16 Jun 2022

Governments across Canada massively undercount COVID-19 deaths

Dylan Lubao


As governments of all political stripes across Canada double down on their lying claim that the pandemic is all but over, new data shows that during the first two years of the pandemic thousands of COVID-19 deaths went unrecorded.

According to official federal government figures, as of June 10, COVID-19 had killed 41,470 people in Canada, a horrific loss of life. However, data compiled by infectious disease researcher Dr. Tara Moriarty of the University of Toronto shows that from February 2020 to April 2022 Canada’s total excess deaths—that is the number of fatalities above the historic norm—reached 48,463 or some 15 percent higher than the current official pandemic death count.

Some of these excess deaths can be attributed to other factors, such as the spate of deaths due to last summer’s heat dome in BC or the resurgence of the opioid epidemic. But even once these disasters are factored in, thousands of deaths are left unaccounted for.

Dr. Moriarty stresses that her figures for excess deaths are likely an underestimate, and that in many jurisdictions it will take upwards of two years for the true extent of death to be revealed.

Every province except for Quebec—which perhaps not uncoincidentally has far and away the highest per capita number of COVID deaths—has posted widely inaccurate COVID-19 death counts. This is due to a combination of delays in reporting deaths and their causes and deliberate undercounting, with people who had an underlying condition or died of a heart attack not being tested for COVID.

For several provinces the difference between the number of excess deaths and the number of official COVID-19 deaths is several orders of magnitude.

British Columbia, for example, reported 9,913 excess deaths to the Public Health Agency of Canada during the Feb. 2020-April 2022 period , but tallied only 3,004 deaths due to COVID-19, a 60 percent discrepancy. New Brunswick had 807 excess deaths but recorded just 358 COVID deaths, a discrepancy of 55 percent. In Newfoundland and Labrador, Alberta, and Saskatchewan total excess deaths were more than double official COVID deaths.

Dr. Moriarty’s excess death figures provide yet further evidence of the ruinous outcome of the ruling elite’s “profits-before-life” policy. Last June, a Royal Society of Canada study in which Dr. Moriarty was involved revealed that the true number of COVID-19 deaths between February 1 and November 28, 2020, was underreported by a staggering two-thirds.

The reality is that governments across the country—whether headed by the supposedly “progressive” federal Liberals in Ottawa and the New Democratic Party in BC, or the hard-right Progressive Conservatives in Ontario, the UCP in Alberta and the Coalition Avenir Quebec—have done everything they could to conceal and downplay the severity of the pandemic.

They have done this in order to create the best conditions for implementing their homicidal “herd immunity” policies, designed to infect the entire population and guarantee that workers remain on the job to generate profits for Canada’s banks and corporations.

When the Omicron variant supplanted the Delta variant last December, these capitalist governments, with the corporate media in tow, declared it to be “mild” without a shred of evidence. A faction of the ruling elite, led by the Conservative Party, then incited and built up the far-right Freedom Convoy so as to intimidate the population into accepting the dismantling of the remaining mitigation measures. The Liberals and NDP, after invoking the never-before-used Emergencies Act to clear the far-right Convoy from Ottawa, proceeded to oversee the implementation of its far-right pandemic program in the weeks that followed.

On Tuesday, the federal Liberal government scrapped almost all remaining vaccine mandates, including for all federal employees, and air and rail travelers.

While COVID-19 has ravaged workplaces and working class communities across the country, it has been a financial bonanza for the wealthy. Fifteen new billionaires have been minted since March 2020. The country’s 59 billionaires have increased their wealth by $111 billion over the same period, as tens of thousands died, hundreds of thousands fell ill, and millions continue to suffer from runaway inflation caused in no small part by the pandemic.

The almost 50,000 deaths directly or indirectly caused by COVID-19 are only the tip of the iceberg. With over 3 million Canadians having contracted COVID-19 according to official figures, the emerging long-term impact of Long Covid is beginning to make itself known.

Long Covid, which encompasses many different symptoms and can affect any organ of the body for months or years after initial COVID-19 infection, is estimated to affect 10 to 30 percent of all those who contract the disease. This translates into at least 300,000 Canadians living with a potentially debilitating health condition, but in all likelihood hundreds of thousands more. It is becoming increasingly common for people to know someone who displays post-infection effects of COVID-19.

According to Dr. Moriarty’s estimates, 57 percent of all Canadians were infected with Omicron beginning in the winter of 2021, equaling 21.6 million people. Using the most conservative estimate, this means 2.1 million people will develop Long Covid in the months and years to come.

Common symptoms include brain fog, decreased lung function, fatigue, and digestive problems, though this is far from an exhaustive list and there may be potentially dozens of unexplained symptoms. A recent study of 94 working adults conducted at the University of Waterloo found that those who had contracted COVID-19 exhibited “significantly more” cognitive failures at work following infection.

At a recent webinar organized by COVID-19 Resources Canada, presenters spoke about the debilitating burden of Long Covid and the substantial impact it will have on the population for years to come.

Carrie Ann McGinn, a health researcher, was struck with Long Covid in December 2020. She was subsequently diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, two increasingly common byproducts of COVID-19 infection. These had a devastating effect on her professional and personal life, leaving her with a lifelong disability.

McGinn related that simple acts of daily living now use up all her energy, to the point that she is often “so exhausted [she] can only shower once a week.” She described herself as a professional and world traveler who formerly had “wind in my sails and a life full of promise,” before becoming bound to a wheelchair and her bed.

