About the DAAD MIPLC Scholarships: With its development-oriented postgraduate study programmes, the DAAD promotes the training of specialists from development and newly industrialised countries. Well-trained local experts, who are networked with international partners, play an important part in the sustainable development of their countries. They are the best guarantee for a better future with less poverty, more education and health for all. The scholarships offer foreign graduates from development and newly industrialised countries from all disciplines and with at least two years’ professional experience the chance to take a postgraduate or Master’s degree at a state or state-recognised German university, and in exceptional cases to take a doctoral degree, and to obtain a university qualification (Master’s/PhD) in Germany.
Fields of Study: Development-Related Postgraduate Courses
Type: Postgraduate
Eligibility: Candidates eligible for the DAAD scholarship for “Development-Related Postgraduate Courses” must:
hold at least a four-year Bachelor’s degree (or a three-year Bachelor’s degree plus a further degree), completed with above-average results.
have received their latest degree no more than six years ago.
have at least two years of full-time professional experience gained in a public authority or a state or private company in a developing country (university staff and academics are generally not taken into account). To meet this requirement, it is sufficient if candidate has completed the two years by the time the program starts in October. In any case, the experience must have been gained after the completion of your first university degree.
have English test scores which meet the MIPLC requirements (see scholarship website).
Number of Awardees: Not specified
Value of Scholarship:
The scholarship recipient(s) will get a full tuition waiver from the MIPLC.
The DAAD will pay the scholarship recipient(s) a monthly stipend of EUR 750.00.
As a rule, the scholarship additionally includes certain payments towards health, accident and liability insurance coverage in Germany.
In addition, the DAAD will generally pay an appropriate travel allowance, unless these costs are covered by the home country or by another funding source.
Furthermore, the DAAD will also pay a study and research allowance.
Last but not least, the scholarship covers a mandatory two-month German course before the start of the MIPLC LL.M. program.
The scholarship does not cover additional costs, e.g. enrollment fees or the fees for a semester ticket for public transport in Munich.
Duration of Scholarship: Duration of course
How to Apply for the DAAD MIPLC Scholarships: You may apply more than a year in advance. To apply for this scholarship, please proceed as follows:
Determine whether you are eligible to apply by DAAD and MIPLC standards, keeping in mind that where MIPLC and DAAD have differing requirements, the stricter requirements prevail.
Apply for admission to the MIPLC (please refer to the How to Apply page).
When you come to the end of the online application form, check “I would like to apply for the DAAD scholarship” and complete the MIPLC Financial Assistance Application Form that opens automatically (please refer to the Financial Assistance Application Instructions).
Print the forms and add all required documentation, as per the instructions provided.
Download and complete the DAAD Scholarship Application Form and add the other documents required by the DAAD (please refer to the DAAD brochure; NB: the MIPLC does not require a research proposal). You only have to submit one copy of each document, even if a document, e.g. your CV, is required by both MIPLC and DAAD.
Make sure that your file is complete, including all three application forms (the MIPLC application form for admission; the MIPLC application form for financial assistance, and the DAAD application form for the scholarship) and all the required documents. Otherwise, your application cannot be processed. Please note that we only need the original application package, no additional copies.
Make copies of all application documents. If your are awarded the scholarship, you will have to upload electronic copies of these documents to the DAAD’s system.
Send your application: Please submit your application directly to the MIPLC, unless you are from Cameroon, in which case you must submit your application through the German Embassy in your country. Your complete file must reach the MIPLC by October 15 of the year preceding the program start.
Deadline for English-speaking and French-speaking applications: 20th January, 2023 at 00h.Midnight GMT
The deadline for applicants from Lusophone countries (Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe and Mozambique) is Midnight GMT Friday 14th October 2022
Eligible Field of Study: courses offered at candidate’s choice higher institution
To be taken at (country): Higher institutions outside of Africa, in countries such as Japan, US, UK etc
Eligible Countries: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, CAR, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, DRC, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Kenya, Kingdom of eSwatini, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Seychelles, Sudan, Tanzania, The Gambia, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
About the Award: Ashinaga presents the “Ashinaga Africa Initiative” aiming to provide higher education to 20 brilliant students from Sub-Saharan African countries each year, some of which are among the poorest in the world, and encourage them to become leading professionals in their own countries.
We search and screen for potential candidates: orphaned or bereaved students with academic potential but who cannot afford to apply to university. We provide them with a concentrated study camp for six months at Ashinaga’s facility, Kokorojuku, in Uganda and Senegal, where they are given dedicated support and assistance with their study of various subjects and languages, as they prepare to apply to highly ranked universities around the world. We also provide them with a full scholarship and living expenses for four years during their studies abroad.
