France to host “peace summit” with Germany, Ukraine and Russia

Clara Weiss

The Élysées Palace of French president Emmanuel Macron announced on Friday that “peace talks” in the so-called Normandy format—involving Berlin, Paris, Kiev and Moscow, but not the United States—will be held in Paris on December 9. The proclaimed aim of the talks is to advance a peaceful resolution of the five-year-long civil war in East Ukraine, which has claimed the lives of at least 13,000 people. The war was triggered by the US- and EU-backed coup in Kiev in February 2014 and has heavily involved Ukrainian fascist forces like the Azov Battalion who have been terrorizing and killing the civilian population in the East.

The announcement of the talks comes amidst growing tensions between US imperialism and the leading European imperialist powers, above all Germany and France, and an escalation of warfare within the US ruling class over an impeachment probe that centers on the White House withholding lethal aid for Ukraine’s war effort against Russian-backed separatists.

The announcement was preceded by months of negotiations. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in April based on promises to end the five-year conflict in East Ukraine. After initially continuing the anti-Russia campaign of his predecessor, Zelensky agreed to a high-profile prisoner swap with Russia in September. Shortly thereafter, his government announced that it would accept the Steinmeier formula.

Named after the current German president, the formula is a vague set of propositions aimed at bolstering the Minsk agreement from 2015. It technically provides for limited autonomy for the Eastern Ukrainian territories with elections held under the supervision of the OSCE and Kiev.

Tens of thousands of far-right nationalists and war veterans have demonstrated against Zelensky’s adoption of the formula. When Zelensky initiated the withdrawal of troops in October, members of the fascist Azov Battalion refused to follow his orders. The ceasefire has been violated several times in recent weeks.

Former president Petro Poroshenko, who is facing charges for corruption and high treason by this administration, denounced Zelensky’s decision as “treason.” Responding to the pressure from sections of the oligarchy and the US-backed far-right, prominent members of the Zelensky administration have since publicly posed with some of the country’s most notorious neo-Nazis.

The war is extremely unpopular in the Ukrainian population and Zelensky’s promises to end it were a central factor contributing to his electoral victory in April. Beyond the at least 13,000 who have been killed, an estimated 30,000 people have been wounded, 1.4 million people have been displaced and 3.5 million are considered in need of humanitarian assistance. Austerity measures implemented since 2014 have pushed living standards in the country down to levels of a Third World nation. In 2018, the Ukrainian population’s net wealth was below that of the population in countries like Nepal, Kenya, Bangladesh and Cameroon and only slightly higher than in war-torn countries like Syria and Mali.

Polls have repeatedly shown that the majority of the population seeks an end to the war and is most concerned by the widespread poverty and ongoing economic crisis. A recent government-conducted poll in the Donbass, the region in East Ukraine where the two separatist self-declared “republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk are located, found that the overwhelming majority of respondents prefer being integrated into the Russian Federation. Respondents overwhelmingly blamed the US and EU for the war, and opposed integration with the EU and NATO.

Zelensky’s primary motivation for the summit, however, is his determination to have his hands free to implement the most far-reaching privatization program since the restoration of capitalism in the 1990s against opposition within the working class. The other major factor is his attempts to maneuver between the European powers and the United States.

The outcome of the talks remains highly uncertain. The Kremlin has been noticeably reluctant to publicize the negotiations or to present them as a major step toward a resolution of the conflict. Recent weeks have seen a series of mutual recriminations between Moscow and Kiev with each side accusing the other of trying to sabotage the talks.

The Ukrainian oligarchy is torn over its foreign policy orientation, with all factions vying for the allegiance of the country’s violent far-right. These conflicts in the Ukraine elite are closely bound up with the growing tensions between Ukraine’s imperialist backers, above all the US, France and Germany. Zelensky’s endorsement of the Normandy talk format is widely regarded as a concession to Paris and Berlin.

France and especially Germany are important economic allies of Ukraine and have escalated their involvement in the country’s affairs since 2014. However, geopolitical tensions with Germany, in particular, continue to run high over the Russian-German pipeline Nord Stream, which the Ukrainian oligarchy, including the Zelensky administration, bitterly opposes.

The US remains by far the most important military ally of Ukraine. In Washington, the impeachment proceedings against Trump focus on his allegedly withholding military aid from the Kiev government. The anti-Trump campaign by the Democratic Party and military-intelligence agencies in recent years has focused on whipping up hysteria over Russia and accuses Trump of not pursuing a sufficiently aggressive course against Russia. A substantial faction of the Ukrainian oligarchy is still primarily oriented toward the alliance with US imperialism and seeks to further bolster Ukraine’s role as a critical military front in the US-led war preparations against Russia.

The warfare in the American ruling class over foreign policy and increasing clashes with the interests of US imperialism in both the Middle East and Europe have also provoked heated discussions in Paris and Berlin about their foreign policy orientation. The French president Macron has been pushing for the Normandy talks, in particular. The decision to host the summit in Paris is, in many respects, a demonstrative move, aimed to underscore the ambitions of French imperialism to play a leading role in Eastern Europe and Europe as a whole under conditions of growing transatlantic tensions.

In recent months, Macron, who had met with Zelensky before the latter was even elected as president, has undertaken several steps aimed at improving relations with Russian president Vladimir Putin while publicly questioning the viability of NATO. Most recently, he gave an interview to the Economist in which he described NATO as “brain dead” and warned of another world war, especially in light of the reorientation of US foreign policy. In this context he urged that “If we want to...rebuild European strategic autonomy, we must reconsider our position towards Russia.”

Echoing the concerns of the French president, a recent paper by the leading German think tank Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) discusses the potential disintegration of NATO. Stressing that the security of Germany was still primarily dependent upon NATO, the paper warns that “the changes in US policy and lack of clarity about future developments” constitute “the by far greatest endurance test for the cohesiveness of the alliance.”

Pointing to growing divisions over policies toward both Russia and China, the SWP warns: “These internal differences [within NATO] harbor considerable potential for conflict. The greatest risk is the formation of groups (bilaterialization and fragmentation), an (unintended) break with the US and, hence, a weakening of NATO.” Implicitly warning of another inter-imperialist war, pitting Germany against the US, the think tank evaluated three potential scenarios for the future development of NATO: NATO’s “Europeanization” with only a subordinate role played by the US; a continuation of the status quo with a stronger role played by Germany and ongoing political conflicts with the US; and a total breakup of the alliance and fragmentation of Europe. For all scenarios, the think tank, which has played a leading role in pushing for the remilitarization of Germany in recent years, urges a more rapid buildup of the German army.

