Margaret McNamara Educational Grants MMEG Scholarships 2024

Application Deadline: 15th January 2024 (Opening 15th Sept)

Offered annually? Yes

Accepted Fields of Study: Any field of study

To be taken at (country): United States (US) & Canada

About the MMEG Scholarships: The Margaret McNamara Educational Grants (MMEG) provides grants to women from developing countries to help further their education and strengthen their leadership skills to improve the lives of women and children in developing countries. About $15,000 Education grants are awarded to women from developing and middle-income countries who, upon obtainment of their degree, intend to return to or remain in their countries, or other developing countries, and work to improve the lives of women and/or children.

Offered Since: 1981

Type: Masters

Who is qualified to apply for MMEG Scholarships? Applicants must meet the following eligibility criteria:

• Be at least 25 years old at time of application deadline (see specific regional program application below);
• Be a national of a country listed on the MMEG Country Eligibility List (listed below);
• Be enrolled at an accredited academic institution when submitting application; and plan to be enrolled for a full academic term after award of the grant by the Board;
• Not be related to a World Bank Group, International Monetary Fund or Inter-American Development Bank staff member or spouse;

Number of Scholarships: Not Specified

MMEG Scholarships Benefits: Approximately $15,000 per scholarship recipient

Duration: The grant is a onetime award to last for the duration of study

Eligible African Countries: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Rep., Chad, Congo, Dem. Rep., Congo, Rep, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt , Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Other Countries:

Afghanistan, Ecuador , Macedonia, FYR of , Albania, Arab Rep., Serbia, El Salvador, Seychelles, Malaysia, Antigua and Barbuda, Eritrea, Maldives, Solomon Islands, Argentina, Armenia, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh , St. Kitts and Nevis, Belarus, Georgia, Mexico, St. Lucia, Belize, Micronesia, Fed. Sts , St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Grenada, Bhutan, Guatemala, Moldova, Suriname, Bolivia, Mongolia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Syrian Arab Rep., Guyana, Tajikistan, Brazil, Haiti, Bulgaria, Honduras, Myanmar, Thailand, India, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Nepal, Cambodia, Iran, Islamic Rep. of, Nicaragua,Tonga, Iraq, Trinidad and Tobago, Cape Verde, Jamaica, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Palau, Turkmenistan, Chile, China, Kiribatii, Panama, Colombia, Korea, Republic of, Papua New Guinea, Ukraine, Comoros, Kosovo, Paraguay, Uruguay, Kyrgyz Rep, Peru, Uzbekistan, Lao PDR, Philippines, Vanuatu, Costa Rica, Latvia, Poland, Venezuela, RB, Lebanon, Romania, Vietnam, Croatia, Russian Federation, West Bank & Gaza, Yemen, Rep, Dominica, Samoa, Dominican Republic, São Tomé and Principe

How to Apply For MMEG Scholarships: Apply via Scholarship Webpage link below.

Remember to read the Application Checklist & FAQs before applying, and when applying (after signing up), select “US-Canada program” in the first question of the application. If the programme name does not appear, the programme may be closed to new applications.

Visit Scholarship webpage for details

Important Notes: Please make sure to submit ALL documents

Brewing Anger in Thailand as the Establishment Unites to Foil Change

Kheetanat Synth Wannaboworn & Walden Bello

Pita Limjaroenrat 4 days before the 1st prime ministership election in the National Assembly, 9 July 2023. Photograph Source: Supanut Arunoprayote – CC BY 4.0

After over three months of Thailand being put on hold as the country’s political adversaries tried to figure a way out of the surprising results of the May elections, a solution was finally reached among contending parties in the third week of August. It was a victory for the establishment, a modus vivendi among its different factions.

Seasoned observers say the elements of the deal were the following: Thaksin Shinawatra, the self-exiled former prime minister, would be allowed to return to Thailand with a promise of kid’s glove treatment for his alleged offenses; the Pheu Thai Party, Thaksin’s personal political vehicle, would lead a governing coalition that would include two defeated parties associated with the powerful military; and the Move Forward Party, which had won the most seats in the May parliamentary elections, would be frozen out of the governing coalition.

The deal that united Thaksin with his former enemies—the military and the conservative establishment—generated anger, consternation, and confusion throughout the country. Former Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya, a Thaksin foe and former Democrat Party leader who has also become a severe critic of the military and the lese majeste law on penalizing people accused of defaming the royalty, summed up the situation tongue-in-cheek:

“The reality is that this government is composed of personalities from the conservative establishment side. Arch-enemies, Thaksin and the generals are now together as one to put up a stand (maybe the last one) against the forces of change. We must be reminded that Thaksin has all along been part of the establishment. But he wanted to monopolize and was opposed by the rest. Now various elements of the establishment have rejoined one another. The Thai political arena is now a struggle between the established elites and the masses. More dramas will surely come to delight and bewilder all of us.”

On the other hand, spokespeople for the Pheu Thai party said that the deal, which would make real estate mogul Srettha Thavisin prime minister, was necessary to end over three months of political uncertainty owing to the absence of a ruling parliamentary coalition.

Move Forward’s Challenge

The country’s latest crisis erupted when the Move Forward Party unexpectedly won the most votes in the parliamentary elections of May 14, 2023. It won 151 seats, besting its coalition partner, the Pheu Thai party, the Thaksin family’s populist vehicle that raked in 141 seats. Left in the dust were the parties controlled by the ruling military regime that gathered a measly 76 seats.

