Code Jam is back for its 19th year! Join the Code Jam community and take on a series of intriguing algorithmic puzzles designed by Google engineers. You’ll have a chance to earn the coveted title of Code Jam Champion and win $15,000 at the World Finals. What are you waiting for?
Google’s longest running global coding competition, Code Jam, calls on programmers around the world to solve challenging, algorithmic puzzles against the clock. Contestants advance through four online-hosted rounds to compete at the annual Code Jam World Finals that is held at a different international Google office each year.
Each round brings new challenges, and in the end 25 contestants will have the ultimate chance to put their skills to the test, vying for cash prizes and the coveted championship title at the World Finals.
What Type of Scholarship is this?
Contest
Who can apply for Google Code Jam?
You understand and acknowledge the age requirements specified in the Terms. You understand and acknowledge that you must be at least (18) years old or the age of majority in your country of residence (whichever is greater) at the time you register for the CJ Contest to be eligible to participate in the Final Round.
How are Applicants Selected?
Register and compete in Code Jam’s Online Qualification Round. It lasts 27 hours, but you won’t need that long to earn the round’s qualifying point minimum. Once you do, you’ll advance to Online Round 1. We offer three sub-rounds for Round 1, and you can compete in as many as it takes for you to finish in the top 1,500 of any of these rounds.
The top 1,500 from each sub-round move on to compete for a spot in the top 1,000 contestants of Code Jam Online Round 2. These top 1,000 contestants advance to Online Round 3 and earn a limited edition Code Jam t-shirt.
The top 25 contestants from Code Jam Online Round 3 will compete in the Virtual World Finals for the championship title and a cash prize of $15,000 USD.
Where will Award be Taken?
Online
What is the Benefit of Scholarship?
Code Jam T-Shirt: You are eligible to receive one (1) t-shirt if you are one of the 1,000 highest-ranked contestants from Code Jam Round 2.
Code Jam Cash Prizes: You are eligible to receive one of the following cash prizes if you advance to and make at least one submission in the Final Round of Code Jam.
Competitor Rank
Prize Money
1st Place
$15,000 USD
2nd Place
$2,000 USD
3rd Place
$1,000 USD
4th—25th Place
$100 USD
Goodies. Google may occasionally, and at its sole discretion, give away Google or Code Jam-branded objects, Google-related products, or other goodies (“Goodies”) to Final Round participants as part of their participation in the CJ Contest. These Goodies are not prizes and must not be treated as prizes by participants. Recipients of Goodies are responsible for ensuring that they comply with any applicable tax laws and filing requirements (if any).
How to Apply for Google Code Jam:
Interested candidates can register online via this page.
Tell Me About Swiss Gov’t Impact-Linked Fund for Education:
Despite strong progress over the past decades, ensuring an inclusive, quality education (SDG 4) to vulnerable children and youth across the globe is far from reality. The economic and social crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic aggravated this alarming gap. Even before the pandemic, high-impact enterprises already were important drivers of change, since they cover the unmet needs of students and teachers and offer high-quality, free, and often technology-enabled education solutions such as mobile-phone based learning or artificial intelligence assistance.
Getting access to capital is a challenge for these enterprises, though. This is why the Impact-Linked Fund for Education will provide suitable, innovative financing instruments in the form of Social Impact Incentives and Impact-Linked Loans to high-impact organizations offering inclusive and equitable education for vulnerable children and youth in MENA and West Africa Region. In addition, a substantial amount of the fund’s target volume will be reserved for technical assistance, research and advocacy measures, which will further boost the effectiveness of this innovative approach.
What Type of Scholarship is this?
Grants
Who can apply for Swiss Gov’t Impact-Linked Fund for Education?
Scope: The organization must be operational for at least three years and operate in one of the target countries (see below). In order to be eligible for SIINC, organizations must be seeking a repayable investment (e.g. debt, equity, etc.) in parallel. There are no specific additional requirements for the Impact-Linked Loans.
Business model: Although there are no specific constraints regarding the legal form, the organizations need to have a business model and generate revenues from their activities.
Financial sustainability: The objective of the ILF for Education program is to support organizations that will continue to generate positive impact long after the SIINC payments or the Impact-Linked Loan have ended. Thus, the organization must have either already achieved financial sustainability, or must have a clear plan for achieving it (through market-based commercial channels, public contracting, or other self-sustaining revenue generation activities).
Impact measurement: The support provided to the organization in this program takes the form of time-bound outcomes-based payments (for SIINC) or interest rate reductions (for Impact-Linked Loans), granted to incentivize positive social impact. In order to design a realistic incentive schedule, it is necessary to have baseline data related to the impact generated by the organization. In that respect, there are two possible scenarios:
(1) The organization already has baseline data of systematically tracked and reported impact indicators, which can act as a basis for structuring the SIINC payments or the Impact-Linked Loan.
