7 Sept 2022

Plebiscite Vote in Chile Rejects Proposed New Constitution

W.T. Whitney Jr.


Supporters of a proposed new constitution for Chile suffered a big defeat in a plebiscite taking place on September 4. The “reject” side gained 7.882.958 votes, or 62% of the total; 4.860.093 voters – 38% – approved the document. Voting in such a plebiscite in Chile is mandatory; participation was 80%.

Chile’s current Constitution, produced in 1980 under the Pinochet military dictatorship, and with alterations since, remains in effect. The issue in question, according to  Hugo Guzman, editor of the Communist Party’s El Siglo newspaper, was “whether Chileans will continue to live in the midst of a repressive political structure and an exploitative economic model installed by a ruthless dictatorship some four decades ago, or whether they will choose to start a new and egalitarian chapter in the history of Chile.”

The vote marked the end of a process that began with huge youth and labor-led demonstrations throughout Chile in October 2019. They continued for months. Protesters were reacting to inequalities generally and to privatization and austerity initiatives interfering with equitable access to education, healthcare, and social security.

The pressure led billionaire president Sebastián Piñera to agree to a nationwide vote on authorizing an assembly charged with devising a new constitution. On October 25, 2020, 79 percent of Chileans voted to approve a Constitutional Convention.

An election was held in May 2021 to choose delegates to the Convention, which would be in session from July 4, 2021 until that day a year later. Meanwhile, voters in December 2021 elected Gabriel Boric, center-left in political orientation, to succeed Piñera, in the process rejecting an extreme rightwing candidateCampaigning, Boric had prioritized carrying on with a new constitution.

The proposed Constitution contained meaningful advances, including:

+ Formation of a Congress of Deputies for passing laws and a Chamber of the Regions for dealing with legislation agreed upon at the local level. The National Congress with its Chamber of Deputies and Senate would disappear.

+ No longer would there be high quorum requirements for passing legislation.

+ Women would make up at least 50% of the officials and office-holders in all state agencies and institutions.

+ Chile would take on the character of a “multinational and intercultural state,” where indigenous peoples would be regarded as nations occupying autonomous regions.

+ The state rather than private entities would assume primary funding responsibility for education, healthcare, low-income housing, and pensions.

+ The proposed constitution recognized the “free exercise of sexual and reproductive rights.” It limited penalization of abortion.

+ The document prioritized ecological sustainability and especially water rights.

Commentary following the plebiscite suggests multiple reasons why the “approve” vote failed, among them:

+ Myths circulated in the media. The new Constitution supposedly would promote late term abortions, dismemberment of the national territory, and empty pension funds. Critics alleged the malign influence of Cuba, Venezuela, and/or Bolivia.

+ The Constitutional Convention presented the appearance of disorganization and lack of experienced deputies. Social movements supposedly exerted more influence within the Convention than did political parties.

+ The Convention failed to provide the public with updates on its deliberations and was unable to overcome propaganda from the corporate-dominated media.

+ The government’s apparent failure to cope with “galloping inflation” – now 13% annually – and a precipitous fall in copper prices and export income overall cast a pall over the idea of a new constitution, according to one critic.

_ Another suggests that the winning majority included a “punishment vote” by those Chileans who normally don’t vote in elections – where voting is optional.

The fight against the “approve” campaign, according to Guzman, found support in the “the right-wing and far-right parties, the Catholic church hierarchy, the so-called “military family,” liberal social democratic sectors, financial groups that own the … consortiums that control private pension and health services — and most of the media and business associations.”

Reaction to the defeat of the proposed constitution varied. For commentator Cristóbal León Campos, the “shadow of Pinochet weighs heavily” with Chile joining Ecuador and Bolivia in sheltering “the most regressive sectors of Latin American conservatism, neofascist in nature.”

An editorial statement from The Citizen (El Ciudadano) news service emphasized the “gigantic sums of money” big corporations paid “to influence the opinions and decisions of millions of people.” It assigned blame to the government for not directing the state media to “confront this tremendous assault.” The editorial pointed to “an intelligence operation aimed at bringing down the most advanced constitutional project in the world.”

The command center of the approve campaign called for “work toward a new social pact, because what was rejected was the text and not the impulse toward a new constitution.” Social movements within the campaign joined in declaring the outcome “to be a matter of an electoral defeat, not defeat of the effort itself.”

Political parties making up the “Approve Dignity” coalition responsible for electing President Boric agreed, and insisted that the project would continue under Boric’s leadership. These included the Socialist, Radical, Liberal, Communist, For Democracy, and six other parties. Boric himself promised “to put everything he had into building a new constituent process, together with the Congress and civil society.” He urged Chileans “to unify and together continue building the future.”

