Key witness against Assange admits to lying in exchange for US immunity

Oscar Grenfell

Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson, a convicted criminal from Iceland, has admitted that the main allegations he made against Julian Assange, which form a central component of the US indictment against the WikiLeaks founder, were lies proffered in exchange for immunity from American prosecution.

The revelation, contained in an extensive article by Stundin, a well-known Icelandic biweekly, is dramatic confirmation that the US attempt to prosecute Assange is a criminal enterprise.

It again demonstrates that the American Espionage Act charges against Assange, and the proceedings for his extradition from Britain to the US, are a pseudo-legal cover for an extraordinary rendition. In this operation, the US Justice Department has collaborated with individuals whom it knows to be criminals, in the concoction of a fabricated indictment that was then submitted to the British courts.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange greets supporters from a balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

In June 2020, US prosecutors issued a new superseding indictment against Assange, months after the first week of British court hearings for his extradition.

The document contained the existing 17 Espionage Act charges against Assange, over WikiLeaks 2010 and 2011 publication of US army war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan and hundreds of thousands of American diplomatic cables. Leaked by the courageous whistleblower Chelsea Manning, the material included evidence of widespread war crimes, as well as the intrigues and conspiracies of American imperialism on a world scale.

The June indictment did not contain additional charges. It was a transparent effort to bolster the 18th count against Assange, which accuses him of attempted computer intrusion in league with Manning. In the January 2020 British court hearings, that charge had been demolished by defence evidence, showing that Assange and Manning had not hacked into any American computer system.

At the same time the US was faced with a growing public recognition that the Espionage Act charges against Assange were an attempt to criminalise press freedom, in violation of international law and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

American prosecutors responded by incorporating false testimony they had already secured from Thordarson and Hector “Sabu” Monsegur, a criminal hacker turned FBI supergrass. The information they furnished was aimed at bolstering the narrative that Assange was a common-variety hacker and criminal, not a journalist and publisher.

Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson pictured in 2019 (Credit: Facebook)

In an interview with Stundin, Thordarson has walked-back virtually all of the claims he made for the indictment. According to Stundin, his statements are corroborated by previously unpublished documents and chat logs. The June indictment refers to Thordarson as “teenager” and Iceland as “NATO Country 1.” It asserted as fact that:

• In 2010, Assange “asked Teenager to commit computer intrusion and steal additional information, including audio recordings of phone conversations between officials in NATO Country-1, including members of parliament.” As per Stundin, “Thordarson now admits... that Assange never asked him to hack or access phone recordings of MPs.” Instead Thordarson is now claiming that such recordings were provided to him by a third party, without any involvement by Assange. Thordarson says he later offered to show the files to the WikiLeak's founder, without knowing what they contained.
  
  
• “[T]hat Mr. Assange and Teenager failed a joint attempt to decrypt a file stolen from a NATO country 1 bank.” Thordarson now says this refers to encrypted files which were widely circulated online in 2010, and were believed to relate to the collapse of Icelandic Landsbanki in the financial crisis two years earlier. The files were thought to have been uploaded by a whistleblower, and there is no indication that Assange had any involvement in the leak or dissemination of the material.
  
  
• That Assange “used the unauthorized access given to him by a source, to access a government website of NATO country-1 used to track police vehicles.” Thordarson now says he had access to the site as a volunteer in a search and rescue team, and that Assange never requested to look at it.
  
  
• That in 2011 Assange oversaw and approved of communications between Thordarson and Monsegur, the head of the Lulzsec hacking group, including over planned cyber attacks targeting Iceland. By that stage, Monsegur had been caught by the FBI and had become an informant. Studin states that based on documents provided by Thordarson, “There is no indication WikiLeaks staff had any knowledge of Thordarson’s contacts with aforementioned hacking groups, indeed the logs show his clear deception.”

More broadly, the Studin article sheds further light on Thordarson’s relationship with WikiLeaks, which has consistently been exaggerated by the American authorities and the press. It notes that he was never a member of the organisation, but insinuated himself into a peripheral role in 2010 by volunteering for it. Almost immediately, Thordarson began moonlighting with journalists and hackers by falsely presenting himself as a prominent WikiLeaks representative.

This fraudulent behaviour escalated in the summer of 2011, when Thordarson initiated contact with Monsegur. According to Studin, “all indications are that Thordarson was acting alone without any authorization, let alone urging, from anyone inside WikiLeaks.”

By August 2011, the game was up, and Thordarson was being pursued by WikiLeaks members, along with $50,000 in merchandise sales he had diverted into his bank account by impersonating Assange. It was then that Thordarson, apparently, emailed the FBI and offered to provide them with information.

It has long been public knowledge that in August 2011, a planeload of US state operatives arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital. They claimed to be there to investigate threats to Iceland’s cyber-security, which the US State Department had first warned of the year before. When Iceland’s Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson found out that this was a false pretext, he surmised that the operatives were there to entrap Assange and sent them packing. Studin has now confirmed that the agents had flown in to pick up Thordarson, less than 48 hours after he offered to cooperate with the FBI.

Notwithstanding the initial setback, the relationship between the Icelandic criminal and the American spies was rapidly consummated. They took possession of files that Thordarson had illegally stolen from WikiLeaks, and repeatedly flew him out of Iceland, all expenses paid.

Thordarson’s fortunes changed in 2013 and 2014. In a series of court cases, he was convicted of embezzling from WikiLeaks and others, impersonating Assange and molesting multiple underage boys. A psychiatric assessment presented to the court found that Thordarson was a sociopath.

