Coronavirus infections surge among detained immigrants in US

Trévon Austin

As the number of migrants imprisoned in US detention centers grows, immigration officials are reporting a major surge in COVID-19 infections among detainees. Very few detainees are vaccinated against the virus, and public health experts worry that the crowded detention facilities could fuel outbreaks not only among those detained, but also in the general population.

As of June 23, there were 765 active COVID-19 cases among migrants in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.

According to ICE, the number of migrants being held in detention centers has nearly doubled in recent months. In April, the agency reported some 14,000 migrants in detention. Last week the agency reported that more than 26,000 people were being detained.

Within that same period, more than 7,500 new COVID-19 cases have been reported in US immigration facilities, accounting for more than 40 percent of all cases reported in ICE facilities since the pandemic began, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.

ICE previously confirmed over 10,000 cases of COVID-19 among detainees in its detention facilities across the US as of March of this year. It also confirmed eight deaths.

The virus also impacted over 27,000 Border Patrol employees, who either became infected or were unable to work due to illness or quarantining, including 24 who died.

The increase in apprehensions, detentions and infections takes place amid the Biden administration’s escalating campaign against immigrants. Vice President Kamala Harris visited Guatemala and Mexico last month. In addition to telling migrants, “Do not come,” she urged the authorities to shore up their security forces to violently suppress the flow of Central American migrants seeking to escape societies ravaged by more than a century of US imperialist exploitation and oppression.

In April, the Biden administration summarily deported 111,714 of the more than 178,000 migrants detained by US Border Patrol. The administration is continuing to invoke Title 42, a Trump-era Centers for Disease Control and Prevention public health order ostensibly aimed at controlling the pandemic by closing the southern border, as justification for its violation of international and US laws on the right to asylum.

The tens of thousands of migrants trapped in immigration jails face inhumane conditions, with immigrants, including children, subjected to overcrowding, extreme cold and inedible food. As of May, according to ICE’s latest available data, only about 20 percent of detainees passing through the centers had received at least one dose of a vaccine while in custody. Such conditions guarantee a rapid spread of the disease.

Nearly one in three inmates of federal and state prisons and jails are currently testing positive for the virus.

In May, the American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed dozens of lawsuits against ICE during the pandemic, called the lack of a vaccine strategy for the detained migrants a “failure” in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and acting ICE Director Tae Johnson.

Three medical experts contracted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and represented by the Government Accountability Project examined protocols in place to control the spread of COVID-19 in detention centers and found that the Biden administration is not doing enough to vaccinate immigrants in detention.

In a letter to Congress, these experts wrote: “The Biden administration has made great strides in controlling the pandemic in many areas of the country, largely by concentrating on vaccine distribution to the general public. Immigrant detention settings, however, continue to be a significant source of spread for COVID and disproportionate harm to detainees, workers and the public, yet DHS has still not implemented a comprehensive plan to address the spread of COVID in immigration detention facilities.”

ICE previously described its vaccination procedures in a document titled “Covid-19 Pandemic Response Requirements.” The agency directed detention facilities to contact their state’s vaccine distribution authorities, such as state or county departments of health, to obtain vaccines.

Some of the worst outbreaks at ICE facilities, including one at the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, have occurred in states where vaccination rates are far below the national average.

At the onset of the pandemic, ICE developed a series of requirements to help protect detainees and staff from the virus, such as new protocols for intake processing, screening and testing, and social distancing. ICE officials claim all detainees are required to receive COVID-19 testing within 12 hours of arrival and are quarantined for two weeks. However, many officials have reported difficulties in complying with the protocols due to “infrastructure limitations,” among other problems.

Dr. Carlos Franco-Paredes, an associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, who has inspected immigration detention centers during the pandemic, told the Times that several factors were to blame for the surge, including transfers of detainees between facilities, insufficient testing and lax COVID-19 safety measures.

Franco-Paredes said that during a recent inspection of a detention center in Colorado he saw many staff members who were not wearing face coverings properly, adding, “There is minimal to no accountability regarding their protocols.”

Health officials point out that even when immigration officers follow testing and processing protocols, the fact that detainees are transported en masse to the facilities by bus opens them up to exposure before their initial COVID-19 test upon arrival.

Sharon Dolovich, a law professor and director of the Covid Behind Bars Data Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the Times that detained migrants would remain vulnerable to infection until vaccination was made a higher priority at the facilities.

“You have people coming in and out of the facility, into communities where incomplete vaccination allows these variants to flourish, and then you bring them inside the facilities, and that variant will spread,” Dolovich said. “What you’re describing is the combination of insufficient vaccination plus the evolution of the virus, and that is really scary.”

US newspapers hail the rise in teen labor and poverty wages as a “rite of passage”

Andy Thompson

In recent weeks several major US newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune, have run articles praising the increase in employment of teenagers. The articles appeared shortly after the publication of the latest jobs report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which showed that the percentage of youth aged 16–19 years old holding jobs increased to 33.2 percent, the highest since 2008.

A theme running through the articles is a sense of jubilation. “Teens are saving the summer,” writes the Journal, with the Post declaring that the higher number of teenage workers is “good news, for the economy and the nation’s soul.” The Tribune ran an op-ed from Charles L. Evans, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago, which argued that increasing the number of teen workers would curb violent crime and youth poverty.

While the capitalist press celebrates that restaurants and bars will reopen now being staffed by high school students, they ignore the social conditions behind the increase in teen employment, principally the COVID-19 pandemic which has caused millions of layoffs and widespread unemployment. Despite the continuing danger of the pandemic and particularly the spread of the Delta variant, businesses that were forced to shut down or cut staff in the last year are now reopening.