Move Forward’s rise was nothing short of mercurial. Founded just five years ago, in 2018, its first incarnation as Future Forward came in third in the parliamentary elections of 2019. Then, coming in first in 2023, it won 14 million votes, or 40 percent of votes cast, up from 13 percent in 2019. It frustrated the legal maneuvers that the military-controlled Constitutional Court threw at it. The Court dissolved Future Forward in February 2020, only to see it resurrected as Move Forward a month later, with a new leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, who declared that “Move Forward is the new chapter of Future Forward.”

To be prime minister, Pita had to get 376 votes from the 750 members of the bicameral National Assembly. He already had the votes of the eight-party opposition coalition but, going into July 13, he needed to secure more, and this had to come either from the rest of the lower house or from the Senate, or both. Parliament concluded a two-hour voting session with Pita securing 324 votes in his favor, 182 votes against, and 199 abstentions in the first round, falling short of the 376 votes needed to become premier by 52 votes.

The most decisive force that shaped the outcome of July 13 were the 250 senators—all appointed by the military, which considers itself the “guardians of the Kingdom’s three pillars” of Nation, Religion, and the King. Pita hardly picked up any votes from this solid bloc.

The Parliament reconvened on July 19, but Pita’s opponents refused to have a second renomination on the grounds that he had already been rejected a week earlier. As the debate ensued, the Constitutional Court separately announced that Pita had been suspended as a lawmaker over an allegation that he violated election rules by holding shares in a private firm.

Thaksin’s Party Abandons Move Forward

At this point, it became very clear that under no circumstances would the establishment allow Move Forward to lead the government or even be part of a governing coalition—not even if it were to give up its plan to reform Article 112 of the criminal code, the royal defamation law. Pheu Thai then stepped in to lead the process of establishing a new government and, during a month-long period of intense negotiations, it junked Move Forward and moved to an accommodation with other parties, including the two defeated parties connected with the generals that had ruled the country for the last nine years.

Thaksin’s return to Thailand to face lenient treatment is said to be the deal that opened the way to a governing alliance among former foes. Hours after his return on August 20, Parliament elected his man Srettha as prime minister, with 482 votes from the 727 politicians. The only significant party to vote against Srettha in the parliament election was Move Forward.

The royal palace promptly signed off on the deal.

Srettha will lead a fragile coalition of 11 parties. According to press reports, Pheu Thai announced that it would control eight cabinet posts and nine deputy cabinet posts. It also disclosed that the parties of the military—Palang Pracharath and United Thai Nation—will receive two cabinet posts and two deputy posts each. Pheu Thai further revealed that the coalition had agreed to “support” Pheu Thai’s platform of boosting the economy, increasing the minimum wage, ending mandatory military service, supporting the continued legalization of medical marijuana, and amending the constitution to make the country “more democratic,” while leaving untouched the royal defamation law. This statement has been received with great skepticism by the public.

The deal has largely unsettled and angered most of the electorate, which saw the May election’s results as a clear mandate for fundamental change. Will what some have termed the “Back from the Future Coalition” or the “Fast Backward Alliance” be able to defuse the smoldering anger that is the overwhelming response to its formation?

Overreach?

Some observers are of the opinion that this time, the establishment has overreached. Although people are not yet out in the streets in protest, according to this argument, they will come out eventually, leading to another round of intense street battles, like the ones that led to the military coup in 2014.

Others do not see the governing coalition lasting very long, expecting the infighting among former bitter enemies to resume in short order, especially since there is really no agreement on a common program except to form a government. Behind the scenes, the formidable Thaksin and the equally formidable military-backed conservative establishment will be calling the shots, and it’s unlikely they’ll find common ground if they are not to disappoint their constituencies. The mass base of Thaksin, the so-called Redshirts, are expecting his populist agenda to resume after being frozen for almost a decade, while the elite is determined to make no concessions on the social and economic front.

Coming out of the deal, Thaksin and Pheu Thai, some say, are likely to be the big losers, being seen by a significant bloc of former supporters as having betrayed the popular mandate in order to promote the interests of the party and the Thaksin family. Thaksin is seen by many former sympathizers as a has-been. Move Forward has captured their political imagination, the way Thaksin did two decades ago.

What Will Happen Now?

Move Forward, ironically, is the one force that has come out of the whole messy affair untarnished. It never gave up on its promise to reform the lese majeste law. It escaped the dirty wheeling-and-dealing that it would have had to engage in to gain enough support from the forces of the old order to form a new ruling coalition. It will now be able to engage in uncompromising opposition politics, which is in synch with the dark, angry, resentful mood of the majority of the citizenry.

An indication of what lies ahead is the #CONFORALL signature campaign. Determined to have a new constitution that truly reflects the will of the citizens, the People’s Constitution Drafting Group—a network of CSOs and activist groups—is calling for a referendum on having a new charter drafted by a 100-percent elected committee. Three days ahead of the deadline set by the Election Commission to receive the people’s petition before the first Cabinet meeting in early September, organizers were told by the Commission that most of the 113,912 names that had been collected so far from offline and online gatherings were invalid since only signatures on paper documents would be recognized.

In the next three days, 205,739 signatures on paper were delivered to the campaign’s head office—four times larger than the 50,000 threshold required by law. One elated observer said that this reminded her of the time the slogan “You messed with the Wrong Generation!” became the battle cry of the 2020 youth uprising. “The battle lines are being drawn,” she said.