She further commented that the community of Long Covid sufferers has heard nothing but “crickets” from governments. McGinn described the failure of all levels of government to take action to warn the public about Long Covid and provide medical care to those stricken by it as “nothing short of an ignored public health crisis.”

Far from addressing this pandemic within a pandemic, not a single government in the country has dedicated adequate funding to even doing basic research on a condition whose ever growing prevalence they are responsible for via their policies of mass infection.

Rather, they are focused on imposing ruthless austerity on workers to pay for the $650 billion in public funds funneled to the banks and big business at the start of the pandemic, and the hundreds of millions of dollars in weaponry they are now sending to the far-right Ukrainian military. No government at any level has even attempted to provide workers with protection against the new SARS-CoV-2 variants and pandemic surges just over the horizon.

The Tory government in Ontario has just removed mask mandates on public transport and in hospitals under conditions where they know that even more transmissible Omircon variants are now circulating. This all but guarantees that in the coming months there will be a resurgence of the pandemic, including within the very hospitals that are supposed to be the first line of defence against serious disease and death.

During the recent Ontario election campaign none of the parties even bothered to address the pandemic, the single greatest health crisis in over a century.

Opposition to these herd immunity policies is strong among broad sections of the working population. However, the trade unions’ systematic suppression of all workers’ struggles aimed at securing improved protections against infection and better working conditions has left opponents of the ruling elite’s policy of mass infection increasingly isolated.

Legal challenges to the dropping of all public health measures have been filed by individuals across the country. In New Brunswick, concerned parent and disability advocate Jessica Bleasdale has filed legal complaints against the province’s Progressive Conservative government, arguing that their herd immunity policies discriminate against her immunocompromised child, who cannot learn safely at school without mask mandates and other protections in place. Although her challenges were endorsed by the province’s Child and Youth Advocate, the provincial government has dismissed them out of hand.

In British Columbia, Lena Patsa, an engineer and university instructor, has filed a class action complaint with the province’s Human Rights Tribunal over Fraser Health’s refusal to allow hospital patients and visitors to use N95 respirators. In response, the health authority, taking its cue from the NDP government, resorted to the threadbare argument that “poorly-fitted” respirators would be a medical and legal liability.

An ongoing case in Alberta filed by the Alberta Federation of Labour and the parents of five immunocompromised children to overturn the dismantling of public health measures has forced the province’s United Conservative Party government to disclose data showing that school boards without mask mandates at the start of the 2021 school year suffered on average three times more outbreaks than those with mandates.

Ukrainian official admits to at least 100 to 200 military deaths a day

Jason Melanovski


In a bid to acquire even more military equipment from NATO member countries, an advisor to the Office of President Volodymyr Zelensky has admitted that Ukrainian Forces are losing approximately between 100 and 200 soldiers per day.

Senior Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak made the revelation while speaking with BBC last week. At the same time, Podolyak admitted Ukraine was completely outgunned by Russian artillery in the Donbass region and urged the West to send between 150 and 300 rocket launchers.

“Our demands for artillery are not just some kind of whim... but an objective need when it comes to the situation on the battlefield,” Podolyak stated, revealing the disadvantageous position of Kiev are in now that Russian Forces have concentrated on taking the entire Donbass region in Eastern Ukraine.

Podolyak’s estimations of Ukrainian casualties are even higher than those of Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov who admitted last Thursday that Ukraine was losing up to 100 soldiers a day, along with 500 more injured.

In the same week, Oleksiy Arestovych, another adviser to President Zelensky known for making revelatory statements, also told the Guardian that “up to 150 troops a day were being killed and 800 wounded.”

On Saturday, the Washington Post cited Arestovych as stating that 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the start of the war.

Previously, Ukrainian casualty figures were a highly-guarded secret with officials refusing to disclose the full extent of Ukrainian losses. In contrast, Ukraine has continued to publish nearly daily totals of estimated Russian casualties, which are most certainly overestimations made for propaganda purposes.

Extrapolating from even the minimum numbers given by Podolyak, Reznikov and Arestovych, at least 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers are killed each month, with over 15,000 injured. And even these are likely underestimations, aimed at concealing the full scope of the devastation in Ukraine.

Ukraine currently claims that Russia has lost 32,500 soldiers in the war. In March, Russia admitted to just 1,300 killed, while several current Western reports are much higher, though below Ukrainian estimates.

Whatever the true number, it is clear that tens of thousands of soldiers have already died on both sides along with tens of thousands more suffering life-long injuries that will affect both countries for decades to come.

Such numbers are the totally predictable disastrous consequences of Russia’s invasion on February 24 after months and years of deliberate provocations by NATO and its proxy, Kiev.

Testifying to the criminal nature of the Kiev government, the revelations of the staggering death toll of the conflict were made only as part of a PR campaign to obtain even more military aid and continue a war with nuclear-armed Russia.

In addition to massive casualties in the course of the war, there are currently 5,600 Ukrainian soldiers in Russian captivity, 2,500 of them from the recently captured city of Mariupol.

The revelations came as the momentum in the war over the Donbass has swung against Kiev, with Ukrainian forces continuing to lose territory over the past week.

Fighting has centered around the industrial city of Sieverodonetsk, with the city changing hands  already several times. Ukrainian forces have been attempting to hold onto the strategically important city at the urging of President Zelensky despite the risk of encirclement.

With the bridges out of the city destroyed, the remaining Ukrainian soldiers are effectively stranded in Russian territory. As they had previously done in Mariupol, Ukrainian forces have retreated to an industrial plant, the Azot Chemical Plant, along with civilians. Russian forces are calling for the remaining Ukrainian soldiers to surrender by Wednesday this week.

