6 Feb 2018

IGB Freshwater Science Fellowship Programme for International Scientists 2018 – Germany

Application Deadlines:  Application deadlines are 1st June 2018 and 1st December 2018.

Offered annually? Bi-annual. Twice a year
Eligible Countries: All
To be taken at (country): Germany
About the Award: You would like to expand your research on freshwaters or inland fisheries? You are highly motivated to put your excellent research ideas into action? You are keen on working abroad with an interdisciplinary team of scientists dedicated to advance freshwater ecology, inland fisheries science or related research areas? And you are looking for unique facilities to develop new approaches to tackle the most important research questions for the future of our freshwaters?
Then we cordially invite you to apply for a research visit at IGB. With Berlin being an attractive science location, you will find stimulating working conditions, excellent infrastructure and open-minded colleagues with a wide range of backgrounds in freshwater ecology and inland fisheries. The working language at IGB is English.
IGB provides excellent laboratory and field facilities for interdisciplinary research, large-scale experimental facilities as well as long-term research programmes. Fellowships are offered in three funding lines:
  1. Postdoc Fellowships: full support for postdoctoral researchers to carry out full-time research at IGB for up to two years
  2. Senior Fellowships: for scientists who generally lead a research group at their home institution to obtain funding for an extended visit at IGB (e.g., during a sabbatical leave)
It is generally possible to split the granted number of months in more than one visiting period at IGB. Please discuss with your host if this option is suitable for your planned project.
Fields of Study: 
  • Ecohydrology
  • Ecosystem Research
  • Experimental Limnology
  • Biology and Ecology of Fishes
  • Ecophysiology and Aquaculture
  • Analytical Chemistry and Biogeochemistry
Type: Fellowship
Eligibility: The type of fellowship applicable to your career stage depends on your qualifications at the intended starting date. Applicants must hold a Master degree or equivalent (PhD fellowships) or a doctoral degree (postdocs and senior scientists) in one of the research areas at IGB. Before submitting an application, please contact your potential host and develop a research programme in accordance with your host group. The following links may help to identify the best potential host to pursue your ideas.
Selection: The selection of the fellowship awards is competitive. The following evaluation criteria apply:
  • scientific record and potential to conduct the proposed research
  • full support of the potential host contacted before
  • quality and novelty of the research proposal
  • complementary integration into ongoing research activities at IGB
The selection committee is composed of the director, the department heads, the speakers of IGB’s cross-cutting research domains and IGB’s equal opportunity commissioner. The director will notify the awardees no later than eight weeks after the application deadline. Research projects can start in agreement with the respective host at any time but no later than six months after notification. Candidates that have not been accepted can resubmit a revised application within one of the following application rounds. Consultation with the potential host is strongly recommended if this option is envisioned.
Number of Awardees: Not specified
Value of fellowship: The fellowships provide resources to cover basic living expenses. They amount to 1,365 €/month at the doctoral level, 1,828 €/month at the postdoctoral level, and 2,600 €/month at the senior scientist level. In addition, some funds can be provided for consumables and travel allowances. The fellowships do not include health insurance, which is mandatory in Germany, nor contributions to pension schemes. Fellowships can normally only be granted if no other income is received during the fellowship period by employments elsewhere.
Duration of fellowship: Fellowships for PhD students, postdocs and senior scientists for 6-24 months.
How to Apply: 
  • CV, including a complete list of publications
  • certificates of your Master degree or equivalent, or of your doctoral degree, respectively
  • a letter indicating your research interests and experience (max. 1 page)
  • your proposed research programme at IGB (max. 1 page), including potential research host(s) and time line
  • two letters of recommendation to be (a) uploaded by the applicant to our application platform or (b) sent by the reference contact directly to Dr. Ina Severin (severin@igb-berlin.de, cc to co@igb-berlin.de)
Please apply electronically in English by using our  online application platform.
Award Provider: The Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB)

International Scholarships for Taught Masters Students at University of Kent 2018/2019 – UK

Application Deadline: 31st May 2018
Offered annually? Yes
Eligible Countries: International
To be taken at (country): University of Kent, UK
About Scholarship: The University has a long tradition of welcoming international students from around the world and is pleased to be able to offer a number of scholarships for entry at taught master’s level.  The scholarships are worth £5000 towards the cost of tuition fees and are offered to nationals of any country paying overseas fees.
Type: Taught Masters degree
Eligibility Criteria: In order to be eligible for consideration for a scholarship, all of the conditions 1 to 3 below must have been satisfied:
  • an application must have been made for a taught degree course at the University of Kent (any location of study is permissible)
  • the applicant must have received an unconditional offer of a place on such a degree course.
  • the University must have received confirmation of the applicant’s acceptance of the unconditional offer.
Selection Criteria: Scholarships will be awarded based on the information provided on your application to the University of Kent, together with the clear thinking and motivation shown in the submitted essay.
Number of Scholarships: not specified
Value of Scholarship: The scholarships are worth £5000 towards the cost of tuition fees
Duration of Scholarship: for the period of study
How to Apply:
  • Applications for the International Scholarship must be made via your applicant portal. Once logged in, click on My Scholarships and Bursaries.
  • You will then see a list of scholarships that you may be eligible to apply for.  You will be able to apply for the International Scholarship once you have received an offer.
  • Click on Apply and follow the steps to submit your application.
  • As part of your application you will need to upload an essay, which should be submitted as either a Word or PDF document. For this essay, please write no more than 750 words on a topic about which you are passionate and which is relevant to your selected degree programme.
  • If you have applied for a programme with the Medway School of Pharmacy, please email international@kent.ac.uk.
  • Scholarships will be awarded based on the information provided on your application to the University of Kent, together with the clear thinking and motivation shown in the submitted essay.
Scholarship Provider: The University of Kent, UK
Important Notes: The University of Kent reserves the right not to allocate the awards if the selection panel identifies no suitable candidates. The International Scholarship is subject to full terms and conditions which will be provided to successful candidates at the point of award.
If you have any questions regarding the International Scholarships, then please contact international[at]kent.ac.uk.