However, adult workers have not returned in large numbers to service and retail jobs, which pay poverty wages and generally have working conditions that would facilitate the transmission of the virus. Faced with a labor shortage and unwilling to increase wages, businesses have turned to hiring teenagers who can be more heavily exploited for their labor.

Many states maintain laws that allow businesses to pay workers under 18 far less than the minimum wage. In Illinois, employers can get away with paying young workers $8.50 per hour when the minimum is $11 per hour. In New York, the under-18 minimum wage is just $7.25. In California, where the minimum wage is $14 per hour, laws exist that allow full-time college and high school students to be paid $11.05 per hour. In Georgia and Wyoming, the states with the lowest possible minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, students can be paid just $6.19 per hour.

In addition, a federal law exists for all states that allows employers hiring a worker under 20 years old to be paid a “training wage” as low as $4.25 per hour for the first 90 days of employment. Conveniently, those 90 days would be around the length of time a student would hold a job during the summer while on break from school.

Reading the major papers, one gets a sense that teenagers are taking up jobs simply to pass the time in what would otherwise be a boring summer break. Petula Dvorak, a columnist for the Post, writes a romanticized tale of her 16-year-old son’s experience getting a part-time job at a coffee shop.

After explaining that her son, who became “lonely and depressed” during the shutdowns of the pandemic, is now joyful. All it took to cure his depression, apparently, was pouring coffee for $10 an hour. She writes, “He comes home on fire after a shift, marveling at the technology of each drink machine he learns to use, the intricate coffee recipes he has to learn.”

Anyone who has visited a major coffee or fast-food chain, let alone having worked in one, will be immediately struck by the absurdity of the thought of the young staff staring starry-eyed at the wonders of a coffee machine. If the story can be believed, the young Dvorak will quickly learn not to spend too much time pondering the awesome power of the ice machine, at least not when the manager is watching.

The shallowness of the Post ’s column does not end there.

Dvorak argues, “Everyone should experience work in the service industry. Nothing builds character, empathy, money literacy and people skills like a low-paying job.” She quotes a manager of an Uncle Julio’s restaurant who believes that “it should be mandatory” for teenagers to have to work for a period as a low-wage worker.

The phrase “rite of passage” appears throughout the various press reports on teen jobs, implying that spending your teenage years working to make money for businesses is simply a part of the American Dream. In Dvorak’s column she goes as far to say programs like sports camps, extra tutoring, or traveling and socializing with peers are all wastes of time that could be better spent working.

The reality is that teenagers and other young workers have not been exempt from the social devastation brought on by the pandemic. Despite the lie pushed by both the Trump and Biden administrations, that young people are essentially immune from the virus, over 2,700 people under 30 have died from COVID-19 in the US, with 326 of them being aged 0–17. Large numbers have delayed their college programs or dropped out altogether.

Moreover, young people have seen their parents lose jobs and struggle to provide necessities over the past year. These conditions of desperation and need to support their families with additional income are what is driving teenagers to take on jobs, not a self-imposed character-building exercise or a fascination with refrigerators.

In a report from the Times, Chase Christensen , a principal at a small high school in Wyoming, shares that several students have dropped out with no plans to return to school having taken on full-time jobs to do what they can to earn an income. And the jobs are not the typical retail or restaurant work that are common summer work for high schoolers. Christensen says that his students have taken jobs working night shifts at a nursing home and digging in a gravel pit.

The conditions of life for young people under capitalism have become increasingly bleak and especially so over the course of 2020. A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that approximately 19 percent more Americans died in 2020 than in 2019 and that the death rate for young adults 25 to 34 has dramatically jumped to the levels of 1953.

It is no surprise that a recent poll from Axios and Momentive found that among adults aged 18–24, 54 percent hold a negative view of capitalism. At the same time, support for socialism is growing. An earlier poll in October of 2020 found that support for socialism among people aged 16–23 increased from 40 to 49 percent from 2019 to 2020.

Faced with unprecedented levels of social inequality young people increasingly find themselves in a position where they have no serious future under capitalism. With a collective $1.57 trillion in student debt, low-wage jobs and seemingly no way out, young people are increasingly looking for a serious political alternative.

US imperialism’s criminal debacle in Afghanistan

Bill Van Auken

US troops pulled out of the sprawling Bagram Air Base at three in the morning last Friday, without notifying the Afghan government forces meant to replace them, and cutting off the power on the way out, an act that triggered an invasion of the base by a small army of looters.

This ignoble retreat is a fitting symbol of the debacle wrought by 20 years of US war and occupation in Afghanistan. Bagram, built by the Soviet military in the 1950s and vastly expanded by the Americans, was at the heart of US imperialism’s two-decade-long criminal war of aggression.

Hundreds of thousands of US personnel passed through the base in the longest war in US history. From Bagram, US warplanes carried out bombing campaigns that claimed the lives of countless thousands of Afghan civilians, and special forces kill teams launched raids in which entire families were wiped out. The base, moreover, housed the Parwan Detention Facility where thousands of suspected insurgents were imprisoned and the methods of “enhanced interrogation”, i.e., torture were employed. Prisoners were beaten, attacked by dogs, shackled to the ceiling, subjected to sexual humiliation and sleep deprivation, and, in some cases, tortured to death.

