Throughout June, applications are open for the i-COOP 2022 Call , organized by the Spanish Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). The call seeks to stimulate, through its own resources, collaboration between CSIC research groups and others in countries that receive ODA (Official Development Assistance), through training, work and specialization stays for the research groups of the entities participants.
In this call, a maximum of 28 grants will be awarded for up to €24,000 each, disbursable over two years (€12,000 per year) for the two types of actions contemplated:
Modality A: aimed at carrying out stays in institutes, centers or units (ICUs) of the CSIC for research personnel in training who are developing their doctoral thesis in a foreign institution from countries that receive ODA. Those proposals that propose the co-supervision of the doctoral thesis by the researcher responsible for the participating CSIC team will be positively valued.
Modality B: scientific cooperation through stays for scientific and technical personnel for specialized scientific-technical training, training in the use of advanced instrumentation, planning of academic programs, including postgraduate and doctoral degrees, and scientific collaboration.
What Type of Scholarship is this?
Research
Who can apply?
The call is open to any thematic area developed by the CSIC research groups, and the international collaborating groups must belong to countries receiving Official Development Assistance (ODA) according to the list established by the Development Assistance Committee (CAD) of the OECD and that includes Peru.
Which Countries are Eligible?
Developing countries
Where will Award be Taken?
Spain
How Many Scholarships will be Given?
28
What is the Benefit of Scholarship?
€12,000 per year
How Long will Program Last?
2 years
How to Apply for Scholarship?
Access to the information and documentation necessary for the presentation of proposals is enabled through the application
next June 30 at 11:59 p.m. in Spain . Prior to entering the platform, applicants must create their user on the CSIC website, through the following link:
Application Deadline: 15th June 2022 before 1pm CAT.
About the Award: This year, the IFCD joins the celebration of the International Year of the Creative Economy for Sustainable Development by calling for projects aiming to make strong contributions to the creative economy in developing countries that are parties to the 2005 Convention.
Type: Grants
Eligibility: The call is open to public institutions and NGOs from eligible countries, as well as international NGOs registered in countries that are parties to the 2005 Convention.
The proposals must fall within the following domains:
Music
Performing Arts
Cinema / Audiovisual Arts
Visual Arts
Publishing
Design
Media Arts
Project eligibility:
The projects must clearly lead to structural changes through:
Introduction and/or elaboration of policies and strategies that have a direct and structural impact on the creation, production, distribution of and access to a diversity of cultural goods and services
Reinforcement of skills in the public sector and civil society organisations to support viable local and regional cultural industries and markets in developing countries.
All projects will ultimately contribute to a sustainable creative ecosystem and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda of the United Nations.
Eligible Countries: Eligible African countries include Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Congo, DRC, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, eSwatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, South Africa, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
Ishango.ai in collaboration with DataQuest are providing aspiring African female data scientists with a time-limited scholarship to improve their Data Science knowledge and experience by taking courses on the DataQuest platform.
Dataquest will provide four hundred scholarships to Ishango.ai to support the growth of data science talent in Africa. Scholarship recipients from across Africa will receive access to Dataquest data science courses, which will prepare them for a career in the data industry. The partnership with Dataquest will help to further Ishango.ai’s mission to put African data science talent on the global map and create data jobs in the region.
What Type of Scholarship is this?
Training
Who can apply?
Aspiring African female data scientists can apply for the Ishango/Data Quest training.
Spain, Thailand, Germany, Japan, Netherlands — The word has gone out that every government can buy a lot more weapons with either no debate at all or with all debate shut down by a single word: Russia. Do a web search for “weapons buying” and you’ll find story after story about U.S. residents solving their personal problems the way their government does. But search for the secret code words “defense spending” and the headlines look like a united global community of nations each doing its important bit to enrich the merchants of death.
Weapons companies don’t mind. Their stocks are soaring. U.S. weapons exports exceed those of the next five leading weapons-dealing countries. The top seven countries account for 84% of weapons exports. Second place in international weapons dealing, held by Russia for the previous seven years, was taken over in 2021 by France. The only overlap between significant weapons dealing and where wars are present is in Ukraine and Russia — two countries impacted by a war widely recognized as outside the norm and meriting serious media coverage of the victims. In most years no nations with wars present are weapons dealers. Some nations get wars, others profit from wars.