Fully-Funded Rotary Peace Fellowship for Masters and Professional Programs 2019/2020

Application Deadline: 31st May 2018
Offered annually? Yes
Eligible Countries: All countries are eligible
About Fellowship:Rotary-Foundation Each year, Rotary selects up to 100 individuals from around the world to receive fully funded academic fellowships at one of its peace centers. These fellowships cover tuition and fees, room and board, round-trip transportation, and all internship and field-study expenses.
In just over a decade, the Rotary Peace Centers have trained more than 900 fellows for careers in peace building. Many of them go on to serve as leaders in national governments, NGOs, the military, law enforcement, and international organizations like the United Nations and World Bank.
Two types of peace fellowships are available.
  1. Master’s degree
Offers master’s degree fellowships at premier universities in fields related to peace and conflict prevention and resolution. Programs last 15 to 24 months and require a practical internship of two to three months during the academic break. Each year, up to 50 master’s degree fellowships are awarded at these institutions: Duke University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, International Christian University, Japan, University of Bradford, England, University of Queensland, Australia and Uppsala University, Sweden
  1. Professional development certificate
For experienced professionals working in peace-related fields who want to enhance their professional skills, Rotary offer a three-month program in peace and conflict prevention and resolution at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. This program incorporates two to three weeks of field study. We award up to 50 certificates each year.
Type: Masters, Fellowship

Eligibility: The Rotary Peace Fellowship is designed for professionals with work experience in international relations or peace and conflict prevention and resolution. Fellows are committed to community and international service and the pursuit of peace.
Applicants must also meet the following requirements:
  • Proficiency in English; proficiency in a second language is strongly recommended
  • Strong commitment to international understanding and peace as demonstrated through professional and academic achievements and personal or community service
  • Excellent leadership skills
  • Master’s degree applicants: minimum three years of related full-time work or volunteer experience, bachelor’s degree
  • Certificate applicants: minimum five years of related full-time work or volunteer experience, strong academic background
Eligibility restrictions: Rotary Peace Fellowships may not be used for doctoral study. And the following people are not eligible for the master’s degree program:
  • Active and honorary Rotary members
  • Employees of a Rotary club or district, Rotary International, or other Rotary entity
  • Spouses, lineal descendants (children or grandchildren by blood or legal adoption), spouses of lineal descendants, or ancestors (parents or grandparents by blood) of any living person in these categories
  • Former Rotary members and their relatives as described above (within 36 months of their resignation)
Recipients of Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships or professional development certificate fellowships must wait three years after completion of the scholarship or fellowship to apply for the master’s degree program.
Rotary Peace Fellows who have completed the master’s degree program must wait five years to apply for the certificate program.
Number of Scholarships: up to 100
Value of Scholarship: The Rotary Peace Fellowship covers:
  • -Tuition and fees
  • -Room and board
  • -Round-trip transportation
  • -Internship/field study expenses.
Duration of Scholarship: 15 to 24 months
How to Apply: Applications are now accepted for the 2019/20 Rotary Peace Fellowships program. Candidates have until 31 May to submit applications to their district. Districts must submit endorsed applications to The Rotary Foundation by 1 July.
It is necessary to go through the Application Process on the Fellowship Webpage (see Link below) before applying.
Sponsors: Rotary International

