Workers’ opposition grows to Netanyahu government over pandemic and social crisis in Israel

Jean Shaoul

Opposition is mounting across Israel to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-Blue and White national emergency government’s handling of the pandemic and the deteriorating economic and social conditions.

On Sunday, some 2,000 public health laboratory workers in 400 public laboratories went on strike over poor working conditions and low wages. In public hospital labs, they are carrying out emergency work only. They are continuing to carry out coronavirus tests but are only contacting those testing positive.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Netaim School in the West Bank settlement of Mevo Horon, September 1, 2020. (Marc Israel Sellem/Pool via AP)

Esther Admon, chair of the Association of Biochemists, Microbiologists and Laboratory Workers, blamed the government after talks with the Finance Ministry broke down on Monday saying, “The indifference and disregard of the prime minister and his ministers is outrageous. Beyond words. I understand with sorrow that there is no leadership in Israel.”

Around 200 of the striking workers protested outside Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem Tuesday evening. They criticised the government for pouring funds into private labs, saying, “If the government had invested even only 10 percent of the NIS 4 billion ($1.3 billion) allocated to the private laboratories, there would have been no reason to strike... We decided to go demonstrate at Balfour [the prime minister’s residence] because we have no choice.”

The strike takes place amid rising opposition to the government’s handling of the pandemic, its return to work policy, and the reopening of schools. Twice weekly demonstrations against Netanyahu’s refusal to resign, even after being indicted on charges of corruption, bribery, and breach of trust in three separate cases, have continued for weeks and are growing larger.

The government initially put tight restrictions in place in early March. In late April, as the infection rate began to fall, the government announced a relaxation of restrictions, allowing the reopening of schools—partially at first and fully on May 17, the day that the new coalition government was sworn in, and a return to work. Later, the government green-lighted the reopening of restaurants, bars, clubs, swimming pools and hotels.

Netanyahu did so without putting in place any measures to guard against or deal with a second wave, despite recommendations from a team of experts, headed by Professor Eli Waxman from the Weizman Institute of Science in Rehovot. His team also recommended that the government reconsider its decision to restart the economy if the daily number of infections rose above 200—another recommendation the government ignored.

Within days of the government lifting restrictions on class sizes, there was a resurgence of the virus, with tens of thousands of pupils later sent into quarantine as their classmates tested positive, ultimately infecting hundreds of students, teachers and relatives. Without contact tracing, hundreds of schools were forced to close. According to the Ministry of Education, by the end of the school year in late June, 977 pupils and teachers had contracted COVID-19, with teachers the worst affected. At least one teacher is known to have died.

Waxman blamed the increase in cases on the speedy and uncontrolled reopening of schools and the economy and the government’s failure to implement his team’s recommendations. He warned that this would soon overload Israel’s hospitals, which have been starved of funds for decades.

Waxman warned other countries considering reopening their schools, “They definitely should not do what we have done,” adding, “It was a major failure.” Experts insisted that smaller classes, mask wearing, keeping desks two metres apart and providing adequate ventilation would be crucial until a vaccine is available. But such conditions are impossible without a near doubling of the number of classrooms and teachers.

In July, Siegal Sadetzki, Israel’s director of public health services, resigned, saying that insufficient safety precautions in schools, as well as large gatherings like weddings, had fueled a “significant portion” of second-wave infections.

In the last two weeks, Israel has reported nearly 22,000 infections, one sixth of the total since the start of the pandemic, and a daily rate now of over 2,000 cases. Nearly 970 people have died, half of them in August. This contrasts with around 250 deaths at the beginning of May when restrictions were lifted.

The situation is no less acute in the occupied Palestinian Territories. In the West Bank, there are 8,172 active cases and 161 people have died. In the Gaza Strip, there are 280 active cases and four people have died. Three of the four deaths occurred in the last week and were due to community transmission, in contrast to previous cases that had contacted the disease abroad.

Dr Ashraf Alkudra, spokesman for Gaza’s Ministry of Health, said there was a major shortage of testing kits at Gaza hospitals. Last week, with limited means to stop the spread of the pandemic, Gaza imposed a full lockdown that is set to continue. There are only 90 available ventilators in Gaza, 10 of which were donated by the World Health Organisation.

Coronavirus czar Professor Ronni Gamzu, a physician, is strongly opposed to opening Israel’s schools in the “red areas” designated by regional councils as hot spots. He said it was unreasonable to open schools in such places because it is impossible to avoid new cases in the process. It was a question of managing risk and “this is not a risk to take.”

In the event, on Monday evening, just hours before all the schools were due to reopen at the start of the new school year, the coronavirus cabinet decided to keep schools in the designated red zones with high infection rates closed.

The reopening of schools has met with fierce opposition from teachers, whose union had threatened strike action. This was only averted the day before schools were due to reopen when Judge Hadas Yahalom ruled against the union’s right to strike. This was after the union and the Education Ministry agreed to maintain discussions and a guarantee that no teachers would be placed on unpaid leave without being allowed to present their case in the space of 24 hours.

The Education Ministry agreed to offer 800 pre-retirement positions to teachers who can show they are at risk of becoming seriously ill from the coronavirus and to provide $10 million for personal protection equipment for preschool and elementary school teachers.

The government only averted a strike by schools support staff, including student aids, maintenance staff, and secretaries, at the start of the school year by agreeing to find funds to support the Karev programme. The programme provides educational services for some of the most needy children, including at-risk students, Ethiopian Israelis, immigrants, special needs students, the ultra-Orthodox and Arab students. Without it, some 4,000 workers would have lost their jobs.

This is part of a larger political problem flowing from the government’s inability to agree a 2020 budget—the deadline has now been postponed until the end of November—leaving many school programmes with no funding earmarked for them and at risk of cancelation.

In recent weeks, there have been several strikes by public service workers over low pay and COVID-19-related issues, including:

• A nationwide strike of bus drivers in 16 bus companies in July over the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) as more than 1,000 drivers became infected.
  