In many cases, when nations increase their military spending, it’s understood as fulfilling a commitment to the U.S. government. The Prime Minister of Japan, for example, has promised Joe Biden that Japan will spend a lot more. Other times, its a commitment to NATO that’s discussed by weapons-buying governments. In U.S. minds, President Trump was anti-NATO and President Biden pro-NATO. But both advanced the identical demand of NATO members: buy more weapons. And both had success, although neither has come anywhere close to boosting NATO in the way that Russia has.
But getting other countries even to double their military spending is pocket change. The big bucks always come from the U.S. government itself, which spends more than the next 10 countries combined, 8 of those 10 being U.S. weapons customers pressured by the U.S. to spend more. According to most U.S. media outlets . . . nothing is happening. Other countries are boosting their so-called “defense spending,” but nothing whatsoever is happening in the United States, although there was that little $40 billion gift of “aid” to Ukraine recently.
But in weapons-company-advertisement-space outlet Politico, another big boost in U.S. military spending is coming soon, and the question of whether to increase or decrease the military budget has already been pre-decided: “Democrats will be forced to either back Biden’s blueprint or — as they did last year — ladle on billions more in military spending.” Biden’s blueprint is for yet another big increase, at least in dollar figures. The favorite topic of the “news” generated by weapons-funded stink tanks and former Pentagon employees and military media is inflation.
So, let’s take a look at U.S. military spending over the years (available data goes back to 1949), adjusted for inflation and using 2020 dollars for every year. In those terms, the high point was reached when Barack Obama was in the White House. But the budgets of recent years far exceed any other point in the past, including the Reagan years, including the Vietnam years, and including the Korea years. Returning to the pre-Endless War on Terror spending level would mean about a $300 billion cut rather than the usual $30 billion increase. Returning to the level of that golden day of conservative righteousness, 1950, would mean a reduction of about $600 billion.
The reasons to increase military spending include: lots of election campaigns are funded by weapons dealers.
So, of course, there’s no debate. A debate that cannot be had must simply be declared over before it begins. Media outlets universally agree. The White House agrees. The whole of Congress agrees. Not a single caucus or Congress Member is organizing to vote No on military spending unless it’s reduced. Even peace groups agree. They almost universally call military spending “defense,” despite not being paid a dime to do so, and they’re putting out joint statements opposing increases but refusing to even mention the possibility of decreases. After all, that’s been placed outside the acceptable range of opinion.
Richard E. Neal’s recent visit to Ireland was a debacle. Last month, Neal, Democrat chair of the powerful US Congress House Committee of Ways and Means, led a nine-strong team of both Democrats and Republicans hoping to press the British government into finding an agreement acceptable to the European Union (EU) and the Irish government over the Northern Ireland protocol.
Neal was met with extraordinary hostility from Northern Ireland’s unionist parties, even to the point of threatening the delegation’s security—a stand given tacit support by the Johnson government in Westminster.
US Congressman Richard Neal, center, speaks to the media at Parliament Buildings, Stormont, Belfast, Northern Ireland, Thursday May, 26, 2022. The US Delegation led by Congressman Richard Neal met with with political leaders to discuss the row around the Northern Ireland Protocol related to Brexit. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
The Northern Ireland protocol component of Britain’s Withdrawal Agreement from the EU has effectively instituted EU checks on commerce across the Irish Sea. The Johnson government agreed it as a compromise intended to avoid the return of a “hard” trade border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It is viewed by unionists as an existential threat to their position within the UK, with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) suspending participation in the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive and demanding the protocol is dropped before either institution can re-open.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s beleaguered premiership increasingly depends on the support of the party’s most fervent Brexiteers. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss therefore announced, shortly before Neal’s visit, her intention to legislate “in the coming weeks” for changes to the protocol without any agreement from the EU. The position was reiterated yesterday by Johnson, after he narrowly defeated a vote of no confidence on Monday evening. He calculates that the protocol issue will keep his loyalists on board, while dividing his opponents. Those who voted against his premiership represent an uneasy coalition between a section of the party’s hard right and what remains of its anti-Brexit wing who are desperate to avoid trade war with the European Union and the wrath of Washington this brings with it.
