To begin with, apply for a master’s programme at universityadmissions.se, between 16 October 2023 – 15 January 2024.
Apply for an SI Scholarships for Global Professionals 12th February 2024. follow the instructions below.
Offered annually? Yes
Eligible countries: International students (especially from developing countries)
To be taken in (country): Sweden
Accepted Subject Areas: SISGP offers scholarships to a large number of master’s programmes starting in the autumn semester 2024. Check the list of master’s programmes that are eligible for SISGP.
About Swedish Institute Scholarships: The Swedish Institute Scholarships for Global Professionals (SISGP) programme is part of the Swedish government’s international awards scheme aimed at developing global leaders who will contribute to the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It is funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Sweden and administered by the Swedish Institute (SI).
The programme offers a unique opportunity for global professionals to develop professionally and academically, to experience Swedish society and culture, and to build a long-lasting relationship with Sweden and with each other.
The goal is to enable the scholarship holders to play an active role in the positive development of the societies in which they live. Ideal candidates are ambitious young professionals with academic qualifications, demonstrated work and leadership experience, ambition to make a difference by working with issues which contribute to a just and sustainable development in their country in a long term perspective, and a clear idea of how a study programme in Sweden would benefit their country.
Priority will be given to applicants with a strong and relevant professional background and demonstrated leadership experience.
Eligibility/Criteria: Applicants must
have minimum of 3,000 hours of demonstrated full-time or part-time employment, voluntary work, paid/unpaid internship, and/or position of trust.
be from an eligible country
display academic qualifications and leadership experience.
be required to pay tuition fees to the universities, have followed the steps of university admission, and will be admitted to one of the eligible master’s programmes..
have demonstrated leadership experience from employment, voluntary work, and/or internship after high school studies.
Read more about the selection criteria, target countries, and eligible master programmes (in link below) before applying.
Number of Scholarships: Approximately 300 scholarships will be awarded
Swedish Institute Scholarships Value:
Tuition fees: directly paid to the Swedish university by us
Living expenses of SEK 10,000/month
Travel grant of SEK 15,000 *
Insurance against illness and accident
Membership of the SI Network for Future Global Leaders(NFGL) – a platform to grow professionally and build your network while in Sweden
Membership of the SI Alumni Network after your scholarship period – a platform for continued networking and further professional development
* The travel grant is a one-time payment for the entire study period. The grant is not applicable to students already living in Sweden.
The scholarship does not cover:
Additional grants for family members
Application fee to University Admissions
Duration of Scholarships: The Swedish Institute Study Scholarships is intended for full-time master’s level studies of one or two years, and is only awarded for programmes starting in the autumn semester. The scholarship is granted for one academic year (two semesters) at a time. It will be extended for programmes longer than two semesters, provided that the student has passed his/her courses/credits.
How to apply for Swedish Institute Scholarships: The application process consists of these steps.
Apply for a master’s programme at universityadmissions.se
Apply for a SISGP scholarship in February 2024
Notifications from University Admissions
Announcement of 300 successful SI scholarship recipients
It is important to go through ALL Application requirements before applying for this scholarship
Britain’s parliament reopened on Monday to declare support for Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza.
Conservative government Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour Leader of the Opposition Sir Keir Starmer delivered near identical opening statements, laying down the trio of lying assertions that became the template for speakers from all parties during the debate:
· Israel is exercising its “right to defend itself”.
· It will “of course” observe international humanitarian law in doing so under terrible difficulties.
· Responsibility for any deaths of Palestinian civilians “lies with Hamas” and “Hamas alone” who are using them as “human shields”.
Rishi Sunak outside 10 Downing Street [Photo: Open Government Licence v3.0]
Hamas had carried out an “existential strike at the very idea of Israel as a safe homeland for Jewish people,” intoned Sunak. Adherence to international law must be balanced against the understanding that Israel faces “a vicious enemy that embeds itself behind civilians.”
“As in any time of great crisis,” Starmer proclaimed. “It is crucial that this House speaks with one voice in condemnation of terror, in support of Israel in its time of agony and for the dignity of all human life.”
Amid his professions of support for Israel, Sunak, like Starmer, did not shy away from speaking of his government’s recognition of the “concerns” and trauma suffered by Britain’s Muslim community regarding the plight of the Palestinians.
In a transparent attempt to shield themselves from the legal implications of their support for war crimes, Sunak made repeated reference to Israel’s taking “every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians” and to their encouragement of operations “in line with international humanitarian law”. Starmer added, “Israel’s defence must be conducted within international law. Civilians must not be targeted. Innocent lives must be protected.” As if any of this is on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s agenda.
They cited in turn the equally hypocritical statements of US President Joe Biden, that “democracies we are stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law”, and his Secretary of State Anthony of Blinken, that “We democracies distinguish ourselves from terrorists by striving for a different standard.”