Having seemingly been dropped by the US authorities, Thordarson was picked up again by the American government after they orchestrated Assange’s expulsion from London’s Ecuadorian embassy in April 2019, and unveiled criminal charges against him. In May 2019, Thordarson was granted an immunity deal by the Trump administration, signed by Kellen S. Dwyer, the deputy of Attorney General William Barr.

In exchange for providing his lies against Assange, Thordarson was given immunity from any American prosecution. The US authorities also agreed to hide from Iceland and other countries any wrongdoing committed by the conman, even if it involved hacking and threats to their national security. According to Stundin, Thordarson has made the most of the deal, beginning a major crime spree involving theft on a large scale, forgery and financial deception.

The involvement of Thordarson exposes the attempted US prosecution of Assange as an illegitimate dirty tricks operation, carried out in violation of national laws spanning multiple countries, and international legislation. For the past decade, the American governments of presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have collaborated at the highest level with a peodophile and conman to subvert Iceland’s national sovereignty, frame a journalist and lie to British courts.

US allies are also implicated in this operation. The British Conservative government and Labour opposition have facilitated Assange’s extradition hearings based on these sordid foundations. In her January ruling, British District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser upheld all of the substantive US allegations against Assange, including Thordarson’s lies, only ruling against extradition on the grounds that the WikiLeaks founder’s health has been destroyed and he would die in a US prison.

The Australian government and Labor opposition have refused to defend Assange, despite him being an Australian citizen, and declared their great confidence in the British “legal process.” The latest revelations brand them as the accomplices of the US intelligence agencies and their criminal stool pigeons in violating the rights of an Australian journalist.

The Thordarson revelations show that workers, students and young people everywhere must take up the demand that the Biden administration immediately drop all charges against Assange; that the UK authorities end the extradition proceedings and immediately grant Assange’s unconditional freedom, and that the Australian government uphold the rights of a citizen.

The filthy and criminal character of the US pursuit of Assange, moreover, shows that the American government is seeking to establish a precedent that could be used to destroy any publisher, political activist or worker who takes a stand against it. Under conditions of a major escalation of the class struggle, and growing social and political opposition, this precedent must not be allowed to stand.

Ignoring warnings of a third COVID-19 wave, Indian government eases restrictions

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Just weeks after the devastating second wave of COVID-19 peaked, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and state government are easing the already limited restrictions, paving the way for another disaster. These moves are a continuation of the Indian ruling elite’s decision, from the outset of the pandemic, to place big business profits above human lives.

India’s total COVID-19 cases are now over 30 million with the death toll nearing 400,000. Despite a relative decline, the number of daily cases and deaths is still very high at around 50,000 and just over 1,000 respectively—down from 400,000 and 4,000 at the height of the second wave. Coronavirus infections, however, are expected to surge again with the spread of new Delta and Delta Plus variants. The ministry of health figures are widely regarded as gross underestimates.

The lowering of daily cases and deaths is largely the result of the limited restrictions imposed by the various state governments. The central government and other state governments, however, are rapidly moving to ease restrictions and fully reopen the economy despite warnings from experts that the situation could rapidly worsen.

People wait to receive COVID-19 vaccine in Mumbai, India, Thursday, April 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

Dr. A Fathahudeen, who, according to BBC, “has treated thousands of Covid patients,” told the news agency that another wave was “inevitable.” It was possible, he said, that “we can delay and contain it with appropriate measures like sequencing—to keep an eye on mutations—and strictly enforcing safety protocols…. If we don’t do all this, then the third wave could sneak up on us faster than we can imagine.”

Confirming this warning, Maharashtra state reported last week that there had been 10,000 daily infections for four consecutive days, with the state accounting for one fifth of India’s COVID-19 cases. The state capital, Mumbai, is India’s financial centre.

The worsening situation led Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to declare that “there should be no hurry in relaxing the coronavirus-induced restrictions.” However, Thackeray’s government, like many other state administrations, has already allowed businesses to reopen.

India Today reported that a health official had told a meeting with Thackeray last week that “The Delta Plus variant could stoke a third wave in Maharashtra. It could spread at double the rate.”

Local and international media have published videos and photos revealing massive crowds at railway stations, markets and shopping malls failing to observe social distancing, a situation encouraged by the lifting of limited lockdown measures.

This is occurring as the Delta variant of COVID-19, first detected in India, and which created the devastating second wave in the world’s second most populous nation, is surging around the world. The Delta variant is reported to be 60 percent more transmissible than the previously dominant variant and shown to be partially resistant to some vaccines.

A June 22 statement by the Indian ministry of health declared that another coronavirus variant—locally named as “Delta Plus,” which is a mutation of the Delta or B1617 variant—was now a “variant of concern.”

The ministry of health said that nearly two dozen cases had been detected in three Indian states, including the worst-impacted Maharashtra. It warned that its characteristics included, “increased transmissibility, stronger binding to receptors of lung cells and potential reduction in monoclonal antibody response.”

According to medical experts, the variant is resistant to the recently authorised monoclonal antibody cocktail treatment (a potent intravenous infusion of antibodies to neutralise the virus) for COVID-19. On June 24, local media reported that Madhya Pradesh state recorded the first death from the Delta Plus variant.

Although the first Delta variant emerged in India last October, the Modi government failed to invest the necessary resources to investigate and attempt to deal with it.

This criminal negligence, along with its ongoing refusal to enact a national lockdown and other basic measures like properly-funded mass testing, contract tracing and other urgently needed resources to upgrade the rundown public healthcare, led to the second wave of the pandemic, and the latest, even more dangerous variant.

