Scientific breakthrough promises to increase agricultural productivity by 40 percent

Philip Guelpa & Thomas H. Douglass

A common trope among some environmentalists is that human population growth has outstripped the planet’s carrying capacity and is responsible for environmental degradation. This political outlook holds that only a drastic reduction in the number of humans can avert utter disaster. A corollary to this view is that because science and technology have created the environmental crisis, they will not provide solutions to it.

Newly announced research has demonstrated that genetic engineering can radically improve upon the natural photosynthetic process in plants, the basis of nearly the entire food chain on the planet. This work demonstrates that advances in science and technology, if applied rationally, can end the threat of hunger that faces large swaths of humanity. The new technology can furthermore decrease the areas of land needed to feed the Earth’s population, thereby mitigating habitat destruction and increasing carbon capture, a process necessary to reverse global warming.

The work, conducted by researchers at the US Department of Agriculture, and genome research, crop science and plant biology centers at the University of Illinois, was published in the journal Science (South, Cavanagh, Liu, and Ort, “Synthetic glycolate metabolism pathways stimulate crop growth and productivity in the field,” January 4, 2019; see also commentary by Eisenhut and Weber, “Improving crop yield”).

The research reports success in overcoming a “flaw” in the photosynthetic process that, if implemented in food crops, could improve productivity by as much as 40 percent.

Photosynthesis is the process by which green plants use the energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) and water into sugars, and ultimately all other biological molecules. These in turn provide the food on which the plants themselves and animals, including humans, depend.

The rate at which photosynthesis operates is a key limiting factor in the planet’s biological carrying capacity—the number of living organisms that can be sustained by Earth.

It has long been known that there is a “glitch” in the chemical process of photosynthesis, significantly reducing its efficiency. A key chemical component of photosynthesis—the enzyme RuBisCO—sometimes reverses the photosynthetic process by absorbing oxygen, normally a waste product, rather than CO2. This results in a 20 to 50 percent reduction in plant growth due to the creation of toxic byproducts, including the molecule glycolate, that the plant must expend energy to remove. In short, not only does the plant waste energy from sunlight and fail to incorporate carbon into sugar, it must spend additional energy intended for growth to remove toxins it creates.

This flaw in the photosynthetic process and the evolutionary “fix” to clean it up are examples of how evolution produces biological systems that are not imperfect, yet sufficient for survival (i.e., indicating that evolution rather than intelligent design is responsible for life on Earth).

This photosynthesis reversal process, known as photorespiration, occurs more frequently at higher temperatures. With ongoing anthropogenic global warming, the productivity of some crops on which humans depend could be significantly impacted in the future. In some cases, agricultural yield losses resulting from temperature change, aridity, storms and rising sea levels could cause food shortages, malnutrition, and famine, especially in less-developed economies.

Using genetic engineering techniques, the researchers provided plants with more efficient tools to clear out the waste molecule glycolate, a byproduct of photorespiration. In one method, the scientists introduced a glycolate removal pathway drawn from E. coli bacteria. In another and even more successful method, the scientists introduced a similar pathway from green algae.

Testing their methods in tobacco, a “model organism” or species commonly used for scientific study, the researchers found that plants grown in the field could achieve a more than 40 percent boost in productivity over time.

Further research will seek to introduce these modifications into food crops, a process estimated to be implemented within a decade. If successful, this new technology and related advances have the potential to significantly increase agricultural productivity at a time when the effects of climate change—including increased droughts, floods, and plant disease—threaten to have substantial negative impacts on food resources.

The development of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago was the technological revolution that permitted a dramatic expansion of the human population and, in turn, laid the basis for civilization. The newly reported research on photosynthesis and other scientific advances to enhance the disease and drought resistance, and nutrient richness of food crops have the potential to provide another great revolution in the food supply.

However, the primary contemporary cause of famine and malnutrition is not lack of resources but rather economic inequality, climate change, and war. The benefits of scientific advances can only be realized provided that they are employed freely and equitably under a globally planned, socialist economy, rather than monopolized by private agribusiness corporations.

Insurgent Gabon soldiers shot dead in foiled coup attempt

Eddie Haywood 

On Monday morning, several soldiers from the Gabonese army stormed the state-owned radio station in the capital city Libreville. After seizing control of the station’s operations, the coup leader, Lt. Obiang Ondo Kelly, broadcast a statement. After declaring that the military had overthrown the government, Kelly announced a “National Restoration Council.”

A video clip circulated showing the insurgent soldiers inside the radio station and two armed men dressed in military fatigues generally worn by junior officers in the Gabonese army standing behind Lt. Kelly, who was seated before a microphone.

Reading the statement, Lt. Kelly appealed to listeners: “If you are eating, stop; if you are having a drink, stop; if you are sleeping, wake up. Wake up your neighbours... rise up as one and take control of the street.”

Kelly stated on air that the rebel faction represented the Patriotic Movement of the Defence and Security Forces of Gabon, and specifically called on Gabonese youth to “take charge of their destiny.” He made a further overture to the Gabonese military, calling on soldiers to take control of transportation systems, armament reserves and airports, in the “interests of the nation.”

Gabon’s President Ali Bongo Ondimba was out of the country during the coup attempt, receiving medical treatment in Morocco. Ondimba has been hospitalized since October after suffering a stroke, when he left the country to attend a conference in Saudi Arabia. The insurgent soldiers appeared to be taking advantage of the president’s absence.

Minutes after the takeover of the radio station, government troops poured into the streets, accompanied by tanks and armored vehicles, and stormed the radio station. A volley of shots rang out before the government declared that it had routed the coup plotters and restored order.

In the first moments of hearing the broadcast, several youth in Libreville took to the streets in support of the coup and set a car and tires on fire. Internet was cut off, with electricity cut in some areas of the city, and the government imposed a curfew over Libreville. In addition, Gabon closed off the border with Cameroon, in effect stopping trade between the two countries.

One insurgent was killed at the radio station, while others surrendered. Lt. Kelly fled, and a short time later, he was shot dead while hiding in a house. Government spokesman Guy-Bertrand Mapangou told the media that the government was investigating the group’s motives.

The coup attempt takes place amid increased political tensions in the region, particular in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an announcement of a result in the disputed election contest to name a successor to President Joseph Kabila has been delayed indefinitely.

Notably, the coup attempt occurred mere days after the Trump administration deployed 80 troops to Gabon for the purpose of “protecting US assets in the event of violent demonstrations” arising from the Congolese election.

France also maintains a permanent military presence in the country, with nearly 1,000 troops and an air detachment located at Camp de Gaulle adjacent to the airport in Libreville.