A member of the Afghan security forces walks in the sprawling Bagram air base after the American military departed, in Parwan province north of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, July 5, 2021. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Bagram was abandoned in the midst of an unmitigated rout of Afghan security forces at the hands of the Taliban insurgency. The Taliban has overrun roughly a quarter of the country’s districts in the space of a few weeks–in addition to the territories it already controlled. Government soldiers have handed over bases and stockpiles of US-supplied weapons and, in some cases, joined the Islamist fighters. Monday saw more than 1,000 government troops flee across Afghanistan’s northeastern border into the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan to escape the fighting.

This rout, which seems to confirm the worst-case scenario prepared by US intelligence agencies that Kabul could fall within six months of a US withdrawal, has touched off an increasingly bitter “who lost Afghanistan” dispute in Washington. Right-wing Republican politicians have indicted the Biden administration, while proclaiming their deep concern for the rights of Afghan women. Biden’s supporters have in turn pointed out that it was the Trump administration that signed the agreement with the Taliban in Qatar in February 2020 mandating the US pullout.

The reality is that the United States lost Afghanistan over the course of its two-decade colonial-style occupation, which provoked intense opposition and anger within the Afghan population.

It is conservatively estimated that 175,000 civilians have been killed in the war. If those dying as a result of the conditions of mass displacement and the general destruction of social conditions were to be added, the total doubtless would climb to well over a million.

The US intervention began with a horrific war crime: the mass execution of over 2,000 Taliban prisoners who were suffocated or shot to death in shipping containers after surrendering to US special forces and their Northern Alliance proxies in November 2001. The US war, obscenely dubbed “Operation Enduring Freedom,” produced an unending series of such crimes against the Afghan population. According to conservative estimates, over the past five years alone, some 4,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in US and allied airstrikes, including nearly 800 children.

The empty promises that the US occupation would bring the Afghan people democracy and prosperity have been exposed as a fraud. The puppet regime in Kabul, the product of rigged elections and deals with criminal warlords, lacks any legitimacy. After 20 years of US aid, Afghanistan still ranks 169th (out of 189 countries) on the UN’s Human Development Index, behind most of sub-Saharan Africa.

The US spent $143 billion on Afghanistan’s “reconstruction”, a sum that is greater, adjusted for inflation, than what Washington spent on the entire Marshal Plan for the reconstruction of Western Europe after World War II. This money has produced neither any significant improvement in the lives of the vast majority of Afghans, nor any development of basic infrastructure. It has gone overwhelmingly to line the pockets of one of the most corrupt kleptocracies on the planet, including the military command, which has stolen soldiers’ pay and supplies, contributing mightily to the ongoing collapse of the security forces.

The war’s costs for the United States, besides the trillion dollars spent to fight it, are measured in the deaths of 2,452 US military personnel, along with those of 455 British soldiers and 689 from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Australia, Spain and other countries. Thousands of military contractors also lost their lives. There are many among the three-quarters of a million US troops who deployed at least once to Afghanistan who returned maimed or mentally scarred by the dirty colonial war.

With the US withdrawal, the question arises: what justified this sacrifice? The claim that the war was waged to protect the American people from Al Qaeda terrorism is a patent lie. It continued for more than nine years after Osama bin Laden, sick, isolated and under house arrest by Pakistan’s ISI military intelligence agency, was executed by a Navy Seal squad. During that period, Washington funded and armed Al Qaeda elements for its wars of regime change in Libya and Syria.

Moreover, the tragic encounter between the people of Afghanistan and US imperialism began not in 2001, but more than two decades earlier, when the CIA, collaborating with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, mobilized Islamist fighters from throughout the Muslim world for a proxy war against Soviet forces supporting a secular government in Kabul. Among the CIA’s closest collaborators was bin Laden, who founded Al Qaeda with the backing of the US intelligence agency.

The motives for the war, which had nothing to do with the welfare of the American people and everything to do with the interests of the financial and corporate oligarchy, are indicated in some of the criticism of the US withdrawal.

The Washington Post editorialized: “U.S. rivals such as Iran, China and Russia could draw the conclusion that Mr. Biden lacks the stomach to stand up for embattled U.S. allies such as Iraq, Taiwan and Ukraine.”

The Wall Street Journal pointed to “strategic costs” of the withdrawal, stating “An American presence in Afghanistan, including at the large air base at Bagram, has given pause to both Iran to the west and China to the east. A significant American presence in that strategic spot provided at least a bit of a check on Iranian aggression and Chinese expansionism.”

An article by Lt. Col. David Clukey, a retired US Army Special Forces officer, which appeared on the website of the Naval War College, warned that the withdrawal would give “communist China ... an opportunity to undermine 20 years of US efforts while simultaneously enabling People’s Republic of China (PRC) advisors and military forces strategic access and influence in South-Asia - a move that would strengthen deterrence against U.S. military intervention in the region.”

What these statements make abundantly clear is that the disputes over the Afghanistan withdrawal are rooted not in fears of terrorism, much less concerns for women’s rights, but rather the geostrategic interests of US imperialism, particularly in relation to its intensifying confrontation with China.

On October 9, 2001, two days after Washington launched its invasion of Afghanistan and in the teeth of a ferocious propaganda campaign by the US government and the corporate media to sell the war to the American people as revenge for 9/11, the World Socialist Web Site posted a statement titled “Why we oppose the war in Afghanistan.” It exposed the lie that this was a “war for justice and the security of the American people against terrorism” and insisted that “the present action by the United States is an imperialist war” in which Washington aimed to “establish a new political framework within which it will exert hegemonic control” over not only Afghanistan, but the broader Central Asian region, “home to the second largest deposit of proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world.”

