Former president arrested in El Salvador amid government default crisis

Andrea Lobo

The former president of El Salvador, Elías Antonio Saca (2004-2009), was arrested on Sunday, along with six other functionaries of his administration, on corruption charges. The Attorney General’s Office declared the next day that it has proof of the laundering of $6 million by Saca and his former private secretary, Élmer Charlaix, and their appropriation of $116 million from the state’s coffers. Accountants and other top financial officials are also implicated.

“Initially, there is a general amount of $246 million that was channeled into a large number of personal accounts (14) in favor of the defendants… some of which can still be justified,” stated Attorney General Douglas Meléndez.

The arrests are part of a series of high-level investigations and arrests of top politicians and businesspeople of the Central American Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras). This anti-corruption drive, supported by the US, is tied to the $750 million Alliance for Prosperity Plan, which is primarily aimed at deterring migrants from traveling to the US and countering the increasing influence of China and Russia in the region.

“Operation Uncovering corruption”, the name given to Saca’s case, is the first one led by the Group against Impunity (GCI), formed by Attorney General Meléndez with strong political, logistical, and financial support from Washington.

This new organization now joins the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and the Support Mission against Impunity and Corruption in Honduras (MACCIH) as instruments used by US and European imperialism to discipline its client regimes and to provide political cover for further social cuts and repression.

The immediate context of the arrests is the deep economic crisis plaguing the FMLN government, which has reached an “emergency” of “technical default” on its payments. Through letters and meetings with the minister of economy, Carlos Cáceres, the World Bank, the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank and other credit agencies have pressured the FMLN and the right-wing opposition ARENA party, which controls Congress, to reach an agreement that solves the state’s liquidity crisis.

Standard & Poor’s issued a report this month warning that it might have to downgrade the country’s credit rating unless fiscal issues are resolved and complaining of “heightened political polarization.”

FMLN president Sánchez Cerén and his cabinet have held several unsuccessful negotiations with ARENA to reach an agreement with the IMF. Cerén announced recently that, “in the interest of the Salvadoran people,” the government is pursuing a new austerity law and a fiscal responsibility law that embody deep social cuts, a “pension reform” to pay for the deficit and the issuance of new debt bonds. However, ARENA, for its part, has been sending mixed signals, presumably to deepen the FMLN administration’s crisis and unpopularity.

The US ambassador to El Salvador, Jean Manes, recently stated: “You must have an honest conversation; a fiscal agreement is key not only to get the funds, but also to send a signal to the international community.” While the supply of funds has been historically used by US and European imperialism, i.e., “the international community”, to impose its preferred policies, the “anti-impunity” campaigns serve as a means of safeguarding both the investments and political control of finance capital.

The FMLN, the former guerrilla front that in 1992 turned itself into a nominally left political party, has become the most dedicated defender of the interests of US imperialism in El Salvador. It has carried out austerity measures, while steadily expanding its repressive apparatus. Most recently, on October 17, the FMLN government sent police “shock groups” to harass striking hospital workers across the country. Meanwhile, the official rates for total, relative and extreme poverty and unemployment have all increased steadily since 2013, according to household census data.

Saca, who became president heading ARENA, the far-right party associated with the late death-squad organizer Roberto D’Aubuisson, had already been under investigation. His arrest takes place less than two months after his successor, Mauricio Funes (2009-2014) of the FMLN, sought asylum in Nicaragua to escape corruption charges linked to $728,000 of unjustified income. Moreover, the investigations against both Funes and Saca were initiated only two weeks after the death of ex-president Francisco Flores (1999-2004), who was on trial for stealing $10 million from relief donations for the 2001 earthquake victims.

When entering office, Mauricio Funes’s government had presented 152 corruption cases against functionaries of past ARENA governments and business people, however only two cases led to prosecutions, including that of ex-President Flores.

In a videoconference on September 14 to announce the creation of the GCI to the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C., Meléndez cynically avoided responding to a question about the 152 cases against ARENA, stating: “It’s very difficult to avoid pronouncements from the political class. What they cannot do is to want to direct these investigations.”

On several occasions, Meléndez has also said that there is “no international involvement” in his GCI; however, he has travelled to and communicated frequently with Washington to coordinate his investigations.

In Guatemala, former right-wing president Otto Pérez Molina and ex-vice-president Roxana Baldetti both resigned and were prosecuted in 2015 after the CICIG presented undeniable evidence of their participation in a corruption network that embezzled about $1 million each month. This and dozens of other prosecutions have generated widespread support for the commission in Guatemala, which US imperialism is seeking to replicate in Honduras and El Salvador.

Conversely, the bourgeois politicians being targeted have expressed their strong opposition. Pérez Molina and his Patriotic Party have accused the CICIG and Guatemala’s attorney general, Thelma Aldana, of being puppets of the US embassy. Also, the discredited parties related to the “Left turn” in Latin America have rejected the commissions as “interference by the United States,” a charge they made in the official resolution of the XXII Sao Paulo Forum held in June.

In a particularly violent case of personal resistance, Pérez Molina’s former finance minister, Pavel Centeno, committed suicide last Friday after shooting two police officers who had come to arrest him over a case of money laundering under investigation by the CICIG.

The broader dependence of these elites on US imperialism for private and public investment, including for their repressive apparatuses in the Alliance for Prosperity, have however forced the national ruling cliques to ultimately accept these forms of imperialist political control.

Somewhat greater resistance, however, has been mounted against the investigation of crimes committed during the Central American civil wars. On July 13, the Salvadoran Supreme Court cancelled a blanket amnesty implemented by a former ARENA government for those involved in crimes related to the civil war. There were 75,000 deaths and 8,000 disappearances between 1980 and 1992 in El Salvador, 85 percent of them attributed to the US-backed security forces. FMLN party leaders described the ruling as a “soft coup attempt” and a “destabilization” of the country, echoing the reaction of the military and the extreme right.

So far, there is only one open civil war case in El Salvador, the massacre of 520 civilians by the Salvadoran army in 1981in the village of El Mozote. Reflecting the FMLN government’s hostility to upsetting the impunity enjoyed by the mass murderers of the Salvadoran security forces, Attorney General Meléndez expressed contempt for the El Mozote investigation, indicating that it’s an “expired” case and a “dead process of merit.”