Israel’s military “investigation” whitewashes murder of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

Jean Shaoul


Israel’s military investigation declared Monday that there was a “high possibility” that Al Jazeera Arabic’s Palestinian reporter Shireen Abu Akleh had been “accidentally hit” by “an Israeli soldier while under fire who was using a telescopic scope and misidentified her as an armed Palestinian gunman.”

A mural of slain of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot dead during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin, adorns a wall in Gaza City, May 15, 2022.The Israeli military acknowledged for the first time on Monday, Sept. 5, 2022, that one of its soldiers likely killed veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May, saying its own investigation shows she was shot by mistake and that no one will face punishment. [AP Photo/Adel Hana, File]

Its report also claimed it was impossible to identify with certainty whether she had been hit by Israeli fire, as there were armed Palestinian gunmen in the vicinity.

The Israeli Military Advocate General’s Office refused to open a criminal or disciplinary investigation into any soldiers involved in the incident as “there is no suspicion that a criminal offense was committed,” even though she was a journalist killed in the line of duty—a clear violation of international law.

The report confirms that Israel’s military apparatus has carte blanche to carry out any criminal action it wants with legal immunity.

Shireen Abu Akleh, a US-Palestinian citizen, had reported on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank for Al Jazeera Arabic for more than 20 years. She was shot by Israeli forces while covering an army raid on Jenin in the occupied West Bank on May 11.

Clad in a press vest and helmet and standing in open view near a roundabout, there is no question that she was deliberately targeted and shot by Israeli snipers along with her co-producer Ali Sammoudi, who was hospitalized, as numerous investigations have concluded.

Israeli officials sought to pin the blame for Abu Akleh’s death on the Palestinians, denying any possibility that Israeli troops had killed her since “the army opens fire only in an orderly, controlled manner.” Days later, as it became apparent that her murder was turning into a public relations disaster, officials went into damage control, proposing a joint Israeli-Palestinian investigation, which the Palestinian Authority rejected outright.

The army then accepted the “possibility” that Israeli gunfire had “inadvertently” killed the veteran journalist. A week later the army announced that it had found the rifle that “had likely killed her” before absurdly claiming that the source of the shot was unclear. As a sop to international public opinion, it promised a “thorough examination” of the events.

Abu Akleh’s murder was part of a long-running attempt to terrorise journalists and prevent their reporting on Israel’s brutal suppression of the Palestinians. She was the 31st journalist to be killed since 2000 in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by Israeli soldiers, none of whom were ever prosecuted. Israel receives the backing of the major imperialist powers which support Israel’s crimes while flaunting their “human rights” pretensions across the Middle East and Ukraine in pursuit of their geo-strategic interests. In May 2021, Israel’s bombing of a tower block in Gaza that housed the offices of Al Jazeera and other media organisations was met with a collective tut-tutting from the major imperialist centres and their corporate media.

After Abu Akleh’s death, Israeli police stormed her family’s home demanding mourners take down Palestinian flags and end the gathering and singing. On the day of the funeral, the police gave pall bearers such a beating that they nearly dropped the coffin. Soldiers fired sponge-tipped bullets and threw stun grenades at the crowds gathered at the hospital morgue until Abu Akleh’s family were forced to whisk her coffin away in a car as a police officer removed the Palestinian flags covering it.

Israeli police confront mourners as they carry the casket of slain Al Jazeera veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during her funeral in East Jerusalem, Friday, May 13, 2022. [AP Photo/Maya Levin]

Israel’s month-long investigation was a whitewash from start to finish, shot through with inconsistencies and glaring contradictions it did not attempt to reconcile.

It claimed that it was impossible to be sure who fired the fatal shots as Palestinian gunmen were firing towards an Israeli army vehicle and could have shot her by mistake. According to Ha’aretz, citing a senior Israeli army official, “One of the soldiers believed Abu Akleh was part of the armed militants who fired at them, and he shot at her through a telescopic scope.” The official insisted, “It needs to be said that there were both IDF soldiers and Palestinians at the scene.”

At least nine other investigations, including those carried out by the media and the United Nations, cited numerous witnesses saying there were no exchanges of fire before Abu Akleh was shot. Furthermore, she was shot in a relatively open site and was clearly visible as a member of the press. Before the soldier fired and killed her, he or another soldier shot journalist Ali al-Samoudi and wounded him in the shoulder.

While the report said that an Israeli soldier had shot at her through a telescopic sight, it could not identify the soldier who had made the statement. At the very least, the army would know who had been issued with that rifle.

Israel’s investigation mimicked one carried out by Israel’s paymasters in Washington published on July 4 that examined the bullet extracted from Abu Akleh’s body and also found that shots fired from the position of Israeli soldiers were “likely responsible” for her death. That report claimed that damage to the bullet made it difficult to draw a definitive conclusion about the gun that fired it and found that her killing was accidental.