The WSWS stated at the time:

The United States stands at a turning point. The government admits it has embarked on a war of indefinite scale and duration. What is taking place is the militarization of American society under conditions of a deepening social crisis.

The war will profoundly affect the conditions of the American and international working class. Imperialism threatens mankind at the beginning of the twenty-first century with a repetition on a more horrific scale of the tragedies of the twentieth. More than ever, imperialism and its depredations raise the necessity for the international unity of the working class and the struggle for socialism.

These warnings have been fully confirmed over the course of the last 20 years, as US imperialism has waged new and equally criminal wars and military attacks from Iraq to Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, while erecting the scaffolding for a police state within the United States itself.

While there is deep hostility to these wars within the American population, these anti-war sentiments have been repeatedly suppressed and diverted behind the Democratic Party. It regained control of both houses of Congress in 2006 and won the presidency for Barack Obama in 2008 on the back of these sentiments, only to continue and expand America’s wars, including through Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan.

Whether Biden’s troop withdrawal signals an end to US imperialism’s four decades of death and destruction in Afghanistan remains to be seen. The US military and intelligence apparatus is developing an “over the horizon” capacity to continue bombings, drone strikes and special forces interventions, while the State Department is casting about for new bases in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

The bid by both Biden and Trump to end the US military occupation of Afghanistan is bound up with preparations for a far more dangerous eruption of US militarism, as Washington shifts its global strategy from the “war on terrorism” to preparations for war against its “great power” rivals, in the first instance, nuclear-armed China and Russia.

Ensuring the end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan and stopping the eruption of new and even more catastrophic wars requires the independent political mobilization of the working class in the US and uniting its growing struggles with those of workers in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and internationally in a socialist anti-war movement. Without the revolutionary intervention of the working class, the threat of a nuclear third world war will only grow.

Food delivery workers in Berlin continue wave of strikes

Markus Salzmann

Workers at the Gorillas delivery service held a number of strikes last week at several of the company’s warehouses in Berlin. They have drawn up a list of demands and indicated that they may continue their job action, which has been provoked by extremely poor working conditions and the confrontational attitude of the company’s management.

On 28 June, several dozen riders, as the workers are known, gathered in front of the company location in Berlin’s Schönhauser Allee. They published a list of 19 demands, including equal pay for equal work, payment for overtime, better equipment, ventilation systems in all warehouses and bikes more suited to transport deliveries.

Solidarity with Santiago

A key demand of the riders is the immediate payment of outstanding wages. By the end of the month, several workers were short on their wages, according to the strikers. The reason given by management was that they had lost income due to being ill, but this is a clear violation of the principle of paid sick leave. In some cases, the riders were only paid for the delivery time, as opposed to their actual working hours, which includes wait times and over which they have no influence. The workers rightly characterize this as “wage theft”. Workers have given management two weeks to respond to the demands.

Company founder and CEO Kağan Sümer showed up during the protest and attempted to appease the angry workers, but without success. Sümer was greeted with placards reading, “Get off your bike and pay us!” A spokesperson for the strikers called for an “end to oppression” at the company. Sümer announced that he wanted to visit a total of 40 company sites across Germany starting on 28 June, in order to do a three-hour shift with his employees and answer their questions. A bike ride in Berlin, which Sümer sought to use to calm the situation down, was cancelled, however, according to media reports.

On 30 June, just two days after one set of the protests, workers at the company branch in the Berlin district of Pankow went on strike. Having been forced to work for four hours in torrential rain with insufficient rain gear, they stopped work at 13.00. As a result, local management had to temporarily halt operations. The strike was suspended in the evening only after a representative promised that the riders would be provided with adequate clothing by the end of the week.

On the same day, about two dozen riders struck in front of the warehouse in Muskauer Straße in Kreuzberg. They also demanded, among other things, waterproof gear.

The jackets and trousers currently provided by the company are completely inadequate, and company spokesperson Tobias Hönig had to admit that what it provides “does not fully protect against getting wet.” At the same time, he launched a broadside against the workforce. “We cannot tolerate the fact that this circumstance has been used as the reason for a spontaneous strike without any legal basis and to call for further strikes in other warehouses,” he told the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel.

One rider told the local TV channel rbb24 that while “rain jackets and rain trousers are available here…they are very dirty.” “We don’t want to wear them, but we have to,” he added. The clothing is also not available in all necessary sizes.

The dangers involved in working without adequate gear were highlighted on July 1 when a rider from Pankow suffered an accident after an ill-fitting rain jacket snagged in her bike. Her injuries were so severe she had to be treated in hospital.

The conflict at the start-up, which attained a company value of one billion dollars in record time and is aiming for a total valuation of six billion dollars, has been simmering for some time and is now assuming ever sharper forms.

Last winter the company failed to provide its riders with warm jackets. Now the company’s warehouses lack any air conditioning, endangering those forced to work during the past several weeks when summer temperatures soared. Riders have long complained about back pain due to their heavy bags and problems arising from defective bicycles. In addition, their hours have recently been extended. They are expected to work shifts between 7 a.m. and midnight.

About three weeks ago, the dismissal of one colleague during his probationary period brought the situation at the company to a head. After one rider named Santiago was let go, about a hundred workers assembled in protest. In solidarity, they blocked two company warehouses in Berlin and demanded his reinstatement. The protest was also directed against Gorillas’ “hire and fire” policy, which uses long probationary periods to dismiss employees when it is convenient. In Santiago’s case, Gorillas justified his dismissal by citing misconduct and alleged unexcused absences.