With control of Sieverodonetsk, Russian forces will be able to attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets river and then from there move towards establishing control over the entire Lugansk province, one of two provinces making up the Donbass region along with Donetsk.

A “senior U.S. defense official” told the Washington Post on Saturday that Russia was likely to seize control of the entire Lugansk province in the coming weeks.

Russia has already claimed that it is close to establishing control over all of Lugansk province, which it recognized as an independent republic just prior to the invasion of Ukraine. 

The losses by Ukrainian forces prompted a snap meeting by NATO defense ministers on Wednesday. In addition to the NATO member defense ministers, Ukrainian officials and those of partners, like the European Union, Sweden, Finland, Georgia and Moldova were also present, and the US announced further weapons deliveries to the Ukrainian army.

In a systematic attempt to weaken Russia and drag out the war, the United States has already provided $4.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion, including 108 howitzers, 26,500 Javelin missiles and 1,400 Stinger missiles. In May, US Congress approved $40 billion in assistance, including $20 billion more in military aid.

Despite the mounting losses, Ukrainian officials have shown no interest whatsoever in continuing negotiations to end the war with Russia that is not only devastating Ukraine but also spurring worldwide inflation and food shortages.

Podolyak and the head of Zelensky’s office, Andriy Yermak, have said in recent weeks that despite overtures from Moscow and anxiety within NATO, no negotiations will take place until Russia withdraws its forces to pre-invasion borders. 

Ukrainian officials are well aware that such a scenario would signify an effective surrender by Moscow and will never take place without substantial concessions by Kiev, or after a regime change in Moscow.

Despite their pledges to keep fighting until the last Ukrainian, soldiers themselves have demonstrated in recent weeks they are not so eager to sacrifice their own lives in the war. 

According to a recent report in the Independent, “cases of desertion are growing every week” among Ukrainian forces. The report also stated that Ukrainian forces are outmanned “20 to 1 in artillery and 40 to 1 in ammunition.” The report, furthermore, indicated that Russian artillery is capable of attacking from 12 times the distance of its Ukrainian counterparts, putting Ukrainian artillery troops at a much higher risk of death.

In the past month, several Ukrainian units have taken to Telegram to complain about poor supplies and command, warning the Ukrainian government they are fed up with the conditions they continue to face under obviously superior Russian artillery.

On May 24, volunteers from the 115th Brigade 3rd Battalion posted a video to Telegram which stated, “We are being sent to certain death,” and cited similar videos posted by members of the 115th Brigade 1st Battalion. “We are not alone like this, we are many,” the Ukrainian volunteer added. 

Russia likewise has faced opposition to the war among its forces, according to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal.

Mikhail Benyash, a Russian lawyer representing soldiers looking to avoid the war, told the Journal he had received requests for legal assistance from more than 1,000 Russian service members. “So many people don't want to fight,”  Benyash said.

While reports of Russian desertions are regularly published in the Western and Ukrainian media, reports of Ukrainian deserters are highly censored to avoid anti-war sentiment spreading among soldiers.

As Serhi Lapko, a Ukrainian company commander stationed in Donbass, recently told the Washington Post, “On Ukrainian TV we see that there are no losses,” Lapko said. “There’s no truth.”

US and Israel ratchet up threats and aggression against Iran

Jean Shaoul


The Biden administration is escalating pressure on Iran with provocations that seem designed to blow up the nuclear talks taking place in Vienna. Israel, its regional client, is simultaneously carrying out murderous attacks on Iran and its allies, setting the stage for a dangerous new escalation of conflict in the Middle East.

The talks in Vienna between Iran and the five states still nominally party to the nuclear agreement—Germany, Britain, France, China and Russia—have been stalled since April. Indirect talks have continued, however, with Qatar, Oman and the European Union serving as go-betweens Washington and Tehran.

Iran and the US accuse each other of introducing issues extraneous to the nuclear accord. The reality is Washington continues to impose sweeping unilateral economic sanctions on Iran that are tantamount to war, and Biden is not prepared to suspend them unless and until Tehran accepts many of the demands made by his predecessor, the anti-Iran “war hawk” Donald Trump.

Washington's threats and bullying of Iran have reached a new stage since Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed punishing sanctions aimed at crashing Iran's economy.

In 2018, Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear accords—reputedly one of the signal diplomatic achievements of the Obama administration. It then imposed punishing sanctions targeting Iran’s economy, including its oil and gas exports and banking system, above and beyond anything the US had deployed against Iran under Obama or George W. Bush.

While the Europeans bitterly protested Trump’s actions, which cut across their plans for lucrative trade and investment deals with Iran, their claims that they would develop an alternative international financial transfer system to bypass US sanctions proved to be a hollow boast.

As a result, Iran’s economy has been battered. Oil exports, a key revenue source, have plummeted. Iran’s increasingly beleaguered bourgeois clerical regime has responded by incrementally rolling back some of the commitments it made under the nuclear accord, commonly known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCOPA). This includes increasing its uranium enrichment up to 60 percent purity, some way off from the weapons-grade level of 90 percent, so as to demonstrate its unwillingness to buckle to US pressure and strengthen its bargaining position.

While continuing to publicly affirm that Trump’s repudiation of the Iran nuclear accord was a blunder, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have tried to use the negotiations on a US return to the JCOPA to browbeat Iran into making further concessions, aimed at limiting its influence in the Mideast. At the same time, they have not foregone the possibility of using a revived JCOPA to bring about a thaw in US-Iranian relations, with the ultimate aim of prising Iran away from Russia and China’s orbit.