The Modi government is attempting to justify its refusal to establish a national lockdown by claiming that the only way to control the pandemic is through a national vaccination program. But the vaccination program is chaotic and moving at a snail’s pace, leaving the overwhelming majority of the country’s more than 1.3 billion people vulnerable.

According to a June 22 Reuters report, India had fully vaccinated only 5.5 percent of the 950 million people eligible with about 18 percent having received just one dose.

“Since May vaccinations have averaged fewer than 3 million doses a day, far less than the 10 million health officials say are crucial to protect the millions vulnerable to new surges. Despite India being the world’s largest vaccine producer, the maximum daily achievable vaccine supply rate is 4 to 5 million doses,” Chandrakant Lahariya, an expert in public policy and health systems, told Reuters.

The news agency report cited other experts who pointed out that vaccinations in rural areas, where two-thirds of India’s population live, have “faltered.” “Maintaining the pace will prove challenging when it comes to injecting younger people in such areas,” Delhi-based epidemiologist Rajab Dasgupta said.

Even in the national capital New Delhi, which was devastated by the second wave, “more than 8 million residents had yet to receive a first dose, and inoculating all adults there would take more than a year at the current pace,” health authorities told Reuters.

Indian news reports also point to huge disparities across districts in the country’s COVID-19 vaccination coverage. The Scroll.in web portal revealed on June 7 that areas such as the western Assam district, bordering Bangladesh, had only administered 3.2 doses per 100 people. Mahe districts, in the union state of Puducherry in southern India, had the best coverage with 63 doses per 100 people.

Of the 10 districts with the lowest vaccination coverage, six (ranging between 4.86 doses per 100 people and 5.37 doses per 100 people) were in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with over 200 million population.

Scroll.in reported that, Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu, had the highest vaccine coverage of India’s largest cities, with over 40 doses per 100 people. Mumbai had 34.14 doses per 100 people, Bengaluru Urban was marginally lower at 32.30 doses and the national capital, New Delhi, had 23 doses per 100 people.

Despite Chennai being the “best performer among all of India’s bigger metros, coverage in 34 of Tamil Nadu’s 37 districts is less than the national average, Scroll said. Northeastern India, as a whole, is reported to have large disparities with coverage in 72 of the region’s 115 districts less than the national average.

An article published on June 24 by the Print cited warnings by Priyanka Kishore, head of India and South East Asia Economics at Oxford Economics. “States are easing lockdowns based on lower test positivity rates rather than vaccination progress. This risky strategy increases the chances of renewed outbreaks that would further delay the recovery.”

Protests and coup threats as Peru enters fourth week without certification of presidential vote

Bill Van Auken

Lima was the scene again Saturday of dueling demonstrations between supporters of Pedro Castillo, the former teachers strike leader who won Peru’s June 6 second-round election, and those of his right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori, who is trying to overturn the results with baseless allegations of fraud in what has been described as a slow-motion coup.

At Fujimori’s rally, right-wing supporters chanted “Peruvians want a new election.” Castillo used his rally to issue pledges of loyalty to Peru’s existing capitalist order, including a call for the chief of the country’s central bank to remain in the position that he has held for the past 15 years. There the crowd chanted “the people united will never be defeated.”

Three weeks have passed since Peruvians went to the polls, and election authorities have yet to officially declare the winner. This is despite all of the ballots having been counted, leaving Castillo with 50.125 percent to Keiko Fujimori’s 49.875 percent, a slim margin of 44,058 votes.

Pedro Castillo addresses June. 26 rally in Lima (Credit: Andina)

The protracted delay in recognizing Castillo’s victory has provoked protests in Peru’s mining corridor, where he won overwhelmingly among the impoverished population. Workers erected barricades across roads, halting truck traffic and threatening to paralyze mining operations, the most crucial sector of the Peruvian economy.

Fujimori is the daughter of the former dictator Alberto Fujimori, now imprisoned for crimes against humanity and corruption during his decade-long rule that ended in 2000. If she fails to secure the presidency, she herself faces the prospect of imprisonment on corruption charges relating to the massive bribery and kickback scandal surrounding the activities of the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, in which every living Peruvian ex-president and virtually every political party are implicated.

The Fujimori camp, backed by powerful sections of the Peruvian ruling class and the bulk of the media, has promoted the lie that Castillo’s election victory was the result of fraud. With the aim of nullifying 200,000, it mobilized an army of lawyers to file a series of challenges alleging irregularities in election districts in Peru’s impoverished Andean and southern region, where Castillo won overwhelmingly.

While the National Electoral Tribunal (JNE) has dismissed the challenges submitted by Fujimori’s lawyers as baseless, they are moving ahead with appeals. In a further bid to paralyze the body’s deliberation, Luis Arce Córdova, a Fujimori supporter resigned from the tribunal last Wednesday claiming that he did not want to “validate false constitutional deliberations”.

This attempt to deny the JNE a quorum was remedied at the end of last week with Arce’s replacement by Víctor Raúl Rodríguez Monteza, a fellow prosecutor who, like Arce, is implicated in a corruption scandal involving the bribing of judges in the port city of Callao.

Among the latest attempts to have the election overturned has been an appeal by the fujimoristas to the Organization of American States (OAS) to intervene by conducting an audit of the results. They have specifically cited the 2019 Bolivian election, in which the OAS intervened with baseless claims of fraud. This paved the way for a coup against President Evo Morales, who was forced to resign by the military and was replaced by a right-wing regime.

In all of this there is an element of playing for time by the Fujimori camp with the aim of organizing sufficient forces within the state apparatus to execute an extra-constitutional coup.