Poverty Strategy Commission report finds millions “surviving not living” in Britain

Steve James

A report into poverty in Britain, one of the world’s richest countries, has concluded that millions of low-income families are “surviving not living”, while a growing proportion of the population is in “deep poverty.”

Overall, between 21 and 24 percent of the population has been in poverty between 2000/1 and 2019/20, nearly 14 million people on the eve of the pandemic. Of those, an increasing percentage—some 31 percent, up from 22 percent—are in deep poverty, with an income of less than half the poverty line.

The release of the figures follows a survey of frontline poverty and social service workers helping 200,000 children between them, who report 120,000 are living in destitution, “life-changing and life-limiting deep poverty.” Nearly 60 percent live in households which cannot afford adequate nutrition or electricity and gas and 63 percent are without basic furniture.

A New Framework for Tackling Poverty report by the Poverty Strategy Commission [Photo: screenshot: povertystrategycommission.org.uk]

According to “A New Framework for Tackling Poverty”, from the recently founded Poverty Strategy Commission (PSC), small recent improvements are being reversed. In 2001, 18 percent of pension-age adults were in poverty. This figure dropped to 9 percent in 2014 but has now climbed back to 12 percent. The number of single parents in poverty fell between 2001 and 2013 from 61 to 47 percent, but by 2019 had increased again to 52 percent.

The rate of persistent poverty, measured as being in poverty now, and over two of the last three years, has increased from 10 percent in 2014/15 to 13 percent in 2018/19.

Even these figures understate the crisis. If housing costs are factored in, the overall poverty rate increases by 4 percentage points. The growing numbers of private renters who are in poverty spend, on average, 47 percent of their income on housing. For those living in poverty in inner London, this rises to an astronomical 71 percent of income.

If assets and debts are included, poverty rates go up by another 3.2 points. The report notes that “the median family in poverty has no liquid assets at all, while the median family outside of poverty has liquid assets of around £4,500”, meaning those in poverty have no reserves with which to deal with the unexpected.

Among children with families, childcare costs increase the poverty rate by 0.4 percentage points. Households in poverty spend 16 percent of their income on childcare. The report notes that these exorbitant costs prevent parents from working.

Low pay and lack of support for the disabled are the major driving factors of this ongoing social disaster. Half of all people in poverty are disabled themselves or live with someone who is disabled. Nearly two-thirds are in a household where someone works, and over a fifth where all adults work full time—incredibly, 9 percent of full-time working households are in deep poverty.

Taken together, the PSC concludes, the “resource gap” faced by the 6 million families in poverty amounts to an average of £6,000 per family per year. In other words, it would take £36 billion to bring them all a hair’s breadth above the poverty line.

The PSC’s assessment is all the more striking for its authors. The Commission is one of the offshoots of the pro-Brexit, right-wing libertarian Legatum Institute, created in 2007 by the partners of Dubai-based investment firm, Legatum. The firm was founded by New Zealand billionaire Christopher Chandler, who made his fortune buying up and trading assets of the former Soviet Union after its dissolution in 1991. By 2002, Chandler and his brother were the fourth largest investors in Russian gas giant Gazprom.

Chair of the PSC is Phillipa Stroud, Baroness Stroud, ennobled in 2015. She co-founded the Centre for Social Justice with former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and was an adviser to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the 2015 Conservative-Liberal Democrats austerity coalition, helping create and implement the punitive Universal Credit welfare system.

Needless to say, the PSC hastens to reassure of the £36 billion shortfall, “This £36 billion is not a spending ask of government or business. Increases in resources can come via a range of routes including reduced costs, increased working hours, improved health, greater family stability, higher productivity, and reduced debt.”

Still less does the report suggest any encroachment on the wealth of the super-rich. Rather, the PSC is warning the financial aristocracy and its minions in the major political parties that, left unchecked and in conditions of the re-emergence of class struggle, the immiseration of much of the working population threatens social upheaval.

Its particular concern is the undermining of the fundamental capitalist free market myth that work is fairly rewarded. This is being shredded by the continuous rise of in-work poverty, and now in-work deep poverty. The authors write in response that “Those working as much as expected by the new social contract, should not be in poverty.”

Of course, there is no “social contract”; there is the profit-driven market competition of the capitalist class, which as iron law impoverishes millions of human beings not “working as much as expected”. To maintain this status quo, the commission proposes a series of fractional increases to income aimed at taking the edge off widespread destitution, without coming close to addressing the enormous social problem of poverty.

Among these are a five percent increasing in the earnings of the working poor, with a median average increase of £650, to increase gross earnings by £2.2 billion and take half a million out of poverty. A separate five percent increase in benefits would, on average, provide a miserly £544 increase annually for families and lift 725,000 people out of poverty at a cost to the state of a mere £3 billion. Similar changes are mooted with regard to debts, housing and childcare costs, skills and “family structure”.

These are substantially aimed at increasing the supply of exploitable labour. The PSC writes that “As well as reducing poverty, many of these would simultaneously improve economic growth and benefit the Exchequer.” Top of the list is “individuals taking on more hours of paid work,” suggested after 15 years in which the number of hours worked in the UK has already increased by 11.3 percent—almost 50 percent more than the OECD average.