Antonio Saca had proven to be a dedicated servant to the US Government, which repeatedly expressed its appreciation for his political subservience, which included sending troops to the Iraq War. He was praised for approving and implementing the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA-DR), “especially in the face of the challenge from China,” according to US State Department documents.

In a leaked diplomatic cable written to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006, then US ambassador Hugh Douglas Barclay described Saca as having, “a visceral dislike for communism (FMLN, Castro, Chavez), which he blames for having destroyed the country's infrastructure and overall economy during the war years. Saca is proud to say that he smokes only Padron cigars, made by Miami Cubans, and would never smoke a Cohiba.”

In December 2009, however, Saca was expelled from ARENA for having misspent $219 million in government funds to improve his personal image, instead of spending it on health and safety programs. He was also accused of intimidating party members and provoking divisions.

Putin criticizes the US and pleads for a change in course

Andrea Peters

With tensions between Washington and Moscow at their sharpest point since the Cold War, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a lengthy critique of the United States in a speech delivered last week to the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi. The Russian leader painted a picture of a global order destabilized by Washington’s pursuit of hegemony and its targeting of Russia. All the while, he persisted in referring to his “partners” in the West.

Putin’s remarks, which included delusional appeals to the United Nations and praise for the principle of national sovereignty, revealed both the dire situation facing Russia’s ruling elite and its inability to offer any form of progressive opposition to Washington’s war drive.

The Russian president began his comments to the assembly of policy experts, government officials, journalists and academics by declaring that since his previous appearance at the forum, “nothing has changed.”

While making no direct reference to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, much less the role played by the social forces he represents in restoring capitalist market relations, Putin found himself compelled to make reference to the consequences of that event. “Some countries saw themselves as victors in the Cold War,” he complained. They attempted “to bring the entire world under the spread of their own organizations, norms and rules,” and “chose the road of globalization and security for their own beloved selves.”

This entailed “airstrikes in the center of Europe, against Belgrade,” Putin continued. He characterized the 1999 US-led Kosovo war as a criminal operation that paved the way for violations of international law that were to come in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

The Russian president went on to charge Washington with creating and arming terrorist groups that have plunged the world into “chaos.” The US is engaging in a “dangerous game” of continuing to supply and train these forces, he added.

He pointed to the hypocrisy of American policy makers, saying, “If the powers that be today find some standard or norm to their advantage, they force everyone else to comply. But if tomorrow these same standards get in their way, they are swift to throw them in the bin, declare them obsolete, and set or try to set new rules.”

Despite his “personal agreements” with President Barack Obama, Putin lamented, “There were people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice.”

He expressed frustration over the continual references to the “Russian military threat,” insisting, “This is a profitable business that can be used to pump new money into defense budgets at home, get allies to bend to a single superpower’s interests, expand NATO, and bring its infrastructure, military units and arms closer to our borders.”

He continued: “The only thing is that Russia has no intention of attacking anyone. This is all quite absurd.” He noted that Russia has only 146 million people compared to NATO’s 600-million population.

Putin described allegations of Russian meddling in the US elections as “hysteria” and “another mythical and imaginary problem.” He asked rhetorically: “Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia can somehow influence the American people’s choice? America is not some kind of ‘banana republic,’ after all, but is a great power.”

He argued that the anti-Russian line is an effort to divert the attention of the American people away from the country’s domestic problems, including the massive accumulation of public debt, “cases of arbitrary action by the police,” and an “eviscerated” political system.

Putin derided the current US elections as consisting of “nothing but scandals and digging up dirt,” adding later, “And honestly, a look at various candidates’ platforms gives the impression that they were made from the same mould—the difference is slight, if there is any.”

“People sense an ever-growing gap between their interests and the elite’s vision of the only correct course, a course the elite itself chooses,” he said. “The result is that referendums and elections increasingly often create surprises for the authorities.”

Because the political establishment is unable to come to grips with this new reality, he observed, it insists that “society does not understand those at the summit of power and has not yet matured sufficiently to be able to assess the authorities’ labour for the public good … Or they sink into hysteria and declare it the result of foreign, usually Russian, propaganda.”

“Friends and colleagues,” he declared, “I would like to have such a propaganda machine here in Russia, but regrettably, this is not the case. We have not even global mass media outlets of the likes of CNN, BBC and others.”

In the limited press coverage that Putin’s speech has received in the US, his remarks have been seized upon to further the McCarthyite-style denunciations of the Trump campaign. An October 31 editorial in the Washington Post was headlined “Trump, Putin share frightening worldview.”

The commentary treated the Russian president’s observations as absurdities. The Post wrote, “For every crime committed by his Kremlin, Putin was ready with a comparison to a supposedly identical outrage by the American ‘ruling class,’ as he likes to call it.”

Putin’s speech is an expression of the objective crisis in which the ruling capitalist oligarchy in Russia finds itself. Facing ceaseless military and economic pressure from the US, the European Union and NATO, the Kremlin chief is compelled to make certain accurate observations about the state of affairs. However, he does so from the standpoint of an enfeebled and corrupt ruling class desperately trying to find a way out of a disaster of its own making.

The oligarchs and security services on whose behalf Putin rules were the architects of the restoration of capitalism in the late 1980s and 1990s. The Stalinist bureaucracy, increasingly frustrated by the limitations on its power and privileges and frightened by the growth of opposition in the Russian working class, transformed itself into a new ruling class by stealing the wealth built up during the Soviet period and liquidating whatever remained of the conquests of the Russian Revolution.

This counterrevolution was hailed by the bureaucracy as not only a new form of “social justice,” but the starting point, in the words of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, of a new era of “co-development, co-creation, and cooperation.” In 1990, speaking before the last Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, Gorbachev declared that “inclusion of our national economy in the world economy is necessary… for the construction, in conjunction with other peoples, of the material foundations for an irreversibly peaceful period of history and for the solution of mankind’s global problems.”

This has all proven to be delusional. In reality, Washington views Russia as an intolerable obstacle in the way of its exploitation of and control over Eurasia. The ruling elite in Moscow is now confronting the consequences of its own stupidity and blindness.