Now, based on news reports, the company is bracing itself for a possible major strike. According to social media, employees from other areas are to be used as riders if necessary, serving as strikebreakers.

The anger among workers is enormous and there have been calls made to extend the strike wave. Solidarity statements from other workers and the setting up of a solidarity fund on social media are expressions of this anger.

The strikes enjoy considerable public support, with increasing numbers of Gorilla customers declaring that they would no longer use the delivery service if conditions for the workers were not improved.

As the situation intensifies and the strikes widen, workers face urgent political questions. In order for their protests to be successful, Gorilla workers must reject the demand for the involvement of trade unions, which is being raised by several pseudo-left groups around the strike. The call for a works council dominated by the leadership of the NGG (Food, Beverages and Catering Union) is a political trap for workers.

In a provocative move, India deploys 50,000 more troops to its disputed border with China

Rohantha De Silva & Keith Jones

India has deployed 50,000 more troops to its disputed Himalayan border with China, action it claims is in response to a Chinese military buildup.

Last year the rival nuclear-armed powers came the closest to all-out war since they fought a month-long border war in 1962. This included a bloody pitched battle on a mountain ridge in the Galwan Valley on the night of June 15, 2020, in which 20 Indian and 4 Chinese soldiers died, and an Indian military operation in late August that saw thousands of Indian troops seize a series of mountain ridges near Pangong Tso lake, which forms part of the current de facto border between India and China. Indian officials subsequently admitted that this highly provocative action, reportedly facilitated by US satellite intelligence, could easily have resulted in a violent clash with Chinese troops spiraling into war.

Tanks on the banks of Pangong Tso lake region, in Ladakh along the India-China border on Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021. (Indian Army via AP)

With its most recent troop deployments, India now has at least 200,000 and, according to some reports, as many as 250,000 troops arrayed along its northern border. According to a report published by Bloomberg last week, the additional troops have been deployed to at least five bases along the full breadth of India’s more than 3,000-kilometre (2,000 mile) border with China. 20,000 of them have been deployed to Leh in Indian-held Ladakh. Along with the adjacent Chinese-held Aksai Chin, eastern Ladakh has been the focal point of the current flare-up in the Sino-Indian border dispute.

India is also in the midst of a crash infrastructure building campaign in its border regions, developing new fortifications, airstrips, and road and rail links to swiftly move troops and supplies. Late last summer, when it took possession of the first of the 35 Rafale fighter jets it has purchased from France, the Indian Air Force made a point of immediately deploying them over Indian-held Ladakh. India has also established a new 18 fighter-jet squadron aimed against China based in Ambala in the north Indian state of Haryana and intends to soon establish a similar squadron at its Hasimara air base in West Bengal to police the eastern section of its border with China.

Citing people “familiar with the matter,” the Bloomberg report said the Indian military has positioned itself to assume a much more aggressive stance. “Whereas previously,” the report explained, “India’s military presence was aimed at blocking Chinese moves, the redeployment will allow Indian commanders more options to attack and seize territory in China if necessary, in a strategy known as ‘offensive defense.’” The report added that Indian forces are now more mobile. This is due to recently acquired US-made helicopters, which can ferry soldiers and artillery including the British-made M777 howitzer from Himalayan “valley to valley.”

India’s officer corps and its government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his far-right Bharatiya Janata Party, have repeatedly boasted that India is ready to confront China. Last week, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh pledged India would “give a befitting reply if provoked.” With the world’s fourth largest military budget, ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, India certainly possesses weapons of mass destruction, meaning that any Sino-Indian conflict, even if it erupts due to miscalculation and is initially confined to their respective border regions, threatens to rapidly spiral into an unparalleled catastrophe for the people of Asia and the world.

But while the two countries have roughly the same size population, China’s economy is more than four times bigger and in most technological domains China eclipses India. The deplorable state of Indian infrastructure has been highlighted by the catastrophic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic that, according to the official gross undercount, has sickened more than 30 million people and killed more than 400,000. Although India does have significant vaccine-manufacturing capacity, to date just 5 percent of India’s population has been fully vaccinated.

New Delhi’s aggressive stance in the current border conflict with China is directly bound up with the support and encouragement it is receiving from Washington.

As per an agreement between Beijing and New Delhi, Indian Army and Chinese People’s Liberation Army officers held disengagement talks in the fall and early winter, and the two sides pulled back forward deployed troops near Pangong Tso lake. However, these talks stalled shortly after Joe Biden was sworn in as US president.

On taking office, Biden lost no time in making clear that under his Democratic administration Washington will intensify its economic, diplomatic, and military-strategic offensive against China, and that India and the Indian Ocean are central to US strategy to thwart China’s “rise,” if necessary, through war. In March, Biden convened the first-ever heads of government meeting of the Quad, a “strategic dialogue” quasi-military alliance, led by the US and including India and its most important Asia-Pacific treaty allies, Japan and Australia. Soon after, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin became the first high-level Biden administration official to visit New Delhi. In a gesture meant to underline the importance India attaches to expanding military-strategic cooperation with Washington, Austin was accorded an audience with Modi.

Since last July, impromptu military exercises between the Indian navy and US aircraft task forces passing near to India have become virtually routine, in what is an unmistakable message to China, whose economy is highly dependent on Mideast oil and Indian Ocean-borne exports to Europe, Africa and much of Asia. The most recent such exercise was on June 23-24, when the USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group, which is based in Japan, passed by India en route to the North Arabian Sea, where it is supporting the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. According to an Indian Navy press release, the exercise was aimed at honing the two militaries’ “war-fighting skills” and enhancing “their interoperability as an integrated force,” and involved practicing antisubmarine warfare.