Truss’s proposed solutions to the protocol involve setting up two channels for goods, with “green” goods destined only for Northern Ireland not checked. It is a measure of the crisis that former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, who boasts of being the architect of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) ending Northern Ireland’s three decades of civil war, has issued his own proposals to “obviate the vast majority of checks on goods moving between Britain and Northern Ireland, provide a compromise on the involvement of the Court of Justice of the EU, and give greater opportunities for consultation on draft EU laws affecting Northern Ireland to representatives from all sides of the community.” This would give Johnson and the unionists much of what they want, while hopefully keeping the lid on tensions with the EU.
The Biden administration views the UK/EU falling out with alarm. As well as threatening its vast Ireland-based financial interests by destabilising the GFA, the row sets its British and European allies against each other. The NATO-Russia war in Ukraine has dramatically intensified concerns, prompting the dispatch of Neal’s delegation. Neal told the Financial Times May 20, prior to his visit, that the “onus and spotlight” was on Britain, warning that the UK was taking the GFA for granted. He opposed unilateral UK legislation warning, “We don’t believe that Ireland should be held hostage to turbulence in the UK political structure.”
Neal, head of the Friends of Ireland in the US Congress, would have expected at least a polite reception in line with the United States’ overwhelming influence in the South, its strategic alliance with the UK and role in orchestrating the GFA. In 1995, the US appointed Democrat George Mitchell as Special Envoy for Northern Ireland. The GFA he helped negotiate laid the basis for Sinn Féin to participate in power sharing in the North, along with the unionists.
It is a mark of the collapse in transatlantic relations over the protocol that, from the first, Neal was denounced from all quarters of unionism, while the Johnson government said nothing. DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson took calculated offense at Neal’s statement that the GFA was based on “accepting the notion that we could make space for the Planter [Protestant settlers from England and Scotland] and the Gael to live together.” He responded by accusing Neal of “the most undiplomatic visit I have ever seen to these shores.”
Former Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster, writing in the Express May 25, denounced the Biden administration for claiming to be “protecting the Belfast Agreement [GFA] when it is clear for all to see that they are only interested in looking after those who would seek to wipe Northern Ireland from the map.” Days later, Foster was awarded with a Damehood by the queen.
On June 1, Conor Burns, a Northern Ireland minister and close ally of Johnson, visited Washington where he asked, “How is the Good Friday Agreement protected if the institutions born of the Good Friday Agreement don’t exist?”
Other events point to an extraordinary breakdown in security cooperation and implicit threats of loyalist violence against Neal and his entourage. On May 24, the Belfast Telegraph was “alerted” to a barely reported security breach, with precise venues, travel times and details of private meetings being held by Neal and his delegation having “somehow fallen into the hands of loyalist paramilitaries”. Details of Neal’s itinerary had only been released to senior Northern Ireland Office officials, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and Neal’s own delegation. The British state has a long history of infiltrating loyalist paramilitary groups and colluding with their activities.
The threat to Neal came only weeks after Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney was forced to suddenly abandon a speech he had been making at a “peace and reconciliation” event in North Belfast. The loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was thought to be behind an incident in which a van driver was forced at gunpoint to drive his vehicle, containing what he thought was a bomb, towards where Coveney was speaking. The device turned out to be a fake.
The Sunday Independent quoted a UVF member threatening to “escalate” threats against “all politicians and officials visiting from Dublin”. A senior Ulster Defence Association (UDA) member told the newspaper of a “two stage strategy” against the protocol: “One is politics, the other is political violence”.
The fact that loyalist paramilitary groups, tied to the top echelons of unionism and the British state, are making such threats is a serious warning that sectarian conflict could re-erupt amid the desperate crisis of unionism, British imperialism and the Johnson government.
Neal’s trip was followed by one of the largest Orange Order demonstrations in years. On May 28, up to 20,000 loyalist band members and supporters of the sectarian organisation, watched by up to 100,000 flag-waving spectators, including the entire unionist political hierarchy and at least one former UDA assassin, marched from Stormont to Belfast city centre to mark the centenary of Northern Ireland’s bloody founding amid the pogroms of the 1921 partition crisis.