United States has the highest child detention rate in the world

Niles Niemuth

Reviewing the findings of a United Nations study of the conservatively estimated 7 million children worldwide currently deprived of liberty by being imprisoned or detained, author Manfred Nowak reported at a press conference Monday that the United States leads the world in the rate which it detains young people under the age of 18.

Sixty out of every 100,000 children in the US are detained in either the criminal justice or immigration system. Countries that come close to the US rate include Bolivia, Botswana and Sri Lanka, while on the low end, Western Europe averages 5 child detentions per 100,000 and Canada detains children at a rate of 14–15 per 100,000.

Children in detention (AP photo)

Nowak pointed to the Trump administration’s racist war on immigrants, which has seen children torn from their parents’ arms and thrown into cages, as a key driver of the particularly high US rate, with the United States accounting for nearly one third of the 330,000 children being held in immigrant detention camps by governments around the world.

“The United States is one of the countries with the highest numbers—we still have more than 100,000 children in migration-related detention in the (US),” Nowak, a professor of international human rights, told reporters Monday. “Of course, separating children, as was done by the Trump administration, from their parents and even small children at the Mexican-US border is absolutely prohibited by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. I would call it inhuman treatment for both the parents and the children.”

Notably, the US government is the only member of the UN that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with successive Democratic and Republican administrations refusing to submit the treaty to the Senate for final approval since it was signed in 1995. The US was one of the countries that failed to return a survey for the latest study.

“The way they were separating infants from families only in order to deter irregular migration from Central America to the United States to me constitutes inhuman treatment,” Nowak stated, noting that this also violated the UN Convention against Torture and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which have been ratified by the US.

While the specific family separation policy was blocked by a court ruling, a record number of unaccompanied minors are still being detained by the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to a recent investigation by the Associated Press and PBS’ “Frontline” program, nearly 70,000 infants, adolescents and teenagers were held in a US government detention center over the course of 2019, an increase of 42 percent over 2018.

Nowak also pointed to the dire situation for immigrant children in Mexico, where the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been cooperating with the Trump administration’s illegal efforts to deny Central American asylum seekers access to the United States. There are currently 18,000 children in that country being held in immigration detention and another 7,000 locked up in prison.

In addition to those in Mexico’s detention centers, more than 55,000 asylum seekers, including many children, have been forced back into Mexico to wait for their claims to be heard.

Even as many of those detained have been resettled with relatives in the US or deported back to the country they fled with their families, their places are already being filled by more children who are daily being arrested for crossing the border.

Under Trump, children are being held for longer durations as his administration has pushed to put an end to legal restrictions on the amount of time a child can be held in an immigrant detention center. An initiative to detain children indefinitely with their parents was blocked by a federal judge early this year. It is well documented that locking up children with or without their parents for any length of time results in serious psychological trauma and puts them at increased risk of sexual abuse.

The staggering rate of child detention in the US is also being driven by the significant number of arrests of minors every year, leading in many cases to criminal charges and detention in the juvenile or adult penal system. According to FBI figures, there were nearly 720,000 arrests of individuals under the age of 18 in 2018, and between 2013 and 2017 nearly 30,000 children under the age of 10 were arrested by police. On average, 500,000 youth go through the country’s juvenile detention system every year.

The United States is one of a handful of countries that has set no minimum age for criminal responsibility, leaving it up to state legislatures to decide at what age children can be sentenced to prison. Thirty-four states have no minimum age for criminal responsibility and 24 states have no minimum age at which a juvenile can be charged as an adult.

Despite his outlining of the abuse of children on a mass scale by the United States government, Nowak told reporters that there would be no consequences from the UN since the US is a permanent member of the Security Council. “That’s one of the weaknesses of the United Nations,” he remarked.

Outside of North America, Nowak pointed to the 29,000 children who are being held in squalid prison camps in Syria and Iraq, having been linked to the Islamic State. Even though the largest share of the foreigners among them are French, the French government has refused to take any responsibility for them. Nowak said that even if some of them had been forced to fight for ISIS, they should be treated as victims and not as criminals.

The mistreatment of children on the a vast and global scale highlighted by the UN’s latest report is an indictment of the capitalist system, which is incapable of providing for the most basic needs of millions, including in the richest country in the history of the world. It is a system that punishes and traumatizes children for the supposed misdeed of crossing borders without required documents either on their own or with their parents. It will not be resolved through the pleas of the UN for reforms or through charity missions.

It is a system that is irrational and fundamentally barbaric. It must be overthrown and replaced by a system that guarantees every child a safe and secure life, no matter where he or she may be born, and one that eliminates borders and puts an end to war. This can be accomplished only through the revolutionary socialist transformation of society by the international working class.

US declares Israeli settlements no longer illegal

Jean Shaoul

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday that the United States no longer views Israeli settlements on Palestinian land seized during the 1967 Arab-Israel war as illegal.

In doing so, he is giving the extreme right-wing caretaker government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu carte blanche to accelerate the creation of new Zionist settlements and the expansion of existing ones. The US ruling is a green light for an escalation in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the annexation of Palestinian land.

The ruling announced by Pompeo also makes clear that Washington will brook no constraints on its pursuit of US hegemony via criminal wars of conquest, annexations and the re-imposition of naked colonialism.

His announcement at a State Department press conference amounts to an argument for abrogating all existing international laws if the US views them as an obstacle to its interests. For the Trump administration, what is “lawful” will be determined by those interests and the use of military force to achieve them.

Pompeo said, “After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate, this administration agrees ... (the) establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law.”

“Calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace,” he said. “The hard truth is that there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and who is wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace.”

The Trump administration would therefore reverse previous US governments’ “approach” to the settlements issue that held that civilian settlements in the occupied territories are “inconsistent with international law.” From now on, the legality of individual settlements would be a matter for the Israeli courts to decide.

The move granting Israel and its courts a free hand, he asserted, would “provide the very space for Israelis and Palestinians to come together to find a political solution.”

The US has never in reality opposed Israeli settlements, but rather protected Israel from all criticism and potential legal sanction. US presidents after Jimmy Carter referred to the settlements as “obstacles to peace” or “illegitimate” or “unnecessarily provocative,” rather than illegal, following a State Department finding in 1978—with Ronald Reagan disagreeing with even this watered-down designation. Irrespective of its formal position, successive administrations have backed Israel’s military aggression in the region, its expansion of the settlements and use of force against the Palestinians, using its veto power in the UN Security Council to quash at least 43 Israel-related draft resolutions.