Laureate Global Fellowship for Young Leaders (Fully-funded to Spain) 2018

Application Deadline: 6th March  2018
Eligible Countries: Global
To be Taken at (Country): Spain
About the Award: Each year, YouthActionNet selects 20 young social entrepreneurs to participate in the Laureate Global Fellowship through a unique partnership between Laureate International Universities and the International Youth Foundation. Laureate Global Fellows are distinguished by their track records for success in achieving positive change in their communities, by their innovative approaches, and their ability to mobilize their peers and community members in support of their social change visions.
Fellows develop leadership expertise and deepen their impact through a dynamic, yearlong learning experience, and join a network of nearly 1500 changemakers like them who continue to benefit from learning opportunities and connections throughout their social change careers.
Type: Fellowship
Eligibility: Applicants must be:
  • 18 – 29 years old as of December 31, 2018
  • Founders or co-founders of existing ventures with at least one year of impact*
  • Fluent in English (applications must be completed in English)
*Applicants must be founder or co-founder of a venture that has not previously participated in the Laureate Global Fellowship, and only one co-founder per venture may apply.
Number of Awardees: 20
Value of Fellowship: 
  • Through the Fellowship, they receive: training and peer-to-peer learning opportunities at a week-long workshop; recognition for their efforts at an annual awards ceremony; and a robust package of yearlong support, including virtual learning, personalized coaching, and access to global advocacy and funding opportunities.
  • Costs including airfair, visa fees, ground transportation, accomodations, and group meals are covered by the International Youth Foundation
Duration of Fellowship: 8-10 days
How to Apply: 
  • Please apply through YouthActionNet’s 2018 Laureate Global Fellowship Online Application. Before applying, be sure to read the full Terms & Conditions.
  • While online applications are preferred, there is a Microsoft Word version of the application for those who require it due to limited internet bandwidth. Click here to access the Word application.
  • In order to provide our applicants with the opportunity to clearly and thoroughly explain their ventures and personal journey, this application consists of seven core sections, which must be completed in order for an application to be reviewed. There is one additional section which is encouraged but not mandatory.
Award Provider: Laureate International Universities

Africa Oxford (AfOx) Visiting Fellows Program for African Scholars (Fully-funded to University of Oxford) 2018

Application Deadline: Midnight, 11th March, 2018 (GMT)
Offered Annually? Yes
Eligible Countries: African countries
To Be Taken At (Country): University of Oxford, UK
About the Award: The AfOx Visiting Fellows Program is designed to enhance academic mobility and network building. Applicants should provide details of an Oxford university host i.e. someone with an academic/research post in Oxford in the applicant’s field of interest who will work with them to maximise the usefulness of the time spent in Oxford. This may be an existing academic collaborator or a new potential collaborator with whom the applicant has established contact before applying for the Fellowship.
Type: Fellowship
Eligibility: 
– Applicants are expected to hold a PhD or research equivalent.
– Legal resident of an African country holding an appointment in an African academic or research institution.
– With an existing collaboration with Oxford or in contact with a potential collaborator at Oxford.
Selection Criteria: Applications will be reviewed primarily on the quality and value added of the proposed research agenda, the fit between the applicant and the Oxford host, and the feasibility of the proposed activities in the timescale of the fellowship.
Number of Awards: Not specified
Value of Award: The Fellows appointed will be provided with an en-suite, single occupancy study bedroom with all meals provided in the host College. A temporary University card for and temporary membership to the college Senior Common Room will be granted for the period of residency. The fellowship will also include airfare, visa fee and a maintenance allowance for incidental expenses.
Duration of Program: The fellowships will be undertaken for 4 to 6 weeks between July and September 2018. Under exceptional circumstances, start dates outside this time period will be considered. Please be aware that applications will be reviewed, in part, on the basis of the work you intend to achieve in the timescale you set out.
Award Providers: The Africa Oxford Initiative, University of Oxford

WMG Excellence Masters Scholarships at University of Warwick for International Students 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 20th May 2018 (17:00 GMT)
Eligible Countries: International
To be taken at (country): UK
About the Award: WMG (formally Warwick Manufacturing Group) is one of the largest academic departments at the University of Warwick, located in the Faculty of Science. The department provides inspiring and industry relevant Masters education in fields related to Management, Technology, and Innovation. WMG is nationally and internationally renowned for collaborative R&D with global companies
Type: Masters
Eligibility:
  • Applicants should have applied to study on a WMG Full-time MSc course that runs in the UK, starting October 2018, before applying for the WMG Excellence Scholarship.
  • Applicants should have an excellent academic track-record. The WMG Scholarship committee will be reviewing both the academic achievement (usually the equivalent of a British 1st Class Honours Degree) and Scholarship Statement when awarding.
  • For conditional offer-holders, scholarship awards will also be conditional on achieving the awardee’s final predicted grade.
  • WMG Excellence Scholarships are for self-funded students only. NB: students with partial bursaries on scholarship-loan schemes or partially funded by an external organisation may be considered. Awardees should inform the scholarship committee if they are in receipt of another scholarship or are later awarded other funding.
  • WMG Excellence Scholarships are awarded for study on UK Full-time MSc Programmes only.
  • WMG Excellence Scholarships are paid towards tuition fees only and cannot be paid in cash or towards accommodation or maintenance costs.
  • WMG will award WMG Excellence Scholarships across all WMG Full-time MSc Programmes to maximize nationality and gender diversity.
  • In order to maximise your chances of success, we recommend you submit your MSc application as early as possible.
Selection Criteria: WMG Excellence Scholarships are available on a competitive basis. Awards will be based on past academic achievement, previous experience, extracurricular activities, reasons for study, and your vision for the future.
Value and Number of Scholarships: Up to a total of 50 WMG Excellence Scholarships will be awarded on a % discount of the tuition fees. Awards will range from 25% to 50% fee discount.
Duration of Scholarship: Fulltime
How to Apply: Students must complete our Scholarship Application form in order to be considered for the WMG Excellence Scholarships.
Award Provider: University of Warwick