Abu Akleh’s family denounced the US report as “an affront to justice that enabled Israel to avoid accountability for Shireen’s murder.” It was tantamount to accepting Shireen’s killing, they said, adding, “Your administration’s actions can only be seen as an attempt to erase the extrajudicial killing of Shireen and further entrench the systemic impunity enjoyed by Israeli forces and officials for unlawfully killing Palestinians.”

President Joe Biden refused to meet the family during his visit to Israel and the West Bank in July, when he gave his full-throated support to Tel Aviv as Washington’s guard dog in the region, pledging billions in aid as well as protection for Israel at the UN and the International Criminal Court.

Lina Abu Akleh, Shireen’s niece, said of Israel’s investigation, “Our family is not surprised by this outcome since it’s obvious to anyone that Israeli war criminals cannot investigate their own crimes…

“We could never expect any type of accountability or legitimate investigation from the very entity responsible for gunning down an unarmed and clearly identifiable journalist.”

The family are demanding that the US government conduct its own investigation into the killing of Shireen, who held both Palestinian and American nationality, and will press for a full International Criminal Court investigation and trial.

On Monday, the US State Department supported the findings of the Israeli military on Shireen’s murder, declaring with consummate cynicism “the importance of accountability in this case”

Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people are matched in their different ways by US imperialism’s other allies in the region: the blood-soaked dictatorships of Egypt and the Gulf monarchs.

The absence of any critical response to Israel’s cover-up highlights the fundamental role played by the corporate media as gatekeepers of the truth and a public relations service for the ruling class. If state crimes cannot be hushed up, they must be carefully stage-managed so as not to rock the boat, with ever more outlandish excuses for war crimes.

It was for breaking with the servile conventions of the mainstream media, revealing the war crimes committed by the US and the UK and exposing their media propagandists who launched the wars, that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is now imprisoned in Belmarsh maximum security prison facing life imprisonment or death in the US.

The killing and imprisonment of journalists in the line of duty signal that all restraints on state lawlessness will be removed as the imperialist powers prepare for direct military confrontation with Russia and China.

IMF announces preliminary bailout loan agreement with Sri Lanka

Saman Gunadasa


International Monetary Fund (IMF) last Thursday announced that a preliminary staff-level agreement with the Sri Lankan government had been reached for a four-year arrangement to provide a $US2.9 billion loan facility, subject to the approval of the IMF the executive board.

World Bank senior mission chief Peter Breuer, right, speaks with Masahiro Nozaki, mission chief for Sri Lanka, by his side during a media conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka on September 1, 2022. [AP Photo/(AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)]

Hailing the IMF agreement as “the beginning of a new economic era,” President Ranil Wickremesinghe declared: “The beginning will be difficult, but we know as we go on that we can make more progresses.”

The so-called “new economic era” with its “difficult beginning” is nothing but a new round of savage austerity measures to make workers and poor pay for the country’s unprecedented economic crisis.

The following far-reaching, harsh measures are among key elements of the IMF program:

* “Raising fiscal revenue to support fiscal consolidation.” Major tax reforms have been proposed for this. While broadening income tax base for corporations, the IMF calls for making personal income tax “more progressive.” This means broadening the tax net to include workers and low income earners. Further increase of value-added tax (VAT) that will inevitably hit the poorest layers of society is also proposed.  

The target is to raise huge new revenues to ensure a fiscal surplus of 2.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2025, from the estimated current deficit of 9.8 percent for this year.

Such a reversal from deficit to surplus in two years can only be achieved by a massive increase of taxes along with deep inroads into government spending on essential services, including health and education, and a major downsizing of the public sector through sweeping job destruction.

* “Introducing cost-recovery based pricing for fuel and electricity to minimize fiscal risks arising from state-owned enterprises (SOE).”

The IMF team “welcomed” the government’s price increases already implemented. These have included huge massive fuel price hikes in recent months, an increase in electricity charges by 75 percent and water tariffs by 127 percent. Prices are to further increase in line with the world market. The privatisation of state owned enterprises is also part of the “reform” agenda.

* Mitigating the impact of the current crisis on the poor and vulnerable by raising social spending, and improving the coverage and targeting of social safety net programs.

This so-called mitigation is to be done at the expense of working people. Yesterday the government presented a social security bill to introduce a new tax of 2.3 percent to fund a social safety net for the vulnerable. In other words, amid a desperate social crisis affecting millions, a new tax has been imposed to provide a pittance for the very poor. “Targeting” means a further limiting of those who will receive any assistance.

* Restoring price stability through data-driven monetary policy action, fiscal consolidation. To implement these policies Central Bank should have autonomy.  

In other words, the Central Bank is to function as the IMF’s policeman in ruthlessly monitoring government policies, while adjusting interest rates and monetary policy in line with the demands of international finance capital.

* Market driven exchange rate policy should be implemented.

