About Scholarship: For decades, the Mexican cultural diplomacy has worked in different successful programs, such as the human capital training through scholarships for academic degrees awarding and research work performing in different areas of knowledge.
The Directorate-General for Educational and Cultural Cooperation, through the Academic Exchange Department, designs and manages the Ministry of Foreign Affairs´ Scholarship Program for Foreigners. The scholarships of the Mexican Government present two programs: the scholarship for academic studies and the scholarship for special programs.
The scholarships for academic studies are offered to take complete programs for Specialization, Master´s or PhD Degrees, and Postgraduate Researches. Likewise, the offer includes academic mobility for Bachelor´s and Postgraduate Degree. On the other hand, the scholarships for special programs are offered to take short-term fellowships addressed to Visiting Professors, Researchers in Mexico´s issues, Media Contributors, Art Production Fellowships, etc.
Type: Specialization, Bachelor’s, Master’s or PhD Degrees, and Postgraduate Researches including short-term fellowships
Selection Criteria and Eligibility: The scholarships will be awarded on academic excellence.
Applicants must hold a Bachelor’s, Master’s or Ph.D. Degree, as required by the program for which the scholarship is requested. Technical and / or commercial degree titles are not accepted. For the cases of mobility at the Bachelor’s level, it will not be necessary to submit a diploma, only proof of studies of the last academic period completed, issued by the institution of origin.
Candidates cannot be living in Mexico at the time of application.
Applicants must have achieved a minimum grade point average of eighty (80), on a scale of 0 to 100, or the equivalent, for the last academic degree received. Applications with a lower grade point average will not be considered
The scholarships are not transferable and cannot be deferred to future years.
Number of Scholarships: Several
Value of Scholarship:
-Enrollment fees and tuition -Health Insurance -Transportation from Mexico city to the Host Institution -Monthly Stipend
Duration of Scholarship:
-Undergraduate and graduate academic mobility programs- one academic term (quarter, trimester or semester)
Undergraduate: 4 years
-Graduate research and postdoctoral fellowships-12 months (1 month minimum)
-Specialization – 1 year
-Master’s degree – 2 Years
-Doctorate- 3 or 4 years
-Medical specialties and subspecialties- 3 Years
Eligible Countries
Africa: Algeria ,Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Nambia, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Saharawi, Arab Rep., Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe
North America: United States, Canada and Canada / Province of Quebec
Latin America: Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela)
Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico (Commonwealth), Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago
Asia: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Kingdom of China, People’s Rep., India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Democratic Rep., Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Islamic Rep. of Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Kingdom of Timor – Leste, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Socialist Rep. of
Pacific: Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Independent State, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu
Middle East: Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestinian National Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen, and
Non-self Governing Territories: American Samoa, Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Guam, Montserrat, New Caledonia, Pitcairn, Saint Helena, Tokelau, Turks and Caicos Islands and United States Virgin Islands
How to Apply: Only applicants from Cuba, Saint Lucia, the Dominican Republic, Antigua and Barbuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, Barbados, Suriname, Guyana, Jamaica, Haiti, Nicaragua, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Turkey, Venezuela, New Zealand, the Palestine and the countries of the African continent may submit paper or online applications.
Applications must be submitted online through the Academic Cooperation Management System (SIGCA (https://sigca.sre.gob.mx), during the duration of the Call.
It is important to go through ALL application requirements in the Award Webpages (see Links below) before applying.
The Conservative government is intensifying its war on refugees and asylum seekers, with the announcement this week by Downing Street that two more barges will be leased for their detention.
In March the government announced plans to house 500 isolated and vulnerable male asylum seekers in a 47-year-old “hotel barge”, the Bibby Stockholm. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s announcement Monday brings the potential detainees to at least 1,500. But this is only the start of a system of many such offshore prison camps with migrants stuffed into what have been described as a shoebox-sized space. The Guardian reported “it is understood” that the two vessels announced by Sunak “are expected to be moored in Teesport, near Middlesbrough, and in docks near Liverpool.” It added that “sources have said that discussions over the acquisition of further barges and disused cruise ships so they can house asylum seekers in Tyneside, Essex, Suffolk and near City Airport were already taking place.”
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gives a press conference after visiting a Border Force cutter boat in the Dover Strait, June 5, 2023 [Photo by Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY 2.0]
Once onboard the ships, migrants will only be allowed to leave at specific times and be provided only a few pounds a week to spend.