School of Life Sciences (SLS) Excellence Scholarships for International Students 2018/2019 – University of Warwick

Application Deadline: 30th May 2018
Eligible Countries: International
To be taken at (country): University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
Type: Masters
Eligibility: 
  • Before applying, applicants should have an offer to study on a School of Life Sciences full-time MSc course starting October 2018.
  • Applicants should have an excellent academic track-record, typically the equivalent of a British 1st Class Honours Degree. The Scholarship Review Panel will assess both academic achievement and the supporting statement when awarding.
  • For conditional offer-holders, scholarship awards will also be conditional on achieving any language requirements and the awardee’s final predicted grade.
  • SLS Excellence Scholarships are for self-funded students only. Students with other partial funding may be considered. Recipients should inform Dr Charlotte Moonan (Charlotte.Moonan@warwick.ac.uk) if they are in receipt of another scholarship or are later awarded other funding.
  • Applications for SLS Excellence Scholarships are welcome from home, EU and international students.
  • SLS Excellence Scholarships are paid towards tuition fees only.
  • SLS Excellence Scholarships will be awarded across all Life Sciences full-time MSc Programmes to maximise nationality and gender diversity.
  • Scholarship recipients will be asked to carry out some ambassadorial duties for the School.
Selection Criteria: SLS Excellence Scholarships are competitive and awards will be based on past academic achievement and experience, your motivation for study, extracurricular activities and your vision for the future.
Number of Awardees: 5
Value of Scholarship: 50% reduction of course fees.
How to Apply: Students must complete a Scholarship Application in order to be considered for an SLS Excellence Scholarship.
Award Provider: University of Warwick

Nuclear Reactors, Bankrupting Their Owners, Closing Early

John LaForge

On January 22, FirstEnergy Corporation announced that its faulty and nearly-self-destructed Davis-Besse power reactor east of Toledo, Ohio, will be closed well before its license expires. But the shutdown is not because the reactor represents reckless endangerment of public health and safety. FirseEnergy was fine with that. No, the old rattle trap can’t cover its costs any more, not with the electricity market dominated by cheaper natural gas, and renewable wind and solar.
Davis-Besse’s early shutdown date has not been announced, but CFO James Pearson of FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co., the corporate division in charge of the wreck, said the reactor will close if lawmakers don’t approve a taxpayer bailout.
FirstEnergy had said the financial sky was falling in March 2017. Chief nuclear officer Sam Belcher [his real name] told the Toldeo Blade then — as the firm was floating the bailout measure (SB 128) through the Ohio legislature — “In the absence of something happening, [taxpayer-funded handout to the private, investor-owned firm] we’re going to have to make some tough decisions.” So far, state lawmakers have refused to save the decrepit reactor with state taxes. They cite old-fashioned market competition, and the failure of previous subsidies to save the mature, well-established reactor industry once led by the now bankrupt Westinghouse.
Serious accidents at David-Besse in 1977, 1985, 1998, and 2002 endangered its neighbors. The most hair-raising was the discovery in 2002 that corrosion had eaten through more than 6-inches of the reactor head’s carbon steel. The corrosion went undetected by federal and company inspectors for decades. Having gouged a hole in the reactor cover the size of a football, the corrosion left only 3⁄8 inch of steel holding back the high-pressure coolant. A break would have caused a massive loss-of-coolant accident and out-of-control overheating, resulting in catastrophic uranium fuel melting (known as a “meltdown”) and massive radiation releases.
Repairs took two years and cost $600 million, during which the Department of Justice penalized FirstEnergy over operating and reporting violations. FirstEnergy paid $28 million in fines. Yet the NRC allowed the company to restart David-Besse in 2004, and then to run the rust bucket for 40 reckless years, even after the company tacked on another $600 million in repairs in 2014.
With combined debt estimated at $3.5 billion and losses mounting daily, CFO Pearson said FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. will file for bankruptcy. Not just Davis-Besse, but the firm’s Perry reactor northwest of Cleveland, and Beaver Valley reactors 1 & 2, northwest of Pittsburg, will also likely be closed.
Reactors Shuttered by Bankruptcy or Accident Risk from Calif. to New Jersey
Elsewhere in nuclear power’s long “goodbye,” California utility regulators decided this January 11 not to save Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) from cheap gas, solar and wind, but to close the company’s two reactors at Diablo Canyon as early as 2020. Unlike the bribe-happy legislatures in New York and Illinois, nuclear power defenders were unable to convince California state law makers to fund a bail out of PG&E.
In 2013, Southern Calif. Edison, owners of the San Onofre reactors north of San Diego, abruptly decided to close them. Reactors 2 and 3 have been churning out high-level radioactive waste since 1983 and 1984 respectively. The hulks ran into trouble when massive repairs and upgrades failed inspections. In May that year, US Sen. Barbara Boxer said that the reactors were “unsafe and posed a danger to the 8 million people living within 50 miles. Boxer even called for a criminal investigation into Edison’s installation of faulty replacement steam generators.
The list of old age reactors shut down or closing soon keeps growing. Kewaunee in Wisconsin was shut in 2013, Vermont Yankee in 2014, and Fort Calhoun in Nebraska in 2016. Oyster Creek* in New Jersey and Pilgrim* in Massachusetts will close in 2019 or sooner. Indian Point’s 1 and 2 near New York City will be shuttered by 2021. Exelon Corp’s FitzPatrick* near Oswego, New York, FE Ginna in Ontario, NY and its nearby Nine Mile Point* were all set to close in 2017, before the state legislature agreed to a $7.6 billion bailout. (This bailout law is being challenged in court by Nuclear Information and Resource Service whose lawsuit survived its first motion to dismiss.) Exelon’s Clinton and Quad Cities* reactors in Illinois, might have shut down last year too, except for a state taxpayer bailout worth $3.5 billion adopted in 2016.
New reactor construction is being thwarted by similarly exorbitant costs. In 2016, two unfinished Bellefonte reactors in northern Alabama were cancelled. The two V.C. Summer reactors that were almost 40% complete in South Carolina were cancelled last July by its owners after the industry-shocking bankruptcy of the projects’ lead contractor Westinghouse Electric.
Next among dozens of shaky reactors on the chopping block, Xcel Energy’s 43-year-old Monticello* unit on the Mississippi River in Minnesota looks vulnerable, especially in view of a string of notorious accidents.
* These units are elderly clones of the General Electric “Mark I” reactors that caused a triple melt-down at Fukushima in Japan which began in March 2011 and continues to spread radiation to the atmosphere and to the Pacific Ocean.