In this way Israel was provided with a license to commit mass murder.
Sunak and Starmer know what they are endorsing with their lies. Israeli bombing raids have already killed more than 2,800 people in Gaza, at least 720 of them children, wounded 10,800, including well over 2,400 children, and displaced close to a million people. Thousands are trapped under rubble. Cut-off electricity, water and food supplies threaten millions with a humanitarian catastrophe.
A day earlier, armed forces minister James Heappey told Sky News of the planned ground invasion of Gaza, “Nobody should pretend that this is going to be anything other than horrific, I’m afraid we’re going to see some awful things over the next few days.”
Former British Army Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon wrote in the Daily Telegraph, “There is no way to describe the potential carnage that will likely unfold. Street by street fighting in Gaza is the very worst form of warfare – just look at Stalingrad, and more recently in Bakhmut in Ukraine.”
British imperialism is sending military support, not only to facilitate Israel’s operations against Gaza but as part of a US-led plan to prepare conflict with Iran, either directly or by engineering a military engagement with its allies Syria or Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Sunak’s statement referred to announced plans to deploy Royal Air Force surveillance aircraft, two Royal Navy ships, three Merlin helicopters and a company of Royal Marines to the region “to deliver practical support to Israel and partners in the region, and offer deterrence and assurance.” They join the United States’s enormous deployment of two aircraft carrier strike groups involving over 15,000 personnel.
Sunak and Starmer’s more carefully calibrated statements were a launching pad for a bloodthirsty, dictatorial deluge from the Tory benches, as MPs reinforced demands for aggressive action against Hamas, more aggression towards Iran and the suppression of popular protest at home.
Former senior cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi declared, “Israel has to take the necessary steps to root out this evil virus … and of course destroy it.”
Bob Blackman claimed, “There can be no greater contrast than between the actions of the IDF [Israel Defense Force], who attempt to prevent the loss of civilian life, compared to the sheer brutality of the terrorists.”
He urged an expansion of the conflict across the region, noting that Hamas’s attack had been “well planned, well resourced,” and stating, “It is beyond belief that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, who fund and support Hamas, were not beyond this whole operation.”
This was a common refrain, with Stephen Hammond also requesting, “Hamas, Hezbollah and a multitude of terrorist organisations get their logistic, financial and military support from Iran. Can [Sunak] assure the House that he will work with our international partners to do everything possible to isolate Iran and increase economic sanctions.”
Sir Julian Lewis made clear the broader predatory aims of British and American imperialism in pursuing war in the region: “Hamas is a creature of a client state of Russia, and we must remember that Russia is still at war with Ukraine.” Sunak responded, “We remain committed to our support for Ukraine… he can be reassured that we are able to do both.”
Former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith followed Home Secretary Suella Braverman in declaring the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” antisemitic—“all about getting rid of Jews”—and tarring every one of the more than 150,000 people who demonstrated in solidarity with Gaza in London just two days prior. Sunak replied that police were still “reviewing footage” to pursue arrests.
On the opposite benches, the few Labour MPs, largely of Muslim and Asian backgrounds, who made criticisms of the Israeli government were sure to preface them with a ritual denunciation of Hamas and invocation of Israel’s “right to defend itself”. The rest of their contributions consisted of requests for Sunak to urge caution in his conversations with the Israelis and statements of support for a peaceful two-state solution.
Each such contribution gave Sunak an opportunity to ram home the same message, to cheers from the Tory benches: “We should support absolutely Israel’s right to defend itself and to go after Hamas… a vicious enemy that embeds itself behind civilians… We must acknowledge, always, that responsibility for what is happening here is with Hamas and Hamas alone.”
Not one member of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs denounced either the government’s or Starmer and his shadow cabinet’s open endorsement of war crimes or acts to suppress popular protest.
Richard Burgon was the group’s lead speaker, with John McDonnell making only half-hearted attempts at getting called to speak and Jeremy Corbyn apparently absent from the chamber. Burgon remarked that Palestinians were being made to suffer collective punishment, “a war crime under the Geneva Conventions”, but concluded in the same desultory style as his colleagues, “Will the prime minister take this opportunity to make clear to the Israeli government that this collective punishment of Palestinian civilians must end immediately?”
The debate finished after just two hours, hurried off the agenda for a discussion on overcrowding in British prisons. Its significance was in revealing the chasm between Parliament and the overwhelming opposition to Israel’s bloody war in the population—on show in the mass demonstrations held across the UK on Saturday and scheduled to repeat this weekend.
The last three days have cast shadows of a looming political conflict between the parties of big business which occupy the House of Commons and the working class—young workers and students above all.
Daniel Noboa, the 35-year-old son of Ecuador’s richest man and five-time presidential candidate Álvaro Noboa, has been elected president of the country with 51.95 percent of the votes in a second round against Luisa Gonzalez, the candidate hand-picked by former President Rafael Correa.