Mervyn Gibson, Grand Secretary of the Orange Order and former detective sergeant of the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch, attacked the protocol, declaring, “Let us make it very simple for our European neighbours, not least those on the other side of the border in the Republic of Ireland... We will not tolerate any system, process or structure that will allow checks on any goods trading within the UK for use within the UK.” He concluded, “And the cry to those who seek to persuade us, protocol or push us into a united Ireland, is still the same: no surrender.” Gibson was given an MBE (The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) by the queen.
Pay disputes among refuse collectors are spreading, with new ballots and actions springing up nationwide.
Workers at Wealden Council, Sussex voted again to continue their strike, until June 25. In Coventry, workers have voted 100 percent to extend their strike, begun in January, throughout the summer.
Isle of Wight refuse workers begin a two-week strike next Monday. Workers at Rhondda Cynon Taff in South Wales have voted overwhelmingly for strike action. Workers in Chesterfield are being balloted for action after a 100 percent rejection of employer Veolia’s 4.48 percent pay offer.
The disputes are meeting an aggressive response from the ruling class, with police attacks on pickets and a bitter propaganda campaign against any pay claims.
On the Isle of Wight, Amey refuses to engage in collective bargaining with the union, insisting on direct contact with workers. Veolia told Chesterfield workers it would offer them a higher but still below-inflation six percent deal if they left the GMB.
Yet, faced with the clear need to unite and coordinate their disputes, refuse workers find their actions consistently undermined and isolated by trade unions.
Strikers on the refuse workers picket line at the Whitley depot in Coventry (Credit: WSWS Media) [Photo: WSWS]
Conservative campaigners at last month’s local elections accused Labour of having supported bin strikes, but Labour has led the way against strikers. Labour-run Coventry city council is mounting a wholesale scabbing operation. Union reps have been suspended, and police and security guards deployed against pickets.
Pay disputes are escalating as the cost-of-living crisis bites harder. Last year, councils implemented a local government workers’ pay rise cap of 1.75 percent, negotiated by the National Joint Council for Local Government Services—a joint negotiating body of 12 employers’ representatives and 58 trade unions.
When this was negotiated, inflation was already 2.9 percent, making any union-agreed “rise” a real-terms cut. RPI inflation has now topped 11 percent. Directly employed council workers have struck against these conditions. Similar deals have also been offered by the private companies providing outsourced services, offering different terms to workers in different areas.
Most of the workers employed by Biffa for Conservative-run Wealden council earn less than £10 an hour. They are demanding rises to hourly rates of £12.50 for loaders, £14.50 for Light Good Vehicle drivers and £17.50 for Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) drivers.
On May 26, they voted 98 percent to reject the latest pay offer, described by Biffa as “17 percent for this year and a minimum of seven percent next year, a cash lump sum, and pay parity with the other two councils in the East Sussex contract.” It was previously reported that the £600 lump sum was performance related.
Action began at Wealden at the end of April, although the GMB suspended its start following an eleventh hour pay offer that even they acknowledged was “well short of our members’ expectations for sure.”
After workers rejected the latest offer, in an attack on the right to strike, a “dozen police … with at least 3 vans” descended on a legal peaceful picket and arrested three officials on suspicion of “obstructing the highway.”
The strike, extended to June 11 following rejection of the offer, has since been extended again until June 25.
Although nominally a dispute with a private contractor, they have the full endorsement of the council. The council told local press Biffa had “made several improved offers to end this strike.” They accused the GMB of making “little movement on pay demands” even as a police attack on strikers was being launched.
The union has been at pains to wind up the dispute, from its initial suspension of the action onwards. When the latest offer was rejected, GMB officer Gary Palmer pledged, “We aren’t that far away from a deal and our door remains open.”
The union has pinned its hopes on the government mediation service ACAS, a tried and tested method of suppressing workers’ struggles based on management-union cooperation.
The likely outcome can be seen from Coventry, where Unite the union mounted no direct challenge to the council’s scabbing operation. Instead, it tied the workers to ACAS, which predictably ruled in favour of the council.