We expect to see these young, educated people go back to their own countries and establish democratic and fulfilled societies, bringing people a higher national income and high-quality education. This movement will eventually contribute to the overall wellbeing of Sub-Saharan countries by helping to break the cycle of poverty, even though the effects will not be immediate, as they are when food or equipment is donated.
There is a theory that the African population will expand to more than three billion by the end of this century. We believe if we can create a bright future for Africa, a continent with so much potential, humanity’s global prospects will be bright as well.
Offered Since: 2014
Type: undergraduate
Eligibility: Applicants must:
Have lost one or both parents.
Have completed secondary school and received the results of their national secondary school examination (technical and vocational degrees not accepted) within the last two years (any date after 2nd August 2020, including all of 2021 and 2022) or will have completed secondary school and received final exam results before February 28th, 2023.
Be born after 1st September 2000.
Not have the means to attend university abroad without external financial support.
Be proficient in English, French or Portuguese.
Be regularly ranked in the top 10% of their class during their last 2 or 3 years of secondary school.
Be able to participate in the two Ashinaga preparatory programs, over the course of one year, before attending university.
Be committed to return home, or to Sub-Saharan Africa, and contribute to society in Sub-Saharan Africa after graduating from university.
Have no dependents who could interfere with academic progress.
Have a good enough health condition to be able to study abroad.
Number of Scholarships: Not specified
Value of Scholarship: The Ashinaga (100-Year Vision) Scholarship provides a full scholarship that covers the cost of tuition, accommodation (during the terms and vacation), insurance, flight, and provides monthly stipend which covers food and necessary academic costs.
Duration of Scholarship: for the period of undergraduate studies
How to Apply: all students who register for the program will receive an email with a link to the application form within 1 month of their registration if they are eligible for the program.
This is a list of the documents you will need to submit as part of your application:
Applicant Registration; Photo or scan of at least one of the following documents; Passport, National ID Card or Birth Certificate Photo or scan of your most recent High School Term Report/Transcript Photo or scan of your final High School Examination Results Certificate (if applicable)**
**For students receiving their examination results in February 2022, we will ask you to send your examination certificate as soon as possible after you have received it.
Full Application; Passport style photograph Passport or National ID Card Birth certificate of applicant. Death certificate of deceased parent(s), including the deceased parent’s name, or alternative official documentation proving death of parent(s) or orphan status. All term reports / secondary school transcripts from the last 2 years. Final secondary school examination certificate, showing grades in each subject* A letter of recommendation from a principal or schoolteacher. This should be inclusive of their email address, phone number and must contain information about your performance and character whilst at secondary school. All recommendation letters should contain an official signature or stamp. Academic transcripts or other results from university (if applicable). Certificates for extracurricular activities, training courses, jobs or other commitments (if applicable).
It is important to go through the Application instructions in the Scholarship Webpage before applying.
Important Note: Please note that if you apply by post, all submitted documents will not be returned to you. Therefore, you must send copies of documents ONLY.
This application and the selection process are FREE. Any person requesting payment at any stage of the process, does against Ashinaga’s will, and should not be paid.
Monkeypox is spreading worldwide, and Germany is becoming an international hotspot. Despite this, the government is downplaying the danger of the virus and doing nothing to curb its spread.
Four-year-old girl with monkeypox (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
The first monkeypox case in Germany was reported on May 20. Since then, the number has risen steadily, from 28 cases per week in late May to 125 in early June. There are now 300 to 400 cases per week and a total of 2,916 cases have been reported to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in Germany to date, corresponding to an incidence level of 3.54 cases per hundred thousand inhabitants. This is more than ten percent of the worldwide cases outside Africa. A recent study estimated the reproductive rate (R-value) of monkeypox in Germany to be 1.21, which is higher than the COVID-19 R-value, which is currently 0.86.
Due to widespread ignorance about the symptoms of monkeypox and generally limited testing facilities, it can be assumed that the actual number of infections is much higher.
Worldwide, Germany is among the most affected countries. In absolute numbers, Germany has the third most infections after the United States with 9,461 cases and Spain with 5,162 cases. On a per capita basis, however, the incidence rate in Germany, at 3.54, is already much higher than in the US, with 2.15 cases per hundred thousand inhabitants. This is despite the fact that the US administration has already declared monkeypox a public health emergency.
Within Germany itself, several cities are emerging as particular hotspots. Berlin, for example, has an incidence level of 41.18 with 1,443 cases—twelve times the national level. Other cities are also seeing an accumulation of cases: Cologne has had 325 cases, Munich 143, Hamburg 131, Düsseldorf 83, and Frankfurt 80.