Nearly 100,000 heavily armed troops and police were deployed to oversee the voting in Ecuador's first elections held under a state of exception. [Photo: Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense]
The election was held after millions had taken to the streets repeatedly to protest social inequality over the past four years, amid rising poverty. Six million out of 17 million Ecuadorians live on less than $3 per day, and about 90 percent of workers make less than $780 per month, the official cost of a family’s basic needs.
Impermeable to the mass sentiments for radical change among workers and peasants, however, Ecuadorian capitalist politics vomited up the election of a man who personifies privilege and plutocracy.
Incumbent President Guillermo Lasso, himself a multimillionaire banker, is due to leave office in December as a result of a historic political crisis. In mid-May, Lasso preempted an impeachment vote over corruption charges by invoking for the first time a “mutual death” clause that dissolved Congress and triggered snap elections.
The Lasso administration, whose approval hovers near 10 percent, has implemented draconian austerity measures to fulfill the diktats of the International Monetary Fund of paying back debtors and cutting the fiscal deficit. This included massive cuts and layoffs in healthcare despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
With Lasso’s failure to implement his broader plan for privatizations and other regressive measures, and fearing a revolutionary upheaval after a series of strikes led by teachers culminated in nationwide protests in June 2022, leading sectors of the ruling class pushed Lasso out.
Since the end in 2014 of the oil boom—the country’s main export—the last three administrations, beginning with Rafael Correa (2007-2017) launched an onslaught of social cuts that greatly discredited the entire political establishment. In response, the Ecuadorian oligarchy has been lurching toward authoritarian forms of rule.
Using a significant increase in gang violence as a pretext, Lasso has adopted increasingly dictatorial forms of rule, including 10 states of exception that involved suspending democratic rights and deploying the military regionally or nationally. This was followed by the autocratic decision to dissolve Congress and rule by decree since, implementing regressive taxes and pro-investor policies.
Several politicians have been killed this year, most infamously the presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, whose candidacy won third place after his death and whose seven murder suspects were all killed in jail. Citing these killings, Lasso ordered nearly 100,000 heavily armed troops and police to effectively oversee the voting in the country’s first elections under a state of exception.
Most significantly, the elections took place under the shadow of a new agreement of military cooperation between Lasso and the Biden administration earlier this month. For the first time since 2009, US troops will be allowed to carry out full-fledged operations on Ecuadorian soil.
The agreement with Lasso, whose regime has acquired a semi-dictatorial character and whose security forces massacred at least seven peaceful demonstrators during the 2022 protests, further unmasks the Biden administration’s claim to defend “democracy” internationally. The deal follows repeated deployments of US troops to assist the murderous repression by the Dina Boluarte regime in Peru against demonstrations opposing the coup that brought it to power.
Rather than being aimed at “transnational drug cartels,” this alliance fully integrates Ecuador into the criminal onslaught led by US imperialism against workers and toilers globally resisting oppression, inequality and dictatorship.
This closer alignment with US imperialism began under the Lenin Moreno administration (2017-2021), which ended the asylum of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. It handed him over to British authorities, who plan to extradite him to face life imprisonment or worse in the United States for exposing imperialism’s war crimes and anti-democratic conspiracies worldwide.
Daniel Noboa [Photo by Christian Medina, Asamblea Nacional / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]
Noboa, who is slated to rule for 15 months until the end of Lasso’s original term, will continue his agenda of austerity, a turn to dictatorship and alignment with US imperialism.
Lasso signed a trade deal with China, and Noboa led a congressional delegation to Russia, reflecting the efforts of the ruling class to leverage these ties to get a better deal with US and European imperialism. However, these maneuvers are carried out within a framework of dependence and subservience to imperialism. Noboa and Lasso have both parroted the official US line of unconditional support for Israel as the supposed victim of “terrorism.”
Noboa’s National Democratic Alliance (ADN) party, moreover, is a new façade for the clique around the Lenín Moreno administration and other right-wing forces. It includes Mover, the new name of the former ruling party Alianza País, which brought both Correa and Moreno to power. As a legislator, Noboa backed Lasso’s pro-business tax and regulatory bills and the “mutual death” decree.
It is worth adding that, while centering his campaign on “anti-corruption” slogans, Noboa, like Lasso, appears in the Pandora Papers as an owner of offshore entities in Panama, where the rich illegally hide their fortunes to evade taxes. Ecuador forbids presidential candidates from holding assets in tax havens.
To the extent that Noboa was able to absurdly pose as “center-left” and an outsider, it was only possible due to the political bankruptcy of the nominal “left” opposition.
His opponent, Luisa Gonzalez, is a career politician who rose through the ranks of the state bureaucracy under Rafael Correa and Lenin Moreno. Her Citizen’s Revolution Movement party was formed by Correa after breaking politically with Moreno, even though Correa had handpicked him as his successor. Correa currently lives in Belgium after being sentenced to prison in absentia for corruption.