Gabon is a tiny country in Western Africa with a population of 1.5 million and a government that is run by a dynastic elite. The Bongo family has held power in Libreville for more than a half a century, beginning with the installment of Omar Bongo as president in 1967 by French president Charles de Gaulle. With Omar Bongo at the helm, French imperialism sought to maintain its economic interests in its former colony after Gabon’s independence in 1960.

Omar Bongo remained in power for the next 42 years until his death at age 73 in 2009. His rule was characterized by nepotism, corruption and the enrichment of a tiny layer of elites who carved up Gabon’s vast oil and gas deposits, along with significant resources of uranium, minerals and precious gems, giving extraction contracts to Western companies. While this parasitic elite enriched itself, it came at the expense of the Gabonese masses, who experienced social misery.

In an election marred by irregularities and fraud, Bongo’s son Ali Bongo Ondimba was elected president in 2009. The poll was met with social unrest, with protesters pouring into the streets of the capital in anger at such a blatant display of dynastic succession. For its part, the incoming Bongo administration violently cracked down on the protests, with security forces swarming into the streets of Libreville, firing tear gas, beating protesters, and carrying out mass arrests.

In 2016, social unrest again rocked the country when Ondimba was reelected once again amid widespread allegations of irregularities in the tally. More than 1000 were arrested and 17 people killed, with scores injured in the ensuing police crackdown.

In recent years, the Bongo dynasty has come under fire from Washington and Europe following the release in 2010 of a US Embassy cable from Wikileaks documenting the embezzlement of millions of dollars from the Bank of Central African States which Bongo funneled to political supporters in France of then French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

For its part France was from the start opposed to an Ondimba government, and during the Bush administration, Omar Bongo remarked to then US Ambassador R. Barrie Walkley, “The French don’t like my son.”

While it is unknown whether Washington or Europe were behind the coup attempt, there are indications of a falling out of relations in recent years between Washington and the Bongo regime, after enjoying years as a subservient partner of US interests. In 2010, a US Senate report documented serious crimes committed by the Bongo government, including election fraud and corruption.

According to the report, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations highlighted that Omar and Ali Bongo have amassed “substantial wealth while in office, amid the extreme poverty of its citizens.”

The Senate report is a completely hypocritical and cynical whitewash of Washington’s criminal involvement. The Bongo dynasty served for years as a pliant government carrying out the dictates of American capitalism in Gabon. Highlighting this, in 2010 then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed the importance of Gabon and called Ondimba “a valued partner.”

Speaking to the media regarding the attempted coup, a spokesman for United States Africa Command (US AFRICOM) issued a complete denial that American troops stationed at Libreville had any involvement in the coup attempt, and further denied that American forces participated in the operation to restore order.

Notably significant is AFRICOM’s close relationship with the Gabonese military, in particular through several training and readiness exercises conducted in the country over the last decade, which leave little doubt to the predatory aims of the Pentagon.

In 2017, AFRICOM held training exercise Judicious Activation in the country, consisting of training given to Gabonese troops in establishing a short-term forward operating base from which military forces could mount an attack and set up logistics in order to sustain forces in deployments across the region.

Considering the vast scale and reach of AFRICOM’s operations extending across the African continent, it can be stated with certainty that Washington is keeping a watchful eye over the political turmoil in Gabon and will intervene at a moment’s notice if American economic interests come under threat.

Guatemalan establishment indifferent to deaths of US incarcerated migrant children

Andrea Lobo

Guatemala’s government and its entire ruling establishment have responded to the recent deaths of two Guatemalan children under US custody with an indifference that not only reflects their disdain for the country’s impoverished masses, but also their efforts to demonstrate loyal submission to the Trump administration.

Jakelin Caal, 7, died on December 8, and Felipe Gómez Alonzo, 8, on December 24, after crossing the border into the US and being taken into custody by the border patrol.

Along with much of the media, Guatemalan authorities have remained silent about the case of Yazmín Juárez, a 20-year-old Guatemalan migrant, who filed a suit last month against the US federal government over the death of her 19-month-old daughter, Mariee, after contracting a respiratory infection and being inadequately treated at an ICE family detention center in Arizona earlier last year.

While Hondurans and Salvadorans comprised the bulk of the caravans that gained widespread media attention and sympathy internationally last year, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported that, for the first time on record, it arrested more Guatemalans crossing the border than any other nationality during the 2018 fiscal year, which ended in September. A total of 50,401 Guatemalan migrants were detained, twice as many as in the previous fiscal year.

On December 25, the US Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen provided data showing that six people died during fiscal year 2018 (ending in September) in CBP custody, while CBP commissioner Kevin McAleenan told CBS that Jakelin was the first child to die in more than a decade.

The deaths of Jakelin and Felipe attest to the ruthless detention regime imposed on migrants by the Trump administration. While investigations are underway into the deaths, it is known that Felipe became ill after being sent to the temporary detention facilities known as hieleras or “ice boxes”, and that Jakelin collapsed after she was ripped away from her father by officials claiming their relationship could not be confirmed.

Many more migrants die while crossing the Sonoran Desert into the US, where CBP officials are known to destroy water and provisions left for migrants by volunteers.

Jakelin’s body was received by a group of saddened neighbors of San Antonio Secortez and nearby towns of the Raxruhá municipality. Dozens gave money and food baskets to the family. Felipe’s body has not been returned to his hometown due to continued examinations.

Jose Manuel Caal, Jakelin’s uncle, told reporters that the girl and her father were escaping hunger. “The poverty we live in, the crops we grow aren’t enough to support a family,” he noted.

In Nentón, Huehuetenango, Felipe’s uncle and one of his cousins had no time to mourn or wait for the body and are already planning on attempting the trip to the United States. “I have no land, I have nothing for my children to live better,” he commented to Prensa Libre shortly after the news came of Felipe’s death.

The outrage over these deaths among workers in the US and the popular anger and grief in Guatemala are anathema to both governments.

The Guatemalan government of President Jimmy Morales has not protested the deaths or the brutal treatment of migrants by US authorities and has instead reproduced the threats by the Trump administration. In fact, the death of Jakelin Caal was temporarily covered up by the Guatemalan authorities despite reports that the consulate at Del Río, Texas was informed on December 8 at 6 a.m. It wasn’t until December 13, five days after her death, that the CBP acknowledged the incident.

Guatemalan Foreign Minister Sandra Jove released the following statement shortly after revealing the identity of the girl: “The government of Guatemala regrets that a citizen has lost her life in this journey and points out that places where migrants cross now are more dangerous and distances they travel are longer.”

