Catalan nationalists struggle to form government

Paul Mitchell

Although the nationalists narrowly held on to their absolute majority in the Catalan parliament in the December 21 regional election, they have been unable to appoint a regional premier and form a new government. If a new premier is not invested before the January 31 deadline, a new election must take place.

The crisis centres on the ban on five nationalist deputies being able to vote in the regional parliament—including former regional premier Carles Puigdemont, leader of Together for Catalonia (JxCat). The five fled to Belgium after the Catalan Parliament declared independence in October, fearing arrest after Popular Party (PP) Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy invoked Article 155 of the Constitution giving Madrid the power to directly administer regions. Sedition and rebellion charges led to the imprisonment of three deputies, including vice-premier Oriol Junqueras (Republican Left of Catalonia, ERC).

Rajoy had hoped to install pro-Spanish unity parties in power on December 21, but it backfired. He has since threatened to extend the use of Article 155 if a new government resurrects the “independence process.”

Although Catalan parliamentary regulations allowed the three imprisoned deputies to nominate proxies able to vote, lawyers say the same privilege cannot be extended to the five in exile without the Speaker’s committee changing the rules. As a result the nationalist bloc is reduced to 65, instead of 70, deputies in the 135 seat regional Parliament ­- three seat short of an absolute majority.

Last week, the nationalists managed to get the ERC’s Roger Torrent elected as Speaker, a post with the power to decide who to propose for investiture as regional premier. However, he only obtained a simple majority on the second ballot - beating by just nine votes José María Espejo-Saavedra candidate of the right wing anti-independence Citizens party, which won the largest number of seats in the election.

The vote for speaker would have been an exact draw, exacerbating the constitutional crisis even further, had it not been for the abstention of nine deputies—eight from the Podemos-backed Catalonia in Common (CeC) and an unknown “renegade” from the pro-Spanish unity bloc comprising Citizens, the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) and Popular Party (PPC).

On Monday, Torrent announced that, following discussions with all the Catalan parties, Puigdemont was “the only candidate” he was putting forward as regional premier even though he was “aware of his personal and legal situation.” Torrent justified his decision saying that Puigdemont is endorsed by JxCat and the ERC and that the Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP), which has four deputies, recognised his “legitimacy.”

He had asked for a meeting with Rajoy “to sit down to analyse and talk about the anomalous situation in the Catalan Parliament,” in which the “political rights” of the eight nationalist MPs were being “infringed.”

JxCat has proposed that Puigdemont’s investiture and participation in parliamentary debates could take place via a video link. The decision on this and whether the five deputies can appoint proxies was postponed on Tuesday by the Speaker’s Committee. Pro-unity parties claimed it was deliberately being delayed to a date as close as possible to January 31 to prevent them appealing to the Constitutional Court.

Puigdemont asserted, during a debate on Catalonia at the University of Copenhagen on Tuesday, that he could form a new government, declaring, “We will not surrender to authoritarianism despite Madrid’s threats…It’s time to end their oppression and find a political solution for Catalonia.”

He demanded that the PP government take the necessary measures so that he can return to Catalonia “safely”, with “complete tranquility and total normality” in order to be invested.

PP ministers declared that this was out of the question. Home Secretary Juan Ignacio Zoido vowed, “Justice will be done with Carles Puigdemont” and that Spanish security forces were “working on the problem.”

“Although there are a lot of country paths and you can get in by boat, in helicopter or in a microlight, we are working towards that not happening… so that Puigdemont can’t even get back in in the boot of a car,” he boasted.

PP government spokesperson Inigo Mendez de Vigo snapped, “He won’t be president” and would not be allowed to vote and rule via a video link from Belgium. If the situation remained stuck, a fresh regional election would be called in Catalonia. “This is not what we want but that’s what will happen if they (nationalists) act outside the law.”

Reports suggest the PP government will lodge an express appeal to the Constitutional Court should the Speaker’s Committee authorise a video link.

The PSC has also threatened an appeal to the Constitutional Court if Puigdemont is elected. Spokesperson Eva Granados declared, “Lawyers have unanimously stated that a tele-investiture cannot be produced…We cannot accept a debate with someone who has decided not to come to the investiture debate.”

Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias also insisted that Puigdemont cannot be premier saying “It does not seem sensible that someone from Brussels can be president of the Government of Catalonia.” Catalonia in Common would abstain in the vote for the “independentistas or constitutionalists… We are not going to support either one or the other.”

Podemos had sought a government agreement “between progressives”—ERC, PSC and themselves, he said.

Podemos is pursuing a case through the Constitutional Court to get the use of Article 155 illegalised.

Citizens leader Inés Arrimadas criticised Podemos bitterly for abstaining in the vote for Speaker and scuppering any chance of her party’s candidate, Espejo-Saavedra. She declared, “The only impediment to not having a premier is that the Podemos gentlemen have decided to side with the independence fighters.”

“There are still arithmetical options for the Parliament to be chaired by the party that has won the elections [i.e., Citizens],” she claimed.