The State Department—in recognition that Pompeo’s announcement might cause protests in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and East Jerusalem—issued a sweeping travel warning for all US government facilities, US private interests and US citizens in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.

Under international law, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Syrian Golan Heights are deemed to be occupied territories. The Geneva Conventions, enacted in the wake of the Second World War to prevent the repetition of the crimes carried out by Germany’s Nazi regime, outlawed the annexation of territory captured in war as well as the building by an occupying power of civilian settlements on such land.

While Pompeo implied that the Trump White House was simply echoing Reagan’s earlier stance, it has gone much further, reversing the 1978 State Department finding. Despite his repeated and lying attempts to respond to questions about the announcement by claiming that Washington’s new position was based on the Trump administration’s review of international law, he did not refer to the authors of this new legal reasoning or its content because there was no such review, which is conspicuous by its lack of publication.

The announcement is the latest in a series of hardline moves by the Trump administration in support of Israel’s militarist expansionism that include:

* The relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

* The recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights

* The closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s offices in Washington and the US Consulate General in Jerusalem, which worked with Palestinians

* The ending of US funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which assists Palestinian refugees, as well as to other Palestinian organizations and programs

* The enactment of US laws that prohibit providing funds to the families of Palestinian political prisoners and individuals killed by Israel, under the pretext of “fighting terrorism”

* Moves to brand any form of criticism of Israel, including the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, as anti-Semitic

* The US withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council in protest against its scrutiny of Israel’s policies.

These moves and Pompeo’s latest declaration in support of Israel’s expansionist policies are bound up with a broader escalation of US imperialism’s military intervention in the Middle East, particularly to roll back Iranian influence in the region in the wake of the successive debacles suffered by Washington in Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu, who faces the likelihood within days of criminal indictments in three major corruption probes, and a battle to remain Israel’s leader after two inconclusive elections, hailed the announcement. “Today, the United States adopted an important policy that rights a historical wrong when the Trump administration clearly rejected the false claim that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria are inherently illegal under international law,” he gloated.

He welcomed Pompeo’s assertion that the legality of Israeli settlements was a matter for the Israeli courts, rather than “biased international forums that pay no attention to history or facts.”

Netanyahu had pledged during this year’s election campaigns that he would extend Jewish sovereignty over all the Israeli settlements as well as the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea area in the occupied West Bank if re-elected. He now has the green light to proceed with this plan.

But any annexation would be a prelude to an apartheid state that would ghettoize the Palestinians, who comprise nearly half of the total population of Israel and the occupied territories. The recently passed Jewish Nationality Act enshrining Jewish supremacy provides the legal foundation for such a state. It would necessarily entail stepped-up repression in Israel and intensified Israeli military aggression in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and the broader Middle East.

Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners wasted no time in calling for Israel to annex settlements in the West Bank. Ayelet Shaked of the nationalist Yamina (New Right) tweeted, “Thank you President Trump and Secretary Pompeo for recognizing that there is nothing illegal about Jewish communities in Judea & Samaria. The Jewish People have the legal and moral right to live in their ancient homeland. Now is the time to apply our sovereignty to these communities.”

Pompeo’s announcement comes just days after the European Court of Justice ruled that all products made in the West Bank, including products made in Israeli settlements, must be labeled as such, a move that the pro-Israel lobby presented as anti-Semitic.

Benny Gantz, leader of the main opposition Blue and White Party and former army chief of staff who has been Netanyahu’s rival in the protracted attempt to form a new Israeli government, also welcomed the announcement. Gantz called it “an important decision, which points once more to the [U.S. administration’s] firm stance by Israel and commitment to the security and future of the entire Middle East.”

Palestinian Authority spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said that Pompeo’s statement “totally contradicts” international law. “The US administration has completely lost credibility and can no longer play any role in the peace process.” He called on other countries to “declare their opposition” to it.

Hanan Ashrawi, an Executive Committee member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, called the move “another blow to international law, justice & peace by a Biblical absolutist waiting for the ‘rapture.’”

As usual, the European powers issued pro-forma statements reiterating their hypocritical position that Israel’s occupation and settlement program contravenes international law, while imposing no sanctions against it.

The bloodbath in Baghdad

Bill Van Auken

The death toll in the mass protests that have shaken Iraq for the last seven weeks has risen to over 330, with an estimated 15,000 wounded. Young Iraqis have continued to pour into the streets in defiance of fierce repression to press their demands for jobs, social equality and an end to the unspeakably corrupt political regime created by the US occupation that followed the criminal American invasion of 2003.

Most of those killed have been felled by live ammunition, including machine-gun fire and bullets fired by snipers, both randomly into crowds and at identified protest leaders. Others have suffered hideous fatal wounds from military-grade tear gas grenades fired point-blank into the demonstrators, in some cases with canisters ending up lodged in the victims’ skulls or lungs. In addition, water cannon have been employed, spraying scalding hot water into the protests.

Forced disappearances have been reported, while families of victims shot to death by security forces have been compelled to sign statements acknowledging the deaths as “accidental” in order to receive the bodies of their loved ones.

An injured protestor is rushed to a hospital during a demonstration in Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2019. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

This brutality has only succeeded in drawing ever wider layers of the population, and in particular growing sections of the Iraqi working class, into the anti-government mobilizations. In Baghdad, protesters have succeeded in occupying three strategic bridges over the Tigris River leading into the heavily fortified Green Zone, where government buildings, top officials’ villas, embassies and the offices of military contractors and other foreign agencies are located.

In the south of the country, demonstrators have once again mounted a siege of Iraq’s main Persian Gulf port of Umm Qasr near Basra, reducing its activity by over 50 percent. Oil workers announced Sunday that they were going on a general strike in support of the demonstrators, and columns of workers organized by Iraqi unions poured into Tahrir Square to back the protests. In the southern Shia heartland of Iraq, the teachers unions have led a general strike movement that has shut down most cities.

Only in the predominantly Sunni northern areas of Anbar Province and Mosul, which were bombed into rubble during the so-called US war against ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), has the protest movement failed to bring masses into the streets. This is not for any lack of sympathy, but rather the threat of a renewed military offensive against any sign of opposition. Even those in the region who have expressed their solidarity on Facebook have been rounded up by security forces, while the authorities have made it plain that anyone there who opposes the government will be treated as “terrorists” and ISIS sympathizers.

