Canadian Imperialism in Africa

Yves Engler

Canadian imperialism in Africa has had a rare social media moment.

On Twiter K. Diallo recently posted a map of the continent with the sum of Canadian mining investment in each African country under the words “75% of mining companies globally are now Canadian. Canada is a great source of corporate neocolonialism expansion.” The tweet received 25,000 likes and 8,500 retweets.

But the map is dated. It said there was $31.6 billion worth of Canadian mining investment in Africa yet Natural Resources Canada put the number at $37.8 billion in 2019. The scope of Canadian resource extraction on the continent is remarkable. Many companies based and traded here have taken African names (African Queen Mines, Asante Gold Corporation, Tanzanian Royalty Exploration, Lake Victoria Mining Company, Société d’Exploitation Minière d’Afrique de l’Ouest, East Africa Metals, International African Mining Gold (IAMGOLD), African Gold Group, etc.).

Canadian resource companies operating in Africa receive significant government support. Amongst a slew of pro-mining measures, Justin Trudeau’s government has put up more than $100 million in assistance for mining related projects in Africa, signed Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements and backed Barrick Gold during a high-profile conflict with the Tanzanian government.

A similar Facebook meme on Ghana has also circulated widely in recent days. Appearing to originate from a statement posted by Kgoshi Mmaphuti Uhuru Mokwele, it notes: “Ghana is the biggest gold producing country in Africa & 8th in the world, but 93.3% of Ghana’s gold is owned by foreign corporations, mainly America and Canada. Ghana owns less than 2% of all the Gold in their land. Ghana has to borrow money from the IMF & World Bank to buy their own Gold, which is on their land, mined by Ghanaian workers, using Ghana’s resources. The price of the Gold is set in New York & can only be purchased with American dollar.”

Canada has certainly contributed to the Ghanaian (and African) impoverishment Mokwele alludes to. Alongside their counterparts from the US and Britain, Canadian officials participated in the 1944 Bretton Woods negotiations that established the IMF and World Bank and Ottawa continues to have outsized influence within those institutions. Tens of millions of dollars in Canadian aid money has supported IMF structural adjustment policies of privatization, liberalization and social spending cuts in Ghana, which benefited Canada’s rapacious mining industry.

After a high profile Canadian-financed structural adjustment program in the late 1980s NGO worker Ian Gary explained its impact: “Ghana’s traditional sources of income — gold, cocoa, and timber — have benefited from the program, but this has only exacerbated the colonial legacy of dependence. Nearly all of the $1.5 billion worth of private foreign investment has been in mining, with most of the profits being repatriated overseas. ‘User fees’ for health care services and education have been introduced. Disincentives to food producers, and the damage caused to local rice producers by cheap rice imports, led to increased malnutrition and lower food security. Rapid and indiscriminate liberalization of the trade regime hurt local industry, while cutbacks in the public sector shed 15 per cent of the waged work force.”

But Canadian support for colonial exploitation goes back much further.

Ottawa began dispersing aid to African countries as a way to dissuade newly independent states from following wholly independent paths or falling under the influence of the Communist bloc. A big part of Canada’s early assistance went to train militaries, including the Ghanaian military that overthrew pan-Africanist independence leader Kwame Nkrumah in 1966. After Nkrumah’s removal Canadian High Commissioner C.E. McGaughey wrote External Affairs in Ottawa that “a wonderful thing has happened for the West in Ghana and Canada has played a worthy part.” McGaughey boasted about the effectiveness of Canada’s Junior Staff Officers training program noting that “all the chief participants of the coup were graduates of this course.” (Canadian major Bob Edwards, who was a training advisor to the commander of a Ghanaian infantry brigade, discovered preparations for the coup the day before its execution, but said nothing.)

During the colonial period Ottawa offered various forms of support to European rule in Ghana and elsewhere on the continent. Beginning in the early 1900s Canadian officials worked to develop commercial relations with the British colony and in 1938 Canada’s assistant trade commissioner in London, H. Leslie Brown, spent three weeks in the Gold Coast. In 1947 Alcan commenced operations there through its purchase of West African Aluminum Limited.

Numerous Canadians played a role in the British colonial service in Ghana. In 1921 former Canadian Lieutenant E.F.L. Penno was appointed assistant commander of the Gold Coast police and was later made overall commander. At the start of the 1900s Galt, Ontario, born Frederick Gordon Guggisberg helped mark over 300 mining and timber concessions in Ashanti and the Gold Coast, which aided Britain’s Ashanti Gold Corporation extract six million ounces of gold from the colony. After two decades moving up in the colonial service Guggisberg was governor of Ghana from 1919 to 1927 (a Canadian governed Kenya and Northern Nigeria as well).

Canadian missionaries and soldiers also played a role in subjugating Ghana at the turn of the 19th century. According to Global Affairs, “In 1906, Québec missionaries established a church in Navrongo in northern Ghana, thus marking the arrival of a Canadian presence in the country.” Oscar Morin and Leonide Barsalou set up the first White Fathers post in the Gold Coast where Canadians would dominate the church for half a century.