Two former military bases in Wethersfield, Essex, and Scampton, Lincolnshire will also take in migrants this summer, with the number of occupants rising to about 3,000 by the autumn, according to the Daily Mail.
The government chose Dover on the south coats as the location for Sunak to make his announcement. At the invitation of the pro-Tory Telegraph, he boarded HMC Seeker, one of the Border Force vessels tasked with stopping boats in the Channel.
Sunak spoke at Western Jet Foil, an asylum seeker processing centre in Dover, and behind a podium emblazoned with the slogan “Stop the Boats”, one of his five promises for 2023, made to satisfy the most rabidly anti-immigration of his parliamentary party and wider Tory constituency. Sunak declared in Dover that the introduction of the barges was “really important” to reduce the use of hotels to house asylum seekers, which is costing £6 million a day. He promised that the Bibby Stockholm barge would arrive to dock at Portland Port in Dorset in the next fortnight.
As well as clearing hotels being used by thousands of asylum seekers as a precursor to many being expelled from the country and never allowed to return, another sadistic plan has been devised to cut the number of hotel rooms being used in the immediate period ahead. The prime minister said, “My basic point of view is if you’ve come here illegally and you’re here because you fear persecution, death, torture, any of these things, in the place that you’re coming from, then I think it’s entirely reasonable to ask you to share a room in a taxpayer-funded hotel room in central London. And by doing that, we think we will free up over 10,000 places over the next few months, which will save the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds.”
Sunak made his statement after around 40 asylum seekers were told last week to stay in a hotel in Pimlico, London, which they refused to enter after being asked to sleep “four people per room”. The refugees mounted a protest outside the hotel, with their sleeping bags and suitcases strewn across the pavement, holding signs reading, “Help us” and “This is a prison, not a hotel”. The government refused to resolve the crisis, with Westminster Council’s rough sleeping teams instead intervening to support the refugees.
Throwing more “red meat” to the Tory hyenas, Sunak boasted that arrests in places where migrants were employed “illegally” had doubled. He announced that measures put in place had reduced small boat crossings of the English Channel by refugees “by almost a fifth this year,” pledging, “We will not rest until the boats are stopped and with grit and determination we will stop this.'
Sunak announced that since signing an anti-immigration deal, 40 percent more small boats were being stopped by France than last year. Last year a third of crossings came from Albania, but since signing a deal with the Albanian government last December Channel crossings from Albania had fallen by 90 percent.
Sunak stated, “The message is if you come here illegally you can't stay. You will be detained and removed to your own country or a safe country such as Rwanda.”
Under the Illegal Migration Bill, a duty will be placed on ministers to remove refugees “as soon as reasonably practicable” to a third country. A deal has already been signed with the Rwanda government to facilitate the mass deportation to that poverty-stricken country where desperate refugees will be forced into hovels. Last October, Home Secretary Suella Braverman made a speech to the Tory’s annual conference declaring it her “dream” and “obsession” to see asylum seekers put on deportation flights to Rwanda.
Her predecessor Priti Patel began the Rwanda deportation policy, and went as far as to organise flights. But last-minute legal challenges stopped the plane on the runway last year. The government has been involved in legal challenges and talks with the European Union ever since to modify Rule 39 of the European Court of Human Rights Rules of Court, which were the basis for the UK having to halt the flights to Rwanda.
According to a Sun newspaper report Tuesday, “The Home Office is secretly preparing for a controversial Rwanda deportation flight as soon as late September… Hopes are growing in Government they will win in the Court of Appeal—and avoid a Supreme Court showdown on the small Channel boats deterrent scheme.
“Ministers believe if judges throw out the appeal lodged by unions and human rights groups, it is unlikely that there will then be a legal justification for sending the case to the highest court in the land.”
The Illegal Migration Bill, dubbed by Downing Street as the “Stop the Boats” Bill passed its readings in the House of Commons where the Tories have a working majority of over 60 seats, but is now being scrutinised in the House of Lords, where the government don’t have an overall majority. The Telegraph noted that “asked twice [by the newspaper] if he is prepared to use the Parliament Act to force through the Bill should the Lords vote it down, Mr Sunak indicated willingness to do just that.”
The 1911Parliament Act removed the power for the Lords to veto a Bill proposed by the Commons. In the more than 90 years since the Act was legislated it only been used seven times.
