Far-right protest against COVID-19 restrictions in Berlin: A put-up job

Peter Schwarz

According to police reports, an estimated 20,000 participants gathered in Berlin last Saturday to protest against Germany’s Corona protection measures. The protest was a predictable, put-up job, which closely resembled the scenario of the Pegida demonstrations held five years ago.

Far-right figures and organisations that pull the strings behind the scenes and maintain close links to the Verfassungsschutz (Germany’s domestic secret service), the police and the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) called the protest, and mobilised a broad coalition of confused, frustrated and eccentric individuals. Political circles and the German media then inflated the whole issue, took the moral high ground and criticised the crude slogans of the demonstrators while declaring at the same time that those taking part were “concerned citizens” whose concerns had to be “taken seriously.” In so doing they were able to divert attention from their own reactionary policies and push the political climate further to the right.

The Pegida demonstrations were used in a similar way to sabotage the “welcoming culture,” whereby broad sections of the German population welcomed refugees from war-wracked countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and to intimidate all those supporting the refugees.

Journalists worked their fingers to the bone with articles which concluded that—in the words of the right-wing extremist historian Jörg Baberowski—”it naturally ends in aggression…wherever many people come from foreign contexts” and when the population is not involved. According to this logic, the refugees—i.e., the victims of the far right—were responsible for the growth of right-wing extremism.

The Corona demonstration in Berlin followed the same pattern. Many of those agitating behind the scenes were among the same people behind the Pegida demonstrations, i.e., neo-Nazis, far-right Reichbürger, supporters of the AfD, the neo-Nazi NPD and the conspiracy theorist QAnon movement, who travelled from all over Germany to Berlin. These forces were joined by opponents of vaccination, Corona deniers and so-called “angry citizens,” together with members of Berlin’s party crowd.

The police watched patiently as the participants disregarded Corona distancing and mask regulations, waved illegal Reich flags and displayed unconstitutional symbols. In contrast to the G20 protests in Hamburg or the recent demonstrations against the murder of George Floyd, where police resorted to the use of pepper spray and water cannons at the slightest opportunity, not a single police officer could be seen along broad stretches of the march. Only after half an hour of the final rally had passed did police officially declare that the protest was ended due to non-compliance with hygiene rules. At the same time, police made no move to break up the demonstration.

Afterwards, leading politicians and the media frothed at the mouth regarding the non-compliance with official hygiene regulations. Demonstrations should be possible, also in a period of Corona…”but not like this,” twittered the German Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU). Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) declared she had no sympathy for demonstrators who high-handedly ignored Corona precautions. Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) called for tougher penalties: “Those who deliberately endanger others must expect serious consequences.” SPD leader Saskia Esken angrily referred to “covididiots.”

These expressions of outrage were aimed at diverting attention from the policies of these very same politicians. The anti-social behaviour of the demonstrators last Saturday pales in comparison with their own criminal response. Germany’s federal and state governments, run by various coalitions involving the CDU, CSU, SPD, Greens, FDP and Left Party, are all pursuing a policy of opening up society and the economy that threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands.

As the worldwide number of infected persons approaches 20 million, with the number of fatalities now exceeding 700,000, the number of cases in Germany is again rising significantly. Currently tens of thousands of holiday makers are returning home, having been encouraged to travel abroad by the lifting of travel warnings. At airports in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where almost half of the returnees voluntarily applied for a Corona test, 2.5 percent proved positive, an extremely high figure.

Despite this, schools are opening up across the country, starting with Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania next week, although it has been proven that schools, with their cramped classrooms and dilapidated infrastructure, are an ideal environment for mass infections.

The Viennese research group Complexity Science Hub, which has statistically evaluated Corona data from 76 regions, concluded that the closure of schools, kindergartens and universities was an “extremely effective means” to limit infection. According to an analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, school closures saved more than 40,000 lives and prevented 1.3 million infections in the US alone.

Conversely, a study by the Technical University of Berlin shows that aerosol concentration in the air of a classroom—critical for transmission—is reached just two minutes after a single infected person in the room coughs. Despite this fact, schools are once again commencing operations at full capacity.

The hygiene measures that have been put in place, which vary from state to state, are risible. For example, the obligation to wear masks, which Federal Education Minister Anja Karliczek (CDU) is now advocating after initially rejecting the proposal, only applies from the school gate to the classroom, but not in the classroom itself, where the risk of infection is highest.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) also estimates the risk of infection to be high in a full classroom where minimum distance rules are not observed. This information is contained in a letter to the Rheinische Post. The prerequisites for maintaining this distance in classrooms are almost non-existent.

The RKI also warns against studies that attribute a significantly higher resistance on the part of children to coronavirus infection. It may well be that the alleged resistance of children is merely due to the fact that they had less social contact during the closure of kindergartens and schools, the RKI notes on its website.

Meanwhile, the media are trying to portray the Berlin demonstration staged by far-right manipulators as an expression of a broad mood within the population. In its lead commentary on Monday, the Süddeutsche Zeitung claimed that when a five-figure number of people take to the streets in Berlin, “one must fear that what was being expressed were issues concerning hundreds of thousands, at least.”

Opinion polls prove the opposite. A recent survey conducted by the opinion research institute Civey for the Tagesspiegel newspaper concluded that 77 percent of those questioned would accept a tightening of contact restrictions if the number of infections rose again significantly. Only around 20 percent were opposed. According to the current Politbarometer, 77 percent also expect a second wave of coronavirus infections to occur soon.

The pressure to lift contact restrictions and open schools does not come from the population, but rather from business and finance interests together with their cronies in the media and political circles. Having transferred hundreds of billions of euros to the corporations and banks to guarantee the profits and fortunes of the rich, the government is seeking once again to squeeze these sums out of the working class. The opening up of schools is a basic condition for parents to be fully available to the labour market and able to work. The drive for profits is being placed above the lives of millions of children and their families.

The neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists who set the tone at the Berlin demonstration have been deliberately targeted to create the necessary political climate for this policy. They are closely linked to the state apparatus, as was revealed most recently by the NSU murders, the murder of the politician Walter Lübcke and the uncovering of various far-right terror networks in the German army (Bundeswehr) and police.