The organization is immediately eligible to obtain impact-linked financing.
(2) The organization doesn’t yet have this track record, but is able and willing to put systems in place to develop it, and then continue monitoring the organization’s impact over time.
The Impact-Linked Fund for Education will provide TA (technical assistance) to high-potential companies in the form of training and support in developing personalized impact measurement systems. Such companies will then be eligible to obtain Impact-Linked Finance either via an accelerated process, or through a subsequent call for proposal, scheduled for July/August 2022.
Impact focus
Organizations that target vulnerable children and youth will be of particular interest. Organizations that do not have a specific impact focus are also eligible if they prove to be willing and able to deliver positive social outcomes for such target populations. The focus of the ILF for Education window lies around improving access to basic education, and learning outcomes of pre-primary, primary and secondary students (K12), including non-formal basic education opportunities (eg. accelerated or catch-up education, remedial education etc.). The window is also open to organizations contributing to bridging education gaps for youth and adults on skills such as literacy/numeracy.
While a technological aspect as part of the organization’s business model is appreciated (EdTech companies), we also encourage providers of non-technological products and services to apply as well.
Which Countries are Eligible?
Target countries: West Africa and MENA (Middle East and North Africa). More specifically, the following countries are in scope: West Africa: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger / MENA: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, Occupied Palestinian Territory.
How Many Grants will be Given?
Not specified
What is the Benefit of Swiss Gov’t Impact-Linked Fund for Education?
The overall objective of the ILF for Education is to provide impact-linked funding to impact organizations active in the Education sector in West Africa and the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa), thus enabling them to scale both in economic as well as impact terms. The fund will support impact organizations with two different Impact Linked Finance mechanisms: Social Impact Incentives (SIINC), and Impact-Linked Loans, for amounts ranging from USD 150K to USD 500K.
How to Apply for Swiss Gov’t Impact-Linked Fund for Education:
The decision by President Vladimir Putin to put Russia’s strategic nuclear forces on high alert is even more dangerous than it looks because it is an act of desperation. The nuclear threat is a reminder that Russia is still a great power to be feared, despite its multiple failures since it invaded Ukraine last week.
The invasion may only have happened last Thursday, but Russia is already weaker in the eyes of the world because it has not achieved its objectives. Its army has failed to take the larger Ukrainian cities and Ukrainian resisting has blocked the Russian advance on almost all fronts. Pictures of the smouldering wreckage of Russian armoured vehicles fill television screens nightly.
The Russian campaign plan apparently assumed a Blitzkrieg advance against negligible opposition, swiftly eliminating the Ukrainian political and military leadership. Mindless wishful thinking is the only reason why Putin could have imagined that an army of only 190,000 soldiers, many of them non-combatant cooks, drivers and the like, would be able to seize and occupy a country three times the size of Britain.
One Russian foreign policy expert, Andrei Kortunov of the Russian International Affairs Council, says that the Kremlin’s original plan was to get the whole operation wrapped up in two weeks. He adds that members of the Russian foreign ministry were “very surprised, shocked, even dismayed” by the decision, which they probably saw as the start of an unwinnable war.
The war is no longer solely about the future of Ukraine, but about the future of Putin, who is unlikely to survive a complete Russian fiasco. He not only gave the order to invade and occupy Ukraine but evidently expected a walk-over.
Everything he achieved or hoped to achieve in his 22 years in the Kremlin is unravelling at extraordinary speed. He said he wanted to prevent the spread of Nato eastwards, but he has ensured that Ukraine will in future be welded politically and militarily into Nato and the EU as they supply weapons and money. He had sought to take advantage of Western disunity in their relationship with Moscow, but now he has compelled Germany and France to take the same tough line towards Russia as the US and Britain.
The same is true on the home front. When Putin took over the Russian leadership in 1999, he was seen as a guarantee of stability who would put an end to the chaos of the Boris Yeltsin era. But on Monday, the Russian rouble dropped 25 percent in value and the Central Bank raised interest rates to 20 percent. Economic sanctions will hobble the economy for decades to come, and it may even have to pay reparations. As regards long-term impact, it is only this month that Iraq made the final compensation payment to Kuwait for the invasion 30 years ago, bringing total payment to $52.4bn (£40bn). How much might Russia have to pay for war damage in Ukraine?
The list of calamities that have already hit Russia, or may do so soon, leave Putin with only one policy option – which is to try to win a military victory in Ukraine so his invasion will not be seen as a complete disaster. There seems little chance of a ceasefire being negotiated at a meeting on the Ukraine-Belarus border today since Putin has been demanding a total capitulation by the Ukraine government and the surrender of its army.
Can Putin’s generals turn the military situation around at this stage? They have lost the advantage of surprise and Ukrainian military morale is high. President Volodymyr Zelensky is proving a vocal and inspirational leader. On the other hand, only 60 percent of the Russian forces surrounding Ukraine have been deployed and they have not used their heavy artillery or bombers to any significant extent.