The pro-unity forces may have little to fear. It seems behind the scenes there are moves to jettison Puigdemont. While Puigdemont was in Denmark, Supreme Court Judge Pablo Llarena appeared not to want to jeopardise those moves. He turned down a request from the Public Prosecutor to reactivate an arrest warrant against Puigdemont, ruling that he preferred to wait until “a time when the constitutional order and the normal functioning of parliament are not affected” to issue a new warrant.

Former PSOE secretary general, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, after declaring that “Puigdemont will not be president” because “the unilateral path has died and everyone knows it,” insisted that in reality none of the nationalist parties want to put at risk their narrow majority in a new election.

On Monday, when asked if the ERC will support the remote investiture of Puigdemont, ERC spokesperson, Sergi Sabrià, said the party would only take a final decision when JxCat reveals how it plans to carry it out. “So far there have been different opinions, and when everything is clear we can talk about certainties and not hypotheses,” Sabrià said.

ERC deputy spokesperson, Gabriel Rufián, went further, revealing that the party had a “plan B” for Junqueras to be put forward as candidate for the premiership.

The leadership of the CUP, which has a deciding vote with its four deputies, will discuss on Saturday whether to support Puigdemont based on whether he will resume the push for independence.

CUP deputy Natàlia Sànchez also complained on Tuesday that JxCat’s lack of “clear information” about how it is planning to invest Puigdemont did not help to “weave trust.” “Not having all the elements does not help make the decision,” she added.

Sànchez said support for Puigdemont depends on whether he will “deploy the Catalan republic or intends to carry out a political action for an autonomist [rather than independentist] legislature.” “All scenarios are open.”

German, French parliaments prepare new alliance, 55 years after Elysée treaty

Alex Lantier 

On Monday, for the 55th anniversary of the signing of the post-World War II German-French Elysée treaty, the Bundestag and the Assemblée Nationale jointly adopted a common “resolution for a new Elysée treaty.” This unusual simultaneous vote of both parliaments underscored the political, and not simply historic, content of the commemoration.

The European Union’s (EU) German-French “axis” is trying to hammer out a world policy around which to rally the EU, despite Brexit and a historic crisis of US-EU relations that has erupted to the surface since the election of Donald Trump. The resolution adopted by both parliaments shows that the policies jointly being prepared in Berlin and in Paris are reactionary and lack any element of democratic legitimacy. It lays out a framework for a major military build-up, deep social cuts and attacks on democratic rights.

On both sides of the Rhine, the media tried to downplay this unpopular political agenda, and play up cross-border friendship and promises that the 1963 treaty put an end to the German-French conflicts that helped trigger two world wars in the 20th century. Le Monde hailed the 1963 treaty as the historic “gesture of reconciliation that European institutions had failed to create until then.”

In his article titled “Friendship is a feeling” for German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Max Hoffmann wrote, “Don’t confuse the simple and clear document of 1963, that let millions of youth get to know the other country and its people, with bureaucratic nonsense about the euro group and PESCO, the Permanent Structured Cooperation on defense policy. While this may be important for the future of the EU, Franco-German friendship is not only about budget deficits, military coordination and structural reforms. It’s about a German-French feeling.”

Propaganda calling workers to passively accept the diplomacy, war planning, and austerity policies of European capital is reactionary and false. What has prevented war in Europe since 1945 is not the pro-militarist “German-French feelings” praised by Mr Hoffman. It was opposition to militarism and austerity in the working class—bound up with the existence of the Soviet Union and the Soviet victory against Nazi Germany in World War II—and, especially after the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, US imperialism’s status as the lone but fading superpower.

The period when US imperialism could rely on its economic and military power to try to impose settlements to conflicts that emerged between other powers is over, however. The German-French resolution lays out plans for the assertion of their imperialist interests in the face of the growing economic weakness of US imperialism, the disasters caused by its endless Middle East wars, and Trump’s threats to lock European products out of US markets.

Anyone who claims that the “axis” between German and French imperialism will avert major wars is placing heavy bets against history. The German-French “axis” is seeking to develop itself as a major independent militarist power, financing a war machine based on the ruthless exploitation of the working class.

Notwithstanding its calls for more German-French sister cities and joint foreign language programs, the resolution is centered around the commitment of Berlin and Paris to a military build-up. It calls for “reinforcing a common foreign and security policy,” hailing “the creation of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) on 11 December 2017 and the agreement on setting up a European Defense Fund.” It calls for stepped-up German-French military coordination, up to the level of the general staffs of their armed forces.

It also calls for more attacks on immigrants, committing Berlin and Paris to “deepen common efforts in the struggle against the causes of immigration”—efforts that have already seen the EU finance detention camps in Libya where immigrants are subjected to torture, sexually assaulted and sold into slavery.

The resolution also calls for more free market and social austerity policies. Germany and France, it declares, “aspire to a complete and rapid integration of their markets … [and] collectively call for a fully integrated European internal market.” This is to be based on a “European foundation of basic social rights, aiming to produce in Europe a minimum level of equality of opportunity and of access to the labor market, of fair working conditions, of social protection and inclusion, and of equality between women and men.”

In fact, the policies pursued by Macron in nine months since his election give an indication of the ruthless attacks now being prepared. He rammed through labor decrees, partially modeled on the German social democracy’s Hartz laws, that effectively suspended the Labor Code and allowed employers to impose sub-minimum wage salary levels in the oil industry and unregulated mass sackings in auto. He is planning broad cuts to pension and health care spending in the coming years.