Protecting the health and livelihoods of the population against the effects of the Corona pandemic is first and foremost a political task. It is only possible on the basis of a socialist programme that puts human and social need above the profit interests of big business.

One can only resolve the urgent problem of education and training within such a framework. It is perfectly possible to provide education in compliance with appropriate safety measures, but this requires that the huge funds currently being diverted into the accounts of the wealthy must be redirected to renovate dilapidated schools, rent additional rooms, purchase computers and IT technology, employ more teachers to instruct small groups, etc.

There is no shortage of ideas and initiatives from committed teachers and parents, but they are being rejected on the grounds of cost or blocked by bureaucratic means.

The Socialist Equality Party (SGP) advocates the establishment of action committees in educational institutions and residential areas that function independently of the trade unions and establishment parties. Such committees are necessary to coordinate resistance to the life-threatening policy of opening up the economy.

Resistance to a system that subordinates every sphere of life to the profit interests of big business and finance is developing in factories, hospitals, transport and public services around the world. The SGP and its sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International are fighting to build a broad socialist mass movement.

Gold price surges to record high

Nick Beams

The pumping out of trillions of dollars and other currencies by governments and central banks around the world, led by the US Fed, to bail out corporations and the stock market, has sent the price of gold to a record high of more than $2000 per ounce.

The gold-buying frenzy has two driving forces: speculation as investors rush in, believing the price will go even higher, and longer-term concerns that the flooding of financial markets with massive amounts of computer-generated money could lead to a crisis of confidence in the US dollar, extending throughout the financial system.

The extent of the gold buying was revealed earlier this week when the Financial Times reported that the exchange traded fund (ETF) SPDR Gold Shares, which owns physical gold stocks rather than financial derivatives based on the metal, was buying tonnes of gold every day.

Its holdings, which are kept in the London vaults of the global bank, HSBC, now amount to 1258 tonnes after it bought 15 tonnes on Monday and Tuesday of this week.

Comprising a partnership between the Boston bank, State Street, and the World Gold Council, a trade body, SPDR’s gold stocks are now equal to a quarter of the gold held at Fort Knox in the US and are more than the gold reserves of the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England and the Reserve Bank of India.

The immediate aim of SPDR is the return obtained from gold buying. The ETF has reported a 33 percent return this year as the price of gold has soared, lifting its value to more than $80 billion.

The Financial Times cited a note by Wells Fargo analysts which pointed to the reasons for the rising gold price. In early 2020, it said, “gold’s rally attached itself to coronavirus fears and excessive global money printing. More recently, gold has hopped on the US dollar train; rallying above $1900 [it is now at more than $2030] as the US dollar has become one of the weakest currencies on the planet.”

In so-called “normal times—now something of a distant memory—gold is at a disadvantage compared to investment in government bonds because it does not return interest. But the massive bond buying programs of the Fed and other major central banks have raised the price of bonds and pushed interest rates to record lows (the two have an inverse relationship).

This week the interest rate on 10-year US Treasury bonds, one of the foundations of the global financial system, has been around 0.5 percent—near its all-time low. This means that when inflation is taken into account, these bonds, regarded as a safe haven, are bringing negative returns, prompting a turn to gold.

A fund manager at the global asset management company Schroders, Jim Luke, noted that when inflation is taken into account, the US 10-year bond yield has fallen to a record low of minus 1.02 percent this month and could drop even further.

“People who look at gold tend to get characterised as ‘gold bugs’ and some do have that kind of blind-faith mentality,” he told the Financial Times. “But what’s drawing investors to gold is not faith in gold itself, it’s much more lack of faith in other things—central banks, governments and, in particular, a lack of faith in the availability of real returns elsewhere. Gold is the inverse of that.”

The sharp twists and turns in financial markets are being driven by the massive inflow of money, created at the press of a computer button, by governments and central banks as they seek to bailout corporations and sustain the stock markets.

According to the Bank of America, governments have announced $20 trillion worth of stimulus measures as they seek to counter the effects of the coronavirus, an amount equivalent to 20 percent of global gross domestic product. The bank has said that the price of gold could rise still further and reach $3000.

This has led to the creation of what could be described as the development of a split personality syndrome in increasingly crazy financial markets.

On the one hand, stock market speculators reckon that the intervention by the US Fed in mid-March, when it became the backstop for all areas of the US financial system—from the market in US Treasuries to corporate bonds—means that whatever the developments in the real economy the Fed will be on hand to support Wall Street.

That belief has been behind the rise and rise of stock markets from their plunge in mid-March which has added hundreds of billions of dollars to the fortunes of the financial oligarchs as workers face the worse economic conditions since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Yesterday, amid the further worsening of the pandemic, the Dow rose by 373 points, or 1.4 percent, the S&P 500 increased by 0.6 percent, taking it to within 2 percent of its record high recorded in February, and the tech-heavy NASDAQ index recorded its 31st record high for 2020.

On the other hand, there is a growing fear, reflected in the rising price of gold, that the continued pumping out of trillions of dollars of computer-created money by central banks is undermining the entire financial system.

Since August 1971, when US president Nixon withdrew the gold backing from the US dollar, every currency in the world, from the US dollar down, has been a fiat currency, meaning it has no backing in a physical asset.

Confidence in the monetary system over the past 50 years has been maintained by the belief that the power of the state, governments and central banks, is able to maintain stability. But this confidence is now being rapidly eroded by the unprecedented expansion of the money supply.

This is expressed in the fear that, if continued, this must lead at some point to inflation—an inflation caused not by rising prices in the real economy but from the collapse in the value of fiat currencies, starting with the US dollar which has been falling sharply over the past months.

Other factors are also at work, in particular the growing political dysfunction in the US amid concerns that the November presidential elections may not even be held or that if they are they will result in a major crisis if Trump is defeated but refuses to accept the result.

Rising geo-political tensions, above all the conflict with China, are also fueling a crisis of confidence.

And, while it is not often reported on in the financial press, there is also a real fear that devastation produced by the pandemic and the subordination of the health of society to the relentless drive by all governments to maintain corporate profits, no matter what the cost, is going to produce an upsurge of class struggle that will shake the very foundations of the capitalist economic order.