Despite Putin’s efforts to portray Washington’s policies after the Cold War as some sort of unforeseeable and unexpected betrayal of the principles of world peace and equality among nations, the actions of the United States were entirely predictable. As Leon Trotsky, the co-leader with Lenin of the Russian Revolution and leader of the socialist opposition to Stalin, noted in 1929, “A capitalist Russia could not now occupy even the third-rate position to which czarist Russia was predestined by the course of the world war. Russian capitalism today would be a dependent, semi-colonial capitalism without any prospects. Russia Number 2 would occupy a position somewhere between Russia Number 1 and India.

In the face of this impossible situation, the Kremlin attempts to shore up its rule by appealing to nationalism and populism. Denouncing “ideological ideas that… are destructive to cultural and national identity” in his Valdai Club speech, the Russian president went on to advocate for Russia’s “identity, freedom and independence.” He called national sovereignty “the central notion of the entire system of international relations.”

The “sovereignty” demanded by Putin is the sovereign right of Russian capitalism to exploit its own population. Like right-wing political figures in the US, France, Britain and elsewhere, he attempts to harness popular anger over disastrous economic conditions and channel it in a nationalist direction.

Putin presides over a society with extremely high levels of social inequality and rising discontent. Some 36 percent of Russian households cannot meet essential living expenses, and the statistical agency VTsIOM has recorded a massive drop in popular support for the government, falling to just 26 percent, the lowest level in five years.

The Kremlin vacillates between seeking an accommodation with the US, issuing impotent appeals to the United Nations, and carrying out military adventures.

Having referred throughout his speech to his “partners” in the West, Putin declared: “It is my firm belief that we can overcome these threats and challenges only by working together on the solid foundation of international law and the United Nations Charter. Today it is the United Nations that continues to remain an agency that is unparalleled in representativeness and universality, a unique venue for equitable dialogue.”

Within less than 24 hours of these remarks, Russia was voted off the United Nations Human Rights Council in a historically unprecedented move. The action was part of the US-led effort to criminalize Russia and the Putin regime for its intervention in Syria in support of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The efforts of Washington to bring down the regime in Damascus and install a puppet government have been frustrated by Moscow’s military intervention, which began in September of 2015.

The Russian-backed Syrian government offensive in Aleppo threatens to dislodge from the city’s eastern sector the anti-Assad Al Qaeda-linked Islamist forces that have been armed and supported by the CIA and Washington’s regional allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. In the face of an impending major defeat for the US-backed “rebels,” Washington is spearheading a propaganda campaign to brand Russia as a “rouge state” and accuse it of war crimes.

While the UN obligingly voted Russia off of its fraudulently named Human Rights Council, it reelected the despotic Saudi regime, which earlier this month added to its human slaughter in Yemen by killing upwards of 140 civilians in the bombing of a funeral in that nation’s capital.

The criminal character of the Putin regime and its policies was highlighted in last week’s speech in Sochi by the Russian president’s pleas for the US to join in a more effective “anti-terror” campaign and his citing of Israel as a model for the conduct of such an enterprise.

The Kremlin regards Russia’s nuclear arsenal as its ultimate tool of defense. The prospect of a “hot” war is now regularly discussed in the Russian media. Continuing a policy that was begun in 2012, at the start of October the Putin regime held civil defense drills involving 40 million people, including 200,000 rescue personnel. Nothing could be more expressive of the dead end of Russian capitalism than the fact that its last line of defense is its ability to incinerate masses of people in a nuclear holocaust.

German think tank demands greater foreign policy independence from the US

Johannes Stern

Just days before the US presidential election, the German government-aligned think tank German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) published a paper entitled “Even without Trump much will change.” It calls for a more aggressive German and European foreign policy, which, “regardless of the election result,” is prepared to impose its economic and geopolitical interests with greater independence from, and if necessary against Washington.

The candidacy of Republican Donald Trump makes “clear that […] a US policy is possible that would demand from Germany more independent action than in the past,” according to the author of the paper and the leader of the America research group, Johannes Thimm. The possibility of Trump entering the White House compels “German politicians to ask themselves difficult questions.”

Trump’s rise to prominence has provoked considerable trepidation within broad sections of the ruling elite in Germany and internationally. “With Trump as president […] there would be a high degree of uncertainty about US foreign policy,” the paper stated. Germany could “certainly not rely on Trump’s unpredictability or extreme positions being ‘discarded,’ either through advisory staff, the cabinet, the military or Congress.”

But even with an election victory for Democrat Hillary Clinton, “corresponding strategic considerations [would be] necessary,” and Germany would “do well not to take the easy way out of wait and see.” Instead, Berlin should, “regardless of the election result, consider how the Transatlantic relationship and the future world order are to be organised.”

In line with the article written for Foreign Affairs in June by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democrats), the SWP paper calls into question the claim of the US to global leadership. In the section “A strategic America policy,” it states, “the balance sheet of American engagement in the world [is …] mixed at best.” Among other things, “the US policy” – such as the “invasion of Iraq in 2003” or the “ongoing Saudi Arabian intervention in Yemen” – is “simply counter-productive for a stable order.”

“If similar types of situations arise in the future,” the paper states provocatively, “it would be important for Germany (possibly with Europe) to take a clear position and adopt its own estimation at an early stage.” Even though options are limited, “Germany and Europe [should] not leave the area of planning the political order to the US alone.”

Concretely, this means, among other things, “to question the view, based on the self-portrayal of the US as exceptional, that American interests are per se global interests.” It is also necessary “to consider how to respond if US behaviour is, from Germany’s standpoint, counter-productive.” In this, “good transatlantic relations” should not be “an end in themselves and [placed] before other considerations,” otherwise, one would be robbing oneself of the “possibility of acting strategically.”

It continues, “Without the willingness to argue with the US government ... many options for exerting influence [are] excluded from the outset.”

Nobody should underestimate the historical, political and military implications of such statements. Two years ago, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) warned: “At present, Washington is pursuing these objectives with the collaboration of the other major imperialist powers. However, there is no permanent coincidence of interests among them. German imperialism, which fought two wars with the US in the 20th century, is reviving its imperial ambitions.”