On December 25, after the death of Felipe, the Foreign Ministry published a new communiqué stating: “we requested a clear investigation that respects the proper process that US authorities assign to this case.” That day, the Guatemalan government’s Human Rights Ombudsman made the following pronouncement: “The efforts by the US authorities must not center only on controlling migratory flows, but also on the integrity of the migrants, since two children have died in the custody of the border patrol in less than 15 days.”

The Guatemalan consul in Del Río, Tekandi Paniagua, was asked whether the death of Caal, reportedly a healthy 7-year-old girl, could have been avoided. He refused to respond until the autopsy.

After Nielsen and Trump blamed the families directly for the children’s deaths, the Guatemalan government made no protest.

Trump has continued his bullying unbothered. On December 28, for instance, he tweeted:

“Honduras Guatemala and El Salvador are doing nothing for the United States but [are] taking our money. Word is that a new Caravan is forming in Honduras and they are doing nothing about it. We will be cutting off all aid to these 3 countries-taking advantage of U.S. for years!”

On January 1, the CBP attacked migrants seeking to cross the border near Tijuana with tear gas and arrested at least 25 of them. Again, there was no protest by Guatemala or other regional governments.

On June 18, at the height of popular rage against Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy against migrants characterized by the separation of children from their parents, the Guatemalan government made no protest but instead declared that it “respects US foreign policy in migration matters.” President Morales again failed to protest the deployment of US troops and violent threats against caravan members by Trump in October, or the shooting of rubber bullets and tear gas canisters to disperse caravan members, including women and young children, inside Tijuana in November.

Such subservience has angered workers, peasants and wider layers of the population. “The imperviousness of the US government and the security forces killed her; the Jimmy Morales administration killed her; the ineptitude and subservience of foreign minister Sandra Jovel killed her; the Congress that legislates for the rich killed her; the greedy elites killed her; the depriving transnational corporations killed her; indifference killed her; we all killed her,” wrote historian María Aguilar in an op-ed on Jakelin’s death for El Periódico.

The hostility to the masses by the Guatemalan ruling class has in turn become useful to mouthpieces of the US imperialist foreign policy, setting the tone for the response by most of the media and political opposition in Guatemala.

The New York Times, in a December 28 article titled “Guatemala cautious on Young Migrants’ Deaths, Wary of Angering US,” sought to shift the blame for the deaths onto the Guatemalan government. It attributes its “solicitous approach” toward Trump’s anti-immigrant offensive to President Morales bid to secure Trump’s backing for the expulsion of a UN-sponsored “anti-impunity” commission, the CICIG (International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala).

Foreign Minister Jovel issued an ultimatum on Monday giving the UN body 24 hours to leave the country.

Undoubtedly, Morales wants Trump’s blessings regarding the CICIG, which had been investigating him for illicit campaign financing and several of his family members and political associates in other corruption cases. But in making this argument, the Times and many others in Guatemala and elsewhere are seeking to channel social opposition over the migrant deaths behind support for the CICIG.

Far from seeking to “combat the corruption that has crippled Guatemala’s political and economic development—and, in part, fueled the migration of its citizens,” as the Times claims, the CICIG is fully controlled by the US State Department and has functioned as a lever of imperialist domination. It has been used to pressure the ruling National Convergence Front to adopt policies that are even more subordinate to US capital and its geopolitical interests—policies that are chiefly responsible for the desperate social conditions forcing migrants to leave.

These policies include the imposition of social austerity and attacks on democratic rights with the aim of keeping Guatemala as a source of cheap labor and natural resources. At the same time, Washington has sought further US militarization of the region, the timely servicing of the public debt to Wall Street and the cutting of economic and political ties with US rivals, chiefly China.

A government report presented in August indicates that 59.3 percent of the population lives under poverty, 8.1 percentage points more than in 2006. The official poverty rates of the municipalities where Felipe and Jakelin lived exceed 80 percent. Decent-paying jobs, health care, sanitation facilities, secondary education, electricity, internet, cable and other basic needs are largely inaccessible. Guatemala collects the smallest share of tax revenues relative to its GDP in the world.

Agricultural workers make on average 40 to 60 quetzales ($5-8) per day, below the paltry minimum wage for the sector of 90 quetzales ($11.6) daily.

At the same time, Guatemala is the world’s fifth main exporter of palm oil and the fourth of sugar. After agricultural products, textiles constitute the second largest export sector, followed by chemicals, minerals and metals.

What maintains the intolerable levels of poverty for workers and peasants is the drive for profits by major transnational corporations and local landowners that continue bleeding Guatemala’s soil and labor.

Almost one of every two children in Guatemala suffers chronic malnourishment, with thousands of children under five dying each year from preventable conditions (13,000 in 2015 according to UNICEF). Youth seeking to escape desperate poverty, domestic abuse or gang violence also face the possible nightmare of being locked up, beaten, and sexually abused in the shelters controlled by the Social Welfare Secretariat (SBS). In 2017, 41 girls died in a fire at a shelter after they set fire to mattresses as part of a failed attempt to escape their “refuge.” The treatment meted out by US authorities to the 15,000 migrant children held in custody is not that different.

The opposition parties in Guatemala were also largely silent on the deaths of Jakelin and Felipe, and their few statements were toothless. For instance, the only official statement by the ex-guerrilla URNG-Maiz, signed by its only legislator, Walter Félix, attacked Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy but made no further demand than calling on the Morales government to “elucidate the case.”

A June analysis by the CELAG think tank (Latin American Strategic Center on Geopolitics) warned that there is no political “left” in Guatemala, citing the lack of political support for the ex-guerrilla URNG-Maiz and the Indian nationalist Winaq Party, adding that “flexible and informal labor hamper the development of trade unions.”

Back in May, the Washington-based think-tank Stratfor expressed confidently that any social explosion in the country would fall “once again under the auspices of CICIG’s Guatemalan defenders,” referring to the channeling of mass protests in 2015 against the Otto Pérez Molina administration behind the CICIG’s corruption case against him, culminating in his resignation that year and replacement by the fascistic Vice-President Alejandro Baltazar Maldonado. Shortly thereafter came the election of the ex-comedian Morales, an even more pliable defender of the interests of US imperialism and the local oligarchy.

The entire establishment opposition has based its criticisms of Morales on defending the CICIG and its corruption cases against the ruling coalition. The CELAG piece reflects concerns among ruling circles in Latin America that the alignment of the pseudo-left behind the CICIG and its other right-wing backers could eventually render them useless as instruments for channeling social unrest behind the bourgeois politics.