• A nationwide strike of nurses over low pay and staff shortages, only carrying out emergency work, that was only called off after the government agreed to hire an additional 2,000 nurses on a temporary basis, 400 doctors, and additional security personnel.
  
• A 16-day strike by social workers in support of their demand for higher wages and a reduction in their burgeoning case load amid the pandemic.

Far from leading any united struggle of workers against the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, the Histadrut trade union federation has been in talks with Amir Peretz, a former Histadrut leader and now Minister of Economy and Industry. The talks are aimed at setting up roundtable discussions with employers and government departments over “flexible unemployment benefits.” The official unemployment rate has reached more than 21 percent, and food poverty is soaring.

In face of overwhelming popular opposition, Brazilian governments push criminal reopening of schools

Tomas Castanheira

After disastrous results in Manaus, the first capital city to resume on-site classes, the governments of major states throughout Brazil, including those most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, are advancing criminal plans to reopen schools between September and October.

Headed by the different parties of the Brazilian ruling class, these governments face as their adversary the working class, which vehemently opposes this homicidal policy.

A survey published by the Datafolha research institute on August 17 found that 80 percent of Brazilians are against reopening schools. About 60 percent are sure that the return of classes will “severely aggravate the pandemic.”

A school in Manaus, Brazil. (Credit: Ione Moreno/Semcom)

These polls reflect the resistance of the great majority of the population to accepting the toxic anti-scientific campaign promoted by the Brazilian state as whole, headed by the country’s fascistic president, Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro has been silent on the subject of schools in the recent period, clearly because he believes that state politicians of his self-declared opposition are doing the dirty work for him.

Brazil remains the country with the highest indices of COVID-19 cases and deaths, trailing only the United States. It has just crossed the milestone of 4 million confirmed cases, with roughly 125,000 confirmed deaths from the disease.

Twenty days ago, on August 10, classes in public schools were resumed in Manaus, the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, by order of Governor Wilson Lima of the Christian Social Party (PSC). The immediate result was the outbreak of new COVID-19 cases in 36 schools within a week of their reopening.

Growing protests by teachers and school staff led the government to announce a massive testing of education workers, while keeping the schools functioning in the same unsafe conditions. The tests were conducted by the Amazonian Health Surveillance Foundation (FVS), which operates as a government public relations agency.

The results of the tests were disclosed in a deliberately confusing manner. On August 24, the FVS released the first result of the tests, with 342 positive cases among the 1,064 tests conducted, indicating that 30 percent of education professionals were infected.

When it presented updated numbers, on Monday, the FVS hid the results of IgG type tests (which show longer term antibodies). It just published that, in a universe of 2,114 tests, “Only 162, or 7.6 percent, had recent infections.”

What they call “only 7.6 percent” is, in fact, an extremely unsettling number. Translated into the total of 110,000 students attending schools, which are not being systematically tested, it would indicate that there are more than 8,300 infected youth inside classrooms. They are putting their own lives at risk, as well as those of their fellow students, teachers and family members.

The impact this will have on the city that produced scenes of mass burials of COVID-19 victims at the peak of the pandemic are not yet clear, but some numbers already sound the alarm. Professor Henrique dos Santos Pereira, of the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), told A Crítica: “From what we can see, there is an increase in the number of hospitalizations in Manaus in the second half of August, approaching the same levels as the peak of June 22.”

The news portal G1 reported that the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Pará, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo have already set dates for a return to classes between September and October.

Facing massive opposition from educators and family members, governors and mayors are spouting lies and taking minimal measures to gain ground. The first claim is that their decisions are being made on the basis of a “scientific evaluation,” expressed with the release of colorful maps, whose criteria change every week. The second is that the return will be “optional” and will not be done suddenly.

The governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), made these hypocritical arguments in an exemplary way this Tuesday, during the presentation of his back-to-school calendar. “We understand that the risk, at this moment, is lower than what was perceived at other moments,” he said. “It is not a return at any cost, nor a disorganized return or a return to normal. It is a calendar to authorize, or to stop restricting (!), but not to force a return.”

What does a “risk lower than what was perceived at other moments” mean? The capital of Porto Alegre has 88 percent of its ICU beds occupied, even after the recent construction of new beds, and the state registered 1,463 new cases this Monday. Amidst this scenario, Leite proposes the return, in the first place, of kindergarten students on September 8.

The preference for reopening the schools for the youngest students is not an accident, and the rationale was explicitly stated by the governor: “Many parents have gone back to on-site work and have no one to leave their children with. This return to work imposes the need for places for child care, which are the kindergarten schools.”

Essentially the same model is being advanced in São Paulo, which has the highest incidence of COVID-19 in the country and for any state in the world, with 30,673 confirmed deaths and 826,331 cases. On Wednesday alone, 298 deaths were reported in the state.

Despite declaring, with the support of the press, that students will return to classes in state schools on October 7, the government of Governor João Doria, of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), is actually promoting the reopening of schools as early as next week. His objectives are exactly the same as those of his fellow party member from Rio Grande do Sul – to give workers a place to leave their children while they generate profits for the ruling class and are themselves subjected to the risks of infection.

To force through his criminal project, Doria is offering overtime pay to teachers who supplement their workload by receiving students on-site for an “emotional welcome” this month. In an interview with Folha, the state secretary of education of São Paulo, Rossieli Soares, stated that he may hire substitute teachers, in a bid to brreak teachers' resistance.

A teacher from the São Paulo state network sent the World Socialist Web Site a government statement sent to the school boards on September 1 that exposes the “optional” character of this return. Advising schools to conduct a survey on the resumption of classes among teachers and parents, the document concludes: “It is not necessary to reach a majority that wants or does not want the return to define the opening of the school.”

The project being prepared in São Paulo, as in other states, represents a conscious assault of the ruling class on the lives of the masses of working people that can be defined as a policy of social murder. A simulation presented by a group of researchers from leading Brazilian and international universities shows that the parameters set for reopening in São Paulo would provoke, in a three-month period, the infection of up to 46 percent of students and teachers.