5 Feb 2018

Rumblings In The Tory Palace: Theresa May And The Brexit Troika

Binoy Kampmark

As the Sunday news vine began getting heavy, that sole topic of all-consuming, toxic interest – Brexit – threatened to claim the casualty of the British Prime Minister herself, Theresa May.  Interest centred on a possible troika that had busied itself on harrying May.
In any context, this troika would have seemed a compilation for pure comic effect: buffoonish Boris Johnson as replacement for PM, Michael Gove as his deputy, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, that “ornament on the backbenchers” as Chancellor.  They would be the “dream team”, though the description of a hallucinatory nightmare is probably more appropriate.
In the course of Sunday night, a “source” in Downing Street issued a statement to delay the delivery of blows against May.  Brexit meant an actual departure from the customs union, rather than some halfway house involving the continued payment of dues and obligations to observe Brussels’ wishes.
Were May not to have come clean on this, the Conservatives would have threatened a walk-out, resulting in a public split.  According to an unnamed (they tend to be these days) Tory MP, “If they go for a customs union, the party will split.”
What did this Downing Street source go on to say?  Instead of a Customs Union arrangement, the PM will seek one of two options: a “highly streamlined customs arrangement” or a customs partnership.  The weasel words are coming thick and fast ahead of Brexit meetings this week.
The picture is, in other words, an incoherent mess.  Ministers such as Amber Rudd and Philip Hammond have little stomach for the stoic diet being advocated by the likes of Gove and Johnson.  To totally exit the customs arrangement, according to them, would cause undue harm and imperil the UK economy. Then looms the problems of border checks between Northern Ireland and Ireland, a prospect that has been flagged as destabilising to the peace process.
Rudd, in an effort to calm the waters, told the Andrew Marr Show that “the committee that meets in order to help make these decisions is more united than they think.”  Optimistically, perhaps merely hopefully, she asserted that “we will arrive at something which suits us all.”  Supposedly, somewhere in these discussions, the elusive rabbit of “frictionless trade” will be pulled out of the hat.  All ills will be healed and grievances forgiven.
Rudd’s hopefulness belies the backroom antics that are taking place.  Hilary Benn, the Labour chair of the Brexit committee, pulsates with scepticism on this point.  “I think the government is in a state of open disagreement.  The prime minister has been immobilised.  We’re 19 months since the referendum… and we still don’t know what it is we want.”
The Times has reported that members of May’s Cabinet are sketching plans that would involve Brexiteers conceding to a limited extension to aspects of the existing customs union.  This opportunity would lay the tentative ground for negotiating with non-EU nations for specific trade deals and avoid economic harm – at least in the short term.
Short term stop gaps to limit harm; long term insistence on something apart from the European Union; steps to prevent the manifestation of Brino (Brexit in Name Only).  These are the propositions that hover with tenacity, refusing to leave discussions and intruding at every given moment.
What the Brexiteer cabal insists upon is the fantasy that the UK retains its mould as a dominant power, and that, left alone to its devices, will somehow manage to entertain the likes of India, China and Brazil on a better footing.  Britain outside its European fraternity will be bolder, braver and more effective.  Being within the EU customs union, on the other hand, entails negotiating as a bloc of states, a collective understanding.
Figures like the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, demand an end to the “obsessive criticism” of Brexit.  “Brexit,” he told Conservative Home last month, “is not a time bomb to be defused but a great opportunity to be embraced.”  His overseas trips have been greeted with confidence; on returning, he meets an enervating “self-defeating pessimism that is too often on show from certain politicians, commentators and media outlets over here.”
Britain’s links, however emotional they might be, remain tangibly linked to Europe. These will, in time, become more onerous and costly, and Brussels promises to be stringent on this.  EU negotiators are doing their best to make sure that no benefits accrue to Britain in its departure.  What matters now is how the Brexiteers manage to sell this to the voters.
May’s Britain is flailing before weak leadership and chronic uncertainty, but a Britain with the likes of Johnson-Gove-Rees-Mogg would be an absurdly antiquarian sight, an anachronism that will see the country become a contender for the sick man of Europe.  In destroying the country they claim to love in a fit of patriotic enthusiasm, they just might also destroy the reality of Brexit itself.