At the beginning of this year, the ICFI wrote in its statement Socialism and the Fight Against War: “Seventy years after the fall of Hitler’s Third Reich, the German ruling class is once again demanding that its state assert itself as the unquestioned overlord of Europe and as a world power. In the face of deeply felt anti-war sentiments within the German population, Berlin is deploying military force to assert its interests in the Middle East and Africa. It is pouring money into rearmament, while apologetics for the crimes of the Nazi regime are being advanced across the political establishment, media and academia, with the aim of justifying the revival of German imperialist ambitions.”

The SWP played a central role in this revival from the outset. In 2013, it organised a project involving 50 leading politicians from all parliamentary parties, journalists, academics and military and business representatives to elaborate a strategy for the return of German militarism. At the end of the discussions, the paper “New Power–New Responsibilities. Elements of a German foreign and security policy for a world in turmoil” was produced, which formed the basis of Steinmeier”s and President Gauck’s imperialistic speeches at the Munich Security Conference in 2014 and the army’s 2016 white paper.

The German ruling elite is now using the deepening international crisis in the wake of the Brexit vote and the political chaos in the US to press ahead with its great power ambitions. In a current essay entitled “Europe is the solution,” Steinmeier writes, “We must grant ourselves the concrete instruments necessary for a joint foreign [EU] policy.” This includes “practical capabilities: for joint situation analysis, financial instruments for stabilisation and crisis prevention, and ultimately joint military capacities, such as joint command structures or maritime task forces.”

These, according to Steinmeier, are “the concrete steps we now face.” Then, “the creation of a European army [should] be discussed ... when we have proven that Europe can do it better than any national state alone.” This would be the significance of a red-red-green (Social Democrats (SPD), Left Party and Greens) federal government! It would have the task in foreign policy of pressing ahead with the return of German militarism behind phrases about “responsibility,” “humanity” and “human rights,” while at the same time developing an independent German foreign policy increasingly at odds with that of the United States.

High Court verdict on EU Brexit plunges UK deeper into crisis

Julie Hyland 

Yesterday’s High Court ruling that Parliament alone has the right to trigger Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU) has created a major constitutional and political crisis.

The verdict, which the government is to appeal, rejected the right of Prime Minister Theresa May to begin Brexit (British exit) without a parliamentary vote by use of the Royal Prerogative. These are archaic powers, once held by British monarchs and now reserved to the government on the advice of the prime minister and the cabinet.

The hearing before Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, Master of the Rolls Sir Terence Etherton and Lord Justice Sales centred on Article 50 of the European Union Treaty, which states that a member state may quit the bloc “in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.”

May intended to trigger Brexit next March, bypassing a vote in parliament. This would begin two years of negotiations as to its terms. With EU ministers stating that the UK should be punished for its decision as a warning to other member states, and May (who campaigned as a Remainer) playing up to the vociferous pro-Brexit lobby in her own party, a substantial section of the bourgeoisie is concerned that this could result in a “hard-Brexit” in which the UK loses access to the Single Market.

With the majority of MPs in favour of remaining in the EU, government lawyers argued at the High Court that it was “constitutionally impermissible” for Parliament to be given a vote on the Brexit process as it was tantamount to overturning the “people’s will”—as registered in the narrow 52 to 48 percent June 23 referendum vote to leave the EU.

The arguments were presented last month at a judicial review at London’s Royal Courts of Justice. Against the government was a group of claimants representing interests in the City of London—led by Gina Miller, a London-based investment manager for the firm SCM Private.

The claimants’ lawyers cited the Bill of Rights of 1689, which states that laws should not be discarded or suspended without consent from Parliament. The use of prerogative powers to trigger Article 50 would have the “intended consequence” of depriving citizens of rights they have as EU citizens, and which were enshrined in UK law. Such constitutional rights could not be removed by the executive, they argued, without “breaking the back of the constitution and crippling it.”

The High Court upheld this argument, stating that government moves to begin exit negotiations without parliamentary approval would overturn 400 years of legal tradition. While asserting that “nothing we say has any bearing on the question of the merits or demerits” of Brexit, the 32-page judgement states that the “sole question” involved was “whether, as a matter of the constitutional law of the UK, the Crown—acting through the executive government of the day—is entitled to use its prerogative” to trigger Article 50.

The “subordination of the Crown (i.e., the executive government) to law is the foundation of the rule of law in the UK,” it states, noting that this has its roots in the English Civil war (1642–1651) and “has been recognised ever since.”

As to the argument that the “opinion of the electorate” stands above constitutional law, the judges rejected this on the grounds that “as a matter of law: ‘The judges know nothing about any will of the people except in so far as that will is expressed by an Act of Parliament’.”

A government spokesman said that ministers would appeal to the Supreme Court against the decision. The hearing will take place on December 7-8. However, any possible delay or further protracted legal wrangling threatens to derail the government’s plans and opens the possibility of an early general election.

The opening of a constitutional crisis underscores the recklessness of the decision by former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to agree a referendum on Brexit. The move was shaped wholly by the attempt to settle a right-wing factional dispute within the Conservative Party and its fringes in the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

Having called a referendum, all sides in the campaign sought to utilise anti-immigrant and nationalist prejudice to divert from the growing social crisis and the danger of war. For the Remain camp, led by Cameron, the aim was to wield a potential Brexit to extract greater concessions from the EU, especially securing beneficial treatment for the City of London. This meant that the Leave campaign—dominated by the most xenophobic and Thatcherite wing of the bourgeoisie—was able to monopolise legitimate opposition to the EU.

Neither side gave any consideration as to the more fundamental consequences of their actions, including the complex constitutional issues raised. Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, who was secretary-general of the European convention that drafted what became the Lisbon treaty, said he had never imagined Article 50 being made use of. “I thought the circumstances in which it would be used, if ever, would be when there was a coup in a member state and the EU suspended that country’s membership,” he said. “I thought that at that point the dictator in question might be so cross that hed say ‘right, I’m off’ and it would be good to have a procedure under which he could leave.”

The shock 52 percent vote in favour has therefore opened up an existential crisis for the British bourgeoisie. Not only does it threaten to gravely diminish the role of the UK as the premier political and military ally of the US in Europe, but it reopens the possibility of the breakup of the United Kingdom itself.