School workers and families must unite to overturn this policy. They need to face not only the governments, but also the trade unions that claim to represent the educators. In the capital of São Paulo the unions are joined with the local government in an “Emergency Committee on the Crisis of Education.”

In a press release on the last meeting of this committee, which took place on August 18, the SINPEEM teachers union stated that it and “representatives of other union entities and congressmen have discussed once again the return of on-site classes ... SINPEEM has insisted once again that the return of the on-site classes can occur only in 2021, after City Hall puts in place protocols with measures that guarantee the safety of education professionals, students and their families.”

What the unions are doing, in fact, is conspiring behind closed doors with the government to create the best conditions to break workers' resistance. The same course is being pursued by the other unions affiliated to the National Confederation of Education Workers (CNTE).

The central objective of the CNTE in the present situation is to isolate workers locally and prevent a general strike of education workers throughout Brazil, which would join with the ongoing postal workers’ strike and could provoke an uprising of the Brazilian working class as a whole.

To overcome this blockade imposed by the unions, Brazilian educators and parents must build independent rank-and-file committees in each school and neighborhood. These committees will allow the workers themselves to politically lead their struggle and unite with their colleagues throughout Brazil and across national borders.

Hundreds at University of Iowa stage sickout as COVID-19 cases skyrocket

E. Cohen & Andy Thompson

Today, hundreds of students and faculty at the University of Iowa are participating in a “sickout”—where instructors and students call in sick—to demonstrate against the university’s homicidal policy of continuing in-person education.

The sickout was organized over the weekend by students and faculty across the university to demand all classes be moved online and quickly drew support. Organizers for the sickout released a pledge to stop work that netted over 600 signatures in four days.

Iowa is a global epicenter of the pandemic, with Ames, home to Iowa State University, and Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa, occupying the number one and number two spots in the United States worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The state has a two-week moving average of 232 cases per 100,000 people. Tyson meat workers in Waterloo, Iowa, carried out a sickout in early May when more than 1,000 were sickened.

Seamans Center for the Engineering Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa

After just one week of classes at the University of Iowa, more than 1,100 students and faculty have reported cases of COVID-19. Educators from across the university have reported mass infections in their classes, as the number of new daily cases at the school—which houses more than 30,000 students—has remained in the triple digits and the university still has 25 percent of classes happening face to face. At Iowa State University the positive rate in the second week of testing was over 28 percent.

The sickout comes as the state of Iowa comes under fire for manipulating COVID-19 case counts after nurse practitioner Dana Jones, who had been tracking reported cases on her own, blew the whistle on the state’s systematic backdating of cases. The true number of cases in Iowa was discovered to be double what the state government had reported, the numbers used to force reopening of schools, workplaces, parks and restaurants.

The university administration has responded to the sickout with hostility. University Provost Kevin Kregel emailed all university faculty condemning the action and suggested faculty are not living up to their obligations to students.

In an astonishing display of hypocrisy, Kregel wrote: “The absence of faculty compromises our students’ ability to maintain the educational progress critical to their future success.

“Accordingly, while the university acknowledges individuals’ concerns about in-person instruction, I strongly disagree with the planned manner of expressing those concerns. I respectfully remind you that as role models, you have an obligation to deliver instruction as assigned, and to provide appropriate notice of absences due to illness.”

Neither the union for contingent faculty, the Service Employees International Union “Faculty Forward” Iowa, nor the graduate student union COGS/UE have endorsed the sickout. In denying any association with the walkout, the unions underline that their main concern is not the health and safety of students and staff but maintaining their good standing with the university and their ability to collect dues.

Faculty and students have used the sickout’s Twitter and Instagram pages to expose conditions in their classes. One student posted: “My brother isolated himself for five months and didn’t see a single person besides my parents and me. He’s been to a grocery store one (1) time since March. He moved into the @uiowa dorms last week, and today he received his positive results for COVID-19.” Another student reported, “I have in-person labs I’m forced to go to without an option to get the content online.”

Students forced to attend in-person classes published photos and videos of the conditions in lecture halls and small classrooms. In a preface to one video, a student said: “This class has 49 people and 1 professor. And the university’s idea of distancing us is having everyone sit in just every other seat. They said they are suspending people for attending gatherings of more than 10 yet they put 50 of us in this classroom. I believe there is already 8 including myself who are unable to attend class now due to self-isolating for quarantining.”

Faculty members at the University of Iowa have also used the sickout’s social media campaign to expose the reality behind the university’s reopening plan. One professor said, “I teach a gen ed [general education] course. I currently have 7 students positive out of 48. My colleagues all have at least 5–6. One has 10. I’m completely disgusted that the university has stalled so long as cases rise. That they invited tens of thousands of students back into this situation.”

The sickout at the University of Iowa is the latest expression in a mass wave of social unrest in the course of 2020. The year has seen walkouts by autoworkers, mass demonstrations against police violence and now opposition from educators and students who are being forced into unsafe conditions. The pandemic is the event that immediately triggered the demonstrations, but their underlying cause is capitalism.

University officials at Iowa and around the United States are determined to continue to push President Donald Trump’s drive to reopen campuses at the expense of the lives of hundreds of thousands of students. The stage is set, at the University of Iowa and all other campuses complicit in the back-to-work drive, for a confrontation between students and educators defending their lives and the administrators who are responding to the demands of the corporations and capitalist politicians to reopen the campuses.

The University of Iowa, which rakes in millions of dollars per year on its football program, has more than ample resources to cover the expenses of moving classes to fully remote status. The protests have targeted the university president, Bruce Harreld, who came to UI after a long corporate career as an executive for billion dollar companies including Kraft Foods, Boston Market and IBM. Harreld’s salary is over $600,000 per year.

Millionaire administrators, along with the Democrats, Republicans and the unions, can offer no solution for students and teachers who are defending their health and lives by refusing to return to campus.

Only through an independent struggle outside of all the organizations of the ruling class can students and teachers defend their lives from the COVID-19 pandemic. Students and teachers in Iowa must follow the example of teachers in Florida and expand their sickout into an all-out strike, forming rank-and-file safety committees on their campuses and in their schools to put forward their demands for online learning and scientifically sound safety measures.

