Assad.

While she describes herself as a convert to Hinduism, and has praised the Hindu chauvinist Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, Gabbard’s connection to that religion is actually tenuous. As described in a long profile in New York magazine, her father joined an offshoot of the Hare Krishna sect founded by an American guru named Chris Butler. People raised in this sect include Gabbard’s family, both her first and second husband, and her congressional chief of staff. Gabbard’s father is currently a Hawaii state senator, elected on a program of liberal environmentalism and anti-gay bigotry. Gabbard only shifted her position on gay marriage after several years in the state legislature.

None of this affects the truth of what Gabbard said about the US intervention in Syria, or the utilization of Al Qaeda forces in Syria as the ground troops for American imperialism’s regime-change war.

Margaret Sanders International Scholarship 2019/2020 for Undergraduate African Students

Application Deadline: 1st November 2019

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be taken at (country): African countries

Type: Undergraduate

Eligibility:

• Be enrolled at an AISA Full Member school in good standing
• Be in their senior year of high school
• Be endorsed and recommended by their school
• Have applied to a qualifying 501 (c)(3), U.S. chartered, degree-granting institution

Selection Criteria: The Margaret Sanders International Scholarship will be awarded to the students who demonstrate character strengths such as persistence and motivation, resourcefulness, and acceptance of other cultures and points of view.
Nominated students should also display a genuine interest in, and sustained commitment to the welfare of others, as reflected through participation in school activities, and community/civic involvement.


Factors considered in the selection process include:

1. 1. Academic achievement
   2. Financial need

• Leadership and service contributions that directly address community and societal needs and solutions

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: To be determined by the Margaret Sanders Foundation each year (normally around US$5,000)

How to Apply: Margaret Sanders International Scholarship details and the application form can be found on the AAIE website here.

• Full Member AISA schools are invited to submit one student for consideration of the scholarship opportunity.
• AAIE will forward all applications received from the region to the AISA Board who will choose one student to represent the AISA region. This applicant will then compete with candidates in other regions for this prestigious international award.
• Winners will be notified on 15 December with awards presented at the annual AAIE Conference in February.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Novo Nordisk International Talent Programme 2020/2021 (Funded to Study at University of Copenhagen)

Application Deadlines:

• 25th October, 2019
• 1st April, 2020

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Universities: The International Alliance of Research Universities are:

• University of Cape Town 

Others are:

• Australian National University
• ETH, Zürich
• National University of Singapore
• Peking University
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of Cambridge
• University of Oxford
• The University of Tokyo
• Yale University

Harvard University is also included in the Novo Nordisk International Talent Program.

To be taken at (country): University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Eligible Field of Study: Bioinformatics, Biochemistry, Biology, Biology-Biotechnology, Public Health, Food Innovation and Health, Global Health, Human Nutrition, Human Biology, Human Physiology, Immunology and Inflammation, Health Informatics, Chemistry, Medicine, Medicine and Technology, Molecular Biomedicine, Nanoscience and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

About the Award: Novo Nordisk International Talent Programme is a scholarship programme set up to assist students from the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) in a range of select academic fields seeking to study abroad at the University of Copenhagen.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: To be eligible to apply, candidate must:

• be enrolled in a degree programme at a IARU university or Harvard University
• apply for admission to UCPH as an exchange or guest student
• study at third year Bachelor’s level or Master’s level while at UCPH in one of the following programmes:
  Bioinformatics, Biochemistry, Biology, Biology-Biotechnology, Public Health, Food Innovation and Health, Global Health, Human Nutrition, Human Biology, Human Physiology, Immunology and Inflammation, Health Informatics, Chemistry, Medicine, Medicine and Technology, Molecular Biomedicine, Nanoscience and Pharmaceutical Sciences
• meet a GPA requirement of minimum 3
• engage in study activities pertaining to metabolism, insulin, haemoglobin and obesity

Selection Criteria: The programme gives priority to applicants who display a strong academic background and have submitted an ambitious study plan for their stay at the University of Copenhagen.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: 

• The scholarship may be spent towards the cost of tuition fees, travel costs, insurance, and other expenses incurred in connection with studying abroad at UCPH.
• The scholarship will typically amount to approximately EURO € 1200 a month. Depending on the costs and length of the study abroad at UCPH, it may increase up to EURO € 26000 in total.

Duration of Scholarship: Scholarships are awarded for up to one academic year.

How to Apply: To submit an application, you will be required to prepare following documents:

• Application form containing a motivated study plan and a list courses you plan to attend during your study abroad – download here
• Transcript of records in English from your Bachelor’s programme and Master’s degree programme (if applicable)

The application and requested documents are submitted through this link.
Please fill in the form electronically and attach all documents as PDF files. Please do not attach recommendations.
You will be requested to submit your GPA, including both Bachelor’s and Master’s grades (if you have Master’s grades). Please use this GPA calculator.
If you are applying from the National University of Singapore, the NUS CAP wil be converted to GPA by multiplying the NUS CAP with 0,80.
You may expect to hear about the outcome of your application 4-8 weeks after the application deadline.


Visit Scholarship Webpage for details