COVID-19 outbreaks at four workplaces in Swindon, UK

Tony Robson

A spate of COVID-19 outbreaks have been reported at four separate workplace locations in Swindon. Workers at a Royal Mail delivery office, a fire station, the Honda car factory, and a distribution centre for the food supermarket chain, Iceland, have been taken ill.

Swindon, in Wiltshire in the southwest of England, has a population of 200,000. The outbreaks at varying workplace locations across the town within the space of two days is unprecedented. Yet the response of the local media was to express “fears of another lockdown,” rather than focusing on the heightened threat the outbreaks posed to workers and their families.

Local Director of Public Health Steve Maddern stated blithely, “As lockdown restrictions are eased, we would expect to see small outbreaks to occur—this is usual, and it is being dealt with in the usual way.” He stressed that an outbreak was defined as “just two people at a linked situation.”

This is in line with a pattern of official indifference nationally. Local health officials and the Public Health bodies have sought to minimise any disruption to the operations of the corporations as outbreaks of the virus have flared up in the meat processing industry and retail distribution centres in Wales and the north of England. Employers have been absolved of all responsibility, while the onus has been shifted onto workers and the public to follow loose guidelines on personal hygiene.

The Royal Mail delivery office in Dorcan, Swindon, with around 1,000 staff, was closed for 48 hours from July 21 to organise a deep clean, after two postal workers tested positive for the virus. Public Health England (PHE) was reported as satisfied that procedures had been followed and there were no outstanding concerns. While postal workers were sent home, no mandatory testing was organised and, according to one account, they were informed that they could report back to duty before receiving their results.

Since the start of the pandemic, Royal Mail has been a flashpoint for walkouts and stoppages by postal workers over the lack of social distancing and personal protective equipment (PPE) in delivery and sorting offices around the UK. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that 40 postal workers, mail sorters, messengers and couriers, have died after contracting COVID-19. Concerns had been raised by postal workers at the Swindon delivery office back in March about the failure to provide gloves and hand sanitiser.

On July 22 it was announced that three firefighters tested positive at Swindon fire station. Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service issued a press release stating that the organisation of further testing would be conditional on whether other staff became symptomatic. Assistant Chief Fire Officer James Mahoney said there was no requirement to review existing practices in the workplace to safeguard against COVID-19.

The fire and rescue service are overstretched nationally due to years of job cuts and a failure by the government to introduce priority testing. Services in the UK were operating with 11,500 firefighters fewer than in 2010, according to the Fire Brigades Union (FBU). The government has ignored calls made by the FBU to introduce priority testing. In April, the union estimated that up to 12 percent of firefighters and control staff nationally were in self-isolation.

Honda posted an on-site notice on July 21 that a worker at its factory in south Marston had tested positive for the virus. The risk of transmission to the 3,000 workers employed at the site has been underplayed by the company, which has withheld details of the extent of infections and continued production. It citing the authority of PHE that it is complying with all safety requirements to maintain a “Covid-secure site.”

The developments at Honda should serve as a warning to all car workers in the UK. The company suspended production from March 18 and reopened in early June, along with Nissan in Sunderland. BMW, PSA and Ford resumed production in mid-May. In the US, after the auto giants were forced to temporarily shut production due to walkouts by car workers, the resumption of production has led to a wave of infections.

Attempts at cover-ups have unraveled, most clearly at the Iceland distribution centre in Bridgemead, which employs over 700 workers and is operated by XPO Logistics.

The distribution hub has remained open with the approval of PHE, even as the number of workers testing positive has more than quadrupled after a mobile testing unit was set up on-site July 29. The previous Friday there were 13 reported cases. Based on the most up-to-date figures, 64 cases have been confirmed and two workers have been hospitalised. A total of 150 staff are self-isolating.

Swindon accounted for the highest increase in coronavirus cases per 100,000 of the population in England in the final week of July. The outbreak at the Iceland distribution centre was the most important factor in the increased ratio from 19.8 per 100,000 the previous week to 48.6 per 100,000.

As far as the Director of Public Health is concerned, however, testing and tracing is simply a case of compiling statistics with no consideration given to any measures of containment that would interfere with the flow of business. Maddern declared that the risk of a wider community outbreak “remains low.”

A few days later, five workers bused from Swindon to the Bakkavor cake factory in nearby town Devizes tested positive.

Official irresponsibility is meeting with significant resistance. The empty assurances of public health officials who sing from the same balance sheet as the government and corporations, has failed to convince around half of the workforce at the Iceland distribution centre to return to work.

Opposition is developing independently of the unions. Speaking to BBC Radio Wilshire, Unite official John McGookin, stated, “As I understand it now, a lot of the workforce have voted with their feet and decided it’s not safe to go to work at the minute.”

McGookin acknowledged that XPO Logistics was refusing to speak to the union but issued no call to mobilise against the company. He said he had no idea why the company had not closed the site.

This is self-serving rubbish. The conduct of XPO Logistics and Iceland have a definite class logic, which Unite tries to conceal. The risk of infection and death is viewed as collateral damage in the pursuit of profit. XPO Logistics has followed the same course at the distribution centre it operates on behalf of ASOS in south Yorkshire, where they refused to close the site for a deep clean after nine workers tested positive for the virus in May. Its reckless actions have been backed to the hilt by the local Labour authority.

Further evidence of a growing intransigence among workers has been expressed at the Bakkavor cake factory in Devizes, which employs 540. On Monday evening, workers staged a strike from 6 p.m. to midnight over having to work in unsafe conditions after the infections of the Swindon workers were discovered.

This emerging opposition must find organised political expression. A socially responsible approach to the pandemic is inconceivable as long as policy is dictated by the corporate elite and its stooges.

Resuming college football driven by financial interests

Andy Thompson

Despite a dramatic increase in new COVID-19 cases in July and expectations of another surge in the fall as schools reopen, US colleges and universities are moving forward with plans to operate their college football programs with minimal changes.

It is practically guaranteed that the opening of the 2020 football season and the fall college semester will spark new outbreaks of COVID-19 among players, the general student population and the surrounding communities. The average student is at an even greater risk because, unlike players, they will not have access to the testing or dedicated health resources reserved for athletics.