These attacks are designed to roll back all of the social concessions made to the working class in an earlier historical period, and press forward with a major escalation of European militarism. Before the vote on the Bundestag-Assemblée resolution, Macron gave a speech at the Toulon naval base again calling for a return to military conscription for all youth in France. This goes hand in hand with growing discussion in Germany of the possible development of a German nuclear arsenal.

Workers cannot afford to wait for Berlin and Paris to implement this reactionary agenda. This year has seen growing strikes and social struggles, from German steelworkers and British railworkers to Iranian and Tunisian workers, pointing to growing militancy in the working class. The only viable response is the fight to build an international movement against war, social austerity, and attacks on democratic rights, unifying workers across Europe in a revolutionary socialist struggle against capitalism and for the United Socialist States of Europe.

This requires a conscious break with the reactionary, nationally-oriented, social democratic, Stalinist, and petty-bourgeois pseudo left forces that promote European militarism, insisting it is less violent than its American counterpart. Sahra Wagenknecht, a leader of the German Left Party, presented their arguments in detail when she traveled with former German Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schäuble to Paris to speak on the joint resolution in the Assemblée nationale.

She hailed the two right-wing heads of state who signed the 1963 treaty, German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and French President Charles de Gaulle, as models for the EU. She declared, “We want “a Europe in which progress ‘becomes a common good,’ as de Gaulle said. Progress as a common good, that is really an entirely different frame of mind from the current EU treaties, in which the freedom of capital clearly outweighs basic social rights.”

This is a travesty of the 1963 treaty designed to sow illusions in the benevolent nature of European capitalism. After five years of talks, Adenauer and de Gaulle both agreed to the treaty to promote their imperialist interests. Adenauer sought an alliance to dissociate West German capitalism from its Nazi past and free it up to play a greater role in Europe; de Gaulle was seeking a German ally against US interference in French imperialism’s colonial interests, in particular the bloody 1954-1962 war in Algeria.

The treaty disappointed de Gaulle, however: the Bundestag voted to add a preamble to the treaty stressing the alliance with the United States. De Gaulle was furious, privately denouncing Germans who “fear they are not kowtowing enough to the Anglo-Saxons. They are acting like pigs. It would be fitting for us to denounce the treaty, break the alliance and agree one with the Russians.”

Wagenknecht’s hailing of de Gaulle as a model for today is reactionary. European capitalism has abandoned its pretensions to distribute wealth as a “common good,” that it maintained in de Gaulle’s era, while the Soviet Union existed as a visible alternative to capitalism. Its national welfare policies undermined by the globalization of economic life, it is tearing up the social gains established by workers struggles in the 20th century and preparing for war.

The divisions between the United States and Europe have, moreover, only grown since de Gaulle’s time and are now reaching explosive levels. Significantly, today’s German-French resolution does not mention any alliance with the United States, Britain, or NATO. Indeed, in the Assemblée nationale, Wagenknecht went on to endorse French imperialism’s anti-American policy in the 1960s, attack Trump, and call for an independent EU foreign policy.

“Lately,” she said, “since the United States has a president who in key moments boasts about the size of his atomic arsenal, it has become fully clear that Europe, as de Gaulle wanted before, must take its fate in its own hands. Yes, we need an independent European foreign policy. But we need it in order to bring peace, disarmament and de-escalation and not to bring on an arms race.”

Wagenknecht’s appeal to re-arm in order to prevent an arms race is cynical and false. An independent European military escalation will not convince Trump or Washington to disarm or deescalate, but intensify the pressure on US imperialism and, indeed, every major power, to step up its armaments programs. Wagenknecht ignores this lesson of both of the world wars of the last century to dress up the reactionary military policy of Berlin and Paris in bright, peaceful colors.

In the final analysis, moreover, such plans only sharpen the strategic and military tensions between Berlin and Paris, which have fought three major wars against each other in the last 150 years. Berlin has emerged from the reunification of Germany immensely strengthened vis-à-vis Paris. The long-standing rivalries between the two again erupted after the September 2017 German elections, when Free Democratic Party leader Christian Lindner attacked Macron’s economic proposals for Europe, denouncing them as a “money pipeline to Paris” that was unacceptable to Berlin.

Significantly, even as Berlin and Paris intensify their strategic cooperation, there are growing signs of nervousness in French ruling circles at German policy. Articles in the pro-Macron Le Monde have warned that Berlin may not respect important French interests, like supporting French military interventions in Africa and maintaining a “pragmatic” approach to Russia.

“Germany, both in terms of public opinion and in ruling circles, does not seem disposed to increase Franco-German strategic cooperation,” Le Monde wrote. It added, “Moreover, greater European integration on defense policy runs up against major obstacles, like the problem of sharing France’s nuclear arsenal or the deployment of German combat troops abroad.”

British Armed Forces chief prepares for war with Russia

Robert Stevens

General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of the General Staff of the British Armed Forces, has declared that Britain must actively prepare for war with Russia and other geo-political rivals.

Carter, the second most senior figure in the Armed Forces chain of command after Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Stuart Peach, detailed the strategic planning of British imperialism to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and made clear that this has been formulated in collaboration with the United States.