The Scottish government has already threatened to hold a second referendum on independence in the event of a “hard-Brexit”, while Wales First Minister Carwyn Jones of the Labour Party welcomed the High Court ruling arguing that the devolved administrations should also get a vote on May’s Brexit negotiating position.

Indicating the explosive character of Brexit for political relations in Ireland, last week, Northern Ireland’s High Court rejected a legal bid to secure a parliamentary vote on May’s Brexit plans. The case had been taken on the grounds that May’s executive action threatened to jeopardise the power-sharing arrangements between the Unionist and Republican parties established by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Sitting in the Belfast High Court, Mr Justice Maguire had said that it “is the court’s view the prerogative power is still operative and can be used for the purpose of the executive giving notification for the purpose of Article 50.”

If the Supreme Court appeal is unsuccessful, the issue is supposed to turn on whether the government can hold a one-off substantive vote on Brexit or whether parliamentary approval applies to the negotiations and terms of any agreement eventually arrived at. It is generally assumed that most MPs, pro-Remain or otherwise, would not veto the referendum result. If, however, it is found that parliament have oversight on the terms, this opens the way for numerous amendments and an even more protracted and politically incendiary process—including the involvement of the House of Lords and a second vote.

Having campaigned for a Leave vote based on “reasserting” the “sovereignty” of the British parliament, the most strident pro-Brexit forces are the loudest in protesting the High Court ruling.

Posing as the defender of the “popular will” against a “judicial elite”, Nigel Farage, the interim leader of UKIP, said, “I worry that a betrayal may be near at hand ... I now fear that every attempt will be made to block or delay the triggering of Article 50. If this is so, they have no idea of the level of public anger they will provoke.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that his party “respects the decision of the British people to leave the European Union.” However, he was the subject of a putsch attempt by the most pro-EU faction of his party and does not command the support of most of his MPs. There is no guarantee that the majority would not vote against triggering Article 50 in a parliamentary vote.

The right wing of the Labour Party, led by Tony Blair, has made clear they are in favour of forming a so-called “progressive alliance” to block or limit a “hard-Brexit”. This position is shared by the Liberal Democrats, whose leader Tim Farron welcomed the High Court ruling, stating, “Ultimately, the British people voted for a departure but not for a destination...”

US air strikes kill scores of civilians in Afghanistan

Bill Van Auken

US airstrikes claimed the lives of scores of civilians in northern Afghanistan Thursday, following a firefight between US-backed Afghan troops and Taliban fighters in which at least two US special forces “advisers” were killed.

The bombing, which continued through much of the night, targeted the village of Bouz Kandahari, on the outskirts of the northern city of Kunduz, where US and Afghan special operations troops had mounted an assassination raid late Wednesday aimed at eliminating two senior leaders of the Taliban. They came under heavy fire, leading to the deaths of the two American soldiers and the wounding of four others. Three Afghan special forces troops were also killed. The Pentagon euphemistically described the operation as a “train, advise and assist mission.”

A spokesman for the governor of Kunduz put the number of civilians killed in the air raids at 30. Residents and others, however, said the real number of dead was significantly higher.

Amruddin, the local representative on the provincial council, said at least 100 civilians had been killed or wounded in the bombing raids. A local resident said that 50 had been killed and between 40 and 50 wounded. Another survivor said at least 70 people had been taken to a local hospital.

As many as 50 homes were demolished by the US bombs, and more victims were feared buried in the rubble.

Outraged relatives of the dead and residents of the village staged a protest march on the governor’s palace, chanting, “Death to America” and “Death to [Afghan President Ashraf] Ghani.” The protesters used pickup trucks to carry the bodies of the dead, most of them women and children. One man held aloft the headless body of an infant. Police stopped them before they could reach their destination.

“What did these children do wrong? I want justice for the killers,” one resident told Al Jazeera.

Taza Gul, another local resident, told the Pajhwok Afghan News: “I was working on my farm when the bombardment started. On coming home, I saw seven members of my family, including women and children, killed in the raids.”

The civilian death toll in Thursday’s bombings represented the worst atrocity carried out by the US military since the deliberate targeting of a Doctors without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz by a US AC-130 gunship killed at least 42 patients and medical staff and wounded another 37 in October 2015.

That attack followed the Taliban’s seizure of the strategic northern city. Despite extensive combat operations in the ensuing year, Kunduz remains insecure and surrounded by territory controlled by the Taliban. Last month, Taliban fighters came close to overrunning it once again.

More than 15 years after the US invaded Afghanistan and nearly two years after President Barack Obama claimed an end to American combat operations, nearly 10,000 US troops remain deployed there along with a considerably larger number of military contractors. US warplanes have conducted more than 700 airstrikes so far this year, twice as many as in 2015.

By all discernible measures, the crisis of the US occupation and the regime that it has installed in Kabul is deeper than ever.

More than 1,600 civilians were killed in just the first six months of 2016, the highest death toll for a half-year period since the UN began keeping figures in 2009.

Afghan security forces, meanwhile, have also suffered record losses. Between January and August of this year, 5,523 Afghan National Army and Afghan National Defense and Security Forces troops have been killed (more than twice as many deaths than the US military has suffered in Afghanistan in 15 years), with nearly twice as many wounded.

Between casualties and desertions, the Afghan security forces are growing weaker rather than stronger, despite the more than $60 billion the US has poured into arming and training them.

Last September, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional committee that the state of the war was “roughly a stalemate.”

A report released last month by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) also reported 101 “insider attacks” in which Afghan soldiers turned on their own units, killing 257 and wounding 125 in the first eight months of the year. Three Americans, two soldiers and a civilian, were killed in such an incident last month at a training base near Kabul.

The SIGAR report found that the Taliban today controls more of the country than at any time since the US invasion of 2001. It also stated that the rates of poverty, unemployment, underemployment, violence, emigration and internal displacement are all on the rise.

The United Nations found that more than a million people had been displaced last year and another million Afghans are “on the move” within the country’s borders this year because of the violence, creating the conditions for a massive humanitarian crisis. The country is the second biggest source of refugees, trailing only Syria, and as many as 100,000 could be sent back after being denied asylum in Europe.