Numerous Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) trained individuals fought the Ashanti in turn-of-the-19^th-century wars. RMC graduate Captain Duncan Sayre MacInnes helped construct an important fort at the Ashanti capital of Kumasi and the son of a Canadian senator participated in a number of subsequent expeditions to occupy the hinterland of modern Ghana. For more than half a century a selected fourth year RMC cadet has been awarded the Duncan Sayre MacInnes Memorial Scholarship.

Scratch the surface of African history and you’ll find Canadian involvement in colonial rule. This country’s role in the impoverishment of Ghana and Africa in general deserves far greater attention.

Who Pays for Eldercare in the US? Women and the Economy

Clara Wilson

The disproportionate pressure unpaid care responsibilities place on women negatively impacts their ability to work paying jobs and has adverse financial consequences. Even though women provide unpaid care to a wide spectrum of individuals, policy conversations around facilitating the employment of women have often primarily centered around alleviating mother’s child caregiving responsibilities. While policies aimed to reduce the barriers that child caregiving has on mothers in the labor force are critical and necessary, solely investing in those policies is not enough to ensure women have equal access to paying jobs. There also needs to be an investment in eldercare; women provide the bulk of the unpaid care for their elderly family members as well.

In the United States, families, typically women within families, provide a majority of eldercare in the form of unpaid family caregiving. Alternative forms of eldercare like nursing homes are typically reserved for older adults, mainly 85 years old or older, that require around-the-clock care due to severe illness or disabilities. Home care and community-based care is another alternative; however, cost and availability make it a less common option. As a result, there are 42 million unpaid elder caregivers, and 61 percent of these care workers are women, particularly wives and daughters. By 2030, 20 percent of the American population will have reached the retirement age causing the prevalence of women providing unpaid eldercare to increase substantially.

Women who provide unpaid eldercare are eight percent less likely to work. For those who do work, balancing family caregiving with employment responsibilities can lead to lower wages for women because they are more likely to decrease their hours, pass up work promotions, switch from full-time to part-time work, and take a leave of absence. Consequently, women that provide unpaid eldercare are more likely to live in poverty and are five times more likely to receive Supplemental Security Income than women who do not provide unpaid care.

In addition to the financial burden, unpaid caregiving can negatively influence caregivers’ health. The stress of caregiving takes a toll causing 23 percent of unpaid caregivers to report that their care work worsened their health. On average, unpaid elder caregivers spend over 20 hours a week providing care. Balancing that many hours on top of working full time can lead to anxiety, depression, social isolation, and caregiving burnout.

There needs to be an investment in eldercare to support women and families, because accessing affordable care for older adults is far too challenging. In the last 10 years, the cost of direct care for older adults has increased by 23 percent. Additionally, the median annual cost for nursing homes is 90,000-102,000 dollars, 51,000-53,000 dollars for home-based care, and 20,000-49,000 dollars for community-based care. Medicaid can be used to supplement direct care for older adults who qualify. However, due to the inadequate supply of direct care professionals, there is currently a backlog of over 800,000 older adults or people with disabilities, who are currently on waiting lists for home-based care.

The Biden Administration has made it a priority to invest in eldercare. Biden’s American Jobs Plan calls for an investment of 400 billion to improve the eldercare infrastructure by increasing the wages and benefits of paid care workers and Medicaid funding for home care and community-based care. Biden’s proposed investment would add approximately 1.1 million jobs to the economy and give more women the opportunity to enter the workforce. A recent Harvard study found that the labor supply increases when families have access to home-based and community-based care through Medicaid. This is because daughters are more likely to work full-time when they do not have to provide extensive care for their parents.

Ultimately, Biden’s plan for eldercare investment is an important and critical step in the right direction. However, improving the eldercare infrastructure cannot end with the American Jobs Plan, because prioritizing increasing Medicaid funding for home and community-based care does not reduce the cost of eldercare for the majority of older adults who do not qualify for Medicaid. Additional policy measures will be needed to make eldercare affordable for all families. As the United States population ages, failure to provide affordable eldercare options for families could have disastrous impacts on the economy and the female labor force participation rate since women bear the brunt of unpaid elder caregiving.

By Letting Saudi Arabia Off the Hook Over 9/11, the US Encouraged Violent Jihadism

Patrick Cockburn

Two decades after 9/11, the role of Saudi Arabia in the attack remains in dispute despite unrelenting efforts by the US and Saudi governments to neutralise it as a live political issue.

The Saudi Arabia embassy in Washington this week issued a statement detailing its anti-terrorist activities and ongoing hostility to Al-Qaeda. This was briskly rejected by the lawyers for the families of the 9/11 victims who said that, “what Saudi Arabia desperately does not want to discuss is the substantial and credible evidence of the complicity [in the attack] of their employees, agents and sponsored agents”.

Saudi Arabia claims that the 9/11 Commission Report, the official American inquiry published in 2003, cleared it of responsibility for the attacks. In fact, it found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials as individuals had funded Al-Qaeda. But this is not an exoneration since the Saudi government traditionally retains deniability by permitting Saudi sheikhs and wealthy individuals to finance radical Sunni Muslim movements abroad. A former Taliban finance minister, Agha Jan Motasim, revealed in an interview with the New York Times in 2016 that he went to Saudi Arabia several times a year to raise funds from private donors for his movement.