Nothing announced by the government in its crackdown can ever be enough for the most right-wing sections of the political elite and their media echo chamber. Their ravings invariably provide the government with justifications to deepen their offensive against immigrants and asylum seekers. This was the case when Braverman engineered a rebellion by the most right-wing sections of the party in order to then proceed with toughening the already vicious Illegal Immigration Bill
Following Sunak’s visit, Tory MP for Dover Natalie Elphicke, who was at the Jet Foil listening to Mr Sunak’s speech, said, “The prime minister specifically commented about the impact of the small boats crossings on our area, referencing my meetings with him and other Ministers to highlight pressures on local services and our community… It’s good news that overall numbers of arrivals are down 20 percent so far this year, and Albanian numbers 90 percent down. However, it’s early days and too many boats are still making the dangerous crossing and it is costing too much.”
Such is the acceptance of the media and the opposition Labour Party of the necessity to fight off what is regularly described by the Tories as “an invasion” of the UK that the only questioning Sunak faced from reporters in Dover were on where exactly the new offshore vessels would be moored. A reporter from ITV Meridian asked if the reduction in the number of crossings able to reach Britain was not due to government policies, but recent windy conditions in the Channel making small boat sailings more difficult.
Post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), often referred to as Long COVID, has had a substantial and growing impact on the global population. Recent prevalence studies from the United States and the United Kingdom found that the complication has affected, on average, around 45 percent of survivors, regardless of hospitalization status.
No accurate tally of the number of people affected and its real global impact has yet been made, but conservative estimates of several hundred million and trillions in economic devastation would hardly be an exaggeration. Even in China, after the lifting of the Zero COVID policy late last fall and the tsunami of infections that followed, social media threads are now widespread with people complaining of chronic debilitating fatigue, heart palpitations and brain fog.
Yet, more than three years into the “forever” COVID pandemic, with Long COVID producing more than 200 symptoms, impacting nearly every organ system and causing such vast health problems for a significant population across the globe, it remains undefined and somewhat arbitrary in the clinical diagnosis. Additionally, the assurances given to study potential therapeutic agents have remained unfulfilled.
In this regard, a new Long COVID observational study called the “RECOVER [researching COVID to enhance recovery] initiative,” was published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, with almost 10,000 participants across the US. Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), it attempts to provide a working definition for Long COVID (PASC).
While the study represents an advance from the standpoint of assessing the impact of Long COVID, and has been celebrated in media coverage, it must be viewed with several reservations and caveats. It is exclusively focused on describing the disease, rather than supporting efforts to alleviate its impact, let alone find a cure. And its definition, however preliminary, could well be misused by insurance companies and other profit-driven entities in the healthcare system to restrict diagnosis and care.
Comments by Dr. Leora Horwitz, one of the study authors and director of the Center for Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Science at New York University, give some sense of the misgivings felt by serious scientists. Horwitz stated, “This study is an important step toward defining Long COVID beyond any one individual symptom. This definition—which may evolve over time—will serve as a critical foundation for scientific discovery and treatment design.”
Certainly, a working definition that medical communities can agree on is critical. But after three years and nearly all the $1.2 billion given to the NIH already spent, one must ask how much another observational study contributes to answering pressing questions affecting patients that have not already been addressed in more than 13,000 previous reports, as tallied by the LitCOVID search engine?
Why have there been so many delays in conducting clinical trials studying potential treatments and preventative strategies in the acute phase of infection that could reduce or eliminate the post-acute sequelae? Where is the urgency at the NIH and in the Biden administration to expand funding and initiate an all-out drive to develop treatments for Long COVID like the $12.4 billion spent on the COVID vaccines?
Photo of an 8-year-old child who has suffered from Long COVID for over one year. Submitted to the Long Covid Kids case studies page. [Photo: Long COVID Kids]
Scoring post-acute symptoms
The findings in the recent study, published on May 25, 2023, in JAMA, titled, “Development of a Definition of Post-acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection,” are somewhat limited and problematic in their current formulation. The authors have identified 12 primary symptoms that distinguish COVID survivors with Long COVID from those without those aftereffects. These include loss of smell or taste (8 points), post-exertional malaise (7 points), chronic cough (4 points), brain fog (3 points), thirst, (3 points), heart palpitations (2 points), chest pain (2 points), fatigue (1 point), dizziness (1 point), gastrointestinal symptoms (1 point), issues with sexual desire or capacity (1 point), and abnormal movements (1 point).
Assigning points to each of the 12 symptoms and adding them up gives a cumulative total for each patient. Anyone scoring 12 or higher would be diagnosed as afflicted with PASC, accounting for 23 percent of the total. In general, the higher the score, the greater the disability in performing daily activities.