They may be deployed in the next phase of the war, which could well be the siege of cities – notably the capital Kyiv with a population of 2.8 million and the second largest city, Kharkiv, in north-east Ukraine, with a population of 1.4 million. Perhaps the Russians could capture them using tanks and infantry alone, though this has not happened so far.
I reported on the siege of Mosul in northern Iraq over nine months in 2016/17, which inflicted horrific casualties on the civilian population and destroyed most of the Old City. This was because the advancing Iraqi army could only eliminate Islamic State fighters by calling in US air strikes or obliterating whole neighbourhoods with shells and rockets. The level of destruction in Raqqa, the Isis de facto capital in Syria, was even worse and for the same reason. Determined infantry dug into a city cannot easily be defeated without using massive fire power that inflicts heavy loss of civilian life.
The grim outcome of siege warfare in Iraq and Syria will not necessarily be re-enacted in Ukraine, but sieges like that of Beirut by Israel in 1982 and Grozny by Russia in 1999 likewise produced heavy destruction and many civilian casualties.
But the Ukrainians will be fighting for their cities before the eyes of a sympathetic world with the death or wounding of every civilian killed by a Russian shell recorded on a phone camera.
Putin has committed himself to an unwinnable war, but it is not clear if he knows this. At the start of the war he showed extreme overconfidence by asking the Ukrainian army to lay down its arms and for the overthrow of a “neo-Nazi” Ukrainian government. This showed almost total detachment from reality on the ground. Focus on Putin’s mental state diverts attention from the ominous fact that his going to war in Ukraine was always a mad venture – and he may use equally poor judgement when it comes to nuclear weapons.
Despite an overall fall in cases, the UK is still recording hundreds of thousands of COVID infections per week. In the seven days since February 24, the date on which all COVID restrictions were ended in England, 231,973 cases were recorded, and 741 deaths.
This is an underestimate, given that there is no systematic testing nationally, with universal contact tracing already ended. A more reliable picture of COVID prevalence is provided by the regular survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). According to the latest estimate, more than 2 million people had coronavirus infections last week.
People queuing outside a COVID test centre in east London, January 2022 (WSWS Media)
COVID deaths in Britain are officially counted by the government if someone dies within 28 days of a positive test. On this measure 161,630 people have already been killed by the virus. According to a more accurate ONS measure, which records mentions of COVID-19 as a cause on the death certificate, 183,579 have died up to February 18. According to the latter measure, 969 died in the week to February 18.
On February 28, Wales’s Labour Party-run government ended the legal requirement to wear a face mask in many indoor settings, including gyms, cinemas, theatres, community centres, and museums. After returning from half-term this week, secondary school pupils are no longer required to wear a mask in classroom settings. First Minister Mark Drakeford’s government plans to end the use of face masks in all settings by the end of March.
This week, Scotland’s Scottish National Party administration ended the requirement for secondary school pupils to wear face coverings in classrooms and for large venues to implement the vaccine passport scheme. All remaining coronavirus restrictions in Scotland will go on March 21.
Ending all restrictions, after almost 19 million people (almost 28 percent of the population) have recorded a COVID infection, lays the basis for a further spread of the disease and new mutations. By the start of this week, total cases just this year had reached 5.5 million in Britain, driven by the Omicron surge.
More evidence has emerged showing that deaths and cases disproportionately hit the most deprived working-class sections of the population. This week, the Independent newspaper reported on a COVID study by Colin Angus, a senior research fellow and health inequalities modeler at the University of Sheffield. It revealed that “a majority of hospital and at-home deaths—close to 25 percent, respectively—are occurring in the most deprived parts of England.”
The Independent noted, “At least 30 percent more coronavirus deaths have occurred in the most deprived areas of England since the turn of the year…”
“Of the 7,053 deaths registered in the six weeks after 1 January, 1,589 (22.5 percent) were from the most deprived 20 percent of the country, compared to 1,188 (16.8 percent) in the least deprived 20 percent.”
It added, “Such figures, which are only available to 11 February, are likely to underestimate the scale of Covid inequalities: the most deprived areas in England tend to be younger in age, while the least deprived have an older population, who are more vulnerable to coronavirus. Despite this, the poorest parts of the country still account for a higher proportion of deaths.”
The spread of COVID in the most deprived areas will only worsen as the UK’s governments end access to free testing for the general public on April 1, as well as sick payments for those ill with COVID forced to self-isolate. Researcher Angus commented that the “inequalities we’ve seen in recent months reflect the situation with free mass testing and mandatory self-isolation [emphasis added].” The Independent cited the Health Foundation charity saying that the “figures were ‘concerning and represent a warning sign that the virus may continue to have a disproportionate impact’ in the weeks and months to come.”