So far, adults have mostly contracted the virus, but the RKI has also already confirmed three cases in minors—a 4-year-old, a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old.
Although monkeypox continues to spread and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an international health emergency on July 23, the German government is downplaying the threat. On the official website of the German Health Ministry, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (Social Democratic Party, SPD) says: “Monkeypox won’t cause a pandemic, the virus does not transmit fast enough for that, and we will get it under control with containments of those who are affected before there is a really big outbreak worldwide.”
Since Lauterbach made this statement on June 2, infection numbers have steadily increased and are approaching 32,000 cases worldwide. The 7-day average of new daily cases is 1,267.
To combat the virus, the government has so far received only 40,000 vaccine doses it ordered. Cities such as Berlin, which has received 9,500 vaccine doses, have already nearly used them up. Additional doses, however, are not expected until late September. Even then, only 200,000 doses are expected to arrive, and the government has no plans to order more for the time being. At the same time, organizations such as Deutsche Aidshilfe (DAH) recently called for one million vaccine doses to combat the virus.
Axel Jeremias Schmidt, an epidemiologist and DAH medical and health policy officer, said, “We don’t expect the epidemic to be over when the doses available so far have been used.” As long as there are monkeypox infections, he said, people who are at risk must be offered a vaccination.
Ulf Kristal of the DAH board also called on the German government to work for a massive expansion of vaccine production so that all people worldwide at risk could have access to vaccination. The goal, he said, must be to reduce the number of infections and bring them under control in the long term. “This is only possible if as many people at risk of infection as possible are vaccinated, in Germany and in all other affected countries.”
However, the German government has been doing nothing to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, setting a precedent for what will be done with monkeypox. With the recently announced Infection Protection Act, it also relaxed the last existing COVID-19 mitigation measures to a bare minimum.
Contrary to the way it is commonly presented, monkeypox is not a harmless disease. Infection causes lesions on all parts of the body, which in some people can lead to blindness, suffocation and scarring of the face or other parts of the body. Infected people often describe it as the most painful experience of their lives, unable to sleep or perform basic bodily functions without excruciating pain. Hospitalization is required in about 10 percent of all cases, primarily to manage this intense suffering.
To date, the mortality rate for the monkeypox strain now spreading worldwide has been estimated at about 1 percent, which is comparable to the mortality rate for COVID-19. Infection transmission can occur via aerosols, droplets, and fomites, with skin-to-skin and respiratory droplet infection considered the most important routes of transmission. Significantly, monkeypox can also spread through contaminated fabrics and surfaces and those infected with the virus can be contagious for over a month.
All London-based children aged between one and nine are to be “urgently” offered a polio vaccine booster. The decision was taken by the Johnson government following advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.
The move to vaccinate nearly a million children over the next four weeks follows the declaration by the government of a “national incident” in June, after poliovirus was detected in the London Beckton sewage plant.
The UK Health Security Agency announces that "All children aged 1 to 9 in London to be offered a dose of polio vaccine" [Photo by screengrab: gov.uk]
The samples were taken between February and May this year. The plant has a catchment area of about 4 million people spread throughout the north and east of the capital. At the time the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said the disease may have already been spreading between “closely linked” individuals.
After infection through the gastro-intestinal tract by one of the three serotypes of polio virus, the virus replicates in the gut.
Polio attacks the nervous system, with young people under the age of five most vulnerable. It initially causes flu-like symptoms but is known to cause permanent paralysis. The virus can affect the muscles that control breathing, causing death due to asphyxiation. It is fatal for up to 10 percent of the children who suffer from paralysis.
Polio identified in a quarter of London boroughs
In a statement this week, UKHSA said, “Following the findings earlier this year of type 2 poliovirus (PV2) collected from the Beckton sewage treatment works, further upstream sampling undertaken by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has now identified at least one positive sample of the poliovirus, currently present in parts of the following boroughs: Barnet, Brent, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, Islington, Waltham Forest.”
These represent a quarter of London’s 32 boroughs.
It warned, “The level of poliovirus found and the high genetic diversity among the PV2 isolates suggests that there is some level of virus transmission in these boroughs which may extend to the adjacent areas. This suggests that transmission has gone beyond a close network of a few individuals.”
Explaining the significance of its finding, the UKHSA revealed, “A total of 116 PV2 isolates have been identified in 19 sewage samples collected in London between 8 February and 5 July this year, but most are vaccine-like virus and only a few have sufficient mutations to be classified as vaccine derived poliovirus (VDPV2).
“VDPV2 is of greater concern as it behaves more like naturally occurring ‘wild’ polio and may, on rare occasions, lead to cases of paralysis in unvaccinated individuals.”