This threat was made explicit in a June 14 letter to the high command of the Peruvian armed forces signed by retired senior commanders, including 23 Army generals, 22 Navy admirals and 18 Air Force lieutenant generals (the list was slightly padded with the “signatures” of dead officers). The communique called upon the military to “act rigorously” in order to “remedy” the “demonstrated irregularities” in the handling of the election results in order prevent the coming to power of an “illegal and illegitimate” commander-in-chief.

Among the most revealing episodes in the electoral coup plot is the revelation that Vladimiro Montesinos, Alberto Fujimori’s powerful chief adviser and intelligence chief and longtime “asset” of the US Central Intelligence Agency, has played an active role in the attempt to overturn the election results, including by bribing members of the National Electoral Tribunal (JNE).

Montesinos is imprisoned in the maximum security naval prison in Callao, serving sentences for bribery, embezzlement and illegal gun-running, and facing trial on other charges related to massacres, extra-judicial executions and torture carried out on his orders. Nonetheless, it has emerged that he was able to make 17 calls, apparently from the office of the prison’s director, to a right-wing former commando and senior fujimorista operative, over the past month.

The substance of these conversations was made public with the release of audiotapes by Fernando Olivera, a center-right politician who first came to prominence in 2000 with his release of the so-called “vladi-videos,” videotapes showing Montesinos handing millions in bribes to political and media figures. The intelligence chief had made the tapes himself to blackmail anyone failing to sufficiently support the Fujimori regime. The release of those tapes played a significant role in the collapse of Fujimori’s decade-long dictatorship, with the ex-dictator fleeing to Japan and Montesinos to Venezuela.

In the audiotapes released last week Montesinos is heard telling the retired commando colonel Pedro Rejas Tataje to contact Guillermo Sendón, a political operative sympathetic to Fujimori, indicating that he could facilitate the bribing of three members of the electoral tribunal. In another audiotape, Sendón tells Rejas Tataje that the three JNE members would vote in favor of Fujimori in exchange “tres palos” (three sticks) meaning a million dollars each. Sendón said he had already been in contact with Luis Arce Córdova, the prosecutor who abruptly resigned from the tribunal.

The ability of Montesinos to play an active role in the attempt to overturn the election is incontrovertible evidence of support by elements of the military in the coup plotting.

Also revealing was Montesino’s advice to the fujimorista operative that he could seek assistance from the US Embassy. The US State Department last week issued a statement praising Peru’s election as a “model of democracy in the region,” but never naming Castillo as its victor, clearly leaving Washington’s options open. For his part, Montesinos, one of the most sinister figures in recent Latin American history, enjoyed an intimate relationship with the embassy and the CIA dating back to the 1970s, when he supplied Washington confidential intelligence on the bourgeois nationalist military regime of Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado.

In the face of the coup threats and an increasingly hysterical campaign denouncing him as a communist, Pedro Castillo has moved ever further to the right in a bid to win the confidence of the Peruvian ruling class.

This shift was at the heart of the speech he delivered to the mass rally in his support on Saturday. He made the most news by stating he intended to maintain Julio Velarde as president of the Central Reserve Bank of Peru (BCRP). Velarde, a favorite of the International Monetary Fund, is affiliated with the right-wing Christian People’s Party, whose ex-president Lourdes Flores is among the most prominent supporters of Fujimori’s bid to overturn the election.

“We are not communists, we are democrats, we respect Peruvian governance and institutionalism,” Castillo told the crowd. “We are respectful of this Constitution and, in this context, I ask doctor Julio Velarde that his work in the Central Reserve Bank remain permanent. This is necessary not only for economic tranquility, but to open the doors for the big investments that have to be made democratically, with rules.” He went on to declare himself “respectful” of the “dignity” and “loyalty to the homeland” of the Peruvian military.

The authoritative big business mouthpiece Bloomberg declared Castillo’s announcement regarding the central bank “the most favorable move for the markets” that he has taken since his election.

International finance capital is taking the measure of Castillo and determining that just like another former union leader turned president, Lula of Brazil, he is a man with whom they can do business.

The hysterical and increasingly dangerous anti-communist campaign within the Peruvian ruling class to overturn the election and revive the Fujimori dictatorship is driven by fear not of Castillo, but of the impoverished layers of the working class, peasantry and urban poor who voted for him. Peru’s stark levels of social inequality have been greatly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the country posting the worst per capita death toll in the world and millions driven into unemployment and poverty. Combined with unending corruption scandals that have discredited every political party and state institution, these conditions threaten to ignite a revolutionary explosion.

All of France’s regional presidents re-elected amid mass abstention

Alex Lantier

Over 65 percent of voters abstained yesterday in the second round of the French regional elections, as each of the 12 incumbent regional presidents were re-elected. Neither Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) nor President Emmanuel Macron’s Republic on the March (LRM) carried a single one of France’s 12 regions.

Thanks to this repetition of the massive abstention in the first round (66.5 percent), the traditional Gaullist and social-democratic parties held on to office. The right-wing The Republicans (LR) won six regions, the Socialist Party (PS) or the Greens five; the pro-autonomy Fà populu inseme party of Gilles Simeoni won Corsica. Notwithstanding this appearance of stability, mass abstention points to the deep discrediting of the political establishment by its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and violent police repression of strikes and protests.

Far-right leader Marine le Pen attends a press conference in Toulon, southern France, June 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

As of yesterday evening, polling and media projections were giving the following results, with the candidate taking the most votes winning the regional executive and a bonus of one quarter of the seats in the regional council:

* Auvergne-Rhône-Alps (regional capital Lyons): Laurent Wauquiez (LR) 55.3 percent; Fabienne Grébert (Greens) 33.4 percent; Andréa Kotarac (RN) 11.3 percent.