The evidence has always been strong that at various points the hijackers, who flew the planes into the twin towers and the Pentagon, had interacted with Saudi state employees, though how much the latter knew about the plot has never been clarified. What is impressive is the determination with which the US security services have tried to conceal or play down intelligence linking Saudi officials to 9/11, something which may be motivated by their own culpability in giving Saudis a free pass when suspicions about the hijackers were aroused prior to 9/11.

In Sarasota, Florida, the FBI at first denied having any documents relating to the hijackers who were living there, but eventually handed over 80,000 pages that might be relevant under the Freedom of Information Act. Last week President Joe Biden decided to release other documents from the FBI’s overall investigation.

A striking feature of 9/11 is the attention which President George W Bush gave to diverting blame away from Saudi Arabia. He allowed some 144 individuals, mostly from the Saudi elite, to fly back to Saudi Arabia without being questioned by the FBI. A photograph shows Bush in cheerful conversation on the White House balcony a few days after 9/11 with the influential Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, told me in an interview with The Independent in 2014 that, “there were several incidents [in which US officials] were inexplicably solicitous to Saudis”. This solicitude did not ebb over the years and it was only in 2016 that the wholly redacted 28 pages in the 9/11 Report about the financial links of some hijackers to individuals working for the Saudi government was finally made public.

I have never been a believer in direct Saudi government complicity in 9/11, because they had no motive and they usually act at one remove from events. When the Saudi state acts on its own – as with the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamil Khashoggi by a death squad at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 – the operation is commonly marked by shambolic incompetence.

Conspiracy theories about 9/11 divert attention away from two areas of Saudi culpability that are beyond dispute. The first is simply that 9/11 was a Saudi-led operation through and through, since Osama bin Laden, from one of the most prominent Saudi families, was the leader of Al-Qaeda and 15 out of the19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. The 9/11 attacks might have happened without Afghanistan, but not without Saudi participation.

Another kind of Saudi government culpability for 9/11 is more wide-ranging but more important because the factors behind it have not disappeared. A weakness of the outpouring of analyses of the consequences of 9/11 is that they treat the attacks as the point of departure for a series of events that ended badly, such as the “war on terror” and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. This is very much a western viewpoint because what happened in New York and Washington in 2001 was not the beginning, but the midpoint in a struggle, involving both open and covert warfare, that began more than 20 years earlier and made Saudi Arabia such a central player in world politics.

This preeminent status is attributed to Saudi oil wealth and partial control over the price of oil. But more than 20 years before 9/11 two events occurred which deepened the US-Saudi alliance and made it far more important for both parties. These genuine turning points in history, both of which took place in 1979, were the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. These together generated 40 years of conflict and war which have not yet come to an end, and in which 9/11 was but one episode and the Taliban victory in Afghanistan last month another.

Saudi Arabia and the US wanted to stop communism in Afghanistan and the rise of Iran as a revolutionary Shia power. The former motive vanished with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 (though not the permanent crisis in Afghanistan), but the Saudi aim to build a wall of fundamentalist Sunni movements in the 50 Muslim majority states in the world did not.

Saudi policy is to bet on all players in any conflict, so it can truthfully claim to be backing the Afghan government and fighting terrorism, though it is also indirectly funding a resurgent Taliban. The US was not blind to this, but only occasionally admitted so in public. Six years after 9/11, in 2007, Stuart Levy, the under secretary of the US Treasury in charge of putting a stop to the financing of terrorism, told ABC news that regarding Al-Qaeda, “if I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia”. He added that not a single person identified by the US and the UN as a funder of terrorism had been prosecuted by the Saudis.

American Muslims 20 years after 9/11

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

“The rising power of American Muslims” is the title of special issue of The Newsweek on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.  It published an article by Steve Friess under the title: Since 9/11, US Muslims have gained unprecedented political, cultural influence.

It’s been an impressive 2021 so far for Muslim Americans. The U.S. Senate, that bastion of partisan gridlock, overwhelmingly confirmed, Judge Zaidi Quraishi, the nation’s first Muslims as a federal district court judge and Lina Khan to chair the Federal Trade Commission. Legislatures in five states swore in their first Muslim members, including a non-binary, queer hijab-wearing representative in, of all places, Oklahoma. Three Detroit suburbs are poised this fall to elect their first Muslim mayors, according to the Newsweek.

The recent rise of many Muslim Americans to positions of power and influence—in Washington and in statehouses, on big screens and small ones, across playing fields and news desks—is a development that few in the U.S. would have predicted two decades ago, Muslims included.

It is the experience of coming of age in this post-9/11 environment, experts say, that drew a new generation of young Muslims to activism, and motivated them to use their voices in political and cultural arenas to debunk misinformation. That they’ve found a receptive audience beyond the Muslim community suggests to some observers that many Americans now understand that the anti-Islamic rhetoric they’ve been served in recent years is based on myths and untrue. As Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who in 2007 became the first Muslim sworn in as a member of Congress, tells Newsweek, “The haters have been proven to be liars.”

