Measles outbreak continues to expand across the US

Benjamin Mateus

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Measles (Rubeola) page (updated biweekly), as of February 29, 2024, a total of 41 measles cases had been reported by 16 states: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington. 

The largest ongoing outbreak continues in Florida, with Broward County the epicenter of the outbreak. A seventh child at the Manatee Bay Elementary School was diagnosed with measles last week. Two other cases in the county had no ties to the school and another in Polk County involved an adult with a travel-related diagnosis, raising the total number of measles cases in Florida to 10.

There have been three cases reported in Michigan, two this week, all in unvaccinated individuals who had recently traveled internationally and are believed to have contracted the disease abroad. There is no evidence of spread within the state, and the three cases are not believed to be related.

The two new cases occurred in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, in Wayne County, and in Ypsilanti, in adjoining Washtenaw County. Both cases were in adults who visited emergency rooms and urgent care facilities, with the infected person in Dearborn visiting a pharmacy as well.

Several hundred people could have been exposed to the measles virus, including all the health care workers at the four facilities visited, and the staff of the pharmacy. Contact tracing has found most of those exposed at the health care facilities, and was able to narrow down those exposed to 10 people who were not vaccinated, but the number exposed at the pharmacy, inside a CVS drug store, is unknown and probably untraceable.

Michigan has had a sharp decline in vaccination coverage for measles in recent years. Coverage with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine for children aged 4-6 fell from 89.4 percent in 2017 to 84 percent in 2022. In Washtenaw County, the coverage for younger children 19-35 months, fell from 90 percent in 2017 to only 81 percent in 2022.

Number of measles cases reported to the CDC, by year. [Photo: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]

Although the total number of infections nationwide may seem small, it bears noting that before the COVID pandemic, the annual number of measles infections across the US had been gaining momentum (1,274 cases documented in 2019). This underscores the salutary effect the efforts undertaken to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the first two years of the pandemic had on the spread of the highly contagious measles. In 2020, only 13 individuals developed measles across eight jurisdictions. In 2021, there were 49 measles infections and in 2022 a total of 121 measles cases, in large part due to a community outbreak in central Ohio, with 85 locally acquired measles cases. And in 2023, there were 58 across 20 jurisdictions. At the current pace, 2024 may be the largest measles outbreak experienced in the US during the COVID pandemic.

The current trends show the dangers posed by the government’s abdication of the responsibility to maintain an actively engaged public health infrastructure. This has led to the promotion of anti-scientific misinformation campaigns by reactionary and fascistic groups who are downplaying the dangers posed by respiratory infections, leading to a decline in childhood immunization and resurgence of disease, specifically measles.

This was particularly evident in the actions of Harvard-educated anti-COVID vaccine quack Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s surgeon general (who might be better described as Florida’s chief executive for spreading diseases). He sent a letter to parents and guardians of the students at Manatee Bay Elementary School. Disregarding all previous public health recommendations to have unvaccinated children and individuals isolate at home after exposure to measles, Ladapo wrote, “Due to the high immunity rate in the community, as well as the burden on families and educational cost of healthy children missing school, the department of health is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance.” 

Ladapo’s comments were met with sharp rebukes from the infectious disease experts and epidemiologists for putting the lives of children in danger. He has been playing fast and loose with the use of the term “high immunity rates” among school-aged children. In Florida, rates of vaccination of kindergartners have fallen to 90 percent, when at least 95 percent vaccination rates are required to take advantage of herd immunity against this highly infectious disease. Also absent from the letter was the call to parents to get their children vaccinated, which helps guard against infection even 72 hours after the initial exposure. 

The rationale for isolation, just as with COVID or influenza, is simple; stop the forward transmission of the disease so that others don’t contract the disease. The virus that causes measles has a very long incubation period. It is also one of the most contagious pathogens known, which is why a very high herd immunity through vaccination is required to protect those who are immunocompromised or unable to take the vaccine for various medical reasons.

Prior to the introduction of the first measles vaccine in the 1960s, the US used to experience upwards of three to four million measles cases each year and hundreds of measles-related deaths. Once the mass vaccination campaigns were implemented, it took only three decades for the US to declare in 2000 that measles had been eliminated, a significant advance in public health.  

Also, across the globe, prior to the measles vaccines, annual cases numbered 135 million, while 6 million, mostly children, died from the disease. Yet, the vaccination efforts were so successful that the World Health Organization estimates the measles vaccines averted 56 million deaths across the globe in the first two decades of the 21st century.

Given this history, the current global surge in measles cases and deaths amid the COVID pandemic means we are seeing a rapid reversal of these gains. It stands as an exposure of capitalism’s advanced state of decay.