Carter stated his enthusiastic agreement with the new National Security Strategy outlined  by US Defence Secretary James Mattis, citing a passage from his speech:

“We will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists that we’re engaged in today, but great-power competition—not terrorism—is now the primary focus of US national security.”

Carter listed, “viewed from this perspective,” the threat posed by “increasing competition in the South China Sea; the potential grave consequences of North Korea’s nuclear programme; the arms race and proxy wars that you see playing out in Yemen and Syria, that perhaps stem from Iran’s regional aspirations. With Russia the most complex and capable security challenge we have faced since the Cold War superimposed on much of this, it would be difficult I think, on that basis, not to agree with Jim Mattis’s assessment.”

No longer were there “two clear and distinct states of ‘peace’ and ‘war’,” said Carter. “…[A]ll of these states have become masters at exploiting the seams between peace and war.”

Inverting Clausewitz, Carter declared that any measure by an opposing power to defend itself, politically or economically, was simply war by other means. Virtually anything can now be designated as a “weapon” threatening the “rules-based international architecture that has assured our stability and prosperity since 1945,” he asserted. “What constitutes a weapon in this grey area no longer has to go ‘bang.’ Energy, cash—as bribes—corrupt business practices, cyber-attacks, assassination, fake news, propaganda and indeed military intimidation are all examples of the weapons used to gain advantage in this era of ‘constant competition.’”

This “strategic challenge… requires a strategic response.”

According to Carter, the main enemy to be faced down militarily is Russia, “the arch exponent” of this new warfare, as “described by the Prime Minister in her Mansion House speech  last autumn.”

Russia represents “the most complex and capable state-based threat to our country since the end of the Cold War,” he insisted, adding that this was a position shared by “my fellow Chiefs of Staff from the United States, France and Germany… at last year’s RUSI Land Warfare Conference.”

Russia was intent on undermining “our centre of gravity which they rightly assess as our political cohesion; and Russian overtures to Turkey are a clear indication of this.”

Carter insisted that the NATO powers “should identify Russian weaknesses and then manoeuvre asymmetrically against them”—that is, with a campaign of stepped-up aggression thinly disguised as a defensive response.

Initially this would centre on “the business of building real institutional capacity in neighbouring states so that they have the strength and confidence to stand up to Russia and the internal resilience to withstand pressures designed to bring them down from within,” Carter said.

But things could not stop at the building of the East European and Baltic states as a proxy force.

Carter proposed nothing less than the eventual invasion and dismemberment of Russia.

It was necessary to pre-empt a Russian attack on the West. This meant planning for land invasions, with a mass troop mobilisation of “Great Power” rivals on the scale of the two world wars, which between them claimed around 100 million lives.

He urged the Armed Forces to “compare the situation today to 1912 when the Russian Imperial Cabinet assessed that it would be better to fight now, because by 1925 Russia would be too weak in comparison to a modernised Germany; and Japan, of course, drew similar conclusions in 1941…

“The parallels with 1914 are stark. Our generation has become used to wars of choice since the end of the Cold War--but we may not have a choice about conflict with Russia… I think, we need to prepare ourselves to fight the war we might have to fight… And I think the 100th anniversary of World War One gives us a great chance to actually think about what that war might look like.”

Carter revealed, “At the moment, we have a project underway styled as ‘Project Henry Wilson’,” a reference to “the Major General who was the Director of Military Operations in 1914, who was able to pull a mobilization plan off the shelf and send the British Expeditionary Force to Flanders. Now, being able to do that again, I think, is important.”

To carry out such an operation, the British Army needed “to be able to deploy overland by road and by rail. And our Strike concept seeks to project land capability over distances of up to some 2,000 km.”

The “need” to project land warfare capability up to 2,000 km is a direct threat to Russia with a horrifying historical parallel.

Carter stated, “For example we are copying what the Germans did very well in 1940 when all of their prime movers, in terms of their tanks and armoured vehicles, had trailers; and by doing that, it reduces your logistic tail. Those sorts of old-fashioned lessons, brought forward, are definitely improving our ability to deploy. And we will test this concept by driving to the NATO Exercise Trident Juncture which is taking place in Norway this autumn.”

The “old fashioned lessons” to which Carter refers were bound up with the preparation by Nazi Germany for Operation Barbarossa—the 1941 war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, recognised as the most brutal military campaign history has ever seen. The Nazi invasion was carried out over a 2,900-kilometer front, with four million troops and utilising 600,000 motor vehicles.

Carter’s speech was timed to coincide with discussions in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Theresa May over the UK’s military spending plans. With the defence budget facing a £20 billion black hole, proposals have been mooted to slash the size of the armed forced by up to 11,000 soldiers and cut the number of Royal Marines and warships.

Carter countered by insisting that Russia possessed a vast array of military hardware that had to be bested by those powers opposed to it--including Britain, which now had to substantially step up its military capability. The implications of this are enormous in an austerity-strapped country.

Concluding, the general warned the government, “I believe that our ability to pre-empt or respond to these threats will be eroded if we don’t match up to them now… we cannot afford to sit back. We need to recognise that credible deterrence must be underpinned by genuine capability and genuine commitment that earns the respect of potential opponents.”