The same day as he terminated COVID restrictions, Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson told parliament, “We will also end self-isolation support payments, although COVID provisions for Statutory Sick Pay can still be claimed for a further month [March 24].”
During the pandemic, workers were allowed to claim statutory sick pay from their first day of absence. From March 24, employees off sick will be required to wait for four days to claim sick pay. The cancelled £500 Test and Trace Support Payment was available for those on low incomes required to self-isolate. The ending of even extremely limited support for those infected with COVID will force many to work while ill, jeopardising their health and their co-workers.
Johnson admitted that the last measures in place to protect against COVID were being scrapped due to their cost. He said, “The Testing, Tracing and Isolation budget in 2020-21 exceeded the entire budget of the Home Office. It cost a further £15.7 billion in this financial year, and £2 billion in January alone at the height of the Omicron wave. We must now scale this back.”
There is no such reluctance when it comes to upscaling spending on the military as the NATO confrontation with Russia escalates.
Justifying the measures, Johnson said, “I’ve often heard it said over the last couple of years that we have a habit of going back to work, or going into work, when we’re not well. And people contrast that with Germany for instance where, I’m told, they’re much more disciplined about not going to work if you’re sick.”
German employers are legally required to pay staff 100 percent of their wages for the first six weeks of sickness. In Britain, statutory sick pay paid by employers is set at just at just £96.35 a week, and only up to 28 weeks. The Guardian noted, “The proportion of a UK worker’s salary covered by sick pay is just 19%, according to the TUC [Trades Union Congress]. Rates are higher in Spain (42%), Sweden (64%) and Belgium (93%), with support only worse in South Korea and the US, where workers do not have a legal right to any sick pay at all.”
The final ripping up of all protections against COVID includes the axing of mandatory vaccination for social care workers in England on March 15. Care home staff were required to be vaccinated to work in the sector from last November. A proposed move to introduce the mandate for frontline NHS staff had already been abandoned.
Everything is being done to end any acknowledgement of the pandemic’s existence. For the first time, COVID cases and deaths were not officially reported this weekend, with those days’ cases instead added to Monday’s total.
All restrictions are being ditched despite warnings from the government’s own Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) last month that even under an “Optimistic” scenario there could be a “Seasonal wave of infections in Autumn/Winter with comparable size and realised severity to the current Omicron wave” in the next 12-18 months.
All scenarios modelled by SAGE “assume that SARS-CoV-2 will continue to circulate for the foreseeable future and that variants will emerge.” This week Dr Susan Hopkins, Chief Medical Advisor for the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA), said in relation to one of the Omicron variants, “We now know that BA.2 has an increased growth rate which can be seen in all regions in England. We have also learnt that BA.2 has a slightly higher secondary attack rate than BA.1 in households.”
“Our people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change. Nearly half of humanity is living in the danger zone now. Many ecosystems are at the point of no return now. The facts are undeniable,” Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations (UN) remarked in unveiling the latest international report on the impacts of climate change. “This abdication of leadership is criminal. The world’s biggest polluters are guilty of arson on our only home.”
These words by the UN chief reflect the conclusions of the most detailed examination to date of the ongoing impacts of climate change and the risks ahead. The new report, prepared by 270 scientists from 67 countries under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is the second of a three-part scientific assessment detailing, respectively, how our climate is changing, the impacts and solutions. This is the sixth such assessment since 1990.
Residents cross flooded fields following Cyclone Enawo in Madagascar's capital Antananarivo, on March 9, 2017(AP Photo/Alexander Joe, File)
The report represents another sounding of alarm bells that have rung since computer climate models were first developed in the 1970s and 80s. Any further delay in concerted global action on climate change, the report warns, means the world “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”
The invocation of a potentially “unliveable” future is backed up by the report’s contents, which clarifies that a humanitarian crisis is already unfolding.
“Increasing weather and climate extreme events,” the authors note, “have exposed millions of people to acute food insecurity and reduced water security.” In Africa, for instance, climate change has reduced agricultural productivity by 34 percent over the past six decades. Additional temperature increases will undermine food production and nutrition, especially in vulnerable countries, the report warns.
Further, climate change is “increasingly driving displacement in all regions, with small island states disproportionately affected.” In 2019 alone, 13 million people in Asia and Africa became climate refugees due to flooding and other extreme weather.
In every region of the globe, climate change has already had a major impact on health, including through heat waves, increased vector-borne disease, increased exposure to wildfire smoke, and the breakdown of health care systems during climate disasters. “Climate change and related extreme events will significantly increase ill health and premature deaths from the near- to long-term,” according to the report.
All told, an estimated 3.3 to 3.6 billion people “live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change.” By 2050—in less than three decades—the more than 1 billion people living in low-lying areas of coastal cities will face escalating threats from floods. By the end of the century, half to three-quarters of the world’s population could experience “life-threatening climatic conditions” due to unbearable heat and humidity.