Teacher protests spread as COVID-19 rips through schools and universities

Renae Cassimeda

Protests and job actions by educators opposed to the unsafe opening of schools have spread across the country as the drive to reopen public schools and university has sparked a massive resurgence of COVID-19.

The University of Georgia reported staggering 821 new COVID-19 cases from August 24–30. Additionally, three K-12 schools in Manatee County School District in Florida, reported positive cases this week, sending hundreds of students with possible exposure into quarantine.

Teachers and students at P.S. 15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York City on September 2, 2020. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

These deadly conditions have provoked hundreds of protests by teachers, parents and students across the country. In Kenosha, Wisconsin, the scene of the mass protests against police killings and the murder of protesters by a right-wing vigilante, teachers continued to protest over the school district’s plans for in-person learning.

Last week, the Kenosha Unified School District (KUSD) changed its plans and announced there will be an in-person option incorporated into their reopening plans, which starts September 14. Teachers, parents and students protested at the district office Monday—the day before Trump’s provocative visit to the city—demanding that officials reverse their plans for in-person instruction. They held signs that read “One student or teacher funeral is too many” and “Don’t make me choose between students and my health.” Teachers and parents are expected to protest and voice opposition at the KUSD school board meeting tonight, shortly after Biden visits the city.

On Monday, educators in Andover, Massachusetts, a town of 33,000 people 25 miles north of Boston, refused to enter school buildings for professional development, citing concerns about poor ventilation and safety, and decided to work outside the schools instead. Andover Public Schools are set to begin the school year with a hybrid learning plan on September 16, with each student attending in-person two full-days per week. School district officials denounced the action as an “illegal strike” and threatened to take legal action against teachers, who were then ordered back to work by the union.

Nearly 375 teachers in Elizabeth, New Jersey publicly announced that they would refuse to show up to teach if school districts reopened for in-person instruction in September. In spite of threats that they may face charges of illegally striking, they insist that their safety as well as the safety of their students and families outweigh the possible retribution.

On Monday, teachers also protested outside the Brighton Area Schools district office, north of Detroit, over safety concerns and looming budget cuts. A recent press release outlined major budget cuts to the district due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The press release stated that the state projects “an excess of $5 million in cuts in Brighton Area Schools’ budget for the 2020–2021 school year.”

Speaking to local news media during the protest, Jennifer, a teacher in BAS, said, “Why am I being asked to take a 5.8 percent pay cut in the middle of a pandemic when our district is not in a deficit situation.” She also expressed concerns over building ventilation, social distancing and other safety issues during a pandemic.

On Wednesday, hundreds of students and faculty at the University of Iowa participated in a “sickout” to demonstrate against the university’s deadly policy of continuing in-person education. In response to a recent rise in cases, students and faculty throughout the university demanded all classes be moved online.

Last month, teachers from around the country established the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee to unite educators, parents and student and prepare for a general strike to halt the reckless opening of schools. Safety committees, which are independent of the unions, are being set up in Michigan, Florida, Texas and other states.

On Monday, teachers and community members in Jacksonville, Florida, including members of the Duval County Rank-and-File Safety Committee, spoke at the local school board meeting. The district is currently open to in-person instruction under a hybrid model—part in-school, part online—for its roughly 130,000 students and over 8,000 teachers.

Duval County teacher speaks at local school board meeting

The district has announced three inadequate measures it will take to stop the spread: cardboard desk shields with clear plastic film, face masks, and a long-lasting bioprotectant spray. Teachers are speaking out against these pseudo-scientific reopening plans that fly in the face of recent science that prove aerosolized COVID-19 particles can become airborne and travel 16 feet or more, well beyond the recommended six feet for social distancing and remain suspended in the air for hours in poorly-ventilated spaces.

One teacher told local reporters, “These cardboard dividers make it so that students can’t even see through a couple of them, so students have to lift their heads over them so that they can see the instructor, see the board. It makes the classrooms kind of impossible.”

In comments to the school board, a member of the Duval County Rank-and-File Safety Committee (DCRFSC) said, “It’s appropriate that the board meeting began with a discussion about how many students are enrolled and how that will affect money because clearly that is at the heart of the decision to reopen these schools so unsafely. Dollars and cents before the lives of our most vulnerable—our children.”

He called school officials’ claims of a so-called safe reopening “false,” and presented the 10 demands of the DCRFSC. Primary among their demands were the calls for the immediate closure of all schools until the safety committee, working with trusted health professionals, deem them safe to reopen, and universal testing for all students, educators and staff.

The teachers denounced the efforts by school authorities to intimidate and silence those exposing these dangers. One teacher and safety committee member Bradley Fisher, said, “I would like to denounce the investigation that is currently filed against me for professional misconduct and other teachers who have dared to tell the truth about what the Superintendent’s reopening really looks like on the ground [and] who have had the bravery to whistle blow.”

Three local doctors also spoke during the meeting, all emphasizing the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over and must be handled carefully. Doctor Nancy Staats, member of Doctors Fighting COVID, stated that COVID-19 is more contagious than any other virus besides measles. Staats also noted the implications of “in-between deaths.” She said, “Yes, you might survive, but you will have a long-term problem and children can have asymptomatic cases and have lung damage, we’ve seen this.”

Trump has repeatedly demanded that workplaces and schools reopen, asserting at the Republican National Convention that, schools and workplaces “have to be open, they have to get back to work.” The Republicans are more open in their push towards the murderous reopening policies, but whatever their rhetorical and tactical differences both parties fundamentally agree.

In remarks Wednesday, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden made clear that if he were in the White House, he would declare a national emergency to open the schools, and keep them open. Biden said, “If President Trump and his administration had done their jobs early on with this crisis, American schools would be open and open safely.” The Democratic candidate said he would use federal disaster money to provide educators and administrators the protective equipment for a “safe reopening” of schools.

It is not possible, however, to reopen schools safely while the pandemic continues to spread across the country. To do so, will only lead to a resurgence of the contagion and more death.