Their unpopularity, however, runs much deeper. It is the result of their abandonment of the class struggle after the guerrillas, along with the student and indigenous protest organizations became the left flank of the UNE (National Union of Hope party) faction of the ruling elite following the “peace process” in the late-1990s, while the living conditions of peasants and workers continued to worsen. This was in turn the inevitable result of the nationalist politics advanced by the petty-bourgeois leaderships of the Maoist and Castroite guerrillas and Stalinist Guatemalan Workers Party (PGT), which actively undermined the struggle to develop a Marxist revolutionary party based on the international working class to fight for socialism.

Only such a party, a section of the ICFI, in the Guatemalan working class, leading behind it all toiling masses, can provide a viable leadership for the struggle against imperialism and social inequality by fighting in unison with workers in the US and across the region to overthrow capitalism, expropriate the wealth of the financial elite and local oligarchy and crush all exploitation, hunger and violence.

Sears liquidation temporarily averted, thousands more jobs to be slashed

Jessica Goldstein

Sears Holding Corp. put its decision to liquidate on hold Tuesday, considering a revised offer for a takeover bid by its chairman and former CEO, hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert. The original takeover bid to purchase all of Sears’ assets, including 425 of its retail stores, for $4.4 billion was announced by Lampert on December 28, 2018, and was initially rejected by the company’s board.

Lampert bid for the US retail chain through an affiliate of his ESL Investments hedge fund, Transform Holdco LLC. The offer included a $1.3 billion financing commitment from three financial groups. Lampert took over as the company’s CEO in 2013 and stepped down after the company filed for bankruptcy in October 2018.

According to Sears’ lawyers, Lampert has until 4 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday to make a $120 million down payment as part of a revised bid. If the offer is accepted, 425 of 500 remaining stores will remain open and up to 50,000 of the current 68,000 employees will be retained.

The company’s stock, now considered a “penny stock” and recently valued at near zero, rose 30 percent to $0.39 per share after the announcement.

In late 2018, Sears announced that it planned to close 80 Sears and Kmart stores across the US in March, in addition to the nearly 200 already set for closure. The retailer filed for bankruptcy earlier in October when it was operating nearly 700 stores, saying it would close only 142 unprofitable stores; the next month, it announced that an additional 40 would be closed.

Sears has suffered a series of financial crises as a part of America’s ongoing “retail apocalypse” that has claimed big box chains such as Toys “R” Us, Bon-Ton stores and The Sports Authority. Throughout much of the 20th century, the company was the country’s largest retailer and its largest private-sector employer. The once powerful department chain suffered financial losses as it faced competition first from big box retailers like Walmart and later from e-commerce giants like Amazon.

The 126-year-old department store chain began as a mail-order retailer in the late 19th century. Through its mail order catalog, it was able grow rapidly by penetrating into underserved rural markets as railroads linked together distant parts of the country and the Rural Free Delivery Act of 1896 expanded mail routes into rural areas.

Sears opened its first department store in Chicago, Illinois in 1925, and continued to expand after the post-World War II boom in the US. By 1975, Sears, along with Montgomery Ward and JC Penney, captured 43 per cent of all department store sales in the country.

By 1991, Walmart overtook Sears as the largest retailer in the US, as a part of the phenomenon of the growth of big box stores which relied heavily on ultra-low-wage labor and cheap goods produced in other countries, many of which had been torn apart by US imperialist exploits. Department stores in the US are being phased out, and Sears, though comparable to the expanse of Amazon in its heyday, was no exception.

Lampert purchased the giant retailer through a merger with discount chain Kmart in 2005, and through his hedge fund engaged in a series of relentless acts of bloodletting to extract every ounce of financial profit that he could from the dying chain. ESL engaged in numerous stock buybacks and other financial schemes to artificially inflate the stock price, while accumulating a large amount of the company’s shares for itself.

When Sears declared bankruptcy in October, Lampert personally owned a 31 per cent stake in the company, while ESL Investments held an additional 18 per cent. Lampert is currently the company’s largest shareholder.

In addition to owning the largest amount of the company’s stock of any of its shareholders, Lampert and ESL own a large amount of its debt. In October, ESL and a related fund, JPP, owned about $2.66 billion in Sears debt, with interest on the notes of between $200 million and $225 million per year.

In 2014, Sears sold its Land’s End clothing brand to a consortium that was two-thirds controlled by ESL. In 2016, Sears sold Craftsman brand tools to Black & Decker for $900 million to pay off debt, including to Lampert’s hedge fund. Sears’ Die Hard batteries were put up for sale in 2017, and in 2018 Lampert made a $400 million bid for Kenmore appliances and an $80 million bid for Sears Home Improvement stores.

In 2015, Lampert split off 235 of the company’s most profitable stores and 31 other Sears real estate holdings to sell to a private real estate trust, Seritage Growth Properties, for $2.7 billion. Lampert’s hedge fund owns 43.5 per cent of this partnership and Lampert serves as chairman. From this transaction, Lampert and ESL have extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from the company in rent, property tax expenses, insurance and utility payments.

Lampert founded ESL Investments in 1988 after a brief period in Goldman Sachs’ risk arbitrage department. The hedge fund specialized in betting on undervalued stocks. He and his wife, attorney Kinga Lampert, own three mansions and a 288-foot luxury yacht. His net worth, which has fallen since Sears’ bankruptcy and possible liquidation were announced, is valued at nearly $1 billion.

Lampert is a perfect example of the parasitic oligarch who has been elevated to the top of society via financialization. His wealth has been gained not through his own merits or hard work, but through a series of financial transactions that have bled the vast productive forces of society dry.

The livelihoods of 68,000 Sears employees now hangs in the balance. If any worker loses his or her job because of a cutthroat deal or liquidation, it will not be the outcome of impersonal economic forces but a premediated criminal act by the ruling class.

Most Sears retail employees are paid extremely low wages, in many cases not enough to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment in most American cities. According to Glassdoor.com, a cashier can expect to make on average $19,697 per year; a sales associate, $21,079 per year; a visual merchandiser, $27,498 per year; and an automotive technician, $33,027 per year.

Whatever the outcome for Sears, further attacks are being planned on workers throughout the economy. In order to fight back, workers must form their own rank-and-file committees to defend their jobs and fight for better wages and working conditions.

In their struggle, workers at Sears should link up with other heavily exploited workers in the retail and logistics sector, including Amazon workers and UPS workers, and autoworkers at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, who are also faced with the threat of job losses and plant closures.

The capitalist system has nothing to offer the working class. Only through a unified struggle of the working class, independent of the trade unions and capitalist political parties, can workers defend their right to a good-paying job by fighting for an end to capitalism and putting in its place socialism, a system in which the productive forces of society are used to meet the needs of the vast majority and not a few wealthy parasites.