Washington has played an intrusive role in the current Indo-China border dispute almost from its outset in May of last year. In a marked contrast with the 2017 Doklam standoff, when Indian and Chinese troops confronted each other on a Himalayan plateau claimed by both China and Bhutan, the US made no pretence to neutrality, quickly labelling China the “aggressor.” Moreover, it has further upped the ante by linking the Indo-China border dispute to its accusations of “illegal” Chinese actions in the South China Sea. Opposing Chinese “expansionism” in the South China Sea is one of the principal pretexts the US has advanced for its massive buildup of military capabilities in the Indo-Pacific and for its provocative “freedom of navigation” exercises off China’s shores.

With strong support from India’s venal capitalist elite, the Modi-led BJP government has followed the path blazed by its Congress Party-led predecessors and integrated India ever more completely into the US offensive against China, on the gamble that by allying with a crisis-ridden American imperialism it can advance New Delhi’s great-power ambitions. Toward this end, during its first six years in power, it threw open India’s ports and airbases for use by US military forces for “rest and resupply,” signed other agreements that the Pentagon insists are necessary for joint military operations, and adopted Washington’s provocative stance on the South China Sea.

But over the past 14 months, roiled by the pandemic and an unprecedented contraction of India’s already troubled economy, the Modi government has taken all of this to a new level. The border dispute with China has been invoked to justify a massive expansion of India’s bilateral, trilateral and quadrilateral ties with the US, and its closest regional allies, Japan and Australia. India has also intensified its collaboration with the US in countering Chinese influence across South Asia and the Indian Ocean region, including by dropping its opposition to Washington signing a defence cooperation with the Maldives, an Indian Ocean archipelago New Delhi hitherto sought to keep firmly under its thumb.

In a further indication of the extent to which India has been incorporated into the US strategic offensive against China, intelligence officials from India and Japan joined a meeting of the US-led Five Eyes global spying operation last fall focused on countering China.

For offering the Indian people up as satraps for US imperialism, the Modi government and Indian bourgeoisie hope to receive their reward in the form of greater international prominence, as in the recent invitation to Modi to attend last month’s G-7 summit in England, assistance in making India a rival production-chain hub to China, and major investments by US arms manufacturers.

Like Washington and other governments and ruling elites, India’s are also whipping up animosity against China as a means of deflecting anger over their disastrous mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent weeks, the Indian media has given prominence to the Wuhan lab conspiracy theory of the origins of COVID-19 first promoted by the fascist Trump and recently revived by the Biden administration.

Beijing’s official response to India’s aggressive new border deployments has been relatively muted. Its official representatives have insisted that the situation remains stable and repeated calls for the two countries to resolve the current dispute through talks. “The words and deeds of the two countries should be aiming at cooling the situation and promoting mutual trust, not the reverse,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin. However, the Beijing regime, which represents the oligarchy created by the Stalinist Communist Party’s restoration of capitalism, has no solution to the US-led imperialist offensive. It oscillates between whipping up Chinese national chauvinism and pursuing its own military buildup and desperately trying to appease Washington through concessions.

Over the past two decades, the reactionary strategic conflict between India and Pakistan, for decades one of Beijing’s closest allies, and the Sino-Indian border dispute have become inextricably enmeshed with the ever-deepening US-Chinese geostrategic rivalry, enormously adding to the explosive character of all three. To prevent decrepit capitalism from plunging humanity into a global conflagration, the international working class must be politically mobilized to disarm the rival nationally based bourgeois cliques through socialist revolution.

USW proposed agreement with ATI would cut hundreds of jobs

Evan Winters

After more than three months on strike, the United Steelworkers (USW) has brought back a proposed agreement to 1,300 striking workers at Allegheny Technologies (ATI) in Pennsylvania and four other states. Despite the USW’s proclamations of victory, the contract is a transparent sellout for workers, giving the company everything it wants, including slashing hundreds of jobs.

After starving and isolating workers on the picket line for months, the USW clearly calculates that the proposed deal will pass when it comes to a vote this coming Tuesday.

Pickets assemble earlier in the strike at the ATI mill in Brackenridge (WSWS Media)

The USW has only released self-serving highlights instead of the full contract. Even these highlights, however, make clear the depth of the concessions the deal contains. The headlined “gain” in the agreement is a 3 percent wage increase in the second, third, and fourth years of the contract. The CPI inflation index has already risen by 5 percent this year, meaning that these nominal wage increases will likely mean a cut in real wages. ATI workers have not had a raise in seven years.

The proposal also includes lump sum payments of $1,500 in the third and fourth years and a $4,000 signing bonus bribe. ATI workers have been on strike for more than three months and have already lost thousands of dollars in income. Throughout this period, the USW has provided a miniscule $150-$225 per week in strike pay. While the USW promised that workers would receive $900 a week in unemployment benefits, this has already been denied in Ohio and will in all likelihood also be denied in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

From the outset, ATI demanded that any wage increase be offset by cuts in another part of the contract. The USW has complied, pairing the above “gains” with, among other things, the elimination of profit sharing.