Biden, in a highly provocative move, has refused to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) from the US list of terrorist organizations subject to severe economic sanctions, a key Iranian demand.

The US and its European allies are also once again using the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as a political tool to criticise and bully Iran over its nuclear program. Over the objections of Russia and China, and with India and Pakistan abstaining, the US and the European imperialist powers last week pushed through a resolution censuring Iran over its supposed lack of cooperation with the IAEA. IAEA director Rafael Grossi has since said that if this didn’t change over the next three or four weeks, “this would be a fatal blow” to reviving the nuclear deal—something the Europeans have previously suggested would cause them to align still more closely with Washington against Tehran.

Iran’s clergy-led bourgeois nationalist regime has always maintained that its nuclear programme is solely for civilian purposes. The major powers, the IAEA and the CIA, have all concurred that there has been no evidence of Iran having any type of nuclear weapons programme since 2003, as the current CIA Director and former deputy Secretary of State William Burns has acknowledged in his autobiography.

Prior to the IAEA vote, Iran recorded its protest by shutting off two IAEA cameras at the Online Enrichment Monitor (OLEM) and one of its flowmeter systems. Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesperson for the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, said the cameras went beyond Iran’s commitments under the JCOPA but Iran had allowed their installation to establish “goodwill.” Following the vote, Iran shut a further IAEA 27 cameras at various installations, leaving 40 operational.

At the beginning of June, Grossi paid a surprise visit to Israel, a bitter opponent of the nuclear accords. The visit, which he admitted was at Israel’s request, was a flagrant breach of protocols that demand IAEA impartiality. All the more so since Israel, which has rejected all international nuclear treaties and inspection regimes, has for decades possessed a nuclear arsenal, as then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert tacitly admitted in an interview on German television in 2006. In his meeting with Grossi, Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett accused Iran of deceiving the international community by using false information and lies” as it moved towards developing nuclear weapons and called on the IAEA to deliver a “clear and unequivocal message” to Iran.

This is part of a series of highly provocative actions by both the US and Israel.

In April, the US seized an Iranian-flagged tanker carrying 115,000 tonnes of Iranian oil that had run into trouble in Greek waters. The US had designated it along with four others for sanctions, supposedly because of its links to Russia’s defence sector. Tehran denounced the ship’s seizure as “piracy” and warned it would take “punitive action” against Athens. Last month it seized two Greek tankers in the Gulf.

This follows dozens of confirmed or suspected incidents in a shadow maritime war against Iran playing out from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. The Wall Street Journal reported in March 2021 that Israel had carried out at least a dozen attacks on Iranian vessels, mostly in the Red Sea and eastern Mediterranean, since 2019, a claim consistent with those in multiple Iranian sources.

Meanwhile, the White House has confirmed that Biden will visit the Middle East July 13-16. He will first meet Prime Minister Naftali Bennett—if he is still in power after his government lost its majority this week—and President Isaac Herzog in Israel and the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah. He will then go on to Jeddah where he will hold talks with the heads of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq.

A key purpose of the US president’s visit is to patch up relations with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the Biden administration initially treated as a persona non grata, because of his role in the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi  and other gross violations of human rights. Biden is to discuss “national security” issues with the Crown Prince, along with climate change, increasing Saudi energy exports to ease global oil prices, Iran’s nuclear program and the war in Yemen.

With Israel and the Saudi regime serving as its cornerstones, Washington is seeking to cement an anti-Iran alliance, as part of its broader preparations for war with Russia and China, with whom Tehran has forged increasingly close relations.

Such an alliance would involve sharing intelligence, anti-aircraft and anti-drone capabilities, advanced radar deployment and both offensive and defensive cyberwarfare technology to be supplied by Washington and to some minor degree Tel Aviv. While seeking to curb Iran’s growing political influence across the region, including in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Gaza, the US is also determined to counter China’s economic presence and political influence by offering an alternative to China for investment in building ports, cellular networks and cyberwar capabilities.

Washington’s provocations have been amplified by Israel’s increasingly reckless military assaults and threats against Iran. Last Friday, Israeli warplanes bombed Damascus International Airport to thwart Iran's efforts to transport weapons to Hezbollah and other regional proxies using commercial flights. Russia, which patrols Syrian airspace, evidently sanctioned the bombing, although it publicly condemned Israel’s attack which has put the airport out of action for weeks.

Last month, the Israeli Air Force carried out 15 attacks against facilities it said were being used by Iran to transport and store weapons and industrial equipment to Syria and Lebanon. Tel Aviv claims that it has stopped about 70 per cent of Iranian arms shipments to the two countries.

Israel has also carried out a series of assassinations inside Iran over the past few weeks, with five senior officials killed in five separate incidents. The dead reportedly include two IRGC officers and three scientists said to be involved in Iran’s nuclear, missile production and drone projects. According to a report in the New York Times, sources in the Biden administration said that the assassination of Colonel Hassan Khodaei, who was responsible for the development of military technology, guided missiles and drones in the IRGC’s Quds Force for the use of Hezbollah and Palestinian groups operating in Lebanon, was an Israeli operation. On Monday, a spokesman for the Iranian government threatened Israel with “reciprocation.”

Israeli Prime Minister Bennett has spoken quite openly about creating “a new equation, in which we strike inside Iran in response to attacks on us by their agents.” He boasted that Israel’s policy towards Tehran has changed and, with Israel having developed the means to conduct operations in Iran on a regular basis, Tel Aviv would not tolerate Iranian attempts to attack Israel or Israeli targets overseas in “silence.” Moreover, Israel’s operations would no longer be restricted to nuclear scientists, but also people involved in “terrorism,” missile production and arms smuggling.