Gonzalez was presented in the corporate media as a “socialist,” even though her campaign sought primarily to outdo Noboa from the right. She vowed a “war,” a “state of emergency” and an “iron fist” against gangs, and repeatedly highlighted her meetings with US and EU ambassadors and officials to discuss cooperation on security. These meetings were a transparent commitment to the geopolitical agenda of US and European imperialism.
The electoral losses to the likes of Lasso and Noboa show that Correismo and the other “pink tide” bourgeois nationalist movements in Latin America have reached a political dead-end.
More broadly, the Stalinist Communist Parties, the union bureaucracies they lead, and the indigenous nationalist leaderships have maintained a policy for decades of backing one faction or another of the capitalist political establishment—including sections that have backed Correa, Moreno, Lasso and now Noboa. These forces and their pseudo-left apologists are primarily responsible for the lack of a genuine left-wing alternative to the reactionary politics of the entire Ecuadorian ruling class.
Now, the scion of the Bonita bananas will oversee a corrupt regime subordinated to its bosses on Wall Street and dependent on exporting oil, fish and bananas like the proverbial “banana republic.” But Ecuador today is also a very different country. Since the 1960s, the urban population has grown from a third to over two thirds of the population, adding millions of workers closely integrated into the globalized economy.
UN officials warned yesterday that Gaza will run out of water and electricity today, due to the blockade the Israeli state imposed amid the uprising against its 16-year illegal blockade of Gaza. The unprecedented humanitarian crisis unleashed in the densely populated area of 2.3 million people, half of whom are under 18, exposes the genocidal character of the Israeli war on Gaza supported by the NATO imperialist powers.
“There is an electricity crisis, water crisis, a crisis of everything,” Eyad Abu Mutlaq told Reuters in Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip. He said he had not found any bread in four bakeries in the city, towards which thousands of Palestinians are fleeing after Israel issued an order demanding that over 1.1 million Gazans abandon their homes around Gaza City and flee into the south of the Gaza Strip.
“I was looking for basic food, eggs, rice, canned food, even milk for the children and I could not find them,” said Um Salem, a resident of Khan Younis. “This is how Israel is fighting us, through starvation of our children. They either kill our children by bombs or soon by starvation.”
Mass protests are building in the working class internationally against the genocidal policies of the Israeli state, which has the full backing of Washington and its European allies. Israel’s blockade of water, food and fuel on Gaza is leading to mass starvation and a collapse of health care and amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population—a crime under international law.
Over 1 million Gazans, nearly half Gaza’s population, have already fled their homes under relentless Israeli bombing that has claimed over 2,800 lives and left over 10,000 wounded. Some 600,000 Gazan refugees have arrived in the more sparsely populated middle and south of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli evacuation order would also compel Gazans to abandon 23 hospitals in northern Gaza with a capacity of 2,000 hospital beds—over half of the area’s 3,500 total hospital beds.
UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) official Philippe Lazzarini gave a press conference in the occupied West Bank, warning of the imminence of mass deaths due to lack of drinking water and the cut-off of electricity to hospitals in Gaza and appealing for a cease-fire.
“Before the war, Gaza was under a blockade for 16 years, and basically, more than 60 percent of the population was already relying on international food assistance,” he said. Now, however, he said: “There is not one drop of water, not one grain of wheat, not a liter of fuel that has been allowed into the Gaza Strip for the last eight days.” He added that UNRWA operations in Gaza “are on the verge of collapse,” with UNRWA staff issued one liter of water per day for drinking, washing, and all other purposes.
Lazzarini called for an end to the Israeli siege and for fuel to be sent to operate fuel desalination plants, food refrigeration facilities, and hospital incubators and generators. He said, “We need to truck fuel into Gaza now. Fuel is the only way for people to have safe drinking water. If not, people will start dying of severe dehydration, among them young children, the elderly, and women…I appeal for the siege on humanitarian assistance to be lifted now.”
UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma said the agency is concerned about the spread of water-borne diseases in Gaza, as Gazans in desperation drink fouled water. She said, “We are very concerned about the spread of waterborne diseases if water continues not to be available in Gaza because we do know that people are resorting to dirty water sources, including wells.”
World Health Organization director for the Eastern Mediterranean Ahmed al-Mandhari warned that Gaza has “24 hours of water, electricity, and fuel left.” He added that if the Israeli blockade were not lifted immediately, doctors would have to “prepare death certificates for their patients.” He added that overcrowding and energy shutoffs have placed “intensive care units, operating rooms, emergency services, and other wings” on the brink of collapse.