However, whatever British imperialism plans for its own military is conceived of running in tandem with Washington’s war aims—“prioritising Great Power competition” not only against Russia but China and any strategic rival to America’s global hegemony.

US escalates war for annexation of Syria

Bill Van Auken

In its first National Defense Strategy document issued in over a decade, the Pentagon this month bluntly declared that its nearly two-decade focus on the so-called global war on terror was over, and that it has adopted a new strategic orientation toward preparing for “great power” confrontation, i.e., war with nuclear-armed Russia and China.

In Syria, the Pentagon’s declared strategic shift has already been realized in bloody facts on the ground. The US plans to permanently occupy parts of Syria, impose a client regime of its own choosing, and destroy the influence of its rivals. These moves have sparked the ongoing Turkish invasion in the northwestern Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin, which threatens to spark a much broader and bloodier conflict.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made public the new war of Syrian annexation on January 18 before an audience at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He stated that US forces—at least 2,000 troops—will remain in Syria indefinitely. He also dispensed with the phony pretext that Washington invaded Syria to wage the war on terror, in this case in the form of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Tillerson made it clear that the aim of US imperialism is to pursue its own geo-strategic interests against those of its principal rivals in the region. The US is, above all, determined to prevent any Russian, Iranian and Turkish brokered settlement of the war that does not achieve the original aim of regime change initiated by the US.

This policy is in line with the demands of the Democratic Party and those sections of the ruling class that have criticized the Trump administration for not adopting an aggressive enough policy in Syria and against Russia. The Washington Post, aligned with the Democrats and owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, hailed the move in an editorial Monday, “Tillerson tells the truth about Syria.”

The Post praised Tillerson for making “an implicit break with US policy of the past several years, which was to seek Syria’s pacification primarily through diplomatic deals with Russia.” Rather than negotiations with Russia, the US must maintain a “serious and sustainable” commitment of military forces in Syria, which will inevitably be directed not just against Assad, but against Moscow and Tehran as well.

Tillerson’s statement came less than a week after the US command in Iraq and Syria announced that it was organizing a 30,000-strong border security force, consisting primarily of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which has served as the main American proxy ground force in Washington’s three-and-a-half-year-old Syria intervention.

It was this provocative policy unveiled by Tillerson and the Pentagon that provoked Turkey, which refuses to accept the deployment of Kurdish militia on its border or any move to set up a Kurdish autonomous region in Syria. Turkey fears that such moves would only revive the struggle of oppressed Kurds against the autocratic regime in Ankara.

Turkey launched its invasion of Afrin after unconvincing attempts by US officials to walk back the announcement of the planned border force. On Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened that the Turkish army will move from Afrin into Manjib, just east of the Euphrates River, which was conquered by YPG militia forces backed by US troops in August of 2016. American special forces remain deployed in the city, using it as a hub for their operations and a training site for their Syrian proxies.

Such an advance would set the stage for an armed clash between the US and its ostensible NATO ally, Turkey, further destabilizing the region and creating a flashpoint for a third world war.

US President Donald Trump held a phone call with Erdogan on Wednesday in which Trump warned “against the growing risk of conflict between the two nations,” according to the New York Times. The Times added that the call “marked an abrupt reversal from a White House briefing just a day earlier, where senior administration officials suggested that the United States would side with Turkey, a NATO ally, in disputes with Kurdish forces.”

Pentagon officials had in recent days indicated that, if necessary, the US military is prepared to dispense with the services of the Kurdish YPG militia, which has provided the cannon fodder for American operations in Syria under the mantle of the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF).

“We don’t see the YPG as currently the majority element (of the SDF),” one Pentagon official told the Voice of America, Washington’s officials propaganda outlet. “We have a much more populous and much more capable Arab force that we can use.”

This “more populous and ... more capable” force will undoubtedly be drawn from the very same “terrorists” that the US used as the pretext to invade Syria in the first place. In the waning days of the murderous US-YPG siege of Raqqa, the US military oversaw the evacuation of some 4,000 ISIS fighters from the city so that they could be deployed against Syrian government troops advancing on the country’s main oil fields. These same ISIS fighters are now to be rebranded as Syrian Democratic Forces to fight the Assad government and both Iranian and Russian forces within the country.

Thus, the shift from the “war on terror” to “great power” conflict assumes a particularly crude and criminal form.

As for the Syrian Kurds, they are to be subjected to an entirely predictable betrayal, one in a long historical series of such tragedies engendered by naked imperialist carve-ups in the Middle East and the bankrupt attempts of the Kurdish bourgeois nationalist leaderships to hitch their wagons to one or another imperialist power.

However, the current tensions between Turkey and the US are resolved, either through another tragedy for the Kurds and the Syrian population as a whole, or a head-on military clash between the two NATO allies, the present crisis has laid bare the immense dangers confronting the international working class.

The predatory and illegal US operation in Syria is part of a broader turn by not only US imperialism, but all of the major imperialist powers, driven by the insoluble crisis of the capitalist system, toward the preparation for “great power” conflicts, i.e., a repetition on a far more catastrophic scale of the two world wars of the 20th century.