Under such conditions, the ability to adapt to climate extremes reaches its limits. Nonetheless, large-scale measures to improve infrastructure to deal with heat waves, drought and flooding are urgently needed. Projects currently underway, the report notes however, have mostly been “fragmented, small in scale, incremental, sector-specific, designed to respond to current impacts or near-term risks, and focused more on planning rather than implementation.” Implementation of these projects is also highly unequal, with the “largest adaptation gaps exist[ing] among lower-income population groups.”
Attempts by capitalist governments to remedy this inequality through pledges of mutual aid and commitments by banks to invest in adaptation projects in developing countries have proven grossly inadequate. The devastating impacts of climate disasters are being felt disproportionately by the working class and the poor, particularly through more frequent and devastating extreme weather events such as hurricanes, wildfires and polar vortexes, to name a few.
The report also emphasizes the connection between the impacts on natural systems and human society. The destruction of ecosystems heightens our vulnerability to climate change, limiting adaptation possibilities. Conversely, the widespread pollution in the environment and destruction of habitats leads to increased susceptibility to climate change for the remaining ecosystems.
The consequences for biodiversity are staggering. The report notes that up to 14 percent of all terrestrial and freshwater species face extinction even if global temperatures are limited to an increase of 1.5 C. Under higher warming scenarios, nearly a third of these species could be lost forever. “Climate change has caused substantial damages and increasingly irreversible losses, in terrestrial, freshwater and coastal and open ocean marine ecosystems.”
To limit these catastrophic and irreversible impacts, every fraction of a degree and every year matters. The opportunity to limit warming to 1.5 degrees is still possible but rapidly fading. To get there, a 45 percent reduction in global emissions is needed over the next eight years. However, the current commitments by national governments reaffirmed in Glasgow last year, if met, amount to increased emissions by 14 percent over the same period.
The contrast between the trajectory of capitalism and what is needed to secure a future for humanity on earth is stark. The report comes as governments worldwide abandon any effort to contain a pandemic that has already killed millions and as the major powers ready their nuclear weapons.
The value of the IPCC assessment is not that leaders of capitalist governments will somehow be swayed into action by indisputable evidence of catastrophe on the horizon. Every report detailing with more certainty the grim consequences of climate change is met by utter failure in the annual climate summit rituals. The ruling class has proven its indifference to mass death.
Japan has backed the NATO-led war campaign against Russia, formally announcing a series of sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis on Tuesday. The decision followed an online meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, US President Joe Biden, and US allied leaders.
Kishida, from the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), stated after Tuesday’s meeting, “We’ve agreed on the need to take powerful sanctions against Russia.” He condemned Russian aggression declaring it “shakes the very foundations of the international order,” and supported united action by “the international community”—that is, the US and its allies.
A police officer goes through the gate of Russia's Central Bank building in Moscow, Russia. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
Japan will freeze the assets of six Russian individuals, including President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The sanctions also target three banks, Russia’s central bank and the stated-owned Promsvyazbank and Vnesheconombank. The sanctions include bans on exporting goods to 49 Russian organizations and bans on exporting any goods that could have military applications, such as semiconductors.
Prime Minister Kishida previously stated that Tokyo would join in blocking Russian banks’ access to the SWIFT international payment system that is essential for many international financial transactions. Japan will provide Ukraine with upwards of $US200 million in loans and aid.
The sanctions are part of Tokyo’s further alignment with Washington’s war drive against Russia as well as China. Kishida claims that Russia has acted unilaterally, but this stands reality on its head. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is a response to Washington’s campaign to surround Russia with NATO allies, complete with US weaponry and troops, and to the 2014 US-instigated coup in Kiev, backed by far-right forces.
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has seized on the Ukraine crisis as a means of pushing the right-wing nationalist agenda of Japanese remilitarization. He issued a call on February 27 for Japan to consider a nuclear weapon-sharing program between the US and Japan, similar to that between the US and NATO countries, that would allow Washington to station nuclear weapons in Japan.
Such a step would be a clear breach of Japan’s anti-nuclear policies that stem from the widespread opposition produced by the US atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Brushing that aside, Abe declared: “Japan is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has its three non-nuclear principles, but it should not treat as a taboo, discussions on the reality of how the world is kept safe.”
The three non-nuclear principles state that Japan will not possess, produce, or allow nuclear weapons on its territory, though the last of these has been violated in the past by the United States.
Well aware of the public opposition to any change, Kishida said Abe’s suggestion was “unacceptable.” However, Abe’s remarks make clear that these discussions are taking place behind closed doors. Abe remains a member of the National Diet’s House of Representatives and highly influential within the LDP, leading the largest faction in the party.
Japan’s main opposition parties, which posture against remilitarization and war, have also lined up with the Washington-NATO agenda. The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) and the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) have denounced Moscow as the sole aggressor and instigator of the current conflict in Ukraine.