The question is never raised about how even the pitiful improvement suggested by the PSC would be funded. It is a mark of the collapse of social reformism in Britain—home of the supposed “cradle to grave” welfare state—that its report, advised by figures from across the major Parliamentary parties, at no time refers to social inequality. Nor does it contrast the staggering financial assets of the wealthy with those of the millions of working people “surviving not living”.

A recent report of the Equality Trust, backed by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and basing itself on the government’s own figures, noted that the poorest fifth of the population earned a mere 8 percent of total disposable income, while the top fifth earned 36 percent.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports that the richest tenth alone take home 15 percent of earnings, and the richest 0.1 percent, just 50,000 people, take 6 percent, or £37 billion—almost exactly the amount needed to lift all 14 million people out of poverty.

Disparities in household wealth were even starker. In 2020, according to government figures, the poorest 50 percent of the population held 9 percent of wealth, while the top 10 percent owned 43 percent. The Equality Trust noted, “By 2023, the richest 50 families in the UK held more wealth than half of the UK population, comprising 33.5 million people. If the wealth of the super-rich continues to grow at the rate it has been, by 2035, the wealth of the richest 200 families will be larger than the whole UK GDP.”

The social roots of the Moroccan earthquake disaster

Alex Lantier

A woman tries to recover some of her possessions from her home which was damaged by an earthquake in the village of Tafeghaghte, near Marrakech, Morocco, Monday, Sept. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)

On Friday evening, September 8, at 11:11 p.m. local time, a devastating earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale struck southern Morocco, near Marrakech. The death toll has already surpassed 2,800 people, many in small, isolated towns in the High Atlas mountains where the quake was centered. At least 3,000 are wounded, many critically, and time is rapidly running out for many more still trapped under collapsed buildings.

While 18 died in Marrakech, a global center of tourism with a population of nearly 1 million, most died in mountain villages whose old, vulnerable mud-brick houses were shattered by the quake. In one village, Tafeghaghte, 90 of 200 inhabitants are confirmed dead, with dozens more missing and feared to be dead or trapped in the rubble.

The few press reports emerging from these villages show that the Moroccan government is mostly leaving quake victims to fend for themselves. Private citizens in Agadir, Marrakech or other areas less badly hit by the quake are having to buy food, water and other critical supplies and transport them to the villages in their personal cars.

“There’s no sign of the authorities for the moment. We’re so isolated here. Without benefactors, we would starve,” one inhabitant of a village hit by the quake, Mustapha El-Machmoum, told AFP. “We asked the authorities for tents yesterday, but nothing arrived. We’re sleeping on the ground in the cold. Adults can cope with this, but not the children.”

Like the Turkish-Syrian earthquake that claimed many tens of thousands of lives last February, the Moroccan earthquake catastrophe is not only a natural disaster. The knowledge and technology exists to greatly limit the impact of such events. Their disastrous consequences are entirely bound up with existing economic interests and social conditions. Under capitalism, policy is dominated by the pursuit of corporate profits and personal wealth by the ruling elites, who are contemptuous of the lives of the masses of people.

The effectiveness of modern, earthquake-resistant housing and the necessity of building it are well known to scientists. The 2021 Fukushima earthquake in Japan, one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, reached over 7 on the Richter scale. Yet, thanks to the considerable investments in earthquake-resistant housing in Japan, only three people died and 16 were seriously injured.

In 2021, the International Journal of Disaster Risk Science found that 1.5 billion people live in earthquake-prone areas worldwide. A Forbes list of the 10 most quake-prone cities—Kathmandu, Istanbul, Delhi, Quito, Manila, Islamabad, San Salvador, Mexico City, Izmir and Jakarta—is largely made up of vast cities of millions of people. A 1999 Nature article warned, however, that earthquake-resistant housing is a “low priority,” adding: “The absence of earthquake-resistant construction in future cities would be indefensible.”

The capitalist class, in control of every national government, rejected the necessary spending on safer housing as an intolerable drain on its profits. Instead, since 1990, trillions of dollars have gone to bank bailouts and the US-NATO wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali and Ukraine. Today, the world’s eight wealthiest individuals own the same amount as half the world’s population. But in countless earthquake-prone areas, masses of people live in housing that can condemn them to death in case of a major quake.

Morocco sits along the fault between the African and Eurasian tectonic plates and has seen major earthquakes, including in 1960 at Agadir and in 2004 at Al Hoceima. Yet not only are Moroccans left in unsafe mud-brick housing, but no preparations were made for substantial disaster response.

Moroccan King Mohammed VI, a longstanding ally of US and French imperialism, was vacationing in his €80 million mansion next to the Eiffel Tower in Paris when the quake hit. He has made no statement since his return to Morocco, only releasing a brief clip, without sound, of him talking to security and health officials. No other officials have yet been able to issue statements, Moroccan journalist Omar Brouksy said, as there is “a rule, unwritten but unswervingly obeyed, [that] states that no official can speak or make a public trip before the sovereign.”

In terms of cold indifference to the plight of the earthquake victims, the Moroccan king was surpassed only by that of France, a former colonial power in Morocco. France’s Moroccan diaspora numbers over 1.5 million people, and Marrakech is a highly popular vacation destination in France. Yet, after the Moroccan monarchy indicated that it preferred to invite Spanish, British, Qatari or UAE rescue teams rather than French ones, President Emmanuel Macron’s government announced a donation of just €5 million to rescue and aid organizations in Morocco.

This means that Macron is donating to Morocco the cost of just one of the 30 Caesar heavy artillery systems he has sent to Ukraine for the NATO war on Russia.