The working class must develop its own independent strategy to prevent these plans from being executed. The most urgent task is the creation of an international anti-war movement of the working class based on socialist principles, and the building of the International Committee of the Fourth International and its sections as the mass revolutionary parties to lead it.

IDRC Cultivate Africa’s Future Fund Program (CA$20 million Grant) 2018

Application Deadline: 1st March 2018

Eligible Countries: This call is open to applicant organizations that will work in partnership with others to carry out research in one (or more) of the eligible countries:

• Burundi;
• Ethiopia;
• Kenya;
• Malawi;
• Mozambique;
• Rwanda;
• Tanzania;
• Uganda;
• Zambia; and
• Zimbabwe.

About the Award: This call will support cutting edge applied field and/or laboratory research projects with the potential to generate high impact and innovative results with particular impact on the food insecure and poor in eligible eastern and southern African countries. All projects require a sound environmental impact assessment, the consideration of social and gender issues, and an applicability to smallholder farmers. The projects should address real practical development challenges and research needs of the 10 developing countries.

The fund will focus on issues under four key research areas aligned to regional priorities as stated in the Malabo declaration:

1. Improved productivity and incomes for farmers and communities and decreased post-harvest losses;
2. Improved gender equity;
3. Nutrition and human health; and
4. Climate change and sustainable water management.

Of special interest is supporting innovative research with the potential for breakthrough results that can be effectively scaled-up and easily adopted by smallholder farmers, food processors, post-harvest handlers, and other value chain actors to improve food and nutrition security and achieve gender equality.

Type: Grants

Eligibility: 

• Applicant organizations must be developing country organizations (national agricultural research systems, universities, government departments, NGOs, regional organizations, and Southern-led international organizations) with legal corporate registration in an eligible country. They may work in partnership with Canadian or Australian organizations, but this is not a requirement.
• United Nations organizations, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research centres, and Canadian and Australian organizations shall not apply to this fund as applicant organizations. They may, however, be included in applications by other research teams as third-party organizations.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: CA$20 million.

Project budgets under this call must be in the range of CA$1 million to CA$3 million (please see the instructions document for more detail on budgets).

Duration of Program: 6 weeks.

Project duration must not exceed 42 months, including all research activities and final reporting. It is anticipated that projects selected in this call will begin in January, 2019. Please plan activities accordingly.

How to Apply: Apply on-line

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: IDRC and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research

Thailand International Postgraduate Scholarship and Training Program for Developing Countries 2018

Application Deadline: Each embassy has a different deadline.

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To Be Taken At (Country): Thailand

About the Award: Annual International Training Course (AITC) was initiated in 1991 as a framework in providing short-term training for developing partners. Today, the AITC remains one of TICA’s flagship programmes. It offers not only a training experience, but also a platform in exchanging ideas and establishing professional network among participants from across the world.

Thailand International Postgraduate Programme (TIPP) was introduced in 2000 as a framework in providing postgraduate scholarships for developing partners. Believing that knowledge sharing is an important pillar of South-South Cooperation, TIPP offers opportunities for Thailand and its partners to exchange their experiences and best practices that would contribute to long-term and sustainable development for all.

Aiming at sharing Thailand’s best practices and experience to the world, the AITC training courses and the TIPP scholarships focus on development topics of our expertise which can be categorized under five themes namely; Food Security, Climate Change, Public Health,  other topics related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and “Sufficiency Economy Philosophy” or SEP which Thailand is proud to introduce as the highlighted theme. SEP has been added with an aim to offer an insight into our home-grown development approach which is the key factor that keeps Thailand on a steady growth path towards sustainable development in many areas.

Fields of Study: Food Security, Climate Change, Public Health,  other topics related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and “Sufficiency Economy Philosophy” or SEP

Type: Training, Postgraduate (Masters, PhD)

Eligibility: 

• Candidates must be nominated by central government agencies in a country from the TIPP eligible countries/territories list.
• Candidates should be an officer or agent (preferably from government agencies) currently working in the area related to the course provided.
• Candidates must have bachelor degree and/or professional experience related field or related to graduate degree.
• Candidates must have a good command of English.
• It is recommended that candidates be less than 50 years of age.
• Candidates must have good physical and mental condition.
• TICA reserves the rights to revoke scholarship offered to participants who are pregnant during the period of study or violate rules and regulations.
• Other requirements apart from these will be under consideration by the University regulations.

English Language Requirements: Candidates must have a good command of English. Candidates whose English is not the first language/Bachelor’s degree was not taught in English/ who is from a country other than New Zealand, USA, the United kingdom, Australia, Canada has to pass and English Language proficiency test according to criteria announced by University regulations.

Selection Criteria: 

• In considering applications, particular attention shall be paid to the candidates’ background, their current position in the service of their Government, and practical use they expect to make of the knowledge and experience gained from training on the return to their Government positions.
• Selection of participants is also based on geographical distribution and gender balance, unless priority is set for particular country/ group of countries.

Number of Awards: Over 700 training fellowships and 70 postgraduate scholarships. Each eligible countries/territory can nominate up to five (5) candidates per academic program.