Further protests against Orbán government in Hungary

Markus Salzmann

On Saturday, in freezing temperatures, about 10,000 people demonstrated again in the Hungarian capital Budapest against the right-wing government of Prime Minister Victor Orbán. In the last weeks, thousands had already protested against the so-called “slave law.”

The protests in Budapest and other cities in the country were triggered by a tightening of labour law allowing companies to demand up to 400 hours of overtime per year from all employees. Orbán’s governing party Fidesz, which has a two-thirds majority in parliament, passed the law in mid-December.

Meanwhile, the protests are directed against the government’s entire right-wing, anti-social policies, which have systematically eliminated press freedoms and democratic rights since it took office nine years ago. The recent restructuring of the judicial system is designed to ensure that the government has full control over the courts. On Saturday, the crowd chanted “We won’t be slaves,” “Dirty Fidesz” and “Orbán, get out!” among other things.

So, it was hardly surprising that the pro-government media in Hungary either barely mentioned the protests or uncritically repeated the reactions of government representatives. As before, Fidesz declared that the demands of the demonstrators would not be met under any circumstances.

At the same time, the government is continuing its anti-Semitic campaign by claiming that US billionaire George Soros was behind the protests. On Saturday, a Fidesz spokesman said Soros was mobilising forces everywhere that were attacking anti-migration governments, such as in Hungary, before the European elections in the spring.

In the meantime, almost all opposition parties and trade unions have joined the protests. They are seeking to bring them under their control and direct social opposition into a political dead end. The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), whose right-wing policies paved the way for Orbán, the hysterically anti-Communist Greens (LMP) and the trade unions have allied themselves with the neo-fascist Jobbik party, which has repeatedly supported Orbán’s xenophobic government policies.

The MSZP, which emerged from the former Stalinist party of state, has used the protests to forge a right-wing alliance with Jobbik. Bertalan Tóth has emerged as the new party leader from months of fierce in-fighting in the MSZP. He has pledged his party to a radical turn to the right and cooperation with the ultra-right Jobbik. In this year’s local elections, the opposition parties want to nominate only one candidate in each region, who will then compete against the ruling party’s candidate.

The unions are threatening a general strike if the government does not respond to four demands they have made. According to the daily Nepszava, they are demanding the overtime law be revoked. In addition, the minimum wage should be raised, pensions improved and the right to strike amended. Laszlo Kordas of the Federation of Trade Unions said, “We are preparing for strike action.”

Andras Földiak, chair of another trade union federation, told Inforadio that he expected nationwide strikes in early February. A nationwide protest is already planned for January 19.

The trade unions and opposition parties fear the protests against the government will expand and take an independent direction if they do not bring them under their control. That this fear is not unfounded is demonstrated by the growth of protests on an international level. For weeks, the “yellow vests” in France have been protesting against President Emmanuel Macron. The protest wave has already spread to Spain and Portugal. Now, more and more protests are developing in southern and eastern Europe.

For several weeks, thousands have been demonstrating against President Aleksandar Vučić in Serbia. His ruling Progress Party (SNS) is implementing brutal austerity dictates and is acting increasingly violently against the opposition forces.

When 10,000 people participated in a demonstration at the beginning of December, Vučić declared contemptuously, “March as much as you like. I will not meet your demands, even if five million should come.” By the end of the year, the number of participants had quadrupled.

The same Saturday, more than 15,000 people came to the demonstration in the capital Belgrade, despite snow and icy temperatures. There were smaller protests in Novi Sad, Niš and Kragujevac. While the crowd shouted, “Vučić, you thief!” banners read, “It has begun.”

Student protests have again broken out in Albania where they had boycotted lessons for two weeks in December and announced they would resume the protests in January. They are opposing the catastrophic conditions confronting pupils and students in the poverty-stricken Balkan state. The education system is chronically underfunded and ailing. Walter Glos of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation told Deutschlandfunk radio that the mood of protest had since spread to other parts of the population.

Bosnia is also in “turmoil,” as the Süddeutsche Zeitung recently noted. Since the death of a student eight months ago, more and more people have been protesting against the government.

The movement was triggered by the death of the 21-year-old student David Dragičević. While the police portrayed the death as an accident, everything points to torture and murder. In the eyes of his father, a waiter and war veteran, his son was the victim of a plot involving criminals, the police and politicians.

This was the trigger for thousands to take to the streets against the right-wing nationalist government. In social media networks, the protests are supported by tens of thousands. In the area formerly blighted by civil war, the government is deliberately seeking to fuel ethnic tensions, however, in the protests against the government, Muslims, Serbs and Croats are showing their solidarity.

Debate begins in British parliament over May’s Brexit deal with EU

Robert Stevens

British MPs begin several days of debate today ahead of a vote next week on Prime Minister Theresa May’s withdrawal deal with the European Union (EU). The “meaningful vote” is slated to be held on January 15.

May’s deal is opposed by all opposition parties and a large swathe of her own Conservative MPs. She was forced to hold this debate and the vote after she called off a vote on the agreement last month at the last minute. May knew she was set to lose heavily, threatening her position as prime minister.

The crisis facing May has only deepened in the interim, with the “hard Brexit”-supporting Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), whose 10 MPs the Tories rely on to rule as a minority government, still pledged to oppose the deal. They are opposed to Northern Ireland remaining in an indefinite “backstop” Customs Union agreement with the EU until a free trade agreement can be reached between the UK and EU, which could be years down the line. On Sunday, Deputy DUP leader Nigel Dodds said the “fundamental problems which make this a bad deal appear not to have changed.” He added, “The backstop remains the poison which makes any vote for the Withdrawal Agreement so toxic.”

The EU has insisted since early December—when May’s deal was announced—that negotiations are now over on a text that took two years to complete. Despite this, May continually claims that the UK is still in negotiations with Brussels ahead of next week’s vote. On Sunday, May told the BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show” that she hoped to secure “changes” to the document and was “still working” with the EU to secure legally binding assurances over the backstop arrangements. Before the vote, May is to outline the government’s proposals over the Northern Ireland border and offer a greater role for MPs in negotiations on the next stage of future UK-EU relations.

In public the EU is maintaining its position that negotiations are over. Last Thursday, the European Commission’s Mina Andreeva insisted, “We are not renegotiating what is on the table.” On Monday, Nathalie Loiseau, the French Europe minister, said that some assurances could be offered to May but, “These are political assurances … there is nothing more we can do.”