Dr Vanessa Saliba, Consultant Epidemiologist at UKHSA, said, “No cases of polio have been reported and for the majority of the population, who are fully vaccinated, the risk is low. But we know the areas in London where the poliovirus is being transmitted have some of the lowest vaccination rates. This is why the virus is spreading in these communities and puts those residents not fully vaccinated at greater risk.”
The BBC noted, “the samples detected are linked to a polio vaccine used in other countries.
“Parts of the world still dealing with polio outbreaks use the oral polio vaccine - which is safe but uses a live virus. This gives a huge amount of immunity but has the potential to spread from person to person in areas where not a lot of people are protected.
“This becomes a problem if it continues to spread, as the safe form of the virus used in the vaccine can mutate and evolve until it can once again lead to paralysis.”
The UKHSA said it was “working closely with health agencies in New York and Israel alongside the World Health Organization to investigate the links between the poliovirus detected in London and recent polio incidents in these 2 other countries.”
The eradication of polio in Britain
The poliomyelitis (or) polio virus has been known since ancient times, but it was in the 20th century that it caused widespread epidemics. These emerged in Europe and the US in the late 19th century, persisting until the middle of the 20th century. In the US there was an outbreak in 1916 that resulted in over 27,000 cases and more than 6,000 deaths and led to polio becoming a global disease.
French clinic for polio victims, Paris 1948-1967
The return of polio in Britain comes after the disease had been totally eradicated due to a public information drive and mass vaccination programmes—aimed at everyone aged under 40—from the late 1950s onwards. Crippled polio victims were once a common sight in Britain and in the early 1950s epidemics resulted in as many as 8,000 annual notifications of paralytic poliomyelitis in the UK. There were up to 750 deaths a year from the disease.
In 1955, the last year before the polio vaccine was introduced in the UK, more than 3,000 cases were recorded. In 1961 there were 707 acute cases and 79 deaths.
By 1963 the number of cases had slumped to just 39. The last outbreak of indigenous poliomyelitis was in the late 1970s. Since 1984 no cases have been reported in Britain, with the country formally declared polio-free in 2003. There are more than 100,000 survivors from the disease in Britain today, including those who would have required extensive treatment in “iron lung” respirators. Polio was also wiped out by 1988 from the US, Australia and much of Europe but remained prevalent in more than 125 countries.
An interview with Dr. Diane E. Griffin of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
In July, the WSWS ran an interview with Dr. Diane E. Griffin, M.D. and Ph.D., a university distinguished service professor and a professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The interview covered Long COVID and viral RNA persistence, but Professor Griffin also addressed the significance of vaccine-derived poliovirus being found in London sewers.
She said, “I’m not surprised to hear that it’s being found. I think in Tel Aviv they’ve known that they’ve had polio in wastewater for a long time and they’ve never been able to identify the person that it’s coming from….
“So, polio vaccine is a live virus vaccine. And that group of viruses are RNA viruses. It’s very good at constantly mutating and selecting for viruses that replicate better. It also recombines with other viruses like it including other types of polioviruses. There are three types of polioviruses.
“Basically, there’s a selection process particularly if it’s being transmitted in a population. That vaccine virus is constantly being shed from the gastrointestinal tract and in low vaccinated populations where people haven’t been vaccinated then you get a lot of transmission.
“I think maybe one of the questions that’s interesting and I haven’t heard about what is happening in the UK but I’m sure the UK has high vaccine coverage for polio, but they use an inactivated vaccine as we do and as many developed countries do and not the live virus vaccine.
“But the inactivated vaccine doesn’t induce intestinal immunity, meaning you can still get infected even though you don’t get sick. The inactivated polio vaccine prevents the virus from going to the brain. And that’s the only part of poliovirus infection that anybody’s really worried about because of the paralysis. Summing it up, the inactivated vaccine works perfectly well to protect against paralytic polio, but it doesn’t protect against infection.
“So, most of the developed countries that are using the inactivated vaccine are susceptible to an introduction of polio through the fecal-oral route or contaminated water or food that then can spread to others. And then if you don’t have a highly vaccinated population, you may start getting cases of paralysis.
“Surveillance for polio, traditionally, has depended on [the presentation of] paralysis among cases. Even with a completely unvaccinated population with wild type infection, only one in 100 to 200 ever get paralyzed. Most people have asymptomatic infection which means you can have a lot of undetected transmission and spread without recognizing it unless you’re doing other kinds of surveillance, like the wastewater surveillance.”