If anything approaching this level of both mass popular revolt and murderous repression were taking place in Russia, China, Venezuela or Iran, one can easily imagine the kind of wall-to-wall coverage they would receive from the corporate media in the US. Yet, the Iraqi events have been virtually ignored by the broadcast networks and the major print media. This is certainly not for lack of popular interest in the country.

After all, some two million US troops, civilian government employees and private contractors went to Iraq between the US invasion of 2003 and the withdrawal of most US troops by the Obama administration in 2011. Some 4,500 US personnel lost their lives there, while tens of thousands more came back wounded and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Within barely three years, the US intervention was renewed with several thousand more American soldiers sent in to retake cities lost by the US-trained and equipped security forces to ISIS.

The reaction of the American mass media is a guilty, shame-faced silence. The events in Iraq are a stark expression of the abject criminality and failure of the entire US imperialist project in that country, so the less said about them the better.

Those who are filling the streets are by and large comprised of a generation formed by the US invasion and occupation, along with the continuing violence that followed. They lived through what the World Socialist Web Site described at the time as an act of “sociocide,” the systematic destruction of an entire society that had before 2003 been one of the most advanced in the Middle East. The estimated death toll from this criminal war, launched on the basis of lies about “weapons of mass destruction,” is over one million, while some two million people remain displaced.

The regime that they are fighting to bring down is the direct product of the US occupation, formed on the basis of a constitution written by US officials. It was fashioned to serve Washington’s divide-and-rule strategy by organizing the puppet political government along sectarian lines, which helped fuel a bloody civil war that had further disastrous consequences.

Iraq’s current Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi is the personification of the bankrupt and corrupt political regime forged by US imperialism. Beginning his career as a member of Iraq’s ruling Ba’athist party under Saddam Hussein, he went on to become a leading member of the Stalinist Iraqi Communist Party and then went into exile in Iran as a loyalist of Ayatollah Khomeini. Brought back to Iraq by US tanks, he joined the puppet government created by US occupation authorities in 2004 as finance minister.

He, like his predecessors since 2004, has presided over the looting of Iraq’s oil wealth to enrich foreign capital, the local ruling oligarchy and a layer of corrupt politicians and their hangers-on. Meanwhile, in a country boasting the fifth-largest oil reserves in the world, the official unemployment rate for younger workers stands at 25 percent, nearly a quarter of the population is living under conditions of extreme poverty and hundreds of thousands of young people, including many university graduates, attempt to enter the labor market each year only to find no jobs.

Ironically, both Washington and Tehran are opposed to the demand of the demonstrators for the downfall of the regime. Both the US and Iran have pursued their respective interests through Mahdi’s administration, even as US imperialism fights to effect regime change in Iran in order to eliminate an obstacle to US hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East.

The US State Department, concerned for the most part in securing the US bases out of which thousands of US troops continue to operate in Iraq, had initially remained silent on the bloody suppression of protesters. Late last month, however, after it was reported that Iran had brokered an agreement between the major Iraqi political parties to support Mahdi’s remaining in power and to suppress the opposition in the streets, Washington began to make noises about respecting the demands of the protesters.

The State Department issued a vague threat of sanctions, naming no one in particular, but indicating that any official cooperating with Iran could be targeted. At the moment, the US has nothing better with which to replace Mahdi and his fellow thieves. They are the best that Washington could find after it toppled Saddam Hussein.

The New York Times, ever the pliant propaganda tool of US war aims, helped to promote the anti-Iranian narrative by publishing on Monday what it claimed was a “trove” of secret Iranian intelligence cables illustrating Iranian ties with various actors in the Iraqi government. A purportedly unknown source—perhaps within the US intelligence apparatus—provided the alleged cables to the Intercept, which handed them off to the Times.

While the US pursues its regional war aims in Iraq, and the Iranian government strives to suppress social unrest that it fears could—and with the recent protests over fuel price hikes already has—spread across its borders, the upsurge in Iraq points to a new way forward in the Middle East. Masses have taken to the streets to pursue their class interests and fight for social equality against a political elite that has promoted sectarian divisions.

This movement must be armed with the program of socialist internationalism fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International to unify workers throughout Iraq, the Middle East and internationally in the struggle to put an end to the capitalist system, the source of war and social inequality.

German army recruits swear war oath in front of Reichstag building

Gregor Link

The German army ordered 400 soldiers to march in front of the Reichstag building, home to Germany’s federal parliament, last Tuesday in Berlin as part of a swearing in ceremony. In the presence of Federal Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, parliamentary President Wolfgang Schäuble and over 200 members of parliament, the recruits vowed to “serve the Federal Republic of Germany faithfully” and “bravely defend the freedom of the German people.”

Large parts of central Berlin were cordoned off by the police for the military ceremony. For the invited guests, a huge grandstand was erected on the Republic Square. Similar spectacles took place at the same time in six other cities throughout Germany.

The marching of the German armed forces in front of parliament must be taken as an alarm signal. Both Schäuble and Kramp-Karrenbauer have made clear in recent weeks that the time has come for the return of German imperialism to the world stage. Hardly a day goes by without one of them making new proposals, including the creation of a protectorate in northern Syria and the abolition of the parliamentary prerogative to approve foreign deployments of the German army (Bundeswehr).

In his keynote Adenauer lecture two weeks ago, Schäuble announced that Germany, in spite of its crimes in two world wars, is once again ready to “bear moral costs.” He repeated this statement to the Bundeswehr recruits.

“Creating peace is not free—it also has a moral price,” warned Schäuble. Germany cannot afford to “sit out of far-flung conflicts in a globally interconnected world in great turmoil.” There has not been a major war in Europe since the downfall of Hitler’s Third Reich 75 years ago, Schäuble continued. “But this peace cannot be taken for granted.” He concluded: “You will face tremendous tasks!”

The ghastly spectacle of German soldiers bellowing with Prussian gusto “I swear!” into the television cameras once again underscores the traditions being revived by the German ruling elite. The population is to be flooded with pro-war propaganda so as to revive German militarism and justify the pursuit of wars of aggression against widespread opposition in the population.

The hardliners in the bourgeois media were jubilant. For example, the Tagesspiegel declared “security must be visible” and stated: “AKK is on the right track.” Meanwhile, the Süddeutsche Zeitung complained that “the Bundeswehr’s attachment to society” is “threatening to be lost” and demanded an “end to this growing apart.”