9/11 set off a wave of Islamophobia that has endured to this day

The September 11 attacks stirred a crescendo of Islamophobia that for the next two decades challenged their beliefs about what it means to be American, according to Dallas News.

Muslims were not the only victims of post-9/11 Islamophobia. The hate against the community also plagued others, such as Sikhs and other non-Muslims of South Asian descent, who were targeted solely for their appearance.

Harbhajan Singh, 65, director of the Gurdwara Nishkam Seva religious and community center in Irving,Texas, said Sikhs around the country were harassed and assaulted because of their religious practice of having beards and wearing turbans.

But rather than reject or distance themselves from the Muslim community, Singh said, many Sikhs, including those in Dallas-Fort Worth, chose to show solidarity.

“We made connections to show them that we support them in their time of need. The Muslim community is as affected by these extremists as perhaps other communities are,” he said. “We felt that the Muslim community was being wrongfully, collectively aligned with these extreme views and they need the support of other people to come around to fight against those types of sentiments together.”

Muslims growing up post-9/11 still can’t escape the long shadow of that day

Muslims who grew up post-9/11 are unable to escape the long shadow of that day, forever pushed to be on the defensive, to justify our place in this country, according to Boston Globe.

What followed the attacks was a war on terror that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives overseas, stripped our civil rights here at home, and caused enormous spikes in anti-Muslim violence.

One of the terrifying anti-Muslim violence happened in 2015 when three Muslim college students were shot to death in Chapel Hill, N.C., by a man who prosecutors said had made hateful comments to them in the past. In 2017, a shooter killed six people at a Quebec City mosque. Two years later, 51 Muslim worshipers were killed in attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Islamophobia does not just hurt Muslims. On Sept. 15, 2001, in what is believed to be the first hate-motivated murder in response to 9/11, a Sikh gas station owner was fatally shot in Mesa, Arizona and in 2012, a gunman killed six people at a Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, before shooting himself. Experts suspected he believed he was targeting a mosque.

The reverberations from 9/11 are far from history

Twenty years may have passed, but for Muslims, the reverberations from 9/11 are far from history.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, in July 2021 released a mid-year report highlighting serious cases of anti-Muslim incidents that occurred in the United States during the first seven months of 2021.

CAIR  typically publishes an annual report tracking hate crimes and bias incidents. The organization decided to release a mid-year “snapshot report” because of a spike in May and June, Robert McCaw, CAIR’s government affairs director, told CNN.

The hundreds of anti-Muslim incidents include hate crimes, harassment, school bullying, discrimination and hate speech.

CAIR documented a spike in anti-Muslim incidents in May and June, including four at mosques in May alone. Those cases involved vandalism, harassment towards women who wear hijab or headscarf and an attempted stabbing.

Remembrance and Resilience

Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has released a survey report to mark the twentieth anniversary. Titled “Remembrance and Resilience: American Muslims Twenty Years After 9/11,” this educational report reviews and analyzes the ways 9/11 has impacted the Muslim community in the United States.

Key research findings of the Survey are:

1. 63% of American Muslims believe that American media coverage of Muslims has not become more accurate in the years since 9/11.
2. 40% of respondents said that they are frequently stopped for extra screening or questioning at airports [strongly agree (20%) and agree (20%)]. This number is on par with the amount of complaints CAIR receives concerning immigration and travel related issues.
3. 95% of Muslims said that when they hear negative comments about Islam and Muslims, they always (45%) or sometimes (50%) speak out.
4. 69% of our respondents said that they have personally experienced one or more incidents of anti-Muslim bigotry or discrimination since 9/11. Moreover, 83% said that they know a Muslim who has personally experienced anti-Muslim bigotry or discrimination since 9/11.
5. 79% of our respondents said that they witnessed or experienced increased anti-Muslim bigotry after the 9/11 attacks. 69% said that they witnessed or experienced it after President Trump’s Muslim Ban and 51% stated that they witnessed or experienced it after the invasion of Iraq. [Note: Respondents were asked to check all that apply].
6. 34% of those surveyed said that anti-Muslim rhetoric in the years since 9/11 has had an impact on their mental health [strongly agree (14%) and agree (20%)].
7. 47% of Muslims reported feeling comfortable requesting a religious accommodation at school or work. 19% said that they feel somewhat comfortable while 19% do not feel comfortable.
8. African American Muslims are more likely to be comfortable requesting a religious accommodation at school or work (58% strongly agree or agree) and more likely to always feel comfortable wearing Islamic religious attire in public (52%) than other ethnic groups in the American Muslim community, including respondents who identify as White, African, Arab, South Asian, etc.
9. 72% of Muslim women have personally experienced one or more incidents of anti-Muslim bigotry or discrimination since 9/11, compared to 67% of Muslim men. Muslim women also reported feeling less accepted in American society (56%) compared to Muslim men (65%).
10. 63% of Muslims report that their mosques have engaged in increased interfaith work since 9/11.

The CAIR survey was based on 1,338 responses from different walks of life in the Muslim community.