These provocations against Tehran come as Washington’s ever tighter economic blockade deepens the poverty of the Iranian masses and strangles the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic which, according to official figures, has claimed the lives of more than 140,000 people. The currency has dropped to its lowest-ever value, with the rial trading in the bazaars at 332,000 rials to the dollar, down more than 4.4 percent since June 1. Iran’s currency is now worth one tenth of its value at the time of the 2015 nuclear deal.

In recent weeks there have been mass anti-government protests across the country. They have been sparked by the government’s cuts to subsidies that have led to a sharp rise in the price of basic food staples, increasing poverty, a threefold rise in rents, low and unpaid wages, the now worthless pensions and the corruption and mismanagement that led to the May 23 collapse of a high-rise building in Abadan that killed more than 30 people.

15 Jun 2022

Government of Malaysia International Scholarships 2022/2023

Application Deadline: 15th June 2022.

Eligible Countries: (List of MTCP Recipient Countries)

To be taken at: Public and Private Universities in Malaysia

Accepted Subject Areas? Field of studies is in the following priority areas:

  • Science and Engineering
  • Agriculture and Fisheries
  • Economics and Islamic Finance
  • Information and Communication Technology
  • Biotechnology
  • Biosecurity and Food Safety
  • Infrastructure and Utility
  • Environmental Studies
  • Health not including nursing, medicine, clinical pharmacy.

Candidates may choose any related course within the field/areas mentioned above

About Scholarship: The Malaysian Technical Cooperation Program (MTCP) was established in 1980 as Malaysia’s commitment to South-South Cooperation through the sharing of Malaysia’s development experiences and expertise with other developing countries.

Type: Masters degree

Selection Criteria: Applications will be considered according to the following selection criteria:-

  • High-level academic achievement
  • The quality of the research proposal and its potential contribution towards advancement of technology and human well-being.
  • Excellent communication, writing and reading skills in English Language

Eligibility: Malaysian Technical Cooperation Programme (MTCP) Scholarship applicants must COMPLY to the following criteria:

  • Not more than 45 years old at the time of application.
  • For Master’s Degree Program, applicants should obtain a minimum of Second Class Upper (Honours) or a minimum CGPA of 3.0 at Undergraduate Degree level.
  • Proof of English Language Proficiency:
    • Scanned copy of the original proof of English Language Proficiency such as IELTS (minimum total score 6.0); or TOEFL paper-based test with a score of 500 or an internet-based test with a score of 60; or
    • Applicants obtaining Degrees with English as medium of instructions may also be accepted (evidence is a prerequisite).
  • Has an excellent level of health certified by a doctor/physician. The cost of the medical check-up shall be fully borne by the applicant.
  • Scholars must undertake full-time study for postgraduate programs at the selected Higher Learning Institutions (Please refer List of Universities).
  • Applications are only open to candidates who have received offer letters from universities in Malaysia but have not yet started their studies or those who have registered for no more than one semester for a Master’s Degree.

How Many Scholarships are available? Several

What are the benefits?

  1. This scholarship covers:
    1. Cost of Living Allowance
    2. Book Allowance
    3. Tools Allowance
    4. House Rental Allowance
    5. Family Assistance Allowance
    6. Placement Allowance
    7. Thesis Allowance
    8. Travel Allowance
    9. Practical Training Allowance
    10. End of Study Allowance
    11. Tuition Fees
    12. Medical Claims
    13. Visa Fee
  • Method of Payment: Participants will receive allowances and other benefits as mentioned above from the Scholarship Division, Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia through their individual savings accounts. Students are advised to open a Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad account.

How long will sponsorship last? For the duration of the programme of study

Visit Scholarship webpage for details.

Scottish nurses threaten pay strike in “broken” National Health Service

Richard Tyler


Nurses in Scotland are threatening strike action if the devolved Scottish government does not agree a 10 percent pay rise.

Along with other public sector workers, nurses have seen the real value of their wages decline through more than a decade of austerity and pay freezes, now exacerbated by mounting inflation.

The centre block of Glasgow Royal Infirmary, as viewed from the other side of Castle Street (Credit: Creative Commons/ Daniel Naczk)

Hailed as “heroes” during the coronavirus pandemic, nurses and health care workers throughout the UK have also confronted spiraling work pressures, with staff shortages putting patients at risk. According to a report presented at a Royal College of Nursing (RCN) conference on Monday, over 80 percent of 20,000 nurses surveyed in Scotland said staffing levels on their shifts had not met patient needs.

There are currently more than 6,200 nursing posts unfilled in Scottish hospitals and GP surgeries, a 38 percent increase in a year, according to figures from Public Health Scotland.

Data from NHS Scotland also shows almost 18 percent of district nursing posts are unfilled.

Colin Poolman, RCN Scotland interim director, described the statistics as “worrying” as they showed that the staffing crisis continued to deteriorate. “Nursing staff have never been under greater pressure and with so many vacancies adding to this, work-related absences are on the rise and significant numbers of experienced nursing staff are considering leaving the profession,” Poolman said.

An RCN poll from January found that six in 10 nursing staff in Scotland were considering or planning to leave their jobs.

Matthew McClelland, lead director for Scotland at the Nursing and Midwifery Council, said the numbers leaving reflected “the impact of pressurised environments, challenging workplace cultures and the pandemic on the workforce.”

The dire conditions facing nurses in Scotland reflect a broader crisis in the National Health Service (NHS). According to Dr. Lailah Peel, chair of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) Scottish junior doctors committee, “All across the National Health Service in Scotland we’re struggling. The system is broken and it’s breaking us.”