Value of Award: Successful candidates will be offered an award which covers:

• Return economy class airfare
• Accommodation allowance
• Living allowance
• Book allowance
• Thesis allowance
• Settlement allowance
• Insurance
• Airport meeting service

How to Apply: 

• The nomination must be made by central government agencies in charge of the nomination of national candidates (such as Ministry of Foreign Affairs) or by relevant central government agencies for which the nominated candidates currently work. The nomination must be in line with relevant rules and regulations of the nominating countries/territories.

• The nomination must be submitted to TICA through the Royal Thai Embassy/ Permanent Mission of Thailand to the United Nations/ Royal Thai Consulate-General accredited to eligible countries/territories. (See “List of Eligible Countries/Territories”)
• Originals of nomination documents, duly filled out, must be received no later than a specified deadline for each academic program.
• The application form must be filled in the typed-block letter.

The nomination must be supported by the following four documents;

• TIPP Application form
• Medical Report
• Transcript
• Recommendation letters
• English score (e.g. TOEFL/IELTS)
• One original with two (2) copies of all forms duly filled out, counter-signed and stamped by the authorized person must be submitted.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Government of Thailand

CERN Openlab Summer Students Program for International Students 2018

Application Deadline: 19th February 2018

To Be Taken At (Country): Geneva, Switzerland

About the Award: During two full months corresponding to nine weeks (June-August 2018), the CERN openlab summer students will be given a series of IT lectures (link is external) especially prepared for them by experts at CERN and other institutes. The students also have the opportunity to attend the CERN generic student programme lectures (link is external), if they wish. Visits to the accelerators and experimental areas are part of the programme, as well as visits to external companies. A report on the work project carried out is to be handed in at the end of the stay.

Type: Training

Eligibility: 

• You must be a Bachelor or Master student in Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering or Physics (with a strong computing profile)
• You have completed, by summer 2018, at least three years of full-time studies at university level.
• You will remain registered as a student during your stay at CERN. If you expect to graduate during summer 2018, you are also eligible to apply.
• You have not worked at CERN before with any other status (Technical Student, Trainee, User…) for more than 3 months and you have not been a CERN summer student in the past.
• A good knowledge of English is mandatory; knowledge of French would be an advantage.

Selection: 

• Once the applications are completed, the selection process begins. Applications are considered by the CERN openlab Summer Student Programme Comittee and by the future supervisors of the students.
• The results of the selection procedure will be made available to the students by mid-April 2018.
• Please note that applications may be forwarded to a panel of national experts for evaluation purposes.
• Diversity has been an integral part of CERN’s mission since its foundation and is an established value of the Organization. Employing a diverse workforce is central to our success.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• An allowance of 90 CHF per day during your contractual dates
• Travel allowance (on a lump sum basis)
• Assistance to find accommodation on the CERN site or nearby
• Health insurance scheme during the duration of your contract
• 9 weeks of stay – 40h/week

Duration of Program: June-August 2018

Possible dates of stay are:

• 18 June to 17 August 2018
• 25 June to 24 August 2018
• 02 July to 31 August 2018

How to Apply: Please apply online before the deadline (19th February 2018). Once your application has been submitted you will receive a confirmation e-mail. The following documents MUST reach us before the deadline in order for your application to be considered.

Required Documents

• CV
• Proof of enrolment at a university for the current year
• Report on Candidate: Once your application has been submitted you will receive a confirmation e-mail which contains a link to this report which has to be forwarded to at least one referee (preferably a professor). In order to be considered, at least one new report must reach us before the deadline.The report on candidate needs to be less than 6 months old at the deadline.

Incomplete applications will not be considered.

The students are welcome to upload other relevant document(s) (e.g. academic records).

Login or register to apply now!

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: CERN

KAAD Germany Research Fellowship Programme (Masters & PhD) for Developing Countries 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 30th June 2018 for the September academic session.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East or Latin America. Countries in Africa include: Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya (with Uganda and Tanzania) and Zimbabwe.

To be taken at (country): Germany.  There is also the possibility for Master-scholarships at local universities.

Eligible Field of Study: There is no specific subject-preference. However, the selection board has often given preference to courses and subjects that they felt to be of significance for the home country of the applicant. This holds true especially for subjects of PhD-theses. There is therefore a certain leaning towards “development oriented” studies – this does however not mean that other fields (cultural, philosophic, linguistic, etc.) can not be of significance for a country and are ruled out.

About the Award: The KAAD Scholarship Program is addressed to post-graduates and to academics living in their home countries who already gained professional experience and who are interested in postgraduate studies (or research stays) in Germany. This program is administered by regional partner committees, staffed by university professors and church representatives. Normally documents are submitted to the committee of the applicant’s home country.

Type: Postgraduate(Masters and PhD) scholarship

Eligibility: To be eligible,candidates must:

• come from a developing or emerging country in Africa, Asia, the Middle East or Latin America and are currently living there
• have a university degree and professional experience from their home country
• want to acquire a master’s degree or a PhD at a German university or do a post-doctoral research project (2-6 months for established university lecturers) at a German university
• be Catholic Christian (or generally belong to a Christian denomination). Candidates from other religions can apply if they are proposed by Catholic partners and can prove their commitment to interreligious dialogue
• possess German language skills before starting the studies (KAAD can provide a language course of max. 6 months in Germany)

Selection Criteria: 

• KAAD’s mission is to give scholarships mainly to lay members of the Catholic Church. This means, that – There is a preference for Catholic applicants.
• However, among the scholars, there is a limited number of: Protestant Christians, Orthodox Christians (especially from Ethiopia)and Muslims.
• Catholic priests and religious people are eligible only in very rare cases.