* Brittany (Rennes): Loïg Chesnais-Girard (PS) 30; Isabelle Le Callennec (LR) 20; Thierry Burlot (LRM) 17; Gilles Pennelle (RN) 12.

* Burgundy-Franche-Comté (Dijon): Marie-Guite Dufay (PS) 43; Julien Odoul (RN) 24.95; Gilles Platret (LR) 24.28; Denis Thuriot (LRM) 9.66.

* Center-Loire Valley (Orléans): François Bonneau (PS) 38.6; Nicolas Forissier (LR) 22.9; Aleksandar Nikolic (RN) 22.4; Marc Fesneau (LRM) 16.1.

* Corsica (Ajaccio): Gilles Simeoni (Fà populu inseme) 40.6; Laurent Marcangeli (LR) 32; Jean-Christophe Angelini (Avanzemu Pè a Corsica) 15.07; Paul-Félix Benedetti (regionalists) 12.26.

* East (Strasbourg): Jean Röttner (LR) 39; Laurent Jacobelli (RN) 27.1; Eliane Romani (Verts) 21.1; Brigitte Klinkert (LRM) 12.8.

* North (Lille): Xavier Bertrand (LR) 53; Sébastien Chenu (RN) 25.6; Karima Delli (Greens) 21.4.

* Île-de-France (Paris): Valérie Pécresse (LR) 45.5; Julien Bayou (Greens) 32.5; Jordan Bardella (RN) 11.5; Laurent Saint-Martin (LRM) 10.5.

* Normandy (Rouen): Hervé Morin (LR) 44.2; Mélanie Boulanger (PS) 25.9; Nicolas Bay (RN) 20.1; Laurent Bonnaterre (LREM) 9.8.

* New Aquitaine (Bordeaux): Alain Rousset (PS) 39.3; Edwige Diaz (RN) 18.9; Nicolas Thierry (Greens) and Nicolas Florian (LR) both 14.3; Geneviève Darrieussecq (LRM) 13.2.

* Occitania (Toulouse): Carole Delga (PS) 57.8; Jean-Paul Garraud (RN) 23.9; Aurélien Pradié (LR) 18.3.

* Provence-Alps-Riviera (Marseilles): Renaud Muselier (LR) 57.3; Thierry Mariani (RN) 42.7.

Amid mass popular disaffection, the ruling class clearly intends to use this election, the last before the April-May 2022 presidential elections, to decide whom to run as president. Macron is deeply unpopular, as is his opponent in the second round of the 2017 elections, neo-fascist Marine Le Pen, who had only a 34 percent approval rating in an April poll. A February poll found that 80 percent of French people would oppose a Macron-Le Pen rematch in 2022, but polls also show that this is what would emerge if elections were held today.

Moreover, with Macron only leading Le Pen 52 to 48 percent in a hypothetical match-up, there is a discernible possibility that a neo-fascist could become president of France next year.

Significant sections of the French ruling class are clearly concerned about finding a more palatable frontman for the reactionary policies advocated by both Macron and the far right. And so, barely two minutes after the first projected were published last night, LR candidate Xavier Bertrand gave a victory speech preparing a presidential bid.

Bertrand, a health and then labor minister under right-wing presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, is a reactionary candidate of the financial aristocracy. Yet his motley speech mixed rhetoric of the Gaullist movement, “yellow vest” protests against social inequality, and the law-and-order appeals of Macron in order to demagogically posture as a candidate of the people.

“History will record that twice here, on the soil of northern France, which is faithful to a certain idea of France, the National Rally was stopped,” he said. He addressed “you, the silent ones, the invisible ones, the workers,” pledging to make sure that “labor will live again, that it will be possible to live decently from work. My priorities are the middle classes and popular social layers.”

At the same time, adopting the rhetoric Macron has used to to justify violent police repression of protests and measures targeting Muslims’ democratic rights, Bertrand pledged to “re-establish order and respect for authority” and to fight “hatred of France.”

Le Pen said the election reflected “a deep crisis of local democracy” and thanked “electors who went to vote while everything pushed them to abstain.” She proposed to adopt Citizen-Initiated Referendums (RIC), a legislative initiative championed by the “yellow vests,” as “everything must be debated in order to win our fellow citizens back to interest in politics.” She concluded by declaring that her party is “the change in government that France needs.”

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former PS minister and leader of the “left populist” Unsubmissive France (LFI) party, also spoke on the elections—hailing his voters in Marseilles who voted for the reactionary Muselier against the neo-fascist, Mariani.

He noted “the abyss of abstention separating the mass of French people from institutions supposed to represent them,” pointing especially to abstention “among youth and workers who, more than others, are turning their backs on what they see as political theater.” He proposed “recognizing blank votes, the right to citizen-initiated referendums and referendums to recall officials” as legal initiatives that could rekindle popular support for the state machine.

Mélenchon cynically applauded the “extremely painful political effort” of his voters in Marseilles who, faced as in the 2017 presidential elections with a poisoned choice between two reactionary candidates, “nevertheless voted to defeat the National Rally.”

There is nothing more superficial and reactionary than the invocations by capitalist politicians and pundits of a crisis of democracy, followed by calls for legislative tinkering and the type of lesser-evil voting that put Macron in power. Totally absent from official analyses of the elections are any account of the political roots of mass abstention and disillusionment with official politics.

Significantly, an Odoxa poll for Le Figaro found that 60 percent of the electorate blamed “political parties and candidates who were unable to interest voters in the elections” for the abstention. Some 37 percent blame Macron, and 20 percent blame “the government, which did not give the French people enough information about the elections.”