The researchers also noted that certain symptom combinations occurred at higher rates in certain groups, leading to identifying four clusters of Long COVID based on symptomology patterns, ranging from least severe to most severe in terms of impact on quality of life. Why such clusters were seen remains uncertain.
Some symptoms were more common than others, and this did not correspond to the severity of the symptoms as measured approximately by the points. Symptoms of post-exertional malaise (87 percent), brain fog (64 percent), palpitations (57 percent), fatigue (85 percent), dizziness (62 percent), and gastrointestinal disturbances (59 percent) were most common.
The study’s lead author, Tanayott Thaweethai from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, explained, “This offers a unifying framework for thinking about Long COVID, and it gives us a quantitative score we can use to understand whether people get better or worse over time.”
Andrea Foulkes, the corresponding author and principal investigator of the RECOVER Data Resource Core and professor at Harvard Medical School, said, “Now that we’re able to identify people with Long COVID, we can begin doing more in-depth studies to understand the mechanisms at play. These findings set the stage for identifying effective treatment strategies for people with Long COVID—understanding the biological underpinnings is going to be critical to that endeavor.”
The currently evolving definition could have significant implications, and not just medically. For instance, if people suffer only brain fog and post-exertional malaise and score less than 12 on their symptomology, they would not be construed as having PASC. Under such a construct, the definition could be used by employers and health insurers to deny compensation or treatment by telling people they don’t have a recognized Long COVID complication. Additionally, it is not clear how long these symptoms have to be present before the diagnosis is accepted.
Lisa McCorkell, one of the authors of the study, explained on her social media account, “If people didn’t meet the scoring threshold for PASC+, that doesn’t mean they don’t have PASC! It means they are unspecified. Unspecified includes people with Long COVID. Future iterations of the model will aim to refine this—that will include doing analysis using the updated RECOVER symptoms survey, adding in tests/clinical features and ultimately biomarkers. That is also why this isn’t meant to be an official prevalence study. The sample is not fully representative, but also, we know that there are people in the unspecified groups that have PASC.”
She continued, “It is very clear throughout the paper that in order for this to be actionable at all, iterative refinement is needed. In presenting this to NIH leadership, they are fully aware of that. But the press is not fully understanding the paper which could have dangerous downstream effects. Since the beginning of working on this paper I’ve done everything I could to ensure the model presented in this paper is not used clinically.”
Unfortunately, in the world of capitalism, such things take on a life of their own. The definitions will influence how health systems will choose to view these patients and demand their clinicians abide by prescribed diagnostic codes. This has the potential to dismiss millions with Long COVID symptoms and deny them access to potential treatments if and when they materialize.
The concerns of Elisa Perego
Dr. Elisa Perego, who suffers from Long COVID and coined the term, offered the following important observations.
In response to the publication, she wrote, “Presenting a salad of 12 symptoms, (many of which many patients might not even experience) as the most significant in #LongCOVID is also detrimental to new patients, who might be joining the community now, and might not recognize themselves in the symptom list.”
She added, “We are also in 2023. There are thousands and thousands of publications from across the world that discuss imaging, tests, clinical signs (=objective measurements), biomarkers, etc. related to acute and #LongCOVID. We have many insights into the pathophysiology already. The #LongCOVID and chronic illness community deserve more. Other diseases, including diseases linked to infections, have sadly been reduced to a checklist of symptoms in the past. This has made research, recognition, and a quest for treatment much more difficult.”
There are additional findings in the report worth underscoring as they provide a glimpse into the ever-growing crisis caused by forcing the world’s population to “live with the virus.”
Hannah Davis, a Long COVID advocate and researcher, with Dr. Eric Topol, Lisa McCorkell, and Julia Moore Vogel, wrote an important review on Long COVID in March, which was published in Nature. She said of the RECOVER study, “The overall prevalence of #LongCOVID is ten percent at six months. The prevalence for those who got Omicron (or later) AND were vaccinated is also ten percent … [However] reinfections had significantly higher levels of #LongCOVID. Even in those who had Omicron (or later) as their first infection, 9.7 percent with those infected once, but 20 percent of those who were reinfected had Long COVID at six months after infection.”
Furthermore, she said, “Reinfections also increased the severity of #LongCOVID. Twenty-seven percent of first infections were in cluster four (worst) versus 31 percent of reinfections.” These facts have considerable implications.