From now on, the anniversary of the Bundeswehr should be celebrated in public, announced Kramp-Karrenbauer in her speech in front of the Reichstag building. She said that the reaction of state governments to her proposal to make the armed forces a more visible part of public life had been more positive than she could have imagined.

The Left Party in particular has distinguished itself as an aggressive champion of German militarism. Thuringia’s Left Party minister president, Bodo Ramelow, planned two events to glorify the Bundeswehr within two weeks. The first took place on November 7, in Oberhof, where 370 tank grenadiers in the presence of Brigadier General Gunnar Brügner and State Chancellor Benjamin-Immanuel Hoff (Left Party) swore their military oath in public.

In his speech, Hoff urged the German population “not to ignore the fact” that “wounding and death” are no longer “abstract words” for Bundeswehr soldiers. After all, the army is responsible for “deterrence and alliance defense,” as well as “foreign military deployments.” To propagate this issue, he appealed for a broad “debate in our society” on the mission and role of the Bundeswehr.

The second swearing in ceremony in Thuringia is to take place in Sondershausen. The local Kyffhäuser barracks supplies the eastern NATO front with battle tanks, among other things. As MDR reported, Thuringia Bundeswehr units currently provide the bulk of the NATO battalion against Russia in Lithuania as part of the Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP) mission.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung viewed the military ceremony in front of the Reichstag building as a first step in getting the public accustomed to a military presence on the streets. In view of the NATO exercise “Defender 2020,” in the course of which 37,000 NATO troops will march in Poland and the Baltic States next year, the question is: “Will anyone in this society stir when military convoys appear on the roads once again, like in the ’80s?”

But the German war machine is not only increasing the danger of world war in the Baltic. At the beginning of the millennium, the German government announced that the “freedom of Germany” would “also be defended in the Hindu Kush.” Today the slogan is: “German interests will also be enforced militarily off China’s coast.” According to press reports, the deployment of a German warship to the South China Sea, as well as participation in US gunboat maneuvers, has been under discussion in the Ministry of Defense for several months.

In her keynote speech at the Munich Armed Forces University earlier this month, Kramp-Karrenbauer announced the expansion of German war missions and openly demanded that German soldiers be sent as a show of force against China. With its “economic and technological power” and “global interests,” Germany cannot simply “stand on the sidelines and watch.” Instead, the army must assume the “role of an agenda-setting power” and be ready to “fully exploit the whole spectrum of military means if necessary.”

The Defence Minister made this point absolutely clear on Tuesday. Following the swearing in of the new recruits, she went immediately to the German Employers Conference in Berlin, where she proposed a major corporate tax reform to the assembled industrialists.

Kramp-Karrenbauer began her speech by saying that she had just come from the Reichstag building, “where a military swearing in ceremony has taken place in public for the first time in many years.” She explained that she was mentioning this because the question of the army and “the question that concerns you” are closely connected. Security and economic stability are taken for granted in the German population, but neither one nor the other is self-evident, she continued.

In conclusion, the defence minister offered the assembled corporate executives her services, saying, “What framework do we need, do you need as business-people, to ensure this?” She provided the answer herself: “supply security” in the energy sector—meaning unhindered access to oil and gas—is “one of the decisive competitive factors” for the German economy.

The international working class must put an end to this madness by turning to a socialist programme. A third drive by Germany for world power and the catastrophic consequences of a world war fought with nuclear weapons must be prevented at all costs. The most urgent political task is therefore the building of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei and its sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International as the leadership of a global movement against capitalism and war.

Google’s Project Nightingale: The largest transfer to date of private medical data to the tech giant

Benjamin Mateus

Last week, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Ascension Healthcare, the second-largest healthcare provider in the US, has partnered with Google in a venture called Project Nightingale to transfer personal health data on millions of patients to the giant technology company’s cloud-based platforms, the largest trove of such information to date.

On the same day that the Journal broke the news, the two entities released a joint press statement confirming their relationship, which involves personal medical data from the entire spread of Ascension, a Catholic network of 2,600 hospitals, clinics, and other medical outlets, spanning 21 states involving more than 50 million medical records. Secret negotiations began a year ago, and thus far 10 million medical files have been uploaded with completion of the transfer scheduled for March 2020. Both companies have assured compliance with government regulatory processes.

What has many critics concerned about the project is the secretive manner in which the negotiations had been conducted and the unprecedented nature of the size and type of information being shared. At no time did Ascension or Google attempt to inform the doctors or their patients or obtain their consent.

A Google office at night

Data sharing between healthcare and technology companies has typically occurred with de-identified data or, in other words, data stripped of all identifying information such that it can’t be traced back to the individual in question.

However, in this case the records being transferred include the names of patients, personal data such as addresses, employer, and medical record numbers. These are tied to their health history, which can include data like their medication list, physiological characteristics, genetic tests, their sexual and psychological reports, and other studies such as various imaging and special procedures such as echocardiograms or colonoscopies, and sundry blood tests. Google will have access to sensitive surgical reports and detailed pathology review of tissues. Accidental breach of the data or intentional covert sharing of the most intimate and private information can have devastating impact on the lives of millions of people.

For the past two decades Google has been facing accusations of repeated privacy violation to include a recent settlement that requires Google and YouTube to pay $136 million to the Federal Trade Commission and $34 million to the State of New York for allegedly violating Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule by targeting advertisement on their children channels.

Google has also been cited for collaborating on patient data transfers with the Royal Free National Health Service Foundation Trust in the UK, DeepMind Technologies (acquired by Google in 2014), and the University of Chicago Medical Center at the University of Chicago where data was not properly de-identified.

Google has also allied with the military, providing them with artificial intelligence software that provides the US military and intelligence community the ability to prosecute their endless wars in the Middle East. The intimate relationship that exists between the giant technology company and the state should give serious concerns about the potential for how this data could be used against the working class. The National Security Agency has been collecting records of phone calls and text messages of millions of Americans. It is certainly conceivable that with Google’s ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) development these formidable tools will even further enhance the state’s repressive capacity.

The coordinated Wall Street Journal reporting on the behind the scene negotiations in conjunction with the release of the press statement by Google and Ascension are characteristic of a damage-control release of information to buffer public concerns and criticism. The tone of the Journal articles is matter of fact and superficial, lacking substantive analysis despite the potentially catastrophic and massive violation of patient privacy involved in this enterprise.