Although ostensibly an amateur competition (although under-the-table bribes are common practice to secure commitments from top high school recruits), college athletics in America is a multi-billion dollar business, with attendances and TV audiences equal to, and in some cases greater than, professional competitions. Top college football coaches, who at public universities are technically state employees, make salaries similar to those of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

Ben Hill Griffin Stadium (Wikimedia Commons)

In the intense struggle for fan interest and revenue, top schools routinely funnel hundreds of millions into their athletics programs even as their academic infrastructure crumbles. Last year’s football champion, Louisiana State University, receives more in donations each year from alumni to its athletics program than to the actual university. The contrast between its decision to invest millions into a futuristic locker room for the football team and the continuously-flooded basement of the school’s library was widely covered in the press last year.

At lower, less lucrative levels of competition, hundreds of programs have already canceled their seasons. All championships for the National College Athletics Association (NCAA)’s Division II and Division III have already been canceled, the sport’s governing body announced yesterday. Many programs in Division I’s lower-level Football Championship Subdivision have also canceled fall sports.

But at larger, more lucrative programs, university administrations are proceeding full speed ahead. Many schools have not even made the decision to play without fans. The University of Texas, whose football stadium is in the middle of downtown Austin, one of the most populous cities in the country, plans on playing its home football games in front of 25 percent capacity crowds, or 25,000 people. Similar schemes are in the works at the University of Georgia, Ohio State University and other schools. Not even Major League Baseball, whose reckless return to play is on the verge of collapse after several outbreaks, has allowed fans into its stadiums.

In June, the NCAA announced that it would permit schools to allow student athletes to return to campus for summer workouts and pre-season training. Most football programs jumped at the opportunity to get their players back to training, in order not to lose an edge on their competition. Almost immediately, large-scale outbreaks occurred on team rosters. Both reigning champion LSU and the previous year’s champion, Clemson, confirmed over 30 cases each on their teams.

The NCAA had stated that athletes would be given access to testing, facilities monitored by health professionals and other amenities to prevent an outbreak among the teams. Despite these measures the results so far have been a disaster.

At Rutgers University, nearly 30 football players and several team staffers have tested positive for COVID-19. The players have been sent to quarantine in on-campus dorms, which are often cramped and close-quartered.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy told reporters Tuesday that he will not order the university to cancel their season, explaining that the outbreak among players has not changed his previous decision to allow the season to move forward. Murphy insists that the decision to cancel the season is not with him, but with the NCAA and the Big Ten Conference, of which Rutgers is a member.

Rutgers stands to lose $50 million if the season is canceled. This is actually one of the lower projected losses for a canceled 2020 season. Ohio State would be expected to lose over $104 million in revenue should the season be canceled.

On Wednesday, the Big Ten put to bed any speculation that the season would be shut down when it released the conference’s 2020 football schedule. It is projected to start on September 3 with a contest between Ohio State and the University of Illinois.

The only significant disruptions to football schedules have been the cancellation of out-of-conference games by the Big Ten and the other “Power Five” conferences which monopolize the sport’s revenues. While the ostensible purpose is to provide schools with flexibility to reschedule games, it is more plausible that the pandemic is being seized on as an excuse to further entrench the cartel system which controls the sport’s highest levels.

So far, only one top football program, the University of Connecticut, has announced it will not play in the 2020 season. However, even in this case, financial considerations likely play a role, as the school’s football program has been hemorrhaging money for years and the school faces pressure from boosters to abandon football altogether in order to concentrate resources on the school’s more successful and lucrative basketball program. While it is possible that more schools will individually cancel their season in the coming weeks, at this point it does not appear to be the norm.

There are growing signs that schools are attempting to cover up outbreaks on their football teams. According to a report by CBS Sports, multiple Colorado State football players and staff members claim the school is attempting to hide an outbreak among the players and threatening students with losing their position on the team if they report symptoms.

One student interviewed told CBS, “We had a player who definitely had coronavirus symptoms, coughing at practice and he wasn’t wearing a mask and I was next to him, touching him and there was spit and sweat. I told him he needed to get tested but he really didn’t want to because then he would be out. The next day he is not at practice. [If he tested positive] he already had spread the virus. That’s why a lot of players don’t feel safe at football practice.”

A staff member told CBS: “There are some red flags in the athletic department but the common denominator with this administration is to protect the coaches before the student-athletes and that makes them feel more like cattle.”

Resistance to the drive to reopen is emerging among athletes themselves. A group of players in Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12) has written an open letter to the NCAA with a list of demands regarding the 2020 season. They write, “Because we are being asked to play college sports in a pandemic in a system without enforced health and safety standards, and without transparency about COVID cases on our teams, the risks to ourselves, our families, and our communities, #WeAreUnited.”

The players’ demands include health and safety protections, the ability for students to opt out of the season without consequences, and a prohibition on compulsory COVID liability waivers. They also state their opposition to the shutdown of less profitable sports programs, several of which have been cut from various schools. The letter also calls for an “end to racial injustice in college sports and society” and for “economic freedom and equity.” Specifically, the letter states this would mean players would form a “civic-engagement task force.” They are also demanding that they receive a percentage of sports revenues and rights to accept sponsorship deals, effectively acknowledging them as professional athletes and ending the age-old sham of their “student-athlete” status.

Almost immediately after the letter was published, players began being threatened by coaches for organizing opposition to the 2020 season. One player at Washington State, Kassidy Woods, told the New York Times that when he called his coach to tell him he wanted to opt out of the season because he had been diagnosed as high risk for sickle cell disease, his position on the team would be at risk.

The coach told Woods that his scholarship could be honored for this year because of health reasons, but that if he was part of any organized action against the season that it would be handled differently and his position on the team could not be guaranteed.

As of Wednesday morning, players from the Big Ten have released a similar list of demands as the Pac-12. These players also call for protections against COVID-19, and added language calling for students who report symptoms or violations by the school to be protected against repercussions.

Altered CDC guidelines provide unscientific basis for reopening schools

Mitch Marcus

Over the past week, a growing number of schools reopened across the US, despite the fact that the coronavirus pandemic is raging out of control. Already, schools in Georgia, Indiana and Mississippi have had students test positive for COVID-19, throwing reopening plans into immediate crisis and deepening community spread of the virus.