The breakdown of public health
To achieve immunity from polio, vaccines must be regularly administered in childhood. In Britain, pre-school children and those aged 8 and 14 are vaccinated. The World Health Organization recommends that, to be successful, a school-aged vaccination programme should achieve a 95 percent uptake. However only three areas of Britain—Rutland, Country Durham and East Riding—meet the threshold, with overall uptake UK-wide under 85 percent.
The fact that a deadly form of polio virus has been detected in London, a city of nearly 10 million, must raise the alarm. Under successive governments for over four decades public health infrastructure and expenditure has been gutted, resulting in the country’s population being disastrously exposed to diseases once considered eradicated and susceptible to new pandemics.
The Johnson government ignored, with terrible societal consequences, a decade of pandemic planning ahead of the COVID-19 disaster. Its criminal policy encouraged the spread of the virus, despite being forced by opposition in the population to impose several lockdowns. The existence and transmission of the polio virus was confirmed just one month before the Office for National Statistics also confirmed on July 13 that more than 200,000 people had died from COVID in Britain.
It also emerged this week that despite the WHO declaring last month that monkeypox was a global health emergency, the UK will likely exhaust stocks of the vaccine in the next two to three weeks. The UK officially has 2,859 cases of monkeypox, one of the largest tallies in the world.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Thursday that it is no longer recommending that those exposed to COVID-19 quarantine in order to prevent the spread of the deadly disease. It is instead calling on those exposed to “wear a high-quality mask for 10 days and get tested on day 5.”
The CDC’s press release also reiterates its earlier reduction of isolation for those who test positive for COVID-19, stating that an infected person should only isolate for five days. It also explicitly notes that as long as “symptoms are improving” after day five, “you may end your isolation.” It only recommends isolation for 10 days for “moderate” or “severe” illness, while ignoring the fact that those with a “mild” case of the pathogen can spread it to others and that even those cases can be extremely debilitating and can lead to Long COVID.
Signs on the wall remind students to keep 6 feet apart during a media tour of the Norris Middle School in Omaha, Neb., Wednesday, July 29, 2020. The CDC has again revised its COVID guidelines, further relaxing quarantine recommendations. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)
The CDC also issued no change to its definition of “fully vaccinated” as two shots of the mRNA vaccines, despite the mass of data showing that the Omicron variant and its many subvariants have severely eroded the ability of two doses to prevent hospitalization. The agency also reaffirmed that it will continue to use hospitalization rates, a lagging indicator of the spread of the virus, as the chief measure of the level of danger from the pandemic in each county.
At a press conference Thursday, CDC spokesperson Greta Massetti attempted to justify the changes by claiming that, “We’re in a stronger place today … with more tools—like vaccination, boosters, and treatments.” She continued that the pandemic is at a point where it, “no longer severely disrupts our daily lives” and added ominously, “We know that COVID-19 is here to stay.”
In other words, according to the CDC, tens or hundreds of thousands of infections and hundreds or thousands of deaths each day from COVID-19 is to be the baseline going forward, with public health measures increasingly non-existent and mass death a daily occurrence. New variants and whole new pandemics, whether from monkeypox, polio or some other disease, are to be accepted by the population.
The agency also explicitly noted that the new regulations mean that the “test to stay” policy to check children for COVID-19 infection after exposure at schools is being dropped. There will be no attempt to stem the spread of the deadly disease in schools, despite the fact that COVID-19 has killed at least 1,736 children in the US alone, a number which is likely a significant undercount, and inflicted Long COVID on an untold number of young people.
Ignoring the mortal threat to children is, however, more or less state policy. The same day the CDC guidelines were released, Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders interviewed the Biden administration’s COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha. One of the topics was the impact of the virus on children. During the interview, Sanders made the extraordinary claim that, “children … are not dying” from COVID-19.
More remarkably, Dr. Jha made no effort to correct Sanders! He instead built off Sanders’ falsehood and justified the new CDC guidelines for schools, asserting, “we should look forward to a school year in which every child is in school, is in person, full-time, for the whole year. I think we have all the ability to do that, and that should be the only acceptable standard.” Dr. Jha’s enforcers will be the “teachers unions,” from whom he received “positive reviews” about the new CDC guidelines.
There is a clear aligning of forces among the capitalist state, from its nominal public health officials, leading politicians, and corporatist trade unions, to ensure that students are forced into schools so their parents can be more easily forced into factories and offices for the enrichment of the capitalist elite and their media and union toadies.
The new CDC guidelines provoked a flood of opposition among principled scientists and anti-COVID advocates on social media Thursday, with many commenting directly to the World Socialist Web Site.
Dr. Ellie Murray, an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health, told the WSWS, “I am disappointed that they are advising fewer protections, despite the continued high case and death rates. I am even more disappointed to see them recommending less testing at the same time they roll back other precautions. With less testing we will not be able to properly assess the impact of this guidance.”