The police attack at Wealden highlights how determined the employers are to offer no concessions. When local Tory MP Maria Caulfield offered to mediate in the dispute, Biffa rejected the overture, while the GMB welcomed the additional layer of corporatist integration.
Workers can put no faith in such manoeuvres designed to disarm their struggle. The Coventry workers are determined to fight, as their 100 percent vote to continue action demonstrates. But Unite is tying their hands behind their back. Announcing the extension of the strike, Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said, “They have their union’s backing all the way.”
Despite such talk, Unite and other unions have isolated disputes and negotiated different deals, which have been used by employers to challenge pay claims.
Refuse workers in Northampton were due to strike last month at contractor Veolia, having turned down a real-terms pay cut. The GMB accused Veolia of failing to pass on a 5.5 percent increase in their council funding to workers. The two-year deal they then accepted saw loaders’ pay rise to £10 per hour and drivers’ to £12.
The deal has been cited as a precedent against GMB members seeking higher rates.
On the Isle of Wight, workers at Amey, the council’s waste contractor, rejected a below-inflation 4.21 percent pay rise. The proposed pay increase only raised their pay to the rate Amey advertised for a trainee HGV driver in Surrey. The GMB appealed to Amey “to simply do the right thing.”
GMB members voted by 90.5 percent on a 77.8 percent turnout for strike action. They are seeking pay rates of £12.50 per hour for loaders/pickers, £13.25 for cage drivers and driver and grab operatives, and £15 for HGV drivers, but the company is pointing to the Northampton deal.
Unite has reached similar agreements. Refuse workers in Rugby came out on strike against a 1.75 percent pay rise on April 26 and had voted to extend the action into June. Some of the workers were having to use foodbanks and Chesterfield workers are reportedly having to work second jobs to make ends meet.
Rugby workers have now accepted a new offer, which Unite presents as a “pay victory.” The annual rates have risen to £30,940 for drivers, £24,018 for loaders, and £24,587 for street cleaners. These have been touted as a 12 percent rise for some, but the rise varies across grades, with some workers still facing a below-inflation deal.
Unite claimed it did bring the Rugby strikers together with other workers, but there was no integration of the strike even with the ongoing action in Coventry, 15 miles away. Unite’s Onay Kasab made clear the union’s “new strategy” was only to “coordinate and share information,” not to combine their struggles.
Strikers in Rugby and Coventry were convinced their employers were coordinating efforts to break their strikes, but the union did nothing to consolidate their actions. The GMB noted that discontent has spread through Sussex as workers have compared conditions and noted that their “key worker” status during the pandemic did not translate into a living wage.
Ballots and disputes have spread throughout the county, from Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, Adur and Worthing to Wealden, with votes also taking place in Littlehampton. The GMB has kept these disputes separate, negotiating different deals where it could.
The plans of Spain’s ruling Podemos party to participate in the May 28-30 NATO summit in Madrid irrefutably exposes this reactionary pseudo-left party of Spanish imperialism.
In Madrid, this world’s largest military organization—responsible for the deaths of millions and the devastation of countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, and now waging war against Russia in Ukraine—will lay out plans for war with Russia and China. Japan, a non-NATO member state at the centre of Washington’s plans against China in the Asia-Pacific, will also attend. At the conference, Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government is to announce a doubling of its military budget to €24 billion, the largest military spending increase in Spain’s history.
The PSOE-Podemos government intends to use the summit to call for a military escalation targeting Africa, the source of much Spain’s oil and gas. Already at the Davos summit, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez declared: “For Spain it is very important that the NATO Summit in Madrid sends a strong message about its southern flank. We have to deal with the security challenge on the eastern flank, but also the security concerns on the southern flank.”
The middle class operatives who run Podemos are now trying to square the circle, trying to present it as both a party of the left and of opposition to NATO, and of support for NATO war. At the same time, they are spending tens of millions of euros to deploy 25,000 police officers to downtown Madrid, which is to be turned into a fortress to insulate NATO delegates from social protest.