In the final analysis, mass abstention flows not from national conditions that can be addressed with one or another legal reform inside France, but by an international crisis of the capitalist system.

The brief regional election campaign was deafeningly silent on the fact that over 110,000 people in France and 1.1 million in Europe have died of COVID-19, due to the ruling elite’s opposition to medical personnel’s calls for a scientific fight against the virus. The European Union (EU) instead gave over €2 trillion in bank and corporate bailouts that raised the net worth of EU billionaires by over €1 trillion. Macron is now debating whether to immediately proceed to further cuts to pension and unemployment insurance to help finance these massive handouts to the rich.

Objectively, this record reveals an unbridgeable class gulf separating the workers from the financial aristocracy and its state machine. Fearing working class anger driven by decades of EU austerity, moreover, reserve and active-duty officers in both France and Spain have threatened to launch military coups.

The fact that a neo-fascist descendant of France’s Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime currently stands a credible chance of ruling France next year is a warning to the authoritarian course pursued by the bourgeoisie. However, Macron’s presidency is an unanswerable refutation to those who would claim that a lesser-evil vote to halt the far right will preserve French democracy. Macron personally hailed Vichy leader Marshal Philippe Pétain, a war criminal and convicted traitor, as a “great soldier” as he unleashed his riot police on social protests and mass strikes.

AIMS NEI Fellowship Program 2021

Application Deadline: 31st July 2021 23:59 CAT.

About the Award: Applications are invited from outstanding female scientists currently residing anywhere in the world. Successful applicants are expected to execute in a suitable African host institution a self-initiated project with the potential to contribute significantly to the understanding of climate change and its impacts, and/or to the development and implementation of innovative, empirically grounded policies and strategies for mitigation, adaptation, and/or resilience.

Established in 2017, the first and second calls for applications attracted highly competitive applications and eventually, six fellowships were awarded to dynamic women scientists working in the area of climate change science and its related disciplines.

By the end of 2021, 20 fellowships in total would have been awarded to outstanding women working on (i) revealing the triggers of our changing climate; (ii) mapping past, current and future climate patterns; (iii) increasing our knowledge of the impacts of these climate patterns on humanity and life on earth; (iv) providing recommendations and solutions on how best to adapt, mitigate or increase our resilience to climate change and its associated impacts, etc.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: To be eligible, applicants must be:

• female
• in possession before the fellowship start date of a doctorate in a quantitative discipline, including, but not limited to, applied mathematics, climatology, physics, chemistry, computer science, theoretical biology, and engineering
• currently employed, on either a permanent or a temporary basis, in a non-profit work environment, including government
• actively engaged in research, policy, and/or practice relevant to climate change modelling, mitigation, adaptation, and/or resilience
• the lead and/or senior author of at least one refereed publication on a topic relevant to climate change modelling, mitigation, adaptation, and/or resilience.

Selection Criteria: All reviews done by the Selection Committee members and other reviewers will be based on the following criteria:

• Quality of applicant: academic qualifications; quality of publications; experience in climate change-related work; real-world impact & recognition (e.g. through awards) of prior work.
• Quality of proposed project: relevance to climate change modelling, practice and policy; strength of connection to the mathematical sciences; experience of applicant in project topic; quality of project design; feasibility; suitability of proposed host institution environment and of named collaborator; quality and realism of budget projections.
• Potential impact of proposed project on scientific knowledge, practice and policy.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The fellowship is worth up to USD 35,000. The exact amount of the fellowship will be specified at the time of the award. This amount will be paid to the Fellow in three installments in accordance with a schedule that will be defined at the time of the award. Fellows must submit accurate banking details (using the form provided below) to avoid undue delays in receiving their fellowship payments.

How to Apply: To apply, please complete this online application form and submit by the 31 July 2021, 23:59 CAT with the following documents attached:

• a completed personal details form, including a detailed budget for all non-project-related activities;
• a completed project proposal form, including a detailed budget for all project-related activities;
• a curriculum vitae; and
• an electronic copy of a representative publication in climate change modelling, its causes, climate change mitigation, adaptation and/or resilience in which the applicant is the lead and/or senior author.

Supporting documents should be saved as a pdf in the format: “name of the research program_type of_document_ AIMSentity/centre_monthyear of applying_first and last name of applicant.” For instance, “MS4CR fellowship_application form_AIMS-NEI_July2021_SarahJake”.

Applicants should request that three confidential letters of support be emailed to ms4cr-fellows@nexteinstein.org, using as subject “MS4CR fellowship application support letter-first and last name of applicant” by the application deadline. Two of these letters should come from the applicant’s immediate supervisor at her home institution and the named collaborator at her proposed host institution. At least one letter should come from a referee who is qualified to assess the applicant’s experience in climate change research, practice, and/or policy. You should share with your referees a copy of the ‘Terms of Reference for Fellows’ and the ‘Instructions for Referees’ document. These can be downloaded on the website.

Incomplete applications will not be evaluated.

Applicants are advised to carefully read the following documents:

• Terms of Reference for Host Institutions and Collaborators
• Terms of Reference for Home Institutions and Supervisors
• Terms of Reference for Fellows
• Instructions for Referees
• Personal details form
• Project proposal form

Fellows will be selected by an international selection committee appointed by AIMS-NEI.

• It is important to go through the Application process on the Program Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship 2022/2023

Application Deadline:

• For Students: Consult nominating institution for submission deadline.
• For nominating institutions: Deadline: 2nd November, 2021 (20:00 EDT).