This will further devalue the Sri Lankan rupee which has already depreciated by 80 percent so far this year.

The remarks of IMF officials show that it came to a staff-level agreement as the Sri Lankan government began to rapidly implement austerity measures. The onslaught on the living conditions of working people has intensified since Wickremesinghe assumed the presidency on July 14. He presented the interim budget for the rest of the year last week, deepening the social attacks.

IMF senior mission chief for Sri Lanka, Peter Breuer, told the media in Colombo on Thursday that “the preliminary agreement is a signal from the Sri Lankan authorities they were committed to comprehensive reforms” and “assuring creditors that it will restore payment capacity…”

As part of this commitment, further harsh measures will be announced in the 2023 budget scheduled to be presented in November.

Sri Lanka “temporary defaulted” loan repayments to international creditors amounting to $51 billion on April 12. It now has to repay $7 billon as debt servicing this year.

The IMF will approve its first loan installment only if it is satisfied that the austerity measures are being implemented. IMF official Masahiro Nozak warned that “a review will precede each set of payments.”

The Paris Club countries, mainly comprising the EU and India, welcomed the agreement. China also expressed its readiness to work with other countries to restructure Sri Lanka’s debt. Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki on Friday called on countries that lent money to Sri Lanka to discuss the country’s debt restructuring.

Creditors could postpone repayment dates or make a small reduction to interest rates, but only to ensure loans are repaid in full. To repay these international finance sharks, the Colombo government will have to squeeze already suffering workers and poor.

In a statement on the IMF agreement, Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena declared: “For several decades, we have consumed much more than our savings. Hence, our debts have increased in a massive proportion… In the future, we will have to make major sacrifices in order to find the solutions to the factors that led to this debacle.”

It is not workers and the poor who are responsible for the country’s massive debts. It is the capitalist class and its successive regimes that obtained these loans to boost their profits and offset the impact of the worsening global capitalist crisis. Half of the borrowings were to prosecute the bloody anti-Tamil war that lasted nearly three decades and devastated the economy and whole areas of the island.

The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, the country’s main big business lobby, issued a statement assuring its support for the IMF agenda. The corporate elite views it as the means for alleviating the immediate crisis and opening up new avenues to extract profits, including through the privatisation of state-owned enterprises.

The vote for the interim budget last Friday exposed the opposition parties and the sheer hypocrisy of their criticisms of the government. The budget was passed with 120 votes and only five opposing votes in the 225-seat parliament.

Thusara Indunil Amarasena, spokesman for the opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), declared: “As a party, we have decided to neither support nor oppose President Wickremesinghe’s budget and to abstain from voting instead.” He explained that was because the SJB did not want to jeopardise the talks with the IMF.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) voted against the budget, but none of its MPs spoke against the IMF’s austerity measures. In the budget debate, JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake simply called for “a new government” with “a new mandate,”—in other words, a government better able impose the IMF’s demands.

Tamil National Alliance spokesman, M. A. Sumanthiran, far from disagreeing with the IMF program, told the government: “The budget needs to be consistent with the IMF economic reform program and macroeconomic framework.”

Expressing the fears in international finance circles about the social explosive situation in Sri Lanka, Fitch Rating warned: “Political instability will pose risks to the implementation of reforms… Additional social spending may not be sufficient to prevent public opposition, particularly given that the government’s public support appears weak…”

Since last April, Sri Lanka has been engulfed in protests and strikes involving millions of workers and poor. They demanded the resignation of former President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his government and also demanded an end to rampant inflation, shortages of essentials and long hours of power cuts. Amid huge protests, Rajapakse fled the country.  

That mass movement was betrayed, however, by the trade unions, backed by pseudo left Frontline Socialist Party, which did everything to limit its scope and to shackle it to the demand for an interim all-party capitalist government. The result is the Wickremesinghe government which is implementing the even more severe burdens on working people—all with the support of the opposition parties.

The ruling class in Sri Lanka and international representatives of finance capital are well aware of the anger again brewing among the broad masses. Since coming to power, Wickremesinghe has intensified the police and military repression against anti-government protesters. Hundreds have been arrested. After brutal police attacks on protesting students, Wickremesinghe sent three student leaders to detention camps using the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Austria’s largest energy company given billions in state aid

Markus Salzmann


Austria’s largest energy company Wien Energie (WE) has run into massive payment difficulties due to high-risk speculative transactions. To prevent its collapse, the company was given 2 billion euros by the federal government within 72 hours. Before that, the owner, the city of Vienna, had already pumped €1.4 billion into WE. Altogether, the total need for financial support could run to six to eight billion euros, according to the company’s board of directors.