Outbreaks at factories and workplaces fuel COVID-19 surge in the US

Jerry White

While barely reported by the US news media, COVID-19 outbreaks in manufacturing, construction sites and other workplaces are a major driving force for the surge of infections and deaths in the United States.

Workers at the FCA Warren Truck Plant in Warren, Michigan (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Fueled by the Delta variant, the pandemic is once again spreading out of control in the US. Total cases have surpassed 41 million, with more than 670,000 officially recorded COVID deaths. The seven-day average of hospitalizations jumped to 99,879 on September 12, with an average daily death toll of 1,648, up 27 percent over the last two weeks alone.

While there is no national record-keeping for workplace outbreaks and many states do not report details on outbreak locations, the reports that are available show that manufacturing and construction sites, along with K-12 schools and long-term care facilities, regularly exchange positions as the top three settings for spreading the virus.

On Monday, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reported that there were 43 ongoing outbreaks at manufacturing and construction sites in the state. This was second only to long-term care facilities (70) and just ahead of schools (42). Twenty of the outbreaks were in the metropolitan Detroit counties, the center of the auto industry.

New outbreaks last week were centered in Michigan schools (77), as students were sent back to classes so parents could be sent back to work, particularly at auto factories, where executives have complained of high absentee rates due to COVID-19 and childcare concerns.

In Illinois, there have been 206 outbreaks at factories and manufacturers since July 1, accounting for 14.2 percent of the total and the highest of any location. In Cook County, which includes Chicago and its industrial suburbs, there have been 56 outbreaks over the last 2 1/2 months, accounting for 32.6 percent of the total.

In California, workplace outbreaks more than doubled between June and July, from 217 to 459. The most outbreaks since the beginning of the year (69) were in the agricultural sector, where migrant workers who harvest crops are packed into busses and dormitories.

These figures confirm reports the World Socialist Web Site has received from workers across the country. In Stuttgart, Arkansas, 55 miles east of Little Rock, workers at a Lennox Industries air conditioner factory report that at least five of their coworkers have died and that the company is bringing in inmates from infected jails to fill in for missing workers. “My brother is afraid to open his mouth and he’s about to die,” the sister of a Lennox worker told the WSWS. “People are afraid to speak up because they are worried about being fired. Lennox is paying judges to keep it open. These people should be exposed.”

The WSWS reported Monday on the outbreak of infections at Dana auto parts plants in Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee and other states. In Dry Ridge, Kentucky, multiple workers report that a large proportion of the plant’s workforce of around 800 is currently out due to COVID-19. Ex-Dana worker Steven Fletcher says he was fired from Dana Dry Ridge after missing time due to COVID earlier this year.

There are currently nine active cases at the Dana plant in Warren, Michigan, according to an update from the company dated September 9. The company claims that there were 53 confirmed positive cases at the plant in 2020, but already 114 this year. At least one worker has died from COVID-19 in 2021.

Case data from local government organizations reveals that in every county where a Dana plant is located, COVID-19 cases are on the rise substantially.

Far from providing this information to workers and encouraging quarantining, there is a deliberate conspiracy to conceal this life-saving knowledge from workers.

Last Friday, the California State Senate, where the Democrats hold 31 of the 40 seats, unanimously approved a bill that explicitly keeps millions of workers from knowing if there are outbreaks at their workplaces. After lobbying from the Chamber of Commerce, state senators removed a clause that allowed the California Public Health Department to reveal the names of individual workplaces with outbreaks, limiting information only to the industry.

Biden has asked the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to draft an emergency rule directing companies of more than 100 employees to adopt COVID-19 vaccination mandates or test their workers regularly. But the agency, which has been gutted for decades, has few means to enforce such a measure even if it were pursued.

Under Biden, OSHA has done no more to protect workers than it did under Trump. Instead, it has ignored thousands of complaints by workers over the lack of safety protocols, employers concealing outbreaks, and threats of being fired if an infected worker does not show up for work.

As of mid-December, OSHA had received 13,000 COVID complaints, not to mention tens of thousands more submitted to state agencies. To date it has concluded 80 percent of the cases, most with cursory investigations that rarely resulted in an inspection. The OSHA web site currently lists only 576 investigations into COVID-19 workplace deaths across the country, with the last one updated October 2020, and has issued only 103 citations related to these COVID deaths.

The unions have played and continue to play the critical role in keeping plants running in the midst of the pandemic. In the spring of last year, the United Auto Workers (UAW) joined with the Big Three companies to reopen the plants after workers took spontaneous action to stop production.

Now, the UAW and other unions are forcing workers to stay on the job even as infections and death spread. UAW officials, who are not planning to return to their Detroit headquarters until 2022 due to COVID concerns, have ignored the demands of Dana workers, who overwhelmingly voted down a pro-company contract, for strike action. Instead, the UAW and the United Steelworkers are forcing Dana workers to labor 12-hour-days, seven days a week—increasing their exposure to COVID—under an extended contract to stockpile parts to aid the company in the event of a strike.