However, the Democrats, just like the Republicans, are determined to reopen the schools in order to get parents back to work producing corporate profits, no matter what the human cost. This includes the mayor of New York City, the largest school district in the nation, which will resume in-person schooling on September 21.

As vice president under Obama, Biden oversaw an oversaw an historic assault of teachers and public education, which has left school districts terribly underfunded and understaffed more than a decade after the Wall Street bailout of 2008–09. Having handed Wall Street a far greater bailout this year, tripling government debt, Biden will oversee a ruthless program of austerity, cutting funds to schools and other vital services to pay the debt.

ACI Foundation International Scholarships/Fellowships in USA & Canada 2021/2022

Application Deadline: 2nd November, 2020.

Eligible Countries: All

To be Taken at (Country): ACI Foundation Fellowships can be awarded to anyone in the world; however, you must attend a U.S. or Canadian university during the award year.

About the Award: The ACI Foundation offers several Fellowship and undergraduate Scholarship opportunities for students and E-Members. ACI Foundation Fellowships and Scholarships are awarded annually to help students with an interest in concrete achieve their educational and career goals. The student must be considered a full-time undergraduate or graduate student as defined by the college or university during the award year. Applications will be accepted from anywhere in the world but study must take place in the United States or Canada during the award year.

Fields of Study: Structural Design, Materials, Construction

Type: Undergraduate, Graduate (Masters, PhD)

Eligibility:
Each student is limited for the duration of their studies to receiving no more than one fellowship and one scholarship from the ACI Foundation.
A single online application form will be used for all the fellowships and scholarships. After answering some qualifying questions, the form will automatically display the fellowships and scholarships for which you may be eligible. Before beginning the application, have the answers ready for these questions:

• Have you ever received a fellowship or scholarship award from the ACI Foundation?
• When submitting the application, what is your current academic status (Undergraduate/Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD)?
• When the award year begins in Fall 2021, what will your academic status be (Undergraduate/Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD)?
• (Fellowship applicants only) Following the application season, can you attend an interview at the spring ACI Concrete Convention on March 28, 2021? Travel, registration, and hotel arrangements will be made through and paid for by the ACI Foundation.
• (For certain fellowships) Can you fulfill a 10- to 12-week internship during the summer of 2021?

For the entire school term (fall semester 2021 through spring semester 2022), you must be a full-time student for the entire school year.

Selection Criteria: Based on essays, submitted data and endorsements, the Scholarship Council of the ACI Foundation will select scholarship and fellowship recipients who appear to have the strongest combination of interest and potential for professional success in the concrete industry.

How to Apply: The application for the 2021-2022 season is now open! You can get started by reviewing the requirements in the links below. Once you have read the requirements, click one of the buttons below to start your application.

Apply Now!

Fellowships & Scholarships Application

Middle East & North Africa Fellowship Application

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

Visit Scholarship Webpage for more details

Award Provider: American Concrete Institute

The Number of Homeless People is About to Skyrocket

Howard Lisnoff

The Covid-19 pandemic will cause the number of homeless people and homeless families to skyrocket. This is not so much a prediction as a certainty. With government subsidies to people to help pay rent and mortgages at an end, and with unemployment benefits reduced, the number of adults and children on the streets will grow exponentially. Why is this?

The answer is that the few and the very wealthy, the oligarchs and the plutocrats, couldn’t give a damn about homeless people in the US. When money flowed to the homeless, during the years I was a grant writer for a homeless shelter and a volunteer at that shelter, there was Housing and Urban Development money for the homeless and grant money available from private charitable organizations. The romance with the homeless ended as austerity, spending on wars, and tax cuts for the wealthy became all the rage. Homelessness was seen as a nuisance. Corporate profits were hoisted as good above all else. Greed became a virtue.

As the economy became deindustrialized, the society put hordes of people onto the streets and into jails for warehousing and further exploitation. The diminished union movement put an exclamation point on it all.

There’s a series that can be seen on YouTube called Invisible People and I think one of its best segments aired in 2018. I may have been drawn to this episode because they filmed it in Ithaca, New York, a place that I love. Ithaca is a college town in upstate New York, which is the home of Cornell University and Ithaca College. Ithaca, like so many college towns across the US, has been especially hard hit by the pandemic because these schools employ lots of people in the area. It’s not much of a leap of faith to know instinctively that the number of homeless people will grow in places like Ithaca. During my last visit to Ithaca, I came upon a meal site based in a church and there was a long line that had queued up outside its door waiting for it to open. This was long before the pandemic hit.

The segment of Invisible People cited above travels into an undeveloped area of fields in Ithaca and the interviews and scenes of homeless people and homeless shelters is powerful. It would be impossible to view this video without a wrenching emotional and intellectual reaction.

Compare the scenes and people in that video with this short video I shot on a street in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts a few weeks ago. I did not have camera equipment with me at the time, so the video is shaky (A Pool and a Pandemic). Try to remain objective while watching this video. Compare what I portray in this video with the scenes of homeless people in Ithaca.

The point is that homelessness results from a predatory economic and social system where there are small numbers of big winners and lots of people without the means to survive in any level of comfort. Living in a comfortable nurturing environment is a basic human right. Those in the middle class may feel squeamish about homeless people, but masses of people understand that it’s the business as usual nature of the social and economic systems that creates homelessness and gives many the ability to accept its worst expressions. It’s no accident that a social class of those with almost no means is relegated to fields, the streets, and sometimes dangerous and overcrowded shelters. There are very few people who choose a life of homelessness, but most are driven there by job loss, domestic violence, and mental illness. Some have been cast out by their families and others have fallen to the scourge of substance abuse, a condition with a host of its own causes. The major cause of homelessness is that there is a limited stock of affordable housing and affordable rentals as home prices soar ever higher and higher for a host of reasons including the machinations of real estate investing and gentrification. Buying a first home in the area where I live is an almost unimaginable enterprise with real estate dynamics driving the price of homes and rental properties through the roof, while jobs that provide enough income for the purchase of a home are almost nonexistent.