On February 27, at its annual convention, the CDP adopted a resolution that condemned Russia’s actions “in the strongest terms” as “a challenge to the international order based on the rule of law, not only in Europe but also in Asia.” It went on to “support the Japanese government in taking measures consistent with the G7 and other international bodies for economic sanctions and humanitarian assistance.”
The CDP’s support for the “international order” and “rule of law” is backing for the US-dominated post-World War II order in which Washington rewrites the rules in its own national interests. While the Russian invasion of the Ukraine is reactionary, the chief responsibility for the war underway rests with US imperialism which has sought to provoke Russia into war by refusing to exclude the Ukraine from NATO. By including Asia in the statement, the CDP provides a justification for broader Japanese involvement in the current conflict.
The Japanese Stalinists in the JCP similarly seek to obscure the causes of the Russian invasion. In a February 24 statement, JCP Chairman Kazuo Shii issued a statement, saying, “The Japanese Communist Party strongly condemns [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine] as it is an obvious act of aggression… The JCP calls on the international community to unite against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and persuade Moscow to desist from further military operations in Ukraine.”
The appeal to the “international community” aligns the JCP with the US and its allies around the world that are chiefly responsible for provoking the war. Shii previously dismissed Russia’s concerns over NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe and potentially the Ukraine in a February 12 statement. “Moscow argues that NATO should halt its eastward expansion, but such an argument provides no justification for its recent actions,” he declared.
Shii papers over the entire 30-year history of the US and NATO since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The destruction of Yugoslavia and the bombing of Serbia, US imperialism’s wars of aggression throughout the Middle East, and the 2014 coup in Ukraine demonstrate that Washington has instigated conflict throughout the region, bringing it right to Russia’s doorstep.
Shii backs the US-led sanctions against Moscow, which are part of the ongoing campaign to wage open war with Russia and reduce the country to semi-colonial status. The JCP, which postures as an opponent of remilitarization and the US-Japan security treaty, becomes an open apologist for Washington’s imperialist appetites.
Neither the CDP nor the JCP are genuinely opposed to imperialist war, Tokyo’s remilitarization, or, above all, the war drive against China. Instead, they camouflage the predatory actions of Japanese and US imperialism and seek to prevent an anti-war movement of workers and youth from emerging.
Major Australian construction company Probuild confirmed Thursday morning last week that it would enter administration after its parent company, South Africa-based Wilson Bayly Holms-Ovcon (WBHO), declared it would “no longer provide financial assistance” to its Australian operations, effective immediately.
WBHO claims it has given 2 billion rand ($183 million) in financial assistance to its Australian arm over the past four years, which has “severely depleted” its resources and had a “significant” effect on its financial performance.
Probuild Construction site in Brisbane, Queensland [Source: Wikipedia Commons]
On Wednesday, February 23, workers were seen hurriedly packing up gear and tools and scrambling to exit Probuild sites across the country, after being ordered off by the company.
Workers were kept in the dark about the company’s intentions until the last minute. One worker leaving The Ribbon hotel project in Sydney told the media no one had been given any indication of when work might resume. He confirmed “there had been no hint of any problems with the company prior to Wednesday afternoon.”
Another worker, arriving at the CSL project site in Melbourne, said: “Just got told, ‘pack up your tools, we’re done here.’ Probuild has gone bust. No notice. Bit of a worry.” A tradesman leaving another site declared: “All the contractors are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars. No one’s going to get their money.”
WBHO Australia comprises 18 businesses, including Probuild, WBHO Infrastructure and Monaco Hickey. The company employs 750 people directly and has $5 billion worth of unfinished projects across three Australian states, including 13 in Victoria, 3 in NSW and 1 each in Queensland and Western Australia. The vast bulk of the work on these projects is carried out by numerous subcontractors, large and small, employing thousands of workers.
Responding to the news on Probuild, Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) Assistant Construction Division Secretary Nigel Davies said the union was “currently seeking information from Probuild to understand the company’s situation and any likely impact on workers.”
“Understanding the company’s situation” is standard language employed by unions to telegraph that they are ready to suppress workers’ opposition and work with administrators to slash jobs and cut costs to attract potential buyers or investors.
Reflecting the corporate elite’s hostility to COVID-19 public health measures that might in any way encroach on profits, WBHO sought to blame the Australian government’s so called “hardline approach” to “managing the pandemic” for its decision to deny further support to Probuild.
“Lockdown restrictions on retail, hotel and leisure and commercial office sectors of building markets created high levels of business uncertainty in Australia,” a WBHO spokesman claimed. This “had significantly reduced demand and delayed the award of new projects in these key sectors of the construction industry.”