The indifference of capitalist governments to essential social needs of the working population, which they view with fear and hostility, inevitably recalls the last great Moroccan earthquake thought to have surpassed the current Marrakech quake. In November 1755, twin earthquakes devastated the Portuguese city of Lisbon and the Moroccan city of Meknès.

In the passage in Candide that he devoted to the Lisbon earthquake, Enlightenment author Voltaire lampooned the defenders of the absolute monarchies that then ruled over Europe. The devastation from the Lisbon quake tore apart their complacent claims that “Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” Three decades after Voltaire published his work, the absolute monarchy by divine right was swept away by the French Revolution.

Over two centuries later, the Moroccan earthquake exposes the bankruptcy of the capitalist order, which is no less corrupt and outlived than the French absolute monarchy was in Voltaire’s day.

In Libya, authorities of the Libyan National Army (LNA) reported yesterday that 2,000 were killed and over 5,000 missing after a dam broke and flood waters swept away much of the city of Derna. The LNA controls the eastern half of Libya, which has been divided between rival militias fighting a bloody civil war ever since the 2011 NATO war against Libya.

In Turkey, countless thousands of victims of the February quake still live in tents, while the Turkish government oversees the building of more non-earthquake-resistant housing into which workers are again to be forced—and in which thousands would again die in the next quake. Is there any doubt that, if the matter is left in the hands of stooges of the banks like Mohammed VI or Macron, they will also prepare the next preventable earthquake catastrophe?

Around the world, the working class is faced with the reality that a tiny, irresponsible ruling elite squanders vast social resources essential to the well-being and even the survival of the population. Impervious to demands for change, it is obsessed with its pursuit of militarism and its own obscene wealth. This is true both in former colonial countries like Morocco or in imperialist “democracies” like France, where riot police this spring brutally repressed mass protests against Macron’s overwhelmingly unpopular pension cuts.

Reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2 and their potential role in Long COVID

Bill Shaw

A review article in Nature Immunology summarizes what is currently known about the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 virus in the body after COVID-19. Theorized as a possible cause of Long COVID, the ongoing presence of the virus could trigger immune responses that account for most or all the sequelae of COVID-19. For the virus to persist, a “reservoir”—that is, a particular tissue that is host to either viral genetic material or ongoing viral replication—must exist.

Some of the most prevalent symptoms of Long COVID

The authors noted that viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 persist in the body after infection and cause chronic illnesses as a direct result. The genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is RNA, and in particular it is single-stranded RNA or “ssRNA” for short. Several other ssRNA viruses—including Zika virus, Ebola virus, enteroviruses, and the measles virus—are known to persist in tissues for months to years after initial infection. 

The persistence of these other ssRNA viruses often results in chronic disorders including heart, eye, neurological, and musculoskeletal syndromes. Therefore it is a reasonable hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 exhibits similar behavior that is responsible for at least a significant proportion of cases of Long COVID. It should also be noted that reservoirs of these viruses have been associated with viral mutations while the virus replicates for long periods of time in the body as well as ongoing transmission of the virus—often silent given that individuals are often months past acute infection.

The purpose of the review article was to assess what science currently has discovered about reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2 and their association with Long COVID. Also, the authors reviewed the possible biological mechanisms by which viral reservoirs might result in the broad array of sequelae seen in Long COVID patients.

The answer is that dozens of tissues are documented reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2 for periods up to 676 days (nearly two years). Viral RNA and associated proteins have been found in brain, nerve, gastrointestinal tract, lymph node, lung and breast tissue, among others. Viral RNA and proteins, including the spike protein, have been found circulating in blood plasma for over a year post-infection.

The reason why so many tissues serve as reservoir of the virus is still a subject for future study. One leading hypothesis is that most human tissues are dense with Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors, and ACE2 receptors are the primary way the SARS-CoV-2 virus binds cells in order to enter them. Notably, ACE2 receptors are particularly abundant in the tissues of the gastrointestinal tract, brain, lung, heart and blood vessels.

The research also demonstrates that individuals with viral reservoirs test negative for the virus by testing of nasopharyngeal (nose and throat) or blood specimens, or in some studies, both. This fact is important, to demonstrate that ongoing primary infection is not confounding the findings, and that these tissues are in fact serving as viral reservoirs post-infection.

The evidence that viral reservoirs are associated with Long COVID is less strong, but nevertheless highly suggestive. As the virus persists in various tissues, viral proteins—including the spike protein—“leak” out into circulating blood plasma. Studies of Long COVID patients have demonstrated persistence of the S1 protein in up to 64 percent of Long COVID patients vs. only 35 percent of control patients who recovered. The results for spike protein are more dramatic, persisting in 60 percent of Long COVID patients vs. zero control patients in one study.

The evidence for both viral reservoirs and their association with Long COVID also comes from studies looking at T cells, a type of white blood cell involved in fighting infection. T cells that are specific to a virus rapidly multiply when that virus is present in the body and then drop off in numbers after the infection. Thus, the persistent elevation in numbers of SARS-CoV-2 specific T cells is evidence that the virus is still present in significant quantity in the body.

First, individuals with the presence of viral RNA and proteins in tissues have been found to also have high numbers of SARS-CoV-2 T cells. These results confirm that SARS-CoV-2 is not an exception to the rule: when the virus is present, so are virus-specific T cells.