May is seeking to use the growing possibility of a “no-deal” Brexit at the end of March, with unforetold economic and social consequences, to pressure Brussels for more and to force MPs to back her deal. She told “Marr,” “If the deal is not voted on at this vote that’s coming up, then actually we’re going to be in uncharted territory,” with the danger “we actually end up with no deal at all.” A crisis would ensue as “I don’t think anybody can say exactly what will happen in terms of the reaction we will see in Parliament.”

The MPs who oppose the deal because they are pro-EU and who support a second referendum on EU membership, as well as the hard Brexit wing within her own party and the DUP, must all “realise the risks they are running with our democracy and the livelihoods of our constituents,” she said.

The Daily Mail reported that up to 200 MPs from all parties are uniting to prevent a no-deal Brexit. Representatives of the group, led by Tory Cabinet minister Dame Caroline Spelman and Labour frontbencher Jack Dromey, were due to meet May for talks this week. The group includes Tories Sir Oliver Letwin, Nicky Morgan and Dominic Grieve, and Labourites Harriet Harman, Yvette Cooper, Ben Bradshaw and Liam Byrne, as well as the former Liberal Democrat energy secretary Sir Ed Davey. Among their reported big business backers are auto manufacturers and engineering firms Jaguar Land Rover, Ford, Rolls-Royce, Airbus and employers’ representatives including the Confederation of British Industry, the Engineering Employers’ Federation and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.

Amid a growing crisis for governments across the continent, including mass protest against austerity such as the Yellow Vest movement in France, the threat of economic turmoil and trade war, and the rise of rightist anti-EU parties, Brussels is caught between a rock and a hard place. It doesn’t want to worsen things via a chaotic no-deal Brexit outcome, but fears that concessions to Britain would undermine the unity of the EU and fuel demands from other states for concessions.

On Monday, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said the EU was primed to offer May “written guarantees, explanations and assurances” to quell opposition to her deal by UK MPs. The Financial Times noted that although “[M]ay is expected to lose the [January 15] vote … She is pinning her hopes on firmer EU undertakings ahead of a second vote—possibly in late January or early February—speculation is rising that the prime minister will have to delay the UK’s departure from the bloc, scheduled for March 29.”

A delay in implementing Article 50—the legislation authorising the UK to leave the EU—is seen as essential to the Remain wing of the ruling class if they are to be successful in reversing Brexit. The Labour Party right-wing, in alliance with the Scottish National Party and Liberal Democrats, are frantically seeking to shift Labour’s position to overt support for a second referendum in opposition to the current position of party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn favours forcing a general election via a vote of no confidence to remove the Tories and negotiating a Brexit deal more favourable to the dominant sections of business.

Opinion polls are issued regularly, including one commissioned by the Blairite-led People’s Vote campaign, claiming that the majority of Labour members and voters are in favour of a second referendum. The same People’s Vote survey found that—when “don’t knows” were subtracted—54 percent of Britons as a whole would vote to remain in the EU, compared to 46 percent for Leave. This is a significant shift towards Remain, but still shows deep divisions.

Polls showed a similar margin of victory for Remain before the 2016 referendum, which ended in a 52-48 percent victory for Leave. Moreover, a YouGov survey showing a wide margin in favour of a second referendum also saw Labour members backing Corbyn’s policy of seeking to force a general election to remove the Tories to negotiate a better Brexit deal— 47 percent in favour of Corbyn’s position, with 29 percent against, and 19 percent undecided.

Writing in the pro-EU Observer, Andrew Rawnsley said, “The conclusion for Labour supporters ought to be clear. If they want another referendum, they will have to learn from their leader and rebel against him.” This is a continuation of the efforts begun in the aftermath of the 2016 referendum, when 172 right-wing Labour MPs carried out a failed coup against Corbyn with the main charge levelled against him that he was only lukewarm in supporting the Remain campaign.

So far Corbyn has formally maintained his position, while refusing to indicate when he will move a no-confidence motion in the government—even telling the Guardian that he would demand May go back to Brussels if her deal is rejected. But Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has made clear that Labour backing a second referendum was “inevitable” if a no-confidence motion was unsuccessful in removing the Tories. Corbyn this week described preparations for a “no-deal Brexit” as the government’s “Project Fear” because of the parliamentary majority he insisted would prevent such an outcome.

Last night, Labour whipped its MPs to support a backbench amendment to the finance bill tabled by leading Blairite Yvette Cooper restricting the government’s tax powers unless a no-deal Brexit is taken off the table.

The vote saw the government defeated by 303 to 296, with 20 Tory MPs backing the amendment.

The defeat is largely symbolic, but indicative of Corbyn’s readiness to seek alliances with pro-Remain Tories that would be essential in any campaign for a new referendum.

US-Turkish tensions rise over Syria withdrawal plan

Bill Van Auken

The crisis over US President Donald Trump’s plan for the withdrawal of US troops from Syria escalated Tuesday after Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to meet with a visiting US security and military delegation and then publicly denounced statements by Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, as he was preparing to fly out of Ankara.

“No one should expect us to accept or swallow national security adviser Bolton’s comments,” Erdogan told members of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in parliament—and an audience on live television—referring to demands that Turkey guarantee the security of the YPG Syrian Kurdish militia, which has served as the main proxy ground force for the US intervention in Syria.

Insisting that his government saw no difference between ISIS and the YPG, Erdogan declared, “If they are terrorists, we will do what is necessary no matter where they come from.”

He added that he had no need to meet with Bolton, when he could speak to Trump anytime on the telephone.

“Although we made a clear agreement with US President Trump, different voices are emerging from different parts of the administration,” Erdogan said. “Trump’s remarks continue to be the main point of reference for us.”

Bolton’s delegation—which included the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford—was relegated to meeting with Erdogan’s spokesman and a group of deputy ministers. A scheduled joint press conference was abruptly canceled.

After Bolton had left Turkey, Fahrettin Altun, Erdogan’s head of communications, tweeted: “I hope that he got a taste of the world-famous Turkish hospitality during his visit. Turkey’s national security is nonnegotiable.”

Trump announced his planned withdrawal on December 19 following a telephone conversation with Erdogan. He advanced the premise that the defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the ostensible mission of US troops in Syria—some 2,000 according to the Pentagon, but reported by at least one general to be twice that number—had been completed, and that Turkey would “take out any remnants of ISIS.”

The announcement triggered an eruption of furor within the US military and intelligence apparatus and its representatives in both the Democratic and Republican parties, who saw it as an intolerable concession to Russia and Iran. It triggered the resignation of Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis as well as Washington’s envoy to the so-called anti-ISIS coalition, Brett McGurk.