Immunologist and COVID advocate Dr. Anthony Leonardi wrote on these findings, “If Omicron reinfections average six months [based on current global patterns of infection], and Long COVID rates for reinfection remain 10 to 20 percent, the rate of long COVID in the USA per lifetime will be over 99.9 percent. In fact, the average person would have different manifestations of Long COVID at different times many times over. Some things reverse—like anosmia [loss of smell]. Others, like [lung] fibrosis don’t reverse so well.”
The work done by these authors deserves credit and support. Every effort to bring answers to these critical questions is vital. The criticism to be made is not directed at the researchers who work diligently putting in overtime to see the research is conducted with the utmost care and obligation it merits. Rather, it should be directed at the very institutions that have adopted “living with the virus” as a positive good for of public health.
The Biden administration neglects Long COVID
In a recent scathing critique of the Biden administration and the NIH by STAT News, Rachel Cohrs and Betsy Ladyzhets place the issue front and center. In their opening remarks, they write, “The federal government has burned through more than $1 billion to study Long COVID, an effort to help the millions of Americans who experience brain fog, fatigue, and other symptoms after recovering from a coronavirus infection. There’s basically nothing to show for it.”
They continue, “The NIH hasn’t signed up a single patient to test any potential treatments—despite a clear mandate from Congress to study them. And the few trials it is planning have already drawn a firestorm of criticism, especially one intervention that experts and advocates say may actually make some patients’ Long COVID symptoms worse.” This is in reference to a planned study where Long COVID patients would be asked to exercise as much as possible, when it has clearly been shown that such activities have exacerbated the symptoms of Long COVID patients.
As the report in STAT News explains, there has been a complete lack of accountability in how the NIH funds were used. Much of the work to run the RECOVER trial has been outsourced to major universities.
Michael Sieverts, a member of the Long COVID Patient-led Research Collaborative with expertise in federal budgeting for scientific research, told STAT, “Many of the research projects associated with RECOVER have been funded through these organizations rather than directly from the NIH. This process makes it hard to track how decisions are made or how money is spent through public databases.”
In April the Biden administration announced they were launching “Project Next Gen,” which is like the Trump-era COVID vaccine “Warp Speed Operation.” It has promised $5 billion to fund the development of the next iteration of vaccines through partnership with private-sector companies, monies freed up from prior coronavirus aid packages. Incredibly, it has left Long COVID out of the plan.
Indeed, this diverting of money back into the hands of the pharmaceuticals and selling it as the Biden administration’s continued proactive response to the ongoing pandemic, while divesting all interest in preventing or curing Long COVID, is on par with every effort the administration has made to peddle the myth that “the pandemic is really over.” Long COVID is one of the central elements of the worst public health threat in a century, in a pandemic that is far from ended.
The recent “crisis” over the US debt limit has exposed the contradictions tearing apart the US state. Currently at stake is one of the Biden administration’s flagship pieces of legislation, the CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to shift the vast semiconductor supply chain back inside the US in preparation for war with China.
The CHIPS Act provides roughly $280 billion in funding to create a domestic manufacturing capability for semiconductors, a crucial component in nearly every facet of the economy. However, $170 billion of that funding requires yearly appropriation by Congress and is thus subject to the new spending limits agreed upon by the Democrats and Republicans.
This money is split between the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, and is intended to fund workforce development, STEM education, and research and development over the next three years. Already funded is $52 billion in direct subsidies to chip manufacturers in exchange for beginning work on US-based foundries.
Even before the theater surrounding the debt ceiling, Congress had already declined to provide the full funding authorized by the CHIPS Act. For the 2023 fiscal year the NSF received $9.87 billion out of a maximum $11.9 billion, and the DoE received $8.1 billion out of a maximum $8.9 billion. With the new spending limits agreed to by the Democrats and Republicans, this shortfall is likely only to grow in the coming years.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, right, speak to reporters after a bill designed to encourage more semiconductor companies to build chip plants in the United States passed the Senate, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, July 27, 2022. [AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite]
While semiconductors are vitally important to the economy as a whole and the money authorized by the CHIPS Act is officially non-defense spending and thus subject to the new spending limits, the law is at its core a foreign policy measure aimed at China. The US ruling elite reacted with trade war measures to the CCP’s “Made in China 2025” program, which aims to make China a center for manufacturing semiconductors and most other advanced technology products.