Despite the depth of this crisis and the fact that more US troops are fighting in the country than anywhere else in the world, the word Afghanistan has barely been mentioned in the 2016 presidential race by either Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump. Not a word about the ongoing war appears on the campaign web sites of either candidate.

Whoever takes office in January 2017, however, the prospects for the continuation and escalation of the war are strong. President Barack Obama, having made the war his own with a “surge” that tripled the number of US troops deployed there to 100,000 in 2010, has put the brakes on what had been billed in 2014 as a gradual drawdown of American forces to the level of “normal embassy presence.”

It is now clear that the corrupt and internally divided Afghan regime will not survive without US military power to prop it up. Moreover, the Pentagon has made clear that it intends to keep permanent bases and thousands of troops in the country, which offer a strategic launching pad for operations in South Asia and the former Soviet republics of energy-rich Central Asia, as well as against both Russia and China.

To these ends, the kind of mass slaughter of civilians seen outside Kunduz on Thursday will continue.

War of smears and scandals intensifies in US election campaign

Patrick Martin

With only four days remaining before Election Day in the United States, the two main capitalist candidates have stepped up their campaigns of scandal-mongering to divert public attention from any serious examination of the critical issues of war, economic inequality and attacks on democratic rights.

Republican Donald Trump has focused his campaign almost entirely on Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of State, and on the operations of the Clinton Foundation, calling her corrupt and demanding she be prosecuted and jailed. Congressional Republicans have chimed in with threats of impeachment if Clinton wins the November 8 vote.

The response of the Clinton campaign and the Democrats has been to intensify their own smear tactics, promoting allegations of sexual misconduct, and even rape, against Trump, and claiming, without any evidence, that Russian President Vladimir Putin has backed the Manhattan billionaire by unleashing Russian intelligence agencies to hack into the communications of the Democratic campaign.

The presidential contest has appeared to narrow significantly since the intervention of the FBI against Clinton last Friday, when FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress announcing additional “investigative steps” in relation to the investigation into Clinton’s private email server.

Clinton retains a small lead in national opinion polls, and in the “battleground” states whose votes in the Electoral College are the most closely contested. She also appears to have benefited from higher Democratic turnout in the early voting that is permitted in 38 of the 50 states. The result of the election remains highly uncertain, as well as the outcome of voting for 33 Senate seats and 435 seats in the House of Representatives, both now controlled by the Republican Party.

Opposition to Clinton’s candidacy within the FBI—a supposedly non-political investigative agency headed by an appointee of President Obama—was underscored by reports in right-wing media outlets Wednesday that agents were pushing an investigation “into possible pay-for-play interaction between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the [Clinton] Foundation.”

Fox News anchor Bret Baier, citing unnamed sources close to the FBI investigation, claimed that the investigation into the Clinton Foundation was “a very high priority” and that “agents are actively and aggressively pursuing this case.” He claimed that “an indictment” was believed likely, although he did not indicate who was to be indicted or for what alleged crime.

The Wall Street Journal—like Fox News, owned by ultra-right billionaire Rupert Murdoch—also reported Wednesday that FBI agents were engaged in a major investigation of the Clinton Foundation, during which they had obtained “secret recordings of a suspect talking about the Clinton Foundation,” without giving any details.

The Journal report also revealed that the FBI investigation began in response to the 2015 publication of an anti-Clinton book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, written by right-wing activist Peter Schweizer. In other words, FBI agents set out to collect evidence that would vindicate a political screed written to torpedo Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The various anti-Clinton investigations led to clashes between the FBI agents and career prosecutors in the public integrity section of the Justice Department, who regarded the evidence as flimsy and the probes politically motivated. These conflicts intensified after FBI Director James Comey announced in July that the investigation into the Clinton email server had not uncovered evidence that warranted any criminal prosecution.

Comey’s letter to Congress last week, apparently reviving the email investigation, was prompted by the continuing unrest within his agency. According to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, as many as 100 FBI agents had threatened to resign unless Comey took the extraordinary step of dropping a political bombshell only 11 days before Election Day. Other press reports described the ranks of the FBI as “Trumpland,” indicating that there is widespread support in the agency for the Republican candidate and his embrace of authoritarian methods against political opponents.

The Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party have responded in kind to the scandalmongering by Trump and the Republicans. Television advertising for Clinton in the final days of the campaign has focused almost entirely on the allegations that Trump has engaged in abusive conduct towards women, which Clinton uses as the basis of her appeal to those layers of the upper-middle-class obsessed with identity politics—the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles attorney and media commentator Lisa Bloom, the daughter of multi-millionaire defense attorney Gloria Allred, announced a news conference at which her client, a woman now 35 years old, was to detail claims that Donald Trump raped her 22 years earlier, when she was only 13. The press conference was then abruptly cancelled with the claim that “death threats” from Trump supporters made it too dangerous.

The effect was to associate the Republican candidate first with sexual assault and then with threats of violence, without actually presenting any evidence. Bloom is also the attorney for one of the women suing Trump for alleged sexual harassment.

Meanwhile congressional Democrats and the Clinton campaign continue to peddle allegations that the Russian government is the source of the trove of emails, now being made public by WikiLeaks, hacked from the account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.

The WikiLeaks emails have proven highly damaging, detailing efforts by Bill Clinton and his top aides to cash in on the operations of the Clinton Foundation by inducing corporate contributors to the charity to pay Clinton lucrative fees for giving speeches or becoming a “consultant” to their businesses.

On Thursday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange flatly denied the claims that the Russian government had supplied the emails to his organization. “The Clinton camp has been able to project a neo-McCarthyist hysteria that Russia is responsible for everything,” Assange said in an interview with Dartmouth Films in Britain, where he has been confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Assange pointed out that the Clinton campaign has repeatedly lied about the emails, claiming the US intelligence agencies had determined that Russian intelligence agencies were responsible for the hacking. In fact, he said, no such determination had been made. US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has claimed that the email server of the Democratic National Committee had been hacked by the Russian government—without providing any evidence—but the DNI has been silent on the hacking of Podesta’s emails.