Last week, Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz, the likely candidate of Podemos in next year’s general elections, skipped the conference on the 40th anniversary of Spain’s entry into NATO. At the conference, Sánchez reaffirmed Spain’s loyalty to NATO and discussed military spending increases to 300 army officials, ambassadors, big businessmen and politicians. Díaz claimed she missed the conference due to a medical appointment.
Soon after, Podemos co-spokesperson Javier Sánchez Serna stated: “No Podemos minister has gone to that event today, because we are in defence of peace and we defend a conception of security that is not only based on military means, but comprehensive, which also involves providing social rights to all European societies.”
Díaz responded by immediately contradicting Serna, however, saying she has not ruled out attending the NATO summit, and that she will decide when the “agenda” is known.
Podemos general secretary and Minister for Social Rights Ione Belarra then intervened, stating: “I’m not going to attend, but that seems the least important issue to me. What matters most is whether we are going to bow as a country to external impositions that do not correspond to the interests of the people of our country or whether we are going to be able to prioritise social spending, which is what the people of our country need, instead of an increase in military spending.”
This was a cynical anti-American appeal, designed to cover up the fact that not only Washington, but also the PSOE-Podemos government is waging war on Russia in Ukraine. It has sent over 800 troops to Eastern Europe, together with a detachment of Eurofighter jets and three warships to patrol the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea; supported crippling economic sanctions against Russia; and sent hundreds of millions of euros in weaponry to Ukrainian forces. This includes weapons sent by the PSOE-Podemos government now being used by the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.
Madrid is now reportedly finalising plans to deliver Shorad Aspide anti-aircraft missiles and Leopard combat tanks, and to train Ukrainian troops on the use of these tanks in Latvia or Spain. Yesterday, Spain’s Ministry of Defence requested a 3 billion loan for its budget to meet Spain’s commitments at the NATO Summit.
After Belarra, Podemos parliamentary spokesperson Jaume Asens, intervened to stress that Podemos could participate in the NATO Summit. He told Spain’s public television TVE: “Our critical position [on NATO] is not incompatible with institutional attendance at these events.”
Asens claimed that a “critical attitude at a given moment can be compatible with an institutional representation. We are very critical of the monarchy,” he added, though this does not prevent Podemos from serving in Spanish King Felipe VI’s government.
It is apparent that the empty criticisms Podemos makes of monarchy and war are only political cover for their slavish support for capitalism and imperialist war. What proves that this is not a tactical error or passing mistake is that an entire international layer of similar parties of the affluent middle class, rooted in postmodernist academia and the trade union bureaucracies, are all rushing to support war with Russia, a major nuclear-armed power.
In the US, the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) four elected legislators all voted for Washington’s $40 billion arms package to fight Russia. At a recent panel, DSA officials claimed that “war creates the possibility for a push of socialist ideas in Ukraine.” The German Green Party is part of a coalition government carrying out the €100 billion rearmament of German imperialism. Pabloite and Morenoite groups like the International Socialist League are urging the imperialist powers to send more weapons to neo-Nazi Ukrainian militias.
In the case of Podemos, its support for imperialist war is directly bound up with its rejection of Trotskyism and embrace of the traditions of Stalinism. After the fall in 1978 of the fascist regime that emerged from General Francisco Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1938, the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) backed the emerging capitalist parliamentary regime against working class protests based on explicit support for NATO.
The first general secretary of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, met in 2012 with the PCE’s general secretary during the 1970s, Santiago Carrillo—who had played a leading role in murdering Trotskyists and left-wing figures during the Civil War—and hailed Carrillo.
To those in the political establishment who knew the history of the PCE, this was an unmistakable statement of the support of Podemos for NATO and its bloody opposition to revolution. Indeed, Carrillo stressed that the PCE would back Spain’s participation in NATO. In August 1976, the New York Times covered a news conference by Carrillo announcing the programme of the then recently legalised PCE, and wrote:
“Referring to American military bases in Spain, Mr. Carrillo asserted that the Spanish party is against ‘all foreign bases, both American ones in capitalist countries and Russian ones in socialist countries.’ His party, he said, supports a policy of elimination of military blocs. But for now, he said, the Spanish Communist Party would accept the American bases in Spain.”