Last week also saw the Guardian reporting on an anonymous whistleblower who works on Project Nightingale. The paper did not make public the content of the whistleblower’s documents other than stating, “Among the documents are the notes of a private meeting held by Ascension operatives involved in Project Nightingale. In it, they raise serious concerns about the way patients’ personal health information will be used by Google to build new artificial intelligence and other tools.”

In a video the whistleblower expressed troubling concerns that the operations have been kept hidden from patients and the public at large. Unlike previous efforts by healthcare organizations to transfer de-identified data to technology companies, the data transfer with all the personal details included will be accessible to more than 150 Google staff and could potentially, through negligence or intent, be hacked or released. At stake are serious violations of federal rules on data privacy and breach of sensitive patient information that have yet to be challenged.

A video released by the whistleblower that supposedly detailed the “confidential outlines of Project Nightingale” has since been removed by Daily Motion, a French-based video-sharing technology platform, citing a breach of its terms of use.

Following these reports, lawmakers have jumped in the fray, suggesting the arrangement between Google and Ascension runs contrary to federal privacy rules regarding medical records. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA) was created to stipulate how personally identifiable information had to be maintained by the healthcare and insurance industries to protect them from fraud and theft.

Senator Mark Warner (Democrat, Virginia) has been one of a handful of legislators decrying the largest effort so far by a technology company to enter the healthcare industry.

Healthcare in the United States is a multi-trillion-dollar industry where technology giants have been attempting to position themselves to compete for lucrative contracts against outmoded and inefficient processes that have led to rising costs. The medical technology field has seen Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft competing to capture larger shares of the market with forays into medical research, electronic medical record systems, logistics, and transportation as well as the use of apps and software to track variety of ailments and conditions.

Legislators have called for a moratorium on Project Nightingale until further investigations into the nature of these arrangements can be conducted. According to Senator Warner, “Allowing already-dominant technology platforms to leverage their hold over consumer data to gain entrenched positions in the health sector is a worrying prospect.” However, according to The Hill, experts in healthcare policy do not consider the partnership to be a HIPPA violation, as the 1996 law allows for a broad definition of “business associate” and makes an exception for data used for quality improvements.

Given the rising cost of healthcare and the need for critical operating revenues, the present collaboration between Ascension Healthcare and Google intends to use artificial intelligence to more rapidly read and analyze electronic health records to capture all pertinent diagnoses and compete in the tightening market of healthcare delivery. As the New York Times noted, “Already, the two organizations are testing software that allows medical providers to search patient’s electronic health records by specific categories and create graphs of the information, like blood test results over time.”

Significantly, Project Nightingale has been a bonanza for Google and its AI programs. Engineers require large troves of accurate data to sift through in order to improve predictions in their AI algorithms. Access to Ascension’s data files linked to real names and identifications will allow them to prospectively analyze their predictions and develop “total” profiles on people which can be used for the most nefarious purposes, from firing workers for breaches of company “health practices” to developing health files which can be used to persecute political opponents.

Former top military official wins Sri Lankan presidential election

K. Ratnayake

The Sri Lankan Election Commission announced yesterday that Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) candidate Gotabhaya Rajapakse had won Saturday’s presidential election.

Gotabhaya Rajapakse, an ex-army colonel and brother of former President Mahinda Rajapakse, was Sri Lankan defence secretary between 2005 and 2014. He has been hailed by a section of the Sri Lankan ruling elite, the military and Sinhala racists for his ruthless prosecution of the war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which ended in May 2009. He is also widely hated for his brutal suppression of workers’ struggles and government critics, including journalists.

Gotabhaya Rajapakse (AP Photo)

The SLPP candidate received 6.9 million or 52 percent of the total votes, much of his support from rural areas. Sajith Premadasa, the candidate of the pro-US ruling United National Party (UNP), received 5.5 million votes or about 42 percent of the total ballot. About 82 percent of registered voters participated in the Saturday’s ballot, one of highest in a Sri Lankan election.

The election was held amid deep hostility towards President Maithripala Sirisena and the ruling UNP-led government, and their implementation of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) austerity demands. Many voting for the SLPP candidate did so as a protest against the UNP government but with no confidence in any of Rajapakse’s election promises that he will alleviate declining social conditions.

The election of Gotabhaya Rajapakse, however, far from improving the lot of ordinary working people will see the intensification of the austerity program of the present government and the ruthless suppression of opposition by workers, young people and the poor.

During the campaign, Rajapakse boasted of his role in ending the war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 and is being hailed as the “strongman” needed to bring stable government. As defence secretary, he presided over the slaughter of at least 40,000 Tamil civilians and is directly implicated in war crimes. He is also responsible for the military-sponsored death squads that carried out hundreds of ex-judicial killings and “disappearances,” including of opposition politicians, critics and journalists.

Rajapakse’s election marks a sharp shift towards autocratic forms of rule and the dispensing with basic constitutional and legal norms. As president, he will inevitably turn to the same criminal methods in dealing with the working class, as he and his brother employed against their political opponents and the Tamil population during the war.

The SLPP whipped up anti-government opposition, following the ISIS-backed National Thowheeth Jamma’ath terrorist attacks on April 21, which killed nearly 300 people, by claiming that the government had weakened the intelligence apparatus.

In an attempt to divert social tensions along communal lines, Gotabhaya Rajapakse promoted anti-Muslim sentiment, claiming Sri Lanka faced a new Islamic terrorist threat, and alleging that “LTTE terrorism is being revived.”

Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s election campaign centred on his agitation for greater “national security” to defeat terrorism. Its real purpose is to build up the military and intelligence apparatus against the working class. This reactionary agenda was shared by UNP candidate Premadasa and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) which also called for strengthening national security during the election campaign.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the Muslim parties called on Tamils and Muslims to spurn Gotabhaya Rajapakse and vote for the UNP candidate. While the TNA and the Muslim parties are discredited, the Tamil and Muslim population overwhelmingly rejected Rajapakse who was defeated in every district in the North and the East.

Significantly, Rajapakse will hold his swearing-in ceremony tomorrow at Anuradhapura, which is venerated by the Buddhist establishment and Sinhala racists. The city is the location of the ancient kingdom of legendary King Dutu Gamunu who ruled the area after defeating a Tamil king.

As soon as Premadasa conceded defeat and resigned as deputy party leader, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he would hold discussions with the new president about whether to dissolve the parliament or sit in the opposition. Several government ministers, including for finance and international trade, have already resigned.