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist and pediatrician at the Baylor College of Medicine, who has been viciously attacked by the right wing and anti-vaccine groups, wrote an important opinion piece on January 9, 2020, when scientists in China were just identifying the novel coronavirus, on the issue of not vaccinating children for measles.

Hotez wrote, “Vaccines prevent diseases, and being unvaccinated carries a risk. Last year (2019), the World Health Organization ranked vaccine hesitancy, a ‘reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines,’ among the top 10 health threats worldwide, alongside Ebola, HIV, and drug-resistant infections.”

He then made the comparison between those vaccinated for measles and those who weren’t. Hotez noted that if 10,000 people received the MMR vaccine, there would be three fever-related seizures, 0.4 cases of abnormal blood clotting, and 0.035 allergic reactions (or 1 in a quarter million). Also, the MMR vaccines do NOT cause autism.

However, if 10,000 children were allowed to contract the virus that causes measles because they weren’t vaccinated, approximately 2,000 would need hospitalization, 1,000 could expect ear infections with potential for permanent hearing loss, 500 children would get pneumonia, 10 to 30 would die, 10 would develop encephalitis (brain infection/inflammation), and there would be several cases of abnormal blood clotting. 

Recent research has also shown that a measles infection can inflict lasting harm on the immune system, weakening it to a point that those infected are left vulnerable for several years to other pathogens. The measles virus can injure the cells that make the necessary antibodies that help fight off these infections. The effect has been called “immune amnesia.”

Amid Ukraine war, EU Commission adopts plan for European war economy

Alex Lantier

Delegates take their seats at the EPP Congress in Bucharest, Romania, Wednesday, March 6, 2024. [AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda]

On March 5, the European Union (EU) Commission adopted a far-reaching plan to put the EU economy on a war footing, diverting massive resources to the arms industry. It asserts vast powers to restructure production around the diktat of the military, arguing: “An industry investing in new capacities and ready to shift to a ‘wartime’ economic model whenever needed, is essential.”

This plan appeared as the European powers respond to the bloody defeat of the NATO-backed Ukrainian army by threatening Russia with open-ended military escalation, including long-range missile strikes and openly sending European troops to Ukraine to fight Russia. The EU plan shows that this reckless escalation, playing Russian Roulette with nuclear weapons, is indissolubly bound up with the bourgeoisie’s escalation of class war across Europe.

The plan calls for EU countries to raise military spending to 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in what is nominally peacetime. Over a decade, it notes, the EU could spend “approximately an additional €1.1 trillion for defence, of which around €270 billion on investment” in weapons systems. It also establishes a €1.5 billion emergency fund, to be increased to €100 billion over the next five years, and calls for private investment: “Under the EU sustainable finance framework, no EU rule, or any EU planned rule, impedes private investment in the defence industry.”

To spend trillions of euros more on the army, the EU is preparing savage attacks on social programs and living standards. Last year, to fund a €100 billion increase in French military spending through 2030, Macron imposed an overwhelmingly unpopular pension cut that provoked mass strikes and protests by millions of workers. Such sums are, however, just intended as an initial down payment, since the EU is moving to invoke emergency powers to spend far broader resources on the military.

The plan proposes to turn the EU Commission into a coordinating body, overseeing supply chains and production of EU arms manufacturers. It decrees that “the Commission … will work towards the establishment of a single, centralised, up-to-date catalogue of defence products developed by” EU arms manufacturers. It will also help fund “strategic stockpiling by industry of basic components such as electronic components and raw materials.”

The plan’s most drastic provisions are those granting the European Commission and Council vast emergency powers to control and reorient European economic production towards war, suspending civilian production, in the event of international crises. The European Council is the assembly of heads of state of the EU countries, while the Commission is the EU’s main executive body.

The plan identifies two types of crises in which the emergency powers would be invoked. The first is a crisis of military production due to shortages in key supplies of raw materials or components, such as microchips. Under these conditions, the plan states, the “activation by the Council of a ‘crisis state’ … will ensure the supply of the concerned components and/or raw materials for defence supply chains, including, where necessary and justified by the overarching public interest, by ensuring priority over some or all civilian supplies.”

More drastic prioritizing of military over civilian production will take place in “security crises,” the plan states: “To face such scenarios, the Council should be given the possibility to activate a second, upper level of the crisis state to resort to measures necessary and proportionate to the resolution of the crisis (mostly focusing on the supply of products specifically designed for military use).”

The plan calls to prepare “the possible repurposing of civilian production lines” for war production, and for industry to “speed up delivery time of EU-made defense products.” It is, in short, a plan to massively boost military spending, turn production away from civilian needs, impose speed-up and intensified exploitation on workers, and hand control of the economy to the officer corps.