[Photo by Viennaphotographer via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0]

About two million households in Vienna and the surrounding area are supplied with natural gas and electricity by WE. However, the company barely produces its own electricity, but buys and sells it on futures and spot markets. Fantastic profits can be realised on these markets, but they are also subject to strong fluctuations and are therefore risky. It is this that has put WE in an extreme financial situation.

A year ago, a megawatt hour of electricity cost less than €90. In the meantime, the price has risen to around €1,000 euros. WE had speculated on falling prices and sold three times more energy than it could deliver. To be able to continue in business, securities running into billions of euros became necessary.

WE is not an isolated case internationally. German energy trader Uniper has so far received €9 billion from the state-owned KfW Bank and applied for about two-thirds of the €34 billion that will be levied on natural gas customers from October via the gas surcharge. The company ran into trouble because gas deliveries from Russia failed to materialise and Uniper was forced to buy gas on the spot markets—where prices exploded—in order to fulfil its supply contracts.

Wien Energie is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wiener Stadtwerke, the infrastructure provider for the city and province of Vienna, and employs around 15,400. The present situation it confronts had been foreseeable for many months. Wien Energie attained a turnover of three billion euros in 2021. However, its annual surplus fell by 61 percent to only €140 million in the same period. In spring this year, the company declared that the future forecast was not “very happy”.

The falling profits were apparently to be made up for by engaging in speculative business deals. “Business was not normal,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung quotes energy market expert Walter Boltz. “I do think that the Viennese took a risk,” according to the ex-head of energy regulator E-Control.

The social democratic mayor of Vienna, Michael Ludwig, had given WE €700 million in July and again in August, using his emergency powers, without informing the public.

Ludwig and Stadtwerke deputy head Peter Weinelt have so far denied that the company was involved in risky speculative transactions. But the findings that have now come to light and the fact that WE strictly refuses to disclose its previous stock market strategy only lead to the opposite conclusion. An external expert as well as the municipal audit office are now to shed more light on the business practices.

The billions injected into the company by the federal government and the state have enabled it to continue its previous business dealings. WE said it was suspending the sale of electricity on the futures market “for the time being”, but that trading on the spot market would, of course, continue. Purchases and sales on the spot market are always made at the current daily price. No collateral is required here, but the risk of price fluctuations is enormous.

Mayor Ludwig played down the consequences of the lifeline using public money. The “most important thing” to him was the security of supply for the Viennese. There have been no consequences so far either for the WE management, nor the supervisory board, nor the Viennese provincial government.

The other political parties are demanding “full clarification” of the case and the resignation of Ludwig. Energy Minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens) now wants to have all energy suppliers investigated to obtain a “detailed picture of the sector”. Until 2020, the Greens themselves were part of the Viennese provincial government and should have been well informed about what was going on at WE. The Austrian chancellor’s party, the conservative ÖVP, is trying to exploit the case for its own benefit and has requested an investigation together with the far-right Austrian Freedom Party.

At the federal level, on the initiative of the Greens, the introduction of a gas surcharge based on the German model is being discussed. The surcharge is passed on to energy suppliers, who are thus compensated for increased import prices. In this way, the money ends up in the coffers of the big energy companies, which profit from it and report record returns.

While the parties are arguing about the responsibility for the recent speculative losses, they all avoid the fundamental issue: namely, a basic social need, the supply of electric power, has become the subject of wild speculative transactions, with which, apart from occasional losses, gigantic profits are made at the expense of consumers.

Since the European Union forced the opening up of electricity markets in 1998, which were previously strictly regulated and mostly in the hands of municipal suppliers, electricity has become a commodity on which producers, traders and grid operators earn massively.

In Germany, large customers, i.e., industrial companies and municipal utilities, only buy about half of their electricity directly from the producers. The other half is bought on the European Energy Exchange in Leipzig. There, some of the electricity is traded in the form of “futures”, with the price fixed up to six years in advance. The rest is bought on the spot market at daily or hourly prices, where the price of electricity tripled last month.

The so-called merit-order principle applies throughout the EU, according to which the price of the most expensive power plant still needed applies to all others, which secures them high profits. Originally, this was intended to promote the producers of renewable energy. But with the explosion of the gas price because of the Ukraine war, electricity prices have also skyrocketed, as expensive gas-fired power plants now determine the price.

For the producers of renewable, nuclear, and coal-fired electricity, this means exorbitant profits. For traders like Wien Energie, who have agreed long-term supply contracts at low prices, it can result in losses of billions. In all cases, the ones who suffer are the consumers, especially private households, and small businesses.

WE customers have had to experience this in the past few days. On 1 September, WE’s prices rose sharply. According to Vienna magazine, customers were given the choice of switching to a new eco-electricity tariff, which is on average 25 percent more expensive, or remaining on the old tariff. However, this tariff will also become massively more expensive—even more than the new eco tariff. In the end, millions of households are faced with a 25 percent increase in their electricity costs.