A major demand of workers during the strike has been for premium-free medical coverage and an end to healthcare tiers. The USW touts the fact that the proposed agreement does not include premiums and is the same for all USW-represented employees. The USW achieved this by raising deductibles and co-pays for all workers and by agreeing to cap increases in the company’s medical and prescription drug costs at 3.5 percent per year. If the cost of workers’ healthcare rises above this cap, a Joint Benefits Committee, composed of “three union representatives and three company representatives” must “meet and determine how to pay the amount over the cap.” The summary explains, “This could be through a reduction to the lump sum in 2024 or through a premium payment in 2024. The parties have to agree on how to pay this and if there is a dispute.”

In other words, if workers’ healthcare costs more than ATI wants to pay, workers will pay the difference. The USW calls this a “victory” because it does not necessarily involve “premiums” and because it applies to all workers, rather than only to new hires.

The agreement also includes no gains for retirees. The union-controlled Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) retiree healthcare fund will continue to receive $1 per hour worked. The summary explains that, “This is adequate to fund the benefits for the term of the agreement, but long term funding will need to be addressed in the future.” In other words, the fund will run out of money no sooner than 2025. The VEBA is largely invested in the stock market, which has risen to record heights in the past several years due to massive infusions of cheap money from the US Federal Reserve. A decline in the stock market could leave retirees without healthcare within years.

The most damning indictment against this proposed agreement is that it does not lift a finger to protect the jobs of roughly 300 workers, about a quarter of the workforce, who are slated to be fired due to plant and department closings during the life of the contract. The USW summary simply notes that “Before negotiations began, ATI announced their intent to permanently close #3 Finishing in Brackenridge [in Pennsylvania], the Waterbury plant [in Connecticut] and the Louisville plant [in Ohio].” The USW then pats itself on the back for opposing company plans to deny laid off workers their pensions.

The summary also makes clear that upon returning to work, workers should expect a management dictatorship lasting at least 90 days. Although the summary says workers will not be forced to work alongside scabs, this only applies to contracted scabs, not management scabs. The union has agreed to “allow supervisors, non-represented workers and retirees to perform some bargaining unit work for 90 days as operations return to normal.” The union will also “allow the company to cancel or reschedule vacation shutdowns, and allow increased overtime.”

At the conclusion of the 2015-2016 lockout, ATI workers returned to the factories to find equipment vandalized by scabs, including human feces in some areas. The USW suspended the grievance procedure and allowed the company to force workers into extended overtime alongside management scabs.

ATI workers should vote to reject this agreement. After months on strike, ATI workers are seeking to win back old concessions, not accept new ones. ATI is immensely profitable, making $40 million in the fourth quarter of 2020 alone.

To move forward, ATI workers must understand that they face not only ATI, but also the pro-corporate USW. Appeals must be made not to the company, the USW, and the National Labor Relations Board, but to the wider working class, which is also moving into struggle.

Within the USW, 650 ExxonMobil refinery workers are locked out at a refinery in Beaumont, Texas. 2,400 miners in Sudbury, Ontario have been on strike since January 1. 2,500 steelworkers in Quebec are angered over the USW betrayal of their strike against ArcelorMittal. Roughly 70 workers at Custom Hoists in Ashland, Ohio walked off the job on June 13. In addition, 1,100 Warrior Met coal miners remain on strike in Alabama. 700 nurses in Worcester, Massachusetts have been on strike since March. And nearly 600 workers at a Frito Lay food processing plant in Topeka, Kansas, went on strike this Monday.

3,000 striking Volvo workers in Virginia are leading the way with the formation of the Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee. Working through this committee, Volvo workers have now voted down two pro-company contracts, which the United Auto Workers (UAW) said were the best deals workers could get. Volvo workers are now fighting against a third pro-company contract that the UAW says contains “major gains” beyond the two rotten earlier deals.

It is likely not a coincidence that the USW brought back a deal at the same time as the latest Volvo tentative agreement. The USW recognizes that if Volvo workers vote their contract down, this will embolden ATI workers to do the same, and vice versa.

To carry forward the struggle, ATI workers must form rank-and-file committees to break the USW-imposed isolation of the strike. These committees must reach out as broadly as possible, including to striking Volvo workers as well as to other workers in the steel industry. ATI workers in Pennsylvania should send delegations to nearby US Steel plants and make an appeal for their support.

These committees should draw up demands based on what workers need, not on what the company says it can afford. These demands should include an end to layoffs, the restoration of all concessions granted by the USW, a return to the eight-hour day, no increases in healthcare costs borne by workers, full funding for retiree healthcare, and at least $900 a week in strike pay.

Workers should also demand to see the full contract, rather than often vague highlights, with a full two weeks to study and discuss it. Any memoranda of understanding between the USW and ATI must also be made available to workers.

Government of Ireland Africa Agri-food Development Program (AADP) 2021

Application Deadline: 30th July 2021.

About the Award: The Objective of the AADP is to develop partnerships between the Irish Agri-Food Sector and African countries to support sustainable growth of the local food industry, build markets for local produce and support mutual trade between Ireland and Africa.

It is intended that any investment by the AADP will be catalytic support with co-funding from the private sector. The fund is designed to leverage greater expertise, experience and investment from the Irish agri-food sector and projects should demonstrate results with a long-term developmental impact that will ultimately lead to sustainable benefits through investment by the private sector.