Much can be learned about a society from how it treats its most vulnerable members.

The UK’s High School Examinations Fiasco

Kenneth Surin

The highest qualification for high-school students in England, Wales, and the north of Ireland, is the A-level. Scotland has a different system called the Highers.

UK students seeking admission to tertiary education within the UK’s four sub-nations have to take A-levels or Highers– though the International Baccalaureate and qualifications in other countries equivalent to the A-level, such as the Abitur in Germany or Bac in France, are also recognized. The US SAT is not recognized.

The A-level exam is unlike the US’s SAT.

The SAT is multiple-choice, whereas the typical A-level exam involves writing 2-4 long (or longish) essays in a 3-hour period in response to questions chosen from an exam-paper with a typical range of 8-12 questions. For this reason successful students taking the more demanding A-levels receive a year’s advance credit if they choose to matriculate at a US university.

Another key difference is that UK students don’t apply directly to individual universities.

Since the UK only has 1 private university, the 105 government-funded universities have a centralized admissions system (UCAS).

Via UCAS, students about to take their A-levels apply to 5 universities at which they wish to study (ranked by applicants in order of interest). Applicants are advised to list the subject they wish to study (this includes joint-degrees), since applicants only get one personal statement for all universities they apply to, the statement having to be tailored to their subject, as opposed to university, of choice.

A key part of the application will be the predicted grades for the applicant provided by their teachers.

UCAS forwards applications to the universities concerned, who then assess the application and decide whether to make an offer for study, which includes the grades applicants must achieve in order to matriculate.

The examinations are set and graded by a number of exam boards.

England, Wales and Northern Ireland have several exam boards; schools can choose between them on a subject-by-subject basis, without restrictions.

Currently, there are 5 exam boards available to state schools: AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance); CCEA (Council for the Curriculum, Examinations & Assessment); OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations); Pearson; and WJEC (Welsh Joint Education Committee).

The Covid lockdown threw a spanner in the works of this system, by preventing students from taking proctored A-level exams at their respective schools. Students had grades to aim for, but sans exams, had no way to attain their hoped-for objectives.

This is where the government blundered.

The 2020 A-level exam period would have run from Monday 11 May until Wednesday 26 June. It became apparent in March that it would be impossible to hold this year’s exams because of the pandemic lockdown, and the government cancelled them.

The Tory education minister, Gavin Williamson (a dimwit whose main claim to fame is being the 2006 fireplace salesperson of the year), therefore had a couple of months to implement an alternative mode of grade-calculation for 2020’s exam takers.

The government decided that grades for these thwarted exam-takers would be based on a combination of their predicted grades, rankings provided by teachers, and an algorithm based on schools’ previous results.

The flaw in the use of this algorithm was clear even without the benefit of hindsight. As is the case nearly everywhere, exam results tend to mirror a location’s prevailing poverty levels.

Students in poorer areas come from schools with lower levels of attainment, the converse being the case for schools in prosperous areas.

The algorithm downgraded 40% of predicted A-level results, with students in less-advantaged areas the hardest hit, while private schools enjoyed the biggest leap in the percentage of top grades.

As a result, thousands of poorer pupils missed out on places at university—in effect the algorithm assigned them grades based on their postcode.

Facing a huge public outcry (including Tory MPs), Williamson dumped the algorithm by making a drastic U-turn in government policy, saying A-level students would now be given the grades their teachers had predicted.

The result has been an absolute crisis for universities.

Those allowed to matriculate on the basis of the algorithm could not now be denied their university places, while those with subsequently acceptable grades based on their teachers’ predications are having to be admitted as well.

An example of this chaos was given me by a family member in the UK university system. A medical degree in the UK is a 5-year undergraduate degree, and clinical practice is of course a vital part of it. But with matriculants now considerably in excess of what medical schools can accommodate, it will be impossible to conduct clinical practice within the existing framework.

What next for medical schools?

Perhaps doctors who are not as well-trained because of shortfalls in their clinical practice, or a huge compensatory infusion of government funds for medical schools in a time of pandemic-induced economic recession, with a post-Brexit crisis still to come on top of this in early 2021?

Hopefully for Brits it will be the latter.

And what about Williamson himself, as well as his boss BoJo Johnson?

Williamson remains in post as education minister despite another U-turn after screwing-up the A-levels exams.

He had decreed that state schools should reopen (in September) without masks being required in classrooms.

Furious protests from parents and teachers compelled a reversal– masks will now be worn in classrooms when schools reopen.

Williamson and BoJo are trying to preserve their careers by throwing educational bureaucrats under the bus.

The head of England’s exam regulator (Ofqual), Sally Collier, has resigned, and the head civil servant in the department of education (DfE), Jonathan Slater, will step down on September 1 after the “prime minister concluded that there is a need for fresh official leadership” in the department, the DfE announced.

Slater is the fifth senior civil servant given the boot in less than a year, following the permanent secretaries of the Foreign Office, Home Office and Ministry of Justice, as well as the cabinet secretary, Mark Sedwill.

Gone are the days when ministers took responsibility for poor decisions made on their watch by resigning (this only seems to happen in Japan)— these days a hapless bureaucrat or two has to face the chopping block in their place, while the ministers involved still drive around in their black limousines, and lie repeatedly in media interviews and even in parliament about the debacles they preside over.

The UK’s parliament is touted in some circles as the mother of all parliaments— nowadays, more appropriately, it is perhaps the motherfucker of all parliaments.

BoJo Johnson became the source of derision even in the normally sedate parts of mainstream media when he blamed the A-levels fiasco on the nonsensical notion of a “mutant algorithm”.

Given that an algorithm can only be applied more or less well by those in charge, there were many jokes about who the real “mutants” were.

The technique used by the Tories in this episode is known in social media as “firehosing”.

Firehosing involves churning out as many lies as feasible as often as possible, not so much with the aim of having people swallow the lies peddled, but rather with the aim of sidelining arguments purporting to rely on ascertaining facts, and putting in their place phantasmagorias of “reality” reduced to the positioning of “narratives” and “optics”. Those who can sell these positions best are then said to win the “argument” in question.