According to the Austrian Energy Agency, this month’s energy price index is up 9.2 percent compared to the previous month and 256 percent higher than in September 2021. In addition, there are also enormous increases in rental costs in Austria. According to consulting firm Deloitte, rents, not including utilities, in Linz and Graz rose by around 10 percent to over €10 per square metre. Rents in Vienna have also risen sharply recently. In large parts of the city, the price per square metre is already over €14.

Experts assume that electricity prices in Europe will continue to rise in autumn and winter. Even the EU Commission’s promise to develop a new “electricity market design” will not change this. It will take months, if not years, for new regulations to come into force.

Fall COVID-19 booster campaign begins in the US as CDC approves bivalent vaccines with limited data

Benjamin Mateus


The Biden administration and corporate media have sought to cultivate a celebratory mood to the kickoff of the new anti-COVID-19 vaccine booster campaign that has commenced after the Labor Day weekend. Despite the fact that they have not completed any clinical trials to prove their benefit, the newly formulated bivalent vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, which contain a formula tailored to both the ancestral variant and the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, are being touted as the next best defense against the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, access to free COVID-19 tests from the federal government has ended, masking and social distancing are not mandated or encouraged in any state, and dashboards tracking COVID-19 infections have been largely dismantled. With K-12 schools and college campuses back in full swing, the number of COVID-19 infections has exploded in these settings without anywhere near adequate testing or data reporting.

Worst of all, the daily average for COVID-19 deaths remains stubbornly high at around 500, with barely a mention in the press on the ongoing horrific scale of death across the US. Approximately 37,000 Americans have died during this summer from COVID-19 and 220,000 since January 1. By the end of the year, the official number of deaths from COVID-19 will surpass 1.1 million.

After a White House summit on the future of COVID-19 vaccines in late July, the decision was made to purchase bivalent vaccines for this fall, but only if they incorporated the dominant strains of the Omicron subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5. Initially, when the vaccine manufacturers began designing their Omicron-relevant COVID-19 vaccines, they targeted the original subvariants, BA.1 and BA.2.

Based on the favorable neutralization titer levels with the BA.1/BA.2 bivalent vaccines, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel assumed these would also hold true for BA.4/BA.5 versions. They gave their surest endorsement, and the Biden administration ordered the vaccine manufacturers to make the necessary adjustments and have them ready before Labor Day so their regulatory agencies could sign off on them.

Given the sobering estimates at the time that this fall and winter would see over 100 million infections and tens of thousand more deaths, the White House needed to save face. With what remained of the limited COVID-19 funds, 105 million doses of the Pfizer and 66 million doses of the Moderna bivalent COVID-19 boosters were purchased.

At the eleventh hour, last Thursday the FDA granted emergency use authorization for the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine boosters. On Saturday, September 3, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) gave a near-unanimous approval, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky signed off the recommendation.

Pediatrician Dr. Pablo J. Sanchez at Ohio State University’s Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus was the lone dissenting member of the ACIP, who voted “no” because there was insufficient relevant clinical data to guide these recommendations. He explained, “I voted no because I really feel that we need the human data, and to me, that’s really important – it’s a new vaccine, it’s a new platform. There’s a lot of vaccine hesitancy already.” Dr. Sanchez added, “Personally, I’m in the age group where I’m at high risk and I’m almost sure that I will receive it. I just feel that this was a bit premature, and I wish we had seen that data. Having said that, I am comfortable that the vaccine will likely be safe like the others.”

According to the CDC, individuals must have completed the initial COVID-19 vaccine series to be eligible for the bivalent boosters. To receive the Pfizer booster, one must be 12 years or older, while for Moderna’s, the lower age limit is 18. Additionally, it is recommended that at least two months have passed from completing the initial vaccine series or receiving the last booster to take the bivalent vaccines.

As mentioned before, there are no human trial data on the specific COVID-19 booster formulations that have been authorized. Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, mentioned last month during a press brief on the forthcoming boosters that data would be available as soon as mid-September. However, Dr. Peter Marks, who heads the FDA office that reviews vaccines, recently told CNBC that it may take at least another couple of months.

Without a doubt, the Biden administration has chosen expediency over data. It remains unclear how much more protection these new bivalent boosters can offer the population over the original boosters. Vaccine scientist John Moore at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City told Nature“This is not some kind of super-shield against infection compared to what you could have got two weeks ago or a month ago.”

The Nature report notes that previous large-scale efficacy trials that had shown significant reduction in severe disease “are no longer practical, possible, or ethical in 2022.” To gauge efficacy, scientists have turned to measuring immune responses with the latest formulations and comparing them to responses achieved when the original vaccines were administered.

One recent study published on August 26, 2022, titled “Predicting the efficacy of variant-modified COVID-19 vaccine boosters,” attempted to provide some context to the question. The authors found that the variant-modified vaccines, on average, produced 1.51-fold higher titers than the equivalent ancestral-based vaccine.