Second, the persistent elevation of SARS-CoV-2 specific T cells has been found in Long COVID patients. One study found that these levels were 6 to 105 times higher in Long COVID patients than in controls. Another study showed that the SARS-CoV-2 T cells had markers that indicated recent T cell activation and/or exhaustion, consistent with active immune response to the presence of virus.

The review also looked at the hypothesized mechanisms by which viral reservoirs result in the broad constellation of phenomena seen in Long COVID patients. The prolonged presence of the virus may directly damage tissues and/or induce prolonged inflammatory responses that damage tissues progressively over time. Also, it is known that viral proteins disrupt the body’s feedback loops that regulate metabolism, gene expression and immune responses. Another hypothesis posits that the virus directly induces clot formation that causes damaging inflammatory responses. 

Specific mechanisms called out by the authors for special consideration include effects on the the vagus nerve, induction of autoimmune responses, and the neurological system.

Infection with SARS-CoV-2 has been associated with disruption of the microbiome, or the set of all bacteria living in the body and most especially the gastrointestinal tract. The kinds of disruptions seen are known from prior research to be associated with the development of certain conditions, including those seen in Long COVID. In particular, it could be an important factor in life-threatening after-effects of COVID-19 seen in children, called Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome of Children or MIS-C.

The vagus nerve has tens of thousands of branches that supply nervous energy to all the major organs in the trunk of the body. Activation of this nerve is associated with numerous non-specific symptoms, and most of these symptoms have been described in Long COVID patients. They include fatigue, difficulty concentrating, anxiety, depression, and muscle and joint pain. Either direct infection of the nerve—which has been found post-infection—or activation of its branches by immune responses in the tissues they stimulate, could explain the common occurrence of these non-specific symptoms in Long COVID.

With respect to autoimmunity, research has found that the antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 infection often includes induction of antibodies that attack the patient’s own tissues. Similar types of autoimmunity have been seen in Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) infection. Some work has hypothesized that SARS-CoV-2 infection reactivates latent EBV in the body. Whether the autoimmunity is thus directly induced or indirectly through EBV reactivation or both is not known.

Direct infection of the central nervous system (CNS) and ongoing inflammatory responses to the virus in CNS tissues might explain the increased risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease in COVID-19 sufferers. One study found increased deposition of protein amyloid-beta (A beta) in brain tissues obtained from hospitalized patients severely ill from COVID-19. A beta has been found in plaques in Alzheimer’s patients and seems to have an antimicrobial role generally against viruses and bacteria.

The review article concludes with an extensive list of 16 “major areas of opportunity” for future research into SARS-CoV-2 reservoirs and their impact on Long COVID. Despite the promising and important research conducted to date, the scientific community still has far to go to clarify our understanding of Long COVID and develop effective treatments for it.

The article thus highlights the stark impact of the ruling class’s criminal indifference to the pandemic and its long-term consequences. Reservoirs of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are associated with extraordinary long-term morbidity and mortality that could have been avoided with a policy of eradication of the virus. Reservoirs also cannot be ruled out as sources of ongoing transmission and development of new variants of the virus, both of which prolong the pandemic and its effects.

Australia’s Labor government and its phony Voice referendum in deepening crisis

Oscar Grenfell

After it scraped into office in the May, 2022 election, Labor immediately proclaimed that it would hold a referendum on enshrining the Voice, an indigenous advisory body to the government, in the Constitution.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at Garma Festival, July 2022. [Photo: Facebook/AlboMP/]

The measure, which headlined Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s election night speech, was intended to put a progressive veneer on a government that was committed from the outset to escalating Australia’s involvement in the US-led preparations for war with China, and implementing sweeping cuts to workers’ living and social conditions demanded by big business.

Now, with the referendum looming on October 14, the Voice is compounding and intersecting with a broader crisis of the Albanese government.

Polling is inherently limited. Under conditions of a huge disconnect between the political and media establishment and the vast mass of the population, it has frequently been off the mark over recent years.

But however accurate the precise voting breakdowns released by the various polling agencies, the trajectory appears to be clear enough. The Voice is not only failing to boost the fortunes of the government, support for the initiative is flagging to the extent that a defeat of the referendum appears to be highly likely.

Last week the Guardian produced a graphical representation of some 45 polls on the Voice dating back to September 2022. Viewable here, the graph resembles the sinking of a ship. There are some outliers, but most of the polls indicate that the highest support from voting age respondents received by the Voice was around 65 percent. Most polls indicating such numbers, however, were early in the year.

All of the polls listed since July 24 indicate that less than half the voting age population is planning to vote “yes.”

Resolve polling, reported by the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday, showed that just 43 percent of respondents were intending to vote “yes.” The Herald noted that “Voters have swung against the Voice for the fifth month in a row and are backing the No case in every state except Tasmania…”

Significantly, that was the first Resolve polling showing a lead to the “no” vote in both Victoria and New South Wales. They are the most populous states, and Victoria had been one of the few states where the “yes” vote had been ahead. To be successful, the referendum must be voted in favor by a majority of the voting population, as well as a majority of the states.

Resolve founder Jim Reed told the Herald that “If anything, the [yes] campaign is having the opposite effect because the No vote is still growing.” Reed added, “The comments we collect from respondents are becoming more exasperated and frustrated in their tone as the campaign wears on. Many people seem impatient for this to be over, especially those who see it as a diversion or divisive.”