To justify their reckless moves to resume in-person instruction, school district officials are invoking the revised guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on July 23. The CDC, which had published weak, nonbinding guidelines in May, has recently bowed to political pressure from the Trump Administration and is more forcefully advocating for the reopening of schools.

Science teachers Ann Darby, left, and Rosa Herrera check-in students before a summer STEM camp at Wylie High School in Wylie, Texas. (Image credit: AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

The body of scientific evidence demonstrates conclusively that it is thoroughly reckless to reopen schools in the US, a fact which has not gone unnoticed by educators and families. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation Poll shows broad public support for keeping schools closed, with 71 percent of those polled feeling schools do not have adequate resources to reopen safely and 79 percent worried that teachers and staff will get sick when schools reopen.

The CDC guidelines are based on several mitigation strategies such as mask use and social distancing when “feasible, practical, acceptable, and tailored to the needs of each community.” These recommended, not required, measures will mean little in the dilapidated and overcrowded classrooms that are the norm across the US.

But even these threadbare measures were too onerous for Trump, who tweeted July 8 that the guidelines were “very tough & expensive.” Vice President Mike Pence, chair of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, added that week, “We don't want the guidance from CDC to be a reason schools don't open.” The CDC responded by dutifully publishing what is essentially a political document rationalizing the homicidal campaign to reopen schools titled, “The Importance of Reopening America’s Schools this Fall.”

The document downplays the dangers involved in reopening schools, omitting key studies that disprove their claims and instead relying on studies from early in the pandemic that have been disproven. Of the six sections of the document, only one deals with the actual relationship of COVID-19 to children, while the other five sections deal with the importance of schools to children, as if there were any doubt of that. There is no section dedicated to, and barely even a mention of, the transmissibility of COVID-19 from children to adults or from schools to the broader community.

Based on this document, one would think that children teach, feed and bus themselves to school! There is a complete omission of the presence of teachers and other school staff within the buildings and buses. The introductory paragraph states, “The best available evidence indicates if children become infected, they are far less likely to suffer severe symptoms.” This assertion is backed up by three citations, all of which are studies published in April. It is true that children appear to be less likely to suffer severe symptoms than adults, yet severe cases do exist among children.

The CDC reports that between February 1 and June 17 there were 13 deaths of children between the ages of 5 and 14. By July 15, there were 342 cases across the US of pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome, including six deaths. On Tuesday, it was reported that two teenagers in Florida succumbed to the virus, bringing the total number of minors killed by COVID-19 in the state to seven.

There have been multiple recent reports of the significant numbers of children who have contracted the virus: 23,000 children in Florida, 7,573 in Tennessee, 4,900 in Mississippi, and 260 campers and staff members (75 percent of attendees) at an overnight summer camp in Georgia.

In one notorious international example, in Israel the number of new cases had risen from fewer than 50 per day two months ago to more than 1,500 per day in early July, primarily attributable to school outbreaks that infected at least 1,335 students and 691 staff.

The new CDC document also asserts that the “death rates among school-aged children are much lower than among adults.” Again, lower does not mean nonexistent, and how many deaths of children is acceptable to the CDC? They state that children “account for under 7 percent of COVID-19 cases and less than 0.1 percent of COVID-19-related deaths.”

Last week, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) concluded that the widespread closure of schools in mid-March saved the lives of at least 40,600 people over a 16-day period and prevented 1.37 million fewer infections over a 26-day period in the spring. Given that community transmission is now taking place at a far higher rate, the CDC is effectively sanctioning mass death.

Particularly pernicious is the CDC’s false comparison between the effects on children of COVID-19, the flu, and H1N1. It states that while COVID-19 has been responsible for 64 deaths, this is less than each of the last five flu seasons as well as the 358 pediatric deaths from H1N1 over an 18-month period. The implication is that the public should adopt the perspective of “herd immunity” and accept a “reasonable” amount of death akin to that produced by regular seasonal ailments.

The comparison to H1N1 does not hold water since the COVID-19 pandemic, unlike the H1N1 threat of 2009-2010, is only getting worse after only seven months in existence and the vast majority of schools have not yet reopened.

As to the seasonal flu, the reproductive rate is 1.3 while that of COVID-19 is between 2 and 2.5. This seemingly narrow disparity equates to deaths from the flu of between 20,000 to 60,000 people over the course of a year, while COVID-19 has killed over 160,000 Americans in just over seven months.

The CDC also states that “transmission among children in schools may be low” and that there have been “few reports of children being the primary source of COVID-19 transmission among family members.” The CDC cites studies from April and May to back up these assertions, ignoring a July 16 publication of the CDC’s own journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, of a study from South Korea, the largest of its kind, which showed that children between the ages of 10 and 19 spread the virus as frequently as adults.

Since the revised guidelines were published, a series of scientific studies have exploded this claim, demonstrating that children spread the virus at an equal or greater rate than adults. The CDC has made no public statements on these studies or revised their guidelines to align with the latest science.

The rest of CDC document deals with the benefits to children in attending school, including receiving educational instruction, social and emotional skill development, safety, nutrition, and physical activity. While mentioned in the agency’s May guidelines, these factors were featured much less prominently, underscoring the political nature and hypocrisy of the revisions.

Democratic and Republican politicians alike are shedding crocodile tears at the effects of their own decades-long socially homicidal policies which have resulted in pervasive poverty, hunger and homelessness among children. They have the temerity to suggest that they suddenly care about the well-being of children so much that forcing them back to school during a raging pandemic is an act of charity, and teachers who oppose this are insensitive to the hardships endured by children outside school walls.

Last week, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, echoed these themes when interviewed at the national convention of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

Fauci, in a live-streamed discussion with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, admitted, “In many respects, unfortunately, though this may sound a little scary and harsh—I don’t mean it to be that way—is that you’re [the nation’s teachers] going to be actually part of the experiment.”

There was an immediate outpouring of opposition to Fauci’s statements within the AFT meeting itself, with one teacher commenting, “My students, families, teachers, school/district staff should never be expendable for an experiment.”

The incident was also widely denounced on social media. An elementary school music specialist commented in the Oregon for a Safe Return to Campus Facebook group, “Damn, I used to like him but I will not be an unwitting participant in an experiment.” Another responded, “EVERY teacher… SHOULD REFUSE, RESIST, and STRIKE, if necessary!”