In violation of international law, however, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are relentlessly bombing Gaza hospitals and murdering Gazan health personnel. Al-Mandhari said 111 health facilities have been attacked, 12 health care workers killed, and 60 ambulances bombed so far. The result is a collapse of medical care in Gaza, he noted: Doctors “have to triage the patients who are coming in. They have no other choice. There are too many people, so some are left to die slow deaths.”
In Egypt, across the border from Gaza, convoys of international aid are waiting to travel to the devastated enclave. However, the Egyptian military junta of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi refuses to open the Rafah border crossing, which the IDF have bombed together with roads leading to it. Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry blamed Israel, noting: “Until now the Israeli government has not taken a position on opening the Rafah crossing from the Gaza side to allow the entrance of assistance and exit of citizens of third countries.”
However, the Sisi regime itself is working with the Israeli regime, for its own reasons, to keep the border crossing closed. The Sisi junta fears that, if Palestinians fled en masse into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Islamist fighters from Gaza’s ruling Hamas party could join the ongoing Islamist insurgency in the Sinai.
US and European officials, facing mounting mass protests at home against the Israeli war on Gaza, are making insincere statements calling for humanitarian aid to Gaza. As the European Union pledged it would try to launch a humanitarian airlift to Gaza, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met the Israeli war cabinet yesterday in Tel Aviv. Blinken reportedly told Israeli officials that some statement on humanitarian aid to Gaza was necessary to try to prevent an eruption of mass anger against the NATO powers’ complicity in the war on Gaza.
In a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Blinken called “allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza critical for keeping up global support for IDF operations,” the Times of Israel reported, citing a senior Israeli military source as saying: “The Biden administration understands the need to dismantle Hamas and stresses that one of the ways to make sure there is enough time to do it is by avoiding a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
This is a pack of lies, first of all because the crimes of the Netanyahu regime have already launched a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Moreover, Blinken, while proposing to help limit the political fallout of the war on Gaza, made no criticisms of Israeli government statements making clear that Netanyahu does not intend to allow any relief to Gaza. That is, Blinken’s statements were empty, insincere political cover for the continued policy of Washington and the European powers to back Netanyahu’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Indeed, earlier in the day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office had issued a brief statement denying that any truce was in place allowing for humanitarian aid to Gaza. It said, “There is currently no truce and humanitarian aid in Gaza in exchange for getting foreigners out.”
The IDF also explicitly denied that any talks were underway for a truce that could allow relief supplies into Gaza. “There are no such efforts under way at this time. If anything changes, we will inform the public. We are continuing our fight against Hamas,” IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.
In Poland, a change of government is imminent following parliamentary elections on Sunday. According to the Polish Electoral Commission, the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which has been in power for eight years, remains the strongest force with 36 percent of the vote, despite losing ground. However, it lacks a coalition partner needed for a majority. Even together with the fascist Konfederacja (7.1 percent), it would only control a projected 211 out of 460 seats in the Sejm, the first chamber of the Polish parliament.
On the other hand, the Citizens Platform (PO) led by former European Union (EU) Council President Donald Tusk, together with the social democratic Lewica (Left) and the conservative party alliance Trzecia Droga (Third Way), would have a majority with 249 seats. The opposition therefore spoke of a “victory of democracy” and Tusk of the “end of PiS rule.” “We removed them from power,” he cheered.
The official final result is only expected to be announced Tuesday.
The election victory of the opposition is the result of high voter turnout, which at 74 percent was higher than ever before in the Third Republic. Long lines formed in front of polling stations late into the night, and the number of Poles living abroad who registered to vote in embassies or consulates also reached a new record of 600,000.
Although PiS lost about 8 percent of the vote, it gained voters in absolute numbers. It was “not defeated, but only overruled,” as one comment put it. Above all, the opposition was able to mobilise voters who protested en masse in recent months against the attacks on democratic rights and the ongoing social crisis.
In the eight years of its rule, PiS has brought large parts of the media and the judiciary under its control, filled key positions with hand-picked people in state-owned companies such as the oil company Orlen and in the army leadership, eliminated the right to abortion, forced education and culture to take an ultranationalist course and strengthened anti-Semitic and fascist forces.
Against this background, the election result is an expression of the widespread rejection of the reactionary policies of the PiS. However, the election winners can in no way live up to the expectations associated with the rejection of the PiS.
Tusk himself was Polish Prime Minister from 2007 to 2014 and President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019. He was therefore described by the PiS, which campaigned against Germany and the EU, as a stooge of Brussels and Berlin. His PO is a member of the conservative European People’s Party (EPP), which Tusk chaired from 2019 to 2022. The Citizens Platform, which had Tusk as its lead candidate in the election, includes three other right-wing parties: among them the peasant party Agrounia and the Green Party.
On social issues, the liberal Tusk is clearly to the right of the PiS, which gained support among poorer sections of the rural population mainly by increasing child benefit and pensions. In the Ukraine war, Tusk’s policy is no different from that of the PiS. Both fully support NATO’s proxy war against Russia.