The polling shows an intersection between the flagging fortunes of the Voice and the standing of the Labor government. Albanese’s net approval rating is minus 7 percent, a fall of 2 percent over the past two months. It compares with a positive approval rating of 35 points in January.

The rating of Liberal-National Coalition leader Peter Dutton has improved marginally, but his approval is also in negative territory. This indicates that while opposition to the Voice is increasing, it is not automatically translating into support for the Coalition, which is leading the official “no” campaign in the referendum.

The impression is increasingly one of a degree of panic and disarray in the Labor government. This morning, the Australian cited two anonymous federal Labor MPs who both predicted that the referendum would be defeated with 60 percent voting against and 40 percent in favour.

One Labor MP allegedly commented: “It’s hard not to be pretty pessimistic about the outcome. It would take something pretty close to a miracle to save it.” Another described the shambles of the referendum as “a bit of a reality check for us.”

Notably, some of the MPs reportedly tied the crisis of the Voice to the growing cost-of-living crisis. That was also indicated by the Resolve data and other polling, showing that the worst inflation in decades, coupled with stagnant or declining real wages, remains the chief concern of most working people.

The Labor government, while pushing the Voice, has rejected any assistance for working people facing the consequences of the crisis. Its two budgets since assuming office have featured major cuts to spending on health and other social necessities and the most contemptuous increases to welfare payments. At the same time, they have handed tens of billions to the military, as Labor prepares Australia to play a frontline role in a catastrophic war with China. The government has rejected calls to scrap Stage Three tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefit the ultra-wealthy and the corporate elite.

The shift in the polling, from majority “yes” support to “no” support refutes claims that the referendum is failing because of racist attitudes among ordinary people, as does the centrality of cost-of-living crisis. Instead, the outcome reflects widespread and correct skepticism that the Voice will improve anything for workers, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike.

There is a substantial experience with indigenous advisory committees, land rights councils and the like. They have done nothing to address the appalling social conditions facing most Aboriginal people while feathering the nests of a narrow indigenous elite tied to the political and corporate establishment.

Proponents of the Voice are becoming increasingly desperate. Last Wednesday, one of the architects of the policy, academic Marcia Langton, ludicrously described the establishment of the advisory body as “our last hope of surviving as the First Peoples with any of our laws, cultures and languages intact.” She said a failure of the Voice would be “a mandate to cause us even further harm.”

But the very Labor government overseeing the “yes” campaign has done nothing to improve the lot of ordinary indigenous people. Instead, it implements an austerity agenda that is hitting workers, Aboriginal and non-Aborignal alike.

Langton’s remarks underscored the duplicity of the official “yes” campaign. While vaguely suggesting that the Voice would improve the lot of oppressed Aboriginal people, she assured those assembled: “This proposition is the barest measure imaginable…”

In fact, leading figures in the “yes” campaign are pushing the far-right talking points associated with cutbacks to welfare and other social rights of indigenous and other poor people. Noel Pearson, a prominent representative of the indigenous elite, told the Murdoch-owned Australian that the Voice would “lock that whole paradigm together, rights and ­responsibilities…”

The need for individuals to “take responsibility” has for decades been a dog whistle used to blame impoverished Aborigines and others for their dire social conditions. Driving home that point, Pearson stated: “You think my mob like it when I talk about responsibility? They love it when I talk about rights and how they’ve been victimised; they don’t like it when I say take responsibility for your children—nobody’s going to save you until you get your family together.”

Regarding its reactionary social content, there is nothing that differentiates Pearson’s statement from open attacks on Aboriginal people by those leading the “no” campaign. That underscores the fact that both camps represent rival factions of the political establishment, committed to the capitalist profit system and the strengthening of the Australian state apparatus for the joint purposes of war abroad and an intensifying onslaught on the social conditions of the working class.

The “Yes23” group, part of the official “yes” campaign, has this week announced a series of purportedly “grassroots” events. The aim, more or less openly stated, is to distance the “yes” campaign from parliament and the government. That is a tacit acknowledgement that a broader groundswell of opposition to the entire political establishment is driving the hostility to the Voice.

The issue that “Yes23” has is that there is nothing “grassroots” about the Voice. It is a top-down creation aimed at putting a progressive gloss on a reactionary government, dividing the working class, integrating an indigenous elite into the corridors of power, and revamping the image of the Australian state.

UK set to station US nuclear bombs on British soil, 15 years after their removal

Robert Stevens

The UK is again on the verge of stationing US nuclear weapons on its soil, at the strategic east coast air force base, RAF (Royal Air Force) Lakenheath.

In March, the US Congress received a 2024 budgetary request for $50 million (£39.5 million) from the USAF (US Air Force) for a “surety dormitory” at RAF Lakenheath. As a number of reports attest, the term “surety” is used in US military parlance to refer to nuclear weapons. That the plans have been fast-tracked was noted in the Telegraph, which stated, “Last year’s [Congress] budget referred to a Nato project to build ‘secure sites and facilities’ to store ‘special weapons’ in a number of Western countries, including Britain, but made no reference to the base itself.”

The new documents confirm that Lakenheath is set for a multi-million dollar expansion, stating that a 144-bunk dormitory is required. Given “the influx of airmen due to the arrival of the potential Surety mission and the bed down of the two F-35 squadrons there is a significant deficiency in the amount of unaccompanied housing available for E4s and below at Royal Air Force Lakenheath”.