The US is also concerned that the dominance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which produces the bulk of the most advanced chips, poses an obstacle to its efforts to provoke a war with China. Almost any open military conflict in or around Taiwan would end the production of semiconductors on the island, with massive ramifications for the global economy. Washington is hoping to induce TSMC to move much of its production to the US, so it has a freer hand in turning Taiwan into a battlefield.
However, subsidies and tax breaks alone cannot run a factory, especially one working at the extreme levels of precision necessary to produce modern semiconductors. Washington and the chip companies confront a massive shortage of skilled labor as they attempt to create new production facilities. The obstacles to training enough workers to staff the facilities being planned already cast doubt on the effectiveness of the CHIPS Act. The unwillingness of Congress to fully fund the act only makes this problem nearly insurmountable.
Some members of Congress have called for the CHIPS Act to be fully funded, but they do so from the perspective of economic nationalism. The New York Times cites comments from Democratic California Representative Ro Khanna, who said, “To make America a manufacturing superpower, we have to have advances in technology. Technology has to be the driver of that because it requires massive increases in productivity.” Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-California) explicitly stated the act needed to be fully funded in order not to “cede the future to China.”
The support of the Democratic Party, along with anti-China hawks in the Republican Party, for the CHIPS Act is an expression of the two parties’ joint support for US militarism and trade war. Economic nationalism, which is shared by all sections of the capitalist class, is a key component of the preparation for military conflict with China.
Khanna, who was Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign co-chair and who has the support of the Democratic Socialists of America, shows that this right-wing nationalism is also a central plank of the American pseudo-left and the trade unions. The latter have been engaged by the Biden administration as its instruments to keep workers in line behind its economic and foreign policy agenda.
The inability of the US to fund its scientific aspirations, even in service of key national security imperatives, is deeply rooted in its economic decline. The initial development of semiconductors as well as related technologies like lasers owed much to the large amounts of money the US government was able to pour into scientific research in the aftermath of World War II.
The importance of nuclear weapons to war planning led to massive investments in engineering and technology as well as basic research. Money was poured into not just particle physics, with the hope of creating more powerful bombs, but into guidance and delivery systems, command and control networks, and computer modeling of many natural phenomena including the weather.
Workers at the Micron Technology automotive chip manufacturing plant February 11, 2022, in Manassas, Virginia. [AP Photo/Steve Helber]
This massive investment in science and technology had follow-on effects in the rest of society. Companies were eager to commercialize their research however they could, but it could not escape the broader dynamics of capitalist development. The economic crises of the 1970s led semiconductor manufacturing to move offshore in search of cheaper labor. The erosion of the vast economic trade and balance of payments surplus, its weakening global position, and the decline in funding for science and technology all played a part.
This new attitude toward science and research was epitomized by the 1993 cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider, four years and $2 billion into construction. The SSC would have been a massive step forward in experimental particle physics, even compared to the Large Hadron Collider which came a decade later.
The cancellation came shortly after George H. W. Bush had promised that a so-called “peace dividend” resulting from the freeing up of vast sums that had previously been spent on military preparations against the Soviet Union would make such investments in science and infrastructure possible. Instead, the ensuing decade would see the dismantling of domestic programs, including spending on scientific research and education.
This decline has found its sharpest expression in the explosion of the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments throughout the world spent years ignoring the warnings of scientists while cutting funding for medical research and letting stockpiles of medical equipment run dry. The ignorance championed by the ruling elite has found noxious expression in agitation against necessary public health measures and the anti-vax movement.
An aerial view shows New York City in a haze-filled sky from the Empire State Building observatory, Wednesday, June. 7, 2023, in New York. [AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura]
More than 115 million people across the eastern United States and Canada were under extreme air quality warnings Wednesday as choking smoke from massive wildfires burning in northern Quebec made its way as far south as Texas and Florida.
Extremely dry conditions and record-breaking heat driven by capitalist-induced climate change have resulted in the eruption of massive wildfires across Canada since early May. This has now developed into a public health crisis on an enormous scale.
The fires in Quebec have forced more than 11,400 people to flee their homes, with entire communities evacuated, including all 7,500 residents of Chibougamau. Over 460,000 hectares have already burned, breaking a more than 30-year-old fire season record, with many weeks yet to go.
The areas most impacted by the smoke include Canada’s main population centers of Montreal in Quebec and Ottawa and Toronto in Southwest Ontario, Upstate New York and New York City, as well as Philadelphia in eastern Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh in the west.
In New York City, the center of Wall Street and world finance capital, the Air Quality Index (AQI) soared well above 400, giving it the worst air quality of any major city in the world and the highest level since 1999, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began recording measurements.