This is a recipe for a collapse in living standards for broad masses of workers, together with the imposition of military dictatorship in all but name. The EU Commission plan cynically tries to justify such policies by invoking the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine.

The plan applauds the NATO puppet regime in Ukraine as “a crucial partner of the Union in the defence industrial sector.” Ukraine’s arms industry, it states, “will emerge as one of the engines of the economic recovery of the country at the end of the war and a test bed of defence industrial readiness. A closer cooperation between the EU and the Ukrainian defence industrial sectors will be part of the EU’s future security commitments to Ukraine.”

In its conclusion, the EU plan advances the tired lie that EU militarization is a response to the supposedly unprovoked 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. “For decades the Union’s citizens have enjoyed an unprecedented period of peace. However, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, as well as the rising tensions at EU’s doorsteps, call for the EU and its Member States to take up strategic responsibility and power up the EU defence industry,” the plan states.

This is a pack of lies. In reality, the decades since the 1991 Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union have been years of mounting imperialist war and social austerity. NATO waged wars of plunder in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Mali and beyond, as European NATO countries poured funds into a huge increase in their armed forces. Russian’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine came after nearly a decade over which Europe increased its yearly military spending by nearly €100 billion, and built up Ukraine as a military base for attacks on Russia.

As capitalism plunges into a Third World War, the imperialist powers are not aiming to protect themselves from Russia, but competing to grab as much plunder as they can from the world economy. This is why, even though the United States and most EU states are nominally NATO allies, the EU military plan contains a series of measures aimed at competing with Washington.

The EU plan complains that EU countries still today overwhelmingly buy their major weapons systems from the United States. It states, “78 percent of the defence acquisitions by EU Member States between the start of Russia’s war of aggression and June 2023 were made from outside the EU, with the US alone representing 63 percent.”

A critical component of the EU military plan is to ensure that EU armies buy a majority of their equipment from EU companies. The plan states, “Member States are invited to make steady progress towards procuring at least 50 percent of their defence investments within the EU by 2030 and 60 percent by 2035.” This is in effect a policy to cut US arms manufacturers—or, since Britain left the EU, British arms manufacturers—out of much of the European defense market.

This policy reflects deep, objectively-rooted conflicts between US and European imperialism, particularly with uncertainty hanging over this year’s US election. As former President Donald Trump continues to win primaries, there are mounting questions in European ruling circles as to whether Trump will carry the election and, in office for a second term, return to imposing trade sanctions on Europe as he did in his first term.

This has accelerated calls in the EU ruling establishment for Europe to have a more independent military policy from Washington. Yesterday, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner reacted to Trump’s primary victories by saying: “We must be better at defense. ... We must invest in our defense capabilities in the context of NATO—quite independently of who sits in the White House.”

The French financial daily Les Echos cited a report by Britain’s Standard Chartered bank, pointing to EU vulnerability to Trump’s threats of tariffs on its exports to America. Since the 2008 Wall Street crash, US trade deficits with the EU have risen continuously, more than doubling to reach €215 billion in 2023. This sum would have been even higher, had Washington not been able to charge Europe tens of billions of euros in very high prices for US liquefied natural gas under crisis conditions, after the EU reacted to the Ukraine war by stopping purchases of Russian natural gas.

“In his first term in office, Donald Trump made reducing the US trade deficit a priority, and Europe a key target,” Les Echos wrote. With the US trade deficit with Europe continuing to rise, it added, “it seems likely that Trump will again want to fix this disequilibrium” with tariffs, particularly targeting German exports to the United States.

The European bourgeoisie’s response, to prepare to install a militarized regime ready to wage war in all directions, is however utterly reactionary. It plays a key role in pressing humanity to the brink of nuclear war. The broadest possible opposition must be mobilized in protests and strikes to oppose the accelerating collapse of Europe into World War III, and a military-police state regime.

Massive study confirms safety profile of COVID-19 vaccines

Bill Shaw

A study on 93 million individuals worldwide who received one of the major COVID-19 vaccines confirmed existing knowledge about the safety profile of these vaccines. Adverse events of special interest were rare and occurred at rates significantly lower than among individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as documented by prior studies. 

For example, 36 million doses of the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine resulted in an approximate excess of 430 cases of myocarditis above the 105 expected (as derived from analysis of Figure 3 of the study). That is roughly 12 excess cases of myocarditis for every 1 million doses administered in a 42-day window post-vaccination.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (credit: WSWS media)

By contrast, a prior study found an excess of 40 myocarditis cases per million SARS-CoV-2 infections in a 28-day window after a positive test, a rate 3.3 times higher—in a shorter window—than what the study observed for the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine.