Individuals such as BoJo (and Trump) don’t really care if people believe them. Their aim is to supplant what used to be considered “reality” by relatively well-informed social groupings possessing a modicum or approximation of scruples, with a riotous epistemological anarchy (à la Fox News), so that those so disposed are in a position to affirm that right is wrong, the true is false, left is right, and so on.

This is the underpinning of what is now considered “post-truth” politics.

BoJo and his allies, however, are not the UK’s first post-truth politicians.

That title belongs to the fundamentally unserious and lightweight “Dodgy” Dave Cameron, BoJo’s fellow Etonian and Oxonian predecessor as prime minister, who was an advertising executive on a minor commercial TV channel before he took up politics (saying he wanted to do this because he’d “be good at it”).

For now this is another story, along with the firehosing surely to follow the disastrous no-deal Brexit almost certain to kick-in on 1^st January 2021.

In the lead-up to this possible future story, the current Optimum opinion poll may become relevant.

The poll shows Labour is now in a tie with the Tories for the first time since last summer, before BoJo became the Tory leader. In just 5 months since the lockdown was imposed by Johnson, the Tories have relinquished a 26-point lead over Labour, who now stand neck-and-neck with the Tories on 40%.

The sad truth for Labour is that it has done nothing to merit this gain. Its Blairite leader, the erstwhile leading lawyer Keir Starmer, has wiped the floor with BoJo in parliamentary debate, but apart from trying to sideline the party’s Corbynites, he’s not made a single policy move or statement of significance since becoming leader.

The opportunism and unbearable lightness that was Tony Blair’s mantle may now descend on Starmer, by his own choice.

Relying on the Tory opposition to shoot themselves in the proverbial foot, which they’ve done repeatedly so far, can bring impressive but variable gains for now, but this Tory foot-shooting won’t fill Labour’s policy vacuum in the longer term.

As for the pandemic, in the last weekend of August, the UK recorded 1,715 Covid cases in largest weekend figure since mid-May.

The Twilight of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Melvin A. Goodman

It is time for the United States to debate the downsizing, if not the dissolution, of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  U.S. national security would be strengthened by the demise of NATO because Washington would no longer have to guarantee the security of 14 Central and East European nations, including the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.  European defense coordination and integration would be more manageable without the participation of authoritarian governments in Poland and Hungary.  Key West European nations presumably would favor getting out from under the use of U.S. military power in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia, which has made them feel as if they were “tins of shoe polish for American boots.”

Russia would obviously be a geopolitical winner in any weakening—let alone the demise—of NATO, but the fears of Russian military intervention outside of the Slavic community are exaggerated.  The East European and Baltic states would protest any weakening of NATO, but it would be an incentive for them to increase their own security cooperation.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created seven decades ago as a political and military alliance to “keep the United States in Europe; the Soviet Union out of Europe; and Germany down in Europe.”  The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989; the Warsaw Pact and the East European communist governments in 1990; and the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the high water mark for the alliance.

For the past three decades, however, the United States has weakened NATO by forcing a hurried and awkward expansion on the alliance.  Most recently in 2020, North Macedonia was admitted as its 30th member, further weakening the integrity of the alliance. Did President Donald Trump actually believe that the presence of North Macedonia as well as 13 other Central European states would strengthen U.S. security?

The enlargement of NATO demonstrated the strategic mishandling of Russia, which now finds the United States and Russia in a rivalry reminiscent of the Cold War.  President Bill Clinton was responsible for bringing former members of the Warsaw Pact into NATO, starting in the late-1990s; President George W. Bush introduced former republics of the Soviet Union in his first term.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel deserves credit for dissuading Bush from seeking membership for Ukraine and Georgia.

The United States justified the expansion of NATO as a way to create more liberal, democratic members, but this has not been the case for the East European members.  Russia, moreover, views the expansion as a return to containment and a threat to its national security. Russia was angered by the expansion from the outset, particularly since President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze that the United States wouldn’t “leap frog” over Germany if the Soviets pulled their 380,000 troops out of East Germany.

NATO’s success from 1949 to 1991 was marked by a common perception of the Soviet threat, which is the key to solidarity in any alliance framework.  In 2020, however, the 30 members of NATO no longer share a common perception of the Russian threat in Europe.  The United States has one view of Russia; the key nations of West Europe have a more benign view; and the East Europeans perceive a dire threat that the others do not share.  The United States has always expressed some dissatisfaction with the asymmetric burden sharing and risk sharing within the alliance, and the Trump administration has threatened to withdraw from NATO over the burden sharing issue.

Turkey has rapidly become the outlier within NATO, and there have been a series of confrontations in the eastern Mediterranean that threaten the integrity of the alliance.  Greek and Turkish warships collided in August, creating the first such confrontation between the two navies since 1996, when the Clinton administration mediated the problem.  The United States no longer acts in such diplomatic capacities, so French President Emmanuel Macron has stepped into the breach by sending jet aircraft to the Greek island of Crete as well as warships to exercise with the antiquated Greek navy.  Greece and Turkey, which joined NATO together in 1952, are rivals over economic zones in the Mediterranean where there are important deposits of oil and natural gas.  Greece and Turkey have squabbled since 1974 over the divided island of Cyprus.

Turkey and France have additional differences over Turkey’s violations of the UN arms embargo on Libya.  The two NATO allies had a confrontation in the Mediterranean when a French warship tried to inspect a Turkish vessel.  Last week, France joined military exercises with Greece and Italy in the eastern Mediterranean following a Turkish maritime violation of contested waters.  Paris backs Athens in the conflicting claims with Ankara over rights to potential hydrocarbon resources on the continental shelf in the Mediterranean.

President Macron took a particularly tough line in stating that he was setting “red lines” in the Mediterranean because the “Turks only consider and respect…a red-line policy,” adding that he “did it in Syria” as well.  Macron’s tough stance is somewhat surprising in view of the concern of France and other European NATO countries regarding Turkey’s ability to turn on the refugee spigot, which would cause economic problems in southern Europe.  Turkey has been using the refugee issue as leverage since 2015, when huge numbers of refugees in West Europe led to a rightward shift in European politics.