On the BMA Scotland website, she describes how total patient numbers are reaching new peaks week to week. It has become impossible to routinely divert ambulances to the Accident & Emergency Department (A&E) at another hospital, as had been the case in the past when demand mounted. “Right now, we’re all feeling these pressures all the time.”

For those attending A&E departments this means longer and longer waits. The last time the A&E waiting time target was met in Scotland was July 2017, with waiting times getting worse since last year. More than 2,000 people were stuck in A&E for over eight hours in mid-May, with over 600 forced to wait over 12 hours before being admitted to a ward or discharged.

Staff shortages meant it was impossible to safely monitor the rising number of patients, according to Dr. Peel. “We can’t repeat observations as often as we would like, we simply can’t keep eyes on all our patients all the time. And we just don’t have the space to see them, so short of examining patients in the corridor, they have to wait, and wait.”

The problems in A&E department are exacerbated by chronic bed shortages, with the loss of NHS beds hitting Scotland proportionately harder than the UK as a whole. Of some 25,000 NHS beds that have gone since 2010, over 4,000 (17 percent) are in Scotland, which has just 8 percent of the UK population.

Added to this is a huge shortage of social care provision, meaning hospital beds cannot be freed. At the end of last year, Simon Hodgson, director of Carers Scotland, said without further funding, “we risk sleepwalking into a new social care crisis.”

These factors combine to force patients to lie on trollies, sometimes for days, until a bed on a ward becomes free. NHS Scotland was short of 100 A&E consultants and twice as many registrars, according to Dr. Peel.

As in England, waiting lists for routine surgery in Scotland ballooned during the pandemic. A letter from senior orthopaedic clinicians leaked to The Times reveals that the number of patients waiting more than two years for common procedures, such as hip or knee replacements, in Scotland is soaring. Planned orthopaedic surgery was currently running at only 48 percent of its former capacity.

Their letter, to NHS Scotland chief operating officer John Burns, says almost 2,900 people in Scotland have been waiting over two years for orthopaedic procedures. They contrasted this with England, with 10 times the population, which had reduced the comparable waiting list to about 4,000.

Official statistics last month revealed the worst cancer waiting times since records began in 2006, with only 79 percent of “urgent” referrals being treated within 62 days. Even worse, well over a third of Scots with cancer only received a diagnosis after attending hospital as an emergency. A major study by researchers at University College London into when cancer was first detected in patients showed Scotland fared worse than the rest of the UK, with almost four in 10 cancer patients there diagnosed through emergency departments. The situation was described as a “ticking timebomb.”

Women who needed to see gynaecology specialists faced “harrowing delays”, according to Glasgow GP Dr. Margaret McCartney. Two-week waits for urgent cancer referrals to gynaecology were now taking “six to eight weeks”, she said. Screening, paused in 2020 due to COVID, has created a hidden disaster just waiting to happen.

The NHS was established as a UK-wide provider of health services and support in 1948, part of “cradle to grave” welfare provisions, free at the point of delivery, introduced following the end of World War Two. Beginning under Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, privatisation has eaten away at the NHS. An “internal market” introduced in 1990 was designed to open the service to external competition and provide a source of profit to the private health corporations.

In 1999, as part of the establishment of devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, responsibility for health was handed over to these bodies. The Scottish parliament, initially under a Labour government, abandoned the “internal market” in NHS Scotland and established a more unified approach through regional health boards. Health funding as a percentage of GDP rose slightly from 6 to 8 percent between 1999 and 2019, with the Scottish National Party (SNP) ruling since 2007.

These modest changes have not altered the fact that public health in Scotland as measured by life expectancy trails behind the rest of the UK. Comparing average life expectancy at birth, this was estimated to be 76.8 years vs 79.3 years for males and 81 years vs 83.1 years for females in 2020. Health differences are still overwhelmingly a class question. Data from Public Health Scotland shows that in the most affluent areas of the country, men enjoy 23.8 more years of good health and women 22.6 more years compared to the most deprived areas.

Moreover, the pandemic has shown that the attitude of the Scottish government under Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP to protecting life does not significantly differ from that of Boris Johnson and the Tories in Westminster. Holyrood has pursued the same herd immunity policy and has now lifted all COVID rules and restrictions.

Johnson government legislates to rip up Northern Ireland protocol

Steve James


On Monday, the UK government published legislation to drastically and unilaterally alter the Northern Ireland protocol component of the Withdrawal Agreement with the European Union (EU), setting Britain on course for legal battles and trade war.

Under the protocol's terms, a trade border has been established in the Irish Sea as Northern Ireland effectively remains within the European single market, despite, juridically, being part of the UK. Although some businesses based in Northern Ireland have benefitted from ready access to both the EU and the UK’s markets, the protocol has enraged Northern Ireland's far right and pro-British unionist parties, close allies of the Conservative government in Westminster, who insist the protocol has compromised Northern Ireland's status in the UK.

Vehicles at the port of Larne, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

The Johnson government has seized on the unionists' calibrated outrage as a pretext to rip up as much as they can of the Brexit agreement.

The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, penned in consultation with hard line Brexiteer Tories, addresses four main areas.

* It seeks to remove all trade restrictions on goods travelling from the Britain to Northern Ireland save on those intended for the Republic of Ireland (RoI). A “green” lane would be set up to allow unrestricted movement through ports on the Irish Sea in Britain and Northern Ireland, while a “red” lane would carry out documentation checks on truckloads directed towards the RoI.