Podemos was founded in 2014 by Stalinist professors around Iglesias in alliance with Pabloite Anticapitalistas—the descendants of the forces led by Michel Pablo who in 1953 rejected Trotskyism and split with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), arguing that Stalinism and bourgeois nationalism would offer revolutionary leadership to the working class. It supported the NATO wars in both Libya and in Syria. Podemos recruited Chief of the Defence Staff Julio Rodríguez, who led Spanish involvement in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, to make this clear.
In 2012, after Podemos formed a government in alliance with the big-business Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), then-Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias cynically boasted to Italy’s Corriere della Sera: “Not even the leader of the largest communist party in the West, Enrico Berlinguer, had managed to get where I have: a Marxist in a government of NATO.”
The very occasional claims of Podemos to be Marxist are monumental political lies. Its record in government shows that it is a tool of the banks and big business. It implemented trillion-euro EU bank and corporate bailouts, social austerity, and showered the Spanish army and industry with billions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it consistently prioritised profits over lives, leading to over 162,000 excess deaths in the country during the pandemic, according to The Lancet.
In government with the PSOE, Podemos has covered for threats by Spanish officers to launch a coup, while mobilizing tens of thousands riot police to crack down on striking truckers and metal workers.
The beginning of the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil has been characterized by a huge increase in cases among teachers, students and school staff. Refuting the claim of the Brazilian and world ruling class that schools are safe, in recent weeks numerous schools across the country have suspended in-person classes and some cities have again mandated the wearing of masks in classrooms.
In May, COVID-19 infections again rose in Brazil. On Saturday, the moving average reached 29,824 daily cases, a 104 percent increase from two weeks ago, and 84 deaths were recorded. These numbers, however, are huge underestimates. In addition to massive under-reporting, 15 of Brazil’s 27 states have not reported pandemic data due to alleged technical problems.
Empty classroom at a Brazilian school (Credit: Brazilian Senate)
“We have never sailed so in the dark,” declared infectologist Fernando Spilki to the daily Folha de S. Paulo. “Very little is tested and registered. Besides, with the [recent] possibility of self-testing... several cases end up not being registered,” he explained.
In what he called a “recipe for disaster,” Brazilian neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis warned on Twitter on May 26: “This is one of the riskiest moments of the pandemic, basically because all measures to contain the transmission of the virus have been eliminated, the window of immunity created by vaccines is closing, new variants are circulating without barriers.”
In fact, today in Brazil the most infectious and vaccine-resistant BA.2 Omicron subvariant is dominant, but cases of the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, responsible for the recent increase in cases in South Africa and Europe, have also been identified. Although it remains mandatory in public transportation and hospitals, the mandate for the use of masks in classrooms and other closed places was abolished in early April in all Brazilian states. Vaccination is stagnant, with 77.4 percent of Brazilians completely immunized and only 44 percent of the population with the booster shot. This situation has led the transmission rate to grow since mid-April, reaching 1.48 on June 1.
It is under these conditions that COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire in Brazilian schools. Far from a surprise, outbreaks in schools are yet another clear confirmation of their role in the spread of COVID-19. And, as has happened before, keeping schools open is driving this fourth wave of the pandemic in Brazil.
However, even with the prospect of a worsening pandemic in the coming weeks, state and municipal governments in Brazil are doing everything they can to make the population “learn to live” with COVID-19. Few cities have restored the mandate for the use of masks in classrooms, even though several scientific studies point out that a simple measure like this can contain up to 80 percent of the transmission of the virus.
This is particularly true in the state of São Paulo, Brazil’s wealthiest state and financial center. According to the state government’s own data, there has been a 370 percent increase in COVID-19 cases in public state schools since the beginning of May. Even though hospitalizations are expected to triple this week, after a 120 percent increase over the past month, on Wednesday the state’s so-called Scientific Committee only recommended the wearing of masks in classroom and other closed places.
Students in Itapevi, a city in Greater São Paulo (Credit: Felipe Barros | ExLibris | PMI)
In several Facebook groups, thousands of teachers in São Paulo have expressed their anger in recent days, both commenting on recent outbreaks and advocating school closures. A teacher commented: “7 teachers caught Covid at the school where I work, including me... The teachers’ families were also infected, including my 82-year-old mother... I think that when it is necessary, you should yes, close it to avoid an outbreak... This disease is no joke, I lost my brother a year ago... Besides, it is known that it causes sequelae.”