Dana Parish, a leading anti-COVID advocate, responded sharply to the CDC’s announcement, telling the WSWS, “The new CDC guidance is the figurative nail in their coffin, and will be the literal nail in the coffin for countless children and adults who counted on CDC to protect them. That they’re downright encouraging further spread of a deadly airborne virus that has a propensity to disseminate and persist in organs all over the body, cause strokes, heart attacks, multiple organ damage, dementia, and lead to an increased risk of sudden death, goes against the most basic principle of public health: to do no harm.
“They are again misleading the public by insinuating that vaccines and/or a less severe acute illness will protect them. But neither prevents long term damage, and that is a crucial message the public deserves to know. To be clear, an asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic infection still puts you at an unacceptably high risk for Long COVID. The initial infection is NOT the problem for most people now; the long term damage is.”
Several other epidemiologists and airborne transmission experts weighed in on the reckless and anti-social character of the new guidance. Nicolas Smit, an expert on masks and respirators, commented to the WSWS, “As COVID-19 continues to spread along with monkeypox, the decision to lift guidelines is another sign that the goal of the government is no longer stopping the damage both viruses have on Americans’ health or the already fragile economy—and instead to focus on winning votes for the midterms at all costs.
“During the 2020 election, President Biden said that anyone who was responsible for allowing 220,000 people to die should not be President of the United States and that it was important to role model mask wearing. Unfortunately, President Biden is now responsible for well over 600,000 deaths, yet still discourages mask use. The continued refusal to protect workers or the public from two preventable deadly and debilitating viruses means that the death toll will continue to grow.”
Yaneer Bar-Yam, co-founder of the World Health Network, warned that, “The CDC continues to abandon protections that prevent disease, death and disability through Long COVID. Everyone should recognize that we have to share responsibility to take care of and protect ourselves under these conditions. Prevention continues to be the best response to both the COVID-19 and monkeypox pandemics.”
Anti-COVID advocate Lazarus Long wrote, “It is ironic that it comes just as school starts. More teachers will be out sick, and children will lose even more quality education. Even if substitutes are brought in, it is likely they will be not qualified, such as college students or military personnel. These changes are not for Americans’ health, but for Biden’s political health.”
It is not merely, however, that the CDC has abdicated its role as the chief public health agency in the country. It is actively pursuing policies designed to generate private profits for a tiny minority of the American and world population as the rest are forced to live and work on an increasingly plague-ridden planet. Anti-COVID activist Theo Allen made this clear, noting that the CDC’s press release “is making explicit that the CDC implemented the Great Barrington Declaration of herd immunity.”
Tens of thousands of local authority workers in Scotland and Northern Ireland are striking, planning to strike or balloting against sub-inflation pay offers. The disputes are driven by soaring living costs.
Local authority workers are entering the fray simultaneously with the wildcat walkouts at the huge Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland and elsewhere, and at Amazon depots across the UK as disputes involving hundreds of thousands of communication, health, education and transport workers break out.
In all some 250,000 workers are employed by Scottish councils. The pay claim submitted by the three trade unions in the Scottish Joint Council (SJC) Unite, Unison and the GMB, in January called for a flat rate £3,000 pay increase, a minimum of £12 an hour, based on the then RPI rate of inflation of 7.1 percent. This claim amounts to real terms pay cut, as RPI is now 11.8 percent with predictions of its reaching 17 percent by the end of 2022.
The employers, the Councils of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA) and the Scottish government, are offering a mere £9.98 an hour minimum, no flat rate increase and allowances to be increased by 2 percent. CoSLA said this was in line with a reduction of £251 million in core funding to local government from the Scottish National Party (SNP) government.
Striking cleansing workers at Dawsholm, Glasgow in November 2021 [Photo: WSWS]
The SJC unions are doing everything in their power to prevent a united struggle emerging among council workers, at a time when millions throughout the UK face similar attacks. The union apparatus, deeply integrated into local authority management, seeks to limit workers to fragmented and delayed actions.
The SJC eventually balloted school, nursery and cleansing workers over strike action in June, months after initial negotiations.
On July 27, Unite finally announced that cleansing workers at 26 of 32 Scottish local authorities had voted for strike action. Workers at Tayside Contracts, which contracts work for Angus, Dundee City and Perth and Kinross, also voted to strike.
Unison reported that its members across Scotland had “overwhelmingly” rejected the employers' offer and that workers at nine authorities had voted in sufficient numbers to overcome the 50 percent turnout threshold imposed by the anti-strike laws. The GMB reported thousands of members supporting strikes, surpassing the 50 percent threshold in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow cleansing departments, while schools in Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow and Renfrewshire.