The reality is, for almost the entire duration of the pandemic, Australia’s state and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, have exempted the construction sector from lockdowns and other restrictions. In line with the demands of big business that profits must not be impeded, workers have been herded onto job sites, endangering their health and lives and furthering the spread of the deadly virus. The CFMEU, like all other unions, has played a leading role in enforcing this murderous “let it rip” agenda.
It is true that COVID-19 has exacerbated problems in global supply chains, delaying shipments and increasing the price of essential materials across every industrial sector. Procurement issues pose serious problems for the construction sector, where building companies are working to meet extremely tight progress deadlines, often with financial penalties.
In the construction industry, as in almost every aspect of capitalism, the pandemic has revealed and deepened the underlying fragility of the system.
The Probuild crisis is the latest in a series of collapses across the construction sector, including the liquidation of giant project builder Grocon in 2020. Left in the hands of capitalist investors concerned only with profit, many more enterprises are set to go to the wall with a devastating impact on the lives of workers.
A recent report by the Housing Industry Association found that the current construction boom will likely end by the middle of 2022 and described the almost 33 percent rise in building projects since 2019 as unsustainable.
In January 2021, the Liberal-National federal government’s Foreign Investment Review Board ruled against a $300 million bid by the China State Construction Engineering Corporation to buy Probuild after federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg indicated he would reject it.
The bid was torpedoed in line with the government’s drive to block Chinese investment in Australia on spurious national security grounds, as part of its ramping up of anti-China sentiment in preparation for US-led military conflict with Beijing. At the time, Probuild Executive Chairman Simon Gray said despite the loss of “fresh investment” from the large Chinese company, the Australian business could still rely on continued support from WBHO.
Melbourne-headquartered Probuild, one of Australia’s largest construction companies, turned a profit of $4 million off revenue of $1.3 billion last year, down from $2.4 billion in revenue in 2019-2020. While the full extent of Probuild’s unpaid debts have not yet been made known, the company reportedly had liabilities worth $401 million last year, $311.6 million of which were listed in its annual accounts as “trade and other payables.”
Probuild has appointed Deloitte Australia as administrator, which has declared it will “be working closely” with the company on a number of plans, including “looking to secure a new owner for the business” and “commencing a sale and recapitalisation process”
Deloitte is well known for its ruthless handling of company collapses, including initiating massive job cuts along with the carving up and flogging off of assets to pay out secured creditors such as banks and large financial investors. Workers and small unsecured creditors, on the other hand, end up with nothing or receive a fraction of what they are owed after being kept waiting for months on end.
The company was appointed as administrator in the aftermath of Virgin Australia’s collapse in 2020. As part of Deloitte’s bid to find a new owner and recapitalise the airline, 3,000 jobs were axed—one third of the workforce—and the carrier’s low-cost airline TigerAir was liquidated, destroying hundreds of jobs. Deloitte’s cost-cutting operation to prepare the $3.5 billion sale of Virgin to private equity firm and corporate raider Bain Capital was fully supported by the airline unions.
With Probuild, the ruling elite is yet again determined to make the working class pay for the financial decisions and misadventures of multinational companies in which they have no say. As the Australian construction boom hurtles towards bust, the assault on workers’ jobs, pay and conditions will only deepen.
Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias (Wikimedia Commons)
Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government is fully engaged in NATO’s war drive to war with Russia over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Founded in 2014 by petty-bourgeois Stalinist and Pabloite forces that joined protests against the US-led 2003 Iraq war, Podemos boasted that it entered politics to “democratise” Spanish and European society and re-distribute wealth to the poorest. In government, Podemos has emerged as a militarist, pro-NATO party whose policies against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threaten to provoke a NATO war with Russia.
In January, Podemos cynically postured as a critic of the actions of the government of which it is a part, including the sending of Spanish warships to the Black Sea and fighter jets to Romania. However, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Thursday—the reactionary response of the Putin regime to NATO’s imperialist encirclement of Russia—Podemos has junked its empty criticisms and lined up behind the war drive.
Amid deep opposition to war, with over half the population and two-thirds of youth opposed to sending troops to Ukraine, Podemos does not want to accidentally trigger an anti-war movement.
Instead, on Thursday, Podemos ministers went into action to support NATO’s military threats and its refusal to negotiate with Russia. Público reported that Podemos “sources consulted by Público stress that there is a clear message of ‘unity’ on the matter, and there are no divisions with the [PSOE] socialist wing” of the government.
Deputy Prime Minister and presumptive future Podemos candidate Yolanda DÃaz said, “We roundly condemn this attack and believe that the only way is diplomacy and international legality.” She then joined the National Security Council to discuss Spain’s role in NATO and the European Union (EU) to escalate tensions against Russia, including sanctions and arming Ukraine.
The Minister of Consumer Affairs and leader of the Stalinist-led United Left, part of Podemos, Alberto Garzón, tweeted: “My solidarity with the Ukrainian working people, who are suffering from imperialist aggression by Russia. An attack that violates international law and previous agreements reached to preserve peace.”