Notably, myocarditis with two doses of the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine was the second highest effect size overall—and the highest that could be reported with confidence—found by the study. All other adverse events of special interest occurred at far lower rates.

The researchers studied data from the Global COVID Vaccine Safety Project, an effort overseen by the multi-national Global Vaccine Data Network. The data were from 10 sites in eight countries in Europe, South America, Oceania and North America. 

The study looked at the three most commonly administered vaccines: Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2, Moderna mRNA-1273 and Oxford/Astra Zeneca/Serum Institute of India ChAdOx1. The latter vaccine was withdrawn from multiple national vaccination programs in 2021 in response to an increased occurrence of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, a finding confirmed by this study.

There were 99 million individuals who received over 242 million vaccine doses included in the analysis. The researchers used a 42-day window after vaccination to look for adverse events of special interest, resulting in over 23 million person years of follow-up in total. These extraordinary numbers lent an unprecedented power to detect rare events and provided narrow confidence intervals for all but the rarest events.

Due to its size, the study had the power to uncover previously undetected adverse events of special interest. The only potential such event was acute disseminated encephalomyelitis due to the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine, but the excess number of cases was a miniscule five. The resulting confidence interval was therefore wide, and thus the results must be interpreted with caution. The researchers plan to analyze this event further in the Global COVID Vaccine Safety Data Project.

The study primarily reported its results as observed to expected event ratios, or OE ratios. It estimated expected event numbers using pre-COVID data from 2015 to 2019, with the exception of Denmark, for which the study used data from 2019-2020. It compared these expected event numbers with the numbers observed in the Global COVID Vaccine Safety Project, computing 95 percent confidence intervals on each OE ratio.

The fact that the results are reported as OE ratios can sometimes be misleading. The fact that two doses of the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine had on OE ratio of 6.1 for myocarditis might lead one to overestimate their personal risk. Although a risk of myocarditis six times higher than baseline sounds high, the extremely low expected rate of myocarditis multiplied by six is still extremely low. For the over 12 million people who received exactly two doses, there were merely approximately 266 excess cases, or an incidence rate of 0.000022.

Besides myocarditis, the statistically significant “safety signal” adverse events varied by vaccine. For the Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 vaccine, the only safety signal was myocarditis.

For the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine, the safety signals were myocarditis, pericarditis, and the acute disseminated encephalomyelitis mentioned previously (with just five excess events). The OE ratios for these events varied by number of doses given.

For the Oxford/Astra Zeneca/Serum Institute of India ChAdOx1vaccine, the safety signals were Guillain-Barre syndrome, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, and pericarditis. The latter, as with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis with the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine, occurred only with three doses and was too rare to give confidence in the results.

As the researchers note, their results are consistent with prior studies. All COVID-19 vaccines have undergone a high level of scrutiny, which has shown repeatedly that the vaccines are safe.

This study once again refutes anti-vaccination disinformation, most often but not entirely promulgated by the far-right. One study on vaccine misinformation on social media found that the most common theme was safety concerns.

Given the strength of the study and the fact that it cuts to the core of anti-vaccination messaging, the only responses possible were either ignoring the study or grossly misrepresenting it. Most of the notorious anti-vaccination personalities largely ignored it. 

The top six of the “Disinformation Dozen” ignored the study. A 2021 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that this group of 12 personalities was responsible for approximately 65 percent of online vaccine disinformation.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., number two of the “Disinformation Dozen,” made no reference to the study on X/Twitter. However, at least one member of the “Disinformation Dozen,” Erin Elizabeth, took the other tack and misrepresented the findings entirely, saying the findings affirmed “safety concerns” promulgated by anti-vaccine disinformation campaigns, when they clearly do nothing of the sort.

Additionally, a piece in the Daily Mirror—Sri Lanka misrepresented the study’s findings, claiming falsely that it validated skeptics’ vaccine safety concerns. The piece also quotes Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne, the immediate past president of the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA), as saying scientific principles were “abandoned” during the pandemic in relationship to the vaccines. This is another lie commonly peddled by the anti-vaccine movement.

The working class must base its program on scientific evidence, which makes abundantly clear that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective at reducing one’s risk of severe disease, hospitalization and death, and appear to reduce one’s risk of developing Long COVID. They must be freely available to the entire global population to provide this protection, and not distributed based on the private profit interests of the pharmaceutical monopolies.