At another teacher’s school, where “several classes with in-person activities [were] suspended, we had 3 babies hospitalized due to SARS. São Paulo Municipal Secretary of Education acts with denialism, not updating the protocol and [not] demanding the use of masks... The reality is here, 4th wave, schools closed [due to the disease] and we don’t even have a look or care for early childhood, which has not yet been immunized.”
In fact, of particular concern is the increase in cases and hospitalizations due to COVID-19 in children in the present wave. In Ceará, one of four Brazilian states ruled by the Workers Party (PT), more than half of last month’s COVID-19 cases were registered among children under 9 years old. As of June 1, only three of the state’s 226 pediatric ICU beds were unoccupied. In the Federal District, where numerous schools were forced to suspend in-person classes in recent weeks, all pediatric ICU beds were occupied earlier this month. The states of Pernambuco, São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina are experiencing similar situations.
The result of this policy of letting the virus spread, particularly using the early reopening of schools to infect children and achieve a supposed herd immunity by contagion, has produced tragic results in Brazil. In 2020 and 2021, there were 2,625 deaths of children and young people between zero and 19 years of age, an average of four deaths per day. Between January and May of this year, just within the age group from zero to five years old, almost 300 COVID-19 deaths were recorded. This number is double that of the same period last year, and debunks the claim widely spread by the international media earlier this year that Omicron is “mild.”
However, this situation could not have been achieved without the assistance of Brazilian unions, which from the very beginning have aligned themselves with the ruling elite’s interests in keeping schools and workplaces open during a raging pandemic. Totally ignoring the risks posed by COVID-19, the unions are acting amid this new outbreak with a combination of complacent silence and cosmetic recommendations to capitalist governments.
The website of the National Confederation of Workers in Education (CNTE), affiliated with PT-controlled CUT union federation, only at the end of May, with the increase in cases in schools in São Paulo, broke a three-month silence and spoke of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, a CNTE manifesto, ignoring all accumulated scientific knowledge on the impacts of COVID-19 on children and the role of schools in community transmission, had proposed that “In situations of stability or decrease in epidemiological indicators... These measures [to control the pandemic, including school closures] outweigh the direct risks arising from the coronavirus.” Today, schools opened under a supposed “situation of stability” are boosting this fourth wave of the pandemic.
Brazil’s largest teacher union, São Paulo’s APEOESP, for its part, has advanced the fraudulent demand “For the return of sanitary protocols in schools,” also recommending that teachers wear masks. Like the CNTE, it ignores what science has long established both inside and outside the classroom: in schools with precarious infrastructure, sanitary protocols are wholly insufficient measures against a virus that spreads predominantly through aerosols, in addition to the rise of community transmission provoked by increased urban mobility due to open schools.
But more significantly, the CNTE, APEOESP and other Brazilian teachers unions have acted to demobilize a growing anger among teachers that has been escalating since the beginning of the pandemic, now increased by rising inflation. Throughout the first half of last year, before and amid the pandemic’s second deadly wave, the unions sabotaged strikes in “defense of life” that demanded school closures to contain the pandemic. More recently, in March and April, unions isolated dozens of teachers strikes that broke out across Brazil against low wages.
In this third year of a pandemic that is far from over, Brazilian teachers and the working class must assimilate the fundamental demands that have been advanced only by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) based on a careful analysis of the scientific and social aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and of the transformation of trade unions into agencies of capitalism under the process of globalization.
The ICFI has warned that if the novel coronavirus is not eliminated, all the suffering and death caused by the pandemic will continue for years to come. The elimination policy, which articulates all mitigation measures, such as lockdowns, vaccination, and school closures, is the only one that responds to the challenges posed by a virus as infectious and mutable as COVID-19. It has been successfully implemented in China since the beginning of the pandemic, and recently its zero-COVID policy has managed to reach virtually zero transmissions in Shanghai. However, if not implemented globally, all countries—including China—will still be susceptible to new and more dangerous outbreaks.