However, PiS clashed with the Ukrainian government during the election campaign for nationalist reasons. Large areas of today’s western Ukraine used to belong to Poland, and the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, who is revered as a hero in Ukraine, was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Poles. At the same time, German imperialism is using the Ukraine war to become the leading military power on the continent, which has met with opposition from the PiS. For his part, Tusk speaks for the wing of the Polish bourgeoisie that prefers a closer alliance with Berlin and Brussels.
Tusk even sought to outdo the PiS from the right with agitation against refugees from Africa and the Middle East, which was a core issue in the PIS’s election campaign.
The Trzecia Droga alliance, which Tusk needs for a government majority, consists mainly of the conservative green party Polska 2050 and the right-wing conservative Peasant Party PSL. Many of its leaders were formerly coalition partners of PiS. The Third Way is currently on 14 percent of the vote.
Lewica (8.5 percent) was cobbled together from the shards of various post-Stalinist and social-democratic parties that dominated Polish politics around the turn of the millennium under President Aleksander Kwaśniewski and have completely discredited themselves in the interest of capital due to their right-wing policies. At this election, they suffered the second-largest losses after the PiS.
Despite the clear electoral success of the opposition parties, it is by no means certain that there will actually be a change of government. On election night, commentators speculated about how closed the three opposition electoral lists were in their desire to replace the PiS.
PiS will do everything it can to divide and lure the opposition. PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczyński threatened on election night: “We have days of struggle ahead of us, tensions of various kinds, but the final will be our victory and above all Poland’s victory.” He added: “Whatever the distribution of votes, we will win!”
PiS has considerable power to sabotage the formation of a new government. President Andrzej Duda, who belongs to the PiS camp and whose term of office runs until 2025, has a free hand in whom he entrusts with the formation of a government. If he exhausts all the possibilities of the constitution, the opposition can form a new government in mid-December at the earliest—if it still holds together.
Even non-constitutional means (the Supreme Court is firmly in the hands of the PiS) and a possible coup, as Donald Trump attempted in the US, should not be ruled out. The nationalist WOT militia created by the PiS in 2016 could serve as a base of support for this.
Earlier this year, Jaroslav Kurski, deputy editor-in-chief of Gazetta Wyborcza, warned, “There is a war going on beyond our border, and PiS will not hesitate to take extraordinary measures to maintain its power.” What was Kurski thinking at the time? An authoritarian presidential dictatorship? The intervention of the Polish army in Ukraine, which has already been threatened several times, and the imposition of martial law at home?
Law professor Wojciech Sadurski also warned shortly before the election in the Wyborzcza that Kaczyński, like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, would refuse to recognize the validity of the elections. He had his “doubts” that the Polish institutions would thwart such a coup.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the mouthpiece of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, celebrated Tusk’s election success as “good news for the European Union” but is also concerned about whether the “change of direction can really be implemented quickly.”
“In the EU, one should not expect,” warns the F.A.Z., “that Poland will very quickly become a reliable partner again. On the contrary, there is a great danger that the opposite will be the case: The largest EU member in East Central Europe, whose importance for supporting Ukraine can hardly be overestimated, could initially enter a dangerous phase of political instability.”
All those in Poland who elected Tusk and his allies to get rid of the reactionary PiS should be warned. Tusk, the man of European and Polish capital, will do everything to prevent such a “phase of political instability” and will come to terms with the PiS.
The report by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, published by the Bank for International Settlements earlier this month, provides further insight into the conditions which led to the March-April episode of significant US and global banking stress.
A pedestrian passes a Silicon Valley Bank Private branch in San Francisco, Monday, March 13, 2023.. [AP Photo/Jeff Chiu]
It pointed to large-scale deficiencies in the management practices of the banks involved, a culture of profit-making at all costs without regard to the risks involved, lack of supervision by regulatory authorities because they lacked the resources and, in cases where it was carried out, manifest failures of assessment.
The report began by noting that the turmoil in the banking system was “the most significant system-wide banking stress since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) in terms of scale and scope.”
The report did not make the point, but it was the occasion for three of the four largest bank failures in US history.
However, it did note that the failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic “triggered a crisis of confidence in the resilience of banks, banking systems and financial markets across multiple jurisdictions” and that “wide-scale public support measures” were necessary to mitigate the impact of the stress.
This is a rather euphemistic way of saying that regulatory measures put in place after the crisis of 2008, which were supposed to guard against the necessity of state intervention, failed completely. Once again a bailout operation had to be launched lest there was a “systemic” breakdown.
The report claimed that what are known as the Basel III reforms have “helped to shield the global banking system from a more severe banking crisis” but goes on to say they “are not calibrated to produce ‘zero failures.’”