However, while the vaccines still provide a certain level of protection, the complete abandonment of all public health measures by every capitalist government has enabled SARS-CoV-2 to undergo rapid viral evolution, rendering existing vaccines increasingly ineffective at preventing infection. As a result, the danger looms over society that a far more deadly and immune-evasive variant could evolve, rendering existing vaccines worthless.

It is critical that massive resources be invested in next-generation nasal, mucosal and pan-coronavirus vaccines, which could potentially provide sterilizing immunity against all future variants as well as other types of coronaviruses that threaten to spill over into human society.

Surge in gold and bitcoin prices points to concerns over stability of US dollar

Nick Beams

The global economic and financial system is coming to resemble a kind of madhouse. There is a speculative binge on stock markets and in other areas amid growing indications of an economic downturn and concerns about the stability of the US dollar as the global currency.

Yesterday both gold and the cryptocurrency, bitcoin, hit record highs, indicating in their own way the increasing lack of confidence in the US currency.

An advertisement for Bitcoin cryptocurrency is displayed on a street in Hong Kong on February 17, 2022. [AP Photo/Kin Cheung]

In trading, gold reached a record price of $2141 per ounce, beating the previous record of $2135 set last December, before falling back to slightly below that level at the end of the day.

A report in the Financial Times said the surge was powered by “investors hunting for haven assets and months of prodigious buying by central banks and Chinese investors.”

The rise in the gold price began in late 2022 when it was trading at $1600. It has been supported by major buying by central banks in the wake of the “weaponisation” of the dollar when the US organised the freezing of the foreign currency assets of Russia’s central bank as part of the sanctions regime imposed after the invasion of Ukraine.

That decision sent a shock through the financial system because it made clear dollar assets were not “safe” and raised the prospect any other country could be dealt with in the same way should it cross the US path.

According to the World Gold Council, central banks added 39 tons of gold to their reserves in January, twice the net purchases in December last year, and the eighth consecutive month in which buying has risen.

The rise in gold prices in the past 16 months has run counter to past experience. Normally under conditions of rising interest rates, as has occurred in the past two years, the price of gold tends to fall. Correspondingly it tends to rise when interest rates are reduced.

Accordingly, there has been some commentary to the effect that the latest rise has been due to the expectation of interest rate cuts by central banks. This explanation, however, was dismissed by the precious metals analyst, James Steel, at HSBC, who pointed to deeper issues.

In comments to the FT, he said changing expectations about interest rates, which had been back and forth since the start of the year, were not the main driver of the latest increase.

“There are new entrants in the market who are operating off uncertainty and looking for gold as a safe haven,” he said. The implication is that the US dollar is not regarded as such.

“It’s a lot of money coming in as there’s a more narrow group of assets that are in vogue and gold is one of them,” Steel said.

It is a measure of the inherent instability of the global financial system, centering on concerns over where the US dollar is headed, that bitcoin is regarded, at least in some quarters, as an alternative asset.

Yesterday, it briefly passed $69,990.90, eclipsing its previous record of $69,000 set in November 2021.

In its article on the bitcoin surge, the Wall Street Journal pointed to some of the reasons. It noted that after falling in the wake of the collapse of major bitcoin trading firms in 2022 and the bankruptcy of FTX, owned by Sam Bankman-Fried, in November 2022, it had started to rise again. This was because the failure of three significant US banks in March 2023 had “sparked fears of a larger banking crisis.”

“The token,” it continued, “is considered by some to be a store of value independent of the financial system and therefore a safer asset in times of crisis.”

Such assessments only underscore the complete divorce of the world of finance, based on speculation, from the underlying real economy.

Bitcoin contains no intrinsic value. Its only “contribution” to the economy is the consumption of massive amounts of electricity to power the computers necessary to “mine” new bitcoins in virtual space.

The latest rise in bitcoin has pushed the market value of all cryptocurrencies to past $2 trillion for the first time since November 2021.

It has been fueled with the recent approval by US regulators to exchange-traded funds in cryptocurrency set up by Wall Street hedge funds, including the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock. The flow of money into the market has led to an increase of 60 percent in the bitcoin price since the start of the year.

Since January when the nine funds began trading, investors have pumped in $15 billion, with BlackRock accounting for more than $7 billion.

As the speculative bubble grows ever larger—as reflected in the bitcoin and stock market surge on the back of the expectations of a profit bonanza from artificial intelligence—the real economy is on a downward trend.

Germany, Britain and Japan, together with much of the eurozone, have been in recession throughout the winter.

The world’s second largest economy, China, is mired in deflation and ongoing crisis in the real estate and property development, which has been responsible for as much as 25 percent of the gross domestic product in the past decade.