A hazardous air quality warning, the highest possible warning, was issued for Central New York and Eastern Pennsylvania from Syracuse to Allentown, with the AQI exceeding 400 Wednesday afternoon. All the major urban centers of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut reported extreme AQIs above 150, which the federal government deems unhealthy.
Photos and videos showed the skyline of Manhattan obscured by heavy smoke and the sky tinted deep orange. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a ground stop for flights into LaGuardia International Airport and slowed flights into Newark Liberty International Airport due to significantly reduced visibility. A Code Red Air Quality Action was issued by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for the entire state Wednesday.
The inhalation of fine particulate smoke from wildfires can trigger asthma attacks and heart attacks and contributes to longer-term health issues, including lung cancer. It can also exacerbate conditions for those who recently suffered pneumonia or myocarditis, common conditions for those infected by COVID-19. Poor air quality is attributed to over six million fatalities per year globally, making it among the leading contributors of death.
Health experts have made urgent warnings about avoiding any work and exercise outside, and that those who have to go out should, at a minimum, wear N95 respirators.
Despite the nature of the threat, however, no recommendations have come from the federal, state or provincial governments that people wear N95 masks when outside in the smoke-affected regions. In New York City and across the affected region, children were still sent to school, even as buildings filled up with smoke. And even though the immediate impact of toxic smoke on those who work in agriculture, landscaping, construction and in factories is well known, there were no stay-at-home orders issued.
The WSWS received reports from workers Tuesday night and Wednesday at the Mack Trucks plant in Macungie, Pennsylvania, just outside Allentown, that workers were passing out on the line and suffering from nausea and headaches due to the smoke, but production continued. Under conditions of terrible air quality and heat, no efforts were made to ventilate the plant or provide workers with high quality masks. The second shift was finally canceled Wednesday as conditions continued to deteriorate and workers called out sick.
In New York City, workers at a Trader Joe’s walked out over unsafe conditions, declaring that the air was so bad that they had trouble breathing.
These horrors were repeated in countless workplaces across the affected regions of the US and Canada, with tens of millions forced to labor in unsafe and potentially deadly conditions.
As with every weather disaster or public health crisis, the capitalist ruling elites and their political representatives are totally indifferent to the suffering of the population. Their only concern is to keep production going and maintain profits in the face of mass suffering and death.
The apparatus of the trade unions, predictably, have done nothing to safeguard workers’ lives. The union bureaucracy has kept workers on the job throughout the affected region, with production halted only when workers took action themselves.
The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 20 million people globally and more than one million in the United States alone, has further inured the bourgeoisie to the misery they inflict on the working class. The dropping of all pretense to even mitigate the spread of COVID-19, allowing the virus to evolve into new and potentially more dangerous variants, signals the abandonment of the most basic principles of public health. Whether in response to the emergence of a new pandemic, or to what is in effect the mass poisoning of millions of people from smoke inhalation, the ruling class is determined that nothing will be done.
The widespread air pollution across Canada and the US is a graphic demonstration of the impacts of the deepening climate crisis, which scientists have repeatedly warned is fueling worse droughts, floods, wildfires, hurricanes and other devastating weather events. The consequences of unchecked global warming are not in the future, they are already happening and being borne by workers around the world.
Last year saw the worst flooding in Pakistan’s history, inundating one third of the country in water, killing more than 1,700 people and leaving over 2 million homeless. Australia witnessed one of its worst ever bushfire seasons in 2019-20, in which thousands of homes were destroyed and 34 people directly killed. An estimated 445 people died as the result of smoke inhalation. Meanwhile, extreme heat records have been repeatedly broken around the world, from China and India to the Arctic, which is one of the fastest warming regions of the planet. Last year was the fifth warmest on record globally and the last nine years were all in the top ten.
On Friday, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) handed down its annual wage review ruling, ordering a 5.75 percent nominal pay rise for the 2.5 million workers covered by industrial awards. With inflation at 7 percent, this means a real wage cut for a section of the workforce that already confronts low pay and high levels of casualisation.
Childcare workers demand higher wages at Melbourne protest in 2022. [Photo: WSWS]
The FWC also increased the national minimum wage, which applies to just 0.7 percent of the Australian workforce, by 8.6 percent. While higher than the official inflation rate, this falls far short of keeping up with the real rise in the cost of living, which disproportionately affects low-income earners. The sharpest inflation over the past year have been in the price of basic essential goods and services, including education, health, housing, food and energy.