In fact, the Declaration of Helsinki, the research ethics cornerstone document adopted in 1964 in response to the horrors of Nazi human experimentation in World War II, states, “Participation by individuals capable of giving informed consent as subjects in medical research must be voluntary [Article 25]” and is invalid if the “potential subject is in a dependent relationship with the physician or may consent under duress [Article 27].”

Neither the teachers, dependent upon their districts for their paychecks and health insurance, nor the students who are minors and incapable of giving consent, nor the parents who are threatened with poverty and homelessness if they do not go to work, can “voluntarily” participate in this experiment free from “duress.”

Teachers, parents, and all workers must take control of the situation, demanding a nationwide general strike against the homicidal drive to reopen schools. The working class must be guided by science, not Wall Street’s insatiable need for profit.

Mounting opposition by teachers against drive to reopen schools

Benjamin Mateus

There have been close to 19 million COVID-19 cases and over 710,000 deaths worldwide, with 6,589 more deaths on Wednesday.

The United States will, by all accounts, exceed 5 million cases of COVID-19 today. The drive to reopen school systems in many states will undoubtedly accelerate the pandemic even more.

One of the first schools to open was Greenfield Central Junior High School in Indiana. On the first day, the superintendent of the Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation was notified that a student who had attended classes had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Crowded hall at a Georgia High School reopening

In Georgia, a second grader tested positive for the coronavirus on the first day of school. The Sixes Elementary in the Cherokee County School district had to close the classroom the next day for deep cleaning, and the instructor and 20 students were quarantined at home for two weeks.

At Gwinnett County Public Schools, which serves over 180,000 students, 260 district employees were prohibited from entering their schools due to positive tests for COVID-19 or from direct exposure to someone who was infected.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, (AJC) “In-person training and meetings are taking place without areas being wiped down or disinfected in between, and masks aren’t being worn at all times, said several teachers who didn’t disclose their names when contacting the AJC. Others added that their school still hadn’t received hand sanitizers.”

Teachers around the US who spoke with the WSWS were outraged over the back-to school drive.

Chris, a long-time teacher in West Virginia, is currently working as a substitute and a home health care worker. He told the WSWS he would be in support of going out on strike in his role as a teacher and supports the demands laid out in the statement published on the WSWS yesterday.

“It does appear that the reopening compromised the effort to contain the virus. Here in West Virginia, the statewide date for bringing the kids back to school is September 8. Kanawha County Schools sent me a letter a couple of weeks ago giving me three choices. (1) I would not return. (2) I would return for long-term substitute positions. (3) I would be available for long-term or day to day positions. I chose (3), knowing that a lot can happen between now and then. I have multiple risk factors and am in no hurry to get back to work. My son is scheduled to start back as a TA [teacher’s assistant] at Notre Dame on Monday.”

The federal CARES relief package provided a meager $13.5 billion for K-12 education, less than one percent of the total stimulus package, despite educators indicating schools across the nation will need multiples of that sum to prepare for and retrofit dilapidated structures with proven systems to minimize the spread of the virus from class to class and person to person.

Adam Goldstein, a fifth-grade teacher in San Diego, noted that, “It’s incredible to me that the federal government would see the necessity of bailing out airlines and banks, and not see the need to do something similar for the public schools in this country.”

Louisiana currently ranks as the US state with the highest per capita rate of COVID-19 infections: 2,712 per 100,000 people. The state also ranks fifth for highest rate of per capita deaths. To date, Louisiana has recorded a total of 126,061 cases and 4,096 deaths.

Under these conditions, the Jefferson Parish School Board, representing the largest school district in the state, in the major suburbs of New Orleans, is planning to carry out a physical reopening on August 12. The district’s superintendent, Dr. James Gray, says that of the 50,000 students in the district, half have already registered for virtual learning, indicating widespread doubt by parents about the safety of sending kids back to school. Local WDSU-TV broke the news that a “handful” of teachers in the district have just tested positive for the virus.

Despite weeks of teachers rallying against the unsafe reopening of schools, teachers were forced back to the buildings on Monday, August 3 for meetings and to prepare the classrooms.

One elementary school teacher, who preferred to remain anonymous, spoke to the WSWS about the reopening. “We were told to assemble in the cafeteria, all faculty and staff. In Phase 2, the group size limit is supposed to be 25, but we had 60 people in the room,” she said.

While it was somewhat possible to remain distanced with just the staff in school, this would be impossible to do so once the students arrive. The teacher explained, “The principal even admitted that we would not be able to maintain the minimum 6-foot distance guideline.” When she set up her classroom, in which she is going to have 25 students, she tried to space out the desks, but “the spacing measured to 15 or maybe 18 inches apart.” (6 feet = 1.8 metres and 15–18 inches = 38–46 cm).

In addition to concern about her own health, having suffered from pneumonia in recent years, she worries for the students and their families. According to the “Strong Start” guideline released by the school board, students who present with fever during the morning temperature check will be sent into an isolation room with other potentially sick students. Considering that children are exposed to multiple viruses, from flu to stomach bugs, those without COVID-19 could end up in close, contained quarters with students who are infected.

When asked about the personal protective equipment that is promised in the same district-wide guideline, she said that the school has informed her that each teacher will receive “one mask, which hasn’t arrived yet. We will have hand sanitizer in the classroom and cafeteria, but no stations around the building.”

She expressed growing disgust with Governor John Bel Edwards (Democrat), who she says has “caved in to business interests and pressure from the White House, and now he’s ignoring common sense and has allowed the state to open up far too quickly.”

The current push to reopen schools on schedule, a position supported by both capitalist parties, forcing children in K-12 back to their desks amidst a raging pandemic, is based on the class logic that the extraction of surplus value from workers is paramount regardless of the consequences that come with it.

In the crudest and most malign terms, President Trump’s comments on Fox News capture the essential narrative being put forth to delude the public when he said, “This thing’s going away. It will go away like things go away, and my view is that schools should be open. If you look at children, children are almost … and I would almost say definitely immune from this disease… they just don’t have a problem… we have to open our schools.”