There is also the problem of Turkey’s purchase of the most sophisticated Russian air defense system, the S-400, which was developed to counter the world’s most sophisticated jet fighter, the U.S. F-35.  As a result of the purchase of the S-400 system, the United States reneged on the sale of eight F-35s to Turkey at a loss of $862 million, creating additional problems between Trump and Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey had planned to buy 100 F-35s over the next several years, and had begun pilot training in the United States.

Trump’s constant harangues about burden sharing have created more friction within NATO.  Trump falsely takes credit for increased European defense spending, but it was the Obama administration that successfully arranged greater Canadian and European defense spending in 2014 in the wake of Russia’s seizure of Crimea. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg panders regularly to Trump on the issue of increased defense spending, ignoring Trump’s false claims that NATO spending will increase by $400 billion annually.  The $400 billion is in fact the increased spending over an eight-year period.

With Trump’s drift toward isolationism and unilateralism (“America First”), there is incentive for the European Community to take control of its own “autonomous” defense policy.  The Europeans have reason to believe that a second presidential term for Trump could lead to a sudden U.S. withdrawal from NATO.  The unilateralist character of U.S. foreign and defense policy strengthens the case for building European defense cooperation along side of an undetermined transatlantic relationship with the United States.

Ecocide- A Sibling of Genocide

Bijit Das

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

-Voltaire

Humanity has been the witness of glory and upheavals since history. A history that has long been constructed to corner the reality that stalks now and then. Utmost resistance of reality also leads to an explosion, explosion of fragmented truth, which if given a shape from the understanding of Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” we can see that those fragments will have undifferentiated consciousness and later looking into the abyss of this consciousness we could gaze of underrating, in with the abyss gazes us with pure reason, a reason with certain limit and scope.

The truth that we are talking of is about environmental destruction generating destruction of civilization vis-a-vis the reverse. The literature on the expansion of cities, war, trade, demographic changes and migration speaks of human greed for existence and achieving the pleasure of assorted fetish.  In fact, surviving is every soul’s greed but achieving this in the context of another soul is a curse of Darwinian evolutionary praxis of “Survival of the Fittest”.

The colonial hard-headed truth of upholding iniquity against indigenous mortals with denial of rights has a legacy of victimisation. In parallel, it is also perceived that this inequality is also against the non-human species of the living and the non-living. The former scaffolds genocide and the later ecocide.

Human agency causing extensive impairment and destruction in the ecosystem of a territory leading to the diminishing of habitat and living of the inhabitants in the following territory falls under the realm of ecocide. Whereas, genocide refers to purposely wiping up a huge flock of people of a specific nationality, ethnicity, religion or race.

It is, however, perplexing that one is recognised by the human-created institution of law while the other is not. Law is yet to take crime against nature seriously for which the dark abyss stalks the institution and shows us a limit of metaphysics.

There has always been a cordial relationship between indigenous people and their land. However, due to the profit mongering of various agents, there is a separation between the two. And the destruction of one can lead to the destruction of another. The paradox of genetically modified crops for the farmers is not a new fact, so is the destruction of land and leading to the destruction of lives. However, understanding how the political economy works for fading away off resources and truth needs serious attention.

If we look colonialism in the purview of violence, harm, exploitation and victimization, we will know that a rat race for dominance over resources has played an important significance in holding ground for not letting people understand how crimes against the dispossessed are entwined with the crime against nature.

In various wars, because of bombing and explosions, ecosystems are being damaged causing the annihilation of living and non-living. The shadow of various wars on our planet, especially Vietnam cold war speaks of war against the unborn. Scientific glory in inventions like herbicides played a hidden role in the following war as a tactic against soldiers. Agent Orange, an organochlorine biocide blended with dioxin was used by the US military as a tactical commitment of unmasking the hidden Vietnamese fighters through demolishing crops and paddy fields.

The deadly toxic component notched into the Vietnamese population leading to the demise of thousands. This incident haunted the future generations because of the abnormalities caused by transmission of the harmful component from mothers to their foetus.

The saga of contemporary military actions carried out by various nations in the name of peace directed against those who violate and abuse of human rights, can also on contrary themselves deny and violate human and environmental rights. The functioning of defence and war produces various wastes. But in terms of dangerous and radioactive waste that causes harm, the seriousness of dumping those is questionable. Examples of disposing of radioactive waste into water bodies are not a new phenomenon, which can sometimes lead to damage to the marine ecosystem.

Environmental embeddedness of human and non-human are never acknowledged by the perpetrators of environmental destructions. Neither the full surmount of this relationship is acknowledged, nor the persona of capitalism and resource accumulation for yielding such menaces.

To understand the consortium of both ecocide and genocide, we have to perceive with attention on culture. Culture is the element that brings solidarity among the mass through its various instrumental projections of material and nonmaterial.

Culture foregrounds as a key concept in understanding the process of genocide. Because of the presence of the binding force between human beings, the destruction of a group of people can be led to genocide via the substantive passage of culture that is through conquering culture. This conquering of culture is done through conquering the fundamental organs which operates for the homeostatic equilibrium of our society.

These organs are the social, biological, economic and cultural.  Society functions through the independent and dependent functions of these organs. Therefore, an assault on any one of it might lead to lethally cripple the entire building of a society. And this can result in social death of a group. Thus homicide occurs at the level of targeting one or more organs leading to mass killing and erosion of society.  When land and ecosystem are encompassed within the realm of culture, the destruction of these identities can lead to social death too, which can lead to an ecologically induced genocide.

Among the ecocides and homicides happening in and around us, think tanks and governments have always induced for sustainable development which is an oxymoron because of the finite nature of the natural resources echoed by the ghost of Thomas Malthus since centuries and just the spirit of capitalism is simply ecologically unsustainable. Therefore sustainable development in the emancipation of capitalism is just an utopia.