Immediately after these ballot results, the SJC wrote in July 27 to CoSLA noting that they now had legal mandates to disrupt the operation of 1,200 schools across 16 local authorities and waste collection across 25 authorities.
Rather than act on votes expressing the determination of council workers to put up a fight, the unions have authorised only two strikes. The first, in Edinburgh, is due to commence August 18 and run for 12 days, to coincide with the latter half of the Edinburgh International and Fringe Festivals, and only 250 workers will be involved. Thereafter, some 1,500 bin workers at a further 15 councils are scheduled currently to strike for a week commencing August 24. According to Unite, “Action specifically impacting schools is expected to begin in early September”.
By dragging everything out, the SJC will seize the any shift in position from CoSLA to justify attempting to call off any further action.
Simultaneous with the council workers ballots, 150,000 National Health Service (NHS) workers in Scotland were balloting until August 8 on an NHS Scotland pay offer of 5 percent and a minimum wage of £10.50. Although the “offer” is vastly below inflation, the unions, well aware that that the offer would be thrown out ensured the ballot was merely “consultative”, meaning that another vote would be required before any action took place. On Friday the votes were published showing significant majorities for industrial action by Royal College of Nursing, GMB and Unison members. Unite members in Scotland had already backed action is a consultative ballot.
The role of the unions in frustrating their members and delaying any fightback was clear in their response. Unison will finally hold a strike ballot of their 50,000 members in Scotland but only beginning in two months’ time, on October 3! The RCN’s ballot will be held beginning September 15 to October 13. The GMB, despite its members voting by 97 percent to reject the deal has announced nothing. GMB Scotland organiser Karen Leonard instead appealed to the SNP government saying it “must do more to help them [workers] confront the cost-of-living crisis and avoid the prospect of more NHS staff slipping into working poverty this winter.”
Referring to SNP Health Secretary Humza Yousaf, she pleaded, “If the minister wants to recruit and retain the people desperately needed to help our NHS recover from the peril it is in, then he must value these key workers better, and particularly those in the lowest pay grades who do not receive the biggest cash increases under this offer.” Despite the huge strike mandate any action is to be delayed as long as possible, with Leonard adding, “However, if these hard truths are not recognised and confronted then industrial action affecting NHS services looks inevitable in the months ahead.”
Conditions in Northern Ireland are similar in all fundamentals, with the trade unions working systematically to fragment and suppress determined efforts by workers opposing pay cuts.
Council workers across Northern Ireland held a week-long strike in March, which produced no movement from district councils, the suspended Northern Ireland Executive or the British government. Rather than escalate and intensify industrial action and seek a broader base of support among other public and private sector workers, the trade unions are seeking local agreements to assist in breaking up opposition to the miserable 1.75 percent pay offer made for 2021/22 and still not settled.
Of the eleven district councils in Northern Ireland, only workers in Mid Ulster District Council are on strike. Since July 25 Unite members have been striking against an offer the authority claims is an additional 4 percent over 2 years and a one-off payment of £500. The add-ons still bring the combined total to less than inflation.
The Mid Ulster strike involves cleansing and leisure centre workers, who have maintained pickets at depots in Dungannon and Magherafelt. Bin collection has been curtailed across the authority and two leisure centres, at Cookstown and Greenvale are partly closed. The strike is scheduled to end August 21.
Workers at Derry City and Strabane District Council were set to strike for four weeks, starting July 18. Unite members working in cleansing and council venues were demanding a 10 percent increase. But Unite regional official, Gareth Scott conceded that even this sub inflation demand was “up for negotiation”. Then, on July 15 the strike was called off “as a matter of good faith” after the district council announced “positive and constructive negotiations” with both NIPSA union members and Unite. Days later, Unite advised its intention to ballot members recommending acceptance of a deal reported in the media as including an offer of as little as a 2.5 percent wage increase, although a one off £1,000 payment had previously been floated.
One thousand workers at Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon District Council have announced they intend to strike from August 15 and “strike action and action short of strike would take place over four weeks.” The members of GMB, NIPSA and Unite, who represent 80 percent of the council workforce, are opposing unequal pay rates and seeking redress for the cost-of-living crisis. Strike action has already been called off once.
Belfast City Council is the largest council, employing 2,500 workers. One thousand of these are members of Unite, SIPTU, NIPSA and the GMB and are opposed to the 1.7 percent offer. Yet again the unions are doing everything to demobilise this sentiment. A “union source” told the Belfast Telegraph that negotiations were continuing, and that strike action was merely “being considered”.
The issue of alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine highlights the decades-long reluctance of today’s major military powers to support the International Criminal Court.