The mutual mudslinging and scandal-mongering between the Democrats and Republicans is not merely an “aspect” of the 2016 presidential campaign. The two parties rely on such degraded methods to fight out bitter internal conflicts within the ruling class while concealing from the American people the right-wing, anti-working-class policies that the next US government, whether headed by Clinton or Trump, will carry out.

Whether it is President Clinton or President Trump, the next administration will be compelled by the deepening global economic crisis of capitalism and intensifying geo-political conflicts to adopt even more aggressive and right-wing policies than those of the Obama administration.

The next administration will employ US military force even more widely than Bush and Obama, not only in the Middle East but against more formidable nuclear-armed opponents like Russia and China. And it will respond to renewed financial crisis with sweeping attacks on jobs, working class living standards and public social services.

Class struggle in US intensifies on eve of election

Jerry White

In the run-up to Tuesday’s national election, a significant number of strikes have broken out among a wide variety of workers in many parts of the United States. The biggest action is a walkout by nearly 5,000 transit workers in Philadelphia. The strike, now in its fifth day, has shut down the nation’s sixth largest public transit system and brought the city of 1.5 million people to a virtual halt.

The main issue in the strike is the demand of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) for an eleven-fold increase in the workers’ out-of-pocket health costs.

Other workers currently on strike include Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra musicians, who are in the fifth week of a struggle against wage and pension cuts; 700 chemical workers at Momentive Performance Materials in New York State and Ohio, who are fighting health and pension cuts; and 300 video game voice actors in Los Angeles, who are demanding improved compensation and working conditions.

In addition, some 400 workers in Indiana and New York State are in the seventh month of a lockout imposed after they rejected demands for health care concessions from the aircraft component manufacturer Honeywell International.

Another series of recent strikes were terminated by the trade unions, which are seeking to prevent walkouts wherever possible and quickly end those that break out in the interests of promoting their campaign for the election of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Over the past several weeks, the unions have shut down strikes by state university faculty members in Pennsylvania, Minnesota nurses, Libbey Glass workers in Ohio, Jim Beam whiskey workers in Kentucky, and cafeteria workers at Harvard University in Massachusetts. These walkouts followed the strike by 40,000 Verizon telecom workers earlier in the year.

Thousands of other workers, including 95,000 California state employees, United Parcel Service aircraft mechanics, General Electric appliance workers in Kentucky, and bus drivers in Ohio and Illinois, could soon be on strike.

The increase in working class struggles in the US coincides with a growth of the class struggle internationally, including last month’s strikes by tens of thousands of autoworkers, rail workers and hospital workers in South Korea, and a record number of strikes in China.

Correlation Between Strike Levels and Wealth Concentration, 1948-2014

The artificial suppression of the class struggle by the unions, which during the Obama presidency held strikes to the lowest level since the end of the Second World War, has allowed the corporations to restructure their operations and slash their labor costs in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash. This has entailed the shifting of health and pension costs onto the backs of workers and the transformation of millions of workers into casual laborers.

A common thread in virtually all of these struggles is opposition to corporate demands for higher out-of-pocket health care costs. The offloading of the cost of health coverage from the companies to the workers has escalated alongside the implementation of Obamacare, the central domestic “achievement” of the outgoing administration.

According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, premiums in the US rose by 3.4 percent and deductibles by 12 percent last year, more than eating up the average 3 percent increase in wages, which followed nearly a decade of falling or stagnant real wages. Another study shows that over the past five years, the share of employees enrolled in high-deductible insurance plans has more than doubled, reaching 29 percent, or 50 million workers.

Between 2002 and 2015 annual earnings for the bottom 90 percent of Americans rose by only 4.5 percent, while earnings for the top 1 percent grew by 22.7 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Under the Obama administration, more than 90 percent of income gains since the so-called “recovery” began have gone to the top one percent.

Real Median Household Income in the United States

Meanwhile, the percent of Americans below 125 percent of the official poverty rate has been higher every year under Obama than during the Bush presidency.

These are the conditions for millions of workers on the eve of an election that pits a billionaire real estate mogul, Donald Trump, against a multi-millionaire long-time politician, Hillary Clinton. Neither of these right-wing defenders of the capitalist system offers any policies to address the social needs of working people.

The elections have been conducted at the most degrading level in order to exclude the real issues confronting the broad mass of working people: economic insecurity and poverty and the growth of militarism and war.

The real sentiments of working people can find no expression within the framework of the existing political system. The ruling elite was shocked and frightened when millions of workers and young people voted for Bernie Sanders to register their opposition to the capitalist system and the tyranny of Wall Street. The 13 million votes for what was presented—falsely and cynically—as a “democratic socialist” campaign reflected a profound shift in consciousness to the left, developing alongside a revival of working class struggle.

Labor’s share of the GDP has fallen to the lowest level since World War II

Sanders’ endorsement and vote-hustling for Clinton, the favored candidate of the financial-corporate elite, thoroughly exposed his reactionary role as an instrument of the ruling elite for channeling social opposition back into the dead end of the Democratic Party. He has played a central part in giving Trump an open road to exploit the social grievances of those who have been economically devastated and seek to channel discontent in a reactionary nationalist direction.

Clinton, taking advantage of Sanders’ capitulation and the backing of the complacent and reactionary liberal and pseudo-left milieu, has redoubled her efforts to promote race and gender politics, and attribute the support for Trump to the supposed racism of the “white working class.”

The greatest exposure of such lies is the class struggle itself. The initial stirrings of a new period of class struggle, involving workers of all races and nationalities, underscores the basic fact, as Marx put it, that society is split “into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other,” the capitalists and the working class.

The political radicalization that found initial expression in the mass support for Sanders has not gone away. It will intensify under a new administration that will escalate US military violence abroad and the attacks on the working class at home.