Since then, the Trump administration has steadily walked back Trump’s initial pledge to pull US troops out of Syria within 30 days. A subsequent report indicated that logistical concerns of the US military mandated at least a 120-day period to execute the pullout. Since then, statements from Trump and top administration officials, including Bolton, have made it clear that the illegal US military presence in Syria, at least in some form, is to continue indefinitely.

Bolton’s overseas mission, beginning in Israel and continuing on to Turkey, was to spell out conditions for the troop withdrawal. These include not only the wiping out of the last remnants of ISIS in northeastern Syria, but also a guarantee of the security of the Pentagon’s proxies in the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which is viewed by the Turkish government as a branch of the PKK, the Turkish Kurdish separatist movement against which it has waged a bloody counterinsurgency campaign for more than 30 years.

Bolton has also indicated that US aims of rolling back Iran’s influence in Syria and the wider region and regime change in Damascus—pursued unsuccessfully and at a terrible human costs through a CIA-orchestrated insurgency by Al Qaeda-linked militias—remain on the table.

Bolton’s rhetoric—coming on top of the walking back of Trump’s pledge of a rapid troop withdrawal—appears to have blown up the scheduled meeting with Erdogan and called into question an apparent rapprochement between Washington and its NATO ally in the region.

In Israel, Bolton indicated that he was going to read the riot act to the Turkish president over any move against the Pentagon’s Syrian Kurdish proxies.

Erdogan and other Turkish officials expressed outrage over Bolton’s equation of the YPG with all Syrian Kurds, insisting that their hostility was only to the YPG, which it regards as an extension of the PKK—which both Washington and Ankara have branded as a “terrorist” organization—and not to the Kurdish people.

Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalm, the main official with whom Bolton and his delegation met, denounced the idea that “Turkey will slaughter Kurds if it enters Syria” as PKK propaganda that Washington should not be repeating.

Such claims are belied by the Turkish operation in the Syrian district of Afrin in March of last year, which resulted in the expulsion of some 300,000 Kurds and the unleashing of Turkish-backed Islamist gangs against the population.

Turkey’s aims were indicated in an op-ed piece penned by Erdogan and published in the New York Times in which he spelled out plans for the carving out of a buffer region on Syria’s northern border in which Ankara would “create a stabilization force” after an “intensive vetting process” of Syrian Kurdish forces.

Syria has rejected Turkish military operations on its territory as an illegal violation of the country’s sovereignty.

According to a US official quoted by Reuters, Bolton told Turkish officials that Erdogan’s article was “wrong and offensive.” Part of the article favorably compared Turkish anti-ISIS operations, which left villages taken from the Islamist militias largely intact, to the savage air war waged by the US military that reduced the city of Raqqa and other towns to rubble.

While Turkish officials reportedly told the American delegation that Ankara would not launch military intervention in Syria as long as US troops remained in the northeast of the country, the Turkish media has reported that the Turkish military has continued a buildup of its forces on the border between the two countries.

Turkish officials also reportedly demanded that the Pentagon hand over all of some 22 separate bases that the US military has established in northern Syria, as well as any armaments left behind by departing US troops. They insisted that none of these weapons remain with the YPG militia.

Amid the rising tensions on the Turkish-Syrian border, a contingent of Russian troops in armored vehicles deployed to the city of Manbij, located about 10 miles from the border, conducting security patrols. The city, retaken from ISIS, had formally been occupied by the YPG along with US special forces troops.

Syrian Kurdish forces invited the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which is backed by Moscow, to send its troops into the city as they withdrew in the face of a threatened Turkish offensive.

Meanwhile, military representatives of Egypt and the UAE, which oppose any expansion of Turkish influence in the region, have also visited Manbij and are promoting the growth of a Sunni Muslim militia in opposition to both Turkey and the YPG.

In tandem with Bolton’s abortive mission to Ankara, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began an eight-nation tour of the so-called anti-Iranian axis, which includes seven Arab monarchical dictatorships and the police state regime of Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt.

On the first leg of this tour in Jordan, Pompeo declared that Washington was “redoubling” its offensive against the “malign influence” of Iran in the Middle East. This effort has included the indispensable US support for the near-genocidal war being waged by Saudi Arabia against the starving people of Yemen.

Pompeo tweeted on Tuesday that Washington’s “tactics have changed, not the mission.”

The message is clear enough. Whatever happens with Trump’s Syria troop withdrawal, US imperialism is continuing the quarter century of uninterrupted wars for hegemony over the oil rich Middle East that have killed and maimed millions. And the crisis created by Washington’s protracted regime-change operation in Syria still threatens to erupt in a wider war of regional and even global dimensions.

Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Grants for Research Collaboration 2019

Application Deadline: 1st February 2019 at 12:00 hrs. (Phase 1)

Eligible Countries: 

• Window 1: Research-based institutions in Denmark, Ghana, and Tanzania are encouraged to apply.
• Window 2: Only research-based institutions in Denmark are eligible and only if they are iin partnership with research institutions in Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Colombia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kenya, Mexico, Myanmar, South
  Africa, Turkey, and Vietnam.

About the Award: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (MFA) provides grants for development research activities as part of Denmark’s international development cooperation. Two windows are available in 2018, providing grants for research with partners in Danida priority countries and for research with partners in growth and transition countries.
Phase 1 is the first step of a process in which applicants submit research proposals leading to prequalification. Phase 2 is the submission of a full application by those selected (“prequalified”).

Type: Research Grants

Eligibility: 

• In accordance with the overall objectives of Danida’s support for research, grants will be awarded to strategic research cooperation which generates new knowledge relevant to the needs and strategies of the growth and transition countries and contributes to strengthening research capacity in these countries.
• It is important to note that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015 constitute an overall thematic framework for development cooperation and research.
• Applications can only be submitted by universities or by a research-based institution (public and private) in Denmark, which will be responsible for the grant. The project coordinator must be attached to that institution.
• At the time of submitting the application, the project coordinator must hold a PhD or equivalent qualification, documented clearly in the CV. Documented evidence that he/she is a Professor, Assistant Professor, or Associate Professor is regarded as equivalent to a PhD.

Selection Criteria: The relevance of the proposal is evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:

• The focus of the project is well-defined with respect to the announced research theme in the chosen partner country;
• The project contributes to the overall objectives of the Danish strategic sector cooperation in the country (where relevant) or is otherwise relevant for strengthening commercial or political cooperation with Denmark;
• Preferably, the project includes private sector partners or has potential for such a partnership in a possible subsequent funding phase.