Offered Annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All

To be Taken at (country): Canada

About the Award: The Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (Vanier CGS) was created to attract and retain world-class doctoral students and to brand Canada as a global centre of excellence in research and higher learning. VCS supports students who demonstrate both leadership skills and a high standard of scholarly achievement in graduate studies in social sciences and humanities, natural sciences and engineering, and health. The scholarship is worth $50,000 per year for three years and is available to both Canadian and international PhD students studying at Canadian universities.

Information for nominating institutions: Nominating institutions are encouraged to consider diversity in discipline, gender, official language, and citizenship when considering which applicants to nominate for the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships (Vanier CGS) program.

Areas of research:

• Health research
• Natural sciences and/or engineering research
• Social sciences and humanities research

Type: Doctoral (PhD)

Eligibility: Open to Canadian citizens, permanent residents of Canada and foreign students pursuing a doctoral degree at eligible Canadian universities

To be considered for a Vanier CGS, candidate must:

• be nominated by only one Canadian institution, which must have received a Vanier CGS quota;
• be pursuing your first doctoral degree (including joint undergraduate/graduate research program such as: MD/PhD, DVM/PhD, JD/PhD – if it has a demonstrated and significant research component). Note that only the PhD portion of a combined degree is eligible for funding;
• intend to pursue, in the summer semester or the academic year following the announcement of results, full-time doctoral (or a joint graduate program such as: MD/PhD, DVM/PhD, JD/PhD) studies and research at the nominating institution; Note that only the PhD portion of a combined degree is eligible for funding;
• not have completed more than 20 months of doctoral studies as of May 1, 2022;
• have achieved a first-class average, as determined by your institution, in each of the last two years of full-time study or equivalent. Candidates are encouraged to contact the institution for its definition of a first-class average; and
• must not hold, or have held, a doctoral-level scholarship or fellowship from CIHR, NSERC or SSHRC to undertake or complete a doctoral degree.

Eligibility of Degree Programs

• Doctoral awards are tenable only in degree programs that have a significant research component. The research component must be a requirement for completion of the program, and is considered to be significant original, autonomous research that leads to the completion of a dissertation, major scholarly publication, performance, recital and/or exhibit that is merit reviewed at the institutional level. Clinically-oriented programs of study, including clinical psychology, are also eligible programs if they have a significant research component, as described above.

Selection Criteria:

• Academic excellence, as demonstrated by past academic results and by transcripts, awards and distinctions.
• Research potential, as demonstrated by the candidates research history, his/her interest in discovery, the proposed research and its potential contribution to the advancement of knowledge in the field, the potential benefit to Canadians, and any anticipated outcomes.
• Leadership (potential and demonstrated ability), as defined by the following qualities:
• Personal Achievement:
• Involvement in Academic Life:
• Volunteerism/community outreach:
• Civic engagement:
• Other

Value and Duration of Scholarship: $50,000 annually for three years.

Number of  Scholarship: Up to 166 scholarships are awarded annually.

How to Apply: Candidates must be nominated by the university at which they want to study. Candidates cannot apply directly to the Vanier CGS program.

It is important to go through the Application requirements in the Scholarship Webpage below before applying.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details 

Award Providers: The Vanier’s scholarships are administered by Canada’s three federal funding agencies:
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

TWAS-BIOTEC Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme 2021

Application Deadline: 30th July 2021

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To Be Taken At (Country): Thailand

Fields: 

01-Agricultural Sciences
02-Structural, Cell and Molecular Biology
03-Biological Systems and Organisms
04-Medical and Health Sciences incl. Neurosciences
05-Chemical Sciences

Type: Postdoctoral

Eligibility:  Applicants for these fellowships must meet the following criteria:

• be nationals of a developing country (other than Thailand).
• must not hold any visa for temporary or permanent residency in Thailand or any developed country.
• hold a PhD degree in any of the following fields: molecular biology, molecular genetics, microbiology, biochemistry, protein crystallography, organic chemistry, biotechnology, bioinformatics, or related disciplines.
• apply for the fellowship within THREE years of having obtained a PhD degree in a fields of the natural sciences specified above.
• must not be more than 40 years old by the date of the submission of their application. NB. For instance, if an applicant turns 40 on 15 June, s/he should make sure not to submit the application later than 15 June.
• be regularly employed at a research and/or teaching institution in their home country where they must hold a research assignment.
• provide an official Acceptance Letter from BIOTEC. Requests for acceptance must be directed to the BIOTEC Research Support Division (e-mail rsd@biotec.or.th) who will facilitate assignment of a host supervisor. In contacting BIOTEC, applicants must accompany their request for an Acceptance Letter with copy of their CV and a research proposal outline;
• provide evidence of proficiency in English, if the medium of instruction was not English.
• provide evidence that s/he will return to her/his home country on completion of the fellowship
• not take up other assignments during the period of her/his fellowship
• be financially responsible for any accompanying family members.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: BIOTEC will provide a standard monthly allowance which should be used to cover living costs, such as accommodation and food.

Duration of Programme: Minimum of 12 months and a maximum of 24 months

How to Apply: Apply Here

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Record abstention in French regional elections exposes political establishment

Anthony Torres

Following the first round of Sunday’s regional elections in France, the various slates had until Tuesday to announce new electoral alliances for the second round of voting this Sunday. The first round was marked by a record abstention rate of over 66 percent. The elections have revealed the widespread rejection by the working population of the criminal policy of “herd immunity” pursued throughout the pandemic, as well as the authoritarian and austerity policies of the entire political establishment.