Surging violence and political crisis in Congo

Thomas Gaist & Eddie Haywood 

The political and social order of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is undergoing a further collapse under the pressure of imperialist-backed demonstrations against the government of President Joseph Kabila, and an ever-growing number of insurgencies and anti-government militia factions. Armed conflict between rebel factions in the south and east of the country, ongoing for decades, is growing markedly. The overall situation is moving rapidly toward a catastrophe not seen since the height of the Congo War of 1996-2003.
The number of Congolese people fleeing the violence caused by the conflict in Congo’s southern, central and eastern provinces, including Kasai and Tanganyika, has surged in the past two years. Congo’s refugee population, by some accounts, now surpasses those of the refugee crises caused by US wars in Iraq and Syria. Some 1.3 million Congolese people were externally and internally displaced in 2017, with 800,000 of them children. Since the start of the conflict in 2008, an estimated 4.5 million Congolese have been displaced.
In the past week alone, thousands of Congolese refugees have fled into Burundi and Tanzania. According to UNICEF, the DRC is now home to one of largest displacement crises for children in the world. Refugees interviewed by the UN have testified to ongoing forced recruitment, including of minors, and atrocities by the militias.
The UN “peacekeeping” mission in the DRC, MONUSCO, is widely and correctly discredited in the eyes of the population with broad layers of the population viewing it with contempt and a lack of confidence.
“The humanitarian situation in the DRC is at a breaking point, as is our capacity to respond due to extremely limited funding. The stories that Congolese who have been forced from their homes are telling are bone-chilling,” the chief of mission for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the DRC, Jean-Philippe Chauzy, said in a statement last month.
The most recent outbreaks of fighting in the southeastern part of the country have already led to thousands of deaths and have further shaken the credibility of the imperialist-backed MONUSCO force, which sustained at least 15 causalities in a single ambush by Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) forces against the UN base near Beni in late December.
The opposition forces are largely composed of fighters drawn from militia networks developed in Central Africa by the United States military-intelligence apparatus over decades. From the early 1990s, the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) backed the training of paramilitaries which launching a series of proxy wars in strategic areas of sub-Saharan Africa contributing to the neocolonial carve-up of large areas of Congo by the first years of the 21st Century.
Forces assembled by the US and its Rwandan and Ugandan allies, roughly from 1993 to 1996, subsequently spearheaded the First and Second Congo Wars, also known as Africa’s World War, across large areas of Congo and neighboring countries between 1996 to 2003.
In the period following the end of the war and the installation of Joseph Kabila in power in 2003, the imperialist backed militias have continued to occupy, and engage in near constant fighting over control of resource rich areas of Congo’s borderlands, where the militias continue to serve as enforcers in the pay of US corporate interests and military agencies.
Hunger and famine in Congo are growing to levels of “alarming food insecurity,” according to a recent World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization declaration. In the past six months, the number of people coping with extreme hunger has risen to two million, adding to the overall number of 7.7 million experiencing hunger. This represents a shocking ten percent of Congo’s overall population of 79 million, of which the majority subsist on approximately one dollar a day.
This year, a cholera outbreak has sent some 200 residents to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) facilities in the capital city of Kinshasa while 1,190 have died and another 55,000 been infected with cholera across the DRC since last year. The effects of the outbreak are exacerbated in a city in which so many lack access to sanitary drinking facilities and health care. As a result, the MSF expects that cholera cases are certain to spread across the city like wildfire over the next period.
The intensification of the new round of wars in the Congo is accompanied by the deepening political crisis of the central administration led by President Kabila. His refusal, in December 2016, to step aside, was seized on by the imperialist powers to begin a mounting pressure campaign against Kinshasa.
Social struggle and conflict are surging, with deadly violence by government security forces and opposition elements in recent months. There have also been growing anti-Kabila demonstrations in major cities throughout the country, led by the Catholic Church and coalitions of other bourgeois opposition forces. More than 100 have been killed in protests since December 2016. Last month, DRC security forces attacked protesters in Kinshasa, killing 6 and injuring 68 others.
Since assuming power in 2003, Kabila and his corrupt ruling clique have fallen out of favor with American and European capitalism. Kabila’s decade and a half in power has seen the DRC government forge much closer ties to the ruling class of China, while Congo’s longstanding alliance with the United States, a relationship secured over decades by the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, has deteriorated. Like many regimes on the continent, in the DRC is becoming an arena of global strategic competition, involving the rising Chinese power, and the United States and the imperialist powers of Europe, together with an array of other contenders, including Russia, India, and the Saudi-GCC bloc.
In Congo, the new scramble for Africa is centrally focused on the vast mineral and natural resources buried in its land, which are among the most strategically important resource concentrations worldwide. Congolese rare metals play a central role in China’s economic strategy and in the production of high-tech hardware generally. Washington correctly views US domination over large sections of Africa’s economic resources as an immensely important lever in its global power struggle against China. This threat has increased steadily since the end of the USSR, with Chinese investment and economic influence throughout the continent expanding massively, to displace the United States as Congo’s main commercial partner.
Forces in Washington have been signaling their backing for Moises Katumbi, an exiled businessman from Katanga province, as a leading candidate to replace Kabila as the leading bourgeois strongman in the DRC. The leadership of the anti-Kabila demonstrations, the Catholic Church, have also backed the wealthy tycoon, calling for the government to allow his return. The US government continues to support an array of opposition groups and NGOs, which it employs to maintain constant pressure against the government.
Despite the efforts of imperialist propaganda to portray the Kabila government as the root source of the social problems and violence in the DRC, their real origins lie in the accelerating breakdown of the capitalist system, and in the efforts of the various imperialist powers to overcome this crisis through military competition and war.
Not only the current government of Joseph Kabila, but the entire Congolese bourgeoisie, together with their backers in the Western financial centers, are engaged in the most ruthless efforts to exploit the Congo’s working class and natural assets, as means to expanding their profit interests. The establishment of genuine peace and the resolution of the social problems facing the oppressed people of the Congo can be accomplished only via the independent struggle of the united African working class, led by Marxist leadership.