SLPP leader Mahinda Rajapakse issued a statement yesterday declaring that he hoped the ruling UNP “would honour the election mandate.” He indicated that priority should be given to sorting out the “complications created by the 19th amendment to the constitution” after the new president is sworn in.

The former president also declared that measures would be taken to “rebuild the economy from the bottom upwards and to introduce constitutional and legal reforms to achieve this objective.”

In other words, the SLPP and Gotabhaya Rajapakse want the UNP-led government to resign and new parliamentary elections to be held to establish a new regime to implement its right-wing, anti-working class agenda.

The so-called “complications created by 19th amendment” is a reference to the limited measures introduced by the UNP-led government to curtail some the president’s powers. While not openly stated, future legal reform and constitutional change will be used to shift the country towards authoritarian forms of rule.

Saturday’s election was held amid a deepening political and economic crisis of the government and the ruling elite and rising struggles of the working-class against austerity. Every faction of the ruling elite is seeking the establishment of police-state rule. Having won the presidential elections, the SLPP will begin implementing such measures.

Mahinda Rajapakse’s reference to “rebuild[ing] the economy from the bottom upwards” is also significant. Sri Lanka is mired in mounting debt and confronts an economic down turn.

In the name of solving the crisis, the IMF has demanded sweeping economic reforms, including privatisation of state-owned enterprises and the slashing of welfare programs. While the IMF wants the fiscal deficit cut to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2020, this year’s deficit has risen to 5.6 percent of GDP. Early this month, the Sri Lanka Central Bank Governor Indrajit Coomaraswamy warned there will be “basically a Greece-like scenario,” if those targets were not achieved.

The SLPP was established by a faction of the President Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) two years after the ousting of Mahinda Rajapakse in the 2015 election, amidst mass opposition. Appealing to Sinhala chauvinism, it has rallied support from a layer of Buddhist monks and racist forces, including the fascistic Bodu Bala Sena, and sections of the military hierarchy.

The pseudo-left and trade unions, who politically disarmed workers during the election, helped create the conditions that brought Gotabhaya Rajapakse to power by promoting the right-wing UNP, which also has a long history of anti-democratic methods of rule.

In this election, the fake left Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP), which functions as an appendage of the UNP government, called for a vote for UNP candidate Sajith Premadasa claiming this would to stop the “fascist” Gotabhaya. Similarly, the United Socialist Party (USP) indirectly backed Premadasa declaring that the main task is stopping “fascist Gotabhaya.”

During the recent wave of strikes and protests by Sri Lankan workers over wages and conditions, the trade unions backed the UNP-led government. Another fake left outfit, the Frontline Socialist Party limited and politically isolated workers struggles, claiming the industrial action could pressure the government and the companies to grant concessions.

These formations all opposed the Socialist Equality Party’s struggle for the independent mobilisation of the working class against every faction of the ruling class and to fight for workers’ and peasants’ government to implement socialist policies. The trade unions and fake left have thus helped strengthen the ruling elite as it moves to dictatorial forms of rule.

The SEP was the only party contesting the election on the basis of an international socialist program, against imperialist war, austerity and attacks on democratic rights. The SEP campaign was well received by many workers and youth with our candidate receiving 3,014 votes across the island. While small, this is a class-conscious vote for socialism.

Sooner, rather than later, the working class will come into direct conflict with incoming President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his government. In order to defeat the attacks workers must base themselves on an international socialist program. We urge workers and youth to join us and build the SEP as the revolutionary party needed for this struggle.

Why did South Korea Walk Out of the GSOMIA?

Sandip Kumar Mishra

The military intelligence-sharing pact between South Korea and Japan, called the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), is going to expire on 23 November 2019. As per Article 21 of GSOMIA, any party can walk out of the agreement with a three-month notice, which, in this case, was given by South Korea to Japan on 22 August.

There have been several unsuccessful bilateral attempts between the South Koreans and the Japanese to resolve the issue involving meetings and delegation visits at the highest levels of government. The latest meeting was between South Korean Defence Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo and Japanese Defence Minister Taro Kono in Bangkok on 17 November. In all of these exchanges, both parties have just stated their respective positions without showing any sign of flexibility. What really led to the breakdown of this agreement?

It is important to consider the context, causes, and consequences of the termination of GSOMIA. Equally, it must be remembered that in the larger picture of bilateral security relations between Japan and South Korea, GSOMIA has a very small role to play. South Korea has similar agreements with around 30 countries, and most of these are largely inactive. In the case of the South Korea-Japan GSOMIA, which was concluded in November 2016, there has reportedly been insignificant critical information-sharing so far. In fact, if bilateral political relations continue to be strained, there is any case very little chance of them contributing to any substantial intelligence-sharing. However, if relations improve, such sharing can be made possible even without GSOMIA. In addition, both countries are part of the Trilateral Information Sharing Agreement (TISA) with the US, through which important intelligence is shared indirectly.

The real context of the termination of the agreement by South Korea thus are issues that are found outside of it, that is, a deterioration of relations with Japan on concerns such as dealing with North Korea, comfort women, compensation to forced Korean labourers, and South Korea's removal from Japan's 'white list'.

South Korea is unhappy with what it sees as Shinzo Abe's spoiler role by insisting on a tough approach to North Korea, or by disproportionately highlighting the abductees' issue, when the Moon Jae-in administration has made several attempts at engagement with Pyongyang and worked to bring the Trump administration on board. The Moon government is also not on board with what Japan considers the final and conclusive agreement on comfort women, of November 2015, and seeks its renegotiation.  

The recent bilateral salvo began with a demand for compensation to Korean forced labour by courts in South Korean in October-November 2018. Japan says that such compensation was already provided to the South Korean government on the basis of the 1965 agreement. South Korea's argument is that this compensation was a judicial decision that the government does not have a say in. In fact, in June 2019, Seoul proposed the established of a joint fund to provide said compensation, but this was rejected by Tokyo. Japan removing South Korea from its 'white list' on the grounds of some Japanese exports being leaked to Iran, UAE, and North Korea deepened the bilateral rift. The trade war between the two countries has escalated into public outrage in both Japan and South Korea, which has had a severe impact on their people-to-people exchanges as well. In this context, the Moon administration's decision to terminate GSOMIA is a strategic move to put it in a bargaining position with Japan.