Expectations from KAAD: 

• Above-average performance in studies and research
• The orientation of your studies or research towards permanent reintegration in your home region (otherwise the scholarship is turned into a loan),
• Religious and social commitment (activities) and willingness to inter-religious dialogue.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship:  Applicants who are awarded scholarships for Germany under S1 are helped by KAAD with their Visa-modalities, paid for the flights to Germany and back, provided with language training in Germany prior to their studies, etc.

Duration of Scholarship: Duration of research

How to Apply: Interested graduates can fill an online questionnaire, which they find on the application webpage www.kaad-application.de. For detailed information about application requirements and procedures, we recommend to read the FAQs.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Katholischer Akademischer Ausländer-Dienst, Germany

Turkey Vs. Kurds

Binoy Kampmark

It’s a cruel saga, and one that promises no immediate end. Turkey, considered one of the more potent of powers within the NATO alliance, has manoeuvred itself into a play that Washington will find hard to avoid. For Ankara, one thing must not happen as Islamic State forces gradually vanish, or more likely metamorphose into the next force they will, in time, become. It is that inconvenient matter of the Kurds, ever present, and, in recent few years ever forceful, about carving out territory within Syria and Iraq.

The United States has seen the Kurds as something of a gem, desperate, keen to fight, and often effective in their encounters with the Islamic State forces and their various incarnations. Ankara has been none too pleased with that fact. Guns, once acquired, are used; weapons, once used, are hard to put down.

NATO allies, on this score, do not see eye to eye, and have never done so. These eyes have parted even further with Washington’s promise that a 30,000 Kurdish-led border force will be established to police Turkish-Iraq borders in an effort to quash any resurgence of Islamic State forces. The promise has also managed to irk Iran and Russia, who see such a force as directed, not merely at Islamic State, but against their regional influence.

On Saturday, 72 Turkish jets targeted the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in Syria in an effort, codenamed Olive Branch, to remove, what Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called a terrorist threat across northern Syria. “Beginning from the west, step by step, we will annihilate the terror corridor up the Iraqi border.” Within that enclave are some 8 to 10 thousand Kurdish fighters. But added to that are 800 thousand vulnerable civilians, many displaced by the Syrian Civil War.

No more negotiations, no more chit chat or fanciful discourses about peaceful resolutions and amiable settlements – this was belligerence, pure and simple. “No one can say a word,” blustered the Turkish leader. “Whatever happens, we do not care anymore at all. Now we only care about what happens on the ground.”

Did it matter that the operation was just another example of Syria’s sovereignty as contingent, best ignored rather than respected by yet another power keen to issue its stamp on the area’s geography? Bekir Bozdağ, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, made a rather weak effort suggesting that such a military venture was temporary, a necessarily surgical move to target an infection. Once achieved, Turkish forces would withdraw.

Bozdağ proceeded to name organisations that have all found the convenient rhetorical packaging of terrorism. There are no distinctions to be had between the Kurdish YPG, or the PKK groups, nor those of the Islamic State. “The only target of the operation is the terrorist groups and the terrorists as well as their barracks, shelters, positions, weapons and equipment.”

As has been the official line in the conflicts that have mushroomed from Syria to Iraq, civilians are not targeted, even if they might be slaughtered. “Civilians are never targeted. Every kind of planning has been done to avoid any damage to civilians.”

Masks, posturing, and a good deal of dissimulation, are essential across the diplomatic engagement here. The one group that seems to be coming out of this rather poorly are history’s traditional whipping boys, the Kurds, who remain gristle in the broader strategic picture. Russia, for one, has blamed the United States for feeding the unstable situation while urging restraint on the part of Ankara’s forces.

“Provocative actions by the US, aimed at isolating regions with predominantly Kurdish population, were the main factors that contributed to the development of a crisis in this part of Syria,” went a statement.

Despite adopting a frowning line to the attacks, there is little doubt that discussions would have been had ahead of time with officials in Moscow, given the presence in the Russian capital of Hakan Fidan of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization and Hulusi Akar, chief of staff of Turkey’s army.

Iran, in turn, has been taking the position that such incursions, rather than dousing the fires of terrorist groups, emboldens them. Careful eyes are noting the fortunes of the respective players in this latest, murderous squabble.

The attacks were far from negligible, comprising some 100 targets. Another important feature of this muddled equation was the role played by fighters of the Free Syria Army, who also participated in operations against the Kurds.

The great power play here, even in the murky bloodiness, is that no one wants a genuinely viable Kurdistan front, and certainly one that has any claim to international legitimacy. One neutralised, weakened, and preferably defanged, is a position that seems to have been reached. Moscow will be assured that future conflict can be averted; Ankara will keep its sword sheathed in future. Washington will be left somewhere in between, left behind in another play it misread. Humanitarian catastrophe will be assured.