Brazil’s political crisis deepens after court upholds conviction of Lula

Miguel Andrade

On January 24, Brazil’s Fourth Appeals Circuit (Tribunal Regional Federal da Quarta Região—TRF-4), upheld the conviction of former Workers Party (PT) president Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula, on charges of passive corruption and money laundering. It went further, extending his original nine-and-a-half-year prison sentence to 12 years and one month. The three-judge panel rejected all the motions of Lula’s lawyers, voting unanimously in favor of the prosecution’s appeal to extend the sentence handed by 13th District Court Justice Sérgio Moro.
Since 2017, Lula has led the polls for the October 2018 presidential election, with an average of 35 percent support for the first-round balloting and an average a 15 percent lead over any potential rival in a run-off. The latest poll from the Datafolha Institute, conducted after the appeals court ruling, saw no change in the polling numbers.
Lula is now virtually barred from running for president, pending rulings by higher courts that are unlikely find that his conviction represented a miscarriage of justice. Lula’s closest competitor in the presidential polls—with just 18 percent support—is the fascistic reserve army captain Jair Bolsonaro, a seven-term representative from Rio de Janeiro in the lower house of Brazil’s federal legislature.
Nineteen percent of those polled indicated that they do not intend to cast ballots for anyone in October, a record number that reflects the broad popular hostility and disgust toward every political party, including the PT.
The unexpected unanimous decision by the appeals court on both the conviction of Lula and the lengthening of his jail sentence unleashed a frenzied run-up on the Sao Paulo stock exchange. The bourgeois media responded with a wave of right-wing triumphalism. This was in line with the media’s increasing subservience toward far-right elements in the upper-middle class, the military and the state apparatus which have for almost three years demanded the punishment of the Workers Party as a criminal organization and the “chief corrupter” of Brazilian society.
The leading prosecutor, Deltan Dallagnol, went so far as proposing in 2016 that political parties be shut down as a maximum penalty for involvement in corruption, a so-far stalled move which was nonetheless supported by Workers Party-appointed Attorney General Rodrigo Janot.
The charges ruled upon by TRF-4 on January 24 stem from the four-year-old Lava-Jato (carwash) investigation into a bribes-for-contracts scheme at the state-run oil giant Petrobras. This is the first case—out of nine—against Lula to reach a verdict. The corruption charge upon which he was convicted stemmed from his alleged acceptance of a seaside penthouse in the resort city of Guarujá, 70 km south of São Paulo, in exchange for favoring the national construction giant OAS on Petrobras contracts during his two terms in office, from 2003 to 2010. A separate charge of money laundering stems from the prosecutor’s allegation that the penthouse, officially owned by OAS, was covertly reserved for Lula.
Neither Justice Moro nor the TRF-4 appeals panel, however, have named any specific favor either granted or promised by Lula to OAS, instead arguing that the “whole” of his demonstrated relationship with several construction giants—including details of unrelated and unfinished investigations—made it “likely beyond reasonable doubt” that the apartment had been provided for services rendered.
The bulk of the evidence presented to the court consisted of internal OAS documents that the company’s president and other executives declared, while negotiating still unconcluded plea bargain agreements, contained nicknames for Lula, his wife and their collaborators, and allegedly showed that the penthouse, legally owned by the company, would be in the future used by Lula.
There is no doubt that Lula, in the course of a more than 35-year political career as head of the PT and as a two-term president, carried out crimes and betrayals against the Brazilian working class and oversaw a political system steeped in corruption. The evidence used to convict him and bar him from running again for president, however, is exceedingly thin.
Lula’s two terms earned him well documented international prestige among imperialist officials and nationalist politicians alike, who used his political success to propagandize the viability of world capitalism. US President Barack Obama famously declared in 2009 that Lula was “the man,” and the most popular politician on earth.
This assessment stemmed particularly from Lula’s pivotal role, as a moderately nationalist metalworkers union leader and later Brazilian president, in propping up Brazilian industrial and commodity monopolies, especially during the early-2000s commodity boom. His policies, as he always boasted, “allowed the rich earn money as never before,” at the same time that token cash transfer programs were employed to reduce extreme poverty and quell social unrest.