In 1998, the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established by an international treaty, the Rome Statute. Coming into force in 2002 and with 123 nations now parties to it, the treaty provides that the ICC, headquartered at the Hague, may investigate and prosecute individuals for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. As a court of last resort, the ICC may only initiate proceedings when a country is unwilling or unable to take such action against its nationals or anyone else on its territory. In addition, although the ICC is authorized to initiate investigations anywhere, it may only try nationals or residents of nations that are parties to the treaty, unless it is authorized to investigate by the nation where the crimes occurred.
The development of a permanent international court dealing with severe violations of human rights has already produced some important results. Thirty-one criminal cases have been brought before the ICC, resulting, thus far, in 10 convictions and four acquittals. The first ICC conviction occurred in 2012, when a Congolese warlord was found guilty of using conscripted child soldiers in his nation. In 2020, the ICC began trying a former Islamist militant alleged to have forced hundreds of women into sexual slavery in Mali. This April, the ICC opened the trial of a militia leader charged with 31 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur, Sudan. Parliamentarians from around the world have lauded “the ICC’s pivotal role in the prevention of atrocities, the fight against impunity, the support for victims’ rights, and the guarantee of long-lasting justice.”
Despite these advances, the ICC faces some serious problems. Often years after criminal transgressions, it must locate the criminals and people willing to testify in their cases. Furthermore, lacking a police force, it is forced to rely upon national governments, some with a minimal commitment to justice, to capture and deport suspected criminals for trial. Governments also occasionally withdrew from the ICC, when angered, as the Philippines did after its president, Rodrigo Duterte, came under investigation.
The ICC’s most serious problem, however, is that 70 nations, including the world’s major military powers, have refused to become parties to the treaty. The governments of China, India, and Saudi Arabia never signed the Rome Statute. Although the governments of the United States, Russia, and Israel did sign it, they never ratified it. Subsequently, in fact, they withdrew their signatures.
The motive for these holdouts is clear enough. In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the withdrawal of his nation from the process of joining the ICC. This action occurred in response to the ICC ruling that Russia’s seizure of Crimea amounted to an “ongoing occupation.” Such a position, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, “contradicts reality” and the Russian foreign ministry dismissed the court as “one-sided and inefficient.” Understandably, governments harboring current and future war criminals would rather not face investigations and possible prosecutions.
The skittishness of the U.S. government toward the ICC is illustrative. Even as he signed the treaty, President Bill Clinton cited “concerns about significant flaws” in it, notably the inability to “protect US officials from unfounded charges.” Thus, he did not submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification and recommended that his successor, George W. Bush, continue this policy “until our fundamental concerns are satisfied.” Bush, in turn, “unsigned” the treaty in 2002, pressured other governments into bilateral agreements that required them to refuse surrender of U.S. nationals to the ICC, and signed the American Servicemembers Protection Act (sometimes called the “Hague Invasion Act”) which authorized the use of military force to liberate any American being held by the ICC.
Although, subsequently, the Bush and Obama administrations grew more cooperative with the court, aiding it in the prosecution of African warlords, the Trump administration adopted the most hostile stance toward it yet. In September 2018, Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly that the United States would provide “no support” to the ICC, which had “no jurisdiction, no legitimacy, and no authority.” In 2020, the Trump administration imposed economic sanctions and visa restrictions on top ICC officials for any efforts to investigate the actions of U.S. personnel in Afghanistan.
Under the Biden administration, however, U.S. policy swung back toward support. Soon after taking office, Biden—in line with his more welcoming approach to international institutions― dropped the Trump sanctions against ICC officials. Then, in March 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine produced widely-reported atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, the U.S. president labeled Putin a “war criminal” and called for a “war crimes trial.”
The ICC was the obvious institution for action. That March, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution backing an investigation into Russian war crimes in Ukraine and praising the ICC. Weeks before this, in fact, the ICC did open an investigation.
Even so, it is unclear what the U.S. government can or is willing to do to aid the ICC in Ukraine. After all, U.S. legislation, still on the books, bars substantial U.S. assistance to the ICC. Also, Pentagon officials are reportedly opposed to action, based on the U.S. government’s long-time fear that U.S. troops might someday be prosecuted for war crimes.
For their part, Russian officials have claimed that the widely-recognized atrocities were a complete “fake” a “fabrication,” and a “provocation.” In Bucha, stated the Russian defense ministry, “not a single local resident has suffered from any violent action.” Not surprisingly, Russian authorities have refused to cooperate with the ICC investigation.
Isn’t it time for the major military powers to give up the notion that their war criminals should be allowed to operate with impunity? Isn’t it time these countries joined the ICC?