Another strategic South Korean calculation motivating the termination is directed west, towards the US. To continue with the GSOMIA, which is also in the US' interest, Seoul would like Washington to consider: one, more flexibility in its position on North Korea; two, that full cost-sharing with the US for their troops stationed in South Korea is unreasonable; and three, the possibility of limiting or restraining Shinzo Abe's aggressive approach towards South Korea.

South Korea’s decision to terminate the agreement is not a hasty one. Through it, it seeks to address what it sees as unhelpful approaches adopted by the US and South Korea towards regional security. If its objectives are achieved, this will be an important milestone for South Korean foreign policy. If no change is achieved, GSOMIA's termination by itself is unlikely to have any significant consequences.

Trudeau Foundation Doctoral Scholarships 2020/2021 in Canada for Researchers

Application Deadline: Students must apply through a university’s internal selection process, and each university sets its own deadlines.
The final deadline for universities to submit their nominations is 22nd January 2020

To be taken at (country): Canadian Universities

Accepted Subject Areas: Social Sciences and Humanities related studies, preferably one of the following:

• Human Rights and Dignity
• Responsible Citizenship
• Canada and the World
• People and their Natural Environment

About the Award:  The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship Program will help shape researchers into engaged leaders who are conscious of the impact of their research, connected to the realities of the communities in which they work, and open to non-conventional forms of knowledge. The Foundation is seeking candidates who are audacious, original, and forward-thinking.
The program will last for three years and will also provide generous support for Scholars’ doctoral work in the form of a stipend and a research and travel allowance.
In the first year of their term, Scholars will receive mandatory leadership training from the Foundation’s Mentors, who are leaders from across the public, private, and non-profit sectors, and Fellows, who are leaders in research and teaching, during Institutes of Engaged Leadership. The Institutes will take place in different provinces, territories, and foreign countries.
In the second year of their term, Scholars will work with Mentors and Fellows to collaboratively plan and participate in a public conference with a flexible format, to be created and led by the Scholars themselves.
The third and final year of the program will be dedicated to knowledge dissemination. Scholars will continue to work closely with Mentors and Fellows to share the lessons they have learned over their term with the Foundation. This activity could take many forms, from the publication of a book to a theatre production or a fundraising gala. It will be a chance to innovate and experiment in order to share knowledge and skills gained through the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation experience with a public audience.
The Foundation recognizes that leaders in Canada communicate fluently in English and French and is committed to supporting Scholars in improving their language skills and expects them to make the necessary efforts to become fluent in both official languages. The Foundation will also strive for robust representation of the diverse stakeholders, cultures, and communities that compose Canadian society in terms of gender, language, ethnicity, and region. The Foundation welcomes First Nations, Inuit, and Métis candidates.

Selection Criteria

• Academic excellence;
• Leadership experience and abilities;
• Thematic relevance of research to the Foundation’s themes;
• Public engagement;
• Desire to contribute to public dialogue and share knowledge;
• Communication skills;
• Desire to belong to a vibrant community made up of leaders from across sectors

The Foundation welcomes candidates embodying all forms of diversity, including but not limited to gender, ethnicity, language, region, and discipline. We encourage First Nations, Métis, and Inuit candidates.

Eligibility:

• You must be already accepted into or in year one, two, or three of a full-time doctoral program in the humanities or social sciences
• Your doctoral work must relate to at least one of the Foundation’s four themes: Human Rights and Dignity, Responsible Citizenship, Canada and the World, People and their Natural Environment
• Canadian citizens are eligible whether they are at a Canadian or an international institution
• Non-Canadians (permanent residents or foreign nationals) enrolled in a doctoral program at a Canadian institution are eligible

Selection:

1. Apply through your university’s internal selection process using the Foundation’s application portal.
2. If your university chooses to nominate you for the national competition, your application will be forwarded to the PETF and will undergo a rigorous review process.
3. Finalists will be invited to interviews with the selection committee.

Number of Awards: Up to 20 Scholars will be selected in 2020.

Value of Awards: If you are chosen as a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar, you will receive:

• Membership in a community of other Scholars, Mentors, and Fellows, all of whom are leaders and change-makers in their respective disciplines and sectors;
• Leadership training from Mentors and Fellows;
• $40,000 per year for three years to cover tuition and reasonable living expenses; and
• Up to $20,000 per year for three years, as a research and travel allowance;

If you are chosen as a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar, you must:

• Attend a community retreat and two Institutes of Engaged Leadership during the first year of your term;
• Collaboratively plan and participate in a conference event during the second year of your term;
• Work with other Scholars, Mentors, and Fellows on a creative knowledge sharing and dissemination project during the third year of your term;
• Work towards fluency in English and French with support from the Foundation;
• Actively engage and collaborate with the Foundation’s community of Scholars, Mentors, and Fellows; and
• Submit one research progress report per year.

Duration: 3 years

How to Apply: You must apply through a university’s internal selection process using the Foundation’s application portal. If your university chooses to nominate you for the national competition, your application will be forwarded to the PETF with a letter of nomination and will undergo a rigorous review process. Finalists will be invited to interviews with the selection committee.

1. Learn about your university’s internal selection process deadlines: Each university has a different internal deadline, so make sure that you apply on time.
2. Register: When the competition opens, register for an account on the Foundation’s application portal. You will receive a username and password by email within 4 business days of registering (please check your spam folder if you do not see it). If you already have an account from a previous scholarship competition, you can login using your existing login credentials or request a password reset.
3. Fill out the application: Once you log in, you can apply by completing the application form the “Ébauche / Draft” section of the portal. Please also fill out your contact information in the “Coordonnées / Contacts” section of the portal.
4. Get recommendation letters: While filling out the application form, you will be asked to enter the name and email address of your three referees in the box provided. An email will automatically be sent to the referees, asking them to upload their reference letter in PDF format directly to our portal. We advise that you follow up with your references to ensure they submit on time.
5. Upload transcripts: Upload transcripts covering all of your post-secondary education in one PDF document. Any candidates who attended CEGEP in Quebec should not include their CEGEP transcripts.
6. Contact your university: Please inform the awards officer responsible for the PETF Scholarship competition at your university to let them know you’ve applied. This ensures that your application will be included in your university’s selection process.
7. University nominations: Your university will nominate applicants and forward their nominations to the Foundation by the closing date of the competition. The Foundation will only send an acknowledgement to those applicants who have been nominated by a university.
8. PETF selection process: All candidates who have been nominated by a university will go through a rigorous selection process. Finalists will be invited for an interview. 

Visit Award Webpage for Details