Irish agri-food expertise is extremely wide-ranging and examples of suitable AADP projects include:

• Business development
• Production system
• Technology Transfer
• R & D
• Project Management

Type: Entrepreneurship/Grants

Eligibility: 

• The partners involved must include one Irish registered agri food company and one local commercial entity in Africa;
• All proposed projects must be commercial in nature and focus. Funding will only be awarded to Irish registered agri food companies.
• AADP funding is up to a maximum of €250,000 per company for a full project or €100,000 for a feasibility study.
• AADP funding will not exceed 50% of the costs of the project;
• The funds contributed by the Irish registered agri food company must not comprise funding received from any other Irish Public funding source.
• If an applicant company was previously successful in applying for AADP funding, it must explain clearly (in the application form) the new project goals/outcomes and how they differ from those in the initial funding round.
• If an applicant company proposes to undertake a feasibility study, it should include a list of ‘potential’ partners with the application.
• Projects will be supported in the following countries – Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia;
  • Funding from the AADF must bring about additionality and not replace existing funding;
  • Successful AADF funding applicants will be encouraged to engage with Irish NGOs where possible on various aspects of the projects i.e. Mechanical and Engineering, Project design, etc.

Evaluation Criteria: Applications will be evaluated against the following criteria:

• Development Impact
• Company expertise (Technical, financial etc)
• Commercial viability
• Risk Analysis
• Monitoring and Expenditure

It is intended that any investment by the AADP will be catalytic support with co-funding from the private sector. The fund is designed to leverage greater expertise, experience and investment from the Irish agri-food sector and projects should demonstrate results with a long-term developmental impact that will ultimately lead to sustainable benefits through investment by the private sector.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: Possible funding of up to €250,000 in total per company

How to Apply: The AADP is now open for submissions. Application forms must be completed by the Irish applicant company and submitted to aadp@agriculture.gov.ie. 

The closing date for the receipt of applications is 5.00pm on Friday, 30th July 2021. 

Please monitor this website and the Departments’ Social Media accounts for updates:

Dept of Agriculture, Food & the Marine Twitter | Dept of Foreign Affairs Twitter

Application Forms

Applications will only be accepted through the official AADP Application Forms.

To request an Application Form for a Full Project or Feasibility Study please email aadp@agriculture.gov.ie with the subject line “Application Form Request”

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Important Note: Only Irish Agri-Food companies can apply.

Award Providers: The Africa Agri-Food Development Programme (AADP) is a joint initiative between the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

DAAD Postgraduate Study Scholarship in Music 2022

Application Deadline: 27th September 2021

Eligible Countries: International

To be Taken at (Country): Germany

About the Award: In this study programme, you can complete

• a Master’s degree/postgraduate degree leading to a final qualification, or
• a complementary course that does not lead to a final qualification (not an undergraduate course)

at a state German college of music of your choice.
Postgraduate studies are possible in the so-called 2nd cycle (usually a four-semester Master’s degree) or a 3rd cycle which usually takes place in two semesters (concert examination, masterclass or PhD in an artistic subject).
This programme only funds projects in the artistic field. Other DAAD scholarship programmes are available for applicants from the field of musicology or music education or musicians with a scientific project.

Type: Masters, Short course/Training

Eligibility: Foreign applicants who have gained a first university degree in the field of Music at the latest by the time they commence their scholarship-supported study programme; if this is not possible, they should have at least exhausted all the training options available for their instrument in their country of origin.

• As a rule, applicants should have taken their final examinations no longer than six years before the application deadline.
• The respective college of music is responsible for deciding age limits for admission, whereby differing rules may be applied depending on the applicant’s academic level and chosen subject.
• Applicants who have been resident in Germany for longer than 15 months at the application deadline cannot be considered.
• If the scholarship holder is enrolled in a Master’s or postgraduate degree programme which includes a study period abroad, funding for this period abroad is usually only possible under the following conditions:
  – The study visit is essential for achievement of the scholarship objective.
  – The study period is no longer than a quarter of the scholarship period. Longer periods cannot be funded, even partially.
  – The study period does not take place in the home country.

Language: Applicants in the field of music should have a knowledge of the language of instruction that corresponds to the requirements of the chosen university at the latest by the time they start their scholarship. If you do not yet have the language skills required by the university at the time of your application, your application should indicate the extent to which you are in a position to reach the required level. After you have been awarded a scholarship, take advantage of the funding opportunities described under “Value”.

Selection Criteria: A special DAAD committee made up of professors from German colleges of music makes the final decision about scholarships in the field of music. The decision is based upon written applications and sound recordings which have to be submitted.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• A monthly payment of 850 euros
• Travel allowance
• One-off study allowance
• Payments towards health, accident and personal liability insurance cover

Under certain circumstances, scholarship holders may receive the following additional benefits:

• Monthly rent subsidy
• Monthly allowance for accompanying members of family

To enable scholarship holders to learn German in preparation for their stay in the country, DAAD offers the following services:

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

Duration of Award:

Master’s degree programme:

• Between 10 and 24 months depending on the length of the chosen study programme or study project
• The scholarships are awarded for the duration of the standard period of study for the chosen study programme (up to a maximum of 24 months). To receive further funding after the first year of study for 2-year courses, proof of academic achievements thus far should indicate that the study programme can be successfully completed within the standard period of study. Therefore, a reference of the main subject teacher will be required.
• Applicants who are already in Germany in the first year of a postgraduate course at the time of application may apply for funding for their second year of study.
• An extension of the scholarship is possible if changing to a new stage in studies is intended (usually from a Master’s degree to an advanced programme of study such as a concert exam or master class). For particularly qualified candidates, it is possible to apply for an extension for a concert exam for up to two years.

Complementary studies not leading to a final qualification:

• One academic year. In individual cases, the scholarship can be extended on request
• Start: usually on 1st October, or earlier if a language course is taken prior to the study programme

How to Apply:

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

Visit Award Webpage for Details