The comments of Dr. Robert Redfield of the CDC to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis are simply a public health cover for the criminal policy being pursued. He said, “I don’t think I can emphasize it enough as the director for the Centers for Disease Control, the leading public health agency in the world—it is in the public health interest that these K-12 students to get the schools back open for face-to-face learning … I want these kids back in school. I want it done smartly, but I think we have to be honest that the public health and interest of the students in the nation right now is to get a quality education and face-to-face learning. We need to get on with it.”

The dishonesty behind these sentiments is appalling. “To get on with it,” there must be certain conditions met, which include a contained pandemic where transmission is halted and surveillance in place to track it. These are just the most basic measures that are woefully lacking.

The number of tests conducted daily in the United States peaked on July 24, with 929,838 new tests. On August 5, this figure had rapidly declined to 664,219 new tests, back to levels from more than a month ago. It appears that the decline in the seven-day average of new cases has correlated with less testing, which could mean that state and federal governments are following Trump’s repeated directives to test less so that the infection numbers will go down.

All these figures must be taken with caution, even skepticism, because in the middle of July the Trump administration shifted reporting of hospitalizations away from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into the hands of the Department of Health and Human Services, where Trump political appointees hold sway.

Not only is the number of tests conducted rapidly declining, but the time to report these time-sensitive results has also been, on average, taking four or more days, making them useless for contact tracing. According to Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, “A test result that comes back in seven or eight days is worthless for everybody—it shouldn’t be counted. It’s not a test in any kind of effective manner because it’s not actionable.”

The state of contact tracing across the nation has remained abysmal. Tracers in Arizona are unable to reach a significant number of infected individuals. Cities in Florida have given up on these programs. In New York City, tracers are complaining of paralyzed communications and difficulty training new tracers.

Beirut port fire: A crime against Lebanese workers

Jean Shaoul

The catastrophic fire that engulfed the port area of Beirut Tuesday afternoon has fueled the long-standing anger towards Lebanon’s ultra-rich ruling class.

The blast is a damning indictment of Lebanon’s political elite, which allowed vast quantities of highly explosive ammonium nitrate to be stored in a wharfside warehouse for years without proper safety controls.

It is one of a number of recent disasters across the world that were entirely foreseeable and preventable, which collectively constitute a searing indictment of capitalism and of the world’s ruling elites—including the Grenfell Tower inferno in London in 2017, the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Dhakar, Bangladesh, BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and, most deadly of all, the coronavirus pandemic.

This photo shows a general view of the scene of an explosion that hit the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

The fire that followed two massive explosions has killed at least 135 people and injured 5,000 others. Those killed and missing include Lebanese soldiers, firefighters and first responders. These numbers are expected to rise as rescue workers sift through the rubble of the tens of thousands of buildings that have been destroyed or damaged.

As the brown haze and fumes from the massive explosions lifted, Beirut appeared as a warzone, with destruction more extensive than after weeks of intensive shelling during Lebanon’s civil war of 1975-1989. The damage has extended across half the city, at a cost estimated at $3 billion, with 300,000 people now homeless, according to the city’s governor, Marwan Abboud, in a city where housing was already in short supply.

The poorly equipped health care system, already overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic, has suffered damage to several of its hospitals. Inundated with patients, medical workers are being forced to triage patients outside, while the Red Cross is working with the government to set up morgues.

Although the cause of the blast is still to be officially identified, senior officials told news agencies that the probable cause was the ammonium nitrate, stored at the port’s Warehouse 12, that ignited after welding work set fire to the warehouse.

The chemical was being stored after it was confiscated from Rhosus, a Moldovan-flagged ship, in 2014. According to the Guardian, the ship was owned by Teto Shipping, whose owner-manager Igor Grechushkin, a Russian national, is believed to be living in Cyprus. He abandoned the ship that had been sailing from Georgia to Mozambique via Beirut, after a dispute with the port authorities, leaving his sailors stranded with wages unpaid for nearly a year.

The ship’s former captain in 2014 had sent a letter to Russian journalists complaining about being “held hostage” on board the ship. He wrote that the Beirut authorities “don’t want an abandoned ship at port, especially with a cargo of explosives, which is what ammonium nitrate is. That is, this is a floating bomb, and the crew is a hostage aboard this bomb.”

Yet it took a year before the crew were released from the ship and the ammonium nitrate was confiscated and warehoused.

Ammonium nitrate is a powerful chemical, normally used in fertiliser production and mine explosives. Its dangers are well known. The deadly risks of storing it in a port were tragically confirmed in 2015, when a series of explosions, one of which involved the detonation of about 336 tons of ammonium nitrate, killed 173 people and injured hundreds of others at a container storage depot at the Chinese port of Tianjin. Fires caused by the initial explosions continued to burn, resulting in further explosions.

The amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the port of Beirut was far higher. Prime Minister Hassan Diab tweeted, “It is unacceptable that a shipment of ammonium nitrate estimated at 2,750 tons has been present for six years in a warehouse without taking preventive measures that endanger the safety of citizens.”

The explosion produced was a fifth as powerful as that produced by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Diab declared three days of national mourning for the victims of the explosion, made the usual promises about bringing those responsible to justice and promised they would “pay the price.” He called on “friendly countries” to help.

Leading officials at the port and customs authorities are reportedly under house arrest. The government has now declared a state of emergency, placing Beirut under military law for the next two weeks.

Diab’s announcement did nothing to stop US President Donald Trump declaring at a press conference on Tuesday that the explosion “looks like a terrible attack.”

He said that the US military thought it was the result of a bomb, a suggestion that the Pentagon sought to distance itself from. Trump’s baseless remarks indicates the degree to which he is prepared to attribute any event to terrorism, to be used as a potential casus belli. One can only imagine his response had the explosion occurred in China or Russia, let alone had it happened in the US.

According to Reuters, despite several investigations and official orders to remove the chemical from the warehouse, nothing was done. An unnamed official familiar with the first investigation said, “It is negligence,” adding that the issue of safely storing the powerful chemical had come before several committees and judges and “nothing was done” to order the material removed or disposed of.

Reuters cited another source as saying that a team that had inspected the material six months ago warned it could “blow up all of Beirut” if not removed.