Lula left the presidency in 2011 to earn big money on the lectures circuit, much in the fashion of former US Presidents Bill Clinton and Obama.
Whatever Lula’s political guilt and responsibility for the wholesale corruption that characterized not only the PT, but every bourgeois party in Brazil, the methods used to prosecute him have been characterized by a complete contempt for democratic rights within the Brazilian ruling establishment and its state apparatus.
“Crusading” prosecutors have employed arbitrary detentions, perp walks and illegal phone bugs—including bugging law firms’ phones on the theory that lawyers were “collaborators” of their indicted clients, and, most notoriously, a phone call between Lula and his successor as president, Dilma Rousseff.
The corrosion of democratic forms of rule in Brazil has rapidly accelerated since the world capitalist crisis first hit the country with full force in 2013.
Rousseff was impeached in 2016 on trumped up charges of budget manipulation in order to intensify austerity measures about which the PT held tactical reservations, above all fearing they would provoke a social explosion. The takeover by Michel Temer, Rousseff’s vice-president and impeachment conspirator, failed to tackle the country’s worst economic crisis in a century, and the government has thus far proven unable to push through a pension “reform” which is key to its austerity agenda.
As Lula’s lead in the presidential campaign widened—and Temer’s crisis deepened—questioning of the investigations against the ex-PT president began to emerge in the media. The financial daily Valor ran a high-profile article on January 22 titled “Jurists see flaws in Lula’s conviction,” signaling the expectation that the TRF-4 panel would have at least one dissenting justice, opening the way for Lula’s appeals to higher courts and a possible election win.
Similarly, the BBC reported on the morning of the appeals court decision that the Eurasia Group had sent international investors a letter advising that a unanimous decision by the TR-4 panel was highly unlikely and that the court’s decision would have “zero say on Lula’s future.” Folha de São Paulo, for its part, published an editorial on the same morning declaring that “the case involves complex evidence and that is why it is going through a second evaluation, which won’t be the last.” FolhaValor and the Eurasia Group were at this point cautiously preparing international and national investors to once more consider Lula as the best-suited candidate to preside over Brazil’s explosive social inequality.
All this was dropped 24 hours later, with the media bowing to the stock market, which saw a 3.72 percent rally in the hours after the appeals court decision, reaching an all-time high. Folha in its January 25 editorial did an about-face, stating, “Facts, in their complexity, resist any attempt by the defense to portray Lula as innocent.” Within 24 hours, eliminating Lula from the election by means of an upheld conviction that renders him ineligible under Brazilian law had become an accomplished fact.
The Lava Jato operation, and Rousseff’s impeachment, have been used by Brazil’s desperate bourgeoisie to push the whole political system far to the right. This includes not only the press, but also Lula and the Workers Party, which accepted the impeachment drive with no attempt to mobilize workers against it. Since then, they have worked with the unions to impose a straightjacket on the working class in order not to jeopardize Lula’s electoral ambitions, even as labor “reforms,” privatizations and the rolling back of environmental and other regulations have devastated conditions of life for the working population.
Despite his lip service to workers at rallies organized by his oligarchic allies around Brazil, Lula placed his true confidence in national and international capital to free him from the corruption conviction
These hopes were not unfounded. In its response to the appeals court decision, the Financial Times of London published an editorial titled “Lula’s conviction will not make Brazil great again,” warning that “the many opponents of Lula are mistaken in their joy. Brazil, one of the most unequal countries in the world, needs a strong, center-left party like the PT.”
Such a strategy, based on preserving the interests of Brazilian and foreign capital, inevitably demands further shifts to the right. Lula’s promise to subject Temer’s “reforms” to referendums should be seen in the light of Syriza’s referendum on austerity in Greece, laying the groundwork for a similar fraud and betrayal should he be given a third term.
As late as December, all the talk about a “left turn” by the PT notwithstanding, Folha de S. Paulo reported discussions within the party about inviting Luiz Trabuco, CEO of Bradesco, Brazil’s largest bank, to serve as Lula’s running mate.