In a statement, Podemos declared: “We strongly denounce the Russian military attack and urge its immediate cessation.” It added, “We demand a military de-escalation and tension on all sides that reduces the risk of a war escalation in Europe.” It concludes, “The memory of the mobilizations of the citizens against the war force the [Spanish] Government to work within the European Union and under the United Nations for the end of the war and the maintenance of peace.”
This cynical posturing comes from representatives of Spanish imperialism and the NATO alliance, which goaded Russia to invade Ukraine. Madrid is currently providing nearly 800 soldiers on Russia’s borders in Eastern Europe. The largest contingent is in Latvia, where it has maintained 350 soldiers since 2017, equipped with six Leopardo battle tanks and 15 Pizarro armored vehicles. The Spanish soldiers are part of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence operation and of a multinational battalion under Canadian command. On Tuesday, Spain sent an additional 150 troops.
In addition, Madrid has four Eurofighter jets and 130 soldiers at NATO’s Graf Ignatievo base in Bulgaria. Supposedly to defend Bulgarian airspace, Spanish jets routinely extend their flight missions 150 kilometers into the Black Sea to face Russian jets. Finally, the Spanish Navy participates with three ships in two permanent NATO naval groups in Eastern Europe.
When Podemos entered government in January 2019, it carefully avoided proposing to withdraw these troops and ending the provocative encirclement of Russia. Instead, in December 2021, its ministers participated in a meeting to approve additional mechanized units, combat aircraft and ship deployments in Eastern Europe.
Podemos now defends crippling economic sanctions against Russia that, together with NATO military action, threatens to escalate the Russian war in Ukraine into a global NATO-Russia war. It also defends sending weapons to the pro-NATO Kiev regime through the EU, cynically presenting it as more “progressive” than Spain sending these directly.
On Tuesday, Podemos parliamentary spokesperson Jaume Asens said it is “legitimate for the international community to provide aid to the [Ukrainian] state under attack.” Asens then joined the capitalist press in comparing the Russian war in Ukraine to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939.
In fact, in this conflict, the NATO imperialist powers are indubitably the main aggressor, having worked systematically to encircle and threaten Russia since the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union 30 years ago.
Podemos itself is pro-war party tied to all Spanish imperialism’s recent crimes. Before taking power with the PSOE, it recruited leading officers, including former Air Force General and Chief of the Defence Staff Julio RodrÃguez, who led the Spanish army’s participation in the US-led neo-colonial wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. RodrÃguez is now a leading member of Podemos and the Deputy Prime Minister’s chief of staff.
Once in power, Podemos has aligned itself ever more closely with NATO wars in the Middle East, pledged to keep the four US military bases in Spain, and supported the increase of Spain’s weapons sales to a record €22.5 billion, including to Saudi Arabia in its bloody war against Yemen. It has also voted for the latest military budget, which rose 9.4 percent last year, beating its earlier record rise from €19.7 billion in 2020 to €21.6 billion in 2021.
Podemos’ bellicose stance is applauded in the bourgeois press. El PaÃs wrote, “Far from making noise, the Podemos’ ministers, who in January publicly disagreed with the PSOE by criticizing the sending of troops to Eastern Europe, have appealed this time to ‘diplomacy’ and ‘respect for international legality’ as the only way to resolve the conflict.”
20 Minutos wrote, “Podemos reacted quickly … to make clear the unity” with the PSOE “on the Russian invasion, especially after the clash with [Defence Minister Margarita] Robles” in January.
As Podemos promoted the war drive against Russia, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, PSOE, was busy phoning Spain’s former prime ministers. This included Felipe González (1982-1996), who sent troops to Iraq in the first Gulf War (1991), Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992–1996) and Kosovo (1998-1999); Jose MarÃa Aznar (1996-2004), despised for participating in the Afghan and Iraq wars, that led to over a million deaths; and Jose LuÃs RodrÃguez Zapatero, who joined the 2011 NATO war in Libya that cost 30,000 lives, including the torture and murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
This list of calls, the pro-PSOE daily El PaÃs wrote, “has great symbolic value and shows the seriousness of the situation and the prime minister’s willingness to involve all his predecessors.”
The ruling class is using the war to cover up its prioritising of profits over lives in the pandemic, which led to over 122,000 deaths in Spain, savage austerity to pay for the EU bailouts, and rising inflation.
There is deep, historically rooted opposition in the working class in Spain and internationally to militarism and war threats against Russia. However, building an anti-war movement in the European and international working class requires a ruthless break with middle class, pro-imperialist parties like Podemos. It aims to isolate and suppress mass anti-war sentiment. If Podemos supports nominally “anti-war” protests this year, it will be to denounce Russia as fully responsible for the war in Ukraine and use it to escalate threats against Russia.