The blast will have devastating economic, social, and political consequences. Diab’s government, brought to power after last October’s mass protests against poverty, government mismanagement, corruption and political sectarianism, was already subject to repeated demands to stand down.

The country of 6 million people, including 2 million refugees, is already reeling under the impact of its worst economic and financial crisis—including a currency that has lost 80 percent of its value in recent weeks, soaring inflation, the doubling of food prices, and widespread and ever-expanding poverty, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Last November, well before the pandemic, the World Bank estimated that 45 percent of Lebanon’s people lived below the poverty line, up from 33 percent before September, with 22 percent living in extreme poverty. It predicted the country’s impending bankruptcy would lead to a further rise to 50 percent in 2020.

The damage to the port is likely to cause shortages of essential items such as food, fuel, and medical supplies as the country imports most basic commodities. The port handles 60 percent of Lebanon’s imports, which the northern port of Tripoli is ill-equipped to replace, under conditions where the country is bounded by war-torn Syria, and Israel, with whom it is officially still in a state of war.

The fire has damaged or destroyed the grain terminal and the silos that normally hold 85 percent of the country’s cereals, largely from Russia and Ukraine, although its stocks were considerably lower than usual due to a widespread shortage of bread during the pandemic.

Last April, amid an expected shortage of wheat and other essential items, the government warned of an impending food shortage and announced it would import extra wheat on its own account—most wheat is imported by private mills—the first time since 2014. It was unclear how it would pay for this, given Lebanon’s shortage of foreign currency reserves.

The destruction of the port’s granary has left the country, which imports more than 80 percent of its grains, with less than a month’s reserves. This did not stop Raoul Nehmen, the economy minister, claiming Wednesday, “There is no bread or flour crisis,” and “We have enough inventory and boats on their way to cover the needs of Lebanon on the long term.”

CIPESA Africa Digital Rights Fund 2020

Application Deadline: 7th August 2020

About the Award: Launched  in April 2019, the ADRF supports organizations and networks to implement activities that advance digital rights, including advocacy, litigation, research, policy analysis, movement building, digital literacy and digital security skills building. The  inaugural round of ADRF awarded USD 65,000 to 10 initiatives advancing digital rights in Algeria, Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal, South Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Type: Grants

Eligibility: The current call is particularly interested in proposals for work related to Covid-19 response measures, how they affect the internet rights landscape, and how to rectify any resulting harms to rights and freedoms. This effort is essential because, even in pandemic times, governments must respect rights and not abuse emergency powers. Moreover, many actors need access to credible information and research to inform their own work on awareness-raising and holding authorities to account during and in the aftermath of Covid-19.

Eligible Countries: African countries

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: Grant amounts for this round will range between USD 1,000 and USD 20,000, depending on the need and scope of the proposed intervention. The ADRF strongly encourages cost-sharing. 

Duration of Award: The grant period will not exceed six months.

How to Apply: Read more about the ADRF  round three guidelines here . The application form can be accessed  here .

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Scholarships in Theology, Diaconal and Development 2021

Application Deadline: 1st October 2020.

Eligible Countries: Developing countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

About the Award: Through the LWF scholarships program LWF works alongside its member churches in developing their capacity to serve effectively in their contexts. The scholarship program helps churches to acquire qualified personnel for spiritual care and diaconal work. The main criteria for a candidate approval is the church’s corresponding need to increase its human and institutional capacity, either in areas of theology or diakonia/development.

Type: Undergraduate, Masters, PhD/Postdoctoral, Research

Eligibility: 

• Church affiliation of the candidate: Only applications from active members of LWF member churches are considered. All applications must be endorsed and submitted by the church. No applications submitted by individuals will be considered.
• Nationality of the candidate: Only candidates from developing countries are eligible for scholarships in fields of diakonia/development. The theological scholarships are, in principle, open to candidates from all regions and countries.
• Age limits: Only candidates up to a certain age are eligible for LWF scholarships, depending on the pursued degree:

Degree	Maximum age at the time of application*
Bachelor degrees	35
Master degrees	40
Doctorate	45
Post-doctoral/research	50
*Special considerations: For candidates who are church employees at the time of application, age limits may be exceeded by up to 7 years for female candidates and up to 5 years for male candidates. For candidates who are actively engaged in the church’s theological or diaconal work at the time of application, age limits may be exceeded by up to 5 years for female candidates and up to 3 years for male candidates. Relatively higher consideration is made for female candidates due to social and cultural factors which cause them to pursue studies later. Selection Criteria:  HICD needs of the church: The proposed training field and degree has to respond well to the human and institutional capacity development needs of the church. The requesting church must demonstrate convincingly how a given application would meet a specific and crucial personnel need in its overall ministry in church and society. Current and future position of the candidate: All candidates are expected to have been in the service of the church and/or community as employees or volunteers. There has to be a clear commitment by the church to engage the candidate as employee or volunteer in an area related to the proposed training after completion of the candidate’s studies/training. Quality of the application: The candidate must demonstrate convincingly his/her commitment, ability and motivation to pursue the training and to support the church afterwards (good educational and professional qualifications, recommendations and certificates, convincing character). Study place. The LWF encourages candidates to study in their home country or home region. In case a study or training program abroad is proposed, convincing reasons must be given in the application. Gender and youth quota: At least 40% of the approved candidates will be female; at least 20% will be youth below the age of 30 years. These quotas will not only apply to the overall approvals, but also to each church and region. Regional balance: The LWF seeks to ensure that candidates from different regions, countries and churches are being supported. Number and Value of Awards: In total, 50-70 scholarships will be awarded for studies in diaconia and development and 20-25 for theological studies. Duration of Programme:   Regular scholarships for study programs of at least 1 year: The candidates are approved for at least 1 year of support to take up or complete their proposed study program. For candidates who have already started with their study program, this means that the study program has to last for at least 1.5 years at the time of application, hence 1 year at the time of approval. Short-term scholarships for training of up to 6 months: The candidates are approved for a short-term training which may last up to 6 months. This may include training courses, workshops, exchange programs or research projects which respond to the needs of the applying church. Application forms and selection criteria are the same as for regular scholarships. How to Apply: You should apply via the new online application system. Applications can only be submitted through LWF member churches. Individuals interested in a scholarship should contact their church office. Visit Programme Webpage for Details