It is not clear from the report what exactly the reforms are intended to do because it pointed out that “despite the enhanced levels of resilience provided by Basel III, the recent turmoil highlighted that banks can be vulnerable to rapid changes in market sentiment.”
However, it is precisely in conditions of “rapid changes” in market sentiment that regulations are supposed to have their effect. If they do not, then it is akin to having an umbrella that works well in relatively calm conditions but is blown inside out and rendered useless in a storm.
Furthermore, according to the report: “The combination of high leverage and long-term opaque assets that are funded with short-term runnable deposits makes banks especially vulnerable to a loss of trust in their long-term solvency.”
The situation described is not an exceptional set of circumstances. It is at the very centre of banking operations and profit making from time immemorial—borrowing short term and lending long. What makes the present situation so potentially explosive is that in the financial world today these operations have assumed ever larger and more complex forms.
The report outlined three structural changes that have taken place since the 2008 crisis. Non-banking financial intermediation, in particular the role of hedge funds, “grew significantly” and now accounts for around 50 percent of global financial assets.
A crypto asset system has rapidly developed, accounting for nearly $3 trillion in 2021 before falling back to $1 trillion. While the connection to the global banking system is small overall, crypto assets “are concentrated in a small number of banks.”
Thirdly, the digitalisation of finance and the use of mobile apps facilitates the ability of depositors to rapidly move their funds.
The report provided some details about each of the banks that went down. Between 2019 and 2021, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) tripled in size “as it benefited from rapid deposit inflow during the period of rapid venture capital and technology sector growth in a period of exceptionally low interest rates.”
These deposits, largely uninsured, were invested by SVB in long-term Treasuries, which led to a rapid increase in unrealised losses when their value fell as a result of higher interest rates.
On March 9 SVB lost over $40 billion in deposits. It was set to lose $100 billion the following day in a deposit outflow that was “remarkable in terms of scale and scope when compared with other episodes of banking stress.”
The SVB board put short-run profits above effective risk management and removed interest rate hedges that would have protected the bank. Moreover, it had compensation packages for senior management which provided an incentive to focus on quick profits.
The failure of Signature Bank, which had total assets of $110.4 billion and was third largest bank failure in US history, raised other significant issues. Like SVB, it experienced tremendous growth with its size doubling during 2020–2021.
The trigger for its failure was the self-liquidation of Silvergate Bank, which was heavily involved in crypto currency, as well as the flow-on effect from the demise of SVB. The report said the failure of the bank was due to poor management and its failure to understand the risks associated with its heavy involvement in the crypto market.
However, the report issued a mild rebuke to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) saying it could have escalated supervisory actions sooner and its communications with the bank’s management “could have been more effective.”
But perhaps the most significant comment dealt with the capacity of the FDIC. One might have thought that following the 2008 global financial crisis and the outlay of billions of dollars to rescue the banks, resources would have been pumped into the regulatory bodies. Not so.
“The FDIC experienced resource challenges with examination staff that affected the timeliness and quality” of examinations. From 2017 to 2023, the FDIC was not able to adequately staff an examination team for the bank. Certain targeted reviews “were not completed in a timely manner or at all because of resource shortages.”
Even where reviews were carried out, they were not just useless, but presented a false picture. The New York Regional Office of the FDIC gave Signature a rating in March, on the eve of its collapse, indicating the overall condition of the bank was satisfactory. It rated the board’s performance as satisfactory right up until March 11, the day before the bank was closed.
The report found that with the failure of SVB and Signature the market turned to the next weakest link and found it to be Credit Suisse (CS) . It was taken over by Swiss authorities after “it became clear CS would not have been able to regain market and client confidence” and was “fast approaching a point of non-viability due to massive cumulative liquidity outflows and its increasing difficulties to transact with other market participants.”
The wind up of First Republic was somewhat more protracted but it eventually went down in May for essentially the same reasons as the other two US banks.
Throughout its report, the Committee continually referred to the failed banks as having “outlier business models.” Such a description is intended to create the impression that the failures have no broader significance. It makes one wonder whether the supposed regulatory authorities have any idea of the working of the financial system over which they supposedly preside.
The very nature of the capitalist system, and above all finance capital, is to develop new “outlier” models which make profit above the market rate. The development of such methods, which become the norm, gives rise to the development of new and more risky methods in the pursuit of profit.
The report cast doubt on the efficacy of its methods. It said a rules-based approach to regulation typically set minimum standards which trigger action when they are breached. Such a system assumes a base level of commonalities in business models and risks.
“But it can also overlook the unique risks associated the novel/outlier business models as well as any technological developments in doing so.” As a result, it “can provide false comfort to supervisors and the public that risks are appropriately assessed and disempower supervisors to engage with banks under a regulatory trigger is exercised, which may often be too late.”
It further noted that the law may prevent supervisors taking action “even though the authority may have identified risks that could threaten the bank’s safety and soundness.” This can occur because they do not have a legal basis for doing so until a regulation is breached.