The spread in factories and workplaces takes place as the final major public school district, in New York City, was reopened Monday. The resumption of in-person classes throughout the country is behind a catastrophic spike in childhood cases. Nearly one million children have been infected since August 5, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The Biden administration, functioning on behalf of the corporate and financial aristocracy, is determined to keep workers on the job and children in schools no matter what the cost in human lives. Under conditions of the buildup of unsustainable levels of debt, fueled by the massive government bailout of Wall Street, they fear that any shutdown of industries would lead to another collapse of the stock markets.

Reopening amid Delta variant surge deepens contradictions in global economy

Nick Beams

There is a deepening contradiction at the centre of the economic agenda being pursued in the major centres of the world economy, in particular the US and Europe.

On the one hand, the policy of re-opening, no matter what the health dangers posed by the Delta variant, and intransigent opposition to any policy of eradication, is pursued on the basis that nothing must be done that could impact the speculative rise of Wall Street and other stock markets over the past 18 months.

Worker carries drinks to a table at Puckett's Grocery and Restaurant, Friday, Sept. 10, 2021, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

On the other, the continued wave of infections around the world, that this policy has produced, is hitting all areas of the economy, leading to disruption of global supply chains, the development of bottlenecks and rising inflationary pressures because of shortages. Problems in the supply of computer chips have attracted most attention, but the shortages range across the board from the simplest components to the most complex.

The supply chain squeeze is being reflected in inflation data. In the year to August, the US producer price index, which measures the wholesale prices of goods, as they leave factories and enter the market, rose by 8.3 percent, the biggest annual increase since 2010.

Comments from US business executives and economic analysts, reported in a Financial Times article headlined “US business model darkens as Delta variant upends forecasts” pointed to the slowdown in economic growth.

The largest US airlines have reported a reduction in demand and scaled back their forecasts for revenue growth in the latter part of the year.

Home Depot chief Craig Menear told an investor conference last week, that the company had not provided guidance on its performance this year, because there was “just so much uncertainty” and it was not known how the Delta variant would play out.

The number of S&P 500 companies lowering their forecasts for earnings growth has risen from 37 percent to 47 percent, between the second and third quarters.

The situation confronting small businesses is also worsening. A blog report by the Innovation Group, issued over the weekend, said the share of small businesses reporting weekly decreases in revenue, held steady for the past three weeks “at elevated levels not seen since March.”

Coupled with the decreased share of businesses reporting increases in revenue, only 8 percent, it was “evidence that the small business recovery may be stalling in the face of Delta’s resurgence.”

In Europe there has been something of an economic upswing in the past few months. But how long it may last is another question.

At a press conference last week, following a meeting of its governing council last Thursday, European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde provided a generally upbeat assessment, but warned that Delta could “slow the recovery in world trade and the full reopening of the economy.”

Erik Nielsen, chief economist as UniCredit, told the FT there would be a good growth number for the third quarter, but “the winter brings the risk of a slowdown. Our leading indicator is nose-diving into the end of the year, so there are warning signs this recovery may not be as smooth as people think.”

The problems in the auto industry, due to the shortage of computer chips, have not abated. Major companies in Europe have shut production lines, and overall output is 30 percent below the level it had reached before the pandemic struck.

One of the most significant aspects of Lagarde’s report on the ECB’s meeting, at which it decided to marginally reduce its asset purchases, from €80 billion a month to between €60 billion and €70 billion, under its Pandemic Emergency Purchasing Program, was the issue of inflation.

The inflation rate for August rose to 3 percent, well above the ECB’s target range of 2 percent. Like her counterpart in the US, Fed chair Jerome Powell, Lagarde maintained this was due to “temporary” factors resulting from shortages.

But, in an indication of a key concern of both the ECB and the Fed, she raised the issue of a push for higher wages by workers hit with rising prices.

“One component that we are addressing, monitoring, and checking very attentively is the second-round effect, is the impact that price increases will have on wage negotiations, and that is what could actually fuel a more persistent and durable price increase and inflation going forward,” Lagarde said, in response to a question on inflation at her press conference.

As in the US, the ECB is relying on the trade unions to continue their now long-established role of suppressing wage demands. She remarked, “we don’t expect these wage increases and these wage negotiations to be very strong.” But her comments underscore the fear in the financial establishment that workers will break free of the union straitjacket and begin to take independent action.

Forcing workers to take whatever job might be available, no matter how low the wage or the dangers to their health, was raised in a recent interview with the St Louis Fed president, James Bullard with the FT.

Bullard, one of the “hawks” in the Fed leadership, who favours a more rapid wind-down of the Fed’s monetary stimulus program, said there was plenty of demand for workers and more openings than unemployed.

The problem, he said, was that workers might not want to take them right now. “They can afford to be careful about which jobs they take, or they may feel like they can get an even better job by waiting or searching more diligently.”

In a graphic display of the vicious class orientation of the entire ruling establishment, he said a problem holding back the supply of cheap labour was that because of the $1400 stimulus payments “households are flush with income.”

The Wall Street billionaires have seen their wealth escalate to record heights as a direct result of the Fed’s pumping of trillions of dollars to the financial system.