In their attempt to estimate the clinical benefits of the 1.5-fold improvement, they modeled the correlating neutralization titers with observed clinical protection based on previous phase 3 clinical trials. This translates to protection against symptomatic infection from 50 percent (immunity presently from vaccines received six months prior) to 85.6 percent for the original booster and to 90.2 percent for the variant-modified jab. Against severe disease, protection would rise to 98 percent with the original booster and 98.8 percent for the bivalent boosters, or “an additional 0.8 percentage points of protection on average from severe COVID-19 compared to an ancestral-based booster.”

The authors conclude, “A large proportion of the benefit comes from receiving any booster at all (including an ancestral-based booster). Use of a variant-modified vaccine is expected to provide a modest increase in protection, which may be slightly greater in cases where the vaccine immunogen is more antigenically related to the circulating variant or if immunity has waned.” As the study underscores, the absolute clinical benefit for bivalent boosters compared to the original strains remains unclear.

The Biden administration has spent the last of its COVID-19 funding to procure these next-generation COVID-19 vaccine boosters. Once these run out, the cost for additional vaccines will be deferred to an individual’s insurance plan. Because these boosters are intended as annual vaccines in line with influenza vaccines, paying for another jab six months later when immunity has waned will be an out-of-pocket cost.

It is essential that workers and the general public reject the propaganda of the political establishment and corporate media, which falsely present COVID-19 as harmless to vaccinated people, and remain vigilant in wearing well-fitting N95 respirators and social distance to the greatest extent possible in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The risks of developing Long-COVID, which can cause crippling debilitation, are only slightly reduced by vaccines, and the same will likely hold for the latest bivalent vaccines. As of yet, there are no treatments proven to mitigate the impacts of Long COVID, which can affect nearly every organ in the body.

The essence of the COVID-19 vaccine booster with Omicron-specific subvariant formulations is to deepen the vaccine-only strategy of the Biden administration, which has openly embraced a criminal policy of “forever COVID-19” in which no efforts will be made to eliminate or even reduce viral transmission.

The latest vaccines change nothing about the nature of the coronavirus and the population’s waning immunity that will most assuredly occur over a few months. World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently warned once again of the possibility of the emergence of deadlier and more infectious variants and the need to take appropriate precautions. However, for Biden and the short-sighted bureaucrats heading the COVID Response Team, in particular Drs. Ashish Jha and Rochelle Walensky, the official epidemiologic statistics on the pandemic read like quarterly financial statements without a thought to the future.

Since hosting a “Summit on the Future of COVID-⁠19 Vaccines” in late July, the COVID Response Team has issued barely a word on the need to fast-track the development of sterilizing mucosal vaccines. Last month, noted Yale immunologist Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, who participated in the White House summit, gave the New York Times the following prognosis for the development of mucosal vaccines in the US: “Nasal vaccines will not be available this winter, but if there is government support and coordination, they can be available in the near future, potentially in a couple of years.”

The Western media has been almost entirely silent on the fact that on Sunday China approved the world’s first inhaled vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Fortune magazine ran the story on Monday that CanSino Biologics had been granted regulatory approval for their “needle-free” vaccine, Convidecia Air. It is inhaled through the mouth using a nebulizer to convert the liquid form of the vaccine into an aerosol. According to a preprint study, participants who had completed the two-dose Sinovac vaccine series and were given the inhaled booster showed a tremendous immune response within four weeks, even to Omicron. By contrast, those receiving the third Sinovac dose did not show an immune response against Omicron.

Another scientific study out of Russia found that the intranasally delivered Sputnik V vaccine induced robust systemic and local immune responses in mice for up to 180 days. Also, on Tuesday Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, Drugs Controller General of India, approved Bharat Biotech’s recombinant nasal vaccine for restricted use in India.

These advances in mucosal vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, as well as similar vaccines being developed far more slowly in the US and EU, could tremendously benefit the fight against the pandemic. But without the resources directed to producing these critical therapeutics and quickly distributing them globally, these crucial breakthroughs will linger on laboratory work benches collecting the proverbial dust.

6 Sept 2022

DAAD Research Grants

Application Deadline: 20th October 2022

Eligible Countries: International

To be Taken at (Country): Germany

Type: Research

Eligibility: Excellently-qualified young academics and scientists who have completed a Master’s degree or Diplom, or in exceptional cases a Bachelor’s degree at the latest by the time they begin their grant-supported research.

  • As a rule, applicants should not have graduated any longer than six years before the application deadline. If you are already working on a doctoral degree, you should not have started your degree any longer than three years previously.
  • Applicants who have been resident in Germany for longer than 15 months at the application deadline cannot be considered.

What can be funded?