Yesterday premier Li Qiang announced in his “work report” to the National People’s Congress that the growth target for this year was 5 percent. But in the absence of concrete measures to achieve even this level—the lowest in three decades—it was largely dismissed as a “target without a plan,”

On the surface, the US appears to be the outlier with growth of around 2.5 percent forecast for the coming year. But there have been tens of thousands of sackings in the high-tech sector, with the auto industry set for major cuts as the global battle in the international car market intensifies with the development of EVs.

And there are signs of a developing slowdown, if not recession. Capital expenditure is expected to fall by 0.6 percent this year. Truck freight volumes dropped 4.7 percent last month, durable good orders dropped by 6.1 percent in January (7.1 percent if military spending is excluded) and new home construction fell by 14.8 percent.

The economics commentator for the London-based Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, pointed to the “strange contradiction” that has developed: “A protracted economic slump across large parts of the world economy with an ever more egregious credit bubble, one that looks increasingly like the sub-prime excesses of 2007.”

The credit bubble, he concluded, could end in two ways each one with the potential to set off cash crisis.

“[I]f the doves [those who want interest rate cuts] are right, a weak economy will set off a wave of corporate defaults; if the hawks are right, a strong economy will lead to monetary torture [continued high interest rates] and also a wave of defaults.”

The issue of dollar supremacy does not feature greatly in headline news. But its global role and importance for continued US hegemony is ever-present in the minds of those in charge of the finances of the US state. They will certainly have noted the rising gold price and what it portends.

Recent comments by Gary Gensler, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the Financial Times on proposed new regulations to govern trading in the $26.5 trillion US Treasury market indicate the growing concern about the position of the dollar.

Confidence in the dollar has been severely shaken since the crisis of 2008 with the most recent experience being the Treasury market freeze of March 2020 when, for several days, there were no buyers for US government debt, supposedly the safest asset in the world.

The Gensler regulations are aimed at preventing the eruption of such a crisis or something potentially even more serious.

“The US Treasury market is … a really important feature to promoting the dollar’s continued leadership around the world,” he said.

“Having that reliable, safe and readily accessible and tradeable asset is critical. It was critical to the British in their time as the leaders in currency. It was critical to the Dutch before that. This is an important piece of what the Fed, the Treasury and we are doing here.”

In other words, under conditions where dollar confidence is being shaken on a number of fronts, the guardians of finance capital are seeking to put in place measures to try to prevent the US going the way of its predecessors.

DAAD Short-Term Research Grants 2024

Application Deadline:

2nd May 2024

About DAAD Short-Term Research Grants:

The primary aim of this programme is to promote research projects within the context of doctoral programmes.

Which Fields Are Eligible?

A research project or course of continuing scientific education at a state or state-recognised institution of higher education or a non-university research institute in Germany, which is being carried out in coordination with an academic adviser in Germany.

What Type Of Scholarship Is This?

Grants

Who Can Apply For DAAD Short-Term Research Grants?

Excellently-qualified doctoral candidates and young academics and scientists who have completed a Master’s degree or Diploma, or in exceptional cases a Bachelor’s degree at the latest by the time they begin their grant-supported research, or those who have already completed a PhD (postdocs).
Doctoral candidates who are doing their entire doctorate at a German university are not eligible to apply

What requirements must be met?

• As a rule, applicants should not have graduated any longer than six years before the application deadline. If you already hold a doctoral degree, you should not have completed your doctorate more than four years ago. Doctoral candidates should not have started their doctoral degree any longer than three years previously.
• Applicants who have been resident in Germany for longer than 15 months at the application deadline cannot be considered.

Note:
For applicants from the fields of human medicine, veterinary medicine and dentistry, other regulations are applicable. Please refer to the leaflet “Additional information on DAAD Research Grants for applicants from medical fields” (www.daad.de/extrainfo).

• A Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Science degree of 2nd class upper division level and a Master of Arts/Master of Science degree are required.
• For francophone countries: A Licence or Maitrise degree of “assez bien” level and a DEA/DESS degree or a Master corresponding to the LMD system are required.

Language skills

• The required language level depends on the applicant’s study plans and subject: In the arts, social sciences and in law, at least a good knowledge of German is usually expected. For the natural sciences and engineering, proof of good English language skills may also be accepted if English is spoken at the host institute.

How Are Applicants Selected?

An independent selection committee consisting of specialist scientists reviews applications.

Central selection criteria are:

• a convincing and well-planned research or training project
• academic achievements

Furthermore, additional documents submitted that prove the applicant’s professional aptitude or provide information about extracurricular commitment will also be included in the evaluation.
For further information on the selection procedure, please refer to the Important Scholarship Information / Section E.

Which Countries Are Eligible?