But the cry is for still more, and so the meagre payments to workers, faced with rising prices and myriad other problems, are regarded as impediments to the process of extracting ever-greater amounts of surplus value and profit from their labour.

Meanwhile Wall Street speculation, based on ultra-cheap money, by the Fed, reaches ever more dizzying heights. A comment by Wall Street Journal columnist Andy Kessler, published over the weekend, noted some of the more egregious examples of this financial insanity.

Joby Aviation, which plans to begin electric air taxi services in 2024, is worth more than Lufthansa. Earlier this year, Tesla was worth more than the nine next car companies combined, since falling back to “only” the next six.

And the list went on: Airbnb worth more than the hotel chains Marriott and Hilton combined; the Crypto-exchange Coinbase worth more than the NASDAQ exchange; Beyond Meat, made with pea protein, worth more than the entire global market for peas, and used car-sales platform, Caravana, worth more than Volvo, Honda, Ford or Hyundai. And there were many other examples on his list.

This financial madness, Kessler said, is being driven, not least, by the “fear of missing out” but, as he noted, when the selling starts this turns into “fear of losing everything as speculators jump like rats off a sinking ship.”

However, the collapse of this speculative bubble, the like of which has never been seen before, will not just be a market correction and a return to something resembling “normal.”

Such has become the dependence of the US economy on the market mania, it will have far-reaching economic and social consequences, going well beyond the effects of the 2008 crash. It will immediately pose revolutionary tasks before the working class—the necessity to undertake a struggle for political power as the prerequisite for a complete reorganisation of the economy on socialist foundations.

FBI declassified document confirms links between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 terrorists

Kevin Reed

Under an executive order from President Joe Biden, the FBI declassified an FBI report on Saturday—the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks—showing that there were links between former representatives of the Saudi Arabian government and the hijackers.

Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud (Credit: en.kremlin.ru)

Although the 16-page report, dated April 4, 2016, is redacted, it contains important details about an investigation by the FBI into the support given by a Saudi consular official and a suspected Saudi intelligence agent in Los Angeles to at least two of the men who hijacked commercial airliners on September 11, 2001.

Entitled, “ENCORE Investigation Update, Review and Analysis: Interview [Redacted] (NOV 2015),” the FBI report reviews connections and witness testimony regarding the activity of the suspected intelligence agent Omar al-Bayoumi and says that he was deeply involved in providing “travel assistance, lodging and financing” to help the two hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.

The report says that what had been previously portrayed in the official 9/11 Commission Report of 2004 as a “chance meeting” between al-Bayoumi and the two future hijackers was in fact a preplanned and well-orchestrated rendezvous at a restaurant. Purportedly attending San Diego State University as part of a work-study program paid for by a contractor with the Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation, al-Bayoumi was characterized by the 9/11 Commission report “to be an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamic extremists.”

The document from Operation Encore, the codename of the FBI investigation, also says that Saudi diplomat and Islamic Affairs official Fahad al-Thumairy had “tasked” an associate to help al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar when they arrived in Los Angeles and told the associate that the men were “two very significant people.”

Al-Hazmi and Al-Mihdhar were two of the five terrorists who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport and flew the Boeing 757 into the Pentagon, killing all 64 aboard and another 125 people in the building.

The FBI release is the first of what is expected to be several documents in response to the September 3 executive order signed by President Biden on “Declassification of Certain Documents Concerning the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.” Biden’s order stated, “Information collected and generated in the United States Government’s investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks should now be disclosed, except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise.”

This is the first official US acknowledgement that a relationship existed between individuals connected to the government of Saudi Arabia and the attacks that occurred twenty years ago, attacks that became the basis for international war crimes against Afghanistan and Iraq, rendition to black sites, torture and indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay as well as an assault on numerous fundamental rights contained in the US Constitution. It is significant that an FBI document based on an interview conducted nearly six years ago is now confirming what has been widely known since 2001.

Family members of those killed on 9/11 responded to the FBI document with blunt statements. Brett Eagleson, whose father died at the World Trade Center, said, “Today marks the moment when the Saudis cannot rely on the U.S. government from hiding the truth about 9/11.” Terry Strada of the group 9/11 Families United said, “Now the Saudis’ secrets are exposed, and it is well past time for the Kingdom to own up to its officials’ roles in murdering thousands on American soil.”

Jim Kreindler, who represents families suing Saudi Arabia, said the report validates their case. “This document, together with the public evidence gathered to date, provides a blueprint for how al-Qaida operated inside the US with the active, knowing support of the Saudi government.”

A statement from the Saudi embassy said: “No evidence has ever emerged to indicate that the Saudi government or its officials had previous knowledge of the terrorist attack or were in any way involved in its planning or execution. Any allegation that Saudi Arabia is complicit in the September 11 attacks is categorically false.”

The administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all blocked public access to any FBI documents regarding Saudi Arabian involvement with al-Qaeda on the grounds that it risked “significant harm to the national security” of the US. However, the existence of Operation Encore, which dates back to 2007, was revealed in an investigative report based largely on anonymous sources published by ProPublica in January 2020. ProPublica said at the time that the Encore investigation “exposed a bitter rift within the bureau over the Saudi connection.”