The report did not mention it, but banks and financial institutions have batteries of lawyers on hand whose task it is to develop schemes to get around existing regulations as this is the road to greater profit.
Providing only a limited view of the events of last March, the report did, however, give a glimpse of the highly unstable nature of the entire financial system and the inherent impossibility of any meaningful control and regulation of its explosive contradictions.
Following the unanimous agreement by all members of the German parliament (Bundestag) to back the German government's war policy in the Middle East and its support for Netanyahu's genocidal policies, state authorities are now suppressing all critical opinions using vicious police state measures. Across Germany, the police are brutally cracking down on peace activists and migrant workers.
Demonstrators in Frankfurt after their demonstration against the massacre in Gaza was banned, 15.10.2023 [AP Photo/Michael Probst ]
Sonnenallee in the Berlin district of Neukölln is under siege. Anyone who leaves their house wearing the wrong clothes is immediately taken away by the omnipresent police and placed in custody. All it takes is for someone to wear a Palestinian scarf or display the Palestinian flag. The social media is full of videos showing the brutality of the German police.
Demonstrations in solidarity with civilians in Gaza are banned in the capital city, as are all gatherings criticizing the massacre in Gaza. The reason given by the police and government is that antisemitic statements could be made at the protests—this, although the fascist members of the German National Party (NPD) and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) regularly carry out their own racist parades.
The hypocrisy of such reasoning was revealed by the ban on a demonstration with the title “Jewish Berliners Against Violence in the Middle East—Against the Murder of Our Fellow Human Beings in Gaza, Jewish and Palestinian People Have the Same Right to Live.” In seeking to justify the ban, police declared there was the danger of popular incitement.
Following the ban, Iris Hefets from the board of the “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East” walked alone with a sign across Hermannplatz in Neukölln, insisting that as a single person, she did not meet the criteria of a gathering. Nevertheless, the police forbade her to carry the sign with the inscription “As a Jew & Israeli Stop the Genocide in Gaza” and took her into custody.
This means that Jews in Germany are not permitted to criticize the genocidal policies of the far-right government in Israel, and this policy is then justified with the mendacious claim that it is about opposing antisemitism.
The actions of the state go far beyond the banning of meetings. In a letter to the city’s schools, the Berlin Department for Education, Youth and Family declared that wearing Palestinian scarves or displaying flags, as well as shouting “Free Palestine” can from now on be banned in schools, even if such activities “did not overstep the boundaries of criminal liability.”
In the event of a violation, schools could react with “educational and disciplinary measures,” the letter continues. In addition, schools are urged to report suspected offenses directly to the police.
In numerous other German cities such as Munich, Cologne, and Düsseldorf, bans on assemblies and bans on already authorized rallies were also issued, most of which were upheld by the courts. In each case, the police used great brutality against anyone who opposed the bans.
In Frankfurt, the administrative court first lifted a previous ban on a demonstration. When hundreds then poured onto Opernplatz early Saturday afternoon, the police declared, only twelve minutes before the official start of the protest, that the Hessian administrative court in Kassel had upheld the original ban and demanded demonstrators vacate the square immediately. Dozens of squad cars and heavily armed police with two water cannons lined the square while police helicopters flew noisily over the city.
Members of the Socialist Equality Party (SGP), who left the site of the rally and distributed passers-by leaflets reading “Down with the Netanyahu Government! Stop the Imperialist-Backed Zionist Offensive Against Gaza!” were stopped by the police. All of the leaflets were confiscated on the grounds that they needed to be checked first—a clear form of censorship of a political party.
The extent of the suppression of the most basic democratic rights is unprecedented in the history of post-war Germany and is openly assuming dictatorial forms. The government is responding to the enormous opposition that is building up against its relentless militarism.
In Frankfurt, 6,000 people defied the ban on demonstrations and spontaneously gathered at Rathenauplatz and Hauptwache, where they were attacked by the police. In Stuttgart, around 2,000 opponents of the massacre in Gaza gathered, with 600 in Braunschweig, 700 in Düsseldorf, and over 200 in Cologne. In Berlin, a pro-Palestine rally planned for Saturday was banned by the authorities. Nevertheless, a gathering of around 150 protesters increased to 1,000 participants in the evening. On Sunday, according to official estimates, more than 1,000 participants gathered on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin to protest against the ban on assembly, the restrictions on freedom of expression as well as the war against the Palestinians. Police forces only managed to break up the rally using arrests and the use of pepper grips and so-called “pain grips.”
The SGP used a European election rally at Hermannplatz in Berlin-Neukölln on Saturday to protest against the massacre in Gaza and explain the party's socialist perspective to liberate the Palestinian people and unite Arab and Israeli workers. Police officers present were visibly nervous, but did not dare to stop the rally.