* The bill gives the British government authority to apply state aid and VAT sales tax rules in Northern Ireland, without reference to the EU. It also removes the need for goods directed to the North to comply with EU standards. Companies can choose to follow either UK or EU standards.

* In line with this, the bill legislates to end the direct role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in overseeing and enforcing the operation of the protocol and in resolving disputes between the EU and the UK.

* A further, sweeping, provision in the bill, Clause 15, gives the government authority to ignore the rest of the protocol under the pretext of safeguarding “social or economic stability”, “the territorial or constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom”, and “the Belfast [Good Friday] Agreement” among other items. Only the UK and Irish Common Travel Area, North-South co-operation between Northern Ireland and the RoI and “human rights” provisions in Northern Ireland are excluded.

The final version of the bill, published just over a week after a narrowly defeated no confidence vote against Prime Minister Boris Johnson by Tory MPs, represents a sharp tack to the right by a weakened and unstable government. Sir Jonathan Jones, former head of the UK government legal service who resigned over the Northern Ireland issue, told the Financial Times the bill was “at the extreme end of anything we might have expected”.

Primarily, the bill is aimed at winning endorsement from the far right and powerful European Research Group (ERG) of Brexiteer Tories. According to the FT, ERG membership is not published but is estimated to be large enough to erase Johnson's 80 strong parliamentary majority.

ERG members view ditching the protocol, in the words of one of its unnamed members, as “the last part of Brexit and we have to make sure we have fully taken back control.” A so-called “Star Chamber” of Brexiteer lawyers is assembling to pronounce on whether the bill goes far enough.

The government also published its legal justification for trampling over its international agreement with the EU, claiming that the “doctrine of necessity provides a clear basis in international law to justify the non-performance of international obligations”. That necessity was the “maintenance of stable social and political conditions in Northern Ireland”. The protocol had created a “genuinely exceptional situation, and it is only in the challenging, complex and unique circumstances of Northern Ireland, that the Government has, reluctantly, decided to introduce legislative measures which, on entry into force, envisage the non-performance of certain obligations.”

This is the unalloyed hypocrisy. Brexit was, from the first, an attempt by sections of the British financial oligarchy to undercut and steal a march on its major competitors within the EU single market by ripping up in the UK regulatory restrictions on profitability that were bound up with EU membership. The partition of Ireland by British imperialism in 1921 means that the Republic in the south remains in the EU, while, post Brexit, Northern Ireland is not. The “doctrine of necessity” cited by the British government amounts to pursuing its own predatory interests under the combined weight of contradictions, including the carefully nurtured threat of loyalist violence, that its own policies have created.

The bill produced a sharp response from the European Commission. Maroš Šefčovič, commissioner for Brexit, warned that legal action begun March 2021 against the British government for breaching the protocol and the “good faith” obligation of the Withdrawal Agreement would be restarted, along with further legal moves. Šefčovič insisted the EU would not renegotiate the protocol, while EU officials expressed the view the UK had already failed to implement large parts of the Withdrawal Agreement.

Should a legal case against the UK for breaching any part of the Withdrawal Agreement be upheld by the ECJ, the likely outcome would be fines for non-compliance, followed by the imposition of trade tariffs on British goods. The EU has already barred British scientists from a €95 billion Horizon research project.

Liz Truss (fifth from left) meeting members of the US delegation in London (Credit:Liz Truss/Twitter)

The US government was more muted, following last month's disastrous tour to Ireland by leading Democrat and Chair of the Ways and Means Committee, Richard Neal, which was seized upon by the unionists for insensitivity and a pretext for tub thumping. Nevertheless, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told the British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss—a rival for Johnson’s party leadership—to “continue good faith negotiations with the EU to reach a solution that preserves the gains of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement”.

The US has huge investments in Ireland, which are dependent on the relative stability created by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement bringing the Irish nationalists of Sinn Fein into power-sharing arrangements with the Democratic Unionist Party in the North. The US views a falling out between its major allies with alarm. A State Department spokesperson added, “Transatlantic peace, security, and prosperity are best served by a strong UK, a strong EU, and the closest possible relationship between the two.”

Responses in Ireland were more frantic. Responding to Johnson's preposterous lie, on a visit to Cornwall, that the legislation was “not a big deal”, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney described the British moves as “a breach of international law.” Coveney, recently the target of a loyalist paramilitary bomb attack hoax, told the Irish Times that the EU would be “forced to respond in a way we don’t want”. He continued, “The risk is by unilaterally acting the way they are now, they potentially risk collapsing the protocol because I don’t believe the EU can accept the approach [of] the British government.”

Irish Times political editor, Pat Leahy, warned of the dangers facing Ireland if the EU responds in kind to the UK's actions. Leahy wrote “if the trade agreements between the two sides crumble, then the Irish Government will be faced with the prospect its predecessor dreaded: choosing between a Border in Ireland or a border between Ireland and the rest of the EU.”

NATO-Russia war inflames conflict between Turkey and Greece

Ozan Özgür


Amid the ongoing US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, tensions are rising dangerously between NATO member states Turkey and Greece in the Aegean Sea. The two countries are holding war games aimed at each other, trading accusations of disregarding international treaties, and violating each other’s borders with jet fighters and warships.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan watches jet fighters fly past during the final day of military exercises that were taking place in Seferihisar near Izmir, on Turkey's Aegean coast, Thursday, June 9, 2022. (Turkish Presidency via AP)

The Turkish Armed Forces’ (TSK) Ephesus-2022 exercise, held in the Aegean Sea and attended by more than 10,000 military personnel, ended last week. Thirty-seven countries, including the United States and Italy, participated in air, sea and land drills. Held in Seferihisar, only 1.5 kilometers from the nearby Greek island of Samos in the Aegean Sea, the exercise was based on the scenario of a “military landing on an island.” It was widely treated in Turkish capitalist media as a threat against Greece.