Doctoral programmes at a state or state-recognised institution of higher education or a non-university research institute in Germany:

  • individual projects under the supervision of a university teacher or academic adviser
    or
  • participation in a structured doctoral study programme

Selection Criteria: An independent selection committee consisting of specialist scientists reviews applications.
The most important selection criteria:

  • a convincing and well-planned research project or course of continuing education
  • academic achievements

Additional documents that prove academic suitability or provide information about extracurricular activities will also be considered in the assessment.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

  • Depending on academic level, monthly payments of:
    euros 850.- for graduates,
    euros 1,200.- for doctoral candidates
  • Payments towards health, accident and personal liability insurance cover
  • Travel allowance
  • One-off research allowance

Under certain circumstances, grant holders completing an uninterrupted stay of over 6 months may receive the following additional benefits:

  • monthly rent subsidy
  • monthly allowance for accompanying family members

To enable grant holders to improve their language skills in preparation for their stay in Germany, DAAD offers the following services:

  • Payment of course fees for the online language course “Deutsch-Uni Online (DUO)” (www.deutsch-uni.com) for six months after receipt of the Scholarship Award Letter
  • if necessary: Language course (2, 4 or 6 months) before the start of the research stay; the DAAD decides whether to fund the grant holder’s participation and for how long depending on language skills and project. If a language course scholarship is granted and the working language at the host institute is German, participation is compulsory.
  • Allowance for a personally chosen German language course during the grant period
  • Reimbursement of the fees for the TestDaF test which has either been taken in the home country after receipt of the Scholarship Award Letter or in Germany before the end of the funding period
  • As an alternative to the TestDaF for scholarship holders who have taken a language course beforehand: the fee for a DSH examination taken during the scholarship period may be reimbursed.

Duration of Award:

  • a maximum of four years; the length of the grant is decided by a selection committee and depends on the project in question and the applicant’s work schedule.
  • Grants are initially awarded for a maximum of one year. Extensions depend on whether the selection committee considers the previous award period to have been successfully completed.
  • For doctoral projects in Germany that require several years of research, research phases outside Germany can be supported if these are critical for the successful completion of the doctoral degree. Planned stays must be specified in the application in the work and time schedule and should not exceed a quarter of the anticipated total funding period.

How to Apply:

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

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Last Mile Film Fund 2022

Application Deadline:

20th September 2022

Tell Me About Last Mile Film Fund :

Africa has an endless pool of talented filmmakers, but they often face a lot of challenges throughout the production process, especially when it comes to financing post-production costs.

Africa No Filter is launching the Last Mile Film Fund to finance African filmmakers who are working on the last steps of their projects. The Last Mile Film Fund offers grants of up to $15,000 for feature-length films and up to $10,000 for short films.

Films must have appealing storylines that challenge stereotypical narratives of Africa.

The grant, which is open to applicants in the continent and the diaspora, will fund narrative-changing films that are in the final stages of production.

Films must have appealing storylines that challenge stereotypical narratives of Africa and should be ready for completion and premiere by 31 August 2023.

What Type of Award is this?

Entrepreneurship

Who can apply for Last Mile Film Fund?

The following criteria will be applied:

  • Short and feature-length fiction, documentary or animation films at the final stages of production, including post-production (editing, visual effects, sound mixing, dubbing…), marketing and distribution, etc.
  • The call-out is aimed at post-production activities which can be covered by the grant in full. However, if the cost of the intended activity is more than the requested funding from ANF (Africa No Filter), the applicant must show evidence of confirmed funding for the excess amount from another source.
  • The fund is open to filmmakers based in the continent and the diaspora, and the project needs to be African led.
  • The production company must demonstrate that they have the authority and capacity to submit the project and hold all the rights in and to the project and its related materials.
  • All films must be submitted in their original language or subtitled in English. Only applications sent through the online application form available on our website will be accepted.
  • Films must challenge a prevailing negative stereotype about or within Africa or reflect a refreshing, more contemporary and nuanced narrative of the continent, along with a storyline that is compelling to a broad audience both at the pan-African level and internationally.

The following applications will not be considered:

  • Incomplete applications which lack supporting materials and documents.
  • Applications submitted via post or e-mail.
  • Films that will be completed after 31 August 2023.
  • Short and feature-length films that are in development or production phases.
  • Films that reinforce the stereotypical and outdated views on Africa by addressing the recurring themes around poverty, poor leadership, weak governance, violence, terrorism, disease, etc.

Which Countries are Eligible?

Africans living on the continent and in the diaspora.

Where will Award be Taken?

Remote

How Many Positions will be Given?

Not specified

What is the Benefit of Last Mile Film Fund?

The Last Mile Film Fund offers grants of up to $15,000 for feature-length films and up to $10,000 for short films.

How to Apply for Last Mile Film Fund?

Apply HERE

Visit Award Webpage for Details