The voting booth for the regional elections in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, Friday, June 25, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Michel Spingler]

An alliance has been announced between the Socialist Party, Communist Party, Radical Party of the Left and Europe Ecology-the Greens, in the regions of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Centre Val de Loire and Pays de la Loire. This did not prevent four separate lists remaining in the second round in Pays de la Loire: François de Rugy of Emmanuel Macron’s Republic on the Move (La République en marche—LREM), with 11.97 percent of the vote, came in behind the far-right National Rally (Rassemblement national—RN) candidate, Hervé Juvin (12.53 percent). They are maintaining their list against the outgoing president Christelle Morançais of The Republicans (Les Républicains—LR), who won the first round on Sunday, with 34.29 percent of the vote.

Under French voting rules, parties that obtained at least 10 percent of the votes cast can stand in the second round, and possibly merge with lists with at least 5 percent of the votes.

In Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the Ecologists’ Fabienne Grébert (14.4 percent in the first round), Najat Vallaud-Belkacem of the Socialist Party (Parti socialiste—PS) (11.4 percent) and the French Communist Party’s (Parti communiste français— PCF) Cécile Cukierman (5.5 percent) announced on Monday that they would put together a joint list to try to unseat the outgoing LR president, Laurent Wauquiez, who received 48.8 percent.

With 41.39 percent of the vote on Sunday, the outgoing president of the Hauts de France region, Xavier Bertrand of LR, substantially outstripped his RN rival Sébastien Chenu (24.37 percent). Bertrand has ruled out any alliance with Macron’s LREM, which receive only 9.13 percent of the vote and failed to qualify for the second round. Secretary of State for Pensions, Laurent Pietraszewski, who headed the LREM list, has now called for a vote for Xavier Bertrand.

In Île-de-France, which includes the capital of Paris, the lists of the Greens, PS and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (La France insoumise—LFI) have merged. The Greens’ Julien Bayou won the highest vote in the first round, with 12.95 percent, against 11.07 percent for the PS-backed candidate Audrey Pulvar, and 10.24 percent for Clémentine Autain of LFI. He will face the outgoing LR president Valérie Pécresse.

In the PACA region, the Ecologists’ candidate Jean-Laurent Félizia has withdrawn his list for the second round, after initially refusing to do so on Sunday evening. He has announced that he is supporting LR president Renaud Muselier. Muselier is predicted to beat National Rally candidate Thierry Mariani.

In Brittany, Normandy, New Aquitaine, Occitanie, Corsica and the Grand Est, the PS, the Greens and their pseudo-left satellites such as LFI have not fused electoral lists.

These electoral manoeuvres, through which the established parties attempt to defend their own against the FN, offer nothing to the working class. They will have no legitimacy, because these parties are pursuing unpopular policies of austerity, against the opposition of the population. They have sided with the policy of “herd immunity” pursued by Macron and the EU, which has led to 111,000 deaths in France since the beginning of the pandemic. The international and French financial aristocracy, meanwhile, has reaped trillions of euros.

The abstention in the first round of voting points to the widespread discrediting of the ruling elite, and caught the media and political establishment unaware. A powerful movement of opposition is brewing against all the political parties. Macron himself warned at his Council of Ministers meeting on Wednesday that the “record abstention constitutes a democratic alert to which we must respond.”

A survey conducted by Ipsos/Sopra Stéria for Television France showed that 87 percent of 18–24 year olds did not vote and 83 percent of 25–34 year olds did not vote. In the next age group, among 35–49 year olds, the abstention was 71 percent, with a similar abstention of 68 percent among 50-59 year olds.

The BMFTV news channel reported: “According to the Ipsos/Sopra Steria survey for France Television, 75 percent of employees and workers abstained, but so did 69 percent of the so-called upper category (71 percent of craftsmen and tradesmen, and 69 percent of executives). According to another Ifop-Fiducial survey for TF1 and LCI, the rate is similar among intermediate professions, with 73 percent abstaining.”

These surveys expose the rejection of the political establishment by workers and young people, and also sections of the middle class whose social position has been reduced and even ruined by the policies dictated by the financial aristocracy. Using police repression, Macron was able to suppress the “yellow vests” protest movement, but the social discontent that underlay it is taking root and intensifying.

While polls suggested that RN would be the victor of the elections, the first round showed the failure of the far right to present themselves as being independent of the political establishment. Marine Le Pen called the election “a civic disaster, which has largely distorted the electoral reality of the country, and gives a misleading vision of the political forces present.” She called on her voters to mobilise because they had not taken “five minutes” to go and vote.

The media has attempted to portray the recent threats of a military coup in France by far-right officers as enjoying broad popular support. Marine Le Pen herself called on the officers to support her presidential campaign. Yet seven out of 10 Le Pen voters (71 percent) subsequently turned away from the polls.

Le Pen, like the rest of the political establishment, is complicit in the deadly health policy and social attacks pursued by the ruling class throughout the European Union. The RN has been able to demagogically exploit the anger provoked by the right-wing policies of Macron, the Socialist Party and former President Nicolas Sarkozy. But its growth is part of a broader shift to the right of the entire ruling class, which will keep fascistic, chauvinist policies at the centre of political life, regardless of Le Pen’s electoral results.

Isolated and hated, the ruling elite remains in power mainly because of the absence of a perspective and leadership in the working class to overthrow it. The regional elections underscore the bankruptcy of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, LFI and other pseudo-left forces, which represent no alternative to Macron. Three-quarters of Mélenchon’s electorate abstained from voting, according to an Ifop-Fiducial survey. Indeed, the trade union apparatuses linked to Mélenchon have been at the forefront of the implementation of Macron’s health policy.