Greek media reported that during Greece's naval exercise Storm 2022, which ended on May 27, Turkey sent “two F-16 fighter jets that violated Greek airspace, reaching just two 2.5 nautical miles from the northern port city of Alexandroupoli.”

During the Ephesus-2022 exercise, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused Greece of arming Aegean Sea islands in violation of international agreements. He warned Athens 'one last time' on this: “We invite Greece to stop arming the islands that have non-military status and to act in accordance with international agreements. I’m not joking, I’m speaking seriously.”

Threatening to militarize Turkish islands if necessary to threaten Greece, Erdoğan said, “We again warn Greece to avoid dreams, statements and actions that will lead to regret, just as they did a century ago,” a reference to the Turkish war of independence against the British-backed Greek invasion in 1919-1922.

A week ago, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoğlu accused Greece of violating its peace treaties with Turkey: “But what is another reason for Greece to be aggressive? Greece's violation of the status of the islands given to it in the 1923 Lausanne Treaty and 1947 Paris Treaty under the condition of not arming them [Greek islands in the Aegean Sea], and our raising this violation within the framework of international law.”

Cavusoglu added: “The sovereignty of the islands will be questioned if Greece does not end its violation.” This threat to “question” Greece’s sovereignty over islands it controls amount to a threat to invade them and go to war.

The Greek Foreign Ministry reacted to the Ephesus-2022 exercise and statements by Turkish officials on Twitter, writing, “Ankara poses a threat to regional peace and security.” On Thursday, Greek government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou dismissed the Turkish claims, calling them “Ahistorical claims and baseless myths that can neither challenge nor, let alone, substitute international law and international treaties.”

Accusing Erdoğan of provocation, Oikonomou threatened, “It is clear to everyone that our country has upgraded its geostrategic and geopolitical footprint as well as its deterrent capacity to be able at any time to defend its national sovereignty and sovereign rights.”

A century after World War I began in the Balkans, NATO and the bourgeois governments in the region again risk plunging the world into a catastrophic war. In 2020, tensions between Turkey and Greece over natural gas and sea borders in the eastern Mediterranean were defused by EU and especially German mediation. Greek-Turkish talks resumed. However, as the World Socialist Web Site warned, “History shows such conflicts cannot be peacefully resolved under capitalism, whether or not a temporary Greek-Turkish peace deal is somehow reached.”

The US-NATO war on Russia in Ukraine has now inflamed the Greek-Turkish conflict, turning the Aegean into an undeclared second front in the NATO-Russia war.

The right-wing government of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has unabashedly aligned itself on Washington’s moves against Russia. The Greek port of Alexandroupoli in the northern Aegean Sea has been transformed into a major US military base. Alexandroupoli is also being used to deliver weapons to Ukraine and to NATO forces along the border with Ukraine in Romania.

The Turkish bourgeoisie has pursued a cynical, two-faced policy on the NATO war on Russia. On the one hand, it has backed NATO’s Ukraine policy, including the far-right coup NATO backed in Kiev in 2014, and armed Kiev with armed Bayraktar TB2 drones. On the other, it has kept diplomatic channels with Russia open, greeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Ankara, and posed certain obstacles to the most aggressive NATO moves targeting Russia.

Ankara closed the Black Sea straits linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea coast of Ukraine and Russia to both NATO and Russian warships, blocking a NATO naval attack on Russia. It also threatened to veto NATO’s plans to absorb Sweden and Finland and post NATO troops on Russia’s northern border with Scandinavia. The Turkish government was not objecting to the war, however, but continuing its long-standing targeting of the Kurdish people: it denounced Sweden and Finland for having ties to Kurdish-nationalist organizations.

Washington responded to this veto threat by inviting Mitsotakis to give a speech denouncing Turkey in the US Congress. During his enthusiastically received speech, Mitsotakis blamed Turkey for the division of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus and demanded a halt to US F-16 sales to Turkey. US President Joe Biden also gave Mitsotakis strong support.

Erdoğan condemned Mitsotakis' trip, declaring that Mitsotakis “no longer exists” for him. Erdoğan added that he viewed the US-NATO bases in Greece, targeting Russia and growing Chinese economic influence in the region, as a threat to his government, saying, “And, most importantly, there are nearly a dozen bases in Greece. Whom does Greece threaten with those bases?”

Workers in Greece, Turkey and internationally must be warned: the danger that the conflicts in the Black Sea and the Balkans will escalate uncontrollably into a world war is very great. In the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, prices are spiraling out of control as the financial aristocracy massively increases its wealth. This has provoked strikes and protests internationally, and capitalist governments are all terrified of the international eruption of the class struggle.

In Greece, there have been protests against the arrival of NATO forces, including the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, to threaten Russia. Strikes have also broken out among rail workers against being forced to ship US tanks towards the Ukrainian and Russian borders. This follows a decade of savage austerity imposed by the European Union and both Mitsotakis’ New Democracy and the pseudo-left SYRIZA (“Coalition of the Radical Left”) governments.

In Turkey, the last year has seen an eruption of health care strikes against the official mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and wildcat strikes in auto, steel, mining, shipbuilding and other industries against the devastating surge in prices. A one-day nationwide strike by over 100,000 doctors in Turkey is set to begin today.