Borlaug Global Research Alliance Fellowships 2017 for Researchers in Developing Countries

Application Deadline: 30th November, 2016

Eligible Countries: Colombia, Costa Rica, Egypt, Ghana, Honduras, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam

To be taken at (country): USA, Candidate’s Home Country

Eligible Fields of Research: 

1. Developing Tools for Greenhouse Gas and Carbon Sequestration Assessments
   • Develop easily used methods for measuring or estimating greenhouse gas emissions in agricultural settings
   • Develop easily used methods for measuring or estimating carbon sequestration in agricultural soils
   • Develop and field test user-friendly software for quantifying and reporting emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
2. Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Intensity in Crop Production Systems
   • Identify agricultural management strategies leading to reduced net greenhouse gas emissions per unit of commodity produced in agronomic (including rice), horticultural, or agro-forestry crop systems
   • Develop models for application of experimental data in decision support tools for different crop or agro-forestry systems in different countries
3. Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Intensity in Livestock Production Systems
   • Identify agricultural management strategies leading to reduced net greenhouse gas emissions per unit of commodity produced in grazing or confined animal production systems
   • Develop models for application of experimental data in decision support tools for livestock production systems in different countries
4. Developing Databases and Strategies for Synthesis, Integration and Decision Support to Manage Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Carbon Sequestration in Agricultural Systems
   • Develop databases assembled from different research teams working on identifying methods to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration
   • Develop process models as a foundation for projecting emissions and sequestration in different agricultural systems and for decision support tools

About the Award: The Borlaug Global Research Alliance Fellowships seek to:

• Provide early-to-midcareer agricultural research scientists, faculty, and policymakers with individual training opportunities in climate change mitigation research
• Provide practical experience and exposure to new perspectives and/or technologies that can be applied in their home institutions
• Foster increased collaboration and networking to improve agricultural productivity and trade
• Facilitate the transfer of new scientific and agricultural technologies to strengthen agricultural practices
• Address obstacles to the adoption of technology such as ineffectual policies and regulations

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: To be considered for the Borlaug Global Research Alliance Fellowships, candidates must:

• Be citizens of an eligible country
• Be fluent in English
• Have completed a Master’s or higher degree
• Be in the early or middle stage of their career, with at least two years of practical experience
• Be employed by a university, government agency or research entity in their home country
• Demonstrate their intention to continue working in their home country after completing the fellowship

Selection Criteria: Applicants are selected based on their academic and professional research interests and achievements, level of scientific competence, aptitude for scientific research, leadership potential, likelihood of bringing back new ideas to their home institution, and flexibility and aptitude for success in a cross-cultural environment. Consideration is also given to the relevance of the applicant’s research area to the research topics highlighted in the application announcement and to global food security and trade.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: To be communicated (TBC)

Duration of Fellowship: up to 12 weeks

How to Apply: Candidates must apply via the online application system (link below). The following information will be required:

• Completed application form
• 2-3 page program proposal and action plan
• Signed approval from applicant’s home institution
• Two letters of recommendation
• Official copy of transcript for college/university degree(s) received
• Copy of passport identification page

Click here to access the online application system

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider:  U.S. Department of Agriculture

Belgium: Science@Leuven Masters Scholarships for International Students 2017

Application Deadline: 31st January 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Eligible Fields of Study: Eligible International Master Programme under the Faculty of Science at K.U. Leuven:

•  Master of Astronomy and Astrophysics
•  Master of Biology
•  Master of Biophysics, Biochemistry and Biotechnology
•  Master of Chemistry
•  Master of Geography
•  Master of Mathematics
•  Master of Physics
•  Master of Statistics
•  Interuniversity Master of Geology (only students applying for the specialisation Geodynamics and Georesources or Surface processes and Paleoenvironments can apply for the scholarship)
•  Erasmus Mundus Master of Theoretical Chemistry and Computational Modelling
•  Erasmus Mundus Master Sustainable and Territorial Development

Type: Masters

Eligibility: Candidates must meet and prove the following requirements:

•  the applicants have not studied or worked at the University of Leuven before,
•  the applicants have a bachelor degree from a foreign university that gives them access to the master programme they are applying for,
• the applicants have not yet acquired a master degree or a PhD,
•  the applicants can prove having had excellent study results during their former training,
•  the applicants can prove a very strong knowledge of English,
•  the applicants show strong motivation to follow a master programme at the Faculty of Science of the K.U.Leuven
•  the applicants are willing to act as an ambassador for the programme.

Selection: The selection procedure involves several steps:

1. The applicants go through the admission procedure of the Master Programme of their choice.  Only students admitted to a Master Programme of the Faculty of Science are considered for the scholarship.
2. The applicants with a complete file and meeting all the necessary requirements are selected for the first round.
3. The list of applicants per master programme is sent to the respective programme director who ranks the students eligible for the Scholarship.
4. The selection committee receives the list of the selected applicants per programme and agrees on a ranking of all the applicants.
5. The selection committee selects a number of students to be interviewed via skype.
6. The selected applicants are interviewed via skype
7. The selection committee makes a final ranking of all the candidates that have been interviewed.
8. The Board of the Science@Leuven Fund defines how many scholarships are available and awards the scholarships.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The amount of the scholarship can be up to 10.000 Euro for 1 year. The scholarship will always cover the tuition fee for 1 year, the insurance and a basic health insurance coverage. The amount awarded for living expenses can vary.

Duration of Scholarship: 1 year.  Most master programmes of the Faculty of Science are 2-year programmes. The scholarship for the second master year will be only be continued for students having had outstanding results the first master year.

How to Apply: 

• Applicants have to apply for the master programme of their choice through the application form of the KU Leuven.
• The applicants note in the application form that they want to apply for the Science@Leuven Scholarship.
• After having completed the application form of the official KULeuven application page, applicants register here.  The id-account asked is the same account as on the application form of the KU Leuven.
• Additional to the information required by the KU Leuven, the applicants also upload the following information through their application form of the KU Leuven:
  • a complete list of course titles for which they have obtained a credit Indicate the course size (in ECTS-credits) and the result they obtained, preferably according to the ECTS-scale; if a different scale is used, please provide an summary explanation on the meaning of the scores;
  • for the courses that they deem most relevant as a preparation for the master that they are considering, provide a short (about one half to one page) description according to the standard guidelines for an ECTS-study guide;
  • two reference letters of internationally renowned professors;
  • a letter of motivation for the programme.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Important Notes: 

• Only students who have complied with all the above requirements will be considered for the Scholarship!
• Students have to register both through the application webpage of the KU Leuven and this website to be considered for selection.
• The selection committee only considers students who have been accepted in the master programme.