An F15 Eagle at RAF Lakenheath in July 2009 [Photo by Tim Felce / CC BY-SA 2.0]

RAF Lakenheath is in all essentials a US military base and has been for decades. Although owned by Britain’s Ministry of Defence, it is run by the US Air Force, with million of pounds provided for its operation each year by the UK government.

Its facilities were first made available for American aircraft and weapons in 1948, and it became one of three locations in the UK at which US nuclear bombs were stored. Up until 2008 at least 110 US nuclear bombs were located at Lakenheath, and their removal—explained on the basis that the threat of nuclear war had subsided—meant that Britain since that date was not officially storing US nuclear weapons on its soil for the first time since 1954.

RAF Lakenheath, as with RAF Greenham Common before it, was the location of longstanding protests demanding the removal of nuclear weopons. After a continual protest over almost a decade at Greenham Common from 1982—and in the midst of the collapse and dissolution of the Stalinist states in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union—the US removed its Pershing cruise missiles from the base between 1989 and 1991.

Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), who was the first to disclose information showing that the US was withdrawing its nuclear weapons from Lakenheath, wrote in a comment last November, “The US Air Force used to store nuclear gravity bombs at Lakenheath, which in the 1990s was equipped with 33 underground storage vaults. By the early 2000s, there were a total of 110 B61 gravity bombs in the vaults for delivery by F-15E aircraft of the 48th Fighter Wing.”

He added, “After nuclear weapons were withdrawn nearly two decades ago, the empty [33] storage vaults were kept in caretaker status. The F-15Es fighter-bombers retained their nuclear capability but at a lower operational level. In recent years there have been rumors about nuclear exercises at the base.”

RAF Lakenheath, wrote Kristensen, is preparing to become the first US Air Force base in Europe equipped with nuclear-capable F-35A Lightning combat aircraft. “The first of the fifth-generation fighter-bombers arrived in December 2021. A total of 24 F-35As will form the 495th Fighter Squadron of the 48th Fighter Wing at the base.”

The Telegraph reported, “The stealth jets are designed to carry out tactical nuclear bombing and are capable of conducting air-to-air missions and intelligence gathering.”

F-35 dropping inert B61-12 nuclear bomb, first trial [Photo: Los Alamos National Laboratory]

Kristensen played down the possibility of the US deploying “additional US nuclear bombs to Europe,” though noted, “FAS estimates there currently are roughly 100 nuclear bombs deployed at six air bases in five European countries [Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey].” He suggested the “upgrade at RAF Lakenheath could potentially be intended to increase the flexibility of the existing nuclear deployment within Europe.”

Plans to restore US nuclear weapons to Britain’s east coast are an escalation in the US-NATO war drive against Russia and confirm the UK’s status as a leading participant. In the last five years, successive Conservative governments have also accelerated plans to boost Britain’s own nuclear weapons arsenal.

In 2021, as part of his integrated defence review, and a £24 billion pound budget increase for the military, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson authorised lifting the cap on the number of stockpiled Trident nuclear warheads by more than 40 percent—the first increase in decades.

While the UK does not possess the thousands of warheads held by the United States and Russia—the review increased numbers from 180 to 260—these are weapons with enormous destructive power. A Guardian report noted that each warhead the “UK holds is estimated to have an explosive power of 100 kilotons. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the second world war was about 15 kilotons.”

The British ruling elite is concealing plans for nuclear Armageddon from the population. A House of Commons Library research briefing from May this year says of the nuclear warhead number increase, “The Government has provided no timeframe for doing so and no longer publishes transparency information, so the precise figure for the stockpile is unclear.”

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova responded to the plans for US nuclear arms to be stationed at Lakenheath by calling them an “escalation”. She added, “In the context of the transition of the United States and Nato to an openly confrontational course of inflicting a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia, this practice and its development force us to take compensating countermeasures designed to reliably protect the security interests of our country and its allies.”

This is only the latest of many statements by the Putin regime warning the British government of the consequences of its reckless actions—some of which have led to military stand-offs.

A Royal Navy battleship, HMS Defender, played a critical role in NATO’s provocations against Moscow leading up to its invasion of Ukraine.

In June 2021, a Russian patrol ship fired a warning shot at Defender in the Black Sea, in Russian-claimed waters off the coast of Crimea where Moscow has a critical naval base.

In September 2022, an incident occurred that came close to triggering NATO’s Article 5 requiring member countries to come to the aid of any other member state under attack, after Russia nearly shot down a British spy plane near Ukraine.

In May this year, Britain shipped Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine, the longest-range weapons yet received by Kiev, confirming the UK’s role as provocateur-in-chief in the NATO war against Russia.

These and many other actions constitute an undeclared war between Britain and Russia, which proceeds without the slightest regard for the views of the population, but with complete agreement within Parliament. As the World Socialist Web Site wrote this May, “With Britain being dragged to the precipice of war with Russia, there has been no popular discussion of the consequences thanks above all to the unanimity between the Tories and the Labour Party. Sir Keir Starmer leads one half of a single, joint party of war sitting across both sides of the House of Commons.”

Those consequences could be catastrophic. In August 2022, Russian General Andrey Gurulyov, a deputy in Russia’s parliament (Duma), said of a nuclear attack on Britain, “Let’s make it super-simple. Two ships, 50 launches of Zircon [hypersonic cruise] missiles—and there is not a single power station left in the UK. Fifty more Zircons and the entire port infrastructure is gone. One more—and we forget about the British Isles.”