The scientific quality of the proposal is evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:

• The research experience and qualifications of the project coordinator and the team;
• The originality and innovative nature of the project, in terms of generating new knowledge;The effect of the research is evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:
• The potential direct effects with respect to the selected sustainable development goal (s);
• The effects of the project in terms of the partnerships with public and private sector which could take the research to the next step;
• Strengthened research capacity of the project, which should add value for both the Danish and the partner institution.

Selection: A Consultative Research Committee for Development Research (FFU) is tasked with assisting the MFA by providing professional and scientific advice in relation to research applications and projects.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• DKK 5 million for each project.
• The total budget available for this research window is approximately DKK 60 million. The funding is conditional of the Danish Parliament’s approval of the 2018 Finance Bill.
• It is envisaged that the extension project could be up to 5 years’ duration with an additional grant of up to DKK 10 million.

Duration of Program: 18 to 36 months

How to Apply: 

• The e-application system is accessible from DFC’s website via the following link here
• The e-application form may contain information which is important in relation to the application albeit not covered in this Call.

It is important to go through the Application Requirements and instructions on the Program Webpage (see Link below) before applying.


Visit the Program Webpage for Details

American College of Surgeons International Guest Scholarships 2020 for International Medical Students

Application Deadline: 1st July 2019.

Eligible Fields of Study: Medicine-related fields

About Award: The American College of Surgeons offers International Guest Scholarships to young surgeons from countries other than the United States or Canada who have demonstrated strong interests in teaching and research. The scholarships, in the amount of $10,000 each, provide the scholars with an opportunity to visit clinical, teaching, and research activities in the U.S. and Canada and to attend and participate fully in the educational opportunities and activities of the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress.
This scholarship endowment was originally provided through the legacy left to the College by Paul R. Hawley, MD (FACS Hon), former College Director. More recently, gifts from the family of Abdol Islami, MD (FACS), the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and others to the International Guest Scholarship endowment have enabled the College to expand the number of scholarship awards.

Type: Fellowship, Short Courses

Eligibility Requirement

• Applicants must be graduates of schools of medicine who have completed their surgical training.
• Applicants must be at least 35 years old, but under 50, on the date that the completed application is filed.
• Applicants must submit their applications from their intended permanent location. Applications will be accepted for processing only when the applicants have been in surgical practice, teaching, or research for a minimum of one year at their intended permanent location, following completion of all formal training (including fellowships and scholarships).
• Applicants must have demonstrated a commitment to teaching and/or research in accordance with the standards of the applicant’s country.
• Early careerists are deemed more suitable than those who are serving in senior academic appointments.
• Applicants must submit a fully completed application form provided by the College on its website. The application and accompanying materials must be submitted in English. Submission of a curriculum vitae only is not acceptable.
• Applicants must provide a list of all of their publications and must submit, in addition, three complete publications (reprints or manuscripts) of their choice from that list.
• Preference may be given to applicants who have not already experienced training or surgical fellowships in the U.S. or Canada.
• Applicants must submit independently prepared letters of recommendation from three of their colleagues. One letter must be from the chair of the department in which they hold an academic appointment or a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons residing in their country. The chair’s or the Fellow’s letter is to include a specific statement detailing the nature and extent of the teaching and other academic involvement of the applicant. Letters of recommendation should be submitted by the person making the recommendation.
• The online application form is structured to assist the Scholarship Selection Subcommittee and assists the applicant in submitting a structured curriculum vitae.
• The International Guest Scholarships must be used in the year for which they are designated. They cannot be postponed.
• Applicants who are awarded scholarships will provide a full written report of the experiences provided through the scholarships upon completion of their tours.
• An unsuccessful applicant may reapply only twice and only by completing and submitting a new application together with new supporting documentation.

Value of Scholarship: The scholarships provide successful applicants with the privilege of participating in the College’s annual Clinical Congress held in Chicago, IL, October 4–8, 2020, with public recognition of their presence. They will receive gratis admission to selected postgraduate courses plus admission to all lectures, demonstrations, and exhibits, which are an integral part of the Clinical Congress. Assistance will be provided in arranging visits, following the Clinical Congress, to various clinics and universities of their choice.

How to Apply: Apply online
It is important to go through the Application Requirements and overview before applying.

Visit Awards Webpage for Details

United Nations Information Service Graduate Study Programme 2019 for Graduates Worldwide

Application Deadline: 3rd March 2019

Eligible Countries: All

To Be Taken At (Country): Geneva, Switzerland

About the Award: The 57th Graduate Study Programme will be held at the Palais des Nations from 1 to 12 July 2019. It will comprise lectures given by senior members of the United Nations and the Geneva-based specialized agencies. The GSP theme for 2019 will be:
100 years of multilateralism: taking stock and preparing the future
“Multilateralism is under fire precisely when we need it most.” – United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in his address to the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly, 25 September 2018.

The first global attempt to form a “general association of nations… for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike,” as outlined in the last of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, is 100 years old. After the League of Nations failed, engulfed in the disaster of World War II, the world’s nations came together once again to build common norms and rules to advance their shared interests. But despite the many achievements of multilateralism, be it in terms of building peace or raising the standard of living for millions of people around the world, today, trust in global governance is largely undermined. The most pressing challenges of our time, however, are more global in nature than ever, from climate change to migration flows. How can we restore trust in our multilateral project?

Participants will form working groups to study issues related to the various dimensions of this theme, under the guidance of United Nations experts. They will be provided with selected documents and publications on the theme under discussion.


Type: Conference

Eligibility: The majority of the sessions will be held in English, therefore absolute fluency in English is essential. As several sessions will be held in French, solid working knowledge of French is also required.

Selection and Criteria: 

• The students invited to attend this programme will be selected on the basis of their academic experience and motivation, with due regard to equitable geographical and gender distribution. The age limit for application is 32 years of age.
• Once selected, successful candidates will be asked ahead of time to provide a medical certificate attesting good health and proof of medical insurance coverage in Switzerland at the time of the GSP (these two documents will be only be accepted by us in English or French). Applications from those already employed full time professionally cannot be considered.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:  Participation in the programme is free. The United Nations does not make any financial contribution towards the travel costs and residential expenses of participants. Governments or universities may offer grants to selected candidates. Candidates should seek advice from their universities on this point.

Duration of Program: 1 to 12 July 2019.

How to Apply: 

• The application form is to be filled in on our website, accompanied by a copy of the applicant’s passport, a letter of recommendation (in English or French only)from a university or governmental authority, proof of current enrolment (at the time of application) in a Master’s degree programme or a postgraduate degree programme (or equivalent) and university diplomas obtained.
  
• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Important Notes: Please note that incomplete applications will not be taken into consideration.