The revelations contained in the declassified document raise many more questions regarding Saudi Arabia’s role and that of US intelligence agencies in the events of 9/11. As explained by the World Socialist Web Site on Saturday, not only did the Saudis al-Thumairy and al-Bayoumi facilitate the two 9/11 hijackers in California, but both al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar lived in “the home of the main FBI informant in the Muslim community of San Diego.

“The Saudi connection is so sensitive not only because it involves US imperialism’s principal ally in the Arab world, but because the intimate ties between Saudi and US intelligence agencies raise troubling questions about how it was possible that no one in the CIA, FBI or other agencies was aware of the hijackers’ plans, even though several of them had been under CIA surveillance and were on FBI watch lists as they freely entered and moved about the United States.”

AfDB Japan Africa Dream Scholarship (JADS) 2021/2022

Application Deadline: 22nd September 2021

Eligible Countries: African countries

To Be Taken At (Country): Japan

About the Award: The Japan Africa Dream Scholarship (JADS) Program – capacity building in energy sector through skills development for sustainable development– is a joint initiative by the AfDB and Japan that aims at providing two-year scholarship awards to highly achieving African graduate students to enable them to undergo post-graduate studies (i.e. a two-year Master’s degree program) in priority development areas on the continent and abroad (including in Japan). This Japan Africa Dream Scholarship programme is funded by the Government of Japan.

The overarching goal that the AfDB and the Government of Japan seeks to attain is to enhance skills and human resources development in Africa in a number of priority areas pertaining to science and technology with a special focus on the energy sector. JADS’s objectives are aligned with the Bank’s High 5 agenda (i.e. Light up and power Africa, Feed Africa, Industrialize Africa, Integrate Africa and Improve the quality of life for the people of Africa) and key Japanese development assistance initiatives to Africa and the 6th Tokyo International Conference for African Development (TICAD VI) outcomes.

Upon completion of their studies, the beneficiary scholars are expected to return to their home countries to apply and disseminate their newly acquired knowledge and skills, and contribute to the promotion of sustainable development of their countries.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: The Japan Africa Dream Scholarship is open to those who have gained admission to an approved Masters degree course at a Japanese partner university. Candidates should be 35 years old or younger; in good health; with a Bachelor’s degree or its equivalent in the energy area or related area; and have a superior academic record. Upon completion of their study programs, scholars are expected to return to their home country to contribute to its economic and social development.

Details on Eligibility Criteria are provided in that call’s Application Guidelines, and these detailed eligibility criteria are strictly adhered to. No exceptions are made.

Broadly speaking, nationals of African countries must:

• Be a national of a AfDB member country;
• Be in good health;
• Hold a Bachelor (or equivalent) degree in the energy area (or related field) earned at least 1 years prior to the application deadline date;
• Have 1 years or more of recent development-related experience after earning a Bachelor (or equivalent) degree;
• Be accepted unconditionally to enroll in the upcoming academic year in at least one of the JADS partner universities for a Master’s degree;
• Applicants living or working in a country other than his or her home country are not eligible for scholarships.
• JADS does not support applicants who are already enrolled in graduate degree programs.
• Not be an Executive Director, his/her alternate, and/or staff of all types of appointments of the African Development Bank Group or a close relative of the aforementioned by blood or adoption with the term “close relative” defined as: Mother, Father, Sister, Half-sister, Brother, Half-brother, Son, Daughter, Aunt, Uncle, Niece, or Nephew.

Selection Criteria: The Japan Africa Dream Scholarship programme uses the following four main factors and the degree of cohesion, to review eligible scholarship applications, with the aim of identifying the candidates with the highest potential, after completion of their graduate studies, to impact the development of their countries.

1. Quality of Education Background
2. Quality of Professional Recommendations
3. Quality of Professional Experience
4. Quality of Commitment to your Home Country
5. Quality of Statement of Purpose

Japan Africa Dream Scholarship (JADS) awards scholarships to applicants who have had at least 1 year of paid employment in the applicant’s home country or in other African countries acquired after receiving the first Bachelors (or equivalent university) degree within the past 3 years.

The JADS Secretariat uses the following criteria to select the finalists:

• Maintaining a reasonably wide geographical distribution of awards, that takes into account the geographic distribution of eligible applications;
• Maintaining a reasonable distribution of awards across gender that takes into account the distribution of eligible applications across gender;
• Giving scholarships to those applicants who, other things being equal, appear to have limited financial resources
• Unusual circumstances / hardships, when assessing the employment experience and other aspects of an application.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The scholarship program provides tuition, a monthly living stipend, round-trip airfare, health insurance, and travel allowance.

How to Apply:

1. Applicant requests for information and application forms and procedures from the chosen JADS partner university. For any inquiries, please contact JADS@AFDB.ORG(link sends e-mail)
2. Applicant completes required documents and sends them to the university.
3. University evaluates and selects applicants.
4. University sends selected candidates to the AfDB.
5. AfDB reviews submissions from universities, prepares and approves the final list.
6. AfDB contacts selected awardees, and informs the universities.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details