Developing countries

Where Will Award Be Taken?

Germany

How Many Scholarships Will Be Given?

Not specified

What Is The Benefit Of DAAD Short-Term Research Grants?

• Depending on academic level, monthly payments of
  euros 861.- for graduates,
  euros 1,200.- for doctoral candidates and postdocs
• Payments towards health, accident and personal liability insurance cover
• Travel allowance
• In the case of a disability or chronic illness: subsidy for additional costs which result from the disability or chronic illness and are not covered by other funding providers: Further information

How Long Will The Program Last?

• One month to a maximum of six months; the length of the grant is decided by a selection committee and depends on the project in question and the applicant’s work schedule.
• The grant is non-renewable.

How To Apply For DAAD Short-Term Research Grants:

• Certificates, proof of credits, certifications and translations may be scanned in non-certified form and uploaded to the DAAD portal. The DAAD reserves the right to request certified copies of the documents.
• It is important to read & adhere to application requirements in Award Webpage. Please note that incomplete applications will not be taken into consideration.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

News Corp Media Fellowship 2024

Application Deadline: 24th March 2024

Eligible Countries: All

To Be Taken At (Country): Washington, USA

About the News Corp Media Fellowship: In collaboration with The Wall Street Journal, ICFJ is offering international journalists an opportunity to participate in an innovative program that includes training on creative storytelling and offers grants to support data-driven projects.  The prize for the best project is a three-month News Corp Fellowship in New York, where the fellow will receive hands-on training and mentorship at the WSJ media science lab.

This program builds on the News Corp Media Fellowship, which has offered international journalists an immersive, hands-on experience in some of the world’s most digitally advanced newsrooms since 2014.

During the fellowship, the journalist will be embedded for three months in the WSJ’s media science lab to work on a data-driven project relevant to the fellow and tailor-made for the WSJ. The selected News Corp Media Fellow will have the opportunity to work on projects related to:

• Workflow and collaboration in a global newsroom;
• Data science, artificial intelligence and computational journalism;
• New forms of training and internal leadership development;
• Audience surveying and emerging forms of social media analysis.

Prior to the three-month fellowship, ICFJ will host a three-day orientation in Washington D.C., where the fellow will receive training and be prepared to develop his or her own digital projects at the Journal.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: To be considered for the News Corp Media Fellowship, journalists must:

1. Participate in two half-day webinars conducted by editors and reporters with expertise in digital tools, data journalism and visualization, artificial intelligence, mobile journalism and audience engagement. Webinars will be open to a select group of up to 50 journalists. Both webinars will occur in April.

2. Receive one of five news innovation grants to support a data or digitally-driven project. Only journalists who participate in both webinars are eligible to apply for these grants. Projects should promote new forms of storytelling, data journalism and visualization, or citizen engagement. Each grant recipient will also receive online editorial coaching and mentorship from experienced editors, reporters and experts.

Only journalists who complete both stages successfully will be considered for the News Corp Media Fellowship. The ideal fellow will be one who:

• Has a strong news sense and curiosity
• Demonstrates strong collaborative skills
• Has an interest in audience engagement and building community
• Is willing to try new things, experiment and innovate
• Comes with ideas for several projects to work on during the fellowship

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of News Corp Media Fellowship: All travel and fellowship expenses are covered by the program.

Duration/Timeline of Programme: 3 months

How to Apply: Please apply here.

Visit the Programme Webpage for Details

Sunak government ready to roll out new “extremism” legislation targeting anti-genocide protests and the left

Robert Stevens

Within 48 hours of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s statement outside Downing Street describing Gaza genocide protests as “extremist disruption and criminality” that had to be crushed, the first measures are being rapidly rolled out.

The Times reported, “Ministers are to broaden the government’s definition of extremism as part of a crackdown on people and groups ‘undermining’ Britain’s institutions and values.”

The previous definition, in place for more than a decade, defines extremism as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values”. The Times reports that this “is seen by the government as no longer being fit for purpose.” The new definition is set to be in place “later this month.”

Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove began his review of the new definition in spring last year. According to a report by the Observer last November, extremism is to be defined as “the promotion or advancement of any ideology which aims to overturn or undermine the UK’s system of parliamentary democracy, its institutions and values” or to “threaten the rights of individuals or create a permissive environment for radicalisation, hate crime and terrorism”.

Michael Gove MP [Photo by Chatham House / Flickr / CC BY 2.0]

The Times noted, “Senior Whitehall sources said that the announcement, expected later this month, would include a list of groups that fell foul of the new definition, but added that this was still being worked on and was ‘legally fraught’…

“Gove is also expected to announce details of a government unit for combating extremism that will be responsible for providing leadership and training for officials across government departments to improve their ability to identify signs and instances of extremism.