The minimum wage will increase from $21.38 per hour to a meagre $23.23. The average hourly rate for workers employed under the General Retail Industry Award—the most commonly used—will increase from $24.48 to $25.89. Average hourly pay for fast food workers employed under the award will reach just $20.24. This figure is lower than the minimum wage because the industry mostly employs workers under 21, who are paid a fraction of the adult rate.
These are among the lowest wages in the country. According to FWC data from 2021, average hourly earnings across all awards were $25.80, less than 60 percent of the $45.20 for workers not employed under awards.
Labor Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke hailed the ruling, declaring it would make a “huge difference in people’s lives” and provide poor workers with “better capacity to be able to pay their bills.”
Labor’s claim that this is a victory for workers, echoed by the unions and the corporate media, is a sham.
The FWC spelled this out in its statement announcing the decision: “We acknowledge that this increase will not maintain the real value of modern award minimum wages or reverse the reduction in real value which has occurred over recent years.”
This is the second successive cut to the real wages of low-paid workers delivered under the Albanese Labor government. As was the case last year, Labor’s submission to the review made clear that it opposed an “across-the-board” pay rise in line with inflation.
This year’s recommendation to the FWC repeated the baseless assertion underlying Labor’s federal budget, that inflation has “reached its peak.” Yet the main factor identified in the submission as responsible for the soaring cost of living—the Russia-Ukraine war—is only escalating, along with mounting preparations for a war against China.
Labor’s claim that inflation is falling also flies in the face of Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showing that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 6.8 percent for the year ending in April, compared with 6.0 percent for the 12 months to March.
Business lobbyists and the financial press have responded to the nominal award wage rise with hysterical claims that it will lead to job cuts, inflation and further interest rate rises. Embracing the fiction that wages, which are increasing at less than half the rate of the CPI, are the cause of inflation, the FWC noted, “We have also had regard to the need to avoid entrenching high inflation expectations by taking a perceived wage indexation approach.”
In other words, workers must shoulder an even greater share of the burden of the crisis that global capitalism has created for itself. Repeated interest rate rises instigated by the central banks, in Australia and globally, are not about lowering inflation, but driving up unemployment in order to force down wages.
Labor’s insistence that award rates must fall in real terms is in line with its broader agenda of deep cuts to jobs, wages, working conditions and social spending.
Across the public sector, Labor governments at state, territory and federal level have imposed, or are in the process of imposing, nominal pay rises of half or less the rate of inflation. At the same time, thousands of public servants are being sacked, while spending on health, disability, education, and social housing has been slashed under the May federal budget.
These attacks are being carried out with the full support of the unions, which have hailed the FWC wage review as a “victory.”
Having declared in April that a 7 percent pay rise was “a matter of survival,” Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus celebrated the 5.75 increase as “the largest increase to minimum and Award wages in Australia’s history.” The ACTU noted that the nominal wage rise was less than the rate of inflation, yet claimed it “should get wages moving in the right direction.”
The unions are in fact playing the leading role in ensuring that wages move in the “wrong” direction. In 2022, wages for workers covered by enterprise agreements increased by just 2.8 percent, compared with the overall Wage Price Index rise of 3.3 percent.
This is a reflection of the fact that the unions are no longer workers’ organisations in any sense. They are an industrial enforcement arm of management and government, controlled by a layer of well-heeled bureaucrats who represent the profit interests of “Australian” capitalism, that is, the demand for ever-increasing exploitation of workers.
The unions’ endorsement of the award wage cut should serve as a stark warning to the broader working class of the sell-out deals the bureaucracy will seek to ram through in the coming period. It is also yet another demonstration of the unions’ unwavering support for the pro-business FWC, which they falsely claim is an “independent umpire.”
It is in reality an anti-worker industrial tribunal that enforces Australia’s draconian anti-strike laws. Labor’s first tranche of industrial relations reforms, rushed through parliament late last year with the full support of the unions, heighten these powers, enabling the FWC to declare a dispute “intractable,” shut down industrial action and impose the demands of big business.
These developments are just the latest among four decades of attacks on the working class, with the union apparatus and Labor playing the leading role. This began with the Hawke-Keating governments of 1983–1996, which slashed jobs, wages and conditions, while the unions suppressed opposition from the working class.
Since then, successive Labor governments, always with union backing, have deepened the assault, including through the establishment of the FWC itself by the Rudd-Gillard government in 2008.