“The unit is also expected to assess whether individuals or groups have breached the new definition and will collect data and research to inform counterextremism policies.”

The Mail on Sunday led its front page with an article backing Sunak’s attack on “poisonous” extremism, citing an accompanying piece by former Home Office Minister Robert Jenrick.

Jenrick called for the police to take more action against “extremists” and “hate preachers” online, saying their current approach was creating a “petri dish for radicalisation”. He argued, “We must immediately end the two-tiered policing that has consistently let extremists off the hook. Appeasement has only emboldened them.”

Also cited was Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of counter-terrorism legislation, who stated, “I haven’t seen this level of open extremism out there since I was appointed in 2019. It is the public brazenness of hate directed towards people by category, in particular Zionists, or Israelis, or Jews.”

The tabloid Sun editorialised, “Given the challenges of controlling increasingly disruptive pro-Palestinian marches, fueled by racist and anti-Semitic sloganeering,” all efforts had to be in place to “crack down on the extremism on our streets.”

Sunak warned in his Downing Street diatribe that he had hosted police leaders two days earlier, who had agreed a series of measures for cracking down on the right to protest. He told the police, “There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule… We simply cannot allow this pattern of increasingly violent and intimidatory behaviour”.

In his Friday speech, Sunak dismissed the technical separation of police and government decision-making to call for a politicised police force. “I respect that the police have a tough job in policing the protests we have seen and that they are operationally independent. But we must draw a line.”

For months, Sunak and his ministers have demanded that the police impose with greater effect the vast powers of repression already in place.

On Saturday, a march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) was prevented from gathering outside a branch of Barclays Bank on Tottenham Court Road, London and kept on the opposite side of the road by the Metropolitan Police, who cited Section 14 of the Public Order Act covering static protests.

Police also issued a Section 35 dispersal order to remove pro-Palestinian protesters from Trafalgar Square. Westminster Police stated, “We made 12 arrests, including nine people for failing to comply with the dispersal order.”

The Guardian also reported on Sunday plans by the government’s adviser on political violence, Lord Walney, the title bestowed on John Woodcock, a former Blairite Labour MP involved in the bogus “antisemitism” witch-hunt of Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters. He has recommended that “mainstream political leaders should tell their representatives to employ a ‘zero-tolerance approach’ to groups that use disruptive tactics or fail to stop ‘hate’ on marches.”

Among the groups listed are the PSC, which has coordinated hundreds of marches nationally against the Gaza genocide. Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are also listed. Writing in the Sun on Sunday, Walney directed, “Rishi [Sunak] and Keir [Starmer] should instruct their MPs and councillors not to engage with anyone from the PSC until they get their house in order and cut the hate from their marches.”

This instruction is in fact aimed squarely at ensuring Starmer moves further in his attacks on the demonstrations. The Guardian notes, “Several sitting Labour MPs have attended PSC events—including the former shadow chancellor John McDonnell and the MP for Poplar and Limehouse, Apsana Begum. Labour has refused to suspend MPs who have attended events, despite demands from senior Tories, because PSC is not a proscribed organisation.”

Walney gave testimony to Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee’s “Policing of Protests” inquiry, which issued a report on February 27, the day before Sunak hosted the police in Downing Street to agree a strategy to crackdown on demonstrations, including banning them from taking place outside Parliament and other “democratic venues”.

The report notes of Walney’s record: “In 2021, he was asked by the then Prime Minister, Rt Hon Boris Johnson, to lead a review of the activity and prominence of political groups. The review was intended to seek views on the rise in prominence of far-right, far-left and other extreme single-issue political groups. On 12 December 2023, Lord Walney told us he had been about to submit his review, but owing to the events of October 7 2023 and the ‘immediate sweep of protests and the issues that have happened since’, he had been ‘rapidly reviewing with a view to resubmitting imminently’”.

Slanders of protesters who have marched in their hundreds of thousands in nine national demonstrations and demands for their repression are fully backed by the Labour Party, which functions as a parliamentary “opposition” to the Tories only in name.

Replying in parliament last week to Security Minister Tom Tugendhat, who had just described protesters as “thugs”, his Labour shadow minister Dan Jarvis, a former major in the Parachute Regiment, stated, “Recent protests, alongside threats to and intimidation of politicians, have also raised the issue of what is defined as hateful extremism. The Government have not yet brought forward a definition, but that would be helpful in countering threats and intimidation.

“Can the Minister say when the Government... will bring forward a definition, and outline when the Government will bring forward an updated counter-extremism strategy?”